• UNESCO condemns killing of Bangladeshi journalist
• RSS chief likens politicians with prostitutes
• Iran must build nuclear confidence: Rafsanjani
• 180-million-year dinosaur fossil found in China
• Pakistan proud of Jinnah's role: Aziz
• US, Israel row over China arms sales
• Man killed by war-era shell
• UN envoy meets Assad
• French reporter freed in Iraq
• 15 hurt as blast derails Moscow-bound train
• EU crisis threatens role on world stage
• Veer-Zaara win 6 IFA awards Shah Rukh best actor, Rani best actress
• US military had no plan for Iraq occupation
• Ethiopians pray for peace after deadly violence
• Anti-BB gun project deemed too dangerous
• Suspect cuts hole in drywall to escape US cell
• Naked cyclists seek to reclaim Spanish streets
• Chirac says freed Iraq hostages in good health
• Italian fertility votes to test new Pope
• 'Mississippi Burning' trial set to open
• Moscow rally in support of jailed tycoon
• US pressing Iraqi govt to be more inclusive
• US air strikes kill 40 in western Iraq
• Turkish PM asserts strong ties with US
• British govt to extend school hours
• Eight killed in pre-election bombings in Iran
• Indian PM wants to make Siachen a 'peace mountain'
• China school flood toll hits 92, may rise further
• Lebanon votes in hotly contested third round
• Pak troops seize telecom ahead of privatisation, scores detained
• Kuwait names first woman minister

June 12: Voicing grave concern over an increase in attacks on journalists in Bangladesh, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) condemned the recent assassination of Golam Mahfuz, editor of a daily newspaper in that country.

"The killing of Mr. Mahfuz is a heinous attack on democracy and rule of law," said Koïchiro Matsuura Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

"It is my sincere hope that the authorities will be able to elucidate this murder and bring its perpetrators to justice, an indispensable condition to stop attacks on freedom of expression, which is a basic human right, he added."

Mr. Mahfuz, editor of the Comilla Muktakantha, was stabbed to death on 31 May in his home east of the capital Dhaka. He is the fifth journalist killed in Bangladesh over the past year, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

A recent report by the IFJ says that 400 reporters received death threats and 320 were tortured in the country over the past 12 months.

"Reports of increasing violence and intimidation against journalists in Bangladesh are a cause of grave concern as to the profession’s ability to continue carrying out its important work adequately under such conditions," Mr. Matsuura said.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Veteran director Yash Chopra and his film about love between an Indian pilot and a Pakistani woman swept six awards Saturday, and Rani Mukherji won both best actress and best supporting actress at the International Indian Film Award ceremony.

Veer-Zaara, a story set against the backdrop of the hostility between the two South Asian neighbours, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Musical Direction. The director's son, Aditya Chopra, won the sixth award for Best Story.

The haul of awards, the equivalent of the Oscars for India's massive film industry, capped an illustrious career for Chopra, 73, who created some of India's landmark films since directing his first movie in 1959.

Veer-Zaara was the first film Chopra directed in seven years. He told the audience of 10,000 he would cherish it above other honours because "this is the last award I'm going to receive for the directing category."

The awards, created six years ago, are presented outside India each year to promote Indian films for an international audience. The Bombay-based industry, commonly called Bollywood, churns out some 800 Hindi-language movies a year - three times Hollywood's production - and more films are produced in southern India.

Shah Rukh Khan, who hosted the five-hour extravaganza in the Amsterdam ArenA indoor soccer stadium, won the Best Actor award. He also was nominated for a second film in the same category.

Rani Mukherji, who has appeared in as many as six films a year since 2000, won Best Actress for Hum Tum (Me-You), a story shot largely in Amsterdam, and Best Supporting Actress for Veer-Zaara, which draws its title from the names of its two characters. Abhishek Bachchan won Best Supporting Actor for the film Yuva.

The awards were given at a lavish evening modelled on the American Oscars, but done in typical Bollywood style. India's screen idols, accompanied by a large and colourful dance troupe, gyrated and lip-synched popular Hindi movie songs. The audience, many of them from the large Indian community that migrated from the former Dutch colony of Surinam, cheered their favourite stars whenever their faces appeared on the large overhead screens.

The fireworks-filled finale saw the legendary Amitabh Bachchan dancing with his newcomer son Abhishek and the former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai.

About 400 actors, producers and directors flew to Amsterdam to participate in the three-day festival that included a business seminar, a celebrity cricket match, a movie premier and all-night parties. A popular Amsterdam theatre screened 27 Indian films for the festival.

