SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Egyptian police arrested 12 alleged members of the Black Bloc – an anonymous anarchist group opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood – after clashes outside Cairo's presidential palace, the official MENA news agency said Saturday.

Protesters hurled rocks and fire bombs at the walls of the presidential palace in Heliopolis, and torched a police vehicle, a security source told MENA.

"Security forces arrested 12 youths who were among rioters involved in the events around the presidential palace on Friday," the source said, adding the judiciary would take action against those involved.

Police fired tear gas to disperse the masked activists of the Black Bloc movement, a security source told AFP.

Footage broadcast on private television station ONTV showed a police vehicle ablaze on the edges of the presidential palace compound.

State television reported early Saturday that "clashes between the police and the Black Bloc at the presidential palace wounded 20 people."

A security official told AFP that three security personnel, including two officers, were among those hurt.

Demonstrators, hooded and masked and dressed in black from head to toe, appeared in January in Cairo and other provinces, calling themselves the Black Bloc.

They present themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to Islamist President Mohammed Mursi.

On their Facebook page, the activists say they are a "generation born of the blood of the martyrs" from the 2011 revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.

Prosecutor general Talaat Abdallah accused the group of "terrorism" three months ago.

For the past five months, Egypt has been suffering a grave political crisis, marked by deadly clashes between supporters and opponents of Mursi.

The palace in Heliopolis has already been the scene of similar violence, notably in December, when tens of pro- and anti-Mursi demonstrators died in clashes. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:al-akhbar

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Thousands of garment factory workers in Bangladesh have protested for the second day over the deaths of more than 300 workers after a building collapsed.

Rescuers also found 50 more workers on Friday evening, as they continue to search for large numbers of survivors believed to be still trapped inside the rubble.

Widespread anger has been fuelled by revelations that factory bosses forced 3,000 workers to continue working on Wednesday despite police orders to evacuate the building because of cracks found in the structure the day before.

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on Friday as protesters attacked factories and smashed vehicles, forcing many garment factories to shut down operations.

"The situation is very volatile. Hundreds of thousands of workers have joined the protests," M Asaduzzaman, an officer in the police control room, told the AFP news agency. "We fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them."

He said some of the protesters were armed with bamboo sticks and their actions had forced factories at Gazipur, just outside the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, to close for the day.

Mustafizur Rahman, the deputy police chief of Gazipur, said workers had attacked factories, smashed vehicles, burnt tyres on the roads and tried to torch roadside shops on the sidelines of the rally.

"They are demanding the arrest and execution of the owners of the factories and the collapsed building at Savar," he told AFP.

The overnight rescue of 45 people late on Thursday who were trapped inside the debris of the eight-storey building in the commercial suburb of Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, raised hopes of thousands of relatives.

Hundreds trapped

An estimated 2,000 people had been rescued in two days, at least half of them injured, but up to 1,000 people remained unaccounted for, the Reuters news agency reports.

It prompted new criticism of Western companies who were accused by activists of placing profit before safety by sourcing their products from the country despite its shocking track record of deadly disasters.

British low-cost fashion line Primark and Spanish giant Mango have acknowledged having their products made in the collapsed block, while a host of brands including Wal-Mart and France's Carrefour are investigating.

Italy's Benetton placed large orders with one of the suppliers, documents found by activists appeared to show, but the group has denied having links to the building.

The US said it could not confirm whether any US companies were sourcing garments from the complex, as protesters in San Francisco targeted the headquarters of Gap with banners reading "No More Death Traps".

"But it does underscore that there's a need for the government, owners, buyers and labour to find ways of improving working conditions in Bangladesh,"  Patrick Ventrell, a deputy State Department spokesman, said.

Human Rights Watch said the tragedy showed there was an "urgent need to improve Bangladesh’s protections for worker health and safety".

"Reforms should include a drastic overhaul of the government's system of labour inspections and an end to government efforts to thwart the right of workers to unionise," the rights body said.

"Given the long record of worker deaths in factories, this tragedy was sadly predictable," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement published on the group's website.-www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Twenty-nine people have been injured in clashes between police and protesters in the latest street demonstrations sparked by anger at Spain's economic crisis, emergency services said.

Around 1,000 protesters massed in front of a police barrier protecting parliament in Madrid on Thursday, calling for 
the government and lawmakers to quit.

