Sunday August 10th 2014

Iranian plane crashes after takeoff, killing 39

TEHRAN, Iran – A regional passenger plane assembled in Iran crashed Sunday while taking off from the capital, killing 39 and injuring another nine onboard, according to a senior transportation official and state media.
The IrAn-140 operated by domestic carrier Sepahan Air crashed in a residential area near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. State TV said the plane's tail struck the cables of an electricity tower before it hit the ground and burst into flames. The official IRNA news agency said the plane suffered an engine failure before it went down.

Deputy Minister of Transportation Ahmad Majidi provided the casualty figures in an appearance on state TV. The channel earlier had reported that all 48 people onboard had died.
The crash happened shortly after the plane took off at 9:20 a.m. local time (0450 GMT), bound for the town of Tabas in eastern Iran.
Eyewitness Hassan Molla said he heard a roaring sound as the plane came in low overhead, one wing tilting.
"There was no smoke or anything. It was absolutely sound and in good condition" before the crash and what appeared to be multiple explosions, he said.
Members of the Revolutionary Guard worked to secure the crash site and security and rescue personnel combed the wreckage as onlookers gathered shortly after the plane went down. The plane's mangled but largely intact tail section was torn from the fuselage and came to rest on a nearby road.
State TV said the bodies of some of the victims were so badly burned that they could not be identified. They will be handed over to relatives after DNA tests are carried out to determine their identities, it said.
The IrAn-140 is a twin-engine turboprop plane based on Ukrainian technology that is assembled under license in Iran. It is a version of the Antonov An-140 regional plane and can carry up to 52 passengers.
A similar plane crashed during a training flight in the city of Isfahan in February 2009, killing five onboard, according to a report by state-run Press TV at the time.
Lawmaker Mehrdad Lahouti suggested Sunday that the earlier accident should have been a wake-up call.
"Lawmakers visited the production site of the plane and expressed concern about its (safety)," IRNA quoted him as saying. "This company should have not been allowed to operate the plane to avoid such a bitter incident."
An official for Sepahan Air told The Associated Press from the central city of Isfahan that the carrier is affiliated with the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company, also known as HESA. The airline was set up in 2010 and has not had any previous crashes, said the official, who refused to provide his name.
HESA has ties to Iran's Ministry of Defense and is the company that assembles the IrAn-140.

Gaza conflict: Fresh fears for ceasefire talks in Cairo

Talks in Cairo aimed at securing a fresh ceasefire in Gaza are under renewed strain, with both sides in the conflict issuing warnings.

Palestinian negotiators said they would leave on Sunday if Israel did not attend without preconditions.
Israel says it will not negotiate "under fire", warning its military campaign "will take time".
However, reports say the Palestinians are considering a new 72-hour truce to pave the way for talks.
A Hamas spokesman told AFP news agency that the response to the new Egyptian ceasefire proposal would depend on "the seriousness of the Israeli position".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks at the weekly meeting of his cabinet in Tel Aviv: "The operation will continue until its objective - the restoration of quiet over a protracted period - is achieved.
"I said at the beginning and throughout the operation - it will take time, and stamina is required."
In other developments:

three people have been killed in Gaza by some 20 Israeli air strikes on Sunday, including a 14-year-old boy, according to health officials
an 11-year-old boy has been shot dead in a West Bank refugee camp near Hebron in unclear circumstances, Palestinian officials say
at least nine Palestinians were killed on Saturday as Israel launched 50 air strikes

More than 1,900 Palestinians - mostly civilians - been killed since violence erupted in Gaza in early July, according to the UN. Sixty-seven people have died on the Israeli side, including three civilians.
Related:

Women stoned to death in Syria for adultery

A cleric read the verdict before the truck came and dumped a large pile of stones near the municipal garden. Jihadi fighters then brought in the woman, clad head to toe in black, and put her in a small hole in the ground. When residents gathered, the fighters told them to carry out the sentence: Stoning to death for the alleged adulteress.

None in the crowd stepped forward, said a witness to the event in a northern Syrian city. So the jihadi fighters, mostly foreign extremists, did it themselves, pelting Faddah Ahmad with stones until her body was dragged away.

"Even when she was hit with stones she did not scream or move," said an opposition activist who said he witnessed the stoning near the football stadium and the Bajaa garden in the city of Raqqa, the main Syrian stronghold of the Islamic State group.

The July 18 stoning was the second in a span of 24 hours. A day earlier, 26-year-old Shamseh Abdullah was killed in a similar way in the nearby town of Tabqa by Islamic State fighters. Both were accused of having sex outside marriage.

