Last Convoy of American Troops Leaves Iraq

An American soldier walked last week through Contingency Operating Base Adder, where the last convoy of the military withdrawal left early Sunday under cover of darkness.

Iran Blocks New US 'Virtual Embassy'

The US launched a "virtual embassy" for Tehran in a bid to reach out to ordinary Iranians isolated by strict censorship -- but it was promptly blocked by the Islamic regime.

US Republican hopeful Cain’s wife: He would not harass women

Herman Cain at a Republican party presidential debate in Spartanburg, South Carolina on November 12, 2011.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is not the type of person who would sexually harass women, his wife Gloria Cain said in excerpts of a Fox News interview released yesterday.

Cain’s wife of 43 years has remained hidden from public eye as her husband seeks the party’s nomination to run against President Barack Obama in 2012. She addressed the allegations that have roiled her husband’s campaign in a rare interview.

“You hear the graphic allegations and we know that would have been something that’s totally disrespectful of her as a woman. And I know the type of person he is. He totally respects women,” Gloria Cain said.

US Republican hopeful Cain under new pressure

Congressional Health Care Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington in this November 2, 2011 file photo.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain faced possibly damaging allegations yesterday from the former boyfriend of a woman who has accused Cain of sexually inappropriate behaviour.

The ex-boyfriend of accuser Sharon Bialek, speaking at a news conference in Louisiana, corroborated Bialek’s claim that Cain made improper advances to her when she sought help finding a job.

Cain, who leads some Republican polls for the 2012 nomination, has denied even knowing Bialek, who held a news conference live on television to accuse the candidate of groping her in 1997.

US varsity coach denies he is a paedophile

Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State University assistant football coach charged with child sex abuse, said yesterday he is not a paedophile, but admitted he showered with young boys.

In a full-court media press across two television networks, Sandusky and his attorney, Joe Amendola, said they have answers for all 40 charges that Pennsylvania prosecutors have levelled.

“I am innocent of those charges,” Sandusky (picture) told NBC’s Bob Costas in a telephone interview with the television network yesterday.

US drone strikes must stop, says American lawyer

A Global Hawk UAV is seen flying over an unidentified location in this US Air Force image.




Prominent international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was impressed by the 16-year-old boy who wanted to draw attention to civilian deaths caused by US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Tariq Aziz had volunteered to take pictures of people killed by the remotely piloted aircraft to help Stafford Smith highlight what he calls illegal killings.

Three days later, on October 31, he and his 12-year-old cousin were themselves killed by a drone missile strike in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, Stafford Smith said.

For the veteran lawyer, the deaths highlighted major flaws in the CIA-run drone campaign, which US officials say is invaluable in the war on militants.

“What they did to Tariq was absolutely disgusting,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.



Stafford Smith made his name defending death row inmates in the United States and prisoners at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He considers the drones as “scandalous” as the secret US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Eighty Pakistani tribesmen, including Aziz, recently met Stafford Smith and other Western lawyers for the first time, in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to complain about the drones.

The United States has sharply stepped up the number of drone attacks in Pakistan’s unruly ethnic Pashtun areas in the northwest, along the border with Afghanistan.

In 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, there were 53 strikes, compared with 42 over the previous four years. In 2010, that number jumped to 118, followed by 68 this year, according to the New America Foundation.

The think tank’s statistics raise doubts about the success of the drones. It estimates as many as 471 civilians were killed by drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004-2011, a 20 per cent non-militant fatality rate.

US officials point to the deaths of senior al Qaeda and Taliban figures as proof the drones are highly effective, and no American troops are needed on the ground.

Missile-armed drones are playing a greater role than ever in US counterterrorism operations, as Obama winds down land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s focus expands to militant havens in countries such as Pakistan.

“Science fiction nightmare”

Stafford Smith says the strategy will cause more civilian deaths and create additional enemies for the United States.

“When you have warfare with no political costs at all, it becomes much too easy to resort to violence,” he said, adding his goal was to raise international awareness about the suffering caused by drone strikes.

“What we are seeing in Waziristan is a process that is alienating the population just as napalm in Vietnam did and it’s achieving very little benefit.”

