US kidnapper killed, 5-year old safe

A US gunman and murder suspect who snatched a five-year-old boy and held him for a week underground in a bunker besieged by police has been killed and the child is safe, the FBI said Monday.

Police had earlier identified the abductor as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired trucker. The motive of the January 29 abduction in the town of Midland City in the southern state of Alabama remained unclear.

"At approximately 3:12 this afternoon, FBI agents safely recovered the child who's been held hostage for nearly a week," said FBI Special Agent Steve Richardson, who is in charge of the Mobile, Alabama division.

"Within the past 24 hours, negotiations deteriorated and Mr Dykes was observed holding a gun. At this point, FBI agents, fearing the child was in imminent danger, entered the bunker and rescued the child."

The five-year-old boy hostage, known only as Ethan, was taken from the scene to the hospital and is believed to be in fine condition. The child was reportedly taken to nearby Flowers Hospital but is not believed to be injured.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Steve Richardson addresses the media near Alabama

said Richardson, ". Sykes had continued to demand “4 minutes on all major networks” to tell his story.

Dykes’s believed that the government was harboring and hiding aliens that threatened to take America’s weapons.

During a televised news conference, Stephen E. Richardson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Mobile, Ala. division, said that during the last 24 hours, negotiations deteriorated and Dykes “was observed holding a gun.”

That’s when authorities decided that the boy was in eminent danger, so they made a move to rescue the boy.

The subject is deceased."

Dykes is thought to have shot dead the driver of a school bus when he seized his young hostage, retreating to an underground room on his property and defying calls for his surrender.

Ala. Gov. Robert Bentley said in a statement that he was “thankful that the child who was abducted is now safe.”

Gov. Robert Bentley

He continued: “At the same time, we also want to remember the family and friends of the bus driver – Charles Poland, Junior. This man was a true hero who was willing to give up his life so others might live. We are all inspired by his courage and bravery.”

Dykes, a retired Alabama trucker, was a decorated Vietnam-era veteran described as a loner who railed against the government.

Word for theDay: “God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas; but for scars.” -― Elbert Hubbard

China/ Japan Conflict!

                              

The spat between China and Japan over disputed sovereignty on a group of small islands in the East China Sea, called the Senkakus by the Japanese and Diaoyus in China, is taking dangerous overtones. China is sending planes and surveillance vessels to test its claims, with Japan taking counter-measures. Taiwan too has entered the fray, as the alternative China, with Japanese firing water cannons at a Taiwanese boat carrying a group of activists wanting to land on the disputed islands.

                             

The trouble began on Aug. 15, when Japanese authorities arrested 14 Chinese citizens from a Hong Kong-based vessel after some of them staged a protest by landing on one of the islands. The landing of Japanese activists on one of the disputed islands further intensified tensions. In response, anti-Japanese protests, some violent, spread across China, apparently chaperoned and approved by the police.

Japan's defense minister, Itsunori Onodera

The governor of Tokyo, a well-known nationalist, further angered Chinese activists by announcing that he wanted to buy three of the disputed islands from their owner, a Japanese citizen. He said he believed that Japan’s central government was not doing enough to defend them.

The next week, the Japanese government announced that it had bought all of the islands from their private Japanese owners for nearly $30 million. It said it acted in the hope of forestalling further conflict, but China accused Tokyo of stealing the islands and dispatched two maritime enforcement ships in a show of force.

In late September, the Japanese Coast Guard used water cannons to disperse fishing boats from Taiwan near the islands, which are also claimed by Taipei.

In October, China announced that it would not send its finance minister or central bank chief to the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Tokyo. The decision was a clear sign of China’s displeasure with Japan’s handling of the dispute over the islands.

The last-minute cancellation, confirmed by Japanese officials on Oct. 10, came as a Japanese news agency reported that Tokyo may try to defuse the standoff by officially acknowledging for the first time that China also claims the islands.

On Oct. 11, a senior Chinese diplomat made a secret visit to Tokyo to hold talks aimed at defusing tensions between the two countries, according to a Japanese government spokesman. The spokesman, Osamu Fujimura, said Luo Zhaohui, who leads the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Asian Affairs Department, met with Shinsuke Sugiyama, the director general of the Asian and Oceanic Affairs Bureau at Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

According to a statement from the Japanese ministry, the diplomats “exchanged opinions” on the dispute and held preparatory talks for a higher-level meeting between the two nations to take place at an unspecified date.

In December, a Chinese military surveillance plane entered what Japan considers its airspace near the disputed islands, the Japanese Defense Ministry said. Japan scrambled fighter jets in response, but the Chinese plane left before they arrived, according to Japanese authorities.

The ministry said the plane’s incursion was the first known violation of Japanese airspace by a Chinese plane since they began keeping records some 50 years ago. China considers the airspace its own, because it is laying claim to the islands that Japan has controlled for decades.

