QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We never expected such an election. For such a situation, both the government and opposition are responsible.They don’t want to establish democracy.” Aminul Islam, a resident of Dhaka, Bangladesh, who refused to vote in a national election boycotted by opposition activists who were protesting at polling stations Sunday Article, this page Migrants in Israel demand worker rights
TEL AVIV, Israel - About 10,000 African migrants marched in Israel’s financial center of Tel Aviv on Sunday and gathered in front of City Hall in their largest demonstration yet to demand work rights and better treatment from the Israeli government.
Chanting “we are refugees, we need asylum,” the protesters asked the government to allow them to stay. Organizers announced that they have embarked on a three-day strike to protest a crackdown on migrants and called on the government to allow them to work legally.
“This protest is over our rights as human beings. We are not treated like humans,” Muttasem Ali from the Darfur region of Sudan said in Hebrew in an interview with Channel 2 TV.
The government has scrambled to stop the flood of migrants by erecting a fence along the 130-mile Egyptian border and a detention center in the remote southern desert.
Ex-Israeli premier’s condition critical
JERUSALEM - The head of the Israeli hospital treating Ariel Sharon said he is pessimistic about the former prime minister’s prognosis, despite doctors’ success in stabilizing some of his bodily functions.
Dr. Zeev Rotstein, director of the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, said Sunday that doctors had managed to stabilize Sharon’s circulatory system over the weekend.
But Rotstein said there is no improvement in Sharon’s kidney function or with other vital organs that have been slowly declining since last week.
The doctor called Sharon’s condition critical and life-threatening.
The 85-year-old Sharon has been in a coma for eight years after a devastating stroke incapacitated him at the peak of his political power.
Sharon was one of Israel’s most iconic and controversial figures.
South Sudan talks focus on cease-fire
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Two warring factions from South Sudan held direct peace talks Sunday for the first time since conflict began roiling the country last month, sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for safety.
The direct talks, focused on a cease-fire and the release of political prisoners, put representatives of President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar together in Ethiopia.
South Sudan has experienced three weeks of violence.
Kiir said the violence began as a coup attempt Dec. 15, though Machar’s side denies the allegation. Violence began as a political dispute but has since taken on ethnic dimensions, with tribes attacking each other.
The U.N. has said at least 1,000 people have died. Some 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting. Rebel forces loyal to Machar now control two state capitals, including the town of Bor, about 70 miles north of the capital, Juba.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the beginning of direct talks was an important step but that both sides need to put the interests of South Sudan above their own.
14 die in stampede at Chinese mosque
HONG KONG - Fourteen people were trampled to death in northwest China on Sunday as a crowd rushed to take offerings of traditional fried flat bread, the official news agency Xinhua reported today.
The stampede occurred outside the Beida Mosque in Xiji county in the Ningxia region. Residents of the area were commemorating a religious figure associated with the mosque, Xinhua said.
Photographs posted on Chinese news websites showed a dense crowd, many of them men in white religious caps, packed around the mosque before the stampede, as well as images of what the reports said was the aftermath: torn clothes and shoes lost in the panic and abandoned on the gravel, and the bodies of children, apparently crushed to death by the panicking crowd.
In addition to the 14 people who died, 10 more were taken to a local hospital with injuries, including four who were in serious condition, Xinhua reported. The agency did not say specifically how the people were killed or injured. An investigation was underway, it said.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/06/2014