The elder Bachchan, once named in a British poll the most popular actor on earth, said the Indian film industry, like it's high-tech business, is at the forefront of a communications revolution. "The world is waking up to our rich talent," he said, opening the evening.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: U.S. air strikes killed an estimated 40 insurgents in western Iraq on Saturday, the military said, but in Baghdad a suicide bomber attacked the headquarters of an elite police unit, killing three.

Seven precision-guided U.S. air strikes on the outskirts of the town of Karabilah killed the insurgents who were stopping vehicles at gunpoint and threatening Iraqi civilians, said a U.S. military statement.

The military said there were no U.S. casualties when Marines engaged large groups of insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles.

The U.S. military said there were no reports of civilian casualties. It was not immediately possible to confirm the insurgent casualty figures independently.

While U.S. forces struck guerrillas in their heartland of Anbar province, a former Iraqi police commando blew himself up in a failed bid to assassinate the leader of the anti-insurgent Wolf Brigade in Baghdad, Major General Mohammed Qureishi, killing three other policemen in the attempt, the Interior Minister said. The motive was unclear but the mainly Shi'ite Muslim force has been at the centre of controversy about aggressive methods and accusations of a sectarian "dirty war" on minority Sunnis. In an Internet claim of responsibility, the Sunni insurgent group linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda said: "Our brother would not accept the humiliation of ... Sunni men and women." Body parts littered the compound near the Interior Ministry which houses the Wolf Brigade. One officer was hurt. Al Qaeda in Iraq, responsible for dozens of suicide bombings, named the attacker as Abu Mohammed al-Dulaimi, apparently a Sunni Iraqi.

Meanwhile, the bodies of 20 people, bound and shot in the head, have been found on a military firing range in the eastern suburbs of Baghdad, police said on Sunday. The identities of the victims were unclear and the bodies appeared to have been there some time, one police source said. They were found on Friday and were now in a Baghdad morgue, another police officer said.

Such finds have become a grim routine of the violence in Iraq. In the couple of months since a Shi'ite-led government was formed, more than

More recently, 17 corpses were found outside the nearby city of Al-Qaim on Thursday and Friday, with some reports suggesting they were those of Shiite soldiers kidnapped from outside their base in Rawa, also in the border area.

Washington and Baghdad maintain that many fighters are crossing the Syrian border into Iraq to take part in the insurgency, charges strenuously denied by Damascus.

Al-Anbar province extends from near the Iraqi capital to the borders with Jordan and Syria and continues to be the site of many kidnappings and executions.

Meanwhile, US Brigadier General Daniel Bolger, now in charge of the army's program to help train, equip and organize the Iraqi army, said that strong human contacts were being built between the two former foes.

Bolger could not say when the Iraqis would fully take over the task of protecting their own country, allowing US troops to return home, but stressed that progress was being made while pointing to areas where more was needed.

"There are currently 169,362 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces," his staff said in a statement following a briefing in the heavily protected Green Zone in central Baghdad.

That includes ministry of interior (police) and ministry of defense (army) forces, grouped in more than 100 operational combat battalions.

Bolger, who heads the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, spoke at length about joint patrols and operations he had witnessed, saying that losses suffered by both sides had played a major role in tearing down obstacles on both sides.

Rebels in the capital, meanwhile, carried out a spate of bomb attacks late Friday and early Saturday despite Iraqi officials proclaiming the success of an anti-insurgent sweep dubbed Operation Lightning.

In the deadliest attack Saturday, police said 11 Iraqi construction workers were killed when gunmen attacked their minibus in an area south of Baghdad dubbed the Triangle of Death for its insurgent violence.

Another 10 people died when a blast tore through Baghdad's mainly Shiite Shula district late Friday, shortly before a night-time curfew came into effect.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: At least eight people were killed and 75 others injured Sunday when a string of bomb attacks rocked Iran's restive southwestern city of Ahvaz just days before the Islamic republic's presidential election.

Four blasts targetted several public buildings in Ahvaz, an ethnic- Arab majority city close to the border with Iraq and capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.

"The victims were two employees of the budget planning organisation and six residents of the city who were outside the prefecture and housing ministry office," deputy provincial police commander General Hassan Assad Masjedi told the official news agency IRNA.

"Because of the seriousness of some of the injuries, the death toll could rise fulood.

