IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Pope’s Last Blessing Drawing Crowd

    {{The last chance for a Sunday blessing from Pope Benedict XVI from his studio window is drawing a crowd to St. Peter’s Square.}}

    The vast cobblestone space was filling up with faithful as well as others wanting to see Benedict in his next-to-last scheduled appearance to the public before he retires to a seclude life of prayer in a Vatican monastery.

    Benedict, 85, steps down on Thursday, the first pontiff to resign in 600 years. He will hold his last public audience in the square on Wednesday.

    The Sunday appearance from the papal apartment window overlooking the square is a cherished tradition for pilgrims and tourists, usually attracting a few thousand people.

    Officials say this history-making moment could draw far more than 100,000 despite forecasts for heavy rain.

  • US Super Fighter F-35 Found Faulty

    {{The U.S. military on Friday grounded the F-35 fighter jet due to a crack in an engine component that was discovered during a routine inspection in California.}}

    The Pentagon said in a statement that it was too early to assess the impact on the fleet of jets designed for use by the Navy, Air Force and Marines.

    The nearly $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system. It is currently being tested.

    The program has been beset by cost overruns and various technical problems during development.

    Currently, there are 51 planes in the F-35 fleet.

    CNN

  • Iran Revolutionary Guard Begins Military Drills

    {{Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard has begun a three-day ground and air military exercise aimed at upgrading its combat readiness.}}

    State TV says the drills involve ground forces of the Guard, Iran’s most powerful military force, around the city of Sirjan in the country’s south.

    It showed tanks and artillery attacking hypothetical enemy positions.

    The broadcast says the aim of the exercise is to upgrade the capabilities of the Iranian forces. It did not elaborate.

    The war games are taking place amid escalating tensions between Iran and the West over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

    Israel has hinted that it may take military action if talks fail to get Iran stop its uranium enrichment program.

    The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

    AP

  • Cuba’s Raul Castro Raises Possibility of Retiring

    {{Cuban President Raul Castro has unexpectedly raised the possibility of leaving his post, saying Friday that he is old and has a right to retire. }}

    But he did not say when he might do so or if such a move was imminent.

    The Cuban leader is scheduled to be named by parliament to a new five-year term Sunday, and Castro urged reporters to listen to his speech that day.

    “I am going to resign,” Castro said at a joint appearance with visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, an enigmatic smile on his face. It was not clear whether he was joking.

    “I am going to be 82 years old,” Castro added. “I have the right to retire, don’t you think?”

    When reporters continued to shout questions about his plans for the next five years, Castro replied: “Why are you so incredulous?”
    He said to listen carefully on Sunday.

    “It will be an interesting speech,” he said. “Pay attention.”

    Castro’s tone was light and his comments came in informal remarks at a mausoleum dedicated to soldiers from the former Soviet Union who have died around the world.

    The Cuban leader has spoken before of his desire to implement a two-term limit for all Cuban government positions, including the presidency.

    He has also alluded to the limited time he has left to overhaul the island’s weak Marxist economy.

    That has led many to speculate that this upcoming term would be his last, though term limits have never been codified into Cuban law.

    In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had no comment on Castro’s remarks.

    Most Havana residents had not heard about the comments, which were not shown on Cuban television, although other footage from his appearance with Medvedev was shown. Many reacted with skepticism.

    “Who would they put in?” asked Marta Alvarez, a 45-year-old housewife walking through Old Havana. “But I don’t think it would be now. It would happen in five years.”

    Castro will be 86 when his next term ends in 2018. Up until now, all eyes had been on who would emerge as Castro’s first and second vice presidents during Sunday’s proceedings.

    The positions are currently occupied by two loyal octogenarians who fought in the 1959 revolution.

    AP

  • NKorea Warns US Commander in SKorea Over Drills

    {{North Korea warned the top American commander in South Korea on Saturday of “miserable destruction” if the U.S. military presses ahead with routine joint drills with South Korea set to begin next month.}}

    Pak Rim Su, chief of North Korea’s military delegation to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone, sent the warning Saturday morning to Gen. James Thurman, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said, in a rare direct message to the U.S. commander.

