Tag: InternationalNews

{{More than 1,000 people were killed in violence in Iraq in May, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, the United Nations reported on Saturday, raising fears of a return to civil war.}}

“That is a sad record,” Martin Kobler, the U.N. envoy in Baghdad, said in a statement. “Iraqi political leaders must act immediately to stop this intolerable bloodshed.”

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the last two months as al Qaeda and Sunni Islamist insurgents, invigorated by the Sunni-led revolt in neighboring Syria and by Iraqi Sunni discontent at home, seek to revive the kind of all-out inter-communal conflict that killed tens of thousands in 2006-2007.

Just this week, multiple bombings battered Shi’ite and Sunni neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, where at least 70 people were killed on Monday and 25 on Thursday.

The renewed bloodletting reflects worsening tensions between Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government and its Sunni minority, seething with resentment at their treatment since Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and later hanged.

Al Qaeda’s local wing and other Sunni armed groups are now regaining ground lost during the long battle with U.S. troops.

An Iraqi army raid on a Sunni protest camp in the town of Hawija in April ignited violence that killed more than 700 people in that month, by a U.N. count. That had been the highest monthly toll in almost five years until it was exceeded in May.

At the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence, when Baghdad was carved up between Sunni and Shi’ite gunmen who preyed on rival communities, the monthly death count sometimes topped 3,000.

{reuters}

{{The unemployment rate across the 17 European countries that use the euro hit a record 12.2 percent in April, and the number of unemployed is on track to reach 20 million by year’s end.}}

The worsening jobs crisis points to the recession that has gripped the euro alliance. Many countries are struggling to stimulate growth while grappling with a debt crisis that’s led governments to slash spending and raise taxes.

Unemployment in the eurozone rose in April from the previous record of 12.1 percent set in March, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, said Friday.

In 2008, before the worst of the financial crisis, the rate was far less — around 7.5%.

The number of unemployed rose 95,000 to 19.38 million. The currency bloc’s population is about 330 million.

Private companies in the eurozone haven’t managed to fill the vacuum created by drastically reduced government spending. In the United States, by contrast, governments have imposed far milder spending cuts and tax increases.

Unemployment, at 7.5 percent, is far lower. And consumers and private companies have kept spending, steadily if modestly.

The unemployment rate for the overall eurozone masks sharp disparities among individual countries. Unemployment in Greece and Spain top 25 percent.

In Germany, the rate is a low 5.4 percent.

The differences are particularly stark for youth unemployment. More than half of people ages 16 to 25 in Greece and Spain are unemployed. In Italy, the rate for this group tops 40 percent. For Germany, it’s just 7.5%.

“Youth joblessness at these levels risks permanently entrenched unemployment, lowering the rate of sustainable growth in the future,” said Tom Rogers, senior economic adviser at Ernst & Young.

The disparities reflect the varying performances of the euro economies. Greece is in its sixth year of a savage recession. Germany’s economy has until recently been growing at a healthy pace.

As a whole, the eurozone is stuck in its longest recession since the euro was launched in 1999. The six quarters of economic decline represent a longer recession than the one that followed the 2008 financial crisis, though it’s not as deep.

The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, has demonstrated far more resilience. It’s grown steadily since the end of its recession in June 2009.

And the U.S. job market has steadily improved: The unemployment rate has fallen sharply from a peak of 10%.

{Agencies}

{{In what has become an annual ritual, the United States on Thursday kept Cuba on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism” and Havana reacted angrily, calling it a “shameful decision” based in politics, not reality.}}

Cuba said in a statement that the U.S. government was pandering to the Cuban exile community in Miami against its own interests and the wishes of the American people.

“It hopes to please an anti-Cuban group, growing smaller all the time, which tries to maintain a policy that now has no support and doesn’t even represent the national interests of the United States,” said the statement issued by Cuba’s foreign ministry.

Iran, Sudan and Syria also are on the list, which is published annually by the U.S. State Department. Cuba has been on it since 1982.

The terrorism designation comes with a number of sanctions, including a prohibition on U.S. economic assistance and financial restrictions that create problems for Cuba in international commerce, already made difficult by a U.S. trade embargo imposed against the island since 1962.

The State Department’s explanation for Cuba’s inclusion on the list discounted most of the reasons from previous years and said “there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.”

In the past, the report fingered Cuba for harboring rebels from the Marxist-led FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and members of Basque separatist groups.

This year, it noted that Cuba is sponsoring peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government and has moved to distance itself from the Basques.

Washington’s primary accusation was that Cuba harbors and provides aid to fugitives from U.S. justice. Cuba does not deny that it has fugitives from the United States, but said none had been accused of terrorism.

Robert Muse, a Washington attorney who specializes in Cuba issues, said there is no legal basis for designating Cuba as a terrorist sponsor because of the presence of the fugitives.

He said they remain on the island because the Washington has refused to honor a longstanding extradition treaty with Cuba.

reuters

{{The remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has recovered enough to walk and assured his parents in a phone conversation that he and his slain brother were innocent, their mother told media.}}

Meanwhile, the father of a Chechen immigrant killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his ties to the slain brother maintained that the U.S. agents killed his son “execution-style.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, walked without a wheelchair to speak to his mother last week for the first and only phone conversation they have had since he has been in custody, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said.

In a rare glimpse at Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s state of mind, he told her he was getting better and that he had a very good doctor, but was struggling to understand what happened, she said.

