Venezuela launches massive street security operation

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has launched a massive security plan aimed at curbing street crime.

Under operation "Safe Homeland", 3,000 soldiers will patrol the streets of the capital Caracas and other cities.
President Maduro said the plan would bring peace to Venezuela, which has one of the highest homicide rates in South America.
The opposition has long criticised the government's record on crime, and used it as a campaign issue in recent polls.
The government says more than 16,000 people were killed in crimes in 2012, a rate of 54 per 100,000.
However the Venezuela Violence Observatory, a campaign group, put last year's murder rate much higher - at 73 per 100,000 people.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who is contesting Mr Maduro's narrow victory in last month's presidential election, highlighted crime rates during the campaign.
Under the operation Safe Homeland soldiers will patrol the country's 79 most crime ridden areas - including four in Caracas.
Speaking on Monday, Mr Maduro said his government was "revising every aspect to build a peaceful country."
Last year, the government introduced a new gun law banning the sale of firearms and ammunition.
Crime figures have been rising steadily since the late president Hugo Chavez took office in 1999

Bangladesh textile factories shut amid unrest

Garment workers have increased their demands for higher wages in Bangladesh

Many Bangladeshi textile factories near the capital, Dhaka, have shut because of unrest sparked by the collapse of a factory building last month, the country's textile association says.

Owners made the decision on safety grounds after many workers went on a rampage, the group's president said.
The government says it will lift trade union restrictions amid pressure to improve workers' conditions.
At least 1,127 bodies have been recovered from the Rana Plaza building.
Officials say the rescue operation is drawing to a close, with the military expected to hand over the site to the district administration on Tuesday.
"The possibility of getting more bodies is thin," said Brigadier General Mohammad Siddiqul Alam Shikder.
The Rana Plaza in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, housed a number of textile factories, some of which were supplying Western retailers.
Its collapse on 24 April is the latest in a series of deadly incidents focusing global attention on safety standards in Bangladesh's textile industry.
'Beatings and harassment' One report said as many as 300 factories had closed in the Ashulia industrial area near Dhaka.
"Owners decided to close their factories on safety grounds after workers went on a rampage almost every day after the collapse of Rana Plaza," Mohammad Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said on Monday.
Workers in 80% of the factories in Ashulia staged a walkout demanding a salary increase, as well as the execution of the owner of the Rana Plaza, local police chief Badrul Ala said.
Police say tensions have been further inflamed by the discovery of a body of a female worker in Ashulia on Sunday.
Thousands of workers took to the streets and vandalised vehicles and shops before being dispersed by police, a police officer told the Associated Press news agency.


On Monday, the government agreed to allow garment workers to form trade unions without permission from factory owners.

  Reshma was the last person to be rescued from the Rana Plaza building, 17 days after it collapsed

The government amended the 2006 Labour Act lifting restrictions on forming trade unions in most industries, spokesman Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said.
"The government is doing it for the welfare of the workers," Mr Bhuiyan told reporters.
This comes a day after the government created a new panel of union representatives and factory workers to raise the minimum wage for garment workers.
However, trade union leaders have responded cautiously to the changes.
"The issue is not really about making a new law or amending the old one,'' Kalpana Akter of the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity told the Associated Press news agency.
"In the past whenever workers tried to form associations they were subjected to beatings and harassment.''
'Epidemic of disasters' Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world.
Last Wednesday, 18 garment factories were shut down for safety reasons, amid growing concerns about industrial safety across the country.
Four major Western retailers, H&M, C&A, Britain's Primark Stores and the owner of the Zara chain, Inditex, said on Monday they will back an International Labour Organisation-led agreement on fire and building safety that has been under negotiation since the factory collapsed on 24 April.
The contract would require them to conduct safety inspections, pay for repairs and stop doing business with any factory that refuses to make necessary safety improvements.
"This agreement is exactly what is needed to finally bring an end to the epidemic of fire and building disasters that have taken so many lives in the garment industry in Bangladesh,'' the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, Scott Nova, said. 

Deadly clashes in China's Xinjiang

Clashes in China's restive Xinjiang region have left 21 people dead, including 15 police and officials, the local government says.

The incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon in Bachu county, Kashgar, a statement on the official Xinjiang government website said.
It began when officials searched homes for weapons, it said. Six "gang members" were among the dead, it said.
There have been sporadic clashes in Xinjiang in recent years.
The incidents come amid rumbling ethnic tensions between the Muslim Uighur and Han Chinese communities. In 2009 almost 200 people - mostly Han Chinese - were killed after deadly rioting erupted.
It is very difficult to verify reports from Xinjiang, reports the BBC's Celia Hatton. Foreign journalists are allowed to travel to the region but frequently face intimidation and harassment when attempting to verify news of ethnic rioting or organised violence against government authorities.
China's propaganda departments have also warned domestic news outlets against conducting their own independent reporting on sensitive Xinjiang stories, ordering them to reprint official stories from China's major state news agencies, our correspondent adds.
'Terrorism' According to the statement, the clash was sparked as officials described as community workers searched homes for weapons and were then taken hostage.
Eight other "gang members" were captured, it said, describing the incident as linked to terrorism.

