CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
SUNDAY AFTERNOON EDITION February 23, 2014
OBAMACARE FAVORED OVER CHRISTIAN BELIEFS
CHICAGO – A federal appeals court has issued a ruling against the University of Notre Dame in a lawsuit over parts of the federal health care law that forces it to provide health insurance for students and employees that covers contraceptives.
The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago on Friday upheld a judge’s earlier ruling that denied the Roman Catholic school’s request for a preliminary injunction as the lawsuit moves forward.
The lawsuit challenges a compromise offered by the Obama administration that attempted to create a buffer for religiously affiliated universities and other organizations that oppose birth control. The health care law requires insurers or the health plan’s outside administrator to pay for birth control coverage.
Notre Dame contends the law violates its freedom to practice religion without government interference.
VENEZUELA: TERROR EXPANDS MIDST INTERNET BLACKOUT
President Nicolas Maduro has ordered paratroopers into the restive Venezuelan border city of San Cristobal amid fierce clashes between government forces and opposition protesters, as the leftist leader warned the US to stay out of the country’s growing unrest.
The battalion was rushed in on Thursday night to “restore order” in San Cristobal, where Mr. Maduro has threatened to impose martial law to quell the protests that began in the city two weeks ago and have since spread nationwide, claiming the lives of at least six people.
Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has been rocked by sometimes violent protests and rallies in the capital Caracas and other cities by government opponents angry at rampant inflation, chronic food shortages and one of the world’s highest murder rates.
While the protests are strongest in middle class areas, they have sporadically spread to poorer neighborhoods which are traditionally aligned with the Socialist government.
In San Cristobal an internet blackout has been imposed, keeping it largely off Venezuelan screens. But residents say they are living in a “war zone”, with the town fully occupied by the army and military helicopters and planes flying overhead. Local reporters have told of siege-like scenes with gunfire and tear gas emanating from regular street battles between protesters and security forces. Demonstrators are blocking roads with burning barricades and most business are shuttered, with few other residents venturing out from their homes. Some say they have lost electricity and running water. The operation is being led personally by Miguel Rodriguez Torres, the country’s interior minister.
The deployment came as the government angrily rejected US calls for dialogue to resolve the protests which have further destabilized the deeply polarized nation.
Mr Maduro’s government said it “emphatically repudiates” remarks by Barack Obama, accusing the US president of “a new and crude interference in the internal affairs of our country.” They have already revoked the license for CNN to continue in their country, claiming they were engaging in a “propaganda war” against his government.
Mr Obama had previously urged dialogue and called on Mr Maduro to release detained protesters and address the “legitimate grievances” of the Venezuelan people just as he had done with Ukraine.
On Sunday, Mr Maduro ordered the expulsion of three US diplomats, accusing them of meeting student leaders to conspire in what the government claims is an opposition coup plot. Washington has denied the allegations.
The government continues to hold Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition figure who has emerged as the hardline leader of “The Exit” protest movement, in prison. It has accused him of orchestrating violence as part of a plot to overthrow the government, a claim he denies. Both sides blame each other for the bloodshed.
The government says sharpshooters are appearing on the opposition side and radicals are seeking to create chaos by smashing property, attacking police and blocking highways.
Meanwhile the protesters accuse Mr Maduro of worsening repression. They say police are firing shots, allowing armed pro-government gangs to attack the protesters and mistreating some detainees.
On Friday Mr Lopez urged protesters not to give up. In a note from the military prison of Ramo Verde released through his wife, he said: “To the police, soldiers, prosecutors and judges: do not obey unjust orders, do not become the face of repression. To the youth, to the protesters, I ask you to stay firm against violence, and to stay organized and disciplined. This is everyone’s struggle.”
The 42-year-old Harvard-educated economist has been charged with instigating violence, property damage and criminal association – but not homicide, as had been threatened.
Henrique Capriles, the moderate opposition leader and 2013 presidential candidate who has kept a low profile during the protests, challenged Mr Maduro to prove his claims that the demonstrations were part of a conspiracy to overthrow his government. “The only one who has talked about a coup d’etat has been the government. It is a fabrication by government actors,” he said.
THE TELEGRAPH
VENEZUELA UPDATE
CARACAS, VENEZUELA – In Caracas, tens of thousands of opponents of President Nicolas Maduro filled several city blocks in their biggest rally to date against his 10-month-old government. Across town, at the presidential palace, Maduro addressed a much-smaller crowd of mostly female supporters dressed in the red of his socialist party.
The violence has left at least 10 people dead on both sides and injured more than 100. The protests claimed their 10th fatality, when a 23-year-old student in the provincial city of Valencia was pronounced dead Saturday after an eight-hour surgery for brain injuries suffered at a demonstration earlier in the week.
Geraldine Moreno was near her home on Wednesday, watching students defend a barricade at the corner of her street, when six national guardsmen rushed in and fired rubber bullets at close range, hitting her in the face, El Universal newspaper reported.
On Saturday at the opposition rally held in wealthier eastern Caracas, two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles urged supporters to keep pressuring the government to resolve problems afflicting the oil-rich nation, from rampant crime to galloping 56 percent inflation. “If you (Maduro) can’t, then it’s time to go,” Capriles told the crowd.
