WORLD BRIEFS
AFGHANISTAN: 28 dead in three incidents
Twenty-eight people died Wednesday in separate explosions of violence. Four died during a disputed night raid by U.S.-led troops who stormed a house in Taloqan, capital of Takhar province in the northwest. Eleven died in a riot that resulted when 2,000 demonstrators protested that two women killed were civilians. Later, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into a bus carrying police academy trainers in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing 13.
LIBYA, IRAN: 5 journalists released
The Libyan government released four foreign journalists Wednesday and a fifth reached freedom in Qatar after disappearing in Syria. Americans Clare Morgana Gillis and James Foley, along with British freelance reporter Nigel Chandler and Spanish photographer Manuel Varela, appeared at a Tripoli hotel after six weeks' detention. Earlier, Iranian-born Dorothy Parvaz, 39, who has U.S. and Canadian citizenship and works for Al-Jazeera, arrived at her network's home base in Doha after being freed by Iran. All were reported in good health. The four in Tripoli were to be taken early today to go to Tunisia. Gillis, who writes for The Atlantic and USA Today, Foley who writes for Boston-based GlobalPost and Varela, who works under the name Manu Brabo, were detained April 5 near the Libyan town of Brega. Chandler was detained separately. Parvaz, a former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter, disappeared after arriving in Syria on April 29; the Damascus government disclosed May 4 that she had been deported to Iran. Parvaz said she witnessed the torture of Syrian civilians. Her fiance, Todd Barker, said she would be traveling to Vancouver, Canada, where her parents live.
BAHRAIN: Opposition editors on trial
Three former top editors of the main opposition newspaper, Al Wasat, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of unethical coverage of Shia-led opposition protests against the kingdom's Sunni rulers.
CUBA: Gitmo prisoner a suicide
An Afghan detained at the Guantánamo prison has died, apparently a suicide, the U.S. military said. The 37-year-old prisoner, who went by one name, Inayatullah, had been held there since September 2007. He is the eighth prisoner to die since January 2002, when the U.S. Navy base began to be used to hold captured detainees suspected of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
