Ethnic Serb faithful, some draped in the Serbian flag, scrambled for space in the complex of churches that Serbs consider the seat of the medieval Serbian state and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
- AP
Cuba preparing another amnesty
HAVANA - Cuba's government has contacted about a dozen people jailed for crimes against the shadowy state-security apparatus and asked if they would be willing to accept freedom in return for exile abroad, a leading human-rights activist said.
If such a deal becomes reality, it would mark the year's second major release of Cuban political prisoners - once unthinkable in the draconian communist state.
Agents from the Ministry of the Interior - charged with running domestic spying and state security activities - visited the political prisoners in their cells in recent days and offered them the chance to go free as long as they accepted exile, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
Sanchez said late Saturday that he received the information from relatives of some of the prisoners who were offered the deal.
- AP
U.S. warnings draw Iranian's ire
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's president Sunday called for U.S. leaders to be "buried" in response to what he says are American threats of military attack against Tehran's nuclear program.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is known for brash rhetoric in addressing the West, but in a speech Sunday to military men and clerics he went further, using a deeply offensive insult in response to statements by U.S. officials that the military option against Iran was still on the table.
"May the undertaker bury you, your table, and your body, which has soiled the world," he said using language in Iran reserved for hated enemies.
The speech was broadcast by both state television and the official English-language Press TV, but the latter glossed over the insult in the simultaneous translation.
- AP
Elsewhere:
Pirates kidnapped two foreign sailors from a tanker off the coast of Nigeria's restive and oil-rich southern delta, a naval spokesman said, suggesting the tanker crew worked in the black-market trade of stolen crude from the region.
