Author Archives: News Sources

North Korea executes defense chief on treason charges: report

Reuters: North Korea has executed its defense chief on treason charges by putting him in front of an anti-aircraft gun at a firing range, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told lawmakers.

Hyon Yong Chol, 66, who headed the isolated country’s military, was purged late last month for disobeying Kim Jong Un and falling asleep during a meeting at which North Korea’s young leader was present, according to South Korean lawmakers briefed in a closed-door meeting with the spy agency on Wednesday.

His execution, the latest of a series of high-level purges since Kim took power in 2011, was watched by hundreds of people, they said.

Facebooktwittermail

Merkel comes up empty as German-U.S. spy talks go nowhere

Bloomberg: Chancellor Angela Merkel has little to show for an effort begun a year ago to limit American spying in Germany as talks between the two countries on U.S. surveillance have run aground.

Meant to calm German outrage over alleged American espionage, the negotiations have been further hampered by the latest reports in Germany that the country’s BND foreign-intelligence agency collaborated with the National Security Agency to help the U.S. spy on European allies and companies, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive talks.

Facebooktwittermail

GCHQ openly recruiting hackers as British government seeks more surveillance powers

Forbes: Now that the Conservative Party has secured a majority government in the UK, it’s pushing ahead with plans to expand the surveillance state with the Communications Data Bill, also known as Snooper’s Charter, which would require communications providers from BT to Facebook to maintain records of customers’ internet activity, text messages and voice calls for a year. This may have emboldened GCHQ, the British spy agency and chief NSA partner, which has, for the first time, openly called for applicants to fill the role of Computer Network Operations Specialists, also known as nation-state funded hackers.

According to a job ad for a Computer Network Operations Specialist, a student or graduate will have to have, or soon have, “a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree incorporating ethical hacking, digital forensics or information security”.

Facebooktwittermail

Bangladesh blogger killings have roots in independence struggle

By Ashraf Hoque, UCL

Ananta Bijoy Das, who was murdered in a brutal roadside machete attack in north-east Bangladesh, is the third secularist blogger to be killed by Islamist extremists since February 2015. But this is a less recent development than it seems. Militant attacks on so-called “atheists” have been accelerated in Bangladesh since 2013.

Militant violence against critics of Islam has been increasing ever since February 2013, when the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) set up in 1973 mainly to handle war crimes cases relating to Bangladesh’s independence struggle, handed down a life sentence to Abdul Qadir Molla, the senior member of the far-right Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, for crimes committed during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The human cost of this tragic episode is estimated by official state sources to be up to 3m lives – and 44 years on, the nation has never quite dealt with the trauma.

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

Monsanto bets $45 billion on a pesticide-soaked future

Mother Jones reports: Once an industrial-chemical titan, GMO seed giant Monsanto has rebranded itself as a “sustainable agriculture company.” Forget such classic post-war corporate atrocities as PCB and dioxin — the modern Monsanto “uses plant breeding and biotechnology to create seeds that grow into stronger, more resilient crops that require fewer resources,” as the company’s website has it.

That rhetoric may have to change, though, if Monsanto succeeds in buying its Swiss rival, pesticide giant Syngenta. On Friday, Syngenta’s board rejected a $45 billion takeover bid. But that’s hardly the end of the story. Tuesday afternoon, Syngenta’s share price was holding steady at a level about 20 percent higher than it was before Monsanto’s bid — an indication that investors consider an eventual deal quite possible. As The Wall Street Journal’s Helen Thomas put it, the Syngenta board’s initial rejection of Monsanto’s overture may just be a way of saying, “This deal makes sense, but Syngenta can hold out for more.”

The logic for the deal is simple: Syngenta is Monsanto’s perfect complement. Monsanto ranks as the globe’s largest purveyor of seeds (genetically modified and otherwise), alongside a relatively small chemical division (mainly devoted to the herbicide Roundup), which makes up just a third of its $15.8 billion in total sales. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The use of force against the mentally ill incarcerated in America

Human Rights Watch: Jail and prison staff throughout the United States have used unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force against prisoners with mental disabilities, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today.

