VOCR Gazette - 070413

Thursday July 4th 2013

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

Egypt swears in new interim leader

The top judge of Egypt's Constitutional Court, Adly Mahmud Mansour, has been sworn in as interim leader, a day after the army ousted President Mohammed Morsi and put him under house arrest.

Mr Mansour said fresh elections were "the only way" forward, but gave no indication of when they would be held.
Mr Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, is under house arrest after what he says was a military coup.
The army said he had "failed to meet the demands of the people".
The upheaval comes after days of mass rallies against Mr Morsi and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement he comes from.
Protesters accused them of pursuing an Islamist agenda and of failing to tackle Egypt's economic problems.
The health ministry says at least 10 people were killed and scores injured in clashes at rival protests across the country overnight. Some 50 people have died since the latest unrest began on Sunday. 

Chinese general warns India against 'new trouble'

An outspoken Chinese general known for his nationalist views warned India on Thursday against stirring up "new trouble" in a long-running border dispute, just as New Delhi's defence minister was set to visit Beijing.

"The Indian side should not provoke new problems and increase military deployment at the border areas and stir up new trouble," Major General Luo Yuan told reporters.
Luo, the deputy-director general of the world military research department at a People's Liberation Army academy, described himself at a briefing as a "reasonable hardliner".
He made waves last year with comments questioning the legitimacy of Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, a chain that includes Okinawa and hosts numerous United States military bases.
"India is the only country in the world that says that it is developing its military power because of China's military threat," said Luo, who was wearing a business suit.
"So I believe that India should be very cautious in what it does and what it says."
A high-altitude frontier dispute between the nuclear-armed giants in the Himalayas has simmered for decades but intensified in May over troop movements in the region.
New Delhi alleged Chinese troops intruded nearly 20 kilometres (12 miles) into Indian-claimed territory.
A three-week standoff ensued and was resolved after talks between local military leaders and a withdrawal of troops from both sides.

Turkish Protesters Score MAJOR Victory

(Reuters) - A Turkish court has cancelled an Istanbul building project backed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan which provided the trigger for nationwide anti-government demonstrations last month, a copy of the court decision showed.
Authorities may well appeal against cancellation of plans for a replica Ottoman-era barracks on Istanbul's Taksim Square. But the ruling marked a victory for a coalition of political forces and a blow for Erdogan, who stood fast against protests and riots he said were stoked by terrorists and looters.
Can Atalay, a lawyer for the Chamber of Architects which brought the lawsuit, said the administrative court ruled in early June at the height of the unrest that the plan violated preservation rules and unacceptably changed the square's identity. It was not clear why it had only now been released.
"This decision applies to all of the work at Taksim Square ... The public-works project that was the basis for the work has been canceled," Atalay told Reuters.
Erdogan has said he would wait for the judiciary to rule, and any appeals process, before proceeding with Taksim, one of several large projects for Istanbul, including a huge airport, an enormous Mosque and a canal to ease Bosphorus traffic.
June's protests and riots began when police used water cannon and tear gas against a relatively small protest over the plans to redevelop Taksim and the adjacent Gezi Park. The heavy handed police action stirred unprecedented actions against Erdogan, accusing him of an increasingly authoritarian style.
Four people were killed and some 7,500 wounded in the police crackdown, according to the Turkish Medical Association. It largely ended when police cleared a protest camp on the square on June 15.

Fresh attacks across Iraq leave 14 dead

At least 14 people have been killed in a series of attacks across Iraq.

