BEIRUT – Syrian government forces renewed their assault on the rebellious city of Homs on Tuesday, activists said, as the U.N. human rights chief raised fears of civil war.
Troops loyal to President Bashar Assad have been shelling Homs for more than a week to retake parts of the city captured by rebel forces. Hundreds are believed to have been killed since last Saturday, and the humanitarian conditions in the city were worsening.
Homs was under “brutal shelling” Tuesday, the Local Coordination Committees activist group said, citing its network of witnesses on the ground.
With diplomatic efforts bogged down, the conflict in Syria is taking on the dimensions of a civil war, with army defectors clashing almost daily with soldiers.
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay warned on Monday that the Security Council’s failure to take action has emboldened the Syrian government.
The uprising began last March.
Libyan militias show muscle with parade
Thousands of fighters from across western Libya held a mass parade in Tripoli on Tuesday, showing off heavy machine guns and rocket launchers and firing rifles in the air.
The procession was a show of force by members of about 100 militias that announced a new, unified military council the day before.
It appeared intended as a warning to anyone who might stage attacks during celebrations this week of the one-year anniversary of the start of the uprising that ended with the death of Moammar Gadhafi in October.
The National Transitional Council that now rules Libya has struggled to control the hundreds of brigades that fought in the war.
Nation
Pekingese wins Westminster show
A Pekingese that clearly was the crowd favorite has won America’s top dog show.
Malachy the Pekingese wobbled off with best in show Tuesday night at the Westminster Kennel Club in New York.
The 4-year-old bobbing pompom won his 115th overall best-in-show title. He beat out a Dalmatian, German shepherd, Doberman pinscher, Irish setter, a Kerry blue terrier and wire-haired dachshund at Madison Square Garden.
The champion at Westminster wins a coveted silver bowl but not a cent of prize money.
Pill-mill doctor gets 4 life terms in Ohio
A federal judge in Ohio has sentenced an Illinois doctor to four life terms after his conviction in the drug overdose deaths of four patients.
Federal prosecutors say Dr. Paul Volkman, 64, dispensed more of the painkiller oxycodone from 2003 to 2005 than any other physician in the country.
U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Beckwith imposed the sentences Tuesday in Cincinnati, along with sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years on 13 other drug-trafficking related counts.
Prosecutors say Volkman made weekly trips from Chicago to three locations in Portsmouth in southern Ohio and one in Chillicothe in central Ohio before federal investigators shut down the operations in 2006.
Penn State official challenges charges
A former Penn State vice president on Tuesday asked a judge to throw out charges that he lied to a grand jury investigating former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and that he did not properly report suspected child abuse.
Gary C. Schultz said his statements to a grand jury that he felt the allegations against Sandusky he fielded from a graduate assistant in 2002 were “not that serious” and that it wasn’t clear to him that a crime occurred are opinions that cannot be proved false.
Schultz also joined a motion filed Monday by co-defendant Tim Curley that challenged the failure-to-report charge on the grounds the law was different in 2002, when Schultz and Curley, the university’s athletic director, were told of Sandusky being in the campus showers with a young boy.
The defendants also say the statute of limitations has expired.
Church sorry for Wiesenthal baptism
Mormon church leaders in Salt Lake City apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but offends members of many other religions.
Wiesenthal died in 2005 after surviving the Nazi death camps and spending his life documenting Holocaust crimes and hunting down perpetrators who remained at large.
Records indicate Wiesenthal’s parents, Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal, were baptized in proxy ceremonies performed by Mormon church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January.
In a statement, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the baptismal rites.
The church immediately apologized, saying it was the actions of an individual member of the church – whom they did not name – that led to the submission of Wiesenthal’s name.
A few women added veils to their helmets or hats, and some carved turns down the mountain wearing gowns as a few snowflakes fell.
