Thursday January 16th 2014
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AFTERNOON EDITION
A spokesman for the
Afghan Taliban has said it is "confident of victory" over Nato-led
forces and already controls large areas of the country.
Interviewed by the BBC's John Simpson, Zabiullah Mujahed said
in remote parts it was "everywhere", and foreign troops were scared to
leave their bases.He also denied any ties with candidates in the "fake" presidential elections.
But it is hard to believe the Taliban might make a comeback in Afghanistan as things stand, our correspondent says.
However, their takeover of Kabul in 1996 was unexpected, and the election of a weak, corrupt president could strengthen them, he adds.
Most Nato-led (Isaf) foreign combat forces are due to leave this year, having handed over control to the Afghan army, as combat operations are declared to be over.
Egyptian voters overwhelmingly back new constitution, official says
A majority of Egyptians who voted on a new constitution have backed the draft charter, a senior Egyptian official said Thursday.The official told The Associated Press that unofficial results, after most of the ballots have been counted, indicate that more than 90 percent of the voters have said "yes" to the constitution.
He declined to give an estimate on the final turnout and spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
According to Reuters, Al-Ahram, the state's flagship newspaper, said the constitution was approved by an "unprecedented majority," citing early results.
The vote held Tuesday and Wednesday is a milestone for Egypt's interim government, installed by the military after the ouster last July of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
A decree is expected within days, setting the date for presidential and parliamentary elections, Reuters reported, citing Al-Ahram. The official result is expected to be announced on Saturday.
The draft is also a key piece of a political roadmap toward new elections for a president, and a test of public opinion about the coup that removed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. It is a heavily amended version of a constitution written by Morsi's Islamist allies and ratified in December 2012 with some 64 percent of the vote but with a nationwide turnout of just over 30 percent.
14 Men Abducted, Killed By Gunmen Wearing Military Uniforms In Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) — Authorities in Iraq say police have found the corpses of 14 Sunni men abducted from a town near the capital, Baghdad, by gunmen in military uniforms.Police officers found the corpses Thursday afternoon in an orchard near the Sunni-dominated town of Mishahda. Officials say the corpses were shot in different parts of the body.
Mishahda is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Baghdad.
Authorities say gunmen wearing military uniforms kidnapped the men from a funeral Wednesday night. Police say men from the same family are among the dead.
Medical officials confirmed receiving the bodies. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.
Bomb blast kills nine people in Pakistan's northwest
PESHAWAR: A bomb blast at an Islamic preaching centre in troubled northwest Pakistan on Thursday killed at least nine people and wounded more than 50, officials said.
The explosion took place at a centre run by the hardline Tablighi Jamaat group just metres from the military cantonment in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan and has been hit by numerous bombings in recent years.
"The death toll from the blast at the preaching centre has raised to nine," provincial health minister Shaukat Yousafzai told AFP. Initially, six people were reported killed.
"Seven patients are in critical condition and I fear a rise in the death toll," he said.
"The blast occurred in a preaching centre on Charsadda road near the military cantonment when around 800 people were offering evening prayers," local police official Ijaz Khan told AFP.
Bomb disposal squad chief Shafqat Malik confirmed the explosion. "Around five kilograms (11 pounds) of explosive material were used in the blast, which was detonated with a timer device," he told AFP.
Rafik Hariri assassination: trial of Hezbollah suspects begins
UN's special tribunal for Lebanon tries Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badredine, Hussein Onessi and Assad Sabra in absentia for 2005 killing
Almost nine years after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the trial of his alleged killers has started in The Hague.
The defendants, all members of the powerful militia Hezbollah, are being tried in absentia – the first time this has happened at an international trial since the Nuremberg prosecutions.
The trial at the UN's special tribunal for Lebanon comes as the country continues to reel from instability caused by the 2005 killing and as a combustible political climate cripples the region.
Victims of the attack, which killed Hariri and 22 others and wounded several hundred more, have said they are expecting accountability from the process – a rare thing in Lebanon where assassinations have long been part of the political fabric, with perpetrators rarely caught.
Prosecutor Norman Farrell laid out a case against the four accused – Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badredine, Hussein Onessi and Assad Sabra – whom Hezbollah have vowed never to arrest, and whom neither Lebanese authorities, nor members of the STL investigative team have been able to locate since the international body was established by UN statute five years ago.
He said the case against the accused would be anchored by communications evidence that "presents a blueprint of how the crime was carried out and by whom".
Netanyahu slams EU after Israel envoys censured over settlements
Netanyahu’s anger was sparked by an apparently coordinated EU move to summon Israel’s ambassadors in London, Paris, Rome and Madrid this week to protest the recent announcement of construction of 1,400 units in the major settlement blocks and in east Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the 1967 lines.
Calling the claim that settlements are an obstacle to a peace agreement “bogus,” Netanyahu, speaking at an annual reception in Jerusalem for foreign journalists, blasted the EU move, and asked when the last time the EU countries called in the Palestinian Authority ambassadors to “complain about incitement to Israel’s destruction,” or to protest that security officers from the Palestinian Authority were participating in terror attacks against innocent Israelis.
“I think its time stop the hypocrisy and inject some fairness in the discussion,” he said, adding that the EU imbalance does not promote peace, but actually pushes it further away because it tells the Palestinians that they can engage in incitement and terror and not be held accountable.”
Britain threatens to leave EU
London: Britain has told its European Union partners the EU's treaties were "not fit for purpose" and there must be reform or it would quit the bloc.In the latest blast of euroscepticism from Conservatives in Britain's coalition government, finance
minister George Osborne said EU treaties had to be changed to protect member states like his own that don't use the euro.The comments, made at a conference in London on reform of the 28-nation EU, are unlikely to be embraced by integrationists in Brussels, who want Britain to remain in the bloc but have become irritated by its demands for change.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, accused countries such as Britain that have questioned the bloc's freedom of movement rules of having a "narrow, chauvinistic idea of the protection" of their interests - an indication of how tough London may find it to win
allies."Proper legal protection for the rights of non-euro members is ... absolutely necessary to preserve the single market and make it possible for Britain to remain in the EU," he said.
"If we cannot protect the collective interests of non-euro zone member states then they will have to choose between joining the euro, which the UK will not do, or leaving the EU."
A drive for closer integration among the 18 countries that use the single currency was straining the EU's institutional architecture, he said, a situation he said risked "going beyond what was legally possible or politically sustainable".
Syrian chemicals removal will likely not be completed until end of June, UN watchdog says
The removal and destruction of the most dangerous agents in Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal may not be completed until the end of June, the head of the UN chemicals watchdog said on Thursday.Ahmet Uzumcu, who is in Rome to brief Italian
authorities, told reporters the amount of chemicals that have reached a Syrian port so far was “not that high”.Related story: Italian port identified for transfer of Syrian chemical weapons materials
Mob 'hacks women to death' in Myanmar
A witness and a rights group say more than dozen Rohingya Muslim women and children killed in western Rakhine state.
A villager and a rights group have claimed that a Buddhist mob have hacked more than a dozen Muslim women and children with knives in an isolated corner of Myanmar.Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, which has been documenting abuses against members of the Rohinyga Muslim minority for more than a decade, said on Thursday that the violence took place on Tuesday in Du Char Yar Tan, a village in western Rakhine state.
She said the death toll was not yet clear, but her sources indicated it could reach into the dozens.
That some of the victims appeared to have been stabbed with knives, not shot or beaten, "would clearly indicate the massacre was committed by (Buddhist) Rakhine villagers, rather than the police or army," the Arakan Project wrote in a briefing on Thursday.
A resident who spoke on condition of anonymity, because he feared reprisals, said 17 women and five children died.
Rakhine state spokesman Win
Myaing said the situation was tense, but denied any deaths had occurred.But Khin Maung Than, a Muslim who lives in a neighbouring village, said he visited Du Char Yar Tan and had seen no evidence of violence or deaths there.
New video 'shows captive US soldier'
The US military has
obtained a new video of a US soldier captured in Afghanistan more than
four years ago, US officials have confirmed.
It shows Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, 27, in declining health but gives his family renewed hope for his eventual return.Sgt Bergdahl, missing since June 2009, is believed to be held in Pakistan by a group affiliated with the Taliban.
The video refers to current events, indicating the only American held prisoner in the conflict remains alive.
"As we have done so many times over the past four and a half years, we request his captors to release him safely," Sgt Bergdahl's parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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John McCain, Tim Kaine push to change presidential war powers
WASHINGTON – Two members of the Senate are pressing for significant changes to how presidents consult with Congress on sending the military into war.Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., unveiled legislation on Thursday that would repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution, often ignored by presidents of both parties, and replace it with a new law that requires greater consultation and a congressional vote within 30 days on any significant armed conflict.
"The Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress, but Congress has not formally declared war since June 1942, even though our nation has been involved in dozens of military actions of one scale or another since that time," McCain said. "There is reason for this: The nature of war is changing."
Since the Vietnam War-era resolution, the U.S. military has been involved in several conflicts, most recently when President Barack Obama sent American warplanes to protect civilians in Libya in 2011. The operation touched off a fierce debate in Congress over whether the president had exceeded his authority.
Obama's initial call last year for congressional approval for U.S. military action against Syria revived the debate.
"Forty years of a failed war powers resolution in today's dangerous world suggests that it's time now to get back in and to do some careful deliberation, to update and normalize the appropriate level of consultation between a president and the legislature," Kaine said.
The proposal would require the president to consult with Congress "before ordering deployment into a 'significant armed conflict,' or, combat operations lasting, or expected to last, more than seven days." The consultation must occur within three days of deployment.
Can President Obama still get things done?
RALEIGH, N.C. — President Obama is touting 2014 as a “year of action,” but it might just as easily be called the year of “measured expectation.”
Contrary to the predictions of many in Washington, Congress is on the verge of passing a spending bill that restores funding to some of Obama’s top priorities, which were undermined by deep cuts that took effect last year. Obama will have new money
for early-childhood education and infrastructure spending, although the
sums involved are far less than what he says is necessary to create
jobs and narrow inequality.And on Wednesday, Obama came here to promote the creation of a new manufacturing innovation institute that he described as a model effort for the economy of the future. Obama said he would like to create 45 such institutions, but the White House has found money
for only four — making it more a symbol of what he’d like to do than a demonstration of broad achievement.Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona
PHOENIX
— Their descent into homelessness began almost as soon as they had
closed a dignified chapter in their lives: their military service.
Dexter
Mackenstadt, 63, a sailor who spent the Vietnam War tracking submarines
along the East Coast, slipped into alcoholism. Robert Stone, 56, who
spent three years stationed at naval bases in California, fell to that,
too, and to a failing heart. John Hankins, 52, who repaired
intercontinental ballistic missiles at an Air Force base in Wyoming,
spent years as a drifter, living in a methamphetamine lab in the Arizona
desert.
Today they are neighbors and participants in a program that White House officials have said has
led Phoenix to become the first community in the country to end
homelessness among veterans with long or recurrent histories of living
on the streets.
In
2011, by a city count, there were 222 chronically homeless veterans
here, a vulnerable, hard-to-reach population of mostly middle-age men,
virtually all battling some type of physical or mental ailment along
with substance abuse.
Federal and city officials acknowledged that was not an exact number,
but it is widely regarded as the best measure of the veteran population.
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Federal and city officials acknowledged that was not an exact number,
but it is widely regarded as the best measure of the veteran population.Obama's NSA Reforms Are Going to Tick Off Everyone
On Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to unveil changes to the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance programs. The announcement comes weeks after a post-Snowden advisory panel appointed by the president issued a whopping 300-plus pages of pro-transparency recommendations that, if taken up, would radically alter how the NSA does business. But according to early reports, Obama will only be implementing small reforms. He will punt the bigger decisions to Congress—with the hope of partially appeasing lawmakers, voters, privacy advocates, and the national security community. From the looks of it, pretty much everyone is going to be mad at him.If Obama Lets the NSA Continue Sweeping Up Vast Information on Americans' Phone Calls…
- Who gets mad? Sixty percent of America, privacy advocates, FreedomWorks; some members of Congress
Millions in farm subsidies flow freely to DC residents who don't actually farm
Washington, D.C., doesn't have many farms, or farmers. Yet thousands of residents in and around the nation's capital receive millions of dollars every year in federal farm subsidies, including working-class residents in Southeast, wealthy lobbyists on K Street and well-connected lawmakers on Capitol Hill.In neighboring Chevy
Chase, Md., one of the nation's wealthiest communities, lawyers,
lobbyists and at least one psychologist collected nearly $342,000 in
taxpayer farm subsidies between 2008 and 2011, according to the watchdog
group Open the Books.Taxpayer subsidies were also paid out to Gerald Cassidy, the founder of one of Washington's most powerful lobbying firms, Cassidy & Associates; Charlie Stenholm, a former congressman; and Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack continues to receive subsides even though he has overseen the agency that pays them since 2009.
"All of it is entirely legal," said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books, a group that created an online database and mobile app to track the subsidies.
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