NEWS,20.05.2013

Bird flu costs China industry $65bn

China's human H7N9 bird flu outbreak has cost the country's poultry industry more than 400 billion yuan ($65bn) as consumers shun chicken, government officials said according to state media Monday.
The sector has been losing an average of one billion yuan a day since the end of March, the Beijing Times said, citing Li Xirong, head of the National Animal Husbandry Service.
H7N9 avian influenza has infected 130 people in China, killing 35, since it was found in humans for the first time, according to latest official data.
Poultry sales have tumbled and prices plunged, Li said, causing major financial problems and job losses as a result.
Another agriculture ministry official, Wang Zongli, said government agencies should set a good example for the public by treating "poultry products in a correct way", the report added.
In a stunt to boost confidence, officials and poultry business leaders in the eastern province of Shandong held a widely reported all-chicken lunch last week, according to Chinese media.
China has seen several food safety scares in recent years, including one in which the industrial chemical melamine was added to dairy products in 2008, killing at least six babies and making 300 000 ill.

US to keep close eye on anti-Semitism

The state department has appointed a special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism as a new report documents a global increase in incidents of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Ira Forman, former CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, was chosen as special envoy as the state department released its annual report on religious freedom around the world.
The report said expressions of anti-Semitism by government officials, religious leaders and the media were of great concern, particularly in Venezuela, Egypt and Iran.
At times, the report said, such statements led to desecration and violence.
Secretary of State John Kerry called the report a "clear-eyed, objective look at the state of religious freedom around the world" and said that in some cases, the report criticises US allies and would-be allies.

Russia foils terror attack on Moscow

Russian security services said on Monday they had foiled a terror attack on Moscow, killing two of the plotters and arresting another.
"Our forceful actions prevented an attempted act of terror in the capital," the National Anti-Terror Committee said in a statement.
The statement said the men, all three of them ethnic Russians, were detected on the outskirts of Moscow. A gunfight erupted during their attempted arrest which left a Russian federal security official lightly injured.
The committee added that all three men are suspected of having received their training in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been personally informed about the foiled plot.

Republicans eye White House amid scandal

Scandals dogging President Barack Obama are a political gift to Republicans, who could use some good luck after recent election losses.

It's not clear, however, how Republicans can best capitalise on Democrats' woes.
The White House's scandal problems offer a big, enticing target.
Congressional Republicans have ripped into the ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), who apologised last week for the tax agency's heightened scrutiny of tea party affiliates and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Republicans have been equally indignant in ongoing inquiries into the administration's role in last September's terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four US officials, including an ambassador.
Another controversy now dogging the White House - the justice department's secret seizure of AP’s phone records in a security leak investigation - has thus far stirred less emotion and partisanship in Washington.
An ‘inept’ administration
Taken together, Republicans say, these three controversies portray a rapaciously political and inept administration.
That could be a powerful message in next year's congressional elections, and perhaps in the 2016 presidential race.
"I think people are beginning to think, 'Is anybody running the government up there?'" said Congressman Tom Cole, a close ally of House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. "Incompetence, detachment, lack of oversight. I think the damage is going to be real and lasting for the president."
Last November's election dynamics that led to Obama's re-election and Democratic gains in Congress complicate the picture, however, and some Republican leaders are urging a bit of restraint in exploiting the White House's new weaknesses.
Party leaders wince when their more zealous colleagues talk of trying to impeach Obama and remove him from office.
Immigration reform
Some Republicans would like to deny Obama a legacy-enhancing prize like passing an overhaul of US immigration laws, one of Obama's biggest second-term goals.
But party strategists say Republicans may need immigration reform more than Democrats do.
Some conservatives, like rising star Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, are urging their party to embrace an overhaul, including a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.
Hispanics are America's largest minority group and one that is steadily making up a bigger share of the electorate.
They overwhelmingly backed Obama in both his elections, and the trend might worsen for Republicans if they don't show greater interest in Latinos' concerns. For many, that includes major changes to immigration laws.
In the end, the scandals - titillating as they are inside Washington - may have surprisingly little impact on immigration legislation and other bills in Congress.
Boehner, asked on Thursday how the Republicans' apparent momentum might influence legislation, said: "I don't expect that it will."
Tea party
The controversies have managed to reignite the limited-government tea party movement, whose influence in 2012 had waned compared to its muscular role in 2010.
Tea party groups have found new political fuel, especially in the IRS scandal that largely centres on such conservative groups, and are flooding mail boxes with fiery fundraising letters and renewed calls to arms.
Democrats hope conservatives overplay their hands. Even if tea party activists boost Republican turnout in next year's nonpresidential elections, they could complicate the Republican Party's need to woo a wider audience to win presidential elections in 2016 and beyond. Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.
A Quinnipiac University poll this spring found that 24% of Americans view the tea party movement favourably, and 43% view it unfavourably.
Scandals
Democrats love to remind Republicans of their partisan excess in 1998, when the House's impeachment of President Bill Clinton for trying to cover up an affair with an intern struck millions of Americans as political overkill.
Republicans lost House seats that year, costing Speaker Newt Gingrich his leadership post. The Senate acquitted the president.
Boehner and other party leaders are keenly aware that Republicans can overdo their attacks, and even build sympathy for Obama, if their criticisms appear nakedly political or not supported by facts, said Cole, the Republican congressman.
Congressman Jack Kingston of Georgia said he hopes the scandals will increase public attention on Congress, enabling Republicans to highlight an agenda he thinks voters will embrace.
"The scandals, they're not your ticket to the dance," said Kingston, who is running for the Senate in a crowded Republican field.
"They are a reason to have people look at your party. And then, if you have good private-sector job ideas, and balancing the budget, then I think people will vote for you."

