World Scene

RUSSIA

Putin disgusted over coverage of Gadhafi’s death

MOSCOW | Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expressed his “disgust” at the global media Wednesday for its graphic coverage of the killing of ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The overwhelming favorite in next year’s Russian presidential elections told an election campaign meeting that he found the TV coverage immoral and blamed journalists for failing a basic ethics test.

“His body was shown on all the world channels. You could not watch without disgust,” he said.

Global disquiet has grown over how Gadhafi met his end on Oct. 20 at the hands of revolutionary fighters who hauled him alive out of a sewer where he was hiding after a NATO airstrike.

Moscow had viewed Gadhafi as an ally who purchased Russian weapons and provided access to Libya’s lucrative oil fields.

COLOMBIA

Oil firm blames union for vandalism

BOGOTA | Colombian authorities Wednesday sent 480 police and soldiers to the country’s biggest oil field after vandals trashed the offices of an oil company locked in a union dispute.

The oil field produces a quarter of Colombia’s oil, and labor unrest has plagued it since July.

The Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp. blamed the oil worker’s union for Tuesday’s vandalism, but the union denied responsibility.

Unionized workers are seeking pay raises and better food and living conditions at the 250-square-mile oil fields on Colombia’s eastern plains.

PHILIPPINES

One killed, 8 hurt in restaurant bombing

ZAMBOANGA | A powerful bomb ripped through a roadside restaurant in the southern Philippines late on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring eight others, police said.

Police were called in the early evening after shopkeepers found homemade bombs at a row of roadside shops and restaurants.

Police disarmed two bombs but a third exploded in a small restaurant.

The attack came hours after soldiers seized a remote hide-out used by Muslim terrorists blamed for a rash of attacks that has killed nearly 40 since last week elsewhere on troubled Mindanao island.

AFGHANISTAN

Security forces taking charge

KABUL | Afghan forces could soon take charge of security in all or parts of 17 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces in the second step in a transition that President Hamid Karzai hopes will leave his police and soldiers in control across the nation by the end of 2014, government officials said Wednesday.

Mr. Karzai is expected to officially announce the new sites that are to transition from NATO to Afghan control at a Nov. 2 conference in Istanbul. In July, he announced the first seven areas to begin the transition process.

Abdul Khalik Farahi, director of the Afghan department on local governance, announced the 17 provinces at a meeting Wednesday in Kabul as the list was being fine-tuned.

BELARUS

Secret police deport Russian journalist

MINSK | A Russian newspaper journalist working on a report about the opposition in Belarus said Wednesday he was deported overnight from the authoritarian ex-Soviet nation by the secret police.

Igor Karmazin said he was detained by plainclothes agents after speaking to Irina Khalip, the wife of jailed former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov. The reporter for the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily said his recordings were erased and he was barred from entering Belarus for a year.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has relentlessly cracked down on dissent and free media during his 17-year rule, prompting the U.S. and the European Union to impose economic and travel sanctions.