CARACAS, Mar 12: Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said he will return home from Cuba where he is recovering from cancer surgery next Sunday, to head up a re-election campaign.

Chavez was speaking during a televised appearance where he met with his cabinet ministers to show he is in full control of the government despite his illness. (agencies)

SANTIAGO, Mar 12: Chile will tighten tax rules for foreign companies and raise levies on larger firms as part of wide-reaching tax reforms likely to be unveiled in April, President Sebastian Pinera said.

Pinera yesterday told tv channel Chilevision the tax reform was aimed in part at raising the tax take to help fund education reforms that the unpopular government pledged in the face of massive protests last year to demand more social benefits and spending.

The government will also lower taxes for individuals and small- and mid-sized companies, he said.

Pinera said the government would probably tax large companies at a rate of 20 per cent, effectively making permanent a temporary increase implemented in the wake of a massive earthquake in early 2010 that has already been partially rolled back and which was due to revert to an original 17 per cent next year.

‘Not only will taxes on large companies increase, we will also correct and eliminate a series of mechanisms of eluding or evading taxes,’ Pinera said.

‘We will correct a series of mechanisms through which foreign companies are not paying as much tax as they ought to, which is do with prices of transfers, double taxation agreements,’ he added.

Pinera has previously said large companies have to make a greater contribution to a more equitable tax system that will seek to foster growth of small and medium-sized companies.

Pinera hiked royalties on mining companies in 2010 and raised a host of taxes to help finance reconstruction after the devastating earthquake.

(agencies)

SANTIAGO, Mar 12: Chile will tighten tax rules for foreign companies and raise levies on larger firms as part of wide-reaching tax reforms likely to be unveiled in April, President Sebastian Pinera said.

Pinera yesterday told tv channel Chilevision the tax reform was aimed in part at raising the tax take to help fund education reforms that the unpopular government pledged in the face of massive protests last year to demand more social benefits and spending.

The government will also lower taxes for individuals and small- and mid-sized companies, he said.

Pinera said the government would probably tax large companies at a rate of 20 per cent, effectively making permanent a temporary increase implemented in the wake of a massive earthquake in early 2010 that has already been partially rolled back and which was due to revert to an original 17 per cent next year.

‘Not only will taxes on large companies increase, we will also correct and eliminate a series of mechanisms of eluding or evading taxes,’ Pinera said.

‘We will correct a series of mechanisms through which foreign companies are not paying as much tax as they ought to, which is do with prices of transfers, double taxation agreements,’ he added.

Pinera has previously said large companies have to make a greater contribution to a more equitable tax system that will seek to foster growth of small and medium-sized companies.

Pinera hiked royalties on mining companies in 2010 and raised a host of taxes to help finance reconstruction after the devastating earthquake.

(agencies)

BEIJING, Mar 12: Adding to the woes of China’s beleaguered railway sector, a section of a new high-speed rail track in central China’s Hubei province collapsed possibly due to persistent rains, prompting authorities to rush hundreds of workers for its repair.

The Hanyi High-speed Railway, which links the provincial capital Wuhan and Yichang city, is expected to open in May. But part of it has already collapsed after test runs, amid persistent rains.

The roadbed of a 300-metre section rail in Qianjiang city collapsed on Friday.

Workers said that heavy rains in the past few days may have caused the problem, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.

The 291-km Hanyi railway, constructed by the China Railway’s 12th Bureau Group Co., will be a major high-speed rail in central China.

The Railways Ministry, which has been under fire for lax safety standards, has said it remained committed to high-speed rail. (PTI)

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN, Mar 12: US officials today warned of possible reprisal attacks after 16 Afghan villagers, mostly children and women, were killed in a likely ‘rogue’ shooting by a US soldier that weakens the West’s tenuous grip on a decade-old war.

Washington has rushed to distance the shootings, blamed on a lone US soldier, from the efforts of the 90,000-strong US force in Afghanistan, but the rampage in southern Kandahar province is certain to inflame anti-Western anger once again.

It comes less than three weeks after US troops inadvertently burned copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, at the main NATO base in Afghanistan, sparking widespread protests in which 30 people were killed.

