News in Brief

More arrests in Greek boat tragedy
Afp, Athens

 
Greek authorities have made more arrests over Friday's boat tragedy that left 12 of 27 migrants of unknown nationalities dead, including four children, after an alleged attempt to smuggle them to Italy, the coastguard said yesterday.
"A 34-year-old foreign national and a 53-year-old woman have been arrested as members of a criminal organisation illegally smuggling migrants," the coastguard said in a statement. A 58-year-old foreign national -- the captain of the eight-metre fibreglass boat that sank off a small western mainland Greek coastal town -- and a 20-year-old Greek had already been arrested.

Kosovo Serbs return to polls
Afp, Kosovska Mitrovica

 
Repeat elections took place yesterday in Kosovo's flashpoint town of Kosovska Mitrovica where ethnic Serbs were casting ballots under heavy security after violence led to the cancellation of a previous vote.
Voting for local mayors and councillors was repeated at three polling stations in the Serb-populated part of the ethnically divided town after masked Serbian extremists destroyed ballot boxes during the previous election on November 3.

Powerful quake hits  south Atlantic
Afp, Washington

 
A powerful 7.8 magnitude undersea earthquake struck in the Scotia Sea, a remote region in the far south Atlantic near Antarctica, US earthquake monitors reported yesterday.
There were no tsunami warnings since there were no vertical movements in the seafloor as occur in a subduction quake, when one tectonic plate moves under another one, said Randy Baldwin at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado.

Two dead in Iraq unrest, six militants die in attacks
Afp, Baghdad

 
Violence in Iraq killed two people yesterday, officials said, while six militants also died in a series of attempted attacks, the latest in a nationwide surge in unrest.
Mired in its worst bloodshed since 2008, Iraq has been forced to appeal for international help to combat militancy only months before its first general election in four years.