Irandaily | No. 4301 | World

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Afghanistan Bomb Blast Leaves 8 Dead

A remote-controlled bomb struck a bus just travelling northwest of the Afghan capital on Tuesday morning, killing at least nine passengers, police said.
The militant who set off the device was spotted running away from the scene and was captured by local villagers.
The bomb was placed under a bridge and was detonated when the bus drove over the span, said Mohammad Zahir, the criminal director for Kabul police. Broken glass and abandoned shoes of victims littered the road near the bus, which was flipped onto its side at the site of the explosion in Paghman district of Kabul province.
At least three other people were wounded in the blast, which went off at around 7 a.m. as Afghans were making their way to work.
“The person who pushed the button on the remote-controlled bomb was captured by villagers who saw him running,” said Abdul Razaq, an Afghan police official in the Kabul area.
Initial reports said the bus was ferrying government employees to an Afghan ministry, but those reports could not be confirmed. Police speculated that the bomber might have tried to target a bus full of government workers but blew up a civilian bus by mistake.
Roadside bombs are one of the Taliban insurgency’s favorite weapons to target Afghan government forces and foreign troops, and they are a leading killer of ordinary Afghans.
Last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the 10-year-old Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents stepped up attacks, according to the United Nations.
Also Tuesday, a French soldier was killed and another wounded on Tuesday in a firefight during a joint operation with the Afghan army in Kapisa province, the French presidency and prime minister’s office said.
A statement from Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault’s office said the casualties were sustained “during a clash with insurgents” and that the wounded soldier was expected to survive, AFP reported.
The statement said the soldiers were from the elite 13th Chasseurs Alpin Battalion. The dead soldier was “part of an assistance team advising Afghan units,” a statement from President Francois Hollande’s office said.

19 Killed in Nigerian Church Attack

Gunmen have opened fire on an evangelical church during a service in central Nigeria, killing at least 19 people in the latest such attack in the country, the military said on Tuesday.
“The attack was at 8:20 pm yesterday night. The attack was from unknown gunmen at the Deeper Life Church,” said Lt. Col. Gabriel Olorunyomi, head of the military’s Joint Task Force (JTF) in Kogi state, “They were doing their normal Monday evening service. When we went there we discovered the church had been attacked, AP reported.
Instantly we saw 15 people dead, including the pastor,” he explained.
The military has since learned that an additional four people had died from their injuries, Olorunyomi explained.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The JTF commander said an investigation had been launched and that it was premature to speculate as to the culprits.
Extremist group Boko Haram has claimed scores of attacks on churches in northern and central Nigeria in recent months as part of an insurgency that has killed hundreds.
The group has also attacked Muslim figures as well as a range of other targets, including the United Nations building in the capital Abuja.
A number of Boko Haram members are alleged to have come from Kogi state.
In mid-July, a bomb went off near another church in Okene, but caused no casualties.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said in June that Boko Haram was seeking to incite a religious crisis by attacking churches in an attempt to destabilize the government.
Jonathan described how the group had moved from targeting local rivals to government institutions and now churches.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and largest oil producer, is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.
In a video posted to YouTube on Saturday, the suspected leader of Boko Haram criticized Jonathan as well as US President Barack Obama over Washington’s decision to label him a “global terrorist”.

UK Coalition in Crisis Over Parliamentary Reform

Tensions between Britain’s coalition partners escalated on Monday as the Liberal Democrats vowed to block parliamentary boundary changes wanted by the Conservatives to help secure an overall majority at the next general election.
The move came after Prime Minister David Cameron failed to persuade rank-and-file Tories to support plans to overhaul the 700-year-old House of Lords, a Liberal Democrat priority. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the Conservatives had “broken the contract” made with his party during the coalition negotiations of 2010, Reuters reported.
The Liberal Democrat threat may deliver a fatal blow to Conservative hopes of governing outright after the next election due in 2015. A review of House of Commons constituencies under way could see the Tories gain as many as 20 seats, according to Anthony Wells, associate director of pollster YouGov Plc.
“Boundary changes are not dead yet even if the Liberal Democrats plan to block them, but they will be harder for Cameron to get through,” Wells said. “There is not a single policy that can now deliver them 20 extra seats. They’ve blown it.”
Clegg’s announcement, made at news conference in London following a telephone call with Cameron, plunged relations between the two parties to the lowest ebb since they came to power two years ago and cast fresh doubt on whether the alliance can survive for another three years.
“Clearly I cannot permit a situation where Conservative rebels can pick and choose the parts of the contract they like, while Liberal Democrat MPs are bound to the entire agreement,” Clegg said.
The review of parliamentary boundaries is designed to reduce the number of lawmakers in the Commons, Parliament’s lower house, to 600 from 650 to save money.
The Tories would have won 299 seats, just short of a majority, if the May 2010 election had been contested on the proposed new boundaries, according to Wells.
“If Cameron doesn’t get the proposed boundary changes through Parliament, the chances of the Conservatives winning a majority at the next election are dramatically reduced,” Mark Wickham-Jones, professor of politics at Bristol University, said in an interview. “It’s also going to make day-to-day management of the coalition much tougher.”
The decision to abandon attempts to introduce a largely elected upper chamber of parliament until at least 2015 is a further blow for Clegg, who in 2011 lost a referendum to change the voting system in general elections.
It means he will face voters in 2015 without having delivered any the constitutional changes he promised and having reneged on other pre-election commitments such a pledge not to increase tuition fees.

Monti Wins Confidence Vote on Extra Spending Cuts

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti won a confidence vote on Tuesday on a bill to cut spending by an extra 4.5 billion euros ($5.59 billion) this year in order to rein in the deficit and delay a planned increase in sales tax.
Italy’s Chamber of Deputies voted 403 to 86 to back Monti and pave the way for a final vote to convert the bill into law in the afternoon. A confidence vote was called to limit debate and accelerate the passage before the summer recess, Reuters reported.
The expenditure reductions are in addition to the 10.5 billion in savings envisioned in Monti’s austerity package, which was passed in December.
Savings from the cuts will increase to 10.9 billion euros in 2013, and 11.7 billion in 2014, and they will push back a 2-percentage-point increase in sales tax until July of next year.
The increase in sales tax rates - currently set at 10 percent and 21 percent - was due to take effect in October. Some 600 million euros will got to further reducing the deficit this year.
New cash-saving measures include reductions in health care spending and a gradual trimming of the number of workers employed in the public sector.
In an interview with Germany’s der Spiegel magazine on Sunday, Monti warned of a “psychological break-up” of Europe that must be contained.
He said the eurozone crisis was creating national resentments that could damage the EU.
Separately, the head of Italy’s central bank, Ignazio Visco, insisted his country did not yet need a bailout.
Meanwhile, negotiations between Greece and its rescue lenders made “good progress” and will resume in September.
Inspectors from the troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) left Athens on Sunday following several days of talks with Greece’s new coalition government.
The Greek government desperately needs the next tranche of bailout money to be released in order to meet debt payments and to pay its bills, but will have to wait another month for a decision.
“Talks went well, we made good progress,” said the IMF’s chief negotiator, Poul Thomsen. “We will take a break and come back in early September.”
The Greeks have offered a further 11.5 billion euros of austerity measures in order to win over the inspectors.

Riyadh Accuses Myanmar Of Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims

Saudi Arabia accused authorities in Buddhist-majority Myanmar on Monday of “ethnic cleansing” against the Muslim Rohingya minority in the west of the country, state media reported on Tuesday.
The Saudi cabinet said it “condemns the ethnic cleansing campaign and brutal attacks against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya citizens, as well as violation of human rights by forcing them to leave their homeland,” in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
The cabinet, chaired by King Abdullah, urged the “international community to take up its responsibilities by providing needed protection and quality of life to Muslims in Myanmar and preventing further loss of life.”
Fighting in western Rakhine state between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya has killed 80 people since June, with three killed on Sunday, a government official in Yangon said.
The violence initially broke out following the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman and the subsequent lynching of 10 Muslims by a crowd of angry Buddhists.
The bloodshed has cast a shadow over widely praised reforms by President Thein Sein, that have included the release of hundreds of political prisoners and the election of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to parliament.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has accused Myanmar forces of opening fire on Rohingya, as well as committing rape and standing by as rival mobs attacked each other.
The Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Sunday proposed sending an OIC mission to probe the “massacres” of Rohingya Muslims.
Myanmar’s government considers the estimated 800,000 Rohingya in the country to be foreigners, while many citizens see them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and view them with hostility. Decades of discrimination have left them stateless and they are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

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