South Korean President Park Geun-hye faces a political crisis over allegations that a former chief adviser pulled strings behind the scenes on key state affairs and feuded with her younger brother for power.
	The scandal poses a setback for Park, who already faces criticism that her leadership is similar to the heavy-handed style of her late dictator father, President Park Chung-hee.
	Critics say the current president's poor communication with the public and lack of transparency on the personnel decisions she makes are to blame for the scandal.
	The scandal centers on ex-aide Chung Yoon Hoe, who, according to local media reports, allegedly met regularly with 10 of Park's associates at a Seoul restaurant to try to exert influence on her personnel management.
	Chung was a Park aide when she was in the legislature but has never worked at the presidential Blue House.
	Those reports are based on leaked presidential documents from an office headed by a presidential aide who's reportedly ...

S Korean leader's aides, brother summoned over scandal

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Around 2,500 Hungarians protested outside Parliament against alleged government corruption, austerity measures and deteriorating social welfare programs. Protest organiser Zoltan Vajda said the 2015 state budget to be approved by lawmakers Monday was unworthy of Hungary.
	"The government is a lie," Vajda said yesterday. "Their whole system is based on lies and (Prime Minister Viktor) Orban himself is a lie."
	Rallies against Orban's government have been held regularly over the past two months, sparked by a failed attempt to tax Internet use, Orban's increasingly close economic ties with Russia and suspected corruption among top officials, including at the national tax office.
	"Why are there many thousands of us here on this cold winter night on the third Sunday (yesterday) of Advent instead at home baking cookies?" Vajda asked, to which protesters yelled "So Orban will go away!"
	People were also upset by government plans to reduce enrolment at universities to increase the number of .

Hungarians protest government budget, corruption

Cairo police briefly detained three Egyptians, including two with British citizenship, after a man told them he overheard them discussing ways to destabilize the country during next month's anniversary of the 2011 uprising, a security official and a British diplomat said today.
	The Egyptian official said that a brother and sister, both Egyptians with British nationality, and their Egyptian cousin were apprehended at a subway station Saturday night after a passenger told police they were speaking in English about burning homes and businesses on the anniversary of the January 2011 uprising which led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
	The three denied the accusations and the case was referred to prosecutors, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
	A British diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the British nationals were provided consular assistance and were subsequently released. It was ..

Egypt briefly detains 3 over alleged sabotage talk

When the CIA sought permission to use harsh interrogation methods on captured al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah (ah-BOO' zoo-BY'-dah), the response from Bush administration lawyers was encouraging, even clinical.
	There were several memos that formed the legal underpinnings for brutal interrogation techniques. One memo said the CIA could lawfully place him in a box with an insect, keep him awake for days at a time and repeatedly slap him in the face.
	The memo said waterboarding was acceptable because it didn't cause the lengthy mental anguish needed to meet the legal standard of torture.
	The release last week of a Senate report cataloging years of such interrogation tactics has revived debate about the legal opinions and about the decision to not prosecute the program's architects or officers who used the methods.

CIA report revives legal debate on interrogation

Egypt's stock market plunged by over USD 3 billion in a single day of trading today as low oil prices dragged down regional economies.
	The EGX30 index closed 5.23 per cent lower, with 170 stocks declining and just five showing gains.
	Yasser Rashad, a stock broker, said there was an immediate dip at the start of the session--"an indication that there has been an intention over the weekend...To sell as soon as the today's session began, out of fear of the stocks continuing to drop this week."
	Wael Ziada, head of research at EFG Hermes, said the drop is a knock-on effect caused by the steep decline in oil prices, which have decreased by nearly half since late June. "These markets are correlated in terms of their performance because the investor base intersects."
	Going forward, the impact of declining oil prices on Egypt's economy is less clear. Egypt is a net importer of oil, therefore "we should benefit from the decline in oil prices," said Ziada.
	However, Egypt relies heavily on ..

