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  • Libya PM Zeidan’s brief kidnap was ‘attempted coup’

    Libya PM Zeidan’s brief kidnap was ‘attempted coup’

    {{Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has said his brief kidnap this week was an “attempted coup”, blaming his political opponents for the attack.}}

    In a TV address to the nation, he said an unnamed political party in the congress was behind the abduction.

    Ali Zeidan was seized from a Tripoli hotel on Thursday and held for several hours by armed militiamen.

    He praised the armed groups that came to rescue him and later called for calm in the increasingly lawless country.

    {{‘Dangerous minority’}}

    In the TV address with members of his cabinet standing staunchly around him, Mr Zeidan said that his kidnap “bears the hallmarks of an attempted coup d’etat against legitimacy”.

    “A political party”, he said, was behind what he described as the “criminal and terrorist act”.

    Referring to his political opponents as a “dangerous minority”, the prime minister said they had tried to secure enough votes in the congress to have him dismissed.

    “When they failed to bring down the government through democratic means, they resorted to the use of force,” he added.

    {Ali Zeidan: “This bears the hallmarks of an attempted coup d’etat against legitimacy”}

    Agencies

  • Vietnam pays last respects to ‘Red Napoleon’

    Vietnam pays last respects to ‘Red Napoleon’

    {{Vietnamese poured into the capital on Sunday to bid farewell to Vo Nguyen Giap, the general who masterminded historic defeats of France and the United States to become one of the 20th century’s most important military commanders.}}

    Crowds lined the streets of Hanoi cheering, crying and holding aloft pictures of “Red Napoleon”, a national legend with a domestic standing second only to the leader of Vietnam’s struggle against colonialism, Ho Chi Minh.

    Giap died on October 4, age 102, after four years in a Hanoi military hospital.

    Short, slightly built and a man of no formal military training, Giap was ranked by historians among giants such as Montgomery, Rommel and MacArthur for victories over vastly better equipped armies that ushered in the end of foreign intervention and cemented communist rule in Vietnam.

    “He was the general of the people, always in the people’s hearts and in history,” said Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the ruling party that Giap’s forces brought to power in 1975 after driving the United States out of what was then a democratic South Vietnam.

    “This is a big loss,” Trong said in a speech at his state funeral, broadcast live on national television.

    Hundreds of thousands thronged to catch a glimpse of Giap’s coffin as it was driven on a military vehicle past an unbroken line of mourners to an airport 30 km (18 miles) away. Giap’s body will be flown to his home province of Quang Binh for burial.

    The funeral has brought a show of unity that Vietnam’s current generation of leaders have struggled to foster in a country where three quarters of the 90 million population were born long after Giap’s battlefield victories.

    agencies

  • Snowden Warns Against Mass Surveillance

    Snowden Warns Against Mass Surveillance

    {{Former US National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden says surveillance programs used by the United States to tap into phone and Internet connections around the world are making people less safe.}}

    In short video clips posted by the WikiLeaks website on Friday, Snowden said the NSA mass surveillance he revealed before fleeing to Russia “puts us at risk of coming into conflict with our own government.”

    Snowden, who faces espionage charges in the U.S. over the leak, described the techniques as “dragnet mass surveillance that puts entire populations under sort of an eye that sees everything even when it’s not needed.”

    “They hurt our economy. They hurt our country. They limit our ability to speak and think and live and be creative, to have relationships and to associate freely,” Snowden said.

    The videos are the first of Snowden speaking since July 12, when he was shown at a Moscow airport pleading with Russian authorities to grant him asylum, which they did on Aug. 1.

    That decision has strained the relations between the U.S. and Russia. President Barack Obama called off a meeting with President Vladimir Putin at a summit hosted by Russia in September.

    Snowden said the U.S. government was “unwilling to prosecute high officials who lied to Congress and the country on camera, but they’ll stop at nothing to persecute someone who told them the truth.”

    In a note accompanying the videos, WikiLeaks said Snowden spoke on Wednesday in Moscow as he accepted the Sam Adams Award, given annually by a group of retired U.S. national security officers and named for a CIA analyst during the Vietnam War who accused the U.S. military of deliberately underestimating the enemy’s strength for political purposes.