“He didn’t hold back his emotions either, as if he were screaming to the whole world: What is this? What’s happening?,” she said.

The April 15 bombings killed three people and wounded more than 260. Elder brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar remains in a prison hospital after being badly wounded.

{AP}

{{ Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview broadcast Thursday that he is “confident in victory” in his country’s civil war, and he warned that Damascus would retaliate for any future Israeli airstrike on his territory.}}

Assad also told the Lebanese TV station Al-Manar that Russia has fulfilled some of its weapons contracts recently, but he was vague on whether this included advanced S-300 air defense systems.

The comments were in line with a forceful and confident message the regime has been sending in recent days, even as the international community attempts to launch a peace conference in Geneva, possibly next month.

The strong tone coincided with recent military victories in battles with armed rebels trying to topple him.

The interview was broadcast as Syria’s main political opposition group appeared to fall into growing disarray.

The international community had hoped the two sides would start talks on a political transition. However, the opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said earlier Thursday that it would not attend a conference, linking the decision to a regime offensive on the western Syrian town of Qusair and claiming that hundreds of wounded people were trapped there.

Assad, who appeared animated and gestured frequently in the TV interview, said he has been confident from the start of the conflict more than two years ago that he would be able to defeat his opponents.

“Regarding my confidence about victory, had we not had this confidence, we wouldn’t have been able to fight in this battle for two years, facing an international attack,” he said. Assad portrayed the battle to unseat him as a “world war against Syria and the resistance” — a reference to the Lebanese Hezbollah, a close ally.

“We are confident and sure about victory, and I confirm that Syria will stay as it was,” he said, “but even more than before, in supporting resistance fighters in all the Arab world.”……

{agencies}

{{British police charged with murder one of the two chief suspects in last week’s brutal suspected Islamist attack against a British soldier on a London street.}}

Metropolitan Police confirmed they had charged Michael Adebowale, 22, Wednesday with the murder of 25-year-old Lee Rigby, who died following the May 22 attack in Woolwich, south east London.

“Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Counter Terrorism Command have…charged a man with the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich on Wednesday 22 May,” said the police statement.

“Michael Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich, was charged with the murder of Lee Rigby contrary to common law.

The suspect was also charged with possession of a firearm.

He was remanded in custody and will appear at Westminster Magistrate’s Court on Thursday morning.

Sue Hemming, head of the public prosecutor’s special crime and counter-terrorism division said she advised police there was now “sufficient evidence” to prosecute Adebowale and it was “in the public interest to do so.

“This man is now charged with serious criminal offences and he has the right to a fair trial,” she added.

The other suspect, 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo, remains under guard at a London hospital, police added.

Both men required hospital treatment after being shot and injured by police at the murder scene last week.

{{Russia has demonstrated its increasing leverage in Latin America with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meeting representatives of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Moscow on Wednesday.}}

The foreign ministers of Cuba, Costa Rica and Haiti and the deputy foreign minister of Chile discussed trade, political dialogue and a visa-free regime with Lavrov, with everyone in agreement that Russia’s relations with the region are ripe enough to establish “a permanent mechanism for political dialogue and cooperation in a Russia-CELAC format,” a statement from Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

CELAC was founded in 2010 as a counterweight to the U.S.-led Organization of American States. It consists of 33 states representing almost 600 million people and producing $7 trillion in annual GDP.

“This is a serious attempt by Latin American states to counter U.S. economic and political influence in the region,” said Mikhail Belyat, an independent Latin American expert and lecturer at the Russian State University for the Humanities.

In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the Soviet Union rapidly increased its economic and military influence in Latin America only to see that influence subside with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Apart from Latin America, Russia has recently reinvigorated its efforts to project its influence around the world, especially in other areas where its influence has declined.

To that end, Russia has been actively promoting the concept of a multi-polar world, playing an active role in such organizations as the BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Space, which is planned to be transformed into a full-fledged Eurasian Union in 2015.

“Our friends have expressed their desire to make permanent contacts between the CELAC and BRICS. Particularly on the sidelines of various meetings. We believe this is a very attractive suggestion and we will definitely discuss it with other states that are members of this association,” Lavrov said at the news conference that followed negotiations.

BRICS consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, representing large, fast-growing economies with an increasing influence on global affairs.

Just like BRICS, CELAC countries have enjoyed strong economic growth of 4.5 percent on average over the last three years, which in turn drives these states to look to distant markets.

“Like Russia, these countries want to diversify their economies and export markets so that their goals complement each other,” Belyat said.

Trade between Russia and Latin America reached $16 billion in 2012 alone.

In order to complement the exchange of goods with the exchange of people, the sides have agreed to put their efforts into establishing a visa-free regime between CELAC countries and Russia.

Although Russians already enjoy visa-free travel to most countries of Latin America, including Brazil, Argentina and Chile, Costa Rica and Panama still require Russian citizens to apply for entry clearance in advance.

Russia has been negotiating visa-free entry for its citizens for some time now, with the most well-known process taking place with the EU.

Russia has noted that the EU already grants visa-free access to such countries as Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela — countries which enjoy a similar level of economic prosperity as Russia.

As the bureaucratic process in the EU drags out visa-free negotiations, Moscow is looking to other regions to expand its influence.

“We used to have hectares full of Lada cars along the Panama Canal, while our tractors were plowing Mexican lands,” Belyat said. “So I predict Russia will become more prominent in Latin America, and we will see more Latin American goods in our stores.”

{The Moscow Times }