JERUSALEM ( Israeli doctors refuse to force feed Palestinian prisoners )

JERUSALEM: Proposed legislation to permit the force-feeding of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike is pitting Israel’s government against the country’s main doctors’ association, which says the practice amounts to torture.
The ethical and legal debate has taken on an urgent tone, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asking to fast-track the bill as a hunger strike by dozens of Palestinian detainees entered its sixth week.
At least 65 of 290 participating detainees have been hospitalized since the first group began a hunger strike April 24. Many are administrative detainees, held for months or years without charges.
Families of hunger strikers say they support the fast despite the risks.
“My husband is in Israeli jails without knowing why and when this nightmare is going to end,” Lamees Faraj said of her husband Abdel Razeq, who is a member of a small, hard-line Palestine Liberation Organization faction and has been in administrative detention for almost eight of the last 20 years.
Faced with the second large-scale Palestinian hunger strike in two years, Israel’s government is promoting a bill that would allow a judge to sanction force-feeding if an inmate’s life is perceived to be in danger.
There has been mounting opposition from Israel’s medical establishment, with the Israel Medical Association urging physicians not to cooperate. “It goes against the DNA of the doctors to force treatment on a patient,” spokeswoman Ziva Miral said Tuesday. “Force-feeding is torture, and we can’t have doctors participating in torture.”
She noted that the World Medical Association, an umbrella for national medical associations, opposes the practice. The WMA said as recently as 2006 that “forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable.
Israel’s National Council of Bioethics has also weighed in, saying it opposes the proposed bill.
Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, contacted the World Medical Association last month, asking that it help stop the legislation. In a letter to the WMA, the Israeli group reiterated the ethical concerns raised by others and added that “the true motivation ... is to break the spirit and protests of the hunger strikers.”
Despite such criticism, Netanyahu reportedly told his Cabinet this week he’ll make sure to find physicians who will participate in force-feeding. Netanyahu noted that force-feeding is carried out at the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp for suspected militants, the Haaretz said.
Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, declined to comment on the report, but confirmed the government supports the bill.
Hadar said force-feeding would be a last resort. Hunger strikers would be represented in legal hearings and physicians would not be compelled to participate, he said.
He said force-feeding is meant to save lives, while acknowledging other considerations at play.
“People go on a hunger strike for political reasons ... and the consequence could be political damage to the state,” he said. “The state also has the right to stop the strike.”
Qadoura Fares, an advocate for Palestinian prisoners, said Palestinians would seek international condemnation of Israel if the legislation is passed.
So far, 65 hunger strikers have been hospitalized, but none are in life-threatening conditions, said Sivan Weizman of the Israel Prison Authority. She did not know how many voluntarily receive vitamins or glucose.
The families wait and worry, including Amani Ramahi, whose jailed husband Mahmoud is a West Bank legislator for the Islamic militant group Hamas. Israel considers Hamas a terror group because it has killed several hundred Israelis in attacks since the late 1980s.
Ramahi said her husband relayed a message from prison that the hunger strikers are determined to continue, “even if they die, because they want to put an end once and for all to their suffering.”

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Ukraine ( Pro-Russia rebels armed with automatic weapons -attack border )

 

Hundreds of pro-Russia rebels armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades mounted a daylong assault Monday on a key government base used to coordinate the defense of the country's border with Russia, prompting the deployment of air support by government forces.

Border guards killed at least five rebels in repelling the attack on their base, a spokesman for the border guard service said.

In the center of Luhansk, some six miles (10 kilometers) away, a blast at an administrative building held by the insurgents claimed more lives. A health official for the Luhansk region told Interfax news agency that at least seven people had been confirmed dead in what rebels described as a government airstrike.

The government denied carrying out an airstrike and said the blast was caused by misdirected rebel fire from a portable surface-to-air missile launcher.

Russia's Foreign Ministry swiftly condemned what it said was a government attack on the rebel-held building and urged U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet, who was visiting Kiev on Monday, to help calm unrest in Ukraine.

"We urge our Western partners to use their influence on Kiev, to stop Ukraine from descending into a national catastrophe," the ministry said in a statement.

