IN BRIEF (Page 11)

Pakistan

US drone kills Taliban No 2

A US drone strike killed the No 2 of the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan region on Wednesday, three security officials said, in what would be a major blow in the fight against militancy. The drone strike killed seven people, Pakistani security officials said, including Taliban deputy commander Wali-ur-Rehman.

United States

Gunman asks to represent self

Accused Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Hasan will ask a US military court on Wednesday to rule he can represent himself at his trial this summer which could bring the death penalty on charges he killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage. Jury selection in Hasan's military trial was delayed until next week after he asked the judge to let him fire his lawyers and represent himself.

France

Most-wanted man captured

French police on Wednesday captured the country's most-wanted man in a hotel outside Paris six weeks after he dynamited his way out of prison in a spectacular jailbreak. Redoine Faid, a famed 41-year-old career thief who had been serving time for robbery and risked a heavy new sentence over the 2010 death of a policewoman, was arrested in the early hours at a hotel in Pontault-Combault.

Myanmar

Mosque burned in new violence

Hundreds of Buddhist men on motorcycles waved iron rods and bamboo poles and threw rocks in a northeastern Myanmar town on Wednesday, a day after a mosque and a Muslim orphanage were torched in a new wave of violence targeting the religious minority.

Bulgaria

Parliament elects new

Bulgaria's Parliament on Wednesday elected Plamen Oresharski as prime minister. Lawmakers voted 120-97 to elect 53-year-old Oresharski, a former finance minister not associated with any party, to head the Cabinet.

Reuters-AFP-AP

(China Daily 05/30/2013 page11)