Govt to report new era name to crown prince beforehand
Jiji PressTOKYO (Jiji Press) — The government will report the new era name to the Emperor and Crown Prince Naruhito before making it public April 1, informed sources said Sunday.
The government thinks it desirable to let the new era name known to both of them beforehand, because an ordinance on the new era name will be signed by the Emperor for promulgation and implemented on May 1, when Crown Prince Naruhito rises to the throne, the sources said.
The government is considering having Prime Minister Shinzo Abe report the new name directly to both the Emperor and the Crown Prince, according to the sources close to Abe.
The government is expected to report the new name to them as soon as the government selects it from among the proposed names.
The government will seek advice from the Cabinet Legislation Bureau to set a specific reporting procedure, so as not to raise any question about the constitutionality of the procedure, the sources said. The constitution bans the Emperor from being involved in political affairs.
Under the 1979 era name law, Japan stipulates an era name in a government ordinance. In determining the new name, the government will follow the procedure taken when the current one, Heisei, was decided in 1989, according to the sources.
The new name will be adopted at a cabinet meeting April 1 this year after being selected from proposed options. The government will obtain opinions from experts and the heads of both chambers of the Diet, the country’s parliament, to make its decision.
The selection process will not involve the current or the new Emperor. At the time of the 1989 name change from Showa, the government reported the era name of Heisei to the Emperor through the grand steward of the Imperial Household Agency before making it public.
The government decided to announce the new era name a month before the Imperial succession, even though some Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and the Japan Conference, a Shinto-linked conservative group backing Abe, called for an announcement after the enthronement.
The idea of reporting the new era name to both the Emperor and the Crown Prince beforehand was devised partly as a response to concerns among conservative people that a prior announcement may defy the tradition of assigning only one era name to each Emperor.
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005521645
Venezuela’s Guaido urges military defections amid protests
The Associated Press CARACAS (AP) — Venezuela’s opposition leader called on more members of the military to abandon the country’s socialist government following Saturday’s defection of a high-ranking general, as President Nicolas Maduro proposed holding early National Assembly elections that could potentially oust his challenger.
Maduro’s call for early legislative voting is likely to intensify a political standoff with National Assembly President Juan Guaido, who is backed by Washington and most South American countries.
Guaido declared himself Venezuela’s legitimate ruler on Jan. 23, and argues that Maduro’s re-election last year was rife with fraud. The 35-year-old opposition leader is invoking two articles of Venezuela’s constitution that he contends give him the right to assume presidential powers.
Speaking from behind a podium decorated with Venezuela’s presidential seal, Guaido told supporters he would keep his opposition movement in the streets until Maduro stopped “usurping” the country’s presidency and agreed to a new presidential election overseen by international observers. On Saturday, tens of thousands of Venezuelans joined opposition protests against Maduro in Caracas and other cities.
Guaido called on “blocks” of the military to defect from Maduro’s administration and “get on the side of the Venezuelan people.”
“We don’t just want you to stop shooting at protesters,” Guaido said in a hoarse voice. “We want you to be part of the reconstruction of Venezuela.”
rest at link
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005521190
hooah anon
Deutsche Bank Refused To Lend To Trump During 2016 Race: NYT
As the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee prepares to subpoena Deutsche Bank, which she described in a recent interview as "perhaps the biggest money laundering banks in the world", the New York Times on Saturday revealed that just as Trump was winning primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina in March 2016, DB refused to expand a loan to the Trump Organization, which had been requested to pay for renovations at Turnberry, one of Trump's golf clubs in Scotland. The money was to be backed by Trump's golf club in Doral, Fla.
At the time, the bank already had hundreds of millions of dollars in loans oustanding to the Trump Organization, and Trump's go-to bankers in Deutsche's private banking unit were inclined to approve his request. However, senior executives at the bank - including now-CEO Christian Sewing - were skittish because of the "reputational risks" pertaining to Trump's divisive statements on the campaign trail. They also were uncomfortable with the political risks, fearing that if Trump won and then defaulted on the loan, Deutsche would be left in the awkward position of having to seize assets from the president of the US.
According to the NYT, Trump asked for the money at a time when he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his campaign. But as the request wound its way to a committee of senior executives in Frankfurt, executives at the bank reportedly became aware for the first time just how much business DB had with the New York real estate developer who would soon become president.
Since Trump's relationship with Deutsche first blossomed in the late 1990s, when the bank agreed to lend him $125 million to finance renovations on a Wall Street skyscraper, the relationship has endured its ups and downs.
At the time, Deutsche was struggling to break into the US market and was more tolerant of risk than its US peers, who had more or less severed ties with Trump after a series of bankruptcies in the early 1990s.
Though it was rocky at times (Trump sued DB during the apex of the financial crisis), his relationship with the bank continued through the dawn of his political career.
The relationship between Mr. Trump and Deutsche Bank had survived some rocky moments. In 2008, amid the financial crisis, Mr. Trump stopped repaying a loan to finance the construction of a skyscraper in Chicago - and then sued the bank, accusing it of helping cause the crisis. After that lawsuit, Deutsche Bank’s investment-banking arm severed ties with Mr. Trump.
But by 2010, he was back doing business with Deutsche Bank through its private-banking unit, which catered to some of the world’s wealthiest people. That unit arranged the Doral loans, and another in 2012 tied to the Chicago skyscraper.
Mr. Trump’s go-to in the private bank was Rosemary Vrablic, a senior banker in its New York office. In 2013, she was the subject of a flattering profile in The Mortgage Observer, a real estate magazine owned by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was also among her clients. In 2015, she arranged the loan that financed Mr. Trump’s transformation of Washington’s Old Post Office Building into the Trump International Hotel, a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, a rep from the Trump organization denied that it had sought money for Turnberry in 2016, and denounced the NYT story as "absolutely false."
"This story is absolutely false. We bought Trump Turnberry without any financing and put tens of millions of dollars of our own money into the renovation which began in 2014. At no time was any money needed to finance the purchase or the refurbishment of Trump Turnberry," she said.
In a separate but similar story, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Deutsche Bank rushed to offload a $600 million loan to Russian state-controlled banking giant VTB in late 2016 as the German lender sought to limit its exposure to Russia following the infamous mirror trading scandal.
The bank decided to shed the loan amid worries about its financial relationships with Russian entities. And though WSJ couldn't figure out how VTB used the money that DB lent it, a Deutsche spokesman insisted that the money wasn't intended to benefit President Trump or his businesses as part of some back-door deal.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-02/deutsche-bank-refused-lend-trump-during-2016-race-nyt
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