Canada meets key aboriginal demand amid blockades

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada‘s prime minister will meet with native leaders next week to discuss social and economic issues, an olive branch to an angry aboriginal movement that has blockaded rail lines and threatened to close Canada’s borders with the United States.

Stephen Harper made no mention of the aboriginal protests in a statement on Friday announcing the January 11 meeting.

But the meeting is a key demand from native Chief Theresa Spence, who has been on a hunger strike for 25 days on an island within sight of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.

Spence’s spokesman Danny Metatawabin told reporters, on the snowy ground outside her traditional teepee, that she would continue her hunger strike until she was satisfied with the outcome of next week’s meeting.

Spence’s hunger strike has been one of the most visible signs of a protest movement called Idle No More, which had announced plans for blockades on Saturday all along the U.S.-Canadian border.

It was not clear if these blockades would now be called off, or if there would be any disruptions at the border crossings between the two big trading partners.

The movement is not centrally organized, and Metatawabin said he would not tell others what to do. Several hours after Harper’s announcement, the Idle No More website still had a call up for blockades on Saturday.

Demonstrators blocked a Canadian National Railway Co line in Sarnia, Ontario, for about two weeks until Wednesday, and there were shorter blockades elsewhere in the country, including one that delayed passenger trains between Montreal and Toronto for several hours on Sunday.

Harper said next Friday’s meeting would address economic development, aboriginal rights and the treaty relationship between the government and native groups. He described it as a follow-up to a meeting with aboriginal leaders last January as well as talks in November with Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo.

“While some progress has been made, there is more that must be done to improve outcomes for First Nations communities across Canada,” Harper said in a statement.

DISMAL CONDITIONS

Many of Canada’s 1.2 million aboriginals live on reserves where conditions are often dismal, with high rates of poverty, addiction and suicide.

Treaties with Ottawa signed a century ago finance their health and education in a way that many experts say is now dysfunctional.

Speaking to reporters in Oakville, Ontario, Harper sidestepped a question on whether he had agreed to the meeting because of Spence’s hunger strike and fear the protests could snowball like last year’s Occupy Movement.

Asked about the demonstrations, he said: “People have the right in our country to demonstrate and express their points of view peacefully as long as they obey the law, but I think the Canadian population expects everyone will obey the law in holding such protests.”

Idle No More was sparked by legislation that activists say Harper rushed through Parliament without proper consultation with native groups and which affects their land and treaty rights. But it has broadened into a complaint about conditions in general for native Canadians.

In her meeting with reporters after Harper’s announcement, Spence said she planned to attend the meeting in person along with three of her supporters and she wanted the governor general – Queen Elizabeth’s representative – and the Ontario premier to attend as well.

She stood flanked by her daughter and several supporters, some of them holding up feathers. There were several minutes of drumming and singing before she and her spokesman began talking.

When asked what she needed to hear from the prime minister in order to start eating again, she said, “a positive result because there’s a lot of issues we need to discuss” and that they should discuss the issues as equal partners.

(Additional reporting by Cameron French in Oakville, Ontario; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Eric Beech)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Canada meets key aboriginal demand amid blockades
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/canada-meets-key-aboriginal-demand-amid-blockades/
Link To Post : Canada meets key aboriginal demand amid blockades
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

France won’t buy troubled Petroplus refinery: Hollande

VAL-DE-REUIL, France (Reuters) – France will not take over insolvent Swiss refiner Petroplus‘ oil refinery in Normandy, but could help the plant financially once a suitable buyer is found, President Francois Hollande said on Saturday.

About 500 jobs at the 161,000 barrels-a-day Petit-Couronne refinery are at risk, the latest industrial headache for the Socialist leader who has vowed to stem rising unemployment by the end of the year.

“It’s difficult to find a serious buyer. We must do everything to find one,” Hollande told reporters after meeting union leaders in Val-De-Reuil, a town about 110 kilometers (70 miles) north-west of Paris.

“The state will do its duty, but it cannot take the plant over, and the workers know that,” he said.

He added the state could at some point provide financing.

Petroplus poses a major test for Hollande’s government after it faced criticism over the tactics it used in a two-month battle over the future of ArcelorMittal’s Florange steel plant, which unnerved investors in the euro zone’s second largest economy and confused France’s unions.

