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Diane Marie Amann is the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at the University of Georgia School of Law.
The Supreme Court yesterday decided its first arbitration case involving a sovereign nation-state much as it would any other international commercial arbitration matter. Overturning an appellate ruling that a private investor’s failure to fulfill a treaty requirement had deprived arbitrators of jurisdiction, the Court’s seven-member majority effectively reinstated a multimillion-dollar arbitral award against the sovereign state, the Republic of Argentina. The judgment rebuffed a treaty interpretation proffered by the United States, which had briefed and argued the case as an amicus. Yet the Court left open the question of how it would interpret certain investment treaties to which the United States is party.
The dispute in BG Group plc v. Republic of Argentina concerned the investment of petitioner BG Group, a British firm, in a privatized natural gas utility operating in Buenos Aires. At the time of the early 1990s investment, Argentine law linked gas tariffs to the U.S. dollar. But Argentina broke the linkage when its economy collapsed less than a decade later. That and other emergency measures resulted in losses for BG Group, which in 2003 sought arbitration pursuant to a 1990 bilateral investment treaty between the United Kingdom and Argentina – one of the thousands of BITs that countries have concluded in the last quarter-century. Following an arbitration in Washington, D.C., arbitrators concluded in 2007 that Argentina had not accorded BG Group “fair and equitable treatment” as required by Article 2(2) of the treaty, and thus ordered Argentina to pay $ 185 million in damages. The matter then moved to federal court.
In 2011, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia confirmed the arbitral award. A year later the D.C. Circuit reversed. Its decision turned on Article 8(2)(a) of the Britain-Argentina treaty, which provides that a dispute shall be submitted to arbitration upon one party’s request “where, after a period of eighteen months has elapsed from the moment when the dispute was submitted to the competent tribunal . . . , the said tribunal has not given its final decision.” The arbitrators had ruled that it would have been “absurd and unreasonable” to enforce this local litigation requirement in the face of emergency restrictions imposed by Argentina, and the district court deferred to this determination. But the D.C. Circuit reviewed the issue de novo, held that BG Group’s failure to satisfy the requirement had stripped the arbitrators of jurisdiction, and vacated the arbitral award.
Whether deferential or de novo review was appropriate amounted to a question of “who – court or arbitrator – bears primary responsibility for interpreting” the treaty provision, according to the opinion for the Court by Justice Stephen G. Breyer. In search of an answer, the Court followed a two-step approach, “initially treat[ing] the document before us as if it were an ordinary contract between private parties,” and then examining “whether the fact that the document in question is a treaty makes a critical difference.” Citing precedents including Breyer’s own opinion for the Court in Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., the Court held that in disputes involving “ordinary contracts,” courts decide substantive issues of “arbitrability,” while “procedural matters” are presumptively left to arbitrators. The local litigation clause in Article 8 constitutes “a purely procedural requirement – a claims-processing rule that governs when arbitration may begin,” the Court wrote in BG Group. It found in the text of the Britain-Argentina treaty no evidence that drafters intended to displace this “ordinary contract assumption.”
The Court then acknowledged that what was at issue was not a private contract, but a treaty, and it expressed “respect” for “the Government’s views about the proper interpretation of treaties.” Yet the Court rejected the United States’s view that the local litigation clause was “‘a condition on the State’s consent’” meriting de novoscrutiny. Instead, the Court applied “‘a [h]ighly [d]eferential’” standard of review, and accepted the arbitrators’ determination that they had jurisdiction to resolve the dispute. The Britain-Argentina treaty, it reasoned, contained no “explicit language” or other evidence of an intent to set aside the “ordinary interpretive framework.”
The dissenters found little that was ordinary in this case of first impression. Of foremost concern was the fact that the document at issue was “a treaty between two sovereign nations” to which “[n]o investor is a party,” wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in a dissent joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. By focusing first on private contracts, the majority “start[s] down the wrong road” and “ends up at the wrong place,” the dissent added. In the dissenters’ view, Article 8(2)(a) is a substantive rather than a procedural requirement: it “constitutes only a unilateral standing offer by Argentina with respect to U.K. investors” – an offer that must be accepted via submission of the dispute to a local court before Argentina may be held to have consented to arbitration. Arguing for a remand to determine if actions by Argentina excused BG Group’s failure to exhaust the local adjudicative remedy, dissenters emphasized the investor-state aspect of the dispute: “It is no trifling matter for a sovereign nation to subject itself to suit by private parties; we do not presume that any country – including our own – takes that step lightly.”
Quoting this passage was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a concurrence in part that charted a path between the majority and dissenting opinions. Sotomayor agreed with the dissenters that the prerequisite of parties’ consent to arbitration “is especially salient in the context of a bilateral investment treaty” that amounts to “a nation state’s standing offer to arbitrate with an amorphous class of private investors.” Unlike the dissent, however, Sotomayor found insufficient evidence that drafters intended such an offer. She thus distinguished Article 8 of the Britain-Argentina pact from the explicit “Conditions and limitations on Consent of Each Party” contained in Article 11.18 of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. Sotomayor explained that she joined the opinion for the Court with the understanding that the majority “wisely ‘leave[s] for another day the question of interpreting treaties that refer to “conditions of consent” explicitly.’”
