News Stories

[ganbaru]

Obama: Iran nuclear deal is 'important first step'
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...al-100293.html

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by AnimeFan188

China creates air defence zone over Japan-controlled islands:

The Times article on this event includes a link to a map of the zone.

Images

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[SaintessHeart]

This guy is a borderline sociopath.

Facing new media's challenges
Anti-establishment element will always be inherent, says PM Lee at The Zaobao Forum

SOME new media users in any country are likely to be anti-establishment, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at a forum last night.

He said that to get the support of the people, the government must continue to do its work, try its best to communicate and involve people in its initiatives to give them a stronger sense of satisfaction.

"We can't wish for new media not to exist, but we can try our best to use it," Mr Lee said in Mandarin, in response to a question from a member of the audience, who asked how the government regards online views about how it is disconnected from the people.

"People who are content don't have time to go online, those who are unhappy will complain online," Mr Lee said. "I am not saying all contrarian views are complaints, but this seems to be a worldwide trend. Therefore, we need to understand these views, and interpret it objectively," he said.

"So the government must continue to do its work. We can't always be looking to see if the Internet approves or disapproves . . . but after doing our work, we must try our best to communicate with people and let people understand what we are doing."

Mr Lee was speaking to 300 members of the Chinese community, including readers of Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, academics and students, at The Zaobao Forum held at the Singapore Press Holdings auditorium. Lianhe Zaobao is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year and launched its web portal, zaobao.sg, yesterday.

In the two-hour session, Mr Lee spoke about the benefits and challenges posed by the transformation of the media landscape into one dominated by the Internet. He also spoke of Zaobao's international role in reflecting Singapore's take on events in China and North-east Asia, as well as its domestic role in balancing the transmission of Chinese culture and values, and the paper's position in a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society.

New media offers benefits in its ability to transmit information quickly, bring together friends and families who are physically apart, and organise people in support of causes.

But there are challenges, seen firstly in criminal activity such as hacking, which recently brought down some websites not just in Singapore but around the region.

Cyberbullying is also a growing problem, as well as "trolling" - abusive remarks found in online discussion forums, often by strangers hiding under the guise of anonymity.

"We must fight back against trolling, and provide a safe, responsible online environment which promotes constructive participation," he said. He added that the government's feedback arm, Reach, will from mid-December require users to log in before they can participate in discussions.

Mr Lee also fielded questions on a range of topics on journalism, bilingualism and his own experience with new media.

"I feel there's value in new media," he said. "Through Facebook, I can directly transmit my thoughts to netizens. But there are limitations . . . the post about the owl (in the Istana) was the most successful. I got 500,000 views. If I can get 200,000 views on a post on economic development and productivity, I would be happy."

Everyone should just read this before they post or read anything on the internet.

[erneiz_hyde]

You know, just because we netizens are so used to online behavior it doesn't make that behavior as "correct". If people don't care so much about civility we won't have mods in here, for example.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

You know, just because we netizens are so used to online behavior it doesn't make that behavior as "correct". If people don't care so much about civility we won't have mods in here, for example.

I would rather you use the word "simple etiquette", but then again, like the term "civility", it is nothing more than a cliche. If you are considering civility as the originally meaning of the term as outlined in dictionaries, I would say that this forum certainly has alot less civility than that I have encountered in real life, where usually disagreements are held back from leaders or majority and nobody dares to play the devil's advocate because it is "uncivilised to argue".

Fault will lie in those who do not exercise their freedom of choice or adapt; I have been a victim of trolls as long as I have been on the internet, and I am sure many people do. But from these trolls, I learned many a lesson about structuring ideas and engaging in conversations - which is the same as meetings and public presentations in real life. Some trolls use that facade to inject sarcasm or bring up a point.

Turning jokes back on the prepatrator earns you respect; and is a showcase of mental tactile. If you don't like feeling and being stupid or insulted, you can :

1. Stay way from people who make you look stupid or insulted.
2. Laugh it off.

From 2, you have the choice of :

1. Ignoring them
2. Fighting back

Those are the choices you can make. Why go to the extent of branding others who make fun of you?

[Ridwan]

Archaeologists Find Sunken Nazi Sub in Indonesia with 17 Skeletons

[SaintessHeart]

I applaud the journalist for that humourous headlines.

