Daily News Channel
A protest rally was scheduled to go ahead in Tehran Saturday despite warnings from Iran’s supreme leader. The rally against last week’s disputed presidential vote was scheduled to begin at around 4 p.m.
An independent commission will start investigating the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in July, the United Nations has announced. Bhutto, 54, was heading the opposition to then-President Pervez Musharraf when she was killed at a December campaign rally in Rawalpindi ahead of parliamentary elections.
Iran is preparing for a potentially violent confrontation between the government and supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi on Saturday. While messages on Twitter and other social networking sites indicate much concern about safety, many opposed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insist they will attend the rally called by Mousavi. Several drew inspiration from a protest march on Thursday, an account of which TIME received on Friday morning.
For those of us who lived through the Iranian revolution, which toppled the government of the Shah and paved the way for the creation of the Islamic republic in 1979, there is a dreamlike familiarity to the massive riots roiling the streets of Tehran. I remember the seemingly spontaneous rallies that brought the country to a screeching halt. The young, fearless protesters daring the security forces to make them martyrs in the cause of freedom
The head of the U.N.
Operations against Maoist rebels were to continue Friday during a week in which Maoist rebels killed more than 10 Indian government supporters and took over eastern Indian villages, a government official said. The government of the state of West Bengal on Thursday deployed paramilitary forces and state police to reclaim Maoist-dominated areas, said Ardhendu Sen, West Bengal’s home secretary. The forces have reclaimed an area of about 12 square miles (20 square kilometers), and there is an area of about 9 square miles (15 square kilometers) remaining to reclaim in the West Midnapore district, Sen added
Like thousands of other Iranian women, Parisa took to Tehran’s streets this week, her heart brimming with hope.
A car bomb exploded Friday morning in Spain’s northern Basque region, killing a person in the vehicle, officials said. The steel workers started striking last Thursday after one contractor axed 51 jobs while another employer on the same site was recruiting. The dispute has prompted a number of wildcat strikes at power stations and oil refineries around the United Kingdom.
Around six hundred workers at Total’s Lindsey oil refinery in Northern England have been told they no longer have jobs after staging what the company calls an "unofficial, illegal walk out." The steel workers started striking last Thursday after one contractor axed 51 jobs while another employer on the same site was recruiting. The dispute has prompted a number of wildcat strikes at power stations and oil refineries around the United Kingdom. The workers’ union GMB, which represents around half of the sacked workers, estimates that, as of late yesterday, up to 4,000 other workers at four power stations and three oil refineries had walked off the job in sympathy
Angelina Jolie has been a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees since 2001. The actress-humanitarian paid tribute at a ceremony Thursday to the 10.5 million refugees now recognized by the Commission. The ceremony was part of several events leading up to World Refugee Day on Saturday.