Iran ‘Will Retaliate’ Against Sanctions or Attack
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Friday that Iran will retaliate against Western-backed oil sanctions and threats of attack, as media reports say U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta fears Israel could strike Iran in the next few months.
A report Thursday in The Washington Post, later backed by other news outlets, said Panetta worries Israel could attack Iran as early as April to stop Tehran's progress on a possible nuclear bomb. Iran insists its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes.
Panetta was not directly quoted in the report and has not commented on it.
Khamenei's comments came in a speech on state television Friday as he marked the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
He said sanctions will have no effect on Iran's determination to continue its controversial nuclear program. He also said Iran will back any nation or group that intends to confront Israel.
Israel is among the nations, including the United States, that suspect Iran may be enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons. Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, while the United States is pushing for increased international sanctions instead.
In retaliation for any further action, Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil is shipped.
2 British Vacationers Die of Legionnaires Disease in Spain
Two elderly British men vacationing in Spain have died from Legionnaires disease.
A British-based vacation booking company says three others who stayed at the Diamante Beach Hotel in the eastern town of Calpe are being treated at a Spanish hospital.
The company says five other British citizens who stayed at the same hotel were treated after returning home.
All of the victims are more than 70 years old.
British officials say they are providing consular assistance to victims of the outbreak and their families.
The Telegraph newspaper says Spanish health officials have not located the source of the waterborne bacteria, which led to an outbreak last month.
They suspect more people could possibly have been infected.
UN: Somalia Famine Over, but Millions Still Need Food Aid
The United Nations has officially declared an end to the famine in Somalia, but warns that nearly a third of the war-torn country's population is still in need of food aid.
The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said Friday that because of a good harvest and humanitarian aid, parts of southern Somalia have improved from famine conditions to a less-severe “emergency.”
But FAO Director-General Jose Graziano warned those gains were fragile and could be reversed without continued support.
“We got this season more than 200 percent improvements in some food staple crops and we can do that (again) if we are able to support the farmers in this forthcoming 90 days. We have less than 100 days to avoid another famine in the region, that is the important message.”
The Horn of Africa is emerging from its worst drought in 60 years. The drought killed tens of thousands of people, and forced hundreds of thousands of Somalis to flee to refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, and the Somali capital of Mogadishu in search of food and water.
At the height of the crisis, three-quarters of a million people were at risk of dying. The FAO said Friday that more than 2.3 million Somalis still need humanitarian assistance.
By U.N. standards, a “famine” means two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of hunger each day and a third of children are acutely malnourished.
The world body declared a famine in six parts of southern Somalia last year. Friday's announcement removed the designation from the last three of those areas, including the displaced persons camps of Mogadishu.
Efforts to deliver aid to Somalia have been hampered by militant group al-Shabab, which has restricted international relief efforts in the areas it controls. Last week, the group banned the International Committee of the Red Cross from operating in those areas.
The ICRC said in a statement late Thursday that it regrets al-Shabab's decision but remains committed to helping Somalis overcome humanitarian crises.
Mark Bowden is the United Nations humanitarian coordinator.
“Access to the vulnerable populations remains a major challenge. However, I believe that through inevitable planning, strengthening local partnerships, we have been able to mitigate the worst effects of the famine but we also really rely on the humanity of all parties to conflict to demonstrate their continuous commitment to the Somali people.
Philippine Troops Search for Bodies of Slain Militant Leaders
The Philippine military says it has not recovered the bodies of three senior Islamist militants killed Thursday in a U.S.-backed air raid on the remote southern island of Jolo.
A military spokesman says troops were still searching the jungle camp near Parang town for the remains of Umbra Jumdail, a leader in the Philippine-based Abu Sayyaf group, and Jemaah Islamiyah leaders Zulkifli bin Hir and Abdullah Ali. The three men were said to have been killed along with 12 other militants in Thursday's strike.
The spokesman says the troops have been hampered by gunfire from the surviving extremists.
Zulkifli bin Hir, a Malaysian national also known as Marwan, carried a $5 million reward for his capture offered by the United States.
Ali was a Singaporean national who went by the alias Muawiyah.
About 600 U.S. special forces have been deployed in the southern Philippines since 2002, providing support for the country's counterterrorism efforts.
Abu Sayyaf is responsible for a series of recent abductions in the southern Philippines, where Muslim rebels have been fighting government forces for self-rule since the 1970s.
The Jemaah Islamiyah network has been blamed for a series of terrorist attacks across Asia, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
Facebook unveils $5bn stock market flotation plans
The world's largest social networking site, Facebook, has announced plans for a stock market flotation.
Facebook said it would seek to raise $5bn (£3.16bn, 3.8bn euros), about half the amount many analysts expected.
But the initial public offering (IPO) is still expected to be the biggest sale of shares by an internet company.
Facebook, just eight years old and started by Harvard University students, now has 845 million users and made a profit of $1bn last year.
Facebook filed its intention to float with the Securities and Exchange Commission after the US stock markets closed.
The documents revealed for the first time information about the company that had previously been the subject of speculation.
This included news that Facebook's net income in 2011 rose 65% to $1bn, off revenues of $3.71bn.
It was disclosed that founder Mark Zuckerberg owns 28.4% of Facebook and has more than 50% of voting rights. It also revealed that the network now has 845 million monthly users of which 443 million are daily users.
A letter from Mr Zuckerberg said: "Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.
"We think it's important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do."
The $5bn being raised would be the most for an internet initial public offering since Google and its early backers raised $1.67bn in 2004.
"The company is a lot more profitable than we thought," said Kathleen Smith, principal of IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital.
She said Facebook's numbers were "very impressive," but she added that Facebook needed to talk more about where it saw its growth coming from.
"What new areas of business is it expecting to pursue beyond display ads?" she said.
The final amount Facebook will raise is likely to change as Facebook's bankers gauge the investor demand for the shares over the coming months.
The story of the company was made the subject of a 2010 Hollywood film, The Social Network, and the firm has made the verb "to friend" a part of everyday language.
Valuation justified
Reports have suggested the company could be worth $100bn, roughly the same as US giants Amazon and McDonald's.
Facebook currently makes most of its money from online advertising.
"As it is not a paying service, you are not the customer, you are the product," explains the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.
"What Facebook is selling to the world is users' time and their attention, their likes and dislikes, all that time and data they pour into the site, so that they can be very precisely targeted with adverts matching our interests," our correspondent says.
As a private company, Facebook has not had to publish detailed accounts so it has not had to make public whether, or how much, profit it makes. This has been the subject of much speculation, however.
Releasing much more detailed information on its finances will become part of the Facebook's duties as a publicly listed firm.
"The company does change when you go public," co-founder of online travel site Lastminute.com Martha Lane Fox told the BBC.
"Whatever Mark Zuckerberg says about continuing to run the company for users, for employees, not for shareholders... it does mean there is a level of scrutiny and accountability not known in a private company."
Planning the IPO
"The IPO of Facebook is the one that investors have all been waiting for, given that it is now an iconic global brand with huge scope to expand even further," said Phil Wong, stockbroker at Redmayne Bentley.
"The major investment banks have competed to be selected as lead advisors given the status of the firm, and investors are sure to be equally eager to acquire a holding in the business."
Facebook is the latest in a series of online firms to sell shares to the public in recent months.
Online voucher firm Groupon went public in November 2011 and online games maker Zynga in December 2011.
Zynga's stock market value immediately fell below its asking price on the first day of trading, whilst Groupon only climbed past its offer price three months after the float.
Shares in the social networking site Linkedin fell below their May 2011 offer price after its shares became freely tradeable.
However stock market traders remain positive about Facebook's flotation.
"Facebook is worth the expected $80-$100bn valuation because we believe it is and will be the dominant social media platform globally," said Richard Nunn at Charles Stanley Securities.
"It has more than 100m more US users than Google did when it IPO'd, and Google is valued at $180bn, and most importantly for advertisers, the average dwell time of 6hrs 51m per month spent on Facebook trounces the competition by some way.'
BBC
Sony reports further losses as Thai floods hit sales
Japanese electronics giant Sony has reported another quarterly loss after sales were hit by lower production following the floods in Thailand.
The company reported a net loss of 159bn yen ($2.1bn; £1.3bn) for the final three months of 2011, compared with a profit of 72bn yen a year earlier. Sales fell 17% to 1.8tn yen.
The firm also blamed weaker demand and the strong yen for the loss.
It also forecast a loss for the financial year of 220bn yen.
In November, Sony had predicted an annual loss of 90bn yen.
Analysts were unimpressed with the results.
"Sony's earnings were worse than I had imagined," said Hisashi Kuroda at Meija Yasuda Asset Management.
"Sony has few businesses that have value. The only hope is, perhaps, film and music, or whether they can make a recovery in the game business - basically software business - not the hardware one."
New leadership
The company has struggled in recent years, particularly at its TV division, which has lost money for the past seven years.
It has been hit by price falls, an oversupply of panels, and intense competition and innovation in the electronics market, analysts say.
On Wednesday, Sony announced that its chief executive, Sir Howard Stringer, would step down from the job on 1 April, to be replaced by vice president Kazuo Hirai. Sir Howard will stay on as chairman.
"It won't be easy for Sony to regain its lost ground under new leadership, as its overall competitiveness has sharply weakened," said Kim-young Chan at Shinhan Investment.
"It's got structural problems that will take years to fix."
Caribbean Export launches regional business competition at UK-Caribbean Forum in Grenada
Two regional companies, SMAKS the West Indian Tea Company and David Weekes and Associates are the first winners of the Caribbean Export Development Agency’s Break Point.
The regional business competition, which utilizes the Caribbean Forum-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (CARIFORUM-EU EPA) to drive entrepreneurship, was launched at the recently concluded seventh UK-Caribbean Forum in St George’s, Grenada.
Break Point will prove to be a practical mechanism for getting CARIFORUM companies and enterprises into the EU market under the EPA framework. It attempts to achieve this by giving the companies and enterprises opportunities for business-to-business relationship building and for jointly exploring investment and distribution partnership opportunities.
“For Caribbean Export this ushers in a new era of export capacity-building and enhancements, and is geared towards achieving our objective of building brands across the region that have the DNA to be globally competitive,” commented David Gomez, senior advisor of market intelligence at Caribbean Export.
“Break Point represents a paradigm shift for the Agency in terms of how we assist companies in getting their goods and services to market. More importantly, this initiative fits perfectly with the three pillars of the Agency including trade and export development, innovation and competitiveness”, Gomez added.
“The experience was extremely exciting and inspiring in terms of bringing like-minded individuals together with a common goal of wanting to strive for excellence”, said Kiran Akal, creative director of SMAKS. “The team coaches were excellent and the competitors benefited from the guidance of the Caribbean Export team throughout the process.”
“Break Point relieves a significant operational burden for young companies”, commented the second winner, David Weekes, chief executive officer of David Weekes & Associates. “Overall this is a fantastic opportunity for regional firms to become adequately prepared for the global marketplace.”
Break Point is supported by the European Union’s (EU) 10th Economic Development Fund (EDF) Regional Private Sector Development Programme, and the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). The initiative also received 500,000 GBP from the Department for International Development (DFID) as a part of their mandate to assist in the development of Break Point and facilitate the ability of regional companies to benefit from London 2012.
The priority areas for Break Point are agro-processing, alternative energy, sports, and technology products. During the launch, six regional businesses: Bio-Tech R&D Institute Ltd. (Jamaica), David Weekes and Associates (Barbados), Merkimport CXA (Dominican Republic), NutMed. (Grenada), SMAKS, The West Indian Tea Company (Trinidad and Tobago) and Xocolat (Dominican Republic) pitched their ideas to a panel of successful business persons and venture capitalists drawn from the Caribbean and the UK.
Deutsche Bank chief Ackermann fears 'social time bomb'
The chief executive of Deutsche Bank has warned of a "social time bomb" from wealth and income inequality.
Josef Ackermann, who also heads the Institute of International Finance which represents the world's banks, told the BBC that bankers had a responsibility to be philanthropic with their bonuses.
He is due to receive a partially deferred bonus of 8m euros (£6.6m).
However, he said, he felt people in his position had to make a contribution.
"We have a social responsibility, because if this inequality increases in income distribution or wealth distribution we may have a social time bomb ticking and no-one wants to have that."
However, Dr Ackermann said he "preferred not" to talk about philanthropic gestures.
Pay disclosure
His comments come as an annual survey of chairman and non-executive directors, who sit on company boards, carried out by head-hunters Hanson Green and Directorbank found just 32% of chairman think the way top executives are paid is working.
The survey of 298 chairman and 190 non-executive directors found 45% agreed with a proposal that the ratio of chief executive pay to average employee pay should be disclosed in company reports.
Some 94% agreed that companies should have the right to claw back pay if performance changes over the medium term.
The firms said that total remuneration for the average FTSE chief executive rose by 13% in 2011.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showed weekly earnings rose at an annualised rate of 1.9% in the three months to November 2011.
India court cancels 122 telecom licences
India's Supreme Court has cancelled 122 telecommunications licences awarded to companies in 2008.
The licences were issued by former minister A Raja, who is accused of mis-selling bandwidth in what has been called India's biggest corruption scandal. Mr Raja denies wrongdoing.
Government auditors say the scandal cost the country about $40bn (£24.5bn).
The judges also ordered a court to decide whether Home Minister P Chidambaram should be investigated.
Opposition MPs accuse Mr Chidambaram of failing to prevent the scandal when he was finance minister. He denies any wrongdoing.
Mr Raja is currently on trial for fraud.
India is one of the world's fastest growing markets for mobile telephones with 893 million connections.
Reports say Thursday's verdict is likely to affect about 5% of connections used by mobile phone customers.
India's telecom regulator says the affected subscribers can be transferred to other mobile operators.
Correspondents say the ruling is a setback for the government which has been hit by a series of corruption scandals in recent months.
'Unfair'
"Licences after January 2008 are quashed [cancelled]. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will make fresh allocations by auction," Justice GS Singhvi told the court.
Petitioner Prashant Bhushan called it a "historic judgement".
"It will change the manner in which corruption will be examined and dealt with in the country," he said.
Reports said some of the companies affected by the court order include Loop, Videocon, Idea Cellular, Tata Telecom, Uninor and Swan.
Uninor, the Indian joint venture of Norway's Telenor, said it had been "unfairly treated" and "was shocked" by the court verdict.
"We will study the order in detail and exercise all options available to ensure that Uninor continues to operate in India," the company said in a statement.
"We also expect the authorities to ensure that our 36 million customers, 17,500 workforce and 22,000 partners are not unjustly affected," the statement said.
The court ruling is a source of further embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which has been hit by several high-profile corruption cases in recent months.
As soon as the verdict was announced, opposition parties began calling for Mr Chidambaram to resign on "moral grounds".
Opposition MP Subramanian Swamy alleges that decisions over the price of telecoms licences were taken jointly by Mr Chidambaram and Mr Raja.
He says Mr Chidambaram as finance minister could have prevented Mr Raja from allocating bandwidth on a "first-come-first-served" basis.
The government says Mr Swamy's allegations are politically motivated.
On Thursday, Telecoms Minister Kapil Sibal defended the Congress Party-led coalition and blamed the opposition government that lost power in 2004 for putting in place the "faulty'' policy for allocating radiowaves.
"The prime minister was in no way responsible, nor was the finance minister,'' he told a press conference.
Blaming Mr Raja for the scandal, he said: "The then minister has been found to have committed irregularities in the allocation of spectrum [bandwidth] on seven accounts."
Mr Sibal said the court verdict had brought clarity on the policy front and the telecoms regulator would prepare guidelines for the auction of radiowaves.
Human rights group concerned about delayed justice
Human rights lobby group, Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), is once again raising concern about the time it takes the families of persons killed by the police, to get justice.
Executive Director of JFJ, Dr. Carolyn Gomes, said cases continue to languish in the Coroner’s court and that even when rulings are made by the court, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) usually takes a long time to act.
Dr. Gomes was speaking against the background of the ruling on Tuesday that Special Constable Dwayne Hoilette, is to be charged for the 2007 death of Trevor Anderson.
Anderson was shot under controversial circumstances, with eyewitnesses claiming he was deliberately killed while the police claimed he was accidentally shot, when a gun went off accidentally.
Tuesday’s verdict in the coroner’s court means Constable Hoilette will have to answer to the charge of manslaughter in the Supreme Court.
However, Dr. Gomes is now calling for the Office of the DPP to prioritise the case given it has been in the coroner’s court for more than three years.
Dr. Gomes said the delay in administering justice is a breach of constitutional rights.
She is convinced the Office of the DPP can expedite the matter, if it is so inclined.