The 127-page report, “Callous and Cruel: Use of Force against Inmates with Mental Disabilities in US Jails and Prisons,” details incidents in which correctional staff have deluged prisoners with painful chemical sprays, shocked them with powerful electric stun weapons, and strapped them for days in restraining chairs or beds. Staff have broken prisoners’ jaws, noses, ribs; left them with lacerations requiring stitches, second-degree burns, deep bruises, and damaged internal organs. In some cases, the force used has led to their death.

“Jails and prisons can be dangerous, damaging, and even deadly places for men and women with mental health problems,” said Jamie Fellner, US program senior adviser at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report. “Force is used against prisoners even when, because of their illness, they cannot understand or comply with staff orders.”

Facebooktwittermail

Offshore wind has the potential to power America

Climate Central: Offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that Europeans have been investing in for decades, has not yet materialized in the U.S. as debates have swirled about the viability of wind farms off the country’s coastlines.

That, however, may be about to change.

The Block Island Wind Farm is set to break ground in July off the coast of Rhode Island, and with it, the future of offshore wind in the U.S. seems very real. If completed, it will be the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., and if it is successful, it could prove that wind power generated by turbines off the coast is a viable enterprise similar to onshore wind farms, which generate about 4 percent of America’s electricity.

That could set the stage for other offshore wind projects all along the East Coast as the federal government expands the waters available for new offshore wind farm development. President Obama’s Climate Action Plan calls for offshore wind to be part of the administration’s goal to generate 20,000 megawatts of renewable power on federally controlled public lands and waters by 2020, a major part of America’s efforts to tackle climate change with low-carbon energy.

The offshore wind power potential in the U.S. is huge, totalling more than 4,000 gigawatts if fully developed — about four times today’s total U.S. electric power generating capacity and enough electricity to power about 800 million homes, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s something that could benefit the many dense cities lining the East Coast, not far from where new wind farms could be built.

Facebooktwittermail

The Italian Mafia’s grip on Africa

CORRECT!V reports: The Italian mafia has established a hidden but lethal presence in Africa. Its members own diamond mines, nightclubs and land, all with the complicity of corrupt regimes.

Italian anti-Mafia authorities estimate that organised crime groups earn €26 billion a year in Italy alone. But the figure only scratches the surface of its economic power. Mafia Inc. is more than ever a global business, infiltrating legitimate economies worldwide. And the extent of the empire is unknown.

An international team of reporters from the non-profit investigative journalism centres IRPI and ANCIR (with the Investigative Dashboard Africa) partnered with the data analysts of QUATTROGATTI and the production room of CORRECT!V to uncover for the first time the Italian Mafia’s grip on Africa.

Supported by two working grants for independent journalism, the Innovative Journalism Grant of the EJC and Journalism Fund, the work took seven months, and included trips to Sicily, Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Lombardy, in Italy and South Africa, Namibia, Senegal and Kenya, in Africa.

Ten investigative reporters from six different countries, one data-journalist and a data-scientist, three editors, one cross-examiner and a bunch of lawyers joined the effort in producing in-depth research into the Mafia’s involvement in 13 countries. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How chaos in Libya spawned a security nightmare in the Mediterranean

By Ioannis Chapsos, Coventry University

Libya has been in a state of chaos ever since the fall of its former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and the situation scarcely seems to be improving. But it’s not just a nightmare on land – Libya is starting to poison the Mediterranean too.

Since a civil war and UN-backed external intervention put an end to Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, good order and security have never been restored. Libya remains divided, with continuous clashes between rival militia and two internal “governments”.

The attack against the US Consulate in Benghazi was just one incident in a spiral of unrest.

Italian naval forces are back to conducting search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean on a daily basis in order to cope with a massive surge in migrants trying to cross the sea from North Africa, where Libya is the primary transit point. Thousands have died in recent months alone.

But on April 17, they had a very different task: a Sicilian fishing boat had been seized by armed men, 50 nautical miles north of the Libyan Coast, forcing the Italian Navy to board and retake control of the vessel.

And on top of the nascent piracy problem, Libya’s efforts to police its coast are apparently getting more violent.

