Tag: InternationalNews

{{China’s small traditional trade in carving uses ivory acquired through legal auctions and in no way encourages or worsens the problem of elephant poaching in Africa, a senior Chinese official said on Tuesday}}.

Demand for ivory as an ornamental item is soaring in Asia and especially in China, driven by the rising purchasing power of the region’s newly affluent classes as well as growing Chinese investment in Africa and demand for its resources.

That has led to an increase in the illegal slaughter of African elephants for their ivory, with some wildlife groups estimating that over 90 percent of the ivory on sale in China is illegally sourced.

But Yan Xun, chief engineer of the wildlife conservation department under the State Forestry Administration, said it was unfair to blame China for the rise in poaching.

“Has China’s legal ivory trade caused the poaching of wild elephants? I don’t think there’s necessarily a connection,” he told a news briefing.

“The reasons for poaching wild elephants around the world are very complex, including competition for resources between people and elephants, livelihood issues for local people, war and … the mistaken belief ivory generates huge profit margins.”

China only permits 37 companies to work with ivory and 145 to sell the finished product. They use no more than a total of 5,000 kg of legal ivory every year, he said.

“I’d like to say that the Chinese ivory trade is mainly to hand down the art of exquisite carvings using ivory. This is not any ordinary trade,” Yan added.

“The Chinese government has been paying great attention to the protection of elephants and we legally source ivory through international auctions,” he said, adding China has to date sourced some 60 metric tons (66 tons) of ivory this way.

Convicted ivory smugglers can be jailed for life, Yan said.

While China has shown no sign of banning the ivory trade, Thailand’s prime minister said earlier this year that her country would do so, promising legislation that could help the country avoid international trade sanctions after criticism by environmental groups.

China is the world’s largest illegal ivory market, followed by Thailand, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

{wirestory}

{{The head of the Council of Europe told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday he was concerned a law requiring non-governmental organizations which received funding from abroad to register as foreign agents could have a “chilling effect”.}}

Prosecutors have conducted a wave of inspections at the offices of all kinds of NGOs in Russia this year citing the law which critics say is part of a campaign to smother dissent against Putin during his third term as president.

It requires NGOs who receive finding from abroad to register as “foreign agents” if they are involved in political activity.

Russia’s only independent pollster, Levada Center, said on Monday its future was in doubt after prosecutors warned it was in violation of the law.

Comments by Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, suggested he shared the concerns of groups which say they are being penalized even though they are not involved in politics, and also about the use of the term foreign agent which critics say evokes Soviet-era spy hunts.

The Council of Europe is made up of 47 countries, including Russia, and sets out to promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

“I have expressed concerns about this (law), and I think it is very important … how political activity is being defined,” Jagland said at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“I have said to my counterparts that I am very concerned with (the term) foreign agent because it is very sensitive wording,” said Jagland, who also met Putin.

“And it can have a chilling effect on the NGO community, particularly if this law is not being put into practice in the right manner.”

Many prominent NGOs have refused to register as foreign agents.

Last month, a Moscow court fined independent vote monitoring group Golos, which said it had detected fraud in recent parliamentary and presidential elections, for failing to register as a foreign agent.

Levada Center said on Monday it might have to close after prosecutors said they determined it was engaged in political activity and threatened to take it to court if it failed to register.

Putin, a longtime Soviet KGB officer who has frequently accused the West of meddling in Russian politics, has called the NGO inspections “routine” and said the law was needed to ensure the state and public know where the groups get their money from.

The U.S. State Department said in March the new law might be akin to a ‘witch hunt’. Washington led other Western countries at the United Nations last month demanding it be rescinded.

The European Union also cited the law in a statement on Sunday in which it criticized Russia’s human rights record.

{{Israeli troops shot at a target across the Syrian frontier on Tuesday in response to gunfire that struck its forces in the Golan Heights, the Israeli military said.}}

A statement said a military vehicle was damaged by shots fired from Syria but that there were no injuries. It said that soldiers “returned precise fire”.

Gunfire incidents across the frontier from Syria have recurred in past months during an escalating a civil war there in which rebels have sought to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s Army Radio said Tuesday’s was the third consecutive cross-border shooting this week.

The Israeli military added in its statement that it viewed these incidents “with concern”.

Israel captured the Golan territory from Syria in a 1967 war and later annexed the area. Negotiations aimed at resolving that conflict ran aground in 2000.

Israel has not taken sides in Syria’s internal conflict, but has been worried about the involvement of its Iranian-backed foe, Hezbollah, in the fighting.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held out the prospect on Sunday of Israeli strikes inside Syria to stop Hezbollah and other opponents of Israel getting advanced weapons.

Netanyahu said Israel was “preparing for every scenario” in Syria. He added “we will act to ensure the security interest of Israel’s citizens in the future as well”.

Israel has neither denied nor confirmed reports it attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near Damascus this month that it believed were waiting delivery to Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is allied with Assad.

{{A devastating, mile-wide tornado touched down near Oklahoma City on Monday, killing at least 51 people—including 20 children—decimating homes, businesses and a pair of elementary schools in the suburb of Moore.}}

According to the state’s medical examiner, the death toll was expected to rise. About 40 bodies were expected to be transported to the medical examiner’s office overnight.

The schools—Plaza Towers Elementary and Briarwood Elementary—were leveled by the tornado.

It was unclear how many children were in them at the time the twister hit, but according to KFOR-TV, at least seven children died at Plaza Towers, and as many as two dozen more were feared to be trapped inside the rubble.

