Purveyor
Purveyor's JournalU.S. Service Sector Grows For 40th Consecutive Month In April
WASHINGTON, May 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. non-manufacturing sector expanded for the 40th straight month in April, but its growth pace slowed, a widely recognized U.S. private survey revealed on Friday.
The Non-Manufacturing Index (NMI), which measures activity in the U.S. service sector, decreased to 53.1 percent last month from 54.4 percent in March, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said in its monthly survey.
The NMI survey covers all sectors outside of manufacturing. A reading above 50 indicates expansion of the service sector.
The index showed that new orders, a signal of future business, decreased last month to 54.5 from 54.6 in March, while the survey's employment component dipped to 52.0 in April from 53.3 in March, said the ISM.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/03/c_132358177.htm
Syria Denies Rebels' Control Over Military Airbase In Northern Aleppo
English.news.cn 2013-05-05 00:04:29
DAMASCUS, May 4 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian troops confronted Saturday the armed rebels trying to storm the Menagh airbase in the country's northern province of Aleppo, killing most of the assailants, the state-run SANA news agency reported.
The troops repelled the attack against the Menagh airbase, causing casualties among the assailants, SANA said, adding that the troops also clashed with rebels at the vicinity of Koerce base, another military airfield in Aleppo, and killed many of the attackers.
Earlier in the day, media reports said that a large number of armed rebels unleashed a wide-scale attack against Menagh, adding that several factions and battalions of the rebels partook in the attack.
Reports said the rebels have succeeded to storm the airbase from different directions and taken control over several parts of it.
The pro-government Sham FM radio citing sources at the base, however, denied the rebels' control over the base, saying that the troops managed to repel the attack but the leader of the airbase, Brigade Mahmoud Ali, and two of his escorts were killed in the battle.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/05/c_132359626.htm
Settlers Torch Olive Trees Near Ramallah
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers on Thursday cut down and torched over 50 olive trees in the central West Bank village of Deir Jarir north of Ramallah.
Residents of Ofra settlement stormed fields belonging to Muhammad Jihad Shujaiyya and Muhammad Mahmoud Hamdan and cut down trees before setting fire to them, witnesses told Ma'an.
Israeli forces arrived and the landowners argued with the soldiers, accusing them of protecting settlers as they attacked Palestinian land.
In April, settlers from Ofra set fire to 10 cars in Deir Jarir
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=591694
Denmark, Finland To Upgrade Palestinian Diplomatic Status
COPENHAGEN (AFP) -- Denmark and Finland plan to upgrade the status of their respective Palestinian representative offices in Copenhagen and Helsinki to that of an embassy, the Danish foreign ministry said Saturday.
"It is with satisfaction that we announce our joint intention to work with the Palestinians to be able to upgrade the status of the Palestinian missions in Copenhagen and Helsinki," the foreign ministers of Finland and Denmark, Villy Soevndal and Erkki Tuomioja, said in a joint statement.
The changes are expected to be implemented sometime in 2013, it said.
The move would "not entail a formal bilateral recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state by Denmark and Finland," the statement said.
"Palestine is in a phase of state-building, and many challenges remain for president (Mahmoud) Abbas to handle before we can recognize Palestine formally as a state," it said.
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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=592140
Readying New Syria Push, US Feels Out Russia Again (starts with Kerry trip to Moscow this week)
8 hours ago Associated Press
The Obama administration is trying to leverage new evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad's government used chemical weapons, and make a fresh diplomatic and possible military push with allies to end the country's civil war.
This renewed effort starts with Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to Moscow this coming week for talks with leaders in Russia, the Syrian government's most powerful international friend.
Russia, alongside China, has blocked U.S.-led efforts three times at the United Nations to pressure Assad into stepping down. The U.S. hopes to change Moscow's thinking with two new arguments, officials said: the evidence of chemical weapons attacks and, with the war now in its third year, American threats to arm the Syrian rebels.
Russia represents the most difficult diplomatic test as the U.S. tries to assemble a global coalition to halt a war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives.
http://tdn.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/readying-new-syria-push-us-feels-out-russia-again/article_546444bb-c9f3-51da-b60a-9149abafee5d.html
Moscow Urges Mideast WMD-Free Zone Conference
MOSCOW, May 4 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow believes there is a pressing need to hold an international conference on a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East before the end of the current year, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
A meeting of the Preparatory Committee for Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review was held in Geneva from April 22 through May 3, attended by representatives of 106 signatory states and over 60 NGOs.
The meeting expressed its consensus-based position that all challenges to the nonproliferation regime should be resolved solely on the basis of NPT provisions, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.
One key priority in that context is the holding of a conference on the creation of a zone free from nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, it continued.
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http://en.rian.ru/world/20130504/180975242.html
US Bulks Up ‘Bunker Buster’ To Combat Iran Threat
To persuade Israel away from a unilateral attack on the Fordo nuclear complex, America stresses its upgraded military capabilitiesMay 3, 2013, 12:43 pm
JTA US officials told Israel that the United States has new weapons capable of destroying Irans underground nuclear site in Fordo, an American daily reported.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday quoted diplomats as saying that US officials had shown video footage to their Israeli counterparts of an earlier version of a bunker buster bomb in action and explained the advanced features which have been added.
The video displays the bomb hitting the ground near its target and setting off a massive underground explosion, sources told the Journal.
The Journal quoted unnamed US officials as saying the improved Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, will serve to convince Israel to hold off on unilaterally attacking Iran and give Washington more time to diplomatically neutralize the suspected Iranian nuclear threat.
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/pentagon-bulks-up-bunker-buster-bomb-to-combat-iran/
Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targeted Missiles From Iran
WASHINGTON The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said Saturday.
It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an attack in foreign territory intended to disrupt the pipeline of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah, and the raid was a vivid example of how regional adversaries are looking after their own interests as Syria becomes more chaotic.
Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, now in its third year. But as fighting in Syria escalates, they also have a powerful stake in expediting the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case Mr. Assad loses his grip on power.
Israel, for its part, has repeatedly cautioned that it will not allow Hezbollah to receive game changing weapons that could threaten the Israeli heartland after a post-Assad government took power.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/middleeast/israel-syria.html?_r=0
Obama On Airstrikes: Israel Has To Guard Against Hezbollah
By REUTERS05/04/2013 22:25SAN JOSE - US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that Israel has the right to guard against the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah a day after Israel allegedly attacked a Hezbollah-bound missile shipment in Syria.
Obama, in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo as part of a three-day Latin America tour that ended in Costa Rica, would not comment on whether the airstrikes had in fact taken place.
"I'll let the Israeli government confirm or deny whatever strikes that they've taken," he said.
But Obama, who visited Israel in March, made clear such strikes would be justified.
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http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Obama-on-airstrikes-Israel-has-to-guard-against-Hezbollah-312041
'Israel May Be Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Use'
A former senior official in the Bush administration said on Thursday the use of chemical weapons in Syria might have been a "false flag operation" of Israel, meant to implicate Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"We dont know what the chain of custody is. This couldve been an Israeli false flag operation, it couldve been an opposition in Syria... or it couldve been an actual use by Bashar Assad. But we certainly dont know with the evidence weve been given. And what Im hearing from the intelligence community is that that evidence is really flakey," retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, told Cenk Uygur in an interview with Current TV.
Given this "flimsy evidence," Wilkerson doesn't believe a red line has been crossed in Syria, and that the US should not base its intervention in the war-torn country based on such evidence.
Wilkerson criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu harshly, saying there is a "geostratigically, geopolitical inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."
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http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israel-may-be-behind-Syrian-chemical-weapons-use-312051
jpost title, not mine![\b]
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