Tag: InternationalNews

{{The U.S. is fully capable of defending itself against a North Korean ballistic missile attack, the White House said Thursday, after Pyongyang threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.}}

The threat from the North Koreans came ahead of a unanimous vote in the U.N. Security Council approving its toughest sanctions yet on the North in response to an atomic test last month.

North Korea has escalated its bellicose statements this week as the tightening of U.N. sanctions loomed. It has also threatened to scrap the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

“I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

North Korea has now conducted three nuclear tests. In the past year, it has made strides toward its goal of having a nuclear weapon that could threaten the U.S. although experts doubt it yet has the capability to hit the U.S. with a ballistic missile or miniaturize a nuclear device to mount on such a missile.

However, the North possesses hundreds of shorter-range missiles that could hit U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea, said Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
It is difficult to know how capable U.S. missile defense is, should it be required.

Carney alluded to the development of U.S. system designed to defend against long-range missiles. He said the U.S. is on a “good trajectory” after success in its return to testing of the Ground-Based Interceptor.

David Wright at the Union of Concerned Scientists said that system, deployed in the U.S., was initiated by the George W. Bush administration because of concern about the North Korean threat. Some of its previous tests of the system failed, and Wright said it is still in development.

In East Asia, the U.S. has deployed the land-based Patriot system and the sea-based Aegis systems, which are designed to intercept shorter-range missiles.

The top U.S. envoy on North Korea, Glyn Davies, cautioned Pyongyang not to miscalculate, saying the U.S. will take necessary steps to defend itself and its allies, including South Korea, where it bases nearly 30,000 U.S. forces.

“We take all North Korean threats seriously enough to ensure that we have the correct defense posture to deal with any contingencies that might arise,” Davies told reporters after testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Thursday’s statement out of Pyongyang appeared to be the most specific open threat of a nuclear strike by any country against another, but the Senate panel’s chairman, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said the threat was “absurd” and one that if carried out would be suicide for North Korea.

{Wirestory}

Armed fighters linked to the Syrian opposition have detained about 21 UN peacekeepers in the increasingly volatile zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan Heights.

The UN Security Council and Philippine government demanded their immediate and unconditional release on Thursday.

“The Philippine government is calling for the immediate release of 21 Filipino peacekeepers who are part of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the Golan Heights,” a foreign ministry statement said.

Talks were under way for the release of the unarmed peacekeepers, who were detained on Wednesday, Raul Hernandez, Philippines foreign affairs department spokesman, said.

The foreign affairs department spokesman said that the Filipino peacekeepers were unharmed.

“The apprehension and illegal detention of the Filipino peacekeepers are gross violations of international law,” the statement said.

The hostages are part of a 300-member Filipino peacekeeping unit.

Colonel Arnulfo Burgos, spokesperson of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, told Al Jazeera’s Marga Ortigas that the abducted peacekeepers are “safe” and being “treated as guests” by the Syrian fighters.

The UNDOF force was established in 1974 following the 1973 Yom Kippur war to monitor the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces and maintain a ceasefire.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN ambassador andthe current Security Council president, said talks were under way between UN officials from the peacekeeping force and the captors.

{Wirestory}

French President Francois Hollande has said his country will begin withdrawing troops from Mali next month.

He said the final phase of military intervention would continue throughout March and be scaled down in April.

Hollande said: “The terrorist kingpins have been destroyed,” though it was not immediately clear if he was referring to two leaders reported dead last week.

Chad had said its soldiers, fighting alongside the French troops, killed two top militant commanders, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and veteran Islamist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

The French have so far not confirmed these reports.

Some 4,000 French troops are present in the West African state.

Mali’s army and troops from several African countries, including 2,000 from Chad, have also been involved in the fighting.

France had initially said that troop numbers would decrease from March if all went according to plan.

On Wednesday, Mr Hollande said that the “final phase” of the French intervention “will last through March and from April there will be a decrease in the number of French soldiers in Mali as African forces will take over, supported by the Europeans”.

Islamist rebels took control of northern Mali a year ago after a military coup in the capital Bamako, in the south.

France intervened militarily in January amid fears the rebels were preparing to advance on Bamako.

{{Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted and sentenced to a year in jail over an illegal wiretap.}}

He was accused of arranging for a police wiretap concerning a political rival to be leaked and published in a newspaper run by his brother.

Mr Berlusconi is likely to appeal and will remain free in the meantime.

He is presently appealing against another conviction and faces two more verdicts in the coming weeks.

One of the rulings expected later this month is about tax fraud, and the other trial concerns allegations the he paid for sex with an underage prostitute.

In October last year, Mr Berlusconi was convicted in another tax fraud case and sentenced to a year in jail.

That conviction is currently subject to an appeal.

{{Clashes between Syrian troops and rebel fighters flared on Thursday near an area where armed fighters linked to the opposition abducted 21 U.N. peacekeepers a day earlier.}}

The peacekeepers are part of a force that monitors a cease-fire between Israeli and Syrian troops in the Golan Heights.

Israel captured part of the territory in the 1967 Mideast war, and while the area has been peaceful for decades, Israeli officials have grown increasingly jittery as the Syrian civil war moves closer to its borders.

On Thursday, the Syrian army battled opposition fighters near the Golan Heights in the southern province of Daraa, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He said the fighting was concentrated on the outskirts of the Syrian village of Jamlah, where gunmen on Wednesday detained 21 U.N. peacekeepers from the Philippines.

