Denmark

Miss World pageant boycott grows

Miss Denmark on Wednesday joined a boycott of the Miss World pageant to protest a sentence of death by stoning imposed on a Nigerian Muslim woman accused of having sex outside marriage.

The pageant has come under international pressure over the case of 31-year-old Amina Lawal, who was sentenced by an Shariah judge to be stoned to death while buried up to her neck in sand in 2004, after her baby born out of wedlock is weaned. The contest is set for late November in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.

“I don’t wish to travel down there unless they reverse the sentence,” said 23-year-old Majsa Juel, who won the Miss Denmark title in November.

Juel joined fellow contestants from Spain, France, Belgium and Switzerland in staying away from the competition.

Colombia

U.S. to resume tracking drug flights

Eighteen months after an American missionary plane was accidentally shot down, the United States will resume a campaign to help Colombia track and force down drug flights, officials from both countries said Wednesday.

The program was suspended in April 2001 in Colombia and Peru after a Peruvian warplane mistakenly shot down the missionary flight over the Amazon, killing an American woman and her infant daughter.

Colombian warplanes will intercept drug flights based on intelligence from the United States, Colombian air force commander Gen. Hector Velasco said Wednesday. He said operations are expected to resume this month.

To prevent more accidental shootdowns, Colombian ground and air crews and pilots are receiving safety training in Oklahoma City, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Galen Jackman.

Iran

Culture official jailed after actors kiss

A cultural official has been arrested for allowing an Iranian actress and the young actor she publicly kissed on the cheek to walk away free, in violation of strict Islamic laws, Iranian media reported Wednesday.

Socializing between unrelated men and women is banned by Iran’s Islamic laws, and public kissing between men and women is considered taboo.

Mohammad Ali Pakdel, a cultural official in Yazd in central Iran, was jailed Tuesday, the daily Etemad reported. He was later released on $6,250 bail.

Pakdel was accused of failing to act on an arrest order issued after actress Gowhar Kheirandish and actor Ali Zamani shook hands and kissed on the cheek during a public festival in Yazd.

Pakdel denied the accusation, saying the judicial order was issued after the pair had already left Yazd, Etemad reported.

Syria

Cave collapses destroy homes; at least 31 killed

Mountain homes in the northern city of Aleppo collapsed early Wednesday when caves beneath them gave way, killing 31 people and injuring 22, officials said.

Some 17 houses home to about 60 people collapsed in the Sawad Hill district of Aleppo, a civil defense officer said. Some residents said relatives and neighbors were missing and feared trapped in the rubble.

The affected houses are in the district of al-Sawdah Hill in Aleppo, about 185 miles north of Damascus, the capital. Some 11,000 people live in al-Sawdah Hill.

Yahya al-Sawad, a 32-year-old resident of the area where the collapse occurred, said the houses fell about 12 feet. A nearby street also caved in, burying three cars.

The collapsed houses were built in the late 1950s, according to Bassam Beiruti, chief of Aleppo’s Municipality Council. Some residents did not know that their houses stood on caves.