Gazette - 072513

Thursday July 25th 2013

Syria death toll rises above 100,000

More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Syria, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said.

The latest estimate of the number killed is 7,000 higher than that issued by the UN only last month.
Mr Ban was speaking at UN headquarters in New York alongside US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Both men stressed the urgency of finding a political solution to the conflict. Mr Ban appealed for fresh efforts to convene a peace conference.
In the past the UN has said its statistics are an underestimate as it believes many deaths have not been reported.
A further 1.7 million Syrians have been forced to seek shelter in neighbouring countries.
The UN announcement came as reports from the capital, Damascus, said that seven people had been killed in a car bomb attack.
Syrian state media said the attack took place in the suburb of Jaramana, home to many Druze and Christians, communities in which there has been more support for President Bashar al-Assad.

Car bomb kills 7, wounds 62 in Syrian capital

Syria's state-run news agency says seven people have been killed and 62 wounded in a powerful car bomb explosion near Damascus.

SANA says the car bomb exploded Thursday in the suburb of Jaramana, just few kilometers (miles) southeast of Damascus.
Jaramana is an overwhelmingly pro-regime area.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-government activist organization, has confirmed the explosion and the death toll. It says the blast caused heavy material damage and started a fire.

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks To Begin In U.S. Next Week

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli and a Palestinian official say preliminary peace talks agreed to after a shuttle mission by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are to begin in Washington on Tuesday.
Israeli-Palestinian talks on the terms of a Palestinian state have been frozen for five years, and both sides have low expectations of the new U.S. peace push.
The two sides still disagree on the rules for actual negotiations, including the principles for drawing a border between them.
It's unclear if those disputes can be resolved in Washington.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Silvan Shalom says "there is a good chance" the preliminary talks will start on Tuesday.
A Palestinian diplomat on Thursday confirmed the date, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with journalists.

Tunisia politician Brahmi shot dead

Tunisian opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi has been shot dead outside his home in the capital, Tunis, officials say.

Mr Brahmi, 58, led the nationalist Movement of the People party.
It is the second time an opposition party leader has been killed this year.
In February, prominent secular politician Chokri Belaid was also shot outside his house in Tunis. His murder sparked protests and forced Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali to resign.
An uprising in Tunisia in late 2010 kick-started a series of revolutions that spread through the Middle East and became known as the Arab Spring.
'Cowardly crime' Gunmen on a motorbike shot Mr Brahmi in front of his wife and daughter on Thursday morning, Movement of the People party officials said.
Local media said the assailants fired 11 bullets at the politician. It is not known yet who is behind the attack.
Large crowds have gathered outside the Ministry of Interior in Tunis in protest over the killing.
There are also reports of protesters converging in the city of Sidi Bouzid, Mr Brahmi's hometown and the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
"People have blocked roads and set tyres alight," a local resident told the Reuters news agency.

Rape and domestic violence follow Syrian women into refugee camps

Children have witnessed massacres, mothers seen their sons killed, families watched their homes looted and burned. But there is one act of violence that refugees from the Syrian crisis will not discuss.
The conflict has been distinguished by a brutal targeting of women. The United Nations has gathered evidence of systematic sexual assault of women and girls by combatants in Syria, and describes rape as "a weapon of war". Outside the conflict, in sprawling camps and overloaded host communities, aid workers report a soaring number of incidents of domestic violence and rampant sexual exploitation.
But this is a deeply conservative society. The endemic violence suffered by Syrian women and girls is hidden under a cultural blanket of fear, shame and silence that even international aid workers are loth to lift.
Dr Manal Tahtamouni is the director of the Institute for Family Health, a local NGO funded by the European commission that was among the first to open a women's clinic in Zaatari refugee camp. When asked, she says, most women will not admit to being raped. They will say they have seen others being raped.
"This is a conservative area. If you have been raped, you wouldn't talk openly about it because you would be stigmatised for your entire life. The phenomenon is massively under-reported," Tahtamouni says. Only after a long process of building trust through one-on-one counselling sessions might a rape survivor talk. Of the 300 to 400 cases her clinics receive in a day, 100 are female victims of violence, mostly domestic.

