IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Hamas Executes 2 Palestinians Convicted of Spying for Israel

    {{Hamas leaders said they had hanged two Palestinians found guilty of spying for Israel over a decade, making them the first to be executed since the end of a month-long amnesty for informants in April.}}

    Sixteen Palestinians have been executed in Gaza for spying since Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

    Hamas, which rejects any recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, says the executions are aimed at discouraging Palestinians from impoverished Gaza selling Israel information such as the whereabouts of top militants or weapons depots.

    Human rights activists say such executions violate Palestinian law which says that any cases of this sort must be reviewed by President Mahmoud Abbas, but Hamas does not recognize the Western-backed Abbas as having authority in Gaza.

  • Taliban offer to free US soldier

    {{The Taliban proposed a deal in which they would free a U.S. soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay, while Afghan President Hamid Karzai eased his opposition Thursday to joining planned peace talks.}}

    The idea of releasing these Taliban prisoners has been controversial. U.S. negotiators hope they would join the peace process but fear they might simply return to the battlefield, and Karzai once scuttled a similar deal partly because he felt the Americans were usurping his authority.

    The proposal to trade U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for the Taliban detainees was made by senior Taliban spokesman Shaheen Suhail in response to a question during a phone interview with The Associated Press from the militants’ newly opened political office in Doha, the capital of the Gulf nation of Qatar.

    The prisoner exchange is the first item on the Taliban’s agenda before even starting peace talks with the U.S., said Suhail, a top Taliban figure who served as first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad before the Taliban government’s ouster in 2001.

    “First has to be the release of detainees,” Suhail said Thursday when asked about Bergdahl. “Yes. It would be an exchange. Then step by step, we want to build bridges of confidence to go forward.”

    The Obama administration was noncommittal about the proposal, which it said it had expected the Taliban to make.

    “We’ve been very clear on our feelings about Sgt. Bergdahl and the need for him to be released,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “We have not made a decision to … transfer any Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, but we anticipate, as I’ve said, that the Taliban will all raise this issue.”

    Bergdahl, 27, of Hailey, Idaho, is the only known American soldier held captive from the Afghan war. He disappeared from his base in southeastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, and is believed held in Pakistan. Suhail said Bergdahl “is, as far as I know, in good condition.”

    wirestory

  • Merkel event in Russia Cancelled in Looted art Dispute

    {{A fresh dispute over German art seized by the Soviet Union as war reparations threatens to overshadow Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Russia.}}

    Mrs Merkel had been due to open a new exhibition jointly with President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, after an economic forum in the city.

    But the Friday evening ceremony was cancelled at short notice.

    It appears Mrs Merkel was planning to mention German claims in her speech and the Russian side objected.

    News of the cancellation came just before Mrs Merkel’s flight from Berlin to St Petersburg, where she is due to address the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

    {{‘Soviet blood’}}

    The two countries are in dispute over whether works of art taken by Soviet forces in the last war should be returned to Germany.

    Nobody quite knows how much art was looted from German collections as the Soviet Army closed in on Berlin but it certainly runs into thousands of paintings and sculptures, our correspondent says.

    One gallery alone in Berlin lost 441 pictures, including masterworks by Rubens and Caravaggio.

    The new exhibition at the Hermitage Museum includes work previously in German museums.

    The Russian position has in the past been that the works were paid for with the blood of Soviet soldiers.

    Russian officials have also pointed out that Napoleon’s troops looted works from Russian collections, works which ended up in the Louvre.

    Furthermore, Nazi forces destroyed or looted Russian art treasures during the invasion of the USSR.

    Art taken from Nazi Germany has been shown in Moscow on several occasions in recent years such as a display at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in 2007 and a Moscow Museum of Architecture event in 2003.

    BBC

  • Spain Detains Eight al-Qaeda-linked Suspects

    {{Spanish security forces have arrested eight suspects in the country’s North African enclave of Ceuta accused of recruiting fighters for an arm of al-Qaeda in Syria.}}

    An interior ministry statement said that police intelligence services and the military-linked Spanish Civil Guard launched operations against the ring early on Friday morning.

