Tag: InternationalNews

{{Bulgaria’s prime minister said on Wednesday that his center-right government will resign following protests over the country’s struggling economy.}}

Boiko Borisov told Parliament that he would hand in his resignation after the regular Cabinet meeting later in the day.

The move comes as the center-right government is losing public support in the wake of the country’s worst economic downturn in a decade and ahead of general elections in July.

The resignation means that early elections will be held, likely in April or May.

Tens of thousands of protesters across the country — which is an EU member — hit the streets in the weekend, accusing the government of failing to improve their living standards.

The protest in the capital, Sofia, on Tuesday night turned violent as police in riot gear clashed with protesters, leaving 14 people injured.
Borisov said that such violence prompted his decision.

“Our power was handed to us by the people, today we are handing it back to them,” Borisov said.

“I cannot stand looking at a bloody Eagles’ Bridge,” he added, referring to the busy intersection in downtown Sofia where police and protesters clashed on Tuesday. “Every drop of blood is a shame for us.”

Borisov gave no immediate indication whether he intended to remain as leader of his party in the coming election campaign.

AP

{{Russian Police has detained two Uzbekistan nationals in the Moscow region who are suspected of belonging to an international terrorist group that recruited members and sent them to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on its official website Tuesday.}}

“It has been established that in 2012, [the group] sent around 38 Uzbek citizens and more than 18 immigrants from Central Asia, including Russian citizens, to militant training camps from Moscow and the Moscow region,” the ministry said in a statement on its official website.

The suspects, whose identities have not been disclosed, were detained in the Odintsovo and Podolsky districts.

Police also confiscated a computer and copy machines, equipment to make brochures and other accessories to prepare published materials.

They also confiscated a large number of phones, sports equipment for combat training and brochures with extremist content.

The ministry said it is considering extraditing the suspects to Uzbekistan.

{moscowtimes}

{{Boisterous protesters backing the Cuban government blocked the Monday screening of a documentary featuring Cuba’s best-known dissident, the blogger Yoani Sanchez, who was in attendance after being allowed to leave the communist island for the first time in nearly a decade.}}

Small groups of protesters met Sanchez when she arrived earlier Monday at two airports in Brazil’s northeast.

They called her a “mercenary” who was being financed by the CIA and tossed photocopied U.S. dollar bills her way. One protester got close enough to pull her hair.

Sanchez was also met by supporters and throughout the day in Tweets and a blog posting expressed her joy at being in Brazil, the first stop on her 80-day tour of about a dozen nations.

Yet at the evening screening in a museum, about four dozen protesters surrounded her the moment she walked through the door, shouting “Cuba yes! Yankees no!” and forcing security guards to evacuate her to a nearby room.

“I was expecting it, even before leaving Cuba I knew this could happen,” Sanchez told media minutes later inside the room where she was taken for protection.

“It’s sad because I’ve been waiting one year for this, I really wanted to see (the) film.”

About an hour after being taken out of the screening room, Sanchez, accompanied by Brazilian Sen. Eduardo Suplicy, went to speak to the crowd, both protesters and supporters.

“After remaining silent for a long time, after living in a society where not speaking up was the option of the majority of my countrymen, after so much silence, one fine day I couldn’t take it anymore and I started a blog,” she told those gathered, some who cheered, some who booed.

Sanchez stayed with the crowd for about 45 minutes, then left the venue.

Readmore…http://news.yahoo.com/pro-cuba-protesters-halt-dissidents-brazil-event-015748949.html

Greek journalists have walked off the job for 24 hours to protest austerity measures and income cuts, pulling radio and television news broadcasts off the air and leaving news websites without updates from 6 a.m. (0400 GMT).

Tuesday’s strike coincides with a six-hour visit to Athens by French President Francois Hollande. Despite a court order ruling the strike illegal for state media, journalists at state-controlled outlets heeded union calls to participate, meaning no Greek media would cover the visit live.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou accused the main opposition Syriza party for orchestrating the strike to cause “a news blackout” during Hollande’s visit.

