Gazette 04-30-14

Wednesday April 30th 2014

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Kiev 'helpless' in east Ukraine

Ukraine's acting President Olexander Turchynov has admitted his forces are "helpless" to quell unrest driven by pro-Russian activists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Mr Turchynov said the goal was now to prevent the unrest spreading.
Activists have seized scores of government buildings and taken hostages including international monitors.
Mr Turchynov also said Ukraine was on "full combat alert", amid fears Russian troops could invade. 

"I would like to say frankly that at the moment the security structures are unable to swiftly take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions back under control," he said during a meeting with regional governors.

He admitted security personnel "tasked with the protection of citizens" were "helpless".
"More than that, some of these units either aid or co-operate with terrorist groups," he said.
Mr Turchynov added: "Our task is to stop the spread of the terrorist threat first of all in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions."
Related Story :Ukraine's Military On Full Alert For Possible Russian Attack

Russia's Economy Is Already In Recession, Estimates IMF

MOSCOW (AP) — The International Monetary Fund estimates that Russia's economy has already entered recession as fears of broad economic sanctions weigh on the economy.

Russia's economy shrank 0.5 percent in the first quarter of the year compared with the previous three-month period and is expected to continue struggling, said the head of the IMF mission in Russia, Antonio Spilimbergo.

"If you understand by recession two quarters of negative economic growth then Russia is experiencing recession now," Spilimbergo told reporters.

Investors are worried that the U.S. and Europe will step up sanctions against Russia because of its policies in Ukraine. Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula last month and has been blamed for fomenting unrest in the country's Russian-speaking east.

Explosion at China Xinjiang railway station

An explosion has hit a railway station in China's western Xinjiang region, injuring a number of people, state media report.

The blast hit Urumqi's south railway station on Wednesday evening, state media said. The cause is not clear, but one report said at least 50 were hurt.
Xinjiang has experienced several violent clashes over the past months.
China's President Xi Jinping visited the region this week, and has promised to step up anti-terrorism efforts.
Verifying reports from the region is difficult because the flow of information out of Xinjiang is tightly controlled.
'Debris and suitcases' "A blast occurred at Xinjiang's Urumqi train station at around 19:00 tonight, and there are injured personnel," state-run newspaper People's Daily said on its verified microblog feed.
Meanwhile, The Beijing News said at least 50 people had been injured, citing police officers.
Photos on social media, which could not be independently verified, appeared to show suitcases and debris strewn across a street after the blast.
However, several microblog posts and photos related to the explosion appeared to have been quickly deleted from Sina Weibo, China's largest microblog platform.

Girls recently kidnapped in Nigeria forced to marry extremists, reports say

LAGOS, Nigeria –  Scores of girls and young women kidnapped from a school in Nigeria are being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors, a civil society group reported Wednesday.
Parents say the girls are being sold into marriage to Boko Haram militants for 2,000 naira ($12), Halite Aliyu of the Borno-Yobe People's Forum told The Associated Press. She said the parents' information is coming from villagers in the Sambisa Forest, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon, where Boko Haram is known to have hideouts.

"The latest reports are that they have been taken across the borders, some to Cameroon and Chad," Aliyu said. It was not possible to immediately verify the reports.
The Nigerian government needs to get international help to rescue the more than 200 missing girls kidnapped in the northeast by the Boko Haram terrorist network two weeks ago, said a federal senator for the area in northeastern Nigeria. The government must do "whatever it takes, even seeking external support to make sure these girls are released," Sen. Ali Ndume said. "The longer it takes the dimmer the chances of finding them, the longer it takes the more traumatized the family and the abducted girls are."

In South Sudan, Leaders' Personal Struggle Drives Nation Towards Catastrophe

JUBA, April 30 (Reuters) - A personal power struggle between South Sudan's leaders is driving Africa's newest nation to "catastrophe", the U.N. rights chief said on Wednesday.

The visit by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay was prompted by a rebel attack on the South Sudanese oil hub of Bentiu this month that left hundreds dead and a revenge assault by rivals on people sheltering in a U.N. base.