US charges Mokhtar Belmokhtar over deadly Algerian hostage crisis

Fugitive leader of al-Qaida splinter group blamed for more than 30 deaths after militants seized gas plant

Federal prosecutors in the US have charged the fugitive militant leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar over the Algerian gas plant attack in January that killed more than 30 people, including Americans and Britons.
The charges, which are being filed in New York, include conspiring to support al-Qaida, using a weapon of mass destruction, discharging a firearm and using and carrying an explosive. Additional charges of conspiring to take hostages and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence carry a maximum penalty of death.
Authorities said a $5m reward was being offered for information leading to the arrest of Belmokhtar, who's also been known as "the one-eyed sheikh" since he lost an eye in combat. Belmokhtar left al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the north African offshoot of the terrorist group, and formed his own spinoff.
He is accused of participating in the 16 January attack on a western-owned gas processing facility in a remote part of eastern Algeria near the border with Libya.
After a four-day standoff the Algerian army moved in and killed 29 attackers and captured three others. At least 37 hostages, including one Algerian worker, died in the battle. Three Americans and scores of Algerian and foreign nationals were killed.
Belmokhtar "unleashed a reign of terror years ago, in furtherance of his self-proclaimed goal of waging bloody jihad against the west", US attorney Preet Bharara said in a release. "His efforts culminated in a five-day siege that left dozens dead."
The court papers said Belmokhtar appeared in an online video the day after the siege ended, claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of al-Qaida.

Pakistan bomb blasts hit intelligence agency in Sukkur

Attackers have stormed an office of Pakistan's intelligence agency, detonating bombs and injuring more than 30 people, police have said.

Gunmen burst into the heavily guarded complex in southern Sindh province and traded gunfire with security personnel.
At least five people were killed, most of them said to be attackers.
Buildings collapsed and officials fear people could be trapped in the debris. No group has said it carried out the attack, in the town of Sukkur.
Police said the target appeared to be the offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).
Up to 10 attackers stormed the heavily guarded compound.
The gunmen seized control of one of the government buildings while another office was still under fire, according to the state-run Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV).
The roof of a third building was reported to have collapsed, with people feared trapped beneath the rubble.

Seized N Korean ship: Panama finds two MiG jet fuselages

Panamanian security forces searching a North Korean ship detained for illegally carrying weapons have found two military jet fuselages.

The ship was seized last week after police found undeclared military cargo hidden under bags of sugar in its hold.
Cuba said it had sent the weapons to North Korea for repairs.
Panama has asked the UN to investigate whether there has been a breach of the sanctions against North Korea, which ban the supply of arms to Pyongyang.
'Obsolete weapons' Prosecutor Javier Caraballo said that "in the containers that we've opened up to now, we have found two fuselages of MiG-21 jets. We've also found some anti-aircraft radars, of the type to launch anti-aircraft weapons".
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Bulgaria names Hezbollah suspects behind bombing of Israeli bus in Burgas

Canadian and Australian citizens named as suspects in terror attack which killed 6; suspects thought to be in Lebanon.

BERLIN - Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry released  on Thursday the names and photographs of two people believed to have carried out the Burgas bus bomb terrorist attack last year that killed five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver.
The powerful explosion at the Black Sea resort town injured 32 Israelis.
The two suspects behind the deadly attack were identified as 32-year-old Australian citizen Meliad Farah, also known as Hussein Hussein, and 25-year old Canadian Citizen Hassan El Hajj Hassan.
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 US lawmakers back phone surveillance

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to continue collecting data on US phone calls, in the first legislative move on the programme.

In a 205-217 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort to restrict the National Security Agency's (NSA) ability to collect electronic information.
The NSA's chief had lobbied strongly against the proposed measure.
The vote saw an unusual coalition of conservatives and liberal Democrats join forces against the programme.
The details of the NSA dragnet were made public by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for America's electronic spying agency. He is now a fugitive, seeking asylum in Moscow.
'Fear' The rejected amendment would have blocked funding for the NSA programme which gathers details of every call made by or to a US phone, unless the records were part of a specific investigation.

