Gazette 080114

Friday August 1st 2014

Netanyahu to Kerry: Hamas bears responsibility for consequences of its actions 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told US Secretary of State John Kerry Friday afternoon that Israel would take “all necessary measures” against those calling for its destruction and using terror against its citizens.
Netanyahu's conversation with Kerry came just hours after two IDF soldiers were killed, and one feared abducted, during an attack that took place an hour after the US and UN brokered cease-fire went into effect.
Netanyahu said that the terrorist organizations in Gaza would bear responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Netanyahu called the attack a flagrant violation of the US and UN-brokered cease-fire arrangement.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, representing the left-flank of the the eight-person security cabinet, wrote on her Facebook page that the IDF was justifiably now operating on the ground “with the full backing of us all.”
“Hamas has paid, and will yet pay a heavy price,” Livni said. Then, in an obvious reference to the fact that the attack took place after Hamas accepted the US and UN brokered cease-fire, Livni added, “If it was not yet clear enough to everyone, now the world knows who is responsible for the destruction and blood” in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the White House condemned the reported Hamas attack on Israeli soldiers as a violation of the recently instated humanitarian cease-fire.
"That would be a rather barbaric violation of the cease-fire agreement," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on CNN, and called on Hamas to release the abducted Israeli soldier. Earnest called on Hamas to release the Israeli soldier.
The United States urged the international community to condemn the Hamas cease-fire violation in the "strongest possible terms," Earnest said.
"And we would encourage those who have influence with Hamas to get them back on to the terms of the cease-fire and to get them to abide by the agreements that they struck just yesterday," he said.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian permanent observer to the United Nations, downplayed the blame on Hamas, telling CNN it was not certain Hamas had carried out the attack or violated the cease-fire.
Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said Hamas terrorists had attacked IDF soldiers an hour and a half after the cease-fire took effect.
"This appears to be an absolutely outrageous action by Hamas, using the cover of a cease-fire to conduct a surprise attack through a tunnel, killing Israeli soldiers and perhaps taking one hostage," Tony Blinken, White House deputy national security adviser, said on MSNBC. "We strongly, strongly condemn it." 

Gaza militants 'seize Israeli soldier' as ceasefire ends

Israeli forces are searching for a soldier believed captured, as a 72-hour truce with Hamas in Gaza collapsed just hours after it had begun.

The soldier, named as Hadar Goldin, 23, disappeared when Israeli forces trying to destroy a suspected militant tunnel were attacked, Israel's military said.
Two soldiers died in the firefight in southern Gaza Strip at 9:30 local time.
The Gaza health ministry said dozens were killed by Israeli shelling in the area shortly after the incident.
In 2006 Palestinian militants captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and held him for five years.
He was released in November 2011 in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas has not confirmed or denied capturing a soldier.
Related : Israeli soldier 'feared' captured as Gaza cease-fire unravels

Saudi King Abdullah says Gaza war is a "collective massacre" and a "crime against humanity"

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia –  Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah says the Gaza war is a "collective massacre" that has spared no Palestinian living there and describes it as a "crime against humanity."
King Abdullah's remarks were read live by a news anchor on Saudi state television Friday. The aging monarch did not make an appearance.

The Saudi king warns that the fighting in Gaza will lead to a generation of children who will grow up knowing nothing but the language of violence. He calls on Muslim leaders and the international community to unite against what he describes as state terrorism and terrorism by groups.
The king has been deeply involved in cease-fire talks, siding with Egypt. He held meetings with the Palestinian president, Qatar's emir and pledged $80 million in aid for the Palestinian people.

