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QUITO: The rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has
agreed to release at least 12 hostages in Ecuador in early March,
Ecuadoran Internal and Foreign Security Minister Gustavo Larrea said
Thursday. “Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy separately knew about Ecuador’s mediation to
liberate 12 hostages, including French-Colombian citizen Ingrid
Betancourt,” Larrea told local television. FARC has agreed to free
former Colombian presidential candidate Betancourt, three U.S.
advisors, four policemen, three Colombian soldiers and an Ecuadoran
citizen, Larrea said.
-- AFP
DUBAI: A suicide attack that killed two NATO
soldiers in eastern Afghanistan earlier this week was carried out by
a Turk who had come from Germany, a group that monitors Islamist
websites reported Thursday. A group named the Islamic Jihad Union
posted a statement online that said one of its members was
responsible for the attack on Monday, the SITE Intelligence Group
said. The author of the attack was identified as Cuneht Ciftci,
alias Saad Abu Fourkan.
-- AFP
SINGAPORE: Tiny Singapore opened a high-tech
underground ammunition storage facility on Friday, which the defense
ministry called the most modern in the world. By building the site
below ground, the island-state freed up about 300 hectares (750
acres) of land—equivalent to 400 football fields—above ground,
the ministry said. The facility needs 20 percent less manpower to
operate than a conventional one because of automation and
technology, and will need less energy for cooling due to the natural
insulation provided by granite caverns, it said.
-- AFP
SANTO DOMINGO: The presidents of Colombia,
Ecuador and Venezuela face off at a regional summit Friday, their
first encounter since Colombia’s raid on a rebel camp inside
Ecuador sent tensions soaring. Arriving in the Dominican capital
Santo Domingo late Thursday, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez said the
Rio Group would have to address the crisis even though it was not on
the agenda. The United States led calls for a peaceful resolution,
but Nicaragua on Thursday joined Ecuador and Venezuela in breaking
diplomatic relations with Colombia after a senior FARC leader was
killed
-- AFP
GENEVA: The United Nations Human Rights Council
on Thursday condemned Israel’s military assault on Gaza but also
urged an end to rocket attacks that killed Israeli civilians. The
47-member council approved the motion calling for “the immediate
cessation of all Israeli military attacks throughout the occupied
Palestinian territory” by 33 votes to 1, with 13 abstentions. The
resolution had been tabled by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization
of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
-- AFP
BELGRADE: Serbia’s cabinet voted Thursday to
reject a parliamentary motion to freeze European Union integration
moves in protest over Kosovo’s independence declaration, despite
deep divisions in its own ranks. The resolution, which the
ultra-nationalist Radical Party moved in parliament on Wednesday,
was rejected ministers on a vote of 15 to seven, according to the
news agency Beta and radio station B92.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: U.S. consumers believe Chinese
products have the second best value in the world, only after the
American goods, a recently released survey shows. The survey,
conducted by New York-based GfK Roper, a market research firm
serving consumer goods companies, found that 26 percent of U.S.
consumers believe Chinese-made products have the best value, up from
9 percent in a comparable survey in 1996.
-- Xinhua
PRAGUE: The Czech Republic Thursday sent first
three civilian experts on agriculture, construction and geology to
Afghanistan as part of its Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in
the central Logar province. The experts are expected to stay in
Logar for around one year, while the whole Czech Provincial
Reconstruction Team will stay there for three to five years. The
Czech government planned to send another 50 soldiers to Logar,
bringing the number of Czech troops in the province to 139.
-- Xinhua
BRASILIA: An 8-year-old Brazilian boy who passed
an entrance exam to study law at university has been blocked from
starting because the institution wants him to first finish primary
school, a report said Thursday. Joao Victor Portelinha de Oliveira
successfully won entry into the law school of Paulista Univerity
after completing exams and a writing test last week, the Correio
Braziliense daily said. But the university said he does not qualify
because he has not studied at secondary school [high school] level.
-- AFP
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