Egypt arrests violators of dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast

September 16, 2009
Cam McGrath

Inter Press Service

Hundreds of Egyptians are reported to have been arrested for eating, drinking or smoking in public during daylight hours as part of a police campaign against people caught breaking the Ramadan fast. “Nobody has the right to arrest someone for eating or drinking in Ramadan,” says rights activist Gamal Eid, head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). “When we hear this we wonder, is this Egypt or Afghanistan? It’s Taliban mentality.”

Local newspapers reported that over 150 Egyptians had been arrested for breaking the Muslim fast in the southern governorate of Aswan on August 30, but the motive behind the round-up could not be corroborated.

Emergency laws in force since 1981 allow police to detain individuals without charge, making it difficult to know for certain the reason for arrest.

A local police chief insisted that the press had “misinterpreted” a routine security crackdown on beggars, homeless people and drug dealers. However, reports of arrests in other governorates, and statements by security officials appear to indicate a coordinated government campaign to enforce Islam’s prohibition of eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset during the holy month of Ramadan, which began August 22.

“I’ve spoken to two who were arrested,” says Eid. “It happened [for publicly breaking the fast], and they were very afraid and angry about it.”

Arrests have been reported in many different areas. Seven youths in the Delta governorate of Dakahlia were taken into custody last week for smoking on the street during the fasting hours, and released after paying a fine of $90, Al-Arabiya news channel reported. It added that arrests were also made in Hurghada, a tourist resort on the Red Sea, where government officials ordered all cafes and restaurants shut during the fasting hours.

In an interview with Al-Sho­rouk independent newspaper published September 10, Interior Ministry spokesman Abdel-Karim Hamdy said a police campaign had been launched in various governorates to arrest people breaking the fast in public during Ramadan.

“They [the violators] have to learn modesty,” he said. “In the past, Egyptian society was very pious, and I hope this piety will be restored … I ask [opponents] to read the law well before criticizing the Interior Ministry.”

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Sep/16/Egypt-arrests-violators-of-dawn-to-dusk-Ramadan-fast.ashx.

Iraqi, Syrian officials meet in Turkey to discuss tensions

September 16, 2009

Officials from Iraq and Syria met Tuesday to discuss tensions stemming from Iraqi accusations that militants based in Syria are responsible for bomb attacks in Baghdad, Turkish and Iraqi officials said. The meeting in Ankara focused “on intelligence issues on a technical level,” a Turkish government official told AFP on the condition of anonymity, adding that the talks were meant to prepare the ground for higher-level discussions between the two sides planned for Thursday in Istanbul.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem will represent their respective countries during the Thursday meeting. Zebari was already scheduled to be in Istanbul on Thursday for separate talks between Iraq and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who earlier this month traveled to Baghdad and Damascus as Ankara attempted to mediate in the dispute, will also attend the talks, sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi delegation would present evidence backing allegations that terrorist groups based in Syria orchestrated deadly bombings in Baghdad.

“The evidence includes confessions, communications, financing and logistic support by people living in Syria and who have relations with Al-Qaeda,” he said in Baghdad on Monday.

Dabbagh was referring to the August 19 truck bombings, dubbed “Bloody Wednesday,” that killed 95 people and wounded 600 at the Finance and Foreign ministries in the Iraqi capital.

Turkey has been acting as a peace broker in the crisis sparked by Iraq and Syria’s tit-for-tat recall of envoys last month, six days after the attacks in Baghdad.

The row was triggered by Baghdad alleging that Syria was harboring two Baathist leaders who plotted the Finance Ministry bombing.

The flare-up threw into disarray extensive efforts in the past year to boost ties between the countries, which had been weak under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his Baathist rule but had recently been improving.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has alleged that 90 percent of foreign terrorists who infiltrate Iraq do so via Syria.

Maliki has formally asked the United Nations Security Council to launch an inquiry into the bombs, which triggered a diplomatic feud between Iraq and Syria.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has dismissed allegations that his country shelters militants suspected of involvement in the August 19 attacks as “immoral” and politically motivated.

Assad is also to travel to Ankara on Wednesday.

