News: World

Plans to build an Islamic centre near Ground Zero in New York have triggered a debate across the US about the limits of religious tolerance.

By VERONIKA OLEKSYN 2010-09-03T17:42:19Z VIENNA (AP) -- The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has asked Israel to consider signing up to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, according to a report made public Friday, in a boost to Arab-led pressure on the Jewish state to join the pact....

By 2010-09-03T17:38:30Z DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- A UPS cargo plane with two crew members on board crashed shortly after takeoff Friday outside Dubai, officials said. There was no immediate word on casualties....

A cargo plane has crashed near a major motorway in Dubai, setting some cars on fire, local officials and media reports say.

By DAN PERRY 2010-09-03T17:37:49Z CERNOBBIO, Italy (AP) -- Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook - especially for the United States and much of the industrialized world....

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Talks to form a right-leaning minority Dutch government collapsed Friday when a populist anti-Islam party pulled out of talks to support the coalition.

Senior Labour politicians urge fresh inquiries into phone hacking claims surrounding the News of the World newspaper.

Firefighters battle blaze that partially destroyed Leicester building, as witness suggests gas leak was to blame for incident

Firefighters were this afternoon battling a fire at a Hare Krishna temple in Leicester, following an explosion.

Initial reports said worshippers were trapped inside the blazing temple but the rescue service said later that everyone was accounted for.

A third of the building in Thoresby Street was destroyed in the initial blast.

The cause of fire has not yet been established. One eyewitness suggested it had been caused by a gas canister.

The temple is in a residential street and there had been a series of ceremonial events taking place.

Firefighters used thermal imaging cameras to look for worshippers inside the building, which was believed to be unstable.

Gauranga Sundara Das, a Hare Krishna community leader in Leicester, said: "There were 30 people there today.

"We were celebrating the birth of the founder of our movement ... I have spoken to someone who was outside at the time of the explosion. Apparently it came from a gas leak in the kitchen."

• Religion
• Firefighters

Owen Bowcott
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By KIMBERLY DOZIER 2010-09-03T17:18:23Z KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The new top commander in Afghanistan is talking up a weapon that has been kept in the shadows for years - special operations missions to kill or capture key insurgents - to try to convince skeptics the war can be won....

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake has struck New Zealand's South Island, the US Geological Survey says.

Prize contenders at the annual event include Darren Aranofsky's Black Swan and Julian Schnabel's Miral

Four days in to the Venice film festival and critics are happy. There have been some good films and, crucially, an interesting mix.

The competition, to be judged by a jury chaired by Quentin Tarantino, opened with Darren Aranofsky's psychosexual ballet thriller, Black Swan. The film features a central performance from Natalie Portman, which is already being talked about as having Oscar potential.

Artist Julian Schnabel showcased Miral, an arguably simplistic drama addressing 40 years of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which could do well in the US.

The event's first French entry, Anthony Cordier's Happy Few, with its repeated devil-may-care sex and nudity, had journalists falling over themselves in praise of its nouvelle vague 2010 artistry.

• Venice film festival
• Festivals
• Darren Aronofsky
• Quentin Tarantino

Mark Brown
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Almost all Belgian cat owners will be obliged to have their pets sterilised and registered by 2016

The Belgian government has come up with a radical way to deal with the burgeoning cat population – to sterilise all but a select few of the animals within five years.

If it is passed into law, the country will embark on a phased neutering of all cats except exotic pedigrees at the start of next year, and there will be a ban on using corner shops, noticeboards and small ads to get rid of unwanted litters of kittens.

The feline population in Belgium, a country of 11 million people, has increased to an estimated 1.7 million, and the culling of cats has become a daily routine. According to the health ministry, more than 13,000 were killed in animal refuges last year, more than one in three of the country's 37,000 strays.

"We are confronted with a dramatic situation," said Jan Eyckmans of the Belgian health ministry. "So our minister asked the animal welfare council to come up with ideas."

