President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court

President Obama on Wednesday nominated Merrick Garland to serve on the Supreme Court, setting up a protracted political fight with Republicans who have vowed to block any candidate picked by Obama in his final year in office.

Garland, 63, is a longtime Washington lawyer and jurist who is chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Considered a moderate, Garland is widely respected in the D.C. legal community and was also a finalist for the first two Supreme Court vacancies Obama filled.

[LIVE updates on Obama’s pick: Reactions from the GOP and more]

In announcing his choice in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said he followed “a rigorous and comprehensive process” and that he reached out to members of both parties, legal associations and advocacy groups to gauge opinions from “across the spectrum.”

He said Garland “is widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence.”

With Garland standing by his side, Obama said choosing a replacement for the late justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly last month, is “not a responsibility that I take lightly.”

“I said I would take this process seriously, and I did,” the president said. “I chose a serious man and an exemplary judge.”

“To find someone with such a long career in public service, marked by complex and sensitive issues, to find someone who just about everyone not only respects but genuinely likes, that is rare,” Obama said. “And it speaks to who Merrick Garland is, not just as lawyer but as a man.”

Despite “a political season that is even noisier and more volatile than usual,” Obama urged the Senate to take up the nomination, saying that lawmakers should treat the process “with the seriousness and care it deserves.”

After Obama introduced him, Garland promptly became emotional as he thanked the president. “This is the greatest honor of my life,” Garland said, “other than Lynn agreeing to marry me 28 years ago.”

He added that “a life of public service is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he is serving. And for me, there can be no higher public service than serving as a member of the United States Supreme Court.”

Seven sitting Republican senators voted to confirm Garland in 1997: Dan Coats (Ind.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Susan Collins (Maine), Orrin Hatch (Utah), James M. Inhofe (Okla.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Pat Roberts (Kan.).

GOP lawmakers, though, have said since Scalia’s death that Obama should leave the choice of a new justice to his successor and that they have no intention of holding a hearing or a vote on the president’s pick.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said “the next Supreme Court justice could dramatically change the direction of the court” and Americans deserved to “weigh in” before that happens.

Garland is a Chicago native who graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After becoming a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter, he joined the Justice Department, where he handled the drug investigation of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District.

Ascending the ranks, Garland became principal associate deputy attorney general, where he supervised the massive investigations that led to the prosecutions of the Unabomber and the bombers of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Garland was appointed to the D.C. federal appeals court by President Bill Clinton in April 1997 and confirmed on a 76-to-23 vote. In February 2013, Garland became chief judge of the D.C. federal appeals court.

[Meet Merrick Garland: Here’s his story]

Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general who worked with Garland at the Justice Department in the Clinton administration, considers her former colleague “supremely qualified” for the high court.

Gorelick praised Garland’s role at the Justice Department in supervising the Unabomber and Oklahoma City investigations.

“We had a lot of very seasoned prosecutors, but when you have a matter that is both substantively difficult and cuts across the department, a really talented person such as Merrick will lead those,” said Gorelick. She added that Garland is a “brilliant lawyer and judge” who is known to be highly collegial even with colleagues across the ideological spectrum.

Initial reaction from interest groups supportive of the president was mixed. National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill praised Garland for “ a rigorous intellect, impeccable credentials, and a record of excellence.”

But she also said his record on women’s rights was “more or less a blank slate. Equally unfortunate is that we have to continue to wait for the first African American woman to be named. For this nomination, the so-called political experts ruled that the best choice for the highest court in the nation was a cipher — a real nowhere man.”

[The Fix: Republicans won’t confirm Garland]

A four-page document circulated Tuesday afternoon among a small group of the administration’s allies, with the heading, “Read What Republicans Had to Say About President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Merrick Garland, Before He Was President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee,” highlighted the support he has enjoyed from lawmakers in the past.

“Garland has had a distinguished legal career, and prior to the GOP’s historically unprecedented obstruction, was a favorite of Senate Republicans alongside progressives,” the briefing material says. “When earlier Supreme Court vacancies occurred in the seats now filled by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said he would be ‘very well supported by all sides’ as a SCOTUS nominee.”

The document notes that when Obama was filling the first Supreme Court vacancy of his tenure, Hatch was quoted at the time as saying that Garland would be a “consensus nominee” who “would be very well supported by all sides.” The briefing material includes previous descriptions of Garland by leading news organizations as a potential nominee who would attract support of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Garland’s colleague on the D.C. Circuit, once said that “anytime Judge Garland disagrees, you know you’re in a difficult area.”

Democrats are also preparing to make the Republicans’ opposition to filling the vacancy an issue in the fall election. Speaking in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said in her victory speech that one of the reasons the presidential race matters so much is because the Supreme Court appointment has such enormous policy implications.

“Together, we have to defend all of our rights — civil rights and voting rights, worker’s rights and women’s rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities — and that starts by standing with President Obama when he nominates a justice to the Supreme Court,” she said, prompting large cheers from the crowd.

[Brace yourself for a long battle about the future of the court]

While the question of who sits on the nation’s highest court is not traditionally a top-tier election issue, Democrats are hoping to use it as part of a broader narrative about Republican resistance to the president’s policies.

