Russia, U.S. fail to set up Syria peace talks

By Oliver Holmes and Tom Miles

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Talks between the United States and Russia to set up a Syrian peace conference produced no deal on Tuesday, with the powers on either side of the two-year civil war failing to agree when it should be held or who would be invited.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal accused the Syrian government of "genocide" and described the involvement in the conflict of foreign militias backed by Iran as "the most dangerous development".

Washington and Moscow announced plans for the peace conference last month, but their relations have since deteriorated rapidly, as momentum on the battlefield has swung in favor of President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington decided this month to provide military aid to the rebels fighting Assad, while Moscow refused to drop its support for the Syrian leader it has continued to arm.

After five hours of talks in Geneva sponsored by the United Nations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said there was still no agreement over whether Assad's ally Iran should be allowed to attend the conference, or who would represent the Syrian opposition.

The United States and Western European powers have joined Arab countries and Turkey in supporting the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels. Russia and Iran support Assad, who has made gains in recent weeks with the help of thousands of fighters from the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet next week, and further talks on the conference are expected to follow, a U.N. statement said.

In Damascus, Assad's forces fired mortars and shells at Zamalka and Irbin, just east of the government-held city centre, in an assault backed by air strikes, opposition activists said.

Rebels who grabbed footholds in Damascus nearly a year ago say they now face an advancing Syrian military buoyed by support from Hezbollah.

If the insurgents are driven from the capital's eastern suburbs, they would lose supply routes and suffer a heavy blow in their drive to end four decades of Assad family rule.

In Jeddah, Prince Saud repeated Saudi Arabia's call for the rebels to be armed. "Syria is facing a double-edged attack. It is facing genocide by the government and an invasion from outside the government," he told a news conference with Kerry. "(It) is facing a massive flow of weapons to aid and abet that invasion and that genocide. This must end."

The Saudi foreign minister attacked Iranian involvement. "The most dangerous development is the foreign participation, represented by Hezbollah and other militias supported by the forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," he said.

Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state which views Shi'ite Iran as its arch-rival, has increased aid to Syrian rebels in recent months, supplying anti-aircraft missiles among other weapons.

Security in Syria's neighbors Iraq and Lebanon, where the conflict has aggravated Sunni-Shi'ite tensions, has crumbled.

Suicide bombers killed eight people north of Baghdad on Tuesday, a day after 39 people died when 10 car bombs exploded in the capital. Violence has spiraled in Iraq since April.

"GETTING OUT OF HAND"

In Lebanon, clashes between the Lebanese army and gunmen led by an anti-Hezbollah Sunni cleric engulfed the southern port of Sidon on Sunday and Monday. At least 40 people were killed, including 18 soldiers, security sources said.

Sectarian hatred has even flared in Sunni-majority Egypt, where a crowd attacked and killed five Shi'ites on Sunday.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League mediator, urged the United States and Russia to help "contain this situation that is getting out of hand, not only in Syria but also in the region".

Speaking in Geneva before the talks with U.S. and Russian officials, Brahimi said he doubted that the Syria peace conference could take place next month, citing disarray among Assad's political opponents.

More than 93,000 people have been killed in Syria since peaceful protests erupted in March 2011. Assad's violent response helped to provoke what is now a civil war that has driven nearly 1.7 million refugees into neighbouring countries.

Outgunned rebels are looking to Western and Arab nations to help them to reverse Assad's gains. But although the United States announced unspecified military aid this month, it is unclear whether this can shift the balance against the Syrian leader and his allies.

Kerry wants to ensure aid to the rebels is properly coordinated, partly out of concern that weapons could end up in the hands of Islamist militants who are prominent in their ranks. "Our goal is very clear, we cannot let this be a wider war, we cannot let this contribute to more bloodshed and prolongation of the agony of the people of Syria," he said.

(Additional reporting by Mahmoud Habboush in Dubai and Lesley Wroughton in Jeddah; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Peter Graff, editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-military-battles-rebels-eastern-damascus-115452207.html

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Russian Cosmonauts Begin Spacewalk Outside Space Station

Two Russian cosmonauts ventured outside the International Space Station today (June 24) to begin a six-hour spacewalk to test and upgrade systems on the orbiting lab's exterior.

Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and his crewmate Alexander Misurkin floated outside to begin their work at 9:32 a.m. EDT (1332 GMT). This is the sixth career spacewalk for Yurchikhin and Misurkin's first. So far, Yurchikhin has logged 31 hours and 52 minutes of spacewalk time.

You can?watch the spacewalk live on SPACE.com?courtesy of NASA TV now. Misurkin is in the blue striped suit and Yurchikhin is in red.?

"I'm excellent," Misurkin said as Yurchikhin joined him outside of the space station. "I'm ready to press on."

The cosmonauts are expected to test automatic docking cables in anticipation of a new Russian module scheduled to arrive at the station later this year. Misurkin and Yurchikhin also plan to install clamps that will hold cables from the station's U.S. side that will power the new module on the Russian portion of the laboratory.

They will also install handholds to aid in future spacewalks, retrieve experiments from the outside of the station and "replace a fluid flow control valve panel on the Zarya module," NASA officials said in a statement.

This is the first spacewalk since two NASA astronauts performed an unplanned emergency excursion to?fix an ammonia leak?on the outside of the space station in May. The spacewalk by Misurkin and Yurchikhin will mark the 169th in support of station care and construction.

The two cosmonauts are living and working on the space station along with NASA's Karen Nyberg and Chris Cassidy, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and Russia's Pavel Vinogradov.

The orbiting laboratory is about the size of a five bedroom house with the wingspan of a football field. The $100 billion?International Space Station?was built by five space agencies representing 15 countries. Construction began in 1998 and has been staffed with rotating crews of astronauts continuously since 2000.

Editor's Note: This is an updated version of an?earlier story about the spacewalk .?

Follow Miriam Kramer?@mirikramer?and?Google+. Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?and?Google+. Original article on?SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-cosmonauts-begin-spacewalk-outside-space-station-135316589.html

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Supreme Court makes it harder for workers to win discrimination lawsuits

The Supreme Court issued a pair of 5-to-4 rulings on workers' lawsuits. Justice Ginsburg filed a dissent in both cases calling for Congress to overturn the decisions by passing new legislation.

By Warren Richey,?Staff writer / June 24, 2013

People wait outside the Supreme Court in Washington as key decisions are expected to be announced Monday, June 24. The high court handed down two important decisions Monday that will make it harder for workers to mount and win discrimination lawsuits against their employers.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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The US Supreme Court handed down two important decisions Monday that will make it harder for workers to mount and win discrimination lawsuits against their employers.

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In a pair of 5-to-4 decisions, the justices embraced a narrow definition of who qualifies as a supervisor for purposes of federal discrimination law, and the court endorsed a tough standard in cases where a worker claims to be the victim of retaliation after complaining of unlawful discrimination.

The majority justices said the narrow standards would be easier for courts to administer and that other safeguards were available to protect workers.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a dissent in both cases calling for Congress to overturn the decisions by passing new legislation.

?Congress has, in the recent past, intervened to correct this Court?s wayward interpretations of Title VII,? she wrote, referring to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act in 2009 overturning a 2007 high court decision.

?The ball is once again in Congress? court to correct the error into which this Court has fallen and to restore the robust protections against workplace harassment the Court weakens today,? she said.

?The winner today, as in most days in the recent past, is business,? Mark Graber, a law professor at the?University of Maryland, said in a statement.

He said the decisions will help insulate businesses from liability in workplace discrimination and retaliation lawsuits.

Both cases were decided by the same 5-to-4 conservative-liberal split among the justices.

The retaliation decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

It stems from the case of Naiel Nassar, a physician and faculty member at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Nassar is of Middle Eastern heritage and complained that one of his supervisors was biased against him because of his religion and ethnic heritage.

He eventually resigned from his teaching position but arranged to keep working at the Medical Center. After resigning, Nassar sent letters to his former supervisors and colleagues stating that he was leaving because of harassment.

Angry at the letter, one of the supervisors contacted the Medical Center, which then withdrew Nassar?s job offer.

Nassar sued, accusing the supervisor of engaging in illegal retaliation tied to his earlier complaints about bias by a different supervisor.

The question in the case was whether the lower courts applied the correct standard for proving a case of illegal retaliation.

The lower courts applied a broad standard that held that Nassar could win his case as long as he could prove that retaliation was a motivating factor [among other factors] for the adverse employment action.

The jury found for Nassar, awarding him $400,000 in back pay and more than $3 million in compensatory damages. The $3 million award was later reduced to $300,000.

An appeals court upheld the lower court?s use of the broader, motivating-factor standard.

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the Medical Center argued that the lower courts should have applied a tougher standard. They said Nassar should have been required to show that he lost his job at the Medical Center because of his supervisor?s illegal retaliation.

