CHINESE LENDER SECURES THE FOOTHOLD IN BRAZIL

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China Construction Bank is in talks to buy a bank in Brazil amid plans to open a subsidiary in Latin America’s biggest economy, according to officials and people familiar with the matter.

The move comes as the leading Chinese banks are moving into Latin America to service rising trade with the region and to encourage South American exporters to begin trading in China’s currency, the renminbi, rather than the dollar.

ON THIS STORY

Retrenchment concerns grip Brazil’s banks
China fears lasting worldwide recession
beyondbrics Brazil: Things starting to get hairy?
beyondbrics Brazil-China: too close for comfort?

ON THIS TOPIC

John Weinshank, senior vice-president at CCB’s New York branch, told a banking conference in Miami that the executive board of the world’s second-largest lender by market value had approved a proposal to open a subsidiary in Brazil.

“We are following our customers,” Mr Weinshank told the annual conference of Felaban, the Latin American banking federation, adding that the proposal still needed the approval of regulators in both countries.

Separately, a person in São Paulo familiar with the matter said CCB had opened talks with the owners of a small Brazilian bank over a potential acquisition of the institution.

The person declined to name the target, but said entry into Brazil through an acquisition would provide CCB with the necessary licences and permits more easily than starting from scratch.

China overtook the US to become Brazil’s largest trading partner in 2009 and its biggest foreign investor last year as companies ranging from car manufacturers to engineering firms are looking to set up in the Latin American economy.

Chen Jin, head of international financial institutions for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in Beijing, told the Felaban conference that the group is establishing branches in Brazil and Peru as it seeks to help its clients with their businesses in Latin America.

ICBC has also bought 80 per cent of Standard Bank in Argentina, a deal that is awaiting shareholder approval, she said.

AFGHANISTAN NEWS

In June 2011, President Obama declared that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion an aggressive timetable for the withdrawal of American troops by 2014.

The reaction in Afghanistan has been complicated. Initially, many in Kabul welcomed the announcement, including President Hamid Karzai, who described the announcement that American troops would depart as “a moment of happiness for Afghanistan.”

As time passes and the Taliban continues its brutal campaign, the mood has turned sober. Throughout Afghanistan, and especially in the south, local officials and tribal elders have questioned the ability of Afghan troops to defend them and have said that the Taliban are far from defeated.

In November 2011, despite criticism from neighboring countries, threats from the Taliban and calls for a boycott from some political opponents, Mr. Karzai called a loya jirga, the traditional grand council of Afghan elders and leaders, in an attempt to gain popular support for a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

There have been no agreements and, in any case, Mr. Karzai’s proposals — which include an end to night raids by American forces and an insistence that the Afghan government be in charge of all detainees — are not acceptable to American officials. But they are an indication of the change in his thinking.

The months that preceded the gathering were notable for their violence. Aug. 6, 2011, was the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war: insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans.

In August a series of attacks by insurgents killed numerous civilians, but for the most part failed against military targets. In Kabul, on Aug. 19, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on the British Council, a British government agency promoting education, culture and the arts. Suicide bombers stepped up attacksin southern Afghanistan in advance of the end of Ramadan. But though Afghan security forces were the intended targets, civilians took the biggest toll.

On Sept. 13, insurgents launched a complex assault against the American Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters, pelting the heavily guarded compounds with rockets in an attack that raised new questions about the security of Afghanistan’s capital and the Westerners working there.

A week later, an unidentified attacker killed the Burhanuddi Rabbani, the leader of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, a former president of the country whose main responsibility was negotiating a political end to the war with the Taliban. The attack was a serious blow to any notion of reconciliation with the Taliban.

Militarily, the Taliban have been under stress since American forces doubled their presence in southern Afghanistan in 2010 and greatly increased the number of special forces raids aimed at hunting down Taliban commanders.

THE LEGEND RETURNS TO SETTLE THE SCORE

LAHORE: All-rounder and former captain Shahid Afridi has been included in Pakistan’s squad of 16 players for the five match ODI series against Sri Lanka, Geo News reported.

The squad also includes Misbah-ul-Haq (captain), Muhammed Hafeez, Umar Akmal, Imran Farhat, Younis Khan, Shoaib Malik, Sarfaraz Ahmed (WC), Junaid Khan, Sohail Tanveer,Abdul Razzaq, Umer Gul, Asad Shafiq, Saeed Ajmal, Azaz Cheema and Abdul Rehman.

Earlier on Wednesday, Afridi had met new PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf and expressed his willingness to play for Pakistan.

The former Skipper had retired from international cricket citing differences with team management and the coach.

