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Thursday, October 18, 2012
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International
RLD
Divided Syrian rebels agree on joint leadership Reuters
REUTERS/Mike Segar
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (L) and U.S. President Barack Obama speak directly to each other during the second U.S. presidential debate in Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012.
Obama takes offensive in crucial debate Associated Press
HEMPSTEAD — President Barack Obama went on the attack against Republican challenger Mitt Romney in a critical debate Tuesday, looking to rebound from an earlier matchup when he was seen as listless and distracted. The stakes of the town hall-style debate could not have been higher. With just three weeks to go before Election Day, the race is locked in a dead heat and many Americans are already casting ballots in states with early voting. Obama strode onto the stage seeking a stronger showing than in the initial debate on Oct. 3, when he had sent shudders through his supporters and helped fuel a rise in opinion polls by Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. The open-stage format, with no physical objects between them, placed incumbent and challenger face to face and, when they chose, directly in each other’s faces. Their physical encounters crackled with energy and tension, and the crowd watched raptly as the two sparred while struggling to appear calm and affable before a national television audience. From the opening moments, Obama was aggressive. He criticized Romney’s opposition to the Democrats’ bailout of the auto industry and rejected Romney’s economic proposals as squeezing the middle class.
“Gov. Romney says he’s got a five-point plan. Gov. Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules,” Obama said. He also said Romney had shifted positions on energy, criticizing coal production years ago and supporting it now. At least twice, Obama accused Romney of being untruthful. Romney responded in kind. He said the Obama administration’s spending was swelling the deficit and would lead to big tax hikes. He criticized Obama’s handling of the economy and blamed the president for high gasoline prices. “The middle class has been crushed over the last four years,” Romney said. The two men interrupted one another early and often, speaking over each other to the point that neither could be understood. “You’ll get your chance in a moment. I’m still speaking,” Romney said as he tried to cut off Obama at one point. There would be little time for
either candidate to recover from a weak showing Tuesday. Only one more debate, next Monday, remains after Tuesday’s faceoff and that one deals with foreign policy, a secondary issue in a race dominated by the economy. Tuesday’s debate was before an audience of 80 uncommitted voters posing questions to the candidates. Obama needed to strike the right balance in coming on strong against Romney without turning off the audience — and tens of millions of television viewers — by going too negative. Obama has said his first debate performance was “too polite.” The economy, the biggest issue in the election, was unsurprisingly the first topic in the debate. There are sharp differences between the two candidates. Obama says his policies prevented a catastrophic economic meltdown, saved the U.S. auto industry and has put the economy on the road to recovery. Romney, a wealthy businessman, argues that Obama has failed to turn around the economy and it is time for new leadership.
BEIRUT - Syria’s divided rebels have agreed to set up a joint leadership to oversee their battle to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, two insurgent sources said on Tuesday as fighting raged in cities across the country. Rebels hope the decision, taken after increasing pressure from foreign supporters on them to unite, will help convince those backers that they are a credible and coordinated fighting force deserving to be supplied with more powerful weapons. “The agreement has been reached, they only need to sign it now,” one rebel source said. Foreign supporters “are telling us: ‘Sort yourselves out and unite, we need a clear and credible side to provide it with quality weapons’.” He said Qatar and Turkey were the main drivers behind the agreement, which might be formally announced this month. It is the latest attempt to bring together Assad’s disparate armed opponents, most of whom have fought nominally under the banner of the rebel Free Syrian Army but who in practice have operated independently, often weakened by deep rivalries. The new leadership will include FSA leaders Riad alAsaad and Mustafa Sheikh - criticized by many rebels because they are based in Turkey - and recently defected General Mohammad Haj Ali, as well as heads of rebel provincial military councils inside Syria like Qassem Saadeddine, based in Homs province. The Syrian National Council has set November 4 as the date for an opposition unity conference in Qatar, organizers said. The 19-month-old revolt against Assad, which started as peaceful demonstrations, has mushroomed into a civil war with sectarian dimensions, pitting the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against a power structure dominated by the Alawite minority. Activists say more than 30,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries and more than a million have been displaced inside Syria as entire city districts have been rendered ghost towns by heavy shelling. The British Observatory for Human Rights said 80 people had been killed in Syria by dusk on Tuesday, after 160 died on Monday. Heavy clashes broke out in the city of Hama, and fighting continued in Aleppo and the northern province of Idlib. A Reuters correspondent on Lebanon’s northeastern border with Syria saw a helicopter dropping explosives on the Syrian side of the frontier. Refugees unloading blankets from a pickup truck in an olive grove on the Lebanese side stopped to watch big black plumes of smoke rising into the sky. Underlining increasing international concern about the conflict, Pope Benedict will send a group of top cardinals to visit Syria in coming days to express solidarity with its battered population, the Vatican news service said. U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has called on Shi’ite Muslim Iran, Assad’s closest regional ally, to help arrange a ceasefire in Syria during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha later this month. Diplomatic sources said Brahimi is also trying to persuade Assad and the rebels to accept a ceasefire and allow U.N. monitors into the country to oversee it. Brahimi, who took over after Kofi Annan quit in frustration in August, has been travelling around the Middle East trying to nudge regional powers into accepting his plan, which resembles a ceasefire Annan tried in vain to implement, U.N. diplomats said. But diplomatic sources familiar with Brahimi’s proposals said that neither Assad’s government nor the fractious opposition had shown interest in halting the conflict. Major powers at the United Nations remain deadlocked over what to do to defuse Syria’s conflict.
