via bbc.co.uk
Sunday, 7 August 2011
BBC News - Police efficiency agency 'has £6.5m credit card bill'
Police efficiency agency 'has £6.5m credit card bill'
National Police Improvement Agency spent money on judo apparatus, karaoke equipment and lingerie
A credit card bill of £6.5m was run up by staff at a quango tasked with making police forces in England and Wales more efficient, disclosures after a freedom of information request have revealed.
The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) incurred the costs in the financial years 2008-9 and 2009-10.
Spending on commemorative coins and karaoke equipment was revealed.
The NPIA said it is "bearing down" on spending but there was a "perception of wastefulness" in its "early days".
It said it had "significantly reduced" the amount spent through the use of credit cards by 33%, from £3.6m in 2009-10 to £2.48m in 2010-11.
Ministers plan to phase out the quango, which was set up in 2007 to help forces in England and Wales to save money.
Its functions will be transferred elsewhere.
Much of the costs by staff at the quango were incurred as a result of train or airline tickets and hotel accommodation for staff who travelled on business.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote Nick Gargan NPIA chief executiveWe accept that, in the early days of the NPIA, there was a perception of wastefulness”
However, a taxi bill of nearly £100,000 has been revealed along with expenditure on a diverse range of items including £828 on judo apparatus, £105 on pottery, £55 on karaoke equipment - and £28 on lingerie.
The government is reviewing the use of so called "procurement cards" in Whitehall.
It plans to publish all expenditure incurred on them above £500 from next month.
Nick Gargan, the NPIA's chief executive, said: "We have controls in place to ensure that the cards are only used where there is a business need and they have been properly authorised.
"The NPIA is a national policy agency which means getting out and about to forces, which will involve incurring business expenditure.
"Nevertheless, we accept that, in the early days of the NPIA, there was a perception of wastefulness."
Mr Gargan went on: "We have been bearing down on this and continue to scrutinise our spending carefully in the context of sharp budget reductions."
He said the agency would deliver £30m savings in the current financial year, adding that it delivered £54.5m savings in the previous year.
via bbc.co.uk
BBC News - On the trail of George Orwell’s outcasts
6 August 2011 Last updated at 01:40On the trail of George Orwell’s outcasts
By Emma Jane Kirby BBC News, Paris and LondonOrwell's narration begins in the street he called the Rue du Coq d'Or, in the 5th Arrondissement, where he once lived
Some 80 years after George Orwell chronicled the lives of the hard-up and destitute in his book Down and Out in Paris and London, what has changed? Retracing the writer's footsteps, Emma Jane Kirby finds the hallmarks of poverty identified by Orwell - addiction, exhaustion and, often, a quiet dignity - are as apparent now as they were then.
"Quarrels, and the desolate cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children chasing-orange-peel over the cobbles, and at night loud singing and the sour reek of the refuse carts, made up the atmosphere of the street…. Poverty is what I'm writing about and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum."
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote Emma Jane Kirby'Tomber dans la misere' (falling into misery), is the phrase she whispers most and I notice her breath is sour like someone who diets or skips meals”
Such was George Orwell's recollection of what he called the Rue du Coq d'Or in Paris, 1929 - the real-life Rue du Pot de Fer. Today it's pleasure rather than poverty that defines the Latin Quarter that Orwell frequented 80-odd years ago. The chic pavement cafes are full of contented-looking people leisurely sipping their vin rose, and the air is perfumed by the sweet smell of crepes and tourists' money.
But poverty hasn't left Paris - she's simply changed address. She may not look quite the same as she did in the 1920s but if Orwell were to meet her again on these streets, he'd know her straight away. And I doubt he'd find her greatly changed...
Poverty came knocking on Claudine's door five years ago when she was made redundant. She leans in close to me as she talks, her right hand often rising to her mouth as if it wants to censor the words that her lips keep forming. "Tomber dans la misere" (falling into misery), is the phrase she whispers most and I notice her breath is sour like someone who diets or skips meals.
"We don't eat lunch," she tells me. "It's just my little way of economising." She nods down to her bulging shopping caddy. "It's enough for my family's dinner," she says, "but not enough for two meals a day."
ShameClaudine and I are sitting in a big warehouse in the north of Paris, which serves as a food distribution centre for the city's chronically poor. It reminds me of the sort of indoor market you find in the less salubrious quarters of former Soviet states - mountains of unbranded pasta and rice piled on tables, misshapen, anaemic-looking vegetables wilting in crates, biscuits and chocolate wrapped in such bland, stark white paper, that not even a child could be excited by its contents.
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We watch the steady line of people, Europeans, Maghrebians and West Africans, methodically trudging from table to table, collecting their rations and stuffing them quickly into a pram hood or caddy. Despite the animated cheerfulness of the staff, I notice not one of the customers meets their eye as they take the food parcels.
Shame, Claudine - who is French - tells me, is what links everyone here. She's told no-one that her weekly shop is a hand-out and she doubts anyone else here has admitted it either.
The secrecy that's attached to poverty is one of the first things that struck Orwell.
"From the start," he wrote, "it tangles you in a net of lies and even with the lies you can hardly manage it."
Continue reading the main storyOrwell the down and out
Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a British colonial civil servant. He was educated in England and, after he left Eton, joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony.
He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs. He described his experiences in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933.
In Paris, he washed dishes at the overpriced "Hotel X", in a filthy, hot kitchen.
He met "eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent".
Milly is fighting poverty with a fierce, indignant energy. A bilingual secretary from Cameroon, she is immaculately dressed and has the practised deportment of a society debutante.
In the drop-in centre where I meet her, she looks decidedly out of place next to the dusty, weary figures that are slumped beside her. Appearances, she tells me, are everything if one is to cling on to one's dignity. She agrees to talk to me but only in a private room so that the other people here won't realise that her situation is as bad as theirs. When the door closes she tells me that she's homeless and last night she slept on a veranda.
Milly is facing deportation. She came here legally but after she fell ill and had to stop working, her carte de sejour - the papers that allow her to stay and work in France - were revoked. She admits that she is homesick but is terrified to return to Cameroon empty-handed. I ask her if her family know she's homeless and she throws her hands up in the air and rolls her eyes in horror.
"It would kill them," she tells me. "They would drop down dead with shame."
Aching all overWhen I meet Modi from Mali, he looks as if he might drop down dead with fatigue. Like Orwell, Modi is a plongeur, a washer-upper in a big restaurant and he works six days a week, 12 hours a day cleaning pots and pans.
