Britain’s Prince Andrew, Prince Harry, Prince William and a pregnant Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the Trooping the Colour ceremony

From Union Jack booties to “Born to Rule” sleepwear, the British royal family has joined retailers in offering baby products to mark the arrival of the royal heir.

Analysts estimate the baby fever could boost the economy by 240 million pounds ($380 million).

A baby sleepsuit modeled on a guardsman’s outfit is one of the gifts on sale at palace shops by the Royal Collection Trust, which uses all profits for the upkeep of the royal palaces.

Prince Charles, the grandfather-to-be, is selling handmade baby shoes through a shop on his country estate Highgrove, while the mother-to-be’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, have added a range of baby goods to their party goods business.

Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research (CRR), estimated that the arrival of the baby, due in July, could add more than 240 million pounds to the British economy.

“This is a good news story and there really is no downside. With the birth coming in July, people will have time to get involved, and that means additional spending,” Bamfield told Reuters after the release of the CRR’s report on Monday.

“There has been a lot of interest across the Atlantic as well, as the younger royals are very well thought of in the United States, so we are expecting good sales of souvenirs.”

The birth of the royal baby, who will be third in line to the throne after Prince Charles and Prince William, is the latest in a run of royal and sporting events.

Prince William married Kate Middleton in April 2011 and Queen Elizabeth marked her Diamond Jubilee in June last year. The London Olympics last summer added to the buzz.

Richard Cope, trends director at market researcher Mintel, expected the duke and duchess’s baby to have a positive impact on consumer spending, which only ticked up 0.1 percent between January-March this year.

“I think the biggest commercial opportunity is going to be with tourists,” Cope told Reuters, pointing to a 13 percent rise in tourists arrivals in April.

Bamfield forecast 4.8 million people would splash out 62 million pounds on alcohol to wet the future monarch’s head and spend 25 million pounds on food for baby parties.

He expected 156 million pounds to be spent on commemorative china and other collectables, toys, books, DVDs and media.

Bamfield said another knock-on effect of the birth would be sales of baby products as other new parents copied the duchess.

The “Kate-effect” is already well known as sales of anything the duchess wears or uses soars. A Dalmatian coat she wore last week to launch a new cruise ship sold out within an hour.

“One of the biggest factors will be the unintentional royal brand endorsement,” said Bamfield.

“The ‘Kate effect’ has already taken the fashion world by storm…and this trend will follow for the infant’s baby grows, rattles, first bike and so on.”

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The door testifies to the kind of visitors who tend to turn up here: it’s made from heavy steel. Yes, the police raid this house every so often. That’s because its residents are not just the stars of Taksim Square but also Turkey’s most prominent revolutionaries, period.

“Right now three of our members, including my wife, are in jail”, Cihan Keskek tells me as he shows me around the house here in the lower-class neighborhood of Ortaköy where he and his bandmates live in a commune. Yes, this is a Communist band. In fact, in their songs Grup Yorum propagate a Marxist revolution. “Protest isn’t enough”, says Keskek, who plays a traditional Turkish instrument similar to a guitar or banjo. “We need a revolution.”

Long before anybody thought of occupying Gezi Park, Grup Yorum protested against the “oppressive” Turkish government in its songs, often including writings by leaders like Che Guevara. In addition, the band and a core group of supporters – who also live and work here in this 20-member commune – produce a Communist magazine. On the ground floor they run a café, where guests can peruse radical literature and help themselves to mini-guitars, carved in wood by jailed band members.

But the musicians have paid dearly for their activism: since the band’s inception in 1985, members and supporters have been sent to jail over 400 times, according to their own calculations. Members report that during its regular visits to the commune, the police destroy the interior, particularly the group’s recording studio. Every time the group buys new equipment and builds a new door.

For a long time, Grup Yorum’s revolt was a lonely one. People were afraid to attend Grup Yorum’s concerts. Media didn’t dare to write about the band. But all of a sudden that has changed. Recently Grup Yorum played to some 55,000 fans in Istanbul. They play to rapturous audiences in Gezi. Reflects Kerkek: “Now people have passed their fear threshold.”

Outside the commune, two members document the revolution, speaking with local residents. They take me to a city park, the Sibel Yalcin Park (named after a female member killed by the police), which Group Yorum has taken from the city and now operates: no fear there either. The folk music group could celebrate its improbable PR victory over the government.

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Residents of the world’s tallest apartment building have been told they will have to climb more than 1,300 steps to their homes after the building’s elevators failed.

The residents all live at the prestigious Princess Towers in Dubai, but have been told that a problem with hosing has caused the block’s eight elevators to fail.

The 1,300 steps mean the equivalent of climbing a third of the height of Mount Everest each day to get home.

Residents of the penthouse suites, who paid more than $3 million for their homes, have been told that spare parts are being flown in from Finland but until they arrive, there is no choice but to climb.

A service elevator has been made available for “limited” trips to the 50th floor, but anyone wanting to get the rest of the way to the 97th floor will have to rely on leg power.

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President Barack Obama will seek the help of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria’s most powerful ally, to bring Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table and end a two-year civil war.

At their first private face-to-face meeting in a year Monday, Obama will try to find common ground with Putin on the sidelines of a G8 summit in Northern Ireland after angering the Kremlin by authorizing U.S. military support for the Syrian president’s opponents.

During talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London on the eve of the summit, Putin renewed his criticism of the West’s position in startling tones, describing Assad’s foes as cannibals.

“I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras,” Putin said at a joint news conference with Cameron.

“Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons?”

Cameron conceded London and Moscow remained far apart.

Russia does not buy the West’s assertion that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons and crossed a red line in doing so, saying U.S. military support for Syrian rebels would only escalate violence.

Washington said on Saturday it would keep F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles in Jordan at Amman’s request, prompting Moscow to bristle at the possibility they could be used to enforce a no-fly zone inside Syria.

Putin’s rhetoric has become increasingly anti-Western since he regained the presidency last year but he appeared upbeat in London, stressing several areas of cooperation between Russian and Britain.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized Putin for backing Assad and expressed pessimism about the chances of a deal on Syria at the summit.

“Mr Putin and his government are supporting the thugs of the Assad regime for their own reasons that I do not think are justifiable and Mr Putin knows my view on that,” Harper said.

“We are not, unless there is a big shift in position on his part, going to get a common position with him at the G8,” he told a joint news conference with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in Dublin on Sunday.

At the Lough Erne golf resort in Northern Ireland, Cameron will bring together leaders of the United States, Japan, Canada, Russia, Germany, France and Italy – representing just over half of the $71.7 trillion global economy.

Syria will inevitably dominate the Monday-Tuesday talks but persistent worries about the global economy will also be central to the discussions.

Market turmoil to focus minds

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders will likely discuss the role of central banks and monetary policy.

They are likely to say they are not content with progress so far in fixing their economies in the wake of the global financial crisis, according to a draft communiqué seen by Reuters.

Japan’s Abe will use the opportunity to explain his cocktail of fiscal and monetary stimulus known as ‘Abenomics’ to the leaders as investors try to absorb the implications of a signal by the U.S. Federal Reserve that it may start to slow its money-printing.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke will not attend. He and his colleagues hold a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Bond yields have climbed and share prices have sagged globally since Bernanke shocked investors on May 22 by saying the bank might ‘take a step down’ in the pace of bond purchases – a blow to a global economy still growing well below trend due to the after effects of the great financial crisis.

“Japan’s decisive moves to reflate its economy will support growth in the near term, but it will need to manage the twin challenge of providing near-term stimulus and achieving longer-term sustainability,” the draft communiqué said, although the version circulated by Britain and seen by Reuters was put together before the recent market turmoil.

The leaders of the European Union and United States are likely to announce the start of formal negotiations on a free trade deal that could be worth more than $100 billion a year to each economy.

EU and U.S. negotiators aim to finish their work by the end of next year.

Treasure Island tax

Cameron has made tackling tax avoidance — which campaigners say costs about $3 trillion a year — one of the key parts of the formal agenda at the summit.

He has turned up the pressure to clamp down on secretive money flows by pressing Britain’s overseas tax havens into a transparency deal and announcing new disclosure rules for British firms.

“It is important we are getting our house in order,” Cameron said on Saturday after representatives of overseas tax havens linked to Britain agreed to sign up to an international transparency protocol.

Aid campaigners said Britain’s action will count for little if the rest of the G8 does not follow suit.

G8 leaders will probably shy away from adopting a measure aimed at curbing tax avoidance by highlighting when companies channel profits into tax havens, and will include a watered-down alternative, according to the draft communiqué.

Tackling corporate tax avoidance has become a political goal internationally following public anger about revelations over the past year that companies like Apple and Google had used structures U.S. and European politicians said were contrived to minimize the amount of taxes paid.

But the draft summit text suggested there will be no agreement on a rule that would force companies to publish their profits, revenues and tax payments on a country-by-country basis.

Global tax evasion could be costing more than $3 trillion a year, according to researchers from Tax Justice Network while as much as $32 trillion could be hidden by individuals in tax havens.

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A 68-year-old British man got a cartoon head tattoo of his 28-year-old wife, according to a BBC report.

Bob Baker’s daughters bought the tattoo, which is meant to be his wife Kelly in a bikini and high heels pushing a lawnmower, as a Father’s Day gift.

“Seventy-five percent of people who have seen it say it’s wicked and come up and shake my hand,” Baker told BBC. He said it was his 12th tattoo; he already has the word “Kelly” tattooed on his neck.

The couple, who have been together for nine years, married in 2010.

He told the news agency that there may be more love-inspired tattoos in the works: “You wait – I am going to have flowerpots next going round the garden.”

