Waching daily Apr 2 2018

Israeli Forces Kill At Least 16 Palestinian Protesters Along Gaza Border: Officials

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GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER, March 30 (Reuters) - At least 16 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years, Gaza medical officials said.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel, gathered along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier where tents were erected for a planned six-week protest, local officials said.

The Israeli military estimate was 30,000.

Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played.

But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments.

The military said its troops had used live fire only against people trying to sabotage the border security fence, some of them rolling burning tires and throwing rocks, and that at least two of the dead were Hamas operatives.

Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces used mostly gunfire against the protesters, in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets.

Witnesses said the military had deployed a drone over at least one location to drop tear gas.

One of the dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation, Gaza health officials said.

Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement that Israel was responsible for the violence and declared Saturday a national day of mourning.

The United Nations Security Council was due to meet later on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, diplomats said.

  RIGHT OF RETURN The protest presented a rare show of unity among rival Palestinian factions in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where pressure has been building on Hamas and Abbas's Fatah movement to end a decade-old rift.

Reconciliation efforts to end the feud have been faltering for months.

The demonstration was launched on "Land Day," an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976.

But its main focus was a demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

In a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of "cynically exploiting women and children, sending them to the security fence and endangering their lives." The military said that more than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed in the area.

Hamas, which seeks Israel's destruction, had earlier urged protesters to adhere to the "peaceful nature" of the protest.

Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority.

It argues that refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Peace talks to that end collapsed in 2014.

There were also small protests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and about 65 Palestinians were injured.

In Gaza, the protest was dubbed "The March of Return" and some of the tents bore names of the refugees' original villages in what is now Israel, written in Arabic and Hebrew alike.

Citing security concerns, Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, blockades the coastal territory, maintaining tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier.

Egypt, battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai, keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.

  (Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Michelle Nichols in New York Writing by Ori Lewis and Stephen Farrell Editing by Richard Balmforth and Larry King)    .

For more infomation >> ( US News ) Israeli Forces Kill At Least 16 Palestinian Protesters Along Gaza Border: Officials - Duration: 6:49.

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( US News ) Inside One Of The World's Largest Refugee Camps, Rohingya Women Can't Escape Trauma - Duration: 10:47.

Inside One Of The World's Largest Refugee Camps, Rohingya Women Can't Escape Trauma

Rachael Heath Ferguson Hadara holds her child.

Imagine a place where over half the population is under 18, and most of the adult population are women, many of whom have been raped at gunpoint.

A place where everyone shares the recent trauma of fleeing their home with only the clothes on their back, witnessing family members being tortured, burned and killed.

Welcome to Kutupalong, Bangladesh.

Kutupalong, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, is home to over a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, over 600,000 of whom arrived in the last four months.

In early December, I spent three days in Kutupalong.

I had been invited by one of the founders of the To: platform, with whom I had recently visited the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda, searching for new ways of addressing the challenge of the global refugee crisis.

We were in Bangladesh with others from the Love Army, and my job was to listen to Rohingya refugees.

Here are some of their stories.

Ten-year-old Said arrived two or three days before we met.

He couldn't remember exactly when, or how long the journey took.

All he knows is he and his siblings fled after watching Burmese soldiers kill their parents, scared that the soldiers would find and kill them too.

Such horror stories are the norm in Kutupalong.

Hadara, like many Rohingya refugees, doesn't know the fate of a loved one.

After seeing soldiers kill her husband in August, Hadara fled her home near Buthidaung in the Rakhine state of Myanmar with her five children.

Their seven-day journey involved trekking through forests at night she said because "if the soldiers or the extremist Buddhists saw us, they would kill us.

We were hiding, running to protect our lives." Only four of her children made it to Kutupalong, Hadara lost her 10-year-old daughter along the way, "She might be dead.

I don't know.

Everyone was running to protect their life.

I couldn't find her.

I have no news if she is alive or not." Two months ago, shooting erupted in Khadija's village, and the family fled when her cousin was killed, as "soldiers were shooting people, capturing women and cutting their eyes out" before burning down their homes.

Khadija became separated from her husband as soldiers shot at them from helicopters, but "we continued to walk without looking back." She doesn't know if he is dead or alive.

Khadija was not the only refugee who reported women being blinded by the military.

Mahboba, 24, told us that soldiers captured his wife as they fled and "cut her eyes with a knife." When Roshida's village was raided two months ago, "the military killed everyone and burned down the houses." She said soldiers killed her brother-in-law and captured her sister: "They shot her in the eyes.

She fled with her eyes shot out." I learned that the soldiers had a system.