Stafford Smith drew parallels between Guantanamo and the drone campaign in Pakistan, arguing both detentions and strikes were often based on dubious intelligence.

He suspects the death of Aziz was a prime example of that.

“We as America offer large bounties to different informants and these informants would sell their own mothers,” said Stafford Smith, 52, a dual US-British citizen who is the director of Reprieve, an organisation that advocates for prisoners’ rights.

“We don’t have proof but this (Aziz’s death) was the result of some Pakistani informants who want to show their paymasters they are doing their jobs. So they make up a story and a poor kid dies.”

Drone “pilots” based in the United States move joy sticks around as they watch live video feeds of militants, who are killed with the push of a button.

“We keep talking our way into a system of warfare that was in our science fiction nightmare 30 years ago and we really need to have an open debate on it,” said Stafford Smith.

He faces an uphill battle. US policy makers are encouraged by drone operations like the one that killed US-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September.

But Stafford Smith believes “justice” will prevail.

“In the early days of Guantanamo Bay people said ‘no one will pay attention’. It was difficult,” he said.

“I have no doubt the American people and everyone else will recognise what’s going on here and put an end to it.”

Woman accuses US presidential candidate Cain of groping

Radio talk show host and former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza Herman Cain, speaks during the Reagan Centennial GOP presidential primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California September 7, 2011.


A woman accused US Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain yesterday of reaching under her skirt in 1997, adding to sexual harassment allegations that are threatening to derail his campaign.

Cain, a former pizza company executive, has led many opinion polls in the race to be the Republican nominee to face President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in next year’s election.

Sharon Bialek said Cain made the unwanted advance after dinner in Washington when she asked for help finding a job after she was laid off by the National Restaurant Association, which he then headed.

Bialek, who identified herself as a registered Republican and single mother from Chicago, put a public face on a growing problem for Cain’s campaign. The 65-year-old candidate quickly denied her account, saying all allegations of sexual harassment against him were “completely false.”

Bialek, looking composed and confident before a phalanx of television cameras, said she had not filed a complaint against Cain but was now coming forward to “give a face and a voice to those women” who did not wish to go public.



Two other women lodged formal complaints against Cain when he headed the restaurant association. One said through her lawyer last week she received a series of unwanted advances.

“I want you, Mr Cain, to come clean, to admit what you did, admit you were inappropriate to people and then move forward,” Bialek said. “Mr Cain, I am for you. Make this right.”

Bialek, appearing with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, said that after the dinner in July 1997, Cain drove her toward the restaurant association offices, parked nearby and offered what Allred called his version of a “stimulus package.”

“Instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch. I was very, very surprised and very, very shocked,” Bialek said.

“I said: ‘What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.’ Mr Cain said: ‘You want a job, right?’ I asked him to stop and he did. I asked him to take me back to my hotel, which he did right away.”

Allred said she had signed declarations from Bialek’s boyfriend at the time, a paediatrician, and a businessman whom Bialek viewed as a mentor. Both said Bialek told them about the incident shortly after it happened.

“She told the businessman that Mr Cain had been aggressive with her,” Allred said.

Allred said Bialek does not want to file a lawsuit against Cain and is not seeking any money.

CAIN DENIAL

Cain never harassed anyone, spokesman J.D. Gordon said, and the candidate attacked the news media for its focus on “gaffes, gotcha questions and time devoted to trivial nonsense.”

Cain said, as an executive, he had turned around Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza.

“At some point during a career like this, someone will not like things you do or how you do it. Someone will complain,” he said. “That is just the nature of things if you’ve ever done much in your life.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed the percentage of Republicans who viewed Cain favourably dropped 9 points, to 57 per cent from 66 per cent a week earlier.

A majority of Republican voters, and nearly six in 10 Tea Party supporters, say they are not concerned about the allegations against Cain, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday.

“It’s attempted sexual assault if it happened,” Bernie Grimm, a criminal defense lawyer in Washington, said of Bialek’s accusation.

He said there is a statute of limitations of five years but, even when an accusation is timely, prosecutors rarely bring a case if the only evidence is the accuser’s word.

Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said the latest accusations “can’t be good for Cain’s campaign.

“He’s now going to be asked about those questions again and, whatever the truth is, the more there are, the more they create doubt among people who might be inclined to support him,” Black said.

Bialek said she last saw Cain at a Tea Party event in Chicago a month ago and asked him: ‘Do you remember me?’“

“I guess I wanted to see if he was going to be man enough to own up to what he had done 14 years ago,” she said.

Bialek said Cain replied that he remembered her from the restaurant association’s education foundation and “looked uncomfortable” before being whisked away by handlers.

One of Cain’s Republican presidential adversaries called on Sunday for more information on the allegations.

“It has got to come out in total,” Jon Huntsman told NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme. “Legitimate questions have been raised and that information has to come forward.

US soldier sentenced to 10 years in S.Korea rape case

Protesters stage a rally denouncing the crime of US soldiers in Seoul November 1, 2011.

A South Korean court today sentenced a US Army private to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a local teenage girl in one of the heaviest punishments handed to an American serviceman stationed on the divided peninsula.







The case has received active coverage by the local media since the initial news reports and the US military pledged cooperation with South Korean authorities on the investigation.

In 2002, the deaths of two schools girls hit by a US military vehicle conducting exercises and the subsequent acquittal of US soldiers involved in a US court martial led to a massive public outcry and an outpouring of anti-American sentiment in South Korea.

The Uijeongbu District Court said in a sentence that the severity of the crime committed against the victim allowed for the full term as laid out in the sentencing guideline, adding that the status of the defendant did not affect its decision.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea in the allies’ defence against North Korea, which was accused of mounting two attacks against its southern neighbour last year that killed 50 people. The South has about 650,000 active force soldiers.

The private in the 2nd US Infantry Division had been indicted in September on charges of sexually assaulting the 18-year-old girl in the frontline area about 35km north of Seoul where the US military maintains a heavy presence.

The court declined to release the name of the soldier pending the filing of any appeal by the defendant. A 2nd Infantry Division private affairs officer reached by telephone could not immediately comment whether the soldier would appeal.

US cuts UNESCO funding after Palestinian vote

David Killion, center, permanent delegate of the United States to UNESCO, reacts as delegates vote on Palestinian membership to the UN cultural agency in Paris

Police, protesters clash at US capital museum

Protesters march with signs past the White House during an “Occupation of Washington” rally in Washington on October 8, 2011.


Authorities shut down Washington’s popular National Air and Space Museum yesterday afternoon after antiwar protesters tried to enter the building and clashed with guards, a museum spokeswoman said.

One person was arrested during the melee at the Smithsonian museum involving between 150 and 200 protesters and six guards, museum spokeswoman Isabel Lara said.

“There was a lot of shoving going on,” Lara said, adding one of the guards was surrounded and used pepper spray before the demonstrators were moved outside. She said she was not aware of any injuries.

The shoving match broke out in a vestibule between two glass doors at the museum entrance after guards told the protesters they could not enter with signs, Lara said.

Protest organisers said the attempt to enter the museum on the National Mall was part of the Occupy D.C. antiwar demonstrations that began on Thursday on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan war.



“Along with the Occupy Wall Street movement, it represents an upswell of people taking to the street around the country to demand social and economic justice as well as an end to the immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” organisers said in an e-mail sent to Reuters.

“It is outrageous that the security guard of a major museum in America pepper sprayed Americans as they entered the museum. The drones housed in this museum and the pepper spraying of Americans at the door are clear evidence of repression in America,” Retired Colonel Ann Wright said in the e-mail.

Drones are armed tactical unmanned planes used by the US government to track and attack insurgents overseas.

The museum, which draws 8 million visitors a year and is the most visited Smithsonian Institution museum, was shut down at 3:15pm (1915 GMT). Lara said it would reopen today.

NYC protesters may expand

Anti-Wall Street protests continued in New York City yesterday and in other US cities, although crowds outside New York have been much smaller.

“We’re tired of other people controlling, or thinking they control, our lives and our livelihoods,” said Kristin Thompson, a 22-year-old preschool teacher and one of 100 protesters in Mobile, Alabama.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, about 250 protesters lined the streets outside a Bank of America branch, waving signs at passing vehicles.