His administration is struggling to stop a haemorrhage of industrial jobs which has helped push unemployment to 15-year highs, while curbing public spending and raising taxes to help slash debt in a stagnant economy.

A French court set a deadline of February 5 for interested parties to submit bids for the Petit-Couronne refinery.

Shell , which had a six-month oil processing deal with the troubled plant running to mid-December, has not extended its contract, making the refinery less attractive for buyers due to expensive restart costs.

So far only NetOil, a company led by Middle Eastern businessman Roger Tamraz, has submitted an offer while 7 others have filed letters of intent to buy France’s oldest refinery.

Net Oil’s offer includes an oil supply deal with BP and an agreement with Hyundai to upgrade the plant.

Union spokesman Yvon Scornet told reporters after the meeting that Hollande had promised to do everything possible to push the project forward, but had given no guarantees.

TAKING CHARGE

Hollande is trying to win back voters who are increasingly unhappy over the government’s handling of the economy and disillusioned by communication gaffes.

A survey by BVA for I>Tele on Friday showed two-thirds of respondents were not convinced by Hollande’s New Year’s address aimed at reassuring the country over his policies.

Approval ratings for Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault hit new lows in December.

Hollande, seen as letting his ministers lead the fight, has been compared unfavourably with his pugnacious, micro-managing predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy.

However, the president, who appointed a new communications advisor on Thursday, appears to have decided to put himself directly in the firing line promising to carry out at least one visit a week across France to show his commitment to battling the economic crisis.

“Today, I have to be more present on the ground,” he said. “I have to set the example as I am the first to blame. I am not delegating to anybody else the responsibility of explaining to the French the policies that I am pushing through.”

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and John Irish; writing by John Irish; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: France won’t buy troubled Petroplus refinery: Hollande
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/france-wont-buy-troubled-petroplus-refinery-hollande/
Link To Post : France won’t buy troubled Petroplus refinery: Hollande
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Odd Mammal Thought Long Extinct in Australia May Still Live

A critically endangered mammal thought to be extinct in Australia since the last ice age may still exist there, a new study suggests.

That speculation comes from the discovery that at least one long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal thought to exist only in New Guinea, was found in Australia in 1901 and that native Aborigine populations reported seeing the animal more recently. The 1901 specimen, described in the Dec. 28 issue of the journal Zookeys, had been shot and stuffed and was lying in a drawer, long forgotten, in the Natural History Museum in London.

“What’s amazing about this study is it all hinges on a single specimen, and it’s a very well-documented specimen that was collected in 1901 in Australia,” said study co-author Kristofer Helgen, a zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “It’s taken until 2013 for myself and the team to really unbury the specimen from the cabinets of the Natural History Museum of London.”

Primitive mammal

Monotremes, which include bizarre little mammals like the duckbill platypus, lay eggs like reptiles but feed their babies milk. They may have diverged from all other mammals as far back as the Triassic Period, which lasted from about 248 million to 206 million years ago. [Image Gallery: Photos of Bizarre Monotremes]

While short-beaked echidnas and duckbill platypuses still live in Australia, the long-beaked echidna, the largest monotreme in the world, was thought to live only in rainforests of New Guinea. The secretive creature, which can weigh up to 20 pounds (9 kilograms), is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Forgotten in a drawer

Scientists knew the spiny, nocturnal creatures once inhabited Australia but thought it died out after the last ice age, between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, when New Guinea and Australia were one continent, Helgen said.

Helgen said he was visiting the Natural History Museum in London to look at its collections when he happened upon a skinned long-beaked echidna that was neatly tagged with the species name and where it was discovered.

It turns out that in 1901, an Australian naturalist named John Tunney shot the echidna on Mount Anderson, a mountain in a vast, arid and sparsely populated region of northwest Australia, while on an expedition for a British collector. Tunney, who was trained in taxidermy, stuffed and delivered the specimen, which was later bequeathed to the Natural History Museum. There it lay forgotten for a century.

Once they realized the echidna had been spotted in recent history, the team went back to aboriginal communities in the West Kimberley region. Some of the women remembered watching their parents hunt long-beaked echidnas.

“They remembered that there used to be an echidna in the area that was much larger, and they pointed to pictures of the modern long-beaked echidna from New Guinea,” Helgen told LiveScience.

Still out there?

