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Taliban video shows U.S. soldier held in Afghanistan

bakozcreblo - 08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:22

Spc. Bowe Bergdahl, the only known U.S. soldier held captive in Afghanistan, appears briefly in a newly released Taliban video standing next to a smiling insurgent commander who once threatened to kill him.

The 24-year-old from Hailey, Idaho, has bags under his eyes and what appears to be an abrasion on his left cheek in the footage. The video was the fourth to appear since he was captured nearly 18 months ago and was provided to reporters Wednesday by IntelCenter, a private, U.S.-based organization that tracks Islamic extremist activities and communications.

His parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, have declined to speak with reporters throughout the ordeal, but Idaho National Guard spokesman Col. Tim Marsano said Wednesday that they had confirmed that the man in the video was their son.

“They responded that it was him, based on the screen shots,” Marsano said. “It’s been an extremely difficult year and a half. Without any concrete news, everyday brings more challenges. They do continue to take some comfort in the support they’ve gotten, from the community, their family and friends.”

NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz said the coalition was not sure whether the footage was old or new. Bergdahl is seen wearing an Afghan-style, lightweight tan shirt, suggesting that the video was shot during warmer weather.

“We are still investigating this case and hope Bowe Bergdahl is still fine,” he said.

Bergdahl has been held by the Taliban since June 30, 2009, when he disappeared in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan.

According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which also tracks Islamic extremist activities, Bergdahl is standing next to Sangin Zadran, a senior official in the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network in Paktika. In July 2009, Sangin’s spokesman told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Berghdal would be killed unless the U.S. stops strikes in Ghazni province’s Giro district and Paktika province’s Khoshamand district.

Bergdahl, who is seen in just a few seconds of footage that includes a montage of past militant attacks and news events, nods occasionally as if acknowledging another speaker and often looks down at the ground.

The 69-minute video, produced by Manba al-Jihad, a video production group of the Haqqani network, was released on the website of the Afghan Taliban on Dec. 2, but appeared on jihadist forums last month, according to SITE.

Bergdahl, a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska, has appeared in three other videos that the Taliban released on July 18, 2009, Dec. 25, 2009 and April 7.

Separately, two NATO service members died Wednesday following an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan. The coalition did not disclose their nationalities or details about their deaths. So far this month, 12 members of the NATO coalition have been killed in Afghanistan. At least 671 have died so far this year.

The Afghan Defense Ministry also condemned a coalition airstrike that it said mistakenly killed two Afghan soldiers on Tuesday afternoon. The ministry said in a statement that three other Afghan soldiers were wounded in the airstrike in Charkh district of Logar province in eastern Afghanistan. NATO said it was investigating the incident.

On Tuesday, Afghan soldiers killed a suicide attacker who was plotting an attack on an Afghan army base in the Gereshk district of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. The ministry did not disclose details, but NATO described the incident in a statement released Wednesday night.

The coalition said that after receiving tips from local residents, a joint Afghan and coalition force stopped two suspicious vehicles traveling on a weapons infiltration route in Helmand’s Washer district.

One suspected insurgent ran from the first vehicle and was detained by the security force. The second suspected insurgent blew himself up inside the vehicle.

In the second vehicle, a suspected militant jumped out and began shooting and was wounded while another managed to escape.

Also in the south, one child was killed and two men were injured in a homemade bomb explosion in the Shahjoy district of Zabul province, said Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar, spokesman for the provincial governor.

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Google, Microsoft Executives Spar Over Mobile Software

bakozcreblo - 08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:21

Google’s Android chief and his Microsoft counterpart traded barbs over Windows Phone 7 and its ability to innovate on the same level as Android and Apple.

At the All Things Digital: Dive into Mobile conference in San Francisco, Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin declared that Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems are the two clear leaders in the industry.

While Mr. Rubin said he thinks Windows Phone 7 is a “good 1.0 product,” he added that he thinks Windows Phone 7 has a legacy problem that’s holding the product back from true innovation.

