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Published: January 4, 2009
Sri Lanka continues its fight with rebels
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Sri Lankan forces launched air strikes and ground assaults on ethnic Tamil rebels in the north yesterday, a day after dealing the separatists' struggle for autonomy a devastating blow by capturing their de facto capital, the military said.
In a sign that the insurgents were determined to battle on, a bomb planted under a car exploded on a busy street in Colombo yesterday, wounding three people, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said. The attack came a day after a suspected rebel suicide attacker blew himself up near air-force headquarters, killing three airmen.
Ethnic Tamil politicians, warning that the rebels would turn to guerrilla warfare, appealed for an end to the fighting and for new talks to resolve the nation's ethnic conflict.
Strong quake in Indonesia sends people running in fear
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A strong earthquake in remote eastern Indonesia cut power lines, cracked building walls, and sent panicked residents running out of their homes toward higher ground yesterday, authorities and witnesses said.
The Indonesian Meteorology and Seismology Agency warned that with a preliminary magnitude of 7.2 it was strong enough to cause a tsunami. However, there were no immediate reports of giant waves and the warning was lifted within an hour.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the strength at a more powerful 7.6-magnitude and nearly three times the depth. Shallow earthquakes generally cause more damage than deeper ones.
Pakistan allowed to arrest ranking Afghan Taliban aide
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- In an unusual instance of cross-border cooperation, Pakistani authorities arrested a ranking figure in Afghanistan's Taliban movement after getting a tip that he had crossed over into Pakistan, officials disclosed yesterday.
Few details were provided about the arrest of Ustad Yasar, a senior aide to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. He had been freed by Afghan officials in 2007 in a much-criticized prisoner exchange to secure the freedom of a kidnapped Italian journalist.
Pakistani officials said that Yasar was picked up in the frontier city of Peshawar, the hub of the nation's volatile northwest and a growing center of the Islamist insurgency on the Pakistan side of the border. They did not say when the arrest occurred.
U.S. soldiers shoot woman identified as TV producer
BAGHDAD -- American soldiers shot and wounded a woman -- identified by an Iraqi television station as one of its producers -- after she failed to heed warnings to stop near a Baghdad checkpoint recently targeted by suicide and car bombs, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said yesterday.
The U.S. military said that the woman was "acting erratic" and did not respond to warnings from Iraqi and American troops near the checkpoint in the central neighborhood of Jadiriyah on Thursday.
The Biladi TV station, which is owned by former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, identified the woman as producer Hadeel Emad, 25.
Earthquake hits Afghanistan in a sparsely populated area
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Officials say that a strong earthquake has hit northeastern Afghanistan, a quake that rattled the capital Kabul for about a minute.
The U.S. Geological Survey said that today's quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 and was in the northeastern province of Badakhshan in the Hindu Kush mountains. The area is often hit by earthquakes but is sparsely populated.
A Badakhshan police official, Fazel Ahmad Naderi, said that the quake was strong but that his cell phone still worked, meaning that towers had not been toppled.
Vandals paint swastikas at a Holocaust memorial
BERLIN -- Berlin police say that vandals have daubed swastikas on some of the slabs that make up the German capital's Holocaust memorial.
A police statement said that security guards found the swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on 12 slabs at lunchtime yesterday.
Authorities ordered the graffiti's swift removal.
The memorial to the Holocaust's 6 million Jewish victims consists of a field of 2,700 gray slabs situated close to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
It was opened to the public in 2005 and is freely accessible around the clock. Similar vandalism has occurred on several previous occasions.
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