Leonard's Lead

For the first time since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, no Palestinians from Gaza are making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca this year because of a power struggle over which Palestinian government is legitimate, reported the New York Times.
Saudi Arabia, which runs the pilgrimage, known as the hajj, asked the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank, run by President Mahmoud Abbas and backed by the West and Israel, to compose the list of pilgrims, 4,000 from the West Bank and 2,200 from Gaza. Egypt opened its border with Gaza to allows the pilgrimage.
The West Bank residents left two weeks ago but Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs Gaza, insisted on submitting its own list of Gazans. When the Saudis said they would not grant any of them visas, Hamas set up eight checkpoints along the route to the Egyptian border and barred passage to those on the other list.
According to witnesses, the police used sticks to beat those who did not turn back. Maher Amin, owner of a tourist company, said five other tourist company owners who dealt with the West Bank officials for the hajj were jailed by security officials.
As a results, Gazans are deprived of of the chance to perform one of the most basic duties of a Muslim, the Mecca pilgrimage.
“Even the Israelis never dared prevent the pilgrimage this way,� Amin said.
“They have been putting military and economic pressure on Gaza, but this is a new form of pressure,� said Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank. “We will not give in.� Since the hajj takes several days and ends early next week, there is no chance a compromise will be reached, he said.
Hamas is under growing pressure not only from Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but from much of the Arab world after withdrawing from a Cairo-sponsored effort to reconcile it with the West Bank government.

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The crew of a supertanker was reported safe Tuesdayafter pirates hijacked the oil vessel off the East African coast near Kenya, reported CNN.
Two more ships were attacked Tuesday and a third was seized Saturday but was only reported Tuesday, according to a monitoring agency.
The hijackings highlight an increase in piracy affecting national governments and shipping companies around the world.
"This is completely unprecedented," said Michael Howlett, assistant director of the International Maritime Bureau in London, which tracks pirate attacks. "We've never seen a situation like this."
After the Tuesday hijackings, 95 incidents involving pirates and commercial vessels off the East African coast have been reported this year, an increase from 31 incidents in 2007 and 10 in 2006, Howlett said.
The U.S. Navy said the tanker is currently anchored off Haradhere, reportedly a village base for pirate gangs, 180 miles north of Mogadishu, Somalia.
Howlett said pirates currently hold 17 vessels and 339 crew members hostage.
A multinational naval force including vessels from the U.S., the UK and Russia has been patrolling the Indian Ocean waters seas near the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, following the increase in pirate attacks in the region. However, attacks are spreading farther north, according to Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center.
The Sirius Star supertanker was attacked Saturday. It weighs more than 300,000 metric tons and the ship's operator says it is fully loaded with oil, which industry sources say could mean as much as two million barrels.
The 25-man crew, including British, Croatian, Polish, Filipino and Saudi crew members are reported to be safe, according to Dubai-based Vela International Marine.
The Saudi-owned vessel is the largest ship seized in the recent piracy crisis.

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President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia expressed hope Saturday that President-elect Barack Obama's election would improve relations between the United States and Russia that have worsened under President Bush, but remained unwavering on the issues that have the divided the countries in recent years, reported the New York Times.
Medvedev, who was in Washington for the first time since his election last spring, reiterated Russia's opposition to the expansion of NATO and vowed that Russia would not reverse its recognition of the separatist regions in Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after the war there in August.
He also repeated his threat, first made the day after Obama was elected, to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad if the United States moved ahead with plans to build missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. However, he said he was prepared to hold talks on the issue.
“There is no trust in the Russia-U.S. relations, the trust we need,� Medvedev said, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington after participating in the summit meeting on the financial crisis Saturday, bringing together the leaders of 20 countries. “Therefore we have great aspirations for the new administration.�
Obama has suggested he would deploy only a proven system rather than proceeding with the construction of radars and other facilities while testing continues, but reversing the program which has been negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic, both NATO allies, could be seen as backing down in the face of Russian threats.
Medvedev’s state of the nation address on Nov. 5 was widely viewed as defiant and sharply anti-American. He criticized the United States for dragging down the global economy and linked it to what the Kremlin views as anti-Russian hostility in all matters of international affairs.
Medvedev expressed hope that he and Obama would meet soon after his inauguration.

