- Sydney - Australia was embroiled in a political brawl yesterday, after its defence minister said access to Iraq's oil was a key reason for keeping troops there. The admission embarrassed the prime minister, John Howard, and was at sharp odds with the government's insistence that oil was not a reason for invading Iraq in 2003, or for stationing soldiers there since.
- Rome - The Vatican yesterday accused organizers of an Internet poll to find the seven new "wonders of the world" of deliberately ignoring Christian monuments. Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, who heads the Vatican's pontifical commission for culture and archeology, said the exclusion of Christian works of art such as Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel was "surprising, inexplicable, even suspicious."
- Port Harcourt, Nigeria - Armed men kidnapped a 3-year-old British girl in Nigeria yesterday, police and witnesses said, heightening a foreign hostage crisis in the country's main oil-producing zone. Police said Margaret Hill, whose father is a British expatriate resident and whose mother is Nigerian, was snatched at gunpoint by five men in Port Harcourt as she was being dropped off for school.
- Saturn - The weirdest moon of Saturn just might be Hyperion, as closeup photos show it looks like an orbiting sponge. In a paper published in yesterday's issue of Nature, scientists report that the unique appearance of Hyperion probably results from its extremely low density. The little moon is barely more than half the density of water, far less dense than the rock in Earth-like planets.
- Turkey - Turkey's constitutional court yesterday rejected demands to annul government reforms introducing the election of the president by popular vote, a major victory for the Islamist-rooted ruling party. The ruling means that President Ahmet Necdet Sezer will now submit the proposed reforms to a referendum, widely expected to be held in the fall.
- Belgium - A court in Brussels yesterday sentenced a former Rwandan army officer to 20 years in prison for killing 20 Belgian UN peacekeepers and an "undetermined number" of Rwandans in 1994. Prosecutors had requested a life term for 55-year-old Bernard Ntuyahaga, who was found guilty on Wednesday of the killings, but the 12-member jury showed clemency because he had "saved the lives of some Tutsis, out of friendship".
- Belgium - A dinner party ended with a gruesome midnight discovery when a helpful guest stored the leftovers in the freezer and discovered the body of her host's wife. The guest fled Didier Charron's house in the small town of Verviers and called police, who not only found the corpse of Chantal, 46, but also that of her son Bryan, 11. Mr. Charron, 41, who will appear in court today, was Bryan's stepfather and was well known to police for his violent fights with his wife, according to the Brussels public prosecutor.
- Britain - Three Islamist extremists were jailed yesterday for engaging in "cyber-jihad" by inciting terrorism on the Internet. They promoted martyrdom and holy war through online forums and websites, including discussions about a plot by 45 doctors to explode a car bomb at a U.S. naval base. It was the first prosecution based entirely on the distribution of jihadi material via the Internet. All three sat through a two-month trial before changing their pleas to guilty this week at Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London.
- Britain - Omar Altimimi, a 37-year-old Muslim man, was convicted on terrorism-related charges yesterday following a month-long trial in Manchester. Mr. Altimimi was convicted of six offences under the terrorism act and two under the proceeds of crime act. It is the first British terror trial since the July 7, 2005 attacks to take place outside of London. Police said Mr. Altimimi was probably preparing an attack and possessed terrorism manuals.
- France - Several farms were sealed off in eastern France and tighter rules were applied to poultry breeders yesterday, after three dead swans tested positive for the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu. The first instance of bird flu in France since early 2006 followed the discovery of a case in eastern Germany on Tuesday.
- Colombia - Much of Colombia came to a standstill yesterday, as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against leftist rebels accused last week of killing 11 provincial lawmakers they were holding hostage. The demonstrators took to the streets in major cities and small towns, aiming their outrage at the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has long used kidnapping as a tool of war against the state.
- United States - A man has been arrested for illegal possession of a knife outside Barack Obama's hotel as fears grow about threats to kill the man hoping to become the first black U.S. president. Davit Zakaryan, 24, was questioned and searched after Mr. Obama's Secret Service guards saw him 'loitering' outside the hotel in Ottumwa, Iowa, just before the Democratic candidate was about to start a day of campaigning. It is believed agents became suspicious because they recalled seeing Mr. Zakaryan's car, with Ohio plates, at an Obama event the previous day.
- Jerusalem - In the most serious Israeli-Palestinian fighting in several months, Israeli troops killed at least 11 Hamas gunmen in the Gaze Strip yesterday. Quoting unnamed army sources, Israel's Ynetnews website characterized the Israeli operation as defensive in nature, designed to prevent Palestinians from venturing near the border, where there was a failed attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers recently, and to search for arms caches and tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt.
Labels: World News
posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 06, 2007
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