Saturday, July 31, 2010

Blackstone to cut Hilton debt by roughly $4 billion

NEW YORK Wed Feb 24, 2010 9:29am EST Stocks & &

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private equity firm Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) will cut the $20 billion debt load of its hotel chain, Hilton Worldwide Inc, by almost $4 billion in a restructuring, according to court documents.

Blackstone has been in talks to cut Hilton"s debt for some months. The private equity firm purchased the hotel group in July 2007 in a deal financed with $20.6 billion of debt and $5.7 billion of equity at the peak of the buyout bubble.

The hotel market was hit hard by the economic crisis as consumers and businesses cut back on travel. While business travel has improved in recent months, it is below levels of 2008 and earlier.

"Absent a near-term restructuring of the loans, the mortgage borrowers and the mezzanine borrowers may be unable to satisfy their financial obligations under the loans," Lehman Bros Holding Inc (LEHMQ.PK) said in the court documents, dated February 23.

Under the restructuring, the mortgage loan and the senior mezzanine loans could be extended by two years. Junior mezzanine loans would be converted to about $2 billion of preferred equity, Lehman said.

In addition, Blackstone would contribute $800 million to repay a portion of the debt.

Lehman said it holds a "small fraction" of the total debt proposed to be restructured, and it has asked the court"s permission to participate in the restructuring.

(Reporting by Chelsea Emery; editing by John Wallace)

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Former chorister creates sex abuse explain opposite Georg Ratzingers choir

Richard Owen, Rome & , : {}

Georg Ratzinger, the Pope"s brother, was drawn further into the paedophile scandal embroiling the Catholic Church yesterday after a former member of the school choir that he ran claimed to have been sexually abused.

Although Monsignor Ratzinger, 86, recently admitted slapping choirboys while running the renowned Domspatzen choir in Bavaria, he also said that was never aware of any sex abuse during his tenure as choirmaster from 1964 to 1994. He is not implicated in the allegations.

However, Clemens Neck, a spokesman for Regensburg diocese, which includes the school, said that sex abuse allegations against four priests and two nuns were being investigated and that one inquiry related to claims made by a former Domspatzen choirboy that a teacher abused him for months in 1971.

The teacher, identified by German media as Father Sturmius W, had been a theology student and an assistant at the Cathedral boarding school attached to the Regensburg choir, and subsequently became a priest.

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Father W, 61, was stripped of his duties last week after the former chorister came forward last week. The accuser, who was 11 at the time of the alleged abuse, was named by Stern magazine as Alexander Probst, now 50.

The latest allegations, after a spate of other claims in Germany and in several Catholic countries around the world, have shaken the hierarchy of the Church, culminating in an unprecedented apology by the Pope last Saturday for decades of abuses committed by members of the Catholic clergy in Ireland.

The latest allegations in Bavaria exceed the statutes of limitations for criminal prosecution in Germany since all but one stem from before the mid-1970s, and the other dates from 1984. Nonetheless the diocese was investigating the allegations and forwarding information to state prosecutors. Seven people altogether had made allegations of abuse against the six people now under investigation, and others had come forward with allegations concerning people now dead, Mr Neck said. He added that the two nuns involved were elderly and suffering from dementia, and it was "nearly impossible" to interview them.

Georg Ratzinger"s brother Joseph, now Pope Benedict XVI, was promoted from Munich to Rome in 1982 to be Vatican head of doctrine. He decreed in 2001 that clerical sex abuse cases should be investigated internally rather than handed to the police, and imposed "papal confidentiality" on the inquiries, a decision criticised as part of concerted effort to cover-up abuse allegations.

The Pope has also come under fire because Father Peter Hullermann, a priest accused of molesting boys in Essen, was allowed to transfer to the Munich diocese for "therapy" in 1980, a move approved by the current Pontiff. Father Hullermann was later allowed to return to pastoral work, including work with children, and in was 1986 convicted of further incidents of sexual abuse. Even then he returned to the Church and was allowed to minister until the allegations surrounding him surfaced earlier this month.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Frenchmen would love looser law to move behind brothels

Charles Bremner, Paris & , : {}

More than 60 years after Paris close the famous maisons closes, or brothels, an MP from President Sarkozys UMP celebration is campaigning to legalize them again.