Tokyo lodged a formal protest with Beijing, which swiftly retorted that it was the Japanese who had encroached.

Looking back at the historical experience of the two major powers of our times, Britain and the United States, the dominance over oceans and sea-lanes was a prerequisite for regional and global primacy. Indeed, this is how China was humbled during the opium wars of the 19th century and reduced to a semi-colonial status. Now China wants to establish its sway over the South China Sea and over the disputed (with Japan) islands in the East China Sea.

When the communists won the civil war and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the US was the dominant military power ruling the waves in much of the world in the midst of a Cold War, with China on the Soviet side. After intense internal ideological and power struggles, and a serious rift with the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s overlapping into the 1980s, China started to emerge slowly as a power in its own right under the stewardship of Deng Xiaoping. Deng was a practical leader with emphasis on learning from facts and not too infatuated with communist ideology, though he was a strong upholder of the Party’s monopoly on power. He wanted to modernise China and build it into a strong and powerful nation. But he also advised that China should bide its time while building its strength.

Deng’s successors obviously believe that the time has come for China to assert and reclaim its power and national interests. And these interests include recovering what it perceives to have been historically its sovereign territories and waters in the South China Sea and other maritime territories, including the Senkaku/Diayou islands, controlled by Japan. In the regional political power play, China once had an advantage over Japan as its atrocious war record in China and other Asian countries created a kind of aggrieved brotherhood, revived now and then over specific issues like the ‘comfort women’, Asian prostitutes that Japanese soldiers used during wartime.

But with China’s rise and its determination to consolidate and expand its power, it is now simultaneously involved in sovereignty disputes over islands in the South China with a number of regional countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and others, and with Japan in the East China Sea. That is creating an aggrieved brotherhood of a different kind against China, with Japan increasingly regarded favourably. The most welcoming of Japan in this respect is the Philippines, with its own serious maritime dispute with China. Japan and the Philippines have become strategic partners agreeing to collaborate to resolve their territorial disputes with China. And they have expressed ‘mutual concern’ about China’s increasingly assertive claims.

Vietnam is another country with a serious maritime dispute with China in the South China Sea, and has lately drawn strategically close to the United States. Both Japan and the Philippines have their security pacts with the United States, as does Australia. But Japan is not without its own problems, arising from a serious maritime dispute with South Korea, which too is a US ally. The US has been urging both its allies to resolve their dispute but the signs so far are not propitious.

Even without the US security connection, Japan is not an inconsequential power, though constrained militarily because of the US-imposed post-WW11 pacifist constitution. There has been a slow erosion of that position, with US support, as Washington has been urging Japan for quite some years to play an important regional military role as its ally. With Shinzo Abe as Japan’s new prime minister, known for his ultra-nationalist views, Japan will raise its defence expenditure and take measures to get rid of the relevant constitutional provision constraining its military power.

China is already an ascendant military power with its defence budget reportedly doubling over the last six years. It seems determined to uphold its perceived national interests, which is its great strength with the Chinese people. While the government might not be playing the military band, the country’s senior military officers are not holding back their frank views. This was recently the case with Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu of China’s National Defence University in an interview with John Garnaut, China correspondent of The Sydney Morning Herald. He said colourfully, “America is the global tiger and Japan is Asia’s wolf and both are now madly biting China.” He hypothetically raised a scenario of nuclear retaliation by raising the WW11 analogy when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and asked, “...how do you know it wouldn’t receive another nuclear bomb?” And said, “The world would hail if Japan receives such a [nuclear] blow.” He amplified, “I don’t want to mention China here [presumably, the country that might deliver the blow], as it is sensitive.” And he had a message for Australia not to follow the US or Japan into any military conflict, saying, “Australia should never “play the jackal for the tiger or dance with the wolf.” 

Though Colonel Liu said his views did not represent government policy, at the same time he emphasised that his views were consistent with what the political and military leaders thought, if not what they said. In addition to the interview, Liu also provided written comments accusing the US of creating “a mini-NATO” to contain China, with the US and Japan at its core and Australia within its orbit.

Having taken such a strong public stand on the sovereignty issue, the Chinese government would find it difficult to retreat from that position. Japan will equally be averse to making its sovereignty over the islands an open issue. If so, China and Japan are heading for a showdown of some sorts in the not-too-distant future. And that won’t be pretty regionally and globally.

In a region devoid of rules like those that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union when their ships and planes crossed paths, the possibility of a deadly accident is high. In addition to the radar scares, the two sides have exchanged threats, with Japan stating that its fighter jets would fire tracer bullets near Chinese aircraft if they strayed too near the rocks. A retired but influential Chinese army general responded that such an act would constitute a “first shot".

The new chief of China’s Communist Party, Xi Jinping, has even taken to urging the People’s Liberation Army to “prepare for war.”

Word for the Day: “ We boil at different degrees. ”— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I still have faith in South African justice system – Okah

The embattled leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Henry Okah, who has been convicted on 13 counts of terrorist activities, said on Thursday January 31st,  he has not lost faith in the South African justice system.

Speaking to journalists in the High Court in Johannesburg before the start of sentencing procedures, Henry Okah stated: “I do not think anything funny has happened…. I just believe that the judge arrived at his conclusion based on the information that was placed before him,”.

“I still haven’t lost faith in the South African justice system, so I will continue to test it.”

On January 21, Judge Neels Claassen found Mr Okah guilty of engaging in terrorist activities, conspiracy to engage in terrorist activity, and delivering, placing, and detonating an explosive device.

He said the State had proved Mr Okah’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The judge said Mr Okah’s failure to testify meant the evidence against him remained uncontested.

Twelve people were killed and 36 injured in two car bombs in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, on October 1, 2010 during the celebration of the anniversary of the Nigeria’s independence.

Mr Okah was arrested in Johannesburg the next day.

He was also found guilty on terrorism charges relating to two explosions in March 2010 in Warri, Delta State.

Judge Claassen found no evidence that the suspect did not head MEND which claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Mr Okah denied any involvement in the blasts and said the charges against him were politically motivated.

South Africa tried him as part of its international obligation, as the Nigerian authorities had not applied for his extradition, according to the prosecution.

Security at the Johannesburg court was increased on Thursday. The main street outside the court was closed to traffic and police officers were stationed on street corners. About 12 police officers and four security guards were outside the courtroom on the second floor. Inside the court about 16 heavily-armed officers monitored proceedings.

Wearing a blue, red and white striped shirt, and jeans, Mr Okah sat calmly in the dock waiting for proceedings to start.

“I have been through worse…. I’m prepared for these kinds of things. This is Africa,” he told reporters.

His wife, wearing sunglasses, sat in the public gallery, with family and friends.

Word for the Day:  Experience is what you get, when you don’t get what you want- Dan Stanford

Money Laundering: Court Remands Jigawa Governor’s Son

Nigeria:


                           

Aminu Lamido, eldest son of Jigawa state governor (Northern Nigeria), Sule Lamido, has been remanded in prison custody until Tuesday following his arraignment on Monday at a Federal High Court in Kano on money laundering charges.

The governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido

Judge Satun Riman ordered that Mr Lamido be remanded in prison pending his ruling on his bail application after he was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Prior to this time, the governor’s son had been enjoying administrative bail granted to him by the EFCC since December 13, a day after he was arrested at the Malam Aminu Kano International Airport by EFCC operatives for allegedly not declaring $40,000 in his possession on his way to board an Egypt bound flight to Cairo.

Word for the Day: Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.

Russia in ground-breaking talks with Syrian opposition

                                       

Ground breaking talks have been held between the Russian Foreign Minister and the Syrian opposition leader, as part of a global push to end the conflict in Syria.
After this first meeting, Moscow has said it will keep in regular contact with the Syrian National Coalition Leader Moaz Al-Khatibib.

Syrian National Coalition Leader Moaz Al-Khatibib.

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier met US Vice President Joe Biden in relation to the on-going crisis in Syria.

There is strong disagreement between the US and Russia over how to end the 22-month conflict, which the UN believes has claimed up to 60,000 lives.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Moscow said Saturday it wanted to keep in regular contact with the Syrian opposition, after its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Syrian National Coalition leader Moaz al-Khatib met for the first time.

"I reminded Khatib that after the creation of the coalition and the appointment of their leader, we immediately demonstrated our interest in maintaining regular contact," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying after the meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

"We will make that happen," he added.

Lavrov had earlier Saturday held talks with US Vice President Joe Biden and UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi amid strong disagreement between Moscow and Washington about ways to end the 22-month Syria conflict, which according to the United Nations has claimed upwards of 60,000 lives.

Khatib, who became the head of the coalition late last year, reiterated on the opening day of the Munich talks Friday an earlier surprise announcement that his group is ready for dialogue with the Damascus regime -- subject to conditions including the release of 160,000 detainees.

Lavrov said Moscow welcomed the initiative, adding: "If we take into account the fact that the coalition was founded on a refusal to engage in a dialogue with the regime, it's a very important step."        

Biden, in his meeting with Lavrov, called on Washington and Moscow to put aside "serious differences" and stressed the need for US-Russian cooperation, including over Syria, the White House said.

Moscow's engagement with the Syrian opposition comes just days after Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev took the rare step of criticising Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad made a "grave, perhaps fatal error" in not reaching out more quickly to the Syrian opposition "which was ready to sit at the negotiating table with him", Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying on Sunday last week.

"It seems to me that his chances of staying (in power) are shrinking day by day," Medvedev told CNN television.

Biden also met Khatib and Brahimi in Munich on Saturday.

He "urged Khatib to continue his efforts to maintain unity among the SOC (Syrian Opposition Coalition) leadership, to isolate extremist elements within the broader opposition, and to reach out to, and be inclusive of, a broad range of communities inside Syria, including Alawites, Christians and Kurds", according to a White House statement.

Earlier the US vice president insisted Assad was a "tyrant" and must go.

The United States and its allies have made repeated calls for Assad's ousting. Key Damascus ally Russia has resisted any international action, arguing that the Syrian people must decide their own fate.

Lavrov, whose country has blocked three UN Security Council resolutions sanctioning Assad for the violence, called for another meeting of the Syrian action group led by Brahimi to try to reach agreement on a transition, saying he believed progress was possible.

He said Moscow shared Washington's concern about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria.

"We coordinate this issue with the Americans on a daily basis. We have reliable information that for now, the Syrian government has control of the chemical weapons, that the situation is safe," Lavrov said in his address to the conference.

"I think that this (the use of chemical weapons) is a 'red line' for everyone. We are categorically against the use of any arms."

In a dramatic development last week, Syria said Israeli air strikes hit a weapons research centre near Damascus and threatened to retaliate.

Israel has not commented on the reports, but a US official said an Israeli raid struck surface-to-air missiles and a nearby military complex on the capital's outskirts.

Israel has frequently warned that if Syrian chemical weapons fall into the hands of the Shiite movement Hezbollah, its arch-foe and close Damascus ally, this would be a casus belli.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told AFP that Washington is also concerned the "chaos" in Syria could allow Hezbollah to obtain sophisticated weaponry.

On the ground on Saturday, rebels were reported to have taken control of the Sheikh Said district of Aleppo, Syria's second city, in a strategic victory securing a key route to its international airport.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on activists and medics on the ground for its information, said at least 114 people were killed on Saturday: 46 civilians, 33 rebels and 35 soldiers.

Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official visiting Damascus reiterated that his country stood squarely behind the Syrian regime.

     

Word for the Day: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter- Martin Luther King Jr.

Syria Air Strike........... Israel Claims Responsibility!

Defense Minister Ehud Barak

Israel‘s defence minister indicated Sunday that his country was behind an air strike on Syria that U.S. officials said targeted anti-aircraft weapons bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah; which he refereed to as “proof that when we say something, we mean it."

“We say that we don’t think it [Syria] should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon,”

It was the first public comment by an Israeli government official on the Wednesday strike. He told top international diplomats and defence officials at a conference Sunday in Germany with top Diplomats and Defence officials from around the world.

Damage done to cars and an office after an Israeli air raid

Barak however, did not bluntly say that Israel had carried out the strike, skirting the issue by saying, “I cannot add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria several days ago,” 

Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the Israeli government for its alleged airstrike in Syria, saying that "those who treated the Israeli government like a spoiled child should know that history will not forgive the Israeli state."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkish Huriyet Daily News quoted Erdogan as saying, “It is unacceptable to us, it is against every international law.”

Word For the Day: To manage men, one ought to have a sharp mind in a velvet sheath - George Eliot

Cuba Elections

               

A total of 8,631,836 Cubans are summoned to the polls on Sunday to elect the 612 members of parliament, said the president of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Alina Balseiro.

Using the free, equal and secret suffrage, according to the Electoral Act 1992, those in the register of voters will also elect the 1269 delegates to 15 provincial assemblies of People's Power, in nearly 30,000 polling stations enabled in the country, Prensa Latina reported.  Balseiro told reporters that they have created the conditions to ensure a massive attendance for election, as is tradition in Cuba.  Over 225,000 election officials were appointed to these elections, about 150,000 of them will work at the polling stations directly. Those citizens received the necessary training to ensure the success of the elections, and the system was subjected to a dynamic test on Sunday, which allowed us to detect and correct problems, said the president of the CEN. The election for members of parliament and provincial deputies is the second part of the general elections 2012-2013, convened in Cuba last July by the State Council.  Critics howbeit, note that the number of candidates vying for seats in the legislature's next five-year-long term is identical to the number of open seats, leaving little suspense about the outcome. However, about two thirds of this year's candidates are running for the first time, raising hopes that the election will bring some change to the country. Also up for grabs on Sunday are 1,269 seats in 15 provincial assemblies. "It is a farce," former political prisoner Oscar Espinosa Chepe told the AFP news agency. Another prominent opposition figure, Elizardo Sanchez, called the election "a race with only one horse" - since the Communist Party is the only one running. Cuban authorities, however, hail the electoral system as a grass-roots democracy since all nominees are elected by municipal delegates and by citizen assemblies. Word for the Day: Be known for pleasing others, espcecially if you govern them...Ruling others has one advantage: you can do more good than anyone else - Baltasar Gracián