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March 20, 2013

The Rijksmuseum, Reborn

By GERALDINE FABRIKANT

AMSTERDAM

ON a wet day in mid-January, Wim Pijbes, the dapper general director of the Rijksmuseum, was showing a visitor a bit of the newly reconfigured institution that has long housed masterworks from the Netherlands’ wealth of grand artists.

Suddenly Mr. Pijbes, standing near the open walkway that will allow the country’s fanatical bicyclists to continue riding through it on their way around Amsterdam, saw something he didn’t like. City workers were starting to demolish parts of the street that is the roof of the underground entrance. Excusing himself, he raced to confer with some yellow-jacketed workers.

It was just the latest in a series of difficulties that have dogged the museum since the national government’s decision more than 10 years ago to upgrade and remodel the museum — a program that has ended up costing nearly $500 million.

The problems will have to be solved by April 13, when the 80-room museum, home to works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, van Gogh and hundreds of other artists, finally reopens at a black-tie gala hosted by Queen Beatrix at one of her last official events before she abdicates at the end of that month.

Mr. Pijbes and his staff say they believe that the renovated museum will attract two million visitors annually, roughly double the number who have been showing up yearly — even recently, when just 400 works remained on display.

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March 20, 2013

Northern Ireland: Judge Holds 2 Liable in Bombing by I.R.A. Splinter Group

By DOUGLAS DALBY

A Belfast judge ruled on Wednesday that two alleged leaders of the Real Irish Republican Army were liable for damages in the 1998 Omagh car bombing that killed 29 civilians and wounded 200 others. Justice John Gillen told a Belfast court the case against Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly was “overwhelming.” The police have failed to win any criminal convictions in the bombing, the most deadly single attack during the years of violence known as the “Troubles.”

The victims’ families say that both Mr. Murphy and Mr. Daly were members of the now-disbanded Real I.R.A., one of a number of republican splinter groups to emerge in protest of the signing of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord and the agreement by the I.R.A. to decommission its weaponry. Lawyers for the families said they would pursue damages from those who had been found responsible.

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March 20, 2013

Police Search I.M.F. Chief’s Home in French Financial Investigation

By NICOLA CLARK

PARIS — The French police on Wednesday searched the Paris apartment of Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in connection with an investigation into her handling of a financial scandal when she was the French finance minister.

The investigation concerns Ms. Lagarde’s decision in 2007 to refer to an arbitration panel a dispute between Bernard Tapie, a French billionaire and supporter of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, and the state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais. The panel ultimately brokered a settlement that awarded Mr. Tapie about $580 million, including interest.

A panel of investigating magistrates is looking into whether she was complicit in the embezzlement of public money in what critics say was an overly generous award to a presidential friend.

Ms. Lagarde has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has expressed her willingness to cooperate with any investigation.

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March 20, 2013

Berlin Won’t Join Effort to Ban Far-Right Party

By MELISSA EDDY

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right government said Wednesday that it would not try to ban a far-right political party deemed “racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist” by domestic intelligence, choosing instead to focus on combating neo-Nazi extremism through other channels.

The decision comes as Germany’s main political camps stake out their positions ahead of a general election in September, in which Ms. Merkel is seeking a third term in office. The chancellor’s main rivals, the center-left Social Democrats and the Greens, who control the upper house of Parliament, announced in December that they would seek to have the far-right National Democratic Party, or N.P.D., banned on grounds that it violated the Constitution.

A separate filing submitted by Ms. Merkel’s government, alongside the one from the upper house, or Bundesrat, would have given political weight to the argument but was not necessary for petitioning the Constitutional Court.

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March 20, 2013

Pope Meets Other Religious Leaders, Pledging Respect

By JIM YARDLEY

ROME — Pope Francis promised friendship, respect and continued dialogue with other religious leaders on Wednesday, pledging cooperation with Orthodox churches, describing the spiritual bond between Catholics and Jews as “very special” and expressing gratitude to Muslim leaders.

“The Catholic Church is aware of the importance of the promotion of friendship and respect between men and women of different religious traditions,” the pope said. “I want to repeat this: The promotion of friendship and respect between men and women of different religious traditions.”

Francis, who was formally installed a day earlier, greeted a diverse group of religious leaders in the ornate Clementine Hall inside the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. Among them were Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, as well as other Orthodox leaders; representatives from different Protestant denominations; Jewish and Muslim leaders and advocates; and representatives of the Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu and Jainist faiths.

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February 20, 2013

Russian Lawmaker Quits After Real Estate Disclosure

By ELLEN BARRY

MOSCOW — A senior lawmaker from Russia’s governing party, who was also the chairman of Parliament’s ethics committee, resigned from the legislature on Wednesday over revelations that he owned more than $1.3 million worth of luxury real estate in Florida that he did not list on required disclosure forms.

The lawmaker, Vladimir A. Pekhtin, said that he did not want the matter to taint colleagues in his party, United Russia, and announced his departure at a morning parliamentary session.

Mr. Pekhtin said he had not broken any law. But “there are very controversial documents that have been made public on the Internet,” he said, and it was necessary to clear up “obvious legal misunderstandings.”

“I will give up my mandate, which I always achieved in honest political battle, and my rivals, my opponents, know this,” he said, in comments broadcast on television. “Nevertheless, I will not cling to it. Because I think that my personal matters are secondary to United Russia. Thank you for many years of work, and for your devotion. We will fight on.”

Whether he surrendered his seat voluntarily or under pressure from the Kremlin, Mr. Pekhtin’s departure set a precedent in the Russian government, where high-level corruption and lavish spending overseas have developed into a serious political liability. Hours after Mr. Pekhtin’s announcement came a second resignation, from a United Russia lawmaker, Anatoly Lomakin, an industrialist whose wealth Forbes estimated at $1.2 billion.

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February 20, 2013

Iceland Looks to Export Power Bubbling From Below

By ANDREW HIGGINS

KRAFLA, Iceland — Soon after work began here on a power plant to harness some of the vast reserves of energy stored at the earth’s crust, the ground moved and, along a six-mile-long fissure, began belching red-hot lava. The eruptions continued for nine years, prompting the construction of a stone and soil barrier to make sure that molten rock did not incinerate Iceland’s first geothermal power station.

While the menacing lava flow has long since stopped and Krafla is today a showcase of Iceland’s peerless mastery of renewable energy sources, another problem that has dogged its energy calculations for decades still remains: what to do with all the electricity that the country — which literally bubbles with steam, hot mud and the occasional cloud of volcanic ash — is capable of producing.

In a nation with only 320,000 people, the state-owned power company, Landsvirkjun, which operates the Krafla facility, sells just 17 percent of its electricity to households and local industry. The rest goes mostly to aluminum smelters owned by the American giant Alcoa and other foreign companies that have been lured to this remote North Atlantic nation by its abundant supply of cheap energy.

Now a huge and potentially far more lucrative market beckons — if only Iceland can find a way to transmit electricity across the more than 1,000 miles of frigid sea that separate it from the 500 million consumers of the European Union. “Prices are so low in Iceland that it is normal that we should want to sell to Europe and get a better price,” said Stein Agust Steinsson, the manager of the Krafla plant. “It is not good to put all our eggs in one basket.”

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February 21, 2013

Cyprus Trial Spurs Call for E.U. to Act Against Hezbollah

By NICHOLAS KULISH

LIMASSOL, Cyprus — A Hezbollah operative who worked as a courier for the group in Europe said at his trial Thursday that he had instructions to record the arrival times of passenger flights from Israel to Cyprus, prompting Israel to press the European Union to formally declare the militant group a terrorist organization.

During a cross-examination, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub described himself as “an active member of Hezbollah” with the code name “Wael,” and that he had received a salary of $600 a month since 2010. Asked why he had a code name, he answered through an interpreter, “In general, the party is based on secrecy between members. We don’t know the real names of our fellow members.”

Mr. Yaacoub said that his handler, a shadowy figure known only as Ayman, told him to track the landing times for an Arkia Israel Airlines flight between Tel Aviv and Larnaca, Cyprus. Ayman also asked him to look into the rental prices of warehouses, he said.

Mr. Yaacoub, 24, who holds Lebanese and Swedish passports, described himself as a pawn, following orders but not involved — or at least not knowingly involved — in planning an attack. But prosecutors say that is exactly what he was doing. Intelligence experts in the United States and Israel say that Mr. Yaacoub was one small player in the covert war that has pitted Israel against Iran and Hezbollah.

