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Strong 6.8-magnitude quake hits northeastern Japan

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Japan Earthquake

Tokyo: A strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan this morning, the US Geological Survey said, but authorities did not issue a tsunami warning and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The quake struck at 6:12 am (local time) off the east coast of Japan’s Honshu island in the Pacific Ocean, according to USGS, at a depth of 38.9 kilometres.

Japan’s meteorological agency said there was no immediate tsunami threat from the quake.

The quake hit 33 kilometres south east of the nearest city of Ofunato. Japan’s islands are situated at the conjuncture of several tectonic plates and experience a number of relatively violent quakes every year.

(AFP)

Swedish court refuses to lift warrant against Julian Assange

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Warrant against WikiLeaks founder and whistleblower will not be lifted

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will still face arrest if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has lived in political asylum since 2012.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will still face arrest if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has lived in political asylum since 2012.

by Common Dreams

The Swedish Supreme Court has rejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s appeal to lift the arrest warrant against him.

Assange still faces arrest if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy where he has been living in political asylum since 2012. He has said he fears being extradited to the U.S., where an ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks is still underway, if arrested by Swedish authorities. WikiLeaks in 2010 published more than 700,000 classified military and State Department documents, some of which exposed U.S. war crimes.

The arrest warrant stems from sexual assault allegations against Assange in Sweden, although he has not been formally indicted.

“The supreme court notes that investigators have begun efforts to question Julian Assange in London. The supreme court finds no reason to lift the arrest warrant,” the court statedon Monday.

Assange has denied the allegations against him. In March, Swedish prosecutors offered to interview him in London, dropping their years-long request that he come to Sweden for questioning. Assange has agreed to be interviewed in London, his lawyer said last month.

Renewed violence forces 100,000 to flee in South Sudan

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UN says fighting in Unity State has displaced 100,000 people, as two aid agencies withdraw from Leer fearing attack.

South Sudan

by Al Jazeera

Fighting has escalated in war-torn South Sudan forcing up to 100,000 people to flee their homes, the United Nations has said.

Toby Lanzer, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan said up to 100,000 people had been displaced from their homes in Unity State, as clashes intensified between rebels and government troops.

“Since the beginning of May, military activities south of Bentiu in Unity State have forced up to 100,000 people from their homes,” Lanzer said in a statement.

“People should never be harmed, and certainly not targeted or forced to flee from their homes,” he added.

Also on Saturday, two global aid agencies evacuated their international staff from part of Unity State fearing clashes.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said they withdrew from the town of Leer, Machar’s hometown, over concerns of an “imminent attack”.

“Today, we withdraw again with a heavy heart, because we know how civilians will suffer when they are cut off from critical, lifesaving medical care,” Paul Critchley, head of mission at MSF said.

MSF was previously forced to abandon Leer in January last year when fighting over the town made it too dangerous to stay.

When aid workers were able to return four months later they found the hospital burned and looted and vehicles stolen.

Franz Rauchenstein, the head of the ICRC in South Sudan, urged the warring sides to respect international law.

“At all times, those who do not take part in the hostilities must be spared and the distinction needs to be made between civilian objectives and military objectives,” he said.

Violence in the world’s youngest nation has been characterised by rape, attacks on civilians and medical facilities and ethnic massacres.

Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed since South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

Seymour Hersh: Obama's entire account Of bin Laden's Death is one big lie

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Osama bin Laden

An expose published on Sunday alleges that President Obama deceived Americans with his narrative of the 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Author Seymour M. Hersh accuses Obama of rushing to take credit for the al Qaeda leader’s death.

This decision, Hersh argues in the London Review of Books, forced the military and intelligence communities to scramble and then corroborate the president’s version of events.

“High-level lying nonetheless remains the modus operandi of U.S. policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no,” Hersh wrote of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

Hersh based his report on a single, anonymous source. This individual, he said, is a “retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abottabad.”