Obama tries to offset current scandals by recycling talking points on economy

President Obama tried to offset a series of second-term scandals Wednesday by talking for more than an hour on the economy. Despite being hyped by the White House a day earlier as a major economic speech, Obama recycled many of his talking points.
His speech at Knox College comes as a new Fox News poll shows Obama's approval ratings continuing to struggle, with just 46 percent of voters now approving of the president’s job performance, while just 25 percent of independents approve of the job he is doing, down from 31 percent last month. 
During his speech, Obama said Washington has "taken its eye off the ball" as he pledged a stronger commitment to tackling the economic woes that strain many in the middle class nearly five years after the country plunged into a recession during his last years as president.
Obama returned to the college campus where he gave his first major economic address as a U.S. senator, and he chided Congress for being less concerned about the economy and more about "an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals."
"I am here to say this needs to stop," Obama said. "This moment does not require short term thinking. It does not require having the same old stale debates."
The president's attempt to refocus on the economy comes amid some hopeful signs of improvement, with the unemployment rate falling and consumer confidence on the rise. But looming spending and budget deadlines this fall could upend that progress if Washington spirals into contentious fiscal fights like those that plagued Obama's first term.


Judge freezes challenges to Detroit bankruptcy

DETROIT — A federal judge on Wednesday swept aside lawsuits challenging Detroit’s bankruptcy, settling the first major dispute in the scramble to get a leg up just days after the largest filing by a local government in U.S. history.
After two hours of arguments, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes made clear he’s in charge. He granted Detroit’s request to put a permanent freeze on three lawsuits filed in Ingham County, including another judge’s extraordinary decision that Gov. Rick Snyder trampled the Michigan Constitution and acted illegally in approving the Chapter 9 filing.
That ruling and others had threatened to derail the bankruptcy.
Questions about Detroit’s eligibility to turn itself around through bankruptcy “are within this court’s exclusive jurisdiction,” Rhodes said.
He said nothing in federal law or the U.S. Constitution gives a state court a dual role. It was a victory for Detroit, which had warned that it would be “irreparably harmed” if it had to deal with lawsuits in state courts while trying to restructure $18 billion in debt with thousands of creditors.
“Widespread litigation ... can only confuse the parties, confuse the case and create serious barriers,” attorney Heather Lennox told the judge.

Clinton Presidency Would Be A Real-Life Horror Flick, Ad Suggests

A new ad released Wednesday by an anti-Hillary Clinton super PAC is hoping to scare people away from supporting the former secretary of state in a potential 2016 presidential run.
The spot, released by the recently formed Stop Hillary PAC, looks like it got some help from a horror movie director. In the ad, a reverberating Clinton voice reads the inaugural oath over haunting sound effects, while scandals and conspiracy theories that have hounded the Clintons over their decades in politics flash across the screen. The list includes Benghazi, a reference to the attack on a U.S. compound in Libya last year to which conservatives, over the past months, have been seeking to tie Clinton and President Barack Obama.

White House Skips Gitmo Hearing

Opponents and supporters of closing down the facility argued fiercely at Wednesday’s hearing, but no representative of Obama, who has renewed his shutdown pledge, testified. Daniel Klaidman on the president’s plan.

There was no shortage of outrage at Wednesday’s Senate hearing on closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. Both critics and supporters of the prison repeated well-rehearsed arguments about why keeping it open—or shutting it down—would harm the national security and American interests more broadly. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who chaired the Judiciary Committee panel, argued that “every day it remains open, Guantánamo prison weakens our alliances, inspires our enemies, and calls into question our commitment to human rights.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) countered that shuttering the facility would endanger the lives of Americans. “Until we are presented with a good, viable strategy for what to do with terrorists who would work night and day to murder innocent Americans,” Cruz said, “I have a hard time seeing how it is responsible to shut down our detention facilities and send these individuals home, where they would almost surely be released and almost surely would return to threaten and kill more Americans.”

