Bulgaria
Hezbollah gets blame
Hezbollah was behind a bus attack that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, investigators said Tuesday, describing a sophisticated bombing carried out by a terrorist cell that included Canadian and Australian citizens. The announcement brought renewed pressure on the European Union from the U.S., Israel and Canada to designate the group a terrorist organization and to crack down on its fundraising operations across Europe. The EU, which regards Hezbollah as a legitimate political organization, has resisted such a move.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Quake brings tsunami
A powerful earthquake in the South Pacific generated a tsunami today that prompted warnings to several island nations. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami of 3 feet was measured in Lata wharf, in the Solomon Islands. No damage was immediately reported. The tsunami formed after an 8.0-magnitude earthquake near Lata in Temotu province, the easternmost province of the Solomons.
Mexico
Gang rapes tourists
Six Spanish tourists were raped by a gang of armed, masked men in Acapulco, the latest chapter of violence that has tarnished the once-glamorous Pacific coast resort. The vicious, hours-long attack occurred before dawn Monday at a house that six Spanish men, six Spanish women and a Mexican woman had rented on a quiet beach on the outskirts of Acapulco.
IRELAND
Report on workhouses
Ireland’s government oversaw workhouses run by Catholic nuns that once held thousands of women and teenage girls in unpaid labor and usually against their will, a fact-finding report concluded Tuesday, establishing state involvement in the country’s infamous Magdalene Laundries for the first time. But Prime Minister Enda Kenny stopped short of making any official apology for the decades of harsh treatment documented in 10 Magdalene Laundries, the last of which closed in 1996.
Compiled from wire reports.