Hersh’s source alleged that the Pakistani government had an active role in approving and implementing the raid on bin Laden’s compound.

In addition, the source said that the Obama administration originally agreed to announce bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike rather than shot during an active Special Forces mission.

“Obama’s speech was put together in a rush,” Hersh wrote of Obama’s announcement of Operation Neptune Spear to Americans.

“This series of self-serving and inaccurate statements would create chaos in the weeks following,” he added.

“This was not the fog of war,” Hersh quoted his anonymous source as saying.

“The fact that there was an agreement with the Pakistanis and no contingency analysis of what was to be disclosed if something went wrong – that wasn’t even discussed,” the source added.

“And once it went wrong, they had to make up a new cover story on the fly,” the source said of Obama’s advisers’ response to his speech on the raid, Hersh wrote.

Hersh’s report also accuses the Obama administration of embellishing the details of the raid itself and presenting al Qaeda as a bigger threat than it actually was before bin Laden’s death.

The White House did not comment on Hersh’s claims.

US's NSA labeled Al Jazeera journalist a member of Al Qaeda

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Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan put on watch list after years of reporting on terror groups

Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan

by Common Dreams

The U.S. government labeled Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan a member of al Qaeda and put him on a watch list of suspected terrorists, new reporting by the Intercept has revealed.

Zaidan, a Syrian national who serves as Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, was put on a watch list by the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2012, according to agency documents leaked in 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Among those documents are a PowerPoint slide from an NSA presentation which shows Zaidan’s face, name, terror watch list identification number, and a label that states he is a “member of Al-Qa’ida” and the Muslim Brotherhood. It also says he “works for Al Jazeera.”

As a journalist, Zaidan spent years reporting on the Taliban and al Qaeda, conducting several interviews with senior leaders in those groups, including Osama bin Laden.

“To assert that myself, or any journalist, has any affiliation with any group on account of their contact book, phone call logs, or sources is an absurd distortion of the truth and a complete violation of the profession of journalism,” Zaidan told the Intercept.

“For us to be able to inform the world, we have to be able to freely contact relevant figures in the public discourse, speak with people on the ground, and gather critical information. Any hint of government surveillance that hinders this process is a violation of press freedom and harms the public’s right to know.”

Read more at the Intercept.

WHO declares Liberia Ebola-free

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With no new cases reported in 42 days, WHO says West African nation is now free of disease that killed 4,700 there.

ebola

by Al Jazeera

Liberia has been declared free from Ebola after no new cases were reported for over a month, the World Health Organisation has said.

Peter Jan Graaf, the head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency, urged vigilence until the worst-ever recorded outbreak of the virus was extinguished in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone.

No new cases were reported in 42 days – twice the maximum incubation period for the deadly disease.

“We’re proud of what we collectively managed to do but we need to remain vigilant,” he said. “The virus is not yet out of the region and as long as the virus is in the region we’re still all of us potentially at risk.”

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that Liberia’s completion of the WHO’s benchmark for the end of an Ebola epidemic should not lead to complacency.

“We can’t take our foot off the gas until all three countries record 42 days with no cases,” said Mariateresa Cacciapuoti, MSF’s head of mission in Liberia.

She urged Liberia to step up cross-border surveillance to prevent Ebola slipping back into the country.

A total of 11,005 people have died from Ebola in the West African countries of Liberia, neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began in December 2013, WHO reported.

At least 4,700 of those have been in Liberia, where the outbreak peaked between August and October, with hundreds of cases a week, sparking international alarm.

Helped by the visible US military presence, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s government launched a national awareness campaign to stem the infectious disease, which is spread by physical contact with sick people.

Heightened surveillance

The UN Special Envoy on Ebola, David Nabarro, said this week that Liberian authorities had pledged to maintain heightened surveillance for at least a year after being declared Ebola-free on Saturday.

Nabarro suggested that, even though fewer than 20 new cases were reported in Guinea and Sierra Leone last week, it could take months to get to zero.

