YEMEN: President plans to sign pact to step down, spokesman says. A spokesman for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh says the embattled ruler plans to sign an agreement to leave power, even though he rejected it 24 hours earlier.
Yemen’s opposition met the promise with deep skepticism, accusing Saleh of stalling.
The impoverished gulf nation is reeling from three months of street protests demanding Saleh’s ouster.
SYRIA: Nation condemns U.S. sanctions over protest crackdown.
The Syrian government Thursday condemned U.S. sanctions against President Bashar Assad and six of his top officials over the ferocious crackdown on anti-government demonstrators that human-rights activists say has killed at least 850 people.
The Syrian state news agency said the sanctions were “one in a series of sanctions imposed by the U.S. administration against the Syrian people as part of the U.S. regional policies serving Israel.”
The condemnation came as Syrian army troops shelled Tall Kalakh, a town adjacent to the Lebanese border, killing at least eight people.
LIBYA: Family of missing photographer believes he was killed.
The family of missing South African photographer Anton Hammerl said today they now believe he was killed in the Libyan desert by Moammar Gadhafi’s forces.
Family spokeswoman Bronwyn Friedlander said journalists recently freed by the Libyan regime reported they were with Hammerl when he was shot in a remote location April 5.
“We believe that his injuries are such that he would not have survived without immediate medical attention,” Friedlander said.
Hammerl’s colleagues had been pressing government officials in South Africa to pursue information about him from the Libyans.
The 41-year-old journalist and his wife, Penny Sukhraj, have two boys, a 14-week- old and a 7-year-old.
CANADA: Al-Jazeera journalist back with family.
An al-Jazeera journalist held in Syria and later Iran is back with her family in Canada, after being released from custody.
Dorothy Parvaz landed Thursday at Vancouver International Airport. She had disappeared nearly three weeks ago after arriving in Syria from Qatar on April 29 to cover anti-government demonstrations. Syria said she was deported to Iran, where she holds citizenship, shortly after her arrival. Parvaz was freed from Iran on Tuesday.
Denver Post wire services
