UAE shuts down two foreign NGOs - India

31 mar 2012

Abu Dhabi (CNN) -- Two nongovernmental organizations that worked primarily on promoting democracy abroad were shuttered by the government of the United Arab Emirates this week.

The Dubai office of U.S.-based National Democratic Institute was shut down Wednesday, followed by the closure of the Abu Dhabi office of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, an organization based in Germany, the next day.

Both pro-democracy groups saw their offices raided and shut down last year in Egypt.

Egyptian authorities accused the organizations of international interference that was stoking continued protests against the current military-led government.

According to the NDI, while the organization has a regional office in Dubai, it does not have any programs in the UAE.

"Our office was simply a regional hub which supported programs in places like Qatar and Kuwait," said Les Campbell, NDI regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Campbell said that authorities -- he's not sure from where -- came to their office and announced that NDI's license was canceled, effective immediately.

"While we are disappointed at this turn of events and disturbed by the arbitrary behavior in Dubai, we do not have programs in the UAE, so it has no serious ramifications for our work," he said.

The German organization, described as a think tank associated with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), reacted with even more surprise.

"We can only react with utter disbelief to the unexpected and sudden developments in Abu Dhabi. We have not been given any viable reasons.

"After the experiences in Egypt, we not only regret this decision. We would see it as an alarming signal if nongovernmental organizations and political foundations are not welcome in the Arab world," said Hans-Gert Poettering, head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Foundation.

UAE officials have not yet commented on the closures.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is in the region, said Saturday she regretted the UAE decision.

"We are ... strong believers in a vibrant civil society, and both NDI and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation office play a key role in supporting NGOs and civil society across the region, and I expect our discussions on this issue to continue."

Meanwhile, press freedom group Reporters Without Borders on Friday condemned the government of the UAE for cracking down on bloggers and other online activists.

"March has seen a wave of arrests, attacks and acts of intimidation. We urge the government to abandon these methods," the group said. "The authorities must stop arresting 'netizens' and bloggers for what they post online and must guarantee their safety."

Human rights groups of late have also stepped up their criticism of the UAE.

According to Samer Muscati, Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, at least three online activists have been detained in recent weeks.

"It seems that the government is still frighted by the events transpiring in the Middle East and are trying to do what it takes to keep the Arab Spring from reaching its shore, regardless of how small that possibility might be," he said.

Unlike many other nations in the region, the UAE was never affected by Arab Spring inspired protests. Nonetheless, the government has been quick to pursue activists who call for reform.

Last year, the citizenship of seven activists -- known as UAE 7 -- was revoked by UAE. The seven pro-democracy activists with ties to Islamist groups were found to be a threat to national security.

Also last year, five activists were arrested, tried and convicted for publicly insulting top UAE officials, committing acts that pose a threat to state security, undermining public order, opposing the government system and instigating others to break laws.

UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan pardoned all five one day after they were sentenced to prison terms.

According to Muscati, there was hope that the pardoning of the five activists last year was a signal of change to come, but that has not been he case, he said.

"These recent arrests are just a continuation of attempts by the authorities to silence critics and other dissenting voices," said Muscati of Human Rights Watch.

Ahmed Mansoor, an engineer and blogger, was one of the five prosecuted activists.

"I strongly disagree and condemn any acts that violate the basic human rights and freedom of opinion and expression," Mansoor told CNN. "The latest arrests and harassment of activists are directly related to the exercising of these basic rights."

Mansoor said the government is worried about the ripple effect of the Arab Spring. "This crackdown does not help anybody; not the social peace and unity nor the country image in the international level."

Anna Hazare now part of school syllabus - India

30 mar 2012

Anna Hazare’s campaign for a jan lokpal bill is now part of school curriculum. Several CBSE-recognised schools here have included a chapter on the anti-graft activist in their general knowledge textbooks for Classes 7 and 8. Some have given him the flattering epithet of ‘India’s second Gandhi’.

“Hazare is an Indian social activist recognised for his participation in the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement,” says a book written by Dhiren M Joshi and brought out by a private publication. This introduction is followed by a fill-in-the-blanks exercise on Hazare’s life and his agitation.
Another chapter describes the salient features of the bill: “An institution called lokpal at the Centre and lokayuktas in states will be set up and these will be independent of the government and no minister or government official will be able to influence investigations in corruption cases.”
The CBSE said it prescribed no such book. “The CBSE and National Council for Educational Research and Training recommend books, define syllabus but can’t dictate terms to schools,” said an official.

Gaddafi family assets worth 1.1 billion Euros seized in Italy - India

28 mar 2012

Gaddafi family assets worth 1.1 billion Euros seized in Italy

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Milan:  Italian tax police said on Wednesday it had seized Italian assets worth more than 1.1 billion euros belonging to members of the Gaddafi family.

In a statement, the tax police said the assets include stakes in Italy's largest bank UniCredit, Italian oil and gas giant Eni, Italy's defence group Finmeccanica, carmaker Fiat, truck-maker Fiat Industrial  and Turin-based soccer club Juventus.

The police said the seizure has been ordered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Strauss-Kahn charged in prostitution vice ring - India

27 mar 2012

Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been charged with involvement in an organised vice ring that procured prostitutes for top-class clients, lawyers said.
Prosecutors said the 62-year-old former Socialist finance minister and one-time presidential favourite had been  released on $135,000 bail following the charges on Monday.
Strauss-Kahn was called in by investigating magistrates in the northern French city of Lille two days earlier than expected and charged with an offence that could carry 20 years in prison if he is convicted.
"He firmly declares that he is not guilty of these acts and never had the least inkling that the women he met could have been prostitutes," said Richard Malka, one of Strauss-Kahn's counsel.
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn was placed under judicial control and was forbidden from contacting defendants, civil plaintiffs, witnesses and the press regarding the procedures," prosecutors said in a statement.
Strauss-Kahn's name came up as police were investigating a pimping operation that saw sex workers from brothels over the Belgian border being brought to France for orgies in high-class hotels in Lille and Paris.
Strauss-Kahn admits that he took part in some of these parties, one of which was said to involve women being flown to Washington to entertain him while he was still managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
But, through his lawyer, he has denied knowing the escorts were paid.
Using prostitutes is not illegal in France, but prosecutors are seeking proof that Strauss-Kahn was aware the parties were arranged by an organised pimping ring and paid for by other guests misusing company funds.
Strauss-Kahn told police he did not suspect the women were prostitutes because he was introduced to them by senior police officers.
lawyers will also be in court on Wednesday in New York for the first hearing in a civil case brought against him by Nafissatou Diallo, a hotel maid who alleges he sexually assaulted her.    

14-crore bribe offered to Army chief: Many missing pieces of information - India

26 mar 2012

14-crore bribe offered to Army chief: Many missing pieces of information

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

New Delhi:  In the morning, the Army chief disclosed that he has been asked for a 14-crore bribe by a retired defence officer in 2010. By the evening, the controversy had expanded to question why General VK Singh had not shared this earlier, or filed a case against the man who offered him the bribe, or blacklisted the company on whose behalf the kickback was allegedly offered.

The General has not named the man who visited him in his office in 2010. But sources say, the deal in question was related to Tatra and Vectra Ltd., which provided trucks to the Army via a contract. The bribe was allegedly offered to convince the Army chief not to introduce competitive bidding. The truck manufacturers had allegedly worked out that if that happened, they would save 40 lakhs per truck. So to clear the consignment of 1600 trucks, General VK Singh was allegedly offered almost Rs. 88,000 per truck, adding upto 14 crores.   

In his interview to The Hindu newspaper, the General said he'd been offered the money to clear sub-standard trucks. But the Defence Ministry has pointed out that nobody from the Army has ever complained about the performance of the trucks supplied by Tatra, which is a Czech company. "We have never received any complaint from the armed Forces," Joint Secretary (Land Systems) in the Defence Ministry Rashmi Verma said.

The government has ordered a CBI inquiry, but both the Congress and the BJP have said the Army chief should have filed a case against the retired officer for trying to bribe a government servant. "It was not like he was giving me bribe in my hand. This was an indirect method and that is why no arrest was made," was the General's explanation.

Though the General has not named the officer who met him, earlier this month, in a press release, the Army targeted former Lieutenant General Tejinder Singh for trying to create a rift between the government and the Army chief. Tejinder Singh had also served as chief of the Defence Intelligence Agency. The Army chief said he had been interrogated earlier about purchasing off-the-air interceptors without required clearances. The Army's statement added that Tejinder Singh had offered bribes on behalf of a company named Tatra and Vectra Ltd., which supplies vehicles to the Army.

Former Army chief VP Malik said to NDTV, "There was a need to take strong prompt, ruthless action. The Army Chief should have pursued the matter. I would have taken action against person offering bribe."

Meanwhile, Lt Gen Singh earlier today denied the charges of bribing the Army chief. Speaking to NDTV earlier today, he said, "I do not think VK Singh has said that I made or did not make this sort of offer." He also said that he met with the Army chief once after he retired, but said he would disclose the circumstances of that meeting later. He further said that he would initiate "legal action against the people concerned". 

The retired officer has also been allotted a flat in the Adarsh Society, a high-rise building in Mumbai whose apartments were intended for war veterans and widows, but were instead given to politicians, bureaucrats and defence officers.

The government and the chief will now have to answer whether the company was blacklisted once the bribe was offered, and why it has taken so long to commission a formal inquiry.

The Congress today suggested that the Army chief's own actions were wanting. "If someone offered him a bribe, as a government servant, he should have filed a case against the person under the Prevention of Corruption Act," said the Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.

The Congress-led coalition at the Centre has been entangled in a maze of financial scandals, with the opposition accusing it of serving as a "government of scams" and of creating an environment that lends itself to graft as the Standard Operating Procedure.

In January, General Singh became the first serving military chief to take the government to court. He wanted the Defence Ministry to accept that he was born in 1951 and not 1950 - records with the Army list both years. The Defence Ministry had refused the General's claim, stating that he had accepted many promotions on the basis of his seniority as established by the documents that showed he was born in 1950. The chief withdrew his petition in the Supreme Court after the judges, through their remarks, indicated they would not side with his claim. He is scheduled to retire at the end of May.
 

