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Tag: InternationalNews

  • US whites now Losing Majority in under-5 age Group

    {For the first time, America’s racial and ethnic minorities now make up about half of the under-5 age group, the U.S. government said Thursday.

    It’s a historic shift that shows how young people are at the forefront of sweeping changes by race and class.}

    The new census estimates, a snapshot of the U.S. population as of July 2012, comes a year after the Census Bureau reported that whites had fallen to a minority among babies. Fueled by immigration and high rates of birth, particularly among Hispanics, racial and ethnic minorities are now growing more rapidly in numbers than whites.

    Based on current rates of growth, whites in the under-5 group are expected to tip to a minority this year or next, Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director, said.

    The government also projects that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of children under 18. Not long after, the total U.S. white population will begin an inexorable decline in absolute numbers, due to aging baby boomers.

    The imminent tip to a white minority among young children adds a racial dimension to government spending on early-childhood education, such as President Barack Obama’s proposal to significantly expand pre-kindergarten for lower-income families.

    The nation’s demographic changes are already stirring discussion as to whether some civil rights-era programs, such as affirmative action in college admissions, should be retooled to focus more on income rather than race and ethnicity. The Supreme Court will rule on the issue this month.

    Studies show that gaps in achievement by both race and class begin long before college, suggesting that U.S. remedies to foster equal opportunity will need to reach earlier into a child’s life.

    AP

  • UN says Nearly 93,000 killed in Syrian conflict

    {{Syria’s spiraling violence has resulted in the confirmed killings of nearly 93,000 people but the real number is likely to be far higher, the United Nations’ human rights office said Thursday.}}

    The new death toll released in Geneva points to the seemingly unstoppable carnage that has engulfed Syria for more than two years.

    In a new analysis of the Syrian death toll issued in Geneva, the U.N.’s human rights office documented 92,901 killings between March 2011 and the end of April 2013.

    But the U.N.’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, said it was impossible to provide an exact current figure.

    The last such analysis, released in January, documented nearly 60,000 killings through the end of November. Since then, U.N. officials had estimated higher numbers.

    “The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels, with more than 5,000 killings documented every month since last July,” said Pillay.

    “This is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.”

    Among the victims were at least 6,561 children, including 1,729 children younger than 10.

    The conflict in Syria began in March 2011 as largely peaceful protests against Assad’s autocratic regime. After a relentless government crackdown on the protests, many Syrians took up arms against the regime, turning the uprising into an armed rebellion that morphed into civil war.

    The U.N. said the average monthly number of documented killings has risen from around 1,000 per month in the summer of 2011 to an average of more than 5,000 per month since last July.

    At its height from July to October 2012, the number of killings rose above 6,000 per month.

    “Civilians are bearing the brunt of widespread, violent and often indiscriminate attacks which are devastating whole swaths of major towns and cities, as well as outlying villages,” Pillay said.

    “Government forces are shelling and launching aerial attacks on urban areas day in and day out, and are also using strategic missiles and cluster and thermobaric bombs.

    Opposition forces have also shelled residential areas, albeit using less fire-power, and there have been multiple bombings resulting in casualties in the heart of cities, especially Damascus.”

    The most documented killings were in rural Damascus, with 17,800 people dead. Next were Homs, with 16,400; Aleppo, 11,900; and Idlib, 10,300.

    {wirestory}

  • France Threatens to Block US-EU Trade Talks

    {{France threatened on Wednesday to block the start of free trade talks between the European Union and the United States if movies and digital media are not kept out of the negotiations.}}

    Two days before EU countries are supposed to give the go-ahead for negotiations, France said it would veto the talks unless the sector – that it sees as crucial to its cultural identity and under threat from Hollywood – is excluded.

    “France defends and will defend the cultural exception to the end – that’s a red line,” Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti told media referring to current EU rules that allow governments to preserve “cultural diversity” by setting subsidies and quotas that might otherwise be considered contrary to free trade.

    The first round of talks – which would seek to establish free trade for all manner of goods – has been tentatively scheduled for July, but both sides must first agree the scope of the negotiations, something EU trade ministers are due to finalize on Friday.

    Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told parliament: “France will go as far as using its political veto. This is about our identity, it’s our struggle.”

    The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership could increase Europe’s economic output by 65 billion euros ($86.3 billion) a year, according to the European Commission, with the United States getting a similar boost.

    But for the talks to start, EU trade ministers must reach a unanimous agreement in their discussions on Friday. France’s stance would appear to make that impossible at this stage.

    “TOO BIG TO FAIL”

    Paris says it will not be pushed into signing up until it is satisfied that its system of support for film, radio and other audio-visual products remains shielded from Hollywood. It also wants to make sure any future technologies in the cultural sphere, such as visual arts downloads, are protected.

    {reuters}

  • Who are Iranian Presidential Candidates?

    {{A look at the six candidates in Iran’s presidential election Friday. Two others — parliament member Gholam Ali Haddad Adel and former Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref — withdrew earlier this week.}}
    ___
    {{SAEED JALILI}}: Iran’s top nuclear negotiator since 2007 and considered a hardliner. Jalili, 47, is believed to have backing from many in the ruling theocracy, including possibly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    He also gained the support of ultraconservative cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who was previously seen as the spiritual mentor of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    At campaign stops, Jalili’s slogan was chanted by supporters: No compromise; no submission. Jalili also is often hailed as a “living martyr” because of losing part of his right leg in 1980-88 war with Iraq.

    He worked as a university lecturer before joining the Foreign Ministry in 1989, where he rose in the ranks until his appointment in 2001 as a senior policy adviser in Khamenei’s office.

    He later served as an adviser to Ahmadinejad and deputy foreign minister for European and American Affairs. He took over the important nuclear negotiator role in 2007 — in a move that surprised even some Iranian hard-liners for his rapid rise.

    A U.S. diplomatic cable at the time — part of the documents made public by WikiLeaks — interpreted the decision as “a move to forestall any compromises on the nuclear issue.” Another cable in January 2008 noted that a European Union official described Jalili as unbending, dogmatic and “a true product of the Iranian Revolution.”
    ___
    {{HASAN ROWHANI}}: A former nuclear negotiator and close ally of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was blocked from the ballot by Iran’s election overseers. Rowhani, 64, is the only cleric among the candidates and viewed as a relative moderate.

    He has drawn support from reformist leaders after a rival, former Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, dropped out of the race in attempts to consolidate the liberal-leaning camp.

    Rowhani started religious studies at a teenager and soon established himself as an outspoken opponent of the Western-backed shah, traveling frequently for anti-monarchy speeches and sermons that caught the attention of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the eventual leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    Rowhani graduated from Tehran University with a law degree in 1972. He then says he went abroad to Glasgow Caledonian University for a master’s degree in legal affairs.

    After the revolution, Rowhani rose quickly with various roles, including reorganizing the military, serving in the new parliament and overseeing the state broadcaster. He strengthened his ties to Rafsanjani during the 1980-88 war with Iraq and, later, as Rafsanjani’s top national security adviser during his 1989-97 terms.

    Rowhani took over the nuclear portfolio in 2003, a year after Iran’s 20-year-old nuclear program was revealed. Iran later temporarily suspended all uranium enrichment-related activities to avoid possible sanctions from the U.N. Security Council.

    Ahmadinejad strongly opposed any such concessions. Rowhani resigned as nuclear negotiator and head of the Supreme National Security Council after a few testy postelection meetings with Ahmadinejad.

    At campaign rallies, Rowhani has pledged to seek “constructive interaction with the world” that includes efforts to ease Western concerns about Iran’s program and lift punishing international sanctions that have pummeled the economy.
    ___
    {{MOHAMMAD BAGHER QALIBAF}}: Tehran mayor and former commander of the Revolutionary Guard during the Iran-Iraq war.

    Qalibaf, 51, has built a reputation as a dynamic leader for a host of quality-of-life projects around Iran’s capital including parks, expanded subways lines and highways.