    “We have broken up a network responsible for sending combatants to al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups operating in Syria,” it said.

    According to the ministry, security forces confirmed that several “jihadists” were waiting to travel from Spain to Syria and dozens of people had already been sent from the enclave and other parts of Morocco by the ring.

    “This network, based in Ceuta and [Moroccan city of] Fnideq, carried out fundraising, indoctrination, and organising and financing travel, in contact with other terrorists and following the guidelines of the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation,” the statement said.

    Spain’s police had been investigating the network since 2009, and the Civil Guard since 2011, before they joined forces early this year.

    The eight suspects face charges of “belonging to a terrorist organisation,” the ministry said, adding that a National Court judge supervising the investigation had issued search warrants that were being executed on Friday.

    {agencies}

  • 35th Moscow International Film Festival Takes Off

    {{Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) is celebrating its 35th edition this year, taking place from June 20 to 29, with likely high-profile guests, including Brad Pitt and now-Russian citizen Gerard Depardieu.}}

    The festival is among the oldest of its kind the world. The first edition was in 1935, with its jury headed by Sergei Eisenstein, but it did not become a fully annual event until 1995, despite increasing in regularity until then.

    This year, the jury features skilled filmmakers from countries as diverse as Iran, France and South Korea, with competitors hailing from an equally impressive range of countries.

    The premier of Pitt’s new film, World War Z, introduced the first day of the festival at Oktyabr Theater as it opened on Thursday.

    Depardieu is expected to appear as the festival draws to a close at the screening of Rasputin, in which he plays the “Mad Monk” himself, scheduled for June 29.

    There are three competitions to be held across the main body of the festival: the more general ‘film’ category, documentary film, and short film, as well as a selection of Hollywood classics being shown throughout.

    Gareth Jones’ exploration of a relationship through trauma, “Delight” opens the main competition, in which 16 different directors are competing.

    Also showing will be Danish director Alex van Warmerdam’s “Borgman,” which recently screened at Cannes, and Nicholas Winding Refn’s crime thriller “Only God Forgives,” starring the ever-popular Ryan Gosling.

    Winners will receive a Saint George inspired 24-karat golden trophy — a classic Russian symbol, also forming the competition’s logo — designed by jewelry house Carrera y Carrera.

    Outside the competition there are numerous other film programs. The festival is screening eight different movies about Stalingrad alone.

    There will also be a Korean cinema showcase and some other intricately-titled categories: “films around the world,” “almost all of Bertolucci” and the rough but promising “sex, food, culture and death” genre.

    A popular element of the festival is the “traditional Russian film program,” from June 21 to 28, during which 25 full-length films will be shown.

    The Russian film program will take place in The House of Cinema (of the Filmmakers’ Union) and is an ideal opportunity to taste some homegrown Russian projects.

    One of the program’s pearls is the 2013 film “Thirst,” from director Dmitry Turin. Thirst was based on a novel by Andrei Gelasimov that goes by the same name. He also wrote the script.

    “The most important theme is the desire to live again,” Turin said.

    Turin hopes that the European spectators will see beyond the standard picture of Russia and Russians through his film.

    “Russia has been shown very negatively in films that have become famous in the past few years. I would like to show Russian people as human beings,” Turin said. “I admit that we have problems, everybody in the world does, but we are good people actually, deep inside.”

    The “universal story” uses all-Russian elements to present itself to the viewer:

    An initially talented boy is left with nothing and joins the army. He gets caught in tank-fire in Chechnya and when he gets back home he seeks consolation in vodka.

    “Our main character has all possibilities to hate the world, because he is unlucky, he is terribly unlucky. … But the moment he stops hating the world, the world stops hating him,” Gelasimov revealed proudly.

    He believes viewers may even find comfort in the film.

    Gelamisov’s novel is written in the first person. To visualize this transition that the main character makes, how he gets “out of his prison,” the artists used Point of View shots.