 There was no information on the identity of the assailants. Ten of the officials and police killed were ethnic Uighurs, it said.
Uighurs make up about 45% of the region's population, but say an influx of Han Chinese residents has marginalised their traditional culture.
Beijing authorities often blame violent incidents in Xinjiang on Uighur extremists seeking autonomy for the region. Uighur activists, meanwhile, accuse Beijing of over-exaggerating the threat to justify heavy-handed rule.
In August 2012, 20 people were jailed on terrorism and separatism charges in the region. 

Bangladesh Dhaka building collapse leaves 70 dead

            Officials have warned that the death toll from the collapse could rise

At least 70 people have been killed and many more are feared trapped after an eight-storey building collapsed in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, government officials say.

Frantic efforts are under way to rescue those beneath the debris. At least 200 were injured by the collapse.
The army is helping with the rescue operation on the outskirts of Dhaka.
Building collapses are common in Bangladesh where many multi-storey blocks are built in violation of rules.
The eight-storey building contained a clothing factory, a bank and several other shops. It collapsed during the morning rush hour.
Many people have gathered near the scene looking for friends and relatives.
The BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan, in Dhaka, says that it is not yet clear what caused the collapse but local media reports said a crack was detected in the block on Tuesday.
Local police chief Mohammad Asaduzzaman told the Reuters news agency that factory owners appeared to have ignored a warning not to allow their workers into the building after the crack was detected.
Police told local media that the rear of the building suddenly started to collapse on Wednesday morning and within a short time the whole structure - except the main pillar and parts of the front wall - had caved-in, triggering panic.
Only the ground floor of the Rana Plaza in Sava remained intact after the collapse, officials said, as army and fire service rescuers equipped with concrete cutters and cranes dug through rubble to pull out trapped people. Many onlookers also joined the effort using their bare hands.
Survivors have described their terror as the collapse began.
"I was in the cutting section of the garment factory and suddenly we heard a huge noise and the building collapsed within a few minutes," a garment worker told private Somoy TV.
"I removed the rubble and came out with two other workers. But at least 30 other workers in my cutting section were still unaccounted for," he said.
In November, a fire at a garment factory in a Dhaka suburb killed at least 110 people and triggered a public outcry about safety standards in the industry.
The last major building collapse was in 2010, when a four-storey building collapsed in Dhaka killing at least 25 people and injuring several others.
Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing competitively priced clothes for major Western retailers which benefit from its widespread low-cost labour.

The Politics of Apology: Hollande and Algeria

 

When newly elected French President François Hollande squarely denounced the brutality and injustice of the whole era of French colonialism before the Algerian Parliament on December 20, 2012, he created headlines on both shores of the Mediterranean. Some found in Hollande’s words vindication for the evil of European imperialism, while others saw an indiscriminate betrayal of French and Western civilizing values. That was the result Hollande intended. The polarization he created bolstered both the French and Algerian governments in trying times.

 

The history of the two countries has always been inflammatory. Paris forced itself on Algiers in 1830 with a quasi-genocide and left it in 1962 amid a shocking outburst of torture, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing that outdid the occasional massacres and unending discrimination of the long years of colonial occupation. France and Algeria went their own ways but never quite consummated the divorce. Algeria was not a colony but a province of France and motherland for more than a million pieds-noirs (i.e., non-Muslims with Algerian roots and French citizenship). The autocratic government that took over in Algiers squandered opportunities to develop the now independent country, leaving citizens to contemplate the long decay of French-era infrastructure and to dream about what life would be like in France. Droves of “Algerian” (i.e., Muslim) laborers followed the pieds-noirs in their exile across the mare nostrum, creating an immigrant community that, several generations later, amounts today to as many as two million people settled in France.
Algerians are as integral a part of France’s social reality as the idea of France is to the Algerian imagination. The Franco-Algerian relationship, filled with acrimony and longing, is too intimate and complicated to yield to an easy repair. The long and brutal war of independence (1954–1962) was a terrible civil conflict, with cruelty and bitterness on both sides, leaving no appetite for prolonged introspection. The generation of Algerians that had won independence never questioned the excesses of violence they had employed, and until now it never occurred to French officials to express even token regrets for the principle of colonialism. Studiously oblivious toward the past, both governments have traded with each other and argued elliptically over issues such as the terms of nationalization of oil production and the treatment of Algerian immigrants in France. In recent decades, Paris and Algiers have found common cause against Islamists, working together to contain the threat they pose to both governments.

