IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Bosnians Rebury 409 Srebrenica Genocide Victims

    {{Tens of thousands have gathered in Bosnia for the funeral of 409 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide on the 18th anniversary of the atrocity in which about 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered.}}

    Among the victims were 43 teenage boys and a baby that was born during the ordeal. They were laid to rest on Thursday at a special cemetery near Srebrenica where victims are buried as their remains are gradually found in mass graves.

    As delegations arrived to lay a wreath at the Srebrenica memorial, families of the victims were paying their last respects at the coffins displayed in the cemetery of Potocari, outside Srebrenica.

    “This year we are going to bury the youngest victim of the genocide, the Muhic family’s baby,” Kenan Karavdic, the official in charge of the burial ceremony, said.

    The baby girl died shortly after birth in July 1995 at the UN base in Potocari. She was buried next to the grave of her father Hajrudin, also a victim of the genocide.

    Srebrenica was a former UN “safe haven” that fell to Bosnian-Serb forces under wartime commander Ratko Mladic. The victims were rounded up, executed and bulldozed into pits over five days in July 1995.

    This year’s commemorations bring the total of identified victims to 6,066. Another 2,306 remain missing a decade after Bosnia began the process of identifying victims of the genocide through DNA testing.

    Their remains were found in more than 300 mass graves in the area, according to Amor Masovic, head of Bosnia’s Institute for Missing Persons. But officials say that many bodies are still unidentified.

    {wirestory}

  • Ireland passes controversial abortion law

    {{A hotly debated abortion bill that will allow women in Ireland to terminate pregnancies in very limited circumstances has been passed by legislators.}}

    The bill, which has been the subject of polarising arguments for several months, was passed by the lower house with a clear majority on Friday with 127 voting in favour and 31 against after hours of debate including an all-night sitting.

    The bill will allow abortions to be carried out when the woman’s life is at risk.

    Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who was sent letters written in blood during the debate, has provoked a strong backlash from both sides by pushing for access to abortion when a woman’s life is in danger.

    Those in favour of abortion rights feel the bill does not go far enough.

    The Irish leader had said that anyone in his party voting against the bill would lose their job, resulting in the departure of Europe minister Lucinda Creighton who refused to vote in favour of the law.

    “When it comes to something that is essentially a matter of life and death, I think it is not really possible to compromise,” Creighton told state broadcaster RTE after the vote.

    {aljazeera}

  • Obama Tells Chinese He’s Disappointed Over Snowden Case

    {{President Barack Obama told Chinese officials that he’s disappointed with China’s treatment of U.S. demands that Hong Kong hand over fugitive security contractor Edward Snowden, who instead was allowed to flee to Russia.}}

    The issue surfaced during a meeting in Washington yesterday between Obama, Vice Premier Wang Yang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi, who were representing China at strategic and economic talks in the city, according to a White House statement.

    “The President expressed his disappointment and concern with China’s handling of the Snowden case,” according to the White House statement summarizing the meeting.

    Snowden, who exposed classified U.S. programs that collect telephone and Internet data, left Hong Kong for Russia on June 23 even as American authorities were pressing for his return to face prosecution.

    He’s believed to be at a Moscow airport, where he’s pursuing asylum in another country.

    Prosecutors in the U.S. are seeking Snowden’s return and have brought theft and espionage charges against the former employee of McLean, Virginia-based government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. (BAH).

    {wirestory}

  • Deadly riots erupt at Indonesian prison

    {{At least five people have been killed in violent riots at a jail in western Indonesia during which about 200 prisoners escaped, police have said.}}

    The dead were killed in chaos after fires were lit by inmates rioting in the overcrowded facility in Medan city on Sumatra island on Friday.

    “Three are prisoners, two are prison staff,” said Heru Prakoso, North Sumatra province police spokesman.

    Media reported that 15 of the escaped prisoners were convicted of “terrorism” offenses and two of them were recaptured, according to police resources. In total, 60 inmates have already been recaptured.

    Its also reported that thousands of security forces from neighbouring provinces have been deployed to help out with the search operations.

    “There are about 500 inmates who still refuse to give up rioting. The latest we have heard is that Indonesian military have entered the building” she said.

    Meanwhile Indonesian justice and human rights minister is meeting seven inmates, who were escorted out of the prison earlier on Friday morning.

    The inmates had demanded a meeting with the minister.

    {aljazeera}

  • Iran Exile Group Claims Evidence of Hidden Nuclear Site

    {{An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed on Thursday to have evidence of a hidden nuclear site located in tunnels beneath a mountain near the town of Damavand, 70 kilometres (44 miles) northeast of Tehran.}}

    The Paris-based militant group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), alleges the site has existed since 2006 with the first series of subterranean tunnels and four external depots recently completed.

    The group also claims the recently elected president Hassan Rohani, a former nuclear negotiator, had a “key role” in the programme.

    The Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) remained non committal about the MEK’s claims.

    “The Agency will assess the information that has been provided, as we do with any new information we receive,” spokeswoman Gill Tudor told media.

    Founded in the 1960s to oppose the rule of the Shah, the MEK was considered a terrorist organisation by the United States until last year, and has provided information about the Iranian nuclear programme on several occasions.

    “The organisation of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) has discovered credible evidence of a secret new nuclear site, gathered over a year by 50 sources in various parts of the regime,” said a statement from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the umbrella group of which MEK is a part.

    “The codename of the project is ‘Ma’adane-e Charq’ (literally ‘the mine of the east’) or ‘Project Kossar’. This site is hidden in a series of tunnels under a mountain near the town of Damavand,” it said.

    The report added that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is also a managing director of a company the MEK claims is overseeing the project’s “nuclear, biological and chemical programmes.”

    The UN’s atomic watchdog IAEA has attempted to speak to Fakhrizadeh in the past without success.

    The “next phase” of the project will be the construction of up to 30 tunnels and 30 depots, the report added.

    The report concluded: “These revelations demonstrate once again that the Mullahs’ regime has no intention of stopping or even suspending the development of a nuclear weapon,” the MEK said, calling on the IAEA to visit the secret site.

    The West suspects Iran of seeking the atomic bomb, although Tehran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear programme was merely for peaceful purposes. The standoff has prompted a raft of sanctions from the UN, the United States and Europe.

    {agencies}

  • Europe Tempers Power of Agency to Shut Troubled Banks

    {{The European Commission proposed on Wednesday creating an agency to salvage or shut failed banks, but the absence of an immediate backstop fund to pay for a clean-up means it may struggle to do its job.}}

    Working in tandem with the European Central Bank as supervisor, the new authority is supposed to wind down or revamp banks in trouble. It constitutes the second pillar of a ‘banking union’ meant to galvanize the euro zone’s response to the crisis.

    If agreed by European Union states, the agency will be set up in 2015 and will eventually have the means to impose losses on creditors of a stricken bank, according to the blueprint.

    But the new authority will be handicapped by the fact that it will have to wait years before it has a fund to pay for the costs of any bank wind-up it orders. In practice, this means it could be very difficult to demand any such closure.

    Officials say the plan foresees tapping banks to build a war chest of 55 billion to 70 billion euros ($70 billion to $90 billion) but that is expected to take a decade, leaving the agency largely dependent on national schemes in the meantime.

    “We have also seen how the collapse of a major cross-border bank can lead to a complex and confusing situation,” said Michel Barnier, the commissioner in charge of regulation.

    “We need a system which can deliver decisions quickly and efficiently, avoiding doubts on the impact on public finances, and with rules that create certainty in the market.”

    The EU’s executive will also not, however, call for giving a backstop role to the euro zone’s rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism.

    The lack of initial funds or recourse to the ESM undermines a central goal of banking union – to sever the ‘doom loop’ that forms as banks buy ever more government bonds from their home states.

    {reuters}

  • US jet Crash Passengers Told to Remain Seated

    {{Passengers on a jet which crashed in San Francisco were told by the pilot to stay in their seats after the aircraft came to rest on the runway.}}

    It was not until a fire erupted 90 seconds after the crash that the order to evacuate the Asiana airlines Boeing 777 was given, according to the National Transport Safety Board on Wednesday.

    The Asiana flight crashed Saturday when its landing gear and then its tail clipped a rocky seawall just short of the runway.

    Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the NTSB, said the pilot told passengers to stay in their seats while he contacted the control tower at the airport.

    She added that, “in order to get certified, an aircraft manufacturer has to show that a fully loaded aircraft can be evacuated, fully evacuated within 90 seconds.”

    “What we saw here was that the first doors and slides weren’t opened for about 90 seconds.”

  • Boston Bombing Suspect Pleads not Guilty

    {{Reports from US indicate that a Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Wednesday pleaded not guilty on all charges in connection with the April attacks, some of which could carry the death penalty.}}

    Tsarnaev, making his first court appearance, entered the federal courtroom in Boston in handcuffs, shackles and wearing an orange jumpsuit. His arm in a cast and his face swollen, Tsarnaev also appeared to have a jaw injury and facial swelling.

    “Not guilty,” said the 19-year-old ethnic Chechen, as each of the 30 counts against him – 17 of which carry the death penalty – were read out at the brief, seven-minute-long arraignment.

    The heavily guarded courtroom was packed with emotional victims of the bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line, some of whom needed canes to walk. Their families, police officers, and members of the public and the media were also in attendance.

    The attacks stunned America with scenes of carnage and chaos at one of the country’s premier sporting events. The bombs were packed with metal fragments to cause maximum damage, and several people lost one or more limbs.

    Tsarnaev is accused of plotting and carrying out the attacks with his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police as the pair tried to escape the Boston area several days later.

    He is also charged in connection with the shooting death of a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the brothers’ overnight getaway attempt.

    {wirestory}

  • Russia convicts dead lawyer of tax evasion

    A Russian court has convicted whistleblower lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in detention led to one of the biggest Washington-Moscow rows in years.

    Judge Igor Alisov of the Moscow court on Thursday read the verdict in the case against Magnitsky and his former boss, US-born British citizen William Browder, the head of the Hermitage Capital investment fund who is being tried in absentia.

    Local media reports that this is the first time a Russian or Soviet court as brought about a prosecution against a dead man.

    The tax evasion case against Magnitsky, who died in pre-trial detention after accusing interior ministry officials of corruption, has been slammed by legal experts and Western governments.

    Magnitsky died in custody in 2009 at the age of 37 after attempting to reveal massive tax fraud against the British Investment Fund Hermitage Capital, to which he was an adviser before, and the Russian state.

    He had accused interior ministry officials of organising a $235m tax scam, but was then charged with the very crimes he claimed to have uncovered.

    {Sergei Magnitskaya died in custody in 2009 at the age of 37 }
    wirestory

  • Confusion reigns over start of Ramadan in France

    {{French Muslims were thrown into confusion on Tuesday after the country’s top Islamic authority and officials at the leading mosque in Paris failed to agree on the official start date of the holy month of Ramadan.}}

    The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the official Islamic representative body, had insisted that according to its calculations, Ramadan began on Tuesday.

    But the theological council at the Great Mosque of Paris said the month of daytime fasting would not start until Wednesday, the same day that many Arab countries are due to begin the observance.

    “The CFCM’s decision has thrown everyone into confusion,” said Hassen Farsadou, head of the Seine-Saint-Denis [northern Parisian suburbs] Union of Muslim Associations, which has called on its followers to start their Ramadan fast on Wednesday.

    “A very large number of French mosques have taken the same decision,” he told local media. According to French Muslim websites, more than 131 mosques, including the Great Mosque of Paris, had followed this lead.

    france24