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

How ISIS uses water as weapon of war

Walaa Hussein writes: The Middle East is facing a water crisis. As the region experiences conflicts over water and faces the continuous risk of war breaking out, experts on water predict that the Islamic State (IS) aims to exacerbate this water crisis, as evidenced by its efforts to seize rivers and dams in Syria and Iraq, starting in 2013.

The Arab League has worked since 2008 to establish a new Arab convention on water usage, which would establish parameters on how to deal with the water crisis. However, the final draft is still under review because of the reservations of some member states.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, an international consulting organization, has identified numerous regions where the water crisis threatens to transform into a global conflict. Turkey, Syria and Iraq are included on that list, due to the Turkish dams controlling the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Iran and Iraq are also witnessing a competition over the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known as Shatt al-Arab. Also included is Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, which are witnessing a conflict over the Nile. Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Chad and Niger are also experiencing a crisis in relation to an 800-meter (0.5-mile) deep underground water field and the Nubian sandstone aquifer. Libya wants to invest in this aquifer to extend an artificial river and supply its coastline with freshwater. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The Afghans fighting Assad’s war

Der Spiegel reports: His war only lasted from one dawn to the next. When the sun rose for the second time over the Syrian city of Aleppo, Murad, a farmer from Afghanistan, was still cowering on the second floor of the house he was supposed to defend to the death. That, at least, is what his Iranian officer had ordered him to do.

How, though, did he get to this war-torn city far away from his village in the mountains of Afghanistan? All he had wanted was an Iranian residence permit, he says. But at the end of his trip, he found himself fighting as a mercenary in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Bashar Assad regime.

On that morning in Aleppo, Murad didn’t know how many from his unit were still alive, nor did he know where he was or who he was fighting against. His four magazines had been empty for hours. When a violent explosion caused the house he was in to collapse, he found himself thinking about his daughters, he says. “I screamed and thought I was suffocating. And then, everything around me was quiet.”

Men arrived and pulled Murad, who was still screaming, out of the rubble. He was lucky, even if he didn’t see it that way at first. “I thought they would kill me immediately. But they bandaged me up and took me to their quarters. There was someone there who spoke a bit of Persian and he told me I didn’t need to be afraid.”

That was seven months ago. Since then, Murad and another Afghan have been sitting in a makeshift prison belonging to the al-Shamiya Front, one of Aleppo’s larger rebel formations. They are being held in a neon-lit basement, next to a roaring generator. The walls are crumbling, a product of the myriad explosions that have shaken the city. In addition to Afghans, Pakistanis and Iranians have also been taken prisoner by other rebel groups, all of them fighting on the front lines. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

House arrest reports add to mystery surrounding fate of Syrian security chief

The Guardian: Mystery surrounds the fate of a senior Syrian security chief who is rumoured to have fallen foul of President Bashar al-Assad, against a background of recent rebel gains, growing Iranian influence and reports of intrigue and disarray in Damascus.

Lt Gen Ali Mamlouk, the head of the country’s national security council, was reported on Monday to be under house arrest in the Syrian capital following a rash of speculation about his whereabouts at a time of deepening crisis for the regime.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the 69-year-old was arrested on suspicion of planning a coup and talking to the opposition because he has qualms about Iran, Assad’s most loyal ally. Tehran is playing an increasingly pivotal role in Syria.

Facebooktwittermail

Iraq counts on magic wands to stop ISIS

The Daily Beast: Last summer, in the days after the group now known as ISIS began its assault across Iraq, many feared that Baghdad could soon fall. Car bombs regularly killed dozens inside the capital. Police and soldiers manned checkpoints across the city. They were Baghdad’s defense and symbols of the state’s power in the face of onslaught. To protect the capital, these cops and soldiers were armed with magic wands. They still are now, nearly a year later.

Across Iraq, members of the security forces carry these magic wands—Rube Goldberg gadgets supposedly designed to detect explosives. The walkie talkie-sized instruments, as ubiquitous in Baghdad as radios are on cops in the United States, are useless pieces of plastic and a required piece of equipment. They were purchased by the Iraqi government for millions of dollars and are still in use to this day, waved around cars like divining rods, two years after a British con man was sentenced to prison for selling them.

Iraqi police officer Salim Abdul Zahra, 33, wielded one of the wands while manning a checkpoint in Baghdad last December. “Want the truth?” Zahra asked after some preliminary explanation about how the detector was supposed to be used. “It is worthless and fake,” he said. “The proof is all the explosions that still happen here.”

But though the wand didn’t work, he said he had to wave it around. Ultimately, if he didn’t use the wand, which he and his fellow officers knew was worthless, he would stick out. “What I can do?” he asked. “I follow the orders and use it.”

Facebooktwittermail

In sign of Palestinians’ mood, Hamas wins vote at a West Bank university

The New York Times reports: Lina Halsa certainly made a splash at the student rally for the Islamist Hamas movement here at Birzeit University last month. Wearing a sleeveless top, tight jeans, and with her hair in a ponytail, Ms. Halsa’s attire was revealing even by the standards of this liberal, secular campus. But it was downright scandalous according to Hamas norms.

Yet, Ms. Halsa was the very image of Hamas success on the campus, where the Islamist party beat out the more moderate Fatah faction in student elections. A photograph of her waving the faction’s signature green banner rocketed around social media, followed by a video in which she explained that she voted Hamas in part because her clothing “shows how much they are able to embrace other people.”

A headline in the Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat trumpeted: “A Blonde Turns Birzeit Green.”

The April 22 election was about far more than clothing, of course. Student elections are seen as an important benchmark of the Palestinian political mood, particularly since there has been no national balloting since Hamas won the legislative contests in 2006, and president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is starting the 11th year of what was to be a five-year term. The nod to Hamas was broadly interpreted as another indication of just how unpopular President Abbas and his government have become. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Bangladeshi secular blogger Ananta Bijoy Das hacked to death in third fatal attack this year

The Washington Post: Ananta Bijoy Das, a Bangladeshi writer known for advocating science and secularism, was hacked to death by masked men wielding machetes while on his way to work Tuesday morning.

Das died instantly in the attack, police in Sylhet city told the Associated Press. He is the third Bangladeshi writer to be killed in less than four months.

Though police did not offer a motive for the killing, they mentioned to Al Jazeera that Das has written about science and the evolution of the Soviet Union. He was also a blogger for Mukto-Mona, or “free mind,” the site launched by prominent author Avijit Roy, who was killed at a Bangladeshi book fair in similar fashion in February.

Facebooktwittermail

White House backs bill that would end NSA bulk collection of phone records

The Washington Post: The Obama administration is urging lawmakers to pass a bipartisan bill that would end the National Security Agency’s mass collection of Americans’ phone records, an effort that has been boosted by a federal appeals court’s ruling last week that the program was unlawful.

The White House’s support for the USA Freedom Act, which preserves the government’s ability to obtain more limited amounts of records, comes as the House is expected to pass it on Wednesday. That sets up a showdown in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is backing another bill that would maintain the NSA program of mass collection and renew it through 2020.

The attorney general and the director of national intelligence are expected to issue soon a letter of support for the USA Freedom Act, saying that they do not think it will undermine national security while its proposed reforms will enhance Americans’ privacy.

Facebooktwittermail

Big drop in share of Americans calling themselves Christian

The New York Times reports: The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region, according to an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center.

Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007.

The Christian share of the population has been declining for decades, but the pace rivals or even exceeds that of the country’s most significant demographic trends, like the growing Hispanic population. It is not confined to the coasts, the cities, the young or the other liberal and more secular groups where one might expect it, either.

“The decline is taking place in every region of the country, including the Bible Belt,” said Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research at the Pew Research Center and the lead editor of the report. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Pakistanis knew where bin Laden was, say U.S. sources

NBC News reports: Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding – and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.

The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking couriers to his walled complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency’s operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission. The official story focused on a long hunt for bin Laden’s presumed courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

While NBC News has long been pursuing leads about a “walk in” and about what Pakistani intelligence knew, both assertions were made public in a London Review of Books article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Hersh’s story, published over the weekend, raises numerous questions about the White House account of the SEAL operation. It has been strongly disputed both on and off the record by the Obama administration and current and former national security officials. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail