MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian state technology firm Rusnano, alongside a group of investors, is investing $ 93 million in three U.S.-based pharmaceutical firms to develop drugs to treat illnesses such as epilepsy, the investors said on Wednesday.
Rusnano is making the investment with U.S. venture capital fund Domain Associates and other investors. Rusnano partnered with Domain in March with plans to invest around $ 760 million in U.S. healthcare and pharmaceutical firms to bring new drugs to the Russian market.
The three companies receiving investments – Marinus Pharmaceuticals, Lithera and Regado Biosciences – are portfolio companies of Domain and the investments will be used to register medications and undertake further clinical trials in the U.S. and Russia, the companies said.
Marinus is developing a drug for the treatment of epilepsy, Lithera works on products for aesthetic medicine and ophthalmology and Regado is developing antithrombotic products.
(Reporting by Megan Davies; Editing by Douglas Busvine)
Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Russia fund in consortium to back U.S. pharma firms Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
Swiss banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $ 1.5bn (£940m) to US, UK and Swiss regulators for attempting to manipulate the Libor inter-bank lending rate.
It becomes the second major bank to be fined over Libor after Barclays was ordered to pay $ 450m to UK and US authorities in the summer.
Regulators worldwide are investigating a number of banks for rigging Libor.
Libor tracks the average rate at which the major international banks based in London lend money to each other.
The bank also admitted to manipulating Euribor and Tibor – the equivalent interest rates set by lenders in the eurozone and in Tokyo.
UBS said it had agreed to pay fines to regulators in three different countries:
It is the second-largest set of fines imposed on a bank to date, after the $ 1.9bn that HSBC agreed to pay US authorities earlier this month to settle allegations of money-laundering.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
The potential costs to [the banks] could be eye-watering if clients can prove they are out of pocket as a result of market rigging”
End Quote
The fine “demonstrates the co-ordinated approach regulators are now taking to serious conduct issues that affect jurisdictions internationally,” said Nick Matthews, a forensic accountant at consultancy Kinetic Partners.
The bank has also agreed to admit to committing wire fraud through its Tokyo office in the case of manipulating Libor rates for loans denominated in Japanese yen, among others.
It said it would seek a non-prosecution agreement with the DoJ covering the rest of the bank’s misbehaviour.
The fine is the latest blow for UBS, following the conviction of rogue trader Kweku Adoboli earlier this year for losing £1.4bn for the bank, a £500m settlement with US authorities for helping US citizens evade taxes.
UBS also suffered the worst losses of any bank from US sub-prime mortgages during the financial crisis, totalling 38bn, and necessitating a bailout from the Swiss authorities.
The bank still faces lawsuits in the US for mis-selling mortgage debt to other investors, including a $ 6.4bn claim by the US government-sponsored mortgage finance agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Trader collusion
UBS said the fines – along with other payouts for mis-selling mortgage debts in the US – were likely to result in the bank recording a loss of 2bn-2.5bn Swiss francs in its financial accounts for the last three months of the year, although it still expects to make a profit for the year as a whole.
Continue reading the main story
What is Libor?
Libor is the “London Inter-Bank Offered Rate”
It tracks the average interest rate at which the big international banks based in London are willing to lend to each other
The Libor rate is used to calculate payments under hundreds of trillions of dollars-worth of financial contracts, including mortgages and loans
Libor is set every day by the British Bankers’ Association, based on estimates submitted by a panel of a dozen or so banks of their borrowing costs
Banks are accused of lying about their real borrowing costs, in order to manipulate Libor for profit, and to make themselves look stronger during the financial crisis
The Swiss lender acknowledged its staff had manipulated the borrowing rates it submitted, which were then used to calculate the Libor rate – a benchmark interest rate that is used to calculate the payments on hundreds of trillions of dollars-worth of financial contracts – in order to make money on their trades.
According to the FSA, UBS had even gone so far as to give its traders formal responsibility for handling the bank’s submissions to the Libor-setting committee at the British Bankers’ Association – creating a direct conflict of interest, as the traders could profit depending on what they submitted.
Significantly, UBS also said its traders had colluded with their counterparts at other banks and brokerages.
