US Crackdown on Companies Employing Illegal Workers
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/politics/30raid.html?_r=1&hp
A raid on a branch of Chuy's Mesquite Broiler in Phoenix.
TUCSON — Obama administration officials are sharpening their crackdown on the hiring of illegal immigrants by focusing increasingly tough criminal charges on employers while moving away from criminal arrests of the workers themselves.
After months of criticism from Republicans who said President Obama was relaxing immigration enforcement in workplaces, the scope of the administration’s strategy has become clear as long-running investigations of employers have culminated in indictments, convictions, exponentially increased fines and jail sentences. While conducting fewer headline-making factory raids, the immigration authorities have greatly expanded the number of businesses facing scrutiny and the cases where employers face severe sanctions.
In a break with Bush-era policies, the number of criminal cases against unauthorized immigrant workers has dropped sharply over the last two years.
Among the employers who have felt the impact of the administration’s tactics are two owners of Mexican restaurants in the Chuy’s Mesquite Broiler chain, which are popular for their laid-back Margaritaville mood and their broiled mahi tacos. On April 20, immigration agents descended on 14 Chuy’s restaurants in coordinated raids in Arizona and California, detaining kitchen workers and carrying away boxes of payroll books and other evidence.
But at the arraignment days later in federal court here, no immigrant workers stood before the judge. The only criminal defendants were the owners, Mark Evenson and his son Christopher, and an accountant who worked with them, Diane Ingrid Strehlow. If the Evensons are convicted on all charges against them of tax fraud and harboring illegal workers, they each could face more than 80 years in jail.
Of 42 illegal immigrants caught in the Chuy’s sweep, only one was charged with a crime, and it was not related to the raid. Thirteen workers were processed for immigration violations — which are civil offenses — and detained or deported. The others remained in this country as witnesses or to seek legal status through the immigration courts.
After bin Laden, US reopens Afghan, Pakistan strategy
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After bin Laden, US reopens Afghan, Pakistan strategy
(Reuters) – Osama bin Laden’s death has reopened a high-stakes debate in Washington over the U.S. role in South Asia, where 100,000 troops are fighting a costly war in Afghanistan next door to a fragile, nuclear-armed and suspicious Pakistan.
President Barack Obama’s aides are divided between a “hug them” or “hit them” approach to dealing with Pakistan, where anger at the May 2 raid that killed bin Laden on Pakistani soil is matched in Washington by angry new questions about Islamabad’s ties to militants.
In Afghanistan, just weeks before an initial U.S. troop withdrawal is scheduled to begin, violence has hit its highest level since the war began a decade ago. Support is growing for the less troop-heavy approach advocated by Vice President Joe Biden during Obama’s first regional strategy review in 2009.
“We are at a significant inflection point regarding our future strategy,” said retired Lieutenant General David Barno, who was a senior commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and is now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank seen as close to the Obama administration.
The commando raid that killed bin Laden epitomized the kind of small, targeted strikes on militants which some officials support for Afghanistan. It has emboldened those U.S. officials who argued against the Pentagon’s broader, costlier counter-insurgency strategy that prevailed in 2009 and produced Obama’s surge of 30,000 troops.
US: Missouri Tornado Kills Dozens
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/us/23tornado.html?_r=1&hp
Emergency personnel walked through a neighborhood severely damaged by a tornado in Joplin, Mo., on Sunday.
A tornado steamrolled over Joplin, Mo., on Sunday night, knocking out a hospital and causing many deaths across the city, according to various reports.
Joplin, which the reports said was in the direct path of the tornado, was left isolated and in the dark after the destruction, with telephone connections largely cut off and many homes without electricity after the twister touched down around 6 p.m.
Reuters quoted the Newton County coroner, Mark Bridges, as saying about 30 people had been killed, and 11 bodies had been recovered from just one location.
A major hospital in town, St. John’s Regional Medical Center, had to be abandoned, witnesses said, and the triage unit set up on its grounds to care for the patients had to be temporarily moved across the street when the hospital caught fire.
The tornado was just the latest in a string of deadly twisters that have killed hundreds of people in recent months, with Tuscaloosa, Ala., still recovering from one that also tore through the center of the city in late April.
Initial reports from Joplin said that schools, apartment buildings, megastores and fire stations were ravaged by the tornado.
“There was panic — firefighters were pulling themselves out of the debris and then helping others,” said Mike Bettes, a meteorologist for the Weather Channel who arrived in Joplin 10 minutes after the tornado touched down, as part of the show “The Great Tornado Hunt.”
Hours later, he said, the scene was “very serene — dark, relatively quiet.” He and his Weather Channel crew had set up to report from the hospital grounds, he said in a telephone interview, and “we are on a hill and the only lights we see are on the fire trucks or ambulances.”
Joplin’s was by far the worst damage on a day of brutal storms in the Midwest, including a tornado in Minneapolis that city officials said left one person dead and dozens injured in an area that covered several blocks. By Sunday night, Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon, had already activated the National Guard and declared a state of emergency.
President Obama said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was being sent.
“FEMA is working with the affected area’s state and local officials to support response and recovery efforts, and the federal government stands ready to help our fellow Americans as needed,” Mr. Obama said.
Weather experts were still trying to assess exactly what had produced such damage. “The power lines have gone down — we can’t reach anyone there,” Bill Davis, a meteorologist at the Springfield, Mo., office of the National Weather Service, said in a telephone interview. He said any assessment of exactly how strong the tornado was would have to wait until tomorrow, when experts would drive to Joplin. However, he said, on a scale from 1 to 10, the tornado looked to be “on the 8-9 level.”
He compared it to a tornado that struck in May 2008 and left a dozen dead in the same part of Missouri. “It very much looked like that supercell,” he said, though that storm managed to spare Joplin a direct hit.
US ‘would repeat Bin Laden raid’
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/13478318
US President Barack Obama: "We are respectful of Pakistani authority"
US President Barack Obama has said he would order a similar operation to that which killed Osama Bin Laden if another militant leader was found in Pakistan.
He said the US was mindful of Pakistani sovereignty but said the US could not allow “active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action”.
The killing of Bin Laden by US forces in a Pakistani garrison town on 2 May strained ties between the two allies.
President Obama was speaking to the BBC ahead of a European visit.
Asked what he would do if one of al-Qaeda’s top leaders, or the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was tracked down to a location in Pakistan or another sovereign territory, he said the US would take unilateral action if required.
“Our job is to secure the United States,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr during a wide-ranging interview.
“We are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan. But we cannot allow someone who is actively planning to kill our people or our allies’ people.
President Obama’s statement that he would be prepared to authorise further covert operations in Pakistan won’t go down well here.
Pakistanis were hugely embarrassed not just by the discovery of Osama Bin Laden in the country, but even more, it appears, by the fact it was a unilaterally US mission that killed him.
Obama Seeks Reset in Arab World
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/us/politics/12prexy.html?_r=1&hp
Egyptian protesters watched President Obama speak in February. Aides said he is immersed in the Arab world's uprisings. AP Photo
WASHINGTON — For President Obama, the killing of Osama bin Laden is more than a milestone in America’s decade-long battle against terrorism. It is a chance to recast his response to the upheaval in the Arab world after a frustrating stretch in which the stalemate in Libya, the murky power struggle in Yemen and the brutal crackdown in Syria have dimmed the glow of the Egyptian revolution.
Administration officials said the president was eager to use Bin Laden’s death as a way to articulate a unified theory about the popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain — movements that have common threads but also disparate features, and have often drawn sharply different responses from the United States.
The first sign of this “reset” could come as early as next week, when Mr. Obama plans to give a speech on the Middle East in which he will seek to put Bin Laden’s death in the context of the region’s broader political transformation. The message, said one of his deputy national security advisers, Benjamin J. Rhodes, will be that “Bin Laden is the past; what’s happening in the region is the future.”
“The spotlight is understandably always on whatever country things are going worst in,” Mr. Rhodes said. “What’s important is to step back and say, ‘The trajectory of change is in the right direction.’ ”
Still, although Bin Laden’s killing may provide a rare moment of clarity, it has less obvious implications for American strategic calculations in the region. Some administration officials argue that the heavy blow to Al Qaeda gives the United States the chance to be more forward-leaning on political change because it makes Egypt, Syria and other countries less likely to tip toward Islamic extremism.
Pakistan slams US for unilateral action, warns India too
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http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/pakistan-slams-us-for-unilateral-action-warns-india-too-103614
The tension between America and Pakistan peaked a little more today, with the Pakistani government taking on America for not consulting it ahead of the military operation that led to Osama bin Laden’s death on Monday. The terrorist was shot in his house in Abbottabad near Islamabad. America has said it did not let Pakistan know about its plans because of fear of leaks.
“As far as Pakistan is concerned…there should be no mistake…that the people, leadership and parliament of Pakistan hold their dignity and honour dear…we are determined to uphold our sovereignty,” said Salman Bashir, the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan. Mr Bashir also stressed a point that Pakistan has made repeatedly in the last few days. “This action was a covert action. Pakistan was not consulted.”
America responded by stating that it would not apologize for how the operation was conducted. And yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney warned, “The US will again carry out special operations in Pakistan like the one that killed Osama to target high profile terrorists, if Pakistan does not act against terror suspects holed up in that country.”
