NATO service members killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO says three of its service members and one civilian working with the international coalition in Afghanistan were killed Saturday in three separate attacks in the country’s east and south.
The coalition says in the east, insurgents killed one service member and the civilian, while a roadside bomb killed another service member.
NATO also says an improvised explosive device killed a service member in the south.
Protesters swarm Istanbul square
ISTANBUL – In a scene reminiscent of the Arab Spring, thousands of people Saturday flooded Istanbul’s main square after a crackdown on an anti-government protest turned city streets into a battlefield clouded by tear gas.
Though he offered some concessions to demonstrators, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan remained largely defiant in the face of the biggest popular challenge to his power in a decade in office, insisting the protests are undemocratic and illegitimate.
Public anger has flared among urban and secular Turks after police violently broke up an anti-development sit-in in the square, with protests spreading to other cities as demonstrators denounced what they see as Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian style.
Some Somali parents say no to polio vaccine
MOGADISHU, Somalia – Islamic extremist rebels are fighting a campaign in Somalia to administer a polio vaccine, charging that it contains the virus that causes AIDS or could make children sterile, a battle of words that is frustrating health workers.
Al-Shabab, the rebels linked to al-Qaida, have discouraged many parents from getting their children inoculated against polio, a disease that is an incipient problem in this Horn of Africa nation long plagued by armed conflict and disease, according to health workers.
Some parents are refusing the inoculation, apparently heeding the advice of the Islamic militants who warn that the vaccination exercise is part of a foreign conspiracy to kill or weaken Somali children.
Associated Press
