Tag: InternationalNews

{{A shoe was thrown at former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as he headed to court to face legal charges after returning from self-imposed exile.}}

Local TV channels showed video of the shoe being thrown at Musharraf inside a court building in the southern city of Karachi on Friday.

Musharraf is seen surrounded by a mob of supporters and journalists and it was difficult to tell from the video who threw the shoe or if it hit the former leader.

Musharraf, who first seized power in a military coup in 1999, returned to Pakistan last weekend.

He faces legal charges, including some originating from a probe of the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

{{ North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned Friday that his rocket forces were ready “to settle accounts with the U.S.,” unleashing a new round of bellicose rhetoric after U.S. nuclear-capable B-2 bombers dropped dummy munitions in joint military drills with South Korea.}}

Kim’s warning, and the litany of threats that have preceded it, don’t indicate an imminent war.

In fact, they’re most likely meant to coerce South Korea into softening its policies, win direct talks and aid from Washington, and strengthen the young leader’s credentials and image at home.

But the threats from North Korea and rising animosity from the rivals that have followed U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang’s Feb. 12 nuclear test do raise worries of a misjudgment leading to a clash.

Kim “convened an urgent operation meeting” of senior generals just after midnight, signed a rocket preparation plan and ordered his forces on standby to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii, state media reported.

Kim said “the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation,” according to a report by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Later Friday at the main square in Pyongyang, tens of thousands of North Koreans turned out for a 90-minute mass rally in support of Kim’s call to arms.

Men and women, many of them in olive drab uniforms, stood in arrow-straight lines, fists raised as they chanted, “Death to the U.S. imperialists.”

Placards in the plaza bore harsh words for South Korea as well, including, “Let’s rip the puppet traitors to death!”

Small North Korean warships, including patrol boats, conducted maritime drills off both coasts of North Korea near the border with South Korea on Thursday, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said in a briefing Friday. He didn’t provide more details.

The spokesman said that South Korea’s military was mindful of the possibility that North Korean drills could lead to an actual provocation.

He also said that the South Korean and U.S. militaries are watching closely for any signs of missile launch preparations in North Korea. He didn’t elaborate.

North Korea, which says it considers the U.S.-South Korean military drills preparations for invasion, has pumped out a string of threats in state media.

In the most dramatic case, Pyongyang made the highly improbable vow to nuke the United States.

{wirestory}

{{A West Bank appeals court on Thursday upheld a one-year prison term for a Palestinian journalist who had a photo on his Facebook page that authorities claimed portrayed President Mahmoud Abbas as a traitor, rights activists said.}}

It was the second such case in two months, and Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is facing mounting criticism for stifling dissent.

In particular, Abbas’ security forces have targeted supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from him in 2007.

The defendant in Thursday’s case was Mamdouh Hamamreh, a reporter for the Hamas-linked Al-Quds TV.

Nimer Hamad, an adviser to Abbas, said the Palestinian president would pardon Hamamreh, but declined further comment.

Prosecutors have alleged that a photo montage on his Facebook page back in 2010 showed Abbas next to a villain in a popular TV drama about French colonial rule in the Levant.

The villain was an informer for the French and the photo caption read: “They’re alike.”

Hamamreh denied that he was the one who posted the photo, but last year a court sentenced him to a year in prison. An appeals court upheld the sentence Thursday, said Issam Abdeen of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq.

In February, a Palestinian court sentenced university student Anas Awwad, 26, to a year in jail for “cursing the president” on Facebook. The Palestinian judiciary applies a Jordanian law that criminalizes cursing the king.

{{Devotees in villages in the northern Philippines took part in a bloody annual ritual to mark Good Friday, a celebration that mixes Roman Catholic devotion and Filipino folk beliefs and sees some reenact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.}}

The crucified devotees spent several minutes nailed to crosses in Pampanga province while thousands of tourists watched and took photos of the spectacle, which the church discourages.

Earlier in the day, hooded male penitents trudged through the province’s villages under the blazing sun while flagellating their bleeding backs with makeshift whips.

Others carried wooden crosses to dramatize Christ’s sacrifice.

Devotees undergo the hardships in the belief that such extreme sacrifices are a way to atone for their sins, attain miracle cures for illnesses or give thanks to God.

Alex Laranang, a 58-year-old vendor who was the first to be nailed to a cross Friday, said he was doing it “for good luck and for my family to be healthy.”

{{In a show of force following weeks of North Korean bluster, the U.S. on Thursday took the unprecedented step of announcing that two of its nuclear-capable B-2 bombers dropped munitions on a South Korean island as part of joint military drills.}}

The announcement is likely to further enrage Pyongyang, which has already issued a flood of ominous statements to highlight displeasure over the drills and U.N. sanctions over its nuclear test last month.

But there were signs Thursday that it is willing to go only so far.

A North Korean industrial plant operated with South Korean know-how was running normally, despite the North’s shutdown a day earlier of communication lines ordinarily used to move workers and goods across the border.

At least for the moment, Pyongyang was choosing the factory’s infusion of hard currency over yet another provocation.

U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement that the B-2 stealth bombers flew from a U.S. air base in Missouri and dropped munitions on a South Korean island range before returning home.

It was unclear whether America’s stealth bombers were used in past annual drills with South Korea, but this is the first time the military has announced their use.

The statement follows an earlier U.S. announcement that nuclear-capable B-52 bombers participated in the joint military drills.

{{Pope Francis will wash the feet of prisoners in a youth detention centre near Rome on Maundy Thursday.}}

Thousands of pilgrims and tourists are arriving in Rome to attend ceremonies during the holy week ahead of Easter.

The washing of feet on the Thursday before Easter is a Christian tradition commemorating Christ’s Last Supper.

It is part of a papal calendar of events running up to Easter, the most important festival in the calendar of the Catholic Church.

On Easter Sunday morning, the new Pope will deliver his first “Urbi et Orbi” message to the city of Rome and to the world.

During his inaugural general audience Wednesday, Francis called for an immediate political solution to the conflict in the Central African Republic after last weekend’s coup.

BBC

{{A judge has announced that more than 150 human skulls and bones recovered from a mass grave in Sri Lanka were buried there about 25 years ago, strengthening suspicion that they belonged to suspected Marxist rebels killed at the time.}}

Magistrate Chathurika de Silva told a court in the central town of Matale on Wednesday that tests carried out by archeological and judicial medical officers show the skeletal remains found inside the premises of a government hospital dated to between 1987 and 1990.

During that period, thousands of men and women suspected of having ties to the rebels disappeared after being arrested by security forces.

De Silva did not explain the cause of death but declared the mass grave a crime scene.

The military could not be contacted immediately for comment.

Workers found human remains while doing construction on part of the hospital land last December. The skeletons had been buried in neat rows, five or six stacked on top of one another totaling 154.

Claims were made initially that the bodies belonged to those killed in an epidemic in the 1940s or a mudslide.

However, hospital authorities did not have any records of bodies buried on the premises.

The Marxist group People’s Liberation Front, which led two uprisings first in 1971 and 1987 to 1989, claimed that the bodies may belong to comrades killed by security forces.

“The state’s army and paramilitaries carried out large scale killings at that time and we ask the government to do a full investigation,” said Anura Dissanayake, a lawmaker from a political party with ties to the former rebels.

The Marxists were mostly rural Sinhalese, the country’s majority ethnic community. They complained of economic disparities and said that rural people were denied equal opportunities.

{{Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after a vigilante leader was killed.}}

Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.

Members of the area’s self-described “community police” say more than 1,500 members of the force were stopping traffic Wednesday at improvised checkpoints in the town of Tierra Colorado, which sits on the highway connecting Mexico City to Acapulco.

They arrested 12 police and the former director of public security in the town after a leader of the state’s vigilante movement was slain on Monday.

A tourist heading to the beach with relatives was slightly wounded Tuesday after they refused to stop at a roadblock and vigilantes fired shots at their car, officials said.

The vigilantes accuse the ex-security director of participating in the killing of vigilante leader Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal, 28, on behalf of local organized crime groups and dumping his body in a nearby town on Monday.

They reported seizing several high-powered rifles from his car, and vigilantes were seen toting a number of sophisticated assault rifles on Wednesday, although it was not clear if all had been taken from the ex-security director’s car.

{{Prisoners taking part in an expanding hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay leveled new complaints about their military jailers Wednesday as a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross made a fact-finding trip to the U.S. base in Cuba.}}

In an emergency motion filed with a federal court in Washington, lawyers say guards have refused to provide drinking water to hunger strikers and kept camp temperature “extremely frigid,” to thwart the protest. A spokesman for the detention center denied the allegations.

“The reality is that these men are slowly withering away and we as a country need to take immediate action,” said Mari Newman, a human rights lawyer based in Denver, who was among those who submitted the motion.

They filed the petition after interviewing Yemeni prisoner Musaab al-Madhwani by phone Monday. He told them that guards were refusing to provide bottled water and telling prisoners to drink from tap water that inmates believe is non-potable.

The lawyers say in their motion that the lack of drinkable water has “already caused some prisoners kidney, urinary and stomach problems,” in addition to the health effects of the hunger strike.

Along with their motion, they submitted an affidavit from Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired general, who believes that the hunger strike and lack of adequate drinking water “sets them up for gastrointestinal infections and a quick demise.”

The doctor also said the 34-year-old al-Madhwani suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder linked to his torture while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and could be worsened by harsh conditions at Guantanamo.

The U.S. government has not filed a response to the motion. Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the prison, said prisoners are provided with bottled water and that the tap water is safe to drink.

{wirestory}