Toddler chews head off snake

A sleepy snake came to a rather untimely end after having its head half chewed off by a fearless toddler in an Arab town in northern Israel, the child's family said on Friday.

Thirteen-month-old Imad Aleeyan, who has six teeth, was found chewing on the head of the 30-centimetre snake by his mother, who alerted the neighbourhood with her screams.

"I was making his milk and I looked over and saw he had a snake in his mouth," said his mother, Ghadir Aleeyan who lives in the town of Shefa'Amr, 15 kilometres (9 miles) east of the port city of Haifa.

"I started to scream. I couldn't believe my eyes," she said. "I nearly died of fright."

Her screams brought the rest of the family -- and the neighbourhood -- running.

"We rushed in and found the baby with a snake in his mouth, chewing it. It was really scary, just horrible," the boy's aunt, Yasmin Shahin, said.

A neighbour who had rushed to see what was going on yanked the half-dead reptile out of the boys mouth and killed it, she said.

"When he pulled it out, Imad started crying," she said, describing the snake's head as 'very badly chewed' when it emerged from the boys mouth.

They immediately checked the child for any bite marks but found none, with doctors at Rambam hospital in Haifa confirming he was unharmed.

"Doctors at the hospital told us the snake was really poisonous but that we were very lucky because they release less venom in the winter," she said.

But Dr Boaz Shacham, an expert on amphibians and reptiles, told AFP that from looking at images of the smashed-up serpent online, it appeared to be a coin-marked snake (hemorrhois nummifer), a non-venomous species which resembles a viper.

Such snakes grow up to 1.3 metres in length, he said suggesting it was a 'very young' specimen.

"It probably didn't bite the child because of the cold," said Shacham who is the head of the herpetology collection at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"They are not really active in winter."

Trial of Mumbai terror attack adjourned in Pak till February 4

A Pakistani anti-terror court conducting the trial of seven suspects linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks on Saturday adjourned proceedings till February 4 after defence lawyers raised legal questions about a judicial panel set to visit India to quiz key officials.

Khwaja Haris, the counsel for Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the commander of the banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, submitted an application that raised certain legal questions about the judicial commission which is expected to visit Mumbai next month.

The application questioned the notification issued by the Pakistan government regarding the constitution of the commission and also whether the panel would meet the requirements of Pakistani laws, sources said.

The defence lawyers also challenged the inclusion of a court official in the commission, the sources said.

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Anti-terrorism court judge Shahid Rafique had recently included a court official in the commission following a request from the prosecution that an official was required to carry the records of the trial in Pakistan to India.

There were no other proceedings during today's hearing and the judge subsequently adjourned the case till next Saturday.

Khwaja Haris, a former Advocate General of Punjab province, replaced his father Khwaja Sultan Ahmed as Lakhvi's lawyer on Saturday.

Ahmed died last week following an ailment. The court directed Haris to submit his passport and other documents so that he could join the judicial commission on its upcoming visit to India.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently announced that the commission will travel to India during February 3-6.

It could not immediately be ascertained whether the application filed by Haris would affect the dates for the commission's visit.

The Pakistani commission will interview the Indian police officer who led the probe into the 2008 Mumbai incident, the magistrate who recorded the confession of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving attacker, and two doctors who conducted the autopsies of nine terrorists killed during the attacks.

The seven Pakistani suspects have been charged with planning, financing and coordinating the attacks that killed 166 people.

Their trial has been stalled for over a year due to various technical reasons, including the admissibility in Pakistani courts of evidence provided by India.

Airline Spanair collapses, passengers stranded

Passengers were stranded at Spanish airports on Saturday after airline Spanair abruptly went bust, cancelling all its flights at short notice.

"Faced with the lack of financial visibility for the coming months, the company has decided to cease its operations as a measure of caution and safety," Spanair said in a statement.

Its last scheduled flight landed last night, leaving rivals such as Iberia, Vueling and Easyjet to share out the passengers left stranded.

Spanish media said at least 22,000 passengers were affected over the weekend but Spanair spokespeople were not immediately available to confirm this to AFP.

A queue of 200 surprised passengers formed at Spanair counters at Barcelona airport last evening shortly after the anouncement, an AFP journalist said.

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Airports authority AENA said this morning everything was normal at Madrid's Barajas airport and Barcelona's El Prat, where special lounges had been allocated for Spanair customers.

"Passengers are turning up at these zones and the other companies are putting them on flights," an AENA spokeswoman told AFP. She said 55 Spanair flights were scrapped at Madrid and 54 at Barcelona on Saturday alone, with a handful of flights cancelled at Palma de Mallorca and Gran Canaria.

The company said in its statement on Friday: "The Spanair management regrets this and apologises to all those people who are affected by this situation."

Spanair, founded in 1986, had tried to survive by a tie-up with Qatar Airways which fell through. The Catalania regional authorities, which owns part of the company, said it was unable to increase its stake due to crisis budget cuts and EU limits.

In 2008 one of Spanair's jets crashed on take-off at Madrid airport with the deaths of 154 people.

Panetta concerned by Pakistan's treatment of doctor

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has expressed concern about Pakistan's treatment of a doctor who helped the United States find Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.

The doctor, Shikal Afridi, has been arrested and charged with treason by the Pakistani government.

In an interview with CBS's ‘60 Minutes’ program due to be aired on Sunday, Panetta acknowledged that Afridi, a Pakistani doctor in Abbottabad, the town where bin Laden was found, had in fact been working for US intelligence, collecting DNA to verify the 9/11 mastermind's presence.

US Navy SEALs killed bin Laden on May 2 in a raid on a compound in Abbottabad, north of the capital Islamabad, and later buried him at sea.

"I'm very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual ... who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation," Panetta said, according to excerpts of the interview.

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"He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan," the defense secretary said. "Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism ... and for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part."

Panetta said he still believed someone in authority in Pakistan knew where bin Laden was hiding before US forces went in to find him.

Intelligence reports found that Pakistani military helicopters had passed over the compound in Abbottabad, according to the interview.

"I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what was happening at this compound," Panetta said. "Don't forget, this compound had 18-foot walls ... It was the largest compound in the area.

"So you would have thought that somebody would have asked the question, 'What the hell's going on there?'" Panetta told CBS.

The Pentagon chief said this concern contributed to Washington's decision not to give Pakistan advance warning of the impending raid.

"It concerned us that if we in fact brought (Pakistan) into it, that - they might ... give bin Laden a heads up," he said.

Panetta acknowledged he did not have ‘hard evidence’ that Pakistan knew of the Al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts.

UK police arrest Murdoch tabloid staff, raid offices

LONDON (Reuters) - Police arrested four current and former staff of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling Sun tabloid and a policeman on Saturday in a probe into suspected payments by journalists to officers for information, police and the newspaper's publisher said.

Arab League suspends monitoring mission in Syria

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League has suspended its monitoring mission in Syria because of an escalation of violence, it said on Saturday.

Yemen says kills Islamist fighters, Islamists deny

ADEN (Reuters) - Yemeni troops killed four Islamist fighters in a southern town they seized from government control, a local official said on Saturday, but a spokesman for the Islamists denied his side had suffered any casualties.

IAEA team heads to Iran to seek nuclear answers

VIENNA (Reuters) - Senior United Nations nuclear inspectors headed to Tehran on Saturday to press Iranian officials to address suspicions that the Islamic state is seeking atomic weapons.

Myanmar shift to democracy not over, more reforms ahead - minister

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Myanmar has already done a lot to reconnect with the international community and win investment, but the return to democracy is not complete and more political and economic reforms are needed, its trade minister said on Saturday.