PEOPLES DAILY, friday, march 6, 2015
Page 30
International
Hillary Clinton: ‘I want the public to see my email’
In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya.
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ormer U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, under fire for using her personal email address to conduct official business during her tenure as America’s top diplomat, said she has asked the State Department to release her emails. “I want the public to see my email,” Clinton said late Wednesday night in a
brief Twitter message. “I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf issued a statement saying the agency will review Clinton’s emails “using a normal process that guides such releases.” “We will undertake this review
as quickly as possible; given the sheer volume of the document set, this review will take some time to complete,” Harf said. Clinton broke her silence on the matter a after her use of her personal email address was revealed by The New York Times, which added that she may have violated federal records laws that
require archiving official government documents. The story took on an added dimension Wednesday when a story published by The Associated Press said Clinton used a personal email server based in her family’s home in New York. The revelations prompted the chairman of the special House of Representativescommittee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya to subpoena Clinton’s emails related to the incident. Four Americans were killed in the attack, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Congressional Republicans have criticized Clinton for not doing enough to ensure the safety of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Libya. Clinton and her staff turned over to the State Department about 50,000 pages of emails related to her time as secretary of state last year. From that collection, the department turned over 300 pages of emails related to Benghazi to the House committee. The revelations about the emails come as Hillary Clinton remains the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, although she hasn’t announced that she is running. She is not the only secretary of state to conduct official business via private email, but political analysts say doing so for all correspondence is unusual.
Ukraine crisis: Ukrainian MPs back bill to boost
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kraine’s parliament has passed a new law to increase the size of the armed forces to counter the threat from pro-Russian separatists in the east. The bill proposes a force of 250,000 personnel, including 204,000 active troops - up from 184,000. The government said its army had begun the second stage of pulling back heavy weapons on Thursday in line with the ceasefire agreed in Minsk last month. A lull in fighting has led to hopes that the truce may broadly be holding. Rebels battled government troops in the village of Shyrokyne, east of Mariupol, in the early hours of Thursday, interior ministry adviser ZoryanShkiryak said. But he added that there had been no other serious fighting in the area.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said it had started military exercises. They are taking place in southern Russia, as well as in the disputed Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the Crimean peninsular, which was annexed by Russia from Ukraine last year. ‘Matter of priority’ Out of the 314 Ukrainian MPs present on Thursday, 270 voted in favour for the law to increase the size of Ukraine’s army, according to reports. Defence Minister Petro Mekhed said it was needed for the “antiterrorist operation” against Russianbacked separatists in the east, and that numbers would be reduced once that threat ended. The head of the parliamentary national security and defence committee, SerhiyPashynskyy, said
the army and its number of combat units would be increased as a matter of priority. The bill now goes to President Petro Poroshenko, who proposed the measure, to be signed into law.
Both Ukraine and the rebels say they are withdrawing heavy weapons from the front line, one of the requirements of the ceasefire deal made in the Belarusian capital last month.
Ukraine says its troops are withdrawing heavy weapons from the front line
German BND spy agency hit by ‘Watergate’ leak
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ermany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is dealing with what media have described as its own “Watergate” scandal, after taps were removed from its unfinished new Berlin headquarters. The removal happened on Tuesday and left large parts of the building flooded, police say. An investigation has begun into the theft, but police have so far found no signs of a break-in.
The incident is seen as embarrassing for the BND, as well as expensive. A substantial amount of water was released when the taps were removed, spreading over several floors and entering cable and ventilation shafts, the authorities say. “It is Germany’s most closely guarded building site,” Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper says, adding that while there is no clue who caused the damage, it will take millions to repair.
2011, German weekly magazine Focus reported that detailed blueprints for the new headquarters had gone missing. The authorities did not say whether the damage would lead to a further delay in the completion of the BND’s new headquarters. Work on the new home for Germany’s intelligence service, which is moving from Munich to Berlin, started in 2006 and its opening has been
delayed several times. The latest date for completion, by the end of 2016, was already in doubt even before news of the latest setback, as technical problems were said to have pushed construction work into 2017. The unexplained disappearance of the taps, dubbed “Watergate” after the US scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, has also triggered considerable reaction on social networking sites.
Europe and Americas
Boston marathon bombing trial resumes after graphic testimony
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he trial of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev resumes Thursday in a federal courthouse in Boston. Tsarnaev’s lawyer, Judy Clarke, admitted the 21-year-old Tsarnaev was involved in the deadly 2013 attack in her opening statement to the jury Wednesday. “It was him,” Judy Clarke said of her client, who is facing the death penalty if convicted in the twin explosions at the finish line of the annual race that killed three people and injured another 264. But she claimed that he was deeply influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan, to carry out the attack, which a prosecutor alleged was aimed at avenging U.S. wars in Muslim countries. By blaming the older brother, Clarke is hoping to convince the jury to not sentence the 21-year-old DzhokharTsarnaev to death. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev inadvertently killed his brother, running over him with a car, as they attempted to elude police days after authorities had identified them as suspects in the bombings.
EU Commissioner Timmermans promises to cut red tape
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top Brussels official in charge of reducing the burden of EU regulations says he is determined to keep the EU focused on priority areas. “What we need is sensible, realistic rules that do their job - no more, no less”, said EU Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans. He is known as Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s “right-hand man”. Critics accuse the Commission of over-legislating, increasing business costs across the 28-nation bloc. “Sometimes there’s a tendency in Brussels to think ‘I legislate therefore I am’. I want to change that, and focus on what Europe needs to do, not what would be nice to do”, MrTimmermans said. He was speaking in London and the UK government is among the most vociferous critics of EU bureaucracy. Mr Timmermans, previously the Dutch Foreign Minister, said he was listening to the concerns of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) about EU regulations. “I want a Europe that works for the little guy ... the big boys and girls can look after themselves very nicely. I want SMEs to feel the difference - to say, hey this actually works.”