An American of Turkish origin was one of the nine activists killed during Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, a U.S. official said Thursday.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the victim was Furkan Dogan, 19 years old, and that U.S. authorities in Turkey had met with Mr. Dogan's father to express condolences and to offer U.S. consular services, the Associated Press reported. She added that two other American citizens had been injured in raid and in a subsequent protest and the U.S. was seeking information about all three from Israel, AP reported.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Injured activist Almahti Alharati is taken to a hospital in Turkey after arriving from Israel. Hundreds of activists were flown back to Turkey early Thursday morning.
"Protecting the welfare of American citizens is a fundamental responsibility of our government and one that we take very seriously,'' she told reporters. "We are in constant contact with the Israeli government attempting to obtain more information about our citizens.''
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Mr. Dogan, who was born in Troy, N.Y., and held dual U.S-Turkish citizenship, had died of "gunshot wounds" but he declined to confirm reports that he had been shot multiple times in the head, AP reported. Mr. Crowley said U.S. consular officials had seen Mr. Dogan's body in a morgue in Israel before it was taken to Turkey but had not known he was a dual citizen at the time.
Mr. Dogan's father told Turkey's state-run Anatolia News Agency that he had identified his son's body and that he had been shot through the forehead. Still, he said, the family was not sad because they believed Mr. Dogan had died with honor.
"I feel my son has been blessed with heaven," he said. "I am hoping to be a father worthy of my son.''
Senior U.S. officials said Thursday that the Obama administration would "redouble" its efforts to get Israel to ease the siege on the Gaza strip. But these officials indicated the White House wasn't going to ask Prime Minister Netanyahu to formally end the blockade.
Rather, these officials said they believed there were ways to accelerate the introduction of important goods into Gaza, such as construction materials and food, while still allowing Israel to guard against the smuggling of weapons.
"We don't think it's in Israel's interest to maintain the status quo," Mr. Crowley said. But he added: "Given the history and reality, Israel has a very legitimate interest to inspect and control the flow of materials into Gaza."
Mrs. Clinton said no decision had yet been made about how to handle Mr. Dogan's death but renewed calls for Israel to "conduct a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation that conforms to international standards and gets to all the facts surrounding this tragic event."
"We are open to different ways to assuring that it is a credible investigation, including urging appropriate international participation," she told AP.
In Istanbul, about 10,000 mourners buried eight of the activists, with a further service due for a Turkish journalist who also was killed on the Mavi Marmara.
The crowd prayed before eight Turkish and Palestinian flag-draped coffins lined up in a row outside Istanbul's Fatih mosque in a traditional service for the dead, AP reported.
"Our friends have been massacred,'' Bulent Yildirim, the head of the Islamic charity group IHH that organized the flotilla, told the crowd.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of humanitarian-aid activists detained by Israeli commandos on their Gaza-bound flotilla returned to Istanbul, with crowds waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israeli slogans. Some of those returning Thursday said more had died but were missing. They were unable, however, to name any of the missing.
By 3 a.m., as the activists boarded buses on the airport tarmac, a jubilant crowd of several thousand Turks had gathered to meet them, pushing through police cordons to reach the airport perimeter fence.
"Turkey is proud of you," "God is great" and "Zionist dogs will pay for this," the crowd chanted.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said nine bodies were on the planes, Israel's first indication, since the raid to halt the flotilla turned violent early Monday morning, that the dead were from Turkey. According to several news reports, one of those killed was a Turkish-American carrying a U.S. passport. U.S. officials had not confirmed the reports.
Activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla return home to cheering crowds. Video courtesy of Reuters.
Turkey's energy minister, Taner Yildiz told reporters in Istanbul that Turkey was suspending all consideration of state to state energy and water projects with Israel, according to the Turkish IHA news agency. Mr. Yildiz said projects would be suspended until after relations with with Israel were normalized, the agency said. He named one project to deliver 50 million cubic meters of water per year, and another to extend the projected Blue Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Turkey to Israel.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned Israel for the incident, and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, had said early Wednesday that Turkey would review its ties with Israel if all Turks weren't released by the end of the day.
"If the Israelis do not lift the embargo on Gaza, we will form much larger flotillas in cooperation with NGOs from Europe and all over the world and we will send them both by sea and through Egypt, said Bulent Yildirim, leader of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH, which owns the Mavi Marmara, in a speech from an open-topped bus. Mr. Yildirim was on the Mavi Marmara when the Israeli commandos boarded.
