News Worthy

• Israel is studying plans to create an artificial island along the Gaza Strip with sea and air ports to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The project, under development for three months by Yaakov Katz, the Transport Minister, proposes building a man-made island four kilometres long and two km wide, Israel's Channel 2 television reported. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, backs the plan for the island, which would also contain a tourist area, a marina, hotels and a desalinization plant for sea water. It would be linked to Gaza by a 4-km bridge. The project is estimated to cost $5-billion to $10-billion and take six to 10 years to complete. The project's backers in the government would like to see the island managed by Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, freezing out the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Agence France-Presse
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• Iraq: At least 53 people were killed Tuesday when gunmen took hostages at a provincial council headquarters in Saddam Hussein's hometown, precipitating a battle with security forces. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Tikrit since a suicide bombing killed up to 60 police recruits in January and was the first hostage incident since 52 people were killed in a Baghdad church raid by al-Qaeda-linked gunmen in October. The assailants set off car bombs, explosive belts and hand grenades as they stormed the building and grabbed hostages. Those who did not die as a result of explosions were executed by the gunmen. Sabah al-Bazee, a freelance Iraqi journalist, and three council members were among those killed. Reuters
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• Ivory Coast appeared to have succumbed to full-scale civil war on Tuesday after six key towns fell to forces opposed to the sitting president. Fighting that has already killed 460 people and forced one million from their homes had been contained to the country's far west and some suburbs of the main city Abidjan. But on Tuesday armed groups swept south of the ceasefire line drawn after the end of the last civil war in 2004, taking several towns in succession. Those fighters support Alassane Ouattara, the former World Bank executive internationally recognized as the winner of November's elections. But his rival, Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president, has refused to step down. The Daily Telegraph
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• Brussels: Guards blocked the sealed offices Tuesday of disgraced MEPs after a fresh resignation in a string of corruption scandals engulfing the European Parliament. Hella Ranner, an Austrian conservative, became the latest to quit after a newspaper report alleged she planned to clear a $9.8-million business debt using expenses meant for staff and office running costs. Three other lawmakers are already facing probes after a sting by Britain's Sunday Times newspaper showed them agreeing to take bribes of up to $140,000 to draft new laws. Last week, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ordered Dan Dover, a veteran British Conservative MEP, to repay $540,000 in unjustified expenses. Agence France-Presse
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• Pakistan has agreed to establish a counter-terrorism hotline and allow Indian detectives investigating the 2008 Mumbai terror plot to visit the country, in the most significant confidence-building measures since the massacre. After two days of talks in New Delhi, India's home secretary and Pakistan's interior secretary said Tuesday the hotline would help "facilitate real-time information sharing with respect to terrorist threats". Security analysts said the moves were a major concession by Pakistan, aimed at persuading India of its sincerity in tackling terrorism and preventing any further attacks being plotted from its territory, like the Mumbai attacks, which were planned by the hardline Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Daily Telegraph
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• Italy: A woman was paid to say she was a victim of Italy's 2009 earthquake and praise the government's reconstruction efforts. Marina Villa, 50, appeared Friday on a popular television program on Canale 5, one of the television channels owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "L'Aquilla is going back to what it was before [the earthquake]. I'd like to thank, if I can, the Prime Minister", she said. "Those who are still staying in hotels, it's convenient for them. They eat, they drink and they don't do anything". Messages left by acquaintances on social networking sites revealed she was not from L'Aquila, but from a small town in the Abruzzo region. The woman admitted Monday she had been paid $420 to appear and read a statement. Reuters
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• United States: Three inmates and their loved ones have been charged with attempting to smuggle drugs into a New Jersey jail on the pages of a children's colouring book. Subozone, which is used to treat heroin addiction and classified as a controlled dangerous substance, was dissolved into a paste, then painted into the colouring book, Sheriff Gary Schaffer of Cape May county, Philadelphia said Tuesday. Pages with "To Daddy", scribbled on top were sent to the prisoners. The New Jersey drug bust was the second this month involving Suboxone smuggling behind bars. Authorities at a prison in Pennsylvania arrested 11 people in what they said was a scheme to hide the drug beneath postage stamps on letters to prisoners. Reuters
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• Tokyo: France and the United States are to help Japan in its battle to contain radiation from a crippled nuclear complex where plutonium finds have raised public alarm over the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. The high-stakes operation at the Fukushima plant has added to Japan's unprecedented humanitarian disaster, with 27,500 people dead or missing from a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
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• Syria may be in the throes of a major power struggle as the country's Cabinet stepped down Tuesday in a last desperate bid to curb nearly two weeks of increasing unrest. The resignation of the 32-member Cabinet led by Naji al-Otari, may clear the way for President Bashar al-Assad to lift a state of emergency that has been in place since 1963 in order to introduce some of the reforms demanded by increasingly restive Syrians. For the last two weeks, while security forces gunned down anti-government demonstrators, state-owned news media have blamed the killings on "armed gangs" who have been sending and receiving more than 1 million text messages "mostly from Israel". National Post
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• A Canadian government's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre stated that "several Islamist insurgent groups" were based in eastern Libya and mosques in Benghazi were urging followers to fight in Iraq. The intelligence report, written in late 2009, called the anti-Gadhafi stronghold of eastern Libya an "epicentre of Islamist extremism", and said "extremist cells" operated in the region, now being defended by a Canadian-led NATO coalition. National Post
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• Canada: A Parti Quebecois government would not hesitate to use public funds to promote sovereignty, party leader Pauline Marois said Tuesday. Ms. Marois said a PQ government would use public money to achieve sovereignty, once in power, notably by commissioning studies on the impact of an independent Quebec. Ms. Marois also noted she would adopt a tougher language law, a citizenship law and a Quebec constitution in preparation for sovereignty before a referendum. Postmedia News
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• China is reinforcing fences and has stepped up patrols along its border with North Korea as fears mount of a catastrophic famine in the secretive state. Fences more than four metres high, topped with barbed wire, are now being erected along a 12-kilometre stretch of the Yalu river around Dandong, a popular entry point for North Korea refugees. "It's the first time such strong border fences are being erected here. It looks like it is related to the unstable situation in North Korea", a resident said of the work, which began in November. The Daily Telegraph