The Court’s decision in BG Group thus may prove simply to impose a clear statement rule – a rule that no less than a private party, a nation-state which wants to assure that courts rather than arbitrators have the last word on whether it consented to arbitration must say so explicitly. As an amicus, the United States argued that such intent might be implicit in the bilateral investment treaty at issue. Although the majority disagreed, as Sotomayor’s concurrence indicated, its holding may not extend to U.S. treaties that, unlike the Britain-Argentina treaty, contain explicit conditions. These include not only the U.S.-Korea agreement, but also the North American Free Trade Agreement, to which the United States belongs along with Mexico and Canada, and the U.S. Model Bilateral Investment Treaty. Whether in some future case the Supreme Court will enforce such express provisions remains an open question.
Plain English summary:
The Court’s decision in BG Group plc v. Republic of Argentina turned on a clause in an investment treaty between the United Kingdom and Argentina that required a private investor (here, a British company that had invested in Argentina) that wished to arbitrate its dispute with the host country first to submit the dispute to the country’s local court system and then wait for eighteen months. A divided Supreme Court held that arbitrators, and not courts, are primarily responsible for deciding what to do if the private investor fails to satisfy this requirement. The Supreme Court thus reversed a decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned an arbitral award excusing such a failure by BG Group. The Court held that the local litigation requirement was a procedural, rather than substantive matter; therefore, courts should defer to the arbitrators’ determination. Two Justices dissented. A third Justice concurred in part on the understanding that the Court’s opinion left for another day the question of how to interpret a clause that – unlike the one the Court was reviewing – explicitly conditioned the country’s consent to arbitration on fulfillment of the requirement.
[Disclosure:Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, served as counsel to the petitioner in this case. The author of this post is not affiliated with that law firm.]
1 of 3. Officers survey the scene of a shooting at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, January 21, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Nate Chute
(Reuters) – One person was shot to death on the campus of Indiana’s Purdue University on Tuesday, and a male suspect was in custody, authorities said.
The shooting took place around noon local time (1800 GMT) in a basement classroom of the university’s electrical engineering building. The shooter seemed to have had only the victim as his intended target, leaving the building immediately after the shooting, said Purdue University Police Chief John Cox.
“It’s just a tragic situation,” Cox said, adding that the shooter was taken into custody without a struggle.
The police, however, did not identify either the victim or the shooter.
University officials said classes had resumed and the campus was considered safe, though the electrical engineering building remained closed.
Upon hearing of the shooting, campus officials immediately ordered students, faculty and staff across campus to take shelter as police searched the area.
School officials said they were make counseling available for students.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence called the shooting a “tragedy.”
“Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family of the victim and to everyone in the Purdue community,” Pence said in a statement, pledging state law enforcement assistance in the investigation.
The frequency of shootings at schools and universities in the United States is fueling the national debate over gun control. On Monday night, a student was shot and critically wounded outside an athletic center at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.
Last week alone, two students were shot at a high school in Philadelphia, another was shot at a high school in Albany, New York, and two students were shot at a middle school in New Mexico.
Gun ownership laws in the United States have come under intense scrutiny since December 2012, when 20 young children and six educators were shot dead by a long gunman at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Chris Francescani and Marina Lopes in New York and David Bailey in Minneapolis; editing by Scott Malone, G Crosse)
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON D.C.Thu Jan 9, 2014 7:13pm EST
India’s Deputy Consul General in New York, Devyani Khobragade, attends a Rutgers University event at India’s Consulate General in New York, June 19, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Mohammed Jaffer/SnapsIndia
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON D.C. (Reuters) – The Indian diplomat whose arrest and strip-searching in New York caused a major rift between India and the United States was indicted for visa fraud on Thursday, and the U.S. government immediately asked her to leave the country.
A U.S. government official said Washington accepted a request by India to accredit the diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, at the United Nations and then asked New Delhi to waive the diplomatic immunity that status conferred. India denied the request, leading Washington to ask for her departure, the official said.
In a letter accompanying her indictment on Thursday, the prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan, initially said Khobragade had left the country.
Shortly afterwards, a spokesman for Bharara said in a statement that she had not left.
A lawyer for Khobragade confirmed this.
“Despite Preet Bharara’s reports to the contrary, Devyani Khobragade has not left the country,” Daniel Arshack, her lawyer, said in a statement. “She is at home with her children.”
There was no immediate comment from the Indian embassy in Washington or its mission to the United Nations.
Khobragade, who was deputy consul-general in New York, was arrested December 12 and charged with one count of visa fraud and another of making false statements about how much she paid her housekeeper.
