WelCome To GT News 24

ACC questionable for dropping Abul Hossain:World Bank

2013-06-19T07:24:00.001+06:00

The Feb 20 report was published on World Bank website on Tuesday. This report was handed over to Finance Minister AMA Muhith a few days back.

The three-member panel, led by Louis Moreno-Ocampo, filed the report where it said the ACC investigation did not appear to be full and fair.

“The Panel maintains that there were no legal reasons to exclude the name of the former Minister of Communications from the initial list of persons under investigation.”

“The Panel agrees with the decision to pursue a formal investigation of the seven named individuals” who allegedly tried to take bribes for themselves and others by favouring Canada-based SNC Lavalin and its partners inthe tender process for construction supervision consultant.

However, the report said “that a final assessment of the adequacy of the ACC’s investigative activities should be done at the end of its investigation”.

Brazil leader acknowledges social protests

2013-06-19T07:12:00.004+06:00

Brazil’s president has embraced an outbreak of protests against her government across the country, after the South American country saw some of its biggest ever rallies earlier this week.
Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship, said on Tuesday that the protests were evidence of a vibrant democracy and acknowledge the need for better public services and more responsive governance.
"The massive size of yesterday's protests prove the energy of our democracy, the force of the voice of the street and the civility of our population,'' she said.
"My government hears the voices clamouring for change, my government is committed to social transformation," she said.
"Those who took to the streets yesterday sent a clear message to all of society, above all to political leaders at all levels of government."
The demonstrators are demanding better education, schools and transport after mass protests across at least seven cities on Monday, which intensified after clashes with police in Sao Paulo.
Demanding more
Many of them have begun to demand more from their government and are angry that billions of dollars in public funds are being spent to host the World Cup and Olympics while few improvements are made on infrastructure elsewhere.
The office of the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the Brazilian authorities on Tuesday to exercise restraint in dealing with the social protests in the country and called on demonstrators not to resort to violence in pursuit of their demands.
The UN body said it welcomed the statement by Rousseff that peaceful demonstrations were legitimate.
A survey by the Datafolha polling agency suggested a large majority of participants at the Sao Paulo protest on Monday night had no affiliation with any political party and nearly three-quarters were taking part in the protests for the first time.
Local news media estimated more than 240,000 people participated in demonstrations Monday night that were mostly peaceful.
However, violence was seen in Rio de Janeiro, where 20 officers and 10 demonstrators were injured in clashes, and in the cities of Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte.
State legislature attacked
The vast majority of Rio's protesters were peaceful, but a group had attacked the state legislature building and set a car and other objects ablaze.
As the group moved on to the state legislature building, footage broadcast by the Globo television network showed police shooting into the air.
At least one demonstrator in Rio was injured after being hit in the leg with a live round allegedly fired by a law nforcement official.
Protests also were reported in the cities of Curitiba, Vitoria, Fortaleza, Recife, Belem and Salvador.
Monday's protests came not only during the Confederations Cup but just one month before a papal visit, a year before the World Cup and three years ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The unrest is raising security concerns and renewed questions over Brazil's readiness to host the mega-events.

NSA chief defends US spying programme

2013-06-19T07:07:00.001+06:00

The head of the US National Security Agency has defended government's sweeping electronic surveillance programmes and said it had helped disrupt possible attacks more than 50 times since September 11, 2001.

Justifying the spying programmes that were disclosed by contractor Edward Snowden earlier this month, General Keith Alexander said on Tuesday he would give lawmakers classified details of all of the thwarted incidents within 24 hours.

He said the public disclosure of spying programmes caused "irreversible" damage to national security and helped America's enemies.

"I think it was irreversible and significant damage to this nation," General Keith Alexander said at a House of Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing.

Asked whether the disclosures by Snowden had helped America's enemies, Alexander replied: "I believe it has and I believe it will hurt us and our allies."

Alexander spoke at a rare open Capitol Hill hearing.

At the hearing, both the FBI and leaders of the House Intelligence Committee have come out in vigorous defence of the NSA programmes.

'Foiled plots'

Deputy FBI director Sean Joyce said that the government's surveillance of telephone and Internet communications foiled plots including one to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.

Michigan Republican Representative Mike Rogers, who will preside over an open hearing of the intelligence panel later on Tuesday, said he expected NSA head to declassify additional information about the programme.

The Obama administration already has declassified data crediting the NSA programme with breaking up a planned attack on New York City's subway system.

On Monday, US President Barack Obama defended the NSA as legal and transparent in a lengthy TV interview.

"We're going to have to find ways where the public has an assurance that there are checks and balances in place ... that their phone calls aren't being listened into; their text messages aren't being monitored, their emails are not being read by some big brother somewhere," Obama said.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is the latest company to disclose how many requests for user data it has received from US government agencies, putting the number between 12,000 and 13,000 in the six months that ended on May 31.