    Four former U.S. government officials who were at the ceremony told The Associated Press on Thursday that Snowden is adjusting to life in Russia and said they saw no evidence that he was under the control of local security services. They refused to say where they met with Snowden or where he is living.

    wirestory

  • 2 Million Muslim Pilgrims Begin Annual Hajj

    2 Million Muslim Pilgrims Begin Annual Hajj

    {{Some two million pilgrims poured out of the Muslim holy city of Mecca on Sunday to begin the annual hajj, their numbers reduced on fears of the deadly MERS virus.}}

    Saudi Health Minister Abdullah Al-Rabia told reporters late Saturday that authorities had so far detected no cases among the pilgrims of the virus which has killed 60 people worldwide, 51 of them in Saudi Arabia.

    The pilgrims moved from Mecca to nearby Mina by road, by train or on foot, the men wearing the seamless two-piece white garment tradition requires, the women covered up except for their faces and hands.

    In Mina, they will pray and rest before moving on to Mount Arafat on Monday for the climax of the pilgrimage rituals.

    The recently constructed electric railway is scheduled to carry 400,000 of the pilgrims taking part in the world’s largest annual gathering.

    Saudi Arabia has deployed more than 100,000 troops to ensure the safety of the pilgrims and has warned it will tolerate no demonstrations or disturbances.

    The oil-rich kingdom has also mobilised huge medical and civil defence resources to ensure the smooth movement of the pilgrims, around 1.4 million of whom come from abroad.

    That figure is sharply down on last year’s 1.75 million.

    Riyadh has imposed a 20-percent cut this year on the quota for pilgrims coming from abroad.

    It has also slashed the number of domestic pilgrims by half because of MERS virus fears and reduced capacity resulting from multi-billion-dollar construction work.

    The fact that the kingdom accounts for the overwhelming majority of MERS cases reported around the world has raised concerns pilgrims could be infected and return to their homelands carrying the virus.

    But the authorities have said they are optimistic the hajj will pass without incident, given Muslims also go on lesser pilgrimages at other times of the year and there has been no problem.

    This year’s minor pilgrimage season, or umrah, during the fasting month of Ramadan in July-August, passed off without any MERS outbreak even though millions of Muslims took part.

    Experts are struggling to understand the MERS coronavirus, for which there is still no vaccine.

    It is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died, and sowed economic chaos.

    Like SARS, its is believed to have jumped from animals to humans. It shares the former’s flu-like symptoms, but differs by also causing kidney failure.

    AFP

  • Manchester Airport to Receive Investment from China

    Manchester Airport to Receive Investment from China

    {{A Chinese company will be part of a group investing £800m in Manchester Airport to develop its surrounding business.}}

    The news was announced as Chancellor George Osborne started a trip to China to promote UK business and encourage Chinese investors to consider the UK.

    The move showed a government plan to do more business with the fast-growing economy was working, Mr Osborne said.

    London Mayor Boris Johnson is also on a separate six-day visit to China.

    He will meet political leaders and business chiefs in an effort to promote the capital’s trade with the country.

    Manchester Airport Group will work with the Beijing Construction Engineering Group (BCEG) as well as the UK’s Carillion Plc and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund to develop the ‘Airport City’ project.

    The development surrounding Britain’s third busiest airport will include offices, hotels, manufacturing firms, logistics and warehouses. It is hoped that by attracting international businesses some 16,000 jobs could be created.

    “I think it shows that our economic plan of doing more business with China and also making sure more economic activity in Britain happens outside the City of London is working,” said Mr Osborne.

    “That’s good for Britain and good for British people,” he added.

    Mr Xing Yan, managing director of BCEG said “To be included in such an interesting and unique development is a real honour.

    “We see our involvement in Airport City as an extension of the memorandum of understanding between China and the UK, where we have been looking to further explore joint infrastructure opportunities for some time.”

