LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s a great loss for Argentina and a great loss for the continent.”
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos,
on the death Wednesday of former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner Article, this pageNo-confidence vote fails in Romania
BUCHAREST, Romania - Romania’s government survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament on Wednesday as 30,000 people protested in Bucharest against wage cuts and austerity measures taken by the authorities during a biting recession.
The opposition got 219 votes, 17 short of the majority it would have needed to topple Prime Minister Emil Boc’s government, Parliament secretary Dumitru Pardau said.
International Monetary Fund officials were visiting Romania to review the country’s ailing economy.
Romania took a $27.8 billion loan from the IMF, the European Union and the World Bank last year when its economy shrank by 7.1 percent.
In return, it pledged to cut spending, and the government took harsh measures, slashing public-sector wages by one-fourth and increasing the sales tax from 19 percent to 24 percent.
Nobel overseers snub far-right leader
STOCKHOLM - The Nobel Foundation said Wednesday that it will not invite the leader of a far-right political party to the Nobel Prize banquet in Stockholm along with other Swedish party heads because of his party’s nationalist agenda.
The decision breaks with a tradition of inviting all party leaders to the lavish December banquet, which is also attended by hundreds of dignitaries and royals.
The foundation’s executive director, Michael Sohlman, said the program of Jimmy Akesson’s Sweden Democrats clashes completely with the will of industrialist Alfred Nobel, who established the prize.
The Sweden Democrats entered Parliament for the first time this year after winning 20 seats in the Sept. 19 elections by calling for sharp cuts in immigration.
The party says it would be ideal for a country’s population to be homogenous and says multicultural societies are unstable and prone to conflicts.
Sohlman said the banquet is a private party, “and we invite those whom we want to invite.”Bin Laden warns France over war, ban
CAIRO - Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden threatens in a new audiotape to kill Frenchmen to avenge their country’s support for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and a new law that will ban face-covering Muslim veils.
In the tape obtained by satellite television station Al-Jazeera and then posted Wednesday on its website, bin Laden said France was aiding Americans in the killing of Muslim women and children in an apparent reference to the war in Afghanistan. He said the kidnapping of five French citizens in the African nation of Niger last month was a reaction to what he called France’s oppression of Muslims.
He asks how France can want peace if it continues to occupy Muslim lands and support Americans’ killing of women and children. He also says that as long as Western countries kill and capture Muslims, militants will do the same to Westerners, adding that withdrawing from the war in Afghanistan is the path to protecting security.
The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified, but the voice resembled that of the terror-group leader on previous tapes determined to be genuine.
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux told Parliament hours after the message was posted that the risk of a terror attack against the country was real and authorities’ vigilance is “total,” according to a report on newspaper Le Figaro’s website.
Artillery rockets in load Nigeria seized
LAGOS, Nigeria - Artillery rockets like those often used by insurgents in Afghanistan made up much of an illegal-arms shipment intercepted at Nigeria’s busiest cargo port, raising security questions about the oil-rich nation before its presidential election.
Officials allowed journalists visiting the holding yard just inside the port’s main gate Wednesday to see the 107mm rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons seized at Apapa Port. Authorities said the shipment also contained grenades, explosives and possibly rocket launchers, but journalists did not see them.
Nigerian National Security Adviser Andrew Owoye Azazi declined to say what ship carried the weapons into the port. He said the federal government would destroy them
Authorities said the weapons were in a shipment whose manifest labeled the goods as building materials. As officials opened new containers, they pulled away yellow insulation and plastic to reach the individual crates. Broken floor tiles littered the ground.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/28/2010