Gazette 062314

Monday June 23rd 2014

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Israeli air strikes target Syria after Golan death

The military said it had attacked nine targets in response to the killing of a 15-year-old boy in a strike in the occupied Golan Heights on the border between the two countries on Sunday.
Two others, including the boy's father, an Israeli defence contractor, were injured when a blast hit their vehicle.
Israel called the boy's death the most substantial incident in the Golan since start of the Syrian conflict in 2011.
It is unclear whether Syrian rebels or government forces were behind the incident.
'Everyone loved him' Israeli military spokesman, Lt Col Peter Lerner, told the Associated Press news agency the attack from Syria was "clearly intentional" but it was unclear whether the blast in the area of Tel Hazeka near the Quneitra crossing was the result of mortar fire, a roadside bomb or shelling.
He described it as "an unprovoked act of aggression against Israel and a direct continuation to recent attacks that occurred in the area".

Egypt court sentences three Al-Jazeera reporters to seven years each in prison

CAIRO –  An Egyptian court on Monday convicted three journalists from Al-Jazeera English and sentenced them to seven years in prison each on terrorism-related charges in a case that has brought an outcry from rights groups.
The sentences were handed down against Australian correspondent Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian acting Cairo bureau chief Mohammed Fahmy, and Egyptian producer Baher Mohammed, who also received an extra three years in prison on separate charges.

"I swear they will pay for this," Fahmy shouted angrily from the defendants' cage after the sentences were announced. Greste raised his fists in the air.
"They just ruined a family," said Fahmy's brother Adel, who was attending the session. He said they would appeal the verdict but added that he had little faith in the system. "Everything is corrupt," he said.
The judge also handed 10-year sentences to two British journalists and a Dutch journalist who were not in Egypt and being tried in absentia. Two defendants among 14 others on trial in the case were acquitted, including the son of Mohammed el-Beltagy, a senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Baghdad Residents Are Living In Fear Of Militants

BAGHDAD (AP) — "Allah, please make our army victorious," rang out the despairing voice of a worshipper making his way through a crowd to reach the ornate enclosure of the Baghdad tomb of a revered Shiite imam. Others in the crystal and marble mosque somberly read from the Quran or tearfully recited supplications.
"We pray for the safety of Iraq and Baghdad," said Mohammed Hashem al-Maliki, a Shiite, squatting on the marble plaza outside the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kazim in northern Baghdad. "I live close by, and I tell you I have not seen people this sad or worried in a long time," the 51-year-old said as his 10-year-old daughter, Zeinab, listened somberly.
While the Iraqi capital is not under any immediate threat of falling to the Sunni militants who have captured a wide swath of the country's north and west, battlefield setbacks and the conflict's growing sectarian slant is turning this city of 7 million into an anxiety-filled place waiting for disaster to happen.

Last of Syria's chemical weapons shipped out

The last of Syria's declared chemical weapons have been shipped out of the country for destruction, the international watchdog OPCW says.

"The ship has just left the port," the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu, said in The Hague.
The operation to destroy Syria's chemical weapons arsenal is several months behind schedule.
More than 160,000 people have died in three years of the Syrian conflict.
The operation to completely destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile was meant to have been completed by 30 June.
Fighting and the threat of attack by rebel groups severely delayed the removal of the weapons, analysts say.

Indian forces fire on Kashmiri protesters; 1 killed and 4 wounded

SRINAGAR, India –  Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir say one person was killed and four others were wounded when government forces fired their weapons to disperse demonstrators protesting the death of a suspected rebel in an earlier gunbattle.
A police officer said local residents clashed with troops and tried to burn an armored vehicle on Monday in Sopore, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) northwest of Srinagar, Kashmir's main city. The protest occurred soon after an 18-hour gunbattle between militants and Indian troops in which the suspected rebel was killed.

The police officer spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
Nearly a dozen rebel groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan since 1989. More than 68,000 people have died in the conflict.

Taliban Frees Hostages Abducted In Afghanistan 2 Weeks Ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's chief electoral officer resigned Monday in a bid to resolve a political crisis over allegations of massive fraud in the runoff presidential vote earlier this month.

Zia ul-Haq Amarkhail told reporters Monday that he denies any involvement in fraud but he is stepping down "for the national interest."

One of the two candidates, Abdullah Abdullah has said his campaign monitors had recorded ballot box stuffing and other irregularities. He suspended cooperation with the vote counting process and demanded Amarkhail be suspended. The crisis has threatened what Western officials had hoped would be a peaceful transfer of authority.

Amarkhail defended the conduct of the June 14 balloting and called on Abdullah to resume relations with the Independent Election Commission and honor an agreement he had signed to respect its decisions.

US unlocks military aid to Egypt, backing President Sisi

The US has revealed it has released $575m (£338m) in military aid to Egypt that had been frozen since the ousting of President Mohammed Morsi last year.

