Tag: InternationalNews

{{President Barack Obama has warned his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai that the US may pull all of its troops out of his country by the year’s end.}}

Mr Obama conveyed the message in a phone call to Mr Karzai, who has refused to sign a security agreement.

The US insists this agreement must be in place before it commits to leaving some troops behind for counter-insurgent operations and training.

The US has had troops in Afghanistan since 2001 when it toppled the Taliban.

Its forces went into the country following the 9/11 attacks on the US. With Afghan and Western allies, they quickly overthrew the Taliban authorities, but have faced insurgent attacks since then.

Correspondents say the disagreement over the bilateral security agreement (BSA) is the latest step in the long and deteriorating relationship between Washington and Mr Karzai, who was once seen as a key US ally.

The BSA, which offers legal protection for US troops and defines a post-2014 Nato training and anti-insurgent mission, was agreed by the two countries last year after months of negotiation.

It was endorsed at a national gathering (Loya Jirga) of Afghan elders in Kabul in November.

wirestory

{{The United Nations has called on Myanmar to investigate reports that dozens of men, women and children who were killed in attacks on Rohingya Muslims with the alleged involvement of police.}}

The UN said it had received “credible information” of a series of attacks in a remote area of strife-torn Rakhine state earlier this month, in the latest statement of international concern over the fresh bout of unrest.

Myanmar, whose sweeping political reforms have been overshadowed by religious bloodshed, has vociferously denied civilians were killed but said a police officer was presumed dead after a clash.

“I deplore the loss of life in [the village of] Du Chee Yar Tan and call on the authorities to carry out a full, prompt and impartial investigation and ensure that victims and their families receive justice”, the UN’s human rights chief Navi Pillay said in the statement late on Thursday.

The UN said it had information that eight Rohingya Muslim men were attacked and killed in the village, near the border with Bangladesh, by local Rakhine Buddhists on 9 January.

{{Several outbreaks}}

Four days later, a police sergeant in the same village was captured and killed by Rohingya.

This in turn prompted police and local Rakhine to kill at least 40 Rohingya Muslim men, women and children the same evening, the statement said, adding that the UN had passed on the information it had received to the Myanmar government.

Presidential spokesperson Ye Htut described the UN statement as “regrettable” and based on “groundless sources”.

“Because of these acts, mistrust and concern can increase in Rakhine state and trust in the UN organisations among local residents can decrease”, he told AFP.

Myanmar’s western Rakhine state remains tense after several outbreaks of inter-communal violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities since 2012 that have killed scores and displaced 140 000 people, mainly from the Rohingya minority.

The area where the latest violence is believed to have taken place is mainly populated by the stateless Rohingya, whose movements are strictly controlled by a heavy security presence.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF), one of the few outside organisations permitted to operate in the region, said it had treated at least 22 patients with injuries believed to be from violence in the village on 14 January, mostly from knife wounds but also one gunshot victim.

Activists said shortly after the 13 January attack that at least two women and a child were stabbed to death in the village, with possibly several dozen casualties.

Both the United States and Britain have raised alarm over the reports of the violence.

Official discrimination

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on his official Twitter account that he was “sickened” by reports that women and children had been killed.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it had received information that police had authorised the arrest of all Rohingya men and boys over the age of 10 in the area.

It said Myanmar’s initial denial of civilian casualties suggested reports of unrest were “not being taken seriously”.

“Official discrimination against the Rohingya population and impunity for past abuses has created a fertile ground for new atrocities to take place”, said HRW deputy Asia director Phil Robertson.

Myanmar’s government considers the estimated 800 000 Rohingya in the country to be foreigners while many citizens see them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and view them with hostility.

Two rounds of unrest in Rakhine state in June and October 2012, largely between local Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslim minority, sparked religious unrest that has since spread across the country leaving some 250 people dead.

Rakhine has been left almost completely segregated on religious and communal grounds by the unrest, with many thousands of Muslims living in squalid camps nearly two years after being displaced.

Thousands of Rohingya asylum seekers have fled Myanmar in rickety and overcrowded boats trying to reach Malaysia and further afield, with scores dying at sea.

Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has sought to emerge from decades of junta-imposed isolation, with sweeping political and economic reforms since taking power in 2011.

{AFP}

{{Thai army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Monday the military had no plans to intervene in the current political crisis and urged dialogue between Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government and protesters who are aiming to oust her.}}

In a rare televised address, he said there were many more groups involved in the protest than in previous unrest in 2010 and it was difficult to know who was on what side.

