Category Archives: News

Footage of Palestinian boys being shot is genuine, says Israeli rights group

The Guardian reports: The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has concluded that footage capturing the moment two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by Israeli soldiers despite posing no risk to them is “genuine and consistent”, contradicting Israeli army claims that the footage is likely to have been forged.

A short section of edited CCTV footage was released earlier this week showing Nadim Nawara, 17, and Mohammad Salameh, 16, being shot and killed. Since then Israeli military sources have been quoted anonymously on several occasions in the local media trying to undermine the tape’s credibility.

The two boys were killed on Thursday last week during a rally involving stone-throwing outside Ofer prison on the West Bank on “Nakba Day”, when Palestinians mark the mass displacement that occurred during the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. [Continue reading…]

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Intense fighting flares in eastern Ukraine

The Wall Street Journal reports: Pro-Russian separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine mounted four simultaneous attacks against government forces Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, officials in Kiev said. The violence comes just days before presidential elections that separatists have vowed to block.

The attacks resulted in some of the highest number of casualties since the conflict began, officials said. The overall death toll in the latest fighting wasn’t immediately available but Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said eight servicemen were killed in one of the battles.

“Today a major operation was prepared on all fronts and it was repulsed,” Andriy Parubiy, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told a briefing in Kiev, according to the Interfax news agency. He said the separatists are expected to increase their attacks in the days ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections.

In a separate briefing, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Kiev is calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to address what he said were efforts by Russia to “escalate the conflict” and sabotage the elections. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed the allegations as “groundless.” [Continue reading…]

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Ukrainian tycoon’s call for rally against separatists goes largely unheeded

The Washington Post reports: A plea by Ukraine’s richest man for demonstrations against Russian-backed separatists met with a mixed response Tuesday as many of his own workers stayed on their jobs.

But many Ukrainians still saw the gesture by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov as a welcome, if symbolic, attempt to end the country’s fraternal strife while European leaders searched for diplomatic solutions to the crisis before Sunday’s presidential election.

Akhmetov, whose coal, steel and other holdings are the industrial might of the Donets Basin in eastern Ukraine, asked his 300,000 employees to join a noon peace rally against the separatist movement that, he said, could wreck the region’s economy. The call followed Akhmetov’s decision last week to form worker patrols to help police restore order on the streets of Mariupol, an industrial port city in southeastern Ukraine.

In Donetsk, several hundred pro-Ukrainian residents rallied just before noon at Donbas Arena. Organizers played the noise of a deafening factory whistle and urged the crowd to download a version of it that they could sound at noon every day as a show of unity.

But at the entrance to Akhmetov’s Ilyich steel plant in this city on the Sea of Azov, nobody stepped outside the factory gate when the plant whistle sounded at noon. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian al Qaeda reach foothills of Israeli-held Golan

Reuters reports: Atop the hill of Tel Ahmar just a few kilometers from Israeli forces on the Golan Heights, Syrian Islamist fighters hoist the al Qaeda flag and praise their mentor Osama bin Laden.

One of the men, a leader of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, compares their battlefield – a lush agricultural region where dead soldiers lie on the ground near a charred Soviet-era tank – with the struggle their comrades waged years ago in Afghanistan.

“This view reminds us of the lion of the mujahideen, Osama bin Laden, on the mountains of Tora Bora,” he can be heard saying in a video posted by the group, which shows the fighters in sight of Israeli jeeps patrolling the fortified frontier.

Last month’s capture of the post was followed days later by the seizure of the Syrian army’s 61 Infantry Brigade base near the town of Nawa, one of the biggest rebel gains in the south during the three years of Syria’s war.

The advances are important not just because they expand rebel control close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the Jordanian border, but because President Bashar al-Assad’s power base in Damascus lies just 40 miles to the north. [Continue reading…]

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Libya’s rogue general gains stream of new allies

The Associated Press reports: Libya’s Interior Ministry, along with the country’s the U.N. ambassador and the commander of the air force, backed a renegade general’s offensive against Islamist lawmakers and extremist militias, further building support Wednesday for a campaign the government has described as a coup.

The show of support for Gen. Khalifa Hifter appears to have triggered a heavy backlash.

Libya’s navy chief Brig. Gen. Hassan Abu-Shanaq, some of whose units have allied with Hifter, was wounded in an assassination attempt in the capital, Tripoli, early Wednesday, along with his driver and a guard, the official news agency LANA said. The night before, the air forces headquarters in Tripoli came under a rocket attack but no casualties were reported.

Hifter has been leading an armed revolt in perhaps the biggest challenge yet to the country’s weak central government and fledgling security forces. He says his campaign, dubbed “Operation Dignity,” aims to break the power of Islamists who lead parliament and whom he accuses of opening the door to extremism and fueling Libya’s chaos.

