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Sana Usman

100 missing in Assam's worst ever vessel tragedy - 0 views

www.newsspeedchannel.eu/worst-ever-vessel-tragedy.html

Brahmaputra stream 100 missing in Assam vessel tragedy Dhubri Deputy Commissioner Kumud Chandra Kalita Indian Prime Minister Army Border Security Force National Disaster Relief Framework district The NDRF BSF and rescue operations ferry Ghat Medartary on

shared by Sana Usman on 01 May 12 - No Cached
  • Sana Usman on 01 May 12
     
    Saviors on Tuesday battered the waters of the Brahmaputra stream amidst heavy rain to find the over 100 missing in Assam's worst ever vessel tragedy that left 103 departed even as authorities feared that the death toll may increase.
Sana Usman

Foreign office rejects the allegations about Hafiz Saeed & Al-Zawahri - 0 views

www.newsspeedchannel.eu/ut-hafiz-saeed-al-zawahri.html

Ministry of affairs Hafiz Saeed and Aiyman Al-Zawahri Pakistan's foreign U.S. Secretary State Miss Hillary Clinton 2008 Mumbai massacre attacks Muhammad Minister Office spokesman Moazzam Khan Speaking in Kolkata Hilary Jamaat-ud-Dawah Islamic Jehadi group

shared by Sana Usman on 07 May 12 - No Cached
  • Sana Usman on 07 May 12
     
    Ministry of Foreign affairs rejects the allegations about Hafiz Saeed and Aiyman Al-Zawahri, Pakistan's foreign office today answered U.S. Secretary of State Miss Hillary Clinton's comments that it had not ended enough against the 2008 Mumbai massacre attacks organizer Hafiz Saeed saying if there any indication against him should be communal with Pakistan so that it can be examined by the courts.
Ed Webb

More than 2,500 dead, missing as 186,000 cross Mediterranean in 2023 | Refugees News | ... - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...00-cross-mediterranean-in-2023

mediterranean migration UNHCR IOM data death Italy Greece Malta Cyprus Spain Tunisia Libya

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Sep 23 - No Cached
  • More than 2,500 people have died or gone missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, the UN refugee agency said, while approximately 186,000 people have arrived in European countries during the same period.
  • of the 186,000 who had crossed the Mediterranean, 83 percent – some 130,000 people – landed in Italy. Other countries where people who had crossed the Mediterranean had landed included Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta.
  • the land journey from sub-Saharan African countries to sea crossing departure points on the Tunisian and Libyan coasts “remains one of the world’s most dangerous”.
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  • “Lives are also lost on land, away from public attention,”
Ed Webb

Veteran US diplomat tackles Middle East 'mess' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...-east-patterson-interview.html

US USA foreignpolicy MENA Egypt Iran KSA Saudi Syria Lebanon diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Al-Monitor:  In the old days, the Iranians and the Saudis used to talk to each other and resolve issues. Now, this is a missing piece. Patterson:  It goes back 20 years [to Lebanon]. This is a missing piece. And so the proxy war has gotten a lot worse and you see it all over now in frankly scary dimensions. But it wasn’t that long ago when they had some kind of relationship. … They never liked each other, but they weren’t at this level of animosity.
  • Al-Monitor:  There have been some incredibly anti-American statements lately in Egypt. [Former parliament member and current Al-Osboa editor] Mustafa Bakri openly called last week for attacks against Americans. What are we doing to counter this? Patterson:  We complain to the government. Mr. Bakri did sort of back off that statement. But now there has been a rash of hugely anti-American stuff in the press. This ebbs and flows, … [but] it’s really a quite dangerous game, because you fan up public opinion and then you’re hostage to public opinion.
  • Al-Monitor:  Let’s turn to Egypt. General, now Field Marshal [Abdel Fattah] al-Sisi seems on his way to becoming Egypt’s next president. How would you characterize our relationship with him and the Egyptian government at this point? Patterson:  Personal relationships with him have been good — certainly with ambassadors, including me and with [Defense] Secretary [Chuck] Hagel and with Secretary Kerry and a lot of people on the Hill. But it’s certainly no secret that we’re concerned about freedom of the press, freedom of association, all the fundamentals that are being thrown into question right now in Egypt, not to mention the huge economic issues.
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  • It’s like 1979. The Arab Spring has changed the situation entirely in the region all at once. … It looks like a mess … but if some of this can be successful, … it will change the chessboard. … So let’s hold out hope that some of this will work.
Ed Webb

