Category: World

Outrage as ISIS beheads Christians

The Islamic State beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians over the weekend, propping the severed heads on the victims’ backs, a barbaric slaughter that led Reverend Franklin Graham to ask, “Can you imagine the outcry if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians?”

“Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world?” he asked.

The brutal killing of the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, who had been abducted in Libya by members of the Islamic State, was videotaped and the entire death film was posted online on Sunday, Feb. 15. It is entitled, “A Message Signed With Blood, To The Nation of the Cross.”

In a Facebook post on Feb. 16, Rev. Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said, “The militant Islamic terrorist group ISIS has released a video called A MESSAGE SIGNED WITH BLOOD TO THE NATION OF THE CROSS showing the beheadings of the 21 Egyptian Christians who had been kidnapped in Libya.”

“Can you imagine the outcry if 21 Muslims had been beheaded by Christians?” said Rev. Graham. “Where is the universal condemnation by Muslim leaders around the world?”

“As we mourn with the families of those 21 martyrs, we’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States,” warned Rev. Graham.

“If this concerns you like it does me, share this,” he said. “The storm is coming.”

Source: cnsnews.com

EU lends to Zimbabwe again

The European Union has given Zimbabwe $267 million, it said on Monday, the first time the bloc has given financial aid to the southern African nation’s government since imposing sanctions in 2002.

The 28-nation EU has gradually eased biting sanctions on Zimbabwe to encourage political reform, although it has kept an asset freeze and a travel ban on veteran President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace, as well as an arms embargo.
Since imposing the sanctions, the EU has shunned the government, and restricted its funding to charities only.

The EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Philippe Van Damme said during a signing ceremony that the agreement opened a new chapter in the bloc’s relationship with Zimbabwe, but cautioned that new problems could still emerge in future.
“Does this mean that everything is suddenly sorted out and that we are entering a new honeymoon? No, we have cleared some obstacles in our partnership, and as in any partnership new problems may emerge, old problems may reappear,” he said.

Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has long demanded the complete removal of EU sanctions it denounces as illegal.

Finance Minister Finance Patrick Chinamasa said the aid marked a significant step towards improving ties between Zimbabwe and the EU but that sanctions on Mugabe and his wife would hurt full normalisation of relations.

“As long as the chief executive (Mugabe) remains under sanctions, our relations remain poisoned and unproductive,” Chinamasa said.

The EU said the funds will improve health, agriculture-based economic development, governance and institution-building.
Half of the money would be released this year, and the rest will be paid gradually until 2020, Van Damme said.

India scraps French Rafale deal

India has scrapped a deal with France to buy 126 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), after three years of negotiations, due to the high cost of the project.

India has announced that a deal to buy 126 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) from French manufacturer Dassault Aviation is “effectively dead”.

The reason is the announced high cost of the overall project, according to the country’s online newspaper Business Standard.

The global tender for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) was the first time the Indian Ministry of Defense (MoD) had awarded a contract based on life cycle costing (LCC). This meant the winner of the tender would not be the fighter with the cheapest purchase price; instead the chosen fighter would be the one that was the cheapest to buy, fly, maintain and overhaul over its 30-40 year service life.

As per the original tender, eighteen of the 126 planes were supposed to be purchased directly from Dassault, while Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) was due to manufacture the other 108 under license at a to-be-built facility in the city of Bangalore.

Dassault Aviation has refused to take full responsibility for these 108 fighters to be manufactured in India, which automatically increased the overall cost of the whole project.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has recently said that Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters, which had been built by Hindustan Aeronautics at its Nashik plant, could be substituted for them, according to the website IndiaSpend.

The Sukhoi-30 MKI is currently India’s most advanced fighter and forms the backbone of its air force. It’s also half the current cost of a Rafale.

The Indian Air Force first signed a deal with the Russian government to purchase eight air defense Su-30K and 32 multi-role Su-30 MK aircraft in 1996. IAF bought an additional 10 Su-30 MKs in December 1998.

Meanwhile former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said his country should deliver the Mistral class helicopter carriers to Russia.

Dumas has urged the authorities to give the Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia under the existing contract and called the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by his country a gross mistake.

According to Russian experts, Paris could face penalties as high as $10 billion if it fails to fulfill its contractual obligations over the Mistral order.

Source: Sputnik News

Qatar marches against ‘white hate crime’

About 1,000 people have taken to the streets of Doha, Qatar, to express their anger over the killing of three Muslim students in the US last week by their white neighbour.

Qatar branded the murder “a terrorist act.”

Protesters’ banners read, “End hate crimes”, “Unity”, and “We all have the right to live free from hate”, AFP reported.

US Ambassador to Qatar Dana Shell Smith was among the demonstrators.

She later posted to her Twitter that it was “good to see young people rejecting hate of all kinds.”

The march was organized by a foundation headed by the mother of Qatar’s emir, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser al-Masnad.

Last week, three students – 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her 19-year-old sister Razan – were allegedly murdered by their white neighbour Craig Stephen Hicks.

The killing happened in the North Carolina university town of Chapel Hill.

Hicks, 46, has been charged with three counts of murder, and is thought to be a fierce opponent of religion: on his Facebook page, he published anti-religious posts, including against Islam, Christianity and Mormons.

According to police, they are looking into the incident as a parking dispute. However, the students’ families believe the attack was religiously-motivated.

Source: RT

Pope pivots to Asia

Pope Francis’ real interest is geopolitics.

In less than two years in office, Francis has nudged the conversation away from sex to such as matters as Cuba-U.S. relations and climate change. In September, he will become the first religious leader who serves as a head of state to address a joint session of Congress.

Pope John Paul II was single-minded in the pursuit of ending Communism in the 1980s, while Pope Benedict XVI was a gaffe-prone bookworm fretting over relativism.

Francis, in contrast, is making his own pivot towards Asia. He already has been twice to the region shunned by his predecessor with a view not only to refilling pews, but also gaining traction with the rising powers.

The challenge for Francis — who is from a religious order that proselytized in China in the 16th century — is how to work with China today. The Vatican and the world’s most populous country have been at odds since 1951 over, among many things, the right to ordain bishops.

Francis, who says he would go to Beijing tomorrow, has a secret corridor with the new leadership for diplomatic messages. There have been small gestures on both sides: Francis didn’t see the Dalai Lama in Rome; doing so would have incensed Chinese authorities. President Xi Jinping allowed Francis to fly in China’s airspace, the first time a pope was granted that right.

China has about 12 million Catholics — three times the number in Ireland — compared with a mere 300,000 in Taiwan.

The gap between the pope’s knowledge and effectiveness may be large. Francis has dived into tough international conflicts including Korea, Cuba and Palestine and not all has gone well.

While he brought attention to the plight of Palestinians by praying in Bethlehem near graffiti that read “Free Palestine,” his visit was followed by violence against the Palestinians.

He was much more successful with Cuba, secretly hosting delegations from there and the U.S. and playing a vital role in the prisoner exchanges that led to renewed relations after half a century.

He has announced plans to shrink the bureaucracy that runs the church, removed executives at the mismanaged Vatican Bank and told cardinals to abandon their limousines and catch the bus.

At the bank, he’s brought a measure of transparency following allegations of illegal behavior and poor oversight. The bank now publishes an annual report, has closed 2,000 accounts and undertaken a review of 18,000 clients.

Source: Bloomberg

US Senator sells war with fake photographs

Serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of photographs provided by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) to sell a “Russian invasion”.

Inhofe released “photographic proof of Russian solders in Ukraine” in order to push forward his bill to provide U.S. arms to Ukraine. Or so he thought.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee first viewed the graphic pictures in December. Sen. Inhofe then obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos, before providing the fake photo’s “exclusively” to the Free Beacon.

Several images of the Russian convoys appear to have been taken in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia, but have been presented as “evidence” of an Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Inhofe wanted the Obama administration and American people to see “graphic violence inflicted upon Ukraine by the Russian-backed separatists”.

United States Senators are the people who actually play an important role in deciding when their country goes to war. Inhofe’s bill to arm the Ukrainians is sponsored by at least 16 other leading Republicans, including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), John Cornyn (Texas), Marco Rubio (Fla.), and Tom Cotton (Ark.).

