Afghan peace bid stumbles on Kabul-Taliban protocol row

A fresh effort to end Afghanistan's 12-year-old war looked in disarray on Thursday after a diplomatic spat about the Taliban's new Qatar office delayed preliminary discussions between the United States and the Islamist insurgents.
Talks between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban had been set for Thursday in Qatar but Afghan government anger at the fanfare surrounding the opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf state threw preparations into confusion.
The squabble may set the tone for what could be long and arduous negotiations to end a war that has raged since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that followed the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks on U.S. targets.
Asked when the talks would now take place, the source in Doha said "There is nothing scheduled that I am aware of." Asked if that meant they would not happen today, the source added: "Yes that's correct."
The opening of the office was a practical step paving the way for peace talks. But the official-looking protocol surrounding the event raised angry protests in Kabul that the office would develop into a Taliban government-in-exile: A diplomatic scramble ensued to allay their concerns.
A Taliban flag that had been hoisted at the Taliban office on Tuesday had been taken down and lay on the ground on Thursday, although it appeared still attached to a flagpole.
A name plate, inscribed with the title "Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" had also been removed.
Questioned whether the Taliban's office in Doha had created a sense of optimism about peace efforts, the source replied: "Optimism and pessimism are irrelevant. The most important thing is that we now know the Taliban are ready to talk, and sometimes talk is expensive."
Word of the U.S.-Taliban talks had raised hopes that Karzai's government and the Taliban might enter their first-ever direct negotiations on Afghanistan's future, with Washington acting as a broker and Pakistan as a major outside player.
The Taliban has until now refused talks with Kabul, calling Karzai and his government puppets of the West. But a senior Afghan official said earlier the Taliban was now willing to consider talks with the government.
PRISONER SWAP
In its talks with the U.S. officials, the Taliban was expected to demand the return of former senior commanders now detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a move opposed by many in the U.S. Congress, as well as the departure of all foreign troops.
The United States wants the return of the only known U.S. prisoner of war from the conflict, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who is believed to be held by the Taliban.
The protocol dispute burst into the open on Wednesday when Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government would not join U.S. talks with the Taliban and would halt negotiations with Washington on a post-2014 troop pact.
Officials from Karzai's government, angered by the official-sounding name the Taliban chose for its political office in Doha, said the United States had violated assurances it would not give official status to the insurgents.
Afghan government officials objected to the impression that the insurgents had achieved some level of international political recognition and could use it as an official embassy or even as a base for a government-in-exile.
"As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar," Karzai said in a statement, referring to a body he set up in 2010 to seek a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
VOID OF TRUST
A statement on Qatar's foreign ministry website late on Wednesday clarified that the office which opened was called the "Political Bureau for Afghan Taliban in Doha".
The source familiar with the matter said: "The Taliban have to understand that this office isn't an embassy and they are not representing a country."
The dispute over the Taliban office after months of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to restart the peace talks underscored what U.S. officials say is a void of trust between Karzai and the Taliban, who have been waging an insurgency to overthrow his government and oust foreign troops.
Fighting continued in the war-ravaged nation. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on the heavily fortified Bagram base near Kabul late on Tuesday, international military officials said.
U.S. and Afghan officials said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Karzai on Tuesday night and again on Wednesday morning in an effort to defuse the controversy.
Underlining the importance of the process to the United States, the State Department said Kerry would travel to Doha for meetings with senior Qatari officials on Friday and Saturday. But U.S. officials said he would not meet with Taliban representatives.

Pele calls for end to protests in Brazil

Demonstrations continued across Brazil on Thursday with protesters notably blocking the main access road to the Arena Castelao, in Fortaleza.
The protest was the latest of a wave in recent days that has marred the ongoing Confederations Cup, and has been organised by groups demanding better public services and complaining about the local government.
"Let's forget all this commotion happening in Brazil, all these protests, and let's remember how the Brazilian squad is our country and our blood," Pele told O Globo.
The former Santos player's appeal, however, was soon derided on social media, with many claiming that his wealth meant he was unable to emphasise with the ordinary Brazilian.
Another former Brazil international, Ronaldo, was also criticised after commenting that "you can't hold a World Cup with hospitals", in response to the protests over the billions spent on stadiums that many Brazilians feel would have been better invested in public amenities.
Meanwhile, two of the country's biggest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, have struck an agreement to revoke an increase in public transportation fares, that first helped spark the nationwide demonstrations.
Sao Paulo state Governor, Geraldo Alckmin, announcing a reduction in fares to their level before the hike, called it "important... so the city can have the tranquility needed to debate issues calmly".
The Selecao picked up their second win of the Confederations Cup on Thursday with a 2-0 defeat of Mexico.

