Yemen plagued by water shortage

Tue Jun 28, 2011 3:38AM

Yemenis waiting to collect water in the capital Sana'a on May 28, 2011

Dearth of water reportedly triggered by fuel shortage and power cuts is taking its toll on the public in Yemen's capital -- already a scene of unbridled regime crackdown on protests.

Truck drivers have started refusing to supply residences in Sana'a with water, complaining of insufficient fuel, Xinhua reported on Monday.

The government, meanwhile, blames the water shortage on power cuts for which it holds alleged obstructionists responsible.

"We can live without electricity but cannot without water," said a local female named Um Mahir.

"There has been no water supply here for weeks and we used to buy water recently. The price of water is triply inflated," said Suad al-Salahi, another woman.

The capital is experiencing a brownout, while power outages there and in many other provinces has seriously damaged or shut down businesses.

In coastal areas some hospital patients have died due to the lack of electricity, reports say.

Fuel scarcity has also triggered long queues at gas stations.

The complications come amid continued popular revolution across the country in favor of an end to corruption and unemployment and the ouster of Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Saleh has been in office for nearly 33 years with opposition groups arguing that his long-promised political and economic reforms have never materialized.

The regime has given the government forces and its mercenary's leeway to use excessive violence against the demonstrators.

HN/MGH

Yemenis condemn foreign meddling

Tue Jun 28, 2011 2:42AM

File photo of a demo in the Yemeni capital Sana'a

Yemenis have held demonstrations condemning Saudi Arabia's attempts to save the unpopular Yemeni government and chanted slogans against the United States and Israel.

On Monday, the demonstrators denounced Riyadh's interference in the country's internal affairs as Ali Abdullah Saleh continues to receive treatment in the kingdom for the injuries he received in an RPG attack on the presidential palace on June 3, a Press TV correspondent reported.

“God is the Greatest,” “Down with America,” “Down with Israel” and “Victory for Islam,” the demonstrators shouted.

They also called for the creation of an interim ruling council to transfer power to the people.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have turned out for regular demonstrations in the country's major cities since January, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment and demanding the ouster of Saleh, who has been in power since 1978.

The people are also demanding that he be tried for the murder of hundreds of Yemenis during the regime's crackdown on the protests.

Yemeni demonstrators have told the Saudi government to stop its efforts to obstruct their revolution.

Riyadh recently claimed that al-Qaeda militants may try to take advantage of the situation if the Yemenis continue to hold demonstrations.

Foreign intervention has been condemned by thousands of Yemenis during demonstrations across the country over the past few weeks.

HN/HGL

Attacking mosque keeper( Mo'adin) beating him without mercy and then cut his tongue, ALLAHU AKBAR تقرير قصة قطع اللسان المؤذن عرفان

What does it mean to attack mosque keeper( Mo'adin) beating him without mercy and then cut his tongue, ALLAHU AKBAR. that's what some of the protesters did in Bahrain. Ya Rab irham Arfaan.

China's new high speed train in final testing

China's new high speed rail network to halve travel time between Beijing and Shanghai.

Last Modified: 27 Jun 2011 17:07

China is carrying out the final testing on its high speed rail network, linking the commercially important cities of Beijing and Shanghai. The new trains will cut the journey between the cities to nearly five hours, making them twice as fast as the existing trains. The project cost more than $220bn, the sacking of the railways minister and four years of work to happen. Al Jazeera's Andrew Thomas reports aboard the bullet train.

