Syrian kills Russian wife for supporting President Assad

A Syrian businessman in Aleppo has shot his wife for supporting President Bashar al Assad, AFP reported quoting the deceased woman’s cousin.

­Mohammad O., around 40 years old, who runs a clothes shop in the al Maissar district of Aleppo, reportedly shot his spouse three times using a pistol, 30-year-old office employee Ahmad said.

“The dispute started when he criticized Bashar al Assad, while she defended the President. The quarrel escalated, and he shot her,” Ahmad told AFP.

The husband then went outside and explained to onlookers that his wife, whom he met in Russia during a business trip and has been married to for 4 years, “didn’t stop showcasing her support for Bashar [al Assad],” and that he simply “couldn’t take her attitude anymore.”

The neighbourhood in which the couple lived has been wracked by unrest and is under the partial rule of the rebels, the police are virtually powerless and the husband was not detained after the killing.

Insurgents seized the town in July,  since then the town has been divided into sectors, with approximately half of it controlled by the government, and the other half by rebel forces.

Waves of anger: Japan tsunami victim aid spent on whalers, officials and fighter pilots

A quarter of Japan’s tsunami relief fund has been spent on unrelated projects, including renovating a government office and subsiding whaling. The revelations have ignited outcry as more than 320,000 tsunami victims remain displaced.

The expenditure was identified after the publication of an independent government-backed audit into the allocation of the $150 billion relief fund, created after the earthquake and tsunami of March last year.

The fund intended not only to restore damaged cities, but to “reinvigorate Japan”, stimulating local economies into recover. Nevertheless, the relevance of some of the funded projects have been raising eyebrows.

Among the expenses listed are $30 million dollars to protect Japan’s yearly whale hunt from environmental activists, $380,000 to promote Tokyo Sky Tree, the world’s tallest free-standing broadcast tower, free training for fighter pilots and a subsidy for a contact-lens factory located nowhere near the site of the disaster-hit coast.

"Taxpayers accepted tax hikes because they thought the money would go to disaster victims and the disaster victims were grateful," said Kuniko Tanioka, who is a member of a group that studied the expenses in the Upper House of the Diet, Japan’s parliament.

"But the funds have been used for projects they never imagined. It is a direct blow to the willpower of those who are trying to rebuild their lives.”

At first the report was largely ignored by the Japanese media, as clientelism – the allocation of budget money to those with close ties, often in exchange for political support, is not unusual in the country’s politics.

But anger rose, sparked by those most in need of help who feel like they’ve  been ignored.

“Exploiting the construction effort is treacherous to the first degree,” proclaimed a Tokyo Shimbun editorial.

Cities on the coastline remain disaster sites, with administrators and former inhabitants unsure they will ever be rebuilt. More than 200,000 are still living in temporary housing.

Victims were allocated around $40,000 per household to rebuild their homes. The money is not nearly sufficient to rebuild the houses, particularly as many victims also lost their jobs.

240 ports – often economic hubs for smaller Japanese towns – remain closed.

Across the disaster zone itself 60 percent of applications from businesses seeking help to re-open have been rejected by authorities due to insufficient funds and red tape. Businesses have to re-open first before they are given financial aid, and have to be judged as “essential” by a local administrative panel.

Stunningly, not only has the money been misallocated, but half of the relief fund has not been given to anyone at all, due to a nominal lack of suitable applicants and red tape. The recovery is being blighted by the slowness of Tokyo’s bureaucrats to make centralized decisions to relieve troubled regions.  Whilst affected areas are worsening the situation, through apparent inexperience in managing such large-scale construction projects.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, whose DPJ party came to power in 2009 on promises of confronting long-standing corruption, was forced to defend the government in the Diet.

"We must listen sincerely to the voices calling for the utmost priority to be accorded to disaster area reconstruction,” said Noda, who was finance minister at the time of the disaster. He also promised to “narrow down” apparent unrelated spending, though he did not specify to what extent or on what criteria.

“The government has lost all public trust,” said Masako Mori, from the opposition Liberal Party.

"That's a fundamental characteristic of bureaucrats. It is the Diet that should check how money is used, but the Diet hasn't put any effort into it," Takayoshi Igarashi, a professor at Hosei University, told Japan Times.

Yoshimitsu Shiozaki, an academic specializing in urban planning at Kobe University, who has conducted his own survey of the spending, believes that little will be done to reverse the spending priorities.

"Legally speaking, there are no problems with these projects," Shiozaki told the Japan Times, noting that before signing off on huge subsidies, bureaucrats only had to prove that a company was in some way connected to the disaster area, even if it is through a single supplier.

