From PressTV
Israeli troops attack Palestinian protesters; 12 wounded
At least twelve young Palestinian men have been injured when Israeli military forces attacked a group of Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank.
On Friday, dozens of Palestinians held a demonstration in al-Jalazoun refugee camp, located 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) north of Ramallah, to express their resentment over the construction of the separation wall also known as the apartheid wall, which snakes across the occupied West Bank, isolating large swathes of Palestinian territories.
Violence erupted when Israeli troops stormed the protesters and fired live and rubber-coated steel bullets to break up the protest. Palestinian youths reportedly threw rocks and empty bottles at Israeli soldiers in return.
Three Palestinians were injured with live fire and a further nine with rubber-coated bullets. They were taken to a nearby Palestinian hospital to receive medical treatment.
The total length of the wall being built in the West Bank is approximately 700 kilometers. Palestinians see the wall as a symbol of occupation and Tel Aviv’s apartheid policies, saying the structure has divided people and communities.
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From PressTV
Israeli forces shoot Palestinian dead in West Bank
One Palestinian man has been killed and thirteen others injured in clashes between dozens of Palestinians attending the funeral of a Palestinian youth and Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
On Friday, Palestinian mourners attended the funeral procession of 22-year-old former prisoner, Jaafar Ibrahim Awad, who died of health complications resulting from medical negligence during his detention in an Israeli prison, in the town of Beit Ummar, located about eleven kilometers (6.8 miles) northwest of al-Khalil (Hebron).
The Israeli forces then hurled tear gas canisters and fired shots to disperse the mourners. Awad’s 27-year-old cousin, Ziyad, was killed as a result.
Three Palestinians were injured with live fire, while ten others were injured with rubber-coated steel bullets. Dozens of mourners also suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation.
In recent months, Israeli forces have frequently raided the houses of Palestinians in the West Bank, arresting dozens of people, who are then transferred to Israeli prisons, where they are kept without any charges brought against them.
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From Russia Today
Canada to send troops to Ukraine ‘in non-combat role’ – report
The Canadian soldiers are likely to be sent for a training mission and could cooperate with American soldiers, the report said.
“While the government is still working out the details, sources told CTV News a training mission is one of the options on the table. Canada is likely to work closely with American allies who are already in the region,” CTV News reporter Mercedes Stephenson said.
From PressTV
UN slams Israel’s unlawful administrative detention
The United Nations human rights office has voiced concerns over Israel’s so-called administrative detention, calling on Tel Aviv to end the unlawful practice of detaining Palestinians without charge or trial.
Briefing reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), expressed worries about the continued and increasing use of administrative detention by Israeli authorities.
The UN official further said the detainees were often transferred to prisons located outside of the occupied Palestinian territories in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The convention prohibits the forcible transfer of detainees and prisoners outside of occupied territory.
“We call, once again, on Israel to end its practice of administrative detention and to either release without delay or to promptly charge all administrative detainees and prosecute them with all the judicial guarantees required by international human rights law and standards,” Shamdasani said.
She also referred to the case of Khalida Kan’an Muhammad Jarrar, a Palestinian lawmaker, who was abducted in a raid by Israeli forces on her house in the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on April 2.
Jarrar, one of the most outspoken critics of the Israeli occupation and atrocities against Palestinians, reportedly remains under administrative detention in an Israeli jail.
The administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods of time.
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From Russia Today
Obama & Castro shake hands during historic encounter (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
US President Barack Obama shook hands with his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, at the Summit of the Americas in Panama. The gesture has been seen as signaling a historic thaw between the two countries as they seek to reestablish diplomatic relations.
Obama and Castro encountered each other in the midst of other foreign leaders at the summit. Photographs and videos from the event showed the two shaking hands as they greeted one another, as well as nodding as they spoke.
Leaders of the United States and Cuba have rarely spoken over the past 50 or so years because of an American embargo implemented against Havana, which was put in place shortly after Fidel Castro led a socialist revolution in the 1950s. However, last year, the two countries announced that they would look to mend their strained relationship.
From The Times of Israel
Wisconsin governor expects to meet PM during Israel visit
Republican Scott Walker seeks meeting with Netanyahu, other officials ahead of likely presidential bid
MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said he “absolutely” expects to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first visit to Israel next month.
As he prepared to depart for a western European trade mission, Walker told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that the Netanyahu meeting in mid-May is not yet confirmed, but that it’s his “hope and expectation” it will happen.
A spokeswoman for Walker’s political group, Our American Revival, did not immediately confirm Friday whether the meeting has been set up.
Walker met with British Prime Minister David Cameron during a trade mission to London in February. Walker departs Friday for visits to Germany, France and Spain.
Walker originally planned for his Israel trip to be a taxpayer-funded trade mission, but he determined that was impossible because the “overwhelming majority” of those who wanted to meet with him in Israel had a political interest. His political arm is footing the bill.
From Russia Today
Tehran threat? Russia questions US, EU motives behind missile shield in Europe
Despite progress being made concerning nuclear talks with Iran, Russia says US and EU officials are trying to “think up” new reasons to deploy a missile shield in Europe. Moscow says there is no need for the defensive system in Europe.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry was commenting on the latest statement given by US state officials. Washington says that even despite the historic deal concerning Iran’s nuclear program, this does not mean a plan to deploy an American missile shield to Europe will be revised.
“The threat to NATO countries posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles continues to increase… the framework [of the Iran nuclear program] agreement does not change that fact,” NATO’s spokeswoman Oana Lungescu told Sputnik last week.
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From The Times of Israel
Ambassador: US handed Cambodia to the ‘butcher’ 40 years ago
American envoy, a German-born Jew, recalls horrors of Pol Pot’s regime, regrets Washington’s ‘abandonment’ of allies
PARIS (AP) — Twelve helicopters, bristling with guns and US Marines, breached the morning horizon and began a daring descent toward Cambodia’s besieged capital. The Americans were rushing in to save them, residents watching the aerial armada believed. But at the US Embassy, in a bleeding city about to die, the ambassador wept.
Forty years later and 6,000 miles (nearly 10,000 kilometers) away, John Gunther Dean recalls what he describes as one of the most tragic days of his life — April 12, 1975, the day the United States “abandoned Cambodia and handed it over to the butcher.”
Time has not blunted the former ambassador’s anger, crushing shame and feelings of guilt over what also proved a milestone in modern American history — the first of several US interventions in foreign countries climaxed by withdrawals before goals were accomplished and followed by often disastrous consequences.
“We’d accepted responsibility for Cambodia and then walked out without fulfilling our promise. That’s the worst thing a country can do,” he says in an interview in Paris. “And I cried because I knew what was going to happen.”
Five days after Operation Eagle Pull, the dramatic evacuation of Americans, the US-backed government fell as communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas stormed into Phnom Penh. They drove its 2 million inhabitants into the countryside at gunpoint, launching one of the bloodiest revolutions of modern times. Nearly 2 million Cambodians — one in every four — would die from executions, starvation and hideous torture.
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From The Times of Israel
PLO rejects idea of fighting Islamic State in Yarmouk camp
Palestinian leadership says it won’t drag its people into Syrian conflict, would work with government to clear refugee camp of ‘terrorists’
The Palestinian leadership has rejected the idea of joining the conflict in Syria’s Yarmouk camp, apparently ruling out involvement in a joint military operation to expel the Islamic State group.
The position was made clear in a statement released late Thursday by the Palestine Liberation Organization from its headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
It came just hours after Ahmed Majdalani, a senior PLO official who is currently in Damascus for talks, said 14 Palestinian factions backed the idea of a joint military operation with the Syrian army to expel the IS jihadists from the camp where more than 15,000 people, mostly Palestinian refugees, are trapped.
But the PLO said its traditional position of non-involvement had not changed.
“We refused to drag our people and their camps into the hellish conflict which is happening in Syria and we categorically refuse to become one of the parties involved in the armed conflict that is taking place in Yarmouk,” it said.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Sheldon Silver Loses Bid To Dismiss Corruption Charges
Ex-N.Y. Speaker Objected To Prosecutor’s Comments
By Reuters
While U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni said she was “troubled” by remarks Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara made bundling Silver’s case together with a broader commentary on corruption and transparency in New York politics, she declined to dismiss the indictment.
“Nevertheless, the parties are cautioned that this case is to be tried in the courtroom and not in the press,” Caproni wrote.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
British Labor Leader Ed Miliband Backs ‘Palestine’ Recognition
Prime Minister Candidate Says Timing To Be DeterminedBy Reuters
The leader of Britain’s opposition Labor Party said on Friday he favored recognizing Palestine as a state if such a move would help bring about a broader peace deal in the Middle East.
Ed Miliband was asked by a reporter if Britain would recognize Palestine in the first year or two of his premiership, if Labor wins national elections on May 7.
Miliband said Labor backed a symbolic vote held last year in Britain’s parliament in favor of recognizing Palestine.
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