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বুধবার, ৩১ জুলাই, ২০১৩
Obama asks Graham, McCain to travel to Egypt
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, is surrounded by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 30, 2013, during a roll call. Graham said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. to travel to Egypt to urge the military to move ahead on elections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, is surrounded by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 30, 2013, during a roll call. Graham said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. to travel to Egypt to urge the military to move ahead on elections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - In this July 18, 2013 file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, talks with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. on Capitol Hill in Washington. Graham says President Barack Obama has asked him and Sen. McCain to travel to Egypt to urge the military to move ahead on elections. Graham told reporters on Tuesday that the two senators were trying to work out the logistics of the trip. He said they want to deliver a unified message that the military should allow new elections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain have been asked by President Barack Obama to travel to Egypt next week to urge the military to move ahead on new elections, the senators said Tuesday.
Egypt has been roiled by deadly protests since President Mohammed Morsi was toppled in a military coup on July 3, developments that have threatened the $1.5 billion in annual U.S. military and economic aid to the Arab world's most populous country. Responding to reporters' questions Tuesday about an attempt to cut off the aid, Graham offered up word that Obama has sought the help of the two lawmakers.
"The president asked Sen. McCain and myself to go to Egypt next week, so we're trying to find a way to get there," Graham said. "So we can go over and reinforce in a bipartisan fashion the message that we have to move to civilian control, that the military is going to have to, you know, allow the country to have new elections and move toward an inclusive, democratic approach."
Graham said the two senators were trying to work out the logistics of the trip at the same time Congress was scheduled to begin its summer recess. McCain provided few details on the trip, but he said that he and Graham would try to assist in the reconciliation process in Egypt.
"The place is in turmoil, obviously," the Arizona senator said. "We have credibility with everybody there, all the different factions there."
Graham said the stakes were high. "If Egypt goes and Israel is surrounded by more and more radical regimes ... we'll regret not doing everything possible to keep Egypt on track as a stable society," the South Carolina senator told reporters.
Graham said the idea of "maybe us going if things deteriorate" in Egypt was first discussed at a July 17 meeting at the White House. McCain and Graham sat down for nearly two hours for a wide ranging national security discussion with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Obama contacted Graham about the trip, although the president specifically requested that McCain, who was Obama's opponent in the 2008 election, go too, McCain said.
Graham said the goal was to deliver a unified message that "jailing the opposition is more and more like a coup."
Last week, the Obama administration told lawmakers that it won't declare Egypt's government overthrow a coup, which would prompt the automatic suspension of American assistance programs under U.S. law. The administration fears that halting such funding could imperil programs that help to secure Israel's border and fight weapons smuggling into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
The White House declined to comment about a possible trip.
The Senate was scheduled to vote Wednesday on a measure by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would end aid to Egypt, shifting the money to crumbling bridges in this country.
"We tell other countries to follow the rule of law, yet our own administration fails to do so. Sending money to Egypt under their current military coups is illegal," Paul said in a statement. "Instead of illegally sending that money overseas, we are better off spending that money at home."
Graham said a vote now could send the wrong signal.
"If you cut off aid, that's a destabilizing event," Graham said, while a vote for aid would "give people the impression everything's fine."
Asked whether the Paul bill might pass, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said: "I hope not."
"I do agree we need to comply with laws that we have in our country," he told reporters, adding that Congress may change the coup restrictions in September to give the president waiver authority to continue providing aid. "Right now, in the middle of this volatile situation, we need to be a voice of calm."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has called for halting assistance to Egypt, but he said Paul's proposal was "too extreme."
"I'm in favor of suspension," Levin said. But he would support gradual resumption of aid as the government "lives up to the commitments that they make in the constitution, having a diverse Cabinet, having elections according to the six-month schedule."
___
Associated Press writers Richard Lardner and Bradley Klapper contributed to this report.
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Israel, Palestinians dispute format of Washington peace talks
By Dan Williams and Ali Sawafta
JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli and Palestinian officials put forward clashing formats for peace talks due to resume in Washington on Monday for the first time in nearly three years after intense U.S. mediation.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to bring the negotiators together in the evening and on Tuesday to renew talks that broke down in 2010 over Israel's settlement of occupied land where Palestinians seek a state.
Previous attempts to resolve the decades-old conflict had sought to ward off deadlock and the risk of knock-on violence by tackling easier disputes first and deferring the most emotional ones like the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.
This time "all of the issues that are at the core of a permanent accord will be negotiated simultaneously", Silvan Shalom, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu's cabinet and rightist Likud party, told Israel's Army Radio.
