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ARY NEWS

Reuters

  • Coalition poised to retake capital, but Yemen risks grow

    But al Qaeda militants appear to be using the coalition’s gains against the Houthis in the south to entrench their position, as fractures start to show between local groups of fighters with the departure of their common enemy.

    The prospect of returning exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi remains distant, five months after an advance on his Aden bolthole by the Houthis, who overran the capital a year ago from their northern base, triggered the Saudi-led intervention.

    At stake is not just who will rule Yemen, which regional power will hold sway and whether its persistent jihadist threat can be ended, but its future as a single state after centuries of tribal disputes and regional divisions.

    Saudi Arabia and its allies want to maintain the state created in 1990 by the merger of the old north and south Yemen, say informed diplomats, but as anger grows over the humanitarian cost, the possibility of division appears to be growing.

    “In the absence of a political settlement the battle for Sanaa will be long, brutal, and deadly with no obvious winner. A failure to retake Sanaa by Hadi’s camp is likely to lead to a de facto partition of Yemen,” said Ibrahim Fraihat, senior political analyst at Brookings Doha Centre.

    Such a settlement still looks elusive, with each side attempting to escalate the fighting since the fall of Aden.

    In the north, the Houthis have pounded the Saudi border, determined to ensure coalition victories and continued airstrikes come at a cost. In southern Taiz, fierce fighting, and the bombardment of civilians, continues.

    Attention has increasingly turned to Marib, a dry tribal region across the arid hills east of Sanaa, where Saudi-linked media and local sources report a build-up of coalition-backed forces preparing for a concerted thrust toward Yemen’s capital.

    GULF GROUND ROLE

    The dozens of Emirati troops guarding Aden’s smashed-up airport and their helicopters, tanks and armored cars lined up on the apron during a recent Reuters visit to the city were ample evidence of the ground role played by Gulf states.

    It was the direct involvement of Emirati ground forces, alongside Yemeni troops trained in Saudi Arabia and equipped with sophisticated heavy weapons that allowed the coalition to break months of stalemate to take Aden, informed diplomats say.

    The Arab states say the Houthis are a proxy for Iran, an accusation the movement denies, countering that its advance is a revolution against Western-backed officials it says are corrupt, as well as al Qaeda militants. It has joined up with military allies of Yemen’s longtime ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted by Arab Spring unrest in 2012.

    The further coalition forces move beyond areas where local support is high, the harder it will be.

    The most obvious launchpad for a new coalition military push is Marib, where local tribes have for months fought back-and-forth battles against the Houthis and Saleh’s forces, and beyond which lies a clear, safe supply route to Saudi Arabia.

    Leaders of the exiled government’s army have been quoted in Saudi press saying they are building up forces in the province and are ready for a push on Sanaa next month.

    A local official told Reuters 130 armored vehicles, 1,000 Yemeni troops trained in Saudi Arabia and military experts from the kingdom and the UAE had arrived in recent days along with engineers to allow its airstrip to import materiel.

    A renewed barrage of attacks on Saudi border positions, including the reported launch of a Scud missile at the kingdom on Tuesday, showed the Houthis and Saleh are determined to make Gulf involvement in the conflict hurt.

    On Friday a Saudi Apache helicopter came down on the border, killing both pilots, while on Monday Houthi shells killed Major General Abdulrahman al-Shahrani, commander of the 18th Brigade, and the kingdom’s highest ranking casualty of the conflict.

    MILITANTS AND FRACTURED ALLIANCES

    While the Emirati soldiers did sentry duty by Aden’s runway or rested in an upstairs terminal lounge, outside the front entrance stood slight young men with assault rifles slung over their shoulders and curling hair falling across bearded faces.

    Many of these un-uniformed fighters, wearing flip-flops and Yemeni futeh sarongs, took up arms when the Houthis reached their city, abandoning daily life as their neighborhoods were engulfed by street fighting.

    But in Yemen’s multi-sided conflict, it was never clear how many of these fighters had loyalties beyond those to their immediate neighborhood, whether to Hadi, to a southern separatist movement or to other political or militant groups.

    While coalition forces protect key facilities in Aden, basic security in many areas of the city has collapsed, as a YouTube video showing the mob execution of a suspected Houthi collaborator demonstrated.

    More alarming still for Hadi and the coalition, dozens of armed men paraded through Aden’s central Tawahi district on Saturday, raising al Qaeda flags, days after a series of bombs exploded outside government offices in the city, killing four.

    Hamza al-Zinjibari, a local al Qaeda leader, earlier this month said in a video message that most of the local, coalition-backed fighters against the Houthis were in fact members of the militant group “shaping the jihad” after military leaders fled.

    Hadi’s government insists the militant group played no role in the defense of Aden from the Houthis and that its apparent display of strength in the city last week was in fact the work of Saleh supporters sowing instability after losing the city.

    A local official in Aden said on Wednesday that Gulf forces were training 2,000 local fighters including separatists, Hadi loyalists and members of Islamist parties to take over security in the city temporarily.

    That strange mix of competing groups, including some who only a year ago would have been sworn enemies, shows the fragility of the local forces upon which the coalition plans depend.

  • Europe ‘shaken’ after 50 migrants found dead in truck

    Police made the grisly discovery in the 7.5-tonne truck stopped on the A4 motorway near the town of Parndorf, apparently since Wednesday, Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in the province of Burgenland, told a news conference.

    He said he could not put an exact figure on the number of victims, whose bodies had begun to decompose. “We can assume that it could be 20 people who died. It could also be 40, it could be 50 people,” he said.

    Merkel told a news conference at the summit on the West Balkans in Vienna: “We are of course all shaken by the appalling news. This reminds us that we must tackle quickly the issue of immigration and in a European spirit – that means in a spirit of solidarity – and to find solutions.”

    Tens of thousands of people, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, have put to sea this year in the hope of reaching Europe, often dangerously packed into small vessels that were never designed to cross the Mediterranean.

    Those who make it ashore and others traveling by land have increasingly tried to make their way north via the Balkans, causing tension among countries along the route.

    Hungary plans to reinforce its southern border with helicopters and mounted police, and is considering using the army as record numbers of migrants passed through coils of razor-wire into Europe.

    Investigations were underway in Austria and Hungary after the bodies were discovered. The truck had Hungarian number plates, a Hungarian official said.

    Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, said a Romanian citizen had registered the number plate in the eastern Hungarian town of Kecskemet.

    Police limited the motorway to one lane while forensic experts checked over the truck parked on the hard shoulder.

    Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told the summit: “The refugees who died today wanted to save their own lives by fleeing, but instead lost their lives at the hands of traffickers. It shows once again how necessary it is to save human lives by fighting criminal traffickers. It shows that we must take responsibility and give asylum to those people who are fleeing.”

    QUOTAS

    “Every week we learn of more deaths and drownings on the Mediterranean route because the boats people are packed on are unseaworthy or overcrowded. Now we are hearing of cases of mass deaths along the land journey. This terrible tragedy shows the unscrupulous business of smugglers who have no regard for human life is extending across the continent,” said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

    European Commissioner Johannes Hahn reiterated that Brussels would propose within weeks a fresh look at the situation.

    “We will have another go at quotas. I hope that in the light of the most recent developments now there is a readiness among all the 28 (member states) to agree on this,” he said.

    German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country expects 800,000 asylum seekers this year, said a fair distribution of refugees was needed to ensure support in countries taking in the bulk of migrants.

    His Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz said: “If we are not able to find a quick European solution here, then more and more countries like Hungary and Denmark – who are already doing it – will try to solve this crisis for themselves on their own with individual measures and their own initiatives.

    “It won’t work and above all it threatens our European idea of having open borders and with that proper security at the EU’s outer borders.”

    Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic put the onus on EU countries to find a better way to handle the influx of refugees.

    “So you have a problem but you are asking us, Serbia, to come up with the action plan for migrants. You should come up with an action plan first.”

  • India deploys army to stop caste-related violence in Gujarat

    Clashes spread after police arrested a young leader of the influential Patel clan who led a huge rally on Tuesday to demand more government jobs and college places for members of his community.

    The breakdown of law and order revived memories of serious rioting in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, died. Modi, chief minister of Gujarat at the time, has faced criticism for doing too little to halt the bloodshed.

    “Six protesters and a police officer have lost their lives and 18 people are critically injured,” said Keshav Shah, a senior police officer in the state capital Gandhinagar.

