Gazette 05-27-14

Tuesday May 27th 2014

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Army 'recaptures Ukraine airport'

Ukraine's interior ministry says the military is now in full control of the airport in the eastern city of Donetsk after a day of bloody clashes.

At least 30 pro-Russia separatists were killed, the insurgents say, after an attempt to take over the airport early on Monday.
New President Petro Poroshenko had vowed to tackle "terrorists" in the east "within hours, not months".
Meanwhile, the OSCE says it has lost contact with a monitoring team.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said four of its monitors were on a routine mission east of Donetsk. Contact was lost at 18:00 (16:00 GMT) on Monday and has not been re-established.
A spokesman told the BBC the monitors were Turkish, Swiss, Estonian and Danish, and all were male.
Seven international military observers linked to the OSCE were taken captive in eastern Ukraine in April and held for a week before being released.

Russia urges Ukrainian president to launch talks
MOSCOW: Russia promised today to assist efforts by Ukraine's president-elect if he moves to negotiate a peaceful end to the unrest in eastern Ukraine, but strongly warned him against trying to score a quick military victory against the rebels.

Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov urged an end to fighting in eastern Ukraine, where government forces fought insurgents Monday over Ukraine's second-largest airport in Donetsk, using jets and helicopter gunships. Dozens were reported killed.

Petro Poroshenko, who won Ukraine's presidential vote on Sunday, pledged to negotiate with the east but also vowed to uproot the pro-Russia separatists.

Lavrov warned Poroshenko against trying to win a quick military victory before his inauguration, saying that it would be "unlikely to create favourable conditions for a hospitable welcome in the Donetsk region."

He promised that Russia will support Poroshenko's efforts to launch a dialogue with the insurgents.

"We expect him to act in the interests of the entire Ukrainian people, and if he does so, we will be his serious and reliable partner," Lavrov said at a briefing.

The US and the European Union have slapped travel bans and asset freezes on members of President Vladimir Putin's inner circle in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and promised more sanctions if Moscow tried to grab more land from Ukraine.

Lavrov said Moscow had no intention of doing that, lashing out at the West for what he called a "ridiculous" search for a pretext to punish Russia. 
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Suicide attack kills at least 17 in Baghdad, officials say 

BAGHDAD –  A suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden belt on Tuesday in a mosque in busy commercial area in central Baghdad, killing at least 17 people, Iraqi officials said, as the country remains without a new government following last month's national elections.
The bomber entered the Shiite mosque in the Shorja market in downtown Baghdad as worshippers were heading inside to attend noon prayers, a police officer said. The explosion wounded 29 other people, he added.

Inside the mosque, furniture lay overturned, walls were pockmarked with shrapnel and the ground was littered with shattered glass. Outside the mosque, blast barriers were stained with blood.
Also in Baghdad, a bomb went off in an outdoor vegetable market in the eastern Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, killing two civilians and wounding five others, police said. And two policemen were killed and six other people wounded when a bomb hit a police patrol in the southern Dora district, another police officer said.
Three medical official confirmed causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

Syria UN chemical weapons inspectors 'attacked'

A convoy of chemical weapons inspectors and UN staff that was travelling to a site of an alleged chlorine gas attack in Syria has come under attack.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said they were all safe and well, and were travelling back to their operating base.
It did not say whether they had been kidnapped in Hama province, as the Syrian government earlier claimed.
OPCW director general, Ahmet Uzumcu, expressed his concern for their safety.
"Our inspectors are in Syria to establish the facts in relation to persistent allegations of chlorine gas attacks," he said in a statement.
"Their safety is our primary concern, and it is imperative that all parties to the conflict grant them safe and secure access."
'Hijacked' The OPCW inspectors were trying to reach the rebel-held village of Kafr Zaita, where there have been six alleged chlorine attacks in two months.

Report: Hamas and Fatah agree on make-up of unity government, name ministers 

GAZA - Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas agreed on the make-up of a national unity government on Tuesday in the most significant step yet toward healing their seven-year rift.
The two groups said they had decided on a list of independent, technocrat ministers who will run the government pending elections in at least six months - moves they hope will revive institutions paralyzed since the parties fought a brief civil war in 2007.
Officials from the two sides told a news conference in the Gaza Strip that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will make a formal announcement of the new government later this week after choosing a religious affairs minister.
"The viewpoints of the Hamas and Fatah movements will be presented to President [Abbas] to give his final decision on the government line-up," Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmed said.
The deal cements an initial unity pledge the two parties announced on April 23, just as US-backed peace talks Abbas was holding with Israel were collapsing.
Those negotiations now appear to be totally stalled, yet both Abbas and his Israeli counterparts say they seek more talks under the right conditions.
Israel objects to the reconciliation moves and regards Hamas as a terrorist group.

