Western bloodlust: Assad days ‘numbered’, ‘day of reckoning’ for ‘disgraceful’ regime

Statements from Western leaders on Syria have grown harsh, if not menacing, as criticisms of the Bashar Assad government are unleashed and regime change becomes a common theme.

The fury and thirst for blood can be heard around the world as Washington and Brussels make their views known on how the conflict in Syria should be resolved. The noose began tightening around Damascus after reports emerged in the previous week that several foreign journalists were killed and injured in a siege of the rebel stronghold Homs. And now, Western officials are taking advantage of the incident as an excuse for openly calling for the removal of Assad and his government. The new labels for the country’s president and his regime are growing creative in their severity.

‘Medieval barbarity’ condemned from the UK

Responsibility for the “medieval barbarity” in Syria lies solely with the country’s leadership, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said at the end of an EU summit in Brussels.

“We will make sure … that there is a day of reckoning for those who are responsible. I have a clear message for those in authority in Syria: make a choice, turn your back on this criminal regime or face justice for the blood that is on your hands,” he said.

Britain is now demanding that Assad face a war crimes tribunal for what Cameron describes as “butchering his own people.”

“It is very important that we set out the war crimes that effectively are being committed, that we write them down, we take the photographic evidence, we bring it together and … make sure that the day of reckoning will come,” he said.

London is withdrawing its entire diplomatic staff from the troubled country, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Thursday.

France wants ‘dictators to pay’

As the two French journalists Edith Bouvier and William Daniels, who were evacuated from the embattled city of Homs, arrived at an airport near Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy asserted that “dictators anywhere in the world should know that they will have to account for their crimes.”

“The crimes that they have committed will not go unpunished,” Sarkozy is quoted as saying by Al Arabiya.

He backed his rhetoric with the announcement that France is to close its embassy in Damascus. 

‘Assad’s days numbered,’ Obama warns

The US is obviously not the country to avoid inflammatory comments on the issue. President Barack Obama stated in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly published on Friday that the Syrian president’s “days are numbered,” and said that the US was working to accelerate the transition to what it calls democracy for the country.

“It is our estimation that [Assad’s] days are numbered – it’s a matter not of if, but when,” Obama added.

“Now, can we accelerate that? We’re working with the world community to try to do that,” he said.

Obama did not hesitate to openly compare the situation in Syria to that in Libya some time ago, saying that the country is more sophisticated and more complicated than Libya – while regretting that “countries like Russia are blocking UN action.”

Regime change was the objective in two separate resolutions presented to the UN Security Council, both vetoed by Russia and China, who believe the international community cannot simply push out governments. Moscow and Beijing maintain that the Syrian people must decide what is to take place in their country, and support initiatives that would have both the government and the opposition agree to a ceasefire.

Obama noted that US is trying through the “Friends of the Syrian People” group to promote humanitarian relief to cities under attack from Syrian government forces.

“But they can also accelerate a transition to a peaceful and stable and representative Syrian government,” he added.

Earlier in the week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a Congressional committee that Assad could be classified as a war criminal, while France suggested Assad be referred to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Assad bad, rebels good?

Western leaders are classifying the Syrian conflict in more black-and-white terms every day, with Assad consistently on the dark side. But while Brussels and Washington condemn the Assad government, eyewitnesses from Homs tell chilling stories of atrocities committed by opposition fighters, who kidnap and kill anyone they choose. 

The Free Syrian Army blocked passage to Red Cross and Red Crescent ambulances, delaying evacuation from humanitarian disaster areas like the one in Baba Amr, a district of Homs. Further, on several instances when aid did reach its destination, there was no guarantee the people, who needed it, would receive it.

Thus, on Tuesday, a Russian helicopter flew into a neutral area to pick up Edith Bouvier, a French journalist wounded in the shelling of Homs on February 22. She was meant to be transported to France or Lebanon, but failed to appear, said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

“She was in the area controlled by the rebels. They could carry her out to the helicopter. But she never came. Or were the rebels holding her?” added Putin.

Nothing changed after two attempts by Red Crescent ambulances.

Bouvier and another injured reporter, William Daniels, finally reached Paris on Friday night. But as far as the official powers are concerned, there was no reason for the wounded journalists to spend so much time in the devastated city.

As the recent death toll in Syria's year-long uprising has leapt over 7,500 people, a growing number of voices are saying the atrocities carried out by the opposition can no longer be ignored.

“There is a growing recognition that some of the fundamentalist Islamic groups, who probably make up about 30 per cent of the armed insurgents, are guilty of as much brutality as the Syrian army,” Aisling Byrne, a project coordinator at the Conflicts Forum, told RT. “It is a guerrilla war. This is not a fight for democracy, but a fight to introduce a hardline Sunni regime.”

Watch RT’s interview with Aisling Byrne

Source: Russia Today

Blast it or paint it: Deadly asteroid bounds towards Earth out of the blue

To avert a new apocalypse – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint, or big guns. The tough part of either scheme is that time has long run out to build a spaceship for any operation.

NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months. 

The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower than the geosynchronous orbit kept by the Google Maps satellite.

Fireworks and watercolors

With the asteroid zooming that low, it will be too late to do anything with it besides trying to predict its final destination and the consequences of impact.

A spaceship is needed, experts agree. It could shoot the rock down or just crash into it, either breaking the asteroid into debris or throwing it off course.

“We could paint it,” says NASA expert David Dunham. 

Paint would affect the asteroid’s ability to reflect sunlight, changing its temperature and altering its spin. The asteroid would stalk off its current course, but this could also make the boulder even more dangerous when it comes back in 2056, Aleksandr Devaytkin, the head of the observatory in Russia’s Pulkovo, told Izvestia.

Spaceship impossible?

Whatever the mission, building a spaceship to deal with 2012 DA14 will take two years – at least. 

The asteroid has proven a bitter discovery. It has been circling in orbit for three years already, crossing Earth’s path several times, says space analyst Sergey Naroenkov from the Russian Academy of Sciences. It seems that spotting danger from outer space is still the area where mere chance reigns, while asteroid defense systems exist only in drafts.

Still, prospects of meeting 2012 DA14 are not all doom and gloom.

“The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most part of it will never reach the planet’s surface,” remarks Dunham.

But if the entire asteroid is to crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia. This is almost the size of Luxembourg. In today’s case, the destination of the asteroid is yet to be determined.

Source: Russia Today

Americans spend on pets than $ 50 billion

New estimates indicated a large increase in spending on American pets, where it saysthe American Association of pet products, it exceeded $ 50 billion through 2011.
The spending on food, medical care, about 65 percent of the total, with increasedspending on "pet services" at rates more than any other spending to reach 3.79 billiondollars in 2011.
Include the expenses of pet care services, food and hotel accommodation competent.
The head of the Association Bob Vetere is expected continued high spending on petservices to reach $ 4.11 billion by the end of 2012.
He adds, "We see an increase in this item, where people continue to work and requestservices such as pet care and feed them and walk around with it."
It is expected to increase pet insurance, where the estimated expenditure for this item to$ 450 million during 2011.
Said Jessica Foglsang doctor in San Diego's Alaitria "Associated Press" People areinterested in Pets, more than ever before. "
She noted that the services sector pets become more able to meet the specific needs of pet owners.

Source: BBC Arabic

Strong earthquake shakes New Caldeonya

She said the U.S. Geological Survey said an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 shookNew Caledonia in the South Pacific on Saturday.

The center said the warning of the tsunami in the Pacific Ocean did not issue a warningthat a tsunami occurred.

The epicenter was 399 kilometers east of the capital Noumea.

Source: Reuters

Poll - sleepiness affects the work of the pilots and train drivers

Many people resist the temptation to sleep in a boring meeting or idle afternoon, but the problem is more apparent between the pilots and train drivers.
He admitted about a quarter of pilots, airlines and about 23 percent of drivers surveyed conducted by the National Foundation for Research on sleep that sleepiness affects the performance of their jobs compared to 17 percent of workers in areas other than transportation.
He said about 20 percent of the pilots and train drivers they have committed serious errors in their work because of sleepiness.
Said David Cloud, CEO of the Foundation based in the Virginia-based "margin of error in these two professions is very small. Staff must transport their sleep organization to perform their best."
Also, the number of car accidents experienced by train drivers and pilots because of sleepiness when driving their cars on their way going or returning from work six times greater than accidents involving other employees.
It may be a working system the pilots and train drivers and travel for long periods of time a source of sleep disturbance, just like doctors, nurses and others who are working throughout the day.
According to the Foundation that the lack of sleep is a common problem with one of every ten Americans admitted that Agalbhm sleep at the wrong time while driving a car or in a meeting.
But the largest number of transport workers. Half of the pilots and train drivers' two-thirds of those surveyed said they rarely get to sleep during periods of healthy Manaobachm night workers more than others.
And lack of sleep has an effect on cognition and risk assessment and problem solving, response time and mood.
The survey, conducted by WB & A Market Research for more than a thousand adults, including 292 miners were working in areas other than transport and 202 pilots and 203 truck drivers and 180 drivers and 210 drivers of trains, buses, taxis and tourist taxis.
Source: Reuters

Killed 14 train crash in Poland

Killed at least 14 people when passenger trains collided head-on in southern Poland in the late evening Saturday in one of the worst train accidents in Poland for more than 20 years.
The trains carrying an estimated 350 passengers and are moving in opposite directions on the same line when he collided at high speed in a rural area. And wounded at least 54 people.
Stepped up one of the carriages, which was traveling to Warsaw to the top by the force of the collision. And went out of other vehicles on the tracks and rolled on her side.
He said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who arrived to the scene with several government officials, a Chrin in the early hours of Sunday morning, "This is certainly the most tragic Korat trains in our history for many years.
"We can not at this time to give full responsibility for the final number of dead. We expect at least 14, but we are afraid to rise to 15 Hmaaladd."
He said it was too early to predict because of the collision, but added that he can not rule out human error.
Was not immediately known the fate of the drivers of the trains at a time when the authorities still determine the identities of the dead.
And rushed more than 350 firefighters to the scene, but they had to carry their equipment into their own hands, because the trains collided in the center of the field does not go through the only railway tracks.
With the help of a dog trained rescuers continued to search for victims of others in a dented steel blocks where Tusk said they had found the body of another one at least.
Said one survivor, "I was shocked. The person who hit the front of me. The lights were turned off. And everything flew. And we flew in the cabin, such as bags. And we could hear the screaming."
And transport the injured to nearby hospitals. It was among the passengers, many of the Ukrainians as well as French and Spaniards, but not one of them is transferred to the hospital.
Source: Reuters

Continuation of the rescue and clean-up in America and the hurricane killed 39

Rescue teams combed and residents of hurricane-ravaged towns to assess the damage on Saturday after a series of hurricanes that have caused havoc along the thousand miles of the U.S. Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico at a time when the death toll rose to 39 at least.
Officials said the hurricane that blew on Friday destroyed homes and damaged schools and a prison and toppled vehicles in different areas, killing 20 people in the state of Kentucky and 14 in the state of Indiana and neighboring three in Ohio and one in the state of Alabama. As announced by the state of Georgia killed a person in a related incident storms.
Said Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana said in a statement to CNN television news during a visit to the affected area in the south east of the state on Saturday, "we are used here in Indiana to nature's fury."
He said while the show's successor in the town of Henrivel which were exposed to serious damage, "but it became serious, as we have seen in past years since I took this job."
Hurricanes and culminating on Friday, which made its way from the Gulf of Mexico as far south as the Great Lakes northward wave of bad weather sweeping the deadly U.S. Midwest, bringing the death toll over the past week to at least 52 people.
In the area of ​​Ground Zero in the center of the town were evacuated Henrivel almost all students of a school compound on Friday afternoon before the storm sweeping the town. But about 40 teachers and students were among the last group leaving the school bus come back when they saw a terrible vow of the storm is approaching.
The storm turned the school bus. The high winds toppled another bus engine to settle down in front of a restaurant on the opposite side of the street, who fled by other residents.
In what looked like only a miracle did not drop dead one in the town, according to rescue officials indicate.
Some residents and semi-Friday Balzalzal hurricane's devastating in April 1974 which was the largest and most violent earthquakes in the history of the United States.
The storms came after less than a year on a series of storms caused the worst wave of losses under the United States is expected that the insurance industry is facing huge losses again.
The television footage showed the air taken from destroyed houses in different parts of several states, including Georgia, where storms toppled a light aircraft on the tarmac of a regional airport in the province before the County Boulding posed smashed on the ground.
An official in Indiana, killing 14 people by the hurricane on Friday in four counties in the state's southeast. A spokesman for the emergency services in the state of Kentucky that the death toll at 20 people across the state as officials announced the state of Ohio, killing three people in one of the districts of the state.
In Georgia, found the 83-year-old woman dead near a drainage tube after it emerged from her home in bad weather on Friday may have to search for the best shelter. An official at the public safety, he may have died after high water in the tube.
Have been warning of the hurricane all day on Friday of the Midwest and even the southeastern United States and shut down schools, shops, such as storm doors after a series of hurricanes earlier this week that killed 13 people in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee.
And increased severe storms last week, fears that the year 2012, carrying more hurricanes in the wake of killing 550 people because of last year across the country, the highest number of victims of its kind in a century, according to statistics from the National Authority for Meteorology.
Authorities said 40 homes were destroyed and another 150 houses were damaged in two districts in northern Alabama on Friday. Said Joe Paul Boone Director of the Emergency Management Agency in the province of Talabussa One person was killed in his home in the province.
Officials in Alabama that the roof Nbran in prison vulnerable to damage, leading to transfer 300 inmates to another place in prison. Said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the prison administration in Alabama that he had not been in prison for a serious injury did not venture any prisoner to escape from prison, despite the damage in some parts of the prison wall.
And multiplying the number of hurricanes as well as Tennessee and along the Ohio River Valley in the state of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.
Source: Reuters

