Japan PM Vows to Protect Disputed Islands

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to defend disputed islands from incursions by China, as Japan’s coast guard detained a Chinese fishing boat near the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.
Speaking Saturday to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces stationed on the southern island of Okinawa, Abe said he would defend Japan’s land, sea and air at all costs. He was apparently referring to remote islands controlled by Japan but claimed by China, called Senkaku by Tokyo and Daioyu by Beijing. China has regularly sent surveillance ships into waters near the islands, raising tensions in both countries.
In national politics, Abe met later Saturday with Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima. The two failed to reach an agreement on the relocation of US Marine Corps’ Futenma air station on the island.
The governor repeated demands by the local population that the base be moved off the island. It is located in a heavily populated area of Ginowan, and residents complain of the noise made by jets and the safety of people living around the facility. Abe told Nakaima that Futenma would be moved to a less-populated coastal area, but remain on Okinawa as called for in an agreement reached with the United States in 2006. Meanwhile, Japan’s coast guard detained a Chinese fishing boat near the southern Japanese island of Okinawa on Saturday and arrested the captain for collecting coral illegally, a coast guard official said.

Men Accused Plead not Guilty to Delhi Gang Rape

Five men pleaded not guilty on Saturday to charges they raped and murdered an Indian trainee physiotherapist, in a case that led to a shake-up of laws against sexual crimes after protests about a rising number of attacks on women.
Police say the gang lured the 23-year-old woman onto a bus in New Delhi, where they repeatedly raped and assaulted her with a metal bar before throwing her bleeding onto a highway. She died of internal injuries two weeks after the December 16 attack, Reuters reported.
The men file into the court room with their faces covered, where lawyers in the case said they were read thirteen charges including murder, which carries a maximum penalty of death. They left after 15 minutes.
“After the judge read out the charges, the five pleaded not guilty and walked out” said A.P. Singh, a lawyer defending two of the accused, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur.
Singh said the prosecution will call three witnesses to the next hearing on Tuesday, which is the formal start of the trial.
The prosecution says it has strong evidence against the five men including blood stained clothing, DNA matches, mobile phone records, confessions and eye-witness statements.
The brutality of the attack was shocking even to a nation inured to a rising wave of sexual crimes against women.
Thousands of young protesters took to the streets in the weeks that followed. In response to the public outcry, on Friday the cabinet fast-tracked new, tougher penalties for sex crimes.

Top Australia Ministers Resign

Two senior Australian ministers announced surprise resignations, only days after Prime Minister Julia Gillard called early elections.
Chris Evans, the government leader in the Senate, and Attorney-General Nicola Roxon both said they were quitting politics for personal reasons.
Local media described the resignations as a severe blow for the Labor Party, BBC reported.
Gillard said she would swear in a new cabinet on Monday before parliament sits for the first time this year.
She praised the contributions of Evans and Ms Roxon and revealed she had known for a year that neither wanted to remain in politics.
“I’ve always had it in my mind that this was the time to announce new arrangements,” she told a joint news conference with the departing ministers in the capital, Canberra.
“We will be able to present the Australian people with a rejuvenated team as we move into the parliamentary year of 2013.”
Evans said he planned to retire from the Senate once a replacement for his seat had been approved by his party, while Ms Roxon will sit on the backbenches of the House of Representatives until the general election.
Both praised Gillard’s leadership and predicted Labor would win a third term in government. However, an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said the surprise departure of such senior ministers was “a very bad look”.

Taliban Kill 35 in Retaliation for US Attack

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“Pakistan has been co-operating with the US in its drone strikes that killed our two senior commanders, Faisal Khan and Toofani, and the attack on military camp was the revenge of their killing,” the Taliban spokesman said.
He said four suicide bombers attacked the camp and blew themselves up. He said more than a dozen soldiers were killed.
The raid followed a suicide bombing at a Shiite Muslim mosque elsewhere in the northwest on Friday that killed 24 people, police said. The blast was the latest in a rising number of sectarian attacks in the country.
The Taliban and allied militant groups have stepped up the pace of attacks in Pakistan in recent months, an indication of their strength despite numerous army operations against their strongholds in the northwest.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said the attack was retaliation for the recent deaths of two Taliban commanders in US drone strikes. He accused the Pakistani army of helping with the attacks. Pakistani officials often criticize drone operations as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, but are known to have assisted some US strikes in the past.
The attack on the mosque Friday took place in Hangu town, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The town has experienced previous clashes between the Sunni and Shiite communities that live there.
Shiites in Pakistan have increasingly been targeted by radical Sunnis who consider them heretics, and 2012 was the bloodiest year for the minority sect in the country’s history. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 400 Shiites were killed in targeted attacks in Pakistan in 2012.
The Taliban are battling the Pakistani government because of its alliance with the United States. Pakistani’s military has launched operations against the Taliban in many of their sanctuaries in the semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border.
But one major area remains: North Waziristan, the main stronghold for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the country. The army has resisted launching an operation there, despite intense US pressure, for fear of a backlash from militants who so far have directed their attacks against US-led troops in Afghanistan rather than inside Pakistan.
It’s unclear whether the recent surge of attacks in Pakistan will alter the army’s calculation. There have also been calls from some political leaders to hold talks with the Taliban in an attempt to end the violence. But others believe the Taliban can’t be reasoned with or trusted, and battling them into submission is the only option.