Egypt stock market loses USD 3B amid oil plunge

A local Yemeni official says Shiite rebels and allied politicians have sacked the governor of a strategic Red Sea province and replaced him with an ally.
	The unprecedented move today comes amid a months-long power struggle between the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, and Yemen's embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The rebels, allied with supporters of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, seized control of the capital Sanaa in September before pushing into the Red Sea province of Hodeida.
	The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief reporters, said Saleh loyalists in the provincial council signed a petition sacking Sakhr al- Wagih, who had protested the Houthi takeover, and appointed Hassan Haij in his place.

Shiite rebels, allies replace Yemeni governor

The minister of oil in Libya's Tripoli-based government says the country's largest oil shipping terminal has been shut down due to clashes between rival militias.
	Mashallah al-Zawi said foreign workers in the Sidra terminal have been evacuated to the eastern town of Ajdabiya. He also said the National Oil Corporation has declared a force majeure in Sidra and another port to the east, Ras Lanuf, because of the clashes. Both are controlled by eastern militias loyal to Libya's rival elected government, based in the eastern city of Tobruk.
	The Tripoli-based government backed by militias from the western city of Misrata and Islamist factions ordered its forces to "liberate" the Sidra terminal as part of a wider offensive they called "Sunrise.

Fighting closes largest oil export terminal

Rescuers pulled more bodies from the debris today after heavy rain in central Indonesia loosened soil and collapsed a hill, setting off a landslide that killed at least 32 villagers and left 76 others missing under piles of mud.
	About 2,000 rescuers, including soldiers, police and volunteers, were digging through the mud and the wreckage of crumpled homes, getting some relief from clear weather following days of heavy rain. Excavators, meanwhile, shoved aside earth and the remains of decimated wooden homes.
	Residents of Jemblung village in Central Java province's Banjarnegara district said they heard a roaring sound followed by the raining down of red soil that buried more than 100 houses late Friday.
	"The landslide looked like it was spinning down," said one resident, Subroto, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "I managed to rescue a pregnant woman, but could not save the other man."
	He said one side of the hill collapsed, then another. "In five minutes, there were ...

32 dead, 76 missing in central Indonesia mudslide

An Egyptian fishing boat crashed into a container ship today in the Gulf of Suez, killing 11 fishermen and injuring 11 while 23 men remain missing, officials said.
	Egyptian naval vessels and other security and medical teams raced to the shores of the town of Al-Tur, the capital of southern Sinai to aid the fishermen. Three other vessels nearby aided in the search for the missing men, authorities said.
	Security officials said 45 fishermen were on the boat at the time of the collision. Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorised to brief journalists.
	Abdul-Rahim Mostafa, spokesman for the Red Sea Ports Authorities identified the container ship involved as a Panama-flagged vessel carrying 220,000 tons of cargo coming from an Italian port. He said authorities ordered the container ship to anchor at the Egyptian Red Sea port in Safaga as an investigation had begun into the cause of the collision.

11 Egypt fishermen drown as boat sinks

North Korea today presented to the media an American who says he illegally crossed into the country but has not been put into custody and is seeking asylum in Venezuela.
	Arturo Pierre Martinez, 29, of El Paso, Texas, said he entered North Korea by crossing the river border with China.
	Details of how and when he got into the country were not immediately clear.
	In his comments to reporters, Martinez strongly criticised the US for alleged human rights violations.
	His comments come amid North Korea's own loud protests of a resolution in the United Nations that could open the door for its leaders to face charges of crimes against humanity for human rights violations, raising questions of whether Martinez was trotted out to the media for propaganda purposes.
	North Korea recently released three Americans two who had entered the country on tourist visas and Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary who had been convicted of "anti-state" crimes.

US man illegally in NKorea says not detained

Yemen's Shiite rebels defeated rival tribesmen and took control of a northern district of the capital today, expanding their control of the city, their spokesman said.
	Mohammed Abdel-Salam, spokesman of the rebels known as Houthis, said the forces took control of Arhab, a district of greater Sanaa. The group already controls most of the capital and several other cities.
	Military and tribal officials said the Houthis used tanks and artillery to shell houses and neighborhoods of rival tribes. The fighting left dozens dead, including 12 tribesmen, they added. Houthis usually refrain from announcing deaths among their ranks.
	All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
	Meanwhile the north, a Yemeni border guard shot and killed three suspected militants wearing women's veils as they tried to cross into Saudi Arabia with a male driver, security officials said.
	Soldiers at the Hawdh area's border crossing had sent the car to a ...

Shiite rebels expand territory in Yemeni capital

When CIA interrogators were torturing accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at a secret prison in Poland in March 2003, a top CIA analyst asked them to show him a photograph of an alleged terrorist named Majid Khan.
	The interrogators slapped Mohammed, denied him sleep, rehydrated him through his rectum, threatened to kill his children and waterboarded him 183 times. And he offered up details on Khan.
	The analyst later told the CIA's inspector general that Mohammed's information helped lead to Khan's arrest, CIA records show. The watchdog included that as a success story in a 2004 report that became public and for many years stood as the most detailed accounting of the program.
	But the analyst, then deputy chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, knew that Khan already had been captured in Pakistan at the time Mohammed was asked about him, according to the 520-page Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA interrogations that was released this past week.
	In other ..

CIA lied about torture, Senate report suggests

With a military escort instead of the usual pomp, the Emir of Mubi was reinstalled in his palace, where until recently flew the black-and-white flag of Nigeria's Islamic extremists, Boko Haram.
	An army tank now guards Mubi's town gate, fortified by sandbags, as residents return from the mountain hideouts where they hid while their city was held for more than a month by the Islamic militants.
	After weeks of setbacks and reports that soldiers ran away when Boko Haram attacked, Nigeria's military, including newly deployed Special Forces, went on the offensive two weeks ago and have recaptured some cities and towns that had been held by the militants.
	All is not yet back to normal in Mubi. Bodies of militants still litter one street testimony to hard fighting by Nigerian soldiers who won back the town a week ago. They were helped by air raids, traditional hunters armed with guns and spears as well as vigilantes carrying clubs prickling with nails and other homemade weapons.
	The emir's 

Nigerian troops win back cities from extremists

Airport officials say Egypt has denied entry to a prominent American scholar arriving at Cairo's international airport, the latest incident in the country's sweeping crackdown on dissent.
	Michele Dunne, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former US diplomat, had accepted an invitation to speak at a conference organised by the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, made up primarily of former Egyptian diplomats.
	In her work, Dunne is frequently critical of the Egyptian government.
	Last August Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth and regional director Sarah Leah Whitson were also denied entry to Egypt ahead of the publication of a report accusing the government of possible crimes against humanity.
	Over 20,000 people have been arrested since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi's ouster last year.

Egypt denies entry to prominent American scholar

Islamic State group militants shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, officials said today, killing the two pilots onboard and raising fresh concerns about the extremists' ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing US-led coalition airstrikes.
	The attack happened late yesterday in the Shiite holy city of Samarra, about 95 kilometres north of Baghdad. A senior Defense Ministry official told The Associated Press the Sunni militants used a shoulder-fired rocket launcher to shoot down the EC635 helicopter on the outskirts of the city.
	An army official corroborated the information. Both spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorised to speak to journalists.
	The EC635, built by Airbus Helicopters, is used for transportation, surveillance and combat.
	The militants shot down at least two other Iraqi military helicopters near the city of Beiji in October. Some fear the militants may have captured ground-to-air missiles capable of shooting down airplanes when they overran Iraqi and 

Islamic State group shoots down Iraqi helicopter

Taliban fighters shot dead at least 12 workers clearing mines today in southern Afghanistan, authorities said, part of a series of attacks that saw two US troops killed and a top Afghan court official gunned down.
	Security in the capital, Kabul, has been stepped up as the Taliban have warned that attacks will continue as most foreign troops prepare to withdraw at the end of the month, 13 years after the September 11 terror attacks sparked the US-led invasion.
	The attack targeting the mine-clearing operation struck southern Helmand province between its Nadali and Washir districts, police spokesman Farid Ahmad Obaid said.
	He said Taliban militants killed at least 12 workers and wounded another 12. Afghan soldiers later began a firefight with the insurgents, he said.
	Obaid identified the company working on the project as Star Link.
	Afghanistan, which has suffered decades of continuous war, is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.
	Those working on projects to clear ..