David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, noted that Richard Nixon first elevated the Supreme Court as an electoral issue in 1968, when he attacked then-Chief Justice Earl Warren and his fellow justices.

“It was putting a liberal-dominated court at the center of the liberal establishment he was attacking,” Greenberg said, for “bringing about all these cultural changes” in the country.

At the moment, more Americans appear to be sympathetic to the White House’s argument. Sixty-three percent of Americans said the Senate should hold hearings on Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, while 32 percent said it should not hold hearings and leave it to the next president, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week. Majorities of Democrats and independents supported holding hearings, while Republicans were more evenly split (46-49) and over half of conservative Republicans said hearings should not be held (54 percent).

Administration officials are hopeful that the GOP senators who are most vulnerable this November — Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Pat Toomey (Penn.) — may lobby their leaders for a vote if they come under fire back home for blocking the nominee.

“The success or failure of this will depend on the pressure that can be brought to bear on those senators who Mitch McConnell marched out to the firing line,” said one former senior administration official, who asked for anonymity in order to discuss internal White House deliberations.


President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court

http://isthattrue.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1248329_1280x720.jpg

President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court

President Obama on Wednesday nominated Merrick Garland to serve on the Supreme Court, setting up a protracted political fight with Republicans who have vowed to block any candidate picked by Obama in his final year in office.

Garland, 63, is a longtime Washington lawyer and jurist who is chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Considered a moderate, Garland is widely respected in the D.C. legal community and was also a finalist for the first two Supreme Court vacancies Obama filled.

[LIVE updates on Obama’s pick: Reactions from the GOP and more]

In announcing his choice in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said he followed “a rigorous and comprehensive process” and that he reached out to members of both parties, legal associations and advocacy groups to gauge opinions from “across the spectrum.”

He said Garland “is widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence.”

With Garland standing by his side, Obama said choosing a replacement for the late justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly last month, is “not a responsibility that I take lightly.”

“I said I would take this process seriously, and I did,” the president said. “I chose a serious man and an exemplary judge.”

“To find someone with such a long career in public service, marked by complex and sensitive issues, to find someone who just about everyone not only respects but genuinely likes, that is rare,” Obama said. “And it speaks to who Merrick Garland is, not just as lawyer but as a man.”

Despite “a political season that is even noisier and more volatile than usual,” Obama urged the Senate to take up the nomination, saying that lawmakers should treat the process “with the seriousness and care it deserves.”

After Obama introduced him, Garland promptly became emotional as he thanked the president. “This is the greatest honor of my life,” Garland said, “other than Lynn agreeing to marry me 28 years ago.”

He added that “a life of public service is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he is serving. And for me, there can be no higher public service than serving as a member of the United States Supreme Court.”

Seven sitting Republican senators voted to confirm Garland in 1997: Dan Coats (Ind.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Susan Collins (Maine), Orrin Hatch (Utah), James M. Inhofe (Okla.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Pat Roberts (Kan.).

GOP lawmakers, though, have said since Scalia’s death that Obama should leave the choice of a new justice to his successor and that they have no intention of holding a hearing or a vote on the president’s pick.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said “the next Supreme Court justice could dramatically change the direction of the court” and Americans deserved to “weigh in” before that happens.

Garland is a Chicago native who graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After becoming a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter, he joined the Justice Department, where he handled the drug investigation of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District.

Ascending the ranks, Garland became principal associate deputy attorney general, where he supervised the massive investigations that led to the prosecutions of the Unabomber and the bombers of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Garland was appointed to the D.C. federal appeals court by President Bill Clinton in April 1997 and confirmed on a 76-to-23 vote. In February 2013, Garland became chief judge of the D.C. federal appeals court.

[Meet Merrick Garland: Here’s his story]

Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general who worked with Garland at the Justice Department in the Clinton administration, considers her former colleague “supremely qualified” for the high court.

Gorelick praised Garland’s role at the Justice Department in supervising the Unabomber and Oklahoma City investigations.

“We had a lot of very seasoned prosecutors, but when you have a matter that is both substantively difficult and cuts across the department, a really talented person such as Merrick will lead those,” said Gorelick. She added that Garland is a “brilliant lawyer and judge” who is known to be highly collegial even with colleagues across the ideological spectrum.

Initial reaction from interest groups supportive of the president was mixed. National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill praised Garland for “ a rigorous intellect, impeccable credentials, and a record of excellence.”

But she also said his record on women’s rights was “more or less a blank slate. Equally unfortunate is that we have to continue to wait for the first African American woman to be named. For this nomination, the so-called political experts ruled that the best choice for the highest court in the nation was a cipher — a real nowhere man.”

[The Fix: Republicans won’t confirm Garland]

A four-page document circulated Tuesday afternoon among a small group of the administration’s allies, with the heading, “Read What Republicans Had to Say About President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Merrick Garland, Before He Was President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee,” highlighted the support he has enjoyed from lawmakers in the past.

“Garland has had a distinguished legal career, and prior to the GOP’s historically unprecedented obstruction, was a favorite of Senate Republicans alongside progressives,” the briefing material says. “When earlier Supreme Court vacancies occurred in the seats now filled by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said he would be ‘very well supported by all sides’ as a SCOTUS nominee.”

