Tag: InternationalNews

{Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets at a southern Israeli port city on Monday and Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor shot down one while the other fell into the sea, a military spokeswoman said.}

The pre-dawn salvo on Ashkelon, about 12 km (7 miles) north of Gaza, was unusual given the relative restraint of Palestinian militants since last November’s war between the coastal enclave’s Islamist Hamas rulers and the Jewish state.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the launches, which came as Hamas tips into financial and political crisis after being cut off from neighboring Egypt by the new, military-guided interim government in Cairo. Hamas has also been challenged at times by more radical, armed Gaza Islamists.

Hamas has tried to mend ties with Egypt while appealing to rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose administration holds sway in the occupied West Bank, to abandon U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Israel.

It has also signaled readiness to fight again, taking responsibility last week for a tunnel which the Israelis discovered running into their territory from Gaza and said was likely intended for kidnapping soldiers or setting off underground explosives.

The Israeli military spokeswoman said a mortar bomb was fired across the border from Gaza on Sunday, but caused no damage or casualties

Reuters

{Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says other countries want Japan to adopt a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter the growing power of China. }

Mr Abe told the Wall Street Journal there were “concerns that China was trying to change the status quo by force, rather than by the rule of law”.

Relations between China and Japan have been strained over recent years.

China said on Saturday that if Japan shot down Chinese drones, this would be considered “an act of war” by Beijing.

The statement was referring to reports that Mr Abe had approved defence plans that envisaged using air force planes to shoot down unmanned Chinese aircraft in Japanese airspace.

Another contentious issue between the two countries is the dispute over a group of islands.

The islands, in the East China Sea, are controlled by Tokyo, but claimed by Beijing.

But analysts say the nations’ rivalry reflects the power shift created by China’s meteoric economic and diplomatic rise while Japan has been mired in a two-decade economic slump.

China has warned against Japanese nationalism in a region where Japan’s colonial expansionism is still bitterly remembered.

BBC

{Germany is to send its top intelligence chiefs to Washington to “push forward” an investigation into allegations the US spied on its leader Angela Merkel.}

The heads of foreign and domestic intelligence would hold talks with the White House and the National Security Agency, a government spokesperson said.

Earlier, Germany and France said they want the US to sign a no-spy deal by the end of the year.

EU leaders have warned a lack of trust could harm the fight against terrorism.

As well as the bugging of Mrs Merkel’s phone, there are claims the NSA has monitored millions of telephone calls by both German and French citizens.

Source: BBC

{Tens of thousands of demonstrators, many displaying rainbows and glitter, thronged the center of Taiwan’s capital on Saturday to press demands to legalize same-sex marriage amid an increasingly tolerant environment on the island nation.}

Organizers and participants said they were heartened by the prospect of same-sex marriage becoming a reality, despite enduring traditional attitudes among many residents.

Taiwan’s legislature on Friday began a review of a gay marriage bill, which has the support of 53 percent of the public, according to a recent opinion poll, though acceptance of a gay family member remains low.

“Chinese families are still very traditional,” said Jennifer Lu of the counseling group Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association and one of the hosts on the center stage. “People still emphasize having an heir and passing on the family name.”

On a cool autumn day, the 11th annual parade was marked by colorful costumes, plenty of exposed skin, musical performances and vendors lining the route to and from the city hall.

Spokeswoman Meico Tsai praised the liberal attitudes that have put Taiwan far ahead of its neighbors in terms of tolerance of gays. “Compared to other Asian countries, we’re more open, but we still have a long way to go,” she said.

Sexual-orientation education is a part of the primary school curriculum and LGBT individuals enjoy legal protection from hiring discrimination and other forms of prejudice.

Reuters

{A girl believed to be 13 was gang raped by three men in her village in India and burned alive, according to various news reports.}

She later died at a hospital after receiving burns over 80% of her body, the Times of India reports.

The girl was from a village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the Daily Mail reports.

The IB Times reports she was in the eighth grade.

The girl had gone to a farm with her older sister and as they returned, three villagers dragged her away and gang raped her, the Times reports the girl’s family told police. One of the villagers was a local “goon” named Ram Bahadur, according to the Times.

The girl told the alleged assailants she would tell other villagers, at which point, they set her on fire, the news organization reports.

The girl’s older sister ran off to get help, but by the time the girl’s family and neighbors arrived at the spot, she had suffered massive burns.

Police are now in search of the suspects, the Times reports.

Last year, a 23-year-old woman was brutally gang raped in New Delhi and thrown from a moving bus, later dying from her injuries. Six others on the bus, including the driver, raped her. Five of the defendants were convicted and one died in custody.

Similar cases are emerging around India and drawing attention to the issue of safety for women and girls there. In one case, the parents of a 4-year-old girl said a distant relative raped the child. Police said the girl had been tortured and assaulted.

