Tag: InternationalNews

{{New Zealand is to hold a referendum on whether to change the national flag, Prime Minister John Key has announced.}}

Mr Key, who on Monday called an election for 20 September, said the vote would be held within three years.

The current flag shows the Southern Cross constellation and includes the Union Jack – the UK’s national flag – in one corner.

Mr Key said the flag represented a period of history from which New Zealand had moved on.

“It’s my belief… that the design of the New Zealand flag symbolises a colonial and post-colonial era whose time has passed,” he said in a speech at Victoria University.

“The flag remains dominated by the Union Jack in a way that we ourselves are no longer dominated by the United Kingdom.”

“I am proposing that we take one more step in the evolution of modern New Zealand by acknowledging our independence through a new flag.”

Mr Key said that he liked the silver fern – popularised by national teams including the All Blacks – as an option, saying efforts by New Zealand’s athletes gave “the silver fern on a black background a distinctive and uniquely New Zealand identity”.

But he said he was open to all ideas and that retaining the current flag was “a very possible outcome of this process”.

{{‘No need’}}

A group of cross-party lawmakers would oversee the vote process and a steering group would seek public submissions for new flag designs, he said.

Mr Key said there was no move to cut ties with the British monarchy.

“We retain a strong and important constitutional link to the monarchy and I get no sense of any groundswell of support to let that go,” he said.

It is not clear to what extent there is support for changing the flag. One poll late last month showed only 28% of respondents wanted to change the flag, compared to 72% who were happy with the current version.

Representatives of service personnel have argued that troops have fought and died under the existing flag.

“The view of the RSA is there is no need to change the flag,” Don McIver, national president of the Returned and Services Association (RSA), was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

The opposition Labour party has said it supports the process.

“We’re not going to differ or divide from the government on this issue. It’s a broad constitutional issue, if the country wants a debate about the flag so be it, but it’s not the primary issue for this election,” leader David Cunliffe said.

The polls have been scheduled so that a new government will be in place by the G20 meeting due to take place in Australia in mid-November.

Mr Key’s National Party currently has a sizeable lead over the Labour opposition, polls show.

BBC

{{Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the international community of “hypocrisy” over Iran.}}

Mr Netanyahu spoke as the Israeli military unveiled what it alleged was a cache of Syrian-made weapons being sent by Iran to militants in the Gaza Strip.

He criticised EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who visited Tehran at the weekend, for her “smiles and handshakes” with Iran’s leaders.

Iran has dismissed as “failed lies” the accusation it was behind the shipment.

A spokesman for Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist movement that governs Gaza, has meanwhile said it is all a “silly joke”.

{{‘Denying the facts’}}

Israel’s navy seized a Panamanian-flagged vessel, the Klos-C, in the Red Sea off Sudan last Wednesday, and said it was carrying dozens of M-302 rockets, which have a range of 150km to 200km (93-124 miles).

The weapons had been tracked for several months as they were flown from Damascus to Tehran and then taken to a port in southern Iran, it alleged. From there, it added, they were loaded on to the Klos-C, which sailed to Iraq, where containers of cement were added.

On Monday, Mr Netanyahu said the world’s apparent decision to downplay the discovery in favour of seeking improved relations with Iran was “evidence of the era of hypocrisy in which we are living”.

“The ship was organised by Iran, dispatched by Iran, financed by Iran. The missiles were loaded by Iran, in Iran,” he added.

“Now, as usual, Iran denies these facts. In fact its foreign minister calls these facts “failed lies”. But it’s Iran who’s lying.”

The Israeli leader said he had heard only a handful of condemnations of this “murderous delivery”, which was intercepted shortly before Baroness Ashton travelled to Tehran.

“By comparison,” he said, “if we build a balcony in a neighbourhood of Jerusalem, we hear a chorus of vociferous condemnation of the state of Israel from the international community.”

Mr Netanyahu has long claimed that the West is being fooled by Iran’s diplomatic overtures following the election last August of President Hassan Rouhani, who was presented as a moderate.