Source: Al Jazeera

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Iran to send monkey into space

AL Jazeera Middle East

Iran conducts missile exercise ahead of plans to send a monkey into space inside a Kavoshgar-5 rocket next month. Last Modified: 28 Jun 2011 04:41

Iran has unveiled the next stage of its space programme, saying it is going to send a monkey into space next month. Five monkeys were undergoing tests before one was to be selected for the flight on board a Kavoshgar-5 rocket, the head of Iran's space agency was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency on Monday. The announcement comes after Iranian state television showed footage of a missile training exercise conducted by the country's Revolutionary Guards. A spokesman said the war games tested long, medium and short-range missile capability on ground and sea targets. Iran says it has a wide range of missiles, some capable of striking Israel and US bases in the region. 'Unsung heroes' Iran will not be the first to send animals into space. In 1948, NASA began putting monkeys in their rockets. Most of them died and are still considered the unsung heroes of the space race. Farouk Baz, a director of space research at Boston University, told Al Jazeera that this mission showcases Iran's homegrown space industry. "This is now all home made. However, many of the Iranians have been studying abroad, the same way the Indians and the Chinese did. They had people working in the laboratories in the US and all over Europe. "Most of these people get good degrees, work very hard and as soon as they are ready they go home, and they are treated like heroes and given funds to further their research." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said last August that Iran planned to send a man into space by 2017. Last week, Iran launched its second domestically built satellite into orbit, the Rasad 1 (Observation), which it said was for transmitting images and weather forecasts. Western countries are concerned that the long-range ballistic technology used to propel Iranian satellites into orbit could be used to launch atomic warheads. Tehran denies such suggestions and says its nuclear work is purely for peaceful use.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

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Former US governor 'guilty of corruption'

AL Jazeera Americas

Rod Blagojevich convicted of trying to swap US President Barack Obama's vacated senate seat for financial gain. Last Modified: 27 Jun 2011 21:13

Blagojevich was ousted from office in 2009 during his second term by the state legislature [Reuters]  Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been convicted of trying to swap US President Barack Obama's vacated senate seat for financial gain. A jury in the central US city of Chicago found Blagojevich guilty on Monday of 17 of the 20 charges against him in connection to what prosecutors called a "political corruption crime spree". Prosecutors had accused Blagojevich of trying to secure personal benefit and campaign funds in exchange for appointing a US senator to fill the seat vacated by Obama after he was elected president in 2008. The jury also found Blagojevich not guilty of soliciting bribes in the alleged shakedown of a road-building executive. But they deadlocked on a charge of attempted extortion on that same case. Blagojevich, a Democrat ousted from office in 2009 during his second term by the state legislature, spoke after the verdict was announced, saying he was disappointed at the outcome. "Frankly, I am stunned," he said. "Patti and I are obviously very disappointed in the outcome. ... We want to  get home to our little girls and talk to them and try to sort things out," he said, referring to his wife. Profanity-laced tapes Blagojevich's conviction on Monday was his second trial in the case against him. An earlier trial ended in August with a conviction on a single charge of lying to federal agents, with the jury deadlocked on 23 other counts in an indictment that included racketeering, bribery, attempted extortion, and wire fraud. Obama and some senior White House staffers played a peripheral role in the case, which was built on FBI wiretaps. In one tape heard by the previous jury, Blagojevich cursed that Obama had not offered him a cabinet post or anything else in exchange for what Blagojevich judged as making a favoured appointment to the vacant senate seat. The profanity-laced tapes made the one-time congressman and his wife Patti the object of television talk-show comedy bits. His defence team had insisted that hours of FBI phone-tap recordings were just the ramblings of a politician who liked to think out loud. They portrayed him as a talkative bumbler who was given bad advice but never received any illegal funds. Corruption-tainted city Blagojevich was arrested in December 2008, two months after Obama won the White House race, vacating one of the two Illinois seats in the US senate. Blagojevich, who ultimately named Roland Burris, a fellow Democrat and the state attorney general, to the seat, was impeached by the Illinois state legislature in January 2009 for corruption and misconduct. He was kicked out of office shortly thereafter. The case helped Republican Mark Kirk narrowly beat a Democratic challenger and Obama protégé to win the seat in November. The affair also shone the spotlight on Chicago's corruption-tainted political scene, but Obama and his administration have escaped the scandal unsullied. Five of the past nine Illinois governors have been indicted or arrested for fraud or bribery and Blagojevich's predecessor, Republican George Ryan, is serving a six-and-a-half year jail term for fraud and racketeering.

