Dozens die in fire at nursing home
Fire tore through a nursing home in Russia, trapping patients in fast-moving flames and choking smoke at a facility cited for numerous safety violations including no fire alarm, officials said Monday. At least 31 people were killed.
The fire broke out early Sunday afternoon in the two-story home for the elderly and invalids in the Tula region south of Moscow.
More than 250 people escaped or were evacuated, officials said. Some jumped from windows.
A short circuit apparently caused the fire, officials said.
The Hague, Netherlands
92 suspects arrested in child-porn bust
Police from across Europe have arrested 92 suspects linked to an alleged network that produced and sold child-abuse videos to 2,500 customers around the world, authorities said Monday.
The videos were sold to clients in 19 countries, prosecutors said.
Authorities said at least 23 mainly Ukranian girls, ages 9 to 16, were duped into performing sex acts with promises of lucrative modeling careers.
Officials said the ongoing investigation was likely to lead to more arrests.
London
British security says 4,000 terrorists active
British security officials suspect that at least 4,000 people are involved in terrorism-related activities in Britain and that al-Qaida’s “deliberate campaign” against Britain poses the “most immediate and acute peacetime threat” to the nation in a century, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency said Monday.
Addressing a press group, Jonathan Evans, director general of Britain’s Security Service, commonly known as MI5, said security agents are watching about 2,000 suspected terrorists in Britain and that they suspect “there are as many again that we don’t yet know of.”
Evans’ predecessor, Eliza Manningham-Buller, said a year ago that agents were tracking 1,600 people in at least 200 cells.
Cairo, Egypt
Police get 3 years for torturing driver
An Egyptian judge sentenced two police officers Monday to three years in prison for presiding over the 2006 torture of a 21-year-old minivan driver in a Cairo police station.
The abuse of Emad el-Kabir became a landmark in Egyptian rights cases when police recorded the torture on a cellphone video camera.
Egyptian bloggers obtained the clip and posted it on the online video site YouTube. Judge Samir Abul Mati said he had spared defendants Islam Nabih, 28, and Reda Fathi, 25, the 15-year maximum sentence because of their youth.
Police took Kabir to their station in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo in January 2006 after he intervened in an argument between his cousin and police. Police used a cellphone to record the mistreatment that followed: Pinioning Kabir’s hands, police sodomized the man with a wooden pole as officers jeered.
Seattle Times news services