Europe
G4S chief to face British Parliament over Olympics security
Nick Buckles, the chief executive of security firm G4S, is to explain to British MPs later today why his firm was unable to provide the number of security guards it promised forLondon’s Olympic Games. Soldiers and police have had to be drafted in at short notice to plug the consequent gaps in security.
Fire rages in Istanbul tower building
A large fire has swept through the 42-storey Polat Tower building in the centre of Istanbul, Turkey. There were no immediate reports of any casualties, and firemen, backed by helicopters, managed to contain the blaze. The cause is being investigated, but Istanbul’s Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu has speculated that a faulty air conditioner might have sparked the blaze. Polat Tower is a mixed block of shops, apartments and offices.
North America
US Navy ship fires on boat in Gulf
A security team aboard the USNS Rappahannock, a US Navy refuelling ship, has fired a heavy machine gun on a small motorboat off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). According to a statement by the US Navy, it did so after the smaller boat ignored warnings and other non-lethal measures and continued to “rapidly approach” the ship. Casualties are unconfirmed, though a UAE official has suggested an Indian fisherman was killed and three others wounded. It is not clear where the crew of the motorboat are from. The US Navy has increased its presence in the Persian Gulf after recent threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial sea route for the oil trade.
Romney: Obama attacks “dishonest”
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has labelled attacks from President Obama’s campaign, focusing on his time at private equity firm Bain Capital, “dishonest”, and called for them to stop. Speaking in a nationally televised interview, Mr Romney said President Obama should focus on defending his own record in office. The Obama campaign’s attacks highlighted that Mr Romney was still listed on Bain’s regulatory filings a couple of years after he said he left the company in 1999 to run the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. The timing is important because Bain was responsible for closing American firms and moving jobs abroad between 1999 and 2001. Mr Romney founded Bain Capital, and said he was “very proud” of his career in business.
Latin America
HSBC “allowed drug money laundering” – US Senate
An investigation by the US Senate has revealed how slackness at HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, allowed international drug kingpins to use it to launder their money. The report, released ahead of a Senate hearing today, claims vast sums of Mexican drug money almost certainly passed through the British bank, as did suspicious funds from Syria, the Cayman Islands,Iran and Saudi Arabia. HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said the bank will “take responsibility for fixing what went wrong”; executives from the bank are due to appear before the Senate committee today.
Russia and Asia
China discriminates against foreign credit card companies – WTO
A panel of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said China discriminates against foreign credit and debit card providers to entrench a monopoly on yuan-dominated payment cards, against WTO rules. This harms providers such as Visa and Mastercard. The complaint against China was first lodged by the Obama administration in 2010 as US companies struggle to access the massive Chinese market. The US government is hailing the WTO’s decision as a “win” which “highlights that tackling unfair Chinese trade practices has been a priority of this president”. The WTO did not, however, uphold all the claims raised by the US.
Africa and Middle East
Syria ready to use chemical weapons, says defector
Nawaf Fares, Syria’s former ambassador to Iraq and the most senior of the regime’s politicians to defect to its opposition, has told the BBC that it will not hesitate to use chemical weapons if it is cornered. Unconfirmed reports suggested such weapons may already have been used in the city of Homs, said Mr Fares. Mr Fares went on to suggest that Sunni Muslim militants in al-Qaeda were collaborating with the regime, which is dominated by those from the minority Allawite sect, making such collaboration unusual.
“Green on blue” Afghan soldier to face death penalty
An Afghan soldier who killed five allied French soldiers in January has been sentenced to death by a military court. Abdul Saboor fired on French forces during a joint operation in Kapisa province before being overpowered. A few days later,France announced it would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan earlier than planned. It was one of the more severe of a growing number of attacks by Afghan soldiers on Nato allies, so-called “green on blue” killings, which have seen the deaths of at least 26 foreign troops in 18 separate incidents so far this year.
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