Tag: Evening Edition

“We call upon President Saleh to move immediately on his commitment to transfer power,” US President Barack Obama said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London.

Germany’s foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke echoed Obama’s calls urging Saleh to accept a Gulf-brokered exit plan.

The prosecutor’s office said that Mubarak and his sons Alaa and Gamal have been charged with “premeditated murder of some participants in the peaceful protests of the January 25 revolution.”

“The public prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmud has decided today to refer former president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons Alaa and Gamal, who will remain under detention, and businessman Hussein Salem to a criminal court,” it said.

After a marathon cabinet meeting, the Socialist government of George Papandreou announced an extra 1.6 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in savings this year and an “immediate” sale of lucrative state assets.

These include OTE, the Balkans’ largest telecoms operator, and the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki which rank among the busiest in the Mediterranean in terms of tourism and trade.

At least 10 people were wounded as towering flames rose over Pakistan naval air base PNS Mehran in the centre of Karachi, where the military and government confirmed that the base was under “terrorist attack”.

An AFP reporter saw scores of soldiers and navy commando reinforcements entering the base as smoke rose into the night sky. An AFP photographer heard seven blasts and periodic bursts of gunfire.

“We intend to continue, because this is not about Sunday’s elections it’s about social cutbacks,” said Carmen Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the organisers at the ramshackle protest ‘village’ that has sprung up in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square.

Thousands of people have massed in city centres across the country in a snowballing movement that began May 15, the biggest spontaneous protests since the property bubble burst in 2008 and plunged Spain into a recession from which it only emerged this year.

The child was among 11 people killed in the central city of Homs while another 10 died in the town of Maaret al-Naaman, located near the western city of Idlib, the activists said.

They said security forces also killed two people in the southern region of Daraa, epicentre of protests that have gripped Syria since March 15, one in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, another in the port city of Latakia and two in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor. Dozens were wounded.

The violence in the eastern province of Paktia, which borders Pakistan, started at around 2:00am (2130 GMT Wednesday) and raged for several hours.

One security guard who survived told AFP that “hundreds” of Taliban had swamped the compound, forcing him and two colleagues to hide with guns and a few bullets so they could kill themselves if they were found.

Those killed in the protests in Taloqan, capital of the northeastern province of Takhar, were mainly civilians, while police trainers and cadets died when a bomber drove his car into a police bus near Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan.

The NATO raid that led to the demonstrations in usually peaceful Takhar saw President Hamid Karzai demanding an explanation of what happened from the US commander of troops in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

It also jailed two senior officers for ordering their men to assassinate the prime minister at the start of the 100-day killing spree, when they also murdered 10 Belgian UN troops protecting her.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted the head of the paramilitary police at the time, Augustin Ndindiliyimana, of genocide crimes but ordered his release as he had already spent 11 years in jail.

NATO-led aircraft meanwhile launched fresh raids on an outlying suburb of the capital Tripoli, destroying a radar base, the state news agency JANA and residents said.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said warrants were also sought for one of Kadhafi’s sons, Seif al-Islam, and intelligence head Abdullah Senussi for crimes against humanity.