Algerians overwhelmingly approved a peace plan that provides a broad amnesty for Islamic extremists, despite critics' charges it whitewashes past crimes, official referendum results showed yesterday.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation got more than 97 percent of Thursday's vote, a giant win that could further strengthen President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The "no" polled less than 3 percent.
Nearly 80 percent of the more than 18 million eligible voters cast ballots, the minister said. In Khenchla, an eastern town 100km from Algeria's border with Tunisia, 99.95 percent voted.
But the turnout rate was far lower -- just over 11 percent -- in the main towns of Tizi-Ouzou and Bejaia in Kabylie, a restive Berber region east of the capital Algiers where there had been calls to boycott the vote.
The interior minister said the results "reflect Algerians' desire to live in peace and to turn the page of the tragedy that our country has lived through for 15 years."
Critics of Bouteflika's charter, from opposition politicians to human rights groups and families of people who disappeared in Algeria's bloody Islamic insurgency, had predicted it would easily pass, especially given the lack of real debate.
The popular Bouteflika also won a landslide re-election victory last year, five years after taking office following an election tarnished by allegations of fraud.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS