IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Britain’s Kate & Prince William Expecting Baby

    Prince William’s wife Catherine is expecting a baby and is in hospital suffering severe morning sickness, St James’s Palace announced on Monday.

    The royal family are “delighted” by the news of the baby, who would be the third in line to the British throne currently occupied by Queen Elizabeth II.

    “Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby,” St James’s Palace said in a statement.

    “The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry and members of both families are delighted with the news.”

    William, the son of heir to the throne Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, married the former Kate Middleton in April 2011 and there has been intense speculation about when the couple, who are both 30, would have a baby.

    The statement added: “The Duchess was admitted this afternoon to King Edward VII Hospital in Central London with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (severe morning sickness).

    “As the pregnancy is in its very early stages, Her Royal Highness is expected to stay in hospital for several days and will require a period of rest thereafter.”

  • Abbas Calls for Palestinian Unity

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  • Japan Tunnel Collapses Kills 9

    Japan ordered inspections of ageing highway tunnels on Monday after a fiery collapse that killed nine people, as suspicion over the cause of the accident centred on decaying ceiling supports.

    The government pledged a thorough review and said “significant investment” would likely be required in the motorway network, parts of which including the accident site were built during the economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s.

    “As a major factor, we suspect ageing,” an official from highway operator NEXCO said, referring to the tragedy at the Sasago tunnel, which passes through hills near Mount Fuji, 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Tokyo.

    Footage from inside the tunnel showed concrete panels had collapsed in a V-shape, possibly indicating some kind of weakness in the central supporting pillars suspended from the roof, experts said.

    Engineers on Monday began inspections at three other tunnels in the region with the same design, as well as at Sasago.

    And the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport ordered emergency inspections of all 49 highway tunnels nationwide that have the same design.

    NEXCO said safety inspections consist largely of visual surveys, with workers looking for cracks and other abnormalities, or listening to the acoustics of the concrete and metal parts by hitting them with hammers.

    Officials admitted that during the five-yearly check of the ceiling in September there had been no acoustic survey of the metal parts on which the panels weighing up to 1.5 tonnes rest.

    Emergency workers were still at the nearly five-kilometre (three-mile) tunnel Tuesday, but 24 hours after the cave-in, efforts shifted from rescue to recovery.

    Three vehicles were buried on Sunday when concrete ceiling panels crashed down inside the tunnel. Witnesses spoke of terrifying scenes as at least one vehicle burst into flames.

    Emergency workers had collected five charred bodies — three men and two women — from a vehicle by early Monday. One report said the victims were all in their 20s.

    They also recovered the body of a truck driver, identified as 50-year-old Tatsuya Nakagawa who reportedly telephoned a colleague immediately after the incident to ask for help.

    Three other deaths have been confirmed, an elderly man and two elderly women, who were all in the same passenger vehicle, officials said.

  • SKorea to Reroute Flights on NKorean Rocket Path

    South Korea says it plans to reroute passenger flights over the Yellow Sea to avoid possible collisions with debris from a long-range rocket that North Korea plans to launch this month.

    The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs said Monday it made the decision after learning that North Korea had informed China and Singapore of the flight path and other details of the launch, set for Dec. 10-22.

    North Korea told those nations the rocket would be launched in the morning and its debris would fall into the Yellow Sea and in waters east of the Philippines.

    Ministry officials say they will reroute six Korean Air flights. They also are considering whether to reroute or change the departure times of several Korean Air and Asiana Airlines flights to Manila.

  • Italy Votes for Center-Left Candidate for PM

    Italians are choosing a center-left candidate for premier for elections early next year, an important primary runoff given the main party is ahead in the polls against a center-right camp in utter chaos over whether Silvio Berlusconi will run again.

    Sunday’s runoff pits a veteran center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, 61, against the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who has campaigned on an Obama-style “Let’s change Italy now” mantra.

    Nearly all polls show Bersani winning the primary, after he won the first round of balloting Nov. 25 with 44.9 percent of the vote. Since he didn’t get an absolute majority, he was forced into a runoff with Renzi, who garnered 35.5 percent.

    After battling all week to get more voters to the polling stations for round two, Renzi seemed almost resigned to a Bersani win by Sunday, saying he hoped that by Monday “we can all work together.”

    Bersani, a former transport and industry minister, seemed confident of victory as well, joking about Berlusconi’s flip-flopping political ambitions by asking “What time did he say it?” when told that the media mogul had purportedly decided against running.

    Next year’s general election will largely decide how and whether Italy continues on the path to financial health charted by Premier Mario Monti, appointed last year to save Italy from a Greek-style debt crisis.

    The former European commissioner was named to head a technical government after international markets lost confidence in then-Premier Berlusconi’s ability to reign in Italy’s public debt and push through sorely needed structural reforms.

    Berlusconi has largely stayed out of the public spotlight for the past year, but he returned with force in recent weeks, announcing he was thinking about running again, then changing his mind, then threatening to bring down Monti’s government, and most recently staying silent about his political plans.

    His waffling has thrown his People of Freedom party into disarray and disrupted its own plans for a primary — all of which has only seemed to bolster the impression of order, stability and organization within the center-left camp.

    A poll published Friday gave the Democratic Party 30 percent of the vote if the election were held now, compared with some 19.5 percent for the upstart populist movement of comic Beppe Grillo, and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in third with 14.3 percent.

    The poll, by the SWG firm for state-run RAI 3, surveyed 5,000 voting-age adults by telephone between Nov. 26 and 28. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.36 percentage points.

    It’s quite a turnabout for Berlusconi’s once-dominant movement, and a similarly remarkable shift in fortunes for the Democratic Party, which had been in shambles for years, unable to capitalize on Berlusconi’s professional and personal failings while he was premier.

    But Berlusconi’s 2011 downfall and a series of recent political party funding scandals that have targeted mostly center-right politicians have contributed to the party’s rise as Italy struggles through a grinding recession and near-record high unemployment.

    Angelino Alfano, Berlusconi’s hand-picked political heir, seemed again exasperated Sunday after a long meeting with his patron over Berlusconi’s plans.

    News reports have suggested Berlusconi might split the party in two and re-launch the Forza Italia party that brought him to political power for the first time in 1994.

    “We have to work to reconstruct the center-right, and reconstructing it means having a big center-right party,” not a divided one, Alfano said.

    He added that Berlusconi didn’t say one way or another if he would run himself. “It’s his choice,” he said. “If there are any decisions in this regard, he’ll be the one to say so.”

    wire

  • North Korea Vows to Launch Rocket in December

    North Korea is vowing to launch a long range rocket in December — nine months after its failed missile launch attempt in April.

    According to state media, the launch will take place between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22.

    The anticipated December launch would Be the second under Kim Jong Un, who assumed party leadership in January, weeks after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

    North Korea claims the rocket is for satellite purposes and the one that is set to launch in December will be an improved version.

    But the outside world sees it as veiled cover to test long range missile technology banned by the United Nations.

    The rocket that was launched from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in the northern part of the country on April 13 failed to enter orbit.

    About 81 seconds into that launch, the United States detected a substantially larger than expected flare and by 10 minutes after launch, the rocket was no longer on several radar screens, U.S. officials said at the time.

    North Korea state media acknowledged the launch failure after U.S. and South Korean officials reported the rocket disintegrated.

    Had the launch been successful, the rocket’s third stage was expected to burn up in the atmosphere about 10 minutes after launch, with debris falling north of Australia.

  • Facebook Ordered to Remove Paedophile Page

    A Facebook page set up to monitor paedophiles has been removed after a judge in Northern Ireland ruled that it risked infringing the human rights of a convicted sex offender.

    The man, who cannot be identified, started legal proceedings against the social networking site after discovering his photograph and threatening comments had been posted on the page.

    High Court judge Bernard McCloskey ruled some content on the page amounted to prima facie harassment of the man, known only as XY.

    The man had previously been given a six-year jail sentence for a string of child sex offences committed more than 20 years ago.

    Judge McCloskey said: “Society has dealt with the plaintiff in accordance with the rule of law.

    “He has been punished by incarceration and he is subject to substantial daily restrictions on his lifestyle.”

    The judge in his ruling gave Facebook 72 hours to take the original page down.

    A spokeswoman for Facebook said: “We are considering our next steps in light of the court judgment and we have nothing further to add at this stage.”

