Somali official says French hostage likely killed

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A Somali intelligence official says that the French intelligence agent held hostage for more than three years by Islamic militants in Somalia was likely killed by his captors during the failed rescue attempt by French commandos.
The official said Sunday that the home where the agent was held was destroyed in the attack Saturday, and that intelligence networks "do not have any information indicating he is still alive." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak to the press. He said that all sources indicated that the agent, known by his code-name Denis Allex, was killed during the attack, most likely by his captors.
The militant Islamist group al-Shabab denies Allex was killed and claims to have a wounded French soldier in custody as well.

Read More..

190 Georgian 'political' prisoners walk free

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Nearly 200 people considered political prisoners by Georgia's new parliament walked free Sunday under an amnesty strongly opposed by President Mikhail Saakashvili.
Many of the 190 prisoners had been arrested during anti-Saakashvili protests in May 2011, while others had been convicted of trying to overthrow the government or of spying for Russia. Relations with Moscow were cut off after Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008.
"This was a great shame on the country, when Saakashvili had personal convicts," said the head of parliament's human rights committee, Eka Beselia, who greeted 70 prisoners released from Gldani Prison No. 8 in Tbilisi, the capital. "The new government fulfilled its obligations before these people who had suffered for so many years in prison."
More than 3,000 other prisoners who had their sentences reduced under the amnesty will be freed in the next two months.
Saakashvili's party, which dominated Georgian politics for nine years, lost control over parliament in an October election. The new majority party in parliament also won the right to form a new government and name the prime minister, who is now in a position to challenge Saakashvili for power.
Saakashvili warned of grave consequences following the release of what he described as criminals and Russian spies. He also scolded parliament for not using the convicted spies to trade for Georgians convicted of espionage in Russia. Four Russian citizens were among the prisoners released Sunday.
Freed prisoner Dzhemal Gundiashvili, a 51-year-old engineer and father of six, was arrested during the May 2011 protests, convicted of trying to overthrow the government and sentenced to three years in prison. He said Sunday that he was repeatedly beaten in prison and had his ribs broken.
"Many intend to continue the fight so that Saakashvili's regime is held responsible for its crimes — I am not afraid of this word — for its crimes against humanity," Gundiashvili said.
Videos of prisoners being beaten and sodomized in the Gldani Prison were broadcast shortly before the parliamentary election and fed popular anger against Saakashvili's government, which has been accused of turning a blind eye to widespread abuses in Georgia's prisons.

Read More..

More than 130 nations begin mercury treaty talks

GENEVA (AP) — Delegates from more than 130 nations began a final round of negotiations on Sunday that are expected to lead to the creation of the first legally binding international treaty to reduce mercury emissions.
The treaty would set enforceable limits on the emissions of mercury, a highly-toxic metal that is widely used in chemical production and small-scale mining, particularly artisanal gold production.
Swiss diplomat Franz Perrez, whose nations helped prompt the call for the treaty, told reporters on Sunday in Geneva that "we are confident that we'll be able to conclude here this week" with a final document that nations will adopt later this year.
Fernando Lugris of Uruguay, who chairs the negotiations, said the six-day conference that has drawn almost 900 delegates and dozens of non-governmental organizations from around the world already has agreed on a draft text to be used this week for negotiations.
The U.N. environment program reported last week that mercury pollution in the top layer of the world's oceans has doubled in the past century, part of a man-made problem that will require international cooperation to fix.
The report by the U.N. Environment Program, which is helping to sponsor the treaty talks, showed for the first time that hundreds of tons of mercury have leaked from the soil into rivers and lakes around the world.
Communities in developing countries face increasing health and environmental risks linked to exposure to mercury, which comes from sources such as coal burning and the use of mercury to separate metal from ore in small-scale gold mining, the U.N. agency says.
About 70 countries are involved in so-called artisanal gold mining, putting up to 15 million miners at risk of exposure to mercury, including 3 million women and children, said David Piper of the U.N. Environment Program.
But the risk of mercury exposure in gold mining "cannot be solved through a ban," said Perrez, who called that aspect of the negotiations "a special situation" that requires a more complex approach.
Mercury concentrations pose the greatest risk of nerve damage to pregnant women, women of childbearing age and young children.
As a naturally occurring element, mercury comes from the earth's crust and, like some other elements, cannot be created or destroyed. Some natural processes, like volcano eruptions and weathering of rocks, release mercury into the environment. But about 30 percent of mercury emissions come from human causes, which the treaty would seek to reduce.
Once it gets into the land, air and water, mercury accumulates in fish and wildlife and goes up the food chain. Most of it isn't removed until ocean or lake sediments bury it, or other mineral compounds trap it.

Read More..

Violence in Northern Ireland for 3rd day over flag

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Northern Ireland police used water cannons to fend off brick-hurling protesters in Belfast on Saturday as violent demonstrations over flying the British flag stretched into a third straight day.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was investigating reports that a number of shots were fired at police lines. A 38-year-man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, police said.
More than 1,000 demonstrators marched on Belfast's city hall earlier Saturday afternoon amid a heavy police presence. While the rally passed largely without incident, police then came under attack from a mob of more than 100 people hurling bricks and fireworks. Two men were arrested, police said.
Protesters have been out in force — with sometimes violent results — since a Dec. 3 decision by Belfast City Council to stop flying the British flag year-round.
Such issues of symbolism frequently inflame sectarian passions in Northern Ireland, where Protestants mainly want to stay in the United Kingdom and Catholics want to unite with the Republic of Ireland.
Many Protestants want the council to reverse its decision about the flag, and dozens of police have been injured in ensuing demonstrations.
Saturday's flare-up followed a tense Friday night in Belfast when nine police officers were injured and 18 rioters arrested during rioting. Police said that more than 30 petrol bombs were thrown at officers, along with ball bearings, fireworks and bricks as they responded to clashes in Protestant sections of the city.
Similar clashes on Thursday saw 10 police injured in east Belfast.
The controversy has also seen death threats made against politicians.

Read More..

Man arrested after shots fired at Northern Irish police in flag riots

BELFAST (Reuters) - Northern Irish police arrested a 38-year-old man on Saturday on suspicion of attempted murder after shots were fired at police officers during protests over the removal of the British flag from Belfast City Hall.
Police used water cannon against more than 100 protesters hurling fireworks, smoke bombs and bricks in the eastern part of the city shortly after a demonstration outside City Hall calling for the flag to be reinstated on a permanent basis.
Pro-British loyalists began rioting a month ago in the most sustained violence in the city for years after a vote by mostly nationalist pro-Irish councillors to end the century-old tradition of flying the British flag from Belfast City Hall.
The violence, which stopped over Christmas, began again on Thursday and 19 police officers have been injured since then, bringing the total number of officers hurt since early December to more than 60.
Loyalists blamed Saturday's fighting on anti-British Catholic nationalists who they said attacked them first.
Militant nationalists, responsible for the killings of three police officers and two soldiers since 2009, have so far not reacted violently to the flag protests, limiting any threat to 15 years of peace in Northern Ireland.
However, Peter Robinson, the British-controlled province's first minister, said on Friday that rioters were playing into the hands of nationalist groups, who would seek to exploit every opportunity "to further their terror aims".
At least 3,600 people were killed during Northern Ireland's darkest period as Catholic nationalists seeking union with Ireland fought British security forces and mainly Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom.
The violence was mostly ended by a 1998 peace deal.

Read More..

Spanish police seize ancient plundered vase

MADRID (AP) — The owner of an antique shop in Spain was arrested after police investigators found a vase there dating back to the late second century B.C., officials said Saturday.
The antiquity had been illegally plundered from an Iberian era archeological site in the province of Alicante, an Interior Ministry statement said.
Inspectors found it in a cardboard box during a routine search of the shop in the eastern town of El Campello.
"We are not yet aware of the full importance of this discovery, but in 20 years' time we will still be talking about this vase," said Jose Luis Simon, an expert from the cultural heritage service of the Ministry of Culture.
Simon said the piece showed decorative paintwork from the Iberian era that tells the story of a hunter who had managed to kill a wild boar, one of the rituals of the time that proved a youth had attained the status of manhood.
He said that while fragments of vases from this antiquity exist in Spain, this was the first to be found whole, making it "of exceptional value."
Simon said the hunting sequences showed similarities to some found on an ancient Greek vase, known as a crater, in the Vatican museum in Rome.
The Interior Ministry said the inspectors who opened the cardboard box knew right away they were dealing with something out of the ordinary and requested technical backup.
"The technicians did not take long to arrive and issue a report confirming the vase's originality," Simon said.
He said it has been moved to the Alicante Archeological Museum for safekeeping.

Read More..

Backward step for reform in Myanmar?

Myanmar's military has stepped up attacks on ethnic Kachin rebels in recent days with airstrikes. This move calls into question efforts by the United States and other international powers to richly and quickly reward the nominally civilian regime there for a series of gestures toward political reform.
US State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday that the Obama administration is "deeply troubled" by increased violence and urged dialogue between Myanmar's government and the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army, which has been in an on again, off again, war against the central state for decades.
Simon Roughneen wrote for the Monitor yesterday that "the Myanmar Army offensive – which includes helicopter gunships and aerial bombardment – comes after weeks of heavy fighting at outposts about 10 miles outside the KIA headquarters on the Myanmar-China frontier." He then quoted Joseph Nbwi Naw, a Kachin Catholic priest in the KIA headquarters town of Laiza as saying "the situation is very tense. The bombers are bombing just about four or five miles from the town here."
Myanmar (also known as Burma) is as ethnically complex a country as they come, and while most in the West have focused on the democracy struggle of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy, there is no guarantee that any new order that emerges from a political promise, with promised free elections scheduled for 2015, will create stability or justice for its minorities. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, an ethnic Burman like most of the junta that kept Myanmar under military rule from 1962 until 2011, has been mostly silent on violence targeting the ethnic Muslim Rohingyas recently and does not appear to have spoken out on the situation involving the Kachin.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
In September, the Irrawady, a Thailand-based news organization that focuses on Myanmar, reported that Aung San Suu Kyi argued against taking a strong stand, as it could make the situation worse. "There are people who criticized me when I remained [silent] on this case," she told a Burmese group on a visit to New York. "They can do so as they are not satisfied with me. But, for me, I do not want to add fire to any side of the conflict." The Irrawady wrote: "Some critics have condemned [Aung San Suu Kyi] for staying silent on Kachin as well as the sectarian violence between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in western Burma."
In early November, I wrote about doubts over the wisdom of America's breakneck pace of normalization with Myanmar, with President Obama becoming the first US leader to ever visit the country that month.
Has there ever been faster restoration of US relations with a country it had once worked so hard to isolate, in the absence of either a US invasion or a revolution? I can't think of one. The once-maligned leaders are being brought in from the cold. The US even indicated in October that Burmese officers would be invited to the annual Cobra Gold military exercise between the US and Thailand as official observers.
The Obama administration's motivations are clear: Demonstrate the benefits of the generals’ political opening and turn toward democracy. But with the breathless rush to friendship comes a country where ethnic tensions still dominate, and ethnic violence, specifically against ethnic Rohingya Muslims, that the generals have been either unwilling or unable to stop.
... If all goes well, the Obama administration’s overture toward Myanmar will go down as a major foreign policy achievement, and more importantly signal a brighter future for Myanmar’s 48 million people. But there are challenges and pitfalls ahead, and with each concession the US and other major powers make before 2015, a potential carrot to offer for positive change is spent.
Hopefully, Obama will not have gone to Myanmar too soon.
The recent war with the Kachin is evidence of how hard it has been to build on the fruits of "dialogue" between Myanmar and armed ethnic-minorities. A 17-year cease-fire between the Kachin rebels, in northeastern Myanmar along the Chinese border, broke in June of 2011, and the results have been catastrophic. Human Rights Watch estimated that 75,000 Kachin were displaced from their homes in the fighting, recording the razing of homes, stealing of property, torture of Kachin civilians, use of civilians as slave labor, and the rape of Kachin women, all by Myanmar soldiers.
Such events have been frequent for Myanmar's ethnic minorities since shortly after independence from Britain in 1948. In February 1947, nationalist hero Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, and other nationalist leaders signed the Panglong agreement with ethnic minorities, who today make up about 40 percent of the national population. The agreement envisioned Myanmar as a federal state, with regional autonomy for ethnic minority states like Kachin, where the residents are mostly Christian and speak a language distinct from the ethnic-majority Burmans, who are mostly Buddhist.
But autonomy was never delivered, and when Aung San and six members of his cabinet were assassinated in July 1947, the stage was set for decades of conflict not just with the Kachin but other ethnic minorities like the Shan and the Wa, many living in the rugged mountains in eastern and northern Burma.
For now, the elections of 2015 are a long way away, and whether those elections will lead to a more just approach to ethnic minorities remains an open question. That Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered personally and for decades for her principled stand on democracy for Myanmar is no guarantee that she or anyone else who may come to power there will handle the country's ethnic tensions any better than their predecessors have for the past 60 years.
Holding some diplomatic and sanctions pressure in the back pocket may prove a wiser course than declaring a democracy victory in early 2013.

Read More..

US drone strike in Pakistan kills influential Taliban commander

Key Pakistani Taliban commander Maulvi Nazir – considered a "good" Taliban by some among the Pakistani military – died in a US drone strike that left at least six dead on Thursday, according to local reports.
According to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Taliban and local government officials confirm that Mr. Nazir and at least two of his deputies were killed when a US drone hit their vehicle in South Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border. The commander's truck had reportedly broken down at the time.
The Guardian notes that neither the Pakistani government nor the Taliban has made an official statement on the reports, and that details remain murky.
Because journalists are usually prevented by militants from visiting places hit by drones, the exact details of what happened and who was killed in such attacks are often extremely hard to verify.
Residents and an intelligence official in South Waziristan who spoke to a local journalist said the total number of people killed in the first attack was either six or 10. The intelligence source said all the men killed were "top leaders" of the Mullah Nazir group, the leading militant group in South Waziristan.
Recommended: How much do you know about Pakistan? Take this quiz.
Maulvi Nazir was the primary militant commander in South Waziristan and a key figure in Pakistan's Taliban, having maintained a complex set of relationships among the region's players.
Unlike some of Pakistan's domestic militants, Nazir chose to focus his efforts fully on Afghanistan and the NATO and US forces stationed there, and according to the US “had a clear collaboration” with Afghanistan's powerful Haqqani network, a primary foe of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The Washington Post notes that he was accused of regularly sending troops into Afghanistan to fight alongside the country's own Taliban against the US-led forces there.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
His Afghan focus on targeting foreign troops earned him a reputation with parts of the Pakistani military as a "good" Taliban, and he negotiated a deal with the Islamabad to stay out of its battle with domestic militants in the region. His militants have also aided Pakistani troops in attacking members of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an anti-Islamabad faction of the Taliban.
But that also earned him the hostility of some of his domestic Taliban peers. Nazir was wounded in November during a suicide attack on his convoy. Rival Taliban commanders were believed to have been behind the attack, which was said to have caused some fracturing of the Pakistani Taliban in the region.
Security analyst Imtiaz Gul told the Guardian that Nazir's death will likely be welcomed by both the US and Pakistan – despite the latter's peace deal with the late militant.
"Both the US and Pakistan will be happy because they now have one less enemy," he said. "Although he was in an undeclared peace deal with the government, he was also subverting the stated goals of that agreement by providing support and shelter to al-Qaida people whose leaders have pleaded with the rank and file of the Pakistani army to rebel against the state."

Read More..

Russia plans biggest war games since Soviet era

The Russian navy has announced that it will hold its biggest war games since Soviet times in the Mediterranean and Black seas later this month.
The ambitious exercises, which will involve ships from all four major Russian fleets, are a sign of growing confidence on the part of Russia's military as it begins to enjoy the benefits of President Vladimir Putin's huge budget allocations for renewing and re-equipping all branches of the armed forces.
The purpose of the war games will be to strengthen integration between different types of forces and gain practice with major military deployments outside Russia's immediate neighborhood, the Defense Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.
Do you know anything about Russia? A quiz.
As part of the maneuvers, naval ships will arrive at an "unprepared" coast in the Russian northern Caucasus region to take amphibious troops onto transport vessels.
"The primary goal of the exercise is to train issues regarding formation of a battle group consisting of troops of different branches outside of the Russian Federation, planning its deployment and managing a coordinated action of a joint Navy group in accordance with a common plan," the ministry's statement said.
The participating ships, it said, will be drawn from all of Russia's four major naval formations: the Northern, Baltic, Pacific, and Black Sea fleets.
Some experts suggest the war games may be cover for an increasingly nervous Moscow's preparations to evacuate Russian citizens and their dependents from war-torn Syria.
About 9,000 Russians are registered with the Russian embassy in Damascus, but some experts say the full number may be 30,000 or more. Over the nearly half a century that Moscow has enjoyed good relations with Syria, thousands of Russian women have married Syrian men and moved to the country. Many of them may urgently demand to return with their children to Russia if the situation turns critical.
This week the Russian navy refreshed a fleet, including several huge amphibious assault ships capable of carrying thousands of people, which it had deployed to the eastern Mediterranean last summer.
Experts say the replacement fleet dispatched this week is of similar makeup, with at least five huge troop-transport ships at its core.
As part of Russia's 8-year, $659-billion rearmament program, the navy is slated to receive 50 new warships by 2016, including new Borey-class nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines – the third of which entered service last weekend – 18 major surface warships, and dozens of special purpose and support vessels.

Read More..

Gerard Depardieu's latest drama: a Russian passport

Vladimir Putin flourished his pen Thursday morning and signed what must be the oddest decree of his long years in power: an order granting a Russian passport to French actor and tax exile Gerard Depardieu.
A terse announcement posted on the Kremlin website noted that Mr. Putin acted "to satisfy an application for citizenship of the Russian Federation by Gerard Xavier Depardieu, who was born in 1948 in France."
Mr. Depardieu, star of over 170 films and possessing what is often politely referred to as a "colorful" public personality, has been locked in a high profile battle with France's new socialist government over an emergency tax that would levy a 75 percent rate on people earning more than $1.3 million. He recently renounced his French citizenship and took up residence in Belgium, which offers a friendlier tax regime for the super-rich.
Recommended: Vladimir Putin 101: A quiz about Russia's president
France's high court struck down the law last week as "unconstitutional," but the government announced it will soon reintroduce the measure after taking the court's concerns into account.
It's not clear whether Depardieu actually applied for residence in Russia, which has a 13 percent flat income tax for all, but in a far-ranging press conference last month Putin declared "If Gérard really wants to have a residence permit or a Russian passport, you can consider it done, the issue solved positively."
Putin also said that he has long enjoyed "kind, friendly, personal relations" with the French actor.
COME TO CHECHNYA
Depardieu is no stranger to Russia. He has appeared in several ad campaigns and filmed the 2011 movie Rasputin in St. Petersburg. He is also rumored to be close to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, and was guest of honor at the pro-Kremlin leader's birthday party in Grozny last October.
Mr. Kadyrov has said that he would happily invite Depardieu to come and live permanently in Chechnya if he wanted to. "If the country's leadership decides in favor of granting Depardieu Russian citizenship, we will be glad to create deserved conditions for the great cultural figure in our republic," Kadyrov said last week.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
Russia's blogosphere erupted in derision and sarcastic comment Thursday, with some people writing painfully of their own troubles with Russia's notoriously bureaucratic passport department.
One man posted on Facebook his own tale of trying for years to repatriate his own Russian-born elderly mother from next-door Belarus, but he has so far failed to move Russian authorities because her Belarussian documents show a slightly different spelling of her name than appears on her Russian birth certificate.
PART OF SPAT WITH WEST?
Sergei Strokan, a foreign affairs columnist with the liberal Moscow daily Kommersant, says the granting of citizenship to Depardieu should be seen in context with the escalating war of words between Russia and the West. Last month President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which aims to punish corrupt Russian officials, and Moscow responded by enacting the Dima Yakovlev Act, whose main feature is a ban on US citizens adopting Russian orphans.
"Russia is very much on the defensive right now. The vindictive nature of Russia's adoption ban has shocked not only the US, but also many in Europe and here in Russia as well," Mr. Strokan says.
"We seem to be entering into a cold war-like battle of images, in which Russia is trying to show that it offers a better life, has higher ideals, and is more friendly to humanity than the West.... So this may be seen as a calculated PR move, an effort to demonstrate that we understand and care for the beloved French actor more than his own homeland does," he adds.
"I can't imagine that Depardieu would actually want to live here and experience the life of Russians, though. Let's see how it goes the first time he attempts to travel with that new Russian passport.

Read More..

Backward step for reform in Myanmar?

Myanmar's military has stepped up attacks on ethnic Kachin rebels in recent days with airstrikes. This move calls into question efforts by the United States and other international powers to richly and quickly reward the nominally civilian regime there for a series of gestures toward political reform.
US State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters yesterday that the Obama administration is "deeply troubled" by increased violence and urged dialogue between Myanmar's government and the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army, which has been in an on again, off again, war against the central state for decades.
Simon Roughneen wrote for the Monitor yesterday that "the Myanmar Army offensive – which includes helicopter gunships and aerial bombardment – comes after weeks of heavy fighting at outposts about 10 miles outside the KIA headquarters on the Myanmar-China frontier." He then quoted Joseph Nbwi Naw, a Kachin Catholic priest in the KIA headquarters town of Laiza as saying "the situation is very tense. The bombers are bombing just about four or five miles from the town here."
Myanmar (also known as Burma) is as ethnically complex a country as they come, and while most in the West have focused on the democracy struggle of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy, there is no guarantee that any new order that emerges from a political promise, with promised free elections scheduled for 2015, will create stability or justice for its minorities. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, an ethnic Burman like most of the junta that kept Myanmar under military rule from 1962 until 2011, has been mostly silent on violence targeting the ethnic Muslim Rohingyas recently and does not appear to have spoken out on the situation involving the Kachin.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
In September, the Irrawady, a Thailand-based news organization that focuses on Myanmar, reported that Aung San Suu Kyi argued against taking a strong stand, as it could make the situation worse. "There are people who criticized me when I remained [silent] on this case," she told a Burmese group on a visit to New York. "They can do so as they are not satisfied with me. But, for me, I do not want to add fire to any side of the conflict." The Irrawady wrote: "Some critics have condemned [Aung San Suu Kyi] for staying silent on Kachin as well as the sectarian violence between Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in western Burma."
In early November, I wrote about doubts over the wisdom of America's breakneck pace of normalization with Myanmar, with President Obama becoming the first US leader to ever visit the country that month.
Has there ever been faster restoration of US relations with a country it had once worked so hard to isolate, in the absence of either a US invasion or a revolution? I can't think of one. The once-maligned leaders are being brought in from the cold. The US even indicated in October that Burmese officers would be invited to the annual Cobra Gold military exercise between the US and Thailand as official observers.
The Obama administration's motivations are clear: Demonstrate the benefits of the generals’ political opening and turn toward democracy. But with the breathless rush to friendship comes a country where ethnic tensions still dominate, and ethnic violence, specifically against ethnic Rohingya Muslims, that the generals have been either unwilling or unable to stop.
... If all goes well, the Obama administration’s overture toward Myanmar will go down as a major foreign policy achievement, and more importantly signal a brighter future for Myanmar’s 48 million people. But there are challenges and pitfalls ahead, and with each concession the US and other major powers make before 2015, a potential carrot to offer for positive change is spent.
Hopefully, Obama will not have gone to Myanmar too soon.
The recent war with the Kachin is evidence of how hard it has been to build on the fruits of "dialogue" between Myanmar and armed ethnic-minorities. A 17-year cease-fire between the Kachin rebels, in northeastern Myanmar along the Chinese border, broke in June of 2011, and the results have been catastrophic. Human Rights Watch estimated that 75,000 Kachin were displaced from their homes in the fighting, recording the razing of homes, stealing of property, torture of Kachin civilians, use of civilians as slave labor, and the rape of Kachin women, all by Myanmar soldiers.
Such events have been frequent for Myanmar's ethnic minorities since shortly after independence from Britain in 1948. In February 1947, nationalist hero Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, and other nationalist leaders signed the Panglong agreement with ethnic minorities, who today make up about 40 percent of the national population. The agreement envisioned Myanmar as a federal state, with regional autonomy for ethnic minority states like Kachin, where the residents are mostly Christian and speak a language distinct from the ethnic-majority Burmans, who are mostly Buddhist.
But autonomy was never delivered, and when Aung San and six members of his cabinet were assassinated in July 1947, the stage was set for decades of conflict not just with the Kachin but other ethnic minorities like the Shan and the Wa, many living in the rugged mountains in eastern and northern Burma.
For now, the elections of 2015 are a long way away, and whether those elections will lead to a more just approach to ethnic minorities remains an open question. That Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered personally and for decades for her principled stand on democracy for Myanmar is no guarantee that she or anyone else who may come to power there will handle the country's ethnic tensions any better than their predecessors have for the past 60 years.
Holding some diplomatic and sanctions pressure in the back pocket may prove a wiser course than declaring a democracy victory in early 2013.

Read More..

New Constitution divides Egypt as economy falters

New constitutions are usually greeted with great fanfare. They're assumed to carry both the promise of a fresh start and signal that a chaotic transition has come to an end.
But Egypt's new constitution is something else again. Signed into law on Dec. 26 by President Mohamed Morsi, the new charter has become a symbol of a sharply divided nation. Mr. Morsi's opponents charge the passage of the constitution is not the result of a national consensus, but evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood that propelled Morsi to power intends to push its agenda over the heads of secular-leaning and liberal political opponents.
While Morsi extended an olive branch to opponents in a nationally televised speech on Dec. 26, the country is at its most sharply polarized point since longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011. Egypt is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections in about two months, and the runup to that election is more likely to exacerbate Egypt's open political wounds rather than heal them.
What will that mean? More street protests, more chaotic governance, and no short-term fixes for an economy that was weak at the time Mr. Mubarak fell and has gone from bad to worse. The Egyptian pound fell to its lowest point against the dollar in eight years this week, and the currency may say more about what happens to Egypt in the coming years than the contents of the new Constitution. Roughly 30 million of Egypt's 80 million people get by on $2 or less a day, and are heavily reliant on government subsidies. The Egyptian government spent $3 billion on its subsidized bread program alone last year.
Recommended: Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.
And with tourism in the dumps and a collapse in local and foreign investment, the government's ability to meet the most fundamental needs and demands of its citizens has been badly strained. Foreign reserves stood at about $36 billion at the start of 2011. Today, foreign reserves are at about $15 billion.
Finding a solution to Egypt's economic woes won't be easy. But for now, that issue is being pushed to the side, with a loose coalition of secular-leaning groups vowing to fight against the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda. The opposition argues that individual liberties are now threatened by the enshrining of aspects of Islamic law into the Constitution and giving Egypt's powerful military the right to detain and try civilians under some circumstances.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
Morsi promised a national dialogue this week and said "mistakes" were made in the drafting of the Constitution, but those remarks fell completely flat as a conciliatory gesture. In the past few weeks he's gotten everything he wanted and critics of the Constitution received zero concessions. Now that he has the document in hand, offers of "dialogue" are being seen as an attempt to put a magnanimous gloss on what was a bare-knuckle, winner-take-all contest that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood just won.
Leftists, so-called liberals, and Egyptians who want a secular approach to the state and Egyptian identity are furious and pondering their next moves. The Brotherhood, meanwhile, is sticking to the game plan that's made it the winner in all four elections held (two referendums, the last parliamentary election, and the presidential) since Mubarak was driven from power in February 2011: superior organization and on-the-ground mobilization.
While opponents of the Constitution pointed to low turnout in the referendum as a sign of general public dissatisfaction with the document, the Brothers have won both elections with overwhelming turnout and ones with small turnout. With the constitution set, next up are fresh parliamentary elections that the movement is going to pull out all the stops to dominate, just like it did last time.
That annulled parliamentary election has much to do with why Morsi's political opponents trust neither him nor his movement. In 2011, the Brothers loudly proclaimed that they had no intention of dominating Egyptian politics and vowed to contest only about 30 percent of the seats in the next parliament. The movement and its newly minted Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) also promised not to run a candidate for president.
But as the contours of the new Egypt started to emerge, and the prospect of a counter-revolution by military officers looked less likely, the Brothers abandoned both promises. Obviously, Morsi won the presidency. And as for Parliament, the Brother's contested 100 percent of the seats, winning almost half of them.
Now on Morsi's agenda is victory in the parliamentary election. If the Brothers can steamroll the opposition again, they'll hold the presidency, the legislature, and a Constitution written with little input from the country's secular-leaning forces.
But the real challenge is Egypt's weak economy and the increased suffering of its poor. Absent economic improvement, and soon, the turmoil of Egypt's past two years could well end up being overshadowed.

Read More..

Progress watch 2012: Smart phones, jobs returning to America, and war crimes trials

Good news is hard to find. That's partly because, no matter what the topic, there's so much distracting bad news: ongoing violence in Syria, America's allegedly imminent fiscal demise, the National Hockey League lockout. From the front page to the sports page, so little looks good.
It isn't just the cacophony of naysaying and fear that crowds out good news. It's also the nature of progress itself: Good news happens slowly. The American storytelling ethos loves narratives of overnight success, but real change isn't usually so sudden. Earlier this year, the World Bank announced that the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day – what policy wonks call "extreme poverty" – had dropped by half since 1990. That study might have been the biggest bit of good news to go overlooked this year, but consider this: Global extreme poverty was actually halved in 2010 – it took two years even to see that progress had happened.
Other highlights, too, have been subject to the long arc of incremental change. Nearly 90 percent of people globally have access to clean water, according to the World Health Organization. In Mexico, homicide rates – driven to outrageous levels in the drug wars – are down for the first time in six years.
Recommended: 2012's 'good news' stories
In The Hague, two international war criminals were found guilty in landmark rulings: the International Criminal Court convicted Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese rebel, of recruiting child soldiers. The conviction, after a two-year trial, was a first for the ICC, established a decade ago. The verdict "was the culmination of decades of hope that accountability for the most serious crimes would be achieved," says James Goldston, founding director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. "It took 10 years, but this conviction [is] an enormous accomplishment and a major step forward for international justice."
In a long-awaited verdict from a different court, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted of war crimes. He is effectively the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes. (The formal distinction goes to Karl Dönitz, who served as president of Germany for the 23 days between Hitler's suicide and the dissolution of the government after Germany's surrender in World War II.)
Not all of this year's good news comes on the heels of tragedy. In Nigeria, Egypt, and India, mobile technology is expanding entrepreneurship so quickly that small, mobile-tech-heavy businesses make up 38 percent of the gross domestic product, according to a study released earlier this year by global consultancy Booz Allen.
Americans are seeing their own mobile revolution – more than half of all Americans today use their cellphones to access the Internet, up from a third three years ago, according to the Pew Research Center. That puts the United States on the brink of a breakthrough: "Within a few years, [smart phone use] is going to be ubiquitous, and when you get that many people using smart phones, it transforms the economy, society, and politics," says Darrell West, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Indeed, technology drives much of the change seen in America, even just this year. Sales of nonpolluting electric cars are surpassing expectations. And self-driving cars are now legal in California. Google conducted the first test of its self-driving car with a passenger who was chauffeured to the dry cleaner and Taco Bell. Even this flashy moment has been slower to brew than it may seem. "This has always been one of the more popular predictions about the future people were talking about in the '60s and '70s, back when they were discussing all the other sort of wide-eyed, post-cold-war futures," says Patrick Tucker, the director of communications at the World Future Society. Beyond being wide-eyed, self-driven automobiles might make passengers safer – computers are likely eventually to be better drivers than humans, Mr. Tucker says – and transform cities. Summoning one's car from even a mile away "removes the need for designing cities on the basis of the availability of on-site parking," he says. Ordering up an automobile also makes car sharing easier, which can reduce carbon emissions, he adds.
Even traditional travel by land, sea, and air has gotten safer this year. The accidental death rate for children in the US plunged 30 percent in the past decade, led by auto safety improvements such as increased use of seat belts and booster seats and safer vehicle design, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Piracy and armed robbery at sea dropped to the lowest levels since 2009, when Somali piracy spiked, reports the International Chamber of Commerce International Maritime Bureau, which attributes the decline to improved policing by international navies and onboard security measures. And in the air, there were no major commercial airline crashes in the US in 2012, the 11th year in a row, says Todd Curtis, director of the AirSafe.com Foundation.
Election season debates overshadowed some exciting news about the economy, which may get a transforming boost from a new kind of robot: Baxter, the (comparatively) affordable factory robot from Rodney Brooks, the man who brought the world the Roomba vacuum cleaner. Tucker calls Baxter "the most unique factory robot that's ever been made" because of its dexterity. "It's about the size of an NFL linebacker, and it's got two arms [that] can pick up a whole bunch of types of objects and do a wide variety of very simple tasks," Tucker says.
"That doesn't sound ... as earthshaking as it is," he concedes. But it might be a major game changer. Most factory robots can perform a few specific tasks, and they can't easily be programmed to do something else. That's why they're seen on assembly lines for cars and appliances but not on those for toys or personal electronics, Tucker says. Baxter can handle the little items that need an update every season. And that might bring some of the manufacturing that's migrated to China back to the US.
Then again, some of that labor is already returning: This year, "reshoring" entered the lexicon as a way of talking about manufacturing jobs returning to the US, usually from China. There isn't tracking of official numbers for this, but the Reshoring Initiative estimates that 12 percent of the manufacturing jobs the economy has seen return since 2010 were from abroad.
Observers caution that the reshoring trend may be a fad; more time is needed to know for sure. That brings us back to the slow pace of progress. However maddening it may be, it is also undeniable: Things are getting better.
Recommended: 2012's 'good news' stories
"We're winning more than we're losing," says Jerome Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, a global futures research center and think tank. The project releases an annual "State of the Future" index, and this year's says that "the world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, and better connected, [and] people are living longer."
Mr. Glenn cautions that things aren't all rosy, and thumbing through any newspaper would suggest there are still plenty of world problems to make progress on. He compares it to making ice: Cooling water isn't too difficult, but turning it into ice requires serious energy. "We're at that point of going from water into ice in a sense of difficulty" of shared global challenges. It's time, he says, "to roll up our sleeves.