Participants said they had been summoned via social network Internet sites, labor organisers, the liberal website MoveOn.org and members of the local Green Party.

“We are all in this together,” said Ramona Beene, 45, who owns a cake company.

She said her two college-age children were “spending thousands of dollars and won’t have jobs after they graduate.”

In New York, hundreds of protesters marched from lower Manhattan to Washington Square Park in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood — the site of protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s — to discuss expanding their encampment to other sites.

Lucas Vasquez, a student leading the march, said protesters were looking at expanding into Washington Square and Battery Parks, but stressed, “We’re not going to give up Liberty Plaza” — the protesters’ name for Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, where about 250 have camped out around the clock.

“It’s sometimes hard to move around there. We have a lot of people,” he said.

Chaos on the interstate as huge dust storm blinds Arizona drivers and causes multiple pile-ups as one driver dies

A blinding dust storm rolled across the Arizona desert Tuesday, causing three pile-ups involving dozens of vehicles on a major interstate. A 70-year-old man was killed and at least 15 other people were injured, authorities said.

The first two crashes occurred just after noon as a dust storm suddenly covered Interstate 10 near Picacho, about midway between Phoenix and Tucson. Those collisions involved 16 vehicles and led to the fatality.

Video showed dust roiling over dozens of cars, tractor-trailers and ambulances pulled over or strewn about the highway. Authorities were unable to transport injured motorists by helicopter because of the heavy dust.

One man was killed and at least 15 other people were injured in the accident, authorities said.Arizona Department of Public Safety officers and other emergency personnel make their way around vehicles involved in a crash on Interstate 10
The pile-ups involved a number of larger vehicles as well as cars
State public safety officers brave the dust storm to help in the massive clear-up operation






'It looked like a war zone,' Patrick Calhoun, one of the first rescuers to responder to the scene, told The Associated Press. 'This has been one of the worst pileups we've had on the I-10.'

Calhoun, with the Avra Valley Fire District, said the man who died was in the passenger seat of a car driven by his wife. Their car had slammed into the back of a semi and was lodged underneath it, killing the man almost instantly and leaving the woman critically injured in a semiconscious state of shock.

Calhoun said it took 45 minutes to hook up winches to the vehicle, pull it out and then cut the woman out of the car to take her to a hospital.

A second vehicle also was lodged under a semi, Calhoun said, and two people were extricated in a similar manner before being taken to a hospital.

A third pileup occurred almost two hours later on I-10 just north of Casa Grande and involved eight vehicles. No one was killed in that collision; two people had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, Graves said.

Katie Maass, a spokeswoman at University Medical Center in Tucson, said the hospital was treating 12 patients involved in the collisions. Three were listed as critical and the other nine were in serious condition as of Tuesday evening.

Authorities closed the interstate for most of the afternoon. They reopened the eastbound lanes around 5:45 p.m., and Graves said officials hoped to have westbound lanes reopened by 10 p.m.

Two other crashes later in the day likely were the result of dust, authorities said. A crash involving two tractor-trailers and a small car on I-10 near the Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix seriously injured two people. Another crash on I-10 near Tonopah, west of Phoenix, didn't involve major injuries, authorities said.

Dust storms are common across Arizona during dry and windy conditions, and walls of dust more than a mile high can blanket an area in a matter of seconds, sometimes reducing visibility to zero.

Winds from the southwest were gusting at up to 40 mph throughout Arizona on Tuesday, said Jessica Nolte, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix.

"These winds have accumulated so much that when they move through the region they start to pick up the dry top soil," she said. "It can be a very rapid development."

The Phoenix area was enveloped in a beige haze for much of the day, obscuring the view of the mountains that surround the metropolitan area.

The winds should taper off Tuesday evening and into Wednesday, Nolte said. Another weather system was expected to move into Arizona on Thursday, and Nolte said it could generate gusts as strong as Tuesday's.

Nolte said the weather service did not issue a dust storm warning before it occurred but did warn people about the strong winds.

Although it was still early to evaluate the extent of Tuesday's damage, Graves said dust storms have created worse crashes.

One strong winter storm wreaked havoc in 2009 near Casa Grande, killing three people dead in a series of fiery crashes caused by thick, blowing dust on I-10. One of those killed was a man whose vehicle was rear-ended by his father's truck. Two teenage siblings also died.

'We did not have that, fortunately, in this situation,' Graves said. 'While it's sad there's a fatality and it's serious, it could have been a lot worse.'

Hank Williams Jr apologises for Obama-Hitler comment

US President Barack Obama (centre) plays golf on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts August 23, 2011. With Obama are Eric Whitaker (left) and Marvin Nicholson (right).


US country music singer Hank Williams Jr. said on Tuesday he was “very sorry” for any offense caused by his remarks on Fox News Channel this week comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.

His apology was posted on his website a day after the Disney-owned cable sports channel ESPN pulled Williams’ theme song from its popular “Monday Night Football” broadcast in a rebuke to the country star for his Hitler remark.




Appearing on Fox News Channel’s morning program “Fox & Friends” on Monday, Williams said he thought that a June 18 golf summit pairing Obama with Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner in the midst of the congressional budget standoff had “turned a lot of people off.”

Asked what he didn’t like about the friendly bipartisan golf match, Williams replied, “Come on! It’d be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.” He went on to refer to Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as “the enemy.”

After his “All My Rowdy Friends” song was yanked from the “Monday Night Football” opening by ESPN later that day, Williams issued a statement acknowledging that his “analogy was extreme” but insisting it was intended to illustrate how ludicrous he thought it was for Obama and Boehner to team up at golf.

Williams, 62, was scheduled to return to the Fox News Channel with an interview on Tuesday on the “Hannity” show, but the network told Reuters the singer decided to cancel.

Hours later, Williams posted another statement, saying: “I have always been very passionate about politics and sports, and this time it got the best or worst of me.”

“The thought of the leaders of both parties jukin and high fiven on a golf course, while so many families are struggling to get by simply made me boil over and make a dumb statement, and I am very sorry if it offended anyone,” he wrote.

He concluded, “I would like to thank all my supporters. This was not written by some publicist.”

The statement was posted just below a link to a video clip from the ABC daytime TV talk show “The View” in which host Whoopi Goldberg suggested Williams was judged too harshly.

“Hank is a musician, and he’s always been provocative,” Goldberg said on the show. “He could have chosen his words more wisely, but as someone who steps in it quite often, we all do it. Those among us who are without sin, cast the first stone.”

Reporting on Williams’ apology on its own website last night, ESPN said it had no comment on whether his song would be used on future telecasts.

US will not offer new F-16s to Taiwan

Taiwan Air Force F-16 fighter jet takes off from the closed-off section of Sun Yat-sen freeway at Chang-hua county in central Taiwan, in this May 15, 2007 file photo

US President Barack Obama has decided against selling new F-16 jets to Taiwan but will give the island an arms package worth US$4.2 billion (RM12.6 billion), the Washington Times reported.

The newspaper quoted administration and congressional officials as saying the US Congress will be briefed later today on the proposals.



The White House declined comment, the newspaper said. Officials in Taiwan had no immediate comment.

The Obama administration had said it would decide by October 1 on Taiwan’s request to buy 66 late-model F-16 fighter planes built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Since 2006, the United States has balked at providing Taiwan the F-16 C/D models, potentially valued at more than US$8 billion, apparently for fear of angering China, which regards the self-ruled island as its own.

China’s top official newspaper warned last week that “madmen” on Capitol Hill who want the United States to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan were playing with fire and could pay a “disastrous price”.

The package proposed by the administration will include weapons and equipment to upgrade Taiwan’s existing F-16 A/B model aircraft, the Washington times said.

US, Japan drop 2014 Okinawa base-transfer deadline

A US Air Force F-22 fighter jet (front) taxis past a C17 aircraft after landing at Kadena US Air Force Base on Japan’s island of Okinawa in this file photo of May 30, 2009. The US and Japan say they will drop the 2014 Okinawa base-transfer deadline


The United States and Japan today agreed to drop a 2014 deadline for building a new airstrip on Okinawa and transferring US Marines from that Japanese island to Guam, top officials said in a statement.

