Uruguay Agrees To Take Five Guantánamo Prisoners

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Uruguay Agrees To Take Five Guantánamo Prisoners

EU agrees on travel bans and asset freezes for Russians in response to Ukraine crisis

By End the Lie

(Image credit: TijsB/Flickr)

The European Union agreed on a framework for their first round of sanctions on Russia since the Cold War in response to the situation in Crimea, including bans on travel and asset freezes on certain people and firms.

Read our latest: “Sen. Feinstein accuses CIA of spying on Senate computers, McCain considers probe” and “Ukraine updates: Russia holds air defense drills, Ukraine to reject Crimea referendum”

This comes after Secretary of State John Kerry indefinitely delayed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian forces continued to take control of bases in Crimea and Russia held air defense drills.

The EU move was stronger than many had expected, according to Reuters, and will target “an as-yet-undecided list of people and firms accused by Brussels of violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

The sanctions will be imposed on Monday if diplomatic progress is not made, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The referendum that could make Crimea part of Russia will be held Sunday, even though the West continues to maintain that the vote is illegal.

While Washington has also announced a series of sanctions to be imposed on Russia, the measures imposed by the European Union would likely hit Russia harder.

Reuters points out that “Europe buys most of Russia’s oil and gas exports, while the United States is only a minor trade partner. The EU’s 335 billion euros of trade with Russia in 2012 was worth around 10 times that of the United States.”

Another Reuters article noted that the sanctions are being coordinated in concert with the U.S., Switzerland, Turkey, Japan and Canada.

This collaboration is part of “an effort to ensure the sanctions net is as tight and effective as possible.”

“Member states shall take the necessary measures to prevent the entry into, or transit through, their territories of the natural persons responsible for actions which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” Article 1 of the document states, according to Reuters.

The second article states “all funds and economic resources [in the EU] belonging to, owned, held or controlled” by those deemed responsible for undermining Ukrainian integrity “shall be frozen.”

The document was approved after none of the EU member states objected to the phrasing of the document, according to unnamed officials.

Foreign ministers of EU states will convene on Monday to formally sign off on the restrictions, unless Russia changes course significantly.

“When it comes to sanctions on Russia, a decision has in fact already been made, especially on the procedure of introducing sanctions,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a press conference, according to ITAR-TASS.

Officials reportedly stated that Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will not be on the sanctions list so that communications channels can remain open, according to Fox News.

Officials from the U.S., U.K., Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan met to discuss the issue in London on Tuesday, Fox News reports.

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EU agrees on travel bans and asset freezes for Russians in response to Ukraine crisis

NKorea Agrees to Hold Talks on Family Reunions

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Asia Pacific|NKorea Agrees to Hold Talks on Family Reunions

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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said Monday that North Korea had agreed to hold talks on arranging reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War for the first time in more than three years.

North Korea last month agreed to restart the reunions and asked South Korea to pick the date. Seoul subsequently chose Feb. 17-22 and proposed working-level talks to discuss details about the reunions. But Pyongyang hadn’t responded for a week, drawing complaints from Seoul officials.

Breaking its weeklong silence, North Korea on Monday sent a message proposing the talks take place either on Wednesday or Thursday at a border village and let South Korea choose the date, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry and Pyongyang’s state media.

South Korea replied it preferred Wednesday, according to the Unification Ministry. Spokesman Kim Eui-do said Seoul officials will try to arrange the reunion as soon as possible.

The reunion program is one of several cross-border cooperation projects that have been stalled in recent years amid tension between the divided Koreas. The program is highly emotional as most applicants are in their 70s or older and want to have the possibility to see their long-lost relatives before they die.

Pyongyang has recently toned down its typical rhetoric against Seoul and made a series of conciliatory gestures. Last spring, the country dramatically raised tensions by issuing repeated threats to launch nuclear wars.

Analysts say the impoverished North needs improved ties with South Korea as that will help the country attract foreign investment and aid.

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NKorea Agrees to Hold Talks on Family Reunions

Finally, IL (almost) agrees with taxpayers about pensions

Finally, IL (almost) agrees with taxpayers about pensions
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By Benjamin Yount | Illinois Watchdog

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois lawmakers have finally come to accept what most taxpayers in the state have known for years.

TOO RICH: Madigan admits to what taxpayers have known for years.

“Illinois pension systems are just too rich to be afforded,” Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan said Tuesday as lawmakers began on a path to pension reform.

