Azerbaijan

7-day mourning planned for former president

Lighting candles and laying pink carnations on the steps of his office, mourners grieved Saturday for former Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliev, the one-time communist who stifled dissent and realigned his predominantly Muslim country closer to the United States.

The 80-year-old leader’s death Friday at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio puts the focus now on his son and successor amid questions about whether he can carry on his father’s legacy in this former Soviet republic of 8 million.

Television channels replaced their normal programming with documentaries on the leader known as “Grandpa” and with somber classical music — a Soviet-era tradition marking a leader’s death.

Saudi Arabia

Third radical cleric renounces militancy

A jailed Muslim cleric renounced his calls for Islamic militants to attack non-Muslims during an interview aired on state-run TV on Saturday, the third major Saudi clergyman to recant in less than a month.

Ahmad al-Khalidi urged militants to “lay down their arms, reintegrate into society, return to their brothers because they are not our enemies, and we are not their enemies.”

Al-Khalidi was one of three radical clerics who publicly praised Islamic militants believed linked to the May 11 attacks on Western residential compounds in Riyadh.

Saudi authorities arrested the three men in May. They were detained during an anti-terror sweep and were charged with advocating violence in sermons.

Germany

Thousands of students protest university cuts

Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of three German cities Saturday, protesting government plans to slash funding for universities.

More than 20,000 students marched in Berlin, carrying banners that said “Berlin without education is like a motor without gas” and “Don’t leave education out in the rain.”

Frankfurt and Leipzig were also the scenes of large demonstrations Saturday.

German universities do not charge tuition, and all students who qualify have the right to attend. But with the country facing one of its worst financial crises in years, the government says it must cut back on its generous social benefits system, including higher education.

West Bank

Renowned Palestinian poet Toukan dies at 86

Renowned Palestinian poet Fadwa Toukan, who chronicled the suffering of her people under Israeli occupation, has died in her home city of Nablus. She was 86.

Toukan died Friday in a Nablus hospital, doctors said.

Praised as the “poet of Palestine” for her depictions of life under Israeli rule, Toukan also was an avid promoter of woman’s rights and through her poetry reflected the hardships faced by women in the male-dominated Arab world.