A wrap of the latest international news.
UK gay marriage plans clear Lords hurdle
LONDON: The British parliament’s upper house has voted down a bid to kill off a bill to introduce gay marriage in England and Wales, moving it a step closer to becoming law.
Following two days of impassioned debate in the House of Lords that exposed deep divisions in the unelected upper chamber, peers voted 390 to 148 against the so-called “wrecking” amendment.
The amendment was a proposal to not allow a second reading of the Marriages (Same Sex Couples) Bill – a rarely used motion.
The bill is certain to face further stiff opposition during detailed line-by-line scrutiny in its later stages.
The vote result was greeted with cheers from supporters of gay marriage outside the Houses of Parliament in London.
The bill has already been backed by the elected lower House of Commons.
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France says no doubt Assad using sarin gas
PARIS: France says it has proof President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is using the deadly nerve agent sarin gas in Syria’s civil war, adding “all options,” including armed intervention, are on the table.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said laboratory tests revealed the use of the gas “several times in a localised manner”.
“We have no doubt that the gas is being used … the laboratory tests are clear,” he said on television after French laboratory tests on blood and hair samples from Syria pointed to the use of sarin gas.
“There is no doubt that the regime and its accomplices” are using them, he added.
“A line has been indisputably breached. We will hold talks with our partners on what we must do and all options are on the table,” to decide “whether to react, including in an armed manner,” Fabius said.
“But we are not there yet,” Fabius said, referring to armed intervention.
UN investigators said earlier on Tuesday said they had “reasonable grounds” to believe both sides in Syria have used chemical weapons.
It was the first time the Commission of Enquiry on Syria – tasked with probing human rights violations in Syria since 2011 – added the suspected use of chemical weapons to its long list of war crimes committed in the country.
Hong Kong marks Tiananmen massacre in rain
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HONG KONG: Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers have braved thunder and torrential rain to attend a candlelight vigil marking the 24th anniversary of China’s bloody Tiananmen crackdown, as Beijing blocked commemoration attempts.
A crowd packed the former British colony’s Victoria Park on Tuesday in an annual act of remembrance for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people killed in the June 3-4 onslaught in Beijing in 1989.
In the Chinese capital police blocked the gate of a cemetery housing victims of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators as part of a sweeping annual attempt to bar commemorations.
In a narrow street near Beijing’s Forbidden City, security personnel patrolled outside the former house of Zhao Ziyang, the former communist party secretary who was purged and held under house arrest for perceived sympathy with the protesters.
Mainland authorities also blocked online searches for a wide range of keywords ranging from “Tiananmen” to “candle”.
Hong Kong and Macau, which reverted to Beijing’s rule in the late 1990s but have semi-autonomous status, are the only places in China where the brutal military intervention is openly commemorated.
“Vindicate June Fourth!” protesters shouted as they huddled under umbrellas and rain doused candles. “We will never forget,” they yelled.
The rally ended earlier than planned when loudspeakers stopped working.
“The candlelight vigil tonight has an additional meaning of not just condemning the massacre 24 years ago but also condemning the suppression today (in mainland China),” Lee Cheuk-Yan, chairman of protest organisers the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, told AFP.
Billy Li, a 28-year-old recent university graduate, said he was attending because the Tiananmen protest “has not been vindicated, because the truth has not been told”.
Organisers said 150,000 people attended the vigil while police put the number at 54,000.
The Chinese Communist Party branded the Tiananmen protests a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” but pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong have marked the event every year.
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