Brazil police, subway workers clash
SAO PAULO -- Brazilian police and striking subway workers clashed Monday in a central commuter station, with union officials threatening to maintain the work stoppage through the World Cup opening match this week.
Authorities are worried about the strike because the subway is the main means of transportation for World Cup fans who will attend Thursday's opening match between Brazil and Croatia. The stadium is about 12 miles east of central Sao Paulo, where most tourists stay.
Officials had hoped the work stoppage would be resolved Monday when union officials met for the first time in days with government authorities. But no agreement was reached, union leaders said.
Union members were to meet through the night to decide whether the strike will continue.
Earlier Monday, riot police firing tear gas forced about 100 striking workers out of the station as the strike threw Sao Paulo's normally congested traffic into chaos for a fifth day. About half the city's subway stations were operating, but with greatly diminished service.
"This is the way they negotiate, with tear gas and repression," said Alexandre Roland, a union leader.
5 get prison in Russian reporter's murder
MOSCOW -- Moscow's highest criminal court on Monday sentenced five men to prison, including two to life sentences, for the 2006 murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. But it left unsolved the question of who ordered the most high-profile killing of a Russian journalist in the past decade.
Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter known for scathing criticisms of Kremlin policies in the Russian republic of Chechnya and of the local leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was 48 when she was shot to death in a contract killing.
On Monday, Judge Pavel Melyokhin sentenced Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, the organizer of the team that murdered Politkovskaya, and his nephew Rustam Makhmudov, the gunman, to life sentences.
U.K. schools must teach 'British values'
LONDON -- The British government on Monday announced that schools would be required to teach "British values" after inspectors found school board members with hard-line Muslim views had intimidated teachers and imposed religiously motivated restrictions at several institutions.
Inspectors were called after an anonymous letter alleged a plot called "Operation Trojan Horse" by Muslim fundamentalists to infiltrate schools in the central England city of Birmingham.
Authorities think the letter was a hoax, but the purported plot triggered several inquiries and raised tensions in Britain's second-largest city, which has a large Muslim population.
The Office for Standards in Education said Monday that it had found a "culture of fear and intimidation" at some of the 21 schools it inspected. Five were found to have failed to protect students from extremism.
Inspectors said members of governing boards had promoted a "narrow faith-based ideology" at some schools, whose students are overwhelmingly from Muslim backgrounds. One school attempted to ban mixed-sex swimming lessons; at another, music lessons were dropped because they were considered un-Islamic. At a third school, board members vetted the script for a nativity play and told staff they could not use a doll to represent the baby Jesus.
Pay dispute creates Abbas, Hamas rift
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- An argument over money set off the first serious dispute Monday between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamic militant group Hamas since the longtime rivals formed a unity government a week ago.
The standoff over salary payments for more than 40,000 government employees -- hired by Hamas during its seven-year rule of the Gaza Strip -- highlights the volatile nature of the relationship between Abbas and Hamas.
Last week, the unity government began disbursing salaries to about 150,000 civil servants loyal to Abbas but said it will find a way to pay the Hamas employees. In response, scuffles broke out in Gaza between those waiting to withdraw their salaries and Hamas employees. Hamas police forces later closed the banks.
Khalil al-Haye, a senior Hamas official, said Monday that the banks can't reopen until a solution is found.
"We demand that President Abbas instruct the government to pay the salaries of the government employees quickly," he said.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 06/10/2014