Euro drags its feet near 3-month low against dollar as Cyprus worries weigh - Reuters

A picture illustration taken with the multiple exposure function of the camera shows a one Euro coin and a map of Europe, January 9, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

By Sophie Knight and Hideyuki Sano

TOKYO | Tue Mar 19, 2013 2:40am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - The euro hovered near a three-month low versus the dollar on Tuesday as a plan to tax Cyprus savings accounts to help fund a bank bailout fuelled fears about the stability of euro zone financial institutions.

While Asian investors were relieved to see limited fallout from the Cyprus deal on other euro zone countries so far as the uptick in Spanish and Italian debt yields appeared to be contained, analysts were guarded about the near term.

"Looking at European and U.S. markets yesterday, the injury seems to be shallow. But it would be premature to say it will heal in just two days," said Daisuke Uno, chief strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Bank.

The euro traded at $1.29400, a whisker higher than late U.S. levels, but still close to a three-month low of $1.2882 hit on Monday, with its 200-day moving average of $1.2875 on Tuesday a strong support.

It recouped some of its losses in late Monday U.S. trade after euro zone ministers urged Cyprus to let smaller savers escape the proposed levy on bank deposits.

Against sterling, the euro edged up from a five-week low of 85.34 pence hit on Monday to change hands at 85.78 on Tuesday.

The common currency now faces an uphill battle to recover to Friday's close of $1.3076 as it remains unclear whether the Cypriot parliament will endorse the plan needed to secure financial rescue at a parliamentary debate scheduled for 1600 GMT (12:00 EST) on Tuesday.

"If the plan is voted down, there will surely be fresh selling in the euro," said Tohru Sasaki, the head of Japan rates and FX research at JPMorgan Chase Bank.

Sasaki also noted that euro looks vulnerable as its bounce overnight was smaller than its rebound after the fall triggered by a Greek election last May, when investors were shocked by the ruling coalition failing to win a majority.

"On Monday after the Greek election, the euro almost fully recovered from a 1 percent loss in Asia. But that turned out to be a high for many months to come, as the euro kept falling in the next two months and a half," he said.

STORM IN A TEACUP?

As Nicosia extends its bank holiday until Thursday to avert panic, market players pondered whether savers in larger European countries would get nervous and withdraw funds, although there was no immediate sign of that on Monday.

Analysts at Barclays say they see limited risk of contagion to other countries.

"We consider that the scope of potential contagion to other peripheral countries in terms of deposit outflows and sovereign debt is considerably more limited than if such a decision would have been taken in previous programs. Specifically, we consider the likelihood of a bank run in other periphery countries to be limited, including in Greece," they wrote.

The radical move on deposits had limited impact on Spanish and Italian debt on Monday. Their yield rose but stayed well within their recent ranges.

Commodity currencies, which took a hit in tandem with the euro initially, have recouped most of losses, with Australian dollar trading at $1.0375, not far from five-week high of $1.0415 hit last week.

The currency of resource-rich Australia is in focus as a new leadership takes charge in China, its biggest export market, said Michiyoshi Kato, senior vice president of forex sales at Mizuho Corporate Bank in Tokyo.

"Whether the Aussie-yen can break through 100 depends on whether the new leaders can actually fire up the economy with no manipulation. That would get investors snapping up the Aussie," he said.

On Tuesday, the Australian dollar bought 99.05 yen, inching up from Monday's low of 97.69 against the Japanese currency, which declined across the board as sour risk sentiment on the back of the Cyprus shock softened somewhat.

The dollar rose 0.3 percent on the day to 95.44 yen as investors covered their short bets on the greenback.

"If the dollar-yen manages to break above the top of its 93-96 yen range then it could sail pretty easily to 98. If you look at the corporate price index on a purchasing price parity basis then 97.5 looks like a buffer," said Kato of Mizuho Corporate Bank.

"Of course, if Cyprus blows up, risk sentiment would spike, meaning it might be difficult for it to get there."

The euro recovered 0.2 percent to 123.495 yen, but it is still down 0.8 percent from late last week.

(Editing by Eric Meijer & Kim Coghill)

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Top US Court Weighs Voter Law Against Illegal Immigrants - Voice of America

— The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on whether the state of Arizona has the right to craft its own voting laws to prevent illegal immigrants from casting ballots, a process critics say opens the door to discrimination against legal voters.

Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, has some of the strongest anti-immigration laws in the United States and the voting rights case is the latest in its efforts to deal with non-U.S. citizens illegally in the state.

It is asking the Supreme Court to uphold a 2004 state law requiring local voting applicants to provide physical proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, passport, tribal forms or a driver’s license.

Opponents of Arizona’s voter-approved Proposition 200 say it violates the decade-old National Voter Registration Act, a federal law requiring voting applicants to state they are U.S. citizens without providing any proof. People caught lying can face perjury charges.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne argued the constitutionality of Proposition 200 before the Court Monday, saying an “honor system” is not strong enough to prevent voter fraud.

Jesus Gonzalez is the lead plaintiff in the case. He tried to register to vote right after becoming a U.S. citizen but was rejected twice by state officials. Gonzalez used both his driver’s license and his naturalization certificate number, but officials said they still could not confirm his citizenship.

Civil rights groups supporting Gonzalez say his story is not uncommon. In a legal brief submitted to the court, the groups say more than 31,000 voting applicants were rejected between January 2005 and September 2007. Of that number, 11,000 eventually succeeded in registering to vote after repeated attempts.