Her arrest set off protests in India amid disclosures that she was strip searched on the day of her arrest. It also soured the broader U.S.-India bilateral relationship, leading to the postponement of two visits to India by senior U.S. officials and another by a U.S. business delegation.
Furious at Kobragade’s treatment, India has curtailed privileges offered to U.S. diplomats and ordered the U.S. Embassy to close a club for expatriate Americans in New Delhi.
The arresting authority, the U.S. Marshals Service, characterized the strip search as a routine procedure imposed on any new arrestee.
UNDERLYING PROBLEMS
Khobragade’s departure would remove the focus of current friction between New Delhi and Washington, but it is unclear how long it will take the anger to subside in the run up to national elections in India in May.
The case has exposed underlying problems in a bilateral relationship that has failed to live up to its billing by President Barack Obama in 2010 as “a defining partnership for the 21st Century.”
Critics accuse Obama of failing to pay sufficient attention to ties with a country viewed as a key strategic counterbalance to China and as an engine to boost the U.S. economy, while U.S. hopes of building a more robust business relationship with India have run into bureaucratic hurdles.
Frustration has grown among the U.S. corporate lobby. Indian sourcing rules for retail, information technology, medicine and clean energy products are contentious and U.S. firms complain about “unfair” imports from India of everything from shrimp to steel pipes. In June, more than 170 U.S. lawmakers signed a letter to Obama about Indian policies they said threatened U.S. jobs.
Daniel Markey, senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Khobragade case made it appear the Obama administration had taken its eye off the ball on the relationship with India.
“The question is why this wasn’t managed in a more sophisticated or subtle way, because things can be managed more effectively. This was always going to be an issue, but it could have been resolved more rapidly with less fanfare.”
Speaking at a seminar on Thursday, Ron Somers, president of the U.S.-India Business Council blamed “bumbling on both sides” for the Khobragade affair.
“We have to do some thinking on this side as to what has there been in the way of frustration that allowed this incident to provoke and spill over as it has,” he said.
“We really need now to be building trust and taking an introspective look at whether we really mean what we say when we talk about strategic partnership and how do we get there.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York, David Brunnstrom in Washington, and Louis Charbonneau at the U.N.; editing by Clive McKeef)
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Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, in a scene from the fifth season of “Breaking Bad.” More Photos »
Spoiler alert: this article contains plot twists from the finale.
After so many lugubrious turns, “Breaking Bad” came to an end on Sunday on an almost uplifting note.
Walter White died, of course, but first he ran the table of revenge, settling score after score with mathematical precision. He went out with a big finish: his ingeniously rigged machine gun mowed down the entire Aryan Brotherhood gang in a fantastical killing spree that was almost like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie. (As bad guys go, the next best thing to a Nazi is a neo-Nazi.)
It was a fitting ending, and predictable in only some ways. Crime didn’t pay and Walter lost just about everything, including his life. But it was also, by the show’s bleak, almost Calvinist standards, a relatively happy ending. It wasn’t, as he so often feared, all for nothing – he found a way to get his money to his children. He also saved Jesse, actually taking a bullet for him by throwing himself on top of the younger man to protect him from the machine gun fire. He even made up with his wife, Skyler.
It was way too late for contrition, but there was a confession and even a kind of deathbed conciliation. Walter for the first time told Skyler the truth about his reason for cooking meth and becoming a drug lord. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it,” he said. “And I was really, I was alive.”
After so many layers of lies, that blunt admission won him at long last the shadow of a loving smile. And that was almost the same look that Walt exchanged with Jesse as the two parted for good, a glint of recognition and farewell.
Then again, the episode began with Walter still alive but already a ghost, walking in and out of secured mansions, public diners and even Skyler’s house undetected, almost as if invisible.
Perhaps the best thing about the finale of “Breaking Bad” is that it actually ended. So many shows, notably “The Sopranos” and “Lost,” have gone dark without anything approaching finality. Here, the writers were so determined to not leave unfinished business that the last episode was called “Felina,” an anagram of finale. And almost every loose end was tied. In some cases, a little too tightly, and in others, not quite as much.
The all-important ricin, like Chekhov’s gun, had to actually be put to use at long last. And it was almost comical that Lydia, so prissy and exacting, was poisoned with a packet of her beloved Stevia sweetener.
In a later scene, the writers underscored the point, showing Lydia in bed, pale and sickly as Walter explains to her over the telephone that he poisoned her drink at the diner. But that was almost overkill: when Lydia tapped the sweetener into her chamomile tea, the camera zoomed in on her mug of tea as it clouded up — as ominous as a glass of milk in a Hitchcock movie.
Even the dreamy scene where Jesse, still in shackles in a meth lab, fantasizes that he is in a woodworking shop sanding a beautiful box had a precise antecedent: in an episode when Jesse was in group therapy, he reminisced about the satisfaction he felt in high school of making a perfect box from “Peruvian walnut with inlaid zebrawood.”
