Gazette Weekend 080914

The following stories are harvested from news services around the World.Stories which "Main Stream Media" have chosen not to report or to minimize its significance in the World review. If you wish to respond to this report, Email VOCR2012@Gmail.com

Saturday August 9th 2014

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Senior Hamas member reportedly killed in Gaza after fighting resumes

Israeli forces struck more than 20 targets Saturday in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the area after the expiration of a cease-fire between Israel and the terror group Hamas, reportedly killing a senior member of the militant group.
Hamas officials said Israel airstrikes hit houses, mosques, its warehouses and training sites. Three bodies were found under the ruins of the al-Qassam mosque in Gaza, including that of senior Hamas official Moaaz Zaid, said Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra.

The Israeli military said militants in Gaza fired five rockets Saturday toward Israel, for a total of 70 since the truce expired. In response, Israel has targeted more than 30 sites in Gaza since Friday, it said.
The militants resumed their rocket attacks Friday shortly before the 72-hour truce expired, drawing a wave of retaliatory airstrikes that killed at least five Palestinians. The fighting shattered a brief calm in the month-long war and dealt a blow to Egyptian-led efforts to secure a long-term cease-fire
The renewed violence threw the Cairo talks on a broader deal into doubt. Hamas officials said they are ready to continue talks, but Israel's government spokesman said Israel will not negotiate under fire.
Hamas wants Israel to open Gaza's borders, following a seven-year closure also enforced by Egypt, but Israel says it will only do so if the Islamic militants disarm or are prevented from re-arming. Hamas has insisted it will never give up its arms.
Related: Hamas threatens major escalation in rocket strikes on Israel

Gaza air strikes 'kill five' as rockets hit Israel

Five people have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, health officials there say, as Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets at Israel.

Violence resumed after the end of a three-day ceasefire on Friday.
Tensions have also been growing in the West Bank where protesters have clashed with Israeli troops. Reports say two Palestinians have been shot dead, one on Friday and one on Saturday.
At least 1,960 people have died since violence erupted in Gaza in early July.
More than 1,900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed, according to the UN.
Sixty-seven people have died on the Israeli side, including three civilians.
Israel said it renewed its military offensive soon after the truce lapsed in response to rocket fire by the Hamas militant group, which dominates Gaza.
Mosque attacked On Saturday, the bodies of three Palestinians were pulled from the wreckage of a mosque in Gaza, local officials said.
Related: Israeli army, rights groups give clashing views in Gaza war over ratio of civilians killed

Islamic militants hold hundreds of women captive in Iraq, official says

BAGHDAD –  Hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been taken captive by Sunni militants with "vicious plans," an Iraqi official said Friday, further underscoring the dire plight of Iraq's minorities at the hands of the Islamic State group.
Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women below the age of 35 are being held in schools in Iraq's second largest city, Mosul. He said the ministry learned of the captives from their families.

"We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them," Amin told The Associated Press. "We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values."
The U.S. has confirmed that the Islamic State group has kidnapped and imprisoned Yazidi women so that they can be sold or married off to extremist fighters, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information came from classified intelligence reports. There was no solid estimate of the number of women victimized, the official said.
Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled when the Islamic State group earlier this month captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border. The Yazidis practice an ancient religion that the Sunni Muslim radicals consider heretical.
The extremist group's capture of a string of towns and villages in the north has sent minority communities fleeing for their lives. The Islamic state views Yazidis and Shiite Muslims as apostates, and has demanded Christians either convert to Islam or pay a special tax.
About 50,000 Yazidis — half of them children, according to U.N. figures — fled to the mountains outside Sinjar where many of them remain, trapped and running out of food and water. Late Thursday, the U.S. military cargo jets dropped humanitarian aid to the mountains.
Amin's comments were the first Iraqi government confirmation that some women were being held by the group. On Tuesday, Yazidi lawmaker Vian Dakheel made an emotional plea in parliament to the Iraqi government to save the Yazidi people, saying the "women have been sold in a slavery market."