Most of the activists were whisked away upon arrival in their buses without stopping. IHH organizers said they were being taken for medical checks.
The group of IHH leaders and foreign-language speakers that stopped to soak up the crowd's adulation and speak to the media appeared tired but victorious. They had conflicting accounts of what happened. Abdi Mahdi, a 30-year-old freelance photographer from Walthamstow London, said he was praying on the Mavi Marmara's deck with about 100 others when the Israelis attacked.
Mr. Mahdi first said they had all scattered "to look after each other" when the Israeli commandos pulled along side in dinghies and fired tear gas canisters on board without warning. He then acknowledged that the activists fought "with whatever we could find," adding that it was in self-defense. Mr. Mahdi spoke alongside several other Britons who held flowers they were given and punched the air before the jubilant crowd.
Gene St. Onge, a 63-year-old structural engineer from Oakland, Calif., was on the ship Sfendoni, behind the Mavi Marmara. Nobody fought on his boat, he said, but they tried to resist by blocking the wheelhouse with their bodies and holding onto the wheel. Israeli commandos pushed him down several times, Mr. Onge said, sporting a cut in his forehead. He said one person was hit in the head with a rifle butt while the ship's Greek captain suffered a burst ear drum and other injuries.
Mr. Onge said he saw the start of the fight on the Mavi Marmara. Eight to ten commandos standing in each small boat sought to scale the sides of the ship, but were driven away with fire hoses and objects tossed at them from above, he said. He said he wasn't able to see the rest.
Asked why people fought only on the Mavi Marmara, he said: "Well, they are Turkish."
"Feelings are stronger here," he explained, nodding at the roaring crowd. "Some might say they went too far, but they were protecting their boat in international waters. The point is, who attacked first? We were not spies, we had no weapons."
He said the detainees were treated roughly, given little food and allowed little sleep. They were questioned repeatedly by Israeli officers, he said. "Initially I think they were trying to flush out if we were Al Qaeda or something, but when it became obvious we weren't it was just a form of collective punishment I think.
Mr. Netanyahu, in a statement broadcast from his office, defended the operation Wednesday, saying terrorists affiliated with Hamas were to blame for the violence on board the Turkish-owned passenger ship, the Mavi Marmara. "This was not the Love Boat, it was the Hate Boat," he said.
The Free Gaza Movement, the Cyprus-based lead organizer of the flotilla, which was primarily manned and funded by the Turkish IHH charity, rejected the statement, saying Turkey had vetted all passengers to make sure none had ties to extremist groups and an independent security firm had searched the ships for weapons.
Israel's cabinet on Tuesday debated pressing charges against activists for allegedly attacking Israeli commandos after they descended from a helicopter onto the ship, but decided instead to send them home, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
Israel's High Court of Justice considered a petition Wednesday to reverse the decision to forgo criminal procedures, but the petition failed to halt the deportation of activists.
In a statement to the High Court, Israel Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein defended the expulsion, arguing "public, security and diplomatic interests prevail'' over the need for a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, Israel continued to transfer aid from the detained boats into the Gaza Strip, but alleged that Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the territory, was impeding shipments.
The United Nations Security Council called early Tuesday for an "impartial investigation" into the deadly events. While Israel's top ally, the U.S., hasn't backed an international investigation into the incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said the U.S. was open to "international participation" in the probe of what happened in the Mediterranean Sea.
The aid flotilla and the outcome of the raid have put Israel under heightened pressure at home and abroad to review its three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday repeated a call for an end to the blockade.
Israel and Egypt began restricting the flow of goods into and out of Gaza in 2007, after Hamas seized control. Critics of the blockade say it has failed to weaken the Hamas government and has kept out crucial aid and basic materials, a claim Israel denies.
Mr. Netanyahu defended the blockade of Gaza Wednesday, saying it is needed to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He said the aim of the flotilla was to break the blockade, not to bring aid to Gaza. "If the blockade had been broken, it would have been followed by dozens, hundreds of boats," he said. "Each boat could carry hundreds of missiles."
Egypt, which criticized the Israeli raid, opened its border with Gaza to humanitarian aid Tuesday and Wednesday.
Activists on an Irish ship are planning to test the blockade again in the coming days. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen appealed to Israel to let the ship deliver its aid cargo to Gaza—but he conceded on Wednesday that supplies of concrete on board would pose a particular stumbling block because Israel considers it of military use.
The ship was supposed to join the flotilla that Israeli commandos intercepted Monday, but was delayed by mechanical problems.
