November 30, 2011
Britain Evacuates Diplomats After Tehran Embassy Attack
CAIRO — Britain said Wednesday it was flying diplomats out of Tehran a day after Iranian protesters shouting “Death to England” stormed the British Embassy compound and a diplomatic residence, tearing down the British flag, smashing windows, defacing walls and briefly detaining six staff members in what appeared to be a state-sponsored protest against Britain’s tough new economic sanctions against Iran.
The attack was the most serious diplomatic breach since the traumatic assault on the United States Embassy after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, expressed outrage over the attack, saying Britain held Iran’s government responsible and promising “other, further, and serious consequences.”
In a statement early on Wednesday, the Foreign Office in London said the British authorities believed “the safety of our staff and their families is our immediate priority. In light of yesterday’s events and to ensure their ongoing safety, some staff are leaving Tehran.”
The statement did not go into detail or say whether the embassy would remain open.
The scale of the attack — led by hundreds of students described as members of the Basij militia by the Iranian state media — appeared to surprise even some Iranian officials. Later in the day, Iran’s Foreign Ministry releasedan uncharacteristic expression of regret that contrasted sharply with the angry rhetorical jabs at Britain issued a day earlier by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s leaders, buffeted by the new sanctions, a collapsing economy and increasingly bitter infighting among the political elite, may have welcomed a chance to change the subject, analysts said. But the episode also appeared to be a shot across the bow aimed at the West, in line with Tehran’s old policies of escalating defiance.
“Khamenei’s philosophy is often to react to outside pressure with provocation, to imply that Western pressure will only further radicalize, not moderate, Iranian behavior,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Security forces initially stood by as students laboriously broke through the embassy’s massive main gate and then ransacked the offices, burning British flags and smashing pictures of Queen Elizabeth II. Only later did police officers in riot gear begin a somewhat lackadaisical effort to remove the protesters from the grounds, according to reports on state-supported Iranian news media and images broadcast on state television.
President Obama, speaking about the assault during a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands at the White House, said he was “deeply concerned” that the Iranian authorities had permitted it to happen. “For rioters essentially to be able to overrun the embassy and set it on fire is an indication that the Iranian government is not taking its international obligations seriously,” Mr. Obama said.
The European Union also rushed to condemn the assault, and the United Nations Security Council issued a statement calling on Iran to protect foreign diplomats and embassy property.
Of the three nations Iran’s leaders loathe the most — Israel, the United States and Britain — only Britain maintains an embassy in the country, making it an easy target. But hostility to the British taps a deep vein in the Iranian psyche. The United States may be the “Great Satan” to Iran’s theocratic rulers, but it is Britain — the crafty old colonial power whose designs in Iran go back two centuries — that is still widely blamed for almost every upheaval in the country. One of the events that helped ignite the 1979 revolution was Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s decision to publish an article accusing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolt’s then-exiled spiritual leader, of belonging to a family of British agents.
“The ‘British hand’ is said to be behind every major event of the past 150 years,” said Abbas Milani, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Stanford University. “The Americans are seen as naïve malleable tools in the hands of the Brits.”
A day before the embassy assault, Ayatollah Khamenei assailed Britain in a speech as an emblem of Western imperial arrogance, saying it “has a history of humiliating nations, destroying cultural and civilization heritage and taking control of their resources.”
Britain’s new economic sanctions provoked special anger because they require all contacts to be severed with the Iranian Central Bank, a step other countries, including the Unites States, have not taken. The United States and the European Union also imposed new sanctions last week after a United Nations report offered new evidence suggesting that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems.
The intensifying struggle over Iran’s nuclear programwas visible in another aspect of Tuesday’s embassy assault: the protesters could be heard chanting the name of Majid Shahriari, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was killed by mysterious assailants exactly a year ago. Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency issued a report on Tuesday accusing Israeli and British intelligence of carrying out the assassination.
Iranian officials have derided the latest United Nations reporton Iran’s nuclear program as “propaganda” written at the behest of the United States to justify airstrikes on Iran.
