QUOTE OF THE DAY “If you violate our border, our slap will be hard.” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Turkish fighter jets shooting down a Syrian
warplane Sunday, saying the strike should serve as a warning against further incursions Article, this page Egyptian activist free on bond before trial
CAIRO - An Egyptian court on Sunday ordered the release on bond of a prominent activist charged with breaking a new law that heavily restricts protests, after he spent nearly four months in jail.
The case against Alaa Abdel-Fattah and 24 other defendants has been criticized by rights groups. It’s seen as part of a sweeping clampdown by authorities on dissidents.
Egyptian authorities arrested Abdel-Fattah, a leading figure in the 2011 uprising against autocrat Hosni Mubarak, in November. He was charged with organizing a protest without permission and assaulting police.
At Sunday’s opening hearing of Abdel-Fattah’s trial, lawyers called on the judge to release Abdel-Fattah and the only other defendant imprisoned in the case, Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, saying there was no reason for their continued detention, hinting it amounted to a punishment.
The presiding judge, Mohammed el-Fikki, agreed, ordering their release and set bail around $1,400. The court adjourned the proceedings until April 6.
Egyptian courts are swamped with legal cases against thousands of defendants arrested in the past eight months on various charges, including purportedly violating the protest law and waging a campaign of violence against security and state institutions.
Ebola said cause of 59 Guinea deaths
CONAKRY, Guinea - Samples from victims of a viral hemorrhagic fever that has killed more than 50 people in Guinea have tested positive for the Ebola virus, government officials said Sunday, marking the first time an outbreak among humans has been detected in this West African nation.
Government spokesman Damantang Albert Camara said the virus was found in tests conducted at a laboratory in Lyon, France.
A Health Ministry statement on Saturday said that 80 cases, including 59 deaths, have been reported, most of them in three southern prefectures near neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia.
A team including the health minister has been dispatched to the region, Camara said, and Doctors Without Borders has set up an isolation unit in Gueckedou to try to stop the disease from spreading.
Officials have not been able to determine how the outbreak started.
U.S. first lady hosts China education talk
BEIJING - U.S. first lady Michelle Obama pushed the importance of education to the foreground Sunday on the third day of a visit to China, where she has won praise for her approachability and admiration for her comments supporting freedom of speech.
Obama hosted a discussion about education with a handful of Chinese professors, students and parents, as well as the new U.S. ambassador to China, Max Baucus, at the U.S.
Embassy on Sunday morning.
The purpose of Obama’s week-long visit is to promote educational exchanges between the U.S. and China, although she raised a contentious issue Saturday in a 15-minute speech at a university.
She said that freedom of speech and unfettered access to information make countries stronger and should be universal rights, but she did not call out Beijing directly in her speech at Peking University’s Stanford Center.
China has some of the world’s tightest restrictions on the Internet.
Libyan navy boards detained oil tanker
TRIPOLI, Libya - Libyan authorities boarded a renegade oil tanker and detained three militiamen and the crew after the vessel anchored off the country’s coast Sunday, the state news agency and a Libyan navy spokesman said.
He also suggested that Libya might have tried to sink the ship had the Americans not boarded it on Tripoli’s behalf.
U.S. Navy SEALs seized the Morning Glory last week in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. That operation ended an attempt by a militia from eastern Libya to sell the tanker’s crude in defiance of the central government in Tripoli.
The oil, estimated at about 350,000 barrels, was to be unloaded later when the tanker moves on to the port of Zawiya refinery, 25 miles west of Tripoli.
The U.S. Navy handed over control of the tanker to Libyan forces Saturday while in international waters.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 03/24/2014