WASHINGTON, September 29 -- US intelligence agencies have underestimated the activity of armed groups inside Syria, which has become "ground zero" for them worldwide, according to US President Barack Obama. Conversely, the US overestimated the ability of the Iraqi army to fight the groups, Obama said in the interview taped on Friday and aired on Sunday, days after the US president globally made his case for action in a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York. Citing earlier comments by James Clapper, director of national intelligence, Obama acknowledged that US intelligence underestimated what had been taking place in Syria. Fighters went underground when US Marines quashed al-Qaeda in Iraq with help from Iraq's tribes, he said. "But over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos," Obama said. "And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world." US and its allies, including Gulf and Western countries, has been conducting air strikes on the self-declared jihadist Islamic State (IS) group, which controls large parts of land and oil fields in Iraq and Syria. The strikes aim at supporting the Kurdish and central Iraqi forces fighting against the IS on the ground. Obama last week expanded US-led air strikes on the IS fighters, which began in Iraq in August, to Syria and he has been seeking to build a wider coalition effort to weaken the group. The IS has killed thousands of people and beheaded at least three Westerners. Clapper told a Washington Post columnist earlier in the month that US intelligence had underestimated the IS and overestimated Iraq's army. "I did not see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming," Clapper was quoted as saying. "I did not see that. It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable." 'Political solution necessary' In the interview, Obama outlined the military goal against the IS: "We just have to push them back, and shrink their space, and go after their command and control, and their capacity, and their weapons, and their fuelling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters." However, Obama said a political solution was necessary in both Iraq and Syria for peace in the long term. "I think there is going to be a generational challenge. I do not think that this is something that is going to happen overnight," Obama said, citing an environment in which young men "are more concerned whether they are Shia or Sunni, rather than whether they are getting a good education" or a good job. Saying a solution involved "how these countries teach their youth," Obama continued: "What our military operations can do is to just check and roll back these [fighter] networks as they appear and make sure that the time and space is provided for a new way of doing things to begin to take root." Obama added that he recognised the contradiction in opposing the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while battling IS fighters who have been fighting Assad's government. "For Syria to remain unified, it is not possible that Assad presides over that entire process," Obama said. "On the other hand, in terms of immediate threats to the United States, IS, Khorasan Group, those folks could kill Americans." Source: Agencies
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COLOMBO, September 29 -- A Buddhist cleric accused of inciting violence against Muslims in Myanmar says he is joining forces with a group in Sri Lanka to fight what he says is the "serious threat from jihadist groups". Ashin Wirathu, the leader of Myanmar's 969 group, told hundreds of monks in the Sri Lankan capital on Sunday that his group would support the Bodu Bala Sena group in its "struggle to protect Buddhism in Asia". Muslim groups had protested against Wirathu's entry into Sri Lanka, saying his visit would only cause further divisions. His group has been accused of inciting violence against the minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. "To protect and defend the threatened Buddhist the world over, my 969 movement will join hands with the BBS," Wirathu said at a 5,000-seat stadium packed with monks and their lay supporters. "Buddhists are facing a serious threat today from jihadist groups," he said, without giving details. "The patience of Buddhists is seen as a weakness. Buddhist temples have been destroyed. There is a jihad against Buddhist monks." The president of the Bodu Bala Sena, Kirima Wimalajothi, told the meeting that Sri Lanka was "not a multi-cultural country but rather a nation for the Sinhala Buddhists" and threatened to topple the government unless it stopped "Muslim extremism". He added that a policy statement compiled by the group would be presented to the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and that it would act to remove him if he failed to implement the changes. The group's general secretary, Galaboda aththe Gnanasara, urged the monks to "return to the temples and rally the people", and said the government had a week to answer the group's demands before it acted. Muslims leaders on Friday petitioned Rajapaksa to request that Wirathu be refused a visa on the basis that he had been accused of inciting violence in Myanmar. No official response was given to the request. Azath Salley, leader of the Muslim Tamil National Alliance, told Al-Jazeera that Wirathu’s visit would only serve to cause further divisions in the country. "The government’s willingness to provide Wirathu with a visa shows they have ulterior motives in relation to the minorities”, he said. "Wirathu promotes violence against minorities, an issue that Sri Lanka is trying to move past. His presence will harm any form of reconciliation taking place". Source: Agencies HONG KONG, September 29 -- A mobile messaging application enabling users to communicate without internet access has seen large numbers of new sign-ups from Hong Kong as pro-democracy demonstrators in the territory scrambled for alternative means of communication amid the weekend’s protests.
