IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Syria crisis worst since Rwanda, UN says

    {{Six thousand people are fleeing Syria every day as the conflict intensifies and merges with violence in neighbouring Iraq, United Nations officials have said.}}

    The warnings were given on Tuesday at a rare public briefing of the UN’s Security Council in New York

    The High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, told the meeting that the organisation had “not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago”.

    Ivan Simonovic, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, told the meeting that at least 92,901 people were killed in Syria – among them more than 6,500 children – between March 2011 and the end of April 2013.

    “The extremely high rate of killings nowadays – approximately 5,000 a month – demonstrates the drastic deterioration of the conflict,” Simonovic told the council meeting.

    Guterres said that two-thirds of the nearly 1.8m refugees registered with the UN in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere had left Syria since the beginning of the year.

    The UN envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, later gave warning that escalating violence in Iraq could no longer be separated from the war in Syria because “the battlefields are merging”.

    Kobler said Iraqi armed groups had an increasingly active presence in Syria and as a result, the Syrian conflict is no longer just spilling over into Iraq, but Iraqis are reportedly taking arms against each other inside Syria.

    “These countries are interrelated,” Kobler stressed. “Iraq is the fault line between the Shia and the Sunni world and everything which happens in Syria, of course, has repercussions on the political landscape in Iraq.”

    Kobler said the last four months have been among the bloodiest in Iraq in the last five years with nearly 3,000 people killed and over 7,000 injured.

    The Security Council has been deadlocked on Syria.

    wirestory

  • School meal leaves 21 children dead in India

    {{At least 21 children have died and dozens are in hospital after eating free meals at a primary school in the eastern India, officials have said.}}

    The children, aged between eight and 11 years old, fell ill after lunch on Tuesday at the government-run school in Masrakh, a village 80km north of Patna in Bihar.

    P.K. Sahi, the state education minister, said a preliminary investigation suggested the food was contaminated by phosphorous, which is used to preserve rice and wheat.

    Bihar state official Amarjit Sinha told the Associated Press news agency that 27 children and the school’s cook were taken to hospital in Patna, the state capital.

    Al Jazeera’s Karishma Vyas, reporting from the Indian capital, said eight children were in serious condition.

    The meal was cooked in the school kitchen.

    Nitish Kumar, the state’s chief minister, ordered an inquiry. Authorities have suspended a food inspector and registered a case of criminal negligence against the school headmaster.

    Each of the families of the dead children are set to receive 2,00,000 Indian Rupee ($3376).

    Al Jazeera’s Vyas said the free meals were supposed to give the impoverished parents an incentive to send their children to school.

    “And in fact this worked. Studies have shown that this programme has directly increased enrollment of children in school,” she said.

    “So it is extremely concerning that, after consuming this state-provided meal, 21 children have died and more are in the hospital.”

    aljazeera

  • Bangladesh Islamist Leader Sentenced to Death

    {{A Bangladesh court has sentenced a senior leader of the country’s largest Islamic party to death for war crimes committed during the 1971 liberation war.}}

    Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, 65, was found guilty by the International Crimes Tribunal of five charges, including abduction and murder, and was sentenced to death, MK Rahman, Bangladesh’s junior attorney-general and prosecutor said on Wednesday.

    “In three out of five charges he was given the death sentence,” Rahman said.

    Mojaheed, the secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islam, had faced seven charges of murder, mass killing, torture, arson and abduction during he war of liberation against Pakistan.

    Media in Dhaka, said that Mojaheed’s son told media that the crimes he was accused of were politically motivated.

    Mojaheed was an influential minister in the 2001-2006 government headed by Khaleda Zia, the present head of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

    {aljazeera}

  • Panama Captures North Korean ship carrying Weapons

    {{Panama seized a North Korean cargo ship it suspects was hiding missile equipment in a shipment of brown sugar from Cuba, after a standoff in which the ship’s captain tried to slit his own throat.}}

    The ship was stopped last week as it headed into the Panama Canal and authorities arrested the crew on Monday after finding undeclared missile-shaped objects – a potential violation of U.N. sanctions linked to North Korea’s nuclear program.

    “We found containers which presumably contain sophisticated missile equipment. That is not allowed. The Panama canal is a canal of peace, not war,” Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli told local radio on Tuesday.

    A photo posted on Martinelli’s Twitter page showed a long, green missile-shaped object with a tapering, conical end inside the ship, which he said was bound for North Korea.

    A security expert said pictures showed radar systems for Vietnam-era, Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles.