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A car bomb injured 16 people Thursday at a university in the city of Pamplona in Spain's northern Basque country, reported the New York Times.
Spanish authorities said police searched the wrong campus for explosives after receiving report of an imminent attack from the Basque separatist group ETA. The government blamed ETA for the bomb that exploded in Pamplona.
The bomb exploded in a parking lot at the University of Navarra at 11 a.m., according to the Interior Ministry in Madrid.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told a news conference in Madrid, "We could have had an enormous tragedy at the University of Navarra. The bomb simply went off when nobody was around."
Police received a warning call in the name of ETA an hour before the explosion, but the caller did not specify which university was the target, said Rubalcaba.
Police first searched the nearby campus in Vitoria, prohibiting police from evacuating the Pamplona university in time, but the campus was evacuated after the explosion.
According to Spanish press reports, the bomb may have contained up to 220 pounds of explosives. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass.
Authorities believe the attack was a response to the recent arrest of three suspected ETA leaders in Pamplona and another in Valencia.

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According to CNN, rain and flooding in Yemen has left 58 dead and 20,000 without shelter, reported a local newspaper Saturday.
One of the worst-affected provinces is Hadramout, where most of the dead were, said Yemen Post Editor-in-Chief Hakim al-Masmari, citing the Ministry ofn the Interior.
The newspaper said that officials continued to evacuate people from the affected areas, but thousands remained stranded in homes because the extensive rain prevented officials from reaching them.
The flooding follows several days of rain in a country which is unaccustomed to more than a few inches of rain a year.
The rain began Thursday as a tropical cyclone moved over the area, said forecaster Martyn Jeanes, continuing into the weekend. The cyclone also brought rain to parts of Saudi Arabia and northern Somalia.
However, Jeanes says that conditions shoud be "much improved" by Sunday.
According to the newspaper, thousands of families have fled Hadramout. Somes evacuees are being taken to schools, but they can only accommodate about 10 percent of the people.
More than 730 houses have been destroyed, according to SABA, the Yememni news agency. SABA alos reported that Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered the formation of an emergency committee for delivery of aid to those affected by the heavy rain.

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CNN reported that Iraqi leaders met Tuesday to discuss the future of U.S. troops in Iraq, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said.
Al-Maliki met with President Jalal Talabani and two vice presidents to review the "semi-final draft" al-Maliki adviser Yassin Majid said.
The reviewed draft of an agreement calls for U.S. troops to leave Iraqi cities, cease street patrols and return to their bases by June, unless if their support is requested, a senior Bush administration official said.
The official said that the agreement also calls for the removal of troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Iraqis could ask troops to stay beyond 2011 depending on conditions which Iraqis would have "sole discretion" the official said.
However, the U.S. official told reporters that the draft was final and negotiations on the Status of Forces Agreement had finished.
We may have a text, but do we really have an agreement? We don't until the Iraqis sign off, the official said.
The official said that as the United Nations mandate authorizing U.S. troop presence in Iraq expiring December 31, U.S. officials are examining "contingencies" in case the Iraqi government does not approve the deal.
One of the major issues discussed by leaders was whether U.S. troops will remain immune from Iraqi la, but the U.S. official said negotiations had "reached a compromise."

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European financial and political leaders agreed Sunday to a plan to invest billions of euros into European banks in attempt to restore confidence to the troubled financial systems, reported The New York Times Sunday.
After a rescue plan announced last week by Britain, the European countries led by Germany and France pledged to invest in distressed banks and guarantee bank lending for up to five years.
France and Germany are planning to announce national rescue packages on Monday worth hundreds of billions of euros, officials said.
Unlike Britain and the United States who have both announced billion dollar plans in government funds, leaders of the 15 countries that use the euro did not put a monetary amount to any of their planned investments.
The Belgian finance minister, Didier Reynders, said that each country will announce concrete figures for the measures they expect to take individually.
"There is no question of setting up a European fund," Reynders said.
Although Britain and the United States announced financial plans last week that would take ownership shares in struggling banks, the 15 leaders of the countries that use the euro looked for collective responses to avoid actions by individual countries that might harm neighboring nations.