Hong Kong protest organisers called on participants to download the application on Sunday, when rumours circulated that the city’s government would shut down cellphone networks in Admiralty. While the cellular networks were not deactivated in Hong Kong on Sunday, some protesters reported bad cellphone reception. FireChat, launched only in March this year, allows smartphone users to communicate via Bluetooth or WiFi, an alternative to cellphone networks. Its chat-rooms, dubbed “firechats”, allow users to communicate without exchanging data with traditional cellular networks. These live and anonymous discussion groups can gather as many as 10,000 people simultaneously, according to Open Garden. Benoliel declined to reveal the application’s total number of users. Groups in support of Hong Kong’s protests in Australia, Canada, the US and the UK have also turned to FireChat to communicate on the protests, Benoliel said. Source: De Peet Journal TOKYO, September 29 -- About 550 Japanese military, police and firefighters launched on Monday an operation at the summit of a Japanese volcano that started erupting on Saturday, to reach 27 people showing no signs of life. The teams are climbing three separate routes. Plans are to airlift the bodies down on army helicopters. On Sunday, the rescue operation was suspended due to a high concentration of toxic gases. At present, Mount Ontake volcano continues emitting smoke and hot volcanic stones are scattered within a radius of4km. Earlier, four bodies were found on mountain slopes. Several hundred climbers were caught by the sudden eruption of Mount Ontake. Most of them managed to descend, but several dozen people were blocked on top because of poor visibility and a concentration of toxic gases in the air. Most of them were rescued. More than 70 people sought medical aid and more than 40 were hospitalized in a grave condition. Mount Ontake is the second tallest volcano in Japan after Mount Funi and is a popular destination for hikers. It is located 200km west of Tokyo. The last major eruption took place in 1979, while the latest smaller scale activity occurred in 2007. Source: Agencies DONETSK, September 29 -- The mass grave was found near the village of Nizhnyaya Krynka where a battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard had been stationed two weeks ago. Militias in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) have found another burial site near Donetsk, DPR First Vice-Premier Andrei Purgin said on Sunday. The mass grave was found near the village of Nizhnyaya Krynka where a battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard had been stationed two weeks ago. “Another burial site has been discovered. It is located near the village of Nizhnyaya Krynka. Exhumation will help establish how many bodies are there and how these people died,” Purgin said. This is not the first mass grave discovered by the Donetsk self-defense fighters on the territory earlier controlled by the Ukrainian troops, Purgin said. Mass graves found on Ukrainian National Guard positions in eastern Ukraine Other mass burialsOn September 23, reports came that Ukrainian people’s militia found mass burials in the area of mine No 22 “Kommunar” outside Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Medical examiners made a conclusion that the bodies found in one of the graves were killed by point-blank shots in the head. This area was previously controlled by the Ukrainian security forces and fighters of the Aidar battalion of the National Guard. The whole area will be examined. The militia say they found other graves that have not been opened up. Russia’s Foreign Ministry believes the mass burial of civilians near Donetsk is a military crime that could have been committed by Ukraine’s National Guard, and insists on an urgent and comprehensive international probe into the case. Kiev has rejected the claims. Source: Agencies
In addition, over 30 of the 140 Dutch nationals known to have travelled to Syria or Iraq are now back in the Netherlands and two are in custody. Uniform Opstelten also reacted to last week’s formal government advice to members of the Dutch armed forces not to travel in uniform. That is nothing more than a precautionary measure and happens in many other countries, he said. Dutch soldiers have twice been warned before not to go out in public in uniform: once when the Netherlands was involved in the mission in Iraq in 2003 and once when Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam video compilation Fitna was issued in 2008, Nos television said. The official threat level in the Netherlands remains ‘substantial’ despite the Netherlands decision to send six F-16 fighter jets to take part in the coalition bombing IS targets in Iraq. Source: De Peet Journal VICE NEWS interview: How are you protecting your family, are you trying to