The U.N. Security Council has called for an investigation into the killings and is considering sanctions against both sides, one led by President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and the other commanded by his sacked deputy, Riek Machar, a Nuer.

"The country's leaders, instead of seizing their chance to steer their impoverished and war-battered young nation to stability and greater prosperity, have instead embarked on a personal power struggle that has brought their people to the verge of catastrophe," Pillay told a news conference in Juba.

The United Nations has accused rebels loyal to Machar of hunting down and butchering civilians in Bentiu, a strategic prize at the heart of one of South Sudan's main oil producing areas. Rebels deny the charge.

Pillay said she had also been sent to investigate the killings days later in Bor, another flashpoint town during the more than four months of fighting, where residents in the predominantly Dinka area attacked a U.N. base where Nuers were sheltering. Dozens were killed.

Pillay, who met Kiir in Juba and Machar at his base in the bush in Upper Nile state during her visit, said the two attacks "have starkly underlined how close South Sudan is to calamity".

Afghan, foreign forces kill 60 near Pakistan border, officials say

Afghan troops backed by Western forces reportedly killed at least 60 militants near the Pakistan border.
According to Reuters, it is one of the biggest assaults against the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. 

Afghanistan's intelligence agency, The National Directorate of Security, said in a statement that about 300 Haqqani insurgents and foreign fighters came under fire when they tried to storm Afghan bases, Reuters reported. 
An Interior Ministry spokesman said the forces were in position after receiving information about imminent attacks by the insurgents. 
"Hundreds of insurgents tried to take over the district center but we were there and hit them with a huge blow," Sediq Sediqq told Reuters. 
The Haqqani networked reportedly has been involved in some of the most deadly attacks of the Afghan war.

US senator to block sending foreign aid to Egyptian military over 'sham trial'

US senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, said on Tuesday he would not approve sending funds to the Egyptian military, denouncing a "sham trial" in which a court sentenced 683 people to death.
"I'm not prepared to sign off on the delivery of additional aid for the Egyptian military," the Vermont Democrat said in a speech on the Senate floor, explaining why he would hold up the $650m. "I'm not prepared to do that until we see convincing evidence the government is committed to the rule of law."
The Obama administration has been grappling for months with how to deal with Egypt, one of its most important allies in the Middle East. The Pentagon said last week it would deliver 10 Apache attack helicopters and $650m to Egypt's military, relaxing a partial suspension of aid imposed after Egypt's military ousted President Mohamed Morsi on 3 July and violently suppressed protesters.
On Monday, an Egyptian court sentenced the leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and 682 supporters to death, intensifying a crackdown on the Islamist movement that could trigger protests and political violence ahead of an election next month.
Leahy said he would be watching the situation in Egypt with "growing dismay" even if he were not chairman of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, denouncing "a sham trial lasting barely an hour."
"It's a flaunting [sic] of human rights by the Egyptian government. It's an appalling abuse of the justice system, which is fundamental to any democracy. Nobody, nobody, can justify this. It does not show democracy. It shows a dictatorship run amok. It is a total violation of human rights," Leahy said.
The Apaches are not subject to congressional approval.

IDF, Shin Bet thwart West Bank terror cell planning attacks against Israelis 

Security forces led by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) arrested members of a Hamas-affiliated terrorist cell in Kalkilya in recent months, who were plotting a campaign of bombings and shootings against Israeli targets, the Shin Bet announced Wednesday.
Security sources told The Jerusalem Post that the suspects, who were arrested in a series of raids between December and March, were in the early phase of planning terrorist attacks on Israeli targets in the West Bank and within the Green Line. 
The members of the cell had begun construction of home made explosives, the Shin Bet stated. Among the suspects are 21-year-old Khaled Mahmoud Daoud, an Israeli Arab citizen, and six Palestinians, two of them brothers, and 30-year-old Salah Daoud who is a prominent Hamas member in Kalilya, security forces said.
The suspects divided their time between the West Bank city of Kalkilya and the Israeli Arab village of Kafr Bara, located east of Hod Hasharon, near Route 6, the investigation found.
"They built improvised explosive devices using agricultural fertilizers, and carried out tests of bombs they prepared, including the setting off an improvised explosive. They planned on purchasing firearms from Israel," the Shin Bet added.
Israeli-Arab citizen Khaled Daoud intended to exploit his unrestricted access to Israel for the purpose of obtaining materials to assemble bombs, as well as high quality firearms, the domestic intelligence agency said. Hamas member Saleh Daoud from Kalkilya "agreed to fund the activities of the cell, and offered its members to make use of other [Hamas] recruits who he knew," the statement said.

Assad regime 'using chlorine gas' in attacks

Gaziantep, Turkey: Soil sample testing conducted on behalf of Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper shows that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is using chemical weapons against civilian targets, the newspaper says.
Soil samples from the scene of three recent attacks were "collected by trained individuals and analysed by a chemical warfare expert".
They showed that chlorine and ammonia gas had been used in strikes on two villages in Idlib province earlier this month, said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of the British army's chemical and biological warfare defences.

10 children among 18 die as air raid hits Syria school: NGO
    
BEIRUT: An air raid on a rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria's northern city of Aleppo hit a school, killing at least 18 people, 10 of them children, on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

At least one teacher was also among the dead in the raid on the Ansari district of the former commercial hub, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rebel-held areas of the city have come under repeated attack from the air since mid-December.

The government's use of barrel bombs, unguided munitions generally dropped from helicopters flying at altitude to avoid ground fire, has come in for particular criticism from human rights watchdogs.

Because they cannot be directed against military targets, they exact an indiscriminate toll on civilians, which Human Rights Watch has said makes them unlawful.
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 Obamanomics under fire from GOP as economy slows to 0.1 percent growth

WASHINGTON –  The U.S. economy slowed to an anemic pace in the first quarter of the year, according to new Commerce Department estimates, renewing Republican claims that Obama administration policies are slamming the brakes on the recovery. 
The department estimated that growth slowed to a barely discernible 0.1 percent annual rate between January and March. That was the weakest pace since the end of 2012 and was down from a 2.6 percent rate in the previous quarter. 

"This report is more than a low number; it is a reflection of the real economic despair that persists in the sixth year of the Obama presidency," said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. 
The slowdown, while worse than expected, is likely to be temporary as growth rebounds with warmer weather. The White House pointed to "historically severe winter weather" as a factor, and noted that these figures are subject to revision. 
But Republicans, who even before the report was released were hammering the administration over policies they claim are holding back job growth, said weather is not the only factor. They've long argued that a heavy regulatory hand, and various mandates attached to the Affordable Care Act, are hurting the economy.

Senate Appears Poised To Sink Minimum Wage Bill

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hemmed in by solid Republican opposition, the Senate seems ready to hand a fresh defeat to President Barack Obama by blocking an election-year bill increasing the federal minimum wage.
Democrats, aware that the measure faces all but certain rejection Wednesday in the chamber they control, plan to use the vote to buttress their campaign theme that the GOP is unwilling to protect financially struggling families."Americans understand fairness, and they know it's unfair for minimum-wage workers to put in a full day's work, a full month's work, a full year's work, and still live in poverty," the measure's sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said Tuesday.
Harkin's bill, an Obama priority, would gradually raise the $7.25 hourly minimum to $10.10 over 30 months and then provide automatic annual increases to account for inflation. Democrats argue that if fully phased in by 2016, it would push a family of three above the federal poverty line -- a level such earners have not surpassed since 1979.
They also say the minimum wage's buying power has fallen. It reached its peak value in 1968, when it was $1.60 hourly but was worth $10.86 in today's dollars.
Republicans say the Democratic proposal would be too expensive for employers and cost jobs. As ammunition, they cite a February study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that estimated the increase to $10.10 could cost about 500,000 jobs -- but also envisioned higher income for 16.5 million low-earning people.
Citing those job loss figures, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday, "When it comes to so many of their proposals, Washington Democrats appear to prioritize the desires of the far left over the needs of the middle class."

White House e-mail reinforces Benghazi talking points

New White House e-mails made public Tuesday by conservative Judicial Watch further support that the Obama team wanted then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to stress that a video disparaging the Prophet Muhammad was the catalyst for a series of anti-American protests across the Islamic world, including the deadly attacks on the Benghazi mission in September 2012.
In an e-mail with the subject line: “PREP CALL with Susan,” deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes wrote that one of the goals before Rice went on the Sunday news shows after the killing of four Americans  was to “underscore these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” While the video appeared to be the cause of dozens of protests, it remains in question what impact it had on the attackers in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. The video was produced in the United States by a California real estate developer.
This collection of e-mails was left out of the e-mails released in May 2013 that showed the back and forth within the Obama administration over talking points. The new Rhodes e-mail, which was sent to Rice and others on the Friday night before her Sunday morning appearances, mentions Libya only briefly and focuses on responses to possible questions she could be asked about the widespread protests. It clearly showed a White House top priority was to shield Obama from criticism less than two months before voters decided whether to give him a second term.

Senator Reid opens door to Keystone pipeline vote

(Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in an abrupt election-year shift in strategy, opened the possibility on Tuesday of allowing a vote on congressional approval of the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline.
"I'm open to anything that will move energy efficiency," Reid, a long-time foe of the project, told reporters.
He was referring to a bill that would save energy through tougher building codes sponsored by Senators Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, and Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, that the Senate is expected to consider as early as next week.
Details were unclear, but in exchange for Republicans supporting the efficiency bill, Reid could permit a vote on a measure that would allow Congress to approve the bill of the pipeline. The vote could allow Democratic senators facing tough elections in November to be seen as supporting the project.
But even if the bill passes the Senate and a similar bill passes in the House of Representatives, it is likely that President Barack Obama would veto it.
The Obama administration has been considering the pipeline for more than five years. Earlier this month, the State Department said it would again delay a decision on the pipeline until the Nebraska Supreme Court settles a dispute over the path of the pipeline, effectively delaying the decision until after the November 4 elections.
"We are discussing what to do," a senior Democratic aide said, making no prediction on when a decision would be made on whether to allow a vote on TransCanada Corp's pipeline. The project would bring more than 800,000 barrels per day of heavy oil from Canada's Alberta province to refineries in Texas.

Reid says he's receiving 'ugly, vile, vulgar' threats

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged Tuesday he is receiving what he called "ugly, vile, vulgar" threats after he labeled supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy "domestic terrorists" last week.

"Each day that goes by, it's hard for me to comprehend how ugly, vile, vulgar, and threatening people are, sending letters to my home and making other threats," said the longtime Democratic senator from Nevada, speaking slowly to reporters, with long pensive pauses and even shaking his head.
"So I don't know who's mad at me, but it's a long list, I guess," Reid continued.
On Monday the U.S. Capitol police said it was looking into "threatening statements made toward Senator Reid."
Congressional sources say the threats began last week after Reid called Bundy's backers "domestic terrorists" for refusing to vacate federal land in Nevada that Bundy used to graze his cattle.
The Bureau of Land Management has been in a dispute with Bundy for 20 years over not paying fines and environmental issues. That came to a head three weeks ago when armed militia members came to Bundy's defense, joining in an old west style showdown with the authorities.
Reid's comments about Bundy riled conservatives, who had already hailed Bundy as a hero for fighting what they called government overreach. But most of those conservatives abandoned the rancher late last week after he made racist remarks about blacks, asking whether they were "better off as slaves."
As for the threats to Reid, he would not elaborate on their nature or the degree to which law enforcement is concerned.
Instead he said "what also bothers me is virtually every one of these horrible things they send has, they cite scripture," he said, holding up his hands. "They cite something out of the Bible. I mean, you try that one on. "
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