Sunday, June 16, 2013

Deadly bombing targets Afghan court staff




A suicide car bomber has struck a bus carrying employees of Afghanistan's top court in Kabul, killing at least 17 people and wounding 40 others, officials say.
Women and children were among the victims in Tuesday's blast, the interior ministry said.
General Mohammad Zahir, the ministry's head of criminal investigations, said the bomber detonated his vehicle after targeting the bus carrying Supreme Court staff near the US embassy.
The blast happened on the main road to the international airport, a few hundred metres from the US embassy gates. The gates are quite a distance from the actual embassy building and also from nearby NATO headquarters.
The area has a number of military facilities belonging to the US-led coalition.
"The target was tree minivans full of Supreme Court employees. Eyewitnesses told us there were deaths at the site itself," said.
"Security forces cordoned off the site and were concerned about a lot of other vehicles already parked in the neighbourhood. A lot of windows were blown out of apartments surrounding the area."
Several Taliban fighters were killed on Monday after launching a gun and grenade attack on military buildings near Kabul airport's perimeter fence.
The response from Afghan security forces was widely praised as a sign of their growing professionalism as they take over responsibility from 100,000 US-led foreign combat troops who will pull out by the end of next year.
Kabul also came under attack on May 24, when the Taliban launched a coordinated suicide and gun assault on a compound of the International Organisation for Migration.

China sends three astronauts into space


China's latest manned spacecraft blasted off with three "taikonauts" onboard on a 15-day mission to an experimental space lab.
The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, atop a Long March 2 rocket, was launched on Tuesday from a remote site in the Gobi desert. The event that was carried live on state television.
Once in orbit, the craft will dock with the trial laboratory Tiangong [Heavenly Palace] 1. The crew - two men and one woman - will then carry out tests on the module's systems in the latest step towards the development of a space station.
They are also set to give a lecture to students back on earth.
China successfully carried out its first manned docking exercise with Tiangong 1 last June, a milestone in an effort to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space station that can house people for long periods.
'Glorious and sacred'
President Xi Jinping oversaw the latest launch. He addressed the crew before blast-off and hailed the mission as "glorious and sacred", according to state media.
This mission will be the longest time Chinese have spent in space, and marks the second mission for lead crewmember Nie Haisheng. 
It is China's fifth manned space mission since 2003. China also plans an unmanned moon landing and the deployment of a rover, as a pretext to sending a man to the moon after 2020.

Japanese forces' name and role to change




A thousand members of Japan's security force are preparing to take part in joint drills with US Marines.
The exercises are taking place at a time of growing tension in the region - with Japan suggesting it could officially reinstate its military for the first time since the end of the second world war.
General Shigeru Iwasaki, chief of Japan's defence staff, said that changing the name of the country's Self Defence Forces would free it from constitutional restraints that have kept it from responding fast enough or striking in case of threats.
"When you look at the instability factors that exist around us, for example, China has been increasing its military spending by more than 10 percent year on year. Their armament has grown to become a significant power," Iwasaki said.
Al Jazeera's Steve Chao was given exclusive access to the elite unit taking part in the war games in Yokosuka.

Muslim jailed for Myanmar violence


A Muslim man has been sentenced to 26 years in prison in Myanmar for an attack on a Buddhist woman that triggered a bout of religious violence last month.
The man, who was described by state media as a 48-year-old drug addict, was convicted in a court in Lashio of intent to kill, assault and drug use, a police source told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
The 24-year-old victim, a petrol vendor, suffered burns in the attack, which provoked Buddhist-Muslim riots in the town that left at least one person dead and saw a mosque and orphanage burned.
The violence last month followed a serious spate of attacks in March, where dozens of people were killed in central Myanmar, and thousands of homes were set ablaze.
Ten Muslims have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years in connection with the March violence in the central town of Meiktila. No Buddhists are yet known to have been convicted.
Communal unrest last year in the western state of Rakhine left about 200 people dead and 140,000 displaced, mainly Rohingya Muslims.