“There’s some stuff that’s 20 years old in Windows Phone 7,” Mr. Rubin said. “You have this package of stuff that was invented before the Internet. It gives us a speed advantage. We can adapt and be more agile.”

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, the corporate VP for Windows Phone Program Management and Design, fought back the next day, saying he suspects Android has similarly old code based on Linux.

Mr. Belfiore admitted that there may be some old code, but he said it in no way impedes the company’s ability to innovate or serve as a base for cutting edge handsets.

“It is true that we have a kernel that has been around for a long time,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

But the bigger issue, according to Mr. Belfiore, was that Mr. Rubin implied Windows Phone 7 is encumbered by legacy.

“I disagree with that premise,” he said. “If you look at either the hardware devices that our operating systems runs on or the software applications, in both those cases our device driver support and our platform support is completely new. I don’t feel that we suffer from or are slowed down by legacy.”

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Madoff Trustee Lifts UBS Claims to $2.5 Billion

bakozcreblo - 08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:21

The trustee recovering money for victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme Wednesday said he is seeking an additional $555 million from Swiss bank UBS AG, bringing the total recoveries and damages sought from the bank to around $2.5 billion.

In a lawsuit filed in federal bankruptcy court in New York, trustee Irving Picard alleged there were an additional 26 counts of financial fraud and misconduct against the bank. The fresh legal move follows a $2 billion suit filed in late November against UBS, which denied the allegations.

In a statement Mr. Picard said UBS and related entities “capitalized on the Ponzi scheme in the face of clear indications of fraud.”

The trustee said UBS allegedly funneled more than $1 billion into the Madoff fraud predominantly through two “feeder funds.” He alleged that the bank aided and sustained the massive Ponzi scheme, and reaped extraordinary financial benefits.

UBS denied the allegations. “The U.S. trustee’s allegations are completely unfounded and without merit,” the bank said in a statement. “UBS wasn’t aware of any wrongdoing by Madoff. We will take all appropriate steps to demonstrate that the allegations are false and unfounded.”

The news comes after Mr. Picard on Tuesday reached a $625 million settlement with the family of Carl Shapiro, a longtime friend and customer of Mr. Madoff. Mr. Picard also filed a suit against New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon. In a court filing last year, Mr. Picard alleged a partnership associated with the baseball team, Mets LP, gained a net $48 million through its investments with Mr. Madoff.

The trustee has filed more than 100 lawsuits against Mr. Madoff’s customers and is seeking to recover funds from banks such HSBC Holdings PLC and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which have all denied wrongdoing. The trustee has a Dec. 11 deadline under federal bankruptcy law to sue to recover funds.

So far, the trustee has recovered about $2 billion for fraud victims. Earlier this week, Mr. Picard reached a $500 million settlement with Swiss private bank Union Bancaire Privée.

Mr. Madoff pleaded guilty in March 2009 to running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme in which investors reportedly lost around $65 billion. He is serving a 150-year sentence.

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In hot seat at climate talks, China softening

bakozcreblo - 08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:20

China, the world’s largest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, said it’s willing to slow the growth of such greenhouse gases as environment ministers began arriving Tuesday in Cancun, Mexico, for the final days of climate treaty talks.

As the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference headed toward its Friday conclusion, there were signs of movement toward a global response to climate change.

“So far, we have made some progress,” European Union representative Joke Schauvliege said at a news conference Monday. China’s climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, on Monday, for example, said his nation would consider making its domestic energy-efficiency goals “binding” in a Kyoto Protocol-style agreement produced by UNFCCC talks. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012, pledged developed-nation signatories to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 5.2% compared with 1991 levels.

“Not so much that this is any change in their policies, but that China has said it here is an important signal they are prepared to make voluntary agreements binding,” said Barry Coates of Oxfam New Zealand, an environmental advocacy group. He and other observers point to progress in three areas:

•Deforestation. Efforts focus on rules to measure forest conservation that also allow poor nations such as Bolivia to exercise control over who gets to profit from selling preservation rights. “This looks like the area that has moved the most forward at the meeting,” said Linda Krueger of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

•Verification. A compromise text released by India has been seen as “a good starting point,” Coates said, toward a global system for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions cuts.

