CBS: Thousands protest Spain's new labor reforms
Hundreds of thousands of protesters were marching throughout Spain on Sunday in the first large-scale show of anger over new labor reforms that make it easier for companies to fire workers and pull out of collective bargaining agreements.
The country's main trade unions organized marches in 57 cities, beginning midmorning in Cordoba in the south and expected to end with evening marches in Toledo and Valencia, with a very large demonstration planned in Madrid from midday.
Union organizers said around a million people had marched by mid-afternoon, but official figures were not released.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government passed the package of reforms nine days ago in an effort to shake up a labor market seen as one of Europe most rigid and to encourage hiring in a country battling the highest unemployment rate in the eurozone, at nearly 23 percent. Rajoy was overheard saying that the reform will "cost me a general strike."
USA Today: North Korea threatens South Korea over drills
North Korea threatened Sunday to attack South Korea, accusing it of planning provocative live-fire drills near their disputed sea border amid persistent tension on the divided peninsula.
The North's military said in a statement that South Korea planned naval shelling drills Monday in the waters around five front-line islands off the western coast, where it said the North maintains its sovereignty.
South Korean defense and military officials said they had no immediate knowledge of such drills. They said South Korea plans joint anti-submarine drills with the United States this week, but the training site is further south.
"Such move of the warlike forces is a premeditated military provocation … to drive the overall situation on the Korean peninsula into the phase of war," a North Korean western military command said in a statement.
Reuters: Algeria seizes missiles smuggled from Libya - source
Algerian security forces have found a large cache of weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles, which they believe were smuggled in from neighbouring Libya, a security source briefed on the discovery told Reuters on Saturday.
The find follows warnings from governments in the region that instability in Libya after the end of Muammar Gaddafi's rule is allowing weapons taken from Gaddafi's arsenal to fall into the hands of al Qaeda's north African branch and other insurgent groups across the Sahara desert.
ABC: Sen. John McCain Endorses Talks With Taliban
Sen. John McCain endorsed U.S. talks with the Taliban this morning on “This Week,” setting himself at odds with Mitt Romney, who he is backing for the GOP presidential nomination.
“I think it’s important to have talks wherever you can,” said McCain, R-Ariz., speaking from Afghanistan. ” We have to have an outcome on the battlefield…that would motivate a successful conclusion.”
During a recent presidential debate, Mitt Romney said “The right course for America is not to negotiate with the Taliban while the Taliban are killing our soldiers. The right course is to recognize they’re the enemy of the United States.”
Afghan president Hamid Karzai confirmed for the first time this week that peace settlement talks between the U.S., Afghanistan, and the Taliban have begun.
MSNBC: Report: UK anti-terror plan to sweep up email, phone, online records
Data on all phone calls, text messages, email traffic and online visits would be stored for a year in vast databases under a new anti-terrorism plan in Britain, The Telegraph reported Saturday on its website.
The report, which did not cite sources, said that phone companies and broadband providers would be ordered to store the information themselves for a year for security services’ “real-time” inspection under the plan. Contents of phone calls, texts or emails would not be recorded, The Telegraph said, but the databases would retain the phone numbers and email addresses sent from and to.
And the plan would reach into social networking for the first time, The Telegraph reported, allowing security services to get information about direct messages between users of Facebook, Twitter and similar sites, and even between players in online video games.
The Telegraph said the government had been negotiating with Internet companies for two months and the plan could be announced as early as May.
MSNBC: US, Britain urge Israel not to attack Iran
The U.S. and Britain on Sunday urged Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear program as the White House's national security adviser arrived in the region, reflecting growing international jitters that the Israelis are poised to strike.
In their warnings, both the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and British Foreign Minister William Hague said an Israeli attack on Iran would have grave consequences for the entire region and urged Israel to give international sanctions against Iran more time to work. Dempsey said an Israeli attack is "not prudent," and Hague said it would not be "a wise thing."
Both Israel and the West believe Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb — a charge Tehran denies. But differences have emerged in how to respond to the perceived threat.
The U.S. and the European Union have both imposed harsh new sanctions targeting Iran's oil sector, the lifeline of the Iranian economy. With the sanctions just beginning to bite, they have expressed optimism that Iran can be persuaded to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Guardian: Baghdad suicide bomb kills 19 police
A suicide car bomber has killed 19 police officers and cadets in an attack on a crowd outside a Baghdad police academy.
Police and hospital sources said 14 cadets and five police were killed, and 26 people were wounded, all but two of them police or cadets.
"I can see body parts scattered on the ground and boots and berets covered with blood. Many cars were set ablaze," said a policeman working at the academy in north-eastern Baghdad.
The attack was the deadliest since 27 January when a suicide bomber set off an explosive-laden vehicle near a Shia funeral procession in Baghdad, killing at least 31 and wounding 60.
BBC: Dozens of inmates killed in gang fight in Mexican jail
At least 44 people have died in a prison fight in northern Mexico.
Security officials said members of rival drug cartels confronted each other with stones and home-made weapons in the jail north of the city of Monterrey.
Some victims were strangled.
An investigation is under way to establish if some of the prison guards colluded in the fight by unlocking the doors separating two wings of the prison.
