Friday, February 22, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Russian Lawmaker Quits After Real Estate Disclosure
Russian Lawmaker Quits After Real Estate Disclosure
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — A senior lawmaker from Russia’s governing party, who was also the chairman of Parliament’s ethics committee, resigned from the legislature on Wednesday over revelations that he owned more than $1.3 million worth of luxury real estate in Florida that he did not list on required disclosure forms.
The lawmaker, Vladimir A. Pekhtin, said that he did not want the matter to taint colleagues in his party, United Russia, and announced his departure at a morning parliamentary session.
Mr. Pekhtin said he had not broken any law. But “there are very controversial documents that have been made public on the Internet,” he said, and it was necessary to clear up “obvious legal misunderstandings.”
“I will give up my mandate, which I always achieved in honest political battle, and my rivals, my opponents, know this,” he said, in comments broadcast on television. “Nevertheless, I will not cling to it. Because I think that my personal matters are secondary to United Russia. Thank you for many years of work, and for your devotion. We will fight on.”
Whether he surrendered his seat voluntarily or under pressure from the Kremlin, Mr. Pekhtin’s departure set a precedent in the Russian government, where high-level corruption and lavish spending overseas have developed into a serious political liability. Hours after Mr. Pekhtin’s announcement came a second resignation, from a United Russia lawmaker, Anatoly Lomakin, an industrialist whose wealth Forbes estimated at $1.2 billion.
Iceland Looks to Export Power Bubbling From Below
Iceland Looks to Export Power Bubbling From Below
By ANDREW HIGGINS
KRAFLA, Iceland — Soon after work began here on a power plant to harness some of the vast reserves of energy stored at the earth’s crust, the ground moved and, along a six-mile-long fissure, began belching red-hot lava. The eruptions continued for nine years, prompting the construction of a stone and soil barrier to make sure that molten rock did not incinerate Iceland’s first geothermal power station.
While the menacing lava flow has long since stopped and Krafla is today a showcase of Iceland’s peerless mastery of renewable energy sources, another problem that has dogged its energy calculations for decades still remains: what to do with all the electricity that the country — which literally bubbles with steam, hot mud and the occasional cloud of volcanic ash — is capable of producing.
In a nation with only 320,000 people, the state-owned power company, Landsvirkjun, which operates the Krafla facility, sells just 17 percent of its electricity to households and local industry. The rest goes mostly to aluminum smelters owned by the American giant Alcoa and other foreign companies that have been lured to this remote North Atlantic nation by its abundant supply of cheap energy.
Now a huge and potentially far more lucrative market beckons — if only Iceland can find a way to transmit electricity across the more than 1,000 miles of frigid sea that separate it from the 500 million consumers of the European Union. “Prices are so low in Iceland that it is normal that we should want to sell to Europe and get a better price,” said Stein Agust Steinsson, the manager of the Krafla plant. “It is not good to put all our eggs in one basket.”
Cyprus Trial Spurs Call for E.U. to Act Against Hezbollah
Cyprus Trial Spurs Call for E.U. to Act Against Hezbollah
By NICHOLAS KULISH
LIMASSOL, Cyprus — A Hezbollah operative who worked as a courier for the group in Europe said at his trial Thursday that he had instructions to record the arrival times of passenger flights from Israel to Cyprus, prompting Israel to press the European Union to formally declare the militant group a terrorist organization.
During a cross-examination, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub described himself as “an active member of Hezbollah” with the code name “Wael,” and that he had received a salary of $600 a month since 2010. Asked why he had a code name, he answered through an interpreter, “In general, the party is based on secrecy between members. We don’t know the real names of our fellow members.”
Mr. Yaacoub said that his handler, a shadowy figure known only as Ayman, told him to track the landing times for an Arkia Israel Airlines flight between Tel Aviv and Larnaca, Cyprus. Ayman also asked him to look into the rental prices of warehouses, he said.
Mr. Yaacoub, 24, who holds Lebanese and Swedish passports, described himself as a pawn, following orders but not involved — or at least not knowingly involved — in planning an attack. But prosecutors say that is exactly what he was doing. Intelligence experts in the United States and Israel say that Mr. Yaacoub was one small player in the covert war that has pitted Israel against Iran and Hezbollah.
Mr. Yaacoub’s testimony, which began here on Wednesday, has provided an unusual look inside the operations of the secretive group. Mr. Yaacoub on Thursday described the weapons training he had received as a member of the group.
3 Convicted in Britain Over Terrorist Plot to Rival ’05 Attacks
3 Convicted in Britain Over Terrorist Plot to Rival ’05 Attacks
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — Three men accused of plotting what prosecutors said would have been the most devastating terrorist attacks in Britain since the London transit system bombings of July 2005 were convicted Thursday after a 12-week trial. The judge hearing the case told the men to expect sentences of life imprisonment.
Prosecutors said the three men — Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, all British citizens from the industrial city of Birmingham in the English Midlands — planned to detonate up to eight homemade bombs in rucksacks in crowded places, the method used by the four suicide bombers who killed 52 other people on London subway trains and buses in 2005.
That attack prompted MI5, the domestic security service, and police forces across the country to rapidly expand their counterterrorism efforts. Officials at MI5 and at Scotland Yard have said that the authorities track dozens of active terrorist cells, and they cite a series of successful prosecutions and the absence of any attack that led to mass casualties in Britain since the transit bombings as evidence of their success.
The court in Birmingham was told that the authorities had the three defendants under close surveillance from an early stage, along with nine co-conspirators, six of whom have pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. The police officer who led the surveillance, Detective Inspector Adam Gough, described the three men, all Muslims, as “committed, passionate extremists,” and added, “They had a real stated intention to kill and maim as many people as they possibly can.”
France tops world hostage list with latest kidnapping
France now has the most nationals held hostage in the world, following the kidnapping of an entire French family holidaying in Cameroon on Tuesday. The number of French citizens held in Africa now stands at 15.
By FRANCE 24 (text)
The kidnapping of a family holidaying in north Cameroon has brought the total number of French nationals being held hostage abroad to 15. All of them have been taken in Africa over the past three years.
The latest incident makes France the country with the highest number of citizens held hostage in the world, according to the terrorist watchdog IntelCenter. The United States, which comes in second on this inauspicious list, has nine citizens in the hands of hostage-takers worldwide.
The latest incident makes France the country with the highest number of citizens held hostage in the world, according to the terrorist watchdog IntelCenter. The United States, which comes in second on this inauspicious list, has nine citizens in the hands of hostage-takers worldwide.
French special forces in Cameroon following kidnappings
© AFP
One day after a French family was abducted in Cameroon, French special forces arrived in the country on Wednesday from their regional base in neighbouring Chad to help with the hostage situation, a local governor said.
By FRANCE 24 (text)
French special forces arrived in northern Cameroon from their regional base in neighbouring Chad, local authorities said on Wednesday, to help with an investigation to locate a French family taken hostage the day before.
“French special forces came in yesterday from N’Djamena to help with the investigation. They left yesterday and came back today,” Augustine Fonka Awa, governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region told the Reuters news agency by telephone.
French Army spokesman Thierry Burkhard declined to comment.
The Moulin-Fournier family was abducted near Cameroon’s Waza National Park on Tuesday, only a few kilometres from the Nigerian border. The father was the Director of External Affairs at the French gas company GDF, who had been stationed in Cameroon’s capital of Yaoundé for two years. The seven family members included four children.
Witnesses told Cameroonian and French media that men armed with Kalashnikovs seized the family from their car, separated the adults from the children and sped away from the scene on motorcycles. In a statement, Cameroon’s foreign minister said the hostages had been whisked across the border to Nigeria.
On Wednesday, France’s Foreign Ministry urged its citizens in northern Cameroon “to leave the area as quickly as possible,” issuing an advisory against travel in regions bordering Nigeria until further notice.
“French special forces came in yesterday from N’Djamena to help with the investigation. They left yesterday and came back today,” Augustine Fonka Awa, governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region told the Reuters news agency by telephone.
|
French Army spokesman Thierry Burkhard declined to comment.
The Moulin-Fournier family was abducted near Cameroon’s Waza National Park on Tuesday, only a few kilometres from the Nigerian border. The father was the Director of External Affairs at the French gas company GDF, who had been stationed in Cameroon’s capital of Yaoundé for two years. The seven family members included four children.
Witnesses told Cameroonian and French media that men armed with Kalashnikovs seized the family from their car, separated the adults from the children and sped away from the scene on motorcycles. In a statement, Cameroon’s foreign minister said the hostages had been whisked across the border to Nigeria.
On Wednesday, France’s Foreign Ministry urged its citizens in northern Cameroon “to leave the area as quickly as possible,” issuing an advisory against travel in regions bordering Nigeria until further notice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)