Sen. Inhofe said in a statement: “The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice. We felt confident to release these photos because the images match the reporting of what is going on in the region. I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008.”

Western embassies in Yemen evacuated

The embassies of Germany and Italy have announced evacuation of embassies’ personnel from Yemen. They followed the example of other NATO member states, such as Britain, France and the Netherlands, which have closed their embassies in Yemen over security fears.

US embassy staff were ordered to destroy all top-secret documents and sensitive equipment and pulled out of Yemen altogether Wednesday.

With major western embassies in Yemen evacuated, Houthi rebels and Al-Qaeda militants were left to deal with each other face to face. As Washington tries to enroll Shia rebels to combat terrorism, Islamic extremists are busy seizing military hardware.

In the meantime, an assault by Al-Qaeda militants on the camp of the 19th Infantry Brigade in Yemen’s Baihan on Thursday ended in the surrender of the garrison and the capture of a large quantity of armored vehicles and heavy weaponry. Seven people have been confirmed dead.

Islamic extremists captured a total of “30 tanks, 90 military vehicles, 25 armored vehicles and 28 artillery pieces,” a Yemeni military official told AFP.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has confirmed the seizure of the camp, accusing troops there of links with the Houthi rebels. Negotiations between Islamic extremists and tribal leaders resulted in Al-Qaeda releasing six Yemeni servicemen.

The Houthi rebels captured the vehicles used for the evacuation of the closed American embassy.

Officials at Sanaa’s airport confirmed that the looted property included more than 25 vehicles used by the US Marines who maintained security at the embassy, as well as three vehicles used by US Ambassador Matthew Tueller and his staff.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki slammed the seizure as “completely unacceptable” and urged the Houthi rebels to “respect international conventions” regarding foreign embassies.

The militia’s foreign relations chief, Hussein al-Ezzi, confirmed the seizure of an unspecified number of vehicles, but insisted they were taken for “safekeeping” and are going to be handed over “to a trustworthy third party, like the United Nations office.”

The US Marine Corps, which organized the evacuation from Yemen, said that Marines destroyed heavy weapons and personal firearms in their possession before leaving the embassy headquarters. They also destroyed computers, documents, phones and other sensitive materials within the embassy’s perimeter.

The closure of the US embassy in Yemen has affected Washington’s ability to conduct counterterrorist operations in the area against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), believed to be one of the world’s most dangerous jihadist networks.

Cashing in on British sexual deviance

UK firms are cashing in on British sexual deviance. Meanwhile, emergency services are on standby for a spate of “bedroom antics-gone-wrong.”

It was revealed Tuesday that hardware store B&Q was preparing its staff and stocks for a spike in cable tie, rope and duct tape sales, as featured in Fifty Shades, a pornographic film to be released on mainstreet.

Another company is actually tapping into the nation’s unhealthy fever, meanwhile.

The “intense female Viagra ice cream,” or “Vice cream,” as the company dubs it, contains a pleasure enhancer Lady Prelox. The company says they hope to see women “screaming for Vice Cream on Valentine’s Day.”

The London Fire Brigade say they are “concerned” the release of Fifty Shades of Grey in cinemas will lead to a “spike” in cases of people stuck in handcuffs and rings.

They attended nearly 400 such incidents since April last year, including 28 involving entrapment in handcuffs and the removal of nearly 300 rings, some from male genitalia. They have also been called out to aid men whose penises have been trapped in toasters, vacuums and other household equipment.

“The Fifty Shades effect seems to spike handcuff incidents so we hope filmgoers will use common sense and avoid leaving themselves red-faced,” he said.

The land of the brave however, should be renamed as the land of the proprietous. Scotland, was revealed to prefer “spooning” to actual sex in a recent poll.

The South East of England ranked themselves 9 out of 10 on a scale of how “kinky” they are.

Russia to ratify BRICS bank deal by March

Russia is set to ratify an agreement on the creation of a bank for the BRICS bloc of large emerging economies this month or in March, the country’s finance minister said.

The establishment of the development bank, aimed at providing funds for infrastructure projects, has been slow in coming with prolonged disagreement over funding and management of the institution.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia was running ahead of the other BRICS nations.

