NOAA to East: Beware of coming 'Frankenstorm'

Associated Press - This NOAA satellite image taken Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at 1:45 PM EDT shows Hurricane Sandy across the central Caribbean moving northward toward Jamaica and Cuba. Tropical Storm Tony is seen along the tail end of a cold front across the central Atlantic. (AP PHOTO/WEATHER UNDERGROUND)

Sandy pounds Bahamas after killing 21 in Caribbean

Soldiers an rescue workers patrol after the passing of Hurricane Sandy in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, Thursday Oct. 25, 2012. Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba on Thursday as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas after causing at least two deaths in the Caribbean. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

Resident Antonio Garces tries to recover his belongings from his house destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in Aguacate, Cuba, Thursday Oct. 25, 2012. Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba on Thursday as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas after causing at least two deaths in the Caribbean. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Hurricane Sandy raged through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 21 people dead across the Caribbean, following a path that could see it blend with awinter storm and reach the U.S. East Coast as a super-storm next week.

Sandy knocked out power, flooded roads and cut off islands in the storm-hardened Bahamas as it swirled past Cat Island and Eleuthera, but authorities reported no deaths in the scattered archipelago.

"Generally people are realizing it is serious," said Caroline Turnquest, head of the Red Cross in the Bahamas, who said 20 shelters were opened on the main island of New Providence.

Sandy, which weakened to a category 1 hurricane Thursday night, caused havoc in Cuba early in the day, killing 11 people in eastern Santiago and Guantanamo provinces as its howling winds and rain toppled houses and ripped off roofs. Authorities said it was Cuba's deadliest storm since July 2005, when category 5 Hurricane Dennis killed 16 people and caused $2.4 billion in damage.

Sandy also killed one person while crossing Jamaica on Wednesday and 10 in Haiti, where heavy rains from the storm's outer bands caused flooding in the impoverished and deforested country.

Early Friday, the hurricane's center was about 145 miles (235 kilometers) east-southeast ofFreeport, Bahamas. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph) and was moving north-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph).

Forecasters warned that Sandy will likely mix with a winter storm to create a monster storm in the eastern U.S. next week whose effects will be felt along the entire Atlantic Coast from Florida to Maine and inland to Ohio.

Sandy, which crossed Cuba and reached the Bahamas as a category 2 hurricane, was expected to maintain its category 1 storm status for the next few days.

In the Bahamas, power was out on Acklins Island and most roads there were flooded, government administrator Berkeley Williams said.

On Ragged Island in the southern Bahamas, the lone school was flooded.

"We have holes in roofs, lost shingles and power lines are down," said Charlene Bain, local Red Cross president. "But nobody lost a life, that's the important thing."

Steven Russell, an emergency management official in Nassau, said docks on the western side of Great Inagua island had been destroyed and the roof of a government building was partially ripped off.

Sooner Halvorson, a 36-year-old hotel owner from Colorado who recently moved to the Bahamas, said she and her husband, Matt, expected to ride out the storm with their two young children, three cats, two dogs and a goat at their Cat Island resort.

"We brought all of our animals inside," she said, though she added that a horse stayed outside. "She's a 40-year-old horse from the island. She's been through tons of hurricanes."

On Great Exuma island, guest house operator Veronica Marshall supplied her only customer with a flashlight and some food before Sandy bore down. She said she was confident that she and her business would make it through intact.

"I'm 73 years old and I've weathered many storms," she said.

Tropical storm conditions were possible for Florida's southeastern coast, the Upper Keys and Florida Bay by Friday morning.

Hurricane Sandy was expected to churn through the central and northwest Bahamas by Friday afternoon and then head northward off the U.S. coast.

With storm conditions projected to hit New Jersey with tropical storm-force winds Tuesday, there was a 90 percent chance that most of the U.S. East Coast would get steady gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Wednesday, U.S. forecaster Jim Cisco said.

In an announcement at the end of Cuba's Thursday night newscast, Cuban authorities said the island's 11 dead included a 4-month-old boy who was crushed when his home collapsed and an 84-year-old man in Santiago province.

Santiago, Cuba's second largest city near the eastern tip of the island, was spared the worst of the storm, which also slammed the provinces of Granma, Holguin and Las Tunas.

