Gazette 01-14-14

Tuesday January 14 2014

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Egypt holds vote on new constitution

Egyptians are voting amid tight security in a two-day referendum on a new constitution that could pave the way for fresh elections.

The new charter aims to replace the constitution passed under Islamist President Mohammed Morsi months before he was ousted by the army.
The military wants a strong Yes vote to endorse Mr Morsi's removal.
His Muslim Brotherhood, now designated a terrorist group, is boycotting the vote. Five people have died in clashes.
One person was killed during an anti-referendum protest in Bani Suef, south of Cairo, the governor there told the BBC.
Three people were killed in clashes with security forces in the Upper Egypt city of Sohag while a further death was reported in Nahia, in the Giza district of Cairo.
Shortly before voting began, an explosion took place near a court building in Cairo's Imbaba district, although no casualties were reported.

Al-Qaida affiliate in Lebanon vows to strike at Iran, Hezbollah over leader's death

An al-Qaida-linked group that has carried out attacks across the Middle East has vowed to target Iran and Hezbollah following the death of its leader in Lebanon.

Majid al-Majid was arrested by the Lebanese army last month and authorities said he later died at a military hospital in Beirut from chronic illness.
A statement issued by the Abdullah Azzam Brigades accused Hezbollah of killing al-Majid, saying his condition worsened in detention. It did not elaborate, but extremist Sunnis in Lebanon have accused the army of being complicit with the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim group.
The statement posted on Twitter Tuesday said al-Majid, a Saudi citizen, passed away after years of cultivating men capable of carrying on his project, adding that attacks will continue after his death.

Mexican Security Forces To Patrol Tierra Caliente After Clashes Between Drug Traffickers And Vigilante Groups

APATZINGAN, Mexico (AP) — Federal forces will take over security in a large swath of a western Mexico state where firefights between vigilante groups and drug traffickers erupted over the weekend, a top Mexican official announced Monday.
Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said federal forces with support from Michoacan state police will patrol an area in the state known as Tierra Caliente, the home base of the Knights Templar drug cartel.
"Be certain we will contain the violence in Michoacan," Osorio Chong said.
He gave no details on what federal agencies would be involved or give numbers on planned forces. Some federal police and troops have been sent to the region in recent months because of the unrest, but have generally not intervened.
The federal Attorney General's Office said later in a statement it had sent 11 helicopters and 70 federal investigators and officers to help return law and order to the state.
Osorio Chong made his announcement after a meeting called by Michoacan state Gov. Fausto Vallejo following a weekend of firefights between drug traffickers and some of the vigilante groups that have sprung up by the dozens over the past year to confront the gangs.
Congressman Ernesto Nunez of the Green Party, who was at the meeting in the state capital of Morelia, said the federal government is looking to have members of the self-defense groups join police departments.
"Those who they see really have the (police) vocation, those who really love their communities, will be invited to join the police," Nunez said.

At least 200 drown in South Sudan ferry accident while fleeing fighting

Between 200 and 300 people feared drowned after overcrowded ferry sinks on the White Nile river

At least 200 South Sudanese civilians have drowned in a ferry accident on the White Nile river while fleeing fighting in the city of Malakal, an army spokesman said.
"The reports we have are of between 200 to 300 people, including women and children. The boat was overloaded," army spokesman Philip Aguer said. "They all drowned. They were fleeing the fighting that broke out again in Malakal."
The disaster is one of the worst single incidents to have been reported from the war-torn country, which has been wracked by conflict for a month following a clash between rival army units loyal to either President Salva Kiir or his former vice-president Riek Machar.
According to the United Nations, 400,000 civilians have fled their homes over the past month, many of them escaping a wave of ethnic violence. Up to 10,000 people are believed to have been killed in the fighting, aid sources and analysts say.
The army spokesman meanwhile reported that battles were raging in several areas of the country, signalling that the government's recapture of Bentiu, another key oil city in the north, had failed to deal a knock-out blow to the rebels.
Heavy fighting was reported in Malakal, state capital of oil-producing Upper Nile state, as rebel forces staged a fresh attack to seize the town, which has already changed hands twice since the conflict began.

Iran nuclear deal to enter into force on 20 January

An interim agreement to curb Iran's nuclear programme will enter into force on 20 January, it has been announced.

