Airport attacker dies of burns
A man critically burned after allegedly crashing an explosive-laden Jeep into Glasgow Airport died of his injuries Thursday, police said.
Kafeel Ahmed, 27, had been in the hospital for a month with burns from the alleged attack on June 30, which came a day after two failed car bombings in London. The other man in the car, Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah, has been charged with conspiring to set off explosions.
Ahmed, an Indian national from Bangalore, was burned on 90 percent of his body and had been in a coma throughout his hospital stay. He had been kept under armed guard at a burns unit.
Kafeel Ahmed’s brother, Sabeel Ahmed, 26, also faces trial after being charged with withholding information that could prevent an act of terrorism. He was arrested in Liverpool on the day of the Glasgow attack. Jordanian doctor Mohammed Jamil Asha is the other man facing charges over the botched attacks.
HARARE, Zimbabwe
Hearses used for public transit
Funeral parlors have put hearses to work as buses to provide desperately needed public transport, in yet another illustration of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse.
Police in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, hailed the move as a public service but warned drivers of hearses, trucks and other vehicles not to overload commuters, state radio said Thursday.
Transportation licensing laws would not be invoked unless there were fights to board vehicles, the radio service said. It did not say if rides were given with coffins aboard.
The prices of gasoline and commuter fares were slashed by more than half under a government decree last month, leading to acute gas shortages and forcing many minibuses, the main means of commuter transport, out of service.
A routine 30-minute trip from Harare’s suburbs now takes up to five hours, most spent waiting to flag down passing drivers who give rides for money.
ADELAIDE, Australia
Aborigines renew apology demands
Aboriginal activists renewed demands for an official government apology to Australia’s “stolen generation” on Thursday, the day after a court handed down a massive award to an Aboriginal man taken from his family as a baby.
The South Australian Supreme Court ordered its own state government on Wednesday to pay Bruce Trevorrow $448,000 for damages caused when he was taken from his parents without their knowledge 50 years ago. He is the first Aborigine to be compensated by a court.
From 1910 until the 1970s, around 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative.
Reconciliation Australia, an advocacy group that aims to bridge the gap between Aborigines and white Australians, said governments should recognize their past mistakes and set up compensation funds to keep future claims out of the courts.
“Whatever the motivation, it is clear that all governments acted improperly and inflicted great, intergenerational damage,” said Barbara Livesey, the group’s leader.