    The U.S. State Department praised Panama’s decision to raid the ship, which it said had a history of involvement in drug smuggling, and warned the vessel would be violating United Nations Security Council resolutions by shipping arms.

    The United Nations has imposed a raft of sanctions on North Korea, including strict regulations on arms shipments, for flouting measures aimed at curbing its nuclear weapons program.

    Panama’s security minister, Jose Raul Mulino, said his government had stopped the ship last Wednesday and had so far found two containers of military equipment.

  • Japan Police Bust Overweight Sex Firm

    {{Japanese police have arrested the alleged ringleader of a sex home delivery service specialising in women weighing up to 150 kilograms (330 lbs), a force spokesman said on Tuesday.}}

    Keiko Saito, 41, and one of her employees are suspected of conspiring to run a prostitution business under the name “Makkusu Bodi” (Max Body), which boasted that it catered for men who like “explosive boobs and bums”, police said.

    Saito is alleged to have had about 30 overweight women in her employ, including one who tipped the scales at more than 150 kilograms, Jiji Press reported.

    Police say punters in Tokyo could telephone to request a visit in their home or hotel room, a service called “deri-heru” (delivery health) that is widespread in Japan, where it is illegal to sell penetrative sex.

    Saito, who is believed to have earned about 400 million yen ($4 million) over three years, had previously worked as a prostitute, Jiji said. She began her business because she believed larger women were popular with customers, the agency added.

    {{agencies}}

  • South Korea Accuses North of Cyber Attacks

    {{South Korea accused North Korea on Tuesday of mounting cyber attacks on the websites of its presidential office and other government agencies, saying it had identified signature malicious computer codes and an internet address.}}

    The cyber attacks took place last month, on the anniversary of the beginning of the 1950-53 Korean War which left the peninsula divided between the rival countries.

    North Korea has been suspected of masterminding previous cyber attacks on South Korea, including one in March that paralyzed tens of thousands of computers and servers at major broadcasters and banks.

    North Korea has repeatedly denied responsibility for such attacks saying it has also been a victim of hacking.

    South Korean officials said they had detected North Korean involvement in the latest cyber assault that shut down several sites including those of the presidential office and the conservative ruling party.

    “An IP address within North Korea’s bandwidth was found,” Chun Kilsoo, an official at the state-run Korea Internet and Security Agency, told a briefing, referring to a computer’s internet protocol address.

    The malicious computer codes and technique of the attack were similar to those detected in previous hacking attacks traced to the North, officials added.

    The accusation comes as the two Koreas wrangle over the reopening of a joint factory park just inside North Korea that North Korea closed during a period of tension that began when it conducted its third nuclear test in February.

    They failed to reach agreement on Monday on the reopening of the complex.

    South Korea has not confirmed findings by U.S. online security company McAfee that a group of hackers was behind a string of cyber attacks on South Korea dating back to 2009 aimed at spying on its military.

    South Korea’s defense minister said at a recent conference that North Korea had about 3,000 highly trained cyber warfare personnel, according to media reports.

    In March, the North suggested the United States was behind cyber attacks on its internet servers after reports of disruptions to its main news services.

    A hacker collective known as Anonymous said it had attacked North Korean websites on the anniversary of the Korean War.

    The group denied through Twitter posts any involvement in attacks on South Korea.

    {agencies}

  • Zimmerman’s Lawyer Calls Prosecutors ‘Disgrace’ to Profession

    {{George Zimmerman’s chief defense lawyer on Monday called Florida prosecutors “a disgrace to my profession” for holding back evidence for months and pledged a new effort to impose sanctions against them.}}

    Mark O’Mara and co-counsel Don West argued the self-defense case that helped Zimmerman win an acquittal of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges on Saturday for the 2012 shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

    The law requires prosecutors to share evidence with defense attorneys, especially if it helps exonerate defendants. The requirement is known as the Brady disclosure.

    O’Mara accused prosecutors of several Brady violations, which were heard by Judge Debra Nelson before the trial. Nelson postponed some of her decisions on sanctions until after trial, saying the process was time-consuming.

    “This is not acceptable, and is not going to be tolerated in any case that I’m involved in,” O’Mara told Press in New York on Monday, accusing special prosecutor Angela Corey and lead trial attorney Bernie de la Rionda of Brady violations.

    “They are a disgrace to my profession,” O’Mara said, referring specifically to de la Rionda and Corey. “They said my client was ‘lucky’ to have been acquitted. Really?”

    Corey responded that O’Mara’s comments were unprofessional and challenged him to point to any judge’s ruling that her office improperly withheld evidence.

