Tag: Open Thread

The red-clad protesters — assembled amid tight security in public spaces near government offices in Bangkok — have vowed to step up their campaign if the government does not dissolve parliament within 24 hours.

“We will leave here to listen to the government’s answer at the 11th Infantry Unit,” Red Shirt leader Nattawut Saikuar told reporters. “If they fail to answer our demands we will announce our next step.”

The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), convening for the first time in the Middle East, is the only UN body with the power to outlaw commerce in endangered wild animals and plants.

Besides the sharply disputed proposal on bluefin, the Convention will debate the status of African elephants, polar bears and tigers.

The bombers walked up to army vehicles in the crowded R A Bazaar area of Lahore, blowing themselves up as people sat down to eat before the main Muslim weekly prayers were to begin, a senior official said.

Lahore, a city of eight million near Pakistan’s border with India, has been increasingly subject to Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in a nationwide bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,000 people in three years.

Violence broke out around a union demonstration in the capital with riot police firing tear gas at hooded youths who hurled firebombs and vandalised stores near parliament and other areas of the city centre.

Police said they had detained 16 people, of whom nine were later arrested, and that 13 officers were hurt after being hit by objects thrown by protesters.

As new gunfire added to the tensions around the flashpoint city of Jos, the Catholic Pontiff added his voice to a chorus of international revulsion over the weekend slaughter which police now say left 109 people dead.

About 8,000 Nigerians have also fled their homes around Jos in the wake of the violence, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Like other fishermen, he usually beat his boat with a stick to try to frighten the giant mammals away, but for once he hesitated.

“The whale insisted, going from one side of the boat to the other, and at one point I was curious and, very gently, I stroked the whale’s face. And nothing happened. It stayed calm,” Mayoral said, driving a boat of tourists across the San Ignacio lagoon some 40 years later.

As US Marines stood guard on roof tops and a small number of bemused Afghan men and boys looked on, Gates took a brief stroll along the dusty main street of Now Zad in southern Afghanistan, where a handful of humble shops have reopened since the Taliban retreated in December.

The mud-brick town remains mostly deserted and a long way from the bustling centre that once was home to about 30,000, but US officials hope life will gradually return as part of a NATO-led bid to push back the Taliban from its southern strongholds.