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| CA-NEWS Summary Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:46 PM PDT Retailers to compensate victims of Bangladesh disaster DHAKA (Reuters) - Two Western retailers have promised to compensate families of garment workers killed while making their clothes in a Bangladesh factory building that collapsed last week in the country's worst industrial accident. The pledge from Britain's Primark and Canada's Loblaw came after the owner of the collapsed Rana Plaza was brought before a court in Dhaka on Monday, where lawyers and protesters chanted "hang him, hang him". ... Full Story | Top |
| China says detains 19, seizes weapons after Xinjiang unrest Monday, Apr 29, 2013 07:39 PM PDT BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained 19 people and seized homemade explosives and weapons following a bloody clash between residents and officials which killed 21 people last week in the restive region of Xinjiang, state media reported. The violence, in the heavily ethnic Uighur part of Xinjiang near the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, was the deadliest in the far western region since July 2009, when nearly 200 people were killed in riots in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi. ... Full Story | Top |
| Italian reporter in Syria missing for 20 days: newspaper Monday, Apr 29, 2013 05:51 PM PDT ROME (Reuters) - Italian journalist Domenico Quirico, a correspondent for Turin's la Stampa newspaper, has not been heard from for 20 days after entering Syria from Lebanon earlier this month, the daily's editor-in-chief Mario Calabresi said on Monday. The 62-year-old Quirico, an experienced war reporter, entered Syria on April 6 to report on the country's civil war, and has not been in contact since April 9. ... Full Story | Top |
| Arab League seems to soften Israeli-Palestinian peace plan Monday, Apr 29, 2013 09:12 PM PDT  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arab states appeared to soften their 2002 peace plan on Monday when a top Qatari official said Israel and the Palestinians could trade land rather than conform exactly to their 1967 borders. Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, Qatar's prime minister and foreign minister, made the comment after he and a group of Arab officials met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss how to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace. ... Full Story | Top |
| Chilean center-right's hopes sag as top candidate quits race Monday, Apr 29, 2013 05:32 PM PDT  By Anthony Esposito SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean businessman Laurence Golborne abandoned his presidential candidacy on Monday over a billing scandal and allegations of undeclared offshore assets, dealing a blow to the ruling center-right coalition's hopes of retaining power in the November election. "I don't want to be an obstacle ... right now I'm withdrawing my candidacy," Golborne, a former public works and mining minister who spearheaded the 2010 rescue of 33 trapped miners in the Atacama desert, said at a news conference in Santiago. ... Full Story | Top |
| Court allows Bolivia's Morales to seek second re-election Monday, Apr 29, 2013 05:01 PM PDT  LA PAZ (Reuters) - Leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales will be allowed to seek re-election again next year, according to a Constitutional Court ruling on Monday that sparked opposition protests. Morales was elected in late 2005 and re-elected in 2009 after leading a push for a new constitution that allows only one re-election for a sitting president. However in a ruling, the country's Constitutional Court said the clock started ticking after the new constitution was signed into law, meaning that next year's vote will be legally counted as Morales' first re-election. ... Full Story | Top |
| Cyprus parliament decides on bailout, thin majority to vote yes Monday, Apr 29, 2013 04:31 PM PDT  By Michele Kambas NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus's parliament decides on Tuesday whether to back a bailout imposed by its EU partners, with approval likely from a thin majority against mounting calls for the island to exit the euro. Lawmakers were due to meet in an extraordinary session at 4 p.m. (1300 GMT) to ratify the terms of the aid, which is conditional on Cyprus winding down its second-largest bank and slapping heavy losses on uninsured depositors in another. ... Full Story | Top |
| Venezuela opposition leader charged with spurring violence Monday, Apr 29, 2013 03:17 PM PDT  CARACAS (Reuters) - A Venezuelan court charged retired General Antonio Rivero on Monday with inciting post-election violence in the latest political flash point in the bitterly divided nation. Opposition leaders say Rivero, a member of the Popular Will movement that is a driving force of Venezuela's opposition coalition, became new President Nicolas Maduro's first political prisoner when he was arrested over the weekend. Authorities say he was one of those behind a wave of violence, on the day after Maduro's disputed April 14 election, that represented a coup attempt and killed nine people. ... Full Story | Top |