Journalists’ unions have been protesting firings and pension and benefit cuts among other issues. Hundreds of journalists in the private sector frequently go unpaid for months.

Associated Press

{{Syrians in “leadership positions” who may be responsible for war crimes have been identified, along with units accused of perpetrating them, United Nations investigators said on Monday.}}

Both government forces and armed rebels are committing war crimes, including killings and torture, spreading terror among civilians in a nearly two-year-old conflict, they said.

The investigators’ latest report, covering the six months to mid-January, was based on 445 interviews conducted abroad with victims and witnesses, as they have not been allowed into Syria.

The independent team, led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, called on the U.N. Security Council to “act urgently to ensure accountability” for grave violations, possibly by referring the violators to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.

“The ICC is the appropriate institution for the fight against impunity in Syria.

As an established, broadly supported structure, it could immediately initiate investigations against authors of serious crimes in Syria,” the 131-page report said.

It added: “Individuals may also bear criminal responsibility for perpetuating the crimes identified in the present report.

Where possible, individuals in leadership positions who may be responsible were identified alongside those who physically carried out the acts.”

Karen Konig AbuZayd, one of the four commissioners on the team of some two dozen experts, told Reuters: “We have information suggesting people who have given instructions and are responsible for government policy. People who are in the leadership of the military, for example.”

“It is the first time we have mentioned the ICC directly. The Security Council needs to come together and decide whether or not to refer the case to the ICC. I am not optimistic.”

But its third list of suspects, building on lists drawn up in the past year, remains secret. It will be entrusted to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, upon expiry of its current mandate at the end of March, the report said.

Pillay, a former judge at the ICC, said on Saturday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be probed for war crimes and called for immediate action by the international community, including possible military intervention.

“The evidence collected sits in the safe in the office of the High Commissioner against the day it might be referred to a court and evidence would be examined by a prosecutor,” said a European diplomat.

The death toll in Syria is likely approaching 70,000 people, Pillay told the Security Council last week in a fresh appeal for it to refer Syria to the ICC, the Hague-based war crimes court.

Government forces have carried out shelling and aerial bombardment across Syria including Aleppo, Damascus, Deraa, Homs and Idlib, the independent U.N. investigators said, citing corroborating evidence gathered from satellite images.

“In some incidents, such as in the assault on Harak, indiscriminate shelling was followed by ground operations during which government forces perpetrated mass killing,” it said, referring to a town in the southern province of Deraa where residents told them that 500 civilians were killed in August.

“SPREADING TERROR”

“Government forces and affiliated militias have committed extra-judicial executions, breaching international human rights law. This conduct also constitutes the war crime of murder.

Where murder was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, with knowledge of that attack, it is a crime against humanity,” the U.N. report said.

They have targeted queues at bakeries and funeral processions, in violence aimed at “spreading terror among the civilian population”, it said.

“Syrian armed forces have implemented a strategy that uses shelling and sniper fire to kill, maim, wound and terrorize the civilian inhabitants of areas that have fallen under anti-government armed group control,” the report said.

Government forces had used cluster bombs, it said, but it found no credible evidence of either side using chemical arms.

Rebel forces fighting to topple Assad in the protracted and increasingly sectarian conflict have committed war crimes include murder, torture, hostage-taking and using children under age 15 in hostilities, the U.N. report said.

“They continue to endanger the civilian population by positioning military objectives inside civilian areas,” it said. Rebel snipers had caused “considerable civilian casualties”.

“The violations and abuses committed by anti-government armed groups did not, however, reach the intensity and scale of those committed by government forces and affiliated militia.”

Foreign fighters, many of them from Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, have radicalized the rebels and helped detonate deadly improvised explosive devices, it said.

The two other commissioners are former chief ICC prosecutor Carla del Ponte and Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand.

“It is an investigative mechanism and its evidence can be given to relevant judicial authorities when the time comes.

In the interim, it is the one piece of U.N.-approved machinery shining a light on abuses,” the European diplomat said.

Referring to del Ponte, who joined in September, the diplomat said: “She brings a harder-edged prosecutorial lens so when they are looking at the evidence she is very well placed to know what sort of evidence would assist a later judicial process.”

Reuters

{{BBC journalists walked off the job Monday in a 24-hour strike to protest job cuts at the broadcaster.}}

Staff mounted picket lines outside of the BBC’s studios in central London and around the country. Programs went on, but many shows were canceled, including the flagship morning news radio program “Today.”

National Union of Journalists general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said poor decisions by the BBC leadership were leading to quality journalism being compromised.

The union says 2,000 jobs are at risk in BBC cost-cutting. Many will be eliminated through attrition, but about 30 jobs are targeted for compulsory layoffs.

The union said members across the BBC, including the World Service, are at risk of compulsory redundancy.

The BBC said in a statement that it was disappointed by the union’s actions. It said it had no choice but to meet savings targets that will require job cuts.

The BBC is funded mainly by a mandatory 145.50 pounds ($228) annual levy on all households with color TVs. Britain’s government froze the fee in 2010, and the corporation has been forced to make cuts.

AP

{{Israel’s prime minister says North Korea’s recent nuclear test shows that “sanctions alone will not stop” Iran’s atomic program.}}

Benjamin Netanyahu told a gathering of international Jewish leaders on Monday that the Western sanctions against Tehran “have to be coupled with a robust, credible, military threat. If they are not, then there is no chance to stop them.”

He says Iran will top his agenda when President Barack Obama visits Israel next month.

North Korea conducted a nuclear test last week despite warnings of more international punishment. Iran, like North Korea, is under stiff sanctions from the West over its nuclear program.

Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat. Netanyahu often hints about a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear sites if sanctions fail.

Associated Press

{{WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange regards his bid to become an Australian senator as a defense against potential criminal prosecution in the United States and Britain, a news website reported on Monday.}}

Assange spoke to The Conversation website at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he was granted asylum in June to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations.

If he wins a Senate seat at elections on Sept. 24, Assange told the website that the U.S. Department of Justice would drop its espionage investigation rather than risk a diplomatic row.

The British government would follow suit, otherwise “the political costs of the current standoff will be higher still,”Assange told the website.

Assange supporters last week enrolled him to vote in Victoria state, a necessary step toward being nominated as a candidate.

Nominations for the Senate are likely to close on Aug. 22, and the six-year term of office would begin on July 1, 2014.

Australians living overseas can enroll to vote and consequently run as a Senate candidate if they left Australia within the past three years and intend to return within six years of their date of departure.
Assange said he was last in Australia in June 2010.

Assange plans to register a new political party, the WikiLeaks Party, to run Senate candidates in several Australian states.

He told the website he was sure the party would attract the minimum 500 fee-paying members required to be registered.

WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance spokeswoman Sam Castro said last week that if Assange was elected and was unable to take his Senate seat, another nominated WikiLeaks Party member would be chosen to fill the vacancy.

The party would run on a platform of transparency in government, she said.

Assange’s election campaign already has the endorsement of his parents.

His father, Sydney architect John Shipton, said he will be the chief executive of the newly-formed party.

“The party stands for what Julian espouses — transparency and accountability in government and, of course, human rights,” he added.
Assange’s mother Christine Assange said public support indicated he would be elected.

“There is a lot of enthusiasm in people for a change,” she said.
Assange told the website the Swedish allegations against him were “falling apart” and police should drop the case.

The U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating WikiLeaks since the secret-busting website began distributing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents. But few details of that investigation have been made public.

Assange’s supporters suggest the Swedish case is being pursued as an avenue to extradite him to the U.S., though the Swedish government denies it.

AP