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Greece has launched a new public television channel, EDT, more than two months after the abrupt closure of the state broadcaster ERT.

Some of the 2,700 fired staff have been continuing to produce programmes from their old offices. Europe’s association of public broadcasters pulled the plug on Wednesday on transmissions by the sacked workers.

The Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said it will stop relaying their programmes to viewers, leaving ERT only available online.

Greece’s conservative-led government cited the need to cut costs due to the country’s severe financial crisis for its decision to abruptly close ERT on June 11.

The ensuing international outcry led to a severe political crisis that saw a small left-wing party withdrawing from the country’s fragile three-party governing coalition, leaving the government with a tiny majority in Parliament.

The fired workers have been producing round-the-clock programming for more than two months from ERT’s headquarters, which they have taken over, in defiance of the government shutdown.

{aljazeera}

{{All five men wanted over the gang rape of a 22-year-old photo journalist in the Indian city of Mumbai on Thursday have been arrested.}}

The last suspect was arrested in the capital, Delhi, on Sunday, and is being brought back to Mumbai, police said.

The woman was attacked at an abandoned textile mill in the centre of the city, where she was on a photo assignment with a male colleague at the time.

The case has renewed public outrage over sexual violence in India.

A 19-year-old unemployed man from south Mumbai was first arrested on Friday, and police made another two arrests on Saturday.

The female victim, who is in hospital with multiple injuries, has said she is anxious to return to work after the attack.

“Rape is not the end of life. I want the strictest punishment for all the accused,” she said.

An intern with a Mumbai-based English magazine, she had gone to the Shakti Mills – a former textile mill that now lies abandoned and in ruins – with a male colleague for a photo shoot when the attack happened.

Her colleague was beaten during the assault.

There were nationwide protests last December following the gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in the capital, Delhi. She later died from her injuries.

The case led to the introduction of tougher laws against sexual violence, but many are asking whether these have had any effect.

{agencies}

{{Macedonia’s prime minister threatened on Saturday to call a snap election unless the main opposition party did more to resolve a political deadlock that is damaging its European Union membership prospects.}}

Nikola Gruevski said the prospect of opening EU entry talks could be withdrawn if the conservative government and the centre-left Social Democrats failed to produce an agreed report on an incident last December when opposition legislators were thrown out for brawling.

A joint government-opposition commission, formed under EU pressure, said on Friday it was unable to agree on what had happened in the incident, when police evicted journalists and opposition deputies during parliament’s budget debate.

Gruevski told the Social Democrats that if they did not help by Sunday to adopt the report requested by the EU, he would call a snap election to try to maintain Macedonia’s standing in Brussels.

“The second option is to convene parliament on Monday and vote to disband it and call an early election for October,” he told a news conference. He said he had enough support in parliament to win the vote.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said in February that failure to resolve the dispute was putting at risk an opportunity for Macedonia to clinch the start of membership talks.

{wirestory}

{{President Barack Obama and his top military and national security advisers hashed out options on Saturday for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria amid “increasing signs” that the government used poison gas against civilians.}}

Obama spoke with British Prime Minister David Cameron, a top U.S. ally, and agreed that chemical weapon use by Syrian President Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces would merit a “serious response,” a spokesperson for the prime minister said in a statement.

Syrian opposition accounts that between 500 and well over 1,000 civilians were killed this week by gas in munitions fired by pro-government forces, and video footage of victims’ bodies, have stoked demands abroad for a robust, U.S.-led response after 2 1/2 years of international inaction on Syria’s conflict.

Syria sought to avert blame by saying its soldiers had found chemical weapons in rebel tunnels. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called his Syrian counterpart on Thursday to chide the government for not allowing U.N. inspectors access to the site.

Obama has been reluctant to intervene in Syria’s civil war, but reports of the killings near Damascus have put pressure on the White House to make good on the president’s comment a year ago that chemical weapons would be a “red line” for the United States.

The United States is repositioning naval forces in the Mediterranean to give Obama the option for an armed strike.

“President Obama has asked the Defense Department to prepare options for all contingencies,” U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters in Malaysia as he began a week-long trip to Asia.

“We have done that and we are prepared to exercise whatever option – if he decides to employ one of those options.”

The White House declined to list what options were discussed on Saturday and said Washington was still gathering details about the attack.

“In coordination with international partners and mindful of the dozens of contemporaneous witness accounts and record of the symptoms of those killed, the U.S. intelligence community continues to gather facts to ascertain what occurred,” it said in a statement.

American and European security sources have said U.S. and allied intelligence agencies made a preliminary assessment that chemical weapons were used by Syrian forces in the attack. The United Nations has requested access to the site.

{agencies}