Tag: InternationalNews

{An assailant with a rifle opened fire in the Paris office of left-wing daily newspaper ‘Liberation’ on Monday, leaving a young man fighting for his life in hospital with a bullet wound to his upper body. The shooter’s motive is unknown.}

The injured person was hit in the thorax, the official said. He added that the motive of the attacker, who was armed with a hunting rifle, was unclear.

“He walked in, fired twice and left,” ‘Liberation’s’ editorial manager, Fabrice Rousselot, told news television channel BFM TV.

Deputy editor-in-chief Fabrice Tassel said separately in a tweet that the young male victim was fighting for his life after having been rushed to hospital. The victim is believed to be a photographic assistant who was there for a magazine shoot.

The mid-morning incident came days after an intruder entered the Paris offices of the BFM TV channel, threatening journalists before disappearing. Rousselot said it was not clear whether the two incidents were linked.

Liberation’s offices near the Place de la Republique in central Paris were cordoned off as forensics experts investigated.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)

{A top Syrian rebel commander has died of wounds he sustained in an air strike on a rebel-held air base in Aleppo province on Thursday, his group says.}

Abdul Qadir al-Saleh, the leader of Liwa al-Tawhid, died overnight, a spokesman told the Associated Press.

Abdul Aziz Salama, the brigade’s political leader, had assumed overall command, the spokesman added.

Liwa al-Tawhid is one of the main rebel forces in Aleppo and is estimated to have between 8,000 and 10,000 fighters.

It was formed in July 2012 to unite the many separate fighting groups operating in the northern Aleppo countryside. Later that month, it led a rebel offensive on the city of Aleppo and took control of several districts.

In January, Liwa al-Tawhid joined the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SILF), an alliance of Islamist groups which mostly recognise the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army but not the National Coalition.
Government advance

Saleh, a former businessman from the town of Marea, had been meeting other senior figures from Liwa al-Tawhid at the time of the air strike.

Youssef al-Abbas, also known as Abu al-Tayyeb, died soon after the attack. There are conflicting reports about whether he was the brigade’s intelligence or financial chief.

Saleh and another senior figure, Abdul al-Aziz Salameh, were meanwhile rushed to a hospital in neighbouring Turkey. The opposition Aleppo News Network reported on Friday that they were in a “good condition”.

{{BBC}}

{David Cameron’s car was surrounded by hundreds of Tamil protesters, held back by the military, as they tried to hand him pictures of their missing loved ones, on a visit to Sri Lanka’s war-scarred north.}

As world leaders gathered in Colombo for the Commonwealth summit, the British prime minister flew to the northern city of Jaffna to meet the region’s new Tamil first minister – former judge CV Vigneswaran of the Tamil National Alliance – and people affected by its 25-year civil war.

Shortly after arriving, his convoy was mobbed by protesters, many of them women, hoping to highlight the disappearance of their relatives.

Cameron then travelled to meet journalists at the Uthayan newspaper, which blames the death of six of their colleagues on masked paramilitary gangs sent by the government. One is still missing.

After assassination attempts, the paper’s editor has lived in his office for years, and there have been six attacks on the premises and staff so far this year.

Cameron toured a burned-out printing press after an arson attack that left the office with bullet holes on the walls. He then visited a nearby refugee camp, described by the government as a “welfare village”, where around 150 families have lived in makeshift accommodation since being displaced 23 years ago.

Members of the military police were present outside the newspaper and throughout the village. A small group of protesters outside the village held placards calling for Britain’s colonial crimes to be investigated.

Suharsha Uthayaswriyan, the deputy leader of the settlement, repeatedly said his people were not angry with the government but they lived in bad conditions and “just want to go back to their lands”.

On Friday afternoon, Cameron will return to Colombo to shake hands with Mahinda Rajapaksa, the controversial Sri Lankan president, in an effort to persuade him to investigate allegations of war crimes, torture and kidnappings of Tamil opponents.

On Friday morning, Cameron said that in his meeting with Rajapaksa he would quote Winston Churchill on the idea that there should be magnanimity in victory, referring to the defeat of Tamil Tiger separatists in 2009.

He said going to Jaffna “helps the people in the north of the island have a voice”. Although, asked about whether anyone he would speak to would be in fear of reprisals, he said: “I am sure there will be difficulties. But that, in a way, will tell its own story. If that’s the case that will be a demonstration of the difficulties in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, freedom of movement and the key freedoms that we value.”

Cameron admitted that he may not be able to speak to as many people as he would like.

On Thursday in India, Cameron condemned Sri Lanka’s failure to investigate allegations of “chilling and appalling” war crimes, and promised a diplomatic showdown with the host country over continuing allegations of human rights abuses and the need for an independent inquiry into historic war crimes.