US identifies Guantanamo indefinite detainees

2013-06-19T07:02:00.000+06:00

The Obama administration has publicly identified for the first time 46 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base whom it wants to hold indefinitely without charge or trial because it says they are too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted.
The Defence Department released the names on Monday after the Miami Herald newspaper and a group of Yale Law School students sued for its release in a US District Court in Washington.
The list also names nearly two dozen prisoners who have been recommended for prosecution, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is already on trial for his alleged role in the September 11, 2011, attack, and Hambali, an alleged Indonesian "terrorist leader".
Those on the list are prisoners who have been held without charge under the Authorised Use of Military Force act passed by Congress and signed by President George Bush in 2001, according to a spokesman for the Pentagon, Army Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale.
The prisoners on the list were first reviewed by an administration task force of lawyers, military officers and intelligence agents.
Indefinite detainees
In a 2010 report, the task force declared 48 Guantanamo prisoners too dangerous to release. However, the report said they could not be tried, either because there was no evidence linking them to specific attacks or because evidence against them was tainted by coercion or abuse.
On the list were 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, three Saudis, two Kuwaitis, two Libyans, a Kenyan, a Moroccan and a Somali.
Two of the Afghans died after the list was compiled, one from suicide and the other from a heart attack.
That leaves 46 of the 166 Guantanamo prisoners designated as indefinite detainees.
The Guantanamo detention camp was set up in 2002 to hold prisoners captured in US counterterrorism operations overseas.
President Barack Obama recently called it a stain on America's reputation and reiterated his intent to close it.
He said his administration would appoint a pair of envoys from the State and Defence departments to work on that.
Following up on that promise, the State Department announced on Monday the appointment of Clifford Sloan, a veteran Washington lawyer, to work as its envoy to negotiate the repatriation or resettlement of 86 prisoners who have been cleared for transfer or release.
Pre-trial hearings
The announcement came as five prisoners charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks on the US appeared in the war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo base for a week of pre-trial hearings.
Defendants in the death penalty case include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of funding and training the hijackers.
All five defendants appeared adequately fed, suggesting they have not joined more than 100 other detainees who have waged a four-month hunger strike in protest at the failure to resolve their fate after more than a decade of detention at Guantanamo.
They sat quietly in the courtroom as their lawyers questioned a retired admiral who previously oversaw the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal.
The lengthy and at times tedious questioning was aimed at showing the admiral and other military officials meddled in attorney-client communications, which are supposed to be confidential.
Hidden microphones
The hearing was the first in the case since February, when camp officials revealed that what appeared to be smoke alarms in the huts where defence lawyers met the defendants were actually microphones.
Camp officials insisted that they never listened to or recorded attorney-client meetings at the detention camp and said the microphones have since been disabled.
In addition to the five defendants in the 9/11 case, the Obama administration had planned to try about 36 prisoners in the war crimes tribunal.
But the chief prosecutor in the tribunals, Army Brigadier-General Mark Martins, told Reuters news agency last week that number would be scaled back to about 20 - including the 9/11 defendants and seven cases that have already been completed.
He had planned to charge many of the others with providing material support for terrorism but a US appeals court ruled last year that was not internationally recognised as a war crime when the acts in question took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Stuntwoman sues News Corp over hacking

2013-06-19T06:55:00.002+06:00

A stunt double for Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has sued Rupert Murdoch's beleaguered media empire News Corp over allegations its British newspapers hacked her phone, the first lawsuit in the US against the company since a hacking scandal broke out two years ago.

The lawsuit filed on June 13 by professional stunt double, Eunice Huthart, said reporters from News Corp's tabloids The Sun and the defunct News of the World, hacked her mobile phone while she was working for Jolie on location in Los Angeles.

A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Huthart's lawsuit said the hacking occurred in 2004 and 2005 while she was in the United States and Britain and resulted in lost voice messages that she never received.

The missing voice mails provided information later used in news reports, according to the court document in US District Court in California.

Huthart is seeking unspecified damages.

Huthart's mobile phone number, account number and personal code appeared in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, who was imprisoned in Britain for six months in 2007 for illegally intercepting phone messages at the request of News of the World.

The weekly paper was shut down in July 2011 after it emerged it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice messages of hundreds of high-profile figures, including missing teenager Milly Dowler who was later found murdered.

Deadly blast marks Afghan security handover

2013-06-19T06:50:00.002+06:00

A deadly blast in the west of Kabul that left at least three people dead has marked the formal handover of nationwide security from the US-led NATO coalition to Afghan forces.

The handover of responsibility on Tuesday is a significant milestone in the nearly 12-year war against Taliban and other armed groups and marks a turning point for American and NATO military forces, which will now move entirely into a supporting role.

It also opens the way for their full withdrawal in 18 months.

The ceremonial handover was, however, marred by an explosion that targeted the convoy of Mohammed Mohaqiq, a prominent ethnic Hazara lawmaker. Mohaqiq is said to have survived the blast.

General Mohammad Zahir, chief of the Kabul Criminal Investigation Division, said three people were killed by the bombing and another 30 were wounded - including six bodyguards.

"The roadside bomb targeted the Mohaqiq convoy, but he safely passed. One of his vehicles was damaged," Zahir said.