The killings were the first of their kind in rebel-held northern Syria, where jihadis from the Islamic State group have seized large swaths of territory, terrorizing residents with their strict interpretation of Islamic law, including beheadings and cutting off the hands of thieves. The jihadis recently tied a 14-year-old boy to a cross-like structure and left him for several hours in the scorching summer sun before bringing him down - punishment for not fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Lebanese villagers repel Islamist fighters who crossed from Syria

BEIRUT - Fighters identified as Islamist militants crossed into Lebanon from Syria on Saturday, triggering an exchange of fire with Lebanese villagers who forced them back across the border, Lebanese security sources and a villager said.
The gun battle near the village of Kfar Qouq followed a battle between gunmen and Syrian security forces on the other side of frontier, the sources said. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.
Kfar Qouq is near the Bekaa Valley town of Rashaya and some 100 km south of the border town of Arsal that was seized last Saturday by Islamist militants who crossed from Syria. That incursion was the most serious spillover yet of Syria's three-year-long civil war into Lebanon.
Dozens of people were killed in five days of fighting between the army and the militants who included Islamists affiliated to the Islamic State, which has seized territory in Syria and Iraq.
The militants pulled out of Arsal to the mountainous border zone on Thursday, taking with them 19 captive soldiers.
Militant sources told Reuters on Friday they sought to exchange them for Islamists held in Lebanese jails.

Islamic State Killed 500 Yazidis, Buried Some Victims Alive

BAGHDAD, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority, burying some alive and taking hundreds of women as slaves, an Iraqi government minister told Reuters on Sunday.
Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents - who have ordered the community they regard as "devil worshippers" to convert to Islam or die - of celebrating a "a vicious atrocity" with cheers and weapons waved in the air. No independent confirmation was available.
Islamic State's advance through northern Iraq has forced tens of thousands to flee, threatened the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region and provoked the first U.S. air strikes in the area since Washington withdrew troops from Iraq in late 2011.
Sudani said in a telephone interview that news of the killings had come from people who had escaped town of Sinjar, an ancient home of the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking community whose religion has set them apart from Muslims and other faiths.
"We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar," he said
"Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar."
President Barack Obama said on Saturday that U.S. air strikes had destroyed arms that the Islamic State, which has captured swathes of northern Iraq since June, could have used against the Iraqi Kurds. However, he warned that there was no quick fix for the crisis that threatens to tear Iraq apart.
Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani urged his allies to send arms to help his forces hold off the militants, who have bases across the Syrian border. During a visit by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Barzani said: "We are not fighting a terrorist organization, we are fighting a terrorist state."
Related:

20,000 Iraqis besieged by Isis escape from mountain after US air strikes

Iraqi Kurdish president asks world for weapons to fight Islamic State

Afghanistan suicide bombing targets NATO convoy, kills 4 civilians

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy moving through Afghanistan's capital Sunday, killing at least four civilians and wounding more than 35 in an assault claimed by the Taliban, authorities said.
The blast struck two MRAPs, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles, in western Kabul, damaging a civilian car and leaving debris scattered across a highway lined by shops. NATO troops and Afghan soldiers cordoned off the scene after the blast.

Hashmat Stanikzai, a spokesman for Kabul's police chief, said the blast killed four civilians and wounded more than 35 people. NATO later said the blast wounded none of its troops, though it was investigating the attack.
"We sincerely regret the loss of the lives and injury to innocent Afghan civilians caused by the insurgents in this tragic incident." NATO said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Mohammad Amin, who had brought his wife to a nearby hospital for a checkup at the time of the blast, said he helped four wounded people to the hospital.
"The explosion was so strong and many people were killed and wounded," he said.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed the bombing in a message to journalists. The Taliban has promised to step up attacks against Afghan security forces in a bid to undermine the Western-backed government as foreign combat troops prepare to withdraw by the end of the year.
Civilians increasingly find themselves under fire as the 2001 U.S.-led war draws to a close, as Afghan forces take the lead in operations targeting the Taliban.

Pakistani police register murder case against Canada-based cleric

Pakistani police registered a murder case on Sunday against an anti-government cleric after three policemen were killed in clashes with his supporters ahead of a demonstration.
The cleric, Tahir ul Qadri, has called for protests on Sunday, saying he wants to bring down the government by the end of the month because it is corrupt. Another protest, led by opposition politician Imran Khan, is due in the capital on Thursday.
The protests have unnerved the civilian government and raised fears of tension with the military. Some ruling party members believe the protesters are getting support from elements in the military in an effort to weaken the government and stymie its pursuit of policies the military objects to.
The law minister of Punjab province, where the clashes between the clerics’ supports and police erupted on Friday, said police were out to arrest him.
“Qadri is responsible for killing police officials and his own workers. Police have booked him for terrorism and murders and will arrest him soon,” said the minister, Rana Mashhood Ahmad.
In Pakistan, police must register a case against someone before charging him with a crime.
A spokesman for Qadri said eight of his supporters had been killed and more than a 100 wounded in clashes with police over the past two days.
The nuclear-armed country of 180 million has a history of coups, protests and violent political rivalry though the military denies meddling in politics.

