HAPPY NEW YEAR

I wish readers, friends, and everyone else a year in which we all be able to smash the obstacles that keep us from reaching our goals. A happy 2014!
(Photo: Palestinian activists making a hole in ''The Wall'' in the West Bank village of Bir Nabala, near Ramallah, on 15 November 2013).  

Two sides in S-Sudan agree to talks, fighting continues in Bor

 
 President Salva Kiir (with hat) and (then) vice-president Riek Machar (to his left) during the celebrations of South Sudan's independence.

Ethiopia says South Sudan's government and rebel leader Riek Machar are sending delegations to Addis Ababa for peace talks. The Ethiopian government announced the negotiations Tuesday, the day the East African bloc IGAD had set as a deadline for the two sides in South Sudan to hold face-to-face negotiations.
More than two weeks of violence in South Sudan continued Tuesday with fresh fighting in the key city of Bor, which government forces recaptured from rebels last week. The French news agency quoted a rebel spokesman as saying fighters backing Machar had re-taken control of Bor.
Tuesday's fighting followed renewed calls by the United Nations and African Union for an immediate end to the fighting. Statements from the U.N. Security Council and the A.U.'s Peace and Security Council late Monday said dialogue should begin immediately between President Salva Kiir and Machar, his former vice president.The African Union also urged Kiir's government to release detained political leaders, and threatened to impose sanctions on those who continue to incite violence.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni visited Kiir on Monday, and warned Machar to sign a cease-fire deal or face action from its neighbors.
The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said Monday tens of thousands of South Sudanese have fled Bor since violence broke out there last week between government troops and the Machar-backed force - the so called "White Army." White Army youths are known for the white powder they use to cover their skin as an insect repellant. Like Machar, they are ethnic Nuers while President Kiir and his loyalists are ethnic Dinka.

Egypt arrests four journalists of Al-Jazeera

Correspondent Peter Creste

Al Jazeera said Egyptian security forces arrested four of its journalists after the interior ministry accused the Qatar-based television channel of broadcasting illegally from a hotel suite together with a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al Jazeera's offices in Cairo have been closed since July 3 when they were raided by security forces hours after the army ousted the Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi from the presidency.
"State security received information that a member of the (Brotherhood) used two suites in a Cairo hotel to hold meetings with other members of the organization and turned the suites into a press center," the Egyptian Interior Ministry said. "(They) made live broadcasts of news that harms homeland security, spreading rumors and false news to Qatar's Al Jazeera channel without permits."
A member of the Brotherhood and an Australian journalist who works for Al Jazeera were arrested and equipment was seized, including broadcast transmitters, the Interior Ministry said. Al Jazeera said the four working for its English news channel who had been arrested were correspondent Peter Greste, producers Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed as well as cameraman Mohamed Fawzy.

Airstrikes on Aleppo kill more than 500 since 15 December

Regime airstrikes on the northern Syrian province of Aleppo have killed at least 517 people since December 15, including 151 children, activists said on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a string of regime aerial attacks on the pre-war commercial capital, including raids with explosives-packed barrels, had also killed 46 women.

The vegetable market after Saturday's bombing.

A Syrian army air strike on a vegetable market in the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 25 people on Saturday, a monitoring group said, continuing a campaign of improvised "barrel bombs" that has drawn international condemnation.
Bashar al-Assad's regime has waged a massive aerial offensive against Aleppo and nearby villages since December 15. Warplanes have launched rockets and helicopters dropped so-called barrel bombs on rebel-held residential areas, often densely populated.

Egypt continues persecution of Muslim Brotherhood members and spells out punishments

Someone reading a copy of Al-Hurreyya wal-Adala, the newspaper of the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper had been closed and its printing materials heve been confiscated. (Reuters) 

Egypt's ministry of the Interior on Thursday detailed the punishment for anyone association with the Muslim Brotherhood, one day after the cabinet declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Anyone who joins Muslim Brotherhood marches will receive a five-year prison sentence, the MOI spokesman said, according to the press agency MENA . Those who are proven to be members in the Brotherhood, anyone who promotes the group verbally or in writing, as well as those caught carrying publications or recordings of the group, will also face the same sentence, ministry spokesman Hany Abd El-Fattah said. Anyone who takes up an administrative position in the group, finances it with money or provides information to the group, will face a hard labour sentence.

Car bomb in Beirut kills former minister critical of Syrian regime and three others

(The Daily Star)

An explosion caused by a car bomb rocked the downtown area of Beirut Friday morning, killing former finance minister Mohamed Shattah along with at least three others. According to the Lebanese health minister Ali Hassan Khalil the number of wounded has surpassed 70 and is expected to rise.
A restaurant and a coffee shop were destroyed in the blast, and several cars were on fire, a witness said to AFP, adding that there was glass everywhere and the smell of explosives filled the air.
Much of Beirut went into lockdown following the explosion, with police blocking off roads across the city.

Shattah was an ally and adviser of Saad Hariri, the leader of the  Future Party, and a staunch critic of Hezbollah and the Syrian government. After his death Hariri wrote on Twitter: "Those who assassinated Mohammed Shattah are those who assassinated Rafik Hariri (Saad Hariri;'s father, TP), and they want to assassinate Lebanon, and sully the state's nose in humiliation, weakness, and emptiness."

Five bus passengers hurt by bomb in Cairo

Five people were wounded by an explosion that hit a bus in Cairo's Medinat Nasr area. A functionary of the explosives department at the ministry of the interior confirmed that that somebody threw an explosive near a public bus in front of a school. Experts found another undetonated bomb planted in a garden in front of this school complex, the King Fahd School, whcih is near Al-Azhar university building, and  the headquarters of the National Security as well as a police station.

Egyptian government declares Muslim Brotherhood a ''terrorist organisation''

 

Hisham Qandil, prime minister during the time of the deposed president Mohammed Morsi, was arrested late Tuesday when he was trying to trsavel to Sudan. The picture shows him blindfolded and with his hand tied on his back. Qandil is incarcerated in the Tora prison in Cairo. He has to serve a year in jail for not having execurtd a court order from 2011 ordering the re-nationalisation of the Tanta Flax and Oil Company.


Egypt's interim government on Wednesday officially declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group. Deputy Prime Minister Hossam Eissa said in a declaration that the cabinet decided the Brotherhood is a terrorist group, making it subject to Article 86 of the Egyptian penal code, which defines terrorism and the penalties for engaging in it.Eissa mentioned that the deadly bombing in the Delta city of Mansoura as well as attacks on churches and other violent incidents attributed to members of the group led to the decision.
Prosecutors are still investigating the Mansoura bombing that left 16 dead, which happened Tuesday. It was claimed by the Islamist militant group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. It is not yet known if the group has any link to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bombs target Christians in Baghdad, 34 killed

At least 34 people were killed in bomb attacks in Christian areas of Baghdad on Wednesday, some by a car bomb that exploded near a church after a Christmas service, police and medics said. The car bomb killed at least 24 people, most of them Christian, when worshippers were leaving the church in the Doura district of southern Baghdad, police sources said. Two bombs also went off in a crowded market in a separate, mostly Christian area in Doura, killing another ten people, police and medics said. At least 52 people were wounded in the attacks.
The minority Christian community has been a target of attacks by al Qaeda militants in the past, including a 2010 attack on a church that killed dozens of people. The year 2013 has been the deadliest year since 2008. Over 8.000 people lost their lives so far due to almost daily bombings and othert attacks. Click here for a complete list, as collected by Russian TV

UN send more peacekeepers to S-Sudan where casualties are feared to be in the thousands

Refugees camping in a warehouse of the UN mission in Jabel, on tjhe outskirts of the South Sudanese capital Juba. (Reuters) 

The U.N. Security Council approved plans on Tuesday to almost double the number of peacekeepers in South Sudan in an effort to protect civilians as reports of mass graves fueled fears of a worsening of ethnic bloodletting in the world's newest state.
The move came as the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in the country said the death toll from the past 10 days of violence was likely now in the thousands, rather than the hundreds the world body had previously estimated. "I think it's undeniable at this stage that there must have been thousands of people who have lost their lives," Toby Lanzer told the BBC's Newshour program. "When I've looked at the hospitals in key towns and I've looked at the hospitals in the capital itself, the range of injuries, this is no longer a situation where we can merely say it's hundreds of people who've lost their lives," he said.
Lanzer was speaking from a U.N. compound in the rebel-held city of Bentiu, capital of Unity state.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the crisis had displaced an estimated 81,000 people, though the real number was likely to be higher.With some 45,000 civilians seeking protection at U.N. bases, the 15-member Security Council unanimously authorized a plan by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to boost the strength of the peacekeeping force in South Sudan to 12,500 troops and 1,323 police.The additional personnel will reinforce U.N. bases where civilians are seeking shelter.

Weeklong air raids on Aleppo kill more than 300

Damage in the Takeek al-Bab neighbourhood in Aleppo (picture of 15 December 2013, Reuters)

More than 300 people have been killed in a week of air raids on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and nearby towns by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, a monitoring group said on Monday.
Many of the casualties, who included scores of women and children, were killed by so-called barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Syrian authorities say they are battling rebels who have controlled parts of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, and most of the surrounding countryside for the past 18 months.
But human rights group have condemned the use of the improvised bombs - oil drums or cylinders which are packed with explosives and metal fragments, often rolled out of the aircraft cargo bay - as an indiscriminate form of bombardment.
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the British-based pro-opposition Observatory, said 87 children and 30 women were among the 301 people killed in the Aleppo air raids since December 15.
Assad's forces have clawed back territory to the southeast of the city in recent weeks and have reasserted control over several Damascus suburbs in the build-up to planned peace talks next month aimed ending Syria's almost three-year-old conflict.
The army is thought unlikely to be able to recapture major parts of Aleppo before the talks in Switzerland start on January 22, but Abdulrahman said the air raids might be aimed instead at turning the remaining residents against the rebel fighters by showing that the insurgents could not protect civilians.

Merry Christmas

I wish my readers (Christians and others) a merry Christmas and a good start of the year 2014.
Palestinians waiting in front of the Bethlehem checkpoint

Huge Christmas tree (made in China) on Manger Square in Bethlehem.