The new findings raise the possibility that the long-beaked echidna is still out there in Australia, and scientists should lead an expedition to find it, Helgen said. But the elusive, critically endangered creatures are difficult to spot even in New Guinea. They venture out at night, avoid humans and curl up into a spiky, unidentifiable ball at the first sign of danger, he said.

The discovery not only points to the importance of maintaining museum collections, it radically changes the picture of long-beaked echidnas, said Christopher Norris, a museums specialist at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study. The New Guinea rain forest where long-beaked echidnas are normally seen is dramatically different from the rocky, arid scrubland of the Kimberley, Norris told LiveScience.

“It overturns our ideas about how this particular animal lives,” he said.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter@livescience. We’re also on Facebook &Google+. 

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Odd Mammal Thought Long Extinct in Australia May Still Live
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/odd-mammal-thought-long-extinct-in-australia-may-still-live/
Link To Post : Odd Mammal Thought Long Extinct in Australia May Still Live
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

How BuzzFeed Is Betting on Hollywood, Long-Form Writing to Grow

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Last January, BuzzFeed, then an aggregator of memes and cat videos, secured a $ 15.5 million round of venture capital to beef up a craft that most traditional media was downsizing: journalism.

It hired dozens of reporters and editors, opened bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and became a must-read for political junkies during the 2012 presidential election.

On Thursday, the company took another step.

It added adding a fourth round of capital investment – this time worth $ 19.3 million. And it plans to expand in two major ways: literary, long-form journalism like the kind practiced by New York magazine and the New Yorker, and – with two former Los Angeles Times staffers newly on board – its Hollywood coverage.

BuzzFeed’s been on a roll. According to the privately held company‘s internal traffic numbers, the 8 million unique monthly visitors it drew in 2008 has swelled to 40 million, and revenue for 2012 may triple that of 2011, a spokeswoman for BuzzFeed told TheWrap.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Tom Gara reported that some analysts place the company’s valuation at $ 200 million and say that revenues may reach $ 40 million this year.

Most of BuzzFeed’s traffic currently comes from its odd mix of news and eccentricity on the homepage. Friday morning, spotlighted stories ranged from J.J. Abrams screening his new “Star Trek” for a dying fan and Sen. Tammy Baldwin talking about breaking the glass ceiling to: “How to Murder Your Friend’s Facebook Page” and “Here Are Some Elephants Eating Christmas Trees.”

But there’s no question things are changing.

The first thing CEO Jonah Peretti did with his 2012 investment cash was hire Ben Smith, a Politico veteran, as the site’s first editor-in-chief. Smith then kicked off a hiring spree of reporters and got to work. Already BuzzFeed is beginning to break stories and get quoted by aggregators.

McKay Coppins, the site’s political editor, embedded with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign. John Stanton, a veteran reporter in Washington, was named BuzzFeed’s first D.C. bureau chief. Michael Hastings, the dogged journalist whose Rolling Stone exposé of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s private disagreements with President Obama over Afghanistan led to his resignation, joined the team.

Then, less than a year into its political foray, the site hired former Spin magazine chief Steve Kandell to make the push for longform journalism.

It began with an experiment – a 7,118-word post from last October titled “Can You Die From a Nightmare?” that garnered more than 115,000 hits. Another in October titled “Making Mitt: The Myth of George Romney” drew nearly 130,000 views. This convinced Smith and his team that literary journalism had a niche in the viral news market.

Despite the internet school of thought that briefer is better, Kandell said he has no plans to restrict stories’ word counts.

“If someone has a story that has to be 10,000 words, I don’t know why that couldn’t be,” Kandell said.

“I don’t think people necessarily have a certain fatigue level when it gets to a certain length and people start trailing out.”

Kandell says he plans in the coming months to start publishing at least one long-form story a week and may even start packaging and selling the stories as Amazon Kindle singles or as audiobooks.

Kandell assembled a “Best of 2012″ post for his nascent section of the site. The stories ranged from the tale of BuzzFeed’s own political editor Coppins, a Mormon, watching attitudes toward his and Romney’s religion change throughout the campaign to an inside look at the “Dark World of Online Sugar Daddies.”

Plans are to cover more foreign policy and national security issues from a Washington-centered perspective – and to add Hollywood into the mix. The only hands-off topic, apparently, will be international news.

