IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Al-Qaeda Calls For Kidnap Of Westerners

    Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged Egyptians to restart their revolution to press for Islamic law and called on Muslims to kidnap Westerners, the SITE Intelligence Group said Friday.

    In a video released on jihadist forums and translated by the US monitoring service, Zawahiri also lashed out at US President Barack Obama, calling him a liar and demanding he admit defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa.

    Criticizing the new Egyptian government — led by a president drawn from the Muslim Brotherhood — as corrupt, he said a battle is being waged in Egypt between a secular minority and Muslims seeking implementation of Shariah law.

    The Egyptian doctor, the former deputy to slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, said these Egyptians want to see their government liberated from US influence, and Palestinian victory over Israel, SITE reported.

    “The battle isn’t over, but it has started,” Zawahiri said, urging “every sincere person in Egypt” to “wage a popular campaign to incite and preach in order to complete the revolution, which was aborted.

    “The revolution in Egypt must continue and the Muslim Ummah must offer sacrifices until it achieves what it wants and until it snatches from the corrupt forces … the dignity and honor of Egypt.”

    Massive protests erupted on January 25, 2011 and toppled former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak after more than 30 years of iron-fisted rule. He was replaced by the Islamist Mohamed Morsi after elections earlier this year.

    Zawahiri said liberating Omar Abdul Rahman, an Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and inmates at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay was an “obligatory duty for every Muslim.”

    “I call upon Muslims to capture citizens of the countries that wage wars against Muslims,” he said.

    “Our captives or Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman will not be liberated except through force, for it is the only language that they understand.”

    In that vein, he made a reference to Warren Weinstein, a relief worker with USAID who was captured in Lahore, Pakistan in August 2011.

    Zawahiri also called Obama a “professional liar.”

    “Obama must admit he and his allies are standing in the defeated line, and that Osama bin Laden, may Allah have mercy on him, and the rest of the Mujahedeen and the Muslim Ummah are standing in the victorious line, whether anyone likes it or not.”

    In a second, 58-minute video, also summarized and translated by SITE, Zawahiri called upon Egyptians to take part in protests “against the Israeli embassy and against normalization and the peace treaty with Israel, and against the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine, and against any concession and surrender to it, and against every siege in Gaza.”

    He also asked Morsi — whom he described as a president with no authority — specific questions, including what his positions were on “the jihad to liberate Palestine,” as well as Sharia rule and Egypt’s participation in the US “war on terror”.

  • Berlusconi Sentenced To Jail

    Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, has been sentenced by a Milan court for tax fraud connected to his Mediaset television channels and also banned from holding public office for five years.

    The court sentenced him on Friday to four years but later cut it to one year because of an amnesty law which reduces the sentences of all crimes committed up to May 2006.

    In addition to the prison sentence, Berlusconi and 10 co-defendants were ordered to pay 10m euros ($13m) to Italian tax authorities, a statement said.

    Berlusconi, 76, is considered certain to stave off any imprisonment or ban on his political activities by appealing through higher courts.

    The Milan court also said Berlusconi could not hold public office for five years or manage any company for three years, penalties that would take force only if the conviction is upheld.

    The tax scam helped to create secret overseas accounts and reduce profits to pay fewer taxes in Italy.

    Big consequences

    Berlusconi was accused of having artificially inflated the price of film distribution rights bought by shell companies, then selling these back to his Mediaset empire.

    The prosecution had asked for a prison sentence of three years and eight months for Berlusconi.

  • Racism Will Affect US Polls

    Candidate Barack Obama has a deficit of 23% points, trailing Republican Mitt Romney 60% to 37% among whites, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll.

    That presents a significant hurdle for the president — and suggests that he will need to achieve even larger margins of victory among women and minorities, two important parts of the Democratic base, to win reelection.

    Overall, Romney has edged ahead in the contest, garnering 50% of likely voters for the first time in the campaign, according to the Post-ABC poll.

    As Romney hits 50%, the president stands at 47%, his lowest tally since before the national party conventions.

    The three-point edge gives Romney his first apparent — but not statistically significant — advantage in the national popular vote.

    The challenger has a clear nine-point lead when it comes to whom voters trust to handle the economy, which has long been the central issue of the contest.

    He has also effectively neutralized what has been a consistent fallback for Obama: economic empathy.

    Romney’s momentum in these areas comes from improvements against the president among white voters.

    The slippage among whites is something of a setback for Obama, who campaigned on bridging the racial divide in his election and has sought to minimize rifts that have arisen in his presidency.

    Although Democrats typically win minorities and fare worse among white voters than their Republican rivals, Obama outpaced previous losing Democratic candidates with both groups.

    Less than two weeks before the election, the evidence suggests that a much more sharply divided country will head to the polls.

    As he did in 2008, Obama gets overwhelming support from nonwhites, who made up a record high proportion of the overall electorate four years ago.

    In that contest, 80% of all nonwhites supported Obama, including 95% of black voters, according to the exit poll. In the Post-ABC tracking poll released Thursday, Obama again draws support from 80% of nonwhites, and backing for his reelection is nearly universal among African Americans.

    In other words, Romney appears to have made no inroads in chipping away at Obama’s support among Hispanics and African Americans.

  • Syria Clashes ‘Violate’ Eid Ceasefire

    Fierce clashes between Syrian government forces and rebels have broken out around a military base near the northern town of Maaret al-Numan in the “first violation” of a ceasefire, an activist group has said.

    “Violent clashes started around 0730 GMT around the Wadi Deif base. The army responded by bombing the neighbouring village of Deir Sharqi. It is the first violation of the ceasefire,” Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the AFP news agency on Friday.

