Greece debt swap talks continue, official says

The representative of Greece’s private creditors said Saturday that talks on a debt swap are continuing even after his unexpected departure from the country.

Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance, told The Associated Press that he is “constantly talking by phone” with Greek officials and that the talks are “coming together.”

Dallara had met with Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos on Friday to hammer out details of a bond swap deal that could potentially lighten Greece’s debt burden by as much as €100 billion ($130 billion).

Greek officials said late Friday that the talks would resume on Saturday.

But Dallara left the Greek capital for a “long-standing engagement” in Paris, said his spokesman Frank Vogl.

Vogl said that IIF’s legal and financial advisers are still in Athens working on several “outstanding issues” with Greek officials and that Dallara will return to Athens “as needed.”

No new date for face-to-face high-level talks has been set, a Greek government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis told The Associated Press.

A European diplomat told The Associated Press in Brussels on Friday that a deal could be reached during the weekend but several eurozone countries still maintain that the proposed interest rate being considered in a bond swap is too high. The diplomat requested anonymity because the talks are confidential.

US official: Taliban should say they want peace

A top American diplomat visiting Afghanistan says the United States wants the Taliban to issue statements disassociating themselves from international terrorism and saying they want to join a peace process to end the 10-year war.

Marc Grossman, the special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, spoke to reporters Sunday in Kabul alongside Afghanistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin.

Ludin says the Afghan government supports having a Taliban political office opened in Qatar and would back an American decision to transfer some Taliban detainees from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Qatar.

Grossman stressed that only Afghans can decide their country’s future, easing Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s fears of being sidelined in the peace process.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Moontime: I believe this has gone far enough. All law-abiding citizens of Malaysia should sue Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan and his family for bringing shame, deceit and blatant waste of time to the courts.

Even if we don’t have locus standi, we want them to know that the amount of resources spent going through this futile appeal can be used more productively elsewhere.

The attorney-general clearly shows his true colours this time by confirming our suspicion all along – that this is a political conspiracy aimed at preventing DSAI (Anwar Ibrahim) from becoming prime minister.

The ruling regime is scared that their corrupt way of life will be exposed once Pakatan Rakyat assumes power and forms the federal government.

Too much is at stake here: Birkin bags, mansions, Mercedes CLS, concubines and whatnot.

Not Confused: What I – and I suspect the majority of the right-thinking Malaysians – wonder is what justice is Saiful looking for?

The charge was consensual sex, therefore he was a willing partner. This has been apparently confirmed by himself.

He stated that he brought lubricant with him and added that the alleged act had been committed a number of times and yet he remained an aide to his so-called assailant.

By logical deduction then, if Anwar is by some further twist of fate, found guilty on appeal, Saiful’s situation has not changed in that he had consensual sex with his boss.

How on earth is this going to uphold his honour and dignity? Can someone out there explain this to me?

DesiKhan: Saiful should use his own money to get his lawyers to fight the issue. Why should the government get involved in this private case?

Q..!: Who is paying for this? Saiful or the taxpayers? If it’s the taxpayers, why should we care about what happened to him. He can get his father to pay for it.

Quigonbond: It’ll be the first if the Court of Appeal overturns a factual decision made by a High Court judge. But under Umno, any form of perversion of justice is possible.

In any event, Umno is screwed. They expected to put Anwar behind bars by now. Even if the Court of Appeal reverses the High Court decision, it cannot convict Anwar. At best, it can only order a retrial.

That’s going to take another two years, by which time Pakatan would have made it to Putrajaya.

But consider another possibility: Najib could be assured of electoral victory by other vicious forms of rigging and manipulation, no matter whether Anwar is leading the charge for Pakatan.

Hence, he might as well milk Anwar’s acquittal for all its worth by ‘cleaning up’ the Court of Appeal and Federal Court.

With this one case, the judiciary in Malaysia will purportedly be made independent, and whole, once more. And then, in the future, it will only be used judiciously by the government for really critical cases.

Phone hacking: News International to pay out to 37 victims

News International has agreed to pay out to 37 victims of News of the World phone hacking, including Jude Law, Lord Prescott and Ashley Cole, in a series of settlements likely to land the publisher with a bill of well over £1m.

The claimants alleged that senior employees and directors at News Group Newspapers (NGN), the News International subsidiary that published the News of the World, knew their journalists were engaging in illegal practices, and that the group sought to deliberately deceive investigators and destroyed evidence.

News International said in a statement:

“Today NGN agreed settlements in respect of a number of claims against the company. NGN made no admission as part of these settlements that directors or senior employees knew about the wrongdoing by NGN or sought to conceal it. However, for the purpose of reaching these settlements only, NGN agreed that the damages to be paid to claimants should be assessed as if this was the case.”

Details of 15 damages settlements, totalling £645,000, were revealed in the high court in London, along with three undisclosed sums to Cole, the England and Chelsea footballer, Harold Shipman’s son Christopher Shipman and former Labour MP Claire Ward. In each of the 18 cases News International is also paying legal costs.

