Top Story: China has executed a European citizen for the first time in nearly 60 years. In 2007, a court in Urumqi, in western China, convicted Briton Akmal Sheikh, 53, of smuggling heroin. He has been held in a Chinese jail since then, and was not informed of his death sentence until yesterday. He was executed by lethal injection* at 10:30 a.m. local time.
Lawyers representing Sheikh's family and the human-rights organization Repreive say he was mentally unstable, and entered China with the intention of recording a pop single to bring world peace. Dozens of British consular and governmental officials, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, pled for clemency for Sheikh, including heated last-minute appeals to save his life. The execution looks certain to cool relations between Britain -- which does not use the death penalty -- and China.
Still unraveling: Authorities said the explosive 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set off on a trans-Atlantic flight on Christmas could have brought down the plane.
* Initial reports said the execution was by firing squad; Chinese authorities say it was by legal injection.
Americas
- U.S. President Barack Obama condemned Iran's violent crackdown on protesters, which reportedly left seven dead.
- The United States enacted strict new emergency air safety measures in the wake of the botched Detroit bombing.
- The first gay marriage in Latin America took place in Argentina.
- More details about U.S. operations in and military support to Yemen emerged.
Europe
- A price dispute with Ukraine might lead Russia to cut off natural gas supplies to three European countries.
- Russia has authorized the first flights from Tbilisi to Moscow since the Georgian conflict of 2008.
Middle East
- In a continuing crackdown on protesters, Iran has arrested dozens of prominent opposition leaders and lashed back at the west.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak today to discuss the peace process.
- Hamas is reportedly attempting to build its own phone network to circumvent Israeli intelligence.
Asia
- Another deadly bomb blast rocked Karachi, Pakistan, targeting the country's minority Shiite community.
- U.S. ties with Japanese Premier Yukio Hatoyama have frayed over U.S. insistence on moving an Okinawa military base against Japanese wishes.
- 4,000 ethnic Hmong forcibly repatriated from Thailand arrived in Laos.
Africa
- Pirates off the coast of Somalia released three hijacked ships and took one more.
- At least 20 died in violent clashes between a religious sect and the government in northern Nigeria.
- The leader of the Guinean junta, hospitalized with a bullet wound to the head from an assassination attempt earlier this month, and the country's interim leader plan to meet.
Luis Belmonte, courtesy of Reprieve UK
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