Chantal Brunel, who was allocated last month to head the inhabitant watchdog on passionate equality, is arguing that crime would be cut and sex workers would good from passionate services centres identical to those run by majority of Frances neighbours.

A inhabitant check by the CSA organisation found that 59 per cent of the French open authorized the reopening of the regulated brothels that were a tie of French hold up and enlightenment until they were abolished in 1946. The offer was upheld by 70 per cent of men and 49 per cent of women. Only thirteen per cent of women were opposed, with 38 per cent undecided, according to the check for Le Parisien newspaper.

The thought is not to go behind to the incident prior to 1946. I introduce that we should cruise the origination of places where the squeeze of passionate services would be probable with medical, authorised and monetary protection, Ms Brunel said. Her debate is summarized in a book to be published this month and comes after argumentative formula from a prior try to quell prostitution.

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A difficult law introduced by Mr Sarkozy in 2002, when he was Interior Minister, combined an corruption of pacifist soliciting, permitting military to assign any lady deemed by her coming to be seeking law in public, even if she creates no proceed to intensity clients.

The Sarkozy law has resulted in the removal of prostitutes 80 per cent of them foreigners from the boulevards of Paris and alternative towns, pushing them to some-more dangerous behind streets, parks and on to the internet, campaigners say. Ms Brunel is piece of a operative organisation at the Interior Ministry that is assessing the stroke of the law and seeking at policies between Frances neighbours. Her offer has nonetheless to bleed a reply from the Government.

As majority as 30,000 women and men are pronounced to manipulate their traffic in France, along with 60,000 part-timers. While procuring or soliciting sex is illegal, harlotry itself is not banned, and sex workers are approaching to compensate income taxation and amicable security. Hundreds of French women are additionally pronounced to be operative in authorised brothels conflicting the frontiers in Spain, Belgium, Germany and Italy. Ms Brunel, MP for the horse opera Paris suburbs, says that France should follow the e.g. of scarcely all the neighbours and concede complicated bordels. It is loyal that couple of women prostitute oneself themselves willingly, she told Le Parisien. But we should not be blind. Prostitution has regularly existed and will regularly do so.

She does not plan to reconstruct the lush Parisian maisons de tolrance that were busy by le lover monde and distinguished by painters and writers such as Emile Zola, Toulouse-Lautrec and Guy de Maupassant. Celebrity clients at the grand Paris establishments that could be run usually by women enclosed Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales and Marcel Proust, who busy a obvious homosexual house.

Proposals to free the French bordels, of that there were 1,400 in 1946, have been done mostly given then. While a little feminist campaigners foster the idea, others are fiercely opposed. Prostitutes debate groups sojourn heedful of state-sanctioned houses.

Mouvement du Nid, a await organisation for Paris prostitutes, pounded Ms Brunels scheme. What kind of a multitude thatch up the women for the wish of men? asked Bruno Lemettre, head of the Nid group. No lady chooses such work of her own free will, he said. Those who contend the conflicting are helmet themselves to equivocate articulate about their suffering.

Ladies of the night

• In the early 1800s Napoleon systematic the registration of all prostitutes and unchanging health inspections

• In the initial half of the 20th century Pariss red-light districts, as portrayed in the Baz Luhrmann movie Moulin Rouge, were a big traveller captivate

• During the wartime Nazi occupation, the twenty tip Paris brothels were indifferent for German infantry and French collaborators

• After the fight the contemptible predicament of majority prostitutes majority at risk from pimps or unethical business caused a open cheer and campaigners succeeded in carrying brothels outlawed conflicting France

• The honesty of the Paris brothel stage desirous countless writers and artists, between them Anaïs Nin, Man Ray, Brassai and the Surrealist egghead Andr Breton

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Thaksin Shinawatra contingency pledge majority of his solidified happening justice rules

Thaksin Shinawatra

Sian Powell, Bangkok & , : {}

The Thai Supreme Court ruled yesterday that infancy of the happening of the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra should be seized from his accounts and returned to the nation.