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When I enter the cafe that serves as a makeshift command central for the revolutionaries of Taksim Square and Gezi Park, Esra Arslan is asleep on a sofa. In fact, the whole room is full of sleeping protesters who’ve done the night shift.

Arslan has been doing the nightshift as a TV producer. Yes, the Turkish revolutionaries have their own TV station. “We saw that the mainstream media was doing a poor job bringing news from here”, explains Arslan, a 20-something who has been in the camp since Day 2. “Facebook and Twitter weren’t enough either, because rumors spread so easily. We realized that we needed a TV channel that could present the facts.” On the day the protests erupted, a large Turkish TV channel opted instead to send a documentary about penguins.

Four days later, they had an internet TV channel, Capul TV, running. One of its symbols: a penguin. Six people aged 24-30 volunteer as producers, two as presenters. It’s a rudimentary set-up indeed: the team’s only professional equipment is the TV camera. When the police attacks, they can easily pack it up, along with their computer. “But a couple of days ago, when they threw gas bombs in here, we just put on gas masks and kept broadcasting”, Arslan reports.

The channel has, in fact, become the go-to source for professional broadcasters, too. On busy days it beams news from Gezi Park and Taksim Square around the clock; on other days only 15-16 hours. Even then, it’s much more than professional channels produce. “Everyone who wants to know what’s going on in the park is watching us” says Arslan. “We’ve interviewed lots of parliamentarians and celebrities. One day, the Mayor of Istanbul tweeted that there would be no attack on the park, and the very same moment the police came. We broadcast that, too.” Her producer colleague Kemal Okur, who keeps track of viewer statistics, tells me that to date over 700,000 unique visitors have watched the Gezi channel.

When I visit, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has issued a “final warning” to the protesters to vacate the park, while at the same time offering to put the future of the park to the voters in a referendum. “But there’s an ultimatum from the government every day”, notes Arslan. “Of course we worry about it, but this is a resistance for freedom.” Shortly thereafter, riot police cleared out the camp and protesters moved to occupy nearby streets. “We started broadcasting the clashes at 3am [on Sunday], Arslan tells me as a reach her. “And now we’ve moved to a different location and will resume broadcasting again.”

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Thousands of Iranians celebrated on the streets into the early hours today, counting on moderate president-elect Hassan Rohani to follow through on promises of better relations abroad and more freedom at home after routing hardliners at the polls.

A mid-ranking Shi’ite cleric, Rohani is an Islamic Republic insider who has held senior political and military posts since the 1979 revolution and maintained a good rapport throughout with theocratic Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s most powerful man who has the last word on all the big issues.

While no reformer himself, Rohani gained the backing of politically sidelined but still popular reformist leaders. His call for an end to the “era of extremism” won over many voters disgruntled over economic crises and crackdowns on free speech and dissidents that marked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency.

Rohani’s surprise win however is not expected to quickly resolve the stand-off with the West over Iran’s disputed nuclear ambitions or break its commitment to backing President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war.

But the new president will run the economy of the sprawling OPEC member state of 75 million people and exert influence when Khamenei decides on national security matters.

His victory goes some way to repairing the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, punctured four years ago when dozens were killed in protests after an election reformists said was rigged, and may help pragmatic voices muzzled since then to re-emerge.

Thousands of young Iranians took to the streets of the capital Tehran and other big cities as soon as the poll results were announced on Saturday, making sure their voices and expectations of the new president were clearly heard.

The president-elect, known in the West as Iran’s main nuclear negotiator in 2003-05, immediately sought to build bridges on Sunday, expressing approval of the street parties but also having talks with the conservative speaker of parliament.

“With their celebrations last night, the Iranian people showed they are hopeful about the future and God willing, morals and moderation will govern the country,” Rohani told state TV.

Hardliners whose power comes from their unquestioning loyalty to Khamenei both badly miscalculated the public mood and failed to set aside their own factional differences and field a single candidate, analysts said.

Both Khamenei and the powerful hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that controls large swathes of the oil-dependent economy said the election was a victory for all.

Whether Rohani succeeds in ushering in change to Iran, or whether the next four years yield the same stalemate that marked the 1997-2005 presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami, will hinge on his ability to balance the demands and expectations of the people with the interests and constraints of those who hold the pivotal instruments of power in the Islamic Republic.

ROHANI MAY HAVE ADVANTAGES OVER KHATAMI

Rohani’s reputation as a mediator and someone who has worked within the corridors of power should be an advantage that Khatami, who was director of the national library before he became president, never enjoyed.

“Rohani is the ultimate regime insider. In contrast to Khatami, who held no governmental position when he was catapulted into the presidency, Rohani has never been out of power or Khamenei’s good graces,” said Ali Vaez, Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“Also, Rohani is a centrist politician, with a unique bridge-building ability. He is unlikely to alienate competing power centers, who can stymie his reforms,” he said.

A big test will be whether Rohani pushes for the release from house arrest of Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, two reformist leaders held under house arrest since 2011. That demand was a constant chant of Rohani supporters at his campaign rallies and on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere overnight.

“This will in my view be the first real test of how sincere this election has been. Then we will know the caliber of Mr Rohani,” said Ali Ansari, professor at St Andrew’s University in Scotland.

“Much depends on the political will of the fractured elite and the willingness of Khamenei to pull back. There is some anxiety that the powers that be, having got their ‘popular election’, will now settle back into their comfort zones.”

Despite similarities between Khatami and Rohani’s upset election victories, political realities “are fundamentally different”, said Yasmin Alem, a U.S.-based Iran expert.

“The supreme leader is more powerful, the Revolutionary Guards are more influential, and the conservatives are more in control. However, Rohani is a crafty statesman and stands a better chance … of navigating Iran’s political minefield.”

Rohani has a tough task ahead of him dealing with Iran’s myriad domestic and foreign policy problems, she said.

“Iranian voters should demonstrate the same maturity and patience they did at the polls, if they want to avoid the disillusionment that followed Khatami’s presidency.”

Rohani himself called for patience soon after his win was announced on Saturday. “The country’s problems won’t be solved overnight and this needs to happen gradually and with consultation with experts,” he told the state news agency IRNA.

But Rohani, whose conciliatory style contrasts with the confrontational populism of Ahmadinejad, said there was a new chance “in the international arena for … those who truly respect democracy and cooperation and free negotiation”.

Post-election revelers were optimistic. “I am hopeful about the future, hopeful that we will have more social freedoms, more stability in Iran, better relations with other countries and hopefully a much better economy,” said Hoda, 26, from Tehran.

As well as chanting “Long live Rohani!” and wishing good riddance to the current president with “Ahmadi, bye bye!”, jubilant crowds did not shy from feting Mousavi, the reformist leader defeated in the election four years ago.

“Mousavi, Mousavi, congratulations on your victory!” the crowds shouted.

Pictures and videos of the celebrations showed more people wearing the green colors of Mousavi’s 2009 campaign than Rohani’s purple. Police stood by and even shared jokes with some people in the throng.

Others had an ironic take on the “death to dictator” chants of the huge 2009 protests at which security forces opened fire, shouting “thank you dictator” for allowing a fair vote now.

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Nelson Mandela continues to recover in hospital from a lung infection but remains in a serious condition, South African President Jacob Zuma said this morning

Mandela has been in a Pretoria hospital for a week, the fourth time the 94-year-old former president and anti-Apartheid leader has been admitted to hospital since December.

“We are grateful that he continues to get better,” Zuma said. “Over the last two days, although he remains serious, his doctors have stated that his improvement has been sustained.”

Zuma was addressing a gathering for Youth Day in eMadadeni in the KwaZulu-Natal province in remembrance of the 1976 Soweto youth uprisings against apartheid.

Mandela’s repeated bouts of illness have reinforced a creeping realization among South Africa’s 53 million people that they will one day have to say goodbye to their first black president.

Mandela, popularly known by his clan name “Madiba”, has a history of lung problems dating back to his time at the windswept Robben Island prison camp near Cape Town. He was released from prison in 1990 after 27 years behind bars and was president from 1994 to 1999.

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Police fired tear gas canisters into back streets around the square for several hours after the raid, a second witness said, to try to prevent crowds from regrouping.

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Turkish riot police stormed a central Istanbul park on Saturday firing tear gas and water cannon to evict hundreds of anti-government protesters, hours after an ultimatum from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

Lines of police backed by armored vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the center of the city as officers stormed the adjoining Gezi Park, where protesters had been camped in a ramshackle settlement of tents.

Erdogan had warned hours earlier that security forces would clear the square, the center of more than two weeks of fierce anti-government protests which spread to cities across the country, unless the demonstrators withdrew before a ruling party rally in Istanbul on Sunday.

“We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country’s security forces know how to evacuate it,” he told tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters at a rally in Ankara.

Panicked protesters fled into an upscale hotel at the back of the park, several of them vomiting, as clouds of tear gas and blasts from what witnesses said were percussion bombs – designed to create confusion rather than injure – engulfed the park.

Residents in surrounding neighborhoods took to their balconies or leaned out of windows banging pots and pans, their clatter rising above the wail of ambulance sirens, while car drivers sounded their horns in support of the protesters.

Several people were brought out of the park on stretchers to waiting ambulances, while families with young children fled into side streets from a main shopping street leading to the square.

A similar police crackdown on peaceful campaigners in Gezi Park two weeks ago provoked an unprecedented wave of protest against Erdogan, drawing in secularists, nationalists, professionals, trade unionists and students who took to the streets in protest at what they see as his autocratic style.

The unrest, in which police fired tear gas and water cannon at stone-throwing protesters night after night in cities including Istanbul and Ankara, left four people dead and about 5,000 injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association.