The document notes that when Obama was filling the first Supreme Court vacancy of his tenure, Hatch was quoted at the time as saying that Garland would be a “consensus nominee” who “would be very well supported by all sides.” The briefing material includes previous descriptions of Garland by leading news organizations as a potential nominee who would attract support of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Garland’s colleague on the D.C. Circuit, once said that “anytime Judge Garland disagrees, you know you’re in a difficult area.”

Democrats are also preparing to make the Republicans’ opposition to filling the vacancy an issue in the fall election. Speaking in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said in her victory speech that one of the reasons the presidential race matters so much is because the Supreme Court appointment has such enormous policy implications.

“Together, we have to defend all of our rights — civil rights and voting rights, worker’s rights and women’s rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities — and that starts by standing with President Obama when he nominates a justice to the Supreme Court,” she said, prompting large cheers from the crowd.

[Brace yourself for a long battle about the future of the court]

While the question of who sits on the nation’s highest court is not traditionally a top-tier election issue, Democrats are hoping to use it as part of a broader narrative about Republican resistance to the president’s policies.

David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, noted that Richard Nixon first elevated the Supreme Court as an electoral issue in 1968, when he attacked then-Chief Justice Earl Warren and his fellow justices.

“It was putting a liberal-dominated court at the center of the liberal establishment he was attacking,” Greenberg said, for “bringing about all these cultural changes” in the country.

At the moment, more Americans appear to be sympathetic to the White House’s argument. Sixty-three percent of Americans said the Senate should hold hearings on Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, while 32 percent said it should not hold hearings and leave it to the next president, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week. Majorities of Democrats and independents supported holding hearings, while Republicans were more evenly split (46-49) and over half of conservative Republicans said hearings should not be held (54 percent).

Administration officials are hopeful that the GOP senators who are most vulnerable this November — Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Pat Toomey (Penn.) — may lobby their leaders for a vote if they come under fire back home for blocking the nominee.

“The success or failure of this will depend on the pressure that can be brought to bear on those senators who Mitch McConnell marched out to the firing line,” said one former senior administration official, who asked for anonymity in order to discuss internal White House deliberations.




News, nominates Merrick Garland, President Obama, President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, to the Supreme Court, World, world news

US election 2016: Obama warns against campaign anger

US President Barack Obama has warned White House contenders to avoid raising tensions, a day after a rally by Donald Trump was called off amid clashes.

Mr Obama said candidates should not resort to “insults” and “certainly not violence against other Americans”.

Mr Trump, who leads the race for the Republican nomination, cancelled his Chicago rally after fighting broke out between his supporters and protesters.

His rivals and others have accused him of using inflammatory rhetoric.

What Trump says about protesters at his rallies

Why are Americans so angry?

How extreme is Donald Trump?

Could Trump’s vulgarity cost him the nomination?

Later on Saturday, Mr Trump suffered heavy defeats in Republican caucuses in Washington DC and Wyoming.

Mr Obama, who will be standing down next January following November’s presidential election, was speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Dallas on Saturday.

He said: “What the folks who are running for office should be focused on is how we can make it even better – not insults and schoolyard taunts and manufacturing facts, not divisiveness along the lines of race and faith.”

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Media captionDonald Trump was surrounded by security agents during an incident in Dayton, Ohio

The clashes at Mr Trump’s Chicago rally on Friday began more than an hour before the event was due to start, and continued after it was cancelled.

‘Tremendous anger’

On Saturday Mr Trump campaigned in Ohio, one of several key states – also including Florida and Ohio – holding primaries on Tuesday.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Media captionJedidiah Brown: “I was told to go back to Africa”

In Dayton, Ohio, he was briefly surrounded by Secret Service agents on stage after a man tried to breach the security cordon.

Mr Trump has taken a strong anti-immigrant stance, promising to build a “great wall” at the border with Mexico.

Commenting on relations between Muslims and America earlier this week, he said: “Islam hates us.”

Speaking to Fox News after Friday’s events in Chicago, Mr Trump denied fostering division.

“I represent a large group of people that have a lot of anger,” he said. “There is tremendous anger out there on both sides.”

Mr Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have both called the incident “sad”.

Texas Senator Cruz accused Mr Trump of creating “an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse”.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Media captionTrump supporter Ryan James Girdusky says he is sad to see what happened in Chicago

Mr Rubio and another Republican challenger, John Kasich, suggested they might not rally behind Mr Trump if he wins the nomination.

Mr Rubio said it was “getting harder every day” to keep his promise to unite behind the eventual Republican nominee.

Mr Kasich said Mr Trump’s rhetoric “makes it very difficult” to support him.

On Saturday, Mr Cruz won a convincing victory in the Wyoming caucus, while Mr Rubio narrowly defeated Mr Kasich in Washington DC. Mr Trump came a distant third in both contests.

Mr Cruz also won on the island territory of Guam.

In the Democratic race. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is continuing his challenge against frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Mrs Clinton won the first ever Democrats’ vote in the Northern Mariana Islands.


US election 2016: Obama warns against campaign anger

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US election 2016: Obama warns against campaign anger

US President Barack Obama has warned White House contenders to avoid raising tensions, a day after a rally by Donald Trump was called off amid clashes.