get them out? It's a very bad situation for us, we cannot take them out of the city. Do your families support your decision to do this? Not just our families, the whole city of Raqqa, because people are just tired of ISIS. How long do you think this is going to last, or when do you think you'll be able to go back to Raqqa? I don't know, but when ISIS get out of the city I will immediately go back. How do people in Raqqa feel about the US air strikes? I would say the people of Raqqa just split into two parts. The first part say, "I will deal with the devil just to take ISIS out of the city, because we are tired of ISIS. Enough of this, we want you to take them out of the city, we want our freedom, we want our lives back, and our sons back from prison, because there are more than 1,200 people from Raqqa in ISIS prisons." They just want these air strikes to kick ISIS out of the city but they fear these air strikes, because they don't want any of the civilians or the innocent prisoners, and innocent families to die. The second part, including me, are against these strikes, because if the West wanted our freedom, why didn't they bomb the Assad regime after he used chemical weapons, and why didn't they bomb the Assad regime when we have been begging for their help for four years now, and they didn't do anything? They are just now doing this because of ISIS, not for us. So they are against these airstrikes. People just split into two parts, but both parts are fearing that air strikes will kill innocent people. Are ISIS fighters using Raqqa's civilians as human shields? Yes. After Obama's speech, when he said he wants to bomb ISIS in Syria, they moved all their families to the suburbs of the city. All their buildings are now empty, and just have two or three guards to secure the buildings, and all the ISIS members are heading to flats they are taking from the people of Raqqa — the civilians, the Christians, those who are escaping from the war. Or if you for instance have three houses, they'll come to you and say, "you don't need three houses, we'll take two and you keep one, to put foreign fighters in it." And you know, people are just scared of them, they cannot say no. They know if they say no it will be a big problem and they may be put in prison because they'll say "you're against the Islamic State." So if for example there's a building with 10 flats, six flats will be for ISIS and four for the people of Raqqa. Each flat between 10 to 15 members. So they are making people into human shields, to hide between them. It's a big problem for the people, they are scared of this. Is anyone in Raqqa still trying to resist ISIS? Are some people starting to buying into their claims or do they just do it to survive? Most of the people of Raqqa are against ISIS, maybe 90 percent. The other 10, ISIS gives them money, power, and because of that they want it in the city. After the airstrikes, a few more people said, "I will be with ISIS against these strikes." But most in the city just want them out. They are just tired. TOKYO, September 28 -- The Japanese bank Softbank has an eye on the American film studio DreamWorks Animation SKG. Japan's SoftBank Corp is in talks to acquire DreamWorks Animation SKG , the Hollywood studio behind the "Shrek" and "Madagascar" movie hits, a person with knowledge of the situation said.An acquisition of DreamWorks by SoftBank would make it part of a cash-rich Japanese communications and media company that, under founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son, has shown a willingness to take big bets on combining disparate businesses. The talks were first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, which quoted an unidentified source as saying a buyout would value DreamWorks at $3.4 billion. The entertainment trade publication said SoftBank had offered $32 per share for DreamWorks, a substantial premium to the stock's Friday closing price of $22.36. Buying DreamWorks, which is headed by veteran Hollywood producer and film executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, would make SoftBank the second Japanese technology company to buy a Hollywood studio, following Sony Corp, which bought Columbia Pictures in 1989. SoftBank has recently cashed in on a share of its investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and dropped its pursuit of mobile carrier T-Mobile US in the face of opposition from anti-trust regulators in the United States. Last week, SoftBank booked a $4.6 billion gain on the share listing of Alibaba Group in New York. SoftBank retains a 32 percent stake, making it Alibaba's biggest shareholder. SoftBank has significant stakes in other large listed entities, including U.S. mobile carrier Sprint, through which it had pursued a deal for T-Mobile, internet portal Yahoo Japan and online games maker GungHo Online Entertainment. A