IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Brazil Conduct Crash Tests

    {{ After a decade of spiking fatalities from passenger car wrecks, the Brazilian government said Monday it plans to build its first auto crash test facility in an effort to improve the poor safety record of vehicles built and sold in the world’s fourth-largest automobile market.}}

    The decision comes a month after The Associated Press published an investigation that showed many cars built by the world’s biggest automakers and sold in Brazil had significantly fewer safeguards than the same or similar models sold in the U.S. and Europe.

    The AP found that Brazilians die at four times the rate as Americans in passenger car wrecks and that fatalities rose more than 70 percent in Brazil in the past decade while falling 40 percent in the U.S. Independent tests have been conducted in Germany on Brazil’s most popular car models, and the results are bleak. Four of Brazil’s five top selling cars failed their crash tests — the fifth has yet to be tested.

    Dr. Dirceu Alves at Abramet, a Brazilian association of doctors who specialize in treating traffic accident victims, said he thinks a crash-test center will improve safety.
    “There is no doubt about the importance of this lab. We cannot believe in the quality controls of the automakers alone,” he said. “We believe it will be one of the factors in reducing the number of traffic fatalities.”

    The Brazilian government has recently begun to implement tougher safety standards for its auto industry. But critics have pointed out that without its own crash test center, the government has no means of verifying automaker claims on impact safety.

    “Until now, when it came to the auto industry there was nothing the government was testing,” said a Brazilian government official, who agreed to discuss the situation only if not quoted by name because he wasn’t authorized to talk about the crash-test center plans.

    The official said the government hopes to have the $50 million crash test center operating by 2017.

    He noted it was a “politically sensitive” topic in a nation where the auto industry plays a big role in the economy. Brazil’s government has repeatedly slashed consumer taxes on cars in recent years in an effort to bolster the nation’s economic outlook.

    A second official, from the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, which will oversee the building and operation of the crash-test center, also confirmed plans for its construction.

    A ministry document indicating plans for the center indicates that it will be built on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro and that automakers could provide part of the funding for its operation and even use the center, which led experts to raise concerns about whether the lab can truly be independent. Further details about the center were not given.

    AP

  • Journalist in US surveillance case

    {{The journalist who exposed classified U.S. surveillance programs leaked by an American defense contractor said Tuesday that there will be more ‘significant revelations’ to come from the documents.}}

    “We are going to have a lot more significant revelations that have not yet been heard over the next several weeks and months,” said Glenn Greenwald.

    Greenwald told media that the decision was being made on when to release the next story based on the information provided by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who has been accused by U.S. Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California of committing an “act of treason” that should be prosecuted.

    Greenwald’s reports last week exposed widespread U.S. government programs to collect telephone and Internet records.

    “There are dozens of stories generated by the documents he provided, and we intend to pursue every last one of them,” Greenwald said.

    Snowden’s whereabouts were not immediately known on Tuesday, although he was believed to be staying somewhere in Hong Kong.

    No charges have been brought and no warrant has been issued for the arrest of Snowden.

    AP

  • Al-Qaida leader scraps Syria, Iraq branch merger

    {{Al-Qaida’s leader has tried to end squabbling between the terror network’s Syrian and Iraqi branches, ordering the two groups to remain separate after an attempted merger prompted a leadership dispute between them.}}

    This came as Syrian rebels battled Monday in a renewed push to capture a government air base in the north, while the regime was said to be preparing for a major offensive to retake opposition-held areas in the province of Aleppo.

    Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged leaders of the Iraqi al-Qaida branch and the Nusra Front in Syria to end their disagreements and “stop any verbal or actual attacks against one another.”

    Al-Jazeera said al-Zawahri’s call came in a letter sent to the station and posted on its website late Sunday. The letter’s authenticity could not be independently verified.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said it also acquired a copy of the letter but did not provide other details.

    Al-Zawahri’s call could also reflect a bid to carve out a more significant role for al-Qaida in the Syria civil war. Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, is the most powerful rebel force fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

    In April, al-Qaida in Iraq said it had joined forces with the Nusra Front, forming a new alliance called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

    Hours after the announcement, Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani appeared to distance himself from the merger, saying he was not consulted. Instead, he pledged allegiance to al-Zawahiri.

    In Sunday’s letter, al-Zawahri chastises the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saying he announced the merger without consulting al-Qaida’s leadership. He also admonished al-Golani for publicly distancing himself from the merger.

    “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will be abolished,” al-Zawahri said, adding that Nusra Front will remain an independent branch of al-Qaida. Al-Baghdadi and al-Golani are to stay on as leaders of their respective branches for another year, after which the al-Qaida leadership will decide whether they will keep their posts or be replaced.

    Assad’s government in April seized upon the reported merger to back its assertion that it isn’t facing a true popular uprising but a foreign-backed terrorist plot.

    The merger had also caused friction among rebels on the battlefield who feared the announcement would further discourage Western powers discussing funneling weapons, training and aid toward rebel groups and army defectors.

    Agencies

  • German WWII bomber raised from English Channel

    {{A British museum on Monday successfully recovered a German bomber that had been shot down over the English Channel during World War II.}}

    The aircraft, nicknamed the Luftwaffe’s “flying pencil” because of its narrow fuselage, came down off the coast of Kent county in southeastern England more than 70 years ago during the Battle of Britain.

    The rusty and damaged plane was lifted from depths of the channel with cables and is believed to be the most intact example of the German Dornier Do 17 bomber that has ever been found.

    “It has been lifted and is now safely on the barge and in one piece,” said RAF Museum spokesman Ajay Srivastava. The bomber will be towed into port Tuesday, he added.

    A few fragments of the plane dropped off as it was being lifted, but officials said divers will retrieve them later.

    The museum had been trying to raise the relic for a few weeks, but the operation was delayed by strong winds and choppy waters.

    In 2008, divers discovered the aircraft submerged in 50 feet (15 meters) of water.
    Experts say the bomber is remarkably undamaged despite the passage of time.

    Museum officials plan to conserve the relic and put it on exhibition next to the wreck of a British Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft that also was shot down during the battle.

  • Venezuela’s Maduro Scraps Food Restriction Plan

    {{Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro says he has halted a plan to restrict the sale of basic food items in the country’s most populous state, Zulia.}}

    The scheme would have limited the number of packages of items such as rice, milk and sugar shoppers were allowed to buy.

    The authorities said it was aimed at curbing smuggling to Colombia.

    Venezuela is suffering from a shortage of some goods, with milk, toilet paper and sugar often not easily available.

    Appearing on television on Saturday, President Maduro called the plan “insane”

    Critics had said the plan to restrict the sale of 20 basic food items constituted food rationing.

    The plan was devised by the authorities in western Zulia state, which borders Colombia.

    It is not clear exactly how it would have worked, but it was meant to prevent shoppers from buying the same product more than once in a day.

    The authorities said it was aimed at preventing people from buying large quantities of price-controlled goods in Venezuela only to sell them at a profit in neighbouring Colombia, where they are more expensive.

    BBC

  • Old Opportunity Mars Rover Makes Rock Discovery

    {{Nasa’s ageing Opportunity rover on Mars has just made what may be one of its most significant discoveries to date.}}

    The nine-year-old robot has identified rock laden with what scientists believe to be clay minerals.

    Their presence is an indication that the rock, dubbed Esperance, has been altered at some point in the past through prolonged contact with water.

    Opportunity has seen a clay-bearing outcrop before but scientists say this is by far the best example to date.

    “It’s very rich,” said Steve Squyres, the rover’s principal investigator.

    “We’ve been discovering evidence for water on Mars since we first landed back in 2004. What’s different here?

    “If you look at all of the water-related discoveries that have been made by Opportunity, the vast majority of them point to water that was a very low pH – it was acid.

    “We run around talking about water on Mars. In fact, what Opportunity has mostly discovered, or found evidence for, was sulphuric acid.

    “Clay minerals only tend to form at a more neutral pH. This is water you could drink. This is water that was much more favourable for things like pre-biotic chemistry – the kind of chemistry that could lead to the origin of life.”

    Prof Squyres, who is affiliated to Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, said he was inclined to put Esperance in his personal top five discoveries made on the Red Planet by Opportunity and her twin rover, Spirit, which stopped working in 2011.

    The clays are aluminium-rich, possibly of the type montmorillonite. However, because Opportunity’s X-ray spectrometer can only discern the atomic elements in a rock, and not their mineralogical arrangement, no-one can say for sure.

    Nonetheless, the mere occurrence of clays is further proof that Mars was much warmer and wetter billions of years ago; a very different place to the cold, desiccated world it has become.

    And these results complement nicely those of Nasa’s newer rover Curiosity, which has also identified clays at its landing site almost half-way around the planet’s equator.

    The old robot made its find at a location called Cape York, which is sited on the rim of a 22km-wide crater known as Endurance.

    Mission managers have now commanded it to start moving along the ridge to a destination dubbed Solander Point.

    There is an expectation that Opportunity will find a deeper stack of rocks at the new location to follow up the Esperance water story.

    “Maybe [we can] try to reconstruct the actual depositional environment of these materials and whether they were lacustrine – that is, formed by a lake – or fluvial (river) or an alluvial fan (network of streams), or whatever,” said deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson, of Washington University, St Louis.

    {Esperance is the most clay-laden rock seen by Opportunity in its nine and a half years on Mars}

  • Jordan Hosts U.S. jets & Missiles in Drills in Syria’s Shadow

    {U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Robert Catalanotti (R), director, Exercises and Training Directorate J-7, U.S. Central Command, speaks during a news conference with Maj. Gen. Awni el-Edwan, Chief of staff of the Jordanian Operations and Training Armed Forces in Amman, June 9, 2013.}

    {{U.S. troops equipped with Patriot missiles and fighter jets began military exercises in Jordan that have drawn condemnation from Russia, which accuses the West of fanning the conflict in neighboring Syria.}}

    Washington confirmed last week it was sending the F-16 jets and missiles – which can be used against planes and other missiles – to its ally Jordan, and said it may consider keeping them there after the drills.

