World scene
October 20, 2008
AFGHANISTAN
Taliban stop bus, kill 30 passengers
KANDAHAR | Taliban militants stopped a bus traveling on Afghanistan's main highway through a dangerous part of the country's south, seized about 50 people on board and killed about 30 of them, officials said Sunday.
A Taliban spokesman took responsibility for the attack but said militants killed 27 Afghan soldiers. Afghan officials said that no soldiers were aboard and that all the victims were civilians.
Militants stopped the bus traveling in a two-bus convoy in a Taliban-controlled area about 40 miles west of Kandahar, said provincial police chief Matiullah Khan.
He said two buses had been traveling together, and the militants had tried to stop the first one but failed. He said the insurgents fired at the first bus, killing a child on board.
SUDAN
9 Chinese workers kidnapped
KHARTOUM | Kidnappers have snatched nine Chinese oil workers in central Sudan, the third such incident of the past year in the oil-producing region, the Sudanese government and diplomats said Sunday.
The government blamed a Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, for the kidnapping. Diplomats, however, said the captors were probably local tribesmen.
Chinese Embassy spokesman Raymond Yu said the kidnappers abducted the workers on Saturday in South Kordofan, source of a large part of Sudan's oil wealth. China is the biggest foreign investor in the African country.
NETHERLANDS
Government injects $13 billion in ING
AMSTERDAM | The Dutch government said Sunday that it will inject $13.4 billion into ING Groep NV to shore up the bank and insurance company amid market rumors it was running out of capital.
Finance Minister Wouter Bos said the deal was necessary given the recent extreme volatility of global financial markets.
The move is the latest case of a government stepping in to help shore up the books of a financial company hammered by the worldwide credit crisis. Among moves in the U.S., the Federal Reserve is loaning American International Group $123 billion, while the government plans to buy about $250 billion in major bank stocks. In Europe, the German government helped bail out mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate, and Britain partially nationalized lender Bradford & Bingley.
CHINA
Ex-Beijing official sentenced in graft
BEIJING | A former Beijing vice mayor in charge of overseeing Olympic construction projects has been given a suspended death sentence for corruption, a court said Sunday, in a stern warning to wayward communist officials.
The Intermediate People's Court in Hengshui, a city outside Beijing, delivered the sentence Saturday after finding Liu Zhihua guilty of taking bribes.
The sentence will be commuted to life in prison in two years if Liu shows good behavior.
Before his sudden dismissal in 2006 for unspecified corruption, Liu was in charge of urban development in the Chinese capital and headed the office overseeing the $40 billion being spent by the city on Olympics-related infrastructure projects.
VENEZUELA
Power blackout hits capital
CARACAS | A large power blackout hit Venezuela on Sunday in the latest of a series of electricity grid failures that have become a political liability for President Hugo Chavez.
Oil operations in one of the world's largest crude exporters were unaffected by the outage because they use separate grids from residential networks, a state oil company spokesman said.
Sunday's blackout hit areas in and around the capital Caracas, at least three other major cities and a tourist coastal region, residents said. A top electricity official told state television that eight central states were affected, although power was gradually being restored in some areas.
CUBA
Russian Orthodox cathedral opens
HAVANA | Cuba's first Russian Orthodox cathedral was consecrated Sunday amid church bells, liturgical chants and the presence of President Raul Castro, in a sign of good will toward the island's former chief benefactor.
Russian diplomats and members of Cuba's dwindling Russian community crowded into the whitewashed seaside cathedral, which is topped by a gleaming gold dome.
Dressed in a dark suit and tie, Mr. Castro attended the opening but left before the liturgical service that followed. His good relations with Russian officials date to Soviet times, and his older brother, Fidel, attended the consecration of a nearby Orthodox church for Greek and other non-Russian Orthodox Christians in 2004.
SOUTH AFRICA
Ex-minister set to form new party
JOHANNESBURG | South Africa's former defense minister has announced that a breakaway party will be launched, splitting the ruling African National Congress and challenging its years of dominance.
"We are going to go and set up a party," Mosiuoa Lekota said in remarks broadcast on South Africa's SAfm radio. It would be set up at a national congress that he has called for Nov. 2, he said.
The move, which was expected, is likely to raise tensions in the biggest political shake-up in the 96-year history of the ANC, which has ruled since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Mr. Lekota, who was suspended from the ANC for threatening to form a new party, has made a wide appeal to South Africans to attend the national congress to discuss what he says are major flaws in the ANC leadership and plan future strategy.
SOMALIA
Pirates get ransom, release Thai ship
MOGADISHU | It's been a busy, profitable week for Somali pirates: They hijacked one South Korean bulk carrier Wednesday, released another South Korean cargo ship Thursday and let a hijacked Thai ship go Saturday after getting a ransom.
Somali official Ali Abdi Aware reported the release of the Thai ship, but said Sunday it was not clear exactly how much money was paid.
Mr. Aware, the minister for foreign affairs for the semiautonomous northern Somali region of Puntland, said Puntland forces will be hunting for the pirates. Earlier this week, Puntland forces freed a Panama-flagged cargo ship from pirates in a gunbattle that killed one soldier.
Nearly a dozen ships and more than 200 crew members remain in the hands of pirates, including the hijacked Ukrainian arms ship MV Faina, for which pirates have demanded an $8 million ransom.
U.S. warships still surround the Faina to keep the pirates from unloading its cargo of battle tanks and heavy weapons.
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