News reports identified the women as Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the initials P.K.K.; Fidan Dogan, the head of the institute and a representative of the Kurdistan National Congress, an umbrella group of Kurdish organizations in Europe; and Leyla Soylemez, a young Kurdish activist. 
Berlusconi's last government ended in November 2011 under pressure from financial markets [Reuters]
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| Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has formed an alliance with the Northern League ahead of next month's elections, a move that puts an end to his previously stated plan to run for the premiership. League leader Roberto Maroni confirmed the coalition pact on Monday, telling a news conference it "says explicitly that the candidate for prime minister will not be Silvio Berlusconi". "Silvio Berlusconi accepted the request not to stand as prime minister," he said. Earlier, in an interview on the Italian radio station RTL, scandal-plagued Berlusconi said he would prefer to be the economy minister The 76-year-old was convicted just months ago of tax fraud and likely facing two criminal verdicts in the coming weeks. Still, opinion polls have seen his conservative party gaining since he pulled its support for Prime Minister Mario Monti's technical government last month. The February 24-25 national election is shaping up into a race with Monti in the centre, Berlusconi to the right and Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani on the left, along with a movement founded by political agitator Beppe Grillo. The conservative coalition has been polling second to Bersani's centre-left forces. 'I am the leader' While the Northern League has ruled in coalition with Berlusconi three times, the relationship has been rocky at best - with the League being behind the downfall of previous Berlusconi governments. The markets have expressed a lack of confidence in his ability to reform Italy's economy. Italy's extraordinary high public debt is the second highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the 17-nation eurozone after Greece. Monti, an economist, came in to shore up Italy's finances and launch economic reforms. His spending cuts and tax increases have brought down borrowing costs but they have also pushed Italy into recession. Monti resigned last month after Berlusconi withdrew his support and is running a caretaker government until the national vote. Berlusconi said it was still not clear whom the centre-right coalition would back to run as premier, saying one possible candidate was Angelino Alfano, the leader of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party. The Northern League, however, was pushing for former Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti. Berlusconi did not acknowledge that some Northern League members were reluctant to back him for the post. "I am the leader of the coalition and I will decide with the other parties involved, in the case of victory, who to propose ... for premier,'' the billionaire media mogul said. Berlusconi has for weeks been toying with a run for a fourth term. He has come out strongly against Monti's unpopular decision to impose a property tax on first homes and has been voicing opposition to any moves by Air France to increase its stake in Alitalia. Berlusconi could see verdicts in two criminal cases before the election, including the sensational sex scandal in which he is accused of paying an underage Moroccan teen for sex and then trying to cover it up. That trial has been slowed by the failure of the Moroccan teen, Karima el-Mahroug, to show to testify. She has been vacationing in Mexico instead. The court has fined her and ordered her to appear on January 14. |
Protests in Northern Ireland has entered its fifth consecutive night [Reuters]
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| Police officers in Northern Ireland have fired plastic bullets and used water cannon after coming under attack from rioters, as protests continued for the fifth consecutive night in the capital Belfast. About 1,000 pro-British loyalists held a peaceful demonstration outside the City Hall on Monday as councillors held their first meeting since last month's decision to limit the number of days it flies the British flag, or Union flag, above the City Hall. But trouble erupted as a group of around 250 arrived at a known boundary between loyalist and republican neighbourhoods after leaving the City Hall protest. Police battled to keep the two groups apart, firing plastic bullets and using water cannon after coming under fire from a hail of masonry and petrol bombs on the city's Newtownards Road. Northern Ireland's chief police officer Matt Baggott earlier accused the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) of orchestrating the violence.
The first of these days will be on Wednesday to mark the birthday of the Duchess of Cambridge. Elected representatives from political parties on both sides have received death threats, the latest being SDLP Assembly member Patsy McGlone. Nationalist party Sinn Fein's Jim McVeigh said politicians "won't be intimidated by those threats". "Their protests are pointless and they will have absolutely no impact on decisions that we take," he added. The flag vote has raised tensions in the province, which was torn apart by three decades of sectarian violence until peace accords in 1998 led to the creation of a power-sharing government between Protestants and Catholics. More than 60 police officers have been injured and around 100 people arrested since the row began. |
| "What it quite clearly demonstrates is the fact that paramilitaries have hijacked this flags protest issue and they have now turned their guns on the police " - Terry Spence, chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland |
| Three Kurdish women activists have been killed overnight inside the Kurdish Information Centre in Paris, including a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Their bodies were found at around 2am on Thursday morning [0100GMT]. All three were shot in the head. "The scene leads one to think of an execution, but the investigation will determine the exact circumstances," a police source told the AFP news agency. Manuel Valls, French interior minister, who visited the centre, also described the killings as an execution. "This is a very grave matter and this explains my presence," he said at the scene. "This is unacceptable." Ak Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Paris, said that Valls described the killings as "precise, assassination-style executions. "Three bullet casings were found near the bodies, all of them with headshot wounds". Sources in Diyarbakir, in eastern Turkey, told Al Jazeera that one of the women, Sakine Cansiz, was a co-founder of the PKK, the group involved in a decades-long armed campaign against the Turkish government. Cansiz was one of the PKK's European representatives. Al Jazeera's Goncha Chennai, reporting from Ankara, said that Cansiz was an "important figure" in the PKK, especially in Europe. Another victim was 32-year-old Fidan Dogan, who worked in the information centre, according to its director, Leon Edart. The third was Leyla Soylemez, described as a "young activist". "Soylemez was an activist from the National Congress of Kurdistan, the Brussels-based organisation," our correspondent said. Political significance The three were last seen on Wednesday at the information centre, which was locked by late afternoon. Andrew Finkel, a journalist and expert on Turkish politics, says the timing of the crimes is very significant. It occurred shortly after the Turkish government resumed negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader, about disarming his group in exchange for greater rights for the country's Kurdish minority, is very significant. "There appears to be serious negotiations going on between Turkish government and the imprisoned leader or former leader of PKK," Finkel told Al Jazeera from Istanbul. "Now these talks appear to be going somehwere. I think if we needed confirmation that they are going somewhere is the fact that someone is trying to disrupt those talks. "Many Kurds in the Paris are blaming the [Turkish] government, but they do not really have a history of these rogue assassinations. "It could be that there is an element within the Turkish state that is unhappy with the talks, but there is an equally probably explanation that its a faction within the PKK itself. "Not everyone in the PKK is happy to see disarmament talks going ahead." Zubeyir Aydar, a European representative for the PKK, blamed the attack on "dark forces" trying to interrupt the talks. On the other hand, Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the Turkey's ruling AK Party, said the attack appeared to be the result of "an internal feud" within the PKK, and suggested they were an attempt to derail talks with the group. Hundreds of Kurds gathered outside the information centre in Paris on Thursday to protest, with some chanting "We are all PKK!" and blaming Turkey for the killings. "There was a demonstration of about 300-400 Kurds who came down to protest against the killings," Al Jazeera's Challands said. |
| Source: AlJazeera |
