World News in brief for October 12, 2012

Oct 12 2012 By Cheryl Mullin

NORWAY: The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize today for its efforts to promote peace and democracy in Europe – despite being in the midst of its biggest crisis since the bloc was created in the 1950s.

The Norwegian prize committee said the EU received the award for six decades of contributions “to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.

CHINA: Nobel Prize for Literature winner Mo Yan has expressed hope that China’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo will regain his freedom.

Mr Mo told reporters today he hoped Liu could “regain his freedom very soon.”

AMERICA: Vice President Joe Biden and the man who wants to succeed him, Republican Paul Ryan, have clashed in a feisty debate over foreign and economic policy.

Mr Biden sought to make up for President Barack Obama’s lacklustre performance last week against his opponent, Mitt Romney.

AMERICA: Mitt Romney said the attack on the US consulate in Libya is an issue in the presidential campaign because Americans wonder why it took the Obama administration so long to acknowledge it was a terrorist act.

He was responding to a charge by Barack Obama’s campaign that the Republican ticket has been politicising the attack which killed the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

SYRIA: Jihadist fighters linked to al Qaida fought with rebels to capture a Syrian military air defence base near Aleppo, reports say.

Videos posted online today apparently shot inside the base say Jabhat al-Nusra took part in the overnight battle for the base. The videos show fighters inspecting lines of large missiles.

INDONESIA: Survivors of the Bali bombings and families of victims braved a fresh terrorism threat today to remember those killed in the terror atrocity.

Security was tight for the occasion a decade after bombs destroyed a holiday in paradise for tourists partying at two nightclubs near the beach in Bali.

IRAN: UN human rights officials are condemning Iran’s use of stoning as a form of capital punishment among a number of “deeply troubling” rights violations, many of which are “systemic in nature,” according to a report.

Ahmed Shaheed, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on Iran, also called for an “extensive, impartial and independent investigation into the violence in the weeks and months that followed the presidential election of 2009”, when pro-democracy protesters surged into the streets to denounce the election of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as bogus and rigged.