Tag: InternationalNews

{Newly built 50,000-tonne carrier demonstrates the growing technical sophistication of China’s defence industries.}

China has launched its first domestically made aircraft carrier, in a demonstration of the growing technical sophistication of its defence industries.

The 50,000-tonne carrier was towed from its dockyard on Wednesday morning after a ceremony in the northern port city of Dalian.

Development of the new carrier began in 2013 and construction commenced in late 2015. It is expected to be formally commissioned some time before 2020, after sea trials and the arrival of its full air complement.

Reports of the launch said a bottle of champagne was broken across the ship’s bow and other craft in the port sounded their horns in celebration.

Like the 60,000-tonne Liaoning aircraft carrier, which was purchased from the Ukraine, the new carrier is based on the Soviet Kuznetsov class design, with a ski jump-style deck for taking off and a conventional oil-fuelled steam turbine power plant.

The design limits the weight of payloads its planes can carry, its speed and the amount of time it can spend at sea compared with US nuclear-powered carriers.

The main hull of the new carrier has been completed and its power supply put into place. Next up are mooring tests and the debugging of its electronic systems, the defence ministry said.

China is believed to be planning to build at least two – and possibly as many as four – additional carriers, with one of them, the Type 002, reported to be already under construction at a shipyard outside Shanghai.

They are expected to be closer in size to the US Navy’s nuclear-powered 100,000-tonne Nimitz class ships, with flat flight decks and catapults to allow planes to launch with more bombs and fuel aboard.

China has offered little information about the roles it expects its carriers to play, although its planning appears to be evolving as it gains more experience.

The Liaoning was initially touted mainly as an experimental and training platform, but in December was declared to be combat-ready and has taken part in live-firing exercises in the South China Sea, where tensions have risen over China’s construction of man-made islands complete with airstrips and military structures.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Reporters Without Borders warns of tipping point for press freedom in era of ‘strongmen and propaganda’.}

Press freedom has never been as threatened as it is now, in the “new post-truth era of fake news”, strongmen and propaganda, Reporters Without Borders said.

Its annual World Press Freedom Index, published on Wednesday, warned of a “tipping point” for journalism.

“Attacks on the media have become commonplace and strongmen are on the rise. We have reached the age of post-truth, propaganda, and suppression of freedoms – especially in democracies,” the report said.

“Media freedom has never been so threatened.”

Syria, where a bloody civil war has entered its sixth year, was the deadliest country for journalists, according to the watchdog, known by its French initials RSF.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, which has jailed 81 journalists after a failed coup attempt, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt, where Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Hussein has been detained, were branded the world’s biggest prisons for journalists.

Hussein is awaiting trial on charges of spreading false news, a charge Al Jazeera denies.

Also in several democracies, “nothing seems to be checking” the erosion of liberty of the press, RSF said.

It blamed the continuing fall to “an obsession with surveillance and violations of the right to confidentiality of sources”.

These include the US and Britain, which both slipped two places in the index to 43rd and 40th.

The report also warned of the “highly toxic” media-bashing of US President Donald Trump’s election campaign and Britain’s Brexit referendum, saying this has pushed “the world into a new era of post-truth, disinformation and fake news.”

RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire said: “The rate at which democracies are approaching the tipping point is alarming for all those who understand that, if media freedom is not secure, then none of the other freedoms can be guaranteed.”

“Where will this downward spiral take us?” he asked.

In the past year nearly two thirds of the countries had registered a deterioration in their situation, while the number of countries where the media freedom situation was “good” or “fairly good” fell by more than two percent, the report found.

“Media freedom has retreated wherever the authoritarian strongman model has triumphed,” the report went on.

Turkey “swung over into the authoritarian regime camp” after the failed coup against President Erdogan in July, it said, adding that it “now distinguishes itself as the world’s biggest prison for media professionals”.

Seven places ahead of Turkey, “Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains firmly entrenched in the bottom fifth of the index,” in 148th place, it added.

Liberty of the press is in peril or in a “very serious situation” in 72 countries, including Russia, India and China, the report found.

Norway came out top of the index with the world’s freest media.

North Korea took bottom place from another repressive closed state, Eritrea, which has propped up the table for a decade.

North Korea continues to keep “its population in ignorance and terror,” RSF said. “Even listening to a foreign radio broadcast can lead to a spell in a concentration camp.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{At least 11 people killed while fleeing fighting between US-backed forces and ISIL in Tabqa, witnesses and monitor say.}

Air strikes have killed at least 11 people, seven of them children, as they tried to flee the fighting in Syria’s northern Raqqa province, witnesses and a monitor said.