The attack on Tuesday began when about 50 protesters invaded the offices in the vast walled compound housing the British Embassy and its manicured grounds, situated in a busy neighborhood in the heart of Tehran, Iranian state media reported. Outside the gates, thousands of student protesters chanted religious slogans and demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador. Meanwhile, 200 to 300 others broke into a British diplomatic residence a few miles north of the embassy, called Qolhak Garden. The facility also houses a school.
Fars reported that police officers freed six British staff members who had been surrounded by the Qolhak Garden protesters and that 12 of those protesters were later arrested.
According to Fars, the police eventually used tear gas to disperse some protesters inside the embassy grounds, and a number of protesters were wounded. The agency said the demonstration ended after Brig. Gen. Ahmad-Reza Radan, the deputy police chief, warned any recalcitrant protesters they would face a “tough police confrontation” if they did not leave the embassy.
Earlier, television images showed protesters, some armed with gasoline bombs, rampaging through offices strewn with papers, and at least one vehicle burning inside the compound. There could be no mistake about the state’s compliance: police could be seen standing by in television footage, and in any case the security forces have maintained strict control over all large protests in Iran ever since the disputed presidential election of 2009.
The Iranian authorities have orchestrated similar political demonstrations against foreign embassies in the past, intervening only after the protest was well under way and the message was clear.
It was the most serious violence aimed at the British Embassy in Tehran since relations were restored in 1990 after a break caused by Iranian outrage over the 1988 publication of “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, the Indian-British novelist.
The embassy attack came a day after Iran’s Parliament approved a measureto expel the British ambassador and downgrade diplomatic relations between the two countries, in retaliation for Britain’s new economic sanctions.
November 29, 2011
Canadian city on top ten list of best places to live worldwide
VIENNA (Reuters) - Vienna's excellent infrastructure, safe streets and good public health service make it the nicest place to live in the world, consulting group Mercer said in a global survey which putBaghdad firmly in last place.
German and Swiss cities also performed especially well in the quality of living rankings, with Zurich, Munich, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva and Bern in the top 10.
The Austrian capital, with its ornate buildings, public parks and extensive bicycle network recently reduced the cost of its annual public transport ticket to 1 euro a day.
Serious crime is rare and the city of around 1.7 million inhabitants regularly tops global quality of life surveys.
But Mercer warned that top-ranking European cities could not take their position for granted in the survey, which assessed more than 200 cities.
"They are not immune to any decrease of living standards should this (economic) turmoil persist," Mercer's senior researcher Slagin Parakatil said on the company's website.
Mercer, which also ranked cities according to personal safety, gave Athens a poor score because of clashes between demonstrators and police and political instability.
"In 2011 Athens is ranked in Europe among the lowest in the personal safety ranking," Parakatil said.
Oslo also fell to 24th place in the separate safety survey because ofAnders Breivik's mass killings in July. It would usually be in the top 15, Mercer said.
Baghdad's political turmoil, poor security enforcement and attacks on local people and foreigners made it the worst place to live in 2011, both in terms of life quality and safety, Mercer said.
Political and economic unrest in Africa and the Middle East also pushed down scores in those regions.
"Many countries such as Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen have seen their quality of living levels drop considerably," Parakatil said.
"Political and economic reconstruction in these countries, combined with funding to serve basic human needs, will undoubtedly boost the region."
He said that while the outlook is uncertain for most of the world because of economic and political turmoil, cities in Asia-Pacific look set to benefit thanks to political stability and solid growth.
Auckland, Sydney, Wellington, Melbourne and Perth made it into the top 20 for quality of life in 2011 while Singapore was the highest-ranking Asian city in 25th place.
Top 10 in Mercer Quality of Living survey
1 Vienna Austria
2 Zurich Switzerland
3 Auckland New Zealand
4 Munich Germany
5 Duesseldorf Germany
5 Vancouver Canada
7 Frankfurt Germany
8 Geneva Switzerland
9 Bern Switzerland
10 Copenhagen Denmark
http://www.mercer.com/qualityoflivingpr#city-rankings
Cdn city on top ten list of best places to live worldwide
VIENNA (Reuters) - Vienna's excellent infrastructure, safe streets and good public health service make it the nicest place to live in the world, consulting group Mercer said in a global survey which putBaghdad firmly in last place.
German and Swiss cities also performed especially well in the quality of living rankings, with Zurich, Munich, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva and Bern in the top 10.
The Austrian capital, with its ornate buildings, public parks and extensive bicycle network recently reduced the cost of its annual public transport ticket to 1 euro a day.
Serious crime is rare and the city of around 1.7 million inhabitants regularly tops global quality of life surveys.
But Mercer warned that top-ranking European cities could not take their position for granted in the survey, which assessed more than 200 cities.
"They are not immune to any decrease of living standards should this (economic) turmoil persist," Mercer's senior researcher Slagin Parakatil said on the company's website.
Mercer, which also ranked cities according to personal safety, gave Athens a poor score because of clashes between demonstrators and police and political instability.
"In 2011 Athens is ranked in Europe among the lowest in the personal safety ranking," Parakatil said.
Oslo also fell to 24th place in the separate safety survey because ofAnders Breivik's mass killings in July. It would usually be in the top 15, Mercer said.
Baghdad's political turmoil, poor security enforcement and attacks on local people and foreigners made it the worst place to live in 2011, both in terms of life quality and safety, Mercer said.
Political and economic unrest in Africa and the Middle East also pushed down scores in those regions.
"Many countries such as Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen have seen their quality of living levels drop considerably," Parakatil said.
"Political and economic reconstruction in these countries, combined with funding to serve basic human needs, will undoubtedly boost the region."
He said that while the outlook is uncertain for most of the world because of economic and political turmoil, cities in Asia-Pacific look set to benefit thanks to political stability and solid growth.
Auckland, Sydney, Wellington, Melbourne and Perth made it into the top 20 for quality of life in 2011 while Singapore was the highest-ranking Asian city in 25th place.
Top 10 in Mercer Quality of Living survey
1 Vienna Austria
2 Zurich Switzerland
3 Auckland New Zealand
4 Munich Germany
5 Duesseldorf Germany
5 Vancouver Canada
7 Frankfurt Germany
8 Geneva Switzerland
9 Bern Switzerland
10 Copenhagen Denmark
http://www.mercer.com/qualityoflivingpr#city-rankings
Canadians should brace for a messy, stormy winter, says the Weather Network
OAKVILLE, Ont. - Canadians should brace for a messy, unpredictable and stormy winter, with many of the ups and down blamed on the return of La Nina.
"This is going to be a real roller-coaster of a winter," said Chris Scott, a meteorologist with The Weather Network.
"The thing to prepare for this winter is a lot of ups and downs, a lot of freeze/thaws cycles, especially in areas that are closer to freezing."
In a forecast for December to February the Weather Network released Monday, the wintry weather is predicted to be similar to that felt last year, with some big rain and snow storms as well as windier than average conditions.
The culprit behind much of that unpredictability will be La Nina, a large pool of colder than normal water off the coast of South America, which tends to make for very changeable conditions.
"We can't say for sure whether we're in for a `Snowmaggedown' or some big monster storm, but we certainly think the pattern is there this winter for some very active weather across the country," Scott said.
Some Canadians were already worrying about the forecast, even though many parts of Canada have yet to see so much as a flake of snow.
"Ruh roh weather network says tdot could have reaaally bad snow storms this winter!! Hope they're wrong," one Twitter user tweeted.
The news is not all dire, however, since Quebec and Atlantic Canada will be in for milder weather, while the wintry weather will be off to a later than average start in southern sections of Ontario.
As well, above average precipitation forecasted for southern British Columbia will make for snow-packed, powdery slopes, and many happy skiers and snow boarders.
Most of British Columbia and the Prairies will experience below normal temperatures, however, and in the North, the Yukon, Northwest Territories and southwest tip of Nunavut are expected to be in for a colder than usual stretch.
"We often see major storms in the winter, it doesn't mean that every week's going to be wild across the country, but as we get to the next few weeks, we'll really start to see winter ramping up," said Scott.
When the storms come, some will have "everything falling from the sky:" snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and rain — so experts say people should bundle up, keep their walkways clean and be aware of driving conditions.
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