Brazil nightclub fire kills more than 230 people

January 28, 2013

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (AP) — The bodies of the young college students were found piled up just inside the entrance of the Kiss nightclub, among more than 230 people who died in a cloud of toxic smoke after a blaze enveloped the crowded locale within seconds and set off a panic.

Hours later, the horrific chaos had transformed into a scene of tragic order, with row upon row of polished caskets of the dead lined up in the community gymnasium in the university city of Santa Maria. Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors.

As the city in southern Brazil prepared to bury the 233 people killed in the conflagration caused by a band's pyrotechnic display, an early investigation into the tragedy revealed that security guards briefly prevented partygoers from leaving through the sole exit. And the bodies later heaped inside that doorway slowed firefighters trying to get in.

"It was terrible inside — it was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another," said police inspector Sandro Meinerz. "We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away."

Survivors and another police inspector, Marcelo Arigony, said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.

"It was chaotic and it doesn't seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died," he told The Associated Press. Later, firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble entering the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance," Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper.

Police inspectors said they think the source of the blaze was a band's small pyrotechnics show. The fire broke out sometime before 3 a.m. Sunday and the fast-moving fire and toxic smoke created by burning foam sound insulation material on the ceiling engulfed the club within seconds.

Authorities said band members who were on the stage when the fire broke out later talked with police and confirmed they used pyrotechnics during their show. Meinerz, who coordinated the investigation at the nightclub, said one band member died after escaping because he returned inside the burning building to save his accordion. The other band members escaped alive because they were the first to notice the fire.

The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network. "There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," she said.

Most victims died from smoke inhalation rather than burns. Many of the dead, about equally split between young men and women, were also found in the club's two bathrooms, where they fled apparently because the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.

There were questions about the club's operating license. Police said it was in the process of being renewed, but it was not clear if it was illegal for the business to be open. A single entrance area about the size of five door spaces was used both as an entrance and an exit.

Family members of those killed walked around the gym in a daze Sunday evening, shuffling between caskets or holding one another and weeping as they identified loved ones and tried to make sense of what had happened.

Elaine Marques Goncalves lost her son Deivis in the fire. Another son who attended the college party at the nightclub, Gustavo, was barely alive after suffering two cardiac arrests caused by smoke inhalation.

She learned of the blaze after the mother of her sons' friends called her early Sunday. "My boys were not home and I had no news. I turned on the TV — the tragedy was all over the television," she said at the makeshift morgue. "All I knew was they had gone to a club, I didn't know which one. I kept saying: 'Where do I start? Where do I go?'"

Television images from the city of about 260,000 people showed black smoke billowing out of the nightclub as shirtless young men who attended a university party there joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at the hot-pink exterior walls, trying to reach those trapped inside.

Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.

Within hours the community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin. Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.

The gathering was a party organized by students from several academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil. Survivor Michele Pereira told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit some sort of flare.

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning." "It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it," he said. "When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working."

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely. Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. He said earlier that the death toll was likely made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could exit.

Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.

Most of the dead apparently were asphyxiated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.

"Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least 90 percent of the victims died of asphyxiation," Beltrame told the AP. Sunday's fire appeared to be the worst at a nightclub since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

Similar circumstances led to a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 people in the United States. Pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling of a Rhode Island music venue.

Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja in Brasilia and Stan Lehman and Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

Inmates moved after bloody Venezuela prison clash

January 28, 2013

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan authorities finished evacuating more than 2,000 inmates on Sunday from a prison where the government said 58 people were killed in one of the deadliest prison clashes in the nation's history.

More than two days after the bloodshed, Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela released an official death toll and said 46 wounded victims remained hospitalized. She said the evacuation of Uribana prison in the city of Barquisimeto was completed on Sunday morning. Inmates were loaded aboard buses and driven to other prisons.

She and other officials appeared on television inside the empty prison compound, among wandering dogs and sheep that the inmates had kept. They pointed out makeshift shacks constructed with wood scraps and sheets of zinc where some inmates had taken shelter in the overcrowded prison.

Varela said that the violence erupted on Friday when groups of armed inmates began firing shots at National Guard troops who were attempting to carry out an inspection. "There was resistance to what was imminent ... a peaceful inspection," Varela said, adding that groups of prisoners had opened fire "on a large scale."

Those killed included inmates as well as two Protestant pastors and one soldier, she said. One victim's body was burned, Varela said. The death toll provided by the government differed from that given a day earlier by Dr. Ruy Medina, director of Central Hospital in the city, who had said 61 were reported killed and about 120 were wounded. Medina said that nearly all of the injuries were from gunshots.

Relatives of the victims mourned in funerals, while survivors' families waited anxiously to hear where inmates were taken. "I still don't know where my son is," said Nayibe Mendez, the mother of a 22-year-old inmate who was unhurt. She spoke by telephone from outside the prison, where she and others gathered waiting for lists showing where their relatives were transported.

The riot was the latest in a series of deadly clashes in Venezuela's overcrowded and often anarchical prisons, where inmates typically obtain weapons and drugs with the help of corrupt guards. Critics called it proof that the government is failing to get a grip on a worsening national crisis in its penitentiaries.

The gunbattles seized attention amid uncertainty about President Hugo Chavez's future, while he remained in Cuba recovering and undergoing treatment more than six weeks after his latest cancer surgery.

Government officials pledged a thorough investigation, while critics said there should have been ways for the authorities to prevent such bloodshed. The riot was the deadliest in nearly two decades. In January 1994, more than 100 inmates died in the country's bloodiest prison violence on record when a riot and fire set by inmates tore through a prison in the western city of Maracaibo. In 1992, about 60 inmates were killed in a riot in a Caracas prison.

Varela said the government decided to send troops to search the prison after reports of clashes between groups of inmates during the past two days. She said the government is battling against "mafias" that slip weapons into prisons, and that the authorities next plan to thoroughly search Uribana prison for hidden weapons.

She said that during one initial swing through the prison, officials came upon a grenade. "No one doubts that inspections are necessary procedures to guarantee prison conditions in line with international standards, but they can't be carried out with the warlike attitude as (authorities) have done it," said Humberto Prado, an activist who leads the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, a watchdog group. "It's clear that the inspection wasn't coordinated or put into practice as it should have been. It was evidently a disproportionate use of force."

In 2011, when Chavez had been in office for 12 years, he created a cabinet-level ministry to focus on prisons and appointed Varela to lead it. The president made that decision following a deadly, weekslong armed uprising at the prisons El Rodeo I and El Rodeo II outside Caracas.

Chavez at the time acknowledged that his government's previous initiatives to improve the prisons hadn't worked, and he pledged changes including building new prisons, improving conditions and speeding trials. Since then, Chavez has approved funds to repair and renovate prisons.

But opponents and activists say the government hasn't made real progress at penitentiaries where hundreds continue to die each year. Violence has flared repeatedly at other prisons in the past year. In August, 25 people were killed and 43 wounded when two groups of inmates fought a gunbattle inside Yare I prison south of Caracas.

Venezuela has 33 prisons built to hold about 12,000 inmates. Officials have said the prisons' population is currently about 47,000. Uribana prison was built to hold about 850 inmates. Varela said that when the violence erupted the prison held about 2,400.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles called government officials' response "incredible" and inadequate. Without mentioning Vice President Nicolas Maduro by name, Capriles criticized government officials who ordered an investigation and then traveled off to a summit in Chile.

He noted that in Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff reacted differently after a nightclub fire that killed more than 230 people, when she cut short her summit trip and returning to visit the injured. "Here, they go away to a summit. They dispose of it as if it were one more matter, one more little problem," Capriles said at a televised event. "If we have a state that's not capable of providing security within a penitentiary, what's left for common citizens?"

"The problem that we're seeing can't be solved closing a prison," Capriles said. "The way to solve it is resolving the problem of overcrowding."

Associated Press writer Vivian Sequera in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.

Nuclear vote turnout appears too low in Bulgaria

January 27, 2013

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Unofficial results show that more than 60 percent of Bulgarians voted Sunday in favor of building a new nuclear power plant, but the voter turnout was far below the threshold needed to make the referendum binding.

The issue, which has been seen as a barometer of the relationship between the European Union's poorest member and Russia, appears likely to head to parliament, where the center-right ruling party plans to block the project.

The pro-Western government last March canceled a deal with Russia's Atomstroyexport for a 2,000-megawatt nuclear plant at the northern town of Belene, arguing that estimated costs of up to €10 billion ($13 billion) were too high.

The vote was called by the opposition Socialist party in an effort to force the government to reverse its decision. It was Bulgaria's first referendum since the fall of communism in 1989. An unofficial vote count by the Alfa Research Agency showed that 21.8 percent of the 6.9 million eligible voters cast a ballot in the referendum, and 61 percent supported having a new nuclear plant. Official results were expected later this week.

The turnout appears well below the 60 percent needed to validate the vote, but if final results show it was above 20 percent and more than half of the votes were in favor, Parliament will have to review the issue within three months.

Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said Sunday that his ruling party, Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria, will again block the project. Analysts have linked the stance to the government's declared strategy of reducing the country's near-total dependence on Russian energy sources.

The Russian firm has filed a 1 billion-euro compensation claim at the Paris-based International Court of Arbitration. The referendum has polarized Bulgarian public opinion along party lines and could affect general elections in July. Analysts anticipated that most voters Sunday would be hard-core supporters of each camp, producing the low turnout.

Egypt declares state of emergency in 3 provinces

January 27, 2013

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's president declared a state of emergency and curfew in three Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by a weekend wave of unrest that left more than 50 dead, using tactics of the ousted regime to get a grip on discontent over his Islamist policies and the slow pace of change.

Angry and almost screaming, Mohammed Morsi vowed in a televised address on Sunday night that he would not hesitate to take even more action to stem the latest eruption of violence across much of the country. But at the same time, he sought to reassure Egyptians that his latest moves would not plunge the country back into authoritarianism.

"There is no going back on freedom, democracy and the supremacy of the law," he said. The worst violence this weekend was in the Mediterranean coastal city of Port Said, where seven people were killed on Sunday, pushing the toll for two days of clashes to at least 44. The unrest was sparked on Saturday by a court conviction and death sentence for 21 defendants involved in a mass soccer riot in the city's main stadium on Feb. 1, 2012 that left 74 dead.

Most of those sentenced to death were local soccer fans from Port Said, deepening a sense of persecution that Port Said's residents have felt since the stadium disaster, the worst soccer violence ever in Egypt.

At least another 11 died on Friday elsewhere in the country during rallies marking the second anniversary of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Protesters used the occasion to renounce Morsi and his Islamic fundamentalist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged as the country's most dominant political force after Mubarak's ouster.

The curfew and state of emergency, both in force for 30 days, affect the provinces of Port Said, Ismailiya and Suez. The curfew takes effect Monday from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day. Morsi, in office since June, also invited the nation's political forces to a dialogue starting Monday to resolve the country's latest crisis. A statement issued later by his office said that among those invited were the country's top reform leader, Nobel peace Laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist politician who finished third in last year's presidential race.

The three are leaders of the National Salvation Front, an umbrella for the main opposition parties. Khaled Dawoud, the Front's spokesman, said Morsi's invitation was meaningless unless he clearly states what is on the agenda. That, he added, must include amending a disputed constitution hurriedly drafted by the president's Islamist allies and rejected by the opposition.

He also faulted the president for not acknowledging his political responsibility for the latest bout of political violence. "It is all too little too late," he told The Associated Press. In many ways, Morsi's decree and his call for a dialogue betrayed his despair in the face of wave after wave of political unrest, violence and man-made disasters that, at times, made the country look like it was about to come unglued.

A relative unknown until his Muslim Brotherhood nominated him to run for president last year, Morsi is widely criticized for having offered no vision for the country's future after nearly 30 years of dictatorship under Mubarak and no coherent policy to tackle seemingly endless problems, from a free falling economy and deeply entrenched social injustices to surging crime and chaos on the streets.

Reform of the judiciary and the police, hated under the old regime for brutality, are also key demands of Morsi's critics. Morsi did not say what he plans to do to stem the violence in other parts of the country outside those three provinces, but he did say he had instructed the police to deal "firmly and forcefully" with individuals attacking state institutions, using firearms to "terrorize" citizens or blocking roads and railway lines.

There were also clashes Sunday in Cairo and several cities in the Nile Delta region, including the industrial city of Mahallah. Egypt's current crisis is the second to hit the country since November, when Morsi issued decrees, since rescinded, that gave him nearly unlimited powers and placed him above any oversight, including by the judiciary.

The latest eruption of political violence has deepened the malaise as Morsi struggles to get a grip on enormous social and economic problems and the increasingly dangerous fault lines that divide this nation of 85 million.

In an ominous sign, a one-time jihadist group on Sunday blamed the secular opposition for the violence and threatened to set up vigilante militias to defend the government it supports. Addressing a news conference, Tareq el-Zomr of the once-jihadist Gamaa Islamiya, said:

"If security forces don't achieve security, it will be the right of the Egyptian people and we at the forefront to set up popular committees to protect private and public property and counter the aggression on innocent citizens."

His threat was accompanied by his charge that the opposition was responsible for the deadly violence of the past few days, setting the stage for possible bloody clashes between protesters and Islamist militiamen. The opposition denies the charge.

In Port Said on Sunday, tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets for a mass funeral for most of the 37 people who died on Saturday. They chanted slogans against Morsi. "We are now dead against Morsi," said Port Said activist Amira Alfy. "We will not rest now until he goes and we will not take part in the next parliamentary elections. Port Said has risen and will not allow even a semblance of normalcy to come back," she said.

The violence flared only a month after a prolonged crisis — punctuated by deadly violence — over the new constitution. Ten died in that round of unrest and hundreds were injured. In Port Said, mourners chanted "There is no God but Allah," and "Morsi is God's enemy" as the funeral procession made its way through the city after prayers for the dead at the city's Mariam Mosque. Women clad in black led the chants, which were quickly picked up by the rest of the mourners.

There were no police or army troops in sight. But the funeral procession briefly halted after gunfire rang out. Security officials said the gunfire came from several mourners who opened fire at the Police Club next to the cemetery. Activists, however, said the gunfire first came from inside the army club, which is also close to the cemetery. Some of the mourners returned fire, which drew more shots as well as tear gas, according to witnesses. They, together with the officials, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation in the city on the Mediterranean at the northern tip of the Suez Canal.

A total of 630 people were injured, some of them with gunshot wounds, said Abdel-Rahman Farag, director of the city's hospitals. Also Sunday, army troops backed by armored vehicles staked out positions at key government facilities to protect state interests and try to restore order.

There was also a funeral in Cairo for two policemen killed in the Port Said violence a day earlier. Several policemen grieving for their colleagues heckled Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the force, when he arrived for their funeral, according to witnesses.

The angry officers screamed at the minister that he was only at the funeral for the TV cameras — a highly unusual show of dissent in Egypt, where the police force maintains military-like discipline. Ibrahim hurriedly left and the funeral proceeded without him, a sign that the prestige of the state and its top executives were diminishing.

In Cairo, clashes broke out for the fourth straight day on Sunday, with protesters and police outside two landmark, Nile-side hotels near central Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 2011 uprising. Police fired tear gas while protesters pelted them with rocks.

IOC inspection team in London before 2012 Games

Wed, Oct 5, 2011

LONDON (AP) — Less than 10 months before the opening ceremony, IOC inspectors are back in London to check on preparations for the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee's coordination commission began a three-day visit Wednesday — its next to last trip to London before the games start on July 27, 2012.

"This is really about the ascent to the summit," London organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe told The Associated Press.

It's the first time the commission has been to London since the capital was rocked by riots in August, violence that was trigged by a fatal police shooting in the Tottenham area.

With most of London's venue construction complete, policing, security and transportation are likely to be top issues in the talks.

The IOC team will receive updates from organizers and tour some of the venues, including the Olympic Park in east London and the archery site at Lord's cricket ground, where a test event is taking place this week.

This is the IOC's ninth visit to London since the city was awarded the games in 2005.

Saudi silence on Israeli-seized islands

Wed Oct 5, 2011

Saudi Arabia and the Western states have kept silent for decades regarding the occupation of two Saudi western islands by the Israeli regime.

Israeli forces reportedly occupied Saudi Arabia's Tiran and Sanafir Islands in 1967.

The two islands are located at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, leading to the Red Sea.

Tiran Island, which has an area of about 80 square kilometers, is located at the inflow of the Straits of Tiran. Sanafir Island, with an area of 33 square kilometers, also lies to the east of Tiran.

The two islands were given to the former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for logistics use in the Six Day War of 1967 against Israeli forces.

However, the islands have been occupied by Tel Aviv since Egypt's defeat.

The Straits of Tiran, which has remained under the control of Tel Aviv, has strategic significance since it serves as Israel's only direct access to the Red Sea.

Regional observers say while Saudi Arabia has maintained a total silence on its own Israeli-occupied islands, it vigorously pursues baseless claims by the United Arab Emirates against three tiny Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/202842.html.

Two ministers relinquish foreign citizenship

Oct 04, 2011

AMMAN (JT) - Two Cabinet members applied to relinquish their non-Jordanian nationalities at the concerned embassies, a government official said.

Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications and Government Spokesperson Abdullah Abu Rumman said the step taken by Minister of Water and Irrigation Mohammad Najjar and Minister of Culture Jeryes Samawi on Monday “was made to abide by the [new] Constitution, which prohibits Jordanians who have another nationality from holding ministerial posts”, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

Under the amendments made to Article 75 of the Constitution, which went into effect Saturday, “no person can become a deputy, senator, minister or a high-ranking official if he/she holds dual nationality”.

