ISLAMABAD

Pakistan embracing request for wind farm construction 

Pakistan is ready to approve a Norwegian company’s request to build a 150-megawatt wind farm, the first part of a $1 billion plan that could boost by a third the announced capacity for clean-energy power plants.

Pakistan is seeking to diversify its energy supplies away from oil and gas and boost electricity production. The nation has a power deficit of 3.6 gigawatts a day, or more than the output of two nuclear reactors, triggering 12-hour blackouts that cause riots in cities nationwide.

The Alternative Energy Development Board is willing to allow a project proposed by NBT AS, a Lysaker-based clean energy company that plans to build the facility in the Sindh province, according to Said Arif Alauddin, chief executive of the government agency.

DUBLIN

Diocese ignored sex-abuse reporting rule, probe finds

A new investigation into the Catholic Church’s chronic cover-up of child abuse found Wednesday that a rural diocese and its bishop ignored Irish church rules requiring all suspected molestation cases to be reported to police — and the Vatican encouraged this concealment.

The government, which ordered the probe into 1996-2009 cover-ups in the County Cork diocese of Cloyne, warned that parishes across Ireland could pose a continuing danger to children’s welfare today given Cloyne’s claims to be following church child-protection policy while actually ignoring it. 

CAIRO

Police officers fired en masse to meet protesters’ demand

Egypt’s government sacked nearly 700 top police officers Wednesday, state television reported, the start of a promised cleansing of a force blamed for chronic abuses during the rule of Hosni Mubarak.

The move meets a key demand of protesters encamped in Cairo’s Tahrir Square who are frustrated by the slow pace of change since an 18-day uprising forced the long-entrenched president from office in February.

In another overture to protesters, Egypt’s state news agency reported that parliamentary elections, which had been slated for September, would be postponed by a month or two.

LONDON

WikiLeaks lawyers attack arrest warrant’s integrity

Lawyers for Julian Assange on Wednesday focused their fight against the WikiLeaks chief’s extradition to Sweden on technicalities — trying to punch holes through the warrant seeking his arrest.

Assange is seeking to overturn a Feb. 24 judgment ordering him to Sweden for questioning on allegations of rape and molestation..

Assange’s new legal team attacked the arrest warrant’s integrity on the final day of a two-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, saying that the allegations against the WikiLeaks founder weren’t backed by his accusers’ testimony and that it was improperly issued.

The two judges said they would give their ruling at a later date.

– From news service reports