Mr. Yaacoub’s testimony, which began here on Wednesday, has provided an unusual look inside the operations of the secretive group. Mr. Yaacoub on Thursday described the weapons training he had received as a member of the group.

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February 21, 2013

3 Convicted in Britain Over Terrorist Plot to Rival ’05 Attacks

By JOHN F. BURNS

LONDON — Three men accused of plotting what prosecutors said would have been the most devastating terrorist attacks in Britain since the London transit system bombings of July 2005 were convicted Thursday after a 12-week trial. The judge hearing the case told the men to expect sentences of life imprisonment.

Prosecutors said the three men — Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, all British citizens from the industrial city of Birmingham in the English Midlands — planned to detonate up to eight homemade bombs in rucksacks in crowded places, the method used by the four suicide bombers who killed 52 other people on London subway trains and buses in 2005.

That attack prompted MI5, the domestic security service, and police forces across the country to rapidly expand their counterterrorism efforts. Officials at MI5 and at Scotland Yard have said that the authorities track dozens of active terrorist cells, and they cite a series of successful prosecutions and the absence of any attack that led to mass casualties in Britain since the transit bombings as evidence of their success.

The court in Birmingham was told that the authorities had the three defendants under close surveillance from an early stage, along with nine co-conspirators, six of whom have pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. The police officer who led the surveillance, Detective Inspector Adam Gough, described the three men, all Muslims, as “committed, passionate extremists,” and added, “They had a real stated intention to kill and maim as many people as they possibly can.”

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February 6, 2013

ArcelorMittal, Announcing Loss, Indicates No Further Plant Closures in Europe

By STANLEY REED

LONDON — ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, appeared to draw the line on additional European plant closures Wednesday, even as it announced a $4 billion net loss for the fourth quarter of 2012 and a $3.7 billion net loss for the year.

But the company’s results also highlighted just how bad operating conditions in Europe have been. A key reason for the losses was $5 billion in write-downs, almost all of it on its European businesses.

ArcelorMittal continues to be badly hurt by its operations in Europe, where it employs 98,000 people and where demand for steel has dropped by 30 percent since 2007, including a 9 percent decline in 2012. The company reported a $2.9 billion operating loss for the quarter in its European unit which supplies the beleaguered automobile industry.

Lakshmi N. Mittal, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said during a conference call with analysts Wednesday that he expected steel shipments to increase this year by 2 percent to 3 percent. That, he said, was because of growing demand for steel in China, Brazil and the United States, where the oil and gas industry, as well as auto and heavy equipment makers, were proving strong markets for ArcelorMittal’s products.

Unlike in Europe, he said that U.S. “businesses are getting loans.” He added that he expected Europe to remain in recession this year, but that this would be “far less severe than in 2012.”

Although ArcelorMittal is bidding on a steel plant being sold to the German steel maker ThyssenKrupp in Alabama, the company is mainly focusing on its new investments in mining, which has been more profitable than steel making of late, recording $1.2 billion in operating profit and a 22 percent operating margin last year.

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February 6, 2013

Italian Bank Confirms Loss of $985 Million in Secret Deals

By JACK EWING and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

FRANKFURT — Monte dei Paschi di Siena, an ancient Tuscan bank whose troubles have shaken Italian politics and caused jitters around the euro zone, on Wednesday confirmed earlier estimates of losses from a series of secret transactions that were used to conceal the scope of the bank’s problems.

The bank said its losses from three questionable transactions were 730 million euros (about $985 million), only slightly higher than an estimate in October of a loss of 720 million euros. The disclosure Wednesday, after a meeting of the bank’s board that lasted into the evening, could calm financial markets if investors conclude that all of the bank’s skeletons are out of the closet.

The disclosure came as Italian prosecutors said on Wednesday they had ordered the seizure of assets worth about 40 million euros in connection with possible fraud against Monte dei Paschi, Reuters reported. Prosecutors did not give details, but Italian news organizations reported that the money was seized from other banks that did business with Monte dei Paschi.

Problems at Monte dei Paschi, founded in 1472 and commonly known as M.P.S., have rippled far beyond the medieval Tuscan city of Siena, which is also the bank’s largest shareholder.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has seized on the scandal as an issue as he tries to make a political comeback.