Earlier this week, the Pakistani government criticized the US mission that killed Osama as “a unilateral action.” Today, Mr Bashir said “this raises legal issues that falls in the domain of the UN, the international community.”
Mr Bashir also took on India for recent remarks by the Army and Air Force Chiefs that if needed, they would be able to deliver an operation similar to the one that killed Osama to nab those wanted for 26/11. “Any other country that would ever act on assumption that it has the right to unilateralism of any sort will find as far as Pak is concerned that it has made a basic mistake,” he warned. “We see a lot of bravado in our own region,” he said, adding “there are statements that have come across…from the military…the air force… that states that this can be repeated. We feel that sort of misadventure would result in a terrible catastrophe.”
For U.S., Pakistan, bin Laden death presents crisis and opportunity
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/02/pakistan.bin.laden/
Washington (CNN) — Although the Obama administration says Pakistan was not involved or given advance warning about the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, top U.S. officials said the al-Qaeda leader never would have been found and killed without the counter-terrorism cooperation between the two countries over the past few years.
“Pakistan has contributed greatly to our efforts to dismantle al Qaeda. And in fact, cooperation with Pakistan helped lead U.S. to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. “We’re committed to this partnership. We think it is in the best interest of the security and safety of the United States.”
Officials maintain that the relationship with Islamabad is complicated, fraught with difficulties and mistrust, but the very fact that Pakistan has allowed the U.S. counterterrorism operative to operate on its soil, albeit with only a tacit endorsement, is critical to the type of operations that led to finding bin Laden.
“The relationship is complicated and their cooperation is mixed at best and going forward it’s going to be bumpy but there is no way to do this sort of thing without this partnership,” one senior official said. “The idea that this would have happened if they wouldn’t have let our guys in the country is not possible.”
Officials say they do believe that while a few members of the Pakistani intelligence service ISI might have known about bin Laden’s location, they don’t think it was broadly known that he was there. But they acknowledge that Pakistan does have some explaining to do about how bin Laden was hiding in plain sight just miles from the country’s main military academy for close to a year. The U.S. never told Pakistan about its own suspicions that bin Laden was hiding out at the compound, officials said.
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani insisted his government had no knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts at any point over the last several years. He didn’t rule out the possibility that some in Pakistan who were sympathetic to bin Laden’s views provided him sanctuary.
“Pakistan is a nation of 180 million. There are people in Pakistan, unfortunately, who have sympathies with Osama bin Laden and obviously some of them had protected for him while he was there,” he said. “If we had really known where bin Laden was, we would have got him.”
Despite being left in the dark, the Pakistani ambassador spoke positively about the bin Laden mission.
“They had superior intelligence, they had superior technology, and we are grateful to them and to God for having given us this opportunity to bring this chapter to an end,” he told CNN.
In addition to President Barack Obama’s phone call with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, administration officials will continue to engage the government “as we learn more about the compound and whatever type of support system bin Laden had,” White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan told reporters on Monday.
The hope, say officials, is that the attack will inspire the Pakistani government to cooperate more fully with the United States. Several officials predict Pakistan will go through a period of soul searching about the fact bin Laden was hiding in their country in plain sight, as well as the fact the U.S. killed him on their soil.
“The top four al Qaeda leaders were killed or captured in Pakistan, its ridiculous to say this is not their problem,” a second U.S. official said. “And any claims that we violated their sovereignty won’t resonate because the target on the other end was Osama bin Laden.”
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Pakistan’s initial reaction to the news suggested reason for cautious optimist about the relationship going forward.
“They didn’t attack us for entering Pakistan. They didn’t condemn us for being in Pakistan. Those are positive signs,” he said.
But, he added, “they don’t tell us. however, what’s happening in the Pakistani military or ISI or the people who in the past have supported the Taliban or tolerated al Qaeda.”
Officials say the U.S. is going to be treating Pakistan gingerly over the next few days, as they weigh how the attack will affect the relationship. Special Representative for Afghanistan/Pakistan Marc Grossman, is in Islamabad Monday for talks with Pakistani officials.
“We still need Pakistan’s cooperation and we need to see how we can move forward,” the second official said. “We need to give them some credit for what they have done, which did lead to this day. We can’t focus excessively on the negative.”
Brennan pointed out that despite the “differences of view” between the U.S. and Pakistan on counterterrorism cooperation, Pakistan has been responsible for killing and capturing more terrorists on its soil than any other country “by a wide margin.”
“There have been many, many brave Pakistani soldiers, security officials, as well as citizens, who have given their lives because of the terrorism scourge in that country,” Brennan said, calling the partnership with Pakistan “critically important to breaking the back of al Qaeda and eventually prevailing over al Qaeda as well as associated terrorist groups.”