Mr Obama said candidates should not resort to “insults” and “certainly not violence against other Americans”.

Mr Trump, who leads the race for the Republican nomination, cancelled his Chicago rally after fighting broke out between his supporters and protesters.

His rivals and others have accused him of using inflammatory rhetoric.

What Trump says about protesters at his rallies

Why are Americans so angry?

How extreme is Donald Trump?

Could Trump’s vulgarity cost him the nomination?

Later on Saturday, Mr Trump suffered heavy defeats in Republican caucuses in Washington DC and Wyoming.

Mr Obama, who will be standing down next January following November’s presidential election, was speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Dallas on Saturday.

He said: “What the folks who are running for office should be focused on is how we can make it even better – not insults and schoolyard taunts and manufacturing facts, not divisiveness along the lines of race and faith.”

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Media captionDonald Trump was surrounded by security agents during an incident in Dayton, Ohio

The clashes at Mr Trump’s Chicago rally on Friday began more than an hour before the event was due to start, and continued after it was cancelled.

‘Tremendous anger’

On Saturday Mr Trump campaigned in Ohio, one of several key states – also including Florida and Ohio – holding primaries on Tuesday.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Media captionJedidiah Brown: “I was told to go back to Africa”

In Dayton, Ohio, he was briefly surrounded by Secret Service agents on stage after a man tried to breach the security cordon.

Mr Trump has taken a strong anti-immigrant stance, promising to build a “great wall” at the border with Mexico.

Commenting on relations between Muslims and America earlier this week, he said: “Islam hates us.”

Speaking to Fox News after Friday’s events in Chicago, Mr Trump denied fostering division.

“I represent a large group of people that have a lot of anger,” he said. “There is tremendous anger out there on both sides.”

Mr Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have both called the incident “sad”.

Texas Senator Cruz accused Mr Trump of creating “an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discourse”.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.

Media captionTrump supporter Ryan James Girdusky says he is sad to see what happened in Chicago

Mr Rubio and another Republican challenger, John Kasich, suggested they might not rally behind Mr Trump if he wins the nomination.

Mr Rubio said it was “getting harder every day” to keep his promise to unite behind the eventual Republican nominee.

Mr Kasich said Mr Trump’s rhetoric “makes it very difficult” to support him.

On Saturday, Mr Cruz won a convincing victory in the Wyoming caucus, while Mr Rubio narrowly defeated Mr Kasich in Washington DC. Mr Trump came a distant third in both contests.

Mr Cruz also won on the island territory of Guam.

In the Democratic race. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is continuing his challenge against frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Mrs Clinton won the first ever Democrats’ vote in the Northern Mariana Islands.




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Watch Xiaomi launch its new flagship phone live at Mobile World Congress

Buzzy Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi is making its first major appearance at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year. The company is set to unveil the Mi 5, its latest flagship smartphone, in what it calls a “Global Launch Event.” Could that naming, along with the event’s location, hint that Xiaomi might be looking to expand its borders further beyond Asia? It’d be a long shot, but you can tune into the live stream above to find out.

XIAOMI ANNOUNCES THE MI 5, ITS LATEST FLAGSHIP PHONE

Xiaomi rose to prominence a few years ago as one of the first companies to sell competent smartphones at extremely low prices, gathering a large user base with the intention of hooking people on a broader ecosystem. Hype around the company peaked in late 2014, when it was valued at a staggering $46 billion.

THE PRESSURE IS ON

Amid an overall slowdown in China, however, Xiaomi has recently missed sales targets in China and failed to prove the viability of its service-based business model, casting doubt over how much further the company can grow and how long its users will stick around. It faces significant logistical difficulties launching phones abroad, and telecoms giant Huawei in particular has proven a major threat at home, using scale to outmuscle Xiaomi at the high end and introducing its similarly nimble, inexpensive Honor brand at the low.

The pressure is on, then, for Xiaomi’s biggest event of 2016. The presentation itself begins at 3AM ET / 9AM CET, 55 minutes after the company starts broadcasting its live stream.


Watch Xiaomi launch its new flagship phone live at Mobile World Congress

http://isthattrue.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/xiaomi-mi-note-1847.0.0.jpg

Watch Xiaomi launch its new flagship phone live at Mobile World Congress

Buzzy Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi is making its first major appearance at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year. The company is set to unveil the Mi 5, its latest flagship smartphone, in what it calls a “Global Launch Event.” Could that naming, along with the event’s location, hint that Xiaomi might be looking to expand its borders further beyond Asia? It’d be a long shot, but you can tune into the live stream above to find out.

XIAOMI ANNOUNCES THE MI 5, ITS LATEST FLAGSHIP PHONE

Xiaomi rose to prominence a few years ago as one of the first companies to sell competent smartphones at extremely low prices, gathering a large user base with the intention of hooking people on a broader ecosystem. Hype around the company peaked in late 2014, when it was valued at a staggering $46 billion.

THE PRESSURE IS ON

Amid an overall slowdown in China, however, Xiaomi has recently missed sales targets in China and failed to prove the viability of its service-based business model, casting doubt over how much further the company can grow and how long its users will stick around. It faces significant logistical difficulties launching phones abroad, and telecoms giant Huawei in particular has proven a major threat at home, using scale to outmuscle Xiaomi at the high end and introducing its similarly nimble, inexpensive Honor brand at the low.

The pressure is on, then, for Xiaomi’s biggest event of 2016. The presentation itself begins at 3AM ET / 9AM CET, 55 minutes after the company starts broadcasting its live stream.

Airstrikes hit two Syrian hospitals, with Turkey condemning ‘obvious war crime’

The prospect of even a temporary truce in Syria seemed as distant as ever on Monday, as violence continued unabated across much of the country with hospitals in two towns apparently being bombed by forces supporting Bashar al-Assad, days after Russia denied it was targeting civilians in its aerial campaign.

The attacks highlighted the fragility of a deal agreed last week in Munich for a “cessation of hostilities” and the impact on civilians of an unforgiving air war led by the Kremlin that has helped consolidate Assad’s position and exacerbated the misery of the five-year conflict, driving tens of thousands out of their homes towards the Turkish border.

The bombardment of a hospital is a too-frequent ‘accident’. It’s also a war crime

Bernard Kouchner

Read more

Assad, the Syrian president, made a televised address on Monday saying that any ceasefire did not mean each side had to stop using weapons.

The purpose of any agreement was to stop “terrorists from strengthening their positions” by gaining ground, he claimed. “Regarding a ceasefire, a halt to operations, if it happened, it doesn’t mean that each party will stop using weapons,” Assad said in Damascus.

“A ceasefire means in the first place halting the terrorists from strengthening their positions. Movement of weapons, equipment or terrorists, or fortification of positions, will not be allowed,” he said.

Meanwhile Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, backed a call from Turkey for a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, saying it would alleviate the situation of displaced Syrians.

The hospital airstrikes came a day after Barack Obama urged Moscow to halt its bombing campaign, illustrating the lack of leverage western powers have over peace negotiations aimed at ending a war that has killed nearly a third of a million people.

The White House on Monday condemned the bombing “in the strongest possible terms”. US state department spokesman John Kirby said the continuation of the aerial campaign “flies in the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG (International Syria Support Group), including in Munich, to avoid attacks on civilians and casts doubt on Russia’s willingness and/or ability to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad regime against its own people”.

The violence risks drawing Turkey, a stalwart backer of the rebels, further into the conflict as it looks on with growing alarm at Kurdish expansion near its border, as Kurdish fighters take advantage of the rebels weakening and vacating territory under the Russian onslaught.

Turkey’s foreign ministry on Monday said the strikes amounted to Russia carrying out an “obvious war crime” and warned that bigger and more serious consequences would be inevitable if Russia did not immediately end such attacks.

The airstrikes on hospitals in two locations in northern Syria mark the latest in a series of attacks on medical facilities and workers, including 14 so far this year.

Médecins Sans Frontières said seven people were killed when a facility it supports in Maaret al-Numan, Idlib province, was hit four times in two separate raids. Mego Terzian, MSF’s France president, told Reuters he thought that either Russia or Syrian government forces were responsible. Both have been engaged in an unrelenting aerial bombardment in Idlib.

The hospital, which has 54 staff and 30 beds, is financed by the medical charity, which also supplies medicine and equipment.

“The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of about 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict,” said Massimiliano Rebaudengo, MSF’s head of mission in Syria.

People gather around the rubble of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders near Maaret al-Numan, in Syria’s northern province of Idlib after the building was hit by suspected Russian air strikes.

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People gather around the rubble of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders near Maaret al-Numan, in Syria’s northern province of Idlib after the building was hit by suspected Russian air strikes. Photograph: Ghaith Omran/AFP/Getty Images

In a separate incident, Syrian opposition activists said a missile struck a children’s hospital in the rebel-held town of Azaz, near the Turkish border, killing 10 people and wounding more than 30. The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, said a Russian ballistic missile had hit the town.

The UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, said four facilities were hit, two in Azaz and two in Idlib. “We at Unicef are appalled by reports of attacks against four medical facilities in Syria – two of which were supported by Unicef,” the organisation said in a statement. “One is a child and maternal hospital where children were reportedly killed and scores evacuated.”

Who backs whom in the Syrian conflict

Read more

“Apart from compelling considerations of diplomacy and obligations under international humanitarian law, let us remember that these victims are children,” the statement added.

The Syrian National Coalition’s representative to the EU, Mouaffaq Nyrabia, said the hospital attacks demonstrated “Russia’s lack of commitment to ending this conflict” and called on the UN to investigate, alongside other attacks on medical facilities in Syria.

Moscow’s intense airstrike campaign has in recent months helped Assad score his most significant advances since the beginning of the war.

The Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, issued a blanket denial over the weekend that his country was targeting civilians and civilian facilities in Syria, but several attacks on health centres have been documented since Russia’s intervention. In the first month of the campaign launched last October, NGO Physicians for Human Rights documented seven Russian attacks on medical facilities in Syria.

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“They are targeting hospitals specifically; this is systematic,” said Zaidoun al-Zoabi, the head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations, when asked about the Russian claim. “Who bombed the hospitals? For God’s sake, who bombed the hospitals today?”

Riad Hijab, the head of the opposition’s high negotiations committee and a former Syrian prime minister, on Sunday reiterated the opposition’s demand that airstrikes are halted and sieges around the country lifted, adding that Assad must leave for peace in Syria to take hold.

“Every day, hundreds of Syrians die from airstrikes and artillery bombardment, poison gas, cluster bombs, torture, starvation, cold and drowning,” said Hijab, speaking in Munich. “The Syrian people continue to live in terror and in utter despair after the international community failed to prevent even the gravest violations committed against them.

“The best approach to put an end to Daesh [Isis] and other extremist groups must start with the removal of the Assad regime.”

Russia resumed airstrikes on Monday in northern Latakia province near the Turkish border as well as Aleppo, bombing rebel positions to pave the way for a regime advance. Obama urged Russia on Sunday to halt airstrikes against mainstream rebels.

Meanwhile, Turkey shelled positions controlled by the YPG, a Syrian-Kurdish paramilitary force, for the third consecutive day on Monday near the rebel-held border town of Azaz. Davutoğlu said Ankara would not allow Azaz to fall to the Kurds and accused them of acting as a proxy for Assad and Moscow.

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Turkey, which strongly backs anti-Assad rebels, is fighting an insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) on its own territory and has viewed with growing alarm what it sees as Kurdish expansionism in Syria. Ankara says the YPG is simply the Syrian affiliate of the PKK.

Turkey’s defence minister denied, however, that Turkey had sent troops into northern Syria and said it had no intention of doing so, as speculation grows of a possible ground intervention by opponents of the Assad regime.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain said last week that they were ready to send small numbers of ground forces into the embattled country as part of the US-led coalition against Isis.

Merkel, the German chancellor, joined the calls from Turkey for a no-fly zone. “In the current situation it would be helpful, if there could be such an area, where none of the parties are allowed to launch aerial attacks,” she told the daily Stuttgarter Zeitung.

Merkel acknowledged it was impossible to negotiate with “terrorists from the Islamic State … but if it’s possible for the anti-Assad coalition and the Assad-supporters to come to an agreement, that would be helpful”.

Turkey, which is already hosting around 2.2 million Syrian refugees, has been calling for a secure zone within Syria where the displaced could find safe haven.


Airstrikes hit two Syrian hospitals, with Turkey condemning 'obvious war crime'

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Airstrikes hit two Syrian hospitals, with Turkey condemning ‘obvious war crime’

The prospect of even a temporary truce in Syria seemed as distant as ever on Monday, as violence continued unabated across much of the country with hospitals in two towns apparently being bombed by forces supporting Bashar al-Assad, days after Russia denied it was targeting civilians in its aerial campaign.

The attacks highlighted the fragility of a deal agreed last week in Munich for a “cessation of hostilities” and the impact on civilians of an unforgiving air war led by the Kremlin that has helped consolidate Assad’s position and exacerbated the misery of the five-year conflict, driving tens of thousands out of their homes towards the Turkish border.

The bombardment of a hospital is a too-frequent ‘accident’. It’s also a war crime

Bernard Kouchner

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Assad, the Syrian president, made a televised address on Monday saying that any ceasefire did not mean each side had to stop using weapons.

The purpose of any agreement was to stop “terrorists from strengthening their positions” by gaining ground, he claimed. “Regarding a ceasefire, a halt to operations, if it happened, it doesn’t mean that each party will stop using weapons,” Assad said in Damascus.

“A ceasefire means in the first place halting the terrorists from strengthening their positions. Movement of weapons, equipment or terrorists, or fortification of positions, will not be allowed,” he said.

Meanwhile Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, backed a call from Turkey for a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, saying it would alleviate the situation of displaced Syrians.

The hospital airstrikes came a day after Barack Obama urged Moscow to halt its bombing campaign, illustrating the lack of leverage western powers have over peace negotiations aimed at ending a war that has killed nearly a third of a million people.

The White House on Monday condemned the bombing “in the strongest possible terms”. US state department spokesman John Kirby said the continuation of the aerial campaign “flies in the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG (International Syria Support Group), including in Munich, to avoid attacks on civilians and casts doubt on Russia’s willingness and/or ability to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad regime against its own people”.

The violence risks drawing Turkey, a stalwart backer of the rebels, further into the conflict as it looks on with growing alarm at Kurdish expansion near its border, as Kurdish fighters take advantage of the rebels weakening and vacating territory under the Russian onslaught.

Turkey’s foreign ministry on Monday said the strikes amounted to Russia carrying out an “obvious war crime” and warned that bigger and more serious consequences would be inevitable if Russia did not immediately end such attacks.

The airstrikes on hospitals in two locations in northern Syria mark the latest in a series of attacks on medical facilities and workers, including 14 so far this year.

Médecins Sans Frontières said seven people were killed when a facility it supports in Maaret al-Numan, Idlib province, was hit four times in two separate raids. Mego Terzian, MSF’s France president, told Reuters he thought that either Russia or Syrian government forces were responsible. Both have been engaged in an unrelenting aerial bombardment in Idlib.

The hospital, which has 54 staff and 30 beds, is financed by the medical charity, which also supplies medicine and equipment.

“The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of about 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict,” said Massimiliano Rebaudengo, MSF’s head of mission in Syria.

