QUOTE OF THE DAY
“There is no real precedent for a situation like this. The plane just vanished.”
Hishammuddin Hussein, the acting Malaysian transport minister, rejecting criticism over the country’s handling of the search for a missing passenger jet Article, this page
Nigeria survivors say 103 slain in raids
KANO, Nigeria - Dozens of gunmen on motorbikes have killed more than 100 villagers in an ongoing conflict over land in northern Nigeria, survivors said Thursday.
The attacks, which began Tuesday night, left scores of people fleeing on foot from the four targeted villages about 110 miles south of Katsina city.
People were still burying victims at Marabar Kindo village when the attackers returned Thursday afternoon and gunned down another seven villagers, resident Adamu Inuwa said. They also set fire to thatch-roofed huts, Inuwa said.
Kabiru Ismail of Maigora village said the first raid came late Tuesday. On Thursday morning, residents were continuing to recover bodies of people who had fled into the bush with the gunmen in pursuit.
By late afternoon, he said he had counted 103 bodies in three of the four villages. Five vehicles also were torched, he said.
The chief imam of Maigora said two policemen responding to calls for help were among the dead. He and Ismail also said two men in military uniforms were among the attackers.
Chinese explosion’s toll updated to 31
BEIJING - The death toll from a little-reported road explosion was disclosed Thursday to be 31, nearly two weeks after the blast shook a highway tunnel in northwestern China.
The city government of Jincheng in Shaanxi province said a team assembled by the State Council to investigate the blast met Thursday in the city to brief on the latest developments. It said another nine people were missing.
The city statement came minutes after China concluded its annual meeting of its ceremonial congress in Beijing, raising questions if the case had been purposely given little attention to avoid disruption to the convention.
The crash March 1 involved more than 40 vehicles, including those carrying hazardous materials, and a fire burned for three days. But the scant news coverage largely ceased March 5, the day when China’s ceremonial legislative body - the National People’s Congress - opened in Beijing for its annual meeting.
The March 5 report by Xinhua said 13 people were dead, another 11 injured and 42 vehicles destroyed in the fire that burned more than 1,500 tons of coal over 73 hours.
4 death penalties upheld in India rape
NEW DELHI - A New Delhi court on Thursday confirmed the death penalty imposed by a lower court for four men convicted in the gang rape and murder of a woman on a moving bus in 2012.
A special fast-track court had sentenced the men in September, saying their crime was one of the rarest of rare cases that warranted the death penalty.
The Delhi High Court dismissed the appeals filed by the men and said it “affirmed” the sentence given by the lower court.
The 23-year-old medical student and a friend were returning home from a movie when the men and two others tricked them into boarding a bus on which they were joy-riding.
They beat woman’s the friend into submission, held the woman down and took turns raping her. They also penetrated her with a rod, causing severe internal injuries that led to her death two weeks after the December 2012 attack.
Police said one of the men hanged himself in prison.
Another man - who was under age 18 at the time of the attack - was convicted and ordered to serve three years in a reform home.
1 killed in attack on Egyptian military
CAIRO - Masked gunmen opened fire Thursday on an army bus in Cairo, killing one soldier and wounding three in a rare attack on troops in the Egyptian capital, security officials and a military spokesman said.
The bus, which belongs to the army’s Military Police, was driving through the capital’s Amiriyah district when it was targeted, the security officials said. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, did not say who was responsible for the attack.
The armed forces spokesman, Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali, blamed the Muslim Brotherhood - the country’s leading Islamist group from which ousted President Mohammed Morsi hails - for the early-morning attack.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/14/2014