When Walt died, it was to the tune of “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, which begins with the words, “Guess I got what I deserve.”
The ending was clear enough; it was the beginning that was left ambiguous.
The finale circled back to Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz, Walt’s former partners at Gray Matter. Walt broke into their mansion and cleverly blackmailed the couple into providing his children with the millions he couldn’t give them directly. And it was a delicious scene: When Elliott fearfully brandished a small blade, Walt said gently, “Elliott if we’re going to go that way, you’ll need a bigger knife.”
But the show never fully spelled out why Walt broke away from Gretchen and Elliott in the first place.
There were hints throughout the series. On several occasions, Walt accused them of cheating him out of his share; that bitterness seemingly helped steer him into his life of crime. But it wasn’t clear that his version was correct — in an episode where they confront each other at a restaurant, Gretchen said that Walt left her without any explanation. And the true story never came out.
“Breaking Bad” brilliantly tracked Walt’s transformation from teacher to criminal mastermind. But it’s still a mystery why that talented chemist turned his back on fame and fortune and became a humble high school chemistry teacher.
That is one secret Walter White took to the grave.
Pakistani office workers evacuate a building after an earthquake struck Karachi on Sept. 24, 2013.Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images
A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck western Pakistan Tuesday, killing at least 25 people and destroying mud houses in a sparsely populated area of the South Asian country, officials and residents said.
The earthquake struck at 4:29 p.m. local time southwest of the city of Khuzdar in Balochistan province at a depth of nine miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Balochistan is a remote, mountainous area with no major industrial infrastructure.
Tremors were felt across the province, as well as in the port city of Karachi, residents said. People as far as the capital New Delhi also reported mild tremors.
Local officials in the Awaran district confirmed to Al Jazeera that at least 25 people had been killed by the quake.
Muhammad Riaz, a senior Pakistan meteorologist, told local media that the earthquake was “major” and that “heavy destruction” was likely.
Mumtaz Baloch, a senior local administration official in Awaran district, 217 miles southwest of provincial capital Quetta, told Agence France-Presse he had received reports of houses collapsing in the area due to the quake.
“We also have initial information about injuries to people as a result of the collapse of houses but there are no reports of any deaths. We have dispatched our teams to the affected area to ascertain the losses,” Baloch said.
In April, another 7.8-magnitude quake centered in southeast Iran, close to the border with Balochistan, killed 41 people.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There is an argument that was made in 1964, 1965 on through the ’80s and ’90s in which those who resisted any change in the status quo, particularly when it came to economic opportunity, made two big arguments.
Argument number one was, any efforts by government to help folks who were locked out of opportunity, whether it was minorities or the poor generally, unions, any effort by government to help those folks is bad for the economy. And that became a major argument. And if, in fact, people start thinking the government’s the problem instead of the solution, then what that leaves you is whatever the marketplace does on its own. And what we’ve seen is a marketplace that increasingly produces very unequal results. And it – so it – it disempowers our capacity for common action to do something about poverty, to do something to help middle-class families.
And I think the second element to that argument that has been made, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, is that government has hurt middle-class families or hurt white working-class families, because, you know, pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington are just trying to help out minorities or trying to give them something free. (PBS NewsHour, August 28, 2013)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There is an argument that was made in 1964, 1965 on through the ’80s and ’90s in which those who resisted any change in the status quo, particularly when it came to economic opportunity, made two big arguments.
Argument number one was, any efforts by government to help folks who were locked out of opportunity, whether it was minorities or the poor generally, unions, any effort by government to help those folks is bad for the economy. And that became a major argument. And if, in fact, people start thinking the government’s the problem instead of the solution, then what that leaves you is whatever the marketplace does on its own. And what we’ve seen is a marketplace that increasingly produces very unequal results. And it – so it – it disempowers our capacity for common action to do something about poverty, to do something to help middle-class families.
And I think the second element to that argument that has been made, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, is that government has hurt middle-class families or hurt white working-class families, because, you know, pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington are just trying to help out minorities or trying to give them something free. (PBS NewsHour, August 28, 2013)
At least 40 people were killed Monday in clashes outside a military building in Cairo where supporters of the former president were holding a sit-in, an Egyptian health ministry official said.
Ministry spokesman Khaled el-Khatib said initial reports also indicated at least 322 were wounded, although he gave no details on the circumstances of the killings.
Military spokesmen said gunmen opened fire on troops at the building, killing at least five supporters of Mohammed Morsi and one officer.
A spokesman from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mourad Ali, and a witness at the scene however said military forces opened fire at dawn on the protesters outside the Republican Guard building. The different accounts could not be reconciled.
Satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera showed footage from a nearby field hospital of at least six dead bodies laid out on the ground, some with severe wounds. A medic from the area, Hesham Agami, said ambulances were unable to transport more than 200 wounded to hospitals because the military had blocked off the roads.
