TOKYO, Jan 15: Two people were critically ill today after their boat collided with a Japanese naval vessel in waters between two of the country’s main islands, officials said.
Television footage showed the upturned hull of a small fishing boat in the Seto Inland Sea off Hiroshima after what the coastguard said was a collision at around 8:00 am with the Osumi, a naval transport ship.
All four crew from the fishing boat were pulled from the water.
A coastguard spokesman said two of them were conscious, but the other two — including the captain — were in cardio-respiratory arrest. The term is usually used by first responders of people who have died but have not yet been certified by a doctor.
Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera expressed regret for the incident and pledged his ministry’s full cooperation in the coastguard’s investigation into its cause.
The Seto Inland Sea is a relatively busy waterway that serves a number of major ports, as well as supporting a vibrant fishery. (AGENCIES)

GENEVA, Jan 14: Victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests said today they hoped UN scrutiny of the Vatican would help finally to hold perpetrators to account and halt future violations.
“This is an important moment for those of us who were raped, sodomised and sexually violated as children by priests,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a global coalition based in the United States.
“Over the years, we’ve struggled to understand why Church officials continue to support and cover up for sexual predators,” Blaine told reporters, two days before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child was to examine the Vatican’s record.
“We’re hoping that finally the truth will be exposed and, more importantly, the Church officials will change what they are doing and that Pope Francis will take action that will actually protect children,” she added.
Signatories of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child agree to be scrutinised by a watchdog panel.
Thursday marks the Vatican’s second examination. Its debut was in 1995, before the abuse of minors by Catholic priests burst into the spotlight.
For more than a decade, the Church has been rocked by a cascade of scandals from Ireland to the United States and from Australia to Germany.
The Vatican says it continues to receive around 600 claims against abusive priests every year, many dating back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Victims’ groups, however, say the issue is far from settled and that the tally could well be in the hundreds of thousands.
Abuse has often been coupled with cover-ups by priests’ superiors, typically transfers to other parishes, rather than turning them over to police.
A 1986 internal Church report on abuse had little or no impact, said Spanish SNAP member Miguel Hurtado.
“When that report was written, I was four years old. When I was abused, I was 16. They had 12 years to try to sort out the problem. They had 12 years to try to implement measures. They had 12 years in which they did absolutely nothing,” he said.
Benedict XVI, pontiff from 2005 to 2013, was the first pope to apologise to victims and called for zero tolerance of abuse. (AGENCIES)

MANILA, Jan 15: The Philippines wants to acquire two more navy ships from the United States to boost its maritime protection amid threats from China, the country’s military chief said today.
The new acquisitions would come under the fresh US military assistance announced by US Secretary of State John Kerry when he visited the Philippines last month, armed forces chief of staff General Emmanuel Bautista said.
“Within the last year, we realised that there is a real threat out there in terms of securing, defending our territory,” Bautista told ANC television.
He said that ideally the country needed about six more frigates to guard its long coastline effectively.
“In fact, we are bidding now for two frigates, hopefully we will be able to acquire them in (a) couple of years,” Bautista said.
He said he has made “maritime domain awareness” and protection a key concern of his leadership.
The funds used to boost maritime defence, he said, would come from the USD 40 million military assistance pledged by Kerry in December.
The Philippines has already acquired two refurbished American frigates in the past two years, and they now lead patrols in the South China Sea.
The Philippines, a long-time US military ally, has been locked in an increasingly tense standoff with China involving disputed reefs and islands in an area Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.
In 2012, the flagship BRP Gregorio del Pilar, the first acquired from the US, confronted Chinese ships on Scarborough Shoal, a small outcrop just off the coast of the country’s main island of Luzon.
The Chinese eventually gained control of the outcrop after Manila backed down. However, the Government sought UN arbitration to settle the dispute, a move rejected by China.
Manila has also increasingly looked to the US for help, and negotiations are ongoing for an increased rotational presence of American soldiers in the Philippines as part of Washington’s “pivot” to Asia.
Bautista said the Gregorio del Pilar, as well as another frigate that arrived last year, have been deployed to protect the country’s waters.
“There are Chinese fishing vessels in the West Philippine Sea as we speak,” he said, but declined to say where they were in the disputed waters.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including waters near the coast of its neighbours.
Recently, it has declared an “air defence identification zone” over the East China Sea where it is engaged in a dispute with Japan.
Kerry has warned China against imposing a similar restriction over the South China Sea, and said the US Government also rejected the zone over the East China Sea. (AGENCIES)