A family was killed in a suspected US-led coalition air strike that targeted their car while leaving the city of Tabqa, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Tuesday.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) have been locked in battle in the northern city and thousands have fled the area.

A citizen journalist group in Raqqa known as Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) said at least 17 civilians were killed in the strikes on the city.

The US-backed SDF are trying to retake Raqqa province, ISIL’s stronghold in Syria and are currently battling ISIL around Tabqa after they have captured the south of the city.

Raqqa province was taken by ISIL in January 2014 from the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and ISIL seized Tabqa’s airbase from the Syrian government in August 2014.

The SDF captured the strategic Tabqa airbase from ISIL last month. The airbase is 45km west of Raqqa.

SDF was founded in Syria’s mainly Kurdish northeastern region in October 2015 and is made up of at least 15 armed factions, mostly fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units and the Free Syrian Army.

The Observatory said in a report on Tuesday that at least 1,264 civilians, including 280 children, have been killed in US-led coalition air strikes since September 2014.

On April 14, the US Central Command said it mistakenly killed at least 18 members of the SDF in Tabqa.

Elsewhere in Syria, government air strikes have hit the town of Houla in Homs province, and killed at least six civilians, the Observatory reported.

Suspected Russian air strikes killed at least 15 people in Jabal al-Dweileh in Idlib province, the Syrian Civil Defence said on Tuesday.

In its latest report, the Observatory said at least 10,915 civilians, including 2,393 children, were killed in government air strikes and barrel bombs dropped by helicopters.

In addition to that, 64,000 others were injured in these attacks.

The casualties were a result of 30 months of air strikes and helicopter strikes.

The UN said in a press release on Monday that at least 39,000 newly displaced people fled to the Jib Al-Shaair makeshift camp in Raqqa province, where four out of five people are staying in the open air without appropriate shelter.

“The UN is deeply concerned for the safety and protection of over 400,000 people in Raqqa, in Syria. In past weeks, civilians have been exposed to daily fighting and air strikes which resulted in an escalating number of civilian deaths and injuries as well as damage to civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, markets and water infrastructure,” the press release said.

As the Syrian conflict enters its seventh year, more than 465,000 people have been killed in the fighting, more than one million injured and over 12 million Syrians – half the country’s prewar population – have been displaced from their homes.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Flurry of diplomacy under way as North Korea reportedly marks military anniversary with large-scale artillery drill.}

A US submarine has arrived in South Korean waters, while envoys from the United States, Japan and South Korea met in Tokyo to discuss rising tensions with North Korea.

Pyongyang reportedly marked the 85th anniversary of the founding of its military on Tuesday by conducting a large artillery drill.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing a South Korean government source, said there were signs that North Korea’s military carried out the live-fire exercise in areas around the city of Wonsan on its east coast.

South Korea’s defence ministry could not immediately confirm the report.

At a “national meeting” of thousands of senior military and civilian officials the day before, Pak Yong-sik, North Korea’s defence minister, reiterated that the country is ready to use pre-emptive strikes or any other measures it deems necessary to defend itself against the “US imperialists”.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un did not attend. It was not known how he was marking Tuesday’s anniversary.

North Korea often marks significant dates by displaying its military capability and has conducted five nuclear tests on such occasions in the past. Pyongyang launched a missile one day after the 105th birthday of late founder Kim il-Sung on April 15.

Al Jazeera’s Divya Gopalan, reporting from Seoul, said that Tuesday’s reportedly large artillery test could be a way of North Korea “saving face and managing tensions” by taking action that is probably outside the UN sanctions remit and is at a less provocative level than a missile launch or nuclear test.

“So this [artillery test] is not banned by the UN, yet it is some kind of provocation,” Gopalan said.

North Korea’s recent moves are testing the developing policies of US President Donald Trump, who has reportedly settled on a strategy that emphasises increased pressure on North Korea with the help of China, North Korea’s only major ally, instead of military options or trying to overthrow North Korea’s government.

The nuclear-powered USS Michigan submarine arrived at Busan in what was described as a routine port visit to rest the crew and load supplies. Commander Jang Wook, from the South Korean navy public affairs office, said there was no plan for any drill.

The submarine’s arrival comes as the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier heads towards the Korean Peninsula in a show of force.

Al Jazeera’s Gopalan said that the mood in Seoul was anxious and that, while there have often been tensions between South Korea and its neighbour over the past decades, there is a general sense that the level has been ratcheted up recently.

