WORLD NEWS

Boko Haram Stages

Fresh Attack in North
Cameroon

JANUARY 19, 2015

Nearly Half of French

Against Printing Prophet
Cartoons: Poll

An employee carries copies of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo,

January 13, 2014.

The file photo shows Boko Haram Takfiri militants in Nigeria.

YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) Cameroons information minister says
Nigerias Boko Haram has staged a
fresh attack in the north of the country as Chadian forces deployed to
fight the extremist group.
Issa Tchiroma Bakary said the attack
Sunday morning took place near Mokolo in the Far North Region. He said
the assailants ransacked and burned the
targeted villages.
He said he had not yet been able to
contact military and local officials for
precise casualty figures.
Boko Harams latest attack on Cameroon came three days after Chad Presi-

dent Paul Biya announced Chad would

send an important contingent to support Cameroons army as it tries to repel
Boko Harams intensifying offensive.
Based in Nigeria, Boko Haram has
been recruiting fighters in Cameroon,
Chad and Niger, and the group recently
issued a video threatening Biya.
Boko Haram, whose name means
Western education is forbidden, says
its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian
government.
The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for numerous deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various
parts of Nigeria which have claimed the

lives of thousands of people since 2009.

The Takfiri militants have also kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian women in
recent months.
On April 14, 2014, the Takfiri group
kidnapped 276 students from their secondary school in the northeastern town
of Chibok in Borno, triggering worldwide outrage. Reports say 57 of the
girls managed to escape, but 219 are
still missing.
According to the Washington-based
Council on Foreign Relations, the violence, which has forced 1.5 million
people to flee their homes, killed over
10,000 people last year alone.

Volcano Erupts in Northern Indonesia

JAKARTA (PRESS TV) A
volcano has erupted in northern
Indonesia, releasing molten lava,
hot ash, and thick smoke and

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said it has

issued special instruction for
the local residents and raised its

Volcanic ash clouds engulf a region during eruption of Mount

Sinabung in Indonesia, February 1, 2014.
leaving local residents in panic.

According to reports, Mount

Soputan in Indonesias North
Sulawesi
Province
spewed
smoke up to 4,000 meters into
the sky on Sunday.

alert status in the region.

Villagers are banned to enter
areas within [a] 6.5-kilometre
radius from the crater, media
outlets quoted BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho as

saying.
The volcano has been showing
signs of increased volcanic activity since January 14.
Sources say spewed ash was
being blown to the south-west
Mount Soputan, which erupted twice on January 6 and has
been showing increased activity
since then.
On December 19, 2014, Mount
Gamalama on the Ternate Island in North Maluku Province
spewed smoke up to 2,000 meters into the sky. It released hot
ash when slow-moving red lava
was visible at the peak of the
eruption.
Indonesia has about 129 active volcanoes. The country
lies on the major tectonic fault
lines known as the Ring of Fire
between the Pacific and Indian
oceans.
In 2010, more than 350 people lost their lives, following
a series of volcanic eruptions
in Mount Merapi in central
Java.

Poll: Greeces Syriza

Widens Lead Ahead of Vote

ATHENS (PRESS TV) A poll

shows Greeces anti-bailout opposition party Syriza widening its lead
over Prime Minister Antonis Samaras ruling conservative party just
over a week before the countrys
snap elections.

The opinion survey by Kapa Research published by Greek daily To

Vima on Sunday showed the Syriza
partys lead grew to 3.1 percentage
points from 2.6 points in a previous
poll earlier this month.
According to the poll, the anti-

bailout party led by Alexis Tsipras

would receive 31.2 percent of the
votes if the elections were held
now compared to 28.1 percent for
Samaras New Democracy party.
The centrist party, To Potami,
would follow with 5.4 percent.
The findings of the Kapa Research survey came just days after
a poll by Pulse for Action 24 television showed similar results on
January 15, with Syriza receiving
31.5 percent of the vote against 28
percent for the ruling party.

In order for a party to win the

elections outright, the leading
party must generally gather between 36 and 40 percent of the
voters support. Under Greek
electoral rules, the winning party
is given an extra 50 seats in parliament to facilitate forming a
government.
The country is set to hold snap
parliamentary elections on January 25. The vote was called for last
month after a failure to elect the
countrys new president.

PARIS (PRESS TV) A

new opinion poll in France
has found that almost half of
the French people are against
printing satirical sketches of
Islams Prophet Mohammad.

Conducted by Ifop, the

poll, the results of which
were published in Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday,
showed that 42 percent of the
respondents to the poll believe the Prophet cartoons,
which Muslims regard as offensive, should not be published.
Fifty percent lent support to
limitations on free speech
online and on social networks.
The poll also indicated
that 81 percent of people in
France believe dual nationals
who have committed an act
of terrorism on French soil
should lose their French nationality.
Meanwhile, nearly 70 percent of the participants in
the poll supported banning
French citizens from coming
back to the country if they
are suspected of having gone
to fight in countries or regions controlled by terrorist
groups, such as the parts

of Syria and Iraq under ISIL

control.
The same proportion also
said people suspected of
seeking to join Takfiri terrorist groups should be banned
from leaving France.
According to the poll, 57
percent of the respondents
expressed
opposition
to
French military intervention
in countries such as Libya,
Syria and Yemen.
The poll was conducted
after French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose
Paris office was attacked by
gunmen on January 7, once
again published a cartoon of
the Prophet on the cover of
its new edition on January
14 despite warnings that the
move is provocative.
Many newspapers and magazines across the globe reprinted the cartoon.
French President Francois
Hollande on Saturday defended the move after protests against Charlie Hebdo
in Niger and Pakistan.
The satirical weekly has
on numerous occasions published cartoons insulting Islam and Muslims, justifying
them as freedom of speech.

Rival Parliament Says UN Talks

Must Be held Inside Libya
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyas

rival parliament decided on

Sunday that it would attend
U.N.-sponsored peace talks only
if they were held inside Libya,
officials said.

Nearly four years after a

NATO-backed revolt ousted
Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is
in turmoil. Two rival governments and two parliaments
are backed by armed factions
who Western governments
fear may drag the country into
civil war.
The United Nations last
week brought factions vying
for control of Libya together
in Geneva, but key representatives from the self-declared
government and associated
parliament based in the capital
Tripoli stayed away.
The Tripoli assembly, known
as the General National Congress (GNC), proposed to hold
the talks in the remote southern city of Ghat, its spokesman Omar Hmeidan said.
Talks must be in Ghat, not in

Geneva.
GNC member Abduqader
Hawaili said 100 of the 110
members attending Sundays
session of the GNC had voted
in favor of the proposal.
The
internationally
recognized government, under
Prime Minister Abdullah alThinni, and the elected House
of Representatives have operated out of the east since the
Libya Dawn faction took over
Tripoli in the summer, set up
its own government and revived the old parliament, the
GNC.
In September, the United
Nations held a first round of
talks bringing together rival
factions in the southern city of
Ghadames, but little progress
has been made.
Libyas conflict involves a
myriad of militias, factions
and armed groups who helped
to topple Gaddafi but are loyal
above all to local or regional
leaders, making any agreement hard to reach or enforce.

MOGADISHU (PRESS TV) Somali

university students have poured into the
streets in the capital, Mogadishu, to join
global Muslim rallies against a sacrilegious cartoon published by French weeklyCharlie Hebdo depicting the Prophet
Mohammad.
The protest rally was held on Saturday
with demonstrators chanting slogans and
holding placards that read I am a Muslim, and I love my prophet.
They also denounced the recent spate of
terrorist attacks in France that killed 17
people, stressing that the Takfiri-fueled
violence has nothing to do with Islam.
On January 14, the French satirical
magazine, whose Paris office was attacked by two gunmen on January 7,
once again published a cartoon of the
Prophet on the cover of its new edition
despite warnings that the move is provocative.
The January 7 attack is largely believed to have been launched over
Charlie Hebdos previous cartoons of
the Prophet.
The al-Qaeda branch in Yemen
claimed responsibility for the attack on
Charlie Hebdo. The group said it chose
and supported Said and Cherif Kouachi, the two brothers who allegedly carried out the deadly assault.
Angry protesters in Pakistan, Niger
and Yemen staged demonstrations to
condemnCharlie Hebdos most recent
publication of a blasphemous cartoon
of the Prophet of Islam.
****
ABUJA (Reuters) A bomber drove a
car packed with explosives into a busy
bus station in the northeast Nigerian
town of Potiskum on Sunday, killing four
people and wounding 35, police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which bore
the hallmarks of Islamist militant group
Boko Haram and added to the countrys
litany of security woes less than a month
before a closely fought presidential vote.
The information I have is that the
car was pretending to be scouting for
passengers, Yobe state police commissioner Danladi Marcus told Reuters by
telephone.
Five people including the bomber
were killed in the attack with about 35
others receiving treatment for various
injuries at Potiskum General Hospital.
Violence is surging ahead of polls
pitting President Goodluck Jonathan
against former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari in the closest contest since
the end of military rule in 1999.
A suicide bomber blew himself up at
a market in the northeast Nigerian city
of Gombe on Friday, killing at least six
people and wounding 10.
Boko Haram has killed thousands, kidnapped hundreds of mostly children and
destabilized the northeast of Africas top
oil producer in its five-and-a-half year
campaign for an Islamic state.
****
PHILADELPHIA (AP) Flashfreezing led to a pileup involving more
than 20 cars on a major interstate outside Philadelphia on Sunday, a transportation department spokesman said.
All lanes of Interstate 76 were closed
west of Philadelphia after a series
of cars slammed into one another
amid freezing rain around 6:30 a.m.,
PennDOT spokesman Eugene Blaum
said. The extent of any injuries was not
immediately clear.
Slick roads caused a number of
crashes, including collisions that also
closed parts of Interstates 95 and 476
in and around Philadelphia. The
Delaware River Port Authority closed
bridges linking Philadelphia and New
Jersey for a time during the morning
while workers put down salt, but began
reopening lanes by midmorning.
Blaum called travel conditions very
hazardous.
The most difficult part about this is
that a flash freeze like this, the moisture can freeze on contact with the
pavement, he said.
The I-76 crash was one of more than
a dozen reported on roads around the
region on Sunday morning, some causing closures while others just blocked
lanes.
Blaum said temperature and precipitation conditions were perfect in some
spots to create a serious problem: a
sheet of ice caused by light rain falling
on cold surfaces.