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Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts

Friday, April 18, 2014

Strong Earthquake hit Mexico

A shake of earthquake of intensity 7,4 of the staircase Richter has been warned in the Mexican state of Guerrero, to north of Acapulco. So has reported to the American (Usgs) geologic institute and that Mexican. The sisma has also been warned separately to City of Mexico. They don't result to the moment news of damages and victims. According to a bulletin of the Service Sismologico Nazionale, the earthquake with epicentro to around 40 south km of Tecpan, a place to north of Acapulco in the state of Guerrero (southwest of the country) is recorded to the 9.27, now local (her 16.27 in Italy). The daily paper El Universal, in his/her digital edition, it informs about some blacks electric out in some zones of City of Mexico and the mayor of the capital, Miguel Angel Mancera, has published a message on Twitter in which you/he/she has confirmed that till now victims or important damages are not recorded: "For the time being there have been only evacuations" preventive in some buildings. 

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Gunmen assassinate election candidate in Pakistan,Terrorist Islamic suspected for the attack




A government official says gunmen have killed a politician running for a provincial assembly seat in southwestern Pakistan.
Saeed Ahmad says Abdul Fatah Magsi was gunned down on Tuesday in Jhal Magsi, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) southeast of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
Ahmad says the candidate's supporters fired back and killed two of the gunmen. He says the attack seemed to be the result of a political rivalry.
Ahmad says the election in the constituency has been postponed, which is mandatory whenever a candidate is killed. National and provincial assembly elections are scheduled to take place across the country on May 11.
Baluchistan is home to both Islamic militants and separatists who have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for decades.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Cody Simpson the Next Justin Bieber


"omg! Insider" correspondent Keltie Colleen caught up with 16-year-old Australian singing sensation, Cody Simpson whom many are referring to as the next Justin Bieber. Like the Biebs, Cody caught the attention of the music biz at a young age when he recorded himself singing and posted it to Youtube. That move scored the teen hunk a manager - Scooter Braun - the same manager that represents Justin! Cody even opened for the "Beauty and a Beat" singer on the European leg of his Believe tour. Check out the vid to hear what Cody has to say about his buddy Justin and for the latest entertainment news, check out “omg! Insider” tonight on TV!

Millions in CIA "ghost money" paid to Afghan president's office


Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, according to the New York Times, citing current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
The so-called "ghost money" was meant to buy influence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but instead fuelled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington's exit strategy from Afghanistan, the newspaper quoted U.S. officials as saying.
"The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan", one American official said, "was the United States."
The CIA declined to comment on the report and the U.S. State Department did not immediately comment. The New York Times did not publish any comment from Karzai or his office.
"We called it ‘ghost money'," Khalil Roman, who served as Karzai's chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, told the New York Times. "It came in secret and it left in secret."
For more than a decade the cash was dropped off every month or so at the Afghan president's office, the newspaper said.
Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the CIA in Afghanistan since the start of the war.
The cash payments to the president's office do not appear to be subject to oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or the CIA's formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies, and do not appear to violate U.S. laws, said the New York Times.
There was no evidence that Karzai personally received any of the money, Afghan officials told the newspaper. The cash was handled by his National Security Council, it added.
U.S. and Afghan officials familiar with the payments were quoted as saying that the main goal in providing the cash was to maintain access to Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the CIA's influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan's highly centralized government.
Much of the money went to warlords and politicians, many with ties to the drug trade and in some cases the Taliban, the New York Times said. U.S. and Afghan officials were quoted as saying the CIA supported the same patronage networks that U.S. diplomats and law enforcement agents struggled to dismantle, leaving the government in the grip of organized crime.
In 2010, Karzai said his office received cash in bags from Iran, but that it was a transparent form of aid that helped cover expenses at the presidential palace. He said at the time that the United States made similar payments.
The latest New York Times report said much of the Iranian cash, like the CIA money, went to pay warlords and politicians.
For most of Karzai's 11-year reign, there has been little interest in anti-corruption in the army or police. The country's two most powerful institutions receive billions of dollars from donors annually but struggle just to recruit and maintain a force bled by high rates of desertion.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Kerry to North Korea: Don't test missile or you will regret