During the meeting with Rajapaksa, he will also raise concerns about attacks on Christians and Muslims, intimidation of journalists and discrimination against Tamils.

However, the encounter is likely to provoke a diplomatic battle after the president insisted his country had nothing to hide and resisted calls for further inquiries.

Cameron used his strongest language to criticise Sri Lanka’s human rights record after watching a Channel 4 documentary about atrocities allegedly committed by state forces in the last months of the war.

After speaking to the United Nations, the prime minister said images of war crimes had been independently verified.

The British Tamil community is pressing Cameron to tackle Rajapaksa on allegations of torture, the disappearance of government opponents and intimidation of the media since the end of the war.

A Downing Street source said Cameron would push for specific goals, including “quick wins”, such as lifting a bar on singing the national anthem in Tamil.

However, Rajapaksa has said his country is open about its past and has a good legal system to deal with allegations. “If anyone wants to complain about the human rights violations in Sri Lanka, whether it is torture, whether it is rape … we have a system,” Rajapaksa said in a Colombo news conference.

He confirmed that he had agreed to meet Cameron, and suggested his response would be combative: “I will be meeting him and we will see what, I will also have to ask some questions.”

Sri Lanka’s media minister, Keheliya Rambukwella, said Cameron could not make demands of the country as if it was a British colony.

He told the BBC: “We are a sovereign nation. You think someone can just make a demand from Sri Lanka. It can be a cordial request. We are not a colony. We are an independent state.”

{{The Guardian}}

{{The United Nations said Friday the death toll from a super typhoon in the Philippines was at least 4,460, citing regional officials, but the national disaster council maintained a much lower figure.}}

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the figure of 4,460 was given from the regional taskforce of the Philippines’ National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council on Wednesday.

But NDRMMC’s spokesman Reynaldo Balido insisted the official toll remained at 2,360.

AFP

{Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey warned on Thursday of a US-style shutdown if the Labor opposition refuses to agree to lift the nation’s debt ceiling to Aus $500 billion.}

The current ceiling of Aus$300 billion will be breached on December 12 and while a bill to raise it passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening, there is a stand-off in the Senate.

Labor and the Greens hold the balance of power in the upper house and only want an increase to Aus$400 billion, but the Tony Abbott-led government said that was not enough.

“If Labor prevents an increase in the debt limit, there is no choice but to start having massive cuts to government expenditure because the government is running on borrowed money — that’s what we inherited,” Hockey told ABC radio, adding: “They’re playing an irresponsible game here.”

Last month the United States government was shut down 16 days and taken to the brink of default as Democrats and Republicans locked horns over a budget bill and raising of the country’s borrowing limit.

Hockey told parliament on Wednesday the government may have to stop welfare and health-related payments if the ceiling was breached.

“The Labor Party is now playing a game of Russian roulette,” he said.

“But what they don’t understand in relation to debt limits is that the barrel is fully loaded. If they choose to pull the trigger, there’s only one outcome for them. But the problem is, there will be ancillary pain for the Australian people.”

Opposition treasury spokesman Chris Bowen accused Hockey of behaving “like a B-grade actor”, saying Aus$400 million was sufficient and “we are not going to give them a blank cheque for half a trillion dollars”.

{{France24}}

{Pakistan is being urged to vaccinate all of its children against polio amid a dangerous outbreak that has reached Syria and neighbouring countries.}

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that 21 nations from the Middle East and surrounding area signed a joint declaration on eradicating the disease, pointing to Pakistan as a key part of the problem.

The UN’s health organisation said said earlier this week that the polio virus had been confirmed in 13 of 22 children who became paralyzed in a northern Syrian province.

The WHO said the Syria outbreak comes from a strain that originated in Pakistan, where, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, it is endemic – and has been spreading across the Middle East.

It says the virus has been detected in Egypt, and closely related strains of Pakistani origin turned up in sewage samples in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but higher immunisation rates in those places have helped keep the virus in check.

Pakistan approved the resolution, which the WHO says includes Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE, and Yemen.

Pakistan’s efforts to vaccinate children against the disease are often frustrated by attacks by fighters, including those from organistations such as the Pakistan Taliban, who claim the programme is a Western front to undermine them.

Aljazeera

{Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday abruptly halted a plan to explore the construction of nearly 24,000 new settler homes in the West Bank, just hours after his housing minister announced the controversial planning process.}

In a statement issued Tuesday, Netanyahu said he had asked Housing Minister Uri Ariel “to reconsider” plans for potential construction of new homes for Jewish settlers noting that Ariel, a member of the pro-settlement Jewish Home Party, had drawn up the plan “without any advance coordination”.