Madigan said Illinois cannot guarantee unionized, public employees 3 percent raises for the rest of their lives.

“We all got drawn into a trap, and we all talked about the (cost-of-living adjustment),” Madigan said. “The 3 percent compounded pay increase in retirement is the furthest thing from a COLA, because it has nothing to do with the cost of living.”

Debate continues over whether lawmakers could have — or should have — gone further with pension reform.

But the fact Illinois, a deep blue state, voted to stand up for taxpayers and stand against public employee unions shows how far the state has progressed over the past decade.

In 2005, then Gov. Rod Blagojevich — with union support — skipped Illinois’ pension payment.

That bill has come due, and lawmakers are now listening to taxpayers.

“The public is pushing us to do something. They want something done,” state Rep. Ed Sullivan, R-Mundelein, said. “A lot of people don’t have pensions. Their 401(k)’s have been diminished. And so, they are looking at this pension system as a special deal for a lot of folks.”

Illinois’ public employees decry the reforms, saying school teachers and public workers will now have to scrape to make ends meet in retirement.

State Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, says the unions should learn some basic math.

“The average (teacher) who worked for 30 years had a starting pension of over $ 72,000,” Ives said. “The average Social Security recipient receives just over $ 14,000, and they have to work almost a decade longer to receive that benefit.”

THIEF: Holmes says Illinois pension reform is worse than a thief in the night.

Illinois is spending nearly 25 percent of its money on retirement payments. Democrats know this.

“We have a crisis. We have a problem,” said state Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook.

Nekrtiz has said pension reforms are needed to ensure Illinois can pay for schools, roads and public safety. You know, to do the work of a functioning government.

Just a handful of Democrats are sticking by the adopted stance of public employee unions, which paint government workers as victims.

“(Pension reform) is actually no different than a thief coming into your house in the night and stealing your valuables,” state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, said. “The difference is, this isn’t a thief coming in the night. This is your elected representative coming to you; looking you straight in the eye and saying, ‘I’m going to take away your future’.”

The next debate at the Illinois statehouse will be over how Democrats, who control state government, spend the $ 1.8 billion in “savings” from Tuesday’s pension reform vote.

Ives expects the Legislature to come back to pensions, because there’s more work to be done. “This is a step backward,” Ives said. “You’re actually asking the people that retire with $ 2 million pensions, and contribute about $ 120,000 of raw contributions, to pay less.”

If Illinois fails to end defined benefit pensions, and taxpayers flee the state, no one will be left to pay for the pension promises anyway, she said.

Contact Benjamin Yount at Ben@IllinoisWatchdog.org and find him on Twitter @BenYount.

Please, feel free to “steal our stuff”! Just remember to credit Watchdog.org. Find out more

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Read more about Finally, IL (almost) agrees with taxpayers about pensions and other interesting subjects concerning NSA at TheDailyNewsReport.com

UPDATE 1-U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Obamacare contraception cases

UPDATE 1-U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Obamacare contraception cases
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Tue Nov 26, 2013 12:18pm EST

(Adds details of the cases)

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON Nov 26 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to consider religious objections made by corporations to a provision of Obamacare requiring employers to provide health insurance that covers birth control.

Oral arguments will likely be scheduled for March, with a ruling due by June.

The so-called contraception mandate of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, requires employers to provide health insurance policies that include preventive services for women that include access to contraception and sterilization.

The key question before the court in the two cases it agreed to hear is whether corporations should be treated the same as individuals when making free exercise of religion claims under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and a 1993 federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

One of the cases was filed by arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby Stores Inc and Mardel, a chain of Christian bookstores. Both are owned and operated by David and Barbara Green and their children, who are evangelical Christians. The administration of President Barack Obama sought the high court’s review in that case after losing before a federal appeals court.

The other case was brought by a Mennonite family that owns a company in Pennsylvania, Conestoga Wood Specialties. The company, which lost in federal appeals court, is owned and operated by Norman and Elizabeth Hahn and their three sons.

The court took no action on a third case filed by Michigan companies Autocam Corp and Autocam Medical LLC.

The cases are not a direct challenge to the mandate itself. The question is whether closely held companies owned by individuals who object to the provision on religious grounds can be exempted from the requirement.

The legal questions surrounding U.S. Health and Human Services regulations issued under the preventive health provisions of the Obamacare law have not previously been before the court. In June 2012, the justices upheld the constitutionality of the law’s core feature that requires people to get health insurance on a 5-4 vote.