The protesters, who oppose government plans to build a replica Ottoman-era barracks on Gezi Park, had defied repeated calls to leave but had started to reduce their presence in the park after meetings with Erdogan and the local authorities.

“This is unbelievable. They had already taken out political banners and were reducing to a symbolic presence in the park,” Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Bosphorus University told Reuters from the edge of Gezi Park.

TAKEN BY SURPRISE

Erdogan told protesters on Thursday that he would put the building plans on hold until a court rules on them. It was a softer stance, after two weeks in which he called protesters “riff-raff” and said the plans would go ahead regardless.

But at the first of two rallies this weekend by his ruling AK Party, he reverted to a defiant tone, telling tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters on the outskirts of Ankara that he would crush his opponents at elections next year.

He called for unity among Turks and accused foreign forces, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), international media and market speculators of stoking unrest and trying to undermine the economy.

The police intervention so soon after Erdogan spoke took many by surprise on a busy Saturday night around Taksim, one of Istanbul’s main social hubs, not least after President Abdullah Gul, who has struck a more conciliatory tone than Erdogan, said earlier on Saturday that talks were progressing well.

“The fact that negotiation and dialogue channels are open is a sign of democratic maturity … I believe this process will have good results. From now on, everybody should return home,” Gul had said on his Twitter account.

What began as a campaign by environmentalists to save what they say is one of central Istanbul’s few remaining green spaces spiraled into the most serious show of defiance against Erdogan and his AK Party of his decade in power.

Erdogan has said the AK Party rallies in Ankara and Istanbul are meant to kick off campaigning for local elections next year and not related to the protests, but they are widely seen as a show of strength in the face of the demonstrations.

“I’ve come here for one reason: to support Tayyip, to support AKP. What is happening in Taksim is just shameful. It’s being carried out by marginal groups, you’ve seen the PKK (Kurdish) flags up there,” said Menderes Kan, 46.

Erdogan has long been Turkey’s most popular politician, his AK Party winning three successive election victories, each time with a larger share of the vote, but his critics complain of increasing authoritarianism.

“At the beginning I felt sympathy towards those in Gezi Park and I thought our prime minister’s tone was too harsh. But now the protests there have turned into something else,” said Sumeyye Erdogmus, a 22-year-old nurse.

“Nothing can justify behavior like cursing the prime minister’s mother and burning buses. This is anarchy, and today we are here to show that our prime minister is not alone.”

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Militants in a volatile region of western Pakistan bombed a bus carrying women students on Saturday and then seized part of the hospital where survivors were taken, in the first major security test for the new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

At least 22 people were killed in a day of violence that started with an apparent separatist attack that destroyed a summer retreat once used by the nation’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the hills of Baluchistan province.

A policeman lost his life in the attack on a popular symbol of Pakistan’s history, which was gutted by fire after several small bombs were detonated.

“Baluchistan is part of Pakistan and we will not leave our people alone in a time of tragedy,” Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid told reporters in a news conference.

The first attack was quickly followed by a bus bomb on a university campus in Baluchistan’s capital Quetta that killed at least 14 women students.

The injured were taken to the city’s Bolan Medical Complex, where an ambush by a suicide bomber and an ensuing firefight with security forces killed at least eight more people.

The government said the Quetta attacks were not connected with the earlier blasts at the hill retreat.

The violence brought an abrupt end to a period of relative calm after Pakistan’s first ever transition between elected civilian governments, which brought Sharif to office for the third time, and highlighted the deep fissures in the nation he must govern.

DIVIDED NATION

As well as the fragile security situation, Sharif has inherited a severe energy crisis and a weak economy. He must also manage a complex relationship with the United States, including nationwide anger at U.S. drone attacks.

At least 36 were injured in Saturday’s violence. Four militants including two suicide bombers were among the dead at the hospital, where security forces moved from room to room freeing trapped patients and doctors, the government said.

Four nurses were also reported dead.

By nightfall, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the hospital siege was over, with one suspect captured. Four members of the security forces were confirmed dead.

The new chief minister in Baluchistan, an ally of Sharif’s, last week vowed to work towards talks to end a long running war with separatist guerrillas in resource-rich Baluchistan.

In addition to the separatist movement, Quetta is home to much sectarian violence, much of it targeting the Hazara ethnic minority, who are Shi’ite Muslims in a largely Sunni country.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the bus and hospital attacks, or whether they were aimed at the Hazaras.

City police chief Mir Zubair Mehmood told Reuters that the students on the bus were from various ethnic groups, including Hazaras, targets of a series of bombings this year. Another police official said the hospital blast seemed to be aimed at government officials who had rushed to the scene.

HAZARAS TARGETED

Saturday’s attack was the biggest since bombings in the city at the start of the year killed almost 200 people, briefly drawing global attention to a growing campaign of victimization of the Hazaras by sectarian militants.

Their 500,000-strong community in Quetta has been subjected to a campaign of shootings and bombings by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), a militant group dedicated to attacking the Shi’ite minority.

The attack on Jinnah’s hill retreat in the town of Ziarat was claimed by the separatist Baluchistan Liberation Army, Baluchistan’s top policeman Mushtaq Sukhera said. Reuters was unable to contact the insurgents to verify that claim.

Jinnah stayed in the woodland Quaid Azam Residency as he tried to recover from a lung disease in 1948, a year after his successful campaign to separate Pakistan from India. He died in Karachi soon after. The building is a national heritage site.

Several men surrounded the house in the early hours of the morning before detonating several bombs, local police and an eyewitness said.

A policeman died and the ensuing blaze tore through the two-storey wooden-clad building, destroying historical relics.

Baluchistan is laden with copper and gold deposits that are largely unexploited. It also supplies much of the natural gas feeding Pakistan’s lifeline textile industry in eastern Punjab province, and is home to a deepwater port at Gwadar.

Chief Minister Abdul Malik last week called on security forces, who deny wrongdoing, to end a campaign of enforced disappearances to support his hopes of kindling dialogue.

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The election of a moderate Iranian president could help rein in hostility between Tehran and its Arab neighbors, but many Arabs doubt he can end a sectarian confrontation that has been inflamed by war in Syria.

Hassan Rohani, a Shi’ite cleric known for a conciliatory approach and backed by reformists, will have only limited say in policy determined by Iran’s supreme leader; but with the Syrian carnage fuelling rage among Sunni Arabs across the region, any gestures from Tehran may help contain it.

“We hope the new Iranian president will be a believer in a political solution in Syria,” said one ambassador at the Arab League in Cairo. “All that we read about Rohani might be grounds for hope – but there is a great difference between election campaigns and what is said once in office.”

For the United States and Western powers, at odds with Iran for decades and now rallying with arms behind rebels fighting Syria’s Iranian-backed president, fierce religious enmities in the oil-rich Middle East add to fears of wider instability.

In Saudi Arabia, whose U.S.-allied rulers lead opposition to what they see as Iran’s drive to spread its power and religion, well-informed analyst Jamal Khashoggi said: “I’m sure for the Saudi leadership this is the best outcome of the elections.”

He recalled that Iran’s last reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, who visited Riyadh while in office from 1997-2005, had mended ties – but at a time of less ferocious disputes. Unlike now, Khashoggi said, “Iran was not meddling heavily in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen … There were no Shi’ites killing Sunnis.”

In Syria, where mainly Sunni rebels are battling Iran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad and his Alawite establishment, who belong to an offshoot of Shi’ism, opposition activists saw little hope for change from Rohani:

“The election is cosmetic,” said Omar al-Hariri from Deraa, where the uprising began during the Arab Spring two years ago.

Muhammed al-Husseini, from the Sunni Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham in Raqaa, noted power in Iran rested with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The powers given to the Iranian president are weak these days,” he said. “They are fake powers.”

In Bahrain, whose Saudi-backed Sunni monarchy accuses Iran of fomenting protests among the Shi’ite majority on the island since 2011, Information Minister Samira Rajab told Reuters: “I think Rohani is one of a team. And anybody who comes from that team will continue the same policy … We have no more trust in the Iranian regime after what happened in Bahrain.”

EGYPTIAN CAUTION

In Egypt, by far the biggest Arab nation, new rulers from the Muslim Brotherhood had lately launched a rapprochement with Iran but have now joined a Sunni call for jihad in Syria after Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah sent in its fighters last month.

Traditionally more open than the Saudi clerical hierarchy to conciliation across the sectarian divide, the Brotherhood still hopes for a change of heart in Tehran: “We are looking forward to seeing how the winner is going to act,” said Murad Ali, a spokesman for the Islamist movement’s Freedom and Justice Party.

“Will there be any change to the policies from the Iranians, especially concerning the Syrian crisis? We are in general open to cooperation with Iran … However, we do have our concerns … related to … their interference in Syrian affairs.”

On the streets of Cairo, however, sectarian passions are running high, piling pressure on Egyptian and other Arab rulers.

Outside the Al-Azhar Mosque, built 1,000 years ago by the Shi’ite Fatimid caliphs who founded the city but now a major seat of Sunni learning, construction worker Mohamed Abdelsattar, 35, said: “All Egyptians hate Iran after what has happened in Syria. What’s happening there now is Shi’ites killing Sunnis.”

Limousine driver Abdelaziz Darwish, 57, had low expectations of any change in Tehran: “All Iranians are the same,” he said. “Shi’ites are more dangerous even than the Jews.”

Standing by his fresh-juice stand, Khaled Fathi, 49, twinned his anger at Iranian involvement in Syria with suspicion of the welcome that Islamist President Mohamed Mursi gave earlier this year to Iran’s hardline outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

“Iran makes problems for us all over the world,” he said. “Iran is helping Mursi, I’m sure of it.”