    “Schools, business and private offices will not open today. The mood is tense and no one should venture out,” he said, adding that a curfew would remain in force.

    Modi has called for calm in the state that he ran for more than a decade before leading his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in last year’s general election.

    The Patels, or Patidar community, make up 14 percent of the population in Gujarat. A relatively affluent group of land- and business-owners, they had been a bulwark of support for Modi.

    Members of the Patel community said they will continue to demand changes to policies that, they argue, unfairly favour groups at the lower end of India’s social order.

    “We will not let the government suppress our demands. They can kill as many Patels as they want,” said 21-year-old activist Hardik Patel.

    The young leader drew a crowd of half a million to a rally on Tuesday in the city of Ahmedabad. His detention there led to clashes between police and protesters across the state, forcing authorities to release him.

  • Cumberbatch’s ‘Hamlet’ wears a hoodie, wows fans in London

    Ever since the 12-week run was announced a year ago and sold out in record time for a London stage show, people have been wondering if the production, which began previews on Aug 5 and officially opened on Tuesday, was going to be a Cumberbatch fest or a serious “Hamlet”.

    The fears can be laid to rest. It is “Hamlet,” but not in the brooding Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton tradition.

    The three-hour-long production directed by Lyndsey Turner at the Barbican Theatre is set for the first half in a palace that looks more like Downton Abbey than Elsinore, while in the second half the same set has been ravaged by war.

    Benedict Cumberbatch

    In this environment, the 39-year-old British film and television star works some of his most famous roles into the DNA of a very modern prince. He at one point wears a hoodie and for most of the play is dressed like a guy from the ‘hood – as are his mates.

    Displaying the quick wit and mental acuity of his television detective “Sherlock,” Hamlet figures out that his uncle Claudius, portrayed by a wonderfully two-faced Ciaran Hinds of “Game of Thrones” fame, killed his father, usurped the crown and married his mother (Anastasia Hille).

    The prince then does his best to alienate everyone around him, especially the young Ophelia (Sian Brooke), whom he deeply loves, a bit like Cumberbatch’s sociopath mathematician Alan Turing does to his colleagues in “The Imitation Game”.

    One thing Cumberbatch’s Dane is not is melancholy. There’s a hilarious scene in the first part where he enters dressed as a drum major and proceeds to dance and drum on a banquet table, before eventually retreating inside a toy fort guarded by four giant-sized toy soldiers.

    The production tinkers with the text, but “To Be or Not to Be,” which in early previews opened the play, sensibly has been restored to its normal spot.

    Other revisions are more subtle, including having Ophelia use some of the dialogue from earlier in the play for the wistful songs she sings just before she drowns herself.

    It may not be a “Hamlet” for the ages, but it is one for now, and for Cumberbatch’s legions of predominantly female fans.

    Some of those attending Tuesday’s performance said while queuing for day tickets that they were seeing it for the fourth or fifth time. At least one or two were planning to jump back in the queue when the show ended, to see it again.

    The production will be broadcast to cinemas on Oct. 15.

  • California man bitten by rattlesnake he picked up for photo

    Alex Gomez, 36, was bitten on Monday by the 4-foot (1.2-meter) rattler in a field at his family’s ranch in Lake Elsinore, a community about 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Los Angeles, according to TV station KCBS which showed a picture of the man holding the snake around his neck.

    Alex Gomez’s mother, Deborah, told KCBS on Tuesday that her son might lose his hand because of the bite wound to the extremity. The man’s hand swelled up after the bite, and he was taken to a local hospital and treated with anti-venom, according to the station.

    “I’m shocked that he would have that thing around his neck,” she told the station. “It could’ve bit his neck, and that would have been it. That’s just being a fool.”

    She could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

    Rattlesnakes, whose bites can be fatal, are found in many parts of California. The peak season for rattle snake bites, which occur about 800 times a year in California, is from April to October, state officials say. – Reuters

  • Afghan men in military uniform kill two foreign troops

    Violence has increased sharply across Afghanistan since foreign forces formally ended their combat mission last year, leaving a small contingent of about 12,000 NATO troops to train Afghan forces against a Taliban insurgency.

    The foreign forces heading the Resolute Support mission said the incident took place in the restive province of Helmand, where government forces are frequently targeted by militant attacks.

    “Two Resolute Support service members died early this morning, when two individuals wearing Afghan National Defense and Security Forces uniforms opened fire on their vehicle,” the alliance said in a statement.

    The statement did not give further information on the exact location of the incident and nationalities of those killed, but most foreign forces operating in Helmand are American.

    A regional official said the incident involved two apparent Afghan special forces firing on their allies at the former Camp Bastion, a major base handed over to Afghan forces last year.

  • Asian shares wobble as China rate cut fails to calm nerves

    China’s key share indexes moved higher several times during the day only to be slapped back by waves of selling, reflecting investors’ views that much more aggressive support is needed from the government and the central bank.

    European markets were expected to open lower, with futures on the euro zone’s blue-chip Euro STOXX index STXEc1 down by 1.6 percent.

    Germany’s DAX futures FDXc1 fell 1.7 percent, Britain’s FTSE 100 futures FFIc1 retreated 1.3 percent and France’s CAC futures FCEc1 dropped 1.2 percent.

    Following a near 20 percent plunge in stock prices in three days, the People’s Bank of China cut interest rates late on Tuesday and lowered the amount of reserves that banks must hold in a much-anticipated move that some economists said was long overdue.

    While the double-barrelled policy move was initially cheered by markets around the world, the relief didn’t last long as investors quickly resumed their focus on the deteriorating outlook for China and its impact on the global economy.

    “The seemingly endless issues confronting global markets remind us too much of the good old arcade game of Whack-A-Mole. Even as one problem retreats, another one seems to be lurking around and ready to spring up,” Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Singapore’s OCBC bank, said in a research note.

    “For one, renewed volatility in China and oil’s price slump have resurfaced to demand attention. Meanwhile, though the potential for Fed’s (interest rate) lift-off has receded somewhat, it remains a matter of time before it pops up again.”

    After yet another rollercoaster day, China’s CSI300 index .CSI300 ended down 0.6 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC fell 1.3 percent to fresh eight-month lows.

    Both had been up 3 percent at one point.

    MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS edged up 0.2 percent and remained just shy of a three-year low hit in the previous session.

    Japan’s Nikkei .N225 was among the few bright spots, rising 3.2 percent on bargain hunting after six days of declines, while Australia rose 0.7 percent.

    Companies such as mining giant BHP Billiton (BLT.L) have softened expectations of demand growth from China while countries most exposed to China’s economy, such as Indonesia, have dialed down their growth forecasts for 2015 in recent days.

    Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group at Franklin Templeton, told Reuters that fund managers are being forced to unwind their holdings because of a “loss of liquidity” and high volatility.

    The CBOE Market Volatility Index .VIX was still elevated at 36, indicating significant uncertainty, even though the “fear index” was below the previous day’s peak of 53.3, which was the highest since January 2009.

    In a sign of how fearful investors have become of risky assets, a rally on Wall Street fueled by China’s policy easing evaporated on Tuesday and stocks ended with deep losses.

    U.S. stock index futures ESc1 fell in early Asian trade before edging back up 0.5 percent.

    Fixed income markets were active with investors rushing for safety in government debt and cash.

    “Some parts of the Asian bond markets have become quite illiquid and investors are only buying high-quality paper amid this selloff,” said Hayden Briscoe, fixed-income director at AllianceBernstein in Hong Kong and part of a team that manages $250 billion in assets globally.

    In currencies, the dollar has also broadly lost steam as traders unwound massive carry trade bets built up in recent years based on higher yielding assets and instead flocked to safe-haven currencies such as euro and yen.

    China’s downturn and global market turmoil have also created fresh uncertainty over whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin raising interest rates this year.

    The euro was $1.1565, little changed from late U.S. trade, but more than a full cent above Tuesday’s low of $1.1396.

    The dollar was at 119.46, failing to maintain its brief foray above the 120 mark.

    Commodity prices hovered just above multi-year lows hit earlier in the week, but concerns that softer demand from China would worsen existing global supply gluts kept a lid on them.

    A 19-commodity Thomson Reuters/Core Commodity CRB Index .TRJCRB was just holding above lows not seen since 2003.

