Gazette - TGIF 121313

Friday December 13th 2013

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North Korean purge of leader's uncle sparks stability fears

The execution of the once-powerful uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has rekindled fears of instability in the secretive nuclear-armed state.

South Korean defence chief Kim Kawn-jin promised "heightened readiness" after the purge of Chang Song-thaek.
He said the execution could be seen as part of a "reign of terror" by the North Korean leader.
Mr Chang was executed for "acts of treachery" after appearing before a military trial.
He was dramatically removed from a special party session by armed guards earlier this week.
South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae warned that the purge could be followed by military moves from Pyongyang, including another nuclear test.

Clashes erupt as Egyptian security forces disperse Islamist protests across the country

Egyptian security forces have fired tear gas to disperse dozens of Islamist demonstrators marching across the country to demand the release of detained student protesters.

In the canal city of Suez on Friday, protesters set a police car ablaze before residents chased them away, a local security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to brief reporters.
The demonstrators gathered despite heavy rains and unprecedented low temperatures in Egypt to support the students, arrested by authorities in recent weeks. With the start of the academic year, Egyptian universities have been at the heart of the political turmoil gripping the country since a popularly-backed coup toppled Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July. Two students died in November during clashes with security forces.

Opposition Leader's Execution Sparks Violent Protests In Bangladesh

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — The execution of an opposition leader in Bangladesh sparked violent protests Friday as activists torched homes and businesses belonging to government supporters, leaving at least three people dead, in a fresh wave of bloodshed ahead of next month's elections.
Abdul Quader Mollah, 65, was hanged Thursday night for war crimes committed during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. The case has exacerbated the explosive political divide in Bangladesh, an impoverished country of 160 million.
Even as violence swept through parts of the country Friday, hundreds of people rejoiced in the streets of the capital, Dhaka, and said justice had been served.
In an editorial, Bangladesh's English-language Daily Star newspaper congratulated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for trying and executing Mollah "40 long years" after he committed his crimes.
Mollah, a leader of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, was the first person to be hanged for war crimes in Bangladesh under an international tribunal established in 2010 to investigate atrocities stemming from the independence war.
Following the execution, Jamaat-e-Islami activists on Friday attacked ruling party supporters and minority Hindus in parts of Bangladesh, torching their homes and shops. At least three people died in the violence, local TV stations reported. Dhaka, however, was calm.
Hindus are believed to be supporters of Hasina.

Syria chemical arms 'probably used' in five cases, UN finds

Chemical weapons were "probably used" at five out of seven sites in Syria, UN investigators say in a report.

In two cases, the weapons affected soldiers, and in a third, soldiers and civilians, the report says.
The study has not determined whether the government or rebels had used the weapons.
The inspectors had already confirmed that the deadly nerve gas sarin was used in an attack near Damascus on 21 August which killed hundreds.
The report said it had proof that chemical weapons were used in Ghouta, Khan al-Assal, Jobar, Saraqueb and Ashrafieh Sahnaya.
It cites "credible evidence" or "evidence consistent with the probable use of chemical weapons", but says it still lacks specific information about the chain of events at many of the sites.
The inspectors said they could not corroborate the use of chemical weapons in incidents in Bahariyeh and Sheik Maqsood. 

More than 20 Iraqi suspects escape detention

More than 20 Iraqi suspects have escaped from a Baghdad detention centre after murdering a guard, in the latest of a series of jailbreaks. There were differing versions of how many were still on the loose.
Interior ministry spokesman Sa'ad Ma'an said 22 people escaped– some of whom had links to al-Qaida. All except three were later recaptured. One prisoner was killed in clashes outside the centre, he said.
But three police sources told Reuters at least 14 prisoners were on the run from the facility in Kadhimiya, north-west Baghdad. They said 11 people were recaptured but a prisoner and a police officer were killed.
Hakim al-Zamili, a member of a parliamentary committee which oversees the performance of the security services, said the prisoners had pretended that one of them was critically ill and lured a guard into their cell. They then attacked him with sharp weapons, seized his gun and escaped.
"This area is very fortified because many security institutions are based there, which means that the escaped suspects got help from inside to guide them smoothly out," he said.
A co-ordinated attack in July freed hundreds of prisoners from Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, the boldest insurgent operation in Iraq in more than five years. An al-Qaida affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), claimed responsibility.
Iraq is going through its worst wave of violence in the last five years and ISIL insurgents have increased their attacks on civilians and government targets.

Prince Harry and team arrive at South Pole

Prince Harry and his fellow adventurers in the Walking With The Wounded expedition have arrived at the South Pole, the organisers have said.