Weather at Pakistan

Mainly dry weather is
expected in most parts of the country in next 24 hours

Terror suspect had started making bombs, New York police says

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Jose Pimentel, 27, a resident of Manhattan and U.S. citizen born in theDominican Republic, was arrested Saturday after being under investigation since 2009.

City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said investigators "had to act quickly" because the man had begun assembling three pipe bombs.

"The suspect was a so-called lone wolf, motivated by his own resentment of the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," Bloomberg said at a news conference. "He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad."

Kelly said Pimentel was inspired by and a follower of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born al-Qaeda leader who operated out of Yemen and was killed in late September by a U.S. drone attack.

Al-Awlaki, who once preached at a mosque in Virginia, had fled to Yemen and had become an eloquent advocate for waging an Islamic war against the United States. The U.S. held him responsible for inspiring Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan's deadly shooting at Fort Hood in Texas in November 2009 and a young Nigerian's scheme to blow up a U.S. jet on Christmas Day 2009.

Kelly said Pimentel came under investigation because of comments about violence to others. "He made some of his like-minded friends nervous because of his extremism,'' Kelly said.

Kelly said Pimentel had talked of killing U.S. servicemembers returning from abroad, particularly those who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and had discussed various bombing targets including a police station in nearby New Jersey.

He said Pimentel had begun to shift from talk to action recently, purchasing ingredients for pipe bombs at a Home Depot and other stores.

Kelly said Pimentel appeared to be guided by an article in Inspire, a magazine published by al-Awlaki's organization, titled "How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom."

Pimentel made three bombs using elbow fittings of metal pipes and planned to affix nails to increase the deadly shrapnel produced in an explosion, Kelly said. When police moved in Saturday, Pimentel had already drilled holes in the pipes for placement of wiring, Kelly said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Pimentel was charged Sunday with conspiring to build a bomb for terrorist purposes and possession of a pipe bomb. Kelly said Pimentel spent most of his life in Manhattan and, for five years lived in Schenectady, N.Y.

Sunday's announcement recalled the May 2010 discovery of an SUV parked in Times Square with a crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks.

Bloomberg said New York's police department has a large intelligence unit focusing on preventing more terrorism attacks in the city.

"We assign 1,000 police officer to counterterrorism duties every single day. This is another case where our caution paid off," he said.

Governor happy over release of funds for education sector

QUETTA: Balochistan Governor Nawab Zulfiqar has expressed his pleasure over release of 800 million for provincial educational institutions by Finance Department on the directives

Chief Minister and lauded efforts of Chief Minister for his interest in the development of education sector.

Governor asked concerned quarters that funds should be spent for the objective for which it has been provided and it must not be allowed to suffer from corruption. He said steps should also be taken to overcome shortage of teachers in the interior of the province.

Governor reminded Chief Minister that funds should also be provided to universities in the province to resolve their financial problems particularly members of parliament and provincial assembly should also provide Rupees 10 million each for the universities so that higher education in the province gets boost and their financial problems are resolved. (PPI)

Egyptians protest at army, clashes kill at least 12

CAIRO: At least 12 people were killed in clashes between security forces and crowds protesting against Egypt's ruling military council in some of the worst violence since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

With just a week before voting in the first free parliamentary election in decades, the confrontations in the capital Cairo and other cities raised worries about how smooth voting will be.

Protesters camped out for a third night on Monday in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 28-day uprising that ended Mubarak's 30-year rule.

Egyptians elect a new parliament in a staggered vote that starts on Nov. 28, but even when the assembly is picked, presidential powers remain with the army until a presidential poll, which may not happen until late 2012 or early 2013. Protesters want a much swifter transition.

Teargas has rained down on demonstrators and police have beaten them with batons in a bid to end the protest. Angry protesters brandished spent shotgun cartridges and bullet casings on Sunday, although police denied using live rounds.

Police backed by army officers fired salvoes of gas canisters and charged demonstrators in the square as darkness fell on Sunday, temporarily sending protesters fleeing.

They burned down banners and Internet video clips, which could not be independently checked, showed police beating protesters with sticks, pulling them by the hair and, in one case, dumping what appeared to be a corpse on piles of rubbish.

But demonstrators swiftly regrouped in side streets and returned to take control of the square.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's defence minister for two decades and who leads the army council, has become a target of protests.

"The people want the toppling of the Field Marshal," protesters frequently chanted.

"I don't want Tantawi ... I am staying tonight," said Ayman Ramadan, a data entry employee, said early on Monday morning.

State television said at least 10 people were killed on Sunday, raising the death toll since Saturday, when clashes erupted, to at least 12. Hundreds have been wounded.

LAHORE: Ruling out the possibility of martial law in the country, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar on Sunday said Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani would take action if Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani was found involved in the memo controversy.