A photo Journalist saw rescue workers pull several children out alive. A makeshift triage center was set up in the school’s parking lot.

Emergency officials urged people to remain off the roads so rescue workers and first responders could reach people potentially trapped in rubble, as the National Guard was called in to help in the search for victims.

Three people were killed at a 7-Eleven in the path of the storm, CBS’ KWTV reported, including a man, woman and baby who took cover in a freezer but didn’t survive. KFOR reported a fourth person was killed there.

{wirestory}

{{A Mexican general took over all police and military operations in a chaotic western state on Thursday in a test run of President Enrique Pena Nieto’s new security strategy to tame raging drug violence.}}

Alberto Reyes assumed control of all federal, state and city police forces, as well as military units in Michoacan, one of the most violent states in the country, after he was named the state’s new security minister.

Big swaths of Michoacan have fallen under the sway of criminal gangs who are fighting among themselves and against authorities.

Former President Felipe Calderon launched his military-led crackdown on drug cartels there in 2006.

Pena Nieto, who took office in December, has vowed to reduce the violence that has exploded in Mexico in the last decade by battling crime rather than hunting down drug lords.

He wants to create a new national police force and move away from Calderon’s strategy of relying on the military, and he is clearly seeking to focus public attention away from violence and on to the economy.

More than 70,000 people have died in drug-related violence since Calderon began his offensive against the drug gangs.

The government says the pace of killing has slowed since Pena Nieto took office in December, but thousands of people still died in his first months in office.

Calderon had sent out generals to lead operations in violence-racked states and cities such as Tijuana and Juarez, but they did not control the state and city police.

{wirestory}

{{The U.S. Embassy employee accused of spying in Moscow flew out of Russia on Sunday, five days after he was ordered to leave the country.}}

A pro-Kremlin TV station broadcast video Sunday evening showing Ryan Fogle going through passport control and security at Sheremetyevo International Airport.

He also was pictured in the company of embassy staff as he wheeled a suitcase into the Moscow airport, which is used by Delta Air Lines for its direct flights to New York.

Russian security services announced Tuesday that Fogle, a 29-year-old third secretary in the U.S. Embassy, had been caught trying to recruit a Russian counterterrorism officer.

Fogle, who was accused of working for the CIA, was widely shown on Russian television wearing a blond wig.

The U.S. Embassy on Sunday again refused to comment on the case.
The attention given to the Fogle case in Russia contrasts with recent moves by Washington and Moscow to develop closer cooperation on counterterrorism in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15.

The bombing suspects — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his elder brother, Tamerlan, who was killed by police — have roots in the Russian republic of Chechnya.

Tamerlan spent six months last year in neighboring Dagestan, now the center of an Islamic insurgency, and U.S. investigators have been working with the Russians to try to determine whether he had established any contacts with the militants.

Little is known publicly about Fogle’s duties and activities in Russia.

The U.S. State Department confirmed that Fogle worked as an embassy employee but would give no details about his job. The CIA declined comment.

{wirestory}

{{Syrian government forces pushed deeper into a strategic rebel-held town near the Lebanese border, battling rebels in fierce street fighting, Syrian state-media said Monday. }}

An activist group said at least 23 elite fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group have been killed in the clashes.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the country’s civil war, said that in addition to the deaths more than 100 Hezbollah members have been wounded in the fighting around the town of Qusair.

If confirmed, it would be a blow to the Shiite group that has come under harsh criticism in Lebanon for its involvement in Syria’s civil war.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman cited “sources close to the militant group” for the death toll but declined to reveal their identity. The Observatory relies on a wide network of activists in the ground in Syria.

For weeks, fighting has raged around Qusair, located in the central province of Homs. The regime launched a push Sunday to regain control of the town, which has been in rebel hands since early last year.

Before Sunday’s offensive, Qusair had been ringed by regime troops and fighters from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, an Assad ally, for several weeks.

The town lies along a land corridor between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Many rebel fighters are Sunni Muslims and Qusair, overwhelmingly Sunni, had served as a conduit for shipments of weapons and supplies smuggled from Lebanon to the rebels.

Lebanese security officials confirmed at least four funerals were being held Monday morning for Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

{AP}

{{Israel said on Saturday that advanced weapons supplied by Russia to war-torn Syria could end up in the wrong hands and be used against the Jewish state.}}

A Russian shipment of Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria was condemned by the United States on Friday and Israel is also alarmed by the prospect of Russia supplying S-300 advanced air defense missile systems to Damascus.

While Israel has declined to take sides in the civil war between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebels trying to topple him, Western and Israeli sources say it has launched air strikes inside Syria in a bid to destroy weapons it believes are destined for the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni told media , “These are not just any weapons, they are tie-breakers, and that’s why there is a responsibility with all world powers, certainly Russia, not to supply such arms.”

Israel has neither denied nor confirmed reports that it attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near Damascus this month that it believed were awaiting delivery to Hezbollah, an Assad ally which fought a war with Israel in 2006.

Senior Israeli defense official Amos Gilad said the S-300 and the Yakhont would likely end up with Hezbollah and threaten both Israel and U.S. forces in the Gulf.

“If Hezbollah and Iran are supporting Syria and propping the (Assad) regime up, then why shouldn’t it transfer those weapons to Hezbollah? You don’t even have to be an intelligence expert, it makes sense that they will,” Gilad said.

{reuters}