IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Armstrong is plans to Return as Swimmer

    {{American cyclist Lance Armstrong is planning to return to competitive sport as a swimmer.}}

    Armstrong, 41, has entered the Masters South Central Zone Swimming Championships in Texas this weekend.

    He is able to compete as US Masters Swimming events are not subject to USA or World Anti-Doping Agency codes.

    Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after deciding not to defend doping charges filed against him last August.

    Armstrong is scheduled to compete in freestyle races over 500 yards, 1,000 yards and 1,650 yards at the event held in his home city of Austin.

    The Texan will compete with swimmers his own age or older. His first race, the 1,650 yards freestyle, takes place on Friday.

    US Masters Swimming executive director Rob Butcher said he had not received any objections to Armstrong competing in the event.

    “The purpose of our organisation is to encourage adults to swim,” Butcher told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.

    Armstrong was charged by the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) in June 2012 with using performance-enhancing drugs.

    He filed a lawsuit against the organisation the following month, accusing it of “corrupt inducements” to other cyclists to testify against him.

    However, Armstrong then announced he would not fight the charges and was given a life ban by Usada.

    In January, he confessed to taking performance-enhancing drugs during all seven of his Tour de France wins between 1999 and 2005 in a television interview with Oprah Winfrey.

    {BBC}

  • Japan Doubles Money Supply to Boost Economy

    {{Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is taking bold measures to spur inflation and increase spending after a 15-year slump.}}

    Bowing to demands from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announced on Thursday that it would reconfigure its policies to double the money supply, or the amount of funds in circulation, and achieve a 2 percent inflation target at the “earliest possible time”.

    Kozo Yamamoto, a senior lawmaker in Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, said: “The first step is to get out of deflation and get a much higher nominal growth rate.”

    A doubling of the money supply was needed to achieve that aim, he said.

    The policies are a fundamental shift in how the central bank conducts monetary policy and appear a major concession to government demands, despite the bank’s ostensible autonomy.

    The bank’ s new phase of monetary easing would, it said, “drastically change the expectations of markets and economic entities”.

    Tsuyoshi Ueno, economist at NLI Research Institute, described the moves as a huge regime change in monetary policy.

    “What the BoJ announced today met almost all policy measures that had been speculated in the market,” Ueno added.

    Aljazeera

  • Argentina Torrential Rains kill 52

    {{At least 52 people drowned in their homes and cars, were electrocuted or died in other accidents as flooding from days of torrential rains swamped Argentina’s low-lying capital and province of Buenos Aires.}}

    At least 46 died Wednesday in and around the city of La Plata, Gov. Daniel Scioli said. Six deaths were reported a day earlier in the nation’s capital.

    Many people climbed onto their roofs in the pouring rain after storm sewers backed up. Water surged up through drains in their kitchen and bathroom floors, and then poured in over their windowsills.

    “It started to rain really hard in the evening, and began to flood,” said Augustina Garcia Orsi, a 25-year-old student. “I panicked. In two seconds, I was up to my knees in water. It came up through the drains — I couldn’t do anything.”

    The rains also flooded the country’s largest refinery, causing a fire that took hours to put out. The La Plata refinery suspended operations as a result, and Argentina’s YPF oil company said an emergency team was evaluating how to get it restarted.

    “Such intense rain in so little time has left many people trapped in their cars, in the streets, in some cases electrocuted. We are giving priority to rescuing people who have been stuck in trees or on the roofs of their homes,” Scioli said.

    But many complained that they had to rescue themselves and their neighbors as cars flooded to their rooftops and homes filled with up to two meters (six feet) of water.

    woman pushing bike through floods
    AP

  • North Korea Moves Missile to East Coast

    {{North Korea has moved a missile with “considerable range” to its east coast, South Korea’s defense minister said Thursday, but he added that there are no signs that Pyongyang is preparing for a full-scale conflict.}}

    The report came hours after North Korea’s military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified” nuclear weapons.

    It was the North’s latest war cry against America in recent weeks. The reference to smaller weapons could be a claim that Pyongyang has improved its nuclear technology. Or a bluff.

    South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said he did not know the reasons behind the North’s missile movement, and that it “could be for testing or drills.”

    He dismissed reports in Japanese media that the missile could be a KN-08, which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit the United States.

    Kim told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee meeting that the missile has “considerable range” but not enough to hit the U.S. mainland.

    The range he described could refer to a mobile North Korean missile known as the Musudan, believed to have a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles).

    That would make Japan and South Korea potential targets — along with U.S. bases in both countries — but there are doubts about the missile’s accuracy.

    The Pentagon announced that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack.

    Experts say North Korea has not demonstrated that it has missiles capable of long range or accuracy. Some suspect that long-range missiles unveiled by Pyongyang at a parade last year were actually mockups.

    {Associated Press}

  • One in four Americans think Obama is antichrist, survey says

    {{Poll asking voters about conspiracy theories reveals alarming beliefs – including 37% believing global warming to be a hoax.}}

    About one in four Americans suspect that President Barack Obama might be the antichrist, more than a third believe that global warming is a hoax and more than half suspect that a secretive global elite is trying to set up a New World Order, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

    The survey, which was conducted by Public Policy Polling, asked a sample of American voters about a number of conspiracy theories, phrasing the questions in eye-catching language that will have the country’s educators banging their heads on their desks.

    The study revealed that 13% of respondents thought Obama was “the antichrist”, while another 13% were “not sure” – and so were at least appeared to be open to the possibility that he might be.

    Some 73% of people were able to say outright that they did not think Obama was “the antichrist”.

    The survey also showed that 37% of Americans thought that global warming was a hoax, while 12% were not sure and a slim majority – 51% – agreed with the overwhelming majority view of the scientific establishment and thought that it was not.

    The survey also revealed that 28% of people believed in a sinister global New World Order conspiracy, aimed at ruling the whole world through authoritarian government.

    Another 25% were “not sure” and only a minority of American voters – 46% – thought such a conspiracy theory was not true.

    At least some of the insane theories suggested by the poll were dismissed by large majorities.

    For example, only 7% of Americans in the survey believed the moon landing was faked, 14% believed in Bigfoot and 4% accepted that “shape-shifting alien reptilian people control our world by taking on human form”.

    In other good news, Paul McCartney will be relieved that a mere 5% of respondents believed that he died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a double so the Beatles could continue their careers, and just 11% embraced the concept that the US government knowingly allowed the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 to take place.

    The survey was carried out in order to explore how voters’ political beliefs impact on their willingness to embrace conspiracy theories – it did indeed find that the partisan divide that is blamed for many problems in Washington DC also extends to the world of paranoia, aliens and Sasquatch.

    For example, when it comes to thinking global warming is a hoax some 58% of Republicans agreed and 77% of Democratsdisagreed.

    While 20% of Republicans believed Obama is the antichrist heralding the End Times, only 13% of independents did and just 6% of Democrats.

    “Even crazy conspiracy theories are subject to partisan polarization, especially when there are political overtones involved.

    But most Americans reject the wackier ideas out there about fake moon landings and shape-shifting lizards,” said PPP president Dean Debnam.

  • Suicide Bomber Storms Court in Afghanistan

    {{A suicide bomb and gun attack on a courthouse in the west Afghan city of Farah has left at least six people dead and 70 injured, most of them civilians.}}

    Militants disguised as soldiers tried unsuccessfully to free suspected Taliban members, officials say.

    After a fierce initial gun battle, shooting continued as militants took cover in at least one building.

    Taliban insurgents said they were behind the attack in the strategic province, which borders Iran.

    A bomb and gun attack on the governor’s compound last May left six policemen, a civilian and four attackers dead.

  • UN Adopts Global Arms Treaty

    {{The 193-nation UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved the first-ever treaty on global arms trade that seeks to regulate the $70bn international trade in conventional arms.}}

    The resolution adopting the landmark treaty was approved by a vote of 154 to three, with 23 abstentions.

    As the numbers appeared on the electronic board, loud cheers filled the assembly chamber.

    A group of treaty supporters sought a vote in the world body after Iran, North Korea and Syria blocked its adoption by consensus at a negotiating conference last Thursday.

    The three countries voted “no” on Tuesday’s resolution.

    “Despite Iran, North Korea and Syria’s deeply cynical attempt to stymie it, the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations have shown resounding support for this lifesaving treaty with human rights protection at its core,” said Brian Wood, Head of Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International, at the UN conference in New York.

    Major arms producers China and Russia joined Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries in abstaining.

    “Those countries that voted no are no surprise really,” Al Jazeera’s Cath Turner reported from the UN headquarters. “Twenty-three other countries abstained. Most abstained instead of voting against it because they did not want to be lumped in with the other three countries.”

    The United States, the world’s number one arms exporter, said last week it would vote in favour of the treaty despite opposition from the National Rifle Association, a powerful US pro-gun lobby group.

    The NRA opposes the treaty and has vowed to fight to prevent its ratification by the US Senate when it reaches Washington – saying it would undermine domestic gun-ownership rights.

    Every country would be free to sign and ratify the treaty. It will take effect after the 50th ratification, which could take up to two years.

    The treaty will not control the domestic use of weapons in any country, but it will require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms, parts and components and to regulate arms brokers.

    The first major arms accord since the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would cover tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, as well as small arms and light arms.

    {Aljazeera}

  • UN Says Haitians Not Getting Enough Food

    {{The United Nations said Tuesday that a growing number of people in Haiti are not getting enough to eat following a heavy storm season that damaged food crops.}}

    The humanitarian department of the U.N. mission in the Caribbean nation of 10 million people said in its monthly bulletin that a spike in malnutrition has been recorded in some areas since October.

    At least one in five households faces a serious food deficit and acute malnutrition despite efforts to reduce hunger, the study said.

    Malnutrition is worst in Haiti’s far western corner in the administrative department of Grande-Anse, the U.N. said.

    There have also been reports of acute malnutrition in southeastern Haiti.

    Widespread flooding damaged crops in the country’s south when Hurricane Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaac brushed Haiti last year.

    The U.N. said that more than more than 1.5 million of Haiti’s people are at risk of malnutrition because of crops lost in the hurricane.

    As much as 90 percent of Haiti’s harvest season, much of it in the south, was destroyed in Sandy’s floods.

  • Syria Army Warns Rebel Push into Damascus is ‘certain death’

    {{Syria’s military is warning rebels against pressing an ongoing offensive into Damascus, saying the push by opposition fighters into the capital means their “certain death.”}}

    Rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad have established strongholds in the suburbs surrounding the capital during the two-year-old-conflict.

    In recent weeks, they’ve stepped up mortar attacks on the center of the city, bringing the conflict closer to the seat of Assad’s power.

    A military commander told the pro-government al-Watan newspaper that any advance by the rebels on Damascus means “certain death for them and their leaders.”

    The commander, who is not named in the Wednesday report, said the bravery of government troops on the battlefield is keeping Damascus safe.

    {agencies}

  • NKorea Refuses SKoreans to Enter Joint Factory

    {{North Korea on Wednesday barred South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory park just over the heavily armed border in the North, officials in Seoul said, a day after Pyongyang announced it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material.}}

    The move to block South Koreans from going to their jobs at the Kaesong industrial complex, the last remaining symbol of detente between the rivals, comes amid increasing hostility from Pyongyang, which has threatened to stage nuclear and missile strikes on Seoul and Washington and has said that the armistice ending the 1950s Korean War is void.

    Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said Pyongyang was allowing South Koreans to return home from Kaesong.

    Three workers returned Wednesday morning; dozens more were scheduled to return later.

    But Kim said about 480 South Koreans who had planned to travel to the park Wednesday were being refused entry.

    North Korean authorities cited recent political circumstances on the Korean Peninsula when they delivered their decision to block South Korean workers from entering Kaesong, Kim said without elaborating.

    Associated Press