    The threat comes as the U.S. and other nations discuss how to punish North Korea for conducting an underground nuclear test on Feb. 12 in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning Pyongyang from nuclear and missile activity.

    North Korea has characterized the nuclear test, its third since 2006, as a defensive act against U.S. aggression. Pyongyang accuses Washington of “hostility” for leading the charge to punish North Korea for a December rocket launch that the U.S. considers a covert missile test.

    The U.S. and North Korea fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953, not a peace treaty, and left the Korean Peninsula divided by a heavily fortified border monitored by the U.S.-led U.N. Command.

    Washington also stations 28,500 American troops in South Korea to protect its ally against North Korean aggression.

    Associated Press

  • Britain Stripped of Triple-A rating

    {{Britain suffered its first ever sovereign ratings downgrade from a major agency on Friday when Moody’s stripped the country of its coveted top-notch triple-A rating, dealing a major blow to Chancellor George Osborne.}}

    Moody’s said weak prospects for British economic growth, which have thrown the government’s deficit reduction strategy off course, lay behind its decision to cut the rating by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa.

    Austerity has been the watchword for Osborne’s fiscal policy since his Conservative-led coalition came to power in 2010 after an election in which he vowed to defend Britain’s triple-A rating, which can help keep down borrowing costs.

    But a very slow recovery from the financial crisis has pushed back by at least two years the government’s goal of largely eliminating the budget deficit by 2015’s election.

    The Labour Party blames the deficit on too much austerity.

    Nonetheless, Osborne insisted now was not the time to change course. His annual budget due on March 20 is expected to show a further deterioration in the country’s fiscal outlook.

    “Tonight we have a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country and the clearest possible warning to anyone who thinks we can run away from dealing with those problems,” he said in a statement.

    “Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.”

    However, the downgrade may fuel unease amongst members of his own party and his Lib Dem coalition partners that Osborne’s gamble that he could slash the deficit and ensure a return to growth by the May 2015 election is failing to pay off.

    Sterling fell by almost a cent to around $1.5160 after the downgrade, just off Thursday’s fresh 2-1/2-year low, and analysts expected it to weaken further on Monday, even if many had seen a downgrade coming sooner or later.

    Reuters

  • Girl Tears US Passport in Favour of Russian Roots

    {{A 10-year-old girl Sara ripped apart her American passport outside the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg.}}

    With photo cameras snapping and television cameras rolling, Sara defiantly said she had no intention of living in the U.S.

    Standing nearby, her mother, Russian emigre and Harvard graduate Marianne Grin, voiced support for legislation banning Americans from adopting Russian children — the reason for the rally in late December.

    “The way that America betrayed us has led us to despair,” Grin said by phone Thursday, explaining her daughter’s actions.

    State media lapped up the scene of a child rejecting her father’s U.S. heritage in favor of her mother’s Russian roots.

    The image of Sara tearing up her passport — albeit it was expired — appeared on television and in newspapers and blogs as the country debated the Jan. 1 ban on U.S. child adoptions.

    Sara’s theatrical gesture, however, casts the spotlight on a less visible sore point in U.S.-Russian relations where children are also suffering: child custody disputes.

    A legal battle between Grin and Michael McIlwrath, a U.S. lawyer based in Italy, over Sara and her three siblings is indicative of the fraught nature of international custody disputes.

    But what makes this case more distressing are fears that the father is being punished because of a recent upswing in anti-American sentiment in Russia, said Alexander Khazov, McIlwrath’s St. Petersburg-based lawyer.

    After the couple divorced, an Italian court initially awarded custody to Grin in 2009.

    But another court in Florence, where three of the children were born and raised, ordered psychological tests on all family members and ruled in December 2010 that the children should move in with their father.

    That arrangement remained in place until August 2011, when Grin took the children from Florence to St. Petersburg, unbeknown to her former husband.

    She has not returned to Italy since and has lodged appeals with Russian courts to overturn earlier verdicts placing the children, now aged 6 to 15, with their father, to deprive him of his parental rights and to secure alimony payments.

    On Jan. 25, about a month after Sara defaced her passport, the St. Petersburg City Court sided with Grin, overruling Florentine court decisions and saying that Russia doesn’t extradite its citizens.

    The ruling came despite bilateral children’s rights agreements that oblige Russia and Italy to recognize analogous verdicts passed in either country.

    In comments to journalists before and after the hearing, Grin described herself as a put-upon Russian mother forced to flee an abusive American husband.

    Her ex-husband’s lawyer noted, however, that she only renewed her Russian citizenship in 2007, after letting her Soviet-era passport expire, and has offered no evidence that McIlwrath mistreated their children.

    readmore….http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/why-a-girl-tore-her-us-passport/475927.html

  • Three Indian Sisters Aged 7,9,11 Raped & Killed

    {{Indian Police say investigators are searching villages in western India for suspects in the rape and killing of three young sisters.}}

    The killing of the girls aged 7, 9 and 11 last week has horrified Indians still angry over the gang rape and killing of a student on a moving bus in New Delhi in December.

    The youngest girl had earlier been erroneously identified by Indian news reports as a 5-year-old.

    The girls’ bodies were found six days ago in a village well in Bhandara district in Maharashtra after they had gone missing from school.

    The victims’ mother said police did not take the case seriously and did nothing for several days until villagers held protests.

    Police officer Abhinav Deshmukh said Friday that 30 investigators are now working on the case.

    AP

  • No Sign of Chavez in Venezuela

    {{At Caracas’ military hospital, the only outward signs that President Hugo Chavez is a patient inside are the motorcades that come and go and the soldiers standing guard, some of them wearing red berets.}}

    A poster with a large photo of Chavez smiling sits atop the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital, but it has been there since long before the socialist leader was admitted upon his return from his latest cancer treatment in Cuba.

    Some of the president’s supporters shout “Viva Chavez!” and “He’s back!” as they drive past the hospital, which this week has become the new center of attention in Chavez’s 21-month-long cancer struggle.

    The government provided an update on Chavez’s condition Thursday night, saying that he remained at the hospital and that “the medical treatment for the fundamental illness continues without presenting significant adverse effects.”

    Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read the statement on television, saying that a “respiratory insufficiency” that arose in the weeks after the surgery “persists and its tendency has not been favorable, thus it continues to be treated.”

    The government has said Chavez is breathing through a tracheal tube.

    “The patient remains in communication with his relatives, with the political team of his government and in close cooperation with his medical team,” Villegas said, adding that Chavez “keeps clinging to Christ, with a maximum will to live.”

    The government hasn’t released a single photo of Chavez since his arrival in Caracas on Monday, and that has led some Venezuelans to question whether he’s actually in the hospital.

    Others insist he is there, just out of sight while undergoing treatment.

    {wirestory}

  • UN Nuclear Agency Documents Iran Atom Advances

    {{U.N. nuclear inspectors recently counted nearly 200 advanced machines fully or partially installed at Iran’s main uranium enrichment site.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday, confirming diplomats’ accounts that Tehran has begun a major upgrade of a program that can be used to make atomic arms.}}

    Iran denies it wants such weapons and says it is enriching only to make reactor fuel and for scientific and medical purposes under international law specifically allowing such activities.

    But because it hid its enrichment program — and other nuclear activities — for decades, many countries fear that Tehran ultimately wants to enrich to weapons-grade level, suitable for arming nuclear warheads.

    U.N sanctions and Security Council demands for a halt in enrichment have been ineffective, with Iran instead expanding the activity.

    The IAEA also has failed to re-launch an investigation into allegations that Iran worked secretly on components of a nuclear weapons program.

    wirestory