Tag: InternationalNews

{{The United States took the unusual step of issuing a worldwide travel alert to its citizens on Friday, warning of a “significant threat” of an al Qaeda terrorist attack between now and the end of August.}}

The travel alert, the first of its kind to be issued by the US since an announcement preceding the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, warned of “the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure”.

The US State Department said the potential for an attack was particularly acute in the Middle East and North Africa and urged US travelers to take extra precautions overseas.

The US intercepted electronic communications among senior al Qaeda figures, according to officials quoted by The New York Times.

“There is a significant threat stream, and we’re reacting to it,” said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told ABC in an interview to be aired Sunday that the threat was “more specific” than previous ones and the “intent is to attack Western, not just US interests”.

The alert came a day after the US announced the closure of 21 embassies and consulates across the Muslim world for the weekend as a security precaution.

{{Yemen could be focus of attacks}}

US officials pointed to Yemen as one of the areas most at risk of a terror attack. The country is the home of al Qaeda’s most dangerous offshoot and the network blamed for several notable terrorist plots on the United States.

“Current information suggests that al Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August,” the State Department said.

The concern by American officials over the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is not new, given the terror branch’s gains in territory and reach during Yemen’s prolonged Arab Spring-related instability.

The group made significant territorial gains last year, capturing towns and cities in the south amid a power struggle in the capital that ended with the resignation of Yemen’s longtime leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh. A US-aided counteroffensive by the government has since pushed the militants back.

Yemen’s current president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, met with President Obama at the White House on Thursday, where both leaders cited strong counterterrorism cooperation. Earlier this week, Yemen’s military reported a US drone strike killed six alleged al Qaeda militants in the group’s southern strongholds.

As recently as June, the group’s commander, Qasim al-Rimi, released an Arabic-language video urging attacks on US targets and praising the ethnic Chechen brothers accused of carrying out the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in April.

{{Britain closes embassy, urges nationals to leave Yemen}}

Meanwhile, Britain also took action Friday in Yemen, announcing it would close its embassy there on Sunday and Monday as a precaution and urged its citizens to leave the country.

Britain, which closely coordinates on intelligence matters with Washington, stopped short of releasing a similar region-wide alert but added that some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn “due to security concerns”.

The British Foreign Office also advised the country’s nationals against all travel to Yemen and strongly advised any remaining Britons to leave the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.

“Our travel advice advises particular vigilance during Ramadan, when tensions could be heightened,” a ministry spokesman said.

(FRANCE 24 with wires)

{{Germany has cancelled a Cold War-era pact with the US and Britain in response to revelations about electronic surveillance operations.}}

Details of snooping programmes involving the transatlantic allies have been leaked to the media by former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.

The revelations have sparked widespread outrage in Germany, where elections are due next month.

The agreement dates from 1968-9, and its cancellation is largely symbolic.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement: “The cancellation of the administrative agreements, which we have pushed for in recent weeks, is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”

Germans’ experience of mass surveillance under the Communist and Nazi dictatorships makes them particularly sensitive to perceived infringements of personal privacy, and the country has strong data protection laws.

The agreement cancelled on Friday gave the Western countries which had troops stationed in West Germany – the US, Britain and France – the right to request surveillance operations to protect those forces.

wirestory

{{ If immigration reform sputters in the deeply divided U.S. Congress, supporters are planning to push President Barack Obama to act on his own to help 11 million illegal residents, lawmakers and immigration advocates said.}}

Immigration law experts, some senators and House Democratic aides speculated that if Congress cannot agree on a wide-ranging immigration bill this year, Obama could use his executive authority to stop deporting parents of children living in the United States illegally.

Many of those children have won temporary reprieves on deportation and broadening the protection to their parents would be a way of keeping immigrant families together.

Navigating around Congress comes with plenty of drawbacks, though, since anything Obama could do would not be as lasting as enacting a law. Furthermore, he could not use his own powers to make sweeping changes, such as creating a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented.

Any such measures are certain to provoke a reaction from Republicans. But immigrant groups would argue that some action from the White House is better than putting up with existing conditions.

Obama also could sidestep Republican opposition to legislation by helping a broader spectrum of illegal residents who have been in the United States for prolonged periods, say 10 years or more, for temporary legal status if they have clean records.

“You could make a persuasive policy argument that those are the people who have most fully sunk roots into communities, most convincingly demonstrating they’re contributing in the labor market,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “Many are paying U.S. taxes and raising families in their adopted country.”

With Congress in a five-week recess and many Republicans balking at “amnesty” for those living in the United States illegally, chances are worsening for passing a comprehensive immigration bill this year, even with the Senate’s bipartisan backing in June for such a measure.

“There’s a huge degree of effort and support going into immigration reform and if it fails (in Congress), all of that effort and support will turn right back on the administration to do something for constituents that have been hurting and are important to the president,” Meissner said.

Senior Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who voted for the Senate-passed bill, told Reuters, “There are a lot of people speculating” about the demands for Obama to act unilaterally if legislation fails.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who helped write the Senate bill, concurred, saying, “I have always suspected that’s a real possibility.”

Agencies

{{Last week’s frosts in southern Brazil damaged nearly a fifth of the unharvested cane crop in the principal growing region, an event likely to cut sugar exports from the world’s largest producer, agriculture research company Datagro said Wednesday.}}

Severe early morning frosts on July 24 and 25 in three of Brazil’s top sugar-cane states devastated large areas, Datagro President Plinio Nastari told Reuters. The cold blight comes at the peak the crushing season when more than half of Brazil’s expected record 590-million-tonne crop remains unharvested.