Ukraine crisis: Army pounds rebels in Donetsk

Ukraine's military has pounded the main pro-Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk with artillery fire, causing massive damage throughout the city.

A military spokesman said the rebels were in "panic and chaos" and had begun to desert en masse.
Ukraine is mulling the possibility of allowing a humanitarian mission into the area, as residents struggle without power or reliable sources of food.
Some 1,500 people are estimated to have died since the conflict began in April.
Rebels sparked the four-month battle when they overran large swathes of the east and declared independence from Ukraine.
Hardship and fear The rebels have sent out mixed signals in recent days, calling for a ceasefire but also insisting they would carry on fighting until the army laid down its weapons.
Russia, which is widely accused of providing military support to the rebels, has repeatedly offered to send a humanitarian mission.
But the West fears Russia would use the mission as a pretext to send in troops.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would consider an aid mission, but only if it was international and unarmed.
Related: Fighting rages in rebel-held city in eastern Ukraine despite rebel request for a cease-fire

Ebola virus: Liberia health system 'falling apart'

The charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) has told the BBC that Liberia's medical services have been completely overwhelmed by the Ebola outbreak.

The MSF co-ordinator in Liberia said official figures were "under-representing the reality", and that the health system was "falling apart".
Nearly 1,000 people have died and 1,800 have become infected in West Africa.
Meanwhile, neighbouring Guinea has denied earlier reports that it had sealed its borders.
On Saturday Liberian police broke up a protest against the government's response.
The Ebola outbreak - the worst ever - is centred on Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, but has spread to other countries in recent months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that the virus was a global health emergency.
The MSF co-ordinator for Liberia, Lindis Hurum, told the BBC: "Our capacity is stretched beyond anything that we ever done before in regards to ebola response."
She said five of the biggest hospitals in the capital Monrovia had closed for more than a week.
"Some of them have now started to re-open but there are other hospitals in other counties that are just abandoned by the staff.
"We are definitely seeing the whole health care system that is falling apart."
'Inaccurate' information On Saturday demonstrators in Liberia blocked a highway, saying authorities had not been collecting the bodies of some victims.
The army was then deployed to restrict movement, particularly from the worst-affected provinces to the capital.

What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak

How many people have been infected?

More than 1,600 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have contracted Ebola since March, according to the World Health Organization, making this the biggest outbreak on record. More than half of those infected have died. Nigeria also reported three probable cases and one suspected case, including that of a Liberian man who traveled there and died on July 25. Two American aid workers infected with Ebola while working in West Africa were transported to a containment unit in Atlanta for treatment.

What Are the Chances of Getting Ebola in the United States?

Two American aid workers infected with the Ebola virus while working in West Africa are being treated at a hospital in Atlanta, in a containment unit for patients with dangerous infectious diseases. But the risk that anyone will contract Ebola in the United States is extremely small, experts say.

Doctors across the country are being reminded to ask for the travel history of anybody who comes in with a fever. Patients who have been to West Africa are being screened and tested if there seems to be a chance they have been exposed. Heightened concern about the virus led to alarms being raised at three hospitals in New York City. But no Ebola cases have turned up. If someone were to bring the virus to the United States, standard procedures for infection control are likely to contain it.

It helps that Ebola does not spread nearly as easily as Hollywood movies about contagious diseases might suggest. In 2008, a patient who had contracted Marburg – a virus much like Ebola – in Uganda was treated at a hospital in the United States and could have exposed more than 200 people to the disease before anyone would have known what she had. Yet no one became sick.

How does this compare to past outbreaks?

It is the deadliest, eclipsing an outbreak in 1976, the year the virus was discovered.

Why is Ebola so difficult to contain?

How contagious is the virus?

You are not likely to catch Ebola just by being in proximity with someone who has the virus; it is not airborne, like the flu or respiratory viruses such as SARS.

Instead, Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. If an infected person’s blood or vomit gets in another person’s eyes, nose or mouth, the infection may be transmitted. In the current outbreak, most new cases are occurring among people who have been taking care of sick relatives or who have prepared an infected body for burial.

Health care workers are at high risk, especially if they have not been properly equipped with or trained to use and decontaminate protective gear correctly.

The virus can survive on surfaces, so any object contaminated with bodily fluids, like a latex glove or a hypodermic needle, may spread the disease.