Al-Shaimaa Younes, who was at the sit-in, said military troops and police forces opened fire on the protesters during early morning prayers. “They opened fire with live ammunition and lobbed tear gas,” she said by telephone. “There was panic and people started running. I saw people fall.”
Women and children had been among the protesters, she said.
Morsi supporters have been holding rallies and a sit-in outside the Republican Guard building since the military deposed Morsi last week during massive protests against him. The military chief replaced Morsi with an interim president, until presidential elections are held. But Morsi’s supporters refuse to recognize the change in leadership and insist Morsi be reinstated. Besides the Republican Guard sit-in, they are also holding thousands-strong daily rallies at a nearby mosque.
Morsi’s opponents are also holding rival rallies. They say the former president lost his legitimacy by mismanaging the country and not ruling democratically, leading to a mass revolt that called on the army to push him from office.
Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said initial information indicates that gunmen affiliated with the Brotherhood tried to storm the Republican Guard building shortly after dawn, firing live ammunition and throwing firebombs from a nearby mosque and rooftops. One police officer on the scene was killed, he said. Another military spokesman, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said five from the Brotherhood side were killed.
A statement by the armed forces published on the state news agency said “an armed terrorist group” tried to storm the Republican Guard building, killing one officer and seriously injuring six. The statement said the forces arrested 200 attackers, armed with guns and ammunition.
After declaring the ouster of Morsi last Wednesday, the Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi replaced him with Egypt’s chief justice and suspended the constitution until new presidential elections. The transition plan is backed by liberal and secular opponents of Morsi, and had been also supported by the ultraconservative Islamist Al-Nour party and both Muslim and Christian religious leaders.
Soon after the attack report however, Al-Nour party spokesman Nader Bakkar said on his Twitter account his party is withdrawing its support for the transition plan in response to the “massacre.”
Egyptian army soldiers take their positions on top of their armored vehicle to guard the entrances of Tahrir square, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, July 8, 2013. Egyptian military officials said gunmen killed at least five supporters of the former president when people tried to storm a military building in Cairo. The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, also said a group had tried to storm the headquarters of the Republican Guard. He added that those killed had been supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi camped outside the building in protest at his overthrow. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Egyptian army soldiers take their positions on top of their armored vehicle to guard the entrances of Tahrir square, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, July 8, 2013. Egyptian military officials said gunmen killed at least five supporters of the former president when people tried to storm a military building in Cairo. The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, also said a group had tried to storm the headquarters of the Republican Guard. He added that those killed had been supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi camped outside the building in protest at his overthrow. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Egyptian army soldiers take their positions near armored vehicles to guard the entrances of Tahrir square, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, July 8, 2013. Egyptian military officials said gunmen killed at least five supporters of the former president when people tried to storm a military building in Cairo. The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, also said a group had tried to storm the headquarters of the Republican Guard. He added that those killed had been supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi camped outside the building in protest at his overthrow. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Egyptian army soldiers take their positions near armored vehicles to guard the entrances of Tahrir square, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, July 8, 2013. Egyptian military officials said gunmen killed at least five supporters of the former president when people tried to storm a military building in Cairo. The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, also said a group had tried to storm the headquarters of the Republican Guard. He added that those killed had been supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi camped outside the building in protest at his overthrow. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Egyptian army soldiers take their positions near armored vehicles to guard the entrances of Tahrir square, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, July 8, 2013. Egyptian military officials said gunmen killed at least five supporters of the former president when people tried to storm a military building in Cairo. The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, also said a group had tried to storm the headquarters of the Republican Guard. He added that those killed had been supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi camped outside the building in protest at his overthrow. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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CAIRO (AP) — At least 40 people were killed Monday in clashes outside a military building in Cairo where supporters of the former president were holding a sit-in, an Egyptian health ministry official said.
Ministry spokesman Khaled el-Khatib said initial reports also indicated at least 322 were wounded, although he gave no details on the circumstances of the killings.
Military spokesmen said gunmen opened fire on troops at the building, killing at least five supporters of Mohammed Morsi and one officer.
A spokesman from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mourad Ali, and a witness at the scene however said military forces opened fire at dawn on the protesters outside the Republican Guard building. The different accounts could not be reconciled.
Satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera showed footage from a nearby field hospital of at least six dead bodies laid out on the ground, some with severe wounds. A medic from the area, Hesham Agami, said ambulances were unable to transport more than 200 wounded to hospitals because the military had blocked off the roads.
Al-Shaimaa Younes, who was at the sit-in, said military troops and police forces opened fire on the protesters during early morning prayers. “They opened fire with live ammunition and lobbed tear gas,” she said by telephone. “There was panic and people started running. I saw people fall.”
Women and children had been among the protesters, she said.
