General ready for second space mission

Jiuquan (XNA)
Jun 11, 2013

Eight years after his first space mission, Nie Haisheng is now ready to take a second assignment.

China's manned space program spokeswoman Wu Ping announced Monday that the 48-year-old Nie is not only the commander of the Shenzhou-10 mission, but also responsible for manually docking the spacecraft with Tiangong-1 module in orbit, which is unprecedented for a Chinese astronaut in one mission.

In September 2005, copilot Nie spent his 41st birthday in lunar orbit during China's second manned space mission, Shenzhou-6. Now the astronaut, who holds the rank of Major General, is waiting for his next mission.

"This is my job and duty. It is an honor for me no matter I am a soldier or a general," Nie told Xinhua.

"As long as I am mission-capable, I will get myself prepared for space missions," he said.

Since Nie was recruited by China's manned space program 15 years ago, he has never stopped technical and physical training.

Medical exam results showed that Nie has had little bone loss in the past eight years and his cardio-pulmonary and cardio-vascular conditions are still above normal levels.

Nie has been selected as a participant of all previous manned space missions, as prime or backup crew. The imminent Shenzhou-10 mission makes him China's eldest astronaut to carry out a space mission.

When astronaut Liu Wang conducted the manual space docking in the Shenzhou-9 mission last year, Nie, as a backup crew member, provided Liu with technical support on the ground.

Talking about the space docking for this mission, Nie said there will be challenges but he has confidence since "we have experienced severe training."

Before the Shenzhou-10 mission, Nie has conducted more than 2,000 ground simulations and achieved 100 percent accuracy in manual docking.

"He is strict with himself," female astronaut Wang Yaping for Shenzhou-10 mission said. "With him, we have nothing to worry about."

Before the Shenzhou-10 mission, China's astronaut center gave them special psychological training to test their tacit understanding and cooperation.

The training was successful and proved that the crew of the Shenzhou-10 mission have very good tacit understanding, which allows each of them to know what the others will do without talking.

"Through a long time of training together, we can understand each other's intention with only a gesture or eye contact when we jointly conduct the manual docking simulation," Nie said.

According to the spokeswoman, the Shenzhou-10 astronauts will orbit the earth for 15 days, the longest time in the country's manned space program.

Nie spent 115 hours in the Shenzhou-6 mission. He will become the astronaut with the most hours in space in China upon the completion of the Shenzhou-10 mission.

"As long as I am qualified and needed, I hope that I can fly to China's space station in the future," Nie said.

Currently, astronaut Jing Haipeng holds the record of most hours in space in China, with his participation to the 68-hour Shenzhou-7 and 13-day Shenzhou-9 missions.

According to a three-phase manned space program, China will construct a permanent space station in low earth orbit around 2020.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/General_ready_for_second_space_mission_999.html.

China's first teacher in space

Jiuquan (XNA)
Jun 11, 2013

Thirty-three-year-old spacewoman Wang Yaping will make history -- she will be China's first teacher in space. Wang will teach Chinese primary and middle school students on Earth physics phenomena in a zero-gravity environment. She is preparing for the lecture and expressed full confidence about the upcoming lesson.

Meeting the media Monday, she said, "We are all students in facing the vast universe. We are looking forward to joining our young friends to learn and explore the mystical and beautiful universe."

Wang, born in January 1980, is from east China's Shandong Province, the hometown of China's most famous educationist Confucius (551-479 BC). She was a transport aircraft pilot in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force with experience of 1,600 hours of flying.

The world's first teacher in space was Christa McAuliffe, a 37-year-old middle school teacher from the United States, but the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated after 73 seconds into flight on Jan. 28, 1986. McAuliffe and other six crew members were killed.

Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe's backup in that mission who became an astronaut later, completed the teaching lesson in space in 2007, when she was sent into the International Space Station with Space Shuttle Endeavor. Via a video feed, she showed students how to exercise and drink water in space.

Except the space lecture, Wang will be responsible for monitoring the conditions of spacecraft, space experiments and operation of equipment, among others.

Wang was recruited to the People's Liberation Army in August 1997 and became a member of the Communist Party of China in May 2000. Currently, she is a major.

In May 2010, Wang became a member of the second batch of Chinese astronauts and was selected to the crew of the Shenzhou-10 space mission in April 2013. She will be China's second female astronaut being sent into space after Liu Yang who was aboard the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft.

Wang's space dream traced back to a decade ago when China's first astronaut Yang Liwei successfully fulfilled his space mission.

At the time, 23-year-old Wang had been enrolled in China's Air Force for two years and was an aircraft pilot. Watching the live TV broadcast of Yang's successful mission, a question came to Wang: since China had a male astronaut, when would the first female astronaut emerge?

Wang's lecture in orbit will be a pleasant surprise, said Zhang Xiaoguang, a male astronaut in the three-member crew of Shenzhou-10 spacecraft.

"She's eager to excel in whatever she does. Sometimes we'd like to give her a helping hand, but she just would not take a hand in help," said Nie Haisheng, commander astronaut in the mission.

"They take care of me as their own younger sister in life, but I wish to be their comrade-in-arms," said Wang. "I'd like to demonstrate that my generation is willing to embrace challenges."

Life is not a plain sailing for the young woman. She missed out on being selected as China's first female astronaut to be sent into space in the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft, launched in 2012.

However, Wang devoted herself to training soon after the selection. She was so tough at the time and always remains with a peaceful mind, said Huang Weifen, deputy chief designer of the astronaut system.

Wang, from a farmer's family in Shandong, has a sister who is seven years younger than her. The experience of doing farm work since an early age has made her strong, and the habit of long-distance running tempered her will.

With a dream of going to college, she insisted on receiving a high school education after graduation from middle school, despite her parents' wish that she could be admitted to a technical secondary school.

Graduating from high school, the young lady, so fascinated by the honor of being a pilot, stood out from fierce competition and managed to be enrolled by an air force college.

The experience of parachute jumping for the first time remains fresh in Wang's mind.

She said the first jump was done among excitement and curiosity, but fears preoccupied her when she started the second jump.

"We girls all cried while singing an inspiring song 'A Hero Never Dies' on our way back after the training," she said.

Wang, with nine years of experience as a transport aircraft pilot and 1,600 hours of flying, fulfilled the missions of conducting disaster relief for the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, dispelling cloud and reducing rain for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, and combating drought in Shandong.

Wang was recruited to China's second batch of astronauts after strict selection in May 2010.

The most arduous task for her was the training under a hypergravity environment. She was very anxious about the intense training which exceeded her body extremes at the very beginning.

By asking for advice from other veteran astronauts and intensifying training, Wang easily reached the criteria the next year.

Like many young Chinese people, Wang likes photography, music and basketball. Beyond many people's imagination, she is an excellent forward on the basketball court.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinas_first_teacher_in_space_999.html.

China to host international seminar on manned spaceflight

Jiuquan (XNA)
Jun 11, 2013

China and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) will co-host an international seminar on manned spaceflight in Beijing in September, spokeswoman for China's manned space program Wu Ping revealed Monday.

The seminar aims to boost international exchanges of latest developments and following steps in manned spaceflight and promote cooperation in the area, Wu told a press conference ahead of the launch of the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft.