    Both Washington and Amman said on Sunday the Eager Lion exercises were not related to the war in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s air power has given him an edge over lighter-armed rebels.

    But the Damascus government, and its most powerful ally Moscow, have been sensitive about any transfer of Western arms closer to the conflict, particularly any gear that could be used to enforce a no-fly zone.

    More than 4,500 American troops, around 3,000 Jordanians, and 500 soldiers from Britain, Saudi Arabia and other countries were taking part in the exercises, less than 75 miles from the Syrian border, said military officials.

    “The drills having nothing to do with any objective related to what is happening in Syria,” the top army commander in charge of Jordanian troops, Major General Awni al-Adwan, told reporters during the launch of the exercises on Sunday.

    U.S. Major General Robert G. Catalanotti told a joint news conference the Eager Lion events would increase “our ability to operate together in any upcoming contingency”.

    The exercises also involved a number of F-18 jets from bases in the Gulf and drills on handling chemical strikes, which Syria’s government and rebels have accused each other of carrying out.

    {Agencies}

  • 2 Koreas to Hold Senior-level Meeting in Seoul

    {{North and South Korea agreed Monday to hold senior-level talks this week in Seoul, a breakthrough of sorts to ease tensions after Pyongyang’s recent threats of nuclear war and Seoul’s vows of counterstrikes.}}

    The two-day meeting starting Wednesday will focus on stalled cooperation projects, including the resumption of operations at a jointly-run factory park near the border in North Korea that was the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement until Pyongyang pulled out its workers in April during heightened tensions that followed its February nuclear test.

    The details of the upcoming talks were ironed out in a nearly 17-hour negotiating session by lower-level officials.

    Those discussions began Sunday in the countries’ first government-level meeting on the Korean Peninsula in more than two years and took place at the village of Panmunjom on their heavily armed border, near where the armistice ending the three-year Korean War was signed 60 years ago next month.

    That truce has never been replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula technically at war.

    The agreement to hold the talks was announced in a statement early Monday by South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which is responsible for North Korea matters.

    North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, also reported the agreement.

    It’s still unclear who will represent each side in what will likely be the highest-level talks between the Koreas in years. But dialogue at any level marks an improvement in the countries’ abysmal ties.

    The last several years have seen North Korean nuclear tests, long-range rocket launches and attacks blamed on the North that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.

    The meeting that starts Wednesday will also include discussions on resuming South Korean tours to a North Korean mountain resort, the reunion of separated families and other humanitarian issues, officials said.

    The issue most crucial to Washington, however — a push to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons — isn’t on the official agenda.

    While there was broad agreement, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said in a statement, sticking points arose over the delegation heads and the agenda.

    Seoul said it will send a senior-level official responsible for North Korea-related issues while Pyongyang said it would send a senior-level government official, without elaborating.

    North Korea said that in addition to the rapprochement projects, the two sides would also discuss how to jointly commemorate past inter-Korean statements, including one settled during a landmark 2000 summit between the countries’ leaders, civilian exchanges and other joint collaboration matters.

    {agencies}

  • Taliban Bomb Kabul International Airport

    {{Seven Taliban insurgents including suicide bombers attacked the main airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul, early on Monday, with explosions and gunfire heard near an area that also houses major foreign military bases.}}

    The attackers took up positions inside a partially constructed building next to the international airport, interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said, and fought Afghan security forces for about four hours before the raid ended.

    The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Roads were sealed off and flights out of the airport were quickly canceled, while incoming flights were diverted to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

    Attacks on the heavily guarded airport, used by civilians and the military, are relatively rare and represent an ambitious target for insurgents, with recent assaults staged against less well-protected targets.

    While it did not escalate dramatically, Monday’s assault will add to mounting concerns over how the 352,000-strong Afghan security forces will cope with an intensifying insurgency once most foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

    The airport is home to a major operational base for NATO-led forces that have been fighting Taliban and other insurgents for 12 years and is bristling with soldiers and police, guard towers and several lines of security checkpoints.

    The attack began at about 4.30 a.m. (2400 GMT), soon after morning prayers, and plumes of smoke were seen rising from behind razor-wire fences at the airport. The fighting ended about four hours later.

    Police said the attack appeared to be centered on the military side of the airport, to the west of the civilian terminal, and that the attackers were dressed as police.

    {agencies}

  • Israel official: No Palestinian state in ’67 lines

    {{A senior Israeli official says the government will not agree to the borders that the Palestinians are demanding for an independent state.}}

    Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said Israel would not let such a state be established within the regional boundaries that existed prior to the 1967 Mideast war.

    Palestinians want east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — territories captured by Israel in that war. Danon’s remarks were broadcast on Israel Radio Sunday.

    His remarks came ahead of another visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to the region this week.

    The government has distanced itself from similar comments made by Danon last week.

    Israel’s chief negotiator Tzipi Livni told the station Sunday she was hopeful talks will resume with the Palestinians despite “elements” within the Israeli government.

    {Israel’s chief negotiator Tzipi Livni}

    {agencies}