Nigeria

Polio spreading after vaccinations refused

Nearly two years after radical Islamic preachers told parents to refuse to have their children vaccinated against polio for fear it was part of a U.S. plot against Muslims, the repercussions are still being felt: A Nigerian strain of the virus that causes the crippling disease has cropped up as far away as Indonesia.

The U.N. health agency says the world still has a chance to meet a deadline to stamp out polio by year’s end, but other experts are pessimistic.

In Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, many residents still refuse to have their children vaccinated, not just against polio but against other childhood diseases such as measles.

“They said the vaccines will endanger our daughters. Now they think otherwise. I am yet to be convinced,” said 37-year-old father of four Mustafa Balarabe. He said his children wouldn’t be vaccinated, citing “the general Western plot against Muslims worldwide.”

Australia

Vietnamese leader planning U.S. visit

Vietnam’s prime minister said early today that he planned to visit the United States next month, a visit that would make him the highest-level Vietnamese leader to travel to the United States since the end of the war between the two countries 30 years ago.

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai said arrangements were being made for him to visit Washington in June.

“Thirty years has passed since the end of the war; this is the first ever visit by a leader of a unified Vietnam to the United States,” Khai told reporters during a visit to Australia.

Khai rejected suggestions that the visit was to strengthen defense and strategic ties as part of a wider policy of containing the power of China.

“The purpose of my visit to the United States is to elevate our relationship to a higher plane in a new situation, and we don’t take into consideration as such the factor of China,” he said.

Colombia

Two U.S. soldiers detained in arms plot

Colombian police arrested two U.S. soldiers accused of involvement in a plot to traffic thousands of rounds of ammunition, possibly to outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups, authorities said Wednesday.

The two soldiers were detained during a raid Tuesday in a gated community in Carmen de Apicala, 50 miles southwest of the capital and near Colombia’s sprawling Tolemaida air base, where the detained soldiers worked and where many U.S. servicemen are stationed.

National Police chief Gen. Jorge Daniel Castro said officers stopped a suspicious man in the area, who offered a bribe to be allowed to go free. Under threat of arrest, the man led the officers to a nearby house where more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition for assault rifles, machine guns and pistols were found, officials said.

Shortly afterward, the two U.S. Army soldiers — apparently unaware of the police operation — tried to go to the house and were later arrested.

A police registry identified the U.S. servicemen only as Allam Norman Tanquary and Jesus Hernandez.

Afghanistan

Forty militants killed; six U.S. troops wounded

American troops and Afghan police killed about 40 rebels and captured six during a battle in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Wednesday, the latest in a string of clashes in an insurgent hotbed near the Pakistani border.

Six U.S. soldiers and five policemen were reported wounded in several hours of fighting Tuesday.

The battle, the deadliest in nearly seven months, occurred in the Dehchopan district of Zabul province, about 205 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, a military statement said. It said U.S. helicopters and warplanes joined the fight against an insurgent band estimated at 25 fighters.

Egypt

Hundreds of Muslims arrested during protests

Thousands of supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamic group, protested across the country Wednesday in an escalation of the opposition campaign demanding political reform. Police arrested an estimated 400 protesters.

More than 2,500 Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters demonstrated in front of a large downtown mosque, some waving copies of the Quran and chanting, “Reform is a religious necessity, reform is Prophet’s way.”

The protests were the latest show of strength by the Brotherhood, which is probably Egypt’s largest opposition movement.