Tag: InternationalNews

More than 100,000 Americans have petitioned the White House to allow their states to secede from the US, after President Barack Obama’s re-election.

The appeals were filed on the White House’s We the People website.

Most of the 20 states with petitions voted for Republican Mitt Romney.

The US constitution contains no provisions for states to secede from the union. By Monday night the White House had not responded.

In total, more than 20 petitions have been filed. One for Texas has reached the 25,000-signature threshold at which the White House promises a response.

The last time states officially seceded, the US Civil War followed.

Most of the petitions merely quote the opening line of America’s Declaration of Independence from Britain, in which America’s founders stated their right to “dissolve the political bands” and form a new nation.

Currently, the most popular petition is from Texas, which voted for Mr Romney by some 15 percentage points more than it did for the Democratic incumbent.

The text complains of “blatant abuses” of Americans’ rights.

It cites the Transportation Security Administration, whose staff have been accused of intrusive screening at airports.

North Korea has conducted motor tests to improve its long-range missiles after a failed launch in April, a U.S. think tank said Monday after reviewing new satellite images.

Since the embarrassing flop in April, the communist regime appears to have carried out at least two tests of large motors needed for rockets and worked on a launch platform, the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said.

The institute examined commercial images of the Sohae satellite launch station between April and September and found that 34 fuel tanks had been moved and vegetation appeared to be burned, next to a flame trench stained with an orange residue.

Such fuel tests would boost development of engines for the Unha-3, the rocket which North Korea unsuccessfully launched in April, or what seemed to be a new, longer-range missile displayed at a military parade the same month.

Some analysts believe that a North Korean rocket, if successfully developed, could eventually reach the range to hit the United States.

Nick Hansen, an expert on imagery analysis, said that North Korea may step up action after elections in both the United States and South Korea, the regime’s two primary foes.

“In the aftermath of the U.S. and South Korean presidential elections, Pyongyang may embark on a new round of activities in the first half of 2013, including rocket and nuclear tests that will contribute to further development of its nuclear deterrent,” he wrote on the institute’s blog, 38 North.

South Korea’s defense minister, Kim Kwan-Jin, said last week that North Korea had completed preparations for another nuclear test and long-range missile launches.

However, 38 North in September reported a work stoppage at a new launch pad for intercontinental missiles — possibly due to rain — that could set the project back by up to two years.

North Korea defiantly went ahead with the rocket launch in April, saying it was trying to put a satellite in orbit, but it disintegrated just two to three minutes after blast-off.

The test put a halt to the latest international effort to engage the isolated state, with the United States calling off plans to deliver badly needed food assistance.

(more…)

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a national inquiry into institutional responses to the sexual abuse of children.

The move followed pressure from lawmakers amid police claims the Roman Catholic Church had concealed evidence of paedophile priests.

The inquiry will look at religious groups, NGOs and state-care providers as well as government agencies.

Ms Gillard said a Royal Commission was the best way to investigate the claims.

Late last week, the state of New South Wales announced an inquiry after a top policeman, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, accused the church of trying to silence investigations into allegations of abuse.

Chief Inspector Fox, who had investigated several cases of sexual assault over 35 years, had called for a Royal Commission in an open letter.

“I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church,” he wrote.

A separate parliamentary inquiry into church sex abuse began last month in Victoria.

Iran’s state TV says the military will test a new air defense system modeled after the U.S. Hawk system.

Monday’s report says the surface-to-air system has been named “Mersad,” or Ambush.

The report says it’s capable of locking a flying object at a distance of 80 kilometers (50 miles) and can hit it from 45 kilometers (30 miles) away, using Iranian-made missile Shahin, or Hawk.

The TV says Mersad will be tested during the military exercises that started last weekend.

Billed as “massive,” the week-long drill is also to include Iranian jet fighters, drones and about 8,000 troops and will cover nearly the entire eastern half of Iran.

The drill is meant to upgrade Iranian capabilities amid escalating tensions with the West over Tehran’s suspect nuclear program.

China is to ramp up development on a disputed South China Sea island, a local government chief has said, in a move likely to stoke a growing territorial row with its neighbours.

The development of roads, water supply and drainage systems will be stepped-up in the new “capital” city of Sansha on Yongxing, one of the islands that make up the disputed Paracel chain, Luo Baoming, Communist Party secretary of southern Hainan Province told state television on Saturday.

Luo also said steps will also be taken to enforce China’s “legal rights” in the region, which includes other island chains which are the subject of competing claims by Asian countries.

