QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Russia should stick to its international commitments and obligations. They should not behave as gangsters in the modern century.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, after insurgents who are believed to have ties
to Russia were blamed for the killing of two people Article, this page
Agency: 86% of Syrian chemical arms gone
AMSTERDAM - Syria’s government has disposed of more than 86 percent of its chemical-weapons stockpile, according to the watchdog agency tasked with overseeing the materials’ removal.
Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Syria on Tuesday surrendered another batch of raw materials used for making chemical weapons.
Cargo ships at Syria’s main port, Latakia, received the latest chemical consignment and delivered it to a U.S. ship offshore, he said in a statement. There, the chemicals will be neutralized under supervision by the watchdog’s experts.
Syria has missed several deadlines for progress specified in last year’s agreed timetable to eradicate its poison-gas and nerve-agent program by June 30. It insists it will meet the final deadline.
Rebel officer caught, 10 freed in C. Africa
KAMPALA, Uganda - African troops captured a junior commander with the Lord’s Resistance Army and rescued 10 people, mostly children, abducted by the rebels, Uganda’s military said Tuesday, the latest blow against the rebel group in an international hunt for its fugitive leaders.
The commander - a rebel lieutenant known as Charles Okello - was seized after a firefight in the Central African Republic, where Ugandan-led African Union troops are hunting down the rebels in a vast jungle, said Ugandan military spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda. Ten civilians, seven of them children, were rescued from the rebels, he said.
African troops are being assisted by United States military advisers in the search for Lord’s Resistance Army leaders. Last month, the U.S. deployed more forces to assist in the hunt for warlord Joseph Kony and other rebel commanders, more than doubling the number of American forces on the ground to 250.
Rio slum’s anger at police turns violent
RIO DE JANEIRO - Violence broke out in a Rio de Janeiro slum late Tuesday after the killing of a popular local figure, with angry residents setting fires and showering homemade explosives and glass bottles onto a busy avenue in the city’s main tourist zone.
Intense exchanges of gunfire were heard when police moved into the Pavao-Pavaozinho slum, which lies a few hundred yards from where Olympic swimming events are expected to take place in 2016.
Residents blamed police for the killing of 25-year-old Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, a well-known figure in the community, whose body was found earlier in the day.
The O Globo newspaper, citing local health officials, reported that another resident of the slum was shot and killed and that a 12-year-old boy shot and wounded during Tuesday night’s gunfire.
Police began a security program in 2008 to drive drug gangs from the impoverished slums they had controlled for decades. It is part of Rio’s overall security push ahead of the World Cup that begins in the city this June and the 2016 Olympics.
But there have been repeated complaints of heavy-handed police tactics that have ended in the deaths of residents, and that is what set off the latest clashes, residents said.
Al-Shabab slays 2nd Somali lawmaker
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Two gunmen belonging to an Islamic extremist group shot and killed a Somali legislator Tuesday as he stepped out of his home in the capital, the second fatal attack on a member of Parliament in as many days, police said.
Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack on Abdiaziz Isaq Mursal in a radio broadcast. Mursal was ambushed in the Madina district of Mogadishu, said senior police officer Ali Hassan.
On Monday, legislator Isaq Mohamed Rino was killed in a car bombing that also wounded a lawmaker with whom he was traveling. Al-Shabab, which has continued to stage attacks in Mogadishu despite being ousted from the seaside capital in 2011, also claimed responsibility for that killing.
Al-Shabab militants previously have carried out attacks against United Nations staff members, government officials, African Union peacekeepers and last year on an upscale mall in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya, which has sent troops into Somalia to battle al-Shabab.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 04/23/2014