Syrian troops near Turkey border

Syrian troops near Turkey border

Syrian refugees walk as they enter the Turkish side of

the border at the border zone between Syria and Turkey,

near the Turkish village of Guvecci.

          Syrian troops massed near the Turkish border, witnesses said on Thursday, raising tensions with Ankara as the president, Bashar al-Assad, uses increasing military force against a popular revolt.

          Hundreds of terrified refugees crossed into Turkey to escape an army assault, witnesses said. Syrian troops stormed the village of Managh, in a rural region.

          ‘I was contacted by relatives from Managh (15 km south of the border). Armoured personnel carriers are firing their machineguns randomly

          Sunni Turkey has become increasingly critical of Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Islam, after previously backing him in his drive to seek peace with Israel and improve relations with the United States.

          A Turkish Red Crescent official told reporters about 600 Syrians had crossed the border on Thursday morning.

                    He was referring to a scorched earth military campaign in the arable hill region southwest of Aleppo, during which rights groups say Syrian security forces have killed more than 130 civilians and arrested 2,000.

          The Syrian troops hauled down the Turkish flag and replaced it with a Syrian one. They stayed through the morning and then withdrew shortly before noon.

China plans to step up fight against corruption

China plans to step up fight against corruption

         

    China's ruling Communist Party says it plans more inspections and supervision of officials as it battles corruption, a deep-rooted problem that has gotten worse and could threaten political stability.

          The party's vice chairman for discipline Wu Yuliang said at a news onference Wednesday that it will monitor the use of public vehicles and supervise officials' financial assets to curb and combat illegal financial activities.

          China has launched numerous efforts to curb graft, but it remains common among Communist Party officials. Corruption is often a focal point of protests by ordinary Chinese.

Extrajudicial Killings

Rajapaksa summoned by US court

The Tigers were also accused of crimes against humanity during their separatist war.

Sri Lanka's justice ministry received a summons issued by a US federal court for President Mahinda Rajapaksa linking him with a extrajudicial murder case filed under the Hague convention by relatives of Tamil victims.
However Sri Lanka's president has cited constitutional immunity and refused to go before a US court where he is being sued for $30 million over the killing of a Tamil man, an official said yesterday.
A US-based Tamil lobby had filed the case claiming damages from him as commander-in-chief of the Sri Lankan armed forces for the alleged killing of Raghiar Manoharan, a member of the island's ethnic Tamil minority.
The alleged killings took place during the Sri Lankan civil war.
"Under our laws, the president has immunity," justice ministry secretary Suhada Gamlath told AFP.
"We don't have to respond to such summons and I have written to the District Court of the Southern District of Columbia of our legal position last week," Gamlath said.
Sri Lanka is facing mounting international criticism over alleged war crimes committed in the final months of its battle against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels who were defeated in May 2009.
The UN and rights groups have said that they had "credible allegations" that thousands of civilians were killed by government troops.

Mobile courts, launched against pickets for the first time of Bangladesh.

The police cordon off a few activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in front of the party’s central office at Naya Paltan in Dhaka

 Mobile courts jail scores as 36-hr strike continues

                Mobile courts, launched against pickets for the first time of Bangladesh.

The mobile courts sentenced 80 people, including 58 in Dhaka, for their suspected involvement in picketing and the law enforcers arrested more than 400 people at places across the country, including 130 in the capital, till midnight while a taxicab and a minibus were set on fire at Dhanmondi and Tongi at night as the non-stop general strike continued.

            The police also arrested the BNP’s vice-chairman Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, also a former home minister, and the party chief’s adviser Hafizuddin Ahmed, a former water resources minister, when they were leading a procession at Mohakhali about 10:00am. They were taken to the Cantonment police station and were kept in the place till midnight.

            The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh Jatiya Party (Naziur) and Sammilita Ulema Mashaikh Parishad on Friday announced to enforce the general strike in protest at the government’s ‘conspiracy’ to change the constitution unilaterally and scrap the provision for the election-time caretaker government.

