World in brief: Detainee cuts own throat with nail

Despite sweeping measures to prevent suicides among the 305 prisoners here, a detainee slashed his throat with a sharpened fingernail recently and could have bled to death if guards hadn’t rushed to his aid, officers disclosed Tuesday.

The apparent suicide attempt in November in a shower at the maximum-security Camp 6 prison was one of dozens known to have occurred since prisoners were first brought here nearly six years ago.

The laceration to the detainee’s throat inflicted by his fingernail caused “an impressive effusion of blood,” said Navy Cmdr. Andy Haynes, deputy chief of the Joint Detention Group that guards the prisoners.

Since three suicides in June last year and one in May, all four by hanging, bed linens have been collected each morning to deprive the detainees of any means of making ligatures.

ROTA, Spain

Rice heading to African talks

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday expressed growing unease about the deteriorating security and faltering peace deals in a number of African countries as she headed to the continent for regional talks.

“I am increasingly concerned about several crisis spots in Africa, and this is a good opportunity to take stock of where we are and help move international efforts forward on each of those,” Rice said en route to Ethiopia, where the African Union is based.

While in Addis Ababa today, Rice will see key players in some of those crises, from insecurity in Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region to conflict in western Sudan’s Darfur province, a fragile North-South Sudanese peace, and chronic instability in lawless Somalia.

She also plans talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a U.S. counterterrorism ally criticized for a crackdown on political opponents.

ROME

Tweety, Mickey summoned to court

An Italian court ordered Tweety Bird, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy to testify in a counterfeiting case.

In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said.

The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino – the Italian names for the characters – as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros.