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Showing posts from April 28, 2019

Explosives found buried in Sri Lanka mosque backyard

Three locally made bombs and 100 grams of ammonia have been found buried in a backyard of a mosque in a Sri Lankan district, the police said. The explosives were recovered at Welipenna on Friday night during a joint operation carried out by the Special Task Force and the police, the Daily Mirror reported. The police said a 42-year-old suspect was arrested after the recovery of explosives.  Officials also seized 16 circuit boards of high technology, 16 SIM cards, several compacts discs, computer accessories and a car in a house at Pirivena Mawatha in Mount Lavinia. According to the police, each circuit board had the capacity to contain 12 SIM cards. A 52-year old man was detained along with the items. The recovery was made after the authorities cancelled weekend masses in the capital due of fears of fresh bomb attacks. The Archdiocese of Colombo spokesman Fr. Edmond Tilakaratne had said that the decision was made by Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith to cancel

Saudi Arabia offers Abbas $10bn to accept US peace plan

Saudi Arabia offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas $10 billion to accept the US’ so called ‘deal of the century’, Lebanon’s  Al-Akhbar  newspaper reported yesterday. Discussing details of a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Abbas, the newspaper said “according to information obtained by  Al-Akhbar , Salman briefed Abbas about the details of the deal of the century and asked him to accept it. According to the information, Salman asked Abbas: What is the annual budget of your entourage? Abbas replied: I’m not a prince to have my own entourage.” Bin Salman then offered Abbas $10 billion over a period of ten years if he accepts the US peace plan and has the Palestinian government’s base in Abu Dis instead of occupied Jerusalem. Abbas, however, rejected the offer and said it would “mean the end of my political life,” the report added. US envoy: Trump team thinking ‘out of the box’ for Middle East peace plan Officials in Ramallah have refu

Russia has much to offer the Korean peace process, from denuclearisation expertise to experience as a mediator

Six years as a recluse consolidating power, often in  unsavory ways , while perfecting the country’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles along the way, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has since come out of isolation, giving new meaning to the 1960s Beach Boys hit,  I Get Around . In the last 16 months, he has met four times with China’s President  Xi Jinping , three times with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, twice with US President  Donald Trump  and finally with Russia’s President  Vladimir Putin , the latter just across the Russian-North Korean border in Vladivostok, in counterpoint to an exhausting 60-hour  train ride  to Hanoi to meet Trump. Still, having made all the rounds only to a wind up in a familiar place – impasse – defies reason. Although greeted with scepticism, the Kim-Putin summit should be viewed as a positive – not a negative – development, a potential turning point and one area where Moscow could actually make a major con

Is Colombian Peace under Threat?

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In 2016, Colombia made headlines when President Juan Manuel Santos accepted the historic  Peace Agreement  with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—one of the most notorious leftist guerrilla groups.  This historic deal brought an official end to Colombia’s 60-year civil war and placed the burden of peace on the Colombian state, which now includes FARC as an official party. At the beginning of  March 2019 , Colombia’s peace agreement made headlines again when President Iván Duque Márquez announced a plan to reform the  Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) —a non-partisan, transitional court established to try all participants of the conflict independent of their affiliation.  Duque issued a presidential veto that targets 6 out of the 159 articles of the statutory law governing these panels. This action is notable because it not only attempts to alter a law that has already been approved by the Constitutional Court, but also because it specifically targets FARC and oth

Pompeo: Iran Deliberately Sabotages Yemeni Peace Process

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo  said Monday that Iran is instructing Houthi rebels in Yemen to violate a fragile ceasefire agreement reached in December between the Tehran-sponsored rebel group and the internationally recognized Yemeni government. The Houthis “continue to refuse to comply with the agreements that they signed up for in Stockholm, Sweden, they refuse to withdraw from the port of Hodeidah,” Pompeo said at an event in Washington. “This is because Iran has chosen to direct them to do that,” he stressed. Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Houthis agreed to the full withdrawal of their troops from Hodeidah’s three ports and city. Pompeo explained that Iran’s control over the Houthis was also seen “with the missile system, the hardware, the military capability” that they had acquired. “These are not Houthi indigenous weapons systems. They have been smuggled into Yemen from Iran.” From September 2015 through March 2016, the United States Navy’s 5th Fleet, base

