The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Cyprus seeks 11th-hour deal to avert financial collapse
- Jury declines to impose death penalty in Puerto Rico murders
- Police confirm second Canadian linked to Algeria gas plant attack
| Cyprus seeks 11th-hour deal to avert financial collapse Posted: 23 Mar 2013 07:11 PM PDT NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades flies to Brussels on Sunday to seek an 11th-hour reprieve from financial meltdown, with a bailout from the European Union and the island's place in Europe's single currency bloc hanging in the balance.
Facing a Monday deadline to avert a collapse of the Cypriot banking system, talks in Nicosia to seal a bailout from the EU and International Monetary Fund broke up late on Saturday without result. "Negotiations are at a very delicate phase," the Cypriot government said in a statement. "The situation is very difficult and the deadlines are very tight," it said. Anastasiades will arrive in Brussels in the mid-morning to continue the talks, it said. The tone of the statement differed sharply from earlier expressions of cautious optimism during days of intense negotiations between Cypriot leaders and officials from the island's "troika" of lenders, the EU, IMF and European Central Bank. Its outsized banking sector crippled by exposure to crisis-hit Greece, the EU says the east Mediterranean island must raise 5.8 billion euros (4.9 billion pounds) on its own before it can receive a 10 billion euro bailout. Without a deal on Monday, the ECB says it will sever emergency funds to Cypriot banks, spelling certain collapse and potentially pushing the country out of the euro zone. Conservative leader Anastasiades, barely a month in the job and wrestling with Cyprus' worst crisis since a 1974 invasion by Turkish forces split the island in two, is expected to meet heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and IMF. Finance Ministers of the 17-nation euro zone will meet at 1700 GMT Sunday. Scrambling to find the funds, officials said Cyprus had conceded to a one-time levy on bank deposits over 100,000 euros, a dramatic U-turn from five days ago when lawmakers angrily threw out a similar proposal as "bank robbery." A senior Cypriot official said Nicosia had agreed with its lenders on a 20 percent levy over and above 100,000 euros at the island's largest lender, Bank of Cyprus, and four percent on deposits over the same level at other banks. 'ONLY HARD CHOICES LEFT' Finance Minister Michael Sarris spoke of "significant progress" in morning talks, as angry demonstrators outside the finance ministry chanted "resign, resign!" The EU's Economic Affairs Commissioner, Olli Rehn, said progress was being made, but warned of tough times ahead. "Unfortunately, the events of recent days have led to a situation where there are no longer any optimal solutions available," he said in a statement. "Today, there are only hard choices left." In a stunning vote on Tuesday, Cyprus's 56-seat parliament rejected a levy on depositors, big and small, and Sarris spent three fruitless days in Moscow trying to win help from Russia, whose citizens have billions of euros at stake in Cypriot banks. Rebuffed by the Kremlin, Sarris said the levy was back "on the table." On Friday, lawmakers voted in late-night session to nationalise pension funds and split failing lenders into good and bad banks - a measure likely to be applied to No.2 lender Cyprus Popular Bank, also known as Laiki. Cypriot media reports suggested talks were stuck on a demand by the IMF that Bank of Cyprus absorb the good assets of competitor Popular Bank and take on its nine billion euro debt to the central bank as well. The reports said the Cypriot government was resisting. A Cypriot plan to tap pension funds had already been shelved, a senior Cypriot official told Reuters, under opposition from Germany, which had warned the measure might be even more painful for ordinary Cypriots than a deposit levy. It was also far from certain that a majority of lawmakers would back a revised levy, or whether the government might even try to bypass the assembly. Ordinary Cypriots have been outraged by the levy and stunned at the pace of the unfolding drama. They elected Anastasiades in February on a mandate to secure a bailout and save banks whose capital was wiped out by investments in Greece, the epicentre of the euro zone debt crisis. RUN ON BANKS But for the past week they have been besieging cash machines ever since bank doors were closed on the orders of the government to avert a massive capital flight. Anticipating a run on banks when they reopen on Tuesday, parliament has given the government powers to impose capital controls. On Saturday, some 1,500 protesters, many of them bank workers, marched on the presidency, holding banners that read, "No to the bankruptcy of Cyprus" and "Hands of workers' welfare funds". The levy on bank deposits represents an unprecedented step in Europe's handling of a debt crisis that has spread from Greece, to Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Cypriot leaders had initially tried to spread the pain between big holdings and smaller depositors, fearing the damage it would inflict on the country as an offshore financial haven for wealthy foreigners, many of them Russians and Britons. The tottering banks hold 68 billion euros in deposits, including 38 billion in accounts of more than 100,000 euros,- enormous sums for an island of 1.1 million people which could never sustain such a big financial system on its own. "Cypriot banks have for years been taking the kinds of risks that are not allowed in France," Bank of France governor Christian Noyer told the French newspaper Le Journal Du Dimanche. "Nobody wants Cyprus to leave the euro," he said. "The first people to suffer would be Cypriot citizens." (Additional reporting by Jan Strupczewski and Luke Baker in Brussels, Costas Pitas and Laura Noonan in Nicosia; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Todd Eastham)
Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Jury declines to impose death penalty in Puerto Rico murders Posted: 23 Mar 2013 06:50 PM PDT SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - A man convicted of killing eight people in a crowded bar in Puerto Rico was spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison on Saturday in only the fifth case in which prosecutors have sought capital punishment on the island. The jury failed to reach a unanimous decision on a death sentence for Alexis Candelario Santana, 41, who was convicted by the same panel earlier this month for the so-called La Tombola killings of October 2009. The death penalty is banned under Puerto Rico's constitution but applicable in certain federal cases. The island is U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Although there is strong opposition to the death penalty, crime has become a top public concern in Puerto Rico and the La Tombola killings were seen as particularly brazen and brutal. One of the people slain was a pregnant woman. Candelario would have been the first person put to death in Puerto Rico since 1927 and the first under the federal death penalty statute. He was convicted of being the mastermind and a participant of the shooting rampage, in which gunmen opened fire in the La Tombola bar in Toa Baja, a suburb west of San Juan. Authorities said the shootings were retaliation against the bar owner, who had taken control of local drug sales when Candelario was in prison. Candelario has been convicted for 10 other killings over the past decade in battles over the drug trade. Prosecutors say he has killed 22 people and attempted to kill another 19 in all. His case marked the fifth time federal prosecutors sought and failed to get the death penalty imposed in Puerto Rico. "I express my most profound respect to the jury for the decision it has taken. With it they have sustained the conviction of the Puerto Rican people that capital punishment should not be applied under any circumstances," Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said in a statement. The governor said he has asked U.S. Attorney Eric Holder not to certify any other federal case in Puerto Rico for the death penalty. (Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Police confirm second Canadian linked to Algeria gas plant attack Posted: 23 Mar 2013 06:31 PM PDT TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian police said on Saturday that they had identified a second Canadian among the dead suspects in a January attack and hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant. Around 70 people died when Algerian troops stormed the Tigantourine desert gas plant near the town of In Amenas and ended the siege. Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said at the time that a Canadian gunman had coordinated the operation.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were dispatched to Algeria to investigate. A spokesman for Canada's national police force said in an e-mail on Saturday that a second Canadian had been identified from the remains of the alleged attackers. "Our investigation into this matter continues and no further information will be given at this time," the spokesman said. U.S. intelligence officials had said in January that signs that Canadian citizens were involved in the attack by Islamist militants were of great concern to American authorities. The possibility that Canadian citizens were involved in the attack on the facility in the Algerian desert raised concerns among security officials about a worrying nexus between North America and North African militants. (Reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Jeffrey Hodgson in Toronto; Editing by David Brunnstrom) Copyright © 2013 Reuters |
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