The script changed a few months into the presidency of François Hollande, who surprised observers used to the conspiracy of silence practiced by both countries with a public speech marking the anniversary of a massacre of peaceful Algerian protesters in Paris on October 17, 1961. That summer, the Algerian independence movement had brought war to the French capital with a bombing campaign, and the police had brutally enforced a curfew on Algerians, building up to the October massacre. Hollande was the first high-ranking official to own up to the tragedy, unnerving the French right. Two months later, he doubled down with his apologetic speech to the Algerian Parliament. It was a transformative moment for the French republic; it was also an opportunistic
political maneuver.
Back in the 1950s, the French left, Hollande’s ideological cradle, was defined by its fierce opposition to imperialism. But since then the issue of colonialism has dimmed, becoming a historical curiosity for most Frenchmen, especially the large numbers born after 1962. But with his anti-colonial statement calling up this prior age, Hollande was seeking to anchor his presidency in a solid leftist tradition. Unable to carry out the redistributive measures promised in his campaign, he wanted to use the speech to reorient the nation’s focus. All the better that the right censures him as unpatriotic. The large community of young people of Algerian and “colonial” heritage in France may not receive jobs from Hollande, but his speech bolstered their self-esteem and gave pride through righteous victimhood.
Hollande’s speech was well received in Algiers. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the Algerian president, is an ailing autocrat whose succession is uncertain at a time when one Arab dictatorship after another is falling into the hands of Islamists. By the early 1990s, after years of single-party rule, those who had led the struggle for Algerian independence had lost popular support to an Islamist opposition. The army, led by those who had once fought for independence, had responded with unrestrained brutality, and one hundred thousand people had died during a few tumultuous years of conflict with the Islamists. Bouteflika, a middling bureaucrat known for corruption, was put in power as that conflict was ended by the security state. Some hoped he would democratize and develop Algeria, but instead he perpetuated what had become a deadening status quo. When the Arab Spring stirred the region in 2011, Algeria had been under a draconian state of emergency for nineteen years and under Bouteflika’s presidency for twelve. History stayed suspended, inhibited by the bloodbaths of the 1990s.
But Algeria has remained tense during the ambiguous blossoming of the Arab Spring. Islamists lurk at the edges of the nation’s politics, waiting for an opening. Not surprisingly, Algiers’ calls for France to apologize for colonialism had grown stronger as the domestic legitimacy of the regime shrank. It was already more than forty years since the liquidation of Algérie Française when Franco-Algerian relations stumbled over the issue, during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande’s predecessor. In an act of reconciliation, Sarkozy paid up the pensions to Algerian veterans who fought for the French army. Bouteflika and others of his nation’s old guard wanted more; they wanted to resuscitate, if only for a day, the glory of their war of independence, and to take a page from the Islamists’ “victimized nativism” handbook. Hollande indulged them with his mea culpa in Algiers. Bouteflika knew not to push his luck: there are no demands for reparations. However, Hollande brought another gift: during the same visit, it was announced that Renault, the French car maker, would build a factory in Algiers, a one-billion-euro investment in a joint venture with the Algerian government. At a time when France’s automobile industry is shedding jobs and market shares, and when trade unions are screaming bloody murder about outsourcing, this initiative had domestic consequences for Hollande.

The North African darling for French industrialists has actually been Morocco—Renault is building a much larger factory there. Algeria is a bigger market, and Tunisians are more skilled, but seventy percent of French investments in North Africa go to the small kingdom on the Atlantic. The Moroccan workforce may be less educated, but it is more reliable. The Moroccan monarch, who claims religious credentials as “commander of the faithful,” is reasonably liked by his people and knows how to keep Islamists and socialists in check. Rabat, Paris, and Algiers must be watching with dread and a pang of satisfaction as Tunisia, the North African country closest to an economic takeoff, now run by a democratically elected Islamist government, descends into hell because of endemic social strife. Both Hollande and Bouteflika are men of the left, and in times of an ascending Muslim Brotherhood, they see an anticolonial diatribe as a way of anchoring themselves against the political headwinds Islamism has generated.
Hollande’s Algiers moment should also be read in the context of France’s Arab policy. Nicolas Sarkozy had Roman dreams of associating the economies of the European Union with those of North Africa and the Levant. When those plans were shelved because of the Arab Spring and the accession of Islamists to power in Egypt and Tunisia, France worked hard to remain relevant during the political transition. It led the NATO mission to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi, evacuated its combat troops from Afghanistan ahead of schedule, and went furthest of all Western powers in supporting Syrian rebels. France also aligned its interests with those of wealthy Qatar, the godmother of the Syrian rebellion, and by far the Arab country with the most ambitious foreign policy. Not coincidentally, Qatar started to make large investments in France.
Mere days after the December anticolonial shocker in Algiers, Hollande authorized a signature neocolonial mission: the military rescue of an embattled African regime. Jihadists, fleeing Algeria in the late 1990s, had been roaming unimpeded among Muslim populations in sub-Saharan Africa, living off ransoms for abducted Western expatriate workers, seeding their ideology among the locals. When in January of this year a radical Malian offshoot looked poised to take the capital, Bamako, Hollande ordered them stopped with air and ground attacks, a decision that showed continuity with, rather than rupture from, his predecessors.
Champion of rebellion here, backer of the status quo there, France has turned the page of colonialism but not of interference. Paris is not just protecting Mali but the vital Algerian gas industry across the long Saharan border—Algiers, obligingly, opened its airspace to French fighter jets. The risk is real: hours after French military operations started, a jihadist commando took hundreds hostage in an Algerian gas facility. The huge task now before Hollande is to mop up the mess in the Sahara created by the 1990s Algerian civil war as well as the recent revolution in Libya. And he has to do so without being stigmatized as imperialist, because the erring of French foreign policy in the Muslim world can come home to roost.
In March 2012, Mohamed Merah, a radicalized twenty-two-year-old gunman, claimed nine victims in the south of France. A Frenchman of Algerian descent, Merah had embraced the jihadist creed and received weapon training the previous summer in Waziristan. Several thousand people are on the French government’s domestic terrorist watch list, many of them women and teenagers glued to their computer screens. French with roots in Muslim Algeria, Senegal, Mali, Niger, and elsewhere will read the foreign policy of their home country through the prism of whatever lingering identification they feel for their country and religion of origin, and of their exposure to jihadist Internet propaganda. To legitimize the operation in Mali, Hollande sought a UN mandate, enrolled African nations to contribute boots on the ground, and got the blessing of his allies in Arabia. With no certainty that this would be enough to counter a Web filled with condemnations of French imperialism, France was placed on high alert for terrorist threat.
Postcolonial victimization fuels the hostility of the jihadist current, and if for that reason alone, it is essential for Western capitals to extricate themselves from that legacy. Hollande’s Algiers apology, however, resembles Obama’s June 2009 “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo: a one-off statement competing against a narrative barrage about the evil of the West and its hegemonic ambitions. It is not clear that, aside from their value as theater, Hollande’s regrets will have measurable effect, one way or the other. Barack Obama’s “apology tour” didn’t make the US more loved or less feared in the Middle East. China’s bickering with Japan for not owning up to World War II atrocities is far less a cause of growing tension between the two nations than practical territorial disputes. Time passes, and the crimes of French colonialism do not reflect on contemporary French society any more than they excuse the shortcomings of the current Algerian government. History takes place in the there and then, and when that context has vanished into time, it is left to scholars to exhume the human reality from the mass graves of human affairs. When it comes to an issue as complicated as “Algérie Française,” opportunistic politicians should stand back.

 

Boston Marathon attack: FBI reveals bomb details

 

 

 The remains of a dark coloured backpack believed to have been used in the attack

Images from the FBI probe into the deadly attack on the Boston Marathon have thrown light on the bombs used.

Images from a joint Homeland Security and FBI bulletin show the remains of a dark coloured backpack and remnants of what appears to be a pressure cooker.

Three people died, including an eight-year-old boy, and more than 170 were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line of Monday's race.
President Barack Obama will travel to Boston on Thursday for a memorial.
The BBC's Paul Adams, in Boston, says vigils for the victims were held across the city on Tuesday night as Bostonians still wrestled with why anyone would want to attack their much-loved marathon.


'Someone knows'
FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers told a news conference that pieces of nylon had been recovered from the scene, along with fragments of ball bearings and nails that were "possibly contained in a pressure-cooker device".
He said they were being sent to the agency's laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, where experts would reconstruct the devices to determine their make-up and components.

 

He added: "The investigation is in its infancy. There are no claims of responsibility and the range of suspects and motives remains wide open."

Mr DesLauriers urged people to report anyone they had seen acting suspiciously.
"Someone knows who did this," he said.
Associated Press quoted a source close to the investigation as saying that the bombs consisted of explosives placed in 1.6-gallon pressure cookers, one with shards of metal and ball bearings, the other with nails.
The bombs were put into black bags and left on the ground, the source said.
Our correspondent says it has also been reported that a circuit board and battery pack - parts of a triggering mechanism - were also recovered.
Doctors treating the wounded say their injuries indicate that the bombs contained metal shards and other shrapnel. A number of victims have had limbs amputated.
Speaking at the same news conference, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said the Boston community would "recover and heal" from the attack.
"This is one community. We are all in this together," he said.
President Obama will address an interfaith service in Boston for the victims on Thursday morning.
The White House said Mr Obama had cancelled a planned trip to Kansas to speak.

Earlier, President Obama condemned the bombings as a terrorist act.
He said the attack was "heinous and cowardly" but stressed it was not yet known whether an organisation - either domestic or foreign - or a "malevolent individual" was responsible, nor what the motive might have been.
"Everything else at this point is speculation," he said.
"It will take time... but we will find whoever harmed our citizens and we will bring them to justice."
One of those who died has been named as eight-year-old Martin Richard, from the Dorchester area of Boston.
He was at the finishing line with his mother and sister, who were both seriously injured.
"They were looking in the crowd as the runners were coming to see if they could identify some of their friends when the bomb hit," Congressman Stephen Lynch, a friend of the Richard family, told Associated Press.
Flowers and tributes were being placed outside the family's home on Tuesday.

A second victim was named as Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager.

Her father released a statement saying the family was devastated.
Boston University said the third person who died was a graduate student. In a statement on Tuesday, it said it was not releasing the name or any other information about the student pending permission from the family.
However, it said the student was one of three friends watching the race near the finish line. Another of the three was injured and is in a stable condition in hospital, the university added.
The Chinese consulate in New York later confirmed that the student who died was a Chinese national.
The first explosion went off close to the finish line at about 14:50 local time (18:50 GMT) on Monday.
Seconds later, as rescuers were rushing to help the injured, another explosion went off nearby.
Speaking at an earlier press conference, Mr DesLauriers moved to reassure the public, saying there was no longer any "known imminent physical threat" to Boston.
"We will go to the ends of the Earth to identify the subject or subjects who are responsible for this despicable crime, and we will do everything we can to bring them to justice," he said.
Police have asked the public to send in any videos or photographs they may have from the day.
The London Marathon - the next major international marathon - is to go ahead on Sunday, with police saying they have well-rehearsed security plans.

 

 

Thatcher Funeral: Most Brits Oppose Paying

Lady Thatcher said she did not want a state funeral, but she has been given the next highest honour: a ceremonial funeral with full military honours tailored to her.
With all the the pageantry of a state funeral, Wednesday's service is set to be the largest in Britain since the Queen Mother's, bringing to the fore the issue of who will pay.
While her estate will make a contribution, Downing Street has refused to give details about how much the service will cost the taxpayer, saying this will be revealed after the funeral.
But a ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror has found that only 25% of people think it should be funded by the public purse - compared to 60% who are against the idea.
The survey also showed that one in three people think she was Britain's greatest peacetime prime minister - although 41% of people disagreed.

Labour's former deputy prime minister John Prescott angrily denounced the cost in his column for the Sunday Mirror.
"Thatcher split this country, North and South, the haves and have nots, 'one of us' or 'the enemy within'. This country paid enough thanks to that woman. So why the hell should we continue to pay now she's dead?," he wrote.
"Privatise her funeral. It would be a fitting tribute," he added.
David Cameron and William Hague both defended using taxpayers' money last week, insisting it would be wrong not to mark Lady Thatcher's huge contribution to the nation.
The Foreign Secretary said: "The rebate she negotiated for this country from the EU has brought us so far £75 billion - which is twice the size of our annual defence budget 

 

 

 

David Cameron will do a Bible reading at the funeral

"I think that puts money in perspective ... so I think we can afford to contribute to a funeral."
The poll comes as the Government released the Order of Service for the funeral at St Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday.
Lady Thatcher's coffin will be carried through the streets of London on a gun carriage, allowing the public to pay their respects as the funeral cortege passes by. 
It is the same honour bestowed on Diana, the Queen Mother and Winston Churchill.
Then there will be a single bell will toll as the funeral cortege draws up to St Paul's, and 14 Chelsea pensioners will line the steps as the coffin is taken into the cathedral.

       



The presence of the pensioners - the oldest aged 90 - is aimed at reflecting the strong connection Lady Thatcher built up with the Royal Hospital Chelsea over the last 10 years.
In front of the coffin, Michael and Amanda Thatcher, grandchildren of the former prime minister, will carry cushions bearing the insignia of the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit and lay them on the Dome Altar.
The service, attended by the Queen, will be "framed" by British music, with traditional pieces by great British composers played at the beginning and at the end.
Lady Thatcher's love of poetry will be reflected in her choice of TS Eliot's Little Gidding, which will be printed on the opening page of the Order of Service and William Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality on the final page.
Prime Minister David Cameron and Amanda Thatcher will deliver the readings from the King James Bible - of which she was particularly fond.
It was confirmed that the hymns will be He Who Would Valiant Be, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, Psalm 84 set to the music of Johannes Brahms, and the patriotic verse I Vow To Thee My Country.
The funeral address will be delivered by the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres.
The military procession leading to the service will feature more than 700 serving Armed Forces personnel from units particularly associated with the Falklands War, including some from the Welsh Guards, the regiment that suffered some of the heaviest losses.
Plans are also developing for Lady Thatcher's legacy to be enshrined in the creation of a major new institution to promote her political philosophy and shape future Tory politics.
Supporters of the former leader are working on a Margaret Thatcher library for London as a lasting memorial.
Backers also aim to raise £15m in private funds to establish the combined library, museum and training centre.
It is planned that visitors will be able to view key artefacts from her time in office, such as her trademark blue Aquascutum suits and handbags.

2 killed, dozens injured after bus rolls over in Irving, Texas

2 killed, dozens injured after bus rolls over in Irving, Texas

             At least two people were killed and more than 40 were hospitalized after a charter bus carrying dozens of passengers overturned outside Dallas Thursday morning during the rush hour commute.
The Cardinal Coach Line bus was on its way to a casino in Oklahoma when it suddenly weaved across the busy highway and struck two concrete barriers before toppling over in the center median, witnesses said. The wreck occurred along President George Bush Turnpike in Irving, just east of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to the Associated Press.
Trooper Lonny Haschel of the Texas Department of Public Safety identifies the dead as 69-year-old Paula Hahn, of Fort Worth, and 81-year-old Sue Taylor, of Hurst, a Fort Worth suburb.
Passengers had said Taylor, known to them as "Casino Sue," organized the trip to the Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Okla.
Authorities say 45 people were aboard the bus, 41 of whom were taken to Dallas-area hospitals for treatment. The 15 worst injured were taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where four were listed in critical condition.
Witnesses say the bus may have blown a tire and rolled several times during the crash.
"Most of the people we pulled out were in shock, they're just crying, we were just trying to get them out and calm them down," said Robert Hare, who witnessed the crash.
"It was just people stacked on top of each other and the bus, it was three seats and the aisle was on the bottom, so all three seats feel into the aisle and they're on top of each other," said witness Ed Cluck, according to Fox 4.
Emergency vehicles could be seen swarming the bus as it lay in the grassy center median, and ladders were being used to access the vehicle. The bus was carrying about 45 people, most of them senior citizens, law enforcement officials said.
A man who answered the phone at Cardinal Coach's offices in Mansfield, just south of Dallas, confirmed that one of the company's buses was involved. But said he didn't have time to talk because he was trying to gather information about the crash.
Cardinal Coach has reported no crashes in the last two years that resulted in deaths or injuries, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The company operates five buses and employs seven drivers, records show.
Cardinal Coach buses have been subjected to roadside inspections by the Texas Department of Public Safety three times in the last two years, according to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records. The most recent was last Thursday, when the driver was cited for speeding and a violation relating to his logbook, neither of which led to an out-of-service order.
The DPS also inspected the company's buses twice in July 2011. On July 25, 2011, a driver was placed out of service for not having an hours-of-service log book. Four days later, a driver was placed out of service for not having a medical card, while the bus was placed out of service due to a lighting violation.
The federal agency also performed a compliance review of the company in May 2009, resulting in a satisfactory rating, records show.
Law enforcement officers were interviewing bus passengers and other drivers who witnessed the crash. The wreck occurred near an interchange with a second highway, snarling traffic for several miles.
"We ended up swirling and weaving and then ended up on the side," passenger Daniel Risik, 73, told The Dallas Morning News. "People were screaming and hollering, a very traumatic situation to say the least."
Risik said most of the passengers weren't wearing seat belts.
"People were piled on top of each other," he said. "It was unbelievable. A lady had pinned me. Rescue got there and started pulling people out of a roof emergency hatch. People were hollering, screaming, there was blood all over the place. It was unbelievable."
A spokesman for Baylor Medical Center in Irving said 13 patients arrived at the hospital following the accident. Officials at Las Colinas Medical Center in Irving confirmed that another six patients were there, though details weren't immediately available on their conditions.
Another 15 patients were transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital, including the driver of the bus, and another victim was airlifted to a fourth hospital in critical condition, hospital officials said. Public transportation buses with Dallas Area Rapid Transit were used to transport some passengers with lesser injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board is sending investigators to Irving, board spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said.

What Rand Paul Doesn't Get About Abe Lincoln, Abe Vigoda, and Black Voters

 

 

 

 

 

Here's something that someone might want to share with Rand Paul. Abraham Lincoln was a president. Abe Vigoda was an actor. The fact that they both have the same first name, does not make them the same person.
That may seem obvious to you, but it's something that I feel compelled to share. Because after listening to his Howard University speech, I'm not sure it's a concept that Senator Paul fully understands.
Here's why: On some basic level, Paul's speech was an inquiry into the alienation that exists between the GOP and African-Americans. His conclusion: It's all just a big misunderstanding.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the Republican Party.]
You see, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was Democrats who led the South's retrenchment after Reconstruction, established segregation and fought tooth and nail to protect Jim Crow. So it's Republicans, not Democrats, according to Paul, who have always been the party of civil rights.
So why aren't more African-Americans Republicans? Paul has an explanation: Having achieved electoral and civil rights African-Americans wanted economic equality, too. Republicans offered one way to get it, according to Paul, the free market, while Democrats offered another, government largesse. Thus far, Paul says, African-Americans have preferred the latter path to the former and what Republicans need to do is better explain why African-Americans should instead embrace the free market model. That's his theory anyway.
Here Paul's trying to pull off an interesting trick: using Republican performance from the pretty distant past to try and credential current policies. But in his historical retelling, Paul essentially collapses the timeline and says: look, we've always been for civil rights, and our free market prescriptions are just the latest iteration of that.

Now, it may be that this is the argument the GOP's been looking for. Perhaps, having heard it, African-Americans will vote Republican in droves in 2014. But I'm not convinced.
First, despite Paul's convictions, there's a pretty obvious reason why African Americans vote for more Democratic candidates than Republicans: They prefer Democratic policies. That's how most voters decide who to vote for – they review the candidate's positions on issues important to them, and then vote for the one whose views are more in sync with their own.
Paul probably wouldn't contest that – but he'd place the blame for Republican losses on someone who you might not expect: the voter. Instead of concluding that to compete for African-American votes Republicans have to change their policies, he suggests that the problem is the failure of African-Americans to fully comprehend the policies Republicans propose. That's what he means when he says that Republicans have to find a different way to talk about them, right? The policy isn't the problem, it's your ability, (or lack thereof) to grasp it.

And here, Paul finds himself on something of a slippery slope. I mean, politics isn't rocket science. And somehow every couple of years voters across the country manage to sift through the various policy papers and pronouncements of politicians up and down the ballot to make decisions about who to support. It's peculiar (at the very least) to suggest that African-Americans are somehow incapable of engaging in the required analysis to do it when it comes to Republicans.
There's something else about Paul's thesis that just doesn't add up. Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and Democrats dominated southern politics during segregation. But really, which of these parties of the past has more in common with the iterations that exist today?
If the answers not obvious to you, there's another bit of history that can help clear it up. Starting in the 1940s and accelerating in the 1960s national Democratic attitudes about segregation moved to the left, while the attitudes of the southern conservatives who had long affiliated with the Democratic Party pushed further to the right. This created an untenable intraparty tension that couldn't last forever. And it didn't, because southern conservatives found a new, more comfortable party to call home, one that expressed values in sync with their own. It was the Republican Party. They switched to it in droves.

All of which means, you guessed it, the lineage of today's Republican party traces much more directly to those pro-segregation Democrats than it does to any southern Republicans who may have been around in that day.
So let's be clear: Yes, Rand Paul is a Republican but when it comes to civil rights, his version of the GOP has about as much in common with the one that helped free the slaves as Abe Lincoln has with Abe Vigoda.

 

Korea crisis high on agenda at London G8 talks

The Korean crisis will be high on the agenda when foreign ministers from the G8 group of nations hold talks in London on Thursday.

Correspondents say Japan, present at the talks, is looking for a strong statement of solidarity over the issue.
North Korea has been making bellicose threats against South Korea, Japan and US bases in the region.
Ministers will also debate the Syrian crisis, Iran's nuclear programme and sexual violence in conflicts.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says ministers agree that the combination of warlike threats from Pyongyang and preparations for new missile tests amount to dangerous provocation.
"There is no disagreement with the United States over North Korea," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in London on Wednesday.
South Korea has raised its alert level amid indications that the North is preparing for a missile test.
Pyongyang has increased its fiery rhetoric following fresh UN sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test and joint military manoeuvres by the US and South Korea.
Syria division Meanwhile, G8 ministers met Syrian opposition figures on Wednesday on the sidelines of the two-day meeting.
Our correspondent says that, unlike North Korea, Syria divides the G8 and no-one expects Damascus's ally Russia to join others backing punitive action against President Bashar al-Assad.
Fresh evidence of links between some opposition fighters and al-Qaeda make it even harder for governments to decide a course of action, he adds.
In a meeting with ministers on Wednesday, leaders of the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC) reportedly pressed for more humanitarian assistance.
Mr Kerry, however, stressed the importance of the opposition becoming better organised, a senior US official told reporters. 

In a statement issued after the talks, UK Foreign
Secretary William Hague said Britain was committed to finding a political solution to the crisis.
"We discussed what further assistance the UK could provide to save lives in Syria, and how we could work together to ensure this support was channelled most effectively," he said.
The London talks are also the first chance for G8 ministers to discuss face-to-face the failure of last week's meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on curbing Iran's nuclear programme.
Tehran says it only wants to produce energy but the US and its allies suspect it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
Mr Hague, meanwhile, has said his "personal priority" for the G8 meeting is a new agreement to prevent sexual violence in conflicts.
Burma, Somalia and cyber-security are also topics on the agenda.
The Group of Eight nations comprises the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.
Britain currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the G8 and the talks are a prelude to the annual G8 summit later this year in Northern Ireland.

Syria crisis: Al-Nusra pledges allegiance to al-Qaeda

Al-Nusra has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the US

Syria conflict

• From peace to war
• Sides entrenched
• Arms debate
• Guide to conflict

The leader of the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group fighting in Syria, has pledged allegiance to the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani said the group's behaviour in Syria would not change as a result.
Al-Nusra claims to have carried out many suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks against state targets.
On Tuesday, al-Qaeda in Iraq announced a merger with al-Nusra, but Mr Jawlani said he had not been consulted on this.
Al-Nusra has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the US.
Debates among Western leaders over whether to arm Syria's rebels have often raised the concern of weapons ending up in the hands of groups such as al-Nusra.
"The sons of al-Nusra Front pledge allegiance to Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri," Mr Jawlani said in a recording released on Wednesday.
But Mr Jawlani said al-Nusra had not been consulted on the merger with al-Qaeda in Iraq and insisted his group would not change its stance in Syria.

Analysis

Jim Muir BBC News, Beirut

The al-Nusra Front clearly finds itself in an awkward position, caught between pragmatic realities on the ground in Syria and its ideological identity and affiliation as an al-Qaeda-related Salafi group ostensibly bent on installing an Islamic state in the region.
The al-Nusra leader's unequivocal public pledge of allegiance to Osama Bin Laden's successor Ayman al-Zawahiri came just three days after the latter called on jihadis to do everything possible to bring about an Islamic state in Syria, as a building-block for a wider caliphate.
That is a goal al-Nusra is generally keeping quiet about, as it seeks to win hearts and minds in the "liberated areas" and to keep the cooperation of other fighting groups dedicated to overthrowing the regime in the name of democracy.
Al-Nusra is aware that al-Qaeda is not a name to conjure with in Syria, which is presumably why it distanced itself from Tuesday's merger announcement from the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq.

The al-Nusra statement assured Syrians that the "good behaviour" they had experienced from the front on the ground would continue unchanged, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from neighbouring Lebanon.

Mr Jawlani said that the oath of allegiance to Zawahiri "will not change anything in its policies", our correspondent adds.
Controversial ties Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State in Iraq, which is the Iraqi wing of al-Qaeda, had said on Tuesday that his group would be joining with al-Nusra under the name The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
But Mr Jawlani said he only heard about the announcement from media and had no prior knowledge of it.
Correspondents say that although it is widely believed - and al-Nusra Front has acknowledged - that there are strong ties between it and the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, it is clearly not something the group wants to highlight.
Al-Nusra is seen as trying to win the support of the population in rebel-held areas, and also to keep the goodwill of the other opposition groups who do not want to be associated with al-Qaeda.
Spokesmen for the Free Syrian Army, considered the main armed opposition group in Syria, reacted to Wednesday's statement by distancing themselves from al-Nusra.
"We don't support the ideology of al-Nusra," FSA spokesman Louay Meqdad told the AFP news agency.
"There has never been and there will never be a decision at the command level to coordinate with al-Nusra," Mr Meqdad went on, while admitting that there had been co-operation between FSA brigades and al-Nusra on "certain operations".
Also on Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the crisis in Syria will be at the "top of the agenda" when G8 foreign ministers meet in London this week.

Germans may find it hard to sell their subs

Germans may find it hard to sell their subs 

 Questions have arisen about the efficacy of German submarines just before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chancellor Angela Merkel sit down for talks in Berlin late this week when arms trade will be a certain, but underplayed, segment of the discussions.

A submarine tender is too lucrative one to covet and like all big ticket military hardware deals, sees tremendous undercutting of the rival’s position. This time the contest among French, German and Russian submarines promises to be no different. The last tender, close to Rs. 20,000 crore, was bagged by the French. The Germans were not considered due to a corruption charge that was rejected by the courts here.

Technical problems

Fingers are being pointed at the poor performance of German submarines in the South Korean and Greek navies. The Hindu has independently verified that allegations about persisting technical problems with the Korean’s HDW Type 214 submarines are correct. The informed sources also confirmed that a prototype Greek submarine of German design too suffered from serious problems.

But the Indian Navy, badly short of submarines and struggling to complete the French Scorpene project, does not have any complaints about its four German submarines. Sources in the Navy said the four HDW submarines were working fine and they were satisfied with their performance. The sources expressed ignorance about HDW submarines malfunctioning in South Korea. But Korean diplomatic sources admitted there were problems.

The German submarines with the Indian Navy seemed to have followed the same trajectory as the VIP AgustaWestland helicopters. Of the 12 choppers, three have arrived while the import of the remaining has been suspended due to bribery charge. Similarly, in the case of the German submarines, two arrived from the OEM and the other two were assembled here. Then the bribery charge struck and the option to build two more was withdrawn.

Vital shortcoming

According to the sources, Korean submarines Son Won II, Jeongji and Jung-geun were immobilised after the first submarine was badly damaged on the high seas. It has also been alleged that the submarines suffer noise problems. This is a vital shortcoming in a submarine which has to be as noiseless as possible to avoid detection. Or, as Navy officials say, they will be as easy to detect as some Chinese submarines that tried to recce the Bay of Bengal. “We picked them up each time they came,” claimed a Navy official.

Independent sources, however, said the noise levels of the German submarines were lower than the requirement but higher than what the manufacturers – ThyssenKrupp Marine Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) – had promised. The sources making the allegations also claimed HDW were fined for the persisting technical problems but none could independently verify the charge.

In the case of Greek submarine Papanikolis, the sources backed their claims with video footage that showed an unusual tilt as it dived. The Germans worked on the Papanikolis but the government has raised other issues.

These problems mean it will not be easy sailing for the German submarines when they make a pitch for the Indian Navy tender.

Currently, the Ministry of Defence is looking at the configuration for supply with circumspection and some more time might be required before a firm decision is taken to call for bids.

Ironically, the allegations against the Germans have originated from one of its close allies, thus indicating the cut-throat competition that is always an integral component of such large military tenders.

North Korea: Putin In 'Chernobyl' Warning

Russia's president says a conflict between the two Koreas could make the infamous nuclear accident "seem like a fairy tale".

 

Vladimir Putin has said a war in Korea could be more devastating than the Chernobyl disaster as Pyongyang was warned against another nuclear test.

The Russian President said he was "worried about the escalation on the Korean peninsula, because we are neighbours".
And Mr Putin, who also praised a US decision to postpone a planned missile test as part of efforts to reduce tensions, said he feared a situation worse than that in Chernobyl after a nuclear accident that was later linked to thousands of deaths.
"If, God forbid, something happens, Chernobyl which we all know a lot about, may seem like a child's fairy tale," he said.
"Is there such a threat or not? I think there is ... I would urge everyone to calm down ... and start to resolve the problems that have piled up for many years there at the negotiating table."
His intervention came after United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the North not to carry out a new nuclear test - saying it would be a "provocative" act.
South Korea raised fears a fourth test was due amid reports of increased activity at the main atomic test site Punggye-ri but later backtracked.
Its Defence Ministry said: "We found there had been no unusual movements that indicated it wanted to carry out a nuclear test."
Mr Ban said: "The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea cannot go on like this, confronting and challenging the authority of the (UN) Security Council and the international community.
"I am urging them to refrain from taking any further provocative measures."
China's Foreign Ministry also said it wanted peace on the Korean peninsula, not war, adding a proper solution to the crisis was the responsibility of all parties.
The Pentagon has already strengthened its missile defences in response to the repeated threats made by Pyongyang in recent weeks.
However, the New York Times has reported a more thorough plan that sets out a limited but forceful response to any future provocation has been drawn up by the US and South Korea.
It said US officials had outlined a "counter-provocation" plan that would see a "response in kind" that would hit the source of any North Korean attack with similar weapons.
Meanwhile, North Korea said it was withdrawing all workers and suspending operations at its joint industrial zone with South Korea, the only surviving symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
South Korea has appealed for North Korea to allow access to the Kaesong joint industrial park, six miles inside its borders.
The North banned South Korean managers and personnel from crossing the border to enter the complex since last Wednesday.
So far 13 the 123 South Korean firms operating there have been forced to halt production due to fuel and raw material shortages.