IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Suspect in British soldier murder ‘attacked’ in jail

    {{British police are investigating claims that one of the two chief suspects in a brutal suspected Islamist attack, against a British soldier on a London street, was assaulted in prison.}}

    British media reported that Michael Adebolajo, 28, had his two front teeth knocked out during Wednesday’s alleged fracas.

    “The police are investigating an incident that took place at HMP Belmarsh on 17 July,” said a Prison Service spokesman.

    “It would be inappropriate to comment while the investigation was ongoing.”

    Adebolajo and co-accused, Michael Adebowale, 22, are due to face trial in November over the horrific knife attack that claimed the life of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on May 22.

    Rigby was hacked to death in broad daylight before Adebolajo delivered an Islamist tirade to passers-by.

    British Prime Minister David Cameron joined thousands of mourners last week at the soldier’s funeral.

    Cameron gathered with some 800 of Rigby’s family members and colleagues for the private military funeral at a church in Bury, near Manchester in northwest England.

    Thousands of members of the public lined the surrounding streets.

    The killing stunned Britain and sparked a rise in community tensions. Several mosques have been attacked while the far-right British National Party and English Defence league have held a string of anti-Islamic rallies.

    {wirestory}

  • Venezuela Slams U.S. Over ‘Repressive Regimes’ Remarks

    {{Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro demanded the United States apologize on Thursday after the Obama administration’s nominee for envoy to the United Nations said there was a crackdown on civil society in the South American country.}}

    Maduro has often clashed with Washington since winning an April election following the death of his mentor, socialist leader Hugo Chavez. He said Samantha Power’s comments to a Senate confirmation hearing had been aggressive and unfair.

    “I want an immediate correction by the U.S. government,” Maduro said in comments broadcast live on state television.

    “Power says she’ll fight repression in Venezuela? What repression? There is repression in the United States, where they kill African-Americans with impunity, and where they hunt the youngster Edward Snowden just for telling the truth.”

    His comment was an apparent reference to the not-guilty verdict handed down in the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman on Saturday for the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

    Maduro has been the most vocal of three Latin American leaders who offered asylum to Snowden, the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor wanted by Washington for leaking details of secret surveillance programs.

    Since taking office, Venezuela’s leader has veered between appearing to want better ties with Washington and denouncing alleged U.S. plots to assassinate him and trigger a coup d’etat.

    During her Senate conformation hearing on Wednesday, Power vowed to stand up against “repressive regimes”, and said that meant “contesting the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.”

    Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader who became Chavez’s foreign minister and vice president, said the “fascist right” in Venezuela were gleefully applauding her comments.

    “And the U.S. government says they want to have good relations? What tremendous relations they want,” he scoffed.

    In June, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Elias Jaua met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a regional summit. That meeting was seen as a sign of improving ties after years of hostility during Chavez’s 14-year rule.

    But the latest collision came when Maduro became the first foreign leader to say explicitly that he was offering asylum to Snowden, the NSA leaker who has been trapped in the transit zone of a Moscow airport for more than three weeks.

    Bolivia and Nicaragua also subsequently offered him sanctuary, but Venezuela’s government has said it can do little to help him as long as he remains stuck at the airport.

    {reuters}

  • UK to Probe Huawei Staff’s role at Cybersecurity Centre

    {{The UK government has confirmed it is to review Huawei’s involvement in a cybersecurity centre.}}

    The news follows a report by parliament’s intelligence committee which raised concerns that staff working at the base in Oxfordshire were employed by the Chinese firm.

    Part of their job is to test Huawei’s own equipment for vulnerabilities.

    US politicians have claimed that the company posed a threat because of links to China’s government and military.

    The allegations are based, in part, on the fact that the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, was a former member of the People’s Liberation Army.

    But Huawei has strongly denied having close ties to the Chinese state and has stressed that it is 98.6%-per-cent-owned by its employees.

    Although the firm has been prevented from bidding for many US infrastructure contracts, it has been active in the UK after striking a multi-billion pound deal to provide networking equipment to BT in 2005.

    A spokeswoman for Huawei highlighted the fact that the government has said it is confident that UK networks using the firm’s equipment “operated to a high standard of security and integrity”.

    She added that her company supported the decision to carry out a review.

    BBC

  • French hostage killed in Mali was ‘shot in the head’

    French hostage Philippe Verdon, who was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Mali in 2011 and found dead several weeks ago, was executed with a shot to the head, prosecutors said Thursday.

    “After the return of the body to France, the autopsy… was able to establish that Philippe Verdon was murdered by being shot in the head,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said.

    The body of Verdon, who suffered from an ulcer and tachycardia, an abnormally fast heartbeat, was flown back to Paris on Wednesday.The possibility had previously been raised that he had died from his ailments and that his killing had been staged.

    The 53-year-old was taken from a hotel in northeastern Mali in November 2011 by AQIM while on business, as was Serge Lazarevic, another French national.

    His captors announced in March they had killed him in revenge for France’s military intervention in the country.

    But Paris had never confirmed this until his body was discovered in the country’s north and identified this month.

    French forces intervened in Mali in January to help the weak Malian military drive out Islamist rebels who had seized control of the country’s north, angering extremists.

    At least seven French citizens remain captive in Africa, with another two in Syria.

    (AFP)

  • Letter from Taliban to Malala: Why we Shot You

    {{In a letter to a Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head on her way home from school, a senior Taliban commander purportedly tells her that she was targeted not because she advocated education for all girls, but rather for her criticism of the militant group.}}

    The letter attributed to Adnan Rashid was released just days after 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai took the stage at the United Nations, where she delivered an emotional plea for the right to go to school on behalf of all children.

    Malala was 15 when gunmen jumped on her school bus and shouted her name, scaring other girls into identifying her, in the Swat Valley on October 9, 2012. The attack sparked massive protests in Pakistan and condemnation worldwide.

    “The Taliban believe you were intentionally writing against them and running a smear campaign to malign their effort to establish an Islamic system in (the) Swat Valley, and your writings were provocative,” according to the letter, which was dated Monday by a Pakistan intelligence source.

    “You have said in your speech … that the pen is mightier than the sword. So they attacked you for your sword not your books or school.”

    However, media could not confirm the authenticity of the letter, but its validity has been generally accepted by Pakistan intelligence officials.

    Rashid made headlines last year after the Taliban broke him out of a Bannu prison, where he was serving a life sentence following his 2003 conviction for his role in the attempted murder of former President Pervez Musharraf.

    Nearly 400 prisoners were freed in the jailbreak, which authorities believe was staged to get Rashid out, a former Pakistani Air Force officer.

    In the letter, Rashid said he was writing — not as a Taliban leader — to say he was shocked by the shooting, and to express his regret that he did not warn Malala ahead of time of the attack.

    The letter went on to say that the Taliban supports the education of women, as long as it adheres to Islamic law.

    He urged her, according to the letter, to return to Pakistan and “use your pen for Islam and the plight of the Muslim community.”

    Gordon Brown, the U.N. special envoy on global education, blasted Rashid’s letter.

    “Nobody will believe a word the Taliban say about the right of girls like Malala to go to school until they stop burning down schools and stop massacring pupils,” he said in a statement released Wednesday.

    This summer in Pakistan, a teacher was gunned down in front of her son as she drove into her all-girl school. A school principal was killed and his students severely injured when a bomb was tossed onto a school playground at an all-girl school in Karachi in March.

    In January, five teachers were killed near the town of Swabi in the volatile northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the United Nations says.

    And, in June, a suicide bomber blew up a bus carrying 40 schoolgirls as it made its way to an all-girl campus in Quetta. Fourteen female students were killed.

    CNN

  • EU Floats Plan to Break Hezbollah Deadlock

    {{The European Union could blacklist Hezbollah’s military wing while stressing it is open to talking to the militant Lebanese movement’s political faction, under a proposal by the EU’s foreign policy chief, EU diplomats said on Wednesday.}}

    European governments have been deadlocked over the issue since May when Britain asked for the Shi’ite Muslim group’s military wing to be put on the EU terror list, citing evidence it was behind a deadly bus bombing in Bulgaria last year.

    Several EU capitals had objected, arguing such a move could destabilize Lebanon where Hezbollah is part of the government, and questioning whether there was sufficient evidence linking the group to the attack in the seaside resort of Burgas.

    Before further talks on the issue in the coming days, the EU’s Catherine Ashton suggested a compromise that could allay concerns that a blacklisting would complicate the EU’s relations with Lebanon.

    {agencies}

  • China Media Accuses Japan PM of Dangerous Politics

    {{Two of China’s top newspapers accused Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday of dangerous politics that could threaten regional security, as Tokyo warned Beijing not to expand gas exploration in disputed waters of the East China Sea.}}

    The People’s Liberation Army Daily said Abe was trying to play the “China threat” angle, to win votes in July 21 elections, with a visit on Wednesday to Japan’s southern island of Ishigaki, near islets claimed by both China and Japan.

    Territorial claims by Japan and China over the uninhabited islets and resource-rich waters in both the East China Sea and South China Sea rank as one of Asia’s biggest security risks.

    During the visit to Ishigaki island, Abe repeated Tokyo’s stand that the nearby disputed Senkaku islands, called the Diaoyu by China, are inherent Japanese territory, adding that he has no intention of conceding even one step.

    “This kind of ‘drinking poison to slake ones thirst’ not only threatens regional stability, it gives encouragement to Japan’s ‘turn to the right’,” said the daily.

    Abe wants to revise Japan’s constitution, drafted by the United States after World War Two, to formalize the country’s right to have a military. Critics say his plan could return Japan to a socially conservative, authoritarian past.

    The People’s Liberation Army Daily said Abe could not have chosen a worse time to visit Ishigaki, which lies some 160 km (100 miles) from the uninhabited islets the two nations contest.

    “You cannot criticize a national leader for visiting his country’s own territory but in a situation where the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands is continuing and the situation is complex and sensitive, Abe’s actions are doubtless extremely dangerous and irresponsible,” the paper, the official publication of China’s military, said in a commentary.

    The ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily warned that China would never allow itself to be trampled on again, a reference to China’s bitter memories of Japan’s invasion of the country ahead of and during World War Two.

    In a commentary published under the pen name “Zhong Sheng”, or “voice of China”, the newspaper said that Abe was looking for excuses to re-arm Japan and that the dispute with China was a convenient way of pushing this.

    “The aim is to create tension and provoke incidents, to push Japan’s military development,” it said.

    Patrol ships from both nations routinely shadow each other near the islands, raising concerns about an unintended clash.

    On Thursday, three Chinese surveillance vessels sailed into what Japan considers its territorial waters near the isles on what Beijing said was a routine patrol.

    The Japan Coast Guard said the ships later left its territorial water but remain in the contiguous area.

    {wirestory}

  • Iran’s New President Dismisses Israeli Threats

    {{Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president-elect, has brushed off threats of military action by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over Tehran’s nuclear programme.}}

    Referring to the US and Israel, Rouhani said: “When some say that all options are on the table and when a miserable regional country says such things, it makes you laugh.”

    In an address to Iran-Iraq war veterans on Wednesday, in which he rebuked Netanyahu, Rouhani said: “Who are the Zionists to threaten us?”

    He also said that warnings of an Iranian retaliation had stopped Israel from carrying out its threats to launch strikes on the country.

    According to the semi-official Mehr news agency, the Iranian foreign ministry characterised Netanyahu’s remarks as Israel’s’s interference in the internal affairs of other countries and its attempts to damage other countries’ relations with Iran.

    Netanyahu on Sunday renewed his threat to take unilateral military action to halt Iran’s nuclear programme.

    {aljazeera}

  • Panama Asks U.N. to advise on North Korean arms ship

    Panama’s Security Minister said on Wednesday the Central American country had asked the United Nations to advice on how to proceed in the case of the North Korean ship caught smuggling arms from Cuba through its canal.

    Jose Raul Mulino said he expects Panama to hand over the ship and its contents to the United Nations, noting that Panamanian officials had discovered two more containers with suspected arms, adding to the two already found.

  • Putin says US ties ‘more important’ than Snowden

    {{Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said Moscow’s relations with Washington outweighed the “squabbles” over a spying scandal revealed by US fugitive Edward Snowden, who has applied for asylum in Russia.}}

    “Relations between states are much more important than squabbles surrounding the work of security services,” Putin was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.

    Putin’s remarks came after the White House voiced opposition to Snowden’s request for a safe haven in Russia as he tries to evade US espionage charges.

    The former National Security Agency contractor has been marooned at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport since June 23 after leaking details of a massive US surveillance programme that has strained ties with Washington’s allies.

    Washington has rubbished the notion that Snowden could be viewed as a human rights activist and has criticised Moscow for providing the 30-year-old with a “propaganda platform”.

    “We believe there is ample legal justification for the return of Mr. Snowden to the United States, where he has been charged with serious felonies,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday.

    “We want to continue (the US-Russia) relationship unimpeded by this issue,” Carney said. “And we believe there is a way to move forward here that allows for Mr. Snowden to return to the United States… and for Russia to resolve this situation that they have been dealing with now for three weeks.”

    On Tuesday, Snowden filed an application for temporary asylum with the Russian migration service, starting a process that could take up to three months.

    Putin, meanwhile, reiterated his earlier stance that Snowden would only be welcome to stay in Russia if he did not harm the United States with further leaks.

    “We have warned Mr. Snowden, that any activity on his part that has to do with harming Russia-US relations is unacceptable for us,” Putin said Wednesday.

    “This is his fate and his choice,” Putin said of Snowden’s request to stay in Russia. “We have our own state interests, including those directed at building Russia-US relations.”