SoftBank spokesman said the company had no comment on the reported talks with DreamWorks. A representative of DreamWorks could not be immediately reached for comment. Move into content In July, SoftBank hired former Google executive Nikesh Arora to run a newly created unit called SoftBank Internet and Media, reporting directly to Son, in a move that stoked speculation the telecommunications company could be considering a move to acquire content production assets. SoftBank held the equivalent of more than $17 billion in cash and equivalents as of the end of June, its most recent reported quarter. DreamWorks, based in Glendale, California, has seen its share price has drop 37 percent this year after two consecutive quarterly losses, a string of weak-performing releases such as "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" and investor concern about the production costs of its movies. In July, DreamWorks said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision was investigating a writedown it took at the end of 2013 on the animated flop "Turbo". Dreamworks Animation was spun off from DreamWorks Studios in 2004 as a separate listed company. The earlier Dreamworks studio had been founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Katzenberg, who moved with the spin-off and remains chief executive of the animation company, which also has the franchise hit "Kung Fu Panda" and owns the rights to Felix the Cat. The move by SoftBank comes as Alibaba is also looking to expand its video content offered through a set-top box in China. In July, the company announced a partnership with Lions Gate Entertainment for its titles including "The Hunger Games". Sony rebuffed a proposal from hedge fund Third Point to spin off its entertainment business last year in order to separate it from its loss-making electronics division. (1 US dollar = 109.2700 Japanese yen) Source: Reuters ROTTERDAM, September 28 -- A "monster" truck, outfitted with tractor-sized wheels, has crashed into a crowd during a show in the Netherlands, reportedly killing two people and injuring at least a dozen. Video footage of the incident shows the truck veering off course after driving over the top of a row of cars, then knocking down a guardrail and driving into a group of onlookers. ROTTERDAM, September 28 -- Dutch-born Ghanaian attacker Elvis Manu was at his best as he brilliantly assisted three goals for Feyenoord in their 4-0 trouncing of Go Ahead Eagles in the Dutch Eredivisie on Saturday. The 21-year-old forced Giliano Wijnaldum to score an own-goal before successively setting up the rest of Feyenoord’s three goals at the De Adelaarshorst. Manu, who is regarded as Feyenoord’s best player forced the opening goal for Feyenoord in the 28th minute before turning the architect to set up Jens Toornstra, Colin Kazim-Richards and Mitchell te Vrede for the rest of the goals. Though he is yet to score a league goal for Feyenoord, he has been overly impressive in their story in the season so far and has assisted as many as six goals since the start the league season. Manu has declared his intentions to play for Ghana though he is representing the Dutch at U21 levels. Source: De Peet Journal ISTANBUL, September 28 -- The Turkish President, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, says his country is willing to join ground operations to protect refugees from the Islamic State. He says the Turkish parliament is expected to vote on October 2 on whether to authorise the army to conduct cross-border operations in Iraq and Syria. Iran, another regional power, is mulling its options on how to deal with IS. President Hassan Rouhani said at the UN that if a long-term deal on its nuclear programme is reached, Tehran will co-operate with neighbouring countries to fight what he described as extremism. Saudi Arabia, deeply involved in the campaign against IS, has publicly expressed concerns over Iran's possible involvement. So, what are the politics that drive regional powers in how they deal with the IS threat? Source: Agencies HONG KONG, September 28 -- Hong Kong police used tear gas Sunday and warned of further measures as they tried to clear thousands of pro-democracy protesters who had gathered outside government headquarters in a challenge to Beijing over its decision to restrict democratic reforms for the semiautonomous city. After spending hours holding the protesters at bay, police lobbed canisters of tear gas into the crowd on Sunday evening. The searing fumes sent demonstrators fleeing down the road, but many came right back to continue their protest. Students and activists have been camped out on the streets outside the government complex since late Friday. Students started the rally, but by early Sunday leaders of the broader Occupy Central civil disobedience movement said they were joining them to