ISLAMABAD ( 7 people killed " while praying " at Mosque )

 

ISLAMABAD – Seven people were killed and 55 others hurt Thursday when a bomb went off inside a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar, Pakistan’s Geo television said.

The blast occurred at the start of afternoon prayers as worshippers were still entering the building, one of the wounded survivors said.

The director of the nearby hospital tending to the injured said several of them were listed in serious condition.

Police and army sappers cordoned off the area to search for additional bombs.

Peshawar is capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan and has become a haven for the Taliban and other jihadists as well as criminal outfits operating on both sides of the frontier.

Terrorism-related deaths in Pakistan increased by 19 percent in 2013 to 2,451, after three consecutive years of declines, according to a recent report from the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies.

Saudi Arabia ( Saudi hospital becomes lung transplant leader )

King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) has become the regional leader in lung transplants with the use of innovative new techniques, local media reported.
Qasim bin Othman Al-Qasabi, executive supervisor of the KFSHRC, said the hospital’s use of the new technique is part of its strategic plan to remain the region’s leader in this type of surgery.
Surgeons performed 17 lung transplants in 2013, with a success rate comparable to well known international hospitals, including 15 two-lung, and two one-lung operations, he said.
He said this was an increase of 20 percent from 2012, when doctors completed 14 operations.
He said the hospital’s surgeons also perform heart, liver, kidney, stem cell and bone transplants.
Walid Saleh, a thoracic surgery consultant and surgical director of the lung transplant program at the KFSHRC, said the technique has recently allowed doctors to replace both lungs of a 17-year-old Saudi teenager.
He said the girl had cysts in her lungs that prevented her from breathing normally and resulted in her using an oxygen tank. This affected her growth and saw her confined to a wheelchair.
He said the girl was able to breathe normally, without any aids, two days after the procedure. The doctors moved her out of intensive care after several days. She would leave the hospital soon, he said.

HONG KONG ( Investigators will travel to Indonesia for " Maid torture case " )

HONG KONG: Investigators from Hong Kong will travel to Indonesia to speak with a woman who left the Chinese city after she was allegedly tortured by her employer, authorities said Friday, adding they will pursue the case “relentlessly.”
Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, a 22-year-old former domestic helper, was reportedly left unable to walk after eight months of alleged abuse at the hands of the employer. She was admitted to an Indonesian hospital in critical condition after returning home last week.


 Domestic workers took to the streets of Hong Kong in support of Erwiana Thursday, and demanded better protection for the city’s hundreds of thousands of foreign helpers.
During the protest, a second maid known only as “Bunga” also came forward to allege abuse at the hands of the same employer — reported to be a woman in her forties who lives with two teenage sons and a husband who is often away — four years ago.
Authorities promised action and have said police officers will be sent to Indonesia to speak with Erwiana.
“Police will be liaising with Interpol with a view to sending officers to Indonesia to take a statement from the helper,” Labor and Welfare minister Matthew Cheung told a press conference on Friday.
“We do not tolerate any abuse or exploitation of domestic helpers in Hong Kong,” Cheung said, adding that the government will “pursue the case relentlessly.”
Cheung also said the government will step up enforcement action over regulation and inspection of domestic helper employment agencies.
 The agency that employed Erwiana said they were unaware of her injuries until they were notified by their corresponding agency in Indonesia.
Erwiana remains in hospital in Sragen, on the main Indonesian island of Java.
Her condition is improving and medics hope her injuries will be healed in two weeks, a spokeswoman for the Indonesian minister of manpower and transmigration has said.
The employers accused of the abuse have yet to comment publicly on the case.
The allegations have renewed concerns about the treatment of domestic helpers in the southern Chinese city, home to nearly 300,000 maids mainly from Southeast Asian countries — predominantly Indonesia and the Philippines.
A Hong Kong couple were jailed in September for attacks on their Indonesian domestic helper, which included burning her with an iron and beatings with a bike chain.
Amnesty International in November condemned the “slavery-like” conditions faced by thousands of Indonesian women who work in the Asian financial hub as domestic staff, and accused authorities of “inexcusable” inaction.
It found that Indonesians were exploited by recruitment and placement agencies who seize their documents and charge them excessive fees, with false promises of high salaries and good working conditions.
Domestic helpers in Hong Kong are paid about HK$4,000 ($515) a month.

Yemen ( Al-Qaeda militants killed 10 Yemeni soldiers in three simultaneous attacks )

SANAA: Al-Qaeda militants killed 10 Yemeni soldiers in three simultaneous attacks Thursday on army positions in the central province of Bayda, a military official said.
“Al-Qaeda assailants carried out simultaneous attacks against three military positions in Rada” in Bayda, an extremist stronghold, the official told AFP.
Ten soldiers were killed and others wounded, while some of the attackers also died, including one wearing an explosive belt who was killed by soldiers. The attacks were followed by clashes between the army and gunmen.
In December, a drone attack killed 17 people, mostly civilians in a wedding motorcade in Rada, triggering condemnation of drones operated in the region by the United States and sparking protests in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.

Uruguay ( Large " Whale " washes up on beach )

MONTEVIDEO – A cargo crane was used to remove the body of a 16-meter (52-foot) sperm whale that washed up on a beach in Montevideo, Uruguay, over the weekend.

The 20-ton carcass was hauled away to a landfill, officials said.

Montevideo city employees, navy personnel and Environmental Management Administration employees worked to remove the dead whale from the beach.

The whale carcass was wrapped in a cargo net and lifted by the crane into a truck, navy spokesman Gaston Jaunsolo said.

The marine mammal was spotted last Friday and washed up a day later on Carrasco, a beach in the Uruguayan capital.

The sperm whale had no “signs of blows or propeller wounds,” leading specialists to conclude that the animal “was suffering from some kind of illness” that caused it to become disoriented and swim into shallow waters, Jaunsolo said.

Montevideo city employees will clean the beach of any remains.

West Bank ( Israeli police say they pulled over the Palestinian prime minister’s convoy )

JERUSALEM: Israeli police say they briefly pulled over the Palestinian prime minister’s convoy for reckless driving in the West Bank, sparking a diplomatic spat.
While police say they quickly allowed the convoy to pass, the Palestinians say the incident was a violation of their rights.




Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says Rami Hamdallah’s car and another vehicle were stopped Tuesday for speeding and “overtaking every vehicle in a dangerous way.”
Rosenfeld says after identifying Hamdallah, police immediately allowed the cars to continue on. However, the two drivers face police questioning.
Ehab Bseiso, a spokesman for Hamdallah, says the incident “shines a light on the many violations committed against Palestinians every day.”
In a separate development, the Czech Foreign Ministry said Palestinian authorities have apologized for illegal weapons that were discovered at the Palestinian Embassy complex in Prague where a possibly booby-trapped safe killed the ambassador.
In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry says the Palestinians have promised to take measures to prevent such incidents in the future.
Police found 12 unregistered weapons in a search following the explosion. The Czechs said the arms were in breach of international obligations.
Ambassador Jamal Al-Jamal died Jan. 1 after an embassy safe exploded. The career diplomat had only started his posting in October.

Mexico ( Battle " Good vs. Evil " self defense group gets larger ) Mexican Militia

NUEVA ITALIA, Mexico (Reuters) - Vigilante groups battling a powerful drug cartel in a troubled region of Mexico on Tuesday rejected a government call to lay down their arms, raising the risk of an increased security headache for President Enrique Pena Nieto.

On Monday, Mexico's Interior Ministry ordered the heavily armed vigilantes to cease fighting the Knights Templar gang in the western state of Michoacan, where violent confrontations have converged on the city of Apatzingan in the last few days.

Apatzingan is considered a stronghold of the Knights Templar, and over the past week, so-called self-defense groups have pushed to take control of surrounding towns and villages.
The violence in Michoacan has raised serious questions about the government's efforts to restore order in Mexico, where more than 80,000 people have been killed in turf wars between gangs and in their clashes with security forces over the past seven years.
Jose Mireles, the most visible leader of the vigilantes, said there could be no talk of putting down guns in Michoacan while the leaders of the Knights Templar remain at large.
"I am not in favor of disarmament, quite the contrary," he said on a video posted on the Internet.
Estanislao Beltran, another leader of the vigilantes, told Mexican radio that to disarm would be to put themselves at risk.
"It's not right for the federal government to come and disarm our soldiers ... who are defending the people," he said, adding that federal troops had strafed a local village with bullets, killing four people, including a girl of 11.
The deaths could not be confirmed immediately.
Already battling the Knights Templar, the government risks opening up another front if the vigilantes refuse to disarm, complicating efforts to restore order in Michoacan.
"There's no question that this is the first in-depth test to see if (Pena Nieto) has a strategy to tackle organized crime," said Javier Oliva, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Pena Nieto has tried to shift attention away from the violence after his predecessor Felipe Calderon staked considerable political capital on rooting out the cartels.
His government killed and captured dozens of senior gang members, but killings intensified and helped condemn Calderon's conservatives to defeat in the 2012 presidential elections.

The mounting violence in Michoacan has made it harder for Pena Nieto's government to maintain a low profile on security.

On Tuesday, convoys of federal police in reinforced pick-up trucks headed along the highway towards Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land - an arid part of Michoacan where the fighting has been most intense.

In the back of each truck, police manned mounted machine guns, their faces obscured with balaclavas and goggles. Some had heavy bandoliers slung around their torsos.

The government had appeared to tolerate the vigilantes, apparently in the hope they could oust the Knights Templar. Militia leader Mireles himself received protection from federal troops after surviving an airplane accident earlier this month.

However, some Michoacan locals say the vigilantes have been infiltrated by drug cartels from neighboring states, so that the government risks replacing one criminal gang with another.

(Additional reporting by Anahi Rama, Lizbeth Diaz and Alexandra Alper; Writing by Dave Graham; editing by Gunna Dickson)