She said since China's first launch of the manned space program, the country has been actively cooperating with other countries in areas such as aerospace medicine, space scientific experiments, training and selections of astronauts.

"We will be more open in carrying out extensive exchanges and cooperation with other countries during the construction and operation stages of the space lab and manned space station, and share our achievements with them, especially with developing nations," she said,while stressing China's commitment to making more contribution to global efforts to peacefully explore outer space.

China will launch the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft at 5:38 p.m. Beijing Time Tuesday, carrying three astronauts to dock with the module Tiangong-1, a year after its first successful manned docking last June. This marked a significant step for China to achieve its goal of building a space station by 2020.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China_to_host_international_seminar_on_manned_spaceflight_999.html.

Crackdown filling NKorean prisons with defectors

June 12, 2013

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's prison population has swelled in recent years with those caught fleeing the country under a crackdown on defections by young leader Kim Jong Un, according to defectors living in South Korea and researchers who study Pyongyang's notorious network of labor camps and detention centers.

Soon after he succeeded his father as North Korean leader, Kim is believed to have tightened security on the country's borders and pressured Pyongyang's neighbor and main ally, China, to repatriate anyone caught on its side of the frontier. In interviews with The Associated Press and accounts collected by human rights groups, North Koreans who have managed to leave the country say those who are caught are sent to brutal facilities where they now number in the thousands.

"They are tightening the noose," said Insung Kim, a researcher from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights who gets to interview most defectors soon after their arrival in South Korea. "This is to set an example to the North Korean people."

The plight of those caught fleeing the North was highlighted last month when nine young North Koreans were detained in Laos, a key stop along a clandestine escape route through Southeast Asia that had previously been thought safe. Instead, the Lao government turned them over to Pyongyang. While the high-profile nature of their repatriation might offer them some protection, human rights group fear for them.

"Forced repatriation from China is a pathway to pain, suffering, and violence," according to "Hidden Gulags," an exhaustive 2012 study on the prison camps by veteran human rights researcher and author David Hawk. "Arbitrary detention, torture and forced labor are inflicted upon many repatriated North Koreans."

In 2003, Park Seong-hyeok, then 7, and his parents were arrested trying to reach Mongolia from China and sent back to North Korea. He ended up at a prison in the northern city of Chongjin, where he was packed in with other kids, some of them homeless children rounded up off the streets.

They were blindfolded each day and forced to clear land for agriculture, he said. If they refused, they were beaten. "I couldn't even tell whether I was alive," Park said. "We were provided five pieces of potato a day, each about the size of a fingernail. "

After a few months, he managed to escape after his uncle bribed the guards. With the help of relatives, he made it to South Korea, where he now attends a special school for North Korean defectors. But he assumes his parents, who he has not seen in 10 years, remain imprisoned in the North.

In the 18 months since Kim took power, any hopes the 20-something ruler would usher in a new era of human rights reforms have been squelched. Defectors pose a particular threat to the Pyongyang regime, human rights groups say, because of the stories they tell the world about the plight of the North Korean people, and the information and money they send back in.

North Korea considers those who leave the country to be guilty of treason and subject to up to five years of manual labor. In addition, the penal code states if the nature of the defection is "serious" — taken by most researchers to mean if the defector gets the help of South Korean or American Christian missionary groups as opposed to trying to reach China for work purposes — the defector risks an additional charge of anti-state activities that could mean life in prison or even death.

North Koreans considered hostile to the government can spend the rest of their lives, along with their families, in one of at least five sprawling labor camps or colonies that encompass fields, factories, mines and housing blocks. Modeled on the Soviet Gulag system, the areas are chosen for their natural barriers, such as mountains and rivers, their remoteness, and their access to natural resources like wood and coal, according to human rights groups.

Defectors may end up in those camps, but are typically held first in other detention facilities close to the border, just as brutal but more resembling traditional penitentiaries, according to human rights groups. Still, at least one labor camp, Yodok, now has a special section for those repatriated from China that houses thousands of inmates, according to Kang Cheol-hwan, a former inmate there.

Kang, who recounted his experiences at the camp in the book "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," said his information came from contacts in the North. He currently heads a foreign-funded campaigning and advocacy group aimed at spreading democracy in North Korea.

Estimates of the current prison population range from 100,000 to 200,000, and activists say would-be defectors account for up to 5 percent of the total. Insung Kim of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights cites a "five-fold rise" in the number of detained defectors over the last 10 years.

"When people get caught, a car comes to their house in the middle of the night and takes them away," said a recent defector, a 17-year-old who asked his name not to be used out of fear relatives in the North might be targeted. "And they don't come back."

The boy, also a student at the defector school in South Korea, worked as a street lookout for his father, who organized the smuggling of money and people across the Chinese border. He fled with his family in 2012 after word got out about the nature of the family business.

"The monitoring has got more intense, there are more patrols," he said of security along the border. Figures provided by the South Korean government appear to support numerous accounts by smugglers, defectors and people living along the border that security has been tightened. In 2009, 2,929 defectors made it to South Korea. Last year, 1,509 did, the lowest number since 2005.

The government said there had been no sign of positive change in human rights inside North Korea since Kim Jong Un came to power. "From defector accounts, it appears prison camps are still being operated, and control on society, including the flow of information, is toughening," it said in a statement.

Despite ever more detailed and consistent testimony by defectors and sharper satellite images of the prison camps, there is still little the international community can do to press for change inside a country that has consistently shown no willingness to engage on human rights issues. The government refuses to allow outsiders access to detention facilities to check conditions, and denies the existence of political prison camps altogether.

The United States' main focus is on getting Pyongyang to resume international talks about giving up its nuclear weapons program. Most other governments believe increased contact with the regime and its people— not sanctions or threats — is the best way to improve conditions. The United Nations will in July begin a high-level commission of enquiry into human rights in North Korea, but few expect Pyongyang will allow U.N. researchers access to the country, let alone the camps.

"The U.S. government can't do much of anything," said Hawk, who conducted detailed interviews with defectors for his "Hidden Gulags" report. "If North Korea wants to maintain its self-imposed isolation, there is very little that the outside world can do except record the grotesqueness of the violations and condemn them."

The main source of information about the prison camps and the conditions inside is the nearly 25,000 defectors living in South Korea, the majority of whom arrived over the last five years. Researchers admit their picture is incomplete at best, and there is reason for some caution when assessing defector accounts.

Only a tiny percentage of the defectors were themselves imprisoned or worked as guards in the camps. On their arrival in the country, all spend three months at a center run by South Korea's intelligence agency, where they are pumped for information, in part to establish whether they might be spies. It often takes several years for defectors to reach South Korea, so their information is rarely current. Some ask for money to be interviewed.

Jung Gwang-il, who fled the North in 2004 after spending three years at Yodok for alleged espionage, said prisoners were forced to grow corn, peppers and barley, and those who didn't work hard enough had their rations cut. Hunger was so intense that prisoners ate undigested seeds from the feces of other inmates, he said.

In April, they would collect the corpses of those who died over the winter, because they were unable to bury them in the frozen earth. "To this day I still remember the smell," he said. "Death was a fact of life there."

Associated Press reporters Elizabeth Shim, Christina Kang and Sam Kim contributed to this report.