| Syrian prime minister survives Damascus bombing, six die Monday, Apr 29, 2013 03:04 PM PDT  By Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's prime minister survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Damascus on Monday, as rebels struck in the heart of President Bashar al-Assad's capital. Six people were killed in the blast, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Previous rebel attacks on government targets included a December bombing which wounded Assad's interior minister. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the bombing, which he described as a "terrorist attack. ... Full Story | Top |
| Gamblers not so anonymous: Beijing keeps closer eye on Macau Monday, Apr 29, 2013 02:31 PM PDT  By Farah Master MACAU (Reuters) - With little fanfare, China is sending an official with a 'tough cop' reputation to be its top man in Macau, the world's biggest gambling hub, as Beijing puts tackling corruption center stage. Li Gang, a veteran of handling contentious issues in Hong Kong, is slated to this year take control of China's liaison office in the former Portuguese colony - which like Hong Kong is a special administrative region under China's 'one country, two systems' principle. ... Full Story | Top |
| Rise of young voters shifts Malaysia election balance Monday, Apr 29, 2013 02:20 PM PDT  By Siva Sithraputhran and Anuradha Raghu KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak escaped a direct showdown with youth when a 23-year-old student gave up his bid to challenge him in his home constituency in the May 5 general election. But Mohammed Bukhairy Mohammed Sofian's quixotic plan to run against Najib -- which he dropped to avoid diverting votes from the main opposition candidate -- was a reminder of how young voters are shaping politics in the Southeast Asian nation as never before and unnerving the long-ruling coalition. He is one of 2. ... Full Story | Top |
| Obama stresses Syria chemical weapons worries in call with Putin Monday, Apr 29, 2013 02:18 PM PDT By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama took U.S. concerns about Syrian chemical weapons to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, reaching out to one of the Syrian government's staunchest allies. The United States is trying to determine the facts around alleged Syrian use of chemical weapons. Last week U.S. officials said they had "varying degrees of confidence" that Syria had likely used the nerve agent sarin on a small scale against rebel fighters. If proved with certainty, the chemical weapons' usage could triggered unspecified U.S. ... Full Story | Top |
| Italy's Letta wins confidence vote after pledging growth drive Monday, Apr 29, 2013 02:12 PM PDT  By James Mackenzie ROME (Reuters) - Italy's new Prime Minister Enrico Letta won his first vote of confidence in parliament on Monday after promising to press for a change to the European Union's focus on austerity and pursue economic growth and jobs. Letta said Italy could not afford to focus simply on trying to cut its huge public debt and needed a new emphasis on lifting the economy out of recession. The confidence motion in his right-left coalition government easily passed as expected, by 453 votes to 153 in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house. ... Full Story | Top |
| Muslim victims of Myanmar unrest face uncertain future Monday, Apr 29, 2013 02:04 PM PDT  By Jared Ferrie MEIKHTILA, Myanmar, April 30 - In Myanmar's central heartlands, justice and security is elusive for thousands of Muslims who lost their homes in a deadly rampage by Buddhist mobs in March. Many are detained in prison-like camps, unable to return to neighborhoods and businesses razed in four days of violence in Meikhtila that killed at least 43 people, most of them Muslims, displaced nearly 13,000, and touched off a wave of anti-Muslim unrest fuelled by radical Buddhist monks. ... Full Story | Top |
| Trapped in South Korea, veteran spies still believe in the North Monday, Apr 29, 2013 02:00 PM PDT  By Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) - Park Hee-sung, a 78-year-old North Korean former agent who has been held in the enemy South for close to half a century, remains staunchly loyal to his homeland, the ruling Kim family and its Juche ideology of economic self-reliance. A trim, neat man, Park is one of around two dozen North Korean operatives trapped in exile in affluent South Korea. He lives in a charity house in central Seoul with another former agent, 79-year-old Kim Young-sik, and dreams of the day he can return freely to the northern part of a unified Korea. ... Full Story | Top |
| Western Sahara protesters clash with police over U.N. resolution Monday, Apr 29, 2013 01:55 PM PDT RABAT (Reuters) - Western Saharan demonstrators clashed with Moroccan police on Monday after the U.N. Security Council renewed a peacekeeping resolution that they said did not adequately address human rights abuses. Dozens of protesters and police have been injured since the protests started in Laayoune, the biggest city of the Moroccan-controlled territory, on Friday, a day after the U.N resolution was passed extending a peacekeeping mission for one year, human rights groups and local media said. ... Full Story | Top |
| Armed protest in Libya prompts congress to postpone sitting Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:49 PM PDT  TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya's foreign ministry remained surrounded on Monday by heavily armed protesters, a tense demonstration of militia force that prompted the legislature to postpone its next sitting. Militiamen surrounded the ministry on Sunday with pick-up trucks loaded with anti-aircraft guns and armed groups also tried unsuccessfully to storm the interior ministry and the state news agency, posing a challenge to state control of key parts of the capital. ... Full Story | Top |
| Egypt pulls out of talks to protest Middle East nuclear arms Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:44 PM PDT  CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt said on Monday it was withdrawing from a second week of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) talks in Geneva in protest at what it called the failure to implement a 1995 resolution for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. That was an implicit reference to Israel which neither confirms nor denies having nuclear arms and is not a signatory to the NPT. Arab states and Iran say Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal poses a threat to Middle East peace and security. ... Full Story | Top |
| Syria access essential for credible chemical weapons inquiry: U.N. Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:27 PM PDT By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that investigators have been gathering and analyzing available information on alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but access to the war-torn country is essential for a "credible and comprehensive inquiry." A U.N. push for unconditional access for its inspection team gained fresh momentum after the United States and Britain said last week they had limited evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's troops used the nerve agent sarin against rebels. U.S. ... Full Story | Top |
| Lawyers, public chant "hang him" as Bangladesh building owner led to court Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:27 PM PDT  By Ruma Paul and Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladeshi lawyers and protesters chanted "hang him, hang him" on Monday as the owner of a factory building that collapsed last week killing nearly 400 people was led into court dressed in a helmet and bullet-proof jacket, witnesses said. The drama came as rescue officials said they were unlikely to find more survivors in the rubble of the building that collapsed on Wednesday, burying hundreds of garment workers in the country's worst industrial accident. ... Full Story | Top |
| France, keen to boost military strength, avoids defense cuts Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:12 PM PDT  By John Irish and Patrick Vignal PARIS (Reuters) - France will keep its defense budget at the same level for the next six years after the government decided proposed cuts would hamper its ability to mount military operations such as its intervention in Mali. The freeze will still lead to the loss of 34,000 jobs in the defense ministry at a time of growing unemployment in France, according to a strategic review announced on Monday. ... Full Story | Top |
| U.S. calls on North Korea to release detained U.S. citizen Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:09 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States called on North Korea on Monday to immediately release on humanitarian grounds a U.S. citizen accused of trying to topple the reclusive state's government. Korean-American Kenneth Bae, 44, was in a group of five tourists who visited the northeastern city of Rajin on a five-day trip last November and has been held by North Korean police since then. "We call on the DPRK to release Kenneth Bae immediately on humanitarian grounds," U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters at his daily briefing. ... Full Story | Top |
| Kremlin says Putin, Obama agree security contacts after Boston Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:04 PM PDT  By Steve Gutterman MOSCOW (Reuters) - Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama agreed on Monday to maintain close contacts between U.S. and Russian intelligence agencies and cooperate to ensure security for the 2014 Olympics that Russia is hosting in Sochi, the Kremlin said. Putin and Obama spoke for at least the second time since the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings, which U.S. authorities believe were carried out by two brothers with roots in Russia's volatile and mostly Muslim North Caucasus. ... Full Story | Top |