When we talk in the bar of a neighbouring restaurant, his head keeps drooping onto his folded arms and it seems to be such an effort for him to articulate his words that he either slurs them all together in a gluey, glottal jumble, or shoots out small phrases in tiny bursts of energy that fizzle out before the last word has been formed.
Orwell complained that when working as a plongeur he felt as if his back were broken and his head "filled with hot cinders". Modi agrees that he aches all over and at the end of the day he cannot feel his feet.
Because rent in Paris is too expensive, he lives an hour's train ride outside the city. Although after midnight the trains are slower so it takes two hours for Modi to get home. He gets up at 0700 and gets to bed at 0200. Most plongeurs in Paris these days are either Pakistani or West African. I stop asking myself why that is, when Modi tells me how much he is paid - just under 4 euros (£3.50) an hour. He's working, of course, "on the black".
"The last time I had a night out," he says flicking through a virtual diary in his brain, "was... last year."
Madame Jolivet can have as many nights out with friends as she wants to - her problem is she's not allowed to have any nights in with them.
Madame Jolivet's tiny B&B room costs 1,730 euros a month
The rules of her B&B state clearly that visitors are not permitted, but I have managed to frighten the landlady into admitting me by pretending to be an official from the local authority. Now I'm standing (albeit slightly stooped) in her fusty-smelling attic apartment.
I am Madame Jolivet's first visitor in six years and she is laughing hysterically at having won this tiny victory over her hated landlady. I tell her that in Orwell's day, the residents in his filthy hotel used to yell "Vache! Salope!" ("Cow! Bitch!") at their landlady, and Madame Jolivet doubles up with mirth as she mimes the insults at the sky-light. Then, quite suddenly, she looks sick with fear and switches the TV on at a high volume, motioning to the door and telling me the landlady is probably listening at it. She's right. We hear her tread softly back down the stairs.
Orwell's hotel room was infested with bugs - Madame Jolivet's is infested with mice. She's tormented by their scratching at night. She's caught them on camera during the day, and once she found one in her fridge. She complained to the landlady who warned her that if she mentions it again, she'll kick her out - after all, she's already been warned that her daughter's voice is too loud.
Madame Jolivet is a large lady and she squeezes herself round the tiny space of her apartment. When she's at the sink she's jammed between the bed and the table, her body painfully curved sideways to avoid smacking her head on the sloped ceiling. The landlady charges 1,730 euros (£1,500) a month for this space which she rents out as a 16 sq m apartment. Recently the police did a spot check on Madame Jolivet's apartment and recorded the actual habitable surface area as just 5 sq m - that's the size of about six or seven beach towels.
Madame Jolivet lives here with her grown-up son and daughter. Until last year her other daughter lived with them, too, but she tried to kill herself twice and is now in psychiatric care.
Although it's miles from the hostel where she's staying tonight, Milly, the dignified lady from Cameroon offers to come with me in the taxi to the Gare du Nord where I'm catching my train home to London to make my next step of Orwell's journey.
"In my country," she smiles, "we never let a traveller start a journey alone."
She's very jolly in the cab, reminiscing about her family, her sister in London, the present she sent her nephew in America last year. By the time we get to the Eurostar terminal I've completely forgotten that Milly's homeless and I realise with a real physical shock that this is exactly what she wanted, that she wanted me to see her as she was before poverty possessed her - a very proper, very animated, valuable woman.
She waves me off, her whole body swaying into the gesture, in that exaggerated way that small children say goodbye. Each time I turn, she's still there, both arms in the air, her head following the rhythm.
Sitting in my seat on the train, my eyes closed, I can see her still. The last line from a Stevie Smith poem comes into my head:
Not Waving but Drowning...
Orwell closely studied the tramps of London
"There exists in our minds," wrote Orwell, "a sort of ideal or typical tramp - a repulsive, rather dangerous creature, who would die rather than work or wash, and wants nothing but to beg, drink and rob hen-houses... I am not saying, of course, that most tramps are ideal characters; I am only saying that they are ordinary human beings, and that if they are worse than other people it is the result and not the cause of their way of life."
Five minutes inside the soup-kitchen in Hackney, east London, and I immediately understand what Orwell meant - that the "typical tramp" does not exist.
The "service-users" - as the volunteers here call them - are a truly disparate group - some look as if they've just stepped off the tube after a busy day at work, others are unkempt and smell feral. Some are evidently fighting a losing battle with drugs and alcohol, while others look more in keeping with an old folks' home.
A well-spoken woman who is far more elegantly dressed than I am, and whom I take to be a doctor, confides in me her concerns about the well-being of a schizophrenic service-user she recently escorted to hospital. She then confounds me by sitting down to eat the free meal. A man with a carefully oiled black quiff is introduced to me by a grinning volunteer as Shakin' Stevens. I smile conspiratorially with him at Shaky's delusions and am later told by the service manager that the volunteer, himself, is delusional and has been coming here to eat each week for years.
MisfitsToday's 'down and outs' are known as 'service-users'
What was it that Orwell said? "Change places and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?"
I am instantly struck by the civility of the meal time. A tattooed and very inebriated punk knocks over an elderly lady's walking frame as he staggers to find a free seat. He apologises, asks if the seat beside her is taken and then appears to engage her in polite conversation. When he is served a plate of Mediterranean vegetable pasta by the charming French chef, he thanks her profusely and leaning towards the Polish man opposite him asks if he would kindly pass the salt?
As I pour tea and coffee, an emaciated black man in a filthy sweatshirt shakes my hand warmly and asks me how I'm doing today? Society's misfits, fitting in.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote GrantSo that's what you think is it? I'm just yet another homeless drunk? ”
It's here I meet Stuart, who is currently on a methadone programme and who has serious mental health problems. Physically abused by his father, Stuart was put into care in the North East of England, where he claims he was then systematically sexually abused until he gathered the courage to run away to London at the age of 15.
Aside from a brief respite of a year or two when he had a council flat, the London streets have been the only home he's known. He is now 40. I ask him to tell me what he remembers about those early years sleeping rough.
He doesn't miss a beat before replying, "Crack, heroin, begging, robbing, stealing and mugging". An entire life, reduced into just six words.
Grant on the other hand can talk the hind legs off a donkey but he prefers to steer clear of personal details, claiming there are many people worse off than him.
He zooms through his life story with a dismissive wave of his hand - adopted, never held down a relationship, used to work in social care, lost his job, lives in a hostel, spent a long time in hospital after being brutally attacked on the street.
Orwell did the rounds of the night shelters and soup kitchens of London
He leaves out the part about his fairly evident problems with alcohol and when, three weeks into our acquaintance, I ask him about that side of his life he snarls defensively, "So that's what you think is it? I'm just yet another homeless drunk?"
