Gazette - 082313

Friday August 23rd 2013

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Obama: Syria chemicals grave concern

US President Barack Obama has said the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria in an attack on Wednesday is a "big event of grave concern".

Mr Obama said the US was still seeking confirmation such weapons were used, but if proved true the situation would "require America's attention".
Meanwhile, Syria's main ally Russia has urged it to allow a United Nations team to investigate the allegations.
Activists say hundreds died in the alleged chemical attack near Damascus.
The British government believes the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the attack, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Friday.
But despite calls from many different countries, there is no sign yet that Damascus will allow a UN inspection team to visit to investigate the claims.

Unverified footage shows civilians - many of them children - dead or suffering from what appear to be horrific symptoms as a result of Wednesday's attack.
Also on Friday, UN agencies said the number of children forced to flee Syria had reached one million.
The UN's refugee agency and Unicef describe the figure as "a shameful milestone", and say a further two million children are displaced within the country.

Related stories: 
Russia tells Syria to cooperate in chemical probe 
US-Russia concern over Syria chemicals

Israeli warplanes strike Lebanon in response to rocket attack 

Israeli warplanes struck a target south of Beirut early Friday, a day after militants fired four rockets into northern Israel, the Israeli military and a Palestinian official said.

The Israeli military said that the aircraft targeted "a terror site located between Beirut and Sidon in response" to the rocket attack. It was the first air raid on the area since the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group.
Ramez Mustafa, a Lebanon-based official with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, said the raid occurred at 4 a.m. and caused no casualties or material damage. He said the Israeli air force fired one missile at the area.
He said the warplanes struck the coastal town of Naameh, 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Beirut. The Palestinian group is active in the area and has a base there.
An Associated Press photographer in Naameh said the raid targeted a PFLP-GC base in a valley in the town. Lebanese troops in the area prevented journalists from reaching the base.
An Israeli army statement issued after the air raid said: "Yesterday's attack is a blatant breach of Israeli sovereignty that jeopardized Israeli civilian life. Israel will not tolerate terrorist aggression originating from Lebanese territory."
On Thursday, militants in Lebanon fired four rockets into Israel, setting off air raid sirens and startling a nation already on edge over turmoil along its northern and southern borders.

Two explosions hit Tripoli, Lebanon's second city

At least 13 dead and dozens injured near al-Taqwa mosque in northern city of Tripoli
Twin explosions rocked the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 80, said Lebanon's state-run news agency.
Footage on local television showed thick, black smoke rising over Lebanon's second largest city and bodies scattered beside burning cars, in scenes reminiscent of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
"I see seven bodies inside several burned cars," one witness told Reuters, speaking from near al-Taqwa mosque, where the first blast occurred.
Syria's civil war has sharply polarised neighbouring Lebanon along sectarian lines and between supporters and opponents of the regime of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. In Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, there have been frequent clashes between Sunnis and Alawites, a Shia sect to which Assad belongs.
Security officials said the blasts went off near mosques on the Muslim day of prayer, when places of worship would be packed. An official said one of the blasts was outside al-Taqwa mosque, the usual place of prayer for Sheik Salem Rafei, a Salafi cleric opposed to the militant Shia group Hezbollah that holds sway in much of the country. It was not clear whether Rafei was inside the mosque at the time, but the national news agency said he was not hurt.
The second explosion went off about five minutes later in the Mina district of Tripoli, outside al-Salam mosque. No details on that explosion were immediately available.

North And South Korea Reach MAJOR Agreement

SEOUL, South Korea — Seoul officials say North and South Korea have agreed to allow reunions next month of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. It will be the first the time the emotional meetings have happened in three years.
The deal Friday marks the latest conciliatory gesture from North Korea after a spring that saw the country threatening Seoul and Washington with missile strikes and nuclear war.
South Korea says that 100 people from each country will be allowed to meet family members Sept. 25-30 at a North Korean mountain resort.
There's immense relief in Seoul that the threats and warlike rhetoric have died down, but there's also some wariness. Analysts say North Korea often follows provocations and threats with charm offensives meant to win much-needed aid and diplomatic concessions. 

Deadly Sudan floods 'affect 300,000'

More than 300,000 people across Sudan have been affected by floods that have killed nearly 50 people in August, the World Health Organization has said.

It said the region around the capital Khartoum had been particularly badly hit and was experiencing the worst floods in 25 years.
One of the major risks to health was the collapse of more than 53,000 latrines, the WHO added.
A UN official in Sudan described the situation as "a huge disaster".
In a report, the WHO said that 48 people had been killed and 70 injured in the floods. It warned of increasing trends of malaria cases in the past two weeks.
Meanwhile, Sudan Interior Minister Mahmoud Hamed put the confirmed death toll at 53, according to the AFP news agency.
The WHO also said property had been damaged in 14 of Sudan's 18 states.

Radioactive ground water under Fukushima nears sea


TOKYO: Deep beneath Fukushima's crippled nuclear power station a massive underground reservoir of contaminated water that began spilling from the plant's reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami has been creeping slowly toward the sea.
Now, two-and-a-half years later, experts fear it is about to reach the Pacific and greatly worsen what is fast becoming a new crisis at Fukushima: the inability to contain vast quantities of radioactive water.
The looming crisis is potentially far greater than the discovery earlier this week of a leak from a tank used to store contaminated water used to cool the reactor cores. That 300-ton (80,000 gallon) leak is the fifth and most serious since the disaster of March 2011, when three of the plant's reactors melted down after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out the plant's power and cooling functions.
But experts believe the underground seepage from the reactor and turbine building area is much bigger and possibly more radioactive, confronting the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., with an invisible, chronic problem and few viable solutions. Many also believe it is another example of how TEPCO has repeatedly failed to acknowledge problems that it could almost certainly have foreseen - and taken action to mitigate before they got out of control.

British police launch Snowden inquiry after seizing files at airport

London: Britain has begun a criminal investigation into Edward Snowden's leak of classified material to The Guardian newspaper and is sifting through documents it seized from the partner of one of the paper's journalists, according to a British government lawyer.
The revelation by lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw came at London's High Court on Thursday, where lawyers for David Miranda - the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald - unsuccessfully sued to stop police from combing through digital material seized from him on Sunday at Heathrow Airport.
It was the British government's first mention of a criminal investigation linked to the seized material, which included a laptop, mobile phone, DVDs and memory sticks.
Mr Greenwald has been at the centre of The Guardian's disclosures about the National Security Agency, which have pulled back the curtain on the American government's secret domestic espionage program.

Mr Miranda, a 28-year-old Brazilian student, was detained for nearly nine hours as he flew through London after meeting in Germany with a journalist working with Mr Greenwald.
Mr Laidlaw said British police had already begun scanning through Mr Miranda's tens of thousands of pages of documents, which he described as ''highly sensitive''.
''The disclosure of [the material] would be gravely injurious to public safety and thus the police have now initiated a criminal investigation,'' Mr Laidlaw said. ''There is an absolutely compelling reason to permit this investigation to continue.''

Mugabe sworn in for five more years as Zimbabwe’s president

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader at 89, was sworn in on Thursday for a new five-year term in the face of criticism from opponents and the West that the election he won in July was deeply flawed.
Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980, has told critics of his re-election to “go hang” and has vowed to press ahead with nationalist policies forcing foreign firms to turn over majority stakes to black Zimbabweans.

Hamas official: Palestinian Tamarod group was trained by Egyptian intelligence 

A Hamas MP claimed on Friday that the Palestinian Tamarod ("Rebellion") movement in the Gaza Strip was trained by the Egyptian intelligence.
"The 'Tamarod against the injustice in Gaza' group, that has bases in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is guided by foreign forces, among them the Egyptian security and intelligence forces," Yahya Moussa said.
"These groups were trained and were organized with the aid of the Egyptian intelligence, to act in the Gaza Strip like the Tamarod movement in Egypt [that brought to the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi]," Moussa added, speaking to the Lebanese newspaper Elnashra.
He stressed that "there is a huge difference between the reality in Egypt to the one in Gaza that is under siege, where movements are fighting against the Israeli occupier This group will not succeed and will not affect Gaza."
This plan is a part of a plot against Hamas that is led by Arab nations "that were chosen by Israel and the United States to lead the struggle against the political Islam," he said.
"The alliance is funded by big Arab countries in the Gulf, who are a part of the plot that brought on the criminal fascist revolution in Egypt," he added.

Iran may have covered up nuclear site with asphalt, US institute says

 A U.S. institute tracking Iran's nuclear program says recent satellite images it has analyzed show further major alterations of a military site that the U.N. has long tried to access to follow up suspicions that Tehran may have used it in attempts to develop atomic arms.
The four photos from satellite company DigitalGlobe and GeoEye were seen by The Associated Press ahead of publication by the Institute for Science and International Security planned for Thursday. The images show what ISIS said was progressive asphalting of an area of the Parchin complex that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has said was a possible location for testing conventional explosive triggers for a nuclear blast.
Experts of the U.N. nuclear watchdog organization met Iranian negotiators 10 times over 18 months in sessions ending earlier this year in futile attempts to gain access to the site and test Tehran's insistence that it was a conventional military area with no link to nuclear tests.
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 The Radical Racist Background Of Michelle Obama

I did some background checking into Michelle Obama and her links with socialists, communists and other high ranking radicals that wish nothing more than to destroy the United States as it is, and create a brand new United States! This may sound absurd and demeaning, but it is true. Some of the words spoken by Michelle Obama and her husband Barack Obama have come directly from a radical book titled Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky. I’ll expose Alinsky’s background in future articles, but before we go too far, let us just start with Michelle Obama’s college days, since to find her high school history seems to be quite difficult. Michelle Obama’s maiden name was Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, and she was born on January 17, 1964. She married Barack Hussein Obama in 1992. According to FrontPageMagazine reporter Jacob Laksin, “In a [February 2008] interview with Newsweek, [Michelle] Obama reveals that she got into Princeton … not on the strength of her grades, which she admits were unexceptional, but thanks to her brother Craig, a star athlete and gifted student who preceded her to the school. As a ‘legacy’ candidate and a beneficiary of affirmative action, Michelle Obama was granted an opportunity that others more accomplished were denied.” The First lady got her college education due to her brother and her ethnicity, not her excellence in academics. So why is she such a radical racist woman? It must come from somewhere in her background. Perhaps her parents were the ones who led her to this road of turmoil about racial prejudice. Let us take a brief look to see just what she was doing at Princeton while she was there and what types of people she had as her close friends. Some of Michelle Obama’s contacts in College were of the Marxist/socialist types.

