In brief: Rocket strikes near embassies
KABUL, Afghanistan – A rocket slammed into a Kabul district housing several embassies, the latest in a series of attacks in the Afghan capital despite heavy security measures.
In southern Afghanistan, two NATO service members were killed Friday by a roadside bomb, the alliance said without giving their nationalities.
No casualties were reported in Friday’s nighttime blast in Kabul, which occurred in the Wazir Akbar Khan district that includes the German, Japanese and British embassies. Police said the rocket landed on a side street and broke a few windows.
List of Afghanistan detainees released
WASHINGTON – The government on Friday released a long-secret list of some 645 detainees held at a military base in Afghanistan, providing the information as part of a lawsuit seeking details of the treatment of terror suspects.
The list was just a small part of roughly 2,000 pages of documents that were released related to various lawsuits seeking government papers about detainees.
The identities of the detainees at Bagram air base had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The list is dated Sept. 22, 2009.
ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the government should also provide details of how the inmates were captured and why they are being held.
A separate 2003 Defense Department letter released Friday indicates a “very small number” of detainees are younger than 16 years old, though exact ages can be difficult to determine for some detainees.
Chavez raises minimum wage
CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez announced a 25-percent increase in Venezuela’s minimum wage Friday to try to blunt the effects of soaring inflation, and defended his handling of an energy crisis and other domestic problems.
Chavez challenged opponents’ predictions that his popularity could suffer due to measures such as last week’s currency devaluation and rolling blackouts imposed by the government.
“They say the country is collapsing … that Chavez is going to fall,” he said in his annual state-of-the-nation address to the National Assembly.
“They are going to be disappointed.”
Chavez’s opponents are looking to capitalize on a range of vulnerabilities as they try to regain control of the National Assembly in September elections: energy shortages, 25-percent inflation, a banking scandal involving businessmen with ties to the government, rampant crime and heaps of trash lining potholed city streets.
Coins, jewelry washing ashore
QUITO, Ecuador – It appears that high tides in Ecuador have been tossing a lot more than seaweed onto the shore: Hundreds of bathers have scooped up what look like U.S. coins, as well as rings, bracelets, necklaces and other silver- and gold-colored jewelry.
The Teleamazonas TV station broadcast images Friday of beachgoers collecting the flotsam at the El Muercielago beach in the Pacific port city of Manta.
No one could say where the objects came from. Manta police did not return calls seeking information.
Teleamazonas reported the treasure-bearing tide began Wednesday and lasted through Thursday.