LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Sometimes in a friendship you advise a friend many times, and then you discover that you aren’t having any impact, so you decide to distance yourself.”
Manaf Tlass,
a former Syrian brigadier general who abandoned President Bashar Assad’s regime this month and says he now aims to unite the country’s opposition Article 9AIndia sends more troops to quell strife
BIJNI, India - Indian authorities on Thursday rushed in more troops to quell ethnic violence in a remote northeastern state where dozens of people have been killed in the past week and villagers are frightened to return to their burned-out homes.
Clashes between members of the ethnic Bodo community and Muslim settlers in Assam state have left 42 people dead and 13 others missing, state officials said. Six of the 42 were killed by security forces, who were given a mandate Tuesday to shoot rioters on sight.
The killing of four Bodo men last week sparked off violent attacks by Bodo tribesmen on Muslim villages.
Hundreds of homes were torched and more than 200,000 people fled their homes for relief camps set up in schools and government buildings.
On Thursday, Assam’s Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi met with Bodo and Muslim leaders in an effort to defuse tensions and restore peace, while the federal government ordered more troops to be sent to the three worst-hit districts: Kokrajhar, Dibrugarh and Chirang.
53 trapped during mine rescue freed
BEIJING - Fifty-three rescuers have been freed after becoming trapped while trying to save five coal miners stuck underground when a tunnel collapsed at a southwest China mine.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the rescuers had been trying to help five miners trapped since the tunnel at the Anlilai mine in Guizhou province collapsed Wednesday.
But as they tried to enter the mine, the tunnel collapsed a second time and trapped the rescuers. Xinhua said the 53 were pulled out Thursday through a freshly dug tunnel.
The work to reach the five trapped miners was continuing.
China’s coal mines are among the world’s deadliest and have frequent explosions, cave-ins and floods. Repeated safety crackdowns have lowered the death rate, but hundreds of fatalities still occur every year.
Topless protester tries to attack cleric
KIEV, Ukraine - A bare-breasted feminist activist bearing a threatening message on her body tried to attack the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church on Thursday to protest alleged anti-Ukrainian policies by the church and the Kremlin.
The protester with the Ukrainian women’s rights movement Femen managed to get to within a yard of Patriarch Kirill at Kiev’s airport but was stopped by a security guard and a priest.
The woman, identified by Femen as Yana Zhdanova, had the words “Kill Kirill” written on her back in large black letters and shouted a phrase from a religious ritual that aims to expel demons, roughly translated as “Kirill, go to hell.”
Police said the activist was being held at the airport and would soon be taken to court, where she may face a fine or several days in custody.
Twitter resolves global Tweet trouble
LONDON - People around the world briefly experienced problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.
About three hours after the San Francisco-based company first acknowledged the problem by saying its engineers were “currently working to resolve the issue,” Twitter said in a statement that the “site issue” had been resolved. It did not go into further detail on what caused the glitch.
Sluggishness or failures were reported for more than an hour in countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some users were able to post updates through their phones or third-party applications.
Twitter said in March that it has more than 140 million active users and that the service sees 340 million Tweets a day.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 07/27/2012