Afghan police: Taliban kill 12 clearing mines

Nicaraguan authorities have said that they had rescued eight more crewmen from a fishing boat that capsized in the Caribbean three days earlier and were still searching for 18 others.
	Navy officials said the lobster boat MN Wayward Wind turned over in a giant wave with 50 people aboard about 35 nautical miles (65 kilometers) southeast of Puerto Cabezas.
	Some of the survivors used canoes from the fishing boat to stay afloat, while others were rescued by a sailboat, the navy said.
	The experience of the crew has given authorities hope that the 18 still missing will be found alive, Rear Adm Marvin Corrales said.
	The boat was on a 15-day trip when it was hit by the wave Tuesday.

18 fishermen missing after Nicaraguan shipwreck

The US Defense Department would be barred from entering into any contract with a Russian state arms dealer under a provision of the $1.1 trillion spending bill.
	The sweeping package includes a prohibition on department dealings with Rosoboronexport or any of its subsidiaries until Russia has withdrawn from the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine or the company has stopped transferring lethal military equipment to the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.
	Republican Sen. John Cornyn has pushed for the provision that enjoys strong bipartisan support. Democratic Rep. Jim Moran also has targeted purchases from the arms dealer.
	The United States has purchased helicopters from the state-owned arms dealer for the Afghan air force.

Bill bars US deals with Russian arms dealer

From the early stages of the CIA's coercive interrogations of terror detainees, the agency's health professionals were intimately involved.
	Front-line medics and psychologists monitored and advised on abusive tactics, even as they sometimes complained about the ethical dilemmas gnawing at them, according to this week's Senate intelligence committee report. Senior CIA medical officials helped the agency and the White House under President George W. Bush.
	The report describes rare moments when CIA health professionals openly balked and objected. But for four years, until Bush shuttered the CIA prison program in 2006, medical teams at each "black site" observed almost every step of procedures that President Barack Obama now calls torture.
	They oversaw water dousing to ensure detainees suffered but did not drown. They inserted feeding tubes and improvised enemas. They took notes when detainees were body-slammed and forced to stand for hours intervening only to ensure that the brutal ...

Report: CIA medics aided, complained about tactics

The top United Nations human rights official says Israel must investigate and curb the rising injuries and deaths occurring during Palestinian protests.
	Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said today the problem was highlighted by the death on Wednesday of a senior Palestinian official during a confrontation with Israeli troops.
	Palestinians blame Israel for the sudden death of Ziad Abu Ain. Israeli pathologists say the 55-year-old died of a heart attack.
	Zeid said the death, along with the serious wounding of a 14-year-old Palestinian boy reportedly shot by Israeli security forces, should be properly investigated.
	According to Zeid's office, at least 50 Palestinians have died in incidents involving Israeli security forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, almost twice as many as the previous year.

UN rights chief: Israel must probe protest deaths

Indonesian police have named editor in chief of a leading English-language newspaper a suspect in a blasphemy case after the paper published a cartoon that allegedly insults Islam.
	An Islamic group in Jakarta has filed a complaint against the paper, the Jakarta Post.
	Jakarta police spokesman Colonel Rikwanto said yesterday that Editor-in-Chief Meidyatama Suryodiningrat was summoned for questioning next week as a suspect in the case.
	Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and its Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. In recent years blasphemy cases have been filed against those seen as offending Islam.

AP

AP

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