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Israel has carried out dozens of strikes in Syria: Netanyahu

JERUSALEM: Israel has launched dozens of strikes in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, acknowledging for the first time such attacks against suspected arms transfers to Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas.

Though formally neutral on Syria’s civil war, Israel has frequently pledged to prevent shipments of advanced weaponry to the Iranian-backed group, while stopping short of confirming reports of specific air operations.

Visiting Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights near the frontier with Syria, Netanyahu said: “We act when we need to act, including here across the border, with dozens of strikes meant to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining game-changing weaponry.”

Netanyahu did not specify what kind of strikes Israel had conducted in Syria. He also gave no timeframe or other details regarding the strikes.

Israel welcomed the cessation of hostilities in Syria in February but has indicated it could still launch attacks there if it sees a threat from Hezbollah, which holds sway over southern Lebanon and whose fighters have been allied with President Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli leaders have sought assurances from Russia, which sent forces to Syria last year to help Assad, that it would not allow Iran and Hezbollah to be bolstered by the partial military withdrawal that Moscow announced last month.

Israel and Russia have maintained a hotline to prevent any accidental clash between their aircraft over Syrian territory.

Hezbollah and Israel last fought a war in 2006 that included rocket strikes inside Israel and an Israeli air and ground offensive in Lebanon.

Israeli leaders have said that since that conflict, Hezbollah has built up and improved the range of a rocket arsenal that can now strike deep inside Israel.

Hit by Panama row, Cameron announces new tax evasion law

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron will try to repair trust in his leadership on Monday by speeding legislation to make companies criminally liable for employees who aid tax evasion.

After a week of questions over his personal wealth and his late father´s connection to an offshore fund, Cameron has moved to defuse criticism over his handing of the fallout from the Panama Papers by publishing his own tax records. 

Seeking to boost his anti-corruption credentials, he will tell parliament on Monday that he will introduce legislation this year making it a criminal offence for companies if they fail to stop employees from instructing clients on ways of evading tax.

But with opposition lawmakers saying Cameron had not done enough to silence concerns about his wealth and members of his Conservative Party critical over his role in leading the campaign to stay in the European Union at a June referendum, the move is unlikely to calm the storm over the Panama Papers.

"This government has done more than any other to take action against corruption in all its forms, but we will go further," Cameron will tell parliament, according to advance excerpts of his statement circulated by his Downing Street office.

"That is why we will legislate this year to hold companies who fail to stop their employees facilitating tax evasion criminally liable."

The plan was announced by finance minister George Osborne in March 2015, but previously the commitment was to introduce the legislation by 2020, Downing Street said.

Accountants said the move could force companies to be punished for "rogue employees" and may increase the risk burden on firms doing business in Britain, which has already seen lower levels of investment because of uncertainty over whether the country will stay in the European Union at the June 23 vote.

"First let´s not have knee jerk reactions to Panama Leaks and the UK PM´s personal issues," said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, a global accounting body based in London.

"We need to be proportionate and realistic in any new legislation being introduced," he told Reuters.

TRANSPARENCY

Cameron is hoping to regain the upper hand after facing accusations of hypocrisy for going after tax evaders when his father had set up an offshore fund.

On Thursday, he bowed to pressure and said he had profited from selling his shares in the fund in 2010 and on Sunday he published a summary of his tax records for the past six years.

But any hope he might draw a line under the row was short-lived, as local media zeroed in on a gift of 200,000 pounds ($282,500) Cameron received from his mother in 2011.

Some reports suggested it may have been a way of avoiding inheritance tax, though the Financial Times quoted tax experts as saying that was not the case.

With the Panama Papers leak having given fresh impetus to criticism that the government favours Britain´s elite over ordinary voters, the wealth of other leading Conservative politicians has also come under scrutiny.

A source close to finance minister George Osborne, an ally of Cameron, said he was "always happy to consider ways to offer even more transparency", but "had never had any offshore shareholdings or other interests".

Cameron´s spokeswoman said Cameron believed it was right that future British leaders and finance ministers should publish information on their tax returns.

The leader of the main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called for all lawmakers to publish their tax records.

EURO IMBROGLIO

The questions come at a difficult time for Cameron´s cabinet of senior ministers, who are split over whether Britain should stay in the European Union and have been criticised for failing to bail out the steel industry.

Cameron has cast himself as championing a crackdown on tax evasion and will host an international summit next month to tackle corruption.

The government says that it has brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) from offshore tax evaders since 2010 and has established a registry of company beneficial ownership information due to become public in June this year.

But for Labour, one lawmaker said it was time to press further for tax reform.