A group of Lebanese Sunni clerics, visiting Al-Azhar while attending the Cairo conference that has issued a call for holy war in Syria, voiced some hope for change from Rohani, however:

“Maybe this new president in Iran will be better,” said Sheikh Hassan Abdelrahman from the city of Tripoli, which has seen recent fighting between Lebanese Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Sheikh Malik al-Jdeideh, also from Tripoli, said: “We came to Egypt to tell Mohamed Mursi that we reject Iranian actions in Syria … But we are working for all religions to be at peace.”

Sectarian atrocities in Syria, and the open appearance of Iran’s Lebanese allies on the battlefield, has forged an unusual degree of unity among major Arab governments following the wave of revolt that shook the region and notably replaced U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt with the Islamists of the Brotherhood.

GULF TENSIONS

Iran’s new influence in Iraq – after the 2003 U.S. invasion replaced the Sunni Saddam Hussein with an elected, Shi’ite-led government – had already put Saudi Arabia on the defensive. And Tehran’s nuclear dispute with the West and Israel has alarmed oil-exporting neighbors, who fear a war, with all the upheaval it would bring.

One Arab League ambassador said Gulf states hoped Rohani, a former nuclear negotiator, might help to defuse that tension.

But a Gulf envoy at the League said Rohani would have little power and was unlikely, in any case, to differ in his views: “They all aim to export the Iranian revolution to neighboring states and interfere in the Gulf states and Syria and Lebanon.”

For Shi’ites who live in Sunni-ruled states, and often complain of being unfairly branded as agents of the Persian-speaking power, any reduction in tension would be welcome.

Khalil Ebrahim al-Marzooq of Bahrain’s opposition al-Wefaq party, which speaks for many Shi’ites, said the election might bring warmer ties across the Gulf that would help his community.

“When relations are better,” he said, “it gives the government no excuses to deprive the people of Bahrain of their rights.”

Jafar al-Shayab, a former elected official in the mainly Shi’ite Saudi district of Qatif, said: “If this sectarian war going on in the region can cool down or stabilize, that will help to improve the relations between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites here.”

Khalil al-Anani, a senior fellow at Washington’s Middle East Institute currently in Cairo, said Rohani’s ability to induce the Iranian leadership to take the heat out of its standoff with the Sunni Arab powers was unclear, but of vital importance.

“Mending Iran’s relations with Arabs would require Rohani to secure strong support from other influential power centers in Iran … which is unlikely in the short term,” he said.

“The question of whether Rohani can be another Khatami is important and crucial for both Iran and the Arabs.”

The post Iran elects new, moderate president appeared first on Metro.us.

Militants in western Pakistan bombed a bus carrying women university students on Saturday and then seized part of the hospital where survivors of the attack were taken, killing at least 12 people, officials said.

At least 19 were injured.

The gunmen in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province long plagued by sectarian violence, were holed up in the emergency ward of a hospital, engulfed in a firefight pitting militants against the security forces.

Television footage showed security forces surrounding the Bolan Medical Complex and a helicopter hovering overhead.

The attack in resource-rich Baluchistan was Pakistan’s most lethal since the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office last week.

The initial blast gutted the bus, killing 11 students, and another explosion went off soon after at the hospital, the city’s largest. Television footage showed people fleeing the building in panic.

A senior local government official was killed in the hospital attack, the state television network reported.

Earlier, city police chief Mir Zubair Mehmood told Reuters that the students on the bus were from various ethnic groups, including the Hazara minority that has been the target of a series of bombings this year.

Saturday’s attack was the biggest since bombings in the city at the start of the year killed almost 200 people, briefly drawing global attention to a growing campaign of victimization of the Hazaras by sectarian militants.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack, or whether it was aimed at the Hazaras.

The 500,000-strong community in Quetta has been subjected to an escalating campaign of shootings and bombings by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), a militant group dedicated to attacking Pakistan’s Shi’ite Muslim minority, which includes the Hazaras.

Earlier in the day, suspected separatists killed a policeman and gutted an historic summer retreat used by Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in a hill town in the province, days after a new government vowed to end a guerrilla war there.

Baluchistan, with large copper and gold deposits, is a vast province bordering Iran and Afghanistan. As well as sectarian violence, it has suffered a long-running armed independence movement, and what rights groups call a campaign of forced disappearances by security forces.

The post Pakistan militants blast bus, attack hospital; at least 12 dead appeared first on Metro.us.

Moderate cleric Hassan Rohani took a solid lead over conservative rivals on Saturday in preliminary vote counting in Iran’s presidential election in what could be the makings of a surprise victory over favored hardliners.

The outcome is unlikely to transform relations between Iran and the outside world, the Islamic Republic’s disputed policy on developing nuclear power or its support of Syria’s president in the civil war there – all sensitive security matters that are the domain of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But the president does wield important influence in decision-making in the sprawling Shi’ite Muslim nation and major OPEC state of 75 million and could bring a change from the confrontational style of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term.

Rohani’s wide early margin revealed a major reservoir of pro-reform sentiment whereby many voters seized a chance to repudiate the dominant hardline elite over Iran’s economic woes, international isolation and crackdowns on personal freedoms despite restrictions on candidate choice and campaigning.

If he wins, Rohani, a moderate who is a former chief nuclear negotiator known for his conciliatory approach, has signaled he will promote a foreign policy based on “constructive interaction with the world” and enact a “civil rights charter” at home.

In an apparent attempt to convey political continuity to both domestic opponents and Western adversaries, Khamenei said that whatever the result of Friday’s election, it would be a vote of confidence in the 34-year-old Islamic Republic.

“A vote for any of these candidates is a vote for the Islamic Republic and a vote of confidence in the system,” the hardline clerical leader’s official Twitter account said.

With some 23 million votes counted from the 50-million-strong electorate, Rohani had tallied 51.07 percent of all ballots cast, Iran’s interior minister said. That would be enough to avoid a second-round run-off on June 21.

Rohani’s nearest rival was conservative Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a long way behind with 16.3 percent. Other hardline candidates close to Khamenei, including current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, scored even lower.

British former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who dealt with Rohani during nuclear negotiations between 2003 and 2005, called him a “very experienced diplomat and politician”.

“This is a remarkable and welcome result so far and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be no jiggery-pokery with the final result,” Straw told Reuters, alluding to accusations of widespread rigging in the 2009 election.

“What this huge vote of confidence in Doctor Rohani appears to show is a hunger by the Iranian people to break away from the arid and self-defeating approach of the past and for more constructive relations with the West,” he said.

“On a personal level I found him warm and engaging. He is a strong Iranian patriot and he was tough, but fair to deal with and always on top of his brief.”

Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Iran “appears to be on the verge of shocking the world”.

“With Rohani leading the vote, the regime’s calculation now is whether a run-off campaign … is worth the risk. A second round would entail an additional week of the kind of exhilarated campaigning, replete with young Iranians dancing in the streets and an amplified chorus of demands for social and political reforms, and ultimately pose a greater risk to the system.”

Excitement was rippling through Rohani’s campaign headquarters with workers there preparing for victory, said a source close to the campaign. The Rohani campaign expected an announcement in the coming hours, the source said.

Electoral officials did not say from which districts the votes so far counted had come from. Late on Friday, authorities estimated turnout would top 70 percent – relatively high and likely to benefit Rohani.

Iran’s rial strengthened about 4 percent against the U.S. dollar on Saturday, web sites which track the currency said.

DECISIVE SPLIT

Rohani’s campaign was endorsed by centrist former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani after the latter, a veteran rival of Khamenei, was barred from running by a state vetting body.

“Iran has held the most democratic elections in the world and there are no uncertainties about it,” Rafsanjani was quoted by Fars news agency as saying on Saturday.

Rohani received another big lift when reformists led by ex-president Mohammad Khatami swung behind him after their own lackluster candidate Mohammad Reza Aref withdrew in his favor.

In contrast, several high-profile conservatives with close ties to the ruling clerical or Revolutionary Guards elite failed to unite behind a single candidate, suffering what appeared to be a decisive split in their support base as a result.

Voting was extended by several hours at polling stations across the country on Friday as millions turned out to cast their ballot in the first presidential race since the 2009 contest where allegations of fraud led to mass unrest.

Rohani came to prominence as Iran’s nuclear negotiator in talks with Britain, France and Germany between 2003 and 2005 that Tehran Iran agree to suspend uranium enrichment-related activities, easing Western pressure on Tehran.

He left the post when Ahmadinejad came to office in 2005. Enrichment work resumed and there has been virtually no progress in intermittent talks since then. The result has been a punishing expansion of international sanctions against Tehran, seriously damaging its heavily oil-dependent economy.

Rohani would be an important bridge between hardliners around Khamenei who oppose any accommodation with the West and reformers sidelined for the last four years who argue the Islamic Republic needs to be more pragmatic in its relations with the outside world and change at home in order to survive.

Security was tight during the election and campaigning subdued compared to the euphoric rallies that preceded the last presidential vote in 2009, when reformist backers thought they scented victory and the prospect of democratization.

Those hopes were dashed when rapid announcements awarded Ahmadinejad 63 percent of the vote, returning him to office and unleashing a tide of protests that lasted for months and led to dozens of killings and hundreds of arrests.

The post Moderate cleric takes lead in Iran presidential election appeared first on Metro.us.

The United States is considering imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, its first direct military intervention of the two-year-old civil war, Western diplomats said on Friday, after the White House said Syria had crossed a “red line” by using nerve gas.

After months of equivocating, President Barack Obama’s administration said on Thursday it would now arm rebels, having obtained proof the Syrian government used chemical weapons against fighters trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Two senior Western diplomats said Washington is mulling a no-fly zone close to Syria’s southern border with Jordan.

