THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012
PAGE 3
NEWS OF THE WORLD
Associated Press
EUROPE
Russian opposition leader receives 10 days in jail after leading march during rally
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russian opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov, left, speaks with the media at a court in Moscow, Russia, Thursday. Udaltsov was detained after Saturday's opposition rally while trying to lead his followers in a march and charged with disobeying police.
MOSCOW — A Russian court has sentenced an opposition leader to a 10-day jail term for disobeying police during an anti-Kremlin rally earlier this month.
Sergei Udaltsov of the Left Front movement said Thursday he would appeal the sentence by Moscow's Presensky district court and declared a hunger strike.
He has been detained dozens of times in the past several years and has spent several months in jail, Udaltsov repeatedly went on hunger strikes, prompting supporters concerns about his health.
Udaaltsov, 35, played a key role in organizing a series of opposition protests in Moscow that drew tens of thousands to protest Vladimir Putin's rule.
Also Thursday, another protest leader Alexei Navalny was fined 1,000 rubles (the equivalent of $33) for disobey-
police orders at the rally Udaitsov helped organize.
Last Saturday, about 10,000 protesters flocked to a central Moscow avenue to demand Vladimir Putin's resignation and protest electoral fraud.
The rally had been widely seen as a test of whether the opposition is able to maintain its strength after Prime Minister Putin won a return to the Kremlin. The turnout was in stark contrast to winter election protests which attracted up to 100,000 people in the largest discontent in Russia's post-Soviet history.
Putin, Russia's president in 2000-2008, had to step down in 2008 to avoid the terms' limitations. He won 64 percent of the vote on Sunday and is set to stay in the Kremlin for the next 6 years.
NORTH AMERICA
Police seize record amount of opiates
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican army said Wednesday that it has made a record seizure of opiates, about 3.6 metric tons of a dark liquid that contains heroin.
Experts said the liquid may be opium paste being processed into heroin.
A Mexican Defense Department press statement called it "the most important seizure of this drug in the history of the army and air force."
Authorities did not say how much heroin it would produce, but in general a kilogram of opium paste can yield about one-tenth as much of the drug.
The largest previous seizure of opiates was 245 kilograms (540 pounds) of opium paste found in Guerrero in January 2011. The Defense Department had said that seizure would have yielded over 600,000 doses of heroin.
The latest seizure was made when soldiers found dozens of large plastic containers with over 3,600 liters of the dark liquid on Feb. 1 during a raid on a drug lab in Coyuca de Catalan, a mountain town in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, near the border with Michoacan, the department said Wednesday
The department did not explain why the seizure was not made public for over a month, but noted that in order to accurately identify the liquid, it had referred the substance to civilian prosecutors for tests.
MIDDLE EAST
Swiss couple held by Taliban released
ISLAMABAD — A Swiss couple held captive for nearly a year by the Taliban in Pakistan turned up at an army post close to the Afghan border on Thursday, claiming to have escaped from their captors, the Pakistani army said. They were swiftly flown to safety by the military.
Taliban commanders said a ransom was paid in exchange for the release of the man and woman.
David Och and Daniela Widmer, smiling and looking healthy, briefly waved for waiting cameras at a military airbase close to the Pakistani before getting into a van.
The couple, who were apparently on holiday in the country, were seized in July in the southwest province of Bauluchistan.
They appeared in a militant video in October, saying their captors were threatening to kill them.
Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the couple showed up at an army post in Miran Shah in North Waziristan, an al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold. He said the couple was then flown to Peshawar, the main city in northwestern Pakistan, on an army helicopter.
"They say they escaped from the custody of militants," he said.
Two local Pakistani Taliban commanders said the couple had been freed, but only after an undisclosed ransom had been paid and some Taliban prisoners were released from Pakistani custody. They refused to give their names.
AFRICA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Oct. 24, 2011, file photo, a man receives treatment after being injured in a grenade attack at a bus stop in Nairobi, Kenya. The Pentagon's JointImproved Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) says that bomb attacks in Nigeria, Kenya and Somalia became more frequent and deadly in 2011, as al-Qaida-affiliated terror groups used more sophisticated devices to kill more people with each explosion.
Deadlier bombs being used in Africa
Militants last year began using a deadlier type of bomb known as a shaped charge for the first time
NAIROBI, Kenya — Bomb attacks in Nigeria, Kenya and Somalia rose in 2011 as al-Qaida-affiliated terror groups used more sophisticated devices to kill more people with each explosion, the Pentagon's anti-IIED unit said.
Nigeria saw a nearly fourfold jump in the number of improvised explosive device incidents last year, while Kenya saw an 86 percent increase, according to the unit. Indorscoring the threat, both nations saw deadly blasts last weekend. A car bomb attack on a church during Mass in Nigeria and grenades thrown at Kenyans as they waited at a crowded bus stop.
in both Somalia and Nigeria, John Myrick, a U.S. military bomb expert said. Advanced bomb-makers use shaped charges to increase the force of a bomb so that it can penetrate armor.
Such deadly explosives were used repeatedly by militants at the height of the Iraq war, and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan.
While Somalia saw only a small increase in attacks, the newer technology lead to greater casualties and deeper impact on Africa Union forces, Myrick said.
On Wednesday, a suicide bomb attack aimed at the main government compound in Mogadishu killed at least three people, said the spokesman for the African Union force known as AMISOM.