In the World
Honduras holds off on president
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Honduran lawmakers will not decide whether to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya until after the presidential elections, the congressional leader said yesterday, a decision that could undermine international support for the vote.Congress will meet Dec. 2 - three days after the Nov. 29 election - to decide whether Zelaya should be returned the presidency to finish his constitutional term, which ends in January, congressional president Jose Alfredo Saavedra told local HRN radio station.
Several Latin American countries have warned they will not recognize the election unless Zelaya is restored beforehand. But the United States has not ruled out restoring diplomatic ties with a newly elected Honduran government even if Zelaya remains out of power through the vote.
Zelaya warned over the weekend that he would not return to the presidency if Congress votes to restore him after the elections, saying doing so would legitimize the June 28 coup.
- AP
Antarctic sea ice hangs up voyage
MOSCOW - A Russian icebreaker carrying more than 100 tourists, scientists, and journalists on a cruise around Antarctica was struggling to free itself from sea ice yesterday about five miles from clear water, a shipping company said.But the company said that no one was in danger, that some of the tourists were using the unplanned stop to take helicopter tours of the area, and that the biggest problem passengers faced was sunburn.
The Captain Khlebnikov icebreaker was near Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea, German Kuzin of the Fareastern Shipping Co. told Russia's Vesti 24 television. The ship was trying to move slowly through the ice, but the winds were too light to break up the ice pack, he said. An Argentine official said the ice would delay the ship's return by three to six days.
- AP
U.N. acquits Rwandan priest
ARUSHA, Tanzania - A U.N. court yesterday acquitted a Catholic priest charged with genocide, murder, and extermination in Rwanda's 1994 genocide after the judge said the prosecution had failed to prove its case.Father Hormisdas Nsengimana, 55, had been imprisoned for seven years since his 2002 arrest in Cameroon. Judge Erik Mose ordered his immediate release from the U.N. detention facility in Arusha. "I wish for peace and reconciliation in Rwanda. . . . I thank God for this," Nsengimana said after his acquittal.
At least 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Nsengimana was alleged to have been at the center of a group of Hutu extremists that planned and carried out targeted attacks in the southern Rwandan town of Nyanza, where he was head of a Catholic school.
- AP