Source: Nigerian President Nixed Deal To Free Kidnapped Girls

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Apparent disagreement has emerged between Nigeria's military chiefs and the president over how to rescue nearly 300 schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists, with the military saying use of force could get the hostages killed and the president reportedly ruling out demands for a prisoner exchange.
Defense chief Air Marshal Alex Badeh announced Monday night that the military has located the girls, but offered no way forward. "We can't go and kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back," he said.
Previous military attempts to free hostages have led to the prisoners being killed by their abductors, including the deaths of a British and an Italian engineer in northern Sokoto town in March 2012.
A human rights activist close to mediators said a swap of detained extremists for the girls was negotiated a week ago but fell through because President Goodluck Jonathan refused to consider an exchange. The activist spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive.
Britain's Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds, said two weeks ago that the Nigerian leader had told him categorically he would not consider a prisoner swap.
Community leader Pogu Bitrus of Chibok, the town from which the girls were abducted on April 15, says authorities are speaking with "discordant voices" and the president appears under pressure to negotiate.

China accuses US of internet surveillance on its leaders

China has accused the US of using internet surveillance to spy on its leaders and key institutions.

A report released by a government agency said that China had been a main target for US spies, who had focused on government officials, businesses and mobile phone users.
It called the behaviour "brazen" and a "gross violation of human rights".
Last week the US charged five Chinese army officers with cyber-espionage.
The report by the China Internet Media Research Centre looked at claims made by US whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and said that several government agencies had confirmed the existence of spying.
"As a superpower, the United States takes advantage of its political, economic, military and technological hegemony to unscrupulously monitor other countries, including its allies," said an extract of the report published in the Guardian.
Hacking conference ban "The United States' spying operations have gone far beyond the legal rationale of 'anti-terrorism' and have exposed its ugly face of pursuing self-interest in complete disregard of moral integrity."
The report also said that the US was violating international law and breaching human rights.

Chinese police: 5 terrorism suspects detained in northwest, bomb materials seized

BEIJING –  Police in China's restive northwest foiled a terror plot by detaining five suspects and seizing 1.8 tons of bomb-making materials, the regional government said Tuesday, five days after a market bombing in the region killed dozens of people.
Authorities in the Hotan section of the Xinjiang region destroyed two bomb-making workshops in the latest raid on Monday, the regional government said on its official Tianshan Net website.

The Muslim region, home to the Turkish-speaking ethnic minority of Uighurs, has seen rising violence that China blames on secession-seeking terrorists. Uighurs complain of restrictive and discriminatory policies and practices by the government and the dominant ethnic majority of Han Chinese.
An attack last week in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi blamed on Uighur terrorists left 43 people dead when men rammed vehicles through a vegetable market and tossed explosives. Police say four of the men were killed in the explosions and a fifth was arrested. All five were from the Hotan area, police say.
Tianshan said the suspects detained in Hotan had planned a similar scheme. It said the suspects had watched materials promoting violence and religious extremism. The report did not identify the suspects' identity but all have Uighur names.

Vietnam accuses China as boat sinks

A Chinese fishing vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in the disputed South China Sea, Vietnamese state media reported Tuesday, in an incident likely to sharpen already dangerously high tensions between the two nations over their overlapping claims in the waters.
The reports in the Tuoi Tre newspaper and other media said the incident occurred about 18 miles (30km) from a large oil rig China deployed on 1 May in a section of the sea claimed by both countries. The move by Beijing infuriated Hanoi and set off violent anti-China protests.
China's official Xinhua news agency countered that the Vietnamese vessel capsized after "harassing and colliding" with the Chinese boat.
"Crew aboard the boat were saved after their ship jostled a fishing boat from Dongfang city in southern China's Hainan province and overturned in the waters near China's Xisha Islands," Xinhua said, citing a government source.
China's government had launched solemn representations with Vietnam over the incident, Xinhua said.
A Vietnamese coastguard officer said earlier on Tuesday that the Chinese boat had rammed and sunk the Vietnamese fishing vessel.
Vietnam sent patrol ships to confront the rig and China has deployed scores of vessels to protect it. The two sides have been involved in a tense standoff, with boats occasionally colliding.
The countries have long sparred over who owns what in the oil and gas-rich waters. Incidents between fishing crews are common.

Iran confirms first cases of deadly Mers infection

Two sisters from Kerman province tested positive for the virus that kills around a third of those it infects.
One sister is in critical condition and the other is receiving treatment, the health ministry's centre for disease control and prevention said.
Mers has been spreading throughout Iran's close neighbour Saudi Arabia.
A recent upsurge of infections in Saudi Arabia is of concern because of the influx of pilgrims from around the world expected from late June for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
There is no vaccine or specific treatment for Mers, which has killed more than 175 people in Saudi Arabia.
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GOP pressing Obama to confront Russia over nukes

Congress is stepping up pressure on the White House to confront Russia over allegations that it is cheating on a key nuclear arms treaty -- a faceoff that could further strain U.S.-Moscow relations and dampen President Barack Obama's hopes to add deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals to his legacy.
Butting heads with Russian President Vladimir Putin over compliance with a 26-year-old treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons is not something that fits into Obama's "reset" with Russia, which already was stalled after Russia granted asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. But the issue has been simmering for a few years and Republicans on Capitol Hill want Obama to address it head-on.

