The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Soul searching lies ahead as riots cool in Britain
- Europe warns Syria of UN steps, Russia wants reform
- White House rejects claim about bin Laden raid film
| Soul searching lies ahead as riots cool in Britain Posted: 10 Aug 2011 08:32 PM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron will face pressure on Thursday to soften his austerity plans, toughen up policing and do more to help inner-city communities after days of riots and looting laid bare deep social tensions in a depressed economy.
With the public seething over the looting of anything from sweets to televisions, Cameron has so far dismissed the rioters as nothing more than opportunistic criminals and denied the unrest was linked to the knock-on effects of deep spending cuts. But community leaders say inequality, cuts to public services and high youth unemployment are also probably to blame for some of the worst violence seen in Britain for decades. As the clear up continues, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government must find quick fixes to avoid further unrest while also addressing longer-term problems in what Cameron has called "broken Britain". "There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick," Cameron told reporters. A surge in police numbers helped to calm streets in London and cities across England such as Manchester and Birmingham on Wednesday night, but four days of often unchecked disorder have embarrassed the authorities, leaving communities ransacked and exhausting emergency services. Police arrested more than 1,000 people across England, filling cells and leaving courts working through the night to process hundreds of cases. Among those charged were a teaching assistant, an 11-year-old boy and a charity worker. It is unclear whether the peace will hold, but trouble on Wednesday night was limited to the odd skirmish. Businessmen and residents had also come together to protect their areas. "Blacks, Asians, whites - we all live in the same community - why do we have to kill one another?" said Tariq Jahan, whose son was one of three young Muslim men run over by a car and killed while apparently protecting property in the mayhem in Birmingham on Tuesday night. "Step forward if you want to lose your sons, otherwise calm down and go home, please," he said. As police investigate that incident and the many other crimes of the last few days, attention is now likely to turn to finding out why the riots and looting erupted and spread and why police were slow to tackle the violence. PARLIAMENT RECALLED Cameron has ordered a rare recall of parliament on Thursdsay from its summer recess to debate the unrest which flared first in north London after police shot dead an Afro-Caribbean man. The opposition Labour party, eager for the government to take a less harsh approach to dealing with a record budget deficit, said cuts to police budgets had contributed to the escalation in violence. "The scale of government cuts is making it harder for the police to do their jobs and keep us safe," said Yvette Cooper, Labour's home affairs spokeswoman. Long-term tensions between police and youth, a dearth of opportunities for children from disadvantaged areas and visible inequalities where the wealthy often live just yards away from run-down city estates have also been highlighted. Others have sided with Cameron, condemning the groups of youths as thrill-seeking thugs who are indicative of a breakdown in Britain's social fabric and morals. Tensions have been bubbling in Britain for some time, with the economy struggling to grow after an 18-month recession, one in five young people out of work and high inflation squeezing incomes and hitting the poor hardest. Finance minister George Osborne will also address parliament on Thursday amid growing concern that the widely publicised scenes of rioting could damage confidence in the economy and in London, one of the world's biggest financial centres. (Reporting by Matt Falloon, editing by Tim Pearce) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. | ||
| Europe warns Syria of UN steps, Russia wants reform Posted: 10 Aug 2011 06:59 PM PDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - European members of the Security Council on Wednesday threatened Syria that it could face tougher U.N. action if it continued a bloody crackdown on protesters, while Russia urged Damascus to implement promised reforms as soon as possible. But veto powers Russia and China, backed by India, South Africa and Brazil, have vehemently opposed the idea of slapping U.N. sanctions on Damascus, which Western diplomats say would be the logical next step for Syria. Council diplomats said there were no signs that the five so-called "BRICS" nations have altered their positions despite the five-month-old crackdown by Syrian security forces on protesters in cities across the country. Envoys of Britain, France, Germany and Portugal spoke to reporters after a closed-door session of the 15-nation council convened to assess Syria's compliance with last week's call by the Security Council for "an immediate end to all violence." They said Damascus has ignored that demand. At Wednesday's meeting, U.N. deputy political affairs chief Oscar Fernandez-Taranco told council members that the violence had continued and the humanitarian situation remained dire, diplomats who attended the meeting told Reuters. He said that nearly 2,000 civilians had been killed since March, 188 since July 31 -- and 87 on Aug. 8 alone. Britain's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Philip Parham suggested to reporters that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continued to ignore calls from the Security Council for an end to the clampdown, Damascus could face U.N. sanctions. "If they continue ... along their current path and they fail to heed those calls, then we believe the council must look at taking further steps to keep up the pressure on the Syrian regime," Parham said. U.S. ENVOY RICE: ASSAD SHOULD GO Parham's counterparts from France, Germany and Portugal echoed his warning that further steps -- which is often diplomatic code for sanctions -- would have to be discussed. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters earlier that "it would be much, much better for the people of Syria, and Syria would be better off, without Assad." She was echoing comments made last week by White House spokesman Jay Carney. Rice told the Security Council that the United States "is working together with its international partners to bring greater pressure to bear on the Syrian regime through further coordinated diplomatic and financial measures." "We are also working with our partners to stem the flow of the weapons and ammunition that Syrian security forces, under Assad's authority, continue to use against peaceful protesters," she said, according to the text of her remarks. The Security Council will take up Syria again next week. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow had made clear to Damascus that it wants Assad's promised reforms implemented as swiftly as possible. "What we are telling them is that they need to have serious reforms as soon as possible, even though we do realize that it takes time, especially in a dramatic situation like this, you simply cannot carry out reforms overnight," he said. Asked if he thought new U.S. sanctions against Syria announced by Washington on Wednesday were helpful, Churkin said, "No." Syrian envoy Bashar Ja'afari blasted the Europeans, accusing them of misleading reporters about the situation. "They tried to manipulate the truth and to hide important facts and elements related to the so-called situation in Syria," he said, adding that the Europeans had deliberately ignored Assad's promises of reform and national dialogue. He also took aim at British Prime Minister David Cameron. "To hear the prime minister of England describing the riots and the rioters in England by using the term 'gangs', while they don't allow us to use the same term for the armed groups and the terrorist groups in my country," he said. "This is hypocrisy. This is arrogance." Parham dismissed Ja'afari's comparison between the riots in Britain and the violence in Syria as "absurd." (Editing by Paul Simao) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. | ||
| White House rejects claim about bin Laden raid film Posted: 10 Aug 2011 05:27 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Moviemakers producing a film about the U.S. special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden are getting help from the Pentagon, but the Obama administration dismissed concerns on Wednesday that classified information has been divulged.
The film, focusing on one of President Barack Obama's key successes in office, is due to be released in October 2012, less than a month before the election in which the Democrat is seeking a second term. Republican Peter King, chairman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, called on Tuesday for an investigation into contacts between the administration and the filmmakers. King questioned whether special operations methods had been compromised. "The claims are ridiculous," White House spokesman Jay Carney told a White House briefing. "We do not discuss classified information. And I would hope that as we face the continued threat from terrorism, the House Committee on Homeland Security would have more important topics to discuss than a movie," Carney added. U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department is cooperating with filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal as they work on a motion picture about the raid that killed bin Laden. The two, who collaborated on the Oscar-winning Iraq war movie "The Hurt Locker," had been developing the bin Laden film even before the al Qaeda leader was killed in May in a raid on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. In a statement, the pair said their movie covered a period of three different U.S. administrations that searched for bin Laden, including those of Presidents Clinton and Bush. "This was an American triumph, both heroic and non-partisan, and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise," Bigelow and Boal said in their joint statement. The Pentagon has a two-person entertainment media office that assists makers of films, television shows, computer games and other entertainment media targeting mass audiences. "Mostly when we're contacted by filmmakers they're looking for access to our equipment, our personnel and our installations. Technical advice is kind of a byproduct of that relationship," said Phil Strub, who heads the office. Reacting to a New York Times column saying the film was timed to give Obama a "home-stretch boost" in his re-election bid, King called for an investigation into the assertion that Bigelow had been given "top-level access to the most classified mission in history." On the Bigelow film, Lapan said the Defense Department is "providing assistance with script research, which is something we commonly do for established filmmakers." Lapan said the Pentagon attempts to help filmmakers and authors but "we do not discuss classified information." Carney said information provided to the filmmakers "has been focused on the president's role." "There is no difference in the information that we've given to anybody who's working on this topic from what we gave to those of you in this room who worked on it in the days and weeks after the raid itself," Carney told reporters. (Editing by Will Dunham and Eric Walsh) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. |
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