Egypt oil ministers to be tried over Israel deal

Sameh Fahmi, pictured here in 2010, and Mahmud Latif, two former Egyptian ministers, are to face trial for selling natural gas to Israel at a low price, judicial sources said on Saturday.

AFP - Two former Egyptian ministers are to face trial for selling natural gas to Israel at a low price, judicial sources said on Saturday.

Sameh Fahmi and Mahmud Latif are accused of costing the state 714 million dollars in losses because of the deal, the sources said.

Five oil ministry officials will also stand trial on the same charges.

Fahmi and Latif, who was briefly oil minister earlier this year, are already in custody.

They are accused of "exporting gas to Israel at a price lower than international prices, harming public finances," the sources said.

The probe into the controversial deal has extended to ousted leader Hosni Mubarak himself.

Mubarak, who has been detained on suspicion of involvement in the deaths of protesters, was questioned about the contract earlier this week.

The 82-year-old former strongman is in police custody in a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Local press reported that Mubarak denied having intimate knowledge of the negotiations for the 2005 agreement with Israel.

The state news agency MENA reported last week that Egypt's prime minister has asked for the revision of all contracts to supply gas abroad, including to the Jewish state.

Egypt supplies an estimated 40 percent of Israel's gas requirements.

Prime Minister Essam Sharraf "has directed the revision and review of all gas contracts Egypt agreed to with all countries, including Jordan and Israel," MENA said on April 13.

The contracts are to be revisited so the gas "would be sold with deserved prices that achieve the highest returns for Egypt," it added.

A sweeping probe into corruption has been launched under the ruling military council which took power when Mubarak was ousted on February 11 following anti-regime protests.

Several powerful members of the former regime and close associates are being questioned by prosecutors, including Mubarak's sons Alaa and Gamal.

At least six killed in flash floods in Venezuela

File photo shows people near the burst banks of the Tachira River on the Colombia-Venezuela border. At least six children have been killed and three adults were reported missing in northwestern Venezuela following flash floods caused by torrential rains.

AFP - At least six children have been killed and three adults were reported missing in northwestern Venezuela following flash floods caused by torrential rains.

Yaracuy state governor Julio Leon told local television all victims lived in the town of Bolivar and belonged to the same family, which was apparently enjoying a picnic in a gully when the flash flood hit.

Heavy rains have been affecting the area for about two weeks causing flooding in many communities.

According to Leon, rescue teams were searching for the missing.

History repeats itself in Greek debt crisis

People take part in a Communist Party rally against austerity measures in central Athens. With insolvency looming in April 2010, Greece was forced to appeal to its European Union peers and the International Monetary Fund for a bailout loan of 110 billion euros ($159 billion) in return for a sweeping overhaul of its economy.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou prepares to give a speech in Athens.

AFP - Austere-looking Europeans dictating economic policy are nothing new for Greece which went bankrupt over a century ago and had to accept an international commission of control over its finances.

The year was 1898. A much smaller Greek state had just lost a disastrous war against the Ottoman Empire and was forced to pay reparations when the government had officially declared insolvency five years earlier.

Determined to collect past loans, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Italy sent officials to monitor state receipts, taxes and customs duties that would repay Greece's obligations.

"The Greek state was born in debt," notes Stavros Thomadakis, a professor of business economics and finance at Athens University.

"In a way, debt is Greece's original sin," he told AFP.

Fiscal profligacy caught up with Athens again last year when greater investor scrutiny of sovereign debt cast a spotlight on its parlous finances.

The incoming Socialist government of George Papandreou had just revealed that the size of Greece's deficit had been misreported and pledged to set the record straight, but the confidence scare that followed caused Greek loans to dry up.

With insolvency looming, Athens was forced to appeal, on April 23 2010, to its European Union peers and the International Monetary Fund for a bailout loan of 110 billion euros ($159 billion) in return for a sweeping overhaul of its economy.

The unpopular quarterly audits by EU and IMF officials that followed echo a situation described in "The Control", a long-lost play by George Isaias that satirised the country's woes some 110 years ago.

