Tag: InternationalNews

{{Russia warned the United States in 2011 to stop trying to recruit its security agents as spies and expelled a CIA operative in January this year after Washington ignored the warning, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday.}}

Russia kept the expulsion in January quiet but went public this week when it detained Ryan Fogle, a U.S. diplomat it says was a spy, because it was fed up with the United States ignoring its concerns, FSB spokesman Nikolai Zakharov said.

“The CIA crossed a red line and we were forced to react,” Zakharov said in a written response to questions from.

In the biggest spy scandal between the former Cold War foes in three years, the FSB said on Tuesday that Fogle had been caught red-handed trying to recruit a Russian security officer as a CIA agent. He was ordered to leave Russia.

The FSB played up the capture, providing television stations with footage of the American being detained in a blond wig and pinned to the ground, as well as pictures of disguises, a wad of cash and a letter offering a target up to 1 million euro a year.

It could hardly have come at a worse time, days after Russia and the United States announced plans to organize an international conference to seek an end to Syria’s civil war and cooperate more on counterterrorism after the Boston bombings.

Senior Russian and U.S. officials have signaled they do not want the scandal to scuttle attempts to improve strained ties, but by publicizing it Moscow has tried to make the point that it is the United States that risks torpedoing those efforts.

{reuters}

{{The European Union is calling for action to counter discrimination and violence against homosexuals after a major survey revealed many gays are living in fear across the 27-nation bloc.}}

Morten Kjaerum of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights says action is needed “to break down the barriers, eliminate the hate and create a society where everyone can fully enjoy their rights.”

The survey of 93,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people showed that more than 80% of the group are verbally abused or bullied at school, nearly one in five feel discriminated against when seeking work and a quarter of the people have been attacked or threatened in recent years.

The survey was released Friday at a conference in The Hague, Netherlands, on the International Day against Homophobia.

{wirestory}

{{Asian stock markets were mixed in holiday-thinned trading Friday as investors digested a slew of disappointing economic data and corporate results from the U.S.
Applications for unemployment benefits jumped to their highest level in six weeks, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday, while manufacturing slowed in the mid-Atlantic region.}}

The bright spot was applications for new construction, which reached a five-year peak, reinforcing “the patchy nature of the US economic recovery,” Michael Hewson of CMC Markets said in a commentary.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.6% to 15,119.53, reversing a lower opening. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.5% to 5,189.70, pushed up by gains in BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company.

The stock rose 2.4% on bargain-hunting. Australia & New Zealand Banking Group rose 1.5%.

Benchmark in mainland China and Indonesia also rose while those in Taiwan, India, Singapore, New Zealand and the Philippines fell. Markets in Hong Kong and South Korea were closed for public holidays.

Evan Lucas of IG Markets in Melbourne said market declines could be explained by investors cashing in their gains following strong rallies. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index has returned 45% so far this year.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 has delivered a terrific first four months. It’s up 16 percent.

“There is always an uneasy feeling underlying the markets when they start making all-time highs,” Lucas said.

{{A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.}}

US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.

The main Syrian opposition coalition said he would be put on trial.

The video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show him cutting out the heart.

“I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,” the man says, referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier’s corpse.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Abu Sakkar is the leader of a group called the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, an offshoot of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Al-Farouq Brigades. He insults Alawites, the minority offshoot of Shia Islam to which Mr Assad belongs.

“The desecration and mutilation of a killed person is definitely a war crime,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, told media. “This one particularly disturbing because of the sectarian nature of the language used by Abu Sakkar.”

HRW said those committing war crimes on either side had to know that there was no impunity and that they would be brought to account.

The human rights group said Abu Sakkar had been filmed before, firing rockets into Shia areas of Lebanon and posing with the bodies of guerrillas from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement killed fighting alongside Syrian government forces.

“Abu Sakkar is a very significant commander – he’s in charge of one of the most important battles happening in Syria right now,” said Mr Bouckaert.

“The danger is that extremists on both sides will feel the need to respond in kind.”

The video was posted on Sunday, though reporters from Time Magazine said they had first viewed the footage in April.

Time said on Tuesday it had spoken to Abu Sakkar, who confirmed that he had bitten into one of the soldier’s organs – though a surgeon told the magazine that the organ appeared to be a lung, not the heart or liver, as reported elsewhere.

Syria’s opposition coalition said the Al-Farouq Brigades were investigating the incident.

“The Syrian Coalition strongly condemns this act – if it is revealed to be true,” it said in a statement. “The culprit will eventually be tried in court in front of an honest and fair judiciary.”

It is one of the most gruesome videos to emerge in more than two years of carnage in Syria.

The UN says nearly 80,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Assad began in March 2011, and millions have fled their homes.

{BBC}

{{A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least six people in the explosion and wounding more than 30, police and hospital officials said.}}

A Muslim militant group, Hizb-e-Islami, claimed responsibility for the early morning attack. The powerful explosion rattled buildings on the other side of Kabul and sent a pillar of white smoke into the sky in the city’s east.

NATO spokesman Lt. j.g. Quenton Roehricht said the international alliance can “confirm an explosion occurred on a coalition convoy in Kabul this morning,” but provided no further details.

Kabul provincial police spokesman Hashmad Stanakzi said the suicide bomber attacked the convoy with a car packed with explosives. “The explosion was very big. It set the nearby buildings on fire,” Stanakzi said.

He said there were people killed and several were wounded but he could not immediately give exact numbers. “The casualty numbers are high and mostly civilian.”

Kabul Deputy Police Chief Daud Amin said it was difficult to immediately estimate the number of dead because the blast had shredded many of the victims.

“We saw two dead bodies of children on the ground,” Amin said. “But the rest of the bodies were scattered in pieces around.”

Two Kabul hospitals reported that at least six dead and 37 wounded were brought in from the scene, city hospitals chief Kabir Amiri said, adding that the toll could increase as more hospitals report in.

The bodies were too badly charred to immediately identify, he added.

{AP}

{{North Korea said Wednesday that the U.S. citizen it sentenced last month to 15 years of hard labor has begun his stay at a “special prison.”}}

Kenneth Bae, who the North Koreans refer to as Pae Jun Ho, was arrested in November in Rason city, a port in the northeastern corner of North Korea.

North Korea accuses him of seeking to bring down the regime of Kim Jong Un, but the United States and his family say he was just working as a tour operator.

In a short article Wednesday, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Bae had “started his life at a ‘special prison’ on Tuesday.” It didn’t give any details about the prison.

The United States has repeatedly called on North Korea to grant Bae amnesty and release him immediately, but the requests so far don’t appear to have gained any traction following a period of heightened tensions between the two countries.

Even a plea last week for Bae’s release from the basketball star Dennis Rodman, who met with Kim Jong Un during a bizarre visit to North Korea in February, has failed to have any apparent effect.

{Agencies}