Iraqis living under Isis rule in Mosul begin to show resistance

Despite military triumphs, Islamist militants are losing hearts, minds and obedience of residents who have had enough

Iraqis living under Isis rule in Iraq, where non-Sunni residents have been forced from their homes and tens of mosques have been deemed idolatrous and marked for destruction, have started to push back against the extreme interpretation of Islam being imposed on them.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has won significant territorial victories and declared an Islamic caliphate in swaths of land it has seized, from al-Bab in Syria to Falluja in Iraq. The US recently said Isis was worse than al-Qaida (pdf) and that it had a "full-blown army". It has subsequently increased reconnaissance flights over Mosul, from one flight a month just two months ago to 50 flights a day.
Isis fighters have fought and wrested territory from the Syrian army, the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga, but have revealed their fragility in governance, in particular, a brutal disregard for local religious and cultural values.
In Mosul, despite its military triumphs, Isis is losing the hearts, minds and obedience of residents who say they have had enough.
When its fighters destroyed the Nabi Jonah mosque (Jonah's tomb) in the Iraqi city last Thursday, they failed to removed copies of the Qur'an and other religious texts. Residents treading through the ruins of the building found torn and burnt pages of the holy books scattered across the rubble. It was an insult to Islam that was captured on video and unified the city in outrage.
"[Isis] claims that having graves inside mosques is heretical but what about the Qur'an, why did not they remove the Qur'an from the mosque before destroying it?" one resident, who did not wish to be named, asked the Guardian.
The fighters – who adhere to an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam that requires the destruction of shrines and graves as idolatory – have reportedly drawn up a list of around 50 mosques to be destroyed in Mosul so far.

Explosion flattens security headquarters in eastern Libyan city

BENGHAZI, Libya –  A strong explosion ripped through the main police building in Benghazi early Friday, nearly flattening it, days after Islamic militias overran army barracks and claimed control of the eastern Libyan city.
The police headquarters has been empty for several days after militias pounded it with shelling. The blast, which was heard across Benghazi and shook houses in surrounding area, appeared to be from explosives planted in the building, the witnesses at the site said. Police officials in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, could not be reached.

A coalition of Islamic militias over the past week captured a number of army bases in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, driving out troops and police and seizing large weapons stores. The fighting takes place at a time that rival militias in the capital, Tripoli, have been battling for weeks over control of its airport.
The spiral of violence in the country's two main cities could be sparking a popular backlash, with calls for large rallies on Friday to protest against militias and demand the return of the police and military.
"It's time for a popular uprising to rescue Libya," said Abdel-Moneim al-Yassir, a lawmaker in the outgoing parliament and head of its National Security Committee. He called for protests on his Facebook page, saying they were "the only solution ... to put an end to the situation by disarming and demobilizing militias under a national accord."

14 killed, including 10 soldiers, in east Ukraine clash: Military

KIEV: Fourteen people were killed, including at least 10 government soldiers, in fighting overnight close to the crash site of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Ukrainian military spokesman said on Friday.

"In total it is known that 14 people died but the bodies of four of them have not been identified and could be Ukrainian soldiers or terrorists," military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky told media.

He added that "so far we are talking about 10 Ukrainian servicemen dead" in the clash, in the town of Shakhtarsk some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the MH17 site.

Earlier the Ukrainian military had said its troops were ambushed by insurgent fighters.

The deadly fighting shattered a brief lull across the war-torn region as international experts headed to the wreckage of the downed plane to try to begin a stalled investigation into the attack on the passenger jet.

The Ukrainian military said it was relaunching a broader offensive against separatist fighters following a day-long ceasefire but insisted troops would not carry out operations in the immediate vicinity of the crash site.

The military said Friday that it had made fresh gains by taking the village of Novyi Svit, some 25 kilometres southeast of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, and was waging operations to secure the volatile border with Russia.