“Due to the fact that the US is putting weight behind its words and maybe because the US seems to be almost as unpredictable North Korea at the moment; so people are finding it hard to gauge where this is going to go,” Gopalan said.

She reported that presidential elections are due soon in South Korea and there are many important domestic issues that would normally be the focus of public debate.

“Instead, North Korea is the main topic of conversation,” said Gopalan.

{{Flurry of diplomacy}}

In Tokyo, US representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun, met on Tuesday with his Japanese counterpart Kenji Kanasugi and Kim Hong-kyun of South Korea.

Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler, reporting from Tokyo, said no policy change announcements are expected from the meeting, which is an opportunity for the three countries to plan and coordinate their response to any potential action by North Korea.

“It’s not unprecedented that they sit down like this, but obviously with this current situation, it’s much more important,” he said.

A US ministerial meeting has been scheduled in Washington DC for Friday.

Meanwhile in an unusual event, the entire US Senate has been asked to attend a briefing on North Korea on Wednesday at the White House.

“So obviously this has escalated to a higher level because the situation is is so tense,” said Heidler.

Japan’s foreign ministry also announced that China’s envoy for North Korea, Wu Dawei, will visit Tokyo on Tuesday for talks with Kanasugi, which may take place later this week.

Trump spoke by phone with both the Japanese and Chinese leaders on Monday. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV quoted President Xi Jinping as telling Trump that China strongly opposes North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and hopes “all parties will exercise restraint and avoid aggravating the situation”.

Trump met the 15 UN Security Council ambassadors, including the Chinese and Russian representatives, at the White House on Monday, and said the UN Security Council must be prepared to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

“The council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programmes,” he said.

Recent US commercial satellite images indicate increased activity around North Korea’s nuclear test site, and third-generation dictator Kim Jong-un has said the country’s preparation for an intercontinental ballistic missile launch is in its “final stage”.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Security forces are searching an area where an explosion targeting a passenger bus left 14 dead and 10 wounded.}

Islamabad, Pakistan – A roadside bomb targeting a bus has killed at least 14 people in the northwestern Pakistani district of Kurram, local officials say.

The explosion occurred in central Kurram as the vehicle travelled to the town of Sadda, about 250km west of the capital Islamabad, early on Tuesday morning, Majidullah, a local administration official, told Al Jazeera.

“There were about 23 passengers in the van, and there was a bomb placed on the roadside near the village of Godar, he said.

“Security forces have now initiated a search operation in the area.”

Officials said that at least five women and four children were among the 14 killed, and at least 10 people were wounded in the explosion.

Kurram lies along Pakistan’s northwestern border with Afghanistan, and has seen a series of attacks in recent days, often targeting the district’s sizeable Shia Muslim minority.

The Pakistani Taliban’s Jamaat ur Ahrar faction has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“This morning Jamaat ur Ahrar’s fighters attacked a census team through a remote-controlled roadside bomb at Godar, near Kurram’s agency’s main town of Parachinar, under Operation Ghazi Abdul Rasheed,” said Asad Mansoor, TTP Jamaat ur Ahrar spokesman.

“Through this attack more than ten Shia heathens and the census team were sent to their terrible fate.”

In a statement, the military said it had dispatched a transport helicopter to move those in need of critical medical care.

The wounded were being treated at hospitals in Sadda, Parachinar and Peshawar, said Majidullah.

Earlier this month, at least six people were killed in the eastern city of Lahore when a Taliban suicide bomber targeted a census team and soldiers guarding it.

Last month, a bomb targeting a Shia mosque in Kurram’s main town of Parachinar killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens more.

In January, a bomb explosion ripped through a busy Parachinar vegetable market, killing at least 22 people.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both of those attacks. Pakistan has been battling the group – an umbrella organisation of armed religious groups – since 2007, and has launched a series of military operations against them, including one in Kurram district that concluded in 2011.

In response to the latest spate of attacks, Kurram’s residents have formed tribal militias to work with Pakistan’s security forces to secure the area. They have dug trenches around Parachinar, as well as establishing bunkers at strategic locations.

This area, however, had no increased security, according to local official Majidullah.

“This area is in central Kurram – there is no increased security there,” he said.

Pakistan began the second round of a countrywide population census on Tuesday, with more than 84,000 census workers dispatched to 87 districts across the country. It is Pakistan’s first census since 1998, and the military has deployed more than 200,000 troops to provide security for the exercise.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Magnitude 7.1 temblor off Valparaiso did not cause any serious damage.}

A major earthquake of magnitude 7.1 has struck off the west coast of Chile, rocking the capital Santiago and briefly causing alarm along the Pacific Coast but not producing any serious damage.

The quake on Monday was centred 35km west of the coastal city of Valparaiso at a shallow depth of 10km below the sea, and about 137km from Santiago, the US Geological Survey said.

“It was short but very powerful,” said Paloma Salamo, a 26-year-old nurse, who was in a clinic just north of Valparaiso when the quake struck.

People ran out of the facility carrying children and some headed for the hills when the tsunami alarm sounded, she told Reuters news agency, but calm was soon restored.

Officials cancelled a tsunami warning that had been issued in Valparaiso after the Chilean Navy and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake was not expected to produce a dangerous seismic sea wave. The centre reported small tsunami waves of 15cm.

There were no reports of structural damage in Valparaiso, but mobile phone networks were down in some places, a spokesman with the local government in Valparaiso said.

“We have no reports of victims or significant damage. There have been some landslides in some places, without major complications,” said Interior Minister Mario Fernandez.

“In general the situation is pretty normal bearing in mind the quake’s intensity.”

Chile lies on what is known as the “Ring of Fire” – an arc of fault lines that circles the Pacific Basin and is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The north of the country was struck by an 8.3 temblor followed by a tsunami in September 2015, killing 15 people.

In 2010 another quake measuring 8.8, also followed by a tsunami, struck the centre and south of the country, killing more than 500 people.

Source:Source

{Storm Arlene is the first named storm of 2017 and becomes only the second April tropical storm on record.}

We recently reported on the rare sight of a subtropical depression forming in the Atlantic Basin, long before the official hurricane season, which does not begin until June 1.

Well, not only did this subtropical depression persist despite chilly ocean temperatures of just 20C, it actually formed into a tropical storm on April 20.

Although it was short-lived, the storm was given the moniker Arlene, making it the first named storm of 2017.

It also became just the second tropical storm on record in April, since satellite technology became available in the 1960s (the first such storm was Ana in 2003).

In addition, Arlene was the most northerly forming storm this early in the year.

Although Arlene was located in a relatively isolated part of the Atlantic basin, between Bermuda and the Azores, it was a hazard to shipping in the region, with wave heights analysed at 13 metres by NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center.

Arlene was downgraded to an extratropical storm sometime after the last advisory from the National Hurricane Center at 09:00 GMT on Friday.

On the face of it, the Atlantic hurricane season has exhibited increasingly erratic behaviour in recent years.

As recently as 2016, Hurricane Alex became the first January hurricane in more than half a century. It was also the strongest January hurricane recorded with sustained winds of 135 kilometres per hour.

In 2014, two hurricanes, Fay and Gonzalo, hit Bermuda within the space of a week.

The year 2013 was notable for an almost total lack of hurricane activity, while 2012 will be remembered for Hurricane Sandy, which was one of the largest hurricanes on record, according to its wind field. Sandy was then swept up into a frontal system which brought damaging winds and destructive coastal surges to the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The forecast for 2017 remains for a season of slightly below average activity, but with hurricanes, you can never be sure.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Appeal comes during Xi phone call to Trump following rising speculation N Korea may hold a sixth nuclear test this week.}

China’s President Xi Jinping has called for restraint when dealing with North Korea during a telephone call with US President Donald Trump, according to Chinese state media.

The official broadcaster CCTV quoted Xi on Monday as telling Trump that China strongly opposed North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, which are in violation of UN Council resolutions, and hoped “all parties will exercise restraint and avoid aggravating the situation” on the Korean peninsula.

The Trump administration has warned that all options, including a military strike, are “on the table” to halt North Korea’s ambitions of developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the US mainland.

The phone call, which took place on Monday morning Beijing time, came amid speculation that North Korea could hold a sixth nuclear test this week.

North Korea often marks significant dates by displaying military capability, and South Korean officials say there is a chance the country will conduct a nuclear test or a major missile launch around the founding anniversary of its military on Tuesday.

On April 15, North Korea showed off its advancing nuclear weapons and missiles programme in an elaborate military parade in Pyongyang honouring Kim Il-sung, the late founder of the communist North Korean state and grandfather of the current ruler.

The displayed military hardware included prototype ICBMs and new mid-range solid-fuel missiles that can be fired from land mobile launchers and submarines, making them harder to detect before launch.

