Hedge funds hold Ireland to ransom over Anglo Irish Bank bail-out
Hedge funds are holding the Irish government to ransom over its €30bn (£26bn) bail-out of one of the country’s biggest lenders, Anglo Irish Bank.
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Nepali Activist Shares “Alternative Nobel”
Kathmandu, Nepal (AHN) – Nepali anti-poverty activist Shrikrishna Upadhyay has been awarded the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize.” He is the first Nepali to receive the award.
Others receiving the award, announced Thursday by the Stockholm-based Right Livelihood Award Foundation, are Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria, Bishop Erwin Krautler from Brazil and the organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The four recipients will share a 200,000 euro cash award.
Upadhyay was commended “for demonstrating over many years the power of community mobilization to address the multiple causes of poverty even when threatened by political violence and instability,” according to the award committee.
Upadhyay was unavailable to comment because he was traveling outside the country. However, a colleague who has been associated with him for 15 years told All Headline News that he is one of the finest personalities he ever had met.
” I have never met people like him who never committed any mistake at any time during his career,” co-worker Ram Bahadur Bogati told AHN in a short conversation.
Upadhyay’s professional qualities are a source of inspiration for other developmental activists in Nepal, Bogati said. During Upadhyay’s maiden career as chief of the Agriculture Development Bank of Nepal, he was one of the most successful leaders, who successfully took the institution to new heights, said his colleague.
In 1975, Upadhyay helped initiate the Small Farmer Development Programme, which yielded substantial achievements in the fields of micro-credit, low-cost drinking water supply schemes, tree planting, training and literacy through social mobilization. In 1991, Upadhyay founded SAPPROS (Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal), which focuses on improving agricultural productivity of small landholders and linking them to emerging markets.
Because of the food crisis and importance of agriculture in reducing poverty, SAPPROS works to promote “high value crops based upon organic agriculture principles, which is going to bring substantial number of small producers out of poverty,” he says on the organization’s website. “In this regard it will promote package of technologies such as sprinklers, water harvesting tanks, SRI, Gravity Rope Ways and others increasing agricultural income of poor households.”
SAPPROS operates in the poorest 12 districts of Nepal. By 2010, SAPPROS said it had formed 2,434 savings and credit groups and 273 cooperatives with a membership of 1.3 million of whom about 40 percent are women.
The awards will be presented to the recipients in a ceremony at the Swedish Parliament on Dec. 6, four days before the Nobel Prizes are handed out.
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Italy’s Berlusconi Wins Key Confidence Vote
Rome, Italy (AHN) – Italian Prime Minister Minister Silvio Berlusconi has won a key confidence vote in Parliament, securing the support of 342 out of 617 votes. Some 275 parliamentarians voted against his proposals, which he had earlier proclaimed, would not be undermined by the current conflict in his ruling coalition.
The confidence vote win was important for Berlusconi government because a defeat could have forced him step down in the middle of his term and would have called early elections.
The victory came to the Italian leader only after 35 dissident center-right parliamentarians announced their support to his coalition on the basis Berlusconi’s reconciliatory speech before the vote.
Welcoming the outcome, outspoken Berlusconi praised himself and claimed that there was “no alternative” to his leadership.
During his speech, he also commended Rome’s decision of not following its eurozone members’ footsteps in deploying the fiscal stimulus.
In 2009, Italy’s budget deficit was recorded at 5.3% of GDP. However, it was comparatively less than the average budget deficit of the 16-nation zone.
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Soybean prices ‘primed for a bearish correction’
Macquarie says soybean prices looks overvalued, given that US yields could trounce forecasts and prospects for Brazilian sowings look better
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Filipino Senator Seeks Legalization Of Illegal Numbers Game
Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines (AHN) – A Filipino senator whose father was ousted as Philippine president for collecting bribes from gambling operators filed a bill on Wednesday seeking the legalization of the same illegal numbers game.
Senate Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada sought to legalize jueteng by filing Senate Bill 2548. The proposed Jueteng Act 2010 would grant the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation the sole control and oversight over jueteng in the country. The bill would ban individuals or private groups from running their own jueteng operations.
Jinggoy Estrada is the son of ex-President Joseph Estrada, who was removed from office in 2000 and imprisoned for several years for corruption. The senator himself was accused of partaking from the gambling lobby payments, but was eventually acquitted of the charges.