He also pointed out that previous relief efforts in the country, such as the Kobe earthquake recovery in 1995, have also been marred by similar scandals.

"But this time the funds are being used in a more deceptive way," said Shiozaki.

In total Japan plans to spend $295 billion on disaster recovery over the next decade.

Golden mystery: Ship carrying precious ore vanishes in Sea of Okhotsk

Cargo carrier Amurskoe disappeared in the Sea of Okhotsk while carrying 700 tons of gold ore. 

Three ships, an amphibious aircraft and a helicopter are undertaking search and rescue operations to find the eight crewmembers of the lost vessel.

­A sonar distress beacon was automatically activated near Feklistov Island in the Shantarsk Archipelago on Sunday, Russia’s Emergency Ministry reported.

The tanker Novik was the first to arrive at the scene, but found no wreckage or survivors. The rescue operation was complicated by severe weather, and waves up to four meters high.

A specially equipped Be-200 amphibious aircraft was dispatched from the city of Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East region to join the operation, but the rescue plane found no trace of the Amurskoe.

By nightfall, the aircraft was forced to return home. The severe weather prevented smaller planes from joining the rescue mission.

The operation continued on Monday morning, with a Mi-8 helicopter and two trawler ships joining the search.

The Amurskoe departed the village of Neran in Russia’s Far East Khabarovsk territory, and was headed toward the port of Okhotsk in the Sea of Okhotsk. After leaving the delta of the Kiran River, the vessel entered the Sea of Okhotsk and sent out a distress signal soon after.

The Amurskoe was built in 1973 in the port of Nikolaevsk-na-Amure. Over the last year, it mainly operated in Russia’s Far East and around Sakhalin Island, and also reportedly made sporadic trips to China.

The vessel was grounded on the bottom of an estuary of the Amur River last year, but was later rescued.

Little hope remains that the Amurskoe's distress beacon was somehow washed overboard and activated, and that the ship is still traveling towards its destination.

The Sea of Okhotsk is situated in the northwestern Pacific – between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands to the east, the large island of Sakhalin and the eastern coast of Siberia to the west and north, and the Japanese island of Hokkaido to the south.

Ten dead, dozens missing after South Sudan accidentally sinks own ship

At least ten soldiers have been confirmed killed and about 50 marked as missing in South Sudan after the young country's army shot and sank one of its own military riverboats after mistaking the vessel for an enemy.

­The troops opened fire on the boat carrying 170 of its own soldiers in a remote region in the Upper Nile after ordering it to stop as it passed their position near the Lul settlement.

Most of the soldiers managed to swim ashore, but 50 are still missing, says South Sudan army spokesman Col. Philip Aguer.

Aguer said the government has launched an investigation into what happened, although he described the incident as "an accident."

South Sudan became an independent state after seceding from Sudan proper over a year ago, following a 2005 deal that put an end to decades of civil war.

The new national army – the Sudan People's Liberation Army – is composed largely of former guerrilla fighters and militias integrated after the peace accord.

'Nuclear time bomb:' Downed K-27 submarine must be lifted out

A Soviet K-27 submarine suffered a nuclear accident before being dumped at the bottom of the Kara Sea 30 years ago. Russia may now have to lift the sub from dangerously shallow waters – before an “uncontrolled chain reaction” causes fatal damage.

“Radiation leakages will come sooner or later if we just leave the K-27 there. The sub has already been on the seafloor for 30 years, and it was rusty even before it was sunken. Leakages of radioactivity under water are nearly impossible to clean up,” Thomas Nilsen, a nuclear safety expert who has extensively mapped radioactive waste on the Arctic seabed, told RT.

Equipped with an experimental liquid-coolant nuclear engine, the K-27 was ill-fated from its launch in 1962. It made only three voyages, the last of which, in 1968, ended in tragedy.

A short way from its base in the Barents Sea, its reactor malfunctioned, and the brave but badly-trained crew made a futile attempt to fix it. Instead of solving the problem, they were exposed to fatal doses of radiation. Nine seamen died, most of them in hospital in agony from radiation sickness several days after the accident. The incident was kept secret by the Soviet government for decades, and the families of the victims received no compensation.

After repeated plans to redesign the sub, Soviet authorities decided it was easier to dispose of it, and towed the vessel to a remote test site in the Kara Sea, near the Arctic Ocean, in 1981.

Although international guidelines say decommissioned vessels should be buried at least 3,000 meters under the sea, the Soviet Navy scuttled it at around 75 meters.