Special Report: 'Great Satan' meets 'Axis of Evil' and strikes a deal

GENEVA (Reuters) - Saturday night had turned into Sunday morning and four days of talks over Iran's nuclear program had already gone so far over schedule that the Geneva Intercontinental Hotel had been given over to another event.

A black tie charity ball was finishing up and singers with an after party band at a bar above the lobby were crooning out the words to a Johnny Cash song - "I fell into a burning ring of fire" - while weary diplomats in nearby conference rooms were trying to polish off the last touches of an accord. Negotiators emerged complaining that the hotel lobby smelled like beer.

At around 2:00 a.m., U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia were brought to a conference room to approve a final text of the agreement which would provide limited relief of sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear programme.

At the last minute, with the ministers already gathered in the room, an Iranian official called seeking changes. Negotiators for the global powers refused. Finally the ministers were given the all clear. The deal, a decade in the making, would be done at last.

Now that the interim deal is signed, talks are far from over as the parties work towards a final accord that would lay to rest all doubts about Iran's nuclear program.

"Now the really hard part begins," Kerry told reporters. "We know this."

THAW

The deal, which represents the most important thaw between the United States and Iran in more than three decades since Iranian revolutionaries held 52 American hostages in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, very nearly did not happen.

There was still ample ground to cover on the final day, when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived, joining foreign ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Officials from several of the countries were doubtful that a deal would be reached. Resentful-sounding European diplomats said their foreign minister bosses had not wanted to come unless a final text was on the table, but had felt obliged to come anyway when Russia's Sergei Lavrov showed up on Friday.

When the foreign ministers arrived, some junior diplomats and journalists were evicted from their hotel rooms to clear space for the VIPs.

After his trans-Atlantic flight on Saturday morning, Kerry met his Iranian opposite number Mohammad Zarif, with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who has led negotiations on behalf of the powers.

According to a senior U.S. State Department official, Kerry told Zarif there could be no more delay. President Barack Obama's administration would call for even tighter sanctions on Iran unless a deal was reached now. Congress members were demanding new sanctions and the White House would join them.

Kerry made the case that "there would be no way to hold back new sanctions to give room for (a) new round and we would lead the charge for more sanctions if we did not come to agreement," the State Department official said.

By Saturday evening, the final language was personally approved by Obama in Washington. In a sign of how big a risk the Obama administration was taking, the main U.S. ally in the Middle East, Israel, decried what it called an "historic mistake", easing sanctions without dismantling Iran's nuclear programme.

But Obama said the deal put limits down on Iran's nuclear programme that would make it harder for Tehran to build a weapon and easier for the world to find out if it tried.

"Simply put, they cut off Iran's most likely paths to a bomb," Obama said in a late-night appearance at the White House after the deal was reached.

Obama was not the only one taking a risk. Iran's new president, the relative moderate Hassan Rouhani, was elected in June and inaugurated in August promising to ease the crippling sanctions. But Iran has invested billions of dollars in a nuclear programme, which its clerical and military establishment believes is a cornerstone of national pride.

Before Zarif was sent to Geneva, he and Rouhani had a meeting with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose approval was absolutely required for any deal.

"The leader's main concern is his core supporters, who truly believe that there should be no deal with America, and are closely watching the developments to find a weak point or a failure to blame on the negotiators for betraying the leadership," said a former Iranian official, a relative of Khamenei.

SECRET TALKS

The deal was in part the result of months of secret talks held with Iran in such out-of-the-way places as Oman, with U.S. officials using military planes, side entrances and service elevators to avoid giving the game away.

The talks, the most important contacts in more than three decades during which Iran branded the United States the "Great Satan" and the United States described Iran a part of an "axis of evil" that also included Iraq and North Korea, were confirmed by U.S. officials and a former Iranian official.

They illustrate a U.S. desire, dating to the start of Obama's administration in January 2009, to explore whether there might be a way to reconcile two nations that have been hostile since 1979 but were once allies.

According to the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, key Americans involved in the effort were William Burns, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

The two men, at times with other officials such as White House national security staff member Puneet Talwar, met Iranian officials at least five times this year, the official said.

Burns, Sullivan and technical experts arrived in Muscat, Oman in March on a military plane - a way to preserve secrecy - to meet Iranians, the official added.

That was months before the election of Rouhani, a sign that Iranian officials were already coming round to the idea of talks before he took power.