In a press conference yesterday, Abu Rumman said Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit has informed all ministers who hold dual nationalities to rectify their statuses according to the Constitution, Petra reported.

Senator Talal Abu Ghazaleh was the first to resign his seat as he holds Bahraini citizenship, along with his Jordanian nationality.

Source: The Jordan Times.
Link: http://jordantimes.com/two-ministers-relinquish-foreign-citizenship.

Saudi police 'open fire on civilians' as protests gain momentum

BY PATRICK COCKBURN
WEDNESDAY 05 OCTOBER 2011

Pro-democracy protests which swept the Arab world earlier in the year have erupted in eastern Saudi Arabia over the past three days, with police opening fire with live rounds and many people injured, opposition activists say.

Saudi Arabia last night confirmed there had been fighting in the region and that 11 security personnel and three civilians had been injured in al-Qatif, a large Shia city on the coast of Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province. The opposition say that 24 men and three women were wounded on Monday night and taken to al-Qatif hospital.

The Independent has been given exclusive details of how the protests developed by local activists. They say unrest began on Sunday in al-Awamiyah, a Shia town of about 25,000 people, when Saudi security forces arrested a 60-year-old man to force his son – an activist – to give himself up.

Ahmad Al-Rayah, a spokesman for the Society for Development and Change, which is based in the area, said that most of the civilians hit were wounded in heavy firing by the security forces after 8 pm on Monday. "A crowd was throwing stones at a police station and when a local human rights activist named Fadel al-Mansaf went into the station to talk to them and was arrested," he said.

Mr Rayah added that "there have been protests for democracy and civil rights since February, but in the past the police fired into the air. This is the first time they have fired live rounds directly into a crowd." He could not confirm if anybody had been killed.

The Shia of Saudi Arabia, mostly concentrated in the Eastern Province, have long complained of discrimination against them by the fundamentalist Sunni Saudi monarchy. The Wahhabi variant of Islam, the dominant faith in Saudi Arabia, holds Shia to be heretics who are not real Muslims.

The US, as the main ally of Saudi Arabia, is likely to be alarmed by the spread of pro-democracy protests to the Kingdom and particularly to that part of it which contains the largest oil reserves in the world. The Saudi Shia have been angered at the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain since March, with many protesters jailed, tortured or killed, according Western human rights organisations.

Hamza al-Hassan, an opponent of the Saudi government from Eastern Province living in Britain, predicted that protests would spread to more cities. "I am frightened when I see video film of events because most people in this region have guns brought in over the years from Iraq and Yemen and will use them [against government security men]," he said. He gave a slightly different account of the start of the riots in al-Awamiyah, saying that two elderly men had been arrested by the security forces, one of whom had a heart attack.

"Since September there has been a huge presence of Saudi security forces in al-Qatif and all other Shia centers " he said. Al-Qatif was the scene of similar protests in March, which were swiftly quashed by security forces.

The Saudi statement alleges that the recent protests were stirred up by an unnamed foreign power, by which it invariably means Iran. The interior ministry was quoted on Saudi television as saying that "a foreign country is trying to undermine national security by inciting strife in al-Qatif". Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies of the western Gulf have traditionally blamed Iran for any unrest by local Shia, but have never produced any evidence other than to point at sympathetic treatment of the demonstrations on Iranian television.

The 20 doctors in Bahrain sentenced to up to 15 years in prison last week say their interrogators tortured them repeatedly to force them to make false confessions that Iran was behind the protests. The counter-revolution in Bahrain was heralded by the arrival of a 1,500-strong Saudi-led military force, which is still there.

Mr Rayah, who flew from Saudi Arabia to Beirut to be free to talk about the protests, said: "People want a change and a new way of living." He said that, in particular, they were demanding a constitution and a free assembly for the Eastern Province. He also wanted the Society for Development and Change legally registered.

Mr Hassan blamed the protests on the fact "that there has been no political breakthrough".

"I am from the city of al-Safwa, which is very close to al-Awamiyah, and there is very high unemployment in both," he said. Some 70 per cent of the Saudi population is believed to be under 30 and many do not have jobs. "We were hoping for municipal reforms and regional elections for years but we got nothing."

He said reforms reported in the Western media were meaningless and that only a few Saudis had bothered to vote in the most recent local elections because local councils had no power.

Source: The Independent.
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-police-open-fire-on-civilians-as-protests-gain-momentum-2365614.html.

Iranians in Iraqi Camp to Seek Refugee Status

By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON, Sep 28 2011 (IPS) - In a development that could help resolve an eight-year-old diplomatic and humanitarian standoff, the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that has several thousand adherents at a military camp in Iraq, has agreed to allow residents to apply for refugee status and be interviewed individually by U.N. officials.

Vincent Cochetel, Washington representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IPS Wednesday that an agreement was reached about 10 days ago through the MEK’s legal counsel in London.

“They have agreed to individual screening,” he said. “We have offered an alternative location near Ashraf,” the camp north of Baghdad where the MEK members reside.

The decision by the MEK could help resolve a crisis that has weighed heavily on the United States as it prepares to withdraw most of its remaining troops from Iraq. Iraqi officials are considering allowing a few thousand U.S. troops to stay in the country but only to provide training and other military assistance.

Mark Toner, deputy State Department spokesman, told IPS, “We fully support the international community’s efforts to resolve the situation at Ashraf.”

There are about 3,300 Iranians left in the camp.

In the past, the MEK leadership has refused to allow most residents of Camp Ashraf to apply for refugee status or to speak with UNHCR representatives without MEK officials present.

Former members of the group, who contend that the MEK is a cult that fosters blind obedience to its leaders, say that many Ashraf inhabitants have been held against their will and would eagerly leave the camp if they could. There have been fears that the leaders would order members to commit suicide en masse rather than let them go.

The agreement with UNHCR is a necessary first step to close the camp – something the Iraqi government has long sought – but does not resolve the problem of where the residents find refuge.

“The challenge for us is to find countries to receive them,” Cochetel said. “The likelihood that they can remain in Iraq is very limited.”

The current Iraqi government, dominated by Shiites and Kurds, has tolerated the MEK camp only under U.S. and international pressure. The Iraqi leadership blames the MEK for allying with Saddam Hussein and participating in brutal crackdowns against Iraqi Kurds and Shiites following the 1991 Gulf War.

The George W. Bush administration initially promised to declare residents of Ashraf enemy combatants following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam’s regime. Instead, however, U.S. forces put the camp under their protection. Since 2008, when Iraq regained sovereignty over the camp, Iraqi troops have entered Ashraf several times in a futile effort to convince residents to leave. A few dozen people have been killed in skirmishes between the Iraqis and the Iranians.

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, told IPS the agreement with UNHCR “could potentially be a breakthrough”, but that it remained unclear whether the MEK leadership would allow everyone in the camp to be interviewed.

“Hopefully, if given enough protection, camp residents will be able to be truthful about conditions in Ashraf and where they want to go,” Parsi said.

Several hundred camp residents have managed to return to Iran since 2003 through the auspices of the International Red Cross. Many of those who remain would fear to go to Iran now in light of the widespread crackdown on Iranian opposition groups that followed disputed 2009 presidential elections.

Originally a Marxist-Islamist group that helped overthrow the Shah of Iran, the MEK lost a power struggle with more Islamic-oriented factions following the 1979 revolution. The group has very little support within Iran because of its siding with Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. During the following decade, while Saddam remained in power, the MEK carried out assassinations of prominent officials and other attacks within Iran.

The U.S. State Department put the MEK on its list of foreign terrorist organisations in 1997 because of the group’s bloody record, which includes the assassination of six U.S. citizens in Iran during the 1970s.

MEK leaders insist that they have renounced terrorism and now advocate a democratic government for Iran. But their literature continues to treat their leader, Mariam Rajavi, who lives outside Paris, as the object of a personality cult. The whereabouts of Mrs. Rajavi’s husband, Massoud, who led the group into exile, are unknown.

In recent months, wealthy supporters of the MEK have waged an aggressive lobbying campaign to be removed from the U.S. terrorist list, paying tens of thousands of dollars apiece to prominent former U.S. officials to speak on the group’s behalf.

One argument advanced by MEK adherents has been that removal from the list would allow Ashraf residents to come to the United States. However, a State Department official told IPS last month that U.S. law forbids immigration to anyone with ties to a foreign terrorist organisation. He said this includes “those who provided material support to, or received military-type training from the group, as many MEK members have”.

Asked if UNHCR was looking to Europe – where many Ashraf residents have relatives – to give refuge to camp residents, Cochetel said, “I can’t say at this point that their response has been overwhelming.”

Source: Inter-Press Service.
Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/09/iranians-in-iraqi-camp-to-seek-refugee-status/.

