Tag: InternationalNews

{{Two gunmen stormed into a gym and killed four people in a tough Mexico City neighborhood that is home to the area’s biggest black market, authorities said Thursday.}}

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said three men who were exercising were killed at the scene and the fourth man, identified as the gym owner, died later in the hospital.

The shooting happened in the Body Extreme gym in Tepito, one of Mexico City’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

Mancera said the gunfire appeared to be targeted at the first three men, and the business owner was shot after confronting the armed men. Agents found six bullet shells inside the building.

“It was a direct attack. There were about 30 people at this place,” he said.
Police later detained two people who were armed and in the same neighborhood. They opened fire on police, without hitting them.

Josefina Ramirez said her nephew was one of the four killed, along with two friends and an instructor.

“Two masked men came and just started shooting,” she said. “He had no enemies.”
Tepito is the main clearinghouse for millions of dollars of contraband, from guns and drugs to counterfeit handbags that come through Mexico City.

A dozen people from the neighborhood were kidnapped nearly two weeks ago from an after-hours bar in the city center. Three people have been detained in the kidnapping, but there is still no sign of the 12 who were taken in broad daylight May 26 by heavily armed and masked men.

It was not immediately clear if the shooting Thursday had anything to do with the kidnapping. The mayor said he did not want to speculate on whether the two attacks were related.

{People stand in front of a partially burned vehicle after gunmen shot and killed an as of yet undetermined number of people in the Tepito neighborhood in Mexico City, Thursday June 6, 2013}

{agencies}

{{France is committed to reforming its economy and bringing down its budget deficit but will do so as it – not the European Commission – sees fit, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.}}

His comments to Austria’s ORF radio mirrored President Francois Hollande stance last week that the Commission cannot “dictate” reforms to members – a defiant, nationalist tone that irked Germany’s ruling conservatives.

Speaking German in the interview aired on Thursday, Ayrault said France had already begun to implement reforms and was in discussions with Brussels.

“The goals are the same (for) the Commission and my government. But the methods for doing this are our affair. That means we have our special social model that we will defend, but we also know that we have to reform it and will do so,” he said.

The EU executive has urged France to rein in public spending, cut labor costs and reform its pension system in return for winning two extra years to bring its budget deficit below the EU’s official ceiling of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

{wirestory}

A U.S. Army sergeant who killed 16 Afghan civilians in cold blood last year pleaded guilty on Wednesday to premeditated murder and other charges under a deal with military prosecutors that spares him from the death penalty.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted to leaving his Army post in the Afghan province of Kandahar last March to gun down and set fire to unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.

“As far as why, I’ve asked that question a million times since then,” Bales said, in a calm, steady voice, when the judge pressed him for an explanation. “There is not a good reason in this world for why I did the horrible things that I did.”

The slayings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a single, rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and further strained U.S.-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.

Bales, 39, now faces a life term in prison, but a military jury will decide if and when he will ever be eligible for parole after further proceedings set to begin August 19.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in return for Bales’ guilty plea to the murder charges he faced.

The judge, Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, accepted the agreement at the end of a lengthy hearing during which Bales was required to recount the events in question and to convince the judge he understood his plea and the consequences of his acts.

{{reuters}}

{{North Korea on Thursday proposed official talks with South Korea to normalize commercial projects, including the Kaesong industrial zone that was shut down at the height of tensions between the rivals in early April.}}

North Korea’s state-owned KCNA news agency also said the government would restore severed communications channels if the South accepted the offer of talks, indicating it was prepared to roll back a series of steps it has taken since March that reinforced the deterioration in relations between the two sides.

The North, in a statement by its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea which handles ties with the South, also proposed discussing the reopening of tours to a mountain resort and family reunions as well as to hold events to mark the 2000 summit of their leaders that opened a decade of warmer ties.

“We propose holding talks between authorities of the North and the South for the normalization of the operation in the KIZ (Kaesong industrial zone) and the resumption of tours of Mt. Kumgang on the occasion of the anniversary of the June 15 joint declaration,” the committee said.

