Latest News Clips 2013.01.10

                    1.      Al-Assad touts plan for resolution, says enemies of Syria 'will go to hell'

CNN     January 7, 2013

        

(CNN) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stood firm Sunday against global calls for him to step down, insisting that his vision should be the foundation of any future solution to the country's crisis.

In a rare public speech, al-Assad lambasted those who want to "fragment Syria" and accused foreigners of helping fuel terrorism on the ground.

"Those are the enemies of the people and the enemies of God. And the enemies of God will go to hell," the president told a packed auditorium of supporters.

Al-Assad laid out a plan for a solution to the crisis, which he said should start with regional countries ending their support for "terrorists." The government frequently describes dissidents as terrorists.

The president's plan includes a national dialogue as well as the writing of a new constitution that would be put up for a public referendum.

But there's a major caveat to the plan: Al-Assad said he will not deal with "terrorists" -- a description that, in his view, includes the vast majority of the opposition.

Similarly, opposition members have said they will not work directly with al-Assad's "criminal" government, nor will they accept any solution that doesn't involve al-Assad's departure.

"There can be no solution to the conflict in Syria until he is pushed out with his team. His speech is continuing the war against the Syrian people," said George Sabra, vice president of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

In a statement, the opposition coalition described the speech as a "preemptive strike against both Arab and international diplomatic solutions."

2.  Chavez battling 'severe' lung infection, respiratory failure

CNN  January 4, 2013

(CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is battling a "severe" lung infection that has caused respiratory failure, a top official said.

Chavez, 58, has been hospitalized in Cuba since undergoing cancer surgery more than three weeks ago.

He is following a strict treatment regimen for "respiratory insufficiency" caused by the infection, Venezuelan Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said in a televised statement Thursday night.

The information minister did not provide details about the treatment or prognosis.

How Venezuela is coping with uncertain times

"It is something quite serious in many cases," said Dr. Elmer Huerta, an oncologist and past president of the American Cancer Society.

Chavez is likely on artificial respiration and receiving high does of antibiotics, Huerta told CNN en Español. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Chavez's immune system is already weakened from cancer, he said.

3.  Newsmaker: Republican maverick Hagel forged bond with Obama over Iraq

Reuters   2013.01.06

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - From his lonely position as an early Republican critic of the Iraq war, former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel sometimes lectured his more timid Senate colleagues. "If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes," he told them.

Now Democratic President Barack Obama, putting together his team for his second term, is poised to choose the intensely independent thinker to run the Pentagon. If Hagel is confirmed by the Senate, he will have to oversee the withdrawal of U.S. troops from another war zone - Afghanistan - and grapple with spending cuts.

The formal announcement of Hagel's nomination could come as early as Monday, Democratic Party sources said.

A social conservative and strong internationalist who co-chaired John McCain's failed Republican presidential campaign back in 2000, Hagel might seem an unlikely pick for Obama's Secretary of Defense, were it not for his opposition to the Iraq war launched by former President George W. Bush. That war was the issue on which Obama also rose to national prominence.

Four years ago, Obama said Iraq was not the only matter where he held similar views with Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran who was also once touted as presidential material.

"He's a staunch Republican, but Chuck and I agree almost on every item of foreign policy," Obama said in August 2008, a month after taking Hagel with him on a tour of Iraq.

Since his name emerged last year as a candidate for the Pentagon, some Republicans contend that Hagel has at times opposed Israel's interests. His critics note he voted against U.S. sanctions on Iran and made disparaging remarks about the influence of what he called a "Jewish lobby" in Washington.

4.  Regulators ease key bank rule to spur credit

Reuters   2013.01.06

BASEL, Switzerland/LONDON (Reuters) - Global regulators gave banks four more years and greater flexibility on Sunday to build up cash buffers so they can use some of their reserves to help struggling economies grow.

The pull-back from a draconian earlier draft of new global bank liquidity rule to help prevent another financial crisis went further than banks had expected by allowing them a broader range of eligible assets.

Banks had complained they could not meet the January 2015 deadline to comply with the new rule on minimum holdings of easily sellable assets from the Basel Committee of banking supervisors and also supply credit to businesses and consumers.

The committee's oversight body agreed on Sunday to phase in the rule from 2015 over four years, as reported by Reuters on Thursday, and widen the range of assets banks can put in the buffer to include shares and retail mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), as well as lower rated company bonds.

The new, less liquid assets can only be included at a hefty discount to their value, but the changes are a significant move from the draft version of the rule unveiled two years ago.

The Basel Committee, drawn from nearly 30 countries representing nearly all the world's markets, hopes they will stop banks from shrinking loan books to comply with the rule.

"For the first time in regulatory history, we have a truly global minimum standard for bank liquidity," the oversight body's chairman Mervyn King told a news conference in Basel, Switzerland.

"Importantly, introducing a phased timetable for the introduction of the liquidity coverage ratio ... will ensure that the new liquidity standard will in no way hinder the ability of the global banking system to finance a recovery," said King, who is also Bank of England governor.