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World Briefs (10/05/10)
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QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuador's congress plans changes to a salary law that prompted protests last week, including additional compensation for police and members of the military, congress President Fernando Cordero said Monday.
Mr. Cordero, a member of President Rafael Correa's ruling Alianza Pais party, said in an e-mailed statement that congress will revise a public service law that cut wages and benefits.
The government has blamed "economic groups," including bondholders, opposition political parties and "traitors" for last week's uprising by police and some military members, which left eight dead and 274 wounded in what the government is calling a coup attempt.
HAVANA -- Washington is working on a plan to bring the vast majority of exiled Cuban political prisoners from Spain to the United States and has processed the first case, a senior State Department official told The Associated Press on Monday.
The official said nearly all of about three dozen former prisoners who are in Spain, along with more than 100 family members, are likely to accept the offer.
The plan gets around a Catch-22 whereby Cubans who left the island were no longer considered in harm's way and thus not eligible for traditional asylum requests.
Some 39 prisoners have been released from Cuban jails after agreeing to leave the island with their families. Another 13 remain behind bars, reportedly because they have so far refused to leave Cuba.
Cuba agreed in July to free all 52 remaining political prisoners jailed in a 2003 crackdown on dissent.
BANGKOK -- A four-hour hearing on the extradition of Viktor Bout, a Russian suspected of being an arms dealer, ended inconclusively Monday, but judges appeared to quash the prospect of a lengthy second trial that could have delayed or scuttled Mr. Bout's departure for the United States.
Mr. Bout, a Russian businessman, has been accused by U.S. officials of running a network of arms trafficking spanning Africa, Afghanistan and beyond. He faces charges of selling arms to a terrorist group and conspiring to kill U.S. citizens with the weapons.
A court in August ruled that Mr. Bout could be extradited to the U.S. on those charges. The two-judge panel said Monday that it would decide today on a second set of charges of money laundering and wire fraud. The final decision rests with the Thai prime minister.
ABUJA, Nigeria -- Nigerian authorities have arrested nine people suspected of being linked to two car bombings last week in which at least 12 people died, a security official said Monday.
All of those detained "have direct links with Henry Okah," said Marilyn Ogar, spokeswoman for the State Security Service.
Mr. Okah, a leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta rebel group that claimed responsibility for the blasts in Abuja, was charged Monday with two counts of terrorism by a South African court. He was arrested on Oct. 2 in Johannesburg..
CHIBA, Japan -- Toshiba, the Japanese electronics maker, said Monday that it would be the first on the market with a TV that displays images in 3-D without requiring viewers to use special glasses.
Currently, viewers must wear clunky glasses to watch 3-D movies at theaters and 3-D images on TV.
First Published October 5, 2010 12:00 am