New Islamist Bloc Declares Opposition to National Coalition and US Strategy - Syria Com... - 0 views

www.joshualandis.com/...s-drop-exiles-go-full-islamist

Syria Islamists

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Abdelaziz Salame, the highest political leader of the Tawhid Brigade in Aleppo, has issued a statement online where he claims to speak for 13 different rebel factions. You can see the video or read it in Arabic here. The statement is titled “communiqué number one” – making it slightly ominous right off the bat – and what it purports to do is to gut Western strategy on Syria and put an end to the exiled opposition.
  • All military and civilian forces should unify their ranks in an “Islamic framwork” which is based on “the rule of sharia and making it the sole source of legislation”. The undersigned feel that they can only be represented by those who lived and sacrificed for the revolution. Therefore, they say, they are not represented by the exile groups. They go on to specify that this applies to the National Coalition and the planned exile government of Ahmed Touma, stressing that these groups “do not represent them” and they “do not recognize them”. In closing, the undersigned call on everyone to unite and avoid conflict, and so on, and so on.
  • if the statement proves to accurately represent the groups mentioned and they do not immediately fall apart again, it is a very big deal. It represents the rebellion of a large part of the “mainstream FSA” against its purported political leadership, and openly aligns these factions with more hardline Islamist forces.
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  • The alleged signatories make up a major part of the northern rebel force, plus big chunks also of the Homs and Damascus rebel scene, as well as a bit of it elsewhere. Some of them are among the biggest armed groups in the country, and I’m thinking now mostly of numbers one through five. All together, they control at least a few tens of thousand fighters, and if you trust their own estimates (don’t) it must be way above 50,000 fighters.
  • Bottom line, they were all Islamist anyway. And, of course, they can still mean different things when they talk about sharia.
  • all of these groups now formally state that they do not recognize the opposition leadership that has been molded and promoted by the USA, Turkey, France, Great Britain, other EU countries, Qatar, and – especially, as of late – Saudi Arabia
  • Dozens or hundreds of small and local groups are missing from this alliance, just like they’ve been missing from every other alliance before it. Some really big groups are also not in there, like the Farouq Battalions or the Ahfad al-Rasoul Brigades, both of them quite closely aligned with the SMC and the National Coalition.
  • Most notably, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham – Syria’s most querulous al-Qaida faction – is absent from the list. Given the recent surge in tension between the Islamic State and other factions, that seems significant. Does it mean the new coalition is in fact aimed at isolating the Islamic State, while also upping its own Islamist credentials? Striking a kind of third way between the Western-backed SMC and its al-Qaida rival? Maybe. The question then remains, what should we make of Jabhat al-Nosra being included, which is also an al-Qaida group.
  • the Northern Storm Brigade – which was routed by the Islamic State in its home town of Aazaz just recently – has quickly expressed support for the new coalition. In a statement posted online, they fell over themselves to explain how they’ve always been all about implementing sharia law. This is of course, how shall I put it, not true. The Northern Storm Brigade leaders are, or so the story goes, a bunch of ex-smugglers from Aazaz, with no particularly clear ideological agenda. They’ve allied with the West to the point of hosting John McCain for a photo op – and as we know, he waltzed out of that meeting firmly convinced that the rebels are all proponents of secular democracy. No: the reason that the Northern Storm Brigade has suddenly gone all Islamist is that they desperately seek protection from Tawhid, after being beaten up by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Perhaps they also figure that this alliance might be the only thing big and mean enough to actually crush the Islamic State. Size, money and momentum are the things to look for in Syrian insurgent politics – ideology comes fourth, if even that.
  • There’s always good reason to be cautious about Syria’s notoriously unstable opposition politics. Things like these will shift quicker than you can say يسقط بشار. The wind could easily turn again, signatory groups could drop out, foreign funders could put the squeeze on groups that have not grasped the magnitude of what they just said.
Ed Webb

Syria Comment » Archives » "Bush White House Wanted to Destroy the Syrian Sta... - 0 views

www.joshualandis.com/blog

US USA Cheney Blair Syria Lebanon Iraq analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10
     
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Ed Webb

Lebanon boat survivors wait for news of missing loved ones | Migration News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...for-news-of-missing-loved-ones

economy migration Lebanon Italy mediterranean migrants navy

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Apr 22 - No Cached
  • Lebanon’s dire financial crisis over the past two years has slipped over three-quarters of the population into poverty. Many Lebanese are struggling to cope with skyrocketing inflation, crippling power cuts, medicine shortages, and an absence of viable social services.
  • Many Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian families have resorted to selling everything they own, and trying to migrate by sea to Europe to find job opportunities.
Ed Webb

U.S. quietly allows military aid to Egypt despite rights concerns - Politics - Egypt - ... - 0 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...y-aid-to-Egypt-despite-ri.aspx

Egypt US USA aid military rights democratization diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Secretary of State John Kerry quietly acted last month to give Egypt $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid, deciding that this was in the national interest despite Egypt's failure to meet democracy standards.
  • "By issuing a waiver without any public discussion, it has at the very least missed a significant opportunity to ... raise its concerns about the political trajectory in Egypt," she said. Wittes said that last year's waiver occurred at a time when Egypt had made some progress toward greater democratic reforms, while this year "the waiver was issued in the context of a negative trajectory in Egypt's transition to democracy."
Ed Webb

What does Africa need to tackle climate change? - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...te-change-161116140527915.html

Africa Morocco agriculture development climate environment

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • the Moroccan presidency of this year's COP climate summit has made African agriculture one of its priorities when addressing climate change. For the first time, pan-African experts and officials meet to discuss their best solutions while making a united plea for $30bn to put them into action. Such regional action has become critical, as talks to include agriculture in the climate negotiations have once again failed, and will now be postponed until May 2017.
  • Every single African country has included adapting agriculture as part of their climate change strategies submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). What is missing is sufficient investment.
  • Out of the 10 countries most affected by greenhouse gas emissions, six of them are in Africa, yet the continent only receives 5 percent of dedicated climate funding.
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  • The cost of adapting agriculture to cope with the effects of climate change will cost between $20bn and $30bn a year until 2030, according to the African Development Bank.
  • better soil management
  • The second area is water control. A third of areas growing olives in Morocco are still using traditional flood irrigation methods, consuming water levels that are far beyond what the trees actually require.
  • The third aspect is climate-risk management.
  • we need funding to expand capacity building and means of sharing our knowledge so that African countries can learn how to adapt to climate change
Sana Usman

United States refused to condemn Pakistan for test-firing nuclear long range missile - 0 views

www.newsspeedchannel.eu/uclear-long-range-missile.html

Washington The United States of long range missile India successfully tested Agni-V airspace in Indian Ocean Shaheen-1A Hatf-IV ballistic test US State Department Spokeswoman Miss Victoria Nuland Hatf IV Arabian Sea

shared by Sana Usman on 26 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Sana Usman on 26 Apr 12
     
    Washington: The United States department of state refused to condemn Pakistan too for its test-firing a nuclear capable long range missile less than a week after India successfully tested it's a long range missile Agni - V, but measured it "most important" that Pakistan had conversant Indian authorities in advance.
Ed Webb

CHARTS: US Overseas Arms Sales More Than Tripled in 2011 | Mother Jones - 0 views

www.motherjones.com/...us-arms-sales-overseas-triples

US USA arms weapons sales KSA Saudi UAE Oman Iran

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Much of the surge was driven exclusively by the ongoing freak-out over Iran: Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (all Persian Gulf allies or partners of the United States) in particular started buying missile defense systems, fighter jets, and other hardware from the US at record levels, just in case Iran ever goes nuclear and tries to throw its weight around West Asia and the Gulf. Saudi Arabia's $33.4 billion deal included dozens of F-15 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters. The UAE threw down $4.5 billion for a missile shield and other toys.
Ed Webb