The demonstration coincided with the release of Spain's latest official unemployment figures which showed the jobless rate had surged past 27 percent, with 6.2 million people out of work.

A group of protesters hurled bottles at the police line and let off firecrackers, prompting riot police with shields and helmets to chase them along nearby avenues, beating some with batons.

Thirteen of those injured in the clashes were police officers, officials said.

Before the demonstration started police arrested four members of anarchist groups suspected of plotting to set fire to a bank and 11 people who blocked access to a university.

Austerity cuts

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government was due on Friday to unveil a further package of economic reforms which he wants to have implemented by 2015. Government officials say the plan will tread a fine line between growth and austerity.

But, with millions people unemployed in the country, protesters on Thursday said the increasing austerity cuts were causing unfair suffering to the poor and complain that the political system is stacked against them.

As well as overseeing a bailout for Spain's banking sector, Rajoy has brought in spending cuts and labour reforms, since his conservative government took office in December 2011.

He says the steps are needed to fix the public finances and strengthen the economy and will help Spain save $196bn by 2014.

Rising unemployment in Spain has caused evictions to soar and forced tens of thousands of people to leave in search of work abroad.

The number of households in which all eligible members are unemployed reached 1.91 million in the first quarter, the statistics office said.

In neighbouring France, also hit by the financial crisis, unemployment reached its highest rate since 1997, according to data announced on Thursday.

Around 3.2 million people were out of work in the country, an 11.5 percent annual increase, the French labour ministry said. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:AL Jazeera

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Authorities in the United States believe that the two brothers suspected of detonating bombs at the Boston Marathon last week hoped to wreak similar havoc in New York City’s Times Square.

On Thursday afternoon, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a press conference that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were planning to set off explosives in Midtown Manhattan.

“The surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets,” Mayor Bloomberg said, adding that details of the attempted terrorist attack surfaced in recent days while Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was being questioned by investigators.

Dzhokhar, 19, has reportedly since stopped speaking with authorities and remains hospitalized in Boston as he recovers from injuries incurred during last week’s manhunt and the subsequent shootouts with police. His brother and co-suspect in the bombings, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed late last Thursday after an armed standoff with police in Watertown, Massachusetts. The younger Tsarnaev brother was captured the following evening and has since been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction for his alleged role in the Monday, April 15 terrorist attack in Boston, Massachusetts. Three people died in the blast.

Addressing the media earlier this week, New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said investigators suspected that the brothers plotted a trip to Manhattan after the bombing in order to “party.” At Thursday’s presser, however, Mayor Bloomberg said that his initial suspicions of a second terrorist attack plotted for the Big Apple have proved accurate.

“Ten days ago our city and nation received a horrific reminder that we remain targets for terrorists,” said Bloomberg, who stressed that the city of New York responded by immediately mobilizing the NYPD’s “vast counterterrorism operations” in order to combat any follow-up attacks.

“We now know that that possibility was in fact all too real,” he told reporters.

Bloomberg and Kelly said that this past Wednesday evening they were informed by the Joint Terrorism Task Force that the two Tsarnaev brothers intended to drive more than 200 miles from Boston to New York to detonate additional explosives in Times Square, the Midtown Manhattan landmark that attracts more than a quarter of a million people each day.

According to Kelly, Dzhokhar “initially told investigators that he and his brother decided after the Boston bombings that they would go to New York City to party. However, subsequent questioning of Dzhokhar revealed that he and his brother decided spontaneously on Times Square as a target.”

The brothers, said Bloomberg, “had the capability to carry out the attack.” Kelly claimed the men planned to bring six explosives in all: five pipe bombs and one pressure cooker device similar to the the ones used in Boston.

Earlier Thursday, Reuters cited anonymous sources who said the brothers intended to make the trip to New York a week earlier after hijacking a vehicle outside of Boston in the town of Cambridge, but unexpected complications caused them to put the plot on hold.

“They discussed this while driving around in the Mercedes SUV that they hijacked,” said Kelly. “The plan, however, fell apart when they realized that the vehicle that they hijacked was low on gas.”

Authorities say the Tsarnaev brothers stole the SUV last Thursday evening after a firefight erupted between the bombing suspects and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer. Twenty-six-year-old Officer Sean A. Collier was killed in the shoot-out just after 10 p.m. last Thursday and that incident rekindled a manhunt for the alleged terrorists thought responsible for the marathon bombing three days earlier. Police would pursue the two brothers across the Boston area that evening, during which the pair reportedly threw a number of explosives out of their automobile. The car-chase took authorities to the town of Watertown, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following another firefight with police.

