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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Dr. Karadzic and myself both thought it was a courageous decision of the trial chamber to say at this stage of the case that there was no genocide in the municipalities in Bosnia in 1992.”

Peter Robinson, the attorney of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic who was acquitted Thursday of one charge of genocide but still faces 10 other war-crimes counts Article, this page

Bus attack in Pakistan kills 10 Shiites

QUETTA, Pakistan - Suspected Sunni Muslim militants attacked a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims in southwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 10 people, officials said.

Separately, a roadside bomb hit a paramilitary convoy in the country’s northwest, killing seven soldiers, a government official said.

The bus, attacked with a bomb and gunfire, was carrying about 40 passengers and was traveling from Iran to Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, said senior police officer Hamid Shakeel.

In addition to those killed, 25 people were wounded, said Mohammed Jafar, a doctor at the main hospital in Quetta.

The roadside bomb attack on the paramilitary convoy occurred as it was passing through a bazaar in Bara town in the Khyber tribal area, where the military is waging a battle against the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, said Iqbal Khan, a local political official. Two soldiers were wounded.

Holed-up Assange ordered to surrender

LONDON - British police served Julian Assange with a demand Thursday that he report to a police station as the first step in his extradition to Sweden to face sex-crime allegations.

The letter was delivered to Ecuador’s London embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for nine days.

Assange is seeking political asylum in Ecuador in a bid to escape extradition for questioning over accusations of rape and sexual assault against two women.

He denies the claims, and says the case against him is politically motivated.

Assange has said he fears the United States plans to charge him for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents via the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website.

Hamas reports member slain in Syria

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas said Thursday that one of its members was assassinated in his home in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

An official in the Palestinian militant movement said Kamal Ghanaja was a former aide to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior commander who was himself assassinated in Dubai in 2010.

The official said Hamas had been informed that a group of people entered Ghanaja’s home, killed him and took some files. He said a senior member of the movement has gone to Damascus to follow the official investigations.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Hamas said in a statement posted on its website that it was working to identify the assassin. Although Hamas did not blame anyone for the killing, suspicions arose that Israel was involved.

Israel is widely believed to have killed al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel in 2010, though it has never confirmed or denied involvement.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused Thursday to confirm or deny Israeli involvement in the Ghanaja killing.

Bahrainis say police wounded activist

MANAMA, Bahrain - Bahraini police wounded a prominent human-rights activist by shooting her in the leg with a tear-gas canister, witnesses said Thursday.

Yousef al-Muhafedha, a member of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said he saw police use a gun to fire the canister at Zainab al-Khawaja at close range after anti-government protesters gathered in the village of Buri southwest of the capital of Manama a day earlier.

Police appeared to recognize al-Khawaja, he added.

Al-Khawaja is the daughter of jailed activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, whose hunger strike of more than 100 days called renewed international attention to the protest movement in Bahrain. She couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The government Information Affairs Authority said police had not received al-Khawaja’s claim of injury, but that all such cases are taken seriously.

It added that “precaution should always be exercised” by Bahrainis taking part in unauthorized demonstrations.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 06/29/2012

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