“Washington is considering a no-fly zone to help Assad’s opponents,” one diplomat said. He said it would be limited “time-wise and area-wise, possibly near the Jordanian border”, without giving details.

Imposing a no-fly zone would require the United States to destroy Syria’s air defenses, entering the two-year-old civil war with the sort of action that NATO used to help topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya two years ago.

The area near the Jordanian border contains some of the most densely-populated parts of Syria, including the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

Washington has moved Patriot surface-to-air missiles, war planes and more than 4,000 troops into Jordan in the past week, officially as part of an annual exercise but making clear that the forces deployed could stay on when the war games are over.

Syria’s civil war grew out of protests that swept across the Arab world in 2011, becoming by far the deadliest of those uprisings and the most difficult to resolve, with powers across the Middle East squaring off on sectarian lines.

Western countries have spent the past two years demanding Assad leave power but declining to take direct action like that taken in Libya, because of the far greater risk of engaging with a much stronger country that straddles sectarian divides at the heart of the Middle East and is backed by Iran and Russia.

Just months ago, Western countries believed Assad’s days were numbered. But momentum on the battlefield has turned in his favor, making the prospect of his swift removal or an end to the bloodshed appear remote without outside intervention.

Thousands of seasoned fighters from Lebanon’s pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia joined the war on Assad’s behalf in recent weeks and last week helped the Syrian government recapture Qusair, a strategic town. Assad’s government says its troops are now preparing for an assault on Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, mainly in rebel hands since last year.

Activists reported an intensified assault on parts of Aleppo and its countryside near the Turkish border overnight, sparking some of the most violent clashes in months.

The use of chemical weapons provides a straightforward reason for Washington to intervene. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said Washington now believed 100-150 people had been killed by poison gas.

“Our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,” he told reporters.

“The president … has made it clear that the use of chemical weapons or transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups is a red line,” he said. “He has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has.”

Syria considers the rebels terrorists. Its foreign ministry called the U.S. decision to arm the rebels a “flagrant double standard” in its dealings with terrorism.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said: “the United States affirmed once again its involvement in supporting the armed terrorist groups in Syria by announcing its intention to provide them with greater military aid”.

COLLISION COURSE WITH MOSCOW

The implicit threat to openly join the conflict puts Washington on a diplomatic collision course with Moscow, which has used its U.N. Security Council veto three times to block resolutions that might be used to threaten force against Assad.

U.S. officials say Obama will try to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to abandon support for Assad. Obama and Putin will meet at a G8 summit in Northern Ireland next week.

The Kremlin did not immediately respond directly to the new U.S. posture but a Kremlin-allied Russian lawmaker said the chemical weapons data was fabricated and that Washington would use it to cook up a justification for joining the war.

“Information about the use by Assad of chemical weapons has been fabricated in the same place as the lies about (Saddam) Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” said Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign policy committee in the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, in a statement on Twitter.

“Obama is taking the same path as George Bush.”

The arrival of thousands of seasoned, Iran-backed Shi’ite Hezbollah fighters to help Assad combat a revolt led by Syria’s Sunni majority has shifted momentum and raised the prospect of sectarian violence spreading across the Middle East.

The United Nations now estimates at least 93,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions driven from their homes.

Western powers have been reluctant in the past to arm the rebels, worried about the rising strength of Sunni Islamist insurgents among them who have pledged their loyalty to the global militant network al Qaeda.

The White House said Washington would now provide “direct military support” to the opposition. It did not publicly specify whether this would include “lethal aid”, which would mark a reversal of Obama’s previous resistance to arming the rebels. But a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the package would include weapons.

Syrian rebels already receive light arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They have asked for heavier weapons including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. European countries, in particular France, have argued that the solution is to provide more weapons for mainstream rebels to marginalize extremists.

U.S. and European officials are meeting the commander of a main rebel fighting force, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), on Friday in Turkey. FSA chief Salim Idriss is expected to plead urgently for more help.

Obama has been more cautious than Britain and France, which forced the European Union this month to lift an embargo that had blocked weapons for the rebels. French officials already said a week ago that they had firm proof Assad used nerve gas, while Washington continued to say it was unsure until Thursday.

REBELS DEMAND WEAPONS

Syrian rebel and political opposition leaders immediately called for sophisticated weaponry.

“We want anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons,” George Sabra, acting leader of the National Coalition political opposition bloc, told Al-Arabiya television. “We expect to see positive results and genuine military support.”

U.S. Senator John McCain, a hawk on Syria, said America needed to neutralize Assad’s air power: “They (rebels) have enough light weapons. They’ve got enough AK-47s. AK-47s don’t do very well against tanks,” McCain told CNN. “They need anti-tank weapons and they need anti-air weapons.”

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed what he said was a “clear U.S. statement”. “The international community has made clear that any use of chemical weapons is completely unacceptable and a clear breach of international law,” Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels.

Syria is not a signatory to the international treaty that bans chemical weapons but has said that it would never use them in an internal conflict. It has accused the rebels of using them, but Washington said it does not believe that the insurgents have access to them.

FIGHT FOR ALEPPO

Assad forces tried overnight to storm the rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city and commercial hub, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based, pro-opposition monitoring group.

The move sparked some of the fiercest battles in months. Activists also reported artillery and air strikes in the rebel-held countryside in the north of the province.

Syrian state media have been touting plans for “Northern Storm,” a looming campaign to recapture the rebel-held north.

Aleppo would be a far more difficult target than Qusair. Assad’s forces only hold a few routes and pockets of territory in the province, mostly in isolated Shi’ite villages.

Assad’s main advantage so far has been the ability to use air power to resupply troops and bomb rebel areas, along with its use of long-range missiles. But Western support or a no-fly zone would change the current balance of power.

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A cat by the name of Morris is running for mayor in the Veracruz state capital Xalapa, in Mexico.

The feline candidate was nominated by two students disgruntled by their city’s do-nothing human lawmakers, ahead of the election day July 7.

With his face on billboards and flyers across Xalapa, the black and white cat pledges to “rid the city of rats”, a local euphemism for corrupt politicians and police. ‘Candigato Morris’ has a Twitter account and a Facebook page, which has already amassed over 100,000 likes, more than any of the four human candidates in the running.

Apart from rooting out rodents, Morris vows to “sleep, s**t, pee and eat”, qualities that make for an “ideal profile for a mayoral candidate”, according to his website.

“Candidates here almost never fulfill their promises,” said Jair Cuevas, one of the students who nominated Morris. “Our candidate promises to sleep, eat, yawn and play in the dirt and that is what he will do if he wins the election.”

Experts say that local frustrations with politicians, who already rig elections by buying votes, allow for an animal vying for public office to gain such viral appeal. “Animal candidates are playful and symbolic expressions which actually show a rejection of politicians and their forms of campaigning,” Eduardo Bueno, professor of political science at Ibero-American University, told Metro. “People are mortified to participate in such elections, so Morris the cat is their claim to political independence.”

Despite his popularity, Morris the cat will not allowed on the ballot on election day as only registered candidates can take part, according to local electoral officials.

The post Vote Morris: Cat running for mayor in Mexico appeared first on Metro.us.

Around Taksim Square and Gezi Park, police officers are hanging out. One young cop in riot gear is taking a nap. Others are reading the sports news. Are they chilling out? Waiting for the next clash? Probably both. The tension over the twin square-and-park is on the verge of turning into a full-blown political revolt.

“This place belongs to the people now”, explains Ozlem Dalkiran, one of the protest organizers, as she takes me around the camp. Dalkiran, a veteran human rights activist here, is in her 40s, but virtually everyone else is in their 20s or even younger. The protesters here in Gezi range from Kurdish nationalists to anti-capitalist Muslims to football fans. In an unprecedented development in this fractious country, they’ve spent over two weeks occupying the famous park to prevent it being bulldozed and replaced by military barracks, as planned by the government. Result to date: three protesters and one police officer dead.

This week Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan met with protest leaders and offered a referendum over the park. “But we’re almost being killed here; how can they negotiate?” exclaims Dalkiran. “We have no idea how he chose the protest leaders he met with. They don’t represent us. The referendum is a big backoff for Erdogan, but for us it’s unacceptable. It’s like asking people if they want to live or die.”

In fact, the protesters have settled into a routine here in Gezi Park and have no intention of moving. They’re surrounding themselves with barricades (including one burnt-out police car), named after various heroes and staffed by volunteers. They have food stations, volunteer janitors, field hospitals, even a station in charge of gas masks for the frequent clashes with the police on Taksim Square.

And, sensing their strength, the protesters are now demanding not just the survival of the trees, but also more democracy. Erdogan’s rule is too heavy-handed, they declare; some fear he’s even trying to introduce sharia law. “People are fed up with the government interfering with their lifestyles”, says Dalkiran. “Erdogan has become like a dictator. Just yesterday he said, ‘Tayyip Erdogan won’t change.’ You can’t say that!” But on Thursday, Erdogan issued a “final warning” to the protesters, demanding that they vacate the park.

“The protest won’t end here”, predicts Sanar Yurdatapan, a famous singer-songwriter and veteran human rights activist, as we meet at a nearby café. “This is the first time people have realized that if we come together we’re stronger.” But will this be a Turkish Spring? Erdogan made a disastrous miscalculation when he allowed police to attack the protesters, and the four deaths will continue to haunt him. But not even the protesters believe that he’ll step down: they know that there’s no opposition leader who could replace him.

Football fans united

Istanbul has three top teams in football, and their fans don’t like each other. In fact, they hate each other. But here in Gezi Park, they behave like the best of friends. The fans unite at one of the camp’s many stands, helping other residents with daily chores. In fact, they serve as the camps attack dogs when the police approach. At the last clash, one protester tells me, the football fans got hold of a fork lift and used it to chase a police water cannon truck away.

Jamming and hacking

Like any 21st century protester, the Gezi Park residents are equipped with mobile phones. Members with engineering skills have tapped into the park’s street lights, thereby providing the residents with power to charge their phones and kitchens. They run their own TV and radio stations, too, and use the Zello smartphone app that turns phones into walkie-talkies. They complain, though, that police jam their communications. But they’re taking revenge: protest hackers have hacked into police databases and retrieved phone numbers. “So now we can call the police chiefs and harass them”, says one member.

The post Metro exclusive: Report from Taksim Square, Istanbul appeared first on Metro.us.

The death toll in Syria reached at least 93,000 at the end of April, but the true number from the violence now in its third year may be much higher, the United Nations human rights office said this morning.

An average of more than 5,000 people have been killed every month since July, while the Damascus region and Aleppo have recorded the highest tolls since November, it said in its latest study of documented deaths.

“This extremely high rate of killings, month after month, reflects the drastically deteriorating pattern of the conflict over the past year,” Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

The previous U.N. figure, issued in mid-May, was that 80,000 had been killed in the conflict, which began with peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011 and turned into an armed rebellion a few months later.

The latest analysis was based on data from eight sources, including the Syrian government and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Killings were only included if the name of the victim and date and location of death were known.

“There are also well-documented cases of individual children being tortured and executed, and entire families, including babies, being massacred – which, along with this devastatingly high death toll, is a terrible reminder of just how vicious this conflict has become,” Pillay said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Alistair Lyon)

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Don’t worry, parents. All that a kidnapper apparently needs to cart your child onto international turf is a plastic passport with a picture of a unicorn.

Emily Harris, a 9-year-old girl from Wales, was traveling on vacation with her parents for a week-long trip to Turkey when a customs agent accidentally mistook her for the pink unicorn, named Lily, pictured in a passport photo belonging to her handmade stuffed animal toy from Design-a-Bear.

“The passport doesn’t even look real; it’s got gold teddy bears on the front and was a completely different size from mine and my husband, Allen’s,” said the girl’s mother, Nicky.

Although customs agents are meant to verify personal identification details before letting travelers of any age pass their stations into any new country, much less the currently contentious Turkey, Mrs. Harris told the New York Daily News: “The man even asked Emily how old she was, and she told him 9, before he stamped it.”

The family only noticed the mistake afterward. They expected to be caught or detained, but were surprised to find that they’d successfully gotten away with the mistaken identity.

“And to make it worse,” Mrs. Harris contended, “the unicorn wasn’t even on holiday with us.”

Click for images of Emily Harris, her pink unicorn and her fake passport.

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After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.

Ship’s cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.

Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a remaining crew member has not been found.

Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him.

“I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it’s the end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it did not,” Okene said, parts of his skin peeling away after days soaking in the salt water.

“I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the skin off my tongue,” he said. Seawater got into his mouth but he had nothing to eat or drink throughout his ordeal.

At 4:50 a.m. on May 26, Okene says he was in the toilet when he realized the tugboat was beginning to turn over. As water rushed in and the Jascon-4 flipped, he forced open the metal door.

“As I was coming out of the toilet it was pitch black so we were trying to link our way out to the water tidal (exit hatch),” Okene told Reuters in his home town of Warri, a city in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta.

“Three guys were in front of me and suddenly water rushed in full force. I saw the first one, the second one, the third one just washed away. I knew these guys were dead.”

What he didn’t know was that he would spend the next two and a half days trapped under the sea praying he would be found.

Turning away from his only exit, Okene was swept along a narrow passageway by surging water into another toilet, this time adjoining a ship’s officers cabin, as the overturned boat crashed onto the ocean floor. To his amazement he was still breathing.

FISH FEASTED ON THE DEAD

Okene, wearing only his underpants, survived around a day in the four foot square toilet, holding onto the overturned washbasin to keep his head out of the water.

He built up the courage to open the door and swim into the officer’s bedroom and began pulling off the wall paneling to use as a tiny raft to lift himself out of the freezing water.

He sensed he was not alone in the darkness.

“I was very, very cold and it was black. I couldn’t see anything,” says Okene, staring into the middle distance.

“But I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear the sound. It was horror.”

What Okene didn’t know was a team of divers sent by Chevron and the ship’s owners, West African Ventures, were searching for crew members, assumed by now to be dead.

Then in the afternoon of May 28, Okene heard them.

“I heard a sound of a hammer hitting the vessel. Boom, boom, boom. I swam down and found a water dispenser. I pulled the water filter and I hammered the side of the vessel hoping someone would hear me. Then the diver must have heard a sound.”

Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of someone swimming along the passageway past the room.

“I went into the water and tapped him. I was waving my hands and he was shocked,” Okene said, his relief still visible.

He thought he was at the bottom of the sea, although the company says it was 30 meters below.

The diving team fitted Okene with an oxygen mask, diver’s suit and helmet and he reached the surface at 19:32, more than 60 hours after the ship sank, he says.

Okene says he spent another 60 hours in a decompression chamber where his body pressure was returned to normal. Had he just been exposed immediately to the outside air he would have died.

The cook describes his extraordinary survival story as a “miracle” but the memories of his time in the watery darkness still haunt him and he is not sure he will return to the sea.

“When I am at home sometimes it feels like the bed I am sleeping in is sinking. I think I’m still in the sea again. I jump up and I scream,” Okene said, shaking his head.

“I don’t know what stopped the water from filling that room. I was calling on God. He did it. It was a miracle.”

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As the car that was filming the scene slows down to see what was going on, the man in the wheelchair gestures them to go away, as if he was trying to say, “Chill out, we got this.”

The heroic hound is definitely this man’s best friend.

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South African President Jacob Zuma said on Wednesday he was happy with Nelson Mandela’s progress, following what he called a “difficult few days” for the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero who is being treated in hospital for a recurring lung infection.

Mandela, South Africa’s first black president who ruled from 1994 to 1999, was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on Saturday in a serious but stable condition, his fourth hospital stay since December.

“We fully understand and appreciate the global interest in this world icon,” Zuma said in a scheduled, budget-related speech to parliament.

“We urge South Africans and the international community to continue to keep President Mandela and the medical team in their thoughts and prayers.”

Mandela’s “serious” condition has reinforced a creeping realization among South Africa’s 53 million people that they will one day have to say goodbye to the father of the “Rainbow Nation” that he tried to forge from the ashes of apartheid.

Mandela has received visits from family members including his current and former wives, Graca Machel and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Zuma will visit him “as soon as his diary allows”, his spokesman told state radio earlier on Wednesday.

Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to his time on the wind-swept Robben Island prison camp near Cape Town.

Before his 1990 release he spent nearly three decades in prison for conspiring to overthrow the white-minority apartheid government. He was sentenced exactly 49 years ago.

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A Fitchburg man is facing aggravated assault and battery charges for allegedly beating his 15-year-old girlfriend while the couple attended at a doctor’s appointment.

The Sentinel and Enterprise reports that Andrew Sanchez, 28, accompanied his girlfriend, who is seven months’ pregnant, to an appointment at Community Health Connections.  According to court documents, she asked Sanchez to leave the room because he began to verbally abuse her, calling her fat, ugly and lazy. Two medical assistants say they then saw Sanchez smack his girlfriend across the face.

Sanchez was released and ordered to stay away from and have no contact with his girlfriend or her Fitchburg middle school.

Sanchez will return to court on June 30.

Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBOS

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Turkish riot police moved on Tuesday into the central Istanbul square at the heart of 10 days of anti-government protests, firing tear gas and water cannon at hundreds of protesters armed with rocks and fireworks.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan declared he would not yield to the protesters. In a further sign of the effect the crisis has had on financial markets, the central bank said it would intervene if needed to support the lira.

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  PHOTOS: Dramatic images from protests in Turkey

“They say the prime minister is rough. So what was going to happen here? Were we going to kneel down in front of these (people)?” Erdogan said after the action began.

“If you call this roughness, I’m sorry, but this Tayyip Erdogan won’t change.”

Police backed by armored vehicles moved soon after dawn into Taksim Square, site of the initial protest against government construction plans 10 days ago which sparked the worst unrest in decades.

Bulldozers cleared barricades, but by early evening hundreds of protesters remained on one side and black smoke from bonfires of rubbish and plastic mingled with tear gas. Demonstrators skirmished with police.

Tear gas drifted into the lobby of an upmarket hotel, overwhelming some guests who were moved to the basement.

What began as a protest at redevelopment plans for Gezi Park, a leafy corner of the square, has grown into an unprecedented challenge to Erdogan.

Victor in three consecutive elections, he says the protests are engineered by vandals, terrorist elements and unnamed foreign forces. His critics say his unyielding talk has made the crisis worse.

MARKET TURMOIL

“A comprehensive attack against Turkey has been carried out,” Erdogan told a parliamentary group meeting of the AK Party he founded in 2001 and led to power in 2002.

“The increase in interest rates, the fall in the stock markets, the deterioration in the investment environment, the intimidation of investors – the efforts to distort Turkey’s image have been put in place as a systematic project,” he said.

Thousands packed into Gezi Park, now a ramshackle settlement of tents at the edge of the square; among their number leftists, environmentalists, liberals, students and professionals who see the development plan as symptomatic of overbearing government.

Despite the street protests against Erdogan, he remains unrivalled as a leader in his AK party, in parliament and on the streets. Many protesters call for his resignation, but others say they just want to moderate his exercise of power.

One organizing group called for a mass protest on the square, where stalemate seemed to prevail. Police were expected to block any attempt to move into the area in the night.

