SPIII -Gazette 071113

Thursday July 11th 2013

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US-Egypt fighter jet deal 'on track'

The US is going ahead with plans to deliver four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt despite the political unrest in the country, senior American officials say.

It comes as Washington is continuing to evaluate last week's overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi by the army.
US massive military aid to Cairo would have to be cut by law if the removal of the Islamist leader is determined by Washington to have been a coup.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Mr Morsi, is demanding his reinstatement.
Its supporters have been staging mass protests near Cairo's barracks, where he is believed to be being held. On Monday, more than 50 Brotherhood loyalists were killed in clashes with the army.
The new authorities have not said where Mr Morsi it, but a foreign ministry spokesman said he was in a "safe place" and being treated in a "very dignified manner".

Was There An Organized Campaign To Undermine Morsi?

CAIRO — The streets seethe with protests and government ministers are on the run or in jail, but since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, life has somehow gotten better for many people across Egypt: Gas lines have disappeared, power cuts have stopped and the police have returned to the street.

The apparently miraculous end to the crippling energy shortages, and the re-emergence of the police, seems to show that the legions of personnel left in place after former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011 played a significant role — intentionally or not — in undermining the overall quality of life under the Islamist administration of Mr. Morsi.

And as the interim government struggles to unite a divided nation, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mr. Morsi’s supporters say the sudden turnaround proves that their opponents conspired to make Mr. Morsi fail. Not only did police officers seem to disappear, but the state agencies responsible for providing electricity and ensuring gas supplies failed so fundamentally that gas lines and rolling blackouts fed widespread anger and frustration.

“This was preparing for the coup,” said Naser el-Farash, who served as the spokesman for the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade under Mr. Morsi. “Different circles in the state, from the storage facilities to the cars that transport petrol products to the gas stations, all participated in creating the crisis.”

Syria's Assad says ousted Baathists made mistakes

Ruling party leaders removed in a reshuffle this week had made mistakes while in office, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad told the Baath party's mouthpiece in an interview published Thursday.

The interview was published two days after the Baath party announced the names of 16 new leaders, which included none of the party's former chiefs with the exception of Assad, who will remain secretary general.
"When a leader does not solve a series of errors, this leader must be held accountable," Assad told Al-Baath newspaper, without elaborating.
"This is the real role of the (Baath party's) central committee, which is supposed to hold accountable the leaders on a regular basis. This did not happen in recent years," he added.
The central committee should "monitor the leadership's work, evaluate it and hold the leaders accountable", said Assad.
The reshuffle came more than two years into a brutal war that has left more than 100,000 dead in Syria.

Zardari security chief killed in Karachi after 'suicide attack' on his convoy

Bilal Shaikh, top aide to president and member of Pakistan People's party, dies with two others in bombing alongside SUV

A trusted aide of Asif Ali Zardari was on Wednesday killed in a suspected suicide bombing in the port city of Karachi as he stopped his armoured vehicle to buy fruit, police have reported.
An officer said that Bilal Shaikh, security chief to Pakistan's president, was killed along with two others in a prosperous area of eastern Karachi.
"It seems that the suicide attacker walked up to [his] vehicle and blew himself up outside the front passenger seat of the vehicle where Shaikh was seated," the officer, Raja Umar Khattab, told Reuters.
About a dozen other people were wounded in the city, Pakistan's financial capital.
A police escort was accompanying Shaikh's white armoured sports utility vehicle when the bombing happened. Police said an unidentified attacker walked up to the car and blew himself up just as Shaikh opened the car door to get out.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place on the eve of Ramadan, which is observed in Pakistan from Thursday.
Pakistan has had a spate of bombings since Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as prime minister in June this year, underscoring the challenges facing the nuclear-armed nation in taming a Taliban-linked insurgency.
The latest wave of attacks across the country brought an end to a period of relative calm after Pakistan's transition between elected civilian governments which brought Sharif to office for the third time, as leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, in elections in May.