Police say that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his brother’s body in the stolen Mercedes while fleeing the scene of that incident and was captured the following evening. Nearly one week later, though, information is finally being released about a second, perhaps much deadlier attempted terrorist attack.

Kelly said that authorities are unsure of when or where the brothers would have detonated the explosives had they successfully made the trip to Times Square, but that surveillance footage recorded earlier on April 18, 2012 has provided investigators with proof that Dzhokhar visited Manhattan last year. An additional photo obtained by the NYPD links Dzhokhar with being in Manhattan this past November.

“The role of surveillance cameras played in identifying the suspects was absolutely essential in saving lives, both in Boston and now we know in New York City,” said Bloomberg.

Kelly added that additional people caught on film with Dzhokhar during a visit to New York have been identified as well and that an investigation into the matter is going forward.

Had the brothers made it to Manhattan, Bloomberg said they would have seen “an enormous police presence,” but would have been unaware of the city’s vast collection of public surveillance cameras. The New York Civil Liberties Union believes that are at least 2,400 of those cameras in New York, and real-time data is reportedly sent directly to US Department of Homeland Security fusion centers that spend millions of dollars annually to investigate and interrupt alleged terrorist attacks.

“The investments that we’ve made in counterterrorism operations, technology and intelligence help reduce the possibility of a successful terrorist strike,” said Bloomberg, all the while cautioning that more could be done to deter future attempts — especially those in New York, described by the mayor during the afternoon presser as a “prime target for those that hate America and want to kill Americans.”

-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:RT

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –French police have clashed with thousands of demonstrators in the capital, Paris, protesting against the approval of a bill that legalizes gay marriages and adoptions for same-sex couples by the country’s parliament.

On Wednesday, police fired tear gas at the angry protesters who had gathered near the National Assembly building. The protesters were hurling glass bottles, cans and metal bars to show their discontent with the parliament’s decision. 
On Tuesday, the lower house of the National Assembly, where President Francois Hollande's socialist party has an absolute majority, approved the bill with 331 votes against 225. The upper house of the French parliament had approved the first article of the bill by 179 votes against 157 on April 9. 
Before becoming law, the bill must be signed by Hollande. 
Meanwhile, the conservative members of the parliament, who are mainly opposed to the decision, said after the vote that they have filed a legal suit with the country’s Constitutional Council against the legislation. 
A verdict from the Constitutional Council could take up to a month and opponents are hoping to build enough force during that time to pressure the president not to sign the bill. 
Critics say Hollande’s campaign promise to legalize gay marriages has carried a political price, stating he should have instead focused on fixing the worsening economy and soaring unemployment. 
The approval of the bill comes despite over a hundred protests during the past months against the move, including a rally on March 24, where police attacked thousands of participants with tear gas and batons. 
French churches have also condemned the bill, calling gay marriages “a sham” that would “shake one of the foundations of our society.” 
If the bill becomes law, France will be the 14th country in the world to approve same-sex marriages, joining countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.

-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:Press TV

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –A man claiming to be the leader of the Lulz Security hacking group has been arrested by the Australian Federal Police on the New South Wales central coast.

The Australian Federal Police have announced the arrest of an individual they describe as the “leader” of LulzSec, a hacker collective with affiliations with Anonymous.

Since the initial Australian police report, several of the country's publications have outed the suspect as Matthew Flannery, a support technician at IT security provider Content Security, contracted by the larger firm Tenable Network Security.

Flannery, who was known online as Aush0k, was evidently arrested at his place of work by the Australian Federal Police, though his employer seemed to downplay his level of access to any customer data by describing him as a “low-level support tech.”

The AFP believes Flannery had been involved with LulzSec for some time. He has been released on bail and is scheduled to appear before a court on May 15.

In a public statement, Australian Federal Police describe the suspect as an IT professional, who has been charged with “hacking offenses” following the alleged attack and defacement of a government website in early April. He is also described as a well-regarded member of the larger Anonymous group.

The arrest is reported by Australian police as having taken place in the coastal town of Point Clare, and involved a 24-year-old individual who evidently proclaimed himself the leader of the hacktivist collective.

LulzSec has garnered notoriety for a series of high profile attacks, having claimed responsibility for knocking the CIA’s website offline, and compromising Sony Pictures in 2011.

