Weekend Gazette 072014

Sunday July 20th 2014

Gaza shelling by Israel 'most intense', dozens reported killed

Gaza has come under the most intense shelling since the launch of Israel's offensive, with more than 50 people reported killed in one district.

The deaths occurred at Shejaiya, east of Gaza City, Palestinian medics said. Eyewitnesses spoke of bodies lying in the streets.
Israel earlier said it had expanded its operation - launched 13 days ago - against Hamas militants.
A few hours later, it agreed to a two-hour humanitarian truce in Shejaiya.
The ceasefire would last from 13:30 to 15:30 local time (10:30-12:30 GMT), an Israeli military spokesman said.
But a BBC team on the ground reported an exchange of fire less than an hour after the truce began.
The death toll continued to rise at the weekend, with the number of Palestinians killed now more than 400 since the operation began, according to Palestinian health officials.
The majority of those killed are civilians, the UN says.
In other developments:

• Hamas claims it carried out a major attack on Israeli forces in Gaza, causing multiple casualties. There is no comment from the Israeli military on this
• There has been almost constant shelling by Israel in the past few hours, with tanks and troops reported on the move
• Hamas is continuing to fire rockets into Israel, with one landing in the city of Ashkelon
• UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to arrive in Qatar later to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas 

Related : Israel resumes firing, accuses Hamas of breaching 2-hour truce 

               Israelis Destroy Hamas Tunnels In Gaza Offensive

Fighting terrorists who move around in ambulances 

Hamas is an expert at embedding itself in the midst of the Palestinian civilian population and using it as human shields, to seek immunity from the army.
Israel’s decision to launch a ground offensive provides it with an important advantage in the war against Hamas.

A ground maneuver gives the IDF the ability to move in enemy territory, destroying targets from up close, while still deploying firepower from the air throughout.

It is a concept as old as Israeli military history. Today, however, Hamas represents the asymmetrical enemy that defines combat in our times.

Hamas is an expert at embedding itself in the midst of the Palestinian civilian population and using it as human shields, to seek immunity from the army.

In recent days, IDF sources reported spotting Hamas gunmen boarding ambulances in Gaza filled with children.

Rebels to give MH17 black boxes to aviation group, separatist leader says

The black boxes for the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 have been found, a Ukraine rebel leader said Sunday. 
Alexander Borodai said that the devices would be handed over to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The announcement came as international investigators and Ukrainian officials said that pro-Russia separatists forced emergency services to surrender the bodies of 196 victims of the plane crash and loaded them onto refrigerated trains bound for a rebel-held city.
Borodai said the bodies would remain in refrigerated containers at a train station in the town of Torez until the arrival of an international aviation delegation.
The surprising, rapid-fire developments Sunday morning came after a wave of international outrage over how the bodies of plane crash victims were being handled and amid fears that the armed rebels who control the territory where the plane came down could be tampering with the evidence.
Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile Thursday at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000 feet above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Both deny shooting down the plane. All those onboard the flight -- 283 passengers and 15 crew -- were killed.
Ukraine says Russia has been sending sophisticated arms to the rebels, a charge that Moscow denies.
The U.S. Embassy in Kiev issued a strong statement pointing to Russian complicity in arming the rebels, saying it has concluded "that Flight MH17 was likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine."  It said over the weekend of July 12-13, "Russia sent a convoy of military equipment with up to 150 vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and multiple rockets launchers" to the separatists. The statement also said Russia was training separatist fighters in southwest Russia, including on air defense systems.
The rebels have been strictly limiting the movements of international monitors and journalists at the crash site, which is near the Russian border, and Ukraine's Emergency Ministry said its workers were laboring under duress, overseen by the armed rebels.
Associated Press journalists saw reeking bodies baking in the summer heat Saturday, piled into body bags by the side of the road or still sprawled where they landed in the verdant farmland in eastern Ukraine after their plane was shot out of the sky.
By Sunday morning, AP journalists saw no bodies and no armed rebels at the crash site. Emergency workers were searching the sprawling fields only for body parts.
It was not immediately clear Sunday if the rebels and the Ukrainian government were working together or at odds with each other on recovering the bodies -- and from their comments, many of officials didn't appear to know either.
Separatists were not immediately available to comment Sunday. Despite the restrictions seen by journalists and observers at the crash site, Borodai insisted Saturday the rebels have not interfered with the work of observers.
Nataliya Khuruzhaya, a duty officer at the train station in Torez, 9 miles from the crash site, said she saw emergency workers loading plane victims' bodies Sunday morning into five sealed, refrigerated train cars.
She said the train was scheduled to head to the town of Ilovaysk, 22 miles further east toward the Russian border, but no instructions had been given about when it would leave or any possible destinations beyond Ilovaysk.
Related : Anti-Russia sentiment running deep in Malaysia after pro-Russia rebels blamed for     downing jet

Iraq: Car bombs in Baghdad 'kill 26'

A series of car bombs in the Iraqi capital have killed at least 26 people, police and medical officials say.

