Blast damages Libyan foreign ministry building in Benghazi

1 of 3. People look at the site of an explosion at a Libyan Foreign Ministry building in Benghazi September 11, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Esam Omran Al-Fetori

BENGHAZI, Libya | Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:14am EDT

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A car bomb damaged a Libyan foreign ministry building in Benghazi on Wednesday, causing no known casualties on the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. consulate in the country's second largest city.

Two years after the revolt that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is riven along regional and tribal lines and dogged by armed violence, leaving the central government struggling to curb the clout of rival militias and radical Islamists.

Local security officials said a car packed with explosives was left beside the ministry building where it detonated at dawn, badly damaging it and several other buildings in the center of Benghazi. There were no reports of casualties.

A few hours before the Benghazi explosion, security forces defused a large bomb placed near the foreign ministry headquarters in the eastern Zawyat al Dahmani district of the capital Tripoli, the government said.

"Libyans cannot ignore the timing of this explosion. It's a clear message by the forces of terror that they do not want the state or the army to stand on its feet," Prime Minister Ali Zeidan told reporters.

Zeidan did not directly blame any group for the attack, but alluded to Islamist militants blamed for a spate of recent car bombs targeting security and army officers.

As well as militia violence, Zeidan's central government has also struggled to end strikes by oil workers and armed guards at oil installations that have paralyzed the North African state's crude production.

A year ago, four Americans including the U.S. ambassador to Libya were killed in an attack on the Benghazi consulate.

Washington initially said the assault had grown out of anti-Western protests. But it later turned out Islamist militants were the perpetrators, marking the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States.

Acting Interior Minister Al-Sadeeq Abdul Karim said the army and police were stepping up measures to stem the deterioration of security in Benghazi and other parts of the vast country.

Benghazi has seen a spike in car bombings and assassinations of army and security officers, many of whom served in Gaddafi's security contingents and then joined successor formations after the 2011 civil war.

Analysts say rebels and militants seeking revenge against former security officers who served under Gaddafi, and frustrated with the limited progress in bringing his ex-henchmen to justice, have sought to take the law into their hands.

(Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli in Benghazi and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Tripoli; editing by Patrick Markey and Mark Heinrich)

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German court rules Muslim girls must join swimming classes

By Madeline Chambers

BERLIN | Wed Sep 11, 2013 2:08pm EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court ruled on Wednesday that Muslim girls must take part in school swimming lessons with boys, in a landmark decision that touches on the sensitive relationship between religion and the state.

The decision by Germany's top court for public and administrative disputes signals that the state's constitutional obligation to educate children can take precedence over customs and practices linked to an individual's religious beliefs.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her center-right government have sought dialogue with the country's roughly four-millions Muslims, but have also said they must make an effort to integrate and learn German.

The court said Muslim schoolgirls could not be exempted from swimming lessons, provided they were allowed to wear so-called 'burkinis', full-body swimsuits worn by many Muslim women which leave only the face, hands and feet exposed.

The plaintiff was a Muslim girl, originally from Morocco, who goes to school in the western state of Hesse. Her parents have tried for several years to stop her from joining swimming lessons with boys. She was 11 years old when the case started.

"The plaintiff has not made sufficiently clear that ... taking part in co-educational swimming lessons with a burkini breaches Muslim rules on clothing," said the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, rejecting her appeal.

Two courts in Hesse had already rejected her bid to be exempted from swimming lessons.

However, the girl's lawyer argued that she was embarrassed to see boys wearing nothing but swimming trunks.

"The Koran not only forbids being seen by others in light clothing but she herself should not see boys and girls with (swimsuits) on," Klaus Meissner, her lawyer, was quoted in German media as saying before the hearing.

The question of Muslim girls taking part in physical education and swimming lessons has prompted legal disputes in several European countries in recent years, highlighting the challenge of accommodating different religious beliefs.

German Islamic groups say they are not against burkinis.

"From our point of view, a full body swimsuit is appropriate and acceptable in Islam. However, freedom of belief and conscience should be respected," Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany's Central Council of Muslims, told German radio.

In May, the Swiss Supreme Court rejected a Muslim family's case against a school rule that their daughter had to take part in swimming classes and could not wear a burkini.

In staunchly secular France, which has banned religious dress such as Muslim headscarves and Jewish skullcaps as well as large Christian crosses in state schools, some public swimming pools have banned burkinis.

(Additional reporting by Tom Heneghan, editing by Noah Barkin)

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Red Cross urges U.S. and Russia to help unblock aid delivery in Syria

GENEVA | Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:43am EDT

GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on the United States and Russia to also address the obstacles to delivering aid in Syria at talks on Thursday focusing on the use of chemical weapons.

