World In Brief

Israeli air strike kills security staff

GAZA: Hamas said today that an Israeli air strike on a vehicle has killed two security personnel.

Israel claimed that it had targeted two militants — one suspected of planning an attack on Israeli civilians and another accused of selling weapons.

But Gaza’s Interior Ministry said that the two killed were members of its border security unit operating along the Gaza-Egypt boundary.

60 countries meet to discuss Syria

NETHERLANDS: Diplomats from more than 60 countries are meeting in The Hague to discuss sanctions against Syria.

The group, inappropriately called Friends of the Syrian People is a coalition set up after the UN failed to agree a resolution condemning President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said that financial sanctions are intended ultimately to help drive Assad from office.

Engineer guilty of stealing code

US: A former software engineer for a major US market speculator has pleaded guilty to stealing source code as he pursued a separate venture to improve electronic trading in China.

Former CME Group employee Chunlai Yang pleaded guilty to two counts of theft of trade secrets.

He admitted downloading more than 10,000 files containing CME computer source code.

Dispute forces airline to cancel flights

US: American Airlines and its regional partner American Eagle have been forced to cancel hundreds of flights amid a dispute with pilots that has seen growing numbers reporting sick.

Their parent company won a ruling from a US bankruptcy judge earlier this month that allowed AA to impose new pay and working rules on pilots.

Eight of its nine unions agreed to cost-cutting contracts, with only the pilots holding out.

California prison riot injures 11

US: A riot at a California prison left 11 inmates in hospital on Wednesday, including one who was shot by prison officers.

The disturbance in the prison yard saw 10 prisoners either stabbed or slashed.

The prison mostly houses inmates serving long sentences and has a sizable gang population.

Bank execs resign amid scandal probe

VIETNAM: Asia Commercial Bank chairman Tran Xuan Gia and two deputies have resigned amid a deepening probe into a scandal over improper lending.

Vietnam’s banking sector is believed to have bad debts of up to 10 per cent of outstanding loans and is one of the greatest risks to the once booming economy.

Court bans ruling based on religion

COLOMBIA: The constitutional court has told a lower court judge that religious precepts cannot be used as the basis for a ruling.

It said quotations from religious texts cannot be used in legal arguments or judgments. Judicial authorities “are obliged to respect the principle of secularism that characterises the Colombian state.”

UN experts to look into disappearances

ALGERIA: The government has agreed that UN experts can investigate what happened to thousands of people who disappeared in the 1990s.

An estimated 200,000 people died during the insurgency — civilians, security forces and insurgents.

More than 3,000 people have been buried without ever being identified and thousands are unaccounted for.