    But he also has faced accusations that he took part in crackdowns against student protesters in 1999 while with the Guard and, four years later, allegedly ordered a full-scale assault to crush another flare-up of student unrest.
    Like many Iranian leaders of his generation, Qalibaf got his footholds in power during the 1980-88 war with Iraq.

    Qalibaf was a Revolutionary Guard commander and later appointed to run one of the Guard’s main economic conglomerates. He was appointed as the Guard’s air force commander in 1997 despite not being a flier, but later received his license and now sometimes pilots passenger planes.

    He was named head of Iran’s police forces in the shakeup after the 1999 Tehran University riots, which marked one of the first major displays of dissent against Iran’s ruling clerics.

    Qalibaf also brings a rare element in Iran’s macho politics: A high-profile wife who has carved out her own political identity.

    Zahra Sadat Moshiri, a former professor of social sciences at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, has served as Qalibaf’s adviser on women’s affairs for Tehran. She has hosted many conferences on women’s issues, including some that reflect her views about balancing Islamic traditions with needs to advance women’s roles on all levels including politics.
    ___
    {{ALI AKBAR VELAYATI}}: Top adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei on international affairs. Velayati, 67, served as foreign minister during the 1980-88 war with Iraq and into the 1990s. He was among the suspects named by Argentina in a 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

    Velayati received a degree in pediatric medicine at Tehran University in the 1960s and later studied at Johns Hopkins University. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he shifted into politics as a member of the first parliament and deputy health minister.

    Velayati was proposed by Khamenei — who was then president — to become the first prime minister. He was rejected by parliament and the post went to Mir Hossein Mousavi, who led the reform-minded Green Movement in the president election in 2009 and is now under house arrest for taking part in massive protests claiming the vote was rigged in favor of Ahmadinejad.

    Under Mousavi’s government the early 1980s, Velayati was appointed foreign minister at a time when Iran’s Islamic rulers were seeking to build new ties with the world. He held the post until 1997 and later became a senior international policy adviser to Khamenei. In a speech earlier this month, Velayati opened the door — just a bit — for better relations with Washington.

    “Iran will … interact with the world, not with those who are expansionist and not those who, like the U.S., rattle sabers against the Islamic Republic,” he said.
    ___
    {{MOHSEN REZAEI:}} Former chief commander of the Revolutionary Guard. Rezaei, 58, ran in 2009, but finished fourth. He currently is secretary of the Expediency Council, which mediates between the parliament and Guardian Council. Rezaei is also charged by Argentina for the Buenos Aires bombing.

    Rezaei was a key member of an underground Islamic guerrilla group fighting the U.S.-backed shah in the 1970s and protecting leaders such Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Rezaei became chief commander of the Revolutionary Guard near the beginning of the 1980-88 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which was then backed by Washington.

    After stepping down from the Guard in the mid-1990s, he retained a prominent role as secretary of the Expediency Council, a group that mediates any disputes between the ruling clerics and parliament and serves as an advisory body for Khamenei.

    In late 2011, Rezaei’s son was found dead in a Dubai hotel room. Ahmad Rezaei had spent years in the U.S. as an outspoken critic of Iran’s Islamic rulers, including claiming he had firsthand knowledge about Tehran’s involvement in the Buenos Aires blast. The death was investigated as a suicide, but opened a flood of unsupported speculation in Iran over possible hit squads.
    ___
    {{MOHAMMAD GHARAZI}}: A former oil and telecommunications minister. Gharazi, 71, also served in parliament in the 1980s and ’90s. He is considered conservative and portrays himself as a steady-handed technocrat.

    Gharazi was part of part of the anti-shah forced in exile before the Islamic Revolution. He then joined parliament and was later appointed to the influential position of oil minister. He was named the minister of post in 1985 and held the job until 1997. He later served on the Tehran city council.

    His campaign has focused on Iran’s sanctions-wracked economy.

    “A global definition says that low inflation and high employment figures are what make an administration popular,” he said earlier this month. “Balanced inflation and employment rates are also acceptable. But a high inflation and a low employment rate are the features of an inefficient administration.”

