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Hackers target Saudi government websites

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May 182013
 

Several government websites in Saudi Arabia were hacked in a series of heavy cyber attacks from overseas in recent days, disabling them briefly until the attacks were repelled, the government has said.

An investigation traced the “coordinated and simultaneous attacks” to hundreds of Internet protocol addresses in a number of countries, an unnamed source at the Saudi Interior Ministry told SPA, the country’s state news agency.

The interior ministry website crashed on Wednesday after it received a “huge amount” of service requests, but was back online less than two hours later after the “necessary technical drills” were performed to counter the attack, the source said.

The report made no mention of a possible motive.

Businesses, government agencies and critical infrastructure operators face unprecedented challenges from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks launched by criminals, hacker activists and foreign governments.

An attack last year on national oil company Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, damaged almost 30,000 computers and was one of the most destructive cyber strikes conducted against a single business.

That attack used a computer virus known as Shamoon. A group that claimed responsibility said Saudi Aramco was the main source of income for the Saudi government, which it blamed for “crimes and atrocities” in several countries including Syria and Bahrain.

On Friday, the website and Twitter feed of the Financial Times newspaper were hacked, apparently by the “Syrian Electronic Army”, a group of online activists who claim that they support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey arrests ‘prime suspect’ over blasts

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May 182013
 

Turkey arrests 'prime suspect' over blasts Turkish police have detained a man they believe to be one of the main perpetrators of car bombings that killed more than 50 people near the Syrian border, officials have said.

Hatay governor Celalettin Lekesiz said police had detained a man, who local media named as Mehmet Genc, shortly before midnight on Thursday in Samandag district, near the Syrian border, and that he was being treated as a prime suspect.

Turkey has accused Syria of involvement in the two bombings last weekend in the town of Reyhanli in Hatay province. Damascus has denied any role.

Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling AK Party, said the two vehicles used in the bombings were registered to the detained man, and that he had driven one to a blast site in Reyhanli.

State-run broadcaster TRT reported on Friday that Reyhanli’s police chief had been dismissed.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week he did not think the attacks were the result of a weakness in the intelligence services, but that there may have been a “disconnect” between them and the police.

Multiple arrests

Lekesiz said police were still searching for two other suspected perpetrators, who along with the latest man detained had been trying to cross over into Syria from Samandag but had failed because of stepped-up security along the border.

He said the two men were believed to still be inside Turkey. A total of 16 people were in detention in relation to the bombings, Lekesiz said, four of whom were formally arrested. It was not clear what charges they faced.

Ministers have said the bombings – one of the deadliest attacks in Turkey’s modern history – were carried out by a group with ties to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Damascus has offered to carry out a joint investigation.

Erdogan has rejected the offer and said his government would have a “road map” on the Syrian crisis after discussing the incident with Washington and other allies in the region.

The Turkish prime minister met US President Barack Obama on Thursday and the two leaders reiterated their calls for Assad to step down and for an end to the killing which the UN says has killed more than 80,000 people.

Dozens hurt in Hong Kong train accident

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May 182013
 

Sixty-two people have been injured after multiple cars derailed on Hong Kong’s light railway in the north of the city, throwing passengers onto the floor, police say.

The accident occurred on Friday in the New Territories region north of the city’s business district.

“There was a derailment on the light rail,” a police spokeswoman told AFP news agency.

The fire department said that four people had been seriously injured while most others suffered sprains and cuts from the collision.

learned that at least one of the injured was in coma when taken to the hospital.

Rob McBride, correspondent, said that at the time of the accident, the railway system was busy because of the national holiday.

“It was driving too fast,” a female passenger told Cable TV News, adding that the train lost control when it was making a turn.

“It was very chaotic inside the train, there was some blood.”

The Hong Kong Light Rail Network links 68 stops along 36km of track in the New Territories.

Bird flu death toll rises in China

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May 182013
 

Bird flu death toll rises in China Four more people have died from a new strain of bird flu in China, bringing the death toll from the H7N9 virus to 36 from 131 confirmed cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

The United Nations health agency said a written statement on Friday that the four deaths were from cases that had already been identified in laboratories.

It said here had been no new cases of infection with H7N9 Since May 8.

The WHO reiterated that there was no evidence that the new strain of bird flu, which was first detected in patients in China in March, was passing easily from human to human. If such a feature emerged it could spark a pandemic.

