Strike warning
1 Spain: A strike by airport workers has been scheduled to coincide with the Easter holidays. Nineteen days of strikes are planned, starting on April 20 and continuing until the end of July. The action is a response to the planned privatisation of Aena, the state-controlled airports authority. Up to 12,000 workers could join the walkout and bring airports to a standstill.
Spain was the most popular holiday destination for British tourists last year, and Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, called the proposed stoppage “selfish”.
Journalists beaten
2 Libya: Three members of a BBC television crew were detained and tortured by Muammar Gadaffi’s forces while trying to enter the city of Zawiyah on Monday. Feras Killani, Chris Cobb-Smith and Goktay Koraltan were seized at a checkpoint. The three men were then held, beaten and subjected to mock executions in the most extreme case of Gadaffi’s harassment of international journalists. After 21 hours they were released and have now been flown out of the country.
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The trio say they witnessed many other detainees who had been tortured and were “in agony”. Killani said of those being held: “Four of them were in a very bad situation. There was evidence of torture on their faces and bodies. One of them said he had two broken ribs. I spent six hours helping them drink, sleep, urinate and move from one side to another.”
Protesters shot
3 Ivory Coast: At least four demonstrators were shot dead by riot police officers on Tuesday in Abidjan. The west African country stands on the brink of civil war with Laurent Gbagbo refusing to give up power after losing a presidential election last November. Nearly 400 people have since died as protests escalate, according to the United Nations, including seven women who were cut down by machine-gun fire last week by troops loyal to Gbagbo.
It was to protest against these earlier deaths that the demonstrators went out to march last week. “We came out to cry for our dead. They didn’t want to let us finish. It’s then they started firing,” said one of the protesters, Marie-Louise Diby.
Go on, I dare you
4 America: A California high-school student on a school trip made the terrifying leap from the Golden Gate Bridge and somehow survived the 220ft plunge into San Francisco Bay that kills dozens of people each year. Up to 1,500 jumpers have died a grisly death with massive internal injuries, broken bones and skull fractures since the bridge opened in 1937, but the 17-year-old suffered no severe injuries beyond bruising and a broken coccyx. It is thought that he was dared by classmates to make the jump.
“It’s a miracle,” said a highway patrol officer, Chris Rardin. “The majority of folks do not survive this type of fall.”
Police chief flees
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5 Mexico: Marisol Valles Garcia, a 20-year-old police chief hailed as the country’s bravest woman, has been sacked for abandoning her post after receiving death threats. She took over as head of public security in the border town of Praxedis Guerrero, a battleground for Mexico’s drug cartels, in October after her predecessor was kidnapped and beheaded in 2009.
Last week she travelled to America on a personal matter but did not return. She has applied for asylum. The mayor of Praxedis said he would take over direct control of the police force.
Cash in the sewer
6 France: Police revealed on Thursday that they had found stolen jewellery valued at €18m (£15m) hidden in a drain in a Paris suburb. The 19 rings and three sets of earrings were taken in a spectacular heist at Paris’s Harry Winston boutique in 2008 where four armed robbers — two disguised as women — stole €85m of jewels. The stash was dug up from a drain at a house in Seine-Saint-Denis belonging to one of the nine people charged over the robbery.
The police say no further arrests have been made although those already in jail have been questioned again.
U-turn over trials
7 Guantanamo Bay: Barack Obama, the American president, reversed his two-year-old order halting new military charges against Guantanamo Bay detainees on Monday, as he gave the green light for military trials of terror suspects to resume. The announcement implicitly confirmed the failure of his election pledge to close the controversial prison camp. The detention facility will stay open after moves to try high-profile inmates and house detainees on the American mainland were blocked by Congress.
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“We remain fully committed to bringing the alleged 9/11 conspirators to justice, drawing on the options we have,” said an administration official.
Lama steps back
8 Tibet: The Dalai Lama is retiring from politics after more than six decades at the helm of Tibet’s fight for freedom from Chinese rule. Tenzin Gyatso, 75, the Buddhist spiritual leader, announced on Thursday that the time had come “to devolve my formal authority to the elected leader”. He added: “As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power. Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect.”
Priest scandal
9 America: Twenty-one priests in Philadelphia have been suspended weeks after a grand jury report found “substantial evidence” of sexual abuse of children. The mass suspension was the most sweeping act in the history of the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in America. It follows a damning grand jury report that said as many as 37 priests remained active in the Philadelphia archdiocese despite credible accusations against them.
Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, said: “I am truly sorry for the harm done to the victims of sexual abuse.”
Enda’s new era
10 Ireland: Enda Kenny was voted in as prime minister on Wednesday, as the country faces the worst economic crisis in its 90-year history. The 59-year-old leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party will lead a coalition administration with the centre-left Labour party. He faces immediate pressure to revive the nation’s debt-crippled economy.
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Promising a better future, he told the Dail [parliament] he was entering into a “covenant with the Irish people”. “Honesty is not just the best policy, it is our only policy,” he said.
He has pledged to gain easier terms on the €85 billion bailout package from Europe and the IMF. The coalition is also committed to reducing the budget deficit from 12% of GDP to 3% by the end of 2015.