Anger, frustration over rapes in India: 'Mindset hasn't changed'
April 23, 2013 -- Updated 0421 GMT (1221 HKT)
(CNN) -- Four months after a vicious gang rape left a 23-year-old physiotherapy student dead and triggered a national outcry over the treatment of women, more protests ignited in New Delhi after another brutal rape -- this time the victim was a five-year-old girl.
Two men have been arrested in the case. Authorities say the girl was abducted, locked in a house and raped repeatedly. She was found semiconscious three days later and doctors removed foreign objects from her genitals, including candle pieces and a small bottle.
"In a capital city, we cannot provide protection to a young girl," said Bhagyashri Dengle, the executive director of Plan India, an organization that works to help underprivileged children.
The girl's family said that police officers had tried to bribe them to keep quiet about the case.
Liu Xia appears in public
Wife of jailed Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo is normally under house arrest but is allowed out for trial of brother
The wife of the jailed Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo has been seen in public for the first time in more than two and a half years.
Liu Xia – who has herself been kept under strict house arrest – smiled and blew kisses to foreign diplomats and media outside the trial of her brother Liu Hui, 43.
Prosecutors accuse Liu Hui and his business partner of fraud over a property dispute that has already been resolved, but the defendants and supporters say they believe the case is politically motivated
Liu Xia shouted: "I'm not free – tell everybody I'm not free," as she glimpsed the crowd outside the courthouse in Huairou, a diplomat said.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Japanese lawmakers visit controversial war shrine en masse
More than 160 Japanese lawmakers have visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates the country's war dead, including convicted war criminals. The shrine visit has raised tensions with China and South Korea.
Tuesday's trip en masse by parliamentarians to the war shrine came on the heels of a weekend visit by Japanese cabinet ministers, sparking ire in China and South Korea. Both Beijing and Seoul view the shrine as a symbol of Tokyo's aggression during the Second World War.
The Yasukuni Shrine commemorates Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including 14 high-ranking officials convicted as war criminals by the Allies. Although the visit to the shrine by Japanese officials is an annual event to mark the spring festival, more than twice as many lawmakers visited this year compared to last, according to Reuters news agency.
The Kremlin's Specter: Will Oligarch Khodorkovsky Be Released?
By Matthias Schepp
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and Putin's strongest adversary, could soon be released from prison. Can the polarizing oil tycoon reinvigorate a beleagered opposition?
Standing in the midst of wool socks from Armenia and hats from Turkey, Anna, the street market vendor, lowers her voice. At the onset of winter, the heat remained off for many weeks in the city's apartments -- the fault, she says, of "this oligarch who has fallen upon us like a meteorite from the sky."
Hezbollah pulls Lebanon further into Syrian war
April 23, 2013 - 12:44PM
Donna Abu-Nasr and Nicole Gaouette
BEIRUT: Hezbollah has a "national and moral" duty to defend Lebanese border villages from the Syrian rebels following the Beirut government's failure to do so, one of its leaders says.
Nabil Qawooq's remarks were reported a day after the Shiite border town of Hermel in Lebanon's north-east came under rocket fire from Syria. Seven 107-millimetre rockets landed in Hermel and villages around it without causing casualties, the Lebanese Army said in a statement on Sunday.
Are we expected to leave our people in the border villages subject to murder, abduction, slaughter and displacement?Nabil Qawooq, Hezbollah
Before the attack, residents in the nearby village of al-Qasr received text messages warning that the Free Syria Army, which is fighting to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would bombard the two communities, the Daily Star reported. Hezbollah backs the Assad government.
Nigeria fighting 'kills scores' in Baga
Intense fighting between the military and Islamist militants in northern Nigeria is reported to have killed at least 185 people, however the army has disputed this figure.
Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy gunfire bombarded the remote town of Baga near the border with Chad for hours on Friday evening, officials say.
Some 40% of the town was destroyed by fire, one rescue worker said.
Nigeria faces a long-running insurgency in its predominantly Muslim north.
The Boko Haram insurgency has left thousands of people dead since 2009.
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