Showing posts with label from yahoo news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label from yahoo news. Show all posts

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Egyptian army to host unity talks as crisis deepens

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's army chief will host national unity talks on Wednesday, seeking to end a growing political and economic crisis in the Arab world's most populous nation.
The meeting scheduled for 1430 GMT was called in response to a wave of protests since President Mohamed Mursi awarded himself sweeping powers on November 22 to push through a new constitution shaped by his Islamist allies, which is due to go to a referendum on Saturday.
"We will not speak about politics nor about the referendum. Tomorrow we will sit together as Egyptians," armed forces chief and Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at a gathering of army and police officials on Tuesday.
Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which propelled him to power in a June election, were expected to attend, while the main opposition coalition said it would decide on Wednesday morning whether to participate. The opposition stayed away from an earlier reconciliation meeting called by Mursi last weekend.
The judiciary committee overseeing the vote decided late on Tuesday that the referendum would be conducted on two days instead of one, as previously planned.
"The committee had officially asked the President to issue a law approving that the referendum takes place on two stages on Saturday December 15 and Saturday December 22," Judge Mahmoud Abu Shousha, a member of the referendum judiciary committee, said. Voting for Egyptians living abroad starts on Wednesday.
"The reason for the splitting of the vote into two stages is due to a shortage of judges needed to supervise the ballot stations," another member of the committee, who asked not to be named, said.
Many judges had decided in a joint meeting on Tuesday to not supervise the vote on a constitution they say had divided the country into two groups.
Outside the presidential palace - where anti-Mursi protesters are demanding the Islamist postpone the vote on a constitution they say does not represent all Egyptians - there was skepticism tinged with some hope.
"Talks without the cancellation of the referendum - and a change to the constitution to make it a constitution for all Egyptians and not the Brotherhood - will lead to nothing and will be no more than a media show," said Ahmed Hamdy, a 35-year-old office worker.
But the fact that the army was calling such talks "is an indication to all parties that the crisis is coming to a head and that they need to end it quickly", he said.
Earlier, Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Said disclosed that a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan, a cornerstone of Egypt's economic recovery hopes, would be delayed until next month because of the crisis.
The delay was intended to allow time to explain a widely criticized package of economic austerity measures to the Egyptian people, Said told Reuters.
REBUILD CONSENSUS
Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said the measures would not hurt the poor. Bread, sugar and rice would not be touched, but prices of cigarettes and cooking oil would go up and fines would be imposed for public littering. In a bid to rebuild consensus, he said there would be a public consultation about the program next week.
In Washington, the IMF said Egypt had asked for the loan to be postponed "in light of the unfolding developments on the ground". The Fund stood ready to consult with Egypt on resuming discussions on the stand-by loan, a spokeswoman said.
On the streets of Cairo, thousands of opposition supporters gathered outside the presidential palace to demand that Mursi postpone Saturday's referendum.
A bigger crowd of flag-waving Islamist Mursi backers, who want the vote to go ahead as planned on Saturday, assembled at two mosques and remained on the streets as night fell over the Egyptian capital. There were also protests in Alexandria and other cities.
The extended upheaval following the fall of Hosni Mubarak last year is causing concern in the United States, which has given Cairo billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland emphasized "deep concerns" over the situation in Egypt and repeated calls on protesters to demonstrate peacefully and on security forces to act with restraint. She declined to be drawn on whether Washington believed the referendum should be postponed.
The latest unrest has so far claimed seven lives in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the opposition. But the Republican Guard has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the presidential palace, now ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades.
(Additional reporting by Tamim Elyan and Edmund Blair in Cairo, and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Friday, 14 January 2011

Michaela McAreavey's body due back in N. Ireland


Michaela McAreavey's body due back in N. IrelandAFP – Mortuary workers carry a coffin containing the body of Michaela McAreavey in Mauritius, the daughter …

PORT LOUIS (AFP) – The body of Michaela McAreavey, the daughter of a prominent Irish sports personality murdered whilst on her honeymoon in Mauritius, is due to arrive back in Ireland on Friday.

An official at the Mauritius Foreign Affairs Ministry, Lam Chiou Yee, said the body, which was handed over to her family for the flight back to Ireland via London, was transported aboard an Air Mauritius flight on Thursday.

Donald Payen, a senior official with Air Mauritius, told AFP everything had been done to enable the body to be repatriated, accompanied by members of her family, on Thursday evening.

Michaela McAreavey was found by her husband John and hotel staff on Monday, strangled in their hotel room at the upmarket Legends hotel, on Mauritius' northern coast.

