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The quake struck 24 miles southeast of the city of T’ai-chung at a depth of nine miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The agency initially said it was 6.6 magnitude but later downgraded it slightly.
Taiwan television said the quake triggered a gas explosion in the centre of the island but it gave no details. There were no reports of any casualties.
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Joblessness in the 17-nation currency area rose to 12.2 percent in April, EU statistics office Eurostat said on Friday, marking a new record since the data series began in 1995.
With the euro zone in its longest recession since its creation in 1999 … the deepening unemployment crisis is a threat to the social fabric of the euro zone. Almost two-thirds of young Greeks are unable to find work, exemplifying southern Europe’s ‘lost generation’.
Economists and policymakers including Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, have said the greatest menace to the unity of the euro zone is now social breakdown from the crisis, rather than market-driven factors.
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When former Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly acknowledged Afridi’s role in the ruse which helped the CIA pinpoint Bin Laden’s presence in an Abbottabad compound, any chance that Pakistani authorities could help him get out of the country vanished, according to what some have called Pakistan’s version of the 9/11 Commission, a 357-page report from an independent body set up to probe the aftermath of the 2011 raid by Navy SEALs in which the Al Qaeda leader was killed.
“The statement by the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was the CIA Director when May 2 happened, confirming the role of Dr. Afridi in making the U.S. assassination mission a success, rendered much of what Afridi told the Commission very questionable if not outright lies,” states the report, which has not been released, but which FoxNews.com has viewed.
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MiG’s director general, Sergei Korotkov, said a Syrian delegation was in Moscow to discuss the details of a new contract for the delivery of MiG-29 M/M2 fighters. In remarks carried by Russian news agencies, he said Syria wants to buy “more than 10” such fighters, but wouldn’t give the exact number.
Russia has said it’s only providing Assad with weapons intended to protect Syria from a foreign invasion, such as air defense missile systems. It has claimed it is not delivering weapons that could be used in Syria’s two-year civil war, which has killed more 70,000 people and sent millions fleeing the country.
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Photo Credit: Iranian Ministry of Defense
A May, 26 broadcast on Iranian television showcased a collection of transporter erector launchers (TELs) capable of launching the Iranian Shahab-3 guided ballistic missiles.
“Iranian television footage showed at least 26 TELs lined up in two rows for the event, which marked their purported delivery to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, which operates the country’s ballistic missiles,” according to the report.
The Shahab-3 is based on a North Korean design and is capable striking Israel from Iranian territory.
“The delivery of such a large number of missile launchers demonstrates the Islamic Republic of Iran’s self-sufficiency in designing and building the strategic system and shows the Iranian Armed Forces’ massive firepower and their ability to give a crushing response to the enemy,” Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said in a report carried by Iranian state news.
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Two of the men in the image are Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, claimed Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star. The men are described as being part of a group who kidnapped 11 Shias last year.
They were identified by one of the kidnap victims, Anwar Ibrahim, who along with one other hostage has since been freed, the Star said. Negotiations over the freedom of the other nine are still ongoing.
“I recognised him (Nour) immediately. He was the photographer who was brought in to take our photos [during captivity]. He works with the kidnappers. He knows them very well,” Mr Ibrahim told the Star.
The Star claimed it had independently confirmed the identity of Nour, who reportedly acted as the spokesman for the kidnappers. The Telegraph has not confirmed the men’s identities.
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Photo Credit: Abdulbaki Todashev
The FBI has said that Ibragim Todashev, 27, was being interrogated at his apartment in Florida on May 22 when he suddenly attacked an agent and was shot and killed.
Abdulbaki Todashev questioned that account at a news conference in Moscow, saying his son was unarmed when he was shot seven times.
“I want justice and I want there to be an investigation, so that these people are tried under American law,” said Todashev. “These are not FBI agents but bandits – I cannot call them anything else and they must be tried.”
Todashev showed reporters photographs of his son’s shirtless corpse on a medical table with several stitched-up wounds on his torso and arm and one on his head. He said his son had been shot after eight hours of questioning.
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Assad also told the Lebanese TV station Al-Manar that Russia has fulfilled some of its weapons contracts recently, but he was vague on whether this included advanced S-300 air defense systems.
The comments were in line with a forceful and confident message the regime has been sending in recent days, even as the international community attempts to launch a peace conference in Geneva, possibly next month. The strong tone coincided with recent military victories in battles with armed rebels trying to topple him.
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The apparent mass abduction purportedly happened sometime between 10 a.m. and noon on Sunday morning just off the Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s main boulevard, near the Angel of Independence monument and only about 1 1/2 blocks from the U.S. Embassy.
The incident was the second recent high-publicity blemish for the city’s largely unregulated entertainment scene, coming 20 days after the grandson of American civil rights activist Malcolm X was beaten to death at another tough bar in the downtown area.
Calling for authorities find their loved ones, family members marched Thursday morning from the Interior Department building to the Zocalo, the city’s main square. Later they protested outside the bar, which bears a sign that reads Bicentenario Restaurante-Bar, and demanded to see the bar’s surveillance video.
“How could so many people have disappeared, just like that, in broad daylight?” said Josefina Garcia, mother of Said Sanchez Garcia, 19, her only son. “The police say they don’t have them, so what, the earth just opened up and swallowed them?”
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The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.
Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”
According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.
Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the network up close. “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she told The New American in a phone interview. “The pillars of the U.S. government — some of them — are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.”
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