News of the Day From Across the Globe

News of the Day From Across the Globe
San Francisco Chronicle News Services
Friday, December 30, 2011

1 Villagers killed: Turkish warplanes mistakenly killed 35 smugglers and other villagers in an operation targeting Kurdish rebels in Iraq, a senior official said - one of the largest one-day civilian death tolls during Turkey's 27-year drive against the guerrillas. The killings spurred angry demonstrations in Istanbul on Thursday and were the latest incident to undermine the Turkish government's efforts to appease the Kurdish minority with cultural freedoms.

2 Political comeback: Preliminary election results show that opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller has reclaimed leadership of Jamaica in a dramatic political comeback. Election Director Orrette Fisher said that based on preliminary results "it appears safe to say" that the 66-year-old Simpson Miller's party will return to power. The official count will be released on Saturday. Simpson Miller was tossed out of office four years ago in a narrow defeat. Her victory Thursday marks a major political comeback.

3 Tusks seized: Large seizures of elephant tusks make this year the worst on record since ivory sales were banned in 1989, with recent estimates suggesting as many as 3,000 elephants were killed by poachers, experts said Thursday in South Africa. In one case this month, Malaysian authorities seized hundreds of African elephant tusks worth $1.3 million that were being shipped to Cambodia. The ivory was hidden in containers of Kenyan handicrafts.

4 Deadly fire: A tanker truck filled with gasoline crashed and burst into flames on Thursday in Venezuela, engulfing several cars and a bus and killing at least 13 people. The tanker truck tipped over and spilled gasoline, which ignited and burned seven vehicles, Caracas fire chief William Martinez said. The truck driver was unhurt.

5 Protest: Opposition leaders trying to sustain the momentum of their upstart protest movement in Russia gathered about 200 people Thursday for an unsanctioned rally in Moscow in support of a jailed radical socialist party activist, Sergei Udaltsov, whom they are hoping to turn into a cause celebre.

6 Sub on fire: A massive fire engulfed a Russian nuclear submarine at an Arctic shipyard Thursday, but there has been no radiation leak or injuries, officials said. The fire on the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine occurred while it was in dock for repairs at the Roslyakovo shipyard in the Murmansk region, said a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry's branch.

7 Workers attacked: A foreign aid worker was shot dead and another was wounded by a former colleague at their office in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Thursday, officials and witnesses said, adding to a series of attacks on humanitarian workers and journalists that has underscored the dangers of working in this war-torn country. The foreigners, said to be French and Indonesian, worked for the Belgian branch of Doctors Without Borders.

8 Death ruling: A judge in Chile has closed the case on the death of President Salvador Allende after an authoritative autopsy confirmed it was suicide. An international panel of experts convened by Judge Mario Carroza determined that Allende took his own life with an AK-47 while defending the presidential palace in Chile's 1973 coup. Carroza ruled out the possibility that a soldier or bodyguard fired the fatal shots.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/29/MN151MI3EA.DTL#ixzz1i2iLtJgp