The ruling, that was preceded by a huge authorised battle, covers roughly dual thirds of his 76 billion baht (1.52 billion) in Thai accounts that have been solidified given prior to long after he was suspended in a troops manoeuvre in 2006.

In a outcome awaited with terror by most Thais who have separate in to pro-Thaksin and opposition royalist camps, a infancy of the 9 judges motionless that a sum of 46.37 billion baht of the Thaksin family happening was forfeit.

The judges found that Thaksin had sought to heighten himself whilst in office, had done supervision process to foster his personal fortunes and had attempted to disguise his tenure of estimable parcels of shares whilst he was Prime Minister. Thaksin could keep 30.24 billion baht, the justice ruled. To seize all the income would be astray given a little of it was done prior to he became Prime Minister, the judges said.

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The appearing outcome had set Thailand on corner and rekindled fears of a rerun of last Aprils assault when Thaksins supporters from the United Front for Democracy opposite Dictatorship (UDD), at large well known as the red shirts, rioted by Bangkok.

Only a handful of red shirt protesters were outward the Supreme Court yesterday, with a couple of hundred some-more watchful over the road.

The UDD spokesman, Sean Boonpracong, pronounced that the outcome had repelled them.

I think the a domestic decision. Thats really, unequivocally clear. The ambience the nation operates in currently was combined by the coup-makers. We are really unhappy with this verdict.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

Recommit to women"s ransom Lindsey German and Nina Power Comment is free The Guardian

international womenInternational Women"s Day. First concluded at a revolutionary women"s discussion in Copenhagen in 1910, the target was to debate for the rights of operative women. Today, the lives of women have altered over approval compared with those of their grandmothers and good grandmothers. But the changes in work and personal hold up have been twisted by the needs of the marketplace and have depressed far short of women"s liberation.

The experience of work has been severe and refreshing for a few, but for majority women in the shops, offices, call centres and factories of 21st-century Britain it has been some-more approaching to paint prolonged hours, consistent pressure, and flourishing attempts to fist some-more capability and distinction out of them. The big enlarge in the numbers of women operative (more than twelve million today) has come from operative mothers. But there has been no identical change in how the family and childcare have been organised.

So whilst mothers work outward the home, mostly full-time, they are additionally mostly approaching to shoulder the needs of shopping, stuff oneself and caring for their children. This is on tip of infrequently prolonged journeys to work, and of the final of change work for many. Whereas the old sexist dichotomy of the 50s was that women could possibly have looks or brains, right away we are approaching to have both, and in progress skills at slightest to the turn of Come Dine With Me, and an all-seeing eye to safeguard that young kids handle at all times.

Women are approaching to juggle all aspects of their lives and are blamed as people for any unwell in their work or family life. The customarily people who can proceed to attain in you do this are those who can means to compensate others (usually women) to lift out a small or all of these tasks. So an armed forces of working-class women cook, clean, caring for children, do ironing and washing, work in supermarkets, wait for in restaurants, perform personal services, all to safeguard the simpler hold up of those women who "have it all". Often in the routine they slight their own family groups to do so.

The approach in that women"s operative lives are portrayed reflects this. There is most speak of potion ceilings, but small about those women who are descending in to the basement, struggling to work and say family groups on misery wages. The hold up practice of women (and men) are in essence different, with a small minority pity in the increase done by working-class men and women.

Alongside work has come increasing sexualisation of multitude – right away greeted with abhorrence by important middle-class opinion, but most speedy by advertising, the media and the distinction ground itself, where porn and path dancing are right away big business. The alternative side of this sexualisation is the stability high levels of rape, made at home assault and passionate abuse. We are still a really prolonged approach from women determining their own lives and sexuality.

This International Women"s Day we should recommit to a women"s ransom that is continuous to a wider transformation for human emancipation and for operative people to carry out the resources they produce. That"s since women and men have to quarrel for liberation. We won"t win but a fight, since there are most vested interests who wish to stop us. But some-more and some-more people are commencement to bond campaigning over meridian change, fight and lack of harmony with fighting for women"s liberation. That"s since we are rising a declaration for 21st-century feminism to proceed to organize for genuine equality.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

England patrol contingency be improved purpose models, says Wayne Rooney Football The Guardian

Wayne Rooney

Wayne Rooney says he has grown as a chairman and accepts the responsibilities that come with personification for England. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images

Wayne Rooney has reacted to a month of pale allegations surrounding England players by surrender he and his inhabitant team-mates do have a amicable shortcoming to be improved purpose models. The Manchester United striker certified that it was this realization that stirred him to reinvent his own picture over the past couple of years.

Fabio Capello"s patrol convened at their Hertfordshire precision bottom yesterday for tomorrow"s accessible opposite Egypt with the deposed captain, John Terry, at the behind of in the overlay notwithstanding the outcry generated by his purported event with Wayne Bridge"s former partner, Vanessa Perroncel. Rooney pronounced the Chelsea centre-half is still an constituent player if England are to mount any possibility of success at the summer"s World Cup finals, though he offering a sign as well of the larger responsibilities that come with hold up in the open eye.

"It is formidable as a footballer since you know people see up to you," Rooney said. "You are purpose models either you similar to it or not. You need to try and be wakeful of that, try and do your majority appropriate on the pitch, and try to do things well for kids to see.

"When I initial assimilated Manchester United I used to go out to nightclubs but it is unequivocally singular that I would go out to a nightclub now. It changes with age, of course, but I finished that preference myself. I got in to a couple of things that I shouldn"t have and I attempted to shift that. I am staid at home now. It"s all good. I am enjoying my hold up with my family. I outlay a lot of time at home with them and that has patently benefited me. When you are home you get your rest and it is unequivocally benefiting me."

Rooney"s approval that England"s players have larger responsibilities than merely progressing standards on the representation will total with the views voiced by Capello, who pronounced last week that his preference to soothe Terry of his duties was innate of a dignified idea that "children see to these players as an e.g. for life". Capello will remind his players of their wider responsibilities prior to the Egypt game, carrying non-stop yesterday"s precision event by revelation them that World Cup preparations effectively begin now.

"But we are happy to have John around," pronounced Rooney when asked if the debate churned up by the Perroncel event had unsettled the inhabitant squad. "He is a great player. If we are going to win the World Cup afterwards we need John Terry. He is a big player for us and we need him.

"John is a great captain and, either he has the armband or not, he will still be a great personality for us at the World Cup. Rio has patently captained United to Champions League success and Steven Gerrard has finished the same at Liverpool. We have a little great captains in the group and I don"t think we will be short."

Rooney has urged England fans not to disapprove Terry at Wembley. "I idea the fans don"t since I have played in England teams when a little of the own players have been booed and it"s not great for the total group not only the player who has been booed," he said.

"When you are heading up to a World Cup, you wish the fans at the behind of you and giving you their total support. That will be unequivocally critical so I idea he gets a great reception."

Capello oversaw a structure of the body patrol at London Colney yesterday since that eleven of his players had been concerned in bar fixtures on Sunday and were limited to light work, but will acquire Rooney at the behind of to precision currently after the United brazen underwent diagnosis on a teenager knee complaint aggravated in his match-winning opening in the Carling Cup final.

Rooney"s idea total for the deteriorate right away stands at an considerable 28, with the brazen surrender that England"s chances in South Africa might rely on him progressing such form. The Germany coach, Joachim Löw, described him as "unstoppable" last week to offer notice of his burgeoning reputation. "I do feel unstoppable," pronounced Rooney. "I feel I am going to measure in each diversion I play. I am ready for all the courtesy – it cannot be as bad as prior to 2006 when the group were scheming and, majority days, the concentration was only on either I would be fit. Now I am in the majority appropriate form of my life, and I"m ready. I idea I can have a disproportion for England at the World Cup. I know that, if I have a great World Cup, we will have a possibility of you do well."

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Charitys bullying claims in disbelief as congregation give up the cause

Tom Baldwin, Chief Reporter & , : {}

Claims that Gordon Browns staff had contacted the National Bullying Helpline were thrown in to disbelief last night after the charity"s congregation all quiescent in criticism over the allegations.

Christine Pratt, who founded the organization 7 years ago, struggled via yesterday to give transparent answers on how most complaints had been perceived from people operative in No 10 or when the calls were done and what they were about.

On Sunday she had wrecked the begin of Labours debate by giving a BBC talk in that she vented ire at the Governments efforts to repudiate charges in a book by Andrew Rawnsley detailing purported incidents of Mr Browns volcanic temper.

She pronounced over the last 3 or 4 years the helpline had probably perceived 3 or 4 calls from No 10 staff who hold they are in a bullying culture. Yesterday, however, Mrs Pratt regularly altered her story. She pronounced dual calls had been from the Deputy Prime Ministers bureau and there had been an additional dual or some-more from the Prime Ministers office. She after insisted that all of these had been inside of the past eighteen months rather than 3 or 4 years ago, as formerly stated.

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When it was forked out that the Deputy Prime Ministers bureau had not existed given 2007, Mrs Pratt said: I will need to go behind and check. Im emotionally tired right now. Im certain all this will blow over. Although she sought to defuse a little of the stroke of remarks, insisting nobody has pronounced to us that they were being bullied by Gordon Brown, this did not assuage the charitys patrons.

Professor Cary Cooper, an consultant on workplace stress, was the initial to make well known he was resigning since Mrs Pratt had grossly breached the confidentiality of people looking the help.

Then Sarah Cawood, a radio presenter, additionally quit. In the light of new events, she said, I feel it is no longer a debate with that I would similar to my name to be associated.

Mary OConnor, a enthusiast and authority of the London Health Commission, became the third to disjoin her links with the organisation. I cant acquit what has been said, she said.

Ann Widdecombe, a comparison Conservative backbencher, additionally quiescent last night as she cited concerns about an strong crack of confidentiality.

Another enthusiast declared on the charitys website, the thespian Mz Bratt, pronounced that she had not strictly taken up the role. A orator told Channel 4 News: Mz Bratt was never reliable as an central enthusiast for the gift in question. The charitys house of curators is approaching to hold an puncture assembly this afternoon. Roy Millard, who runs a internal security organization in Swindon, told The Times: Anything we have to contend will be communicated scrupulously rather than by only one source.

Figures from the Charity Commission lift questions over the helplines pretensions to be a inhabitant organisation. In 2007, the income of this small Swindon-based organization was only �1,818, with output of �852. These are the ultimate accounts accessible since those for 2008 are 207 days owing notwithstanding steady reminders.

The commission after reliable that it was reviewing complaints about the anti-bullying helpline, that concentration on claims that Mrs Pratt has used it to capture commercial operation for a consultancy that she runs with her husband.

Jane McGrath, a bullying plant in 2008, has purported that Mrs Pratt was looking to line her own pockets. There was no support, no guidance, recommendation or caring I felt really most similar to she was utilizing me and my harmful incident as a equates to to acrue business, she wrote in an e-mail.

Mrs Pratt said: We suggest all the callers options to be referred to brawl fortitude agencies. One of these is a association run by my father and myself. She combined that the complement for transferring clients from the gift to her consultancy had been authorized by the Charity Commission. We repudiate that we were angling for business.

Labour hurt the Tories yesterday by suggesting that Mrs Pratt had been piece of a domestic operation to allegation Mr Brown. Lord Mandelson, the First Secretary, said: Conservative Party press officers were active yesterday, running reporters towards Mrs Pratt, presumption that she had a little fuel to throw on this fire.

A Conservative orator said: Allegations of bullying inside of Downing Street have been done by both Andrew Rawnsley and Mrs Pratt. Instead of addressing them, they are dismissing Mrs Pratt as a Tory celebration stooge. She is not.

The charitys website carries a selection from David Cameron, whilst Mrs Pratt is well known to have discussed ways of augmenting the helplines income with Conservatives in Swindon recently. She said: They have been in hit with us but we are not a domestic charity. Im not politically motivated.