First Dutch animal cops to start training

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Dial 112 if you're in trouble. Dial 144 if your dog is.

From October, police officers will be trained to answer the call, ready to enforce laws protecting pets, livestock and wildlife against abuse, the government announced Friday.

The first country to elect an animal rights party to parliament will begin training 125 police officers next month, who "will be 100 percent dedicated to tackling animal abuse," said Justice Ministry spokesman Job van de Sande.

The recruits will be drawn from the regular police force, already trained to fight armed criminals. A new special animal emergency number, 144, will also go into effect.

Marianne Thieme, leader of the Party for Animals, said last year the national animal protection agency gets some 8,000 reports of abuse each year.

But the driving force behind the creation of the animal cops was the Freedom Party of anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, which campaigned for better livestock welfare at national elections last year.

Wilders told The Associated Press his party pushed for the new corps during negotiations to form the current government. His party is not in the minority government but supports it on important votes in return for concessions, such as on tightening immigration.

"We strongly believe in tougher penalties for people who mistreat animals and police who are specialized in that," Wilders said in a text message to the AP. "Animal welfare is an important issue to may people and to us."

The government said prosecutors will also begin demanding tougher sentences for those convicted of abusing animals.

The old empire watches the royal wedding

NEW DELHI – They gathered Friday in distant outposts of what used to be the British empire, a world of not-quite-subjects watching the wedding of the heir to the crown.

In New Zealand, they celebrated the Kiwi godmother to Kate Middleton's father (Brenda McAdam told national radio she and her late husband became friends with Kate's grandfather in the 1940s). In Hong Kong, there was Chinese-language TV commentary from a well-known wedding designer.

And in India, once the jewel of the empire, they sat transfixed in front of millions of televisions.

"Of course I'm watching. It's the biggest event of the century," said Jasmine Bhomia, an 18-year-old student in New Delhi — who then added that this wedding would, one day, be eclipsed by Prince Harry's.

Then there was Australia, where pubs across the country cashed in on the frenzy with wedding bashes that featured everything from dress contests to bouquet-tossing competitions.

At the AB Hotel, a Sydney pub decorated with British flags and fake gold crowns, dozens of people gathered to watch.

"These events are sort of like a football game to guys," said Lana Leach, a 26-year-old from Amsterdam and yet another Harry fan ("the bad boy," she sighed).

"This is my king getting married!" she said, eyebrows raised, as she sat among a cluster of friends.

"Future king," interjected her friend Barbara Vos, 25, a glass of wine in one hand, a cluster of balloons in the other.

Then Leach made her prediction: "I give it five years before Kate goes off with Harry."

England once governed a huge swath of the planet, with millions of subjects from the Caribbean to East Africa to India. Though the empire is long gone, some former colonies, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, still retain the British monarch as their head of state. Dozens more countries retain looser ties, meeting one another for financial summits and sporting events.

In some former colonies, the wedding hoopla has raised the prickly issue of whether the British monarch should be dumped.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been outspoken about her hopes Australia would drop its royal ties and become a republic, leading some to question why she would attend the wedding.

"There are many republicans in Australia. There are also many Australians who want to see our continued ties to the monarchy," Gillard told reporters in South Korea earlier this week when asked about the controversy.

"I received an invitation to go to the royal wedding and I think — on behalf of the nation — it's appropriate that I'm there."

In New Zealand, some 300 people gathered to toast the wedding at a hotel in the northern city of Auckland, an event hosted by the organization Monarchy New Zealand.

Those who lean toward a republic didn't celebrate, joining "the ambivalent majority" who don't really care, said Lewis Holden of New Zealand Republic.

"You can't really attack someone for getting married, and we obviously wish William and Kate all the best. Our only comment is that it really shouldn't have anything to do with us in New Zealand, 12,000 miles away," he said.

Even the doting non-subjects could not resist an occasional jab.

The Hindustan Times, one of India's largest-circulation English-language newspapers, had an entire page of glowing stories about the royal couple.

Still, it couldn't resist noting something on page 1: Kate, the newspaper said, would be sporting a spray-on tan for the ceremony.

Foreign victims identified in Morocco cafe attack

MARRAKECH, Morocco – The international police agency Interpol called the attack on a crowded tourist cafe in Morocco a suspected suicide bombing, as the government said Friday that two Canadians, two French citizens, a Dutchman and two Moroccans were among 15 killed.

Police sought to restore calm to the jewel of Morocco's tourism industry the day after one of the country's worst terrorist attacks, and investigators worked to determine how it was carried out and who was responsible.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the death toll was 15, and that seven of the dead have been identified. The state news agency MAP had earlier put the death toll at 16. More than 20 people were wounded.

Police were at the fabled Marrakech square searching for clues Friday, keeping back onlookers who showed up to see the dramatic sight. Flowers for the dead lay on the ground of the plaza.

Morocco's deadliest attack in eight years hit the heart of the city's bustling old quarter, in Djemma el-Fna square, one of the top attractions in a country that depends heavily on tourism.

"Yesterday the plaza was full, and we had just passed in front of the cafe. ... There was a big detonation, a very big detonation, which made us stay still and lower our heads. We saw a very big plume of smoke, and a lot of objects go up in the air," said Stephane Le Pretre, a 46-year-old tourist from Rouen in northwest France, traveling with his children.

They watched sheets being lain across bodies of the dead.

"We slept very badly last night, didn't eat much. We are stressed, we feel that we could have been there," he said Friday.

Government spokesman Khalid Naciri told the AP it was too soon to lay blame for what he called a terrorist attack. But he noted that Morocco regularly dismantles cells linked to al-Qaida, and says it has disrupted several plots.

Authorities were struggling to coordinate the response to the attack. Some questioned whether it would prompt a new security crackdown like the one after suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003, or undermine constitutional changes that King Mohamed VI recently pledged in response to protests.

Government spokesman Naciri said Friday that the attack would not thwart the king's promised reforms.

The Israeli consul in Shanghai, Jackie Eldan, identified two of the dead as a Jewish couple who lived in Shanghai — an Israeli citizen and her Moroccan husband, They were visiting his parents in Casablanca and had taken a day trip to Marrakech, leaving their 3-year-old son with his grandparents.

"They took a day off to go to Marrakech and left the child with the family. To their misfortune, they were in the cafe on the second floor" when the bombing hit, Eldan told Israeli station Army Radio on Friday.

MAP said two people died of injuries in the hospital. The emergency room chief at Marrakech's main Tofail Hospital told The Associated Press that one of the injured died at the hospital and another en route in an ambulance.

Visitors gather on the iconic square to watch snake charmers, storytellers, jugglers and local musicians, filling the cafes that ring the edges of the square on the route to the city's major open-air souk, or market.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the "cowardly attack" and promised support for Morocco, a steady U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism.

France, Morocco's former colonial ruler, has sent psychologists and extra staff to the consulate in Marrakech, and is helping investigate, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

"We don't have the least indication or suspicion that French interests or people were targeted," Valero said.

Interpol, which said in a statement Friday that it was a suspected suicide bombing, offered its assistance in the investigation, including disaster victim identification specialists and support from terrorism investigators.

Al-Qaida's affiliate in North Africa stages regular attacks and kidnappings in neighboring Algeria. Morocco, however, has been mostly peaceful since it was hit by five simultaneous terrorist bombings in Casablanca in 2003 that killed 33 people and a dozen bombers.

Moroccan authorities have rounded up thousands of purported terror suspects in recent years and while they "regularly discover terrorist cells ... nothing led us to foresee an act of this magnitude," Naciri said.