Revived this year by an Athenian troupe, the 1900 play chronicles the arrival of two foreign loan officers, the stiff German Von Gdare (Von Flayer) and the skirt-chasing Frenchman De Fagan (De Glutton), and the efforts of their Greek hosts to mollify them.

The closeness of the script to Greece's current predicament is not lost on play director Costis Kapelonis.

"Once again, it's a control that exceeds the powers of the Greek state and has an impact on everybody's daily life," he says.

Then, as now, major military spending took a large chunk of state funds.

George Dertilis, a director at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, noted that the Greek state directed over 33 percent of its spending on the army from 1830 onwards.

At the time of the foreign powers' commission, says Athens University's Thomadakis, the image of creditors "drinking the blood of the country" was deeply embedded in popular culture.

"Today, people see the EU and the IMF as an occupation force even if this is not the case," he says.

And although Isaias' play closes with a call to resistance, Greece actually managed to rebound from bankruptcy, Thomadakis adds.

"The first decade of the 20th century was one of Greece's most productive, to a great extent because of the order restored to the country's finances," he said.

Purported samples of Greece's ornate 1898 bond certificates, backed in gold by the governments of Britain, France and Russia, can today be found on Ebay for under $10.

"You are about as likely to collect on this bond as you are Greece's current debt!" reads one tongue-in-cheek comment.

In another brush with history, albeit unintentional, Papandreou's ruling Pasok party was for decades headquartered on an Athens street named after Harilaos Trikoupis, the visionary prime minister who was forced to declare insolvency in 1893.

The Pasok party moved to new offices before the start of the crisis.

Fukushima operator may build underground walls to stop leaks

The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, TEPCO, is considering building underground walls around its crippled reactors to prevent radioactive water seeping out, according to Japan’s TV Asahi, citing unnamed sources.

By News Wires (text)

AFP - The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is considering installing underground walls around its crippled reactors to prevent radioactive water seeping out, a broadcaster said Saturday.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is studying the measure to contain contaminated water leaking from the plant’s reactors which were damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, TV Asahi said citing unnamed sources.

Workers would have to dig to a depth of 15 metres (50 feet) to reach an impervious layer to build the walls on, it said.

TEPCO has dumped a massive amount of water into reactor containers and overheating pools containing spent nuclear fuel rods, after the magnitude 9.0 quake triggered monster waves which knocked out the plant’s cooling systems.

Workers battling to stabilise the battered nuclear facility later found highly contaminated water submerging turbine buildings and underground tunnels, with some running off from a cracked concrete pit into the Pacific Ocean.

They sealed the crack but have faced a challenge in trying to ensure no underground water seeps out of the plant.

The report came a day after former construction minister Sumio Mabuchi, who is now one of Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s advisors, suggested the plan.

A TEPCO spokesman stopped short of confirming the project would go ahead.

“The company considers many possible measures to to do, and it may be one of them,” said a company spokesman.

Workers dousing the reactors and fuel rod pools have tried to control the amount of water they use, to limit the quantity of contaminated water produced by the cooling process.

But the temperature at reactor four’s fuel pool had risen to 91 degrees Celsius (196 degrees Fahrenheit), forcing workers to add more water to prevent the rods from being exposed and releasing radiation, TEPCO said Saturday.

“The company is considering sending a waterproof CCD camera into the pool, but the temperature is now at 91 degrees C, which is too high,” the spokesman said. “But we also need to carefully watch how much water to inject.”

The camera would be used to check on the condition of the fuel rods and see if any had melted.

‘Invisible commando’ chief agrees to disarm his forces

The head of the “Invisible Commando” militia that fought alongside anti-Gbagbo rebels in Abidjan has agreed to peacefully lay down his arms after the country’s new president Alassane Ouattara ordered his troops to round up illegal weapons.

By News Wires (text)

AP - A renegade warlord in Ivory Coast said Saturday he was ready to lay down his arms as ordered by the new president, but said it would take time to organize.