The cases are Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 13-354, 13-356. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Vicki Allen)

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Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate

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BRIEF-TransAlta agrees to issue $400 mln senior notes

BRIEF-TransAlta agrees to issue $400 mln senior notes
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/78569__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

Wed Nov 20, 2013 12:22pm EST

Nov 20 (Reuters) – TransAlta Corp : * Announces public offering of senior notes * Agreed to issue $ 400 million of senior unsecured medium-term notes * Says notes carry a coupon rate of 5.00%, payable semi-annually, at an issue

price equal to 99.516% of the principal amount of the notes * Intends to use net proceeds from offering for repayment of indebtedness,

financing of corp’s long-term investment plan and growth projects * Source text for Eikon * Further company coverage

Reuters: Bonds News

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US agrees to keep Patriot missiles in Turkey

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the U.S. will continue to provide two Patriot missile batteries in Turkey for another year as part of that country’s air defenses while the civil war rages on in Syria.

Pentagon spokesman Carl Woog says Hagel met with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu (AH’-meht dah-voot-OH’-loo), on Monday and said the missiles will remain. They are under NATO command and Turkey requested they stay another year. They also discussed the effort to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has a plan to destroy Syria’s estimated 1,300-ton arsenal, which includes mustard gas and sarin, outside Syria, but has yet to find a country willing to host the risky operation.

The operation began with inspections more than a month ago.

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Politics Headlines

US agrees to keep Patriot missiles in Turkey

Rosneft agrees to ship oil to China via Kazakhstan

Rosneft agrees to ship oil to China via Kazakhstan
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YEKATERINBURG, Russia Mon Nov 11, 2013 11:41am EST

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The company logo at a Rosneft petrol station in St.Petersburg October 23, 2012.


Credit: Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk







YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) – Rosneft (ROSN.MM) said on Monday it had agreed on the basic principles for shipping oil to China via neighboring Kazakhstan in a deal essential for the Russian company to honor its supply commitments to Beijing.




The preliminary agreement was signed by executives of Rosneft, Kazakh state oil firm KazMunaiGas and oil pipeline monopoly KazTransOil KZTO.KZ.




No details were disclosed, but sources familiar with the agreement told Reuters that Rosneft would supply 7 million metric tons a year (140,000 barrels of oil per day) to China via Kazakhstan.




Rosneft would pay export duty to the Russian state, the sources said.




Russia and Kazakhstan are part of a Moscow-led duty-free customs union, and the issue of how export duty would be levied was one key obstacle to the agreement.




The fee stands at $ 395.90 per metric ton in November.




In return, KazTransOil would cut transportation tariffs for Rosneft, which aims to start shipping oil next year, a source in Kazakhstan said.




The sources said Rosneft and Kazakhstan plan to clinch a final deal by the year-end.




Rosneft, the world’s largest listed oil company by output, is preparing to triple oil exports to China to some 1 million barrels per day (bpd), seeking to secure market share and billions of dollars in pre-payments.




But it lacks infrastructure to ship increased volumes to Beijing and has been considering shipments via Kazakhstan of up to 10 million metric tons a year (200,000 bpd) starting from January 1, 2014, sources told Reuters earlier this year.




(Reporting by Alexei Anishchuk, Katya Golubkova and Alla Afanasyeva; Editing by Douglas Busvine, Mark Potter and Dale Hudson)





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Global Deals Review: 2011 Q3


Global Deals Review: 2011 Q2






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JPMorgan ‘agrees’ to tentative $13 billion penalty for role in 2008 financial crisis

AFP Photo / Robyn Beck

In a telephone call on Friday between the US attorney general and the bank’s CEO, the two sides tentatively agreed to a $ 13billion settlement for JPMorgan’s alleged sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

The tentative agreement concludes a civil investigation by the California attorney general over the bank’s sale of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2005 to 2007, as well as the New York attorney general’s probe of Bear Stearns’ sale of MBSs to these two companies. JPMorgan, the largest US bank by assets, still faces a criminal investigation by the state of California.

The $ 13 billion penalty is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amount forked over by the US government to keep the global economy from total collapse. Forbes reported in 2011 that the estimated $ 16 trillion emergency lifeline tossed to banks and corporations during the worst of the crisis was actually an underestimate of the true cost to US taxpayers.

The record civil settlement includes investigations of the mortgage businesses of Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, which were both acquired by JPMorgan just as the crisis was making landfall for a mere fraction of their total worth.