Handover ceremony

The blast came as hundreds of local and international officials gathered on the capital's outskirts to mark the beginning of the final phase of security transition to Afghan forces across the nation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the formal handover. "Our security and defence forces will now be in the lead," he said in a speech.

"From here, all security responsibility and all security leadership will be taken by our brave forces."

Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary-general, said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would help militarily if and when needed but will no longer plan, execute or lead operations.

"The main effort of our forces is shifting from combat to support," he said in speech during the ceremony.

"By the end of 2014, our combat mission will be completed. At that time, Afghanistan will be fully secured by Afghans," he said
Following the handover, Afghan forces will now have the lead for security in all 403 districts of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.
Until now, they were responsible for 312 districts nationwide, where 80 percent of Afghanistan's population of nearly 30 million lives.
After the handover, 100,000 NATO forces will play a supporting and training role, as Afghan soldiers and police take the lead in the fight against armed groups.

Doubts remain, however, over the ability of the 350,000-strong Afghan forces to thwart the Taliban, and the NATO military coalition will retain an important role in logistics and air support as well as in combat when required.
Recent attacks have demonstrated the Taliban's ability to strike at Kabul, as the country prepares for next year's presidential elections and the NATO withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Less than a week ago, a deadly suicide car bomb struck a bus carrying employees of the Supreme Court in Kabul and killed at least 17 people.

The blast on June 12 also injured 40 others, according to officials.

The total of 3,092 civilians killed or wounded between January 1 and June 6 this year was 24 percent higher than the same period last year, according to UN figures

Torrential rains devastate north Indian state

2013-06-19T06:45:00.001+06:00

Rescue efforts are under way after torrential rains and floods washed away buildings and roads, killing at least 64 people in north India, with thousands of pilgrims stranded in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, officials have said.

The Indian Air Force scrambled a dozen helicopters to reinforce a military-backed rescue mission in the worst-hit state of Uttarakhand, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Local government officials in the state capital Dehradun said they were overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.
"So far, we have found 54 bodies and 17 others are still missing," top disaster management official Piush Rautela told the AFP news agency by telephone.
"The situation is really very bad out there. More than 600 buildings have toppled or been swept away and there are 75,000 people including pilgrims stranded at various places."
"Certain areas are still unaccessible to us," he added, speaking from a control room in Dehradun which is monitoring rescue and relief missions.
More than 10,000 pilgrims stranded along a mountain pass leading to a Hindu religious site were being evacuated by helicopter after roads to the pilgrimage spot were blocked by landslides.
The army was also working to evacuate thousands from popular locations in Dehradun, Uttarkashi and Rishikesh.
A military statement said five airbases in northern India have been activated to speed up operations.
Pilgrimage trips cancelled
Television footage showed bridges, houses and multi-storey buildings crashing down and being washed away by the swirling waters.
As many as 250,000 people are thought to be in danger. The hilly terrain has made rescue operations difficult.
A giant statue of Lord Shiva could be seen submerged up to its head in the tourist hub of Rishikesh in Uttarakhand.
Rising water levels in some towns have also swept away cars, earthmoving equipment and even a parked helicopter, as a result of the surprise rains which began lashing the region on Saturday.
Authorities have cancelled pilgrimage trips, fearing further rains and landslides in the state, often referred to as the "Land of the Gods" because of its many Hindu temples and Hindu religious sites.
Wildlife, including deer, could be seen struggling for safety against the tide.
"Right now our priority is to save as many lives as possible and the scale of destruction will be assessed later," Routela said from Dehradun.
The state government was also readying food parcels and drinking water to be dropped by helicopters to the remote villages.
The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke with officials in Uttarakhand and promised "all assistance in rescue and relief operations" in the the stricken state, the premier's office said in a statement mailed to AFP.
Thousands stranded
In the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh state, the death toll from rain-related accidents stood at 10, said a state government official from the capital Shimla.
About 1,500 people, including 150 foreign holiday-makers, were stranded in the state which is a popular tourist destination, the official added.
Efforts were under way to try to reopen the major roads to rescue those cut off by the rains, said JM Pathania, a top administrative official of Kinnaur district of the state.
The monsoon, which India's farming sector depends on, covers the subcontinent from June to September, usually bringing some flooding.
But the heavy rains arrived early this year, catching many by surprise. The country has received 68 percent more rain than normal for this time of year, data from the India Meteorological Department shows.
Two hydropower stations that supply the region have also been shut down as a safety measure.
The River Ganges and its tributaries are flowing above the danger mark in several areas in Uttarakhand.

