World news in brief
Israeli troops kill three, including 11-year-old
Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians, one of them an 11-year-old boy, and wounded at least 248 others taking part yesterday in weekly protests at the fortified Gaza Strip border, Palestinian medical officials said. The deaths brought to 177 the number of Palestinians killed since the sometimes violent demonstrations were launched on 30 March to press demands against Israel.
The 11-year-old, Shadi Abdel-Al, is the youngest fatality from Israeli gunfire. “He used to go every Friday to the marches like thousands of other people. This Friday was his destiny to die as a martyr,” the boy’s father, Abdel-Aziz Abdel-Al, said. The Israeli military said it used force necessary to repel 13,000 Palestinians who massed at several points at the fence. Reuters
Kosovo indicts 12 people over war pensions fraud
Kosovo’s state prosecutor indicted 12 people, including senior government officials, on charges of pensions fraud yesterday, accusing them of falsely registering thousands of people as war veterans who claimed millions of euros in state benefits. Around 40,000 people in Kosovo are drawing state pensions for war veterans, but the prosecution says half of them never fought in the 1998-99 war for independence with Serbia.
Public prosecutor Aleksander Lumezi said that among those indicted is Rrustem Berisha, minister for Kosovo’s Security Forces and his deputy Agim Ceku. Mr Ceku served as prime minister from 2006 to 2008.
“From the evidences that we have gathered so far it has been proven that from the unlawful payments for veterans the budget was damaged in the amount of €68m,” the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has long warned that Kosovo’s war veterans’ pension scheme would come to be a major burden on its budget. Reuters
French Railways to launch driverless trains
Strike-hit French Railways is rapidly developing “drone trains”, with the aim of running fully-automatic services within five years – and “semi-autonomous” trains by 2020. According to Railway Gazette, the president of the national rail operator, SNCF, wants train drivers to become more like pilots, monitoring the journey while technology optimises performance.
SNCF group president Guillaume Pepy vowed to put France at the forefront of innovation in the rail sector. The state-run enterprise has a test circuit in northern France where a locomotive is “driven” by a “téléconducteur” at the control centre in Lyon, hundreds of miles away. SNCF aims to have driverless freight trains operating by 2021, with passenger trains running on the RER network through Paris by 2023. These services will operate at speeds of up to 75mph.
Nigeria: robbers demand £10,000 for stolen body
Kidnappers stole a corpse from a morgue in Nigeria and demanded a ransom for its release, police say. Chukwudi Chukwu, 38, and Ibeh Bethel Lazarus, 28, allegedly took the dead body of a woman after breaking into the mortuary at Jesus Hospital in Imo state.
They then contacted the mortuary manager, Bright Nwanshi, to negotiate its release in return for five million naira (£10,600). “One of the suspects is my former worker,” Mr Nwanshi told the Nigerian Daily Post. “They asked me to give them N5m. I reported the matter to the police and investigation commenced.”
The suspects were arrested following an operation by the anti-kidnapping unit of the Nigerian police’s Imo state command. Police also recovered a Suzuki bus allegedly used to carry the corpse.