The settlements included actor Law (£130,000), former Labour deputy leader Prescott (£40,000), Labour MPs Chris Bryant (£30,000) and Denis MacShane (£32,500), Welsh rugby union international Gavin Henson (£40,000), designer Sadie Frost (£50,000) and Prince Harry’s friend Guy Pelly (£40,000).

The others are to Lisa Gower (£30,000) – Steve Coogan’s former partner – an anonymous member of the public, HSK (£60,000), Prescott’s former aide Joan Hammell (£40,000), Law’s ex-assistant Ben Jackson (£40,000) and former PR Ciara Parkes (£35,000), journalist Tom Rowland (£25,000), lawyer Graham Shear (£25,000) and Joan Smith (£27,500), journalist and author and MacShane’s former partner.

The high court heard that a total of 37 cases have been settled, with 19 individuals not wishing to make a statement or have details of their settlement made public, in addition to the 18 who had statements read out on Thursday.

The total damages for the 37 settlements is unknown, but is likely to rise to more than £1m, with News International’s total bill significantly higher when legal costs are taken into account.

India lit fest says Rushdie cancels due to threats

Booker-Prize winning author Salman Rushdie canceled plans to appear at an Indian literature festival Friday after protests from Muslim clerics and warnings that he could be targeted for assassination.

Rushdie’s planned appearance at the Jaipur Literary Festival had reawakened the long dormant controversy over his 1988 book “The Satanic Versus,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. He spent years in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged he be killed for writing the book, which also was banned in India.

In recent weeks, the head of the influential Darul Uloom seminary urged the government to bar Rushdie from the festival, and the chief minister of the state of Rajasthan, where Jaipur is located, said Rushdie should stay away because of security concerns.

Organizers of the five-day festival, which began Friday, postponed an event with Rushdie that had been planned for the first day, but still hoped he would attend.

On Friday, they read out a statement from the British-Indian author saying he had decided to cancel his trip after being informed by intelligence sources that “paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to ‘eliminate’ me.”

“While I have some doubts about the accuracy of this intelligence, it would be irresponsible of me to come to the festival in such circumstances,” he said.

The controversy over Rushdie’s attendance clouded the opening of the festival, which will be attended tens of thousands of people who have come to this city to see Oprah Winfrey and literary stars, such as Michael Ondaatje, Tom Stoppard and Annie Proulx.

“It is tragic,” said William Dalrymple, an author and an organizer of the festival.

Rushdie followed up with a message on his Twitter account: “Very sad not to be at jaipur. I was told bombay mafia don issued weapons to 2 hitmen to ‘eliminate’ me. Will do video link instead. Damn.”

The Indian city of Mumbai used to be known as Bombay.

Organizers said they were trying to work out the details for holding an event with Rushdie via video conferencing.

The 64-year-old author attended the annual festival in 2007 without incident.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

150 people killed after terrorist bombing in Nigeria

BRITAIN has condemned terrorists behind bomb and gun attacks in Nigeria which left scores of people dead.

At least 150 people were reported to have been killed in the bombings in the northern city of Kano.

Hospitals and mortuaries were last night struggling to deal with the numbers of killed and injured.

Friday’s attacks hit five police stations, immigration offices and the headquarters of Nigeria’s secret police.

A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with powerful explosives outside one of the police stations, tearing off its roof and blowing out ­windows.

The radical Islamist group Boko Haram claimed they carried out the attacks because the ­government refuse to release some of their members held by police.

Foreign Secretary William Hague told yesterday how he was “shocked and appalled” by the violence.

He said: “The nature of these attacks has sickened people around the world and I send my deepest condolences and s­ympathies to the families of those killed and to those injured.

“There is no place in today’s world for such barbaric acts and I condemn in the strongest possible terms those who carried them out.

“These events underline the importance of the international ­community standing together in the face of terrorism in all its forms.”

The atrocity in the city of nine million people was Boko Haram’s ­deadliest assault in Africa’s most heavily populated nation.

Arab League Meets on Syria

The Arab League meets in Egypt Sunday to review the first month of its heavily criticized observer mission in Syria. The Arab bloc is expected to extend its 165-person mission and increase its size.

Head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, was in Cairo Saturday for meeting with Arab League officials.  He said if the report from the observers is not objective, his group will reject it.

The U.S. Secretary of State called her Egyptian counterpart Saturday.  The State Department said Hillary Clinton “compared notes” with Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr about the developments in Syria in advance of the Arab League meeting.

Syrian activists said Saturday a group of army deserters seized the town of Douma on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, and then withdrew to their bases.  The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the fighting erupted when security forces fired on a funeral procession, killing four people.  Douma has been a continuing focus for unrest during a 10-month crackdown on anti-government protests.

Syrian state media and activists said at least 30 people were killed across the country Saturday as opposition groups appealed to the Arab League to seek United Nations intervention in Syria.

The United Nations says violence linked to the uprising has killed more than 5,400 people. Syria says “terrorists” have killed about 2,000 security force members since the unrest began.

