Category Archives: News

ISIS has fired chemical mortar shells, evidence indicates

The New York Times reports: The Islamic State appears to have manufactured rudimentary chemical warfare shells and attacked Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria with them as many as three times in recent weeks, according to field investigators, Kurdish officials and a Western ordnance disposal technician who examined the incidents and recovered one of the shells.

The development, which the investigators said involved toxic industrial or agricultural chemicals repurposed as weapons, signaled a potential escalation of the group’s capabilities, though it was not entirely without precedent.

Beginning more than a decade ago, Sunni militants in Iraq have occasionally used chlorine or old chemical warfare shells in makeshift bombs against American and Iraqi government forces. And Kurdish forces have claimed that militants affiliated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, used a chlorine-based chemical in at least one suicide truck bomb in Iraq this year. [Continue reading…]

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AIPAC forms new lobby group to oppose Iran deal

The New York Times reports: The pro-Israel group Aipac has formed a tax-exempt lobbying group to oppose the nuclear deal reached this week with Iran.

Aipac, an acronym for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has been a vocal critic of President Obama’s policies toward Israel and his negotiations with Iran. The new group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, was formed with the sole mission of educating the public “about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal,” said Patrick Dorton, a spokesman.

“This will be a sizable and significant national campaign on the flaws in the Iran deal,” Mr. Dorton said.

A person who had been briefed on the plan said the group planned to spend upward of $20 million on the effort. Another person familiar with the campaign said advertising was planned in 30 to 40 states. [Continue reading…]

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Ayatollah Khamenei, backing Iran negotiators, endorses nuclear deal

The New York Times reports: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, voiced support on Saturday for his country’s nuclear deal with world powers while emphasizing that it did not signal an end to Iran’s hostility toward the United States and its allies, especially Israel.

“Their actions in the region are 180 degrees different from ours,” he said.

Speaking after a special prayer marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Mr. Khamenei portrayed the nuclear agreement as a victory for Iran, not least because it does not require the country to completely stop enriching uranium, as some in the West had wanted. The speech appeared to remove a main obstacle to formal approval of the agreement in Iran.

“After 12 years of struggling with the Islamic republic, the result is that they have to bear the turning of thousands of centrifuges in the country,” Mr. Khamenei said, referring to the United States and its five negotiating partners. [Continue reading…]

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Despite repeated alarms on hacking, U.S government computer systems remain vulnerable

The New York Times reports: In the month since a devastating computer systems breach at the Office of Personnel Management, digital Swat teams have been racing to plug the most glaring security holes in government computer networks and prevent another embarrassing theft of personal information, financial data and national security secrets.

But senior cybersecurity officials, lawmakers and technology experts said in interviews that the 30-day “cybersprint” ordered by President Obama after the attacks is little more than digital triage on federal computer networks that are cobbled together with out-of-date equipment and defended with the software equivalent of Bubble Wrap.

In an effort to highlight its corrective actions, the White House will announce shortly that teams of federal employees and volunteer hackers have made progress over the last month. At some agencies, 100 percent of users are, for the first time, logging in with two-factor authentication, a basic security feature, officials said. Security holes that have lingered for years despite obvious fixes are being patched. And thousands of low-level employees and contractors with access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets have been cut off. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. phases out 200th coal plant as momentum for renewable energy grows

The Sierra Club: Alliant Energy, a major Iowa utility, has committed to phase out coal use at six of its plants in the state, marking the 200th coal plant to shut down in the United States. This marks a milestone in the country’s transition to clean energy and underscores Iowa’s growth as a clean energy state. The announced coal plant retirements are the result of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign advocacy, which has been a driving force in the national transition to renewable sources of power. The retirement of 200 coal plants nationwide represents the phase out of nearly 40 percent of the 523 U.S. coal plants that were in operation just five years ago. The work of Sierra Club and more than 100 allied organizations to retire these plants and replace them with clean energy has enabled the United States to lead the industrialized world in cutting global warming pollution, and has put the White House on firm footing to push for a strong international climate accord in Paris at the end of this year.

“The days of coal-fired power plants putting Americans at risk are coming to an end,” said Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. “In Iowa and across the country, people are demanding clean air and clean water—and they are winning. Iowa is a leader in America’s transition from coal to renewable energy, and is providing a model for other communities as they demand and realize a 100 percent clean energy future.”

