Russian mafia boss shot dead in Moscow

ONE of Russia's biggest mafia bosses has been shot dead in the centre of Moscow, in an apparent contract killing as he was leaving a restaurant after lunch, the interior ministry says.

Aslan Usoyan, 75, known by his nickname of Grandpa Hassan, was killed by a shot from a sniper's rifle as he was exiting the Karetny Dvor restaurant, about 1.5 kilometres from the Kremlin, on Wednesday.

Some observers feared that the murder of Usoyan would unleash a turf war in the criminal world of Russia and former Soviet republics.

The sniper shot Usoyan once, and the victim was rushed to the hospital, but died on the way, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

Investigators have launched a murder probe, with Usoyan's "criminal activities" as one of the possible explanations for the murder, it said.

Born in Soviet Georgia in the 1930s, Usoyan was one of the remaining mafia old guard and was considered the most influential criminal in the former Soviet Union. He was first convicted when he was 19.

Investigators on Wednesday said the sniper also wounded a female bystander who was being treated.

Usoyan had already survived an assassination bid in September 2010 when he was shot in the abdomen in central Moscow, and temporarily handed over business to his two nephews, according to reports.

The tabloid daily Komsomolskaya Pravda in a report on its website dubbed him the "king of the Russian mafia".

In a sign of Usoyan's colossal influence despite his increasing age, a parliament deputy expressed fear that his murder might trigger unprecedented turf wars and more violence.

"I am sure that a new criminal redistribution will begin now," Russian MP Alexander Khinshtein, who sits on the security committee, wrote on his Twitter blog.

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Lesbians chased from Indonesian home

TWO women who married in Indonesia by disguising themselves as a heterosexual couple have been chased away from their village after neighbours discovered they were lesbians, community members say.

Neighbours raided the couple's home on Batam island near Singapore after growing suspicious that Musdalifa was a woman because he never socialised with other men in the village and the couple always kept to themselves.

"We reject homosexuals here, so last week we raided their house and saw Musdalifa was obviously a woman. She'd been walking around in loose men's clothes," Marlina, 34, told AFP Wednesday.

"We told Musdalifa to leave. They both fled and we haven't seen them since," said Marlina, who goes by one name.

It was discovered that Musdalifa was really a 23-year-old woman named Angga Soetjipto, who married her girlfriend Ninies Ramiluningtyas, 41, earlier this month.

The locals complained to the local Religious Affairs Office, which administers marriages and has reported the case to the Religious Affairs Ministry.

"There was no way we could have known, because they both had all the right documents, including a letter of identification from the village," office head Budi Dharmawan said.

He said the office would consider intensifying customary pre-marriage counselling to ensure illegal marriages do not slip through the net again.

Homosexuality is legal in Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation, though gay marriage is outlawed.

Although the majority of Indonesians practise a moderate form of Islam, the country's sharia stronghold Aceh province has deliberated flogging homosexuals and has forced gay and lesbian couples to separate.

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Car bombs kill at least 22 in Syria

A TRIPLE car bombing has killed at least 22 people in northern Syria, a government official and activists say, a day after massive blasts at a university campus in the city of Aleppo left 87 dead.

It was not immediately clear what the target of the three almost simultaneous blasts in the city of Idlib was.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombings targeted security vehicles near the local security headquarters and a checkpoint. At least 24 people were killed, most of them regime forces, it said.

However, a government official said the blasts hit a major highway and a roundabout in Idlib, killing 22 people and wounding 35. The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media, did not say what the target was.

Rebels control vast areas of the Idlib countryside, but the city itself is controlled by the regime.

The bombings in Idlib come on the heels of the twin blasts a day earlier that ripped through the Aleppo University campus, which anti-regime activists said killed 87 people.

The Observatory said the death toll could rise even further because medics have collected unidentified body parts and some of the more than 150 wounded are in critical condition.

Syria's Ministry of Higher Education suspended classes and exams at all Syrian universities on Wednesday, "in mourning for the souls of the heroic martyrs who were assassinated by the treacherous terrorist hand," the state news service reported.

The SANA report quoted the minister of higher education, Mahmoud Mualla, as saying that Assad had ordered the reconstruction of Aleppo University "with the utmost speed."

The opposition and the government have blamed each other for the university blasts, which marked a major escalation in the struggle for control of Aleppo - Syria's largest city and once the country's main commercial hub.

It remains unclear what caused the blasts, which hit the campus as students took exams, setting cars alight and blowing the walls off dormitory rooms.

Activists said forces loyal to President Bashar Assad launched two airstrikes on the area at the time of the blasts, while Syrian state media said a "terrorist group" - the government's shorthand for rebels - hit it with two rockets.

The scale of destruction appeared inconsistent with the rockets the rebels are known to possess.

Syria's crisis began with political protests in March 2011 but quickly descended into a full-blown civil war, with scores of rebel groups across the country fighting Assad's forces. The UN said this month that more than 60,000 people have been killed in the violence.

