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Mustafa Quraishi / the associated press

World

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Around the world

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.30.2008
GERMANY
Airlift anniversary is commemorated
WIESBADEN — About 10,000 people, including U.S. soldiers, attended an open house at Wiesbaden Garrison on Sunday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift — one of the largest humanitarian undertakings of all time.
The commander of the U.S. Army garrison, Col. Ray Graham, said the role played by Allied forces who organized the airlift set the stage for NATO and closer ties ever since.
"Through the staunch resolve of the Western allies, and the grit of the Berliners, the blockade was broken," Graham told a crowd that included Germans, American soldiers and their families. Participants remembered what has been regarded as one of the first and most decisive battles of the Cold War.
From June 26, 1948, to May 1949, the airlift carried food, medical and fuel supplies to some 2 million West Berliners cut off from the West by Soviet forces.
ISRAEL
Prisoner is freed in return for bodies
JERUSALEM — The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The German-mediated deal was a rare political victory for embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closed a chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against the Lebanese militant group two years ago.
But critics warned that the deal's heavy price for Israel could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers. In Lebanon Sunday, Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.
Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 to OK the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war.
Before a six-hour Cabinet debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead.
Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
The most difficult part for Israel was the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
AFGHANISTAN
Civilian toll rising in ongoing conflict
KABUL — The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year, to almost 700 people, a senior U.N. official said Sunday.
The figures are a grim reminder of how the nearly seven-year war has failed to stabilize the country and suggest that ordinary civilians are bearing a heavy toll, particularly from stepped-up militant attacks.
John Holmes, the world body's humanitarian affairs chief, said the insecurity was making it increasingly difficult to deliver emergency aid to poor Afghans hit by the global food crisis.
"The humanitarian situation is clearly affected and made worse by the ongoing conflict in different parts of the country," Holmes told reporters in Kabul during a multiday visit.
Holmes said U.N. figures show that 698 civilians have died as a result of the fighting in the first half of this year. That compares with 430 in the first six months of 2007, a rise of 62 percent.
Militants caused 422 of the recorded civilian casualties, while government or foreign troops killed 255 people, according to the U.N. numbers. The cause of 21 other deaths was unclear.
SWEDEN
School confiscates party invitations
STOCKHOLM — A school has confiscated an 8-year-old boy's birthday party invitations after they were handed out during class because it said it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.
The boy handed out invitations to classmates at his school in Lund, southern Sweden but did not invite two boys because they were not his friends, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported last week.
The school, 360 miles south of Stockholm, confiscated all the invitations, saying it objected because it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.
The report on Friday did not name the boy or his family. It said the boy's father has filed a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.
The parliamentary ombudsman has asked the school board to decide on the issue before Sept. 8.
FRANCE
Shooting showcase leaves 16 wounded
PARIS — A military shooting demonstration in southeast France on Sunday left 16 people wounded, including children, when real bullets were used instead of blank ones, officials said.
Gay-rights supporters participate in the first "Rainbow Pride Walk" in New Delhi Sunday. It was the largest display of gay pride in deeply conservative India, where homosexual acts are illegal. Demonstrators called for acceptance in a society where intolerance is widespread.
The Associated Press
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