“We’ve played around with ways to make world news more sharable, just like every editor at every publication,” he said, noting that readers liked a roundup of Instagram photos of the civil war in Syria. “It’s really hard, it’s not something we want to jump into without really knowing what we’re doing.”

As for Hollywood, BuzzFeed hired Richard Rushfield, former entertainment editor of LATimes.com, and ex-Times television editor Kate Aurthur, also a former Daily Beast staffer, to jump-start its bureau.

Smith said he plans to forge a presence in Los Angeles second only to its flagship New York bureau. A Hollywood vertical is expected to launch on January 7.

To that end, the site is entering a crowded space – one dominated by publications like Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, Vulture and the Times – but Rushfield said he plans to cover entertainment through BuzzFeed’s social-web lens: If it’s irresistibly share-worthy, it’s publishable.

“We have a unique position, despite how crowded the beat is,” Rushfield told TheWrap, adding that they won’t be competing with trades over stories concerning studio executives and casting deals. “One of our advantages is that we are not going to be going after every single story that the trades are – we have more room to take the things that we think can be interesting. What BuzzFeed is about is writing news that will be of interest to the social web.”

Now the trick is to make all these editorial investments worthwhile financially.

Revenue growth from its advertising model has been climbing, chief operating officer Jon Steinberg told TheWrap.

Forgoing the usual banners and display ads, BuzzFeed offers its clients “branded content.” For example, Scope mouthwash sponsored a “listicle” on the most “courageous” mustaches.

To that end, the advertising team, which is made up of 20 people that report to Steinberg, works with brands from General Electric to Virgin Mobile to devise sharable pieces of content.

The ratio of advertorial to editorial content on the homepage is usually about one to every six or so stories,” he said.

Those branded-content headlines garner 10-20 times the click-through rates of blinking banner and display ads, Steinberg told TheWrap.

“You compare those ads in the 1950s to modern advertising, you realize how broken modern advertising is,” Steinberg said. “Most publishers and media companies say you can’t make money on modern advertising.”

But – though he declined to reveal exact numbers, as BuzzFeed is a private company – the model helped to increase revenue last year and has allowed the publication to focus solely on its advertising stream.

He said the company has no immediate plans to enter the conference business popular with online publications including the Business Insider, AllThingsD and TheWrap.

“This is our Google ad words,” Steinberg said of the innovative advertising tool that Google pioneered in the mid-2000s. “If we were Apple, this would be our manufacturing of great hardware products.”

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: How BuzzFeed Is Betting on Hollywood, Long-Form Writing to Grow
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/how-buzzfeed-is-betting-on-hollywood-long-form-writing-to-grow/
Link To Post : How BuzzFeed Is Betting on Hollywood, Long-Form Writing to Grow
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner marries his “runaway bride”

(Reuters) – Octogenarian Playboy founder Hugh Hefner briefly swapped his iconic silk pajamas for a tuxedo to marry Crystal Harris, the one-time “runaway bride” who followed through this time at a New Year’s Eve wedding.

“Happy New Year from Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Hefner!” the Playboy magazine publisher tweeted early on Tuesday.

The message accompanied a photograph of Hefner, 86, wearing what appeared to be purple silk pajamas under a black bathrobe and snuggling his bride, 26, still wearing her pale pink wedding dress. He also wore his trademark captain’s hat.

An hour earlier, Hefner posted a picture of himself in a tuxedo with his bride under an arch of pink and white flowers at the wedding ceremony in the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

“Crystal & I married on New Year’s Eve in the Mansion with Keith as my Best Man. Love that girl!” Hefner wrote on Twitter with the picture, referring to his brother Keith Hefner, a songwriter.

The couple tied the knot more than a year after their planned 2011 wedding was scuttled when Harris got cold feet.

The blonde Playboy Playmate of the Month for December 2009 jettisoned the adult entertainment mogul in what was called a “change of heart” five days before a lavish June 2011 wedding before 300 guests.

Harris, who appeared on the July 2011 cover of the adult magazine with a “runaway bride” sticker covering her bottom half, tweeted on Monday that she was ready to commit and changed her name to “Crystal Hefner” on the micro-blogging site.

“Today is the day I become Mrs. Hugh Hefner,” Harris, who has a psychology degree, wrote on Twitter after writing “Feeling very happy, lucky, and blessed.”

The San Diego native, whose parents are British, said she asked for Christmas ornaments rather than lingerie at her pre-Christmas bridal shower to help decorate Hefner’s famed mansion.