Breaking from https://biginla.tripod.com/bbcnews : Buffett: Municipal Debt Meltdown Will Hit US Topic: warren buffett, us economic down
Add investment legend Warren Buffett to the list of those who warn of a municipal debt meltdown.
Many municipalities have promised overly generous retirement and health benefits to public workers without any viable plans to bring in the money necessary to pay for those benefits.
Add investment legend Warren Buffett to the list of those who warn of a municipal debt meltdown.
Many municipalities have promised overly generous retirement and health benefits to public workers without any viable plans to bring in the money necessary to pay for those benefits.
They have assumed unrealistic returns in their pension fund investments and unrealistic revenue from taxes.
The Pew Center on the States recently estimated that as of the end of 2008 budget years, states had $1 trillion less than needed to pay for future pensions and medical benefits. And that number doesn’t even reflect much of the losses suffered by pension fund investments in the second half of 2008.
“There will be a terrible problem, and then the question becomes will the federal government help,” Buffett said at a hearing of the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in New York, Bloomberg reports.
“I don’t know how I would rate them myself. It’s a bet on how the federal government will act over time.”
In May, Buffett said the feds may end up having to bail out some states from their extreme financial woes.
“It would be hard in the end for the federal government to turn away a state having extreme financial difficulty when they’ve gone to General Motors and other entities and saved them,” Buffett said at Berkshire’s annual meeting, Bloomberg reports.
“I don’t know how you would tell a state you’re going to stiff-arm them with all the bailouts of corporations.”
The Oracle of Omaha has been cutting municipal bond holdings in his company Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire’s portfolio of munis has dropped 17 percent since the end of 2008, to $3.9 billion as of March 31 from $4.7 billion.
The company’s 2009 annual report showed $16 billion at risk in derivatives tied to municipal debt, Bloomberg reports.
Buffett has made clear his bearishness toward municipal bonds by warning of the dangers of insuring those bonds.
In his 2009 letter to shareholders, the world’s second most wealthy man said local governments may be tempted to default on bonds whose payments are guaranteed by insurance companies rather than implement politically difficult tax hikes.
Insuring muni bonds “has the look today of a dangerous business,” Buffett wrote.
About $14.5 billion of municipal bonds defaulted in 2008 and 2009, according to Income Securities Advisor Inc., which studies distressed debt.
Los Angeles is one of the cities whose finances are in desperate straits.
“Los Angeles is facing a terminal fiscal crisis: between now and 2014 the city will likely declare bankruptcy,” former mayor Richard Riordan wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
“Yet Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council have been either unable or unwilling to face this fact.”
METAIRIE, La. – BP sliced off a pipe with giant shears Thursday in the latest bid to curtail the worst oil spill in U.S. history, but the cut was jagged and placing a cap over the gusher will now be more challenging.
BP turned to the shears after a diamond-tipped saw became stuck in the pipe halfway through the job, yet another frustrating delay in the six-week-old Gulf of Mexico spill.
The cap will be lowered and sealed over the leak, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster. It won't be known how much oil BP can siphon to a tanker on the surface until the cap is fitted, but the irregular cut means it won't fit as snugly as officials hoped.
"We'll have to see when we get the containment cap on it just how effective it is," Allen said. "It will be a test and adapt phase as we move ahead, but it's a significant step forward."
Even if it works, BP engineers expect oil to continue leaking into the ocean.
The next chance to stop the flow won't come until two relief wells meant to plug the reservoir for good are finished in August.
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward promised the company would clean up every drop of oil, and "restore the shoreline to its original state."
"We will be here for a very long time. We realize this is just the beginning," Hayward said Thursday.
This latest attempt to control the spill, the so-called cut-and-cap method, is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser removed a kink in the pipe, and could temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent.
Hayward conceded the attempt was risky, but said the risk was reduced when the pipe was cut away.
Live video footage showed oil spewing uninterrupted out of the top of the blowout preventer, but Allen said it was unclear whether the flow had increased.
"I don't think we'll know until the containment cap is seated on there," he said. "We'll have to wait and see."
President Barack Obama will return to the Louisiana coast Friday to assess the latest efforts, his third trip to the region since the April 20 disaster. It's also his second visit in a week.
The White House said the federal government was sending BP a $69 million bill for costs so far in the spill. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the bill was the first to be sent to the oil company, which leased the rig that exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven people were killed.
So far, anywhere between 21 million and 46 million gallons of oil has spewed into the Gulf, according to government estimates.
Computer models show oil could wind up on the East Coast by early July, and even get carried on currents across the Atlantic Ocean, by Bermuda and toward Europe. The models showed oil entering the Gulf's loop current, the going around the tip of Florida and as far north as Cape Hatteras, N.C. Researchers with the National Center for Atmospheric Research cautioned that the models were not a forecast, and it's unlikely any oil reaching Europe would be harmful.
Oil drifted six miles from the Florida Panhandle's popular sugar-white beaches, and crews on the mainland were doing everything possible to limit the catastrophe.
Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by Friday, threatening a delicate network of islands, bays and beaches that are a haven for wildlife and a major tourist destination dubbed the Redneck Riviera.
Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of "tar mats" about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.
Mark Johnecheck, a 68-year-old retired Navy captain from Pensacola, sat on a black folding chair as rough surf crashed ashore at Pensacola Beach and children splashed in the water. Johnecheck has lived in the Pensacola area since the 1960s, but doesn't come to the beach very often.
"The reason I'm here now is because I'm afraid it's going to be gone," he said. "I'm really afraid that the next time I come out here it's not going to look like this."
He said the arrival of the oil seems foregone: "I don't know what else they can do," he said. "It just makes you feel helpless."
His wife walks up and becomes emotional thinking about the oil. "It's like grieving somebody on their dying bed," said Marjorie Johnecheck, 62.
Next to her chair is a small white pail full of sugary Panhandle sand. She will take it home and put it in a decorative jar.
"I'm taking it home before it gets black," she said.
County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.
Anne Wilson, a 62-year-old retired teachers aide who has lived in Pensacola Beach for the last year and a half, felt helpless.
"There's nothing more you can do," said Wilson, who lived in Valdez, Alaska, near the Exxon spill in 1989. "It's up to Mother Nature to take care of things. Humans can only do so much."
Florida's beaches play a crucial role in the state's tourism industry. At least 60 percent of vacation spending in the state during 2008 was in beachfront cities. Worried that reports of oil would scare tourists away, state officials are promoting interactive Web maps and Twitter feeds to show travelers — particularly those from overseas — how large the state is and how distant their destinations may be from the spill.
The effect on wildlife has grown, too.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.
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LIMA, Peru – A Dutch man long suspected in the disappearance of an Alabama teen in Aruba was arrested Thursday in the murder of a young woman in Peru.
Stephany Flores, 21, was killed in a Lima hotel Sunday, five years to the day after Natalee Holloway disappeared.
The suspect, Joran van der Sloot, was escorted by three police officers as he was taken from a dark vehicle into a police office in downtown Santiago, Chile. He made no comment as he entered, walking calmly and without handcuffs as journalists shouted his name.
Van der Sloot was detained while traveling in a taxi, about halfway to the coast on Route 68, said Fernando Ovalle, deputy spokesman of Chile's national investigative police.
The suspect did not resist and has been calm under detention, Ovalle said.
Chilean police are awaiting instructions from their counterparts in Peru, Ovalle said.
Flores, who had been seen with van der Sloot early Sunday, was found Wednesday lying face down on the floor of the suspect's hotel room in Lima, with her neck broken, Peruvian police Gen. Cesar Guardia told The Associated Press. She was fully clothed, with no signs of having been sexually abused.
Authorities found no potential murder weapons in the room, Garcia said.
Flores was killed exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway during a high school trip in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge.
Prosecutors said van der Sloot is still their main suspect in the case even though he was never charged.
Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman was in Peru for a poker tournament and appears with the dead woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday. The two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees about 5 a.m. and the Dutchman departed alone about four hours later, he said.
"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," Guardia said.
The victim's father, Ricardo Flores, 48, is a former president of the Peruvian Automobile Club who won the "Caminos del Inca" rally in 1991 and brings circuses and foreign entertainers to Peru. He ran for vice president in 2001 and for president five years later on fringe tickets.
A lawyer for van der Sloot in New York, Joe Tacopina, cautioned against a rush to judgment.
"Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull's-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play," Tacopina said.
Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway in Aruba.
No trace of her has been found and van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, Ann Angela, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor's office, said Wednesday.
"What's happening now is incredible," she said. "At this moment we don't have anything to do with it, but we are following the case with great interest and if Peruvian authorities would need us, we are here."
The mystery of Holloway's disappearance garnered wide attention on television and in newspapers in Europe and the United States.
Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed on a beach from being drunk. He said he believed she was dead and asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.
Judges subsequently refused to arrest van der Sloot on the basis of the tape.
A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Alabama, told the AP the family was aware of the development in Peru but would have no comment.
Funerals take place in Istanbul for Gaza ship activists
Emotions are running high in Turkey at funerals for nine activists, all Turkish or of Turkish origin, killed in Israel's raid on the Gaza aid flotilla.
The bodies were flown from Israel to Istanbul, along with more than 450 activists, to a heroes' welcome.
Israel has said there is no need for an international inquiry into the incident, insisting its own will meet the "highest international standards".
The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) voted earlier to set up an investigation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his troops had no choice but to stop the ships.
He argued the flotilla had been aiming not to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans, but to break Israel's blockade.
It was Israel's duty to prevent rockets and other weapons being smuggled into Gaza to Hamas by Iran and others, he said.
Turkey, one of Israel's few allies in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador after the incident on Monday.
'Barbarism and oppression'
Its President, Abdullah Gul, said relations between the two countries would "never be the same".
The prayers for the dead before the funerals were not just about sadness and loss, though there was plenty of that.
This was a political event as well.
The mood of the crowd echoed remarks made by the Turkish president, who said that an irreparable and deep scar had been left in Turkey's relations with Israel.
The Israelis and what they did were denounced repeatedly.
Israel's version that its men opened fire in self-defence is utterly rejected here.
At the end of the ceremony the dead were taken away to be buried close to their homes.
For Turks, it is not just that civilians died. The raid is seen as an attack on their country's honour and sovereignty and, like the Gaza war and the Iraq invasion, it is detaching some Turks at least from old friends in the West and pushing them closer to the Muslim Middle East.
"This incident has left an irreparable and deep scar" on relations, he told reporters in Ankara.
In a fiery speech at Istanbul airport, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc accused Israel of "piracy" and "barbarism and oppression".
Crowds of people, some wearing Palestinian-style scarves, gathered in the city to meet the coffins, swathed in Turkish flags, at the Ottoman-era Fatih mosque.
The funerals took place in a strongly Islamist part of the city and emotions were running high, reported the BBC's Bethany Bell.
One of the bodies was due to be buried in Istanbul while the other eight were being taken to their home towns, AFP news agency reported.
Turkish post-mortem examinations found all nine of the dead had been shot, some at close range.
The dead include a 19-year-old Turkish citizen with an American passport - hit by four bullets in the head and one in the chest - and a national taekwondo athlete, Turkish media say.
The bodies arrived, along with the 450 activists, in three aircraft chartered by the Turkish government at Istanbul airport in the early hours of Thursday, after several hours of delays.
Mr Arinc said his government saluted the Turkish Islamic charity, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), which played a leading role in organising the convoy - a charity Israel has accused of supporting terrorism.
IHH leader Bulent Yildrim said upon his arrival back in Istanbul that he believed the death toll could be higher than nine, as his organisation had a longer list of missing people.
British activist Sarah Colbourne told the BBC: "I couldn't even count the amount of ships that were in the water. It was literally bristling with ships, helicopters and gunfire. It was horrific, absolutely horrific."
Swedish author Henning Mankell, who was aboard one of the ships in the flotilla, has dismissed the idea that weapons were being carried by the activists.
"On the ship I was on, they found one weapon: my razor. And they actually came up and showed it off, my razor, so you see what level this was at," the author of the popular Wallander detective novels told Swedish radio.
'Double standard'
Consular staff were on hand in Istanbul to help the activists from other countries. They include 34 people who hold British passports.
HOW ISRAEL RAID UNFOLDED
The flotilla of six ships, including the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, was on its way from Cyprus to Gaza carrying supplies including cement, paper and water purification tablets.
HOW ISRAEL RAID UNFOLDED
As the flotilla, still in international waters, neared Gaza, Israeli commandos intercepted the boats from air and sea. This image shows a soldier rappelling from a helicopter onto the upper deck of the ferry.
HOW ISRAEL RAID UNFOLDED
The Israelis say their soldiers were set upon and beaten with bats, chairs and metal poles as soon as they boarded the Mavi Marmara. Activists say the soldiers attacked them first.
HOW ISRAEL RAID UNFOLDED
As the incident escalated, the Israelis used live weapons on the activists, although the exact circumstances are unclear. This still from Turkish TV footage shows first aid being given to an injured activist.
HOW ISRAEL RAID UNFOLDED
At the end of the incident at least nine activists were dead. Israel escorted the flotilla to the port of Ashdod and detained the protesters. An online maritime tracking map shows the route taken by the boats.
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Doctors in Ankara, where some of the severely injured were taken, say they have been treating people for bullet wounds. Three people are in intensive care.
Seven other activists are in a serious condition and will remain in Israeli hospitals until they can be moved, Israeli officials say.
Another plane carrying 31 Greek activists, three French nationals and one American flew into Athens early on Thursday.
More than 100 relatives and supporters cheered and shouted pro-Palestinian slogans at the airport.
Rejecting the proposed HRC investigation, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said demands for an external inquiry showed a double standard towards the Jewish state.
When American or British troops were accused of killing civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, he said, it was the US or Britain that carried out the investigation, not an international body.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested attaching international observers to an internal Israeli inquiry.
"We have excellent jurists... one of whom will be willing to take it on himself, and if they want to include an international member of some sort in their committee that's alright too," he told Israel radio.
The US, Israel's most important ally, has already made it clear it will accept an Israeli-led inquiry, the BBC's Andrew North reports from Jerusalem.
New ship
Talk in Gaza is now turning to the next ship on its way across the Mediterranean to try to break the blockade, the BBC's Jon Donnison reports from the territory.
The MV Rachel Corrie is expected in the blockade area within days
The Rachel Corrie - carrying 15 people including Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire - had been due to be part of the original flotilla but was delayed because of technical problems.
The ship could be in the region by Saturday, our correspondent reports. Israel has said it will not be allowed to dock in Gaza.
"Everybody was very upset at what happened [with the flotilla]," Irish crew member Derek Graham told Reuters news agency by telephone.
"Everybody has been more determined than ever to continue on to Gaza."
Meanwhile, some of the 10,000 tonnes of aid seized from the flotilla by Israel has been returned to the Israeli port of Ashdod after being left stranded at a Gaza-Israel crossing.
The Hamas government in control of Gaza refused to accept the aid until Israeli-Arab activists from the flotilla were released.
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Review gives strength to nuclear nonproliferation effort
Consensus on the future of nuclear nonproliferation efforts achieved at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference over the past month gives the United Nations a stronger case to push countries suspected of hiding stockpiles. While non-nuclear countries were unable to get nuclear powers to agree to a 2025 timetable to dismantle all weapons, the final text contains clear benchmarks each country must meet before the next review in five years. TIME (6/2)
This was a win for multilateralism. I was very pessimistic about the chance of achieving this outcome. But the document moved the treaty forward. It had several key advances in it."
Deepti Choubey, deputy director for nuclear policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on the NPT conference. Read the full story.
"The World Health Organization seems to be seizing on the spotlight by renewing a call to allow for the unimpeded access into Gaza of medical supplies and technical know-how."
U.S. submits climate report to UN U.S. authorities expect to see a 4% growth in greenhouse gases through 2020, with the bulk of the increase coming from hydrofluorocarbons, according to a U.S. State Department report to the United Nations. The U.S. will contribute as much as $30 billion through 2012 to help developing countries manage climate-change effects, and increase its budget for climate research. Google/The Associated Press (6/1)
U.S. high court may have a role in UN harassment case Two United Nations employees have filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court requesting diplomatic immunity for former UNHCR chief Ruud Lubbers be withdrawn. The two women allege Lubbers is guilty of sexual harassment and the UN has failed to take any disciplinary action on claims made over incidents in 2003. Lubbers resigned his post in 2005 amid intense media coverage of the charges. Google/Agence France-Presse (6/1)
Chinese see salvation in spuds China has turned to an unlikely tool in hopes to prevent famine, alleviate poverty and make the most of its dwindling arable land resources: the potato. Facing a population boom that will require it to produce 100 million additional tons of food every year by 2030, China has ramped up research and training in the cultivation of the potato -- a food resource that produces more calories per acre and requires less water to grow than rice. The Washington Post (5/31)
Hurricane devastates Guatemala, killing 146 The hurricane season's first tropical storm wracked Central America, causing widespread landslides and flooding. Guatemala was particularly hard hit, with at least 146 people reported dead among collapsed roads and devastated bridges. Emergency officials are struggling to reach victims in remote areas, while some 35,000 people have taken to emergency shelters. The Independent (London) (6/2)
Haiti is not ready for hurricane season Hundreds of camps housing the bulk of Haiti's 1.5 million homeless earthquake survivors are ill-equipped to manage hurricanes, aid agencies and officials warn. Aid groups are scrambling to find alternative locations, erect safe housing and clear roads of rubble. The Miami Herald (free registration) (5/31)
Study links African mines with TB spike Poor working conditions in African mines combined with a lack of access to health care could be factors in tuberculosis outbreaks across the continent, according to a study published in American Journal of Public Health. Countries that reduce mining see a rapid drop in the number of tuberculosis cases, according to the study. AlertNet.org/Reuters (6/1)
India falls behind in carbon credits The UN Clean Development Mechanism has cut the number of carbon credits issued to India in the past five months by 51%, in part due to increased scrutiny being applied to hydropower projects as well as plans involving cuts in hydrofluorocarbons. Bloomberg Businessweek (6/2)
Violence hampers Sudan's first mechanized farm effort A group of Canadian volunteers is battling infrastructure limitations and frequent violence to create Sudan's first mechanized farm. The group hopes to train local residents to maintain the machinery so that the farm may become a sustainable locally operated food source. The Globe and Mail (Toronto) (6/2)
Israel moves to deport flotilla activists Facing consternation from the international community, Israel began expelling some of the hundreds of activists it detained after a raid on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza. Though an Israeli Foreign Ministry lawyer said that Israel believed it had grounds to prosecute some of the activists they detained during the raid, it was decided that they would be deported. Activists have said that the Israeli raid was marked by unprovoked attacks -- a claim that will not be settled by the UN, as the U.S. blocked an attempt by the UN Security Council to open an international investigation into the incident. The New York Times (free registration) (6/2) , The Guardian (London) (6/2)
Global weapons spending reaches $1.5 trillion Global spending on arms worldwide grew 5.9% between 2008 and 2009, eclipsing $1.5 trillion total. The U.S. alone accounts for half of all global spending on weapons, with China following behind and France third -- though Asian and Oceanic nations are growing the fastest in terms of military spending. CBC.ca (Canada) (6/1)
Afghan "peace jirga" is marked by rockets, suicide attacks At least three Taliban suicide bombers struck a national peace assembly in which Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban to join the government and civil society -- an attack that underscored the difficult prospects of reconciliation. Though no targets were reported killed, one Taliban rocket struck near the compound that houses Afghanistan's loya jirga tent used for official gatherings. The Taliban, who claimed credit for the attacks, said that the suicide bombers had dressed like Afghan security officials in order to infiltrate Afghan security. The New York Times (free registration) (6/2) , The Guardian (London) (6/2)
Aid groups look to Turkey as second Gaza flotilla launches The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza will fund another flotilla to follow up on the efforts of the Free Gaza Movement aid flotilla raided by Israeli authorities -- a flotilla that will be larger and filled with more activists than the first. The first group of aid ships was funded in large part by the Turkish organization Insani Yardim Vakfi -- a group that Israel claims supports Hamas and has links to al-Qaida. The organizers of the second flotilla say that it is highly possible that the MV Rachel Corrie could attract the semiofficial funding or backing of Turkey. Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv, Israel) (6/2) , The New York Times (free registration) (6/1)
UN Wire is a free service sponsored by the United Nations Foundation which is dedicated to supporting the United Nations' efforts to address the most pressing humanitarian, socioeconomic and environmental challenges facing the world today.
FOR months Yukio Hatoyama’s tenure as prime minister has looked in doubt. But his decision on June 2nd to resign and take down Ichiro Ozawa, his equally powerful sidekick, with him has shocked Japan’s political establishment. It throws the country’s politics into disarray just when it is in the midst of a democratic upheaval and faces pressing economic problems that cry out for strong leadership.
It was not immediately clear who would replace Mr Hatoyama. Naoto Kan, deputy prime-minister and finance minister, was considered the most likely candidate, though an internal election of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was called on June 4th and other cabinet members may stand against him, political analysts said. None of the potential candidates openly canvassed for the removal of Mr Hatoyama and Mr Ozawa, so it is hard to identify anyone in the party’s leadership who looks exceptionally courageous or politically astute.
It was also unclear how significant Mr Ozawa’s resignation as the DPJ’s secretary-general is. The party is split between those who support him, and those who fear him as an unprincipled schemer who has built and destroyed parties in a lonely thirst for power. His supporters credit him for orchestrating the DPJ’s election triumph last August that drove the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from power for only the second time in 54 years. He may continue to lurk in the wings of the DPJ and run the campaign for election to the upper house, which takes place this summer, not least because he controls the party’s purse strings.
