Iran wants 'jump-start' in nuclear talks with big powers

By Louis Charbonneau and Yeganeh Torbati

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iran‘s foreign minister expressed hope on Wednesday that a meeting with top diplomats from the United States and five other powers this week will jump-start negotiations to resolve the decade-long dispute over the Iranian nuclear program.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as well as diplomats from Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany on Thursday in New York in a rare encounter between American and Iranian officials.

Asked what he expected from the meeting with the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany, Zarif said: “a jump-start to the negotiations … with a view to reaching an agreement within the shortest span.”

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday cautiously embraced overtures from Iran’s new centrist president, Hassan Rouhani, as the basis for a possible nuclear deal and challenged him to take concrete steps toward resolving the issue.

Speaking after a meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, he added: “The Islamic Republic has the political readiness and political will for serious negotiations and we are hopeful that the opposite side has this will as well.”

“We (Zarif and Fabius)… had a good discussion about the start of nuclear talks and the talks that will take place tomorrow at the foreign ministerial level between Iran and the P5+1,” Zarif said, referring to the so-called P5+1 group comprising the five Security Council powers plus Germany.

Iran has been negotiating with the P5+1 since 2006 about its nuclear program, which Western powers and their allies suspect is aimed at developing a nuclear-weapons capability. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian energy purposes only.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Rouhani said that nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction “have no place in Iran’s security and defence doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions.

Iran has been hit with painful American, European Union and U.N. sanctions for refusing to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Kerry will join Fabius, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the German and Chinese foreign ministers for the meeting. Also present will be European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The meeting bringing the top U.S. diplomat and new Iranian foreign minister around the same conference table will be highly unusual given that the United States has not maintained diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington was interested in more than words from the Iranians.

“We hope that the new Iranian government will show and not just say they are prepared to engage substantively, and tomorrow is an early test of that proposition,” she said.

NO CONCESSIONS

A failed effort to arrange a simple handshake between Obama and Rouhani on Tuesday underscored the entrenched distrust that will be hard to overcome.

Rouhani used his debut at the world body on Tuesday to pledge Iran’s willingness to engage immediately in “time-bound” talks on the nuclear issue. But he offered no new concessions and repeated many of Iran’s grievances against the United States and Washington’s key Middle East ally, Israel.

He steered clear, however, of the Holocaust-denial rhetoric that was characteristic of his hard-line predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and later told CNN that the Holocaust had been a “reprehensible crime” against Jews, although the scale of it was a matter for historians to consider.

Rouhani repeated that sentiment in a meeting with a small group of editors and journalists on Wednesday.

“The Nazis committed a crime not just against Jews but against Christians and Muslims, against all humanity,” he said. “The massacre cannot be denied against the Jewish people. We condemn it.”

Obama and other Western leaders said in their U.N. addresses that the conciliatory language from Iran would need to be matched with solid steps.

Scepticism runs deep, particularly among the Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will not be fooled by Hassan Rouhani’s international outreach, and the world must not be either.

The Israelis are not alone.

“We are seeing an enormous amount in terms of signals and gestures but absolutely nothing in substance,” a French diplomatic source said about Zarif’s meeting with Fabius. “We hope that tomorrow will be the occasion to change that.”

Iranians are also hoping to see some concrete steps taken by the Western powers – namely sanctions relief.

Seyed Yahya Safavi, a senior military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, said in an interview with Fars news agency on Wednesday that Tehran wants to see action from the Americans. “If they lift sanctions bit by bit and establish trust, (then) we can be hopeful,” Safavi added.

Morteza Sarmadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, quoted in state news agency IRNA, echoed Safavi’s comments, saying: “The thing that will get us results are the actions that must follow these statements,” referring to Obama’s U.N. speech on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Adler and John Irish; Editing by Will Dunham)

Iran wants 'jump-start' in nuclear talks with big powers

Oompa Loompas Sentenced Over Drunken Brawl

Two men have admitted taking part in a street brawl in Norwich while dressed as Oompa Loompas.

Louis Gelinas and Matthew Wright were dressed as the Road Dahl characters – famous for their short stature, green hair and orange skin – when they were involved in a fight with two men during a night out.

Prosecutor Stephen Spence, describing the brawl in Norwich’s Prince of Wales Road nightclub district, said that “somewhat ironically” the men targeted their victims because of what they were wearing.

He told Norwich Crown Court: “The two defendants together with another man were in fancy dress as Oompa Loompas – fictional characters from Loompa Land which end up being preyed upon by Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers.