The groups say Proposition 200 violates the U.S. Constitution “because it requires naturalized citizens - predominantly Latinos and Asians - to surmount additional and unique hurdles to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”

“The unique obstacles presented by the law effectively relegated this population to second-class citizenship,” they write in the brief.

The Obama administration is on their side, although it is focusing on another aspect of the case. It has filed court documents supporting the ruling of a federal appeals court, which ruled against Proposition 200 because it said federal law overrides state law.

The outcome of the case could determine how other states approach the issue. If the Supreme Court upholds Arizona’s request to determine its own voting guidelines, other states could follow suit, opening the door for new sets of rules like Florida’s attempt in 2005 to require voter applicants to prove their mental capacity.

Voter rights groups, including the Constitutional Accountability Center, expressed cautious optimism after Monday’s court arguments.

"A majority of the Court, including Justice [Anthony] Kennedy, appeared to recognize that the entire point of having a single federal form was to streamline the voter registration process, and that approving Arizona's law would pave the way for a patchwork of 50 state forms," Doug Kendall, the group’s president, said in a statement.

Even after the Supreme Court decides on this case, the battle over immigration is far from over. Arizona is at the center of a national debate on how to secure the country’s borders and treat the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The issue is being tackled by lawmakers in Congress and advocacy groups across America.

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Vatican Criticizes Campaign Against Pope - ABC News

The honeymoon that Pope Francis has enjoyed since his remarkable election hit a bump Friday, with the Vatican lashing out at what it called a defamatory and "anti-clerical left-wing" media campaign questioning his actions during Argentina's murderous military dictatorship.

On Day 2 of the Francis pontificate, the Vatican denounced news reports in Argentina and beyond resurrecting allegations that the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio failed to openly confront the junta responsible for kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents.

Bergoglio, like most Argentines, didn't publicly confront the dictators who ruled from 1976-83, while he was the leader of the country's Jesuits. And human rights activists differ on how much blame he personally deserves.

Top church leaders had endorsed the junta and some priests even worked alongside torturers inside secret prisons. Nobody has produced any evidence suggesting Bergoglio had anything to do with such crimes. But many activists are angry that as archbishop of Buenos Aires for more than a decade, he didn't do more to support investigations into the atrocities.

On Thursday, the old ghosts resurfaced.

AP

A gust of wind blows a nun's veil as she... View Full Caption

A gust of wind blows a nun's veil as she stands in front of St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 14, 2013. The Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name of Pope Francis, after he was elected the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday, March 13, at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty) Close

A group of 44 former military and police officers on trial for torture, rape and murder in a concentration camp in Cordoba province in the 1970s wore the yellow-and-white ribbons of the papal flag in Francis' honor. Many Argentine newspapers ran the photo Friday.

The Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that Argentine courts had never accused Bergoglio of any crime, that he had denied all accusations against him and that on the contrary "there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time."

He said the accusations against the new pope were made long ago "by anti-clerical left-wing elements to attack the church. They must be firmly rejected."

The harsh denunciation was typical of a Vatican that often reacts defensively when it feels under attack, even though its response served to give the story legs for another day.

It interrupted the generally positive reception Francis has enjoyed since his election as pope on Wednesday, when even his choice of footwear — his old black shoes rather than the typical papal red — was noted as a sign of his simplicity and humility.

There was one clearly unscripted moment Friday, when the 76-year-old Francis stumbled briefly during an audience with the cardinals, but he quickly recovered. And for the second day in a row, Francis slipped out of the Vatican walls, this time to visit an ailing Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mejia, who suffered a heart attack Wednesday and was in the hospital.

This upbeat narrative of a people's pope who named himself after the nature-loving St. Francis of Assisi has clashed with accusations stemming from Bergoglio's past.

The worst allegation is that as the military junta took over in 1976, he withdrew support for two Jesuit priests whose work in the slums of Buenos Aires had put them in direct contact with the leftist guerrilla movement advocating armed revolution. The priests were then kidnapped and interrogated inside a clandestine torture center at the Navy Mechanics School.

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Physical limits can cut short a filibuster, including Rand Paul's against drones - Washington Post

Watch Paul’s entire production, fully streamable at c-span.org. Better yet, fast-forward Wednesday’s filibuster in the Senate to random intervals with the volume down low for the full Kabuki effect of this American political theater. Watch hour zero, minute zero when, red-tied and wide-eyed, the Kentucky Republican strolls to the lectern. Witness the progression:

3:06 p.m.: The whites of his eyes have begun to match his tie.

9:43: The reds of his eyes have begun match the sheen of the Senate mahogany.

11:43: Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) is talking now, saving Paul, saving all of us from having to watch.

“One thing senators like to do is talk,” says Don Ritchie, the Senate historian. He worries not for the senator. In the 19th century, all senators were orators. Their constituents got to hear their positions only when they came home to speechify, and those speeches would always last for at least two, three hours. “They were used to standing up on the back of a wagon.”

Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) reportedly took daily steam baths in preparation for his 24-hour 1957 screed against the Civil Rights Act, to dehydrate himself and prepare for his separation from the urinal. In 1935, Sen. Huey Long (D-La.) managed to go for 10 hours when he rose to address matters in the National Recovery Act, but he was felled by nature: According to a 2005 Village Voice account of the day, “The Kingfish announced he would yield the floor to seek a conference with the leadership, and he ran for the toilet.”

“My urinary tract was in good shape that day,” says Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), the last torchbearer of the filibuster — he spoke for eight hours in 2010 about tax cuts. “We got a call from the nurse,” though, he says. She wanted him to make sure he walked around enough, to avoid blood clots. The experience wasn’t scary, he says, because he was speaking on something “I feel very strongly about.”

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