■ India
Homemade bomb kills seven
A gas canister filled with explosives was set off in a parked car as a paramilitary convoy passed by yesterday, injuring seven troopers in a bus, police in India's violence-wracked Jammu-Kashmir state said. An unidentified caller to a local news agency claimed responsibility on behalf of two Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups, but there was no way to confirm the truth of the caller's statement. The Indian-made Ambassador car was parked on the roadside in the Hyderpora suburb of Srinagar. When a convoy passed carrying paramilitary troopers -- who have fought Islamic militants during a 14-year insurgency -- the bomb was triggered, injuring seven troopers, said Javed Gilani, senior superintendent of police.
■ Afghanistan
Rockets fired at US base
About a dozen rockets were fired at the main US base in eastern Afghanistan, but there were no reports of casualties, Afghan officials said yesterday. The rockets smashed into fields near Khost airport, about 150km south of Kabul, at about 11pm on Wednesday evening, said Hayatullah Taniwal, a spokesman for the provincial governor. "Our sources say no one was hurt," Taniwal said. "So many rockets have never been fired at the airport before." He said the rockets were fired from mountains to the south of the city. "This was done by remnants of al-Qaeda because that area is close to the Pakistani border," Taniwal said, without providing any evidence for his assertion.
■ Sri Lanka
Tamils back ceasefire
The Tamil Tiger rebel group has promised Norwegian peace brokers it will honor a cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government despite a power struggle between government leaders that has blocked peace efforts, a pro-rebel report said yesterday. On Wednesday, Norwegian officials met Tamil guerrilla leaders in London for the first time since suspending mediation efforts in November, when the political crisis began, the TamilNet Web site said. Peace broker Erik Solheim met the rebels' London-based chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham, and discussed the political situation.
■ South Korea
US soldier on trial
A US soldier went on trial yesterday on charges of fleeing a drunk-driving accident that killed a South Korean woman. Sergeant Jerry Onken, 33, of Onamia, Minnesota, was the first US soldier to be handed over to South Korean authorities for custody before a trial. Surrendering troops to South Korean courts for pretrial jailing was part of a 2001 revision of the Status of Forces Agreement giving South Korea greater authority over accused US soldiers. Prosecutors said the off-duty Onken was under the influence of alcohol when he collided with another vehicle near Seoul in November last year. A 22-year-old Korean woman died in the crash, and prosecutors said Onken fled the scene.
■ China
SARS patients recover
China's two suspected SARS patients are to be released from hospital within the week, an official said, as the World Health Organization (WHO) awaited test results yesterday to determine whether they indeed had contracted the virus. The two were expected to be released on Jan. 22, the Guangzhou Daily reported People's No 8 Hospital director Tang Xiaoping as saying.
■ Spain
Spiritual leader jailed
A Muslim spiritual leader who wrote a book telling Muslim men how to beat their wives was sentenced to 15 months in prison for encouraging violence against women, a court in Barcelona announced Wednesday. In his 120-page book, Women in Islam, Mohamed Kamal Mostafa, imam of the southern Spanish town of Fuengirola, urged husbands not to hit their wives on sensitive parts of the body or with force but, rather, "on hands and feet, using a light rod so that the blows don't leave scars or bruises," according to the sentencing document, dated Monday and released Wednesday.
■ Russia
Rebels kill seven soldiers
Rebel attacks killed seven Russian soldiers in Chechnya and four others died when trying to defuse a land mine, officials said Wednesday. Six of the soldiers died as Russian military positions came under fire a total of 19 times over the previous 24 hours, said an official in the Kremlin-backed Chechen administration. Another was killed in clash with rebels near the village of Chiri-Yurt, at the edge of the foothills of the mountains where rebels take shelter, the official said on condition of anonymity. The official and Russian news reports said four sappers were killed when a land mine they were trying to defuse exploded in the Shatoi region deep in the mountains.
■ Guatemala
New president takes office
Landowner and businessman Oscar Berger took office as Guatemala's new president on Wednesday, ending four years of controversial rule by the party led by former dictator Efrain Rios Montt. Berger promised to create jobs and increase investment while tackling the rampant corruption that critics say characterized the rule of the outgoing Guatemalan Republican Front in the Central American nation. "We need to eliminate from public institutions any suspicion of impunity and corruption," he said at the inauguration ceremony.
■ Iraq
Troop suicides jump
The top health official in the Pentagon said there were at least 21 suicides last year among troops serving in Iraq. The official, Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said 18 of the deaths were Army soldiers. He said the rate was a slight increase over past years. "We don't see any trend there, in looking at these cases, that tells us that there's more that we might be doing -- something different that we might be doing -- to prevent what we've seen," Winkenwerder said.
■ United Kingdom
Teen told not to say `grass'
He cannot mention the green stuff which is a feature of gardens everywhere. If he does, he could face up to five years in custody. Zachary Tutin, a 14-year-old from Manchester in northern England, has been made the subject of an anti-social-behavior order which prohibits him from using the word "grass," after he repeatedly abused his neighbors, claiming that they were police informers. The order bans him from saying grass at any time in England and Wales until 2010. But grass has a number of meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as: "Herbage of which the blades or leaves and stalks are eaten by cattle, sheep, horses, etc," and "low-growing plants blanketing the ground," as well as "marijuana, esp as smoked. slang (orig US)," in addition to "a police informer."
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
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