Israel MP speaks of removing settlers

Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose new centrist party is the second largest in Israel's government, said on Monday thousands of Jewish settlers would have to be removed from occupied land under any peace deal with the Palestinians.

But, echoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position, Lapid said Israel intended to hold onto major settlement blocs in the West Bank when final borders are set in the six-decade-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"It's heartbreaking. We will have to remove tens of thousands, not just from their homes, but from their dreams," he said, speaking at a business conference in Tel Aviv. But, he added: "The settlement blocs will remain in Israel."

Lapid did not say which settlements he felt would need to be evacuated. About 80% of 340 000 settlers in the West Bank live in large clusters near Jerusalem and central Israel.

Lapid's Yesh Atid party soared to a surprising second place finish in the January general election and joined the right-wing Netanyahu's coalition.

The former TV news anchor's pre-election promise to partner with Netanyahu only if Israel entered into negotiations with the Palestinians raised hopes among Western powers that Lapid could push the premier into peacemaking concessions.

'Meaningful compromise'

US-brokered peace talks broke down in 2010 in a dispute over continuing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Palestinians have demanded a settlement freeze as a condition for returning to the negotiations.

Netanyahu, speaking in general terms, has said that Israel is prepared for a "meaningful compromise" with the Palestinians, noting that it has withdrawn from occupied territory in the past, such as the Gaza Strip in 2005 and south Lebanon in 2000.

But he has rejected any Israeli return to the lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, calling those boundaries indefensible.

Palestinians seek to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. About 500 000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. About 2.7 million Palestinians live in those areas.

Lapid, speaking just days before US Secretary of State John Kerry returns to the region to try to restart negotiations, questioned Palestinian leaders' commitment to pursuing peace.

"Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] is one of the founders of the Palestinian victimhood doctrine and at this stage I do not see him taking one step in our direction," Lapid said.

He was referring to the view of some Israelis that Palestinian leaders focus more on highlighting Palestinian suffering at Israel's hands than on making compromises that might hasten the establishment of an independent state.

Kerry is to meet separately with Netanyahu and Abbas in Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday and Friday.

Israel cancels Unesco mission to Jerusalem

Israel announced on Monday it was calling off a United Nations investigative mission to the Old City in annexed east Jerusalem because of Palestinian efforts to politicise the visit.

"Israel has cancelled the delegation," which was due to have arrived the same day, a foreign ministry official said.

"The Palestinians were not respecting the understandings. The visit was supposed to be professional, [but] they were taking measures that showed they were politicising the event and not letting the delegation focus on professional sides of it," the official said.

Israel in April agreed that the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) could assess the state of the Old City of Jerusalem, the first such monitoring mission since 2004, following pressure from Jordan and the Palestinians, who became members of the organisation in 2011.

But ahead of the start of the delegation's work, the Palestinians were trying to "politicise" it, Israel said, contrary to understandings reached by the sides, and to change the action plan Unesco decided upon in 2010.

"Palestinian foreign minister Riad Malki recently said they considered the mission a 'commission of inquiry'," the official said, "and said they would discuss political issues with the mission."

"The Palestinians are also pushing for the delegation to visit the Temple Mount," which is revered as Judaism's most sacred place, said the official, using the Israeli term for the complex known to Muslims as Al-Haram Al-Sharif that houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Cultural and religious heritage is a highly politicised issue for Israel and the Palestinians.

In March, the Palestinian Authority confirmed a verbal agreement dating back to 1924 giving Jordan custodianship over Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, whose eastern sector Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.