“Somebody has to take responsibility but that doesn’t mean soldiers can intervene without working under the framework [of the law],” army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha also noted. “How can we be sure that if we use soldiers, the situation will return to peace?”

The military, which cracked down on a protest movement in 2010, has staged numerous coups since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. It overthrew the embattled prime minister’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, in 2006, but has stayed above the fray this time round.

{{Thai PM leaves Bangkok}}

Meanwhile, Yingluck Shinawatra has left the city and is staying 150 km (90 miles) away, her office said on Monday, without specifying the location.

The protests, punctuated by occasional gunfire and bomb blasts, including one on Sunday that killed a woman and a young brother and sister, are aimed at unseating Yingluck and erasing the influence of her brother, who is seen by many as the power behind the government.

Yingluck’s office told reporters she was not in Bangkok and asked media to follow a convoy outside the city to where they said Yingluck was “undertaking official duties”.

The office would not confirm how many days Yingluck had been working outside the capital. She was last seen in public in Bangkok nearly a week ago, last Tuesday, and is due to attend a corruption hearing there on Thursday.

Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said Yingluck would hold a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“It is highly likely that we will hold the cabinet meeting outside of Bangkok. As for the prime minister’s exact whereabouts today, I have not been informed,” Surapong told reporters.

The political crisis, which pits the mainly middle-class anti-government demonstrators from Bangkok and the south against supporters of Yingluck from the populous rural north and northeast, shows no sign of ending soon.

But the army, which toppled Thaksin in 2006 in the latest of 18 coups or attempted coups since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, said it would not intervene this time round.

Protesters, who disrupted and boycotted this month’s general election, have been urged by their leader to target businesses linked to Thaksin and gathered outside a television station on Monday managed by Thaksin’s son.

They also headed for the foreign and finance ministries.

The Election Commission had said it would try to complete the election process in late April, but has since suspended that date pending a court decision, leaving the country in limbo under a caretaker government with limited powers.

Bomb blast leaves three dead

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for Sunday’s bomb blast in a busy central shopping district, but the polarisation of Thai society raises the possibility of wider civil strife.

The six-year-old sister of a boy killed in the attack died on Monday, doctors said, taking the death toll to three.

Each side has accused the other of instigating violence, while armed provocateurs have a history of trying to stir tension. Protesters and the police have blamed violence on shadowy third parties.

Yingluck described Sunday’s attack, and one on Saturday in the eastern province of Trat in which a five-year-old girl was killed, as terrorism.

“I strongly condemn the use of violence in recent days … since the lives of children were lost,” she said on Facebook.

At least 20 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since the protests began in November, according to the Erawan Medical Center, which monitors hospitals.

france24

{{Judicial authorities in the United States say they will seek the extradition of the world’s top drug baron, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.}}

Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa drugs cartel, was arrested in Mexico on Saturday after 13 years on the run.

He was detained in the beach resort of Mazatlan without a shot being fired.

He is wanted in the US on charges of smuggling vast amounts of drugs into the country, but Mexican authorities are also likely to want to charge him.

‘Best course’

A spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said prosecutors there “planned to seek his extradition”.

But an official in the Mexican attorney general’s office said Guzman would first have to serve the remainder of his jail sentence before being extradited.

In 2001, Guzman escaped from a high-security jail in Mexico hidden in a laundry basket. He was eight years into his 20-year sentence.

Chairman of the US House Homeland Security Committee Michael McCaul said extraditing Guzman to the United States would prevent another escape.

“I think that would be the best course not only for Mexico, but also the United States, in ensuring that what happened in 2001 does not happen again,” he told ABC television.

Guzman is also likely to face fresh charges in Mexico, including drug trafficking, involvement in organised crime and possession of weapons restricted to the military.

{{Criminal mastermind}}

Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel is believed to be one of the biggest criminal organisations in the world, trafficking drugs into more than 50 countries worldwide.

Forbes magazine has estimated Guzman’s fortune at about $1bn (£0.6bn).

His capture has been hailed as a major victory for the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Guzman was arrested by Mexican marines working with US law enforcement officials in the early hours of Saturday.

He was detained in a four-storey condominium in Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where he was hiding with a bodyguard and, according to some sources, with a woman believed to be his wife.

Guzman had a military-style assault rifle on him but no shots were fired.

{{Key communications}}

Saturday’s operation was the culmination of a 13-year manhunt for Guzman, who had been rumoured to be hiding everywhere from Mexico’s remote mountain region to Argentina.

US law enforcement officials told the Associated Press news agency that their big break came when they tracked a mobile phone to one of Guzman’s hideouts in the city of Culiacan, the capital of north-western Sinaloa state.

