Syria troops advance in Yabrud as war enters fourth year

Syrian troops advanced on Saturday on the key rebel bastion of Yabrud as the country’s civil war entered its fourth year, with more than 146,000 dead, millions displaced and peace efforts stalled.

Army troops were locked in fierce clashes with rebel forces, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, after they entered the town on Friday.
The strategic stronghold is the last rebel-held town in the Qalamun region, which lies along the border with Lebanon and on the key highway between Damascus and third city Homs.
The human cost of the conflict has soared, with nine million people forced from their homes, creating the world’s largest displaced population, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
More than 2.5 million Syrians are registered or awaiting registration as refugees in neighbouring countries, and in excess of 6.5 million people are displaced inside the country.
The total number who have fled their homes now exceeds 40 per cent of the pre-conflict population, the UN said.
The exodus has strained the neighbouring countries disproportionately bearing the burden of the new arrivals, including small Lebanon, which is housing nearly one million Syrians.
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday urged all nations to open their doors to Syria’s refugees.
‘To see Syrian children drowning in the Mediterranean today after fleeing the conflict... is something totally unacceptable,’ he said.
‘Borders need to be open everywhere, visa policies need to be open everywhere, family unification programmes need to exist everywhere.’
Aid groups are urging government and citizens to continue to donate to relief efforts with no end to the humanitarian disaster in sight.
A generation risks being ‘lost forever’ with millions of Syrian children deprived them of health care, education and security, they warned Saturday.
Experts say neither side can score a decisive military victory and the country is gradually splintering. Agence France-Presse . Damascus 

Pakistan-Taliban peace talks falter on start

Agence France-Presse . Islamabad 

Pakistan’s planned peace talks with Taliban insurgents stumbled as they began Tuesday, with government negotiators missing a preliminary meeting citing doubts over the militants’ team.
The faltering start will fuel scepticism about whether negotiations with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) can achieve a meaningful and lasting peace accord.
The prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, caused surprise last week by announcing a team to begin dialogue with the TTP, which has been waging a violent insurgency since 2007.
Many observers had been anticipating a military offensive against TTP strongholds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, following a bloody start to the year. More than 110 people were killed in militant attacks in January, many of them military personnel.
Tentative efforts towards peace talks last year came to an abrupt halt in November when the TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone strike.
Teams representing the Taliban and government had been due to gather in Islamabad at 2:00 pm (0900 GMT) on Tuesday to chart a ‘roadmap’ for talks.
But the government delegation did not show up. One of its members, senior journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, said they wanted to clarify who was on the Taliban team and what powers they had.
The TTP initially named five negotiators but cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan declined to take part and another was pulled out by his political party.
‘We told them we are ready to meet them after we get an explanation about one issue, that their committee will consist of three members,’ Yusufzai told AFP.
‘We also seek explanations on other issues, like how powerful this committee is.’
The head of the Taliban team, hardline cleric Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, accused the government of not taking the talks seriously.
‘Today it has been exposed how serious the government is about talks,’ Haq told AFP.

Big winter storm hits US East, disrupts travel

Associated Press . Philadelphia 

A woman walks down a street during a snowstorm in the Brooklyn borough on Monday in New York City. — AFP photo

Another round of snowy weather hit the eastern United States on Monday, killing at least two people, disrupting thousands of flights and hurting travel plans for people trying to return home from the Super Bowl football championship in the New York City area.
The snow neared 8 inches in Philadelphia and New York, according to the National Weather Service.
By late afternoon, the flight-tracking website FlightAware reported more than 4,300 delayed flights and 1,900 cancelled flights nationwide in cities including Philadelphia, Newark, New Jersey and New York. Inbound flights to Newark, LaGuardia and Kennedy airports were delayed two to three hours because of snow and ice.
At least two deaths and one serious injury were blamed on the storm. In Kentucky, a 24-year-old man died Sunday when his car skidded into a snowplow. On Monday, a 73-year-old New York City man was fatally struck by a backhoe that was moving snow.
A 10-year-old girl was in serious condition after she was impaled by a metal rod while sledding north of Baltimore.
Government offices, courts and schools closed in parts of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia; scattered power outages were reported throughout the region.
Another storm is likely to hit the same region beginning Tuesday night, bringing a combination of rain, freezing rain and snow, said Gary Szatkowski, a weather service meteorologist in New Jersey.