Source: Agencies

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Web censorship moves West

AL Jazeera Opinion

While few may object to blocking access to child pornography, online restrictions set dangerous precedent. Jillian C. York Last Modified: 25 Jun 2011 09:08

China, along with Tunisia and Iran, is one of the world's most strict countries on internet censorship - but restrictions are also being introduced in western democracies [EPA] For a long time, the dominant conversation around internet censorship has focused on two of the practice's giants: Iran and China. Arguably owners of the most sophisticated filtering methods, the criticism levied against these two countries has been deserved. And yet, the focus on them has largely been at the exclusion of other countries that also censor the web to varying degrees - including an increasing number of democracies. In recent weeks, Turkey, Tunisia, and Australia have all made headlines for their various plans to introduce new filtering schemes. Though each country's plan differs, they all have similar focus: curbing access to obscene content. But while blocking obscenity may reflect the will of the people, such filters nonetheless have implications for freedom of expression. Australian ISPs 'aim to curb child sexual abuse' In Australia, after several failed attempts by the government to introduce a mandatory filtering scheme, several Australian ISPs have taken matters into their own hands, blocking access to a list of 500 sites. The ISPs will base their blacklists on a list maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), as well as - according to News.com.au - "child abuse URLs that are provided by reputable international organisations". In 2009, a copy of the ACMA's blacklist was published by WikiLeaks, and was found to include the website of a Queensland-based dentist, a handful of Christian sites, and some YouTube videos - as well as adult sites deemed to be legal in Australia. Such errors raise questions amongst free expression advocates about the lack of transparency in the process of determining which sites will be banned. There is also concern that there appears to be no appeals process by which to challenge sites banned by the ISPs. Tunisia blocked pornography by court order For years, Tunisia stood along with China and Iran as one of the world's most strict online censors. Following the January 2011 popular revolt, however, internet filtering became obsolete for a time. Shortly thereafter, a military tribunal moved to block a handful of sites, including all individual Facebook profiles or pages. The latest measure to block sites in Tunisia comes after a group of conservative lawyers filed a legal case to "impose the blocking of pornographic content". The Tunisian Internet Agency at first refused to implement the order and sought a stay of the ruling, but on June 13, the motion was denied and the Agency was forced to comply with the order. The decision was met with derision by many Tunisians, some of whom protested on the grounds of personal freedom or concern that filtering any type of content would open the doors to further censorship; while others felt that the debate distracted from more important issues in the fledgling democracy. Still, some others were in support of the ban. Turkey's four-pronged approach Turkey's proposed filtering scheme has raised ire across the country, with citizens marching in the streets against censorship. Though the scheme is meant to offer four opt-in layers of filtering - from "standard" to "children" - Turkish citizens realise they have plenty to lose. After all, the government has blocked YouTube and WordPress, among various other sites, for containing content deemed insulting to "Turkishness". Meanwhile, Turkey's Law on the Internet #5651 allows any party to petition a court to block content for a range of reasons - including alleged defamation. Some Turkish analysts believe that the law is easily abused. Furthermore, a 2009 report from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe highlighted that 80 per cent of Turkey's banned sites had been blocked at the behest of administrative decisions, rather than court rulings. Though the new system's "standard" option will come without new filtering, there is no word as to whether already-blocked sites will remain banned. Filtering is futile While filtering - when conducted in the home or other private space - can be a good thing, such as preventing children from inadvertently accessing obscene or other undesirable content, government-level filtering does more harm than good. Not only is it probable - and quite common - for "benign" sites to get caught up in content filters, blocking a certain type of content does not necessarily mean that such content ceases to exist; and in the case of child pornography, blocking may simply force such content "underground", to peer to peer and other private networks where perpetrators are more difficult to catch. Filtering at the government or ISP level is costly, yet can be easily circumvented with minimal tech savvy, using widely available proxy tools. Most problematically, setting a precedent of blocking websites simply makes it that much easier for a government or ISP to extend filtering as they wish. While few might object to blocking child pornography, what happens when the filters go after politically sensitive content? Will anyone object then? Jillian C York is the director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

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