International aid organisations were forced to step in as the Ebola outbreak ravaged the region’s poorly equipped and understaffed healthcare systems.

MSF – which was highly critical of the slow response by the United Nations and western governments – opened the world’s largest Ebola management centre in Monrovia, with a capacity of 400 beds.

According to the WHO, a total of 868 health workers have caught the virus in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone since the start of the outbreak, of whom 507 died.

International Medical Corps (IMC), a charity that ran two Ebola clinics in Liberia, appealed for international support in rebuilding the healthcare system there in the wake of the virus.

“Now is the time to build on the momentum we have generated to strengthen the Liberian health system … and change attitudes to keep the people of Liberia safe long into the future,” said Anouk Boschma, IMC’s acting country director in Liberia.

UN: Only five percent of Nepal quake funds received

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About $22m of $415m requested by UN and partners has been provided so far, amid large number of global crises.

Nepal's post-disaster response has been heavily criticised in the 10 days following the earthquake [Getty Images]

Nepal’s post-disaster response has been heavily criticised in the 10 days following the earthquake [Getty Images]

by Al Jazeera

Only a fraction of the emergency funds the United Nations has requested for victims of Nepal’s earthquake have come in, UN officials have said, as crises around the world put unprecedented demands on international donors.

Of the $415 million requested by the UN and its partners last week, just $22.4 million has been provided – about five percent.

“It’s a poor response,” Orla Fagan, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told the Reuters news agency on Thursday.

Fagan attributed the shortage to “donor fatigue”, citing more than a dozen other long-running international crises, such as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, which are also making demands on donor nations.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck northwest of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on April 25 has killed at least 7,759 people, injured more than 16,000, and destroyed more than 300,000 homes.

Nepal’s post-disaster response has been heavily criticised in the 10 days following the earthquake. Many people in rural areas have still not received any government aid. The UN and Western governments have blamed the country’s bureaucracy for taxing and stalling the flow of supplies at border crossings.

The government, however, has denied those accusations.

“Nepal is a very small country, we have limited resources,” Brigadier General Jagadish Chandra Pokharel told Al Jazeera this week. “The terrain is inaccessible even under ideal circumstances. We have no conflict and good relations, so 90 percent of military personnel are focused on relief efforts.”

David Cameron wins British election with slim majority

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PM Cameron says he will “go on working hard” after his Conservative party defies expectations and wins thin majority.

David Cameron

by Al Jazeera

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party looks set to continue in power after it defied expectations and won the 323 seats needed to command a parliamentary majority.

The results confirmed a shock exit poll projection published by British broadcasters late on Thursday night that put the party way ahead of the opposition Labour Party with 316 seats. Updated projections put the Conservatives on 329, an absolute majority.

The poll also predicted Labour winning 239 seats, the Scottish National Party (SNP) winning 58 and the Liberal Democrats winning 10. Labour’s tally was further revised down to 233 as the vote counts came in.

The party’s leader, Ed Miliband, is expected to resign his position, sources within the party told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

Nick Clegg, who was deputy prime minister under the outgoing coalition government, announced his resignation as leader of the Liberal Democrats after his party’s “catastrophic” defeat.

Clegg called the loss of more than 40 of the party’s seats “the most crushing blow to the Liberal Democrats” since it was founded.

Speaking after successfully defending his seat in Witney, Cameron said his Conservative party’s policies in the last government had been vindicated by the result.

“This has been a very strong night for the Conservative Party,” the prime minister said.

“Some people say there’s only one opinion poll that counts and that’s the one on election day, and I don’t think that’s ever been truer than tonight,” he added, referring to polls published before election day that had put his party neck and neck with Labour. A party needs 326 seats to achieve a majority in parliament, but this number is slightly lower in practice, as the Sinn Fein MPs in Northern Ireland do not take up their seats. Miliband, speaking after he retained his Doncaster North seat, said he was “disappointed” in the result. “It’s clearly been a very disappointing and difficult night for the Labour Party. We haven’t made the gains we wanted in England and Wales, and in Scotland we’ve seen a surge of nationalism,” he said, apologising to Labour members who had lost their seats to the SNP in Scotland. “I am deeply sorry for what has happened.”

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from Westminster palace in London, said the scale at which the opinion polls had failed to predict the result had been unprecedented.

“What’s turning out to be the result of this is an extremely divided election, and a potentially very disunited kingdom,” he said.

In Scotland, the nationalist SNP has taken a near clean sweep of seats in the region, picking up 56 of 59 seats.

The gains came at the expense of the Labour and the Liberal Democrats, which were reduced to just one seat each in the region.

Labour lost 40 seats in Scotland and saw its regional head, Jim Murphy, and shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander lose their seats.

Danny Alexander, a Liberal Democrat minister under the last government, also lost in his own constituency.

The SNP went into the elections with just six seats from 2010.

The party’s leader, Nicola Sturgeon, who was not standing herself celebrated the result, after initially urging caution over the exit poll projection.

“Thanks so much to everyone who voted SNP today. Whatever the results, I’m very proud of our campaign,” she said in a post on Twitter.

 

A number of prominent MPs, including current ministers and senior leaders from across the political spectrum, have lost their seats.

The Liberal Democrats bore the brunt of the losses, their 59 seats reduced to about a dozen. The party’s former leader, Charles Kennedy, lost his seat to the SNP, and ministers Vince Cable and Simon Hughes also lost in their constituencies.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell told Al Jazeera the party would have to “start from the bottom up”.

George Galloway, a former Labour MP and leader of the Respect party, lost to Labour’s Naz Shah in Bradford West, a seat he was widely expected to retain.

The Conservative Employment Minister Esther McVey lost her seat in Wirral West to Labour.

Labour’s shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, was also defeated by Conservative candidate Andrea Jenkyns.

In Wales, the nationalist Plaid Cymru held its three seats, and in England the right-wing UK Independence Party is expected to pick up only one seat, despite gaining around 12 percent of the votes cast. Party leader Nigel Farage failed in his attempt to take the Thanet South seat from the Conservatives.

The Green Party’s Caroline Lucas is expected to hold its only seat. 

 

Pakistan: Norway, Philippines envoys killed in helicopter crash, army claims no terror attack

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This file photo shows Polish ambassador Andrezej Ananicz (C) with his wife (L) and Ambassador of Norway Leif Larsen (R). — Dawn/File

This file photo shows Polish ambassador Andrezej Ananicz (C) with his wife (L) and Ambassador of Norway Leif Larsen (R). — Dawn/File

by Mateen Haider & Imtiaz Taj, Dawn

Gilgit: Ambassador of Philippines Domingo D Lucenario Jr, Ambassador of Norway Leif Larsen and the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian ambassadors were among seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Naltar Valley in the Gilgit-Baltistan region on Friday.

Two pilots and a crew member were among those killed when the Pakistan Army helicopter crash-landed on a school in Naltar Valley, Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major-General Asim Bajwa said. Media reports identified the two pilots as Major Altamash and Major Faisal.

Injuries were also reported from the incident in which Dutch ambassador Marcel de Vink and Polish ambassador Andrzej Ananicz were injured.

Bajwa said that six Pakistanis and 11 foreigners were on board the MI-17 helicopter.

The convoy comprised of three MI-17 helicopters, one carrying foreign diplomats, one carrying the prime minister and his staff and a third one with senior military officials, Bajwa said.

AFP quoted a statement by the Prime Minister Office as saying that Premier Nawaz Sharif was on a plane, not helicopter, en route to the Gilgit area at the time of the incident, but turned back to Islamabad after news of the crash broke.

A top regional administration official told AFP that the premier was due to inaugurate a chair-lift project at a ski resort in Naltar Valley.

