The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Blind Chinese activist's brother says lawsuit rejected
- CIA officials in Libya made key decisions during Benghazi attacks
- Obama, Romney return to attack as campaign hits final stretch
| Blind Chinese activist's brother says lawsuit rejected Posted: 01 Nov 2012 08:04 PM PDT BEIJING (Reuters) - The eldest brother of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng said on Friday a Chinese court had rejected his lawsuit filed against local police and officials for unlawfully barging into his house after his brother's escape.
The rejection of Chen Guangfu's lawsuit on Thursday was an expected outcome, but it underscores the continued pressure on Chen Guangcheng's family in northeastern Shandong province, about five months after Chen Guangcheng left for the United States to study. Chen Guangfu said he would appeal, and although his legal fight is likely to fail, it could renew international focus on China's human rights and legal system and galvanise lawyers and rights advocates to push for the rule of law in China. Chinese courts rarely accept lawsuits filed by dissidents or their relatives, and when courts do they invariably find for the government. The Yinan County People's Court rejected Chen Guangfu's lawsuit on the grounds that he did not provide "any corresponding evidence" and therefore he "cannot prove that his claims are based in reality", Chen Guangfu said by telephone from his village of Dongshigu. Court officials could not be reached for comment. Chen Guangfu is trying to sue police and local government officials that oversee his village for "scaling the walls of his home and for wrecking his home" just after midnight on April 27, the day after they discovered his blind brother had escaped. "This outcome was expected; it's just one of their rogue tactics," Chen Guangfu, 55, told Reuters. "How can they say the evidence doesn't correspond with reality? Kegui is still in their hands." Chen Guangfu's son, Chen Kegui, has been charged with intentional wounding after he took a kitchen knife and slashed three officials who had barged into Chen Guangfu's home and beat up family members of Chen Guangcheng. Chen Kegui's lawyers have been repeatedly denied access to him. After breaking free from 19 months of house imprisonment in April, Chen Guangcheng sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, embarrassing the Chinese authorities and sparking a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Washington. He is now studying law in New York. Copyright © 2012 Reuters | ||
| CIA officials in Libya made key decisions during Benghazi attacks Posted: 01 Nov 2012 06:08 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA officials on the ground in Libya dispatched security forces to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi within 25 minutes and made other key decisions about how to respond to the waves of attacks on U.S. installations on September 11, a senior American intelligence official said on Thursday.
Officials in Washington monitored events through message traffic and a hovering U.S. military drone but did not interfere with or reject requests for help from officials in the line of fire, the official said. The information emerged as officials made available on Thursday a timeline chronicling the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials died. The material appears to refute claims by critics that officials in Washington delayed sending help to the besieged personnel. The handling of the attack by the Obama administration and CIA has come under sharp criticism by supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney during the campaign ahead of the presidential election on November 6. The senior intelligence official said that CIA officers in Benghazi, "responded to the situation on the night of 11 and 12 September as quickly and as effectively as possible. "The security officers in particular were genuine heroes. They quickly tried to rally additional local support and heavier weapons, and when that could not be accomplished within minutes, they still moved in and put their own lives on the line to save their comrades," the official said. "At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could," the official said. "There was no second-guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger. There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support," the official added. OBAMA, CIA PUSH BACK AGAINST CRITICISM Intelligence and other administration officials expressed particular dismay about a report on Fox News last week that alleged that armed CIA operatives near the U.S. compound in Benghazi were repeatedly told to "stand down" after asking for permission to assist on the night of September 11 and were also refused military backup by the CIA chain of command. Following the initial broadcast of the Fox News report, Jennifer Youngblood, a CIA spokeswoman, denied that CIA had ever turned down requests for help from U.S. personnel in Benghazi. "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate," Youngblood said. According to the timeline, around 9:40 p.m. Benghazi time, officials at the CIA's relatively fortified and well-defended base in Benghazi got a call from State Department officials at the U.S. diplomatic mission about a mile away that the less-fortified public mission complex had come under attack from a group of militants, the intelligence official said. Other official sources said that the initial wave of attacks on the diplomatic mission involved setting fires using diesel fuel. The dense smoke created by the fuel both made it hard for people at the compound to breathe and to organize a response to the attack. About 25 minutes after the initial report came into the CIA base, a team of about six agency security officers left their base for the public diplomatic mission compound. Over the succeeding 25 minutes, the CIA team approached the compound, and tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to get local Libyan allies to bring them a supply of heavier weapons, and eventually moved into the burning diplomatic compound, the intelligence official said. At around 11:10 p.m., a Defense Department drone, which had been on an unrelated mission some distance away, arrived in Benghazi to help officials on the ground gather information. By 11:30, U.S. personnel who had been working or staying at the mission had been rounded up except for Ambassador Stevens, who was missing, the intelligence official said. When they tried to drive out of the diplomatic compound to return to the CIA base, however, the convoy carrying U.S. evacuees came under fire. Once they got back to the CIA base, that installation itself came under fire from what the intelligence official described as small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. These patchy attacks went on for roughly 90 minutes, the intelligence official said. CIA SENT TEAM FROM TRIPOLI Around the same time, a CIA security team based in Tripoli, which included two U.S. military officers, landed at Benghazi airport. Upon its arrival, however, the team spent some time trying both to arrange local transport and to locate the missing Ambassador Stevens. After some time trying to solve these problems, the security team that had flown in from Tripoli eventually arranged for an armed local escort and extra transportation, but decided not to go the hospital where they believed Stevens had been taken. In part this was because they had reason to believe Stevens was likely dead, and because security at the hospital was believed, at best, to be "uncertain," the intelligence official said. Not long before dawn, the reinforcements from Tripoli managed to take themselves and a convoy of vehicles to the CIA base to prepare for an anticipated evacuation. However, just after they arrived at the CIA base, the official said, a new round of attacks on that facility was launched, this time with mortars. Although the mortar attacks lasted only 11 minutes, two U.S. security officers were killed by a direct hit from one of the shells, the intelligence official said. Finally, a bit less than an hour later, a heavily armed Libyan military unit arrived at the CIA base to help evacuate the compound of U.S. personnel to the Benghazi airport, the official added. Over the next few hours, roughly 30 Americans, as well as the bodies of Stevens and the other three Americans killed during the attacks, were loaded on planes and flown out of the city, several U.S. officials said. Copyright © 2012 Reuters | ||
| Obama, Romney return to attack as campaign hits final stretch Posted: 01 Nov 2012 05:46 PM PDT GREEN BAY, Wisconsin (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney went back on the attack on Thursday, breaking a storm-induced campaign truce to hit the road and pound home their closing messages in the final stretch of a tight battle for the White House.
