15 Around the world thursday, march 27, 2014
guyanatimesgy.com
India’s Congress targets ‘inclusive’ UN considers probe into Sri Lanka atrocities growth in election pitch
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (C), Chief of India’s ruling Congress party Sonia Gandhi (R) and her son Rahul Gandhi, Vice President of the party, hold copies of their party’s election manifesto for the April/May general election in New Delhi, March 26
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ndia’s ruling Congress party, facing a likely general election defeat, defended its economic track record over a decade in power and sought to woo voters with offers of further costly welfare measures. The party, controlled by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and its scion Rahul
Gandhi, is expected to lose due to public anger over graft scandals, high inflation and an economy growing at its slowest pace in a decade. Unveiling its election manifesto on Wednesday, the party said it would lift 800 million people – almost as many as have the
right to vote – into the middle class and raise gross domestic product (GDP) growth to eight per cent within three years. Appealing to its core constituency of poorer voters with a call for inclusive growth, Congress proposed new rights to include guaranteed access to health, pensions, housing and even “to entrepreneurship”. “Growth by itself is not sufficient,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told an event at which Congress President Sonia Gandhi made a rare public appearance in support of son Rahul’s leadership of the party’s flagging campaign. The 50-page policy document was long on policies to redistribute wealth with fewer proposals on how to generate it, reflecting a left-leaning heritage that predates independence in 1947. (Excerpt from Reuters)
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ri Lanka faces renewed condemnation at the United Nations’ top human rights body, as a resolution for an international criminal investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by Government soldiers is being debated in Geneva. The debate has been denounced by Sri Lankan officials as “unwarranted interference” in the country’s internal affairs. On Wednesday, UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay presented a report on the issue to the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) before the debate started on a U.S.-led resolution demanding accountability for the deaths of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians in the final stages of the country’s 26-year civil war. “Almost five years since the end of the conflict, it is important for the Human Rights Council to recall
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has already denounced an international probe as foreign interference and said Western nations were unfairly targeting him
the magnitude and gravity of the violations alleged to have been committed at that time by the Government and the LTTE” said Pillay to the council on Wednesday. She said that even though the Government established various mechanisms with the task to investigate past violations, “none have had the inde-
pendence to be effective or inspire confidence among victims and witnesses.” Government troops crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an armed separatist organisation known as the Tamil Tigers, in May 2009. The UN says the war may have claimed as many as 40,000 civilian lives in its final months. (Excerpt from Al Jazeera)
Zimbabwe court orders U.S. court convicts bin China to try former compensation for rape victim Laden’s son-in-law mining magnate and on terrorism charges his gang next week
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imbabwe’s top court has ordered the state to pay compensation to a rape victim who was denied an abortion after she was attacked eight years ago. The court criticised police and medical workers for delays in helping the woman seek a termination of her pregnancy. Abortion is illegal in Zimbabwe, but may be permitted where the pregnancy is a result of rape or where it poses a threat to the woman’s life. The woman’s eight-yearold child is now going to school. The Supreme Court was scathing in its judgment, reports the BBC’s Brian Hungwe from the capital, Harare. It ruled that the mental anguish from the pregnancy was foreseeable and doctors should have recommended
emergency contraception – the so-called “morning-after pill” – within three days of the rape in 2006. The doctors instead referred the matter back to the police, contributing to delays which meant it was eventually too late to terminate the pregnancy. The Supreme Court referred the case to another court to determine the sum to be awarded in damages. The woman was also seeking US$42,000 (£25,000) in compensation to cover the costs of raising the child, but that claim was thrown out, the AFP news agency reports. The ruling was welcomed by the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association, which initiated the litigation on behalf of the woman. (Excerpt from
BBC News)
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U.S. court convicted former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law on Wednesday in connection with his role in producing propaganda videos aimed at luring new terrorist recruits in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The jury found Sulaiman Abu Ghaith – the highestranking al Qaeda figure to face charges on U.S. soil for the attacks – guilty on three charges: conspiracy to kill Americans, providing support to al Qaeda and conspiring to provide support to al Qaeda. Abu Ghaith had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. The Kuwaiti imam testified during his
three-week-long trial that he complied with a request from bin Laden to record videos for use in recruiting new followers for suicide missions like those that saw 19 al Qaeda followers use hijacked planes to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “The storm of airplanes will not stop,” Abu Ghaith was heard warning in an October 2001 video, which was played for the jury. Also shown to the jury were frames of a video made on September 12, 2001, that showed Abu Ghaith seated next to bin Laden and two other top al Qaeda leaders as they discussed the attacks. (Excerpt from France 24)
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he trial of a Chinese former mining magnate and the “mafiastyle” gang he ran will begin in central China next week on charges including murder, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday. Liu Han, the former Chairman of Hanlong Mining, which attempted to take over Australia’s Sundance Resources Limited, led his gang on a crime spree for more than a decade, focused on China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, state media have said previously. The probe into Liu is one of the highest-profile cases against a private businessman since President Xi Jinping took power last
year, vowing to battle corruption. All 36 members of the gang will stand trial in a court in Hubei province on Monday, Xinhua said. “They are suspected of organising, leading and participating in the gang as well as intentional homicide,” the report cited a court statement as saying. “The gang, allegedly led by Liu Han and (his brother) Liu Wei, is the largest mafia-style criminal group to be tried in recent years in China.” The ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily said last month that the Government would also be going after the officials who protected the gang.
(Excerpt from Reuters)
Flight MH370: 122 new objects spotted – Malaysia Minister German ‘bishop of bling’ resigns over A spending scandal further 122 objects potentially from the missing Malaysian plane have been identified by satellite, the country’s acting Transport Minister has said. The images, taken on March 23, showed objects up to 23 metres (75 feet) in length, Hishammuddin Hussein said. All aircraft taking part in Wednesday’s search have now left the area without identifying debris from the plane. Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board. The objects were found in satellite images from a 400-square-kilometre (km) area around 2557km (1588 miles) from Perth in Western
Australia, Hishammuddin said. He said that it was not possible to tell whether the potential objects were from the missing aircraft, but called them “another new lead that will help direct the search operation”. The images were supplied by French-based Airbus Defence and Space and were given to the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency on March 25, Hishammuddin said. The images were passed on to the Australian Rescue and Co-ordination Centre in Perth on Tuesday, he added. The latest images are the fourth known collection of satellite pictures showing possible debris in the south-
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The images, given to the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency by Airbus, show several light-coloured objects
ern Indian Ocean. No pieces have yet been recovered in the search area, which has
now been split into an east and west section. (Excerpt from
BBC News)
ope Francis has formally accepted the resignation of a senior German Church leader suspended over his alleged lavish spending. The Vatican made the announcement in a statement on Wednesday. Bishop of Limburg FranzPeter Tebartz-van Elst has been accused of spending more than 31 million euros (£26 million) on renovating his official residence. The cleric, dubbed the “bishop of bling” by the media, offered to resign when the scandal broke last October. In response, Pope
Francis temporarily suspended Bishop Tebartzvan Elst and instructed a Church commission to investigate the matter. Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of senior clerics whose lifestyles seem too lavish. On Wednesday, the Vatican said the inquiry found that the senior cleric could no longer exercise his ministry. The Church called on the diocese of Limburg to accept the decision “with docility” and to work toward restoring a “climate of charity and reconciliation”. (Excerpt from BBC News)