Russia also called an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to introduce a resolution calling for an immediate halt to the violence and talks to establish a cease-fire. Moscow has almost daily demanded that the Kiev government halt its military operations in the east, but it was the first time it has called for a Security Council resolution. It was unclear how much support the proposal would have.

The rebel assault on the government base continued into the night, ending around 9 p.m. with the border guards succeeded in repelling the insurgents.

Earlier, rebels in camouflage had promised safe passage to the government troops if they surrendered and laid down their arms. The pro-Russian insurgents, who have seized government and police buildings across eastern Ukraine, have waged increasingly aggressive attacks on government-held checkpoints and garrisons in an attempt to seize weapons and ammunition from Ukrainian forces.

The attacks are deeply troubling for Ukraine's new government, whose president-elect, Petro Poroshenko, has pledged to crush the separatist movement in the east. The conflict has escalated markedly in the past week, with rebels attempting to seize a major airport and the shooting-down of a Ukrainian military helicopter.

Serhiy Astakhov, the spokesman for the border guard service, told The Associated Press that five rebels were killed and eight wounded in Monday's attack on the walled compound on the western fringes of Luhansk, a major city not far from the Russian border. He said seven servicemen were wounded, three seriously.

The initial attack by about 100 insurgents was met by gunfire from the border guards, and the number of attackers swelled to around 400 a few hours later, he said. Astakhov said the Ukrainian armed forces sent aircraft to the area, and at least one fighter jet was seen flying overhead.

An AP reporter saw about 40 rebel fighters, and one of them said that more than 200 were involved in the assault on the base.

At least one dead rebel fighter fell about a half-mile away from the base. Fellow insurgents approached and broke into tears as they viewed the body. One insurgent said the dead man was a leading rebel commander.

PHOENIX ( Family Asks McCain to Help Win U.S. Marine’s Release from Mexican Jail )

PHOENIX – Relatives of U.S. Marine Andrew Tahmooressi, who is being held in a Mexican jail for entering the country with weapons in his possession, have asked Republican Sen. John McCain for help in the case.

“We’re very concerned about his well-being. He’s been beaten, he’s suffering from hunger. The only thing they’re giving him to eat is bread and water with sugar,” Beth Whitney, Tahmooressi’s aunt, told Efe as she displayed a photo of her nephew.

Tahmooressi, a Marine sergeant who served two tours in Afghanistan, was arrested in March 31 when he entered Mexico from San Diego with three firearms in the trunk of his car.

Mexico only allows members of its armed forces to carry weapons.

At the entrance of the checkpoints into Mexican territory there are signs indicating that entering the country with firearms is prohibited.

Everything was a mistake, given that Tahmooressi crossed into Tijuana, Mexico, to do some shopping and when he returned to his parked vehicle in San Diego he then took a wrong turn, realizing quickly thereafter that he was once again in Mexico with the firearms in his possession, Whitney said.

His truck “was surrounded by a group of 20 soldiers, all of them pointing pistols at him,” Whitney said.

The family is desperate about the soldier’s “uncertain future” and so on Saturday they went to McCain’s offices in Phoenix to ask for his help with the aim of obtaining Tahmooressi’s release, Whitney said.

The Tahmooressi case spurred Congressman Duncan Hunter Jr. to take the lead in a series of efforts with an eye toward getting his countryman released, arguing that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

Hunter, a war veteran like Tahmooressi, requested that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel suspend any kind of military aid to Mexico until the Marine is released from the jail in Baja California state where he is being held.

KABUL (Three Turkish Engineers Killed in Afghanistan Suicide Attack)

   

KABUL – Three Turkish engineers died on Monday and another was wounded in a suicide attack against the van in which they were going to work in the eastern province of Nangarhar, an Afghan official told Efe.

The attack occurred in the town of Benegah when a suicide bomber detonated the explosives he was carrying in a motorized rickshaw, provincial Gov. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said.

The engineers were headed for a construction site.

No insurgent group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which came after the recent freeing of five captive Taliban leaders by the United States in exchange for the only U.S. prisoner remaining in Afghanistan, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

The Afghan conflict has entered one of its bloodiest phases since the U.S. invasion ousted the Taliban regime nearly 13 years ago.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force’s mission in Afghanistan will conclude at the end of 2014, though Washington has announced that it will maintain some 9,800 troops in the country until late 2016.

