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Gen Petraeus will take over this weekend from Gen George Casey, who has been promoted to US Army chief of staff.
As well as the raid on the health ministry, there were another series of sectarian attacks in Iraq.
A car bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens in a market in the predominantly Shia town of Aziziya, south of Baghdad, while 10 people died in a car bombing in a mainly Shia district in the eastern of the capital.
Elsewhere, 14 people said to be from one Sunni family were reportedly killed by gunmen in Balad, north of Baghdad.
Iraqi officials say US and Iraqi troops broke down doors in the health ministry's offices in central Baghdad in their search for Mr Zamili.
Shattered glass littered the floor, computers were overturned and a large white boot print was left on the office door, the Associated Press news agency reported.
The minister and some of his guards were arrested.
The US military said Mr Zamili was allegedly implicated in the deaths of a number of ministry officials.
It said he had also allegedly channelled millions of dollars to Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
Mr Sadr's group accused the US of provocation and urged the government to take immediate action to free the official.
"They are trying to drag the Sadrist movement to a confrontation. How else would arresting a deputy health minister without an arrest warrant be read," Abdel Mahdi al-Matiri, an official in Mr Sadr's movement, told Reuters news agency.
The raid on the Iraqi health ministry comes more than two months after suspected Sunni insurgents tried to storm the building, triggering a fierce gun battle.
US and Iraqi forces have announced a major offensive in the Baghdad area, aimed at ending spiralling violence by Sunni and Shia militants.
The BBC's Jane Peel in Baghdad says that in the past some members of Iraq's governing Iraqi coalition have provided militias with protection.
Last month the US military said operations had led to 16 senior members of the Mehdi Army being detained and one commander being killed.
On Wednesday Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki urged his military commanders to speed up preparations for the new security measures in Baghdad.
He said a delay in implementing the US-backed plan had started to give a negative message.
He also says the idea being promoted by the government that if our exporters make more profits it will improve the lives of all New Zealanders is “a version of the discredited trickle-down theory” and that he would be very sceptical about the economic growth claims.
In general, Stiglitz says, free trade agreements can be “job killing” in the poorer countries, who sign up to such agreements and exert a downward pressure on the wages even in advanced countries.
The theme of job losses and job creation as a result of free trade agreements is one Bruce says he will develop in his upcoming documentary but for the moment is simply scathing of the thin six-page report on the (CPTPP) recently issued by The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.
“Take for example the submission by the Council of Trade Unions on the lowering of wages that might well result from this agreement. They pointed to New Zealand research in its submission that shows workers who lose their jobs earn 20-25 percent less in the year following their displacement and are still 8-12 percent lower five years later, than where they would have been had they not lost their job. The issue doesn’t get a mention in the committee’s summary,” says Bruce.
Also glossed over in the six-page select committee report Bruce says, is the fact that three of the major economies in the agreement – Japan, Canada, Mexico – and Chile have all refused to sign side letters preventing investors from their countries suing in Investment State Dispute Settlement tribunals, which are not courts and against which there is no appeal.
During the 30-minute interview, Stiglitz unpacks how ‘big corporates’ and ‘financial elites’ benefit hugely from these agreements at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Speaking from an American perspective he says, “They do it by lobbying and through campaign contributions” and New Zealand should avoid being bullied by them.
Bruce says he has approached Trade Minister David Parker twice for an on-camera interview about some of the issues raised by his research. Both he and NZ First spokesperson on Trade, Fletcher Tabateau, have refused.
Kampala — Police yesterday confirmed that security in public and social gathering places around the country has been beefed up in the wake of the terror attack in Kenya's Capital, Nairobi.
Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility of the attack on a hotel and office complex which left at least 14 people dead on Tuesday.
The group remains a security threat to Uganda following their attacks on Kampala in a twin-bombing in July 2010 that left more than 70 people dead.
Daily Monitor has seen a directive issued by the Director Counter Terrorism, Mr Abas Byakagaba, instructing all counter terrorism unit commanders to be on high alert and ensure that all crowded places, hotels and tourism sites in the country are secured.
He directed that the heightened vigilance and carrying out precautionary measures aimed at closing security gaps in those places be carried out closely with other security agencies and private security firms guarding such places.
"Ensure maximum vigilance and activate all measures to protect all vulnerable areas, including crowded places, hotels, tourism sites and other facilities," Mr Byakagaba said in an internal memo seen by this newspaper.
Police spokesperson Fred Enanga confirmed the development, saying other wide ranges of interventions which could not be disclosed to the public have been put in place.