The group has previously claimed credit for attacks on the US Senate, as well as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal following those companies’ refusal to process donations to whistleblower organization WikiLeaks.

Several members of LulzSec were arrested when the group’s former leader, Hector Xavier Monsegur (known by his moniker Sabu) evidently turned on the group.

News of the arrest are unlikely to impress the greater Anonymous community, as offshoots such as LulzSec are regarded more as banners under which individuals operate, rather than a structured hierarchy. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:RT

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Fresh anger swept through Delhi after a five-year-old girl was taken to hospital having been allegedly raped by a neighbour. Protesters clashed with police, who were accused of trying to bribe the family to keep quiet, and a senior police officer was suspended after striking a woman protester.

In the latest incident to create outcry, it emerged the young girl had been raped and assaulted after being snatched from her home on Monday. It is alleged that the man who took her, rented a room in the same building as that of the girl's family in the Gandhi Nagar area of east Delhi.

The family were alerted after hearing the girl's cries on Wednesday. When she was eventually inspected by doctors, it emerged that a bottle and pieces of candle had been inserted inside her. She said she had not had food or water for two days.

"This is the first time that I have seen such barbarism with a five-year-old," RK Bansal, medical superintendent of the Swami Dayanand hospital, where the youngster underwent an operation, told reporters.

He added: "There were injuries on her lips and cheeks and bruise marks on her neck, suggesting that attempts were made to strangle her. The blood pressure was way below normal, and she had fever when she was admitted."

The young girl was later taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi where her condition was said to be stable. Activists and family members clashed with police, who were accused of giving money to the family and telling them to forget the matter. The girl's father said police had refused to register a case when he went to report her missing.

"The police tried to suppress the matter and even offered [£24] to the family to keep quiet," a spokesperson for the Aam Aadmi party, Aswathi Muralidharan, told the Indo-Asian News Service. "On top of that, the child was admitted to a hospital which does not even have proper facilities and equipment."

The incident is the latest in a series of sexual attacks in Delhi that have created outcry in the aftermath of the December 16 gang-rape and murder of a Delhi student. The authorities have vowed to do more to protect women and police have been ordered to take steps to make the city safer.

Indian media reported that the ministry of home affairs had summoned senior Delhi police officials demanding a full report on what took place.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh said he was "deeply disturbed" by what had taken place. According to the Press Trust of India, he said the way police had treated the woman protesters was "completely unacceptable". -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:The Independent

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Kuwait riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades at thousands of opposition activists who were protesting against authorities for raiding the house of a key opposition leader.

Several protesters were wounded in the clashes on Wednesday, the first in about three months in the oil-rich Gulf state which underwent violent protests late last year against the amendment of an electoral law, witnesses said.

Violence broke out hours after Special Forces raided the house of Mussallam al-Barrak, the former opposition MP, with assault rifles in an attempt to arrest him to serve a five-year prison term for insulting the country's emir.

"In the protests, the Special Forces [were] brutally harsh on the protesters," Mohammad Almatar, head of international relations of the opposition coalition, told Al Jazeera.

Kuwait riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades at thousands of opposition activists who were protesting against authorities for raiding the house of a key opposition leader.

Several protesters were wounded in the clashes on Wednesday, the first in about three months in the oil-rich Gulf state which underwent violent protests late last year against the amendment of an electoral law, witnesses said.

Violence broke out hours after Special Forces raided the house of Mussallam al-Barrak, the former opposition MP, with assault rifles in an attempt to arrest him to serve a five-year prison term for insulting the country's emir.

"In the protests, the Special Forces [were] brutally harsh on the protesters," Mohammad Almatar, head of international relations of the opposition coalition, told Al Jazeera. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Al Jazeera

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Riot police raided a high school and fired tear gas at students in Bahrain’s capital Manama Tuesday morning as the teenagers demonstrated for the release of a pupil arrested the previous day.

Amateur footage posted online show police firing tear gas at hundreds of students at the Jabriya boy’s school.

The students were demanding the release of 17-year-old Hassan Humidan who was arrested on Monday.

The school is located close to the US Embassy in a residential southern district of Manama full of parks and nurseries.

Mohamed Jaber, a father of one of the students, says he came to pick up his son but police told him and other parents to leave.

Activists said that police have arrested about 100 people over the past two weeks in preparation of the Formula One race scheduled for April 21.