A day later, the authorities managed to capture one of Guzman’s close associates, who – according to the officials – provided them with details of seven houses in Culiacan that Guzman was using to hide from the authorities.

All the houses were secured with steel-reinforced doors and had escape hatches hidden underneath the bathtubs leading to tunnels linked to the city’s drainage system.

It is through these tunnels that Guzman again evaded capture as Mexican marines were closing in on him, one of his detained associates revealed to investigators.

The associate, Manuel Lopez Ozorio, said he had picked up Guzman, his communications chief. and a woman from a drainage pipe and took them to the resort town of Mazatlan.

US law enforcement officials told AP that further wiretaps allowed them to pinpoint Guzman’s location to the building on Mazatlan’s beachfront where he was detained.

Mexican security forces continue to search for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Guzman’s number two and the man tipped to to take over Guzman’s operations.

BBC

{{Viktor Yanukovich clearly felt he had something to hide when he fled Kiev. Numerous documents that he attempted to destroy have been found at his residences – and even at first glance, there is plenty of incriminating evidence.}}

As people roam the park surrounding one of the guest houses on the sprawling grounds of Viktor Yanukovich’s estate, inside the house a small team of volunteers is working day and night to save thousands of documents found dumped in a lake nearby. Most relate to financial transactions.

“Not as much things were burned because we think they had no time to burn it, and that’s why they put it into the water,” said Inna Brozylo, of the Chesno anti-corruption project. “[We] think maybe the most important agreements between different companies were burned.”

Documents are also spread around the house. For now, it’s not about analysing their content but about physically preserving them.

“Here we save the folders that are already worked by us. Every wet paper, we cover it with two new ones,” Brozylo said.

Volunteers say the evidence of wrongdoing fairly leaps off these pages – including apparent payoffs made to security service workers.

“These documents are evidence that they were additionally financed by the president and his companies in cash,” said Chesno’s Tetyana Peklun, adding that the bribes were made not in Ukrainian hryvnias but in US dollars, which is strictly prohibited.

Even professional anti-corruption campaigners are struggling to digest what they’ve found. The papers reveal the astronomical sums the president spent on his various homes – in a country where the average monthly salary is €300 – but also hint at largescale money laundering.

“All [the] gossip, all [the] assumptions about Yanukovich, the amount of his corruption, are being proved,” Brozylo said. “A lot of activists at the Euromaidan think that death is a very easy way for him to go away. He should take all the pain that the people got from him.”

france24

Ukraine’s interim President Olexander Turchynov has warned of the dangers of separatism following the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Many in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking regions oppose his overthrow and the installation of a more European-leaning interim administration.

Russia is also angry at the changes, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow will not intervene.

The formation of a unity government has been delayed until Thursday.

Addressing parliament, Mr Turchynov said “a coalition of national faith must be elected”.

And he said he would meet law enforcement agencies to discuss the risk of separatism in regions with large ethnic Russian populations.

Separatism was a “serious threat”, he said.

‘Unilateral advantages’
At a news conference in Moscow, Mr Lavrov warned other states against seeking “unilateral advantages” in Ukraine, but said Russia’s “policy of non-intervention” would continue.

“It is dangerous and counter-productive to try to force on Ukraine a choice according to the principle of either being with us or against us,” he said.

BBC

{{Authorities were on Monday investigating a fatal shooting in an Israeli prison after a US-Israeli inmate was gunned down by guards after opening fire with a smuggled weapon.}}

The Israel Prison Services said it was looking into Sunday’s incident, during which Samuel Sheinbein shot at guards apparently using a gun he had smuggled into Rimonim prison, north of Tel Aviv.

Three wardens were wounded, two of them seriously, as well as one prisoner.

Sheinbein, 34, was eventually killed by the prison’s anti-riot unit.

Police had also formed an investigative committee to investigate the incident, spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told reporters.

Sheinbein was sentenced by an Israeli court to 24 years in jail for the gruesome murder and dismembering of acquaintance Alfredo Enrique Tello in the United States in 1997, when he was 17 years old.

He had fled to Israel to escape justice, and the Jewish state refused to extradite him because he was an Israeli citizen by birth through his father, in legal wrangling that caused outrage in the US.

Following Sheinbein’s case, the Israeli parliament passed a law which allows for Israeli nationals to be extradited.

AFP

{{The Obama administration has announced that it won’t enforce money-laundering laws against banks doing business with marijuana stores, in a move designed to “facilitate illegal conduct,” says Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA)}}

The Obama administration calls it “Guidance to Financial Institutions on Marijuana Businesses.”

