Gazette 05-23-14

Friday May 23rd 2014

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Thai army detains ex-PM Yingluck

Thailand's ex-PM Yingluck Shinawatra and a number of family members and politicians have been detained, as leaders of the nation's military coup tighten their grip on power.

Ms Yingluck and scores of politicians from the deposed government had earlier been ordered to report to the military.
She was kept for several hours and then driven to an undisclosed location.
Army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha also met key officials, telling them reform must come before any elections.
Gen Prayuth summoned governors, business leaders and civil servants to the Bangkok Army Club on Friday.
Six of Thailand's most senior military officers have now been appointed to run the country, with provincial commanders supervising local government.

Gunmen open fire on Indian Consulate in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan –  Gunmen armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the Indian Consulate in western Afghanistan's Herat province Friday, an assault that injured no diplomatic staff, police said.
The three gunmen opened fire on the consulate from a nearby home, provincial police chief Abdul Sami Qatra said. Police killed two of the three gunmen, though one continued to fire on security forces trying to secure the area, Qatra said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Afghanistan is experience a rise in insurgent attacks as foreign troops plan to withdraw from the country by the end of the year.
Herat lies near Afghanistan's border with Iran and is considered one of the safer cities in the country, with a strong Iranian influence. In September 2013, Taliban gunmen launched a similar assault on the U.S. Embassy in the city, killing at least four Afghans but failing to enter the compound or hurt any Americans.
Foreign embassies and consulates remain a favorite target of insurgents in Afghanistan, but many are protected by high walls and multiple gates, as well as security forces.

Putin: Russia Will Respect Ukraine's Election Results

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — Russia will recognize the outcome of Ukraine's presidential vote this weekend, President Vladimir Putin promised Friday, but he also voiced hope that Ukraine's new leader would halt the military operation against separatists in the east.
In Kiev, Ukraine's caretaker president urged all voters to take part in Sunday's crucial ballot to "cement the foundation of our nation." Yet pro-Russia insurgents were still battling government forces Friday in eastern Ukraine, where a vote boycott and threats against election workers were disrupting the prospects of the ballot taking place.
AP journalists in the east saw three dead from Friday's fighting a day after insurgents killed 16 Ukrainian soldiers at a checkpoint. One rebel leader said 16 more people died in fighting Friday — 10 soldiers, four rebels and two civilians —but there was no immediate way to verify his statement.
Speaking at an investment forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said Russia will "respect the choice of the Ukrainian people" and will work with the new leadership. He said Russia wants peace and order to be restored in its neighbor.
The Russian leader also voiced hopes of mending ties with the United States and the 28-nation European Union, which have slapped asset freezes and travel bans on members of Putin's entourage and had threatened to introduce more crippling sanctions if Russia tried to derail Sunday's vote in Ukraine.
Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies think-tank, said Putin's comments reflected a desire to avoid another round of Western sanctions. He added, however, that Russia's relations with Ukraine will be unlikely to normalize any time soon.

Baghdad bombings target Iraq Shia pilgrims

At least 24 Shia Muslim pilgrims have been killed in three bombings in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, officials say.

Suicide bombers targeted pilgrims walking along main roads in the western area of Mansour and in Bab al-Sharji, in the city centre, while a car bomb exploded in Urr, an eastern district.
Security had been increased to protect the tens of thousands of pilgrims going to the shrine of Moussa al-Kadhim.
They are marking the anniversary of the seventh Shia imam's death in 799.
Election results Thursday's deadliest attack happened in the Urr district, where a vehicle rigged with explosives blew up, killing at least 10 people, including seven children under 14 years of age, police told the Associated Press.
In Mansour, a man dressed in a long, black woman's robe, or abaya, blew himself up among a crowd of pilgrims, the AFP news agency reported. At least nine people were killed. The second suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in Bab al-Sharji, killing another five.

Mortar hits Assad gathering in Syria, killing at least 21

BEIRUT –  A mortar shell struck a large tent in southern Syria where supporters of President Bashar Assad had gathered for election campaigning, killing at least 21 people and wounding scores, opposition activists said Friday.
State media reported the mortar attack late Thursday, saying it killed and wounded an unspecified number of civilians inside the tent.

Assad, rarely seen in public since the start of Syria's 3-year-old conflict, has not been seen campaigning since he declared his candidacy last month and he was not at the gathering in the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising against his rule began in March 2011.
More than 160,000 people have been killed in the fighting as the revolt morphed into a civil war that has also sent millions fleeing for their lives and turned once-prosperous cities into rubble-strewn warzones.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Daraa. Rebels trying to overthrow Assad frequently fire mortar shells into Syria's major cities, including the capital, Damascus, from opposition-held suburbs.

Nigeria's Boko Haram Attack Village, Gun Down At Least 29 Farm Workers

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, May 22 (Reuters) - Suspected militants from Islamist group Boko Haram shot dead 29 farm workers as they tilled their fields in remote northeast Nigeria, a police source said on Thursday, amid a mounting insurgency increasingly targeting civilians.

The attackers destroyed most of the village of Chukku Nguddoa and wounded another 10 people on Wednesday, said the police source in Borno state, the heart the revolt that is piling political pressure on the government.

Boko Haram, which grabbed world headlines last month by kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls further north in Borno, has stepped up its five-year-old campaign to carve an Islamic state out of the religiously mixed oil producer.

Bomb attacks are growing more sophisticated, including two on the capital Abuja last month, and massacres of villagers in the area where Boko Haram is based are an almost daily occurrence.

Boko Haram initially attacked mostly security forces, government officials and sometimes Islamic clerics who spoke out against it.

Chocolate tycoon heads for landslide victory in Ukraine presidential election

Petro Poroshenko has faced down protesters and rivals to lead the opinion polls before the first round of voting on Sunday

For a man with presidential ambitions, it was not a propitious scene. Petro Poroshenko stood atop a bulldozer between a line of police and an angry crowd chanting expletives at him. Shouting into a loudhailer he urged calm, asking protesters to desist from storming the presidential headquarters in Kiev.
Hardcore elements in the crowd didn't like his speech; they responded with jeers of "dickhead" and "Jew trash". (Actually, Poroshenko is a Christian.) Someone dragged him off his perch. Others managed to rescue him from this seething frontline. Masked youths grabbed the tractor and used it as a battering ram to force a path though police. Clouds of smoke billowed across Ukraine's warring capital.
This was early December. Six months later Poroshenko is on the brink of becoming Ukraine's new president. Opinion polls suggest he will win the first round of Sunday's presidential election by a landslide. Such is his lead he may even beat his nearest rival, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in the first round, avoiding the need for a run-off vote on 15 June.
For Poroshenko, it has been a steep rise to popularity that begs two questions: how has he managed it? And will this support help him accomplish one of the toughest jobs in the world today: running Ukraine?
Softly spoken, articulate, and fluent in English, Poroshenko bears little resemblance to the bear-like ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych. A former foreign minister and minister of trade, Poroshenko is no political newbie. But he has managed to dodge the unpopularity that has engulfed the rest of Ukraine's governing class.

Leader of Sinai jihadist group which fired rockets on Eilat killed in Egypt

CAIRO - Shadi al-Menei, the head of a Sinai Peninsula Islamist militant group, was shot dead on Friday by unknown assailants, security sources said, days before Egypt holds elections to vote for a new president.
The security sources said al-Menei and five others were killed in a firefight while walking in Maghara in central Sinai.
Al-Menei was the head of Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, or "Defenders of Jerusalem," which was responsible for several recent attacks on security forces in Egypt.
A statement on the army spokesman's official Facebook page said the army executed an operation that resulted in the killing of six extremely dangerous criminal elements on Thursday. It did not name Menei and it was not immediately clear if the statement was referring to the same incident.
Separately, one security officer was shot dead by unknown assailants at a security checkpoint in the North Sinai town of Rafah, near the border with Israel, state news agency MENA reported early on Friday.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis   said it had carried out the rocket launches against Eilat, claiming responsibility for the January attack, adding that it was undeterred by Egyptian security sweeps.

'Top candidates' pose difficult problem for European leaders

Brussels:  A power struggle is looming  over who should, in effect, become the next chief executive of the world’s second largest democracy.
European parliamentary elections being held from May 22 to 25 come with the slogan “This time it’s different”. The next president of the European Commission - charged with proposing legislation, managing the budget and enforcing the law - will be nominated by heads of state in the European Council as before.
However, under the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, when choosing their nominee Angela Merkel & Co must now “take into account” whichever party wins the most seats in the 751-seat European Parliament, which must also vote to approve the Council’s choice.

The change is designed partly to put a face to European politics in the hope of reviving voter turnout, which has slumped from 62 per cent in 1979 to 43 per cent in 2009.
The political groupings of the centre-right European People’s Party, centre-left Socialists & Democrats, the Liberals and the European Left have each nominated a candidate, while the Greens picked two.

China sentences mining tycoon to death

 BEIJING: A Chinese court on Friday convicted a mining billionaire said to have links with former security tsar Zhou Yongkang of murder and sentenced him to death.
Liu Han led private company Hanlong, which once launched a billion-dollar bid for an Australian firm. He and his brother Liu Wei were found guilty of "organising and leading a mafia-style group", murder and other crimes, the Xianning Intermediate People's Court said.
They and three accomplices were sentenced to death.
The Liu brothers' gang, based in the southwestern province of Sichuan, killed eight people and wounded many others over nearly 20 years, the court said in a posting on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.
"Liu Han and Liu Wei had extremely malicious intentions, their acts were exceptionally atrocious, their social influences were extremely vile and their crimes and the consequences were extremely serious," it said. "They should be severely punished according to the law."
Another 31 accused were given penalties ranging from suspended death sentences -- normally commuted to life imprisonment -- to three years in jail, state media said.
Sichuan is one of the power bases of Zhou Yongkang, who once enjoyed vast power as China's security chief but is now at the centre of rumours about a corruption investigation. He has not been seen in public for months.

