Obama told me so: June 2014

Monday, 30 June 2014

Beirut refugee camp clashes kill 3

Three men were killed and seven people, including two children, wounded in Monday’s armed clashes on the outskirts of...

Audit shows problems at Samsung suppliers in China

SEOUL, South Korea -- Samsung says an external audit has found labor violations at dozens of its suppliers in China including failure to provide safety gear and excessive working hours.

Samsung Electronics Co. on Tuesday released the findings covering 100 of the company's Chinese suppliers in its annual social responsibility report.

There were 59 Chinese suppliers that did not provide sufficient protective goggles, masks and other safety equipment to workers while 48 let minors handle chemicals. Most of the audited factories did not comply with legally permitted overtime hours.

The external audit was conducted on Samsung's suppliers in 2013.

Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, faced allegations in 2012 of child labor and other labor violations in China. It vowed to resolve the problems.

Lebanon's Arabic press digest – July 1, 2014

The following are a selection of stories from Lebanese newspapers that may be of interest to Daily Star readers. The Daily Star cannot vouch for the accuracy of these reports.

An-Nahar

Bkirki against any Constitutional amendment before election of new president

Sources at the seat of the Maronite Church told An-Nahar that Bkirki rejects any Constitutional amendment before the election of a new president.

Everything is possible, however, after the election of a head of state, the sources added.

Separately, An-Nahar has learned that a Saudi delegation is in Beirut to follow up on the investigation into the two Saudi bombers at the Duroy Hotel in Raouche.

A source told An-Nahar that the Saudi detainee will be tried in Lebanon.

An expanded security meeting will be held at the Interior Ministry Tuesday to coordinate efforts among the various security agencies to counter terrorism.

As-Safir

Aoun moves against Taif Accord ... Future Movement responds today

The vicious circle continues to spin. Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and also MP Walid Jumblatt, is waiting for an initiative from MP Michel Aoun toward March 14 Christians while Rabieh awaits clear signals from a stalled relationship with Paris.

The Future Movement considered Aoun’s proposal as a “Coup against Taif and the Constitution.”

Aoun Monday proposed that the Constitution be amended to allow the Lebanese people to vote for their head of state

Leaders in Beirut refused to comment publicly, pending the green light from Hariri himself.

Ad-Diyar

French, German delegations in Beirut

A French and a German delegation, who arrived in Beirut recently, have held a series of meetings with Lebanese security officials.

The French delegation has demanded information regarding at least one French would-be suicide bomber detained during a raid at the Napoleon hotel in Hamra, Beirut.

The German delegation, however, is seeking to exchange information with Lebanese security authorities after the success security agencies had had in disrupting terrorist networks.

Al-Joumhouria

Change and Reform bloc would not secure quorum for a new president who represents 1 percent of the people

Change and Reform MP Ibrahim Kannan said bloc members “refuse to secure quorum for a president who represents one percent of the people.”

“But if parliamentary elections were held according to a law that provides partnership, we will be the first to go to Parliament,” Kanaan told Al-Joumhouria.

He said a consensus president “eliminates all the so-called Constitution and National Charter.”

$25 million settlement in NY veterans charity case

NEW YORK -- A direct-mail fundraising company that sent solicitations on behalf of a disabled veterans' charity but took in most of the money raised will pay $9.7 million in damages and the charity will re-organize its board and reform its practices as part of a $24.6 million settlement, the state attorney general's office said.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was expected to discuss the agreement among his office, the Disabled Veterans National Foundation charity, the Quadriga Art direct-mail company and another company, Convergence Direct Marketing, on Tuesday.

Besides the damages, the settlement calls for Quadriga to forgive $13.8 million still owed to it by the charity and pay $800,000 to the state for costs and fees. Convergence, which Schneiderman's office said also played a role in the fundraising, will pay $300,000 in damages. The $10 million in damages from the two direct-mail vendors is slated to go to efforts to help disabled veterans including spinal cord research.

Quadriga and Convergence designed direct-mail fundraising appeals for the charity, which was founded in late 2007, and raised more than $116 million, Schneiderman's office said. The mailings included material that was false or misleading, such as stories about veterans the charity hadn't helped, the office said.

The direct-mail vendors had an agreement with the Washington, D.C.-based charity in which the vendors assumed the cost of the donation campaigns and were paid by the money that came in.

Schneiderman's investigation found that the charity's board had little experience with direct-mail fundraising and performed very little oversight of Quadriga's and Convergence's operations, including the relationships and financial arrangements among various company executives and board members.

Schneiderman said the investigation showcased "some of the most troublesome features" of direct-mail fundraising.

"Taking advantage of a popular cause and what was an unsophisticated start-up charity, these direct-mail companies used cleverly designed but misleading mailers to raise tens of millions of dollars in donations from generous Americans, nearly all of which went to the fundraisers and their agents, and left the charity nearly $14 million in debt," he said.

None of the parties admitted any wrongdoing. As the charity's part of the settlement, its board members will step down and new ones will be brought on, and it has to stop using false or misleading fundraising materials and create an independent audit committee.

The charity, which in recent months appointed a new chief executive officer, said it "welcomed" the agreement.

"This is a very significant and positive step for the Disabled Veterans National Foundation that will enable us to improve the services we deliver and increase transparency with our loyal donors," CEO Joseph VanFonda said.

Quadriga CEO Mark Schulhof said his company "made mistakes" in using "a fundraising strategy that outpaced the charity's programs and services."

"We mailed too much, and too quickly, for a young charity," he said.

The company said it is instituting practices including presenting the risks and costs of any campaigns to a charity's board and providing an annual report of a campaign's performance.

Childhood vaccines again deemed generally safe

NEW YORK -- The latest analysis of childhood vaccines confirms they're generally safe.

The report should be reassuring to parents, the researchers say. For example, there still is no evidence the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism. Nor is there any proof vaccines cause childhood leukemia.

The assessment mirrors and updates a 2011 report on vaccine safety by the U.S. Institute of Medicine. That report found vaccines can cause certain side effects but serious ones are very rare.

Experts say such risks need to be balanced against the benefits of vaccines — the prevention of millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths annually.

But that message seems lost on some parents. A small but growing numbers of parents have tried to get their children exempted from school attendance vaccination requirements. And one recent study found vaccine safety messages actually reduced some parents' willingness to get their kids vaccinated.

"I don't think this report, alone, will convince parents that vaccines are safe," said Dr. Courtney Gidengil, one of the RAND Corp. researchers who did the report for federal health officials.

But maybe it will at least influence their family doctors, she and others said.

"Many parents look to their physicians as the ultimate sources of information," said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of Emory University's Vaccine Center, adding "now it's up to them."

The new analysis looked at dozens of medical studies completed since the 2011 report. It echoes some of those findings and included vaccines that report hadn't addressed.

The journal Pediatrics published the report online Tuesday. Among its conclusions:

—Newer evidence confirms a link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and fever-triggered seizures. The seizures rarely cause long-term health problems, but can be frightening for parents.

—Apparently, flu shots can also spur fevers that can trigger seizures. The seizures seem to happen more often in children who get a vaccine against pneumococcal bacteria the same day.

—Newer vaccines against rotavirus, a severe diarrheal disease in children, slightly raise the risk of a rare bowel blockage.

The risks of serious side effects were deemed very low. For example, the rotavirus vaccines were linked to no more than five extra cases of the blockage for every 100,000 kids vaccinated.

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Online:

CDC vaccine info: http://1.usa.gov/1iPHK9v

Starbucks chair co-writing book on military vets

NEW YORK -- Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz is collaborating on a book about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"For Love of Country: What Our Veterans Can Teach Us About Citizenship, Heroism, and Sacrifice" will be released by Alfred A. Knopf on Nov. 4. The book will be co-written by Washington Post correspondent and editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

"Given that less than 1 percent of our country has served in the military conflicts of the last decade, this is a time in America when it's crucial to bridge the divide in our society between our civilian and military populations," Schultz said in a statement issued Monday by the publisher.

The book will tell of deeds both on the battlefield and back home, whether an orthopedic surgeon who enlisted at age 60 and saved numerous lives or a military spouse helping wives of severely wounded soldiers.

Schultz has been a prominent advocate for veterans, saying that too little has been done for them once their service was completed. He has pledged to hire 10,000 veterans and military spouses, and earlier this year donated $30 million for research into post-traumatic stress syndrome and brain trauma.

According to Knopf, Schultz is giving all author proceeds to charity.

Pension agency says plans for 1.5 million at risk

WASHINGTON -- Despite an improving U.S. economy, retirement plans covering roughly 1.5 million workers are severely underfunded, threatening benefit cuts for current and future retirees, a federal watchdog agency warned Monday.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) said multi-employer plans, which are collectively bargained retirement plans maintained by more than one employer, are most at risk. "Plan insolvencies ... are now both more likely and more imminent than in our last report," the report said.

At the same time, the agency said single-employer pension plans — covering just over 30 million participants — are on firmer financial footing and are likely to remain so at least over the next 10 years.

The report concluded that, as shaky as the situation is for the underfunded multi-employer plans, the outlook is slightly better than it was just a year ago as the nation's economy gradually improves from the severe 2007-2009 recession.

"In the past year, economic conditions have improved significantly and most plans are projected to remain solvent," said the agency, which was created under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

But, it added, that research over the past year had made clear that, for some multi-employer plans, "even the improving economy will not be sufficient to maintain their solvency."

If a company goes bankrupt and is forced to terminate its pension plan, the PBGC will generally take over making sure that retirees continue to draw pension benefits, at least up to certain limits. It's a form of insurance. The maximum guaranteed amount paid by PBGC in 2013 was $4,789.77 per month, or $57, 477.24 per year. The agency does not pay the benefits directly to people covered by failed plans, but provides financial assistance to the plans themselves to enable them to continue providing benefits.

Employers pay a fee to the PBGC for each employee.

As more and more baby-boomers retire and begin drawing pension benefits, the PBGC comes under increasing financial strain.

The agency noted that for many years, the single-employer program was more likely to be seriously underfunded than the multi-employer plans: "That situation is now reversing."

"Some multi-employer plans are deteriorating and PBGC's multi-employer program is more likely than not to run out of money within the next eight years," the agency said.

The agency said many participants in the troubled multi-employer plans are employed by small companies in the building and construction industries. Also many workers in retail food, garment manufacturing, entertainment, mining and truck and maritime industries could feel the consequences.

GM opens gates for victim claims, recalls 8.4 million more cars

WASHINGTON -- Beleaguered General Motors unveiled a compensation plan with no caps Monday for those harmed by crashes stemming from faulty ignition switches in its Chevy Cobalts and multiple other models, even while announcing the costly recall of another 8.4 million cars, the vast majority with similar defects.

The firm’s outside compensation guru, Kenneth Feinberg, told a news conference that its 2009 bankruptcy “will not be a bar” to the filing of claims for accidents that occurred before it sought Chapter 11 protection, assuring that those victims will not be left empty handed.

General Motors has previously fought individual lawsuits on behalf of crash victims and survivors of some of the 13 known fatality victims on grounds that the company was shielded from liability by its 2009 bankruptcy filing.

Feinberg’s announcement represented the automaker’s latest attempt to deal head-on with the fallout from its failure, over more than a decade, to address defects that caused ignition switches to slide to the “auxiliary” or off positions while vehicles were in motion. The engine shutoffs are believed to have disabled air bags, leaving drivers and passengers prone if the cars crashed.

With the Justice Department still conducting a criminal investigation of GM’s failure to act long ago on the ignition switch problem, GM has seemed in a weekly race to air its dirty laundry as it discloses defects in one model after another.

The latest recalls, involving an array of seven Cadillac, Chevy, Oldsmobile and Pontiac models between 1997 and 2014, brought to a staggering 29 million the number of vehicles for which the Detroit automaker has announced it would take responsibility for repairing defects this year.

The company said it is aware of seven crashes, eight injuries and three fatalities in older model, full-size sedans being recalls for inadvertent ignition key rotations, but said there is not conclusive evidence that the defect caused the crashes.

“We undertook what I believe is the most comprehensive safety review in the history of our company, because nothing is more important than the safety of our customers,” GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra said of the latest recalls. “Our customers deserve more than we delivered in these vehicles.

“This has hardened my resolve to set a new industry standard for safety, quality and excellence.”

GM has said it would take charges exceeding $2.5 billion for the various recalls, and the compensation program and a Justice Department case could send the total pricetag of the auto safety scandal past $5 billion, not to mention the cost of any long-term impact on the company’s image with consumers.

In hiring Feinberg last spring, Barra said she gave him total discretion in designing the compensation program.

Feinberg set no cap on the amount of compensation in individual cases and said those who’ve already agreed to court settlements without being aware of the ignition switch defect will be eligible to seek higher compensation through the company’s claims program. Nor will there be an aggregate cap for compensation under the program.

Claims will accepted beginning Aug. 1 and may be submitted for any accident until Dec. 31, 2014, and he will aim to distribute compensation within 90 days – 180 days in complicated cases, he said.

Those who file claims will not waive their rights to seek restitution in court unless they are satisfied with the compensation offered by Feinberg.

“This program is designed to provide swift compensation to eligible victims of ignition switch defects in certain GM vehicles,” Feinberg said. “We will work closely with all individual claimants and their lawyers in evaluating individual claims and reaching a determination as to eligibility and value as soon as possible.”

Feinberg may be the nation’s leading expert on victim compensation, after administering funds for victims of the Sept. 11th terror attacks, the explosion of a BP oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico and last year’s Boston Marathon bombings.

He said that he set no cap on individual claims because that’s an “arbitrary” figure that would be “disingenuous.”

Feinberg said that he and his staff “benefited greatly in the design of this program from the input and constructive advice received from lawyers representing claimants, non-profit public interest groups and GM itself.”

Under the GM program, Feinberg will have sole discretion over the awards, including eligibility and the amounts awarded.

Drivers who were intoxicated, speeding or negligent in other ways will still be eligible for compensation if their faulty ignition switches caused an accident, he said.

A notice of the program will be sent to 3 million people who bought GM cars, Feinberg said.

Barra said in a statement that the company is “pleased that Mr. Feinberg has completed the next step with our ignition switch compensation program to help victims and their families.

“We are taking responsibility for what has happened by treating them with compassion, decency and fairness,” she said. “To that end, we are looking forward to Mr. Feinberg handling claims in a fair and expeditious manner.”

Email: ggordon @ mcclatchydc.com ; Twitter: @ greggordon 2 .

Ave Maria will pursue lawsuit over contraceptives

AVE MARIA, Fla. -- Ave Maria University officials say they're thrilled by a Supreme Court ruling Monday against a requirement to provide health care that includes contraceptives, and they'll push forward with a lawsuit against the government over the mandate.

The court ruled that some corporations can opt out of the requirement, if they are owned by a small group of people with religious objections to providing the coverage.

The ruling applies to for-profit companies, not the university, but Ave Maria President Jim Towey said he hopes the ruling prompts the government to create "the exemption that should have been provided from day one for faith-based groups."

The Catholic university in southwest Florida balked at the mandate and sued the government. In 2012, Ave Maria stopped making health insurance available to students after its insurance carrier said the university was required to pay all students' claims for "preventive services."

The university has until Nov. 1 to comply with the contraception mandate with insurance coverage for 170 employees or face hefty fines, Towey said.

He planned to meet with the university's attorneys to discuss their next steps for the lawsuit that stalled while awaiting the Supreme Court's decision. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing the school.

"What was impressive to me today was the court made clear the government has the ability to provide free contraception and does not need faith-based organizations who object to do this for them. And that's been our argument all along," Towey said.

The Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby Decision

Watch on YouTube

Today, the Supreme Court ruled on the much-publicized Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. case.

This decision would allow some bosses to withhold contraceptive care from their employees' health coverage based on their own religious beliefs -- which their employees may not share.

At the top of today's press briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest delivered a statement about where the President stands on this ruling, noting:

"President Obama believes that women should make personal health care decisions for themselves, rather than their bosses deciding for them."

He went on to state that "today's decision jeopardizes the health of women who are employed by these companies."

You can read a full transcript of the statement and press briefing here.

President Obama Speaks on Immigration Reform

President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, delivers remarks on immigration reform in the Rose Garden of the White House, June 30, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

In the Rose Garden this afternoon, President Obama reiterated his commitment to immigration reform and reproached House Republicans for their unwillingness to confront this important issue.

Speaking a year ago to the month when the Senate passed an immigration reform bill, the President outlined what Republican obstruction has meant over the past year:

We have fewer resources to strengthen our borders;

Businesses can still game the system by hiring undocumented workers -- which punishes businesses that are playing by the rules and hurting the wages of hard-working Americans;

The best and brightest that come to study in the United States are still forced to leave, heading overseas and subsequently competing against our workers; and

Eleven million immigrants are still living in the shadows, instead of having the opportunity to earn their citizenship.

What's more, "it's meant the heartbreak of separated families," the President stressed.

Meanwhile, the majority of Americans -- ranging from law enforcement to labor to faith communities -- continue to support immigration reform.

New York ruling on fracking bans might send tremors across U.S.

WASHINGTON -- New York state’s highest court ruled Monday that cities and towns have the power to ban fracking, a decision that comes as local governments across the nation are increasingly trying to use zoning laws to stop the contentious spread of drilling.

“I hope our victory serves as an inspiration to people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, California and elsewhere,” said Mary Ann Sumner, the town supervisor of Dryden, N.Y.

The towns of Dryden, in Tompkins County, and Middlefield, in Otsego County, changed their zoning laws to ban fracking in recent years after energy companies started acquiring local leases to drill. The companies, Norse Energy and Cooperstown Holstein, filed lawsuits and argued that only the state had the authority to decide whether to prohibit oil and gas activities, not individual cities and towns.

The New York State Supreme Court disagreed Monday. It decided in a 5-2 judgment to uphold the opinion of a lower state court that found cities and towns do have the power to ban fracking.

“The towns both studied the issue and acted within their home rule powers in determining that gas drilling would permanently alter and adversely affect the deliberately cultivated, small-town character of their communities,” the New York State Supreme Court found.

Parts of New York state sit on the Marcellus Shale, which is rich in natural gas. The state has a moratorium on fracking, which oil and gas companies are hoping Gov. Andrew Cuomo will eventually lift. Even if he does, more than 75 municipalities in New York state have banned fracking and others have implemented at least temporary prohibitions on its use.

Municipal bans are a growing phenomenon nationwide as localities target hydraulic fracturing, in which water and chemicals are pumped underground to break shale rock and release the oil and natural gas inside. Such cities and towns are often in conflict with state governments that want the revenue and the employment associated with the drilling technique that’s spurred an American oil and natural gas boom.

The battle is especially fierce in Colorado, where the governor and oil and gas companies have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn bans passed by local voters.

Pennsylvania tried to prevent its local governments from prohibiting fracking, but it lost in court. The Ohio Supreme Court is considering whether cities and towns have the right to ban the practice.

Attorneys from the environmental law firm Earthjustice helped the town of Dryden with the New York case, and they said Monday’s ruling “has sent a firm message to the oil and gas industry.”

New York State Petroleum Council Executive Director Karen Moreau said the ruling would pose a problem for natural gas development in her state.

“Municipal boards change hands every two years, and a constantly shifting landscape of regulatory uncertainty virtually guarantees that major long-term investments in the state’s economy cannot occur,” she said.

The New York State Supreme Court tried to stay out of the fight over the impact of fracking in its decision Monday, saying the issue is about the limits of local power.

“These appeals are not about whether hydrofracking is beneficial or detrimental to the economy, environment or energy needs of New York, and we pass no judgment on its merits,” the court said in its ruling.

GM safety crisis grows as recalls mount

DETROIT -- General Motors' safety crisis deepened dramatically Monday when the automaker added 8.2 million vehicles to its ballooning list of cars recalled over faulty ignition switches.

The latest recalls involve mainly older midsize cars and bring GM's total recalls in North America to 29 million this year, surpassing the 22 million recalled by all automakers last year. They also raise questions about the safety of ignition switches in cars made by all manufacturers.

