Trump baffles Sweden with crime comment, says it was based on TV report

World News | Sun Feb 19, 2017 | 7:44pm EST
By Anna Ringstrom and Jeff Mason | STOCKHOLM/WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. 

 A day after falsely suggesting there was an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, President Donald Trump said on Sunday his comment was based on a television report he had seen.

Trump, who in his first weeks in office has tried to tighten U.S. borders sharply for national security reasons, told a rally on Saturday that Sweden was having serious problems with immigrants.

"You look at what's happening last night in Sweden," Trump said. "Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible."

No incident occurred in Sweden and the country's baffled government asked the U.S. State Department to explain. (Read more)

One might wonder if the President actually knew in which Melbourne he was.

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Soldier shot; gunman enters Canadian parliament, many shots fired

By Randall Palmer and David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A gunman shot a soldier at the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa and was then chased by police into the main parliament building, where at least 30 more shots were fired, according to media and eyewitness reports on Wednesday.

Parliament was locked down and Prime Minister Stephen Harper had left the building safely as police converged on the area.

As the situation developed, CBC News said in a tweeted news alert that more shots were fired near parliament and the gunman was still at large.

Police and tactical teams had converged on the area.

The wounded soldier was taken into an ambulance where medical personnel could be seen giving him cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

The shooting comes two days after an Islamic convert ran down two Canadian soldiers with his car, killing one, near Montreal, before being shot and killed by police.

A construction worker on the scene told Reuters he heard a gunshot, and then saw a man dressed in black with a scarf over his face running towards parliament with a gun
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The man stopped a black car at gunpoint and hijacked it, construction worker Scott Walsh told Reuters. The driver got out safely, then the man drove the car to the Centre Block on Parliament Hill, where construction work is underway.  Read more 

See also CBC News

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Stupidity knows no borders!

Train drags German mooner half naked along tracks

Reuters, October 12, 2009

BERLIN - A German man mooning at railway staff in a departing train got his trousers caught in a carriage door and ended up being dragged half naked along the platform, out of the station and onto the tracks.

The 22-year-old journalism student shoved his backside against the window of a low-slung double-decker train when staff forced him off in Lauenbrueck for travelling without a ticket, a spokesman for police in the northern city of Bremen said.

"It’s a miracle he wasn’t badly hurt," the spokesman said on Monday. "This sort of thing can end up killing you."

Instead, dangling by his trousers, the man got pulled along for about 200 metres, all the while managing to keep his legs away from the wheels of the train.

The ordeal ended when a passenger pulled the emergency brake. Rescues services were called in, causing rail services between Bremen and Hamburg to be suspended for over an hour, delaying 23 trains.

The man — unharmed except for cuts and bruises — now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face sizeable a compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.

"He was full of remorse when I talked to him," the spokesman said. "And he advised others not to try the same thing."

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Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize to mixed reviews

By Wojciech Moskwa and Matt Spetalnick

OSLO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for offering the world hope and striving for nuclear disarmament in a surprise award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism.

The bestowal of one of the world's top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Critics -- some in parts of the Arab and Muslim world -- called the committee decision premature. (more)

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Madoff jailed after admitting to fraud -- By Grant McCool and Martha Graybow

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges he orchestrated the biggest fraud in Wall Street history and was ordered to jail to await a sentence that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

In an emotional court hearing in front of scores of investors he swindled, the former Nasdaq stock market chairman spent 10 minutes describing a long-running Ponzi scheme he knew from the beginning was criminal and wrong but hoped would end quickly.

"I am painfully aware that I have deeply hurt many, many people," including family, friends and associates, said the gray-haired, grim-faced Madoff, 70, speaking of his crime for the first time publicly before U.S. Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan federal court.

"When I began my Ponzi scheme I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme," said Madoff, who wore a gray suit but none of the rings and jewelry that long were a signature of his style.

He said that shutting down the scheme, in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients, proved impossible and he soon came to realize "that my arrest and this day would inevitably come."

Madoff was head of a family-run business in which his brother, Peter, and sons Mark and Andrew were executives in the brokerage arm of his firm. Neither they nor his wife of nearly 50 years, Ruth Madoff, were in court.

Madoff has become one of the most vilified men in America, a symbol of the unraveling of Wall Street that has laid bare other multimillion dollar frauds.

His swindle also cast a harsh light on securities regulators for failing to uncover his scam or other purported frauds, such as an $8 billion scheme run by billionaire Texan Allen Stanford.

150 YEARS POSSIBLE

Madoff's swindle, which took in as much as $65 billion over two decades before the 2008 market meltdown, could land him in prison for the rest of his life. The maximum possible penalties on 11 criminal charges add up to 150 years.

The judge revoked Madoff's bail and ordered him to jail immediately, ending his house arrest in his luxury Manhattan penthouse. He will be sentenced June 16. Some of his victims cheered as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

Prosecutors, who want Madoff to forfeit all of the money and property that can be traced back to the alleged fraud, estimated that figure at more than $170.8 billion.

"The essence of my scheme," Madoff said in a statement he read in court, was telling clients and prospective investors he would "invest their money in shares of common stock, options and other securities of large well-known corporations."

But he said the money was never invested. "Instead, those funds were deposited in a bank account at Chase Manhattan."

When clients asked for redemptions -- and there were more requests coming in last year than he could meet -- he withdrew the money from the bank account.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt said the investigation was far from over.

"A lot of resources are being expended both to find assets and to find anyone else who may be responsible for this fraud," he said.

After the once-respected trader answered each of the 11 criminal charges with the word "guilty," Chin accepted the plea and rejected his request to stay out on bail until sentencing.

"RISK OF FLIGHT"

"He has incentive to flee, he has means to flee, and he is a risk of flight," Chin said.

He will be jailed in a shared cell at the nearby Metropolitan Correctional Center, a far cry from the opulent lifestyle to which he has been long accustomed.

His attorney, Ira Lee Sorkin, said he would appeal the judge's ruling revoking bail.

Some of the hundreds of former investors who sat in the courtroom or in another room in the courthouse watching a video feed of the proceedings, said they were unsatisfied by Madoff's admission and apology.

"Satisfaction will be when I get my money back," Ronnie Sue Ambrosino, a 56-year-old investor from Florida said outside the court.

His investors included hedge funds, banks, Jewish charities, the wealthy, and small individual investors in North and South America and Europe. Three were allowed to speak at the hearing.

By pleading guilty to charges including securities fraud, money laundering and perjury, Madoff avoided a trial that some of his victims had sought.

They said a trial would have revealed more about Madoff's complex global scheme and his suspected co-conspirators. No one else has been charged.

"If we go to trial we have more of a chance to comprehend the global scope of this horrendous crime," investor Maureen Ebel of Florida said in court.

"At trial, we can bear witness to the pain Mr. Madoff has inflicted on the old, the infirm and the disabled."

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Canada's Harper signals permanent tax cuts in budget

By Frank McGurty

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper signaled on Saturday for the first time that the budget his government will introduce next week will contain permanent tax cuts, not just short-term measures to lift the sagging economy.

"I think that if we're talking about tax cuts, these measures in most cases have to be permanent to be effective," the Conservative leader said in an interview with La Presse, the French-language daily.

Harper's minority government will introduce a budget on Tuesday for the coming fiscal year that will call for Canada's first deficit in a decade.

The package is expected to feature measures to stimulate Canada's flagging economy, including spending billions of dollars to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and modest tax cuts for consumers and businesses.

Canada has avoided deficits since 1996-97, and Harper has vowed that his government would never allow a return to permanent or "structural" fiscal shortfalls.

To that end, most of the stimulus measures in the package for the 12 months beginning April 1 are expected to be short term in nature, such as infrastructure projects, whose funding would end with their completion.

Harper, a longtime fiscal conservative and free-market champion, said on Saturday that the global economic crisis gave the government little choice.

"I think we're in a rare time where you need a deficit," Harper said in a separate interview with the Toronto Star newspaper, pointing to a sharp decline in consumer spending and business investment.

In the campaign before the October 14 federal election, Harper insisted Canada could avoid a deficit even as the global economy deteriorated. Most economists say Canada entered a recession in the fourth quarter of 2008.

DEFICIT SPENDING

"We're only moving into deficit because of the declining revenues of the slowing economy and ... our spending initiatives," the prime minister said in an interview with Global Television aired on Saturday.

"Those spending initiatives will run out eventually ... and our revenues will recover, so we should over four or five years, if we stay on track, return to a healthy surplus," he said.

The government envisions C$64 billion ($52 billion) in deficit spending over the next two fiscal years, an aide to Harper told reporters on Thursday, revealing a long-awaited number that has the potential to hurt the Conservatives.

The Liberals, the main opposition party in Parliament, have said they may vote against the budget and bring down the minority government if they consider the package inadequate.

Opposition parties have accepted the need for short-term deficits but have criticized the government for earlier tax cuts that they say led to narrower surpluses.

Public opinion appears to be divided over the issue of deficits. A slim majority of Canadians believe deficits of the size the government is planning are necessary to pull the economy out of recession, according to a Ipsos Reid poll released on Saturday.

But 41 percent of those surveyed said the spending was a waste of money.

Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader, said on Friday the government was irresponsible in leaking the size of the expected deficits. Ignatieff, who has said his party will wait until Wednesday before announcing how it will vote on the budget, accused Harper of playing political games at a time of crisis.

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McCain urges Obama join him in town hall meetings -- Reuters.

By Jeff Mason
Wed, Jun 4, 6:53 PM ET

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain proposed on Wednesday that Democrat Barack Obama join him in at least 10 face-to-face encounters at town hall meetings this summer.

Obama's campaign reacted positively to the idea, but suggested a few tweaks.

McCain, a veteran Arizona senator, performs better in the "town hall" format of taking questions from an audience, rather than delivering the set-piece speeches at which Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, excels.

McCain, whose invitation came the day after Obama clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for the November presidential election, suggested the first meeting be June 11 or 12 in New York's Federal Hall.

"I think the American people want a new kind of debate," he told reporters in Louisiana about his proposal.

"I think they want ... a real chance to express their hopes and dreams and aspirations for the future, and I think they'd like to hear directly from the candidates. So I hope that Senator Obama will quickly agree."

McCain suggested at least 10 of the meetings, to take place once a week, ending right before the Democratic nominating convention in late August, with locations to be determined by the two sides.

'APPEALING'

The Obama campaign said it was open to the possibility, but called for a slightly different format.

"The idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement.

"We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas," he said, referring to famous debates in 1858 before the Civil War.

A McCain spokeswoman said in a statement that the campaign managers for both candidates had talked on Wednesday and agreed "in spirit" to the joint appearances.

McCain insisted to reporters that the town hall format be maintained.

"If there is some way to modify the details of it, then I'll be glad to obviously discuss that. But I want a town hall meeting," he said, noting that he would not have won the New Hampshire primary -- the early nominating contest that saved his candidacy -- had he not conducted so many such events.

McCain also suggested the two candidates fly together to the meetings, joking that that would save energy and money.

"I even suggested we travel to them together on the same plane, probably help out on energy savings," he said to applause from an audience in Baton Rouge.

"I know my campaign would agree to it," he said. McCain's fund-raising trails Obama's by a wide margin.

McCain and Obama have both made fighting global warming and cutting down on foreign oil dependence themes of their White House bids.

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The result of the US election will have a huge effect not only for the US but for Canada as well and, in fact, for the whole world. That is why I started the poll so our readers could have at least a virtual vote in this major historic event.

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Bank of Canada says focus remains on inflation on Yahoo! Canada News

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Bank of Canada said on Tuesday its focus, heading into next week's monetary policy announcement, remains on keeping inflation under control, despite concern the robust Canadian dollar is hurting sectors of the economy.

There are both downside and upside risks to the Canadian economy and targeting inflation is the best way to achieve economic stability, the bank's Senior Deputy Governor Paul Jenkins told a House of Commons industry committee.

'We have one tool at our disposal, which is interest rates, and we use that tool to achieve our objective, which is a 2 percent inflation target and we believe by doing that, we provide that best support for the Canadian economy overall,' said Jenkins.

The Bank of Canada has been less aggressive than the U.S. Federal Reserve in cutting interest rates in the face of the U.S. economic slowdown, which has allowed the interest rate differential to open up a full percent in favor of a stronger Canadian dollar.

The Canadian dollar has risen around 60 percent since 2002 and the country's exporters have been shedding jobs as they try to adjust.

The main factors influencing the strength of the Canadian dollar are high commodity prices and the interest rate spread, said Jenkins.

A recent Reuters poll showed that a majority of Canada's primary security dealers expect the central bank to lower interest rates by 50 basis points to 3.50 percent on March 4.

That would narrow the interest rate differential between Canada and the United States to 50 basis points. But the U.S. Federal Reserve meets two weeks later and it is expected to continue its aggressive easing to bolster its economy.

Deputy Governor John Murray told the committee that if the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar was dramatically lower, the manufacturing sector might be more competitive, but the economy would operating in very high gear, with resulting inflationary pressures.

"I guess the only observation I'd make from that would be that what you think you might have gained from a lower exchange rate, you could probably find yourself losing in the form of higher inflation, so your competitive position, ultimately in manufacturing, would not be much changed."

(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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World Faces Food Shortages -- by Emma Graham-Harrison and Ben Blanchard

BEIJING - The world is eating more than it produces and food prices may climb for years because of expansion of farming for fuel and climate change, risking social unrest, an expert and a new report said on Tuesday.

Biofuel expansions alone could push maize prices up over two-thirds by 2020 and increase oilseed costs by nearly half, with subsidies for the industry effectively constituting a tax on the poor, the International Food Policy Research Institute said.

Global cereal stocks, a key buffer used to fight famines around the world, have sunk to their lowest level since the 1980s due to reduced plantings and poor weather, said the institute’s director general, Joachim von Braun.

“The world eats more than it produces currently, and over the last five or six years that is reflected in the decline in stocks and storage levels. That cannot go on, and exhaustion of stocks will be reached soon,” he told a conference in Beijing.

Countries such as Mexico have already experienced food riots over soaring prices, von Braun added in a report released at the same meeting, held by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

“The days of falling food prices may be over,” said von Braun, lead author of the “World Food Situation” report.

“Surging demand for food, feed and fuel have recently led to drastic price increases … climate change will also have a negative impact on food production,” he added.

Growing financial investor interest in commodity markets as prices climb is fueling price volatility, and world cereal and energy prices are increasingly closely linked.

With oil prices hovering around $90 a barrel, this is bad news for the poor, who have already suffered “quite dramatic” impacts from a tripling in wheat prices and near-doubling in rice prices since 2000, the report said.

More investment in agricultural technology, a stronger social welfare net with particular support for children, an end to trade barriers and improved infrastructure and finance opportunities in less-developed countries, could all help improve food security.

Although increased trade, a key demand of many developing world nations in global talks, would bring economic gains, in many cases it would not significantly reduce poverty, the report added.

Warming, Biofuels Loom
Global warming could cut worldwide income from agriculture 16 percent by 2020, despite the potential for increased yields in some colder areas and the fertilizing impact on plants of having higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

“With the increased risk of droughts and floods due to rising temperatures, crop-yield losses are imminent,” the report said.

It warned that Africa would be hit particularly hard by changes in weather patterns, in which scientist say man-made gases pumped into the atmosphere are an important factor.

“When taking into account the effects of climate change, the number of undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa may triple between 1990 and 2080,” the report said.

Biofuels also threaten nutrition for the poor. Under current investment plans, and assuming expansion in nations with high-potential but without detailed plans, maize prices would rise a quarter by the end of the next decade.

Under a more dramatic expansion, prices could climb up to 72 percent for maize and 44 percent for oilseeds, the report said.

Even when next-generation biofuels that use feedstocks such as wood and straw become commercially viable, competition for resources from water to investment capital may continue.

Global food demand is shifting towards higher-value vegetables, diary, fruits and meat as a result of rapid economic growth in developing countries including China and India.

But it can be difficult for smaller farmers to take advantage of the trend because of large retailers’ growing grip on the market and their high safety, quality and other requirements.

(Editing by Ken Wills and Jerry Norton)