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BEITUNIA, West Bank ?? Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners late Sunday, the second and final phase of a swap with Gaza Hamas militants that brought home an Israeli soldier after five years in captivity.
Under the Egypt-brokered deal, Israel agreed to exchange a total of 1,027 prisoners for Sgt. Gilad Schalit, [...]
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BERLIN (Reuters) ? “Tey,” a Senegalese modern fairy-tale which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday, depicts a young man who wakes up inexplicably knowing today is the last day of his life. “Tey,” meaning “today” in the Wolof language, is one of three films in the competition set in Africa, which festival director [...]
Led by provocative-as-always but much-less-visible host Ricky Gervais, the 2012 Golden Globes proved to be an entertaining mix of A-list presenters (in the usual sleek tuxes and gorgeous gowns), funny moments and some surprising wins. George Clooney had a big night, from the red carpet (where everyone gawked at his girlfriend Stacy Keibler) to the [...]
KIEV/LONDON (Reuters) ? Bitterly cold weather sweeping across Europe claimed more victims Sunday, brought widespread disruption to transport services, and left thousands without power with warnings that low temperatures would continue into next week.
Hundreds have lost their lives in eastern Europe as freezing weather sweeps across the continent westwards, while major airports warned that services would be delayed or cancelled.
Steven Keates, a weather forecaster at Britain’s Met Office, said the severe wintry conditions were expected to last, and spread to other areas.
“It will still be very cold, maybe not quite the exceptional temperatures we’ve seen this last week, but still very cold,” he told Reuters.
“(It will be) perhaps turning increasingly unsettled across southern and eastern Europe, so that will probably bring a risk of snow for Italy across to Greece and up round the Balkan countries.”
A state of emergency was declared in Bosnia after the cold snap claimed its seventh victim, and avalanches and strong winds cut off hundreds of villages in eastern parts.
Helicopters were needed to deliver aid packages to mountainous areas and take the sick to hospital.
Greece also declared an emergency situation in the western Peloponnese peninsula after heavy rain caused flooding and an 82-year old woman drowned while trying to escape her house.
Nine more deaths from freezing temperatures were registered in Ukraine overnight, emergency services said, taking the death toll to 131 from a nine-day cold spell, the most severe in the country for six years with night temperatures down as low as minus 33 Celsius (minus 27 Fahrenheit) in parts.
HELP FOR HOMELESS
Many of the dead were homeless people with bodies being found in the streets under snow, in rivers and in doorways. More than 3,000 heated tents have been set up around the country to provide makeshift accommodation for the homeless.
In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked local authorities to waive the ban on admitting inebriated individuals to homeless shelters as eight more people died taking the death toll to 53, PAP news agency reported.
The extreme cold also caused the death of at least three people in Hungary, national news agency MTI said, and at least five people froze to death in Lithuania over the weekend in Lithuania as the temperature fell below -30 Celsius overnight.
Transport networks were also badly hit as the chilling weather moved west, prompting severe weather warnings to be issued across much of France and Britain.
London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, said it had cancelled about half of its normal services as more than 15cm (6 inches) of snow fell in parts of England overnight and temperatures dropped to almost -10 Celsius.
Many of Britain’s other airports were forced to shut runways overnight and warned of further disruption, while rail services were affected and motorways near London were brought to a standstill, forcing some divers to abandon their vehicles.
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower received a coating of snow and more downfalls were expected to bring problems to the French capital’s main airports.
The French death toll rose to five, after a 12-year old boy died of hypothermia after falling into a frozen pond in eastern France and two homeless people were found dead.
Meanwhile about 86,000 Italians were left without power because of trees falling on power lines, Livio Gallo, head of state power company Enel told SkyTG24 television.
The deaths of 13 people were blamed on the bad weather, Italian police said, including three men who died of heart attacks while shoveling snow.
Two highways in central Italy that cross the Apenines remained closed, the Interior Ministry said, while in Rome, schools and public offices are to remain closed until at least Tuesday, Mayor Gianni Alemanno said.
He urged people to get out and clean sidewalks, and said the city had handed out 2,350 free shovels.
FUN FOR SOME
While the cold snap has brought death and misery across Europe, some made the most of the conditions.
Snowboarders took to the streets of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo after it was blanketed by a record snowfall of 107 cm.
