Some of the world's top business and political leaders started annual secret talks with the Bilderberg group Thursday in a suburb of Athens, under tight security control. A Greek navy launch and boats carrying elite divers could be seen a few meters off the coast of the peninsula where the hotel stands. Greek newspapers said the group had also asked for the protection of two F-16 warplanes and a police helicopter. Reports say U.S. State Department number two James Steinberg, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso, Queen Sofia of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands are among those attending the Bilderberg meeting.
A radical Muslim who dressed his baby daughter in a hat with “I love al-Qaeda” on it tried to firebomb the home of the publisher of a controversial novel about the Prophet Mohammed. Ali Beheshti, 40, along with Abrar Mirza, 22, have admitted conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life after they poured diesel through the letterbox of a publishing house. Officers had been watching the three men in an “intelligence led” surveillance operation. Beheshti’s 20-month-old daughter, Farisa, was pictured wearing the hat when he took her along to a protest against Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed and proudly called her “the youngest member of al-Qaeda”. He waved banners vowing to “Massacre those who insult Islam” and promising “Europe, your 9/11 will come!” The three men began their attack when publisher Mr Rynja was preparing to release The Jewel Of Medina, a novel about the Prophet Mohammed and the life of his child bride, Aisha. The publication of The Jewel of Medina was cancelled by one major publisher in the United States over fears that it could offend Muslims.
Bosnia's state court on Friday released from detention a Croatian parliamentary deputy who fled to Bosnia to avoid jail for war crimes but said it would proceed with his extradition to Croatia, setting a legal precedent. Branimir Glavas was the first senior Croatian official to be convicted of war crimes against Serbs during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He fled to Bosnia shortly before being sentenced since he holds Bosnian citizenship. Glavas was accused of giving orders to members of a unit under his command to abduct, torture and murder Serbs in the eastern city of Osijek in late 1991 when he commanded the city's defence forces.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, and top energy officials from Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, will together negotiate joint ventures to construct and operate South Stream at a meeting in Sochi on Friday. The Russian state gas company, Gazprom, wants to have the pipeline up and running by 2015. It will deliver at least 30bn cubic metres of gas a year from Russia, across the bed of the Black Sea to Bulgaria before splitting into a southern branch leading to Greece, and a northern branch into Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Italy. South Stream is a rival project to another, future pipeline proposed by the European Union and backed by the United States. Known as Nabucco, it would deliver gas from Central Asia to Europe via Turkey, avoiding Russia and Ukraine as transit routes altogether. However, there are serious doubts over Nabucco's viability, since only one-fifth of the gas supply needed to run it has been guaranteed by the Central Asian exporters.
A team of specialized American sailors apprehended 17 suspected pirates who attacked an Egyptian merchant ship in the dangerous waters off Yemen. The 17 pirates seized were taken aboard for further questioning. They were operating from a "mothership" — a larger vessel pirates often use to resupply the small speedboats that attack ships far offshore. The Navy did not say what happened to the mothership after the operation. Also Thursday, Iranian state television said the country will send two warships to join an international flotilla protecting cargo ships from pirates off the Somali coast. At least 19 ships and over 250 sailors are now being held hostage by Somali pirates. Last year, 42 ships were seized and pirates earned an estimated $1 million or more in ransom each time they freed a ship.
Greece heaped scorn overnight on plans by Macedonia to erect a gigantic equestrian statue of Alexander the Great, the famed warrior-king of antiquity that both countries claim as their own. Born in Pella, modern-day Greece, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire and much of the world known to ancient Greeks before dying in Babylon in 323 BC at the age of just 32. In recent years, Greece has faced a challenge from the former Yugoslav republic over the spiritual rights to Alexander's heritage and has been at pains to stress that the ancient Macedonians were Greek. But the tiny Balkan nation, which became independent after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, has staked its own claim as it lies on what was once part of ancient Macedonia. Greece has also refused to recognise its neighbour under its constitutional name of Macedonia because that is also the name of the northern Greek province of Macedonia.
This appeal for peace, in the morning, found its most profound expression in his visit to the Holy Sepulchre, where he spoke of the “hope that does not disappoint” offered by Christ’s empty tomb. “The Gospel – he said - reassures us that God can make all things new, that history need not be repeated, that memories can be healed, that the bitter fruits of recrimination and hostility can be overcome, and that a future of justice, peace, prosperity and cooperation can arise for every man and woman, for the whole human family, and in a special way for the people who dwell in this land so dear to the heart of the Saviour.” The Pope’s voyage had many objectives, not least the aim of carrying on dialogue with other Christians confessions. To this end his visit to the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate, which lies next to the Holy Sepulchre. “Standing in this hallowed place, - he had said shortly before in the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate - alongside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which marks the site where our crucified Lord rose from the dead for all humanity, and near the cenacle, where on the day of Pentecost “they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1), who could not feel impelled to bring the fullness of goodwill, sound scholarship and spiritual desire to our ecumenical endeavours?” “It is imperative therefore – he added - that Christian leaders and their communities bear vibrant testimony to what our faith proclaims: the eternal Word, who entered space and time in this land, Jesus of Nazareth, who walked these streets, through his words and actions calls people of every age to his life of truth and love”.