Today’s landmark settlement requires Alliant to phase out coal use or install pollution controls at all eight of its coal-fired power plants to comply with the Clean Air Act. The plants were emitting more pollution than was allowed by the company’s air permits, contributing to an estimated 32 deaths and 541 asthma attacks annually, and costing local residents $15.3 million in healthcare bills each year according to plant-level 2010 estimates by Clean Air Task Force (CATF). [Continue reading…]

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Iran unlikely to spend most of its post-sanctions funds on militants, CIA says

The Los Angeles Times reports: A secret U.S. intelligence assessment predicts that Iran’s government will pump most of an expected $100-billion windfall from the lifting of international sanctions into the country’s flagging economy and won’t significantly boost funding for militant groups it supports in the Middle East.

Intelligence analysts concluded that even if Tehran increased support for Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen or President Bashar Assad’s embattled government in Syria, the extra cash is unlikely to tip the balance of power in the world’s most volatile region, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence document.

The controversial CIA report, on which key members of Congress have been briefed, provides ammunition to both sides in the battle brewing on Capitol Hill over what White House aides call President Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, a sweeping multinational agreement that aims to block Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons for at least a decade in exchange for the easing of sanctions that have hobbled its economy. [Continue reading…]

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The nuclear physicist answering lawmakers’ questions on Iran deal

The Wall Street Journal reports: As the White House ramps up its campaign to sell its Iran nuclear deal to a skeptical Congress, a shaggy-haired scientist is proving to be its best asset on Capitol Hill.

Both Republicans and Democrats called Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor, the administration’s most credible source of information on the accord reached this week aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program and the negotiations that produced it.

“He’s by far been the best witness, the best person to talk to,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R. Tenn.). On Thursday, Mr. Corker said Mr. Moniz would testify at the committee’s first hearing on the final deal next week, along with Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

The agreement reached Tuesday in Vienna puts strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program for the next decade that are designed to keep Tehran from being at least 12 months away from amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb. In exchange, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will lift economic sanctions on Iran.

Mr. Moniz, 70 years old, played a key role over the months of talks that led to the accord between Iran and six global powers. In particular, he had a string of one-on-one technical discussions with Ali Akbar Salehi, now chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Mr. Salehi studied at MIT in the 1970s, when Mr. Moniz taught at the school, though they didn’t meet there.

“It’s extraordinarily fortunate that at this moment in time we have, in the cabinet and on the negotiating team, an honest-to-goodness nuclear physicist who knows this stuff,” said Sen. Angus King (I., Maine). [Continue reading…]

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54 U.S.-trained fighters head into Syria to challenge ISIS

McClatchy reports: They arrived in Toyota Hilux pickup trucks, the favored vehicle of Islamist fighters in the Middle East and South Asia. But these men, the first graduates in the faltering U.S. train-and-equip program, were traveling into Syria to fight against an extremist insurgency, the Islamic State.

The U.S. military calls them the “New Syrian force” and disclosed that they are to coordinate with rebel forces already on the ground who have a different objective – to fight the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The goal, a spokesman said, is to expand the effectiveness of all moderate forces.

Turkish news media said 54 fighters crossed in Sunday in a convoy of 30 vehicles, commanded by an ethnic Turkman colonel who’d defected from the Syrian army. McClatchy obtained photos from an anti-regime activist in Syria that showed the trucks were Toyota Hiluxes. [Continue reading…]

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The Libyan political dialogue: An incomplete consensus

International Crisis Group: The preliminary political agreement that emerged from UN-led talks between Libyan rival factions at a signing ceremony in the Moroccan coastal resort town of Skhirat last week was a critical first step toward ending the Libyan civil war. Yet one side’s refusal to come on board without further amendments to the text potentially makes the agreement stillborn. Under the leadership of UN Special Representative Bernardino León, Libyan, regional and international actors should therefore put all their efforts into reaching a broader consensus on the text before proceeding to the next mileposts on the political roadmap, first and foremost the establishment of a national unity government, as well as security arrangements in Tripoli to support it.

On 11 July 2015, eighteen out of the 22 participants of the UN-facilitated Libyan Political Dialogue signed a preliminary framework agreement in Skhirat, Morocco, that charts a way out of a conflict that has divided Libya into two rival sets of parliaments, governments and military coalitions since July 2014. The Political Dialogue includes four representatives from each parliament – the internationally recognised House of Representatives (HoR) in Tobruk and its predecessor, the General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli – as well as boycotting members from both sides and a number of independents, mainly former bureaucrats. The GNC delegation stayed away from the final talks in Skhirat and refused to sign the agreement, demanding further changes based on its perception that the text effectively sidelines its camp from the proposed political arrangement. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt ISIS affiliate claims destruction of naval vessel

The New York Times reports: A militant group affiliated with the Islamic State said it destroyed an Egyptian naval vessel on Thursday, posting photographs on social media of a missile exploding in a ball of fire as it slammed into the vessel.