Grant is articulate and funny. He's wary and prickly, yet sensitive and compassionate.
He likes Orwell but prefers Jack London. When my questions become woolly, he pulls me up for being unfocused and he is constantly re-assessing and re-evaluating his own beliefs and opinions. Twice after our meetings he has sent me text messages, apologising for sounding grumpy. When we talk late in the evening, he suddenly checks his watch and becomes concerned about how I'm going to get home to the other side of London. When I ask what keeps him going in life, he gestures towards the volunteers who are clearing up the kitchen.
"Belief in your fellow man's goodness," he says. "Because by and large people are good, aren't they?"
RecessionOrwell always defended tramps' reputation as "drunks", pointing out that none of the tramps he knew had any money with which to buy beer. But today alcohol is cheap and features heavily in the lives of many of those on the streets. Not least in the lives of the many Poles who came to seek their fortunes as labourers in the UK when the borders opened in 2004.
When the recession bit and the building sites closed, they had limited access to benefits and quickly found themselves homeless. The volunteers in many of the drop-in centres and soup kitchens I visit in London tell me that around a good third or even half of their service-users are now Polish. As one careworker put it, they're "Orwell's latter-day Irish tramp" - Catholic, slightly on the fringe of the London homeless community, and plagued with a "great thirst".
Continue reading the main storyLondon
In London, the narrator lives as a tramp, stopping off in a variety of accommodation - lodging houses, tramps' hostels and Salvation Army shelters.
He meets a number of characters, including Bozo, a pavement artist, storyteller and philosopher, who is adept in the technique of begging.
One chapter is devoted to the fine points of London guttersnipe slang.
Zibbi, who's in his early 40s came to the UK seven years ago, where he got work in a salad factory in Peterborough. For nine months life was "good-good", he tells me in his broken English.
"Good-good, because Zibbi is good and Zibbi no drink."
Zibbi refers to himself almost entirely in the third person, as if while talking to me, he has stepped outside of himself and has become a detached observer, albeit with an anthropological curiosity in his own behaviour.
"Do Zibbi drink today?" he asks me.
By the look - and smell of Zibbi - he does little else but drink these days. His face has bloated and taken on the colour of ripe plums, his hands shake and the sharp stench of pure alcohol from his breath overpowers even the acrid, vinegary smell of his clothes and the odour of hot grease from his recent fried breakfast, which still hangs in fat little globules in his beard and moustache.
He shakes his head. "Oh, lady," he says, "Zibbi drink not a little drink, Zibbi drink and drink. He drink vodka til…" (he makes a gesture of passing out). "Until bang and bye bye. Game over."
Zibbi blames the heavy drinking culture of his country for his weakness and claims his cousin, Miro, is the worst influence on him, egging him on to have just one more. Frequently he seems to set himself on stage, theatrically acting out imagined dialogue he has with Miro and with his disgusted family. It's like watching a medieval morality play, with the forces of Good and Evil battling for power.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote MikaelI've thought about [my situation] so many times on the streets - especially when I'm alone, but no-one really asked me before... I feel strengthless and hopeless”
The drop-in centre has set Zibbi up with an alcohol adviser who is trying to help him cut down his alcohol consumption. He talks about her in hallowed terms, and when he whispers her name "Karen", he lifts his hands and face to heaven. I suspect she's the only woman he has regular contact with. When I meet Karen later she tells me that she's trying to wean Zibbi off calling her "Mummy".
I ask Zibbi what he thinks of himself and he looks startled. "Me? Zibbi?" he asks uncertainly and his eyes become confused as if he's struggling to connect the alcoholic Zibbi character with the man who speaks his words.
"I… I… I don't know," he stutters. He hangs his head and slumps in his chair.
"So tired lady. I… I…"
'Not needed'Zibbi becomes distressed as he fruitlessly searches for words which might join his isolated personal pronoun and we stop the interview. I realise he has totally lost his sense of self.
A few miles east in Hackney, and Mikael, a young, good-looking Pole in his late 20s, has also lost his identity - or at least his identity papers. Someone stole them one night a few months back when he'd blacked out in a vodka-induced stupor. Mikael is so softly spoken that he's barely audible at times. He tells me that talking to me is like going to Confession.
"I've thought about it [my situation] so many times on the streets," he says. "Especially when I'm alone, but no-one really asked me before... I feel strengthless and hopeless."
Mikael underestimates himself. A bright man and a fluent English speaker, he's enrolled in an Alcoholics Anonymous programme and, in a bid to stay on track, has made the very difficult decision to eschew the company of his fellow Poles and all other rough sleepers. He is still on the streets but unlike Zibbi, he is wearing freshly laundered clothes and looks fit and fairly healthy. He may not smell of alcohol but he reeks of loneliness.
Seven years ago, life was very different for Mikael. He had a legal, well-paid job as a labourer, he had a fiancee, a studio-flat and a gym membership. There were holidays, cinema trips, football matches - there was, as Mikael puts, it a time when he was "really connected to society… and there was a future". Then his boss sold his business and moved overseas. Mikael began drinking heavily, lost his studio and his girlfriend. I ask him what he misses most about his old life, fully expecting him to say the obvious things - a hot shower, a comfortable bed, his own food. But Mikael says something quite different.
"I feel like I'm not needed by this world. Like nobody needs me," he says quietly. "I miss my girlfriend because I felt then someone needed me. And I felt needed in terms of work."
The evil of poverty, wrote Orwell, is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. Work, he insisted, is the only thing to turn a half-alive vagrant into a self-respecting human being.
Mikael is desperate to find a job believing that work is the yellow brick road which will lead him "to come back to the normal life," as he puts it. Although he admits that it's hard to keep motivated when you wake up cold, wet and shattered from a disturbed night in a shop doorway.
Mikael's progress is sporadic. He has long spells when he's free of alcohol and then sudden lapses which infuriate him and provoke tirades of self hatred, especially when he imagines what his family back home in Poland would say if they knew he was on the streets.
I return to the soup kitchen three weeks later confident of meeting Mikael again but worryingly, he doesn't turn up. I think of the boyish shyness which passed across his face when he had told me that sometimes when he was very lonely he talked to God. The prayer he recited was always the same:
"Hello God - I hope you still remember me and keep some faith in me."
At the end of Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell asks himself what he's learnt from his experiences on the streets and in deference to the great man I shall ask myself the same question. I have learnt how quickly the dry rot of poverty stultifies and festers, crumbling confidence and destroying dignity.
