The Volgograd city council passed a measure Thursday to use the name Stalingrad in city statements on the commemoration day, on Russia's May 9 Victory Day and on four other days connected with the battle, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. TPM
CAIRO — Reacting to Egypt’s growing chaos, the head of the Army warned on Tuesday of the “collapse of the state” if political forces in the country did not reconcile, reflecting growing impatience with the crisis from Egypt’s most powerful institution. NY Times
Dozens of armed assailants raided and looted the InterContinental Semiramis hotel on Cairo's Nile Corniche, while staff desperately called for help via their official Twitter account, in the early hours of Tuesday morning amid fierce clashes between protesters and security forces.
Anti-government demonstrators secured the besieged hotel and helped hotel guests flee until they were safely in taxis to the airport, as the police and the army failed to come to their aid. Ahram
The Station nightclub fire was the fourth deadliest nightclub fire in American history, killing 100 people. The fire began at 11:07 PM EST, on Thursday, February 20, 2003, at The Station, a glam metal and rock and roll themed nightclub located at 211 Cowesett Avenue in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
The fire was caused by pyrotechnics set off by the tour manager of the evening's headlining band, Great White, which ignited flammable sound insulation foam in the walls and ceilings surrounding the stage. A fast-moving fire engulfed the club in 5½ minutes. Some 230 people were injured and another 132 escaped uninjured. Video footage of the fire shows its initial growth, billowing smoke that quickly made escape impossible, and the exit blockage that further hindered evacuation. Wikipedia
A fire ignited by a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early on Sunday morning in Santa Maria, a city in southern Brazil, killing at least 232 people, police officials said. NY Times
Tried to reach Down Town by car - failed. 6 October is blocked, young masked guys informed to turn back. Bulak-Esaaf side is damn jammed. teargas is everywhere, couldn't even walk.impossible to walk on 15 May bridge - teargas coming from Maspero side.The protesters were warning people off the conflict areas so no one inadvertently got stuck in a violent situation. There are so many instance of this. People always warns you off when there's a fighting nearby. There is so much kindness still in this chaos.
He wrote: “This is the big question asked by Israel’s middle class, the same sector on whose behalf I am going into politics. Where’s the money? Why is it that the productive sector, which pays taxes, fulfills its obligations, performs reserve duty and carries the entire country on its back, doesn’t see the money?”
Mr. Lapid harnessed the frustration of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who took to the streets in the social-justice protests of the summer of 2011. When he founded Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) the next spring, he adopted and sharpened the popular demands for a more equal sharing of the burden, meaning an end to automatic military exemptions for thousands of ultra-Orthodox students who opt for full-time Torah study, as well as demands for better public education and an end to rising taxes that choke the middle class.
David Cameron outlined the scale of his ambition to transform the terms of Britain's membership of the EU when he called for the UK to be exempted from its founding principle: the creation of an ever-closer union.
In his long-awaited speech on the EU, the prime minister cast himself as a modern-day heretic as he pledged to challenge established thinking.
Speaking at the London headquarters of Bloomberg, Cameron confirmed plans to hold an in-out referendum after the next election but warned: "The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point." Guardian
Oil-rich gulf state Qatar has a vested interest in the outcome of the north Mali crisis, according to various reports that have been picked up by French MPs, amid suspicion that Doha may be siding with the rebels to extend its regional influence.
The first accusations of Qatari involvement with Tuareg separatists and Islamist groups came in a June 2012 article in respected French weekly the Canard Enchainé. France 24
On matters related to the Palestinians, the president seems to view the prime minister as a political coward, an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise.The column is worth reading in full.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Obama’s nominee to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, is said to be eager to re-energize the Middle East peace process, but Obama -- who already has a Nobel Peace Prize -- is thought to be considerably more wary. He views the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as weak, but he has become convinced that Netanyahu is so captive to the settler lobby, and so uninterested in making anything more than the slightest conciliatory gesture toward Palestinian moderates, that an investment of presidential interest in the peace process wouldn’t be a wise use of his time.
Jeffrey Goldberg
In a reflection of its declining fortunes across much of the country, Germany's once high-flying Pirate Party failed to enter parliament in a pivotal state election in Lower Saxony on Sunday.
The Pirate Party, which rose to prominence in Germany over the past year and a half with its message of Internet freedom, political transparency and other issues relevant to the digital age, has been plunging in the polls recently after gaining seats in the legislatures of four German states. On Sunday, its winning streak ended with a stinging electoral defeat.
In Berlin, it had garnered 8.9 percent of the votes in fall 2011, followed by state elections in Saarland (7.4 percent), Schleswig-Holstein (8.2 percent) and North Rhine-Westphalia (7.8 percent). It scored just 1.9 percent in Lower Saxony. Spiegel
4
We stayed at a guesthouse a few kilometers from Pyongyang that was really like a private hotel, in that we were the only guests. Food overall? Solidly decent. Like Korean food, only with less pizzazz and more corn (?).