    Brent crude futures LCOc1 last traded at $43.46 per barrel, about a dollar above 6 1/2-year low of $42.23 on Monday.

    Copper CMCU3, often considered a proxy for global economic activity because of the metal’s extensive use, fell 1.2 percent to $5,002 per tonne.

  • Gujarat hit by violent caste-related protests

    India deployed paramilitary forces and imposed a curfew in Gujarat on Wednesday after violence broke out at a protest led by a powerful clan to demand more government jobs and college places.

    The protests pose a challenge to the authority of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who ran Gujarat for more than a decade before winning last year’s general election.

    At least half a million members of the Patidar, or Patel, community rallied on Tuesday in Ahmedabad to demand changes to policies that, they argue, unfairly favour groups at the lower end of India’s social order.

    Clashes broke out after the arrest of the movement’s leader, 21-year-old activist Hardik Patel, forcing police to fire teargas and to baton-charge protesters.

    “The agitators clashed with the police and members of the lower castes. They have burnt down nine police stations and over three dozen buses,” P.C. Thakur, Gujarat’s top police officer, told Reuters.

    “We had to impose a curfew to control the clashes. Offices, trading houses and educational institutions will not open today.”

    The Patels, a wealthy business community in India and overseas, have been a driving force in the country’s economic growth. The community dominates the thriving diamond trade, oil processing and the textile industry.

    But they say that caste-based reservations deprive them of opportunities. They insist the government should put an end to affirmative action policies that favour Muslims, low-caste Hindus and Other Backward Classes – a collective term covering socially and educationally deprived groups.

    Caste-based reservations has always been a sensitive issue in India, used often as a tool for what is called vote-bank politics.

    In a recent speech, Modi said that India must overcome its caste-based divisions, and work towards a more merit-based society. Modi comes from a lowly caste included in the Other Backward Classes, and has made much of his rise to power from humble origins as the son of a tea seller.

    Caste politics are likely to play a role in a forthcoming state election in Bihar, whose chief minister Nitish Kumar belongs to the Patel community and has sympathised with the Gujarat protesters.

  • Hindu population in India drops below 80pc as Muslim ratio rises

    Members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, which swept to power last year, have expressed growing concern about the rising numbers of Muslims.

    The census data shows that Hindus declined to 79.8 per cent of the country’s 1.2 billion people in 2011, from 80.5 per cent a decade earlier.

    The share of Muslims rose to 14.2 per cent from 13.4 per cent in 2001 – the only major religious group to record a rise. Christians stayed at 2.3 per cent and Sikhs fell to 1.7 per cent from 1.9 per cent.

    Sakshi Maharaj, a Hindu priest-turned-politician, caused an uproar earlier this year when he said Hindu women should give birth to four children to ensure that their religion survives.

    In the first census, conducted after Britain carved India and Pakistan out of colonial India in 1947, Hindus accounted for 84.1 per cent of the Indian population.

    Although population growth is slowing in all religious groups, India is still set to overtake China to become the world’s most populous country by 2022, according to a United Nations forecast.

    India’s population grew by almost a fifth during the period between the last two censuses, straining supplies of land, food and water and bloating its underemployed, poorly skilled workforce.

  • One Direction taking a break, not splitting: Horan

    Horan, 21, told his 23 million fans on Twitter that the group will continue to tour and play new music, after a report in a British newspaper said the band will be taking a year-long break next year so that members can pursue separate interests.

    “We are not splitting up, but we will be taking a well earned break at some point next year,” he said. “Don’t worry though, we still have lots we want to achieve!”

    A Sony Music representative for the band declined to comment to Reuters.

    The band, now comprising Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, soared to international prominence after finishing third on the British version of “the X Factor” in 2010.

    One Direction

    The break will come after the band, reduced to four members following the departure of Zayn Malik earlier this year, release their fifth album in March, the report in the Sun said.

    “The guys have been together for five years, which is an incredible run for any boy band,” a source told The Sun.

    “They fully deserve to have at least a year to work on their own projects. There is absolutely no bad blood between them and they are all 100 percent behind the decision.”

    The group’s last scheduled stadium concert will be in Sheffield, England on Oct. 31. They will promote their new album in February, after a Christmas break, the Sun said.