Scores of Libyan military units and commanders have made already made loyalty pledges to Hifter’s “Libyan National Army” and his offensive, which began Friday, first against Islamist militias in the eastern city of Benghazi. A number of powerful militias also back Hifter, including ones from the western city of Zintan and Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: [Ahmed Matiq, named prime minister two weeks ago in a disputed vote,] said at a news conference Wednesday that he wouldn’t step aside. Libyans “don’t want to return to having a military body rule them,” he said, presumably referring to Hifter.

A leader of one of the most powerful Islamist militias in Benghazi warned the ex-general not to try to take over the city.

“If he ever thinks of coming into Benghazi it will be his grave, like it was Gaddafi’s grave,” said Ismail Salabi, a leader of the Rafallah al-Sahati Brigade. He also echoed a common criticism by Hifter’s opponents — that he was trying to carry out a coup. “If he is looking for power he should remove his military uniform and go into politics,” he said. [Continue reading…]

Barbara Slavin reports: US Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones said Wednesday that she would not condemn the actions of Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a former officer in Moammar Gadhafi’s army who has declared war on Islamic “terrorists” in Libya and forced the country to call new parliamentary elections for June 25.

Speaking at the Stimson Center in Washington, Jones repeated US State Department assertions that the Barack Obama administration did not support and had no advance knowledge of Hifter’s actions — which included sending forces to kill scores of Islamist fighters in eastern Libya last week and storming Libya’s parliament in Tripoli over the weekend. But she added that “it’s very difficult to step up and condemn” Hifter given that his forces are “going after very specific groups … on our list of terrorists.”

“I am not going to come out and condemn blanketly what he did,” she said.

Hifter defected from Gadhafi’s military two decades ago after a failed war in Chad and moved to northern Virginia where he acquired US citizenship. He has claimed that the US government backed him in the 1990s in unsuccessful efforts to overturn the Gadhafi regime.

Karim Mezran, an expert on Libya at the Atlantic Council, told Al-Monitor that there are “widespread rumors that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates” are backing Hifter in hopes that he will expunge the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist elements from the Libyan government and even take power as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did in Egypt after ousting President Mohammed Morsi. “If they can conquer the east, the military balance will be in their favor,” Mezran said of Hifter’s forces.

Jones, asked by Al-Monitor if Egypt and the UAE were behind Hifter, who staged a failed coup in February, said, “I have nothing for you on than that” — the diplomatic equivalent of a non-denial — but that “Libyans who reside in the UAE and Egypt support him.” She added, “I hear a lot of support of his actions against these groups but less for him as an individual. The jury is still out because it’s not clear what the agenda is behind this.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia says it will veto UN resolution on Syria

The Associated Press reports: Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said his country will veto a U.N. Security Council resolution to refer the crisis in Syria to the International Criminal Court, calling it a “publicity stunt” and warning that it will harm efforts to end the violence by political means.

The conflict is now into its fourth year, and tense peace talks have gone so poorly that the joint U.N.-Arab league envoy who tried to broker them has announced he will resign.

Dozens of countries are urging the Security Council to refer the Syria crisis to the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal so it can investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by all sides.

France has called for a vote on the resolution Thursday. But permanent council member Russia has vetoed three previous resolutions on Syria, and Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters his country would do the same with this one. Moscow is Syria’s closest ally. [Continue reading…]

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Planned Homeland Security headquarters, long delayed and over budget, now in doubt

The Washington Post reports: The construction of a massive new headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security, billed as critical for national security and the revitalization of Southeast Washington, is running more than $1.5 billion over budget, is 11 years behind schedule and may never be completed, according to planning documents and federal officials.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the George W. Bush administration called for a new, centralized headquarters to strengthen the department’s ability to coordinate the fight against terrorism and respond to natural disasters. More than 50 historic buildings would be renovated and new ones erected on the grounds of St. Elizabeths, a onetime insane asylum with a panoramic view of the District.

The entire complex was to be finished as early as this year, at a cost of less than $3 billion, according to the initial plan.

Instead, with the exception of a Coast Guard building that opened last year, the grounds remain entirely undeveloped, with the occasional deer grazing amid the vacant Gothic Revival-style structures. The budget has ballooned to $4.5 billion, with completion pushed back to 2026. [Continue reading…]

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Egyptian court convicts Mubarak of embezzlement

The New York Times reports: A criminal court here convicted former President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday of diverting millions of dollars in public money for his personal use in a case that rights advocates say could also now implicate the current prime minister and spy chief in a cover-up.

The court sentenced Mr. Mubarak, 86 and living under house arrest in a military hospital overlooking the Nile, to three years in prison. His sons Gamal and Alaa were each sentenced to four years for their role in the scheme. The court ordered the three to pay penalties and make repayments totaling more than $20 million.

