Terror hinder sentenced:
A US businessman has been sentenced to
ten years in prison for trying to transfer money to militants in
Afghanistan. Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, 57, was arrested in
New York in February 2007 after he agreed to help an undercover
agent, posing as a Middle Eastern businessman, to send $152,500
to Pakistan. Alishtari, who also used the name "Michael Mixon"
and has donated more than S15,000 to the Republican Party, was
led to believe that the money was going to be used to buy
night-vision goggles, medical supplies and other equipment for
terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The court
heard how Alishtari had insisted he be kept "three steps away"
from the money so that it could not be traced back to him. At the
time, Alishtari was also running a phony international investment
scheme, in which investors have been conned of $ 18m in total.
New York
Suicidal statues:
Life-size sculptures by
British artist Antony Gormlcy have been
causing alarm among New Yorkers, who
have mistaken them for men about to
leap off buildings. The 31 anatomically
correct figures that make up Gormley's
piece Event Horizon have been erected on
perches and window ledges across
Manhattan's Flatiron district. The day
after they were installed, a man jumped
from a ledge on the Empire State Building
where a statue had been placed (left). So
far, the police have
received around ten calls about the figures,
"It's a total pain in
the ass," one officer said.
New York
A delinquent president: One of the oldest libraries in
America - the New York Society Library - has revealed
that the country's first president, George Washington,
failed to return two books he borrowed in October
1789, months after gaining office. (New York was
the US capital from 1785 until July 1790.) A ledger belonging to
to the library shows that a reader referred to only as "President"
borrowed an essay on international affairs and the 12th book in a
14-volume set of English parliamentary debates, but never
returned them. Allowing for inflation, the fines accrued by
Washington (who famously "could not tell a lie") would l>e in the
region of $300,000. "We're not actively pursuing the overdue
fines," said head librarian Mark Bartlett.
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Bypassing the moon: Barack Obama has outlined a new strategy
for America's space programme. In February, the President
dismayed proponents of state-funded space travel by cancelling
George W. Bush's SlOObn plan for a manned spaee flight to the
mtx>ii by 2020. And last week at a conference at the Kennedy
Space Center in Florida he made it plain that with the imminent
retirement of the space shuttle Discovery, he wants astronauts to
lie lifted to the International Spaee Station by the commercial
sector. But Nasa, he reassured them, still had a key role to play in
sending humans not to the moon but to new destinations - to an
asteroid from 2025, and then into Mars's orbit. "We can't just
keep on doing the same old things we've been doing," he said.
And he calmed fears of job losses in this key electoral battle-
ground with plans for a new escape pod and heavy-lift rockets.
Havana
Cardinal wants change: The head of Cuba's Roman Catholic
church has delivered an unusually outspoken attack on the
country's communist regime. "Our country is in a very difficult
situation," Cardinal Jaime Ortega told the Catholic newsletter
Palabra Nueva. He has criticised the government of Raul Castro
(Fidel's brother) before, but never in such clear terms. Cuba is in
the midst of its worst recession since the fall of the Soviet Union,
and Ortega, 73, spoke of a "consensus" among ordinary Cubans
that the government's inefficient bureaucracy was part of the
problem. Asking for rapid reforms and the release of political
dissidents, the Cardinal also told the regime to stop harassing the
"I.adies in White": a group of wives and mothers of prisoners.
Caracas
Chavez ally turns: A former rising star in President Hugo Chavez's
party has accused the Chavez family of corruption. Wilmer
Azuaje, a member of Venezuela's national assembly from Chavez's
home state of Barinas, claims that the state - which is governed by
the president's brother, Adan - has become the centre of a $20m
empire of family-controlled hanks, farms and businesses. "I
believed in the process of reform," Azuaje told The Guardian.
"They turned out to be the most corrupt ever." Azuaje says the
government is now determined to silence him. His brother has
been murdered; his wife has lost her state job. Azuaje himself faces
charges, which he denies, of assaulting a policewoman.
La Paz
Bring back the fizz: A Bolivian
company has caken advantage of
the country's increasingly relaxed
stance towards the coca leaf-which is used to
make the drug cocaine - by adding it to cola.
The new beverage, named "Coca Colla" (right)
after the Colla people of the Bolivian highlands
and not the world's most famous drink, has
gone on sale in La Pa/, Santa Cruz, and
Cochabamba. The leftist president of Bolivia,
Evo Morales, was once a coca-leaf grower, and
he has championed its use in teas, toothpastes
and alcoholic drinks.
Tikrit
Al-Qa'eda struck: Three al-Qa'eda
leaders have been killed in Iraq. Abu
Ayyub al-Masri (above), the group's leader in
Iraq, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who led
an allied faction, were killed by a missile
strike on a house near Tikrit last Sunday.
Two days later, the Iraqi government
announced the death of a third leader,
Ahmed al-Obcidi, who was thought to be
al-Qa'eda's "military emir" in the north
of the country. With security improving,
US forces are planning to begin pulling out
of Iraq in August.
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan
Medics released: Three Italian aid workers
who were accused, to general surprise, of
plotting to kill the governor of I lelmand
province, have been released without
charge. The three medics, Matteo
Dell'Aira, Marco Garatti and Matteo
Pagani, work for F.mcrgency, a charity
based in Milan. They were detained after
Afghan police, accompanied by British
soldiers, raided the hospital they ran in
Lashkar Gah, Hclmand's capital. The
provincial governor, Gulab Mangal,
claimed that weapons, including
explosives, were being kept in the hospital,
and that a member of Emergency's staff
had been given $500,000 to kill him. The
arrests caused alarm in Italy, where
thousands marched in Rome, demanding
the medics' release. President Hamid
Karzai says he will investigate the arrests.
Seoul
Killer defectors: South Korea says it has
arrested two North Korean spies who were
on their way to assassinate a North
Korean defector and prominent critic of
the isolated regime. The two agents,
identified by officials as majors in North
Korea's General Bureau of Surveillance,
entered the country claiming to be
defectors, but were exposed during routine
debriefings by South Korean intelligence
officials. They admitted to being on a
mission to cut the throat of Hwang
Jang-yop, an 87-year-old former secretary
of the North Korean Workers' Party and
tutor to Kim Jong-M, who now calls the
North Korean leader "human scum".
Relations on the Korean peninsula were
shaken last month by the unexplained
sinking of a South Korean naval vessel,
with the loss of 46 lives.
Puning, China
Elderly held: Authorities
in the southern Chinese
city of Puning have
detained 1,377 people -
many of them elderly - as
part of a drive to sterilise
111,000 couples who have
violated birth-control
policies. Some of the
detained are couples with
children who have refused
to undergo sterilisation,
but in many cases it is
their parents who have
been held, in an attempt
to compel the families to
obey China's strict
family-planning rules.
Tamanrasset,
Algeria
Anti-terror base:
Four Saharan
countries have
opened a joint
command centre in southern Algeria to
co-ordinate their fight against al-Qa'eda
in the region. Algeria, Mali, Mauritania
and Niger acted after Western
governments, led by the US, warned them
that militant groups were gaining a
foothold in the Sahara Desert, as they
have done in Somalia. Fdwin Dyer, a
Briton, was kidnapped on the border of
Niger and Mali last year and later killed
by a group calling itself al-Qa'eda in the
Islamic Maghreb. In Mauritania,
meanwhile, a US aid worker was shot
dead, and a suicide bomber injured two
people at the French Embassy. Three
Spaniards are currently missing.
Bangkok
Bullets for protesters: Hundreds of soldiers
have been sent into Bangkok's business
district to halt the spread of protests by the
Red Shirts, the loose coalition of leftists
and supporters of the exiled former prime
minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who want
to bring down the government. The army
has also threatened to use live bullets if the
unrest continues. At least 25 people have
been killed in clashes between protesters
and the security forces over the past
month. The protesters are demanding the
resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit
Vejjajiva and fresh elections.
Melbourne
Gangster killed:
Australia's most
notorious crime
boss has been
murdered in
the yard of the
prison where he
was serving a
35-year sentence
for ordering three
murders. Carl
Williams, 39,
(above) died after being clubbed with part
of an exercise bike by two fellow inmates
on Monday. In the 1990s, Williams led a
brutal turf war against his rivals, the
Moran family, to gain control of
Melbourne's drug trade. At least 35
people were killed in the violence.
Williams's life inspired a hit TV series,
Underbelly^ which was described as
Australia's The Sopranos.
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