DUBLIN

Ireland faces national revolt over annual property tax

Debt-mired Ireland is facing a revolt over its new property tax.

The government says 1 million of the country’s 1.6 million households failed to pay the annual charge by Saturday’s deadline.

About 5,000 anti-tax protesters marched through central Dublin to the conference of the governing Fine Gael party.

The crowd outside the Dublin Convention Centre carried signs denouncing government leaders as snakes and dictators, and tried to block party members from entering or exiting the building.

BEIRUT

Syrians reject envoy’s call for halting violence first

Syria rejected international envoy Kofi Annan’s call for the regime to halt violence first just days after the government agreed to a cease-fire plan. A senior official declared victory over the opposition.

It was the government’s first response to an appeal by Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, to stop military operations first as “the stronger party” in a “gesture of good faith” to the lightly armed opposition. Annan brokered the agreement aimed at stopping the bloodshed and Assad agreed to it Monday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi said the government will not pull tanks and troops from towns and cities engulfed by unrest before life returns to normal there.

ROME

Fugitive Italian banker held after being tracked on Web

A fugitive Italian banker implicated in the “Pizza Connection” drug and money laundering trial has been detained in Thailand after Italian authorities tracked his whereabouts on Facebook, authorities said Saturday.

Italy’s highest court in 2009 upheld the 2006 conviction and nine-year prison sentence against Vito

Roberto Palazzolo for Mafia association. Prosecutors allege that while working in Switzerland as a banker, Palazzolo laundered money for some of Italy’s top mobsters, a charge he denies.

Palazzolo’s attorney, Baldassare Lauria, said Saturday his client had been detained by Thai police at Bangkok’s airport on an Italian extradition request. He said he planned to fight extradition.

The “Pizza Connection” investigation broke a $1.6 billion heroin and cocaine smuggling operation that used New York pizzerias as fronts from 1975 to 1984.

TAMMAN, Jordan

Jordan’s security forces arrest activists at rally

Jordanian security forces arrested 12 activists for insulting the country’s King Abdullah II in a rally in the capital Saturday, a police official said.

He said the 12 – 11 men and one woman – were also being questioned for disturbing public order by blocking traffic in a key area of Amman near the prime minister’s office and foreign diplomatic missions.

The 12 were among 100 protesters demanding the release of two dozen other activists charged with inciting violent riots in the south of the country earlier this month.

ALLENTOWN, Pa.

Mexican national blocked from attending son’s funeral

A Mexican national said he has been barred from entering the United States to bury his 10-year-old son, a U.S. citizen who died Tuesday in a house fire in northeastern Pennsylvania that killed three other people.

Attorneys for Fidelmar “Fidel” Merlos-Lopez are trying to win humanitarian parole so he can attend the funeral Monday, but say U.S. Customs and Border Protection has rebuffed their efforts.

Damien Lopez died in a Shenandoah row house along with his cousin, aunt and 7-month-old half-brother.

Philadelphia-based immigration lawyer Elizabeth Surin said her client, 34, has been waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border at Laredo, Texas, since the fire.