An Egyptian military spokesman said that the crew of the unnamed ship “exchanged fire” with militants off the coast of the northern Sinai Peninsula, causing a fire on board that did not result in any fatalities.

But the militant group, which calls itself Sinai Province, claimed that the missile was guided and had killed everyone on board. [Continue reading…]

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Watchdog blasts Turkey’s record on press freedom

McClatchy reports: Turkey remains the top jailer of journalists in Europe and should “reform the laws criminalizing freedom of expression” as well as the way courts implement those laws, the leading European human rights watchdog said Thursday.

Turkish jails currently hold 21 media representatives, according to the report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. That number appears to be a significant improvement on 2012, when 95 journalists were being held.

But in addition, “many more journalists and social media users face trials that could result in prison sentences,” said Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE representative on Freedom of the Media. And many journalists are now on trial – “so many that it would be hard to oversee,” she told McClatchy in a separate interview. [Continue reading…]

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Russia plans fuel shipments to Syria from Crimea

Reuters reports: Russia plans to supply Syria with 200,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) per year via the Crimean port of Kerch, two trading sources told Reuters.

The plans are a further sign of cooperation between the two countries despite hopes in the West that Russia might stop shielding President Bashar al-Assad from pressure to step aside.

Moscow had been shipping significantly lower volumes of LPG to Syria via Kerch before Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014.

The United States and the European Union, which say the seizure of Crimea violates international law, have imposed sanctions on individuals and business in Crimea, which include restrictions on use of the Kerch port. [Continue reading…]

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‘I’m not a butcher’: An interview with ISIS’s architect of death

Der Spiegel reports: The heavy gate slowly opened, but only after the guards had called in to headquarters to confirm the identity of the SPIEGEL team and its 10 p.m. appointment. Inside was an obstacle course of four-meter-high concrete walls with Humvees, equipped with mounted machine guns, parked at two different corners. Only then did the actual prison gate appear.

The high-security facility is in Baghdad, but its name and exact location cannot be revealed. These were the conditions for an interview with its most prominent inmate: a gaunt man in his late 30s known by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdullah. For one and a half years, he was the head logistician for suicide attacks carried out by Islamic State in Baghdad. Abu Abdullah is one of the few Islamic State leaders to have been taken into custody alive. Most either blow themselves up or swallow the capsules of poison many of them carry so as to avoid capture. Or they die in a firefight. Being captured alive is not part of the terror group’s concept.

But Abu Abdullah was overpowered so quickly that he had no time to kill himself. He had been under surveillance for some time before he was arrested in late July 2014, and his bomb factory, camouflaged as an automotive garage, was taken intact by the authorities. Surprisingly, the man himself is also talking from prison.

His name repeatedly surfaced during months of research into the leadership structure of Islamic State. Furthermore, investigators from the Iraqi police, the secret service of the Interior Ministry and other officials all provided details from his testimony to SPIEGEL.

Those fragments were consistent with the image of Islamic State as an organization in which responsibilities are divided, and even sealed off internally. People only know as much about its operations as they need to — like numerous small gears on a piece of machinery that can immediately be replaced when they break. Even if they wanted to, most Islamic State members can provide but little information about its overall structure. Abu Abdullah, though, occupied a key position in Baghdad, one vital for the ongoing terror attacks in the city. He was the one who chose the locations for the attacks, who equipped the suicide bombers and who accompanied them up until shortly before their detonation. [Continue reading…]

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Human impact on the oceans is growing — and climate change is the biggest culprit

The Washington Post reports: The world’s oceans have suffered a lot at the hands of humans — ask any marine conservationist. Unsustainable fishing, pollution and the effects of climate change are just a few of the issues that worry scientists and environmentalists.