World powers are currently engaged in talks with Iran in a bid to convince Tehran to scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Speaking after meeting with Baroness Ashton in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said a nuclear deal could come in the next four months.

{wirestory}

{{A Mexican drug lord who had been falsely reported dead more than three years ago was killed in a shootout with federal forces in western Mexico early on Sunday, the government said.}}

Nazario Moreno led a powerful criminal gang that has ravaged the western state of Michoacan, and was known as “El Mas Loco,” or “The Craziest One.”

He had been reported killed by the government in a firefight in December 2010, but his body was never recovered and he was widely believed to be still alive.

Government security spokesman Alejandro Rubido said after security forces discovered Moreno was still alive, he was tracked down and found to be the undisputed leader of the main drug cartel operating in the area, The Knights Templar.

“This morning, he was intercepted,” Rubido said. “When he was asked to turn himself in, he opened fire and was killed.”

The death of Moreno marks another major victory for President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government in its campaign to bring Mexico’s powerful drug gangs to heel.

The country’s most wanted drug baron, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, was captured last month.

Officials said the identity of Moreno, who was killed near Tumbiscatio, a village about 50 km (30 miles) north of the port of Lazaro Cardenas, was confirmed via fingerprints.

{{SURVIVOR}}

Moreno led a drug cartel known as La Familia, which fractured after his reported demise in 2010. Moreno’s allies formed the most powerful faction of La Familia and renamed themselves the Knights Templar after a medieval military order.

The Knights Templar had much of Michoacan under its control until local vigilante groups rose up against it at the start of this year and began to overrun the gang’s strongholds.

The government has formed an uneasy alliance with the vigilantes despite concerns that the so-called self-defense groups had themselves been infiltrated by organized crime.

Rubido said a series of raids and arrests in the last few weeks had helped the government to track down Moreno.

Moreno was born in 1970 in an unruly part of Michoacan known as the “Tierra Caliente,” or hot country, where traffickers have long grown marijuana and poppies to make opium.

Working as a laborer in the United States in the 1980s, Moreno converted to evangelical Christianity, and on his return home, he spread his version of the gospel within the drug trade.

In 2006, Moreno named his cartel “La Familia Michoacana” and in advertisements printed in newspapers claimed his troops were good Christians who defended their kind even if they smuggled drugs.

La Familia was given a boost by the growing crystal methamphetamine trade, with smugglers bringing in precursor chemicals to Michoacan’s Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas.

The Knights Templar took a firm hold of Lazaro Cardenas and would go on to export iron ore from the port to China.

Federal police first caught up with Moreno in 2010, when he was handing out Christmas presents of washing machines and cars in a festival in the Michoacan village El Alcalde.

Police who took part in the attack against Moreno said the 2,000 officers involved in the operation ran into hundreds of gunmen who blocked roads with burning cars and trucks.

Five officers were killed, and police shot dead more than 50 gunmen in fighting lasting several hours, police said. The gang carried many of those hit, including Moreno, into the hills.

{{About a dozen nuns held by rebels in Syria for more than three months were released on Sunday and arrived back in Syria after traveling through Lebanon, officials and witnesses said.}}

Witnesses at the Syrian border with Lebanon said the nuns arrived at the crossing late on Sunday night and headed toward Damascus in a minibus. One witness counted 13 nuns and three other workers from their convent.

“I’m in good health, thank God,” one of the nuns said by phone, leaving before she could give her name or further details.

A Lebanese security source had said the nuns had been taken to the Lebanese town of Arsal earlier in the week and would head to the Syrian capital on Sunday accompanied by the head of a Lebanese security agency and a Qatari intelligence official.

The nuns went missing in December after Islamist fighters took the ancient quarter of the Christian town of Maaloula north of Damascus.

After being held in the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Thecla in Maaloula, they were reportedly moved to the rebel-held town of Yabroud, about 20 km (13 miles) to the north, which is now the focus of a government military operation.

