Cleric: Bahrain crackdown failed to end protests

Friday, September 9, 2011

The Associated Press

MANAMA, Bahrain — The harsh crackdown on anti-government protests in Bahrain has failed to silence people's demands for greater rights, a senior Shiite cleric in the Gulf kingdom said Friday as thousands of opposition supporters rallied on the outskirts of the capital.

The latest demonstration was staged by people who say they were unfairly fired from their jobs simply for being members of the island nation's Shiite community, which led the months of protests. Thousands of Shiite professionals accused of having a role in the protests have been fired from their jobs.

Shiites make up a majority of Bahrain's people, but they have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the country's ruling Sunni dynasty and a lack of economic opportunities.

A police helicopter flew over the large demonstration, which was backed by Bahrain's biggest opposition party, Al Wefaq. The crowd chanted slogans against Bahrain's 200-year-old Sunni monarchy. Some protesters demanded their jobs back and others urged opposition leaders not to compromise with the monarchy.

"Our revolution will continue," the protesters chanted. They warned the rulers: "If you don't want to listen then you have to leave."

Bahrain is a strategically important nation in the Persian Gulf and is the home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

The U.S. has appealed to its ally to listen to protesters' demands for more political freedoms, but a government-led national dialogue produced no compromise with the Shiite opposition, which only had token representation at the talks.

Bahrain's senior Shiite cleric, Sheik Isa Qassim, said the "politics of fear" and the Sunni rulers' refusal to reform has strengthened the resolve of Shiites.

"Those who refuse to reform and continue to ignore the people's demands for rights should know that the masses will not submit to despots," the cleric said during Friday's sermon in the opposition stronghold of Diraz, northwest of the capital, Manama.

More than 30 people have died since February when protests inspired by other Arab uprisings began in Bahrain.

Hundreds of activists have been detained and brought to trial on anti-state charges in a special security court.

Bahrain lifted emergency rule in June. Since then, government opponents have clashed with police almost every night.

Friday's protest dispersed peacefully, although groups of opposition supporters marched to Manama's Pearl Square, the heavily guarded former epicenter of Bahrain's uprising.

___

September 09, 2011

Copyright 2011, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Link: http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/cleric-bahrain-crackdown-failed-1164596.html.

Iraqi woman gives birth to one-eyed child

KARBALA (BNO NEWS) — An Iraqi woman has given birth to a baby girl who has one eye and no nose, local media reported on Sunday. It is the second time the woman gave birth to a deformed child.

Doctors said the baby was recently born at the Women and Delivery Hospital in Karbala, the capital of Karbala Governorate, according to the Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “One of our women delivery chambers has witnessed a strange birth,” a doctor told the news agency.

Dr. Sabah Nour Hadi al-Moussawi said the 24-year-old mother from Najaf gave birth to a baby girl who has only one eye, no nose and a distorted ear. Moussawi said it was the first such case ever at the hospital, but noted that the woman previously also gave birth to a deformed child who died several years ago.

It was not immediately known what caused the deformations. In March 2010, doctors in the Iraqi city of Falluja reported high levels of birth defects, mainly involving the heart and nervous system.

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/20019/iraqi-woman-gives-birth-to-one-eyed-child/.

Israel to relocate 30,000 Bedouins from unrecognized villages

JERUSALEM (BNO NEWS) — The Israeli government on Sunday approved a plan to relocate some 30,000 Bedouins who are living in unrecognized villages in the Negev region to recognized settlements.

As part of the plan, for which the state will allocate 1.2 billion shekel ($334 million), those relocated will receive financial compensation and alternate plots of land, the government said.

“Given the situation that has been created in the Negev, the time has come to act. This started with the previous government and is being decided upon by us,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “A decision must be made for the country and for the development of the Negev and its residents, Jews and Bedouin alike.”

The issue of Bedouin communities in Negev has been present since the establishment of Israel. The Bedouins have complained that the lands where their ‘illegal’ villages are belong to them before the inception of Israel.

“Ownership claims over land will be dealt with in a unified and transparent method to be provided for by law and according to which compensation will be provided for in significant amounts of land and funds”, a statement from the Israeli government said. “Thus, for example, every land ownership claim by a claimant who holds land, the status of which will be fully provided for, will receive 50% of the claim, as opposed to the 20% being currently offered.”

Some 150 members of the Bedouin community gathered outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on Sunday to protest the decision. A Bedouin representative called the decision “a declaration of war,” according to Haaretz newspaper.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, slammed the government’s approval, saying it would result in the uprooting of tens of thousands of people and the demolition of many Bedouin villages. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel also condemned the decision, arguing that the conditions the government sets for recognizing Bedouin villages are prejudicial.

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/20035/israel-to-relocate-30000-bedouins-from-unrecognized-villages/.

Once-banned Tunisian rights group meets

2011-09-11

The Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH) opened its first annual congress in 11 years on Friday (September 9th), TAP reported. The group, which was barred from holding meetings under the regime of deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, called on the country's future leaders to ensure independent courts, women's rights and the end of capital punishment. The three-day event was attended by Tunisian Interim Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi and NGOs from several Arab states.

Source: Magharebia.
Link: http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/newsbriefs/general/2011/09/11/newsbrief-06.

NASA launches twin spacecraft to study Moon's core

Washington DC (AFP)
Sep 10, 2011

NASA on Saturday launched a $500 million pair of washing-machine-sized satellites on a mission to map the Moon's inner core for the first time.

The twin spacecraft took off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 9:08 am (1308 GMT) aboard a Delta II rocket on a three-month journey to the Moon.

"We are on our way, and early indications show everything is looking good," said David Lehman, NASA project manager for GRAIL, which stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory.

High upper level winds delayed the first attempt on Thursday, and also briefly set back Saturday's launch.

But once the rocket blasted off, the journey went smoothly and the twins separated as planned just under an hour and half into the flight.

The duo will travel on a three-month route to the Moon, arriving into a polar lunar orbit around New Year's Day.

With one spacecraft trailing the other, the plan is for the two to use gravity tools to map the terrain beneath, revealing the contents of the inner core of the Moon, about which little is known.

The mission should also shed light on the unexplored far side of the Moon, and perhaps tell scientists whether there was once a second Moon that fused with ours.

"GRAIL will be the first mission to determine the internal structure of the Moon," program scientist Bobby Fogel told reporters this week.

"We have used gravity science before to try to gain some insight as to what is going on inside the Moon, however these have been very primitive attempts.

"If those previous attempts could be likened to a magnifying glass, GRAIL by contrast would be a high-powered microscope."

Scientists believe that the Moon was formed when a planet-sized object crashed into the Earth, throwing off a load of material that eventually became what we now recognize as our planet's airless, desolate satellite.

How it heated up over time, creating a magma ocean that later crystallized, remains a mystery, despite 109 past missions to study the Moon since 1959 and the fact that 12 humans have walked on its surface.

A recent hypothesis that there may have been two Moons that slowly merged into one can also be tested with this mission, said principal investigator Maria Zuber.

"If we want to reconstruct the evolution of the Moon over time, we certainly need to reconstruct the temperature structure of the Moon right now," she said.

Little is known for certain about what lies inside the lunar body. The widely held belief that there is a small solid iron core surrounded by a liquid iron core is unproven, said Zuber.

"It is actually quite possible that deep inside the Moon the core could be titanium oxide, which is a material that would have fallen out or would have crystallized out of the magma ocean and sunk to the deep interior of the Moon," she said.

Once the GRAIL twins enter the orbit of the Moon, they will line up with each other and "essentially chase each other around in a polar orbit as the Moon rotates slowly underneath them," said Zuber.

They will hover about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above the lunar surface, with the distance between them ranging from 37 to 140 miles, collecting measurements of the terrain beneath.

The duo will accomplish the mission's primary aim of understanding the Moon's inner character by performing a series of low-altitude gravity field measurements using what is known as a Ka-band ranging instrument.

The mission itself is relatively short in duration, just 90 days once the two spacecraft reach orbit.

About 40 days after their work is done, the pair will plunge into the lunar surface, NASA said. Scientific analysis of their data is expected to continue for a year.

The project is part of NASA's Discovery program, which has launched 10 spacecraft since 1992 to study the solar system.

Last month, NASA launched its billion-dollar solar-powered spacecraft Juno on a five-year journey to Jupiter aiming to discover what makes up the solar system's biggest planet.