Hefner, founder of the Playboy adult entertainment empire, has been married twice before. He and his second wife Kimberley Conrad, also a former Playmate, divorced in 2010 after a lengthy separation. His first marriage to Mildred Williams ended in divorce in 1959. He has two children from each marriage.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey and Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Paul Simao)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Playboy founder Hugh Hefner marries his “runaway bride”
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/playboy-founder-hugh-hefner-marries-his-runaway-bride/
Link To Post : Playboy founder Hugh Hefner marries his “runaway bride”
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Julia Roberts to star in HBO film on early AIDS epidemic

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Julia Roberts will star as a paraplegic physician treating patients early in the AIDS epidemic in the stage-to-screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning drama “The Normal Heart,” U.S. cable television network HBO said on Friday.

“The Normal Heart,” set to air on HBO in 2014, tells the story of the dawning of the epidemic in 1980s New York.

Oscar-winner Roberts plays Dr. Emma Brookner, who treats several early patients infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Co-star Mark Ruffalo plays Ned Weeks, an eyewitness to how the disease ravaged the city’s gay community.

The film will be directed by “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy and was adapted by the play’s author, Larry Kramer, an early advocate for AIDS prevention and care.

“Ryan has assembled an extraordinary cast to bring Larry Kramer’s landmark theatrical achievement to the screen for the first time, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to bring this important film to HBO,” Michael Lombardo, HBO’s president of programming, said in a statement.

“The Normal Heart” debuted on stage in 1985 in New York and was revived on Broadway in 2011, winning the Tony Award for best revival.

The movie version was originally envisioned as big screen release before HBO took it up as a television film.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Will Dunham)

Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Julia Roberts to star in HBO film on early AIDS epidemic
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/julia-roberts-to-star-in-hbo-film-on-early-aids-epidemic/
Link To Post : Julia Roberts to star in HBO film on early AIDS epidemic
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

“Fiscal cliff” deal a budget help or hindrance? Yes, says CBO

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – So does Congress’ landmark deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” by canceling tax hikes on most Americans increase or decrease long-term U.S. budget deficits?

The answer is a definitive “yes,” the Congressional Budget Office said on Friday. It all depends on the comparison. And by the way, it also helps – and hurts – the economy.

As it said earlier this week in its official budget scoring of the legislation passed on January 1, the deal adds $ 4 trillion to deficits over a 10-year period compared to allowing all income tax rates to jump back to their pre-2001 levels and allowing automatic spending cuts to bite — effectively a leap off the fiscal cliff.

Add in the increased debt service costs through 2022, and you have $ 4.6 trillion in new debt burden. The main culprit is simple: the legislative deal brings in less revenue than called for by tax laws that would have reinstated the old rates.

But few in Washington believed it was realistic to allow a full return to Clinton-era tax rates, sharply lower Medicare payments to doctors and a failure to stop the dreaded alternative minimum tax from ensnaring ever-larger numbers of middle-class taxpayers.

So the CBO last year came up with an alternative scenario, which assumed that all tax rates were left unchanged and the AMT indexed for inflation. Had this been enacted, deficits would have risen $ 4.5 trillion, or $ 5.2 trillion including debt service costs, CBO estimated in August.

After making some adjustments in the agency’s calculations due to the fiscal cliff legislation, CBO director Doug Elmendorf said in a blog posting that the deal would produce 10-year budget savings of $ 600 billion to $ 700 billion compared to this alternative tax-extension scenario.

Add in lower debt service costs, and the savings would be $ 700 billion to $ 800 billion.

CBO also had predicted that going over the fiscal cliff had dire consequences for the economy, plunging it back into recession. This would have caused U.S. gross domestic product to shrink by 0.5 percent in 2013 – a huge plunge from Federal Reserve forecasts of 2.3 percent to 3.0 percent growth.

An economy in recession generates less tax revenue and prompts higher spending on unemployment benefits, which widens a deficit and forces more borrowing.

But due to this week’s deal, the CBO’s estimate is now back in the black, with the office expecting 2013 GDP growth of around 2.5-2.75 percent. This could decline due to some further fiscal tightening still on the books for this year, however.

The CBO’s analysis does not include any further spending cuts that Congress may make in the next two months as a looming battle over the federal debt limit heats up.

