MONTH THAT WAS

Saudi Arabia to retain ban on non-Muslim places of worship

Riyadh: Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia will retain its longstanding ban on non-Muslim places of worship, Justice Minister Mohammed al-Issa said in comments reported by the Saudi media on Wednesday, according to AFP.

As Saudi Arabia is “home to the Muslim holy places, it does not allow the establishment of non-Muslim places of worship,” the Al-Hayat newspaper quoted Issa as telling European MPs in Brussels.  Saudi Arabia, home to the holy Kaaba — the cube-shaped structure at the Grand Mosque in Mecca towards which Muslims worldwide pray — has come in for repeated criticism for its ban on non-Muslim places of worship.  Although Saudi Arabia’s citizen population is Muslim, the kingdom is also home to millions of expatriates of various beliefs. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s Gulf Arab neighbours allow the building of churches and the celebration of non-Muslim feasts.

Swiss Govt moots laws to combat illicit money

Bern/New Delhi: Facing demands from India and other countries for banking details of persons with alleged black money in Switzerland, the European nation has proposed new rules for combating money laundering and mandating extra due diligence by banks before accepting clients’ money.

Switzerland’s Federal Council, the country’s top-most policy making body, has proposed that these norms would be put through an extensive consultation process till June 15.

The proposals come within days of Switzerland promising deepening of dialogue with India on administrative assistance and exchange of information about suspected illicit wealth stashed by Indians in the Swiss banks. 

At the same time, Switzerland’s Finance Ministry has also made it clear that it would not entertain any banking information requests that are based on stolen or illegally obtained account details, while it has also refused to consider any fishing expedition for Swiss bank details.

Switzerland has also refused entertaining requests that are based on information “obtained through acts punishable under Swiss law, such as the illegal acquisition of data.”

This comes in the backdrop of requests from countries, including India, which are in possession of account details of Swiss bank customers that were allegedly stolen or gathered through illegal means and passed on to governments.

Obama vows to close down Guantanamo detention facility

US President Barack Obama vowed to make a new push to close the American military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the US military sent extra medical personnel there to deal with prisoners on a hunger strike.

The prisoners are protesting conditions and their long detentions. Guantanamo Bay is “contrary to who we are”, unsustainable and harmful to US interests, Obama told reporters at the White House, pledging to “go back at this” and work with Congress to close the facility, which since 2002 has housed suspected terrorists and enemy combatants, captured in the US-led war on terror.

The controversial detention facility “is inefficient, it hurts us in terms of our international standing, it lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts, it is a recruitment tool for extremists, it needs to be closed,” Obama said.

He blamed Congress for the fact that the detention centre was still open and holding 166 detainees.

Nearly 100 detainees at Guantanamo were on a hunger strike, and 21 of them were being fed through a tube, US Army public affairs officer Lt. Col. Samuel House was quoted as saying by international media.”I don’t want these individuals to die,” Obama said, defending the decision to force feed some of the detainees. He insisted the best way to try suspected terrorists was in the civilian court system, and reiterated his conviction that Guantanamo must close.

 China’s local govt debt out of control: Auditor

Beijing: The spectre of massive local government debt threatens to haunt China, with a senior Chinese auditor warning that the debt is “out of control” and could spark a bigger financial crisis than the US housing market crash. “We audited some local government bond issues and found them very dangerous, so we pulled out,” Zhang Ke of accounting firm, ShineWing, told Financial Times

Zhang, who is also vice-chairman of China’s accounting association, said “most don’t have strong debt servicing abilities. Things could become very serious”.

Local government debts soared after 2008, when Beijing loosened borrowing constraints to soften the impact of the global financial crisis.   Provinces, cities, counties and villages across China are now estimated to owe between RMB 10-20 trillion ($ 1.6- 3.2tn), equivalent to 20-40 per cent of the size of the economy, the Times said in its report.

IMF rating agencies and investment banks have also raised concerns over Chinese government debt. “But it is rare for a figure as established in the Chinese financial industry as Zhang to issue such a stark warning”, the report said.

“It is already out of control. A crisis is possible. But since the debt is being rolled over and is long-term, the timing of its explosion is uncertain,” he said.

Last week, Fitch cut China’s sovereign credit rating, in the first such move by an international agency since 1999.

Moody’s cut its outlook for China’s rating from positive to stable. Since local governments are prohibited from directly raising debt, they have used special purpose vehicles to circumvent these rules, issuing bonds under the vehicles’ names to fund infrastructure projects. Loan disbursement soared with China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, saying China’s loans touched a whopping $441 billion in the first quarter, up $ 47 billion.

China’s new yuan-denominated lending stood at 2.76 trillion yuan ($ 441 billion) in the first quarter, up 294. 9 billion yuan (over $ 47 billion) year on year. Analysts pointed that almost half of the recent growth in credit has taken place in China’s loosely regulated and largely opaque shadow banking market. The rapid expansion has been driven largely by corporate and local government borrowers. Despite the heavy money supply China’s growth unexpectedly slowed to 7.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, reports PTI.

5-year-old boy shoots his 2-year-old sister

Chicago:A 5-year-old toddler in the US accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister with a rifle that was given to him as a gift. Police said the girl's brother accidentally shot her with a rifle which was kept in the corner of a room. According to police, the gun was loaded. The coroner said that the boy is used to shooting the gun, and that the boy often goes shooting with his father on their property.

US air passenger detained for talking about ‘bomb’ sandwich

New York: A traveller was detained at the busy John F Kennedy airport for mentioning an explosive device, only to be later found out that he was actually talking about a ‘bomb sandwich’.

Jason Michael Cruz, was on an escalator when a Transportation Security Administration officer overheard him tell a friend he “had the wrong kind of bomb”. She reported the conversation to her supervisor, Robert Haddok, who sent officers to a security checkpoint to question the pair, the New York Post reported.

Officials ushered Cruz and his friend, Matthew Okumoto, to a holding area, where they learned the pair was talking about a sandwich called ‘The Bomb’, airport officials said.

Cruz told officers he was chatting about wanting to bring food on the airplane, sources said. The TSA agent who reported the bomb comment explained that she had only caught a snippet of the conversation.