Royal Bank of Scotland fined US$612m to settle Libor probe

LONDON : State-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland will pay fines totalling US$612 million (453 million euros) to US and British regulators to settle allegations of Libor interest rate rigging, it announced on Wednesday.

RBS is the third bank to admit its part in the Libor affair after British rival Barclays and Swiss lender UBS.

The investigations uncovered "wrongdoing" by 21 employees, predominantly in relation to the setting of the bank's yen and Swiss franc Libor submissions between October 2006 to November 2010, the bank said.

RBS added it had been fined US$325 million by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, US$150 million by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and US$137 million by Britain's Financial Services Authority.

The bank has also entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DoJ, in relation to one count of wire fraud relating to Swiss franc Libor and one count for an antitrust violation relating to yen Libor.

RBS Securities Japan Limited has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to one count of wire fraud relating to Yen Libor, it added in the statement.

British finance minister George Osborne condemned the "totally unacceptable" behaviour at the bailed-out bank and insisted the taxpayer would not pick up the bill.

"Those responsible will face the full force of the law," Osborne told reporters.

The Edinburgh-based lender was rescued with taxpayers' cash at the height of the global financial crisis.

John Hourican, chief executive of the bank's Markets and International Banking division, is meanwhile to leave RBS and will forfeit his 2012 bonus and long-term incentive shares.

"This is a sad day for RBS, but also an important one in continuing to put right the mistakes of the past," Royal Bank of Scotland chairman Philip Hampton said in the statement.

"That is why those responsible have left the organisation or been subject to disciplinary action."

RBS said its derivative traders sought to influence the bank's yen and Swiss franc Libor setters over the four-year period.

"Two RBS traders based in London colluded with other banks and brokers in making and receiving requests for higher and lower" rates, it said.

The total fines handed down to RBS are more than those handed last year to Barclays for attempted Libor rate-rigging, but less than the amount paid by UBS for similar offences.

Libor, or London Interbank Offered Rate, is a flagship instrument used all over the world, affecting what banks, businesses and individuals pay to borrow money. Euribor is the eurozone equivalent.

Libor is calculated daily, using estimates from banks of their own interbank rates, and affects the pricing of more than $300-trillion of contracts across the world, according to British regulator, the Financial Services Authority.

But the system has been found to be open to abuse, with some traders lying about borrowing costs to boost trading positions or make their bank seem more secure -- seriously damaging the reputation of the 'City of London' financial centre.

At Swiss bank UBS, two former employees were charged in December when the group's Securities Japan unit settled similar allegations with US and British authorities for US$1.5 billion, the biggest amount to date.

The British government owns most of RBS after a massive bailout of the bank and there is considerable pressure for senior bank executives to take responsibility for the Libor crisis.

Barclays bank in June agreed to pay about US$450 million in connection with the affair, which led to the resignations of three Barclays senior board members, including chief executive Bob Diamond.

More than a dozen other institutions remain under investigation, while last October the British government announced plans to make it a criminal offence to manipulate Libor.

- AFP/ch

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French troops clash with Islamists in 'real war' in Mali

GAO (MALI): French and Malian troops clashed with Islamist rebels near the large town of Gao, Paris said on Wednesday after reporting that hundreds of insurgents had been killed in a "real war" to reclaim northern Mali.

French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the extremist rebels, who have been driven from key strongholds which they had controlled in northern Mali for 10 months, struck back at troops with rocket fire on Tuesday.

"There were clashes yesterday around Gao," Le Drian said on Europe 1 radio. "Once our troops, supported by Malian forces, started patrols around the towns that we have taken, they met residual jihadist groups who are still fighting.

"We will go after them. We are securing the towns we have been able to take along with the Malian forces. The jihadists around Gao were using rockets yesterday."

One of the militant groups, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) said it had attacked military positions in Gao, the largest city in the north.

"The combat isn't over. The attacks are going to continue," MUJAO's Abou Dardar told AFP.

