Christian market bomb attack kills 7

Indonesian police have detained a man and tightened roadblocks around the city of Palu in a hunt for those responsible for killing seven people in a nail-bomb attack on a Christian market on New Year's Eve.

Rais Adam, spokesman for police in volatile Central Sulawesi province where Palu is the capital, said today that police had raided several locations. He declined to give details.

The blast in a Christian market selling pork came after warnings of militant violence during the Christmas and New Year's season in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Pork is forbidden to Muslims, who account for some 85 percent of Indonesia's people, but the east of the country has large pockets of Christians.

Avalanches kill climbers, snowshoer

Avalanches killed seven Czech tourists Saturday in Slovakia's highest mountain range and a German man on a snowshoe tour a day earlier in Switzerland, officials said.

The seven Czech mountaineers were hit by the avalanche as they were sleeping early Saturday in the western part of the High Tatras range, Slovak rescue worker Rudolf Zupa said. One man escaped, he said.

Subway strike fails to dim New Year's

Londoners managed to move around the city Saturday to celebrate New Year's despite a 24-hour subway strike, which slowed but failed to cripple the capital's transport system.

Leaders of the RMT union had expected the subway to grind to a halt when guards and ticket-office workers left their posts at noon. But London Underground managed to keep most of the Tube running, saying only around 40 of the sprawling network's 275 stations were closed.

Authorities said the stoppage had little effect. Nevertheless, many Londoners were left confused about which stations would be open, and worried about their journeys home.

Kidnappers release ex-diplomat, family

A former German diplomat and his family were released unharmed Saturday, three days after being kidnapped by tribesmen while on holiday in the rugged mountains of eastern Yemen, officials said.

Juergen Chrobog, a former German foreign minister, his wife and their three children were flown from the area after they were let go, German and Yemeni officials said.

The kidnappers freed the family after Yemen's government agreed to hold talks about a group of detained fellow tribesmen.

Anti-rebel campaign rounds up hundreds

Thousands of police officers and soldiers fanned out across the Sri Lankan capital before dawn on Saturday to root out what they called suspected ethnic separatist rebels, arresting 920 people, most of them ethnic Tamils.

By the end of the day, only 53 remained in custody; the police said five were members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam guerrilla group. The rest, charged with minor crimes, were released on bail.

Saturday's action, after an increase in the number of attacks against government targets by the Tamil Tigers, was reminiscent of similar security operations against the island's Tamil minority before a 2002 cease-fire agreement between the government and rebels.

Russia, not U.S., gets expelled ex-official

A former nuclear-energy minister under indictment in the U.S. was jailed in Moscow on Saturday following his extradition from Switzerland, and charged with fraud and abuse of power, officials said.

Yevgeny Adamov was flown to Moscow from Zurich airport late Friday after a Swiss court had ruled that he should be extradited to Russia rather than the United States, even though he faces U.S. charges of conspiracy to transfer stolen money and securities, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., money laundering and tax evasion.

Compiled from The Associated Press and The New York Times