NKorea Eases Rules, Lets Visitors Bring Cellphones

North Korea is loosening some restrictions on foreign cellphones by allowing visitors to bring their own phones into the country. However, security regulations still prohibit mobile phone calls between foreigners and locals.For years, North Korea required visitors to relinquish foreign cellphones at the border until their departure, leaving many tourists without an easy way to communicate with the outside world.

The ritual of handing over phones was part of an exhaustive security check that most visitors face at immigration in North Korea. Many foreigners — including Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, who traveled to North Korea earlier this month — choose to leave their phones behind in Beijing before flying to Pyongyang.

Now, foreigners can bring wideband, WCDMA-compatible mobile phones into the country or rent a local handset at the airport, and purchase a local SIM card for use in North Korea. The SIM card allows them to call most foreign countries, foreign embassies in Pyongyang and international hotels in the North Korean capital, according to Ryom Kum Dan of 3G cellphone service provider Koryolink.

Dissident Eritrean troops seize ministry

Dissident Eritrean soldiers with tanks took over the information ministry on Monday and forced state media to call for political prisoners to be freed, a senior intelligence official said.

The renegade soldiers have not gone as far as to demand the overthrow of the government of one of Africa's most secretive states, long at odds with the United States and accused of human rights abuses.

Eritrea has been led by Isaias Afewerki, 66, for some two decades since it broke from bigger neighbor Ethiopia. The fledging gold producer on the Red Sea coast has become increasingly isolated, resisting foreign pressure to open up.

Soldiers forced the director general of state television "to say the Eritrean government should release all political prisoners," the Eritrean intelligence source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

There was no immediate statement from the Asmara government.

Cameron to Deliver Delayed Europe Speech on Wednesday

Prime Minister David Cameron will deliver his postponed address on Britain’s future relations with Europe on Wednesday, his office said Monday.Mr. Cameron had planned to deliver the speech in Amsterdam on Friday but delayed it amid the Algerian hostage crisis, in which at least three Britons were killed. However, Mr. Cameron’s office released excerpts suggesting he had planned to explicitly warn that Britain might leave the European Union unless the bloc changed the way it was run.

Under pressure from his Conservative Party, Mr. Cameron has signaled his readiness for a referendum on the relationship with Europe, although the precise question to be asked is not clear.

The United States has been unusually public in its insistence that Britain, a close ally, stay in the union. Last week, a White House spokesman quoted President Obama as telling Mr. Cameron by telephone that “the United States values a strong U.K. in a strong European Union, which makes critical contributions to peace, prosperity and security in Europe and around the world.”

Split Emerges Over Cyprus Bailout Package

Cyprus is in urgent need of money from the euro rescue fund, but the troika responsible for the bailouts is split over how it should be structured. The IMF is worried that the country's debt load is not sustainable.
When euro-zone finance ministers meet in Brussels on Monday, a welcome guest will be missing. Christine Lagarde, 57, the French managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is currently unwilling to discuss giving aid money to ailing euro-zone member Cyprus. For some time now, the Americans in particular have been eyeing the IMF's involvement in Europe with suspicion, causing the Frenchwoman to hit the brakes time and again. "I have no mandate for that" is a statement that the euro-zone finance ministers have heard only too often from Lagarde.As such, it remains to be seen whether the IMF will ultimately participate in a loan program for Cyprus. A number of countries, Germany first and foremost, have said that IMF participation is crucial. The statutes of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the euro zone's €700 billion ($931 billion) permanent backstop fund, stipulate that the IMF must rubber stamp a country's debt sustainability before any cash can flow.
But this time around, the IMF is hesitating. A member of the troika which is currently negotiating the bailout deal with the Cypriot government, the IMF has an entirely different notion as to how the program should look.

Obama sworn in for 4 more years in office

 Stepping into his second term, President Barack Obama took the oath of office Sunday in an intimate swearing-in ceremony at the White House, the leader of a nation no longer in the throes of the recession he inherited four years ago, but still deeply divided.

The president, surrounded by family in the ornate White House Blue Room, was administered the oath by Chief Justice John Roberts. With Obama's hand resting on a Bible used for years by Michelle Obama's family, the president vowed "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States," echoing the same words spoken by the 43 men who held the office before him.

"I did it," Obama whispered to his youngest daughter, Sasha, as he wrapped her in a hug moments later.

The president said the oath in just minutes before noon on Jan. 20, the time at which the Constitution says new presidential terms begin. There was little pomp and circumstance Sunday - Obama walked into the room flanked by his family and exited almost immediately after finishing the oath.

He'll repeat the swearing-in ritual again Monday on the west front of the Capitol before a crowd of up to 800,000 people.

Only about a dozen family members were on hand to witness Sunday's swearing in, including the first lady, daughters Malia and Sasha, and the president's sister Maya Soetoro-Ng and her family. Mrs. Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, and the first lady's brother, Craig Robinson, and his family were also on hand, along with a few reporters and photographers.

Yet the mood in the nation's capital was more subdued during this year's inaugural festivities than it was four years ago, when Obama swept into office on a wave of national optimism, becoming the first African-American to hold the nation's highest office. Since then, he has endured fiscal fights with Congress and a bruising re-election campaign - and has the gray hair and lower approval ratings to show for it.

Canadian in charge of deadly hostage-taking named by Algerian PM

ALGIERS, ALGERIA-A total of 37 foreigners and an Algerian died at a desert gas plant and five are still missing after a four-day hostage-taking coordinated by a Canadian gunman, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on Monday.

More bodies found at Algeria gas plant

Sellal also told a news conference that 29 Islamists had been killed in the siege, which Algerian forces ended by storming the plant on Saturday, and three were taken alive. Most of the gunmen were from various states of north and west Africa.

With some bodies burned beyond recognition and Algerian forces still combing the sprawling site, some details were still unclear or at odds with figures from other governments.

The siege has shaken confidence in the security of Algeria's vital energy industry and drawn attention to Islamist militancy across the Sahara, where France has sent troops to neighbouring Mali to fight rebels who have obtained weaponry from Libya.

Of the 38 dead captives, out of a total workforce of some 800 at the In Amenas gas facility, seven were still unidentified but assumed to be foreigners, Algerian premier Sellal said.

Cancer-Stricken Chavez ‘Enters New Phase of Treatment’

Venezuela’s cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez is entering a new phase of treatment after finishing post-operative care, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Sunday.

“The president’s condition and the functioning of all vital organs stabilize, he is conscious. He has more vital forces to enter the next phase of treatment, which will be officially announced,” Maduro told Venezuelan media.

After visiting Chavez in Havana on January 14, Maduro said the Venezuelan leader “is recovering from surgery” and "the entire infection phase has been controlled," referring to Chavez’s respiratory problem.

Univision channel said on Friday Chavez was transferred from the intensive care unit to a secret underground bunker-hospital in Havana, which was designed for emergency medical assistance to Fidel Castro.

Hundreds of security agents and physicians took part in the operation. This was made to avoid leakage of information about Chavez’s health and possibly start preparation for sending him to Caracas.

Dreamliner probe widens after excess battery voltage ruled out

U.S. safety investigators on Sunday ruled out excess voltage as the cause of a battery fire this month on a Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner jet operated by Japan Airlines Co (JAL) and said they were expanding the probe to look at the battery's charger and the jet's auxiliary power unit.

Last week, governments across the world grounded the Dreamliner while Boeing halted deliveries after a problem with a lithium-ion battery on a second 787 plane, flown by All Nippon Airways Co (ANA), forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing in western Japan.

A growing number of investigators and Boeing executives are working around the clock to determine what caused the two incidents which the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says released flammable chemicals and could have sparked a fire in the plane's electrical compartment.

There are still no clear answers about the root cause of the battery failures, but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's statement eliminated one possible answer that had been raised by Japanese investigators.

It also underscored the complexity of investigating a battery system that includes manufacturers across the world, and may point to a design problem with the battery that could take longer to fix than swapping out a faulty batch of batteries.

Thousands call for election boycott in Jordan

Thousands of Jordanians have been demonstrating across the country demanding the government suspend next week's parliamentary elections.

Friday's peaceful demonstration in the capital, Amman, drew nearly 2,000 people, including youth activists and Muslim Brotherhood members, united in the election boycott and in demands that King Abdullah II cede some of his powers.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan's largest opposition group, has renewed calls for King Abdullah to transfer his authority to appoint governments to the "people", meaning an elected parliament.

More than 1,500 candidates, including 213 women, have been registered for the January 23 election for 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, which the opposition groups have boycotted over a lack of reform.

"We reject cosmetic elections and schemes against our demands for reform," read a banner at the rally, organised by the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The protesters chanted: "The people want to reform the regime," and "listen Abdullah, the people demand freedom."

Former Japanese prime minister slammed as 'traitor' at home

The Japanese government has criticized former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's acknowledgment of a "territorial dispute" with China over islands in the East China Sea, with the defense minister going so far as to use the word "traitor."

On his four-day private visit to China, Hatoyama told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday, "The Japanese government says there are no territorial disputes (between the two countries). But if you look at history, there is a dispute."

The remarks contradict his own government's position of indisputable territorial sovereignty over the islands that it calls Senkaku and that China calls Diaoyu.

"If his (Hatoyama's) remarks have been politically used by China, I'm unhappy," Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said on television Thursday. "At that moment, the word of 'traitor' arose in my mind."

Dangerous waters: Behind the islands dispute The day after his controversial remarks, Hatoyama, 66, and his wife visited the Nanjing Memorial, which is for the estimated 300,000 people killed in a 1937 massacre by Japanese forces.