DAMASCUS, Aug 13, (AFP) - The UN Security Council is to discuss human rights and the humanitarian emergency in Syria after at least 16 people were killed as thousands of protesters rallied after Ramadan weekly prayers.
The Security Council will hold a special meeting next Thursday, diplomats at the United Nations announced.
In a Twitter statement, France's UN mission said UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay and UN under secretary for humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos, will brief the meeting.
As the West grapples with ways to pressure Damascus into ending the bloodshed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged countries to stop trading with Syria.
“We urge those countries still buying Syrian oil and gas, those countries still sending Assad weapons... to get on the right side of history,” Clinton told reporters.
In an interview with CBS News, she suggested that China and India impose energy sanctions on Syria, and urged Russia to stop selling arms to Damascus.
She also urged the Europeans to impose energy sanctions. “President Assad has lost the legitimacy to lead and it is clear that Syria would be better off without him,” Clinton told a news conference with Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
But she stopped short of explicitly urging Assad to step down -- a call which US officials have said President Barack Obama's administration has decided to make, although it has not finalised the timing.
A dual nationality Canadian engineer on Friday accused Ottawa of “indirectly financing” the Damascus regime.
Abdullah Almalki, 40, was arrested in Syria in 2002 on the basis of information provided by Canadian authorities who suspected him of terrorism. He returned to Canada in 2004 and was cleared of all accusations.
“The oil and gas revenues do not go to the benefit of the Syrian people -- it goes to the Assad regime,” he told CBC at a demonstration in Ottawa. “Nowadays they're being used to supply the killing machine, to supply the rounds, the bullets and the salaries of the thugs of the government who are killing day in, day out.”
The Canadian oil firm Suncor has invested some $1.2 billion in a partnership with Syria's state-run General Petroleum Corporation to
exploit oil and gas fields in central Syria.
Celebrations in Cuba as Fidel Castro turns 85
HAVANA, Aug 13 (AFP) - Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro turns 85 today amid celebrations in his honour that he so far failed to attend.
Cuba has been partying since Tuesday, with concerts, ballet performances and art exhibitions organized on behalf of the man who led the island nation for nearly 50 years before ill health led him to cede power to his brother Raul in 2006.
The celebrations culminated late Friday with a “Song of Loyalty” gala at the Karl Marx Theater, Cuba's largest with a capacity of 5,000.
Most of the events have been organized by the Guayasamin Foundation, named for the Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, a close friend of Castro. The organization is often involved in planning Castro's birthday celebrations.
However, the guest of honor did not show up.
Castro's public appearances are increasingly rare. The last came in April, at the ruling Communist Party's annual congress, when Raul officially succeeded his older brother as party leader.
Since that time, Fidel has only been seen in video footage visiting ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez -- who is receiving chemotherapy treatment in Cuba. “Raul is in charge now,” Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, told AFP.
Dogs saved from dinner tables:
Thai authorities
BANGKOK, Aug 13 (AFP) - Thai authorities have rescued more than a thousand dogs, which were found stuffed into tiny cages and being smuggled out of the country to be cooked and eaten in Vietnam, officials said today.
Police intercepted four trucks stacked high with crates packed with the animals in an operation on Thursday evening in Nakhon Phanom province in northeastern Thailand near the border with Laos.
A Nakhon Phanom livestock development official said 1,011 dogs were being held in a government shelter after two separate raids in Nathom and Si Songkhram districts.
She said an additional 119 had died either through suffocation in the cramped cages or when they were thrown from the back of the trucks as the alleged traffickers sped away from arresting officers.
Two Thai men and a Vietnamese man have been charged with trafficking and the illegal transportation of animals, police case officer Captain Prawat Pholsuwan told AFP.
“The maximum punishment is a one year jail term and a fine of up to 20,000 baht ($670),” he said.
The dogs were transported from nearby Sakon Nakhon province and were destined to be taken across the Mekong river in Laos and into Vietnam, Prawat added.
Traffickers, who round up stray dogs and barter for pets in rural Thai villages, can receive up to $33 per dog in Vietnam, police said.
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