Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Six In The Morning Wednesday March 18

Netanyahu wins elections

Prime Minister's right-wing Likud party wins surprise victory, sweeping past rival Zionist Union, Israeli media reports.

18 Mar 2015 08:28 GMT

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has won a clear victory in Israel's Parliamentary elections, Israeli media reported, after 99 percent of the ballot boxes were counted.

Netanyahu's Likud party captured at least 29 seats in Parliament, sweeping past the rival Zionist Union alliance, which won 24 seats, according to Yediot Ahronotnewspaper on Wednesday.

Reuters news agency reported that Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog has called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his election victory.

On Tuesday night, Netanyahu had already claimed victory, making it all but certain that he would form a new government and serve a fourth term.

Food concerns mount in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam

Aid agencies say some crops have been wiped out and fishing boats destroyed by the category five storm

Reuters

International aid agencies ramped up appeals for cyclone-hit Vanuatu on Wednesday, warning that the powerful storm which affected more than two-thirds of the south Pacific island nation had wiped out crops and destroyed fishing fleets, raising the risk of hunger and disease.

Residents of the southern island of Tanna said food and basic supplies were running low while relief workers were still battling to reach many islands pummelled by cyclone Pam’s gusts of more than 300km/h (185 miles per hour) on Friday and Saturday.

The United Nations said the official death toll was 11, but many officials anticipate that number will rise once they are able to more thoroughly inspect the outer islands of the scattered archipelago.

Saudi woman sentenced to 70 lashes for allegedly insulting man on WhatsApp

In a separate case, a judge allowed a man to divorce his wife after she told him she prayed 'to be patient enough to put up' with him on the messaging service

The 32-year-old, who has not been named, admitted to insulting the man but also refuted the verdict, according to reports in GulfNews.com and other local media.

The nature of their argument was unclear but she was found guilty of tarnishing the reputation of the complainant through the application, reported the Okaz newspaper who also said she was fined around £3,600 for the offense.

In a separate case, another Saudi judge allowed a man to divorce his wife after she told him that she prayed “to be patient enough to put up” with him in a WhatsApp message, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported.

Prosecutors arrest seven over Srebrenica massacre

Men are the first to be detained for slaughter of over 1,000 Muslims in warehouse in 1995

Prosecutors have made Serbia’s first arrests of people suspected of the Srebrenica massacre killings.

Serbian police arrested seven men accused of taking part in the slaughter of more than 1,000 Muslims at a warehouse on the outskirts of Srebrenica, a joint team of Serbian and Bosnian prosecutors said.

Altogether, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed in the eastern Bosnian enclave by the Serbs in 1995 - the only atrocity in Europe to be labelled genocide by theUnited Nations since the Second World War.

Serbia in the past has put on trial men who took a group of prisoners away from Srebrenica to be killed, and in 2011 it arrested Ratko Mladic - the warlord who masterminded the slaughter - and sent him to an international criminal court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Botched Philippines counter-terror raid assisted by US: investigators

March 18, 2015 - 3:25PM

Craig Whitlock

Washington: US counter-terrorism personnel played a hidden but key role in a bungled commando operation in the Philippines that resulted in dozens of deaths and a political scandal, according to a government investigation.

At least six Americans were present at a Philippine command post during the ill-fated January raid and supplied Philippines forces with surveillance data collected by US aircraft, the investigation, released on Tuesday in Manila, found. One of the Americans went so far as to order a Philippines army general to call in artillery fire, though the general angrily refused, investigators found.

The investigation by the Philippines senate contradicts past statements from US officials that Americans played no role in the operation except to help evacuate wounded Philippines police officers from a prolonged gun battle with Islamist rebels on the island of Mindanao, in the lawless region of the southern Philippines. The raid targeted two terrorist suspects with multi-million dollar US bounties on their heads but ended in a deadly ambush, with 44 police officers and four civilians dead.

South Africa tests its forgiveness of apartheid-era killers

South Africans are grappling with justice for notorious figures like Dr. Wouter Basson and Eugene de Kock, raising renewed questions about the limitations of forgiveness.

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA — Joyce Ledwaba's son Samuel was 17 years old when he disappeared from their Pretoria home in 1986. Although his body would never be recovered, he is believed to have been tranquilized bySouth African security agents, and then burned to death.

Nearly three decades on, Ms. Ledwaba is still waiting for the man she believes is responsible to be punished. He is Dr. Wouter Basson, who ran a top-secret biological warfare program known as Project Coast, tasked with developing chemical and biological weapons for the then-apartheid government to covertly eliminate its enemies in the 1980s.

Nicknamed Dr. Death, Mr. Basson was never convicted of a single criminal offense. But over the last seven years he has been on trial before the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) to determine whether he should be disbarred from practicing medicine for his dark past. Found guilty last year, he has yet to be sentenced.

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