Afghan officials to talk with Taliban in Doha

2013-06-19T06:40:00.003+06:00

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that his government will send representatives to Qatar soon to discuss peace with the Taliban, a day after it was reported that the group was set to open its political office in Doha.
The announcement on Tuesday is the first significant step towards reaching a ceasefire in the 12-year-old war against the armed group.
"Afghanistan's High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the Taliban," Karzai said in Kabul, referring to the council he formed in late 2010 to pursue talks with the armed group.
Karzai was speaking at a ceremony in which the international military coalition marked its final handover of security to Afghan forces.
There was no immediate comment from Taliban.
Al Jazeera had earlier reported that Taliban would open a political office in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Tuesday.
Until earlier this year, Karzai was strongly opposed to the Taliban having a meeting venue outside Afghanistan, but the US has pushed for the Taliban to be present at the negotiating table.
In March, Karzai met Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, and discussed "issues of mutual interest," the state news agency QNA said, without elaborating on the substance of their talks.
Members of the Taliban arrived to Doha about one year ago to establish the office from which they could engage in negotiations with representatives of Washington, in the hope of eventually achieving direct Afghan-to-Afghan talks with the government of President Hamid Karzai.

But as early as March of this year, the Taliban seemed far from ready to forge peace by laying down their arms.

Suicide blast targets funeral in Pakistan

2013-06-19T06:34:00.004+06:00

A suicide bomber has targeted a funeral procession in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 29 people, including a legislator, and wounding more than 30 others, police have said.

The attack took place in the town of Sher Garh in Mardan district during funeral prayers for the owner of a local compressed natural gas (CNG) station, Abdullah Khan.

The blast, which police said appeared to target the politician, highlights the security challenges facing the new government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, sworn in earlier this month after winning the May 11 general election.

The death toll was confirmed to Al Jazeera by Shaukat Yousafzai, the information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KPK).

Some of the wounded are in a serious condition and have been rushed to hospitals in Mardan and Peshawar. There were more than 100 people at the time of the funeral, according to sources.

A witness told Pakistan's Dunya television that 700 to 800 people were attending the funeral when the bomber detonated the device.

"We all fell down after the blast,'' he said. "There were bodies and wounded everywhere.''

Years of fighting

Imran Khan Mohmand, a lawmaker and provincial assembly member from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was also believed to be killed.

Mohmand ran in Pakistan's May 11 parliament elections as an independent candidate and later supported PTI - the party of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.

He is the second member of the assembly killed today. Earlier, Farid Khan of the same party was killed in Hangu district.

The carnage poses a challenge for the newly-installed provincial government of Imran Khan, who campaigned on a platform that he would negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban to bring an end to the years of fighting and attacks in northwestern Pakistan.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is on the frontline of a seven-year Taliban insurgency and borders the semi-autonomous tribal belt, where US drone strikes have targeted Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives.

G8 summit fails to deliver on tax reforms

2013-06-19T06:28:00.002+06:00

The main focus of the second day of talks at the G8 conference has been about cracking down on international tax evasion.
Leaders want to keep pressing for legislation to cut down on the criminal use of shell companies.
However, they did not take firmer action for now to tighten rules on tax evasion and money laundering.
Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.

Anti-government protests grow in Bosnia

2013-06-19T06:23:00.001+06:00

Anti-government protests have escalated in Bosnia over the issuing of identity documents.

On Monday, a funeral was held for a Bosnian baby whose specialist treatment abroad was delayed because she had no identificaiton card.
All children born since February are without personal documents as the government bickers over how to define new identity numbers.
Al Jazeera's Charlie Angela reports.

'Tweet' added to Oxford English Dictionary

2013-06-19T05:52:00.001+06:00

The word tweet, in relation to social media, has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), breaking the rule which says a new word must be current for a decade before inclusion.

The addition is marked as a 'quiet announcement' on the dictionary's June 2013 update.

Chief editor and lexicographer John Simposon, 59, said: "The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED."

Other new word entries include flash mob, live blog, mani-pedi, geekery and jolly hickey sticks.

Commenting on the word tweet, Simpson said: "This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for 10 years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on."

The word has been used only since 2007, the dictionary says, one year after the launch of Twitter.

To tweet, says the entry, is to "make a posting on the social networking service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually."

The Oxford English Dictionary was first used in 1895.

Leaders shift focus to economy at G8 summit

2013-06-19T05:47:00.001+06:00

Leaders of the G8 countries will be spending the final hours of the summit focusing on how to deter kidnappings of foreign workers in Africa, and how best to corner globe-trotting companies into paying more taxes.

G8 leaders agreed to curb the payment of ransoms for hostages kidnapped by "terrorists", British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said at the summit in Northern Ireland on Tuesday.

Downing Street said the world leaders would also call on companies to follow their lead in refusing to pay for the release of abductees.

Hostage-taking of foreign workers for cash payments is on the rise across much of West Africa, particularly Nigeria with its own oil industry dominated by Western companies and foreign managers.
Syria statement

Elsewhere, on the sidelines of the final talks at the summit, officials said they were close to agreeing on a statement on the Syria conflict despite deep divisions between the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the rest of the G8.
However, the leaders are still working out the exact wording of the final communique they will issue, officials from two Western nations told the AFP news agency.

The statement is likely to focus on less contentious issues such as the need to push for a Syria peace conference in Geneva, and on humanitarian aid, one official said on condition of anonymity.

