Israeli missile kills, wounds bystanders
An Israeli air attack Tuesday on a car carrying militants in the Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian teenager and two children and wounded at least a dozen other bystanders, Palestinian medical officials said.
The Israeli military said the strike, next to the village of Jabaliya on the northern edge of Gaza City, targeted members of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militia tied to the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The members escaped the car shortly before the missile hit, the group said.
The Hague, Netherlands
Charles Taylor arrives for trial
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor – once one of Africa’s most feared warlords – arrived Tuesday in The Hague to face charges of war crimes and allegations that he destabilized West African countries while amassing a fortune from the illegal trade in diamonds, guns and timber.
Taylor’s trial was moved from Sierra Leone, where he is accused of mass murder, sexual slavery and conscripting child soldiers during his support for a rebel movement that killed thousands of people during that country’s 1991-2002 civil war.
The U.N. Security Council, which approved the move from Freetown to the facilities of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, cited concerns that trying the case in Sierra Leone could destabilize Liberia, Sierra Leone and neighboring West African countries.
London
Royal guards may lose bearskin hats
A British lawmaker is gathering support for his call to ban the towering bearskin hats worn for almost 200 years by the red-coated soldiers who guard the country’s royal palaces.
The motion, introduced by Labour party lawmaker Chris Mullin in March, declares the hats made from the fur of Canadian black bears “have no military significance and involve unnecessary cruelty.”
So far, 180 of 646 lawmakers in the House of Commons have signed the motion.
On Sunday, about 100 animal rights activists staged a naked demonstration in London to protest against the hats.
Khartoum, Sudan
President won’t let peacekeepers in
Sudan’s president vowed Tuesday to never allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur and said he would lead the “resistance” against any foreign force, his strongest rejection yet of the United Nations plan for halting violence in the war-torn region.
Omar al-Bashir’s comments were likely to escalate tensions with the United Nations, coming as a joint U.N. and African Union team was in Sudan to plan for deployment of a possible peacekeeping force.
“This shall never take place,” al-Bashir said at a news conference alongside South African President Thabo Mbeki. “These are colonial forces and we will not accept colonial forces coming into the country.”
U.N. officials want to send a beefed-up peacekeeping force to replace 7,000 African Union soldiers that have largely been unable to stop the fighting in Darfur.