World Briefs

07-06-2009 |

Panama Star CAIRO - An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

PARIS – A submarine scouring the Indian Ocean on Sunday heard the signal beacons of the two black boxes from a Yemenia Airways flight that crashed off the Comoros Islands, the French aviation agency said.

Plans were under way to retrieve the boxes within days, an official from Yemen said.

WASHINGTON – The OAS suspended Honduras participation in the organization because of last week's military coup. Honduras' interim government has already said it's quitting the organization rather than meet demands to reinstate the ousted president.

The decision was made during a special meeting of foreign ministers and supported by 33 out of 34 members of the Organization of American States with one abstention — Honduras.

MOSCOW – Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev end a seven-year hiatus in US-Russian summitry today, with each declaring his determination to further cut nuclear arsenals and repair a badly damaged relationship.

Both sides appear to want to use progress on arms control as a pathway to possible agreement on trickier issues, like Iran and Georgia, the former Soviet republic.

New Delhi – In a historic ruling, an Indian court decriminalized homosexual sex – a move that was hailed by gay rights activists as the first concrete step toward achieving equal rights for homosexuals in this deeply conservative country.

Homosexual sex has been illegal in India since 1861, when a law introduced by Lord Macaulay, a British politician, made it punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

BAGHDAD – Iraqis are skeptical that much will change after last week's pullback of US combat troops from Baghdad and other cities, a sentiment not shared by their government.

The government declared the June 30 pullback National Sovereignty Day and celebrated it with a military parade and noisy street celebrations by Iraqi soldiers and police. But there was no spontaneous outpouring of joy by Iraqis since many of them did not see the move as signi ficant, with some 130,000 US troops remaining in the country.