In brief: Terror threat shuts down German parade

BERLIN – Police in the German city of Braunschweig canceled a popular Carnival street parade on Sunday because of fears of an imminent Islamist terror attack.

Police spokesman Thomas Geese said police received credible information that there was a “concrete threat of an attack with an Islamist background” on Sunday’s parade and therefore called on all visitors to stay at home.

Geese said the parade was canceled less than 90 minutes before its scheduled start and that “many people arriving at the train station from out of town were already dressed up and very disappointed – but we didn’t want to take any risks.”

Braunschweig’s Carnival parade is the biggest one in northern Germany and draws around 250,000 visitors each year.

Smugglers threaten Italian coast guard

ROME – Four smugglers brandishing Kalashnikovs threatened an Italian coast guard motorboat involved in one of several operations that rescued more than 2,000 migrants leaving Libyan shores on Sunday.

Italian Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi said the gunmen used a small boat to speed to the scene some 50 miles off the coast of Libya, where security is rapidly deteriorating.

After threatening the rescuers who had taken aboard the migrants, three of the smugglers jumped onto the then-empty migrants’ boat and took off with it.

Nearly 2,200 migrants were rescued in several operations Sunday, the coast guard said. They were being taken to Italian ports. Hundreds were also rescued Saturday.

Female suicide bomber kills 16 in Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – A teenage female suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded bus station in northeast Nigeria on Sunday, killing at least 16 and wounding 30 others.

Most of the victims were children who had either been selling peanuts or begging for money at the time of the explosion, said witnesses.

The bomber managed to get through the security check at the entrance to the bus station in Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state, and detonated herself at 1 p.m. local time.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing but it fits the pattern of violence by Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown Islamic extremist group that caused an estimated 10,000 deaths last year and is fighting to impose Islamic Shariah rule over Nigeria.

American gored by bull in Spain is healing

MADRID – An American youth is recovering in the intensive-care unit of a hospital in western Salamanca after being savagely gored during a bullfighting festival celebrating Carnival, officials said Sunday.

Surgeon Enrique Crespo said he was called to operate on 20-year-old Benjamin Miller from Georgia, who had been gored and tossed by a large fighting bull on Saturday, the first day of nearby Ciudad Rodrigo’s “Carnaval del Toro.”

“It’s not the worst injury I’ve seen, but it’s the biggest goring wound I’ve ever had to operate on,” Crespo told the Associated Press.

Miller underwent a three-hour operation to repair damage to thighs, sphincter and back muscles, Crespo said.

Town councilor Pedro Munoz said two other unidentified men had sustained less serious goring injuries during Saturday’s events.

Ex-vice president in prison for corruption

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s former first vice president has been taken to jail to serve his prison term for corruption, the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday.

Mohammad Reza Rahimi, a top aide to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was convicted by Iran’s supreme court last month and sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a $300,000 fine. The court also ordered Rahimi to pay compensation equivalent to $800,000.