India city calm despite bombings

Jaipur, India

Indian authorities imposed a daylong curfew in the historic city of Jaipur on Wednesday, the day after serial bombs tore through the pink-walled center of this western Indian city, killing 63 people and wounding more than 100.

Police officers and civic leaders shooed people off the streets in hopes of avoiding any Hindu-Muslim tension, and foreign tourists were restricted to their hotel rooms.

Hindu-dominated India already has blamed "foreign terrorists" for the bombings, a phrase that usually refers to neighbor and nuclear rival Pakistan. Muslim dominated Pakistan condemned the attacks.

Authorities earlier had reported 80 people had died.

"The intention obviously was to create communal disturbances," said A.S. Gill, director general of police for Rajasthan state, of which Jaipur is the capital. added that nothing of the sort had yet materialized. "It's totally peaceful."

The Hague, Netherlands

War-crimes trial told of Libya link

Moammar Gadhafi's Libyan government ran a training camp in the 1980s that prepared Charles Taylor's troops to seize power in the West African nation of Liberia, a key witness at Taylor's war-crimes trial testified Wednesday.

Moses Blah, who served as vice president under Taylor after he rose to power in Liberia, is the highest-ranking witness to testify against his former boss since the trial began early this year in the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Blah's testimony was the strongest link yet in the prosecution's case against Taylor that Gadhafi had a hand in his rise to power and also linked the Libyan leader to other bloody African insurgencies.

Taylor has pleaded not guilty to charges that include murder, rape, torture and enlisting child soldiers during the 10-year civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone that ended in 2002.

Prosecutors allege that Taylor orchestrated the atrocities from his presidential power base in Liberia's capital, Monrovia.

Brussels, Belgium

NATO pact aimed at cyberwarfare

Seven NATO allies signed a deal Wednesday to fund a research center to boost the alliance's defenses against cyber attacks, seen as a growing threat to military and civilian computer networks.

The center is based in the Baltic nation of Estonia, which was hit last year by an unprecedented wave of cyber attacks that crippled government and corporate computer networks.

The attacks followed a dispute over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in the Estonian capital, leading many to suspect the Kremlin was behind the virtual strikes. Moscow denied involvement.

Defense chiefs from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Spain and Slovakia all signed the agreement to provide staff and funding for the center in Tallinn.

Also

Spain bombing: A powerful car bomb blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA exploded outside a barracks housing police and their families in northern Spain on Wednesday, killing one officer and injuring four others.

Syrian blogger imprisoned: The group National Organization for Human Rights said 24-year-old Syrian blogger Tarek Bayass has been convicted and sentenced to three years in prison on charges of undermining the prestige of the state and weakening national morale.

Family slain: Investigators discovered the bodies of five people Wednesday after a man turned up at a Vienna, Austria, police station and calmly explained that he had killed his family to spare them the shame of his financial ruin, authorities said.

Seattle Times news services