“Completion of the FRF (Futenma Replacement Facility) and the Marine relocation will not meet the previously targeted date of 2014,” the two allies said in a statement following Cabinet-level talks in Washington.

They vowed to complete the projects “at the earliest possible date after 2014.”

US Senate confirms Panetta as Pentagon chief

CIA Director Leon Panetta testifies at his Senate confirmation hearings to become US Secretary of Defence on Capitol Hill Washington in this June 9, 2011 file photograph. The US Senate voted unanimously on June 21, 2011 to confirm Panetta as the new secretary of defence.


The US Senate voted unanimously yesterday to confirm outgoing Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta as the new secretary of defence, replacing the retiring Robert Gates.

Panetta, 72, who has held a variety of senior posts in Washington dating back decades, was nominated by President Barack Obama to head the Pentagon. Panetta is expected to start his new job on July 1.

The rare 100-0 vote followed a debate that saw praise for Panetta and anxiety about the challenges he will face to push defence budgets lower and oversee the start of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

The troop pullout is due to begin next month and Obama is expected to present a blueprint for it in a prime-time speech to Americans today.

“The next secretary of defence will have to struggle with the competing demands on our forces while Washington struggles with an extremely challenging fiscal environment,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said.



He said Panetta’s lengthy experience made him the right man for the job. As CIA director since February 2009, Panetta had been “intimately” involved in the most pressing national security issues, Levin said — personally overseeing the manhunt that ended in last month’s covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda.

During his confirmation hearing, Panetta broadly signaled his alignment with Gates, saying they tended to “walk hand in hand” on many issues. Gates has warned against hasty troop drawdowns in Afghanistan.

Senators of both parties lauded Gates, who is stepping down after four and a half years as Pentagon chief, first under former President George W. Bush and then Obama.

Debate over Afghanistan

While there was no argument about Panetta’s qualifications, his confirmation did produce Senate debate on Afghanistan.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said the United States could not afford the war any longer as it “drowns in a sea of debt.” Manchin urged Obama to “end the scope of our current mission well before 2014,” when the lead in Afghanistan’s security is due to be turned over to Afghan forces.

“I believe it is time for President Obama to begin a substantial and responsible reduction of our military presence in Afghanistan,” Manchin told the Senate. “I believe it is time for us to rebuild America, not Afghanistan.”

Senator John McCain called Manchin’s comments isolationist, while fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said it was important not to leave faster than Afghan security forces are able to fight militants without the help of US troops.

Panetta told Congress he would ensure fiscal discipline in the US military, saying the days of “unlimited” defence budgets were over.

Panetta was budget director for former President Bill Clinton and helped shape decisions that led to budget surpluses of the late 1990s, Levin said. Panetta is also a former member of Congress and once chaired the House budget committee.

Decades ago, Panetta headed the Office of Civil Rights in the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon. But he won election to the House of Representatives as a Democrat and worked for Democratic administrations after that.

Hackers break into US Senate computers

The US Sergeant at Arms Office confirmed yesterday that the Senate’s website had been hacked this past weekend and that it had ordered a review of all Senate computer sites.

“Although this intrusion is inconvenient, it does not compromise the security of the Senate’s network, its members or staff,” a Sergeant at Arms Office official said. “Specifically, there is no individual user account information on the server supporting senate.gov that could have been compromised.”



The revelation came after a loosely aligned group of computer hackers calling themselves Lulz Security said they broke into the US Senate’s computer network.

Lulz Security, who have hacked into Sony’s website and the US Public Broadcasting System, posted online a list of files that appear not to be sensitive but indicate the hackers had been into the Senate’s computer network.

“We don’t like the US government very much,” Lulz Security said at the top of their release. “This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov — is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?”

The comment refers to reports that the US military had decided that it could respond to cyber attacks from foreign countries with traditional military force.

Senate staffers asked about the hack were unaware of it.

“They (Lulz) certainly demonstrated that they were in and they found the file server,” said Stewart Baker, a former cyber official at the Department of Homeland Security.

Obama 2012 — it’s all about jobs

President Barack Obama walks out to speak about jobs to employees after touring a North Carolina energy efficient LED lights manufacturing facility, Cree Inc., in Raleigh-Durham, June 13, 2011.


If President Barack Obama wants to convince Americans he can right the struggling US economy and deserves four more years in office, he needs to come up — quickly — with a convincing plan to generate jobs.

Recent disappointing economic data has raised fears of a double-dip recession, particularly a weaker-than-expected unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent in May. And with polls showing voters are deeply concerned, Republicans vying for their party’s nomination to oppose Obama in 2012 have been hammering the incumbent on the issue.

“The pressure to come up with something is getting stronger all the time, because the numbers in the last two months have not been good,” said Jeremy Mayer, an associate professor at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University.



Most polls have shown Obama defeating any of the current Republican White House contenders next year, but the continuing fiscal woes are cutting into his lead. A Reuters/Ipsos survey this month showed 60 per cent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, amid higher gasoline prices, stubbornly high joblessness and a weak housing market.

“Despite his or his handlers’ rhetoric, the electorate — if the various polls are an indication — has given plenty of feedback that it wants specifics and definitive action, not pablum, and most definitely not the ‘I feel your pain’ response to the seeming endless stream of negative economic news,” said Gerald Shuster, a political communications expert at the University of Pittsburgh.

Republican candidates attacked Obama as a failure on the economy during their first major debate of the 2012 nominating race on Monday. Analysts said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the early front-runner, who touts his record as a successful businessman to blast Obama’s economic record, had a particularly good night.

Voters can expect to see more, unless things improve.

“My perspective is that if the current path continues, you’ll see a message out of the eventual Republican nominee that basically says, ‘If I can’t fix the economy in four years, you should fire me also,’” said Matt McDonald of Hamilton Place Strategies, a Republican policy and communications consultant.

“And candidly, the response that the administration needs to have to that is a better economy. It’s just very difficult. Communications strategy can get blamed for a lot of things, but sometimes the news is just bad,” he said.

No US president since World War Two has been re-elected with an unemployment rate higher than 7.2 per cent.

BLAMING BUSH

As the administration has struggled to come up with an economic message, it has shifted away from blaming Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, a strategy that failed to convince Americans looking to the White House for leadership on the biggest challenge the country faces.

“The message is switching away from, ‘It was the Bush administration,’ to a slight variant, which is ‘it’s a really, really deep hole and we’re beginning to dig out of it, but it’s going to take a while to dig out of it,’” said Christopher Arterton, a professor of political management at George Washington University, who has been a Democratic consultant.

The White House says Obama is not changing his economic strategy in response to recent discouraging data.

“What the president said a month ago on jobs day, when the numbers exceeded expectations, was very similar to what the president said last Friday,” White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki told Reuters last week.

“He wasn’t waving a victory banner a month ago, and he isn’t waving a victory banner now.”

Obama will continue to talk about the progress the country has made and what else needs to be done, including taking a responsible approach to the deficit and focusing on programmes to boost economic growth, as well as successes like growth in manufacturing, she said.

Obama met on Monday in North Carolina — a state he won narrowly in 2008 — with his jobs panel, a group of corporate executives who offered job-boosting proposals including measures to cut red tape, provide more loans and invest in energy efficiency.

But voters will be looking for big results, and Obama will face a tough fight with Republicans in Congress who are focused on cutting government spending to control the budget deficit — to pass another stimulus package or other spending programmes.

Mayer suggested Obama’s best strategy might be to sidestep Congress and work directly with state governors, many of them Republicans, on a stimulus plan targeting state governments, given steep budget cuts and layoffs at the local level.

“The numbers coming out of state capitals are looking pretty horrendous,” he said. “These are very significant job losses and if you could save some of those jobs, that would have some positive outcomes for Obama.”

Bahrain king approves US$16.4b spending for two years

Bahrain’s king has approved a budget of US$16.44 billion (RM49.34 billion) over the next two years, a finance ministry spokesman said today — a 44 per cent rise in expenditure in the kingdom, hit by political unrest earlier this year.

“The king passed the law for the budget for 2011 and 2012 . . . it will approve expenditures for 6.198 billion Bahraini dinars,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Facing a rising subsidies bill and dragged down by its struggling banking sector, the small non-OPEC energy producer has the weakest fiscal position among Gulf Arab nations.