Nigeria agrees to truce with Boko Haram Islamists

Nigeria has agreed to a ceasefire with Islamist group Boko Haram after talks with the Islamist group's deputy leader, Mohammed Marwan, the government said.
The agreement has the support of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, said Minister of Special Duties Kabiru Turaki, chairman of a presidential committee set up to negotiate with the group.
A pledge in January by a self-proclaimed Boko Haram spokesman, Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, that the group agreed to lay down its arms didn't halt the violence.
"There were mediations in the beginning, but at the end of the day we spoke face to face," Mr Turaki said.

The ceasefire, which came into effect this week, is "a result of a painstaking series of discussions and meetings we've had with them."
Talks about signing a public agreement are still under way, he said.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is a sin" in the Hausa language, has killed thousands of people in gun and bomb attacks since 2009 in the mainly Muslim north and Abuja in its campaign to establish an Islamic state in Africa's largest oil producer.
Nigeria's more than 160 million people are roughly split between Christians, predominant in the south, and Muslims, mostly in the north.
"Such an announcement of cessation of violence needs to come from the leader of Boko Haram himself," Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the Abuja-based Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, said, referring to Shekau. "I think that would be much more credible than a statement by a government official."
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Report: Saudi missile base may be targeting Israel, Iran

IHS Jane's Intelligence Review reveals new base near Al-Watah; launch pad appears to be aligned on bearings at Israel, Iran.

Saudi Arabia may be targeting Israel and Iran with lorry launched missiles from a base 125 miles south-west of Riyadh, the IHS Jane's Intelligence Review revealed on Tuesday.
The Jane's analysts examined a satellite image of the base, near the town of Al-Watah, built within the last five years.
Analysts found that one of the launch pads "appears to be aligned on a bearing of approximately 301 degrees and suggesting a potential Israeli target, and the other is oriented along an azimuth (bearing) of approximately 10 degrees, ostensibly situated to target Iranian locations."
According to the report the launch pads, were designed for Saudi Arabia's arsenal of lorry launched DF 3 missiles, which have a range of 1500-2500 miles and can carry a two ton payload.
Saudi Arabia reportedly acquired missiles from China in the 1980s.

Gunmen in western Iraq kill 14 during Ramzan meal

BAGHDAD: Gunmen overran an Iraqi army checkpoint and then shot up a trailer packed with policemen breaking their Ramzan fast, killing a total of 14 troops in the country's restive western Anbar province, authorities said today.

The attack happened at sundown, yesterday, as the troops were marking the end of the first day of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramzan. It was the latest in a string of brazen strikes by militants that has killed more than 2,000 people since the start of April.

Gunmen launched their assault on an army checkpoint near the town of Barwana, which lies across the Euphrates river from the town of Haditha, about 220 kilometres (140 miles) northwest of Baghdad, according to Barwana's mayor, Meyasser Abdul-Mohsin.

The attackers then shot up a trailer used by the special oil industry police force protecting a nearby pipeline, as the men were sitting down to have the iftar meal that breaks the daytime Ramzan fast at sunset.

Abdul-Mohsin said three soldiers died at the checkpoint and 11 troops at the trailer.

A security official in nearby Haditha gave a similar account and confirmed the death toll. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Sunni militants, including al-Qaida's Iraq arm, frequently target security forces and the country's vital oil infrastructure in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government.

Syrian rebels put down food protest with gunfire

Syrian rebels fired into the air to disperse a protest by civilians in a rebel-held district of Aleppo against a blockade preventing food and medicine reaching government-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo, residents said on Wednesday.
Rebel fighters have stopped supplies entering western Aleppo for weeks. The tactic is aimed at weakening the supply routes of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces but thousands of civilians are now left hungry, residents say.
Video footage posted on the Internet on Tuesday showed dozens of civilians in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Bustan al-Qasr protesting at a rebel checkpoint which prevents supplies from entering the western part of the city, home to 2 million people and held by the army.
Although insurgents and the army control different parts of the country, civilians are normally allowed to cross freely to shop or meet family members and friends.
The footage, posted by the opposition Bustan al-Qasr Information Office, showed men at the protest chanting, “the people want an end to the blockade.” A rebel fighter brandishes a pistol and then a gunshot is heard as the video ends.
An opposition activist group called the Aleppo Martyrs said rebels fired at the protesters, killing one person and wounding several others. But a resident at the protest said the man was killed prior to the protest by army sniper fire as he tried the cross between rebel and government-held territory.
Reuters was not able to confirm the report due to media and security restrictions in Syria.

