Today's other world news in brief
Afghan suicide attack kills 14 schoolchildren
ISLAMABAD - A suicide car bomb in Afghanistan yesterday killed 14 primary schoolchildren in what officials said was a failed attempt to blow up a meeting of tribal elders.
The blast, in the country's eastern Khost province, also killed an Afghan army soldier and a security guard, and injured 58, including at least 40 civilians, the US army said. Video footage of the bombing, taken from a security camera, shows a group of children, apparently returning from school, walking alongside a road that had a checkpoint guarding a district centre. A dark-coloured 4x4 vehicle is seen snaking through the barriers placed on the approach to the checkpoint, before detonating just as it drew level with the children. - (Guardian service)
New trial for 'Chemical Ali'
BAGHDAD - An Iraqi court yesterday opened a new trial against Tariq Aziz and the man known as "Chemical Ali", right-hand men to Saddam Hussein, on charges of crushing opposition from prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa party.
Aziz, a former deputy prime minister, and Ali Hassan al-Majeed, dubbed Chemical Ali for his role in gassing Saddam's enemies, were in a Baghdad court. - (Reuters)
Death of Samuel Huntington (81)
BOSTON - Samuel Huntington, the political scientist best known for his views on the clash of civilisations, has died at 81.
Huntington, who died at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, had retired from active teaching last year after 58 years at Harvard. His research and teaching focused on American government, democratisation, military politics, strategy, and civil-military relations.
He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nations, but from cultural and religious differences among the world's major civilisations. - ( AP)
Turkey bombs Kurdish targets
ANKARA - Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq over the weekend, Turkish army sources said.
Kurdistan Workers' Party targets in the Hakurke region of northern Iraq were hit on Saturday night and several other targets near the Iraqi-Turkish border were bombed yesterday afternoon.
The strikes in a mountainous border area claimed no civilian casualties, said Lieut Col Ihsan Kamal, commander of the border guards' operation room in Kurdistan. - (Reuters)
Man charged with abduction
LONDON - Police in Britain charged a man yesterday in connection with the abduction of a nurse found alive in the boot of her car after going missing for more than a week.
Magdeline Makola, originally from South Africa, had not been seen since December 15th when she left the car park of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where she works as a nurse.
She was found by police in the boot of her car on Friday. - (Reuters)