"It´s time for Labour ... to restore some basic fairness to our system of taxation," Wes Streeting wrote.

Kerry says Hiroshima ‘gut-wrenching’ reminder world should abandon nuclear weapons

HIROSHIMA: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday called his visit to a memorial to victims of the 1945 US nuclear attack on Hiroshima “gut-wrenching” and said it was a reminder of the need to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons.

The first US secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, Kerry said President Barack Obama also wanted to travel to the city in southern Japan but he did not know whether the leader’s complex schedule would allow him to do so when he visits the country for a Group of Seven (G7) summit in May.

Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, whose haunting displays include photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.

“It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” he said. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation everyone of us in public life carries...to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons,” he told a news conference.

After the tour by Kerry and his fellow G7 foreign ministers, the group issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to building a world without nuclear arms but said the push had been made more complex by North Korea’s repeated “provocations” and by worsening security in Syria and Ukraine.

The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States laid white wreaths at a cenotaph to the victims of the August 6, 1945, bombing, which reduced the city to ashes and killed some 140,000 people by the end of that year.

While he is not the highest-ranking US official to have toured the museum and memorial park, a distinction that belongs to then-US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in 2008, Kerry is the most senior executive branch official to visit.

“Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial. It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself,” the chief US diplomat wrote in a guest book.

Asked later if this meant Obama should come, Kerry said: “Everyone means everyone. So I hope one day the president of the United States will be among the everyone who is able to come here. Whether or not he can come as president, I don’t know.”

‘First step’

At Kerry’s suggestion, the ministers also made an impromptu visit to the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal remains of the only structure left standing near the hypocentre of the bomb explosion and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Three days after a US warplane dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, on August 9, 1945. Japan surrendered six days later.

A visit by Obama could be controversial in America if it were viewed as an apology.

A majority of Americans view the bombings as justified to end the war and save US lives, while the vast majority of Japanese believe it was not justified.

Hopes for Obama’s visit to Hiroshima were raised after an April 2009 speech in Prague when he called for a world without nuclear weapons.

He later said that he would be honoured to visit the two nuclear-attacked cities.

The G7 foreign ministers’ trip to the museum and memorial is part of Japan’s effort to send a strong nuclear disarmament message from Hiroshima, the world’s first city to suffer atomic bombing.

“I think this first-ever visit by G7 foreign ministers to the peace memorial park is a historic first step towards reviving momentum toward a world without nuclear weapons,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement.

He later told a news conference that it was “inconceivable” that Japan would ever decide to have nuclear weapons.

Last month, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Japan and South Korea should build such weapons to deter enemies.

In a separate, detailed statement, the G7 ministers singled out North Korea for sharp criticism, condemning its recent nuclear test and launches using ballistic missile technology.

And in a statement on maritime security, they voiced their strong opposition to provocative attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas, an apparent reference to China, which is locked in territorial disputes with other nations including the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.

Bus bombings kill at least 14 in Afghanistan: officials

JALALABAD: A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 12 army recruits on a bus in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, officials said, hours after a similar attack killed two people in the capital Kabul.

The latest blast hit a bus in the Sorkh Rud district of Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan.

Twelve bodies and at least 38 wounded had been taken to the main hospital in Jalalabad, the principal city in eastern Afghanistan, hospital chief Ihsanullah Shinwari said.

The number of casualties was expected to rise, several officials said.

“The suicide bomber was on a three-wheel motorcycle and targeted new army recruits who were heading to Kabul for training,” said a police official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to discuss matters concerning the Afghan army.

Defence Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri confirmed one of the ministry’s buses carrying army recruits had been attacked but put the number of wounded at 26."It was a crowded area and it is hard to say now how many of them were from the defence ministry,” Waziri said.

Hours earlier, a bomb hit a mini-bus carrying Education Ministry workers in eastern Kabul, killing two people and wounding seven, the ministry said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack.

Government workers and members of the security forces are often targeted by insurgent groups, including the Taliban, who are seeking to topple the US-backed government in Kabul.

A spokesman for the Taliban said the group was not aware of either of the attacks.

The Taliban have stepped up their insurgency since most foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, although Kabul had enjoyed a period of relative calm during the harsh winter months.

That lull was expected to end soon with the Taliban poised to launch their annual spring offensive.

In Kabul, bus conductor Rahim Gul said the force of the blast threw him out of the vehicle.

“We picked up the Education Ministry staff and we were driving on the road when there was an explosion,” Gul told Reuters Television.

“It was very powerful and threw me out of the car window. A few minutes later I found myself in a wheat field and then I rushed to the site of the attack and helped some injured people and they were taken to hospital.”