The death has stunned Ireland -- the 27-year-old teacher and former beauty queen was the daughter of Tyrone Gaelic football boss Mickey Harte, one of Ireland's best-known sporting figures.

Police staged a re-enactment of the crime at Legends Thursday -- standard procedure in all homicide andmurder cases in Mauritius.

The three Legends staff were provisionally charged with murder and complicity to murder Wednesday.

One of them has admitted stealing from the McAreaveys' room.

The three accused are Avinash Treebohun, a 29-year-old room attendant and Sandip Moneaa, a 41-year-old floor supervisor, both charged with murder, and Raj Theekoy, 33, also a room attendant who is charged with complicity to murder. All three remain in police custody.

One of the three men is believed to have used an electronic key card to open the couple's room shortly before the victim died.

Mauritius police chief Dhun Iswar Rampersad told reporters Thursday that Theekoy had admitted to hearing noises from room 1205 and to having seen one of his friends coming out of the room a few minutes later, apparently "in a strange state".

Police then questioned Treebohun and he "confessed to police that a few minutes before the victim came in they (Treebohun and Moneaa) were in the room stealing purses full of money and jewellery that were on the table," Rampersad said.

The victim's brother Mark Harte and Brian McAreavey, the brother of the bridegroom have been on the island since Wednesday and other family members arrived Thursday.

Irish media have reported that Dublin's ambassador to South Africa Brendan McMahon has also been on the island to give consular assistance.

Mickey Harte, distraught over his daughter's death, cancelled initial plans to come to collect the body, Tourism Minister Nando Bodha told AFP.

Mauritius officials, anxious to limit the damage to its crucial tourism sector, have been at pains to emphasise that such crimes are almost unheard of on the island.

Gaelic football is the most popular sports in Ireland and top players and managers are celebrities.

Saturday, 27 November 2010

Iraqi PM: No need for US troops to stay post-2011


FILE - In this Nov. 1, 2010 file photo, pallbearers carry the coffin of a victim out of Our Lady of Salvation church the morning after its congregatioAP – FILE - In this Nov. 1, 2010 file photo, pallbearers carry the coffin of a victim out of Our Lady of Salvation …

BAGHDAD – Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that an agreement requiring U.S. troops to leave by the end of 2011 will stand because Iraqi forces are capable of taking care of the country'ssecurity.

The comments are his first on the subject since being tasked with forming a new government following eight months of political deadlock, and some of his strongest to date on what is expected to be a key issued faced by the next government.

"The security agreement with what it included of dates and commitments will remain valid, and I do not feel the need for the presence of any other international forces to help Iraqis control thesecurity situation," al-Maliki told reporters during his first news conference since getting the formal request on Thursday to form the new government.

Under an agreement between Iraq and the U.S., all American troops are to leave the country by the end of 2011. The U.S. currently has a little less than 50,000 troops in Iraq, down from a one-time high of 170,000.

American officials have said they will abide by the agreement although they would consider any request by thenew Iraqi government to stay longer.

Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. government is open to discussing changes to the agreement. But he said the "initiative clearly needs to come from the Iraqis."

One sign of the Iraqi security forces' burgeoning capability came Saturday when Iraq's Interior Minister said they have arrested at least 12 insurgents behind a deadly church siege.

Interior Minister Jawad Bolani told The Associated Press that the arrests — the first in connection to the October siege at the Our Lady of Salvation church — occurred in recent days.

He said the insurgents were behind a wide range of operations in Iraq leading up to the siege and described their arrest as a coup for security forces.

"It is a painful blow to al-Qaida," Bolani said.

Insurgents took about 120 people hostage during the Oct. 31 church attack. The siege ended hours later with 68 people dead in an attack that shocked many of Iraq's already-hardened citizens.

The attackers raided the church located in one of Baghdad's more affluent neighborhoods during Sunday evening Mass. Dozens of cowering parishioners, and two priests were killed — one execution-style on the church floor — before Iraqi security forces stormed the building.

Al-Qaida later claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed in an Internet message to continue a campaign of bloodshed against Iraq's dwindling Christian minority.

According to Bolani, security forces also seized money and explosives during the arrests.

Bolani gave no details as to where and how the arrests took place, but an intelligence official responsible for monitoring al-Qaida cells in Iraq, said security forces acted on a tip to make the first arrest.

From there, the security forces eventually managed to round up the entire group, the official said. He put the number of people arrested at 17.

The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.