THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012
PAGE 3A
NEWS OF THE WORLD
- Associated Press
AFRICA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tunisian protesters clash with riot police, in Siliana, Tunisia, Saturday. The army moved into a southwestern Tunisian town, an official and witnesses said Friday, the fourth day of protests that have injured more than 300 people. President Moncef Marzouki said on television that the North African country's government has not "met the expectations of the people" and asked that a new one, smaller and specialized to deal with the unrest, be formed. The current government has about 80 members.
Removal of governor ends strike
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TUNIS, Tunisia - A Tunisian labor union on Sunday suspended a nearly weeklong strike in an impoverished central town after the national government agreed to remove a local governor.
Over 300 people had been injured in clashes with police this week in Siliana, 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Tunis.
The Regional Workers Union called a strike last week to protest
the area's economic problems, its lack of government investment and the imprisonment without trial of 14 activists for the last year and a half.
The strike degenerated into daily clashes between stone-throwing youths and police, who responded with tear gas and buckshot.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission criticized police for using excessive force and the ministry of health announced Saturday that two civilians had lost an eye from the buckshot.
burned himself to death, setting off protests that toppled Tunisia's longtime dictator in January 2011. That in turn set off what is now known as the Arab Spring revolutions.
Since then, however, Tunisia's economy has struggled, especially with the economic crisis in Europe, its largest trading partner. High unemployment and low investment continue to plague interior regions.
"The governor will never again set foot in Siliana, he has just left and if he returns we will restart the strike," he told the cheering crowd.
Before hundreds of supporters in Sillana, union official Ahmed Chafei announced the "provisional suspension" of the strike to "test the seriousness of the promises made by the government."
Unrest in the poor regions outside Tunis has particular resonance, for it was there that a young man selling vegetables
EUROPE
Serbian village on the lookout for vampire
ZAROJE, Serbia — Get your garlic,
crosses and stakes ready: a bloodsucking
vampire is on the loose.
Or so say villagers in the tiny western Serbian hamlet of Zarozie, nested between lush green mountain slopes and spooky thick forests. They say rumors that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened are spreading fear — and a potential tourist opportunity — through the remote village.
A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires, although it appeared designed more to attract visitors to the impoverished region bordering Bosnia.
Many of the villagers are aware that
Sava Savanovic, Serbia's most famous vampire, is a fairy tale. Still, they say, better to take it seriously than risk succumbing to the vampire's fangs.
"The story of Sava Savanovic is a legend, but strange things did occur in these parts back in the old days," said 55-year-old housewife Milka Prokic. "We have inherited this legend from our ancestors, and we keep it alive for the younger generations."
Some locals say it's easy for strangers to laugh at them, but they truly believe.
Richard Sugg, a lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the U.K.'s University of Durham and an expert on the vampire legends, said the fear could be very real. Stress can bring on nightmares, which makes people's feelings of dread even worse.
SOUTH AMERICA
Peasant movement leader murdered
ASUNCION, Paraguay — Gunmen murdered one of the surviving leaders of a peasant movement whose land dispute with a powerful politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo's presidency last June.
A friend, Mario Espinola, told The Associated Press that Vega was shot down when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.
Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants
Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times early Saturday by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report prepared at the police headquarters in the provincial capital of Curuguay.
from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language.
He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that Colorado Party Sen. Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.
By last May, the peasants finally lost patience and moved onto the land. A firewall during their eviction on June 15 killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado Party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.
Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been jailed without formal charges since then on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings Dec. 16.