"One of the bombs was inside a car parked outside the prefecture," Mohammad Kianoush-Rad, a former parliament deputy, told AFP by telephone from the city.

"Two others exploded in the Amaniyeh administrative district. A local housing ministry building was hit. The fourth exploded in the Padadshahr residential district," he added, saying officials had also appealed for blood donors. Quoted by the state news agency IRNA, the interior ministry's security affairs director Amir Hossein Motahar said another one of the blasts was outside the home of the director of Iranian state television operations in Ahvaz.

One bomb also exploded while police were trying to defuse it, he said.

IRNA said one of the bombs appeared to have been hidden in the toilets of one of the buildings, the inside of which was shown on television to have been almost totally gutted.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on a visit to the Siachen Glacier which has been the scene of bloody fighting with Pakistan, said on Sunday it was time to convert the world's highest battlefield into a "peace mountain".

Singh is the first prime minister to visit Siachen, between 18,000 and 22,000 feet above sea level.

There has been no fighting on Siachen since 2003, when a ceasefire came into effect

between Indian and Pakistani troops.

But thousands have died in the past two decades with more soldiers killed by sub-zero temperatures, the high altitude and accidents than enemy action.

"The time has come that we make efforts that this battlefield is converted into a peace mountain," Singh, 72, told troops stationed there.

Singh reiterated there could be no redrawing of boundaries in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, over which the South Asian rivals have fought two wars.

India refuses any change in the existing frontier, while Pakistan refuses to accept the ceasefire line-or Line of Control-as an international border.

"We are not ready to accept any changes in this country's existing borders," Singh said.

"We feel these boundaries are not just necessary for our security, but they are also related to the honour and security of our country."

A ceasefire has been in place in Siachen and along the rest of the Kashmir border since 2003 as part of a gradual but steady peace process between the nuclear powers, which have fought three wars since they were created in 1947.

The overall peace process began in earnest in early 2004. It has moved slowly, but a recent meeting in New Delhi between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Singh went off well and has fed hopes of more progress.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

JUNE 12: Rescuers have found 28 more bodies, mostly children, after a flash flood triggered by the worst rains in 200 years hit a packed Chinese school two days ago, killing at least 92 people, state media said on Sunday.

The toll could rise further as the official Xinhua news agency said 17 children were still missing after the wall of water and debris smashed into the school on Friday near Ning'an, in northeast Heilongjiang province.

Of the dead, 87 were primary school students and four were adult villagers, the official Xinhua news agency said, adding that more than two dozen people were still in hospital. One body had not yet been identified.

In its first extended report from the scene, China Central Television showed rescue workers shovelling muddy debris, and shocked parents and teachers describing the terrifying floods.

"The water kept rising, and we were shouting at the students to hold on to their desks, that they had to hold on and not let go," one teacher said from her hospital bed before breaking down in sobs.

The flooding, triggered by a storm that dumped up to 20 cm (8 inches) of rain in 40 minutes, caused damage in seven villages near Ning'an city, knocking down 55 houses and devastating large swathes of farmland, state media said.

The floodwaters had swelled to a depth of two meters (6 feet) when they swept through the school on Friday afternoon.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Voters flocked to the polls Lebanon Sunday for the third round of elections likely to be the most hotly contested so far, with the shadow of powerful neighbor Syria still looming large. The election in eastern and central regions of the country was held as a UN special envoy met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad amid US claims that Syrian intelligence agents remained in Lebanon despite its troop pullout in April. By midday, about 35 percent of the 1.2 million eligible voters had cast their ballots to choose 58 MPs in the Bekaa Valley and Mount Lebanon from a total of 262 runners, according to candidates and AFP correspondents.

Unlike the first two rounds which saw Muslims-both the anti-Syrian opposition and the pro-Syrian Shiite movements Hezbollah and Amal-easily sweep to victory, Sunday's vote witnessed a real election battle. The fiercest contest pits retired Christian general and former exile Michel Aoun and his Free Patriotic Current against opposition Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and his anti-Syrian ticket.

Christian politicians are also odds with each other after Aoun, who was kicked out of Lebanon by Syrian forces after the 1975-1990 civil war, decided to forge an unlikely alliance with pro-Damascus candidates. Jumblatt, who allied himself with wartime foes the Christian Lebanese Forces, accused Aoun of trying to divide the anti-Syrian opposition, which expects to win the majority of seats in the 128-member parliament. The four-round elections are the first free of Syria's 29-year-long military presence and follow the February killing of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri which plunged Lebanon into turmoil.