Five bombs went off across Baghdad on Saturday, with three blasts reportedly taking place in less than 10 minutes.
The mostly Shia neighbourhood of Abu Dashir was hit, as were the districts of Baiyaa, Jihad and Kadhimiya.
Iraq is experiencing an upsurge in instability. The government is battling Islamist militants, who have seized cities in the country's north-west.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Christians are fleeing the northern city of Mosul after militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) threatened to kill them unless they converted to Islam or paid a "protection tax".
The deadliest blast on Saturday hit Abu Dashir when a car bomb rammed into a police checkpoint, killing at least seven, officials said.

US Drone Strike In Pakistan Kills 11

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A U.S. drone fired several missiles at a sprawling compound in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan on Saturday, killing eleven militants, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The officials said the strike happened in Datta Khel, a town in North Waziristan, where the Pakistani military has been carrying out a major offensive against militants since last month. They said most of the slain men were members of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella group encompassing militant organizations across the tribal areas.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to media.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has called for overthrowing the Pakistani government in order to implement its hard-line version of Islamic law and end cooperation with the Americans in Afghanistan.
For several years now, Washington had pushed Pakistan to take action against militant groups operating in North Waziristan.
After assuming office a year ago, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried to resolve the issue through negotiations with the militants and urged the U.S. to refrain from drone strikes during the peace process.
But negotiations collapsed after militants attacked the country's biggest airport in the port city of Karachi on June 8, prompting the government to order military action in North Waziristan.

21 Egyptian border guards killed by gunmen

Gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked a border guard post Saturday in Egypt's western desert near Libya, killing 21 troops, the military said.
The attack targeted a checkpoint in the western desert governorate of Wadi el-Gedid, on the Farafra Oasis Road, more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Cairo, according to a statement on the official Facebook page of Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir, a military spokesman. Farafra is the country's western most oasis, near the border with Libya.
Samir said one of the gunmen's rockets struck a cache of weapons at the checkpoint, sparking an explosion. He said the attack killed 21 troops and forces later seized two car bombs before they exploded.
He identified the gunmen as "terrorists," but did not elaborate.
Another military official said about 20 gunmen in weapon-mounted vehicles took the checkpoint by surprise. Ensuing clashes killed three of the attackers, the official and the state news agency MENA said. A medic said some of the bodies were burned.
The official and medic spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

Iran nuclear talks deadline extended until November

Diplomats have agreed a four-month extension to the deadline for an agreement between Iran and world powers on Iran's nuclear programme.

The US says it will unblock $2.8bn in frozen Iranian funds, in return for Iran continuing to convert its stocks of 20%-enriched uranium into fuel.
The talks have aimed to persuade Iran to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
World powers suspect Iran seeks atomic weapons, which Iran denies.
The country insists that it is enriching uranium for use in nuclear power stations and for medical purposes.
Reuters reports that negotiations will now resume in September, with a final deadline set for 24 November.
"There are still significant gaps on some core issues which will require more time and effort," said a joint statement issued by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Boko Haram 'Piling Up Corpses' In Attack On Nigerian Town

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Boko Haram gunmen killed many villagers and set homes ablaze in a northeastern Nigerian town just 85 kilometers (53 miles) from the strategic center of Maiduguri before dawn Friday, according to survivors.
Residents of Damboa town called The Associated Press to say they were "piling up corpses."
Half the town is up in flames, say civilian defense fighters there according to Nigerian Vigilante Group spokesman Abbas Gava.
Well-armed Islamic extremists attacked as residents were preparing for the 5 a.m. dawn prayers and the civilian defense fighters could only resist with clubs and homemade shotguns, he said.
Damboa has been besieged for two weeks, since Islamic extremists on July 4 attacked a new tank battalion base set up on its outskirts. The Defense Ministry reported it repelled the attack and killed at least 50 insurgents, with the deaths of six soldiers including the commanding officer. But locals said the soldiers were driven from the base and that extremists twice have ambushed military convoys trying to reach it in the past week.
The militants had cut off access to the town from the south on Monday when they blew up a bridge further south. Damboa is on the main road south from Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.
Both Nigeria's military and Boko Haram have been claiming victories on the battlefield in the rapidly spreading Islamic insurgency in Africa's most populous nation and biggest oil producer.

Clashes between Libyan militias near Tripoli airport leave three dead

Week-long battle for control of Libya's main international airport resumes after ceasefire efforts fail

At least three people were killed when a stray rocket hit their house as rival Libyan militias exchanged heavy fire around Tripoli's international airport, according to a security official.
A powerful militia from the western city of Zintan, which controls the airport, has been engaged in a week-long battle for the facility with Islamist-led militias, including fighters from Misrata, to the east of Tripoli.
The bombardment resumed early on Sunday after ceasefire efforts failed, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The fighting is said to have killed two militiamen from Misrata and a civilian who died when a stray rocket hit his house.
A mortar shell hit a Libyan Arab Airlines plane and a column of black smoke could be seen rising from inside the airport, which has been closed since Monday.
Tripoli is witnessing one of its worst periods of violence since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in 2011. The rival militias, made up largely of former rebels, have forced a week-long closure of petrol stations and government offices.
Armed men have attacked vehicles carrying money from the central bank to local branches, forcing their closure.
In Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, gunmen killed an army officer on Saturday while he was driving home in his car, and early on Sunday a former special forces officer was shot dead in the downtown Salmani district, according to a local security official. The UN support mission in Libya said last week that it was withdrawing its staff temporarily because of the deteriorating security situation.

Tunisia orders crackdown after militants kill 14 soldiers

TUNIS: Tunisia on Saturday launched a crackdown on mosques and radio stations associated with hardlineIslamists after militants killed 14 soldiers in an area near the country's border with Algeria.

The move underscores the difficulty one of the Arab world's most secular countries faces in dealing with the rise of conservative Islamist movements and militants since the 2011 revolt that ousted autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and opened the way to democracy.

Tunisia's armed forces have been carrying out a campaign to flush out militants from their remote hideout in the Chaambi mountains on the border with Algeria. Some of the militants are tied to al-Qaida and 14 soldiers were killed this week when dozens of gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades attacked two army checkpoints in the region.

"The prime minister has decided to close immediately all the mosques that are not under the control of the authorities, and those mosques where there were reported celebrations over the deaths of the soldiers," the office of Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa said in a statement.

It said the government would also order the closure of radio stations, websites or television stations that publish messages from militant groups. More than 60 Islamists linked to militants had also been arrested since the attacks on the army checkpoints, the statement said.

It did not give any figures for mosques included in the crackdown or name any websites or media.

White House reportedly dismissed border crisis as 'local problem' in 2013

The Obama administration ignored a report to the Department of Homeland Security last year which predicted that a large number of unaccompanied children would arrive at America's southern border in the coming months, according to a published report. 
The Washington Post reported Saturday that a team of experts from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) submitted the 41-page report in August of 2013 after discovering a makeshift transportation depot manned by Border Patrol agents at the Fort Brown station in Brownsville, Texas. The report detailed how thirty agents were assigned to perform such tasks as washing the children's clothes, driving them to offsite showers, and making them sandwiches. 

The report said that an average of 66 children were taken into custody each day and more than 24,000 cycled through patrol stations in Texas alone in 2013. 
The study's leader, a former Border Patrol agent named Victor Manjarrez Jr., told the Post that the government had little reaction to the report's warning and viewed the situation as a "local problem." Manjarrez added that a crisis on the scale of what has developed over the past several months was "not on anyone's radar [even though] it was pretty clear this number of kids was going to be the new baseline."
Cecilia Munoz, President Obama's chief domestic policy adviser, told the Post that federal officials only realized this past May that the number of children crossing the border would exceed the Border Patrol's original estimate of 60,000 for the year. The Border Patrol has since revised that estimate to 90,000 children by the end of September.

Foreign Crises Grow More Challenging For Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — Surveying a dizzying array of international crises, President Barack Obama stated the obvious: "We live in a complex world and at a challenging time."
And then suddenly, only a day later, the world had grown much more troubling, the challenges even more confounding.
The downing Thursday of a passenger plane carrying nearly 300 people spread the impact of the standoff between Ukraine and Russia far around the globe. The prospect of more Mideast casualties was assured when Israel launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip after efforts to arrange a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed.
Yet there was a ray of hope elsewhere at week's end with the announcement that the U.S. and its negotiating partners had agreed to extend nuclear negotiations with Iran for four months rather than allowing the talks to collapse as a Sunday deadline neared.
Still, there's no guarantee of overcoming stubborn differences with Iran and reaching a final agreement. Obama also will have to find a way to stave off pressure from members of Congress, including some fellow Democrats, who see the extension as a stalling tactic by Iran and are anxious to further penalize Tehran.
"Increased economic pressure would strengthen our hand, but the administration opposes it," said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "It should welcome congressional efforts to ratchet up the economic pressure on Iran."