Read More..

Secret cremation for gang-rape victim sparks anger against Indian government

Protests became violent today in Delhi as the youth wing of the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) pelted stones at police and tried to climb over barricades following news of the secret cremation of the body of the Delhi gang rape victim.
The young woman was cremated on the outskirts of Delhi Sunday morning, in an effort to prevent the public from swarming the funeral site. However, this only increased public resentment, reaffirming the growing perception that the government was being hostile to the protests.
Recommended: Think you know Asia? Take our geography quiz.
Protests began nearly two weeks ago, after the gang-rape and brutal assault of the 23-year-old on Dec. 16, with an outpouring of anger by Indians demanding greater protection for women from sexual violence. Demonstrators marched to Raisina Hill, which houses the presidential palace. There, on the first day of demonstrations a young girl breached security and entered the palace.
As protests became more organized on Facebook and by political organizations, more people took to the streets and the relationship between protestors and police grew more strained.
One protester was filmmaker Anusha Rizvi, who witnessed left-wing groups form a circle and peacefully protest within it. “By afternoon we heard policemen announce loudly in their walkie talkies that they would start charging on the crowd. The regular police went behind and the police criss-crossed through the group of people in the circle.”
The police then charged the crowds with batons, fired tear gas and water canons. The government later said the police had little choice because the protests had become violent. However, many witnesses say the police charged on nonviolent crowds who were sitting on the road.
“I couldn’t see anything. I just heard the two cracks of a split bamboo stick on my back, butt, and thighs. Then I heard the police screaming ... and then I saw a boot kicking my knees and shin,” wrote graphic designer Sangeeta Das in a widely circulated Facebook note.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
Lokesh, an activist with the feminist organization Streemukti Sangathan, said that a few people were seen pelting stones out of frustration but the rest tried to stop them. “I don’t know who they were,” she said, “but ... the government was ignoring us and not responding to the protests.”
That the police wanted to disperse the protests and not simply respond to stray stone-pelting became clear when it also attacked media personnel and their vehicles, say observers.
“News channels had declined [a] government request to leave the site and [so] they showered our broadcast vans [with a water hose] to make us leave,” said one journalist on condition of anonymity. Another journalist was injured when a tear gas shell exploded near her. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry later issued an “advisory” asking news channels to show restraint with their reporting, threatening action if they didn’t.
Metro stations in central Delhi were closed for nearly a week. India Gate and Raisina Hill were cordoned off from most traffic.
“This is how the government handles public protest across India, even firing directly at protestors and killing them,” says political scientist Nivedita Menon. “Be it agitations against nuclear plants or land grabs, this is the language of the government,” she says echoing the views of many Indians as the protest movement has become as much about police repression as it has been about the safety of women.
TO QUELL POPULAR ANGER
The government has appointed a special commission designed to give recommendations on how to keep women safe and has made various statements to assuage public anger to little avail.
“The government didn’t have to take the burden of guilt in this case, it could have shared people’s grief,” says political commentator Ajoy Bose, adding that since the anticorruption protests of 2011 the government has showed it has become scared of demonstrations. “There is a huge disconnect between the government and the people, the government no longer knows how to interact,” he said adding that that, too, has angered Indians.
Barkha Dutt, editor of the NDTV news channel, tweeted, ”From day one the government needed to (and didn't) show Compassion, Communication and Commonsense. Now their attempts seem forced, puny, insincere.”
Still, say some, directing anger at the government is misplaced. “The protestors are taking the easy way out by blaming government apathy. The state only reflects a deeply misogynistic society – the protestors need to look within, not without,” said columnist Mihir Sharma.

Read More..

UN envoy: Without deal in Syria, think Somalia not Yugoslavia

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
After a week of attempting to craft a peace plan that both President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian opposition would agree to, the United Nations' envoy to Syria said the situation will not stabilize on its own and that a political deal is no closer.
“People are talking about a divided Syria being split into a number of small states like Yugoslavia,” Lakhdar Brahimi said, according to The New York Times. “This is not what is going to happen. What will happen is Somalization – warlords."
“The situation is bad and it’s getting worse,” Brahimi also said, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. “I can’t see anything other than these two paths: Either there will be a political solution that will meet the ambitions and legitimate rights of the Syrian people, or Syria will turn into hell.”
He warned that the violence could claim as many as 100,000 lives in 2013.
Recommended: Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.
According to the New York Times, Mr. Assad did not respond to Mr. Brahimi's proposals and a Syrian opposition leader declined an invitation to Moscow to meet with Russian officials. Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said Assad could not be convinced to leave the country, which the opposition has insisted is a precondition for talks.
Speaking about the yawning gap that has to be bridged for the two sides to sit down for talks, CNN reports that Brahimi said, "The Syrians disagree violently. On one side, the government says we are doing our duty to protect our people from ... terrorists. On the other side, they say the government is illegitimate," Brahimi said. "They are not talking about the same problem. They are talking about two different problems."
Brahimi's comments came the day after what CNN said might be the bloodiest day in the uprising – on Dec. 29, at least 399 people were killed.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
According to Reuters, Mr. Lavrov pinned the blame for continuing violence on the opposition, even though the US, European countries, and most Arab states back the opposition's demand that Assad's removal from power come first.
"When the opposition says only Assad's exit will allow it to begin a dialogue about the future of its own country, we think this is wrong, we think this is rather counterproductive," he said. "The costs of this precondition are more and more lives of Syrian citizens."
But the Syrian opposition's calculus has changed over the last couple months. A string of victories has made it optimistic abut winning the war in the end, and therefore less flexible in negotiations, according to Reuters.
REGIME STILL HAS STRENGTH
But despite their recent success, "the government still has the bigger arsenal and a potent air force. It controls most of the densely populated southwest of Syria, the Mediterranean coast, most of the main north-south highway and military bases countrywide," Reuters notes.
Russia appears to be making an effort to secure a meeting, agreeing to meet the opposition representative outside of Russia if he insists. Bloomberg reports that, according to RIA Novosti, the foreign ministry said talks could be held in Geneva or Cairo instead.
Meanwhile, Brahimi is rapidly losing ground support in Syria, Reuters reports.
The envoy's credibility with the rebels appears to have withered. In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up banners ridiculing Brahimi with English obscenities.
"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," the rebel chief in Aleppo province, Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, said on Friday.

Read More..

Obama's pivot to Asia? Middle East will still demand attention in 2013.

