State of emergency declared in Crimea

MOSCOW • A state of emergency has been declared in Crimea after pylons carrying electricity from Ukraine were blown up, cutting off power to almost two million people, the media and the Russian government said yesterday.

The Russian media reported that two pylons in the Kherson region of Ukraine north of Crimea had been blown up by Ukrainian nationalists.

REUTERS

Three street attacks in West Bank

JERUSALEM • A Palestinian girl tried to stab Israelis and was fatally run down by a Jewish settler in the West Bank yesterday, while another Palestinian was shot dead after an attempted attack, Israeli police said.

In a third attack, an Israeli was stabbed by a Palestinian attacker who was shot dead afterward. The female victim was reportedly in serious condition.

A surge in often spontaneous and leaderless Palestinian street violence since Oct 1 has challenged Israel's security system and alarmed the United States, whose Secretary of State John Kerry is due to sound out both sides this week.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Iran jails Washington Post reporter

DUBAI • A court in Iran has sentenced Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian to an unspecified prison term, the state news agency IRNA said yesterday, quoting the judiciary spokesman.

"Serving a jail term is in Jason Rezaian's sentence but I cannot give details," IRNA quoted the spokesman, Mr Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, as telling journalists during a weekly news conference in Teheran.

On Oct 11, Mr Ejei said Mr Rezaian, the paper's Teheran bureau chief who has both US and Iranian citizenship, had been convicted, without giving any details.

REUTERS

153 in Liberia under Ebola surveillance

MONROVIA • Liberia has placed 153 people under surveillance as it seeks to control a new Ebola outbreak in the capital more than two months after the country was declared free of the virus, health officials said.

Three Ebola cases emerged in Liberia on Friday. The first of the new patients was a 15-year-old boy, Nathan Gbotoe from Paynesville, a suburb east of the capital Monrovia. Two other family members have since been confirmed as positive and they are all hospitalised.

REUTERS