The younger Estrada pointed out jueteng operations has been ongoing since the Spanish era and all anti-gambling initiatives undertaken by different Philippine administrations have failed. He said by legalizing jueteng, the cash-strapped government could even benefit from its operation.
Under the bill, 20 percent of the income from jueteng would go to authorized collectors, supervisors and other personnel, 30 percent would be the prize money and go to the social fund of Pagcor, 10 percent would go to the provincial government and 40 percent to city or municipal education programs.
The Senate is currently finding ways to battle the illegal numbers game following the release by retired Dagupan Bishop Oscar Cruz and Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago of two separate lists of jueteng operators and recipients of gambling money lobby. Among those mentioned in the list are heads of government agencies and local government units.
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Congress Passes Stopgap To Fund Government; Goes On Recess
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Lawmakers passed a resolution on Wednesday, their last day of session before the mid-term elections, funding government operations until after they return from their recess. The stopgap measure was needed since both the House and the Senate haven’t passed a single appropriations bill for the next fiscal year, which begins on Friday.
By 228-194, the House passed a continuing resolution extending into December appropriations for the State Department, foreign operations and related programs past the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Only one Republican, Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), voted in support.
In the Senate, the the temporary spending measure passed 69-30 with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) as the sole Democrat opposing. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) offered amendments providing funding until February and reducing all non-defense spending by 5 percent, but both measures failed along party lines.
“With the new fiscal year beginning on Friday, the continuing resolution put forward by my Democrat colleagues only perpetuates the out of touch federal spending levels we have witnessed in recent years,” Thune said in a statement.
Lawmakers are scheduled to return to the Capitol for a lame-duck session on Nov. 15, when the 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2011 fiscal year are expected to be approved. A backlog of bills will also be tackled, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the extension of 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts that are due to expire in January.
Democrats were hoping to pass a jobs bill to address the 9.6 percent unemployment rate before the elections, but could not muster enough votes to overcome Republican opposition. They sought to extend tax cuts for middle class families earning less than $250,000 a year.
The GOP, however, wants to make the tax cuts permanent for all including high-income earners. They’ve been accused by the White House of “holding the middle class hostage,” but they argue that the government should not raise taxes during a recession.
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Congress Hears Pentagon Plans For Improving Financial Accountability
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is pursuing near- and long-term goals to improve financial accountability, according to a testimony to Congress delivered Wednesday from the department’s top financial official.
Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Robert Hale told a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that he understood that, “There are enterprise-wide weaknesses in DoD financial management that demand an enterprise-wide business response.”
Citing a “new and focused” methodology, Hale said, “This new approach, I think, has established a demanding, but meaningful, goal,” adding, “It will lead, for example, to auditability for the statement of budgetary resources in all the services.”
“The new approach is one to support senior military and civilian personnel; it’s been generally endorsed by Congress, and it’s been called a reasonable approach by the Government Accountability Office,” he told Congress.
Hale stressed the need “to implement that goal,” adding, “That’s the challenge in a department that is rightfully focused on winning the war in Afghanistan and completing the mission in Iraq.”
On the weaknesses in the present system, Hale said, “The lack of auditable financial statements is an indication of those weaknesses, and it’s one of the business management weaknesses that must be resolved.”
“I think our new, focused approach and our implementation plan justifies our optimism. We are all personally committed to moving forward,” Hale added with optimistic flavor.
Earlier on the question of the present drawbacks and weaknesses in the working of the DoD, a Pentagon official told AHN that there is always scope for improvement and that the department is striving to improve in all departments.
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Drugmakers Rouse Wall Street
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Profits from pharmaceutical firms beat a drop in consumer confidence and fueled a rally Tuesday that put Wall Street back into positive territory.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished with a 46-point or 0.4 percent gain to close at 10,858 with Pfizer Inc. and Intel Corp. as the top gainers.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 5 points or 0.5 percent to finish at 1,148 as all but seven of 51 healthcare stocks advanced. Walgreens shares surged more than 11 percent after reporting a $16.9 billion fourth quarter revenue driven by strong prescription drug sales.
The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 10 points or 0.4 percent to close at 2,379.
Crude oil for November delivery dropped 34 cents to settle at $76 per barrel.
Gold futures for December delivery climbed $9.70 to settle at a new record of $1,308 an ounce.
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