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Spanish to name square for Clash singer

THE Spanish city of Granada plans to name a square after the late British punk star Joe Strummer who sang of the town in one of his band The Clash's classic tunes, an official says.

The driving rock anthem Spanish Bombs on the band's 1979 album London Calling recalled the Spanish civil war and Granada's favourite son, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, executed there by nationalist soldiers in 1936.

Now a city commission for civic honours has accepted a petition - backed by local newspaper Ideal and thousands of fans on Facebook - to honour Strummer for his ties to the city.

It has identified a small square to bear his name a few hundred metres from the Alhambra palace, the city's Islamic-era landmark which is one of Spain's biggest tourist draws.

"It is expected that the project will be approved in February by the city council," which has to grant planning permission, a source in the city hall, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

Strummer lived in southern Spain in the 1980s and produced records for local bands there, said Ideal.

"Good old Joe travelled to Granada seduced by stories of the Civil War, the killing of Lorca and the image of Granada," it wrote on Wednesday.

"He worked, lived and drank in the capital of the Alhambra," Ideal added.

Strummer sang in Spanish and English in the song, evoking "bullet holes in the cemetery walls" as the "ragged army" of the Republicans waged their doomed fight against Francisco Franco's forces.

Spanish Bombs brought to stages across the world the name of Lorca and of Granada, sung out loud by thousands of young rebels and activists," Ideal wrote.

Strummer's politically-charged lyrics drove The Clash to the forefront of the punk movement in the 1970s along with the Sex Pistols.

He was born John Graham Mellor and died suddenly of heart failure in 2002 at the age of 50.

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France girds for new threats after Mali op

ARMED soldiers are on guard in Paris' subways, train stations and some of the world's most recognisable monuments to head off terror attacks after France's military launched an operation to push back al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in Mali.

Since the operation in Mali began on Friday, the soldiers have reinforced already tight security with a far more visible presence. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said France is well aware of the dangers of attacks from terrorists angry over the intervention. But he said he believed the long-term threat posed by the advance of the militant Islamist fighters in Mali was far greater, because it could become a potential training ground for terrorists.

Declaring France had "opened the gates of hell" with its assault, the rebels from the Sahel desert region that includes Mali threatened retribution on Monday.

"France is watching individuals who want to go to Afghanistan, Syria and the Sahel. We're watching those who could return here," Valls told the French television network BFM. "We're facing an exterior enemy and an interior enemy."

He said France had already fallen victim to attacks in recent months, referring to a French-born radical Islamist Mohammad Merah who targeted French soldiers and a Jewish school in the south, and a group of men accused of firebombing a kosher grocer in September.

The French government late last year passed a law barring citizens from training for terrorism abroad in response to the deadly attacks in the south by Merah, who received paramilitary training in Pakistan.

Marc Trevidic, a French judge who has investigated terrorism cases, said he was not worried about the threat of attacks in the short term.

"The Malian Islamists currently have other priorities than carrying out a terrorist attack in France," he told Le Parisien newspaper. But long term, he said, the threat is very real, especially given how easy it is to travel between France and Mali. "With this military intervention, we're on the front lines. Suddenly, France is a priority target."

Some 100,000 Malians are residents of France, and there are regular direct flights between Mali's capital, Bamako, and Paris.

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India rape suspect 'is a juvenile'

DOCUMENTS presented in a hearing indicate that a suspect in the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus in December was a juvenile at the time of the attack, a court official present at the hearing says.

Two principals from the suspect's elementary school showed paperwork indicating that the suspect was a juvenile at the time of the attack, which would make him ineligible for the death penalty, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a gag order on the case.

A judge is expected to rule on the suspect's age in a January 28 hearing, the official said, adding that the suspect did not appear in court on Tuesday.

The suspect, who is not being identified by The Associated Press because he says he is 17, would face three years in a reform facility if convicted as a juvenile. A conviction as an adult could lead to his execution.

Five other men also have been charged in the case, which has put an international spotlight on sexual abuse against women in India. One of the five now says he is also a minor.

Police say the 23-year-old victim and a male friend boarded the bus on December 16 after seeing an evening movie. But the bus turned out to be off-duty and was being driven by a group of friends who, police say, attacked the couple and then took turns raping the woman. They also penetrated her repeatedly with a metal bar, causing massive internal injuries. The two were eventually dumped on the roadside. The woman died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.

Figuring out the young suspect's age could be complicated. He is believed to lack a birth certificate - a common occurrence in India, where many people are born at home. In such cases, school records are often used as proof of age or identity.

There are also medical tests that can indicate a person's general age, though it's unclear if the technology would be able to give a precise age.

While sexual violence is believed to be a major problem across India, the issue has seldom been raised in a country where women are still often regarded as second-class citizens. Victims are often blamed for sexual attacks - by their families or authorities - and the shame of rape keeps many women from reporting such attacks at all.

The bus rape, though, has drawn protests and intense media attention. Rapes have become front-page news nearly every day across the country, with demands that police do more to protect women and that the courts treat sexual violence seriously.

Late on Monday, more than 150 people gathered outside a school in the western state of Goa to protest the rape of a second grade student.

