Voters deal blow to Catalan president's hopes for independence referendum
Artur Mas's CiU will need alliance with hardliners after party emerged with 50 seats, down from the 62 it won two years ago
The Catalan president leading the region's most determined bid for independence in decades has emerged much weaker from elections he called to press for a referendum on breaking away from Spain.
The final count gave Artur Mas's Convergència i Unió (CiU) 50 seats, down from the 62 it won when elections were last held, two years ago, and far fewer than the 68 needed to win approval for a referendum in the 135-member Catalan parliament without settling differences with smaller parties.
CiU now needs an alliance with the separatist Esquerra party, which surged into second place with 21 seats, from fourth spot in 2010. Although Esquerra has often criticised Mas's minority government, it has not ruled out an agreement.
The Irish Times - Monday, November 26, 2012
Israel warns it will disrupt Hamas attempts to rearm
MARK WEISS in Jerusalem
Israel’s top general has warned that the army will continue to disrupt any attempt by Hamas to rearm.
The comments by Israeli defence forces chief of staff Lieut Gen Benny Gantz followed reports in the British Sunday Times that Israeli spy satellites had detected a cargo ship, docked at an Iranian port, being loaded with missiles, presumably bound for the Gaza Strip.
Lieut Gen Gantz said the issue of Hamas’s attempt to bolster its strength was important and far from new.
Deputy Hamas politburo chief Mousa Abu Marzook said Hamas would not stop making weapons in Gaza or smuggling them into the territory. “These weapons protected us and there is no way to stop obtaining and manufacturing them,” he said.
Bangladesh blaze highlights plight of garment workers
November 26, 2012 - 1:30PM
Jason Burke and Saad Hammadi
SURVIVORS have described how a fire tore through a multi-storey garment factory just outside Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, killing more than 120 colleagues in one of the worst such incidents in recent years.
Mohammad Shahbul Alam, 26, described flames filling two of the three stairwells of the nine-floor building – where clothes for international brands appear to have been made – shortly after the fire alarm had been raised.
Rooms full of female workers were cut off as piles of yarn and fabric filling corridors ignited. Reports also suggested fire exits at the site had locks on, which had to be broken in order for staff to escape.
At least 12 dead as al-Shabaab attack town on Kenya border
Somalia's al-Shabaab fighters briefly took control of a small town on the border with Kenya in a battle that left at least 12 people dead.
Heavy fighting broke out late on Saturday afternoon in Bulohawo and lasted into the evening, residents and military commanders said, with residents confirming that the al-Shabaab took full control of the town for a few hours before Somali troops were able to reinforce their positions.
"The violent elements attacked Bulohawo in late afternoon and after heavy fighting our forces defeated them and inflicted heavy losses on them," said Diyad Abdi Kalil, a Somali military commander in the area, by phone.
Casualty estimates varied but most sources agreed that at least a dozen people, most of them fighters for the two sides, had been killed.
26 November 2012 Last updated at 00:29 GMT
Brazil’s World Cup work overshadowed by police murders
It is not a good time to be a police officer in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city.
So far this year, 95 officers have been murdered in and around the giant, sprawling city, according to official figures - up from 47 in 2011.
The spike in fatal attacks has been blamed on a powerful criminal gang known as the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), or First Command of the Capital.
The violence exploded back in May when six members of the PCC were killed in a shoot out with an elite police unit trying to clamp down on the drugs trade.
According to lurid newspaper headlines in Brazil, the gang's leadership swore revenge, and police officers immediately started being targeted in what has been described as an "undeclared war". Many have been killed in ambushes while they are off duty.
Pulitzer wanted for reporter who broke story on Nazi Germany’s surrender
By
In headier days, Ed Kennedy personified the hard-drinking, hard-charging war correspondent of another era. The first time his future wife saw him, he was sidled up to a hotel bar in Paris with none other than Ernest Hemingway, both of them so “dead drunk” they could hardly stand.
Kennedy was a star Associated Press correspondent with a penchant for daring evasion of authority, dashing into World War II battle zones where he wasn’t supposed to go because he had to get the story. He just had to.
But it was the biggest scoop of his career — Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender — that ruined his career. And a determined group of prominent journalists wants to do something about that.
They want Kennedy to be posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a recognition of a singular moment of courage when a star correspondent defied political and military censorship to file one of the biggest stories of the century.
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