Iran has urged the Netherlands to prevent the screening of a film in which a right-wing populist lawmaker plans to lay out his view of the Koran, a news agency in the Islamic Republic said yesterday.
Justice Minister Gholamhossein Elham expressed concern about what he called the making of an offensive film against the Koran in a letter to his Dutch counterpart Ernst Hirsch Ballin, the Fars News Agency said.
He called on Ballin to prevent this "provocative and satanic act on the basis of European Convention on Human Rights," the news agency report, picked up by the BBC in London, said.
"We must not allow freedom of speech ...to be used as a cover for assaulting the sensibilities and exalted moral and religious values which are respected by all of humanity," Elham, who is also government spokesman, said in the letter.
More bird flu-infected chickens
Veterinary workers have started culling some 150,000 chickens infected with bird flu in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka yesterday.
"The culling of a huge number of chickens has just started and it may take until this afternoon to complete the task," a Livestock Department official told Reuters.
Officials said bird flu has spread to 42 out of 64 districts since it was first detected in the Dhaka region last March.
The H5N1 virus was quickly brought under control through aggressive measures, including culling, before re-emerging in January.
The Government has raised compensation for poultry farmers to encourage the farmers to report and kill sick birds to help to stamp out the outbreak.
No human infections have been reported so far but the virus has spread across nearly two-thirds of the country of more than 140 million people.
Riots hit Turkey after boy's death
Rioters chanting slogans in support of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) smashed shop windows and damaged cars in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey yesterday after the funeral of a teenager.
The 15-year-old boy died after being hit on the head by a stone during a protest on Friday marking the ninth anniversary of the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Some 1,000 people followed the child's coffin in the border town of Cizre, witnesses said.
Protesters threw stones at passing buses and tore up paving stones which they used to block the main road of Cizre, near the Iraqi border.
Severed human feet a mystery
Police have found themselves with the gruesome mystery of why three human feet have washed ashore on islands in the Strait of Georgia on Canada's Pacific coast over the past six months.
Investigators do not know who the victims were, when they died, or if foul play or an accident was involved.
The cases all involved right feet, and the decomposing remains were still wearing sneakers.
"It is not known at this time what relationship, if any, this (third) foot has with the two feet recovered last year in the same area," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
The first two were discovered in August and the third was found on February 8. Each was found on a different island in the Strait of Georgia, which separates the mainland and the city of Vancouver from Vancouver Island.
DNA testing on the feet found in August failed to link them to any missing person cases. The third foot awaits testing.
American Gangster lawsuit
A federal judge has dismissed a $55 million lawsuit filed by former Drug Enforcement Administration agents against the film studio that made American Gangster, but said the film got its facts wrong at the end.
Former DEA agents Louis Diaz, Gregory Korniloff and Jack Toal last month sued NBC Universal, owned by General Electric, for falsely claiming the film was based on a true story and harming the agents' reputations.
The film, which grossed more than $127 million, showed events surrounding former Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas, portrayed by Denzel Washington, and New Jersey Detective Richard Roberts, depicted by Russell Crowe.
Satellite blast to test weapon
Russia's Defence Ministry said yesterday a US plan to shoot down an ailing spy satellite could be used as a cover to test a new space weapon.
The ministry said there was insufficient proof that Washington's decision to fire a missile at the disabled satellite was to prevent a potentially deadly leak of toxic gas as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
"In our opinion, the decision to destroy the US satellite is not as harmless as it is being presented. Especially as the United States has been avoiding talks on restricting a space arms race for quite a long time," the ministry's information department said in a statement.
"Under cover of discussions about the danger posed by the satellite, preparation is going ahead for tests of an anti-satellite weapon. Such tests mean in essence the creation of a new strategic weapon."