Indonesia

Bomb explodes on bus, killing four, injuring 17

A bomb exploded inside a passenger bus packed with commuters in central Indonesia, killing four people and injuring 17, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

The explosion occurred Wednesday afternoon as the bus carrying 25 people headed toward Poso, the district capital of Central Sulawesi, a province with a history of violence between Muslims and Christians.

Because of the region’s remoteness, it took time for the news to reach Jakarta.

Police said they were inspecting the badly damaged bus Thursday but could not say who was behind the bombing. They said they were looking for three unidentified passengers who got off the bus before the blast.

Wales

DNA analysis appears to solve 3 old murders

Nearly 30 years after three teen-age girls were raped and killed in Wales, police have exhumed the body of a man and conducted DNA tests that show he probably was the murderer.

The DNA samples, taken last month from the remains of Joe Kappen, a nightclub bouncer who died of cancer in 1990 at age 49, match those taken in Wales from the bodies of three 16-year-old victims, police said Thursday.

The girls Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes, who died in September 1973, and Sandra Newton, who was killed in July of that year were believed to have known Kappen.

The girls’ bodies were found near Neath, Wales.

South Wales police were trying to determine if Kappen could be linked to any other unsolved sex attacks or murders.

France

D-Day remembered

France held solemn ceremonies Thursday as American veterans visited cemeteries in Normandy to honor thousands of fellow soldiers who died in the Allied campaign to liberate France, and eventually Europe, from the Nazis.

Wreaths were laid and religious ceremonies were held along the coastline to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the first breach of Hitler’s Atlantic wall.

With tourists and French schoolchildren standing by, hundreds of veterans retraced some of their steps along the beaches where thousands were gunned down in a deafening hail of German machine gun and mortar fire.

Veterans also visited the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, where 9,387 U.S. soldiers are buried.

About 60,000 Americans landed on the Normandy coastline on D-Day, most of whom had no experience of combat.