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Manila 'friendly fire' acknowledged (Al Jazeera) Thu Sep 09 14:25:07 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 14:25:07 +0200 2010

Philippine authorities suspect police may have shot hostages during botched rescue attempt.

Outside the Box: To know China, see the world through its eyes (MarketWatch) Thu Sep 09 08:40:06 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 08:40:06 +0200 2010

Whether it involves investing, business dealings or debate, dealing with China requires mutual respect.

Google seeks to speed up Web searches (Reuters) Thu Sep 09 08:25:09 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 08:25:09 +0200 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's search engine now displays results before users finish typing.

China should defend its turf, says Supachai (People's Daily) Thu Sep 09 08:05:36 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 08:05:36 +0200 2010

New trade protection measures adopted by developed countries like the United States against China will not only sour bilateral relations but also hamper global recovery, Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said on Wednesday. Urging the nation to defend itself from such attacks, Panitchpakdi said the measures would strain China's economic ties with the US. In an interview with China Daily, Panitchpakdi said he does no ...

Woods & Mickelson 'could team up' (BBC Sports) Thu Sep 09 07:55:07 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 07:55:07 +0200 2010

United States Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin refuses to rule out pairing world numbers one and two Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at Celtic Manor.

DPRK urges withdrawal of U.S. troops from S. Korea (People's Daily) Tue Sep 07 09:11:24 +0200 2010

Tue Sep 07 09:11:24 +0200 2010

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday urged the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea after a 65-year-long deployment, the official KCNA news agency said. The Jurists Institute of Korea of the DPRK released a white paper, demanding the withdrawal after a lapse of 65 years since the United States enforced its colonial rule over South Korea after occupying it on Sept. 8, 1945, the KCNA said. The United States should halt its domination and interference in South K ...

China opposes unilateral sanctions against Iran (China Daily) Thu Sep 09 16:30:04 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 16:30:04 +0200 2010

China on Thursday expressed its opposition to unilateral sanctions against Iran.

Japan, India agree to trade deal to expand ties (China Daily) Thu Sep 09 16:30:03 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 16:30:03 +0200 2010

Japan and India agreed on a free trade deal on Thursday which Tokyo said would lead to a 10-fold jump in trade flows as it eyes the fast-growing economy as a low-cost production centre and a market for exports.

Manila police may have shot bus hostages (China Daily) Thu Sep 09 16:30:02 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 16:30:02 +0200 2010

The Philippines acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that some of the hostages killed during a botched bus hijack rescue operation in Manila last month may have been shot by police.

Would you want to know about a terrorist threat at any cost? (Physorg.com) Thu Sep 09 16:25:11 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 16:25:11 +0200 2010

As we approach the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this weekend, many people may be thinking about the possibility of future terrorist strikes. If the government knew about a concrete threat, would you want it revealed to you, regardless of the consequences? A new study led by professor V. Kerry Smith of the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU provides surprising details about how Americans view secrecy very differently, depending on the type of plot.

Craigslist faces new wave of political attacks (CNet News) Thu Sep 09 16:15:05 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 16:15:05 +0200 2010

Congressional committee has asked Craigslist founder Craig Newmark to testify at a hearing next week on domestic minor sex trafficking, sources tell CNET.

So, who's still buying Netbooks? (CNet News) Thu Sep 09 16:15:05 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 16:15:05 +0200 2010

The Netbook craze flamed out faster than most people anticipated, thanks partly to the emergence of touch-screen tablets earlier this year.

Goldman Rapped By British Regulator (Forbes) Thu Sep 09 15:55:02 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 15:55:02 +0200 2010

The FSA fines the bank $27 million for failing to inform it of the SEC's investigations into London-based banker Fabrice Tourre.

Wen: No rivalry between China, US (China Daily) Wed Sep 08 08:15:07 +0200 2010

Wed Sep 08 08:15:07 +0200 2010

China reasserted the importance of the strategic dialogue between Beijing and Washington on Tuesday, with calls for quiet and in-depth discussions with US officials to promote mutual trust.

EU chief outlines global agenda (China Daily) Wed Sep 08 08:15:06 +0200 2010

Wed Sep 08 08:15:06 +0200 2010

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso outlined the European Union's (EU) new economic and political agenda to become a global player and winner in his first State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

Japan arrests captain of Chinese ship near Diaoyu Islands (China Daily) Wed Sep 08 08:15:05 +0200 2010

Wed Sep 08 08:15:05 +0200 2010

Japan's Coast Guard arrested the captain of a Chinese fishing boat early Wednesday near the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea despite China's representations.

Trend Micro bets on the cloud (CNet News) Wed Sep 08 08:00:03 +0200 2010

Wed Sep 08 08:00:03 +0200 2010

Trend Micro revamps its consumer-protection suites by wagering heavily on cloud-based protection, creating security suites that the company claims are faster at detection and lighter on system resources.

China Mobile now world's most profitable telecom operator (People's Daily) Thu Sep 09 11:40:05 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 11:40:05 +0200 2010

China Mobile, which enjoys a near-unassailable share in China's telecom market, is also the most profitable telecom operator in the world. The company ranked seventh in revenue on the top-10 global telecom operators list released by market research company Analysys Mason on Sept. 8, but ranked first according to the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. According to Analysys Mason, the worldwide telecom market generated 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2009, ...

Thaksin supports Thailand's reconciliation via Twitter (People's Daily) Thu Sep 09 11:20:06 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 11:20:06 +0200 2010

The fugitive ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra posted Twitter messages to support the national reconciliation, his latest Twitter update since his last message on July 26. He sent the 5-point reconciliation proposal about 16 hours ago, and the message begins with: (I) condemned instigation of violence and creation of situation for the sake of national peace and security. He asked every group and political party to stop slandering each other, not to create more conflicts, but think together a ...

New Firefox beta offers audio API, menu tweaks (CNet News) Wed Sep 08 04:25:03 +0200 2010

Wed Sep 08 04:25:03 +0200 2010

A new audio data API, default hardware acceleration, and a return of some menu options that had been missing in previous betas are the keystones to Firefox 4 beta 5.

Malays held for early Eid celebrations (Sydney MH) Thu Sep 09 10:05:14 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 10:05:14 +0200 2010

Malaysian religious officials say they have detained and fined nine members of an Islamic sect for celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday two days early.

Craigslist removes 'censored' bar from site (CNet News) Thu Sep 09 09:05:02 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 09:05:02 +0200 2010

The 'censored' bar, which acted as a symbolic protest against the removal of Craigslist's Adult Services section on Friday, has now itself been removed.

An economy kept afloat by mafia cash is not just the stuff of Le Carré thrillers | Jonathan Freedland (Guardian) Wed Sep 08 02:45:12 +0200 2010

Wed Sep 08 02:45:12 +0200 2010

Until we find the political will, the establishment will be happy to ignore the dirty crimes behind today's dazzling fortunes

He is bull-necked and barrel-chested, bald and foul-mouthed, the owner of a bejewelled Rolex and the hundreds of millions – perhaps billions – that go with it. His English is Russian-accented and salted with expletives. He is holidaying in Antigua, on a peninsula that he owns in its entirety. He is the kingpin in a brotherhood of Russian super-criminals, a financial whiz who until now has acted as a human Laundromat, expertly washing clean his fellow crooks' soiled fortunes. But now he has made covert contact with the British authorities: he wants to be an informant, a mega-grass who will reveal the secrets of the dark underworld he has inhabited for so long.

If that sounds like the plot of a thriller, that's because it's the set-up of the new and utterly riveting John le Carré novel, Our Kind of Traitor. The Russian gangster is Dima, whose fate we follow as a rogue unit in British intelligence seeks to reel the would-be defector in to safety on England's shores.

Now here's another storyline. Leading banks around the world, desperate for cash in the financial crisis, turn to the proceeds of organised crime as the only liquid investment capital available, eventually absorbing the greater part of a staggering $352bn of drugs profits into the global economic system, laundering that vast sum in the process.

Sounds far-fetched, but that's no fiction. That tale was published in the Observer in December 2009, when the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime admitted that colossal piles of drugs money had kept the world financial system afloat when it looked dangerously close to collapse.

The story broke long after Le Carré had finished Our Kind of Traitor, but it confirmed everything the new novel is saying: that a huge slice of the global economy, as much as a fifth on some estimates, is made up of the fruits of organised crime; that the criminals behind that money have found a thousand ingenious ways to disguise its origins – and those we might expect to stand in the way, including reputable banks and elected politicians, instead help smooth its path out of the black economy and into the white.

The problem is so vast, people somehow fail to see it. Nobody picked it up! a still incredulous Le Carré said of that UN statement when we met in his Hampstead home today. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I really did have the feeling that it had been suppressed. He sees too many unanswered questions, starting with how exactly that $352bn came to pass into the legitimate economy. What buttons do you press, who do you call? Whose consent do you seek? Did someone in government wink to the super-crooks, telling them they no longer had to keep their money in cash in, say, the Cayman Islands, but could now buy government bonds? If so, who and on whose authority?

If this seems arcane, a matter for forensic accountants, it shouldn't. Balzac had it right: Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime. And behind today's dazzling fortunes lie some very dirty crimes indeed: if it's not selling guns or hooking the vulnerable on drugs, it's trafficking young women as sex slaves and would-be economic migrants into servitude. When the profits of evil deeds like these are laundered, the world is saying that crime – even the gravest crime – does indeed pay.

The scale is enormous. The Serious Organised Crime Agency – Soca – puts revenue from organised crime in the UK alone at £15bn and admits that is likely to be a very conservative (and dated) estimate. Add in profits from Russia, India and beyond and the numbers reach the stratosphere.

None of that wealth would be much use to the gangsters if it stayed in telltale cash, betraying its tainted origins. So these real-life Dimas devise ever more ingenious ways to pass it off as legit. Property is a favourite: buy a house, sell it on and the proceeds become clean. A department store works just as well, as does a football club. Or create a series of shell companies registered behind a brass plate in faraway Vanuatu or the Solomon Islands, one owning another owning another, financial Russian dolls that exhaust and bamboozle investigators, according to Misha Glenny, whose book McMafia is the go-to guide to this new realm of international, multibillion-dollar crime.

Sadly, he includes London in that roll call of safe havens, places attractive to those with illicit fortunes to bleach clean. Once Gordon Brown set his heart on London outstripping New York as the world's financial capital, Glenny argues, the inevitable result was lighter regulation, no stress entry for big fortunes, non-dom arrangements and an entire legal architecture hospitable to the mega-wealthy.

That's not to say the authorities are doing nothing. Soca boasts of denying criminals assets of £317.5m in the last year: but the words drop and ocean come to mind. Brown certainly tightened some rules in trying to crack down on terrorist finance after 9/11 but, the experts agree, the regime still tends to catch the minnows while leaving the sharks to roam free. As Hector Meredith, the principled spy in Our Kind of Traitor, puts it: A chap's laundering a couple of million? He's a bloody crook. Call in the regulators, put him in irons. But a few billion? Now you're talking. Billions are a statistic.

What might explain the institutional blind eye turned towards these enormous, ill-gotten fortunes? Political influence. The Russian oligarchs, for example, have been tireless in their cultivation of political friends, sparing no expense. Le Carré passes on speculation that there is a substantial body of peers sitting in the House of Lords singing for the Russian choir. His novel features an ambitious British politician who mingles with high-rolling members of the Russian criminal fraternity on a yacht, though no doubt the resemblance to any real-life figure is purely coincidental.

And sometimes, in some places, it's more than a blind eye. Glenny reports that in Italy following the financial crisis the mafia has been allowed to assume the role of the banks, lending at reasonable rates to small businesses. The mafiosi can do it because they are cash rich – and in return their money is washed clean. For organised crime, a recession is good for business.

What can be done? A kind of defeatism stalks Le Carré's novel, as if this dragon is too powerful ever to be slayed. The author admits that he can't see how any country can get on terms with it. Others suggest action will be possible only when Russia – where the white and black economies are entangled in a permanent shade of dark grey – chooses to join the international struggle against organised crime.

But there's more that can be done now. The US has set a good lead, regarding any transaction done in dollars as within its jurisdiction (which is why the US authorities are pursuing the Saudi/BAE episode long after Serious Fraud Office investigators abandoned it in Britain). To go further, governments would have to find the political will to chase the big villains, not just the small ones. Ending the non-dom regime would help too.

One reform is both surprising and easy. Oligarchs and their ilk don't come to London for the weather: a big draw is our draconian libel laws, which keep them safe from scrutiny. Change those, so that at last we can start debating this enormous criminal racket out loud – in the newspapers rather than on the pages of a novel, no matter how riveting.

Jonathan Freedland

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Planes in 'near-miss' over London (BBC) Thu Sep 09 08:15:04 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 08:15:04 +0200 2010

A business jet and a passenger plane carrying 232 people came close to a mid-air collision over London in July, a report reveals.

Google 'yet to apply for Web mapping nod' (People's Daily) Thu Sep 09 08:05:37 +0200 2010

Thu Sep 09 08:05:37 +0200 2010

No application has been received from Google Inc to provide Internet mapping services in China, authorities said on Wednesday, raising fresh uncertainty since the US search engine renewed its Chinese website license two months ago. Song Chaozhi, deputy director general of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM), told China Daily that about 70 to 80 firms had submitted their applications since the bureau introduced a new regulation in May that required companies providing online map ...