Gay Irish couples can marry soon
DUBLIN – Some of Ireland’s gay couples planning a civil partnership may receive a surprisingly fast upgrade to marriage.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald announced Monday that the bill to legalize gay marriage, after its landslide approval in Friday’s referendum, should be passed before lawmakers’ planned July 16 summer recess.
She says as part of the law, those gay couples already scheduled to be wed in civil partnership ceremonies after the bill’s passage will have their pre-booked events legally upgraded to full-fledged marriages.
Fitzgerald said: “I am very conscious that many couples will want to get married as soon as possible. I am working to make that happen.”
Gay couples in Ireland have been entitled to marriage-style civil partnerships since 2011.
Galapagos Island volcano erupts
QUITO, Ecuador – A volcano atop one of the Galapagos Islands has erupted for the first time in 33 years, threatening a fragile ecosystem that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Ecuador’s Galapagos National Park administration said the mile-high Wolf volcano began spewing fire, smoke and lava before dawn Monday.
The volcano lies on the northern tip of Isabela Island, the archipelago’s largest. It’s far from the only population center, Puerto Villamil, 70 miles to the south. Authorities said no tourist activity was affected.
Authorities said lava flowing in the southwest direction for now poses no risk to the world’s only population of pink iguanas, which live on the island’s northwest tip.
Conservative wins presidency in Poland
WARSAW, Poland – Conservative challenger Andrzej Duda has won Poland’s presidential election and ousted the incumbent in a runoff vote, according to official results Monday.
Duda, a right-wing member of the European Parliament, won with 51.55 percent of the vote, the State Electoral Commission said.
President Bronislaw Komorowski, allied with the ruling pro-business Civic Platform, garnered 48.45 percent in the second round of voting on Sunday.
Turnout was 55.34 percent in this nation of more than 37 million people. Duda, a 43-year-old lawyer with experience in the government, will be taking office in August, for a five-year term.
Duda, a Roman Catholic, traveled Monday to the Jasna Gora shrine in Czestochowa and prayed there.
UN postpones talks about peace in Yemen
SANAA, Yemen – A United Nations-sponsored Yemeni peace conference that was to start Thursday in Geneva has been indefinitely postponed, officials said, as battles raged across the country.
The talks were meant to end weeks of heavy fighting and Saudi-led airstrikes against an Iran-backed rebel group amid a humanitarian crisis that has left millions in the Arab world’s poorest country short of food and fuel.
Three officials from the Houthi, socialist and unionist parties said late Sunday they were notified the talks had been postponed and that no new date had been set. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.
A UN official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and therefore also spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the talks would be postponed.
Associated Press