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Missing Missoni plane pilot unauthorised

THE pilot of a small plane that disappeared off the coast of Venezuela with six people aboard, including the scion of Italy's Missoni fashion family, was not authorised to fly, Italy's air safety agency Ansv says.

"The pilot's psychophysical certificate had expired on November 30 2012," Ansv said in a statement which also said the Transaereo 5047 company which owns the plane "was not certified as a flight operator."

The plane went missing on January 4 on a flight from the Los Roques islands to Caracas.

Flown by Venezuelan German Merchan, 72, and a co-pilot, it was carrying Vittorio Missoni - the son of the eponymous fashion label's founder Ottavio Missoni - his wife Maurizia Castiglioni and another Italian couple.

Ansv said Merchan's age also meant that he had only been authorised to pilot flights within national airspace.

The Italian embassy in Caracas earlier said the location where the plane went down had been identified, but as the ocean floor in the area reaches a depth of 2000 metres, it was "too deep for many available instruments."

A specialised oceanographic ship from Louisiana has been deployed to help with the search.

A similar disappearance took place exactly five years ago, on January 4, 2008.

At the time, a plane carrying 14 people, including eight Italians, went missing in the same area as it flew from Caracas to Los Roques. No trace of the aircraft or its passengers was ever found.

Missoni runs the company known for its knitwear and iconic zigzag patterns with his siblings Luca and Angela. Vittorio is marketing director, his brother Luca is technical director and his sister Angela is the designer.

The fashion house was founded in 1953 by Ottavio Missoni and his wife Rosita. It now sells ready-to-wear attire for men, women and children, as well as haute couture and perfume.

Missoni has also created auto interiors for Mazda cars and designed interiors for two luxury hotels, in collaboration with the Rezidor Hotel Group.

Los Roques is an archipelago of 350 islands that attracts tourists from all over the world for its deep turquoise sea and the large number of exotic species that live there.

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Teen charged over gate crashing attack

A 16-YEAR-OLD boy has been charged over the serious assault of a young Sydney partygoer, who remains in a coma after a metal rod was thrown at his head by a gatecrasher.

Liam Knight, 17, is in a critical condition in Royal North Shore Hospital after trouble flared at a friend's birthday party on Friday night at Forestville, on Sydney's north shore.

Following regular police appeals for information, a 16-year-old boy from North Ryde handed himself in to Surrey Hills police station on Tuesday afternoon before being arrested.

Police allege the boy threw a number of objects at the party, including the metal rod that struck Mr Knight, as well as punching two other boys, aged 16 and 17, and pushing a 44-year-old man.

He has been charged with recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, two counts of common assault, affray, and breach of bail.

He was refused bail and will appear in Bidura Children's Court on Wednesday.

Around 50 people were enjoying themselves at the party when a group of gatecrashers attempted to get into the home about 11.30pm (AEDT) on Friday, police said.

A fight broke out, police allege, before one of the intruders went to the back of the house and began hurling building materials.

A metal rod penetrated Mr Knight's head so deeply that part of the rod had to be cut off at the scene before he could be transported to Royal North Shore Hospital where doctors surgically removed it.

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GM loses global sales crown to Toyota

GENERAL Motors lost the global sales crown once again to Toyota in 2012, as its sales grew just 2.9 per cent to 9.2 million vehicles, the US auto giant says.

The American automaker, which briefly regained the crown after Toyota's supplies were shattered by the 2011 Japanese quake and tsunami, nonetheless remains at No.2 worldwide.

German rival Volkswagen, which aspires to be the world's biggest automaker by 2018, on Sunday reported an 11 per cent increase in 2012 sales to 9.07 million.

Toyota has forecast its 2012 sales will jump 22 per cent to 9.7 million vehicles.

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UPS to drop bid for TNT Express

US delivery giant United Parcel Service (UPS) says it's pulling out of its multi-billion-euro bid for Dutch firm TNT Express after EU competition authorities said they would probably block the deal.

"UPS informed TNT Express that UPS sees no realistic prospect that EC (European Commission) clearance can be obtained and that UPS will not pursue the transaction on any other basis," UPS said in a statement from Hoofddorp in the Netherlands on Monday.

The decision is despite an attempt by UPS last year to overcome competition concerns by amending its 5.16 billion euros ($A6.59 billion) bid.

EU competition authorities had warned that the takeover as constructed would result in damaging concentration in the European market for express delivery.

EU competition officials met UPS and TNT Express representatives on Friday and "informed the companies that on the basis of UPS's current remedy proposal it is working towards proposing a prohibition decision."

UPS then told TNT it would not continue chasing the deal and that "formal termination of the merger protocol will occur upon receipt of the prohibition decision of the EC, which ...TNT Express deems inevitable," it said.

In June, UPS launched a bid to take over TNT Express, but the EU competition authorities announced a month later they would investigate the deal.

The EU said it was worried the proposed merger would reduce the number of competitors from four to three and lead to a highly concentrated market for domestic and international express delivery services on the European continent.

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