Morsi supporters have been holding rallies and a sit-in outside the Republican Guard building since the military deposed Morsi last week during massive protests against him. The military chief replaced Morsi with an interim president, until presidential elections are held. But Morsi’s supporters refuse to recognize the change in leadership and insist Morsi be reinstated. Besides the Republican Guard sit-in, they are also holding thousands-strong daily rallies at a nearby mosque.
Morsi’s opponents are also holding rival rallies. They say the former president lost his legitimacy by mismanaging the country and not ruling democratically, leading to a mass revolt that called on the army to push him from office.
Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said initial information indicates that gunmen affiliated with the Brotherhood tried to storm the Republican Guard building shortly after dawn, firing live ammunition and throwing firebombs from a nearby mosque and rooftops. One police officer on the scene was killed, he said. Another military spokesman, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said five from the Brotherhood side were killed.
A statement by the armed forces published on the state news agency said “an armed terrorist group” tried to storm the Republican Guard building, killing one officer and seriously injuring six. The statement said the forces arrested 200 attackers, armed with guns and ammunition.
After declaring the ouster of Morsi last Wednesday, the Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi replaced him with Egypt’s chief justice and suspended the constitution until new presidential elections. The transition plan is backed by liberal and secular opponents of Morsi, and had been also supported by the ultraconservative Islamist Al-Nour party and both Muslim and Christian religious leaders.
Soon after the attack report however, Al-Nour party spokesman Nader Bakkar said on his Twitter account his party is withdrawing its support for the transition plan in response to the “massacre.”
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Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael contributed to this report
The Federal Reserve says it will leave in place its $ 85 billion purchase of securities each month, citing “a moderate pace” of economic expansion. The Fed will also leave low interest rates untouched.
Richard Drew/AP
The Federal Reserve says it will leave in place its $ 85 billion purchase of securities each month, citing “a moderate pace” of economic expansion. The Fed will also leave low interest rates untouched.
Richard Drew/AP
The Federal Reserve will continue its program of purchasing $ 85 billion in securities and will leave the target interest rate for federal funds untouched to support the U.S. economy, the U.S. central bank said in a policy update issued Wednesday afternoon.
Here’s a summary of the state of the U.S. economy from the Fed, which concluded two days of meetings today:
“Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in May suggests that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace. Labor market conditions have shown further improvement in recent months, on balance, but the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending and business fixed investment advanced, and the housing sector has strengthened further, but fiscal policy is restraining economic growth.”
To bolster the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has spent $ 85 billion in stimulus measures every month, purchasing a mix of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. It has also worked to keep interest rates low, in an attempt to encourage borrowing by businesses and households.
Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to speak at a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET; we will update this post with news from that event.
The Federal Open Market Committee’s statement also said that inflation had remained below the panel’s long-term goals, and that there is no reason to believe that will change.
Here’s the portion of the release dealing with interest rates:
“In particular, the Committee decided to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that this exceptionally low range for the federal funds rate will be appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6-1/2 percent, inflation between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than a half percentage point above the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run goal.”
And here’s the part about the monthly purchase of securities:
“To help support a stronger economy… the Committee decided to continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $ 40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $ 45 billion per month.”
Ten of the committee’s members voted to approve the new monetary policy; the two votes against were brought by James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and Esther L. George, president of the Kansas City Fed. Both cited concerns about the policy’s possible effects on inflation.
Erika Brannock is the last of the more than 250 victims released
She suffered severe bone and tissue damage
“I will use what I’ve learned to pay it forward,” Brannock says
She plans to finish a master’s degree and return to teaching in the fall
Boston (CNN) — For Erika Brannock, Monday was a long time coming — 50 days in fact.
That’s how long she was hospitalized after bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon ripped apart her legs.
She was the last of the more than 250 victims from that attack to be released.
“I leave here today — after 11 surgeries, some pretty dark moments, and 50 days in this hospital — with nothing but admiration for this great city,” said Brannock, who was treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
On the day of the marathon, she, her sister and her brother-in-law had gone to watch Brannock’s mother run.
They were standing near the finish line when the bombs went off.
“I fell backwards, and I could see oranges and yellows,” Brannock told CNN on Monday. “I could hear the sirens and people crying and screaming. But I never heard the actual boom.”
“I had a conversation with God in my head, and I told him I wasn’t ready to go.”
Just at that moment, a woman crawled over to Brannock and grabbed her hand. She used her belt as a tourniquet on Brannock’s leg.
“She had heard me screaming for help and she said, ‘My name is Joan from California, and I’m not going to let you go.’ And she stayed with me the whole time.”
Brannock, 29, credits this mystery woman with saving her life. She desperately wants to find and thank her.
She also praises her medical team.
Brannock, a preschool teacher from Maryland, suffered severe bone and tissue damage, requiring the amputation of her lower left leg.
“I would not be here today without the talent and devotion of my care team, as well as the first responders and the marathon spectator — who I only know as ‘Joan from California’ — wherever you are — you saved my life,” she said.
‘We will thrive again’
The double bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 killed three people and injured at least 264.