Greeks Take to the Streets Against More Cuts

By Joanna Kakissis / Athens
Wednesday, Oct. 05, 2011

The Greek government is facing powerful public resistance to new austerity measures that foreign lenders are demanding in return for bailout loans. But only a few thousand protesters marched to Parliament on Wednesday during the first general strike since June. Scuffles broke out between fringe anarchists and riot police. Officers dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Marina Massad, a 19-year-old photography student, said this chronic violence likely scared most Greeks into staying home. "No one likes the chemicals," said Massad, her face smeared with white liquid maalox, which helps keeps tear gas from stinging. "They are scared. But someone has to come out here and make some noise. So here I am."

The country's main labor unions, ADEDY and GSEE, which represent 2.5 million workers, held the strike to protest cuts in the public sector and a new property tax which will be collected through electricity bills. The strike grounded most international flights, halted trains and closed tax offices and some state schools. Hospitals are running on emergency staff. At the same time, inspectors from the European Union and International Monetary Fund continue their evaluation of Greece's finances to determine whether the country should receive $11 billion, the latest installment of a $150 billion bailout loan package, by next month. The Greek government said Tuesday it has enough cash to pay its bills only through November.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said Tuesday that Greeks must back the new measures if the country has any hope of meeting its deficit target for 2011, which was revised to 8.5% of gross domestic product from 7.6%. Along with tax hikes, budget cuts and the long-overdue reforming of the country's bloated public sector, the Greek government must also privatize some state assets and crack down on longtime tax evasion.

But winning public support for more austerity seems virtually impossible right now. Polls show that nearly all Greeks oppose more cuts and most believe the measures have done little to get Greece out of debt. More than a year of tax hikes and wage and pension cuts have decimated the middle class. Unemployment is at more than 16%. Personal bankruptcies, homelessness, suicides and crime are all on the rise. And yet the Greek government missed its deficit targets this year. Euro-zone finance ministers have decided to delay the latest loan payment, which Greece needs to stay solvent, because they don't think the country is trying hard enough to reform itself. More austerity, they say.

Yanis Varoufakis, a professor of economic theory at the University of Athens, is one of many economists who say austerity is actually killing an already weak Greek economy. "Anyone with any logic can see that this is not the way to jump-start the economy of a country that's in recession," Varoufakis says. Instead, austerity has put the economy in "a permafrost from which the Greek society has lost its capacity to react creatively to the crisis and to work itself out of the hole in which it has found itself."

Greeks have also lost faith in nearly all of their politicians. As the government party, center-left PASOK has suffered the most. "Right now, considering how big and unprecedented this financial crisis is, it's understood that the government committed the equivalent of political suicide a long time ago with the austerity drive," says Takis Pappas, a political science professor.

PASOK, which stands for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, is led by George Papandreou, a quiet but stubborn sociologist and the American-born scion of Greece's most prominent political family. His grandfather and father were both premiers. His father, Andreas, who founded the party, was a Harvard-educated economist who built up the public sector to offer "jobs for life" to an emerging middle class in Greece. The civil service never became a bastion of Greece's best minds. Instead, it grew into an unwieldy monster overstuffed with party loyalists, many of whom were unqualified for their jobs.

Yet many Greeks, even well-educated ones, long desired a position in the civil service "because it was easy," Pappas says. "Now that option is gone. So for the government to restructure the civil service and make it truly productive, it has to make sure that it lays off not the bright, efficient workers but the ones who are not doing their jobs. It has to give people incentives to strive instead of rely on cronyism. The state needs to show that it has changed."

Anita Papachristopoulou, a 44-year-old environmental scientist who works for the Athens Water Supply and Sewer Company, says there's a grain of truth to the caricature of the lazy Greek civil servant worker. But she says there are thousands of Greek public-sector employees, like herself, who got their jobs through perseverance, not connections. "No one introduced me to anyone," says Papachristopoulou. "I just sent in my application cold, and I was lucky to get the job."

Panagiotis Akarepis, a 44-year-old air traffic controller, got his civil service post — one of the most demanding jobs in the world — after he passed several stringent tests. Air traffic controllers walked off the job as part of the larger strike by ADEDY, the public sector union, but also because of they say are illegal cuts on allowances and pay.

"They are penalizing everyone indiscriminately for this bad image of public servants, which in turn makes people who actually do work, not want to work," he says. "How is anything ever going to get done this way? It's totally unfair to put everyone in the same bucket."

Source: TIME.
Link: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2096177,00.html.

Ex-premier elected new Czech president

January 26, 2013

PRAGUE (AP) — A former left-leaning prime minister staged a big return to power Saturday by winning the Czech Republic's first directly elected presidential vote.

With all the votes counted, Milos Zeman won 54.8 percent of the vote for the largely ceremonial post, the Czech Statistics Office reported. His opponent, conservative Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, had 45.2 percent.

"Long live Zeman!" his supporters chanted at his campaign headquarters in Prague. "I promise that as a president elected in a direct popular vote I will try to be the voice of all citizens," Zeman said.

Voters seemed to punish Schwarzenberg for the government's unpopular austerity cuts that aimed to reduce the budget deficit. "It definitely didn't help me," Schwarzenberg said, adding he will continue to serve as foreign minister.

Since Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic in 1993, the Czech Republic has had two presidents elected by Parliament: Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus. But bickering during those votes led lawmakers to give that decision to the public.

The 68-year-old Zeman will replace the euro-skeptic Klaus, whose second and final term ends March 7. Zeman is considered more favorable toward the 27-nation European Union, to which the country belongs. People in his inner circle also have close business ties with Russia so "he might become an advocate of closer relations with Russia," said Josef Mlejnek, an analyst from Prague's Charles University.

Zeman is not opposed to pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and opposes Kosovo's independence. In the campaign, one of the top issues became the 1945 expulsion of 3 million ethnic Germans from then-Czechoslovakia in a move approved by the Allies. Schwarzenberg said Czechs should not be proud of this action, prompting attacks from both Zeman and Klaus.

"Nationalism took over the campaign," said Mlejnek. A chain smoker who likes a good drink, Zeman made international headlines as prime minister with his outspoken comments. He once compared the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Adolf Hitler, drawing condemnations from the EU and the Arab League, and called Austrians who opposed a Czech nuclear plant "idiots."

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., Zeman and his interior minister said they believed that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001. That purported meeting was cited as evidence of a possible al-Qaida connection to Iraq. The 9/11 commission later said such a meeting never happened.

In 2002, Zeman outraged German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder by calling ethnic those Germans "Hitler's fifth column." In protest, Schroeder canceled his official trip to Prague. During his four years in office beginning in 1998, Zeman's government privatized the ailing bank sector but was criticized for a lack of transparency in privatizing state-owned property and for often failing to run public tenders for state contracts.

Under the Czech constitution, the president has the power to pick the prime minister after a general election and to appoint members of the Central Bank board. With the approval of Parliament's upper house, the president also appoints Constitutional Court judges.

Otherwise the president has little executive power and the country is run by the government chosen and led by the prime minister.

Thousands of Portuguese teachers protest big cut

January 26, 2013

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Thousands of teachers from around Portugal are marching in downtown Lisbon to protest proposed spending cuts they say will slash €1 billion ($1.3 billion) from the education budget.

Unions say the government plans to privatize many public schools and cut around 50,000 sector jobs. Union spokesman Mario Nogueira says the plans revealed in a recent document from the International Monetary Fund would "mean the end of a free and inclusive public school system."

Portugal, which is headed for a third straight year of recession, needed a €78 billion lifeline in May 2011 to avert bankruptcy and has a jobless rate of 16.3 percent. Austerity measures have triggered many strikes and protests.

It was the third country that uses the euro to require an international bailout to deal with its debts.

U.N. resolution on Syria vetoed

Oct. 4, 2011

DAMASCUS, Syria, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Russia and China Tuesday vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned Syria's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The proposed resolution included a call for an immediate end to alleged human rights abuses by the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, the United Nations said in a release.

In Syria, activists said four people were killed Tuesday in clashes between government security forces and military defectors in Talbiseh, near Homs, Voice of America reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, said at least one those killed was a civilian.

The fighting Tuesday followed days of security operations in Rastan, during which activists say government forces arrested as many as 3,000 people to track down dissident soldiers.

It's estimated 2,700 people have died in anti-government protests in Syria since mid-March.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, France, Gabon, Germany, Nigeria, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States voted in favor of the draft Security Council resolution. Brazil, India, Lebanon and South Africa abstained.

A veto by any one of the council's five permanent members -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- is enough to block any resolution.

The proposed wording condemned "the continued grave and systematic human rights violations and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities." It called for all sides to reject violence and extremism and for the creation of "an inclusive Syrian-led political process conducted in an environment free from violence, fear, intimidation and extremism, and aimed at effectively addressing the legitimate aspirations and concerns of Syria's population."

After the veto, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his country does not support Assad's regime but that the draft resolution was not the way to achieve a peaceful resolution of the crisis. He said most Syrians desire a gradual political change, not an abrupt overthrow of the current government, and the resolution failed to adequately factor in the impact of extremists organizations in the country.

Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong said his country was greatly concerned about the violence in Syria but the resolution would only complicate matters. He said the threat of sanctions would not resolve the conflict in Syria.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud said he was disappointed in the vote, which he said came after repeated attempts by the co-sponsors to work out acceptable wording.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the countries that did not back the resolution would have to answer to the Syrian people. She said it was a "ruse" to suggest passing the resolution would lead to military intervention in Syria.

Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari of Syria said the resolution revealed some Western countries' desire to undermine his country's authorities.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/10/04/UN-resolution-on-Syria-vetoed/UPI-40371317740266/.

Honduras solar energy plans get a boost

Oct. 5, 2011

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Financially troubled and diplomatically isolated since a controversial 2009 coup, Honduras has taken a tentative step toward shedding some of its energy burden and opting for a switch from diesel to solar energy.

An $84 million project, surprisingly large for a country struggling with debt, devastating effects of political turmoil and international isolation, is intended to be a win-win situation for Honduras and Onyx Contract and Solutions, Inc., the company contracted to deliver the project within nine months.

Funding for the project comes from Villela and Villela law and lobby firm, which has its office in Roatan, Onyx said. News of the contract on the Onyx Web site makes clear the project is part of a wider plan to build support for countries seen as friends of the United States or seen to be under pressure from left-wing populist forces in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Onyx pulls no punches. Those three states appear in deep red in a sea of blue in an online graphic bearing the caption, "The high stakes struggle for power effecting (sic) neighboring U.S. allies."

Onyx reasons a better electrified and energy self-sufficient populace is less likely to revolt against the government in power or align itself with forces challenging U.S. interests in the area. It cited Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Panama as "current allies" that deserved help with energy independence.

Onyx Service and Solutions will build the solar power project at Roatan, Honduras.

The project will assist Honduras in becoming more self-reliant for electrical power as opposed to using imported diesel for power generation, "which comes at a very high cost," including dependence on Venezuela.

The project aims to generate 18.5 megawatts of power from 65,000 280-watt solar panels. Onyx is also in talks to increase the size of the solar power capacity up to 58 total megawatts, once the original 18.5 megawatt facility comes online.

Onyx said it has "identified a lucrative market for solar power projects in areas that use diesel produced electricity" throughout Central and Latin America and the Caribbean. The company is hopeful of new projects in Colombia, Mexico and Panama.

"Beyond the company's excitement over supplying and installing their newest products, this project also represents a move to assist a strong U.S. ally to become more self-reliant for electrical power," Onyx said.

"Currently, many nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean find themselves being squeezed by the need for power coupled with the temptation to use Venezuelan diesel for electrical generation," Onyx said.

Honduras has struggled to restore international links after a 2009 coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya triggered a political crisis that only eased after Porfirio Lobo was elected president under the military's supervision. Despite U.S. and EU recognition, many Latin American states still don't acknowledge Lobo's presidency.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/10/05/Honduras-solar-energy-plans-get-a-boost/UPI-86681317811210/.

Greek subway staff end strike after police raid

January 25, 2013

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Striking subway workers in Athens returned to the job Friday, hours after the Greek government used riot police to evacuate holdouts from a train depot, ending a bitter standoff over new austerity measures.

The nine-day strike — which knocked out a system serving more than a million people a day — was the biggest labor unrest Greece's uneasy, conservative-led governing coalition faced since taking over last June.

It was only overcome after authorities resorted to issuing a rare civil mobilization order to workers who had defied a court ruling that their strike was illegal. Thursday's mobilization order meant that staff refusing to return to work risked dismissal, arrest and jail time.

Though the subway trains started running again, the city of some four million still lacked bus and trolley bus services, as unions launched rolling strikes in sympathy with their colleagues. "I am pleased that the urban rail workers restarted the network, and passengers are even more pleased," Transport Minister Costis Hadzidakis said.

Metro staff have been outraged by plans to scrap their existing contracts as part of a broader public sector pay reform, with their union saying workers faced a roughly 25 percent salary loss. Hammered by a financial crisis since late 2009, Greece has imposed repeated rounds of public sector salary and pension cuts in return for billions of euros in international rescue loans. The measures have led to a deep recession, now in its sixth year, and record-high unemployment of more than 26 percent.

In Friday's pre-dawn raid at the western Athens depot, police broke through the gates and removed dozens of strikers, while rows of riot police blocked off surrounding roads to keep away hundreds of strike supporters.

No violence was reported, with the workers not putting up resistance. In the afternoon, dozens of strikers burned their mobilization papers outside a metro station. The government's order led to a swift backlash, with all other public transport workers declaring immediate strikes that forced Athenians to walk or take taxis through thunderstorms Thursday and Friday. Traffic slowed to a crawl, and commutes took up to three times as long as normal.

Defending the government's, government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou insisted the new austerity measures must be implemented. "We are a society, an economy, at a very difficult time," he said. "People can't ask for exceptions."

The civil mobilization law, amended in 2007 to deal with "peacetime emergencies," has now been used nine times since the 1974 collapse of a military dictatorship in Greece - three of those in anti-austerity strikes over the past two years. Defying the order to return to work can lead to arrest and jail terms of between three months and five years.

Unions and the radical left main opposition Syriza party accused the government of dictatorial tactics. "It's a new coup against this country's constitution to mobilize working people on strike on the subway with military-style methods," Syriza lawmaker Dimitris Stratoulis said late Thursday.

Considered an extreme measure, use of the law usually sparks an outcry but does tend to end a strike. It has been used in the past to end a protracted strike by garbage collectors, with the government at the time citing public health concerns, and to end a fuel truck strike that had caused major gasoline shortages.

The strike has been met with a mixture of understanding and exasperation from commuters, many of whom have also suffered deep income cuts. Data released by Greece's statistical authority Friday showed that households' disposable income dropped 10.6 percent in the third quarter of 2012, compared with a year before. The authority said salaries fell 11.3 percentand social benefits received by households decreased 10.2 percent — while taxes on household income and wealth increased 17.7 percent.

Since Greece's finances started to implode in late 2009, incomes have dropped on average by about 30 percent. Strikes in general are so widespread and frequent in Greece that they have become part of everyday life.

"I agree with the strikers," said Christos Bousios as he walked through central Athens. "They have their demands. People will be inconvenienced. With all strikes, it's people who end up paying. ... Those who complain about the strikes today are the ones who strike the next day and make other people's lives hard."

The Greek capital's metro, which opened in 2000, serves more than 700,000 passengers daily. It operates alongside an older network, bringing the capital's combined daily subway traffic to 1.1 million passengers, according to the operators.

Thousands strike amid gov't crisis in Slovenia

January 23, 2013

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Schools closed down, theaters cancelled shows, hospitals switched to weekend schedules and long lines formed at Slovenia's borders on Wednesday in a massive anti-austerity strike, as the main coalition partner walked out of the government over corruption allegations against the prime minister, bringing it to the brink of collapse.

Tens of thousands of teachers, university professors, doctors, customs officials and other state employees joined the strike, angry that the coalition government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa has cut their salaries by 5 percent to reduce debt and avoid needing an EU bailout.

Meanwhile, Jansa's main coalition partner, the Citizens' List, announced it is quitting the government, leaving it without the ministers of justice and finance, and a majority in the parliament. That does not mean the immediate collapse of Jansa's Cabinet, because he can continue to lead a minority government pending a no-confidence vote in the assembly.

Earlier Wednesday, several thousand flag-waving protesters rallied in central Ljubljana, the capital, demanding job security and accusing the government of corruption. "Don't believe those who say the situation will improve if cleaners, policemen or nurses are fired!" a union leader, Branimir Strukelj, told the crowd.

Jansa's government has said that the austerity measures are necessary for Slovenia to restore public finances that, like the economy, have been hurt by the eurozone debt crisis. The measures also include a plan to overhaul the banking system and reform the labor market.

But the government has been shaken by corruption allegations against Jansa, who has been asked to step down by coalition partners. A report issued this month by an anti-graft watchdog accused him of failing to declare more than €200,000 ($266,000) in private assets, which he has denied.

Gregor Virant, the leader of the Citizens List, blamed Jansa for the political turmoil. "The political crisis erupted the day that the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption presented its grave and damning findings," Virant said. He added that his party's walkout from the ruling coalition was "the first step in the resolution of the political crisis."

The priority for his party is an early election, he added, saying the report "has changed the situation in Slovenia so much that the citizens ought to be given the chance to make a new choice." Virant also announced he will step down as Parliament speaker.

In an interview Tuesday with local Primorka TV, Jansa urged "sensibility and maturity to enable the government to do what needs to be done without delay." The anti-graft report also accused Zoran Jankovic, the main opposition leader who is also the mayor of Ljubljana and one of the richest people in Slovenia, of failing to clarify where €2.4 million ($3.1 million) of his money came from.

Slovenia, once a star economy among EU newcomers, has seen its gross domestic product shrink by 3.3 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier — the third-biggest drop in the eurozone after Greece and Portugal.

Jovana Gec and Dusan Stojanovic contributed from Belgrade, Serbia.

Netanyahu narrowly wins Israeli election

January 23, 2013

JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line allies fared far worse than expected in a parliamentary election Tuesday, likely forcing him to reach across the aisle to court a popular political newcomer to cobble together a new coalition.

While Netanyahu appeared positioned to serve a third term as prime minister, the results marked a major setback for his policies and could force him to make new concessions to restart long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.

More than 99 percent of the votes had been counted by Wednesday morning and results showed the hawkish and dovish blocs were split about evenly. Netanyahu's most likely partner was Yesh Atid, or There is a Future, a party headed by political newcomer Yair Lapid that showed surprising strength. Lapid has said he would only join a government committed to sweeping economic changes and a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Addressing his supporters early Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed to form as broad a coalition as possible. He said the next government would be built on principles that include reforming the contentious system of granting draft exemptions to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and the pursuit of a "genuine peace" with the Palestinians. He did not elaborate, but the message seemed aimed at Lapid.

Shortly after the results were announced, Netanyahu called Lapid and offered to work together. "We have the opportunity to do great things together," Netanyahu was quoted as saying by Likud officials.

Netanyahu's Likud-Yisrael Beitenu alliance was set to capture about 31 of the 120 seats, significantly fewer than the 42 it held in the outgoing parliament and below the forecasts of recent polls. With his traditional allies of nationalist and religious parties, Netanyahu could put together a shaky majority of 61 seats, results showed. But it would be virtually impossible to keep such a narrow coalition intact, though it was possible he could take an additional seat or two as numbers trickled in throughout the night.

The results capped a lackluster campaign in which peacemaking with the Palestinians, traditionally the dominant issue in Israeli politics, was pushed aside. Netanyahu portrayed himself as the only candidate capable of leading Israel at a turbulent time, while the fragmented opposition targeted him on domestic economic issues.

Netanyahu's goal of a broader coalition will force him to make some difficult decisions. Concessions to Lapid, for instance, will alienate his religious allies. In an interview last week with The Associated Press, Lapid said he would not be a "fig leaf" for a hard-line, extremist agenda.

Lapid's performance was the biggest surprise of the election. The one-time TV talk show host and son of a former Cabinet minister was poised to win 19 seats, giving him the second-largest faction in parliament.

Presenting himself as the defender of the middle class, Lapid vowed to take on Israel's high cost of living and to end the contentious system of subsidies and draft exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jews while they pursue religious studies. The expensive system has bred widespread resentment among the Israeli mainstream.

Thanks to his strong performance, Lapid is now in a position to serve as the kingmaker of the next government. He will likely seek a senior Cabinet post and other concessions. Yaakov Peri, a member of Lapid's party, said it would not join unless the government pledges to begin drafting the ultra-Orthodox into the military, lowers the country's high cost of living and returns to peace talks. "We have red lines. We won't cross those red lines, even if it will cost us sitting in the opposition," Peri told Channel 2 TV.

Addressing his supporters, a beaming Lapid was noncommittal, calling only for a broad government with moderates from left and right. "Israelis said no to the politics of fear and hatred," he said. "And they said no to extremism and anti-democracy."

There was even a distant possibility of Lapid and more dovish parties teaming up to block Netanyahu from forming a majority. "It could be that this evening is the beginning for a big chance to create an alternative government to the Netanyahu government," said Shelly Yachimovich, leader of the Labor Party, which won 15 seats on a platform pledging to narrow the gaps between rich and poor.

Although that seemed unlikely, Netanyahu clearly emerged from the election in a weakened state. "We expected more seats in the parliament," Danny Danon, a senior Likud member, told the AP. "But the bottom line is that Benjamin Netanyahu is the next prime minister of Israel."

Under Israel's system of proportional representation, seats in the 120-member parliament are allocated according to the percentage of votes a party gets. As leader of the largest party, Netanyahu is in the best position to form a coalition and be prime minister.

The results were shocking, given the steady stream of recent opinion polls forecasting a solid victory by Netanyahu and his allies. Netanyahu appeared to suffer because of his close ties to the ultra-Orthodox and perhaps from complacency. Many voters chose smaller parties, believing a Netanyahu victory was inevitable.

Tensions with the United States, Israel's most important ally, also may have factored into the thinking. President Barack Obama was quoted last week as saying that Netanyahu was undermining Israel's own interests by continuing to build Jewish settlements on occupied lands.

Netanyahu has won praise at home for drawing the world's attention to Iran's suspect nuclear program and for keeping the economy on solid ground at a time of global turmoil. In his speech, Netanyahu said that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons would remain his top priority.

But internationally, he has repeatedly clashed with allies over his handling of the peace process. Peace talks with the Palestinians have remained stalled throughout his term, in large part because of his continued construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want a halt to settlement construction before talks begin. Netanyahu says talks must start without any preconditions.

Obama has had a turbulent relationship with Netanyahu, and the two leaders could find themselves on a collision course in their new terms. The Obama administration said that regardless of the results of the election, the U.S. approach to the conflict would not change.

"We will continue to make clear that only through direct negotiations can the Palestinians and the Israelis ... achieve the peace they both deserve," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. In London, British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged Obama to make the Middle East peace process his top priority. "We are approaching the last chance to bring about such a solution," Hague warned.

Netanyahu himself has only grudgingly voiced conditional support for a Palestinian state, and his own party is now dominated by hard-liners who oppose even that. A potential coalition partner, Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party, which won 11 seats, has called for annexing large parts of the West Bank, the core of any future Palestinian state.

While Lapid advocates a softer line toward the Palestinians, his campaign focused on economic issues and it remains unclear how hard he will push Netanyahu on the issue. Lapid's positions also fall short of Palestinian demands. Most critically, he opposes any division of Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future state.

The Palestinians viewed the election results grimly. "If he brings Lapid into his government, this would improve the image of the Netanyahu government in the eyes of the world. But it won't make him stop building settlements, particularly in east Jerusalem," said Mohammed Ishtayeh, a senior adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas.

In all, 32 parties contested the election, and 12 won enough votes to enter parliament, according to the exit polls. Netanyahu now has up to six weeks to form a government.

Aron Heller in Tel Aviv, Daniel Estrin and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem, and Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

Russia moves to enact anti-gay law nationwide

January 21, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Kissing his boyfriend during a protest in front of Russia's parliament earned Pavel Samburov 30 hours of detention and the equivalent of a $16 fine on a charge of "hooliganism." But if a bill that comes up for a first vote later this month becomes law, such a public kiss could be defined as illegal "homosexual propaganda" and bring a fine of up to $16,000.

The legislation being pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church would make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is defined as "propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism." It includes a ban on holding public events that promote gay rights. St. Petersburg and a number of other Russian cities already have similar laws on their books.

The bill is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values as opposed to Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and church see as corrupting Russian youth and by extension contributing to a wave of protest against President Vladimir Putin's rule.

Samburov describes the anti-gay bill as part of a Kremlin crackdown on minorities of any kind — political and religious as well as sexual — designed to divert public attention from growing discontent with Putin's rule.

The lanky and longhaired Samburov is the founder of the Rainbow Association, which unites gay activists throughout Russia. The gay rights group has joined anti-Putin marches in Moscow over the past year, its rainbow flag waving along with those of other opposition groups.

Other laws that the Kremlin says are intended to protect young Russians have been hastily adopted in recent months, including some that allow banning and blocking web content and print publications that are deemed "extremist" or unfit for young audiences.

Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada Center, an independent pollster, says the anti-gay bill fits the "general logic" of a government intent on limiting various rights. But in this case, the move has been met mostly with either indifference or open enthusiasm by average Russians. Levada polls conducted last year show that almost two thirds of Russians find homosexuality "morally unacceptable and worth condemning." About half are against gay rallies and same-sex marriage; almost a third think homosexuality is the result of "a sickness or a psychological trauma," the Levada surveys show.

Russia's widespread hostility to homosexuality is shared by the political and religious elite. Lawmakers have accused gays of decreasing Russia's already low birth rates and said they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled. Orthodox activists criticized U.S. company PepsiCo for using a "gay" rainbow on cartons of its dairy products. An executive with a government-run television network said in a nationally televised talk show that gays should be prohibited from donating blood, sperm and organs for transplants, while after death their hearts should be burned or buried.

The anti-gay sentiment was seen Sunday in Voronezh, a city south of Moscow, where a handful of gay activists protesting against the parliament bill were attacked by a much larger group of anti-gay activists who hit them with snowballs.

The gay rights protest that won Samburov a fine took place in December. Seconds after Samburov and his boyfriend kissed, militant activists with the Orthodox Church pelted them with eggs. Police intervened, rounding up the gay activists and keeping them for 30 hours first in a frozen van and then in an unheated detention center. The Orthodox activists were also rounded up, but were released much earlier.

Those behind the bill say minors need to be protected from "homosexual propaganda" because they are unable to evaluate the information critically. "This propaganda goes through the mass media and public events that propagate homosexuality as normal behavior," the bill reads.