The tiny Gulf island kingdom was dealt a further blow after weeks of anti-government protests in February and March that led to an imposition of emergency law, which it revoked last week.

Analysts polled by Reuters expected Bahrain to post deficits of 1.4 per cent of gross domestic product in 2011 and 1.7 per cent for 2012.

US congressman Weiner admits online affairs

US Representative Anthony Weiner yesterday tearfully admitted having a number of inappropriate relationships with women over the Internet, saying he was deeply ashamed but would not resign.

Weiner admitted to inappropriate Internet and telephone conversations with six women but said none of them developed into a physical relationship.


“I’m deeply regretting what I have done and I’m not resigning,” Weiner, who had been seen as a rising star among Democrats, told a news conference while wiping away tears as he apologised for his actions and for lying in the cover-up.



The New York Democrat, a leading liberal voice in the US House of Representatives, had been expected to run for mayor of New York City in 2013.

The scandal began more than a week ago when Weiner denied tweeting a photo of a man’s bulging boxer briefs to a 21-year-old female student in Washington state, insisting his account had been hacked.

“I tweeted a photograph of myself that I intended as a direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle,” he told reporters yesterday.

“Once I realised I had posted it to Twitter, I panicked. I took it down and said that I had been hacked. I then continued to stick to that story, which was a hugely regrettable mistake,” he said. “The picture was of me, and I sent it.”

Calling his actions “very dumb” and “destructive”, he stressed he did not have sex with any of the women.

Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, a long-time aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The couple was married in a ceremony officiated by former President Bill Clinton.

“I love my wife very much and we have no intention of splitting up over this,” he said.

Forget about mayor?

Weiner said his affairs were conducted over several years on Twitter, Facebook, email and by phone with women he met online, primarily on Facebook. He said he sent the women explicit pictures of himself but broke no law, mostly used his home computer and never used his congressional mobile device.

“Certainly he can forget about (running for) mayor,” said Doug Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College in New York, adding that while Weiner might weather the storm, he would likely face a tough challenge if he sought re-election next year.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called for an ethics probe “to determine whether any official resources were used or any other violation of House rules occurred”.

Weiner said in a statement: “I welcome and will fully cooperate with an investigation by the House Ethics Committee.”

New York State Republican Party chairman Ed Cox called for his resignation, saying: “His actions are at best despicable and at worst illegal.”

Former Senate Republican aide John Ullyot, a communication consultant at public relations firm Hill & Knowlton in Washington, said: “Weiner’s handling of this situation is an absolute disaster — a textbook example of how not to act in a matter involving personal scandal.

“By holding a news conference and answering 30 minutes worth of questions, Weiner opened up many more lines of inquiry than he resolved: the possibility of underage victims, use of office phones, questions of whether his wife was aware.”

Earlier this year, two other members of Congress, both Republicans, stepped down amid scandal. John Ensign resigned from the US Senate amid an ethics committee probe into his extramarital affair with a campaign aide. And US Representative Chris Lee resigned after he posted a shirtless and flirty photo of himself online.

Yesterday, more pictures of Weiner, this time of him from the waist up sitting at his desk naked, surfaced online.

He characterised his relationships with the women as “a frivolous thing” and admitted that the affairs were conducted both before and since he was married.

Weiner’s denials and eventual admission was evocative of President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 admitted to an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky after vigorous denials.

Unlike Clinton, who was accused of being evasive even after admitting his dalliance, Weiner took many questions from the press yesterday, answering them plainly as he choked back his emotions, pausing to sip water on several occasions.

Unusual revelations by politicians in the New York metro area are nothing new. Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after frequenting prostitutes, and former New Jersey governor James McGreevey, who was married, tearfully resigned after it was revealed he had a homosexual affair with an aide.

Still, Weiner being undone by his own actions while using social media tools such as Twitter, which he was successfully using to bolster his personal political brand, is certainly a modern twist.

Rep. Anthony Weiner's Sexting Bombshell

Rep. Anthony Weiner encouraged a porn star to lie about their on-line relationship and offered her the help of his public relations team, according to a report on Tuesday. Weiner sent emails to former X-rated ...