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Seven Russian peacekeepers and two others were killed Friday in a car bomb explosion in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, reported The New York Times.
The explosion occurred six days before a scheduled pullback of Russian troops from Georgian territory, heightening tensions in the separatist region.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian peacekeepers in an ethnic Georgian village stopped two cars Friday carrying firearms and grenades, detaining four men without documents. While the cars were being searched, one exploded, killing two of the detained men and wounding eight others.
European Union monitors began patrolling the so-called "buffer zone" outside South Ossetia on Wednesday, following the ceasefire agreement between President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Russia.
President Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia said he had "no doubt" that Georgian special forces were responsible for the explosion. Kokoity said that these actions "undermine international efforts to stabalize the situation and torpedo the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan."

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A car bomb exploded Saturday morning near a Syrian intelligence agency office in the capital city of Damascus, killing 17 and wounding at least 14 people, reported The New York Times.
This was the worst attack Syria has faced since the 1980s.
Authorities say that the bomb included more than 400 pounds of explosives and exploded near a crowded intersection close to a well-known Shiite shrine. All of those dead and wounded are reported to have been civilians.
The bombing followed what The New York Times reported as "unusual political assassinations" this year in Syria, and occurred less than three months after Islamist rioted and took hostages at a prison outside the capital.
In the 1980s, the secular government fought for years against Sunni Islamist rebels, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands people.
During a time of heightened awareness, especially as the nation is in the midst of peace negotiations with Israel, many are concerned for the safety of Syria and its people.
“These attacks are becoming more frequent, and there are worries that Syria is being targeted by groups from the outside,� said Marwan Kabalan, a political science professor at Damascus University.
Syria has recently been under accusation of aiding Islamist fighters to cross the border into Iraq, but has a long history of fighting Sunni Arab militants. Many of the militants disagree with the secular state of the government, especially as President Bashar al-Assad and other ruling officials are members of the Alawite sect of Islam, which some Sunni extremists view as herectical.

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A least seven people were killed and more than 100 were injured after explosions in the Mexican state of Michoacán Monday night during an Independence Day celebration, reported The New York Times.
Explosions were caused by grenades that were thrown into a crowd during celebrations in Morelia, the hometown of President Felipe Calderón. Although it is unclear who threw the grenades, it is assumed that local drug cartels are responsible.
After taking office in 2006, Calderón has sent more than 25,000 soldiers to combat drug traffickers. Drug gangs have responded with shootings, beheadings, assassinations and massacres, reported the International Herald Tribune.
"These illegal acts were clearly attacking our national security, committed by true traitors who have no respect for others or for the country," Calderon said. "Those who believe they can use fear to hold our society hostage and immobilize us are mistaken. ... They are doomed to fail." (International Herald Tribune)
Mexico has recently experienced other violent attacks, mostly involving drug gangs. Days before the Independence Day attack, 24 bodies were found bound and killed execution-style outside of Mexico City.

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The New York Times reported explosions at five sites in India's capital on Saturday as part of a recent series of terrorist attacks in cities across the country. Shivraj Patil, India's home minister, said 18 people were killed in Saturday's attack and many more were wounded.
The explosions hit five crowded markets and thoroughfares, including a popular tourist destination. The police said that at least two unexploded bombs were found in the area.
An e-mail message was sent to television stations earlier in the evening, warning of the attacks, by a group called Indian Mujahedeen. The group has claimed responsibility for other deadly bombings in India, as well.
As national elections are approaching, terrorist attacks have become an increasing threat to the nation and intensified conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Saturday's attacks took place during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
"The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has criticized the Congress Party-led coalition government for its inability to prevent bombings like those that hit the capital on Saturday," The New York Times reported.

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