The Israeli leader’s strongly worded statement said the plan was “a meaningless step – legally and in practice – and an action that creates an unnecessary confrontation with the international community at a time when we are making an effort to persuade elements in the international community to reach a better deal with Iran.”

The statement said Ariel had accepted the request.

Amid mounting Israeli concerns over the international nuclear negotiations with Iran, which could result in the easing of sanctions, Netanyahu has stressed that pressure on Tehran should be increased, not eased, until Iran dismantles its nuclear programme.

Israel is widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, although Israeli officials neither confirm nor deny the speculation. Netanyahu is concerned that any shift in the international community’s position on Iran could change the strategic balance in the region.

Abbas gets on the phone to Kerry

Shortly after the news of Housing Minister Ariel’s shock announcement broke earlier Tuesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned that the current stalled peace talks would effectively be over if Israel proceeded with the plan.

According to the Israeli daily, Haaretz, Abbas discussed the issue with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi as well as members of the Middle East Quartet, which includes the US, the UN, the EU and Russia.

Kerry had warned that Israel’s continued settlement construction raised questions about the Jewish state’s seriousness about pursuing peace, in an interview broadcast on Israeli and Palestinian TV last week.

Responding to Ariel’s announcement on Tuesday, the US State Department said it was “deeply concerned” by the news and was demanding explanations from Israel.

The contentious issue of settlement construction has been at the heart of the stalled Mideast peace process in recent years.

The Palestinians want their state to include all the land captured by Israel in the 1967 war, which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. But more than 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law and have been a deeply divisive issue between Israel and the international community.

France 24

{A U.S. Army veteran who turned his life around after struggling with drug addiction is fighting his deportation, saying he should not have been expelled last year for a minor criminal record after honorably serving his country and living here legally for more than 50 years.}

Arnold Giammarco was deported to his native Italy over drug possession and larceny convictions, his attorneys said. The former Connecticut resident is seeking to reverse his deportation, arguing in a federal lawsuit he planned to file Tuesday that immigration authorities never acted on his citizenship application in 1982.

Giammarco, 57, did brief stints in prison for shoplifting in the 1990s and drug possession in 2007. He has been homeless at times, but his supporters said he got clean, became a father in 2008, found work and married.

“I think it’s a shameful thing for the United States to take a man who’s lived lawfully in this country for 50 years, who’s raising a family, who’s working productively, who volunteered for the Army, served honorably,” said Michael Wishnie, a law professor at Yale University handling his case with law school students. “It’s a shameful thing to deport him based on minor non-violent criminal convictions. It’s a departure I think from our historic treatment of veterans.”

Giammarco served in the Army from 1976 to 1979 and National Guard from 1980 to 1983 and had a green card to live legally in the U.S., Wishnie said.

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment on the case. Immigration officials contend in documents obtained by Yale students working on the case that his application wasn’t completed.

ICE exercises prosecutorial discretion for veterans on a case-by-case basis when appropriate, Walls said. ICE issued a memo in 2011 that identifies military service as a positive factor that should be considered.

“We are very deliberate in our review of cases involving veterans,” Walls said.

For decades, authorities declined to deport veterans except in extraordinary circumstances but Giammarco’s lawyers say immigration agents have departed from that practice in recent years.

Giammarco’s grandfather returned to Italy after he was wounded in World War I fighting in the U.S. Army. Giammarco and his parents came to live in the U.S. in 1960 when he was 4.

Giammarco and his supporters say he’s had a tough time in Italy, with even relatives suspecting he must have committed a more serious crime to be deported after serving in the military. Giammarco, who spoke little Italian, eventually landed a part-time landscaping job.

“It was just a big nightmare,” Giammarco said in a telephone interview.

Giammarco, whose daughter turns 5 Tuesday, said he has missed three of her birthdays. His daughter asked him if he would be home for her birthday and Christmas.

“She said, ‘Daddy I’ll save you a piece of cake,” Giammarco said. “That just broke my heart.”

Giammarco and his wife married on July 4, 2010, the 50th anniversary of his arrival with his parents in the United States. Giammarco’s wife, Sharon, has collected more than 3,000 signatures on a petition to officials seeking his return.

Giammarco was arrested by immigration officials in 2011 and was detained in a Massachusetts jail for 18 months before he was deported. His daughter visited him, but could not hug or touch him.

“I just wait for a day to hold my daughter again in the country that I love,” he said.