Ukraine: Secret service publishes Stalin files

The SBU chief archivist, Ihor Kulyk, says his colleagues recently read on Facebook that - at the request of Russia's FSB security service - a court in Moscow denied Russian historian Sergei Prudovsky access to look at a cache of documents dealing with Japan's efforts to recruit right-wing Russian emigres as spies.
After hearing about the case, the archivist "decided to help the Russian researcher by publishing the document in question" - since there was a copy in the Kiev vaults, Ukraine's Centre for the Study of the Liberation Movement reports. "It is purely of historical value, and so in Ukraine access to it cannot be denied," the Ukrainian archivist says, adding that anyone interested can drop by the SBU archives and have a look at the file.
The papers, which were signed off in 1937 by Stalin's notorious secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov, look at the community of tens of thousands of Russians who fled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and escaped to Harbin - a Japanese-occupied Chinese city on the Soviet border.
But in 1935, thousands of Harbin Russians fled back in to the Soviet Union to escape the Japanese occupation. According to Russia's Memorial Society, which publishes material on Soviet political oppression, 48,133 of those people were arrested on charges of having spied for Japan, and 30,992 of the "Harbinites" were later shot. 

China confirms new generation nuclear-capable ICBM that can target US

Beijing: China has acknowledged the existence of a new intercontinental ballistic missile said to be capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads as far as the United States, state-run media reports.
A government environmental monitoring centre in Shaanxi said on its website that a military facility in the province was developing Dongfeng-41 (DF-41) missiles, the Global Times reported.
The DF-41 is designed to have a range of 12,000 kilometres, according to a report by Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems, putting it among the world's longest-range missiles.
It is "possibly capable of carrying multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles", the US Defence Department said in a report in June, referring to a payload of several nuclear warheads.
China's military is highly secretive, and the Global Times said it had not previously acknowledged the existence of the DF-41.
The original government web post appeared to have been deleted on Friday, but the newspaper posted a screengrab.
It also quoted a Chinese military analyst as saying: "As the US continues to strengthen its missile defence system, developing third generation nuclear weapons capable of carrying multiple warheads is the trend."
China's defence ministry in January responded to reports that it had tested a hypersonic missile delivery vehicle by saying that any military experiments were "not targeted at any country and at any specific goals".
It made the same response last December when asked about reports that it had tested the DF-41.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing have risen in recent months over territorial disputes with US allies in the East and South China Seas and cyber-hacking.

Japan gives Vietnam six navy ships amid regional tension

Japan says it will give Vietnam six naval ships for patrols in the South China Sea, amid regional tension over competing maritime claims with China.

The offer, worth 500 million yen (£2.9 million, $5 million), was announced during a visit by Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida to Hanoi.
China angered Vietnam when it moved an oil rig to disputed waters in May, sparking deadly protests in Vietnam.
Japan and China both claim a string of islands known as Diaoyu or Senkaku.
The six boats are used vessels and will be accompanied by training and equipment to help coastguard and fisheries surveillance, Mr Kishida told reporters.
He also said that both Vietnam and Japan agree on "maintaining peace and stability" in regional waters, and disputes must be settled "in accordance with international law".
Vietnam's Thanh Nien News quoted China security policy expert Yun Sun as saying Japan's gift could be seen as an "alignment of positions" with Vietnam that is "perceived as hostility by China".
It comes after the Philippines, which is also locked in territorial disputes with China, signed a military pact with the United States in April to increase the latter's troop presence in the country, a move which angered China.

Ebola outbreak 'moving faster than our efforts to control it,' WHO says

West Africa’s Ebola outbreak is out of control but it can be stopped, World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan told the presidents of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast at a meeting in Conakry on Friday.

“This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response,” Chan said, according to a WHO transcript.  “This outbreak is moving faster than our efforts to control it. If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries.”

The WHO said it would launch a $100-million response plan on Friday during a meeting with the affected nations in Guinea. It is in urgent talks with donors and international agencies to send more medical staff and resources to the region, it said.
The WHO on Thursday reported 57 new deaths in the four days to July 27 in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, raising the death toll to 729. It said the number of Ebola cases had topped 1,300.

Illegal immigrant kids exposed federal agents to lice, scabies, tuberculosis and chicken pox, report says

Unaccompanied illegal immigrant children with communicable diseases have given or exposed federal agents to lice, scabies, tuberculosis and chicken pox, according to a report issued Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
In two cases, the children of a border patrol agent got chicken pox contracted from their parents’ exposure to unaccompanied children with chicken pox, according to the report on conditions of detention centers and border facilities.

The report, the first in a series, is based on 87 unannounced visits to 63 detention centers being used to house unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in Texas, Arizona and California during July 1-16.
“Many UAC and family units require treatment for communicable diseases, including respiratory illnesses, tuberculosis, chicken pox, and scabies,” said the memorandum summarizing the report.
“UAC and family unit illnesses and unfamiliarity with bathroom facilities resulted in unsanitary conditions and exposure to human waste in some holding facilities.
“DHS employees reported exposure to communicable diseases and becoming sick on duty. For example, during a recent site visit to the Del Rio USBP Station and Del Rio Port of Entry, CBP personnel reported contracting scabies, lice, and chicken pox.

Big Banks Remind Us Why We Should Be Scared

Three separate events in Washington Thursday served as reminders that America’s big banks continue to pose risks to college students, consumers, and taxpayers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group were among lawmakers and organizations warning that college students and their families are being harmed by financial institutions that either refuse to reduce student debts, push borrowers into default, or prey on low-income students through campus-sponsored banking products that hit them with high fees when they try to access their federal student loans.
Meanwhile, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it would explore whether new rules were needed to limit the tens of billions of dollars in overdraft fees large banks reap at the expense of households. The agency found that consumers, on average, pay higher fees than the amount by which they’ve overdrawn their accounts.

Argentina blames US mediator for debt default

Argentina has blamed the US for its debt default, calling the mediator in failed talks "incompetent".

Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said his country was considering opening proceedings at international tribunals in The Hague after it was declared to be in technical default.
The announcement came just hours after last-minute talks in New York with a group of bond-holders failed.
The bond-holders are demanding a full pay-out of $1.3bn (£766m).
Argentina says the bond-holders are "vultures" using the South American country's debt problems to make a big profit.
The investors are US hedge funds that bought debt cheaply after Argentina's economic crisis in 2001-2002.
They are also known as "hold-outs" because they did not sign up to a restructuring of debt which the majority of bond-holders agreed to in 2005 and 2010.
Under that deal, investors agreed to settle for about a third of what they were originally owed.
However, hedge funds NML and Aurelius Capital Management bought up a large chunk of the remaining distressed debt at low prices.
They demand to be paid the full face value of their holding.
'Shameful handling' Mr Capitanich said Argentina would denounce the "vulture funds" before the International Court of Justice at The Hague and the United Nations General Assembly.

California Drought Reaches A Terrifying Milestone

Data released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that 58 percent of California is facing “exceptional drought,” the most severe condition on the center’s scale and the worst ever recorded in the state.
“You keep beating the record, which are still all from this year," climatologist Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center told the Los Angeles Times, noting that this is the first time such dryness has ever been recorded in California since the federal government started releasing drought reports in the 1990s.
The latest assessment is a startling jump from two months ago, when the entire state was first labeled as being in “severe” drought or worse.

Defense panel: Obama administration defense strategy ‘dangerously’ underfunded

The Obama administration’s four-year defense strategy lacks funding needed for fulfilling global military missions and the U.S. military faces “high risk” in the world unless changes are made, according to a bipartisan report by a congressionally backed panel of defense experts.
The report by the National Defense Panel, led by former Defense Secretary William Perry and retired Marine Corps Gen. John Abizaid, criticized the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review for outlining military responsibilities that cannot be met because of sharp defense funding cuts.

The report concluded that the capabilities called for in the QDR “clearly exceed the budget resources made available to the department.”
“This gap is disturbing if not dangerous in light of the fact that global threats and challenges are rising, including a troubling pattern of territorial assertiveness and regional intimidation on China’s part, [and] the recent aggression of Russia in Ukraine.”
Other threats include nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran, the ultra-violent Islamist insurgency in Iraq and civil war in Syria, along with growing unrest throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
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