Mr Enanga said all commanding officers had received the directives.
In a way of preparedness for any planned terror attacks on Uganda, different government ministers have urged Ugandans to be vigilant and help the security agencies to detect acts of terrorism before they can strike.
The Security minister, Gen Elly Tumwine, asked Ugandans to be on the look out to identify and report strange people in their communities.
"Good enough we have now known that what happened in Nairobi was a terror attack, and terrorism can occur anywhere around the world. So, we warn everyone to be on the lookout for strangers and monitor strange parking of vehicles in busy places," Gen Tumwine said.
However, he refuted reports that the National Security Council had sat earlier in the day to evaluate the security situation and discuss the country's preparedness since the al-Shabaab, who attacked Kenya, always wish to attack Uganda.
"No, we did not have any security council meeting. I attended other meetings but not the security council meeting," Gen Tumwine said.
But Foreign Affairs State Minister Okello Oryem had told this newspaper that the Security Council sat to evaluate and assess the security situation in the country, saying "an attack on Kenya means an attack on Uganda".
Mr Oryem, who declined to reveal details of the meeting and whether he or his senior minister Sam Kutesa attended it, said: "The National Security Council sat today (Wednesday) to evaluate and assess the security situation because it is prudent for us to examine ourselves when terrorists strike out neighnours."
He said there were no reports of any Ugandans among the causalities of the Nairobi terror attack.
A source at the Ugandan embassy in Nairobi said there were some Ugandans among the people rescued from the office complex but there were no reports of "dead, wounded or missing" Ugandans.
"We sent out a notification to the Ugandans to call in case of any deaths, injuries and missing persons. Nobody has called. The official causality list is not out yet," the source said.
MACOMB — On February 22, from 6-8 PM, the Macomb Park District will host a Daddy Daughter Dance in the Midamerica National Bank Conference Hall at the Spoon River College Outreach Center, for daughters aged six to 12.
Doors open at 5:30, and the dance will proceed from 6 – 8 p.m. The dance is themed after a night in Paris.
Taylor Hanneman, the park district’s superintendent of events, said that the event encourages parental figures of all types, and offers formal dancing, food, deserts, professional pictures, games, and other fun activities.
Registration for the event can be found online at the Macomb Park District’s website, under the “registration” tab. There, prospective attendees can find a link to register individually. Registration is $20 per person ($40 per couple) if you are a resident of Macomb, and $25 (for couples) for those outside the district. There are 120 slots in total, and 114 remaining at the time of this article. Registration costs will increase to $60 per couple on the day of the event.
The upper level of the penthouse.
A triplex penthouse at the Chetrit Group's 550 Madison Avenue will have the astronomical price tag of $150 million and is slated to shatter the record for the city's priciest listing, The Real Deal has learned.
The $150 million penthouse will encompass floors 33 through 35 of the 37-story tower between 55th and 56th streets, according to an offering plan filed with the New York Attorney General's Real Estate Finance Bureau and reviewed by TRD.
The residence will be serviced by a private elevator and will measure a whopping 21,504 square feet - a vast space that will hold eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms and 10 powder rooms, according to the offering plan. Douglas Elliman is listed as the selling agent.
The middle level of the penthouse.
The asking price per square foot for the 550 Madison triplex is about $6,975, in comparison to the $10,489 per square foot the Zeckendorfs are planning to ask for their $130 million triplex atop 520 Park Avenue. Chetrit is bringing 96 ultra-luxe condos to Sony's former headquarters for a total sellout of $1.8 billion, as TRD reported.
The developer and an investor group paid $1.1 billion for the property in 2013. The principal sponsors of the condos are Meyer Chetrit and David Bistricer of Clipper Equity.
The lower level of the penthouse.
The city's current pricing listing is a $118 million three-unit combination at the Ritz Carlton in Battery Park City. Meanwhile, a $100.5 million penthouse condo at Gary Barnett's One57 became the city's priciest-ever condo sale when it closed last year for about $9,200 per square foot.
Before that, the $88 million purchase in 2012 of Sanford Weill's 15 Central Park West penthouse, which closed for about $13,000 per square foot, was the highest price paid for a Manhattan pad.
SAN JOSE — For the first time, San Jose residents know exactly how much of their city has been paved over and how much is shaded by trees.
According to a new study that used lasers to map trees from the air, 58 percent of San Jose’s urbanized area is covered with buildings, asphalt or concrete. And 15.4 percent is covered by trees.