We were told well ahead of time to assume that everything was bugged: phones, cars, rooms, meetings, restaurants and who knows what else. I looked for cameras in the room but came up short. But then, why bother with cameras when you have minders? After a day in frigid Pyongyang, I was just thankful it was warm. Sophie in North Korea
It remains to be seen how long the planes will be grounded, how much the fixes will cost, and what exactly needs to be done. There will be much discussion regarding Boeing’s decision to rely on powerful but unstable lithium-ion batteries, and we can expect one or more emergency Airworthiness Directives, as they’re known, issued from the FAA, mandating changes to the plane’s batteries, and perhaps to the fire-protection aspects of its electronics compartments.
Lithium batteries, similar versions of which power most personal computers, are smaller and lighter than traditional batteries, but have a known propensity for hazardous “thermal runaway” conditions that can result in fires. The FAA recently banned the carriage of lithium batteries in passenger luggage. In 2006, a UPS cargo freighter made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after a shipment of lithium batteries caught fire in the cargo compartment. The plane was destroyed. And last year, the fatal crash of a UPS 747 near Dubai is believed to have been caused by a large shipment of lithium batteries that ignited during flight. (The halon extinguishing systems used in the cargo compartments of commercial planes has only limited effectiveness against these fires.) Ask the Pilot
As gun rights activists celebrated the turnout at gun shows for national Gun Appreciation Day Saturday, police responded to at least thee accidental shootings that left five people injured at shows across the country. TPM
The Algerian government has been relatively silent since the start of the crisis, releasing few details. The government faced withering international criticism for rushing ahead with its first assault on the militants on Thursday even as governments whose citizens were trapped inside the plant pleaded for more time, fearing that rescue attempts might lead to workers dying. The Algerians responded by saying they had a better understanding of how to handle militants after fighting Islamist insurgents for years. NY TimesThat is the bottom line I think. There will be much second guessing on how the Algerian could have done better but this is a hostage situation with 30 - 40 attackers and hundreds of hostages.
On the third question, the issue of who was to blame if the prosecution was too severe, I think it’s important to realize that what happened in the Swartz case happens it lots and lots of federal criminal cases. Yes, the prosecutors tried to force a plea deal by scaring the defendant with arguments that he would be locked away for a long time if he was convicted at trial. Yes, the prosecutors filed a superseding indictment designed to scare Swartz evem more in to pleading guilty (it actually had no effect on the likely sentence, but it’s a powerful scare tactic). Yes, the prosecutors insisted on jail time and a felony conviction as part of a plea. But federal prosecutors use those tactics all the time. What’s unusual about the Swartz case is that it involved a highly charismatic defendant with very powerful friends in a position to object to these common practices. That’s not to excuse what happened, but rather to direct the energy that is angry about what happened. If you want to end these tactics, don’t just complain about the Swartz case. Don’t just complain when the defendant happens to be a brilliant guy who went to Stanford and hangs out with Larry Lessig. Instead, complain that this is business as usual in federal criminal cases around the country — mostly with defendants who no one has ever heard of and who get locked up for years without anyone else much caring. Volokh
The exact number of people being held was still far from certain. A top Algerian government official said 20 Islamist militants had attacked the gas field and that security services had now “encircled the base” so that “no one can leave.” Concerning the number of hostages, he said that “the situation is confused for the moment,” and that there might be as many as 30. “We don’t have precise figures for now.” NY Times
Military sources said French and Malian government troops had encircled the central town of Diabaly, which was overrun by Islamists on Monday, after advancing to the nearby town of Niono on Tuesday. Diabaly is 220 miles (350km) from Bamako. Guardian
According to Dr. William Haynes, director of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Iowa, “Consumption of alcohol undoes many of the human body’s healthy reflexes, one of which is keeping the core body temperature warm in cold weather.” It doesn’t even take that much for this effect to kick in—just one alcoholic drink will start the process that results in a lowered core body temperature. Mental Floss
But with its attention and resources so focused on other conflicts in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, the Obama administration has rejected such strikes in favor of a more cautious, step-back strategy: helping African nations repel and contain the threat on their own.
Over the last four years, the United States has spent between $520 million and $600 million in a sweeping effort to combat Islamist militancy in the region without fighting the kind of wars it has waged in the Middle East. The program stretched from Morocco to Nigeria, and American officials heralded the Malian military as an exemplary partner. American Special Forces trained its troops in marksmanship, border patrol, ambush drills and other counterterrorism skills.
But all that deliberate planning collapsed swiftly when heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya. They teamed up with jihadists like Ansar Dine, routed poorly equipped Malian forces and demoralized them so thoroughly that it set off a mutiny against the government in the capital, Bamako. NY Times
So what phrase is appropriate to describe Saturday’s jaw-dropping reading of 755 at 8 p.m., when all of Beijing looked like an airport smokers’ lounge? Though an embassy spokesman said he did not immediately have comparative data, Beijing residents who follow the Twitter feed said the Saturday numbers appeared to be the highest recorded since the embassy began its monitoring system in 2008. NY TimesThe Air Quality Index tops at 500. 755 is beyond scale.
Here is where we need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor’s behavior. From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.
Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.
For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.”
In that world, the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.” For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it.
