A round-up of other world news in brief
Schoolboy terrorist gets two years
LONDON- Britain's youngest convicted terrorist was sentenced to two years in jail yesterday as a judge described how the schoolboy had "fallen under the spell" of fanatical extremists who exploited his naivety.
Hammaad Munshi, the grandson of a respected Islamic scholar, was 15 when he was radicalised via the internet by co-defendant Aabid Khan and recruited into a cell engaged in a "worldwide conspiracy" to kill "kuffar", or non-Muslims. - (Guardian service)
Zimbabwe talks still deadlocked
HARARE- Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have again failed to break a deadlock over forming a cabinet after reaching a power-sharing deal, an MDC spokesman said yesterday.
"What we want is genuine powersharing, not a false marriage, said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa. - (Reuters)
Islamic school blast kills five
QUETTA- An explosion killed five students at an Islamic school near the Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, police said.
Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, a southwestern province bordering Afghanistan, where a large number of schools, or madrasas, were set up in the 1980s to raise volunteers to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in a war covertly funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia. - (Reuters)
Ugandan rebels attack villages
JUBA- Ugandan rebels attacked villages near the remote Congo-Sudan border this week, taking 40 schoolchildren hostage and killing at least three people, authorities in Congo and Sudan said yesterday.
South Sudan's military said Lord's Resistance Army rebels attacked one of its units and killed a soldier and the son of a local chief on Thursday on the Congolese border. - (Reuters)
Thousands watch blood miracle
NAPLES- Thousands of Neapolitans crowded into the city's cathedral yesterday to witness the miracle of Saint Gennaro - whose dried blood is said to liquefy twice a year, 17 centuries after his death.
Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, archbishop of Naples, announced that the blood had turned to liquid at 9:45am and the glass phial was paraded to crowds outside, who set off fireworks. - (Reuters)