NEWS OF THE DAY

 

 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that the US justice system was suffering from a “calamitous collapse in the rule of law”, as Washington reeled from the sensational exposure of vast spy agency surveillance programmes. Speaking in an interview with AFP at Ecuador’s London embassy, where he has been holed up for almost a year, the founder of the whistleblowing website accused the US government of trying to “launder” its activities with regard to the far-reaching electronic spying effort revealed on Thursday.

Obama defends surveillance dragnet

  WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama has defended US spy agency programs which trawl phone and Internet data as a “modest encroachment” on privacy needed to keep Americans safe from terrorism.

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Obama said, seeking to quell public disquiet after two days of explosive revelations hinting at the scope of a vast and classified government data mining operation.

Obama, in San Jose, California, hit out at what he said was “hype” over reports the National Security Agency (NSA) logs details of millions of domestic calls, for possible later use in anti-terror operations.

He also defended a program called PRISM, in which NSA and FBI agents are tapping into the servers of nine US Internet giants, including Facebook, Google, YouTube, Apple and others, as they try to subvert terror plots originating abroad.

“This does not apply to US citizens. And it does not apply to people living in the United States,” Obama said.

Civil liberties and privacy groups have raised alarm at the two programs, reported by the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers, warning they are “Orwellian” and could be unconstitutional.

Obama said he welcomed the debate, but warned the programs had previously been kept under wraps to avoid tipping off America’s enemies and said they made only “modest encroachments” on privacy.

“I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society,” he said.

He repeatedly argued that Congress had been kept fully apprised of the activity and had voted to authorize it. Federal and secret intelligence courts were also used to present abuse, he said.

The Washington Post, citing a career intelligence officer, reported late Thursday the NSA had direct access to Internet firm servers to track an individual’s web presence via audio, video, photographs and emails.

The paper said the leak came from an officer “with firsthand experience of these systems and horror at their capabilities.”

“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer was quoted as saying. Internet giants, however, denied opening their doors for US spy agencies. —AFP

Xi, Obama urge new relations amid hacking row

US president Barack Obama listens as Chinese president Xi Jinping answers a question following their bilateral meeting at the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California on Friday.

 RANCHO MIRAGE: Throwing formality aside at a desert retreat, the US and Chinese leaders pledged a new approach in ties, but President Barack Obama took the rising power to task on cyber-hacking charges.

Skipping the usual summit pageantry, Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping both went without neckties at a resort under the blazing California sun as they looked to forge a personal chemistry that could shape the years to come.

In their first meeting since Xi assumed power in March, Obama voiced hope the US superpower and fast-growing China “can forge a new model of cooperation between countries based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

“It is in the United States’ interests that China continues on the path of success because we believe that a peaceful and stable and prosperous China is not only good for the Chinese, but also good for the world and the United States,” Obama said before a leisurely dinner.

Hovering over the summit at the Sunnylands retreat was a vexing question for both countries—whether China’s rise to regional and global prominence will mean an inevitable clash with the United States.

Obama wasted no time in hitting a key theme of the visit from the US side—complaints of an alleged Chinese Internet spying effort targeting American military and commercial secrets and intellectual property.

He voiced concern over the alleged theft—which a recent study said was costing the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year—and urged “common rules of the road” to protect against hacking. —AFP 

Five die in Santa Monica shooting

  California: At least five people are dead and several others injured after a gun rampage in the beachfront city of Santa Monica, California, police say.

The attack began at a house and ended on a college campus where police say they shot the gunman in the library.

Police initially put the death toll at six, but later revised it to five people dead, including the shooter.

The gunman was in his late 20s and had been carrying an assault-style rifle, say witnesses.

President Barack Obama was at a fundraiser not far from where the shooting unfolded just before noon on Friday.

The gunman, dressed in black and wearing an ammunition belt and bullet-proof jacket, began by firing shots at the house, witnesses said. The property was then engulfed by fire although it is not clear how the blaze started.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the first two victims were the gunman’s father and brother.

Neighbour Jerry Rathner said she witnessed the shooting from her veranda, the Associated Press reported.

The gunman then walked to the street corner, pointed his gun at a driver and told her to pull over.

He signalled to another car with a female driver to slow down and fired into the car several times.

Ms Rathner said she rushed to help the victim and saw she had a shoulder injury.

“He fired three to four shots into the car, boom, boom, boom, right at her,” Ms Rathner said.

Authorities say the violence then moved to a street corner near Santa Monica College where the suspect fired at passing vehicles. —BBC Online 

Syria regime takes last rebel bastion near Qusayr

A vehicle is seen burning in the village of Buweida, north of Qusayr, in Syria’s central Homs province on Saturday as regime forces sought to mop up the final pockets of rebel resistance north of Qusayr, after retaking the key town that was an insurgent bastion for a year, a watchdog said.

 DAMASCUS: Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have now seized all of the Qusayr area in central Syria, state television reported on Saturday, as the United Nations launched a record aid appeal for refugees.

Saturday’s seizure of Eastern Bweida village, the last rebel bastion in the area, brought the entire Qusayr region near the border with Lebanon back under regime control.

It came four days after Qusayr, a strategically key town for both the regime and the rebels which had been in insurgent hands for a year, fell to the army and forces from Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement.

“Our heroic troops have restored safety and security in Eastern Bweida” in the central Syrian province of Homs, the state broadcaster said.

Hundreds of people who fled Qusayr as it fell on Wednesday had taken refuge there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was concerned about the fate of hundreds of fighters and civilians, many of them wounded. —AFP 

Iran condemns deadly Iraq attack on its pilgrims

  TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday condemned a deadly attack the day before in neighbouring Iraq, in which at least 14 Iranian Shiite pilgrims were killed, the official IRNA news agency said.

“Iran condemns this indiscriminate terrorist act, which is contrary to Islamic and human values,” it cited foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi as saying.

Iranian television reports said 14 pilgrims from Iran were killed and 45 wounded on Friday when a parked vehicle rigged with explosives detonated in the restive town of Muqdadiyah north of Baghdad.

The blast occurred as the pilgrims’ bus passed through the town en route from the Iranian border to the Shiite holy city of Najaf. —AFP

Five die in Russian copter crash

  MOSCOW: Five people died when a helicopter on a commercial flight crashed and burst into flames in a remote region of Far Eastern Russia, the emergency situations ministry said Saturday.

Rescuers found the bodies of four crew members and one passenger in the burnt-out wreckage of the Mi-8 helicopter in the Khabarovsk region after a two-day search. The helicopter was carrying three tons of cargo, the ministry said.

The helicopter had taken off from the village of Tugur on the Sea of Okhotsk and was flying to the remote inland village of Briakan when it crashed on Thursday. —AFP 

Somali warlords battle over key southern port

  MOGADISHU: At least eight people have been killed in fighting between rival Somali warlords battling for control of the southern port city of Kismayo, witnesses said Saturday.

Gunmen from the Ras Kamboni militia of former Islamist warlord Ahmed Ma-dobe—recently self-appointed “president” of the southern Jubaland region—battled against forces loyal to Iftin Hassan Basto, another leader claiming to be president.

Fighting broke out Friday evening, paused overnight, but resumed on Saturday. “Fighting started when soldiers from Ras Kamboni attacked and tried to arrest me,” Basto told reporters. “But my men fought back and defended me.”

Several rival factions claim ownership of Kismayo, a former stronghold of the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab, where Kenyan troops in an African Union force are now based.

Kenyan troops, who invaded Somalia in 2011, back Madobe’s control of the strategic and economic hub, but neither the title of “president” nor the region of Jubaland is recognised by the weak central government in Mogadishu. —AFP 

Egypt court adjourns Mubarak trial, bars lawyers

Egyptian female supporters of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak hold his portraits outside the Egyptian police academy in Cairo during his retrial on Saturday.

 CAIRO: An Egyptian court in the retrial of fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak for alleged complicity in the killings of protesters barred lawyers in civil cases from the proceedings at a brief session on Saturday.

Presiding judge Mahmoud al-Rashidi adjourned the court to Monday, shortly after opening the second hearing in Mubarak’s retrial, a criminal case.

Mubarak, 85, watched the proceedings while sitting up on a stretcher inside the defendants’ cage, shared with seven of his former security commanders and his two sons.

His original trial led to a life sentence for Mubarak and his interior minister Habib al-Adly, and acquittals for six police commanders.

But an appeals court ordered a retrial, citing procedural errors. Rashidi on Saturday barred lawyers filing civil suits against Mubarak and his co-defendants from attending hearings in the retrial. Those filing civil suits had been allowed to attend the first trial.

One of the main lawyers filing civil suits, Sameh Ashur, told AFP Rashidi’s ruling would not have a major impact on the proceedings.

But the decision angered the lawyers in the makeshift court in a police academy lecture hall outside Cairo.

“The people demand the cleansing of the judiciary,” they chanted.

Mubarak’s lawyer Farid al-Deeb appeared visibly satisfied with the ruling. He had demanded the same of the judge in Mubarak’s first trial. —AFP

Senate urged to pass immigration overhaul bill

  WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Saturday urged lawmakers to pass an immigration overhaul bill that the Senate is due to debate this week, saying that it was “commonsense” though not perfect.

“For years, our out-of-date immigration system has actually harmed our economy and threatened our security,” Obama said in his weekly radio and television address.

“The bill before the Senate isn’t perfect. It’s a compromise. Nobody will get everything they want—not Democrats, not Republicans, not me,” he conceded.

“But it is a bill that’s largely consistent with the principles I’ve repeatedly laid out for commonsense immigration reform.” —AFP 

Thousands join Turkey protests defying PM

  ISTANBUL: Thousands of angry Turks took to the streets on Saturday to join mass anti-government protests, defying Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s call to end the worst civil unrest of his decade-long rule.

From the early morning, protesters began arriving in Istanbul’s Taksim Square with food and blankets to settle in for a weekend of demonstrations, adding to the growing tent city in nearby Gezi Park.

“A week ago, I could never imagine myself sleeping out on the streets of Istanbul,” said 22-year-old Aleyna, wrapped up under a blanket with a stray kitten, pointing to her dirty clothes. “Now I don’t know how I can ever go back.”

Fresh demonstrations were also planned in the capital Ankara as the crisis entered its ninth day. —AFP 

Mali holds crisis talks with Tuareg rebels

  OUAGADOUGOU: Talks between Malian authorities and armed ethnic Tuareg rebels aimed at resolving the conflict in the north of the country opened on Saturday after a day’s delay.

“The aim is to find a durable solution to the grave crisis engulfing Mali,” said President Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso which is mediating the negotiations.

Tensions remain high in the north of Mali after heavy fighting near the rebel-held city of Kidal, stoking concerns about the staging of planned nationwide elections next month.

Kidal, a town prized by the Tuaregs, has been occupied by the rebel National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) since the end of January. —AFP