Japan to push anti-terror measures at nuclear plants - India

25 mar 2012

Japan to push anti-terror measures at nuclear plants

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Tokyo:  The U.S. had repeatedly warned Japan about vulnerabilities at its nuclear plants in case of a September 11-style terror attack. It turned out Washington was right about the soft spots, but wrong about the enemy that would strike them.

When nature unleashed its own fury on Japan last year with a devastating tsunami, a list of U.S. recommendations proved highly prescient. The elements Washington identified as most vulnerable in an attack - spent fuel pools, cooling systems, backup electricity - were the ones worst hit in Japan's disaster.

Tokyo had ignored the recommendations, which were implemented at U.S. nuclear sites, because Japanese officials thought the chances of terrorist-flown aircraft striking its plants were remote.

But as leaders from around the world head to Seoul for a major summit this week on nuclear security, Japan's disaster at its Fukushima plant has provided a salient example of how solid protections against terrorist attacks go hand in hand with protections against natural disasters.

The summit is primarily about ways to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists, but the Japanese government plans to propose a series of Fukushima-inspired measures to enhance emergency power backup systems and advocate a closer link between anti-terror security and general safety issues.

"We have to imagine the unimaginable," Kensuke Yoshida, the director of the arms control and disarmament division of Japan's Foreign Ministry and a member of Japan's delegation, told The Associated Press.

"Once an incident happens, the consequences will be extremely grave, whether caused by a natural disaster or terrorists," Mr Yoshida said.

Japan had been slow to make that connection.

Documents made public since Japan's nuclear crisis began last year suggest the scenario that played out in Fukushima was by no means unforeseeable - it was simply ignored.

After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a number of directives to the domestic nuclear industry based on a review of what might happen if an airliner hijacked by terrorists was crashed into an atomic plant.

It expressed concern that such an attack could cripple a plant's power system, and proposed portable diesel-driven pumps, portable power supplies and hoses be made readily available so that reactor cores can be kept cool to prevent them from going into dangerous, radiation-spewing meltdowns. It also suggested measures to provide backup cooling water to the vulnerable spent fuel pools.

The suggestions were passed on to Japan several times, but Tokyo dismissed them because it regarded the recommendations as a terrorism issue and did not think it faced a significant terrorist threat, according to Tetsuya Endo, a former diplomat and vice chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan.

"The agency that got the recommendations just put them in their pocket. No one else knew anything about it," said Mr Endo, who is on an independent fact-finding commission that recently released a scathing review of Japan's response to the crisis.

"We are an island nation with an island mentality. We see ourselves as free from the possibility of terrorist attack," he said.

Last year's March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated the very systems that the NRC had found to be weakest. Fukushima experienced the electrical blackout that it warned of, and three of its reactors went into meltdowns, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate as plant workers struggled to find ways to keep them cool.

In recent testimony before a parliament-appointed investigative panel, Haruki Madarame, a nuclear physicist and head of Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, acknowledged that Japan should have taken the U.S. findings more seriously.

"Even though we were aware of the issue and knew that they were taking steps, we didn't do anything," he said. "When other countries were discussing the problems, we only wasted time trying to find excuses why we didn't have to do it."

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear terrorism expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Japan's crisis is a good case-in-point for experts who have long warned that anti-terrorism measures need to be enhanced.

"The Fukushima accident has certainly illustrated the dependence of nuclear plants on electrical power supply, both off- and on-site, and how core damage can occur solely as a result of a prolonged loss of power in the absence of timely intervention," he said.

But he said the disconnect between policymakers who are primarily concerned with anti-terror measures and those focused on mitigating natural disasters continues to be a major problem.

Mr Lyman said the United States' post-9/11 recommendations, which were made public in May to support the NRC's argument that the U.S. was prepared for a Fukushima-type event, reflected that imbalance.

"The measures were specifically intended to help plants survive the impact of a single aircraft, and not to survive other types of initiating events, like earthquakes and floods," he said. "In fact, the U.S. guidance specified that such equipment did not have to be seismically qualified."

Because of the Fukushima example, he said, the NRC is now updating its measures to take into account a wider variety of challenges.

Raja Bhaiyya suspends jail superintendent, deputy jailor in Lucknow - India

24 mar 2012

Raja Bhaiyya suspends jail superintendent, deputy jailor in Lucknow

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Lucknow:  Uttar Pradesh minister for jails Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya today suspended the jail superintendent and the deputy jailor of a prison in Lucknow as the food in the jail was found to be below the specified standards.

Mr Singh also inspected two other jails in Lucknow.

In a surprise visit of "nari bandigrah", Mr Singh found the food being provided to the inmates below the specified norms and standards, sources said.

The minister also took a serious note of complaints that the inmates were not being provided things of their daily requirement in the prison, sources said.

The Kunda MLA ordered the suspension of jail superintendent Amita Dubey and deputy jailor Anjani Kumar Gupta.

The minister also found anomalies in the construction and sanitation works in the other jails, and directed officials to ensure that the inmates are provided with proper facilities.