275
VATICAN CITY: Two hundred non-Christian religious leaders will join the pope for a ceremony on October 27 that is being boycotted however by the influential Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, the Vatican said.
Pope Benedict XVI is hosting the event in favour of world peace, which was started by his predecessor John Paul II in Assisi, the birthplace of St Francis, and a variety of faiths will be represented including Islam.
Among the spiritual leaders attending will be Baha'i, Buddhists, Confucianists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Sikhs, Taoists and Zoroastrians, joining 100 Christian leaders, Vatican officials said at a news conference on Tuesday.
A total of 69 Muslim leaders will also be present from 19 countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia, said Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
But the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar mosque has refused to attend as the Sunni Islamic centre froze relations with ...
PARIS: France's opposition on Tuesday called for the resignation of the head of the country's domestic intelligence agency, a friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, after he was charged over spying on a journalist.
DCRI spy agency boss Bernard Squarcini was charged Monday with violating confidential correspondence, illegally collecting data and violating the confidentiality of sources of a journalist with the daily Le Monde.
Under French law, preliminary charges are brought to allow magistrates to continue investigations before ...
BEIJING: China's leaders have adopted a directive aimed at maintaining "security" and expanding the "influence" of Chinese culture, state media said Tuesday at the end of an annual meeting of Communist Party chiefs.
The country will strive to improve its citizens' "sense of identity and confidence in Chinese culture," according to a statement issued after the end of the secretive four-day plenum in Beijing, as quoted by Xinhua news agency.
China was facing a challenge to protect ...
BERLIN: German engineering companies are forecasting a slowdown in sector-wide growth next year, the industry association VDMA said on Tuesday.
"We're expecting output growth of 4.0 percent in 2012," VDMA chief Thomas Lindner told a news conference in Berlin.
For this year VDMA is pencilling in growth of 14 percent.
The engineering industry, which employs nearly one million people in Germany and commands a worldwide market share of 17 percent, is one of the main pillars of ...
WASHINGTON: US producer prices rose more than expected in September to record their largest increase in five months as gasoline prices surged, a government report showed on Tuesday.
The Labor Department said its seasonally adjusted index for prices received by farms, factories and refineries, increased 0.8 percent after being flat in August. Economists polled by Reuters had expected prices to increase 0.2 percent.
Excluding volatile food and energy, wholesale prices rose 0.2 percent last month after inching ...
BUCHAREST: Bulgaria's 2011 budget deficit will be about 2 percent of gross domestic product, its finance minister said on Tuesday, below a target of 2.5 percent and confirming the Balkan country's tight fiscal stance.
The centre-right government has been trying to rein in the deficit to avoid possible external risks that could put pressure on Bulgaria's currency peg to the euro.
"Our budget deficit proposal for this year was 2.5 percent of gross domestic product and ...
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka on Tuesday announced it would raise defence spending by over five percent in 2012, more than two years after the government ended a decades-long ethnic conflict with Tamil rebels.
The government allocated 230 billion rupees ($2.1 billion) for the calendar year 2012, up from 215 billion rupees ($1.92 billion) estimated for defence expenses in 2011, according to official figures tabled in parliament Tuesday.
Sri Lanka has maintained that it needs to keep ...More Articles...
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
