World Scene

INDONESIA

Cafe bombing kills four in Sulawesi

JAKARTA — A bomb blast killed four persons late yesterday at a cafe on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island and wounded at least three others.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack.

In October 2002, bombs on Indonesia’s premier tourist island of Bali killed 202 persons, mostly foreign visitors, in what was the deadliest such incident since the September 11 attacks on the United States.

CHINA

Beijing warns U.S. on Hong Kong

BEIJING — China yesterday warned the United States to stop “interfering” in Hong Kong’s affairs, a day after Washington reiterated its support for democratic reform in the former British colony.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman also called on Washington “not to do anything harmful to the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and to Sino-U.S. ties,” the Xinhua news agency said.

The United States on Friday said it “strongly supports democracy through electoral reform and universal suffrage in Hong Kong.”

GEORGIA

Police rescue kidnapped banker

TBILISI — Georgian police yesterday freed a banker seized more than a month ago and rounded up his kidnappers.

Tamaz Maglakelidze, co-founder of the United Georgian Bank who was kidnapped in early December, was freed in a pre-dawn police raid on a mountainous spot where he had been held in a pit.

One of those arrested was a former deputy defense minister, Gia Vashakidze, a big-time underworld figure long sought by police.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

NATO troops hunt for Karadzic

PALE — Italian peacekeepers searching for war-crimes suspects raided a hospital in the Bosnian Serb wartime stronghold of Pale yesterday and deployed near buildings linked to leading fugitive Radovan Karadzic.

A spokesman for the NATO-led Stabilization Force said peacekeepers raided the hospital because they believed a war crimes suspect was hiding there.

ALGERIA

Quake rocks close to capital

ALGIERS — An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.7 shook an area close to the Algerian capital last evening, slightly injuring about 300 panic-stricken residents, official media reported.

The epicenter was located in the Mediterranean village of Zemmouri, the same area as a devastating magnitude 6.8 quake killed 2,300 persons last May 21. Zemmouri is 32 miles east of the capital, Algiers.

RUSSIA

5 killed, 13 hurt in mine blast

MOSCOW — Five miners were killed and 13 were injured after an explosion ripped through part of a mine in Siberia yesterday, the Interfax news agency reported.

The blast, thought to have been fueled by methane gas, ripped through the Sibirskaya mine in the Kemerovo region early yesterday morning some 560 feet below ground.