Syria barrel bombs kill 85 in Aleppo

At least 85 people were killed in 24 hours of Syrian regime air raids on the city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said Sunday, after 10 days of inconclusive peace talks.
The deaths came as a suicide car bombing in a Hezbollah stronghold across the border in Lebanon killed four people on Saturday, in the latest regional spillover of the conflict.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime helicopters hit rebel-held areas of Aleppo with barrels packed with explosives.
The so-called barrel bombs are a controversial weapon, condemned by rights groups as indiscriminate.
‘At least 85 people were killed, including 65 civilians, 10 of whom were children,’ on Saturday, the Observatory said.
Attacks targeted several areas of the city, with 34 killed in the southeastern Tariq al-Bab area alone, among them six children.
Another 22 civilians, including another six children, were killed in the Salhine, Ansari and Marjeh districts, with nine others killed in other parts of the city.
The Britain-based Observatory said 10 jihadists from Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, were also killed in a local headquarters in the city.
Ten other deaths in the attacks were recorded but the identities of the dead had not been confirmed.
Once Syria’s economic hub, Aleppo is now divided between regime and rebel-held areas, with large swathes of the city devastated by the fighting that began there in mid-2012.
In December, government aircraft launched a sustained blitz on the city that killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians.
Regime forces recently launched an offensive on rebel-held areas in the east of the city, with defence minister General Fahd al-Freij visiting the province on Friday.
The latest aerial assault came the day after Syrian government and opposition delegations wrapped up peace talks in Geneva.
The 10 days of talks yielded no tangible results and the government team said it was unsure whether it would return to the negotiating table.
On Sunday, SANA carried scathing remarks from deputy foreign minister Faisal al-Moqdad, who accused the opposition of being ‘mercenaries manipulated by foreign forces.’
He said they bore ‘full responsibility for the lack of results at Geneva because of their refusal to engage on the basis of principles that no Syrian could refuse: the unity of Syria, its independence and its sovereignty.’ 
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, was equally critical of the opposition, accusing them of having ‘no vision or political programme,’ SANA said.
Al-Watan added, however, that the conflict has ‘transferred to the political and diplomatic field, which is one that the Syrians know well.’ Agence France-Presse . Damascus 

Ukraine considers state of emergency as ministry seized

A Ukrainian government minister on Monday warned protesters that a state of emergency could be imposed to deal with the country’s deadly crisis, after radicals seized the justice ministry in Kiev.
The storming of the justice ministry threatened to derail talks between the opposition and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, to find a peaceful outcome to a boiling standoff that according to officials has left three activists dead.
The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday was due to meet to discuss concessions proposed by Yanukovych to end the crisis, in a highly anticipated extraordinary session that could be a make-or-break moment to resolve the standoff.
With concern growing in the West that the situation in Ukraine is spiralling out of control, the crisis was also set to dominate an EU-Russia summit on Tuesday.
The protests, which began in November as a drive for EU integration after Yanukovych ditched a key deal with the bloc under Russian pressure, have now turned into an all out uprising to unseat him.
Tensions remained high in Kiev as several dozen radical protesters from a group named Spilna Sprava (The Right Deed) seized control of the justice ministry late Sunday, smashing windows and erecting new barricades outside.
Justice minister Olena Lukash, who is taking part in the negotiations, said she would ask for the talks to be broken off if the building was not freed.
‘I will be forced to ask the president of Ukraine to stop the talks if the building is not freed immediately and negotiators are not given a chance to find a peaceful solution to the conflict,’ Lukash told Ukraine’s Inter channel.
If the protesters do not vacate the building, Lukash said she would also approach Ukraine’s national security council with ‘a demand to discuss imposing a state of emergency in this country.’
The Interfax-Ukraine news agency said opposition leader and former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who is involved in the negotiations with the president, had visited the scene overnight and asked the protesters to leave, but to no avail. Agence France-Presse . Kiev 