Activists: Syrian rebel attack kills 60 Shiites

June 12, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Activists say Syrian rebels have attacked a village in the country's east, killing dozens of Shiites there, mostly pro-government fighters.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 60 died in Hatla village in the province of Deir el-Zour on Tuesday. An activist based in the province says the rebel attack was in retaliation for an earlier attack by Shiites from Hatla that killed four rebels. The activist, Thaer al-Deiry, who identified himself only by his nickname for fear of government retaliation, spoke via Skype on Wednesday.

The Observatory and al-Deiry say many Shiite villagers from Hatla were forced to flee to nearby Jafra. The clashes came a week after Syrian troops backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group captured the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border.

Clashes in Istanbul extend into night in Taksim

June 12, 2013

ISTANBUL (AP) — Riot police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets in day-long clashes that lasted into the early hours Wednesday, battling protesters who have been occupying Istanbul's central Taksim Square and its adjacent Gezi Park in the country's most severe anti-government protests in decades.

The crisis has left Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan looking vulnerable for the first time in his decade in power and has threatened to tarnish the international image of Turkey, a Muslim majority country with a strongly secular tradition, a burgeoning economy and close ties with the United States.

Throughout the protests, Erdogan has maintained a defiant tone, insisting he would not be bowed by what he described as a vocal minority. On Tuesday, as police clashed with protesters in Taksim, he insisted again that the unrest was part of a conspiracy against his government.

The demonstrators, he said, "are being used by some financial institutions, the interest rate lobby and media groups to (harm) Turkey's economy and (scare away) investments." A peaceful demonstration against the park's redevelopment that began more than two weeks ago has grown into the biggest test of Erdogan's authority, sparked by outrage over a violent police crackdown on May 31 against a peaceful sit-in in the park.

The unrest has spread to 78 cities across the country, with protesters championing their objections to what they say is the prime minister's increasingly authoritarian style and his perceived attempts to impose a religious and conservative lifestyle on a country with secular laws — charges he rejects.

Four people have been killed, including a policeman, and about 5,000 have been treated for injuries or the effects of tear gas, according to the Turkish Human Rights Foundation. Thousands of police moved in early Tuesday, pushing past improvised barricades set up by the protesters who have swarmed through the massive square and park in the tens of thousands for the past 12 days.

Police fired repeated rounds of tear gas that rose in stinging plumes of acrid smoke from the square in running battles with groups of protesters hurling fireworks, bottles, rocks and firebombs in a cat-and-mouse game that lasted through the day and into the night.

More than 30,000 converged on the square again as dusk fell and were repelled by water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas after Istanbul's governor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu, said the police came under attack from "marginal groups."

By the early hours of Wednesday, cleanup crews had moved into Taksim Square, clearing the debris and dismantling the makeshift shelters the protesters had set up. Protesters set up barricades of metal railings and smashed vehicles at the edge of the square leading into Gezi Park, where hundreds returned despite repeated rounds of tear gas being fired into their midst. Fearing injury, many protesters scrawled their blood type on their forearms with marker pens.

The area reverberated with the echoes of exploding tear gas canisters into the night, while volunteers ferried the injured to waiting ambulances. Gezi Park, with its thousands of camped-out demonstrators young and old, has become the symbol of the protests. Both the governor and the police initially promised that only Taksim Square would be cleared, not the park.

But late into the night, the governor indicated a more muscular police sweep was imminent. "We will open the square when everything normalizes in the area, and our security forces completely control the area," Mutlu told A Haber news channel. "Our children who stay at Gezi Park are at risk, because we will clean the area of the marginal groups," he said, referring to what the government has said are troublemakers among the protesters.

"We won't allow our government to be seen as weak." In the capital, Ankara, police fired water cannon and tear gas to disperse several hundred protesters — some throwing stones — who gathered in sympathy with their Istanbul counterparts. In the early hours of Wednesday, police moved in to Kugulu Park where protesters had been camping. They made dozens of protesters pack up their tents, and arguments broke out with those unwilling to move.

Tuesday's clashes came a day after Taksim saw its smallest gathering since the demonstrations began. The government had said Erdogan would meet with some of those occupying the park on Wednesday to hear their views.

Erdogan, a devout Muslim, says he is committed to Turkey's secular laws and denies charges of an authoritarian manner. As he defended his tough stance, he gave critics little hope of a shift in his position.

"Were we supposed to kneel before them and say, 'Please remove your pieces of rags?'" he asked, referring to the dozens of banners and flags the protesters had festooned in the square. "They can call me harsh, but this Tayyip Erdogan won't change."

Confident of his position of power after winning the last elections in 2011 with 50 percent of the vote, Erdogan has insisted he will prevail. He made it clear that he has come to the end of his patience with the protesters, whom he accused of sullying Turkey's image abroad and being vandals and troublemakers.

"To those who ... are at Taksim and elsewhere taking part in the demonstrations with sincere feelings: I call on you to leave those places and to end these incidents and I send you my love. But for those who want to continue with the incidents I say: 'It's over.' As of now we have no tolerance for them."

"Not only will we end the actions, we will be at the necks of the provocateurs and terrorists, and no one will get away with it," he added.

Susan Fraser, Jamey Keaten and Ezgi Akin contributed from Ankara, Turkey.

Russian lawmakers pass anti-gay bill in 436-0 vote

June 11, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — A bill that stigmatizes gay people and bans giving children any information about homosexuality won overwhelming approval Tuesday in Russia's lower house of parliament.

Hours before the State Duma passed the Kremlin-backed law in a 436-0 vote with one abstention, more than two dozen protesters were attacked by hundreds of anti-gay activists and then detained by police.

The bill banning the "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" still needs to be passed by the appointed upper house and signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, but neither step is in doubt.

The measure is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values instead of Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church see as corrupting Russian youth and contributing to the protests against Putin's rule.

The only parliament member to abstain Tuesday was Ilya Ponomaryov, who has supported anti-Putin protesters despite belonging to a pro-Kremlin party. A widespread hostility to homosexuality is shared by much of Russia's 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.

The State Duma passed another bill on Tuesday that makes offending religious feelings a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. The legislation, which passed 308-2, was introduced last year after three members of the Pussy Riot punk group were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for an impromptu anti-Putin protest inside Moscow's main cathedral and given two-year sentences.

Both bills drew condemnation from Amnesty International. "They represent a sorry attempt by the government to bolster its popularity by pandering to the most reactionary elements of Russian society — at the expense of fundamental rights and the expression of individual identities," John Dalhuisen, the human rights group's Europe and Central Asia program director, said in a statement.

Before the anti-gay vote, rights activists attempted to hold a "kissing rally" outside the State Duma, located across the street from Red Square in central Moscow, but they were attacked by hundreds of Orthodox Christian activists and members of pro-Kremlin youth groups. The mostly burly young men with closely cropped hair pelted the activists with eggs, shouting obscenities and homophobic slurs at them.

Riot police moved in, detaining more than two dozen protesters, almost all of them gay rights activists. Some who were not detained were beaten by masked men on another central street. The legislation will impose hefty fines for providing information about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community to minors or holding gay pride rallies. Those breaking the law will be fined up to 5,000 rubles ($156) for an individual and up to 1 million rubles ($31,000) for a company, including media organizations.