MOSCOW, Jan 14: Russian lawmakers today announced plans to push through legislation introducing harsher punishments for those who carry out deadly attacks, as Russia tightens security ahead of February’s Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
A cross-party group of lawmakers will submit three draft bills to parliament tomorrow, Irina Yarovaya, a ruling party lawmaker and the head of the Duma’s security and anti-corruption committee, told the Interfax news agency.
The legislation will introduce sentences of up to 20 years or even life sentences for “organising and committing crimes of a terrorist nature and for organising financial terrorism,” she said.
She said the bills would introduce harsher sentences for “committing crimes with the aim of propaganda justifying and supporting terrorism.”
The draft legislation is also aimed at fighting money laundering by restricting the terms of use of electronic payment systems, Yarovaya said.
Yarovaya said she expected the lower house of parliament would consider the bills “as a priority.”
Andrei Lugovoi, lawmaker for the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, said that the draft legislation proposed expanding the remit of the powerful FSB security service.
“Now we are increasing their powers and they will be able not only to check documents but also to search people and to inspect vehicles,” he told the RIA Novosti news agency.
Lugovoi, a former FSB agent, is Britain’s main suspect in the polonium poisoning of dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 but Russia has refused to extradite him.
Russia has set up a tight security cordon around Sochi, blocking highways to drivers without special permits and patrolling the Black Sea resort city with drones.
Sochi’s proximity to the North Caucasus means Russia is on high alert of possible Islamist plots targeting the Games, with recent attacks choosing cities where attacks have been rare.
In December, two suicide bombings in a rail station and a trolley bus in the southern city of Volgograd killed 34. Three police were killed in a car bombing in December in Pyatigorsk, a spa resort. (AGENCIES)

DAMASCUS, Jan 14: A Palestinian minister today accused “terrorists” fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of blocking aid access to the Yarmuk refugee camp in southern Damascus.
Rebels control swathes of Yarmuk, but for months Government forces have imposed a suffocating siege on the camp, where some 20,000 Palestinians live despite terrible shortages.
Palestinian labour minister Ahmad Majdalani, who was visiting Damascus to negotiate aid access to the camp, said its Palestinian residents must not be used as “hostages” in the conflict.
An aid convoy heading to Yarmuk was targeted yesterday “some 100 metres (yards) away from the agreed meeting point,” on the edges of the camp, Majdalani said at a press conference in Damascus.
He said “the source of fire was known… To be controlled by Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and Suqur al-Golan,” directly accusing rebel groups battling Assad’s troops.
Majdalani added “all these groups are known for their terrorist links and methodology.”
The minister also said Palestinians “everywhere know… that those who have taken the camp hostage are these groups, not the Syrian authorities.”
Some 45 people have died in recent months because of food and medical shortages in Yarmuk, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group has said, with the most recent death today.
Yesterday’s aid convoy was the sixth to have failed to enter the camp.
Palestinian sources have told reporters the convoys were blocked from entering by gunfire, but did not specify who was responsible. (AGENCIES)

TRIPOLI, Jan 14: Protesters fired shots at Libya’s parliament building in Tripoli today, hitting it several times and prompting the session to be suspended but causing no casualties, a lawmaker told reporters.
Demonstrators have attacked or broken into the General National Congress (GNC) building several times in the past, either trying to force the adoption of laws or to air other grievances.
“We heard the shots before the bullets hit the front of the building,” the congresswoman said on condition of anonymity.
Demonstrators calling for a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s Government fired the shots, she added.
Security personnel helped lawmakers to evacuate the building.
The GNC, the country’s highest political authority, had been discussing the future of Zeidan’s cabinet after a no-confidence motion was tabled by 72 lawmakers.
Zeidan has been repeatedly criticised for his Government’s failure to tackle the instability that has plagued Libya since the ouster of dictator Moamer Kadafi in October 2011.
The embattled premier said today he would resign if the GNC came to a consensus on a successor, warning of a power vacuum if he left his post without one.
Zeidan was himself briefly abducted by militia last year, highlighting the persistent lawlessness. (AGENCIES)

PARIS, Jan 14: President Francois Hollande today defended France’s policy of forcibly evicting Roma migrants from temporary camps, after a report said a record number were kicked out of the often squalid settlements last year.
“Do we have to be ashamed of what we have done? No,” Hollande said at a press conference, in response to a question about France’s policy towards the Roma, adding the law had always been respected.
His comments come after two rights groups said in a joint report that a record 19,380 Roma migrants had been evicted from their camps in 2013, more than double than the previous year.
“In comparison 9,404 Roma were forcibly evicted by authorities in 2012 and 8,455 in 2011,” the Human Rights League (LDH) and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) said.
“Forced evictions continued almost everywhere without credible alternative housing solutions or social support,” they said.
The report said that Government policy requiring social assessments before evictions “is rarely implemented”.
There are an estimated 20,000 Roma living in temporary, often illegal, camps on the edges of French towns.
The Government has in recent years pursued a controversial policy of evicting some of them from the camps, often paying them to return to their countries of origin, mainly Romania and Bulgaria.
The policy has come under attack from rights groups, as has the current climate of hostility towards the ethnic group, highlighted when Interior Minister Manuel Valls said few of the Roma had any interest in settling in France and should return to their countries of origin.
“This policy of rejection is ineffective, costly and unnecessary since nothing has changed after these evictions,” said Pierre Tartakowsky, the president of LDH.
“Roma still live in France, in settlements they have rebuilt a little farther away, but their situation is increasingly insecure. The ongoing, increased evictions pave the way for the expression of extremism and anti-Roma racism.”
ERRC chief Dezideriu Gergely called for an immediate end to forced evictions and for a “real integration policy for those people at risk of poverty or social exclusion.”
The data showed that evictions peaked mid-year, but continued at a high rate in the last three months of the year despite cold weather. (AGENCIES)