Kremlin sees Assad's plan as viable ground for Syrian settlement

Source : Xinhua | English.news.cn

MOSCOW, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russia sees Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's recently proposed plan as viable ground for settling his country's crisis, a Kremlin spokesman said Friday.

"Lots of countries give different kinds of support to the opposition, which definitely do not support a viable or sustainable solution to the Syrian crisis," Dmitry Peskov told U.S. magazine The National Interest.

Moscow supports the idea that the future of Syria is subject to decisions taken by all sides of the Syrian conflict, "including those who are being named as opposition," Peskov said.

"We sincerely believe the plan suggested by President Assad is a kind of continuation of the Geneva talks and could constitute a very good basis for further attempts to settle the problem," said the spokesman.

The Syrian president proposed in early January a three-point vision for a political solution to the Syria crisis: a cease-fire, followed by a comprehensive national dialogue and the establishment of a broad-based government and parliament.

The proposal was rejected by the opposition, who said he had sidestepped a point the opposition deemed crucial: to relinquish power.

Also, the United States and its allies dismissed the speech as "disconnected from reality."

Turkey eyes role in Iraq’s oil and gas shares

Source : Vesti Kavkaza

Turkey should secure a place for itself in both the northern and southern oil and gas fields of Iraq since its energy future is inextricably linked with its southern neighbor, despite frequent recent friction, sector representatives have said, Hurriyet Daily News reports.

“If there is energy somewhere, then it has to flow somewhere else. You can’t escape that fate,” said Mehmet Öğütçü, the head of Global Resources Corporation, implying that fuel drilled in Iraq would be transported outside the country regardless of political or economic obstacles.

Speakers at yesterday’s “Natural Gas as the Game Changer” roundtable meeting organized by the Marmara Group Foundation predicted that Iraq would have a significant place in the natural gas bus sector in the coming years.

“Iraq will be producing around 19 billion cubic meters of natural gas by 2035, which means it will become the fifth or sixth biggest producer in the world,” said Tahir Uysal, a partner at Silso Oil.

US Bars Afghan Airline on Suspicion of Drug Trafficking

  RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, January 25 (RIA Novosti) – The US military has barred Afghanistan’s biggest private airline from its list of potential contractors after accusing it of smuggling large amounts of opium into Tajikistan, a major transit route for drugs from the region, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The allegations state that Kam Air ferried “bulk” quantities of opium – the key ingredient in heroin – on civilian flights, the paper said, citing US military officials.

“The US will not do business with those who fund and support illicit activities,” US Army Maj. Gen. Richard Longo, commander of the Task Force 2010 anticorruption unit, told the Journal. “Kam Air is too large of a company not to know what has been going on within its organization.”

Kam Air denied the allegations, with the company’s president and founder, Zamari Kamgar, telling the newspaper it would be impossible to ferry drugs out of Afghanistan given security restrictions at airports. The airline's only passenger flight to Central Asia services the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.

The ban against the airline highlights growing concerns on the part of the US and its allies over the bustling heroin trade in Afghanistan as they prepare to draw down their anti-insurgent operations there.

It also casts fresh light on the role played by ex-Soviet Central Asian countries -- particularly Tajikistan, which shares a porous border with Afghanistan of some 800 miles -- in the massive global drug trade.

The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan supplies some 90% of illegal opiates in the world and that, in 2009, it supplied 84% of the heroin consumed worldwide.

In 2010, almost a quarter of the heroin produced in Afghanistan – some 90 tons out of 380 – passed through Central Asia, about 85 percent of it through Tajikistan, according to a 2012 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

More than 75 percent of this was “destined for the Russia market,” the report said, while a small portion continues on to Europe. Russian drug officials have estimated that their country consumes about 21 percent of the world’s heroin.

According to Kam Air’s website, the airline is planning a direct route from Kabul to Moscow.

The classified US military investigation into Kam Air, which has a fleet of about 16 planes, was launched late last year after the airline bid for an international contract, the Journal said citing Longo, the anticorruption task force commander.