The Palestinians, with international backing, want their future state to have borders approximating the boundaries of the West Bank, adjacent East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip before Israel captured them in the 1967 Middle East war.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the U.S. letter of invitation to the Washington talks had not specified which disputes were to be discussed.
But Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio the talks "will begin, in principle, on the issues of borders and security".
Netanyahu had resisted Abbas's calls to accept the 1967 border formula before talks resumed. Shalom said that the Israeli position would help keep the talks, which are slated to last nine months, comprehensive.
CONCESSIONS
"Had the matter of borders and territory been given over, what incentive would they (Palestinians) have had to make concessions on the matter of refugees or Jerusalem?" Shalom asked.
Israel deems all of Jerusalem its capital - a status rejected internationally - and wants to keep West Bank settlement blocs under any peace accord. It quit Gaza in 2005 and that enclave is now ruled by Hamas Islamists hostile to the Jewish state and opposed to Abbas's peace strategy.
Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war at Israel's founding, along with millions of their descendants, claim the right to return to their original homes in what is now Israel. The Israelis rule that out as demographic suicide, saying the refugees should resettle in a future Palestine or elsewhere.
Netanyahu says any peace accord must safeguard Israel, which has often clashed with Hamas in Gaza and fears the Islamist movement could gain ground in the West Bank. Kerry has also described Israel's security as "paramount".
Abed Rabbo said Israel and the United States had been conferring about security without including the Palestinians.
"This is a big shortcoming in the Israeli and the American behavior because they are not discussing their bilateral security, they are discussing a central and a fundamental issue of ours and it concerns our future as a whole," he said.
After months of intensive and discreet mediation, Kerry announced on July 19 in Amman, Jordan, that the parties had laid the groundwork to resume negotiations on the so-called "final status" issues that must be resolved to end the dispute.
"The meetings in Washington will mark the beginning of these talks," Kerry spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "They will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural work plan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months."
In what it dubbed a goodwill gesture required to restart diplomacy, the Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 104 long-serving Palestinian security prisoners in stages. Thousands more Palestinians remain in Israeli jails.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-palestinian-peace-talks-resume-three-years-002836072.html
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মঙ্গলবার, ৩০ জুলাই, ২০১৩
Sequestration and fuel reserves: Storing carbon dioxide to release liquid fuels
[unable to retrieve full-text content]A technique for trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide deep underground could at the same be used to release the last fraction of natural gas liquids from ailing reservoirs, thus offsetting some of the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels, experts say.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/5NNIXseRT7M/130730163140.htm
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Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to resume after three years
By Arshad Mohammed and Ori Lewis
WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel and the Palestinians plan to resume peace negotiations this week for the first time in nearly three years after an intense effort by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to bring them back to the table.
The talks are scheduled to resume in Washington on Monday evening and Tuesday and will be conducted by senior aides to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the State Department said.
"Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point. We are grateful for their leadership," Kerry said in a statement.
Middle East analysts voiced skepticism that the talks might lead to a peace treaty to end the more than six-decade conflict that has defied two decades of U.S. efforts to broker a solution.
Still, the resumption of negotiations is a rare moment of good news in the Middle East for the Obama administration, which has struggled to formulate a policy to try to end the civil war in Syria or to facilitate a democratic transition in Egypt.
Even getting the Israelis and the Palestinians to agree to resume talks required great effort by Kerry, who made six peace-making trips to the region in the last four months - an unusual amount of time - to coax the two sides back.
The last piece of the puzzle came together when the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners, with 13 ministers voting for the release, seven against and two abstaining, an Israeli official said.
In another sign of possible momentum, Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who directs the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, is expected to be named as the new U.S. envoy for Middle East peace, possibly as early as Monday, a source familiar with the matter said.
OBAMA'S INVOLVEMENT NEEDED?
The last round of direct negotiations broke down in late 2010 in a dispute over Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, land that Israel seized in a 1967 war, along with the Gaza Strip, which the Palestinians want for a state.
It is unclear how the United States hopes to bridge the core issues in the dispute, including borders, the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
While commending Kerry for his determination, Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, said President Barack Obama would have to get involved if the talks were ultimately to succeed and the United States would have to offer its own ideas for a solution.
"At some point, the central player in this saga is not going to be Netanyahu, it's not going to be Abu Mazen (Abbas), it's not going to be John Kerry, it's going to be Barack Obama," he said. "So far, it's not clear that ... the president is prepared to take the kind of risk that would move this forward."