Justice Department to challenge Texas on voting rights

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday that the Department of Justice, despite a Supreme Court ruling last month striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, will ask a federal court to force the state of Texas to obtain approval from the federal government before making any future changes in its voting rights requirements.
Speaking to the National Urban League in Philadelphia, Holder signaled the action as his department’s response to the Supreme Court decision in June striking down a section of the Voting Rights Act that dictated that Texas and other mostly Southern states with a history of discrimination seek “preclearance” from the Justice Department or a federal court before making voting changes.
“This is the department’s first action to protect voting rights following the [Supreme Court’s] decision,” Holder said. “But it will not be our last. Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law’s remaining sections to ensure that the voting rights of all American citizens are protected.

Wisconsin Teachers’ Unions In Full Collapse

Remember all those dire predictions about the damage Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s public employee union contract reforms would do? Remember the angst of Wisconsin’ teachers and other “vital workers” over what they saw as the end of the line for their cushy jobs and control over their state? Well, they were right to be worried. They are getting crushed and put out of existence.



Now that two years have passed and the dust has settled, it’s safe to say that the union protesters who filled the legislative offices and camped out in Wisconsin’s state capital were actually optimistic. The results of Walker’s changes have been more devastating than either side could have feared or hoped for, depending on their point of view.

Since Act 10 passed two years ago, public employees’ unions have been in a steep decline they may not be able to come out of. Like a plane whose engines have failed will crash and burn, these unions are on their way to crashing and burning.

Savor this roll call of collapse in just two years.

Among Wisconsin’s fastest declining unions is AFSCME Council 24, which has seen a jaw dropping 88% (5,900 to 690) reduction in its dues paying members.

Another union, the WSEU, has shrunk from 22,000 members before Act 10, to less than 10,000 as of last December.

Harper's office contacted by RCMP in Duffy-Wright probe

The RCMP's investigation into Senator Mike Duffy's expenses and the cheque Nigel Wright wrote to cover them has prompted the Mounties to approach the Prime Minister's Office.
A senior government source confirmed Wednesday that the RCMP has contacted the PMO and said it is assisting with the investigation.
"We encouraged all current and former staff to assist RCMP," the source added.
Wright was Harper's chief of staff who resigned after the secret $90,000 payment was revealed. He's not the only one who has left the PMO in recent weeks. Chris Woodcock, one of the people who knew about the cheque according to an affiadavit filed by the RCMP, left his job as director of issues management last week. He now works for Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver.
Benjamin Perrin, who worked as a legal adviser in the PMO and is also named in the affidavit, is also gone. He left his job a few months ago and teaches law at the University of British Columbia.
The RCMP met with Wright's lawyers on June 19 and details of their discussion are contained in court documents. They indicate that the Conservative Party of Canada was initially going to pay for living and travel expenses that Duffy had improperly claimed but then backed off when it learned the amount was going to be as high as $90,000.
Wright's lawyers told the RCMP that Wright informed Woodcock and Perrin about his intention to pay the money personally and that Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein and Wright's assistant David van Hemmen also knew.
The RCMP believes Duffy may have committed breach of trust and fraud on the government because of the living and travel expenses he claimed and for accepting the money from Wright.

Osborne hails GDP rise of 0.6%
The pace of second-quarter economic growth doubled from the first three months of 2013, ONS data shows

Britain's recovery picked up pace in the second quarter, official figures have confirmed, with GDP expanding by 0.6%.
George Osborne, the chancellor, welcomed the fresh evidence that the economy has moved, as he has put it, "out of intensive care".
"Britain is holding its nerve, we are sticking to our plan, and the British economy is on the mend," he said, "but there is still a long way to go and I know things are still tough for families. Unlike the unbalanced economy before the crisis, we are going to make sure that everyone benefits from this recovery."
Labour's shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, speaking from the US, said the stronger growth was "both welcome and long overdue" – but he stressed that for most families, living standards are still falling. "While millionaires have been given a huge tax cut, for everyone else life is getting harder with prices still rising much faster than wages." Balls added that the US economy has grown almost three times as fast as the UK's since mid-2010.
The 0.6% quarterly rate of growth was twice the pace of the first three months of 2013, and exactly as predicted by economists, after signs of a pickup in retail sales and strong readings in business surveys.
"The economy is coming out of the shadows, with a doubling in its quarterly growth rate from 0.3% in Q1 to 0.6% in Q2. The recovery is not quite on dry land yet, but at least it is a step in the right direction," said David Brown, of consultancy New View Economics.