Syrian government forces and opposition rebels are both preventing medical assistance in particular from reaching the sick and wounded, ICRC President Peter Maurer said on Wednesday.

"We need political and diplomatic support for independent humanitarian action," Maurer told reporters in Geneva a day before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov meet in the Swiss city.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Netanyahu says Syria must be stripped of its chemical weapons

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem September 8, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Uriel Sinai/Pool

JERUSALEM | Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:32am EDT

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday Syria must be stripped of its chemical weapons and that the international community must make sure those who used weapons of mass destruction pay a price.

Netanyahu said Syria had carried out a "crime against humanity" by killing innocent civilians with chemical weapons and that Syria's ally Iran, who is at odds with the West over its nuclear program, was watching to see how the world acted.

"It must be ensured that the Syrian regime is stripped of its chemical weapons, and the world must make sure that whoever uses weapons of mass destruction pays a price for it," Netanyahu said. "The message that is received in Syria will be received loudly in Iran."

(This story was refiled to fix translation in quote in third paragraph to read "It must be ensured ... " instead of "We must make sure ... ")

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Russian Duma warns U.S. against Syria strike

By Steve Gutterman

MOSCOW | Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:55am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian parliament on Wednesday urged the United States not to strike Syria, warning that military action could be a "crime against the Syrian people" but stopping short of threatening countermeasures.

Air strikes would "lead to new civilian deaths, further destruction of vital infrastructure and, in the end, an irreversible humanitarian catastrophe," the State Duma, the lower chamber, said in a declaration adopted by unanimous vote.

The non-binding declaration by the Duma, dominated by the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party, echoed the vociferous opposition to U.S. military action of President Vladimir Putin and his government.

"Those who are prepared to give an order for such an attack should understand that such actions could be qualified as a very crude violation of international law and as a crime against the Syrian people," it said.

It warned that a strike could "place nuclear and chemical security in the region under threat", a reference to Syria's chemical weapons stocks and a small reactor that contains radioactive uranium.

Russia has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most powerful backer during the civil conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people since 2011, delivering arms and - with China - blocking three U.N. resolutions meant to pressure Assad.

The Duma expressed support for Russia's proposal to place Syria's chemical arsenal under international control, which Putin said on Tuesday would only succeed if the United States and its allies abandoned plans for possible military action.

The vote followed debate in which lawmakers proposed Russia consider taking action to punish the United States if it does strike - such as withdrawing from the New START nuclear arms control pact, increasing weapons sales to Syrian ally Iran or curtailing cooperation with the United States on Afghanistan.

No such measures ended up in the declaration, but lawmakers said they could be included in a second statement that could be put to a vote if the United States strikes Syria.

The Duma criticized the U.S. Congress for allegedly refusing to see Russian lawmakers who offered to travel to Washington for talks on Syria, saying it "could place interaction on key issues on the Russian-American agenda in question".

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

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British minister calls for greater BBC scrutiny after funding row

1 of 4. A man talks on a mobile phone inside the BBC headquarters in London November 21, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Andrew Winning

By Paul Sandle

CAMBRIDGE, England | Wed Sep 11, 2013 2:13pm EDT

CAMBRIDGE, England (Reuters) - The British government believes the BBC needs to come under greater scrutiny after generous severance payments made to departing executives raised "serious questions" about the management of the publicly funded broadcaster.

Former BBC Director General Mark Thompson, who quit the BBC last year to become chief executive of the New York Times Company, and six other senior executives were grilled by British lawmakers on Monday over payments made beyond contractual obligations during the last three years of Thompson's 2004-2012 watch.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller was due to tell television executives attending the Royal Television Society Conference on Wednesday that the questioning, which saw BBC executives past and present arguing over who sanctioned the payments, was a "grim day" for the BBC's senior management and for British households who fund the broadcaster through license fees.

The BBC said it would launch a review of its internal governance systems, structures and cultures and examine the relationship between the executive management of the corporation and the BBC Trust, which regulates the broadcaster.

"The corporate dramas of the BBC should never eclipse its actual drama," Miller would tell the conference in Cambridge, according to an advance copy of her speech.

"Ultimately, license fee payers rely not only upon the right structures and governance being in place but also upon the BBC's executive management using their good judgment. And I think serious questions were raised about that judgment by the scale of the severance payments made."

She said under the leadership of Tony Hall, who assumed the role of director general in April this year, significant changes were being made at the broadcaster.

The government had already opened the BBC's accounts to scrutiny by the National Audit Office (NAO) to ensure license fee payers could see where their money was spent.

But she said she wanted the auditors to get quicker access to BBC accounts.

"The NAO's work has been pivotal in bringing issues to light so I want us to strengthen its role further," she said. "I want a system where the NAO can look at any area of concern without hindrance or delay."

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