On Monday, the high court agreed with the Medical Center that the tougher standard is required.

?The text, structure, and history of Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] demonstrates that a plaintiff making a retaliation claim under [federal civil rights law] must establish that his or her [allegation of discrimination was the cause] of the alleged adverse action by the employer,? Justice Kennedy wrote.

?The University claims that a fair application of this standard, which is more demanding than the motivating-factor standard adopted by the Court of Appeals, entitles it to judgment as a matter of law,? he said.

Kennedy said that question would be better resolved by the lower courts that handled the case.

The Supreme Court vacated the earlier appeals court decision that upheld the lower court, and remanded the case for further action under the clarified standard.

The case was University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Naiel Nassar (12-484).

The decision in the second case was written by Justice Samuel Alito. The issue in that case was how to determine who qualifies as a supervisor in the workplace for purposes of a federal discrimination lawsuit.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/0_dJrk5tVB8/Supreme-Court-makes-it-harder-for-workers-to-win-discrimination-lawsuits

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Judge: Defense can use Zimmerman statements

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) ? George Zimmerman's defense attorneys can use the neighborhood watch volunteer's claim that he was screaming for help moments before he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Judge Debra Nelson made the ruling Monday shortly before opening statements in Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial.

Zimmerman told a police officer and neighbor that he was yelling for help but nobody responded during his confrontation with Martin.

Zimmerman is pleading not guilty to second-degree murder, claiming self-defense.

Arguments over whether the remarks could be used by the defense delayed opening statements, which were scheduled to begin Monday after almost two weeks of picking a jury.

Zimmerman, who identifies himself as Hispanic, says he shot Martin in self-defense. Prosecutors say Zimmerman racially profiled Martin as he walked through a gated community where Zimmerman lived and often patrolled. Martin was returning from a convenience store on a rainy night in February 2012, wearing a dark hooded shirt. The two eventually got into a fight and Zimmerman shot Martin.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson ruled last week prosecutors will be able to use the word "profiled" in their opening statements, as long as their description isn't limited to racial profiling. Prosecutors will be able to describe Zimmerman as a "wannabe cop" and "vigilante" and will be able to say Zimmerman confronted Martin.

"We don't intend to say he was profiled solely because of race," prosecutor John Guy said last week.

Defense attorneys Mark O'Mara and Don West will argue the case is simply self-defense, free of the racial overtones that have overshadowed it. The initial decision not to charge Zimmerman led to public outrage and demonstrations around the nation. Civil rights leaders and others accused the police in the central Florida city of Sanford of failing to thoroughly investigate the shooting because Martin was a black teen from Miami. Martin was visiting his father in Sanford when he was shot.

"We're trying so hard in this case not to make it what everybody outside the courthouse wants it to be," O'Mara said.

On Feb. 26, 2012, Zimmerman spotted Martin, whom he did not recognize, walking in the townhome community where Zimmerman and the fiancee of Martin's father lived. There had been a rash of recent break-ins and Zimmerman was wary of strangers walking through the complex.

The two eventually got into a struggle and Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest with his 9mm handgun. He was charged 44 days after the shooting, only after a special prosecutor was appointed to review the case and after protests.

"I ask that you pray for me and my family because I don't want any other mothers to have to experience what I'm going through now," said Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother, shortly before the start of opening statements.

Two police dispatch phone calls will be important evidence for both sides' cases.

The first is a call Zimmerman made to a nonemergency police dispatcher as he followed Martin walking through his gated community. At one point, the dispatcher tells Zimmerman he doesn't need to be following Martin.

The second 911 call captures screams from the confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin. Martin's parents said the screams are from their son while Zimmerman's father contends they belong to his son.

Nelson ruled last weekend that audio experts for the prosecution won't be able to testify that the screams belong to Martin, saying the methods the experts used were unreliable.

___

Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KHightower

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-defense-zimmerman-statements-134304862.html

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India monsoon floods kill at least 560; thousands missing

By Danish Siddiqui

RUDRAPRAYAG, India (Reuters) - Flash floods and landslides unleashed by early monsoon rains have killed at least 560 people in northern India and left tens of thousands missing, officials said on Saturday, with the death toll expected to rise significantly.

Houses and small apartment blocks on the banks of the Ganges, India's longest river and sacred to Hindus, have toppled into the rushing, swollen waters and been swept away with cars and trucks.

"It has been a horrifying experience," said Tulika Srivastava, a visitor from the northern Indian city of Lucknow, who has been stranded with her 80-year-old mother in the key pilgrimage town of Rudraprayag since last week.

Thousands of military servicemen are involved in rescue operations, with air force helicopters plucking survivors, many of them Hindu pilgrims and tourists, from the foothills of the Himalayas.

About 33,000 people had been rescued so far this week, the home ministry said. Railways were running special trains from the devastated areas to take people home.

"Whatever is humanly possible is being done," Manish Tewari, the minister of information and broadcasting, told reporters.

The rains had eased on Saturday but more rain is expected early next week, complicating the task of rescuers. Rain will fall from Monday onwards in many places in the Himalayan foothills, said a weather official who sought anonymity.

As many as 150,000 people were airlifted from the reach of the floods, said Dinesh Malasi, a rescue official at Dehradun, the state capital, with 60 helicopters pressed into the task.

Aid workers are struggling to negotiate roads blocked by landslides to reach the Kedarnath Valley, one of the worst affected areas, where thousands of pilgrims have been stranded. Some of those rescued by helicopter told charity officials in Dehradun they had seen bodies scattered everywhere.

Kedarnath, the site of a temple to a powerful Hindu deity, is 86 km from Rudraprayag in the hill state of Uttarakhand.

"The deaths will certainly rise," said Madan Mohan Doval, an official of Sphere India, a group of non-government bodies working in the area that includes international charity Plan as well as the Indian Red Cross Society.

"People are in immediate need of basic aid such as dry food, clean drinking water, clothes, medicines, tarpaulin sheets for shelter and blankets," Doval added.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has offered 200,000 rupees ($3,400) to the family of each of those who lost their lives and 50,000 rupees ($840) to the injured from his national relief fund. He also pledged money to people who have lost their homes.

Singh promised 10 billion rupees ($167 million) in disaster relief to Uttarakhand, home of the gods in Hindu mythology and the hardest-hit state.

The rains have not hit the summer sowing season in northern India so far, as the planting of rice, sugar, cotton and other agricultural produce is not yet in full swing. ($1=59 rupees)

(Additional reporting by Sruthi Gottipati, Ratnajyoti Dutta and Nita Bhalla in NEW DELHI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/india-monsoon-floods-kill-least-560-thousands-missing-063101300.html

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Taliban offer adds urgency to Idaho POW rally

HAILEY, Idaho (AP) ? Hundreds of activists for missing service members gathered in a small Idaho town Saturday to hear the parents of the only known U.S. prisoner of war speak just days after his Taliban captors announced they want to exchange him for prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Bob and Jani Bergdahl were already on a list of speakers at the "Bring Bowe Back" celebration in Hailey, Idaho, when the Taliban proposed the prisoner swap on Thursday.

Organizer Stefanie O'Neill said the parents of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, captured four years ago June 30, haven't wavered in their pledge to address those who gather, a group that included as many as 400 POW-MIA activists aboard motorcycles riding into town.

Buses also brought POW-MIA activists from as far as Elko, Nev.

Though yellow ribbons on Main Street trees and "Bring Bowe Home" placards in Hailey shop windows are a constant reminder of the 27-year-old Bergdahl's captivity, O'Neill said the Taliban offer has lent an addition element of urgency ? and hope ? to the event.

"We're not a community without Bowe," O'Neill said. "We're doing our best, but we need him back."

Bob Bergdahl plans to ride his son's dirt bike as part of the motorcycle procession that will travel north on Idaho State Highway 75 to Hailey's Hop Porter Park. That's where young four Norway maples have been planted overlooking the children's playground to commemorate each of the four years Bowe Bergdahl been held captive following his June 30, 2009 capture in Afghanistan.

He's believed held somewhere in Pakistan, but the Taliban said they would free him in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay, the American installation on the southeastern tip of Cuba that's housed suspected terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The militant group's proposition came just days ahead of possible talks between a U.S. delegation and Taliban members in Qatar.

The discussions would be the first U.S.-Taliban talks in nearly 1 1/2 years, and the prospect that they could include discussions over Bergdahl have raised his family's spirits in Hailey, according to Donna Thibedeau-Eddy, a family friend.

The discussions are just the latest good news Bob and Jani Bergdahl have received in recent weeks. On June 6, they announced they had received a letter in Bowe's handwriting, the first since he was taken prisoner, shuttled through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-offer-adds-urgency-idaho-pow-rally-081600377.html

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