QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Ok. Don’t miss me.And most importantly - do not be lazy.”
Alexei Navalny, a Russian anti-corruption activist, in a Twitter post urging supporters to continue his work after he was convicted on embezzlement charges that he called fabricated
Article, this page
N. Korea ship’s crew faces criminal case
Panama brushed aside North Korea’s demands that it release an impounded North Korean freighter and its 35-member crew, pressing criminal charges Thursday accusing all aboard of endangering public security by attempting to transport a concealed cargo of Cuban weapons through the Panama Canal.
The charges against the crew members, lodged by the office of the prosecutor, Javier Caraballo, heightened the Panamanian confrontation with North Korea over the ship, the 450-foot Chong Chon Gang, which had been awaiting permission to cross the canal for the voyage home after a visit to Cuba.
The vessel was impounded Sunday after the crew, armed with what officials called sticks, tried to fend off Panamanian marines investigating whether it was carrying contraband.
The marines found old radar and missile components buried in the hold of the ship, underneath more than 200,000 bags of Cuban brown sugar.
The criminal charges were announced only hours after North Korea broke its silence over the impounded ship and demanded that Panama let the vessel and crew depart. A statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the ship had been transporting the Cuban weapons to North Korea for refurbishment under a legal contract.
Italy says Panama has ex-CIA official
ROME - A former CIA base chief in Italy who was convicted in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a street in Milan has been detained in Panama, the Italian justice ministry said Thursday.
However, Panamanian Security Minister Jose Raul Molino said he was unaware of Robert Seldon Lady’s detention, and the press office of the National Police - which works with Interpol, the international police agency - said it had no information about the case.
The CIA said it had no immediate comment.
Lady, the former Milan CIA official, was sentenced by an Italian appeals court in Milan earlier this year in the extraordinary rendition case to nine years in prison after being tried in absentia in Italy in the kidnapping of the Muslim cleric.
The trials of Lady, 59, and two other Americans resulted in the first convictions anywhere in the world against agents involved in the agency’s extraordinary rendition program, a practice alleged to have led to torture.
Italy and Panama have no extradition treaty, Italian diplomats said, so being detained in Panama wouldn’t necessarily result in Lady’s return to Italy, which he left a few years after the abduction, early into the Italian investigation.
Palestinians reject Kerry plan on talks
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian political leadership did not approve U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s plan for returning to peace talks with Israel as expected Thursday, dulling mounting hopes that Washington’s diplomatic push might soon yield a breakthrough.
Emerging from a two-hour meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, several of the leaders said the formula Kerry proposed was insufficient, because it did not require a freeze of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank or insist that new negotiations be based on Israel’s 1967 borders.
The group formed a committee to review the plan in more detail Thursday night and make recommendations today to the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The leadership meeting came a day after a statement from Arab League foreign ministers offering “full support” to Kerry’s efforts and saying that his ideas “lay the proper foundation” for “serious negotiations to address all final-status issues.”
Indian forces kill 4 in Koran protest
SRINAGAR, India - Government forces in the Indian portion of Kashmir on Thursday fatally shot four villagers and wounded 25 others who were protesting the purported desecration of the Muslim holy book by border guards, police said.
Separatist groups that reject India’s sovereignty over the region called for three days of strikes and demonstrations beginning today.
The protesters accused the Indian border force soldiers of entering a religious seminary Wednesday night looking for Kashmiri militants in Dharam, a village 140 miles south of Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir.
The head of the seminary, Qari Shabir, said the border guards tore pages of several copies of the Koran after beating a school caretaker. As thousands of villagers marched to the seminary Thursday to protest the purported desecration of the Korans, government forces opened fire to stop them, Shabir said.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 07/19/2013