The Malian army arrested two young men in Gao's market Wednesday who were brandishing two grenades and a pistol, though it was unclear "whether they planned to commit an attack or wanted to use the weapons for robbery", a police spokesman said.

On Tuesday, Le Drian said "several hundred" al-Qaida-linked militants had been killed by French air strikes as well as "direct combat" in the key central and northern towns of Konna and Gao.

"This is a real war with significant losses but I'm not going to get into an accounting exercise," he said Wednesday when asked about the toll.

France's sole fatality so far has been a helicopter pilot killed at the start of the military operation 27 days ago.

Mali said 11 of its troops were killed and 60 wounded after the battle at Konna last month but has not since released a new death toll.

The United Nations said Wednesday it had regained access for aid operations in central Mali, and hoped to soon be able to move into the north, where security was still a concern.

"We could have access over coming days," said David Gressly, who steers UN humanitarian operations in the region, adding that some 500,000 people were facing hunger in the north.

France launched its surprise intervention in the former French colony on January 11 as a triad of Islamist groups that had seized control of the north in the aftermath of a military coup pushed south toward the capital.

Nearly 4,000 French troops have deployed, a number that will not be increased, Le Drian said.

With Paris keen to pass the baton to some 8,000 African troops pledged for Mali, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said soldiers would begin withdrawing "in March, if all goes as planned".

Hollande confirms March withdrawal

President Francois Hollande confirmed that timeline, with a government spokeswoman telling journalists: "The president confirmed this morning that if everything goes to plan, the number of French troops in Mali will begin to fall from the month of March."

Hollande, whose surprise decision to intervene in Mali won him a hero's welcome there on Saturday, had said during his whirlwind visit that France will stay as long as it takes.

The Islamists have put up little resistance, many of them fleeing to the Adrar des Ifoghas massif around Kidal, a craggy mountain landscape honeycombed with caves where they are believed to be holding seven French hostages.

Kidal, the last key bastion of the Islamists, is now under control of French forces and some 1,800 Chadian troops, but fighter jets continue to pound the region around the remote desert outpost.

Meanwhile a Tuareg separatist rebel group that kickstarted Mali's descent into chaos with a rebellion for independence last year said it is working with France against "terrorists" in the region.

The Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) linked up with the radical Islamists in its bid to secure independence for the desert nomad Tuareg people, who have long felt marginalized by Mali's government.

But after being chased from their strongholds by the extremists, they have voiced a willingness to negotiate since France intervened.

The MNLA said on Wednesday it had retaken the town of Menaka, 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Niger border, which Nigerien troops had taken from militant occupiers but then left as they continued their advance.

Le Drian said France had "functional relations" with the group in Kidal but that fighting terrorists alongside them was "not our objective."

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?

In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues to unfold that helps flesh out the real Richard III.

The Richard III Society unveiled a 3D reconstruction today of the late king's head and shoulders, based on computer analysis of his skull combined with an artist's interpretation of details from historical portraits. (Related: "Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Currency.")

"We received the skull data before DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were Richard III, and we treated it like a forensic case," said Caroline Wilkinson, the University of Dundee facial anthropologist who led the reconstruction project. "We were very pleasantly surprised by the results."

Though Shakespeare describes the king as an "elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog," the reconstructed Richard has a pleasant, almost feminine face, with youthful skin and thoughtful eyes. His right shoulder is slightly higher than the left, a consequence of scoliosis, but the difference is barely visible, said Wilkinson.

"I think the whole Shakespearean view of him as being sort of monster-like was based more on his personality than his physical features," she reflected.

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People are naturally fascinated by faces, especially of historical figures, said Wilkinson, who has also worked on reconstructions of J.S. Bach, the real Saint Nicholas, the poet Robert Burns, and Cleopatra's sister.

"We make judgments about people all the time from looking at their appearance," she said. "In Richard's case, up to now his image has been quite negative. This offers a new context for considering him from the point of view of his anatomical structure rather than his actions. He had quite an interesting face."

A Voice From the Past

Most people's impression of Richard's personality comes from Shakespeare's play, in which the maligned ruler utters such memorable lines as "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York," and "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

But how would the real Richard III have expressed himself? Did he have an accent? Was there any sense of personality or passion in his choice of words?

To find out more about the mysterious monarch, Philip Shaw, a historical linguist at University of Leicester's School of English, analyzed the only two known examples of Richard III's own writing. Both are postscripts on letters otherwise composed by secretaries—one in 1469, before Richard became king, and one from 1483, the first year of his brief reign.

Shaw identified a quirk of spelling that suggests that Richard may have spent time in the West Midlands, or perhaps had a tutor who hailed from there.

"I was looking to compare the way he spells things with the way his secretaries spell things, working on the assumption that he would have been schooled to a fairly high level," Shaw explained.

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In the 1469 letter, Richard spells the word "will" as "wule," a variation associated with the West Midlands. But Shaw also notes that by 1483, when Richard wrote the second letter's postscript, he had changed his spelling to the more standard "wyll" (the letters 'i' and 'y' were largely interchangeable during that period of Middle English).

"That could suggest something about him brushing up over the years, or moving toward what would have been the educated standard," Shaw said, noting that the handwriting in the second example also appears a bit more polished. "One wonders what sort of practice and teaching he'd had in the interim."

Although it's hard to infer tone of voice from written letters, there is certainly emotion in the words penned by Richard III.

In the 1469 letter, the 17-year-old seeks a loan of 100 pounds from the king's undertreasurer. Although the request is clearly stated in the body of the letter, Richard adds an urgent P.S.: "I pray you that you fail me not now at this time in my great need, as you will that I show you my good lordship in that matter that you labour to me for."

That could either be a veiled threat (If you don't lend me the money, I won't do that thing you asked me to do) or friendly cajoling (Come on, I'm helping you out with something, so help me out with this loan).

"His decision to take the pen himself shows you how important that personal touch must have been in getting people to do something," Shaw said.

The second letter, written to King Richard's chancellor in 1483, also conveys a sense of urgency. He had just learned that the Duke of Buckingham—once a close ally—was leading a rebellion against him.

"He's asking for his Great Seal to be sent to him so that he can use it to give out orders to suppress the rebellion," Shaw said. "He calls the Duke 'the most untrue creature living. You get a sense of how personally let down and betrayed he feels."

Shaw said he hopes his analysis—in combination with the new facial reconstruction—will help humanize Richard III.

"He probably wasn't quite the villain that Shakespeare portrays, though I suspect he was quite ruthless," he said. "But you probably couldn't afford to be a very nice man if you wanted to survive as a king in those days."

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US Postal Service to End Saturday Mail Delivery

Feb 6, 2013 8:28am

                                              (Image Credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Weekend mail delivery is about to come to an end.

The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays, but will continue to deliver packages six days a week, the USPS announced at a news conference this morning.

While post offices that open on Saturdays will continue to do so, the initiative, which is expected to begin the week of August 5, will save an estimated $2 billion annually. The USPS had a $15.9 billion loss in financial year 2012.

“America’s mailing habits are changing and so are their shipping habits,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said. “People will say this is a responsible decision. It makes common sense.”

The service reduction is the latest of Postal Service steps to cut costs as the independent agency of the U.S. government struggles with its finances.

To close its budget gap and reduce debt, it needs to generate $20 billion in cost reductions.

USPS officials have pushed for eliminating mail and package delivery on Saturdays for the past few years, but recent data showing growth in package delivery, which is up by 14 percent since 2010, and projected additional growth in the coming decade made them revise their decision to continue package delivery only.

Saturday mail delivery to P.O. boxes will also continue.

Research by the post office and major news organizations indicated that 7 out of 10 Americans support switching to five-day service.