Three suicide bombers blow themselves up in Russia

Three suicide bombers blow themselves up in RussiaThree suicide bombers carry out explosions in Russia's Stavropol region, according to a report from Russain news agency Interfax.

The suicide bombers were killed by the blast and no one else was hurt, according to RIA news agency.

Parents of Nigeria's missing Chibok girls cling to hope of finding daughters

Parents of Nigeria's missing Chibok girls cling to hope of finding daughtersLAGOS: When Dauda Yama retrieved his mobile phone from a neighbour´s house in January this year, he noticed a missed call from his daughter Saratu who had been missing for almost two years.

The last time he spoke with Saratu was on April 14, 2014, when she rang to say men from the extremist group Boko Haram had loaded her and her classmates from the Government Girls´ Secondary School in Chibok in northeast Nigeria onto trucks.

Attempts to reach her again failed and two years on, 219 girls abducted that night remain missing, despite a global campaign #bringbackourgirls involving celebrities and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama calling for them to be found.

The students are among an estimated 2,000 girls and boys abducted by the Boko Haram since the start of 2014, with many of those abducted used as sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers, according to an Amnesty International report.

But when Yama returned the missed call that evening, a man answered.

Yama hung up and rushed to the home of Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Association of Parents of the Abducted Girls from Chibok.

"He asked me what he should do," Nkeki, 58, a schoolteacher, whose 17-year-old adopted daughter Maimuna Yakubu Usman is among those missing, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Nkeki took the phone and redialled the number that was again answered by a man who said the phone belonged to his wife.

Reporting the matter to any of the armed personnel around Chibok was out of the question so instead they informed a campaigner with the Bring Back Our Girls group, which advocates the return of the missing girls "now and alive".

"We don´t know who to trust," said Nkeki who has received physical threats for his efforts to keep the abduction of the Chibok girls in the headlines and the government's sights with the abduction becoming a political issue for Nigerian leaders.

Took the lead

Providing counsel to parents of the missing Chibok girls is part of Nkeki´s role as chairman of the association.

He also checks up on the parents to see if they need help at all.

"I check if they have food items or if someone is seriously sick," he said.

"If there is any issue, I call the committee members.

"Some months ago, for example, the association received a donation of 128 bags of corn from a missionary group.

The association decided to give three bags to one parent to sell and raise money for medicine for his son who was bitten by a snake.

Nkeki said he had not intended to become a leader for the parents but was catapulted into the role when he tried to rally families into action after the abduction.

Under his lead, and frustrated by a lack of official action, the parents formed a team to search the Sambisa forest for missing girls the day after the abduction, finding scarves and other items along a trail until heavy rain forced them back.

Nkeki then organised a meeting of parents in his village of Mbalala, calling for a peaceful demonstration and seeking media coverage to get the word out, with his initiatives prompting the parents to appoint him as their leader.

It was Nkeki´s efforts that ascertained exactly how many girls were missing after the school said the Boko Haram had razed all records.

He cycled from village to village for two weeks with pen and paper to build a register.

"I got the names of the girls, their pictures. I asked for proof. They showed me their daughters´ books so that I could get the exact name the girl used in the secondary school," he said.

His census revealed the number of girls abducted was 276 but 57 were able to escape as the trucks took off and came home.

Not Welcome

But the attempts to rally parents were not always welcome. Nkeki said some parents refused to have anything to do with the parents association and he has been harassed and arrested by armed forces personnel, displeased with his media appearances and efforts to keep the missing Chibok girls in the news.

Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan was criticized for his slow reaction to the Chibok kidnappings, which was seen by some as indicative of his response to Boko Haram, which at its strongest held large swathes of northeastern Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who defeated Jonathan in an election last year, ordered a new investigation into the abductions in January.

"My family is afraid for me. Even my uncle´s wife whose daughter was abducted, the one I adopted, said to me that she does not want to lose her daughter and then also lose me," said Nkeki.

But despite Nkeki´s efforts, his daughter and the other girls are still missing, with the parents desperate for any leads that could help locate their daughters.

Hopes were raised earlier this month when a suspected female suicide bomber who claimed to be one of the missing Chibok girls was arrested in northern Cameroon.

But official investigations revealed the 12-year-old girl was not from Chibok but abducted from Bama in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram a year ago.

Nkeki and Yama dialled Saratu´s number a few more times after the initial success but the line repeatedly went dead.

However, Nkeki says it rang when Yama tried again in February. "The man warned him never to call his wife´s number again. He said if he is not careful, he will lose his life," he said.