There were no reports of injuries at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but there were downed trees and power lines, said Kelly Wirfel, a base spokeswoman. Officials canceled a military tribunal session scheduled for Thursday for the prisoner charged in the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole.

In Haiti, Joseph Edgard Celestin, a spokesman for the civil protection office, said the country's death toll stood at nine, including three people who died while trying to cross storm-swollen rivers in southwestern Haiti. He did not provide specifics of how other people died.

Officials reported flooding across Haiti, where many of the 370,000 people still displaced by the devastating 2010 earthquake scrambled for shelter. More than 1,000 people were evacuated from 11 quake settlements, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Sandy was blamed for the death of an elderly man in Jamaica.

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Associated Press writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica; Trenton Daniel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Ben Fox in Guantanamo, Cuba; Seth Borenstein in Washington; Juan McCartney in Nassau, Bahamas; and Fernando Gonzalez, Paul Haven, Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana contributed to this report.

Israel keeps silent on mysterious Sudan airstrike

A Sudanese man shows damage in his home caused by an artillery shell in Khartoum, Sudan, in this Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012 photo following an explosion and fire at a military factory south of the capital, Khartoum, killing at least two people as ammunition flew through the air. Senior Israeli officials on Thursday Oct 25 accused Sudan of playing a key role in an Iranian-backed network of arms shipments to hostile Arab militant groups across the Middle East. The tough comments are likely to fuel Sudanese allegations that Israel carried out the airstrike in the North African country's capital (AP Photo/Abd Raouf)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Senior Israeli officials accused Sudan on Thursday of playing a key role in an Iranian-backed network of arms shipments to hostile Arab militant groups across the Middle East, a day after a mysterious explosion rocked a weapons factory near the North African country's capital.

The tough words were likely to add to Sudanese suspicions that an Israeli airstrike was behind the blast. Israel has both the motive and means to carry out such an airstrike, and Sudan has accused Israel in the past of operating on its territory.

Israel considers Iran to be a grave threat, citing Iranian calls for Israel's destruction, suspicions that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, and Iran's support for militant groups on Israel's southern and northern borders. Israeli officials have long contended that Sudan is a central player in Iranian efforts to funnel weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah guerrillas inLebanon.

Sudan claimed Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes caused an explosion and fire at a military factory south of the capital, Khartoum, killing two people. It said four aircraft hit the Yarmouk complex, setting off a huge blast that rocked the capital before dawn.

"They used sophisticated technology," Sudan's information minister, Ahmed Belal Osman, said without elaborating. There was no word on the identities of the two people who were killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to comment on the incident at a news conference with the visiting Italian premier, Mario Monti.

But Netanyahu's vice premier, Moshe Yaalon, said Israel had "nothing to cry about."

Speaking to Israel Radio, Yaalon described Sudan as an important base for both Iranian and al-Qaida militants to carry out mayhem.

"It's used as a base to disseminate terror, in Africa and in our direction too," he said. "There's no doubt that there is an axis of weapons from Iran via Sudan that reaches us, and not just us. It shows Iran continues to be a rogue state stirring up not a few conflicts in the region."

Sudan has been engaged in various armed conflicts for many years. Its government has been at war with rebels in the western region of Darfur and with its neighbors in South Sudan, which broke away to become Africa's newest country in 2011.

Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Sudan was a major hub for al-Qaida militants and remains a transit for weapon smugglers and African migrant traffickers.

The U.S. imposed economic, trade and financial sanctions against Sudan in 1997, citing the Sudanese government's support for terrorism, including its sheltering of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s. In 1998, American cruise missiles bombed a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory suspected of links to al-Qaida.

Jonah Leff, who monitors Sudan for the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, said it remained unclear what caused Wednesday's blast. Although the U.S. also maintains warplanes in the region, he said Israel was the likely culprit if it turned out to be an airstrike.

"I can't think of anyone other than Israel that would have conducted it," he said, noting the Iranian ties with Sudan, the past reports of Israeli airstrikes in Sudan and Israel's emerging alliance with South Sudan.

Israel has grown increasingly concerned about the arms flow to both Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel believes that both groups possess tens of thousands of rockets, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and other advanced weapons.

These concerns have been illustrated by a pair of incidents in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Israel shot down an unmanned Iranian-made aircraft launched by Hezbollah. This week, Hamas fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel during a brief flare-up of violence.