President Barack Obama, who pledged on two dusty campaign trails to hold companies legally responsible for unethical conduct leading up to the financial crisis, has come under fire in the past for not doing enough to punish those responsible for the crisis.

“[W]hen faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze,” wrote Drew Westen in the New York Times in August 2011. “Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it.”

Back in May, the US Department of Justice put JPMorgan Chase & Co on notice that it was under investigation for violating federal securities law by selling highly volatile subprime and Alt-A residential mortgage securities from 2005 to 2007, just before the housing bubble burst.

The $ 13 billion penalty, $ 9 billion in fines to the government and $ 4 billion in mortgage relief programs to homeowners, some of whom lost their homes in the crisis.

The agreement between the Justice Department and the financial powerhouse does not include a non-prosecution agreement that JPMorgan had originally insisted be part of the deal.

The company, one of the few financial brokerages that emerged largely unscathed from the 2008 crisis, has agreed to cooperate with investigations against bank employees who may have knowingly committed fraud, CBS News, citing an anonymous inside source, reported.

In its latest quarterly earnings, JPMorgan booked a $ 9.2 billion litigation charge related to the probes. JPMorgan also disclosed a huge $ 23 billion in litigation reserves. It made about $ 20 billion net profit in all of 2012.  JPMorgan Chase has spent $ 22 billion since 2008 on an estimated 18 federal, state and overseas probes.

The settlement is the latest in a string of legal woes for JPMorgan.

In September, the company agreed to pay about $ 920 million in fines to US and UK regulators over charges related to the so-called “London Whale” incident that saw a team of traders last year bet heavily on complex derivatives that ultimately resulted in some $ 6 billion in losses.

JPMorgan reported a third-quarter loss in the wake of mounting legal expenses.

CEO Jamie Dimon said in a press release accompanying the earnings statement that earnings could be choppy in the near future.

“While we expect our litigation costs should abate and normalize over time, they may continue to be volatile over the next several quarters,” he said.

JPMorgan posted a loss of 17 cents per share in the latest quarter, compared with net income of $ 1.40 per share one year earlier.

Source: RT

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JPMorgan ‘agrees’ to tentative $13 billion penalty for role in 2008 financial crisis

Syria agrees to UN probe of purported attacks

In this photo taken on a government organized media tour, Syrian army soldiers are seen deployed in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013. Syrian state media accused rebels of using chemical arms on Saturday against government troops trying to storm a contested neighborhood of Damascus, claiming a major army offensive in recent days had forced the opposition fighters to resort to such weapons “as their last card.” State TV broadcast images of plastic jugs, gas masks, vials of an unspecified medication, explosives and other items that it said were seized from rebel hideouts. It did not, however, show any video of soldiers reportedly affected by toxic gas in the fighting in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus. (AP Photo)

In this photo taken on a government organized media tour, Syrian army soldiers are seen deployed in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013. Syrian state media accused rebels of using chemical arms on Saturday against government troops trying to storm a contested neighborhood of Damascus, claiming a major army offensive in recent days had forced the opposition fighters to resort to such weapons “as their last card.” State TV broadcast images of plastic jugs, gas masks, vials of an unspecified medication, explosives and other items that it said were seized from rebel hideouts. It did not, however, show any video of soldiers reportedly affected by toxic gas in the fighting in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus. (AP Photo)

This image provided by by Shaam News Network on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, purports to show several bodies being buried in a suburb of Damascus, Syria during a funeral on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013. Syrian government forces pressed their offensive in eastern Damascus on Thursday, bombing rebel-held suburbs where the opposition said the regime had killed more than 100 people the day before in a chemical weapons attack. The government has denied allegations it used chemical weapons in artillery barrages on the area known as eastern Ghouta on Wednesday as “absolutely baseless.” (AP Photo/Shaam News Network)

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Syria agrees to UN probe of purported attacks

N Korea agrees to family reunions

18 August 2013 Last updated at 04:49 ET

North Korea has agreed to a South Korean proposal to resume reunions of families separated since the 1950-1953 war, official media in Pyongyang say.

The reunion meetings would take place in the Chuseok holiday on 19 September.

South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye called last week for the resumption of the reunions, last held in 2010.

Her appeal followed an agreement to reopen a joint industrial plant, the latest step in the easing of tension between the two countries.

BBC News – Asia

N Korea agrees to family reunions