In the latest recalls, GM said keys may be jostled or accidentally bumped, causing the ignition to slip out of the "run" position. The recalls cover seven vehicles, including the Chevrolet Malibu from 1997 to 2005, the Pontiac Grand Prix from 2004 to 2008, and the 2003-2014 Cadillac CTS.

The company is aware of three deaths, eight injuries and seven crashes involving the vehicles, although it says there's no clear evidence that faulty switches caused the accidents. Air bags didn't deploy in the three fatal accidents, which is a sign that the ignition was out of position. But air bags may not deploy for other reasons as well.

A GM spokesman couldn't say Monday if more recalls are imminent. But this may be the end of the recalls associated with a 60-day review of all of the company's ignition switches. At the company's annual meeting earlier in June, CEO Mary Barra said she hoped most recalls related to that review would be completed by the end of the month.

Karl Brauer, an industry analyst with Kelley Blue Book, said the number of recalls — while huge — may be a good thing for the company in the long run.

"I think there's a new standard for what GM considers a potential safety defect, and Mary Barra has no tolerance or patience for potential safety defects that are unresolved," he said.

In a statement Monday, Barra said "we will act appropriately and without hesitation" if any new issues come to light.

Lance Cooper, a Marietta, Georgia, attorney who is suing GM, said he was not surprised by the additional recalls and expects even more. A company-funded investigation of the ignition switch problems by former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas found that GM had a dysfunctional corporate culture in which people didn't take responsibility to fix the problems, Cooper said.

"Cars got made that were defective. The buck kept getting passed, and this is what happened as a result," Cooper said.

The announcement of more recalls extends a crisis for GM that began in February with small-car ignition switch problems. GM recalled 2.6 million older small cars worldwide because the switches can unexpectedly slip from "run" to "accessory," shutting off the engines. That disables power steering and power brakes and can cause people to lose control of their cars. It also stops the air bags from inflating in a crash. GM has been forced to admit that it knew of the problem more than 10 years, yet it failed to recall the cars until this year.

GM has been reviewing the performance of its ignition switches since the first recalls were announced, and it continues to find more that can turn too easily. Of the 29 million vehicles recalled by the company this year, 17.1 million have been due to ignition switches.

The problem has drawn the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government's road safety agency. On June 18, the agency opened two investigations into ignition switches in Chrysler minivans and SUVs, and acknowledged that it's looking at the whole industry.

The agency is looking into how long air bags remain active after the switches are moved out of the run position. In many cases, the answer is less than a second.

GM's conduct in the small-car recall already is under investigation by the Justice Department and both houses of Congress. Earlier this year, the company paid a $35 million fine to NHTSA for delays in reporting the small-car ignition switch problems.

GM's recalls on Monday bring this year's total so far to more than 40 million for the U.S. industry, far surpassing the old full-year record of 30.8 million from 2004.

The recalls come the same day the company's compensation consultant, Kenneth Feinberg, announced plans to pay victims of crashes caused by the defective small-car switches. Attorneys and lawmakers say about 100 people have died and hundreds were injured in crashes, although Feinberg said he didn't have a total.

Feinberg said the company has placed no limit on how much he can spend in total to compensate victims. But victims of the new set of recalls announced Monday can't file claims to the fund, which deals only with the small cars.

In the original recall, the ignition switches didn't meet GM's specifications but were used anyway, and they slipped too easily out of the "run" position.

The vehicles recalled Monday have switches that do conform to GM's specifications. In these cases, the keys can move the ignition out of position because of jarring, bumps from the driver's knee or the weight of a heavy key chain. The cars recalled Monday will get replacement keys; the small cars recalled in February are getting new ignitions.

In all the cases, the ignition switches out of the "run" position and into the "accessory" or "off" position.

GM is urging people to remove everything from their key rings until all of the recalled cars can be repaired.

Of the three people who died in crashes involving the newly recalled vehicles, it's unclear whether those deaths were ignition-related, said GM spokesman Alan Adler. In each of the cases the air bags didn't deploy, but there are many reasons air bags don't deploy, including the angle at which a car is hit and whether or not the occupants were belted, he said.

The Detroit company said it plans to take a $1.2 billion charge in the second quarter for recall-related expenses. Added to a $1.3 billion charge in the first quarter, that brings total recall expenses for the year to $2.5 billion.

GM also announced four other recalls Monday covering more than 200,000 additional vehicles. Most are to fix an electrical short in the driver's door that could disable the power locks and windows and even cause overheating.

GM has announced 54 separate recalls this year.

GM's stock fell 32 cents, or just under 1 percent, to close at $36.30 on Monday.

Business Highlights

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GM won't limit ignition switch crash compensation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The attorney overseeing General Motors' compensation to victims of small-car crashes says there's no limit to what the company will pay, provided the crashes were caused by faulty ignition switches. The tally could climb into billions of dollars.

GM links 13 deaths to defective ignition switches in cars such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion. But trial lawyers and lawmakers say hundreds of others could file claims of wrongful death and injury.

Kenneth Feinberg, one of the country's top compensation experts, said Monday that GM has placed no cap on the total amount he can pay to injured people or relatives of those killed. And he alone — not GM — will decide how much they each will get, even though he is being paid by the company, which did not like some of the program's provisions.

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GOP bucking business priorities on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Traditional ties between the business community and the Republican Party are fraying on Capitol Hill, where the House GOP has bucked corporate interests on a series of priorities this year, from immigration to highway funding to trade.

Rebuffed in Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have found more success backing pro-business candidates for election, but even they don't always deliver.

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Washington faces difficulties launching legal pot

SEATTLE (AP) — Pete O'Neil saw Washington's legalization of marijuana in 2012 as a path to retirement, or at least to his kids' college tuition.

He's paid tens of thousands of dollars in rent on possible locations for a pot-shop chain, hired lawyers and picked out flooring. But now the nation's second legal recreational marijuana industry is about to start without him.

O'Neil struck out in Washington's lottery for coveted pot-shop licenses. He has unsuccessfully tried to buy companies that scored a lucky number. In frustration, he's turning what would have been his Seattle retail store into a medical marijuana dispensary.

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French bank BNP guilty of US sanctions violations

WASHINGTON (AP) — France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, pleaded guilty Monday and agreed to pay nearly $9 billion to resolve criminal allegations that it processed transactions for clients in Sudan and other blacklisted countries in violation of U.S. trade sanctions, the Justice Department announced.

After months of negotiations, the bank admitted to violating U.S. trade sanctions by conducting currency transactions for clients in Sudan, Cuba and Iran. The transactions were made through the bank's New York office from at least 2004 through 2012. The United States had imposed the sanctions on the countries to block their participation in the global financial system.

BNP entered a guilty plea in state court in New York City and is expected to do the same Tuesday in federal court, officials said.

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Court: Religious rights trump birth control rule

WASHINGTON (AP) — A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that some companies with religious objections can avoid the contraceptives requirement in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, the first time the high court has declared that businesses can hold religious views under federal law.

The justices' 5-4 decision, splitting conservatives and liberals, means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under the health insurance plans of objecting companies.

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Court: Public union can't make nonmembers pay fees

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court dealt a blow to public sector unions Monday, ruling that thousands of home health care workers in Illinois cannot be required to pay fees that help cover a union's costs of collective bargaining.

In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take.

The ruling is a setback for labor unions that have bolstered their ranks and their bank accounts in Illinois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers. It could lead to an exodus of members who will have little incentive to pay dues if nonmembers don't have to share the burden of union costs.

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Stocks end mixed; S&P closes near all-time high

NEW YORK (AP) — The stock market closed out the second quarter regaining its upward momentum as investors were encouraged by an improving economy.

Stocks have resumed their upward trajectory after getting off to their worst start in five years in the first quarter. Investors sold stocks in January as they worried about the impact of an unusually harsh winter on the economy. The dangers of the intensifying conflict between Russia and the Ukraine also weighed on the markets.

By contrast, there were fewer worries in the second quarter.

As the weather improved, there was more encouraging news about hiring and manufacturing. Stocks were also propelled higher by a turnaround in some of the riskier parts of the market. Internet, biotechnology and small-company stocks all rebounded after dragging the market lower in March.

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Contracts to buy US homes up sharply in May

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes shot up in May. But the pace of buying this year remains slower than in 2013, in part because of sluggish sales during winter.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday that its seasonally adjusted pending home sales index rose 6.1 percent to 103.9 last month. It was the sharpest month-over-month gain since April 2010. The index remains 5.2 percent below its level a year ago.

Pending sales are a barometer of future purchases. A one- to two-month lag usually exists between a contract and a completed sale.

Lower mortgage rates and increased supplies of homes on the market drove much of last month's gains. Signed contracts rose in all four U.S. regions: the Northeast, Midwest, South and West.

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PPG Industries buying Mexico's Comex for $2.3B

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Paint and coatings maker PPG Industries is buying Consorcio Comex SA de CV for $2.3 billion to help bolster its architectural coatings presence in Mexico and Central America.

Comex makes coatings and related products in Mexico and sells them in Mexico and Central America. Pittsburgh-based PPG makes coatings, specialty materials and glass products.

Privately held Comex, based in Mexico City, had 2013 sales of about $1 billion. Its brands include Effex, Texturi and its namesake. Comex has eight manufacturing plants and six distribution centers.

PPG plans to fund the transaction mostly with available cash and short-term investments, but may fund part of the acquisition with the addition of debt.

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Devon Energy selling some US assets for $2.3B

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oil and gas exploration company Devon Energy Corp. is selling some U.S. oil and gas properties to Linn Energy LLC for $2.3 billion.

The properties include those in the Rockies, onshore Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent region, Devon said on Monday. The sale is part of a transformation plan the company announced late last year in which it was looking to sell non-core assets. The properties being sold to Linn Energy produced 275 million cubic feet of natural gas equivalent per day, with proved reserves of 1.242 trillion cubic feet of gas equivalent.

Oklahoma City-based Devon will have lowered its debt by more than $4 billion this year once the sale is complete.

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By The Associated Press=

The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 25 points, or 0.2 percent, to 16,826. The Standard & Poor's 500 index edged down less than a point to close at 1,960 Monday, two points below the record high it set on June 20. The Nasdaq composite rose 10 points, or 0.2 percent, to 4,408.

Benchmark U.S. crude for August delivery fell 37 cents to close at $105.37 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils used by many U.S. refineries, fell 94 cents to close at $112.36 a barrel in London. Wholesale gasoline fell 3.1 cents to close at $3.043 a gallon. Natural gas rose 5.1 cents to close at $4.440 per 1,000 cubic feet. Heating oil fell 2.8 cents to close at $2.975 a gallon.

Obama's No-Win Immigration Predicament

President Obama, accompanied by Vice President Biden in the White House Rose Garden, lashed out at House Republicans for stalling immigration legislation.

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hide captionPresident Obama, accompanied by Vice President Biden in the White House Rose Garden, lashed out at House Republicans for stalling immigration legislation.

Charles Dharapak/AP

President Obama, accompanied by Vice President Biden in the White House Rose Garden, lashed out at House Republicans for stalling immigration legislation.

Charles Dharapak/AP

President Obama's tough predicament on immigration is only getting worse.

He certainly didn't want to be dealing with an influx of unaccompanied minors illegally entering the U.S. across the Southern border, overwhelming the Homeland Security Department's ability to deal with them during a critical midterm election year.

Obama also presumably didn't want an immigration bill passed by the Senate a year ago to sit, forsaken, in the House. But that's happened too, with Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, recently telling the president the Republican-controlled House won't take up legislation to overhaul the nation's immigration laws this year.

Responding to the first problem of the children who are illegally crossing into the U.S. and mainly coming from Central America, Obama announced Monday that he would be seeking more resources to address that influx while shifting current resources to the border – an announcement that not only failed to placate anyone, but served to upset immigration advocates.

In a letter to Congress, Obama said he would be asking for additional resources, according to reports more than $2 billion, to help manage what he called a "humanitarian crisis" at the border.

Besides allowing the surge of more immigration judges, asylum officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyers to the Southern border to deal with the influx, the president was also asking Congress to extend extra authority to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson that would allow him to use more discretion in returning minors to their home countries.

That would sidestep protections Congress placed in law to give children more protection than adults because of their greater vulnerability to human trafficking – a result that angered and surprised immigration advocates.

"I was actually stunned," Kevin Appleby, director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' office of migration policy and public affairs, told It's All Politics.

"I think they've been trying to beat back their critics on their harsh enforcement record over the last year or so," he said, referring to the administration's aggressiveness in the use of deportations, which has been sharply criticized by immigration advocates and Latino groups. "To double down on that at this point surprised me."

Appleby attended a White House meeting on immigration last week and said administration officials didn't mention that they planned to request more money or reverse the protections in the law for child immigrants.

What's more, Appleby said, because many of the children are fleeing violence in their Central American homelands, they are more refugees than immigrants.

"The administration's move has sparked outrage among advocates for children and refugees and immigrant rights advocates and for good reason," said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, in a Monday teleconference with reporters. "If Congress authorizes this request, the Obama administration will be shuttling children right back to the dangerous situations they escaped without allowing them the opportunity to fully present their cases in court."

Obama's frustration was clear Monday in a White House Rose Garden statement that the GOP's refusal to even take up immigration legislation left him no alternative other than to use the type of executive action they criticize as usurping congressional authority to try to address some of the border problems.

"If House Republicans are really concerned about me taking too many executive actions, the best solution to that is passing bills. Pass a bill," Obama said. "Solve a problem. Don't just say 'no' on something that everybody agrees needs to be done."

Obama said he asked Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to review actions he could take on immigration without Congress and he promised to approve them this summer, seemingly even before knowing exactly what the members of his cabinet would recommend.

For Obama and congressional Democrats — given the vow he made to Latino voters that fixing the nation's broken immigration system would be a second-term priority — his promise of executive action beat doing nothing. And doing nothing would risk alienating a significant part of his base as Democrats try to hang onto their small majority in the Senate.

Boehner responded in a statement that the president was to blame for the impasse, saying that House Republicans don't trust that the president would faithfully execute new immigration laws if they passed and he signed them.

"In our conversation last week, I told the president what I have been telling him for months: the American people and their elected officials don't trust him to enforce the law as written," Boehner said in a statement. "Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue. The crisis at our southern border reminds us all of the critical importance of fixing our broken immigration system. It is sad and disappointing that – faced with this challenge – President Obama won't work with us, but is instead intent on going it alone with executive orders that can't and won't fix these problems."

New Mexico high court upholds property tax cap

SANTA FE, N.M. -- New Mexico's highest court has upheld a state law that caps residential property tax valuation increases until a home changes ownership.

The state Supreme Court on Monday said the law was constitutional.

Critics of the tax limitation law contended it had improperly created a new class of taxpayers based on when someone bought a house.

Under a state law that took effect in 2001, most people are subject to a 3 percent limit on how much property values can climb each year for tax purposes. However, the cap doesn't apply when a home changes hands.

Critics contend new homeowners can be hit by "tax lightning" because their property tax bills often are much higher than their neighbors when the valuation of the newly purchased house is reassessed for tax purposes.

Rates on US Treasury bills rise at weekly auction

WASHINGTON -- Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills rose in Monday's auction, with rates on three-month bills climbing to their highest level since late March.

The Treasury Department auctioned $25 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.040 percent, up from 0.025 percent last week. Another $23 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.065 percent, up from 0.050 percent last week.

The three-month rate was the highest since those bills averaged 0.045 percent on March 31. The six-month rate was the highest since those bills averaged 0.070 percent on June 16.

The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,998.99, while a six-month bill sold for $9,996.70. That would equal an annualized rate of 0.041 percent for the three-month bills and 0.066 percent for the six-month bills.

Separately, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, edged up to 0.11 percent last week from 0.10 percent the previous week.

Words fail to allay fears of a bloody Ramadan

BEIRUT: Fears grew Monday that terrorist attacks could escalate during the holy month of Ramadan, as investigation with detainees revealed further details on plots to attack the country.

Speaking to The Daily Star, Western diplomatic sources expressed their worry that this Ramadan, which began over the weekend, could be “the bloodiest” if extremist groups were able to carry out the bombings they were planning, particularly as they are now believed to be recruiting women as would-be suicide bombers to target crowded areas.

The sources said many Islamists believe that “jihad” and sacrificing one’s self during the holy month is highly rewarded by God.

An Army source described reports of further violence during Ramadan as rumors, but acknowledged that security in Lebanon was not at its best: “All this is mere talk. The security situation is not excellent, but it is also not bad. We are still much better than countries in the region.”

Other sources said Lebanese security agencies had two weeks ago received a list from U.S. intelligence services with the names of fundamentalist individuals from Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Syria, France and Egypt who have reportedly entered Lebanon both via illegal routes from Syria and through Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport.

The same sources said the 33 individuals, who carry forged IDs, are now in a number of Akkar villages, the central and western Bekaa Valley, Beirut and in the Palestinian refugee camps of Ain al-Hilweh, Shatila, burj al-Barajneh and Beddawi.

These terrorists, who are not believed to belong to one specific group, are said to be planning to assassinate Shiite, Sunni and Christian religious figures with the aim of sparking strife.

After enjoying relative calm for around three months, Lebanon has seen a new wave of bombings in late June. In response, Lebanese security services have arrested a number of terror suspects and would-be suicide bombers.

A judicial source told The Daily Star that a Frenchman and two Saudi nationals – one of whom blew up himself to evade arrest during a raid on the Duroy Hotel in Beirut last week – were recruited and trained in Istanbul by a radical Jordanian.

The source said the trainer supplied the recruits with money before sending them to Lebanon with instructions about who to meet upon arrival. Once in Lebanon, someone would take charge of the new arrivals, provide them with explosives and give them instructions, according to the source.

The source added that the investigation had revealed a link between a French suspect, originally from the Comoros Islands, who was arrested in a June 20 raid on the Napoleon Hotel in Hamra and the second Saudi bomber who was captured alive at the Duroy Hotel.

The source said Military Prosecutor Saqr Saqr would in the coming hours refer the Saudi detainee to Lebanese Army Intelligence for further investigation.

“They [radicals] are seeking to turn Lebanon into fertile ground for Daesh,” said the source in reference to militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). “They want Lebanon to become a mini-Iraq.”

Also Monday, Syria’s state TV reported that three rigged cars – two with Lebanese license plates – were found in Wadi al-Hussayn in the mountainous area of Qalamoun near the Syrian border with Lebanon.

Qalamoun – which was under the control of Syrian rebels until this spring – was believed to be the main source of cars that were being laden with explosives and then sent back into Lebanon to target areas associated with Hezbollah for months late last year and early this year. But despite the gloomy picture, Defense Minister Samir Moqbel reiterated after visiting Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai that Lebanon’s security “is for sure under control.”

Separately, the Saudi Embassy in Beirut said Monday that Riyadh stands at the forefront of those facing the global threat of terrorism, while dismissing recent criticism of the kingdom as “an affront to truth.”

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia suffers first and foremost from terrorism and has contributed to the field of counter-terrorism,” the embassy’s statement said.

The statement was seen as a reaction to comments by Lebanese journalist Ghassan Jawad of slabnews.com during an appearance on OTV’s “Think Twice” over the weekend, in which he called for visa restrictions on Arab Gulf tourists and accused them of having a “desert” and “Bedouin” mentality.

In another security development, two men were killed and at least four others wounded in a shootout on the outskirts of Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, police sources told The Daily Star. The sources said that the clashes were related to drug trafficking issues.

California minimum wage rising to $9 an hour

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's minimum wage will rise to $9 an hour when a new law takes effect on Tuesday and provides workers with the first such increase since 2008.

That amount will increase again to $10 an hour starting on Jan. 1, 2016, under AB10, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last fall.

"This first modest increase will help put more money in the pockets of hardworking Californians to provide food, clothes and housing for their families," Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, said in a statement.

AB10 is one of several laws that take effect in July. Others will provide additional protections to victims of domestic violence, expand the state's paid family leave program, and give tax breaks to manufacturers.

California's minimum wage increase comes amid a national debate about low-wage workers who have seen their purchasing power decline in recent years.

President Barack Obama has pushed Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, but the proposal hasn't gained much traction. Instead, he has encouraged cities and states to raise those wages on their own.

New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Oklahoma City are among the municipalities debating minimum wage increases. In early June, the Seattle City Council voted to raise the minimum wage within the city to $15 an hour, starting next April and phasing in over several years.

Currently, the highest minimum wage in the country is in SeaTac, a Washington state town of about 25,000 that is home to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The $15-an-hour minimum wage approved by voters took effect in January for workers at major hotels and parking lots, and the state Supreme Court will decide whether it also applies to workers at the airport, which is run by a separate authority.

Washington has the highest minimum wage of any state at $9.32 an hour.

In California, a bill that would have raised the state's minimum wage even higher and tied it to inflation failed in the Legislature this year.

Other bills that take effect Tuesday include:

— AB93 and SB90 allow manufacturers and certain researchers and developers to obtain a partial exemption of sales and use tax equal to 4.2 percent on some manufacturing and equipment purchases through July 1, 2022. The measures were authored by Sens. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, and Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres.

— AB161 permits a court, when issuing a domestic violence restraining order, to restrain one party from changing insurance coverage. It was authored by Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose.

— AB176 by Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose, gives domestic abuse victims greater protection by having police follow the toughest protective order when there are multiple or conflicting orders.

— AB218 says state and local government agencies must determine a job applicant's minimum qualifications before obtaining and considering information regarding the applicant's conviction history. It was authored by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento.

— AB1121 by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, will help transgender people change their names by eliminating the requirement that people announce the name change in a newspaper before seeking a court order for it.

— SB652 by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, requires property sellers to disclose to homebuyers all pre-litigation claims presented to the builder.

— SB770 broadens the definition of family under Family Paid Leave to allow workers to receive partial wage replacement benefits while taking care of seriously ill siblings, grandparents, grandchildren and parents-in-law. The bill was authored by Sens. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord.

Colorado fracking initiatives advance after ruling

DENVER -- Supporters of ballot questions to give more control to local governments over fracking will be able to turn in signatures for six different measures after rulings from the Colorado Supreme Court.

Monday' rulings mean that signatures collected for the initiatives can be turned in by the Aug. 4 deadline. The court ruled that the ballot questions accurately reflect what they intend to do and are not misleading.

The six initiatives include questions to increase setbacks for how far rigs can be from occupied properties. The current minimum is 500 feet. Other initiatives would give local governments more control over hydraulic fracturing and create an Environmental Bill of Rights.

Each petition requires 86,105 valid signatures to get on the November ballot.

Gov. John Hickenlooper is trying to find a legislative compromise to hold off the initiatives.

Aoun’s presidential proposal draws rebuke

BEIRUT: Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun proposed Monday that the Constitution be amended to allow the Lebanese people to vote for their head of state, drawing criticism from his political rivals as his allies continue their reticence on his presidential bid.

“I suggest a limited constitutional amendment that allows the presidential election to be decided by the people directly over two rounds,” Aoun said Monday at a news conference.

Aoun suggested that Christians would vote in a first round, with the top two candidates then facing a public poll open to voters of all sects.

Aoun said a direct election would prevent a presidential vacuum from occurring in the future by eliminating the need for a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament or a two-thirds quorum with an absolute majority.

The presidency, which has been vacant since former President Michel Sleiman’s term ended on May 25, is reserved for a Maronite Christian under the National Pact of 1943 that governs Lebanon’s political power-sharing.

Aoun resurrected his previous proposal for a new parliamentary electoral law under which each religious group would elect its own members of Parliament.

Aoun complained that under the current law, Christian MPs were being elected by Muslims, leading to losses by his party in the last round of elections because Muslim voters “come in one bloc.”

“This is not fair,” he continued, adding that “Christians are not well represented” and this violated the National Pact and Christians’ right to parity with Muslims.

“When every religious group elects its own officials, we are ensuring justice and fair representation,” he said.

Aoun’s proposal, dubbed the “Orthodox Gathering draft law” when he first proposed it last year, drew criticism at the time from those who derided it as unconstitutional and feared it would lead Lebanon to become more sectarian.

Aoun denied such claims at Monday’s conference, saying “confessionalism is the basis of the Lebanese [political] system ... and implementing justice inside the system prevents any sect’s domination over another.”

Aoun also addressed claims the FPM was disrupting the presidential election, telling the public: “You have lived for 24 years in a presidential void ... It is time to end this void. We are trying to wake you up.”

The FPM leader cited a statistical study by Abdo Saad, according to which 86 percent of the Lebanese people support his initiative.

The stalemate over the electoral law last year caused elections to be postponed until this fall, with Parliament extending its own mandate by 17 months.

Aoun’s proposal drew a flurry of negative reactions from the March 14 movement, as his allies in Hezbollah and the Amal Movement remained tight-lipped, voicing neither support nor opposition to the proposition.

Future Movement MP Ahmad Fatfat called Aoun’s proposal “strange” as well as “un-serious and impractical.”

“This is not an exit from the crisis, it is a complication,” he told The Daily Star, adding that no amendments can be made to the Constitution while Parliament’s mandate has been extended. He said now was not the time to question the entire Lebanese political system.

Regarding Aoun’s proposal for a new parliamentary law, Fatfat said the draft law has “already been rejected.” He went on to question why Aoun would support direct election for the presidency only, and not the other top positions such as the speaker and the prime minister.

Fatfat also dismissed the theory, put forth by some analysts, that Aoun is demanding the impossible in order to push his rivals to “compromise” by backing his presidential bid.

“He knows [direct election] is impossible, and he also knows it is impossible for him to become president,” Fatfat said.

Separately, Future Movement MP Ammar Houri told Future Television that the Constitution cannot be amended at this time, emphasizing that the priority should be on electing a new president.

Future’s Christian allies also made clear their opposition to the proposal, with most echoing Fatfat’s concern over making Constitutional amendments during an extraordinary Parliamentary term.

“Aoun is clearly saying: enjoy these long months of vacancy because I didn’t become president,” said Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra, appealing to Aoun’s allies not to put the former general’s ambitions above the welfare of the country.

The Kataeb party responded with a statement in which it said the proposal would “exacerbate the crisis and the [effects of] the vacancy [in the presidential palace].”

It also added, sarcastically, “out of concern for the rights of all sects and ensuring equality, the Kataeb party asks: why not use General Aoun’s mechanism for electing a president to also choose the speaker and prime minister?”

The party called the “obstruction” of the presidential election a blow to national security, and called for dialogue and cooperation among the Lebanese factions.

Information Minister Ramzi Joreige, for his part, who is considered close to the Kataeb, said it was “illogical” to hold parliamentary elections before the presidential poll, as suggested by Aoun.

“How can we ignore all these constitutional issues and hold parliamentary elections in this environment?” he told the Voice of Lebanon radio. “And if a new Parliament is elected [before a president], who will hold the necessary parliamentary consultations on behalf of the president, the current council of ministers? I don’t think this is possible.”

If a new Parliament is elected, the Cabinet immediately loses its mandate, the minister explained, and another caretaker government would only exacerbate the power vacuum in the government.

Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb accused Aoun of threatening to paralyze the government if he is not elected president, likening him to a lovestruck youth who threatens to kill the girl he loves if he is not allowed to wed her.

“If the aim is to strike down the Taif Accord and return to a majority rule in our decisions and institutions, I do not think anyone will agree to this step, neither Christians nor Muslims, and not the political parties which are aware of the sacrifices made for us to reach the Taif,” Harb said.

Is Lebanon at risk of becoming the next jihadi hub?

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Foreign jihadists have been immigrating to Lebanon for years, but sources say that following the rapid conquest of territories in Syria and Iraq by Islamist groups, their numbers have recently been increasing to the extent that the country is at risk of becoming a hub for jihadists.

And now the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is hurriedly making its way to Lebanon.

Alongside Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s declaration over the weekend that he is caliph of the Islamic State his group is building and an announcement that the group was now called just the “Islamic state,” Abdel-Salam al-Urduni was named as the emir of Lebanon.

According to opposition fighters in Syria, Urduni is most likely a Palestinian with a Jordanian passport, and is someone who has lived in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon for a long time.

This dangerous development will likely stir the feelings of a wide range of Islamist militants currently embedded within Lebanon’s social fabric.

When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi became the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and called on Arabs to declare their allegiance to the group, he won the minds and hearts of many fundamentalists, including in Lebanon, beginning with Palestinian Ahmad Abdel-Karim al-Saadi, also known as Abu Mohjen, the leader of Islamist group Osbat al-Ansar. After he was sentenced to death, Saadi fled to Iraq to work there.

Saadi and Walid Boustani, a Lebanese member of Fatah al-Islam, are considered to be among the first to pave the way for jihadists to travel to Syria, specifically to Qalaat al-Hosn or Crac des Chevaliers, after the conflict erupted between Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and rebels fighting to unseat it.

Boustani escaped Lebanon’s notorious Roumieh Prison in 2010 after he was arrested, then joined Islamist forces fighting in the Syrian uprising. He was executed by the Free Syrian Army at some point in 2012, with his death captured on a video posted on YouTube in September that year.

Reports have subsequently emerged of an unknown sheikh, reportedly a famed Salafist residing in Tripoli, who issued the decision to kill Boustani. Some of the northern city’s militants have allegedly not forgiven him for his decision as it deprived them of the possibility of establishing their emirate within Syria.

Another key Islamist, Saddam Hajj Dib, was killed in May 2007 in clashes between the Internal Security Forces and Fatah al-Islam in fighting that sparked clashes that summer in the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. Hajj Dib is the uncle of brothers Motasem and Hasan al-Hasan, both of whom died fighting in Syria.

The Nahr al-Bared clashes were aimed at destroying Fatah al-Islam and its leader Shaker Youssef al-Absi. Absi founded the organization after first meeting Zarqawi in a Jordanian prison, and then Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, who became the leader of the Nusra Front, in a Syrian prison.

“It is all an interconnected series between all of them and it is the dream of establishing a caliphate and building an Islamic state and ruling only through the Shariah law,” a fundamentalist Islamist in Tripoli, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Star.

He is one of many Sunnis in the city who are preoccupied with jihad at the moment as a means to escape what they perceive as an unfairly harsh crackdown on their activities.

According to a Salafist activist with ties to jihadist groups, Islamists emigrating to fight is not a new notion at all, “especially since Tripoli is a safe haven for jihadists, beginning with the emergence of a number of notable personalities primarily [the late] Bassam Kanj, known as Abu Aisha, who was the emir of emigration and takfirism, and who was killed ... in 2000.”

Then emerged Boustani and Australian sheikh Abu Sleiman al-Muhajir, who became emir of Qalaat al-Hosn, and is believed to have been killed in the fighting there after recruiting a significant number of young men, including the Hasan brothers.

The Salafist activist did not respond to The Daily Star’s questions regarding young Lebanese men leaving for Syria to fight there, and whose numbers have reportedly exceeded 100, but he did say that Lebanon has turned into an effective jihadist arena.

According to him, Lebanon will soon witness an increased flow of jihadists into the country, as has already been proven with the uncovering of a number of terrorist cells in the past week.

But despite all of this, he said it was still impossible to organize mass jihadist emigrations from Lebanon to elsewhere in the Middle East. He also said it was unlikely that Tripoli would turn into a base for jihad, especially for those going abroad.

“All of our experiences have failed and we all paid the price of unpredictable adventures,” the activist explained. “Most of the Islamists who have adopted fundamentalist thinking are either buried in the ground with their organizations’ secrets, or have been put in prison and reaped nothing but disappointment.”

He denied that he was what he called a “repentant jihadist,” but acknowledged that he was being more careful in his work.

He also said that there was an ongoing debate among Salafist circles between those supporting the Islamic State launching a jihadist operation in Lebanon, and those that believe that the country is uniquely structured – demographically and geographically – and would not be a good place to establish an emirate.

Also notable is the disappearance of Islamist Shadi Mawlawi – who was briefly arrested in Tripoli in 2012 along with Qatari Abdel-Rahman Attieh, reportedly the top supporter for the formation of the Nusra Front, and Jordanian Abdel-Malak Youssef Othman Abdel-Salam – and his brother Nizar.

Reports have emerged that Mawlawi is moving between Syria and Lebanon via the northern border. He is reportedly accompanied by Osama Mansour, known as Abu Mansour, the Salafist sheikh who disappeared along with others such as Hussam al-Sabbagh in Tripoli.

It is possible Mawlawi and Nizar’s disappearance does not mean anything at all. However, it’s also possible that there is a link between their absence and the recent uncovering of a number of terrorist cells, particularly those in Qalamoun and Fnaydeq in north Lebanon.

A high-ranking security official confirmed to The Daily Star that the significant number of terrorist cells flocking to Lebanon was most probably related to the Islamic State’s decision to destroy the previously calm security situation in Lebanon and link the country up with its areas of jihadist activity in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State is believed to be hoping to double its capacity and move its elements around more easily via the Syrian areas adjacent to the eastern Lebanese border town of Arsal, from where it can take advantage of that fact that many Arab nationals can easily enter the country.

“As with the car bombs, there is no accurate count of foreign suicide bombers in Lebanon, but we are following up diligently on Lebanese areas where maybe cars are being rigged and jihadists are being prepped,” the security source said.

“These areas have a certain element that forces us to work within them differently ... we are alert as we fear painful attacks on all levels as Lebanon is now under the threat of imminent danger.”