Tag: InternationalNews

It was a little before 10 p.m. that February night in 1898 when a fiery explosion roiled the normally calm waters of Havana Harbor, blowing out windows in the city and sinking the USS Maine to the bottom of the bay, just the mast and some twisted metal wreckage left to poke above the waves.

Havana’s monument to the 266 U.S. sailors who died that night was dedicated 27 years later as a tribute to lasting Cuban-American friendship, a thank-you for Washington’s help in shedding the yoke of Spanish colonial rule, which was known for its cruelty.

The years since have been unkind to the twin-columned monument, and to U.S.-Cuba ties. But while relations between Washington and Havana remain in deep freeze, the monument, at least, is now getting a facelift.

The restoration project is fraught with symbolism, with the monument’s scars telling the story of more than a century of shifts in the complex relationship and changing interpretations of the marble structure.

“Of the monuments in Havana, that’s one that really is struggling to contain all of these different historical episodes,” said Timothy Hyde, a historian of Cuban architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. “It doesn’t just symbolize any longer this single moment of the sinking of the Maine. It symbolizes all these periodic moments of antipathy and hostility and challenges between the two nation-states.”

Soon after the USS Maine suddenly sank off the coast of this Caribbean capital 115 years ago Friday, the United States accused Spanish colonial authorities of responsibility in the blast.

“Remember the Maine!” became a rallying cry in the States, and after the U.S. victory in the brief Spanish-American war, Spain ceded control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.

The Maine monument was inaugurated in 1925 and bears the names of all 266 sailors. Two statues standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the base represent a maternal America guiding the maiden Cuba into independence.

Words etched into the marble quote an 1898 U.S. congressional resolution recognizing a free Cuba, and the massive bronze eagle that long capped the monument faced due north to symbolize Washington’s promise to return home after helping the island break from Spain.

“To me it signifies a legacy of loyalty … friendship between two peoples,” said Julio Dominguez Santos, the monument’s night watchman for 17 years.

But things didn’t work out as that earlier Congress had hoped.
Many Cubans resented the 1901 Platt Amendment, which said Washington retained the right to intervene militarily as a condition of ending the postwar U.S. occupation.

The U.S. did in fact intervene several times, and American business and mafia gangs came to dominate many aspects of the island in the run-up to the 1959 revolution — leading many Cubans to feel like the eagle had never flown back north.

Soon after Fidel Castro’s rebels marched victoriously into Havana, the tense marriage rapidly careened toward divorce and diplomatic ties were severed in 1961. Following the doomed, U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion months later, the more than 3-ton eagle was ripped from the monument during an anti-American protest and splintered into pieces.

“The eagle was torn down after the triumph of the revolution because it’s the symbol of imperialism, the United States, and the revolution ended all that,” said Ernesto Moreno, a 77-year-old Havana resident who remembers waking up one day to see the statue gone. “I found it to be a very good thing, and I think most Cubans agreed at the time.”

Castro’s government added a new inscription to the base of the broken monument alleging the Maine victims had been “sacrificed by imperialist greed in its zeal to seize the island of Cuba,” a reference to speculation that the U.S. deliberately blew up the Maine to justify a war against Spain.

Historians say the explosion was probably an accidental ignition of the Maine’s own munitions, but the conspiracy theory still commonly circulates in Cuba.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma, for example, has written in the past that the Maine victims were “immolated to serve as a pretext for American intervention that in 1898 prevented the island from gaining true independence” — ignoring the fact that Cuban rebels had failed to oust the Spanish on their own for decades.

AGENCIES

{{Newcastle United player Cheick Tiote has had his car seized by police after being arrested on suspicion of fraud.}}

The 26-year-old midfielder was stopped by police on Tuesday near the club’s training ground on suspicion of fraud in relation to driving offences.

His car, a Chevrolet Camaro estimated to be worth about £75,000, was seized by Northumbria Police, who said inquiries were ongoing.

The Ivory Coast international signed for the club in 2010.

Agencies

The economy of the 17 nations in the euro shrank by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, which was worse than forecast.

