Six In The Morning

Olympus inquiry blames executives and auditors

• Japanese camera-maker rocked by £1bn accounting scandal
• Independent panel calls for legal action against culprits
• Top management was 'rotten' and 'salaryman' culture blamed
• Report finds no evidence of 'yakuza' gangster involvement

• Reuters
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 December 2011

An independent panel has issued a damning report into the £1.1bn accounting scandal at Japan's Olympus, urging legal action against executives behind the cover-up and the replacement of others who knew about it.

"The core part of management was rotten and the parts around it were also contaminated by the rot," the 178-page report, commissioned by the company, said.

"In the worst possible sense, the situation was that of the tribal culture of the Japanese salaryman," it added, referring to a culture of absolute loyalty to the company.

Revealed: Karzai's secret plans to cling on to power in Afghanistan

Western intelligence report claims President is hoping to change constitution and rule indefinitely

KIM SENGUPTA 

 

BONN

 

TUESDAY 06 DECEMBER 2011

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is secretly planning to stay in power when his second and constitutionally final term ends in three years' time, according to a Western intelligence report seen by The Independent.

Mr Karzai, it is claimed, wants to emulate Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who, similarly blocked from holding office for a third consecutive term, handed the Presidency to Dmitri Medvedev in 2008. Mr Putin is seeking a return to the Kremlin in March.

Desperately Seeking Capital

Berlin May Have to Nationalize Giant Commerzbank

By Martin Hesse and Anne Seith

In the foyer of Frankfurt's Commerzbank Tower stands a Christmas tree decorated with all manner of glitter. The idea is to brighten up the gloomy mood with a bit of seasonal cheer. Next to the tree is a notice board covered with children's wish lists for the Yuletide. Most of the youngsters want computer games and other forms of amusement -- small wishes, for the most part, that can easily be fulfilled.

It will be more difficult to indulge the man sitting on the 48th floor of the building. If Commerzbank CEO Martin Blessing could make one wish, he would presumably ask for a few billion euros, or that someone would take the bank's ailing subsidiary Eurohypo off his hands, or that the entire sovereign debt crisis would simply disappear.

South Korean robot prison guards: R2-D2 maybe, not the Terminator

REPORTING FROM SEOUL -- Think of it more as R2-D2 than the Terminator.

South Korea is ready to wheel out its latest weapon in the war against crime: a 5-foot-tall, four-wheeled prison guard robot that will patrol the behind-bars hallways of penal institutions, even assess the mental states of prisoners.

This won’t be just any new guard to join the team. There will be no breaks, no demands for higher pay, no unprovoked attacks and not even a chance of accepting a bribe.

As South Korea battles Japan for supremacy in robot technology, designers have invented what they call a team of “friendly robots” that will not just guard prisoners but keep an eye on their well-being to boot.

'Blow-fly zone' takes hold over Syria By John Helmer  MOSCOW - Calliforida, the common blow-fly, has an exceptional talent - it has the ability to smell a corpse at a distance of up to 16 kilometers. Forensic investigators use the blow-fly's eggs deposited in the flesh as a measure of how much time has elapsed since death, more reliable than the dead flesh itself.  Syria isn't in rigor mortis, but the credibility of the international community of wellwishers is deader than Muammar Gaddafi. The purported no-fly zone which the allies pushed through the United Nations Security Council on March 17 - with help from President Dmitry Medvedev, China, India, Germany and Brazil - was a fake.  BP: HALLIBURTON DESTROYED EVIDENCE AFTER GULF SPILL By msnbc.com news services NEW ORLEANS -- BP has accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence about the quality of its cement slurry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. In a court filing, the oil company alleged that Halliburton did inadequate cement work. BP also asked a federal judge to punish the oilfield services company. The accusation raises the stakes ahead of a trial, expected in late February, to assign blame and damages for the April 2010 blowout of the Macondo well, which triggered the spill.