Afghanistan is also in the midst of a presidential election campaign for the June 14 runoff – Three Turkish engineers died on Monday and another was wounded in a suicide attack against the van in which they were going to work in the eastern province of Nangarhar, an Afghan official told Efe.

The attack occurred in the town of Benegah when a suicide bomber detonated the explosives he was carrying in a motorized rickshaw, provincial Gov. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said.

The engineers were headed for a construction site.

No insurgent group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which came after the recent freeing of five captive Taliban leaders by the United States in exchange for the only U.S. prisoner remaining in Afghanistan, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

The Afghan conflict has entered one of its bloodiest phases since the U.S. invasion ousted the Taliban regime nearly 13 years ago.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force’s mission in Afghanistan will conclude at the end of 2014, though Washington has announced that it will maintain some 9,800 troops in the country until late 2016.

Afghanistan is also in the midst of a presidential election campaign for the June 14 runoff

SAN FRANCISCO ( Man " Wanted by FBI " nationwide alert ) In custody 6-3-2014

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The FBI has issued a nationwide alert to law enforcement agencies about a San Francisco social media consultant they consider armed and dangerous who is wanted on suspicion of possessing explosives.

FBI spokesman Peter Lee said Sunday that 42-year-old Ryan Kelly Chamberlain II was last seen in a dark blue, hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

Multiple agencies, including hazardous materials crews, searched Chamberlain's apartment in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood on Saturday, blocking off the street to vehicle and pedestrian traffic for much of the day.

Lee gave no details Sunday about the nature of the investigation, but said authorities believe Chamberlain is acting alone.

"We believe he is alone in the vehicle but we just don't know, again, where his ties or his network is so we ask that any members of the public be on the lookout for anyone that matches this man's description," Lee said at a press conference outside FBI headquarters on Sunday.

Chamberlain is traveling in a white 2008 Nissan Altima with Texas or California license plates, but authorities do not know where he is heading, Lee said.

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This undated image provided by the FBI shows Ryan Kelly Chamberlain, II, who is being sought by the  …

His boss at a music rights consultancy group said he last contacted her Friday to remind her to deposit his paycheck at a new bank account. Brooke Wentz said the conversation was uneventful and that she was "tremendously dumbfounded" by the news that the contractor she hired to handle her company's social media accounts was wanted by the FBI.

"He's a nice guy," Wentz told The Associated Press.

Wentz said it didn't seem like Chamberlain was staying in the apartment on Jackson Street. She said when she mailed him his paycheck in April, he told her he would have to go the apartment to pick it up. She said he seemed under financial pressure because he told her that two friends who were leasing his apartment left without telling him and he had to scramble to pay for two rentals.

"I wondered what kind of friends would do something like that? I tried to ask him about the situation but he was kind of evading my question," Wentz said.

Randy Bramblett, a personal trainer and professional athlete in San Francisco, said he became friends with Chamberlain through Project Sport, a local sports marketing company. The company let Chamberlain go when it was sold in November and he soon lost touch with friends and stopped returning calls and messages, Bramblett said.

"We all knew that he was a very emotional guy and when he didn't get his own way he would say 'Screw you, I'm going to go do my own thing,'" Bramblett said. "I've never seen him be violent, ever, but I would definitely say that maybe emotionally and mentally he was a little unstable."

Chamberlain had worked for years as a political consultant on Democratic campaigns, Bramblett said.

He also worked as an independent contractor for The San Francisco Chronicle during the 2012 NFL season, doing social media to boost coverage for the San Francisco 49ers Insider iPad app, the newspaper said.

A spokeswoman for the University of San Francisco said Chamberlain taught a "Grass Roots Mobilization" course to graduate students in the Public Affairs program in 2011. Anne-Marie Devine said Chamberlain taught for one semester, and wasn't invited to teach another course. She said she didn't know why because hundreds of adjunct professors come and go at the university.

The affidavit and search warrant used to enter Chamberlain's home remain under seal.

India ( Protest over "Rape and killing of girls" police fire water cannon ) video