US investigates Yemenis' charge that drone strike 'turned wedding into a funeral'
By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News
The Obama administration has launched an internal investigation into a Dec. 12 drone strike in Yemen that targeted an al Qaeda militant but which local villagers say ended up hitting a wedding party, killing 12 and injuring 14 others, U.S. officials tell NBC News.
NBC News has obtained exclusive videos and photos taken in the aftermath of the strike. The graphic images show the scorched bodies of young men who villagers say were part of a convoy on their way to the wedding celebration when they were killed in their pickups by two Hellfire missiles fired by a U.S. drone.
The video and photographs were shot by Nasser Al-Sane, a local Yemeni journalist, and given to NBC News by Reprieve, a human rights group critical of U.S. drone policy.
Taliban deny sending 10-year-old girl on Afghan suicide bomb mission
Child says she refused to carry out attack on Helmand checkpoint after being given explosives by her brother
The Taliban have denied that they dispatched a 10-year-old girl to carry out a suicide attack against Afghan police after the girl said her brother wrapped her in an explosives-packed vest but that she refused to blow herself up at a checkpoint in Helmand province.
Border police in the southern Afghan province arrested the girl's father, Abdul Ghfar, and were searching for the brother, a police commander said. The girl, who was detained on Monday and identified herself only as Spozhmai, said her brother was a Taliban commander.
But Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahamdi on Tuesday denied any involvement in the alleged plot, which he dismissed as government propaganda.
Ex-Swiss guard complains of sexual advances in Vatican
Over 20 reported sexual advances from priests, bishops and a cardinal
Derek Scally
For almost 500 years, young men from all over Switzerland have made the trek to Rome to guard the pope as Swiss guards.
Now a former member of the elite division has revealed that, besides protecting the pontiff, he spent his two years in the Vatican rebuffing unwanted sexual advances from priests, bishops and even a high-ranking cardinal.
The unnamed guard told a Swiss newspaper that he was the subject of 20 “unambiguous sexual requests”.
“One night, after midnight, I received a call on my mobile phone,” said the former guard in the interview. “The person on the other end said he was a cardinal and he asked me to come to his room.”
First chemical-arms material shipped out of Syria
A first batch of chemicals from Syria’s weapons program has been shipped out of the war-torn country. Syria’s government agreed to surrender its chemical weapons in a deal last year to avoid a US bombing campaign.
The United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced on Tuesday that a small quantity of chemical material that could be used in the production of weapons had left Syria.
"A first quantity of priority chemical materials was moved from two sites to the port of Latakia for verification and was then loaded onto a Danish commercial vessel today," said a statement released by the Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch diplomat who heads the joint UN-OPCW mission charged with supervising the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons.
"It will remain at sea awaiting the arrival of additional priority chemical materials at the port," the statement added.
Palestinian villagers detain, beat Israeli settlers
January 8, 2014 - 3:24PMAbed Qusini
Qusra, West Bank: Palestinian villagers on Tuesday briefly detained and beat up a group of Israeli settlers, accusing them of having thrown rocks at farmers tending their fields in the occupied West Bank.
The incident – the details of which were disputed by a representative of a nearby settlement – stoked tensions long simmering on land where Palestinians seek statehood under struggling US-sponsored peace negotiations with Israel.
Yet with several alleged settler assailants in Israeli police custody after they were extricated from Qusra village by the army, and no immediate repercussions for the Palestinians involved, the incident may signal a new toughness by the Jewish state in tackling violent ultra-nationalists.
DR Congo's Lubumbashi hit by fighting
At least 26 people have been killed in an eight-hour battle between government and rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo's second city Lubumbashi, police say.
The rebels were beaten back on Tuesday morning after heavy fighting overnight, police said.
The city of more than a million people was deserted, police added.
The assault was launched by the Mai Mai Kata Katanga, a secessionist group in the region, police said.
It is fighting for the independence of Katanga, the richest province in DR Congo.
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