TBILISI — Four people were killed and seven wounded in Zugdidi, western Georgia, on Sunday when an unidentified man opened sub-machine gun fire at a funeral procession. It was the burial of Gocha Esebua, the 29-years-old head of a terrorist group that took hostage U.N. officers in February 1998. According to information of the Zugdidi police, the procession came under fire several hundreds of meters away from the cemetery. Esebua was killed on March 31 in a fire... (GunPolicy.org)

These are some of the weapons in the arsenal of the Tamil Tigers, the guerrilla army waging a bloody war for an independent state on the tiny island nation of Sri Lanka: surface-to-air missiles from Cambodia, assault rifles from Afghanistan, mortar shells from the former Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe, and 60 tons of explosives from Ukraine. The Tigers are considered some of the more advanced and ruthless terrorists in the world. The Tigers' suicide bombers, wearing specially... (GunPolicy.org)

NAGANO — Sometimes, Stacey Wooley says, a biathlete just needs to be with her .22. To pick it up. To put it to her cheek. To squeeze off a few dry rounds. "You are better," Wooley said, "when you are one with your rifle." But for Wooley, from Newberry, N.H., and other Olympic biathlon competitors, Japan has turned into the land of the locked-up gun. Severe restrictions on all firearms in this country mean biathletes — whose sport is a mixture of cross-country... (GunPolicy.org)

A 15-year-old schoolboy was arrested Monday for attacking a police officer with a knife while attempting to steal the officer's gun in yet another act of teenage violence, police said. At around 12:15 a.m., the boy, a third-year junior high school student, attacked Yoshinari Yasuda, 54, a police officer who was patrolling Tokyo's Koto Ward on... (GunPolicy.org)

NOZAWA ONSEN, Japan — An alternative rifle storage facility, that will be used by the athletes participating in the biathlon event at the Nagano Olympic Winter Games, opened Friday in the ski resort village of Nozawa Onsen. The facility was opened after several of the participants in the biathlon event decided to stay at hotels and inns at the hot springs resort in order avoid the commute to the Olympic Village in Nagano, located over 50 kilometers away. The... (GunPolicy.org)

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia's co-prime ministers on Monday destroyed 1,500 weapons recently confiscated from militia forces under a security-improvement plan launched last year. Second Prime Minister Hun Sen and his co-premier Ung Huot drove bulldozers over rows of old rifles and grenade launchers at a ceremony on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Hun Sen said the scheme to disarm provincial militia, launched in August, would help improve the atmosphere for a July 26... (GunPolicy.org)

MANILA — Philippine gunowners will be banned from carrying their weapons in public when campaigning for presidential elections officially begins on Sunday, a police official said on Friday. "Anyone who has a licenced firearm who would want to bring that firearm (outside his residence) has to secure an exemption from the Commission on Elections," Jaime Lasar, head of the firearms and explosives division of the Philippine National Police, told reporters on Friday. The... (GunPolicy.org)

BEIJING — China is urging its defence industry to join other ailing state sectors and promote layoffs amd mergers to cut losses within the next three years, the People's Daily said on Thursday … The arms industry, one of China's most troubled state-owned sectors, in 1997 saw six mergers of large- and medium-sized enterprises and laid off 90,000 redundant workers, finding new jobs for 74,000 of them, the newspaper said... (GunPolicy.org)

NOZAWA ONSEN, Japan — The Winter Olympics may put this hot springs and ski resort on the international sports map, but villagers here are up in arms over the idea of rifle-toting biathletes shooting up the hillsides. Japan's gun control laws — among the world's strictest — have presented officials with a host of difficulties for the biathlon, which combines rifle shooting and cross-country skiing. Mitsu Sato, head of the village's Olympic preparations, said two... (GunPolicy.org)

DAVAO CITY — The Basilan provincial police command in co-ordination with military authorities has finalized plans for the implementation of a firearms ban mandated by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from January 11 to June 10 this year. The gun ban covers the election period for the May 1998 local and national elections. Provincial police director Supt. Isah Abdullah said checkpoints will be established in entry and exit points to all centers of the province's... (GunPolicy.org)

JERUSALEM — The cabinet yesterday accepted a proposal by Communications Minister Limor Livnat to establish an interministerial team, in cooperation with the Knesset Committee on the Advancement of the Status of Women, to examine how to increase cooperation among the various organizations dealing with family violence involving weapons. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the recent spousal murders "a spreading plague; we must do everything in our power to reduce... (GunPolicy.org)

BANGKOK — An assistant to the village headman in a northern Thai town went on a shooting spree and killed four of his neighbours before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide, police said on Monday. Prathuang Ruankaew, 37, was thought to have suffered a nervous breakdown a few days before the shooting on Sunday in Baan Kwang village about 600 km (360 miles) north of Bangkok, police said. They said his parents told police that Prathuang, who was an... (GunPolicy.org)