    “Our office adhered to the highest standards of ethical behavior,” Corey told media. “Our rules of professional conduct regulate comments like that. I don’t think those are the kind of comments that are appropriate.”

    Her office confirmed last week that it had fired its information technology director, Ben Kruidbos, who had testified in a pre-trial hearing that files he created with text messages and images he retrieved from Martin’s phone were not handed to the defense.

    Kruidbos testified last month that he found embarrassing photos on Martin’s phone that included pictures of a clump of jewelry on a bed, underage nude females, marijuana plants and a hand holding a semi-automatic pistol.

    O’Mara said he intends to amend his request for sanctions against the prosecutors in light of testimony from the trial, calling prosecutors’ failure to turn over data from Martin’s phone records for months “an undeniable Brady violation.”

    Prosecutors handed over raw data from Martin’s phone, but O’Mara accused them of withholding additional data that had been extracted by Kruidbos. Corey countered that the judge determined the defense was in possession.

    O’Mara has quarreled with the prosecutors since they charged Zimmerman last year and has become increasingly aggressive in his criticism of the prosecution since his client’s acquittal.

    A jury in Sanford, Florida, found Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter after a three-week trial in which defense lawyers argued that the neighborhood watch volunteer, shot Martin in self-defense.

    {reuters }

  • EU Sets Sanction Deadline in Iceland Mackerel Dispute

    {{The European Union’s fisheries chief said she will decide by the end of the month whether to propose sanctions against Iceland in a row over mackerel quotas, which could see the island’s fishermen banned from landing catches at EU ports.}}

    The warning on Monday by EU fisheries commissioner Maria Damanaki came on the eve of a visit to Brussels by Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, who in May suspended Iceland’s bid to join the 28-nation bloc, pending a referendum.

    The fishing dispute erupted in 2009 when Iceland – suffering from the collapse of its banking system during the financial crisis – massively increased its mackerel catches to cash in on an increase in stocks in its waters.

    That brought it into conflict with the European Union and Norway, which until then had traditionally set catch levels jointly with Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which also faces EU sanctions in the mackerel dispute and in a separate row over herring catches.

    “We cannot permit unilateral actions that can destroy the stocks,” Damanaki told reporters after a meeting of EU fisheries ministers in Brussels which ended late on Monday.

    “We cannot wait until next year, we have to take action now. But about our concrete actions and what we’re going to do, more information will be provided by the end of this month,” she said.

    As well as blocking Icelandic and Faroese fishermen from landing catches at EU ports, the sanctions would also likely include a ban on imports of mackerel and related fish products from both territories, said one EU official speaking on condition of anonymity.

    Any sanctions proposed by the Commission would have to be agreed by EU governments, and would likely get strong support from traditional mackerel-fishing nations like Britain and Ireland.

    Iceland says its increased quotas are justified by a surge in mackerel stocks in its waters, after the fish began migrating further northwards as a result of warming seas.

    In February, Reykjavik cut its mackerel quota for this year by 15 percent compared with 2012, taking the catch to 123,182 tonnes.

    But the EU and Norway say that compares with Iceland’s traditional catch of about 2,000 tonnes a year before 2009, and accuse the island of 320,000 people of endangering the health of the North Atlantic mackerel stock.

    The dispute has drawn comparisons with the “cod wars” of the 1950s and 1970s between Britain and Iceland. Gunnlaugsson has described possible sanctions by the EU against Iceland as “illegal”.

    {reuters}

  • Pro-Assad militia kills Syrian reconciliation team

    {{Gunmen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad shot dead at least six mediators sent to try to reconcile warring sectarian groups in the province of Homs, where people on opposing sides in Syria’s war had until now been able to coexist, residents said on Tuesday.}}

    The negotiators were from the National Reconciliation Committee, which the government set up to foster talks in a two-year conflict that has taken more than 100,000 lives.

    The killings, which happened on Monday evening in the village of Hajar al-Abyad, highlight the growing challenge of mediating between towns held by rebel groups and those controlled by pro-Assad militias known as “shabbiha”.

    Recent fighting in the rural territory of western Homs province, part of a strategic corridor between the capital Damascus and Assad’s strongholds on the Mediterranean coast, has frayed relationships between neighboring communities and risks sparking a sectarian conflict in the area.

    Western Homs province is a combustible mix of towns from Syria’s long marginalized Sunni Muslim majority, which has supported the revolt against Assad, and towns that are home to minority sects that have largely supported the president.

    Christians and Alawites, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam to which Assad himself belongs, often cite fears of the rising power of hardline Sunni groups among the opposition.

    Assad’s forces, backed by Christian and Alawite militias, have been pushing a successful offensive in the area. Sunni rebels are now fighting back hard in order to maintain a foothold in the critical region.

    The six negotiators had been trying to set up talks between the Sunni town of al-Zara and the Alawite town of Qameira, which clashed for several days last week.

  • Nissan to unveil Datsun in India

    {{Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) takes the veil off the first car in its resurrected Datsun brand in New Delhi on Monday – a sub-400,000-rupee ($6,700) hatchback that is part of a foray by the Japanese auto maker into cheap cars for emerging markets.}}

    With the Datsun hatchback and other Datsun models to follow over the next three years – one of which could be priced as low as $4,000 (240,000 rupees) if Nissan can meet its aggressive manufacturing cost objectives – Nissan is treading ever so closer to the ultra-low-cost car market.

    That market in India is now famously occupied by the Tata Nano, a barebones car that retails for between 150,000 and 220,000 rupees.

    “We try to keep the price positioning for Datsun competitive, so that products are appealing” to the lower half of the auto market in India where Nissan has few products competing today, Nissan’s program director for Datsun, Ashwani Gupta, told Reuters in an interview.

    It is a move that has been generally resisted so far by other global auto giants, such as Toyota Motor Corp.(7203.T), out of concern a scruffy, ultra-cheap car model could tarnish their high-value brands.

    Top Toyota executives, including current chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, rejected a chief engineer’s design for a low-cost emerging market car several years ago, saying it was too cheap to be called a Toyota, an engineering executive said.

    The car has since undergone some design iterations and was finally launched in India in 2010 as the Toyota Etios sedan, which starts at 545,000 rupees. A hatchback version of the car, launched in 2011, starts at about 450,000 rupees.

    Since Nissan plans to market Datsun cars in India through its existing Nissan-branded dealerships, Datsun could expose the Japanese auto maker to similar risks, though executives downplay the possibility.

    They say use of a separate brand name should effectively shield Nissan’s brand image. Datsun, which Nissan once used for its cars outside Japan, has a history dating back to the 1930s.

    “We’re serving different customers” with Datsun, said Tatjana Natarova, a Datsun spokeswoman. “That’s why we came up with a different brand.”

    To make Datsun cars affordable, Nissan has been aiming to reduce manufacturing costs to $3,000 to $5,000 per vehicle. The first car is due for a launch in India early next year and Gupta said the company has partially achieved the cost goals.

    Still, as price-competitive as that may be, it will face formidable competition from Maruti Suzuki (MRTI.NS) and Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS), which together control two-thirds of India’s passenger car market, excluding SUVs and vans.

    Maruti has about 1,200 retail stores in India, while Hyundai operates a network of more than 350 stores. Nissan, by contrast, has only about 100 dealers, though it says it plans to triple the number of its stores to 300 by March 2017.

    Nissan said last year it would revive the Datsun name as a marquee for emerging markets, starting with India, Russia and Indonesia. Eventually, it wants to expand into Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

    To make the new name stick, Nissan does not plan to stop with a sub-400,000-rupee car. It plans to expand the Datsun brand’s appeal by following its first car with a second model by the end of next year and a third vehicle by 2016.

    Nissan is still trying to meet the goal of producing a Datsun car for as little as $3,000 per vehicle, said an executive speaking on condition of anonymity.

    “If we met that, there would be a good possibility we could offer the car for $4,000 on the retail market,” the executive said.

    That is not as cheap as the Nano, but Nissan is not aiming to compete head-on with the Nano any way, the executive said.

    By the year ending March 2017, Nissan wants to capture 10 percent of India’s overall passenger vehicle market that includes sedans, sport-utility vehicles and vans. Nissan had a market share of less than 1 percent as of May, data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers shows.

    By then, Datsun aims to generate one third to a half of overall sales in India, which bought 2.7 million passenger vehicles in the year ended March 2013, Gupta said.

    To achieve low manufacturing costs, the Datsun product team designed and engineered cars so that “nearly all” the components needed to build them could be procured within India, Gupta said.

    India has a relatively limited auto parts supply base so procuring almost all the necessary components locally poses a challenge. Gupta said though that Nissan aims to pull off the feat not only in India, but in Indonesia and Russia as well.

    Gupta said Datsun cars would be stripped of features and functions that do not offer “value” to customers in markets they target to make cars affordable.

    Nissan thus will likely avoid developing new technology. Instead, it will use tried technology, in particular vehicle underpinnings, engines and transmissions, which are costly to develop. It is also likely to pare down expensive features such as power-windows, navigation systems, and extra safety airbags.

    {wirestory}