LONDON: As Iran hanged a second man in connection with protests on Monday, Amnesty International said that at least 27 people in the country, including three juveniles, were at “great risk” of execution in “grossly unfair sham trials.”

In a letter sent to Iranian Chief of Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei earlier in the month, the human rights organization said that some of those at risk had been sentenced to death while others had been charged with crimes that could result in the death penalty.

LONDON: It has taken eight decades, cost billions of dollars and consumed the careers of generations of physicists.

But last week scientists at a US government-funded laboratory in California claimed to have cracked the long-elusive puzzle of nuclear fusion, in the process producing enough energy to boil a few kettles.

That, of course, was not the end game for researchers at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, which began operating at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2010.

BEIRUT: The Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers held a memorial at the Beirut airport on Sunday for an Irish soldier killed by a mob that opened fire last week at two vehicles belonging to the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, a traditional stronghold of the militant Hezbollah group.
The attack that killed 24 year-old Pvt. Seán Rooney of Newtowncunningham took place near the southern town of Al-Aqbiya on Wednesday night, as he and seven other Irish peacekeepers from UN peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, were on their way to the Beirut airport.

LONDON: The family of the Libyan accused of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie have said the US staged an abduction using a local militia leader, The Observer reported on Sunday.

Mohammed Abouagela Masud was charged last week in the US more than 30 years after the 1988 bombing that killed 270 people.

The 71-year-old’s family say he was kidnapped from his home in Tripoli in November by gunmen led by a local warlord on the orders of the US.

KIRKUK: At least seven members of Iraq’s federal police were killed Sunday during an attack near Kirkuk in the country’s north, where remnants of Daesh group militants are active, police and government sources said.

A bomb blast initially targeted a truck transporting the men. It was followed by “a direct attack with small arms,” near the village of Chalal Al-Matar, a federal police officer who attributed the assault to Daesh, said on condition of anonymity.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.