Italy: Tourist base still at risk despite lava’s slowdown
Fountains of ash, rock and sand rained down Wednesday on Mount Etna, but a river of lava that had threatened to swallow a tourist station stopped its fiery advance – at least for a day. Emergency officials cautioned that Europe’s most active volcano still wasn’t finished after two weeks of around-the-clock eruptions and that the Rifugio Sapienza tourist base in Sicily was still at risk. Despite the lull, at least 70 bulldozers remained on the scene halfway up the volcano, shoring up the last protective barrier between the river of lava and the base.
Macedonia: Albanian language gains new status in proposal
Negotiators reached a rough agreement on the status of the Albanian language in Macedonia – the issue that has been holding up peace talks between majority Macedonians and ethnic Albanians for three weeks. U.S. envoy James Pardew and his European Union counterpart, Francois Leotard, offered only a general outline of the new proposal on whether to make Albanian an official language in the troubled Balkan nation. Albanian would now be accepted as an official language in areas where 20 percent of the population is ethnic Albanian, sources said. The talks, which start again Friday, had become jammed after two weeks over ethnic Albanian leaders’ demands that Albanian become a second official language, together with Macedonian.
Japan: Man armed with knife kills 1, injures 5 in shop
A man with a history of mental illness attacked six people – including two children – with a kitchen knife on the southern island of Okinawa, killing one woman, police and news reports said. Firefighters received a call from a resident saying “a man armed with a knife is on a rampage,” fire official Riki Teruya said. Takaharu Shimada, another police official, identified the slain woman as 68-year-old Haruko Shiroma. Five others were injured, none critically, the Kyodo News agency said. The attack took place in a shop owned by the suspect’s parents, who were among those injured, Kyodo said. It was unclear what motivated the attack.
Nablus, West Bank: Palestinians bury dead in West Bank. Flurry of attacks against Israeli targets
Thousands of mourners, some firing guns into the air, poured into the streets of Nablus in a funeral procession today for eight Palestinians killed in an Israeli helicopter raid.
The crowd surrounded the bodies as they were removed from the Nablus hospital and carried through the streets on stretchers, covered with Palestinian flags. Women and children screamed and cried. Many waved green flags of the radical Palestinian group Hamas, whose offices were the target of Tuesday’s assault.
“We will not stop our uprising,” Anan al-Atiri, spokeswoman for the Fatah movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said at the funeral. “I think the coming days will be worse than before.”
Israeli security forces warned that Palestinian militants were likely to attempt a major attack, while government officials defended the Nablus assault, which came under international criticism.
The raid killed six people in the third-floor Hamas office, including a senior leader. Two brothers, ages 5 and 8, were killed by shrapnel on the street below the offices.
In most previous raids, Israel has concentrated on bombmakers or gunmen who have carried out attacks. But Tuesday’s raid targeted Jamal Mansour, a top Hamas leader.
Israel said Mansour was part of the Hamas leadership behind 10 bomb attacks since November, including a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on June 1 that killed 23 Israelis. He was planning additional attacks, Israel said, while the Palestinians called him a political figure.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s security cabinet met for five hours Wednesday, and afterward said they would continue the current policy of targeted attacks, according to Israel radio.
Israel’s strike brought international reproach. Even the United States, Israel’s leading ally, issued a condemnation. In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles F. Hunter said, “We continue to strongly oppose the Israeli policy of targeted attacks.”
A total of 10 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces Tuesday, the deadliest single day in the Mideast conflict since a U.S.-brokered cease-fire was declared in June.
Briefly…
A hippopotamus reportedly attacked an 18-year-old woman after she entered its cage and plunged into its pool at a zoo in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The hippo picked up the woman with its mouth and shook her by the waist before tossing her into the air, newspapers reported. She was hospitalized in serious condition with broken bones and a concussion.