Since 2006, the Postal Service has reduced annual costs by $15 billion, cut the career force by 28 percent and consolidated 200 mail-processing locations.

The USPS announced in May it was cutting back on the number of operating hours instead of shuttering 3,700 rural post offices. The move, which reduced hours of operation at 13,000 rural post offices from an eight-hour day to between two and six hours a day, was made with the aim of saving about $500 million per year.

The cutback in hours last year resulted in 9,000 full-time postal employees’ being reduced to part time plus the loss of their benefits, while another 4,000 full-time employees became part time but kept their benefits.

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Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.

In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.

As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

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Afghanistan's Karzai confirms to leave power in 2014

OSLO: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai confirmed Tuesday in Oslo that he plans to step down next year when his mandate expires.

"The question of me staying as the president beyond 2014 is out of the question," Karzai said when reporters asked about recent speculation that he was keen to stay on.

"Neither am I seeking a third term, nor does the constitution allow it. There will be an election and a new president will come," he said.

Karzai was elected in 2004, and re-elected in 2009 in a vote marred by accusations of fraud.

Afghanistan's next presidential election is scheduled for April 2014, just a few months before the end of NATO's mission.

Karzai has previously said he would not stay in power beyond 2014, including at a meeting with US President Barack Obama last month, amid some concern that he could try to cling to power.

During his visit to Oslo, Norway said it would continue to help the country until 2017, with annual aid of 750 million kroner (101 million euros, $137 million). Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, and one of the most corrupt.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said the aid agreement -- which formalises previously-made pledges -- would depend on Afghan authorities' commitment to "good governance, the rule of law, human rights, transparency and democracy."

"We have zero tolerance for corruption," he stressed, noting that Oslo had suspended development aid in the past when funds had been misappropriated.

Afghanistan, the second-biggest recipient of Norwegian aid, is ranked as one of the most corruption-riddled countries in the world alongside North Korea and Somalia, according to graft watchdog Transparency International.

-AFP/ac

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VHP's PIL against Shinde's 'Hindu terror' remarks dismissed

ALLAHABAD: A petition filed by Vishwa Hindu Parishad against Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde's "Hindu terror" remarks was dismissed by the Allahabad high court today.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Shiva Kirti Singh and Justice Dilip Gupta dismissed in limine the Public Interest Litigation which had sought to make Shinde, the Cabinet Secretary and the Union Home Secretary respondents.

Significantly, the Home Secretary had, barely a few days after Shinde accused BJP and RSS of running training camps for terrorists, stated that there was "evidence" to suggest that a number of terror accused in the country had links with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The statements have caused much consternation among the Sangh Parivar outfits, including the BJP which is the main opposition party.

In the PIL, it had been alleged that the January 20 statement of the Union home minister was "scandalous", "provocative", "against the soul of the Constitution" and had "adversely affected national harmony and social structure, putting national security and sovereignty in danger".

The PIL had prayed for issuing directions to the Centre to frame rules with regard to issuing statements besides demanding an "independent judicial inquiry into the truth of the statement".

However, Additional Solicitor General of India K C Kaushik, appearing on behalf of the Centre, contended that the PIL was "misconceived" and liable to be "dismissed as not maintainable".

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Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base

Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.

It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility.

"Terrestrial 3-D printing technology has produced entire structures," said Laurent Pambaguian, head of the project for ESA, in a statement.

On Earth, 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, produces a three-dimensional object from a digital file. The computer takes cross-sectional slices of the structure to be printed and sends it to the 3-D printer. The printer bonds liquid or powder materials in the shape of each slice, gradually building up the structure. (Watch how future astronauts could print tools in space.)

The ESA and its industrial partners have already manufactured a 1.7 ton (1.5 tonne) honeycombed building block to demonstrate what future construction materials would look like.

—Jane J. Lee

Published February 4, 2013

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Boy Rescued in Ala. Standoff 'Laughing, Joking'

The 5-year-old boy held hostage in a nearly week-long standoff in Alabama is in good spirits and apparently unharmed after being reunited with his family at a hospital, according to his family and law enforcement officials.

The boy, identified only as Ethan, was rescued by the FBI Monday afternoon after they rushed the underground bunker where suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was holding him. Dykes was killed in the raid and the boy was taken away from the bunker in an ambulance.

Ethan's thrilled relatives told "Good Morning America" today that he seemed "normal as a child could be" after what he went through and has been happily playing with his toy dinosaur.

"He's happy to be home," Ethan's great uncle Berlin Enfinger told "GMA." "He's very excited and he looks good."

Who Is Jimmy Lee Dykes?

"If I could, I would do cartwheels all the way down the road," Ethan's aunt Debra Cook said. "I was ecstatic. Everything just seemed like it was so much clearer. You know, we had all been walking around in a fog and everyone was just excited. There's no words to put how we felt and how relieved we were."

Cook said that Ethan has not yet told them anything about what happened in the bunker and they know very little about Dykes.

Ala. Hostage Standoff Over: Kidnapper Dead, Child Safe Watch Video

Alabama Hostage Standoff: Jimmy Lee Dykes Dead Watch Video

What the family does know is that they are overjoyed to have their "little buddy" back.

"He's a special child, 90 miles per hour all the time," Cook said. "[He's] a very, very loving child. When he walks in the room, he just lights it up."

Officials have remained tight-lipped about the raid, citing the ongoing investigation.

"I've been to the hospital," FBI Special Agent Steve Richardson told reporters Monday night. "I visited with Ethan. He is doing fine. He's laughing, joking, playing, eating, the things that you would expect a normal 5- to 6-year-old young man to do. He's very brave, he's very lucky, and the success story is that he's out safe and doing great."

Ethan is expected to be released from the hospital later today and head home where he will be greeted by birthday cards from his friends at school. Ethan will celebrate his 6th birthday Wednesday.

Officials were able to insert a high-tech camera into the 6-by-8-foot bunker to monitor Dykes' movements, and they became increasingly concerned that he might act out, a law enforcement source with direct knowledge told ABC News Monday. FBI special agents were positioned near the entrance of the bunker and used two explosions to gain entry at the door and neutralize Dykes.

"Within the past 24 hours, negotiations deteriorated and Mr. Dykes was observed holding a gun," the FBI's Richardson said. "At this point, the FBI agents, fearing the child was in imminent danger, entered the bunker and rescued the child."

Richardson said it "got tough to negotiate and communicate" with Dykes, but declined to give any specifics.

After the raid was complete, FBI bomb technicians checked the property for improvised explosive devices, the FBI said in a written statement Monday afternoon.

The FBI had created a mock bunker near the site and had been using it to train agents for different scenarios to get Ethan out, sources told ABC News.

Former FBI special agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said rescue operators in this case had a delicate balance.

"You have to take into consideration if you're going to go in that room and go after Mr. Dykes, you have to be extremely careful because any sort of device you might use against him, could obviously harm Ethan because he's right there," he said.

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Aliwal Arts Centre to be launched in March 2013

SINGAPORE : The Aliwal Arts Centre will be launched in March 2013 as the next arts housing development under the Framework for Arts Spaces.

The framework comes under the National Arts Council's (NAC) plan to create a stronger link between infrastructure support and the different needs of artists.

The Goodman Arts Centre was rolled out in 2011 as a pilot project under the framework.

Since its opening, the centre has launched more than 200 programmes.

NAC has been working with government agencies and commercial developers to facilitate co-location of artists and arts groups in commercial developments.

One such project involves Very Special Arts taking up a space at Changi City Point Mall in 2011.

Another project involves the Singapore Dance Theatre moving into Bugis+ mall from early 2013.

NAC is discussing with partners like the People's Association on co-locating artists and arts groups in community spaces.

- CNA/ms

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