The deal, agreed in talks with world powers in November, envisages easing of some international sanctions on Tehran.
US President Barack Obama welcomed the news but said more work was needed to strike a long-term deal. He threatened new sanctions if there was a breach.
The West accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, but Tehran has consistently denied that.
The EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the world powers would now ask the United Nations' nuclear watchdog (IAEA) to verify the deal's implementation.

Rouhani boasts of West's 'surrender' to Iran in nuclear talks

Ahead of implementation of interim nuclear deal, IAEA says planned meeting to discuss Iran's nuclear program now pushed back to February 8.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took to social media on Tuesday to boast that the interim nuclear agreement reached between Tehran and the P5+1 nations was the result of the “world powers surrender[ing] to the Iranian nation’s will.”
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday a planned meeting with Iran next week to discuss steps meant to ease concerns over its nuclear program has been pushed back to Feb. 8 at Tehran's request.


Cameron orders inquiry into claims of British role in 1984 Amritsar attack

Move comes after government papers appear to show SAS role in planning fatal Indian military attack on Golden Temple

David Cameron has asked the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to conduct an urgent investigation into a decision by the government of Margaret Thatcher to send an SAS officer to Delhi in 1984 to advise the Indian government on the expulsion of militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Amid calls from Sikh groups for an inquiry into the alleged British involvement in planning the operation, the prime minister's spokesman said that the investigation would examine two issues: the British action in 1984 and the decision to release such sensitive government papers.
Heywood will want to examine why the papers were not marked sensitive and held back when papers from 1984 were released under the annual 30-year rule.
The prime minister intervened after the recent explosive release of papers from 1984 which showed that the then foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, responded "favourably" to a request from Delhi for help in drawing up plans to launch a military operation to remove militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site in the Sikh faith.
The Indian government said around 400 people were killed when the Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, sent troops into the temple in June 1984 in an operation that lasted six days.
The general who led the assault in the temple, Lieutenant General KS Brar, said on Tuesday the allegation the British government secretly helped Indira Gandhi plan the mission was "fictitious" and that "all the plans [for Operation Bluestar] were laid and executed by Indian military commanders"

Nigeria hit by deadly car bomb

A car bomb has exploded in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, and there are fears of many casualties.

Witnesses spoke of bodies on the ground and AFP news agency quoted police as saying 17 people had died.
Blood-spattered people were seen fleeing the scene near a market. Vehicles collided trying to leave.
No organisation has said it was behind the attack, but the Islamist militant group Boko Haram is active in the region.
Boko Haram, which translates as "Western education is sin", has been conducting a four-year campaign of violence to push for Islamic rule in northern Nigeria.
The military was unable to give the BBC a firm casualty figure for the explosion in Maiduguri, which is the capital of Borno state, but said a suspect had been arrested.

Germany is now the 'bordello of Europe'

Bordellos with flat rates, package deals, everyone-at-once gangbangs and airport quickies. This is just a tiny sampling of the erotic specialties on offer these days in Germany, where prostitution has boomed so dramatically since its legalisation in 2002 that opponents - ranging from radical feminists to Christian conservatives - carp that it's now the "bordello of Europe".
In the past two decades, the number of (overwhelmingly female) sex workers has more than doubled to 400,000, according to some estimates. And you don't have to go to Hamburg's notorious Reeperbahn street to find them. Berlin alone has some 500 brothels; Osnabruck, a small university city, has 70; and another 3000 or so exist across the rest of the country. Their neon-red lights and windowless facades dot even picturesque little towns known primarily for their cuckoo clocks and gingerbread.
The Pascha brothel in Cologne, for example, services an estimated 800 men every day. The 12-storey building, open 24 hours a day, is the biggest whorehouse in Germany, with 126 rooms as well as a restaurant, beauty salon, boutique, launderette, tanning studio and several bistros. About 150 women work there, supported by 90 other staff. An entire floor is dedicated to transsexual services.

I won't resign, Thai PM says

BANGKOK: Thailand's prime minister reiterated Tuesday she wouldn't quit as protesters seeking her ouster blocked key roads in the heart of Bangkok for a second day, leaving the country's political crisis firmly deadlocked.

