Pope leads Holy Week Mass on Palm Sunday
Vatican City: Pope Francis celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter’s Square, encouraging people to be humble and young at heart, as tens of thousands joyfully waved olive branches and palm fronds. The square overflowed with some 250,000 pilgrims, tourists and Romans eager to join the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter, Christianity’s most important day.
‘Israel will silence source of fire from Syria’
Jerusalem: Hours after Israeli Defence Minister vowed to “immediately silence” any fire from Syria, the country on Sunday said it has destroyed a machinegun position in the Golan Heights from where it came under fire twice. “IDF forces destroyed a Syrian machine gun nest that fired twice in the last 24 hours on Israeli patrols operating to safeguard the border,” Israeli Prime Minister’s Office spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said on his Twitter page.
C African Republic prez flees rebel attack
Bangui: Central African Republic’s President Francois Bozize fled the capital early Sunday, hours after hundreds of armed rebels threatening to overthrow him invaded the city, an adviser said. The rebel alliance, known as Seleka, issued a statement referring to Bozize as the country’s “former president.” “Central African Republic has just opened a new page in its history,” said the communique, which was signed by Justin Kombo Moustapha, secretary-general of Seleka.
chief election commissioner appointed in Nepal
Kathmandu: Nepal President Ram Baran Yadav on Sunday appointed a new Chief Election Commissioner and four commissioners to manage the country’s forthcoming polls. The key posts at Election Commission of Nepal including the Chief Election Commissioner had remained vacant for the past few months as the major political parties struggled for months to reach an agreement to form an election Government.
A Chief Justice-led Government was finally installed on March 14, that will hold elections by June 21.
17 Pak soldiers killed in fidayeen attack
Islamabad: At least 17 Pakistani soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden water tanker into a check post in the restive North Waziristan tribal region of the country. Six security personnel were killed instantly when the attacker last night rammed the tanker into Esha check post near Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan Agency.
‘Mossad spy spilled secrets to Hezbollah’
Berlin: A man identified by media as an Australian-Israeli Mossad agent and found hanged in a Tel Aviv jail had passed secrets to Hezbollah before his death, an influential German magazine reported on Sunday.
News weekly Der Spiegel said Ben Zygier, a man known as “Prisoner X” who died in 2010 in an allegedly suicide-proof cell, had handed tips to the lebanese militant group that led to the arrest of at least two people spying for Israel. After conducting its own “internal investigations”, the report found that Zygier had started working for Mossad in 2003, investigating European companies doing business with Iran and Syria.