Emirates police make arrest in American's stabbing

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates: The United Arab Emirates' interior minister said on Thursday that police have arrested a female suspect in the stabbing death of an American schoolteacher in the country's capital and revealed that the attacker also planted a bomb outside the home of another American.

Interior minister Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan said the makeshift bomb was left at the house of an American doctor and that police dismantled it after it was discovered by one of the physician's sons.

Word of the gruesome killing in a public restroom at a mall in Abu Dhabi has rattled the Emirates, a Western-allied, seven-state Gulf federation that includes the glitzy commercial hub of Dubai. It is home to a large foreign-born population, who far outnumber Emirati citizens.

Police say the teacher was stabbed to death by a butcher's knife-wielding attacker wearing the full black veil commonly worn by women throughout the Gulf Arab region.

Footprints Recruiting, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based teacher recruitment company that found a job for the victim, identified her as Ibolya Ryan.

"We await the results of the ongoing police investigation before making conclusions about why this senseless tragedy occurred," the company said. "We are confident that the UAE in general and Abu Dhabi in particular remains a safe environment in which to live and work."

Police earlier said the victim had 11-year-old twins and that they were being kept in protective custody until their father, who is the victim's ex-husband, arrived in the country.

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Yemen's al-Qaida threatens US hostage in new video

SANAA, Yemen: Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen threatened an American hostage kidnapped over a year ago, giving Washington three days to meet unspecified demands and denouncing US actions in the Arabian Peninsula country in a new video released on Thursday.

The hostage, identified as 33-year-old Luke Somers, an American photojournalist born in Britain, is featured for the first time in the video, posted on the al-Qaida offshoot's Twitter account and first reported by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant sites.

The video mimicked some of those used by al-Qaida rivals from the Islamic State group, which has beheaded several American and British hostages in the aftermath of a summer blitz that captured much of Iraq and Syria. The IS fighters have at times battled al-Qaida and prompted defections among their rivals.

Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 from a street in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where he had worked as a photojournalist for the Yemen Times. Since his capture, Yemeni journalists have been holding sit-ins in Sanaa to press the government to seek his release.

Somers was likely among a group of hostages who were the objective of a joint rescue mission by US operation forces and Yemeni troops last month that freed eight captives in a remote corner of Yemen's Hadramawt province.

At the time, a Yemeni official said the mission, carried out in a vast desert area dotted with dunes called Hagr al-Saiaar, an al-Qaida safe haven not far from the Saudi border, failed to liberate five others, including an American journalist and a Briton who were moved elsewhere by their al-Qaida captors days before the raid. The American was not identified by name and Yemen did not officially confirm the participation of US commandos in the rescue mission - a rare instance of US forces intervening on the ground in Yemen.

In the three minute video, Somers appears somber and gives a brief statement in English, asking for help.

''It's now been well over a year since I've been kidnapped in Sanaa,'' Somers said. ''Basically, I'm looking for any help that can get me out of this situation. I'm certain that my life is in danger. So as I sit here now, I ask, if anything can be done, please let it be done. Thank you very much.''

Before Somers' statement, the video shows local al-Qaida commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, reading in Arabic and speaking about alleged American ''crimes against'' the Muslim world.

Al-Ansi criticizes US-led airstrikes against the Islamic State group and President Barak Obama for his ''latest foolish action,'' referring to the ''failed operation'' in Hadramawt. He says an ''elite group of mujahedeen,'' or holy warriors, were killed in the US raid.

He also warned the US against more ''stupidities,'' referring to future attempts to rescue hostages.

Al-Ansi gives the US three days to meet al-Qaida's demands or ''otherwise, the American hostage held by us will meet his inevitable fate,'' without elaborating or explicitly saying they would kill their captive.

Al-Ansi also does not specify the group's demands but says Washington is ''aware'' of them.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemeni group is known, is considered by the US to be the world's most dangerous branch of the terror network and has been linked to several failed attacks on the US homeland.

Abduction of foreigners has been common in impoverished Yemen, troubled both by al-Qaida and the advance of Shia rebels, but while kidnapping for ransom was common in the past, threatening a hostage's life appears to be a shift in the al-Qaida branch's tactics.

On Thursday, Yemeni security officials said the body of a Yemeni hostage who had been held captive together with Somers, was found in the district of al-Qatn in Hadramawt late Wednesday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, identified the man as Rashid al-Habshi and said the al-Qaida Yemeni branch had recorded his purported confession of helping Americans in carrying out drone strikes against militants.

The US drone strikes, targeting suspected militant gatherings, have become increasingly unpopular in Yemen due to civilian casualties.

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Pakistan appoints sharia court judge as new CEC

ISLAMABAD: Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan was on Friday named Pakistan's new chief election commissioner, a day before the expiry of a Supreme Court deadline to fill the key constitutional office lying vacant for over 16 months.

The announcement was made by senator Rafiq Rajwana, chief of the parliamentary committee that appointed Justice Khan, 69.

Rajwana said Islamuddin Shaikh of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) proposed the name of justice Khan and it was supported by all party members during the meeting of the committee.

Members of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) did not attend the meeting.

PTI members have refrained from attending meetings of the parliamentary panel since party legislators resigned en masse at the peak of their protests in Islamabad in August.

Justice Khan, who belongs to Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is the chief justice of federal shariat court and he retired as a judge of the Supreme Court in 2011.

He was among the supreme court judges who had refused to take oath under the provisional constitution order after then military ruler Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency in 2007.

He was also a member of the bench which gave a decision in the famous national reconciliation ordinance case. Justice Khan was the only member who gave a "partial dissenting note," according to Dawn.

The appointment comes after the supreme court had set a December 5 deadline for the appointment of a permanent CEC.

The apex court had threatened on Tuesday it would consider issuance of notices against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah on December 8 if the two leaders failed to appoint a permanent CEC by the deadline.

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Egypt's top prosecutor to appeal Mubarak verdict

CAIRO: Egypt's public prosecutor on Tuesday said he would appeal against a court verdict that acquitted former president Hosni Mubarak, his former interior minister and six aides, of murder charges for killing unarmed protesters during the country's 2011 revolution.

A team from General Prosecutor Hisham Barakat's office was ordered to prepare a study with reasons to be proposed to the appeal court.

"A study of the reasons for the ruling revealed legal flaws that marred the judgment," said a statement issued by the general prosecutor's office.

On Saturday, the Court of Cassation, Egypt's highest court, ruled that 86-year-old Mubarak and seven of his former security commanders, including his former interior minister Habib al-Adly, were "innocent" in the killing of anti-government protesters during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The judge in the case said that Mubarak should never be tried for these charges.

In May 2011, al-Adly was also convicted of money laundering and profiteering, for which he received a 12-year jail sentence. The Court of Cassation overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial.

Last week's judgement overturned the life sentence Mubarak received in June 2012, and means he will face no punishment for allegedly sanctioning the murder of 846 protesters during Egypt's 2011 uprising that ousted him or for allegedly profiting from the export of gas at below-market rates.

Mubarak's sons, Alaa and Gamal, currently serving four-year prison terms for embezzlement of state funds, were also acquitted on all corruption charges.

The ruling was followed by massive angry protests in Cairo in which two people were killed.

Mubarak was retried on charges of complicity in the killing of unarmed protesters during the January, 2011 revolution that ended his 30-year rule.

In 2012, the former dictator was sentenced to 25 years in jail but the verdict was successfully appealed in January, 2013 as the presiding judge ruled that there was not enough evidence presented by the prosecution. Mubarak's retrial began in April, 2013.

Though Mubarak was not convicted on any charges, he will still not be freed as in May, a Cairo court had sentenced him to three years in prison for embezzlement.

Mubarak is serving his sentence at a military hospital on the southern outskirts of Cairo.

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Fears rise for over 50 missing from S Korean ship

SEOUL, South Korea: More than 50 crew members from a South Korean fishing ship that sank in the western Bering Sea were feared dead on Tuesday, as furious relatives blamed the ship's owner and its captain for not doing enough to save their family members from the frigid waters a day earlier.

Russian coast guard helicopters and at least five fishing ships were scouring the area in search of the missing, with authorities finding at least one empty lifeboat Tuesday. Officials from the ship's South Korean parent company said they were hanging onto a "glimmer of hope," but with continued rough seas and bad weather, there were dwindling expectations that the fishermen would be found.

At a gathering at the company's headquarters, relatives of the missing fishermen wondered whether the captain was too late in taking emergency measures after the ship started sinking amid high waves Monday. Some blamed Sajo Industries, the canned tuna company that owns the ship, for not ordering him to evacuate the vessel earlier, according to Kim Kang-ho, a company official.

"Stop blaming the captain! The company should have ordered an evacuation in such a crisis," a person believed to be a relative was seen in TV footage shouting at a company official.

The emotional scenes of grief and anger hit a nerve in a country less than eight months removed from its deadliest maritime disaster in decades. The sinking of the Sewol ferry off South Korea's southwestern coast in April left more than 300 passengers dead, mostly teenagers on a school trip, causing nationwide grief and fury.

