Venezuela's Chavez set for more Cuba cancer treatment
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has given a speech from the presidential palace in Caracas, the first since his latest round of treatment in Cuba for a malignant tumour.
Mr Chavez, who was more than two hours late, told thousands of supporters that he was "doing well".
But he also said he would return to Cuba on Saturday for more radiotherapy.
Mr Chavez said he did not know if he would be able to attend the Summit of the Americas in Colombia this weekend.
The president had returned to Caracas late on Wednesday after the third round of radiotherapy for a malignant tumour in his pelvic region.
At the time, the presidential office had announced Mr Chavez would have two more rounds of radiotherapy in Cuba, but he had been expected to do so after a brief visit to the Summit of the Americas in the Colombian port city of Cartagena.
Fighting talk
Colombian police said he had been scheduled to land in Cartagena on Friday at 14:25 local time (19:25 GMT), in order to attend the official summit dinner and a brief meeting on Saturday.
Instead, Mr Chavez gave a speech from the presidential palace in Caracas marking the 10th anniversary of his return to power after a failed coup.
Shouting "Viva Venezuela!", Mr Chavez stepped onto the balcony of the Miraflores Palace more than two hours after the scheduled time for the speech.
He told thousands of cheering supporters that while the radiotherapy had "had an impact" on his health, he was "doing well".
He then put his trip to the Americas Summit to a popular vote, asking his supporters for a show of hands as to how many of them thought he should be attending the meeting.
After an overwhelming vote for Mr Chavez to stay in Caracas, he broke into song and performed an impromptu dance with his daughter.
He later announced he would be returning to Cuba on Saturday and that he "didn't know whether he would go the Americas Summit".
Mr Chavez, who has been in power since 1999, has said that despite his health problems he is determined to win October's presidential election.
Colombia's Jose Antonio Ocampo exits World Bank race
Colombia's Jose Antonio Ocampo has pulled out of the race to be the next president of the World Bank.
"It is clear that this is not based on the merits of the candidates but is a political exercise," he said.
His comments referred to the likelihood that an American would be chosen given the US has the most votes at the Bank.
His withdrawal leaves just two candidates - Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Korean-American Jim Yong Kim, who is the favourite for the job.
Mr Ocampo, who is a professor at Columbia University, also said he was at a disadvantage given the lack of support from his own government.
He said he would now support Mrs Okonjo-Iweala "to facilitate the desired unity of the emerging and developing economies around one candidate".
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala thanked Mr Ocampo for his "unselfish decision" to withdraw.
The World Bank is expected to name its new president on Monday. The successful candidate will replace Robert Zoellick who has been in the role since 2007.
The US has always held the top job at the World Bank while a European has always led its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Goldman Sachs fined $22m over flaws at weekly 'huddles'
Goldman Sachs has been fined $22m (£13.8m) by US regulators to settle charges that some "top clients" may have been tipped off about stocks.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that the bank lacked policies to prevent leaks from their weekly "huddles" on equity research.
That sort of information includes an analyst's recommendation on whether to buy or sell stocks.
As part of the deal, Goldman neither admitted nor denied the charges.
The SEC has been criticised over its continued use of settlements where banks do not admit liability in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
"Despite being on notice from the SEC about the importance of such controls, Goldman failed to implement policies and procedures that adequately controlled the risk that research analysts could preview upcoming ratings changes with select traders and clients," said Robert Khuzami, the SEC's head of enforcement.
The SEC also said these risks were increased by the fact that many of the clients and traders engaged in high-volume trading - where trading algorithms are used to place bets on stocks.
Goldman has been the subject of vocal criticism recently.
Greg Smith, who headed Goldman's equity derivatives business in Europe, quit the bank in a scathing editorial for the New York Times, saying its environment was "toxic and destructive".
Goldman has been criticised over its role in the global financial crisis, including the US housing market slump and the Greek government's debt problems.
But Goldman's boss, Lloyd Blankfein, rejected these claims and said the attacks did not reflect the banking giant's values.