"He's an extremist and we will not let him steal our victory," Jumblatt said of Aoun.

After casting his ballot in Baabda-Aley, home to a large Christian and Druze population, Aoun urged Lebanese to "go and vote, today we are exercising democracy."

He said he had sought to revive the competitive nature of polls because "in Syria's era elections had become mere appointments and results were known in advance."

In the Bekaa, the Hezbollah-Amal coalition list is tipped to win in two districts, while Aoun's list is running against Jumblatt's coalition in the third. Hezbollah was seen ferrying busloads of supporters to voting stations. Preliminary results are expected late Sunday after polls close at 6 pm (1500 GMT) with official numbers due Monday to give a clearer picture of the future shape of parliament expected to be dominated by the anti-Syrian opposition.

Hariri's son and anointed heir Saad, who swept the elections in the Beirut round, is being tipped as a possible premier.

Lebanon's Muslim community includes Sunnis, Shiites and Druze and represents 63 percent of the population. Christians-Catholics, Maronites and Greek Orthodox-account for the remaining 37 percent. The electoral law guarantees parliamentary parity between Christians and Muslims who are elected for four years.

Aoun and one of his Christian opponents Nassib Lahoud, cousin and rival of pro-Syrian head of state Emile Lahoud, are both eyeing the presidency, should the president fall after the polls.

But Lahoud, increasingly isolated amid opposition allegations that his regime played a role in the killing of Hariri, insisted he would not go early. "I'm staying till the last moment I have in my tenure, the constitution says so. Is it wrong to be united, to have a stable Lebanon?" he said Sunday. Meanwhile, UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen held talks in Damascus with Assad amid US and Lebanese opposition allegations that Syrian intelligence agents were still in Lebanon.

Bush's warned Syria on Friday that needs to "not only remove their military, but to remove intelligence officers as well." UN Secretary General Kofi Annan ordered on Friday a UN verification mission back to Lebanon.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Pakistani security forces seized control of the national telecoms firm and netted scores of trade union leaders Sunday after they called a strike against the company's privatisation next week, officials and union leaders said.

The deployment of troops and police officers follows the government's announcement on Saturday that bids would be invited to invest in 26 percent of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd. (PTCL) on June 18. The government had earlier postponed the privatisation of the country's largest telecoms company to end a 10-day standoff with 55,000 PTCL workers. Military officials said security forces had taken control of key PTCL installations in major cities while police and paramilitary rangers were posted to check on the law and order situation.

"We have sent our experts from the Corps of Signals on the request of the PTCL authorities to take control of all important installations," said military spokesman Colonel Idrees Malik.

Witnesses said troops arriving in machine-gun fitted vehicles took control of telephone exchanges and vital installations in major cities of the populous Punjab province.

"We have asked the staff to perform their duties as usual," an army officer in the central city of Multan said.

"However we would not let them switch off or discontinue the telecom system in any case."

Union leaders have threatened to paralyse the service if the decision is not withdrawn by Wednesday.

"We'll continue our protest and go on strike on June 15 if the authorities stick to their plan," a union leader Shahid Ayub, said in Karachi. However the government has refused to back down. "The decision to privatise PTCL is irreversible and those who try to damage national assets will be dealt with severely," said Communications Minister Awais Leghari.

He unveiled an employees welfare package, ensuring job security, education of the employees' children, health coverage as well as a 30 percent wage increase.

The country's privatisation commission has already short-listed several foreign telecoms conglomerates as potential buyers. They include Singapore Telecom (SingTel), Emirates Telecommunications Corp. (Etisalat), Telekom Malaysia, MTC of Kuwait, Saudi Oger, Turkcell, China Mobile Communication Corp. and Saudi Telecommunications Co.

The unions are demanding PTCL continues to employ 4,800 workers who are paid their wages on a daily basis and that the company also provides job quotas for their children.

A PTCL employees action committee said about 150 had been detained in the police crackdown against union leaders and workers across the country. "Some 150 union leaders have been arrested from Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi and other cities," committee member, Saif-uddin Qureshi, said. Police rounded up dozens of leaders in Lahore, said union worker Ghulam Mohyuddin.

Lahore police officer Imran Ahmad confirmed the detention but did not figures.

"We will not allow any worker or office bearer to cause any damage to the sensitive installations," he told AFP.

Another officer Saghir Ahmad said police teams were conducting raids on Sunday but "most of the office bearers have gone underground."

