January 10, 2013

Families grieve as Chicago killings increase

Community organiser Darius McGraw was one of more than 500 people killed in the US' deadliest city in 2012

Chicago, US - A stack of glossy images showing an active and smiling young man is all that's left for Darius McGraw's family to remember him by.

On a cold morning in November 2012, 22-year-old McGraw was gunned down while walking to the home of his fiancée on Chicago's Southwest Side to pick up the couple's two-year-old daughter, Harmony.

According to a website set up by The Chicago Tribune to track homicides in the city, 513 people were killed in Chicago in 2012, most by gun violence.

The number is 15 percent higher than the previous year, and higher than more populous cities such as New York and Los Angeles - where the homicide rate has been decreasing in recent years.

More: http://aje.me/ZHq4l5

January 9, 2013

UN seeks to deploy drones over DR Congo

Source: Al Jazeera

The UN peacekeeping department has asked the Security Council to back the use of surveillance drones for the first time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The UN wants to use the drones to monitor the vast eastern DRC border, where Rwanda has been accused of helping rebels fighting the government. Rwanda denies the charge.

The introduction of drones would be a major shift in UN peacekeeping operations, but Rwanda opposes their use in the DRC and other countries are also suspicious.

Herve Ladsous, the UN peacekeeping chief, said he had asked the Security Council for the means to strengthen its DRC operation.

Read more: http://aje.me/VK0yIT

January 9, 2013

Bank Hacks Were Work of Iranians, Officials Say

Source: The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later.

But there was something disturbingly different about the wave of online attacks on American banks in recent weeks. Security researchers say that instead of exploiting individual computers, the attackers engineered networks of computers in data centers, transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas.

The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

"There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks," said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/technology/online-banking-attacks-were-work-of-iran-us-officials-say.html

January 9, 2013

Bank Hacks Were Work of Iranians, Officials Say

By Nicole Perlroth. and Quentin Hardy
The New York Times
January 09, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO - The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later.

But there was something disturbingly different about the wave of online attacks on American banks in recent weeks. Security researchers say that instead of exploiting individual computers, the attackers engineered networks of computers in data centers, transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas.

The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

"There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks," said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/technology/online-banking-attacks-were-work-of-iran-us-officials-say.html

January 9, 2013

Jersey City cops go to wrong address and hold family at gunpoint, woman says

A Jersey City woman says police tackled her husband and held her family and guests at gunpoint when they responded to her home by mistake on New Years Day. And to make matters worse, the police refuse to apologize to her traumatized kids, she says.

"I was terrified and I didn't know what was going on," said Kesha Moyd-Jones, who is a legal secretary at the state Attorney General's Office in Newark and lives at 351 Randolph Ave. "They came with the attitude of 'shoot first and ask questions later.' "

-snip-

"Oh my God, there were about 20 police cars and more were pulling up," Moyd-Jones said today. She said her husband had just returned from walking their dog and he was standing outside the open front door. Moyd-Jones said the cops asked for a different address on the block, and my husband told them they were at 351 Randolph.

"I yelled down 'Look at the door.' Then they asked him if a Kesha lives here and as soon as he said 'Yes, that's my wife,' they threw him to ground and jumped on him. "I yelled down 'Get off my husband' and I thought maybe he'd done something and I yelled 'What's going on?' They looked up and said 'We are looking for Kesha.' and when I said 'I'm Kesha,' the next thing I know is they took out their guns and came in."

More: http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2013/01/jersey_city_cops_go_to_wrong_a.html

January 9, 2013

Utah town makes arming households a top priority

SPRING CITY, Utah (AP) —Officials in a small Utah town want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too.

Spring City Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed an ordinance requiring a gun in every household in the town of 1,000. The rest of the council scoffed at making it a requirement, but they unanimously agreed to move forward with an ordinance "recommending" the idea.

The council also approved funding to offer concealed firearms training Friday to the 20 teachers and administrators at the local elementary school.

"It sends a statement that criminals better think twice," Sorensen told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "If a teacher would have had a concealed weapon in Sandy Hook, I think the death loss would have been fewer. If sane, trained people had guns, they could have shot back."

More: http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Utah-town-makes-arming-households-a-top-priority-4174979.php

January 9, 2013

Syria conflict: New insight into shadowy jihadist group

A new report has cast unprecedented light on Jabhat al-Nusra - the shadowy al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that has become a key player in the conflict. The document by the UK-based think-tank Quilliam Foundation says the group has developed from al-Qaeda militants in Iraq and now has about 5,000 members.

It says the group - which has claimed deadly attacks against the government - will fight on even if President Bashar al-Assad's regime falls.

The group, the document says, is now "adapting to the changing conflict, and making preparations for a post-Assad future". This includes "the procurement of heavy weaponry".

The rebel group has alarmed Western and Arab governments by its fanaticism and links to al-Qaeda, the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner says.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20950132

January 8, 2013

Drone strikes claim lives in Pakistan

Source: Al Jazeera

At least eight people have been killed in two suspected US drone attacks in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas, security officials say.

Both attacks took place in the Mir Ali area of the North Waziristan tribal district in the early hours of Tuesday.

In Khiderkhel, eight missiles were fired at a compound, killing at least four people, security sources told Al Jazeera. In Essakhel, meanwhile, two missiles were fired, killing at least three people.

The two attacks happened within an hour of each other. The identity of those killed could not be immediately confirmed. The US, however, claimed that an al-Qaeda operative was among those killed.

Read more: http://aje.me/ZjGqeM

January 8, 2013

Moderate Republican group to remove ‘Republican’ from name, welcome Democrats

The Republican Main Street Partnership , a Washington-based group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, will remove the word "Republican" from its title and welcome center-right Democrats in 2013, Yahoo News has learned.

The organization's board of directors voted Tuesday morning to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as "The Main Street Partnership." The group's new president, former Ohio Republican Rep. Steven LaTourette, told Yahoo News that he plans to begin conversations with Blue Dog Democrats and centrist groups in the coming months.

"The goal is to try and fill the void that is the middle," LaTourette, who resigned from Congress this year, said. "The American political system is like a doughnut: You've got sides, but you don't have anything in the middle, and it would be my goal to work with Republicans and Democrats who want to find the path forward to getting things done and compromise."

The Main Street Partnership will also expand its super PAC, Defending Main Street, to aid center-right members of both parties, LaTourette said, adding, "It's not going to be focused so much on party as it is on protecting people from the right and left extremes if they choose to do the right things."

More: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/moderate-republican-group-remove-republican-name-welcome-democrats-191019543--politics.html

January 8, 2013

What is impossible in Syria is impossible in Iraq

By GEORGE SEMAAN
Al Arabiya
Jan 8, 2012

Following the reemergence on the scene of Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, i.e. Saddam Hussein’s vice president, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was left with nothing to do but wait for a new Zarqawi to revive the Organization of the Islamic State of Iraq, or for the announcement of the unification of the Jihadists in both Iraq and Syria. This would tighten the siege around the leader of the State of Law Coalition who has mastered the art of provoking all his opponents at once, both domestically and abroad. These opponents include Turkey, whose Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is saying that Maliki’s government “is acting as a sectarian Shiite government,” thus calling for a government of “fair democracy.”

They also include the Gulf states which have yet to forgive the transformation that affected the legitimacy of the authority and power in Baghdad, considering that these states do not appreciate Maliki’s positions towards the Sunni sect, his submission to Iran, and his open lines with the regime in Damascus. There is also Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, which sees itself as the sponsor of the Sunnis in the Arab world and is naturally supporting the Anbar province population and the remaining provinces showing solidarity with it.

Domestically, Maliki knows he is engaged in an open conflict with Kurdistan, although Washington and Tehran intervened to contain the situation for the time being. In addition, President Jalal Talabani, who is now being hospitalized, might not be able to act as a safety valve between the prime minister and President of the Kurdistan province Massoud al-Barzani, as well as between him and the Sunni forces. Indeed, at the level of the latter, Maliki did not settle for banishing one of their symbols, i.e. Vice President Tarek al-Hashemi, thus launching a battle against one of their most prominent leaders Finance Minister Rafeh al-Issawi.

More dangerously, the leader of the State of Law Coalition missed a very important point – which was not missed by his partners/opponents within the ruling Shiite coalition – related to the fact that what is happening in Syria will be deeply echoed inside Iraq. This is why these partners, at the head of whom are Moqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim, expressed solidarity with the Al-Anbar population and its demands, fearing the expansion of the Syrian revolution to the Iraqi provinces under the slogan of the “injustice” affecting the Sunnis. For their part, Sunni leaders called for the containment of the situation to prevent its slide back to what it used to be in the middle of last decade - during which the voices of Al-Qaeda and the extremists rose – as this would cause Iraq’s fall in a new sectarian war.

More: http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2013/01/08/259246.html