I have seen how poverty marginalises, separates and ridicules. And I have understood that the chief cruelty of homelessness is that it doesn't dull the sensibilities of the man sleeping in the doorway but rather spitefully heightens them, forcing upon him so many cavernous hours in which he can burn with shame, ache with loneliness and cry for his mother.
Perhaps Mikael sums it up for everyone I have met both in Paris and London when he says, "You know it's so easy to lose everything. But it's so, so tough to get it back."
via bbc.co.uk
Largest US online child porn ring dismantled - Americas - Al Jazeera English
Largest US online child porn ring dismantled
Last Modified: 03 Aug 2011 22:30
The US attorney general's office says more than 70 people arrested over "Dreamboard" [Reuters] US authorities say they have dismantled an online bulletin board allegedly used by over 600 people around the world to trade graphic images and videos of child sex abuse.
More than 70 people have been charged in connection with the private site, which was called "Dreamboard" and gave members varying access to the material.
Board members who molested children themselves getting the most coveted "Super VIP" access to pictures and videos, they said.
"To put it simply, we have charged that these individuals shared a dream - to create the preeminent online community for the promotion of child sexual exploitation," attorney general Eric Holder told reporters.
"But for the children they victimised, this was nothing short of a nightmare."
US officials called it the largest prosecution of people who participated in an online child exploitation enterprise operated for the purpose of promoting child sexual abuse, disseminating child pornography and evading law enforcement.
The bulletin board, created in 2008, folded in the spring of this year when members became aware of the US government's investigation, Justice Department officials said.
The 600 members of Dreamboard offered to trade images and videos of infants and children 12 and younger, contained in some 27,000 posts, the authorities said.
"The nature of this crime is abhorrent. These are some of the most disturbing images I think you will ever see," Holder said, adding that some victims were in obvious pain and crying.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said digital media recovered from those arrested in the US included more than 1 million images of child pornography.
Of those charged in the US, 43 have been arrested in this country and nine foreign nationals have been arrested overseas, including accused bulletin board administrators located in Canada and France, the officials said.
Global syndicate
The board's three other administrators have yet to be identified and authorities were seeking to identify other members and the victims, they said. About one-third of the members were in the US and the rest were overseas.
"The dismantling of Dreamboard is another stark warning to would-be child predators who think they can trade in child pornography," said John Morton, director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which conducted the investigation.
The board's administrators required prospective members to upload child pornography when applying for membership, the officials said. The more content the members provided, the more child pornography they could access.
Members used encryption programs, proxy servers to disguise a user's location, and aliases rather than their real names in an effort to avoid detection, the officials said.
Some of the criminal charges carry sentences ranging from 20 years to life in prison. The officials said 13 of those charged in the US have already pleaded guilty.
Impunity cloaks abuse of girls in Jamaica - Features - Al Jazeera English
Impunity cloaks abuse of girls in Jamaica
Last Modified: 06 Aug 2011 18:20
Child rape is one of the fastest growing crimes in Jamaica [Photo: Thomas Devenishek] When a jury acquitted a Jamaican-born American pastor of carnal abuse charges in June, outraged islanders were forced to recognise that cultural norms seem to be promoting the sexual abuse of young girls.
Just over two years ago, in June 2009, Paul Lewis was arrested and charged with having sex with a 15-year-old girl - carnal abuse - and the indecent assault of her 14-year-old friend in his Negril hotel room.
Lewis' acquittal, despite the presence of DNA evidence, stunned many, including child advocate Betty Ann Blaine founder of Hear the Children's Cry, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the wellbeing of the nation's children.
According to Blaine, who is now campaigning for international help to address the problem, child rape is one of the fastest growing crimes in Jamaica, "with little or no public outcry".
Radio talk shows flooded with calls even as many Jamaicans speculated that the victims, and perhaps the jurors as well, had been "paid off" or bribed. It is a theory shared by the police, as Lewis is still to face charges for "perverting the course of justice". Given the high profile of the case, Blaine also questioned the competence of the public prosecutor.
"Over the last two years I have known of at least three cases of children under 12 years old in which the accused have walked free even when there was DNA evidence. One child was only six years old," Blaine said in an article criticising the verdict.
In many inner city areas, women are forced to "hand over" their adolescent daughters to local criminal leaders who use violence to control their communities. It is also not uncommon for families here to accept payment or be coerced into covering up sexual abuse of minors to prevent scandals or to avoid "shaming the family" members and friends.
Charles Black, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, spoke of several incidents in his small district in the eastern parish of St Thomas, where the carnal abuse of children as young as ten years old has gone unreported for decades because residents are unwilling to "send relatives to jail".
"There is an uproar when it happens, then everybody comes to quash it because it is mainly family here," he explained. He cited the recent examples of two teenaged girls - 13 and 15 years old – who were impregnated by older men in the small community.
According to official data, in 2004, teenaged girls accounted for 70 per cent of reported sexual assaults. In 2006, 78 per cent of sexual assault/rape cases admitted to hospital were children and adolescents. Girls under the age of 16 accounted for 32 per cent of all sexual assaults.
Amnesty International's 2006 report, "Sexual violence against women and girls in Jamaica: 'Just a little sex'", attributed the high rate of under-reporting to "entrenched discrimination" and the "trivialisation" of sexual violence by family and acquaintances as "just a little sex".
In fact, local police believe that carnal abuse - in which adults engage in sexual relationships with minors - is frequently covered up after monetary payments are made. And despite recent legislative reforms, officials say the problem is growing.
At a press conference in May to name the island's most wanted sexual offenders, the Jamaican constabulary reported an increase in the number of child rape cases.
The deputy superintendent of the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA), Gloria Davis Simpson, told journalists that, since the start of 2011, sexual attacks on 11- to 15-year-olds had increased. There was also a spike in the number of attacks on very young boys, she said.
"Incest has become a worrying trend. Also, in the case of carnal abuse, teenage boys are now targeting children ten and younger," Davis Simpson said.
Davis Simpson said that offenders have also begun targeting young women and girls via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
The government has taken some steps to address the problem. A new Child Care Protection Act was passed, along with an alert system to help find missing children. The post of children's advocate was created, and a child abuse hotline launched.
The Ananda Alert, named for 11-year-old Ananda Dean who was kidnapped, raped and murdered while on the way home from school, allows police to circumvent the 48-hour waiting period required to report of missing children.
In addition, the police branch dedicated to the investigation of sexual crimes was overhauled and given special responsibility for children.
Activists say part of the problem is the lack of a sexual offenders registry, despite its inclusion in the 2009 revision of the Sexual Offences Bill.
