Tag: InternationalNews

{{A judge has remanded in custody a convicted child rapist who was arrested in Spain after a controversial pardon by Morocco’s king was revoked in the face of angry protests.}}

The judge ruled that Daniel Galvan Vina, a Spanish national found guilty of raping 11 children aged between four and 15 in Morocco and sentenced to 30 years in prison there, was a flight risk and would remain in custody while his extradition was being considered, the court said.

Galvan lacked “family, social, economic or work links that would neutralise the temptation to put himself beyond the reach of the justice system if he was set free,” Spain’s top criminal court, the National Audience, wrote in Tuesday’s ruling.

Galvan, 63, was arrested on Monday earlier at a hotel in the southeastern Spanish city of Murcia where he once worked at a university after Morocco issued an international arrest warrant against him.

Morocco is seeking the extradition of Galvan, who was among 48 Spanish prisoners pardoned by King Mohamed VI and freed last week from jail following a visit in mid-July to Morocco by Spain’s King Juan Carlos.

The pardon was revoked by the king on Sunday, two days after baton-wielding police dispersed several thousand people who tried to rally in front of the parliament in the Moroccan capital Rabat.

A royal palace statement said the king had been unaware of the nature of Galvan’s crimes, and on Monday the Moroccan monarch dismissed the director of prisons after an inquiry blamed his department for Galvan’s release under royal pardon.

Spain’s royal household said Juan Carlos had not asked for the release of Galvan or any other Spanish prisoner during his visit and had only shown interest in the wellbeing of Spanish nationals held in prisons in the North African country.

Spain and Morocco do not allow their citizens to be extradited to each other’s country, and an exception would have to be made if he is sent back to the north African nation.

The case is also complicated by the fact that in Spain the government cannot revoke a pardon.

{aljazeera}

{{Nagasaki on Friday marked the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing by the United States during World War II that turned the Japanese city into an inferno.}}

Tens of thousands gathered to remember the more than 70,000 people who died instantly in the blast, or of the after effects in the months and years after the bombing, which hit Nagasaki at 11:02 am local time (0202 GMT).

Bells tolled as ageing survivors, relatives, government officials and foreign delegates observed a moment of silence at the time of detonation.

The bombing of Nagasaki came three days after the first ever atomic blast at Hiroshima, which claimed about 140,000 lives in all. Hiroshima held its own remembrance ceremonies earlier this week.

“We hold the responsibility to realise a world free of nuclear weapons and pass on to the next generation and to the world the inhumane nature” of atomic weapons, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the ceremony.

{{Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will resume talks on ending their long-standing conflict on August 14 in Jerusalem, the US State Department has said.}}

The sides held their first peace negotiations in nearly three years in Washington on July 30 in US-mediated efforts to end the conflict of more than six decades. They agreed to try to resolve their differences within nine months.

Jen Psaki, State Department spokeswoman, said that Martin Indyk, the US mediator, would attend the next round of talks, which will be followed by a meeting in Jericho.

She said Secretary of State John Kerry, who hosted July’s resumption of the talks, “does not expect to make any announcement in the aftermath of this round of talks”.

After three years of stalemate in the peace process, last month’s meeting was hailed as a breakthrough.

Tzipi Livni, Israeli negotiator, and her Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erakat, held two days of face-to-face dialogue in Washington DC and promised to quickly resume talks in their divided region.

The rivals hope to reach an agreement on recognising two states living side by side in peace, across a border roughly based on that of 1967, but many thorny issues remain.

The final status of the city of Jerusalem and of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory are expected to be sticking points.

Psaki, the State Department spokesperson, said it had expressed its concern to Israel after reports that it was to authorise the building of a thousand new homes for Jewish settlers on Palestinian land.

Settlement building angers Palestinians, and the peace process has been derailed in the past by disputes over new housing.

“Our position on settlements has not changed. We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity and oppose any efforts to legitimise settlement outposts,” she said.

The latest direct talks collapsed in late 2010 over Israel’s building of the settlements in the West Bank.

Source: Agencies

{{Doctors say a British woman has given birth to the biggest baby ever born naturally in Spain – a girl weighing 6.2kg.}}

Maxime Marin, 40, had what doctors described as an “uncomplicated” delivery at the Hospital Marina Salud in Denia, Alicante.

The mother, who lives in Spain with her Colombian partner, said she knew the baby would be big “but not that big”.

“I did not even need an epidural,” Ms Marin is quoted as saying.

Both are believed to be doing well, although the newborn – Maria Lorena – remains in the neonatal care unit.

Larger babies are often delivered via caesarean section.

Maxime Marin’s three other children all weighed at least 4.5kg when they were born, media reported.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s heaviest baby was born to Anna Bates of Canada in 1879.

The baby weighed 10.5kg but died 11 hours after birth. Both of the baby’s parents had giantism.

A woman in Brazil gave birth to a son weighing 8kg by caesarean section in 2005.

In March, George King became the UK’s second biggest baby born naturally – weighing in at 7kg.

BBC

{{Venezuela’s highest court has rejected an appeal by opposition leader Henrique Capriles against April’s contested presidential election result.}}

The Supreme Court of Justice described the appeal as “inadmissible”.

After the ruling Mr Capriles tweeted that there was a “lack of justice” in Venezuela.

Nicolas Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s handpicked successor, won the election by less than 1.5 percentage points – about 200,000 votes.

The opposition alleged that the vote had been marred by fraud.

In June the Venezuelan National Electoral Commission (CNE) confirmed President Maduro’s victory in an audit on millions of votes, but Mr Capriles denounced the audit as “a fake”.

In her ruling on Wednesday, Justice Gladys Gutierrez said the opposition had not not offered “sufficient proof” to back up their allegations.

The 10-point appeal had been lodged by Mr Capriles, the opposition coalition and several citizens.

On Tuesday, Mr Capriles criticised the court’s delay in making a ruling and said that he would take the case to “international bodies”.

April’s election was called after the death of President Chavez on 5 March following a long battle against cancer.

{agencies}

{{Russia has voiced disappointment with US President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel his Moscow summit with President Vladimir Putin, but said it remains ready to co-operate on bilateral and international issues.}}

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters on Wednesday that Obama’s decision reflected the US’ inability to develop relations with Moscow on an “equal basis”.

At the same time, he said the invitation to the US president to visit Moscow next month still stands and added that “Russian representatives are ready to continue working together with American partners on all key issues on the bilateral and multilateral agenda”.

The cancellation of the summit underscores US dismay over Russia’s harbouring of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as disagreements on other key issues, such as missile defence and Russia’s human rights record.

Snowden, an NSA systems analyst accused of leaking highly secretive details about the agency’s surveillance programs, was stuck in the transit zone of a Moscow airport for more than a month before Russia granted him asylum for one year last week.

{agencies}

{{Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev vetoed a budget revision on Wednesday, saying the Socialist-led government had not shown enough transparency in its use of public money in the European Union’s poorest state.}}

Last Thursday parliament backed a plan to raise new debt in defiance of the government’s opponents, including protesters who have been demonstrating for weeks against corruption.

“I return the provisions about the revenues, expenses and planned new debt for reconsideration,” Plevneliev told a news conference. “It is correct for the expenses to be transparent so that we know what they will be spent on.”

Bulgaria’s president is chosen by popular vote.

Analysts expect the assembly to overturn Plevneliev’s veto. Parliament speaker Mihail Mihov said lawmakers would interrupt their summer holiday to hold an extraordinary session on August 30, to review the president’s statement “and make a decision about the justness of his arguments”.

The government has said it will increase the 2013 budget deficit to 2 percent of gross domestic product from 1.3 percent to spur a weak economy and help the needy, raising up to 1 billion levs ($681 million) in new debt to finance the shortfall and payments on maturing debt.

Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski said Plevneliev’s veto of his plan would hurt the country. “Even if the veto is overturned in the parliament, the effect of the delay remains,” he said.

The cabinet is composed of Socialists and the ethnic Turkish MRF and has been in power for just over two months. It controls barely half of the seats in parliament and relies on the passive support of Attack, a nationalist party, to stay in office.

Supporters of the revision say Bulgaria needs more money to issue food vouchers for employees and additional funds for employment programmes for the disadvantaged. However, many Bulgarians say extra spending would just fuel inefficiency.

($1 = 1.4693 Bulgarian levs)

{reuters}

{{Syrian rebels said on Thursday they targeted President Bashar al-Assad’s motorcade heading to a Damascus mosque to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, but state television showed him unharmed and the government denied he had been attacked.}}

The Tahrir al-Sham rebel brigade, a unit of the Free Syrian Army, said it fired several artillery shells towards Assad’s convoy in the heart of the capital and that at least some hit their target.

If confirmed, the attack would be one of the most direct against Assad in two years of conflict which have pitched mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against the Alawite president.

Rebels have targeted Assad’s residences in Damascus and a bombing in the capital last year killed four of his inner circle, but there have been no reports of Assad himself coming under fire.

Video footage distributed by the Tahrir al-Sham rebels showed smoke rising from what it said was the Malki district, where Assad and his close aides have homes. Other activists also reported rocket fire into the area.

Syria’s government denied the reports. “The news is wholly untrue,” Information Minister Omran Zoabi said.

Firas al-Bitar, head of the Tahrir al-Sham brigade, said his fighters had carried out reconnaissance of the route of Assad’s motorcade and fired 120 mm artillery towards the president’s convoy early on Thursday.

“The attack rattled the regime, even if Assad was not hit,” he told Reuters from an undisclosed location in the capital. “There were two motorcades, one containing Assad and a decoy. We targeted the correct one.”

Bitar’s brigade operates mainly in the Ghouta region on the eastern outskirts of the capital. Another official in Tahrir al-Sham said Assad’s forces fired rockets and artillery “like rain” on the region in response to the reported attack.

Following the statement, Syrian state television showed footage of Assad praying alongside ministers and other top officials. It said the footage was from Thursday’s Eid prayers at the Anas bin Malek Mosque in Malki.

Assad appeared unharmed and smiled at the worshippers as he entered the mosque.

Islam Alloush of the Liwa al-Islam, another rebel brigade, told Reuters earlier on Thursday that rebels fired rockets which struck Assad’s motorcade.

“Assad was not hit but the information we have based from sources within the regime is that there were casualties within his entourage,” Allooush said.

Other activists also reported rockets were fired into the Malki area, which was sealed off by security forces.

{agencies}

{{Yemen says it has foiled an al-Qaeda plot to blow up oil pipelines and seize some of the country’s main ports.}}

Security remains tight – and hundreds of armoured vehicles have been deployed to protect key targets.

Both the US and UK have withdrawn diplomatic staff from Yemen, prompted by intelligence reports of renewed terrorist activity.

The US is reported to be preparing special operations forces for possible strikes against al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Yemeni government spokesman Rajeh Badi said the plot involved blowing up oil pipelines and taking control of certain cities – including two ports in the south, one of which accounts for the bulk of Yemen’s oil exports and is where a number of foreign workers are employed.

“There were attempts to control key cities in Yemen like Mukala and Bawzeer,” said Mr Badi.

“This would be co-ordinated with attacks by al-Qaeda members on the gas facilities in Shebwa city and the blowing up of the gas pipe in Belhaf city.”

BBC