PTCL accounts for about 15 percent of the weighted-average index of 100 shares on the Karachi Stock Exchange.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Kuwait appointed its first female cabinet member on Sunday, naming veteran women's rights activist Massouma al-Mubarak as planning minister, the state news agency KUNA said.

Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah "announced the appointment of Dr. Massouma Mubarak as planning minister and minister of state for administrative development affairs," KUNA reported.

Mubarak, a columnist and political science professor at Kuwait University, told Reuters she had been offered the post, and said she was honoured to be the first woman minister in the Gulf Arab state's history.

She replaces Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah in both posts.

The appointment makes Kuwait the third country in the conservative Gulf Arab region to have a woman cabinet minister. Sheikh Ahmad retained his post as communications minister and was also given the health ministry portfolio, official sources said.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

Jun 12: Close on the heels of the upheaval in BJP which led to the party President L K Advani's resignation and subsequent withdrawal, RSS Chief K S Sudarshan Saturday lashed out at politicians likening politics to prostitutes.

"We have kept ourselves away from politics as salvation cannot be attained through it. Politics keeps changing every minute. Like a prostitute who keeps changing her form, politics also keeps changing its appearance. There is no permanent element in politics," he told RSS workers here.

The remarks assume significance as they come close on the heels of the four days of crisis in BJP after RSS took a tough stance on Advani's statements in Pakistan, including his praise for Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, front- runner in Friday's presidential election, has said Iran must pursue confidence- building measures to reassure the West it has no military nuclear ambitions.

Tehran has suspended its uranium enrichment programme, which could produce fuel for power plants or weapons, under a November deal with France, Britain and Germany, which have offered Iran incentives to end and dismantle the project.

The European trio shares U.S. suspicions that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. They say the only way Tehran can allay these suspicions is to abandon all enrichment activities. "Right now, our policy has focused on convincing Western countries and even America that our nuclear programme is solely peaceful," Rafsanjani told reporters late on Saturday. "The most important issue is building confidence. We are determined to build confidence," he declared, without saying if he would change Iran's nuclear policy if he wins the election. Rafsanjani, widely seen in Iran as the man with the best chance of repairing ties with the United States, hinted he could gain the support of hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on state policy.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Chinese archeologists have excavated fossils of a herbivorous dinosaur which lived 180 million years ago at the slope of a 1,840-meter altitude mountain in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Started on June 2, the excavation is near Guanglong village of Chengjiang County, where a local villager found the fossil on May 14, Chen Ailin, curator of Yunan Chengjiang animal fossil museum, said that from the already- unearthed fossils, scientists concluded that the dinosaur was more than 10 meters long, and 7 to 8 tons in weight when it was alive.

The dinosaur had short forelegs and rather long hind ones, with slim neck, very small head and a 5-meter long tail, all of which show that it had lived in a swamp area rich with water grass, and transferred to mountain slope after geological vicissitudes.

Chen said that his team will complete the excavation within ten days, for part of the fossils have already rotted due to air exposure.

Within the 5,000-square-meter area the dinosaur fossil excavation place, at least three other dinosaur fossils were still underground, said Chen, stressing that his team has already accelerated their "salvage excavation" activities, for the herbivore fossils are more easy to be broken.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: As BJP sought to end its crisis over Jinnah remarks of L K Advani, Pakistan Saturday said it was proud of the "role" played by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in creating it and the world recognised him as a great leader. "I do not want to react to what Advani or the BJP has said.

All I can say is that Qaid-e-Azam is the father of the nation. His role in creating a homeland for Muslims, which is now Pakistan is a role we are proud of and we will always be proud of.

The whole world recognises that the Qaid-e-Azam was great leader who created our beloved country," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters when asked about the BJP resolution on Friday.

Responding to another question, Aziz said Pakistan was looking at the Iran-India gas pipeline along with three other options to meet its growing energy requirements. The Iranian Petroleum Minister was shortly due here to discuss the project.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: A dispute between Israel and Washington over Israeli arms sales to China is deepening after months of US sanctions on joint military projects, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Sunday.

Washington has demanded that its close ally Israel provide details of more than 60 recent security deals with China and its arms export trade in general, the newspaper reported on its front page. In the interim, the United States has suspended cooperation with the Israeli air force on developing a new jet in the Joint Strike Fighter project and other high-tech military equipment used by ground troops. Contact has also been "disrupted" at the top echelon between the Israeli defence ministry and the Pentagon, with Israeli phone calls not answered, the newspaper added.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: A man was killed and another seriously injured when a Vietnam War-era shell exploded in the central province of Phu Yen, state press reported Sunday.

