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(Newser) – After a deadly attack last night, Libya’s parliament has relocated and will meet in a five-star Tripoli hotel. Tensions in the country have been high, with rival militias backing Prime Minister Ali Zidan and the Islamist factions in parliament that oppose him. Dozens of protesters stormed parliament yesterday, shooting guns, throwing bottles, and setting things on fire, the AP reports. A guard was killed, two lawmakers were shot, three were beaten up, and one was wounded by broken glass.
Parliament’s term ended on Feb. 7, but lawmakers voted to extend it and hold new elections in the spring, leading hundreds of protesters to demonstrate each day and demand parliament be disbanded immediately. No date for the new elections has been set, CNN reports. Yesterday’s attack was preceded by an attack on an anti-parliament sit-in; unidentified assailants set fire to a tent and then kidnapped two of the protesters. Some lawmakers think yesterday’s attack was a reaction to that incident.
Deadly violence grips Kiev as protesters advancing on Parliament are shot at by police with Kalashnikovs and sniper rifles. Via The Foreign Bureau, WSJ’s global news update.
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UK parliament condemns BBC, NY Times" Thompson over payouts http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20131216&t=2&i=820630119&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=CBRE9BF05ZT00
By Andrew Osborn
LONDONSun Dec 15, 2013 9:09pm EST
Mark Thompson, president and CEO of the New York Times Company, poses for a portrait in New York, November 26, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson
LONDON (Reuters) – British lawmakers delivered a stinging rebuke on Monday to top BBC executives and trustees, including the corporation’s former chief Mark Thompson, saying their award of severance payments to outgoing managers appeared to be part of a culture of cronyism.
In a report which included an assessment of payments of 25 million pounds made to 150 departing BBC staff from 2009 to 2012, parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said many of them “far exceeded” contractual entitlements, that some of the justifications put forward were “extraordinary”, and that the BBC’s governance model was “broken”.
“There was a failure at the most senior levels of the BBC to challenge the actual payments and prevailing culture, in which cronyism was a factor that allowed for the liberal use of other people’s money,” the PAC said in a statement.
The scale of some of the severance payments, many of them made as austerity cuts swept Britain, angered politicians and members of the public, who fund the broadcaster through a compulsory license fee.
Thompson, who quit the British broadcaster last year to become chief executive of the New York Times, robustly defended the severance payments in September in front of the same committee, saying they had ultimately helped the BBC cut costs.
In a statement cited by the Guardian newspaper on Monday and released before the embargo on the PAC report was lifted, Thompson was quoted as saying:
“The members of the PAC are entitled to criticize the result, but the decision to make the settlement was made in an entirely proper and transparent way.
Despite some inflammatory language in the PAC report, there is absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing by anyone at the BBC in relation to these severance payments.”
A handful of U.S. media commentators have questioned Thompson’s handling of the episode, saying they want to know more about the cases. The New York Times said it has full confidence in him.
REPUTATION ‘AT RISK’
Margaret Hodge, the PAC’s chairwoman and a senior lawmaker, said the payments had put the BBC’s reputation at risk and that the influential committee remained concerned about the veracity of some of the oral evidence it had heard.
“Some of the justifications for this put forward by the BBC were extraordinary,” she said in a statement.
“We are asked to believe that the former Director General Mark Thompson had to pay his former deputy and long-time colleague Mark Byford a substantial extra sum to keep him ‘fully focused’ on his job instead of ‘taking calls from headhunters’”.
The committee agreed with an assessment of the affair by Tony Hall, the current BBC chief, that the publicly funded corporation had “lost the plot” in its management of the payouts, she said.
The BBC said it had already acted to cap future payments at 150,000 pounds and to clarify the responsibilities of executives and trustees to ensure more rigorous standards.
The severance payment row came after a tumultuous year for the BBC during which Thompson’s successor, George Entwistle, resigned after 54 days in the job to take responsibility for a BBC news report which falsely accused a former politician of child abuse.