“We are ahead of everyone. Our ratification is possible for the end of February or at the latest March,” Siluanov told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance chiefs on Tuesday.

Russia is expected to commit $2 billion to the fund.

The group has struggled to take coordinated action after an exodus of capital from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa prompted by a scaling back of U.S. monetary stimulus.

Siluanov said discussions between BRICS countries took place at deputy level at the summit because not all of the finance ministers were there. He said terms of reference for the bank as well as the board of directors and executives were being discussed.

Source: Reuters

Falklands on high alert

Extra British troops will be stationed on the island for three to six weeks.

They are part of a force of more than 1,000 soldiers being prepared for duty in the south Atlantic and will be sent out in five tranches of 150 to 300.

They will include members of the Royal Artillery and 3 Commando, Royal Marines, with each group staying on the islands for three to six weeks.

Military chiefs are mounting a series of “high readiness reinforcement” exercises to plug a strategic gap until the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is operational in 2020.

Senior military sources say the war games will be “low profile” as part of a commitment to ensure the UK can secure its overseas garrisons.

Currently the islands have a core military presence of 1,200 troops, four Typhoon fighter jets and a missile battery.

A senior source said: “The aim is to put more than 1,000 troops from five different cap badges into the islands by November but they will deploy in small groups from 150 to 300, for short tours.”

Last night the Ministry of Defence said there were “currently no plans to increase the number of troops deployed to the Falklands”.

However, the military source said the plan did not represent a “permanent increase in garrison numbers but a series of high-readiness exercises”.

Meanwhile Argentina will discuss a government-sponsored bill set to reform the Intelligence services in Congress on Friday.

New regulations will bring transparency to the country’s intelligence system the government says.

The dissolution of the Intelligence Secretariat (SI, formerly SIDE) and the creation of a new Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), is “a major, transcendent” move, according to analysts.

The measure was first announced by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner last Monday, a week after the mysterious death of AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman.

Nisman’s death brought to the forefront issues associated with the country’s intelligence agencies.

Source: UK Express

Ebola is back

The number of new cases of Ebola rose in all three of West Africa’s worst-hit countries last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, ending several weeks of encouraging declines across the region.

Suspicion of aid workers, especially in Guinea, and unsafe local practices were continuing to hamper efforts to halt the deadly virus, the United Nations agency said.

The WHO said a week ago that there had been 99 confirmed cases in the week to Jan. 25, the lowest tally since June 2014, raising hopes that the tide might have turned.

But its new figures, for the week ending Feb. 1, showed the first recorded rise in new cases across all three countries this year.

Sierra Leone, the worst hotspot, accounted for 80 of the 124 new cases of the disease, Guinea recorded 39 while Liberia had just five, all near the capital Monrovia, the report said.

Nearly one third of Guinea’s 34 prefectures had reported at least one security incident or other form of refusal to cooperate with health workers in the previous week.

Villagers are often alarmed by the approach of aid workers wearing space-age protective equipment and have resisted efforts to find cases, isolate those infected and chlorinate homes.

Meetings were planned between authorities from Guinea, Mali and Senegal to strengthen disease surveillance, the WHO said. A rapid response team has deployed in the border area with Ivory Coast, it added.

In all, 8,981 people have died of Ebola out of 22,495 known cases in nine countries since the outbreak began in December 2013, according to the agency.

Source: Reuters

Large HIV trail in Africa fails spectacularly

The spectacular failure of a large clinical trial of H.I.V.-prevention methods in Africa — and the elaborate deceptions employed by the women in it — have opened an ethical debate about how to run such studies in poor countries and have already changed the design of some that are now underway.

Scientists who conduct clinical trials are now testing participants’ blood more often and holding group discussions to quell rumors and urge participants to take their medications diligently.

As a result of the failed trial, scientists are arguing vigorously about the extent to which it is ethical to pay participants for their time, and whether results of trials that do so can be trusted.

The trial — known by the acronym Voice, for Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic — was abruptly halted by independent safety monitors because it was not working: Women who were given pills or vaginal gels containing anti-H.I.V. drugs were becoming infected at roughly the same rate as women who were given placebos.