Capriles, 41, has frequently criticized Lopez’s strategy of taking to the streets without building support among the poor. Those differences were on display again Saturday, when he told supporters that unrest in middle-class neighborhoods distracts people’s attention from the country’s mounting woes and only strengthens the government’s hand. “Who are you going to convince by barricading yourself on your own street when everyone there is already convinced,” he said.
Still, he downplayed any sense of division within the opposition’s ranks, and recalled his own four-month confinement in 2002 in the same military prison where Lopez is being held while vowing to fight for the politician’s release.
“We may have our differences, but there’s something bigger than us all that unites us, which is Venezuela, damn it!” Capriles told the roaring crowd.
Elsewhere in the capital, government backers filled a wide avenue in a boisterous march to the presidential palace accompanied by sound trucks blaring music and slogans. The crowd made up mostly of women danced in the street and carried photos of the late president Hugo Chavez while vendors hawked calendars emblazoned with his image.
First Lady Cilia Flores called on supporters to be alert for opposition attempts to incite more violence in the days ahead to create conditions for a Ukraine-like power grab. “Venezuela isn’t Ukraine,” Flores, who rarely speaks in public but is a close adviser to her husband, told the crowd. “The right-wing fascists aren’t going to impose themselves here.”
Maduro said he won’t pull security forces off the streets until the opposition abandons what calls a “fascist” conspiracy to oust him from power. “This elected president, the son of Chavez, is going to keep protecting the people,” he said while holding up what he said was an improvised explosive device used by protesters to attack government buildings and security forces. “Nobody is going to blackmail me.”
It’s unclear whether the street protests can maintain their momentum with fatigue setting in, the Carnival holiday approaching and no Kiev-like ousting of Maduro in sight. Capriles has said he’ll attend a meeting Monday called by Maduro to talk with local authorities, including opposition members, but is threatening to walk out if his remarks aren’t broadcast live on national TV as the president’s are almost daily.
Even if the protests fizzle out, the underlying frustrations that sparked them show no sign of easing: high crime, food shortages and inflation that erodes living standards in a country with the world’s biggest oil reserves. “This is a rich country and we can’t even buy a kilo of flour, a rich country but we live in misery,” Marta Rivas, a 39-year-old mother of two, said as she joined the San Cristobal march.
THEY CRY “PEACE! PEACE! BUT THERE IS NO PEACE” IN KIEV
Hours after being released from prison after 2 1/2 years in captivity, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko appeared before crowds gathered at the protester encampment in Ukraine’s capital Saturday, urging the protesters to keep occupying the square. Her speech to the crowd of about 50,000, made from a wheelchair because of the severe back problems she suffered in prison, was the latest stunning development in the fast-moving Ukrainian political crisis.
Only a day earlier, her arch-rival, President Viktor Yanukovych, signed an agreement with protest leaders that cut his powers and called for early elections. Parliament, once controlled by Yanukovych supporters, quickly thereafter voted to decriminalize the abuse-of-office charge for which Tymoshenko was convicted.
Yanukovych meanwhile appeared to be losing power by the hour. He decamped from Kiev to Kharkiv, a city in his support base in eastern Ukraine, while protesters took control of the presidential administration building and thousands of curious and contemptuous Ukrainians roamed the suddenly open grounds of the lavish compound outside Kiev where he was believed to live.
In Kharkiv, Yanukovych defiantly declared that he regarded parliament’s actions as invalid and bitterly likened the demonstrators who conducted three months of protests against him to Nazis. “Everything that is happening today is, to a greater degree, vandalism and banditry and a coup d’etat,” he said. “I will do everything to protect my country from breakup, to stop bloodshed.”
Earlier in the day Tymoshenko had promised to run for president, news agencies reported, saying she will make it so that no drop of blood that was spilled will be forgotten.” The European Union condemned the jailing of Tymoshenko as political and urged Yanukovych to free her. Yanukovych had refused, and in November he spurned a landmark pact with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia, triggering massive, deadly protests.
The reversal of fortune for both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych was an eerie echo of the Orange Revolution of a decade ago — the mass protests that forced a rerun of a presidential election nominally won by Yanukovych. Tymoshenko attracted world attention as the most vivid of the protest leaders, her elaborate blond peasant braid making her instantly recognizable.
On Saturday, Tymoshenko appeared close to exhaustion and her voice cracked frequently, but her flair for vivid words was undimmed. “You are heroes, you are the best thing in Ukraine!” she said of those killed in the violence. The Health Ministry on Saturday said the death toll in clashes between protesters and police that included sniper attacks had reached 82. And she urged the demonstrators not to yield from their encampment in the square, known in Ukrainian as the Maidan. “In no case do you have the right to leave the Maidan until you have concluded everything that you planned to do,” she said.
After the 2004 protests helped bring Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency, Tymoshenko became prime minister. But when Yanukovych won the 2010 election, Tymoshenko was arrested and put on trial for abuse of office, an action widely seen as political revenge.