Nearly four years ago, President Barack Obama addressed a packed, enthusiastic crowd at Cairo University and promised a "new beginning" between the United States and the Muslim world.
In that speech, Mr. Obama outlined a vision for a new era of economic cooperation in the Middle East, one of steadfast US support for democracy, and of reset priorities.
"I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect," he said then.
While Obama ended the war in Iraq on a schedule provided to him by his predecessor, George W. Bush, many of the promises in that speech went unfulfilled. The Guantánamo Bay military prison was never closed. Progress on peace between Palestinians and Israelis was not made. The promised economic development of Afghanistan, beset by a war that Obama now looks set to end in 2014, never took root.
Recommended: Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.
Nevertheless, four years later, he's got his new beginning – not by his own hand, and not the one he would have either imagined or wanted when he made his series of stirring promises in Cairo.
The self-immolation and death of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia in December 2010 led to the sharpest change in the politics of the Middle East since the 1960s. The events of the past year in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Libya have cemented a radical new reality that Obama will have to contend with in his second term.
Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now
For all the talk of a US strategic "pivot" to Asia, a dramatically changed Middle East looks set to suck up a huge portion of American diplomatic energy and attention in the coming years. Old, comfortable patterns of dealing with regional dictators like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have been severely disrupted. Islamists, long feared by the US, have since won power in free elections in Egypt and Tunisia, and are among those fighting the secular regime in Syria.
SYRIA'S DENOUEMENT
In Syria, the civil war has claimed more than 40,000 lives, and there are threats to US interests in both the demise of Bashar al-Assad's regime there, if it comes, and in his survival. As this year draws to a close, the US has edged closer to full-fledged support for elements of the uprising against Mr. Assad even as it labeled one of the opposition's most effective fighting groups, the jihadi Jabhat al-Nusra, a foreign terrorist organization.
The denouement there, when it comes, could well have destabilizing ripples for neighboring Lebanon and Iraq. Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles are a reality that can't be ignored, and the prospect of those weapons falling into the hands of jihadi groups has the Obama administration drawing up contingency plans for possible intervention.
Israel, while it's had a long cold war with Assad's Syria and continues to occupy the Golan Heights, nevertheless is frightened by the prospect of yet another Sunni Islamist regime, rather than a secular nationalist one, on its doorstep.
TROUBLES AT HOME FOR ISRAEL
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also moving into new, dangerous waters. The so-called peace process that began with the Oslo Accords in 1993 has petered out completely. In 2009, Obama called for an end to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and early in his presidency leaned hard on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for at least a temporary freeze. But expansion has continued unabated, and the Obama administration appears to have lost interest in pressing the issue.
In the West Bank, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been weakened by his failure to negotiate an end to the encroaching Israeli settlements, and in Gaza the Islamist movement Hamas remains as entrenched as ever.
In November, Israel was a hairbreadth away from an invasion of Gaza that was only avoided at the last minute by a negotiated cease-fire. A key figure in heading off that crisis was Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood stalwart whom the US turned to as intermediary with Hamas.
BROTHERLY RELATIONS
The rise to power of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt captures the peril for the US of this new beginning. Mr. Morsi was elected in a free election, but the country's new constitution, which is set to pass a referendum this month, is filled with alarming elements in terms of personal freedoms and minorities' rights.
The state of that country's economy has deteriorated sharply thanks to the political turmoil of the past two years, with clashes in Cairo between supporters of Morsi and his opponents in November being the latest reminder that the authoritarian stability of the Mubarak years has been replaced by something fluid and hard to predict.
Many of the Egyptian liberals and secularists who listened to Obama's Cairo speech so appreciatively now grumble that he's backing the Brothers as they seek to cement their power and influence over the country. In the year ahead, and beyond, Obama will have to weigh criticism of Egyptian suppression of civil liberties on the one hand against a desire for Egyptian cooperation in keeping Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, contained in Gaza.
There are still other shoes to drop in the region. Libya is struggling to create a new order after decades of one-man rule by Muammar Qaddafi, with weapons smuggling rife along its desert borders and sharp clashes there still to be worked out over the role of Islam in the country's political life. In Bahrain, a close US ally and home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, a Sunni monarchy is contending with the simmering political discontent of the country's Shiite majority, which is challenging Obama's earlier assertion of a personal commitment to advocating "governments that reflect the will of the people."
EAST OF THE MIDDLE EAST
The one constant from four years ago is hardly reassuring: the slow, steady progress of Iran's nuclear program. Obama has spearheaded an effort among Western governments to financially isolate Iran, with restrictions on its oil sales and the financial transactions of its central bank, which have taken a heavy toll on Iran's economy but have done little to lessen the commitment of Ayatollah Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, to what he insists is a peaceful nuclear program.
For now, Iran continues to insist on its right to nuclear enrichment, which the US argues is producing material that could be eventually used in a nuclear bomb.
RELATED – Bomb Iran? Why 5 top Israeli figures don't want to do it
The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is as fraught as ever. Yes, Osama bin Laden was killed in a daring raid in Pakistan by US troops in 2011. But, notwithstanding billions of dollars in annual US aid, that country continues to provide a home to militants, and Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor who helped the US track Mr. bin Laden to his compound in Abbottabad, remains in a Pakistani jail.
In Afghanistan, the Army is completely reliant on US financing and technical support to operate, and the Taliban appear no weaker than they did when Obama took office.
As the Obama administration looks ahead to 2013 and its new challenges, it is looking over a Middle East landscape transformed from four years ago. The old ways of doing business in the region aren't going to work anymore. How Obama must miss them.

Read More..

Bomb kills Afghan provincial police chief

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan police say a roadside bombing has killed the police chief of a southern province. A police official in Nimroz province, Obaidullah, says the attack took place on Monday morning in the western province of Herat. Obaidullah, like many Afghans, only goes by one name. He says the vehicle with the chief of Nimroz province struck a bomb while driving back from Herat. The police chief, Gen. Mohammad Musa Rasouli, was seriously wounded in the blast and rushed to the hospital, where he died of his wounds. Rasouli was going back to his job to Nimroz after a short break in Herat province.

Read More..