    The page, called ‘Keeping our kids safe from predators’, was no longer visible at 20:00GMT but a new page entitled ‘Keeping our kids safe from predators 2′ had appeared, gaining over 2,400 likes in just a few hours.

    It is not clear whether the creator of the new page is the same as the user that set up the original one.

    However, the new page’s administrator wrote in a posting at 15:30GMT: “Thats (sic) the first page gone sad day.”

    More than 5,000 people had liked the original page before its removal.
    Some of the latest posts were written after the judge made his ruling.

    Facebook is understood to have removed the man’s photo and comments made about him but his legal team insisted that the page should be shut down.

  • Israel to Build 3000 Homes in East Jerusalem

    Israel has authorised the construction of 3,000 more housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to Israeli officials.

    It is also speeding up the processing of 1,000 extra planning permissions.

    The Palestinian Authority has said it will not return to peace talks without a freeze in settlement building.

    The decision comes a day after a vote at the UN General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians’ status at the UN to that of non-member observer state.

    According to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, some of the new units will be between Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim.

    Plans to build settlements in the area, known as E1, are strongly opposed by Palestinians, who say settlements will cut the West Bank in two, preventing the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state.

    The move is a first indication of Israeli anger, less than 24 hours after the vote on Palestinian status was held at the UN.

    The Palestinians may well have been expecting this – or something like it – but it’s a reminder that the gulf between the two on the settlement issue remains huge, our correspondent adds.

    Wirestory

  • Assange Rejects Questions on Free Press

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange declined to discuss government abuse of the press by the country that has been shielding him from arrest in a press interview that was more remarkable for what he didn’t say than any revelations about his plight.

    In a sometimes combative interview Wednesday on “OutFront with Erin Burnett,” Assange described strategic surveillance by governments as a “sea change in politics” that puts freedoms at risk.

    When pushed about Ecuador’s press freedom record, described by the Committee to Protect Journalists as one of the worst in Latin America, Assange said: “Its people have been generous to me, but it’s not a significant world player.”

    “Whatever little things occurring in small countries are not of concern,” he said. “We must concentrate on what is happening in the entire civilization of the world.”

    Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he raped one woman and sexually molested another.

    Assange has said he fears Sweden will transfer him to the United States, where he could face the death penalty for the work of WikiLeaks.

    He has repeatedly said the allegations are politically motivated and tied to the work of his website, which facilitates the publication of secret documents. WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of pages of American government diplomatic cables and assessments of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    He has not been charged in the United States, though Assange and his supporters claim a U.S. grand jury has been empanelled to consider charges against him.

    Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, 24, has been charged with leaking classified military and State Department documents while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

    Assange nor WikiLeaks have ever confirmed Manning was the source.

    Assange appeared on the CNN news show to promote a new book he co-authored: “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet,” which examines the threat of the Internet.

    He wrote the book with Jacob Appelbaum, Jeremie Zimmermann and Andy Muller-Maguhn.

    The interview turned testy when he declined to discuss Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s press freedom record.

    Correa, according to CPJ, has shuttered 11 local radio stations and had a record of filing lawsuits in civil and criminal courts as a means of intimidation.

    “It’s not the topic of what we are doing here,” Assange said, adding that he agreed to appear on the show to discuss “the surveillance state.”

    During the interview, Burnett asked Assange whether he felt any guilt about the plight of Manning or concern he might broker a plea deal that could implicate him.

    Assange deflected the questions and focused on the effort of Manning’s attorney to get the case dismissed over alleged abuse the private suffered to implicate him and WikiLeaks.

    “As far as we know, there has been no such confession.”

    Assange also declined to answer questions about his health following comments from Ecuador’s ambassador to the UK that the WikiLeaks founder is suffering a chronic lung infection.

    “I don’t think it’s important,” Assange said.

    Assange has been effectively confined for the past five months to the Ecuadorian Embassy, which granted him asylum in August. The move sparked a diplomatic row with the UK, which has said it will arrest Assange if he leaves the embassy.

    The UK says it has a legal obligation to hand Assange over to Sweden, after his legal effort to avoid extradition were rejected by British courts.

    CNN

  • Palestine Assumes UN ‘Observer State’

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