QUOTE OF THE DAY “Repression works in reverse. More people are coming to Maidan.” Ukrainian demonstrator Tamara Tribko, as 20,000 gathered in Kiev’s central square Sunday Article, this page2 dead after police raid Kenyan mosque
MOMBASA, Kenya - Police opened fire on Muslim youths wielding daggers at a mosque linked to the recruitment of Islamic extremists, and at least one officer and a young man were killed Sunday, witnesses and officials said in the coastal resort and port city of Mombasa.
Police said they raided the Masjid Musa mosque acting on intelligence that a meeting to recruit militants was taking place.
A reporter at the scene reported seeing police shoot and kill one person as they tried to disperse a growing crowd screaming “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great” outside the mosque, which has been the recent site of violent confrontations between young Muslims and police.
A police officer who was stabbed in the face died of his wounds, said Mombasa Police Commander Robert Kitur.
Another officer was stabbed in the stomach and is being treated at the hospital, he said.
Police later occupied the mosque and its precincts, Kitur said.
China, Japan strife concerns Kissinger
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger raised the specter of war in Asia as tension between China and Japan played out at a global security conference.
“Asia is more in a position of 19th-century Europe, where military conflict is not ruled out,” Kissinger, 90, said on a panel at the meeting in Munich on Saturday. “Between Japan and China, the issue for the rest of us is that neither side be tempted to rely on force to settle the issue.”
Fu Ying, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Party Congress, told the conference earlier that China’s relationship with Japan is “probably at its worst” amid a territorial dispute. China will take action to maintain stability in the region, she said.
A deepening conflict between the two nations over a chain of islands in the East China Sea threatens security in the region as the countries escalate rhetoric over their World War II past. About a month after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to a shrine honoring wartime leaders, Fu blamed Japan’s “history of denial” of its crimes during the war.
S. Sudan rebel: Government on attack
JUBA, South Sudan - A brigadier speaking for rebels in South Sudan said Sunday that government troops have attacked their positions, actively violating a cease-fire in what he called a deliberate attempt to sabotage imminent peace talks.
Brig. Lul Ruai Koang said that rebel commanders in South Sudan report that government forces and allied militias attacked northern Leer town and surrounding villages in Unity state Saturday, killing an unknown number of people and destroying property. The rebels’ defensive positions in Upper Nile state also came under attack Saturday, he said.
South Sudan military spokesman Col. Philip Aguer said he was unaware of fresh clashes.
Koang said Saturday’s attacks “are clear indications that [President Salva] Kiir’s government is not interested in peace but prepared for war.”
It was consistent with a “trend of government destruction and carnage” that had intensified before the signing Jan. 23 of a cease-fire agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he said.
It was impossible to verify the allegations from Koang, who is based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Activists denounce Saudi Arabian law
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Saudi Arabia put into effect a sweeping new counterterrorism law Sunday that human-rights activists say allows the kingdom to prosecute anyone as a terrorist who demands overhauls, exposes corruption or otherwise engages in dissent.
The law states that any act that “undermines” the state or society, including calls for regime change in Saudi Arabia, can be tried as an act of terrorism. It also grants security services broad powers to raid homes and track phone calls and Internet activity.
Human-rights activists were alarmed by the law and said it is clearly aimed at keeping the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud family firmly in control amid the demands for democratic overhaul that have grown louder since the Arab Spring protests of 2011.
In defense of the law, the Saudi minister of culture and information, Abdel Aziz Khoja, was quoted in December as saying that the legislation strikes a balance between prevention of crimes and protection of human rights according to Islamic law.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/03/2014