The crashed helicopter was carrying a delegation of ambassadors to inspect projects on a three-day trip to Gilgit-Baltistan, where the foreign envoys were set to meet with the prime minister.

What caused the crash

Speaking to DawnNews after the incident, DG ISPR said the helicopter crashed due to a technical fault and ruled out the possibility of any terrorist or subversive activity.

He, however, said that as per procedure, a board of inquiry has been constituted to investigate the cause of the crash.

Moreover, the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed that the incident was the result of an attack it carried out however this could not be independently verified.

Transporting bodies, injured

Shortly after the incident, the injured were taken to the emergency ward of the Combined Military Hospital in Gilgit, hospital officials said.

Moreover, arrangements were being made by the Pakistan Air Force to bring the bodies of the ambassadors and the wives of two other envoys to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office in Islamabad has informed the respective governments about the tragic incident.

According to a list of passengers obtained by AFP, the ambassadors of Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Romania, Norway, South Africa, the Philippines and Poland were scheduled to fly on the helicopter.

A passenger in one of the helicopters told AFP that the air convoy was supposed to have included four helicopters but the number was later reduced to three.

“It was a diplomatic trip with members of 37 countries in total,” said the passenger who requested anonymity, adding that the school had caught fire after the crash but no children were in class at the time.

“The school, built by Pakistan Air Force for the children of the area, was closed as part of a security plan for the prime minister’s visit,” he said.

PM declares one day of mourning

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has extended heartfelt condolences on the sad demise of the two ambassadors and the spouses of two other envoys who died in today’s incident and has declared one day mourning in relation to the incident.

He also expressed concern over the conditions of the injured diplomats and prayed for their speedy recovery. He directed concerned authorities to provide the injured diplomats with the best medical treatment.

The premier also directed authorities to dispatch planes and helicopters to evacuate the injured diplomats and transport the bodies to Islamabad.

CAR to sue French soldiers over alleged sex crimes

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Justice minister announces case against soldiers accused of raping children in exchange for food at a refugee camp.

A UN report detailed interviews with six children, aged eight to 15, who approached the French soldiers to ask for food [EPA]

A UN report detailed interviews with six children, aged eight to 15, who approached the French soldiers to ask for food [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

The Central African Republic will take legal action against the French soldiers accused of raping children in exchange for food at a refugee camp, the country’s justice minister has said.

“Legal action will be pursued … These are still very serious acts,” said Justice Minister Aristide Sokambi on Wednesday, insisting his nation was not targeting France but individual soldiers.

Several children – the youngest just nine – allege that 14 soldiers dispatched to the impoverished nation as part of a peacekeeping force sexually abused some of them in exchange for food between December 2013 and June 2014.

“We regret the fact we were not brought into these investigations despite the cooperation agreements we have with France,” Sokambi added.

“So I have instructed the public prosecutor to open a probe and seek the evidence already at the disposal of the French.”

French troops were deployed to the Central African Republic in December 2013 to help African Union peacekeepers restore order after a bout of sectarian violence triggered by a coup.

Hundreds of troops were stationed at Bangui’s M’Poko airport, which was transformed into a giant refugee camp.

Most of the displaced families living amid the abandoned planes had lost everything in the conflict, which pitted mainly Muslim rebels against vigilantes from the majority Christian population.

Paris investigates

Prosecutors in Paris have opened an investigation into the reports, with France’s defence ministry pledging to take “all the measures necessary for the truth to come out”.

The defence ministry has said it immediately launched a probe into the case, sending police investigators to the former French colony on August 1 after receiving the news.

The ministry has denied attempting to cover up a potentially devastating scandal. The allegations were contained in an internal UN report that was leaked to French authorities last summer by a UN official.

If proven, the allegations will not only affect the French army but also the Central African Republic, which is trying to find a way out of a conflict that has killed thousands and displaced nearly 900,000 people.

Many people living in the camp at M’Poko airport had lost their livelihoods to the violence.

Hunger in the camp became so widespread that riots often broke out when food was distributed.

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