The group stood at the bottom of the world at 12:00 GMT after more than three weeks of pulling sleds.
Twelve injured servicemen and women from the UK, the US and the Commonwealth were on the 200-mile walk.
A competitive element of the expedition had been suspended because of "difficult terrain".
Team UK, which includes the prince and four injured British soldiers, had been racing against a US team, and a team made up of Canadians and Australians.
Ed Parker, the expedition's director and co-founder of the Walking With The Wounded charity that organised the challenge, said: "We always knew that this wasn't going to be easy, but that is what makes the challenge so exciting.
"Our aim was to show that, despite injury, young men and women from our armed forces can still achieve great things.
"We came down here, determined to get 12 men and women, all injured in conflict, to the South Pole, and this is what we have done. The feeling is incredible."

Middle East snow storm brings havoc and hardship to Holy Land

Snow covers swaths of the Holy Land as storm Alexa continues to cause havoc across the Middle East.
Meteorologists in Jerusalem said it was the worst storm to hit the city for 60 years, with snow reported to be 50cm deep in some areas.
Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv was briefly closed on Friday morning, and roads between that city and Jerusalem were littered with abandoned cars. Motorists were stranded in their vehicles for up to 12 hours as snow blocked highways, media reported.
Public transport was cancelled and schools were closed for the second day. Thousands of homes were without power as snow-laden trees collapsed, bringing down power lines.
Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, described the snowstorm as a "tsunami", for which the city council was unprepared.
Residents of Ramallah, in the West Bank, awoke to blizzard conditions and widespread power cuts. Other areas of the West Bank, including the Palestinian cities of Hebron and Bethlehem, were struggling to cope with heavy snowfalls.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld took to Twitter to confirm three evacuation centres had been set up to help more than 1,000 people stranded overnight.
Gaza, whose residents have been forced to deal with 12- to 16-hour power cuts as a result of the severe fuel shortage in the tiny coastal strip, has been affected by heavy flooding as well as the first snowfall for decades. Dozens of people have been injured.

Many feared killed by rebels in Damascus suburb

Syria's state media and an opposition activist group say many civilians are feared dead in a town near Damascus after parts of it were captured by Islamic rebels.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has documented the names of 19 civilians killed by hard-liners over the past two days in Adra, northeast of Damascus.
The Observatory says the civilians were minority Alawite and Druse.
Syrian Minister of Social Affairs Kinda Shammat described on Friday what happened in Adra as a "massacre."
The TV and other state-run media are blaming "terrorists" for the killings, a term used by the government to refer to opposition fighters.
Shammat told Syrian TV that the army was now carrying out an operation in the area, an industrial section of the town. 

Chinese naval vessel tries to force U.S. warship to stop in international waters

A Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. guided missile warship to stop in international waters recently, causing a tense military standoff in the latest case of Chinese maritime harassment, according to defense officials.
The guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which recently took part in disaster relief operations in the Philippines, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing’s new aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to officials familiar with the incident.
“On December 5th, while lawfully operating in international waters in the South China Sea, USS Cowpens and a PLA Navy vessel had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision,” a Navy official said.
“This incident underscores the need to ensure the highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap.”
A State Department official said the U.S. government issued protests to China in both Washington and Beijing in both diplomatic and military channels.
The Cowpens was conducting surveillance of the Liaoning at the time. The carrier had recently sailed from the port of Qingdao on the northern Chinese coast into the South China Sea.
According to the officials, the run-in began after a Chinese navy vessel sent a hailing warning and ordered the Cowpens to stop. The cruiser continued on its course and refused the order because it was operating in international waters.

Critics hit at Canada Post cutbacks

Critics have said Canada Post's move to phase out home delivery over five years is the wrong way to turn around the agency's financial struggles.

The change, along with an increase in the cost of stamps and as many as 8,000 job cuts, was introduced on Wednesday.
Labour unions and opposition legislators have said the agency needs to focus instead on making money.
The service faces a projected 1bn Canadian dollar ($943m; £576m) loss by 2020 without "fundamental changes".
Canada Post lost C$73m in the third quarter of the current fiscal year, CBC News reported. The postal service put the declining revenue down to the rise in digital communications.
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 Wis. governor offers a way around ObamaCare problems

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to give people in his state a way around ObamaCare’s problems.
He is floating a proposal that would still channel federal subsidies to Wisconsin’s poor and uninsured, but his plan would allow them to purchase coverage directly from the insurer and sidestep the on-line “exchange” created by the Affordable Care Act.
His idea is getting support, even in the bitterly divided Wisconsin state house. Six Democrats crossed party lines and backed his proposal in the assembly, sending it over to the Senate with a healthy majority.
Still, before it goes into effect, Walker’s idea would need the blessing of the Obama administration.
“If they don't approve this, this is ultimately exposing that this isn't really about access and this isn't about affordability,” says Walker. “It's about government playing a heavier hand in these kinds of decisions.”
Regardless of support, his idea stands in the face of President Obama’s claim that, when it comes to health care, Republicans complain but don’t offer solutions.
 “They sure haven't presented an alternative.  If you ask many of the opponents of this law what exactly they'd do differently, their answer seems to be, well, let's go back to the way things used to be,” the President said in a White House speech Dec. 3.