Foreign citizens arrested under the new law can be deported or jailed for up to 15 days and then deported. European gay rights activists have joined Russians in trying to hold gay pride rallies in Moscow in recent years.

Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, but anti-gay sentiment remains high. Russia also is considering banning citizens of countries that allow same-sex marriage from adopting Russian children. Earlier Tuesday, dozens of anti-gay activists picketed the Duma. One of them held a poster that read: "Lawmakers, protect the people from perverts!" while others held Orthodox icons and chanted prayers.

Russian and foreign rights activists have decried the bill as violating basic rights. "Russia is trying very hard to make discrimination look respectable by calling it 'tradition,' but whatever term is used in the bill, it remains discrimination and a violation of the basic human rights of LGBT people," Graeme Reid, the LGBT rights program director at Human Rights Watch, said Tuesday in a statement.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia's oldest and most prominent rights activists, called the law "a step toward the Middle Ages." "In normal countries, no one persecutes representatives of sexual minorities," Alexeyeva told the Interfax news agency. "A modern person knows that these people are different from the rest just like a brunette is different from a blonde. They are not guilty of anything."

Russian officials have rejected the criticism. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defended the bill in February, saying that Russia doesn't have any international or European commitment to "allow the propaganda of homosexuality."

An executive with a Russian government-run television network said in a nationally televised talk show that gays should be prohibited from donating blood, sperm or organs for transplants, and after their deaths their hearts should be burned or buried.

The bill's 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 democratic reforms that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

AP writer Lynn Berry contributed to this report.

EU nations battle over air traffic control plans

June 11, 2013

PARIS (AP) — A massive battle is taking place in the skies over Europe — and airplane passengers across the continent are feeling its effects.

A plan to simplify the European Union's patchwork air traffic control system and open up more air traffic duties to private enterprise has sparked strikes and job actions by controllers that began Tuesday in France and were to spread Wednesday to 10 other European nations.

Nearly two decades after the 27-nation EU began eliminating checks along its land borders, its airspace remains a contentious issue. At the heart of the dispute is the idea of a single European sky — consolidating the continent's hodgepodge air traffic control systems under a sole authority, turning its many scattered air traffic zones into a few regional blocs, opening up bidding on services like weather forecasting and navigation, and easing what European officials say is a looming capacity crunch.

About 27,000 flights a day now cross European airspace, for a total of over 9 million a year and most are flying under air traffic management systems that were designed in the 1950s, the European Commission said.

Air traffic control workers, however, don't necessarily want to adapt to new proposals put forward by the European Commission on Tuesday. They say they fear threats to passenger safety and to their jobs and claim the EU is yielding to industry pressure to cut costs.

"This is a dispute between European technocrats who know nothing about air traffic control and highly trained specialists," said Olivier Joffrin, a French union leader in Paris. Air traffic controllers in France began a series of strikes on Tuesday, forcing the country's main airports to cut their flight timetables in half just as the busy tourist season was beginning. Some 1,800 flights were cancelled.

"When I came here they told me the flight was canceled. So I had to buy another ticket ... I couldn't wait for a flight next Saturday," stranded passenger Ahmed Adouani said at Orly airport in Paris, where he was trying to fly to Algiers.

Air traffic workers elsewhere in Europe were expected to join over the next 24 hours to varying degrees — from working strictly by the book, to picketing and distributing leaflets, according to the European Transport Workers Federation.

The strikes came the same day that EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas called for the speediest possible implementation of the centralization plan, saying the current system's inefficiencies are costing airlines and customers 5 billion euros ($6.6 billion) annually.

"The time has come for more decisive action. If we leave things as they are, we will be confronted with heavy congestion and chaos in our airspace," Kallas told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, as he introduced the latest plan.

Due to national borders, many flights over Europe take less-than-ideal routes that the EU has estimated add an average of 42 kilometers (26 miles) to each flight. With jet fuel making up an increasing portion of airlines' costs, and Europe's air traffic expected to increase by 50 percent over the next two decades, the European Commission said acting quickly was crucial.

Some aviation experts blamed Europe's zigzag air routes and overlapping controls for the chaos that followed the April 2010 eruption of a volcano in Iceland. More than 100,000 flights were canceled at the time, affecting an estimated 10 million passengers, as EU countries each imposed different restrictions about how airlines should handle the dangerous volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere.

National air traffic controllers are also often very highly paid, an issue that grates in recession-weary Europe. Despite Kallas' plea for speed, transport ministers in France and Germany on Tuesday asked for new delays to the EU airspace program that has already been under discussion for nearly 15 years.

Coupled with the strikes, a continued impasse seemed a likely outcome. French Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said France and Berlin were seeking a formal postponement of the airspace plan at the next European summit.

"The plan to create a single European sky is a worthy goal that France initiated, but it has to take into consideration national interests, notably our history of civil aviation," Cuvillier told RTL radio. "This regulatory harassment isn't corresponding to the human side of things, which takes time."

France in particular is extremely wary of any plans that could cut French jobs. Kallas countered that even the speeded-up airspace plan would only take full effect in 2020 — giving plenty of time for workers to adjust.

"What is the problem? It is a very highly skilled group of people who are doing their job in a very sophisticated area of responsibility," he said. Under the European plan, the continent would be divided into nine airspace blocs, instead of the 27 currently in place. The European Commission estimated that, fully implemented, safety would be improved tenfold, airspace capacity would be tripled and air traffic management costs would be reduced by 50 percent.

Francois Ballestero of the Brussels-based European Transport Workers Federation said the European Commission was being unnecessarily confrontational and provoking the controllers' anger. "We don't want it forced on the countries. Why do they have to force us? This is really a dogmatic approach to liberalization," he said.

Ballestero said air traffic control workers in 11 countries would take part in the job action, including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Portugal and Slovakia.

But participation was varying widely. In France, entire control towers walked out while in Italy, for example, union members agreed only to distribute information about their concerns. There was no job action in Spain, where air traffic controllers became extremely unpopular after a wildcat strike in 2010 and revelations that they were earning an average of 350,000 euros ($463,600) a year with overtime even during the country's severe economic crisis.

Government restrictions on overtime have cut those salaries nearly in half but the air traffic controllers are still reviled by the many Spaniards. Gesine Meissner, a German member of the European Parliament, said the issue has dragged on for years because it's a power struggle.

"It is not a technological problem. It is a problem of power," Meissner said. "The United States has the same amount of airspace. It is by far more efficient. It is less costly and better for the environment. It is so bad for Europe that we don't succeed."

__ Casert contributed from Brussels, Belgium.

China to send second woman into space: officials

June 10, 2013

The crew will be in orbit for 15 days as Beijing’s reputation for space exploration grows
AFP

Beijing: China is to send its second woman astronaut into orbit on its longest mission yet, space officials said on Monday, as the country works towards building a space station.

The Shenzhou-10 — the name means “Divine Vessel” — will be launched on a Long March rocket at 9.38am GMT on Tuesday, Wu Ping, spokeswoman for China’s space program, told a news conference.

The crew will be in orbit for 15 days, she said, and will include Wang Yaping, the second woman China has sent into space.

Beijing sees the multi-billion-dollar space program as a symbol of its rising global stature, growing technical expertise, and the ruling Communist Party’s success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.

