Senate talks on monetary remodel move forward

Glenn Somerville WASHINGTON Wed Feb 24, 2010 12:25pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate negotiations toward a bipartisan agreement on financial regulatory reform moved forward on several fronts on Wednesday and hopes were high for a pact early next week.

Barack Obama

Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said momentum was building for the sweeping legislation after it seemed to stall earlier this month over disagreements related to the powers of a consumer financial protection agency.

"We"re working, a lot of members are, the door"s open," Dodd told reporters after addressing the Credit Union National Association.

Dodd and Republican Senator Bob Corker, of Tennessee, were scheduled to meet Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner later in the day, presumably to try to iron out any differences between positions of the Obama administration and Republican members of the banking committee.

Hope for a revived Senate effort stems primarily from Dodd"s effort to find common ground with Corker, who has indicated a willingness to work with Dodd.

A spokeswoman for Dodd, in a comment on social networking service Twitter, said financial reform talks "are going well" but it seemed unlikely a bipartisan Senate deal would be reached this week.

Dodd, after his address to the credit union, said, "I won"t state any timetable at all; we"ll get something soon."

There are a number of areas in which compromises must be achieved to get a Senate bill. The Obama administration insists a Consumer Financial Protection Agency is needed -- separate from banking regulators -- to ensure that consumers are not victimized on mortgages, credit cards and other financial instruments, but Republicans are wary.

Reckless lending and lax standards by banks were blamed for causing much of the credit problems that helped drive the U.S. economy into a deep recession in late 2007. Banks have since recovered, posting growing profits and paying big bonuses to their top executives, but homeowners continue to struggle with high foreclosure rates and difficulties in getting loans.

There also is uncertainty about how extensively an administration push to ban or limit banks" proprietary trading -- effectively letting them use government-protected capital to trade for their own profit -- will be watered down by the Senate bill.

An earlier bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would allow, but not require, regulators to restrict proprietary trading at firms seen as a risk to the financial system"s stability.

Something similar might be incorporated into the Senate bill.

President Barack Obama, who had proposed the proprietary trading ban in January, dubbed it "the Volcker rule" in honor after Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who is a proponent of separating banks" riskier trading from their less-volatile commercial banking activities and is now head of a panel that advises the White House on economic issues.

(Additional reporting by Karey Wutkowski, editing by Leslie Adler)

Barack Obama

Guardian Media Group arch Carolyn McCall to take helm at easyJet

Robert Lea, Susan Thompson & , : {}

EasyJet will announce today that its new chief executive is Carolyn McCall, the head of the Guardian Media Group.

Ms McCall has no experience of the cut-throat airline industry and is leaving one company in turmoil for another beset by management rows and departures.

The carrier, which handles more passengers in the UK than any other airline including British Airways, is to announce that Ms McCall will replace Andy Harrison who is swapping budget aviation for budget hotels by becoming the chief executive of Whitbread, the company that owns the Premier Inn chain.

The appointment will cause surprise in some quarters. Not only is Ms McCall an industry outsider but few women have reached the top of the airline industry.

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One easyJet insider defended the appointment. Few people believed easyJet would appoint a chief executive from within the airline industry, he said.

The airline has been looking for someone who has experience of a highly competitive market, someone from a consumerfacing industry, someone at home with the transition to the internet and someone adept at government lobbying. Carolyn McCall was a very impressive candidate.

The position became available only after Mr Harrison decided to quit following an internecine battle with the airlines founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou who at one stage, as a non-executive director of the company, refused to sign off its accounts, so deep had the divisions with Mr Harrison and the then chairman Sir Colin Chandler become.

Sir Colin subsequently walked out and has since been replaced by Sir Mike Rake, the chairman of BT and the former head of KPMG, the accountancy giant.

It should be a stable space

Rosemary Bennett: Case investigate & , : {}

Thelma Mensah was improving from an puncture Caesarean territory when she was approached by a womanlike photographer who asked if she would similar to a little cinema taken of her new daughter, Ruby.

I had a ubiquitous analgesic so I was unequivocally groggy. My father was unequivocally keen, so we only sealed up. I cant unequivocally recollect most about it, even how most we paid, but I recollect meditative it didnt appear similar to good value, she said.