Turkey, which in recent years has deepened ties with neighbors Iraq and Syria, is worried the feud could destabilize the region, in particular as Ankara seeks a solution to its decades-long conflict with rebels in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

Turkey needs cooperation from Iraq and Syria to fight Kurdistan Workers’ Party guerrillas who are based along their borders.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Sep/16/Iraqi-Syrian-officials-meet-in-Turkey-to-discuss-tensions.ashx.

Boats hire guards to ward off pirates

Spanish tuna boats will be able to hire armed guards to ward off Somali pirates trying to seize them in the Indian Ocean, the Madrid government has said.

In April, a Basque tuna boat was hijacked off Somalia and held for six days until a reported £720,000 ransom was paid. Another Spanish trawler escaped a hijacking attempt off the Seychelles this month.

Universal reveals details of new Harry Potter park

By Travis Reed, Associated Press Writer

MIAMI — It sounds like a new book in the Harry Potter series, but "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" will be a high-tech ride and the marquee attraction at the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter," a new theme park area opening in spring 2010 at Universal Orlando Resort.

The "Forbidden Journey" ride was named by author J.K. Rowling and described Tuesday by Universal officials in a Web cast revealing details of what the Potter park will look like.

The ride will takes guests through scenes and rooms from the blockbuster movies inside a richly detailed remake of Hogwarts Castle made to look 700 feet tall. Hogwarts is where Harry attends a boarding school for witches and wizards.

Guests will enter the "Wizarding World" through a station archway named for Hogsmeade, the magical village near Hogwarts. A plume of steam and a train whistle will sound the arrival of the Hogwarts Express. The goal is to make the experience immersive, so nothing outside is visible after guests pass the Hogsmeade station archway.

Rowling, known for carefully guarding the Potter franchise, hasn't yet journeyed to Orlando, but the design team has made several trips to London to consult with her.

Other rides include the "Dragon Challenge," a twin high-speed roller coaster themed after the "Triwizard Tournament" and the family roller coaster "Flight of the Hippogriff," named for a creature with an eagle's head and a horse's body.

"Along those journeys they're going to be swept up into the greatest parts of the movies and the books. We've pushed every technology available to us to give guests a theme park experience unlike any they've had before," said Paul Daurio, producer of the Potter area.

The Harry Potter park will be part of Universal's Islands of Adventure.

Art and set directors from the films, including Oscar-winning production designer Stuart Craig and art director Alan Gilmore, were hired to translate the movies into the park.

Every shop and eatery is Potter-themed. Honeydukes sells chocolate frogs and "Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans," Ollivander's peddles magic wands, Zonko's joke shop has Sneakoscopes, and the British restaurant Three Broomsticks pours Butterbeer.

At The Owl Post, guests can send letters with a certified Hogsmeade postmark. Magical instruments and equipment are available at Dervish and Banges, including everything needed to play Quidditch — a game like soccer played on flying broomsticks.

"The interesting thing about Harry Potter is that the stories are so rich in themselves, so deep," said Universal Creative President Mark Woodbury. "There wasn't so much difficulty of creating the look, it was, 'How do you execute at a level of authenticity that is unquestionable?'"

There could even be new footage of Potter stars shot on actual sets from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." A Universal spokesman declined comment on the issue, but the company was explicitly granted those privileges in its 2007 licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer Products Inc., according to the contract filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Potter area will be Universal's third big-ticket addition in three years. SEC filings from the company estimate the combined cost of The Simpsons Ride, Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit and Wizarding World at between $275 million and $310 million.

Simultaneously, the resort owned jointly by NBC Universal and private equity company The Blackstone Group finds itself on shaky financial footing. If it cannot find refinancing, $1 billion in long-term debt may be maturing as soon as April, the company said in SEC filings.

The Potter park is sure to prove popular not just with American fans but also with visitors from the United Kingdom, Potter's home and the largest source of international tourism to Orlando, with about 1 million arrivals a year.

"It couldn't have come at a better time," said Danielle Saba Courtenay, spokeswoman for the Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau. "There is such an affinity for the characters, particularly in the United Kingdom, and we do expect that the pent-up demand and having such a strong name will drive traffic to the area.

"It's such a huge worldwide brand, and the only place in the world you're going to be able to experience it is in Orlando," she said.

Hamas: Abbas not authorized to negotiate alone

Hamas says that the interim chief of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is not authorized to hold dialogue with the Zionist entity until internal unity is achieved.

