Costa Rica may have legalized civil unions
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Conservative Costa Rican lawmakers are mortified that they may have accidentally approved language making same-sex unions legal when they passed a piece of legislation this week.
President Laura Chinchilla on late Thursday signed the bill governing social services and marriage regulations for young people.
The mostly conservative members of Congress didn’t notice that the final version of the bill had changed earlier language that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
After realizing they had approved a bill that “confers social rights and benefits of a civil union, free from discrimination,” the lawmakers asked Chinchilla to veto the new law. She has refused.
Conservative lawmakers say they’ll launch a legal challenge to the new law which they say goes against family values.
Spain says it warned Snowden on plane
MADRID – Spain on Friday said it had been warned along with other European countries that former U.S. intelligence worker Edward Snowden was aboard the Bolivian presidential plane this week, an acknowledgement that the manhunt for the fugitive leaker had something to do with the plane’s unexpected diversion to Austria.
It is unclear whether the United States, which has told its European allies that it wants Snowden back, warned Madrid about the Bolivian president’s plane. U.S. officials will not detail their conversations with European countries, except to say that they have stated the U.S.’s general position that it wants Snowden back.
President Barack Obama has publicly displayed a relaxed attitude toward Snowden’s movements, saying last month that he wouldn’t be “scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.”
But the drama surrounding the flight of Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose plane was abruptly rerouted to Vienna after apparently being denied permission to fly over France, suggests that pressure is being applied behind the scenes.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish National Television that “they told us that the information was clear, that he was inside.”
Bomber kills 15 north of Baghdad
BAGHDAD – Iraqi officials say a suicide bomber who walked into a Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad has killed 15 worshippers and wounded 32.
The attack happened on Friday night during prayers in Baghdad’s Kiraiyat neighborhood.
A police officer and a medical official both confirmed the casualties. Both spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.
A car bombing earlier in the day killed four civilians and wounded six north of the Iraqi capital.
Since December, members of Iraq’s Sunni minority have been staging demonstrations over what they call second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government. In some places, clashes erupted between security forces and protesters.
The deadliest incident was in the northern town of Hawija in April, where 23 people were killed.
South Africa denies Mandela ‘vegetative’
JOHANNESBURG –As former South African president Nelson Mandela remains on life support in a Pretoria hospital, family members continue to fight over burial details.
Mandela, who was hospitalized June 8, remains in critical but stable condition, according to the office of President Jacob Zuma, who visited the anti-apartheid leader Thursday. The president’s office also said doctors denied reports that Mandela, 94, is in a ‘“vegetative state.”
A court paper filed June 27 concerning Mandela family graves said affidavits would be provided from his physicians to show that Mandela “is in a permanent vegetative state.” A later filing dropped that phrase. Both court filings, however, said that Mandela’s breathing was machine-assisted.
The former president’s health is “perilous,” according to a separate court affidavit filed this week. “The anticipation of his impending death is based on real and substantial grounds,” the documents said.
Associated Press and USA TODAY