I didnt unequivocally similar to any of the pictures. But we had paid a deposition so I got a couple of for the grandparents.

Mrs Mensah, 37, a personal tutor from Walthamstow, northeast London, pronounced she was astounded that companies were since entrance to postnatal wards. Looking back, it seems unequivocally odd. I was hardly compos mentis. I was ostensible to be recuperating. So were the alternative mothers on the sentinel since we had all had formidable births.

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But since the photographer was on foot around the sentinel I thought she was something to do with the hospital. I unequivocally think a maternity sentinel should be a stable space.

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Conservatives discussion launches opinion for shift choosing campaign

Robin Henry & , : {}

The Conservatives have voiced the 6 key themes they will quarrel on in the ubiquitous choosing as they denounced their new debate slogan, "Vote for change."

The celebration used their pre-election open conference, that proposed in Brighton today, to launch a debate focusing on inhabitant debt, boosting enterprise, family, the NHS, propagandize standards and reforming Westminster.

This week the celebration saw the check lead over Labour lead trip to only five per cent and the two-day discussion is being seen as a consequential event to quarrel back.

The Conservatives currently denounced their choosing aphorism Vote for Change, whilst shade chancellor George Osborne has voiced new policies together with an puncture bill and tax-incentives for start-up businesses.

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Writing in the today"s Times, Osborne certified his celebration had been as well easy on Labour not long ago and are right away becoming different their choosing tactic.

Since the New Year, we are the celebration that has been environment out the new process ideas that will shift Britain, he said.

Perhaps that has done it as well easy for the Labour Party to simply conflict us whilst evading inspection themselves.

That will right away change. We will go on to set out the own certain ideas, but we will additionally ask acid questions about Gordon Browns jot down and possibly he has anything new to offer.

People are going begin focusing on possibly they unequivocally wish five some-more years of Gordon Brown. This choosing has turn a choice, a preference in between the past and the future.

Osborne pronounced the Conservatives would not duplicate Labour"s "phoney pledges" to contend their lead in the polls.

He said: "Oppositions have dual paths they can follow. They can possibly guarantee genuine change, or they can fool around it protected with phoney pledges.

"Tony Blair and New Labour did the latter in 1997. It took him to new highs in the polls, but led to new lows of open doubt when the betrothed shift never materialised."

Osborne, who is the aim of a Labour postal debate in Brighton branding him a chancer not a chancellor, will have known a array of mercantile measures this afternoon.

He will oath to revoke house taxation by 3p and cut the rate for small companies to only 20p, whilst new businesses will embrace a one-year mangle from profitable National Insurance for their initial ten employees.

The Conservatives contend the will additionally plunge into the inhabitant debt, have Britain the majority family-friendly nation in Europe, await the NHS, lift standards in schools and remodel politics.

David Cameron will verbalise at the discussion on Sunday.

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BAE pleads guilty to rapist assign in the US

David Robertson and Matt Spence & , : {}

BAE Systems, Europe"s largest counterclaim company, has pleaded guilty to a rapist assign of dubious the United States Government over past arms deals in what a decider has called one of the majority critical offences by a counterclaim executive "in this or any alternative decade."

David Parkes, BAE"s association secretary, entered the guilty counterclaim in Washington DC on interest of the counterclaim group, similar to a $400 million chastisement for swindling to deceive and the creation fake statements to the US Government.

As well as the outrageous excellent were alternative penalties together with 3 years of association probation, the order in designate an eccentric "corporate monitor" and the you do and upkeep of a corporate correspondence and ethics programme.

Speaking after his acceptance of BAE"s allotment terms, Judge John D. Bates of the District Court of Washington DC called the crime "one of the majority serious" by the counterclaim industry "in this or any alternative decade." He continued, "It strikes at the really firmness of the tellurian counterclaim marketplace."

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The counterclaim agreement was struck with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) dual weeks ago and the conference in probity brings to an finish a extensive examination in to purported temptation and crime in BAEs arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

BAE has additionally concluded a apart understanding with Britain"s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) underneath that it will confess teenager accounting offences and compensate a �30 million excellent relating to a stipulate in Tanzania. This allotment additionally requires the capitulation of a decider but a date has not nonetheless been set.

The UK understanding has been challenged by anti-arms campaigners who last week asked the High Court for an claim to retard it. Corner House, a amicable probity group, and Campaign Against Arms Trade, disagree that the chastisement concluded by the SFO is unsuitable with the astringency of the allegations opposite the association and have requested a legal review.

According to a sentencing chit filed by the regulator in the US District Court last week, BAE has already implemented a series of calming actions given the temptation examination began, together with replacing comparison government team allegedly concerned in the conspiracy.

The DoJ request said: "The association no longer employs assorted members of BAEs comparison government who were concerned in the rapist bungle unclosed by the investigation, nonetheless it does go on monetary and advisory family with at slightest one particular concerned in the rapist carry out and undisclosed payments."

BAE has defended Dick Evans, the company"s authority during the duration underneath examination by the DoJ, as an confidant on Saudi Arabia. He perceived �265,480 for this work in 2008 and has warranted scarcely �1.5 million from BAE given stepping down in 2004. Ian King, BAE"s arch executive, pronounced not long ago that Mr Evans would be kept on as an confidant to the company.

The examination in the US associated to BAE arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Hungary and the Czech Republic whilst the SFO allotment relates to the sale of an air-traffic carry out complement to Tanzania. According to the DoJ"s primary probity filings - or "charge sheet" - BAE is purported to have dark commission payments to agents, or middlemen, when securing unfamiliar arms deals.

By you do so, BAE pennyless promises done to the US Government to imitate with the countrys Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Not disclosing these payments in applications to trade US-sourced record was additionally an purported crack of the Arms Export Control Act.

The DoJ purported that BAE gave a comparison Saudi Arabian central perks, together with travel, skill and cars, value some-more than $5 million over a nine-month period. It alleges that BAE had paid this successful central by a Swiss bank comment tranquil by one of the companys middlemen. According to probity documents, there was a remuneration of �10 million and a serve $9 million in to the comment over a duration of about 9 months in between May 2001 and early 2002.

The DoJ additionally purported that BAE paid a sum of �135 million, and $14 million to middlemen concerned in winning unfamiliar arms deals by an offshore association in the British Virgin Islands in the duration after May 2001.

British Airways cabin organisation set upon in the change Business

British Airways cabin organisation could set upon by the center of subsequent week. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

A set upon by BA cabin organisation is in the change after the airline currently asked for an prolongation to talks in sequence to cruise a last-ditch suggest of a 2.6% compensate cut.

The Unite traffic kinship concluded to go on discussions until midday tomorrow to concede BA some-more time. Yesterday, member of Unite and the Bassa cabin organisation bend tabled a cost-cutting package together with a compensate cut this year and reductions in perks such as write allowances.

Unite claimed the proposals exceeded the airline"s assets aim of £60m a year, but the airline was still mulling them as the 5pm deadline for finale the talks passed. Instead, BA requested the prolongation that was supposed by Unite"s partner ubiquitous cabinet member and arch negotiator, Len McCluskey.

If the prolongation fails to furnish an agreement, a walkout could take place as shortly as subsequent Wednesday or Thursday once the kinship has since BA the requisite 7 days notice of set upon action.

According to a check on the Bassa website, scarcely one-third of BA"s 12,000 cabin organisation wish a set upon lasting longer than 10 days. Unite has already voiced that it will not set upon over the Easter holidays.

The last Unite suggest of a rebate in cabin organisation costs of £61.85m a year appeared to be foundering among BA questioning over the turn of evident cost assets in the document.

A understanding over the origination of a apart fleet, staffed by reduce paid cabin crew, has been queried by the airline, that claimed assets would not be delivered rught away since the swift had nonetheless to be created.

Unite"s cost assets document, seen by the Guardian, argued that the move would save £10m a year – but BA"s warding off to admit the plan effectively leaves the Unite offer at £51.85m a year, next the airline"s assets target. BA"s arch executive, Willie Walsh, is approaching to scrutinize the proposals and broach a outcome on them by tomorrow"s new deadline.