French journalist tells the story of her escape from Homs

French journalist said Edith Bouvier dim it to end its attempt to escape from inside the tunnel Homs Mazam extends three kilometers was used by the armed opposition to carrying supplies to the district of Baba Amr besieged when the Syrian army bombed the tunnel exit.
And broke her leg in the explosion of a shell killed two foreign journalists two days before her escape, and Bouvier left in the tunnel was placed on a stretcher improvised fled while dozens of opposition fighters with the effects of explosions and returned to the neighborhood in which his uncle's destruction.
Buffett said the French newspaper Le Figaro, which was self-employed in Syria, "put one of them put his rifle Kalashnikov me. Then put his hand on my head and followed by prayers. It was not reassuring. Then left.
"I did not know what will happen after that. Do you close the outlet (the tunnel) .. you will enter Syrian soldiers .. I wanted to escape and then I found linked to the stretcher."
And saved one opposition fighters Bouvier and French photographer William Daniels, who accompanied throughout the journey when he entered the tunnel with a height of 1.6 meters on a motorbike and returned them to the Pope Amr.
Buffett said that when she saw the light outside the tunnel so her head was bleeding and had her leg wrapped in bandages was not wearing her underwear is after the stretcher had to leave and added that the opposition fighters stunned when I asked them a cigarette.
One of the fighters and asked her "Do you want to end your days here?" She said "Sure .. if that was after a long life but not now."
Arrived Bouvier and Daniels to Homs in February 21 to join a small group of war correspondents who documented the attack forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad on the city as part of an extensive campaign to suppress the protests resulted, according to statistics the United Nations has so far killed more than 7,500 civilians.
Buffett recalls the day the first since the bombing of the house approached the journalists who live there "when the bombs fell they told us that this cast Bashar greet the morning."
The journalists left the house three-storey house, fearing for their lives but a shell exploded near them as they enter into the street, wounding and killing Bouvier war veteran journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remy Aohleyk.
The scans were examined when Buffett was taken to a field hospital belonging to the opposition fighters and was told that her thigh bones broken. She added, "They told me you need to have emergency surgery Ajlaak. And then began the great escape."
Buffett praised the courage of Syrian fighters to escape as she recalled a trip that lasted a week and said they risked their lives to take it out is to Daniels safety while besieging the fourth year, led by Maher al-Assad of the city.
Buffett has denied allegations that the Syrian government opposition foreign journalists used as human shields and said they were too afraid to leave with a convoy of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was transporting wounded civilians for fear of snipers.
With the collapse of the tunnel and the approach of the fall in the hands of Pope Amr Army decided to journalists who have become hunted after Syrian television broadcast their forms and risk everything to escape in a car under cover of darkness.
Buffett said "We were exhausted physically and mentally. We had to get out of there."The newspaper did not publish details of the escape, fearing for the safety of the forward to them a helping hand.
Source: Reuters