Facebook bans Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Louis Farrakhan and other right-wing personalities

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The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today' Chris Riotta Facebook  has banned popular right-wing personalities, citing their content as “dangerous” while announcing a major purge from its platforms.  Bans have been issued to conspiracy theorist  Alex Jones , fringe right social media personality Laura Loomer and Milo Yiannopoulous, who often espouses xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments, among several others.  "We've always banned individuals or organisations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology," the company said in a statement announcing the bans. "The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today." We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From  USD 0.27  a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. Other accounts purged Thur

Waking peace talks from ‘hibernation’: an interview with Dr Min Zaw Oo

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Frontier speaks with Dr Min Zaw Oo, founder of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security, about what it would take to revive deadlocked peace negotiations. Ben Dunant Thursday, May 02, 2019  By BEN DUNANT | FRONTIER Myanmar's peace process, which aims to resolve more than half a century of civil conflict between Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, and ethnic armed groups fighting for autonomy, was launched in 2011 to international fanfare. One man who returned from a career abroad to take part in it was Dr Min Zaw Oo. Min Zaw Oo joined fellow students in the 1988 democratic uprising and later served in a rebel army, the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, for four years before winning a scholarship to study in the United States. He completed a PhD in conflict resolution at George Mason University, Virginia, and was a security analyst for the US military and US-funded development projects, including in Afghanistan. On his return to Myanmar in 2012, he was ma

NI peace process still failing young people – priest

The priest who spoke at the ecumenical service of murdered journalist Lyra McKee has said there has been no progress in many areas since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Fr Martin Magill, who gave a eulogy in Belfast’s St Anne’s Cathedral in memory of the 29-year-old woman killed by a dissident republican group, said that while the peace process has changed the country in a positive way, many areas have yet to see any real benefit from it. “Imagine what difference the peace process has made over 21 years; of course, I’m going to acknowledge the fact that there are people living today, and that’s obviously the primary benefit of it. But at the same time, there’s maybe certain areas of Belfast or Derry, or other places and other towns – there are a lot of places in Northern Ireland – that haven’t seen any real benefit,” he told The Irish Catholic. Fr Magill added that some young people in the North have not seen “any advantage of our peace process”, and that the response

Terror funding case: ED attaches over ₹70 lakh worth of assets linked to Hafiz Saeed

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached more properties in connection with an alleged terror funding case against Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder and U.N. designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed and others. In the past few months, the agency has identified proceeds of crime to the tune of ₹212 crore in more than a dozen cases of terror financing. In the latest case, the attached properties, worth ₹73.12 lakh on paper, were in the name of one Mohammed Salman and his family members. They include a residential flat, a shop and bank accounts. The action has been taken on the basis of an FIR and charge sheet filed by the National  Investigation  Agency (NIA) against Salman, Mohammad Salim and Kamran, a Pakistani national based in Dubai. The ED said that according to the NIA investigation, Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) is a Pakistan-based terror organisation established by Jamat-ud-Dawa, which was founded by Hafiz Saeed. “The humanitarian front, religious and charity work being pro

U.S. and Taliban resume talks as Kabul seeks role in peace process

KABUL (Reuters) - American and Taliban officials resumed talks in Qatar on Wednesday aimed at ending a 17-year war in Afghanistan, while the Afghan government hosted a rare assembly in Kabul to ensure its interests are upheld in any peace deal. The Taliban issued a statement saying the U.S. special envoy for peace in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, had met the Taliban's political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is heading the Islamist militants' delegation. "Views were exchanged about key aspects for a peaceful resolution of the Afghan issue," its spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. The talks are part of U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to end America's longest war, which began when U.S.-backed forces ousted the Taliban weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Since October, U.S. and Taliban officials have held several rounds of talks aimed at ensuring a safe departure for U.S. forces in return for a Taliban guar