In the latest disaster, authorities rescued seven crew members and recovered one body after the ship sank, but bad weather and rough water conditions complicated the search for the others, an official from the South Korean fisheries and oceans ministry said on condition of anonymity because of office rules.

Rescue workers found an empty lifeboat Tuesday near the site of the accident that might have belonged to the sunken Oryong 501, Kim said.

The crew included 35 Indonesians, 13 Filipinos, 11 South Koreans and one Russian inspector, the fisheries and oceans ministry official said. Russian authorities said there were 62 people aboard the ship, which sank in the western part of the Bering Sea, near Russia.

The ministry official said it's believed that the ship, which was catching pollock, began to list after stormy weather caused seawater to flood its storage areas.

Kim said the 2,000-ton vessel was 36 years old. The seven people who were rescued had symptoms of hypothermia and couldn't talk in length about what exactly happened, he said.

An official from South Korea's foreign ministry, who refused to be named, citing office rules, said Tuesday that the death toll was expected to rise because rescuers failed to find any of the missing passengers. Five fishing ships that were operating nearby were continuing to search for survivors, but harsh weather conditions have limited their mobility, the official said.

Kim, the Sajo official, said the ship left for the Bering Sea from Busan, South Korea, on July 10 to catch pollock, a winter delicacy in South Korea.

Another official from Sajo, who did not want to be named, said the ship had eight lifeboats, and that the seven fishermen who survived and the person later found dead used one of them to escape. The captain of the ship had issued an escape order, and it was believed that the rest of the crew also attempted to escape, he said.

At the time of the sinking, the waves were more than 4 meters (13 feet) high and the water temperatures were below -10 degrees celsius, he said.

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3 Hong Kong protest leaders to surrender to police

HONG KONG: Three founders of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protest movement called on Tuesday for an end to street demonstrations to prevent more violence and take the campaign to a new stage, but it wasn't clear whether student protesters, who make up the bulk of the activists, would heed the call.

Professors Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Chan Kin-man and pastor Chu Yiu-ming said they planned to surrender to police on Wednesday to take responsibility for protests that have shut down parts of the Asian financial center for more than two months.

Instead of street protests, the three said they hope to continue the campaign through networking among civic groups, community organizing and education in democracy and human rights.

The three are founders of the Occupy Central movement, which is trying to force China's government to scrap its requirement that candidates in inaugural 2017 elections for Hong Kong's leader be approved by a panel chosen by Beijing. However, the three represent only one faction of demonstrators, most of whom are students.

Hundreds of demonstrators remain entrenched in the main downtown protest site, building tents, work tables and other infrastructure, even as energy has diminished on the streets since the first surge of demonstrations in late September.

Joshua Wong, a prominent student leader, said Monday that he and two other members of his group would go on an indefinite hunger strike to press their demands.

"We admit that it's difficult in the future to have an escalated action, so besides suffering from batons and tear gas, we would like to use our bodies to direct public attention to the issue," Wong said Tuesday. "We are not sure if the hunger strike can put pressure on the government, but we hope that when the public realizes the student hunger strike, they will ask themselves what they can do next."

In the early hours of Monday, police armed with pepper spray, batons and riot shields clashed with activists carrying umbrellas as authorities moved to clear them out an area in front of the Hong Kong government complex where activist had been camped out.

The compound was forced to shut temporarily and the semiautonomous city's Beijing-backed leader said public patience was wearing thin, adding that police would "continue to take decisive action to enforce the law."

In a statement read to reporters, Tai, Chan and Chu said their surrender also would serve as a "silent denunciation of a heartless government."

"Tomorrow's battleground is expansive and now is the time to transform the people's strength into a sustainable civil society movement, to sow the spirit of democracy deep into the community," they said in the statement.

Tai said it wasn't clear whether police would simply send them home, or detain them for inciting the protests, which the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have denounced as illegal.

While the trio's call to end the protests threatened to fracture the movement, Tai denied they were abandoning the demonstrators.

"We just urge the occupiers to consider the importance to understand that the fight for democracy is a long battle," he said.

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Explosions, gunfire in Nigeria's Damaturu city

KANO: Explosions and gunfire rocked the north Nigerian city of Damaturu on Monday, in a suspected Boko Haram attack that targeted police, residents told AFP.

The sound of blasts and heavy weapons being fired woke locals in the Gujba Road area of the Yobe state capital at about 4:45am (0345 GMT), said Umar Sada, who lives in the area.

"We have left our homes. We are now in the bush. We don't know what's going to happen," said local man Umar Sada, who said a police barracks had been destroyed.