In an interview with The Associated Press Saturday, Gen. Ibrahim “IB” Coulibaly said that one could not just dispose of arms in the streets. He spoke from his heavily armed stronghold within Abobo, a poor neighborhood in Ivory Coast’s largest city Abidjan. He arrived at the interview in a three-car convoy, guarded by a missile launcher set up on the back of a pickup truck.

FRANCE 24 EXCLUSIVE IVORY COAST Gbagbo weapons stockpiles discovered near Abidjan

President Alassane Ouattara on Friday ordered Coulibaly, who led two coups in Ivory Coast and commands the Invisible Commando force, to lay down arms or be forcibly disarmed.

Ouattara also ordered all combat units back to their barracks _ the former rebel forces who installed him in power to their stronghold in the central city of Bouake and troops who fought for former President Laurent Gbagbo to their old military camps.

Ouattara said that regular and paramilitary police will be redeployed to take over security.

“He said lay down your arms. We will lay down our arms. It is not a problem,” said Coulibaly of Ouattara’s order.

When asked why then he has so many arms around his stronghold, Coulibaly said: “You don’t dispose of arms in the street. There has to be a strategy.”

Coulibaly, who began the battle against Gbagbo’s troops and militia in Abidjan, said he wants his forces to join the new army but is waiting to be invited.

He told the AP that he has 5,000 men under his command. But the number appears under 1,000 from AP assessments at his Abobo headquarters and a college there where his commanders are training recruits.

Ouattara tried to distance himself at first from the former rebels fighting in his name when they began a lightening assault that brought them from Bouake and the west to the gates of Abidjan within days. They had been accused of atrocities during the offensive.

But when his pleas for an international intervention to force Gbagbo from power went unheeded, he adopted them as his forces and now calls them the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, or FRCI by the French initials.

Ouattara’s orders to disarm and return to barracks came two days after the former rebels attacked Coulibaly’s Invisible Commando force in his stronghold in Abobo, but were repulsed.

Meanwhile on Saturday, thousands of people from the mainly Muslim quarters of Abobo cheered when a commander told them the war was over at a gathering called by forces backing Ouattara.
Cmdr. Sofi Dosso, leader of the traditional hunters who live in tropical rainforests, said his forces were “ready to help disarm those who disobey the president’s commands.”

Despite Ouattara’s call to return to their barracks, Dosso and others still gathered in an area of Abobo near the town hall. Several fighters holding AK-47s were also in the crowd.

“The war is over,” Dosso said. “We don’t want to hear anymore gunshots in Abidjan.”

All groups in a bloody four-month electoral conflict are accused of killing civilians, looting, burning homes and extorting money. On Wednesday, former rebel forces turned their guns on each other in the southwest cocoa port of San Pedro, forcing U.N. peacekeepers to intervene when they started launching rockets and mortars in the city’s downtown area.

“We are ready to help disarm those who disobey the president’s commands. But right now, we are needed here to help in the disarmament process because we know the many people who are holding arms illegally,” Dosso said.

Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer and second largest coffee grower, had been divided between a rebel-held north and government-run south since Coulibaly launched a rebellion in 2002.

Infighting among the rebels forced Coulibaly into exile until his Invisible Commando mysteriously emerged in Abidjan this year.

Those battles were won by Guillaume Soro, now Ouattara’s prime minister and minister of defense, who remains a bitter rival of Coulibaly.

Nov. 28 elections were supposed to reunite the country. But the intransigent Gbagbo, who had ruled from 2000 and repeatedly delayed elections, refused to accept his defeat and took a final stand in Abidjan. It is the country’s biggest city and the commercial capital where about a third of the population of 15 million lives.

Abobo suffered the worst in the battle for Abidjan, when Gbagbo’s troops fired rockets and shells into its shacks and working-class homes.

Many residents there consider Coulibaly a savior who ended the slaughter.

Both Ivory Coast and France, the former colonial power, have issued
international arrest warrants against Coulibaly, who was one of the leaders of a December 1999 coup that brought Gen. Robert Guei to power.

Coulibaly 47, was convicted in his absence by a French court for recruiting mercenaries in France and plotting a failed 2003 coup to oust Gbagbo. At the time, Coulibaly said the case was a plot to prevent him from running in presidential elections Gbagbo called for 2008, then delayed.