Although leafier than San Francisco and Los Angeles, San Jose lagged behind Sacramento and Pasadena in terms of tree cover. And out of the six other California cities compared in the new report, San Jose’s preponderance of pavement was topped only by Los Angeles.
Scientists from the U.S. Forest Service, UC Davis, Cal Fire and the University of Vermont used lasers and other imaging techniques to count and map out the city’s trees. In a first-of-its-kind twist to the “urban canopy” study, the scientists then calculated the economic value the trees provide to the city’s residents, both in terms of property value and ecological benefits such as cleaning the air and making hot summer days a bit cooler.
City Council District 6, which includes Willow Glen and the Rose Garden, is the leafiest district, whereas populous District 7 in central San Jose is the least. District 6 is 21.3 percent covered by trees, District 7 only 12 percent.
The trees boost the city’s economic value by $239 million annually — $5.7 billion over the next century.
Planting 100,000 more trees — the goal of Mayor Chuck Reed’s Green Vision plan — will increase tree cover by less than a percentage point — to 16.3 percent.
There are 124,000 available spots for street trees — and another 1.9 million spots for trees on private property.
The 6-year-old Green Vision plan aims to plant 100,000 trees by 2022 as part of an effort to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. But at the current rate of 2,000 trees per year, the city won’t reach that goal for another half-century. The city, however, is now in the process of conducting an on-the-ground assessment of the city’s street trees and has plans to ramp up tree planting when it’s complete, arborist Mize said.
To do the study, scientists used a technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, which uses a laser beam to measure the height of objects on the ground, allowing researchers to distinguish between trees, shrubs and grass. The scientists then used the resulting tree-canopy map to pinpoint the spots in each district that need more greening, said Forest Service researcher Greg McPherson, the study’s leader.
Each district’s tree planting potential was affected by its proportion of “impervious surfaces” — areas occupied by buildings or covered with pavement. The number varied widely between districts, but San Jose has fewer spots to plant trees than most other cities studied.
“I was surprised with the amount of impervious surface that San Jose has — and not a lot of plantable space,” McPherson said. “The only city that has less is Los Angeles,” with 61 percent.
Even densely packed San Francisco, with 54 percent, had less impervious space than San Jose.
Still, just because an area is paved shouldn’t mean you can’t carve out planting strips, said Rhonda Berry, the CEO of Our City Forest. The San Jose nonprofit has coordinated the planting of 65,000 trees along San Jose’s streets and in schools and parks.
For a few decades in the postwar period, San Jose earned a reputation as the poster city for higgledy-piggledy sprawl — which could account for its large amount of impervious surface. But according to Joe Horwedel, San Jose’s planning director, the city began requiring builders and property owners to plant a lot more trees beginning in the late 1980s.
“We are focused on improving the number and quality of trees throughout the city,” Horwedel said.
The overwhelming majority of the 2 million potential planting sites exist on private land, out of reach from the city’s street tree plan. This means that property owners have an extraordinary opportunity to boost the city’s tree cover, Berry said.
Our City Forest receives 20 percent of its funding from the city of San Jose, but it mostly relies on support from state and federal grants. Berry said that funding issues have forced the nonprofit to reduce its staff by 20 percent this year, adding that she hopes that Silicon Valley corporations will step up to provide some more funding.
Despite the setbacks, Berry said she remains optimistic that local leaders will respond to the city’s need for more greenery.
“People recognize that trees bring character — and make a neighborhood,” said city Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, who represents leafy District 6.
The upscale district has the benefit of older, established neighborhoods with heritage trees. But the story is different in District 7, known for its tightly packed, working-class neighborhoods.
Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, who represents District 7, said her constituents hunger for more greenery.
Contact Jessica Shugart at 408-920-5782. Follow her at Twitter.com/jessicashugart.
Since acquiring a barren patch of land by Mineta San Jose International Airport four years ago, Our City Forest volunteers have transformed it into a thriving nursery that boasts a diverse collection of 5,000 native trees and shrubs.
The trees are available for purchase. For details, go to www.ourcityforest.org.
France’s National Assembly on Tuesday passed a law that restrains the right to protest, with 387 votes against 92. Dubbed the “loi anti-casseur”, or “anti-thug law”, the text aims “to reinforce and guarantee law enforcement during protests”.
Its scope and severity have stirred controversy. Across the political spectrum, people fear the law will dangerously limit the right to demonstrate and pre-emptively sanction dissidents. 50 MPs from La République en Marche (LREM), Macron’s party, abstained from the vote – a record for government-backed legislation.
The law will now return to the Senate for a second reading, where it first originated in an even harsher form as the product of right-wing party Les Républicains. Despite warning lights on all sides of the parliament, French Interior minister Christophe Castaner insisted that the law is not specifically aimed at the Gilets Jaunes – “quite the opposite”. Rather, he said the law would “ensure that we can protest when we want, without enduring brutes”.
It will protect “protesters, business owners, cities and the police”, and will “prevent violence”, he added.
In French, “casseur” (literally “breakers” – or “thugs”) refers to violent protesters who only attend marches to wreak havoc. But over the last few months, the French government has habitually applied this term to the weekly marches of the Gilets Jaunes. When shops and monuments on the Champs-Elysées were attacked in December, Castaner denounced a “strategy managed by professionals of disorder and breakages”; a month later, he said that the violence at Paris marches was committed by “casseurs in yellow vests”.
The substance of the new law includes measures that limit and could even endanger the right to free assembly that Castaner said it was intended to protect. It will allow local officials, known as préfets, who already have the power to ban protests within their jurisdiction, to directly ban certain people from protesting for up to a month if they “constitute a threat to public order” – even if they have not been condemned for previous criminal acts, a power that was until now reserved for judges.
Banned “thugs” will also be listed on a criminal database, and their information will be added to the national wanted persons file. The interior ministry promises this information will be “deleted” once the month-long ban runs out. Protesters who have not been pre-emptively banned from assembling will be searched by the police, with vehicles stationed close to the march’s perimeter, ostensibly to search for weapons.
If this didn’t already sound draconian, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, Macron’s deputy, last year explained what else lies in store. “Concealing one’s face without a legitimate motive” will, under the anti-thug law, be sanctioned by one year in prison and €15,000 in fines, he said. Anyone arrested will have to prove they had a good reason to be masked. The law also provides that “thugs” who break things will have to pay for them – even if they have not been obliged by a court to do so.
So let’s recap: any protester attending a march would, under this new law, be considered a potential suspect. Covering one’s face at a march (even as protection against tear gas) could result in a prison sentence. Breaking a window or a road sign could result in blacklisting on a list for wanted criminals. And representatives of the French executive branch will have the power to remove a citizen’s right to free assembly for a month, without any prior court decision.
No wonder that even pro-Macron MPs refused to vote for the law. “If populists are in power tomorrow, they will be able to apply their policies without any problem under that kind of law”, said one of the 50 rebel LREM MPs, Aurélien Taché. The law “gives even more power to the executive, it is absolutely oppressive”, agreed his fellow LREM MP Martine Wonner.
Other MPs also warned about the danger of passing such a law. Alexis Corbière, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing party La France Insoumise, denounced an “authoritarian downward slide”. The centrist MP Charles de Courson said the law is prejudicial to French liberties, and represents “a return to the Vichy régime”: “Wake up! Voting this law is sheer madness!” he exclaimed.
But the most striking warning came from Edwy Plenel, journalist and founder of investigative publication Médiapart.
“What they are doing to the right to protest today, they will do to the freedom of the press tomorrow,” he cautioned.
His words proved prescient. One day after his declaration, a search order into Médiapart offices was sent by a prosecutor (named by president Macron and taking orders from PM Philippe), to uncover the publication's sources in an investigation linking the scandal involving Alexandre Benalla, Macron’s deputy chief of staff who allegedly beat a young protester during 2018 May Day demonstrations, to the Elysée. Médiapart refused the search, and proceeded to entrust the judicial system with the troubling recordings it had published.
Two independent counter-powers – the justice system and the press – are worried about the future of French fundamental liberties. If this “anti-thug law” is adopted in the months to come, the first will lose decisional power. The second might be next.
Last night, Sinclair Broadcast Group station WJLA hosted a “town hall” discussion on "youth & morality" featuring morally bankrupt media personality Armstrong Williams, young conservative talking heads Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens, a campus carry activist, and a Daily Caller reporter (among others) -- and Sinclair wants you to believe it’s for the public good.
The town hall was branded as both an episode of Sinclair-linked commentator Armstrong Williams’ show and a part of Sinclair’s ongoing town hall discussion series. The town hall does not appear to have yet aired on WJLA and it’s not clear if it has aired or will air on the WJLA-operated local Washington, D.C., cable channel News Channel 8, but it’s posted in full on WJLA’s website.
Though the panel was titled “Youth & Morality,” it was advertised as largely focusing on one study that showed dwindling millennial identification with Christianity, which WJLA characterized as a sign of “unprecedented moral decline.” The panel discussion was filmed at the Museum of the Bible.

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