Rouhani defeated more hardline candidates based in part on hopes he would ease sanctions that had taken an increasing severe toll on the Iranian economy since they were sharply tightened by the United States and European Union to hit Iran's crucial oil exports since 2011.

A former nuclear negotiator, Rouhani replaced the combative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But ultimately no negotiations would have been possible without a nod from the supreme leader, Khamenei.

'GREEN LIGHT'

"The leader gave the green light but was not optimistic about the result," said a former Iranian official, who participated in one round of the secret talks. He said the hardest meeting was the first one because of Khamenei's scepticism.

The Oman channel itself had been nurtured by Kerry, who, as chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee before he took over as Secretary of State, made an unannounced trip to the Gulf state to meet Omani officials.

After Kerry replaced Hillary Clinton as the top U.S. diplomat on February 1, it was decided the Oman channel would continue to help feed into multi-lateral talks led by the EU's Ashton on behalf of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany, the P5+1. Kerry visited Oman himself in May for talks with Omani officials.

Around the time that Kerry was taking over the State Department, Zarif's predecessor, Ali Akbar Salehi - then serving as foreign minister under Ahmadinejad - sent an extraordinary three-page, hand-written letter to Khamenei, calling for "broad discussions with the United States".

The supreme leader, though cautious about the prospect, sent a reply to Salehi and the rest of the cabinet: he was not optimistic but would not oppose them if they pursued the initiative, several sources said.

"Salehi endangered his career - and even his security," said a source who knows Salehi and saw the letter. "But he said this letter will be registered in history." In August, Rouhani put Salehi in charge of Iran's nuclear agency.

The senior U.S. official said that four of the secret U.S.-Iranian meetings took place since Rouhani's August inauguration, a sign that the United States was trying to exploit the opportunity presented by the Iranian official's ascent.

Kerry met Iran's foreign minister at the U.N. General Assembly in September and, soon thereafter, Obama and Rouhani spoke by telephone, marking the highest-level contact between the United States and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Kerry also spoke to the Iranian foreign minister by telephone on October 25 and November 2 -discussions that were not revealed by the State Department at the time.

In recent months there has been noticeable change in body language when diplomats from the United States and Iran are in the same room. Whatever the relations between their countries, officials from both sides now appear - normal.

During talks in Geneva earlier this month, Reuters spotted U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman chatting alone in a hotel lobby with Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. Such casual, cordial meetings in public would have been unthinkable just months ago.

Nevertheless, the United States was so eager to keep the role of Burns and Sullivan secret that it brought them to Geneva twice this month for wider talks between Iran and the major powers but left their names off the official delegation list and made them use hotel side entrances and service elevators to keep the secret.

FINAL PUSH

When the time came for the final push in Geneva, diplomats expected their bosses would not show up until the text was nearly complete. Journalists waited drinking $9 capuccinos and $29 bloody marys at the Intercontinental.

Even after the foreign ministers arrived, officials sounded downbeat about the prospected of a deal on the final day.

"It's not a done deal. There's a realistic chance but there's a lot of work to do," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

One final bone of contention was the Iranian heavy water reactor at Arak, where Western countries suspect Tehran could one day make plutonium for a bomb.

"Defining limits on that and what should take place there in this six month period has proved to be quite a task," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said. "However, that has now been agreed. It was the resolution of that problem that helped unlock the agreement."

French officials had been holding out in public for a tough line on Iraq, although several Western diplomats said the French were more flexible behind closed doors.

The Arak issue was tough, but it wasn't the toughest. Iran and the powers would still have to find language that both sides could find acceptable over what Iran considers its fundamental right to enrich uranium.

Before heading to Geneva, Zarif had a crucial meeting with Khamenei in the presence of Rouhani, a senior member of the Iranian delegation said.

"The leader underlined the importance of respecting Iran's right to enrich uranium and that he was backing the delegation as long as they respected this red line," said the delegate.

According to another source in Iran, Zarif and Rouhani, along with their top allies, later held a three-hour meeting and discussed various "face-saving solutions" of wording designed to be acceptable to both sides.

Sunday's agreement said Iran and the major powers aimed to reach a final deal that would "involve a mutually defined enrichment programme with mutually agreed parameters consistent with practical needs, with agreed limits on scope and level of enrichment activities, capacity, where it is carried out, and stocks of enriched uranium, for a period to be agreed upon."