Israeli officials believe many of these weapons follow a circuitous route that begins in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, stretch through Dubai and on to Sudan, before crossingEgypt's lawless Sinai desert and into Gaza through underground tunnels. The Israeli air force periodically targets these tunnels in an attempt to halt the flow of weapons.

A number of other operations over the years have also been attributed to Israel. In 2009, Sudan accused Israel of carrying out an airstrike on an arms convoy near the Red Sea in eastern Sudan.

The following year, Hamas accused Israel of assassinating a top militant in a Dubai hotel room. Israel never confirmed involvement, but claimed the militant, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, had worked in Sudan and played a critical role in shipping advanced Iranian rockets to Gaza.

Israel possesses a sophisticated air force of U.S.-made F-15 and F-16 warplanes, and has a record of carrying out daring air raids over enemy skies. In 1981, Israel destroyed an unfinished nuclear reactor being built in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In 2007, it destroyed what the U.S. has said was a nearly finished nuclear reactor in neighboring Syria.

In recent months, Israel has hinted that it is ready to use its air force against Iran as well. Israel believes Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons — a scenario that it considers a threat to its very existence. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, but Israel and many Western countries dismiss this.

Israel has threatened to strike Iranian nuclear facilities if it concludes that international sanctions fail to stop the Iranians.

Some Israeli commentators said that if Israel had indeed carried out an airstrike that caused Wednesday's blast in Sudan, it might have been a dress rehearsal of sorts for an operation in Iran. Both countries are roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away from Israel, and an air operation would require careful planning and in-flight refueling.

But there are key differences as well. Iran has a far more advanced air-defense system than Sudan, and its nuclear facilities are scattered across the country in heavily fortified sites.

"The Iranians ought to be worried by Israel's ability to deceive and achieve surprise at such a vast distance from home — if it was Israel that carried out the attack," wrote Alex Fishman, a military affairs commentator with the Yediot Ahronot daily. But, he noted, "a flight over Iran or to Iran is a more complicated effort."

Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired Israeli air force general and a former head of the Israeli space agency, said he had no idea what caused the explosion but that anyone with an advanced air force could pull it off.

He noted that Arab countries tend to blame Israel for any attack that takes place on their soil. In the case of the explosion in Sudan, he said Israel had no interest in confirming or denying its involvement.

"Even if it wasn't us," he said, "there's no damage in letting them think it was."

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Follow Federman at www.twitter.com/joseffederman .

Official: Suicide bomber kills 36 worshippers at mosque in northern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing 36 people and wounding 23, officials said.

The attack in the town of Maymana, capital of northern Faryab province, came as people were gathering at the mosque to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Top provincial officials, including the governor and the police chief, were inside the building when the bomber set off his explosives outside, where a large crowd had gathered, officials said. The officials were not hurt, but most of the dead were police officers and soldiers.

"The targets of the bomber were all the officials inside the mosque," Deputy Governor Abdul Satar Barez said. He said the dead included 14 civilians.

"There was blood and dead bodies everywhere," said Khaled, a doctor who was in the mosque at the time of the blast. "It was a massacre," said Khaled, who like many Afghans uses only one name.

Video from the scene showed the motionless bodies of several soldiers and policemen lying next to their vehicles parked on a tree-lined avenue of the city, located about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northwest of Kabul. On the sidewalk, a number of civilians lay along the mosque's outer wall, some writhing and moaning in pain.

It appeared to be the deadliest suicide attack in recent months.

On Sept. 4, 25 civilians were killed and more than 35 wounded in Nanghar province, and on Sept. 1, 12 people were killed and 47 wounded in a suicide attack in Wardak province.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the attack, saying that those who carried it out were "enemies of Islam and humanity."

He said in a statement that 36 people died in the blast and 23 were injured.

The attack came as Karzai was urging Taliban insurgents "to stop killing other Afghans."

In his Eid al-Adha message to the nation on Friday morning, Karzai called on the insurgents to "stop the destruction of our mosques, hospitals and schools."

The United Nations says that Taliban attacks account for the vast majority of civilian casualties in the 11-year war. The insurgents routinely deny that they are responsible for attacks on civilians, saying they target only foreign troops or members of the Afghan security forces.