“They are in fact peaceable characters who Willy Wonka employs in his factory to keep them away from trouble.

“Far from keeping out of trouble, these men got into what was initially a verbal altercation, were abusive, calling one of the men ‘gay’, and ended up pushing the men resulting in facial injuries to one of them.”

A man, aged 28, suffered cuts and bruises in the attack which was caught on CCTV at 3am on December 27.

Gelinas, 20, from Rectory Road, Sutton, and Wright, 20, from Decoy Road, Potter Heigham, both in Norfolk, pleaded guilty to affray at an earlier hearing.

Wright also admitted an unrelated assault.

Judge Nicholas Coleman ordered Gelinas to complete 240 hours of unpaid work for the community while Wright was sentenced to 10 months in a young offenders’ institute.

Jonathan Morgan, defending university student Gelinas, said: “Clearly they were not dressed for trouble.

“My client’s braces were hanging down so it is easy to tell on the CCTV which of the Oompa Loompas he was.

“He did not start the violence and is seen walking away.”

Wright’s lawyer, Ian James, described his client as a “hard-working and busy” young man who is training to become an electrical inspector.

He said: “He had taken drink and believed that one or other of his friends, by way of the unusual way they were dressed, was involved in a confrontation and he involved himself.”

Oompa Loompas featured in the children’s novel Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and are known for their moralising songs advising people on what they should and should not “Oompa Loompa doompadee do”.

Oompa Loompas Sentenced Over Drunken Brawl

Cashpoint Thief Jailed Over Petrol Station Blast

A thief who took part in a raid on a petrol station that led to a cash machine being blown to pieces has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Damien Limb, 27, was the driver for the bungled heist at a Texaco station that completely destroyed the ATM, scattering £20,000 of cash across the forecourt as well as damaging petrol pumps and the station’s canopy.

The heavy door of the ATM was blown 25 metres and sliced through an inch thick stanchion “like a knife through butter”.

The gang only managed to scoop up £3,400 from the shattered cash machine.

Police said afterwards that the thieves were lucky they did not kill themselves or others when they pumped oxygen and propane gas into the machine to to cause an uncontrolled blast.

Residents nearby heard a “huge explosion” at 3.15am on March 31 as debris was hurled up to 38 metres away.

The masked gang had prized open the machine using a crowbar at the filling station in Weyhill, Hampshire, and pumped the mixture in through hoses before sealing the hole with paper, Winchester Crown Court heard.

After 40 seconds, the mixture ignited, probably due to an electrical circuit inside or heat from the machine, and it blew up.

The whole operation and the explosion was captured on CCTV, which showed the ATM being completely destroyed before three men dressed in black started scrambling about trying to pick up £20 notes.

The damage to the garage cost £150,000 to repair, while the cashpoint cost £15,000, the court heard.

Limb, from Lichfield Road, Bristol, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and conspiracy to cause criminal damage with unknown persons, as the rest of the gang has not been caught.

He was traced after police followed a trail of cash and wheel tracks from the cylinders’ trolley from the scene, under a bridge where a receipt for water and a small amount of petrol from a garage in Bristol was found.

CCTV from the garage was used to identify Limb.

The drug user said he did not realise the other gang members would cause so much damage and he was not present when they tried to steal the cash because he stayed in the van.

Michael Warren, prosecuting, said: “As a result of that explosion, police were called and were quickly on the scene and the equipment used to blow the ATM was found.

“Two canisters of oxygen and propane gas were around the corner and also against a wall was a five foot wrecking bar, a Volvic bottle with petrol in it and a wick and by that a bottle top that had the defendant’s DNA and a partial match for two other people.

“It is not a particularly well known method of attacking an ATM machine and it had devastating results,” the barrister added.

In mitigation, Richard Onslow said Limb, who has a string of previous convictions for burglary and attacking cash machines, had fallen in with the wrong crowd but he was no mastermind.

“He was asked to provide transport, which he did for this enterprise,” he said.

“Asked to carry three others and canisters of oxygen and propane to Weyhill which he did, told where to park and he remained in the van.

“He knew that some damage would be caused to the ATM but he did not expect what happened was going to happen.

“As he waited in the van he heard the explosion and the others returned.

“The defendant is not the leading light in this conspiracy but he accepts he was wrong by becoming involved in it.”

Mr Onslow explained that, on three occasions, Limb had been caught by police at the scene of his crimes.

Once when he was “frothing at the mouth” through drink and Valium, once hiding in bushes and once dangling inside a building after he had fallen through the roof.