Two years ago, the former president was convicted and received a life sentence in a separate case for directing the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that ended his rule in 2011, but even the presiding judge acknowledged at the time that the evidence was thin, and an appeals court has ordered a retrial. Mr. Mubarak is expected to appeal the new verdict as well, but the evidence appears far more substantial.

His conviction on Wednesday, involving his presidential palaces, arguably spares the new government installed by former Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of the potential embarrassment of freeing Mr. Mubarak. [Continue reading…]

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Changes to surveillance bill stoke anger

The New York Times reports: Leaders of both parties in the House of Representatives, at the Obama administration’s request, have changed a surveillance overhaul bill that restricts the power of the government to obtain Americans’ records in bulk.

A revised version of the bill was unveiled on Tuesday, and the House may vote on it this week.

Several civil liberties groups that had backed a previous version argued that the changes weakened the limits in a way that leaves the door open for the government to obtain enormous volumes of records. They said they were withdrawing their support. [Continue reading…]

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Young Iranians arrested for being too ‘Happy in Tehran’

Robert Mackey writes: Just days after Iran’s president denounced Internet censorship as “cowardly,” six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television Tuesday for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video they posted on YouTube last month.

By uploading their video, recorded on an iPhone and promoted on Facebook and Instagram, the group was taking part in a global online phenomenon, which has resulted, so far, in hundreds of cover versions of the Pharrell Williams song “Happy” recorded in more than 140 countries. “Happy in Tehran” was viewed more than 165,000 times on YouTube before it was made private.

In a speech over the weekend, President Hassan Rouhani argued that Iran should embrace the Internet rather than view it as a threat, Reuters reported. His remarks were also summarized on a Twitter account updated by his aides.


“We must recognize our citizens’ right to connect to the World Wide Web,” the president said, according the official IRNA news agency. “Why are we so shaky? Why have we cowered in a corner, grabbing onto a shield and a wooden sword, lest we take a bullet in this culture war?” he asked.

“Even if there is an onslaught, which there is,” he added, “the way to face it is via modern means, not passive and cowardly methods.” [Continue reading…]

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Video prompts look at killing of Palestinian teens

The Associated Press reports: Security-camera video showing two unarmed Palestinians crumpling to the ground during a lull in a stone-throwing clash with Israeli soldiers revived allegations by human rights activists Tuesday that the troops often use excessive force.

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the images back its findings that troops killed the teens without cause by firing live rounds from more than 200 meters away. The soldiers were in “zero danger” at the time, said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said, “It was a life-threatening situation, so the officers acted accordingly.”

He said he hadn’t seen the video, but alleged the images had been manipulated through editing.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a senior spokesman, said preliminary findings show forces fired only rubber-coated steel pellets, a standard means of crowd control, and did not use live fire.

The United Nations and the U.S. State Department called on the Israeli authorities to conduct a transparent investigation. [Continue reading…]

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Greenland glacier melt will cause greater global sea rise than expected

UC Irvine: Greenland’s icy reaches are far more vulnerable to warm ocean waters from climate change than had been thought, according to new research by UC Irvine and NASA glaciologists. The work, published today in Nature Geoscience, shows previously uncharted deep valleys stretching for dozens of miles under the Greenland Ice Sheet.

The bedrock canyons sit well below sea level, meaning that as subtropical Atlantic waters hit the fronts of hundreds of glaciers, those edges will erode much further than had been assumed and release far greater amounts of water.

Ice melt from the subcontinent has already accelerated as warmer marine currents have migrated north, but older models predicted that once higher ground was reached in a few years, the ocean-induced melting would halt. Greenland’s frozen mass would stop shrinking, and its effect on higher sea waters would be curtailed.

“That turns out to be incorrect. The glaciers of Greenland are likely to retreat faster and farther inland than anticipated – and for much longer – according to this very different topography we’ve discovered beneath the ice,” said lead author Mathieu Morlighem, a UC Irvine associate project scientist. “This has major implications, because the glacier melt will contribute much more to rising seas around the globe.” [Continue reading…]

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The NSA is recording every cell phone call in the Bahamas

In March, the Washington Post reported: The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine — one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance. [Continue reading…]

The Intercept now reports: The National Security Agency is secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation on the island nation of the Bahamas.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country’s cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the “full-take audio” of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

SOMALGET is part of a broader NSA program called MYSTIC, which The Intercept has learned is being used to secretly monitor the telecommunications systems of the Bahamas and several other countries, including Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya. But while MYSTIC scrapes mobile networks for so-called “metadata” – information that reveals the time, source, and destination of calls – SOMALGET is a cutting-edge tool that enables the NSA to vacuum up and store the actual content of every conversation in an entire country.