Castro to be named housing secretary

President Barack Obama is set to nominate San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as US housing secretary in a cabinet reshuffle.

The move elevates the profile of a young politician seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, analysts say.
Current Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan will become White House budget director.
If confirmed by the Senate, Mr Castro, 39, would become the highest-ranking Hispanic administration official.
He won a third term as mayor of the Texas city in 2013.
Mr Obama selected Mr Castro to deliver the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, a function Mr Obama himself filled in 2004 when he was running for US Senate.
Analysts say the San Antonio mayor has been mentioned as a potential running-mate for Hillary Clinton in 2016, if she decides to run for president, and a cabinet-level position would give him a national platform.
The outgoing secretary of the department of housing and urban development, Mr Donovan, will be elevated to director of the White House office of management and budget.
He will replace Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whom Mr Obama recently nominated to be US health secretary.
Mr Castro's nomination completes the shuffle begun after Kathleen Sebelius resigned from the department of health and human services after the botched rollout of the website for Mr Obama's healthcare law.

Dem Senate candidates break with Obama, call for Shinseki's resignation

Two high-profile Democratic Senate candidates have split with the Obama administration and called for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki's resignation, just days after President Obama stood by his embattled Cabinet member. 
Democrat Michelle Nunn, who's seeking Georgia's open Senate seat, said Friday that she hopes Shinseki will "step aside," citing the need for "new leadership." 

A day earlier, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky also called for new leadership as the VA investigates 26 facilities nationwide over allegations of treatment delays and deaths. 
Both decisions undoubtedly are colored by politics. Grimes and Nunn have sought to distance themselves from Obama as they court moderate voters -- both Democrats recently have declined to say whether they would have voted for ObamaCare. 
But the statements put added pressure on the administration to show they're fixing the problems at the VA, or consider making changes in leadership. The administration a week ago ousted the VA's top health official, Robert Petzel. But the so-called "resignation" swiftly was called into question by lawmakers who noted Petzel was already slated to retire this year.

Obama Surprises Tourists Outside The White House

President Barack Obama took a surprise walk around the White House on Wednesday, surprising Washington residents and tourists alike.
"The bear is loose!" he exclaimed to a crowd as he made his way to the Department of the Interior with a cadre of staff and Secret Service agents.

A year later, Obama's strategy shift on terrorism stalls

WASHINGTON — A year after President Barack Obama announced a major new counterterrorism strategy to take the country beyond the threats that flowed directly from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, much of the agenda he outlined remains unfinished or not even begun.
In an ambitious address delivered a year ago Friday at the National Defense University, Obama said that the core of al-Qaida was "on the path to defeat" and that the upcoming end of the war in Afghanistan had brought America to a "crossroads."
But many of the changes Obama outlined have proved easier said than done, including new rules governing the use of force abroad, increased public information on and congressional oversight of lethal attacks with drones, and efforts to move the CIA out of the killing business.
Some initiatives have become mired in internal debates, while others have taken a back seat to other pressing issues and perceived new terrorism dangers. Congress, while demanding faster change in some areas, has resisted movement in others.
In a Senate hearing Wednesday, irate lawmakers criticized senior administration officials over the lack of follow-up with one of the strategy's principal goals: Obama had said he was looking forward to "engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine and ultimately repeal" the nearly 13-year-old congressional authorization to use force against those individuals, groups and nations responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Las Vegas, Cincinnati out of the mix for 2016 GOP convention

(CNN) - Las Vegas and Cincinnati withdrew bids to host the 2016 GOP convention, the Republican National Committee announced Thursday.

Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and Kansas City are still in contention to host the convention where Republicans will officially choose their presidential nominee.
Site Selection Committee Chairwoman Enid Mickelsen said that Cincinnati and Las Vegas withdrew their bids.
"While the committee understands their decision, both cities made a compelling case for 2016 and would make excellent hosts should they pursue efforts to host a future RNC convention," Mickelsen said in a statement.
The RNC said Cincinnati dropped out of the process "based upon the criteria set forth by the RNC for the main arena" and Las Vegas withdrew based on criteria for an arena and "enough on-site preparatory time to accommodate the 2016 convention."
Representatives from each of the cities have been courting the RNC's Site Selection Committee for the past few months, making their formal pitches in March.
RNC staff visit each of the cities, and members of the Site Selection Committee are expected to choose the host city by late summer or early fall.
For a city, a convention is a costly affair as the host is expected to raise upwards of $60 million to help pay for it. But if managed correctly, a convention pays off as the surrounding communities are flooded with as many as 50,000 new visitors and the area is showcased on an international stage for weeks leading up to the event.
A number of factors are considered as the Site Selection Committee determines which city will hold the convention, including the ability to raise money, adequate infrastructure, public perception, potential electoral benefits, and ease of transporting delegates and visitors to and from the convention hall.
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