On Wednesday, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar urged his fighters to "pay full attention to the prevention of civilian casualties," saying the enemy was trying to blame them on the insurgents.

Also Friday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for killing two American service members in southern Uruzgan province, in what may have been the latest insider attack against Western troops.

In an emailed statement, Taliban spokesman Yusuf Ahmadi said a member of the Afghan security forces shot the two men the day before, then escaped to join the insurgents.

A spate of insider attacks has undermined trust between international troops and Afghan army and police, further weakened public support for the 11-year war in NATO countries and increased calls for earlier withdrawals.

Maj. Lori Hodge, spokeswoman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said on Thursday that authorities were trying to determine whether the latest attacker was a member of the Afghan security forces or an insurgent who donned a government uniform.

It was the second suspected insider attack in two days. On Wednesday, two British troops and an Afghan policeman were gunned down in Helmand province.

Before Thursday's assault, 53 foreigners attached to the U.S.-led coalition had been killed in attacks by Afghan soldiers or police this year.

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United Nations to Establish Dedicated Investigations Unit for Civilian Deaths Caused by U.S. Drone Strikes

Ben Emmerson (Image credit: United Nations)

With the drone war on the rise – both domesticallyand internationally – technological advancementsleading the way for even more frequent use, the United Nations has announced that they are going to set up a Geneva-based unit dedicated to investigating drone strikes carried out by the United States.

Interestingly, it seems the UN is focusing solely on the U.S. while human rights lawyers have previously pointed out that British civilians participating in the drone program can actually be held partially responsible for the murders carried out under said program.

The announcement came from Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur, in a speech to Harvard law school, according to the British Guardian.

In the speech Emmerson also reportedly called secret renditions and waterboarding crimes under international law, which they both quite clearly are.

The U.S. military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have both been sued in the past over the drone assassination program, but as of yet nothing has come from it and it may be somewhat pessimistic but I don’t think the UN will be able to do much about it either.

Emmerson also called for investigations into US drone attacks earlier this summer, warning that some of the strikes in Pakistan may indeed be war crimes.

While I agree that they very well might be war crimes and the U.S. drone program is hardly acceptable in any way, the simple fact is that the UN cannot and should not be trusted.

In order to realize this all one needs to do is observe the fact that the UN recently openly called for international internet surveillance.

“If the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms … then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act,” said Emmerson.

“Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks,” Emmerson continued.

The UN’s investigation will also include a look at “other forms of targeted killing conducted in counter-terrorism operations, in which it is alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted.”

Emmerson added that the position claiming that the U.S. has a right to conduct international warfare in the name of fighting al Qaeda or other related groups is, in fact, indefensible.

“The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” said Emmerson. “It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.”This is quite interesting indeed since that position justifying international war is the entire basis of the so-called global war on terror.

“The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the U.S.,” continued Emmerson.

“The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone program of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.”

“[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners,” said Emmerson.

“Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view,” he added.

Emmerson also slammed both President Barack Obama and the Republican candidate Mitt Romney, focusing on their constant avoidance of the drone issue.

“It is perhaps surprising that the position of the two candidates on this issue has not even featured during their presidential elections campaigns, and got no mention at all in Monday night’s foreign policy debate,” said Emmerson.

Surprising? Not quite. For anyone who has been following the drone war and the defense it enjoys in Washington and elsewhere, this is hardly surprising.

“We now know that the two candidates are in agreement on the use of drones,” said Emmerson. “But the issue of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques is an one which, according to the record, continues to divide them.”

“I should make it absolutely clear that my mandate does not see to eye to eye with the Obama administration on a range of issues – not least the lack of transparency over the drone program,” said Emmerson. “But on this issue the president has been clear since he took office that water-boarding is torture that it is contrary to American values and that it would stop.”

While Obama indeed publicly called waterboarding torture and claimed it would no longer be used, his true stance is revealed by the fact that he refused to go after the individuals who actually carried out the torture.

This is fascinating since he has no problem with going after CIA employees who blow the whistle on similarly objectionable practices.

Personally, I’m not going to hold my breath in hopes of some magical UN action that will stop the widespread and expanding use of drones both domestically and internationally.

To do so would require a deep ignorance of history as well as a severe lack of common sense.

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This article originally appeared on End the Lie