Portuguese Protest Against Austerity Cuts

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Lisbon and other Portuguese cities Saturday to protest against the government’s austerity measures aimed at rescuing the debt-hit eurozone nation.
The rallies were organized by a non-political movement which claimed 500,000 marched in the country’s capital and another 400,000 in the main northern city of Porto. There have been no official estimates of the crowds.
But the mood of the crowd was clearly political, calling for new elections with banners declaring “Portugal to the polls!” and “If you fall asleep in a democracy, you wake up in a dictatorship”.
Another banner showed a picture of centre-right Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho with the caption: “Today I am in the street, tomorrow it will be you.”
portugal was granted a financial rescue package worth 78 billion euros ($103 billion) in May 2011, in exchange for a pledge to straighten out its finances via austerity measures and economic reforms.
Lisbon has to reduce its public deficit to 4.5 percent of GDP this year, but the government recently conceded it may be impossible for it to reach that target given the continued recession.
Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar has said the economy is expected to contract around two percent this year, double an earlier forecast.
The organizers of Saturday’s march are galvanized by their opposition to the so-called troika of public creditors--the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund--who bailed out Portugal.
“This demonstration is a clear sign that ‘the troika’ and the government are not wanted in this country,” said Joao Semedo, the leader of a far-left bloc.
The march included groups of teachers, healthcare workers and pensioners who have been especially hard hit by the budget cuts.
After cutting salaries and pension benefits in 2012, the government this year has declared a general tax increase and expects to impose further cuts of some four billion euros.

US Lawmakers Question Military Aid to Egypt

Concerned about Egypt’s political instability and the US budget crunch, a growing number of American lawmakers are challenging the wisdom of providing $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Cairo, arguing that the policy is overdue for a wholesale review.
Lawmakers say that Washington’s largess, which includes large fleets of M1A1 tanks and F-16 fighter jets, could backfire, given the unpredictability of Egypt’s government and its fraught relationship with Israel, The Washington Post reported.
Washington’s increasingly controversial aid package to Egypt, a titan in the Middle East, was on the agenda while Secretary of State John F. Kerry was to meet with Egyptian leaders in Cairo. Kerry has argued that disengaging from Egypt would be a mistake, but he will have to contend with louder calls for a review of a policy established decades ago, in a vastly different political context.
Critics of Egypt in the House and Senate have introduced bills this year seeking a temporary halt or outright end to shipments of military supplies to Egypt. While the bills have not drawn widespread support, the arguments that underpin them have gotten significant traction, members of Congress said in interviews.
“Why are we giving billions to Egypt, when in my mind it is not a friend of America?” said Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), who recently introduced a bill calling for a suspension of military and civilian assistance to Egypt. “We’re drowning in a sea of debt. Why are we spending so much money in a part of the world that doesn’t like us?”
In the Senate, James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the new ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, called on Jan. 31 for a temporary halt of military aid to Egypt, including a fleet of 20 F-16 planes being shipped this year. Inhofe said the suspension would send a strong message to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi has sought to curb the authority of the country’s vaunted military, a historically secular institution that has maintained a discreet working relationship with Israel.
Egypt and Israel have been the top recipients of US foreign aid since 1979, when Washington brokered a landmark peace deal between the dueling nations. The Camp David Accords remain the main pillar of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Bangladesh Still Tense After Deadly Clashes

Bangladesh deployed troops in the north of the country on Sunday after 16 more people were killed in a fresh wave of violence over the conviction of Islamist leaders for war crimes in the Muslim-majority nation.
Thirteen were shot dead in the north and northeast and one policeman was killed in clashes with protesters in the western district of Jhenidah, police officials said, adding two people were killed late Saturday, AFP reported.
In the northern district of Bogra at least 10,000 protesters armed with sticks, home-made bombs and other weapons attacked five police stations, forcing police to open fire on them, police Inspector Shamsul Haq said.
“They came from the villages in several groups and attacked our stations in the dawn. Seven people were killed in Bogra district including three who were killed in the worst-affected Shahjahanpur (town),” he said. Troops have been deployed in Shahjahanpur to strengthen security, he said.
Four people were shot dead in the northwestern town of Godagari after police and border guards opened fire on thousands of protesters from the Jamaat-e-Islami party after they attacked police with sticks and stones, the area police chief said. The death toll in the clashes over the war crimes verdicts has risen to 72 since the first was announced on January 21, police said, including 56 killed in the four days since Jamaat’s vice president was sentenced to death.
Delwar Hossain Sayedee was Thursday found guilty of murder, religious persecution and rape during the 1971 independence war against Pakistan. The sentence triggered violent clashes across the country between rampaging Jamaat supporters and police. The 73-year-old firebrand preacher was the third person to be convicted by the war crimes tribunal. The verdicts have sparked outrage among Islamists.
Jamaat, the nation’s largest Islamic party, says the process is more about settling scores than delivering justice.
The party has called a nationwide strike for Sunday to protest at the verdicts and the killing of its activists by police.
Security was tight in the capital Dhaka with around 10,000 policemen on patrol and shops and schools were closed. Inter-city motorways and roads in the capital Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong were empty.
The United States and United Nations have appealed for calm while global rights group Human Rights Watch has asked the government and Jamaat to act urgently to stem further acts of violence.
On Saturday minority groups appealed to the government for increased security after a series of attacks on Hindu temples and houses by Jamaat supporters, in which one Hindu man was killed. Jamaat denied they were behind the attacks.
An inter-city train was torched, allegedly by protesters, late Saturday.
The war crimes trials of a dozen leaders from Jamaat and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party have opened old wounds and divided the nation, with the opposition accusing the government of staging a witch-hunt.
The government, which says the war claimed three million lives, rejects the claims and accuses Jamaat leaders of being part of pro-Pakistani militias blamed for much of the carnage during the war.
Independent estimates put the death toll from the war in which Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan at 300,000-500,000.