People such as New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and current employees have expressed support for the bank.
'Vampire squid'
Rolling Stone magazine notoriously likened the bank to "a vampire squid wrapped round the face of humanity".
Mr Blankfein once told the Sunday Times that banks were "doing God's work", a phrase which made headlines around the world - but was meant as a joke.
The SEC opened a fraud investigation in 2010 over the marketing of mortgage investments as the US housing market faltered.
These featured e-mails from trader Fabrice Tourre saying that "the entire system is about to crumble any moment" in 2007.
Goldman agreed to pay $550m to settle civil fraud charges of misleading investors in 2010 - the biggest fine for a bank in the SEC's history.
Goldman was also fined £17.5m by the UK's financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, for failing to tell it that the bank was being investigated by the SEC.
Standard & Poor's reaffirms UK's AAA credit rating
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's has reaffirmed its AAA credit rating for the UK, saying it believes the economy is "wealthy, open and diversified".
S&P also confirmed a stable outlook, as it expects the government to implement the bulk of its austerity measures.
The other two major ratings agencies, Fitch and Moody's, have placed the UK's top rating on "negative outlook", warning that it could be downgraded.
They have cited concerns about growth prospects and public-debt levels.
A credit rating in theory determines a country's borrowing costs.
'Weathering the storm'
S&P said in a statement: "In our view, the UK has a wealthy, open, and diversified economy, supported by a well-established political system and macroeconomic policy framework, which can react quickly to economic challenges.
"We expect economic policy to focus on closing the fiscal gap, and we forecast the government's net debt burden to peak in 2013 [at about 87% of GDP]."
Chancellor George Osborne said: "This is a reminder that Britain is weathering the international debt storms because of the policies we have adopted and stuck to in tough times."
Shares hit by worries over Spain
Stock markets have fallen in the US and Europe, led by bank shares, as worries over Spain re-emerged.
The FTSE 100 dropped 1%, while Spain's Ibex fell 3.6% and the Dow Jones in New York closed down 1%.
Markets have been spooked by the rising dependence of Spain's banks, and its entire economy, on emergency ECB loans.
In bond markets, the Spanish government's 10-year cost of borrowing rose back towards 6% - a sign of fear over the country's creditworthiness.
In contrast, the cost of borrowing faced by Germany - considered the safest borrower in the eurozone - fell to 1.72%.
The cost of insuring losses on Spanish debt for five years, via financial contracts called credit default swaps, rose to a record high of 4.98% per annum.
Markets are concerned at the scale of rescue loans being provided by the European Central Bank to the banks of Spain and the rest of southern Europe.
Earlier on Friday, the Spanish central bank - which is subordinate to the European Central Bank (ECB) within the eurozone's monetary system - said its net lending to its banks in March had risen to 228bn euros ($298bn; £188bn), up from 152bn euros a month earlier.
The big jump was mainly due to a second auction of three-year emergency loans carried out by the ECB, and offered to the eurozone's banks via their respective national central banks.
The increasing scale of the loans being provided by the ECB reflects the steady withdrawal by private sector investors of their own money from southern Europe to the perceived safety of Germany.
Bank bonus clampdown threatened by European Commission
Europe's Internal Markets Commissioner, Michel Barnier, has said that "tougher action" is needed to curb bank bonuses.
He said that he was "seriously worried" by the proportion of pay awarded as bonuses in some countries, and said it encouraged excessive risk-taking.
It follows a report from the European Banking Authority that said existing bonus rules were not being implemented consistently by different EU countries.
Mr Barnier said parts of the report made for "startling reading".
Unnamed
"I cannot see how some of the ratios [of bonuses to base salaries] included in the report... can ever be considered justifiable or a sensible way to manage risk and long term interest," he said.
According to the EBA report, the average bonuses paid to bank executives across the EU as a whole was 122% of basic pay, and for other staff (mainly traders) it was 139%.
However, in one unnamed EU country, the averages were 220% and 313% respectively, and in one individual case a bonus of more than nine times basic pay was reported.