Nine Arrested in Right-Wing Austria Ball Protest

Nine protesters have been arrested for civil disorder in demonstrations against a right-wing ball in Vienna’s imperial Hofburg Palace, Austrian police said on Saturday.
More than 2,500 joined protests against the Academics’ Ball on Friday night which was hosted by Austria’s far-right Freedom Party and has in the past attracted right-wing icons such as France’s Marine le Pen, Reuters reported.
Police had closed off a large area around the palace, which contains several museums and the office of the Austrian president, ahead of the protests by mainly green and left-wing student groups, after clashes at the event last year.
Two of the 780 ball-goers were slightly hurt, on Saturday.
Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Freedom Party, caused outrage last year when he said right-wing sympathizers who had been intimidated by protesters as they arrived at the ball could be considered the “new Jews”.
The ball, one of hundreds that take place in Vienna every January and February, has split Viennese society, with some arguing that anyone should be allowed to organize such an event, while others say it legitimizes extreme right-wing views.
Austria, which was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, has laws that ban Nazi symbolism and prevent the establishment of neo-Nazi parties.
Strache recently announced that he would not attend this year’s Academics’ Ball, saying he planned to be on holiday.

Clinton Out, Kerry in as Secretary of State

Hillary Rodham Clinton formally resigned on Friday as America’s secretary of state, capping a four-year tenure that saw her shatter records for the number of countries visited. John Kerry was sworn in to replace her.
In a letter sent to President Barack Obama shortly before she left the State Department for the last time in her official capacity, Clinton thanked her former opponent for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination for the opportunity to serve in his administration. Clinton said it had been an honor to be part of his Cabinet, AP reported.
Her resignation became effective at 4 p.m. EST, when Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan swore in John Kerry as the top US diplomat.
The former Massachusetts senator and 2004 presidential candidate is the 68th secretary of state.
“I’m just very, very honored to be sworn in and I’m very anxious to get to work,” Kerry told reporters after the private ceremony at the Capitol.
“I’ll be reporting Monday morning at 9 o’clock to do my part,” he said, but he refused to say what global hotspot he would visit first.
In the State Department’s main lobby, Clinton pushed through a throng of American foreign service workers who clamored for handshakes and smartphone photos with her and gave an emotional goodbye speech.
Clinton, however, also left office with a slap at critics of the Obama administration’s handling of the September attack on a US diplomatic mission in Libya.
She told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that critics of the administration’s handling of the attack don’t live in an “evidence-based world,” and their refusal to “accept the facts” is unfortunate and regrettable for the political system.
Clinton said the attack in Benghazi was the low point of her time as America’s top diplomat. But she suggested that the furor over the assault would not affect whether she runs for president in 2016.
Although she insisted that she has not decided what her future holds, she said she “absolutely” still plans to make a difference on issues she cares about in speeches and in a sequel to her 2003 memoir, “Living History,” that will focus largely on her years as secretary of state.

Hollande Visits Mali

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Soldiers with bomb-sniffing dogs and at least nine armored personnel carriers patrolled the sand-enveloped courtyard outside the library of ancient manuscripts, a section of which was set on fire by the extremists when they fled the city ahead of the advancing French troops last week.
Around 800 French forces took part in the effort to free Timbuktu, including hundreds of paratroopers who parachuted onto nearby dunes.

Torture Claims
Three suspected jihadists arrested in the days since the liberation of Timbuktu said on Friday that Malian soldiers were torturing them with a method similar to waterboarding.
The three are being held in an earthen cell in what remains of the military camp in the town, which was freed this week by French and Malian soldiers after nearly 10 months.
The three suspects, who were tied together with a turban and one handcuff, all acknowledged to The Associated Press having been members of the A-Qaeda-linked group known as Ansar Dine, or Defenders of the Faith.

Warns of Retaliation

North Korea is threatening to retaliate for what it calls US double standards over recent rocket launches by Pyongyang and US ally Seoul.