{{AP}}

{Iran agreed Monday to allow the United Nations to conduct additional inspections of its nuclear sites after failing over the weekend to reach a deal with six world powers on more extensive concessions.}

Secretary of State John Kerry said the confidence-building deal under discussion in Geneva over the weekend broke down because Iran rebuffed an offer that diplomats on the other side were united behind. It called for Tehran to curb some nuclear activities in exchange for easing punishing international economic sanctions.

Under the new accord, Iran will give inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, more regular access to several significant parts of the country’s nuclear infrastructure. However, it falls well short of Western demands that Iran open all sensitive sites as part of efforts to prevent the country from eventually attaining a nuclear weapon.

Nevertheless, Western diplomats said the IAEA accord was a step in the right direction.

U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague called it “another positive sign provided that the verification activities that have been agreed allow us to resolve all the past and present issues raised by the IAEA.”

He added: “It is important that in doing so, Iran addresses the substance of the agency’s concerns over what it calls the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

More on: WSJ

{In a bustling neighbourhood outside of Lebanon’s capital Beirut, a group of Syrian refugee women are learning to translate knowledge of their regional dishes into a marketable skill.}

They hail from different provinces across the war-torn country, united by their exile in Lebanon, and are hoping their famed cuisine can provide both an income and empowerment.

For about two months they have been participating in a food skills workship dreamed up by a Lebanese restaurant and financed by the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR with help from the Lebanese branch of the Caritas charity.

In a modest basement belonging to Caritas in the Dekwaneh suburb of Beirut, Ibtissam Masto proudly shows off her “monk kibbeh” — balls of bulghur wheat seasoned with pomegranate molasses that is a speciality of Jisr al-Shughur in northwestern Idlib province.

The petite young woman, wearing a black headscarf, fled several months ago from her home town, which is now better known for violence between rebels and regime troops than its culinary specialities.

“I had a great life in Jisr al-Shughur before the war. I used to sing anasheed (religious songs) during marriages and funerals,” says Masto.

“I gave lessons at a religious school and I worked in a pharmacy,” she adds, in a voice full of energy.

“Here, not only am I unemployed, but my husband, who is a plumber, is diabetic and can’t work every day,” she says as she prepares the pomegranate molasses, a key ingredient in Syrian cuisine.

“The idea of this workshop excited me. I hope I’ll be able to make some money.”

Though their primary motivation is financial, the workshop has also given the refugees — most of whom are housewives — a way to feel useful, to forget their exile and the war, and also to get to know Syrians from across their country.

Participants come from diverse regions including Idlib, northwestern Hasakeh and northern Aleppo provinces.

For Marlene Yukhanna, an Assyrian Christian from Hasakeh, the experience has been a chance to learn Syrian specialities that were new to her.

The 40-year-old mother-of-three can now whip up the Idlib dish of mahshi bulghur — eggplants stuffed with bulghur and chickpeas — and kibbeh semmayeh, which uses the spice sumac and hails from Aleppo.

In exchange, she and her friend Nahrain, who both fled Hasakeh three months ago as fighting between Kurds and jihadists there intensified, have been teaching their colleagues their specialties.

Among them is Assyrian kofta, pounded meat mixed with rice, parsley and tomato sauce, and kotal Mosul, a dish of cracked wheat with meat that comes from Iraq, which the Assyrian community was forced to flee in the early 20th century.

Because many dishes are common to cuisines throughout the Levant, the participants have been encouraged to produce only unique regional specialities little seen elsewhere.

“We did the same project previously with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and it worked very well,” said Jihan Shahla of Tawlet Souk al-Tayeb, the Lebanese restaurant behind the project.

“We’re helping them have the ability to do something, to have an income, to build a brand image that will allow them to be sought out to cater a wedding, for example,” she added.

Every participant carries with them a tale of grief.

“Hasakeh became unbearable in the last few months,” said Yukhanna, who has short hair and who sports a white T-shirt.

“The (jihadist) Nusra Front harassed me, demanding that I put on the veil and they destroyed my husband’s car. Then there were kidnappings.”

Lubana, a 30-year-old mother of eight, cries as she describes the endless bombing that forced her from the town of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib.

“My house is destroyed, my husband has heart problems and my children cry because they aren’t going to school in Lebanon,” she said.

Like her colleagues, she says the workshop has allowed her “to do something in life”.

Reem Azouri, a culinary consultant, oversees the women as they work, instructing them in the standards necessary for a professional cook.

“We have to constantly remind them that they are not cooking for their husband or their children,” she smiles.

“They must learn how to store food, how to avoid contamination, how to set the table,” she adds.

For Mariam, who fled Aleppo 14 months ago, the real joy of the workshop is the “mini-Syria” it has created.

“It’s very beautiful. I feel that I’m at home, in my Syria.”

{{AFP}}