Month: June 2013

Welcoming the formation of the new civilian government in Pakistan led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the US on Wednesday said it was important to continue working with Islamabad on the key issue of counter-terrorism.

In a snub to the Republicans, President Barack Obama named long time confidante Susan Rice, who had courted political controversy with her remarks on the Benghazi terrorist attack, as his national security adviser.

Currently US ambassador to UN, Rice, who would replace the retiring Tom Donilon in the influential foreign policy post, had courted controversy with her comments and lost out to John Kerry for the job of secretary of state.

Ten months after six worshippers died in the gurdwara shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will begin formally tracking hate crimes against Sikhs, Hindus and Arabs.

An FBI advisory board meeting in Portsmouth, Virginia, voted Wednesday to expand standard hate-crime incident reports used by police departments across the US to include crimes motivated by bias against the two religious groups as well as Arabs.

The changes, which go into effect by 2015, follow years of pressure from civil rights groups and lawmakers.

India, China and seven other countries have received fresh six-month waivers from the US State Department on Iran sanctions for agreeing to reduce purchases of oil from Tehran.

“The United States and the international community stand shoulder-to-shoulder in maintaining pressure on the Iranian regime until it fully addresses concerns about its nuclear programme,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement Wednesday.

A baby boy born in Italy with just one limb is being put up for adoption after his migrant parents rejected him. Hospital staff have named the baby Francis, after the pontiff.

Two days after the baby was born, without both his legs and one arm, his parents refused to register him as their son.

Hospital doctors and nurses in the town of San Donato di Arezzo decided to name the boy after the pope.

Reports did not state the nationality of Francis’ birth parents, but he is said to be “beautiful” and in excellent health.

A 24-year-old man in Italy has confessed to killing his father with a crossbow after he refused to give him money.

Labourer Nicola d’Auria turned himself to police in the coastal town of Castellammare di Stabia near Naples.

He said he fired two crossbow bolts at his father following a row at the family’s apartment.

Forty-eight-year-old Pasquale D’Auria, a bricklayer, was hit twice in the left thigh and died of a haemorrage and punctured spleen soon after he was admitted to hospital.

Labour ministers from Italy, France, Germany and Spain will meet in the Italian capital for talks on jobs, ahead of a European Union summit later this month, the Italian government said.

The meeting – scheduled for June 14 – is being held “in the context of the prime minister and the government’s commitment to forging European policies to boost employment, especially among young people,” said a statement from Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s office.

Recession-mired Italy saw a 40-percent surge in the number of suicides over a 15-month period between 2012 and the first three months of this year, according to a new human rights report.

Almost half of the 121 people who killed themselves over the period were facing financial insecurity, and in over one quarter (28.1 percent) of cases, they had lost their jobs, said the Report on Global Rights 2013.

The biggest share of suicides – nearly one-third – occurred in the industrial northeast, just over a quarter in central Italy and 14.6 percent in the south, the report said.