The BBC is still seeking to rebuild public confidence which was shaken in 2012 when it emerged that Jimmy Savile, one of the corporation’s biggest stars of the 1970s and 80s, was a prolific child sex abuser over decades.
The opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, sitting, second from left, and fellow party members at a news conference at the Democrat Party headquarters in Bangkok on Sunday.
BANGKOK — The Democrat Party, Thailand’s oldest and the main force behind the country’s political opposition, announced on Sunday that its members would resign from Parliament and join anti-government street demonstrations, deepening the political turmoil that has left five people dead and hundreds injured over the past two weeks.
The Democrats have been deeply frustrated by their inability to win elections against the powerful political machine backed by the billionaire tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister who now lives in exile. The party’s decision to withdraw from Parliament is the latest sign of the skepticism of Thailand’s democratic process that is spreading among the opposition and many members of the Thai elite.
“We cannot beat them,” said Theptai Seanapong, one of the members of Parliament who resigned on Sunday. “It doesn’t matter if we raise our hands and feet in parliamentary votes, we will never win.”
The mistrust of electoral politics has echoes across the region — in Malaysia, where the governing party has heavily gerrymandered the electoral map, and in Cambodia, where the authoritarian prime minister, Hun Sen, has used the machinery of the state and military to bolster his power. The Cambodian opposition continues to boycott Parliament over allegations of widespread electoral fraud in July elections.
One major difference in Thailand is that there is little dispute that Mr. Thaksin’s party has won the hearts of the majority of voters. By tailoring its policies to voters in the provinces, especially in northern Thailand, scholars say, the governing Pheu Thai party has convincingly won every election since 2001.
The move by the Democrat Party to abandon the House of Representatives leaves more than 340 seats still occupied, above the threshold of 250 members needed to conduct votes. The party said 152 Democrats would resign. There is very little chance that measures backed by the government will be blocked because the governing coalition controls about 300 of the 500 seats in the House.
But the Democrat Party will now inject its resources and prestige into the volatile street protests, which are set to continue after a call for a mass gathering on Monday with the aim of taking over the prime minister’s office.
Thai news media reported on Sunday that protesters were arriving in the capital from the provinces, especially southern Thailand, the stronghold of the Democrat Party.
As Thailand’s peak tourism season gets underway, embassies have advised their citizens to avoid the protest areas, and Bangkok’s main airport has alerted travelers that they should leave for the airport at least four hours before their flights are scheduled to depart.
The Democrat Party has many grievances with Mr. Thaksin’s party, including what it considers the railroading of some spending bills, voting procedures in Parliament that a court has called illegal and the furtive passage of important laws in the early hours of the morning.
But for a party that has long cultivated a genteel and intellectual image and advocated resolving differences inside Parliament, the decision to take to the streets was contentious within its own ranks. A number of key members of the party were not present at the meeting on Sunday.
Yet the party’s move has parallels — and worrying similarities, some observers believe — to a move the party made seven years ago.
Amid a campaign of street protests against Mr. Thaksin, then the prime minister, the Democrat Party boycotted elections in April 2006. Five months later, Mr. Thaksin was deposed in a military coup.
During the current round of demonstrations, protest leaders have courted the military, and many protesters have openly called for another coup. But until now, the army chief, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, has appeared wary of intervening in the crisis.
A Thai newspaper, the Post Today, reported on Sunday that General Prayuth had said a coup would not solve the country’s problems.
“We must be patient and seek a peaceful solution,” the paper quoted him as saying.
The protesters’ hope for royal intervention has also not had results.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has intervened in political standoffs in the past but is now ailing, did not specifically address the protests in a speech given on his 86th birthday on Thursday.
Mr. Thaksin also appears to be going out of his way to patch up any perceived differences with the royal family. After several weeks of public silence, he posted a comment on his Facebook page on Saturday denying claims that he had ever been disloyal to the royal family.