Iraq Arms Kurds Against ISIS

WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - The Iraqi government provided a planeload of ammunition to Peshmerga fighters from Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region on Friday, a U.S. official said, in an unprecedented act of military cooperation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces brought on by an acute militant threat.
The official said Iraqi security forces flew a C-130 cargo plane loaded with mostly small-arms ammunition to Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, in a move that American officials hope will help the region's Peshmerga fighters keep militants from the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot, at bay.
"This is unprecedented," the official said on condition of anonymity.
"Developments over the last few days have refocused the issue, and we've seen unprecedented cooperation between Baghdad and Arbil in terms of going after (the Islamic State), not only in terms of conversation but in terms of actual support."
In the first airstrikes in Iraq since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011, U.S. warplanes bombed Islamic State fighters several times on Friday, in an increasingly urgent attempt to halt the militants who have seized a wide swathe of territory since they swept into northern Iraq in June. The hard-line fighters now appear set on trying to take the Kurdish capital.
The grave threat to Arbil, seat of the regional government and a hub for foreign firms in Iraq, appears to have at least temporarily eased a long-running feud between leaders of the Kurdistan region, who have long dreamed of an independent state, and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Arab who has sparred with Kurds over land and oil.
As Islamic State fighters made another dramatic advance earlier this week, Maliki ordered his air force for the first time to back Kurdish forces in their fight against militants.

After first airstrikes, US drops new aid to thousands of Iraqis fleeing militant advance

IRBIL, Iraq –  The U.S. launched a new airdrop Saturday to aid thousands of members of an Iraqi minority group who fled the advance of the Islamic State group, trying to stem a worsening humanitarian crisis in a country reeling from the extremist offensive.
The extremists have captured hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority, according to an Iraqi official, while thousands of other civilians fled in fear.

Many of America's allies backed the U.S. intervention, pledging urgent steps to assist the legions of refugees and displaced people. Those in jeopardy included thousands of members of the Yazidi whose plight — trapped on a mountaintop by the militants — prompted the U.S. to airdrop crates of food and water to them.
Yazidis belong to ancient religion seen by the Islamic State group as heretical. The group also sees Shiite Muslims as apostates, and has demanded Christians either convert to Islam or pay a special tax.
American planes conducted a second airdrop of food and water early Saturday for those trapped in the Sinjar mountains, said Pentagon chief spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby. Escorted by two Navy fighter jets, three planes dropped 72 bundles of supplies for the refugees, including more than 28,000 meals and more than 1,500 gallons of water, said Kirby, who spoke from New Delhi during a trip with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The extremists' "campaign of terror against the innocent, including the Yazidi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque and targeted acts of violence bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. "For anyone who needed a wake-up call, this is it."
Underscoring the sense of alarm, a spokesman for Iraq's human rights ministry said hundreds of Yazidi women had been seized by the militants. Amin, citing reports from the victims' families, said some of the women were being held in schools in Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul.
"We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them," Amin told The Associated Press. "We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values."
Related: Australia preparing to join Iraq air campaign, says Tony Abbott

Egypt court bans Muslim Brotherhood's political wing

A court in Egypt has dissolved the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing.

The ruling will effectively prevent the banned Islamist movement from formally participating in parliamentary elections expected later this year.
The government declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group in December.
It was accused of orchestrating a wave of violence to destabilise the country after the military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013.
The Brotherhood has denied any connection to the jihadist militants based in the Sinai Peninsula who have killed hundreds of security personnel.
At the same time, more than 1,400 people have been killed and 16,000 detained in a crackdown by the authorities on Mr Morsi's supporters.
President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, a former military chief who was elected head of state in May, has vowed to wipe out the group. 

6 Pakistan police officers abducted in fighting with anti-government cleric's supporters

LAHORE, Pakistan –  Authorities in Pakistan say six police officers have been abducted and two people killed in clashes between supporters of an anti-government cleric and security forces.
The fighting began Friday in Pakistan's Punjab province. Provincial law minister Rana Mashood said fighting continued Saturday as supporters of cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri abducted six policemen in Punjab's capital, Lahore.

Security forces have blocked roads to Lahore and the site of a planned protest Sunday by supporters of Qadri to protest the killing of 14 people in June in similar clashes.
Mashood says police have arrested 500 suspected supporters of Qadri and recovered weapons and batons.
Qadri's spokesman Raheeq Abbasi says two of his supporters were killed and dozens injured.
Qadri is based in Canada but has a network of mosques and religious centers across Pakistan. Related: Pakistan: four dead as Tahir ul-Qadri supporters clash with police

Commander Says Rebel-Held Donetsk Surrounded By Ukraine Troops

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces have seized a key town and are surrounding Donetsk, the largest insurgent-held city in eastern Ukraine, a top rebel commander said Saturday.
The statement by Igor Girkin, a former Russian special services officer, appeared to be a significant admission by the rebels that Ukrainian government forces are gaining the upper hand in the four-month-old fight.
He said the town of Krasnyi Luch, which lies on one of two main roads between Donetsk and the other rebel-held city of Luhansk, "has been taken by the enemy."

"The Donetsk-Horlivka group of the fighters of Novorossiya is completely surrounded," he said on a rebel social media page. Novosrossiya, or "New Russia," is a term widely used by the rebels for the eastern area that seeks independence from the government in Kiev. Horlivka, where rebels and Ukrainian forces are also fighting, is 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Donetsk.
Seizing Krasnyi Luch would cut off many routes to other parts of the rebel-held east.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian military operation, Andriy Lysenko, told reporters Saturday that he could not confirm that the town was under government control.
In Donetsk, a city spokesman said at least one person was killed and several injured Saturday in shelling of the city's southern area. Spokesman Maxim Rovninsky also told The Associated Press that about 30 apartment blocks came under fire during the night.
The city, whose population was nearly 1 million before the fighting but has seen hundreds of thousands flee, has increasingly come under fire over the past weeks. Ukrainian officials deny that they are shelling civilians, as rebels claim, and say the rebels are putting rocket launchers in populated areas.
Related:Three civilians killed and 10 injured in overnight shelling of Donetsk 

Pakistan says Taliban command system 'crippled'

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday said it has crippled the command and control system of local Taliban militants adding that the likelihood of a backlash to the ongoing military offensive in the troubled northwest would be "minimal".

Addressing a national security conference in Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the ongoing strikes against the militants were inevitable because peace talks had failed to proceed.

But he played down the likelihood of militants being able to hit back.

"If there is a reaction to the operation Zarb-e-Azb it would be very minimal," Sharif said in an address broadcast live on television.

Pakistan began an offensive in the northwest following a brazen attack on the country's busiest airport in Karachi which killed dozens and left a nascent peace process in tatters.

More than 500 militants and 27 soldiers have been killed in the assault so far, according to the military, though their death toll for insurgents cannot be independently confirmed.

In a statement issued to the media after conference, military officials said they were confident that the command and control system of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) had been "crippled".

John Kerry's Faltering Effort to Redefine US Foreign Policy

John Kerry has spent months rushing from one conflict to the next, but has little show for it. His failures are symptomatic of an America that lacks a foreign policy identity -- and of a country that seems uncomfortable with its role as a superpower.

In the Middle East, it doesn't take much to be branded a terrorist -- even if you are the US secretary of state. The week before last, John Kerry spent several days traveling back and forth between Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah in an effort to establish a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But his efforts were not universally appreciated. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that senior officials in Jerusalem described his cease-fire proposal as a "strategic terrorist attack."

The derisive comment came after Kerry presented what was essentially a reasonable plan. It called for a temporary cessation of hostilities during which negotiations for a long-term armistice could continue. But instead of being appreciated, it was mocked. Jerusalem angrily rejected the plan, saying it only catered to demands made by Hamas. A short time later, things got even worse. Israel's Channel 1 broadcast the alleged transcript of an antagonistic telephone conversation between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It later turned out the transcript was a fake.
When Kerry did finally manage to broker a 72-hour cease-fire at the end of last week, the resulting hope was short-lived. Just three hours into the suspension of hostilities, Hamas allegedly abducted an Israeli soldier andthe cease-fire was history. Israel later announced that the soldier had been killed rather than abducted.
In recent days, global diplomacy has seemed like an absurd form of theater, with John Kerry in the role of the tragic hero. He doesn't look like the secretary of state from a world power, Haaretz jeered, but like "an alien who just disembarked his spaceship in the Mideast." In speaking last week about the hostile atmosphere, Kerry vowed to keep trying, saying: "None of us here are stopping."
The helplessness of the world's most important foreign minister shows just how little influence the US still hasin the Middle East. And with each failure, Washington's influence in the rest of the world erodes as well. A civil war is raging in eastern Ukraine, an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program is still a long way off, Islamist terrorists now control large swaths of Iraq -- and the US doesn't appear to be in a position to do anything about it.

US police to investigate James Brady death as homicide

The death this week of former White House press secretary James Brady was caused by injuries sustained in a 1981 shooting, US police have said.

He was wounded during an attempt on President Ronald Reagan's life by John Hinckley Jr. Mr Brady's death has been therefore classified as homicide.
He suffered brain damage and partial paralysis and died on Monday aged 73.
Hinckley has been confined to a psychiatric hospital since he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
"We can confirm that the autopsy has been ruled a homicide and the Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the case," spokesman Officer Hugh Carew told the BBC.
In a statement, the Metropolitan police said that Mr Brady's remains were transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the Northern District of Virginia.
"An autopsy was conducted and revealed the cause of death to be a gunshot wound and consequences thereof, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide," it said.
Mr Brady died on Monday at the age of 73.
A lifelong Republican, he had served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and as a Senate aide before joining Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign.
'Not guilty' On 30 March 1981, John Hinckley Jr opened fire on the president's party outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, striking four people, including Mr Brady and Reagan.

State Department hires company to prep officials for congressional grillings

The State Department has reportedly approved a contract worth up to $545,000 to help train department officials to effectively testify at congressional hearings after a series of poor performances.
The Washington Times reports that the department has hired a company called AMTIS, Inc. to train staffers to effectively speak with lawmakers and testify at congressional hearings.

According to the Washington Times, the contract included classes, such as “Communicating with Congress: Briefing and Testifying,” which will be taught by instructors with Capitol Hill experience.
It also includes individual sessions, which include mock hearings where officials can testify in front of a panel of experts, who will then critique them on their performance.
According to its website, AMTIC, Inc. provides “federal and state agencies with innovative, high-quality, and affordable products and services while continuing to serve our nation.”
A spokeswoman for the Citizens Against Government Waste told the Washington Times the training shouldn’t be necessary, because all the officials need to do is testify “truthfully, honestly and thoroughly.”
“It’s not ‘The Charlie Rose Show’; it’s not ‘The View,’” Leslie Paige told the Washington Times. “It is congressional testimony. So just cough up the facts, because that’s all we really need from you.”

Obama departs Washington for two-week vacation

President Barack Obama departed Washington late Saturday morning for Martha’s Vineyard, where he and his family will vacation for two weeks.
Obama will return to Washington Aug. 17 for two days and then return to Martha’s Vineyard for the next week. He will come back to Washington Aug. 24.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest declined to say what was bringing Obama back to Washington, but said he would be at the White House meeting with staff.
“The president wanted to take advantage of a little time...to do a day or two of in-person meetings here at the White House,” Earnest told reporters this week. “This is an opportunity for the president to do some in-person meetings here at the White House just for a day or two before he returns to Martha’s Vineyard.”
On Monday afternoon, Obama will attend a fundraising for Senate Democrats on Martha’s Vineyard.
Republicans on Saturday called on Obama to cancel the fundraiser during a “time of extreme crisis” after he just order airstrikes and food and water drops to tens of thousands in norther Iraq.
“Our country’s foreign policy is in shambles,” said the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Brad Dayspring. “We are facing so many security crises, yet President Obama's instinct is to head to Martha's Vineyard to fundraise for Democrats. It is outrageous and is unacceptable.”
Before he left town, Obama recorded his weekly radio address, explaining he authorized two operations in Iraq and assuring that the United States will not get back into war in Iraq.
“As commander-in-chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” he said. “American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis there.” 

Key ObamaCare official likely deleted emails now sought in House probe

A key ObamaCare official involved in the rocky rollout of Healthcare.gov likely deleted some of her emails that are now being sought as part of an investigation into the problems by a House committee, Fox News confirmed Thursday.
The Department of Health and Human Services informed House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa in a letter Thursday that some of the emails belonging to Marilyn Tavenner, who leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, may not be “retrievable.”

The missing emails belonging to Tavenner, whose agency runs the ObamaCare exchanges, were first reported by msnbc.com.
Issa, whose committee is also dealing with a missing email problem in its probe into the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups, said it “defies logic” that multiple Obama administration officials are “ignoring” federal rules on records-keeping. 
“Yet again, we discover that this administration will not be forthright with the American people unless cornered,” he said.
HHS also informed the National Archives, which preserves government records, about the missing emails from Tavenner in a letter.
In that letter, the HHS said that since Tavenner receives as many as 12,000 emails a month, she would sometimes delete emails after either forwarding or copying the email to her staff to keep. However, some of these emails never made it to her staff, but the department believes that was due to sloppy records-keeping not an attempt to conceal information.
An HHS spokesman told Fox News that the department has confidence that the “vast majority” of Tavenner’s emails can be retrieved, and they have already located more than 70,000.
“There are no significant chronological gaps and we are working to compile the most complete email record possible for her,” the spokesman said.
The HHS discovered the missing emails when gathering documents to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last year, as part of its investigation into the problems with the rollout of Healthcare.gov.
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