Speaking to reporters at the border, Syrian Greek Orthodox Bishop Louka al-Khoury welcomed the reported release of the nuns. “What the Syrian army achieved in Yabroud facilitated this process,” he said.

Shortly after the nuns disappeared, Islamist rebels said they had taken them as their “guests” and that they would release them soon.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group identified the rebels who took the nuns as militants from the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

The Observatory and a rebel source in the area said the release of the nuns had been agreed as part of a swap in which the government would free scores of women prisoners.

“The deal is for the release of 138 women from Assad’s prisons,” the rebel source said, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Other reports by activists on social media said around 150 prisoners would be released.

In December, the nuns appeared in a video obtained by Al Jazeera television, saying they were in good health, but it was not clear under what conditions the video had been filmed.

Syrian state television devoted significant coverage to the release on Sunday, but made no mention of any prisoner exchange agreement.

It broadcast live footage from the Lebanese border and interviews with church officials, including one who denounced the West as only believing “in the dollar”.

A montage of Christian imagery including churches, a statue of the Virgin Mary and murals of Jesus was set against music and described Syria as a “cradle of the monotheistic faiths.”

Syria’s Christian minority has broadly tried to stay on the sidelines of the three-year-old-conflict, which has killed over 140,000 people and which has become increasingly sectarian.

But the rise of hardline Islamists among the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim opposition has alarmed many. Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, has portrayed himself as a bulwark against militant and intolerant ideologies.

{wirestory}

{{Military radar indicates that the missing Boeing 777 jet may have turned back before vanishing, Malaysia’s air force chief said on Sunday as authorities were investigating up to four passengers with suspicious identifications.}}

The revelations add to the uncertainties surrounding the final minutes of flight MH370, which was carrying 239 people when it lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam after leaving Kuala Lumpur early on Saturday morning for Beijing.

A massive international sea search has so far turned up no trace of the plane, which lost contact with the ground when the weather was fine, the plane was already cruising and the pilots didn’t send a distress signal — unusual circumstance for a modern jetliner operated by a professiona airline.

Vietnamese air force jets spotted two large oil slicks on Saturday, but it was unclear if they were linked to the missing plane, and no debris was found nearby.

Air force chief Rodzali Daud didn’t say which direction the plane might have taken or how long for when it apparently went off route.

“We are trying to make sense of this,” he told a media conference. “The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back and in some parts, this was corroborated by civilian radar.”

{{Puzzling incident}}

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots were supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn.

“From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled,” he said.

Authorities were checking on the suspect identities of at least two passengers who appear to have boarded with stolen passports.

On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight’s manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

This, and the sudden disappearance of the plane that experts say is consistent with a possible onboard explosion, strengthened existing concerns about terrorism as a possible cause for the disappearance.

Al-Qaeda militants have used similar tactics to try and disguise their identities.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that authorities were looking at two more possible cases of suspicious identities.

He said Malaysian intelligence agencies were in contact with their international counterparts, including the FBI. He gave no more details.

“All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies,” he said. “We are looking at all possibilities.”

A total of 22 aircraft and 40 ships have been deployed to the area by Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States, not counting Vietnam’s fleet.

{{Prepared for the worst}}

Two-thirds of the jet’s passengers were Chinese. The rest were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

After more than 30 hours without contact with the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should “prepare themselves for the worst”, Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for the airline told reporters.

Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort.

Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over many square kilometres. If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.

A team of American experts was en route to Asia to be ready to assist in the investigation into the crash.

The team includes accident investigators from National Transportation Safety Board, as well as technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the safety board said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San Francisco, killing three passengers, all Chinese teenagers.

Investigators will need access to the flight data recorders to determine what happened.

{{Plane inspected days ago}}

Aviation and terrorism experts said revelations about stolen passports would strengthen speculation of foul play.

They also acknowledged other scenarios, including some catastrophic failure of the engines or structure of the plane, extreme turbulence or pilot error or even suicide, were also possible.

