Hindus burn more christian churches
NEW DELHI, India — Hindu extremists torched nearly a dozen churches and the home of a Christian leader Thursday, defying a curfew imposed to quell three days of religious violence in eastern India. Christians retaliated by setting fire to several homes belonging to Hindus.
Local police have been unsuccessful in halting the attacks, and the federal government announced it was sending in a paramilitary force.
About 19 churches, most of them small mud and thatch buildings, have been razed since violence broke out on Christmas Eve when long-standing tensions between the Hindu majority and the small Christian community erupted over conversions to Christianity.
Hindu groups have long charged Christian missionaries with trying to lure away the poor and those on the lowest rungs of Hinduism’s complex caste-system with promises of money and jobs.
One person was killed and at least 25 people, belonging to both Hindu and Christian communities, were arrested for suspected involvement in the violence.
Former official extradited on child sex charges
HONIARA, Solomon Islands — The Solomon Islands government extradited its former attorney general Thursday to face child sex charges in Australia.
Julian Moti, 42, an Australian national who was fired earlier this week from his post, was due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court today. He is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997 — a crime he was acquitted of by a jury in the South Pacific nation.
Under Australia’s anti-pedophile laws, its citizens can be tried for crimes committed overseas. Australian law does not recognize the Vanuatu court’s decision. If convicted, Moti faces a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison.
Unknown gunmen kill 3 soldiers
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania — Three soldiers were killed Thursday by unknown assailants in Mauritania’s northern desert, a military official said.
The attack followed the Christmas Eve slaying of four French tourists who were picnicking by the roadside near Aleg, a small town 150 miles east of Nouakchott. The government blamed the murders on a terrorist “sleeper cell” affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The back-to-back killings are unusual in the desert nation, a moderate Islamic republic situated on the western edge of the Sahara desert that has been relatively free of violence.
The three soldiers were gunned down near the town of Ghallawiya, about 430 miles north of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, said Lt. Col. Mohamed Lemine Ould Taleb, a military spokesman.
The gunmen arrived in two trucks and opened fire on the soldiers manning a checkpoint at the entrance to a military base, said Taleb. They seized a military vehicle equipped with a machine gun and fled, he said.
Divided opposition party to rejoin against Mugabe
JOHANNESBURG, S. Africa — Zimbabwe’s fractured opposition party is preparing to join forces behind a single slate of candidates headed by longtime leader Morgan Tsvangirai in elections scheduled for March, according to party officials.
The decision sets up a rematch between Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since the end of white-supremacist rule in 1980.
Mugabe beat Tsvangirai in 2002 in an election that international observers said was marred by violence and profoundly skewed in favor of the ruling party. Mugabe’s party also defeated Tsvangirai’s in the 2005 parliamentary elections.