•Finances. Among others, European Union pledges toward a global finance fund have added to hopes of a financing agreement for clean energy technologies in poor nations, and payments to communities already affected by sea-level rise, flooding and other climate changes, according to U.S. State Department negotiator Todd Stern.

“The big question,” Coates said, is whether U.S., Chinese and other large greenhouse gas emitters will sign an agreement that allows them to move cuts pledged last year at the Copenhagen climate meeting into the U.N. treaty talks. That could quell worldwide doubts about U.S. commitment to addressing climate and reassure poor nations they will receive help. Last year, President Obama called for 17% U.S. emissions cuts compared with 2005 levels by 2020. Without significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report last year said, global average atmospheric temperatures would likely rise an additional 2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit in this century.

Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Climate Change suggested a successful meeting would produce agreements on issues such as deforestation and a willingness to continue working on the big issue of a way to reduce fossil fuel emissions globally.

“Everyone says they support a goal of a binding agreement, but they have very different notions of what it would look like,” Diringer said. “We’ll see if those differences can start to be bridged.”

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Protest of Haiti election results: We will set the country on fire

bakozcreblo - 08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:20

Protests erupted around the Haitian capital Tuesday night after an election council announced a runoff between a former first lady and a candidate allied with an increasingly unpopular government.

Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady of Haiti, won the presidential election held over a week ago with 31.37 of the vote, the Provisional Electoral Council announced late Tuesday.

Jude Celestin, the candidate backed by President Rene Preval, came in second with 22.48 percent while popular musician Michel Martelly was just behind Celestin with 21.84 percent.

Fires erupted throughout the city late into the night, and protesters promised more violence.

“Preval is a thief. We don’t need Jude Celestin. We need Michel Martelly,” people chanted in the streets early Wednesday morning. “Tomorrow we will set the country on fire.”

Since no candidate obtained the 50 percent of the votes needed to win outright, Haitians will return to the polls in January, four days after the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake, to vote in a runoff election.

But the vote was fraught with allegations of fraud, with many believing that Preval would go to any lengths to ensure a win for his protege, Celestin.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a statement Tuesday saying that the United States stands ready to support efforts to review irregularities in the vote so that results are “consistent with the will of the Haitian people expressed in their votes.”

“Like others, the government of the United States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council’s announcement of preliminary results from the November 28 national elections that are inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council (CNO), which had more than 5,500 observers and observed the vote count in 1,600 voting centers nationwide,” the embassy said.

Celestin’s entry into the runoff prompted violent demonstrations throughout Port-au-Prince. Gunfire rang out on the streets, and the smell of fires and burning tires filled the air.

People ran out on the streets denouncing Celestin. In the central Champs de Mars plaza, white pickup trucks carried police in the back and made their way around barricaded streets.

Residents of a tent city that covers the entire plaza beat on the rows of portable toilets, knocking one down.

It had been feared that a win or runoff spot for Celestin would trigger more unrest in the Haitian capital. Preval’s government has become increasingly unpopular with Haitians who see a lack of progress in their homeland.

Preval was barred by the constitution from seeking another term. Celestin headed the state-run transportation company that gained notoriety in the days after the quake as its trucks picked up the bodies of the dead.

The next president of Haiti will inherit the daunting task of leading this Caribbean nation in its struggle to recover from years of dictatorship and poverty compounded earlier this year by the earthquake and a current cholera epidemic that has now sickened almost 100,000 people.

Martelly, a popular Kompa singer, alleged massive fraud and vowed to challenge the results.

His campaign manager, Damian Merlo, said Martelly had expected that Preval would not relinquish power easily.

“The math says an absolute fraud,” Merlo said.

The OAS-CARICOM Joint Election Observation Mission, which includes the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community, said it maintained a presence in the vote tabulation center. Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the suspected fraud in the electoral process was more serious than previously thought.