In some parts of West Africa, there is a belief that simply saying “Ebola” aloud makes the disease appear. Such beliefs create major obstacles for physicians from groups like Doctors Without Borders, which are trying to combat the outbreak. Some people even blame physicians for the spread of the virus, and turn to witch doctors for treatment. Their skepticism is not without a grain of truth: In past outbreaks, hospital staff who did not take thorough precautions became unwitting travel agents for the virus.

New York-bound flight evacuated in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN (Puerto Rico): An engine fire forced evacuation of a New York-bound JetBlue flight before it could take off on Saturday, Puerto Rico airport officials said.

Puerto Rico airport authority official Rolando Padua said in a statement that the 186 passengers aboard were evacuated after the pilot halted the A-320 at 7 pm EDT (2300 GMT) before it could take off. Firefighters at Luis Munoz Marin airport then extinguished the fire.

He said three people suffered minor injuries because of the emergency evacuation.

Flight 704 had been scheduled to land at John F Kennedy Airport at 10.37pm Padua said the airline was working to put the passengers on a different flight on Saturday night.

Obama says Iraq situation will take more than 'weeks' to solve

President Obama braced Americans on Saturday for a sustained military involvement in Iraq, saying the United States is prepared to continue with air strikes to protect U.S. diplomats and citizens and others under attack from the Islamic State terror group.
"I don't think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks," the president said on the South Lawn of the White House. “This is going to be a long-term project.”

Obama laid out a three-part strategy for heightened U.S. involvement in Iraq, one day after U.S. aircraft began launching air strikes on military installations belonging to the Islamic State (IS), the militant group formerly known as ISIS, and dropping humanitarian aid for the estimated thousands who have fled from the terror group into the Sinjar mountains, in the northern region of the country.

WATCH FULL PRESS CONFERENCE

The president said his immediate goals are to help those stranded on the mountain, provide safe passage for them to return to the region around the Kurdish regional capital Irbil and to continue to help Iraq establish a functional and inclusive government.
However, Obama, who departed after the speech for a one-week family vacation on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, gave no specific timetable for his plan.
"Even as we continue to deal with the immediate situation, we seek a broader solution," he said. "There's not going to be a U.S. military solution to this problem."
The Islamic State extremists have captured hundreds of Yazidi women, according to an Iraqi official, while thousands of other civilians, including Kurds and Christians, have fled into the mountains and elsewhere as the militants in recent days have seized a string of northern towns and villages.
Yazidis belong to ancient religion seen by the Islamic State group as heretical. The extremist group considers Shiite Muslims apostates, and has demanded Christians either convert to Islam or pay a special tax.
Obama acknowledged Saturday that providing a "safe corridors" for those who face a potential “genocide” will be difficult.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie Ousted By Sen. David Ige In Primary

In a stunning defeat for an incumbent, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was unseated by a fellow Democrat in Saturday's primary election, as voters chose state Sen. David Ige as their nominee in one of two marquee races that have divided the party.

Abercrombie had tried to hold onto his seat while disgruntled voters turned their allegiance to Ige, who promised to bring a less confrontational political style. Voters rewarded Ige with a decisive victory.
In the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Democrat Brian Schatz also faces a threat from fellow Democrat U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who believes the seat should have been passed on to her when her mentor, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, died in 2012. Schatz took a slim lead late Saturday, but the race remained too close to call.

The winners of each race will face Republicans and independent candidates in the November general election, but such campaigns are often longshots in heavily Democratic Hawaii.
Abercrombie, who has spent nearly 40 years in Hawaii politics, is the first Hawaii governor to lose to a primary challenger and only the second not to win re-election. His defeat comes after President Barack Obama last month urged residents of his native state to back Abercrombie, invoking the Hawaiian word for family in a radio ad, saying Abercrombie is "like ohana to me."

Ebola tests come back negative for Ontario man hospitalized after Nigeria travels

The patient with flu-like symptoms who recently visited Nigeria and was put into isolation at an Ontario hospital has tested negative for the deadly Ebola virus.

Ontario's Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Eric Hoskins confirmed that the man, who recently travelled to Canada from West Africa, where the outbreak has prompted states of emergency, is now "doing well" and anticipated to have a "full and speedy recovery."
"I can now confirm a recent case that underwent testing at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg was found to test negative for Ebola virus disease," Hoskins said in a release, posted to the Ontario ministry's website.
The man had complained of fever, headache, muscle pain and malaise.
Brampton Civic Hospital had instituted heightened infection-control procedures after the patient was admitted.
Hoskins said health professionals responded appropriately and showed "our system worked as it should."

Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS

The former secretary of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine. She says this about President Obama's: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."

President Obama has long-ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion. In an interview in February, the president told me that “when you have a professional army ... fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict—the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”
Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.
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8/10/2014

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