8 theSun | WEDNESDAY MAY 6 2009

news without borders

North Korea accuses US of plotting war

SEOUL: North Korea vowed yester-
day it would not give up its nuclear
weapons programme and accused the
United States of working on new plans
to attack the communist country.
The Korean peninsula is “on the
brink of war because of a new war
scheme by US hostile forces,” the
North’s ruling party newspaper Rodon
Sinmun said in an editorial.
It reiterated a promise by
Pyongyang to bolster its deterrent,
arguing the United States has been
working on a new “nuclear war sce-
nario for aggression.”
“We are compelled to bolster our
nuclear deterrent” as hostile forces
have clarified their scheme to occupy
North Korea by force, it added.
The North has made similar
comments almost every day since
threatening last week to carry out
fresh nuclear and missile tests unless
the United Nations apologises for
condemning and punishing its April 5
rocket launch.
Pyongyang says the launch put
communications satellite into orbit,
but the United States, South Korea and
Japan say it was a disguised missile
test.
On Monday, the North’s foreign
ministry denounced Washington for
trying to find an excuse for applying
sanctions against Pyongyang.
The UN Security Council on April
13 slapped sanctions against North
Korea, banning transactions and call-
ing on UN member states to freeze
the assets of three business entities
of Pyongyang.
In protest, the North said it had
started reprocessing spent fuel rods
at its Yongbyon complex to make
weapons-grade plutonium.
It had already announced it was
quitting a six-nation nuclear disarma-
ment pact with the United States,
China, South Korea, Japan and Rus-
sia.
Analysts say the North’s threat to
conduct a second nuclear test, follow-
ing a first in October 2006, is aimed
at forcing the United States to open
direct negotiations. – AFP

a hotel, the Dominion Post

reported.

briefs
Wealthy German
fined for theft of
RM1,088 Prada bag
HONG KONG: The wealthy Ger-
man head of a mortgage corpora-
tion has been convicted of steal-
ing a US$300 (RM1.080) Prada
bag from a Hongkong hotel bar, a
news report said yesterday.
Timo Woskowiak, 43, Asia-
Pacific head of Hypo Real Estate,
was found guilty on Monday of
stealing the bag from the bar of
the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong-
kong where he was staying.
Woskowiak, from Berlin, who
reportedly earned US$580,000
(RM2.1 million) including bo-
nuses last year and owns two
properties in Germany, was fined
US$320 (RM1,152) by Hongkong’s
Eastern Court. The Prada bag was
picked up by Woskowiak after it
was left beneath a table in the
bar by a Chinese man who had
just bought it from a nearby store,
the South China Morning Post
reported. – dpa
Woman drowned
in bizarre exorcism
WELLINGTON: A Maori mother
of two drowned when water
was poured into her mouth
and eyes to wash out demons
in a bizarre exorcism ritual, a
Wellington court was told, a
newspaper reported yester-
day. A tribal elder told relatives
that Janet Moses, 22, had been
possessed by an evil spirit
triggered by the theft of a con-
crete lion statue from outside
Three men and six
women pleaded not guilty to
the manslaughter of Moses
in October 2007 when their
trial opened in the Welling-
ton High Court on Monday.
One of the women and
another man were also
charged with cruelty to a
14-year-old girl, who was
thought to have caught the
evil spirit from Moses after
she died. The girl survived.
Defence attorney Mike An-
tunovic, representing all 10
defendants said what took
place was an intense and
powerful experience. – dpa
Maid jailed
for abusing
employer’s baby
SINGAPORE: A court oyester-
day sentenced an Indonesian
maid to nine months in jail for
abusing her employer’s baby, a
news report said.
Identified only as Etik, 25,
the maid pleaded guilty to
pushing, slapping, shaking and
kicking the two-month-old boy
on Jan 25 last year.
She had been employed
since November 2007 and
was recorded by closed-circuit
television pushing the baby’s
groin and slapping his leg while
he lay crying on the sofa, the
online edition of Straits Times
newspaper reported.
She then put the baby in a
sarong cradle, kicked the sa-
rong and used her leg to swing
on the cradle, the report said.
Later, the maid kicked the
victim’s buttocks once and
swung the cradle vigorously,
the report said. – dpa
Obama cracks down on tax
havens, outsourcing companies
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama,
decrying “egregious” tax abuses, announced
on Monday savings of US$210 billion (RM756
billion) by squeezing offshore havens and US
firms’ ability to profit from outsourcing jobs.
Vowing that all US taxpayers would start
“contributing their fair share,” Obama said
the shakeup was “a downpayment on the
larger tax reform we need to make” as
he battles the nation’s worst recession
since World War II.
But the reforms submitted to Con-
gress came under fierce attack from
big business and Republicans, who
argued they would backfire by driving
even more US companies to relocate to
cheaper locations abroad.
Claiming 10-year savings of US$210
billion, Obama said the money would
be used “to reduce the deficit, cut taxes
for American businesses that are play-
ing by the rules, and provide meaning-
ful relief for hard-working families.”
Under the plan announced by
Obama and Treasury Secretary Timo-
thy Geithner, the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) would hire nearly 800
new agents to go after offshore tax
avoidance.
Overall, according to the adminis-
tration, companies exploit an array of
tax loopholes and shady practices to
pay an average of just two percent on
their foreign profits, costing the US tax-
payer tens of billions of dollars a year.
The reforms fulfill one of Obama’s key
campaign pledges, by ending the abil-
ity of US companies to “defer” taxes on
profits made overseas after they shut
down facilities at home and ship the
jobs elsewhere.
Such “egregious examples” and
“distorted provisions” inserted into US
tax law by special interests would end,
Obama vowed to reporters.
“I want to see our companies remain
the most competitive in the world. But
the way to make sure that happens is
not to reward our companies for mov-
ing jobs off our shores or transferring
profits to overseas tax havens.”
Geithner said that with the excep-
tion of research and development
expenses, companies would no longer
receive deductions on their US taxes
for their offshore investments until they
pay taxes on their offshore profits. In a
statement, the White House said this
would recoup US$60.1 billion (RM216
billion) from 2011 to 2019. Some of the
savings would fund a permanent tax
credit for research and development
costs, it said. The plan would also close
another “deferral” loophole under
which companies can deduct their US
taxes from their foreign taxes, yielding
US$43 billion (RM154 billion) back to
the Treasury over the next 10 years.
That loophole, Obama said, lets
“some of our largest companies tell the
IRS that they’re paying taxes abroad,
tell foreign governments they’re pay-
ing taxes elsewhere, and avoid paying
taxes anywhere.”
But the US Chamber of Commerce
said the United States is the only major
economy that imposes double taxation
on its companies’ overseas earnings.
“Since other countries don’t subject
their companies to double taxation,
US companies need deferral to stay
competitive in the global marketplace,”
it warned.
Obama’s revamp would also force
US firms to report foreign subsidiar-
ies as separate companies to the IRS,
rather than hide them in offshore ad-
dresses such as the Cayman Islands,
raising up to US$95.2 billion (RM342
billion) over the next decade.
And in line with new action against
Switzerland and other havens under-
taken by the Group of 20 nations, the
plan also clamps down on wealthy
Americans who mask their money in
foreign bank accounts.
Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell said the proposals would
damage “our shared goal of creating
more American jobs rather than driv-
ing them overseas by increasing the
cost of job creation here at home.”
Criticism did not come from Repub-
licans alone. The Democratic chairman
of the Senate Finance Committee, Max
Baucus, said “further study is needed
to assess the impact of this plan on US
businesses.” – AFP

Grieving...
A family who lost their
relatives in the attack mourn
in front of a hospital in
REUTERSPIX

Mardin, southeastern Turkey,

early yesterday.