The news came as Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo just two weeks after former army chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was sworn in as president.
After talks with the new leader, Mr Kerry stressed the importance of upholding the rights of all Egyptians.
Mr Sisi won May elections, vowing to tackle "terrorism" and bring security.
The retired field marshal overthrew Mr Morsi last July amid mass protests against his rule.
He has since been pursuing a crackdown on Mr Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which urged a boycott of the 26-28 May elections. Liberal and secular activists also shunned the poll in protest at the curtailing of civil rights.
'Difficult years of transition' State department officials said the military aid was released to the authorities in Cairo about 10 days ago, after getting a green light from Congress.
The funds - from the annual $1.5bn of chiefly military aid - will mainly be used to pay existing defence contracts.

North Korea Faces Worst Drought In Over A Decade

SEOUL, June 23 (Reuters) - North Korea's rivers, streams and reservoirs are running dry in a prolonged drough, state media said on Monday, prompting the isolated country to mobilize some of its million-strong army to try to protect precious crops.

The drought is the worst in North Korea for over a decade, state media reports have said, with some areas experiencing low rainfall levels since 1961.

Office workers, farmers and women have been mobilized to direct water into the dry floors of fields and rice paddies, the official KCNA news agency said.

In the 1990s, food shortages led to a devastating famine which killed an estimated million people but gave rise to a fledgling black market that in some areas now provides the food the government can no longer supply.

Linda Lewis, of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-led NGO, confirmed the media reports and said managers on its North Korean partner farms had seen lower-than-usual rainfall levels in March and May.

"They expressed concern about 'serious drought' conditions and the impact this was having on spring plowing and paddy field preparation," Lewis told Reuters via email.

In some areas, she said, farm managers had experienced 70 days without rain.

Afghan election crisis: 'stuffed sheep' recordings suggest large-scale fraud

Audio released by Abdullah Abdullah's campaign allegedly capture senior election official conspiring with team of rival candidate Ashraf Ghani.

Afghanistan's leadership crisis has deepened after one presidential candidate released audio recordings that he said captured a senior election official conspiring to commit large-scale fraud using the code word "stuffed sheep" to discuss illegally filled ballot boxes.
In 15 minutes of sometimes slightly surreal conversation, two men urge an official to fire election staff with suspect loyalties and replace them with known supporters, ramp up plans for vote buying and ballot stuffing, and close down polling stations in areas thought to be unsympathetic.
"Take the sheep into the mountain and bring them back stuffed," one man says, before apparently lamenting the growing cost of buying votes. "The price of goats and sheep has gone up these days," he says ruefully.
A campaign manager for former mujahideen doctor Abdullah Abdullah on Sunday said one speaker in that conversation was a close aide of the country's chief electoral officer, Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, although he refused to reveal the source of the recordings or offer any verification of the speakers' identity.
He claimed that the other man was from the campaign team of Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat and author of the book Fixing Failed States. Ghani appears to have a majority of votes in the 14 June run-off against Abdullah but is accused by his rival of cheating.
A two-stage vote that was initially hailed as a triumph for the Afghan people and their fledging democracy, after Taliban threats failed to deter millions from turning out to cast their ballots, has since descended into a tense standoff with no clear path to a resolution.
Abdullah announced last week that he was withdrawing from the election process, accusing incumbent Hamid Karzai and Amarkhil of helping Ghani rig the vote, with assistance from government and election officials around the country.
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Israel to renew demolition of terrorists’ homes 

Israel will renew its controversial policy – discontinued in 2005 – of destroying the homes of terrorists as a deterrence measure, diplomatic sources said Monday.

The decision came at a recent security cabinet meeting, and will be implemented – subject to court approval – against the home of Ziad Awad, the terrorist suspect arrested last month with his son Azzadin Ziad Hassan for the Passover eve murder near Kiryat Arba of Baruch Mizrahi, and the injuring of his wife and one of their children.

The sources said that the government intended to increasingly ask the courts to allow the punitive house demolitions, which they said have proven to be successful in the past.

According to B’Tselem, Israel demolished some 666 houses as punishment for terrorist attacks during the years of the second intifada, from 2001 until the practice was discontinued in February 2005. 

Kenyan jets hit al-Shabaab bases in Somalia, kill 80: Report

MOGADISHU: Kenyan fighter jets have attacked two bases belonging to Islamist al-Shabaab insurgents in Somalia and killed at least 80 militants, African Union peacekeepers there said on Monday.

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), whose soldiers launched a new offensive against al-Shabaab this year, said Kenyan planes carried out the raids on Anole and Kuday in the southern Lower Jubba region. It did not say when they took place.

"The air strikes in Anole left more than 30 al-Shabaab fighters dead, three technical vehicles and one Land Cruiser loaded with ammunition destroyed," AMISOM said. More than 50 rebels were killed in the Kuday raid, it added.

Kenya first sent its troops into neighbouring Somalia in 2011 after several attacks inside its territory that it blamed on al-Shabaab, and later joined the peacekeeping force.

The militants have since carried out a string of assaults to punish Kenya for its intervention. Al-Shabaab fighters killed at least 67 people in a raid on a Nairobi shopping mall last year.

AMISOM said alShabaab had lost control of more than 10 major towns in the new push by African troops, including soldiers from Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Burundi and Sierra Leone.