The FSA said that UBS’s Tokyo office had made corrupt payments to brokerages – which helped to bring borrowers and lenders together anonymously in the inter-bank lending market – in order to enlist their support in manipulating Libor.
Besides UBS and Barclays, about a dozen other major banks are involved in setting Libor rates each day across a range of currencies, and most of them are understood to be still under investigation.
UBS chairman Axel Weber said: “The authorities have recognized UBS for the thoroughness of our investigation and our exceptional co-operation.”
According to the FSA, it would have fined UBS £200m, but gave the bank a 20% discount because it co-operated. Nonetheless, the £160m fine was still the largest ever imposed by the UK authority.
Barclays – which was the first bank to come clean over the scandal – has previously indicated that its fine of $ 450m would be overshadowed by the fines to be imposed on other culpable banks.
‘Not pretty reading’
Like Barclays, UBS also accepted that management had also told staff to submit inappropriately low estimated borrowing costs for the bank during the financial crisis, in order to give a false impression of the bank’s ability to borrow cheaply and maintain market confidence in the bank.
“We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behaviour,” said UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti.
“No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity.”
Former Schroders group managing director Philip Augar told BBC News that disadvantaged customers could take action against banks
The FSA said that the misconduct at UBS was extensive and widespread and involved at least 45 individuals.
“At least 2,000 requests for inappropriate submissions were documented – an unquantifiable number of oral requests, which by their nature would not be documented, were also made,” the FSA said.
“Manipulation was also discussed in internal open chat forums and group emails, and was widely known.”
It was so common that the FSA said every single Libor submission by UBS during the period it examined, from 2005 to 2010, may have been tainted.
“The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading,” said the FSA’s head of enforcement, Tracy McDermott.
Despite this, five separate internal audits by the bank’s compliance department failed to pick up on the misbehaviour.
BBC News – Business
Title Post: UBS in $1.5bn Libor rigging fine Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels took full control of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on Monday after fighting raged for days in the district on the southern edge of President Bashar al-Assad‘s Damascus powerbase, rebel and Palestinian sources said.
The battle had pitted rebels, backed by some Palestinians, against Palestinian fighters of the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Many PFLP-GC fighters defected to the rebel side and their leader Ahmed Jibril left the camp two days ago, rebel sources said.
“All of the camp is under the control of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army,” said a Palestinian activist in Yarmouk. He said clashes had stopped and the remaining PFLP fighters retreated to join Assad‘s forces massed on the northern edge of the camp.
The battle in Yarmouk is one of a series of conflicts on the southern fringes of Assad’s capital, as rebels try to choke the power of the 47-year-old leader after a 21-month-old uprising in which 40,000 people have been killed.
Government forces have used jets and artillery to try to dislodge the fighters but the violence has crept into the heart of the city and activists say rebels overran three army stations in a new offensive in the central province of Hama on Monday.
On the border with Lebanon, hundreds of Palestinian families fled across the frontier following the weekend violence in Yarmouk, a Reuters witness said.
Syria hosts half a million Palestinian refugees, most living in Yarmouk, descendants of those admitted after the creation of Israel in 1948, and has always cast itself as a champion of the Palestinian struggle, sponsoring several guerrilla factions.
Both Assad’s government and the mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels have enlisted and armed divided Palestinian factions as the uprising has developed into a civil war.
“NEITHER SIDE CAN WIN”
Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that neither Assad’s forces nor rebels seeking to overthrow him can win the war.
Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim in a power structure dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, has rarely been seen since the revolt erupted in March 2011 and is not part of the president’s inner circle directing the fight against Sunni rebels. But he is the most prominent figure to say in public that Assad will not win.
Sharaa said the situation in Syria was deteriorating and a “historic settlement” was needed to end the conflict, involving regional powers and the U.N. Security Council and the formation of a national unity government “with broad powers”.
“With every passing day the political and military solutions are becoming more distant. We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime,” Sharaa was quoted as telling Al-Akhbar newspaper.
“The opposition cannot decisively settle the battle and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a decisive settlement,” he said, adding that insurgents fighting to topple Syria’s leadership could plunge it into “anarchy and an unending spiral of violence”.