Mr Barnier said he found recent proposals for bonus restrictions by the European Parliament "both useful and interesting".
Those proposals have included a call for bonuses to be capped at 100% of basic pay.
The commissioner also criticised the tendency of some banks to apply existing bonus restrictions only to a small proportion of staff - another inconsistency between EU member states highlighted in the EBA report.
The pan-European rules, which came into force at the beginning of last year, require that the top executives and traders at a bank receive only about 20%-30% of their bonuses in upfront cash.
Half of their bonus should be paid in shares, and about 40%-60% of their total bonus should be staggered over three-to-five years, according to the rules.
Banks are also required to cap bonuses as a percentage of an employee's basic salary.
The new regulations have been criticised for focusing excessively on the ratio of bonuses to basic pay, instead of the actual value of bonuses.
Many banks have responded to the new rules by raising the level of basic pay awarded to staff.
Regional health officials to discuss two studies on HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean
Caribbean health officials meet here next week to examine the findings of two studies to ascertain the quantity and quality of available gender specific HIV services for key populations in the region.
The studies were commissioned by the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) and will be discussed at the second meeting of the Technical Working Group on Prevention from April 16-17.
PANCAP is a regional partnership established by CARICOM Heads of Government in 2001 to respond to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean. The prevention of HIV Infection is the main priority of the partnership.
According to the one of the studies, “sexual and reproductive health and HIV services provided to most at-risk populations across the region is not nationally led or driven and governments appear to have no clear strategy for responding to the needs of this population”.
The two-day meeting is expected to formulate practical, workable solutions for achieving the HIV Prevention Millennium Development Goal of halving new HIV infections among vulnerable populations by 2015.
According to UNAIDS, the Caribbean can only achieve the target ‘Reaching to Zero’, by implementing more evidence-informed, sustainable and cost effective prevention interventions. Research has shown that there exists an inequity in strategies to adequately address programming for most at risk populations. These populations have reported that mainstream services neither have the capacity nor resources to meet their needs.
“Among the expected outputs are recommendations to address the key areas of prevention namely, consistency across partners, resource mobilization, mobility of key populations and involvement of the most vulnerable in HIV programming and strategies,” the organisers of the conference said in a statement.
By CMC
Carnival And Christianity – No Longer In Conflict
THERE HAS always been an ambiguity in the responses of Trinidadians to carnival.
Carnival has two ‘pulls’ on the heartstrings of the Trinidadian. It is an expression of their cultural arts that defies comparison. In carnival, all at once, one saw the best of Trinidadian creative genius.
On the streets were the fabulous costumed creations, the ‘mobile street art’, the street theatre of the carnival bands, some of which has its origins in African ‘masking’.
In the calypso tents one heard the passion and pain, the humour, the inventiveness of the calypso – an art form evolved through the need of the poor and downtrodden to express their soul, their wit and their amazing ability to survive and remain whole.
One also heard, in the pan yards of the ghettos and rural peasant lands the amazing sound of that musical wonder of the world called the steel band. These bands were made up of instruments forged out of the waste material of the cold industrial world that had come to Trinidad because oil had been discovered there, tuned and crafted to eventually emit some truly marvellous sounds.
Part of that ‘pull’ is also a deep understanding that carnival has evolved from a history of resistance, an insistence on humanness, on wholeness through systems of survival employed by the slaves and ex-slaves. In the music of the tamboo-bamboo and the subsequent steel bands were the ancient rhythms and melodies of their African ancestors; rhythms and melodies that harked back to their homeland and gave them sustenance during the dehumanising experience of slavery and colonialism, and helped to keep them whole and human. It fostered the ‘in your face’ declaration to the world that “we are alive – see we yah!”
It is true that, over the past few decades much of carnival has been sold out to rampant capitalism and to the desire for quick gratification in the baring of flesh in skimpy costumes. Mark you, sexuality and sensuousness is an integral part of some aspects of carnival – as is so much of what is seen as black culture. But carnival is now marketed so much as pure ‘wine and jump’ and nothing else that the younger generation in Trinidad seems to have started to believe that and the older artistes of the carnival, like Peter Minshall, have begun to despair.
But the spirit of carnival is still alive and well.
And this is another part of the ‘problem’. The source of the other ‘pull’ on our heartstrings.
Trinidad carnival has, from its birth, been fuelled by the spirits of the Orisha. The belief in the power of the African deities to sustain them through all hardship lurks somewhere in the souls of those who give the carnival movement its energy. This has been a conflict in the minds of the people of this highly religious country.
The problem lay in the fact that those who Christianised us taught us to reject anything that was connected to ancestral African religion as ‘devil worship’ and to be rejected.
Negative expression
So there was this ambiguity. How were we, as black people, to respond negatively to this expression of all that has sustained us through our darkest times? But then, how were we, as Christians, to embrace that which we knew had its roots in African tribalism and ‘devil worship’?
Eventually, we grew to accept the idea that Orisha was just a religion which some of us no longer accepted, and carnival was not, in itself, sinful.
So, by the turn of the century, attitudes had changed to the point where David Rudder could have a hit calypso called High Mas in which he prayed to the father who had “given us this art” and who knew “the pain we’re feeling”, in his mercy, to “Send a little music, to make the vibration raise”.
This would have been unheard of 50 years ago.
But Rudder, like most thinking people, also realises the excesses that take place at carnival time and the abuse of the spirit of the thing. This is why, in his calypso, he admits that ” in this bacchanal season some men will lose their reason”, and asks God to “Forgive us, this day, our daily weaknesses”.
Jamaica Gleaner
Kim Jong Un Delivers First Public Speech
North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un delivered his first-ever televised speech Sunday during a major military parade to make the 100th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather.
Wearing a black Mao suit, Mr. Kim told huge cheering crowds in the capital, Pyongyang, that he offered his “purest respect and the greatest honor to great comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il,” referring to his late grandfather and father.
The 28-year-old leader also expressed his greeting to, who he called, compatriots in South Korea and across the world who dedicate themselves to reunification and the prosperity of the nations.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of people gathered in Pyongyang's huge football stadium in a show of support for North Korea's ruling dynasty.
The audience, including members of North Korea's 1.2 million strong military, women in colorful gowns and men in dark suits, sat in the packed Kim Il Sung stadium to hear praise for the family that has ruled the nation since its founding in 1948.
Ahead of the main event Sunday, Kim Jong Un ordered promotions for about 70 senior military officers. Mr. Kim himself was elected first chairman of the National Defense Commission Friday, which makes him North Korea's supreme leader. Lawmakers also approved setting aside close to 16 percent of the budget for defense, indicating that the army will continue to play a strong role in North Korea under its new young leader. Kim Jong Un took over in December, after his father Kim Jong Il died.
North Korean leaders planned to launch what they called an observation satellite into orbit Saturday to coincide with Kim Il Sung anniversary celebrations. But the launch, largely considered to be a covert ballistic missile test and condemned by the international community, failed.
Some political analysts say the embarrassment will spur the isolated country to compensate for the failure by carrying out another nuclear test. Pyongyang has earned tough international sanctions after its first nuclear test in 2006 and another one three years later.
Kim Il Sung's birthday, April 15, 1912, is considered North Korea's most important holiday.
US Military Staff, Secret Service Accused of Misconduct in Colombia
The U.S. Secret Service says 11 employees sent to Colombia ahead of President Barack Obama's visit have been returned home and placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of alleged misconduct that involved prostitution.
Also Saturday, the U.S. military announced that five military staff assigned to support the Secret Service in its assignment have been “confined to quarters” in Colombia.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the incident with the military personnel stems from the same episode involving the Secret Service agents.
The alleged misconduct is said to have taken place before Mr. Obama arrived in the resort city of Cartagena Friday.
Carney said the president has confidence in his bodyguards and that the incidents had no impact on presidential security.