Israeli lawmakers OK Gaza Strip plan

Jerusalem

The Israeli parliament Wednesday gave its final approval to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, passing a bill that sets compensation for evacuated settlers and penalties for those resisting removal.

After two days of debate, lawmakers voted 59 to 40 with five abstentions in favor of the bill, a key step toward the pullout, which is supposed to take place this summer. The settler’s umbrella council called the decision a “black day for democracy.”

Compensation for the 8,500 settlers to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements will total $1 billion, with families receiving between $200,000 and $500,000 each for homes, businesses and lost jobs.

According to the bill, people resisting evacuation could face jail terms of six months to two years.

The Israeli Cabinet is expected to authorize an initial removal of settlements in a vote Sunday.

North Korea marks leader’s birthday

Seoul, South Korea North Korea marked the 63rd birthday of leader Kim Jong Il amid heightened nuclear tensions on Wednesday, comparing Kim to a daring porcupine routing an arrogant United States that swaggers like a tiger.

But South Korea dampened the Pyongyang’s festive mood, saying there will be no large-scale economic cooperation until the dispute over the communist North’s nuclear weapons programs is resolved.

North Korea flouted the international community last Thursday by announcing it had nuclear weapons and was staying away from international nuclear talks where the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have urged it to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

“The Americans swagger like a tiger around the world, but they whimper before our republic as the tiger does before the porcupine,” Pyongyang Radio said.

Earlier Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said he told U.S. officials during a weeklong trip to Washington that his country has no plans to begin large-scale economic cooperation with the North before the North Korea agrees to end the nuclear dispute.

Church to consider women bishops

London Eleven years after the Church of England first began ordaining women as priests, its governing body voted on Wednesday to consider allowing females to become bishops.

The vote was a victory by reformists over objections by conservatives and evangelists. It came at a time when disagreements over the issue of homosexuality have deeply divided the church into similar factions.

“There are those who feel that as a matter of justice, women priests should now be eligible … and that the church’s credibility is being damaged … because of the bar on women being bishops,” said the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, as he opened the debate.

“There are others, however, who argue that now is not the right time,” he said. “The church is facing a number of serious issues which threaten to divide it. Is this really the time to introduce another cause of division?”

But Gerald O’Brien, a synod member, said 1,000 British parishes have said they would not want women priests to replace the male ones they now have, given the “significantly different beliefs” the females have.

Opponents in the church’s growing ranks of conservatives and evangelicals believe there is no biblical precedent for women bishops since Christ’s apostles all were male, and that it is wrong for women to have authority over men in a religious capacity.

World’s population getting older, urban

United Nations

Half the world’s population will live in cities in two years, the U.N. chief said Wednesday, adding that the number of elderly people is rising rapidly, prompting a need for economic and social changes.

The biggest problem for developing countries was high mortality rates, while wealthy countries faced falling birth rates and the decline in the working-age population, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report to the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

Annan said the population of all countries will continue to age substantially, but the increase will be faster in developing countries and social security systems that depend on workers to pay for those who are retired will be affected.

More people also are living in cities, the report found. It predicted that half the world will live in urban areas by 2007. In less developed regions, the number of urban dwellers will equal the number of rural dwellers by 2017, the report said.

The United States is the most highly urbanized area of the world with 87 percent of its population living in cities. Latin America and the Caribbean followed, with 78 percent of the population living in urban areas, the report said.

In 1950 only two cities had 10 million inhabitants or more: the New York-Newark, N.J., area with a population of 12.3 million and Tokyo with 11.3 million.

Today, the report said, 20 cities have more than 10 million inhabitants.