Seven people died when a bomb exploded on a busy street in Nahrawan, a south-eastern suburb of the capital, Baghdad. The bodies of three builders were also found in the nearby area of Zafaraniya.
Later, two car bomb blasts killed four people in the northern city of Mosul.
The deaths bring to 123 the number of people killed since Monday in a wave of bombings and attacks across Iraq, amid an upsurge in sectarian violence.
No groups have said they were behind the recent violence, but much of it has occurred in predominantly Shia Muslim areas.
On Tuesday, at least six car bombs exploded in markets and commercial areas of the capital. In total, at least 49 people were killed nationwide.
Ramadan warning The UN has said that more than 2,500 people were killed in April, May and June, which is believed to be more than twice the death toll from violence in the first three months of the year.
A Kurdish MP said the situation was unlikely to improve because it would soon by the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when militants have stepped up their attacks in recent years.
"Nothing will change," Hassan Jihad, who sits on parliament's security and defence committee, told the AFP news agency.
"This month will not be better because the security forces will carry out the same routine," he warned, adding that militants would "continue to show that they are everywhere, that they can reach any place".
The upsurge in sectarian violence was sparked by an army raid on a Sunni anti-government protest camp near the northern town of Hawija in April that left 50 people dead.
The protesters were calling for the resignation of Shia Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and denouncing the authorities for allegedly targeting the Sunni community.
Although the violence is less deadly than that seen during the heights of the insurgency in 2006 and 2007, it is the most widespread since the US military withdrawal in 2011.

Bomb kills 4 girls at Afghan wedding: Officials
 KANDAHAR: A bomb attack killed four girls attending an Afghan wedding, officials said Thursday, blaming the attack on Taliban rebels intending to target government employees at the event.

The children, aged between seven and 12, died when an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated as they collected water from a river during celebrations in the southern province of Helmand.

"The children were at the wedding party and this morning they went to collect water when the IED exploded on a footpath," provincial administration spokesman Omar Zwak told AFP.

"The Taliban may have planted the bomb to hit local government staff who were at the wedding, but it killed innocent children." Senior police official Mohammad Ismail Hotak confirmed the incident outside the provincial capital Lashkar Gah and gave a similar account.

"Four young girls were killed. The body of one of them has been totally shattered," he said. Taliban rebels regularly use IEDs to target government officials, and NATO and Afghan soldiers, but civilians and children are also often killed and wounded by the attacks.

Raul Castro Announces Shakeup Of Cuban Party Leadership

HAVANA -- Cuba's president has announced the removal of former Parliament chief Ricardo Alarcon and several other leaders from the Communist Party's powerful Central Committee.
In comments broadcast on state-television Tuesday, Raul Castro made clear that those leaving the 118-strong committee had not made any mistakes or committed any crimes. He said they were moving on in the normal course of events.
"This door leads out, without it constituting any demerit," Castro said. He spoke at a previously unannounced meeting of the Central Committee.
Alarcon, 76, was one of Cuba's most visible politicians and the point person for relations with the United States. He stepped down as parliament chief in February.
Among the others removed were Jose Miguel Miyar Barruecos, 81, who was secretary of the Council of State for three decades, and Misael Enamorado, 60, the party chief in Santiago de Cuba.

Portugal battles to defuse crisis

Portugal's prime minister faces a day of talks aimed at shoring up his coalition, reeling after the resignations of two senior ministers.

Pedro Passos Coelho is anxious to keep his conservative partners on board, to defuse a political crisis and avoid the turmoil of an early election.
His coalition is under intense pressure to stick to the tough austerity targets dictated by Portugal's bailout.
But the interest rate on Portuguese bonds has dropped back below 8%.
Yields on 10-year Portuguese bonds fell to 7.26% on Thursday. The sharp spike - topping 8% on Wednesday - had revived market jitters about instability in the eurozone.
President Anibal Cavaco Silva will meet Mr Passos Coelho and other political leaders later on Thursday. The president is known to be keen to avoid calling early elections, the BBC's Alison Roberts reports from Lisbon.
Left-wing opposition parties are demanding early elections, and opinion polls suggest the ruling conservatives would do badly. The Communist Party held a big anti-government rally in central Lisbon on Wednesday.

Europol Seizes $822 Million Of Coke, Heroin, Pot

AMSTERDAM, July 3 (Reuters) - About 30 tonnes of cocaine, heroin and marijuana with a street value of $822 million was seized in Central America and the Caribbean last month in one of the biggest international drug hauls, pan-European police force Europol said.
It said Operation Lionfish, which targeted the maritime trafficking of drugs and illicit firearms by organised crime groups across Central America and the Caribbean, yielded the arrest of 142 people and seizure of 15 vessels as well as guns, cash, and eight tonnes of chemical precursors.
The international operation was carried out from May 27 to June 10, a Europol spokesman said, and an investigation into the source of the drugs was under way. No details were released of the nationalities of those arrested.
More than 30 countries and territories were involved in the operation, led by Interpol and supported by Europol.
"The operation was coordinated in response to growing evidence of the organised crime in the trafficking of drugs and firearms in the Central America and Caribbean regions due to its strategic location," Europol said in a statement. 

Eight communist rebels killed in east Philippines

MANILA: Philippine troops on today killed eight communist rebels, two of them women, in the latest flare-up of violence since talks to end one of Asia's longest running insurgencies broke down.

Soldiers were deployed to a poor, remote farming village in the eastern province of Sorsogon after residents complained of "prolonged extortion, abuses and threats" by New People's Army (NPA) rebels, armed forces spokesman Major Ramon Zagala said.

"Heavy casualties were inflicted on the NPA, while no casualty or damage was incurred by the government security forces," Zagala told AFP, adding the clashes went for about 35 minutes.

He said the bodies of eight NPA guerrillas were recovered, including two women, along with their rifles, grenade launchers and improvised bombs.

"The women were combatants for sure. They were found with high-powered rifles, with bandoliers packed with bullets around their bodies. They traded fire alongside the men," he said.

The NPA has been fighting successive governments for 44 years in a rebellion that has claimed at least 30,000 lives.

The military estimates the rebels have about 4,000 fighters, down from a peak of roughly 26,000 in the 1980s.

West demands more progress from Afghanistan in return for aid

After years of lavish spending in support of the now-waning military mission in Afghanistan, the west on Wednesday embarked on an attempt to reset its relationship with Kabul, demanding measurable progress in return for aid cash.
Afghanistan has been promised around $8bn (£5.2bn) a year in military and development spending after foreign troops leave in 2014. But Nato governments say the aid money comes with strings attached.
A meeting on Wednesday in the Afghan capital aimed to be the first step in this "paradigm shift", grading the country on progress towards goals agreed last year in Tokyo.
But the assessment was sombre, despite praise for an unexpectedly "realistic" discussion. Only three of 17 benchmarks had been met in full, one western official said, and Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, was notable by his absence from a high-profile meeting held just a stone's throw from his palace.
Failures picked over include parliament's dithering over election laws that could result in the country going into a crucial presidential poll next year with no legal framework, the feeble sentences handed to the masterminds of the $900m Kabul Bank scandal and slow progress on asset recovery.
Donors were also unhappy with Karzai's unilateral choice of new members of the country's well respected human rights watchdog. One is a former member of the Taliban, another said she hopes to run for president and a third is a former police general.
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State Department spent $630G to boost Facebook 'likes,' report says

The State Department spent more than $630,000 on advertising campaigns to boost the number of Facebook "likes" for the agency's pages on the website, according to a report released by the agency's inspector general.
Between 2011 and March 2013, the agency's Bureau of International Information Programs used the funds on advertising to increase the number of fans for each of its four Facebook pages from 100,000 to more than 2 million, according to the May report.
The program was initiated after the bureau expanded the agency's presence on social media by setting up Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs targeted at foreign audiences, the report states.
The report found that many employees in the bureau were critical of the advertising campaigns and felt that the agency was "buying fans" who may have once clicked on an ad but have never engaged further.

Obama orders US to review aid to Egypt after Morsi ousted

 President Barack Obama urged Egypt's military Wednesday to hand back control to a democratic, civilian government without delay, but stopped short of calling the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi a coup d'etat.

