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| Anglican leader says minorities in Pakistan "under siege" | |  By Katharine Houreld LAHORE Pakistan (Reuters) - The spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans urged Pakistan to treat all people equally on Wednesday during a trip designed to show his support for the embattled Christian community, saying many felt "under siege". The Archbishop of Canterbury arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday to meet Muslim and Anglican leaders at a time when Christians feel under attack from both authorities and their Muslim neighbours due to Pakistan's oppressive blasphemy laws. "There is a considerable sense of anxiety, of being under siege," Justin Welby, a former oil executive, told Reuters outside a church in the eastern city of Lahore. He earlier told reporters: "Equality under the law is very important." Rights activists say a spike in the number of blasphemy cases in Pakistan is evidence of rising intolerance in the mainly Sunni Muslim South Asian state of 180 million people.
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| Corrected - U.S. cannot confirm Nigerian claim to have located kidnapped girls | |  (Corrects to say Nigerian government in fourth paragraph) The United States said on Tuesday it does not have information that would support Nigeria's claim that it knows the whereabouts of more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls, and U.S. and European officials voiced skepticism about the statement. "We don't have independent information from the United States to support" that statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. "We, as a matter of policy and for the girls' safety and wellbeing, would not discuss publicly this sort of information regardless." Nigerian Chief of Defence Staff Air Marshal Alex Badeh said on Monday that the country's military knew the location of the schoolgirls, abducted by the Boko Haram Islamic militant group on April 14. Five U.S. and European security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they had no credible information on the location of the girls and were skeptical that the Nigerian government knew where they were.
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| Egyptians slow to vote despite efforts to boost turnout | |  By Asma Alsharif and Maggie Fick CAIRO (Reuters) - Many Egyptians failed to vote in a presidential election on Wednesday despite official efforts to boost turnout with an extra day of polling, raising doubts about the level of support for the man still forecast to win, former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. A low turnout would sound a warning to Sisi that he had failed to achieve the resounding mandate he sought after toppling Egypt's first freely elected president, Islamist Mohamed Mursi, following street protests last year. A tour of Cairo polling stations on Wednesday suggested authorities would again struggle to get more people to cast their ballots. The same pattern emerged in Egypt's second city, Alexandria, Reuters reporters said.
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| Myanmar lawmakers to debate law curbing religious conversions | | | By Jared Ferrie YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar began a parliamentary session on Wednesday that will see lawmakers debate the first of four proposed laws that aim to protect the country's majority Buddhist identity by regulating religious conversions and interfaith marriages. The proposals come amidst rising sectarian tension in Myanmar, which has exploded in violent clashes between Buddhists and Muslims, killing at least 237 people and displacing more than 140,000 since June 2012. The vast majority of victims were Muslims who make up only about 5 percent of Myanmar's population of 60 million. It has yet to publish drafts of the other three bills, dealing with population control measures, a ban on polygamy and curbs on interfaith marriage. |
| Entertainer Rolf Harris groomed 13-year-old girl for sex, court told | |  By Jack Stubbs LONDON (Reuters) - Veteran Australian entertainer Rolf Harris groomed and psychologically dominated a 13-year-old girl before repeatedly sexually abusing her, a British court was told on Wednesday. A mainstay of family entertainment for more than 50 years, Harris is charged with 12 counts of indecent assault against four girls, some as young as seven or eight, between 1968 and 1986. You effectively psychologically dominated that girl," Prosecutor Sasha Wass said, addressing the 84-year-old musician and TV-presenter, on the witness stand at London's Southwark Crown Court. Harris, who denies all the charges, told the jury on Tuesday that he had been in a relationship with the woman, but that this had not started until she was 18, and that it had been an adult and consensual affair.
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| Saudi court sentences Shi'ite to death for sedition | | | By Angus McDowall RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced to death a Shi'ite Muslim convicted of sedition, rioting, protesting and robbery in the district of Qatif, home to many of the Sunni kingdom's minority sect who say they face entrenched discrimination. The sentence, issued on Tuesday and reported by state media early on Wednesday, is the second time in a week the death penalty has been imposed on a Shi'ite involved in unrest in Qatif, located in the oil-producing Eastern Province. The judge's decision to apply the penalty can still be challenged in an appeal court, the supreme court and then by petitioning the king. More than 20 people have been killed in Qatif since February 2011 when large protests erupted calling for democracy and equal rights between Sunnis and Shi'ites. |
| South Korean nominee for PM withdraws in latest blow to Park | | | By Jack Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Park Geun-hye suffered another political setback on Wednesday when her choice for prime minister withdrew his name amid questions about the ethics of earning a large income after leaving public service. Park had nominated Ahn Dai-hee to replace the incumbent who resigned over the government's slow and ineffective response to last month's ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people. Ahn was expected to enforce bureaucratic ethics including ending a culture of officials leaving senior government jobs to go into the private sector which can blur the lines between businesses and those regulating them. |
| Iranian judge summons Facebook CEO for breach of privacy | |  A conservative Iranian court opened a case against instant messaging services WhatsApp and Instagram while also summoning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over complaints of privacy violation, state news agency ISNA reported on Tuesday. The case underscores the growing struggle between moderate Iranian president Hassan Rouhani's drive to increase Internet freedoms and demands by the conservative judiciary for tighter controls. "According to the court's ruling, the Zionist director of the company of Facebook, or his official attorney must appear in court to defend himself and pay for possible losses," said Ruhollah Momen-Nasab, an Iranian internet official, according to state news agency ISNA, referring to Zuckerberg's Jewish background.
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| Pakistani Taliban splits as divisions grow within insurgency | |  By Javed Hussain and Saud Mehsud PARACHINAR/DERA ISMAIL KHAN Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistan Taliban split into two groups on Wednesday, highlighting growing divisions within the movement and diminishing the government's chances of finding a negotiated settlement with the insurgency. The split is between two rival groups from the powerful Mehsud tribe which provides the Taliban the bulk of their money and fighters from its base in the South Waziristan region. The breakaway group is in favour of peace talks with the government while the main insurgency has announced that it will continue attacks against government and security targets. "The (Taliban's) present leadership and fighters have become a band of paid killers involved in un-Islamic activities like killings, robberies, extortion and kidnappings for ransom," Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the breakaway faction, told Reuters.
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