LessigThere's a White House petition to remove the overzealous prosecutor.
Whatever else is true, Swartz was destroyed by a "justice" system that fully protects the most egregious criminals as long as they are members of or useful to the nation's most powerful factions, but punishes with incomparable mercilessness and harshness those who lack power and, most of all, those who challenge power.
French troops have begun military operations including air strikes in Mali to contain Islamist groups which are continuing to clash with the army in a fight for control of the desert north of the west African country.
François Hollande announced on Friday night that French armed forces had gone to the aid of Malian troops on the ground during the afternoon. The French president said Mali was facing a "terrorist aggression" of which "the whole world now knows its brutality and fanaticism".
The foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said France's air force carried out an air strike in Mali on Friday as it supported government forces.
The French military intervention came as the Islamists who control northern Mali advanced ever closer to the furthest town still under government control. Al-Qaida-linked groups have controlled northern Mali since the army deserted the military campaign against Tuareg and Islamist rebels, which was followed by a military coup last March. Since the coup, the country, where France was once the colonial power, has been thrown into disarray. Western powers have voiced fears that an alliance of al-Qaida-linked militants that seized the northern two-thirds of Mali last April would seek to use the vast desert zone as a launchpad for international attacks. Guardian
The turning point came almost exactly four months ago. On Sept. 6, 2012, 22 men gathered on the 36th floor of the European Central Bank building in Frankfurt to reach a momentous decision on the Continent's common currency. The euro, said ECB President Mario Draghi at the press conference following the meeting, is "irreversible." To save it, he added, his bank would undertake unlimited purchases of sovereign bonds should it become necessary.
Since then, an amazing thing has happened. Although the ECB has yet to embark on any such bond shopping sprees, countries such as Italy and Spain, at risk of being engulfed by the crisis, no longer have to pay the horrendous interest rates they did in the middle of 2012. Furthermore, the massive imbalances that have recently plagued the European banking system have shrunk, if only slightly. Spiegel
Fresh from paying back a $182 billion bailout, the American International Group has been running a nationwide advertising campaign with the tagline “Thank you America.”These people make me sick.
Behind the scenes, the restored insurance company is weighing whether to tell the government agencies that rescued it during the financial crisis: thanks, but you cheated our shareholders.
NY Times
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "insoluble" and most Israelis "couldn't care less about it any more", according to Naftali Bennett, the surprise star of the election campaign, whose extreme rightwing nationalist and pro-settler Jewish Home is within sight of becoming the country's second biggest party.It is so fucked up that a pro settler party is likely to become Israel's second biggest party in the coming election. This is not going to end well.
In an interview with the Guardian, Bennett said he did not intend to waste the next four years "babbling about Israel and the Palestinians", and defended his plan to annex most of the West Bank in the face of international opposition, which was the "result of ignorance". Guardian
Consider it a mea culpa submerged in a deep pool of calculus and regression analysis: The International Monetary Fund’s top economist today acknowledged that the fund blew its forecasts for Greece and other European economies because it did not fully understand how government austerity efforts would undermine economic growth. Washington Post
Some world leaders live in palaces. Some enjoy perks like having a discreet butler, a fleet of yachts or a wine cellar with vintage Champagnes. Then there is José Mujica, the former guerrilla who is Uruguay’s president. He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.This is pretty inspiring.
Visitors reach Mr. Mujica’s austere dwelling after driving down O’Higgins Road, past groves of lemon trees. His net worth upon taking office in 2010 amounted to about $1,800 — the value of the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle parked in his garage. He never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor.
His current brand of low-key radicalism — a marked shift from his days wielding weapons in an effort to overthrow the government — exemplifies Uruguay’s emergence as arguably Latin America’s most socially liberal country. NY Times
Switzerland's oldest bank is to close permanently after pleading guilty in a New York court to helping Americans evade their taxes.
Wegelin, which was established in 1741, has also agreed to pay $57.8m (£36m; 44m euros) in fines to US authorities. BBC
Today's Tokyo has become a permanent mecca of consumption, its boroughs seemingly divided according to target markets. The city's Sugamo district, for example, is dominated by the elderly. Escalators in the subway station there go extra slow, while the stores along the Jizo Dori shopping street offer items such as canes, anti-aging cream and tea for sore joints. The Hurajuku neighborhood, on the other hand, is teeming with fashionistas made up to look like Manga characters.
This world of glitter, however, is but an illusion. For years, the world's third-largest economy has been unapologetically living on borrowed cash, more so than any other country in the world. In recent decades, Japanese governments have piled up debts worth some €11 trillion ($14.6 trillion). This corresponds to 230 percent of annual gross domestic product, a debt level that is far higher than Greece's 165 percent. Spiegel
The reason is simple: Unlike countries in the euro zone, Japan borrows most of its money from its own people. Domestic banks and insurers have purchased 95 percent of the country's sovereign debt using the savings deposits of the general population. What's more, the Japanese are apparently so convinced that their country will be able to pay off its debts one day that they continue to lend their government a seemingly endless amount of money.Which is the bottom line. The Japanese is not going to run away from their own country.