After GRAIL, the US space agency plans to launch its Mars Science Laboratory in November on a nearly two-year journey to the red planet.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_launches_twin_spacecraft_to_study_Moons_core_999.html.

Iraq's Sadr says no anti-US attacks before pullout

Najaf, Iraq (AFP)
Sept 11, 2011

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers not to launch any attacks on US troops before a year-end deadline for their withdrawal, in a statement seen on Sunday.

Sadr's remarks came just days after he backtracked on a call for popular anti-government rallies. American forces have accused militias linked to the cleric of largely being behind attacks on its soldiers.

"In order that Iraq can recover its independence through the withdrawal of the invaders from our territory, I judge it indispensable to halt all armed resistance operations until the complete withdrawal of the occupying forces," Sadr said in the statement originally issued Saturday.

"If the pullout is completed and there is no longer a single US soldier on our territory, the military operations will end definitively but if that is not the case and Iraq remains in a state of dependency, they will resume with greater vigor," Sadr said.

He paid tribute to "the resistance for its actions" and said his movement was now working "hand in hand with the government to achieve the liberation of the country and supporting it against US pressure."

In July, Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, spokesman for US forces in Iraq, accused three Shiite militia groups of being behind attacks on US troops.

He named them as the Promised Day Brigades, formed by Sadr in November 2008, and Ketaeb Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, two splinter groups which broke away from Sadr's former Mahdi Army militia which fought US-led troops from 2004 to 2007.

The cleric's bloc holds six cabinet posts and has 40 seats in parliament.

Sadr said in a separate statement on Monday that he was giving Iraq's government a "last chance" to implement reforms, after earlier calling for protests.

His statement comes as Washington and Baghdad deliberate over the size of a US military training mission to last beyond year-end, after Iraqi leaders said last month they were open to such plans.

The new US Army chief warned on Thursday against leaving too large a force in Iraq after 2011, saying too many boots on the ground could feed the perception of an American "occupation."

General Ray Odierno commanded US forces in Iraq until last year and was one of the senior officers who spearheaded the troop "surge" in 2007, which the military believes turned the tide in the war and reduced sectarian violence.

He spoke amid a debate in Washington over the scale of a possible future US military mission in Iraq and after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta endorsed a tentative plan for a force of 3,000-4,000 troops.

Some US lawmakers have criticized that number of soldiers and say senior officers favor a larger force of at least 10,000, which would include a unit deployed in northern Iraq to defuse Arab-Kurdish tensions.

But Odierno told reporters the United States had to carefully balance how many troops were needed to assist Iraqi forces while scaling back the American profile in a country where anti-US sentiment still runs high.

"I will say when I was leaving Iraq a year ago, I always felt we had to be careful about leaving too many people in Iraq," said Odierno, who took over as army chief of staff on Wednesday.

"The larger the force that we leave behind ... (the more) comments of 'occupation force' remain," he added.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iraqs_Sadr_says_no_anti-US_attacks_before_pullout_999.html.

Turkey asks US to base Predators on its soil: report

Washington (AFP)
Sept 10, 2011

The United States is considering a request from Turkey to base Predator drones there to operate against Kurdish separatists based in northern Iraq, The Washington Post reported late Saturday.

Citing unnamed senior US military officials, the newspaper said a decision to deploy the drones could strengthen the US-Turkish diplomatic alliance but draw the United States deeper into the conflict.

The US military has flown unarmed Predators from Iraqi bases since 2007, sharing their surveillance video with Turkey as part of a secretive crackdown against fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the report said.

But the counterterrorism partnership could end by December 31, when all US forces are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq.

According to The Post, US President Barack Obama's administration has not yet made a decision on the Turkish request.

Last month, the United States offered Turkey its continued support in the fight against PKK rebels, after they claimed responsibility for the deaths of eight Turkish soldiers in an ambush.

The attack took place in the Cukurca region of Hakkari province, close to the border with Iraq. Eleven others were injured.

Previously undisclosed diplomatic cables show Turkey has become highly dependent on the Predators, U-2 spy aircraft and other US intelligence sources in its military campaign against the PKK, The Post said.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Turkey_asks_US_to_base_Predators_on_its_soil_report_999.html.