  • Pope Says ‘gay lobby,’ corruption Exist in Vatican

    {{Pope Francis has acknowledged the existence of a “gay lobby” and a “stream of corruption” in the Vatican, according to reports in Catholic media not denied by the Vatican.}}

    The pope made the remarks last week in Spanish during a private meeting with representatives of the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious (CLAR), according to the Chilean Catholic website “Reflection and Liberation”.

    On Tuesday it published what it said was a summary of the conversation written by participants after the June 6 meeting in the Vatican.

    CLAR, which is based in Colombia, confirmed that a summary had been written but regretted that it had been published.

    In the conversation, the pope is quoted as talking about various subjects of concern, including the problems of the Curia, the Church’s central administration which was at the centre of a corruption scandal last year.

    “In the Curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people. But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true… The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there… We need to see what we can do,” the synthesis by CLAR officials said.

    In its own statement, the presidency of CLAR said it “deeply regretted the publication of a text which refers to the conversation with the Holy Father”.

    It did not confirm the precise quotes attributed to the pope but acknowledged the summary reflected the “general feeling” of the meeting.

    After the initial report was picked up and translated by a number of other Catholic websites, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said: “It was a private meeting, therefore I have no comment to make on the contents of the conversation”.

    Earlier this year, in the period immediately after Pope Benedict announced his resignation, Italian media published unsourced reports of a powerful “gay lobby” in the Vatican that left the Holy See open to blackmail.

    Before resigning on February 28, Benedict left Francis a top secret report about the leaks scandal that rocked the Catholic Church last year.

    The report concerned the so-called Vatileaks affair in which internal documents alleging corruption, mismanagement and infighting in the Curia were leaked to the media.

    The report was prepared for Benedict, who is now “Pope Emeritus”, by three elderly cardinals who investigated the leaks.

    Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, was convicted last year of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media. He was pardoned by Benedict after being briefly jailed.

    The documents alleged corruption and rivalry between different factions inside the Curia and was one of the major concerns of cardinals choosing a new pope to run the Church at a time of crisis.

    Anger over the dysfunctional state of the Vatican bureaucracy, which includes many Italians, is said to have been one factor in the cardinal electors’ decision to choose a non-European pope for the first time in nearly 1,300 years.

    {wirestory}

  • World’s oldest person dies at 116 in Japan

    {{The world’s oldest person, 116-year-old Japanese man Jiroemon Kimura, died on Wednesday, Japanese media said.}}

    Kimura, who lived in Kyotango near Kyoto in western Japan, had been hospitalized for pneumonia since last month.

    He became the world’s oldest person on December 17, 2012, after the former title holder, a 115-year-old woman from Iowa died, according to Guinness World Records.

    Kimura was born in 1897 the same year as aviator Amelia Earhart and the year Queen Victoria marked her Diamond Jubilee. He worked as a postal employee and as a farmer at his home.

    On his 115th birthday, Kimura told reporters he was keeping his mind fit by learning English. He attributed his longevity to getting out in the sunlight.

    “I am always looking up towards the sky. That is how I am,” Kimura said then.

    Kimura is survived by seven children, 14 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren, and 15 great-great-grandchildren, Japanese media said.

    Japan has more than 50,000 centenarians, 2011 government data showed, reinforcing its reputation for longevity.

    {reuters}

  • Swiss Upper House Backs U.S. Tax Deal to Protect Banks

    {{ Switzerland cleared the first hurdle towards ending a long-running U.S. tax probe after one chamber of lawmakers voted to allow banks to sidestep strict secrecy laws to end the threat of criminal charges for helping wealthy Americans evade tax.}}

    The draft law is set to face far tougher opposition in Switzerland’s lower house next week than in the upper chamber, which passed it by a decisive 24 votes to 15 on Wednesday.

    The protection of client information has helped to make Switzerland the world’s biggest offshore financial center, with $2 trillion in assets.

    But that haven has come under fire as other countries have sought to plug budget deficits by clamping down on tax evasion, with authorities probing Swiss banks in Germany and France as well as the United States.