With five days left until Tuesday's election, Obama received an endorsement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, resurrected his 2008 "change" slogan and said he was the only candidate who had actually fought for it. Romney criticized Obama as a lover of big government who would expand the federal bureaucracy. National polls show the race deadlocked, and Obama and Romney will spend the final days in eight swing states that will decide who wins the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House. Obama made Wisconsin the first stop on a four-state swing on Thursday that also took him to rallies in Nevada and Colorado before going to Ohio for the night. Romney had a full day of campaigning across Virginia. "You may be frustrated at the pace of change, but you know what I believe, you know where I stand," Obama told a crowd of 2,600 people on an airport tarmac in Wisconsin, a state that is a vital piece of his electoral strategy. "I know what change looks like because I've fought for it." At a rally in Doswell, Virginia, Romney criticized Obama's comment that he would like to consolidate government agencies that deal with business issues in a new department under a secretary of business. "I don't think adding a new chair to his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Romney said. Jobs will again be the focus of fierce debate on Friday when the government releases the unemployment figures for October. Any big change from the 7.8 percent number in September could potentially sway voters. Obama and Romney had put campaigning on hold for several days as the historic storm Sandy pounded the eastern seaboard, leaving a trail of destruction and forcing Obama to turn his attention to storm relief. That pause produced some unexpected political benefits for Obama, who won warm praise from Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Romney supporter, and he spent days directing federal relief efforts in a show of presidential leadership that largely sidelined Romney. New York's Bloomberg - a Republican-turned-independent who did not back a candidate in 2008 - endorsed Obama and cited the Democrat's record on climate change, an issue that has gained more attention since the storm. Bloomberg said Obama had taken significant steps to reduce carbon consumption, while Romney had backtracked on earlier positions he took as governor of Massachusetts to battle climate change. Obama said he was "honoured" by the backing of Bloomberg, who flirted with White House runs in the past. On their first day back on the trail, both Obama and Romney returned to political attacks but struck a slightly more positive tone than usual in trying to woo undecided voters and push their own supporters to vote. In Doswell, Romney proclaimed his faith in the future and said, "The American people have what it takes to come out of these tough times." In Wisconsin, Obama drew distinctions with Romney but dropped his usual reference to "Romnesia" - the term he uses to describe what he calls Romney's tendency to shift positions. SWING-STATE ADVANTAGE FOR OBAMA Obama has a somewhat easier path to 270 electoral votes than Romney, fuelled primarily by a small but steady lead in the vital battleground of Ohio - a crucial piece of any winning scenario for either candidate - and slight leads in Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada. Barring any surprises elsewhere, Obama can win a second term by capturing the Midwestern bastions of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, and his schedule was aimed at shoring up his safety net there. Obama plans to visit Ohio on each of the last four days of the campaign, and plans two more trips to Wisconsin and Iowa. He will conclude his campaign on Monday night with rock singer Bruce Springsteen in Iowa, where a 2008 caucus win launched his run to the presidency. So far, Obama has planned just one visit each in the final days to Florida and Virginia, where most polls give Romney a slight lead. Romney will hit Wisconsin and Ohio on Friday, and New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado on Saturday. Romney plans to finish up his campaign on Monday night in New Hampshire, the state where he launched his bid last year. Romney's campaign has aired ads in recent days in the Democratic-leaning states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, hoping to put them in play after polls showed the races tightening but Obama still ahead. The campaign said Romney would visit Pennsylvania on Sunday, marking his first campaign visit since the nominating convention to one of his new target states. A win in Pennsylvania would be a crippling blow to Obama, but most public polls still show Obama leading there. Romney aides said the moves into those three new states were a sign of their growing momentum, although Obama aides described them as a desperate ploy to find new paths to 270 electoral votes. A Reuters/Ipsos national online poll on Thursday showed the race remained effectively deadlocked, with Obama at 47 percent to Romney's 46 percent. Most national polls showed roughly similar results. Most swing-state polls have found Obama clinging to slender leads in five of the eight most heavily contested states - Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. In most polls, Romney has a slight lead in Florida, while Virginia and Colorado were effectively tied. A Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Thursday showed Obama with a 5-point lead in Virginia, and 2-point leads among likely voters in both Ohio and Florida. Romney led by 1 point in Colorado in the Reuters/Ipsos polls. (Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Virginia; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)
Romney to make unexpected campaign stop in Pennsylvania Copyright © 2012 Reuters |
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