A breeze agreement in in between both sides, watchful to be published in the eventuality of a deal, contains a oath to "rebuild the certitude shop-worn by the new dispute". However, that will take a little bid after months of increasingly sour wrangling.

BA has drawn up plans to mangle a set upon with 1,000 proffer cabin organisation drawn from the ranks of the 38,000 workforce and a swift of twenty-three franchised jets. Willie Walsh, the arch executive, last week pronounced he hoped to work a "substantial proportion" of the airline"s Heathrow long-haul operations and a "good number" of short-haul flights.

BA will work the complete report from London City airfield during the approaching strike, and has additionally claimed some-more than two-thirds of the Gatwick-based organisation will work normally, withdrawal the long-haul report from the UK"s second-largest airfield intact.

The airline operates 650 flights a day with the 239-plane fleet, often from Heathrow, but has not pronounced that routes would be kept open by the substitute workforce.

The brawl in in between BA and Unite has been protracted, noted by high justice hearings and accusations of danger on both sides. After months of talks, during that BA unsuccessful to secure agreement on cost cuts, the airline unilaterally private at slightest one moody in attendance from long-haul flights in November, triggering a set upon ballot.

While a little cabin organisation secretly concurred that the changes had not combined poignant problems, Unite and Bassa officials were mad that they were brought in but negotiation.

The growth has meant, however, that estimable moves – such as Unite"s acceptance of putting lower-paid new recruits on a apart swift of planes – have been overshadowed by the conflict to to some extent dissolution staffing cuts. The cost-cutting offer submitted by Unite includes a prejudiced dissolution of the staffing reductions.

BA lost £401m at a pre-tax turn last year, and is streamer for an additional estimable loss this year. The airline has targeted cost assets of £140m per year in the cabin organisation bill but has unsuccessful to reach agreement with Unite over how to grasp those efficiencies.

Iran indicted of attempted murder debate opposite Kurds

Adam Sage, Paris & , : {}

Iran"s eremite care is orchestrating a debate of killings and arrests in Kurd provinces as it seeks to forestall pro-democracy protests from swelling to the country"s racial minorities, an Iranian Kurd personality has said.

In an talk with The Times, Abdullah Mohtadi, cabinet member ubiquitous of the Komala Party, pronounced Tehran had systematic a security crackdown that had brought renewed hardship to Kurd areas in the arise of protests opposite last year"s contested presidential election.

He additionally indicted Britain and alternative Western governments of branch their backs on the predicament of the country"s Kurdish population, estimated at five million by the US authorities and up to twelve million by Mr Mohtadi. ""We need everything, but we get nothing,"" he said.

About 35 million Kurds live in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, as well as Iran, where Mr Mohtadi pronounced they faced a prolonged story of discrimination, nuisance and violence.

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The talk took place in Paris a day after Tehran had voiced the constraint of Abdolmalek Rigi, the personality of Jundallah, the Sunni belligerent organisation obliged for a array of attacks on Iran"s Revolutionary Guards. Mr Mohtadi pronounced that he, too, was being hunted.

With Iran"s complement of administration unfortunate to stop the Green transformation sparking fighting back between the minorities that consecrate roughly half the population, he pronounced comprehension agents would be rebuilt to constraint or kill him anywhere in the world, together with Europe. "There are most people similar to me who unequivocally are in danger.""

Unable to work in Iran, his celebration has formed itself in Iraq, where it has multiform hundred peshmergas, or armed fighters. Mr Mohtadi pronounced their participation was required to forestall gangland slaying attempts on Komala"s leadership, but insisted that his celebration had deserted aroused transformation in foster of domestic strategies in Iran.

It has a radio station, that is continually shut off by the Iranian authorities, and a newspaper, that is smuggled opposite the limit to foster calls for a democratic, decentralised domestic complement in Iran. But any one held celebration of the mass the journal is roughly sure to be summoned by Iranian tip services and detained, pronounced Mr Mohtadi.