Iraqi leaders seen as desperate as Kerry arrives in Baghdad

BAGHDAD –  Choppering into Baghdad for his first visit to Iraq since an army of Sunni insurgents began seizing major cities in an advance toward the capital, Secretary of State John Kerry began a series of critical meetings with key Iraqi politicians, in an effort to prod them towards the swift formation of a new central government.
With tensions in Iraq running high, security for the secretary's visit was extremely tight, with journalists accompanying him forbidden from reporting his trip to Baghdad until the C-17 military plane that transported the traveling party from Amman, Jordan touched down at the airport outside the capital. 

Kerry met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the latter's residence, with the Iraqi foreign minister and other senior officials present, for an hour and 40 minutes. "That was good!" Kerry could be heard exclaiming, as he and his delegation exited. Hours earlier, however, fighters from ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, had recently captured new territory at border crossings near Syria and Jordan. 
A senior State Department official, briefing the reporters traveling with Kerry via a background conference call conducted from Iraq, described al-Maliki, a Shiite, and other senior figures in the Iraqi government – regardless of religious affiliation – as deeply unnerved by the ISIS offensive. ISIS is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization.

South Dakota Republican Party Passes Resolution Calling For Obama's Impeachment

The South Dakota Republican Party passed a resolution on Saturday calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama.
Delegates at the party's annual convention in Rapid City voted 191-176 in favor of the measure, which claims that the president has "violated his oath of office in numerous ways," according to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
Specifically, the resolution cited the trade of five Taliban detainees for U.S. Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, as well as Obama's much-maligned campaign promise that people would be able to keep their existing health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and a recent EPA proposal that would curb emissions from coal power plants.
"Therefore, be it resolved that the South Dakota Republican Party calls on our U.S. Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States," the resolution reads, according to the Argus Leader.
Allen Unruh, the delegate who sponsored the resolution, said he had a "thick book on impeachable offenses of the president." He called on South Dakota to "send a symbolic message that liberty shall be the law of the land."
Talk of impeaching the president even made a return to Capitol Hill this week, when, after a discussion about immigration reform, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Penn.) claimed that the House could "probably" impeach Obama if the matter was brought to the floor.
"You know, the problem is, you know, what do you do for those that say, 'Impeach him for breaking the laws or bypassing the laws'?" Barletta said in a June 16 interview. "You know, could that pass in the House? It probably could. Is the majority of the American people in favor of impeaching the president? I'm not sure."

Border Patrol scraps plan to fly illegal immigrants to California from Texas

The Border Patrol shelved plans to fly nearly 300 Central American illegal immigrants to California from Texas late Sunday.

Paul Beeson, chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector, had told the Associated Press Saturday that two flights, each carrying approximately 140 passengers, would fly to San Diego and El Centro, approximately 100 miles east. Beeson also told AP that the flights would continue every three days and mainly carry families with children.


On Sunday, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesman told the AP that the flights would not proceed as scheduled Monday, but did not give a reason. Ralph DeSio said that Beeson's statements were accurate at the time he made them.

"This whole thing is in a very fluid state," DeSio said. "I'm not sure if the plans will be reactivated but, as we're speaking here this moment, it has been canceled. Tomorrow is another day."

The government has been struggling to cope with a surge of Central Americans entering Texas' Rio Grande Valley, where the Border Patrol has made more than 174,000 arrests since Oct. 1. Immigration and Customs Enforcement decides whether families with young children and adults remain in custody or are released while they are in deportation proceedings.

Could Clinton’s wealth be a political liability?

When Hillary Rodham Clinton said this month that she was once “dead broke,” it was during an interview in which she led ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer through her $5 million Washington home, appointed like an ambassador’s mansion. Mahogany antiques, vibrant paintings and Oriental rugs fill the rooms. French doors open onto an expertly manicured garden and a turquoise swimming pool, where Clinton recently posed for the cover of People magazine.
On her current book tour, the former secretary of state has traveled the country by private jet as she has for many of her speaking engagements since stepping down as secretary of state last year. Her fee is said to be upwards of $200,000 per speech; the exceptions tend to be black-tie charity galas, where she collects awards and catches up with friends such as designer Oscar de la Renta and Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
Such scenes reveal a potentially serious political problem for Clinton as she considers a 2016 presidential run: She and her husband are established members of the 1 percent, leading lives far removed from the millions of middle-class voters who swing elections.

U.S. House Republican leader says all options open in Iraq

(Reuters) - The newly elected No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Sunday he would not rule out sending American troops to Iraq to help Baghdad in its fight against a Sunni insurgency.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was elected last week to the majority leader's post in the House, also said President Barack Obama needed to lay out an overall strategy for dealing with terrorism in the Middle East region.
Asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether he would support putting "boots on the ground" in Iraq, McCarthy said: "I'd put everything on the table. But most people, when you talk to them, don't think boots on the ground work right now."
Obama announced last week he was sending up to 300 military advisers to Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, which is fighting an insurgency led by the Sunni militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Obama, who withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, has ruled out sending troops back there and has urged the Baghdad government to take urgent steps to heal the country's sectarian rift.
McCarthy said he supported Obama's decision to send the advisers, which will staff joint operations centers for intelligence sharing and planning, but he also called on Obama to outline a broader strategy for combating terrorism.
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