A round-up of today's other stories in brief...
Beyonce 'overjoyed to be pregnant'
NEW YORK – Singer Beyonce Knowles and her rapper husband Jay-Z are expecting their first child, US Weekly magazine reported yesterday. The 29-year-old Beyonce was surprised to learn she is in her first trimester of the pregnancy.
She had wanted to finish another album but was overjoyed, the US magazine said. The couple were married in New York in 2008. – (Reuters)
US seeks to reinstate gay ban in military
SAN FRANCISCO – The Obama administration asked a federal appeals court yesterday to let the Pentagon reinstate its ban on openly gay men and women serving in the military while it appeals a lower-court ruling.
The request for an emergency stay was filed with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco even as some gay veterans expelled under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy have sought to re-enlist in a test of the lower-court ruling.
US district judge Virginia Phillips ruled in September that the military’s 17-year-old policy infringed the free-speech and due-process rights of gay men and women in uniform. – (Reuters)
Rise in number of terror suspects
BERLIN – Germany is probably home to more than 1,000 potentially violent Islamists and the number of identified militants has risen constantly in the past few years, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said yesterday.
The number of investigations into Islamic terrorism in Germany, where the 9/11 attacks on the United States were planned, has risen continually since 2001, according to the BKA.
A total of 352 investigations are now under way, it said. – (Reuters)
Racism suspected in Swedish attacks
MALMÖ – Swedish police said yesterday a series of shootings in the southern city of Malmö over the past year could be racially motivated.
There is growing tension over immigration policy in Sweden, where an anti-immigration party gained its first seats in parliament in an election last month.
“The victims don’t have any explanation as to why they’re being shot. They are not criminal or known to police and all of them have an immigrant background,” a policeman spokesman said. – (Reuters)