Talking to reporters here on Sunday, he said Mansoor Ijaz was a known intriguer and had been involved in similar acts in the past as well. “Husain Haqqani is part of the prime minister’s team and if he is found involved in the memo issue, he will not be spared,” Mukhtar added.

He dismissed rumours about the prevailing unease among the security forces following the memo scandal but said the coming days would be crucial for the political situation in the country. He said Pakistan was passing through a critical phase and it would not be easy to say who was actually behind the memo controversy. He said he hoped the facts would come to the surface soon.

About PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and his plan to move the court if the memo was hushed up, Mukhtar said: “The PML-N leader can go for anything he wants. If his target is to remove the government, ours is to save it”.

Online adds: About Nawaz Sharif’s allegations that secret agencies were backing a particular political party, Mukhtar said the ISI and other agencies had nothing to do with political activities. “Blaming the agencies for political meddling is not correct,” he said.

INP adds: Mukhtar said there was no tussle between the civilian and military establishments. “Whenever new issues surface in the country, there are rumours that the government will not be able to complete its term,” he said. “The government will continue to work till the completion of its tenure.”

U.S sennctions

Sources: Iran faces new U.S. sanctions

The Obama administration plans to impose fresh sanctions against Iran on Monday,

Missing US link in memo mystery confirmed

ISLAMABAD: The identity of the intermediary between Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz and Admiral Mike Mullen is no longer a mystery. James Logan Jones, former United States National Security Advisor and a retired US Marine Corps General, confirmed to The News Sunday night that he had received the memo from Mansoor Ijaz and delivered it to Mullen.

General Jones confirmed his role as conduit to this correspondent via email but wanted to make it clear he was not a serving government official or associated with the United States administration in any way when he passed on the memo from Ijaz to Mullen. "I was not in government on May 10 when I forwarded the message to Admiral Mullen on 10 May," General Jones said.

After this correspondent received information from trusted sources that General Jones was the intermediary between Ijaz and Mullen, he was approached, via email, and asked to confirm or deny. General Jones' reply said: "Dear Ms Zahra-Malik, No secret here. Have confirmed my role as conduit with FT (The Financial Times) four days ago. I was not in government on May 10 when I forwarded the message to Admiral Mullen on 10 May. Cheers, Jim Jones."

General Jones has served as Commander, United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2003 to 2006 and as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003. Jones retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007, after 40 years of service. He later served as the US National Security Advisor from January 2009 till November 2010.

With the confirmation from General Jones, one of the last links in the memo authenticity-chain now stands confirmed. Now the only remaining missing link in the puzzle relates to the principal agent: did Ambassador Haqqani draft the memo with the authorisation of President Asif Ali Zardari, as alleged by Mansoor Ijaz and is being used by the president as a scapegoat now that the plot has been revealed, or was the ambassador, as is being suggested, the mastermind behind the plot to rein in the Pakistani security establishment?

has arrived in Islamabad to explain his role, if any, in conceptualising, writing and passing on the memo to the US administration. The envoy has reportedly already held two informal meetings with the president and is now expected to 'explain' his alleged role in the memo case in a closed door meeting with the president, prime minister, army chief and DG ISI.

In the days ahead, it is expected that the last link in the chain will be revealed: did the President of Pakistan, the supreme commander of Pakistan's armed forces and the symbol of the federation, authorise the writing of the memo? If the treasonous memo is traced back to President Zardari, it will raise serious constitutional questions about his competence to remain president and further exacerbate the country's menacing civil-military imbalance.

The News has already published the document at the heart of the memo controversy: a six-point plan offering to reshape Pakistan's national security leadership in return for US help in avoiding a military coup. The memo was delivered to Admiral Mullen by, as confirmed by The News, General Jim Jones just nine days after the killing of Osama bin Laden and requests Mullen's help in ending Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani's and Director General ISI, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha's "brinkmanship aimed at bringing down the civilian apparatus."

The News has confirmed that after news of the memo first surfaced in an op-ed written by Ijaz in London's Financial Times on October 10, it was decided at the highest level of the military leadership that the initial investigation would be carried out by spy chief General Pasha himself. Mansoor Ijaz subsequently met General Pasha in London on October 22 and shared with him a cache of evidence, including full records of phone calls, SMS messages, BBM chat exchanges, emails and other data.

General Pasha briefed General Kayani about the matter only after the authenticity of Ijaz's evidence was verified. The army chief subsequently met with President Zardari twice and asked him to act against Haqqani and at least two other federal ministers, both close aides to the president, who allegedly assisted Haqqani in his efforts to slander their institution. The army chief's meetings with President Zardari followed led to the summoning of Ambassador Haqqani to Islamabad.

As things stand now, the ambassador's job and the president's government hang in the balance. Both have much to account for: a memo that includes not just a direct acknowledgment that the current security establishment is in cahoots with terrorist outfits but also asks for direct intervention from the US to set things 'right.' There are questions to answer and answer the government must.

KARACHI: Pakistan ambassador to US Husain Haqqani said on Monday that he was unable to understand the claims made by American businessman Mansoor Ijaz. He was speaking to Geo News and said that Ijaz calls him a patriot and a liar at the same time.

The ambassador raised many questions and asked that why Mansoor Ijaz sent the memo and who delivered that to Admiral Mike Mullen. And how it was proved that he was the author of that document.

Ambassador Haqqani also said that Mansoor Ijaz has now accepted that President Zardari was unaware of the memo but he had said otherwise when he initiated the entire fiasco.

The ambassador predicted that Ijaz will step back from other claims as well and suggested that agencies should investigate that who is behind the memogate scandal and who can take advantage of the army-establishment clashes.

Top stroy

LONDON: Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan was recently introduced to Cameron Munter, American Ambassador to Pakistan, in the presence of General Ahmed Shuja .

ENDANGEREED SPECIES

"We may have to give up building some infrastructure or the panda will face a bigger threat to its existence than in 1980," he said.

Wild panda numbers dropped to as low as 1,000 in the late 1970s, but a painstaking conservation programme has increased numbers to around 1,600 today scattered across six mountain ranges in southwestern China.

BARMUDA TRIANGLE!

The barmuda triangle is still a mystery many tried to solve this but failed but it is clear that what goes inside doesnt come back it dissappears into another dimension...........the barmuda trianle start from japan and expands to atlatic

enviormental disaster

An unknown enviormental disaster occured in one of the tankers this piture was taken after he disaser caused this to happen .............According to me this must be due to one of those electric storm.

For the purpose of this article an environmental disaster is defined as a specific event caused by human activity that results in a seriously negative effect on the environment. Sometimes a natural disaster can become an environmental disaster, but that is a topic to be discussed elsewhere.

In most cases environmental disasters are caused by human error, accident, lack of foresight, corner cutting during industrial processes, greed, or by simple incompetence. In other words without some kind of human intervention they would never have happened. They are also often characterised by firm authoritative denials that anything serious has even happened.

Lack of foresight is a common cause of an environmental disaster. In agriculture a classic example of is the increasing salinity of soils in hot climates. With the need to produce more food, a warm climate seems ideal for European-style agriculture, once the existing vegetation has been cleared. The one proviso is that there must be plenty of water. Irrigation projects and deep wells are usually the answer, but as has been found in Australia, if this is not properly managed, salination can result and the land becomes effectively useless.

A further example of a catastrophic and misguided interference with nature resulted in the dust bowls that hit North America in the 1930s. The fertile soil seemed ideal for intensive agriculture, but a combination of deep ploughing and a lack of crop rotation weakened the soil structure. Following years of drought, high winds simply removed all the topsoil and millions of acres of once fertile farmland became a virtual desert.

Another unforeseen agricultural disaster was Moa Zedong's 1958 decree to eliminate sparrows. It was considered that because sparrows ate grain seeds they were robbing the people of the fruits of their labour. The campaign was very successful that it cleared the way for swarms of locusts to descend on the farms. Crops were decimated, leading to a famine that resulted in the deaths of 38 million people.

Introducing alien species can be just as disastrous as eliminating native ones. This has been the case in Australia when in 1859 12 imported English wild rabbits were released so that a local settler could go hunting. In the course of time they multiplied and it is estimated that even after serious efforts to control them, the Australian rabbit populations is still between 200 and 300 million.

As well as being responsible for the loss of vast acreages of agricultural crops and grazing land, rabbits are suspected of being the most significant known factor in species loss in Australia, killing young trees by eating the bark at the base of the trunk. They are also responsible for serious erosion as they eat native plants, leaving the topsoil exposed.

It is very easy to upset the fragile balance of nature. In June 1918 a steamship ran aground on a Pacific Island and while it was stranded, Black Rats escaped and got ashore. Here they thrived, causing the extinction of several of the island's endemic birds and other fauna. They also raided the crops of the islanders, particularly the seeds of the Kentia Palm, which was the islanders' only export commodity.

In an effort to control the rats, Masked Owls were introduced but this simply compounded the environmental disaster. By introducing yet another predator to the ecosystem, the result was that many of the remaining sea birds were simply wiped out as breeding species.

Industrial pollution has been the cause of so many environmental disasters that it is impossible to list them all. One of the most serious was the Bhopal disaster of December 1984 when a leak of methyl isocyanate resulted in at least 22,000 deaths plus various genetic diseases that will continue for generations. The chief causes of this disaster were negligence, corruption and the complete disregard of safety standards.

STORMS & TORNADOES

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