At least 7 killed in eastern Afghanistan tribal clashes

JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN (BNO NEWS) — At least seven people were killed during tribal clashes in the eastern region of Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

Clashes erupted after two tribes disputed over the ownership of territory in the Bati Kot district, located in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, spokesman to the Governor Ahmad Zia Abdulzoi told Wakht News Agency.

The disputes began a couple of days ago, but they intensified on Wednesday and violence caused the deaths of seven people while 11 others were wounded. According to reports, a member of one the tribes blamed police for attacking and killing five people, but local authorities have denied such claims.

Meanwhile, local tribe elders have formed a delegation, along with members of the provincial council and other government officials to try to resolve the issues and bring calm to the region. In addition, security forces have been deployed in order to disarm both sides and secure the area’s stability.

On Tuesday, at least six people were killed and 18 others were injured after violent clashes broke during an apparent land dispute in in the Mirwais Mena neighborhood, located in the Afghan capital of Kabul. According to some locals, Mirwais Hassan and MP Qais Hassan seized some of the area’s territories and tried to take over the land when the fighting broke out.

The violence and killings triggered Bagrami residents to block the Kabul-Gardez Highway and put bodies of the people killed during the clash on the road in front of the Presidential Palace as a protest to the violence. Demonstrators demanded the arrest of the killers, as they set tires on fire on the road near the Ministry of Finance and Fire Department.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19378/at-least-7-killed-in-eastern-afghanistan-tribal-clashes/.

Allies of former Ivorian President Gbagbo charged over post-election violence

ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST (BNO NEWS) — The son of former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo is among 12 more people who have been charged over post-election violence which killed an estimated 3,000 people, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Michel Gbagbo, who has both French and Ivorian nationalities, was charged along with other close allies of his father, including former prime minister and head of Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (PFI), Pascal Affi N’Guessan.

All the key figures arrested along with Gbagbo in April have now been charged, except for the former president himself and his wife Simone. The 12 Gbagbo allies have been charged with taking part in an armed insurrection and attempting to undermine the state.

The group is being held in separate towns in the north, which is a stronghold of current President Alassane Ouattara. Officials have said they could also face an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

But Gbagbo’s lawyer, Herve Gouamane, condemned the charges saying the lawyers were not informed. “At the same time they talk about reconciliation they go after those who were close to Gbagbo and they’re attacked simply for being linked to Gbagbo,” Gouamane told the BBC.

26 other allies of Gbagbo had already been charged while international arrest warrants have been issued for those who have fled overseas. These include militant youth leader Charles Ble Goude and Kone Malachie, a self-proclaimed prophet who told the former president he was God’s appointed ruler of Ivory Coast.

President Ouattara has always insisted that those on both sides of the political divide should face justice if they committed crimes during the five-month post-election dispute. But so far, none of his supporters have been arrested or charged, even though human rights groups have accused some of them of killing people suspected of backing Gbagbo.

An armed rebellion in 2002 split the country into a Government-controlled south and a rebel-held north. Since then, peace deals have alternated with renewed violence as the country has slowly edged its way towards a political resolution of the conflict.

However, the presidential elections in late 2010 led the country to a new crisis when Alassane Ouattara won the UN certified poll and incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept defeat. The five-month fighting killed as many as 3,000 people and left up to 1 million Ivoirians displaced.

The impasse ended in April when forces loyal to Ouattara entered Abidjan and captured Gbagbo with the backing of UN and French troops. Ouattara was sworn in as the country’s legitimate president in May 2011.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19379/allies-of-former-ivorian-president-gbagbo-charged-over-post-election-violence/.

FIFA bans six match officials for life for match-fixing

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND (BNO NEWS) – The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) Disciplinary Committee decided on Tuesday to ban six match officials for life after finding them guilty of corruption and match-fixing, FIFA announced on Wednesday.

Charges were brought against the Hungarian and Bosnian referees after they were found guilty of match fixing during an international tournament in Antalya, Turkey, on February 9. During the matches, Latvia against Bolivia and Estonia versus Bulgaria, all the goals were scored from penalties.

The six match officials have been banned from taking part in any kind of football-related activity at national and international level for life. They were found guilty of passive corruption and unlawfully influencing match results, according to the FIFA disciplinary code.

The BBC reported that the Hungarian referees are being held by police in their country while authorities are further investigating the match-fixing accusations. The Bosnian officials denied the charges at the hearing but were found guilty.

The two friendly matches were fixed for a betting scam, which has become an important case as FIFA attempts to bolster its fight against match-fixing. The FIFA Disciplinary Committee meeting also examined the case of Lisle Austin, head of the Barbados Football Association.

Austin was punished by FIFA after he lodged a claim in the ordinary courts in the Bahamas to succeed Jack Warner as president of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF).

Austin was initially made interim president when Warner was suspended on bribery charges, but was himself suspended when he attempted to remove Chuck Blazer from his position as General Secretary of CONCACAF. The FIFA Disciplinary Committee decided to ban Austin from taking part in any football-related activity for a period of one year.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19380/fifa-bans-six-match-officials-for-life-for-match-fixing/.

Russia considers North Korean pipeline

SEOUL, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Russia is having discussions with North Korea to build a pipeline across the country to supply Siberian natural gas to South Korea.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in Moscow with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan with energy issues on the agenda.

Lavrov said there currently are "contacts at the level of gas companies' chiefs" in the Russian Federation, South Korea and North Korea for the proposed natural gas pipeline project.

"If experts agree at the corporate level, all three capitals will provide political support," he said. "We want (North Korea) to develop dynamically and to solve its international problems that would facilitate the normalization of the situation in Northeast Asia," Yonhap news agency reported.

Kim said he and Lavrov had "in-depth" discussions about the political situation on the Korean Peninsula, remarking, "Both sides agreed that the six-party talks, if resumed, should be substantial and practical."

Political decisions on supplying an annual 10 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to South Korea were made in the autumn of 2010 during President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Seoul.

The proposed pipeline faces a number of logistical difficulties, not the least being that the two Koreas are still technically at war, as no peace treaty -- only an armistice -- signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

If built, the pipeline could help North Korea's chronic shortages of hard currency, as Pyongyang would earn tens of millions of dollars annually from transit fees.

"Energy starvation" has severely stressed North Korea, and in July its Moscow ambassador visited the headquarters of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned natural gas monopoly.

Also, Gazprom Deputy Chairman Alekhsandr Ananenkov traveled to Pyongyang and Gazprom head Alexei Miller is going to visit both the North Korean capital and Seoul for further talks about the potential pipeline.

There is a second Russian initiative to supply its Siberian natural gas to South Korea. Ananenkov signed an agreement with Kogas Chief Executive Officer Choo Kang-soo in Moscow on Friday to consider options of shipping natural gas from the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok natural gas transportation system to South Korea.

Lavrov added that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has a long-standing invitation to visit Russia, noting, "The timing and other organizational issues have to be coordinated by the nations."

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/08/09/Russia-considers-North-Korean-pipeline/UPI-23831312910418/.

U.S. invests more cash into solar power

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Energy Department announced it was offering a $967 million loan guarantee to back a 290-megawatt solar plant in Arizona.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the loan for Aqua Caliente Solar to support the construction of a solar generating facility in Yuma County, Ariz.

The Energy Department said that when the facility is completed, it would be one of the largest plants of its kind in the world.

"The Agua Caliente Solar project will bring hundreds of jobs to Arizona, while helping increase the reliability of renewable solar power," Chu said in a statement.

The Energy Department said the United States had a dominant position in the solar energy sector in 1995, manufacturing 43 percent of the world's solar panels. That market share slipped to 7 percent last year, however.

The so-called SunShot program by the U.S. government aims to spur American innovations to reduce the cost of solar energy.

U.S. President Barack Obama in a January address to the nation laid out a clean-energy target of meeting 80 percent of U.S. energy needs with clean sources by 2035.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/08/09/US-invests-more-cash-into-solar-power/UPI-43011312885990/.

Gbabgo allies rounded up in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- A lawyer for former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo said the current government can't call for reconciliation while simultaneously arresting former officials.

Herve Gouamene, a lawyer for Gbagbo, said he condemned the arrest of former regime officials in Ivory Coast by the government of President Alassane Ouattara.

"What we deplore is the bizarre nature of this -- the lawyers aren't informed," he told the BBC. "At the same time they talk about reconciliation they go after those who were close to Gbagbo and they're attacked simply for being linked to Gbagbo."

Michel Gbagbo, the 41-year-old son of the former Ivorian president, was among 12 allies of the former leader charged with taking part in violence during a political impasse that pushed the country toward civil war. More than two dozen Gbagbo allies were already charged.

Gbagbo refused to step down after the international community recognized Ouattara as the winner of a November presidential election.

Ouattara has called on the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged atrocities committed during the standoff, which ended with Gbagbo's arrest in April.

Human rights groups accuse both sides of human rights abuses during the conflict.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/08/10/Gbabgo-allies-rounded-up-in-Ivory-Coast/UPI-19591312998997/.

Will members of the hacker group Anonymous try to bring down Facebook?

By Joe Pompeo | The Cutline
Wed, Aug 10, 2011

Some members of Anonymous, the nebulous group of hackers whose high-tech activism has wreaked havoc on law enforcement agencies, government ministries and corporations, appear to have a new target in their cross-hairs: Facebook.

A threatening message on YouTube was allegedly disseminated by affiliates of the shadowy collective, which in recent days has hijacked the websites of the Syrian Defense Ministry (in protest of the restive nation's autocratic regime) and dozens of rural police offices in the United States (in retaliation for the recent arrests of some of the group's suspected cohorts). "If you're a willing activist or guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy," implores the narrator of the message, using a voice scrambler.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly been criticized for his alleged lack of concern for the privacy of his 700 million users.

"Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so they can spy on people all around the world," the Anonymous message, titled "Operation Facebook," claims. (It was uploaded on July 16, but it only began circulating widely around the web on Tuesday...)

"Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your privacy settings, and deleting your account is impossible," the statement continues. "Even if you delete your account, all of your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your account more private is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family. ... You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realize what we have done here is right. Think for awhile and prepare for a day that will go down in history: Nov. 5, 2011."

If successfully carried out, the allegedly pending attack would coincide with Guy Fawkes Day, a British celebration that commemorates a failed assassination attempt on King James I of England in 1605. Members of Anonymous are known to don masks resembling Fawkes.

A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment. But Anonymous weighed in on its Twitter account. The group initially claimed the YouTube video was a hoax, but later clarified: "#OpFacebook is being organized by some Anons. This does not necessarily mean that all of #Anonymous agrees with it." A subsequent tweet reads: "We prefer to face the real power and not to face to the same medias that we use as tools."

Some observers are skeptical about the authenticity of the threat.

"Why didn't this news spread like wildfire three weeks ago?" writes Emil Protalinski on ZDNet. "Whenever Anonymous or [affiliated hacker group] LulzSec declare a new target, the world definitely notices. Furthermore, while Guy Fawkes Day is a perfectly understandable choice, it's very far away. There are 112 days between July 16, 2011 and November 5, 2011: Anonymous rarely gives more than a few days notice, if at all."