U.S. Military Chief in Israel to Discuss Iran Nuclear Program

The top U.S. military official held closed talks Friday with Israeli leaders over how to respond to Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which both countries fear is being used to develop nuclear weapons.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak and military chief Benny Ganz.

Few details about the meetings were released, but Israeli media report the U.S. officials were expected to urge Israel not to make a pre-emptive military strike on Iran. Israel has not yet ruled out that possible tactic. The United States favors stronger sanctions against Iran instead of any military action.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the issue with her German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle. She told reporters after the meeting that Iran has a choice to come back to the table and address international concerns about its nuclear program or face international pressure and isolation.

“We are making it clear to Iran that its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its needless provocations such as the threats regarding the Strait of Hormuz place it on a dangerous path,” said Clinton.

The United States has been trying to gather more international support for the sanctions and says a military strike against Iran could further destabilize the Middle East.

In Brussels, the office of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she had sent a letter to the Iranian Supreme National Security Council in October. The letter said the group of six nations, which include five permanent U.N. Security Council members [the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France] plus Germany, is prepared to meet with Iranian officials if Tehran will work toward concrete confidence- building steps.

Tehran claims its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes, but has rejected international inspection of its facilities. Iranian leaders have also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz for oil shipping if the West imposes sanctions on Tehran.

Need to Know News: Newt Gingrich delivers show-stopper at beginning of South Carolina debate; 6 Marines die in Afghanistan crash

Each day, we here at “Piers Morgan Tonight” put together the news you need to know – from what happened last night to what will happen today.

For January 20, 2012 – Newt Gingrich delivers a show-stopper at the beginning of South Carolina debate, 6 Marines die in an Afghanistan crash and Joe Paterno allies to confront the Penn State Board of Trustees…

• Newt Gingrich delivers show-stopper at beginning of South Carolina debate: “In a campaign cycle where debates have had direct consequences on the ebb and flow of the race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich turned his contempt for the media into one of his strongest performances yet. When CNN Chief National Correspondent John King opened the debate with a question about open marriage, following an interview by Gingrich’s ex-wife saying that he had sought one, the Republican chastised him.”

• 6 Marines die in Afghanistan crash: “Allied forces have suffered a day of heavy losses in Afghanistan in a helicopter crash that killed 6 U.S. Marines and an attack that killed four French service members and raised the prospect of France withdrawing its troops early.”

• Costa Concordia ship captain allegedly ordered food after crash: “The captain of the Costa Concordia ordered dinner for himself and a woman after the ship struck rocks off Italy’s coast, a cook from the ship told a Filipino television station. In an interview with GMA Network, cook Rogelio Barista said Capt. Francesco Schettino ordered dinner less than an hour after the accident.”

• U.S. stocks prepare for cautious trading day ahead: “U.S. stocks are gearing up for a cautious open Friday, as investors await the outcome of key Greek debt talks. Still looming large over investors are fears about the European debt crisis, particularly the prospect that Greece may end up defaulting in a disorderly fashion.”

• Joe Paterno allies to confront PSU Board of Trustees: “Members of a Penn State alumni group who opposed how longtime football coach Joe Paterno was fired will question the university’s Board of Trustees when it meets Friday. The meeting is the first by the board since Paterno’s controversial firing in November.”

Fox News: CNN’s John King Helped Newt Gingrich Win South Carolina

Did CNN’s John King swing the South Carolina primary to Newt Gingrich?

That’s what several Fox News analysts said on Saturday, including former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who said that Gingrich should take King out to a steak dinner for his tough questioning during Thursday night’s debate.

King opened CNN’s candidates debate by asking Gingrich a controversial question about an interview ABC conducted with his ex-wife Marianne in which she said the former Speaker wanted an “open marriage.”

Gingrich then attacked King, calling his second wife’s claim “trash” and saying he was “appalled” that King would open a presidential debate with such a question.

Also read: Newt Gingrich Calls Ex-Wife’s Claims ‘Trash,’ Rips CNN

Gingrich went on to have another strong debate, and attacking the media has long been a specialty of his.

In his victory speech after his win in South Carolina on Saturday, he took another opportunity to say the media elite was out of touch with the American people.

But it was King’s question and the debate that Fox analysts argued swung the vote since a large number of voters were still undecided.

“Taking on the media is always good in a Republican primary,” Fox analyst Karl Rove said. “John King couldn’t have set up the question in a more positive way for Gingrich to just nail it and haul it right out of the park.”

Also read: Jon Stewart Offers Gingrich New Slogan: ‘Open Your Legs, America’ (Video)

Marianne Gingrich’s claims clearly did not have a huge effect on her ex-husband’s popularity among women in South Carolina, as he won the largest number of votes with both sexes.

For its part, CNN political analysts blamed continued discontent with Mitt Romney and said that the ABC interview may prove more damaging in the future. Analysts such as Wolf Blitzer did say the debates gave Gingrich a big boost, as they almost did in Iowa until Romney’s negative advertising overwhelmed Gingrich’s underfunded campaign there.

Gingrich, in a rare case of modesty — or perhaps false modesty — said in his victory speech that he is not a particularly good debater but that he “articulates the deepest held values” of the American people.