Facebook and Microsoft reveal data requests


Several internet companies have struck an agreement with the US government to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive, two sources familiar with the discussions told the Reuters news agency.
Facebook became the first to release aggregate numbers of requests, saying in a blogpost that it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data in the second half of 2012, covering 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts.
The company said it released the information after reaching a deal about disclosures with US national security authorities.

"These requests run the gamut - from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat," Facebook said in its blogpost on Friday.

Microsoft Corp said later on Friday that for the last six months of 2012 it received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from local, state and federal US governmental entities.

'Tiny fraction'

Facebook is quick to point out that these cover "only a tiny fraction of one percent" of its 1.1 billion active user accounts.

"We will continue to be vigilant in protecting our users’ data from unwarranted government requests, and we will continue to push all governments to be as transparent as possible."

The agreements underscore the pressure imposed on the US government and internet companies after news leaked last week of a controversial National Security Agency programme involving surveillance of foreigners.

The disclosure of that programme triggered concern about the scope and extent of the information-gathering exercise.

Other internet companies are expected to release numbers of government requests without revealing how many originate from the National Security Agency, the sources said.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft have publicly urged the US government to allow them to reveal the number and scope of the surveillance requests they receive, including confidential requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Google declined to comment.

Nelson Mandela 'recovering well' from infection


Nelson Mandela, the ailing former South African president and anti-apartheid hero, is recovering well from a lung infection which has kept him in a serious condition in hospital for a week, his grandson says.
The comment by Mandla Mandela on Saturday was the latest indication that the health of 94-year-old grandfather, South Africa's first black president, was showing signs of improvement.
Mandela has been receiving visits from family members after he was rushed to hospital a week ago with a recurrence of lung problems.
"Madiba is recovering very well and looks good," Mandla Mandela said in Qunu, a village in the Eastern Cape province where Mandela was born and spent his early years.
Speaking in Xhosa at a funeral of another relative, Mandla used the clan name 'Madiba' by which Mandela is popularly known.
"I thank the nation and the world for the prayers for Madiba, and the doctors and the office of the ANC for keeping the family updated," he said.
South Africa's government said on Thursday that Mandela was continuing to recover but his condition remained serious.
Mandela's hospitalisation is his fourth since December and has reinforced growing awareness among South Africa's 53 million people that they will one day have to say goodbye to the father of the "Rainbow Nation" created from the ashes of apartheid.
Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to his time at the windswept Robben Island prison camp near Cape Town. He was released in 1990 after 27 years behind bars and went on to serve as president from 1994 to 1999.

Iraqi al-Qaeda chief rejects Zawahiri orders


Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq has rejected orders from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group's global chief, to break up his group's claimed union with the Jabhat al-Nusra, an armed Islamist group in Syria, according to a new audio message.
The purported remarks by head of Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the message posted on jihadist forums on Saturday indicate tensions between ISI and al-Qaeda's central command.
In April, Baghdadi announced that ISI had merged with Syria's Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra Front.
Al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani acknowledged a relationship between the two groups, but he denied there had been a merger and publicly pledged his allegiance to Zawahiri.
In Saturday's message, the man identified as Baghdadi said "the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant will remain, as long as we have a vein pumping or an eye blinking. It remains and we will not compromise nor give it up".
"It remains, and we will not compromise; we will not give up [...] until we die."
Baghdadi had "made a mistake" by announcing a merger "without consulting us", he said.
The merger plan has been "damaging to all jihadists", Zawahiri said, adding that "Al-Nusra Front is an independent branch of Al-Qaeda".
But the message on Saturday said: "When it comes to the letter of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri - may God protect him - we have many legal and methodological reservations."
After consulting with the consultative council of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [...] I chose the order of God over the orders that contravenes Allah in the letter.
The audio message could not immediately be independently verified.
Al-Nusra Front, created in January 2012, joined al-Qaeda last December on a US list of foreign terrorist organisations.
An al-Nusra front member in Syria, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera that following the release of Zawahiri's letter, many members of ISI rejoined al-Nusra, particularly in the province of Deir Ezzor.
He said this new audio recording causes further division and confusion among those fighting on the ground.
"Defying the orders of Zawahiri is a black dot on Baghdadi's career", he said.
Among elements fighting to oust the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, al-Nusra is one of the best armed and most successful on the battlefield. It has carried out some of the deadliest attacks in the uprising, claiming responsibility for several suicide bombings.

Syrian warplanes hit Damascus suburbs




Syrian artillery and warplanes have hit rebel-held areas of Damascus, as Russia has warned against any attempt to establish a no-fly zone over the country.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, said jets and artillery had attacked Jobar, a battered district where rebels operate on the edge of central Damascus, on Saturday.
It said heavy artillery was also shelling opposition fighters in the provinces of Homs, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor.
Fighting was also reported around dawn on the outskirts of the Palestinian Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, which also came under regime fire along with southern Al-Hajar al-Aswad.
Outside the capital, loyalist troops fired mortar rounds at several areas including western Moadamiyet al-Sham, southern Sbeineh and the region of Wadi Barada, northwest of Damascus.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, however, said on Saturday that any attempt to establish a no-fly zone using F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defence missile systems from Jordan would "violate international law".
"You don't have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov  told a news conference with his Italian counterpart in Moscow.
Western diplomats said on Friday the United States was considering a no-fly zone over Syria, but the White House said later that it would be far harder and costlier to set one up there than it was in Libya in 2011, stressing that the United States had no national interest in pursuing that option.
Lavrov also scoffed at suggestions that Assad's regime would use chemical weapons now in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels.
"The regime doesn't have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons, moreover at such a small quantity?" he said.

Rouhani wins Iran's presidential election




Moderate Hassan Rouhani has secured more than 50 percent of the Iran presidential ballot to win the election, the Interior minister has said. 
In a statement, reported by the Iranian media on Saturday, the president-elect hailed his election as a "victory of moderation over extremism.
"This victory is a victory for wisdom, moderation and maturity... over  extremism," Rouhani, who was backed by reformists, said.
Interior minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar told a press conference earlier that Rouhani had won Iran's presidential election with more than 18 million of the votes.
Najjar said 72 percent of the 50 million eligible Iranians had turned out to vote, and that Rouhani had secured just over the 50 percent of the vote needed to avoid a run-off.
Rouhani's closest rival, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, garnered six million votes, less than 16 percent. Other candidates close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, including current nuclear negotiator Rouhani Jalili, scored even lower.
Khamenei congratulated Rouhani and the Iranian people on the the presidential election win, the website leader.ir reported.
"I urge everyone to help the president-elect and his colleagues in the government, as he is the president of the whole nation," he said.
Civil rights charter
Al Jazeera's Soraya Lennie, reporting from Tehran, said that all Rouhani needed was 50 percent plus one vote in order to avoid a run-off.
"Everybody was predicting a very close race and that this would end in a run-off between Rouhani and Qalibaf," our correspondent said.
The outcome will not soon transform Iran's long tense relations with the West, call into question its disputed pursuit of nuclear power or lessen its support of Syria's president in the civil war there - matters of national security that remain the domain of Khamenei.
But the president runs the economy and wields important influence in decision-making and Rouhani's meteoric rise could offer latitude for a thaw in Iran's foreign relations and more social freedoms at home after eight years of confrontation and repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Though an establishment figure, Rouhani is a former chief nuclear negotiator known for his nuanced, conciliatory approach.
He has pledged to promote a policy of "constructive interaction with the world" and to enact a domestic "civil rights charter".
Crowds celebrate
Tens of thousands of jubilant Iranians took to the streets of Tehran, toting pictures of 64-year-old Rowhani and chanting pro-reform slogans as news of his victory spread.
At the last presidential election in 2009, the jubilation of crowds sensing a reformist victory in Tehran turned to shock and
anger after results showed Ahmadinejad had won, a result opposition leaders said was rigged. Security forces crushed the protests and authorities insisted the result was fair.
This time, Iranian authorities and the candidates themselves, including Rouhani, discouraged large street rallies to forestall any possible flare-up of violent instability in the sprawling OPEC member state of 75 million people.
Leading world figures spoke highly of the new president-elect.
Britain's former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who dealt with Rouhani during nuclear negotiations from 2003 to 2005, called him a "very experienced diplomat and politician".
"What this huge vote of confidence in Dr Rouhani appears to show is a hunger by the Iranian people to break away from the arid and self-defeating approach of the past and for more constructive relations with the West," he said before Rouhani's victory was declared.
"On a personal level I found him warm and engaging. He is a strong Iranian patriot and he was tough, but fair to deal with and always on top of his brief."