In an online video, a man identified as a spokesman for the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigades said his group will hold the peacekeepers until Assad’s forces withdraw from Jamlah.

The Yarmouk Brigades said in a statement on its Facebook page on Thursday that Assad’s troops are pounding the Jamlah, and warned that the army will be responsible if the peacekeepers in rebel custody are harmed.

In the Philippines, the government said Thursday that talks were under way for the release of the peacekeepers.

Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Raul Hernandez said the 21 were unharmed and were being treated as “visitors and guests.”

The capture came a week after the announcement that a member of the peacekeeping force is missing. The force, known as UNDOF, was established a year after the 1973 war.

It monitors the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces and maintains a cease-fire.

{wirestory}

{{North Korea on Thursday vowed to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, amplifying its threatening rhetoric hours ahead of a vote by U.N. diplomats on whether to level new sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.}}

An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for “a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors” because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.

Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. It is believed to have enough nuclear fuel, however, for several crude nuclear devices.

Such inflammatory rhetoric is common from North Korea, and especially so in recent days. North Korea is angry over the possible sanctions and over upcoming U.S.-South Korean military drills.

At a mass rally in Pyongyang on Thursday, tens of thousands of North Koreans protested the U.S.-South Korean war drills and sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council is set to impose a fourth round of sanctions against Pyongyang in a fresh attempt to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, said the council will vote on the draft sanctions resolution Thursday morning.

The resolution was drafted by the United States and China, North Korea’s closest ally.

The council’s agreement to put the resolution to a vote just 48 hours later signaled that it would almost certainly have the support of all 15 council members.

The statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

{wirestory}

{{North Korea threatened Tuesday to nullify the 1953 armistice accord that ended the Korean War Citing what it called U.S.-led international moves to punish it for its recent nuclear test.}}

The North also denounced joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises scheduled to start on next Monday, declaring that if the maneuvers will go ahead, it wil cut off direct phone link with South Korea at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom.

North Korea is known for its harsh rhetoric but Tuesday’s announcement appears to be a step higher in its intensity.

The two divided Korean states are technically at war, with no peace treaty signed at the end of the three-year Korean conflict.

North Korea’s military is ready to take strong countermeasures against its communist regime, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“When the war exercises turn into their main phase after March 11, the Korean War armistice agreement that has existed in its name only, will come to an end,” the KCNA quoted the North’s military command as saying.

Tensions run high on the Korean Peninsula following the North’s third nuclear test on Feb. 12.

The U.N. Security Council is currently working on a new sanctions resolution to penalize the communist regime.

To counter possible North Korean provocations, South Korea and the United States have tightened up their joint defense posture.

On Friday, the allies launched their annual two-month-long joint military drills, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, with thousands of troops from both sides involved.

About 285,00 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War.

Koreaherald

{{The number of Syrians who have fled their war-ravaged country and are seeking assistance has now topped the one million mark, the United Nations’ refugee agency said Wednesday.}}

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement released in Geneva that the figure is based on reports from his agency’s field offices in neighboring countries that have provided refuge for Syrians escaping the civil war.

“With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster,” Guterres said.

Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 with protests against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian rule.

When the government cracked down on demonstrators, the opposition took up arms and the conflict turned into a full-blown civil war.

The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed.

The relentless violence also has devastated many cities and forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to seek refuge abroad.

Guterres said the number of refugees has swelled dramatically this year, with most Syrians pouring into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

More than 400,000 people have become refugees since Jan. 1, and often arrive in neighboring countries “traumatized, without possessions and having lost members of their families,” he said.

Around half are children; the majority under age 11.

AP

{{Airline passengers will be able to carry small knives, souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment onto planes beginning next month under a policy change announced Tuesday by the head of the Transportation Security Administration.}}

The new policy conforms U.S. security standards to international standards, and allows TSA to concentrate its energies on more serious safety threats, the agency said in a statement.

The announcement, made by TSA Administrator John Pistole at an airline industry gathering in New York, drew an immediate outcry from unions representing flight attendants and other airline workers, who said the items are still dangerous in the hands of the wrong passengers.

Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents over 10,000 flight attendants at Southwest Airlines, called the new policy “dangerous” and “shortsighted,” saying it was designed to make “the lives of TSA staff easier, but not make flights safer.”

“While we agree that a passenger wielding a small knife or swinging a golf club or hockey stick poses less of a threat to the pilot locked in the cockpit, these are real threats to passengers and flight attendants in the passenger cabin,” the union said in a statement.

The policy change was based on a recommendation from an internal TSA working group, which decided the items represented no real danger, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the agency.

The presence on flights of gun-carrying pilots traveling as passengers, federal air marshals and airline crew members trained in self-defense provide additional layers of security to protect against misuse of the items, he said.

However, not all flights have federal air marshals or armed pilots onboard.

The new policy permits folding knives with blades that are 2.36 inches or less in length and are less than 1/2-inch wide.

The policy is aimed at allowing passengers to carry pen knives, corkscrews with small blades and other knives.

Passengers also will be allowed to bring onboard as part of their carry-on luggage novelty-sized baseball bats less than 24 inches long, toy plastic bats, billiard cues, ski poles, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and two golf clubs, the agency said.

The policy goes into effect on April 25.

Security standards adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, already call for passengers to be able to carry those items.

Those standards are non-binding, but many countries follow them.

Box cutters, razor blades and knives that don’t fold or that have molded grip handles will still be prohibited, the TSA said.

AP