Kurdish militant leader urges congress on peace with Turkey (france24, reuters)
Latest update : 2015-03-21
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko fired powerful tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky as a regional governor Wednesday in a move that could affect the country's internal balance of power and Kiev's fight against Moscow-backed separatists.
The 52-year-old Kolomoisky has been at the center of a political storm since armed men, apparently loyal to him, briefly entered the offices of the state-owned oil monopoly UkrTransNafta in the capital, Kiev, Thursday night after its director, his ally, was summarily replaced.
Privatization calls find Greece caught between creditors and voters
EU expects Athens to sell off state assets, but the electorate wants to save the national patrimony
Maria Aroni isn’t entirely opposed to privatization, but she deems efforts by the Greek state to sell off public assets in order to pay down its debts as “a move of desperation.” And last spring, the businesswoman and former deputy mayor of the tiny island of Elafonissos helped lead a successful fight to prevent a soft-sand beach being sold off to hotel developers.
“This island, as beautiful as it is, simply cannot survive if it’s cut off from Simos beach,” she explained. “This beach is the source of life financially, supporting all the small businesses on the island, and encouraging the kind of small-scale tourism that brings out the best of Greece, like its natural beauty, its hospitality.”
US
House urges Obama to send weapons to Ukraine
©
AFP | Ukrainian special troops stand guard in the southern city of Odessa in
January.
Latest
update : 2015-03-24
The US House of Representatives
overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Monday urging President Barack Obama to
send weapons to Ukraine to help its fight against Russian-backed rebels. The US
has so far provided only non-lethal aid.
American lawmakers voted overwhelmingly
Monday to urge President Barack Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal
weapons to defend itself against Russian "aggression."
The US House of Representatives approved
the resolution in a broadly bipartisan 348-48 vote, heaping further pressure on
the Obama administration to end its delays in providing weapons and other heavy
military equipment to Kiev forces.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Deadly explosion strikes mine in eastern Ukraine
A blast at a coal mine in the eastern Ukrainian rebel stronghold of Donetsk killed more than 30 people, a local official said on Wednesday, with dozens more miners who were underground at the time unaccounted for.
Miners’ relatives were gathering at the entrance to the Zasyadko mine desperately trying to get more information, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.
Local officials said about 70 people were working in the mine when the explosion happened. One worker, leaving the mine in dirty overalls, said he had heard that 45 people were still trapped underground, though there was no immediate confirmation of this figure.
“According to preliminary information, more than 30 people were killed. Rescue workers have not yet come to the place of the explosion, they are removing the poisonous gas and then will go down,” said Vladimir Tsymbalenko, the head of the local mining safety service.
The cause of the blast in the Zasyadko coal mine was not immediately clear. An explosion at Zasyadko in 2007 killed 106 people.
The sister of one miner who was in the pit at the time of the explosion, Alexei Novoselsky, stood at the entrance to the mine, in tears.
“Tell me, are there survivors? Why are you concealing the truth,” she said as a local rescue services employee tried to calm her.
A welder at the mine, who gave his name as Oleg, said outside the entrance: “What I heard is that there are 45 people trapped. They got one out.”
Asked about the chances of rescuing more miners, he said: “I’ve been down the pit for 23 years, and this is the fourth explosion that I can recall. If they didn’t get them out straight away, then later they will only retrieve bodies. An explosion is a terrible thing.”
Ireland accidentally makes drugs legal, for a day
Some of the most powerful recreational drugs, including ecstasy, ketamine and magic mushrooms, were accidentally made legal in Ireland on Tuesday – but only for one day – thanks to a loophole in the law.
The Irish government is now rushing to pass through emergency legislation to re-criminalise thedrugs, but this will not be completed until Wednesday at the earliest.
The bizarre situation came about after the country’s Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday morning that a longstanding piece of anti-drug legislation – the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 – was unconstitutional.
According to Ireland’s Department of Health, this meant possession of drugs listed in the act such as ecstasy, benzodiazepines and newer psychoactive substances immediately ceased to be an offence.
“The outcome of this case does not affect existing laws regarding the supply, possession or sale of older drugs such as heroin, cocaine or cannabis,” the department said in a statement.
The case concerned the prosecution of a man for possession of a substance sold by one of Ireland’s so-called ‘head shops’, operators that sell substances often dubbed “legal” or “herbal” highs that the government sought to crack down on in 2010.
The stimulant, methylethcathinone, was added to the list of controlled substances by ministerial order in 2011, a move the court deemed to be unconstitutional as it had been done without any consultation with the Irish parliament.
As a result, all other drugs added to the list of controlled substances by similar government orders over the years also ceased to be illegal.
Irish Health Minister Leo Varadkar is set to introduce emergency legislation in a session at the Dáil, the lower house of the country’s parliament, on Tuesday evening.
However, once through the Dáil the bill will need to go before the parliament’s upper chamber, the Seanad, tomorrow, before it can become law.
“The emergency legislation I am introducing today will re-instate the status quo ante and re-control all drugs that were controlled prior to this judgment,” Varadkar said in a statement.
Euro spirals toward 1:1 parity with USD
The euro and the dollar are nearly trading one for one, as the EU single currency continues to fall to new depths after the announcement of the ECB’s quantitative easing, the €1.1 trillion bond-buying program launched Monday.
In early trading Tuesday, the euro lost more than 1 percent against the dollar to $1.0586, its lowest since March 2003.
At the time of publication, $1 buys €1.06, whereas a year ago it bought 1.36, a more than 30 percent fall in value.
The euro has been on a steep decline since the European Central Bank announced its loose monetary policy in December. Since the start of 2015, it has lost more than 14 percent.
"It's the euro versus everything," Stephen Gallo, European head of FX strategy at BMO Capital Markets in London, told Reuters.
Against the pound, the euro dropped 1.15 percent, with one euro now buying only 70.18 pence, the weakest since November 2007.
"The way these moves look is if it's not just speculators piling into euro shorts, it's actually a net flow of capital out of the euro,” Gallo said.
Other factors affecting the euro which is used by 19 countries, is the looming possibility Greece may again fall into a sovereign debt crisis and possibly leave the eurozone, which would send the currency sinking even further. ECB officials, along with IMF and European Commission, visit Athens Wednesday to discuss terms of a bailout extension.
Another stressor is the resurgence of the greenback after it underwent its own quantitative easingfrom 2008-2014. Falling oil prices also contribute to deflation, or lower prices, across Europe.
The European Central Bank launched its €1.1 trillion bond-buying program on Monday. The program will pump new money into the economy via central banks buying sovereign bonds in order to jumpstart the EU economy and steer clear of deflation. Inflation is hovering close to zero and nowhere near the ECB’s 2 percent target.
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