While we have a good idea of which activities are causing harm to the ocean, scientists have been less clear on which ones are the most damaging and which regions of the ocean are getting the worst of it. Now, new research has allowed scientists to map the impacts of 19 different types of human activity that have harmed the ocean over a span of five years. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers used global-scale data to map the cumulative impacts of human activities between 2008 and 2013, pinpointing which areas are under increasing stress, which areas are experiencing a decrease and which human activities are having the biggest impacts in which areas. They found that nearly two-thirds of the ocean in experiencing an increase in these man-made impacts — and climate change is the worst of all, driving the majority of the changes the researchers observed. [Continue reading…]

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Earth’s degradation threatens major health gains: study

AFP reports: The unprecedented degradation of Earth’s natural resources coupled with climate change could reverse major gains in human health over the last 150 years, according to a sweeping scientific review published Thursday.

“We have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present,” said the report, written by 15 leading academics and published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.

“By unsustainably exploiting nature’s resources, human civilisation has flourished but now risks substantial health effects from the degradation of nature’s life support systems in the future.”

Climate change, ocean acidification, depleted water sources, polluted land, over-fishing, biodiversity loss –- all unintended by-products of humanity’s drive to develop and prosper –- “pose serious challenges to the global health gains of the past several decades”, especially in poorer nations, the 60-page report concludes. [Continue reading…]

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Israeli special forces assassinated senior Syrian official in 2008

The Intercept reports: On Aug. 1, 2008, a small team of Israeli commandos entered the waters near Tartus, Syria, and shot and killed a Syrian general as he was holding a dinner party at his seaside weekend home. Muhammad Suleiman, a top aide to the Syrian president, was shot in the head and neck, and the Israeli military team escaped by sea.

While Israel has never spoken about its involvement, secret U.S. intelligence files confirm that Israeli special operations forces assassinated the general while he vacationed at his luxury villa on the Syrian coast.

The internal National Security Agency document, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is the first official confirmation that the assassination of Suleiman was an Israeli military operation, and ends speculation that an internal dispute within the Syrian government led to his death. [Continue reading…]

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Shakedown: Israeli opposition leader heads to Washington to ‘demand’ more money and weapons

The Jerusalem Post reports: Amid news of the nuclear deal reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers, opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) announced Tuesday that he will be leaving for the US in the coming days to “demand a dramatic package of security measures for Israel.”

Voicing his disappointment over the deal, Herzog noted that a country that “funds, trains and nurtures terrorist organizations,” was both detrimental to Israel and to its future.

“With regard to security, I am more extreme than Netanyahu,” Herzog remarked. “In light of the situation, we must do everything within our power to improve our security,” he said. [Continue reading…]

The Times of Israel reports on the response from another opposition leader: Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said Wednesday the Iran deal was the country’s biggest foreign policy failure ever.

“We stand today facing the greatest foreign policy failure by any Israeli prime minister since the establishment of the state,” Lapid told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “Netanyahu] is not [former British prime minister Winston] Churchill before the Second World War, he is [former Israeli prime minister] Golda [Meir] after the Yom Kippur War.”

The 1973 war, in which Israel was surprised by several Arab armies and needed urgent US airlifts of weapons, is considered one of the greatest strategic fiascoes in the history of the country. Then-prime minister Meir resigned in the wake of a commission of inquiry that analyzed Israel’s failure to see the war coming.

Lapid said that he would defend Israel to the world but added that a better agreement could have been reached:

“To the outside world, in English, we will support the government and explain to the whole world how dangerous this agreement is, and I have been doing this since yesterday,” he said. “But inside, in Hebrew, let’s face it – the prime minister failed in reaching a different agreement […] we could have had a deal in which the main issue is that of inspection. Sanctions could have been removed based on milestones [reached] and not according to a schedule, and then the deal would be different,” he said.

Lapid said Netanyahu has decimated Israel’s foreign relations: “Until yesterday the entire world was convinced the US and Israel always walk hand in hand. As of yesterday [the world] learned that the US will no longer listen to the prime minister, the Europeans won’t listen to the prime minister, the Chinese, the Russians, the Democrats [in the US], and he left scorched earth in Israel’s foreign relations. [Netanyahu] needs to go home after a failure of such colossal proportions. The prime minister cannot remain in office.” [Continue reading…]

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Documenting death inside Syria’s secret prisons

NPR reports: A Syrian forensic photographer, who now uses the pseudonym Caesar, documented the death of thousands of detainees in Syria’s brutal prison system. He made more than 55,000 high-resolution images before he fled the country, fearing for his safety, in 2013.

He spoke publicly for the first time in July 2014, when he appeared before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, wearing a blue jacket with a hood to protect his identity.

Dozens of Caesar’s photographs will be displayed again in the halls of Congress on Wednesday.

The exhibition is sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in cooperation with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Continue reading…]

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