Sarah Palin Slams Federal Government For Employing Ayo Kimathi: 'Unflippingbelievable' 

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) took to Facebook to slam the federal government for employing Ayo Kimathi, who operates a racist website predicting and advocating a race war, according to a DHS official.
"His fellow employees say they're 'astounded' he is employed by the taxpayers," Palin wrote. "His side 'job' running the 'War On the Horizon' website was reportedly approved by supervisors. Really, Fed? Really?"
"Unflippingbelievable," Palin continued, linking to a Fox News story on Kimathi.
Ayo Kimathi, an acquisitions officer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, operates "War on the Horizon," a site that includes descriptions of an "unavoidable, inevitable clash with the white race." He operates under the alter ego "the Irritated Genie."

Justice Dept. sues Texas over voter ID law

The Justice Department on Thursday redoubled its efforts to challenge state voting laws, suing Texas over its new voter ID measure as part of a growing political showdown over electoral rights.

The move marked the latest bid by the Obama administration to counter a Supreme Court ruling that officials have said threatens the voting rights of minorities. It also signaled that the administration will probably take legal action in voting rights cases in other states, including North Carolina, where the governor signed a voter ID law this month.

Final Nixon tapes reveal bid to ease tensions with Soviets

LOS ANGELES — They were great antagonists of the Cold War, the avowedly Red-hating American president and the world's most powerful communist.
Yet when Richard Nixon hosted Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev for a summit in June 1973, their private exchanges had the casual, meandering comity of old friends.
Meeting his Soviet counterpart privately in the Oval Office, with only a translator accompanying them, Nixon said the world's safety hinged on their mutual trust.
"Mr. Brezhnev and I have the key, and I think that our personal relationship will unlock the door," Nixon said. He did not tell Brezhnev that they were being tape-recorded.
The exchange, the only known recording of a superpower summit, is part of the last 340 hours of Nixon's secret White House tapes - the final major portion of a singular informational trove in presidential history.
In all, the 17-year release of Nixon's tapes represents about 3,700 hours of surreptitiously recorded conversations in the White House and at Camp David, Md. They reveal a president who is at times reflective, profane, self-pitying and intent on destroying political rivals such as Ted Kennedy.
But the final tapes show a different side of Nixon: An outspoken cold warrior who was trying to reduce tensions between the U.S. and the Communist world.
The 94 new tapes, released Wednesday by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, reflect Nixon's conversations from April 9, 1973, to July 12, 1973, shortly before his secret taping system was exposed and discontinued.

Justin Trudeau's Marijuana Admission Slammed As 'Poor Example' While Liberals Defend Leader

OTTAWA — As Conservatives pounced on Justin Trudeau's admission he smoked marijuana as an MP, saying it is proof he is unfit to govern, Liberal MPs say they believe the public wants an open and honest leader.
Justice Minister Peter MacKay denounced what he called a "profound lack of judgment" from the Liberal leader.
"By flouting the laws of Canada while holding elected office, he shows he is a poor example for all Canadians, particularly young ones," MacKay said in a statement. "Justin Trudeau is simply not the kind of leader our country needs."
Liberal Senator James Cowan defended Trudeau, calling MacKay’s comments "ridiculous."
"I don’t think that many Canadians will criticize Justin Trudeau for that, and will hold it against that he did what he did, or that he was honest enough to (say it)," the Liberal Senate leader said. "I think Mr. [Stephen] Harper could take a lesson in openness and candour."
Cowan said he thinks people who are turned off by politics will find Trudeau’s comments refreshing.
The NDP leader's office told HuffPost Canada late Thursday afternoon that Thomas Mulcair has not smoked marijuana since he was elected to office. He was elected to National Assembly of Quebec in 1994.

Tom Coburn: Obama ‘close’ to impeachment

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) joined with a handful of other Republican politicians Wednesday, warning the President that his impeachment could be near.
According to Tulsa World, at a convention in Muskogee, Okla., Coburn said Wednesday that the president was “getting perilously close” to the Constitutional standard for impeachment. He also called the Obama administration lawless and incompetent, the news site reported, although he acknowledged the president as a “personal friend.”

Earlier this week Michigan Rep. Kerry Bentivolio told constituents at a townhall that it would be a “dream come true” if he could write and submit the bill to impeach the president. Last week, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) kicked off the impeachment debate, declaring that the House had enough votes to make the notion a reality.