NEWS OF THE DAY
1 Golan Heights shelling: Syrian soldiers battled rebels in a firefight that killed nine people Tuesday and sent several mortars sailing across the border into the Israelioccupied Golan Heights. The Israeli military said that nobody was hurt in the shelling and that the spillover was believed to be accidental.
2 Tibetan meeting: Tibetan exiles from around the world met in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala on Tuesday to discuss how to respond to dozens of self-immolations by Tibetans and find new ways to increase global support for their people’s cause. The self-proclaimed Tibetan governmentin-exile says 41 Tibetans have died from self-immolation since March 2009. It considers them a sign of the suffering Tibetans feel under China’s repressive policies. China claims the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, encourages the suicide attempts.
3 Nuke smuggling: A court in Switzerland found three men guilty Tuesday of helping supply material and knowhow to Libya’s atomic weapons program almost a decade ago, but approved a plea bargain that cited the defendants’ cooperation with the CIA as a mitigating circumstance. The case shed rare light on the U.S. intelligence agency’s successful operation to destroy the nuclear smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
4 Google arrest: A judge has ordered the arrest of the president of Google’s operations in Brazil for failure to remove YouTube videos that attacked a mayoral candidate. The order to arrest Fabio Jose Silva Coelho was issued Monday by Judge Flavio Peren of Mato Grosso do Sul state. Google said it is appealing the ruling because it is not responsible for content posted on its site.
5 Blasphemy trial: Egyptian prosecutors referred to trial Tuesday a well-known radical Islamist who tore up an English copy of the Bible during a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against an anti-Islam film produced in the United States. The case against Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah is a rare example of Egypt’s blasphemy laws — often condemned by rights groups as restrictive of freedom— used against someone who allegedly insulted a religion other than Islam.
6 Apology to the queen: Britons got a rare glimpse of Queen Elizabeth II’s personal views Tuesday when a prominent BBC reporter told a live radio audience about a conversation he had with the queen in which she apparently described telling a minister of her concern about the continued liberty of radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri. The BBC and the reporter, Frank Gardner, apologized within hours for breaching the queen’s confidence. Still, the remarks raised questions about the queen’s role in British public life. It sounded to some listeners as if Gardner was engaged in high-level name dropping with the BBC hosts interviewing him and momentarily forgot that he was on a live radio show.
7 Seeking independence: Catalan President Artur Mas on Tuesday called early elections for Nov. 25, defying Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a campaign that will focus attention on the potential for Spain’s biggest region to declare independence. Mas made his announcement in the capital Barcelona five days after Rajoy rejected his bid for greater control of the region’s tax revenue. Catalonia, where 1.5 million people demonstrated for independence in Barcelona this month, accounts for a fifth of the Spanish economy.