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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a stark warning to North Korea on Friday not to test-fire a mid-range missile, while tamping down anxiety caused by a new U.S. intelligence report suggesting significant progress in the communist regime's nuclear weapons program.
Kicking off four days of talks in an East Asia beset by increasing North Korean threats, Kerry told reporters in Seoul that Pyongyang and its enigmatic young leader would only increase their isolation if they launched the missile that American officials believe has a range of some 2,500 miles — or enough to reach the U.S. territory of Guam.
"If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it's across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community," Kerry told reporters. "And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people's temperatures."
If the trajectory of the test missile suggests that it could be a threat to either the U.S. or allies, the military would move to shoot it down from one of nine warships armed with sophisticated ballistic missile defense systems in the Pacific, including two that were moved closer to the Korean peninsula, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss military plans.
Kerry said the test would be a "huge mistake" for Kim.
"It will further isolate his country and further isolate his people who are desperate for food and not missile launches," he warned. "They are desperate for opportunity and not for a leader to flex his muscles."
Kerry's diplomatic tour, while planned long in advance, is unusual in that it brings him directly to a region of escalated tensions and precisely at a time when North Korea is threatening action. The North often times its military and nuclear tests to generate maximum attention, and Kerry's presence on the peninsula alone risked spurring Pyongyang into another provocation. Another key date is the 101st birthday of the nation's founder, Kim Il Sung, on April 15.
After meeting South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Kerry also weighed in on an intelligence report that rocked Washington on Thursday, suggesting that North Korea now had the knowhow to arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead — even if the weapons would lack reliability. Kerry, repeating assertions by other administration officials, noted that Pyongyang still hadn't developed or fully tested the nuclear capacities needed for such a step.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., surprised a hearing on the defense budget Thursday when he read aloud one paragraph of an otherwise classified Defense Intelligence Agency report. The assessment said the Pentagon's intelligence wing has "moderate confidence" that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles but that the weapon was unreliable.
The disclosure took even Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by surprise and he refused to discuss it at the budget hearing. While analysts have made similar statements over the last two years, the reading of it at the same time Kim was renewing threats against the U.S. and its allies gave the notion new urgency.
Kerry offered strong words of solidarity for South Korea, praising Park's "bright vision" of a prosperous and reunified Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons. By contrast, he said North Korea's Kim, by estimates only 29 or 30 years old, has a choice to make between provocation and returning to talks to de-escalate tension and lead to the end of its nuclear program.
"It's up to Kim Jong Un what he decides to do," Kerry said.
A missile launch, he said, "is not going to change our current position which is very clear: We will defend our allies. We will stand with South Korea and Japan against these threats. And we will defend ourselves."
Speaking beside Kerry, South Korea's Yun called for more United Nations action against Pyongyang if it commits another provocation.
He refused to comment specifically on the U.S. intelligence report, saying only that the North has "high nuclear and missile capabilities" but that it is still some time away from a nuclear bomb that is "small, light and diversified."
Both Yun and Kerry kept the door open for future negotiations with Pyongyang.
But both seemed to suggest that such talks were unlikely in light of the North's increasingly bombastic threats, including nuclear strikes on the United States. Most experts say those are unfeasible based on the North's current capacity and would never be explored seriously because the U.S. response would be overwhelming against a regime focused primarily on survival.
Kerry said any talks with North Korea have to lead toward denuclearization.
They have to be really serious," Kerry said. "No one is going to talk for the sake of talking and no one is going to play this round-robin game that gets repeated every few years, which is both unnecessary and dangerous."

Kerry to meet China's top leaders to discuss North Korea



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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meetsChina's top leaders on Saturday in an effort to persuade them to exert pressure on North Korea to scale back its belligerent rhetoric and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.
Travelling to Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry made no secret of his desire to see China take a more activist stance toward North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States.
As the North's main trading partner, financial backer and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, China has a unique ability to use its leverage against the impoverished, isolated state, Kerry said in the South Korean capital Seoul late on Friday.
"There is no group of leaders on the face of the planet who have more capacity to make a difference in this than the Chinese, and everybody knows it, including, I believe, them," Kerry told U.S. executives.
"They want to see us try to reach an amicable resolution to this," he said. "But you have to begin with a reality, and the reality is that if your policy is denuclearization - and it is theirs as it is ours as it is everybody's except the North's at this moment - if that's your policy, you've got to put some teeth into it," he said.
Kerry is scheduled to see the top echelon of China's leadership on Saturday, including President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and State Councilor Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat who outranks Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
In remarks before reporters at the first meeting, neither Kerry nor Wang directly referred to North Korea, though the trip had "come at a critical moment", Wang said.
"Obviously there are enormously challenging issues in front of us and I look forward to having that conversation with you today to do exactly what you said - lift this conversation up, broaden it, set a roadmap, define for both of us what the model relationship (would) be and how two great powers, China and the United States, can work effectively to solve problems," Kerry told Wang.
Kerry's visit to Asia, which will include a stop in Tokyo on Sunday, takes place after weeks of shrill North Korean threats of war since the imposition of new U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February.
North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it said on Friday were its "treasured" guarantor of security.
"HUGE MISTAKE"
Beijing has been reluctant to apply pressure on Pyongyang, fearing the instability that could result if the North were to implode and send floods of refugees into China.
However, U.S. officials believe China's rhetoric on North Korea has begun to shift, pointing to a recent speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping in which - without referring explicitly to Pyongyang - he said no country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain."
Kerry, who arrived in  early on Saturday, told reporters in Seoul that if North Korea's 30-year-old leader went ahead with the launch of a medium-range missile, he would be making "a huge mistake."
Kerry's visit coincided with preparations for Monday's anniversary of North Korean state founder Kim Il-Sung's birth, a possible pretext for a show of strength, with speculation focusing on a possible new intermediate missile test launch.
At a news conference in Seoul on Friday and in a U.S.-South Korean joint statement issued on Saturday, Kerry signaled the U.S. preference for diplomacy to end the tensions, but stressed North Korea must take "meaningful" steps on denuclearization.
"We will continue to encourage North Korea to make the right choice. If North Korea does so, we are prepared to implement the commitments under the 2005 Six-Party Joint Statement," it added, referring to the aid-for-denuclearization agreement.
The United States and its allies believe the North violated the 2005 deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment program that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based program.
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