The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Explosions, gunfire heard around Kabul international airport
- Ex-CIA man says exposed U.S. spy scheme to protect world
- Turkey's Erdogan warns patience with protests will run out
| Explosions, gunfire heard around Kabul international airport Posted: 09 Jun 2013 07:32 PM PDT KABUL (Reuters) - Insurgents launched a pre-dawn attack on Afghanistan's main international airport in the capital, Kabul, on Monday, police said, with explosions and gunfire heard coming from an area that also houses major foreign military bases.
There were no immediate reports of casualties and there was also no early claim of responsibility for the attack. Attacks on the heavily guarded airport, used by civilians and the military, are relatively rare and would represent an ambitious target for insurgents, with recent assaults staged against less well-protected targets. The airport, by comparison, is home to a major operational base for NATO-led forces that have been fighting Taliban and other insurgents for 12 years and is bristling with soldiers and police, guard towers and several lines of security checkpoints. Police said the attack appeared to be centred on the military side of the airport, to the west of the civilian terminal. "Gunmen have entered a house under construction in the west of Kabul airport and are fighting with security forces," Kabul police spokesman Hashmatullah Stanekzai said. "Their target is Kabul airport and all roads to it are sealed," he said. A spokesman for the Afghan Air Force, which is also based at the facility, also said the airport was the target of the attack. There are also a number of logistics bases in the area. The attack began at about 4.30 a.m. (2400 GMT). Embassies in the diplomatic zone in the centre of Kabul were quickly locked down and emergency alarms were heard ringing loudly from the British embassy. Reuters witnesses reported hearing explosions at the airport, with reports of rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire. Blasts still being heard an hour after the attack was launched. Concerns are mounting over how the 352,000-strong Afghan security forces will cope with an intensifying insurgency once most foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The airport attack came soon after assaults on the International Organisation for Migration in Kabul and against the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Four people were killed and three wounded in those attacks. In April 2011, a rogue Afghan air force officer shot and killed eight U.S. servicemen and a civilian contractor in the worst attack at the airport since the war began. (Additional reporting by Dylan Welch and Omar Sobhani; Writing by Dylan Welch; Editing by Paul Tait) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Ex-CIA man says exposed U.S. spy scheme to protect world Posted: 09 Jun 2013 06:43 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency revealed on Sunday it was he who leaked details of a top secret U.S. surveillance program, acting out of conscience to protect "basic liberties for people around the world."
Holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden, 29, said he had thought long and hard before publicizing details of an NSA program code-named PRISM, saying he had done so because he felt the United States was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American. Snowden, a former technical assistant at the CIA, said he had been working at the super-secret NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen. He said he decided to leak information after becoming disenchanted with President Barack Obama, whom he said had continued the policies of predecessor George W. Bush. "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under," he told the Guardian, which published a video interview with him on its website. Both the Guardian and the Washington Post published revelations last week that U.S. security services had monitored data about phone calls from Verizon and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook. The news came just before - and grabbed much attention from - a U.S.-China summit at the weekend at which Obama confronted Chinese President Xi Jinping over allegations of cyber theft, which the Washington Post reported included data from nearly 40 U.S. military weapons programs. In naming Snowden on Sunday, the newspapers said he had sought to be identified. "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything," Snowden said in explaining his actions. "With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards," he said. WORKED AT NSA FOR FOUR YEARS The Guardian said Snowden had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies. Three weeks ago, he copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii and told his supervisor he needed "a couple of weeks" off for treatment for epilepsy, the paper said. On May 20 he flew to Hong Kong. The CIA and the White House declined to comment, while a spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence would not comment directly about Snowden himself but said the intelligence community was reviewing damage done by the recent leaks. "Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law," said the spokesman, Shawn Turner. The NSA has requested a criminal probe into the leaked information. On Sunday, the U.S. Justice Department said it was in the initial stages of a criminal investigation following the leaks. Booz Allen, a U.S. management and technology consultancy, said reports of the leaked information were "shocking and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation" of company policy. It said Snowden had been employed by the company for less than three months and that it would cooperate with any investigations. A spokesman for Dell Inc declined to comment on reports that Snowden had been employed at that company. In 2009, Dell acquired Perot Systems, a U.S. government contractor that did work for U.S. intelligence agencies. Snowden's decision to reveal his identity and whereabouts lifts the lid on one of the biggest security leaks in U.S. history and escalates a story that has placed a bright light on Obama's extensive use of secret surveillance. The exposure of the secret programs has triggered widespread debate within the United States and abroad about the vast reach of the NSA, which has expanded its surveillance dramatically in since the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York in 2001. U.S. officials say the agency operates within the law. Some members of Congress have indicated support for the NSA activities, while others pushed for tougher oversight and possible changes to the law authorizing the surveillance. "ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT LEAKERS" Snowden's decision to go public could expose him to the wrath of the U.S. authorities. The Guardian compared him to Bradley Manning, an American soldier now on trial for aiding the enemy after passing classified military and State Department files to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. One legal expert was puzzled as to why Snowden fled to Hong Kong, because it has an extradition treaty with the United States while mainland China does not. In routine criminal cases, unlike this one, Hong Kong had shown a willingness in recent years to extradite people to face charges in the United States, he said. In the video, Snowden said that "Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech." Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997, but still enjoys some autonomy in business and governmental functions. Douglas McNabb, a Houston lawyer who specializes in extradition, said it would not be difficult for the United States to provide justification for its request. "This guy came out and said, 'I did it,'" he said. "His best defense would probably be that this is a political case instead of a criminal one." The treaty would allow Hong Kong to hold Snowden for 60 days while Washington prepares a formal extradition request, but prohibits extradition for political cases. Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department attorney who represents whistleblowers, told Reuters that Snowden had become "one of the most significant leakers ... in U.S. history." She said she hoped his case could become "a watershed moment that could change the war on whistleblowers and the broader war on information." Snowden, who said he had left his girlfriend in Hawaii without telling her where he was going, said he knew the risk he was taking, but thought the publicity his revelations had garnered in the past few days had made it worth it. "My primary fear is that they will come after my family, my friends, my partner. Anyone I have a relationship with," he said. "I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. I am not going to be able to communicate with them. They (the authorities) will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night." He spoke of his willingness to give up a comfortable life in Hawaii, where he earned about $200,000 a year: "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building." In the video interview, the bespectacled, lightly bearded Snowden looked relaxed. He said he was ultimately hoping that Iceland, which values internet freedom, might grant him asylum. (Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn and Peter Graff in London; David Morgan, John Shiffman, David Ingram and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Peter Graff, Christopher Wilson and David Brunnstrom)
Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Turkey's Erdogan warns patience with protests will run out Posted: 09 Jun 2013 06:01 PM PDT ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned protesters who have taken to the streets across Turkey demanding his resignation that his patience has its limits and compared the unrest with an army attempt six years ago to curb his power.
Riot police used teargas and water cannon to disperse anti-government protesters from a square in the capital, Ankara, just a few kilometres from where Erdogan spoke. He held six rallies on Sunday, a measure of tensions after a week of the biggest demonstrations and worst rioting of his decade in power. Thousands waved red Turkish flags and shouted Allahu Akbar (God Is Greatest) as he accused protesters of attacking women wearing headscarves and desecrating mosques by taking beer bottles into them. "I believe in Erdogan and his path. We will not let some looters hijack our country and our flag," said a housewife who gave her name as Zeynep, waving a national flag with Erdogan's picture emblazoned on it. In the commercial centre Istanbul, tens of thousands flooded the central Taksim Square, where protests began nine days ago when police used teargas and water cannon against a peaceful demonstration over plans to build on a park there. Many see Turkey's secular order threatened by Erdogan. Protesters, many camped out in tents, now control a large area around the square, with approach roads barricaded by masonry, paving stones and steel rods. Police have withdrawn completely from the area, water cannon kept hundreds of metres away by the side of the Bosphorus waterway. Western countries have held up Erdogan's Turkey as an example of an Islamic democracy that could be emulated elsewhere in the Middle East. Violent police action, however, has drawn criticism from the West and Erdogan has increasingly accused foreign forces of trying to aggravate the troubles. He also rounded on speculators, foreign and domestic, in the country's capital markets, vowing to "choke" those who he said were growing rich off "the sweat of the people", and urging Turks to put their money in state not private banks. "Those who attempt to sink the bourse, you will collapse ... If we catch your speculation, we will choke you. No matter who you are, we will choke you," he said. Turkey's financial markets were turbulent last week and investors are preparing for more volatility this week. Early on Friday, the lira hit its weakest point against its euro/dollar basket since October 2011, while Istanbul's main share index lost around 15 percent over the week. The yield of Turkey's two-year benchmark sovereign bond hit a six-month high on Thursday. The E-COUP Three people have been killed and around 5,000 injured in the troubles rocking a country faced with war across its southern border with Syria. "We were patient, we will be patient, but there is an end to patience, and those who play politics by hiding behind the protesters should first learn what politics means," Erdogan said, in one of his most strongly worded speeches since the troubles began. Erdogan did not specify who he thought was 'hiding behind the protesters'; but one of his proudest achievements has been in combating a conservative secularist establishment, especially an army that had toppled four governments in four decades. Erdogan, who critics say has become authoritarian after three election victories in a row, compared the troubles with a confrontation with the army that became known as the "e-Coup". "Today, we are exactly where we were on April 27, 2007." On that date, the army issued a memorandum on its website denouncing plans to have Abdullah Gul, co-founder with Erdogan of the AK Party, appointed as president. The move would give AKP broad control over the state apparatus and the generals suggested they could act to stop it in defence of secularism. Erdogan's government had been expected, like others before it, to bow to the will of the military. But it faced down the army, chided it publicly for its intervention and went ahead with Gul's appointment. It was a definitive moment in relations with the military, many of whose top generals have since been jailed after investigation of alleged coup plots against Erdogan. The Ergenekon plot had hinged on stirring widespread protests throughout Turkey and public disorder, followed then by bombings and assassinations that would clear the way for an army takeover to restore order. Erdogan clearly feels there are potentially powerful forces still ranged against him. Underscoring the drama of the moment, Erdogan, who denies Islamist ambitions for Turkey, made reference to two of his political models - former prime minister Adnan Menderes, hanged after a 1960 coup, and Turgut Ozal, a reforming president who some believe was poisoned to death. "My beloved brothers, we're walking towards a better Turkey. Don't allow those who attempt to plant divisive seeds to do so," Erdogan said at another speech in the southern city of Adana on Sunday, from atop of a bus emblazoned with his picture and the AK Party's slogan, "Big Country, Big Power". (Editing by Nick Tattersall and Andrew Heavens)
Copyright © 2013 Reuters |
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