CANADA
Bill gives government new cybermonitoring powers
OTTAWA — The government Tuesday introduced a bill to give law enforcement authorities sweeping powers to probe online communications, but the move sparked criticism about threats to privacy.
“New technologies provide new ways of committing crimes, making them more difficult to investigate,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told a news conference in unveiling the measure. “This legislation will enable authorities to keep pace with rapidly changing technology.”
Liberal opposition groups and civil liberties advocates complained that the bill from the ruling Conservative government contains broad new police powers that could result in unreasonable searches and seizures.
SOUTH SUDAN
Army accuses Sudan of breaking nonaggression pact
JUBA — South Sudan on Tuesday accused its northern neighbor Sudan of violating a nonaggression agreement between the two nations just hours after it was signed.
South Sudanese military officials said Sudan launched an attack early Saturday on the disputed border town of Jau.
Col. Philip Aguer said the area was shelled by Sudanese Armed Forces and then bombed by the Sudanese Air Force during the day.
Jau is on the border of South Sudan’s Unity State and Sudan’s South Kordofan state and has been claimed by both countries.
Sudan currently is battling a rebel group that was linked to South Sudan’s Southern People’s Liberation Movement before the country gained independence from Sudan in July.
NORTHERN IRELAND
IRA suspect arraigned on bomb charge
DUBLIN — A suspected Irish Republican Army dissident already facing trial on one bomb charge was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of planting a car bomb outside a Northern Ireland courthouse.
Eamon Cassidy, 49, offered no plea and was ordered held without bail on charges that he had a role in planting a 100-pound car bomb across the street from the courthouse in Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second-largest city, in March 2011. Tuesday’s arraignment took place in the same building.
Mr. Cassidy is being held in Northern Ireland’s main prison, Maghaberry, while awaiting trial on the first charge when Londonderry police found a small bomb in September 2011 while searching a car carrying him and other alleged IRA dissidents.
ARGENTINA
Police attack veterans demanding pensions
BUENOS AIRES — Argentine police fired tear gas and used water cannons on Tuesday to break up a protest by veterans of the 1982 Falklands War who demand pensions for their service.
Security forces acted when the former soldiers, wearing military uniforms and carrying sticks and shields, charged into a line of riot police in the capital Buenos Aires.
The veterans are part of a group that was mobilized during the war with Britain but were sent to the Patagonia region of South America instead of being deployed to the Falklands, which are part of the British Commonwealth.
ROMANIA
Coal miners donate food for people cut off by blizzard
BUCHAREST — Thousands of coal miners volunteered Tuesday to donate some of their food to help feed people in areas buried in snow as deep as 15 feet.
Helicopters already are rushing to 150 communities in Romania that have been cut off to deliver food and pick up sick people who need hospital treatment.
Officials said five Romanians died in the past 24 hours because of frigid temperatures, bringing the total to 79 weather-related deaths since the nation’s cold spell began.
Neighboring Moldova also has been hard hit by snow, and both countries have seen schools, borders, highways and train services shut down in some areas as temperatures plunged to minus 9 Fahrenheit overnight there.
On Tuesday, about 4,000 Romanian coal miners volunteered to buy tins of food from the money the company gives them for hot meals and donate that to the worst-affected victims in eastern Romania.
• From wire dispatches and staff reports
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