Weekend 03-01-14

Russia approves troops for Ukraine

Russia's upper house of parliament has approved President Putin's request for Russian forces to be used in Ukraine.

He had asked that Russian forces be used "until the normalisation of the political situation in the country".
Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, where many ethnic Russians live.
Ukraine's acting President Olexander Turchynov said he had put the army on full alert but urged people to remain calm.
In a televised address, he asked Ukrainians to bridge divisions in the country and said they must not fall for provocations.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was standing next to Mr Turchynov, said he was "convinced" Russia would not intervene militarily "as this would be the beginning of war and the end of all relations".

Ukraine official: Russia has launched 'armed invasion' in Crimea

Russian troops moved into Crimea Friday, U.S. officials told Fox News, prompting Ukraine to accuse Russia of an "armed invasion."
At the White House, President Obama said the U.S. government is "deeply concerned" by reports of Russian "military movements" and warned any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty would be "deeply destabilizing."
"There will be costs" for any military intervention, he said, without specifying what those costs might be.
U.S. officials told Fox News they see “evidence of air and maritime movement into and out of Crimea by Russian forces” although the Pentagon declined to officially "characterize" the movement.
Agence France Press quoted a top Ukranian official as saying Russian aircraft carrying nearly 2,000 suspected troops have landed at a military air base near the regional capital of the restive Crimean peninsula.
"Thirteen Russian aircraft landed at the airport of Gvardeyskoye (near Simferopol) with 150 people in each one," Sergiy Kunitsyn, the Ukrainian president's special representative in Crimea, told the local ATR television channel, according to AFP. He accused Russia of an "armed invasion."

Ukrainian crisis overshadows Iran, Palestinian talks as Netanyahu heads to DC 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to leave on Sunday morning for a meeting with US President Barack Obama, even as Iran and the Palestinian issue are taking a back seat in Washington to the crisis in Ukraine.

Neither Netanyahu nor the Foreign Ministry has issued any statement concerning the dramatic developments in Ukraine, although the situation facing Ukraine’s Jews has been raised in high-level meetings.

One government official said that the Netanyahu-Obama meeting on Monday is still set to focus on Iran and the Palestinians, despite the mounting US tension with Russia. The main impact of the Ukrainian crisis on Netanyahu’s five-day visit will likely be less media attention, the official said.

The prime minister is also scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry and with congressional leaders.

He is slated to address the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference on Tuesday, a day after Kerry is to speak at the gathering.

Netanyahu’s meetings with Obama and Kerry will come some four weeks before Israel is scheduled to release the last tranche of 26 Palestinian security prisoners as part of the framework agreed upon last July to get the PLO to return to the negotiating table. It is expected that Kerry will try to present his much-anticipated document that is to serve as a basis for continued talks between the two sides before the prisoner release.

Kerry is expected to travel back to Israel in mid-March for another round of shuttle diplomacy, following Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu and an expected meeting in Washington with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

UN Security Council to hold open, televised meeting on growing crisis in Ukraine

The U.N. Security Council is about to hold an open meeting on the growing crisis in Ukraine.

After meeting behind closed doors, the council agreed to hold an open, televised meeting despite objections from permanent member Russia. Ukraine has accused Russia of "a military invasion and occupation" of strategic points in the Crimean peninsula.
Ukraine is asking the other four permanent council members — the U.S., Britain, France and China — for help in stopping Russia's "aggression."
Russia's parliament earlier Saturday approved President Vladimir Putin's request to authorize the use of the Russian military to protect its interests in Ukraine.
Ukraine's U.N. ambassador, Yuriy Sergeyev, says Russia has rejected Ukraine's proposal to hold immediate bilateral consultations.

Knife attack at train station leaves dozens dead in south-west China

A group of knife-wielding men attacked a train station in south-western China on Saturday, leaving at least 27 people dead and another 109 injured, the official Xinhua News Agency said, making it one of the deadliest attacks in China in recent years.
Xinhua did not provide further details about the evening attack at the Kunming railway station in Yunnan province, or identify the attackers. Kunming city police said they did not have any immediate information to release about the attack.
Local television station K6 said that several of the attackers were shot by police and that victims were being transported to local hospitals.
The state-run Yunnan News said that the men were wearing uniforms when they stormed the railway station and that gunshots were heard after police responded.
Photos circulating online showed scattered luggage and bodies lying on the floor in blood.
The motive behind the attack was not immediately clear, but China has seen a number of mass stabbings and other attacks carried out by people bearing grudges against society.

Pakistani Taliban announce monthlong ceasefire

MIRANSHAH: Pakistani Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid on Saturday announced a month-long ceasefire to allow the resumption of stalled peace talks with the Pakistan government.

"We announce a month-long ceasefire from today and appeal to all our comrades to respect the decision and refrain from any activity during this period," the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) spokesman told AFP.

"Because of a positive response from the government, an appeal from the religious scholars and for the better future of Pakistan we have decided not to carry out any activity (attacks) for one month," he said.

Last month Islamabad began peace talks with the Taliban in an attempt to end a seven-year insurgency which has cost thousands of lives.

But the militant group continued to carry out attacks in the country on a near-daily basis.

Government mediators later suspended dialogue with their Taliban counterparts after the insurgents claimed they had executed 23 kidnapped soldiers in a northwestern tribal region.

'Many dead' in twin Nigeria blasts 

Two explosions targeting a busy market in the town of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria have left several people dead.

Eyewitnesses told the Reuters news agency that that 10 people had been killed and that more were feared trapped under rubble.
Maiduguri is the headquarters of a military force fighting against the Boko Haram Islamist group, which has stepped up its attacks in the area.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Eyewitnesses said that the attack was carried out using a car bomb at a crowded market near the airport.
The second bomb went off two minutes later as neighbours arrived to help the victims.
Eyewitnesses described seeing people blown apart and body parts in the street.
Airstrike In a separate incident, eyewitnesses told the BBC that 20 people were killed in a government airstrike in the village of Daglun on Friday.
Military jets have been bombing the area for weeks as part of a campaign against the Boko Haram group.
An army spokesman told the Associated Press that he was unaware of the death of any civilians in an airstrike.
President Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states last year in an attempt to curb the insurgency.

Syria agrees to new April target to remove chemical weapons

Syria has agreed to a new timetable to remove its chemical weapons by late April after failing to meet a deadline to ship out the arsenal earlier this month, diplomats said on Wednesday.
Under a U.S.-Russian deal reached after a chemical weapons attack killed hundreds of people around Damascus last year, President Bashar al-Assad’s government should have handed over 1,300 tonnes of toxic chemicals by Feb. 5 for destruction abroad.
But only a handful of cargoes have been shipped out of the country so far, a small fraction of the stockpile declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons overseeing the process along with the United Nations.
The OPCW said a fourth consignment, containing mustard gas, left Syria on Wednesday. It welcomed the move, while urging Damascus to “maintain momentum” in shipping out the chemicals.
Amid growing international frustration at the slow pace of progress, Syria last week submitted a new 100-day plan to remove the remaining chemicals, which would have set a target of late May or early June for completion.
But the OPCW said the work could be done quicker, despite fighting between al-Assad’s forces and rebels seeking his overthrow.
Diplomats said the latest timetable would see Syria committing to transport most of the remaining chemicals to its Mediterranean port of Latakia by April 13, from where they would be shipped out for destruction.
Consignments from two sites where security was precarious would be delivered to Latakia by April 27, they said.

The curious case of China's falling yuan

The Chinese currency has had its biggest one-day fall, down nearly 1%, and has fallen 1.5% for the past week and a half. It is the biggest decline since 2005 when it introduced its new currency regime and moved away from a tight peg against the US dollar.

Dropping to 6.1 yuan to the dollar, the currency has broken a long-term trend of appreciation. Recall that it had been around 8 yuan to the dollar in 1994 when the exchange rate was set up.
The Chinese central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), is right in that these are not big moves in the foreign exchange market. In a statement, the PBOC says this volatility is normal for other economies so there's "no need to over-interpret it."
But since the Chinese currency is controlled by the central bank to move within a narrow band of 1% around a daily fix and isn't convertible, the breaking of a steady trend will be viewed as a signal.
So what is the central bank signalling? Probably that the yuan isn't a one-way bet, meaning that the currency can fall as well as rise. It matters in that if traders expect the currency to always rise, then they will increase demand for the yuan that produces the intended effect.
As China wants to control the pace of appreciation, it ends up having to intervene to buy dollars and there's not a huge appetite to buy even more dollars as China holds rather a lot already.

Fresh Venezuela protests after violent clashes

Anti-government protesters took to the streets of Venezuela's capital on Saturday, calling for the release of dozens of activists who have been arrested during three weeks of violent demonstrations.

Protesters from a radical opposition group formed a convoy of cars and bikes in eastern Caracas after fresh violence on Friday saw pitched battles between security forces and demonstrators.

A total of 18 people have died in the demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro's government, according to official figures.

Protesters on Saturday vowed to boycott Venezuela's annual carnival celebrations as a mark of respect to the dead.

"We honor the dead. No carnival, there is nothing to celebrate," engineering student Argenis Arteaga told AFP at the protest.

Saturday's demonstration came after at least 41 people, including several foreign journalists, were arrested during Friday's clashes.

National Guard security forces used water cannons and tear gas to break up student-led demonstrations in the city's wealthy Chacao district.

Hooded protesters set up barricades and responded with a steady barrage of Molotov cocktails.

Maduro has labeled the protests that began on February 4 as a Washington-backed attempted "coup."

He claims that radical opposition leaders have joined students angered by high inflation and goods shortage in plotting to topple his nearly year-old government.

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 Ukraine crisis: Obama warns Russia against intervention

US President Barack Obama has warned Russia there will be "costs" for any military intervention in Ukraine.

He said he was deeply concerned by reports of Russian military movements inside the country.
Ukraine's acting president has accused Russia of deploying troops to the Ukrainian region of Crimea and trying to provoke Kiev into "armed conflict".
Crimea's pro-Moscow prime minister has asked Russian authorities for help in maintaining peace in the region.
"I appeal to the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, to provide assistance in ensuring peace and tranquillity on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea," Serhiy Aksyonov said in a statement.
Mr Aksyonov, who was appointed by the Crimean parliament on Thursday, also said he was taking control of Crimea's interior ministry, armed forces, fleet and border guards "on a temporary basis".

Obama's policy toward Russia is a 'failure', national security expert says

Russia’s movement of troops into Crimea is proof that the Obama administration’s policy toward Moscow is a failure, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Peter Brookes said Friday.
Brookes, who is a senior fellow for national security affairs for the conservative policy research group, told Fox News' Shannon Bream on "The Kelly File" the White House is behind the power curve on Russia. He acknowledged the two countries have a complicated relationship and Obama must walk a fine line, but said the issue should have been dealt with earlier.
“This administration’s policy toward Russia has been a failure,” Brookes said, later adding, “There is some value in strategic ambiguity because you are trying to deter the Russians from going any further, you’re trying to involve yourself in preventive diplomacy, but this should have been done a long, long time ago. And unfortunately this administration, like so many issues, is behind the power curve.”
Brookes said the situation could only get worse if violence against ethnic Russians or Russian citizens in Ukraine escalates.
“This thing easily spiral out of control if there is some sort of crisis or some sort of violence within Ukraine, especially against Russians,” Brookes said. “Putin has shown in the past he will act on these things.”

End of an Era? Clinton Media Strategy May Be Due for an Overhaul

WASHINGTON — Soon after Hillary Rodham Clinton left the State Department, her longtime spokesman talked wistfully about their paradise lost.

“We knew the golden age was coming to an end,” Philippe Reines said.

Mr. Reines was referring to the coverage Mrs. Clinton received from the State Department press corps — in his view, a substantive, high-minded and worldly lot who diligently covered her diplomatic travels and policy initiatives. They were, Mr. Reines explained, in sharp contrast to “the parallel press corps” of political reporters who have scrutinized Mrs. Clinton’s every utterance, scratched at any scent of scandal and speculated about her ambitions since she first refused to bake cookies.

As Mrs. Clinton has now moved back into that parallel universe ahead of a potential second presidential run in 2016, Mr. Reines and the other press operatives entrusted to guard her image remain armored and armed against a media they believe has it in for the former first lady. But some veterans of past Clinton campaigns think her bunker mentality toward the press is outdated, and that it is the couple’s own psychological baggage that could hurt her chances.

After all, Mrs. Clinton has simply outlasted many of her old combatants — real and imagined — from the media wars of the 1990s. In their place is a virtual clean slate of Clinton reporters whose formative experiences with her come from the last campaign or her time as a senator. Some of the babies ready to board the 2016 campaign bus were actually babies in the 1990s.

Memos detail efforts to retool Clinton’s image

A cache of confidential documents released by the National Archives offers new insights into her stylistic evolution from a political spouse to a political leader in her own right. 

click here for memos

What We Learned from 5,000 Pages of Hillary Clinton Documents

Fresh hope for GOP to take over Senate

For months, the key question about the upcoming midterm congressional elections has been whether Republicans can overcome their six-seat deficit to become the majority party in the US Senate.
Now the question has changed somewhat — to whether the surprising strength of Republican candidates in states once considered long shots for the GOP portends disaster for Democrats hobbled by ObamaCare and the president’s weak approval ratings.
No one doubted the GOP would come close or better than close to a Senate takeover in November. But every day, the map looks more favorable for the Republicans.
First, four races feature wounded Democrats in states that went against President Obama in 2012: Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Mary Landrieu (Lousiana), Kay Hagan (North Carolina) and Mark Begich (Alaska).
The GOP challenger in Arkansas, the extremely impressive Rep. Tom Cotton, may already be running away with his race; he’s ahead anywhere from four to seven points over Pryor. Every potential Republican challenger to Hagan is beating her in head-to-head polls. In Alaska, Begich is losing to both possible GOP candidates and has a job-approval rating around 40 percent, which is basically death for an incumbent. Landrieu is essentially tied with her leading challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy; that’s better than her colleagues, but not where you want to be when you’ve served as a senator for 18 years.
Among seats held by retiring Democrats, the likely Republican candidate in West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito, is up by 14 points in the latest poll. In South Dakota, a popular Republican ex-governor, Mike Rounds, is favored to win the seat being vacated by Democrat Tim Johnson.
In Montana, Max Baucus announced his retirement and then left the Senate early to become ambassador to China — solely, it seems, so that the Democratic governor could appoint this year’s candidate, Jim Walsh, to the Senate to give him incumbent status in the race. But Walsh is down double-digits to the two Republican contenders even so, and this one will almost surely go GOP.

Kerry Kennedy acquitted in drug-driving case

Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of late Senator Robert Kennedy, has been acquitted of drug-driving in New York.

Ms Kennedy, 54, could have faced up to a year in jail if convicted of the misdemeanour offence.
The human-rights activist was arrested after her car swerved into a truck on a highway in July 2012, an incident she said she could not remember.
She accidentally took a sleeping pill before the journey, her lawyers said, mistaking it for other medication.
Failed sobriety tests "I'm happy justice was done," Ms Kennedy, who is the ex-wife of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, said following Friday's verdict.
Ms Kennedy took a sleeping drug unintentionally - mistaking it for her daily thyroid medication - before driving to a local gym, her defence team told the court.
Ms Kennedy's Lexus blew one of its tyres as it hit a truck. She was found disoriented and slumped at the steering wheel, witnesses said.
Police have said she failed several sobriety tests at the scene, but she passed tests at a police station a few hours later.
Prosecutors argued that Ms Kennedy had realised she was impaired and should have stopped driving.
They said she was "responsible for the chain of events".
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