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February 6, 2013

Europe’s Plan for GPS Limps to Crossroads

By ANDREW HIGGINS

FUCINO, Italy — With lofty dreams of European unity increasingly grounded by economic woe and the weight of narrow national interests, an array of computer screens here in central Italy blinks with faint signs that — far away in space, at least — Europe’s often quarreling nations can still sometimes find common cause.

Ringed by snow-covered mountains on a plateau east of Rome, the Fucino Space Center stands guard over the European Union’s flagship joint project: a satellite navigation system that is years behind schedule, many times over its original budget and unlikely to start operating for at least another year.

Europe’s future commitment to the project, known as Galileo and designed to create a new, improved and European-controlled version of America’s Global Positioning System, is to be decided in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, when European leaders will try for a second time, after talks failed in November, to hash out a long-term budget for the 27-nation bloc.

With recession and austerity clouding much of the Continent, they will argue over where the ax should fall on a European Union budget for 2014 to 2020, which would total nearly $1.35 trillion as drafted. An over-budget satellite navigation system that is years from full completion, largely a duplicate of an American system already widely used in Europe and unlikely ever to generate much revenue would seem to be in the budget cutters’ cross hairs.

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February 6, 2013

English Hospital Report Cites ‘Appalling’ Suffering

By SARAH LYALL

LONDON — Shockingly bad care and inhumane treatment at a hospital in the Midlands led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths and stripped countless patients of their dignity and self-respect, according to a scathing report published on Wednesday.

The report, which examined conditions at Stafford Hospital in Staffordshire over a 50-month period between 2005 and 2009, cites example after example of horrific treatment: patients left unbathed and lying in their own urine and excrement; patients left so thirsty that they drank water from vases; patients denied medication, pain relief and food by callous and overworked staff members; patients who contracted infections due to filthy conditions; and patients sent home to die after being given the wrong diagnoses.

“This is the story of the appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people,” Robert Francis, the lawyer appointed by the government to lead the inquiry, said at a news conference.

“They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs and put corporate interests and cost control ahead of patients and their safety,” he added. “There was a lack of care, compassion, humanity and leadership. The most basic standards of care were not observed, and fundamental rights to dignity were not respected.”

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January 10, 2013

Sharp Words From European Minister for Countries in North

By JAMES KANTER

BRUSSELS — Jean-Claude Juncker, the departing leader of the group of ministers who oversee the euro currency, sharply criticized northern Europeans on Thursday for demanding austerity budgets from their southern neighbors.

But in the same speech he seemed to endorse as his successor an official from the Netherlands, one of countries that has made the toughest demands for fiscal rigor in the euro zone.

Mr. Juncker, himself a northern European and prime minister of Luxembourg, told members of the European Parliament’s influential Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee that northerners had falsely painted themselves as more economically virtuous than southerners. “I’m totally against this distinction,” he said.

Mr. Juncker warned that some members of his own country’s Parliament had become fed up with “the German diktat,” and he said countries making painful economic adjustments should be rewarded for their efforts.

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January 8, 2013

Italy: Court Condemns Italian Jails

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Italy’s prisons violated inmates’ basic rights and fined the government $130,000. It also ordered Italy to make improvements within a year. The court ruled on a 2009 case brought by seven inmates in two prisons who complained that each had to share a 97-square-foot cell with two other inmates. The men also said they did not have regular hot water or light. The court, in Strasbourg, said the conditions violated the European Convention on Human Rights, which forbids torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. Italy’s justice minister, Paola Severino, said she was “disheartened” but not surprised by the decision.

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January 10, 2013

Signs of a Rift in British Coalition Over European Union

By STEPHEN CASTLE

LONDON — A blunt warning from the United States to Prime Minister David Cameron over his plans to loosen ties with the European Union was echoed by Mr. Cameron’s coalition partner Thursday, opening new fissures here over Britain’s ambivalent attitude toward the 27-nation bloc.

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, said risking Britain’s membership in the union was perilous, and he mocked a long-awaited speech on E.U. policy that Mr. Cameron is expected to make in the Netherlands before the end of the month.

Mr. Clegg, who is a Dutch speaker and whose party supports the European Union, joked that he would be on hand to translate Mr. Cameron’s speech “from double-Dutch to just Dutch.”

Mr. Cameron, whose Conservative lawmakers are increasingly critical of the European Union, has said he wants to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the bloc and seek consent from voters for the outcome of those talks.

Many observers expect him to make an explicit promise of a referendum in his upcoming speech — in part because Mr. Cameron’s party risks losing support to the  Independence Party, which wants Britain to leave the union.

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January 10, 2013

Scotland Yard Officer Found Guilty in Phone Hacking Scandal

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON (AP) — A top British counterterrorism detective was found guilty Thursday of trying to sell information to one of Rupert Murdoch's tabloids, becoming the first person convicted on charges related to Britain's phone-hacking scandal since a police investigation was reopened in early 2011.

Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn was charged with misconduct for phoning the News of the World tabloid and offering to pass on information about whether London's police force would reopen its stalled phone-hacking investigation.

Prosecutors said the tabloid did not print a story based on her call and no money changed hands but she had committed a "gross breach" of the public trust by offering to sell the information.

Casburn, 53, also was accused of trying to ruin the phone-hacking inquiry — which centered on Murdoch journalists at the now-defunct News of the World — by leaking information to the press.

A key witness testified that Casburn wanted to torpedo the hacking inquiry because she feared it would drain resources from the fight against terrorism. The witness said she also was upset about the purported pressure being put on prosecutors by John Prescott, a deputy prime minister under Tony Blair who had been a hacking victim.

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January 10, 2013

Top Kurdish Militant Is Among Three Slain in Paris

By DAN BILEFSKY, ALAN COWELL and SEBNEM ARSU

PARIS — Three Kurdish women, including a founding member of a leading militant group fighting for autonomy in Turkey, were shot to death at a Kurdish institute in central Paris, police officials said on Thursday, potentially jeopardizing efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in the decades-old conflict.

News reports identified the women as Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the initials P.K.K.; Fidan Dogan, the head of the institute and a representative of the Kurdistan National Congress, an umbrella group of Kurdish organizations in Europe; and Leyla Soylemez, a young Kurdish activist.

The women’s bodies were discovered shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday, according to Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, who added that the antiterror department of the prosecutor’s office would oversee the investigation. She confirmed that Ms. Dogan, born in 1984, and Ms. Soylemez, born in 1988, were victims in the killings, but declined to confirm the identity of the third woman.

Asked about the motive, she said, “No hypothesis can be excluded at this stage.”

Visiting the crime scene on Thursday, Interior Minister Manuel Valls called the shootings “intolerable” and said they were “without doubt an execution.” The violence at the Kurdish Institute of Paris, in the city’s 10th Arrondissement near the Gare du Nord railroad station, seemed to open a new chapter in the often murky annals of Kurdish exile life.

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December 18, 2012

Spain: Separatist Catalan Parties Announce Alliance

By REUTERS

Two of the largest parties in Catalonia agreed on Tuesday to an alliance day that aims to clear the way for a referendum in 2014 on secession, a vote that the central government in Madrid has said is illegal. A prolonged recession and record unemployment have fueled separatist sentiment in a region that is among Spain’s wealthiest, adding to uncertainty for investors concerned over Spain’s finances. The pact was formed between the center-right Convergence and Union party and Republican Left, which are usually at loggerheads, after each failed to win decisively in last month’s election.

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December 17, 2012

Poland Finds It’s Not Immune to Euro Crisis

By JACK EWING

WARSAW — The Fiat factory in Tychy, Poland, has long been considered one of the most productive auto plants in Europe, often singled out for praise by the Italian company’s demanding chief executive, Sergio Marchionne.

Polish workers “always responded whenever I asked,” Mr. Marchionne said at the Paris Motor Show in October. “I feel an exceptional responsibility to the people there.”

So when Fiat said recently that it would lay off a third of the work force in Tychy, or about 1,500 people, it was a harsh reminder: Even with the healthiest big economy in Europe, Poland cannot escape the Continent’s economic downturn.

Polish growth is expected to slow to as little as 1.5 percent next year, according to World Bank estimates, from 2.1 percent this year. That still compares favorably with the neighboring euro zone, where most countries are either in recession or just barely growing. With a gross domestic product of €369.7 billion in 2011, according to the European data agency Eurostat, Poland ranked ninth among the 27 E.U. countries, just below Belgium and a rung above Austria.