Jason Middleton, the head of the Sydney-based University of New South Wales’ School of Aviation, said terrorism or some other form of foul play seemed a likely explanation.

“You’re looking at some highly unexpected thing, and the only ones people can think of are basically foul play, being either a bomb or some immediate incapacitating of the pilots by someone doing the wrong thing and that might lead to an airplane going straight into the ocean,” Middleton said.

“With two stolen passports [on board], you’d have to suspect that that’s one of the likely options.”

Just 9% of fatal accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude, according to a statistical summary of commercial jet accidents done by Boeing.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said on Saturday there was no indication the pilots had sent a distress signal.

The plane was last inspected 10 days ago and found to be “in proper condition”, Ignatius Ong, CEO of Malaysia Airlines subsidiary Firefly airlines, said at a news conference.

– AP

{{China will toughen its environmental protection laws to target polluters, according to a high-level policy report released on Sunday, paving the way for possibly unlimited penalties for polluting and the suspension or shutdown of polluters.}}

The revised law would hold “polluters accountable for the damage they cause and having them compensate for it”, said the report, delivered by Zhang Dejiang, who sits on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee as one of the country’s most powerful politicians.

Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war on pollution” in a report during the country’s annual parliamentary session on Wednesday, but critics say the statement amounts to mere rhetoric without legal reforms to back it up.

The environment has emerged as one of Beijing’s key priorities amid growing public disquiet about urban smog, dwindling and polluted water supplies and the widespread industrial contamination of farmland.

Sources with ties to the leadership told Reuters in February that amendments to China’s 1989 environmental law would expand the environment ministry’s powers significantly and allow regulators to suspend and shut down repeat offenders.

Sunday’s policy report did not give specific details on how enforcement would be toughened. China’s environment ministry has historically been unable to enforce anti-pollution laws effectively.

Almost all Chinese cities monitored for pollution last year failed to meet state standards.

China tested a domestically-produced drone aircraft that disperses smog by releasing a chemical catalyst, state media reported on Sunday.

reuters

{{North Koreans have been voting in a five-yearly election to approve members of the rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly.}}

Each of the 687 districts has only one candidate running for office, with electors required to write only “Yes” or “No” on the ballot paper.

Campaign posters across the capital, Pyongyang, have urged a “Yes” vote.

Observers say the candidate list is an opportunity to see who is in or out of favour with the leadership.

In the last election in 2009, turnout was 99%, with 100% of votes in favour of the given candidates.

The election is the first to be held under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who came to power in December 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

Mr Kim is registered as a candidate in Mount Paekdu, venerated in party propaganda as the birthplace of Kim Jong-il.

The vote is being held in a holiday atmosphere in the capital, Pyongyang, with performances taking place in the street.

“Through this election we will fully display the might of the single-hearted unity of our army and people,” said Hyon Byong-chol, chairman of a preparatory committee for one of the sub-districts in the election.

wirestory

{{Iranian foreign minister has told the visiting EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, that a nuclear deal could come in the next four months.}}

Mohammad Javad Zarif held talks lasting more than an hour with Baroness Ashton, who is making her first visit to Tehran amid a thaw in relations.

“We can do it in four or five months and even shorter,” Mr Zarif said.

Baroness Ashton cautioned there was “no guarantee” her talks would lead to a comprehensive agreement.

World powers want Iran to scale back its nuclear work to ensure it cannot assemble a nuclear weapon.

The election of Iranian moderate Hassan Rouhani as president last year led to an improvement in ties between the Islamic Republic and the EU.

In November, Baroness Ashton helped broker a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme in return for limited sanctions relief.

Analysts say the war in Syria is also expected to be discussed, as Iran is a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad.

It is the first visit to Iran by an EU policy chief since 2008.

{{‘No guarantee’}}

“This interim agreement is really important but not as important as a comprehensive agreement [which is]… difficult, challenging,” Baroness Ashton said at a joint news conference with Mr Zarif.

“There is no guarantee that we will succeed.”

There was, she added, a need for support from all sides.