Three killed in mall shooting near US capital

Three people died and five others were injured Saturday in a shooting at a popular shopping mall outside the US capital, amid signs the suspect may have intended to kill more, reports AFP. Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon said the as yet unidentified alleged gunman had "a large amount of ammunition" still on and around him when officers found his corpse in a store alongside the two victims at the Columbia Mall in Maryland. "Because of concerns about any other weapons he may have or explosives, we are approaching this with an abundance of caution," McMahon said, stressing that an investigation had just begun. "We're getting assistance from some of our federal partners and making sure there are no explosives on the body of the deceased." First responders were alerted to the mid-morning gunfire at the mall, a favorite weekend spot for young families about 45 minutes outside downtown Washington, by an emergency police call indicating shots were fired inside the two-story shopping center. " HoCoPolice responded to 911 call in less than 2 minutes. Found victims and suspect dead from gunshots upon arrival," the Howard County Police Department tweeted. It said officers would be posted "throughout the night" both inside and outside the mall, which will remain closed for the day. Police identified the victims as Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Maryland, and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City, Maryland. Both were employees of skateboard store Zumiez. The identity of the shooter is still unknown, and police have yet to identify a motive. Howard County General Hospital said all five injured shooting victims have been treated and released. One had suffered a gunshot wound to foot. "The other four were either medical conditions or twisted ankles, things like that as people have were moving away from a very, very chaotic and dangerous situation," McMahon said. The mall of about 200 stores, which has an indoor carousel and play area, is a favored weekend destination for young and old alike. Many people living in Columbia, a planned community replete with parks and good schools, work in either Washington or Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun newspaper said shoppers reported hearing gunfire before fleeing the upscale mall, home to several department stores such as Lord & Taylor, Macy's and Nordstrom. NBC television spoke to one man who said he was in phone contact with his daughter, who was taking shelter in a Bank of America branch inside the shopping center, along with dozens of others. The young woman described a chaotic scene as shoppers were told to evacuate or quickly take shelter. "People were panicking," her father said. An employee at one of the stores described the mayhem as shots resonated through the mall. "In today's world that we live in, when you hear gunshots, you run. There's nothing else to do," he told CNN. The shooting is the latest in a slew of gun-related rampages in the United States. The most notorious in recent history took place in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, when a young gunman entered an elementary school and opened fire. In 10 minutes, the 20-year-old shot and killed 26 people before taking his own life. The Newtown attack briefly reignited the US gun control debate, triggered every time there is a major shooting, although attempts to pass tougher laws have made little headway in the US Congress.

North Korean envoy meets CPB leaders

North Korean ambassador to Bangladesh Ree Song Hyun met with the leaders of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) at the Mukti Bhavan on Thursday.

North Korean ambassador to Bangladesh Ree Song Hyun met with the leaders of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) at the Mukti Bhavan on Thursday. Newly appointed North Korean ambassador and Mujahidul Islam Selim, CPB President congratulated each other at the party office. Comrade Selim welcomed North Korean ambassador at the party office.

They discussed various issues, including strengthening the relation between peoples of the two countries, international politics and recent important issues in Bangladesh.

Ambassador acclaimed the role of CPB in the movement against imperialism, Counsellor of North Korean Embassy was present in the meeting.

CPB general secretary Syed Abu Jafar Ahmed, Presidium member Md. Shah Alam & International affairs member Hasan Tarik Chowdhury were also present in the meeting.

Comrade Selim emphasized in his speech that election should be fair and participated by all party, He said that the USA and other imperialist countries should not interfere in Bangladesh politics. He also said that the people of North Korea were and will be with Bangladeshi people in any legal movement. He said the struggle of North Korean people against the injustice of USA is an inspiration to the peaceful world today.