Budget deal passes House before Senate enters second night of partisan strife

Congress celebrated a rare moment of bipartisan harmony on Thursday evening, after a $1tn federal budget passed in the House of Representatives, before swiftly returning to all-night bickering in the Senate.
An overwhelming majority of 332 Republicans and Democrats voted against 94 rebels from both parties to pass the limited two-year spending deal and repeal parts of the so-called sequester cuts.
Opponents, including the Democratic whip Steny Hoyer, comprised a mixture of fiscal hardliners who wanted more cuts and liberals angry that the deal neglected to fix expiring unemployment benefits and will charge future federal workers more for their pensions.
The messy compromise, which is expected be ratified by the Senate next week and is backed by the White House, makes this the first time since the 1980s that a divided US government has agreed to set a formal budget. 
“We have been at its each others throats for a long time,” said House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan, who negotiated the deal with his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Patty Murray. “[But] elections have consequences. To really do what we think needs to be done we are going to have to win some elections. In the meantime, we need to make this divided government work.”
Hoyer, whose Maryland seat includes 62,000 federal employees, acknowledged that the deal was better than the alternatives on offer, but called for more ambitious negotiations to tackle long-term fiscal challenges. Minutes later, an even bigger majority – 350-69 – voted in favour of a hard-fought defence authorisation bill that will renew spending for the US military.


US unemployment claims rise sharply but recent economic growth intact

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose sharply last week, reversing the prior three weeks declines, but a recent strengthening of the labor market likely remains intact. 
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits surged 68,000 to a seasonally adjusted 368,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the largest weekly increase since November 2012. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported. 
Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to rise to 320,000 last week. 
The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 6,000 to 328,750. 
A Labor Department analyst said no states had been estimated and there were no special factors influencing the report. He noted, however, that seasonal volatility, including a late Thanksgiving, made it difficult adjusting the data for seasonal variations. 
Jobless claims fell for much of November. 
The labor market is strengthening, with nonfarm payrolls increasing solidly in October and November. The unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 7% in November. 
The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid increased 40,000 to 2.79 million in the week ended November 30.

Here's the Story Behind the Big Wall Street Reform Rule That Was Just Approved

On Tuesday, banking regulators finalized one of the most important provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. It's called the Volcker rule, and it's supposed to prohibit the high-risk trading by commercial banks that helped cause the financial crisis. Here's what you need to know about it.
What's the reason for the new rule? In the run-up to the financial crisis, big banks invested in low-quality mortgage-backed securities. When those over-leveraged bets turned sour, the economy collapsed, and the government had to bail out big financial institutions. The Volcker rule ensures that banks don't engage in what is called proprietary trading—that is, when a firm trades for its own benefit instead of trading on behalf of its customers. In May 2012, JPMorgan Chase lost $2 billion on a bad trade, which led to calls for a strong Volcker rule.
Why is it called the Volcker rule? The rule is named after Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve in the 1980s, and later an adviser to President Barack Obama. He advocated this change in financial regulation and persuaded the president to back the rule in 2010, when the Dodd-Frank bill was passed.
2010? What took so long? One reason it took three years to finish the rule is that after the legislation was passed, the actual regulation had to be crafted jointly by five banking regulators—the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). That's a lot of coordination amongst people with different backgrounds and priorities. And during the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney vowed to repeal Dodd-Frank. So for several months, wait-and-see regulators slowed down devising the details of the rule.
Wall Street lobbying also played a big part.

Crude oil rail transport could get new hazard standards

The federal transport minister is considering a number of changes to how crude oil is transported across Canada by rail.
The move would come after last summer's tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, Que., where 47 people died after a runaway train carrying tankers of crude oil derailed and set off massive fireball explosion in the centre of town.
Transport Minister Lisa Raitt set up three working groups in November that are looking at, among other things, how crude oil is classified.
Right now, crude oil is listed as a flammable substance, but not a highly explosive one.
Another working group is examining whether companies should be required to have emergency response assistance plans for the shipment of crude oil.
That exists now for hazardous goods, and includes having specialized response teams along the route in case there is an accident.
It's also a sign Transport Canada understands there is a need to treat crude oil differently.
The working groups will report back with recommendations in January. The department will then come up with proposed regulations for consultation in February.

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