News briefs
BY Wire reports
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
11/14/12 at 2:23 AM
Paris: France rules out any use of air power in Mali
Neither France nor Europe will intervene militarily to oust al-Qaida and its allies from northern Mali - not even with air strikes, the French defense minister said Tuesday.
Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke two days after West African nations agreed to send some 3,300 troops to help Mali's tenuous government wrest control of the country's vast north that was seized by al-Qaida-linked fighters more than six months ago. The plan requires U.N. Security Council approval, which could come within weeks. Europe and the United States have taken a supporting role.
Kingston, Jamaica: Official: Preaching on Jamaican buses banned
Jamaica's state-owned bus company is putting the brakes on lay ministers preaching to weary commuters.
Transit company director Hardley Lewin has told his drivers to politely ask religious people to stop evangelizing to captive audiences on buses. He said customers have complained that they feel harassed by preachers who sometimes loudly evangelize on buses in the island of about 2.8 million people.
Evangelical pastor Bishop Herro Blair said lay ministers should have first sought the company's permission to preach on buses.
Santiago, Chile: Chile's Allende progeny loses mayoral race
The granddaughter of fallen socialist President Salvador Allende has lost her first political race after a recount.
Maya Fernandez Allende lost in Santiago's Nunoa district by 30 votes to incumbent Mayor Pedro Sabat.
Salvador Allende was a democratically elected socialist president who was ousted in a 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
London: Radical cleric Abu Qatada released from prison
A radical Islamist cleric described by prosecutors as a key al-Qaida operative in Europe was jeered by protesters Tuesday after he was freed from prison following a court ruling that he cannot be deported to Jordan to face terrorism charges.
Palestinian-born Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada was driven from Long Lartin maximum security jail in Worcestershire, central England, to his home in London, where a few demonstrators gathered to demand his expulsion from Britain.
Britain's government has attempted since 2001 to remove Abu Qatada, who was convicted in his absence in Jordan over terror plots in 1999 and 2000, but has been repeatedly thwarted by European and British courts, including the latest one Monday which granted him bail.
Perth, Australia: Clinton urges closer ties for Australia, India
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday encouraged Australia to increase its military ties with India, but added that America also supported the peaceful rise of the Asian economic powerhouse, China.
Clinton and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in the west coast city of Perth on Tuesday on the eve of bilateral security summit with their Australian counterparts.
Clinton said the U.S. had made a strategic priority of supporting India in playing a larger role in Asian affairs.
The United States also supports a peaceful and open China, she said.
Bangkok: Thai authorities seize 600 smuggled cobras
Thai authorities Tuesday seized a pickup truck full of deadly cobras at a checkpoint 130 miles south of Bangkok. They believe the snakes came from Malaysia and were destined for a third country for use in traditional medicine or human consumption.
Thai Customs chief Benja Louicharoen said that officials found 600 cobras worth about $16,500 in mesh bags inside plastic baskets in the truck. They arrested the driver, who confessed that he was delivering the snakes to northeast Thailand where they were to be smuggled over the border into Laos.
Associated Images:
A man walks past cut trees in Duisburg, Germany, on Tuesday. While temperatures in Germany drop, these tree trunks wait to be dried. FRANK AUGSTEIN/Associated Press
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