The June declaration refers to the outcome of the 2000 summit between then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and the North’s Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011.

South Korea has previously proposed to hold talks with the North on reopening the Kaesong zone, but Seoul has been reluctant to link those talks with the summit commemoration, saying Pyongyang would try to use them for propaganda.

It was not immediately clear whether Seoul will consider the North’s statement as an acceptance of its offer for talks. Officials at the Unification Ministry, which handles Seoul’s ties with Pyongyang, could not immediately be reached for comment on a holiday on Thursday.

From the beginning of March, North Korea has threatened to attack the South and U.S. military bases in the Pacific using its missile and nuclear arsenal, driving tensions to the highest point in decades.

The daily barrage of threats and steps to cut off communications channels with the South and the U.S.-led forces guarding the Korean border ceased in late April, timed with the end of annual military drills by the South and U.S. forces.

Experts said the threats may have been designed by the North to reinforce leader Kim Jong-un’s stature as a military leader and to beef up his grip on the country’s nearly 1.2-million strong army.

{reuters}

{{The court-martial of Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of passing U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, continues on Wednesday, when his immediate superiors are due to take the stand.}}

Manning, a 25-year-old private first class, is charged with providing more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website, in a case that has raised questions about the limits of secrecy and openness in the Internet era.

WikiLeaks began exposing the U.S. government secrets in 2010, stunning diplomats and U.S. officials, who accused Manning of endangering lives and damaging sensitive diplomacy. Manning has been in confinement since he was arrested in May 2010.

In opening arguments of the trial, which began on Monday, prosecutors argued that Manning had been driven by arrogance.

But lawyers for Manning, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, portrayed him as naive but well intentioned in wanting to show the American public the reality of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Manning could be sentenced to life in prison without parole if convicted. He faces 21 charges, including the most serious one of aiding the enemy, and prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917.

Witnesses due to testify on Wednesday are enlisted personnel who oversaw Manning. The trial is expected to run until at least late August.

{reuters}

{{China and Russia joined four Western powers in pressing Iran on Wednesday to cooperate with a stalled investigation by the U.N. nuclear agency into suspected atomic research by the Islamic state.}}

In a joint statement intended to signal their unity in the decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, the six powers said they were “deeply concerned” about the country’s atomic activities. Iran denies having any nuclear weapons agenda.

But, like previous such diplomatic initiatives, it looked unlikely to have any immediate impact in softening Iran’s defiance in the face of increasing international pressure to make it curb activity with both civilian and military uses.

The West suspects Iran is seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons behind the facade of an atomic energy program.

Israel, widely assumed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state, sees Iran’s declared civil nuclear program as the most serious risk to its security and has threatened air strikes if diplomacy and sanctions fail to rein in Tehran.

Western envoys said they would have wanted the powers’ statement to be more strongly worded but this was not possible if they wanted Moscow and Beijing – which have said Western sanctions against Tehran are counterproductive – to agree to it.

“We are deeply concerned that Iran continues to undertake certain nuclear activities contrary” to U.N. Security Council and IAEA board resolutions,” the powers said in the text read out by Germany’s ambassador at a meeting of the 35-nation governing board of the U.N. nuclear agency in Vienna.

These included steps to install more advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges, and the construction of a research reactor, said the statement, which Reuters first reported about on Tuesday.

The IAEA has held 10 rounds of negotiations with Iran since early 2012 in a so-far fruitless effort to get it to address indications of what the Vienna-based U.N. agency calls the “possible military dimensions” to its nuclear program.

The IAEA board was meeting in Vienna at a time of apparent deadlock in a broader diplomatic push by the six powers – the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain – to find a peaceful solution to the dispute.

Western diplomats say they are awaiting the outcome of Iran’s June 14 presidential election but still do not anticipate any notable rollback from its nuclear defiance.

Iran, a big oil producer, says its nuclear program aims to meet the electricity needs of a rapidly growing population and advance scientific research.

{reuters}