US drone attack kills 18 in Pakistan
Islamabad: A US drone targeted a residential compound and a vehicle in northwest Pakistan’s restive tribal region close to the Afghan border, killing at least 18 suspected militants, officials said on Wednesday. The CIA-operated unmanned plane fired four missiles targeting the compound and the vehicle in Danday Darpakhel area in North Waziristan tribal region’s Miranshah on Tuesday night.
‘Ecuador’s london embassy bugged’
london: A hidden microphone has been found inside the Ecuadorean embassy in london, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is holed up for over a year, according to the country’s foreign minister. Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said the device was discovered a fortnight ago inside Ecuadorean ambassador Ana Alban’s office, while the minister was in the UK to meet Assange and discuss the whistleblower’s future with the British foreign secretary William Hague, the Guardian reported.
Indonesia quake kills 29
Banda Aceh: Soldiers, police and volunteers fanned out across an earthquake-damaged region of western Indonesia on Wednesday, scouring the debris of fallen homes and landslides for possible victims of a temblor that killed at least 29 people and injured hundreds. The magnitude-6.1 quake struck on Tuesday afternoon at a depth of just 10 kilometers and was centered on the far western tip of Sumatra island in Aceh province.
Malaysia proposes Bill for religion change
Kuala lumpur: In the wake of a controversial conversion of two minor ethnic Hindu children in Malaysia, the Government is planning an amendment in a Bill, which allows a person below the age of 18 to convert into Islam even if only one parent or guardian consents to the conversion. Earlier, two minor ethnic Indian Hindu children in Malaysia had been converted to Islam without their mother’s consent, triggering protests from the country’s Bar Council which called unilateral conversion as illegal.
Iraq attacks death toll rises to 57
Baghdad: The death toll from a wave of attacks in Iraq mostly targeting Shias in packed markets rose to 57, officials said on Wednesday, marking a second day of brutal violence against the sect. A series of bombings and shootings since last two days have left more than 100 people killed and upwards of 280 wounded, the latest in spiralling violence that has sparked fears of renewed all-out sectarian war.
Swine fever spreads across ‘European Russia’
Moscow: African swine fever has spread to virtually all the regions in the European part of Russia and some of them face a tangible threat of a shutdown of all the hog raising enterprises, a senior Russian sanitary watchdog official said. “The African swine fever has turned up victorious almost on all the European part of Russia,” said Nikolai Vlassov, deputy director of the federal sanitary watchdog agency Rospotrebnadzor.
Egypt’s Princess Fawzia dies at 92
Cairo: Princess Fawzia, a member of Egypt’s last royal family and the first wife of Iran’s later-deposed monarch, has died, Iranian opposition groups said. She was 92. Fawzia died Tuesday in Egypt’s Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, the Paris-based opposition groups said, but no cause of death was immediately known. She was the daughter of Egyptian King Fuad I, who ruled until 1936.
Five men shot in Philippine capital
Manila: Five young men were shot dead before dawn on Wednesday in a street on the outskirts of the Philippines’ main business district, police said. The victims, all related to each other and in their early 20s, were attacked as they walked home from a party, said Chief Superintendent Anthony Gandang, operations chief for the Makati business district in Manila.