Russia, China Oppose Military Intervention in N. Korea

Russia and China said on Friday they would oppose any foreign military intervention in North Korea over its recent nuclear test.
The two countries’ foreign ministers condemned last week’s test but said any action against North Korea had to be agreed at the United Nations, where Russia and China have the right of veto as permanent members of the Security Council, Reuters reported.
“We are against the carrying out of a nuclear test in North Korea,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a joint news conference after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.
“The U.N. Security Council should give an adequate response ... but the action should be directed towards peace on the Korean peninsula,” he said.
Lavrov said China and Russia had agreed that it was “vitally important not to ... allow the situation to be used as a pretext for military intervention.”
North Korea’s latest test, its third since 2006, prompted warnings from Washington and others that more sanctions would be imposed on the isolated state.
The U.N. Security Council has only just tightened sanctions on Pyongyang after it launched a long-range rocket in December. The North is banned under U.N. sanctions from developing missile or nuclear technology after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

Mexican Police Charged With Rape of Italian

Two Mexican policemen have been charged with rape and abuse of authority after allegedly attacking an Italian woman in the resort of Playa del Carmen.
A third man, reportedly their commander, is still being sought.
It is alleged the woman was raped after being unable to pay a bribe for the officers to ignore an offence of urinating in public, BBC reported. The incident comes just two weeks after six Spanish women were sexually assaulted by a gang in Acapulco.
Prosecutors in the state of Quintana Roo say the latest attack happened in an alleyway between two clubs in the Caribbean resort in the early hours of 12 February.
The woman said the officers raped her after she and her companion refused to hand over a bribe of 3,000 pesos (£150; $235).
She said they had gone into the alley after leaving a club and failing to find a public lavatory.
The BBC’s Will Grant in Mexico says the tourism industry is increasingly concerned about the damaging effect such attacks have on business.
President Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to tackle violent crime in Mexico since coming to power at the end of last year. However, critics say a major overhaul of the local and federal police forces is needed to address endemic problems of corruption, violence and impunity.
Following the attack in Acapulco, six men were arrested. Our correspondent says the arrests came after intense international pressure on local authorities.

India on High Alert After Deadly Bombings

India’s major cities have been put on high alert after two explosions killed at least 15 people and injured more than 100 others in the southern city of Hyderabad, officials have said.
Investigators hunted on Friday for perpetrators of the twin bomb attacks near a cinema and a bus stand in a busy neighborhood of the city, which has seen several disturbances in the recent past, Aljazeera reported.
A blast outside a temple in 2000 killed two people, while in 2007, 40 people were killed in bombings in the city.
Local police said they were trying to determine the cause of the explosions, as officials from the National Investigation Agency and commandos from the National Security Guard arrived from New Delhi to help with the investigation.
Top state police officer V Dinesh Reddy said improvised explosive devices with nitrogen compound were used in the blasts, which he blamed on a “terrorist network”. “The authorities are keeping very tight-lipped about who might be to blame, Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman, reporting from Hyderabad, said.
They are not pointing anything at the moment, as investigations are under way, he said.
“A lot of assumptions are being made in the local media, but as far as authorities are concerned, they are keeping very tight-lipped, Rahman said.

Dastardly Act
Witnesses said one of the crude devices went off about 15 meters from the entrance to the Venkatadri Cinema in the popular retail district of Dilsukh Nagar.
Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, pledged punishment of those responsible for the “dastardly act”, which came with the nation on alert after the hanging of a separatist earlier this month.
Mohammed Afzal Guru was executed after being convicted of involvement in a 2001 attack on India’s parliament, in which nine policemen were killed.
Many in Indian-administered Kashmir believe Guru did not receive a fair trial, and the secrecy with which the execution was carried out fuelled anger in a region where anti-India sentiment runs deep.
The attacks have raised questions over whether Australia’s cricket team will go ahead with a scheduled international match to be played in the city starting on March 2, although the tourists said the Test was still on for now.

‘No Specific Intelligence’
Sushil Kumar Shinde, India’s home minister, who visited the blast site on Friday, said that while authorities had received intelligence of a possible threat of attack, “it was not specific”.
“The investigation has just started ... we will find out everything,” he said.
The bombings, the first to strike India since 2011, hit a mainly Hindu district in Hyderabad, a southern hub of India’s computing industry which has a large Muslim population.
Al Jazeera’s Rahman, earlier reporting from New Delhi, said: “The devastation is pretty widespread. This part of the city is a very popular bazaar area, very popular with young people when they are going out in the evening,” he said.
Ranjan Mathai, India’s foreign secretary, said the culprits were not known but did not rule out foreign involvement.
“I am not sure there is any evidence it could be homegrown terrorism,” he said.

