Quebec premier victory speech: Shots fired, 1 dead, gunman detained (PHOTOS)

Quebec’s newly-elected Premier Pauline Marois has been rushed off stage during her acceptance speech, after shots were heard inside Montreal's Metropolis concert hall. One man is reported dead.

Another person is in a critical condition and one more witness is being treated for shock, Montreal police have informed Canadian media.

Ian Lafrenière stated that the dead man was in his 40s and that two guns were recovered at the scene, but there was no reason to believe there was more than one shooter.

After firing shots the gunman started a fire behind the downtown Montreal venue where Marois’ supporters had gathered, Reuters reports.

Video has emerged, reportedly showing a man in a blue bathrobe and black balaclava with a gun on the ground surrounded by police. Video footage showed a high-powered rifle, which Twitter users identified as an AK-47 or Valmont Hunter weapon.

The gunman is said to be 62 years old and was apparently shouting “the English are waking up” in French with a Canadian-English accent before adding in English that there would be "payback."

Marois heads the separatist Parti Quebecois, which seeks independence for the French-speaking province of Quebec.

The premier-elect returned to the stage a few minutes after she left it, urging her supporters who packed the hall to leave calmly, stating that "there was a little unfortunate incident," so as not to create panic. Everyone was evacuated and police are investigating.

"We don't know what was [behind] that event," police spokesperson Dany Richer told CBC. "Our investigators are going to meet with [the detained] overnight."

Quebec’s election

This event comes as the separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ) won Quebec’s provincial elections and will form a new government there, once again raising the possibility of a referendum on independence being held in Canada’s French-speaking province.

According to the latest results, PQ has won or was leading in 57 ridings in Tuesday’s election, just shy of the 63 needed for a majority in the 125-seat legislature.

The party’s leader Pauline Marois, 63, will replace the head of the Liberal party, Jean Charest, and will become the province's first female premier.

Just before the shooting incident took place Marois took the stage for her acceptance speech telling her supporters that she hopes to put aside all the difference for a united Quebec.

"Voters have made a choice and we will respect it, and we will govern with all other parties at the national assembly,"she said.

PQ’s win is a significant loss for the Liberals, who governed the province for almost a decade.

Jean Charest miscalculated the mood of the electorate, believing voters would support the Liberals for a fourth term. He ended up losing his own riding of Sherbrooke to a PQ candidate.

"This is not the result I would have wanted. This is not a battle that I backed away from. I now have the firm conviction that our party will continue to serve Quebec, and will do it together," Charest told his supporters.

Independent journalist Robert Harneis told RT that the shooting in the Metropolis concert hall will not affect PQ’s policies in the future.

In his opinion, a “province the size of Quebec could easily be a country.”

“The difficulty of course is that you have English-speaking Canadians on both sides of Quebec, like in Nova Scotia for example, and they are definitely not interested in a French autonomous Quebec,” he added.