    “Dmitry, as a director, shows this in the film through the character’s eyes. As the character slowly gets out of his prison, after 15 minutes, we will see the character’s face for the first time.”

    The festival will also host a special program dedicated to the memory of recently deceased director Alexei Balabanov. Five of his films are to be screened, including “Brat,” his most famous.

    Gennady Sidorov’s adaptation of the controversial “Romance/Novel With Cocaine” — the translation of the novel’s title was deliberately ambiguous — is to be shown. It was unfinished upon the directors death in 2011.

    {The Moscow Times }

  • Spyware Claims Emerge in row over Chinese Dissident

    {Chen Guangcheng }

    {{When Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States in May last year he was given a fellowship at New York University, use of a Greenwich Village apartment, and a pile of gifts from supporters, including smartphones and an iPad.}}

    But at least two of the gadgets presented to Chen as gifts may not have been quite what they seemed: They included software intended to spy on the blind dissident, according to Jerome Cohen, an NYU professor who has been Chen’s mentor, and another source familiar with the episode.

    Like nearly everything surrounding Chen these days, the existence of the spyware is in dispute, and only adds to the public recriminations there have been between NYU and Chen’s supporters over events surrounding the end of his fellowship.

    Last weekend, Chen accused NYU of bowing to pressure from China by ending the fellowship, and his supporters have suggested that the university is wary of displeasing the Chinese authorities because of its plans for a campus in Shanghai.

    The allegations are vigorously denied by NYU, which says the fellowship was only ever planned to last a year.

    At issue in the latest escalation in the argument are an iPad and at least one of the smartphones that were given to Chen days after he fled China and arrived in Manhattan.

    The devices were found by NYU technicians to have been loaded with software that made it possible to track the dissident’s movements and communications, according to Cohen and the second source, who was not authorized to speak on the matter.

    The episode suggests that from almost the day that he arrived at the university there was an uneasy atmosphere between Chen, his supporters, and NYU

    Among the first visitors in May 2012 to the New York apartment Chen had moved into with his family after a dramatic escape from house arrest in China was Heidi Cai, the wife of activist Bob Fu. She brought an iPad and iPhone as gifts.

    The devices were screened by NYU technicians within a few days and were found to have been loaded with hidden spying software, said Cohen, who arranged the fellowship for Chen at NYU Law School, helping defuse a diplomatic crisis between the United States and China after Chen took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

    “These people supposedly were out to help him and they give him a kind of Trojan horse that would have enabled them to monitor his communications secretly,” said Cohen.

    The iPad was eventually cleaned up and returned to Chen at his request, the second source said.

    The spyware issue was not publicized at the time and has only surfaced because of the recent scrutiny of NYU’s arrangement with Chen. Cohen said he was surprised when he heard that Reuters knew about the episode.

    {reuters}

  • Sao Paulo, Rio revoke transport fare hikes as protests continue

    {{Brazil’s two biggest cities agreed on Wednesday to revoke an increase in public transportation fares that set off demonstrations that have grown into nationwide protests against poor public services, inflation and corruption.}}

    The decisions, made separately in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, followed another day of protests across Brazil, which also included a march by demonstrators around a major international soccer game in the northeastern city of Fortaleza.

    This month’s transport fare hikes, which came as Brazil struggles with annual inflation of 6.5 percent, stirred a groundswell of other complaints, leading to the biggest protests to sweep Brazil in more than two decades.

    The protests have been organized by a disparate group of activists who have rallied supporters via social media.

    Sao Paulo state Governor Geraldo Alckmin, announcing a reduction in fares to their level before the hike, called it “important … so the city can have the tranquility needed to debate issues calmly.”

    It remains unclear whether revoking the fare increases, which followed similar fare cuts in other state capitals, will be enough to quell the unrest. Initially focused in cities like Sao Paulo, Rio and Brasilia, demonstrations have spread, with protests planned in more than 70 smaller cities for Thursday.