Cities started adopting anti-gay laws in 2006. Only one person has been prosecuted so far under a law specifically targeted at gays: Nikolai Alexeyev, a gay rights campaigner, was fined the equivalent of $160 after a one-man protest last summer in St. Petersburg.

In November, a St. Petersburg court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trade Union of Russian Citizens, a small group of Orthodox conservatives and Putin loyalists, against pop star Madonna. The group sought $10.7 million in damages for what it says was "propaganda of perversion" when Madonna spoke up for gay rights during a show three months earlier.

The federal bill's expected adoption comes 20 years after a Stalinist-era law punishing homosexuality with up to five years in prison was removed from Russia's penal code as part of the democratic reforms that followed the Soviet Union's collapse.

Most of the other former Soviet republics also decriminalized homosexuality, and attitudes toward gays have become a litmus test of democratic freedoms. While gay pride parades are held in the three former Soviet Baltic states, all today members of the European Union, same-sex love remains a crime in authoritarian Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In Russia, gays have been whipsawed by official pressure and persistent homophobia. There are no reliable estimates of how many gays and lesbians live in Russia, and only a few big cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg have gay nightclubs and gyms. Even there, gays do not feel secure.

When a dozen masked men entered a Moscow night club during a "coming out party" that campaigner Samburov organized in October, he thought they were part of the show. But then one of the masked men yelled, "Have you ordered up a fight? Here you go!" The men overturned tables, smashed dishes and beat, kicked and sprayed mace at the five dozen men and women who had gathered at the gay-friendly Freedays club, Samburov and the club's administration said.

Four club patrons were injured, including a young woman who got broken glass in her eye, police said. Although a police station was nearby, Samburov said, it took police officers half an hour to arrive. The attackers remain unidentified.

On the next day, an Orthodox priest said he regretted that his religious role had not allowed him to participate in the beating. "Until this scum gets off of Russian land, I fully share the views of those who are trying to purge our motherland of it," Rev. Sergiy Rybko was quoted as saying by the Orthodoxy and World online magazine. "We either become a tolerant Western state where everything is allowed — and lose our Christianity and moral foundations — or we will be a Christian people who live in our God-protected land in purity and godliness."

In other parts of Russia, gays feel even less secure. Bagaudin Abduljalilov moved to Moscow from Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia where he says some gays have been beaten and had their hands cut off, sometimes by their own relatives, for bringing shame on their families.

"You don't have any human rights down there," he said. "Anything can be done to you with impunity." Shortly before moving to Moscow, Abduljalilov left Islam to become a Protestant Christian, but was expelled from a seminary after telling the dean he was gay. He also has had trouble finding a job as a television journalist because of discrimination against people from Dagestan.

"I love Russia, but I want another Russia," said Abduljalilov, 30, who now works as a clerk. "It's a pity I can't spend my life on creative projects instead of banging my head against the wall and repeating, 'I'm normal, I'm normal.'"

Angry protests, clashes on Egypt anniversary

January 25, 2013

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptians delivered an angry backlash against President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood on Friday, marking the second anniversary of the start of the country's revolution with tens of thousands filling major squares and streets around the country to call for a new regime change.

Two years to the day that protesters first rose up against now-toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is entrenched in the new phase of its upheaval — the struggle between ruling Islamists and their opponents, played out on the backdrop of a worsening economy.

Rallies turned to clashes near Tahrir Square and outside the presidential palace in Cairo and in multiple cities around the country, with police firing tear gas and protesters throwing stones. At least four people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in the day's worst clashes, in the city of Suez, where protesters set ablaze a building that once housed the city's local government.

More than 370 were injured nationwide, the Health Ministry said, including five in Suez with gunshot wounds, raising the possibility of a higher death toll, the state news agency said. Friday's rallies appeared to have brought out at least 500,000 opposition supporters, a small proportion of Egypt's 85 million people, but large enough to suggest that opposition to Morsi and his Islamist allies is strong in a country fatigued by two years of political turmoil, surging crime and a free falling economy that is fueling popular anger. Protests — and clashes — took place in at least 12 of Egypt's 27 provinces, including several that are Islamist strongholds.

"After what happened to me, I will never leave until Morsi leaves," said protester Sara Mohammed after she was treated for tear gas inhalation during clashes outside the president's palace in Cairo's Heliopolis district. "What can possibly happen to us? Will we die? That's fine, because then I will be with God as a martyr. Many have died before us and even if we don't see change, future generations will."

The immediate goal of the opposition was to have a show of strength to push Morsi to amend the country's new constitution, which was pushed through by his Islamist allies and rushed through a national referendum last month.

But more broadly, protesters are trying to show the extent of public anger against the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization Morsi hails from, which they say is acting unilaterally and taking over the state rather than setting up a broad-based democracy.

Morsi is Egypt's first freely elected and civilian president, a significant feat given that all his four predecessors were of military background. But his six months in office have been marred by some of the worst crises since Mubarak's ouster and divisions that have left the nation scarred and in disarray. A giant wave of demonstrations erupted in November and December following a series of presidential decrees, since rescinded, that gave Morsi near absolute powers, placing him above any oversight, including by the judiciary.

The Brotherhood and its Islamist allies, including the ultraconservative Salafis, have justified their hold by pointing to their string of election victories the past year — though the opposition says they have gone far beyond what in many ways is a narrow mandate — Morsi won the presidency with less than 52 percent of the vote. Brotherhood officials have increasingly depicted the opposition as undemocratic, trying to use the streets to overturn an elected leadership.

Thursday night, Morsi gave a televised speech that showed the extent of the estrangement between the two sides. He denounced what he called a "counter-revolution" that is "being led by remnants of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime to obstruct everything in the country."

Unlike in 2012, when both sides made a show of marking Jan. 25 — though, granted, not together — the Brotherhood stayed off the streets for Friday's anniversary. The group said it was honoring the occasion with acts of public service, like treating the sick and planting trees.

On the horizon are key elections to choose a new lower house of parliament. The opposition is hoping it can leverage public anger into a substantial bloc in the legislature, but it is still trying to weld together an effective campaign coalition in the face of Islamists' strength at the ballot box. Last winter, the Brotherhood and Salafis won around 75 percent of the lower house's seats, though the body was later disbanded by court order.

Pending the election of a new lower house, Morsi gave legislative powers to parliament's Islamist-dominated upper house, a normally toothless chamber that only about seven percent of Egypt's 50 million eligible voters bothered to elect in balloting last year.

The violence Friday pointed to the increasing tempers among some in the opposition, particularly younger men who have been the most restive. Clashes erupted outside the presidential palace when youths tried to push through a police barricade outside the gates. In other cities, protesters tried to break into offices of the Brotherhood's political party or government and security buildings.

Beyond the violence, the protests re-created the tone of the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, including the same chants, this time directed against Morsi — "Erhal! Erhal!", Arabic for "leave, leave" and "the people want to topple the regime."

Some of the protesters are planning sit-in strikes in major squares and streets, insisting that they will not go home before Morsi leaves office. Standing near Tahrir Square, retiree Ahmed Afifi declared that he joined Friday's protests because he was struggling to feed his five children on less than $200 a month.

"I am retired and took another job just to make ends meet," he said, his eyes tearing. "I am close to begging. Under Mubarak life was hard but at least we had security ... The first people hit by high prices are the poor people right here."

Tens of thousands massed in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the 2011 uprising began, and outside Morsi's palace. Banners outside the palace proclaimed, "No to the corrupt Muslim Brotherhood government" and "Two years since the revolution, where is social justice?" Others demonstrated outside the state TV and radio building overlooking the Nile.

In two towns in the Nile Delta, Menouf and Shibeen el-Koum, protesters blocked railway lines, disrupting train services to and from Cairo. In Ismailia on the Suez Canal, protesters stormed the building housing the provincial government, looting some of its contents. There were also clashes outside Morsi's home in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiyah.

The demands of Friday's protesters vary. Some on the extremist fringe of Egypt's loosely knit opposition want Morsi to step down and the constitution adopted last month rescinded. Others are calling for the document to be amended and early presidential elections held.

"There must be a constitution for all Egyptians. A constitution that every one of us sees himself in it," opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said in a televised message posted on his party's website.

Egypt's bestselling novelist and democracy campaigner Alaa al-Aswany marched with ElBaradei on Friday to Tahrir. "It is impossible to impose a constitution on Egyptians, a constitution which was sponsored by the Supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the revolution today will bring this constitution down," he said.

Protester Ehab Menyawi said he felt no personal animosity against the Brotherhood but opposed its approach toward Morsi as Egypt's first freely elected leader. "The Brotherhood thinks that reform was achieved when their man came to power and that in itself is a guarantee for the end of corruption," he said as he marched from the upscale Cairo district of Mohandiseen to Tahrir with some 20,000 others.