Sentencing Limb, Judge Jane Miller QC said that because the other gang members had not been found, Limb was “taking the rap” and even though he was not there he must take responsibility for what happened.

Cashpoint Thief Jailed Over Petrol Station Blast

ICAP fined 54 million pounds over Libor, three former staff charged

By Kirstin Ridley and Clare Hutchison

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. and British authorities on Wednesday fined ICAP, the world’s biggest interdealer broker, $87 million (54 million pounds) and laid criminal charges against three former employees over the Libor interest rate rigging scandal.

The scandal, which has laid bare failings by regulators and bank bosses over several years, has triggered a sprawling global investigation that has already seen three banks fined a total of $2.6 billion, four other people charged, scores of institutions and traders interrogated and a spate of lawsuits launched.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) charged New Zealand resident Darrell Read and Daniel Wilkinson and Colin Goodman from England with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud – offences carrying sentences of up to 30 years.

Simultaneously, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ordered ICAP’s ICAP Europe Ltd unit to pay $65 million and 14 million pounds ($22 million) respectively.

“These three men are accused of repeatedly and deliberately spreading false information to banks and investors around the world in order to fraudulently move the market and help their client fleece his counterparties,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the DoJ’s criminal division.

ICAP called its former staff “rotten apples” and said it would improve systems to ensure compliance with regulations.

A central cog in the global financial system, the London interbank offered rate (Libor) is used as a benchmark against which hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of products from complex derivatives to personal mortgages are priced worldwide.

Based on a survey of what banks would charge each other for loans, traders colluded on answers that could nudge the reported rates by amounts that were tiny but translated into big profits.

“LORD LIBOR”

ICAP, run by London businessman and former Conservative Party treasurer Michael Spencer, is the first interdealer broker sanctioned in the affair. Firms like ICAP match buyers and sellers of bonds, currencies and derivative financial instruments, such as swaps.

“ICAP and other interdealer brokers are expected to be honest middlemen,” David Meister, the CFTC’s Director of Enforcement, said in a statement. “Here, certain ICAP brokers were anything but honest. They repeatedly abused their trusted role when they infected the financial markets with false information to aid their top client’s manipulation of Libor.”

The FCA said ICAP unit’s yen derivatives desk routinely tried to manipulate Libor and that at least 10 individuals, including two managers, on three desks took part.

Traders promised derivatives brokers anything from curries to Ferraris in kickbacks for helping rig rates, according to computer messages published by regulators and prosecutors.

Daniel Wilkinson, once employed in the London office of ICAP, supervised a group of derivatives brokers, including Darrell Read, who specialised in yen-based products.

According to the charges, the desk’s biggest client between 2006 and 2009 was Tom Hayes, a former UBS and Citigroup trader who is also facing criminal charges in Britain and the United States for alleged Libor manipulation.

Read talked to Hayes almost daily, prosecutors said, and a sizeable chunk of what the ICAP traders earned was tied to the business from him. Read passed Hayes’s requests for what to tell the Libor compilers on to Colin Goodman, according to the DoJ.

Goodman, a cash broker in ICAP’s London office nicknamed “Lord Libor”, was in contact with derivatives traders at other institutions and sent out to them a daily email with “SUGGESTED LIBORS” which, according to the CFTC, reflected biased rates.

While purporting to offer predictions of where yen Libor would fix later in the day, the DoJ said, Read, Wilkinson and Goodwin used the email to misinform banks and so skew Libor.

The CFTC said the broker demanded compensation for “LIBOR services” or, he warned, there would be “no more mr libor.” This grew from dinners and champagne, to additional commission-generating trades, to “kickbacks” totalling $72,000.

The conduct stretched into 2010, well after allegations of Libor manipulation had surfaced in public.

Wilkinson – who now writes fiction for young adults, according to a LinkedIn profile in his name – and Goodman did not respond to requests for comment sent via the social media site. Read could not immediately be reached. Hayes’s lawyer, Lydia Jonson, did not respond to a request for comment.

“ROTTEN APPLE SITUATION”

Michael Spencer, who founded one of the firms that make up today’s ICAP in 1986 and has become one of the richest men in Britain, said all individuals linked to the wrongdoing had either left the company or were being disciplined.

“We deeply regret and strongly condemn the inexcusable actions of the brokers who sought to assist certain bank traders in their efforts to manipulate yen Libor,” he said.

But he denied the problems were cultural. “It is very sadly a rotten apple situation here,” he said.