Jet-Sized Unmanned Drone Makes History

NORFOLK, Va. — The Navy successfully landed a drone the size of a fighter jet aboard an aircraft carrier for the first time Wednesday, showcasing the military's capability to have a computer program perform one of the most difficult tasks a pilot is asked to do.
The landing of the X-47B experimental aircraft means the Navy can move forward with its plans to develop another unmanned aircraft that will join the fleet alongside traditional airplanes to provide around-the-clock surveillance while also possessing a strike capability. It also would pave the way for the U.S. to launch unmanned aircraft without the need to obtain permission from other countries to use their bases.
The X-47B experimental aircraft took off from Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland before approaching the USS George H.W. Bush, which is operating off the coast of Virginia. The drone landed by deploying a tailhook that caught a wire aboard the ship and brought it to a quick stop, just like normal fighter jets do. The maneuver is known as an arrested landing and has previously only been done by the drone on land at Patuxent River. Landing on a ship that is constantly moving while navigating through turbulent air behind the aircraft carrier is seen as a more difficult maneuver.
"Your grandchildren and great grandchildren and mine will be reading about this historic event in their history books. This is not trivial, nor is it something that came lightly," said Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the Navy's program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons.


Iceberg half the size of Greater London calves off Antarctic glacier

Natural event unrelated to global warming responsible for 720-sqkm ice sheet cutting lose from Pine Island glacier
An iceberg half the size of Greater London has calved off Pine Island glacier in the Antarctic.
This week a radar instrument on the German satellite TerraSAR-X captured an image of a crack having grown to extend across the entire ice shelf at the front of the glacier since 2011. Scientists say that the 720-sqkm iceberg calved off in a natural event unrelated to the effects of global warming.
Andy Smith of the British Antarctic Survey said: "Although there's nothing to suggest this event is unusual, it's not to say that it's not interesting. We are extremely interested because we want to understand if the loss of a large block of ice has an affect on the flow of the glacier".
The large fissure in the Pine Island glacier was first spotted by a Nasa low-flying plane in 2011 at which time the iceberg was expected to break-free within a year.
The iceberg will be watched closely over the next few months as it moves and melts into the surrounding bay. Capturing this event allows researchers like Prof Angelika Humbert, a glaciologist and ice modeller with the Alfred Wegener Institute, to understand the processes that drive glaciers, and the way they fracture. "I use the images from the satellite to model the flow of the glacier and how the grounding line is retreating which allows us to predict the behaviour of the ice sheet over the next hundreds to thousands of years.
"A calving event of this size is relatively common with similar events occurring at the Pine Island glacier in 2007 and 2001".
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 US diplomats cry foul as Obama donors take over top embassy jobs

Former ambassador likens practice to 'selling of public office' as figures show average amount of cash raised is $1.8m per post.
Barack Obama has rewarded some of his most active campaign donors with plum jobs in foreign embassies, with the average amount raised by recent or imminent appointees soaring to $1.8m per post, according to a Guardian analysis.
The practice is hardly a new feature of US politics, but career diplomats in Washington are increasingly alarmed at how it has grown. One former ambassador described it as the selling of public office.
On Tuesday, Obama's chief money-raiser Matthew Barzun became the latest major donor to be nominated as an ambassador, when the White House put him forward as the next representative to the Court of St James's, a sought-after posting whose plush residence comes with a garden second only in size to that of Buckingham Palace.
As campaign finance chairman, Barzun helped raise $700m to fund President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. More than $2.3m of this was raised personally by Barzun, pictured, according to party records leaked to the New York Times, even though he had only just finished a posting as ambassador to Sweden after contributing to Obama's first campaign.

House Republicans drop food stamps from massive farm bill

House Republican leaders are taking a risky step as they try to bring a massive farm bill back to the floor, dropping food stamps from the legislation in the face of Democratic opposition. 
The farm bill historically has been a vehicle for both oodles of farm subsidies and billions of dollars worth of food stamps. Twinning the two massive programs has in the past helped win support from rural-state lawmakers and those representing big cities. But after the bill failed in the House last month, Republican leaders are trying a different approach. 
Teeing up a vote as early as Thursday, GOP leadership released a smaller version of the five-year bill late Wednesday. They dropped the section pertaining to the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program. 
Republicans are divided on how big cuts should be to food stamps, which have doubled in cost in the last five years. Democrats have opposed any cuts. The dropped section would have made a 3 percent cut, which many Republicans say isn't enough. By dropping the section altogether, House leaders hope to win over more conservatives. 
But the White House is adamantly opposed to separating food stamps from the rest of the farm bill. Late Wednesday, the White House released a statement say that President Obama would veto the House legislation if it is sent to him. The statement said that the food stamp program "is a cornerstone of our nation's food assistance safety net, and should not be left behind as the rest of the Farm Bill advances."

Student Loan Deal Reached In Senate Threatens To Raise Future Costs

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of senators struck a deal late Wednesday to overhaul the federal student loan program, tying interest rates on new loans to the U.S. government’s cost to borrow in a move that immediately reduces the cost to finance higher education, but is forecast to raise borrowing costs for millions of graduate students and parents in about three years.
Rates on new student loans from the Department of Education, the dominant source of college loans, would be pegged to the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Undergraduates would pay 1.8 percentage points above the government’s cost to borrow for 10 years. Graduate students would pay 3.8 percentage points above the rate. Parents would pay 4.5 percentage points above the benchmark, officials said.
The yield on the 10-year note was 2.57 percent late Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. Assuming the measure is signed into law as is, most students starting school this fall and their parents would enjoy lower borrowing costs than the rates that prevailed during the last school year.
But their savings would effectively be subsidized by future borrowers, who would pay more relative to current law as the economy improves and interest rates rise.
Interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans, meant for students from moderate-income and low-income households, had been at fixed at 3.4 percent the last few years before doubling to 6.8 percent on July 1 as a result of previous legislation. Unsubsidized Stafford loans, used by other undergraduates and graduate students, are set at 6.8 percent. PLUS loans, used by parents of undergraduates and graduate students who exhaust Stafford borrowing limits, are fixed at 7.9 percent. Congress has been setting the interest rates, as opposed to allowing the rate to fluctuate with market borrowing costs.

House Oversight schedules another IRS hearing

The House Oversight committee has scheduled yet another hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting controversy, this time to examine the relationship between the agency’s officials in Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.

Committee investigators have spent the past several months interviewing employees from the IRS offices in both regions to determine how and why the agency singled out conservative groups and subjected them to inappropriate scrutiny after they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.
Those issues surfaced after IRS official Lois Lerner issued an apology for the misguided efforts in May, just days before the release of an inspector general’s report that detailed the behavior.

Hillary Clinton speaks at private equity event

Hillary Clinton recently was a featured attraction at private equity giant KKR’s annual U.S. investor meeting in California, where she fielded questions on a range of topics from firm co-founder Henry Kravis, sources confirmed to POLITICO.
The event was one of the paid appearances Clinton has given in the last few months since she left the State Department. It was held last month just outside of Los Angeles with about 400 people, sources said.

Instead of a speech, Clinton answered questions for over an hour from Kravis, on topics including the Middle East, Washington, and politics in general.

(PHOTOS: Who’s talking about Hillary 2016?)
KKR is one of the larger private equity firms and is generally viewed as a bipartisan entity. Last year, KKR entered into an infrastructure improvement plan that was part of the Clinton Global Initiative.

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