Obama Decides to Remove Cuba from Terrorism Sponsor List

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday informed Congress of his intention to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, where that nation has been since 1982 and which comes with the imposition of sanctions.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest announced the move in a communique.

Cuba has been demanding for years that it be removed from the list prepared annually by the State Department. Countries on the list – which currently includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria – are subjected to sanctions such as a prohibition on weapons sales and economic aid.

Congress now has 45 days to study the decision and, if it disagrees with Obama’s action, it can present a bill to try and revoke the presidential order.

Obama’s decision comes just three days after his historic meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro during the 7th Summit of the Americas in Panama, a significant step toward the normalization of bilateral relations announced by the two governments on Dec. 17.

In his message to Congress, Obama certifies that the Cuban government “has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period (and) has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

Obama made the decision after receiving a recommendation on the matter from Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Tuesday hailed the president’s move.

In a communique, Kerry said that circumstances have changed since 1982, when Cuba was originally included on the list because of its efforts to promote armed revolution in Latin America.

The reasons that Washington had kept Cuba on the list to date include Havana’s alleged welcoming of members of the Basque ETA terrorist organization and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as well as certain fugitives from U.S. justice.

Kerry acknowledged that although the United States has, and will continue to have, significant concerns and disagreements regarding many Cuban policies and actions, those concerns do not meet the criteria established to define a state as a terrorism sponsor.

The review that Kerry made of the matter included contributions from the U.S. intelligence community regarding Cuban actions and guarantees provided by the Cuban government, Earnest said.

Wikileaks Publishes Documents Stolen in 2014 Cyberattack on Sony

WASHINGTON – Wikileaks, the website headed by Julian Assange, on Thursday published online all the documents and emails from Sony Pictures that last year were allegedly stolen by North Korean hackers.

The database published by Wikileaks consists of more than 30,000 documents, 173,000 emails and 2,200 email addresses from Sony Pictures Entertainment, the moviemaking affiliate of the Japanese tech giant.

In a communique, Assange, who founded Wikileaks, wrote in a statement that the information is “newsworthy and at the centre (sic) of a geopolitical conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”

He added that “This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation.”

Sony responded with a statement of its own in which it criticized the publication of the searchable database, which it said was private information obtained through a “criminal act.”

The hacking of Sony began last year and, according to the U.S. government, was the responsibility of North Korean cyber-pirates who were acting in reprisal for the release of a Sony Pictures film – “The Interview” – which makes fun of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The documents made public by Wikileaks contain details of Sony’s relationships with politicians and its business strategies vis-a-vis its competition, among other things.

At the same time, it places at the disposal of Web users personal data collected on the multinational’s employees.

Until the publication of the searchable database by Wikileaks, the information had been made public in phases and the media had edited out sensitive data in their reporting of it.

Grave Marker of Hillary Clinton’s Father Toppled in Possible Vandalism

WASHINGTON – The gravestone of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham, was found to be toppled Wednesday in a cemetery in Pennsylvania, a possible case of vandalism that police are investigating.

Scranton police chief Carl Graziano told the local press that someone at the cemetery reported that the marker was tipped over Tuesday, saying that possibly vandals had disturbed it and adding that he is “not sure how else it would have fallen over.”

Rodham, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, owned a small textile business and was buried there in 1993 after dying of a heart attack in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Paul McGloin, a caretaker at the Washburn Street Cemetery, told local media that he hoped the incident had nothing to do with politics.

The gravestone had been pushed over from its original position but was apparently otherwise undamaged, with no graffiti or anything else on it, authorities said.

Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator, in addition to serving as secretary of state, announced last Sunday that she was running for president for the second time, after being defeated for the Democratic nomination by Barack Obama in 2008.

Iran’s teachers protest gatherings are picking up momentum

As some 1300 teachers in the capital Tehran stated a demonstration in front to the parliament and other sited in Tehran, teachers in Hamadan, Central Iran, also gathered to demand their rights. When the demonstration was first formed, the number of protesters was 200, but as the time went by, the number grew and is reported that is growing by hour. 
In the cities of Sari, Ahwaz, Sanandaj, Mashhad and Meshkin-Shahr similar protests have been reported. Teachers are gathering at every opportunity to express their grievances condemning repressive policies in schools and plundering programs and procedures by the government agencies and offices.

Maryam Rajavi hails protesting Iranian teachers and urges expansion of support for them

NCRI - Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, hailed the teachers, workers and toilers who have risen in various parts of the country for their rights and to protest against discrimination, corruption and oppressive measures by the mullahs’ regime. She called on the people, especially the youth and students, to expand the protests and express solidarity with the teachers.

Teachers’ protest movement, ongoing since last year, swelled on Thursday, April 16, in Tehran and most provinces, including Fars, Mazandaran, Esfahan, Eastern and Western Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Central, Kurdistan, Zanjan, Yazd, Alborz, Khorasan Razavi, Southern Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Lorestan, Ilam, Kerman, Kermanshah, Qazvin, Khuzestan and Hamedan. Teachers demanded the annulment of judicial sentences and the release of the imprisoned teachers, increase in wages, ending discrimination, and improvement of the educational environment.

Protestors were carrying placards that some of them read: “Imprisoned teacher must be freed”, “improvement of livelihood is our absolute right”, “equality is our absolute right”, “our silence is louder than outcry”, and “criticizing forbidden – embezzlement permitted”.

In Kerman the protestors put on shrouds to portray the condition of teachers while in some cities the teachers chanted slogans against the Education Minister of Rouhani.
Mrs. Rajavi said: While teachers are struggling with severe poverty, the riches of the Iranian people is either spent on unpatriotic projects of export of fundamentalism and terrorism, production of the nuclear bomb, beefing up the suppression machine, the revolutionary guards, and the terrorist Qods Force, or is plundered by the leaders of this regime and their families.

The official budget of the military, suppressive and export-of-terrorism organs is three fold that of the education with around one million teachers and 13 million students. Beside the official budget, billions of dollars is placed at the disposal of the revolutionary guards and the mullahs’ intelligence by Khamenei or through the vast economic resources that these organs control with no supervision over them.

Mrs. Rajavi added: As long as the clerical regime is in power in Iran, poverty, unemployment, inflation and high prices that hurt the people in general and teachers and workers in particular, shall only get worse. Only the overthrow of this anti-human regime by the people and the Iranian Resistance and the establishment of democracy will bring this great catastrophe to an end.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 16, 2015

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