NASA celebrates 45th anniversary of first moon landing

Forty-five years ago today, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on another world. Armstrong's "one small step ... one giant leap" on the dusty lunar surface July 20, 1969, still stirs hearts.
On Monday, NASA will honour Armstrong, who died in 2012, with a renaming ceremony of the historic Operations and Checkout Building at Cape Canaveral, Fla., the launch site. Both Aldrin and Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot who orbited the moon, will be there.
"For those who may ask what they can do to honour Neil, we have a simple request," the Armstrong family said in a statement after his death. "Honour his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
Some other easy ways to get swept up in moon fever:

• Follow along on Twitter as the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum recreates, in 140 characters or less per tweet, the eight-day flight, which began with the Saturn V liftoff on July 16, 1969, and ended with a Pacific spashdown on July 24, 1969
• Tune in to NASA TV via cable, satellite or computer late Sunday night. The space agency will broadcast restored footage of Armstrong and Aldrin's lunar footsteps, beginning at 10:39 p.m. EDT, the exact time Armstrong opened the Eagle's hatch 45 years ago. Take pleasure in knowing this is the first major Apollo 11 anniversary in which the events fall on the same day of the week as they did in 1969.
• Check out your local science museum or planetarium for anniversary events. The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City, for example, has a bevy of astronauts on tap as part of its space and science festival. Aldrin is the featured speaker Friday. The five-day festival runs through Sunday.
• Slooh Observatory will broadcast high-definition images of the lunar surface Sunday night, along with a panel discussion, beginning at 8:30 P.M. EDT.
  
• Pull out the popcorn and relive NASA's early glory days through documentaries and films. Some choices: "The Right Stuff" from 1983, "For All Mankind" documentary from 1989, "Apollo 13" from 1995, "From the Earth to the Moon" TV miniseries from 1998, and "The Dish" from 2000, certainly the funniest and sweetest as it chronicles Australia's key role in the moon landing.

Obama adminstration opens Eastern Seaboard to offshore oil exploration for first time in decades

ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH, Fla. –  The Eastern Seaboard is being opened to offshore oil and gas exploration for the first time in decades with the Obama administration's approval Friday of sonic cannons that can pinpoint energy deposits deep beneath the ocean floor.
The decision dismays environmentalists worried about the immediate impact of the sonic cannons, which shoot sound waves 100 times louder than a jet engine through waters shared by endangered whales and turtles, as well as the offshore drilling that now requires such sophisticated mapping technology as a first step. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management disclosed its final approval first to The Associated Press ahead of an announcement later Friday.

The approval opens the Eastern Seaboard from the coast of Delaware down to Florida to exploration by energy companies that are preparing to apply for drilling leases in 2018, when a moratorium is set to expire. The bureau contends it has found a way to proceed while minimizing deaths and injuries of marine life, although it acknowledges that thousands of sea creatures will be harmed.
"The bureau has identified a path forward that addresses the need to update the nearly four-decade-old data in the region while protecting marine life and cultural sites," acting BOEM Director Walter Cruickshank said in a statement.  "The bureau's decision reflects a carefully analyzed and balanced approach that will allow us to increase our understanding of potential offshore resources while protecting the human, marine, and coastal environments."
The sonic cannons are already in use in the western Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska and other offshore oil operations around the world. They are towed behind boats, sending strong pulses of sound into the ocean every 10 seconds or so. The pulses reverberate beneath the sea floor and bounce back to the surface, where they are measured by hydrophones. Computers then translate the data into high resolution, three-dimensional images.
"It's like a sonogram of the earth," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association in Washington DC. "You can't see the oil and gas, but you can see the structures in the earth that might hold oil and gas."

West Kelowna wildfire: Firefighters contain 30% of fire threatening homes

Ground crews putting out hot spots above West Kelowna have been putting in long hours of tiring manual labour, but said Saturday that they appeared to be gaining ground on the Smith Creek wildfire.
"It's a pretty good fire, but controllable, for sure," said Jake Sparks, a firefighter for the past seven years.
Sparks said his team started three days ago, chopping and digging into smouldering stumps and patches of forest floor on steep slopes above West Kelowna.
They aim to work 12-hour shifts, but end up putting in closer to 16 hours each day.
He says the hardest part of the work is keeping properly fed and hydrated, and staying alert despite the heat and inevitable exhaustion.
"Making sure you keep your head up — the swivel — watching trees come down. Just all around kind of keeping your head in the game," he said.
The tops of many trees are burnt and brittle, and clumps of charred wood keep falling down around the firefighters, Sparks explained. But overall, things are looking up in the firefighting effort, he said.
"Everything is pretty good. These ministry guys are all doing their jobs, and it's awesome."

One third contained

B.C.'s Wildfire Management Branch said five helicopters, multiple air tanker groups, and 75 men and women from the Wildfire Management Branch and local fire departments were working at the Smith Creek wildfire Friday, and even more resources would be arriving Saturday.
Tracy Wynnyk, the fire information officer for the area, said the fire that has been threatening close to 1,100 homes in West Kelowna has been 30 per cent contained, up from 20 per cent on Friday.
"Right now, things are looking really good," she said.
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