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World's tallest, floating Christmas tree on display

RIO DE JANEIRO: The world's tallest floating Christmas tree has been put on display in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.

The 85-metre tree, which weighs 542-tonnes, is illuminated with 3.1 million lights on the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon.

Thousands of people participated in the lighting ceremony, one of the traditional Christmas attractions in the city.

This year's theme "A Christmas of Lights", takes visitors through the history of light, starting with the glow of the stars and culminating with Christmas lights.

The tree, which will be lit every night until Jan 6, has been officially certified by Guinness World Records as the largest of its kind in the world.

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Suicide attack at a funeral in Afghanistan kills nine: Police

KUNDUZ (Afghanistan): A suicide attack at a funeral in northern Afghanistan killed at least nine people on Monday, officials said, underlining nationwide insecurity as Nato troops end their 13-year war this month.

The blast followed a series of attacks in the capital Kabul which have heightened concerns that Afghanistan could tip into a spiral of violence as the US-led military presence declines.

The embattled Kabul police chief who tendered his resignation on Sunday will stay on in the role, a spokesman said, as Afghanistan struggles to respond to rising militant unrest.

Nato's force in Afghanistan will change on December 31 from a combat mission to a support role, with troop numbers cut to about 12,500 — down from a peak of 130,000 in 2010.

"A suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives among people who were attending a funeral ceremony in Burka district this morning," Aminullah Amarkhil, police chief of Baghlan province, told AFP.

"Initial reports show nine people, including two police, were killed and around 18 wounded."

Amarkhil said the funeral was for a tribal elder in Baghlan, a province on the main road from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif that has suffered worsening security in recent years.

Taj Mohammad Taqwa, the district chief of Burka, confirmed the death toll to AFP.

"The target was probably a number of high-ranking police officials and provincial council members who were attending the ceremony," he said. "They are unharmed."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A Taliban attack on Saturday in Kabul killed a South African father running an education charity and his two teenage children.

Insurgents have targeted foreign guest houses, embassy vehicles, US troops, Afghan army buses and a female member of parliament in recent weeks.

They also launched a four-day attack on a major military base in the southern province of Helmand that was only handed over by Nato a month ago, and killed 12 soldiers at a separate outpost in the same province on Saturday.

President Ashraf Ghani reacted to the spate of attacks by describing the Taliban as "a small minority who want to hijack the nation".

"We won't allow that," he vowed. Ghani, who came to power in September, has vowed to bring peace to Afghanistan after decades of conflict, saying he is open to talks with any insurgent group.

Kabul police chief's resignation was accepted on Sunday, but the decision was reversed by Monday morning.

"Based on the request of high-ranking officials and in order to avoid disruption of security affairs, General Zahir was asked to continue his duties," Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanakzai told AFP.

Afghan soldiers and police have suffered soaring casualties on the battlefield, with more than 4,600 killed this year as they take on the Taliban with less assistance from the US military.

Afghanistan faces a fragile economy and declining aid funds as well as worsening violence.

Ghani and chief executive officer Abdullah Abdullah, who signed a power-sharing deal in September, headed to a Nato meeting in Brussels on Monday before attending a conference in London on Thursday.

Their "national unity government" has struggled to get off the ground, with no ministers yet confirmed two months after Ghani was inaugurated.

Hamid Karzai, president from 2001-2014, opened preliminary contacts with the Taliban but they collapsed acrimoniously last year.

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Chemical weapons abandoned in China to be destroyed

BEIJING: China and Japan will destroy over 3 lakh pieces of chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese forces in northeast China at the end of World War II.

The trial destruction will take place on Monday in the Harbaling area of China's Jilin Province, where the largest amount of weapons are buried, an estimated 330,000 pieces, Chinese foreign ministry said on Sunday.

This marks a new stage in disposal of the weapons which will be decisive for the destruction of all of them, it said.

Japan had abandoned at least two million tonnes of chemical weapons at about 40 sites in 15 Chinese provinces at the end of World War II, most of them in the three northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

Abandoning these weapons was one of the several crimes during Japan's invasion of China.

Though the war has been over for decades, the weapons still pose huge threats to Chinese people, property and environment, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

In accordance with the Convention on the Banning of Chemical Weapons and the memorandum on the destruction of abandoned chemical weapons signed by China and Japan in 1999, Japan will offer all necessary funds, technology, expertise, facilities while China will provide assistance.

"China will continue to urge Japan to speed up the destruction process on the precondition of ensuring personnel and environmental safety," the ministry said.

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