thursday, october 29, 2015
guyanatimesgy.com
15
Around the world
US vows to repeat Arch-rivals Saudi Arabia, Iran to at Chinadiscuss Syria face-to-face for first time sail-by claimed islands
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audi Arabia and Iran announced they would attend international talks in Vienna on Friday on the war in Syria, in the first meeting between the regional adversaries aimed at ending the four-year-long war. Saudi Arabia said its participation in the talks aimed to gauge the willingness of Russia and Iran, the Syrian Government’s main backers, for a peace deal, Foreign Minister Adel alJubeir said on Wednesday. “The view of our partners ... was that we should test the intentions of the Iranians and the Russians in arriving at a political solution in Syria, which we all prefer,” al-Jubeir told a news conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and three of his deputies will attend the multilateral talks, Iranian state news agencies said earlier on Wednesday. It will be the first time that Tehran attends international negotiations on Syria’s war. Other participants, notably the United States, say Assad can play no part in Syria’s future. The Saudi Foreign Minister added that the kingdom and its allies would hold a separate meeting on Friday to
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A school girl walks past damaged buildings in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria October 28
seek “the time and means of Bashar alAssad’s exit”. Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Lebanon, the European Union and France also said they would attend Friday’s talks, which come a day after a smaller round of negotiations between the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Around a dozen participants are expected in total. It was not clear whether any invitation had been issued to either the Syrian Government or the Opposition. Neither side was present at the last talks in Vienna. (Excerpt from Reuters)
he United States has vowed to continue sailing more naval warships near disputed islands in the South China Sea, risking escalating tension with China, which has claimed a vast territory in the area. “We will do it again. We sail in international waters at a time and place of our choosing,” a US official said in an interview with the AFP news agency on Tuesday. The USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed within 22 kilometres of at least one of the man-made land formations claimed by China on Tuesday. The patrol came within the internationally accepted limit of a nation’s territorial claim, according to the US. The US and other Southeast Asian countries, with competing claims to the area, say these are international waters open to anybody. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 22km (12 nau-
tical miles) limit cannot be set around man-made islands built on previously submerged reefs. The US official, who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity, said the “freedom-of-navigation” patrols were expected to become more frequent. The move prompted Beijing to summon the American Ambassador and denounce what it called “coercive actions that seeks to militarise” the disputed waters. China’s Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui told US Ambassador Max Baucus, that the patrol was “extremely irresponsible”. Earlier, Beijing sent a guided-missile destroyer and a naval patrol ship to shadow and give warnings to the US warship “according to law”, China’s Defence Ministry said. Beijing said that the warship illegally entered Chinese territory and threatened its “sovereignty”.
Police officer fired TB “joins HIV as most India to ban foreign for student assault deadly infection” surrogate services in South Carolina T
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United States Police Officer has been fired after video showing him throwing a female student across a classroom was shared widely on the internet. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said that Senior Deputy Ben Fields “did not follow proper procedure”. He was a school resource officer at the school in South Carolina. He “should not have thrown a student – he could have done a lot of things he was trained to do, he was not trained to throw a student”, Sheriff Lott said. The incident occurred at the Spring Valley High School in Columbia, witnesses said,
when the unnamed AfricanAmerican student refused to put away her mobile phone and then refused to leave the classroom. The Officer was then summoned and asked her to leave again. She refused, and he told her she was under arrest. Video then shows the Officer violently knocking the student down and pulling her across the floor. The incident was filmed by a fellow student and was published on the Internet, prompting the hashtag #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh to circulate on Twitter and an outcry from various civil rights and parents’ groups.
(Excerpt from BBC News)
uberculosis now ranks alongside HIV as the world’s most deadly infectious disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. Each accounted for between 1.1 million and 1.2 million deaths in 2014. The WHO said the tuberculosis figures were unacceptable for a disease that could be cured. Medecins Sans Frontieres said the statistics were “disheartening” and warned the world was “losing ground” on tackling resistant forms of TB. The WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Report 2015 shows the huge strides that have been made in tackling TB, with the death rate being nearly halved since
1990. And the number of infections has been falling by 1.5 per cent a year since 2000. Deaths from HIV/AIDS have also been falling rapidly because of improved access to anti-retroviral drugs. Dr Mario Raviglione, the WHO’s Tuberculosis Director, told the BBC News website: “Tuberculosis and HIV are now competing to be the number one cause of death from infectious disease in the world. “Tuberculosis now ranks alongside HIV.” Most new cases of TB are in China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria or Pakistan. Deaths from HIV/AIDS have been falling since the mid-2000s, and stand at 1.2 million a year. (Excerpt from BBC News)
Tensions high in Zanzibar as authorities annul vote
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anzania’s elections have been thrown into doubt after the semiautonomous Zanzibar archipelago annulled polls, sparking tension on the islands and raising questions about national presidential results. Zanzibar’s electoral commission on Wednesday said elections on the Indian Ocean islands – where the 500,000 registered electorate had also voted on Sunday for Tanzania’s national president – must be carried out again, citing “violations of electoral law”. “The process was not fair and had breaches of the law ... I declare all the results to be null and void,” Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC)
The annulment is likely to delay the announcement of full national results [Khalfan Said/AP)
Chairman Jecha Salim Jecha said, reporting alleged violations including double-voting and cheating. In response to the annulment, Maalim Seif, presidential candidate and leader of the main Opposition
party, the Civic United Front (CUF), accused the ZEC of acting unilaterally and without consultation at a brief meeting with senior party members. Despite also citing electoral irregularities,
such as dead names appearing on the voter’s roll, Seif, who is also currently Zanzibar’s second Vice President in a unity Government that rules the semi-autonomous islands, has urged the electoral commission to continue with tallying votes and announce the result. “We still can solve the puzzle and the process must continue,” he told Al Jazeera. “The Chairperson of ZEC had three days to announce the outcome and if there were problems he should have approached us. The rules allow for an extra three days if problems arise, but ZEC did not do this. (Excerpt from Reuters)
(Excerpt from Al Jazeera)
India is called the “surrogacy hub” of the world
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he Indian Government has said it plans to ban surrogate services for foreigners wanting babies in a move which will hit a thriving industry. It says surrogacy would be available “only for Indian couples”. India is called the “surrogacy hub” of the world, where infertile couples, including many from overseas, hire the wombs of local women to carry their embryos through to birth. But there have been growing concerns over what is an unregulated business. This had prompted a petition in the Supreme Court, which last month ordered the Government to spell out plans for regulating the industry. “The Government does not support commercial surrogacy and also the scope of surrogacy is limited to Indian married in-
fertile couples only and not to the foreigners,” the Government said in an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Existing rules say foreign couples seeking to enter into a surrogacy arrangement in India must be a “man and woman [who] are duly married and the marriage should be sustained at least two years”. The Government said it would require some time to introduce the law. “[It is] in the process of bringing a comprehensive legal framework for not only protecting the rights of surrogate mother, but also for prohibiting and penalising commercial surrogacy,” the affidavit presented to the court by Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said. Commercial surrogacy is estimated to be worth more than US$1 billion (£65 million) a year in India. (Excerpt from BBC News)