All told, the NSA is using MYSTIC to gather personal data on mobile calls placed in countries with a combined population of more than 250 million people. And according to classified documents, the agency is seeking funding to export the sweeping surveillance capability elsewhere. [Continue reading…]

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Libyan special forces commander says his forces join renegade general

Reuters reports: The commander of Libyan army special forces said on Monday he had allied with renegade general Khalifa Haftar in his campaign against militant Islamists, highlighting the failure of central government in Tripoli to assert its authority.

The announcement gives a major boost to a campaign by Haftar, who has been denounced by the Tripoli government as attempting to stage a coup in the oil producer.

It remains unclear how many troops support Haftar, whose forces launched an attack on Islamist militants in Benghazi on Friday in which more than 70 people died. Militiamen apparently allied to Haftar also stormed parliament in Tripoli on Sunday.

The violence has compounded government’s apparent weakness in combating militias which helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but now defy state authority. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. charges five in Chinese army with hacking

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Justice Department indicted five Chinese military officers, alleging they hacked U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, a major escalation in the fight between the two superpowers over economic espionage.

The indictment, unsealed Monday, marks the first time the U.S. government has publicly accused employees of a foreign power with cybercrimes against American firms. It also marks the most extensive formal allegations by the government of the kind of hacking that American corporations have long complained about, but until now have rarely acknowledged.

Among those named as victims in the document are brand names from America’s industrial heartland, including U.S. Steel Corp., Westinghouse Electric Co. and Alcoa Inc.

U.S. officials said other cases relating to China are being prepared. In addition, alleged hackers in Russia are likely to be charged soon, according to people familiar with the government’s investigations. U.S. agencies have also been investigating incidents with possible ties to Iran and Syria, these people say.

It is unlikely the suspects will ever be brought to trial in the U.S., since there is no extradition treaty with China. Yet in publicly naming the five, and providing details in a 48-page indictment, the Obama administration is ratcheting up the political and diplomatic costs to China and others if they use computers to steal secrets or attack U.S. interests. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: China on Tuesday summoned the U.S. ambassador in Beijing and warned it would retaliate if Washington followed through with the charges. It said the affair would damage “mutual trust”.

At the centre of the row is a nondescript tower block in the northern suburbs of China’s financial capital Shanghai, home to Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Unit 61398.

The 12-storey block houses as many as several thousand staff, according to Mandiant, a U.S. cyber security firm recently acquired by global network security company FireEye Inc . Mandiant identified the location as the source of a large number of espionage operations in a 70-page report last year. [Continue reading…]

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BlackShades malware bust ends in nearly 100 arrests worldwide

CNET reports: Law enforcement officials from 19 countries joined forces over the last two days to takedown nearly 100 alleged hackers. These purported hackers were said to be creating, selling, and using what the FBI calls a “particularly insidious” computer malware known as BlackShades.

Over the course of the operation, officials’ searched 359 houses and confiscated more than 1,100 data storage devices, such as computers, laptops, cell phones, routers, external hard drives, and USB memory sticks. Law enforcement also seized “substantial quantities” of cash, illegal firearms, and drugs, according to the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol.

BlackShades is a type of malicious software that acts as a Remote Access Tool, or RAT — letting users remotely control a victim’s computer. Once a hacker installs BlackShades onto a victim’s computer, they can see anything on the computer, such as documents, photographs, passwords, banking credentials, and more. They can also deny access to files, record victims’ keystrokes, and activate the computer’s webcam.

One case of BlackShades use documented by Europol involved an 18-year-old man from the Netherlands who allegedly infected roughly 2,000 computers to take photos of women and girls who were using the machines.

Since 2010, BlackShades has been distributed and sold to thousands of people worldwide in more than 100 countries and used to infect more than half a million computers, according the FBI. Certain versions of the malware can be bought for as little as $40. [Continue reading…]

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Syria insurgents issue ‘revolutionary covenant’

EA Worldview reports: The Islamic Front, Syria’s largest insurgent bloc, and other factions have issued a Revolutionary Covenant setting out political and military principles.

The Covenant declares a commitment to a fight not only against the Assad regime but also the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham. It promises respect for human rights and the pursuit of “a state of law, freedom, and justice, without any sort of pressure or dictatorship” for all Syrians, including ethnicities and minorities. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq’s Maliki ‘wins most seats in parliamentary polls’

BBC News reports: Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s alliance won last month’s parliamentary elections in Iraq, but fell short of a majority, preliminary results show.

The electoral commission said State of Law had taken 92 of the 328 seats in the Council of Representatives.

Its two main Shia rivals, Ammar al-Hakim’s Muwatin and the Ahrar movement loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, followed with a combined 57 seats.

Mr Maliki wants a third term, but other parties have voiced strong opposition.

They blame him for the sectarian violence that has left more than 3,000 people dead this year, and accuse him of trying to monopolise power. [Continue reading…]

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