It was the second general strike enforced by the BNP and allies in protest at the government’s move to change the constitution and scrap the caretaker government system.

Islami Oikya Jote, led by Fazlul Haque Amini, which is the other component of the BNP-led alliance, extended its ‘full support’ for the general strike.

Some offices and apparel factories, however, remained open.

Loading and unloading of goods at jetties at the Chittagong and Mongla ports remained normal but the transport of goods to and from the ports remained suspended, port authorities said.

The Bangladesh Railway and the civil aviation authorities said that train communication and flight operations were normal.

The Supreme Court Bar Association president, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, alleged that the arrested opposition leaders and activists were being sentenced summarily in such proceedings in ‘Ayub Khan-style’, a reference to the rule of former Pakistani dictator.

Mahbub, also an adviser to the BNP chairperson, Khaleda Zia, alleged that the arrested were convicted after being denied their constitutional right to defend themselves.

Hardly any pickets could be seen elsewhere the city although at some places they made some hit-and-run explosion of crude bombs. But no injury was reported.

A group of BNP leaders and activists and the police scuffled when the party’s acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and the opposition chief whip in the parliament, Zainul Abdin Farroque, tried to bring out a procession.

About 15 BNP activists were dragged into a police van by policemen, in plainclothes and in uniform.

Some BNP men, led by the party’s standing committee member Nazrul Islam Khan, later sat on the footpath in front of the party office for hours with being cordoned off by the police.

Two crude bombs went off in front of the BNP office and another at Fakirapool in which two policemen were injured.

Six Jamaat-e-Islami men were arrested at Mirpur Section 11 about 6:15am and a mobile court jailed them or a month on charges of ‘obstructing lawmen.’ They were Amirul Momenin, 24, Al-Fatah Habibullah, 35, Jahangir Alam, 33, Hossain Ahmed, 53, Jamaluddin, 60, and Nurul Amin, 34.

The strike was peaceful at Motijheel, Gulistan, on Bangabandhu Avenue, in Supreme Court and Purana Paltan areas.

The Port city Chittagong police had arrested 31 BNP activists, including 13 women, at places in the city.

Mobile courts in Chittagong jailed 28 BNP activists for varying terms after their arrest on Sunday. The activists were also fined varying amounts.

Sixteen leaders of the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami and Khelafat-e-Majlis were arrested when they were picketing at places in Khulna city.

In Sylhet, the police picked up 14 activists of the BNP and Jamaat from places in the city.

Hillary warns against 'new colonialism'

Hillary warns against 'new colonialism' in Africa

 

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledges dancers welcoming 

her on Friday in Lusaka, Zambia, at the start of a five-day Africa trip that 

will also take her to Tanzania and Ethiopia to highlight the Obama 

administration's drive to help African countries meet challenges ranging from 

HIV/AIDS to food security and accelerate often impressive economic growth. 

              US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, Africa must beware of “new colonialism” as China expands ties there and focus instead on partners able to help build productive capacity on the continent.

                 Clinton, asked in a television interview in Zambia on Saturday about China’s rising influence on the continent, said Africans should be wary of friends who only deal with elites.
                   “We don’t want to see a new colonialism in Africa,” Clinton said in a television interview in Lusaka, the first stop on a five-day Africa tour.
                 “When people come to Africa to make investments, we want them to do well but also want them to do good,” she said. “We don’t want them to undermine good governance in Africa.”
China pumped almost $10 billion in investment into Africa in 2009 and trade has taken off as Beijing buys oil and other raw materials to fuel its booming economy.
                      “We saw that during colonial times it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave,” she said.
                      “The United States is investing in the people of Zambia, not just the elites, and we are investing for the long run.”
                       African states, she said, could learn much from Asia on how governments can help support economic growth but said she did not see Beijing as a political role model.
“We are beginning to see a lot of problems” in China that will intensify over the next 10 years, she said, pointing to friction over Chinese efforts to control the Internet as one example. “There are more lessons to learn from the United States and democracies,” Hillary Clinton said.