World Scene

CANADA

Bank bombed as a warning

OTTAWA | Anarchists took responsibility Wednesday for the firebombing of a Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch in the nation’s capital and warned of more chaos at a Group of Eight and Group of 20 summit in Toronto next month.

“The resistance continues,” an unidentified group said in an online posting taking aim at RBC for its financing of the Alberta oil sands development and “trampling native rights” by sponsoring the Winter Olympics in February.

Police said an investigation is ongoing into the blaze, but would not comment on the group taking responsibility for it. No one was injured.

“G8 and G20 leaders and bankers are meeting in Huntsville and Toronto to make decisions that will further their policies of exploitation of people and the environment,” the group said. “We will be there.”

PAKISTAN

Muslim anger spurs Facebook blockage

LAHORE | Pakistan’s government ordered Internet service providers to block Facebook on Wednesday amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

The page on the social networking site has generated criticism in Pakistan and elsewhere because Islam prohibits any images of the prophet. The government took action after a group of Islamic lawyers won a court order Wednesday requiring officials to block Facebook until May 31.

By Wednesday evening, access to the site was sporadic, apparently because Internet providers were implementing the order.

The Facebook page at the center of the dispute — “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” — encourages users to post images of the prophet on May 20 to protest threats made by a radical Muslim group against the creators of “South Park” for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year.

RUSSIA

Two in cockpit before crash

MOSCOW | At least two passengers visited the cockpit of Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane before it crashed last month, and others may have chatted on cell phones, possibly affecting navigation as the crew battled heavy fog over challenging terrain.

Those were among the details revealed Wednesday by Russian and Polish officials investigating the April 10 crash that killed Mr. Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others outside the western Russian city of Smolensk. The preliminary report drew no conclusions about what caused the crash.

Russia and Poland have had troubled relations, and releasing an incomplete report may have been intended by both sides to show their determination to be candid and cooperative.

Alexei Morozov, head of the technical commission of Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, told reporters that among the questions that need further investigation is whether the rolling terrain around the Smolensk military airport distorted instrument readings.

The plane went down in a ravine 50 feet below the level of the runway, just a kilometer away.

COLOMBIA

Land activist killed by gunmen

BOGOTA | A leader of families displaced by Colombia’s violence was fatally shot in what human rights groups said Wednesday is the latest attack on activists seeking the return of land allegedly stolen by rightist paramilitary groups.

Rogelio Martinez, 51, was riding on a mototaxi near his residence in San Onofre, Sucre province, when gunmen intercepted the vehicle and shot him three times Tuesday, police Col. Hugo Javier Agudelo said.

No arrests had been made and police declined to offer a motive. Human rights groups said Mr. Martinez had been receiving death threats since December 2008.

Mr. Martinez lived with 52 displaced families locked in a dispute with a paramilitary group over a 1,374-acre farm called “La Alemania,” according to press releases from the Interchurch Commission for Peace and Justice and the human rights group CODHES.

LEBANON

12 charged in lynching

BEIRUT | Twelve people were charged on Wednesday for the mob lynching of an Egyptian murder suspect in a Lebanese village, a court source said.

The prosecutor in Mount Lebanon charged eight detainees and four fugitives with “beating, stabbing and lynching” Mohammed Muslem in Ketermaya, southeast of the capital Beirut, on April 29.

No further details were given on the defendants, except that they were all from Ketermaya, nor on when the trial would begin.

If convicted, they could face the death penalty.

Mr. Muslem, 38, was the prime suspect in the deadly stabbing of an elderly couple and their two granddaughters, aged seven and nine, in Ketermaya.

He was dragged from a police car by an angry mob as he was being driven through the village for a re-enactment of the crime to which he had confessed, according to authorities.

He was then stabbed and beaten to death before being stripped to his underpants and strung up on an electricity pole with a butcher’s hook through his chin.

• From wire dispatches and staff reports