Greeks Rally Against Education Reforms, Austerity Cuts

Demonstrators, mainly teachers and students, marched through the Greek capital, Athens, on Saturday to protest against government mandated educational reform and austerity measures imposed by international creditors.
The march followed the accidental deaths of two students from carbon monoxide poisoning this week in the central city of Larissa, AP reported.
Many protesters blamed the fatalities on the austerity measures. According to police information, the youths had used a makeshift heating stove to warm up their home in the city centre on Thursday. With all the windows closed, they gradually fell unconscious within hours in the enclosed space.
Critics say the skyrocketing price of heating has pushed the population to use unsafe alternative methods.
Protesters said educational reform was viewed as the first step to the abolition of free education for all.
“We are here today for one more time, to march and demonstrate and state our disagreement with the politics of reform that are imposed by the government, the European Union and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) against the people of our country,” said Themis Kotsifakis, general secretary of the teachers’ union OLME.
“The new measures are constantly downgrading our lives. They are destroying free education and the free health system, and of course the rest of the social services. Educational staff have been reduced to misery, and children’s education is constantly being devalued,” he added.
Basilopoulous Stayroula, student in the English department of Athens University, said the memorandums of the imposed austerity measure are destroying the people.
“We as people, as students, as workers, as citizens, have to do something about that. Because we love our life, we love our culture, we love our country, and we have to fight first of all for ourselves,” she said.

French Soldier, Al-Qaeda Leader Killed in Mali

From Page 1
A legionnaire with the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment was killed amid heavy clashes on February 19 and a helicopter pilot died at the very start of the operation.
The intervention quickly ousted the rebels from the north’s main cities and operations are now focused on hunting them down in mountainous areas.
The Chadian army, whose troops have been at the forefront of the hunt for Al-Qaeda-linked fighters hiding in northern Mali, said Mokhtar Belmokhtar was killed during an operation in the Ifogha mountains on Saturday.
The Algerian national, a ruthless Afghanistan veteran, had broken away from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) weeks ago to form a group called Signatories in Blood.
The report of the death of the man branded “The Uncatchable” came after Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno announced on Friday that his forces had killed Abou Zeid, the top AQIM commander in Mali, a few days earlier. A Mauritanian news agency said he was killed by a French air strike.
If the deaths are confirmed, the French-led military coalition fighting in northern Mali will have eliminated the Sahel region’s two historical Al-Qaeda leaders and decapitated the jihadist insurgency in Mali.
“The Chadian forces in Mali completely destroyed the main jihadist base in Adrar of the Ifoghas mountains” at 1200 GMT, an army statement said, adding that several militants were killed “including leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar”.
Belmokhtar, 40, was seen several times in the main northern Malian cities of Timbuktu and Gao after AQIM and its allies took over northern Mali in April 2012.
He quit AQIM last year and in December the creation of his new group was announced.
In January, days after France’s surprise decision to send in fighter jets and troops to help the Malian government reconquer the north, Belmokhtar claimed the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in southern Algeria.

Seven More Dead In Malaysia Shootout

From Page 1
Police dropped leaflets by helicopter over the occupied village Saturday telling the Filipinos to give up, while the navy bolstered patrols in waters between Malaysia and the Philippines.
The Filipino group is led by a brother of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III of the southern Philippine province of Sulu.
The standoff elevated the Sabah territorial issue, a thorn in Philippine-Malaysian relations for decades, to a national security concern for both countries.
In Manila, Jamalul Kiram III told reporters that he was worried the violence in Sabah might spread because many Filipinos, especially followers of his sultanate in the southern Philippine, are upset by the killing of their compatriots in Lahad Datu.
The crisis erupted during peace negotiations brokered by Malaysia between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines.
Some Malaysians have voiced worries about whether tens of thousands of Philippine migrants living in Sabah, many undocumented workers, might sympathize with the Filipino group and cause unrest if they’re upset with the government’s reaction to the crisis.

Macedonia Riots

Violent ethnic riots rattled Macedonia’s capital, culminating on Saturday with hundreds raging through the city center, clashing with police, overturning cars and attacking a bus station.