Beijing enraged Vietnam and caused concern in Washington when it announced the establishment of a new city and military garrison at Sansha in July.

The island, under the control of Hainan Province, will have administrative control over a region that encompasses not only the Paracels, but Macclesfield Bank, a largely sunken atoll to the east, and the Spratly Islands to the south.

The sovereignty of each remains a matter of dispute.

“To safeguard our legal rights in the South China Sea, we are now coordinating between the relevant departments in order to set a more unified, and efficient law enforcing body,” Luo said.

Domestic media reported in August that work had begun on sewage disposal and waste collection facilities for the island’s roughly 1,000 residents.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, which is home to vital shipping lanes and substantial proven and estimated oil and gas deposits.

Taiwan and ASEAN members the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia all have rival claims on areas of the sea, while the United States is also watching China’s increased assertiveness closely.

The announcement in July that Sansha would be established led to a formal protest being lodged by Vietnam, which said it violates international law.

The Philippines, which is involved in a dispute over the Spratly Islands, summoned the Chinese ambassador to lodge a complaint against the garrison announcement.

Syrian dissidents have signed an “initial agreement” during talks in Qatar to form a new umbrella national coalition, according to an opposition official.

Attempts to find Arab-Israeli common ground on banning weapons of mass destruction from the Mideast have failed, and high-profile talks on the issue have been called off, diplomats said Saturday.

The two diplomats said the United States, one of the organizers, would likely make a formal announcement soon saying that with tensions in the region remaining high, “time is not opportune” for such a gathering.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the cancellation ahead of the formal announcement.

The meeting — to be held in Helsinki, Finland, by year’s end — was on shaky ground since it was agreed to in 2010 by the 189 member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Its key sponsors were the U.S., Russia and Britain, but they said such as meeting was only possible if all countries — especially Israel —agreed to attend.

The decision to postpone, if not to scrap it, will cast doubt on the significance of the NPT and its attempts every five years to advance nonproliferation. Any new attempt is unlikely until the NPT conference meets again in 2015.

Hopes for such a meeting were alive as recently as Tuesday, when Iran joined Arab nations in saying that it planned to attend, leaving Israel as the only undecided country.

Tehran’s announcement came at a Brussels seminar on a Mideast nuclear-free zone also attended by Israel and the Arab countries, and described as largely free of regional tensions.

But the two diplomats said the decision to call off the Helsinki meeting had already been made by the time Iran declared Tuesday that it would attend.

But a decision to give up on staging such a gathering after it was approved by the NPT is more than a reflection of Mideast realities.

It also is bound to weaken efforts at future NPT conferences to reconcile clashing visions of disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.

Daryl Kimball, head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, warned that “an indefinite cancellation of the long-awaited conference on a Middle Eastern WMD-free zone will only worsen the proliferation risks in the future and undermine the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”

Iran, the Arab nations and most other developing countries say the emphasis should on the U.S. and other nuclear-armed states that are NPT members to disarm.

Such nations also castigate the West for supporting Israel and its widely suspected nuclear weapons program.

Washington and its allies say Iran, North Korea and Syria are the greatest proliferation threats, even though Tehran and Damascus deny allegations of secret nuclear activities linked to weapons.

The Arab proposal to create a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Mideast and to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared arsenal of perhaps 80 nuclear warheads, was endorsed by the 1995 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference but never acted on.

The conference meets every five years.

The two diplomats who spoke Saturday are from nations that were invited to the Helsinki meeting, which was to be open to all NPT-member nations.

The diplomats also are from member nations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

While Syria’s civil war, nuclear tensions with Iran and other Mideast frictions will be cited as the official reason for the cancellation, one of the diplomats acknowledged that the decision is mainly being taken because Israel has decided not to attend.

The diplomat — from a Western nation sympathetic to Israel— said Arabs countries have refused to budge from positions that made it impossible for the Jewish state to participate.

Israel has long said that a full Arab-Israeli peace plan must precede any creation of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction.

The region’s Muslim neighbors in turn have asserted that Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal presents the greatest threat to peace in the region.

They insist that Israel declare its arsenal and join the NPT as part of any peace talks.

The diplomat said that while the announcement that the Helsinki meeting has been canceled might be made in the name of all three co-sponsors — the U.S, Russia and Britain — it would likely be delivered only by the United States, reflecting tensions between Moscow and Washington on the issue.

He said the Russians have opposed declaring the meeting dead at this point.