Data from the Ministry of Health show sexual assault as the second most common cause of injury for women, accounting for five per cent of all injuries in hospitals. Some studies indicate that as many as a quarter of Jamaican girls are forced into sex at least once.
A March 2009 Guttmacher Institute report on teenage pregnancy and sexuality found that roughly half of pregnant teens between the ages of 15 to 17 years had been coerced into sex or raped. One-third of the interviewees said that their first sexual experience had been "persuaded or forced".
Police Commissioner Owen Ellington this year announced that CISOCA - the arm of the constabulary responsible for prosecuting sexual offences - and other state agencies would turn their attention to "strengthening the regulations" to provide tougher punishment for sexual offences.
But advocates remain concerned about apparent "leniency" in the judicial system towards sexual offenders.
Children's Advocate Mary Clarke says she believes that convictions for child rape will increase if the laws facilitate the submission of taped evidence of the children involved in such cases.
A version of this article first appeared on the Inter Press Service news agency.
Shell Island, Llanbedr... Daily Star: Simply The Best 7 Days A Week :: News :: Kerry Katona is a happy camper after getting back with her old boyfriend
KERRY KATONA IS A HAPPY CAMPER AFTER GETTING BACK WITH HER OLD BOYFRIEND
ABOVE: Kerry Katona and boyfriend Adam Waldon are back together
She now thinks Adam Waldon and Kerry Katona are the lowest of the low and reckons she’s more than welcome to him
A pal of Adam's ex-girlfriend Caroline talks about the couple's rekindled romance
LOVED-up Kerry Katona is back in the arms of her old flame and preparing to rekindle their romance under canvas.
Handyman Adam Waldron is planning to whisk the TV reality star and her children off to a campsite for a £7.25-a-night break.
He is hoping that once they have pitched their tent on the spectacular North Wales coast she will realise she was wrong to end their five-month affair last year.
But his weekend beach jaunt to Shell Island near Harlech – the largest camping site in Europe, set in 450 acres – has left Adam’s other former girlfriend spitting with rage.
Blonde Caroline Harrison accused I’m A Celebrity winner Kerry, 30, of snatching the painter and decorator away from her and has branded her “a wicked, home-wrecking bitch”.
Telecom sales girl Caroline, 24, claims the former Atomic Kitten muscled in on her six-month live-in affair with golf-mad Adam, 34, and won him back with flirty phone calls, texts and Facebook messages.
Caroline stormed out of the pad she shared with Adam three weeks ago, confiding in friends that she could not go on having “three people in our relationship”.
Last night, one of her close pals blasted: “She now thinks he and Kerry are the lowest of the low and reckons she’s more than welcome to him.
“She’s heard from Adam’s mates that he is so smitten with Kerry that he wants to take her to this campsite where they can have a right load of fun and talk about the old times.
“Caroline always suspected he still fancied Kerry like hell and now it’s all come out in the wash. He hasn’t wasted a second since she packed her bags and left.”
The final straw came when Caroline, from Alderley Edge, Cheshire, stumbled across a secret shrine to Kerry in their bedroom, featuring every newspaper article about the star.
Heartbroken Caroline was so livid she wrote “Thank you very much” on a card she had bought him to mark their six-month anniversary and slammed it on top of the cuttings pile, before packing her bags and leaving.
Adam’s friends believe the camping trip will also include Kerry’s two children Heidi, four, and three-year-old Max from her doomed three-year marriage to ex-cabbie Mark Croft, 40.
It is thought her other two children Molly, nine, and Lilly-Sue, eight, may be away at the time with their dad, former Westlife singer Brian McFadden, 31.
One pal said: “All Adam’s mates know he has never stopped having a soft spot for Kerry, even when he was with Caroline.
“He very much sees his future with her and doesn’t want her to slip away like she did last time.
“He’s going to do everything possible to keep hold of her.”
Kerry’s mum Sue, 51, fears her daughter is in meltdown and needs stability since being ditched by her agents Can Associates following a wild bender in Marbella
via dailystar.co.uk
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Use the Internet safely - http://www.ikwro.org.uk
Use the Internet safely
Warning: if you are worried about someone knowing you have visited this website please read the following safety information.Please note, the information below is for guidance only and may not completely cover your tracks. If you want to be completely sure of not being tracked online, the safest way would be to access the internet at a local library, a friend's house or at work.
How can an abuser discover your internet activities?
As a rule, internet browsers will save certain information as you surf the internet. This includes images from websites visited, words entered into search engines and a trail ('history') that reveals the sites you have visited. Below are instructions on how to minimize the chances of someone finding out that you have visited this website.
Warning about deleting cookies and address histories
It is important to state that there is a risk involved in removing data from your computer. For instance, if your partner uses online banking and has a saved password, then if you clear the cookies on your PC, your partner will realise you've done so, because their password will no longer be saved. Also, your partner may notice if the address history on the PC has been cleared, and this may raise suspicion.How do I work out which browser I'm using?
If you know what browser you are using, then skip to the relevant instructions below. If you do not know the type of browser you are using, click on Help on the toolbar at the top of the browser screen. A drop down menu will appear, the last entry will say About Internet Explorer, About Mozilla Firefox, or something similar. The entry refers to which browser type you are using - you should then refer to the relevant instructions below.Instructions on how to delete history & cache from your PC:
Internet Explorer 6 (Find your version by selecting Help in the Internet explorer and clicking About Internet Explorer)
Click on the Tools menu and select Internet Options... On the General page, under Temporary Internet Files, click on Delete Cookies and then OK. Click on Delete Files, put a tick in the box labeled Delete all offline content and click OK. Under History, click on Clear History and then OK. Now look at the top of the window and click on the Content tab, select AutoComplete and finally, Clear Forms.
Internet Explorer 7Click on the Tools menu and select Internet Options. In the General page under Browser History, select the Delete... button. Either select and Delete each section: Temporary internet files; Cookies, History; Forms data and Passwords; or select the Delete all... button at the bottom to clear everything.Firefox 1 (NOT /Netscape)
Click on Tools and then Options, then click on Privacy. Click on the Clear button next to History; Saved Form Information; Cookies and Cache.