People gather around the rubble of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders near Maaret al-Numan, in Syria’s northern province of Idlib after the building was hit by suspected Russian air strikes.

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People gather around the rubble of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders near Maaret al-Numan, in Syria’s northern province of Idlib after the building was hit by suspected Russian air strikes. Photograph: Ghaith Omran/AFP/Getty Images

In a separate incident, Syrian opposition activists said a missile struck a children’s hospital in the rebel-held town of Azaz, near the Turkish border, killing 10 people and wounding more than 30. The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, said a Russian ballistic missile had hit the town.

The UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, said four facilities were hit, two in Azaz and two in Idlib. “We at Unicef are appalled by reports of attacks against four medical facilities in Syria – two of which were supported by Unicef,” the organisation said in a statement. “One is a child and maternal hospital where children were reportedly killed and scores evacuated.”

Who backs whom in the Syrian conflict

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“Apart from compelling considerations of diplomacy and obligations under international humanitarian law, let us remember that these victims are children,” the statement added.

The Syrian National Coalition’s representative to the EU, Mouaffaq Nyrabia, said the hospital attacks demonstrated “Russia’s lack of commitment to ending this conflict” and called on the UN to investigate, alongside other attacks on medical facilities in Syria.

Moscow’s intense airstrike campaign has in recent months helped Assad score his most significant advances since the beginning of the war.

The Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, issued a blanket denial over the weekend that his country was targeting civilians and civilian facilities in Syria, but several attacks on health centres have been documented since Russia’s intervention. In the first month of the campaign launched last October, NGO Physicians for Human Rights documented seven Russian attacks on medical facilities in Syria.

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“They are targeting hospitals specifically; this is systematic,” said Zaidoun al-Zoabi, the head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations, when asked about the Russian claim. “Who bombed the hospitals? For God’s sake, who bombed the hospitals today?”

Riad Hijab, the head of the opposition’s high negotiations committee and a former Syrian prime minister, on Sunday reiterated the opposition’s demand that airstrikes are halted and sieges around the country lifted, adding that Assad must leave for peace in Syria to take hold.

“Every day, hundreds of Syrians die from airstrikes and artillery bombardment, poison gas, cluster bombs, torture, starvation, cold and drowning,” said Hijab, speaking in Munich. “The Syrian people continue to live in terror and in utter despair after the international community failed to prevent even the gravest violations committed against them.

“The best approach to put an end to Daesh [Isis] and other extremist groups must start with the removal of the Assad regime.”

Russia resumed airstrikes on Monday in northern Latakia province near the Turkish border as well as Aleppo, bombing rebel positions to pave the way for a regime advance. Obama urged Russia on Sunday to halt airstrikes against mainstream rebels.

Meanwhile, Turkey shelled positions controlled by the YPG, a Syrian-Kurdish paramilitary force, for the third consecutive day on Monday near the rebel-held border town of Azaz. Davutoğlu said Ankara would not allow Azaz to fall to the Kurds and accused them of acting as a proxy for Assad and Moscow.

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Turkey, which strongly backs anti-Assad rebels, is fighting an insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) on its own territory and has viewed with growing alarm what it sees as Kurdish expansionism in Syria. Ankara says the YPG is simply the Syrian affiliate of the PKK.

Turkey’s defence minister denied, however, that Turkey had sent troops into northern Syria and said it had no intention of doing so, as speculation grows of a possible ground intervention by opponents of the Assad regime.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain said last week that they were ready to send small numbers of ground forces into the embattled country as part of the US-led coalition against Isis.

Merkel, the German chancellor, joined the calls from Turkey for a no-fly zone. “In the current situation it would be helpful, if there could be such an area, where none of the parties are allowed to launch aerial attacks,” she told the daily Stuttgarter Zeitung.

Merkel acknowledged it was impossible to negotiate with “terrorists from the Islamic State … but if it’s possible for the anti-Assad coalition and the Assad-supporters to come to an agreement, that would be helpful”.

Turkey, which is already hosting around 2.2 million Syrian refugees, has been calling for a secure zone within Syria where the displaced could find safe haven.




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What will a world with 5G look like?

Your smartphone will have a faster connection, for sure. But that just scratches the surface of what 5G could be capable of.

Everyone in the wireless industry agrees that 5G is coming by the end of the decade. But what will it be used for? That’s still up in the air.

Nokia on Tuesday previewed a demonstration it plans to present at Mobile World Congress later this month, detailing its vision for 5G. Nokia’s 5G forecast includes some surprising capabilities: 5G will make cars safer to drive. It will make instant replay more instant. And doctors will be able to perform surgery using wirelessly controlled robots..

And, yes, 5G will be much faster.

Faster speeds

Nokia (NOK),

aiming to be one of the world’s biggest 5G players, claims that it has tested a 5G connection with download speeds of 30 gigabits per second. That’s more than 1,000 times faster than your average 4G connection.

In the real world, there’s very little chance of your phone actually getting speeds that fast. Trees, buildings, your distance from a cell tower and those pesky other customers who are also trying to use the network are going to slow down speeds dramatically from what Nokia was able to achieve in a lab.