    With some of its biggest institutions facing formal investigations and Switzerland’s oldest private bank already a prominent victim in the probe, the Swiss government is seeking a swift compromise with the United States to limit the damage to its vital finance industry.

    Even backers of the bill said they did so grudgingly, while others chafed at what they described as U.S. blackmail.

    “Even if this bill violates our understanding of constitutional law, it is vital for our country. Switzerland’s reputation as a financial center is at stake,” said Ivo Bischofberger of the Christian People’s Party, who voted in favor.

    U.S. investigators have lost patience with Swiss officials, who have struggled for months to find a way to bend secrecy rules to satisfy U.S. demands and clean up past transgressions.

    The bill would allow banks to hand over information and strike settlement deals with U.S. prosecutors, which one lawmaker called a “choice between the plague and cholera.”

    Such deals would avert the threat of criminal prosecution, but are still expected to include heavy fines that could cost the industry as much as $10 billion.

    {reuters}

  • Israeli PM warns of another Holocaust from Iran

    {{Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off a two-day visit to Poland, which Germany’s Nazis occupied during World War II and where they committed the worst crimes ever against the Jewish people, with a stern warning about a potential Holocaust from Iran.}}

    Netanyahu said Wednesday the upcoming “so-called” Iranian presidential election will “change nothing” in the Islamic republic’s quest for nuclear weapons and that the regime will continue to pursue a bomb aimed at destroying Israel.

    Iran insists its uranium enrichment program has only peaceful goals.

    Iran’s election overseers have approved a list of would-be hopefuls, most of them loyalists favored by both the theocracy and the military, and any future president will likely side with the supreme leadership’s nuclear aspirations.

    “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s 6 million Jews,” he said, alluding to the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.

    “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.”

    Israel considers Iran its greatest threat because of its support of Islamic militant groups, its arsenal of long-range missiles and primarily its advanced nuclear program.

    Netanyahu’s comments in Warsaw carried added significance since they came a day before he travels to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in southern Poland, where he is to inaugurate a new pavilion meant to educate visitors about the Holocaust and the Nazi Germany’s quest to exterminate the Jewish people.

    AP

  • Turkish gov’t open to Referendum to end Protests

    {{The Turkish government is open to holding a referendum over an Istanbul development plan that has had a central role in nearly two weeks of mass protests, a spokesman for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party said Wednesday.}}

    The announcement following talks between Erdogan and a group of activists amounts to the first big gesture by his government to end a standoff with protesters in Istanbul’s Taksim Square and around the country.

    But on a more defiant note, Justice and Development Party spokesman Huseyin Celik also said the government would not allow the ongoing sit-in in Gezi Park, next to the square, to continue “until doomsday” — a sign that authorities’ patience is running out.

    The prospect of a referendum amounts to a political gamble by Erdogan, who has drawn the ire of protesters over his alleged authoritarian streak. He appeared to be betting that his strong base of support would vote for the plans.

    The protests erupted May 31 after a violent police crackdown on a peaceful sit-in by activists objecting to the project to replace Gezi Park with a replica Ottoman-era barracks.

    They then spread to 78 cities across the country and have attracted tens of thousands of people nearly every night.

    AP

  • Obama Administration to Drop Limits on Morning-after pill

    {{The Obama administration will scrap age restrictions on the sale of emergency contraception pills, making the morning-after pill available to women and girls without a prescription.}}

    The U.S. Department of Justice said in a letter on Monday that it would comply with a court’s ruling to allow unrestricted sales of Plan B One-Step, withdrawing its appeal on the matter.

    The move closes a battle over the pill that has lasted over a decade, but could raise new controversy for President Barack Obama.

    Until recently, the pill was only available without a prescription to women 17 and older who presented proof of age at a pharmacist’s counter.

    Critics say unfettered access could lead to promiscuity, sexual abuse and fewer important doctor visits if readily available for purchase.

    Advocates for such emergency pills say they help reduce unwanted pregnancies or abortions and that quick access for women of all ages is critical for the medicines to work. The pill is most effective when taken within 72 hours of intercourse.