Tag: Weekend News Digest

Hopes for an agreement to end weeks of protests, which have been punctuated by deadly street clashes, evaporated as Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva ruled out the “Red Shirts” offer to disperse if polls were called in 30 days.

“No, I reject it. Because they use violence and intimidation I cannot accept this,” Abhisit said of the proposal which would have seen a ballot held in 90 days and was a softening of earlier demands for snap polls.

US President Barack Obama and dozens of other dignitaries failed to come to the elaborate state funeral because of a cloud of volcanic ash covering the region but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived to show solidarity.

Medvedev called for the two nations, at loggerheads for decades, to unite in sorrow after the April 10 plane crash in Russia that killed the couple and 94 others, most of them figures from Poland’s military and political elite.

The bombers struck minutes apart in the Kacha Pukha camp on the outskirts of the garrison city of Kohat, a registration centre for people fleeing Taliban violence and Pakistani army operations close to the Afghan border.

The attacks underscored the grave threat posed by extremists despite stepped-up Pakistani offensives and a significant increase in US drone attacks targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in the nearby tribal belt.

Draped in a red and white Polish flag, the coffin bearing Lech Kaczynski was carried onto a red carpet at Warsaw Airport, where it was met by his identical twin brother Jaroslaw, a former premier, and a presidential guard of honour.

Before his body was flown home, Poles observed a two-minute silence on the stroke of midday, which was marked by the wailing of sirens.

The Tupolev Tu-154 was taking Kaczynski and his wife, the military chief of staff and other top officers, central bank governor, deputy foreign minister, members of parliament and other senior officials to a memorial ceremony for thousands of Polish troops massacred by Russian forces in World War II.

The jet hit treetops in fog as it approached the runway at Smolensk airport in western Russia and broke up in flames, regional governor Sergei Antufiev said.

The leader of the world’s one billion Catholics condemned the persecution of Christian minorities in Iraq and Pakistan, but failed to mention escalating allegations of decades of child abuse by the Church’s priests.

The dean of the College of Cardinals however rallied around the embattled head of the Roman Catholic Church, telling him in a rain-drenched St Peter’s Square: “The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the idle chatter of the moment.”

Jewish groups and those representing victims of abuse by Roman Catholic priests condemned Father Raniero Cantalamessa for quoting the comments, which he said were made in a letter from a Jewish friend, in his Good Friday sermon.

Rome’s chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni told La Stampa on Saturday: “It’s an inappropriate parallel and of dubious taste.”

In a report released in Kampala, HRW said 250 others, including at least 80 children, were abducted in the December 14-17 Lord’s Resistance Army attack in the remote Makombo area of northeastern Haut Uele district.

A Catholic clergyman at Isiro-Niangara in the same district, speaking before the report was issued, confirmed that 30 members of the rebel LRA attacked a dozen villages of Haut Uele, which is in Orientale province.

As allegations piled up of sexual molestation by priests in the scandal that has swept the United States and Europe, the media expressed shock and bewilderment in comments and editorials.

“How could the Catholics do such a thing?” asked Britain’s The Independent newspaper.

The red-clad protesters — assembled amid tight security in public spaces near government offices in Bangkok — have vowed to step up their campaign if the government does not dissolve parliament within 24 hours.

“We will leave here to listen to the government’s answer at the 11th Infantry Unit,” Red Shirt leader Nattawut Saikuar told reporters. “If they fail to answer our demands we will announce our next step.”

The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), convening for the first time in the Middle East, is the only UN body with the power to outlaw commerce in endangered wild animals and plants.

Besides the sharply disputed proposal on bluefin, the Convention will debate the status of African elephants, polar bears and tigers.

As expected, Icelanders overwhelmingly voted down the deal in Saturday’s referendum, with some 93.6 percent of voters lined up on the “no” side after more than 50 percent of the votes had been counted.

Only 1.5 percent of voters had so far voted “yes” to the Icesave deal, said RUV public broadcaster which compiles all electoral statistics.