NEWS As a group of rebels gathered in an apartment in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, debating the value of the United States’ decision to provide them with weapons, government forces nearby began pounding an opposition-held neighborhood. The opposing events led the group to focus on a question asked on Friday by many in Syria’s beleaguered opposition: Would the promised aid come in time, or would be it be too little, too late? An older rebel who leads a few dozen fighters on one of the front lines in Aleppo was skeptical. “I’ll believe that America is helping us when I see American arms in my group’s hands, not statements and food baskets,†said the 40-year-old fighter, who calls himself Abu Zaki. Ben Hubbard reports from Cairo.
A judge at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague has exposed a deep rift at the highest levels of the court in a blistering letter suggesting that the court’s president, an American, pressured other judges into approving the recent acquittals of top Serb and Croat commanders. The letter from the judge, Frederik Harhoff of Denmark, raised serious questions about the credibility of the court, which was created in 1993 to address the atrocities committed in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Even before Judge Harhoff’s letter was made public Thursday, in the Danish newspaper Berlingske, the recent acquittals had provoked a storm of complaints from international lawyers, human rights groups and other judges at the court, who claimed in private that the rulings had abruptly rewritten legal standards that had been applied in earlier cases. Marlise Simons reports from Paris.
A thick slab of grass-fed sirloin dripping in its own juices: so many Argentines consider such a feast a birthright to be enjoyed regularly that one president in the 1990s quipped to an American magazine, “Tell your readers, ‘Don’t come to my country if they’re vegetarian.’ †But tastes change, even in Argentina. Beef consumption in this red-meat colossus has decreased so much over the decades that the nation recently fell from its perch as the world’s top per capita consumer of beef, a title Argentine ranchers are fighting to regain from their tiny neighbor, Uruguay. In another jolt, a study warned that pizzerias could soon outnumber steakhouses in this city. Simon Romero reports from Buenos Aires.
European Union ministers thrashed out a deal to begin trade negotiations with the United States late Friday after bowing to French demands to protect state-sponsored film and television industries. The breakthrough, which came after 13 hours of tense talks, should enable Britain to hail the start of the trans-Atlantic trade discussions when the leaders of the Group of 8 biggest economies hold a summit meeting on Monday in Northern Ireland. “The formal launch of negotiations between the world’s two largest trading blocs is now imminent,†Vince Cable, the British business secretary, said in a statement shortly after the deal was announced. James Kanter reports from Luxembourg
The A350 XWB, the first all-new commercial jet from Airbus in more than six years, took wing into partly cloudy skies here on Friday. There was a lot more riding on it than the multinational crew of two test pilots and four engineers. The new aircraft carries the burden of dispelling Airbus’s reputation for cross-cultural and industrial dysfunction, which caused costly delays in the introduction of the company’s previous plane, the A380 superjumbo. And in the wake of last year’s failed merger of the plane maker’s parent, European Aeronautic Defense and Space, and the British military contractor BAE Systems, Airbus is betting its future more heavily on the success of commercial jets like the A350. Nicola Clark reports from Toulouse, France.
ARTS The market for antiquities from the ancient world is undergoing an upheaval that sends some works of art skyrocketing to unimaginable heights while scores of others are effectively becoming unsalable. The reason for this discrepancy lies in the Unesco convention adopted in 1970 to safeguard the buried heritage of mankind and shield standing monuments from looting. While many countries, including the United States, did not sign up, the convention is effectively being implemented by international institutions and, increasingly, by prudent collectors and dealers, fearful that the legitimate ownership of their acquisitions may be challenged in the future. Souren Melikian reports from Paris.
SPORTS Of the 156 players who started the U.S. Open tournament in Pennsylvania, by nightfall Friday only Phil Mickelson and Billy Horschel were under par. Horschel finished his weather-delayed first round of two-over 72 in the morning and chased it with a 67 in the afternoon for a one-under 139 on Merion Golf Club’s East Course. Horschel, a winner at this year’s PGA Tour stop in New Orleans, hit every green in regulation. He finished around the time Mickelson, the first-round leader, was teeing off. Mickelson, who opened with a 67, made a bogey at the first hole and two more on the 12th and 13th. His only birdie in his round of 72 came on the 18th hole, after the horn sounded to suspend play because of darkness. Karen Crouse reports from Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