Her call for protests to continue and Yanukovych’s defiance leaves unsettled the fate of Ukraine, a nation of 46 million of huge strategic importance to Russia, Europe and the United States.
The country’s western regions, angered by corruption in Yanukovych’s government, want to be closer to the European Union and have rejected Yanukovych’s authority in many cities. Eastern Ukraine, which accounts for the bulk of the nation’s economic output, favors closer ties with Russia and has largely supported the president. The three-month protest movement was prompted by the president’s decision to abort an agreement with the EU in favor of a deal with Moscow.
“The people have won, because we fought for our future,” said opposition leader Vitali Klitschko to a euphoric crowd of thousands gathered on Kiev’s Independence Square. Beneath a cold, heavy rain, protesters who have stood for weeks and months to pressure the president to leave congratulated each other and shouted “Glory to Ukraine!”
“It is only the beginning of the battle,” Klitschko said, urging calm and telling protesters not to take justice into their own hands.
The president’s support base crumbled further as a leading governor and a mayor from the eastern city of Kharkiv fled to Russia. Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the border guard service, told The Associated Press that Kharkiv regional governor Mikhaylo Dobkin and Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes left Ukraine across the nearby Russian border.
Saturday’s developments were the result of a European-brokered peace deal between the president and opposition. But Yanukovych said Saturday that he would not sign any of the measures passed by parliament over the past two days as a result of that deal. They include motions:
-saying that the president removed himself from power;
-setting new elections for May 25 instead of next year;
-trimming the president’s powers;
-naming a new interior minister after firing the old one on Friday;
-releasing Tymoshenko.
The decisions were passed with large majorities, including yes votes from some members of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, which dominated Ukraine’s political scene until this week but is now swiftly losing support.
Russia came out Saturday firmly against the peace deal, saying the opposition isn’t holding up its end of the agreement, which calls for protesters to surrender arms and abandon their tent camps. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday called his German, French and Polish counterparts and urged them to use their influence with the Ukrainian opposition to stop what he described as rampages by its supporters. European officials urged calm.
Ukraine’s defense and military officials also called for Ukrainians to stay peaceful. In statements Saturday, both the Defense Ministry and the chief of the armed forces said they will not be drawn into any conflict and will side with the people. But they did not specify whether they still support the president or are with the opposition.
In Kharkiv, governors, provincial officials and legislators gathered alongside top Russian lawmakers and issued a statement saying that the events in Kiev have led to the “paralysis of the central government and destabilization of the situation in the country.” Some called for the formation of volunteer militias to defend against protesters from western regions, even as they urged army units to maintain neutrality and protect ammunition depots.
Anti-government protesters around the country took out their anger on statues of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, using ropes and crowbars to knock them off pedestals in several cities and towns. Statues of Lenin still stand across the former USSR, and they are seen as a symbol of Moscow’s rule.
The past week has seen the worst violence in Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago. At Independence Square Saturday, protesters heaped flowers on the coffins of the dead. “These are heroes of Ukraine who gave their lives so that we could live in a different country without Yanukovych,” said protester Viktor Fedoruk, 32. “Their names will be written in golden letters in the history of Ukraine.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
LAVISH LEADERSHIP LUXURY
NOVI PETRIVTSI, UKRAINE – The opulent residence of President Viktor Yanukovych has always been a closely guarded secret — and a symbol of the alleged corruption at Ukraine’s highest levels. On Saturday, after he fled the capital and its gates were thrown open, thousands streamed into the compound to get a first-hand look.
Inside the walled compound known as Mezhyhirya, posh mansions stood amid manicured lawns. There were parks dotted with statues, ponds with fountains and wild ducks, a tennis court, a golf course and a colonnaded pavilion.
As throngs of ordinary Ukrainians got their first look at Yanukovich’s luxurious estate, many expressed disgust. Some brought their children — one even brought his dog. They considered the tour a victory for anti-government demonstrators.
At a protest of government censorship of the media in June outside the walls of Yanukovych’s residence, the gates were cordoned off by dozens of beefy riot police in red berets. Yanukovych had always refused to talk about his residence, admitting only to living in a modest house on a small plot inside Mezhygirya Park, about 140 hectares (345 acres) of forested hills along the Dnipro River. Now those gates were open to the public.
Activists described one giant wooden building as a guest house. It was closed and no one was allowed inside but a peek through a window revealed marble floors, crystal chandeliers, a massive stairway with what looked like gold-covered railings, and a giant piano in a reception hall with luxurious beige armchairs.
Activists attached a yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag to the house, and many posed for photos in front of it. “It’s like we entered Berlin and seized the Reichstag,” said Oleksiy Tiunov, a 33-year-old computer specialist from Kiev. “I’m so proud of my friends. They didn’t flee, they didn’t run, good guys, even when they started getting killed. Everybody stood there, even peaceful citizens. We Ukrainians still have this spirit which cannot be crushed,” Tiunov said, choking back tears.
Many waved Ukrainian and European Union flags, embracing each other and chanting, “Glory to Ukraine.”
