World in brief: U.N. scales back role in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The United Nations said it is stopping long-term development work in northwestern Pakistan because of security concerns.
The U.N. said today’s decision applies to Pakistan’s tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province, areas where the Pakistani military has launched operations against militants.
The U.N. said it will focus on emergency, humanitarian relief, security operations and any other essential operations as advised by the U.N. secretary-general.
The decision follows a string of recent militant attacks in Pakistan, including a bombing of a U.N. office in Islamabad that killed five people.
Search under way after boat sinks
SYDNEY, Australia – An urgent search and rescue mission was under way today for about two dozen people missing after their boat sank in open seas far off Australia.
Merchant vessels that responded to a distress call managed to pluck 17 survivors from the Indian Ocean late Sunday and were searching for others, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said.
About 40 people were believed to be aboard the boat when it went down near the Cocos Islands, sparsely populated atolls about 1,500 miles northwest of the Australian coast.
Scattered violence leaves 10 dead
BAGHDAD – A bomb attached to a bicycle killed five people in southern Iraq on Sunday, and at least five others were killed in violence across the country, police said.
The bloodshed comes as Iraqi lawmakers intensify negotiations over a new election law that many hope will hasten the end of political gridlock over control of oil-rich Kirkuk – an old dispute between Arabs and Kurds that has threatened Iraq’s fragile stability as U.S. troops prepare to leave the country.
Maj. Muthana Khalid said a booby-trapped bicycle exploded at a popular fruit and vegetable market Sunday near Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. Thirty-seven people were wounded, Khalid said.
In the western city of Ramadi, two people – including a policeman – were killed when twin car bombs exploded in a parking lot of the city’s Traffic Police Directorate.
Three people were killed when a bomb exploded on a bus as the vehicle approached a police checkpoint in the southern holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad.
Former detainees resettle in Palau
KOROR, Palau – Six Chinese Muslims newly released from Guantanamo Bay were wide awake and excited Sunday as they traded life behind bars for rooms with ocean view in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, which agreed to a U.S. request to resettle them.
The ethnic Uighurs, in U.S. custody since 2001, were met at the airport in the middle of the night by President Johnson Toribiong and taken to their new home – a large house in the heart of Koror, where most of Palau’s 20,000 residents live and work.
The Pentagon determined last year that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo were not “enemy combatants,” but they have been in legal limbo ever since.