    After the fare increase was scrapped, leaders of the protest movement in Sao Paulo said their cause would now shift to free public transport and that a planned protest for Thursday would be a celebration.

    President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured by Brazil’s former military dictatorship as a youth, acknowledged on Tuesday the legitimacy of the protesters’ demands.

    Her Workers’ Party presided over a near decade-long economic boom that lifted more than 30 million people from poverty. But a recent slowdown is prompting many among Brazil’s growing middle class to demand more of the government.

    She praised the mostly non-violent demonstrators and said her government would seek to improve schools, hospitals, infrastructure and other public facilities and services.

    {reuters}

  • Russia’s Birth Rate Up 30% Since 2007

    {{The birth rate in Russia grew 30 percent since 2007, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection Maxim Topilin said on Wednesday.}}

    In his interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station, the minister attributed the trend in part to the introduction of the so-called “maternity capital” on January 1, 2007.

    “During this period, the birth rate increased by 30 percent,” Topilin said without giving the exact figures. Growth was attributed “to the introduction of the maternity capital, among other things.”

    In a bid to encourage families to have more than one child, all women who gave birth to their second child after January 1, 2007 are eligible for a government-issued benefit of almost 409,000 rubles (about $12,600).

    The benefit is not paid in cash, but parents can spend the money to improve their housing conditions, pay for their children’s education or put the money towards a pension.

    {The Moscow Times}

  • India Monsoon Floods Kill 120

    {{Military helicopters carried out emergency food drops yesterday for thousands of people stranded by flash flooding from early monsoon rains which have killed at least 120 in northern India, officials said.}}

    The states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have witnessed torrential rains at least three times as heavy as usual since last week when the annual monsoon broke a fortnight ahead of schedule.

    Thousands of houses have been swept away in the flash floods and authorities are using helicopters to evacuate people and drop essential food supplies. “At least 110 people have died.

    The state government and the army are trying to rescue thousands of tourists who are stranded near the submerged valleys and Hindu shrines,” said Jaspal Arya, the disaster relief minister of Uttarakhand.

    Stranded pilgrims
    Arya said portions of a Hindu temple were washed away on Tuesday and about 10,000 pilgrims were stranded. “The Kedarnath temple is submerged in mud and slush. We just hope that it does not collapse,” Arya told press.

    Authorities have cancelled pilgrimage trips, fearing further rains and landslides in the state, often referred to as the “Land of the Gods” because of its many Hindu temples and Hindu religious sites.

    Officials in Uttarakhand, the worst-hit state, said about 200 cars, two earthmoving equipment and even a parked helicopter had been swept away by floods.

    The torrential rains began lashing the region on Saturday and local officials said 40 relief camps have been set up to provide food and water to locals and tourists.

    {wirestory}

  • U.S. Human-Trafficking Report Gives China, Russia Low Grades

    {{The Obama administration has downgraded the ratings of China, Russia and Uzbekistan in an annual report on global efforts to combat modern slavery.}}

    The three-tier ranking puts Russia and China on a list of the world’s worst offenders, such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia, and below second-tier countries such as Rwanda, described in the report as a destination for “women and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.”

    About 27 million men, women and children worldwide are trapped in some form of slavery — South Asian maids confined in Qatari homes against their will, children taken from school to work in Uzbek cotton fields and Paraguayans forced into labor in Argentine sweatshops.

    Millions of women and children are trafficked for sex. Very few are even identified, a focus of this year’s report.

    “Modern day slavery affects every country in the world including the United States,” Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday. “No government is doing enough.”

    Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, who heads the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said identifying victims is a key to fighting the abuses.

    “Everything we do is driven by finding and identifying these people,” he said on a call with reporters. Last year, 46,500 of the world’s 27 million victims were identified, he said, indicating the scale of the work ahead.

    {{27 Downgrades}}

    Of 188 countries examined, 27 were downgraded and 14 moved up in rankings that assess their commitment and success in stopping human trafficking.