Longer term, however, CBO estimates that the fiscal cliff deal will reduce GDP output compared to allowing all of the tax rates to snap back to Clinton-era levels.

While some short-term pain will be avoided, it will do little to halt the growth of U.S. debt in the long run. The debt service costs and the lower national savings and reduced capital stock associated with this will eventually start to sap economic growth, the CBO said.

By contrast, the CBO had previously predicted that the greater amount of deficit reduction achieved by going over the fiscal cliff would start to pay dividends in higher growth by the end of the decade.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: “Fiscal cliff” deal a budget help or hindrance? Yes, says CBO
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/fiscal-cliff-deal-a-budget-help-or-hindrance-yes-says-cbo/
Link To Post : “Fiscal cliff” deal a budget help or hindrance? Yes, says CBO
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Brotherhood official urges Egypt’s Jews to return

CAIRO (AP) — A leading Muslim Brotherhood member and adviser to Islamist President Mohammed Morsi created a stir in Egypt when he called on Egyptian Jews in Israel to return home because Egypt is now a democracy and because the Jewish state won’t survive.

Essam el-Erian’s remarks in a TV appearance put the Brotherhood, which holds power in Egypt, on the spot as opponents — and some allies — jumped on the comments to denounce the group. Morsi’s office this week disassociated the president from the comments, saying they were el-Erian’s personal opinion.

The criticism ran an unusual gamut of Egyptians’ attitudes toward Jews, Israel and the Brotherhood itself.

Some denounced the Brotherhood for trying to put up a veneer of tolerance by inviting Jews to return while Egypt’s other religious minorities, particularly Christians, are increasingly worried about persecution under the new Islamist rulers and an Islamist-slanted constitution.

Others saw the comments as a sort of outreach to Zionists, considered the enemy, and as a new example of how the Brotherhood has had a hard time melding its longtime anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish rhetoric with its new responsibilities since coming to power. Under Morsi — who hails from the Brotherhood — the government has continued cooperation with Israel, upheld the two countries’ peace deal and Morsi last month helped mediate a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

Some warned that el-Erian was opening the door for Egyptian Jews to demand compensation for property taken from them or left behind in Egypt and could even undermine the Palestinians’ right to return to homes in Israel. Still others were simply outraged that a Brotherhood official would invite back Jews, and one hardline Islamist politician threatened any Jews who come back.

And there were a few voices calling for Egypt to sincerely look at past treatment of its Jewish community — including why they left or were expelled — and whether they should have the right to return.

Speaking on private ONTV, historian Khaled Fahmy suggested taking el-Erian’s comments at face value. “I am taking the call seriously. I would like to see it in part as respectable, as addressing morals and high principles.” He said Egyptians should talk about the past “harm to Egyptian Jews” and consider them as still having Egyptian nationality.

“I wish this was put to a public discussion,” he said.

Egypt’s once thriving Jewish community largely left Egypt more than 60 years ago amid the hostilities between Egypt and Israel. Estimates say about 65,000 Jews left Egypt since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, most of them to Europe and the West, with a small portion settling in Israel. Their departure was fueled by rising nationalist sentiment during the Arab-Israeli wars, harassment and some direct expulsions by then-President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and attacks on Jewish properties, some of them blamed on the Brotherhood, which renounced violence in the 1970s.

Now only a handful of Jews, mostly elderly, remain in Egypt, along with a number of heavily guarded synagogues, open only to Jews.

El-Erian, who is also deputy of the Brotherhood’s political party, made his comments last week on a late night talk show on the private station Dream TV.

“I wish our Jews return to our country, so they can make room for the Palestinians to return, and Jews return to their homeland in light of the democracy” evolving in Egypt, he said. “I call on them now. Egypt is more deserving of you.”

“Why stay in a racist entity, an occupation, and be tainted with war crimes that will be punished, all occupation leaders will be punished,” he said. He added in separate comments that the Zionist “project” will end.

The comments didn’t make much of an impact in Israel, and there was no official comment about them and little discussion of them in the press. In contrast, they raised widespread ridicule and debate in Egypt on TV shows, newspapers and social websites.

Belal Fadl, a popular Egyptian columnist and satirical writer, said the comments were hypocritical given other Brotherhood officials’ statements accusing Egypt’s Christians of threatening Morsi’s legitimacy as president, fueling anger against the minority community.