International
Thursday, October 18, 2012
INDONESIA 2 police killed investigating terror in Poso
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Rescuers examine the wreckage of an Indonesian Air Force Hawk 200 fighter jet that crashed during a routine exercise near houses in a village in Kampar, Riau province, Indonesia, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012. The
Associated Press
pilot ejected safely
JAKARTA — Two police officers have been found dead in central Indonesia, a week after they disappeared while investigating suspected terrorist activities, authorities said Wednesday.
and no casualties
National police spokesman Col. Agus Rianto said the officers’ bodies were found Tuesday with their throats slit and stripped of almost all their clothes in a shallow grave in mountainous Poso district of Central Sulawesi province, the site of deadly religious clashes a decade ago. “They apparently were tortured before being killed,” Rianto told a news conference. He refused to say who might be involved, but another police spokesman, Brig. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar, said some members of Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid, an organization founded by convicted radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir and designated a terrorist group by the U.S. in February, were involved in the murder. “There is more than one perpetrator and they are well trained,” Amar said, adding the guns of the officers were taken. Rianto said the two had been missing since Oct. 8, a day after police arrested a suspected militant who tipped them off to a possible terrorist training camp in Poso, where clashes between Christians and Muslims left more than 1,000 people dead between 2001 and 2002. Indonesia, a secular nation, has been battling terrorists since 2002, when militants linked to the Southeast Asian network Jemaah Islamiyah began attacking Western nightclubs, restaurants and embassies. More than 260 people have been killed in the attacks, many of them foreign tourists. Recent terror attacks in Indonesia have been carried out by individuals or small groups and have targeted security forces and local “infidels” instead of Westerners, with less deadly results.
have been reported. AP Photo/Azwar
Superhawk 200 jets grounded Antara
JAKARTA - The Indonesian Air Force Chief of Staff, Imam Sufaat, has stated that the Air Force will stop using its Superhawk 200 jet fighters temporarily, in the wake of the jet crash in Pasir Putih, Kampar, Riau Islands, during a routine training mission on Tuesday morning. “All Superhawk 200 jets will be grounded until we find out the cause of the crash. This is an anticipatory measure, since we do not want this to happen again,” he said at the State Palace here on Tuesday. Sufaat added that the Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee
AFP PHOTO / Bay ISMOYO
“Many of those jets were purchased in 1994,” Safaat added. The Superhawk 200 was made in the UK in 1980. It was reportedly the single-seat ground-attack version that crashed. “The jet crash happened during the preparatory training for `Angkasa Yudha`,” Safaat stated. “In fact, the Air Force planned to conduct war simulation on October 23 in Tanjung Pandan, Belitung, by deploying all types of fighter aircraft, such as F16 and Sukhoi, as well as Superhawk 200,” he explained. “However, now, we will not use the Hawk until we find out the cause of the crash,” Safaat added.
New Jakarta governor Jokowi observes densely populated areas Antara
Journalists hold placard readings “stop violence on journalists” during a rally in front of the Defence Ministry offices in Jakarta on October 17, 2012 to protest alleged attacks by Indonesian Air Force officers on journalists who were working at the site of a crashed British Aerospace Hawk 200 fighter jet in Pekan Baru, Riau province on October 16. At least six journalists were allegedly attacked by soldiers while trying to cover the aftermath of the crash of the military fighter jet, according to media reports.
of the Indonesian Air Force was still investigating the cause of the crash. “We cannot estimate how long this investigation will take, since there are many things that need to be investigated. However, I believe this was not caused by human error,” he stated. “There might be something wrong with the jet`s engine because the aviator will not eject himself out of the jet without any reason. I think he faced some engine trouble, so he decided to get out of the aircraft,” Sufaat noted. He said the Indonesian Air Force had two squadrons of Superhawk 200, with as many as 32 aircraft.
JAKARTA - The new Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (Jokowi) a day after being installed by Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi, on Tuesday observed Pademangan, one of the densely populated areas in the capital city. “We wish to see about the condition of drainage, settlement areas and green open space,” the new governor who was accompanied by some of his ranking staffs said. While passing through the narrow paths and saw the gutters which are full of garbage, Jokowi called on chief of the city`s public works office to pay attention and also asked the residents` readiness to help remove the garbage accumulating in the gutters. “I directly instruct them (public
works officials and residents) to remove the garbage from the gutters. I asked them to clean the gutters in a week,” the governor noted. According to him, the fund for cleaning the gutters have been allocated in the city`s 2012 budget, so such work can immediately conducted. “Just take it easy, money to finance the activities is available,” he cited. Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi, installed Joko Widodo and Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) as governor and vice governor respectively to replace Fauzi Bowo and Prijanto following their victory in the run-off election last month. Thousands of Jokowi-Ahok supporters crowded the venue of the event to welcome the instal-
lation of their candidates as the new Jakarta governor and vice governor. The Jokowi-Ahok ticket`s victory was phenomenal as only two political parties namely PDIP and Gerindra supported the candidates while most political parties were behind Fauzi Bowo who ran with Nachrowi Ramli. The public meanwhile have expressed high hope from the new governor and vice governor to settle various problems faced by the capital city. A political observer from the state Islamic University of Syarif Hidayatullah here, Burhanuddin Muhtadi, said the public expectations would be the biggest challenge to be faced by the new leaders.