Iranian officials can point to the mention of an enrichment programme as a victory that shows they will be allowed to keep it. Western officials say it means no such thing and emphasise all the limits described in the text.

The differences in interpretation underscore how difficult it may be to move towards a final deal that would resolve differences once and for all. Progress could easily be stymied.

Still, for those on both sides committed to the agreement, it represented an historic victory.

"We took a risk," said the former Iranian official who participated in the secret talks with the United States. "But we won."]

[JokerD]

A story I found interesting:
The victims of Syria's war finding care in Israel

In the maternity unit at the Sieff Hospital in the Israeli city of Tzfat, the safe arrival of every baby feels like a minor miracle.

But on the day we visited, there was one little boy among the row of newborns who will one day have quite a story to tell. That is, if his parents ever decide to tell him.

The child's name has to be withheld: publishing any kind of information which could identify him might put him in danger when he goes back to his home village - which is in Syria.

His mother's name or any personal information that might identify her can't be published either. She looked tired but happy when we met her, quick to praise the kindness of the Israeli medical staff who had treated her.

She was already in labour when she went to her local clinic in her home village in Syria - but they told her that they could not treat her.

Her worried husband knew that it was possible to get her treated in Israel - and so the couple began a dangerous race to the frontier in a country at war and a desperate race against time.

She had to be taken to a point inside Syria from where she could be seen by Israeli soldiers patrolling the fence that marks the old ceasefire line between the two countries that dates back decades.

A military ambulance then took her to hospital - she made it time.
Map
System of transfer

The humanitarian chain that got the woman from her home village under heavy shellfire to the boundary fence and then to hospital links guides in Syria to Israeli Army paramedics on the frontier, to the doctors and nurses in Tzfat.

For the woman, every step in the process worked perfectly, perhaps because it has become a well-trodden path.

She was the 177th person to make to the journey to the emergency room in what has become one of the most extraordinary subplots of Syria's agonising civil war.

Syria and Israel regard each other as enemies. A state of war has existed between them for decades.

And yet, since the first patients arrived around nine months ago, the informal system of patient transfer has become so well-established that some patients have even arrived with letters of referral written by doctors in Syria for their Israeli counterparts.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

I expect they will reflect on what was their experience here and that they will reflect differently on what the regime tells them about Israelis and Syrians being enemies”

Dr Oscar Embon Director, Sieff Hospital
Human dramas

Dr Oscar Embon, the director of the Sieff Hospital, says simply: "Some beautiful relationships have started between the staff at the hospital and the people that we treat. Most of them express their gratitude and their wish for peace between the two countries."

The Israelis say they are treating everyone who needs treatment. That often means women and children but it is possible that among the young men who have been patched up, there may well be fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, or jihadist rebels who in other circumstances would attack Israeli targets if they could.

Dr Embon says that policy of not discriminating between the sick and the hurt is entirely consistent with what he sees as the values of his country and the ethics of his profession.

He told me: "I don't expect them to become lovers of Israel and ambassadors for what we do here, but in the interim I expect they will reflect on what was their experience here and that they will reflect differently on what the regime tells them about Israelis and Syrians being enemies."

Israel's help for the Syrian patients is politically interesting, of course - this is the Middle East, after all.

But even if you only spend a few hours in the hospital at Tzfat, you get a sense that there are powerful human dramas being played out in the treatment room.

Most of the patients, though, won't talk about what they have been through - they are too frightened about what would happen to them back in Syria if it emerged they had been to Israel.
Forming relationships

At the centre of the system is an Israeli Arab social worker who asked us to refer to him only by his first name, Faris.

He calms the fears of disoriented patients who are shocked to find themselves suddenly being treated in an enemy state.

He organises charity collections to provide them with toiletries and toothbrushes.

And he listens to their stories.
Israeli medic tends to Syrian baby in maternity unit in Sieff Hospital The hospital treats any Syrian case - from pregnant women to injured rebel or government fighters

The job Faris does is tough at the best of times - imagine having to explain to a young boy blinded in an explosion that he will never see again - but with the Syrian patients, it feels even more difficult because they go home as soon as they have been treated.

And once they cross back onto the Syrian side of the boundary fence, all contact with them will be lost between the old enmities of the Middle East and the dangerous chaos of civil war.