But it said: “Until the source of infection has been identified and controlled, it is expected that there will be further cases of human infection with the virus.”

Nine labs open

The WHO said that Chinese health authorities had continued with enhanced surveillance, epidemiological investigations, close contact tracing, clinical management, laboratory testing and sharing of samples as well as prevention and control measures.

The number of new cases has dwindled in some provinces and operations

“In the past week, the Shanghai and Zhejiang provincial governments have started to normalise their emergency operations into their routine surveillance and response activities,” the health organisation said.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has said that it has dedicated nine extra laboratories to help investigators track a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS that appears to be centred in the kingdom.

The Health Ministry announcement on Thursday follows its report that two health care workers became ill this month after being exposed to patients with the virus.

Experts were closely studying whether it could spread easily from person to person.

The WHO had been informed of 40 confirmed cases of the virus since September 2012, mostly in Saudi Arabia but also in Europe and Jordan.

At least 20 people have died, including 15 reportedly in Saudi Arabia.

The virus has been compared to SARS, a pneumonia that surfaced in China in late 2002 and killed at least 774 people worldwide.

The WHO, which is closely monitoring the viruses, has said that the bird flu and SARS-like viruses had the potential to cause a global pandemic if they evolved into a form easily spread between people.

France set to legalise same-sex marriage

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May 182013
 

French President Francois Hollande is due to sign a gay marriage and adoption bill into law, after the country’s Constitutional Council threw out a legal challenge by the right-wing opposition.

Hollande, trying to turn the page on months of bitter opposition to the measures, said it was “time to respect the law and the Republic”.

The Constitutional Council approved the bill on Friday, which was also the International Day Against Homophobia.

The French court ruling clears the way for France to become the 14th country to legalise same-sex marriage when Hollande signs the law on Saturday.

French deputies approved the bill in parliament last month after a several days of often stormy debate.

The main right-wing opposition UMP party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy immediately challenged the move on constitutional grounds.

Friday’s statement by the Constitutional Council, however, said same-sex marriage “did not run contrary to any constitutional principles,” and that it did not infringe on “basic rights or liberties or national sovereignty”.

The council did say that gay marriage did not automatically mean the “right to a child”: the “interest of the child” would be the overriding factor in such cases, it ruled.

Reacting to the ruling Friday, UMP party chief Jean-Francois Cope told TF1 television: “It is a decision that I regret, but that I respect.”

‘Celebration time’

Hollande, as he announced his decision to sign the bill into law as early as Saturday, warned that he would brook no resistance.

“I will ensure that the law applies across the whole territory, in full, and I will not accept any disruption of these marriages,” he said.

Gay rights groups hailed the decision as a watershed.

“Now it’s celebration time,” said spokesman Nicolas Gougain of the LGBT association representing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

Gay rights watchdog SOS Homophobie added: “Our country has taken a great step forward today although it’s regrettable that it was taken in a climate of bad faith and homophobic violence.”

The issue of gay marriage has divided France, which is officially secular but overwhelmingly Catholic. Protests against the bill drew hundreds of thousands, with a handful of hard-core protesters clashing with police.

Violent protest

Late on Friday, between 200 and 300 protesters gathered in central Paris to denounce the ruling backing the bill and calling on Hollande to resign.

One police officer was injured after a flammable liquid was thrown in his face.

Earlier, a group of bare-chested men wearing white masks staged their own protest against gay marriage on one of the bridges over the Seine. They call themselves the “Hommen” – a riposte to the bare-breasted feminist protesters known as the “Femmen”.

Opponents of the law plan another major protest rally in Paris on May 26.

Recent polls suggest that opinion in France is fairly evenly split on both gay marriage and adoption.

As the French bill got the green light to become law, a report by the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) highlighted the problems that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people still face across Europe.

It said two-thirds of the community were still afraid to show their sexuality in public — and a quarter had been victims of physical or verbal attacks.

South Sudan town ‘trashed by army’

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May 182013
 

South Sudan town 'trashed by army' Gained access to a South Sudanese town, where fighting and looting have forced most of the population to leave.

Homes and a hospital have been looted and destroyed, with the UN blaming South Sudanese soldiers who have been fighting a regional rebel group.

The army denies the charge, but medical staff and patients at the hospital, the only such facility for 150km, said they had been threatened by soldiers.

Jonglei state is the scene of a rebel insurgency that has steadily gained momentum. An organisation that calls itself the South Sudan Democratic Movement says it wants to overthrow the government and it has taken significant territory in the east of the country.

Scores killed in attacks on Iraqi Sunnis

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May 182013
 

Scores killed in attacks on Iraqi Sunnis At least 76 people have been killed in bombings in majority Sunni districts in Baghdad and surrounding areas in the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months have officials said.

The spike in violence has raised fears the country could be on the path to a new round of sectarian bloodshed.

Friday’s attacks pushed the three-day Iraqi death toll to 130, including Shias at bus stops and outdoor markets in scenes reminiscent of the retaliatory attacks between the two Islamic branches in 2006-2007 that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

In the deadliest attack on Friday, twin bombings near a Sunni mosque in Baquba, north of Baghdad, killed 41 people and injured dozens.

One bomb exploded as worshippers were departing the Saria mosque while a second went off after people gathered at the scene of the first blast, police said.

Television aired footage of bodies on the ground outside the mosque, pools of blood and the scattered shoes of the victims.

“I was about 30 metres from the first explosion. When the first exploded, I ran to help them, and the second one went off. I saw bodies flying and I had shrapnel in my neck,” said Hashim Munjiz, a college student, at the site.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Baghdad bombings

In Baghdad, a bomb exploded near a shopping centre during evening rush hour in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Amariyah, killing at least 12 people and wounding 32.

That was followed by another bomb in a commercial district in Dora, another Sunni neighbourhood, which killed two people and wounded 22, according to officials.

In another attack, a roadside bomb exploded during a Sunni funeral procession in Madain, south of Baghdad, killing eight
mourners and wounding 11, police said.

An explosion also struck a cafe in Fallujah, 65km west of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding nine, according to police and hospital officials.

A day earlier, attacks targeted Shias in several locations.

Omar Al Saleh, reporting from Erbil, said the sectarian nature of recent attacks were worrying Iraqis.

“You have attacks on Shia worshippers, you have attacks on Sunni worshippers. It appears that whoever is behind those attacks wants to ignite sectarian strife,” he said.

“It’s an indication that security conditions are really going downhill in this country. There is a huge and growing sense of fear among Iraqis.”

Tensions have been intensifying since Sunnis began protesting against what they say is mistreatment at the hands of the mainly Shia-led government, including random detentions and neglect.

The protests, which began in December, have largely been peaceful, but the number of attacks rose sharply after a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in the country’s north on April 23.

A suicide bomber on Thursday killed 12 people at the entrance of Al-Zahraa Husseiniyah, a Shia place of worship in the city of Kirkuk, where relatives of victims from violence on Wednesday were receiving condolences.

Car bombs also hit three Shia-majority areas of Baghdad on Thursday, killing 10 people.

India gang rape suspect attacked in prison

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May 172013
 

One of the men on trial for the fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in India has been beaten and poisoned by prison inmates and is unconscious in hospital, his lawyer said.

Prison authorities on Wednesday denied any mistreatment of Vinya Sharma, who has been at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail since he was arrested on suspicion of attack on the woman in December that stunned India and brought thousands of protesters onto the streets.

Kavitha Krishna, of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, said not much has changed since the attack

One of Sharma’s co-accused, Ram Singh, the alleged ringleader, was found hanged from a ceiling grille inside his cell in March. Police described his death as suicide although a judicial inquiry is pending.

Sharma’s lawyer, AP Singh, accused inmates of “beating him on the chest” and poisoning his food, and said he was admitted to Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital on Tuesday after being treated at another city hospital since Sunday.

“Vinay was beaten by four or five fellow inmates inside the jail premises,” he told Reuters, adding he was in an unconscious state.

‘The allegations are false’

Sunil Gupta, a spokesman for Tihar Jail, said Sharma was being treated in a city hospital for a fever.

“There was no such beating of Vinay to my knowledge. All the allegations are false,” he said.

Police arrested Sharma and Singh, along with three other adult men and a teenage boy, on charges of raping the 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a moving bus and fiercely beating her and her male friend on Dec. 16.

The woman died of her injuries in a Singapore hospital two weeks after the assault, which enraged Indians, who protested in their thousands for days to demand better law enforcement to fight gender crimes.

The city court where Sharma has stood trial since early this year asked jail authorities and doctors on Wednesday to file reports on his health on Thursday. Sharma was falsely implicated in the case, his lawyer said at the start of the trial.

Convicted Bollywood star surrenders to court

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May 172013
 

Indian actor Sanjay Dutt has surrendered before a Mumbai court and will begin serving time for a weapons conviction linked to a deadly terror attack in the city in 1993.

The Bollywood actor surrendered on Thursday to a five-year jail sentence handed by India’s Supreme Court in March for illegal possession of weapons supplied by mafia bosses linked to the terror attack, which killed 257 people in the city 10 years ago.

The 53-year-old actor served 18 months in jail in 2007, before being released on bail pending an appeal, so he is to spend the next three and half years behind bars.

The Supreme Court reduced his prison sentence to five years from the six-year term initially handed down.

Earlier this month, the court rejected Dutt’s plea seeking review of its judgement on his conviction and jail term.

According to industry estimates, Dutt is currently involved in projects worth at least $20 million.

Denying knowledge

Dutt was convicted for possession of an automatic rifle and a pistol that were supplied to him by men subsequently convicted in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.

Dutt has said he knew nothing about the bombing plot and that he asked for the guns to protect his family – his mother was Muslim and his father Hindu – after receiving threats during the religious riots that preceded the bombings.

The 1993 bombings were seen at the time as the world’s worst terrorist attack, with 13 bombs exploding over a two-hour period across Mumbai.

Powerful explosives were packed into cars and scooters parked near India’s main Bombay Stock Exchange and other sites in the city. In addition to those killed, more than 720 people were injured in the attack.

Despite the long-drawn trial over the bombings, Dutt’s Bollywood career has flourished over the past 20 years.

China warns EU against telecoms probe

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May 172013
 

China has threatened to retaliate if the European Union formally opens an investigation into alleged anti-competitive behaviour by Chinese mobile telecom equipment companies.

The European Commission said earlier this week it would open an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into mobile telecommunications network equipment and components from China if bilateral negotiations fail.

Beijing’s commerce ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said on Thursday that European mobile telecom equipment firms enjoy a “much bigger” market share in China than Chinese companies have in the EU, and any moves by Brussels will harm them both.

“We hope the EU will not take actions that do no good to either side,” he told reporters.

Beijing will take “assertive” measures to “defend our lawful interests and rights” according to World Trade Organisation rules and Chinese laws, he said, if the EU follows through with the investigation.

China “does not want to go into a trade war with the European Union”, he said, but warned: “Any consequences caused must be borne by the party who provoked the friction.”

China is the world’s second-largest economy and the EU is its biggest trading partner, with total two-way trade reaching $546bn last year according to Chinese Customs figures.

‘Chinese subsidies’

An investigation would be the first to be launched without a complaint by European companies, but rather by the Commission itself.

Manufacturers such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent have suffered as a result of cheap Asian imports but will not make formal complaints for fear of Chinese reprisals, which has made it hard for the Commission to gather evidence.

Although not mentioned in the statement, EU officials told Reuters the primary targets of the investigation would be world No 2 telecoms equipment maker Huawei and smaller Chinese company ZTE.

Officials said they now had proof of Chinese subsidies, but both Huawei and ZTE deny benefiting from illegal state support. Huawei also denied it was selling telecoms equipment below cost to secure market share.

Shen said China had made a proposal over the telecoms matter to the European Commission during a recent visit by an EU delegation to China, but had still not received any response.

“This makes one cast doubt on the sincerity of the EU to resolve conflicts through consultations,” Shen said.

EU officials said on Wednesday they have had an open-door policy to the Chinese authorities for more than a year at China’s own request, but that the response had been disappointing so far.

“As we made clear yesterday, the European Commission counts on our Chinese partners to take up the offer of negotiations in a serious manner to find an amicable solution to resolve this situation,” EU trade spokesman John Clancy told Reuters on Thursday.

The EU and China are embroiled in a series of tit-for-tat disputes on items ranging from agricultural products to steel tubes.

Earlier this week, officials said the European Commission had agreed to impose average import duties of 47 percent on solar panels from China, a move they say is to guard against the dumping of cheap goods in Europe.

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