EGYPT
Soccer fans, police clash in Cairo
Police used tear gas to disperse rock-throwing fans outside the stadium before the African Champions League final Sunday, an outburst that has heightened fears for an upcoming World Cup playoff between Egypt and Ghana. Hundreds of Egyptian soccer fans clashed with the police. A police car was damaged and traffic was briefly disrupted outside Arab Contractors Stadium. About 4,000 police officers using armored vehicles were stationed around the stadium. There were no reports of injuries and the game appeared to go off without problems inside the stadium.
NEW JERSEY
Penalized good deed sparks goodwill
Offers of support have poured in from around the nation for a former homeless man whose good deed proved costly. James Brady, 59, who has since found housing, was homeless when he found $850 on a sidewalk in April and turned it over to police. He was allowed to keep the money after no one claimed it. The Hackensack Human Services Department suspended Brady’s government benefits after he failed to report the money as income. The Record of Woodland Park said many of its readers have offered to help for Brady, and Bergen County’s United Way has set up an account for Brady through its Compassion Fund.
NEW JERSEY
Arrow removed from deer’s head
Wildlife officials removed an arrow from a young deer’s head Saturday and released the animal back into the woods. The arrow had completely pierced the 5-month-old male deer’s head. It was removed by biologists with the Department of Environmental Protection. The biologists who did the procedure said the arrow had not damaged any major arteries or organs and the deer’s prognosis for survival is excellent.
CALIFORNIA
Group: Transgender law repeal qualifies
Opponents of a new California law that gives transgender students certain rights say they have collected enough signatures for an initiative that would repeal the law. Frank Schubert, the political strategist handling the signature gathering effort for conservative groups, said Sunday that the group submitted 620,000 signatures to get the initiative on the November 2014 ballot, more than 505,000 valid signatures required. California is the first state to pass a law detailing the rights of transgender K-12 students. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law in September.
NEW JERSEY
Family visits site of student’s suicide
The family of the Rutgers University student whose suicide sparked a national conversation about the treatment of young gay people paid their first visit Sunday to the bridge where he took his life. Members of Tyler Clementi’s family crossed The George Washington Bridge to New York City to help raise awareness about the dangers of bullying.The 18-year-old Rutgers freshman jumped to his death in 2010 after finding out his roommate had used a webcam to spy on him kissing a man in their dorm room. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, spent 20 days in jail after being convicted of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and witness tampering.
PAKISTAN
Army condemns Taliban martyr comment
The Pakistan army on Sunday condemned a prominent Islamic political leader who called the Pakistani Taliban chief killed by a U.S. drone strike a martyr. Syed Munawar Hasan, the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, told a Pakistani TV station earlier this month that he thought slain Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was a martyr. He later implied that Pakistani soldiers killed while fighting Islamic militants are not martyrs because they are allied with the U.S. The army condemned Hasan’s comments in a statement posted on its website as “irresponsible and misleading,” demanding he apologize.
GREECE
Government survives no confidence motion
Greece’s conservative-socialist coalition government survived a no-confidence motion tabled by the main opposition Radical Left Coalition party early today, following an often heated three-day parliamentary debate. The motion fell well short of the 151 votes needed to pass, with 124 lawmakers voting in favor and 153 against, Parliament speaker Evangelos Meimarakis announced after the roll-call vote was completed. Greece has been surviving on international rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund and other European countries that use the euro since 2010 after a combination of dismal financial stewardship, loss of investor confidence and the global recession brought it to the brink of bankruptcy.
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