Turkey and Iran seek workaround on Syria - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...syria-crisis-intervention.html

Turkey Iran Syria politics diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In Tehran, Erdogan stated, “The terrorist groups that are operating under the cover of Islam are in no way related to Islam. We will widen our cooperation shoulder-to-shoulder with Iran in combating terrorist groups.” Rouhani, for his part, spoke of “common views about … terrorism and extremism.” What the two sides disagree on is the source of terrorism. According to Turkish officials, the Iranians maintain that “Assad’s departure would make no sense without the elimination of terrorist groups, the prevention of their entry [to Syria] and cutting the financial and other support they receive.” In response, Erdogan said: “The terrorist groups emerged under Assad. A government change is a pressing necessity. We disagree with the argument that ‘this cannot happen as long as terrorist groups are there.’ Measures could be equally taken through the formation of an interim government in Syria. The interim government could combat terrorism by means of the Free Syrian Army and at the same time lead the country to elections.”
  • Asked about any compromise with Iran on Syria, Erdogan said, “I cannot say we have reached an agreement.” He added, though, that the two sides had instructed their foreign ministers and intelligence chiefs to work on the issue. This proposal reportedly came from Iran and the Turkish side accepted. So, here begins the path to compromise. The common discourse of threat regarding the situation in Syria lays the ground for cooperation.
  • Turkey has fallen into the situation of Pakistan, which serves as a springboard for the Afghan jihad. Like a boomerang, al-Qaeda has turned on Turkey. On Jan. 28, the Turkish army shelled positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) as the group attacked the Syrian Turkmen village of Al-Rai near the border. Even though ISIS spokesman Abu Layth said it would not strike back because “Muslims will take Turkey without arms,” security and intelligence authorities remain on alert against possible al-Qaeda attacks
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  • Turkey fears it will end up on the sidelines if the US succeeds in its dialogue with Iran. As a neighboring country, it does not want to miss the opportunities that the eventual abolition of sanctions on Iran would present. And as the Iraqi scene has already shown, too much regional competition with Iran has a paralyzing effect on Turkish interests.
  • The Gulen community — Erdogan’s former partner, which he has now declared a “parallel state” and an enemy over the corruption probe — is averse to Iran and Shiism
Ed Webb

US and Israel lose UNESCO voting rights - Americas - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ights-2013118131753600731.html

UN UNESCO US USA Israel Palestine MEPP

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • UNESCO has suspended the voting rights of the United States, two years after it stopped paying dues to the UN's cultural arm in protest over its granting full membership to the Palestinians, according to a UNESCO source. The US has not paid its dues to UNESCO due to the decision by world governments to make Palestine a UNESCO member in 2011. Israel suspended its dues at the same time and also lost voting rights on Friday.
  • The US decision of not paying UNESCO was blamed on US laws that prohibit funding to any United Nations agency that implies recognition of Palestinian demands for their own state.
  • The withdrawal of US funding, which to date amounts to about $240m or some 22 percent of UNESCO's budget, has plunged the organisation into a financial crisis, forcing it to cut programmes and slash spending.
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  • Some fear that a weaker US presence will lead to growing anti-Israeli sentiment within UNESCO, where Arab-led criticism of Israel for territorial reasons has long been an issue. "We won't be able to have the same clout," said Phyllis Magrab, the Washington-based US National Commissioner for UNESCO. "In effect, we (now won't) have a full tool box. We're missing our hammer." Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Nimrod Barkan, told The Associated Press that his country supported the US decision, "objecting to the politicisation of UNESCO, or any international organisation, with the accession of a non-existing country like Palestine." Elias Sanbar, Palestinian Ambassador to UNESCO told Al Jazeera: "We need them (the United States) to be active. By taking this decision, first of all, they have created big problems for UNESCO, but they have also lost part of their role and we need their role." UNESCO designates World Heritage sites, promotes global education and supports press freedom among other tasks.
  • The Palestinians have so far failed in their bid to become a full member of the UN, but their UNESCO membership is seen as a potential first step towards UN recognition of statehood.
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