| Israel evicts Palestinian villagers for army exercise Monday, Apr 29, 2013 12:02 PM PDT  By Noah Browning HAMRA CHECKPOINT, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers evicted several hundred Bedouins from a village in the occupied West Bank on Monday after the army declared the area a live-fire training zone. The residents of Wadi al-Maleh, a village mostly inhabited by shepherds in the arid area bordering Jordan, had almost all left their homes by an evening curfew and retreated to neighboring villages, Aref Daraghmeh, a local leader, told Reuters. ... Full Story | Top |
| Seven killed in U.S. cargo plane crash in Afghanistan Monday, Apr 29, 2013 11:58 AM PDT KABUL (Reuters) - Seven crew members of a U.S.-run cargo plane were killed on Monday when their plane crashed shortly after take off from Bagram air base near the Afghan capital Kabul, the cargo operator told Reuters. The Taliban in a statement claimed responsibility for the crash, but NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said there were no reports of insurgent activity in or around the base, which is one of the largest in the country and located about 40 km (25 miles) north of Kabul. ... Full Story | Top |
| South Africa's Mandela frail in first TV footage in months Monday, Apr 29, 2013 11:23 AM PDT  JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela made his first television appearance in almost a year on Monday, looking thin and frail in his Johannesburg home where he has been resting after a bout of pneumonia. The veteran leader stared mostly straight ahead, his face showing little expression in the footage of a visit from President Jacob Zuma and other officials, shown by state broadcaster SABC. ... Full Story | Top |
| France says soldier killed in combat in northern Mali Monday, Apr 29, 2013 11:21 AM PDT PARIS (Reuters) - A French soldier was killed in combat in northern Mali on Monday, the president's office said, without providing further details on the incident. The death, announced in a statement, brings the death toll to six from France's intervention to help Malian forces repel an offensive by Islamist rebels. (Reporting By Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Michael Roddy) Full Story | Top |
| Mali breaks up suspected militant cell in Bamako: security sources Monday, Apr 29, 2013 11:03 AM PDT BAMAKO (Reuters) - Malian security forces have arrested at least eight people suspected of plotting an attack in the capital Bamako for the Islamist militant group MUJWA, two senior security sources said on Monday. Malian officials said the arrests were the first sign that Islamist rebels battling French and African troops for control of Mali's desert north have activated cells in Bamako, which is located in the south. ... Full Story | Top |
| Five convicted in Kosovo organ trafficking case Monday, Apr 29, 2013 10:38 AM PDT  By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA (Reuters) - Five men were convicted in Kosovo on Monday of involvement in an organ trafficking ring that performed at least 23 illegal kidney transplants at a clinic on the outskirts of the capital, under the noses of United Nations police and NATO peacekeepers. The trial of the men, all citizens of Kosovo, has taken on added significance in the region because it echoes a high-profile probe into alleged organ harvesting by guerrilla fighters during the 1998-99 war. ... Full Story | Top |
| Japan, Russia agree to revive talks on island dispute Monday, Apr 29, 2013 10:37 AM PDT  By Alexei Anishchuk MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Japan said on Monday they would revive talks on resolving a territorial dispute that has prevented them signing a treaty formally ending their World War Two hostilities, and, wary of China's rising influence, agreed to bolster trade ties. At the two G8 powers' first Moscow summit for 10 years, President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had China's economic and political might in mind as they launched a new effort to warm up their relationship. ... Full Story | Top |
| Car bombs, shootings kill 23 across Iraq Monday, Apr 29, 2013 10:35 AM PDT  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 23 people were killed in Iraq on Monday in a series of car bombs in Shi'ite Muslim areas and militant attacks, medics and police sources said, taking the week's death toll to nearly 200 as sectarian violence intensifies. Clashes have increased as the civil war in Syria puts strain on fragile relations between Sunnis and Shi'ites. The tensions are at their highest in Iraq since U.S. troops pulled out more than a year ago. ... Full Story | Top |
| U.N. condemns attempted assassination of Syrian prime minister Monday, Apr 29, 2013 10:24 AM PDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday condemned the attempted assassination of the Syrian prime minister in an attack that killed six people, describing it as a "terrorist attack." Syria's prime minister survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Damascus on Monday though half a dozen other people were killed, as rebels struck in the heart of President Bashar al-Assad's capital. ... Full Story | Top |
| Accused Canadian cannibal/killer to go on trial in September 2014 Monday, Apr 29, 2013 09:20 AM PDT  OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian man accused of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student, eating parts of the corpse and posting an online video of the crime will go on trial in Montreal on September 15, 2014, an official said on Monday. Luka Rocco Magnotta, 30, is accused of killing Jun Lin in Montreal in May 2012, posting a video on the Internet of the stabbing death and defiling the body and eating parts of it. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, indignities to a body and publishing obscene materials. ... Full Story | Top |
| Analysis: Italy's politics turned upside down by election aftermath Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:48 AM PDT  By Barry Moody ROME (Reuters) - Five months ago, Silvio Berlusconi was in steep decline and his party was in shambles. His center-left enemies looked triumphant and sat on a 15-point opinion poll lead. Today that situation has turned 180 degrees. The center-left is devastated by divisions and the 76-year-old media tycoon has an opinion poll lead ranging from five to eight points. ... Full Story | Top |
| Egypt's Moussa says Brotherhood out for revenge Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:27 AM PDT  By Yasmine Saleh and Paul Taylor CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood is trying to exact revenge on the judiciary for years of imprisonment and political exclusion, but is attacking the wrong target, opposition leader Amr Moussa said on Monday. The elder statesman told Reuters that Egypt faced an exceptional "to-be-or-not-to-be crisis" worse than after its 1967 defeat by Israel, and Islamist President Mohamed Mursi would do better to pursue national unity rather than division. ... Full Story | Top |
| UAE pardons more than 100 Egyptian prisoners Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:26 AM PDT DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates pardoned more than 100 Egyptian prisoners on Monday in a move hailed by the Egyptian ambassador to Abu Dhabi as a gesture that will improve strained relations between the two countries. Ties between Egypt and the UAE soured after veteran Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak, a longtime Gulf ally, was toppled in 2011. The UAE has voiced distrust of the Muslim Brotherhood that helped propel Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi to power last year. ... Full Story | Top |
| Thai rebels press for independence, set to scupper peace talks Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:22 AM PDT  By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK (Reuters) - Leaders of a Muslim rebel group in southern Thailand said they will press for an independent state and made other demands that are likely to scupper a second round of peace talks, which started in Malaysia on Monday. Resistance to Bangkok's Buddhist rule has existed for decades but flared up violently in 2004 since when a campaign of bombings and roadside shootings has killed over 5,300 people, according to monitoring group Deep South Watch. ... Full Story | Top |
| Racist fans attack Hungarian activist ahead of Jewish Congress Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:21 AM PDT BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The head of a Hungarian anti-racism group said far-right soccer fans shouted "Sieg Heil" and attacked him, breaking his nose days before the country is due to host the World Jewish Congress. Ferenc Orosz, chairman of the Raoul Wallenberg Association, told Reuters he was assaulted after arguing with a group of supporters chanting the Nazi slogan at a match between the Hungarian teams Videoton and Ferencvaros in Budapest on Sunday. ... Full Story | Top |
| New PM Letta says Italy must reform, extend welfare provision Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:07 AM PDT ROME (Reuters) - Italy must reform an outdated and inadequate welfare system, new Prime Minister Enrico Letta said in his maiden speech to parliament on Monday. "We need a welfare system which is more universal, more focused on young people and women, extending it to those who are not covered, especially temporary workers," Letta said, adding that he would work with trade unions to find ways to cut unemployment. Letta also announced that the first measure of his government would be to reduce the salaries of parliamentarians. (Reporting by Naomi O'Leary, writing by Gavin Jones) Full Story | Top |
| Letta says Italy must focus on growth immediately Monday, Apr 29, 2013 08:07 AM PDT ROME (Reuters) - Italy must focus immediately on reviving its economy and it will lobby its European partners to obtain more growth-oriented policies at the EU level, new Prime Minister Enrico Letta said in his maiden speech to parliament on Monday. Letta said that later this week he would visit leaders in Brussels, Paris and Berlin to demonstrate the importance Italy attached to EU-wide economic strategy. ... Full Story | Top |
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