|
BELGRADE: A deadline loomed Friday (Saturday in Manila) for Radovan Karadzic to appeal his transfer to the UN war crimes tribunal, as more details emerged about his life on the run and his assets came under threat of confiscation. Hours before the midnight deadline for an appeal to be filed, there was still no confirmation from his lawyer Svetozar Vujacic. Vujacic, who earlier said he would lodge an appeal, refused to confirm whether he had to the Tanjug news agency, insisting that "depriving [the] public of information about it is a part of defense strategy." Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, was arrested in Belgrade, having evaded capture for more than a decade.
PHNOM PENH: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is poised to extend his 23-year grip on power Sunday in general elections unfolding with the kingdom locked in a military standoff with neighboring Thailand. Thousands of Cambodian and Thai forces have squared off for nearly two weeks around a small patch of land near the ruins of an ancient Khmer temple, sparking a nationalist fervor just as the nation geared up for the vote. Hun Sen has taken a strong line in the conflict, accusing Thailand of ignoring international law and threatening regional peace by sending troops into the disputed zone around the Preah Vihear temple.
TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Nine people including a boy of 10 were killed in fierce sectarian clashes that raged through the night in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli, a security official said. Lebanese army tanks patrolled the streets after militants from the rival Sunni Muslim and Alawite communities fought with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the latest bout of violence to rock the Mediterranean city. Among the dead were a 10-year-old boy and two women, while another 50 people were injured, the security official told Agence France-Presse.
TEHRAN: Iran is planning a mass execution of 30 people convicted of murder and drug trafficking, a press report said . "Thirty people convicted of murder, drug trafficking, illegal relationships . . . will be executed on Sunday at dawn," the Aftab newspaper quoted Tehran's prosecutor office as saying. It would the largest mass execution in the Islamic republic in recent years. Human rights groups have accused Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty but Tehran insists it is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process. Iran has so far hanged at least 126 in this year, according to an Agence France-Presse count.
GAZA CITY: Hamas-run security forces fanned out across Gaza City Saturday, clashing with rival gunmen and arresting dozens of people after a bomb blast killed five senior Palestinian militants and a girl of five. The explosion late on Friday near a beach outside Gaza City was the deadliest incident in weeks in the territory that has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement for more than a year. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known but Hamas blamed Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, accusing it of collaborating with Israel. In the hours after the attack, Hamas-run security forces arrested dozens of people in sweeps across Gaza City, mostly Fatah members, according to witnesses.
ROME: Catholic groups from Europe to the Americas called on Pope Benedict XVI on Friday to reverse the Vatican's opposition to contraception, on the 40th anniversary of a key text confirming its position. About 60 organizations signed an open letter marking four decades since Pope Paul VI's encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (On the Regulation of Birth), which confirmed the Roman Catholic Church's condemnation of artificial birth control. Dissident Catholic bodies from countries including Britain, Brazil, Canada, France and the United States said the effects of the Church's position had been "catastrophic," in the letter published Friday in the Corriere della Sera. The letter criticized a position it said "puts the lives of women in danger and exposes millions of people to the risk of contracting the AIDS virus."
LOS ANGELES: An escaped convict who had been jailed for sending huge numbers of junk e-mails has been found dead with his wife and daughter in an apparent murder-suicide, Colorado police said Friday. Edward Davidson, 35, dubbed the "Spam King" after being sentenced to 21 months in prison in May, was found dead by his car on Thursday, four days after he escaped from a minimum security prison in Florence, 50 kilometers south of Denver. The bodies of Davidson's wife and the couple's three-year-old daughter were found nearby. The couple's seven-month-old son, who was also in the car, was unharmed. According to the Denver Post, Davidson's 16-year-old daughter was wounded with a shot in the neck before managing to escape and raising the alarm.
ADDIS ABABA: An advisor to President Omar al-Beshir threatened Friday that peacekeepers could be expelled from Darfur if the Sudanese leader is indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. "We are telling the world that with the indictment of our president al-Beshir we can't be responsible for the well-being of foreign forces in Darfur," Beshir's advisor Bona Malual told reporters in Addis Ababa. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo accuses Beshir of instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and the use of rape to commit genocide. Last week, Moreno-Ocampo asked ICC judges to issue a warrant for Beshir's arrest. A decision could take several months, but if granted it would be the first issued by The Hague-based court against a sitting head of state.
SEOUL: Mudslides and flash floods caused by days of heavy rain have left seven people dead and six missing in South Korea, officials said. Four people were killed in Chunyang village in the southeastern county of Bongwha, where hundreds of others were forced to evacuate after floodwaters and mudslides hit their homes, the National Emergency Management Agency said. Two persons were killed when hillocks caved in on their house on Friday, while two drowned in a flashflood as they were climbing down a hill. Most of the missing people were also in the county, which has received more than 23 centimeters (9.2 inches) of rain since Thursday, officials said. Rising waters have also flooded rice paddy fields and left livestock dead.
COLOMBO: At least 66 Tamil Tiger rebels and eight government soldiers have died in the latest fighting in northern Sri Lanka, the island's Defense ministry said. The fighting on Friday was centered around Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya and the Weli Oya regions, the ministry said. There was no immediate comment on the claims from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The toll brings to 5,301 the number of rebels the military says it has killed since the start of the year when the government pulled out of a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire. Just 464 government soldiers have died in the same period, according to ministry figures.
ATHENS: Firefighters on the Greek island of Rhodes on Saturday pushed back a blaze that has devastated the island's pine forests for five days and forced hotel evacuations on Friday (Saturday in Manila), officials said. The fire-believed to have destroyed more than 5,000 hectares of forest and brush on verdant Rhodes, one of Greece's prime travel destinations-threatened a village Friday and led to three hotel evacuations. A force of more than 500 firefighters, 100 soldiers and 17 aircraft including four water bombers from Italy and France and a helicopter from Cyprus are deployed on the island, a fire department press officer told Agence France-Presse.
KOLKATA: Two Czech scientists arrested in India for allegedly stealing rare butterflies and insects in order to sell them on the Internet were granted bail on the weekend, an official said. Emil Kucera, 52, and Petr Svacha, 51, were arrested last month at a hotel in Darjeeling in northeastern India. Officials said they were caught with more than 50 species of butterflies and rare insects captured in a national park. Kucera and Svacha were granted bail by a Darjeeling court Friday, said assistant divisional forest officer Utpal Nag. An earlier bail application had been denied.
BEIJING: Families whose children were left disabled in China's devastating earthquake will be allowed to have another baby, the government of the province worst hit by the disaster said. A new regulation adopted by the Sichuan government, posted on its website, also confirmed earlier reports that parents who had lost their children in the May 12 disaster could have another baby. The regulation stipulates that a family whose child was disabled during the 8.0-magnitude quake, and who could no longer perform normal work, was allowed to apply to have another baby.
AUCKLAND: China must deal with security threats in the run-up to the Olympics but avoid using them as "a cover" to muzzle political dissent, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned. Rice's comments in New Zealand highlighted the diplomatic tightrope the Bush administration is walking over the Olympics by insisting the Games are not a political venue but stepping up public criticism of Beijing's rights record. Rice, who is due to lead the US delegation to the Games' August 24 closing ceremony in Beijing, said China "should showcase not just the Olympics but an attitude of openness and tolerance."
-- AFP
|