But Seth Jones of the RAND Corporation warns that bin Laden’s death does not resolve the big-ticket issues between Washington and Islamabad, namely Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and other insurgent groups battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, like the Haqqani network.
“As long as many of those issues continue to exist, and they have very different interests, and they have very different strategic goals in the area, then some level of conflict will likely persist,” Jones said.
Officials say they hope that the U.S. can get Pakistan on board to support a political process in Afghanistan with reconciliation between the Taliban and the Afghan government — and they believe bin Laden’s death presents an opportunity for progress.
Officials do believe that al Qaeda in Pakistan has suffered a huge disruption, having lost a charasmatic leader like bin Laden. But they are also bracing for members of al Qaeda to avenge his death and believe the U.S. will see a period of increased threat, where attacks will likely be planned against U.S. interests.
US, China to hold economy meeting in May
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Timothy Geithner attends a hearing on Capitol Hill on April 5. AFP Photo
WASHINGTON — Top officials from the United States and China will meet in Washington early next month, the Treasury Department said Monday, as tensions between the two economic superpowers simmer.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo, amid continued tensions over debt, exports and the value of China’s currency.
The Treasury Department has delayed the publication of a report that could lead to sanctions against Beijing until after the meeting, despite US lawmakers complaining that China is still manipulating its currency for trade advantage.
The semi-annual report, which was due on April 15, has become a focal point for critics who accuse Beijing of unfairly keeping the yuan weak against the dollar to boost Chinese exports.
The US government said it would wait until a meeting of the Group of 20 finance chiefs, the IMF’s annual spring meetings and the bilateral meeting on May 9 and 10 before publishing the document.
The yuan has strengthened almost five percent against the dollar in the last year, amid fierce political pressure from Washington. But experts say it still remains undervalued.
With China the largest foreign holder of US bonds, the two sides are also likely to discuss the outlook for US debt.
China urged the United States last Tuesday to adopt “responsible measures” after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut the outlook on US sovereign debt to negative.
S&P sent stocks plunging worldwide when it slashed its outlook from “stable” to “negative” Monday, pointing to doubts about Washington’s ability to tackle looming debt and fiscal deficits — concerns raised by Beijing in the past.
“US Treasury bonds are a reflection of US government credit and are important investment products for domestic and international institutional investors,” foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement.
“We hope the US government will earnestly adopt responsible policy measures to guarantee the interests of investors,” he added.
U.S. to regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco
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U.S. to regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco
(Reuters) – The U.S. government said on Monday it plans to regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco products.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s announcement came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a decision that electronic cigarettes are not drugs or devices unless they are marketed for therapeutic purposes.
In 2009, the FDA was given the authority to regulate tobacco products that are not drugs or devices.
Electronic cigarettes, marketed under names such as NJOY, mimic the act of smoking and include nicotine, but do not emit the same type of odor or ash.
In December, three judges from the appellate court ruled that the FDA could regulate the products as tobacco products and not as drugs. They also said that the FDA could not block the import of such products, giving Sottera Inc the ability to start importing its NJOY goods.
The FDA said in a notice posted on its website that it is working on a strategy to regulate products such as electronic cigarettes, which are not subject to pre-market review requirements, as tobacco products.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said on Monday that it was disappointed the U.S. government would not appeal the federal appeals court ruling. The group said the ruling opened a loophole that lets manufacturers add nicotine to products, bypassing the regulations that traditionally apply to smoking cessation medications and other non-tobacco products that include nicotine.
Obama treads carefully between Armenia and Turkey
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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/04/obama-treads-carefully-between-armenia-and-turkey/1
By Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images
Once again, President Obama stepped carefully into the historic dispute between Turkey and Armenia, but he still got criticized.
Obama issued the annual statement on Armenian Remembrance Day on Saturday, honoring the “horrific events” that took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 — but declining to label it as “genocide.”
Turkey, a key Islamic ally of the U.S. that angrily denies accusations of genocide, attacked Obama’s statement as “one-sided.”
“The statement distorts the historical facts.” said the Turkish foreign ministry. “Therefore, we find it very problematic and deeply regret it … One-sided statements that interpret controversial historical events by a selective sense of justice prevent understanding of the truth.”
In his statement — issued late Saturday — Obama said: “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed. A full, frank, and just acknowledgment of the facts is in all our interests.”
In the meantime, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, Ken Hachikian, criticized Obama for a “disgraceful capitulation to Turkey’s threats” and failing to acknowledge what many historians describe as genocide.
“His complicity in Turkey’s denials, and his administration’s active opposition to congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide represent the very opposite of the principled and honest change he promised to bring to our country’s response to this crime,” Hachikian said.
Armenians say that 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, which Armenians and several nations around the world recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey denies that the massacres were genocide, saying the death toll is inflated and Armenians were killed in civil unrest as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
