[An Nahar] International credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded euro member Cyprus to junk status Tuesday on heightened concerns over its banking sector's exposure to Greece.
The agency cut its rating on Cyprus by one notch to Ba1 and assigned a negative outlook, meaning that further downgrades are possible.
Moody's is the second agency to push the island nation's credit rating to junk after Standard & Poor's in January. Fitch rates Cyprus a notch above junk.
The downgrades have effectively shut Cyprus out of the international markets, prompting it to seek a 2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) low-interest loan from Russia to meet its financing needs for this year.
Moody's said that apart from their significant Greek government bold holdings, Cypriot banks' woes are compounded by their large Greek loan portfolios. It said those stresses on the banking system combined with weak private sector confidence and adverse external conditions will constrain the island's growth potential in the next few years and add to the fiscal challenges facing the government.
"Although the government seems well positioned to achieve significant progress this year, unfavorable economic conditions present implementation risks in 2013 and beyond," Moody's said.
The agency said that although Cypriot banks are looking to bolster their capital buffers through private sector investment, there is a "very material risk" that the government will have to step in to cover a likely shortfall that could amount to 5-10 percent of the island's gross domestic product. That could, in turn, deepen the island's debt load.
Cyprus Finance Minister Kikis Kazamias called the downgrade "unfair" because ratings agencies are factoring into their assessments possible losses that Cyprus may incur as a result of its banks' Greek exposure several years down the road.
[An Nahar] The suspected arsonist behind a deadly fire at a Brussels mosque said Tuesday he set the Shiite place of worship ablaze to scare the community he blames for the violence in Syria, officials said.
Belgium's Mohammedan community was in shock a day after the attack that left a holy man dead.
The suspect, a self-described Mohammedan in his mid-30s, told Sherlocks he sought to "scare" the Shiite community as it was allegedly responsible for Syria's crackdown on dissent, the public prosecutor's office said.
Under questioning the man said "he was shocked by the pictures of what was going on in Syria and wanted to do something to scare members of the community which was responsible" for the violence, front man Jean-Marc Meilleur told the press.
The suspect, who presented himself as a Sunni Mohammedan, was charged with arson resulting in death and remanded in jug. The fact that the attack late Monday was based on religious beliefs is an aggravating factor, said Meilleur.
The man told Sherlocks he had acted alone and decided to carry out the attack two weeks ago but had had no intention to kill.
If not nabbed he would have surrendered to the police, he also told the authorities.
As Sherlocks interrogated him, members of Belgium's Shiite and Sunni communities met to ensure calm after the arson attack, which also left two other people injured.
Interior Minister Joelle Milquet suggested inter-religious strife may be to blame after the man stormed into the Rida mosque with an axe, a knife and fuel, shouting about the conflict in Syria.
"It appears to be a problem between Sunnis and Shiites," Milquet told RTBF broadcaster.
"Belgium will not tolerate this type of act and the importing of this type of conflict on its territory," she said, adding that the government would take "all necessary measures" in coming days to prevent attacks.
#3
"If not nabbed he would have surrendered to the police". Which will not sound as convincing once he is in the dock and typically claims temporary insanity.
[An Nahar] President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... pulled ahead of his Socialist rival for the first time in La Belle France's election race Tuesday according to a poll conducted after the right-winger took a strident anti-EU turn.
The survey forecast Sarkozy would lead in the first round but still lose out to Francois Hollande in the second, but it was a symbolic boost for the leader who had consistently trailed his rival for the past five months.
"It's true that it's better when things are going well," Sarkozy told news hounds when asked about the poll.
"Nothing is settled, nothing is finished. I campaigned before, I will campaign after ... let each say what he will do for the next five years and the French will decide," he said.
Sarkozy's spokeswoman claimed there was "panic" among the Socialists after the Ifop poll said the president would win 28.5 percent of the vote in the first round in April, against 27 percent for Hollande.
Hollande, who has never held a ministerial post and whose ex-partner Segolene Royal lost to Sarkozy in 2007, is still on course to win the second round in May with 54.5 percent against Sarkozy's 45.5 percent, the poll said.
"It's a turning point... but a nuanced turning point," Frederic Dabi of Ifop told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Socialist former minister Jack Lang played down the survey's importance, deeming it "abnormal" that an incumbent be as low in the polls as is Sarkozy.
"Let's not get taken in or too excited by this or that poll," he said.
The survey of 1,638 people was carried out by telephone, shortly after tens of thousands of Sarkozy supporters turned up in a Gay Paree suburb on Sunday for his biggest campaign rally so far.
Sarkozy's UMP party had billed that meeting as a key part of their bid to turn the tables on Hollande.
The president, who had initially campaigned as the self-styled savior of Europe's single currency, thrilled the cheering crowd with a surprise new Eurosceptic stance.
In a tub-thumping speech, he threatened to pull La Belle France out of Europe's 26-nation passport-free travel zone unless the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... does more to keep out undocumented Democrats.
And he demanded the EU adopt measures to fight cheap imports, warning that La Belle France might otherwise pass a unilateral "Buy French" law.
The left was quick to attack what they saw as a populist stunt, with Hollande's team accusing Sarkozy of behaving like a Eurosceptic British prime minister.
Hollande's campaign manager Pierre Moscovici said the new poll results were nothing for his team to worry about.
"This poll must be taken with cool heads," he said.
"Nothing is settled, we can see that the outgoing president is ready to do a lot to keep power, in particular with a lot of lies ... and with temptations that could be perilous for the building of Europe."
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Front, meanwhile secured the backing of enough local government officials to run in the two-round presidential election, her party said Tuesday.
All French presidential candidates must have the signed endorsement of 500 elected local mayors and officials -- of which there are around 42,000 in La Belle France -- by a March 16 deadline.
Although polls consistently put Le Pen in third place in the presidential race, there was speculation that few mayors or regional councilors wanted to take the political risk of associating themselves with her campaign.
Her father Jean-Marie Le Pen has repeatedly claimed in the past that he was struggling to garner the signatures necessary to stand for the presidency, but was able to do so at every presidential election since 1988.
[Dawn] Belgium's Moslem community was in shock Tuesday after a man set fire to a Shia mosque in Brussels, leaving the imam dead in an act some linked to tensions between Shias and Sunnis.
As Sherlocks sought to determine whether late Monday's arson attack was an isolated incident or a deliberate assault on the Shia community, Interior Minister Joelle Milquet suggested inter-religious strife may be to blame.
"This person went in (the mosque) hurling statements linked to the Syrian conflict. It appears to be a problem between Sunnis and Shias," Milquet said, adding that Sherlocks still had to confirm the motive.
"Belgium will not tolerate this type of act and the importing of this type of conflict on its territory," she said, adding that the government would take "all necessary measures" in coming days to prevent attacks.
The area around the Brussels mosque, one of four Shia centres of worship in the city's overwhelming majority Sunni Moslem community, has a large immigrant Moslem population.
The suspect told police he was a Moslem born in 1978, but authorities were not immediately able to confirm his identity because he lacked ID papers.
Azzedine Laghmich, an official at the mosque, told AFP the attacker was "a Salafist," who sprayed petrol inside the mosque before setting it alight and shouting Sunni slogans on his way out --cries related to the conflict in Syria.
"All the eyewitness accounts said so," Laghmich added.
Isabelle Praile, another bigwig in Belgium's organised Moslem community, said the mosque "had already been placed under police protection several years ago," citing threats from members of the ultra-conservative Salafist movement.
More than 100 men gathered near the Rida mosque after the fire, shouting Shia slogans behind a police tape as some prayed and others hugged or cried over the death of imam Abdallah Dadou, a 46-year-old father of four.
The imam died of smoke inhalation and a second person was slightly injured after the man, who wielded a knife and an axe, set fire to the place with fuel.
"I brought my eight-year-old son here with me so that he can see blind hate, what it can do," said Ismael Ben Mohammad, 40.
The mayor of the city's Anderlecht ward, Gaetan Van Goidsenhoven, appealed for calm at an overnight presser, saying it was "not only necessary to live side-by-side, but also to allow justice and the police to do their work."
The imam was described by worshipper Abdel Adouzeyneb, a 39-year-old real estate agent, as "a person who was loved by everybody --he was open, well integrated, smiling and happy."
Prosecutor Jean-Marc Meilleur said the arson suspect was jugged by police after people inside locked him inside the mosque.
"At the moment, there is only one suspect," Meilleur said early Tuesday, adding that it was too soon to know whether it was a one-man attack or a wider plot.
The last time a holy man was targeted in Brussels was in 1989 when Saudi-born Abdullah Muhammad al-Ahdal was rubbed out.
He served as imam in the Grand Mosque of Brussels and was killed on March of that year by an armed man inside the mosque.
His killing was claimed by a small pro-Iranian group in Leb who accused him of being too moderate and of having rejected the death fatwa slapped on writer Salman Rushdie.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[An Nahar] International credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded euro member Cyprus to junk status Tuesday on heightened concerns over its banking sector's exposure to Greece.