Wang, wearing a blue jumpsuit with a red Chinese flag affixed to her chest, stood up and saluted journalists at a separate news conference, as she and her two male fellow astronauts sat on a stage enclosed in glass for quarantine purposes.

She will give lessons to schoolchildren from orbit, she said, smiling.

Wang, 33, is a major in the People’s Liberation Army and also a member of the Communist Party, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Flight commander Nie Haisheng, 48, a major-general in the army, who went into space on board Shenzhou-6, told reporters: “We will carry out a glorious mission.

“I would like to thank all my comrades in the army and assure them that we are determined to accomplish our task,” he added.

The third crew member is Zhang Xiaoguang, 47, a colonel.

The craft will dock with the Tiangong-1 — “Heavenly Palace” — space laboratory, and the crew will transfer into it and carry out medical and space technology experiments.

The mission will mark a crucial step towards China’s goal of building a full space station capable of housing astronauts for extended periods.

China first sent a human into space only in 2003 and its capabilities still lag behind the US and Russia, but it has a highly ambitious program including plans to land a man on the moon and build a station orbiting earth by 2020.

The previous Shenzhou mission, in June last year, included China’s first woman astronaut, Liu Yang, who became a national heroine.

The coming voyage “will be more complex than any mission China has attempted before”, Morris Jones, an independent space analyst based in Sydney, Australia, told AFP.

“Rendezvous and docking is a tricky operation for any space program regardless of how much experience you have,” he said.

China has conducted such operations several times before both with and without humans, he said, but this time the crew will experiment with carrying out the rendezvous at different angles of approach.

“I have no doubts that the mission will be successful,” he said. “The technology is well-tested and it’s proven itself many times.”

Officials have said China will land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time this year.

At the same time the United States, long the leader in the field, has scaled back some of its programs, such as retiring its space shuttle fleet.

Jones said the latest mission is another significant step in China achieving its space station goal.

“By demonstrating rendezvous and docking as well as the ability to live in space for a long period of time, they’re gradually showing that they have the technology and the procedures that they will need to construct that space station,” he said.

Source: Gulf News.
Link: http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/china-to-send-second-woman-into-space-officials-1.1195145.

Colorado secede? Counties weigh exit plan to form state of 'North Colorado'

By Mark Trumbull
June 8, 2013

Colorado secede? It sounds implausible, but the idea of counties withdrawing from one state to form a new one isn’t impossible. But some big hurdles – like the US Constitution – make it very difficult.

It’s an uphill climb that looks Rocky Mountain high, but a collection of independent-thinking counties may mount an effort to secede from the rest of Colorado and form their own new state.

The idea is rooted in the political rift that many Coloradans – especially rural ones – feel with a Denver-based state legislature that has taken a liberal turn in recent years.

A new state, if it formed, might be called North Colorado.

Would that mean that the rest of the current state would need to become South Colorado? How would the US flag look with 51 stars? Would this give similar ideas to politically restive sections of other states?

It may be too early to ask such questions. The road to forming a new state is a difficult one.

The move would require not just a secession vote showing the counties’ desire to depart. It would also require votes of approval by Colorado’s Legislature and by the US Congress, according to Article 4 of the US Constitution.

“No new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress,” the Constitution says.

According to the National Constitution Center, an organization based in Philadelphia, this process “has been used successfully to create five states: Vermont (from New York, in 1791); Kentucky (from Virginia, in 1792); Tennessee (from North Carolina, in 1796); Maine (from Massachusetts, in 1820); and West Virginia (from Virginia, in 1863).”

So it can be done. And in Colorado, the idea is on the table.

In a Thursday news article, the Coloradan website said the state’s Democrat-controlled Legislature has recently passed laws for stricter gun control, greater reliance on renewable energy in rural areas, and restraints on what was perceived as cruel treatment of livestock.

“Our vision and our morals are no longer represented by the state [Legislature] and the current [governor’s] administration, and we think it’s time that we do take seriously what our options are,” said Douglas Rademacher, a Weld County Commissioner. “This is just one of our options, but we will be moving forward with it.”

In addition to Weld County, other counties weighing the new-state idea are Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma, and Kit Carson.

A state of North Colorado containing those counties would not be the smallest US state, in land area, but it would have the smallest population.

Similar ideas have sprung up in other US states. But again, since 1863, secession to form a new state hasn’t actually happened.

Source: Christian Science Monitor.
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0608/Colorado-secede-Counties-weigh-exit-plan-to-form-state-of-North-Colorado.

Iran opens space monitoring center

Tehran (XNA)
Jun 11, 2013

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday inaugurated a space monitoring center in the country's central city of Arak, official IRNA news agency reported.

Ahmadinejad said the center will help make use of the space and manage the behavior of the satellites in orbit.

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi told reporters that the project aims to provide security for the country's space systems as well as monitor the moving objects in the space, according to IRNA.

By launching this center, Iran can exchange data with other countries, Vahidi added.

In January, reports said Iran had sent a live monkey onboard a homemade rocket named Pishgam (Pioneer) into space. Shortly after, officials said Iran has taken the first major step to send a man into space.

Iran, a founding member of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, launched its first domestically-made data- processing satellite, the Omid (Hope), in 2009.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_opens_space_monitoring_center_999.html.

Iranian hardliner drops out of election, narrows field for allies

By Jon Hemming
DUBAI | Mon Jun 10, 2013

(Reuters) - A conservative former parliament speaker dropped out of the June 14 Iranian presidential election on Monday in a move to consolidate the hardline vote and lessen the chances of an upset favoring a moderate candidate.

The 12-man Guardian Council, largely under the sway of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had already barred all but eight of the 686 people who registered as candidates, including pragmatic ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

That left four hardliners, separated only by small differences on issues such as Iran's nuclear stand-off with the West, facing a lone independent outsider and two relative moderates who may be able to generate popular support.

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a close adviser to Khamenei related to him by marriage, had been one of three so-called "Principlist" conservative candidates alongside Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati before announcing on Monday he was dropping out.

While he did not endorse any single candidate, Haddad-Adel urged voters to back his fellow Principlists, hinting that they were the ones also backed by Khamenei.

The Shi'ite clerical leader, the most powerful man in the Islamic Republic, has not publicly endorsed any candidate and insists he has only one vote in the election.

"With my withdrawal I ask the dear people to strictly observe the criteria of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution (Khamenei) when they vote for candidates," Haddad-Adel said in a statement carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

"I advise the dear people to take a correct decision so that either a Principlist wins in the first round, or if the election runs to a second round, the competition be between two Principlists," he said.

Friday's presidential vote will be Iran's first since 2009 when the excitement generated by large reformist election rallies turned to anger and protests when incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner.

Reformers, after two landslide presidential election wins in 1997 and 2001, said the 2009 results were rigged. Fearing a repeat, many of their supporters could stay home this time.

The only remaining moderates in the presidential race are cleric Hassan Rohani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator under reformist president Mohamed Khatami, and the lackluster Mohammad Reza Aref.

Despite the odds stacked against him, Rohani has still managed to rouse thousands of supporters in sometimes heated election rallies at which some of the old reformist slogans were chanted, such as calls for political prisoners to be freed. Several Rohani staffers and supporters were arrested afterwards.

But, with sanctions imposed on Iran over its disputed nuclear program compounding problems of economic mismanagement and corruption, the big issue overriding ideology for many voters is which candidate can best rescue the oil-based economy from a slow, grinding collapse that some analysts predict.

NO MORE CANDIDATES BARRED

Mehr news agency, citing an unnamed source, said on Sunday the Guardian Council would consider barring Rohani from the election for revealing what it said was classified information on Iran's nuclear activity during a televised debate, and for the slogans uttered by his supporters.

But the Guardian Council said on Monday that it was not considering barring any other candidate, denying the reports.

While Rohani only smiled when reporters asked him about the report that his candidacy may be up for review, he may have grasped that failure to curb his faithful could lead to him removal from the race. The report might also discourage a much-rumored withdrawal by Aref that could widen a vote for Rohani.

With nuclear issue and foreign affairs and national security all decided by Khamenei, there will be little substantial departure from current policy whoever becomes president, but the result could usher in a change of nuance and style.

During a televised presidential debate on Friday, candidates clashed on Iran's nuclear policy, with nuclear negotiator and potential election front-runner Saeed Jalili coming under fire from rivals over the lack of progress in talks with world powers.

Rohani said hardline stances taken since his time as nuclear negotiator had resulted in several rounds of U.N. sanctions.

"All of our problems stem from this - that we didn't make an utmost effort to prevent the (nuclear) dossier from going to the (U.N.) Security Council," said Rohani, who in 2003 negotiated a suspension in uranium enrichment with world powers, winning a relative respite in Western pressure on Tehran.

Enrichment activity resumed after the hardline populist Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.

"It is good to have centrifuges running, provided people's lives and livelihoods are also running," Rohani said, referring to Iran's campaign to develop advanced nuclear technology despite its worsening economic problems.

(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: Reuters.
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/us-iran-election-idUSBRE9590M520130610.

German WWII bomber raised from English Channel

June 10, 2013

LONDON (AP) — A British museum on Monday successfully recovered a German bomber that had been shot down over the English Channel during World War II.

The aircraft, nicknamed the Luftwaffe's "flying pencil" because of its narrow fuselage, came down off the coast of Kent county in southeastern England more than 70 years ago during the Battle of Britain.

The rusty and damaged plane was lifted from depths of the channel with cables and is believed to be the most intact example of the German Dornier Do 17 bomber that has ever been found. "It has been lifted and is now safely on the barge and in one piece," said RAF Museum spokesman Ajay Srivastava. The bomber will be towed into port Tuesday, he added.

A few fragments of the plane dropped off as it was being lifted, but officials said divers will retrieve them later. The museum had been trying to raise the relic for a few weeks, but the operation was delayed by strong winds and choppy waters.

In 2008, divers discovered the aircraft submerged in 50 feet (15 meters) of water. Experts say the bomber is remarkably undamaged despite the passage of time. Museum officials plan to conserve the relic and put it on exhibition next to the wreck of a British Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft that also was shot down during the battle.

Syrian war enters new phase but no end in sight

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Crispian Balmer
AMMAN/BEIRUT | Mon Jun 10, 2013

(Reuters) - Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are massing around Aleppo in preparation for an offensive to retake the city and build on battlefield gains that have swung the momentum of Syria's war to Assad and his Hezbollah allies.

Rebels reported signs of large numbers of Shi'ite Muslim fighters flowing in from Iraq to help Assad end the civil war that has killed at least 80,000 people and forced 1.6 million Syrians to flee abroad.

The move to a northern front comes as Syria's war is increasingly infecting its neighbors - Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel - and widening a regional sectarian faultline between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

For the first time since the start of the uprising in March 2011, an Israeli minister suggested on Monday that Assad might prevail in the war, thanks in large part to support from Shi'ite Iran and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

However, efforts to dislodge rebels in Aleppo will be a much tougher proposition than last week's capture of the town of Qusair, with military analysts predicting that the conflict will probably drag on for months or years as Assad's many foes are likely to be galvanized by recent rebel reversals.

Alarmed by Assad's swift advances and hoping to turn the tide, Washington might decide later this week on whether to start arming the rebels, a U.S. official said.

Assad's army is preparing to lift sieges on areas close to Aleppo before turning its sights on the country's second city, according to the semi-official Syrian al-Watan daily

"Any battle in Aleppo will be huge and most certainly prolonged," said Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center.

"You have large numbers of rebels in several areas of the city. There will have to be a lot of very close combat fighting that always takes a lot of time and leaves many casualties."

Rebel brigades poured into Aleppo last July and have more than half the great merchant city under their control. The front lines are largely stable and a growing number of radicalized, Islamist foreign fighters have joined rebel ranks.

PINCER MOVEMENT

Opposition activists and military sources said the army was airlifting troops to Aleppo airport and to the Kurdish area of Ifrin behind rebel lines, as well as reinforcing two rural Shi'ite Muslim enclaves, Zahra and Nubbul, north of the city.

"The regime appears to be making a pincer movement to try and regain the major cities across the north and east of Syria ahead of the Geneva conference," said Abu Taha, a northern rebel commander, referring to proposed international peace talks.

The United States and Russia hope to hold the conference in Switzerland next month, but Britain has warned that Assad's recent success might make him reluctant to offer the sort of compromises believed necessary to end the bloodshed.

After appearing to seize the initiative in 2012, the rebels have suffered a series of setbacks this year, with Assad's demoralized forces significantly bolstered by the arrival of well-trained fighters from the Shi'ite Muslim group, Hezbollah.

Rebels said these guerrillas had played a determining role in the emphatic victory last week in Qusair, which controls vital supply routes across Syria and into Lebanon.

A security source in Lebanon said Hezbollah would continue to assist Assad, but unlike the battle for Qusair, which lies close to its home turf, it might not dispatch its troops north to Aleppo, preferring instead to offer training.

Looking to relieve the growing pressure on Aleppo, rebels attacked on Monday two major military compounds in northern Syria -- on the outskirts of the city of Raqqa and the Minnig airport in the adjacent province of Aleppo.

"The rebels have raised pressure ... in the last two days to pre-empt any attack on Aleppo," said Abdelrazzaq Shlas, a member of the opposition administrative council for the province.

Activists said the army had retaliated by bombing Raqqa, killing at least 20 civilians and fighters.

"There is a big loss of lives, but the aim is to deflate the morale boost that the regime received after Qusair and not allow it to go to Geneva as a victor," Shlas said.

But in a worrying development for the rebels, Shlas said there were reports of militiamen loyal to Iraqi Shi'ite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr streaming into Syria to bolster Assad's forces.

Their arrival would underline the increasingly regionalized nature of the war following Hezbollah's entry into the fray.

JIHAD

Lister, who monitors Sunni Muslim Jihadist forums, said it seemed a growing number of Sunni men appeared ready to take up arms in Syria with the mainly Sunni rebel forces.

"If you believe what you read in the forums, then there are a lot of people heading to Syria to take up the fight," he said, adding that there were also a growing number of death notices for foreign fighters appearing on the web, including six in one day last week.

Israel, which shares a tense border with Syria, has regularly predicted the fall of Assad. But on Monday, Minister for Intelligence Yuval Steinitz offered a very different view.

