The world in brief

Thursday, January 24, 2013

— QUOTE OF THE DAY

“There should be a clear signal to the Syrian regime that what they have been doing, bombarding cities by airplanes, is a war crime.The silence of the international community is killing people.”

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu This Page

Ballot counting begins in Jordan

AMMAN, Jordan - Polls closed Wednesday night in Jordan in elections that King Abdullah II called part of a major governmental overhaul initiative but that opposition parties boycotted as offering insufficient change.

The state news agency said at least 56 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the election for the 150-member lower house of parliament. Results were expected today.

Abdullah touted Wednesday’s election as the centerpiece of his reformist agenda, an answer to street protests in his own nation and the wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East. But opposition parties and activists groups dismissed changes in the election law as superficial.

Even some loyal to Abdullah acknowledge that Wednesday’s election perpetuates a voting system that gives a disproportionate number of seats in parliament to areas loyal to the monarch over those populated by Palestinian citizens. The king’s promise of picking his Cabinet in consultation with the parliament has been widely derided by voters and observers as a fiction and a source of future troubles.

Attack plot purported in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela’s vice president said Wednesday that the government has uncovered a plot by unidentified groups to attack him and another senior leader.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro did not give details about the purported plot but said there are “groups that have infiltrated the country” and the authorities believe they intended to attack him and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, and then “try to blame one and the other.”

Maduro told of the purported plot while announcing that he would soon travel to Cuba along with Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez to see ailing President Hugo Chavez.

A large contingent of police and troops with rifles stood guard while Maduro spoke to government supporters at an outdoor rally in Caracas.

Maduro didn’t mention any arrests, but said, “Don’t be surprised by the actions that will be taken in the coming days,” adding that unspecified actions would be taken against “criminals that infiltrate the country.”

Bombing at funeral kills 35 in Iraq

BAGHDAD - A tent crowded with Turkmen funeral mourners in northern Iraq was transformed into a killing ground Wednesday by a suicide bombing that left at least 35 people dead and 117 wounded, regional officials and tribal leaders said, calling it a genocidal attack meant to further stoke the already-inflamed sectarian tensions in the country.

The dead and wounded victims included a number of high-ranking regional dignitaries, military officers, professors and religious men among the Turkmen population of the Tuz Khurmato district in Salehedden province, an area in the Kurdish north also claimed by Arabs and Turkmen. It came a day after an extended outbreak of sectarian shootings and bombings in the country killed at least 24 Iraqis.

Mourners had been paying their respects to a Turkmen employee of the Ministry of Health killed in the mayhem the day before. They had packed into a tent at the Imam Ali Shiite mosque when the suicide bomber, apparently masquerading as one of the aggrieved, blew himself up.

‘Palestine’ nameplate stirs Rice at U.N.

UNITED NATIONS - U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice objected Wednesday to the Palestinians’ latest bid to capitalize on their upgraded U.N. status when their foreign minister spoke at the Security Council while seated behind a nameplate that read “State of Palestine.”

It was the first Palestinian address to the Security Council since the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Nov. 29 to upgrade the Palestinians from U.N. observer to nonvoting member state.

Rice said that the United States does not recognize the General Assembly vote in November “as bestowing Palestinian ‘statehood’ or recognition.”

“Only direct negotiations to settle final status issues will lead to this outcome ” Rice said.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 01/24/2013