His opponents, however, increasingly regarded him as a liability who meddled with cabinet-level policy decisions by whispering, Svengali-like, into Mr Hatoyama’s ear. Embroiled in money scandals, they argued that he and Mr Hatoyama left the impression that the DPJ was no different from the discredited LDP, with its history of corruption scandals, that the voters had rejected last year. Some senior cabinet members plotted behind the scenes against the two men. However, when the end came it was more of Mr Hatoyama’s own doing than anyone else’s.
In his resignation speech to his party’s lawmakers, Mr Hatoyama admitted that his mishandling of a row with America over an American marine base in the island of Okinawa cost him his job, coupled with lavish political-funding scandals that have led to indictments of former members of his and of Mr Ozawa’s staff. Though he once again denied his responsibility for the funding disaster, the two resignations would help the DPJ become “new and cleaner,” Mr Hatoyama said.
The immediate catalyst for his downfall was Mr Hatoyama’s decision last Friday to support a plan with America to relocate a United States marine base, called Futenma, within the island of Okinawa, rather than removing it elsewhere. Besides breaking a personal promise to Okinawans to get rid of the base, Mr Hatoyama was also forced to sack Mizuho Fukushima, the head of one of the DPJ’s two coalition parties, from his cabinet because she opposed the Futenma plan. This set off a damaging chain of events.
On May 30th her party, the Social Democrats, abandoned the coalition and the following day indicated it might support a censure motion in the Diet against Mr Hatoyama. It was not clear whether his party held enough seats to block such a motion in the upper house, nor that it would enjoy the support of its own lawmakers from Okinawa.
Opinion polls taken after the Futenma decision also showed a slump in Mr Hatoyama’s support, down from 71% nine months ago to as low as 17%. This lengthened the DPJ’s odds in the upper-house election. Some of the party’s lawmakers up for re-election were told by their constituents that Mr Hatoyama’s indecisiveness over Futenma and his financial scandals might cost them their re-election, which led them to openly discuss removing him.
To make things worse for the DPJ, support for the LDP, which voters dealt a long-overdue thrashing to last year, edged ahead for the first time in the polls this week. When Mr Ozawa began to publicly distance himself from Mr Hatoyama, it became clear that the prime minister’s days were numbered. What wasn’t clear was whether Mr Ozawa would be caught in Mr Hatoyama’s downward spiral. He was.
Mr Ozawa’s departure leaves the DPJ deeply divided. Through a combination of carrot and stick he had managed to keep his supporters and opponents bound together. Some of the latter have admitted to being wary of upsetting him lest he abandon the DPJ and drag his loyalists with him. “He’s a loose cannon and you want to tie him down,” says Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Tokyo.
Neither Mr Hatoyama nor Mr Ozawa appeared keen to grapple with Japan’s serious fiscal problems, including a debt-to-GDP ratio that is the highest in the world and only gets worse because of entrenched deflation. Mr Kan, the potential replacement as prime minister, discovered to his surprise when he took over as finance minister this year how vulnerable the country’s skewed public finances were. After seeing the thrashing private investors were giving Greece, he began to talk about tax reform.
Wall Street economists believe that whoever replaces Mr Hatoyama will need to address these problems directly, and might also have to raise the consumption-tax rate. Masaaki Kanno of JPMorgan in Tokyo says any new leader will need to tackle the fiscal problem, slow growth and deflation in short order—though he doubts Mr Kan has a sufficient sense of urgency on the matter. If Mr Ozawa remains lurking in the DPJ’s wings, any chance such serious issues will be aired in an election season will be diminished.
![[ISRAEL_SUB]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WO-AB182_ISRAEL_G_20100602211854.jpg)
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images ![[SB10001424052748704025304575284051844672916]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-IS329_4israe_D_20100603053523.jpg)
The MV Rachel Corrie is expected in the blockade area within days 
Poor working conditions in African mines combined with a lack of access to health care could be factors in tuberculosis outbreaks across the continent, according to a study published in American Journal of Public Health. Countries that reduce mining see a rapid drop in the number of tuberculosis cases, according to the study. 
FOR months Yukio Hatoyama’s tenure as prime minister has looked in doubt. But his decision on June 2nd to resign and take down Ichiro Ozawa, his equally powerful sidekick, with him has shocked Japan’s political establishment. It throws the country’s politics into disarray just when it is in the midst of a democratic upheaval and faces pressing economic problems that cry out for strong leadership.
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