Speaking to foreign reporters in Jerusalem, he said Assad's government "might not just survive but even regain territories".

Western nations, including the United States, have said Assad must stand down, but have thus far refused to arm the rebels, worried the weaponry might fall into the hands of radical elements, including groups tied to al Qaeda.

On a visit to Aleppo earlier this month, a Reuters correspondent saw a marked increase in the number of hardcore Islamist groups, who seemed to have gained ascendancy over the more moderate Free Syrian Army that led the initial combat.

Rebels in the city also seemed more focused on resolving day-to-day issues rather taking the fight to Assad.

"The biggest problem we have is thievery. There are thieves who pretend to be rebels and wear rebel clothes so they can steal from civilians," said Abu Ahmed Rahman, head of the Revolutionary Military Police in Aleppo, an organization set up to resolve disputes between rebels and civilians.

But there were also signs of anti-Assad forces digging in, preparing for an eventual army onslaught.

"This conflict has no discernable end point at the moment," said Lister.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Aleppo and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: Reuters.
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/us-syria-crisis-future-idUSBRE9590P520130610.

Turkey premier to meet with Istanbul protesters

June 10, 2013

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's prime minister will meet with a group of protesters occupying Istanbul's central Taksim Square this week, the deputy prime minister said Monday, as the government sought a way out of the impasse that has led to hundreds of protests in dozens of cities.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said, however, the government would no longer tolerate "illegal acts," and implied that the occupation of Taksim and its accompanying Gezi Park would be over by the weekend.

"Illegal acts in Turkey from now won't be allowed and whatever needs to be done according to the law will be done," he said after a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "All necessary actions against illegal acts will have been completed, and we will see this all together, by the weekend."

The protests appeared on the wane, with the smallest number of demonstrators in the past 11 days gathering in Taksim on Monday night. The protesters occupying Gezi Park remain, however. Smaller protests occurred in Ankara too, with about 5,000 people demonstrating. Police there have used water cannon and tear gas to break up demonstrations almost every night.

Three people have died and more than 5,000 have been treated for injuries or the effects of gas during the protests. The government says 600 police officers have also been injured. Erdogan will meet Gezi Park protesters Wednesday, following a request by some of the protesters, Arinc said, but not at the square. With no clear leadership organizing the Gezi occupation, it was unclear who the prime minister would be meeting.

The unrest was sparked by a violent police crackdown on a peaceful sit-in by protesters objecting to a project replacing the park with a replica Ottoman-era barracks. The crackdown, in which protesters were confronted with tear gas and water cannon as they slept, galvanized tens of thousands of Turks. The demonstrations quickly turned into a denunciation of what many see as Erdogan's increasingly autocratic ways and attempts to impose Muslim values on a country with secular laws — charges the prime minister vehemently rejects.

A law restricting the sale of alcohol and banning its advertising — one of the things protesters had pointed to as evidence of decreasing social tolerance — was signed into law by President Abdullah Gul on Monday.

Associated Press writer Elena Becatoros in Istanbul contributed to this report.

Organizers: Med Games 'unaffected' by protests

June 10, 2013

MERSIN, Turkey (AP) — This month's Mediterranean Games in Turkey will be "unaffected" by the anti-government protests sweeping the country, organizers said Monday.

The Olympic-style event is scheduled for June 20-30 in the Mediterranean coastal city of Mersin, with thousands of athletes from two dozen countries expected to take part. The protests, which have led to three deaths, entered their 11th day on Monday. They are the first serious challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power for 10 years.

In a statement, Mersin organizers and the Turkish Olympic Committee said the games are "unaffected by the largely peaceful protests that have taken place in the Adana-Mersin area." "An exhaustive review of the current situation with leading experts found that there is no elevated risk to the event participants," it said.

"We have worked hand-in-hand with all the necessary authorities and drawn on international best practice to create rigorous safety and security models to deal with all eventualities," the statement added.

The protests were sparked May 31 by a violent police crackdown on a sit-in at a park on Taksim to prevent a redevelopment project that would replace the green space with a replica Ottoman Barracks. They have since spread to 78 cities across the country.

Protesters have been venting their anger at what they say are Erdogan's growing authoritarian ways and attempts to impose religious and conservative views on their lifestyles. Erdogan, a devout Muslim, says he is committed to Turkey's secular laws and rejects charges of autocracy.

The unrest comes as Turkey prepares to host football's Under-20 World Cup, which begins June 21, and as Istanbul enters the final months of the bidding to host the 2020 Olympics. Istanbul is competing with Madrid and Tokyo for the Olympics. The IOC will select the host city in a secret ballot on Sept. 7 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Turkish officials insist the bid should not be affected by the protests. Youth and Sports Minister Suat Kilic said on Twitter on Monday that hosting the Olympics will bring "great value" to the country and region.

"There are many people within the protesters who want (the bid) to be affected negatively," Kilic said in an interview Sunday with Kanalturk television. "I am very saddened by this fact and I condemn those who do."

"Istanbul 2020 is not only the aim of (Erdogan's) party. This has to be the project of (all Turkish political parties)." Kilic noted that IOC President Jacques Rogge said last week that "there is nothing so far" to hurt Istanbul's Olympic hopes.

Al-Qaida leader scraps Syria, Iraq branch merger

June 10, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Al-Qaida's leader has tried to end squabbling between the terror network's Syrian and Iraqi branches, ordering the two groups to remain separate after an attempted merger prompted a leadership dispute between them.

This came as Syrian rebels battled Monday in a renewed push to capture a government air base in the north, while the regime was said to be preparing for a major offensive to retake opposition-held areas in the province of Aleppo.

The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV reported that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged leaders of the Iraqi al-Qaida branch and the Nusra Front in Syria to end their disagreements and "stop any verbal or actual attacks against one another."

The TV said al-Zawahri's call came in a letter sent to the station and posted on its website late Sunday. The letter's authenticity could not be independently verified. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said it also acquired a copy of the letter but did not provide other details.

Al-Zawahri's call could also reflect a bid to carve out a more significant role for al-Qaida in the Syria civil war. Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, is the most powerful rebel force fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

In April, al-Qaida in Iraq said it had joined forces with the Nusra Front, forming a new alliance called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Hours after the announcement, Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani appeared to distance himself from the merger, saying he was not consulted. Instead, he pledged allegiance to al-Zawahiri.

In Sunday's letter, al-Zawahri chastises the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saying he announced the merger without consulting al-Qaida's leadership. He also admonished al-Golani for publicly distancing himself from the merger.

"The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will be abolished," al-Zawahri said, adding that Nusra Front will remain an independent branch of al-Qaida. Al-Baghdadi and al-Golani are to stay on as leaders of their respective branches for another year, after which the al-Qaida leadership will decide whether they will keep their posts or be replaced.

Assad's government in April seized upon the reported merger to back its assertion that it isn't facing a true popular uprising but a foreign-backed terrorist plot. The merger had also caused friction among rebels on the battlefield who feared the announcement would further discourage Western powers discussing funneling weapons, training and aid toward rebel groups and army defectors.

On Monday, rebel forces advanced inside the sprawling air base of Mannagh near the border with Turkey, activists said. The Observatory said rebels captured a building inside the base, which has been under siege for months. The opposition's Aleppo Media Center said rebels destroyed several army vehicles and captured the observation tower.

Activists also reported clashes around the predominantly Shiite villages of Nubul and Zahra, besieged by rebels for a year. Aleppo-based activist Mohammed al-Khatib said military reinforcements, including Hezbollah fighters, have been sent to parts of Aleppo, including the two Shiite villages and north-western parts of the city. He said the government was using helicopters to reinforce its positions and resupply in those areas.

The Shiite military group has openly joined the fight in Syria and was key in assisting regime forces in recapturing the strategic town of Qusair last week. Syrian state-run media and the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV have said the regime is preparing an offensive reportedly named Operation Northern Storm to recapture Aleppo.

Moved by the Assad regime's rapid military advance, the Obama administration began discussing Monday whether to approve lethal aid for the beleaguered rebels, and U.S. officials said a decision could come later this week.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the intense preparation for a siege on Aleppo "reaffirms the urgent need for the international community to focus its efforts on doing all we can do to support the opposition as it works to change the balance on the ground."

Opposition leaders have warned Washington that their rebellion could face devastating and irreversible losses without greater support. Also Monday, a roadside bomb lightly damaged a van that was heading from Lebanon to Syria, Lebanese security officials said. The van was hit by the bomb, detonated remotely, in the eastern Bekaa valley but kept driving toward the border, crossing into Syria, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. There appeared to be no casualties in the bombing.

Syria's conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Lebanon is bitterly divided over the war next door, with gunmen from rival religious sects fighting on opposite sides of the conflict. Lebanese Sunnis mostly back the opposition while many Shiites in Lebanon support Assad. The Syrian regime is dominated by members of the president's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah forces have taken an increasingly prominent role in Syria's fighting and were key in helping Assad's troops capture the strategic town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon, following weeks of battles with rebels.

On Monday, Syria's Defense Minister Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij said Qusair's capture last week was a "main point toward restoring security and stability to every inch of our nation." In apparent retaliation by the rebel side, scores of rockets have been fired from Syria into Hezbollah strongholds in northeastern Lebanon.

Senior Hezbollah official Sheik Nabil Kaouk said it will not change it position on Syria, regardless of "how much local, regional and international pressure increases" on the Lebanese group.

Associated Press writer Bradley Klapper contributed to this report from Washington.

Bosnia anti-govt protests stretch into second week

June 10, 2013

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Anti-government protests in Bosnia have stretched into a second week, with hundreds of people marching through Sarajevo streets to parliament.

It all began last Wednesday when angry young parents besieged parliament, demanding lawmakers pass a law on national ID numbers, which citizens need to obtain passports and other documents. The old law lapsed in February, leaving all babies born in the country since then without personal documents.

More than 1,500 lawmakers and others were trapped inside parliament until police freed them Thursday after a 12-hour standoff with protesters, including mothers pushing baby carriages. On Monday, Bosnians took to the streets again in what have become daily protests, demanding politicians start doing their jobs and stop ethnic bickering. Protesters marched past official buildings, including the presidency, before ending at parliament.

Breaking: NSA spy grid whistleblower Ed Snowden steps forward in mind-blowing video interview with Glenn Greenwald

Sunday, June 09, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) The NSA spy scandal has just exploded beyond the worst fears of the highly-secretive U.S. government. The whistleblower behind the leaked PRISM slides has just stepped forward, offering a mind-blowing interview to investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke this story in The Guardian. (Wow, actual journalism is making a comeback! This is legendary stuff!)

We have copied the video from The Guardian and placed it on TV.naturalnews.com to make sure it's safely archived on a network that can't be censored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, YouTube, etc. -- all the top companies who conspired with the NSA to turn over private user data (emails, phone calls, videos, etc.) to government spooks...

Source: NaturalNews.
Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/040694_Edward_Snowden_Glenn_Greenwald_interview.html.

China launches its longest-ever manned space mission

Beijing (AFP)
June 11, 2013

China began its longest manned space mission yet Tuesday with the launch of the Shenzhou-10, state television showed, as the country steps up an ambitious exploration program symbolizing its growing power.

The rocket ascended above the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert exactly on time at 0938 GMT, trailing a vast column of flame.

The three astronauts on board -- who include Wang Yaping, 33, China's second woman in space -- saluted cameras mounted inside their capsule.

A few minutes after launch the boosters detached from the rockets, and a little later the solar panels of the Shenzhou-10 -- the name means "Divine Vessel" -- were deployed, to applause from mission control.

"The vessel is already in orbit," said Zhang Youxia, the manned space program's chief commander. "I now announce the launch was a great success."

The crew are due to spend 15 days in orbit, in a mission that is a crucial step towards China's goal of building a full space station capable of housing astronauts for extended periods.

President Xi Jinping, fresh from a summit with US President Barack Obama, was on hand to watch the departure.

Beijing sees the multi-billion-dollar space program as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise, as well as the ruling Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.

The project is heavily promoted to the domestic audience, and state broadcaster CCTV began continuous coverage several hours before the launch.

Xi told the trio he had come to see them off on behalf of the Communist Party, the government, the military and "all the nationalities and people of the entire nation".

"You make all the Chinese people feel proud. Your mission is both glorious and sacred," he added.

Mission commander Nie Haisheng responded: "We will certainly obey orders, comply with commands, be steady and calm, work with utmost care and perfectly complete the Shenzhou-10 mission."

State-run newspapers gave the mission blanket coverage, with stories and pictures of the astronauts on almost every front page.

Astronaut Wang will teach lessons to schoolchildren via video link from space, officials said.

"We are all students in facing the vast universe. We are looking forward to joining our young friends to learn and explore the mystical and beautiful universe," she told a press conference on Monday.

In a profile of Wang, the official Xinhua news agency said she trained as a transport pilot in the air force and has 1,600 hours of flying experience, including dispelling clouds for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

She is a major in the military and a member of the Communist Party.

"The experience of doing farm work since an early age has made her strong, and the habit of long-distance running tempered her will," Xinhua said.

It quoted her as saying that during parachute exercises in the air force: "We girls all cried while singing an inspiring song 'A Hero Never Dies' on our way back after the training."

The third crew member, senior colonel Zhang Xiaoguang, has previously tried for selection for space missions but was not picked, Xinhua said.

"If success is part of our life, so are setbacks. If those who had never failed are winners, so are those who always keep on trying," it quoted him as saying.

The Shenzhou-10 will dock with the Tiangong-1 -- "Heavenly Palace" -- space laboratory, and the crew will transfer into it and carry out medical and space technology experiments.

China first sent a human into space only in 2003 and its capabilities still lag behind the US and Russia. But its program is highly ambitious and includes plans to land a man on the moon and build a station orbiting Earth by 2020.

At the same time the US, long the leader in the field, has scaled back some of its projects, such as retiring its space shuttle fleet.

Independent space analyst Morris Jones, who is based in Sydney, Australia, told AFP it was "a very smooth and clean launch".

"My expectation is that they will continue to grow their program at a steady pace, so it will get larger in the next decade and they will probably mount a serious challenge to the Americans and everyone else in space."

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/China_launches_longest-ever_manned_space_mission_999.html.