Hump Day Headlines – May 19, 2010

Every Wednesday you will find links and top-line summaries to current events around the globe.

Curfew imposed to curb Bangkok rioting as buildings burn [Reuters]

- Rioting and fires swept Bangkok on Wednesday after troops stormed a protest encampment, forcing protest leaders to surrender, but sparking clashes that killed at least four people and triggered unrest in northern Thailand. Protesters torched at least five buildings, including the Thai stock exchange and Central World, Southeast Asia’s second-biggest department store complex, and attacked local Channel 3 television station as riots spread across the city of 15 million people
- Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva imposed a curfew in Bangkok on Wednesday from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. on Thursday. The curfew was meant to allow security authorities perform their duty, Abhisit said in the order. The chaos followed a military operation in the morning in which troops in armored vehicles and firing semi-automatic weapons advanced on an area occupied for more than six weeks by thousands of the “red shirt” demonstrators
- Moments later, live television showed four “red shirt” protest leaders in police custody and an army spokesman said in a television broadcast the protest site was under army control and the military had halted operations. Minutes after they surrendered, three grenades exploded outside the main protest site, badly wounding two soldiers and a foreign journalist, a Reuters witness said. Rioting was seen in five areas of the city as protesters lit fires and burned tires

Chavez government takes over Venezuela forex trade [Reuters]

- Venezuela’s government took control of currency trading on Tuesday by promising a band for dollar exchanges and banning brokerages from an unofficial market where the local bolivar has bombed this year. Seeking once again to rein in a currency that has been devalued three times since he took power in 1999, President Hugo Chavez has ordered the central bank to take sole charge of the free-floating “parallel” market
- He accuses capitalist speculators of driving down the bolivar and fueling sky-high inflation in the OPEC member. Critics blame him, however, for the currency chaos in Venezuela, saying an ill-planned and multilayered system has distorted the market and created corruption, while socialist policies have crushed investment and production
- Central Bank President Nelson Merentes said international bond prices would be used as a reference to give transparency to a system run by the bank. He said brokerages would be “totally” excluded from the new mechanism, thereby eliminating the impact of speculation while still letting market forces set prices. The bolivar has plunged to more than 8.0 per dollar this month, fueling one of the world’s highest inflation rates

China’s One-Time Richest Man Jailed for 14 Years [New York Times]

- China’s one-time richest man and the founder of a major retail chain was jailed for 14 years on Tuesday for bribery, insider trading and illegal business dealings, state media reported. Huang Guangyu was also fined 600 million yuan (60 million pound) and he had another 200 million yuan worth of property confiscated, the official Xinhua News Agency said
- Huang, who made his fortune by founding and building up GOME Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd, dubbed by local media as China’s Best Buy, was detained in November 2008 during a police investigation of stock market manipulation allegations. The investigation gradually grew wider, ensnaring government officials and police who had been assigned to fight financial crime
- Huang, who is in his early 40s and had a net worth of $6.3 billion in 2008, was ranked first on Hurun’s China Rich List for that year. But Huang built his fortune from humble beginnings, having been raised in a poor family in Guangdong province. He moved to Beijing in his late teens with his brother and set up a home appliances distribution firm with 30,000 yuan ($4,400) and founded GOME in 1987

Euro drops to new four-year low against US dollar [BBC]

- The euro has plummeted against the US dollar, falling below $1.22 for the first time since April 2006. The eurozone’s single currency fell more than 1.7% in afternoon trading in New York, to $1.216, before rallying. The decline came after Germany announced plans to ban naked short-selling of shares from midnight local time
- Traders fear that the austerity measures being put in place in many eurozone countries will hit growth. Despite the huge sums of money pledged in support for eurozone countries, severe measures are needed to cut budget deficits and debt
- The German government’s ban will apply to the country’s 10 most important financial institutions, and aims to stop the short-selling of euro government bonds. Short-sellers usually borrow shares, sell them, then buy them back when the stock falls and return them to the lender, keeping the difference in price. “Naked” short selling is when sellers do not even borrow the shares

Portugal’s president to ratify same-sex marriage law [BBC]

- Portugal’s President Anibal Cavaco Silva says he will sign a law legalising same-sex marriage passed by parliament earlier this year. The law had been fiercely opposed by conservatives in the Catholic country
- The ratification will make Portugal the sixth country in Europe to allow same-sex marriage after Belgium, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden. The announcement comes days after Pope Benedict, on a visit to Portugal, told pilgrims they should oppose the law
- During a heated debate in January, Prime Minister Jose Socrates said the law would put right an injustice that caused unnecessary pain. But parliament rejected proposals to allow homosexual couples to adopt. Many other countries have introduced civil partnerships, which give lesbian and gay couples some of the rights of married heterosexuals

Yahoo Buys Freelance News Site Associated Content [New York Times]

- The acquisition announced Tuesday will enable Yahoo to supplement its regular lineup of stories by full-time reporters with independently produced material that typically isn’t covered by traditional media outlets
- Associated Content, launched in 2005 by Luke Beatty, bills itself as ”the people’s media company.” It has developed a low-cost news model that relies on about 380,000 freelancers who share their expertise on a variety of subjects. The material includes how-to advice, review, opinion pieces and coverage about what’s happening in neighborhoods around the United States
- The stories evidently are striking a chord: Associated Content attracted 16 million visitors last month, according to comScore Inc. That exceeded the roughly 14 million people who visited The New York Times’ Web site last month, comScore said. Yahoo plans to sprinkle Associated Content’s contributions throughout its news, sports, finance and entertainment sections

Karzai says West starts to get Taliban peace push [Reuters]

- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday the West was starting to realize the war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily and that the peace process must involve reaching out to the Taliban. More than nine years after their ouster from power by U.S.-backed forces, the Taliban have made a comeback in Afghanistan despite the presence of some 140,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military
- The draft pushes for the removal of the names of insurgent leaders from a U.N. sanctions list and possibly giving them asylum overseas. Karzai told a news conference in Kabul he had held “extensive discussions about the peace process” with U.S. President Barack Obama during a three-day visit to Washington last week
- Karzai said the most important part of the peace draft was the offer of asylum to Taliban leaders. The idea was to have some of those Taliban leaders settled in an Islamic or Arab country. At least two NATO nations have said they will not extend their troops’ missions in Afghanistan and the Pentagon says it will start to scale back its presence by July next year

US Supreme Court changes rule on youth convicts [BBC]

- US youths can no longer be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes other than murder, the Supreme Court has ruled. The court upheld an appeal by a Florida man who was sentenced to life at the age of 17 for armed burglary
- His lawyers argued that the sentence infringed the US constitution’s banning of “cruel and unusual” punishments. The Supreme Court said 129 US youths were currently serving such sentences – 77 of whom were in Florida. The US was thought to be the only country in the world to allow such sentences
- One of the Supreme Court judges who disagreed with the decision, Justice Clarence Thomas, openly criticized the court for imposing “its own sense of morality and retributive justice”. In addition to the juveniles serving life with no parole for lesser crimes, more than 2,000 are serving the same sentence for murder

Goldman, BP sued over alleged SemGroup conspiracy [Reuters]

- Several dozen oil and gas producers have sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc and BP Plc, alleging they conspired with SemGroup LP to defraud the plaintiffs of money for oil and gas delivered just before the energy trader’s 2008 bankruptcy
- Once the 14th-largest privately held U.S. company, SemGroup filed for Chapter 11 protection on July 22, 2008, in the wake of $3.2 billion of losses on energy futures and derivatives trades. It emerged on November 30, 2009, as SemGroup Corp, and this month said it plans to become publicly traded. The 82 Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas producers are seeking millions of dollars owed on contracts in June and July 2008 to deliver millions of dollars of crude oil and gas to SemGroup
- According to two of the lawsuits, Goldman and its J. Aron & Co commodities trading unit took advantage of the bank’s capacity as a SemGroup banker, lender and trading partner to enter transactions with the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company. The producers separately contended that BP Oil Supply Co conspired to allow SemGroup to satisfy its contractual obligations by delivering the producers’ crude oil and gas

- How the White House learned to love the drone [Reuters]
- Opium addiction fuels Afghan chaos [BBC]
- Big powers agree on Iran sanctions draft [Reuters]
- Pfizer to Cut 6,000 Jobs [Reuters]
- Suicide bomber kills at least 18 in Afghan capital [Reuters]
- Africa’s oil spills are far from U.S. media glare

Photograph by REUTERS/Adrees Latif