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German woman kidnapped from restaurant

By TIMES WIRES
Published August 19, 2007

AFGHANISTAN

Four armed assailants kidnapped a German aid worker dining with her husband at a restaurant in Kabul in a bold midday attack. The abduction of the 31-year-old German woman, who works for a small Christian aid organization along with her husband, prompted police in Kabul to shoot at the speeding getaway car, killing a nearby taxi driver. The woman works for the Ora International aid group, based in the central German town of Korbach, said Ulf Baumann, a spokesman for the organization. Germany's Foreign Ministry confirmed the kidnapping and said officials were working with Afghan officials.

Also Saturday:

- The Taliban said negotiations for the release of 19 remaining South Korean hostages have failed. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the group's demands for the release remain the same: a swap for Taliban prisoners, which the Afghan government has ruled out. The militants killed two hostages and released two others after face-to-face talks with South Korean officials.

- A suicide car bomber killed 15 people and wounded 26, including women and children, in Kandahar.

Elections

Kazakhstan: Oil-rich Kazakhstan held parliamentary elections Saturday in an early vote widely considered an attempt by the long-ruling president to improve the ex-Soviet republic's democratic image while retaining his grip on power. Exit polls indicated that his party had won an overwhelming majority of votes.

Maldives: Thousands of Maldivians, many fed up with the president's nearly three-decade rule, voted Saturday in the capital, Male, and on remote atolls in a poll seen as a referendum on their leader. Provisional results were expected today. The vote was technically to choose a new form of government, but many here hailed it as their first real expression of democracy.

Thailand: The country holds its first-ever national referendum today to choose a new constitution. But the choice is limited to voting yes or no on a charter designed to curb the power of politicians. Critics complain that neither democracy nor choice is playing much of a role in the proceedings, because a rejection of the military-approved proposal means the generals will then be free to impose a constitution without further consultation with the voters.

Elsewhere

China: More than 900,000 people were evacuated along China's southeast coast as Typhoon Sepat roared toward the mainland Saturday after killing at least one person on Taiwan, state media said.

Iran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday at a religious conference that Israel was the standard bearer of Satan and that the Jewish state would soon fall apart, state media reported. "The Zionist regime is the standard bearer of invasion, occupation and Satan," he said, predicting Israel's eventual demise. "When the philosophy behind the establishment of a regime is in question, it is not unlikely that it will find itself on a course of decline and dissolution."

Switzerland: Hundreds of naked people formed a "living sculpture" on Switzerland's Aletsch glacier Saturday, hoping to raise awareness about climate change. The photo shoot by New York artist Spencer Tunick was designed to draw attention to the effects of global warming on Switzerland's shrinking glaciers.

[Last modified August 19, 2007, 00:35:51]