Netscape 7Click on the Edit menu and select Preferences. In the left pane, expand History then in the right area click Clear History. Next, expand Privacy and Security and select Cookies then on the button Manage Stored Cookies and in the new dialog box click Remove All Cookies. Then repeat similar for Forms and the Manage Stored Form Data button and the same for Passwords and the Manage Stored Passwords button. Aditionally, you may Manage Forms, Cookies and Passwords individually from the Tools menu - but not the temporary page Cache files.Opera
Click on Tools and then Preferences. Click on the Advanced tab and then the History section on the left-hand side. Click the Clear button to the right of Addresses and the Empty Now button to the right of Disk cache. Opera does not have an easy wasy to clear all Cookies.Safari (often used on Apple Macs)Resetting Safari clears the history, empties the cache, clears the Downloads
window, and removes all cookies. It also removes any saved user names and
passwords or other AutoFill data and clears Google/Yahoo search entries.To do this go to the Safari menu at top left hand screen. Choose Reset Safari, and click Reset.
Deleting your browsing history:Internet browsers also keep a record of all the web pages you visit. This is known as a 'history'. To delete history for Internet Explorer and Netscape/Firefox hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, then press the H key (Crtl, Alt and H for Opera). Find any entries that say www.ikwro.org.uk, right click and choose Delete. For Safari, select History at top of the screen and choose "Clear History"
E-mail:
If an abuser sends you threatening or harassing e-mail messages, they may be printed and saved as evidence of this abuse. Any email you have previously sent will be stored in Sent Items.
If you started an email but didn't finish it, it might be in your Drafts folder. If you reply to any email, the original message will probably be in the body of the message - print and delete the email if you dont want anyone to see your original message.When you delete an item in any email program (Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird etc) it does not really delete the item - it moves the item to a folder called Deleted Items. You have to delete the items in Deleted Items separately. Right-click on items within the Deleted Items folder to delete individual items.
Toolbars:
Toolbars such as Google, AOL and Yahoo keep a record of the search words you have typed into the toolbar search box. In order to erase all the search words you have typed in, you will need to check the individual instructions for each type of toolbar. For example, for the Google toolbar all you need to do is click on the Google icon, and choose "Clear Search History".
General security:If you do not use a password to log on to your computer, someone else will be able to access your email and track your internet usage. The safest way to find information on the internet, would be at a local library, a friend's house, or at work.
(copied from Women's Aid)
via ikwro.org.uk
http://www.ikwro.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=128
IKWRO
Welcome to the website of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO).
The Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) is a registered charity. It was set up in 2002 by our director Diana Nammi, in partnership with other refugee women from Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan.
At IKWRO we believe that all women have the right to live without fear and oppression. We provide confidential advice and other support to Middle Eastern women and girls who are facing domestic violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and ‘honour’ based violence. We can offer help in Farsi, Kurdish, Dari, Arabic and Turkish. IKWRO aims to preserve Middle Eastern (Iranian, Kurdish, Afghan, Turkish and Arab) women’s and girls’ rights and equality, to combat discrimination and violence against women, and to empower women to access their rights and entitlements in the UK. We are not affiliated with any religion or political ideology and we help women of all backgrounds. As well as supporting women directly, we offer advice and training for professionals from the public sector and voluntary organisations to enable them to meet the needs of our clients.
We also campaign to raise public awareness of issues such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation and ‘honour’ based violence and to push for better laws and policies to protect women’s rights.
via ikwro.org.uk
Nominations are open for the True Honour Awards! « A blog by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation
Do you know someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the fight against honour based violence in the UK?
IKWRO announced earlier this year that we will grant True Honour Awards to one individual and one organisation. The winners will receive £1000 each as well as a commemorative piece of crystal.
The awards ceremony will take place in November and we are currently calling for nominations. We want to hear from you if you know a person or an organisation who deserves a True Honour Award.
How to nominate someone
To nominate someone, simply write to us with the following information (no more than two pages please):
- Your name, organisation, email and phone number.
- The name, organisation, email and phone number of the person or organisation you are nominating.
- How you know your nominee.
- Details of how your nominee has contributed to the fight against honour based violence.
- Why you think your nominee should receive a True Honour Award.
Send your nomination to campaigns.ikwro@gmail.com or to IKWRO, PO Box 65840, LONDON EC2P 2FS. Please make sure it reaches us by Monday 26 September 2011.
Some ideas for who to nominate (just to get you thinking…)
- Survivors of honour based violence who have used their experience to help others.
- People who have spoken out against honour based violence in their community or workplace, in parliament, in the media or elsewhere.
- Groups who help victims of honour based violence, for example through a helpline, support group or refuge.
- People who have helped to bring perpetrators of honour based violence to justice, for example a police officer, a lawyer or a witness in a trial.
- People who have found creative ways to raise awareness of honour based violence, for example by writing about it, making a film or producing an artwork.
Why are we granting True Honour Awards?
We want to raise awareness of the problem of honour based violence, and to recognise those who struggle to prevent it and protect those at risk. There are an estimated 12 honour killings in the UK each year, and many more women face other forms of honour based violence, including beatings, imprisonment and forced marriage.
If you have any questions about the True Honour Award you can call IKWRO on 0207 920 6460 or email campaigns.ikwro@gmail.com.
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MAASTRICHT COFFEESHOPS TO BAN ALL BUT DUTCH, GERMANS AND BELGIANS - Encod.org
MAASTRICHT COFFEESHOPS TO BAN ALL BUT DUTCH, GERMANS AND BELGIANS
Published on Friday 5 August 2011 10:28, by . Modified on Friday 5 August 2011 10:27
All the versions of this article: [English] [Nederlands]
Source: Trouw
04 August 2011
Cannabis cafes in Maastricht are to ban all but Dutch, German and Belgian nationals from their premises as part of a plan to reduce the nuisance caused by marijuana smokers, Trouw reports on Thursday.
Marc Josemans, of the local cannabis cafe owners association, told the paper the ban will reduce the number of marijuana tourists coming to the border town by some 500,000 a year - or 20% of the total. Some 70% of the city’s coffee shop customers come from abroad.
Visitors from Germany and Belgium will still be allowed in the cafes because the two countries border the Netherlands, Trouw says.
City council
The paper says Maastricht city council ’takes note of the plan but does not support it’. And, it points out, the plan can be considered discriminatory because not all foreigners are being banned.
The council has been trying to reduce drugs tourism for several years.
The national government already has plans to stop everyone who is not an official resident of the Netherlands from buying marijuana in coffee shops by turning them all into members’ only clubs.
The European court of justice has said this is technically possible under EU law.
via encod.org
mChip: The 'credit card' that can tell you if you have HIV within minutes and costs just $1 | Mail Online
The 'credit card' that can tell you if you have HIV within minutes and costs just $1
- The mChip takes less than 15minutes to test with near 100% accuracy
Last updated at 12:59 PM on 5th August 2011
A portable blood test that can diagnose an infection within minutes has been hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the developing world.
The size of a credit card, the mChip has proved almost 100 per cent accurate in testing for HIV in Rwanda.
Hundreds of tests using a prototype were carried out in the town of Kigali and returned a 95 per cent accuracy for HIV and 76 per cent for syphilis.
How it works: The mChip (right) has proved almost 100 per cent accurate in testing for HIV in Rwanda. It comes with a cheap detector (left) if clarification is needed
The plastic device, manufactured in the U.S. and developed by scientists at the University of Columbia in New York, costs just $1 (60p) to make.
Lead researcher Professor Samuel Sia said: 'The idea is to make a large class of diagnostic tests accessible to patients in any setting in the world, rather than forcing them to go to a clinic to draw blood and then wait days for their results.'
The mChip uses optics to read fluids by taking a single pin-prick of blood.
Lead researcher Samuel Sia and his team set out to make a cheap, portable device
It contains ten detection zones which the blood passes through and then returns a positive or negative result for HIV/AIDS or syphilis in about 15 minutes.
The result is presented in a simple colour-coded manner similar to a pregnancy test, making it extremely easy to use and understand.
An alternative is to use a cheap detector box - the 'lab' - to check the results.
The mChip's low cost and efficiency has been hailed as a major breakthrough in the fight against HIV in the developing world.
Drugs to place HIV in remission have long been available but have been deemed too expensive to use on a widescale basis.
The mChip, on the other hand, is extremely cheap, can fit in an aid worker's pocket and produces a result with a high degree of accuracy within 15 minutes.
Researchers are now hoping to increase testing for sexually-transmitted diseases in pregnant women in Africa
via dailymail.co.uk
Crop circles: Now even ET is at it (with a little help from mircowaves and GPS) | Mail Online
Now even ET is making crop circles (with a little help from GPS and MICROWAVES)
Last updated at 8:21 PM on 2nd August 2011
UFO fanatics clinging to the belief that extra-terrestrials are responsible for crop circles sometimes like to echo the X Files catchphrase: ‘The truth is out there.’
But, as it turns out, the answer might actually be much closer to home - inside your kitchen in fact.
Because, for example, this 200ft image of a pipe-smoking alien – carved into a Wiltshire field – could have been created using an ordinary microwave oven, according to scientists.
From kitchen to field: Microwaves may have created this 200ft alien crop circle near Cherhill, Wiltshire
A handheld device called magnetron – made using parts from the common household cooker and a 12-volt battery – may have ushered in a new generation of crop circles.
Professor Richard Taylor, a physicist, claims to be able to reproduce the intricate damage inflicted on crops using such a gadget developed by his team at the University of Oregon.
He believes similar advances have been made by others – despite avid UFO spotters insisting that the growing phenomenon is beyond scientific understanding.
Prof Taylor said microwaves – the radiation waves that are capable of heating food when utilised in an oven - cause crop stalks to fall over and cool in a horizontal position.
The technique could explain the speed and efficiency of the artists and the incredible detail that some new crop circles exhibit, such as the alien, which was created two weeks ago alongside an ancient white horse at Cherhill, near Stonehenge.
Strange goings on: The two-week-old alien appeared alongside an ancient white horse, near Stonehenge
Dispensing with rope, wooden planks and bar stools that have traditionally been used to create such designs, Prof Taylor suggested these spectacular patterns could also be carved with lasers.
And he believes the satellite Global Positioning System could track the markings.
Mathematical analysis of some of these ever-more complex designs has revealed the use of constructions lines, invisible to the eye, that are used to design the patterns.
Writing in Physics World, he said: ‘Crop-circle artists are not going to give up their secrets easily.
‘This summer, unknown artists will venture into the countryside close to your homes and carry out their craft, safe in the knowledge that they are continuing the legacy of the most science-oriented art movement in history.’
Physics World editor Matin Durrani said: ‘It may seem odd for a physicist such as Taylor to be studying crop circles, but then he is merely trying to act like any good scientist - examining the evidence for the design and construction of crop circles without getting carried away by the side-show of UFOs, hoaxes and aliens.’
But as fascinating as the patterns are to scientists, farmers find crop circles infuriating.
Tim Carson, who owns the land where the recent alien design appeared, has had 125 circles on his land since 1990.
The price in ruined crops is particularly steep this year because of soaring fuel and fertiliser costs, and a 25 per cent drop in wheat yields due to the drought.
Booming: Crop circles in Wiltshire are attracted tourists to the area, but farmers are unhappy with lost income
Cropping up: This circle is one of those that has appeared at Devizes in the last few weeks
Elaborate: This 409 circles in this creation brought the farmer whose land it was on thousands in media fees and helicopter landing fees
‘I’m beginning to get a bit tired of it all,’ said Mr Carson.
‘Each circle costs me £1,000 in lost income. This year, I decided to destroy circles as soon as I found them, but that means losing more crops. And, whatever you do, the circles affect the growing next year, as the thick mat of crops covers soil, compromising its quality.’
Every year, 50 to 60 circles materialise in the rolling chalk downlands of Wiltshire.
In the rest of the world put together, only 40 to 50 appear annually.
And, in recent years, a booming tourist trade has developed. From Belgium, Holland, America, Norway and Australia, crop-circle enthusiasts come in their thousands — each with their own theory, each rushing to a new site as soon as it is reported.
This week, within hours of the first reports of a new circle on Windmill Hill — near the neolithic stone circle at Avebury — a Dutch tour party of nine people rushed to the spot.
‘There are heaps of biophysical anomalies here,’ said the tour leader, Janet Ossebaard, 45, author of Crop Circles: Scientific Evidence.
Hard at work: Crop circles are often made by groups of six who work at night using basic tools such as bamboo sticks, tape, and 3ft-wide wooden planks
‘This wasn’t made by people, otherwise you’d see damage from board marks [where hoaxers lay planks to flatten the wheat]. It’s been hit by a plasma vortex.
‘You can see the burn marks on the crops and cavities,’ she says, holding up a grain stalk, which does indeed have small holes in it.
‘We also found a half-fried caterpillar. This is a vortex that has been intelligently guided — not by hoaxers, nor the Army [which is heavily represented in this part of Wiltshire].’
Crop circles have been reported in England since 1678, when a Hertfordshire news pamphlet referred to The Mowing Devil, a creature that cut a farmer’s oat crop into a series of concentric circles.
In the 19th century, occasional circles were recorded and the first-known photograph of one appeared in Sussex in 1932.
But it wasn’t until the early Nineties that Wiltshire crop circles started multiplying at an extreme rate.
In 1990, Led Zeppelin released an album, Remasters, with a picture on the cover of an elaborate crop circle created on Mr Carson’s land.
via dailymail.co.uk
United States loses prized AAA credit rating from S&P | Reuters
NEW YORK |
(Reuters) - The United States lost its top-tier AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's on Friday in an unprecedented blow to the world's largest economy in the wake of a political battle that took the country to the brink of default.NEW YORK
S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about the government's budget deficit and rising debt burden. The action is likely to eventually raise borrowing costs for the American government, companies and consumers.
"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics," S&P said in a statement.
The outlook on the new U.S. credit rating is "negative," S&P said in a statement, indicating another downgrade was possible in the next 12 to 18 months.
The move reflects the deterioration in the global economic standing of the United States, which has had a AAA credit rating from S&P since 1941, and it could have implications for the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status.
"The global system must now adjust to the many implications and uncertainties of the once-unthinkable loss of America's AAA," said Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co which oversees $1.2 trillion in assets.
The outlook on the new U.S. credit rating is "negative," S&P said in a statement, indicating another downgrade was possible in the next 12 to 18 months.
The decision follows a fierce political battle in Congress over cutting spending and raising taxes to reduce the government's debt burden and allow its statutory borrowing limit to be raised.
On August 2, President Barack Obama signed legislation designed to reduce the fiscal deficit by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. But that was well short of the $4 trillion in savings S&P had called for as a good "down payment" on fixing America's finances.
The political gridlock in Washington over addressing the long-term fiscal problems facing the United States came against the backdrop of slowing U.S. economic growth and led to the worst week in the U.S. stock market in two years.
The S&P 500 stock index fell 10.8 percent in the past 10 trading days on concerns that the U.S. economy may be heading into another recession and because the European debt crisis has worsened.
Treasury bonds, once indisputably seen as the safest security in the world, are now rated lower than bonds issued by countries such as Britain, Germany, France or Canada.
U.S. TREASURY QUESTIONS CALCULATION
Obama was briefed earlier in the day regarding S&P's intentions, but discussions only took place with Treasury officials and did not include the White House, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
Late on Friday, the Treasury said the rating agency's debt calculations were wrong by some $2 trillion.
S&P confirmed it changed its economic assumptions after discussion with the Treasury Department but said it did not affect its decision to downgrade.
"We take our responsibilities very seriously, and if at the end of our analysis the committee concludes that a rating isn't where we believe it should be, it's our duty to make that call," David Beers, head of sovereign ratings at S&P, told Reuters.
The theme running throughout S&P's analysis is the breakdown in the ability of the Democratic and Republican parties to govern effectively.
The agency said that policymaking and political institutions had weakened in the past few months "to a degree more than we envisioned." This has major implications for the nation's budget and debt problems.
For example, S&P now assumes that tax cuts brought in under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 would not, as planned, expire by 2012 because of staunch Republican opposition to any measure that would raise revenues.
The compromise reached by Republicans and Democrats this week calls for creation of a bipartisan congressional committee to find $1.5 trillion of deficit cuts by late November, beyond the $917 billion already identified.
'DAUNTING' IMPLICATIONS
While the downgrade is a blow to U.S. prestige, it was largely expected and may not have a big impact on trading of U.S. Treasuries and other assets when markets reopen in Asia on Monday.
In fact, Treasuries have rallied this week, driving the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to 2.34 percent, its lowest level in about 10 months. This reflects a belief among investors that U.S. government debt is still a safe bet at a time when prices of stocks and commodities are falling on concern about slowing global economic growth.
"To some extent, I would expect when Tokyo opens on Sunday, that we will see an initial knee-jerk sell-off (in Treasuries) followed by a rally," said Ian Lyngen, senior government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut.
But the downgrade has implications for the country's financial sector, ranging from insurance companies to government-related firms such as housing financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"At least initially, the impact on the market will be negative because there will some forced liquidation of U.S. assets," said Boris Schlossberg, GFT director of currency research.
The downgrade could add up to 0.7 of a percentage point to Treasuries' yields over time, increasing funding costs for public debt by some $100 billion, according to SIFMA, a U.S. securities industry trade group.
The Federal Reserve and other bank regulators moved on Friday to reassure global markets that the downgrade would not mean that additional capital would be needed by banks and other institutions holding Treasury securities.
The Fed also said the cut would not impact the operation of its emergency lending window for banks, nor its buying and selling of Treasury securities to conduct monetary policy.
The impact of S&P's move was tempered by Moody's Investors Service's decision earlier this week confirming, for now, the U.S. Aaa rating. Fitch Ratings said it was still reviewing its AAA rating and would issue its opinion by the end of the month.
S&P's move is also likely to concern foreign creditors especially China, which holds more than $1 trillion of U.S. debt. Beijing has repeatedly urged Washington to protect its U.S. dollar investments by addressing its budget problems.
"China will be forced to consider other investments for its reserves. U.S. Treasuries aren't as safe anymore," said Li Jie, a director at the reserves research institute at the Central University of Finance and Economics.
One currency strategist, however, did not think there would be wholesale selling by foreigners.
"One of the reasons we don't really think foreign investors will start selling U.S. Treasuries aggressively is because there are still few alternatives to the Treasury market in terms of depth and liquidity," said Vassili Serebriakov, currency strategist at Wells Fargo in New York.
He said there was likely to be weakness in the U.S. dollar but a sharp sell-off was unlikely.
S&P had already placed the U.S. credit rating on review for a possible downgrade on July 14 on concerns that Congress was not adequately addressing the fiscal deficit of about $1.4 trillion this year, about 9.0 percent of gross domestic product, one of the highest since World War II.
But Obama administration officials grew increasingly frustrated with the rating agency during the debt limit debate and accused S&P of moving the goal posts in its downgrade warnings, sources familiar with talks between the administration and the agency have said.
The downgrade was immediately pounced on by candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination. Mitt Romney said the move was "a deeply troubling indicator of our country's decline under President Obama," while Jon Huntsman said it was due to spreading of a "cancerous debt afflicting our nation."
The downgrade, 15 months before the next presidential election, and debt will be top campaign issues.
(Reporting by Walter Brandimarte and Daniel Bases; additional reporting by Burton Frierson, Chris Reese, Alexandra Alper, Jennifer Ablan, Wanfeng Zhou in New York; Matt Spetalnick, Steve Holland, Mark Felsenthal in Washington; Koh Gui Qing and Wang Lan in Beijing; Editing by Jan Paschal and Clive McKeef)
via reuters.com
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