Kerry visits area struck by quake

Meira, Pakistan Former U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry toured earthquake-devastated parts of northern Pakistan on Saturday, distributing school uniforms and meeting local leaders at a tent village funded partly by both the United States and communist Cuba.

The visit came amid warnings that heavy snow would blanket the quake zone over the next four to five days, possibly triggering avalanches along the jagged peaks and promising more misery for the 3.5 million people left homeless by the Oct. 8 quake.

Kerry toured a camp housing some 18,000 people who survived the 7.6-magnitude quake, which killed 87,000 people, mostly in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and the country’s North West Frontier Province. There were 1,350 deaths in India’s portion of Kashmir.

“We’re sorry you have to go through this,” said Kerry.

Italian women march to keep abortion legal

Rome Tens of thousands of women marched through Milan on Saturday to demand Italy keep its liberal abortion law intact while gays rallied in Rome to push for legal recognition for homosexual couples.

Both topics have become issues in Italy’s election campaign, and the Roman Catholic Church and ministers in Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government were scathing in denouncing the rallies.

“These demonstrators are really nauseating,” Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, a member of the right-wing Northern League, was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. “Family is a serious thing, based on love between a man and a woman.”