LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “We have never changed our position and will not change it.” Alexander Lukashevich, spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, which sought to distance itself from comments a day earlier by its Middle East envoy that the Syrian rebels may defeat President Bashar Assad Article, 1A
Chinese slasher
injures 22 pupils
BEIJING - A knifewielding man injured 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China as students were arriving for classes Friday, police said, the latest in a series of periodic rampage attacks at Chinese schools and kindergartens.
The attack in the Henan province village of Chengping happened shortly before 8 a.m., said a police officer from Guangshan county, where the village is located.
The attacker, 36-year-old villager Min Yingjun, was in police custody, said an officer who declined to give her name.
A Guangshan county hospital administrator said there were no deaths among the nine students admitted, although two badly injured children had been transferred to better-equipped hospitals outside the county.
A doctor at Guangshan’s hospital of traditional Chinese medicine said that seven students had to be admitted, but that none were seriously injured.
Russian sentenced in reporter’s death
MOSCOW - A Moscow court sentenced a former policeman to 11 years in prison for his role in the murder of reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, RIA Novosti reported.
Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was found guilty of organizing monitoring of Politkovskaya before her assassination and buying weapons for the crime, the state-run news service said Friday.
Politkovskaya wrote about alleged corruption under President Vladimir Putin and chronicled alleged abuses by security forces in the mainly Muslim region of Chechnya.
Pavlyuchenkov is the first person to be convicted for involvement in the 2006 killing of Politkovskaya. The U.S. government urged Russia to find the real culprits behind the murder of the reporter, who held dual Russian-U.S. citizenship, after a Moscow jury acquitted three men of involvement in the killing in 2009.
Vatican Christmas
tree illuminated
VATICAN CITY - The Christmas season kicked off Friday at the Vatican with the traditional lighting of the tree in St. Peter’s Square - and a reminder from the pope about what happened when the “lights” of God were turned off in past atheistic regimes.
Benedict XVI, 85, occasionally refers to his experiences as a devout young Catholic in Nazi Germany in pressing his case for Europe to recover its Christian heritage and reassert its faith in everyday life.
“And when in the past they tried to stamp out the light of God to instead turn on illusory and misleading glows, there were seasons of tragic violence against man,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 12/15/2012