It is the sharpest contraction since the beginning of 2009 and marks the first time the region failed to grow in any quarter during a calendar year.

It followed news that the economies of Germany, France and Italy had all shrunk by more than expected.

A recession is usually defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. In the first three months of 2012 the eurozone economy failed to grow, but then in the second quarter of the year it contracted by 0.2% and it shrank by 0.1% in the third quarter.

The GDP numbers sent the euro lower. It fell to a three-week low against the US dollar of $1.3320.

Carsten Brzeski from ING said: “These are horrible numbers, it’s a widespread contraction, which does not match this positive picture of stabilisation and positive contagion.”

But he added: “We still expect growth to return in the course of 2013 but any return of growth will be very small which means that the social impact of this recession, especially in the peripheral countries will be still a very severe one.”

Germany, the eurozone’s biggest economy, saw the deepest contraction since the height of the financial crisis as its economy shrank 0.6%.

It was hit by a sharp decline in exports.

The German statistics office said: “Comparatively weak foreign trade was the decisive factor for the decline in the economic performance at the end of the year: in the final quarter of 2012 exports of goods declined significantly more than imports of goods.”

The French economy shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter, while Italy showed 0.9% contraction for the period.

read more….http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21455423

{{U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday it had again failed to clinch a deal in talks with Iran this week on investigating suspected atom bomb research by the Islamic state.}}

The lack of a breakthrough in Wednesday’s meeting in Tehran, though expected by Western diplomats, represented a new setback for international efforts to resolve a decade-old dispute over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

It comes before six world powers and Iran are due to meet for negotiations in Kazakhstan on February 26 over the Islamic state’s atomic activities, which the West fears are aimed at developing nuclear bombs. Iran denies this.

Herman Nackaerts, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters after he and his team returned to Vienna the IAEA was committed to continuing talks but needed more time to reflect on the way forward.

The two sides “could not finalize the document,” he said, adding no date had yet been set for a next meeting.

Agencies

{{South Korea unveiled a cruise missile on Thursday that it said can hit the office of North Korea’s leaders, trying to address concerns that it is technologically behind its unpredictable rival which this week conducted its third nuclear test.}}

South Korean officials declined to say the exact range of the missile but said it could hit targets anywhere in North Korea.

The Defence Ministry released video footage of the missiles being launched from destroyers and submarines striking mock targets. The weapon was previewed in April last year and officials said deployment was now complete.

“The cruise missile being unveiled today is a precision-guided weapon that can identify and strike the window of the office of North Korea’s leadership,” ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters.

North Korea has forged ahead with long-range missile development, successfully launching a rocket in December that put a satellite into orbit.

The North’s ultimate aim, Washington believes, is to design an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could hit the United States.

North Korea, which accuses the United States and its “puppet”, South Korea, of war-mongering on an almost daily basis, is likely to respond angrily to South Korea flexing its muscles.

North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, carried out its third nuclear test on Tuesday, drawing condemnation from around the world including its only major ally China.

The test and the threat of more unspecified actions from Pyongyang have raised tensions on the Korean peninsula as the South prepares to inaugurate a new president on February 25.

“The situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula at present is so serious that even a slight accidental case may lead to an all-out war which can disturb the whole region,” North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said.

Reuters

{{Pope Benedict XVI continued his farewell tour Thursday with an off-the-cuff meeting with Roman priests, an annual encounter that took on poignant new meaning with his impending resignation.}}

Walking with a cane, Benedict received another standing ovation from thousands of clerics gathered in the Vatican’s main audience hall.

The Vatican has said Benedict would reflect on his personal experiences as a young theological expert attending the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world.

Benedict spent much of his 8-year pontificate seeking to correct what he considers the misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it wasn’t a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics paint it, but a renewal and reawakening of the best traditions of the ancient church.

During an emotional final public Mass on Wednesday, Benedict lamented the internal church rivalries that have “defiled the face of the church” — a not-too-subtle message to his successor and the cardinals who will elect him.