Syria was discussed for a second time on Tuesday during a session on counter-terrorism, following a lengthy discussion during the leaders' dinner on Monday, another source said.
As well as host Britain, the G8 includes the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia.
Public pressure

The G8 leaders also are expected to agree on new measures to restrict the ability of multinational corporations to avoid paying taxes in their home countries by using shell companies and other legal accounting tricks to shelter cash in principalities and islands, many of them British, that charge little or no tax.
Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee, reporting from Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, said there was a lot of public pressure to make sure companies are taxed in their home countries, especially when normal citizens were having to bear the brunt of austerity measures.
The British Treasury chief George Osborne is taking part to help explain Britain's agreement, unveiled last week, with its far-flung crown dependencies and overseas territories - including the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Anguilla - to start sharing more information on which foreign companies bank their profits there.

"You're going to see concrete achievements today on changing the international rules on taxation, so individuals can't hide their money offshore and companies don't shift their profits away from where the profit is made,'' Osborne said.

Hungary charges Nazi war crimes suspect

2013-06-19T05:42:00.003+06:00

A 98-year-old top Nazi war crimes suspect, accused of overseeing thousands of Jewish deportations during World War II, has been charged with war crimes in Hungary, prosecutors said.

Laszlo Csatary, who has been under house arrest since last year, is listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as its most-wanted alleged Nazi war criminal.

The Nazi-hunting organisation says that Csatary was a senior Hungarian police officer in charge of the Kosice ghetto, in what is now Slovakia.

"He is charged with the unlawful execution and torture of people ... committing war crimes partly as a perpetrator, partly as an accomplice," said Bettina Bagoly, a spokeswoman for the Budapest Chief Prosecutor's Office.

She said Csatary's case would go to trial within three months.

The Center says that in his role, Csatary helped organise the deportation to Ukraine and the Nazi death camp Auschwitz of some 15,700 Jews between 1941 and 1944.

He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1948 by a court in what was then Czechoslovakia.

Csatary, whose full name is Laszlo Csizsik-Csatary, sometimes spelt Csizsik-Csatari, was arrested on July 18, 2012 in Budapest on the basis of information provided by the Wiesenthal Center.

Csatary had fled to Canada after World War II but apparently lived undisturbed in Hungary for about 15 years before his arrest.

At a court hearing last July he denied all the accusations.

Scores detained in Turkey police swoop

2013-06-19T05:36:00.004+06:00

Police in Turkey have arrested 85 people following more than two weeks of anti-government protests.

Muammer Guler, Turkish interior minister, said on Tuesday that 62 people had been detained in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, while 23 others had been arrested in the capital Ankara as a result of raids in several cities.

“The operations are against members of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, who also attended the Gezi Park protests, as part of an investigation being conducted by prosecutors for more than a year,” Guler said.

Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Istanbul, said the detained people were accused of damaging public property and inciting violence.

Earlier, police detained a dozen people who stood still at Istanbul's Taksim Square in a form of passive defiance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authority after activists were ousted from a sit-in at Gezi Park over the weekend.

Erodogan brushed aside criticism of the crackdown on Tuesday and vowed to increase the police's powers to deal with the unrest.

Police defended

Erdogan also defended police use of pepper spray against the protesters.

"Using pepper stray is natural right of the police. Have they fired a bullet, have they used guns?... The police forces have passed the democracy test," he said in an address to his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) parliamentary group at the assembly.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu sharply criticised Erdogan for his speech.

Accusing Erdogan of behaving a like a dictator, Kilicdaroglu said that Turkey's reputation had increased as a result of "youth's cry for freedom".

"Our youth won. Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost," Kilicdaroglu added in an address to CHP’s parliamentary group.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has stated that it documented “a huge wave of arbitrary detentions and police attacks” during the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul over the weekend.

In a statement published on its website on Tuesday, HRW said Erdogan government's use of force in a clampdown on protesters has “precipitated a deepening human rights and political crisis in Turkey".

Facing criticisms from inside and outside Turkey, AKP will continue to organise "Respect to National Will" rallies this week to counter anti-government protests.

Erdogan announced that such rallies, initally held in Ankara and Istanbul during the weekend would continue in Kayseri on Friday, in Samsun on Saturday and Erzurum on Sunday.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul called on anti-government demonstrators to stop their protests.

Gul warned that Turkey’s image should be protected in all aspects.

“You make effort to create this image in 10 years, but you can destroy it within a week,” Gul told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday.

The crisis began when a sit-in to save Gezi Park's 600 trees from being razed in a redevelopment project prompted a brutal police response on May 31, escalating into countrywide demonstrations against Erdogan, seen as increasingly authoritarian.

According to the Turkish Medical Association (TBB), four people have been killed and nearly 7,500 people injured during clashes between protesters and the security forces.

US to hold direct peace talks with Taliban

2013-06-19T05:29:00.003+06:00

The US will engage in direct negotiations with the Taliban in Qatar next week, aimed at achieving peace in Afghanistan, senior White House officials have said.
Tuesday's announcement came as the Taliban opened a political office in the Qatari capital, Doha, to help start talks on ending the 12-year-old conflict, saying it wanted a political solution that would bring about a just government and end foreign occupation.
Mohammad Sohail Shaheen, Taliban spokesman and a member of the Doha political office, told Al Jazeera the armed group will continue to attack US targets in Afghanistan, but will simultaneously seek to end the conflict by pursuing peace talks.

He said there was no ceasefire with the US and its allies and that the Taliban "simultaneously follows political and military options".

"There is no ceasefire [with the US] now. They are attacking us and we are attacking them," Shaheen said.

Late on Tuesday, fighters attacked the Bagram Air Base west of Kabul, killing four US soldiers.

US President Barack Obama said the opening of the Taliban office was an important first step towards reconciliation between the Taliban and Afghanistan's government.
He cautioned, however, that the process would be lengthy and insisted that the Taliban break ties with al-Qaeda and end violence.
Secret discussions

A senior representative of the Afghan government confirmed that talks were scheduled with the Taliban and said the progress was made after secret discussions with the group.

"Peace talks will certainly take place between the Taliban and the High Peace Council," the official said, referring to the body created by Karzai in 2010 to negotiate peace with the group.

The Taliban has until now said it would not countenance peace talks with the Karzai government, which it calls a "stooge" of the US and other Western nations.
The peace talks, if they go ahead, could also lead to a reduction in fighting across Afghanistan, the official said.

"We hope that the attacks carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan will reduce while we talk peace; there is no point in talking if the bombs continue to kill civilians," he said.
But in what could anger the Afghan government, the white Taliban flag was visible at Shaheen's side during Tuesday's ceremony in Doha, and a large sign behind him proclaimed the office of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", the name the Taliban used during their brief national rule in the 1990s.

Both events may have been timed to coincide with a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the beginning of the final phase of security transition from the US-led coalition to the Afghan state.
Concern in Kabul
Al Jazeera's Jane Ferguson, reporting from Kabul, said that many poeple were saying they would resist what they percieved as the rise in power of the Taliban.
"The people here in Kabul are extremely concerned about the developments in Doha today," she said.
"What people here are asking is: What about the other objectives that were sold to Afghans in 2001 such as women's rights, universal human rights, democracy? Are those objectives to be sacrificed for the sake of a quick American withdrawal?

"If the Taliban were to have widespread political influence here, does that mean a lot of the things that the Americans have worked for over the past 12 years could be lost?"

Deadly clashes erupt in south Lebanon

2013-06-19T05:24:00.003+06:00

Two people have reportedly been killed in armed clashes between supporters of a pro-Hezbollah group and followers of a Sunni cleric in south Lebanon, local media has said.

The fighting erupted in the Abra neighbourhood of the port city of Sidon on Tuesday, as the army cut off roads leading to Abra in an effort to control the fighting there, state news agency NNA said.

It is the latest apparent outbreak of violence between Lebanese factions supporting opposing sides in the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Lebanon's Sunni leaders have called on their followers to fight alongside Syria's rebels, who are mostly Sunni. While the Shia group Hezbollah has given its support firmly to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades were used in the fighting in the eastern Sidon suburb, marking the worst violence in the area in years.

'Hezbollah apartments'

Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, the Sunni cleric whose followers were fighting in Sidon, is a vehement critic of the Hezbollah and has threatened to clear apartments occupied by the group's supporters in the mostly Sunni city.

Al Jazeera's Nour Samaha, reporting from Beirut, said Assir has made repeated accusations that there were Hezbollah apartments in the area near his mosque that the cleric wants cleared.

"Following the clashes today, he told one local channel that he has given the tenants of these apartments a deadline until Monday to get out," Samaha said.

Local media reported that the gunmen fighting Assir's followers belonged to the local Resistance Brigades that support Hezbollah.

Tensions have been building in Sidon since Monday, when followers of Assir said a soldier verbally harassed one of them as he went to the local mosque to pray.

The clashes erupted on Tuesday after several people attacked the car of Amjad al-Assir, the brother of the cleric, throwing stones at his car and breaking its glass, the officials said.

The army issued a stern ultimatum calling on all gunmen in the area to get off the streets, saying they will open fire on any armed man they see, our correspondent said.

Iraq worshippers killed in twin blasts

2013-06-19T05:15:00.002+06:00

Two suicide bombers have blown themselves up in and around a Shia mosque in the Iraqi capital, killing 26 people and wounding many more, police said.

Tuesday's coordinated blasts are the latest in a string of attacks rippling across Iraq that is reviving fears the country is headed back toward the widespread sectarian bloodshed that pushed it to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

Police said the first bomber detonated his explosives at a security checkpoint near the mosque in Baghdad's northern al-Qahira neighbourhood in an apparent attempt to distract the authorities.

The district is a middle-class, Shia-majority neighbourhood.

Amid the commotion, a second bomber slipped into the mosque and blew himself up while worshippers were performing midday prayers, according to police.

A medic in a nearby hospital confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to media.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The latest violence comes a week after a series of blasts across the country left at least 48 people dead.

More than 1,000 people were killed in attacks in Iraq during May, according to the United Nations, making it the deadliest month since the 2006-2007 sectarian bloodletting.

Both Sunnis and Shias have been targeted in an intensifying wave of violence since the beginning of the year.

BNP walked out of Parliament

2013-06-18T06:24:00.003+06:00

Nazma Akhter MP’s comment came a day after Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury issued a ‘tough warning’ against using ‘un-parliamentary’ language.
Speaking on the proposed budget, Akhter claimed: “Laxmi Rani Marma is the opposition leader’s mother… Her father, too, had a surname of Marma.”
She continued ignoring the Speaker’s call to speak on the budget and claimed to have gleaned the information from a book.
Khaleda is the daughter of Tayeba Majumder and Eskander Majumder.

Irked at the ruling MP’s remark, the opposition showed their back to the proceedings at around 9:30pm before returning 15 minutes later.
Parliament has been rocked by personal attacks in recent weeks.
Last week, both the opposition and the ruling party assured the Speaker that they would not use offensive remarks. However, such assurances seem to

have had little effect.

Bangladesh Jatiya Party’s Andaleeve Rahman Partho first stirred Monday’s session by attacking Awami League’s Tofail Ahmed, Suranjit Sengupta, and Syed Abul Hossain.

Last week, BNP’s Syeda Ashifa Ashrafi Papia MP, known for her rhetoric, had claimed Prime Minister’s daughter-in-law was a Jew.

Papiya’s remark had prompted Nazma Akhter to attack the BNP chief over her family lineage.

Akhter flayed Andaleeve’s remark that the government was getting ‘scared’ of BNP Senior Vice Chairman Tarique Rahman’s speech.

Tarique made his first appearance at a public meeting in nearly five years in London last month where he urged the expatriates to mount pressure on the government to reinstate the caretaker government provision.

In response to Andaleeve’s remark, Nazma Akhter said: “We are certainly afraid of him (Tarique). [Because] we’ll have grenade attacks like the one on Aug 21, women will be dishonoured at the Khowab (Hawa) Bhaban, militant attacks will take place, if he returns.”

She alleged Tarique, under the influence of liquor, had tried to rape the wife of an actor on a plane.

Al-Qaeda confirms death of leader in Mali

2013-06-18T06:09:00.001+06:00

A top leader in al-Qaeda's north Africa branch has been killed in fighting with France, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has said, according to a statement carried by the private Mauritanian news agency ANI.

According to the statement released by AQIM on Sunday, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, considered a top commander within the group, was killed in the ongoing fighting in Mali.

The statement did not provide details of the date of Zeid's death, though it comes three months after France first announced he had been killed.

The AQIM said the Algerian-born Abou Zeid, died "on the battlefield defending Umma (the Muslim community) and sharia law."

Paris had announced in March that Abou Zeid was killed in fighting with its forces after France led an offensive to rout al-Qaeda linked groups from northern Mali.

Both France and Chad, whose troops were also involved in the offensive, said the 46-year-old fighter was killed at the end of February.

"It is the first time that an AQIM statement has officially referred to the death of Abou Zeid," said ANI director Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Abou Al-Maali, a specialist on the armed group.

Born in Debdeb in Algeria, close to the border with Libya, Abou Zeid was a young activist in the FIS Islamist movement that won the country's first democratic elections in 1991 but was denied power.

He then disappeared underground for most of the 1990s.
He re-emerged in 2003 as second in command of the GSPC group which kidnapped dozens of foreigners in southern Algeria, and that would later, along with several other organisations, evolve into AQIM.
Mali descended into chaos in the wake of a March 2012 coup as al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels capitalised on the power vacuum to seize the desert territory in the north.

France launched its offensive in its former colony on January 11 to stop the rebels from advancing on the capital Bamako.

Five 9/11 accused appear in Guantanamo court

2013-06-18T06:03:00.003+06:00

Five men accused of taking part in the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US have appeared in a court in Guantanamo Bay.

They appeared before the judge on Monday for the start of five days of pretrial hearings.

The accused have been charged with terrorism and nearly 3,000 counts of murder. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.

A judge is considering a long list of procedural issues that include whether the defence can have access to confidential records of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The men were last in court in February. That hearing was dominated by defence concerns that their private conversations with the accused were being monitored.

The government denied any monitoring.

The defendants include self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The government has asked for a trial in late 2014, though it's likely to be later.

Protest rallies held in Brazil's main cities

2013-06-18T05:59:00.000+06:00

Protesters have massed across Brazil to demonstrate against the rising costs of both public transport and the 2014 World Cup to be held in the country, following clashes with police over several days.
Protesters gathered in four Brazilian cities on Monday in what they hoped would be their biggest demonstrations yet against the increase in transit rates.
The protest movement is mainly made up of the middle class and is critical of the government's decision to increase transit rates by 10 cents, to $1.60.
Police in Sao Paulo estimated that 30,000 people rallied in the city's biggest demonstration yet. Up to 20,000 people marched in Rio de Janeiro and another 6,000 took part in protests in the capital Brasilia.
Authorities said they would respond with force only if protesters destroyed property.
Riot police had fired rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds of protesters on Thursday in Sao Paulo. Protest organisers said more than 100 people were hurt. Police only confirmed about a dozen injuries.
On Sunday police used tear gas and rubber bullets again when several hundred protesters marched near Maracana stadium before a Confederations Cup match between Italy and Mexico, part of an eight-team warm-up tournament for next year's World Cup finals in Brazil.
The government of Brazil, where almost one-fifth of the population lives in poverty, estimates that hosting the 2014 World Cup will cost $14.5bn.
Some tickets to the international football tournament are expected to cost more than Brazil's minimum wage of $300.
The government, however, has asked FIFA to make 500,000 seats available for free to the poor.
Demonstrations also were being held in the capital of Brasilia and in Rio de Janeiro.
In Brasilia, several thousand people under heavy police escort marched on the Esplanada dos Ministerios thoroughfare that cuts between rows of government ministry buildings.

Brazilian officials are using drones, thermal cameras and thousands of troops to patrol the six stadiums hosting matches in six different cities across the country.

Snowden defends leaks on US spy programme

2013-06-18T05:53:00.003+06:00

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the US government's top-secret monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet data, has said the government's "litany of lies" about the programmes compelled him to act.

In a question-and-answer session with readers and journalists on website of the UK’s Guardian newspaper on Monday, Snowden urged President Barack Obama to "return to sanity" and roll back the surveillance effort.

Snowden also talked about his motivations and reaction to the debate raging about the damage or virtue of the leaks. Snowden remains in hiding, reportedly in Hong Kong.

"I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets," he said.

"I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target."

Snowden said disillusionment with Obama contributed to his decision, but there was no single event that led him to leak details about the vast monitoring of Americans' activity.

"It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress - and therefore the American people – and the realisation that Congress ... wholly supported the lies," said Snowden, who had worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton before providing the details to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Snowden referred to US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's testimony to Congress in March that such a programme did not exist, saying that seeing him "baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed."

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Snowden's actions, and US officials promised last week to hold him accountable for the leaks.

'No fair trial'

However, Snowden said the US government made it impossible for him to receive a fair trial.

"The US government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice," he wrote on the online forum.

His actions ignited a renewed debate about privacy rights and national security, and in the US Snowden has been called both a hero and a traitor for his actions.

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney was the latest to call Snowden a traitor, but Snowden called that a badge of honour.

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honour you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him ... the better off we all are," Snowden said.

Indonesians rally against fuel price hike

2013-06-18T05:48:00.003+06:00

Thousands of protesters have rallied across Indonesia against government plans to hike the price of fuel, with police in one city firing tear gas to stop hundreds storming the local parliament.

Indonesia's parliament on Monday approved budget amendments that will pave the way for the government to announce the first price hike since 2008.

Demonstrations were held in the capital Jakarta and other cities to coincide with the parliament session that approved compensation measures for the poor that the government had demanded before it would agree to cut fuel subsidies.

Fuel prices have long been a flashpoint issue in Indonesia, with economists arguing that huge government subsidies are damaging Southeast Asia's top economy.

Millions are opposed to lowering the payouts, which keep down the cost of living.

In Jambi, a city on Sumatra island, hundreds of protesters tried to push through the gate in front of the local legislature, provincial police spokesman Almansyah told AFP news agency.

"The situation became somewhat chaotic and the police had to fire tear gas to disperse them," said the spokesman, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Nobody managed to enter and the situation was under control, he added.

A journalist was hit near the eye by a tear gas shell casing and was receiving hospital treatment, the spokesman said.

'Hang SBY'

In Jakarta, about 3,000 demonstrators gathered outside the national parliament in light rain, setting fire to tyres and waving banners that read "Reject the fuel price rise" and "hang SBY [President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono]".

"Get ready to occupy the parliament building if they raise the fuel price," shouted one protester through a loudspeaker.

About 19,000 police and military personnel were deployed across Jakarta, police said.

In the city of Makassar, on Sulawesi island, about 500 university students and teachers protested, burning tyres and yelling "revolution".

While only a small percentage of Indonesians are private car owners, the plan to increase the price of petrol by 44 percent is expected to push up the cost of everyday goods as they will be more expensive to transport.

The decision to raise fuel prices rests with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Government officials have repeatedly stated that the price rises would follow shortly after the parliamentary decision.

Vietnam jails blogger for 'erroneous' posts

2013-06-18T05:43:00.003+06:00

Vietnamese police have arrested a blogger accused of posting "erroneous and slanderous" information about the communist government, the third blogger to be locked in the past month in an intensifying crackdown against dissent.

The state-run Thanh Nien newspaper reported on Monday that Dinh Nhat Uy was taken into police custody in southern Long An province on Saturday. He is accused of "abusing democratic freedoms," an offense that carries up to seven years in prison.

The 30-year-old is the brother of Dinh Nguyen Kha, a student who was sentenced last month to eight years in jail for spreading propaganda against the government.

Two well-known bloggers have been arrested over the past three weeks on the same charges.