Morsi has kept government policy-making and the choice of appointments almost entirely within the Brotherhood. Members and supporters of the group are being installed bit by bit throughout the state infrastructure — from governor posts, to chiefs of state TV and newspapers, down to preachers in state-run mosques.

Many were also angered by the constitution and the manner of its adoption. Islamists finalized the draft in a rushed, all-night meeting, throwing in amendments to fit their needs, then pushed it through a swift referendum in which only a third of voters participated. The result is a document that could bring a much stricter implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, than modern Egypt has ever seen.

Looming over the struggle between the opposition against the Islamists is an economy that has been in tatters since Mubarak's ouster. The vital tourism sector has slumped, investment shriveled, foreign currency reserves have tumbled, prices are on the rise and the local currency has been sliding.

More pain is likely in the coming months if the government implements unpopular new austerity measures to secure a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. "Egypt is in a bad place, It's been wholly consumed with issues of power, and governance has been left by the wayside. None of this had to be," said Michael W. Hanna, a senior fellow at the New York-based Century Foundation.

Associated Press reporters Aya Batrawy and Mariam Rizk contributed to this report.

Syrian forces escalate offensive in Homs

January 26, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's army unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on rebel-held areas in a central province Friday as part of a widening offensive against fighters seeking to oust President Bashar Assad. At least 140 people were killed in fighting nationwide, according to activist groups.

The United Nations said a record number of Syrians streamed into Jordan this month, doubling the population of the kingdom's already-cramped refugee camp to 65,000. Over 30,000 people arrived in Zaatari in January — 6,000 in the past two days alone, the U.N. said.

The newcomers are mostly families, women, children and elderly who fled from southern Syria, said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said the UNHCR was working with the Jordanian government to open a second major camp nearby by the end of this month.

Many of the new arrivals at Zaatari are from the southern town of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad first erupted nearly two years ago, the Britain-based Save the Children said Friday. Five buses, crammed with "frightened and exhausted people who fled with what little they could carry," pull up every hour at the camp, said Saba al-Mobasat, an aid worker with Save the Children.

The exodus reflected the latest spike in violence in Syria's civil war. The conflict began in March 2011 after a peaceful uprising against Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring wave of revolutions that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, turned violent.

Despite significant rebel advances on the battlefield, the opposition remains outgunned by government forces and has been unable to break a stalemate on the ground. In Lebanon, the leader of the Syria-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said Friday in a speech that those who dream about "dramatic changes" taking place in Syria should let go of their fantasies.

"Particularly those who were expecting the fall of Damascus," he told supporters, adding that military, political and international developments point to the futility of such dreams. Activists said the army recently brought in military reinforcements to the central province of Homs and launched a renewed offensive aimed at retaking patches of territory that have been held by rebels for months.

An amateur video posted online by activists showed rockets slamming into buildings in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the provincial capital, Homs. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.

Another video showed thick black and gray smoke rising from a building in the besieged city. "The city of Homs is burning ... day and night, the shelling of Homs doesn't stop," the narrator is heard saying.

Troops also battled rebels around Damascus in an effort to dislodge opposition fighters who have set up enclaves in surrounding towns and villages. The troops fired artillery shells Friday at several districts, including Zabadani and Daraya, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said regime warplanes carried out airstrikes on the suburb of Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus. Other video showed devastation in the Damascus neighborhood of Arbeen, following what activists said were two airstrikes there. A bleeding, wounded man can be seen being helped out of the rubble of the destroyed building. The videos appeared consistent with Associated Press reporting on the fighting.

Last month, the UNHCR said it needed $1 billion to aid Syrians in the Mideast, and that half of that money was required to help refugees in Jordan. The agency says 597,240 refugees have registered or are awaiting registration with the UNHCR in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Some countries have higher estimates, noting many Syrians have found accommodations without registering, relying on their own resources and savings.

In Turkey, U.S. officials announced that the United States was providing an additional $10 million in assistance to help supply flour to bakeries in the Aleppo region. Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the aid would help provide daily bread for about 210,000 people for the next five months.

She said that with the new assistance, the United States was providing a total of $220 million to help Syrians. "Too many people — an unconscionable number of Syrians — are not able to get daily bread, in addition to other supplies," Lindborg told journalists after a visit to a Syrian refugee camp near Turkey's border with Syria.

In a rare gesture, Syria's Interior Ministry called on those who fled the country during the civil war to return, including regime opponents. It said the government will help hundreds of thousands of citizens return whether they left "legally or illegally."

Syrian opposition figures abroad who want to take part in reconciliation talks will also be allowed back, according to a ministry statement carried late Thursday by the state SANA news agency. If they "have the desire to participate in the national dialogue, they would be allowed to enter Syria," it said.

The proposed talks are part of Assad's initiative to end the conflict that started as peaceful protests in March 2011 but turned into a civil war. Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international activist groups.

Opposition leaders repeatedly have rejected any talks that include Assad, insisting he must step down. The international community backs that demand, but Assad has clung to power, vowing to crush the armed opposition.

More than 60,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, according to the U.N. Activists also said two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights, killing eight. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military, the Observatory said.

The Syrian government had no comment on the attacks, which occurred Thursday night in the town of Quneitra, and nobody claimed responsibility for them. Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Syrian troops and government institutions have been the hallmark of Islamic militants fighting in Syria alongside rebels trying to topple Assad.

Quneitra is on the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights after capturing the strategic territory from Syria in the 1967 war.

Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

Child Labor in Yemen

by Abdulrhaman Shamlan
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Hundreds of thousands work to help their families survive financially

Sana'a--Mohammed Abdu Al-Jadol, a 13-year-old boy, gets up early in the morning not to go to school like his friends but to go to a small welding shop, where he works from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m .for only $4 a day.

Poverty and harsh economical conditions pushed Mohammed's father to force his children to work and drop out of school to help him provide for their big family. Mohammed says he only studied until the sixth grade.

Wearing a black helmet and polarized sunglasses to protect his eyes from welding light, he told The Media Line, "I don't like school anyway." But it's too early for him to know what's best for him.

"I pushed my children to work because I needed help to feed their younger brothers and sisters," Mohammed's father Abdu, a 48-year-old builder, told The Media Line. "When I brought my two children with me to Sana'a, I was planning to let them continue their studies but that proved to be impractical."

Consoling himself, he added:: "My children can be better than the educated people if they work hard and establish their own businesses in the future. They can even hire those who received certificates."

Like Mohammed, there are hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children aged 5-17 deprived from enjoying their childhood and continuing their education because of their families' harsh economic conditions and lack of awareness about the dangers of child labor.

A recent survey showed that there are over 1.3 million child laborers in Yemen. The study results announced last week were based on a survey conducted in 2010 by the Yemeni government with support from the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Social Development Fund and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

According to the survey, 17 percent of Yemen’s 7.7 million children in the 5-17 age group and 11 percent of those aged 5-11 are child laborers.

Although the study shows alarming figures, Yemeni activists and government officials working in child rights say that the real number of working children is far more than reported.

Ahmed Al-Qarashi, the chairman of the Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection, told The Media Line, "The recently-announced study is outdated. It's impractical to announce the results of a study three years after conducting it."

"In the past two years, Yemen has experienced political turmoil and security unrest. The turmoil has significantly increased the child laborers' number," he said.

Mona Ali Salem, the head of Child Labor Unit at Yemen's Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, told The Media Line, "Child labor is on the increase in Yemen. In 2000, a government survey showed that there were around 421,000 working children and the results of the 2010 survey indicated that there are more than 1.3 million child laborers."

While Jamal Al-Shami, the head of Democracy School, an organization advocating child rights in the country, estimated the current number of working children at three million, Al-Qarashi says he believes there are about five million child laborers in Yemen.

The working children are vulnerable to different kinds of abuse ranging from maltreatment to sexual abuse, child rights activists said.

Al-Qarashi said his organization has documented some cases in which a part of children's bodies was amputated for them to be suitable for certain professions, like begging.

“An ever heightening poverty, increasing instability and high population growth are the main reasons for the alarming widespread of child labor in Yemen," Salem said,  an understanding that both Al-Shami and Al-Qarashi shared.

Yemen is the poorest Arab state, with more than half of its population living on less than $2 a day.

Al-Shami told The Media Line, "A lack of awareness about the dangers of child labor and illiteracy among the parents are also factors for the widespread child labor."

Underscoring that, a field study on child labor in the port city of Aden showed about 84% of working children are from rural areas. It indicated that the child laborers' parents are either illiterate or received very basic education.

"Taking into consideration the economical hardships of Yemenis, we only oppose the work of children in hazardous professions or in jobs that interfere with their ability to attend regular school," Afrah Humad, the communication officer for the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood, a governmental body that answers to the prime minister, told The Media Line. "For example, we can't force a mother who says she does not have anything to feed her children not to let her sons work and help her in providing for the family but we can persuade her to make them work in jobs that don't affect their schooling."

Al-Shami said the government should pass laws making education obligatory for children and punishing irresponsible parents who push their children to work without a great necessity for it.

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