- Sport : Capello quits as England manager
- Mexico : US ocean fence aims to curb smuggling from Mexico
- London gang crime : Met police task force declares war on London gang crime
- Argentina : Falklands 'are British out of choice'
- broken promises : Greece's broken promises anger EU partners
- football : Redknapp found not guilty
- Commerce Minister Praxoulla Antoniadou : Wrangling starts over natural gas
- Crime : Our View: We need an action plan to tackle crime today, not...
- crisis : EAC backs down on late payment levy
- air travel : CY rubbishes rumours of its imminent demise
NewsInternational
US ocean fence aims to curb smuggling from Mexico
US authorities are building a steel and concrete barrier 90 meters out into the Pacific Ocean south of San Diego to curb dangerous attempts by illegal immigrants and smugglers to slip through the breakers to California.The new maritime fence is being built at a cost of $4.3 million at the point where the US-Mexico border plunges into the ocean between San Diego and the industrial powerhouse of Tijuana, in northwest Mexico.The new "surf fence" is a steel-and-concrete barrier up to 18 feet tall that replaces a rusted and uneven line of posts."It was falling apart, it was out of alignment, it looked like a bad set of teeth," said Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ralph DeSio... 1 comment
Met police task force declares war on London gang crime
A new 1,000-strong police task force on Wednesday declared war on London's street gangs and raided 150 homes across the city.The Met squad will target the capital's 250 gangs for the first time as part of Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe's "total war" on crime.Writing in the Evening Standard on Wednesday, Hogan-Howe pledged to use "all tactics, if legal and ethical", to target the gangs.The first assault was launched with dawn raids on suspected gang members across the city. Officers smashed down doors after weeks of intelligence gathering on the most violent gangsters, arresting 121... Read on
Falklands 'are British out of choice'
Britain has "nothing to fear" from an Argentinian complaint to the United Nations over claims of militarisation around the Falkland Islands, senior government sources said yesterday.The Foreign Office insisted the islands were "British out of choice" and warned there would be "no negotiations" on sovereignty unless that changed.Downing Street said it was "relaxed" after Argentina's president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, raised diplomatic tensions by announcing the complaint. She accused Britain of acting like a colonial power by sending one of its most powerful warships, Type 45 destroyer Dauntless, to the South Atlantic, and posting Prince William to the islands as a search-and-rescue pilot... 1 comment
Greece's broken promises anger EU partners
Taxes go uncollected, deficit targets are routinely missed, job cuts from the state payroll are postponed, privatisations have barely begun and pharmacies still shut in the middle of the day.Nearly two years into Greece's bailout, so many promises have been broken that international lenders have largely lost faith in the country's will to reform itself and are torn between imposing stricter outside control and cutting Athens loose.European Union partners and International Monetary Fund officials negotiating a second financial rescue for the eurozone's most indebted state say they are tired of asking for the same measures to be agreed or implemented, again and again... 4 comments
Greek parties delay bailout talks despite EU threats
Greek political parties delayed yet again on Tuesday making the tough choice of accepting painful reforms in return for a new international bailout to avoid a chaotic default, seemingly deaf to EU warnings that the eurozone can live without Athens.With a series of deadlines come and gone, leaders of the three parties in the coalition of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos postponed what was supposed to be a crunch meeting until Wednesday.One party official blamed the delay, which is likely to enrage eurozone leaders desperate to tie up the 130 billion euro rescue after months of argument, on missing paperwork - the same reason given when the meeting was postponed from Monday to Tuesday... 1 comment
Work to 75? Swedish PM pension remarks spark furore
Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said people should work till they are 75 rather than expect to retire at 65, sparking a furore in a country that prides itself on its cradle-to-grave welfare system.Reinfeldt heads a centre-right coalition that has so far cautiously cut taxes and some welfare spending without alienating middle class voters proud of their social security.He made his remarks ahead of a conference this week on jobs for the elderly and women, which will be attended by some European leaders."The question is whether an employer will have a different attitude to someone who is 55 if the 55-year-old says, 'now I am thinking of working for another 20 years'," Reinfeldt was quoted by daily Dagens Nyheter as saying... 2 comments
Turkey's EU minister stands by genocide denial comments
Turkey’s EU affairs minister repeated on Tuesday his denial that Ottoman Turks had committed genocide against Armenians nearly 100 years ago, in a challenge to Swiss officials who are investigating whether similar comments last month broke the law.Turkey summoned the Swiss ambassador on Monday to complain about the decision by Swiss officials to investigate minister Egemen Bagis's comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos and also at a concert in Zurich."I said there on that day that what happened in 1915 was not genocide and I repeat that today. Nobody should doubt that I will give the same answer every time I am asked," Bagis told a news conference... 7 comments
Canadian Muslims issue fatwa against 'honour killing'
A GROUP of Canada's leading Muslim clerics has issued a fatwa against so-called "honor killings," just a week after three members of an Afghan Canadian family were convicted of a gruesome quadruple murder that triggered a national debate about cultural values.A weekend statement from the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada said 34 imams and leaders affiliated with the group issued the religious edict to remind Muslims that honour killings, domestic violence and misogyny are major sins and crimes punishable by law."The recent Shafia family trial in Kingston, Ontario has reminded all of us that we need to do more in order to prevent such tragedies in the future," the statement said... 5 comments
Norway mass killer decries ‘cultural destruction’
Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway, said on Monday his massacre was necessary to prevent his country's cultural destruction."We in the Norwegian movement will not sit and see that we are made a minority in our own country," the anti-Islam fanatic told a packed courtroom in only his second public comments since the attack in July."The attacks on the government headquarters were preventive attacks on people committing cultural destruction of Norwegian culture and Norwegian ethnicity," he said and demanded to be released immediately... 2 comments
Greece lets another deadline slip in bailout poker
Greece let yet another deadline slip on Monday for responding to painful terms for a new EU/IMF bailout as patience in Brussels wore thin over drawn-out negotiations among its feuding political leaders.Failure to strike a deal to secure the 130 billion euro rescue risks pushing Athens into a chaotic debt default which could threaten its future in the euro zone.Panos Beglitis, spokesman of the PASOK socialist party, said on Sunday that leaders of the three parties backing technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos' government had to give their responses in principle by noon (1000 GMT).However, a government official denied that the parties had been given an ultimatum to respond on Monday... 2 comments
