What the other papers say this morning
FINANCIAL TIMES
Icelandic raider pleads not guilty
Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, the Icelandic corporate raider who used to own large parts of the UK high street, has pleaded not guilty as one of the most notorious sagas in the collapse of the Icelandic banking system came to court.
Obama announces new security team
Barack Obama has announced his new national security team, tapping loyalists to oversee the continuing pursuit of terrorists, the implementation of defence budget cuts and a drawdown of US military operations overseas. Shrugging off a campaign against Chuck Hagel as secretary of defence for his views on Iran and Israel, Obama said the former Republican senator was the “leader our troops deserve” and urged the Senate to approve him “promptly”.
China media stand-off escalates
Striking Chinese journalists have escalated their stand-off with censors in the southern city of Guangzhou, presenting Beijing’s new leaders with their first full-blown political crisis since taking power in November.
THE TIMES
Music stops again for Virgin
Virgin France is to close its megastore on the Champs Elysées and file for insolvency after a collapse in sales. The music chain says it is drawing up an emergency plan to save some of its 27 stores in France.
Wales’s biggest firm looks to grow
IQE, the Cardiff business that uses clever nanotechnology to manufacture wafers for microchips, is believed to be in the process of raising £17.5m with which to make an acquisition.
The Daily Telegraph
US seriously mulling $1 trillion coin
The US is seriously considering creating a $1 trillion (£620bn) platinum coin to write down part of its debt to stop the world’s largest economy defaulting as early as next month, financial analyst Cullen Roche told BBC’s today programme yesterday.
Sterling faces triple cocktail in 2013
Sterling will weaken this year, HSBC said, as the UK faces a potentially testing triple cocktail of sovereign downgrade looms, austerity hits and the fiscal cliff fades away.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Netflix signs Warner Bros. deal
In a sign that Netflix’s appetite for new content remains as healthy as ever, the video-streaming service struck a licensing deal with Warner Bros., covering a series of fresh TV shows.
France looks to hike internet costs
The French government is studying ways to push large web companies to pay local internet providers more for the bandwidth being used, a minister said yesterday.