Trump has pressed Xi to exert greater pressure against North Korea given China’s status as the country’s sole economic lifeline and major ally. Monday’s call is the second time that the two leaders have spoken by telephone since meeting in Florida earlier this month.

Trump also spoke on Monday with Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, and they agreed to urge North Korea to refrain from what Abe called provocative actions and alled for China to play a larger role in helping to restrain North Korea.

Motosada Matano, spokesman for the Japanese prime minister, told Al Jazeera: “President Trump’s firm stance of having all options on the table has worked as a strong deterrent in this case and we highly value the policy.”

Speaking in Sydney on Saturday, Mike Pence, US vice president, said the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson would arrive in the Sea of Japan, bordering the Korean peninsula, “in a matter of days”.

The ship joined other warships for joint exercises with Japan in the Philippine Sea on Sunday.

Confusion has clouded the naval strike group’s whereabouts in recent days after Trump suggested the “armada” was heading towards North Korea when in fact it was sent towards Australia.

{{US citizen named}}

In another related development, the US citizen detained by North Korea on Saturday has been named as Tony Kim, who also goes by his Korean name, Kim Sang-duk.

Kim, who is 58, taught accounting at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology for about a month, according to the university’s chancellor Park Chan-mo.

Park said Kim was detained by officials as he was trying to leave the country from Pyongyang’s international airport. A university spokesperson said he was trying to leave with his wife on a flight to China.

The detention brings the number of Americans now being held in North Korea to three.

“It’s usually a tactic held by North Korea when they want to get the attention of high level US officials. South Korea says they are now looking into this detention,” said Al Jazeera’s Divya Gopala, reporting from Seoul.

Against this backdrop of geopolitical tensions, the issue of North Korean refugees in Chinese detention was raised on Monday by Human Rights Watch.

China should immediately reveal the whereabouts of eight North Koreans it detained last month, the US-based rights organisation said.

It said they risk severe torture if they were returned to the North.

Most North Korean refugees begin their escape by crossing into China and then try to make it to third countries – often in Southeast Asia – where they seek asylum in the South.

If caught and returned to the North they can face severe punishment.

China regularly labels North Koreans as illegal “economic migrants” and repatriates them based on a border protocol adopted in 1986.

“By now, there are plenty of survivor accounts that reveal Kim Jong-un’s administration is routinely persecuting those who are forced back to North Korea,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

“There is no way to sugarcoat this: if this group is forced back to North Korea, their lives and safety will be at risk,” Robertson said.

More than 40 North Koreans, including children and pregnant women, have been held by China over the past nine months, Human Rights Watch said, and at least nine forcibly returned to the North.

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, more than 30,000 North Koreans have escaped – most after a deadly famine in the mid-90s – and settled in the South.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is believed to have tightened border controls since he came to power after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in December 2011.

The number of refugees arriving in South Korea plunged nearly 50 percent to 1,417 last year.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Two men abducted while hunting in southern Iraq relish their newfound freedom as they return home.}

Two Qatari hunters who endured a 16-month hostage ordeal in Iraq spoke on Sunday of their joy at being released, the first public comments since the group was freed.

Mohammed Marzouki was among 24 Qataris and two Saudis who were on a hunting trip in the Muthanna area of southern Iraq when they were kidnapped in late 2015.

They flew back to Doha on Friday following their release under a complex regional deal linked to the Syrian civil war.

“When I saw the lights of Doha, I felt like life was beginning again – my happiness is indescribable,” Marzouki told the local Arabic daily newspaper, Al-Sharq.

“My joy at returning to the homeland is a feeling that cannot be described in words.”

A fellow hostage, Khalid bin Dhafer Al Dosari, told the same newspaper “all our aches and pains disappeared once we reached our homeland”.

The hunting party, believed to include prominent members of the Qatari royal family, were captured in mid-December 2015 and held captive until they were freed on Friday.

There was never any claim of responsibility for the kidnapping of the hunters, who were widely believed to have been taken by militias with close ties to Iran.

While the terms of the group’s release have not been made public, it has been reported that Qatar paid millions in ransom to secure their freedom.

After flying home on Friday, the hunters were met at Doha’s Hamad International Airport by the country’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The release deal was linked to the evacuation of thousands of people from the Syrian government-held towns of Foua and Kefraya, long besieged by rebels.

The evacuations marked the end of the first stage of a deal brokered by rebel-backer Qatar and Syria’s ally Iran.

Citizens of Arab Gulf states often venture to countries – including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq – to hunt with falcons.

Source:Al Jazeera