New York Times: Two Senators Say U.S. Should Arm Syrian Rebels
With the Syrian government continuing its deadly crackdown on its citizens, two senior American senators who were on their way to the Middle East spoke out strongly on Sunday in favor of arming the Syrian opposition forces.
The two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, laid out a series of diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid proposals that would put the United States squarely behind the effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The senators, both of whom are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that rebel fighters deserved to be armed and that helping them take on the Syrian government would aid Washington’s effort to weaken Iran.
Syria relies on Iran for financial and military support, and the governments in Damascus and Tehran have sectarian ties as well: Iran has strongly backed the Syrian Shiite minority and the offshoot Alawite sect that dominates Syria’s ruling class.
“I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement,” Mr. McCain said. “The Iranians and the Russians are providing Bashar Assad with weapons. People that are being massacred deserve to have the ability to defend themselves.”
BBC: Egypt presidential election: Decision on date delayed
Egyptian election officials have failed to confirm the date of the first presidential election since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
An election commission briefing only expressed hope the process could be over by the end of May.
The commission chairman told local TV the problem lay in organising the expatriate vote.
Mr Mubarak stepped down on 11 February last year after 18 days of street protests in which hundreds were killed.
BBC: Egypt presidential election: Decision on date delayed
Egyptian election officials have failed to confirm the date of the first presidential election since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
An election commission briefing only expressed hope the process could be over by the end of May.
The commission chairman told local TV the problem lay in organising the expatriate vote.
Mr Mubarak stepped down on 11 February last year after 18 days of street protests in which hundreds were killed.
Guardian: Myanmar state media: dissident monk to be charged
A dissident monk who helped lead Myanmar's 2007 anti-government uprising is facing fresh legal action, in part for breaking into monasteries sealed by the former military junta after the mass street protests five years ago, state media reported Sunday.
The case against Shin Gambira, the first since he was freed in an amnesty last month, raises concern about the new, nominally civilian government's commitment to reform. It also raises questions about how much authorities here will tolerate dissent.
Gambira is facing charges of "squatting" illegally in a monastery shut down by the government and breaking into two others, the state-run New Light of Myanmar said.
The 33-year-old monk was one of the leaders of the so-called Saffron Revolution, a 2007 uprising led by Buddhist monks against the then-ruling military junta that saw the streets of the main city, Yangon, swell with some 100,000 demonstrators.
CBS: 2 dead, 4 hurt in Colorado plane crash
Authorities say two people are dead and four others injured after a private airplane from Texas crashed just short of an airport runway during a heavy snowstorm in Colorado.
The Denver Post reports the crash happened at 3:40 p.m. Sunday at Yampa Valley Regional Airport in Hayden, about 25 miles west of the ski resort town of Steamboat Springs.
Few details were released, including the victims' names and the type of plane involved.
Airport manager David Ruppel says investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to begin their investigation into the cause of the crash.
New York Times: After Bailout of Auto Industry, Detroit Fallout Trails Romney
As Congress and the White House scrambled in the fall of 2008 to confront the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, Mitt Romney felt compelled to say what many in his native Michigan would consider heresy: Do not bail out the troubled American automakers.
Government checks would not solve the car companies’ long-term problems, Mr. Romney wrote in an opinion article that he asked The New York Times to publish. The better path, he suggested, was a court-administered restructuring that would leave the companies with costs more in line with the global competition. The article carried the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” which critics continue to use against him.
General Motors and Chrysler did eventually enter bankruptcy, and the headline was written by an editor, not by Mr. Romney. Yet more than three years later, the position he took still leaves many of his allies in the business world befuddled. It has also opened up an awkward distance between Mr. Romney and some top Republicans in his native state who insist that the $80 billion assistance plan completed by the Obama administration, expanding on steps taken by President George W. Bush, was the only viable path to save the carmakers from ruin.
But in that tumultuous moment — just after President Obama’s election but before he took office — Mr. Romney had both personal and political reasons to speak out.
BBC: German parties agree on Joachim Gauck as new president
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she backs Joachim Gauck, a pastor and former East German rights activist, to be the country's next president.
Mr Gauck was proposed by the opposition Social Democrats and Greens after Christian Wulff quit as president on Friday over corruption allegations.
Mrs Merkel opposed Mr Gauck for the presidency in 2010, instead supporting her ally Mr Wulff.
Germany's president has a largely ceremonial, but influential, role.
USA Today: 3 dead, up to 8 missing in Wash. avalanche
Three people died and as many as eight others are missing after an avalanche near a Washington state ski resort, authorities said.
King County sheriff's Sgt. Cindi West said her office began receiving word about the avalanche near the Stevens Pass ski area just after noon Sunday. Stevens Pass is in the Cascade Mountains northeast of Seattle.
CBS: "Colbert Report" to return Monday after absence
A representative for Stephen Colbert says "The Colbert Report" will return Monday after a sudden break due to the ailing health of the star's mother.
The Comedy Central show last week substituted repeats for scheduled shows on Wednesday and Thursday. At the time, the network said only that the cancellations were because of "unforeseen circumstances."
Colbert is expected to address his absence on Monday. His 91-year-old mother, Lorna Colbert, is ill.