MANIK FARM, Sri Lanka -- Sri Lanka will release next month the remaining 136,000 Tamil refugees still in the squalid and overrun government camps where they have been detained since the country's civil war ended six months ago, a top official said yesterday.
Some 300,000 war refugees were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government's decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.
The ethnic-minority Tamils are being held against their will.
Rocket strike outside Kabul hotel wounds two
KABUL -- A rocket hit outside the luxury Serena Hotel in Afghanistan's capital late yesterday, wounding two people outside the hotel , the Interior Ministry said.
The heavily guarded Serena regularly houses visiting diplomats, officials and international workers. It has been the target of attacks before, most recently in late October when a rocket slammed into a courtyard.
In yesterday's attack, a rocket hit low on the outside of a compound wall around the hotel, just behind a guardhouse, said an Associated Press reporter who saw the impact spot. Rubble surrounded the area, but there was no large crater.
Prosecutors seek life for U.S. student charged in Italy
PERUGIA, Italy -- Prosecutors requested life in prison yesterday for an American student and her ex-boyfriend accused in the fatal stabbing of her British roommate during a drug-fueled sex game -- charges that the U.S. woman dismissed as "pure fantasy."
In their closing arguments, the prosecutors said that Amanda Knox and Italian Raffaele Sollecito should be convicted of murder and sexual violence in the 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher.
Prosecutors argued that Knox resented her British roommate and killed her, aided by Sollecito and Rudy Hermann Guede of Ivory Coast, under "the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol."
Iran plans war games today to protect nuclear facilities
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran will begin large-scale air-defense war games today aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, a senior military commander said yesterday, reflecting the country's concern that Israel could make good on threats to make a military strike.
The drill comes as a top clerical official renewed his threat to target "the heart of Tel Aviv" should Israel attack Iran.
The five-day drill will involve Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and the regular army, and will cover 230,000 square miles of central, western and southern Iran, said air force Gen. Ahmad Mighani.
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