Brannock’s sister, Nicole Gross, had a broken leg and remained hospitalized for 33 days.
Her sister’s husband suffered cuts, bruises and burns.
“Although we had three family members injured, our family remains intact. We not only survived, but we will thrive again, even though our lives have been changed forever,” said Brannock.
The road to recovery is long and sometimes difficult.
She kept a picture above her hospital bed of a dragonfly, which she said was a symbol of strength, courage and getting through hard times. She described the creature as her mascot.
Brannock started having nightmares after she learned that surviving bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was at the same hospital as her.
She dreamed he was going to blow up Beth Israel.
Back in Maryland, Brannock will start physical therapy and will have to learn how to walk with a prosthetic leg. But she says she is up to the task.
“I can get through anything,” Brannock said.
Nurses and doctors lined the hallway Monday as she left the hospital, cheering and clapping. She gave a high five to one.
Next on deck? Brannock plans to finish a master’s degree in early childhood education and return to teaching in the fall.
“I will use what I’ve learned to pay it forward,” she said.
“Thank you Boston. Thank you everyone. I’m ready to go home.”
The second man arrested over the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby has been discharged from hospital, police say.
Michael Adebolajo, 28, has been taken into custody at a south London police station, where he will be questioned.
The other suspect, Michael Adebowale, 22, has been charged with the soldier’s murder and appeared before magistrates on Thursday.
Drummer Rigby’s family have called for calm amid reports of a rise in anti-Muslim incidents following the attack.
Mr Adebowale, of Greenwich, south-east London, and Mr Adebolajo, originally from Romford, east London, were shot by police and arrested at the scene of the killing near Woolwich Barracks on 22 May.
They were both held under police guard in hospital following the arrest.
Mr Adebowale was discharged from hospital earlier this week. He is due to appear in court again on Monday.
The sun shone for the first time in days as tea and biscuits were served outside Greenwich Islamic Centre.
Leaders at the centre, also known as Woolwich Mosque, had urged the community to drop in after Friday prayers. An inter-faith meeting also took place at the mosque.
Erica Wooff, rector of Charlton, said tea and a chat was a simple but effective way to respond to the events of last week.
“When words are impossible, the only way to respond is with actions. And what better way than with a cup of tea,” she said.
Locals Caz Shane, 70, and Fazilah Brooke, 55, who chatted animatedly over an orange juice, had not met before today.
“The more people who come the better so we can all get to know each other,” said Mrs Brooke.
Mrs Stone added: “I wanted to be here to say to the EDL and others, ‘I’m not with you’.”
Police investigating the Woolwich attack have also arrested a 42-year-old man in north London and a 46-year-old man in east London on suspicion of involvement in the supply of illegal firearms.
‘Harrowing experience’
Faith Matters, an inter-faith organisation aimed at tackling extremism, said it had recorded 212 incidents since last Wednesday, up from between four and six per day.
In a statement, Drummer Rigby’s family said: “Lee would not want people to use his name as an excuse to carry out attacks against others”.
“We would not wish any other families to go through this harrowing experience and appeal to everyone to keep calm and show their respect in a peaceful manner.”
Drummer Rigby’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers, also issued a notice to veterans and serving soldiers warning them about being associated with far-right groups.
It said a number of retired soldiers had been approached to take part in demonstrations taking place in the wake of the soldier’s death.
Brig Ian Liles, regimental secretary to the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, said: “It is wrong and disgraceful that the death of one of our own should be exploited in this manner.”
A separate notice issued by Army headquarters and passed on by Col James Stopford warned that “extremist organisations (the English Defence League in particular) will seize any opportunity to align veterans with their cause”.
In other developments:
An inquest into Drummer Rigby’s death was adjourned after hearing he was hit by a car and attacked with a knife and cleaver on his return to the barracks from work at the Tower of London. His family did not attend the brief hearing.
Police in Scotland said they had detained a 24-year-old man in Inverness after receiving reports of an “inflammatory remark” made on a memorial page for the soldier on Facebook.
Woolwich Mosque invited the community to share tea and biscuits after Friday prayers, an occasion which was also attended by the Bishop of Woolwich.
Police asked the British National Party to alter the route of a planned march from Woolwich on Saturday. Instead, it will be allowed to take place in Westminster.
On Friday, the Queen visited Woolwich barracks where she met officers and soldiers associated with Drummer Rigby in private.
The BBC’s Daniela Relph said the Queen would be acknowledging the soldier’s death privately
The visit to see the new home of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery was planned before the attack.
During her visit, the Queen met Lieutenant Colonel Bob Christopher, commander of Woolwich Station, and his team, as well as staff from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers’ outreach team, Drummer Rigby’s regiment, based at the Tower of London.
The Queen’s visit to the Royal Artillery Barracks was long-standing and Buckingham Palace was keen for it to go ahead, despite last week’s stabbing.
Drummer Rigby, a member of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was not based at Woolwich, but did live there. The MoD acknowledged that it had been “a tough week” for staff at Woolwich, but would not be drawn any further on how troops had been affected.
The main purpose of the Queen’s visit to Woolwich was to present medals to two soldiers from the largely ceremonial King’s Troop, who have just returned from a tour in Afghanistan.
But before lunch, she privately acknowledged Drummer Rigby’s death by meeting a group of soldiers involved in coordinating the barrack’s response to the attack, and some of those who formed part of his chain of command.
The Palace said there would be no public acknowledgement of the stabbing, as the Queen’s route to and from the barracks would not pass the floral tributes that have been left outside the main entrance to the barracks.
Her tour of the base was hosted by the commanding officer of the King’s Troop, Major Mark Edward.
The regiment, which is a largely ceremonial one, is famed for firing gun salutes on royal anniversaries and state occasions, and for providing a gun carriage and a team of black horses for state and military funerals.
Baroness Thatcher’s coffin was carried on a gun carriage from the King’s Troop during her recent funeral, and on Monday the unit will fire a 41-gun royal salute from London’s Green Park to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation.
During her visit, the Queen watched a gun team display in the riding school and visited the horses’ stables, the forge where they are shod and the veterinary clinic.
She also presented medals to two members of the King’s Troop – Lance Bombardier Dannielle Parker, 25, and Warrant Officer Second Class Jeremy Faulkner, 36 – who have recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan.
Her journey to the barracks in south-east London did not take her past the scene of Drummer Rigby’s murder, where thousands of flowers have been laid by members of the public in his honour.
The total number of arrests made in connection with the attack stands at 12. So far, six of those arrested have been bailed and two released without charge.
MOSCOW — A prominent and well-connected economist who has openly supported opposition figures has resigned from several posts and abruptly left Russia under mounting pressure from investigators, officials of the university he leads said on Wednesday.
The economist, Sergei Guriev, has been questioned repeatedly in a case that stems from a report that he co-wrote that harshly criticized the treatment of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned oil tycoon and one-time political rival to President Vladimir V. Putin.
A centrist figure who is at home among Russia’s power brokers, Mr. Guriev drew attention a year ago for publicly declaring his support for the anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny.
“Am I not afraid to support an opposition politician?” he wrote at the time, adding that he and his wife had contributed a small amount to a fund to support Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption effort. “No. I am a free person. I know that as long as I haven’t violated the law, no one can forbid me to say something or do something. Might I be misled? Of course.”
Mr. Guriev declined to comment on the reasons for his departure on Wednesday, and has said he left for a vacation in France, where his wife and children live. However, two close associates said he had left because he was unsettled by intensifying interest from investigators.
“He had reason to believe he could be deprived of his freedom,” and possibly prevented from leaving Russia, said one friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.
“He had visits from people. After those visits, he asked a number of influential people in Moscow who normally would protect him, and he was given advice that he was not safe,” the friend said. “He left in a hurry. We’re talking about a few days.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, said that as far as he knew, Mr. Guriev had simply left Russia on vacation, and that he could not comment on the investigation.
“This is not our question — this has nothing to do with the Kremlin, nothing to do with the president,” he said. “The only thing I can tell you is that this is pure speculation. I have found only his words saying he had personal reasons to resign, and he has not left Moscow.”
However, if Mr. Guriev has left Russia because of a politically tinged prosecution, it is likely to make waves both in Russia and the West, because he is so well known. When President Obama visited Russia in 2009, he delivered an address at the New Economic School, where Mr. Guriev has served as rector for 10 years. Mr. Guriev wrote speeches for Mr. Medvedev when he was president, and was seen as closely affiliated with his government.
Aleksei V. Makarkin, an analyst at Moscow’s Center for Political Technologies, said the pressure on Mr. Guriev shows that law enforcement organs are increasingly confident in their moves against supporters of the political opposition, even if it comes at the cost of international prestige.
He noted investigators’ recent scrutiny into whether Skolkovo, the government-financed innovation hub pioneered by Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, had funneled money to opposition politicians.
“Probably the siloviki have gotten carte blanche to carry out actions on people regardless of their standing,” he said, referring to the investigators. “There was some kind of an informal manifesto which does not exist now.”
Mr. Guriev is one of a panel of experts who agreed to co-write a highly critical 2011 report on the Khodorkovsky verdict under the auspices of Mr. Medvedev’s human rights council. After Mr. Putin became president last spring, investigators opened an inquiry into whether Mr. Khodorkovsky had secretly paid the report’s authors.
Another of the authors, Mikhail Subbotin, who heads the Center for Legal and Economic Research, said investigators had carried out numerous searches of the homes of his organization’s founders and co-workers, going so far as to search the home of one woman’s husband in Kazakhstan. He said they were searching for evidence that Yukos, the giant oil company Mr. Khodorkovsky headed, had given money to the organization in 2003, eight years before the report was published.