Those rivalries came to the fore last year with the leaks of internal papal documents by the pope’s own butler.

The documentation revealed bitter infighting within the highest ranks of the Catholic Church, allegations of corruption and mismanagement of the Holy See’s affairs.

Benedict took the scandal as a personal betrayal and a wound on the entire church.

In a sign of his desire to get to the bottom of the leaks, he appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate alongside Vatican investigators.

His butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, although Benedict ultimately pardoned him.

Agencies

{{Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has offered to help negotiate an end to conflicts between the government and the country’s ethnic minority groups.}}

Suu Kyi made the offer on Tuesday in a video address to members of her National League for Democracy party on Union Day, which marks when her late father signed a 1947 agreement with leaders of the country’s ethnic minorities to gain independence from Britain.

The occasion is a reminder of an issue that has destabilised the country since even before it obtained independence in 1948 under the name of Burma.

Rebellions by ethnic minorities striving for greater autonomy were hard for a democratic parliamentary system to deal with, which increased pressure for strong central authority and helped lead to an army takeover in 1962. Military rule persisted until 2011.

The government of elected President Thein Sein has reached ceasefire agreements with most of the major ethnic groups, but still finds itself engaged in a bitter struggle with the Kachin in northern Myanmar.

Thein Sein in his Union Day address stressed the importance of “political stability and the end of armed conflicts”.

{{Senior U.N. investigators are in Iran for a new round of talks with government officials over allegations that Tehran may have carried out tests on triggers for atomic weapons.}}

Iranian state TV said Wednesday that talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency could be extended beyond the day, “if necessary.”

The visit by the U.N. team, led by Herman Nackaerts, comes a day after Tehran raised prospects that the IAEA may be allowed to inspect Parchin, a military site where the agency suspects nuclear-related experiments were conducted.

Iran denies any such activities and insists Parchin is only a conventional military site.

The U.S. and its allies fear Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies the charge, saying its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

wirestory

{{President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday that 34,000 troops – about half the U.S. force in Afghanistan – will withdraw by early 2014, bringing the United States one step closer to wrapping up the costly, unpopular war.}}

Obama announced the withdrawal in his annual State of the Union address, as he renewed his pledge to a war-weary American public that the 66,000 remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan would move into a support role this spring.

“This drawdown will continue. And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” Obama said to applause.

The announcement was limited in detail and appeared to give the White House time and flexibility before it answers bigger questions about its exit strategy from America’s longest war.

This includes the size of the U.S. force that Obama will keep in Afghanistan once the NATO mission is completed and the war is declared formally over at the end of 2014.

Obama also must decide how large an Afghan force to finance, and for how long, as his allies in Congress press to keep them at their maximum strength.

No decisions on broader issues have been made, a senior administration official said, and Obama said only that the future U.S. mission would be focused on training and equipping Afghan forces and combating al Qaeda.

“Beyond 2014, America’s commitment to a unified and sovereign Afghanistan will endure, but the nature of our commitment will change,” Obama said.

{{Australia’s lower house has unanimously passed a bill recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples as the country’s first inhabitants.}}

The move came on the fifth anniversary of the historic apology to indigenous Australians for past injustices.

It is seen as a interim move before a referendum is held to include the recognition in the constitution.

The plebiscite was meant to take place this year but had been postponed by the government to build up support.

Indigenous Australians watching from the public galleries met the passage of the bill, which enjoyed bipartisan support, with applause.

“I do believe the community is willing to embrace the justice of this campaign because Australians understand that indigenous culture and history are a source of pride for us all,” Ms Gillard said.

“This bill seeks to foster momentum for a referendum for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”

She said that a review will be held to gauge public support for a referendum, which is needed to make any change to the constitution in Australia.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott said that constitutional recognition for the indigenous peoples was long overdue.

“We need to atone for the omissions and for the hardness of heart of our forebears, to enable us all to embrace the future as a united people,” he said.

In 2008, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised to the indigenous population for laws and policies that “inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss”.

In his apology, he singled out the “stolen generations” of thousands of children forcibly removed from their families.

BBC