    BBC

  • Iran rejects West’s demand to ship out uranium

    Iran rejects West’s demand to ship out uranium

    {{Iran on Sunday rejected the West’s demand to send sensitive nuclear material out of the country but signaled flexibility on other aspects of its atomic activities that worry world powers, ahead of renewed negotiations this week.}}

    Talks about Iran’s nuclear programme, due to start in Geneva on Tuesday, will be the first since the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has tried to improve relations with the West to pave a way for lifting economic sanctions.

    Rouhani’s election in June to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has raised hopes of a negotiated solution to a decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme that could otherwise trigger a new war in the volatile Middle East.

    Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi’s comments on Sunday may disappoint Western officials, who want Iran to ship out uranium enriched to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, a short technical step away from weapons-grade material.

    However, Araqchi, who will join the talks in Switzerland, was less hardline about other areas of uranium enrichment, which Tehran says is for peaceful nuclear fuel purposes but the West fears may be aimed at developing nuclear weapons capability.

    “Of course we will negotiate regarding the form, amount, and various levels of (uranium) enrichment, but the shipping of materials out of the country is our red line,” he was quoted as saying on state television’s website.

    In negotiations since early 2012, world powers have demanded that Iran suspend 20-percent enrichment, send some of its existing uranium stockpiles abroad and shutter the Fordow underground site, where most higher-grade enrichment is done.

    In return, they offered to lift sanctions on trade in gold, precious metals and petrochemicals but Iran, which wants oil and banking restrictions to be removed, has dismissed that offer. It says it needs 20-percent uranium for a medical research reactor.

    However, Araqchi’s statement may be “the usual pre-negotiation posturing”, said Middle East specialist Shashank Joshi at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.

    “It is easy to imagine a compromise whereby Iran would ship out only some of its uranium, allowing the negotiating team to claim a victory. There are many potential compromises that will be explored,” Joshi told reporters.

    Cliff Kupchan, a director and Middle East analyst at risk consultancy Eurasia Group, took a similar line, saying Iran was seeking to gain leverage ahead of negotiations.

    “Still, it is sobering that a lead Iranian negotiator is setting red lines so early. These are going to be tough talks.”

    {agencies}

  • Rwanda Contingent Ready for EAC Military Exercise in Burundi

    Rwanda Contingent Ready for EAC Military Exercise in Burundi

    {{The Army Chief of Staff, Maj Gen Frank Mushyo Kamanzi has urged Rwanda contingent leaving for Regional Military Exercise in Burundi to maintain maximum discipline and be good ambassadors for the country. }}

    He urged them to maintain Rwandan flag flying high and keep high standards already set by RDF in regional military exercises. The contingent was reminded to work as a team and foster good relations with comrades from other countries.

    Gen Kamanzi briefed the contingent on behalf of RDF Chief of Staff, Gen Patrick Nyamvumba.

    Rwanda Contingent led by Col Tom Mpaka, who is also the Exercise Chief of Staff, will leave for Burundi this Sunday.

    The contingent is composed of 51 participants that include 41 military, 4 Police officers and 6 civilians. The regional military drill is codenamed “EAC Command Post Exercise ( CPX)Ushirikiano Imara 2013”.

    A total of 265 participants from EAC countries are awaited in Bujumbura, Burundi for two weeks CPX scheduled 13th-26th October.

    The aim of the exercise is to practice the EAC Partner States’ Armed Forces and stakeholders in planning and conduct of peace support operations, counter terrorism, counter piracy, and disaster management in order to enhance their capacity in combating complex security challenges.

    The same exercise was held in Rwanda at RDF Command and Staff College, Nyakinama in 2011.

    source:MOD

  • Police Seizes Tones of Smuggled Plants

    Police Seizes Tones of Smuggled Plants

    {{Police yesterday seized two trucks ferrying about 10 tonnes of smuggled plants locally known as Umushikiri/Kabaruka.}}

    Police in Bugesera district confiscated the first truck with number plate RAB 172N after the owner, Jean Bosco Nzabonimpa, abandoned it and ran away. He was later arrested after an investigation.