‘The US Embassy in Kabul alerts US citizens in Afghanistan that as a result of a tragic shooting incident in Kandahar province involving a US service member, there is a risk of anti-American feelings and protests in coming days, especially in the eastern and southern provinces,’ the embassy said in an emergency statement on its website.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, toppled by US-backed forces in late 2001. Southern and eastern provinces have seen some of the fiercest fighting of the war, increasingly unpopular among Americans and their European allies.

Early today, the embassy said on its Twitter feed restrictions had been placed on the movements of all embassy personnel in the south.

A sharp increase in attacks on US troops by Afghan forces followed the Koran burning. Sunday’s incident in Kandahar was one of the worst of its kind, witnesses describing it as a ‘night-time massacre’ that killed nine children and three women.

Villagers in three houses were attacked and many civilians were wounded, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Officials from the US Embassy, ISAF and from Washington said it appeared there was only one. An ISAF spokesman said the lone US soldier ‘walked back to the base and turned himself in to US forces this morning’, adding there had been no military operations in the area.

The soldier in custody was described by one US official in Washington as a staff sergeant who was married with three children. The sergeant had served three tours in Iraq but was on his first deployment in Afghanistan, the official said.

Neighbours and relatives of the dead said they saw a group of US soldiers arrive at their village in Panjwai district, about 35 km from the provincial capital Kandahar City, at about 2 a.M. They said the soldiers entered homes and opened fire.

However, Afghan Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid said a US soldier burst into three homes near his base in the middle of the night, killing a total of 16 people, including 11 people in the first house.

Villager Haji Samad said his children and grandchildren were among 11 relatives killed.

‘They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,’ a weeping Samad told Reuters at the scene, with blood splattered on the walls of his home.

Neighbours said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk.

‘Their bodies were riddled with bullets,’ said Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where the killings took place.

A senior US defence official in Washington rejected such accounts. ‘Based on the preliminary information we have this account is flatly wrong,’ the official said. ‘We believe one US service member acted alone, not a group of US soldiers.’

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also called Karzai to offer his condolences. ‘I condemn such violence and am shocked and saddened that a US service member is alleged to be involved, clearly acting outside his chain of command,’ Panetta said.

(agencies)

BEIJING, Mar 12: China, which is yet to take a decision on a three-member crew for its first manned space docking mission this year, today said that it may include a woman astronaut in the team.

Authorities have completed the initial selection of crew members for China’s first manned space docking mission and the roster includes woman astronauts, an official with the country’s manned space programme said.

But the final three-person crew will be decided “on the very last condition” of the team of astronauts of both sexes currently undergoing training, Niu Hongguang, deputy commander -in-chief of the country’s manned space programme and deputy head of General Armament Department of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.

The manned spacecraft Shenzhou-9 will take its crew members to board the Tiangong-1 space module lab, which was launched in September last year and completed the country’s first space docking with the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft in November.

The selected astronauts are in training at the moment, Niu said on the sidelines of the annual Parliamentary session.

Assembly on the Shenzhou-9 and its carrier rocket, the Long March-2F, has been completed, and the manned space docking is due between June and August this year, he said.

“The perfect docking between Shenzhou-8 and Tiangong-1 has laid the perfect foundation for the manned docking this year,” Niu said, noting that the manned docking will feature brand new technology.

Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace-1, has been orbiting normally for more than 160 days, and is capable of docking with Shenzhou-9 and accommodating astronauts, he said. (PTI)

TOKYO, Mar 12: The yen remains overvalued despite its recent steep fall from historic peaks versus the US dollar, Japan’s prime minister said today, while the country’s finance minister kept up a warning against speculative currency moves.

‘Compared to record highs seen last October the yen has weakened but as a trend it is still somewhat overvalued … The yen is valued highly in relative terms when considering fundamentals,’ Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said in parliament.

Finance Minister Jun Azumi added there was no change in Japan’s stance of taking steps against speculative moves in currency markets, though he declined to say whether the yen is correctly valued at present.

‘As I’ve said before, we will take firm action against excessive and speculative moves,’ Azumi said at the same parliamentary committee meeting. He acknowledged that a strong yen damages the global competitiveness of Japanese firms.

When urged by an opposition lawmaker to step into forex markets more frequently, Azumi said there were no constraints on intervention by Japan, though the fact it regularly discloses intervention amounts makes it different from emerging economies that heavily intervene to weaken their currencies.

The yen in early February advanced towards a record high against the dollar, but it has retreated nearly 10 percent after monetary easing from the Bank of Japan and brighter prospects for the US economy.

The dollar was down 0.3 percent at 82.16 yen, hovering below a 10-1/2 month high above 82.60 yen hit on Friday. (Agencies)

LOS ANGELES, Mar 12: Whitney Houston’s daughter said she still hears her mom encouraging her ‘keep moving, keep going,’ and the pop star’s sister-in-law revealed new details of the day Houston died in their first public interviews since the singer’s death.

Bobbi Kristina Brown, 19, yesterday told talk show host Oprah Winfrey that she was ‘doing okay … I’m doing as good as I possibly can’ since her mother was found lifeless in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hills Hilton hotel on February 11, the eve of the music industry’s Grammy Awards.

‘I can hear her voice, you know, and spirit talking to me, telling me, you know, ‘keep moving baby. I’m right here. I got you’ … She’s always with me. I can always feel her,’ Bobbi Kristina Brown told Winfrey.

‘I feel her pass through me all the time,’ said Brown, whose father is singer Bobby Brown.

Houston and Brown’s only daughter said she feels her mom’s presence in the house they shared in Atlanta. The ‘lights turn on and off, and I go ‘mom, what’re you doing?’ … I can still laugh with her. I can sit there and I can still talk with her.’

Houston was 48-years-old when she died. She rose to fame in the 1980s and enjoyed a long career that peaked with her 1992 hit ‘I Will Always Love You’ from the movie ‘The Bodyguard.’

But her life was plagued by a troubled marriage to singer Brown, and she had previously admitted to heavy use of cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and prescription pills.

Officials have said prescription drugs were found in the hotel room where she died, but a cause of death is still pending toxicology tests which are expected later this month.

The interview, which took place at the Atlanta home of Houston’s brother Gary and sister-in-law and manager Patricia, revealed new details of the day the singer died.

FACE DOWN IN BATHTUB

Oprah opened the broadcast by saying ‘members of the family told me she (Houston) was face down and naked’ in the bathtub, and Patricia revealed that Houston’s assistant, Mary, discovered the singer’s body in the hotel room bathtub.

A security guard who is Patricia Houston’s brother tried in vain to resuscitate Houston in the room but was unsuccessful.

He was ‘trying to revive her to the point of exhaustion,’ Patricia Houston said, ‘and I called his name. I said, ‘Ray … Let it go.’ They (paramedics) asked him to move. He was on his knees. He said, ‘I tried.’ He was so out of breath.’

A tear rolled down Patricia Houston’s face as she recalled the sight of her sister-in-law lying dead on the hotel room floor. ‘She had a peacefulness on her, a look on her. She had a peaceful look,’ Patricia Houston said.

Winfrey asked Patricia Houston if she believed drugs were involved in the singer’s death. Patricia Houston said she believed the pop star’s worse days of drug abuse were behind her, although she stopped short of saying Houston was not on drugs or drinking on the day of she died.

‘I don’t think drugs (were) an issue for her before her death. I don’t know what happened that day. Do you understand what I’m saying,’ Patricia Houston said.

Finally, Winfrey asked Houston’s brother Gary whether Brown, whom Whitney Houston divorced in 2007, was asked by Houston’s family not to attend the singer’s funeral and Gary replied ‘Absolutely not.’ Brown did turn up for the funeral, but left early, blaming a mixup with security over seating.

He said his family was not angry about a picture of Houston in her casket that was printed in the tabloids following her death, and added that his mother long ago had premonitions about a young demise for his sister.

‘I remember my mother used to say … Whitney’s not going to be with us too long,’ Gary Houston said. ‘She’s an angel. She’s a gift.’

(AGENCIES)