The traditional Sartai horse race on ice also went ahead in Lithuania and local media reported more than a dozen men and women from a health club went swimming in a lake near Vilnius.
Meanwhile in Belgium, police found that overnight temperatures of about -10 Celsius were so low that machines to test motorists’ alcohol levels did not work.
(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris,; Rob Strybel in Warsaw,; Aleksandar Vasovic and Matt Robinson in Belgrade, Sandor Peto in Budapest, Nerijus Adomaitis in Vilnius, Angeliki Koutantou in Athens, Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo, Steve Scherer in Rome and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels)
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By msnbc.com staff
?Iran has confirmed the death sentence of a man, who was accused of programming a porn website, according to media reports.
According to a report in the?U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, Saeed Malekpour faces imminent execution.
Iranian authorities picked up Malekpour?in 2008 and accused him of contributing to an Internet?pornography site, which is a crime in the theocratic country. He was?confined to solitary confinement?in Tehran for a year without legal counsel, the Guardian reported.
He was sentenced to death a?year later?after confessing to a series of crimes?on a state television program.
Malekpour’s family has asserted that?Malekpour is a permanent resident of Canada and that he wrote software for uploading photographs?that was used on the porn site without his knowledge.
His sister, Maryam Malekpour, said in an interview with the Iranian website Roozonline that Iran’s supreme court had confirmed the death sentence.
“Saeed is in imminent danger of execution,”?Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a human rights activist based in Toronto, told the Guardian. “He has never been provided with a fair trial at any point during this horrific and twisted ordeal.”
Activists and concerned citizens in Canada have campaigned for Malekpour’s release.
MOSCOW ? Russian investigators on Thursday declined to close a probe against a Russian lawyer who died in jail of an untreated illness, extending the investigation by another two months despite his family’s pleas to end it.
Sergei Magnitsky died of an untreated pancreatitis in November 2009 after spending almost a year in a Moscow jail on tax evasion charges. Investors working in Russia have said the lawyer’s death and allegations of torture highlight corruption in the judicial system and presents a litmus test for President Dmitry Medvedev’s pledge to cement the rule of law in the country.
Magnitsky’s family petitioned to get the probe against him closed. His mother and wife have talked to prosecutors and the Interior Ministry.
But the Investigative Department of the Interior Ministry said Thursday they must still contact his other close relatives to make sure they agree. Under Russian law, once a suspect is dead authorities can close a probe with the agreement of the family.
A spokesman for the department who asked to be unnamed, citing the department’s policy, said that they have not contacted all of Magnitsky’s close relatives, and “haven’t got a definite answer” from his mother and wife.
But Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya Magnitskaya, has repeatedly petitioned to get the case closed, and told The Associated Press “there are no other relatives” except for herself, Magnitsky’s widow and their two children.
“They haven’t asked us about anything,” she said of the department’s announcement it was looking for more relatives.
The family’s lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov said the decision was akin to “spitting on the grave of a dead man and his relatives.”
“Magnitsky’s family has repeatedly voiced their position about the illegality of the posthumous prosecution by filing formal written complaints to all Russian state bodies,” Gorokhov said in an emailed statement.
Two prison doctors have been charged with oversight leading to death, but none of the officials Magnitsky accused of framing him have faced charges.
Magnitsky worked for Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund owned and run by U.S.-born William Browder, who has since been barred from Russia as a security risk.
Magnitsky was charged with tax evasion linked to his defense of Hermitage Capital and arrested by the same police officials he had accused of a $230 million tax fraud.
His death sparked outrage in Russia and globally. The U.S. administration imposed travel restrictions on 60 Russian officials suspected of involvement in the lawyer’s imprisonment and killing. Moscow retaliated by drafting a list of American officials it will bar from entering Russia.
Activists presented their report on Magnitsky’s death to Medvedev in July, arguing that police investigators and prison officials are to blame for the lawyer’s death. They later criticized police and investigators for putting the blame squarely on the doctors and shielding their colleagues from responsibility.
The Investigative Committee, a body that oversees high-profile investigations in Russia, is still investigating Magnitsky’s death, the committee’s chief, Alexander Bastrykin, told Russian news agencies on Thursday.
Bastrykin said they are investigating people who could be involved in the lawyer’s death ? not only the doctors who had been charged.
The investigation “will go on until we are 100 percent sure that we have found all the officials and employees of the institutions that are partly or directly to blame for this death,” he said, according to Interfax.
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