World news 13 June 2013

Russian court rules against arresting opposition activist Navalny

The Leninsky District Court in Kirov has turned down prosecutors’ requests on taking into custody opposition activist Aleksey Navalny. A prosecutor had asked to change Navalny’s restrictive measure to arrest following a recess in a court hearing on Thursday, Interfax said. The judge was supposed to verify information that Navalny was summoned to an investigator in Moscow at the same time. The opposition activist is charged with embezzlement at the state-run timber company Kirovles, an accusation he denies.

10:30

Turkish PM orders ‘troublemakers’ removed from park

Turkey’s prime minister ordered Thursday that “troublemakers” be removed from Istanbul’s Taksim Square within 24 hours. “We will clean the square,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, a day after his Justice and Development party proposed a referendum over a development plan at the square that has fanned the protests. Erdogan also lashed out at the European Parliament over its resolution that expressed concern over“the disproportionate and excessive use of force by the Turkish police.” The PM said he would not “recognize the decision that the EU parliament is going to take about us.”

09:46

Czech police detain director of PM’s office – reports

Czech police detained the director of Prime Minister Petr Necas’ office and several other people in overnight raids, media reported on Thursday. A spokesman for the police's organized crime unit confirmed that the unit was involved in an operation, but refused to provide any details, Reuters said. The head of Necas’s office Jana Nagyova was reportedly among those detained.

09:14

UN says 93,000 killed in Syrian conflict

The death toll in Syria reached at least 93,000 at the end of April, but the true number from the violence may be much higher, the UN human rights office said on Thursday. “This extremely high rate of killings, month after month, reflects the drastically deteriorating pattern of the conflict over the past year,” Reuters quoted Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as saying. The previous UN figure, issued in mid-May, was that 80,000 had been killed in the conflict, which began in March 2011.

07:23

Legal position won’t allow Russia to send peacekeepers to Golan – Israel

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin said Thursday that the current legal position will not make it possible for Russia to deploy its peacekeepers to the Golan Heights. The deployment is unlikely soon due to this reason, the minister said in Moscow. However, the possibility of such a move, as well as its pluses and minuses was discussed during his visit to Russia, Elkin said.

07:11

US girl gets lung transplant after being placed on adult waiting list

A 10-year-old American girl whose dire need for a lung transplant catapulted her into the political spotlight has undergone potentially life-saving surgery, AFP reported. Last week, a US judge took the unusual step of ordering that the child be placed on an adult waiting list after the family filed a lawsuit alleging that current US standards discriminated against children. Sarah’s doctors are very pleased with her prognosis for recovery, said the child’s mother, Janet Ruddock Murnaghan. The case drew international attention when the child's family pleaded with the US government to bend the rules and allow her to be put on the list for an adult lung transplant.

06:09

Rural US loses population for first time

Rural America is losing population for the first time ever, the Census Bureau reported. The new estimates, as of July 2012, show that would-be retirees are opting to stay put in urban areas near jobs. About 46.2 million people, or 15 per cent of the US population, reside in rural counties, which spread across 72 per cent of the nation’s land area. From 2011 to 2012, those non-metropolitan areas lost more than 40,000 people, a 0.1 per cent drop. Some Baby Boomers have fewer savings than a decade ago to buy a vacation home in the countryside.

03:40

North Korea accuses South of 'sinister intention' over collapsed talks

In a setback to what looked to be fence-mending in relations, North Korea’s state news agency on Thursday accused the South of having “sinister” motives towards failed talks that had been meant to start earlier this week. According to the AP, the North protested when Seoul requested that senior ruling Workers’ Party official Kim Yang-gon, a close advisor to Kim Jong-un, be in attendance. The North responded that Yang-gon was far too senior to Seoul’s Unification Minister, who was slated to head the South’s delegation. The aborted talks had been meant to reopen a closed joint industrial zone between the two countries, long considered a powerful barometer of functional relations between North and South.RTNews