The unrest has knocked investor confidence in a country that has boomed under Erdogan. The lira currency, already suffering from wider market turmoil, fell to its weakest level against its dollar/euro basket since October 2011.

The cost of insuring Turkish debt against default rose to its highest in ten months, although it remained far from crisis levels.

Western allies have expressed concern about the troubles in a key NATO ally bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran. Washington has held up Erdogan’s Turkey as an example of an Islamic democracy that could be emulated elsewhere in the Middle East.

The police move came a day after Erdogan agreed to meet protest leaders, whose peaceful demonstration two weeks ago spiraled into anti-government protests in cities across the country after police crushed it using tear gas and water cannon.

“I invite all demonstrators, all protesters, to see the big picture and the game that is being played,” Erdogan said. “The ones who are sincere should withdraw … and I expect this from them as their prime minister.”

Police removed huge banners hung by protesters from a building overlooking Taksim but the local governor said they had no intention of breaking up a protest on Gezi Park itself. Riot police moved into the park briefly, then withdrew.

Hundreds of protesters, many wearing facemasks and hard hats, gathered on steps leading from the square to the park.

“Our aim is to remove the signs and pictures on the Ataturk statue and the Ataturk Cultural Centre. We have no other aim,” Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu wrote on Twitter.

POLICE APPEAL

Police hung a single Turkish flag and picture of the founder of the Turkish secular state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, from the building. Protesters accuse Erdogan of authoritarian rule and some suspect him of ambitions to replace the secular republic with an Islamic order – something Erdogan denies.

“This movement won’t end here. We’ve started something much bigger than this park … After this, I don’t think people will go back to being afraid of this government or any government,” said student Seyyit Cikmen, 19, as the crowd chanted “Every place is Taksim, every place resistance.”

Police appealed to the protesters not to throw rocks, calling from loudspeakers, “Dear Gezi friends. We are unhappy with this situation. We don’t want to intervene. We don’t want to harm you. Please withdraw.”

Turkey’s Medical Association said that as of late Monday, 4,947 people had sought treatment in hospitals and voluntary infirmaries for injuries, ranging from cuts and burns to breathing difficulties from tear gas inhalation, since the unrest began more than ten days ago. Three people have died.

Erdogan has repeatedly dismissed the protesters as “riff-raff”. But Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said on Monday leaders of the Gezi Park Platform group had asked to meet him and Erdogan had agreed.

A meeting was expected on Wednesday.

Erdogan has made many democratic reforms, taming a military that toppled four governments in four decades, starting entry talks with the European Union, reining in rights abuses by police and forging peace talks with Kurdish rebels to end a three-decades-old war that has cost 40,000 lives.

His AK Party has taken Turkey from a crisis-prone economy to Europe’s fastest growing over the past decade, and has won three successive elections, each time with a higher share of the vote.

But the protests, embracing a wide range of people from nationalists and leftists to secular activists and students, have shaken Turkey’s reputation for stability.

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Russia would consider granting asylum to the American who has exposed top-secret U.S. surveillance programs, if he were to ask for it, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said on Tuesday.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stopped short of saying Moscow would accept Edward Snowden, but pro-Kremlin lawmakers spoke out in favor of the idea, tapping into a lingering Cold War rivalry with the United States and a vein of anti-American sentiment Putin has often encouraged.

“Promising Snowden asylum, Moscow takes upon itself the defense of people persecuted for political reasons,” Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the international affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, said on Twitter.

“There will be hysteria in the United States. They recognize this as their right alone,” he said.

Putin and other Russian officials have often accused the United States of hypocrisy, saying it tries to impose standards of human rights, freedom and democracy on other nations while falling far short of them itself.

Snowden, who provided the information for reports that revealed broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data by the U.S. government, fled to Hong Kong and has said he hopes that Iceland might grant him asylum.

He is not known to have mentioned the possibility of asylum in Russia, but Peskov was quoted in Russian daily Kommersant as saying Moscow was open to such an approach.

Asked by Reuters whether Russia would be inclined to grant an asylum request, the spokesman said: “It is impossible (to say) now. No one has applied yet. If he says: I request (political asylum), then we will consider it.”

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Chinese people riding motorcycles make their way on a smoggy day in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province.

China led a rise in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to a record high in 2012, casting doubt over the chances of limiting global warming to what scientists regard as an acceptable level.

Falls in CO2 emissions by the United States and Europe were offset by China, lifting worldwide emissions by 1.4 percent to 31.6 billion tonnes, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

Scientists have said that the rise in global average temperature needs to be limited to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century to prevent climate effects such as crop failure and melting glaciers, but that would require emissions to be kept to about 44 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2020.

The IEA said that the world is on a path to an average temperature rise of between 3.6 and 5.3 degrees Celsius.

China’s CO2 emissions rose by 300 million tonnes last year, but the 3.8 percent gain was one of the lowest it has achieved in a decade, reflecting the nation’s efforts to adopt renewable sources and improve energy efficiency.

Japan’s emissions, meanwhile, rose by 70 million tonnes, or 5.8 percent, as efforts to improve energy efficiency failed to offset increasing use of fossil fuels after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, the IEA said.

In the United States, a switch from coal to gas in power generation helped to reduce emissions by 200 million tonnes, or 3.8 percent, bringing them back to the level of the mid-1990s.

Even though the use of coal increased in some European countries because of low prices, emissions in Europe declined by 50 million tonnes, or 1.4 percent, because of the economic slowdown, growth in renewables and emissions caps on industrial and power companies.

FOUR-POINT PLAN

IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told Reuters that he does not expect any EU country to be able to produce substantial amounts of shale gas, as the United States has done, before 2020.

“After 2020, if there are increases in shale use in EU countries such as Britain, Poland and Germany, and it replaced coal like in the U.S., there would be a greater reduction in emissions,” he said.

The IEA urged governments to adopt quickly four policies that would ensure climate goals could be reached without harming economic growth. They are: improving energy efficiency in buildings, industry and transport; limiting the construction and use of inefficient power plants; halving methane emissions; and partially phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.

The agency said that the coal industry in particular needs to take the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology more seriously to ensure cleaner use of the fossil fuel.

CCS buries and traps CO2 underground but it is not yet a commercially viable proposition.

“Realistically, we need to see CCS penetrate within the next 10 years – certainly no later than 2025 – or the fossil fuel industry will be caught unprepared,” Birol said.

International negotiators are in Bonn, Germany, until Friday for United Nations talks aimed getting a new global climate treaty signed by 2015 and in force by 2020.

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said that the IEA report comes at a crucial time for the talks.

“Once again we are reminded that the gap can be closed this decade, using proven technologies and known policies, and without harming economic growth in any region,” she said.

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Edward Snowden’s decision to flee to Hong Kong as he prepared to expose the U.S. government’s secret surveillance programs may not save him from prosecution due to an extradition treaty in force since 1998.

A 29-year-old former CIA employee, Snowden has identified himself as the person who gave the Guardian and the Washington Post classified documents about how the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) obtained data from U.S. telecom and Internet companies.

While preparing his leaks, Snowden left Hawaii for Hong Kong on May 20 so he would be in a place that might be able to resist U.S. prosecution attempts, he told the Guardian.

“Mainland China does have significant restrictions on free speech but the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting in the streets, making their views known,” Snowden, a U.S. citizen, said in a video interview posted on the Guardian’s website.

The NSA has requested a criminal probe into the leaks and, on Sunday, the U.S. Justice Department said it was in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.

The United States and Hong Kong signed their extradition treaty in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China. It allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that may also involve the Chinese government.

The treaty went into force in 1998 and provides that Hong Kong authorities can hold Snowden for 60 days, following a U.S. request that includes probable cause, while Washington prepares a formal extradition request. Some lawyers with expertise in extraditions said it would be a challenge for Snowden to circumvent the treaty if the U.S. government decides to prosecute him.

“They’re not going to put at risk their relationship with the U.S. over Mr. Snowden, and very few people have found that they have the clout to persuade another country to go out of their way for them,” said Robert Anello, a New York lawyer who has handled extradition cases.

However, under Hong Kong’s Fugitives Offenders Ordinance, Beijing can issue an “instruction” to the city’s leader to take or not take action on extraditions where the interests of China “in matters of defense or foreign affairs would be significantly affected.”

Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule amid constitutional guarantees for a high degree of autonomy. China, however, has responsibility over defense and foreign affairs and has exerted considerable behind-the-scenes influence over the financial hub’s political, financial, legal and academic spheres.

“We’ve never seen the Chinese government interfere in these sorts of decisions before,” said Patricia Ho, a lawyer with Daly & Associates in Hong Kong, who has dealt extensively with refugees and asylum claims in the city.

The U.S. consulate in Hong Kong wouldn’t comment when asked if an extradition claim would be made for Snowden. Nor would it confirm if he was still in the city. Hong Kong’s Security Bureau and Justice Department also gave no immediate comment.

PAST CASES

In March, a former equities research analyst, Trent Martin, was extradited from Hong Kong to New York to face charges of insider trading. He had been arrested in Hong Kong in December and has pleaded not guilty.

Other suspects were extradited for smuggling charges, suspicion of violating controls on military exports, investment fraud charges and the alleged sale of illegal prescription drugs, according to U.S. prosecutor statements at the time.

But Hong Kong has not agreed to every U.S. request for a prisoner transfer. In 2008, Hong Kong released without explanation an Iranian operative whom Washington had accused of trying to obtain embargoed airplane parts. Yousef Boushvash was in custody with a criminal complaint on file in New York, so his release angered U.S. officials.

Douglas McNabb, a Houston lawyer who specializes in extradition, said he was surprised to hear that Snowden had chosen Hong Kong as a safe haven given the existing treaty.

