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The killing of Marwa el-Sherbini provoked outrage among Muslims for its sheer brutality and brazenness. According to witnesses, the pregnant mother was stabbed to death in front of a courtroom full of people in Germany by a man with an apparently deep-seated hatred of Muslims. Thousands marched in Egypt, Iran and other Muslim countries against what they perceived as a disturbing rise of Islamophobia and racism in Germany as well as the scant attention the attack received in the German media.

Now, four months later, the trial of el-Sherbini’s alleged killer is being closely watched by Muslims across the world — not to mention Germany’s 4 million–strong Muslim community — amid fears that anything but a severe punishment for the defendant, an unemployed Russian émigré identified only as Alex W., could spark more unrest. In Egypt, where el-Sherbini has been dubbed by the media as the “headscarf martyr,” people are expecting “justice to be administered in a swift way,” Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, Egypt’s ambassador to Germany, told al-Jazeera.

The trial began on Oct. 26 in the same courthouse in Dresden where the killing took place. The 28-year-old defendant wore a cap, a dark blue hooded top and sunglasses to conceal his face as he was led into the courtroom, flanked by police officers, and seated behind a screen of bulletproof glass. Prosecutors then described how el-Sherbini, 31, was attacked. The pharmacist had appeared in court on July 1 to testify in a hearing against Alex W., who was appealing an earlier conviction for defaming el-Sherbini by calling her an “Islamist” and a “terrorist” on a playground. Prosecutors say that after el-Sherbini’s testimony, Alex W. lunged at her with a 7-in. kitchen knife he had smuggled into court and stabbed her at least 16 times. Her husband, Elwy Okaz, 32, was also repeatedly stabbed before being shot by a police officer who mistook him for el-Sherbini’s attacker. El-Sherbini, who was three months pregnant at the time, bled to death in front of the couple’s 3-year-old son. More…

Author: Tristana Moore / Berlin
Photo Credit: Ralf Hirschberger / Reuters

Opposition Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero is expected to finally make formal his presidential bid today, which announcement was originally planned to take place some two weeks ago, but with his camp now indicating this signaling as the eventual declaration of his team-up with partymate Sen. Loren Legarda, as frontrunners of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) in next year’s elections.

Amid requests by Escudero’s camp for media coverage on an “important political announcement” he will make today, there already are talks that the senator, the lone neophyte member of the upper chamber embarking on presidential race, is already withdrawing his bid for the highest position in the country.

But Escudero is said to be set to declare his presidential bid today at the Club Filipino in Green Hills, San Juan. Earlier, the announcement said that he will be making an “important announcement at the at the University of the Philippines’ Bahay ng Alumni.

“Sen. Chiz Escudero is ready to lead this nation out of the misery brought about by an immoral leadership that came to power by questionable means,” Brian Ong, president of the claimed one-million strong Youth for Chiz Movement, said yesterday. He will unveil a seven-point pro-people platform of change, Ong said.

Talk from NPC sources said Escudero is going to junk Sen, Loren Legarda as his running mate and is now scouting for a vice presidential candidate who is loyal to the NPC. The name mentioned was Tourism Secretary Ace Durano.

Talks on Escudero pulling out of the race came out as early as Monday and was further heightened when his camp made last-minute changes on the venue of the scheduled event.

“He is not dropping out and he will make his firm intention known to the public tomorrow,” Lito Banayo, political adviser of Sen Panfilo Lacson and now political strategist for Chiz as well as his campaign manager, said in TV interview.

Banayo reiterated previous explanations given by Escudero in postponing his annoucement. More…

Author: Angie M. Rosales and Gerry Baldo
Photo Credit: beazfroi

Geneva – Nearly 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Since most countries have stopped counting individual swine flu cases, the figure is considered an underestimate. WHO said there were 4,999 total deaths through Oct. 18, most of them in the Western Hemisphere. The figure was up 264 from a week earlier.

Iceland had its first swine flu death this week, and WHO said Sudan and Trinidad and Tobago also reported deaths from the virus for the first time this week. In the United States, swine flu caused at least 95 children’s deaths since April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity, the CDC said, adding that only Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina are without widespread flu. In London, drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC said children may only need one shot of its swine flu vaccine to be protected.

In its statement Friday, Glaxo said one dose was enough to boost children’s immune systems to fight the virus, based on data from a trial in Spain in 200 children aged six months to 3 years.

Glaxo’s finding comes after experts said they expected children would need two doses, since their immune systems are weaker than those of adults. Last week, rival vaccine maker Sanofi Aventis said children would likely need two doses of vaccine against swine flu, or H1N1.

GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix vaccine contains an adjuvant, a chemical compound that stretches a vaccine’s active ingredient and increases the human body’s immune response. While European flu vaccines commonly use adjuvants, there is limited data on how safe they are in groups including children and pregnant women. The adjuvant in Glaxo’s swine flu vaccine has been used in more than 41,000 people in bird flu, swine flu and regular flu vaccines. See the top 5 swine flu don’ts.

Swine flu vaccines in the U.S. do not have adjuvants. Some countries have ordered special stocks of vaccines without adjuvants for their at-risk populations. More…

Author: AP
Photo Credit: alvi2047

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The Republic of the Philippines brings the second Asian sovereign in 24 hours and its third dollar bond this year.

The Republic of the Philippines priced a $1 billion dollar bond late Friday (Hong Kong time), at the end of a hectic 24 hours in the Asian bond markets, which saw the completion of three other benchmark-sized deals — a sovereign from Sri Lanka, the largest Asian high-yield in more than a year from Indonesia’s Adaro Energy, and another Korean offering from Korea Expressway.

The deluge of offerings had seemingly no impact on investor demand, however, with each of the deals being well subscribed.

The Philippines bond — the country’s third dollar-denominated deal this year — attracted over $5 billion of demand and more than 200 accounts, and around the time of the Asian close on Friday, the bookrunners — Deutsche Bank, HSBC and UBS — felt confident enough to confirm that the size would be $1 billion and to tighten the guidance. The deal was initially announced in the US afternoon on Thursday at a size of $750 million to $1 billion.

One reason for the strong interest, according to sources, was the 25-year maturity. In Asia there hasn’t been any dollar bonds with that kind of maturity for 18 months, which means investors with long-dated liabilities who tend to play this part of the curve were keen to make the most of the opportunity. The long end of the Asian curve in general has rallied lately and the volatility has come down; more specifically, there has been enough buying at the long end of the Philippines curve to suggest that there would be demand for another issue at that end. Indeed, the Philippines curve has been inverted at the long-end, making this a good opportunity for government to get long-dated funds at a reasonable cost.

One source noted that the debt market recovery is not stable enough that it can handle both longer dated issues and a greater number of deals, which partly explains the four issues at the end of last week. However, issuers are also aware that this favourable market sentiment will not last forever.

“This is not the final window this year, but we are coming up towards the final six to eight weeks of the year and the length of the windows are declining,” the source said, noting that issuers that are planning to go to the debt capital markets are likely to try to do so sooner rather than later. More…

Author: Anette Jönsson
Photo Credit:

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President Barack Obama will know by Friday whether he got the deal on Iranian nuclear material on which he has staked his engagement strategy. A third day of talks in Vienna ended inconclusively on Wednesday, with the Iranian delegation requiring consultations with its government back in Tehran before signing off on a detailed plan to ship three-quarters of its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into harmless reactor fuel. The parties to the deal have been given until Friday to report back, although reports from Vienna suggested that Tehran was pushing back against some of the terms being set for the deal by the U.S. and its partners — specifically over the timetable and scale of Iran’s uranium delivery to Russia.

The points of contention not only highlight the differing objectives of the two sides in making a deal, but also serve as a reminder that as significant a confidence-building mechanism as the Vienna deal may be, it doesn’t actually begin to address the deadlock between Iran and the West over whether the Islamic Republic will continue to enrich uranium. (See pictures of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.)

The deal under discussion in Vienna was hatched when Iran approached the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this year for help in acquiring fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran, which is not suspected of being part of any covert weapons program. U.S. officials took the opportunity to address the “ticking clock” concern that Iran had already amassed enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) that — if Iran expelled inspectors and reprocessed the material to weapons grade — it could be fashioned into a single atomic bomb. So Washington proposed that Iran use its stockpile of LEU as the basis for the reactor fuel, which would require shipping it to Russia and France for further enrichment and conversion into fuel rods that would be extremely difficult for Iran to weaponize. The deal obviously appealed to the West as a way to limit Iran’s ability to potentially create a bomb, but the Iranians aren’t viewing it as a concession. They see the deal as a tacit recognition that uranium enrichment in Iran is an intractable reality, despite Western hopes of coaxing and cajoling Iran into abandoning it altogether in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives. (After all, the uranium that Russia and France would reprocess for Iran under the proposed deal was enriched in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.)