US, allies dismiss Syrian referendum
US, allies dismiss Syrian referendum
damascus, syria
The U.S. and its allies dismissed the Syrian regime’s referendum on a new constitution Sunday as a “farce” meant to justify the bloody crackdown on dissent.
But voters in government strongholds suggested why some Syrians have not joined the uprising against President Bashar Assad: Loyalty, distrust of the opposition and fear his fall will ignite a civil war.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the poll “a cynical ploy” and urged Syrians who still support Assad to turn against him. A “farce” and a “sham vote” was how German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle described it.
Train derails in Canada, killing 3
burlington, ontario
A Canadian Via Rail passenger train derailed west of Toronto on Sunday, killing three railroad employees and injuring dozens of passengers, officials said.
Via Rail spokeswoman Michelle Lamarche said the three people killed were all engineers riding in the cab of the locomotive at the front of the train when it derailed in Burlington, Ontario. A fourth Via worker in the locomotive was injured, she said.
Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring also confirmed that three people died in the accident. Lamarche said no passengers died but 45 were injured.
Girl fights classmate, dies hours later
long beach, calif.
After getting her nose bloodied in a fight with another girl near their Southern California elementary school, 11-year-old Joanna Ramos told her mother on the way home she felt sick. Hours later, she was dead.
“My daughter started complaining, saying she doesn’t feel good, let’s go home, so we went to home and I changed her clothes, and she go to sleep, that’s the only thing that I know,” Joanna’s mother, Cecilia Villanueva told KNBC-TV. “We took her to the hospital but it was too late. She was in a coma.”
Ramos died at a Long Beach hospital at 9 p.m. Friday, about six hours after the fight in an alley, police said. Authorities have not released the girl’s name but Villanueva told KNBC the girl who died was her daughter, Joanna.
Scientists: Stem cells can produce eggs
washington
For 60 years, doctors have believed women were born with all the eggs they’ll ever have. Now Harvard scientists are challenging that dogma, saying they’ve discovered the ovaries of young women harbor very rare stem cells capable of producing new eggs.
If Sunday’s report is confirmed, harnessing those stem cells might one day lead to better treatments for women left infertile because of disease — or simply because they’re getting older.
Colombian rebels to release all hostages
bogota, colombia
The leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said Sunday that the group would release all hostages and give up kidnapping as a tool to reach its goals.
The announcement on the FARC website brought Colombia closer to a peace agreement, since the government of President Juan Manuel Santos had demanded the release of all hostages and the end of armed hostilities before peace talks could begin.
Ten members of the military and the police are have been held by FARC for more than 10 years. A date was not immediately set for the 10 men, whom FARC refer to as “prisoners of war,” to be freed.
Combined dispatches