In brief: Islamist rebels release 3 hostages

BAMAKO, Mali – A helicopter was dispatched to Mali on Wednesday to retrieve three European hostages held for the past 10 months by a jihadist group, according to the governments of Italy and Spain and a military official in Burkina Faso, which sent the helicopter.

The hostages, who were not immediately able to leave due to a sandstorm, were freed in a prisoner exchange, a prison official in neighboring Mauritania who requested anonymity told the Associated Press.

Spaniards Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez del Rincon and Italian Rossella Urru are aid workers who were kidnapped from a refugee camp in southern Algeria last October. The Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, known as MUJAO by its French acronym, was responsible for their kidnapping. They were freed near the town of Gao in Mali’s distant north, according to Sanda Abdou Mohamed, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, a radical Islamic group allied with MUJAO which now controls northern Mali, including the city where the three were released.

Somali pirates free fishing boat, crew

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Taiwan’s foreign ministry says a Taiwanese fishing vessel and its 26-member crew were freed after being held by Somali pirates for almost 19 months.

The ministry says the Shiuh Fu No. 1 was released Tuesday after the ship’s owner completed negotiations with the hijackers. The ministry didn’t say whether a ransom was paid, but analysts say Somali pirates often get ransoms averaging $5 million.

The Shiuh Fu was seized Dec. 25, 2010, off the Madagascar coast and taken to Somalia. The European Union Naval Force Somalia says seven vessels and 211 hostages are still held by Somali pirates.

Ultra-Orthodox rabbi dies at 102

JERUSALEM – Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, revered by Jews worldwide as the top rabbinic authority of this generation for his scholarship and rulings on complex elements of Jewish law, died Wednesday, hospital officials said. He was 102.

Elyashiv devoted his life to Torah study and credited his longevity to never getting angry. He rejected worldly possessions and chose instead to live modestly in a tiny Jerusalem apartment, where people lined up, seeking advice, blessings and rulings on religious issues.

The Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem said Elyashiv died there after a long illness.

Elyashiv was the leader of the Lithuanian sect of ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews that adhere to a strict religious lifestyle and ideology renowned for its analytic form of studying complex Jewish holy texts.

He also served as the spiritual leader of a small ultra-Orthodox party in the Israeli parliament, Degel Hatorah, which later merged into the influential United Torah Judaism that consists of various small religious parties.

Party members conferred with Elyashiv on all matters – political, religious and personal – and a few words uttered by the elderly rabbi could sway Israeli policy or affect daily life for devout Jews.

For his hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, Elyashiv was considered a sage and a respected arbitrator.