KAM Air operates Boeing 747 and 767 airliners and provides both passenger and cargo services.

Interview: S. African land policies, labor conflicts to cause uncertainty to farming sector: expert

Source : Xinhua | English.news.cn

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- South African agriculture production conditions will meet growing food demand this year, but land policies and labor conflicts will cause "considerable uncertainty" to the sector, the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (ABCSA) said Monday.

In an interview with Xinhua in Johannesburg, ABCSA Chief Executive Officer John Purchase said policy issues and current labor protests will "impact negatively" on the South African farming industry.

"The chamber predicts that production conditions will generally be favorable and will meet a growing demand effectively," Purchase said. "But it also predicts that policy issues around land reform and labor unrest will cause considerable uncertainty and impact negatively on the South African Agriculture industry," he said.

South Africa farming industry has been hollowed in deep problems since last year following labor protest that sparked in the Wastern Cape Province.

Early this month, the protest resumed and was marred by violence. Although farmworkers suspended the protest, but sporadic events of protest continued as government-mediated wage negotiations.

Purchase said ABCSA believes that the strike action is not perpetrated by real farmworkers but is primarily pushed by seasonal workers (fruit pickers) that are "generally only employed for three months of the year."

"There are a number of unemployed involved, and even a criminal or anarchist element following their agenda. While there certainly is a political element to this strike and this was even exploited as such by certain elements."

"ABCSA believes the strike is more about poor living conditions, poor service delivery in informal settlements, limited employment conditions outside of the fruit picking season."

Farmworkers are demanding a daily wage of 18 U.S. dollars (R150) from 7 U.S. dollars (R69) and improved living conditions, but very few farmers have since agreed to increase the daily wage to 12 U.S. dollars (R105).

Purchase said ABCSA believes that the minimum wage will be reviewed by government and increased significantly by 20 percent, but this will lead to retrenchments and greater mechanization by farmers as they will need to restructure.

South Africa agriculture has been shedding jobs significantly and continuously over the past couple of years and this trend is now expected to continue, despite various policy efforts to achieve sustainable employment growth in the sector, Purchase said.

ABCSA said the government, farmers and workers are "all three big losers" under the current ongoing strike action. The chamber is calling on all parties to engage constructively and to resolve the disputes.

"This will demand leadership. Strong leadership from all parties is what is required now," Purchase told Xinhua. He said investor confidence in the South African agriculture sector "was most definitely" affected by the strike action.

Police Make 90 Kilo Heroin Bust in Moscow

Source :  RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, January 18 (RIA Novosti) – Narcotics police have recently seized more than 90 kilograms of Afghan heroin in the Moscow Region, Russian drug czar Viktor Ivanov said Friday.

In one major bust, the police discovered a cache of drugs in the apartment of “a citizen of one of the Central Asian countries,” as part of a special operation conducted in the southeastern Moscow Region, he said. Police found 53 different packages holding at least one kilogram each of highly concentrated heroin.

As part of the same operation, narcotics officers uncovered a hideout in the Ramenskoe region in Moscow, where they arrested a courier and found more than 30 kilograms of heroin.

Ivanov did not clarify exactly when the operation, dubbed “Network,” took place.

He added that police also arrested a dealer on the M-4 highway late on January 14 and seized more than six kilograms of heroin.

According to official estimates, Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world’s heroin, with Russia consuming about 21 percent of the global share. Drug traffickers have long since established routes from Afghanistan and neighboring Tajikistan, through Central Asia, and into Europe and Russia.

Up to 40,000 people die each year in Russia from illegal drugs, officials said, while Russians typically consume up to 80 tons of heroin per year

US Navy ship stuck on coral reef in Philippines

Source : APA

Baku-APA. A U.S. Navy minesweeper was stuck on a coral reef in the Philippines for a second day Friday, as the crew struggled to extract the ship and Philippine authorities tried to evaluate damage to a protected marine park, APA reports quoting Associated Press. The Navy's 7th Fleet said in a statement that the crew of the USS Guardian was working to find out the best method of safely extracting the ship. Winds and waves were stronger Friday and may make it more difficult to free the ship, Philippine officials said.

It had just completed a port call in Subic Bay, a former American naval base west of the Philippine capital, when it hit the reef Thursday in the Tubbataha National Marine Park, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, 640 kilometers (400 miles) southwest of Manila. The ship was not listing or leaking oil but its bow struck the reef, said Angelique Songco, head of the government's Protected Area Management Board, after flying over the ship in a Philippine Air Force plane. "(The ship) does not appear to be damaged." She said it was unclear how much of the reef was damaged. She said the government imposes a fine of about $300 per square meter (yard) of damaged coral. In 2005, the environmental group Greenpeace was fined almost $7,000 after its flagship struck a reef in the same area.

The World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines said in a statement that according to an initial ocular inspection, the 68-meter (74-yard) long, 1,300-ton Guardian damaged at least 10 meters (yards) of the reef.

Songco said that park rangers were not allowed to board the ship for inspection and were told to contact the U.S. Embassy in Manila. Their radio calls to the ship were ignored, she said. The Tubbataha Reef is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the Coral Triangle, the world's cradle of marine life. It is off-limits to fishing and the collection of corals, wildlife and any marine life is prohibited. In 1992, UNESCO designated the reef as a World Heritage Site. U.S. Navy ships have stepped up visits to Philippine ports for refueling, rest and recreation, and joint military exercises as a result of a redeployment of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region. The Philippines, a U.S. defense treaty ally, has been entangled in a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.

Australian outlaw to be laid to rest, 132 years later

Source : Shanghai Daily

The remains of Australia's most famous outlaw, Ned Kelly, are finally to be laid to rest, 132 years after he was hanged for murder.

Kelly's descendants, who received the bushranger's remains after they were exhumed from a mass prison grave, said yesterday they will hold a private church memorial service tomorrow before the burial in an unmarked grave on Sunday.

The homemade armor and helmet Kelly wore during his last violent shootout with police and his reported final words before he was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on November 11, 1880 - "Such is life" - helped make him an iconic figure in Australian history.

His family, the Kelly Gang, became a symbol for social tensions between poor Irish settlers and the wealthy establishment at the time, and Kelly himself became a folk hero to many for standing up to the Anglo-Australian ruling class.

Kelly's descendants said the private farewells were in keeping with the outlaw's requests.

"The descendants of the Kelly family wish to give effect to Ned Kelly's last wish and that he now be buried in consecrated ground with only his family in attendance in order to ensure a private, respectful and dignified funeral," the family said in a statement.

Kelly's remains have made a circuitous journey to their final resting place. They were first buried in a mass grave at Melbourne Gaol. When that closed in 1929, Kelly's bones were exhumed and reburied in another mass grave at the newer Pentridge Prison.

All the bones buried in Pentridge yard were exhumed in 2009 and Kelly's skeleton was positively identified in 2011 by scientists after DNA tests against a descendant. His skull remains missing.

His life story inspired the novel "True History of the Kelly Gang" by author Peter Carey, which won the 2001 Booker Prize, and the late actor Heath Ledger played him in a 2003 movie

German Court Fines British Bishop for Holocaust Denial

Via : Naharnet

Source Agence France Presse German court on Wednesday fined a renegade British bishop 1,800 euros ($2,400) for denying key facts about the Holocaust.

The district court in the southern city of Regensburg convicted Bishop Richard Williamson of incitement to hatred after he gave an interview to Swedish television disputing the existence of Nazi gas chambers to kill Jews.

The 72-year-old also said in the 2008 interview that "200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps."

The prosecution had demanded a higher fine of 6,500 euros for Williamson, who was not present at the hearing, but the court lowered the amount, as it judged he had no income at present.

Williamson's lawyer argued the conviction should be quashed as the bishop had expected the interview to be aired only in Sweden, where denying the Holocaust is not a crime.

But the actual interview took place in the German city of Regensburg, where it is illegal to deny the Nazis murdered six million Jews during World War II.

A previous fine of 6,500 euros handed down in July 2011 was quashed in February 2012 due to "irremediable procedural problems" in the case.

Williamson was expected to appeal the verdict.

While still a member of the breakaway ultra-conservative Catholic fraternity, the Society of Saint Pius X Society, Williamson also hit the headlines in 2009 when Pope Benedict XVI reversed his excommunication in a bid to bridge a rift with the organisation.

Benedict later said he would not have made such a move if he had known about Williamson's views on the Holocaust.

Williamson was expelled from the fraternity of traditionalists last year after it said he had disobeyed and disrespected his superiors for several years.

Air India grounds Boeing Dreamliners

Source : Voice of Russia

Air India has grounded all its Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft for safety concerns following an emergency landing of a Boeing 787 plane in western Japan earlier this week caused by a battery fire risk.

Air India has ordered a total of 27 Dreamliners.

The airliner's spokesman K. Swaminathan said that India's aviation authority directed the state airline to stop flying the Boeing planes Thursday morning as it waits for an investigation by Indian regulators to take place.

The 787, known as the Dreamliner, is Boeing's newest jet, and the company is counting heavily on its success.

Since its launch after delays of more than three years, the plane has been plagued by a series of problems including a battery fire and fuel leaks.

Voice of Russia, AP

US surprised by ‘Iranian evasion technique’

Source : Islamic Invitation Turkey

US surprised by ‘Iranian evasion technique’

As sanctions mount against Iran, reports have gave an account of how surprised some US authorities are by Iran’s methods of bypassing the sanctions. “Despite onerous sanctions that have basically shut Iran out of the global financial system, the country is still finding some ways to bypass them, the Treasury Department said Thursday, describing what it called a small but “emerging threat” to the effectiveness of the sanctions effort,” NY Times said in an article January 10.

“Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which supervises American enforcement of the sanctions, said the Iranians were using private exchange houses and trading companies in other countries, masking transactions with fake identities and relying on the paperless practice known as hawala, common in parts of the Middle East and Asia, in which money is transferred informally and often illegally through trustworthy couriers,” NY Times continued.

The report says that with only 300,000 barrels deficit in oil export (as opposed to the alleged one million barrel deficit), Iran is bypassing sanctions.

The report goes on to say that in 2011 the growth rate was 1.7 per cent, to slip down to -1 percent in 2012.

World Bank expects Iranian economy to come clean of the slump with a 0.6 per cent growth rate in 2013. A previous report had predicted the growth rate at -0.7

Based on the report it is expected that Iran’s current account balance will remain positive and the country’s GDP growth would be 7.6 per cent.

Mafia Boss Gunned Down in Moscow

Source :  RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, January 16 (RIA Novosti) - A reputed top criminal kingpin was killed in a contract hit in Moscow on Wednesday, police said.

Aslan Usoyan, also known as Granddad Khassan, was fatally wounded by a sniper in central Moscow and died in hospital soon afterward.

The sniper fired a total of six shots from a nearby building as Usoyan, 75, walked out of a restaurant. Only one bullet hit him while two others seriously injured a woman passerby, who was put into intensive care.

The assailant escaped.

Granddad Khassan survived at least two previous attempts on his life, one in 1998 and the other in 2010.

Police have linked the attack to an ongoing turf war.

Usoyan, “in the business” since the 1960s, has worked his way up in the Soviet and post-Soviet underworld.

He controlled a large number of organized crime groups in the Caucasus, the Urals region and central Russia, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as abroad. He has engaged in gambling, drug trafficking, illegal arms sales and extraction of mineral resources.

Mechel Buys Russian Pacific Port | Business

Source : RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, January 15 (RIA Novosti) – Russian metals and mining giant Mechel has closed a $508 million deal to buy the port of Vanino on the Russian Pacific coast, the company said late on Monday.

“Mechel reports acquiring 55 percent (73.33 percent of common shares) of Vanino Sea Trade Port. The acquisition was made in line with the company’s strategy of developing its mining division in a bid to expand its export capacities and reduce transport costs in line with planned increases in coal mining volumes,” the company said in a statement.

Mechel won the tender for the Vanino port in early December, offering 15.5 billion rubles ($508 million) for the state package compared with the starting price of 1.5 billion rubles.

Mechel CEO Yevgeny Mikhel later said the company had set up a consortium of Russian and foreign companies to participate in the tender but declined to specify the firms.

Port Vanino is located in the Strait of Tartary, between the Pacific Ocean’s Sea of Okhotsk and Sea of Japan. Vanino is the largest transport hub in the Khabarovsk Region and one of Russia’s ten largest ports. It handled some 6 million tons of cargo in 2012.

Vanino handles cargo bound for Russia’s north-east, Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, the United States and other Pacific countries. Navigation at the port is open all year round.

“Vanino is a universal port that fits ideally into the logistics of Mechel’s deliveries to Asia-Pacific. Using its capacities will enable the company to consolidate its position as one of the world’s largest producers of metallurgical coals and significantly expand its customer base,” Mechel said.

China says 4 workers kidnapped by militants in Sudan's North Darfur

Source : Fox News

KHARTOUM, SUDAN – China's Foreign Ministry says four Chinese workers have been abducted in Sudan's North Darfur region by unidentified gunmen.

Monday's statement says the men are employees of the China Railway 18th Bureau Group who were building a road in North Darfur just outside the regional capital of El-Fasher.

Sudan's state news agency SUNA has blamed the abduction on a Darfur rebel movement, but it stopped short of naming which group.

The news agency has reported that five Sudanese were also abducted along with the four Chinese workers, among them drivers and engineers.

The government says it dispatched 18 military vehicles to pursue the abductors.

China is a major oil buyer from Sudan and invests heavily there.

North Korea says it is bolstering its war defenses

Source : Fox News

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA – North Korea vowed Monday to strengthen its defenses amid concerns the country may conduct a nuclear test as a follow-up to last month's long-range rocket launch.

Citing U.S. hostility, Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a memorandum that North Korea will "continue to strengthen its deterrence against all forms of war."

The memorandum carried by state media did not say what action North Korea would take to defend itself. However, North Korea has claimed the right to build atomic weapons to protect itself from the United States, which stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea.

North Korea sent a satellite into space on Dec. 12 aboard a long-range rocket, a launch that the U.S. and its allies have criticized as a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

In 2006 and 2009, Pyongyang conducted atomic tests after being slapped with U.N. Security Council condemnation and sanctions for similar launches of long-range rockets.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry urged the Washington to dismantle the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which oversees an armistice signed at the close of the Korean War in 1953. It accused the U.S. of trying to turn the U.N. Command into a NATO-like regional military bloc.

"Whether the U.S. immediately dismantles the U.N. Command or not will serve as the acid stone in deciding whether the U.S. will maintain or not its anti-(North Korea) hostile policy," said the memorandum, which was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The Korean War armistice was never replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula in a technical state of war 60 years later

6 arrested in another bus passenger rape in India

Source :  Tehran Times

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police said Sunday they have arrested six suspects in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India, four weeks after a brutal attack on a student on a moving bus in the capital outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws.

Police officer Raj Jeet Singh said a 29-year-old woman was the only passenger on a bus as she was traveling to her village in northern Punjab state on Friday night. The driver refused to stop at her village despite her repeated pleas and drove her to a desolate location, he said.

There, the driver and the conductor took her to a building where they were joined by five friends and took turns raping her throughout the night, Singh said. The driver dropped the woman off at her village early Saturday, he said. Singh said police arrested six suspects on Saturday and were searching for another.

Gurmej Singh, deputy superintendent of police, said all six admitted involvement in the rape. He said the victim was recovering at home.

Also on Saturday, police arrested a 32-year-old man for allegedly raping and killing a 9-year-old girl two weeks ago in Ahmednagar district in western India, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Her decomposed body was found Friday.

Police officer Sunita Thakare said the suspect committed the crime seven months after his release from prison after serving nine years for raping and murdering a girl in 2003, PTI reported Sunday.

The deadly rape of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus in December led to the woman's death and set off an impassioned debate about what India needs to do to prevent such tragedies. Protesters and politicians have called for tougher rape laws, police reforms and a transformation in the way the country treats women.

"It's a very deep malaise. This aspect of gender justice hasn't been dealt with in our nation-building task," Seema Mustafa, a writer on social issues who heads the Center for Policy Analysis think tank, said Sunday.

"Police haven't dealt with the issue severely in the past. The message that goes out is that the punishment doesn't match the crime. Criminals think they can get away it," she said.

In her first published comments, the mother of the deceased student in the New Delhi attack said Sunday that all six suspects in that case, including one believed to be a juvenile, deserve to die.

She was quoted by The Times of India newspaper as saying that her daughter, who died from massive internal injuries two weeks after the attack, told her that the youngest suspect had participated in the most brutal aspects of the rape. Five men have been charged with the physiotherapy student's rape and murder and face a possible death penalty if convicted. The sixth suspect, who says he is 17 years old, is likely to be tried in a juvenile court if medical tests confirm he is a minor. His maximum sentence would be three years in a reform facility.

"Now the only thing that will satisfy us is to see them punished. For what they did to her, they deserve to die," the newspaper quoted the mother as saying. Some activists have demanded a change in Indian laws so that juveniles committing heinous crimes can face the death penalty.

The names of the victim of the Dec. 16 attack and her family have not been released.

Greek political parties condemn gunfire attack on ruling party headquarters

Source : Xinhua

ATHENS, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Greek political parties strongly condemned on Monday a gunfire attack on the conservative ruling party headquarters in Athens, which ended with no injuries.

Two unknown assailants fired at least nine shots with kalashnikov AK 47 riffles at the building located in a central Athens district in the early hours of Monday, while it was empty.

A bullet has hit the office of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, head of the party, on the second floor, Greek government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said citing preliminary reports by police and counter-terrorism squads.

Within hours police found a burnt out car which is believed could be used for the attack, a few kilometers away.

Kedikoglou strongly condemned the "fresh attack against our democracy in the context of efforts to spread terror in our society ," reiterating calls for a clear denouncement of violence from all political parties.

Since last Friday Greece has witnessed a string of attacks with homemade petrol bombs against a dozen offices of political parties, such as New Democracy, co-ruling socialist PASOK party as well as main opposition Radical Left SYRIZA, and an attack at the home of the spokesman's brother, George Kedikoglou while he was inside with his spouse and a three-year old child.

An anarchist group claimed responsibility for the first string of minor attacks with gas canisters at the homes of five Greek journalists, accusing media that "they represent a corrupted political and financial system which has led to the current debt crisis." No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks.

The three-party coalition government of conservatives and center-Left has strongly condemned the attacks, stressing that "democracy cannot be terrorized."

Amid the series of attacks, a dispute has erupted between the government and SYRIZA over the party's position over violence stemming from extreme Left groups. New Democracy criticizes SYRIZA for a "lenient and mild" approach on the matter, an allegation the party categorically denies.

"Democracy is targeted," SYRIZA spokesman Panos Skourletis said, underlining that they condemn all forms of political violence, adding that the attacks shift the focus from the major problems debt-ridden Greece faces at the moment.

Britain's Cameron plays down prospect of in-out EU referendum

Source : LBCI News

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday played down the prospect of a near- term referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, ahead of a long- awaited speech on the issue he is expected to deliver next week.

Cameron told BBC radio an in-out referendum soon would be a "false choice", and made clear that although he did not think Britain would "collapse" if it left the EU, it was in Britain's interests to stay in the 27-member bloc.

Cameron says he plans to renegotiate Britain's ties with the EU and seek the public's fresh consent for the new deal. He told the BBC he believes he has allies in his efforts to repatriate more powers from Brussels.

Malian PM arrives in Algeria following its support initiative

Source : Alarabiya.net

Malian Prime Minister Diango Cissoko visited Algeria on Sunday a day after Algiers proclaimed “unequivocal” support for its neighbor, where France is helping battle an Islamist insurgency.

The visit came as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday that Algeria has allowed France full use of its air space in its military intervention against Islamist rebels in Mali and is ready to seal its border if the conflict moves north, reported Reuters.

The delegation, consisting of Cissoko and his defense minister Diaran Kone, are scheduled to meet Algerian FM Abdelmalek Sellal ahead of a meeting Monday with Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, AFP quoted Malian sources as saying.

Algerian officials said the talks will focus on bolstering cooperation between the two countries and with partners outside the region to eradicate terrorism and organized crime, which threaten stability in the Sahel region.

Foreign ministry spokesman Amar Belani said in a statement on Saturday that Algeria expresses its “unequivocal support for the Malian transitional authorities, with whom it maintains multifaceted relations, including in the military sphere”.

“It should be noted that Mali has asked, in line with its sovereignty, for friendly powers to reinforce its national capacities to fight terrorism,” Belani said, as quoted by AFP.

In the same vain, French FM Fabius said he was in regular contact with the government in Algeria, which had pushed for a political solution to the crisis in Mali over a military intervention, and was grateful it was being supportive of the operation.

“Algeria has authorized unlimited access to fly over its territory, something I thank the Algerian authorities for,” Fabius told LCI television, as Rafale jets deployed from France pounded rebel strongholds in northern Mali according to Reuters.

Algeria has long defended the principle of non-interference, but did not oppose a UN resolution authorizing the intervention of an African military force in Mali if dialogue failed.

France has intervened in Mali at Bamako's request following a new offensive toward the south by the Islamists, who seized control of the country's north in June.

Benin on Sunday pledged roughly 300 troops to take part in an African force aimed at helping Mali battle the Islamists, after Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal had each pledged 500 troops the previous day.

The U.N. Security Council has approved a 3,300-strong force to help Mali win back its north. The force is to be commanded by a Nigerian, with Nigeria pledging the largest contribution so far at 600 troops.

French Mirage fighter jets on Sunday pounded Mali for a third straight day and a top Islamist leader was reported killed.

Topless Femen Activists Detained at Vatican Gay Protest

Source :  RIA Novosti

ROME, January 13 (RIA Novosti) – Four activists of Ukrainian feminist group Femen staged a topless protest for gay rights at the Vatican on Sunday as Pope Benedict XVI was reciting his prayer, local media said.

The activists with slogans "In Gay We Trust" painted on their backs, staged the protest by the Christmas tree in the center of St. Peter's Square.

The women were briefly detained by Vatican police, Agi news agency said.

Ukraine's radical feminist movement Femen was established in 2008 and devoted mainly to protests on women’s issues. Later the group made headlines for pro-democracy and anti-corruption protests in Russia, Ukraine and London.

Top Japan General Calls for Beefed-Up Defenses

Source :  WSJ.com

TOKYO—When a Japanese coast guard cutter spotted a small Chinese aircraft flying above disputed East China Sea islands in December, Japan's air force scrambled eight F-15 fighter jets, but they reached the scene only after the intruder had left. Japan's radar or surveillance planes had missed the low-flying aircraft entering what the nation considers its airspace, causing a delay in scrambling.

The embarrassing incident underscores the need for Japan to beef up the defense of air, sea and land in its southwest, said Gen. Shigeru Iwasaki, the top uniformed official of Japan's military, known as the Self-Defense Forces. He said ..