World Scene

PORTUGAL

President ratifies gay-marriage law

LISBON | Portugal’s conservative president announced Monday he was ratifying a law allowing gay marriage in the predominantly Catholic country.

The head of state’s decision to permit the enactment of a bill passed by Parliament in January makes Portugal the sixth European country allowing same-sex couples to wed.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva said in a nationally televised address he regretted that the country’s political parties had failed to reach a compromise during days of heated debate in Parliament four months ago.

GREECE

Official quits over spouse’s taxes

ATHENS | Greece’s deputy tourism minister resigned after tax officials said her husband, a popular singer and former film star, owes millions of euros in unpaid taxes, a major embarrassment for the cash-strapped government which is waging a war on tax evasion.

A government statement Monday said Angela Gerekou, a 51-year-old former actress who once posed topless for a Greek men’s magazine, stepped down hours after the scandal broke in a daily newspaper.

Mrs. Gerekou claimed she had no involvement in the tax affairs of her husband, Tolis Voskopoulos, according to the statement.

Greece, which is debt-ridden, narrowly staved off bankruptcy after a $136 billion loan bailout from its eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund, whose first installments will allow repayment of $11 billion in debt that matures Wednesday.

BELGIUM

NATO panel drafts mission statement

BRUSSELS | NATO must win the war in Afghanistan, expand ties with Russia and even China, counter the threat posed by Iran’s missiles, and assure the security of its 28 members, according to the alliance’s proposed mission statement for the next decade.

The draft document, released Monday, seeks to bridge a growing rift between the U.S., which favors a greater international role for NATO, and European nations that want to retain its defensive focus.

INDIA

Maoists blow up bus, kill 20 officers

RAIPUR | Maoist rebels blew up a bus carrying police in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Monday, killing at least 20 people, a police official said, the latest in a series of attacks.

“About 40 people were traveling on the bus and at least 20 police personnel and a couple of civilians have been killed in a land-mine blast,” said S.R. Kalluri, deputy inspector general of Dantewada district, where the attack took place.

AFGHANISTAN

Plane crashes with 44 on board

KABUL | An Afghan passenger plane carrying 44 people, including six foreigners, crashed Monday in a mountainous northern region where weather was hampering efforts to locate it, officials said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Rescuers were trying to reach the crash site near the 12,700-foot-high Salang Pass, a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the capital to the north.

The plane was operated by Pamir Airways, a private airline making a flight from the northern city of Kunduz to the capital, said Kabul International Airport Police Chief Mohammad Asif Jabar Khil.

The plane crashed about 60 miles from Kabul, he said.

SRI LANKA

Rights group cites war crimes

COLOMBO | An international rights group said Monday there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Sri Lankan forces committed war crimes during the final months of the country’s civil war and called for an international investigation.

In a scathing report, the International Crisis Group said tens of thousands of civilians were killed in shelling and other violence in the last battles of the quarter-century conflict between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended last May.

• From wire dispatches and staff reports