“I would like to insist here that I’ve never even thought to reproach any member of the royal family because I received their royal graces all along,” he said.
Thailand’s prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, who is Mr. Thaksin’s sister, said on Sunday that she would consider calling elections, a move that other members of her government had rejected in recent days.
Until now, protest leaders have spurned the notion of elections, and many opposition leaders freely admit that they cannot overcome the electoral power of Mr. Thaksin’s party.
Instead, the protest leaders are calling for a system that would replace the country’s electoral democracy with a vaguely defined “people’s council,” a plan that has been widely derided by civic leaders and scholars as idealistic, unworkable and retrograde.
Ms. Yingluck said on Sunday that the country would have to hold a referendum for any such plan to be considered.
Her administration has earned plaudits from foreign government for its handling of the crisis in the face of aggressive moves by the protesters, who have taken over the Finance Ministry, occupied a large government complex on the outskirts of the city and temporarily cut power to a number of state-owned buildings, including the police headquarters.
The police say that the five deaths that occurred were caused by shootings among competing groups of protesters.
At the height of the violent confrontations between protesters and the riot police last week, the European Union said the authorities’ actions had been “restrained and proportionate.”
1 of 2. Police stand guard in front of protesters during a demonstration in support of EU integration in front of the Parliament building in Kiev December 3, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Gleb Garanich
KIEV (Reuters) – Thousands of pro-EU protesters calling for the resignation of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich gathered outside parliament on Tuesday with opposition leaders pressing for a vote of no-confidence in his government.
Only days after a massive rally that brought 350,000 protesters into central Kiev, Yanukovich is set to travel to China, leaving the country plunged into crisis by his decision to spurn a landmark deal with the European Union and boost ties with Ukraine’s Soviet master Russia.
In addition to political opposition, Yanukovich is under pressure from international markets, increasing the risk of a financial crisis that could force his hand.
Ukraine’s currency and bonds have come under pressure, along with share prices, and the central bank was forced to assure people their savings were safe and there was no need for panic withdrawals.
The cost of insuring Ukraine’s debt against default has risen to its highest since September, while the government must find billions to meet debt repayments and the cost of gas imports next year.
Outside parliament, several thousand protesters holding EU and Ukrainian flags stood face to face with riot police. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov accused the opposition of planning to seize the building.
Protesters had blocked the entrances to the main government building on Monday, and Azarov said the government could not perform its basic functions, which could affect the payment of pensions and salaries.
“This has all the signs of a coup d’etat. This is a very serious matter,” Interfax news agency quoted him as telling the ambassadors of the EU, United States and Canada.
Parliamentarian Hannah Herman, from Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, said there was a possibility that some members of the party could vote against Yanukovich’s government.
Deputies were due to debate whether to hold a no-confidence vote. The opposition needs at least 226 votes to get the confidence motion on the agenda, and the same again to pass it.
LONG CAMPAIGN
In Kiev’s Independence Square protesters set up tented camps in preparation for a long campaign against Yanukovich’s last-minute decision to reject the free trade deal, which had been due to be signed on Friday.
On Monday, demonstrators halted traffic and called a general strike, seeking to force Yanukovich from office after massive demonstrations at the weekend, the biggest since the pro-democracy “Orange Revolution” of nine years ago.
The United States said violence by the authorities against protesters on Saturday was unacceptable that reports of media representatives being targeted were “disturbing”.
With temperatures dropping well below zero, the numbers of protesters have dropped sharply, and Yanukovich clearly felt the security situation was under control when he announced he would stick to a plan to travel on Tuesday to China, from which he is seeking loans and investment to avert a debt crisis.
But some felt leaving was unwise nevertheless.
“It is a very bad time to go abroad. The president’s absence may make talks with the opposition much more difficult,” said Ukrainian political analyst Gleb Vyshlinsky.
Russia wants to draw Ukraine into a Moscow-led customs union and prevent it moving closer to the EU, a move that would signal a historic shift towards the West and away from Kiev’s former Soviet masters in Moscow.