The Washington Post story about this development carried the innocuous headline, “Obama administration clears banks to accept funds from legal marijuana dealers,” when in fact the marijuana “business” is not “legal” under federal or international law.

“Marijuana trafficking is illegal under federal law, and it’s illegal for banks to deal with marijuana sale proceeds under federal law,” noted Grassley. “Only Congress can change these laws. The administration can’t change the law with a memo.”

He added, “This is just one more area in which the Obama Administration is undermining our system of checks and balances and the rule of law.”

Robert Charles, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Accuracy in Media that, despite the “guidance” from the Obama administration, banks will stay away from laundering marijuana money because of the fear of being sued.

“The range of suits is enormous,” he said. “The guidelines do absolutely nothing. They protect no bank against anything. The DOJ won’t give any bank an assurance that it won’t be prosecuted under federal bank secrecy or anti-drug laws.”

Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, told AIM, “This is yet one more example of the lawlessness of the Obama administration. We all know that banks are federally regulated and that pot is still illegal at the federal level. This action will clearly put banks in jeopardy of violating regulations and will enable criminal activity to thrive.”

She added, “This action tells parents and grandparents that the government can no longer be counted on to do what it is intended to do: protect U.S. citizens from criminals who engage in drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapons trafficking, and other serious illegal activities that are inter-connected to the drug underworld. Rather, our government is now embracing this activity and enabling it.”

While most of the major media have been in support of what the Obama administration is doing to facilitate the spread of mind-altering drugs, some publications are sounding the alarm.

Whistleblower, a publication of WND.com, has published a special issue on the epidemic of drug use, legal and illegal, in American society. A piece by Art Moore titled, “Dude: Science contradicts Obama’s pot claims” refers to Obama as the “Choom Gang” president, a reference to his membership in a high school gang of heavy marijuana users, and notes that Obama’s claims about the relative harmlessness of pot are not sustained by the scientific evidence.

Another article by Moore identifies Obama supporter George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, as the main force behind marijuana legalization.

Investigative reporter Michael P. Tremoglie says in an article on a site called Main St. that Soros is only one of several big name CEOs and rich elites who are financing the marijuana movement. He also names:

Google billionaire Paul Buchheit
Facebook billionaire founders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz
PayPal founder Peter Thiel
George Zimmer, founder of Men’s Wearhouse
John Sperling, chairman and CEO of the University of Phoenix
Whole Foods founder John Mackey
A website called “Marijuana Majority” names dozens of other personalities backing the legalization of dope.

It appears, however, that some Republicans are moving in the direction of Obama’s soft-on-drugs policy.

Five days after the Maryland mall shootings, The Washington Times ran a front page story, “In the weeds: Paul, Christie, Perry open to softer pot laws ahead of 2016,” about possible Republican presidential candidates embracing the drug. It turned out that the Maryland mall shooter, who killed two people and then himself, was himself a pothead, and was possibly having a psychotic episode.

The Times said that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) “has arguably been the most vocal on the subject, saying the federal government should leave the issue entirely to the states.” The Times also reported that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has vowed to scrap the “failed war on drugs.”

But David Evans, the Executive Director of the Drug Free Projects Coalition and a special advisor to the Drug Free America Foundation, notes that during the George W. Bush administration marijuana use went down among young people by 25 percent.

“If we had had a reduction in any other health problem in the U.S. of 25 percent, we would consider it an outstanding success,” he said. But marijuana use has been going up under the Obama administration.

Michele M. Leonhart, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), declared in a statement issued last December that “Those who aspire to see their own or others’ children accomplish great things in life or who want to live in a nation of increasing prosperity should be very concerned about the increase in marijuana use by teenagers, including the fact that a staggering 12 percent of 13- and 14-year-olds are abusing the drug.

The mixed messages being sent to America’s teens about the harmfulness and legality of using record-high-potency marijuana are obscuring kids’ awareness of the effects their use will have on them. America owes it to its children to give them the best possible start in life, so they and society are not hindered in the future.”

Her statement takes on even more significance now that Obama has disregarded the scientific evidence, declared the drug to be relatively harmless, and is encouraging banks to launder money from the marijuana traffickers.

Pro-marijuana groups are demanding that Obama fire Leonhart. But she continues to enforce the federal laws against marijuana as best she can. The DEA announced on January 27th that the owners of a “medical marijuana” dispensary in Bakersfield, California, had been charged with trafficking in both methamphetamine and marijuana.

{businessdaily}