Thousands of Bahrainis have taken to the streets across the kingdom in recent days to protest the race amid an ongoing crackdown on anti-government demonstrators.

Bahrain has been wracked by more than two years of unrest with almost daily demonstrations against the US-backed monarchy.

A popular uprising nearly threatened to topple Bahrain’s autocracy in early 2011 before a Saudi-led gulf force entered the country in March to crush protests.

At least 80 people have been killed in the unrest since February 2011.-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:al-akhbar

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –At least three people are dead following twin explosions in Boston, Massachusetts, where thousands of runners were participating in the annual Boston Marathon. Local media report over 100 people have been injured.

Two explosions occurred near the finish line of the 26.2-mile (42km) event at 2:50pm local time (18:50 GMT), and the Boston Globe is reporting three deaths and more than 100 injuries.

The FBI confirmed that the blasts were a terror attack, according to federal sources cited by CNN.

Follow RT's Live Updates on the blasts.

Federal aviation authorities have declared a no-fly zone over the area and authorities including the US Air Force continue to attempt to secure the scene. The aviation restrictions have reportedly extended to an order that all flights out of Boston's Logan Airport be grounded until further notice.

An intelligence official working on the scene told the Associated Press that two additional explosive devices were found inside garbage cans near the site. Other reports say there were a total of five unexploded devices found following the blasts.

As law enforcement look for further explosives, they have reportedly told people in the area to stay off mobile phones for fears that the signal could detonate another undiscovered device.

A source at Boston's Mass General hospital claimed that at least 10 patients have been admitted to the facility's emergency room with missing limbs after the accident.

Police denied a claim by the New York Post that a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian national was in custody as a suspect in the blasts.

RT spoke to eyewitness Yury Sulyemanov, who as a spectator was standing meters from the blasts.

"I think absolutely everyone around me thought it was just somewhat expected fireworks, as it was so close to the finish line. But then we heard the second explosion and it was much closer to us," he told RT.

"Runners were asking to use our phones so they could text their families and tell them they were all right."

Boston's John F. Kennedy Library was affected by a fire as well Monday afternoon, with initial reports linking it to the attack at the marathon. However, it was later reported to be a separate and unrelated case.

The Boston Marathon’s headquarters have reportedly put on locked down while authorities investigate the incident. Both US President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden have been made aware of the tragedy.

"Obama has directed administration to provide whatever assistance is necessary in the investigation and response,” a White House official tells the Globe.

Eyewitnesses say smoke filled the streets of the city after a first explosion, and seconds later another loud boom was heard.

“I saw  two explosions. The first one was beyond the finish line. I heard a loud bang and I saw smoke rising,” Boston Herald reporter Chris Cassidy said from the scene. “I kept running and I heard behind me a loud bang. It looked like it was in a trash can or something.”

“There are people who have been hit with debris, people with bloody foreheads,” he says.

Witness Andrea Storer adds to the Globe, “It was huge. There had to be people killed. There had to be.”

"Blood everywhere,” another witness tells the paper.

The event has been put on hold and paramedics are quickly trying to assess the situation.

Earlier in the afternoon, 23-year-old Ethiopian runner Lelisa Desisa came in first-place by completing the run in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 22 seconds. At the time of the explosions, though, hundreds of runners were still racing for the finish line.

Organizers call the event the "world's oldest annual marathon and one of the world's most prestigious road races.”

Among the wounded are a two-year-old boy with a head injury, a nine-year-old girl with leg trauma and six other children under the age of 15. The children are being treated at Boston Children's Hospital, which has declined to provide further details about the condition of the patients.

Medical officials at Massachusetts General Hospital said they were treating 29 victims for injuries that ranged from “cuts and bruises to serious shrapnel wounds,” Reuters reported.

Surgeons said they had performed several amputations by mid-evening on Monday.

The names of the victims have not been publicly revealed.

Peter Fagenholz, a trauma surgeon at Mass General, said the most serious cases - none of them children - arrived at the hospital within the first 15 minutes. And while he said the injuries were not"other worldly," the scale of the incident caught him off guard.

He said the oldest patient he cared for was 71.

"We take care of accidents all the time. It's just depressing that this was intentional," Fagenholz said, as quoted by Reuters.

He said many of the patients would have a difficult recovery.

"A number of patients will require repeat operation tomorrow and serial operations over the next couple of days." -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:RT