The State Department said the initial talks were planned for 8 p.m. on Monday at an iftar - the evening meal at which Muslims break their daily Ramadan fast - that Kerry will host at the State Department. They are to be followed by talks on Tuesday.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki suggested the talks in Washington would be to chart a path forward, rather than to leap directly into the thorny issues that need to be resolved.
After his latest round of shuttle diplomacy, Kerry announced on July 19 in Amman, Jordan, that the parties had laid the ground to resume negotiations on the so-called "final status" issues that must be resolved to end the dispute.
"The meetings in Washington will mark the beginning of these talks," Psaki said. "They will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural work plan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months."
PRISONER DEAL
Earlier on Sunday, Netanyahu had urged divided rightists in his Cabinet to back the prisoner deal.
"This moment is not easy for me, is not easy for the Cabinet ministers, and is not easy especially for the bereaved families, whose feelings I understand," he said when the Cabinet met, referring to families who have lost members in militant attacks.
"But there are moments in which tough decisions must be made for the good of the nation and this is one of those moments."
Israeli Channel 1 television said prisoners would be released in three stages, depending on progress in the talks, with a group of Israeli citizens left until the last stage.
Abbas has demanded the release of prisoners held since before a 1993 interim peace accord took effect. Israel has jailed thousands more Palestinians since then, many for carrying out deadly attacks.
The prisoner release would allow Netanyahu to sidestep other Palestinian demands, such as a halt to Jewish settlement expansion and a guarantee that negotiations over borders will be based on boundaries from before the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Hundreds of protesters from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) staged a rally against the resumption of peace talks, clashing with police in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of Abbas's Palestinian Authority.
PFLP activists also demonstrated in Gaza and chanted: "Listen Abbas, our land is not for sale. ... The (Palestinian) cause will never be resolved except by the rifle."
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator who works for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars think tank in Washington, said he was impressed by Kerry's tenacity.
"He has invested so much in this now, and even through expectations are so low, he is in an investment trap, he really can't let it fail now," Miller said. "Which means he'll have to go to extreme lengths to keep this thing afloat."
(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Stacey Joyce and Paul Simao)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-palestinian-peace-talks-resume-three-years-002836072.html
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সোমবার, ২৯ জুলাই, ২০১৩
Cannes jewel heist: $53 million in diamonds, jewels stolen from hotel
Cannes jewel heist saw $53 million in diamonds and other precious gems stolen from a hotel on the French Riviera. The Cannes jewel heist is the latest in a series of?several brazen jewelry thefts in Europe in recent years.
A policeman is seen at the Carlton hotel, in Cannes, southern France, the scene of a daylight raid, Sunday, July 28, 2013. A staggering 40 million euro ($53 million) worth of jewels and diamonds were stolen Sunday in a Cannes jewelry heist, one of Europe's biggest jewelry heists recent years, police said. The French Riviera hotel was hosting a temporary jewelry exhibit over the summer of the prestigious Leviev diamond house, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.
Lionel Cironneau/AP
EnlargeA staggering 40 million euro ($53 million) worth of diamonds and other?jewels?was stolen Sunday from the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in?Cannes, in one of Europe's biggest jewelry heists in recent years, police said. One expert noted the crime follows recent jail escapes by members of the notorious "Pink Panther"?jewel?thief gang.
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The hotel in the sweltering French Riviera was hosting a temporary jewelry exhibit over the summer from the prestigious Leviev diamond house, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.
A police spokesman said the theft took place around noon, but he could not confirm local media reports that the robber was a single gunman who stuffed a suitcase with the gems before making a swift exit. The spokesman spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record.
The luxury Carlton hotel featured prominently in Alfred Hitchcok's "To Catch a Thief," which starred Cary Grant as a reformed burglar chasing a?jewel?thief. It is situated on the exclusive Promenade de la Croisette that stretches a mile and a half (2.4 kilometers) along the French Riviera, and is thronged by the rich and famous throughout the year. The hotel's position provides not only a beautiful view of the sea but also an easy getaway for potential?jewel?thieves along the long stretch of road.
"It's a huge theft. Anytime you talk about a heist with many millions of dollars it turns heads and feeds the imagination," said Jonathan Sazonoff, U.S. editor for the Museum Security Network website and an authority on high-value crime.
He said the likelihood of recovering the stolen diamonds and?jewels?is slim, because the thieves can easily sell them. "The fear is, if you're dealing with high-quality minerals, it's hard to get them back," Sazonoff said. "They can be broken up and so they can be easily smuggled and sold."