Sources close to the Syrian government say Sharaa had pushed for dialogue with the opposition and objected to the military response to an uprising that began peacefully.
In a veiled criticism of the crackdown, he said there was a difference between the state’s duty to provide security to its citizens, and “pursuing a security solution to the crisis”.
He said even Assad could not be certain where events in Syria were leading, but that anyone who met him would hear that “this is a long struggle…and he does not hide his desire to settle matters militarily to reach a final solution.”
In Hama province, rebels and the army clashed in a new campaign launched on Sunday by rebels to block off the country’s north, activists said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked violence monitor, said fighting raged through the provincial towns of Karnaz, Kafar Weeta, Halfayeh and Mahardeh.
It said there were no clashes reported in Hama city, which lies on the main north-south highway connecting the capital with Aleppo, Syria’s second city.
Qassem Saadeddine, a member of the newly established rebel military command, said on Sunday fighters had been ordered to surround and attack army positions across the province. He said Assad’s forces were given 48 hours to surrender or be killed.
In 1982 Hafez al-Assad, father of the current ruler, crushed an uprising in Hama city, killing up to 30,000 civilians.
Qatiba al-Naasan, a rebel from Hama, said the offensive would bring retaliatory air strikes from the government but that the situation is “already getting miserable”.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes, Erika Solomon and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Afif Diab at Masnaa, Lebanon; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
World News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A Florida man who pleaded guilty to hacking into the email accounts of celebrities to gain access to nude photos and private information was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday.
Former office clerk Christopher Chaney, 36, said before the trial that he hacked into the accounts of film star Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities because he was addicted to spying on their personal lives.
Prosecutors said Chaney illegally gained access to email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry, including Johansson, actress Mila Kunis, and singers Christina Aguilera and Renee Olstead from November 2010 to October 2011.
Chaney, who was initially charged with 28 counts related to hacking, struck a plea deal with prosecutors in March to nine felony counts, including wiretapping and unauthorized access to protected computers.
“I don’t know what else to say except I’m sorry,” Chaney said during his sentencing. “This will never happen again.”
Chaney was ordered to pay $ 66,179 in restitution to victims.
Prosecutors recommended a 71-month prison for Chaney, who faced a maximum sentence of 60 years.
TEARFUL JOHANSSON
Prosecutors said Chaney leaked some of the private photos to two celebrity gossip websites and a hacker.
Johansson said the photos, which show her topless, were taken for her then-husband, actor Ryan Reynolds.
In a video statement shown in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a tearful Johansson said she was “truly humiliated and embarrassed” when the photos appeared online, asking Judge S. James Otero to come down hard on Chaney.
Prosecutors said Chaney also stalked two unnamed Florida women online, one since 1999 when she was 13 years old.
Chaney, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested in October 2011 after an 11-month FBI investigation dubbed “Operation Hackerazzi” and he continued hacking after investigators initially seized his personal computers.
Shortly after his arrest, Chaney told a Florida television station that his hacking of celebrity email accounts started as curiosity and later he became “addicted.”
“I was almost relieved months ago when they came in and took my computer … because I didn’t know how to stop,” he said.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Florida man sentenced to 10 years in “hackerazzi” case Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After making major concessions on long-held “fiscal cliff” positions, President Barack Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner will test the reaction Tuesday of their respective parties in the U.S. Congress and continue talks aimed at further narrowing their differences.
The effort is designed to avert the steep tax hikes and across the board spending cuts set to take effect unless a deal is enacted into law before December 31. Enactment would require a buy-in by the full U.S. Senate and House on whatever Obama and Boehner present to them. Neither Obama or Boehner can be certain yet on how much resistance they might meet.
Though much work remains, the progress contrasted dramatically with previous movement so slow that as recently as Sunday, some Washington insiders saw a 50-50 chance of going over the cliff – which the Congressional Budget Office says would bring on a new recession.
In rapid developments Monday, the two sides came significantly closer to bridging gaps on critical issues such as tax hikes for the wealthy and cuts in Social Security cost-of-living benefits. Those issues have the potential to cause problems politically for both leaders, as Republicans and Democrats start to study them.
