World Digest
Nigeria militia forces pursued in ravaged oil region

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Burned houses and twisted corrugated iron roofs — strewn flat over an area of a football field — bore witness to the savagery of militia attacks on one slum district in Port Harcourt, a city of 3 million

Violence in the Niger Delta over the past year has killed more than 1,000 people and at times shut down up to 40 percent of oil production in Nigeria, the world's No. 7 oil-producing country. One U.S. oil company alone, ChevronTexaco, is estimated to have lost at least $1.75 billion in production losses and sabotaged equipment since March 2003.

The army and navy launched their latest offensive last week in response to deadly militia raids in August into Port Harcourt.

San'a, Yemen

Blasts kill nine in town, including bombers

Two explosions rocked a northern Yemen town in the past 24 hours, killing nine people, including two men carrying bombs that detonated, security officials said yesterday.

Both explosions reportedly occurred in the northern town of Sa'dah, 125 miles northwest of San'a, where government troops have been fighting Shiite cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Hawthi and his supporters.

Yemen, a poor, tribal country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is awash with weapons, with authorities estimating that there are 60 million firearms, or three for each citizen.

Taipei, Taiwan

Charges filed link three to Chen shooting
 
Taiwan today charged three men in connection with an election eve assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian, the first breakthrough in a mysterious shooting the opposition said was staged to win his re-election.

The three were charged with possession of homemade bullets that investigators say matched those used in the shooting of Chen while he campaigned March 19, prosecutors said.

Chen and Vice President Annette Lu were slightly wounded as they drove through southern Tainan in an open-top jeep.

Police two months ago detained Ho Tun-ching, 50. Further investigations led police to a friends of Ho, identified as Chang Ku-ten, 33, and Ho Chih-chiang, 30, who had supplied Ho with the weapon and ammunition, the Tainan prosecutor's office said. The arrests of the men had never been made public.

Prague, Czech Republic

Six British soldiers die in helicopter crash

A British military helicopter crashed yesterday in the Czech Republic, killing all six British soldiers on board, a spokesman for the Czech Defense Ministry said.

The Lynx helicopter crashed near Namest nad Oslavou, 110 miles southeast of Prague, spokesman Andrej Cirtek said.

The soldiers were part of a Czech-British military exercise, he said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, Cirtek said, adding that the exercise was put on hold after the accident.

Washington, D.C.

U.S. remains to be sent back from North Korea

Remains believed to be those of U.S. troops missing in action from the Korean War have been recovered in North Korea and will be taken to Hawaii for identification, the Pentagon said yesterday.

The precise number of remains will be determined by U.S. military forensic experts at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii, the announcement said.

The remains were found by joint U.S.-North Korea teams searching near the Chosin Reservoir and in Unsan County about 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

About 1,000 Americans are missing in action from battles in the Chosin campaign, where 7th Infantry Division troops fought Chinese forces in November and December 1950.

Also

An intruder dubbed "Spiderman" sneaked past tight security at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's Miraflores Presidential Palace to try to contact the populist leader before being nabbed by guards, authorities said yesterday.

Forensic experts have exhumed 100 bodies from a single mass grave in northwestern Bosnia dating to the 1992-95 Bosnian war, an official said yesterday.

Croatia yesterday banned the building of new houses directly on its scenic Adriatic coast, which has seen a tourism boom after the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

A man in Thailand has died of bird flu, the first human casualty in the country since the disease re-emerged in Asia in July, officials said yesterday.