Before villages were burned to the ground, almost everyone spoke of helicopters hovering overhead with soldiers shooting "from the skies." Jamilah, 23, told me that when the helicopters landed in her village, soldiers "took the women from their houses and raped them before forcing people inside at gunpoint and burning the houses down with people inside." Jamilah estimated the population of her village to have been "250 families" and that some 200 women and girls were raped, including her sister.

When they fled, they "hid in the mountain during the day, and walked at night" while being hunted by soldiers.

The men, it seems were targeted for death, the women for torture.

Another member of the Love Army spoke to a woman who had been raped by ten soldiers, her husband was forced to watch at gunpoint.

The soldiers then doused him and their two children in gasoline, marched him and the children into their home at gunpoint and burned it down in front of her.

Her husband and children remained inside.

Rachael Heath Ferguson Jamilah Pregnant women were less likely to be tortured, but for them the days-long treks without food were especially perilous.

Thirty-four-year-old Ramsha invited me into her tent, where she lit a small fire for warmth.

The tent was uncomfortably hot on the humid 85-degree day, but Ramsha shivered with a high fever, her right hand resting on her infant son, who lay on the ground next to her.

She made the 15-day trek with her husband and nine children, while she was late in her third trimester.

They had occasionally paused at villages along the way so Ramsha might rest, but every village they stopped at was attacked and burned down by soldiers.

Ramsha nonetheless felt fortunate; she had her children and her husband, and she had not been assaulted.

While Kutupalong is overcrowded, disease is spreading, and sanitation is a challenge.

But at least the traumatized refugees can sleep without the sound of gunfire or the smell of homes burning.

But their lives have been disrupted beyond recognition, thrown into an unimaginable uncertainty.

In Myanmar, Hadara's husband owned rice paddies, but in Kutupalong "our life depends on donations." So do many others.

A vast number of Bangladeshis, and some Rohingya, have set up small shops in Kutupalong, selling food and other necessities.

Because refugees are not allowed to leave, shops can charge extortionate prices.

Consequently, drug gangs and pimps allegedly operate in the camp, exploiting refugees' need for income.

Rachael Ferguson Kutupalong How extensive is criminal activity in Kutupalong? I asked a group of Bangladeshi soldiers on police duty who denied that crime exists in the area.

But we had already observed some soldiers on duty beat refugees with sticks at a food distribution center, so I was already rather skeptical of the military. My translator stuck to the official line when I mentioned later that it was inconceivable that there wasn't any crime given the size of the population.

Aid workers were more forthcoming.

One told us of reports that children had been abducted and sold to outsiders, and a health worker told us that female refugees had been raped in the camp by "local men, Bangladeshi men." When I mentioned this to Rohingya women, asking if it was true, they refused to answer.  Add criminal activity and refugee abuse to the already mind-boggling challenges faced by those tasked with managing camp infrastructure and the needs of a rapidly growing and deeply traumatized population, and it would seem that the Kutupalong crisis has only just begun.

Imran, one of my translators, had been a 21-year-old tech entrepreneur in Myanmar, until his father was killed, forcing Imran to flee to Bangladesh with his mother.

"We had a good life," he told me, "but our luck is dead."    .

For more infomation >> ( US News ) Inside One Of The World's Largest Refugee Camps, Rohingya Women Can't Escape Trauma - Duration: 10:47.

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박지헌이 아내의 여섯째 임신 소식을 밝히며!-Tistory News - Duration: 4:54.

For more infomation >> 박지헌이 아내의 여섯째 임신 소식을 밝히며!-Tistory News - Duration: 4:54.

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( US News ) The Catalan Independence Movement Just Scored A Huge Victory - Duration: 7:53.

The Catalan Independence Movement Just Scored A Huge Victory

By Sonya Dowsett and Sam Edwards BARCELONA (Reuters) - Separatists looked set on Friday to regain power in Catalonia after voters rejected Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's attempt to neuter the independence movement to defuse Spain's biggest political crisis in decades.

Spanish markets recoiled at a surprise result that is also a setback for the European Union, which must now brace for more secessionist noise as it grapples with the disruption of Brexit and simmering east European discontent.

By risking an election in the wealthy region, Rajoy appears to have made the same mistake that leaders such as Greece's Alexis Tsipras, Britain's David Cameron and Italy's Matteo Renzi have made in recent years: betting that voters would resolve their troublesome domestic conundrums for them.

With the count from Thursday's Catalan parliament election almost complete, separatist parties had secured a slim majority, sending stocks down around 1 percent on fears that tensions with its richest region will hurt the euro zone's fourth-largest economy.

Catalonia accounts for a fifth of Spain's economy.