Three banks – Britain’s Barclays and RBS and Switzerland’s UBS – have already paid around $2.6 billion to secure civil settlements for rate-rigging with British and U.S. regulators.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has brought criminal charges against three people and U.S. prosecutors have now charged five. Prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic have charged Hayes, who once complained in a text message to the Wall Street Journal: “This goes much higher than me.”

The SFO has said it hopes to charge more people over Libor in the coming months and that will not hesitate to also pursue senior industry figures or institutions.

($1 = 0.6256 British pounds)

(Additional reporting by Aruna Viswanatha and Douwe Miedema in Washington, Tommy Wilkes in London; Editing by Carmel Crimmins, Will Waterman and Alastair Macdonald)

ICAP fined 54 million pounds over Libor, three former staff charged

Britain challenges banker bonus cap in new clash with EU

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is mounting a legal challenge against the European Union’s cap on bankers’ bonuses, a source said on Wednesday.

The UK Treasury has lodged a legal complaint over the cap which will take effect on bonuses awarded for 2014 and onwards. The majority of bankers that will be hit are based in London.

The cap limits a bonus to no more than a banker’s fixed salary, or twice that level with shareholder approval.

Britain, the bloc’s biggest financial centre, was outvoted on the cap and critics warn that banks will simply bump up fixed salaries, a step some lenders are already taking.

It is the latest sign of how Britain – on course to hold a referendum on its EU membership in 2017 – is resorting to legal action in the bloc’s top court, the European Court of Justice, to reverse rules it disagrees with.

Last week an adviser to the ECJ backed Britain in saying that a Paris-based EU markets watchdog should not have the power to impose bans on short-selling of shares on a member state.

The UK is also challenging a plan to introduce a tax on financial transactions in some EU states, but not Britain, because it would impact London markets.

A UK legal challenge has also been lodged with the top court against a European Central Bank policy of requiring clearing houses that handle large amounts of euro denominated securities to be based in the single currency area.

(Reporting by William Schomberg and Huw Jones)

Britain challenges banker bonus cap in new clash with EU

Miliband Urges Cameron To Commit To TV Debate

Ed Miliband has given television debates in the run-up to the next general election his full backing and challenged David Cameron to sign up.

The Labour leader told Sky News there was no reason why the format should not be the same as in 2010 when the debates played a crucial part in the campaign.

The next election is less than two years away but there is still no confirmation that the clashes between party leaders will be repeated.

Mr Miliband piled pressure on Mr Cameron by unequivocally supporting the approach as he was interviewed by Adam Boulton at the end of Labour’s party conference.

Riding high after his keynote speech on Wednesday, he declared: “You have my commitment that I will do the same as we did last time. I think we need those TV debates.

“We have got big debates to have about energy and other issues. I say bring on those TV debates in the general election campaign. I am looking forward to them. I hope the Prime Minister will be there.

“We had a format last time – it was good for our democracy … I don’t see why our starting point should not be the same as last time – let’s have those debates.”

The three debates in 2010 between Mr Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown were staged by Sky, the BBC and ITV and helped raise Mr Clegg’s profile significantly.

They were credited with turning the election race on its head and Mr Cameron faced criticism for allowing the Lib Dem leader to be involved.

Ultimately, the surge in Lib Dem support waned and did not translate into votes but Mr Clegg still ended up as kingmaker because there was a hung parliament.

The Lib Dem leader told Sky last week that he believed the debates were an “important addition” and should be repeated.

“I’m ready to have TV debates whenever they are organised. I think they were a good innovation last time,” he said.

Also in his interview on Sky, Mr Miliband dismissed claims about his energy price freeze causing blackouts as “scare stories”.

“The real thing that shapes investment decisions in energy is the long-term framework,” the former Energy Secretary insisted.

And he denied that his conference speech, which included a string of left-wing policies, was designed to appeal to Labour’s core vote.

“This is a strategy to reach out to people right across this country who are suffering from the cost-of-living crisis,” he said.

Miliband Urges Cameron To Commit To TV Debate

Seven held over family death fire

Seven men have been arrested in connection with the deaths of a mother and her three children who were killed in a house fire.

Leicestershire Police said the arrests came after officers executed warrants at several properties in the Leicester area.

The men were detained in connection with the fire in Wood Hill on Friday 13, in which Shehnila Taufiq, 47, her daughter Zainab, 19, and sons Bilal, 17, and Jamil, 15, all died.

Seven held over family death fire