Afghanistan

U.N. resumes aid to refugees

The U.N. refugee agency resumed helping Afghans make their way home Tuesday, months after the slaying of a French aid worker prompted a suspension in aid and the withdrawal of staff from lawless provinces bordering Pakistan.

The aid program, which gives $8 per person and a travel allowance to help families return, was suspended after two gunmen killed Bettina Goislard on Nov. 16 in the eastern city of Ghazni.

The refugee agency pulled its international staff — about 30 people — out of a swathe of southern and eastern Afghanistan for 3 1/2 months after the attack and halted repatriation aid.

But that aid resumed after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees received security assurances from both the Afghan and Pakistani governments, spokesman Nader Farhad said.

Germany

Probe begins journey to land on comet

A European spacecraft sped away from Earth’s gravity Tuesday after a flawless launch, beginning a 10-year journey to land on an icy comet in search of answers about the birth of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth.

The Rosetta craft blasted into orbit from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariane-5 rocket at 4:17 a.m. local time. Scientists then waited a tense two hours for the automated firing of the rocket’s upper stage, boosting the craft to the nearly 25,000 mph needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field.

European Space Agency controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, then took command of the 3-ton craft and began bringing its systems to life, spreading its 105-foot solar panels and pointing them toward the sun to get electrical power.

Rosetta’s destination — in 2014 — is a comet called 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko, an irregular chunk of ice, frozen gases and dust discovered in 1969 by Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko.

Philippines

Terrorist thought aboard deadly ferry run

A man listed by the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf as one of its suicide bombers was aboard a ferry carrying 899 people that caught fire last week after an explosion, the coast guard chief said Tuesday.

But Vice Adm. Arturo Gosingan said there was no indication so far that a bomb caused the blaze that gutted the Superferry 14 shortly after it left Manila on Friday. Police dogs checked the ferry before it departed.

One body has been found but at least 134 people remain missing, officials say.

Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida-linked group, claimed responsibility for the incident and identified the “suicide bomber” as Arnulfo Alvarado, 33, the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper reported.

However, the government has dismissed the Abu Sayyaf’s claim of responsibility as propaganda.