World Scene

SINGAPORE

Tiny nation leads in executions

Singapore leads the world in executions, putting to death more people than Saudi Arabia, China and Sierra Leone on a per capita basis, rights group Amnesty International said yesterday.

About 400 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug trafficking, giving the wealthy city-state of 4 million people possibly the highest execution rate in the world relative to population, Amnesty said.

Singapore’s drug laws are among the world’s harshest.

PAKISTAN

Church targeted in attacks

KARACHI — A grenade followed by a powerful car bomb exploded outside a church here yesterday, injuring 15 persons in the first instance of anti-Christian violence in more than a year, police and residents said.

Two men on a speeding motorcycle hurled the grenade at the Pakistan Bible Society’s Christian Reading Library, next to the Trinity Church, in central Karachi’s Saddar Bazaar, injuring no one but drawing crowds, security officials said.

The car bomb went off about 15 or 20 minutes later as employees of the library and the church gathered outside with several policemen.

AFGHANISTAN

Rockets fired at American base

KABUL — About a dozen rockets were fired at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, but they caused no casualties, Afghan and U.S. officials said yesterday.

The rockets exploded in fields near the Khost airport, about 90 miles southeast of Kabul, at about 11 p.m. Wednesday, said Hayatullah Taniwal, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

CANADA

Nuclear fusion bid to be abandoned

MONTREAL — Canada announced yesterday that it is withdrawing from the international multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear fusion project ITER.

Canada had proposed a site near Toronto for the reactor. France and Japan now are competing for the valuable project.

ISRAEL

Top court to hear plea against barrier

JERUSALEM — Israel’s High Court decided yesterday after a petition by a human rights group to hold a hearing within a month on the legality of a barrier the Jewish state is building in the West Bank.

The hearing will be held before the International Court of Justice at The Hague begins deliberations on Feb. 23 in response to a United Nations General Assembly request to rule on whether Israel was obliged legally to tear down the barrier.

SWITZERLAND

WHO, 6 nations push to eradicate polio

GENEVA — The World Health Organization and six countries in which polio remains endemic agreed yesterday on a final push to eradicate a disease that once paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children a year.

The plan calls for massive house-to-house vaccination campaigns, mainly in six countries — India, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Niger and Afghanistan — with about 250 million children being vaccinated in a bid to stop transmission.

From wire dispatches and staff reports