    He said that among the rebel fighters were members of the Islamist Al-Nusra Front, an armed group that had already indicated it would not abide by the truce, agreed by President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the main rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) for the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

    There were no immediate indications from either the regime or the FSA that they considered the ceasefire had been violated.

  • China Condemns NY Times Story

    The article said Mr Wen’s family members “have controlled assets worth at least US$2.7billion”.

    A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the report had “ulterior motives”.

    Both the NYT’s Chinese and English sites are being blocked inside China, as are references to the report on micro-blogging sites.

    “Some reports smear China and have ulterior motives,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said when asked about the story in a daily press briefing. On the blocking, he said the internet was managed “in accordance with laws”.

    In its report, the New York Times said Mr Wen’s relatives’ holdings included property, insurance and construction firms.

    “Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership,” the newspaper wrote.

    “In many cases, the names of the relatives have been hidden behind layers of partnerships and investment vehicles involving friends, work colleagues and business partners.”

    The family’s investments reportedly spanned several sectors. The newspaper cited one holding as Ping An, an insurance company which it said had benefited from reforms enacted in 2004 by a state body over which Mr Wen had oversight.

    It said that partnerships controlled by Mr Wen’s relatives, along with their friends and colleagues, had bought into the firm before its IPO, or stock market flotation, in 2004, and held as much as $2.2bn in the company in 2007.

    The newspaper said both the Chinese government and Mr Wen’s relatives declined to comment on the investigation, which was based on corporate records from 1992-2012.

    BBC

  • Colin Powel Endorses Obama

    Former US secretary of state Colin Powell Thursday endorsed President Barack Obama’s bid for re-election.

    The Republican who used to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said, “I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012.”

    Powell said that in 2008, the Democrat Obama inherited an economy that was close to depression, with Wall Street in chaos and the housing sector starting to collapse.

    Under Obama’s leadership, stability has come back to the financial community, housing is picking up and and consumer confidence is rising, although unemployment remains high, among other problems, Powell said.

    Also, Obama has protected America from terrorism and wound down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he added.

    “And so I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on,” Powell said.

    Powell, himself once widely touted as a prospect for the White House, said his party affiliation has not changed — but he said he’s “a Republican of a more moderate mold,” something he said was “a dying breed.”

    Four years ago, Powell, the first African-American to occupy the top US military post, also came out publicly in support of Obama, who became the first African-American president.

    Powell said then he thought “Obama would be a transformational president.”

  • Embassy Life Like ‘a Space Station,’ Assange Says

    Four months holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been “a little like living in a space station” but beats prison, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Thursday.

    Assange sought refuge in the embassy in June, after losing a court battle against extradition to Sweden. Since then, he has been living in a single room with a frosted-glass window while the business of the diplomatic mission goes on around him.

    “It’s a little like living in a space station, because there’s no natural light and you’ve got to make all your own stuff. You can’t go out to shops and so on,” Assange told CNN in an interview Thursday.

    “But I have been in solitary confinement. I know what life is like for prisoners. It’s a lot better than it is for prisoners.”

    Embassy staffers would not allow CNN to view his living quarters, but Assange appeared relaxed and healthy despite his restricted circumstances.

    His comments came the same day WikiLeaks began disclosing a new round of U.S. military documents dealing with handling prisoners in American military custody.

    Ecuador granted Assange asylum in August, amid a diplomatic row between the United Kingdom and his South American hosts.

    British courts have approved his extradition to Sweden, and Assange faces arrest if he sets foot outside the embassy.

    Assange has not been charged with a crime, but Sweden has said it wants to question him about allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman there.

    Assange has denied the allegations and says they’re a ruse to get him to Sweden, which would then extradite him to the United States.

    Though the first of the newly published documents include no bombshells, Assange said the records his group will put out are “documents of incredible historical importance” and demonstrate a “climate of unaccountability” within the U.S. government.

  • Israel Accused of Bombing Sudan Arms Factory

    Sudan said on Wednesday that an Israeli air strike had caused the huge explosion and fire at an arms factory in Khartoum that killed two people, while Israel’s defence minister declined to comment.

    Sudan, which analysts say is used as an arms-smuggling route to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip via neighbouring Egypt, has blamed Israel for such strikes in the past but Israel either has refused to comment or said it neither admitted nor denied involvement.

    Asked by Israel’s Channel Two News about Sudan’s accusations, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said: “There is nothing I can say about this subject.”

    A huge fire broke out late on Tuesday at the Yarmouk arms factory in the south of the capital which was rocked by several explosions, witnesses said. Firefighters took more than two hours to extinguish the fire at Sudan’s main factory for ammunition and small arms.

    “Four military planes attacked the Yarmouk plant … We believe that Israel is behind it,” Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman told reporters, adding that the planes had appeared to approach the site from the east.

    “Sudan reserves the right to strike back at Israel,” he said, saying two citizens had been killed and that the plant had been partially destroyed. Another person was seriously injured, he added.

    Around 300 people gathered in the evening at the courtyard of a government building where the Sudanese cabinet was meeting at an emergency session, shouting “Death to Israel” and “Remove Israel from the map.”

    “Israel is a country of injustice that needs to be deterred,” Vice President Ali Osman Taha, standing next to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, told the crowd. “This attack only strengthens our firmness.”

    The governor of Khartoum state initially had ruled out any “external” cause for the blast but officials later showed journalists a video from the vast site. A huge crater could be seen next to two destroyed buildings and what appeared to be a rocket lying on the ground.

    Osman said an analysis of rocket debris and other material had shown that the attack had been engineered by Israel, which Sudan views as an enemy.

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  • Korea to Launch Naro Rocket into Space Friday

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