AP

(Reuters) – {Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif urged U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday to end drone strikes in Pakistan, touching on a sore subject just as relations between the two countries improve after years of suspicion over Afghanistan and the U.S. counterterrorism fight.}

“I … brought up the issue of drones in our meeting, emphasizing the need for an end to such strikes,” Sharif told reporters after meeting with Obama in the Oval Office.

But the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that while top Pakistani officials denounce the U.S. drone program, they have secretly endorsed it for years and are routinely given classified briefings on targets and casualties.

The Post, citing secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos, said that markings on some documents indicated they were prepared by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center so they could be shown to Pakistani officials. The documents discuss strikes that killed dozens of alleged al Qaeda operatives and in which they say no civilians were killed.

The Post said a CIA spokesman it contacted did not dispute the authenticity of the documents.

U.S.-Pakistani relations were badly strained following the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan where he was in hiding. But they appear to be on the mend as the United States prepares to pull forces out of Afghanistan in 2014.

The United States has quietly restarted security assistance to Pakistan after freezing aid during the period of soured relations, when Washington frequently voiced complaints about the ties of the Pakistani intelligence service to militant groups active in Afghanistan.

A series of major setbacks in recent years included a 2011 NATO air strike that mistakenly killed Pakistani border guards and another incident that year in which a CIA contractor killed two men on the streets of Lahore.

Obama acknowledged tensions and “misunderstandings” between the two countries. He said he and Sharif had pledged to work together on security issues in ways that “respect Pakistan’s sovereignty.”

“We committed to working together and making sure that rather than this being a source of tension between our two countries, this can be a source of strength for us working together,” Obama said.

Sharif was elected prime minister in June in a historic election that marked Pakistan’s first civilian transfer of power after the completion of a full term by a democratically elected government. He is the first Pakistani leader to visit the White House in five years.

“To see a peaceful transition of one democratically elected government to another was an enormous milestone for Pakistan,” Obama said.

Much of U.S. security aid to Pakistan is intended to bolster the ability of its military to counter militants in semi-autonomous tribal areas.

For fiscal year 2014, which began on October 1, Obama has requested $1.162 billion from Congress for Pakistan, including $857 million in civilian aid and $305 million in security assistance.

The U.S. use of armed drones to attack suspected militants in Pakistan has long been controversial, although the number of incidents has dropped in recent months.

The issue came up again this week when Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused the United States of breaking international law by killing civilians in missile and drone strikes intended for militants in Pakistan and Yemen.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called it “a hard fact of war” that U.S. strikes sometimes result in civilian casualties, but said drone strikes did so far less than conventional attacks. The United States takes pains to make sure any such strikes conform to domestic and international law, he said.

{An EU summit is due to begin in Brussels with fresh allegations of US spying threatening to overshadow talks.}

It comes a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel called President Barack Obama over claims that the US had monitored her mobile phone.

France’s President Francois Hollande is pressing for the issue to be put on the agenda following reports that millions of French calls had been monitored.

EU leaders will also discuss Europe’s economic recovery and immigration

BBC Europe Editor Gavin Hewitt says some leaders are likely to want to use the summit to demand further clarification from Washington over the activities of its National Security Agency (NSA) in Europe.

The US is being called to account by its allies over allegations of spying based on material said to originate from fugitive American leaker Edward Snowden.

Mrs Merkel says she wants US officials to clarify the extent of their surveillance in Germany.

Her spokesman said the German leader “views such practices… as completely unacceptable”.

The White House said President Obama had told Mrs Merkel that the US was not monitoring her calls and would not in the future.

However, it left open the question of whether calls had been listened to in the past.

BBC

{New Zealand’s postal service is set to reduce the frequency of its basic deliveries, as customers increasingly turn to electronic communication.}

In an agreement with the government, six-day-a-week deliveries in urban areas may drop to just three days starting in June 2015.

Services in rural areas, where customers tend to rely more on mail, will be maintained at five days.

The postal service said the move was needed for its financial viability.

“The change in delivery frequency at some point is inevitable given the ongoing and rapid decline in letter mail volumes,” the New Zealand Post said in a statement.

It added that while parcel volumes “have increased by nearly three million since 2006”, letter volumes over the same period dropped by at least 30%.

It was not immediately clear how many jobs would be lost as a result of the planned cut in deliveries.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Amy Adam said in a statement that postal volume decline in New Zealand was at 8% per annum.

She said that if changes were not made to the government’s agreement with the service, “then significant and ongoing government subsidisation” may be required.

The set minimum standards apply to basic standard postal services and do not include others like express mail or courier post, she added.

BBC

The change is scheduled to take place in June 2015.