But the tug-of-war between Brussels and Moscow for influence in Ukraine has so far done little to alleviate its looming debt crisis and the China visit will involve the signing of at least 20 economic and trade agreements.
“Yanukovich is trying to show that the European Union and Russia are not the only possible partners for Ukraine,” said Volodymyr Fesenko of Ukraine’s Penta think-tank.
However, he said Beijing may now demand assurances over Ukraine’s political and economic stability, adding: “Ukraine is unlikely to secure direct financial aid (from China).”
Beijing has already provided the former Soviet republic with loans worth $ 10 billion, but the government must find more than $ 17 billion in 2014 to meet gas bills and debt repayments.
Former NSA agent, Edward Snowden, has called on an EU Parliament committee to provide protection for whistleblowers and “create better channels” for them to inform. The committee is currently holding an inquiry into the ‘Prism scandal’.
The inquiry involves a series of special hearings looking at specific aspects. On September 30 it heard evidence from the whistleblowers, including the UK’s Annie Machon, who revealed an MI6 plot to assassinate Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in February 1996 – and Edward Snowden. However, the latter was not able to attend in person.
As US fugitive NSA-leaker, Snowden submitted testimony to the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE), saying “the surveillance of whole populations rather than individuals threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time.”
“I thank the European parliament and the LIBE committee for taking up the challenge of mass surveillance,” Snowden wrote in a statement read by Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project before the European Parliament’s Committee.
In “returning public knowledge to public hands” Snowden has made a plea not to rely on “individual sacrifice”, which in his case resulted in “persecution and exile.”
“We must create better channels for people of conscience to inform not only trusted agents of government but independent representatives of the public outside government,” Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, wrote.
Snowden blamed “a culture of secrecy” for removing from society “the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between the fundamental right of privacy” and “governmental interest in investigation.” He says that such decisions should be made by people, only “after full, informed and fearless debate.”
Snowden explained his reasons in the statement for leaking documents, saying he did it “with the sole intention of making possible” a debate about changes in governments’ surveillance programs.
“We see emboldened courts that are no longer afraid to consider critical questions of national security,” he writes. “We see brave executives remembering that if the public is prevented from knowing how they are being governed, the necessary result is that they are no longer self-governing. And we see the public reclaiming an equal seat at the table of government.”
Meanwhile, Edward Snowden has been nominated for this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Snowden is wanted in the US on espionage charges, after leaking secret documents revealing the US surveillance program PRISM used to gather private data. In August, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he currently resides.
The quake cracked roads and knocked stock off shelves in shops
A minute-long earthquake has shaken New Zealand, halting trains and damaging Wellington’s parliament building.
The 6.5-magnitude tremor was centred 35 miles (57 km) off the coast south of the capital at a depth of 6.3 miles, said the US Geological Survey.
But while some structural damage and power cuts were reported, officials said there was no risk of a tsunami.
The quake hit at 17:09 (05:09 GMT) and was felt as far north as Auckland.
It smashed windows, knocked stock off shop shelves and burst some water pipes, but there have been no reports of serious casualties.
Wellington resident James Barwell said the earthquake had caused power cuts in the city suburbs and prompted the temporary closure of its airport.
“There’s been a bit of structural damage, lots of shattered glass everywhere,” he told the BBC. “Initially there were a few screams and panic, people thought it was another Christchurch.”
A 6.3-magnitude earthquake centred near Christchurch in February 2011 killed 185 people.
Sunday’s tremor was the latest in a series that have shaken the lower half of New Zealand’s North Island in recent days.
New Zealand lies on the notorious Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim.
The country experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which only around 20 have a magnitude in excess of 5.0.
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LONDON (Reuters) – A lobbying scandal that has tarnished the reputation of Britain’s parliament widened on Sunday after a newspaper secretly filmed a senior lawmaker from Prime Minister David Cameron’s party making what is said were improper remarks.
