Mes: septiembre 2019

(AP) JERUSALEM – Israel’s prime minister on Tuesday moved to contain the first major crisis in his newly expanded coalition government after his most significant partner threatened to quit in a dispute over how to overhaul the country’s military draft. Benjamin Netanyahu is rushing to meet an Aug. 1 court deadline to end a contentious system that has exempted tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews from serving in the army. The explosive issue is threatening to drive Netanyahu’s new coalition partner, Kadima, out of the government. Kadima, led by Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief of staff, joined the coalition just two months ago with the aim of reforming the draft. “If Netanyahu doesn’t keep his promises, then the crisis is going to be severe and there won’t be a partnership. There’s no middle ground here,” Mofaz told the Yediot Ahronot daily. Mitt Romney to visit Israel this summer The issue of the exemptions has become a major point of division in Israeli society. Under a long-standing arrangement, ultra-Orthodox seminary students are permitted to skip mandatory military service in order to pursue religious studies. This system, begun six decades ago by Israel’s founding fathers, was originally meant to allow several hundred gifted scholars to revive institutions of Jewish learning following the killing of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The numbers of exemptions have swelled over the years, and...

(AP) KINSHASA, Congo – Rebels have seized a town on volatile eastern Congo after the army fled their advance, a local official said Sunday. Omar Kavota says the M23 rebels seized the town of Rutshuru Sunday. Kavota says the army looted during their retreat. “We appeal to the international community to do something to protect the civilians who fled the fighting and are living in fear,” he said. Panicked residents were fleeing Rutshuru on Friday night amid reports that the rebels had advanced within shelling distance, according to a statement from the North Kivu Civil Society. Fears were heightened by the evacuation of U.N. and independent aid agencies, followed in the late afternoon by the retreat of Congolese army soldiers, it said. An Indian peacekeeper was killed overnight on Thursday as M23 fighters attempted to take the town of Bunagana, said Madnodje Mounoubai, the United Nations spokesman in Congo. Congo’s two-year-long peace was shattered in April when an army unit led by Gen. Bosco Ntaganda defected. They fled into the bush, where they regrouped as the M23 rebels, named for the date in March 2009 when the former rebels signed a deal with the Congolese government, a deal brokered as the army was in full retreat and the dissidents threatened to take the eastern provincial capital of Goma. Under the accord, the rebels were integrated into the very army...

(AP) RAMALLAH, West Bank – Yasser Arafat’s body may be exhumed to allow for more testing of the causes of his death, the Palestinian president said Wednesday, after a Swiss lab said it found elevated levels of a radioactive isotope in belongings the Palestinian leader is said to have used in his final days. Arafat’s widow, Suha, called for an autopsy in the wake of the lab’s findings, first reported by the Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera. In an interview with the station, she did not explain why she waited nearly eight years to have the belongings, including a toothbrush and a fur hat, tested. At the time of his death, she refused to agree to an autopsy. The Palestinian leader died at a military hospital outside Paris in November 2004 of what French doctors called a massive brain hemorrhage — weeks after he fell violently ill at his West Bank compound. Doctors, including independent experts who reviewed his medical records on behalf of The Associated Press, have been unable to pinpoint the underlying cause of the hemorrhage. Speculation has lingered in the Arab world that he was killed by Israel, which viewed him as an obstacle to a peace treaty. Israeli officials have vociferously denied any foul play. Francois Bochud, who heads the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his...

(AP) TRIPOLI, Libya – Libya’s first nationwide elections in nearly five decades brought hints Sunday of an Arab Spring precedent: Western-leaning parties making strides over Islamist rivals hoping to follow the same paths to power as in neighbors Egypt and Tunisia. While final results from Saturday’s parliamentary election could still be days away under a two-tier selection system, unofficial and partial counts from Libya’s biggest cities suggested liberal factions were leading the Muslim Brotherhood and allies in a possible first major setback to their political surge following last year’s uprisings. If the Libyan trend holds — which is still far from certain — it would challenge the narrative of rising Islamist power since the fall of Western-allied regimes from Tunis to Cairo. It also could display the different political dynamics in Libya, where tribal loyalties run deep and groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood at times cooperated with the rule of Muammar Qaddafi. “Anyone with past ties with old regime is hated, even despised,” said Fathi al-Fadhali, a pro-Islamist Libyan political analyst who lived in exile for 30 years. “Any political names associated with the regime are immediately politically burnt by that association.” Ultimately, the 200-seat parliament will face the task of forming a government — which could become tests of strength for Islamists and secular forces over questions such as women’s rights, the extent of traditional Islamic law...