Gov't: Building felled by NZ quake poorly built

SYDNEY (AP) — A six-story office building that collapsed and killed 115 people in New Zealand's devastating earthquake last year was poorly designed by an inexperienced engineer, inadequately constructed and should never have been issued a building permit, a government report said Monday. The Canterbury Television (CTV) building crumbled to the ground during the 6.1-magnitude earthquake that rocked Christchurch on Feb. 22, 2011. The building's collapse was responsible for nearly two-thirds of the 185 deaths from the quake. Monday's report was the final release from the government-ordered commission that spent months investigating the buildings damaged in the quake. Findings the commission released in February concluded that the CTV building was made of weak columns and concrete and did not meet standards when it was built in 1986. The building's designer contested those findings. Prime Minister John Key said building failures were responsible for 175 of the 185 deaths from the quake. "We owed it to them, their loved ones left behind, and those people badly injured in the earthquake, to find answers as to why some buildings failed so severely," Key said in a statement. The report found several deficiencies in the CTV building's engineering design and said the city council should never have issued the building a permit because the design did not comply with the standards at the time. The commission also concluded that there were problems with the building's construction. The commission blamed the engineers from Alan Reay Consultants Ltd. for developing an inadequate and noncompliant design and city officials for not noticing the problems. The report said the structural design was completed by engineer David Harding, who had no experience designing multistory buildings like the CTV and was "working beyond his competence." Yet Harding never sought assistance from his boss, Alan Reay. The report blamed Reay for leaving Harding to work unsupervised, despite knowing that Harding lacked experience. The report also found that Reay pressured city officials to approve the building despite them having some reservations about it. Harding's lawyer, Michael Kirkland, said neither he nor his client had read through the report so they couldn't comment. Reay also declined to comment. Mary-Anne Jackson, who fled the building seconds before it collapsed with a deafening boom, said she and other CTV workers had long felt unsafe in the building. She said it shook when trucks drove by and there were cracks in the walls. Jackson hopes Reay and others involved in the building's design and construction will face criminal charges. "I want justice and accountability," Jackson told The Associated Press. "It's just devastating and it just never goes away. It's always there and I'll take it to the grave with me." The commission noted that the building had been issued a "green sticker" following a magnitude-7.0 earthquake in September 2010, signaling authorities had given it the thumbs-up for people to continue using it. An investigation by the AP last year found that inspection checks routinely used across the world to verify the safety of buildings following earthquakes fail to account for how well those buildings will withstand future quakes. The AP found that building occupants and public officials in Christchurch did not understand that a "green sticker" doesn't mean the building has undergone a thorough analysis of its structural health, nor that it will stay intact during future quakes. The commission's report found that the CTV building was given a green sticker after being inspected by just three building officials, none of whom was an engineer. The commission recommended that in the future, only trained building safety evaluators be authorized to inspect buildings after earthquakes, and that government agencies should research how to account for aftershocks. Maan Alkaisi, whose wife Maysoon Abbas died in the building's collapse, praised the commission for its thorough investigation. "Now we know that there were many design deficiencies in the CTV building and we know who was responsible for these design deficiencies and why," Alkaisi told the AP. "I don't want to see this happening again, so we have to make sure that the recommendation made by the royal commission is adopted, that much better building standard is adopted and much better engineering practice is also adopted." Brian Kennedy, whose wife Faye died when the building fell, said the report had brought him a measure of closure and that he was not interested in punishing the engineers or construction team involved.

Read More..

No sign of imminent rocket launch in North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea held off launching a long-range rocket Monday, the first day of a 13-day window during a frigid, snowy stretch of winter weather, a day after announcing it may delay the controversial liftoff. Pyongyang had made a surprise announcement earlier this month that it would launch a rocket mounted with a satellite one morning between Monday and Dec. 22, its second attempt this year. The North Koreans called it a peaceful bid to advance its space program, and a last wish of late leader Kim Jong Il. However, the U.S., Japan and other nations see it as an illicit test of missile technology, and have warned North Korea to cancel the launch — or face a new wave of sanctions. There was no indication that the launch at a west coast site in North Korea's northwest took place Monday, South Korean officials said. Experts in Seoul and Tokyo speculated that technical glitches may have forced scientists to postpone the launch of the finicky three-stage rocket, its fourth attempt since 1998. Early Sunday, a spokesman from North Korea's Korean Committee for Space Technology told state-run media that scientists were considering "readjusting" the timing of the launch. He did not elaborate. Temperatures in the nearby border city of Sinuiju, 35 miles (50 kilometers) to the north, dropped to minus-13 C (8.6 F) during the launch window, and the Korean Peninsula has been seized by early winter storms and unusually cold weather, the Korean Meterological Agency said in Seoul. Engineers can launch a rocket when it's snowing, but lightning, strong wind and freezing temperatures have the potential to stall liftoff, said Lee Chang-jin, an aerospace professor at Seoul's Konkuk University. Snow covered the site last week, according to commercial satellite imagery taken by GeoEye on Dec. 4 and shared with The Associated Press by the 38 North and North Korea Tech websites. The road from the main assembly building to the launch pad showed no fresh tracks, indicating that the snowfall may have stalled the preparations. Still, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Monday that his government would maintain vigilance. Tokyo has mobilized its military to intercept any debris from the rocket. "At this moment, we are keeping our guard up," Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto told reporters Monday. "We have not seen any objective indication that would cause us to make any change to our preparedness." In addition to three failed launches, North Korea has unveiled missiles designed to target U.S. soil and has tested two atomic bombs in recent years. It has not yet proven to have mastered the technology for mounting a nuclear warhead to a long-range missile. A successful launch would mean North Korea could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland within two to three years, said Chong Chol-Ho, a weapons of mass destruction expert at the private Sejong Institute near Seoul. Six-nation negotiations to offer North Korea much-needed aid in exchange for nuclear disarmament have been stalled since early 2009. The announcement of a North Korean rocket launch also sparked concern in regional capitals due to the timing: South Korea and Japan hold key elections this month, President Barack Obama begins his second term in January, and China has just formed a new leadership. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was deeply concerned, and urged foreign ministers from NATO and Russia to demand that Pyongyang cancel its plans. Moscow joined calls on Pyongyang to reconsider. China, North Korea's main ally and aid provider, also noted its concern, acknowledging North Korea's right to develop its space program but urging Pyongyang to harmonize the bid with restrictions — including those set by the U.N. Security Council. North Korea, however, may have its own reasons for launching a rocket in snowy December. The country will be marking the first anniversary on Dec. 17 of the 2011 death of Kim Jong Il. However, international pressure and the prospect of dialogue may be a factor in the delay, analysts in Seoul said. China must have sent a "very strong" message calling for the North to cancel the launch plans, said analyst Baek Seung-joo of the South Korean state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. North Korea may also be holding off if the U.S., its longtime Korean War foe, actively engages Pyongyang in dialogue, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul's Dongguk University.

Read More..

Taliban attack Pakistan police station, kill 6

BANNU, Pakistan (AP) — Taliban militants armed with a rocket, hand grenades and automatic weapons attacked a police station in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing six people, police said. The attack occurred in the city of Bannu, which serves as a gateway to the North Waziristan tribal area, the main sanctuary for Taliban and al-Qaida militants in Pakistan. The city has been hit by repeated attacks over the year. The militants began the attack by firing a rocket at the gate of the police station and tossing hand grenades, triggering a battle with police last lasted over an hour, said senior police officer Wagar Ahmed. Three policemen and three civilians were killed in the attack, said Ahmed. The civilians were coming out of a nearby mosque when they were shot by the militants. Eight people were wounded, including three policemen and five civilians. Three militants were killed during the attack and one escaped. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to The Associated Press from an undisclosed location.

Read More..