Faris acknowledges that the regular partings from men, women and children he has helped through dark moments are tough for him as well as for them.

He looks tired when we meet but says he sleeps well knowing that he has been given a chance to do some good.

"When people come here for two months," he told me, "a relationship starts between you and them and becomes stronger. Then they go home and the sad thing is you can't be in contact with them because their villages are 'enemy' villages."

Such is the grinding misery of Syria's civil war, though - and the growing problems in the healthcare system there - that it seems every week will bring Faris and the medical staff at the hospital new patients and new problems.

The Syrians who go home cannot be too open about the help they have received in Israel - merely admitting having been here could put them in danger.

But somehow word is spreading and it seems likely that as long as the civil war goes on, the tide of injured seeking help will continue to rise.

[ganbaru]

Insight: Weak at home, France seeks grandeur abroad
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9AO08320131125

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Insight: Weak at home, France seeks grandeur abroad
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9AO08320131125

Makes perfect sense. According to the Urban Dictionary (the most reliable source in the world), the French version of "Screw this" is Pour la Gloire. For ze glory.

Thanks, Bonaparte.

But whereas French jingoism abroad is a perfectly normal state of affairs, I'm curious what's really going on domestically. I think there are a few French members around here -- what's up with Hollande and the Socialists? American/British -- read: Capitalist -- news outlets are utterly unimpressed. Are they trying to be Japan DPJ 2.0? What's limiting them?

[Zakoo]

They are trying to play it democratic like, it's unfit of France which is probably the democracy where the executive has the most power in the world, legistlative is only for show more or less. For example it took 8 months for the homosexual mariage to pass simply because he wanted to follow the legislative calender, if they felt like it they could have done it with rainbows and little poneys within 3 weeks.

I could do a whole 100 pages to explains the whole thing but I will do it in a nutshell:

the providential (wo)man do not exist and won't ever exist in a democracy. My compatriots do not seem to understand it, thus leading to a paradoxal situation where words and empiric results contradict each other, they like to have the president make them dream, but dream being what they are, when they return on earth it hurts.. Each president for the last 40 years had the same diagram of popularity, they crumble after one year. Honestly the last thing that will make me lose faith in him is whether he will adapt his politic according to the surveys or not. So far he is holding.

Second part, the industrial situation of France is really bad, even if in term of living most french are still reaaaaallyyy fine, but we are losing production skills, on the long term it can be the apocalypse for a country, there are many causes of this and all the past governments have a fault inside so there's no point throwing the ball to each other. There again, he still has my support, as said Elayne in the wheel of time :"A leader must take decisions, they are generally harsh and the people won't understand them, but they are necessary for a country."

Lastly, socialists never had the cult of the leader, each of them thinking they have better ideas than their neighbour he is right to fear a rebellion within his own wing : left is ready to backstab him if they see the slightest opening.

Hopefully, the opposition being in a total state of confusion, the prime minister and him can still swim in the sea, the sharks of far right are rising but politically speaking it's a good strategy, even if I hate it.

[Fireminer]

The country where Exorcisms are on the rise

Read more at: http://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25032305

Is this what people seeks when they are uneducated and losing hope?

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

The country where Exorcisms are on the rise

Read more at: http://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25032305

Is this what people seeks when they are uneducated and losing hope?

They do need exorcists named "Police"... yeah, not those lazy and chubby ones in police cosplay...

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by NoemiChan

They do need exorcists named "Police"... yeah, not those lazy and chubby ones in police cosplay...

The Ms on this forum disagree. They want female policemen with chubby chests and butts in boots and tasers.

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

The Ms on this forum disagree. They want female policemen with chubby chests and butts in boots and tasers.

As long as they give JUSTICE to bad boys, then NO PROBLEM...

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

The Ms on this forum disagree. They want female policemen with chubby chests and butts in boots and tasers.

Did you just requested to be tasered by a caricature of a female cop ?

[Ithekro]

He has been known for odd things.

[JokerD]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Did you just requested to be tasered by a caricature of a female cop ?

He usually prefers to be tasered by a loli in a policewoman cosplay

[Fireminer]

How about a Nun Police? Spilled with Holy Water and then get Tasered?

[Ithekro]

Ninja Nuns? (Anglican?)