More than 3,100 firms have shifted their headquarters out of the region since the independence drive boiled up this year into a referendum that Madrid declared unconstitutional.

"More companies leaving, less economic activity there - and worse for everyone," said the chief executive of a major listed Spanish company, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the tense climate of the independence debate.

Rajoy, who called the election after sacking the previous, secessionist government, had still not made a comment, some 12 hours after the outcome became clear.

He is due to make a statement at 1300 GMT.

Albert Gea / Reuters REJECTION FOR RAJOY Rajoy had hoped to mobilize hitherto quiescent supporters of union with Spain and so deal separatism a decisive blow.

Instead, his own party performed miserably, and the result raises the question of a return to power for the Catalan president he had deposed.

Carles Puigdemont campaigned from Belgium after fleeing Spain to avoid arrest for sedition, and he faces the prospect of arrest if he were to return home.

Puigdemont is due to speak in Brussels at 1100 GMT.

"Either Rajoy changes his recipe or we change the country," he said on Thursday night in a televised speech, flanked by four former cabinet members who fled to Brussels with him.

At jubilant pro-independence rallies around Barcelona, supporters chanted "President Puigdemont!" and unfurled giant red-and-yellow Catalan flags as the results came in.

Puigdemont's spokesman told Reuters in a text message: "We are the comeback kids." Catalonia, a former principality with its own language, has stepped up its push for independence in recent years as its economy has boomed.

Secessionists say it pays an unfair share of taxes to Madrid, but investors fear independence would knock the indebted region out of the EU and the euro zone by default.

Spain has trimmed its growth forecasts for next year because of the crisis, and official data shows foreign direct investment in Catalonia was down 75 percent year-on-year in the third quarter.

GERMANY AND FRANCE BACK RAJOY The EU's major powers, Germany and France, have backed Rajoy's anti-independence stance despite some criticism of his methods at times.

On Oct.

1, national police used tear gas and batons to prevent some Catalans from voting in the banned referendum.

When the Catalan parliament declared independence after the referendum, Rajoy invoked constitutional powers to impose direct rule from Madrid.

He promised to restore Catalonia's autonomy regardless of the election result, but could re-impose it if a new government again pursued secession.

Puigdemont's attempts to gain international support in Brussels have failed so far.

He has called the EU a "club of decadent countries" for declining to mediate a solution.

But Europe now ends the year having struggled to build on the integrationist Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French presidential election in May.

Germany faces months of political limbo, Brussels is mired in a nasty dispute with Poland's right-wing government and a far-right party has just entered the government in Austria.

A German government spokeswoman called on Friday for reconciliation in Spanish society and hoped that divisions could be overcome.

Catalonia's separatist parties won 70 of the 135 seats, with Puigdemont's Junts Per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) retaining its position as the largest separatist force.

The unionist party Ciudadanos (Citizens) won the most votes, but other unionist forces ― Rajoy's People's Party and the Socialist Party ― registered a dismal performance.

"It's a bitter victory," said Paloma Morales, a 27-year-old student at a Ciudadanos rally.

"It means four more years of misery." (Additional reporting by Jesus Aguado and Andres Andrés González in Madrid and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels; Writing by Angus Berwick and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Kevin Liffey)    .

For more infomation >> ( US News ) The Catalan Independence Movement Just Scored A Huge Victory - Duration: 7:53.

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FOX and Friends First 4/2/2018 (5AM)- Breaking Fox News - April 2, 2018 - Duration: 41:34.

For more infomation >> FOX and Friends First 4/2/2018 (5AM)- Breaking Fox News - April 2, 2018 - Duration: 41:34.

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FOX and Friends First 4/2/2018 (5AM)- Breaking Fox News - April 2, 2018 - Duration: 41:34.

For more infomation >> FOX and Friends First 4/2/2018 (5AM)- Breaking Fox News - April 2, 2018 - Duration: 41:34.

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( US News ) Another North Korean Defector Dashed Across The DMZ - Duration: 8:28.

Another North Korean Defector Dashed Across The DMZ

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean guards fired warning shots across the heavily militarized border with North Korea on Thursday as a soldier from the North defected in thick fog, complicating efforts to ease tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

A South Korean defense ministry official said up to 20 warning shots were fired as North Korean troops approached too near the "military demarcation line" at the demilitarized zone (DMZ), apparently in search of the missing soldier.

Thursday's defection came about five weeks after a North Korean soldier suffered critical gunshot wounds during a defection dash across the border.

Two North Korean civilians were also found in a fishing boat on Wednesday and had sought to defect, officials in the South said.

That brings the total number of North Koreans who have defected by taking dangerous routes either directly across the border or by sea to 15 so far this year, including two other soldiers.

