A government official said gunmen in Pakistan’s southwest have set ablaze 14 tankers carrying fuel for US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.
A driver also was wounded during yesterday’s attack.
Islamist militants and criminals in Pakistan frequently attack trucks carrying supplies for US and Nato troops.
The supplies typically arrive in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi and travel overland to Afghanistan through two main border crossings.
Local official Fatteh Mohammed said the latest attack occurred in the Dera Murad Jamali area in Baluchistan province. The tankers were parked at a roadside restaurant when eight gunmen struck.
The attacks in Pakistan have led the US to rely more on other supply routes, including through countries north of Afghanistan.
Germany bans sales from 934 more farms
German authorities have banned sales of eggs, poultry and pork from a further 934 farms amid new fears that livestock feed has been tainted with the cancer-causing chemical dioxin.
Agriculture minister Ilse Aigner said yesterday authorities in Lower Saxony state discovered that a producer suspected of selling dioxin-contaminated feed had hidden deliveries to 934 farms.
She said their sales were banned to avoid the spread of possibly tainted products.
Aigner urged the state’s governor to hold those responsible for failing to properly oversee the feed producer to account “by tonight”.
China braced for mass migration
China said about 230 million people will be travelling during the Lunar New Year holiday season, which unleashes the world’s biggest annual human migration.
Wang Zhiguo, the vice-minister of railways, told a press conference yesterday the number of expected travellers is up 12.5 per cent from last year.
The comments were posted on the ministry’s website.
China’s holiday travel season officially starts on Wednesday and ends on February 27, with the Lunar New Year falling on February 3.
US soldiers shot dead by Iraqi in training
Two US troops were killed yesterday by an Iraqi soldier who apparently smuggled real bullets into a training exercise and opened fire.
The incident raises fresh concerns about the nation’s security forces as Americans prepare to leave by the end of this year.
A US military official said the shooter was immediately killed by American soldiers who were running the morning drill at a training centre on a US base in the northern city of Mosul.
Indian police ordered to compensate beggar
India’s human rights watchdog has ordered two police officers who dumped a disabled beggar into a rubbish tip in 2009 to pay compensation to the man.
India’s National Human Rights Commission says the officers in the western beach resort state of Goa must pay £630 to Shelton Messier, who was dumped at a rubbish disposal site on the outskirts of the state capital, Panaji, on a rainy night in June 2009.
Messier, who is paralysed in one leg, was rescued by a lawyer who happened to be passing and heard his cries.
Oldest living African-American dies at 113
A Louisiana woman believed to have been the oldest living African-American and one of the last children of United States slaves has died aged 113.
Mississippi Winn, an upbeat former domestic worker known as ‘Sweetie’, died last Friday at Magnolia Manor Nursing Home in Shreveport, Louisiana, said Milton Carroll, an investigator with the Caddo Parish coroner’s office.
Winn was believed to be the oldest living African-American in the US and the seventh-oldest living person in the world, said Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group.
Obama to ease Cuba travel restrictions
President Barack Obama plans to loosen Cuban travel policy to allow students and church groups to go to the communist country, the administration announced.
Students seeking academic credit and churches travelling for religious purposes will be able to go to Cuba.
The plan will also let any American send as much as $500 every three months to Cuban citizens who are not part of the Castro administration and are not members of the Communist Party.