Conditions are ripe for multiparty talks on the future of Spain’s strife-torn Basque region, with armed separatist group ETA having called a ceasefire last month, the leader of the group’s banned political wing said on Wednesday. ”All conditions are in place” for ”a multiparty negotiation” on the future of their wealthy northern region, Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi said.
World powers struggled on Wednesday to show a united front over Iran’s nuclear drive, fearing Tehran will exploit any split to forge ahead with uranium enrichment. ”I would have thought that this is the time for the world to send a clear and united message to the Iranian regime,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London as diplomats gathered in Moscow.
Thousands of striking security guards marched peacefully to the offices of G4 Security in Hatfield, Pretoria, on Wednesday, handed over a memorandum of demands and dispersed. A police helicopter, heavily armed police officers and a water cannon were on standby in case of trouble, but the march proceeded without incident.
Michael Jackson has returned to the studio and plans to release a new album next year, a Bahrain-based record label said. The label, 2 Seas Records, which is owned by Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad al Khalifa, son of Bahrain’s king, said on Tuesday that it had signed an exclusive recording agreement with the beleaguered king of pop.
The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein ruled on Wednesday that signatures linking the ousted Iraqi leader to a massacre in the 1980s were ”authentic”. Shortly after the trial resumed following a two-day recess, Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman again adjourned the trial, until April 24.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a strongly-worded attack on Wednesday on Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, calling his regime a ”disgrace” that had brought the country to its knees. ”What the regime is doing in Zimbabwe is a disgrace,” Blair told Parliament in his weekly question-and-answer session.
”Maybe it was inevitable that as the child of a reborn God-botherer and a misanthropic atheist, I might end up a little spiritually perplexed. My grandmother, a stout-hearted Matabeleland farmer, read her gilt-edged Bible every night, but was known to call in a nyanga (traditional healer) when necessary”, writes Nicole Johnston.
There is no clear definition for the New Age movement. It is simply a term that lumps together a wide variety of beliefs, customs and practices, from acupuncture to astrology, Gnosticism, Wicca and various indigenous belief systems that have only recently been acknowledged in the West.
International community pressure to convince Iran not to develop nuclear arms should apply to Israel as well, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Wednesday. Saud made his comments during a wide-ranging inaugural speech at the second Saudi-British Two Kingdoms: Friendship and Partnership conference, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The global economy, which has coped amazingly well with fallout from natural disasters and lofty energy prices, is expected to pick up a little more speed in 2006 and log another year of brisk growth. Still, risks remain, the International Monetary Fund indicates in its latest World Economic Outlook, released on Wednesday.