Obama and Boehner made the most headway on extending the reduced tax rates originally enacted in the administration of President George W. Bush. Both have agreed to keep the low rates for everyone but the wealthy, but they still differ on who qualifies as wealthy for tax purposes.
Obama, whose definition has for months been taxpayers above the $ 250,000 threshold, traveled to $ 400,000 in his latest offer. Boehner was at $ 1 million, but could move down to $ 500,000.
Obama also offered a “fast track” process for major tax and spending reforms in the year ahead. A Republican aide who asked not to be identified said that “conceptually,” there was agreement to make permanent changes in the tax code, with some of those changes taking effect at the start of 2013 and others at the beginning of 2014.
A comprehensive cliff-avoiding agreement would immediately substitute new and more targeted spending cuts for the indiscriminate slashing of defense and non-defense programs known as “sequestration.”
Possible plans to produce cuts in spending for Medicare and Medicaid, the government health insurance programs for seniors and low income Americans respectively, remain to be discussed.
Boehner and Obama have made headway on the politically explosive question of the president’s ability to avoid constant battles over raising the debt ceiling, which controls the level of borrowing by the government. Boehner is ready to give Obama a year of relative immunity from conservative strife over the debt ceiling, while Obama is pushing for two years.
Boehner is set to meet with Republicans in the House Tuesday morning and then speak to reporters. Also likely Tuesday is a White House briefing which could shed more light on the work ahead.
The reaction Tuesday from their party allies in Congress may help determine how much further each can go to finish off a deal and how much long it would require to do so.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Mark Felsenthal, David Lawder and Fred Barbash. Editing by Fred Barbash)
Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: “Fiscal cliff” deal closer, but gaps remain Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
While President Barack Obama and other Democratic politicians clear their throats about proposing new gun control laws sometime next year, the marketplace is responding swiftly to the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the largest retailers in its industry, said Tuesday it is suspending the sale of certain military-style semiautomatic rifles similar to the one used by the Newtown killer. Fox News reported that Discovery Channel has decided to cancel its popular reality show “American Guns.”
Less visible to consumers, but no less important, Cerberus, a $ 20 billion private-equity firm based in New York, announced overnight that, under pressure from the California teachers’ pension fund, it will sell its controlling stake in the country’s largest guns-and-ammo manufacturer, a conglomerate called Freedom Group. The semiautomatic rifle used to slaughter 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, 20 of them children, was made by Bushmaster Firearms, one of the companies that operates under the Freedom Group umbrella.
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which has $ 751 million invested with Cerberus, said it would review its relationship with the private-equity firm “given the tragic events last Friday in Newtown, Conn.” Cerberus then followed with its announcement, saying that unloading Freedom Group “allows us to meet our obligations to the investors whose interests we are entrusted to protect without being drawn into the national debate” on gun control.
Bloomberg TV’s Tom Keene asked me this morning on his “Surveillance” program whether this the beginning of something akin to the divestment campaign aimed at breaking South Africa’s apartheid system. That’s a provocative question. The answer is probably no, and the reasons shed light on the nature of the American gun market.
Gun ownership in the United States is not apartheid. Millions of Americans relish firearms and use them for lawful hunting, shooting sports, and self-defense. To many people, guns represent individualism and self-reliance. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to keep a handgun in the home. Forty-nine states allow their citizens to carry guns concealed in public. A federal appeals court recently said that the sole holdout, Illinois, violated the Second Amendment by prohibiting concealed carry.
The $ 2 billion American gun industry is not the South African economy. The gun market historically has been fragmented and made up of relatively small companies. It consolidated in recent years, driven largely by Cerberus buying companies such as Bushmaster (and Remington, Marlin, and Para USA) in hopes of squeezing redundancies from their operations and selling off the roll-up in an IPO. To Cerberus’ frustration, the initial private offering had stalled for reasons having nothing to do with Newtown. (Finding efficiencies and cross-marketing opportunities turned out to be more difficult than the private-equity gurus anticipated.) Now, Cerberus will use the cover of renewed controversy over gun control–and the suddenly shocked sensibilities of the California teachers pension-fund managers (from whom Freedom Group presumably had not been kept secret)–to dump a guns-and-ammo play that wasn’t working out smoothly.