Attack on Shaheens

Washington DC - The holy night of 27th Ramadan is also known as “Lailatul-Qadr” or “The Night of Power”. According to Muslim beliefs, it is when the Noble Qur’an descended. Believers devote much of their time praying, reciting the Qur’an, and remembering God. Lailatul Qadr is better than a thousand months and peace reigns until the rising of the sun.
But not in Kamra. Around 2:00am PST, 9 heavily armed militants with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives strapped to their bodies stormed Pakistan Air Force Base Minhas (named after Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas Shaheed, Nishan-e-Haider) located only about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Islamabad, host of fighter jets including F-16s, and a factory that makes aircraft and other weapons systems.
Two hours of intense firefight left a security officer (Shaheed) and nine insurgents dead. One of the rockets hit and damaged a Ukrainian built transport plane parked inside the hangar. The commander in charge of the base was wounded in the attack. After a few hours, without any surprise, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesperson Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack.
This is not the first time that TTP/Militants attacked a military facility inside Pakistan. On May 2011, in the Southern port city of Karachi, 6 Taliban militants attacked Mehran naval base, killing at least 10 people and destroying two US-supplied surveillance aircraft. In October 2009, in the city of Rawalpindi, 10 militants attacked army headquarters (GHQ), killing nine soldiers and 2 civilians. Ironically one thing is common in all the attacks--ex-servicemen were involved along with Taliban fighters.
Some Defense Analysts do not consider the May 2011 raid by US Navy SEALs on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad a direct attack on Pakistani security forces or institutions. The relationship between US and Pakistan after the raid demonstrates otherwise.
Minhas Air Force base is also linked to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. According to western media, the facility is widely believed to store some of the country’s estimated 100 nuclear warheads, even though Pakistani military denies any connection between the base and the nuclear programme.
Almost all the foreign offices of many countries including UK, USA and France issued statements and condemned the attack. They also showed their concern over the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
On the other hand, Awami Muslim League (AML) chief Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, also an ally of Imran Khan’s PTI, requested Taliban leader Mullah Omar to allow Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) to take his march to Waziristan.
TTP (Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan) spokesperson Ahsanullah Ahsan promised the safety of Imran Khan and his march to Waziristan. After few hours of Minhas base attack, Imran Khan became a mouthpiece for TTP and claimed that Minhas attack was a preemptive strike by TTP in reaction of planned military operation in North Waziristan in September and warned security forces about future suicide attacks.
The Pakistani Taliban and its allies have waged a bloody insurgency against the government that has killed over 30,000 people. This is almost 10 times more than the number of deaths in the World Trade Center attack.
They are attacking our military facilities, causing harm to national security, stability and endangering nuclear arsenals. Our leaders are asking for safety and protection from these criminals. Enough is enough; financial and moral support for these criminals should be stopped.
All parties should unite against this clear and present danger. Support for our security forces is the need of the hour and our security forces needs to follow strict policy of “no criminal left behind”. I hope next Lailatul Qadr will bring Peace and Prosperity until the rising of the sun and beyond, Insha’allah.

Iran to close Strait of Hormuz if its security is threatened, warns naval chief

Naval commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, says Iran can stop even 'a single drop of oil' passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz is a strategic shipping route through the Persian Gulf. 

Photo by AP

Iran could prevent even "a single drop of oil" passing through the Strait of Hormuz if its security is threatened, a naval chief said on Saturday, as tensions simmer over Tehran's nuclear program.

Tehran will increase its military presence in international waters, said Ali Fadavi, naval commander in Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

"If they (the U.S.) do not obey international laws and the IRGC's warnings, it will have very bad consequences for them," Fadavi said, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.

"The IRGC's naval forces have had the ability since the (Iran-Iraq) war to completely control the Strait of Hormuz and not allow even a single drop of oil to pass through."

Fadavi added: "IRGC special naval forces are present on all of the Islamic Republic of Iran's ships in the Indian Ocean and to its east and west, to prevent any movement.

"This IRGC naval force presence in international waters will increase."

Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said his office has drawn up plans to make newly tightened sanctions against the Islamic Republic ineffective.

His remarks, carried by ministry website shana.ir on Saturday, did not elaborate on the plans. Qasemi's comments come two weeks after an EU oil embargo went into effect against Iran for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz shipping channel, through which 40 percent of the world's sea-borne oil exports passes, in retaliation for sanctions placed on its crude exports by Western powers.

The sanctions were imposed over Iran's nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at creating an atomic weapon. Iran says the program is for peaceful energy purposes.

The United States has beefed up its presence in the Gulf, adding a navy ship last week to help mine-clearing operations if Iran were to act on threats to block the strait. Tehran said last month it was building more warships, in part to guard Iranian cargo ships from pirates, and Iranian military leaders often assert Iran's strength in the region and dominance in the Strait of Hormuz.

Military analysts have cast doubt on Iran's willingness to block the slender waterway, given the massive U.S.-led retaliation it would likely incur.

Dangerous game: 'US almost daring Tehran to strike first'

With sanctions against Iran gradually showing their ineffectiveness, Washington is escalating the situation in the Persian Gulf, as if encouraging Tehran to attack first, a US politics professor told RT.