The result is the Multi-annual Cat Plan 2011-2016, which says sterilisation is necessary "to halt the increase in the numbers of strays and cats collected in shelters".

Initially, all cats in shelters will be sterilised. The next phase imposes neutering on cats from breeders and sellers. Finally, all cat owners will be obliged to have their pets sterilised and registered, costing about €130 (£108) for a female cat and €50 for a tom. Breeders and owners of Siamese, Abyssinian and other special pedigrees will be exempted from the new regime.

"If you buy a very expensive cat for €600 and want to have kittens, you can't sterilise them all," said Eyckmans. "We need to find the right balance."

Many are sceptical about the proposal. "Not a good idea. It won't be easy. They'll never be able to sterilise all the cats," said Alan, who helps to run the Nos Amis Fidèles (Our Faithful Friends) kennels in Waterloo, south of Brussels.

"Pet owners will rebel and refuse to do it," agreed Marleen Meersseman, who helps to run a rescue service for stricken wild animals in the Flemish village of Nieuwkerke. "And this wouldn't be Belgium if people did not find a back door."

But the animal welfare lobby is strongly supportive of the scheme.

"We don't want the cat to vanish from the earth," said Ann De Greef, director of Gaia, which is taking the campaign to the town squares of Belgium and reports "enormous support".

"A cat can have one pregnancy every six months and 36 offspring in less than 16 months," said De Greef.

The new project is the first to propose compulsory sterilisation nationally. It will be watched closely in other countries wrestling with ballooning cat populations.

Cat culls have a long history in Belgium. In Ypres, in western Flanders, they've been hurling the animals from the belfry of the 12th-century Cloth Hall for hundreds of years in an annual ritual to ward off the devil.

The massacre continues, now every three years. But nowadays the cats are fluffy, velveteen toys. The cat cull is considered a tourist attraction, an excuse for a fancy-dress party. Yvette Deraedt enjoys Ypres's feline festival. But the pensioner, who tends the eight strays at the ancient Flemish town's municipal animal shelter, would not dream of killing a cat.

"The vet euthanised one earlier this year, but it was very sick. Otherwise we would never do that," she said.

• Belgium
• Pets

Ian Traynor
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Officials in northern Bangladesh battle to contain an anthrax outbreak that has infected more than 250 people.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A strong earthquake of 7.4 magnitude hit New Zealand, just 4 miles southeast of Christchurch, in the middle of the night local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said Friday.

DUBAI (Reuters) - A cargo plane crashed near a busy highway in Dubai on Friday, causing a fire, Al Arabiya television reported.

Three of the world's most successful club DJs join forces to pay tribute to those who died at the Love Parade festival in Germany in July.

Aircraft carriers, unmanned drones and tanker aircraft among possible projects considered for Anglo-French co-operation

The defence secretary, Liam Fox, today spoke of the prospect of close military co-operation with France, a country he called Britain's "natural" partner in Europe.

Fox described France as Britain's major western ally, along with the US, after a meeting in Paris with his French counterpart, Hervé Morin.

"These are natural partnerships. We intend to develop them for reasons of our mutual security," he said.

Among a range of projects suitable for closer co-operation, he singled out Europe's new military transport aircraft, the A400M. Europe has a chronic shortage of large aircraft which can carry troops and military equipment.

Defence officials told the Guardian that other possible areas of co-operation included unmanned drone flights and tanker aircraft used to refuel warplanes.

While the two ministers dismissed the idea of sharing aircraft carriers as unrealistic, officials are looking at the scope for shared operations and the use of each other's military platforms.

One problem is that British defence ministers have so far opted for the hugely expensive US short-takeoff Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) for the navy's two proposed new carriers, while French carrier-borne planes are launched by catapult.

One option is to scrap plans to buy the JSF for both carriers and turn one of them into a less expensive, more adaptable ship. The carriers are due to enter service in 2016 and 2018 at an estimated cost of £5.2bn.

