1 Britain’s pension ‘revolution’ (BBC) Major changes
to UK pension rules have come into force, in what Chancellor George Osborne has
called "a revolution". He said the moves were the "biggest
changes to pensions in 100 years". People aged 55 and over will be given
new powers to decide what to do with their retirement savings.
From Easter Monday, they can cash in Defined
Contribution (DC) pension savings. But there have been warnings about
potentially big tax bills. Mr Osborne said: "What it means is that people
who have worked hard and saved hard can have access to their pensions
savings."
Pension savers will no longer be required to use
their pension pot to buy an annuity when they approach retirement. Some 540,000
people will be able to take control of their savings from 6 April, according to
the government. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said many people
face paying tens of thousands of pounds in income tax if they cash in their
pensions pots.
2 Protests against Islamic law in Australia (Johannesburg
Times) Protesters waving Australian flags and carrying signs such as "Yes
Australia. No Sharia" rallied around the country in events organisers said
were against Islamic extremism. The "Reclaim Australia" events drew
hundreds of supporters but also triggered counter-rallies from other groups who
criticised them as racist and called for greater tolerance.
Reclaim Australia's John Oliver said that the group
was "not against any particular race or any particular religion. We're
against the extremists of one particular religion," he said. In Melbourne,
tensions between competing protesters led to scuffles, with police on horseback
forced to form a barrier between the groups, and reports paramedics treated
several people for injuries.
3 In Yemen, a cure worse than the illness (John Gee
in Straits Times) In the past week, Saudi warplanes have bombed neighbouring
Yemen and other countries have made great efforts to evacuate their nationals.
The stage seems set for still greater foreign military intervention, and much
of the international community seems to approve.
A little investigation of the facts on the ground
would reveal how unwise they are to take this view. It comes about through
making an old mistake - that of accommodating a local conflict with its own
dynamics within a predetermined framework of analysis based on a broader
international perspective. In this case, an internal Yemeni conflict is being
lazily or deliberately subsumed into a reading of regional politics as
characterised by Sunni versus Shi'ite rivalry, with an aggressive Iran as the
Shi'ite puppet master.
The foreign intervention has been occasioned by the
advance of fighters of the Ansar Allah movement, commonly called
"Houthis", across northern Yemen and the flight of Yemeni president
Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to Saudi Arabia. Most Arab states have rallied round to
declare their support for Mr Hadi and their determination to defeat the
Houthis.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian
peninsula, but it has more rainfall than its neighbours and a large agricultural
sector. The British seized the southern port of Aden in 1839 and gradually took
control of its hinterland, leaving northern Yemen first in the hands of the
Ottoman Turks and, later, independent under its imams. This contributed significantly
to the different paths of development of north and south. While much of
southern Yemen remained poorly developed and socially conservative, Aden became
a strategically important port, with an oil refinery and other industries.
When the two Yemeni states united on May 22, 1990,
the former ruling parties agreed that united Yemen should be a democracy, with
freedom of the press and contested elections, which is just how it was at
first. Saudi Arabia treated this as a threat. In 2011, a mass protest movement
in the north condemning corruption and repression and demanding democratic
change threatened the government. After months of protests and violent clashes
in the capital, Sanaa, Mr Salih agreed to step down.
What Yemen now needs is the realisation of the aims
of the 2011 reform movement and an acceptance that, if that does not yield the
minimum conditions for unity demanded by the Southern Movement, an amicable
divorce between north and south would be better than an unhappy marriage.
External intervention aimed at returning Yemen to the previous status quo
would, if successful, merely leave the country with a discredited government
devoid of popular support and determined, simply for the sake of its own
survival, to deny democratic freedoms to its citizens.
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