China broadens stress tests for banks

By Jamil Anderlini, FT.com

April 24, 2011 -- Updated 0302 GMT (1102 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• China stress tests would see how they handle a 50 percent property prices fall
• Sign of Beijing's growing official unease about the overheated real estate market

RELATED TOPICS

• China
• Financial Markets

(FT) -- China has ordered its banks to conduct stress tests to see how they would be affected if property prices fell by up to 50 per cent, in a sign of growing official unease about the overheated real estate market.

The tests are more stringent and factor in a larger drop in prices than earlier ones conducted in the past two years. This comes after predictions from prominent Chinese analysts of 20-30 per cent property price declines this year.

Analysts said previous tests looked only at the effect of housing price declines on loans to developers and mortgage borrowers, and disregarded the effect on loans collateralised by land and real estate. This resulted in an overly optimistic assessment of their exposure to a serious property market correction.

"If property prices drop 50 per cent we would be in big trouble; it would mean a hard landing for the economy," according to Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Securities. UBS recently described the Chinese property market as the single most important sector in the entire global economy because of the overwhelming importance of real estate construction to China's growth model and, by extension, global commodity demand.

Ms Wang said a crash in the real estate market could have a huge effect on developers, cement companies, steel producers and consumer purchases of items such as cars and appliances, which are closely correlated to property sales.

For now, prices are still rising in China despite more than a year of government policies to cool the sector and bring down prices that are well out of reach of most of the population.

Property transaction volume across the whole country increased in the first quarter of the year from the same period a year earlier but a closer look at data shows a steep decline in March in the 10 largest cities, which often lead the rest of the country.

Transaction volume collapsed 40 per cent from a year earlier in China's 10 largest cities in March following a 33 per cent increase in the first two months, according to Du Jinsong, a real estate analyst at Credit Suisse.

Mr Du forecasts a 5-10 per cent decline in real estate prices in China this year, accompanied by a 15 per cent dfal in transaction volume but he said most Chinese analysts were predicting a 20-30 per cent decline in prices this year.

Officials say about 20 per cent of all Chinese bank lending has gone directly to mortgage borrowers or property developers but a huge proportion of loans to other borrowers are backed by land as collateral.

China's banking regulator said it had asked banks to test the effect of 50 per cent price drops in cities with the fastest price increases, but in cities where prices had not risen as much banks were required to test for price drops of 40 per cent, 30 per cent or less.

Officials were quick to point out the stress tests were not a prediction by the regulator or an indication of the government's expectations.

Beijing has introduced a series of measures since last year to slow soaring prices, including raising interest rates, raising down-payment requirements, directly restricting home purchases, imposing price control targets and levying a trial real estate tax in Shanghai and Chongqing, two of China's biggest cities.

© The Financial Times Limited 2011

3 government officials are killed in Iraq

From Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN

April 23, 2011 -- Updated 1938 GMT (0338 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The officials are shot in three separate neighborhoods in Baghdad
• The gunmen used pistols equipped with silencers
• In a separate incident, a bomb blast wounds two

Baghdad (CNN) -- Three Iraqi government officials were assassinated by gunmen using pistols equipped with silencers in separate neighborhoods in the capital Saturday, officials with the Interior Ministry said.

Yousif Abdullatif, a Defense Ministry employee, was shot dead in the al-Jadriya neighborhood in central Baghdad, officials said.

Director General of the Iraqi Taxes Committee Foad Fadhel was killed in the al-Jamia neighborhood in western Baghdad, they said.

Mohammed Qassim, an officer working at the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, was shot dead by gunmen in the Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad, the officials said.

Separately, in the Saydiya neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad, a sticky bomb attached to a civilian vehicle exploded, wounding two people inside the car.

Government figures show the death toll in Iraq has been rising.

In March, 247 Iraqis were killed, up from 197 people in February. Another 370 people were wounded in March.

Overall, violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the peak of the sectarian violence between 2005 and 2007, but mortar attacks, bombs and assassinations are still commonplace.