A self-appointed guide who introduced himself as Roman told of the construction of the guest house and showed everyone a multilevel pond, surrounded by elegant statues. “This is where our money was wasted,” he said. People were overwhelmed but also curious. “Where is the helicopter pad? Where is the golf course?” one woman asked. “Where are the ostriches?” questioned another.
One of those inside the estate was Mykhailo Havrilyuk, a well-known activist who had been stripped naked, beaten and humiliated by Yanukovych’s police force last month. He insisted Yanukovych must go, and he suggested Mezhygirya be turned into a children’s sanatorium. “Let him be hanged or hidden away in a place where nobody will find him,” Havrilyuk said.
Yulia Yashchenko, 26, brought her 5-year-old son, Volodymyr, so he could witness history. “I want to see how the guarantor of our constitution, so to speak, lived, and to show this to my child,” she said, with some sarcasm. “These are historic events.”
Vitali Rus, 31, and his wife Lilia, 28, both lawyers from Kiev, could not hide their disgust. “It looks like a medieval pharaoh who had an entire empire working for him, who was spending all this tax money on himself,” Vitali said, holding his 3-year-old son, Artem. “When we saw footage from the residence of the British queen, we didn’t see such luxury as with this modern Ukrainian dictator.”
By afternoon, thousands had lined up to enter. Some walked several kilometers (miles), because the roads were choked with hundreds of cars going there. Over loudspeakers, activists urged the visitors not to destroy anything and checked those who were leaving to make sure nothing had been taken.
Back in Kiev, funerals were held for some of the dead protesters. Those victims were on the mind of Vitali Rus as he toured Yanukovych’s compound. “Today is a day of sorrow, when we must mourn the hundreds of those who died, and thanks to whom we were able to enter this territory,” he said. “And this wicked man, who calls himself the president of Ukraine, has fled.
RUSSIA STILL VOWS TO PUNISH UKRAINIAN PROTESTERS
MOSCOW – Russia’s foreign minister says that Ukraine’s opposition has failed to fulfill its side of a peace deal intended to end the nation’s political crisis. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday called his German, French and Polish counterparts, who helped broker Friday’s agreement between Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov urged his counterparts to use their influence with the Ukrainian opposition to stop what he described as rampages by its supporters.
BLOODY RIOTS IN THAILAND TOO
BANGKOK, THAILAND – Police in eastern Thailand say at least 35 people were hurt last night when an anti-government rally was attacked by armed men. Police Lt. Thanabhum Newanit said assailants in a pick-up truck attacked a Saturday night rally held by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee in the province of Trat, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) east of Bangkok.
He said the attackers shot into the crowd and two explosive devices went off. It was not clear if the protest group, which uses armed guards, fought back.
Protest-linked violence has increased recently, in the forms of fighting with police and attacks by unknown parties on the protest sites, which are mainly in the capital, Bangkok. In the past three months 15 people have been killed and hundreds injured. The protesters want Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to resign to make way for an appointed interim government to implement anti-corruption reforms.
NIGERIA CLOSES ITS CAMEROON BORDER
YOLA, NIGERIA – Nigeria’s military says it has closed hundreds of miles (kilometers) of its northeastern border with Cameroon to stop Islamic extremists using the country as a haven and launch pad for attacks. Brig. Gen. Rogers Nicholas of the 23rd Armored Brigade told reporters Saturday he was exercising emergency powers because it is “imperative” to seal the border between Cameroon and Nigeria’s Adamawa state against illegal crossings. He said customs and immigration officials are working with soldiers and police “to ensure that nothing crosses into Nigeria.” Large stretches of that porous border are generally left unpatrolled. The move will affect hundreds of traders who routinely cross the border.
The border between Borno state and Cameroon, which Nigerian troops and a jet bomber crossed last month in pursuit of extremists, apparently remains open.
KURDISH VICTORY OVER aL-QAEDA IN SYRIA
BEIRUT – Syrian activists say Kurdish fighters have captured a northeastern town near the Iraqi border after days of combat with members of an al-Qaida breakaway group. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say members of the so-called People’s Protection Units captured Tel Brak on Saturday.
It was the latest gain by Kurds in almost a year of fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The units are dominated by members of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, Syria’s most powerful Kurdish group. Since mid-2013, Kurdish fighters have been on the offensive capturing wide areas in northeastern Syria from the Islamic State. The Tel Brak battle left some 19 people dead.
KERRY REALISTIC ABOUT UN’S SYRIAN RESOLUTION
The breakthrough this weekend came when Russia, Syria’s closest ally, and China, another supporter, agreed with the Western and Arab-backed resolution.
After two weeks of negotiations and a watering-down of the original text, the two countries decided to join the rest of the 15-member council in sending a strong message, especially to the Assad government, that food, medicine and other essentials must not be blocked to civilians caught in the conflict. Strong evidence suggests Assad troops killed hundreds last August 21 in a chemical weapons attack on rebels in suburb Damascus.
According to the United Nations, 9.3 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance and 6.8 million have fled their homes but remain in the country.
