■INDIA
Serial bombs kill at least 48
Eleven bomb blasts in quick succession yesterday ripped through the main city of India’s troubled northeastern Assam state and three other towns, killing at least 48 people and wounding 235, police said. No one has claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts. Assam has been a focus of a separatist insurgency for decades, but it has also recently suffered bomb attacks blamed on Islamist militants from Bangladesh. Firefighters doused the smoldering remains of cars and motorcycles at one of the blast sites in Guwahati. One of the blasts targeted a high-security zone with a court as well as offices and the homes of senior police officials. Many of the blasts were in crowded markets in the state. Twenty-five people were killed in four blasts in Guwahati and the remainder in the other three towns in the state.
■ISRAEL
Oldest Hebrew text found
A ceramic shard found in the ruins of the ancient town of Khirbet Qeiyafa south of Jerusalem bears the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered, an archeologist said. He says the find could provide an important glimpse into the culture and language of the Holy Land at the time of the Bible. Archeologist Yossi Garfinkel of Hebrew University says the five lines of faded characters written 3,000 years ago suggest a powerful Israelite kingdom existed at the time of the Old Testament’s King David. The shard was found in a site that overlooks the scene of the slingshot showdown between David and Goliath. Other scholars are reluctant to embrace Garfinkel’s interpretation. His understanding of the finds were made public yesterday.
■UKRAINE
Russia accused of info war
Russia is waging an “information war” against Ukraine to try to push it out of lucrative arms markets, the head of Ukraine’s main arms export agency was quoted as saying on Wednesday. In comments posted on the Ukrainian president’s Web site, Serhiy Bondarchuk said Russian allegations that Ukraine had made illegal arms sales, specifically to Georgia, were aimed at trying to secure control over key markets. “Russia has launched an unprecedented, large-scale information war on Ukraine,” Bondarchuk, head of the Ukrspetsexport agency, said in a statement. “Although Russia is formally our strategic partner, it is also trying, through rough and often dirty means, to compete with Ukraine on the key sections of today’s arms market.” He said this was reflected in the recent “wave of hysteria” of allegations that Ukraine had supplied arms illegally to Georgia. Russia fought Georgia in a five-day war in August.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Troops deafened by combat
Hundreds of British soldiers who have served in Afghanistan have had their hearing permanently damaged because of the noise of intense combat, a newspaper reported yesterday. Requests by the Times under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that in one regiment, nearly one in 10 soldiers have hearing defects that could bar them from further frontline service and hamper their chances of a civilian job. The Royal British Legion veterans organization said it had dealt with 1,195 hearing loss claims against the Ministry of Defense in the past three years. The Times reported 37 out of 411 soldiers in the Grenadier Guards have severe hearing problems. Nearly 240 of 691 soldiers in the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglians, back from Afghanistan last October, also suffered difficulties.
■PERU
Mob torches police station
Angry villagers in the northern jungle torched a police station a day after 71 people were hurt in a clash between police and protesters in the south. RPP radio says a 1,000-strong mob set fire to the station and took 25 officers captive in San Martin province. They reportedly were angered when police threw tear gas near a school and several children were affected. Mounting unrest has spread to five provinces as demonstrators press a variety of demands with local authorities or the central government.
■PERU
Faith healers back Obama
US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama apparently can count on the support of a majority of Peruvian faith healers. Each of the 11 shamans in a faith-healing organization said on Wednesday that they had foreseen victory in the election: nine for Democrat Obama and two for his Republican rival John McCain. Blowing incense over a sacred llama fetus perched on a bed of coca leaves next to posters of the leading candidates, the shamans shook rattles, chanted “up, Obama, up!” and threw flowers at their images. “Obama is growing stronger, I’ve seen that he has the spiritual support of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy to protect him,” said Juan Osco, president of the Apus-Inka healers association. “He’s going to win.”
■MEXICO
Man admits to killings
A man temporarily extradited from the US has told a court he and two other men killed at least 10 women in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Thirty-year-old Jose Granados acknowledged to a judge on Wednesday that they killed the women from about 1993 to 2006. He testified that one was buried in his back yard. Granados said Edgar Alvarez, who was sentenced to 36 years in prison in one of the killings, masterminded the kidnappings and killings. Chihuahua state prosecutor’s spokesman Alejandro Pariente said Granados would be sent back to the US to finish serving a three-year term for immigration violations while his trial continues in Mexico.
■UNITED STATES
Oil well explosion kills two
Authorities say an oil well explosion in southern Illinois killed two people and injured five. Medical helicopters flew four of the injured victims from the scene of the explosion on Wednesday morning west of Crossville. Anita Sullivan of the White County Sheriff’s Department said Mason Well Servicing was working to cement a finished well when the explosion occurred. The fire was under control by the afternoon. Messages left for the company and the county coroner were not immediately returned.
■UNITED STATES
Security system delayed
A major Bush administration post-Sept. 11, 2001, security program is facing another delay. This time an important system collapsed, and no backup was in place to continue operations. Last week, a power surge hit a government building in Maryland that houses the technology to activate special identification cards for workers with access to seaports. The surge knocked out a computer system needed by some 120,000 workers to activate their cards today. The system was created to help ensure potential terrorists lack access to sensitive security areas of US seaports. The deadlilne has been pushed back to Dec. 1, according to the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees the program.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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