A round-up of today's news in brief
Cannabis linked to schizophrenia
BRITAIN - Smoking cannabis increases the risk of schizophrenia by at least 40 per cent according to research which indicates that there are at least 800 people suffering serious psychosis in the UK after smoking the drug.
Mental health groups called on the government last night to issue fresh health warnings and launch an education campaign to advise teenagers that even light consumption of the drug could trigger long-term mental health problems. - (Guardian service)
At least 25 killed in Iraq bombing
MIDDLE EAST - A car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 115 when it exploded near an intersection in central Baghdad yesterday. Police said the toll was likely to rise.
Bodies lay strewn around the street after the blast, which smashed three buildings into piles of masonry and concrete. It was at least the fourth to hit the predominantly Shia district of Karrada this week. - (Reuters)
Eta's third in command held
SPAIN - French police have arrested Eta's head of logistics, who is third in command of the Basque separatist rebel group, Spanish interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said yesterday.
Juan Cruz Maiza Artola (56) and two other suspected Eta members were arrested in the southern town of Rodez. - (Reuters)
De Klerk denies death squads role
SOUTH AFRICA - FW de Klerk, South Africa's last apartheid-era president, has denied he knew about death squads and other human rights abuses by the white regime, after his former law and order minister was charged with attempted murder.
Mr De Klerk, who won the Nobel peace prize for ending apartheid, was responding yesterday to reports that he may be implicated in political crimes by the trial next month of Adriaan Vlok, who is accused of ordering a botched plot to kill a leading cleric. - (Guardian service)
Libya protests medics' pardons
SOFIA- Libya has sent a formal protest note to Bulgaria over the pardoning of six medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
The Libyan protest comes after the families of the HIV victims condemned Bulgaria's "recklessness" on Wednesday, called on Tripoli to cut ties with Sofia and deport all Bulgarian nationals and demanded the medics be re-arrested by Interpol. - (Reuters)
Italy sees fall in migrant numbers
ITALY - The number of illegal migrants landing on Italy's shores has fallen sharply this year, the country's police chief, Antonio Manganelli, has told a parliamentary hearing.
The number reaching the island of Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost point which attracts the largest numbers, has almost halved to 5,200 since the start of the year. - (Reuters)
Pope's secretary warns of Islamism
GERMANY- Europe should not ignore attempts to introduce Islamic values in the West which could even threaten the continent's identity, Pope Benedict's private secretary, Georg Gänswein, said yesterday. - (Reuters)