Actor James Gandolfini of 'The Sopranos' dies at 51

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Actor James Gandolfini, who rose to fame as crime boss Tony Soprano on the “The Sopranos,” has died of a possible heart attack in Italy, HBO confirmed to Fox News.
There were few immediate details surrounding his death at 51, although he was on vacation in Rome,  his managers said.
Gandolfini,  a New Jersey native, appeared in films and on the stage before his breakthrough part  in 1999 as Mafia boss Tony Soprano in the HBO series, which brought him three Emmys during its six-year run.
“We're all in shock and feeling immeasurable sadness at the loss of a beloved member of our family,” said a statement from HBO.  “He was special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person who treated everyone no matter their title or position with equal respect.
“He touched so many of us over the years with his humor, his warmth and his humility.  Our hearts go out to his wife and children during this terrible time.  He will be deeply missed by all of us. “
His managers Mark Armstrong and Nancy Sanders said, “It is with immense sorrow that we report our client James Gandolfini passed away today while on holiday in Rome, Italy.  Our hearts are shattered and we will miss him deeply.  He and his family were part of our family for many years and we are all grieving.”
Organizers of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily were scrambling to put together a tribute to Gandolfini, who had been expected to attend the festival's closing ceremony this weekend and receive an award. Organizers Mario Sesti and Tiziana Rocca said Gandolfini will instead be honored with a tribute "remembering his career and talent."
He is survived by his wife, Deborah Lin, their baby daughter and his son Michael, with his ex-wife, Marcy Wudarski, from whom he was divorced in December 2002.
Gandolfini, easily recognized with his bear-like frame, turned Tony Soprano into a multi-faceted character who merged mob boss and family man. In addition to his Emmys, the part brought him a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
He played Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden hunt docudrama "Zero Dark Thirty." He worked with Chase for the `60s period drama "Not Fade Away," in which he played the old-school father of a wannabe rocker. And in Andrew Dominick's crime flick "Killing Them Softly," he played an aged, washed-up hit man.
On Broadway, he garnered a best-actor Tony Award nomination for 2009's "God of Carnage."
Deploying his unsought clout as a star, Gandolfini produced a pair documentaries for HBO focused on a cause he held dear: veterans affairs.
Gandolfini's performance in "The Sopranos" was indelible and career-making, but he refused to be stereotyped as the bulky mobster who was a therapy patient, family man and cold-blooded killer.
After the series concluded with its breathtaking blackout ending, Gandolfini's varied film work included comedies such as "In the Loop," a political satire, and the heartwarming drama "Welcome to the Rileys," which costarred Kristen Stewart. He voiced the Wild Thing Carol in "Where the Wild Things Are."
Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, N.J., the son of a building maintenance chief at a Catholic school and a high school lunch lady.
After earning a degree in communications from Rutgers University, Gandolfini moved to New York, where he worked as a bartender, bouncer and nightclub manager. When he was 25, he joined a friend of a friend in an acting class.
Gandolfini's first big break was a Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" where he played Steve, one of Stanley Kowalski's poker buddies. His film debut was in Sidney Lumet's "A Stranger Among Us" (1992).
In a December 2012 interview with The Associated Press, Gandolfini said he gravitated to acting as a release, a way to get rid of anger. "I don't know what exactly I was angry about," he said.
"I try to avoid certain things and certain kinds of violence at this point," he said last year. "I'm getting older, too. I don't want to be beating people up as much. I don't want to be beating women up and those kinds of things that much anymore."
"Sopranos" producer and creator David Chase issued a statement Wednesday night saying, “He was a genius.  Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that.  He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time.
"A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes.  I remember telling him many times, 'You don't get it.  You're like Mozart.’  There would be silence at the other end of the phone.
"For Deborah and Michael and Liliana this is crushing.  And it's bad for the rest of the world.  He wasn't easy sometimes.  But he was my partner, he was my brother in ways I can't explain and never will be able to explain.”
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also paid tribute to Gandolfini, saying, "It's an awful shock. James Gandolfini was a fine actor, a Rutgers alum and a true Jersey guy. I was a huge fan of his and the character he played so authentically, Tony Soprano. I have gotten to know Jimmy and many of the other actors in the Sopranos cast and I can say that each of them are an individual New Jersey treasure."
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, said late Wednesday he was saddened to hear about the death of a "talented actor whose unforgettable performances made him a television icon." He said Gandolfini was a proud New Jerseyan and a Rutgers University graduate.
The senator said he has displayed Gandolfini's photo in his Washington, D.C., office for years as part of a New Jersey Wall of Fame.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/06/20/actor-james-gandolfini-sopranos-dies-at-51/#ixzz2WebdXRXv