Amid pressure mounting on Tehran, a major Indian company, United India Insurance Co., has agreed to provide insurance for tankers carrying oil from Iran. Insurances are vital for sea transportation. Without insurance, tankers are unable to deliver oil from one destination to another.

The decision of an Indian company means a serious blow to the effectiveness of the US sanctions against Iran in a bid to crank up the pressure over the country's nuclear activities. The sanctions target companies accused of breaching a European ban on buying oil from Tehran.

Simultaneously, to give their sanctions policies some military support, the US is sending fourth air carrier to the Persian Gulf region. It has also been announced that America deploys underwater drones to deal with sea mines Iran might plant in the Strait of Hormuz to block the vital route.

“The more warships the US moves [to the region], the more threatened Iran is going to feel and there is more chance of triggering some kind of mistake,” explains Patricia DeGennaro, professor of politics at New York University.

She says the act of sending more warships to the region is a dangerous game of “dare”.

“I don’t know what they are going to achieve by putting more warships in the region. This is a very bad move. Maybe they are trying to make Israel feel safer, but in fact again that is a very dangerous game that is almost daring somebody to strike first,” the professor believes.

‘Mrs. Clinton should better promote peace instead of war’

A naval clash in the Persian Gulf region is very real, DeGennaro told RT, because military communications do not often go as they are expected to.

“The Iranian military is organized a bit differently than the American military. They can get orders not normally understood… within a context of a country being threatened.”

“We should do more negotiations and more diplomacy,” the professor concluded. “I’d like to see Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton lead the State Department as Secretary of State instead of really promoting more war in the region.”

Western intelligence claims Iran might be just a year away from building a nuclear weapon, while Tehran denies allegations of developing nuclear power for military use. This confrontation need to be resolved given neither side wants to lose face, which means negotiations in the first place, believes Patricia DeGennaro.

“Let’s sit down and talk before we start pointing weapons at each other, which should really facilitate a really large scale conflict in the region.”

Iran lawmakers prepare to close Hormuz Strait

An oil tanker cruises towards the Strait of Hormuz off the shores of Khasab in Oman (AFP Photo / Marwan Naamani)

Iranian lawmakers have drafted a bill that would close the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers heading to countries supporting current economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"There is a bill prepared in the National Security and Foreign Policy committee of Parliament that stresses the blocking of oil tanker traffic carrying oil to countries that have sanctioned Iran," Iranian MP Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi told reporters.

"This bill has been developed as an answer to the European Union's oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Agha-Mohammadi said that 100 of Tehran's 290 members of parliament had signed the bill as of Sunday.

Iran's threats to block the waterway through which about 17 million barrels a day sailed in 2011 have grown in the past year as US and European sanctions aimed at starving Tehran of funds for its nuclear programme have tightened.

The Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping route through which most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq and nearly all the gas exported from Qatar sails.

An EU ban on Iranian oil imports came into effect on Sunday

Quit smoking with a shot? New vaccine might cure addiction

                      Scientists think they are on the right track to treating nicotine addiction

Scientists are saying they could be closer to curing cigarette addiction than ever before: researchers at a New York lab have developed a vaccine that they think curbs the need for a fix and so far their tests are being considered a success.

Research is still in its early stages at a Weill Cornell Medical College lab, but so far scientists think they are on the right track to treating nicotine addiction. If their tests continue to return positive results, the doctors behind the development say they might be able to eliminate addiction, and all with just a simple vaccine.

By injecting humans with a harmless virus that modifies liver cells, scientists are able to change the body’s chemistry so that it is tricked into generating a steady stream of nicotine antibodies. From there, nicotine fixes could be nixed immediately as the antibodies seek to steer the body away from wanting another drag of a cigarette.

“The antibody is like a little Pac-Man floating around in the blood, and it grabs onto the nicotine and prevents it from reaching the brain, so there’s no reward,” Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell, says in a statement.

"As far as we can see, the best way to treat chronic nicotine addiction from smoking is to have these Pac-Man-like antibodies on patrol, clearing the blood as needed before nicotine can have any biological effect," Dr. Crystal adds.

So far scientists have tested the vaccination on only mice, but researchers believe that the results are putting them on the right track to someday save humans from their addictions.

“With a single administration of the vaccine, we converted the liver to make the antibody, and it lasts for the life of the mouse,” Dr. Crystal continues. "While we have only tested mice to date, we are very hopeful that this kind of vaccine strategy can finally help the millions of smokers who have tried to stop, exhausting all the methods on the market today, but find their nicotine addiction to be strong enough to overcome these current approaches," he adds in a report published in the Science Translational Medicine journal.

Around one-out-of-five Americans currently smoke regularly, despite diseases linked with cigarettes being tied to one-out-of-five of each casualty in the country.

Russia halts plans to supply S-300 missile system to Syria - reports

                             S-300 missile system (RIA Novosti/Mikhail Fomichev)
Russia’s main weapons producer has allegedly suspended its contract with Syria to supply S-300 long-range missile systems. Russia’s ‘Vedomosti’ daily published the report, citing unnamed sources within the military-industrial complex.

The very fact of the contract’s existence was not known until it was revealed in an annual report made only last week and published online by the makers of the S-300 systems, Almaz-Antey.

The report states that the company’s largest contracts are with Algeria (which is paying $39 million for a long-range missile defense system), and Syria, which signed a contract for the same system for $105 million.

The report also says that deliveries on the Syrian contract are expected to be made between 2012 and 2013. But ‘Vedomosti’ claims two separate sources, who chose to remain anonymous, have said deliveries have been put on the back-burner “after a direct order from above.”

It’s unclear whether these reports are true, but many are already speculating on the potential reasons for such a step. Some have suggested that Moscow has decided to placate Washington and Tel Aviv, drawing parallels between this situation and the one back in 2010, when Russia cancelled its contract for the same missile system with Iran.

However, the circumstances in 2010 were rather different. If Russia had fulfilled its contractual obligations back then, it would have been violating an international embargo. But no such embargo currently affects contracts between Russia and Syria.

Others have suggested that Damascus may be strapped for cash, and simply cannot afford the S-300 complex. This claim is also open to speculation as military cooperation between the two states is basically founded on the fact that Russia forgave Syria its $10 billion debt in return for future arms contracts.

No officials have yet commented on the matter, so it will be some time before light is shed on the situation. But President Vladimir Putin had previously said the arms that Russia delivers cannot be used in civil conflicts, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, stated the supplies were merely defensive weapons sold in contracts signed long ago.

“We are sending no battleships to Syria. We have been saying publicly that we have been implementing contracts under which we have to supply arms to Syria. These armaments are entirely defensive and they mostly consist of air defense systems, which cannot be used against the population and can only be used to respond to outside aggression,” Lavrov told RT.

Russia's military trade with Syria

Attention has been focused on military ties between Russia and Syria for some time, ever since international media claimed Russia was supplying helicopters to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at first even lashed out at Russia, but later backtracked and was forced to admit that the shipment that had got the West’s blood boiling merely consisted of some old helicopters sent back to Russia for repairs.

Although the Russian Ministry of Defense does not disclose the total value of the arms supplied to Syria, outside estimates exist. The US Congress says Russia has outstanding contracts to supply arms for $3.5 billion, while the Swedish think-tank SIPRI puts the figure at between $5 and $6 billion.

Among the widely reported shipments are two K-300 Bastion coastal defense batteries, equipped with supersonic Yakhont missiles. Two anti-aircraft systems, BUK-M2 and PANTSYR-S1, have also been purchased by Syria, though it is unclear if the orders have been fulfilled.

A $550 million contract for 36 Yak-130 planes was signed between the countries earlier this year. While nominally a sophisticated training jet, it can also serve as a light combat aircraft. Russia has also promised to deliver 24 modernized Mig-29 destroyers. It is assumed that neither of these contracts has been fulfilled.