Cyprus to grant citizenship to biggest foreign bailout losers

Cyprus will offer citizenship to foreigners who lost at least €3 million in state banks under the bailout deal, the country’s president has announced. The new measure, to a great extent affecting Russians, is expected to be approved on Monday.

In remarks to Russian businessmen and media in the city of Limassol, President Nicos Anastasiades stated that his cabinet is seeking to approve the relaxation of restrictions on foreigners seeking citizenship of Cyprus.

“Non-resident investors who held deposits prior” to March 15 and lost “at least 3 million euros will be eligible to apply for Cypriot citizenship,” Anastasiades said, adding, “We believe that a number of measures to be adopted could on the one hand mitigate to some extent the damage the Russian business community has endured.”

Currently Cyprus runs a “citizenship by investment” program that offers investors the benefit of an EU citizenship if they meet the investment eligibility criteria of €10 million.

If the cabinet approves the measure on Monday, the original amount will be reduced to €3 million, and those who have lost at least that amount in the bailout deal will now be handled “in a fast-track manner.

The government is also “examining various scenarios which could permit the compensation of part of the losses which shareholders of banks, holders of debt securities and depositors have suffered,” Anastasiades said.

On Friday, the EU approved a multibillion-euro bailout for Cyprus in a bid to save the country’s collapsing economy. According to the deal, the International Monetary Fund will provide €1 billion, the Eurozone will pay €9 billion, and the island itself will generate €13 billion.

The cash that is being raised by Cyprus comes bank deposits above 100,000 euros, which are being levied at up to 60 percent of their value.

On March 30, it was announced that major depositors at the Bank of Cyprus would see 37.5 per cent of their deposits converted into bank shares, with the figure possibly set to increase by another 22.5 percentage points if the bank required further injections of cash. Since the Bank of Cyprus will also absorb the island’s second-largest bank Laiki, the same conditions are likely to apply to Laiki Bank depositors as well.

Meanwhile, with the debt €6 billion higher than expected, smaller depositors fear for their savings as well.

Russian citizens and multinational corporations have suffered the most from the financial crisis in Cyprus, as they have notoriously used the Mediterranean island as a tax haven over the last decade. Russians are believed to have held an estimated €5-31 billion in Cypriot banks before the island’s banking system was frozen to secure the bailout deal.

 

Employees of the bank hold banners as they march towards the parliament on April 4, 2013 during a demonstration in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, over fears that pensions may be at risk under Cyprus’s bailout, as more details emerged of biting austerity measures imposed on the cash-strapped island (AFP Photo / Patrick Baz)

RT

Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Un’s Brother, Could Have Been Supreme Leader Of North Korea

Sometimes it can be hard not to look back in time and wonder, “What if?”

We found ourselves doing just that after Mental Floss published a short but fascinating portrait of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. The article painted a picture of Kim Jong Nam as a fun-loving playboy with a refreshing habit of speaking the truth about North Korea’s secretive ruling family.
Kim Jong Nam, the love-child of an illicit affair the regime’s former dictator Kim Jong Il had with a North Korean actress, was once the top contender to succeed his father in the role of Supreme Leader, according to The New York Times. But an embarrassing incident at a Japanese airport — Kim Jong Nam tried to use a fake passport to go to Tokyo Disneyland — along with his “voracious appetites for alcohol and women” made his father doubt Kim Jong Nam’s ability to lead, the Times reported.
Still, Kim Jong Nam, who is 42 and reportedly living in Singapore with his family, doesn’t seem all that upset about being passed over for the position.
He’s spent much of the past few years in Macau, a seaside gambling town in southern China that he likes because “it’s the most free and liberal place” near where his family lived at the time. (He and his family reportedly left China for Singapore in early 2012 out of fear for their safety, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports.)
“Because I was educated in the West, I was able to enjoy freedom from early age, and I still love being free,” Kim Jong Nam reportedly said, according to a book written by Yoji Gomi, a Japanese journalist who corresponded with him for several years.
Kim Jong Nam’s relative freedom has allowed him to speak his mind about the North Korean regime with a candor most North Koreans will never enjoy. He once called the country’s practice of passing power down through the ruling family “a joke to the outside world,” according to Gomi’s book. He also reportedly cast doubt on whether his younger brother, Kim Jong Un, had enough experience to lead.

Still, Kim Jong Nam can’t say too much else about his now-infamous brother; the two have reportedly never met.

What if this straight-talking playboy had been chosen to lead North Korea instead of his pugnacious little brother? Would North Korea still be singling out cities like Austin, Texas, for missile attacks? We’ll never know.

 

 

huffingtonpost

Amsterdam plans to relocate troublemakers to ‘scum villages’

A plan set to begin early next year would move trouble-making residents from Amsterdam’s city center, pictured, to resettlements outside the city.

In a move that sounds straight out of Orwell, Amsterdam allocated 1 million euros last week to a plan that would relocate trouble-making neighbors to camps on the outskirts of the city, the BBC reports.

The “scum villages,” as critics have called them, would lie in isolated areas and provide only basic services to their unwilling residents. According to details of the plan reported by Der Spiegel and the BBC, residents will live in “container homes,” under the watchful eye of social workers or police. The residents themselves might not make very good company. According to the BBC, they’ll include families that engage in repeated, small-scale harassment, like bullying gay neighbors or intimidating police witnesses.

If this reads a little like ghettoization, you’re not the only one to notice. Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan has already faced a number of questions about the fairness of the plan, as well as the fear that crowding troublemakers together will simply breed more trouble. Most alarming, however, are the parallels to a plan proposed by far right-wing politician Geert Wilders last year.

Under that plan, Dutch paper de Volkskrant reports, repeat offenders (and their families, if minors) would relocate to container compounds in isolated areas. Residents could only return to society after a proven period of work or study. At the time, Wilders called his proposal a way to “put all the trash together and leave normal people alone,” according to a translation by Der Spiegel. But Wilders’s definition of “normal people” has concerned many observers, including Holland’s Public Prosecution Service — it charged him with several counts of inciting hate and discrimination against Muslims in January 2009.

Amsterdam city officials are, unsurprisingly, disavowing any similarity between their plan and Wilders’s. It’s already drawing comparisons to a gentler assisted-living program in Denmark, which lacks — through design or better PR — the dystopic overtones of the “scum villages.”

“Usually people are scared to report problems for fear of intimidation,” city spokeswoman Tahira Limon told the BBC. “It’s an upside down world and we want to change it so the people who cause the problems are moved.

 

Source-WashingtonPost

 

‘Al Qaeda-linked’ Yemeni Among Four Pakistan Drone Strike Dead

US drone

A missile fired from a drone killed four people, including a Yemeni fighter linked to al-Qaeda, when it hit their car in northern Pakistan on Saturday evening, intelligence and tribal sources said.

The strike at Sheen Warsak village in South Waziristan followed another drone attack in the same area two days earlier, reports .

A Yemeni fighter called Abdul Rehman, allied to al-Qaeda, was among the dead, government and intelligence sources said.

It is difficult for journalists to verify the casualties from drone strikes since the government forbids foreign journalists from travelling to the area without a military escort and the Taliban often seal off the sites of strikes.

Many Pakistanis say the strikes are a violation of national sovereignty and that civilian casualties encourage families seeking revenge to join the insurgency.

But the U.S. says civilian deaths are minimal and the drones operate in areas outside of Pakistani government control.

 

 

REUTERS

 

New Mexican president sworn in amid violent protests ( PHOTOS)

Protesters clashed with police outside the Mexican Congress in Mexico City on Saturday, as the country’s new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, took the oath of office.

Hundreds of demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, firecrackers and rocks at security forces, who responded by using tear gas to disperse the crowd.

At least two protesters were injured, one seriously and a police officer with a bleeding face was taken for medical treatment, according to law enforcement agencies.

Mexican authorities erected security barriers around the Congress several days ago in anticipation of protests by groups opposed to Nieto and the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power.

Forty-six year old Nieto, who will have the top job during the next six years, won the presidential election on July 1st by a narrow margin, with his victory has exposed deep divisions within the Mexican society.

The president-elect has took over at midnight in a symbolic ceremony after campaigning as the new face of the PRI, repentant and restructured after the party was voted out of the presidency in 2000. The PRI had ruled for 71 years with a mix of populist handouts, graft and rigged elections.

Rioters clash with police officers outside of the Congress building before the inauguration ceremony of incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1, 2012, in Mexico City (AFP Photo / Pedro Pardo)

After the oath-taking, the new president delivered his inaugural speech at the historic National Palace in the city’s downtown, promising to govern democratically with transparency.

But his first act in charge shows a strong link to the past. In announcing his Cabinet on Friday, he turned to the old guard as well as new technocrats to run his administration.

Nieto has pledged to make economic growth and job creation the centerpiece of his administration, with campaign manager and long-time confidant Luis Videgaray the key person. Videgaray, a 44-year-old economist with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will lead the treasury department.

Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, a 48-year-old former state governor who is known as a political operator and deal maker, has been named secretary of the interior, a post that will play a key role in security matters.

The new president has also promised to push for reforms that could bring major private investment into Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, the crucial state-owned oil industry, which is currently struggling.

Rioters clash with police officers outside of the Congress building before the inauguration ceremony of incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1, 2012, in Mexico City

Policemen stay on alert as demonstrators protest outside the Congress in Mexico City during the inauguration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, on December 1, 2012 

A demonstrator throws stones at the police during a protest outside the Congress in Mexico City during the inauguration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, on December 1, 2012 

A protestor holds a Mexican flag with an anti-PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party in Spanish) sign drawn on it during clashes with police officers outside of the Congress building before the inauguration ceremony of incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1, 2012, in Mexico City

Source-RT.com