The Russians are accused of testing a new ground-launched cruise missile in violation of the treaty. Russian officials say they have looked into the allegations and consider the matter closed.
It's unclear why the administration, which has raised the issue with Russia through diplomatic channels, doesn't want to publicly blow the whistle on Moscow's alleged violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed in 1987. The treaty banned all U.S. and Russian land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 miles and 3,400 miles.
There are several theories: The U.S. doesn't want Russia to pull out of the treaty altogether, which would be embarrassing for a president who, shortly after taking office, declared his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

Republicans Seek Election Edge With Benghazi, IRS Controversies

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican strategy for the fall elections seemed set: hammer Democrats on the health care law and "jobs, jobs, jobs."

As Democrats show increasing confidence on those fronts, however, House Republicans are gambling that ramping up new inquiries into old controversies involving the Internal Revenue Service and Libya will energize conservative voters without turning off moderates.

Over Democrats' heated objections, House Republicans voted this month to hold an IRS official in contempt for refusing to testify. They also launched a new investigation into the September 2012 terrorist attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Democrats say the moves reek of political opportunism and desperation.

Regulators add new safety requirements to Keystone pipeline

WASHINGTON –  Safety regulators have quietly placed two extra conditions on construction of TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oil pipeline after learning of potentially dangerous construction defects involving the southern leg of the Canada-to-Texas project.
The defects -- high rates of bad welds, dented pipe and damaged pipeline coating -- have been fixed. But the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration wants to make sure similar problems don't occur during construction of the pipeline's controversial northern segment, which is on hold pending a decision by the Obama administration.

One condition requires TransCanada to hire a third-party contractor chosen by the pipeline safety agency to monitor the construction and make reports to the safety administration on whether the work is sound.
The second requires TransCanada to adopt a quality management program to ensure "this pipeline is -- from the beginning -- built to the highest standards by both Keystone personnel and its many contractors."
The conditions are buried near the end of the 26 appendices in a voluminous environmental impact statement on Keystone XL released by the State Department on Jan. 31.
Most of Appendix Z is devoted to 57 well-known "special conditions" that TransCanada agreed to three years ago. But conditions 58 and 59 are listed on an additional page.
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VA crisis echoes Obamacare's stumbles: 'Drip, drip, drip'

If it sounded familiar when President Obama vowed to fix the problems plaguing the Veterans Affairs medical system, that’s because it was.
The drumbeat of his response this week — defending the administration’s record, declaring his anger at the mess-ups, pledging to straighten things out — almost completely echoed Obama’s reaction to the fouled-up beginnings of his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act.
A simple quiz illustrates the point. Guess which — Obamacare or the VA — the president was talking about when he said each of the following things:
1. “Nobody is madder than me about the fact that [it] isn’t working as well as it should.”
2. ”We have to be honest that there are and will continue to be areas where we’ve got to do a lot better.”
3. “It is something that we intend to fix.” 
4.  “Listen, if somebody has mismanaged or engaged in misconduct, not only do I not want them getting bonuses, I want them punished.” 
The answers: 1. Obamacare. 2. The VA. 3. Obamacare. 4. The VA.
Add to that the baying desire for instant solutions that attends the nation’s political controversies, and almost every crisis seems to roll into the last.

This week, calls rumbled for the firing of the secretary of Veterans Affairs, Vietnam veteran and career Army man Eric Shinseki, just as six months ago there were demands for the head of Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services who oversaw the healthcare rollout. (Sebelius eventually announced her resignation in early April, after months of sign-ups brought a more successful sheen to Obamacare.)

Obama to lay out defense of foreign policy in West Point speech

(Reuters) - Stung by criticism, President Barack Obama will use a speech on Wednesday to launch a sweeping defense of his approach to foreign policy, one that he will say is reliant on multilateral diplomacy instead of military interventions.
Obama is to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the first in a series of speeches that he and top advisers will use to explain U.S. foreign policy in the aftermath of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and lay out a broad vision for the rest of his presidency.
The president has come under withering fire in recent months for what his critics say is a passive approach to foreign policy, one that has allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to flex his muscle in Ukraine, and left the Syrian civil war to fester and China to threaten its neighbors in the South China Sea.
Shortly after a trip to Asia late in April during which he strongly defended his incremental approach, he directed aides to frame a speech to explain his foreign policy and how he plans to handle world hot spots during his remaining two-and-a-half years in office.
"You will hear the president discuss how the United States will use all the tools in our arsenal without over-reaching," a White House official said on Saturday. "He will lay out why the right policy is one that is both interventionist and internationalist, but not isolationist or unilateral."
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