The study, paid for by the National Institutes of Health, was supposed to definitively establish whether pre-exposure prophylaxis — the use of small amounts of anti-AIDS drugs to prevent infection — would work for African women. It enrolled 5,029 women at 15 clinics in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda, and cost $94 million.

In Africa, where there are 1.6 million new infections each year, women are at particularly high risk: About 60 percent of Africans living with H.I.V. are women, and teenage girls are far more likely to be infected than teenage boys.

The strategy has worked well for gay American men and Thai drug users who took their pills daily, but not for African women.

When parts of the trial had to be stopped prematurely in 2011, scientists suspected it was failing because some women were not using their gel or pills, even though they claimed they were and produced empty bottles and applicators to prove it.

But all blood samples had been stored for later testing, so the researchers had no idea how pervasive the problem was. The final analysis, published on Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine, said that about 70 percent of the women actually had no tenofovir, the main study drug, in their blood, even though about 90 percent had claimed they were taking their pills or using the gel, and counts of empty pill bottles and used gel applicators suggested that 86 percent had been taken or used.

Ariane van der Straten, a researcher who led follow-up interviews with over 300 participants, found that many admitted to discarding pills or pouring gel down the toilet.

Source:NYT

Good luck to Nigeria’s president at the polls

Less than two weeks from national polls, Nigeria’s ruling party is facing unprecedented shifts in the politics of religion that could spell trouble for the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan.

While he may still be the favourite on February 14, experts said some factors could remove his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from power for the first time since the end of military rule in 1999.

Opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim, has gained surprising traction in the mostly Christian south, despite sustained PDP efforts to paint him as a religious extremist.

Jonathan has been heavily criticised for his apparent failure to reduce graft in Africa’s most populous country and top economy, where billions of dollars in public money have been stolen, especially in the oil sector.

Boko Haram’s brutal uprising has also worsened each year under Jonathan’s watch, with more than 13,000 people killed since 2009.

For Dapo Thomas, political scientist at Lagos State University, the emphasis on a candidate’s religion and tribe has “driven merit to the backseat”.

Jonathan beat Buhari by roughly 10 million votes in 2011, winning roughly eight million in the north and the religiously divided central states.

If Jonathan’s support in the north collapses and Buhari makes inroads in the south, analysts said the president could lose.

Buhari is helped by the fact that he is leading a united opposition, unlike in 2011 when rival candidates peeled off more than three million votes.

Source: AFP

Peak food: Shortages loom as global production slows

The world has entered an era of “peak food” production with an array of staples from corn and rice to wheat and chicken slowing in growth – with potentially disastrous consequences for feeding the planet.

New research finds that the supply of 21 staples, such as eggs, meat, vegetables and soybeans is already beginning to run out of momentum, while the global population continues to soar.

Peak chicken was in 2006, while milk and wheat both peaked in 2004 and rice peaked way back in 1988, according to new research from Yale University, Michigan State University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.

What makes the report particularly alarming is that so many crucial sources of food have peaked in a relatively short period of history, the researchers said.

“People often talk of substitution. If we run out of one substance we just substitute another. But if multiple resources are running out, we’ve got a problem. Mankind needs to accept that renewable raw materials are reaching their yield limits worldwide,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, of Michigan State University.

“This is a strong reason for integration … rather than searching for a one-for-one substitution to offset shortages,” he added.

“Just nine or 10 plants species feed the world. But we found there’s a peak for all these resources. Even renewable resources won’t last forever,” said Ralf Seppelt, of the Helmholtz Centre.

The research, published in the journal Ecology and Society, finds that 16 of the 21 foods examined reached peak production between 1988 and 2008.

The simultaneous peaking of crops and livestock comes against a backdrop of a growing population, which is expected to reach nine billion by 2050, requiring the world to produce twice as much food by then as it does now, according to a separate study by the California Academy of Sciences.

The problems caused by the growing population have been compounded by the growth of wealthy middle-class populations in countries such as China and India which are demanding a meatier diet. This is problematic because meat and dairy use up a lot more resources than if a comparable level of nutrition were provided by crops, grown direct for human consumption.

Source: The Independent