Swiss likely to approve prescription heroin

GENEVA -- Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.

Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering their own programs modeled on the system, which is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.

The heroin program has won wide support within Switzerland since it was begun 14 years ago to eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s.

Somali pirates hijack 1 ship, free another

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Somali pirates seized control of a chemical tanker in the Gulf of Aden on Friday and a NATO helicopter gunship, too late to prevent the hijacking, picked up three security guards who jumped into the sea.

Both France and Germany, which have ships in the area as part of an international anti-piracy coalition, sent the aircraft after receiving a distress call just after dawn, French military spokesman Cmdr. Christophe Prazuck said. But in the 15 minutes it took to get to the site, the pirates had already boarded and had taken the crew of 25 Indians and two Bangladeshis hostage.

The two British guards who leapt overboard with their Irish colleague were safe onboard a French warship, he said.

Germany and France have ships in the area as part of a NATO fleet which, along with warships from Denmark, India, Malaysia, Russia and the U.S., have started patrolling the vast maritime corridor.

They escort some merchant ships and respond to distress calls in the fight against increasingly brazen pirate attacks off Somalia's coast, a major international shipping lane through which about 20 tankers sail daily. Friday's was the 97th ship hijacking this year.

Ethiopia to withdraw from Somalia year end

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Ethiopia announced Friday that is pulling its forces from Somalia by year's end, leaving the ravaged capital vulnerable to the Islamic militants who have seized nearly all of the country.

The decision ends the unpopular two-year presence of the key U.S. ally much as it began -- with the militants in near-total control of a failed state with a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Ethiopia has sent thousands of troops here since early 2007, when it launched a U.S.-backed operation that drove the militants from Mogadishu after six months in power.

Since then, the Islamists have waged a ferocious insurgency, attacking U.N.-supported Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies nearly every day.