BELGIUM
Germany, Italy to help train Afghan troops after 2014
Germany and Italy have committed to join the United States in helping to train Afghan troops after combat operations cease at the end of next year, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday. Germany will take the lead in the north of Afghanistan and Italy in the west, diplomats said after a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, while Hagel said Turkey is considering becoming the lead nation in the capital, Kabul. The agreement does not include specific troop numbers.
VENEZUELA
U.S. filmmaker, jailed as alleged spy, released
A U.S. filmmaker jailed for alleged espionage in Venezuela was expelled from the country and returned to the United States on Wednesday in a gesture that could signal a thaw in tense relations between the two countries. The release of Timothy Tracy, 35, occurred just hours before the top diplomats of both countries agreed during a meeting in Guatemala to discuss restoring ambassador-level relations. The release was secured with the help of former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who has long worked to improve often strained U.S.-Venezuelan ties and was hired by Tracy’s family as an attorney in the case.
IRAQ
Gunmen ambush, shoot dead 14 travelers
Gunmen ambushed a group of travelers at a fake checkpoint at a remote desert site in western Iraq on Wednesday and killed at least 14 of them, according to Iraqi officials, in what appeared to be the latest blow in sectarian violence gripping the country. Officials said the 14 victims were shot in the head. They said the dead included police and soldiers, as well as civilian residents of the overwhelmingly Shiite Karbala.
JAPAN
Leak found in tank at Fukushima nuclear plant
The operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Wednesday it had found a leak in one of the hundreds of steel tanks used to store radioactive water at the plant, raising renewed questions about the company’s ability to handle the plant’s cleanup. On Tuesday, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted it had found cesium particles in groundwater flowing into the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, reversing its earlier claim that the water was uncontaminated. The company stressed that the size of the tank leak was small — about one liter, or a quart, had dripped out so far, it said — and that the level of radioactivity in groundwater was within safe levels.
JAMAICA
U.N. agency condemns violence against children
The United Nations’ child welfare agency said Wednesday it is deeply concerned about what it describes as “unrelenting violence” against youngsters in Jamaica. Robert Fuderich, UNICEF’s representative in Jamaica, said a recent spate of grisly crimes targeting schoolchildren has underscored a chronic and disturbing problem in the Caribbean country that has put authorities on alert and parents on edge. UNICEF reports that 40 children were reported slain in 2012 on the island of roughly 2.6 million inhabitants. In just the first four months of this year, 16 children were killed — almost half of last year’s total. Reports of child abuse, including neglect and rapes of schoolchildren, are also increasingly frequent. Last year, Jamaican child welfare authorities received 8,741 reports of child abuse, compared to 7,826 the year before.
ENGLAND
Suspicious fire guts Islamic center in London
British counterterrorism officers were investigating a suspicious fire Wednesday at a Somali community center in London, where graffiti spelling out the name of a far-right group was left on the building. The fire at the Somali Bravanese Welfare Association — also known as the Al-Rahma Islamic Center — came two weeks after the killing of a British soldier in London in a suspected Islamic extremist attack. The Metropolitan Police said detectives were investigating if there was any link between the blaze, which caused extensive damage, and the graffiti found on the building. The graffiti read “EDL” — the anti-immigrant English Defense League.
MEXICO
Vigilantes, police kill three cartel suspects
Three suspected drug-gang gunmen were killed in a confrontation with community self-defense squads and federal police in the mountains of western Mexico, the local mayor said Wednesday. Mayor Justo Virgen Cerrillos in the town of Chinicuila said the suspects had been trying to steal residents’ cars to flee the recent offensive by federal forces and died in a gunbattle that began when they were confronted by vigilantes and police Tuesday. Virgen Cerrillos said the suspects were among the cartel gunmen who have been hiding in the mountains since self-defense squads were formed by local residents earlier this year.
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