    The report is mandated by Congress and based on information provided by nonprofit organizations, reports from embassies and activists.

    China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said today her country has always been “highly focused” on fighting human-trafficking.

    “We are against irresponsible accusations against China on this issue,” Hua said. “The U.S. should treat China’s effort fairly and objectively, and stop making one-sided judgments.”

    The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. of being motivated by “political antipathy” toward Russia and other countries.

    “We will respond reciprocally to these unfriendly steps,” the ministry said in a statement on its website today.

    Representatives at Uzbekistan’s Washington embassy didn’t respond to requests for comment on the report.

    {{‘Tough’ Report}}

    Kerry called the report “tough” and said recent studies have shown that countries are twice as likely to take action once they get the report’s lowest ranking.

    This year’s rankings were released amid strains in relations with both Russia and China. The U.S. and Russia are at odds over Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s war against rebels within his country.

    The U.S. also is trying to win help from its former Cold War foe to restrain Iran’s nuclear program and enact new controls on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    A “shirt-sleeves summit” this month between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, meant to establish cordial relations, was chilled when Xi questioned U.S. allegations about Chinese computer hacking in light of revelations about U.S. monitoring of computer and telephone use.

    Russia and China both had been on the “Tier Two Watch List,” a status that requires improvement within four years before the State Department is required by law to downgrade those countries. This is the first year the provision for mandatory downgrades is in effect.

    {{Mature Relationship}}

    “We trust that the relationship with these countries is a mature relationship; this is one of many issues with which we deal with these governments,” CdeBaca said.

    “While sometimes these truths can be hard to tell and hard to hear, at the same time, we need to have an accurate and respectful dialogue with them on what can be done and what needs to be done.”

    Non-governmental organizations had some concerns that politics would intrude and countries such as China or Russia would be upgraded despite a lack of improvement.

    Karen Stauss, director of programs at the Washington-based advocacy group Free the Slaves, said there was even concern that U.S. allies currently in their last year on the watch list before mandatory demotion, such as Thailand, would be pre-emptively upgraded to avoid offending them next year.

    “The political will that this report represents is really something,” Stauss said in a telephone interview. “We were all preparing for the possibility that the downgrades wouldn’t happen across the board.”

    {{Strong Reasons}}

    “Of the three downgraded, with China and Russia there are strong reasons not to fray relations,” Stauss said.

    Before the mandatory demotion to Tier Three this year, Russia had spent nine years on the Tier Two watch list. It ranks among the top 10 countries of origin for trafficked people, with as many as 130,000 victims estimated to be in Moscow alone.

    While Russia’s Ministry of Interior estimates that as many as 17,000 children are being forced to work as prostitutes, the actual number is thought to be closer to 50,000, according to Free the Slaves.

    The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, has become a driver of abuse. A February Human Rights Watch report documented abuse of workers, including laborers cheated out of wages, deprived of their passports or work permits, and given few days off.

    {{Chinese Trafficking}}

    China is cited in the report as a significant source of girls and women subjected to forced prostitution throughout the world.

    Most of its trafficking occurs among the estimated 236 million internal migrants within Chinese borders, according to the State Department report. They are forced to work in brick kilns, coal mines and factories.

    “China does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking,” the report said, and was being downgraded after nine years on the watch list.

    The report found that the government itself “continued to perpetuate human trafficking in at least 320 state-run institutions.”

    Children in “work-study” programs supported by local governments were forced to work in farms and factories and in 2012, some schools were reported for forcing students to work in factories.

    In Uzbekistan, the world’s sixth-largest cotton producer and the third-largest exporter of the commodity, the government threatens to jail or withhold social benefits from people who don’t contribute to the country’s cotton harvest quota, according to Free the Slaves.

    This year, the country is being demoted to the State Department’s Tier Three for continuing to use older children to harvest cotton and weed fields.

    The State Department also cited reports that teachers, students and private business employees have been forced by the Uzbek government to work in construction, agriculture and in cleaning parks.

    {Bloomberg}