    Police also recovered a Ugandan Fuso lorry number UAM 979 V, in Nyabugogo in Nyarugenge district, loaded and abandoned by the driver with more than 7 tonnes of the plant.

    Police is hunting the driver, Charles Kalisa, who vanished after realising Police was following him. Police had been tipped-off by residents.

    The plant, mainly smuggled through Uganda and Tanzania via porous borders, is allegedly on high demand in Asia as a raw material for production of perfumes and other cosmetics.

    The Central Region Police Spokesperson, Senior Superintendent (SSP) Urbain Mwiseneza, lauded the public for providing Police with timely information which leads to the arrest of such criminals.

    SSP Mwiseneza also called upon the public to stop the illegal acts. “It is not only punished by the law but also destroys the environment.”

    Article 416 of the penal code provides for punishment to anyone who cuts trees or who causes others to do so. Punishments can be a prison term of six months to two years and a fine of Frw300, 000 to Frw2 million or one of these penalties.

    However, the same law provides for anyone seeking to cut any tree to seek authorization from authorities.

    {agencies}

  • Zimbabwe Backs ICC Pull Out Call

    Zimbabwe Backs ICC Pull Out Call

    {{Zimbabwe says it will back calls for Africa to pull out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) during an African Union summit this weekend in Ethiopia.}}

    The Southern African country has signed the Rome Statute that created the ICC but has not ratified it, which means it is not bound by the court’s obligations.

    Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday accused the ICC of targeting African leaders while letting off their Western counterparts.

    “History has taught us that colonialism was Europe colonising us. Now we need to go to Europe to be tried there by the same former colonial powers, down with that,” he said

    “We are not even debating it (ICC protocol). I don’t think it will see the light of the day in terms of ratification.”

    Some critics say President Robert Mugabe’s reluctance to step down is partly because he fears being dragged to the ICC for alleged human rights violations.

    Mr Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe wants Africa to “stand up and stamp their authority” against ICC bias.

    “Western leaders are left free but in Africa, look at Kenya, they are taking President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy who were elected by the people of Kenya, hauling them to go and face trials (at The Hague,” he said.

    President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are being tried for allegedly playing a role in the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

    agencies

  • Norway says its citizen may have taken part in Westgate attack

    Norway says its citizen may have taken part in Westgate attack

    {{Norway said on Thursday that one of its citizens may have been involved in the attack on a Kenyan shopping mall last month which killed at least 67 people and was claimed by Somali Islamist militants.}}

    More than two weeks after the mall assault, the worst attack on Kenyan soil since al Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, it remains unclear how many gunmen were involved and what their nationalities were.

    Kenyan government officials at the time of the raid said 10-15 militants had stormed the upscale mall, but so far only four have been named. Witnesses have said some of the gunmen may have escaped the building early on in the four-day stand-off with the military.

    Norwegian investigators were now in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Norway’s police security service, known as PST, said.

    “PST has received information that a Norwegian citizen of Somali origin may have been involved in the planning and execution of the attack, and PST decided to initiate an investigation on this basis,” PST said in a statement.

    Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels have said they staged the attack as an act of revenge for Kenya’s military campaign in the Horn of Africa nation to help neutralize al Shabaab and restore order there after two decades of anarchy.

    Jan Glent, a PST section leader, told Norway’s private broadcaster TV2 that he could not rule out “more Norway-linked suspects”.

    U.S. special forces carried out a raid on the Somali town of Barawe, a rebel stronghold south of the capital Mogadishu, on Saturday to capture a militant commander linked to multiple plots against Kenya. The mission failed after the Navy SEALS retreated under heavy gunfire.

    U.S. officials identified the target as Ikrima, the nom de guerre of Abdikadar Mohamed Abdikadar who Kenyan and Western security agencies say was a go-between for commanders of al Shabaab with al Qaeda and Kenya’s home-bred militants.

    Earlier this week, Norwegian TV2 reported Ikrima travelled to Norway where he applied for asylum, but left in 2008 before there was a decision on his application. When in Norway, he lived in the Oslo area but visited Somalia, the channel said.

    -Reuters