“Probable cause won’t be hard,” McNabb said. “This guy came out and said, ‘I did it.’ His best defense would probably be that this is a political case instead of a criminal one.” The treaty prohibits extradition for political cases.

Another defense for Snowden, lawyers said, would be to argue a lack of “dual-criminality” – for a person to be extradited, the alleged act must be a crime in both countries. While that will be for a Hong Kong court to decide, it might be a long shot, Anello said. “My guess is they will be able to find a law in Hong Kong that is very similar” to the U.S. Espionage Act, he said.

It was not immediately clear whether Snowden had a lawyer.

Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department lawyer who represents whistleblowers, said she expected prosecutors would “try to indict him as soon as possible” with “voluminous” Espionage Act charges followed by Interpol warrants for his arrest. But she said Snowden fit the profile and legal definition of a whistleblower and should be entitled to protection under a federal law passed to protect people who reveal waste and abuse.

“He said very clearly in statements that he’s given that he was doing this to serve a public purpose,” Radack said.

Asked if he had a plan in place, Snowden told the Guardian: “The only thing I can do is sit here and hope the Hong Kong government does not deport me … My predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values. The nation that most encompasses this is Iceland. They stood up for people over Internet freedom. I have no idea what my future is going to be.”

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United States could make a decision as early as this week on whether to arm Syrian rebels, U.S. officials said on Monday, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put off a Middle East trip to attend meetings on the subject.

However, the U.S. government has debated for months whether to provide weaponry to the rebels in their civil war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and has so far decided against.

One U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity stressed that while a decision on whether to start arming the rebels is possible as soon as this week, deliberations on the issue could easily take longer.

Kerry put off a planned trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories to attend the White House meetings, an Obama administration source said.

What has changed in recent weeks is the tilting of the battlefield against the rebels as Lebanese Hezbollah has entered the fray on the side of Assad’s forces, helping them to retake the strategic town of Qusair.

That shift has made it less likely that a U.S. and Russian planned peace conference to bring the rebels and the government to the table would succeed in U.S. President Barack Obama’s aim of a negotiated political transition to remove Assad from power.

With Assad’s forces, backed by Hezbollah and Iran, gaining the upper hand, he has little incentive to give up power.

The United States and other governments are also weighing evidence that Assad’s forces may have used chemical weapons, something Obama has said would cross a “red line.”

CONSENSUS ELUSIVE

A consensus remains elusive, with U.S. policymakers still wrestling with concerns that any American weapons could fall into the wrong hands. Also, growing controversy at home over the government’s sweeping surveillance programs are expected to occupy much of Obama and his national security team’s time.

The renewed focus on Syria comes two years into the uprising against Assad that has seen at least 80,000 people killed and has sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into Turkey and Jordan and displaced millions within Syria.

Fredric Hof, an analyst at the Atlantic Council think tank, said the Obama administration might decide to take charge of the distribution of weapons to the rebels but not necessarily to provide U.S. arms.

“If the president is going to make that decision this week … I suspect it would be a decision for the United States to take charge of the process by which carefully vetted units of the Free Syrian Army get what they need both in terms of lethal and in terms of non-lethal (aid) and that General Salim Idriss of the Supreme Military Council gets full credit and indeed things would be passed through him,” Hof, a retired official who worked on Syria policy in the Obama administration.

If the United States were to channel arms through Idriss, who leads the military wing of the main civilian opposition group, the former Syrian military officer could gain credibility from other fighters and perhaps gain greater control over the notoriously fractious anti-Assad fighters.

Obama this year shifted policy to take the step of giving U.S. medical kits and military rations to the rebels. Arms, however, have been left to Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar to provide to the rebel fighters.

“What’s been needed here is American leadership and management of a process which, if left in the hands of local actors, simply results in the accumulation of clients and a very uneven supply system in terms of effectiveness,” Hof added.

By centralizing the delivery of arms – whatever their origin – it might become easier to get the fractious rebels to work under a single command authority rather than as multiple militias with allegiances to various external powers.

A possible move by the United States to arm the rebels who are fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces, was first reported by The Associated Press late on Sunday.

“No new announcements at this time.” said the White Spokesperson.

Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said the Obama administration was continually looking at ways to strengthen the opposition but had nothing new to announce.

“At the president’s direction, his national security team continues to consider all possible options that would accomplish our objectives of helping the Syrian opposition serve the essential needs of the Syrian people and hastening a political transition to a post-Assad Syria,” Meehan said.

“We have prepared a wide range of options for the president’s consideration, and internal meetings to discuss the situation in Syria are routine,” she added. “The United States will continue to look for ways to strengthen the capabilities of the Syrian opposition, though we have no new announcements at this time.”

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Brazil have much to prove as hosts as the countdown to the 2014 FIFA World Cup begins this Saturday with the Confederations Cup, a prelude tournament one year from the main event.

As doubts persist over Brazil’s preparedness, the facilities and organization will be under scrutiny. But most critically for the world’s grandest and most successful football nation, the team must deliver results.

The ‘Samba Boys’ would normally be heavy favorites on home turf, but a run of just two wins in six games – following indifferent results at major tournaments – has seen their FIFA ranking drop to a record low of 22. Recent matches have been accompanied by boos from supporters, and legend Pelé recently attacked the team for having “no structure, no harmony”, and branded star forward Neymar an “ordinary player”.

Although stakes are lower than at major tournaments, Brazil face testing opposition in the winners of the six confederation championships plus Italy (Euro 2012 runners-up). Spain are the biggest threat coming off a historic three-tournament winning streak and Barcelona midfield masters Xavi and Andres Iniesta remain the gold standard.

Italy, winners of the 2006 World Cup, also arrive in good form, including a recent draw with Brazil. Latin American contenders Uruguay and Mexico have dangerous forwards despite inconsistent form, while Nigeria, Japan and debutants Tahiti will hope to spring a surprise on the grand stage.

The hosts will at least be spared a clash with Spain until the knockout rounds, and their opening match with Japan offers the opportunity of a solid start. But with time running out, Brazil’s margin for error is disappearing and any false steps could turn nerves into a national crisis. Playtime is over – now it’s all business.

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The NSA leaker who revealed top secret U.S. surveillance programs says he hopes to find shelter in Iceland, but he may be disappointed by the reception from a new government seen as less keen than predecessors to attract exiles and Internet renegades.

The country of 320,000 people has served as the home base for the fundraising efforts of anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and earlier earned a reputation as a safe haven by taking in American fugitive former chess champion Bobby Fischer in 2005.

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency now holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong after divulging NSA secrets, said he hoped to go to a country which encompassed his values of Internet freedom, naming Iceland.

But the government of newly-elected conservative Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, while still untested, is widely seen as closer to Washington than past administrations and less keen to foster the island country’s cyber-haven image.

Snowden has yet to make a formal application for asylum and would have to go to Iceland to make the request, said Kristin Volundarsdottir, head of Iceland’s Directorate of Immigration. Gunnlaugsson’s government did not otherwise comment on the case.

“I would be very surprised if they (the government) would be eager to engage in any international disputes with the U.S. And it is pretty difficult to be granted asylum here,” said Stefania Oskarsdottir, lecturer in political science at the University of Iceland.

“I think what this guy is saying is based on something he is imagining or hoping for rather than actual facts.”

As a U.S. citizen, Snowden would not need a visa to enter Iceland and could immediately apply for asylum. He would be free to live in Iceland while immigration authorities decide his case, which could take more than a year, according to Helga Vala Helgadottir, a lawyer specializing in asylum cases.

“The government is perceived as being less welcoming to asylum seekers,” said Helgadottir. While the decision rests with immigration authorities, Snowden could appeal to the interior ministry if his application were rejected.

Iceland has an extradition treaty with the United States, but it is unclear whether it would cover any crimes that Snowden might be charged with.

An Icelandic foundation championing free speech has offered to help him.

“We have a lawyer, we have everything set up,” said Smari McCarthy, head of the International Modern Media Institute and a member of the Pirate Party, a movement that promotes Internet freedom and holds three seats in Iceland’s 63-seat parliament.

REFUGE FOR CHESS CHAMPION

Were Snowden to reach Iceland, his arrival could put public pressure on the government by voters proud of their image of supporting media freedoms and also angry about the secrecy that surrounded the collapse of their banks in 2008.

“This is coming at a very interesting point for us, because obviously in the wake of our financial collapse there is a very big emphasis on a pro-truth society here,” said Katrin Oddsdottir, lawyer at law firm Rettur in Iceland, which specializes in human rights issues.

In 2010, with a center-left government in power in Iceland, WikiLeaks registered a company called Sunshine Press Productions there for its fundraising.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crimes, visited Iceland several times in the run-up to some of the website’s major releases.

Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir helped Assange put together the “Collateral Murder” video package, which included footage of a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians in which two Reuters journalists were killed.

Jonsdottir has campaigned to make a free speech and Internet safe-haven status for Iceland enshrined in law.

Wikileaks won a ruling this year in Iceland’s Supreme Court against MasterCard’s local partner. The court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the payment card firm had illegally ended its contract with the website.

In the Fischer case, the former child chess prodigy was wanted by the United States for evading taxes and breaking sanctions by playing a match in Yugoslavia in 1992. After years living abroad he was detained in Japan for nine months, until Iceland offered him asylum and citizenship in 2005. He spent his last years in Iceland before dying in 2008.

It was a conservative coalition of the same parties now in power in Iceland that pushed through the highly unusual step of granting Fischer citizenship.

“So the most interesting precedent that we have is actually a precedent which dates from a time when the same parties were) in power as are now,” said Oddsdottir.

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