In a carefully worded statement, Obama said he was "deeply concerned" by the military's move to topple Morsi's government and suspend Egypt's constitution. He said he was ordering the U.S. government to assess what the military's actions meant for U.S. foreign aid to Egypt -- $1.5 billion a year in military and economic assistance.
Under U.S. law, the government must suspend foreign aid to any nation whose elected leader is ousted in a coup.
"I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters," Obama said.
The U.S. wasn't taking sides in the conflict, committing itself only to democracy and respect for the rule of law, Obama said. 

Obama’s new Guantanamo envoy begins work, tours detention center

WASHINGTON — The State Department’s new special envoy for the closure of the prison camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba began work this week with a one-day trip to the notorious site and said Wednesday that closing it was a national priority.
Clifford Sloan, a former publisher of Slate magazine and a Washington attorney who’s worked in all three branches of government, told McClatchy that he spent Tuesday touring the camp – learning about operations from its military commanders and talking with medical officials, presumably about the hunger strike that’s now spread to 106 of the 166 prisoners.
Sloan’s arrival this week rejuvenates diplomatic efforts that had been scaled back after his predecessor, Ambassador Daniel Fried, was moved to another department and the position vacated in January. Sloan said that he visited the prison camp on the second day of his new job because he considered it “essential” to have a feel for the place as he forges ties with Congress and foreign governments to move quickly toward the goal of repatriating detainees or finding countries willing to take prisoners in need of resettlement.
“President Obama has been very clear as he laid out the goal, and the objective is to close Guantanamo,” Sloan said in a 15-minute interview, the first since his appointment last month. “Our marching orders are clear.”
Sloan was reluctant to divulge details of the visit, however. He declined to say whether he’d toured the secret Camp 7, where 16 prisoners once held in clandestine CIA prisons overseas are now held, or whether he’d witnessed any detainees being force fed, a controversial process of forcing nutritional supplements into some hunger strikers via a tube inserted in the nose and snaked down the throat into the stomach.
More than 40 detainees undergo that process daily; human rights groups have deemed such feedings as unethical.
“I did have a chance to talk to medical officials,” is all Sloan would say on the matter.
Sloan also confirmed that he met with the detention facility’s current commander, Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith Jr., and the de facto warden, Army Col. John V. Bogdan. Sloan said military officials gave him “a very thorough” tour of the premises, though he couldn’t give specifics on which parts of the compound he saw.

McCain arrives in Afghanistan on Fourth of July visit

(CNN) -- U.S. Senator John McCain arrived on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Thursday, a coalition spokeswoman told CNN.

The Arizona Republican is expected to meet with U.S. forces. He is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Fourth of July visit comes as the United States prepares to draw down its forces in Afghanistan.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force plans to withdraw all international combat troops by the end of 2014 but to keep a residual force in the country to help train Afghans and carry out counterterrorism operations when needed. The size of that force remains under discussion.

Obama, Merkel Agree To Talks On NSA Surveillance Allegations

Days after an explosive Der Spiegel report alleged that the United States' spying efforts extended into Europe, high-level talks with Germany will happen in the coming days.
The White House released a readout of a Wednesday phone call between President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, where the pair agreed to bring security officials together to discuss the surveillance issue.
"The president assured the chancellor that the United States takes seriously the concerns of our European allies and partners," the White House said in a statement. "The two leaders reaffirmed the importance of continued close cooperation between our respective intelligence services in the fight against terrorism and other threats to the security of the United States, Germany, and our allies."
Germany responded strongly to the Der Spiegel report Monday, with Merkel spokesperson Steffen Seibert classifying the allegations as "unacceptable" if true.
"We are no longer in the Cold War," Seibert said.
Facing that level of uproar, Obama suggested Monday that spying on other countries is not unusual. But he also aimed to reassure allies that communication is always the first mode of contact.
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