Still, the wireless industry thinks 5G will be really fast: 10 to 100 times faster than 4G, according to Brian Daly, director of government standards at AT&T. Daly was speaking at a panel on 5G wireless technologies held by the CTIA wireless association in Washington on Tuesday.

Those faster speeds will also allow more customers to be connected at the same time, giving the network more capacity and making connections more reliable for mobile customers.

5G wireless table

Video multi-casting

Sports stadiums are equipped with giant screens for people in the nosebleed sections. But what if you could get the feed of the game or concert in real-time on your smartphone or tablet? You could even switch the camera angle and get truly instant replay. And the video would be in stunning 4K, about four-times the resolution of HD.

That will all be possible with a 5G network, Nokia believes.

Self-driving cars

Today’s self-driving test cars are powered by wireless networks. One problem that has emerged is the amount of latency, or lag, between the car’s sensor and the data center sending information to the car.

When self-drivng cars become a reality, they’ll have to identify an obstacle and immediately communicate that to the data center (and receive instructions from the cloud) with virtually no latency whatsoever. Otherwise, the car could crash.

One of 5G’s biggest promises is ultra-low latency, delivering uninterrupted communication flow to driverless cars. That could dramatically improve vehicle safety and reduce congestion.

Networked robots

Robotic surgical tools can be incredibly useful machines for doctors. But they need to react in real-time, just as the doctor issues a command. The same goes for robots that perform complex manufacturing commands, which need to communicate instantly with other robots on the assembly line.

5G’s low latency should help tremendously to allow networked robots to perform even more complicated tasks in the future, Nokia predicts.

Virtual reality

When you put on a virtual reality mask, you can “enter” a virtual world with other people. You can interact with them, play video games with them, and even virtually high-five them.

With 5G, Nokia believes virtual reality users “will be able to collaborate as if they are in the same physical location.” It could usher in a new era of video games and remote collaboration.

“5G will give birth to the next phase of human possibilities, bringing about the automation of everything,” said Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer at Nokia. “This automation, driven by a smart, invisible network, will create new businesses, give rise to new services and, ultimately, free up more time for people.”


What a world with 5G will look like

http://isthattrue.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/150518144020-5g-wireless-table-780x439.jpg

What will a world with 5G look like?

Your smartphone will have a faster connection, for sure. But that just scratches the surface of what 5G could be capable of.

Everyone in the wireless industry agrees that 5G is coming by the end of the decade. But what will it be used for? That’s still up in the air.

Nokia on Tuesday previewed a demonstration it plans to present at Mobile World Congress later this month, detailing its vision for 5G. Nokia’s 5G forecast includes some surprising capabilities: 5G will make cars safer to drive. It will make instant replay more instant. And doctors will be able to perform surgery using wirelessly controlled robots..

And, yes, 5G will be much faster.

Faster speeds

Nokia (NOK),

aiming to be one of the world’s biggest 5G players, claims that it has tested a 5G connection with download speeds of 30 gigabits per second. That’s more than 1,000 times faster than your average 4G connection.

In the real world, there’s very little chance of your phone actually getting speeds that fast. Trees, buildings, your distance from a cell tower and those pesky other customers who are also trying to use the network are going to slow down speeds dramatically from what Nokia was able to achieve in a lab.

Still, the wireless industry thinks 5G will be really fast: 10 to 100 times faster than 4G, according to Brian Daly, director of government standards at AT&T. Daly was speaking at a panel on 5G wireless technologies held by the CTIA wireless association in Washington on Tuesday.

Those faster speeds will also allow more customers to be connected at the same time, giving the network more capacity and making connections more reliable for mobile customers.

5G wireless table

Video multi-casting

Sports stadiums are equipped with giant screens for people in the nosebleed sections. But what if you could get the feed of the game or concert in real-time on your smartphone or tablet? You could even switch the camera angle and get truly instant replay. And the video would be in stunning 4K, about four-times the resolution of HD.

That will all be possible with a 5G network, Nokia believes.

Self-driving cars

Today’s self-driving test cars are powered by wireless networks. One problem that has emerged is the amount of latency, or lag, between the car’s sensor and the data center sending information to the car.

When self-drivng cars become a reality, they’ll have to identify an obstacle and immediately communicate that to the data center (and receive instructions from the cloud) with virtually no latency whatsoever. Otherwise, the car could crash.

One of 5G’s biggest promises is ultra-low latency, delivering uninterrupted communication flow to driverless cars. That could dramatically improve vehicle safety and reduce congestion.

Networked robots

Robotic surgical tools can be incredibly useful machines for doctors. But they need to react in real-time, just as the doctor issues a command. The same goes for robots that perform complex manufacturing commands, which need to communicate instantly with other robots on the assembly line.

5G’s low latency should help tremendously to allow networked robots to perform even more complicated tasks in the future, Nokia predicts.

Virtual reality

When you put on a virtual reality mask, you can “enter” a virtual world with other people. You can interact with them, play video games with them, and even virtually high-five them.

With 5G, Nokia believes virtual reality users “will be able to collaborate as if they are in the same physical location.” It could usher in a new era of video games and remote collaboration.

“5G will give birth to the next phase of human possibilities, bringing about the automation of everything,” said Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer at Nokia. “This automation, driven by a smart, invisible network, will create new businesses, give rise to new services and, ultimately, free up more time for people.”




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