The valuable gems were supposed to be on public display until the end of August. It was not immediately clear how many pieces were stolen.
Leviev, in a brief statement, said: "Company officials are cooperating with local authorities investigating the loss and are relieved that no one was injured in the robbery."
Several police officers were placed in front of the Carlton exhibition room ? near a Cartier diamond boutique ? to prevent the dozens of journalists and photographers from getting a look at the scene of the crime.
Hotel officials would not comment, and attempts to get comments from Leviev or his company were not immediately successful.
Europe has been struck by several brazen jewelry thefts in recent years, some of which have involved tens of millions of dollars in treasure.
On Feb. 18 in Belgium, some $50 million worth of diamonds were stolen. In that heist, robbers targeted stones from the global diamond center of Antwerp that had been loaded on a plane headed to Zurich. Authorities have since detained dozens of people and recovered much of the items stolen in that operation.
Five years ago, in December 2008, armed robbers wearing women's wigs and clothing made off with diamond rings, gem-studded bracelets and other jewelry said then to be worth $108 million from a Harry Winston boutique in Paris.
Also in 2008 ? in February of that year ? in a scene reminiscent of the movie "The Italian Job," masked thieves drilled a tunnel into a Damiani jewelry company showroom in Milan, Italy. They tied up the staff with plastic cable and sticky tape, then made off with gold, diamonds and rubies worth some $20 million. The robbers had been digging for several weeks from a building under construction next door.
Cannes?appears to be a favorite target this year ? in May it was struck by other two highly publicized jewelry heists during the?CannesFilm Festival.
In the first theft, robbers stole about $1 million worth of?jewels?after ripping a safe from the wall of a hotel room. In the second, thieves outsmarted 80 security guards in an exclusive hotel and grabbed a De Grisogono necklace that creators said is worth 2 million euros ($2.6 million).
Sazonoff said it is normal for robbers to gravitate to a place like?Cannes, whose glimmering harbor and glamorous film festival attract the world's rich and famous. "Why do thieves target?Cannes? It's simple ... On the Cote d'Azur, it's where the monied people flow," he said.
Sazonoff also said police would likely probe whether Sunday's heist is linked to recent jail escapes by alleged members of the Pink Panther?jewel?thief gang.
On Thursday, gang member Milan Poparic escaped his Swiss prison after accomplices rammed a gate and overpowered guards with bursts from their AK-47s, police said.
Police say the Pink Panther network's members are prime suspects in a series of daring thefts. According to Interpol, the group has targeted luxury watch and jewelry stores in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the United States, netting more than ?330 million (?285m) since 1999.
Poparic is the third member of the Pink Panthers to escape from a Swiss prison in as many months, according to Vaud police.
"The brazen drama of it is their style... The possibility of the reemergence of the Pink Panther gang is very troubling and taken seriously by law enforcement worldwide," Sazonoff said. "The theft of high value diamonds is exactly what they do, so it's not a great leap to assume they are on the warpath again. They are a crime wave waiting to happen."
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Pfizer to internally split generic, branded drugs operations
(Reuters) - Pfizer Inc on Monday said it plans to internally separate its commercial operations into three business segments, including two units that sell patent-protected branded drugs and one that sells generic medicines.
The largest U.S. drugmaker said the changes will go into effect in January in countries that do not require a consultation with labor unions.
Pfizer earlier this year said it would begin separately examining the finances and marketing of its patent-protected drug business, which it calls its "innovative" business, and its generic operation, which it calls its "value" business, as a possible prelude to selling off the generic business in coming years.
One of the businesses will include drugs expected to have patent protection beyond 2015, and generally include the treatment areas of inflammation, immunology, cardiovascular and metabolic, neuroscience and pain, rare diseases and women's and men's health. It will be headed by Geno Germano, who will be president of the Innovative Products Group.
The other "innovative" business will include vaccines, cancer and consumer healthcare, Pfizer said in a release. It will be headed by Amy Schulman as president of Vaccines, Oncology and Consumer Healthcare.
Many industry analysts have been urging Pfizer to spin off its lower-profit generics business, as the company has spun off its nutritional products and animal health businesses in recent years, to focus more intently on its core, more lucrative branded pharmaceuticals business.
But Pfizer has said it will first need to closely analyze the operations of its patent-protected and generic drugs, as if they were distinct businesses, including audits of their financial operations, before deciding whether to split off the generic unit.
Pfizer's shares gained 21 cents to $29.58 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Maureen Bavdek)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pfizer-internally-split-generic-branded-drugs-operations-131446267.html
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