International News for Feb. 12-19

This is not original reporting. All information has been compiled from the BBC World News and New York Times International News. Silver Chips Online posts this news summary to provide readers with a forum for discussion.

Afghanistan
The 10th Mountain Division's one-year deployment in Afghanistan has been extended by four months. The 3,200 soldiers had already packed their uniforms, gear and equipment for deployment when the decision was announced on Jan. 25.

Algeria
Seven bombs exploded almost simultaneously, killing six people and wounding more than dozen in what is considered to be the worst attacks in months. A terrorist group, Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, which says it has allied itself with Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Argentina
Argentina formally asked Spain to extradite María Estela de Perón, in part with a human rights abuse investigation that is currently being conducted against the former president. Péron, also known as Isabel, has lived in exile in Spain since 1980.

Baghdad
Four back-to-back explosions at two markets in central Baghdad killed at least 67 people and injured 155 on Monday, Feb. 12. In the past year alone, more than 500 people were killed while shopping or selling goods in the capital’s market.

Bosnia
Gojko Jankovic, former Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader, was sentenced to 34 years in prison by the Bosnian Court for killing, torturing, raping and expelling Muslims and Croats from the eastern town of Foca at the beginning of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Canary Islands
A man with two loaded handguns hijacked a Mauritanian plane to the Canary Islands, a region of Spain off the coast of Africa. The plane was overpowered by passengers and crew members. The police stormed the plane shortly after it landed and arrested the hijacker.

China
The editor of Southern Metropolitan Daily in China, Li Minying, who was imprisoned for six years for corruption after the newspaper broke articles about police abuse and medical cover-up in Guangdong Province, was released from prison three years early.

Ecuador
Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, won congressional approval to hold nationwide referendum on convening an assembly to rewrite the countries' Constitution. The plan was approved by a 57 to 1 vote in the 100-seat Congress.

Estonia
Estonia's President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, said that he would veto legislation to authorize the removal of Soviet war monuments, specifically a memorial known as the Bronze Soldier in the capital of Tallinn.

France
Attendants at the Louvre were on partial strike on Feb. 14 demanding a bonus for the stress caused by the marshaling of tens of thousands visitors a day past the Mona Lisa.

Gaza Strip
Construction has begun on 300 homes next to the Jewish settlement of Rafiah Yam in the Gaza Strip. This is the first major construction project in or near a settlement since Israeli soldiers and settlers pulled out of the land in the summer of 2005.

Germany
Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a leader of the terrorist Red Army Faction, who was imprisoned for 24 years after committing murders and kidnappings in the 1970s, was ordered to be released by the German court.

Great Britain
British leaders expressed dismay on Friday, Feb. 16, as a recent wave of gun crime in south London claimed five lives, particularly at the young men in their mid-teens who were shot to death in their homes.

Guinea
Guinea's ailing president declared martial law on Monday, Feb. 12, in hopes of stopping a wave of violent street demonstrations and strikes that have crippled the country and brought it to the point of rebellion.

Iran
A car bombing in southeastern city of Zahedan killed at least 11 people and injured 34 others. The bomb blew up in front of a bus carrying members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Italy
Police arrested 15 radical leftists, who were heirs to the red Brigades, Italy's most active terrorist group in the 1970s that killed former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, in 1978, for actively planning future attacks.

Ivory Coast
A Netherlander oil trading company agreed to pay almost $200 million to the Ivory Coast government, to settle the claims that it illegally dumped toxic petrochemical waste in Abidjan last August. At least 10 people died and thousands were sickened due to this incident.

Japan
Japan's economy is expanding at an annualized 4.8 percent for the October-December period, and has grown for the eighth consecutive quarter. Data shows that Japan is the world's second-largest economy, following the United States.

Lebanon
On Feb. 13, a day before people in Lebanon prepared to celebrate the second anniversary of its former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri who was assassinated, two minibuses were bombed, killing three people and wounding 23.

Malawi
A $2 million program, financed in party by the World Health Organization and the European Union, will try to help Malawi with its battle to reduce the high number of maternal deaths during childbirth. Malawi has pledged to reduce the rate of 984 deaths for every 100,000 live births by 75 percent by 2015.

Mexico
Mexico’s national police has begun an inquiry into whether the mayor of Acapulco, Félix Salgado Macedonio, has had links to drug traffickers. Mayor Macedonio welcomed the investigation and said that he has nothing to hide.

Mozambique
The flooding of the Zambezi River has forced more than 68,000 people from their homes, but the government said it did not need large-scale international aid yet. This is Mozambique’s worst flood since a catastrophic 2001 flood.

Nepal
The capital of Nepal, Katmandu, got some snow for the first time in 63 years. While Nepal is home to Mount Everest, the capital is located in a valley and has not had snow since January 1944, according to Kantipur Television.

North Korea
A tentative agreement was reached between the United States and four other nations that will provide North Korea with $400 million in fuel oil and aid. In return North Korea must allow inspectors back into the country and disable its nuclear facilities.

Pakistan A sixth suicide bomber in a month blew himself up in a district courtroom killing 15 people, including a senior judge, and injuring 35 others. The bombing occurred on the border town of Quetta on Saturday, Feb. 17, and while no group claimed responsibility, some 40 people have died as a result of suicide bombings.

Rwanda
Lawmakers in Rwanda are drafting a law limiting couples to no more than three children in order to stop the fast-rising population from increasing poverty levels. The population has been growing at 3 percent a year, with women giving birth to an average of six children, this is one of the highest rates in Africa.

Spain
José Ignacio de Juana Chaos, a former Basque armed group ETA leader, who was imprisoned in 1987 for killing 25 people, went on a hunger strike after a new charge was brought against him close to the day of his release last year. After 100 days of strike, the Supreme Court cut Ignacio’s prison sentence.

Sri Lanka
Britain offered to help Sri Lanka end a two-decade-old civil war, by taking a bigger role in the peace negotiations with the Tamil Tiger rebels that the country outlawed as terrorists.

Turkey
Seven Muslim men were sentenced to life in prison for bombing Jewish and British sites in Istanbul in 2003 that killed more than 60 people and wounded hundreds more.

Turkmenistan
Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, a dentist by training but a bureaucrat by profession, took office on Feb. 14 as the new president of Turkmenistan. Election officials announced that he has received nearly 90 percent of the votes.

United Nations
A vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrhea-causing infection that kills up to 600,000 children every year, has been approved by the World Health Organization. The United Nations can soon buy the vaccine in bulk and use it in mass vaccination campaigns, especially in areas such as Africa and Asia where the infection is most prevalent.

Yemen
Around 30 Somali and Ethiopian migrants, who were trying to reach the Arabian Peninsula, drowned after their boat capsized off Yemen. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that unconfirmed reports from those that survived placed the death toll as high as 78.