China denies planning military base in Afghanistan
Reuters, Beijing
China on Wednesday denied that it planned to build a military base in Afghanistan, after a Hong Kong newspaper said Beijing was constructing a training camp for Afghan troops to which it could also send its own soldiers.
The South China Morning Post, citing unidentified sources with ties to the Chinese military, said China was building the camp in the narrow Wakhan Corridor that links the two countries.
Two killed as political rivals clash in W Bengal
AP, Kolkata
Police in eastern India say supporters of rival political parties have exchanged gunfire and hurled crude bombs at each other, killing at least two people and injuring 13.
Police officer Abhitjit Bandyopadhyay says the protesters torched some police vehicles on Wednesday when police tried to separate the warring groups in Amdanga, a small town in West Bengal state.
HK professor arrested for murder
AFP, Hong Kong
A University of Hong Kong professor has been arrested on suspicion of killing his wife after police found a body stuffed in a suitcase in his office, the latest grisly murder to transfix the crowded city.
Officers discovered the body of a woman, wearing only her underwear and with electric wire around her neck, hidden in a suitcase inside a large wooden box in the office of 53-year-old Cheung Kie-chung.
Greek ferry limps to port after fire on board
AFP, Athens
Hundreds of passengers were safely evacuated early Wednesday from a Greek ferry after a fire broke out in the car deck, officials said.
The Eleftherios Venizelos, originally bound for Hania, Crete, returned to the port of Piraeus shortly after 0100 GMT, the Greek coastguard said.
Bomb at Philippines street festival kills 2
Reuters, Manila
A homemade bomb hidden under a motorcycle killed two people, one a child, and wounded 37 at a local street festival in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, security officials said, the latest unrest in a region prone to militancy.
The explosion occurred in front of a clothing stall along a highway in Isulan in Sultan Kudarat province, where a festival was taking place.
Suicide car bomber kills 11 in Iraq
AFP, Ramadi
A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle in the town of Al-Qaim in western Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people, five of them security personnel, police said.
The 9 am (0600 GMT) bombing at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Al-Qaim also wounded 16 people — 11 civilians and five security personnel, police Captain Mahmud Jassem told AFP.
Bomb kills 5 soldiers in northern Kenya
Reuters, Nairobi
Five Kenyan soldiers were killed and 10 wounded on Wednesday when their car ran over a homemade bomb in northern Kenya, the military said.
A Kenya Defence Forces statement did not say who it believed was responsible for the attack in coastal Lamu County although it referenced “lurking terror elements” in the region.