It took eight days to announce the final results of the November 28 election.

Since then, riots have erupted in the Haitian capital, some violent enough for police to spray tear gas.

Some aid workers, including United Nations staff, left their offices early to return home before darkness fell.

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More Nuclear Talks With Iran Are Set

bakozcreblo - 08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:20

Tense talks between Iran, the United States and other world powers ended Tuesday with an agreement to hold another meeting toward the end of January in Istanbul.

“Our expectations for this meeting were low, and I can’t say that they’ve been exceeded,” said a senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He characterized the tenor of the discussions, in which Iran was pressed on its nuclear program, as “difficult and candid.”

Still, the official said, the simple fact that Iran agreed to meet in the first place, and to a future meeting as well, was positive, coming after more than a year of domestic friction over Iran’s disputed presidential election and the imposition of a fourth round of United Nations economic sanctions that was followed by additional independent measures from the United States and other nations.

Iran had maintained that its nuclear program was not open for discussion, but officials who attended the talks said that, despite Iranian denials, most of the day and a half of meetings focused on the deep concerns of many of Iran’s neighbors and much of the West that the country was trying to build a bomb. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is merely to generate power and create medical isotopes.

A senior European official said that the talks evidenced a level of mistrust between Iran and the other powers that could be compared only to the situation with North Korea, and that it was important to continue to offer serious negotiations in combination with the possibility of harsher measures, including further sanctions.

But the Iranian side ended the meetings on a note of defiance. The head of its delegation, Saeed Jalili, said at a news conference that the only agenda for the Istanbul meeting was “to have talks for cooperation to find common ground” and insisted that international requests for Iran to halt its enrichment of uranium would not be discussed.

“I am announcing openly and clearly that Iran will not discuss a uranium enrichment halt in the next meeting in Istanbul with major powers,” Mr. Jalili said, portraying Iran as being at the height of its power, economically and regionally, despite the buildup of international sanctions.

He spoke at a podium flanked by a black-bordered portrait of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Majid Shahriari, who was killed Nov. 29 in Tehran when a bomb attached to his car exploded, an attack the Iranians have blamed on the West and Israel.

Officials said that during the talks, Mr. Jalili gave an impassioned critique of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog, and quoted “highly selectively” from its reports on Iran.

But his negotiating partners repeated their demand that Iran cooperate fully with the agency, whose last report said that Iran was not doing so.

Besides Iran, the nations represented here at the talks, led by Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, were the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany. They are known as the “P5 plus 1” — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany.

While repetitive, the American official said, the talks “were part of a clear dual-track strategy” of negotiations backed up by sanctions and the possibility of military force, and were important to display to the Iranians “our seriousness on both tracks and to keep P5 plus 1 unity” so that Iran could not divide one nation from another.

In Dubai on Tuesday, six gulf Arab leaders appealed to Iran to “respond positively” to talks about its nuclear program and to be “a good neighbor” in the region. In a statement, the Gulf Cooperation Council said it “welcomes international efforts, including those made by the P5+1, to peacefully resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis and hopes it will respond positively to these efforts.”

The last talks with Iran, more than a year ago, yielded a tentative agreement for uranium enrichment for medical use outside the country, a deal that rapidly fell apart. The accomplishment here, the American official said, was to “restart” the nuclear talks and “begin a systematic process of confidence-building through practical steps.”

Iran needs “to show that it is serious,” but the process of talking “cannot be open-ended,” he said, acknowledging that Iran historically has tried to buy time and divide its critics.

The senior European official echoed that assessment, saying: “There was no breakthrough, no great leap forward. As for progress, we made a restart, we re-engaged. But if we take this forward, we need to find some substance to move forward on.”

Possible confidence-building measures, the Western officials said, could include a revision of the October 2009 deal to remove a major portion of Iran’s enriched uranium so it could be turned into nuclear fuel rods abroad.

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08 de diciembre de 2010 - 23:11

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