The demonstrators had pledged to "shut down" the city of 12 million people, but life in most of the vast metropolis was unaffected, with school classes restarting, commuters heading to work and most businesses open.

The Southeast Asian nation's latest bout of unrest began late last year and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has tried to ease it by dissolving Parliament and calling for new elections on February 2.

There are growing doubts that the vote will take place, however, and both protesters and the main opposition Democrat Party are calling for a boycott. Yingluck's opponents are demanding she step aside so an interim, non-elected government can take over and implement reforms before any new poll is held.

Christie inquiry over Sandy funds

The governor of the US state of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is being investigated over the use of Superstorm Sandy relief funds.

Federal officials are looking into whether Mr Christie misused some of those funds to produce tourism adverts.
Advertising agency Sigma Group lost out to MWW for a campaign proclaiming the state was "stronger than the storm".
Mr Christie is also being sued over claims his office created gridlock on a bridge as part of a political vendetta.
Mr Christie, who is seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate, is being audited by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to determine if Sandy funds were misappropriated to finance an advertising campaign during an election year.
'Double the price' Sigma Group's $2.5m bid lost out to a $4.7m bid by MWW for a campaign that featured Mr Christie and his family proclaiming the state is "stronger than the storm".
"We were left scratching our heads as to why they would give this bid to an agency at double the price," Shannon Morris, president of Sigma Group, told the Reuters news agency on Monday.
Christie spokesman Colin Reed said the ad campaign had been a success that helped the state begin to recover from the devastation caused by the October 2012 storm.
"We're confident that any review will show that the ads were a key part in helping New Jersey get back on its feet after being struck by the worst storm in state history," Mr Reed said.

The Benghazi Transcripts: Top Defense officials briefed Obama on ‘attack,’ not video or protest

Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation's top civilian and uniformed defense officials -- headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama -- were informed that the event was a "terrorist attack," declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president's Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward. 
Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing -- in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing -- occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief. 
According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham -- who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 -- said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center. 
"My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey's office, to say, 'Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,'" Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. "I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta."

The new spending bill’s winners and losers

Congressional negotiators released the details of a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill that would fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year and end the lingering threat of another government shutdown.
So, what's in it? We quickly sifted through the legislation, consulted supporting documents from Democratic and Republican aides, and called out some of the more notable and controversial elements below.  (If you want a detailed report on each of the 12 pieces of the broader spending bill, it's all here.)

Older Pool of Health Care Enrollees Stirs Fears on Costs

WASHINGTON — People signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s federal and state marketplaces tend to be older and potentially less healthy, officials said Monday, a demographic mix that could threaten the law’s economic underpinnings and cause premiums to rise in the future if the pattern persists.

Questions about the law’s financial viability are likely to become the next line of attack from its critics, as lawmakers gear up for the midterm elections this fall. Republicans quickly seized on the government’s progress report on Monday as evidence that the health insurance law would not work.

But administration officials expressed optimism that more young people would sign up in the months ahead, calling the latest enrollment numbers “solid, solid news” for the health care law. They said that interest in obtaining insurance through the marketplaces was increasing sharply across all age groups and that youth outreach efforts would become more aggressive as the March 31 open enrollment deadline approached.

US anger at Israel Kerry 'comment'

The US has condemned as "offensive" reported comments by Israel's defence minister about Secretary of State John Kerry's Middle East peace proposals.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the alleged comments by Moshe Yaalon were "inappropriate" given America's support to Israel's security.
It was a rare rebuke to America's ally.
Mr Yaalon was quoted by Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper as saying Mr Kerry was acting out of "misplaced obsession and messianic fervour".
He said a security plan Mr Kerry had presented to Israel was "not worth the paper it was written on".
"John Kerry - who has come to us determined and is acting out of an incomprehensible obsession and messianic fervour - cannot teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians."
Mr Yaalon made his comments in private conversations in Israel and the US, the Israeli newspaper said.
Mr Kerry has made a series of visits to the Middle East in recent months in an attempt to inject momentum into Israeli-Palestinian peace talks re-launched last year.
However, the talks have so far shown little sign of progress.
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Newer railcars 'damaged less' in Plaster Rock, N.B., derailment