Ahmadinejad still has about a month and a half of his presidency left and then Rouhani will be sworn in.

Turkish police clear Istanbul sit-in




Riot police have fired tear gas and water cannon at protesters in Istanbul's Taksim Square and Gezi Park, dispersing them just hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a Sunday deadline for those occupying the park to leave or face eviction.
Lines of police backed by armoured vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the centre of the city on Saturday as officers stormed the adjoining Gezi Park, where protesters had been camped in a ramshackle settlement of tents for more than two weeks.
Residents in surrounding neighbourhoods took to their balconies or leant out of windows banging pots and pans, while car drivers sounded their horns in support of the protesters.
Several people were brought out of the park on stretchers as ambulances waited to receive them.
Earlier, PM Erdogan addressed a rally of thousands of supporters in the capital Ankara.
"We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country's security forces know how to evacuate it," he said.
Erdogan flexed his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party's muscles in the rally organised hours after sit-in protesters in Gezi Park rebuked the government’s calls for them to leave their position.
Turkey has been in turmoil since late May after a sit-in protest against an urban development project in the heart of Istanbul transformed into
In the AK Party rally in Ankara, the prime minister also accused "a network of treachery" of being responsible for the unrest that has gripped the country for more than two weeks.
Erdogan said that the protests are not about the environment, as those in Taksim Square say, but are part of a plot "coordinated inside and outside" Turkey.
"I will reveal this network of treachery with the documents proving [it]," he said.
He blamed the protesters for vandalism both towards AK Party buildings and public property. He also accused the protesters of attacking women wearing headscarves and entering mosques with their shoes on.
Reporting from Ankara, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said that Erdogan was very defiant in his speech, lashing out at protesters. "Now we have to wait the reaction of the protesters at Gezi Park to Erdogan’s ultimatum," our correspondent said.
Erdogan's ruling party has organised a series of rallies in Ankara and Istanbul this weekend in order to show the support he continues to enjoy. The rally in Ankara on Saturday was entitled "Respect for the National Will".
The prime minister frequently makes remarks about his party's legitimacy and the fact that it won 50 percent of the votes in 2011 elections, referring to "the ballot box" as the base of democracy.
Sit-in action continues
Meanwhile, in Gezi Park itself, protesters have refused to vacate the siteof the sit-in despite a call from the president
for them to withdraw and a pledge from Erdogan to wait for a final court verdict to decide on the urban development project that ignited the protests in the first place.
"We will continue our resistance in the face of any injustice and unfairness taking place in our country," the Taksim Solidarity group, seen as most representative of the protesters, said in a statement on Saturday.
The decision came a day after Erdogan met with members of the group, along with artists and actors.
President Abdullah Gul, who has struck a more conciliatory tone than Erdogan throughout the protests, has called on the protesters to return home.
"The fact that negotiation and dialogue channels are open is a sign of democratic maturity,” he said via his Twitter account.
Following the meeting with protesters early on Friday, Erdogan accepted to delay the redevelopment of Gezi Park pending a court decision on its legality. He also said a referendum would be held to determine the park's fate, even if the court ruled in favour of re-development.
Earlier on Saturday, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), called on the government to respect the decision taken by the sit-in protesters at Gezi Park to continue their action.
"The youths have taken the decision to go on with their sit-in protest. They have been discussing [to continue or not] for a while. We have to respect their decision as it is supposed to be in democracies," Kilicdaroglu, who met foreign media members at a hotel in Istanbul, said, stressing that in his opinion the sit-in action is legal. 

Egypt cuts diplomatic ties with Syria:President Mohamed Morsi


Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's president, has announced that Egypt is cutting off diplomatic relations with Syria and has ordered that Damascus Embassy in Cairo to be closed.
Morsi told thousands of supporters in a rally held on Saturday that his government is also withdrawing the Egyptian charge d'affaires from Damascus.
Morsi also called on Lebanon's Hezbollah armed group to leave Syria, where the group has been fighting alongside troops loyal to embattled President Bashar al-Assad against the rebel forces.
"We stand against Hezbollah in its aggression against the Syrian people," Morsi said. "Hezbollah must leave Syria - these are serious words. There is no space or place for Hezbollah in Syria."
The Egyptian president also called on the international community to implement a no-fly zone over Syria, where the UN says that more than 93,000 people have been killed since a popular uprising escalated into civil war more than two years ago.
The rally that Morsi addressed on Saturday was called for by hardline Islamists loyal to the Egyptian president to show solidarity with the people of Syria. However, Morsi also used the occasion to warn his opponents at home against the use of violence in mass protests planned for June 30, the anniversary of his assumption to power.
Morsi repeated the allegation that Egyptians loyal to the now-ousted regime of autocrat Hosni Mubarak were behind the planned protests and that they were working against the January 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.
"Some who are delusionary want to pounce on the January revolution and think that they can undermine the stability that is growing daily or undermine the resolve that people have clearly forged with their will,'' he said.

At least 22 killed Siege ends after attacks in Pakistan's Quetta



The first explosion happened on a bus near the campus of the Sardar Bahadur Khan Women's University, with a bomb hidden in the vehicle, reports said.
The second blast struck the casualty ward of the Bolan Medical Complex, and firing continued in the aftermath. At least eight unidentified gunmen were reported to have taken positions in the hospital, and killed at least four security personnel who were attempting to resecure the facility and three nurses, local officials said.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the country's interior minister, said that the siege had ended by 8:30pm local time (15:30 GMT) on Saturday, with security forces freeing 35 people trapped inside the building and killing four of the attackers. One of the attackers was also arrested.
Khan confirmed that four security forces personnel and one senior government official had been killed during the violence.
Zubair Mahmood, the city police chief, described the bombing targetting the bus earlier in the day as having been carried out by an "improvied explosive device". The bomb exploded after the students had boarded and the bus was leaving the university.
Another police official, Fayyaz Sumbal, added that the bus caught fire after the explosion and many students were critically wounded.
"As casualties were being brought to the hospital terrorists had taken position inside the hospital building," Khan told reporters. "They opened fire on on administration and police officials who arrived at the hospital.One suicide bomber blew himself up in the hospital."
Siege at hospital
Authorities say that Abdul Mansoor Khan, the deputy commissioner of Quetta, was among those killed at the hospital, Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder reported. So far, at least 36 people have been injured in both attacks, he said.
Pakistani security forces surrounded the hospital and carried out an operation to clear it once the gunmen had taken over.
Quetta is the capital city of Balochistan province, and regularly witnesses violence on a large scale.

Pakistan founder's home hit in Three rocket attack


The attack happened in the early hours of Saturday in the resource-rich province of Balochistan, only days after a new government vowed to end an insurgency there.
Three rocket-propelled grenades slammed into the Quaid Azam Residency in the hill town of Ziarat, district commissioner Nadeem Tahir said.
A policeman died and the ensuing blaze tore through the two-storey wooden building, damaging several other houses nearby.

A police official said it appeared that the rockets were fired from nearby mountains.
Balochistan, a vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, has suffered a long-running armed independence movement, and what rights groups call a campaign of forced disappearances by security forces.


'Kill-and-dump'

Balochistan supplies much of the natural gas feeding Pakistan's lifeline textile industry in eastern Punjab province, and is home to a deepwater port at Gwadar.
Saturday's attack was the first since a new chief minister of the province, which contains largely unexplored copper and gold deposits, took office last week.
Chief minister Abdul Malik has urged security forces, who deny wrongdoing, to end rights abuses and support his hopes of kindling talks with the fighters, who are seeking an independent homeland.
On the day chief minister Malik took oath, five bullet-riddled bodies were found in the province.

The discoveries were seen by many as a message that security forces were intent on continuing what human rights
groups have dubbed a systematic campaign of "kill-and-dump".


Jinnah stayed in the Quaid Azam Residency as he tried to recover from a lung disease in 1948, a year after his
successful campaign to separate Pakistan from India.

He died in Karachi soon after. The residency is a national heritage site.