Now, what was once one of the most remote places on Earth has become a hub of commercial activity, with the melting ice caps providing greater opportunities for shipping, and oil companies waiting to drill the seabed below the waves.

Earlier this year, environmental NGO Bellona claimed that the submarine may be reaching critical status, and now a joint Russian-Norwegian expedition is studying the site of the accident. It is expected to publish its findings in the coming weeks..

Big Oil to the rescue

Experts believe that the sub will eventually have to be removed from its current resting place.

"Russia must take responsibility for their own waste financially,” Bellona’s Igor Koudrik told the Barents Observer newspaper.

But so far, the government has not allocated any funds towards the operation.

Nilsen believes that the operation will be expensive – costing “tens of millions of euro” – and hazardous.

“Our challenge today is to find a way to lift it without shaking the reactors so much that an uncontrolled chain-reaction doesn't start. If that happens, a large amount of radioactivity can leak out to the fragile Arctic marine environment,” Nilsen said.

The increasing presence of energy companies will not necessarily add to the problem, but could provide a solution – if they pay for the lifting of the sub.

Russian giant Rosneft is conducting a seismic study of the Kara Sea, with a view to drilling its rich oil reserves. The potential profits could make the multi-million-euro extraction costs seem a fair price to pay for avoiding a nuclear accident.

Unfortunately, even if the danger of the K-27 is defused, others still lurk at the bottom of the sea.

The Russian government has recently released archives showing that there are 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships contaminated ships, and 14 nuclear reactors in the Kara Sea – and most of these objects have been decaying there since the Soviet era.

US officials say attack in Libya may have been planned

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the United States September 11, 2012

 Officials within the Obama administration have reportedly said the deadly attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, which killed ambassador Chris Stevens, was planned in advance.

­Both the New York Times and CNN are quoting sources within the administration as saying the attack on the consulate was planned.

CNN's source claimed "Tuesday's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was planned in advance, and the attackers used the protest outside the consulate as a diversion".

Some media reports have also suggested 'Innocence of Muslims', the scandalous film that many blame for sparking the protest, was used as a pretext for the attacks on US embassies in Libya and Cairo.

Senior US officials also told CNN that unmanned surveillance drones are expected to begin flying over Benghazai and other locations in eastern Libya to look for jihadi encampments and targets that may be tied to the deadly attack on American personnel.

Pentagon plans drone sales to 66 countries

The use of drones might be raising questions within the United States, but overseas the demand is mounting. The US Defense Departments says they are preparing to make unmanned aerial vehicles commercially available to 66 outside nations.

If approved by Congress and the US State Department, the Pentagon could soon be peddling the remote-controlled war machines that have become a hallmark of America’s overseas wars to dozens of its allies. It’s a not deal that’s likely to be cut without a sound, however, as the use of UAVs has become one of the most debated issues regarding the US military at home.

Last year, however, the DoD put together a list of 66 countries they hope they will be cleared to sell drones too, and today the Defense Department says they are just as eager as ever to get the ball rolling.

Countless watchdog groups have condemned the use of drones, calling the aircraft responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians. As recently as this past weekend, a US-led drone strike in Yemen was reported to cause fatalities for no fewer than 13 civilians. Even so, adding UAVs to the wish-lists of other countries could be a consideration favored by much of Washington, especially those who have feared than planned budget cuts will nix billions from the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade.

Last year, US weapons exports amounted $66.3 billion worth of deals thanks to sales to the States’ allies, the largest figure ever to come through arms sales. Just last month, a Congressional Research Service report claimed that 2011 was “the highest single year agreements total in the history of the US arms export program,” and that trend could very well carry over, especially if UAVs are added to the list of inventory available to the allies.

To Reuters on Wednesday, Northrop Grumman Corp CEO Wes Bush says that the Obama White House is working to make it easier for his company and others to deal drones as part of their international arms exchange, but roadblocks remain in place, regardless.

"I wish we were further along in getting that done. It's slow, it's painful, but we're doing the right things to move in that direction," Bush tells Reuters.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency deputy director, Richard Genaille, told attendees at the ComDef 2012 conference, "We don't really have a comprehensive U.S. government policy" on drone exports, but one was indeed in the works.

"It hasn't moved quite as fast as we would like, but we're not giving up,” Genaille said.

In May, Turkish President Abdullah Gul told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the White House has expressed a “positive stance” over the sale of UAVs, and “They are trying to convince the Congress” before an agreement is made.

Last month, the US-based marketing firm Teal Group estimated that “UAV spending will almost double over the next decade from current worldwide UAV expenditures of $6.6 billion annually to $11.4 billion, totaling just over $89 billion in the next ten years.”