W O R L D

US Senate blocks Obama’s bill on anti-outsourcing
Washington, September 29
The Republicans in the US Senate blocked an anti-outsourcing bill that would have deterred American firms from shifting jobs to competitive locations overseas. Seen as a blow to President Barack Obama, the 53-45 defeat vote blocked the bill yesterday, as it fell six votes short of passage.

26/11-like attack foiled in Europe
Berlin/London, September 29
Intelligence agencies have disrupted plans for multiple attacks on European cities by a group thought to be linked to the al-Qaida, Britain’s Sky News said on Tuesday. Militants based in Pakistan were planning simultaneous strikes in London, as well as cities in France and Germany, the channel’s foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro speaks during the celebrations to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) in Havana on Tuesday. On the occasion, he warned people of an apocalyptic future of nuclear war and environmental destruction with capitalism and its chief proponent, the United States, as the primary culprits. — Reuters

US Senate blocks Obama’s bill on anti-outsourcing

Washington, September 29
The Republicans in the US Senate blocked an anti-outsourcing bill that would have deterred American firms from shifting jobs to competitive locations overseas. Seen as a blow to President Barack Obama, the 53-45 defeat vote blocked the bill yesterday, as it fell six votes short of passage. At least 60 votes were needed to clear the Republican procedural hurdle to the Democrat bill.

The bill proposed a ban on government contractors from using American taxpayers\ money to move jobs offshore. A relieved India Inc that lobbied hard against anti-outsourcing campaign in the US, hailed Republicans for blocking the bill that denied tax breaks to US companies moving jobs offshore.

The setback to anti-outsourcing campaign, propelled among others by Obama himself, comes a week after a Nasscom delegation comprising representatives of top IT companies such as Infosys, Wipro and TCS visited the US and lobbied with the key Congressmen and American corporations.

As part of efforts to boost employment in the US, Obama is vigorously pushing to end the tax break for companies who ship jobs overseas saying it should go to firms who create jobs in America.

India, which already holds at least 50 per cent of the global outsourcing market, has become the world’s back office as Western firms set up call centres, number-crunching and software development outlets to cut costs.

Democratic backers, who vow to make the vote a campaign issue in the November 2 Congressional election, claimed that Republicans have undermined their efforts to create jobs. On the other hand, Republicans and business groups dismissed the bill as a political stunt that would increase taxes on companies and undermine job growth.

In what was seen as an electoral populist move of the Democrats, the Creating American Jobs and End Offshoring Act aims at small manufacturers and included a payroll tax exemption for firms that encourage jobs to US. But it also contains provisions to prevent businesses from deferring US taxes on the income they make from foreign subsidiaries. — PTI

26/11-like attack foiled in Europe

Berlin/London, September 29
Intelligence agencies have disrupted plans for multiple attacks on European cities by a group thought to be linked to the al-Qaida, Britain’s Sky News said on Tuesday. Militants based in Pakistan were planning simultaneous strikes in London, as well as cities in France and Germany, the channel’s foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said.

Germany has said it knew of intelligence pointing to possible al-Qaida attacks in Europe and the United States, and US officials said Washington was working closely with its allies on terrorist threats.

Intelligence sources said security agencies had disrupted plans by Pakistan-based militants for simultaneous strikes in London, as well as in cities in France and Germany.

The plot had been in the early planning stages and would have involved small groups of assailants taking and killing hostages, the sources said. It was unclear whether all conspirators had been eliminated in recent attacks by drones in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, they said.

US security officials said they could not confirm that a plot had been disrupted. But they said they believed that the threat of a plot or plots remained.

But a British security source said: “There definitely was (a plot) as far as we know, and the American intelligence services and the agencies in those three countries mentioned have been working on it for quite a while.”

The source said the planned attacks would have involved “suicide terrorists”and resembled commando-style raids on Mumbai in 2008 in which Pakistan-based gunmen killed 166 people.

A separate British police counter-terrorism source said no arrests had been made or were on the cards, indicating the threat was not thought to be imminent. The security source said Prime Minister David Cameron had been briefed on the threat a couple of weeks ago.

Intelligence sources said an increase in strikes by unmanned US drone aircraft on suspected militants in Pakistan in the past few weeks was part of Western efforts to thwart the plot.

Pakistan’s army dismissed the information, reported on Tuesday evening by Sky News, as “very speculative”.

Military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said: “We don’t have any information or intelligence that militants had gathered there (in North Waziristan) and were plotting attacks. There is absolutely no intelligence on that.”

A security official said the reports had probably been sparked by the interrogation of a German-Afghan terrorism suspect in Afghanistan. The suspect believed to be behind the intelligence was identified by media as Ahmed Sidiqi, a German of Afghan origin. — Reuters