""No kind of domestic wake up is authorised"" and plea for breaches of the law was ""very fast and really harsh"". Mr Mohtadi pronounced Tehran had regularly treated with colour Kurds ""like enemies and looked at the Kurdish people usually from a security point of view.""

Now the hang-up had been stepped up. ""They are impediment some-more people, melancholy some-more of them, badgering some-more of them, job some-more of them to the comprehension services. There are some-more surreptitious killings going on as well."

He pronounced some-more than thirty Kurds had been placed on genocide row, often for polite activism. Farzad Kamangar, 32, a teacher, had his judgment commuted to thirty years in jail this week following an general debate to save him.

On the anniversary of the Iranian series this month, Mr Mohtadi pronounced so most troops vehicles were sent to Kurdish provinces ""that it was similar to being in an assigned country. There was an unaccepted curfew imposed and helicopters drifting over all the main cities.""

The show of strength was written to passage a Kurdish criticism transformation in the blossom ""because they know that from the impulse that happens, it will be formidable to contain,"" pronounced Mr Mohtadi.

Nevertheless, there are signs of armed overthrow in Iran"s Kurdish provinces. Earlier this month, for instance, Tehran pronounced it had killed 4 members of a Komala crush organisation that it blamed for receiving the lives of 3 policemen in December. This week, the Iranian authorities pronounced they had foiled a bombing by the same faction.

Chinas ultimate mystery: Hu Jintao and the declining micro-blog

Jane Macartney in Beijing & , : {}

Chinas President dismayed the internet at the week end by opening a micro-blog the Chinese homogeneous of Twitter.

Fascinated netizens began signing up at the rate of some-more than ten people a minute. But a day after the comment of Hu Jintao disappeared.

A short pro-forma note this sunrise on the dull site, hosted by the Communist Party spokesman Peoples Daily Online, pronounced simply: This object cannot be found, the writer might have erased it.

That fails to insist the poser of the presidents blank micro-blog.

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Did the famously discreet personality of 1.3 billion people confirm he wasnt ready for such open interaction? Has he assimilated the ranks of those censored by the Great Firewall of China? Was it a box of temperament theft? Had the Peoples Daily unsuccessful to lift out the correct checks? Or was it a elementary computer error?

A journal inform on the remarkable disappearance offering dual central explanations. One was that the site simply crashed underneath the assault of 1,000 people an hour signing up to follow President Hus micro-blog.

The second was that a new ascent combined an involuntary micro-blog for any one who had purebred their temperament in the Peoples Daily chatroom as the boss did for an online review with the open on Jun 20, 2008.

A notice on the website pronounced all Strong Country VIP accounts were at the moment dangling to concede acknowledgment of the identities.

Whatever the case, the result is a serious annoyance for Peoples Daily Online. Today, would-be micro-bloggers were incompetent to register new accounts, at slightest for the moment, notwithstanding the notice that pronounced users were still acquire notwithstanding the strong overkill the day before.

Registered supporters of President Hu will be disappointed. He had nonetheless to post a singular blog prior to the site disappeared.

His micro-blog had been reliable as genuine, according to the Global Times an English-language announcement underneath the Peoples Daily.

Perhaps users should have been alerted to intensity problems by the deficiency of a photograph. Instead, micro-blogger Hu Jintao was represented simply by the animation light-bulb used by those reluctant or incompetent to pulp up a self-portrait.

His blog had been listed as @hujintao. It gave his temperament as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese President and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

The pretension was roughly as prolonged as a singular entry. By the time the micro-blog left it had gained some-more than 16,000 supporters and a thousand-plus comments, most of that were adulatory.

Blogger Shao Mingbo wrote on Sunday: "I will keep watchful tonight to see who can be the initial propitious supporter of the account." An hour later, a blogger declared "feiquanmingqin" was hailed as the initial supporter of President Hu"s micro-blog and wrote "Calm down, ease down as others offering congratulations.

Another voiced disappointment, saying: "It"s a empathize he hasn"t created anything yet.

Some had even asked either the boss would concede Twitter criminialized in China to reappear.

It looks as if they will be watchful utterly a little time for a twitter from that sold micro-blogger.