“How can we believe the tolerance of el-Erian amid all the sectarian statements by leaders of the groups and other sheiks that all seek to chase away Egypt’s Christians in the footsteps of the Jews,” Fadl wrote in the daily al-Shorouk Thursday.

Youssef el-Husseini, a prominent TV presenter known for his liberal views and harsh criticism of Morsi and the Brotherhood, said el-Erian was showing a fake tolerance for Jews to impress Israel and the United States — setting aside the anti-Israel parts of his statement. El-Husseini said that if a liberal made the comments he would be branded a traitor and would be accused of inviting Zionists back to Egypt.

“Is el-Erian flirting with the Zionist state to say we are fine and you are friends,” el-Husseini said on a Sunday morning talk show. “Or is he flirting with Obama” because of U.S. aid to Egypt. “Is the group taking their political garb bit by bit?”

On Tuesday, Morsi’s spokesman said the presidency is not responsible for comments made by el-Erian. “These are his personal opinion,” Yasser Ali, the presidential spokesman said.

Mohammed Salmawy, the head of Egypt’s Writers Union, called el-Erian’s comments “delirium.”

“What is this superficial understanding of matters that borders naiveté?” he wrote, saying the problem of Palestinian refugees is not one of “making room” for their return.

“What the Jews who were living in Egypt want is not to return, particularly in the current circumstances. What they want is compensation for their properties” they left behind.

He said el-Erian was recognizing a right of return for Israeli Jews of Arab origin, which he said would allow for a quid-pro-quo forcing Palestinians refugees to drop their demand to return to homes in Israel so that Jews drop demands to return to Arab nations.

“It seems the way to deny the Palestinians the right of return or compensation is to exchange that right for … the right of the return of Jewish refugees to Arab countries,” he wrote Thursday.

The leading member of a former Islamic militant group, Gamaa Islamiya, which is now a political party allied to the Brotherhood, simply said Jews were not welcome back.

Quoted in the Rose el-Youssef newspaper, Tarek el-Zumor said his group will not tolerate their return “except over our dead bodies or after they change their religion and become Muslims.”

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Brotherhood official urges Egypt’s Jews to return
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/brotherhood-official-urges-egypts-jews-to-return/
Link To Post : Brotherhood official urges Egypt’s Jews to return
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

iPad still dominates tablet Web traffic; Microsoft Surface has smaller share than PlayBook

The iPad is still by far the most widely used tablet for surfing the Web in North America, but it can no longer claim to lord over 90% of all North American tablet traffic. Via AppleInsider, the latest numbers from mobile advertising firm Chitika show that the iPad accounted for roughly 79% of all mobile traffic in the last week of December, a dominant share that was nonetheless a seven percentage point drop from the previous week.

[More from BGR: Samsung confirms plan to begin inching away from Android]

In contrast, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire HD saw its traffic grow by three percentage points over the same period to account for 7.5% of all North American tablet traffic while Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Tab models saw their share increase by nearly 1.5 percentage points to 4.39% of all North American tablet traffic.

[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]

Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface was practically a non-factor in Chitika’s measurements, accounting for 0.4% of North American tablet traffic — even less than RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry PlayBook.

This article was originally published by BGR

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas engaged to businesswoman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Star Wars” creator George Lucas will marry his longtime girlfriend Mellody Hobson, the director’s production company Lucasfilm Ltd said on Thursday.

Lucas, 68, and Hobson, the president of Chicago investment firm Ariel Investments LLC, have been together for the past six years. It will be Lucas’ second marriage. He was married to Oscar-winning film editor Marcia Lucas from 1969 to 1983.

No date or location for the wedding has been made public.

Hobson, 43, serves on the board of directors for Hollywood studio Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc, cosmetics company Estee Lauder Companies Inc, coffeehouse chain Starbucks Corp and Internet coupon company Groupon Inc.

Lucas, who rose to fame directing the 1971 science-fiction film “THX 1138,” launched “Star Wars” in 1977 developed it into one of the highest-grossing film franchises of all time.

Lucas sold Lucasfilm and the “Star Wars” franchise to the Walt Disney Co in November for $ 4.05 billion.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas engaged to businesswoman
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/star-wars-creator-george-lucas-engaged-to-businesswoman/
Link To Post : ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas engaged to businesswoman
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..