Izzat al-Rishiq, a member of the Political Bureau of Hamas, told the Quds Net News Agency on September 13 that Hamas does not authorize Abbas to conduct any further negotiations with the occupying regime of Israel before there is unity among the Palestinian political factions.

Peace talks without unity are worthless and would not lead to any positive outcome, he stated.

Al-Rishiq made it very clear that if Abbas were to hold any new negotiations, the outcome of the talks would not be binding on the Palestinians.

And there are concerns that the current internal divisions could lead to more concessions, especially regarding the 'right of return' of the refugees, the city of Jerusalem (al-Quds), and historic Palestine, he added.

Al-Rishiq also said that the fundamentalist government of Israel, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, has no impetus to push ahead with meaningful peace talks.

Israel has refused to negotiate with the democratically elected Hamas administration that controls the beleaguered Gaza Strip and only talks with the Abbas administration, which currently has no democratic mandate but which nominally controls the occupied West Bank.

Mahmoud Abbas' term as president came to an end in February, yet he has remained in control without a mandate and is the preferred negotiating partner of Tel Aviv and its allies.

Boy finds rare pink grasshopper

By Lori Bongiorno

Daniel Tate, an English schoolboy, was looking for grasshoppers at a wildlife event he attended with his great-grandfather last week. But the 11-year old boy and his companions at Seaton Marshes Local Nature Reserve had no idea what a huge surprise they were in for.

Tate saw something pink that he thought was a flower. But when it jumped he knew it was a grasshopper.

It turns out that it was an adult female common green grasshopper that just happened to be born pink.

Experts aren't sure what caused this mutation. Grasshoppers of different colors, including pink, are unusual but not unheard of according to experts. What makes this particular grasshopper so rare is the intensity of the pink, according to Fraser Rush, a nature reserves officer in Britain.

Grasshoppers aren't the only insects that can be pink.

Japan's PM, Cabinet resign

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO – Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet resigned Wednesday to pave the way for parliament to elect Yukio Hatoyama as the country's next leader.

The top officials resigned after holding their final Cabinet meeting early Wednesday morning, the prime minister's office said.

The resignations were a formality so that parliament's lower house, now controlled by Hatoyama's party following their landslide election victory last month, can vote him in as Japan's prime minister. Hatoyama's victory ends more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by Aso's Liberal Democratic Party.

Hatoyama, head of the left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan, has promised to shake up Japan's political system, cutting government waste, reinvigorating the world's second-largest economy and focusing policies on consumers, not big business.

Parliament was to convene in a special session later in the day to formally select the new prime minister. Hatoyama's party controls 308 of the 480 seats in the body's lower chamber, which selects the prime minister, virtually assuring him of the post.

"I am excited by the prospect of changing history," Hatoyama said early Wednesday. "I also feel the weight of the responsibility of making history."

He will have a tough job ahead.

His first task would be to name a Cabinet. Media reports said he had already chosen Katsuya Okada as his foreign minister and Hirohisa Fujii as his finance minister. Though Okada has never held a Cabinet post, Fujii was finance minister under a coalition government in 1993-94, the only time in its 55-year history that the Liberal Democrats had previously been ousted from power.

Hatoyama has a limited pool of seasoned politicians to choose from. His party, created a decade ago, has never held power, and nearly half of the Democrats' members of the lower house will be serving in their first terms in parliament.

Though largely untested in power, Hatoyama and his party face huge tasks that they must deal with quickly.

Japan's economy is in its worst slump since World War II, unemployment is at a record high and wages are falling. The rapid aging of its population also threatens to be a drag on public coffers as the number of taxpayers decreases and pension responsibilities swell.

"The economy is in very difficult shape, so we must work hard to improve it," said Mieko Tanaka, one of the Democratic Party's new lawmakers.

Hatoyama will also be tested quickly on the diplomatic front. He has said he wants to attend a meeting in the United Nations in New York next week and possibly meet with President Barack Obama.

Hatoyama has said he wants to build a foreign policy that will put Tokyo on a more equal footing with Washington and force closer ties with Japan's Asian neighbors, particularly China.

Some members of Hatoyama's party have said they want to overhaul the U.S.-Japan security alliance under which 50,000 troops are deployed throughout Japan. That idea has met with strong opposition from Washington, although plans are already underway for 8,000 Marines to be relocated from the southern island of Okinawa to the U.S. territory of Guam.