QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I’m seeing people carrying bloody bodies. There are parts of bodies littering the street.”
Mallam Samalia, a trader, after two bombs exploded Saturday night at a marketplace in Maiduguri, a northeastern Nigerian city Article, this page
Burma reverses doctors group expulsion
RANGOON, Burma - A day after Doctors Without Borders announced its expulsion from Burma, the government backpedaled, saying the aid organization would be allowed to resume operations everywhere but Rakhine, a state plagued by bloody bouts of sectarian violence.
The aid group expressed grave concern Saturday about the fate of tens of thousands of vulnerable people in the state, which is home to the country’s minority Rohingya Muslim community.
Doctors Without Borders, which provides care across religious, ethnic and racial lines, has come under fire for working on behalf of the Rohingya.
It was last week that its license was being revoked, in part because it was hiring “Bengalis,” the name Burma’s government uses to refer to the Rohingya. The group also was accused of lacking transparency.
Presidential spokesman Ye Htut said negotiations were continuing between the Ministry of Health and Doctors Without Borders about the aid agency’s work in Rakhine.
Burma is often called Myanmar, a name that ruling military authorities adopted in 1989.
703 killed in Iraq in February, U.N. says
BAGHDAD - The United Nations said Saturday that violence across Iraq in February killed 703 people, a death toll higher than the year before as the country faces a rising wave of militant attacks rivaling the sectarian bloodshed that followed the U.S.-led invasion.
The figure issued by the U.N.’s mission to Iraq is close to January’s death toll of 733, showing that a surge of violence that began 10 months ago with a government crackdown on a Sunni protest camp is not receding.
Meanwhile, attacks Saturday killed at least five people and wounded 14, authorities said.
Attacks in February killed 564 civilians and 139 security force members, the U.N. said. The violence wounded 1,381, the vast majority civilians, it said. That compares with February 2013, when attacks killed 418 civilians and wounded 704.
U.N. mission chief Nickolay Mladenov appealed to Iraqis to stop the violence.
February’s numbers could be even worse than the U.N.
reported, however, as they again excluded deaths from ongoing fighting in Anbar province, because of problems in verifying the “status of those killed.”
Ex-U.S. detainee denies terrorism charge
LONDON - A former Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee and human-rights activist was arraigned Saturday in a London court on charges of promoting terrorism in Syria.
Moazzam Begg, 45, a prominent defender of terrorist suspects’ rights since his return to Britain in 2005, denied charges that he provided terrorist training and funded overseas terrorism. He was ordered held in custody until his next court appearance March 14.
Begg was arrested Tuesday along with three others in Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city. One, Gerrie Tahari, 44, appeared alongside him in court Saturday and denied a charge of aiding overseas terrorism.
Begg was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 as an “enemy combatant.” He was held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and sent a year later to the U.S.-run prison camp in Cuba. He was released without being charged in 2005 and now helps to direct a London-based lobbying group called Cage.
S. Korea leader calls for more reunions
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea’s president on Saturday proposed the rival Koreas hold reunions of Korean War-divided families on a regular basis, saying time was running out for the elderly separated by hostilities and politics.
South Korea has made similar proposals in the past, but President Park Geun-hye’s latest overture came after the two Koreas last month held their first reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War in more than three years.
North Korea didn’t immediately respond to Park’s proposal. Analysts say North Korea has been reluctant to increase family reunions because of worries that doing so could open the country to influence from the more affluent South Korea and threaten its grip on power.
The latest six-day family reunions were arranged after North Korea began calling for better ties with South Korea.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/02/2014