Of the five railcars that derailed and burst into flames in Plaster Rock, N.B., last week, the three newest cars made of thicker steel and built with higher safety standards were damaged less, the company behind the derailment told a rail safety forum in Ottawa on Monday.
“Of the five cars, three were new and they were ‘damaged less’ was the precise phrase I heard from Canadian National,” rail consultant Malcolm Cairns said at a seminar hosted by the Canadian Transportation Research Forum that's looking into safety issues surrounding DOT-111 railcars, which have been involved in numerous high-profile accidents across North American in recent years.
Safety watchdogs in Canada and the U.S. have for decades warned that the tankers are prone to punctures and broken valves during crashes. Some safety advocates attending Monday’s meeting say Ottawa and Washington need to step in and force the retrofitting or retirement of some 50,000 tanker cars that for years have been identified as being prone to puncture and leaks during derailments.
Industry figures suggest there are as many as 228,000 DOT-111 railcars currently in operation across the U.S., and the Railway Association of Canada says some 160,000 carloads of Canadian crude was shipped across North America on railcars last year.
Transport Canada on Friday announced a proposal for new regulation requiring new rail tank cars built here to be built to a standard currently used in the U.S. But the regulation does not propose any solution for the existing fleet of cars, which were involved in recent derailments such as the one in Lac-Mégantic, Que., that killed dozens of people, or the more recent one in New Brunswick.
“There are so many players — the leasing companies, the shippers, the railways — it’s unlikely you are going to get a very large shift unless there’s government involvement,” said David Jeanes, head of the safety group Transport Action Canada.

Neil Young vs. PMO: Oilsands comments spark war of words

In response to a CBC News query, here's what PMO spokesperson Jason MacDonald had to say about Neil Young's just-launched fundraising tour to support First Nations groups fighting oilsands expansion:

Canada's natural resources sector is and has always been a fundamental part of our country's economy. And it continues to present a tremendous economic opportunity for all Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

The resource sector creates economic opportunities, and employs tens of thousands of Canadians in high wage jobs, contributing to a standard of living that is envied around the world, and helping to fund the programs and services Canadians rely on.
Even the lifestyle of a rock star relies, to some degree, on the resources developed by thousands of hard-working Canadians every day.
Our Government recognizes the importance of developing resources responsibly and sustainably and we will continue to ensure that Canada's environmental laws and regulations are rigorous. We will ensure that companies abide by conditions set by independent, scientific and expert panels.
Projects are approved only when they are deemed safe for Canadians and environment.
In addition, it's important to note that we have for the first time in Canadian history the prospect of significant economic and resource development in regions where aboriginal people are often the dominant populations and where there have been no similar large-scale economic opportunities.

Here's Young's response, which has been edited slightly for ease of reading (direct quotes from PMO statement removed):
If rock stars need oil is an official response, how does that affect the treaties Mr. Harper's government of Canada is breaking?

Of course, rock stars don't need oil. I drove my electric car from California to the Tar sands and on to Washington DC without using any oil at all and I'm a rock star. My car's generator runs on biomass, one of several future fuels Canada should be developing for the Post Fossil Fuel Age. This age of renewable fuels could save our grandchildren from the ravages of Climate related disasters spawned by the Fossil Fuel Age; but we have to get started.

As to the thousands of hard working Canadians, we have respect for all working people. The quandary we face is the job they are working on. They are digging a hole that our grandchildren will have great trouble digging their way out of. By that we mean Climate Change, the result of too much CO2 in the atmosphere There are better jobs to be developing, with clean energy source industries to help make the world a safer place for our grandchildren.

The oil sands projects are among the very dirtiest on earth. Per day, the oils sands operations produce as much CO2 as all the cars in Canada. While every gallon of gasoline from the cleanest oil sources produces 19.5 LBS of CO2, Alberta oil sands derived gasoline produces up to three times as much CO2 because of the inefficient methods used, potentially bringing the total CO2 per gallon to almost 60 LBS. This oil is going not to Canada, but to China where the air quality has been measured at 30 times the levels of safety established by the World Health Organization. Is that what Canada is all about?

As a Canadian citizen, I am concerned that this government is not acting within the advice of science.

When people say one thing and do another, it is hypocrisy. Our Canadian environmental laws don't matter if they are broken.
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