There are personal elements to the move, as well. Stephen Feinberg, who founded Cerberus in 1992, and is an avid hunter and gun enthusiast. His father, Martin Feinberg, lives in Newtown and told Bloomberg News the shooting was “devastating.”
Cerberus’ move and the prospect that the companies within Freedom Group will get sold off individually or in small clumps will return the fractious gun industry to something closer to what it looked like a half-dozen years ago. Smith & Wesson (SWHC) and Sturm Ruger (RGR), the two publicly traded gun makers in the U.S., will stand a little larger in relative terms. Glock, Beretta, and Taurus will continue to import guns from, respectively, Austria, Italy, and Brazil (as well as assemble weapons in their U.S. plants). And overall, gun makers will likely enjoy increased sales over the next six to 12 months, as consumers buy additional pistols and rifles out of fear that their favorites might be more difficult to obtain if Democrats succeed in pushing through new restrictions.
There will be additional post-Newtown reaction from retailers and from Hollywood. Wal-Mart (WMT) is a major gun seller. It accounts for about 13 percent of Freedom Group’s sales, for example. The world’s biggest retail chain will doubtless come under pressure from anti-gun activists to curb its firearms sales, and the image-conscious company may follow its more specialized rival Dick’s.
In the entertainment world, the cable channel TLC has already delayed airing a show called “Best Funeral Ever.” Violent movie trailers might get postponed or edited. The massacre during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora (Colo.) in July prompted Warner Bros. to pull the trailer for the forthcoming Gangster Squad, which showed a theater shooting. Later the studio cut the scene entirely.
Whether marketplace behavior will change over the long haul is a different question. Gangster Squad‘s opening was delayed but not cancelled. The film, pitting organized crime killers against police in Depression-era Los Angeles, is now slated to begin in theaters next month, and it will still include plenty of gunplay.
Businessweek.com — Top News
Title Post: Newtown Fallout: Cerberus Retreats From Guns Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian media say the son of influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been released on bail.
Several papers, including the pro-reform Etemad daily, say Mahdi Hashemi was released late Sunday and immediately went to his father’s home.
Authorities arrested the younger Hashemi in late September, a day after he returned to Iran from Britain.
He is held on charges of fomenting unrest in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election that brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. Hashemi also faced corruption charges.
His arrest came days after his sister, Faezeh, was taken into custody to serve a six-month sentence on charges of making propaganda against Iran’s ruling system.
Since Rafsanjani backed Ahmadinejad’s reformist challenger in 2009, his family has come under pressure from hardliners.
Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Iran media: Son of ex-president released on bail Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
(Reuters) – Clearwire Corp agreed to sell roughly half of the company for $ 2.2 billion to majority shareholder Sprint Nextel Corp, which would then have full ownership of spectrum that will help it offer high-speed wireless services.
The $ 2.97-per-share deal is only 7 cents per share higher than a bid many minority shareholders said was too low days before. Clearwire shares tumbled 12.2 percent to $ 2.96 in morning trading on Monday.
Sprint already owns slightly more than half of Clearwire. The company said owners of 13 percent of Clearwire shares – Comcast Corp, Intel Corp and Bright House Networks LLC – had agreed to vote for the deal.
But it was not immediately clear whether Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, could win the backing of a majority of Clearwire’s minority shareholders, which it needs to take control.
“This is not going to be popular with the minority shareholders,” said Davidson & Co analyst Donna Jaegers.
But Clearwire’s top executive told analysts on a Monday call that the company had little alternative.
“Despite our efforts we have been unable to secure new partnerships,” said Clearwire Chief Executive Officer Erik Prusch. “Our existing governance agreements prevented us from offering third parties the governance rights they desired in a partnership.”
Shareholders with more than 13 percent of Clearwire shares said last week that they were not happy with the $ 2.90-per-share offer, and some have said Sprint should offer as much as $ 5 per share.
Crest Financial, which owns more than 3 percent of Clearwire, recently filed a lawsuit to stop the company from selling itself to Sprint.
After the deal was announced on Monday, Crest said it had amended the lawsuit to make it a class action.
Another shareholder, Mount Kellett, said last week that the $ 2.90-a-share deal “grossly” undervalued Clearwire.
Clearwire, which also counts Sprint as its biggest customer, has been seeking financing for a high-speed wireless network upgrade and to keep itself afloat.
While some analysts and shareholders said Clearwire did not need to rush into a sale to Sprint, others have said that move would be its best hope for survival.
Sprint, whose shares rose 1 percent to $ 5.61 on Monday, needs Clearwire’s substantial spectrum to better arm itself against larger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.
Reuters reported last week that Japan’s Softbank Corp, which recently struck a deal to buy 70 percent of Sprint, would not consent to a bid of more than $ 2.97 per share.
Softbank said on Monday that it supported the deal.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew in New York and Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Rodney Joyce, Sriraj Kalluvila and Lisa Von Ahn)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Clearwire accepts slightly sweeter bid from Sprint Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz mixed entertainment with education to become the first world-class entertainer in decades to perform in Myanmar, with a concert to raise awareness of human trafficking.
Mraz’s 2008 hit “I’m Yours” was the finale for Sunday night’s concert before a crowd of about 50,000 people at the base of the famous hilltop Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.
Local artists, including a hip-hop singer, also played at the event organized by the anti-trafficking media group MTV EXIT — for “End Exploitation and Trafficking” —in cooperation with U.S. and Australian government aid agencies and the anti-slavery organization Walk Free.
Myanmar is emerging from decades of isolation under a reformist elected government that took office last year after almost five decades of military rule. It has been one of the region’s poorest countries, and its bad human rights record made it the target of political and economic sanctions by Western nations.
But democratic reforms initiated by President Thein Sein have led to the lifting of most sanctions, and the country is hopeful of a political and economic revival. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy opposition leader, was released from house arrest in late 2010 and won a seat in parliament last April.
Mraz called his top-billed appearance at the concert a “tremendous honor.”
“I think the country is, at this time, downloading lots of new information from all around the world,” he said. “I’ve always wanted my music to be here, (for) hope and celebration, peace, love and happiness. And so I’m delighted that my music can be a part of this big download that Myanmar is experiencing right now.”
Organizers said Mraz was the first international artist to perform at an open-air, mass public concert in Myanmar. Jazz artists Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Charlie Byrd visited the country under U.S. government sponsorship in the 1970s, when it was still called Burma, but played at much smaller venues.
Many in the crowd queued for two hours before being admitted to the concert site. Yangon native Sann Oo, 31, wearing a white T-shirt with a sketch of Mraz, said he was pleased that Mraz had come and that there would be a broadcast of the event.
“His visit can promote the image of Myanmar, because people outside have been seeing the country as an insecure place, and poor,” he said. “Now they can see how we look like from the concert. It also opens the potential for more concerts by foreign artists.”
Mraz has a history of involvement with human rights and other social causes.
But there was some criticism of his visit by campaigners for Myanmar‘s Muslim Rohingya community, which has been the target of ethnic-based violence this year that has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes into makeshift refugee camps. They feel Myanmar’s government has been complicit in the discrimination, and that Mraz’s visit provides it cover with the image of being a defender of human rights.
Mraz said he was aware of the issue, but that if he didn’t come to do the concert because someone else had asked him to protest another problem, then that would not help tackle the exploitation and human trafficking issue.
“I understand that there is a lot of wrongdoing in this world,” he said. “Today I’m here for this.”
Walk Free used the occasion of Sunday’s concert to launch a campaign calling on the world’s major corporations “to work together to end modern slavery by identifying, eradicating and preventing forced labor in their operations and supply chains.” They are seeking to have the companies make a “zero tolerance for slavery pledge” by the end of March next year.
“While many think of slavery as a relic of history, experts estimate that there are currently 20.9 million people living under threat of violence, abuse and harsh penalties,” the Australia-based group said in a statement. “Within this massive number, the majority of people – more than 14.2 million – are in a forced labor situation, used to source raw materials, and create products in sectors such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing and domestic work.”
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Jason Mraz tops Myanmar anti-trafficking concert Rating: 100%
based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews. Author: Fluser SeoLink Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