‘Brave People’
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said in a tweet that he had expressed his sympathies for the “brave people” of Hyderabad when he met India’s foreign secretary in Washington.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, “strongly condemned the indiscriminate attacks”.

Tunisia’s Ennahdha Names Candidate for PM

Tunisia’s main Islamist Ennahdha party has named Ali Larayedh as its candidate for prime minister after Hamdi Jebali declined to head the next government.
Larayedh, the country’s interior minister, was a founding member of Ennahdha, and served as the party’s secretary-general in the 1980s, up until his arrest in 1992. He served 14 years in prison, Agencies reported.
“He is the official candidate of Ennahdha for prime minister,” Mouadh Ghannouchi, son of party chief Rached Ghannouchi, said on Friday.
Larayedh became interior minister when Jebali’s government was formed in December 2011 after an election in October.
The party leader and Larayedh, 57, will now meet with President Moncef Marzouki, who is expected to task the interior minister with forming a new government.
Larayedh is viewed as belonging to Ennahdha’s hardline wing, which rejects any political role for parties linked to the era of deposed President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
Jebali, who is secretary-general of Ennahdha, resigned on Tuesday after his plan for a non-partisan cabinet of technocrats to prepare for elections collapsed, largely because of opposition from within his own party and its leader, Rached Ghannouchi. “Jebali declined to accept nomination [for next prime minister],” Ennahdha said.
French media reported that Ennahdha’s Shura council spent hours negotiating who their candidate would be, well into Friday morning.
The assassination of opposition leader Shokri Belaid on February 6 plunged Tunisia into its worst political crisis in the two years since a revolt toppled Ben Ali.
The secular leftist’s killing sent protesters flooding into the streets, exposing the deep rifts between Tunisia’s empowered Islamists and their liberal and secular-minded opponents.

Japan PM Set for Washington Talks With Obama

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is set to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington, in a visit aimed at fortifying their key security alliance.
Economic ties, tensions with Beijing over a territorial dispute and North Korea’s recent nuclear test are expected to top the agenda, Aljazeera reported.
Mr Abe, who was elected in December, has said US support is “critical” in Japan’s dispute with China.
China has fiercely criticized Mr Abe for comments made before his departure.
He had told Washington Post newspaper that China had a “deeply ingrained” need for conflict with Japan and other countries in the region, using disputes to bolster nationalism and support for its authorities.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing was “astonished” by the report, saying it was rare for a country’s leader to insult its neighbor, China’s Xinhua news agency reports.
Mr Abe is serving as Japan’s top leader for a second time, after a brief period in power in 2006-7. He is the fifth Japanese prime minister that Mr Obama has met in office.
His visit is seen as a bid to shore up a security alliance between the two countries that goes back decades.
Ties were strained somewhat under the previous Democratic Party (DPJ) administration amid a row over the relocation of a US military base in Okinawa.
But Mr Abe, who heads a Liberal Democratic Party administration, has spoken out about the need to prioritize the Japan-US alliance amid a changing regional dynamic.

‘Critical’
In his Washington Post interview, Mr Abe said improved ties with Washington were top of his agenda in the US.
On the bitter row with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea, he said US support was key.
Both Beijing and Tokyo have ships in waters around the islands - known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China - leading to fears of a clash. Japan controls the islands, which are also claimed by Taiwan.
“It is important for us to have them recognize that it is impossible to try to get their way by coercion or intimidation,” Mr Abe said, referring to China.
“In that regard, the Japan-US alliance, as well as the US presence, would be critical.”

Athens Under Water After Several Hours of Rainfall

Several hours of heavy rain and a thunderstorm in the Greek capital Athens have flooded roads and homes, caused traffic jams and disrupted the train and tram network, officials say.
The deluge inundated basements and forced authorities to close underpasses and a central subway station.
The fire department said it had received at least 600 calls to drain water from houses and businesses, Allvoices reported.
Many of the city’s streets remain ankle-deep in water.
“It was one of the worst thunderstorms we have ever had in the greater Athens area [since 1961],” fire department chief Sotiris Georgakopoulos told NET state television.
At one point the rainfall was so intense that parked cars were swept away by racing waters.
“There are cars immobilized on several Athens highways and we have dispatched tow trucks to clear the roads,” senior traffic police officer Dimitris Papanagiotou told NET.
Fire chiefs say that they have about 60 crews tackling the floods which they expect to recede throughout Friday.
No injuries have been reported.

Malian, French Troops Kill 15 Islamists

Malian troops backed by French soldiers and attack helicopters killed 15 Islamists in Gao on Thursday in fighting to retake a mayor’s office occupied by the militants, France’s Defense Ministry said on Friday.