That is three times the number last year, according to South Korean officials.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula were already high after reclusive, impoverished North Korea accelerated testing of its missile and nuclear programs this year in defiance of international pressure and UN sanctions.

The defections also threaten to complicate South Korea's efforts to ensure the smooth running of the 2018 Winter Olympics, which begin in Pyeongchang in February.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Tuesday he had proposed postponing major military drills with the United States until after the games in an attempt to soothe relations, although officials in Seoul later said any proposed delay would depend on the North not engaging in any "provocations".

In a notice published online, the U.S.

military's 8th Army said a "significant number of North Korean propaganda leaflets and CDs" had been distributed at "strategic locations" on multiple U.S.

military bases in South Korea.

The notice called on troops to report any suspicious individuals to help combat potential "insider threats" that could disrupt military operations.

The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and North Korea says regular U.S.-South Korean military drills are a prelude to invasion.

It regularly threatens to destroy the United States and its two key Asian allies, South Korea and Japan.

LANDMINES, BARBED WIRE Seoul says more than 880 North Koreans have defected to the rich, democratic South so far this year, but the vast majority have taken a less dangerous route through China.

Going through China, North Korea's neighbor and sole major ally, means they avoid the DMZ, which features landmines, barbed wire, surveillance cameras, electric fencing and thousands of armed troops on both sides.

The number of defectors arriving successfully in the South has dropped since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011, a trend defectors and experts say may be linked to a crackdown by Pyongyang.

There was no immediate comment from the secretive North about the latest incidents.

However, the North's state media released a statement sharply denying U.S.

allegations this week that Pyongyang was behind a number of recent cyber attacks.

Washington has publicly blamed North Korean hackers for a cyber attack in May that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies.

Researchers also say the North was likely behind attacks on virtual currency exchanges.

The military drills with the United States have also complicated relations with China.

The proposed delay in drills was discussed during a summit between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping last week after the proposal was submitted to Washington, an official at the presidential Blue House said this week.

China and Russia have proposed a "freeze for freeze" arrangement under which North Korea would stop its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a halt to the exercises, but there has been little interest from Washington or Pyongyang.

DEFECTION IN HEAVY FOG In Thursday's defection, a low-ranking soldier crossed the border near a South Korean guard post, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman, Roh Jae-cheon, said.

No shots were fired at the soldier.

Surveillance equipment detected him despite heavy fog that limited visibility to about 100 meters (110 yards), Roh said.

South Korean guards fired about 20 warning shots at North Korean troops near the border presumably searching for the defector about half an hour later, a defense ministry official in the South told Reuters.

Gunfire from the North was detected later but the target could not be determined, the official said.

South Korea's Unification Ministry also said maritime police had found two North Korean men drifting in a small boat off the coast on Wednesday.

The pair "expressed their willingness to defect", a ministry official said, and their claim for asylum was being investigated.

The North Korean soldier who was shot several times during a daring dash across the border on Nov.

13 has since been identified as 24-year-old Oh Chong Song and is now in a military hospital south of Seoul.

His treatment for gunshot wounds and pre-existing conditions has included two major operations and intelligence officials will begin questioning him soon.

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For more infomation >> ( US News ) Another North Korean Defector Dashed Across The DMZ - Duration: 8:28.

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( US News ) UN Rebukes Trump's Jerusalem Move In Overwhelming Vote - Duration: 5:22.

UN Rebukes Trump's Jerusalem Move In Overwhelming Vote

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - More than 100 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor.

A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, nine voted against and 35 abstained.

Trump's threat appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions.

Nevertheless, Washington found itself isolated on the world stage as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure.

Ahead of the vote, the United States said it was "singled out for attack" at the United Nations over Jerusalem, which holds Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites.

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," U.S.

Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, told the 193-member General Assembly.

"We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit," she said.

Earlier this month, Trump reversed decades of U.S.

policy by announcing the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would move its embassy there.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trump's move.

The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city.

The vote was called at the request of Arab and Muslim countries.

The United States, backing its ally Israel, vetoed the resolution on Monday in the 15-member U.N.

Security Council.

The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem." "Israel rejects the U.N.

decision and at the same time is satisfied with the high number of countries that did not vote in its favor," said a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.

"Israel thanks (U.S.) President Trump for his unequivocal position in favor of Jerusalem and thanks the countries that voted together with Israel, together with the truth." Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told the United States it could not buy Turkey's support in Thursday's vote.

"Mr Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

"I hope and expect the United States won't get the result it expects from there (the United Nations) and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States," Erdogan said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a "house of lies" ahead of the vote.

"The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution's) approval," Netanyahu said in a speech in the port city of Ashdod.     .