Fox stressed the coalition government's "willingness to engage in stronger bilateral co-operation with France".

He added: "And why France? Because there are two things that matter most when it comes to defence co-operation: the willingness to deploy and the willingness to spend on the research and development required to maintain modern military capabilities. That makes France the natural European partner for the United Kingdom."

Fox said it was not simply a response to budgetary pressures. "It has to be driven by wider security interests."

Morin said the two countries would come up with precise proposals by the end of October, after Britain's strategic defence and security review.

• France
• Military

Richard Norton-TaylorLizzy Davies
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - More women are working and dying for powerful drug cartels in Mexico's most violent city as high unemployment along the U.S. border sucks desperate families into the lethal trade.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all kick off their Euro 2012 qualifying campaigns on a busy night of international football.

78 injured in procession blast as death toll from series of sectarian attacks mounts

Suicide bombings targeting religious minorities killed at least 44 people in Pakistan today, sharply increasing the death toll from sectarian assaults in a country already battered by massive flooding.

A blast killed at least 43 people in the south-western city of Quetta during a Shia procession calling for solidarity with Palestinians, police said. A spokesman said 78 people were wounded, several of whom were in a critical condition.

The bodies of the dead and wounded lay strewn across the road as clouds of black smoke from burning motorcycles billowed through the streets.

Some Shia youths fired shots in the air after the blast, and a senior police official said officers were trying to control the situation.

Shia leader Allama Abbas Kumaili appealed to participants to remain peaceful. "We understand these are attempts to set Sunni and Shia sects against each other," he said.

The attack in Quetta was the second this week on Pakistani Shias, who by some estimates make up about 20% of the population in the mostly Sunni Muslim country, although figures are imprecise and disputed.

Earlier today , a suicide bomb attack on a mosque belonging to the minority Ahmadi sect killed at least one person and wounded several others in the north-west Pakistani town of Mardan. A triple suicide attack on Wednesday night killed 35 people at a Shia ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.

Kumaili said the attacks against minority sects were a result of government failure.

"Our government concentrates all its efforts to secure VIPs. Common men are not their priority," he said.

Government officials have said they cannot protect outdoor gatherings from attacks, and interior minister Rehman Malik yesterday called for Shias to hold religious ceremonies indoors.

Baluchistan provincial police chief Malik Iqbal said officials had warned organisers of the Quetta ceremony to stay inside a security cordon after intelligence agents received reports about a possible terror attack.

"They violated the route," Iqbal said. "We had warned them not to extend their rally out of the cordon."

The hardline Sunni Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack in Lahore, and a host of other assaults on religious minorities. The group is seeking to overthrow a government shaken most recently by the flooding that has caused massive suffering, population displacement and economic damage.

Military and law enforcement officials also have been battered by militant violence, particularly along the border with Afghanistan. Officials said a roadside bomb attack in the capital of the northwest's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province killed one police officer and wounded three others.

The floods, caused by heavy rains weeks ago in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and elsewhere in the mountains of northern Pakistan, have killed more than 1,600 people and affected about 20 million. The waters are still swamping rich agricultural land in the southern provinces of Sindh and Punjab.

Flood victims say they have received little government help, and that most assistance has come from private charities. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned yesterday that survivors' anger was beginning to hamper those aid efforts.

About 500 survivors blocked a key road in the Sindh town of Gharo today to protest about inadequate food and drinking water.

"We have blocked traffic today to draw government attention toward our problems. We are living at a government building without food," said Deedar Ahmad, 25, who said he fled along with about 1,000 people from a nearby flooded village.

Survivor Ali Nawaz said the government had housed flood victims but was not providing food, electricity, water or adequate shelter.

"We cannot sleep because of the fears of snakes," he said.

The flooding, and anger over the government response, has prompted concern about the stability of Pakistan's government, seen as a problematic but essential western ally in the fight against Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan's own restive tribal areas.

• Pakistan
• Global terrorism
• Pakistan flood

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