Although Nastari was unable to say how much mill-output will drop or reduce a global sugar glut that has pushed prices to three-year lows, he said 65 million metric tons, or 18 percent of the cane standing uncut in fields was damaged by the frost.

Frost in tropical Brazil has long been a weather risk for global coffee markets. This frost, though, is the first in recent history that threatens to significantly cut sugar output and it’s impact will likely extend into the next harvest too.

“We don’t know how much of the affected … cane has been lost yet; we should know in about a week,” Nastari said by telephone. “In some cases the ratoons (young shoots) were hit and will need to be replanted, so the impact will carry over into next year’s crop.”

New York ICE front month sugar futures recovered from an early morning low of 16.68 cents/lb soon after Reuters reported news of the potential frost damage. Prices later pierced the 17-cent threshold for the first time in a month to settle nearly flat with Tuesday at 16.92.

Alphaville, Brazil-based Nastari, one of Brazil’s most respected sugar experts, has a PhD in agricultural economics from Iowa State University and hosts widely attended sugar and ethanol conferences in Brazil and abroad.

Saving the crop will depend on speed, Nastari said, as some fields, where frost has killed the core, or gem, of the cane plants, will likely rot before they can be harvested.

“The most serious damage from the two days of frost occurred over 70 to 80 percent of the cane still standing in the states of Parana and Mato Grosso do Sul,” Nastari said. “A cane plant’s gem is its center of growth. When the frost kills the top gem of a cane plant, it stops growing and begins to die.”

He added that 15 million to 16 million metric tons in Brazil’s fourth-largest cane state Parana and 16 million to 18 million metric tons in Mato Grosso do Sul, the fifth-largest cane producer, were seriously affected.

{reuters}

{{China, Iran’s largest trading partner and top oil customer, repeated its opposition on Friday to tougher U.S. sanctions on Iran after the House of Representatives approved a bill aimed at halting Iran’s oil exports.}}

The bill seeks to cut Iran’s oil exports by a further one million barrels per day to near zero over a year, an attempt to reduce the flow of funds to Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

The legislation provides for heavy penalties for buyers who do not find alternative supplies.

“China has long advocated resolution through dialogue and negotiations and opposes unilateral sanctions from one nation based on its domestic laws,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a faxed statement to Reuters.

“In particular, it opposes sanctions that will hurt the interests of a third party,” it added, without elaborating.

The success of any toughening of the sanctions will depend on China, Iran’s top customer, which has repeatedly said it opposes unilateral sanctions outside the purview of the United Nations.

China reduced oil purchases from Iran by 21 percent last year, but that was partly on account of differences in the first quarter over the renewal terms of annual contracts and shipping delays.

Chinese oil industry officials have said refiners are likely to cut shipments 5-10 percent this year from last. They cut imports 2 percent in the first six months of the year.

China has consistently advocated resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program through talks and has opposed what it views as unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union made outside the framework of the United Nations.

Agencies

{{Italy’s former PM Silvio Berlusconi has broadcast an angry video message after his prison sentence for tax fraud was upheld by the country’s highest court.}}

Berlusconi said he was the innocent victim of “an incredible series of accusations and trials that had nothing to do with reality”.

The court also ordered a further judicial review on whether he should be banned from holding public office.

Berlusconi, 76, is unlikely to go to jail because of his age.

While he is expected to serve out his sentence as house arrest, he has the option of asking to do community service instead, with the deadline for the application not expected to fall until mid-October.

The ruling by Rome’s Court of Cassation, against which he cannot appeal, came after a three-day hearing. Berlusconi was not in court.

In an emotional nine-minute video, Berlusconi denounced the decision as “based on nothing, and which deprives me of my freedom and political rights”.

“No-one can understand the onslaught of real violence that has been directed against me following an incredible series of accusations and trials that don’t have any foundation in reality,” he said.

He described the more that 50 court cases he has faced as “genuine judicial harassment that is unmatched in the civilised world”.

“In exchange for the commitments I have made over almost 20 years in favour of my country and coming almost at the end of my public life, I have been rewarded with accusations and a verdict that is founded on absolutely nothing, that takes away my personal freedom and my political rights.”

He criticised the country’s judicial record, saying: “Is this the Italy that we want? Is this the Italy that we love? Absolutely not.”

It is the billionaire businessman’s first definitive conviction after decades of criminal prosecutions.

The case concerns deals that his firm Mediaset made to purchase TV rights to US films.

BBC

{{The US has labelled Russia’s decision to grant asylum to fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden as “extremely disappointing”.}}

The White House is reconsidering a meeting scheduled for next month between President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The US wants Mr Snowden extradited and tried for leaking secrets.

Mr Snowden, who left a Moscow airport transit zone for the first time since June, thanked Russia for its action.

‘Stab in the back’

Mr Obama had been scheduled to meet Mr Putin on the sidelines of a G20 summit in early September in St Petersburg.

However, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “We’re extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step despite our very clear and lawful requests in public and in private to have Mr Snowden expelled to the United States to face the charges against him.

“We’re evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this and other issues.”

Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, an ally of Mr Obama, said Russia’s decision was a “stab in the back” and urged the president to recommend relocating the G20 summit away from Russia.

Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain said there should be “serious repercussions”.

Russia has consistently played down the importance of the issue and insisted relations with the US should be unaffected.

{wirestory}