Mysterious new MERS virus spreads easily, deadlier than SARS

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  UNDATED: This electron microscope image made availalbe by the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases - Rocky Mountain Laboratories shows novel coronavirus particles, also known as the MERS virus, colorized in yellow. (AP)

A mysterious new respiratory virus that originated in the Middle East spreads easily between people and appears more deadly than SARS, doctors reported Wednesday after investigating the biggest outbreak in Saudi Arabia.
More than 60 cases of what is now called MERS, including 38 deaths, have been recorded by the World Health Organization in the past year, mostly in Saudi Arabia. So far, illnesses haven't spread as quickly as SARS did in 2003, ultimately triggering a global outbreak that killed about 800 people.
An international team of doctors who investigated nearly two dozen cases in eastern Saudi Arabia found the new coronavirus has some striking similarities to SARS. Unlike SARS, though, scientists remain baffled as to the source of MERS.
In a worrying finding, the team said MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) not only spreads easily between people, but within hospitals. That was also the case with SARS, a distant relative of the new virus.
"To me, this felt a lot like SARS did," said Dr. Trish Perl, a senior hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who was part of the team. Their report was published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Perl said they couldn't nail down how it was spread in every case — through droplets from sneezing or coughing, or a more indirect route. Some of the hospital patients weren't close to the infected person, but somehow picked up the virus.
"In the right circumstances, the spread could be explosive," said Perl, while emphasizing that the team only had a snapshot of one MERS cluster in Saudi Arabia.
Cases have continued to trickle in, and there appears to be an ongoing outbreak in Saudi Arabia. MERS cases have also been reported in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Tunisia. Most have had a direct connection to the Middle East region.
In the Saudi cluster that was investigated, certain patients infected many more people than would be expected, Perl said. One patient who was receiving dialysis treatment spread MERS to seven others, including fellow dialysis patients at the same hospital. During SARS, such patients were known as "superspreaders" and effectively seeded outbreaks in numerous countries.
Perl and colleagues also concluded that symptoms of both diseases are similar, with an initial fever and cough that may last for a few days before pneumonia develops.
But MERS appears far more lethal. Compared to SARS' 8 percent death rate, the fatality rate for MERS in the Saudi outbreak was about 65 percent, though the experts could be missing mild cases that might skew the figures.
While SARS was traced to bats before jumping to humans via civet cats, the source of the MERS virus remains a mystery. It is most closely related to a bat virus though some experts suspect people may be getting sick from animals like camels or goats. Another hypothesis is that infected bats may be contaminating foods like dates, commonly harvested and eaten in Saudi Arabia.
Doctors around the world have struggled to treat patients. "We need more information from other countries to find out what the best treatment is," said Dr. Clemens Wendtner, who treated a MERS patient who later died in Munich. "Our patient got everything possible and it still didn't help him."
Other experts said there are enough worrying signs about MERS that it can't yet be written off, despite the relatively small number of cases it has caused.
"As long as it is around, it has every opportunity at the genetic roulette table to turn into something more dangerous," said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan has previously called MERS the single biggest public health threat and acknowledged officials were "empty-handed" regarding prevention measures.
"We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat," she said last month in Geneva.
At a meeting this weekend in Cairo, WHO will meet with other experts to discuss MERS and to possibly develop guidelines for next month's Ramadan, when millions of Muslim pilgrims will be visiting Saudi Arabia.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/20/new-mers-virus-spreads-easily-deadlier-than-sars/#ixzz2WeaGHnLW

Lawmakers question Obama's pledge to scale back US nuclear arsenal

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WASHINGTON –  President Obama’s pledge to cut the United States' nuclear arsenal by one-third is sending the wrong message to the global community, some Washington lawmakers said Wednesday.
“Now is not the time to pursue further strategic nuclear force reductions,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., said following Obama’s speech in Berlin, Germany.
Inhofe was among several lawmakers who warned that cutting the country’s strategic nuclear arsenal by one-third would put America at a disadvantage against countries like Russia, North Korea and Iran. Inhofe said the president’s plan wrongly assumes that reducing the role of nuclear weapons would make the world safer.
“Instead, our experience has been that nuclear arsenals -- other than ours -- are on the rise, Russia defies us at almost every turn, efforts to curb the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran are failing, and our allies grow increasingly uneasy about the reliability of U.S. nuclear guarantees,” Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.
The president called for further reducing nuclear stockpiles, and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons, during an address in Berlin on Wednesday. "So long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe," he said.
In the near-term, if the Senate approves the U.S.-Russia proposal, Obama would reduce the current limit for each country of 1,550 by a third, which would potentially bring the warhead stockpile to as low as 1,000.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a freshman Republican senator from New Hampshire, called the president’s decision to pursue additional reductions “misguided and dangerous.”
“A robust and reliable U.S. nuclear arsenal discourages nuclear proliferation and deters nuclear attacks on the United States and our allies,” Ayotte said in a statement.
Ret. Gen. Jack Keane told Fox News the country needs to do the opposite of what the president is proposing and instead should ramp up and modernize the program.
“Our (nuclear program) is in very bad shape and we have decorating capabilities,” he said.
Some lawmakers, though, applauded the president’s plan.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, praised Obama's approach.
“The president’s announcement today will allow the United States to lead the way on nuclear weapons reductions in a manner that strengthens our national security,” he said in a statement, adding that Obama “clearly understands that a strong nuclear deterrent remains essential. We have, and would retain, the ability to destroy the world many times over."
During his speech in Berlin, Obama said “this is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons."
It was the same message he told a crowd of 200,000-strong in Germany back in 2008 while he visited the country during his presidential campaign.
Obama also said, upon his return to the U.S., he will ask the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which has failed to make any significant strides in the Senate. During Wednesday’s speech, Obama also announced plans to attend a summit on securing nuclear material in 2014 in the Hague, an extension of the series of international meetings he initiated in 2009.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin seemed to question Obama’s sincerity and dismissed his statements.
“Obama’s calls to reduce nuclear arms cannot be taken seriously given that the U.S. is still ramping up its missile defenses,” Rogozin  told Reuters.
At the end of the Cold War with Russia in 1991, America had deployed more than 10,000 warheads on delivery vehicles. Since then, the number has decreased to fewer than 2,000 warheads, and is slated to fall further in the next five years, after the new START Treaty completes implementation.
The current cost of the U.S. arsenal and its support infrastructure surpasses $31 billion a year.
In April 2010, the U.S. and Russia signed the New START Treaty which the Senate approved in December 2010. The new START superseded SORT-- the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which was signed by the two nations in 2002 and was scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.
Under the terms of the New START agreement, each side would limit its number of deployed nuclear weapons delivery systems to no more than 700. The number of deployed strategic nuclear warhead stockpiles were capped at 1,500.
Presently, the administration is completing a review of the size of its nuclear force as well as a review of the country’s employment policy.
The president has also said publicly that the U.S. may be able to cut its numbers of deployed and non-deployed warheads even more. According to press reports, the Pentagon is now reviewing the number of alternatives and that the White House is likely to shave the number of nukes even more to 1,000 warheads. However, Obama insists that any major movements would be done in parallel with Russia.
There are a growing number of countries who have access to nuclear weapons.
According to the Arms Control Association, China has 240 total warheads, France has fewer than 300 and Russia has 1,480 deployed strategic warheads. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia has another 1,022 non-deployed strategic warheads and another 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads. Russia has thousands of others waiting to be dismantled. The United Kingdom has a stockpile of 225.
Part of the global concern over nuclear capabilities stems from the widespread catastrophic damage that could occur if the weapons were placed in the wrong hands especially in countries of instability like North Korea and Syria.  

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/20/gop-lawmaker-calls-obama-pledge-to-scale-back-us-nuclear-arsenal-is-misguided/#ixzz2WeZ6wR7i