kick-start a long-threatened mass sit-in to demand that an election for Hong Kong's leader be held without Beijing's interference. Police used the tear gas after the protest spiraled into an extraordinary scene of chaos, with the demonstrators jamming a busy road and clashing with officers wielding pepper spray. The protesters were trying to reach a mass sit-in being held outside government headquarters to demand Beijing grant genuine democratic reforms to the former British colony. "It was very cruel for the police to use such harsh violence on protesters who had been completely peaceful," said one of the demonstrators, Cecily Lui, a 30-year-old clerk. "They were just sitting down on the road asking to speak with (Hong Kong leader) Leung Chun-ying to start a dialogue. Now, police have solved nothing and students are more resolved to stay." After using the tear gas, police issued a statement urging the protesters to "leave peacefully and orderly." "Otherwise police will use a higher level of force in order to restore public order and safeguard public safety," the statement warned. The demonstrations — which Beijing called "illegal" — were a rare scene of disorder in the Asian financial hub, and highlighted authorities' inability to rein in the public discontent over Beijing's tightening grip on the city. The protesters reject Beijing's decision last month to rule out open nominations for candidates under proposed guidelines for the first-ever elections for Hong Kong's leader, promised for 2017. China took control of the former British colony in 1997, agreeing to a policy of "one country, two systems" that allowed Hong Kong to keep civil liberties unseen on the mainland, while promising that the city's leader can eventually be chosen through "universal suffrage." But Beijing's insistence on screening election candidates for patriotism to China has stoked fears among democracy groups that Hong Kong will never get genuine democracy. Earlier Sunday, thousands of protesters who tried to join the sit-in breached a police cordon, spilling out onto a busy highway and causing traffic to come to a standstill. Police officers in a buffer zone manned barricades and doused the protesters with pepper spray carried in backpacks. The demonstrators, who tried at one point to rip apart metal barricades, carried umbrellas to deflect the spray by the police, who were wearing helmets and respirators. Police had told those involved in what they also call an illegal gathering to leave the scene as soon as possible, warning that otherwise they would begin to clear the area and make arrests. After police used the tear gas, the protesters chanted "Shame on C.Y. Leung," referring to the city's deeply unpopular Beijing-backed leader. To many, it seemed to mark a major shift for Hong Kong, whose residents have long felt their city stood apart from mainland China thanks to its guaranteed civil liberties and separate legal and financial systems. Hong Kong "has changed to a new era so the people have to be awakened. It's no longer the old Hong Kong," said one protester, W.T. Chung, 46, who yelled at police officers after they used the tear gas. Earlier, police said they had arrested 78 people since demonstrations started late Friday, though all but three were released. Leung said Hong Kong's government was "resolute in opposing the unlawful occupation" of the government offices or the financial district by Occupy Central. "The police are determined to handle the situation appropriately in accordance with the law," he said at a news conference. The Chinese government agency that handles Hong Kong affairs condemned the protests. "China's central government firmly opposes illegal acts taking place in Hong Kong," and fully supports the local government in handling the matter according to the law, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council as saying. Protest organizers said police took away several pro-democracy legislators who were among the demonstrators. Among the protesters was media magnate Jimmy Lai, who owns the popular Apple Daily, Hong Kong's sole pro-democracy newspaper. Source: Agencies PARIS, September 28 -- Air France's leading pilots' union has ended a 14-day strike that crippled air traffic and led to condemnation from the French government. The SNPL union confirmed that the action is now over after a walkout grounded more than half of the airline's flights and stranded passengers worldwide. The strike's end comes after Air France offered to scrap a central part of a plan to shift most of its European operations to low-cost carrier Transavia. That plan prompted the strike, because pilots see it as a way to outsource their jobs to countries with lower taxes and labour costs. Air France wants to restructure to stay competitive. Source: Agencies |
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