Two a penny

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AFP – French trader Jerome Kerviel is to stand trial over the massive multi-billion trading scandal at Societe Generale last year, sources close to the case said Monday.

Investigating magistrates Renaud van Ruymbeke and Francoise Desset ordered Kerviel to answer charges of breach of trust among others before the Paris criminal court.

One of France’s three biggest banks, Societe Generale shocked the financial world when it unveiled losses of 4.

No date has been set for the trial, which is not expected to begin before the end of the year at the earliest.1 billion dollars) in January last year.9 billion euros (7.

The bank has said Kerviel was a rogue trader who went to great lengths to conceal his dealings.

The losses were incurred when Societe Generale was forced to unwind more than 50 billion euros of unauthorised deals Kerviel is said to have made.

Other than breach of trust, Kerviel faces charges of falsifying and use of fake documents and tampering with computer information, according to the sources.

The 32-year-old trader has countered that his managers knew of his actions and kept silent as long as he was making good returns. .

He faces a possible sentence of five years in prison and 375,000 euro fine if convicted.

Societe Generale’s then-chairman Daniel Boutin described Kerviel as a terrorist and fraudster who had betrayed the confidence of his managers.

Described by workmates as a quiet, unassuming trader, Kerviel turned himself in to police on January 26, two days after the bank revealed the losses.

banking – France – Jérôme Kerviel – justice – Societe Generale

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A French official charged with overseeing efforts to appease racially-charged tension in a French Indian Ocean territory has accused France’s Interior Minister of orchestrating the affair.

Paul Girot de Langlade, coordinator of a political peace process on the island of Reunion, has been suspended pending an inquiry into a charge that he insulted security personnel at Orly airport by using a racial slur.

I am the victim of a politcal ploy the official told French daily Le Parisien on Thursday.

The behaviour and comments that have been attributed to me in the media for the past two days do not come from me and do not reflect reality or my personality, Girot de Langlade told France Inter radio on Saturday. The investigation into what was initially a minor incident has been orchestrated by [Interior minister] Brice Hortefeux, who wants to restore his anti-racist image, he said, referring to a series of harsh anti-immigration measures.

According to a judicial official, Girot de Langlade was stopped by security staff and asked to empty his pockets when a metal detector buzzer sounded after he disembarked from a flight at Orly airport outside Paris on July 31.

The prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Creteil has opened an investigation into public insults of a racial character.

You’d think we were in Africa.

Girot de Langlade admitted that he losts his patience while going through security at the airport. In any case, there are only blacks here, he is accused of replying, according to the official.

I told them to hurry up — granted, in an aggressive manner — but that is all that I told them, the prefect, or senior state official, said.

The Air France stewardess who was accompanying me for the transit in Orly between two planes was herself shocked by the behaviour of the security agent and apologised in the name of her company, he said.

Following the crisis, Girot de Langlade was charged with coordinating talks at which representatives of the community, employers and the state can discuss their grievances. .

French politics – racism

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REUTERS – French police have discovered three underground hiding places believed to belong to the Basque separatist group ETA in southern France in a widening crackdown on the militants, a judicial source said on Monday.

One of the hiding places contained 240 kg of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make explosives, the source said.

In a major anti-ETA operation that began with a tip-off from Spanish police, French police have raided caches in forests, villages and resorts in southern France, turning up weapons, ammunition, detonators and explosives. .

That bombing followed an attack two days earlier in the northern Spanish city of Burgos that wounded 50 people in a Civil Guard family quarters.

On the first day of the raids last Wednesday, French police arrested three suspected ETA members who were wanted by Spanish authorities after a car bomb attack on the island of Mallorca in late July that killed two Civil Guards.

ETA has been fighting for half a century to carve out an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southern France.

Spanish security forces believe ETA, weakened by the arrests of several leaders and long relatively quiet, has been trying to put on a show of force to prove it is still able to strike at the Spanish state.

The Socialist government in Madrid broke off peace talks with ETA after the rebels killed two people with a car bomb at Madrid airport in December 2006.

While polls indicate most Basques seem to favour some sort of independence for their mountainous region, which already has considerable autonomy in Spain, support for violence has slipped in recent years. The group has been blamed for more than 800 deaths in the past 40 years.

ETA – France – police – terrorism

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AFP – Five people were killed on Sunday when their light aircraft crashed into a hill just inland from the French Riviera and burst into flames, local gendarmes said.

The airplane, thought to have taken off from Cannes, crashed on a wooded hill near a residential area in Callas, near the southeastern city of Draguignan, just before 10:00 am (0800 GMT), killing all five people on board.

Gendarmes and firefighters cordoned off the crash site.

One resident told he heard a loud bang, like a gas bottle exploding, as the airplane came down, and that the walls of his house shook from the force of the blast.

The identity of the victims was not immediately known.

airplane crash – aviation – Cannes
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Surprise, surprise, the Aussies are raising cheating claims against All Blacks skipper Richie McCaw, labelling him an outlaw ahead of Saturday night’s crucial test.

With the stakes so high – the Wallabies need to win to stay in both the Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations races – they are targeting the All Blacks talisman forward.McCaw was missing when the Wallabies walloped the All Blacks in Sydney last year. .Under the headline McCaw The Outlaw, the Daily Telegraph claimed McCaw was at his cheating best in this year’s win in Auckland in the opening match of the Tri-Nations. But he has been a key figure in New Zealand’s four subsequent wins over Robbie Deans’ team.They say McCaw enters rucks illegally to command the breakdowns and steal invaluable turnovers.The paper used six still images from Australian broadcaster Fox Sports to illustrate their point. In fact it’s almost an annual event in both hemispheres as McCaw has earned himself the title of being the best No 7 in the business.This sort of campaign is nothing new.Dwyer suggested Deans needed to emphasise McCaw’s tactics when he meets South African referee Jonathan Kaplan before the test.Former Wallabies coaches Bob Dwyer and Eddie Jones, convenient mouthpieces, were happy to support this latest attack on McCaw.”He tries to make it look like he comes through the gate but he hasn’t really.”Richie is a very good player but he does get away with a fair bit,” said Dwyer.”Sometimes he even knocks you away with his forearm.”Dwyer said McCaw was also a master of obstructing opposition defenders by running on their line to the breakdowns.McCaw suggested McCaw was right out of the Sean Fitzpatrick mould in being able to cover up any dubious tactics. It’s definitely an obstruction,” said Dwyer.”McCaw’s point of difference, just like Seam Fitzpatrick, is that he is an outstanding captain with good communication skills – and he develops a good rapport with refs and profits from the social reciprocation.Jones said McCaw was no different to most of the world’s top flankers with his tactics but he was able to use his position as captain to sweet-talk referees. Smart!”Deans, who perhaps knows McCaw’s techniques and abilities better than any coach from his time coaching the Crusaders, was more respectful when asked to comment. He speaks well to refs so refs respond well.”I’m not concerned about history, just Saturday night in Sydney.”If you get away with it, you’re a smart player but I don’t want to go there,” Deans told the paper.”

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AFP – Al-Qaeda’s North African wing claimed on Tuesday responsibility for an August 8 suicide bombing close to the French embassy in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, a US-based monitoring group said. .

The group said the attack was in response to the aggression of the Crusaders, particularly France, and Mauritanian leaders against Islam and Muslims, according to an online statement quoted by SITE.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb named the bomber as Abu Obeida Musa al-Basri and said he had failed to detonate his device inside the embassy because of a barrier that prevented him entering, SITE Intelligence said.

al Qaeda – France – Mauritania – terrorism
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It provided images of the bomber dressed in traditional Mauritanian attire while training on machine guns in a desert area

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font-size:10. It is the most plausible scenario, he told reporters, although he admitted having no guarantee of her release.0pt”Times New Roman”}

The father of French lecturer Clotilde Reiss said on Thursday that he believes his daughter will be released on bail sometime today. Her release is a purely technical question, Remi Reiss said.

&raquo Focus: Is Iran using Reiss as a pawn?
All of the required documents were made available to Iranian authorities yesterday.

Remi Reiss also confirmed that France would pay a few hundred thousand dollars in bail to the Iranian authorities so that his daughter can await her verdict at the French embassy in Tehran, rather than in prison.

The French ministry of foreign affairs refused to confirm or comment on the statement, stating simply that France would continue to ask for the young woman release until it is granted. She was among those tried on charges related to huge protests that swept across Iran after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June.

Reiss, 24, has been detained since July 1.

Iran has put 110 protesters on trial for allegedly participating in the unrest.

&raquo Turmoil elicits differing analyses
&raquo Neda: a young woman&#039s death becomes a rallying cry
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&raquo Mousavi, improbable leader of the green wave
She was accused of spying and taking part in a Western plot to destabilise the government of the Islamic republic. . These include top reformists as well as Reiss, local French embassy employee Nazak Afshar and a local employee of the British embassy .

Clotilde Reiss trial – Iranian elections – justice – Nicolas Sarkozy – protests

.A Paris swimming pool has refused entry to a young Muslim woman wearing a burqini, a swimsuit that covers most of the body.
The pool ban came as French lawmakers conduct hearings on whether to ban the burqa after President Nicolas Sarkozy said the head-to-toe veil was “not welcome” in secular France.
But when she returned in August they decided to apply hygiene rules and told her she could not swim if she insisted on wearing the garment, which resembles a wetsuit with built-in hood. .
Le Parisien newspaper said the woman, identified only by her first name Carole, was a French convert to Islam and that she was determined to go to the courts to challenge the decision.
Pool staff “reminded her of the rules that apply in all (public) swimming pools which forbid swimming while clothed”, said Daniel Guillaume, an official with the organisation that manages pools in the area. “I will fight to try to change things.
“Quite simply, this is segregation,” the paper quoted her as saying.”
Local mayor Alain Kelyor said “all this has nothing to do with Islam”, adding that the burqini was “not an Islamic swimsuit, that type of suit does not exist in the Koran”, the Muslim holy book. And if I see that the battle is lost, I cannot rule out leaving France.
The country has had a long-running debate on how far it is willing to go to accommodate Islam without undermining the tradition of separating church and state, enshrined in a flagship 1905 law.
France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority, has set up a special panel of 32 lawmakers to consider whether a law should be enacted to bar Muslim women from wearing the full veil, known as a burqa or niqab.
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A scene examination of an Auckland house where a mother of four was found dead on Monday, amid what police said was obvious signs of violence, continues today.

The body of Leanne Kingston, 39, was found by her sister inside her home at Cargill St, Papakura, about 4pm.

However, initial investigations showed there “were obvious signs of violence within the property”.

Detective Inspector Mark Gutry said police were keeping an open mind about the circumstances surrounding her death.45pm and a neighbour reported hearing what sounded like a window breaking.

Mr Gutry said there was a disturbance at the house about 12.

Ms Kingston, a triplet, lived at the house with her children, who are aged eight to 19, and with whom she shared custody with her ex-partner.

He said the scene examination was likely to go into tomorrow and urged anyone with information that might help the inquiry to contact police.

On Monday, Ms Kingston’s family became concerned when she failed to collect one of her children from school.

The children are being cared for by relatives.

One woman, who had been a victim of a home invasion and didn’t want to be named, expressed concern for the safety of solo mothers in the street.

Residents said there had been several break-ins in the area.

“They used to have time out, he would go out of the country or to the South Island for a while,” she told the New Zealand Herald.

Meanwhile, friend and neighbour Margaret Tate said Ms Kingston and her on-and-off partner couldn’t live together but could not stay apart.

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Deputy Prime Minister Bill English will pay back more than $12,000 of the taxpayer-funded accommodation allowance he has received for living in his $1.2 million family home in Wellington. .But he said today he accepted there was a perception that he was claiming more than ordinary MPs who live in homes they have an interest in, and though he had done nothing wrong, there was only one way to change that perception.Mr English has insisted his claims were within the rules, and that he had decided to stay in the house to keep his family together, as was his right.

“I’m the Minister of Finance.

“The fact is no amount of detail will change the perception that in some way I’m gaining a bigger allowance than other members of Parliament, so I’ve decided to deal with that perception. It’s my job to lead by example, so I’ll be getting in touch with the Ministerial Services to pay back the difference between the rate I’m on and the other rate going back to the election. Figures issued last week show Mr English claimed $23,763 for the first six months of this year, leaving a difference of $11,763.”

Under Parliament’s rules, ordinary MPs can claim a maximum of $24,000 a year for accommodation.

Mr English’s home is held in a family trust, but he and his wife Mary were named on the title deed till March this year, when the ownership changed into her name alone. The amount he pays back will be several thousand higher as he has agreed to backdate it to the Novermber 8 election.

Prime Minister John Key said he had played no part in Mr English’s decision.

He gave up his interest in the trust at the end of last year for financial and personal interests which he has not comprehensive.”I support him in that move,” Mr Key told reporters in Cairns where he is attending the Pacific Island Forum leaders summit.”I support him in that move,” Mr Key told reporters in Cairns where he is attending the Pacific Island Forum leaders summit.”I don’t like the thought of my ministers feeling as though they are ripping off the New Zealand taxpayer when they are just observing the rules that have been there for decades,” he said.”Mr Key said the situation highlighted the importance of the review he has ordered into ministerial housing arrangements.

– with