Sunday April 6th 2014
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Pro-Russian protesters have stormed the regional administration building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
About 50 people are reported to have broken away from a rally
of about 2,000 people in the city centre, and got past a police cordon
to enter the building.
Donetsk has seen several similar protests in the weeks since pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.
The latest protests comes amid diplomatic tensions following Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
The protesters shouted "Donetsk is a Russian city" and raised Russian flags above the building.
Some called for the region to have a referendum on the region's independence from Ukraine.
BAGHDAD – Gunmen near Iraq's capital
kidnapped and later shot to death six men, the deadliest of a series of
attacks Sunday that killed at least 15 people across the country,
authorities said.
The gunmen broke into the homes at dawn Sunday in the town of
Latifiyah, a mainly Sunni town 20 miles south of Baghdad, a police
officer said. Authorities later found the bodies, all with gunshot
wounds to the head, in remote, rural farmland near the capital, the
officer said.
No one immediately claimed the slayings and the motive behind the
killing was unclear. Shiite militiamen could be seeking revenge for the
ongoing Sunni insurgent attacks against Shiite neighborhoods. Militants
with Al Qaeda's local branch targets Sunnis in attacks as well or it
also could be a personal vendetta.
However, the slayings come amid escalating sectarian violence in
Iraq, which last year saw its highest death toll since the worst of such
killings in 2007, according to the United Nations. In November, 18
Sunnis kidnapped by men in Iraqi army uniforms were found dead, just
days after police found the corpses of 13 men all killed by close-range
gunshots to the head.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has said Israel may take "unilateral action" against the Palestinians after the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, signed 15 international conventions that could pave the way for a renewed attempt to gain United Nations statehood.
Speaking
at his weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said: "Unilateral actions from
the Palestinians will be answered with unilateral actions from our
side". He blamed the Palestinians for the current impasse over the
US-sponsored peace talks.
He said Israel was not afraid of UN
intervention and that the Palestinians had "a lot to lose" if they were
to pursue their attempt to gain UN statehood, which was shelved last
year as a concession to the Israelis, who released 104 Palestinian
prisoners in return.
His comments come before a crucial Knesset
debate on Monday, called by 25 members of the Israeli parliament, to
discuss the progress – or lack of it – of the peace initiative sponsored
by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the government's failure to secure the release of the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
There
is no clear indication yet of what form Israeli unilateral action could
take, but the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that it could
include the withholding of taxes collected by Israel from the
Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel last did so in 2012, sparking unrest
in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Palestinian and
Israeli sources said on Saturday that a meeting would be held on Sunday
between the US envoy Martin Indyk, the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb
Erekat and the Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni to try to breath new life
into the faltering peace process.
"We will have to struggle to
see how we fix it, how we make progress and what we must do to move
forward. It is not simple. It is very complicated. It is a real crisis,"
Livni said.
KANO (Nigeria): Gunmen believed to be Fulani herdsmen stormed a meeting in northern Nigeria's Zamfara state and killed 30 people, police said on Sunday.
"Thirty people were killed and several others injured," Zamfara state police spokesman Lawal Abdullahi told AFP.
"The incident happened in Galadima yesterday during a meeting of community leaders and representatives of vigilante groups" who were discussing ways to thwart armed robbers and cattle rustlers, he said.
He said security forces had deployed to the area. Survivors said more than 60 people might have died in the attack.
Former Israel Navy chief Admiral (Res.) Eliezer "Chiney" Marom spoke at The Jerusalem Post's Annual Conference in New York on Sunday, saying that Israel was in a "secret war" with terror organizations and the "evil axis" led by Iran.He pointed to the interception near Sudan by Israel of a ship carrying weapons sent by Iran to the Gaza Strip in early March.
"This interception (Klos C) exposed a new area of military affairs in
the Middle East. An ongoing battle between battles, an ongoing war
between wars that I like to call a 'secret war,'" Marom said.
"It means Israel is facing a new kind of threat based on terror and
long-range rocket fire, directed at civilian targets in Israel," Marom
stated.
The former Navy chief said that Hezbollah has 100,000 rockets and
missiles. "Some are very accurate, very long-range, and very powerful,"
he stated.
In addition, Hamas has several thousand rockets, some long range and accurate, he added.
"All
of these, including those in Syria, are directed at civilian targets in
Israel," Marom said, warning of the possibility that jihadi elements
could potentially take over and lead Syria in upcoming years.
Marom
said that one of Israel's key weaknesses is its homeland. "We are very
sensitive to rocket attacks hurting civilians," he stated.
Delhi: Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist coalition
is on track to win a thumping victory in the world’s biggest democratic
elections according to opinion polls published the day before voting
began in the far north-eastern provinces of Assam and Tripura.
Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition could be the
first party to win a clear parliamentary majority since 1984, breaking
the gridlock that has made the present parliament one of the most
unproductive since India gained independence in 1947.
And if the polls are correct the deep-rooted Indian National
Congress, the party of modern India’s founding fathers Mohandas Gandhi
and Jawaharlal Nehru, could be reduced to its worst-ever result, with
less than 100 seats in the 543-seat lower house. Such a esult could also
finally end the dynastic grip that Nehru’s descendants have held over
the party, which is being led in this election by Nehru’s
great-grandson, 43-year-old Rahul Gandhi and his 67-year-old
Italian-born mother Sonia Gandhi.
At least one person has
been reported killed and dozens hurt in a riot at Jordan's Zaatari camp,
home to some 106,000 refugees from Syria's war.
Jordanian forces used tear gas against stone-throwing refugees who had set fire to tents and vehicles.
Both sides blame each other for provoking the violence. The dead person was a Syrian refugee, officials say.
The sprawling camp has seen several protests since opening two years ago, mainly over poor living conditions.
Zaatari is located in the Jordanian desert, about 12km (7.5 miles) from the Syrian border.
It is the world's second-largest refugee camp - behind Dadaab
in eastern Kenya - and has become the fourth largest city in Jordan.
Harsh conditions
Jordanian authorities said the violence broke out after police
arrested a group of refugees who were trying to leave the camp
illegally.
"The rioters burned six tents and two caravans and tried to
attack police stations," the Public Security Directorate said in a
statement.
BANGKOK – Suspected Muslim insurgents have launched a wave of attacks in southern Thailand that killed one person.
Police Col. Prayong Khotsakha says 24 other people were wounded in the violence Sunday in the city of Yala.
Prayong
says the most serious of the assaults was a car bomb that detonated in
front of a furniture store, triggering a blaze that burned nearby homes.
He says several other explosions were reported in the city, blowing up a motorcycle and a bank's automated teller machine.
The U.S. will deploy two additional ballistic missile defence
destroyers to Japan by 2017 as part of an effort to bolster protection
from North Korean missile threats, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said
Sunday.
Speaking to at a news conference following a meeting with
Japan Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera, Hagel said they discussed the
threat posed by Pyongyang. He said the two ships are in response to
North Korea’s “pattern of provocative and destabilizing actions” that
violate U.N. resolutions and also will provide more protection to the
U.S. from those threats.
A big anti-austerity demonstration has been taking place in the European quarter of Brussels, where EU offices are located.
Water cannon and pepper spray were used to try to disperse
protesting Belgian trade unionists near the headquarters of the European
Commission and the European Council.
Thousands of people have been marching through the streets
carrying banners and placards criticising the austerity policies which
are supported by EU institutions. They include demonstrators from other
EU countries.
There is a big police presence and many roads in the area have been cordoned off.
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Former CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested Sunday the Obama
administration’s apparent offer to release convicted Israeli spy
Jonathan Pollard to salvage the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is a
desperate effort that could open the door for criminal spies like Edward
Snowden to walk away free.
“I certainly don’t think its good idea to keep some people at the
table,” Hayden, a Bush administration appointee and former NSA director,
told “Fox News Sunday.”
“It’s almost a sign of desperation to throw this in the pot, offer a
third view. If this were to take place … people in the intelligence
community would not be hearing the name Pollard, they would be hearing
Snowden.”
Last year, Snowden, then a National Security Agency contractor, gave
news outlets classified documents that exposed the federal government’s
massive, global surveillance efforts, which include collection data on
the phone calls and Internet activities of Americans and foreign leaders
worldwide.
Snowden is charged with espionage and is living under asylum in
Russia in what is largely considered the biggest security leak in U.S.
history.
“I believe this kind of behavior could be politically negotiated away,” Hayden also said.
U.S. officials have indicated that Secretary of State John Kerry
offered the early release of Pollard during talks with both sides last
week in Israel, in an effort to restart the U.S.-led two-party peace
talks, which have stalled over the delayed release of Palestinian
prisoners.
WASHINGTON — President
Obama plans two new executive actions this week to promote equal pay for
women — and to promote equal pay as a critical issue for Democrats this
election year.
One action, an executive order, will prohibit
federal contractors from retaliating against employees who talk about
how much money they make, according to an administration official
familiar with the plans.
The other, a presidential memorandum,
will require contractors to report data to the government showing the
compensation they provide their employees by sex and race.
Advocates
for pay equity say that a major challenge to enforcing equal pay laws
is secrecy about what people are paid. Some employers maintain policies
that punish workers who voluntarily share salary information with
coworkers, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
Tuesday’s
actions will affect only businesses that do work for the federal
government. The executive order doesn’t require workers to...
President Obama's recent announcement that his administration would rethink its deportation policies
and practices was welcome news in some quarters. But Obama's words
didn't do much for immigrants rights activists, who have taken to
calling him the "deporter in chief" and are planning a series of rallies around the country tomorrow, April 5, urging the president to suspend future deportations.
That's because the Obama administration is either flirting with or
has crossed the 2 million deportation mark. It took George W. Bush,
whose administration faced greater political pressure to clamp down on
immigration, nearly two full terms to reach that number; Obama hit it in
slightly more than one. Here's a brief explainer on Obama's deportation
milestone:
What exactly do we mean when we say "deportations"?
The government measures deportations in two broad categories: removals
and returns. Generally, removals are more serious and carry deeper legal
ramifications than returns. Removals are orders issued by a
judge, while returns, though also serious, are less strict and allow a
person to apply to legally return much faster. (Many people caught at
the border used to end up as returns, but that has changed in recent
years.) So, although it can be confusing, when people talk about Obama's
record-breaking 2 million deportations, they're really talking about
removals. According to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data, there
was an average of about 40,000 removals each fiscal year from 1892 to
2008. Fiscal years 2009-12 saw an average of about 396,000. The surge in
deportations came in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration,
and has been on a steady rise ever since.
How do Obama's numbers compare to those of previous administrations? Based on the DHS data and a Bloomberg Businessweek report
from late last year, the Obama administration has carried out roughly
1.8 million removals in his time in office through September 7, 2013.
That's less than George W. Bush's overall total of slightly more than 2
million, but even conservative estimates of the number of deportations
in fiscal year 2014 would have Obama crossing that mark right about now
and on pace to crush it by the end of his presidency. (The number
represents total removals, not the number of people removed; one person
could be sent back to their country of origin several times.)
WASHINGTON
— After months of wincing in the face of negative ads funded by the
industrialists David and Charles Koch, Democrats believe they have
finally found a way to fight back: attacking the brothers’ sprawling
business conglomerate as callous and indifferent to the lives of
ordinary people while pursuing profit and power.
By
drawing public attention to layoffs by subsidiaries of Koch Industries
across the country — a chemical plant in North Carolina, an oil refinery
in Alaska, a lumber operation in Arkansas — Democrats are seeking to
make villains of the reclusive billionaires, whose political
organizations have spent more than $30 million on ads so far to help
Republicans win control of the Senate.
The
approach should seem familiar. President Obama and his allies ran
against Mitt Romney in 2012 by painting a dark picture of Bain Capital,
the firm Mr. Romney founded, as a company that cut jobs and prized the
bottom line over the well-being of its employees.
Senator
Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska, has called out the Kochs — whose
combined net worth is estimated to be $100 billion — in his latest ads. In one,
which features a picture of the brothers grinning, one of them wearing a
tuxedo, Alaskans look directly into the camera and unload. “They come
into our town, buy our refinery,” says one. “Just running it into the
ground,” says another. “A lot of Alaskans are losing jobs, and I’m
definitely concerned about the drinking water,” says a young woman
holding a baby.
Republicans
and other allies of the Kochs say Democrats are wasting their breath
and their money. “Their only plausible counter strategy is to try to
cast as villains two individual Americans who 95 percent of Americans
have never heard of? I think it’s such a stretch,” said Tim Phillips,
president of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-aligned organization
responsible for most of the ads attacking Democrats.
He said it was ‘the right war.’ Then he did everything he could to screw it up.
Despite
the violence and uncertainty surrounding this Saturday’s election for a
new Afghan President, there’s one positive —Hamid Karzai, the sitting
president and the architect of much of the country’s unrest, is not on
the ballot this time. But while Karzai must cede power under the rules
of the Afghan constitution, the other leader whose mismanagement helped
tank Afghanistan abandoned his influence in what he once called “the
right war” a long time ago. That leader is President Barack Obama.
An
outright winner is unlikely on Saturday, unless one campaign is far
superior in the art of vote fraud. The most dramatic political comeback
belongs to Dr. Ashraf Ghani, a technocrat economist who previously
served as Karzai’s Minister of Finance. Known for a volatile
temper—according to former colleagues, he once broke his wrist by
slamming his hand into a meeting table—Ghani only earned three percent
of the vote against Karzai in 2009. Today, Ghani polls as the
frontrunner, dividing the margin of Karzai’s heir apparent, former
National Security advisor and Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul, and Dr.
Abdullah Abdullah, an ophthalmologist with a fondness for flashy Italian suits. He gathered 30 percent of the vote in 2009, but declined to participate in a run-off against Karzai.
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