QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The area is not fully safe - there is enemy movement there, and it is also surrounded by mountains and covered with forest.”
Ghulam Jilani Khan, security chief for Zabul province, Afghanistan, where six American troops died in a helicopter crash for which the Taliban claimed responsibility but Khan attributed to technical problems Article, this page
U.S. tells its citizens to leave S. Sudan
JUBA, South Sudan - The United States ordered its citizens to leave South Sudan immediately Tuesday because of fighting in the capital after what its president called a coup attempt by soldiers loyal to his former deputy.
Facing an escalating threat of violence, about 20,000 people sought refuge at United Nations facilities in Juba, the capital, where sporadic but heavy gunfire has been heard since Sunday as factions of the armed forces repeatedly clashed across the city.
U.N. diplomats said they were told that local sources in Juba put the death toll at 400 to 500 and estimated the number of injured at around 800, but these figures could not be verified.
The U.S. Embassy said in an advisory Tuesday that Americans who choose to stay in South Sudan “should review their personal security situation and seriously reconsider their plans.” The Embassy suspended its normal operations.
President Salva Kiir said Monday that a group of soldiers loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar, whom he fired in July amid a power struggle, tried to take power by force but were defeated. Kiir then ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the capital.
Guantanamo hearing boots defendant
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A Guantanamo Bay prisoner charged with aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was ejected twice Tuesday from a pretrial hearing at the naval base after he ignored warnings and kept trying to address the court about purported mistreatment inside his high-security prison cell.
Ramzi Binalshibh, one of five Guantanamo prisoners facing a war-crimes tribunal for their purported roles in the terrorist attack, was escorted out of court in the morning and again in the afternoon session at the orders of the military judge, Army Col. James Pohl.
Both times the judge was asking the defendant to acknowledge his right to be absent during the week-long pretrial hearing. The other four defendants answered in the affirmative, but Binalshibh refused and tried to turn the question into an opportunity to repeat previous allegations that guards were making banging noises throughout the night in a deliberate effort to prevent him from sleeping inside Camp 7, the highest-security section of the prison on the U.S. base in Cuba.
Burma opium on rise, fills hole in farming
BANGKOK - Official efforts to stamp out opium production in Burma are falling flat because poor farmers don’t have alternative ways to make a living, a United Nations agency said Wednesday.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its annual Southeast Asia Opium Survey that Burma will produce about 960 tons of opium in 2013, remaining the world’s second-largest grower after Afghanistan. That would be a 26 percent rise over 2012 production.
The agency said last month that Afghanistan’s opium production this year was about 6,060 tons, a 49 percent rise.
The report said rising demand in Asia for illicit drugs has fueled Burma’s increase.
The drug-producing heartland where the borders of Burma, Thailand and Laos converge also is a major source of methamphetamine and heroin, which is derived from opium.
Car bombing targets Hezbollah base
BAALBEK, Lebanon - A car bomb packed with explosives detonated near a Hezbollah base in east Lebanon on Tuesday and caused several casualties, officials said, the latest in a wave of deadly attacks that have targeted the Shiite militant group’s interests in Lebanon.
However, there were conflicting reports on the source of the pre-dawn explosion, and the number of deaths resulting from the blast in the remote, scarcely inhabited area was not immediately clear.
It was the first such attack against a Hezbollah outpost in east Lebanon’s Bekaa region after bombings that targeted Hezbollah strongholds south of the Lebanese capital.
Later on Tuesday, three rockets hit just outside the northeast region of Hermel, also a Hezbollah stronghold, without causing any damage, residents said.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 12/18/2013