The one million civil service strikers are demanding an 8.6percent wage raise and have rejected the government's 7.5 percent offer. Public hospitals and schools have been hardest hit by the strike, which has been marred by sporadic violence.
- AP
Hezbollah snubs request by U.N.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah's leader said Friday that he would not respond to a U.N.-appointed prosecutor's demand for the group to hand over all information relevant to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told a crowd of supporters that he does not recognize the legitimacy of the U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 killing, and would cooperate with the Lebanese judiciary instead.
The remarks come more than a week after U.N.-appointed prosecutor Daniel Bellemare said that a packet of evidence turned over by Hezbollah was "incomplete" and failed to add anything to what Nasrallah had disclosed.
- AP
7 guilty in Lisbon of child sex abuse
LISBON, Portugal - Seven people were convicted of child sex abuse in Portugal on Friday in a trial that lasted nearly six years and shocked the country.
The six men and one woman were found guilty of crimes including sexually abusing minors and adolescents, raping children, and running a pedophile ring at a state-run children's home in Lisbon during the 1990s.
The men were handed jail sentences of between six and 18 years for sexual abuse. The woman, whose house was used by the ring, was not given a custodial sentence because of a 2007 change in the law, the judge said.
The longest sentence was given to a 53-year-old former driver at the home, who confessed to more than 600 crimes and gave evidence against the other defendants. - AP
Elsewhere:
A UPS cargo plane with two crew members on board crashed shortly after takeoff outside Dubai, officials said. The state news agency WAM, quoting the General Civil Aviation Authority, reported that the "bodies of two pilots" had been found at the scene, but UPS did not confirm that.
The Dutch Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Alliance failed to agree on forming a coalition with the support of the anti-Islam Freedom Party, leaving the Netherlands without a new government almost three months after elections. The collapse ends a third attempt to form a coalition headed by the Liberal Party, which won the June 9 election.