The resolution does not threaten sanctions — Russia insisted that this reference be dropped from the original text. Instead, it asks U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report to the council every 30 days on implementation and expresses the council’s intention to take “further steps” if the resolution’s demands aren’t fulfilled. All Security Council resolutions are legally binding, but what remains to be seen is whether this resolution has an impact on the ground since it will be so difficult to enforce.
The resolution demands that all parties, especially the Syrian government, “promptly allow rapid, safe and unhindered access … across conflict lines and across borders” for humanitarian aid, and it calls on both sides “to immediately lift the sieges of populated areas. It further demands that all parties “cease depriving civilians of food and medicine indispensable to their survival.” And it also demands a halt to all attacks against civilians, including indiscriminate shelling and aerial attacks using barrel bombs in populated areas.
The resolution also focuses on strongly condemns the increased terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliates and other terrorist groups, and calls on the government and opposition to defeat the terrorists and “demand that all foreign fighters immediately withdraw from Syria.”
Finally, The resolution demands that the government and opposition work toward “a genuine political transition that meets the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and enables them independently and democratically to determine their own future.”
Russia and China had vetoed three previous resolutions backed by Western nations that would have pressured Assad to end the conflict, which according to activists has killed more than 136,000 people.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow supported the humanitarian resolution because “many Russian considerations were borne in mind, and as a result the document took on a balanced nature.” He accused the resolution’s sponsors — Australia, Luxembourg and Jordan — and its supporters of raising the humanitarian crisis in the council “only after it became clear that attempts to use a deterioration of this humanitarian situation in order to carry out a regime change was unsuccessful.”
Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari Syria told the council that since the beginning of the crisis the Syrian government has provided 75 percent of the humanitarian assistance in the country while the U.N. and other organizations have supplied only 25 percent.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday hailed the U.N. Security Council uniting for the first time on a resolution regarding Syria’s humanitarian crisis, calling it a potential “hinge-point” in ending that country’s deadly, 3-year-long civil war.
The agreement calls for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and opposition forces to provide immediate access across the country to humanitarian aid for all Syrians. Kerry said. “After three years of slaughter and savagery, people rightfully will question whether progress is possible, but this resolution holds the promise of something real.” Still, Kerry warned that such an agreement is only the first steps toward ending the international crisis in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions forced from Syria and into refugee camps. “The test is whether the words of the Security Council are matched with the life-saving actions the Syrian people so desperately and urgently need.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
SUICIDE BOMBERS KEEP SHOWING UP AND BLOWING UP IN LEBANON
BEIRUT – A senior Lebanese army officer says a suicide attacker has blown himself up at an army checkpoint at the entrance of the town of Hermel after soldiers tried to search his car. Word on casualties has not yet been given.
Hermel is a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group. A series of attacks have struck Shiite areas in Lebanon over the past months, killing and wounding scores of people.
AFGHANISTAN’S KARZAI MEETS WITH TALIBAN LEADERS
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s High Peace Council says it held meetings with a breakaway faction of senior Taliban leaders in the United Arab Emirates.
The Dubai meetings are the first, fresh Afghan-initiated efforts to restart peace talks aimed at bringing a negotiated end to the conflict ahead of the final withdrawal of international combat troops due at the end of this year.
The Taliban has denied links to the faction, organized by former Taliban finance minister Aga Jan Mohtism.
The High Peace Council said in a statement Saturday that the delegation it met with clearly had indicated they were ready for peace talks and that both sides agreed on the need for further dialogue — both inside and outside of Afghanistan.
TALIBAN WON’T TALK TO OUR GOVERNMENT NOW
SLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – Afghanistan’s Taliban says it has suspended “mediation” with the United States to exchange captive U.S. soldier Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban prisoners held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, halting — at least temporarily — what was considered the best chance yet of securing the 27-year-old’s freedom since his capture in 2009. In a terse Pashto language statement emailed to the Associated Press on Sunday, Zabihullah Mujahed said, “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate has decided to suspend the process for some time due to the current complex political situation in the country. The process will remain suspended without the exchange of the prisoners until our decision to resume.”
The Taliban spokesman did not elaborate on what “political situation” in Afghanistan led to the suspension of talks or say when they might resume. Afghanistan is in the middle of a presidential election campaign. President Hamid Karzai cannot seek another term in office under the Afghan constitution which allows only two terms as president. The election is scheduled for April 5.
Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was last seen in a video released in December, footage seen as “proof of life” demanded by the United States. Bergdahl is believed to be held in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mujahed said the indirect talks with the United States had been mediated by the Middle Eastern state of Qatar, where the Taliban established a political office last June. The video of Bergdahl was part of the negotiations which were to lead to the eventual transfer of five senior Taliban leaders held since 2002 in Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. State Department has refused to acknowledge the negotiations, but a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations confirmed to The Associated Press that indirect talks were underway.
The five Taliban detainees at the heart of the proposal are the most senior Afghans still held at the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba. Each has been held since 2002
AMERICAN TAXPAYERS COULD NEED MORE THAN A CENTURY
TO PAY FOR OUR WARS
The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher. Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as the nation went to war, seeking to quickly bolster its talent pool and expand its ranks. Those decisions and the protracted nation-building efforts launched in both countries will generate expenses for years to come, Linda J. Bilmes, a public policy professor, wrote in the report that was released Thursday.
“As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives,”the report says. “The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”
Bilmes said the United States has spent almost $2 trillion already for the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those costs, she said, are only a fraction of the ultimate price tag. The biggest ongoing expense will be providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of the two conflicts.
“Historically, the bill for these costs has come due many decades later,” the report says, noting that the peak disbursement of disability payments for America’s warriors in the last century came decades after the conflicts ended. “Payments to Vietnam and first Gulf War veterans are still climbing.”
Spending borrowed money to pay for the wars has also made them more expensive, the study noted. The conflicts have added $2 trillion to America’s debt, representing roughly 20 percent of the debt incurred between 2001 and 2012.
Bilmes’s estimate provides a higher range than another authoritative study on the same issue by Brown University’s Eisenhower Research Project. Brown researchers put the price tag at roughly $4 trillion. Both figures are dramatically higher than what U.S. officials projected they would spend when they were planning to go to war in Iraq. Stephen Friedman, a senior White House official, left government in 2002 after irking his colleagues by publicly estimating that the Iraq war could end up costing up to $200 billion.
It’s unclear how long Washington will keep paying bills for that conflict, which dragged on for nearly a decade and became deeply unpopular at home and in Iraq. Judging from history, it could take quite awhile. The Associated Press recently found that the federal government is still cutting checks each month to relatives of Civil War veterans nearly 150 years after the end of that war.
By Ernesto Londono
FIVE FORMER PRISONERS FROM GUANTANAMO
SUE THE U.S. FOR ABUSE
Five former Guantanamo detainees are seeking damages for what they say were years of sexual, mental and physical abuse at the US detention center, where they were held without charge or trial.
The men from Turkey, Uzbekistan and Algeria, who are now settled in other countries, alleged on Friday in a US appeals court they were subjected to forced nudity, sexual harassment and beatings, first in Afghanistan and then at the military jail in Cuba.
Justices will make their ruling in several weeks, but one of them, Judge David Tatel, said military and civilian officials at the Pentagon had failed in their duty.
“Their job is to protect the detainees from abuse, they failed to do so,” he said.
Russell Cohen, lawyer for the men, said in the appeal: “From their earliest interactions with US soldiers and interrogators, Mr Celikgogus, Mr Sen, Mr Mert, Mr Hasam and Mr Muhammad were subjected to physical, mental and religious abuse carried out by US soldiers and/or civilians under the command of officials in the Department of Defense.”
Cohen said in the appeal three of the men spent two more years at Guantanamo after they had been cleared for release, and “continue to suffer the physical and mental effects of their detention, abuse and torture, and the stigma of their having been detained in Guantanamo”.
“Plaintiffs were subjected to various forms of religious and cultural abuse,” he said, adding that this included the confiscation of their Korans.
The US government argues that neither US nor international law applies.
“Plaintiffs have no constitutional rights as they are non-resident aliens located outside United States sovereign territory,” it said in response.
Shayana Kadidal, senior staff attorney at the non-profit Center for Constitutional Rights, said the men’s lives had been “irreparably damaged”.
“The US government acknowledges they were wrongly imprisoned for years yet refuses to compensate them and help them rebuild their lives,” said Kadidal.
“Guantanamo may close one day, but as long as the Obama administration refuses to apologize in any way for what happened there, these men will carry their scars forever.”
AAP
TURKEY’S PRIME MINISTER SOUNDING LIKE A COMMUNIST
ANKARA, TURKEY – A Turkish parliamentary committee is debating a government proposal to increase the powers and immunities of the nation’s spy agency — the latest in a string of moves critics say is undermining democracy in the EU-membership aspiring country. The proposal before the internal affairs committee on Saturday follows a wave of contentious measures introduced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, including legislation that increases government controls over the Internet and the judiciary.
The proposed legislation would allow Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency greater eavesdropping and operational rights and access to personal data without court orders. Journalists publishing leaked documents would face jail terms. The agency would not be prosecuted for its actions without the prime minister’s permission. The proposal is expected to reach the floor next week.
ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER APPLAUDS ARREST OF DRUG LORD
WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder says the capture in Mexico of the world’s most-wanted drug lord is a “landmark achievement.” Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was taken into custody Saturday morning in the resort city of Mazatlan. He is being taken to prison in Mexico and faces multiple drug trafficking indictments in the U.S.
Holder says in a statement that the arrest of the Sinaloa cartel drug chief is a “victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States.”
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson calls the arrest a “milestone” in law enforcement efforts to fight drug trafficking along the border.
NO MORE FORTUNE FOR THESE BRAZILIAN TELLERS
RIO DE JANEIRO – Police in Brazil say nine members of a gang that specialized in blowing up automatic teller machines have been killed during a shootout with officers. Police say 80 officers confronted at least 15 heavily armed men after they used dynamite early Saturday to blow up a cash machine in a rural area of Minas Gerais state. Five other suspects were arrested and one escaped.
Police say they’ve been investigating the gang for months, and were tipped off about a plan to blow up all five cash machines in the small town of Itamonte.
Brazil has seen similar crimes in recent years as automatic tellers are used increasingly in the country.
FORMER HEAD OF LIBERIA’S FORESTRY AGENCY
ARRESTED FOR STEALING MILLIONS
MONROVIA, LIBERIA – Liberia’s information minister says the former head of the West African country’s state forestry agency has been arrested and indicted for allegedly defrauding the country of millions of dollars by issuing bogus permits that allowed foreign companies to exploit the country’s hardwood forests between 2006 and 2012.
Lewis Brown said that Moses Wogbeh, former managing director of the Forestry Development Authority was held at Monrovia Central Prison Friday night. Brown said that a lawyer for the forestry agency has also been arrested and seven other officials are being sought on the same charges. He said the illegal permits defrauded the government of 12 to 15 million dollars.
Wogbeh was dismissed last year when an investigation panel found that he and others misused Liberia’s forests by granting illegal contracts.
THE DANGER OF CURRENT NUCLEAR POWER LEAKS AT FUKUSHIMA
The Fukushima nuclear plant is a relentless disaster. Another plume of radioactive water— the biggest in the last six months — has escaped from the plant, its operator Tepco announced. Thursday. The 100-ton spill was traced to two valves left open by mistake, Tepco said.
Each liter of escaped water contains an average of 230 million becquerels (a unit of radioactivity) of particles emitting beta radiation, the New York Times reports. Half of the particles are likely strontium 90, which means the leak contains 3.8 million times the legal limit for drinking water. Strontium 90 can cause bone cancer and leukemia, and is absorbed by the human body much like calcium, the Times reports. That’s 46 times more radioactive than the groundwater near the plant, where contamination was disclosed earlier this month.
It is hard to comprehend the number of radioactive water accidents at Fukushima since an earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant in 2011. At a point last August, the Japanese government announced that roughly 330 tons (about 80,000 gallons) of radioactive water leaked into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima plant every day. The same month, experts feared that a vast underground reservoir of radioactive water was perilously close to reaching the ocean.
The following October, radioactive water leaked while workers transferred water between two tanks. A few days later, Tepco announced a smaller amount of radioactive water had leaked into the ocean after workers miscalculated the capacity of the tank due to it sitting on a slope. The list goes on.
The evacuation and other drastic life changes prompted by the event is also taking a toll, especially on the elderly. More people have died of stress and other related conditions than from immediate injuries in the 2011 disaster, The Japan Times reported. While the long-term medical impact of elevated radiation in the area is largely unknown, 2,000 Fukushima workers face a heightened risk of thyroid cancer.
Concern over potential harm from the disaster has recently spread to the U.S. military. Over the past year, more than 70 U.S. sailors and Marines who were deployed to Japan in 2011 to aid tsunami victims have joined a billion-dollar lawsuit against Tepco. According to the suit, they suffered serious health issues after the mission, and allege that the company did not disclose information about the level of danger associated with radiation exposure near the nuclear plant.
Medical experts who spoke with CNN are skeptical of a connection between the soldiers’ ailments and their mission, saying that it is too soon to attribute their illnesses to radiation. But plaintiffs like Lindsay Cooper and Kim Gieseking, who both say they’ve suffered from debilitating thyroid issues, are sure their time in Japan was the cause. Navy Officer Steve Simmons, another plaintiff in the case, lost all control of his legs a year after the mission. The Navy has acknowledged that the USS Ronald Reagan sailed through the nuclear plume, but maintain that it sailed far farther from the coast than the lawsuit alleges, according to CNN.
WHILE OBAMA AND KERRY PUSH CLIMATE CHANGE, CHINA KILLS
According to the World Health Organization, Beijing’s air pollution has reached eight times the recommended levels as smog in the city persisted for a fourth day, prompting China’s environmental protection regulator to send inspection teams to the capital and surrounding areas. The concentration of PM2.5, fine particulates that pose the greatest risk to human health, was 198 micrograms per cubic meter near Tiananmen Square in China’s capital at 11 a.m, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said on its website. The WHO recommends levels of no higher than 25 micrograms per cubic meter in 24 hours.
China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said today it has dispatched 12 groups to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province to determine if local authorities have taken adequate measures against air pollution and whether curbs on steel, coal, glass panel and cement production are in place. The regulator also sent an urgent notice requiring local governments to better predict air quality and make timely disclosure to the public.
Beijing maintained its air pollution alert at orange, triggering orders for some enterprises to limit production and a ban on outdoor barbecues and fireworks, as smog levels were projected to stay hazardous until at least Monday morning.
Pollution in Beijing and Shanghai placed them among the least hospitable of 40 international cities listed in a report by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, which ranked China’s capital second from bottom, ahead of Moscow.
Smog will persist until Monday morning in Beijing, Tianjin, and parts of Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, Xinhua reported today, citing China’s meteorological agency. The agency forecast the smog will ease on Thursday when a cold front is expected to bring winds.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
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BOLIVIA FORMS ITS OWN ABORTION LAWS
The Constitutional Court of Bolivia has upheld the country’s laws protecting unborn children despite international pressure from UN experts. Bolivia’s highest court handed down a surprise ruling in a challenge to its criminal prohibition on abortion from advocacy group IPAS. The court held that unborn life must be protected, though it expanded a rape exception, and opened the door to embryo destructive research and the morning after pill.
The case has been highly publicized in Bolivia, and was pending in the courts for two years. President Evo Morales reportedly weighed into the debate last year saying that “any abortion is a crime.”
The court’s arguments for protecting life are original. It asserted ancient indigenous cosmic beliefs that life is in constant perpetuity, without beginning or end; therefore everything that is life or “could potentially generate life” is protected by the Bolivian constitution. Abortion-on-demand should never be permitted, it continued, and abortion is a crime during the later stages of pregnancy.
Of note to abortion groups will be how the court disregarded the recommendations of two UN committees that asked Bolivia to de-criminalize abortion last year.
Proponents of an international right to abortion want domestic courts to strike down national laws based on the recommendations of UN human rights monitoring committees in order to claim there is an international customary norm on abortion. So far they have not had the success they seek. Only two high courts in Latin America have recognized the suggestions of UN monitoring committees on abortion as authoritative or binding, in Colombia and Argentina. Most courts, including the high courts of Mexico, Peru, and Chile, have declined to follow the recommendations of UN monitoring committees on abortion.
While the court inflicted a stinging defeat on IPAS and other abortion groups working in the country, it did not leave them entirely empty-handed. The Bolivian justices followed the lead of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in determining when life begins. In a ruling about the legal status of embryos, the Costa Rica-based Court decided that human life does not begin at conception, when an embryo is formed, but when the embryo is implanted in the uterus.
The justices also struck down the requirement that a woman press charges or obtain a judicial order against her rapist in order to avail herself of the rape exception in Bolivia’s criminal law. Even though evidence shows this could mean impunity for rapists and sex traffickers, the court said these requirements would constitute cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, echoing suggestions to Bolivia from the Committee Against Torture, a UN committee that monitors the implementation of the UN treaty against torture.
LifeNews.com Note: Stefano Gennarini, J.D. writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.
TODAY’S NEWS FLASHES
- (CNN)– A restaurant manager died and 27 other people were hospitalized after carbon monoxide poisoning at a restaurant in New York City.
- (Reuters) – The United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said.
- (CNN) – Traces of narcotics and hypodermic needles were found with the bodies of two former Navy SEALs who were American security officers on the container ship Maersk Alabama. Jeffrey Reynolds and Mark Kennedy, both 44, were former Navy Seals. The 500-foot Maersk Alabama was the target of an attempted hijacking in the pirate-infested waters off East Africa in 2009 — an incident that inspired the 2013 film “Captain Phillips.”
- (CNN)– A U.S. student who went missing while studying abroad in Italy was found dead inside a railroad tunnel in central Rome, police there said Saturday. 21-year-old John Durkin was one of six students in a study abroad program in Rome through Trinity College in Connecticut.
- TORONTO It’s been more than a week since 58-year-old Canadian filmmaker Dave Walker vanished without a trace while filming in Cambodia.
Walker’s cellphone, laptop and passport were all later found in his room.
Walker was in Cambodia to film “The Poorest Man.” The movie is about the brutal Khmer Rouge, the communist regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s torturing, overworking and starving millions of citizens to death. Walker’s cousin said, “He’s been interviewing people for the film,” Wallbridge-Madden said. “Maybe he talked to the wrong person.”
- NEW YORK (WABC) –The outbreak of the mumps at Fordham University has spread from one campus to another. There are now 25 cases reported. All of the infected patients had the mumps vaccine, but doctors say it’s not 100 percent effective.
- In Savannah, Georgia, a movie crew was working on train tracks without permission from the railroad when a freight train crashed into the production team and its equipment, killing one and injuring seven others. The Savannah-based crew was shooting footage for “Midnight Rider,” starring William Hurt.
- Men are to be banned from becoming Queen or Princess of Wales as part of an unprecedented effort to rewrite more than 700 years of law to prevent unintended consequences of gay marriage.
Maria von Trapp died yesterday at 99 at her family home in Stowe, Vermont. She was the second-eldest daughter of Baron von Trapp. She was the last survivor of the brothers and sisters who were dramatized in the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The Sound of Music. It was a surprise to many that she lived so long because she had a weak heart ever since childhood.
DID YOU SENSE THAT THE END OF THE WORLD WAS YESTERDAY?
The ancient Vikings must be rolling in their graves. Their prophecy that the end of the world would occur on 22 February 2014 has suffered the same fate as the Mayan calendar and Y2K. However, because their prophecy came from so many centuries ago, let’s face it, they may have missed it by a day or two. So whenever you plan to do in the next several hours, make it special – IF you believe the Vikings. If not, have a hot fudge Sunday.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
A lot of people who worry about the future }
should be preparing for it instead
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SUNDAY AFTERNOON NEWS, February 23, 2014 CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY