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Western Sydney raids: alleged terrorist cell had Islamic flag, photos of foreign fighters
MMNN:23 Dec. 2015
A terror cell allegedly conspiring to attack police buildings and a naval base in Sydney were found with a notepad full of scribbled plans, mobile phone photos of foreign fighters and an Islamic flag secreted in a family home.
Mohamed Rashad Almaouie, 20, and Abdullah Salihy, 24, were arrested on Wednesday, bringing to seven the number of men charged over the partially formed plot.
The group's arrest centred around a cache of notes, hand-written on A4 pages of a lined notebook, seized from the home of outspoken extremist Sulayman Khalid during raids in December 2014.
Police allege all seven, including a 15-year-old boy, played some part in authoring the notes, which listed the Australia Federal Police headquarters and NSW Police buildings as possible attack targets and made mention of "guerilla warfare" in the Blue Mountains.
Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn revealed on Wednesday that the notes also mentioned the Garden Island naval base in Woolloomooloo.
No specific dates were mentioned and the plans were not well-formed, with the authors unable to determine specific addresses for targets or roles each member would play, Fairfax Media understands.
The notes contained random jihadi rhetoric including phrases like "take the dogs", Fairfax Media understands.
"There was a group of people who came together with the idea, with the intent to do something, and they started to make preparations to carry out a terrorist act," Ms Burn said.
Almaouie's older brother, Jibryl, was one of five men charged over the foiled plot earlier this month after his family's Wiley Park and Bankstown homes were raided for the second time in a year.
He was already in prison, after police allegedly found a stash of firearms and ammunition hidden in the family home in 2014 as well as books on guerrilla warfare and the history of combat.
Fairfax Media understands officers found a black "shahada" flag, similar to the one mistakenly used by Lindt Cafe gunman Man Haron Monis instead of an Islamic State flag, wrapped up near a motorbike.
A phone belonging to one of the group members allegedly contained photos of Australian terrorist Mohammed Elomar and other foreign fighters celebrated as heroes among extremists.
Almaouie had visited his older brother several times at John Morony Correctional Centre over the past year, using his now-deleted Facebook page to protest his innocence and "curse" those who had imprisoned his brother, who he referred to as Jabba.
Mr Salihy was previously named in Federal Circuit Court documents as one of a group of 18 extremists, dubbed the Naizmand Group, who had the intent and capability to carry out an attack.
His Merrylands home was raided two weeks ago and his brother, Mohammed, was targeted in counter-terrorism raids in September 2014, relating to a plot to behead a random person.
Both men chose not to appear in Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday and were denied bail.
Ms Burn stressed that there was no information suggesting any imminent threat to Australia.
Consulted Kayani, Aziz before declaring emergency: Musharraf
ISLAMABAD:MMNN:23 Dec. 2015
Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has for the first time blamed the country’s senior civilian and military leadership for his decision to impose emergency in 2007 by saying they have been consulted before taking the decision.
Gen. (retd.) Musharraf (72) is facing treason charges under a case launched in 2013 for suspending the Constitution by declaring emergency on November 3, 2007.
‘Kayani principal offender’
In a statement recorded before the joint investigation team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the former president described ex-army chief General Parvez Kayani as the principal offender in the case.
He said Gen. Kayani, who became the Chief of Army Staff on November 27, 2007, did not revoke the emergency.
“By not revoking the same, General Kayani is also a principal offender,” he alleged.
The former military ruler insisted that in addition to Gen. Kayani he had consulted the senior military and civilian leadership, including the then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, before imposing the emergency.
“Acted at Aziz’s behest”
Gen. (retd.) Musharraf said since he acted upon the advice of the then Prime Minister and his Cabinet in imposing the emergency, he was not responsible.
Gen. (retd.) Musharraf said the summary moved by Mr. Aziz for emergency had “mysteriously” been removed from the official record by some “quarters concerned.”
Dawn reported that it is the first time that Gen. (retd.) Musharraf has directly dragged retired Gen Kayani and the senior civilian and military hierarchy into the high treason case.
Kayani yet to respond
General Kayani retired in 2013 after being Chief of Army for six years and he has not responded so far to the allegations by Musharraf.
Not happy with Kayani?
It is believed that Gen. (retd.) Musharraf was not happy with Gen. Kayani, who was his handpicked Army Chief, for not playing active role to save him from humiliation when he was arrested and involved in several cases on his return from abroad in 2013 to contest the elections.
Former Prime Minister Aziz who was also the personal choice of Musharraf left the country on end of his term in 2007 and he never returned.
Under the 1973 constitution, abrogation of the constitution will be an act of high treason, liable to death under Pakistan’s treason laws.
The former military ruler lives in Karachi as he cannot leave the country under a court order.
Donald Trump Calls Hillary Clinton 'Liar' For ISIS Recruiting Claim
WASHINGTON:MMNN:21 Dec. 2015
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Sunday that Democrat Hillary Clinton was a "liar" for claiming that his proposal to ban entry of all foreign Muslims into the United States has aided ISIS propaganda efforts.
Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Trump said Clinton had no evidence to back up a charge she made during a debate on Saturday that the Republican frontrunner is becoming the extremist group's "best recruiter."
"She's a liar and everybody knows that," Trump said. "She just made this up in thin air."
Trump's call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States following a December 2 attack in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people has drawn widespread criticism from Republican rivals as well as Democrats like Clinton.
During Saturday night's Democratic debate, Clinton said Islamic State is using Trump's rhetoric to enlist fighters to radical jihad.
"They are going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists," the Democratic frontrunner said.
Counterterrorism experts and Reuters reporters who monitor Islamist online activity have found no evidence so far that Islamic State has mentioned Trump in its official online accounts.
Asked to comment on Sunday, the Clinton campaign did not respond to Trump's charge but reiterated that Hillary Clinton's remark was based on evidence that supporters of the extremist group frequently cite Trump's comments to make the case that Americans hate Muslims.
It quoted a counterterrorism expert and linked to a tweet from a "very vocal ISIS supporter."
For Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, that's enough to indicate that Trump is helping, not hurting, the jihadist group.
"That's the interpretation we made," Podesta said on "Meet the Press," adding "I think it's a very fair charge."
Counterterrorism experts say it is nearly impossible to keep track of the torrent of online activity being generated by Islamic State and its sympathizers.
"There are very few analysts who have watched all of ISIS videos," said counterterrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. "That being said, I believe Hillary Clinton's claim was false."
Still, Trump's comments make it harder for the United States to build good will among Muslim populations and make him complicit in Islamic State mobilization efforts, said Democratic strategist Bud Jackson.
"Donald Trump is in essence aiding and abetting the enemy with his comments. He's making things worse, not better. There's no denying that," he said.
Notorious Lebanese militant Samir Kuntar confirmed dead in Israeli raid in Syria
Beirut:MMNN:21 Dec. 2015
A Lebanese militant notorious for the 1979 murder of three Israelis, including a little girl, has been killed in an Israeli air raid near Syria's capital, his Hezbollah movement said.
Samir Kuntar was freed by Israel as part of a prisoner swap in 2008, three decades after the killings, and he became a high-profile figure in Hezbollah.
Late Sunday, at least two rockets were fired into Israel from Hezbollah's south Lebanon heartland, security sources on both sides of the border said. No casualties were reported.
The Israeli military said it responded with "targeted artillery fire".
One rocket hit northern Israel's Galilee area, military sources said, adding that residents were ordered into bomb shelters.
In September, the United States placed Kuntar on its terror blacklist, saying he had "played an operational role, with the assistance of Iran and Syria, in building up Hezbollah's terrorist infrastructure in the Golan Heights".
The 54-year-old was killed on Saturday night "when the Zionist enemy planes bombed the building where he lived in Jaramana", southeast of Damascus, the Shiite militant group said in a statement.
Syrian Prime Minister Wael Halaqi said targeting Kuntar was equivalent to "targeting the axis of resistance", referring to Syria and its allies.
Iran, a close Damascus ally, called it an "assassination" and a "violation of an independent country's national sovereignty and territorial integrity".
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Israeli aircraft had tried but failed several times in the past to hit Kantar inside Syria.
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said her country "has not claimed" the strike but "was happy to learn the news".
"He was an arch-terrorist who killed a young girl by fracturing her skull and had continued his terrorist activities after being freed," she told military radio.
"It's a good thing he met his maker."
The family of the Israeli victims said "justice has been done".
'Target for Israel'
Kuntar's brother Bassam confirmed the militant's death on Twitter, saying: "We are proud to have joined the long list of families of martyrs."
Kuntar and four other prisoners received a triumphant red carpet welcome in Lebanon in 2008 when they were exchanged for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.
Wearing a Hezbollah military uniform, he waved to applauding crowds under a shower of confetti.
In an interview with AFP, Kantar said he was more than ever committed to wiping Israel off the map.
"The resistance will end only when the Zionist entity disappears," he vowed.
Former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said on Sunday Kuntar had been "very active in the north part of the Golan Heights in the Syrian side, responsible for preparing the area for attacks against Israel".
"And if he is neutralised by someone, it's good news for the state of Israel," said Amidror, but added that he did not know whether his country was behind his death.
'Small consolation'
Kuntar, who had earned the title of longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel, was still a teenager when he and three other members of the Palestine Liberation Front infiltrated the Israeli village of Nahariya by sea from Lebanon.
The militants shot dead Danny Haran, 28, and battered his four-year-old daughter Einat's skull with rifle butts in an attack that shocked Israel to the core.
Kuntar was sentenced to five life terms plus 47 years for murdering the father and daughter and an Israeli policeman.
Haran's widow Smadar told army radio on Sunday that "justice has been done, especially when we know that he has continued to be active in terrorism against us since his release".
Their second daughter suffocated as Smadar tried to keep the two-year-old from making noise and revealing their hiding spot during the kidnapping of her husband and other daughter.
It is not the first time that Hezbollah, which has deployed thousands of men to fight alongside the Syrian regime in the country's conflict, has accused Israel of killing one of its senior figures in Syria.
In February 2008, top Hezbollah official Imad Moughnieh, wanted by Interpol over the 1992 car bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, was killed in Damascus. Israel denied responsibility.
In 2006, the militant group fought a month-long war with the Jewish state that devastated several parts of Lebanon.
That conflict killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and around 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
Japan executes first man convicted by citizen judges
Tokyo:MMNN:18 Dec. 2015
Japan on Friday carried out the first execution of a man who had been convicted by lay judges, as part of a pair of hangings that were condemned by human rights groups.
The two executions bring to 14 the total number of death sentences carried out since Shinzo Abe became prime minister three years ago.
Japanese media quoted a justice ministry official as saying that Sumitoshi Tsuda had been hanged for killing three people in May 2009. Tsuda, 63, was the first inmate to be executed following a conviction by a new system introduced in 2009 to give citizen jurors a role in sentencing, along with a panel of judges.
Campaigners described the executions as “a cruel form of punishment”.
Roseann Rife, East Asia research director at Amnesty International, said: “The Japanese authorities’ willingness to put people to death is chilling and must end now before more lives are lost. The death penalty is not justice or an answer to tackling crime, it is a cruel form of punishment that flies in the face of respect for life.
“Japan should immediately introduce an official moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.”
Some campaigners hoped lay judges would be more reluctant to convict defendants accused of crimes that carry the death penalty - particularly those who claim they were forced to confess - but the number of accused to have been sentenced to death under the system now stands at 26.
The justice minister, Mitsuhide Iwaki, told reporters that the lay judges had arrived at a “very grave” judgement after lengthy deliberations.
The second hanged man, Kazuyuki Wakabayashi, 39, had been convicted of the murder of a 52-year-old woman and her daughter in 2006. He was sentenced to death by judges.
Japan has resisted international pressure to abolish the death penalty, notably from the UN and the European Union. Public support for capital punishment has remained strong since Aum Supreme Truth, a doomsday cult, killed 13 people and injured thousands of others in a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
Japan and the US are the only two advanced industrial nations that retain the death penalty. Last year, only 22 countries carried out executions, and as of November this year, 140 countries had abolished capital punishment in law or in practice, according to Amnesty.
“Japan’s continued use of the death penalty makes it stand out for all the wrong reasons – across the world, and increasingly also in the East Asia region,” Rife said.
Japan’s “secret” executions have been condemned as particularly cruel. Typically, prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for years and given only a few hours’ notice before being led to the gallows. Their families and lawyers are usually notified about the execution only after it has taken place.
Amnesty said that several prisoners with mental and intellectual disabilities are known to have been executed or remain on death row.
Doubts have also been raised over the safety of death penalty convictions in Japan. Iwao Hakamada, who had spent more than 45 years on death row, was freed last year after a court ordered a retrial in his murder case, amid suggestions that police investigators fabricated evidence against him.
Before Friday’s executions Japan had 128 inmates on death row, local media said.
Cameron hails 'pathway to deal' after EU dinner
MMNN:18 Dec. 2015
Prime Minister David Cameron said he could see a pathway to a deal to keep Britain in the European Union after EU leaders told him at a summit in Brussels they would not accept discrimination against EU migrant workers in the UK.
"Nothing is certain in life, nor in Brussels, but what I would say is there is a pathway to a deal in February," Cameron told a news conference early on Friday after a substantial discussion of Britain's demands to renegotiate the terms of its membership of the bloc before a referendum on whether to stay.
In his longest address in more than five years of attending EU summits, the conservative leader told the 27 other national leaders over dinner that if they wanted to keep Britain in, they must address his voters' concerns about curbing immigration.
European Council President Donald Tusk, who chaired the session, said he was more optimistic after the discussion that an accord could be reached in February on all four key British demands because Cameron was looking for a "fair compromise".
He said Britain's bid to deny EU migrants access to in-work benefits - an income supplement for the lower paid - for four years had caused the most difficulty.
The clearest message from the talk was that no one - including Cameron - was ready to accept discrimination, Tusk said: "This is unacceptable and for sure this is not the intention of our British partner."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's most influential leader, said there was a widespread will to reach an agreement to keep Britain in the EU.
"We made it clear that we are ready to compromise, but always on the basis that we safeguard the core European principles, which include non-discrimination and free movement," she said.
SKEPTICS
Cameron's Euroskeptic opponents were dismissive, drawing attention to a brief official EU statement, which concluded: "Following today's substantive and constructive debate, the members of the European Council agreed to work closely together to find mutually satisfactory solutions in all the four areas at the European Council meeting on Feb. 18-19."
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said: "David Cameron came, saw, and got hammered. How many times can his little plans be rejected? All he got as a result was a meaningless two sentences in a communique."
Matthew Elliott of the Vote Leave campaign said: "David Cameron’s EU renegotiation is trivial ... He claimed he put in ‘hard work’ for Britain but people will look at this and not believe his spin."
Officials said there was no row, despite the occasional sharp word to Cameron, who himself put on determined and eloquent charm offensive. The tone was constructive.
Some of those involved in the past months of detailed behind-the-scenes negotiations were upbeat, saying Cameron had signaled a willingness to consider alternatives and other leaders had engaged with the issue and given a clear signal to their teams to "go away and solve this" within two months.
French President Francois Hollande said it had been "a frank and open discussion".
NO GANGING UP
"There can be adjustments, accommodation, but European rules and principles must be respected," Hollande said, noting there were difficulties about non-euro Britain's relationship with the euro single currency zone as well as on migration.
Britain wants guarantees that the euro zone will not gang up to discriminate against the City of London financial center in regulation. Hollande said countries outside the euro must not be allowed to prevent further integration of the euro zone.
Polish Prime Minister Beate Szydlo, whose country has approaching a million citizens living in Britain, left the meeting without speaking to reporters.
Earlier, she and the leaders of three other ex-communist central European countries said in a joint statement they would not accept any change in EU laws that would mean discrimination against their citizens or limit their freedom of movement.
For many Europeans born east of the Iron Curtain, that freedom is a touchstone of their post-Cold War liberation.
Over filet of venison with parsnip mousse and Szechuan pepper jus, the British prime minister sought to convince fellow leaders that the UK's continued membership hinges on finding a convincing solution to the sensitive immigration question.
"The levels of migration we have seen in a relatively short period of time are unprecedented, including the pressures this places on communities and public services. This is a major concern of the British people that is undermining support for the European Union," Cameron told fellow leaders.
"We need to find an effective answer to this problem."
UN seeks women candidates for Secretary General
UNITED NATIONS:MMNN:16 Dec. 2015
The UN has kicked off the process to elect the next Secretary General, with the Security Council and General Assembly making an unprecedented call to member states to recommend woman candidates for the top job that has been held by a man for the past 70 years.
In a first, UN Security Council President for December U.S. envoy Samantha Power and General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft circulated a letter yesterday to the 193 UN members soliciting names of candidates for the next UN chief and vowing to make the process more transparent and inclusive.
The two also made a special emphasis on the need for member states to nominate women candidates for the job of the world's top diplomat.
No woman has served as Secretary General in the 70 years that the UN has been in existence.
“Convinced of the need to guarantee equal opportunities for women and men in gaining access to senior decision-making positions, Member States are encouraged to consider presenting women, as well as men, as candidates for the position of Secretary-General,” the letter said.
Lykketoft said that so far two candidates had been put forward for selection — Croatia’s woman Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic and former UN General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has served two five-year terms and his tenure as UN Chief will end next year.
He has been a strong proponent of electing a woman as his successor and has said at several public venues that “it’s high time for a Secretary-General to be a woman”.
India has also called for changing and improving the existing process of selecting the world body’s chief, with its UN envoy Ambassador Asoke Mukerji saying that gender equality and regional rotation should be given due regard.
The next Secretary-General will assume the role in January 2017 and will serve a five year term, which can be renewed by Member States for an additional five years.
According to the UN Charter, the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly following the recommendation of the Security Council.
Until now the selection of the Secretary General was made behind closed doors by the Security Council with the five veto-wielding permanent members having the last word.
However as the time to elect Ban’s successor nears, there is a growing demand from member states not only to make the process more transparent and inclusive but also to have a woman leader assume the role.
In another unprecedented move, Power and Lykketoft said potential candidates will be given the opportunity to interact with members of the Security Council and General Assembly.
“The President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council will offer candidates opportunities for informal dialogues or meetings with the members oft heir respective bodies, while noting that any such interaction will be without prejudice to those who do not participate.
“These can take place before the Council begins its selection by the end of July 2016 and may continue throughout the process of selection,” they said in the letter.
Lykketoft told reporters here that there is a “strong wish” from many UN member states to have a woman Secretary General and it will be for the first time in UN history that the entire UN membership will be included in the selection process.
“The process is started and the wish is that the membership, for the first time in UN history, is included totally in the discussion of the next Secretary-General,” Lykketoft said, adding that he thinks “this is a watershed in the way that we are doing things.”
“Until [today], the selection process of the Secretary-General has been very secretive and involving mostly — or only — the permanent five members of the Security Council,” he said, referring to China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
He added that the permanent Council members “still have a very strong position in selecting proposals for the General Assembly, but I think if, out of this new process we are now embarking on, comes an imminent candidate supported by a majority of the membership, it will actually give the general membership an increased, de facto power in selecting the Secretary-General.”
Lykketoft said that the presentation of candidates would also give Member States the opportunity to ask questions about their position on UN priorities, such as the Sustainable Development Agenda, peace and security, and other issues.
Giving a timeline of the selection process, Lykketoft said that the Security Council would select candidates by the end of July 2016 after which the name will be forwarded to the General Assembly.
The letter added that the position of Secretary-General is one of great importance that requires the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity, and a firm commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
“We invite candidates to be presented with proven leadership and managerial abilities, extensive experience in international relations, and strong diplomatic, communication and multilingual skills,” it said.
Iran's October missile test violated UN ban: Experts
New York:MMNN:16 Dec. 2015
Iran violated a UN Security Council resolution in October by test-firing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, a team of sanctions monitors said, leading to calls in the US Congress on Tuesday for more sanctions on Tehran.
The White House said it would not rule out additional steps against Iran over the test of the medium-range Emad rocket. The Security Council's Panel of Experts on Iran said in a confidential report, that the launch showed the rocket met its requirements for considering that a missile could deliver a nuclear weapon.
"On the basis of its analysis and findings the Panel concludes that Emad launch is a violation by Iran of paragraph 9 of Security Council resolution 1929," the panel said.
Diplomats said the rocket test on Oct. 10 was not technically a violation of the July nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, but the UN report could put U.S. President Barack Obama's administration in an awkward position. Iran has said any new sanctions would jeopardise the nuclear deal. But if Washington failed to call for sanctions over the Emad launch, it would likely be perceived as weakness.
Diplomats said it was possible for the UN sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities, something Washington and European countries are likely to ask for. But they said Russia and China, which dislike the sanctions on Iran's missile program, might block any such moves.
The panel's report was dated last Friday and went to members of the Security Council's Iran sanctions committee in recent days. The report came up on Tuesday when the 15-nation council discussed the Iran sanctions regime. It said the panel considered ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons to be those that can deliver at least a 500-kg (1,102-pound) payload within a range of at least 300 km (185 miles).
"The Panel assesses that the launch of the Emad has a range of not less than 1,000 km with a payload of at least 1,000 kg and that Emad was also a launch 'using ballistic missile technology,'" the report said.
Iran's UN mission did not respond to a request for comment. In October, Tehran disputed the Western assessment that the missile was capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. The panel noted that Iranian rocket launches from 2012 and 2013 also violated the UN ban on ballistic missile tests.
The chair of the Iran sanctions committee, Spanish Ambassador Roman Oyarzun, told the council the Panel of Experts had concluded the attempt by Iran to procure titanium alloy bars earlier this year also violated UN nuclear sanctions.
Republicans in Congress who disapprove of the Iran nuclear deal were seizing on the UN panel's findings as grounds for additional congressional sanctions. Even some Democrats supported unilateral US action on the missile violations.
Democratic US Senator Chris Coons, a member of the foreign relations panel who backed the Iran nuclear deal, said it was up to the Security Council to act, but if it did not, the United States should, including by imposing direct sanctions on Iranians responsible for the missile tests.
While ballistic missile tests may violate UN Security Council sanctions, council diplomats note that such launches are not a violation of the nuclear deal, which is focused on specific nuclear activities by Iran. Iran, which has always rejected sanctions against it as illegal and unjustified, has repeatedly made clear it has no intention of complying with the restrictions on its missile program.
Asked about the panel's report, British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters it was "absolutely crucial that the Security Council upholds its responsibilities and does respond effectively to what appears to have been a breach."
The expert panel did not mention a second reported missile test that Iran carried out last month. The panel produced its report after the United States, Britain, France and Germany in October called on the UN sanctions committee to take action in response to Iran's test of an Emad missile.
Security Council resolution 1929, which bans ballistic missile tests, was adopted in 2010 and remains valid until the nuclear deal is implemented. Under that deal, most sanctions on Iran will be lifted in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. According to a July 20 resolution endorsing the deal, Iran is still "called upon" to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years.
Although the section of the July 20 resolution applying to missiles is weaker and more limited than the total ban in resolution 1929, US officials have said they will continue to act as if there were a de facto total ban on ballistic missile tests by Iran in the years to come once the nuclear deal is implemented.
The experts' report also noted that ballistic missile launches would still be covered by the July 20 resolution. US, Iranian and Russian officials have said they expect full implementation of the Iran deal, including the lifting of sanctions, to happen early next year once the UN nuclear watchdog confirms Iranian compliance with the agreed restrictions on its atomic work.
Earlier on Tuesday, the UN nuclear watchdog's 35-nation board in Vienna closed its investigation into whether Iran sought atomic weapons, opting to back the international deal with Tehran rather than dwell on Iran's past activities, diplomats said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the decision to close the investigation into whether Iran once had a secret nuclear weapons program.
Saudi Women Win Local Council Seats In Historic Elections
SAUDI ARABIA:MMNN:14 Dec. 2015
At least 19 Saudi women won seats in historic municipal elections that were open to female voters and candidates for the first time here.
Among them were nationally prominent women, as well as some who were little known beyond their home towns.
"I won because I don't work for my personal gain," Huda al-Jeraisy, one of two women who won in the Seventh District of northern Riyadh, said on Sunday. "I know how to deal with men and to be logical, and I never confront men or get into clashes with them."
She spoke at a women-only section of a post-election news conference, wearing her full veil and black abaya. When asked whether this has been a democratic step, she replied, "We have democracy. We have always had it. We follow the Koran."
She acknowledged that the support of her large extended family helped her over the top in Saturday's balloting; she won by 97 votes.
Hers is also a decidedly influential family. She is the daughter of Saudi businessman Abdulrahman al-Jeraisy, who is the chairman of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and she is on several advisory committees to the chamber. Another winner was Lama al-Sulaiman, a vice chairwoman and board member of the Jiddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Some Saudi women were less than enthusiastic about women who "used their power and family ties to win," as voter Nora Alkhaldi, 34, put it. "In Saudi Arabia, if your dad is well connected to the business world, many doors open for you - same goes if your dad is a tribal chief who has the loyalty of his people," she said.
Her friend Mona Alqahtani, who was following two candidates on Twitter who didn't win, said she was optimistic and willing to give the prominent victors the benefit of the doubt, for now. "I can't say there won't be any change," she said. "We need to give those women a chance to prove themselves. This is just the beginning."
This election was the first in which women could vote and run as candidates, and many have portrayed it as a progressive step toward democracy and gender equality. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from driving and requires its female citizens to provide a male guardian's approval for such basic matters as traveling, working and studying, as well as for marriage and being admitted to hospitals.
Turnout was just over 47 percent of eligible voters. But as this was the first election in which women could cast ballots, the number of registered men far outnumbered women, by 1.35 million to 130,000, the Associated Press reported. The total population of Saudi Arabia is almost 29 million.
Male turnout was at 44 percent, while 82 percent of registered women voted.
Among the women winners were two in the conservative al-Qassim region, three in al-Ahsa in the east, two in Jiddah and at least three in the capital, Riyadh.
About 7,000 candidates, among them 979 women, were competing for 2,100 seats on municipal councils across the country, the Associated Press reported. The councils are the only government bodies elected by Saudi citizens. They do not have legislative powers, but advise authorities and help oversee local budgets.
Turkey says its patience with Russia 'has a limit': newspaper
MMNN:14 Dec. 2015
Turkey's foreign minister said Ankara's patience with Russia "has a limit" after Moscow's "exaggerated" reaction to a weekend naval incident between the two countries, an Italian newspaper reported on Monday.
A Russian destroyer fired warning shots at a Turkish vessel in the Aegean on Sunday to avoid a collision and summoned the Turkish military attache over the incident..
"Ours was only a fishing boat, it seems to me that the reaction of the Russian naval ship was exaggerated," Mevlut Cavusoglu told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview.
"Russia and Turkey certainly have to re-establish the relations of trust that we have always had, but our patience has a limit," Cavusoglu said.
The incident is likely to heighten tensions between the two nations who are at odds over Syria and Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane last month.
Cavusoglu said Russia had already "put itself in a ridiculous position" with accusations by its President Vladimir Putin that Turkey had shot down the jet to protect oil supplies from Islamic State.
"No-one believed it" he said.
He also criticized Russia's military intervention in Syria, saying it was aimed at propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, not combating Islamic State.
"Unfortunately Russia is not in Syria to fight terrorists," he said, adding that only 8 percent of its air strikes had been aimed at Islamic State while 92 percent were against other groups hostile to Assad.
Cavusoglu also said air strikes were not sufficient to defeat Islamic State and soldiers on the ground were necessary, according to the interview.
Paris burns the midnight oil, climate talks go into overtime
Paris:MMNN:11 Dec. 2015
Sleep-starved envoys tasked with saving mankind from catastrophic climate change aim to wrap up a historic Paris accord on Saturday after battling through a second all-night session of UN talks, the French hosts said.
Eleven days of bruising international diplomacy in the French capital appeared to finally open the door to an elusive deal, now expected to be delivered one day after the original Friday evening deadline. “It will be presented Saturday morning for adoption midday,” said a source at the French presidency of the climate talks, an annual gathering that frequently misses deadlines by days.
“Things are moving in the right direction,” said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is presiding over the talks, according to the source who spoke to AFP. Releasing a fresh draft of the pact on Thursday night that showed progress on some key issues, an increasingly confident Fabius had said a deal was “extremely close”.
Fabius instructed the ministers from 195 nations to make unprecedented compromises on the outstanding issues: extremely complex rows primarily pitting rich countries against poor that have derailed previous UN efforts. World leaders have described the Paris talks as the last chance to avert disastrous climate change: increasingly severe drought, floods and storms, as well as rising seas that engulf islands and populated coastal regions.
The planned accord would seek to revolutionise the world’s energy system by cutting back or potentially eliminating the burning of coal, oil and gas, which leads to the release of Earth-warming greenhouse gases.
UN efforts dating back to the 1990s have failed to reach a truly universal pact to contain climate change.
Blame game
Developing nations have insisted established economic powerhouses must shoulder the lion’s share of responsibility as they have emitted most of the greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution.
But the United States and other rich nations say emerging giants must also do more, arguing that developing countries now account for most of today’s emissions and thus will be largely responsible for future warming. They are arguments worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which still need to be resolved before the negotiators can leave Paris.
Climate justice issue, highlighted by Modi, missing from Paris summit
Among the most striking developments in the latest draft of the agreement is wording that seeks to resolve a dispute over what temperature limit target to set. Nations most vulnerable to climate change had lobbied hard to limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
However several big polluters, such as China and India, had preferred a ceiling of 2C, which would allow them to burn fossil fuels for longer. The latest draft offers a compromise that states the purpose of the agreement is to hold temperatures to well below 2C, but to aim for 1.5C.
“With this, I would be able to go home and tell my people that our chance for survival is not lost,” said Tony de Brum, Foreign Affairs Minister of the Marshall Islands, one of the archipelagic nations that could be wiped out by rising sea levels. Another key set of words the French hosts hope have been settled in the draft is a commitment for all nations to aim for “the peaking of greenhouse gases as soon as possible”.
“Assuming the deal does go through, this will be the first time in history at which virtually every country has committed to restraining its emissions of greenhouse gases,” said Richard Black, director of the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop also told reporters after the draft was released that: “There’s a sense of optimism”.
Deal-busters
But everyone at the talks was fully aware that the toughest issues, primarily over money, are still to be confronted. Rich countries promised six years ago in Copenhagen to muster $100 billion (92 billion euros) a year from 2020 to help developing nations make the costly shift to clean energy, and to cope with the impact of global warming.
But how the pledged funds will be raised remains unclear -- and developing countries are determined to secure a commitment for increasing amounts of money after 2020. The latest text refers to the $100 billion as a floor, potentially triggering a last-minute backlash from the US and other developed nations.
Another remaining flashpoint issue is how to compensate developing nations that will be worst hit by climate change but are least to blame for it. The developing nations are demanding “loss and damage” provisions, which Washington is particularly wary of as it fears they could make US companies vulnerable to legal challenges for compensation.
Most nations submitted to the UN before the conference their voluntary plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions from 2020, a process that was widely hailed as an important platform for success. But scientists say that, even if the cuts were fulfilled, they would still put Earth on track for warming of at least 2.7C. Negotiators also remain divided over when and how often to review national plans so that they can be “scaled up” with pledges for deeper emissions cuts.
First plane carrying 163 Syrian refugees arrives in Canada, PM Trudeau calls for 'open hearts'
Toronto:MMNN:11 Dec. 2015
The first Canadian government plane carrying Syrian refugees arrived in Toronto late Thursday where they will be greeted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is pushing forward with his pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February.
The arrival of the military flight carrying 163 refugees comes amid an intense debate in the West over what to do with people fleeing violence in the Middle East. Canada's welcoming stands in stark contrast to the U.S.
The flight arrived just before midnight carrying the first of two large groups of Syrian refugees to arrive in the country by government aircraft.
"This is a wonderful night, where we get to show not just a planeload of new Canadians what Canada is all about, we get to show the world how to open our hearts and welcome in people who are fleeing extraordinarily difficult situations," Trudeau said to staff and volunteers who were waiting to process the refugees.
All 10 of Canada's provincial premiers support taking in the refugees and members of the opposition, including the Conservative party, attended the welcoming late Thursday. Trudeau was also joined by the ministers of immigration, health and defense, as well as Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Toronto Mayor John Tory.
The Obama administration plans to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. But several Republican governors have tried to stop the arrival of Syrian refugees in their states in the wake of the deadly attacks blamed on Islamic extremists in Paris and California. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a worldwide uproar with a proposal to temporarily block Muslims from entering the U.S.
The first flight arrived in Toronto before midnight and another will land in Montreal on Saturday. The planes, both military aircraft, will carry a total of about 300 Syrian refugees.
The headline on the front page Thursday's Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation newspaper, read: "Welcome to Canada," with the Arabic translation below: Ahlan wa sahlan. "Welcome."
The front page included an editorial. "You'll find the place a little bigger than Damascus or Aleppo, and a whole lot chillier. But friendly for all that. We're a city that cherishes its diversity; it's our strength," it reads.
About 800 refugees are being screened by security and health officers each day in Lebanon and Jordan.
Canada's commitment reflects the change in government after October's election. Former Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who lost the 19 October election to Trudeau, had declined to resettle more Syrian refugees, despite the haunting image of a drowned 3-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach. The boy had relatives in Canada, and the refugee crisis became a major campaign issue.
"They step off the plane as refugees, but they walk out of this terminal as permanent residents of Canada with social insurance numbers, with health cards and with an opportunity to become full Canadians," Trudeau said.
"This is something that we are able to do in this country because we define a Canadian not by a skin color or a language or a religion or a background, but by a shared set of values, aspirations, hopes and dreams that not just Canadians but people around the world share."
Canada has long prided itself on opening its doors to asylum seekers. In times of crisis in decades past, Canada resettled refugees quickly and in large numbers.
It airlifted more than 5,000 people from Kosovo in the late 1990s, more than 5,000 from Uganda in 1972 and resettled 60,000 Vietnamese in 1979-80. More than 1.2 million refugees have arrived in Canada since World War II.
Molotov explosive kills 12 people at Cairo restaurant
CAIRO:MMNN:4 Dec. 2015
A Molotov cocktail hurled at a Cairo restaurant killed 12 people and wounded six on Friday, Egyptian security officials said.
One of the officials said the attacker was an employee who had been fired from the restaurant in the Agouza area in the centre of the Egyptian capital.
Security officials earlier said 18 people died.
Islamist militants have claimed a number of bombing and shooting attacks in Egypt,
mostly against members of the security forces since the army toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests.
Russia warns Thailand, says ISIS militants have entered the country
Bangkok:MMNN:4 Dec. 2015
Thai police, on Friday, said Moscow's top intelligence agency has warned a group of 10 militants from the self-styled Islamic State has entered the kingdom to target Russians.
A leaked letter, marked "secret" and "urgent" and signed by the deputy head of Thailand's special branch, was widely circulated on local media late Thursday.
It said Moscow's Federal Security Service (FSB) has told Thai police that 10 Syrian militants from Islamic State entered the country between October 15 and 31 to target Russian interests.
Thailand is a major holiday destination for Russian tourists, particularly during the peak Christmas and New Year holidays.
"They (the Syrians) travelled separately. Four went to Pattaya, two to Phuket, two to Bangkok and the other two to (an) unknown location," the letter said, citing the information from Russia's top intelligence agency.
"Their purpose is to create bad incidents to effect Russians and Russia's alliance with Thailand," the letter said, without naming the suspects.
The Russian Embassy in Bangkok could not be immediately reached for comment. But a deputy spokesman for the Thai police said "the letter is real".
"So far it's only intelligence news that still needs to be proved... we have no proof if they are here for real or not," Songpol Wattanachai told reporters.
"Please be confident (in Thailand) -- we won't disregard the intelligence."
Thailand is in its peak holiday season when international arrivals surge, bringing huge sums of money to the economy.
Any confirmation that Islamic State militants have entered the country will likely cause panic among holiday-makers, especially in busy resort areas such as Phuket and Pattaya -- both popular with Russians.
Russia launched strikes against IS targets in September.
A month later a Russian passenger plane was brought down by a bomb over the Sinai desert in Egypt killing 224 people, mainly Russian holiday-makers.
Islamic State later claimed responsibility for bombing and the November 13 attacks on Paris which killed 130 people, raising the global alarm over the possibility of further terror attacks by groups of gunmen and bombers.
Scans of King Tut's tomb point to hidden chamber
LUXOR:MMNN:30 Nov. 2015
Scans of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings point to a secret chamber, archaeologists said Saturday, possibly heralding the discovery of Queen Nefertiti’s long-sought mummy.
Using hi-tech infrared and radar technology, researchers are trying to unravel the mystery over the legendary monarch’s resting place.
A wife of Tutankhamun’s father Akhenaten, Nefertiti played a major political and religious role in the 14th century BC, and the discovery of her tomb would be a major prize for Egyptologists.
Experts are now “approximately 90 percent” sure there is a hidden chamber in Tutankhamun’s tomb, Antiquities Minister Mamduh al-Damati told a news conference.
The scans were spurred by a study by renowned British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves that said Nefertiti’s lost tomb may be hidden in an adjoining chamber.
Speaking at the same press conference, Reeves said the initial results could bear out his theory.
“Clearly it does look from the radar evidence as if the tomb continues, as I have predicted,” he said.
“The radar, behind the north wall (of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber) seems pretty clear. If I am right it is a continuation — corridor continuation — of the tomb, which will end in another burial chamber,” he said.
“It does look indeed as if the tomb of Tutankhamun is a corridor tomb… and it continues beyond the decorated burial chamber,” he added.
“I think it is Nefertiti and all the evidence points in that direction.”
Cult of sun god
Damati emphasised that the findings were “preliminary” results, and a Japanese expert working with the archaeologists needed a month to analyse the scans.
Experts carried out a preliminary scan of the tomb earlier this month using infra-red thermography to map out the temperature of its walls.
Damati said at that time that the analysis showed “differences in the temperatures registered on different parts of the northern wall” of the tomb.
But the minister and Reeves had differed on whose mummy they expected to find.
According to Reeves, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, Tutankhamun, who died unexpectedly, was buried hurriedly in an underground chamber probably not intended for him.
The boy king died aged 19 in 1324 BC after just nine years on the throne. His final resting place was discovered by another British Egyptologist, Howard Carter, in 1922.
Reeves’s theory is that priests would have been forced to reopen Nefertiti’s tomb 10 years after her death because the young pharaoh’s own mausoleum had not yet been built.
But Damati believes that such a chamber, if found adjoining Tutankhamun’s tomb, may contain Kiya, another of Akhenaten’s wives.
Akhenaten is known for having temporarily converted ancient Egypt to monotheism by imposing the cult of sun god Aton.
Nefertiti’s role in the cult would have ruled out her burial in the Valley of the Kings according to Zahi Hawass, the country’s former antiquities minister and expert on ancient Egypt.
“Nefertiti will never be buried in the Valley of the Kings,” he told AFP.
“The lady was worshipping Aton with Akhenaten for years. The priests would never allow her to be buried in the Valley of the Kings,” he said.
Hawass also questioned how archaeologists would enter the hidden part of the tomb without causing damage.
Damati said that after the analysis, that would be the next challenge.
“The data is being analysed to get a clear picture of what’s behind the wall,” he said.
“The next step, which we will announce once we agree on it, will be accessing what’s behind the wall without damaging the tomb,” he said.
Since Paris Attacks, France Bars Entry to Nearly 1,000
MMNN:30 Nov. 2015
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says that nearly 1,000 people so far have been barred from entering France since border controls were put in place just after the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.
Cazeneuve, speaking on Saturday in the eastern city of Strasbourg, said that nearly 15,000 police, gendarmes and customs officials are manning France's borders, notably the northern borders that are entryways to Belgium, where the three teams of attackers started their deadly journey, and to Germany.
He said 4,000 individuals had been questioned at 285 border control points following the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and were claimed by the Islamic State group.
Cazeneuve said since the state of emergency started, French police have searched 2,000 houses, detained 212 people for questioning, started 250 judicial procedures and put 312 people under house arrest.
Police have also confiscated 318 weapons, including 31 military-grade arms.
The borders were re-enforced in the run-up to the COP21 climate talks that start on Monday and in the wake of the attacks. Cazeneuve noted the "very high threat level" that has yet to abate.
Besides those barred from entering France, 300 people have been placed under house arrest as part of a state of emergency.
Two dozen of the 300 are considered potential threats to public order during the two-week climate summit.
Murder of opposition activist Luis Diaz shakes Venezuela before election
Caracas:MMNN:27 Nov. 2015
Venezuela has launched an investigation into the murder of a local opposition leader days before a legislative election, stirring fears of renewed political violence in the volatile South American nation.
Luis Diaz, a leader of the opposition Democratic Action party in Guarico state in Venezuela's central plains, was shot towards the end of a public meeting on Wednesday night, the latest of several violent incidents during the campaign.
The Public Prosecutor's Office said two of its prosecutors, aided by police investigators, would lead the probe.
"There was a burst of 10 shots and he fell on the floor covered in blood," said Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who was on stage near Mr Diaz when he was shot.
Democratic Action is part of an opposition coalition contesting a December 6 vote for a new National Assembly. Polls show the ruling Socialists could lose the legislature for the first time in 16 years.
The high stakes have raised anxiety of a flare-up in political violence. Opposition protests last year sparked anti-government violence nationwide, killing 43 people and injuring hundreds.
Both President Nicolas Maduro's government and the opposition accuse each other of harbouring a violent agenda. Mr Lopez, the country's best know opposition figure, was jailed for 13 years in September on charges of inciting the deadly protests.
South American regional bloc UNASUR, which has sent a mission to observe the election, condemned the killing. "We call on the relevant national authorities to carry out an exhaustive investigation of this awful incident," it said.
The US also condemned the murder and called on Venezuela's government to protect all candidates.
Democratic Action's national leader, Henry Ramos, originally pointed the finger at the Socialist Party for Mr Diaz's death. The Venezuelan government, however, said preliminary investigations suggested paid killers had murdered Mr Diaz in a fight between gangs. State ombudsman Tarek Saab said police had identified a presumed "intellectual author" of the crime as a member of Mr Diaz's rival union.
"Ramos' accusation is reckless," Mr Maduro said, condemning the killing.
Ms Tintori alleged she too had been the victim of two attempted attacks on Wednesday, including the dismantling of brakes on a plane her team was using.
The Democratic Unity coalition said three other opposition politicians had also been victims of aggression recently, including Henrique Capriles, who lost the 2013 presidential vote to Mr Maduro after the death of former leader Hugo Chavez.
"The killing of Luis Manuel Diaz provides a terrifying view of the state of human rights in Venezuela," said rights group Amnesty International.
Nostalgia reigns as Queen Elizabeth takes perhaps final trip ‘home’ to Malta for Commonwealth meeting
VALLETTA, Malta:MMNN:27 Nov. 2015
Rain swirled through the sky as the Queen arrived in Malta for the Commonwealth summit Thursday, but the air was also filled with a distinct note of melancholy.
The band of 4th Regiment, Armed Forces of Malta set the tone when they chose to play Thanks For The Memory on her arrival in Valletta. The Bob Hope hit talks of rainy afternoons, of motor trips, of candlelight and wine, sunburn at the shore; the sort of memories, indeed, that the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, will cherish from their life in Malta between 1949 and 1951.
But as the tune was played in the courtyard of the presidential palace of San Anton, it was the people of Malta, who so took the young Princess Elizabeth to their hearts, who seemed to be saying goodbye.
It is a bittersweet moment for the Queen. She is visiting a country she loves on what may be her final trip to an organization she cherishes — one that might struggle without her.
The 89-year-old monarch arrived Thursday for a summit of the Commonwealth, the post-colonial international alliance she has helped for decades to unite.
In 1949-51, Prince Philip, was stationed on the island as a Royal Navy officer, and she lived as a military wife, rather than a duty-burdened heir to the throne.
“She was able to drive her own car around, go to the cinema, go to polo matches, go to dances at the Phoenicia Hotel,” said royal biographer Hugo Vickers. “She has been known to say Malta is the only place in the Commonwealth, other than Britain, (she can call home).”
Many people in Malta retain a deep affection for the queen. At the start of the three-day state visit, she was welcomed in the capital, Valletta, by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, receiving flowers from his twin daughters Soleil Sophie and Etoile Ella.
The Queen wore grey, matching the unseasonably wet, blustery weather that forced the welcome ceremony from outdoors in St. George’s Square to inside the presidential San Anton Palace.
Memories were very much the theme as the Queen exchanged gifts with Malta’s president, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca.
The president had chosen a watercolour of Villa Guardamangia, the Queen and the Prince’s former home, which is now in such a poor state of repair that visiting it is out of the question.
There was more nostalgia at an evening reception at San Anton palace.
Freddie Mizzi, 81, was a clarinettist with the Jimmy Dowling Band when the Queen and the Duke used to go dancing at the Venetian Hotel in Valletta in the early 1950s.
He said: “I reminded her that we used to play their favourite song, People Will Say We’re In Love, from Oklahoma, and she remembered. She and the Duke used to dance a lot. She was always beautiful and always so nice and kind, and she hasn’t changed.”
Frank Attard, 87, who spent 55 years working as a photographer for the Times of Malta, brought along some prints of some of his favourite pictures of the Queen and the Duke.
He said: “She had her best days on the island. She was so young and so lovely. When I showed her the pictures she started laughing. She said she could remember some of them being taken but not others.”
On Friday, she will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
The British monarch has given up long-haul travel and is unlikely to attend the 2017 Commonwealth conference, whose location has not been decided. Her absence would be a blow to a 53-nation organization that is close to her heart — but seen by some as a vestige of empire with an uncertain mission in the 21st century.
Pakistan's lady fighter pilot Marium Mukhtiar dies in jet crash
Islamabad:MMNN:25 Nov. 2015
One of Pakistan's few female fighter jet pilots was killed in a training crash Tuesday, the air force said in a statement,
adding that she was the first of its women pilots to "embrace martyrdom".
Flying Officer Marium Mukhtiar and Squadron Leader Saqib Abbasi were flying a training mission on an FT-7PG aircraft and encountered a "serious in-flight emergency" during the final stages,
the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) said in a statement.
"Flying Officer Marium embraced martyrdom and became the first lady pilot from PAF to attain this great honour," it said.
The crash took place in Kundian, Mianwali district, about 175 kilometres (109 miles) southwest of Islamabad.
The male officer, Abbasi, sustained minor injuries, the air force added.
Pope Francis Begins Peace Pilgrimage to 3 African Countries
ROME:MMNN:25 Nov. 2015
Pope and his entourage aboard departed at about 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) Wednesday from Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport,
bound for the first stop in Kenya.
Francis is also scheduled to visit Uganda and Central African Republic before he is due back in Rome on Nov. 30.
Francis has described himself as a messenger of peace to a continent scarred by conflicts and extremist attacks,
including against a growing Christian flock.
Paris attacks: EU ministers to discuss tightening borders
New Orleans:MMNN:23 Nov. 2015
A gunfight between two groups erupted on Sunday in a New Orleans park where hundreds of people were gathered for a block party and the filming of a music video, leaving 16 people wounded, police said.
Circumstances surrounding the shooting in the city's Upper Ninth Ward, and details of what precipitated the violence, were not immediately clear, but New Orleans Police Department spokesman Tyler Gamble said that no fatalities were reported.
When asked if gang activity was thought to be involved, Gamble said that it "was still too soon to say, we know, by speaking to some of the victims, there were two groups of people shooting at each other," Gamble said.
Witnesses told police that both groups involved in the gun battle fled the park on foot immediately after the shooting, police said in a statement. No arrests were immediately reported.
According to the statement, 10 gunshot victims were taken to area hospitals by ambulance, and six more arrived at emergency rooms "via private conveyance."
Gamble said that each of the 16 victims suffered either a "direct gunshot wound" or a "graze wound" and all were listed in stable condition, though the full extent of their injuries was still to be ascertained. Police said they did not have the age or genders of the victims.
The incident unfolded at about 6:15 p.m. Central Time at the Bunny Friend playground, following a community "second line" parade that ended a few blocks away earlier in the day, police said.
Several hundred people were gathered in the park at the time for an un-permitted block party and the impromptu filming of a music video, according to police.
New Orleans police Commander Chris Goodley, speaking in a video clip posted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune website, said the crowd at the park remained "orderly" after the shooting. "But we were trying to preserve the crime scene as best as we could and tend to the victims," he added.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Michael Harrison also was quoted by the Times-Picayune as saying, "no one has died at this time."
Three witnesses told the newspaper they saw a man with a silver-colored machine gun, and also heard more gunshots coming from within the crowd as he ran away. Several people were lying on the sidewalk after the shooting, it said. WVUE-TV reported that the police believed the shooting stemmed from a fight.
Hong Kong's 'Umbrella Soldiers' win seats in local elections
HONG KONG:MMNN:23 Nov. 2015
Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement got a boost on Monday with about eight candidates involved in crippling protests last year winning office at district-level elections, while some veterans from both sides of the political divide suffered defeat.
The election of the so-called Umbrella Soldiers - named after the 2014 demonstrations in which activists used umbrellas to guard against tear gas and pepper spray - reflects continued support for political change in the Chinese-ruled city.
"The paratroopers are the new force," said James Sung, a political analyst at the City University of Hong Kong, referring to candidates inspired by the Umbrella movement. "The paratroopers are a new power, a challenge to the government and the central authorities in Beijing."
Results from Sunday's polls, which saw about 900 candidates compete for 431 district council seats, where pro-Beijing parties currently hold a majority, were announced on Monday.
"My greatest wish at this moment is to serve the community well," said Wong Chi-ken, 38, who took part in the protests and has been referred to in local media as an Umbrella Soldier.
The election of candidates who took part in the protests now casts them in a legitimate political light, in contrast to how they were perceived by some during the demonstrations, which were deemed illegal by the central government in Beijing.
District councillors wield little power, acting more in an advisory role in which they can push forward policies, in particular grass-roots concerns, for the government in the Chinese-controlled city to consider.
But the poll results may provide insight into how elections for the city's powerful Legislative Council, due next year, and a controversial leadership poll in 2017 could pan out.
"The results show that the Umbrella Soldiers reflect the intention or wishes of the youngsters," said political commentator Johnny Lau.
At least 40 candidates who took part in the democracy protests, or were inspired by them, ran in the elections, local media reported.
Two democracy veterans lost their seats.
Democratic Party lawmaker and heavyweight Albert Ho, who faced stiff competition in the gritty new town of Tuen Mun in the western New Territories, lost his seat. So, too, did Frederick Fung, another pan-democratic candidate who ran in the working-class district of Sham Shui Po.
On the pro-Beijing side, Chung Shu-kun of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong was unseated in a surprise move after 21 years.
The mixed results from the elections, in which a record number of people voted, will not significantly change the numerical make-up of pro-democracy and pro-government groups.
Paris attacks: EU ministers to discuss tightening borders
Europe:MMNN:20 Nov. 2015
France wants EU citizens to be subject to the same stringent border checks as non-EU travellers, and wants easier sharing of airline passenger data.
It has emerged the alleged Belgian leader of last week's attacks travelled undetected from Syria to France.
Meanwhile, Germany's intelligence chief has warned of a "terrorist world war".
Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic intelligence agency, told the BBC that the so-called Islamic State (IS) had made Europe its enemy and European countries had to "assume something like Paris can happen any time".
The near-simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers and gunmen on bars and restaurants, a concert hall and sports stadium last Friday killed 129 people and left hundreds of people wounded. IS said it was behind the attacks.
France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, speaking on Thursday, said it was "urgent that Europe wakes up, organises itself and defends itself against the terrorist threat".
He said France received no warning from other European countries that Abdelhamid Abaaoud - a well-known face of IS and on international "most wanted" lists - had arrived on the continent.
France said it received intelligence from a non-European country some three days after the attacks that Abaaoud had passed through Greece on his return from Syria.
One of the attackers who blew himself up outside the Stade de France, has also been traced by his fingerprints to Greece where he was registered as a migrant.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said some of those involved in the attacks had taken advantage of the migration crisis in Europe - which has seen thousands of asylum seekers arrive on the continent - to "slip into" France unnoticed.
2013: Said to have first visited Syria, joining the Islamic State group before slipping back to his home country, Belgium
20 January 2014: Passes through Germany's Cologne-Bonn airport, en route to the Turkish city of Istanbul. Returns to Syria, where he becomes one of the faces of IS propaganda
15 January 2015: His mobile phone is reportedly traced to Greece from calls made to an Islamist cell in Verviers, Belgium
16 November 2015: Three days after the Paris attacks, a foreign intelligence service alerts France that he is back in Europe, having passed through Greece; police receive a tip-off that he is on French territory
18 November 2015: Killed in police raid on Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, five days after reportedly heading the attacks in Paris that left 129 people dead
On Thursday, French prosecutors confirmed that Abaaoud was among those killed in a police raid the previous day.
His bullet-riddled body was found in the wreckage of a flat in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, along with Hasna Aitboulahcen - reportedly Abaaoud's cousin - who died after detonating a suicide vest.
A draft resolution for Friday's EU meeting says ministers will agree to implement "necessary systematic and co-ordinated checks at external borders, including on individuals enjoying the right of free movement".
This means EU citizens, along with non-EU citizens, will have their passports checked against a database of known or suspected terrorists and those involved in organised crime.
Ministers will also consider cracking down on the movement of firearms within the EU, the collection of passenger data for those taking internal flights and also the blocking funding for terrorists.
The key to all of this will be the co-operation and sharing of intelligence and information between EU countries, notes the BBC's Alex Forsyth in Brussels.
Terrorist cell took advantage of refugee crisis to ‘slip in’ to France
MMNN:20 Nov. 2015
Members of the terrorist cell which carried out the attacks in Paris took advantage of the refugee crisis to “slip in” to France, according to the country’s prime minister.
Manuel Valls said the EU’s passport-free zone — under the Schengen agreement — would be “undermined” if Europe did not tighten security at its external borders.
He warned authorities were unsure if there were any other groups or individual jihadists “still active”, adding the terror threat would be “long and permanent”.
His comments come ahead of an emergency meeting in Brussels on Friday called by French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who urged the introduction of a passenger name record system to collect data on those who enter the EU.
Ministers will propose increasing scrutiny of EU nationals entering the Schengen free travel zone, a move prompted by the revelation that most of the Paris attackers were EU passport-holders who returned to Europe from Syria.
They will also call for the rapid introduction of new EU legislation which will allow investigators to access airlines’ data on air passengers entering and leaving the union.
Introduction of the so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR) proposal has been resisted by a large cohort of the European Parliament amid concerns about data privacy.
Any substantive decision on the introduction of border checks at Europe’s internal borders is unlikely, however.
Mr Valls told France 2: “These individuals took advantage of the refugee crisis ... of the chaos, perhaps, for some of them to slip in.
“The external borders of the European Union must be strengthened. If Europe does not assume its responsibilities, the whole Schengen system will be undermined.”
Mr Valls spoke on French television after authorities confirmed the ringleader of last Friday’s massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was among those killed as police besieged an apartment block in a Paris suburb.
Syrian passport
Abaaoud (27) had previously boasted of moving unrestricted between Syria and Belgium despite being flagged by intelligence agencies, while one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Stade de France was found to have used a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad to pass through Greece.
It was initially thought Belgian Abaaoud was in the Middle East before French police were tipped off by foreign intelligence that led them to the apartment in Saint-Denis on Wednesday.
The Islamic State militant was killed alongside his cousin Hasna Aitboulahcen, who blew herself up with a suicide vest.
Mr Valls admitted authorities “do not know” how Abaaoud entered France before the attacks on the nation’s capital, which left 129 people dead.
Mr Cazeneuve earlier revealed the jihadist had returned from Syria in 2014 and had been involved in four of six foiled attacks in France since spring 2015.
It is believed the extremists were set to carry out a second attack reportedly targeting Charles de Gaulle airport and the city’s financial district La Defense before the pre-dawn raid on Wednesday.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the operation neutralised a “new terrorist threat”, and that “everything led us to believe that, considering their armaments, the structured organisation and their determination, they were ready to act”.
State of emergency
The National Assembly in Paris voted almost unanimously to extend the state of emergency by three months, prolonging until February the period in which the authorities can ban demonstrations, impose curfews and conduct searches without warrants.
The assembly also approved a law that means anyone suspected of posing a threat to national security can be placed under house arrest for 12 hours a day.
“This is the fast response of a democracy faced with barbarism. This is the effective legal response in the face of an ideology of chaos,” Mr Valls told the assembly.
As the manhunt continued for an eighth suspected attacker, French national Salah Abdeslam, Belgian police arrested nine people in six separate raids in Brussels.
Paris Attack Mastermind Among 3 Dead in Raid in Saint Denis: Report
Paris:MMNN:18 Nov. 2015
Gunfire and explosions shook the Paris suburb of St Denis early on Wednesday as French police surrounded a building where a Belgian Islamist militant suspected of masterminding last week's attacks in the French capital was believed to be holed up.
Three assailants were killed, including a woman who detonated a suicide bomb, a source close to the case said, adding that the police operation was continuing to flush out two other suspects. One civilian was also killed in the operation.
The target of the raid, which filled the streets of St Denis with heavily armed police and soldiers, was Islamic State militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was initially thought to have orchestrated the Paris attacks from Syria, police and justice sources said.
A judicial source said police had originally been hunting other suspects in St Denis, but now believed he was one of those barricaded in the building. (Pics)
Shooting began at about 4.30 a.m. (0330 GMT) and police special forces of the RAID unit were still involved in exchanges of fire three hours later, witnesses said.
Three police officers were injured in the assault. Five suspects had been arrested at the scene close to the Stade de France stadium which was one of the targets of last Friday's attacks, Paris prosecutor's office said.
The coordinated series of bombings and shootings killed 129 people, the worst atrocity in France since World War Two. Investigators soon linked the attacks to a militant cell in Belgium which was in contact with Islamic State in Syria.
The group claimed responsibility for killings, saying they were in retaliation for French air raids in Syria and Iraq over the past year. France has called for a global coalition to defeat the radicals and has launched three large airstrikes on Raqqa -- the de-facto Islamic State capital in northern Syria.
"Let's go"
French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday - four Frenchmen and a man who was fingerprinted in Greece among refugees last month.
But they now believe two men directly involved in the assault subsequently escaped.
Wednesday's operation came after a source with knowledge of the investigation said a cell phone had been found with a map of the music venue targeted in one of the attacks and a text message saying "let's go".
The source said the phone was found in a dustbin near the Bataclan concert hall where 89 people died.
Late on Tuesday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said two Paris-bound Air France flights were diverted following anonymous bomb threats, and hundreds of passengers and crew were safely removed.
Authorities in the United States and Canada, where the planes landed, later said both aircraft had been searched and were safe.
On Tuesday night, bomb fears had prompted German police to call off a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands in Hanover two hours before kick-off. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been due to attend.
No arrests were made and no explosives were found.
Russia has also intensified its attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria after confirming that a bomb had downed a passenger airliner over Sinai last month, killing 224. The militants had previously claimed responsibility.
Paris and Moscow are not coordinating their operations, but French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 26 to discuss how their countries' militaries might work together.
Hollande is due to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington on Nov. 24 also to push for a concerted drive against Islamic State, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
Obama said in Manila on Wednesday he wanted Moscow to shift its focus from propping up Syria's government to fighting Islamic State and would discuss that with Putin.
Russia is allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The West says he must go if there is to be a political solution to Syria's prolonged civil war.
No Threat Found on 1 of 2 Diverted Flights From US to Paris
SALT CITY:MMNN:18 Nov. 2015
Authorities cleared both Air France flights bound for Paris from the U.S. that had to be diverted Tuesday night because of anonymous threats received after they had taken off.
Air France Flight 65 from Los Angeles International Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris was diverted to Salt Lake City International Airport, Air France said in a statement. At about the same time a second flight, Air France 55, took off from Dulles International Airport outside Washington and was diverted to Halifax on Canada's East Coast, officials said.
Passengers got off both planes safely and were taken to terminals.
American authorities investigated and found no credible threat, according to an FBI statement released late Tuesday night.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said investigators found no evidence of an explosive device after they searched the plane and luggage.
Passengers in the Utah airport were boarding their plane again around 11:30 p.m., Salt Lake airport spokeswoman Bianca Shreeve said.
Keith Rosso of Santa Monica, California, a passenger on the flight from Los Angeles with his fiancee, said "everything was smooth, everything was great, everything was going swell" for the first two hours of the flight, then things changed.
"The flight attendants quickly came by and cleared plates, then there was an announcement that we were making an emergency landing and that the flight attendants were trained exactly for situations like this," Rosso told The Associated Press by phone from the airport in Salt Lake City.
He said he looked at the flight monitor at his seat and saw that "we had made a pretty sharp right turn - we had been almost near Canada - toward Salt Lake City."
Rosso said an FBI agent interviewed the passengers after the landing.
In Halifax, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police led the investigation.
RCMP Constable Mark Skinner said there were 262 people onboard that plane, which also received an anonymous threat. No further details on that threat were released.
"We received a complaint of a bomb threat and we responded to it," Skinner said.
Halifax Stanfield International Airport spokesman Peter Spurway said police cleared the plane. He said passengers will go through Canadian customs, pick up their baggage and be put up at hotels overnight.
"Air France will make a decision as to when it will depart," Spurway said.
The threats came after last week's attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and heightened security concerns around the world.
'An act of war': France warplanes bombard Islamic State stronghold in Syria's Raqqa
Paris:MMNN:16 Nov. 2015
French warplanes pounded the Islamic State group's de facto capital in Syria on Sunday, in the first such strikes since a wave of coordinated attacks claimed by the jihadists left 129 people dead in Paris.
As the nation prepared to mourn the victims of the carnage in a minute of silence on Monday, a dozen warplanes dropped 20 bombs on Islamic State targets in the Islamists' stronghold of Raqqa, signalling the French government's resolve in its fight against the group.
The strike destroyed an Islamic State command post, jihadist recruitment centre, a munitions depot and a "terrorist" training camp, the defence ministry said.
The air raids came after President Francois Hollande called the Paris attacks — the worst in the country's history — an "act of war" and vowed to hit back "without mercy".
As the probe into the assault spread across Europe, French police released a photograph of a "dangerous" suspect wanted over the attacks.
The suspect, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam said to be one of three brothers linked to the attacks, is also wanted by Belgium, which has issued an international arrest warrant for him.
He is believed to be either on the run or one of the gunmen who died during the attacks, security sources said. He lived in the poor immigrant Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, where Belgian police made several arrests in connection with the Paris attacks.
Security sources said the wanted man's brother, 31-year-old Brahim Abdeslam, blew himself up outside a cafe on Boulevard Voltaire in eastern Paris, while the third brother is believed to be among seven people detained in Belgium.
Six other gunmen wearing suicide belts died during the attacks in the French capital — three at the Stade de France stadium and three at the Bataclan concert hall, the scene of the worst bloodshed.
The sports minister said at least one of the bombers who detonated their explosives near the stadium had tried to enter the venue where France were playing Germany in an international football match at the time.
As night fell over the jittery French capital on Sunday, crowds shocked by the brutality of the killings packed into the Notre-Dame cathedral to mourn the dead.
Prosecutors say they believe three groups of attackers were involved in the carnage, and they do not rule out that one or more assailants may still be at large.
It is now known that three of the suicide bombers were French nationals, two of whom lived in the Belgian capital Brussels.
In a further sign of the growing Belgian connection to the attacks, investigators said two cars used in the violence were hired in Belgium.
One was found near the Bataclan venue, and the other in the suburb of Montreuil east of Paris, with a number of AK47 rifles inside.
Witnesses said the second car, a black Seat, was used by gunmen who shot dozens of people in bars and restaurants in the hip Canal St Martin area of Paris.
Attacker identified
The first attacker to be named by investigators was Omar Ismail Mostefai, a 29-year-old father and French citizen, who was identified by a severed finger found among the carnage at the Bataclan, where 89 people were killed after heavily armed men in wearing explosives vests stormed the venue.
French police detained six people close to Mostefai, including his father, brother and sister-in-law, judicial sources said.
Born in the modest Paris suburb of Courcouronnes, he had eight convictions for petty crimes but had never served a prison sentence.
"It's a crazy thing, it's madness. Yesterday I was in Paris and I saw what a mess this was," one of his brothers told AFP before he was taken into custody on Saturday night.
In southern Germany, authorities were questioning a man from Montenegro found last week with a car-load of eight Kalashnikov rifles, three pistols and explosives.
The man, who had been heading for Paris, has refused to cooperate with police.
Meanwhile, the discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one suicide attacker has raised fears that some of the assailants might have entered Europe as part of the huge influx of people fleeing Syria's civil war.
Greek and Serbian authorities have confirmed the passport was issued to a man who registered as a refugee in October on the island of Leros and applied for asylum in Serbia a few days later.
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who has urged EU countries to take in more refugees, said there was no need for a complete review of the bloc's policies.
"Those who organised, who perpetrated the attacks are the very same people who the refugees are fleeing and not the opposite," he said.
Paris in mourning
Paris residents struggled to come to terms with the latest atrocities, 10 months after jihadists hit satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.
Museums and parks were closed and Sunday markets empty, although thousands still flocked to lay flowers and light candles at the sites of the violence.
But in a sign of just how shaken people were, the sound of fire-crackers at Place de la Republique, where mourners were standing in quiet solidarity, sent scores fleeing in panic before they realised it was a false alarm.
"We need to get out, you shouldn't stay at home," 38-year-old Herve told AFP. "You need to go out and look, get a feel for yourself of what happened."
The Islamic State group said they carried out the attacks in revenge for French air strikes in Syria and threatened further violence in France "as long as it continues its Crusader campaign".
World leaders united Sunday to denounce terrorism at a heavily-guarded G20 summit in Turkey and observed a minute's silence in respect of those who were killed.
"We stand in solidarity with France in hunting down the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice," US President Barack Obama said after talks with his host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Russia's Vladimir Putin said overcoming global terror was possible only "if all the international community unites its efforts".
PM Modi calls for comprehensive global strategy to end funding channels of terror groups
Antalya:MMNN:16 Nov. 2015
Joining world leaders in calling for joint action against terrorism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday sought steps to choke financing, supply of arms and communication channels of terrorists and enhance global cooperation to check use of cyber networks by militant groups.
Strongly condemning Friday's terror attacks in Paris, Modi, at a meeting of the BRICS leaders on the sideline of the G20 Summit here, made a case for united global effort to combat the menace of terrorism.
"We stand united in strongly condemning the dreadful acts of terrorism in Paris," he said. "The entire humanity must stand together as one against terrorism. The need for a united global effort to combat terrorism has never been more urgent."
Combating terrorism must also be a priority for BRICS nations, Modi said. "We express deepest sympathy and support to Russia for the loss of life in Sinai. Ankara and Beirut are also reminders of terror's growing spread and impact".
Counter-terrorism should become an important aspect of the BRICS countries' work, Modi said, adding that "the scourge of terrorism is growing, and all humankind should unite to fight it. This must be a priority for BRICS countries as well."
According to a BRICS statement, other leaders also condemned terror attacks in strong words.
Modi said G20 should promote stronger global action to address security challenges, including through "comprehensive global strategy to put an end to finance, supplies and communication channels of the terrorists".
It should also stop the flow of arms and explosives to terrorist groups, create special international legal regime to disrupt terrorist activities.
The G20, he said, should cooperate in "preventing the use of cyber networks by terrorist groups" as well as adopt at an early stage Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.
In his intervention at the main G20 Summit, Modi said the meeting is being held under "the tragic shadow of dreadful acts of terrorism" and leaders are "united by a sense shock, pain and outrage".
"We are united in condemning the barbaric attacks in Paris this week; and, the recent bombings in Ankara and Lebanon. We share the sorrow of Russia for the lost lives in the fallen aircraft in Sinai," he said. "These alone are a stark reminder of the dark force we face– larger than specific groups and particular targets and territories."
Terror, he said, is a major global challenge. "It not only takes a tragic toll of lives, it also extracts a huge economic cost and threatens our way of life. It calls for a comprehensive global response. Combating it must be major priority for G20," he said.
The killing of 129 persons in Paris terror attacks linked to the Islamic State ahead of the G20 Summit has put pressure on global leaders to enhance cooperation in their fight against terrorism.
Several leaders including US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping have condemned the Paris terror strikes.
Meanwhile, as the G20 Summit discussed ways to tackle terrorism and channels of terror financing, the leaders of 20 large economies today observed a minute's silence for the victims of the deplorable terrorist attacks in Paris.
US Sends B-52s Near Islands Claimed by China
MMNN:13 Nov. 2015
U.S. defense officials say two B-52 bombers flew near contested islands in the South China Sea earlier this week, and received a verbal warning from Chinese ground controllers in the latest instance of Washington challenging Beijing's expansive territorial claims there.
The bombers, which originated from and returned to a U.S. air base on Guam, conducted a "routine mission in international airspace in the vicinity of the Spratly Islands" on November 8 and 9, according to Commander Bill Urban, a Pentagon spokesman on Thursday.
The planes "received two verbal warnings from a Chinese ground controller despite never venturing within 15 nautical miles [28 kilometers] of any feature," Urban said. "Both aircraft continued their mission without incident, and at all times operated fully in accordance with international law."
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook also confirmed the flight, which he said was not out of the ordinary. "I know we conduct B-52 flights in international airspace in that part of the world all the time," he said during a press conference Thursday.
The U.S. military has been ramping up what it calls routine "freedom of navigation" operations in the South China Sea, where Beijing has competing territorial claims with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
In the boldest U.S. move yet, the USS Lassen last month sailed within 11 kilometers of the Subi Reef in the Spratly Island archipelago. Beijing launched a massive building project last year to transform the submerged reefs into islands that can support runways and other facilities.
The artificial island building project has outraged China's neighbors who are concerned Beijing will use the facilities in part to enforce its disputed claims to the area. The U.S. has called on China to stop the island-building.
The maritime tensions are expected to be a major focus next week when U.S. President Barack Obama travels to the region to meet with regional leaders at a pair of Asia-Pacific summits.
Although Washington says it does not take an official position on the territorial disputes, U.S. leaders routinely slam Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea and have developed closer military ties with many of China's rival claimants.
'Jihadi John': Quiet football fan who became the symbol of IS
LONDON:MMNN:13 Nov. 2015
From a quiet, football loving child to an Islamic State executioner, the man who became one of the most haunting figures of the jihadist movement remains a mystery even after being the high-profile target of a US air strike.
Born Mohammed Emwazi, the masked Brit who became known as "Jihadi John" sparked worldwide revulsion with his grisly executions of foreign aid workers and journalists in Syria on camera.
People who knew him quoted by British media said they could not reconcile the quiet but intense young man they knew with the "cold, sadistic and merciless" killer described by one former hostage.
Emwazi, 27, was born in Kuwait but the family moved to London when he was six years old and he grew up in North Kensington, a leafy, middle-class area where a network of Islamist extremists has since been uncovered.
As a child he was a fan of Manchester United football club and the pop band S Club 7, according to a 1996 school year book published by The Sun tabloid.
"What I want to be when I grow up is a footballer," he wrote in the book.
He went on to study information technology at the University of Westminster, which confirmed that someone by that name left six years ago and said it was "shocked and sickened" by the allegations.
A document published by Sky News revealed his birthdate to be August 17, 1988, and that he gained a lower second class (2:2) degree in his Information Systems with Business Management degree.
The campaign group Cage, which published years of correspondence with Emwazi, blamed his radicalisation on a post-graduation trip to Tanzania in 2009.
Emwazi told Cage the trip was a holiday, but said he was accused by British authorities of planning to join Al-Shebab fighters in Somalia.
Following overnight detention at gunpoint in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital, Emwazi said he and his friends were sent back to Britain via Amsterdam, being interrogated in both ports, according to the correspondence released by the London-based charity.
He claimed that British intelligence services had been behind his detention, that they had asked him to become a spy and that they had promised him "a lot of trouble" after he rejected the offer.
On the advice of his mother and taxi-driver father, Emwazi flew to Kuwait to live with his fiancee's family and took up a job in IT, Cage said.
He paid two return visits in 2010 to see his parents, who were living in a modest house on the edge of a housing estate in west London.
Neighbour Elisa Moraise told the Daily Telegraph that Emwazi by then had become "strange and unfriendly".
It was while trying to return to Kuwait after the second of these visits, in July 2010, that he claimed in his emails to Cage that authorities blocked him from travelling and put him on a terror watch list.
Court papers published by British media connected him to a network of extremists known as "The London Boys" -- originally trained by Al-Shebab.
The Guardian newspaper said some of them played five-a-side football together.
The papers also linked him to Bilal al-Berjawi, who became a senior leader of Al-Shebab but was killed in a US drone attack in January 2012.
After changing his name to Mohammed al-Ayan and one final failed attempt to enter Kuwait in early 2013, he went missing, the Cage emails said.
Cage said the police told his family they believe he travelled to Syria after that.
How he rose to become one of the world's most wanted men is a mystery, but one hostage who fell under his control in the IS group's hub in Raqa talked of a "cold, sadistic and merciless" killer.
Confirmation of attack on jet may strengthen Vladimir Putin's resolve in Syria
MOSCOW:MMNN:9 Nov. 2015
The main bell in St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg tolled 224 times Sunday, once for each victim of the destruction of a Russian charter flight in Egypt a week ago.
Although President Vladimir Putin and his aides at first indignantly dismissed suspicions of a terrorist act, the Kremlin has since then clearly come to grips with the idea that a bomb was probably involved in the crash: Late Friday it suspended all travel by Russians to Egypt, and initiated an emergency airlift that by Sunday had repatriated 11,000 Russians, by government count.
Should an attack be confirmed — and particularly if the Islamic State's claim that it bombed the plane in revenge for Russia's intervention in Syria turns out to be true — analysts and other experts expect that it will only strengthen Putin's resolve to become more deeply involved in the Middle East.
First, Putin said the Russian air force's bombing campaign in Syria was partly intended to help dismantle the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which includes up to 7,000 fighters from Russia and the former Soviet Union. One worry is that they might return to wage a terrorist war in Russia. An attack against a civilian airliner would confirm that Russian interests were already being threatened — and might cause Russia to begin targeting the Islamic State more aggressively.
Second, Putin's Syrian intervention has been taken as an attempt to show that Russia has again become a global power capable of tackling the world's most intractable problems. Reversing course after the first setback, however violent, would undercut that image.
Third, the Russian leader has painted the West, and the United States in particular, as quick to abandon its Arab allies since the dawn of the Arab Spring in 2011 and its chaotic aftermath. Syria, now beleaguered, has been Russia's only Arab ally for decades, but Putin has also been courting President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt. A terrorist attack by enemies of the Egyptian government will most likely strengthen, not diminish, that effort.
Ever since the Russian air force began bombing targets in Syria at the end of September, Putin has repeated the theme that it is better to attack terrorists on their home territory. His response in the face of any terrorist attack will probably be to double down, analysts said. But he is still likely to avoid committing ground forces, which polls show remains highly unpopular among Russians.
"If it was a terrorist act, that pushes the stakes higher and makes this Syria operation more costly," said Vladimir Frolov, a political analyst. "It also proves the point that terrorists have to be destroyed before they come to our own land."
The problem, he said, is that "Russia's current strategy cannot defeat the Islamic State."
Russia deployed more than 50 combat aircraft in Syria, along with some 4,000 troops. About half of them were there as advisers and technicians, while most of the rest are ground forces needed to protect the pilots and various bases.
The strategy as laid out by Putin was that the Russian air force would bolster the weakened military forces under President Bashar Assad, allowing them to strengthen their hold on Syria and then to take on the Islamic State strongholds in western Syria, using Syrian and allied ground forces.
Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, saw two main options for Russia. One, he said, was that "Russia can intensify the Syria operation, send more troops and volunteers to support Assad." That move, he said, would probably worsen already strained ties with the West.
In the second option, "Fighting the Islamic State will become a priority rather than supporting Assad," he said. "In this situation,Russia will pressure Assad to move toward a transitional government." Those efforts had started but not gotten very far before the attack.
In the few instances that Putin has spoken out about the crash, it was mostly to offer his condolences. Soon, though, he will need to explain the catastrophe at home — especially given the Kremlin's initial insistence on dismissing the idea that the plane's downing could be linked to Syria.
Pakistan invites India for key Afghan 'Heart of Asia' conference
ISLAMABAD:MMNN:9 Nov. 2015
Pakistan has invited External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for a crucial regional conference here on Afghanistan, a move that could provide an opportunity for the two neighbours to mend their frosty ties.
The 'Heart of Asia' conference will be held on December 7 and 8, where representatives from Azerbaijan, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the UAE are expected to attend.
Pakistan has also sent an invitation to Swaraj, the Express Tribune reported.
"A formal invitation has been sent to India and 25 other countries for the Heart of Asia ministerial meeting on Afghanistan to be hosted by Pakistan," a senior Foreign Office official was quoted as saying by the paper.
An Indian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed New Delhi has received the invitation but said the decision on whether the External Affairs Minister will attend the conference has yet to be taken, the paper said.
He said India is likely to send a high-level delegation headed by the minister given the conference's importance.
The meet provides a moment to unfold the process for a dialogue between the two countries after recent hiccups in their ties.
Indo-Pak ties are going through a chill particularly after cancellation of NSA-level talks following differences over the agenda proposed by Islamabad, and a planned meeting between Kashmiri separatists and Pakistan's National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz.
India has also accused Pakistan of repeated ceasefire violations and of having a hand in recent terror incidents in Jammu and Kashmir.
Modi and Sharif had last met in Ufa, Russia, in July on the sidelines of the BRICS and SCO summits.
It is believed that Prime Minister Modi may be ready for talks with Pakistan after Bihar elections, where his party could not repeat the success it had in Kashmir last year, the paper said, citing analysts.
The Afghan conference will discuss the current situation in Afghanistan with particular focus on helping the war-torn country's economy.
Germany Urges Travellers to Avoid Sinai, Contact Travel Operators
BERLIN, GERMANY:MMNN:6 Nov. 2015
Germany's Foreign Ministry on Thursday urged travellers to Egypt to avoid the Sinai Peninsula and,
noting suspensions to some airlines' services to Sharm el-Sheikh, urged those affected to contact their tour operators or airlines.
In an update to its travel advice on Egypt, the ministry stuck to its 'partial travel warning', and said the cause of a Russian plane crash in the Sinai Peninsula was still unclear.
German experts were involved in investigations, it added.
The ministry later updated its website to say that security structures at Sharm al-Sheikh airport were also currently being reviewed.
Britain said on Thursday there was a significant possibility that Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate was behind a suspected bomb attack on a
Russian airliner that killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula and banned flights to and from Sharm al-Sheikh while airport security measures are improved.
Afghanistan turns to India for military helicopters, likely to rile Pakistan
KABUL/NEW DELHI:MMNN:6 Nov. 2015
Afghanistan is poised to acquire four attack helicopters from India to help it fight a growing Taliban insurgency, a small but significant deal marking a shift in Kabul's search for allies that is likely to anger Pakistan.
Soon after he took over, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani held off military assistance from India while he courted Pakistan's political and military leadership to end years of mutual hostility and steer the Taliban, many of who live in Pakistan, toward negotiations.
But a wave of bombings in Kabul that Ghani said were plotted in Pakistan, followed by the Taliban encircling major cities including briefly taking over Kunduz in the north, has prompted a scramble to shore up support in the region.
Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar is due in New Delhi this weekend to finalise the transfer of the Russian-made Mi-25 helicopters, said sources in New Delhi and Kabul who are involved in the plans.
Afghan forces badly need air power to reverse gains by the Taliban and in particular helicopter gunships that have range as well as firepower, the officials said.
While the United States has agreed to supply Afghan forces with light McDonnell Douglas MD 530 helicopters, which can be fitted with weapons, many Afghan officers prefer the bigger, sturdier Russian machines.
Atmar will be discussing with his Indian hosts the fight against terrorism as well as air force equipment issues, the Afghan National Security Council said in a Twitter post.
"We are going to give them the helicopters, this is a one-off arrangement," said an Indian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The supply of the assault helicopters will be the first offensive weapon to Afghanistan since India signed a strategic partnership agreement with Kabul in 2011 that riled old enemy Pakistan. It has donated light helicopters, vehicles and provided military training in the past.
An Afghan source confirmed the plan to induct Mi-25s from India, saying Kabul was looking to regional players to help it fight the Taliban.
"We are the ones who are fighting the Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban, everyone else is only talking," the source said. "But terrorism is everyone's problem."
Atmar will also be discussing a proposal to train Afghan Special Forces in counter insurgency schools in India, the Afghan source said, in addition to about 1,000 Afghan army officers who visit India for training each year.
WATCHED VERY CLOSELY
Pakistan's foreign ministry declined to comment on the Afghan plan to obtain attack helicopters from India, saying it was a matter between those two countries. The military did not respond to a request for comment.
Pakistan, bordered by India to the east and Afghanistan to the west, has in the past frowned on Indian military assistance to Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a plan to undermine its stability from the rear. It has said New Delhi must limit itself to economic assistance.
"This kind of deal will definitely be watched very closely here and people will be concerned about this," said Ejaz Haider, a Lahore-based security analyst.
"Because it will be seen as linking up with the steadily deteriorating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Afghanistan has sought military hardware not only from India but also Russia directly. Earlier the United States had purchased smaller helicopters from Russia for its air force but that stopped after Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine.
"They (Afghan air force) have been going to many nations - it's not just been to Russia. They've been going to everywhere they can trying to find what they can for that capability," said Brigadier General Christopher Craige, commander of NATO's air force training mission in Afghanistan.
India had discussed ways to ship the Mi-25 helicopters to Afghanistan with the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, another Indian source said.
New Delhi can't fly the choppers to Kabul since they would have to go through Pakistan and so they would need to be taken apart and transported by plane. Campbell paid a rare visit to New Delhi in September but no details were released at the time.
New Delhi would also need Moscow to sign off on the transfer since the helicopters were bought from Russia, a Russian diplomat said.
China Rails at 'Hegemony' as US Vows to Continue Sea Patrols
BEIJING:MMNN:4 Nov. 2015
China criticized U.S. "hegemony and hypocrisy" Tuesday after a top U.S. admiral vowed to continue naval patrols in the South China Sea.
On a visit to China, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., defended last week's decision to sail a U.S. naval destroyer close to a Chinese-occupied island in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, and reiterated that such patrols would continue - despite Beijing's intense displeasure.
Harris, speaking at the Stanford Center at Peking University, tried to play down the dispute by stressing deepening cooperation between the two nations' militaries, including joint participation in regional military exercises and a coordinated naval search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last year.
"Some pundits predict a coming clash between our nations. I do not ascribe to this pessimistic view," he said. "While we certainly disagree on some topics - the most public being China's claims in the South China Sea and our activities there - there are many areas where we have common ground."
The United States and its regional allies have become increasingly concerned about China's efforts to build artificial islands on rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, and to construct airstrips and surveillance equipment on those islands. In April, Harris said China was building a "Great Wall of Sand" there. Last week's action by the USS Lassen was designed to show that the United States would not tolerate any interference with freedom of navigation in nearby waters.
Harris said Monday he continues to have "personal and candid conversations" with Chinese military leaders about tension in the South China Sea. He also described China's claims to almost all of the South China, encompassed by its "nine-dash line" maritime boundary, as both "ambiguous" and a challenge to the "rules-based international order."
But he tried to characterize last week's mission by the U.S. destroyer as routine.
"Our military will continue to fly, sail and operate whenever and wherever international law allows. The South China Sea is not - and will not - be an exception," he said. "I truly believe that these routine operations should never be construed as a threat to any nation."
A Pentagon official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, said the Lassen had also sailed past four islets or reefs held by Vietnam or the Philippines last week before it went past the Chinese-held Subi Reef.
However, the attempt by Harris to defend U.S. actions met a fierce rebuttal from China, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accusing the United States of "plain provocation."
With 100,000 ships passing through the South China Sea safely every year, it was a "false proposition" to argue that freedom of navigation was threatened, she said.
The United States has been strengthening its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and holding frequent military exercises with China's rivals, while hyping the threat from China, Hua told a news conference.
Strong earthquake hits eastern Indonesia; no tsunami threat
JAKARTA:MMNN:4 Nov. 2015
A strong earthquake has struck off eastern Indonesia, causing panic among residents, but there are no reports of injuries or damage, and authorities say there is no threat of a tsunami.
The US Geological Survey says Wednesday's magnitude-6.3 quake was centered 28 kilometers (17 miles) northeast of the Alor island chain in East Nusatenggara province.
It had a depth of 14 kilometers (9 miles).
Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency says the quake did not have the potential to trigger a tsunami and that there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The quake caused panic among residents in Alor, the closest town to the epicenter, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire".
France's Francois Hollande Heads to China Ahead of Key Climate Summit
PARIS:MMNN:2 Nov. 2015
French President Francois Hollande heads to China on Monday to try and persuade Beijing, a key country in the fight against global warming, to give a decisive push to negotiations ahead of a key climate conference in Paris.
China alone produces about 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it the biggest polluter on the planet and a major player in the fate of the upcoming UN climate change conference which begins in the French capital on November 30.
The main aim of Hollande's trip is to secure a strong joint statement from his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, ahead of the crunch talks in Paris to secure a global climate pact.
The conference, which will be attended by at least 80 world leaders including Xi and US President Barack Obama, seeks to unite all the world's nations in a single agreement on tackling climate change, with the goal of capping warming at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
Ahead of Hollande's visit, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who will chair the Paris summit, and China's climate change envoy Xie Zhenhua have engaged in lengthy discussions over the draft of the joint declaration.
Talks have largely stalled over the mechanism for following up on commitments by the 195 countries attending the conference: France is calling for a "legally binding" mechanism with a review every five years, while China has ruled out any kind of punitive system.
China, which was blamed for scuppering a 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, has already promised its carbon dioxide emissions will peak "by around 2030" in a symbolic announcement in June.
And in September, Beijing also committed in a joint declaration with the United States to set up a national emissions quota system in 2017.
As the giant of the G77 group of emerging economies, Beijing is well placed to put pressure on its partners at the conference, particularly India, the world's fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
India has effectively rejected calls to limit its use of heavily polluting coal, saying it is vital to meet the needs of its burgeoning economy and that its growth cannot be limited by environmental conditions.
Delhi has pointed the finger at wealthy developed countries as mostly to blame for global warming.
Following Merkel
Travelling with Hollande is a delegation of around 40 business leaders as well as the ministers of foreign affairs, ecology and finance.
The French president's China trip comes hot on the heels of a similar visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who arrived on Thursday hoping to drum up business.
Several major EU countries including Germany, France and Britain are wooing China in the hope of winning business and becoming hubs for the growing overseas trade of its yuan currency.
Hollande's first stop will be the southwestern city of Chongqing before he flies to Beijing, where he will be received by Xi at the Great Hall of the People before talks between the two.
On Tuesday, Hollande will meet with the China Entrepreneur Club, which comprises top executives and industrialists, for talks on the Chinese economy, the second-largest in the world but which this year is expected to see its lowest growth in 25 years.
He will end his visit by addressing a Chinese-French business forum on the economy and climate, and holding talks with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and the head of the Chinese parliament.
The French president will then fly to Seoul, where his message on climate change is likely to be better received.
South Korea is home to the headquarters of the UN's Green Climate Fund, a mechanism for transferring funds from developed to developing nations to help them counter the effects of climate change.
(LEAD) Any N. Korean aggression, provocation won't be tolerated: Han, Carter
SEOUL:MMNN:2 Nov. 2015
South Korea and the U.S. agreed on Monday that they will not tolerate any aggression or military provocation by North Korea, reaffirming the U.S.' commitment to provide "extended deterrence" against the communist country's growing nuclear threats.
"Defense Minister Han Min-koo and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter reaffirmed that any North Korean aggression or military provocation is not to be tolerated and the Republic of Korea and the U.S. would work shoulder-to-shoulder to demonstrate our combined resolve," said a joint statement issued after their annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) held in Seoul.
During the 47th SCM, the allies' major venue for defense issues, Secretary Carter also guaranteed U.S.' commitment to "provide and strengthen extended deterrence for South Korea, using the full range of military capabilities including the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike and missile defense capabilities."
The U.S. security reassurance comes as North Korea is anticipated to conduct its fourth nuclear test or a long-range missile test launch in the near future.
In May, the country test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile, escalating security concerns on the Korean Peninsula and over the North's advancing inter-continental ballistic missile capabilities.
Tensions between South and North Korea had steeply escalated to the brink of a military confrontation in August following North Korea planting landmines on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone that seriously injured two South Korean soldiers.
The rival Koreas also engaged in an exchange of live fire over the border that month before they reached a last-minute agreement to resolve the tension.
"Minister Han and Secretary Carter condemned North Korea's underwater ballistic missile-related ejection test from a submarine on May 8 as a clear violation of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions," according to the joint statement.
The officials urged North Korea to cease all nuclear-related programs "immediately" including those at its Yongbyon nuclear facility and to abandon all nuclear weapons and programs in a "complete, verifiable and irreversible manner."
Until South Korea has the full capabilities to conduct intelligence, reconnaissance and counter-artillery operations against North Korea, the allies will postpone the planned return of Washington-held wartime operational control of South Korean troops, Carter said, referring to the signing of the "Conditions-based Operational Control (OPCON) Transition Plan" during the meeting.
The signed plan specifically laid out under what conditions Seoul will take for the OPCON over its own forces.
Last year, the allies initially agreed in their SCM in Washington to delay the transfer, previously set for late 2015, until South Korea gains full defense capabilities.
The timing is estimated to be around mid-2020 when South Korea will have finished the installation of its indigenous defense systems, Kill Chain and Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD).
Han reiterated the defense system plans, saying that they will be critical military capabilities for responding to North Korean nuclear and missile threats and interoperable with the U.S. defense system.
Until then, the U.S. will also retain its counter-artillery forces close to the inter-Korean border, the statement said, referring to the U.S. Force Korea's 210th Field Artillery Brigade based right below the Demilitarized Zone.
The top officials "reaffirmed the commitment to maintain U.S. counter-fires forces in their current location north of the Han River until the ROK forces' counter-fires capability is certified... by around the year 2020."
Han and Carter also endorsed an enhanced set of anti-North Korea operation plans to defend South Korea from North Korean missile, nuclear, chemical and biological threats by approving implementation guidance on them.
The Concepts of ROK-U.S. Alliance Comprehensive Counter-missile Operations, or "4D Operational Concept," is designed to detect, disrupt, destroy and defend against such North Korean threats.
Migrant crisis: Merkel's welcoming arms earn her a cold shoulder
London:MMNN:30 Oct. 2015
The dour German chancellor is hard to read. Perhaps it could be that she is feeling the backlash from what Tony Abbott this week called her "catastrophic error", letting compassion overrule sense and opening her country's borders to a flood of refugees.
Gustav Horn sees something different. In Merkel's eye is the sign of a new purpose, this German political analyst says. He sees one of Europe's great leaders, who had been contemplating retirement, now reaching for her legacy: nothing less than saving the continent by embracing change rather than pulling down the shutters.
"That is motivating her to stay as a chancellor right now," Horn, director of Berlin economic policy think tank IMK, says.
"She sees the opportunity that she will be a historical figure for saving Europe out of this crisis – that is something that I realise when I see her.
"She has that opportunity right now – so she has gripped the immense task that she is facing. "
But "Mutti", the mother of Germany, already the longest-serving of Europe's leaders, may finally have met a problem she can't solve, Horn says.
"People are wondering whether Europe in its present state will or should survive. It is an open political battle now. It is uncertain what will prevail."
Two years ago Merkel was at the height of her popularity, emerging from a domestic election campaign as taxing as an afternoon nap, the centre of attention and influence at every gathering of European leaders.
But the migrant crisis has come on top of the financial crisis, which pitted Germany against a bankrupt Greece, and questioned the foundations of Europe's political and financial unions.
Merkel's aura is that of the ultimate consensus politician. She is the anti-Thatcher, a former East German scientist who instinctively seeks common ground between foes.
But the most successful politicians in Europe at the moment are nationalists, not unionists. The mood is fractious. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban hit his highest approval rating all year after implementing a razor-wire-and-riot-police rejection of migrants at the border.
Austria is talking of putting up border fences. And Poland's conservative opposition seized back power at last week's election, decimating the liberal left, on a Eurosceptic and anti-refugee platform.
"We see that parties who are anti-immigrant, anti-European are on the rise in many countries, even Germany," Horn says. "This is a very difficult situation that requires high political skills and I am not sure – nobody can be sure – whether Ms Merkel will be able to deal with that."
Europe's migrant crisis is not going away, and is starting to claim political casualties.
More than 680,000 migrants, many of whom are refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, have crossed to Europe by sea so far this year, the International Organisation for Migration estimates.
Germany expects 800,000 migrants will arrive at its borders this year, of whom about 40 per cent will remain, granted asylum as legal refugees.
Merkel was stung by accusations this year that she lacked compassion towards refugees. The mood was personified by a young Palestinian asylum seeker, Reem, facing deportation from Germany, who sobbed in a German TV encounter with Merkel that "others can enjoy life, and I can't".
Merkel awkwardly rubbed the girl's shoulder and made excuses that "politics is sometimes hard". It was a rare political misstep.
Then, in September, Merkel announced that Syrian migrants who reached Germany would not be sent back to the first EU country they arrived in, as treaties allowed, but would have their asylum applications dealt with in Germany.
By that stage tens of thousands of Syrians had already arrived in the country. But the announcement sparked a fresh surge of migration. The news spread through the Syrian community, along with images praising Merkel – one shared by Syrian poet Lukman Derky superimposed the chancellor's face over a romantic poem.
Migrants in the Balkans in late September told Fairfax Media the announcement had spurred their decision to leave refugee camps in Turkey, where there was no chance of starting a new life. "We love Merkel," many said, fondly dubbing her "Mama Merkel".
As the new wave of migration broke over Germany's borders, Merkel stuck to her guns. Her "master plan" is: rapid integration of those who are allowed to stay; quick repatriation of those who don't have the right to stay; and making deals with the countries they come from, so they may not make the decision to migrate.
She adapted it on the fly, with new laws to get rid of non-genuine refugees more quickly.
But the core project remains the same, and is infuriating the countries in between Turkey and Germany, way stations on a refugee highway, who find it hard to cope, practically and politically.
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said on Sunday the migrant crisis could be "the end of the European Union as such".
"If we don't deliver concrete action, I believe Europe will start falling apart," he said.
Discontent is not only external. In a recent party meeting of Merkel's ruling CDU party, Der Spiegel reported, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said the mood of the party members on the refugee issue was "quite bad".
He may have been exaggerating. Days earlier a Stern magazine survey found the chancellor retains strong support from party members – also, Horn says, she has no obvious successor within her own party, and she is picking up supporters on the left as quickly as she loses them on the right.
But in another blow, the Christian Social Union, sister party to Merkel's CDU, is reportedly considering pulling its ministers out of Merkel's cabinet.
The CSU's power base is Bavaria in the country's south, where cities such as Munich are the first stop for arriving migrants.
"The danger of society splitting is palpable every day," Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer told the state parliament in Munich.
He has threatened to take the federal government to the Constitutional Court over its refugee policy.
And German security services are also protesting, newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported. Security officials were concerned about importing Islamist extremism, Arab anti-Semitism and the national and ethnic conflicts of other nations, the paper said.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is being channelled through a revitalised Pegida, a political movement based in Dresden.
They are one of the main drivers of a wave of anti-immigrant violence: hundreds of arson attacks on asylum seekers' homes this year.
Pegida stands for Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West and it appears to have found new strength in recent months. Last week more than 15,000 crammed into a Dresden square, chanting "Merkel out", waving signs depicting Merkel as a "euro dictator" and "traitor to the people".
Dresden is the capital of Saxony – the wealthiest of the states of former East Germany thanks to a thriving science and research industry. Locals are worried about "massive economic and cultural damage", Saxony's Economics Minister Martin Dulig told the Welt am Sonntag last weekend.
One research institute chief told the paper that before meetings or visits foreign researchers were asking if Dresden was safe, and the rector of Dresden University of Technology said some foreign scientists were considering not renewing their contracts at the university.
Horn says it is too simplistic to say, as some do, that poorer parts of the country resent migrants the most because they see them a competing for limited resources.
"I think it's cultural issue. People in east Germany are not used to foreigners. They have been isolated. So many foreigners come to Germany now that people are simply afraid. They don't know how to deal with that. It's fear, I would say, that drives them on the streets."
Horn says there are genuine concerns about the cultural change that the wave of refugees will bring – which has led to a big emphasis on integration, of teaching German values.
Merkel was asked about the impact of refugees on Germany in her most recent weekly podcast.
"Those who really are persecuted, threatened by war or terror, have to have a chance to find protection," she said. Everyone granted asylum would have a 600-hour "integration course", and their children would be quickly found places in schools. Job training and language courses would help them get into work quickly, she said.
"We will manage," Merkel said during an interview on ARD television on Wednesday. "I am completely convinced of that."
Frank-Jurgen Weise, head of Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), is dealing with the task of processing more than 300,000 outstanding asylum applications. But he emphasises the positive, saying it would be a "good addition to our labour market and our society", counteracting the effect of an ageing population and contributing to "a vibrant society".
There will be higher government spending – €9 billion to €11 billion – to integrate the refugees. But young, educated Syrians are the perfect answer to Germany's demographic problem.
Yet a poll three weeks ago found less than half the country believed Germany could house and integrate the new arrivals.
But Horn is optimistic. "Germans are more open than they were. Against the backdrop of German history, the world wars and unification, we have seen many changes and we have dealt with that. It makes you more self-conscious and gives you the strength to deal with these kind of problems.
Pakistan earthquake: Relief operations continue
Islamabad:MMNN:30 Oct. 2015
Relief operation are in full swing in areas of Pakistan which were hit by the 7.5 magnitude earthquake on Monday, Radio Pakistan reported on Friday.
On the directives of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, relief goods have been airdropped in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's upper Kohistan valleys.
More than 7,500 tents, 12,000 blankets, 2,000 mats and over 11,000 food packages have been distributed among the affected people so far.
Pakistan's Punjab provincial government has also sent 50 relief trucks to different areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Two Pakistan Air Force (PAF) C-130 aircraft carrying relief goods for the earthquake affected areas landed at Chitral on Friday. One of planes airlifted approximately 18,000 pounds of dry ration which was donated by the PAF.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has released 3 billion Pakistani rupees (about $28 million) for relief and rehabilitation activities in earthquake affected areas.
So far, the toll has risen to 272, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) of Pakistan said on Thursday.
According to the NDMA, at least 2,123 people were injured and 25,364 houses damaged in the earthquake which hit the country at 2.09 p.m. Its epicentre was determined in Hindu Kush mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The quake was felt in most parts of Pakistan but caused more damage in the northwestern mountainous parts of the country.
The Pakistan meteorological department said that after Monday's quake, a series of aftershocks ranging from 2.5 to 5.3 magnitude have been recorded in the country.
Turmoil persists in earthquake-hit Pakistan and Afghanistan, death toll climbs to 339
Peshawar:MMNN:28 Oct. 2015
Rescuers were struggling to reach quake-stricken regions in Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday as officials said the combined death toll from the previous day's earthquake rose to 339.
According to Afghan and Pakistani officials, 258 people died in Pakistan and 78 in Afghanistan in the magnitude-7.5 quake, which was centered deep beneath the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan's sparsely populated Badakhshan province that borders Pakistan, Tajikistan and China. Three people died on the Indian side of the disputed region of Kashmir.
Afghan authorities were scrambling to access the hardest-hit areas near the epicenter, located 73 kilometres south of Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan province. Teams on foot were sent to the most remote regions to assess damage and casualties, but air relief drops were not expected to begin for some days.
In Pakistan, the Swat Valley and areas around Dir, Malakand and Shangla towns in the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were also hard-hit. Officials said 202 of the dead were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Pakistani town closest to the epicenter is Chitral, while on the Afghan side it is the Jurm district of Badakhshan.
More than 2,000 people were injured in Monday's temblor, which also damaged more than 4,000 homes in Pakistan, officials said.
In Afghanistan, Qameruddin Sediqi, an adviser to the public health minister confirmed 78 dead and 466 wounded, based on numbers reported by hospitals across the country.
"We believe the exact numbers are much higher because not all people bring the bodies to the hospitals so there are many that are not being counted.
And there are still areas we don't have access to so we are not aware of the situation there," he said.
Badakhshan Gov Shah Waliullah Adeeb said more than 1,500 houses there were either destroyed or partially destroyed.
The province's casualty figures of 11 dead and 25 injured "will rise by the end of the day, once the survey teams get to the remote areas and villages," Adeeb said.
Helicopters were needed to reach the most remote villages, many inaccessible by road at the best of times, he added. Now, landslides and falling rocks have blocked the few existing roads. Food and other essentials were ready to go, he said, but "getting there is not easy."
Badakhshan is one of the poorest regions of Afghanistan, despite vast mineral deposits. It is often hit by earthquakes, but casualty figures are usually low because it is so sparsely populated, with fewer than 1 million people spread across its vast mountains and valleys. It also suffers from floods, snowstorms and mudslides.
In Baghlan, southwest of Badakhshan, Jawed Bahsarat, spokesman for the provincial police chief reported at least three dead and 31 wounded. More than 350 houses had been destroyed or damaged. He too said the number was expected to rise as officials and relief workers reached remote districts.
Nangarhar province on the eastern border with Pakistan was particularly hard hit, despite its distance from the epicenter. Enamullah Maikheil, spokesman for the Nangarhar public health hospital, said at least 28 people died and 141 were wounded. More than 1,000 homes were destroyed and many livestock killed.
In Pakistan, casualties and damage were also being assessed, said Ahmad Kamal, the spokesman for Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority. Bajur tribal region bordering Afghanistan was also affected by the quake, with dozens of homes damaged in other tribal regions.
Helicopters and military planes were transporting relief supplies and military engineers were working on restoring communication lines disrupted by landslides, said Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa, the army spokesman. The landslides were also hampering rescue attempts in some areas, and roads were being cleared to ease access.
A magnitude-7.6 quake hit Pakistan on 8 October, 2005, killing more than 80,000 people and leaving more than 3 million homeless, most of them in the northwest of the country and in the divided region of Kashmir.
That quake was much shallower than Monday's — 10 kilometres below the surface, compared to the depth of 213 kilometres on Monday — and thus caused greater damage, said Mohammad Hanif, an official at the Meteorological Department.
In the Swat Valley town of Mingora, resident Jamal Ali Shah said the earthquake "was like the Day of Judgment." He sobbed as he sat outside his damaged home with his belongings around him, fearing the building would collapse in an aftershock.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited the earthquake-hit town of Shangla in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where at least 49 people were killed and 80 were injured in the earthquake.
He said his government would soon announce a relief package to help quake victims.
Monday's quake shook buildings in the capital, Islamabad, and cities elsewhere in Pakistan and Afghanistan for up to 45 seconds in the early afternoon, creating cracks in walls and causing blackouts.
In Afghanistan's Takhar province, 12 students at a girls' school were killed in a stampede as they fled a shaking building.
Sonatullah Taimor, a spokesman for the governor of Takhar province, said so far authorities had recorded 14 people dead there — including the schoolgirls. More than 50 were injured and 200 houses destroyed. He said food, blankets and tents were in short supply, though people had been warned to sleep outside — in near-freezing temperatures — in case of aftershocks.
China warns US Navy after ship sails by Chinese-built island
Pekin, China:MMNN:28 Oct. 2015
The United States defied China Tuesday by sending a warship close to artificial islands the rising Asian power is building in disputed waters, prompting Beijing to summon the US ambassador and denounce what it called a threat to its sovereignty.
The USS Lassen passed within 12 nautical miles -- the normal limit of territorial waters around natural land -- of at least one of the formations Beijing claims in the South China Sea.
China's defence ministry said a destroyer-class ship and another frigate were dispatched to "warn" the US vessel, which Beijing said it had "shadowed".
Washington's long-awaited move appeared to escalate tensions over the strategically vital waters, where Beijing has rapidly transformed reefs and outcrops into artificial islands with potential military use.
China claims sovereignty over almost the whole of the South China Sea, raising concerns it could one day dictate who may transit its busy sea lanes.
Several neighbouring countries including the Philippines, a US ally, have competing claims and the dispute has raised fears of clashes in an area through which a third of the world's oil passes. The US action was part of its "routine operations in the Sea in accordance with international law", an American official told AFP. "We will fly, sail, and operate anywhere in the world that international law allows."
China's deputy foreign minister Zhang Yesui summoned US Ambassador Max Baucus on Tuesday to announce that the USS Lassen had engaged in a "serious provocation," the official news agency Xinhua said.
"The Chinese government will resolutely safeguard territorial sovereignty and legal sea interests, and China will do whatever necessary to oppose deliberate provocation from any country," Zhang added.
A foreign ministry spokesman said that the ship had "illegally entered" waters near the islands. Fiery state-run tabloid the Global Times hinted in an editorial that Beijing could respond more strongly if the US made similar trips in the future.
"We should first track the US warships. If they, instead of passing by, stop for further actions, it is necessary for us to launch electronic interventions, and even send out warships, lock them by fire-control radar and fly over the US vessels," it said.
It added that: "At present, no country, the US included, is able to obstruct Beijing's island reclamation in the region." But despite the Chinese rhetoric, analysts said more such US manoeuvres could be expected.
Beijing's so far limited response showed that it had had "its bluff called", said Rory Medcalf, director of the international security programme at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
"The US and its allies and partners should now help the Chinese leadership in saving face, by emphasising that freedom of navigation operations are normal, not extraordinary," he said.
Balance of power
China's defence ministry said in a statement it had sent a "Lanzhou" missile destroyer and another ship to warn the USS Lassen. It added that the US actions had "damaged trust" and said China would take "all necessary measures" to maintain national security.
There have been repeated confrontations in the area between Chinese vessels and boats from some of its neighbours who assert rights to the waters, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam. Both are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has long called on China to negotiate a code of conduct in the region, as are fellow claimants Brunei and Malaysia. Taiwan also makes claims over part of the sea.
Manila has infuriated the world's second-largest economy by taking the dispute to a United Nations tribunal, and Philippine President Benigno Aquino said the US action demonstrated that "the balance of power says that there is not just a single voice that must be adhered to".
Beijing's reclamations have been seen as an attempt to assert its claims by establishing physical facts, but Aquino said: "There is no de facto changing of the reality on the ground."
Beijing has repeatedly said the construction work is mainly for civilian purposes. But satellite images of the islands published by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies show that Beijing has reclaimed millions of square metres of land in the Spratlys, known as Nansha in Chinese.
The pictures also show a host of facilities with the potential for military applications being developed, including as many as three runways -- at least one of them 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) long.
'Long overdue'
The US, which is engaged in a foreign policy "pivot" to Asia, and China, which has the world's largest military and is expanding the reach of its navy, are jockeying for position in the Pacific. The sail-by was "long overdue", said Bonnie Glaser, a senior China expert at CSIS, adding that the exercises "should be done quietly, regularly, and often".
"There should be no media fanfare," she added. "The way this has been handled has left the Chinese believing that the US is challenging its sovereignty rather than simply exercising freedom of the seas."
Tony Blair: ‘Elements of truth’ to argument Iraq invasion led to Islamic State
MMNN:26 Oct. 2015
In an interview yesterday, the United States’s principal ally in the Iraq War has said there are “elements of truth” to the argument that the 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the rise of the Islamic State.
“When people look at the rise of ISIS, many people point to the invasion of Iraq as the principal cause,” Zakaria said. “What do you say to that?”
“I think there are elements of truth in that,” Blair said, “but I think we’ve got to be extremely careful. Otherwise, we’ll misunderstand what’s going on in Iraq and Syria today.”
Blair continued.
“Of course you can’t say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015,” he said. “But it’s important also to realize: 1) that the Arab Spring, which began in 2011, would have also have had it’s impact on Iraq today and; 2) ISIS actually came to prominence from a base in Syria and not in Iraq.”
Blair said that, while the invasion of Iraq could be criticized, there is no clear path forward to peace in the Middle East.
“We’ve tried intervention and putting down troops in Iraq,” he said. “We’ve tried invention without putting in troops in Libya. And we’ve tried no intervention at all but demanding regime change in Syria. It’s not clear to me that even if our policy did not work, subsequent policies have worked better.”
Blair was also challenged on Iraq’s famously missing weapons of mass destruction.
“Given that Saddam Hussein didn’t prove to have weapons of mass destruction,” Zakaria said, “was the decision to enter Iraq and topple his regime a mistake?”
“Whenever I’m asked this, I can say that I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong,” Blair said. “Because even though he had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people, against others, the program in the form that we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought. So I can apologize for that. I can also apologize, by the way, for some of the mistakes in planning and certainly our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.”
Though the previous statement seemed to amount to apologizing for the war, Blair, well, stopped short of apologizing for the war.
“I find it hard to apologize for removing Saddam,” he said. “I think, even from today — in 2015 — it’s better that he’s not there than he is there.”
Prime minister from 1997 through 2007, Blair, in office and out of office, has weathered intense criticism over his role in Hussein’s removal, during which he was seen by critics in Britain as little more than a toady of President George W. Bush. As Britain’s parliament prepares to release a report on the country’s involvement in Iraq, Blair faces the prospect that his war record will be among his longest-lasting political legacies — particularly after memo leaked earlier this month appeared to show he would have authorized an Iraq invasion as early as 2002.
“On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary,” Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote that year.
Not for the first time, Blair was pilloried in the British media after the Zakaria interview.
“It is scarcely surprising that Tony Blair gave a half-hearted apology for the way he dragged Britain into a disastrous invasion of Iraq,” the Guardian wrote. “What is more surprising is that he had not done it much sooner – and that he did it to an American broadcaster.”
In the past, Blair has almost said sorry for Iraq — but never quite made it all the way. In a memoir, he wrote of being asked by Parliament about any regrets about the war in 2010. It was a “headline question,” he wrote, designed to provoke the opponents of the conflict no matter how he answered.
So, he gave an answer that wouldn’t fit into a headline.
“I said I took responsibility, accepting the decision had been mine and avoiding the headline that would have betrayed,” he wrote, adding: “Do they really suppose I don’t care, don’t feel, don’t regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died?”
2 Koreas Wrap Up Emotional Family Reunion
SOUTH KOREA:MMNN:26 Oct. 2015
North and South Korean families divided since the Korean War said a tearful final farewell today, wrapping up a rare reunion that was clouded at the last by a maritime border spat.
After three emotionally fraught days seeking to redress more than 60 years of separation, the reunion ended on the most traumatic note of all a goodbye that for most of the elderly participants marked the last time they will ever see each other.
For some it was simply too overwhelming, and Han Um-Jon's last sight of her 86-year-old South Korean husband was on a stretcher as he was placed into an ambulance to take him back to Seoul.
Others clung desperately to the hands of their South Korean relatives through the windows of buses preparing to leave the North Korean mountain resort where the gathering had been held.
"Father, please live until the age of 130. I'll live till the age of 100," said Lee Dong-Wook, the son of the eldest South Korean participant 98-year-old Lee Suk-ju.
"We will find a way to meet again," a women on the bus shouted to her elderly North Korea relative outside. "Just don't fall sick. Okay?"
Around 1,000 relatives from both sides took part in the week-long event a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands wait-listed for a reunion slot.
Divided into two rounds, it was only the second gathering in five years for those torn apart by the 1950-53 Korean conflict.
The two Koreas had agreed to the reunion as part of a deal brokered in August to ease tensions that had pushed them to the brink of armed conflict.
Sign of detente?
The fact that it went ahead as scheduled had encouraged those who hoped the deal might usher in a period of detente, but the inherent volatility of North-South ties was underlined on Saturday by an incident on their disputed maritime border.
It was a minor spat, with a South Korean naval vessel firing warning shots at a North Korean patrol boat that had strayed across the border and promptly returned.
But Pyongyang insisted it was a dangerous and deliberate provocation by the South that could "totally derail" the August agreement.
The accord had also envisaged the resumption of official talks between the rival Koreas, but there has been no sign to date of such a dialogue getting under way.
The latest reunion, meanwhile, ended with no commitment as to when the next one might be held.
Given that there are more than 65,000 South Koreans currently on the waiting list for a reunion spot, those selected represent a very fortunate minority.
But Monday's scenes of relatives clinging to each other and weeping at their final breakfast meeting underlined the emotional cost that gatherings exact.
The "three-day" tag attached to each reunion round is misleading. In reality, that boils down to just six, two-hour sessions only one of which allows the separated relatives to meet in private.
A lost son
Among those reunited over the last three days was Lee Bok-Soon, 88, and the son she had not seen since he was abducted by the North in 1972 while on a fishing boat in the Yellow Sea.
"I am alive and have lived a good life," her son, 64-year-old Jung Gun-Mok told Lee during one of their meetings monitored by an ever-present North Korean official.
North Korea has rejected repeated requests from the South to make the reunions longer and more frequent.
South Korean participants say the events are wrenchingly short and over-politicised, with their North Korean kin obliged to parrot official propaganda during their monitored conversations.
The reunion programme began in earnest after a historic North-South summit in 2000, and was initially an annual event, before strained cross-border relations interrupted their frequency.
Pyongyang has long manipulated the reunion issue as a tool for extracting concessions from Seoul, and sees its agreement to hold the meetings as an act of diplomatic largesse that merits reward.
Observers say the North has little to gain from the reunions, and is focused solely on restricting the amount of time its citizens spend in the company of their clearly more affluent South Korean kin.
Sweden school attack: police investigate racist motive for double murder
Sweden:MMNN:23 Oct. 2015
Swedish police are continuing to investigate an assault on a school that left three people, including the sword-wielding attacker, dead, as the country reacted with horror to the deadliest incidence of school violence for more than half a century.
Local media named the man behind the killings as 21-year-old Anton Lundin Pettersson.
His victims were a 17-year-old male pupil and a teacher, both of whom died of stab wounds. A 14-year-old boy and a 41-year-old teacher remain in hospital in critical condition.
The attacker, who posed with students before starting his killing spree at Kronan school in Trollhättan, an industrial city near Gothenburg, was shot dead by police.
Police investigator Thord Haraldsson told reporters that a racist motive was “part of the picture”, but did not elaborate.
Police were able to piece together the killer’s movements “by following the blood on the floor” that dripped from his weapon, Haraldsson added.
On Thursday evening, dozens of people gathered quietly to pay their respects outside the school, whose pupils range in age from pre-school to high school, many of them the children of immigrants.
Some stood outside the school, holding a vigil and carrying posters reading “Why?” and “Why kill?”.
“This is a black day for Sweden,” prime minister Stefan Lofven said of the attack. “It is a tragedy that hits the entire country.”
Lofven, who cancelled his scheduled program and rushed to Trollhättan, placing a bouquet of roses outside the front door of the school, declined to comment on Swedish media reports that the attacker had right-wing sympathies, saying that police were still trying to establish his profile.
The anti-racist organisation Expo, citing reliable sources, said it knew the identity of the attacker, who “during the past month showed clear sympathies with the extreme right and anti-immigration movements”.
Mobile phone images of the suspect show a man in a helmet resembling that used by the Nazis, holding a sword and wearing what was described as a Star Wars mask. According to several witnesses, he allowed himself to be photographed with students, who took it to be a Halloween prank.
Police said the man carried more than one weapon, including “at least one knife-like object”.
Fourteen-year-old student David Issa saw the assailant stab his teacher. “We were sitting in the [school’s] cafe and then this guy came up who was wearing a mask and carrying a sword and he stabbed my teacher. I panicked and ran away,” he said.
Hillary Clinton grilled for 11 hours on Benghazi attack
Washington:MMNN:23 Oct. 2015
Hillary Clinton wrapped up 11 hours of testimony before Congress on Friday, for the most part deftly handling a marathon grilling by lawmakers seeking details about the 2012 attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
Clinton sat for four consecutive hours-long sessions in a packed hearing room of the House Special Committee on Benghazi, parrying accusations by Republicans that she did not do enough to protect the US mission in Libya during a period of deep unrest, and then hid details of how she responded to the attacks.
Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president, remained composed through her interrogation by the Republican inquisitors on the panel. Democratic lawmakers on the panel occasionally lashed out at their Republican colleagues in her defence.
"If we stay here much longer, you're going to have to take that 3 am phone call from the committee room," said Democratic panel member Adam Schiff. The reference was to a famous Clinton ad during the 2008 presidential campaign suggesting that she would be best prepared to handle national emergencies.
In her testimony Clinton managed to accuse her rivals of exploiting the deadly attacks in Libya -- which came under her watch as secretary of state -- for political gain. On Twitter, the reviews of Clinton's performance were overwhelmingly positive, with many opining that this will be a tremendous boost to her presidential campaign and with the length of the proceedings causing some pro-Clinton supporters to create the hashtag #FreeHillary.
"I am impressed with @HillaryClinton and her ability to remain poised. Says a lot about how she would handle pressure," said writer Brandon Lee Fureigh. "The #Benghazi committee made @HillaryClinton look presidential," added Margaret @Margaretherapy.
One the few conservatives writing in the flood of pro-Clinton tweets was a woman named Kit, who said: "The thing bothering most... the ease with which both Clintons lie." Another conservative, IronHide, writing during the hearing, said that the Republican Committee chairman Trey Gowdy "is just KILLING IT right now. #HillaryClinton wants to be hiding under a rock right now." Even the conservative Washington Times newspaper wrote: "#HillaryClinton's poise in #BenghaziCommittee testimony boosts 2016 prospects."
US President Barack Obama to push Sharif to do more to counter terrorism
Washington:MMNN:21 Oct. 2015
As Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Washington, the White House made clear that its top priority would be how to take on extremist elements inside Pakistan who have "committed terrible acts of terrorism."
The US "has an important security relationship with Pakistan, that our security forces have in a variety of ways been able to effectively coordinate our efforts in a way that enhances the national security of both the United States and Pakistan," the White spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday.
President Barack Obama, who is set to meet Sharif at the White House on Thursday, he said will come "with some ideas about what more the Pakistanis could do to strengthen the relationship between our two countries and to advance the security interests of our two countries."
"Obviously there are extremist elements inside of Pakistan that have committed terrible acts of violence and terrible acts of terrorism inside of Pakistan," Earnest said describing it as a "shared priority of our two countries."
"This risk that we sense emanates from this broader region .is a threat that Pakistan has had to deal with firsthand, and it underscores the importance of our security relationship with the Pakistanis," he said.
Obama, Earnest indicated, would also discuss with Sharif the need to push the Taliban back into peace negotiations in Afghanistan, where the US in a policy reversal has decided to delay its troop drawdown beyond 2016.
"One of the early rounds of reconciliation talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban was actually hosted by the Pakistani government inside of Pakistan," Earnest noted.
"So it's clear that the Pakistan government recognizes how important those reconciliation efforts are and we're pleased that they've stepped up in trying to facilitate constructive conversations," he said.
Asked if there was a feeling in the administration that Pakistan was not doing enough to tamp down the extremist interest there, Earnest acknowledged "that there have been some peaks and troughs in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan."
"What the President hopes to do is to strengthen the relationship between our two countries based on our shared interest," he said describing "countering extremist forces in that region of the world" as such.
"This is something that Pakistan has to deal with on their doorstep," Earnest said. "And to the extent that the United States can be helpful in that regard, we would like to be, principally because we believe that it's in our interest for Pakistan to succeed in their fight against those extremist elements."
Ahead of his meeting with Obama, Sharif will also meet Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a South Asia expert has suggested that Obama "must focus the meeting on gaining full Pakistani cooperation with the US-led mission in Afghanistan, rather than on striking a civil nuclear deal-the terms of which Pakistan would be unlikely to honour in any case."
"Discussing civil nuclear cooperation with the Pakistani government before it has begun to crack down on terrorist groups that are undermining the US mission in Afghanistan and that fuel Indo-Pakistani tensions would compromise vital US national security interests in the region," wrote Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
"Rewarding a country that is responsible for the most significant nuclear proliferation disaster in history and which has continually rebuffed US appeals to crack down on terrorists would undermine US credibility and contribute to regional instability," she wrote.
Ahmed Mohamed, the student clockmaker who was detained in US, to move to Qatar
MMNN:21 Oct. 2015
Ahmed Mohamed, the teenager who became a national flash point after he was detained and handcuffed in a suburban Dallas high school for bringing in a homemade clock, is moving to Qatar with his family.
The Young Innovators Program at the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development said it was giving Ahmed, a 14-year-old from Irving, Texas, a full scholarship. The foundation works in partnership with several U.S. universities, including Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, Georgetown and Northwestern.
Ahmed's family said the foundation would fund his high school and undergraduate education.
"I really enjoyed my time at Education City, where I met other kids like me who are part of the Young Innovators Program," Ahmed said in a statement about time he spent in Qatar this month.
"Qatar was a cool place to visit. I loved the city of Doha because it's so modern. I saw so many amazing schools there, many of them campuses of famous American universities. The teachers were great. I think I will learn a lot and have fun, too."
Ahmed was detained Sept. 14 when he showed a teacher at his school, MacArthur High, his homemade clock, which the teacher feared was a bomb. No charges were filed, but his detention provoked widespread accusations of racial profiling, sparking a larger discussion of Islam, immigration and ethnicity.
Typhoon leaves 2 dead, Filipino villagers rescued from flood
ZARAGOZA (PHILIPPINES):MMNN:19 Oct. 2015
Army, police and civilian volunteers scrambled on Monday to rescue hundreds of villagers trapped in their flooded homes and on rooftops in a northern Philippine province battered by slow-moving Typhoon Koppu.
The typhoon blew ashore into north-eastern Aurora province with fierce wind and heavy rains early Sunday, leaving at least two dead, forcing more than 16,000 villagers from their homes, and leaving nine provinces without electricity.
But after its landfall, the typhoon weakened, hemmed in by the Sierra Madre mountain range and a high pressure area in the country’s north and another typhoon far out in the Pacific in the east, government forecasters said.
Flash floods
By Monday morning, Koppu was located over Ilocos Norte province with winds of 120 kilometres (74 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph (93 mph).
Several of the affected provinces, led by Nueva Ecija, were inundated by flash floods that swelled rivers and cascaded down mountainsides, trapping villagers in their homes and on rooftops, said Nigel Lontoc of the Office of Civil Defense.
“There were some people who needed to be rescued from the roofs of their homes,” Mr. Lontoc told The Associated Press by telephone on Monday. “But our rescuers couldn’t penetrate because the floodwaters were still high.”
His farmland turned into mud
Erwin Jacinto, a 37-year-old resident of Nueva Ecija’s Santa Rosa town, said the flooding turned his farmland into “nothing but mud.”
Mr. Jacinto spoke from the top of a high-level bridge that juts out from his flooded town and where dozens of farm villagers like him stayed in the open overnight with their families, and their pigs and chickens.
Authorities suspended dozens of flights and sea voyages, and many cities cancelled classes on Monday.
Teenager, woman killed
A teenager was pinned to death on Sunday by a fallen tree, which also injured four people and damaged three houses in metropolitan Manila. In Subic town, northwest of Manila, a concrete wall collapsed and killed a 62-year-old woman and injured her husband, officials said.
President Benigno Aquino III and disaster-response agencies had warned that Koppu’s rain and winds may potentially bring more damage with its slow speed. But government forecasters said that there was less heavy rain than expected initially in some areas, including in Manila, but that fierce winds lashed many regions.
12th such storm
Koppu, Japanese for “cup,” is the 12th storm to hit the Philippines this year. An average of 20 storms and typhoons each year batter the archipelago, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most ferocious storms on record to hit land, barrelled through the central Philippines, levelling entire towns and leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing.
Israel: Assailant opens fire on bus station, soldier killed
JERUSALEM:MMNN:19 Oct. 2015
An Arab attacker armed with a gun and a knife opened fire in a southern Israel bus station, police said, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding 10 people in one of the boldest attacks yet in a month long wave of violence.
The attack came as Israel further tightened security around the country, highlighted by the construction of a barrier separating Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem. In a bid to halt the fighting, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he would meet the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the coming days.
Israel has deployed thousands of police, backed up by troops, to maintain order following a spate of attacks, mostly stabbings, by Palestinian assailants. Those measures have so far failed to stop the violence.
In Sunday night's attack, police said the Arab assailant entered the central bus station in the southern city of Beersheba and began shooting and stabbing people. They said an Israeli soldier was killed, five police were lightly wounded and five civilians were wounded to varying degrees.
Yoram Halevy, a police commander in southern Israel, told reporters that in addition to the knife and gun he entered with, the attacker also snatched a weapon from the soldier he killed.
The attacker, whose identity was not immediately known, was shot and killed.
A foreigner was shot by police during the attack after they apparently mistook him for an assailant. Halevy said security forces responding to the attack entered the bus station from another area and saw a "foreign national," shooting and wounding him.
Israeli media said the foreigner was an Eritrean national living in Israel. Israeli media showed footage of a blood-streaked floor and rows of ambulances outside the bus station. Security camera footage from the bus station aired on Israeli TV showed what appeared to be a civilian shooting the attacker as soldiers and civilians crouched for cover nearby.
The attack was one of the most serious incidents amid near-daily bouts of violence that has hit Israel and the Palestinian territories over the past month. After the attack, a crowd of Israelis gathered outside the bus station and chanted "death to Arabs."
The unrest erupted in Jerusalem a month ago over tensions surrounding a Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews and Muslims. It soon spread to Arab neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem and then to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.
Barack Obama extends US military mission in Afghanistan into 2017
Washington:MMNN:16 Oct. 2015
When President Barack Obama leaves office in 15 months, he’ll hand his successor military conflicts in the two countries where he promised to end prolonged war: Afghanistan and Iraq. There will be far fewer troops in each, and the American forces won’t have a direct combat role. But for Obama, it’s nevertheless a frustrating end to a quest that was central to his political rise. “As you are all well aware, I do not support the idea of endless war,” Obama said Thursday as he announced he was dropping plans to withdraw nearly all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of next year.
Instead, he’ll leave office with at least 5,500 on the ground to help protect gains made during 14 years of war. As a result, the winner of the 2016 presidential election will become the third American commander in chief to oversee the Afghan war. The president’s goal of ending the wars he inherited had already been tarnished by the return of U.S. forces to Iraq last year, 2½ years after they left. The troops are there to help Iraq fight the Islamic State, a mission Obama has said will likely outlast his presidency.
Obama never mentioned Iraq Thursday, but the tenuous situation there has no doubt hung over his decision-making on Afghanistan. Obama’s critics contend the decision to withdraw from Iraq created the vacuum that allowed the Islamic State to thrive and warned leaving Afghanistan next year could have the same consequences. Military commanders have argued for months that Afghans needed additional assistance and support from the U.S. to beat back a resurgent Taliban and keep the Islamic State from using the country as a haven.
The president had originally planned to withdraw all but a small embassy-based force from Afghanistan in late 2016, shortly before leaving office. Under the new $15 billion-a-year plan, the U.S. will maintain its current force of 9,800 through most of 2016, then begin drawing down to 5,500 late in the year or in early 2017. Obama’s decision thrusts the war into the middle of a presidential campaign that so far has barely touched on Afghanistan. Candidates now will be pressed to say how they will try to do what Obama could not — end a conflict that has killed more than 2,230 American service members and cost more than $1 trillion.
On Thursday, leading Democratic candidates — including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who served as Obama’s secretary of state — were silent about the president’s decision. Last year, after Obama announced his original 2016 withdrawal timeline, Clinton said she would be open to extending the U.S. presence if Afghan leaders made that request. The president’s revamped plan was welcomed by several Republican presidential candidates, but some said 5,500 troops would not be enough. “If he is truly committed to fighting terrorism and securing a stable Afghanistan, he shouldn’t shortchange what our military commanders have said they need to complete the mission,” said Jeb Bush.
The former Florida governor did not say how many troops he thought would be sufficient. According to a defense official, the president approved the highest number requested by commanders, with the greatest amount of flexibility. Former technology executive Carly Fiorina called Obama’s decision a “recognition of reality” in Afghanistan. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the president was “waking up to the fact that disengaging America from the world and allowing there to be safe havens for terrorists is not the right way to protect American homeland security and national security.” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was an outlier among Republican candidates. He vowed to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan immediately if elected president.
U.S. officials say Afghan President Ashraf Ghani asked Obama to keep the troops in his country when they met in Washington earlier this year. Obama sees Ghani as a more reliable partner than former President Hamid Karzai, a mercurial leader who deeply frustrated the White House. Obama’s meeting with Ghani set off a months-long re-evaluation of the U.S. role in Afghanistan. The president’s decision was reinforced when Taliban fighters took control of the key northern city of Kunduz late last month, leading to a protracted battle with Afghan forces supported by U.S. airstrikes.
During the fighting, a U.S. air attack hit a hospital, killing 12 Doctors Without Borders staff and 10 patients. The Associated Press reported Thursday that American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on the hospital days before it was destroyed because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity. The U.S. forces that Obama spoke of Thursday will continue with their current two-track mission: counterterrorism operations and training and assisting Afghan security forces. The troops will be based in Kabul and at Bagram Air Field, as well as bases in Jalalabad and Kandahar.
Ghani welcomed the decision, saying it sent a message to the Taliban and terrorist groups that their actions “will produce no result other than defeat.” Officials said the drawdown to 5,500 would begin late next year or in early 2017, with the pace determined by military commanders. They said NATO allies had expressed support for extending the troop presence in Afghanistan, but they did not outline any specific commitments from other nations.
White House officials said they were still pleased with the progress Obama had made in drastically reducing the number of U.S. troops from a high of about 100,000 in 2010 and ending America’s direct combat role. Still, there’s no doubt the situation he’ll leave behind is far different from what he envisioned last year, when he announced it was time to “turn the page” and withdraw from Afghanistan.
Israel PM Netanyahu says 'perfectly open' to meeting Palestine President Abbas
JERUSALEM:MMNN:16 Oct. 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said he would be "perfectly open" to meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in order to end weeks of Israeli-Palestinian unrest.
The Palestinian president has ignited an uproar in Israel after falsely claiming that Israel had "executed" a 13-year-old Palestinian boy who is recovering in an Israeli hospital, drawing new accusations that he is inciting violence at a time of heightened tensions. Netanyahu told reporters he has been speaking to US.
Secretary of State John Kerry and other leaders about meeting with Abbas. "I'd be perfectly open to it now," he said. "I think it's potentially useful because it might stop the wave of incitement and false allegations against Israel," he said. "I'd be open to meeting with Arab leaders and the Palestinian leadership in order to stop this incitement and set the record straight."
The Palestinian boy, who was run over by an Israeli vehicle after involvement in the stabbing of an Israeli boy, has become the center of heated, high-level name-calling between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders — reflecting the abyss between them after a monthlong spike in deadly violence.
Abbas said in a televised speech late Wednesday that Israel is engaged in the "summary execution of our children in cold blood" and wrongly claimed that 13-year-old Ahmed Manasra was among those killed. Netanyahu swiftly accused Abbas of "lies and incitement."
The case has become a lightning rod for both sides, as they trade accusations in an increasingly charged atmosphere. Netanyahu has repeatedly alleged that Abbas is inciting Palestinians to violence against Israel, a claim denied by the Palestinian leader. Abbas says Israel has been using excessive force against Palestinians.
Turkish President Pays Homage at Ankara Bombing Site
ANKARA, TURKEY:MMNN:14 Oct. 2015
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid homage today at the site of weekend twin bombings in Ankara, as he seeks to deflect criticism of alleged security lapses over the country's deadliest attack.
Along with Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto, Erdogan laid a wreath in front of the city's railway station where two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Saturday in a crowd of leftist and pro-Kurdish activists attending a peace rally, killing 97 people.
The government has said the Islamic State (IS) group is the prime suspect behind the attack, which also injured more than 500.
The bombings have raised political tensions to new highs as Turkey prepares for a November 1 snap election, with polarisation within the country now greater than ever.
Erdogan has admitted there were security shortcomings but said their magnitude would only be made clear later.
He has ordered a top-level probe into the bombings.
There have been growing indications that the authorities are focusing on possible parallels or even links to a July 20 suicide bombing at a peace rally in Suruc on the Syrian border that killed 34.
The government blamed IS for that attack, which also targeted a gathering of pro-Kurdish and leftist activists.
Russian military claims it has destroyed 'most' ISIS ammunition and heavy weapons
MMNN:14 Oct. 2015
The Russian military claims to have destroyed "most" of ISIS's ammunition and heavy weapons after days of intensive air strikes across Syria.
The extraordinary claims, which have been met with scepticism from experts, were accompanied by a series of videos showing attacks on targets by Su-24 and -24M bombers.
According to the ministry, at least 86 ISIS targets were hit during 88 separate sorties over 24 hours on Monday and Tuesday. Russia said it carried out more than 100 air missions in Syria over the weekend.
"Russian air strikes resulted in the elimination of the majority of ISIS ammunition, heavy vehicles and equipment," the Russian defence ministry said in a statement, adding that ammunition depots, vehicles, explosive plants and field camps were among the targets.
Srdja Trifkovic, a Serbian-American foreign affairs expert and editor with Chronicles magazine, told Russa Today: "The Russians with Syrian boots on the ground have done more to degrade Isis in less than 10 days than the US did in more than a year of its half-hearted campaign."
But the official line from the Russian government was described as a "ridiculous" claim by UK-based experts.
Charlie Winter, a senior researcher for the anti-extremism think-tank Quilliam, said reports on the ground of Isis territorial gains "run contrary to Russia's claims".
"I highly doubt that even the Russians, who will be party to much of Assad intelligence, know where the "majority of ISIS ammunition, heavy vehicles and equipment" is located," Mr Winter told The Independent.
He described Vladimir Putin's intervention in Syria as an attempt to "contest the monopoly" of the West's "War on Terror", and described the defence ministry's statement as "propagandising to this end".
Dr Andreas Krieg, an expert on the Middle East from King's College's Department of Defence Studies, said the positions Russia had said it was targeting "have been in the hands of moderate rebels for months now" - not ISIS.
"They also do not have the precision strike capability that western air forces have," he said. "These claims that Isis has been significantly weakened are either highly exaggerated or wrong."
Russia began launching air strikes in Syria on 30 September, allowing Syrian government forces to carry out a multi-pronged ground assault.
Moscow insists it is mainly targeting the Isis group, but Western-backed rebels say the ground-and-air offensive is largely being waged in areas controlled by other insurgents in order to strengthen the Assad regime's position.
Also on Tuesday, Iraq said it had begun bombing Isis targets with help from a new intelligence centre that has staff from Russia, Iran and Syria.
"We can get a lot of use from Russian intelligence [in Iraq], even if they don't do air strikes," Shia politician Hakim al Zamili told.
Five killed after British helicopter crashes in Kabul, says Nato
Kabul:MMNN:12 Oct. 2015
Nato says five people have been killed and five others injured in a helicopter crash on its base in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
In a statement on Sunday, the alliance said the helicopter "crashed due to a non-hostile incident 11 October at approximately 4:15 pm at Camp Resolute Support, Kabul."
The alliance says the incident is under investigation. The nationalities of those killed and injured were not released, according to protocol.
Earlier, US Army Col Brian Tribus, the military spokesman, said an "incident" involving a NATO aircraft and an observational balloon had taken place "in the vicinity of the Resolute Support base."
The balloon was severed from its mooring in the incident, he said, without providing further details.
An Afghan security guard said the military helicopter appeared to strike the balloon as it was landing.
Russian police foil 'terror attack' planned on Moscow
Moscow:MMNN:12 Oct. 2015
Russian police have arrested a group of people they said were planning a terror attack on Moscow, the country's anti-terrorism committee have said, without giving details about the group's motives.
"After a series of investigations by the security services, a group of individuals was arrested in the west of Moscow suspected of planning a terrorist attack on the capital," the committee was quoted by local media as saying.
Investigators found about four kilograms (nine pounds) of homemade explosives in the suspects' apartment, the official TASS news agency reported.
More than 120 people were evacuated from the building and the explosives were defused.
Authorities did not give any details about the number of people arrested or their motives.
United Nations Aid Chief Demands Probe of Yemen Wedding Bombing
UNITED STATES:MMNN:9 Oct. 2015
The top United Nations aid official called for a swift investigation Thursday of a suspected Saudi-led air strike that killed dozens of people at a wedding in Yemen.
Stephen O'Brien, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said he was "deeply disturbed" by the news that civilians had been killed in Wednesday evening's bombing.
"I call for a swift, transparent and impartial investigation into this incident," O'Brien said in a statement.
"Real accountability for parties to conflict, whether they are states or non-state groups, is urgently needed, to ensure that the commitment under international law to protect civilians is meaningful," he added.
O'Brien quoted Yemen's ministry of public health as saying that at least 47 people were killed and 35 were injured, among them many women and children, in the strike.
Medical sources confirmed at least 28 deaths to AFP.
The raid hit a house where dozens of people were celebrating in the town of Sanban in Dhamar province, 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of the capital Sanaa, residents said.
It was the second alleged air strike by the Saudi-led coalition on a Yemeni wedding party in just over a week.
But the coalition, under mounting criticism over the civilian death toll of its bombing campaign against Iran-backed Shiite rebels, denied any involvement in the latest attack.
O'Brien noted that 4,500 civilians have been killed or injured since the Saudi-led coalition began air strikes against rebels in Yemen in March.
"That is more than in any country or crisis in the world during the same period," he noted.
The strongly-worded statement underscored that the sides have a responsibility under international law to avoid damage to homes and other civilian structures.
"With modern weapons technology, there is little excuse for error," he added.
A Western-backed resolution calling for a UN investigation into rights abuses committed during the conflict in Yemen was withdrawn last week at the UN rights council due to protests from Saudi Arabia.
MSF says 33 people still missing after Afghan hospital bombing
Washington:MMNN:9 Oct. 2015
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) authorities have said that 33 people are still missing almost a week since the deadly US bombing of the hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan.
According to The Washington Times, the charity organisation's representative in Afghanistan, Guilhem Molinie, said that 24 staff members and nine patients are still missing.
The airstrike had killed 22 people and injured 37 others on Saturday.
There were more than 80 staff members inside the hospital at the time of the bombing.
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday apologised to the director of the organization for the airstrike in Kunduz, that the Pentagon admitted was a mistake.
However, General John F. Campbell, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had said that the strike was called in by Afghan forces on the ground, who were fighting Taliban after the militant group successfully recaptured the major city, marking the first success for the group since the U.S. invasion.
Doctors Without Borders has urged an independent probe into the tragedy and called the bombing a war crime.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is conducting its separate investigation.
Ruling on Transatlantic Data Transfers Puts US Tech Firms in Rough Water
MMNN:7 Oct. 2015
The legal blow in Europe that removed "Safe Harbour" protection of cross-border data transfers by from US tech firms on Tuesday has thrust them into rough water.
The ruling Tuesday by Europe's top court, invalidating the 15 year old Safe Harbour agreement, means that some 4,000 Internet companies ranging from giants such as Apple, Facebook, and Google to startups just getting their sea legs can no longer legally transfer user data from Europe to the United States.
"Aside from taking an axe to the undersea fibre optic cables connecting Europe to the United States, it is hard to imagine a more disruptive action to transatlantic digital commerce," the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington, DC, said in an online post.
"Safe Harbour agreement has been the cornerstone of the transatlantic digital economy since before global companies like Facebook were founded."
The rise of online social networks and the cloud services and storage industry have come with Internet titans building huge data centres in the US and elsewhere to catalogue Internet user and other data from around the world.
User information is also shifted between tech company servers to target advertising, the lifeblood of the Internet economy.
Huge problem
The European court of Justice ruling could force companies to keep European users' digital information in Europe. That would require companies to have enough data centre capacity there.
Major technology firms might be able to absorb that expense, but it is not likely small or medium sized companies have such room in their budgets.
"It's a huge problem for companies that move a lot of that information across borders, particularly Google and Facebook which have a lot of processing power in the US," said independent analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group.
"It means you have to keep data contained in the country."
Internet firms should be able to rent server capacity from cloud computing service providers in Europe,and deep-pocketed players will likely invest in building more data centres there, according to the analyst.
Already illegal
The court ruling did not come with a stated grace period, meaning that Internet firms may already be breaking the letter of the law.
It remains to be seen how aggressively and quickly regulators in Europe move to enforce it.
The EU insisted Tuesday that companies can keep transferring personal data to the United States while authorities work out a replacement for Safe Harbour.
"It's not as if the United States government could not have seen this coming," Danny O'Brien of the cyber rights advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation said in an online post.
"For the last two years, major tech companies, including Facebook and Google, have told American politicians that without reform of the NSA's global surveillance programs, they risked 'breaking the internet'."
The EU high court accepted the legal argument that the Safe Harbor agreement failed to live up to its promise in the wake of spying details leaked by former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.
"The spread of knowledge about the NSA's surveillance programs has shaken the trust of customers in US Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple," said O'Brien.
"It should come as no surprise, then, that the European Court of Justice has decided that United States companies can no longer be automatically trusted with the personal data of Europeans."
The ITIF believed that the ruling will not only disrupt Internet firms that depended on Safe Harbor to do business, but that it will hit the broader economy.
The non-profit research and education foundation urged policy makers to swiftly ink an interim agreement to avoid shutting down "transatlantic digital commerce overnight."
19 Terrorists Killed in Russian Airstrikes in Syria
BEIRUT:MMNN:7 Oct. 2015
At least 19 Islamic State terrorists were killed in Syria in airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force, according to a rights group.
At least 15 people were killed in al-Karma and its surroundings in eastern areas of al-Raqa province, an Islamic State stronghold in Syria, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The other four were killed in airstrikes targeting IS locations in the ancient city of Palmyra in the province of Homs.
The report said that the Russian air force carried out 34 missions in al-Karma and Palmyra, where two armories and 12 vehicles were destroyed.
Since September 30, Russia has been targeting Islamic State positions in Syria with aerial bombings, according to Russian and Syrian officials.
Opposition activists have condemned the Russian airstrikes claiming they targeted civilians and opposition fighters, not IS terrorists.
Angela Merkel's India visit: 10 things to know
MMNN:5 Oct. 2015
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on a three-day visit to India. Here are 10 important things to know about India-Germany relations.
1.India and Germany are strategic partners since 2001.
2.Germany is India's largest trading partner in European Union.
3.Germany is the seventh largest foreign investor in India.
4.The overall exchange of goods and services between the two countries was valued at around 15.96 billion euros last year.
5.India's exports to Germany rose marginally to 7.03 billion euros in 2014, its German imports dropped to 8.92 billion euros from 9.19 euros in the previous year.
6.More than 1,600 Indo-German collaborations and around 600 Indo-German joint ventures are currently in operation.
7.Tuesday's meet is the second bilateral meeting between PM Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
8.The German leader, who met Modi at Hannover Messe in April, is in India for the 3rd inter-governmental consultations (IGC) between both countries.
9.The IGC is a unique summit-level dialogue with cabinet participation of both governments to help advance the bilateral partnership across priority areas of mutual interest.
10.Germany's competencies in manufacturing, high technology, clean energy, water and waste management provide a robust foundation for enhanced partnerships in a range of priority areas.
Israeli air raid hits Gaza after rocket attack: army
JERUSALEM:MMNN:5 Oct. 2015
Israel carried out an air strike on the Gaza Strip early on Monday in response to a Palestinian rocket attack from the territory, an army statement said.
"Israel Air Force aircraft targeted a Hamas terror site in the northern Gaza Strip," it said.
The rocket was fired into southern Israel late on Sunday but hit open ground, the army said.
No casualties were reported on either side.
The military said that so far this year 16 rockets have been launched at Israel from Gaza.
On September 30, Israeli warplanes hit four training camps of Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave that was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defence system.
The camps were empty at the time and nobody was injured.
Salafist militants claiming links to the Islamic State group have said they were behind recent rocket fire from Gaza, but Israel holds Hamas responsible for all such incidents.
Hamas is the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and has fought three wars with Israel since 2008, including a devastating conflict last summer which left some 2,200 Palestinians dead and more than 100,000 homeless.