The accident occurred when two scrap metal traders were attempting to break open the American-made 105-millimetre (4.2-inch) shell on Wednesday in order to extract explosives, said the youth daily Thanh Nien. Police found 11 other unexploded shells of the same type at the victim's house, it said. Since the war ended in 1975, more than 38,000 people have been killed and over 100,000 injured as a result of unexploded ordnance, according to Ministry of Public Security figures published by state media. According to the United States military, more than 15 million tonnes of bombs, mines, artillery shells and other munitions were used during the Vietnam War.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday amid US allegations that Syria still has intelligence agents in Lebanon despite withdrawing its troops in April. "They discussed all relevant issues and they will continue their dialogue," a UN statement said, without disclosing the content of their talks. A UN spokesman said Roed-Larsen would be briefing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who on Friday ordered a UN verification mission back to Lebanon over the US claims. US President George W. Bush said on Friday he was disturbed by fresh reports that there were still Syrian agents in Lebanon, which is currently holding elections without the presence of Syrian troops for the first time in 29 years. "Our message to Syria-and it's not just the message of the United States, the United Nations has said the same thing-is that in order for Lebanon to be free," Syria needs to "not only remove their military, but to remove intelligence officers as well," Bush said.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi interpreter Hussein Hanun have been freed following five months held hostage in Iraq, French officials said Sunday.

"She was thinner but surprisingly vivacious and smiling," French ambassador Bernard Bajolet said after a small jet carrying Aubenas took off from Baghdad airport around noon (0800 GMT). "She got through this ordeal with exceptional courage." The pair were abducted by an unknown group after leaving her hotel in Baghdad on January 5, triggering a massive public campaign in France and elsewhere in Europe for their release. In Paris, a spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said he would fly to Cyprus to greet Aubenas, a writer for the center-left daily Liberation. "On behalf of everyone, I want to express to Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanun our happiness of the entire nation to know that they are free and will soon be returning to us," French President Jacques Chirac said.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

AP, MOSCOW

June 12: A suspected terrorist bomb blast derailed a train travelling from Chechnya to Moscow on Sunday morning, injuring at least 15 people, officials said. It was a national holiday, the Day of Russia, and the blast occurred hours before President Vladimir Putin held a reception and awards ceremony in the Kremlin. Many Chechen rebel attacks have been timed for significant Russian holidays.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said the train's driver reported that an explosion occurred on the tracks in front of the train, and that a crater and wires were found at the site about 90 miles south of Moscow.

Deputy prosecutor general Nikolai Savchenko said a criminal case was opened on suspicion of terrorism and attempted murder, the Interfax news agency reported. He said investigators found signs of an explosion at the site, and Interfax quoted a deputy Moscow region governor as saying the blast was caused by a bomb containing the equivalent of 11 pounds of TNT.

Federal Security Service spokeswoman Diana Shemyakina said four cars of the train went off the tracks. Savchenko said 15 people were injured, Interfax reported. He said a conductor was hospitalized with a spinal injury that was not life-threatening.

Interfax later quoted a Russian Railways company spokesman as saying that five people were hospitalized, including a boy with a broken ankle, and that a total of 42 people had sought medical aid after the derailment.

Russian news agencies initially reported that the derailment, which occurred shortly after 7 a.m., was caused by an explosion, but later quoted Moscow region authorities as saying a preliminary investigation indicated a technical cause.

Then the Federal Security Service said it was an apparent explosion.

"According to the driver, there was an explosion on the track bed in front of the train," Shemyakina said.

She said there was a crater about 3 feet wide and 1 1/2 feet deep at the site, and that authorities had found wires attached to the right rail and a spot where the person who caused the blast might have been located.

State-run Channel One television showed footage of the derailed cars standing at an angle. Authorities said none of the cars overturned. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu headed to the site.

Trains started traveling between the Chechen and Russian capitals only a year ago after a five-year interruption due to the war in the rebellious province.

The city's central railroad station was destroyed early in the fighting, which began in September 1999, and nearby tracks were damaged. The train, which takes two days to make the trip, travels twice a week.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: The EU is battling to prevent its constitution crisis threatening its growing global clout, risking sapping its diplomatic energy on key fronts ranging from Iran to China and beyond, analysts say.

The crisis, set to come to a head at a summit in Brussels this week, could be a major turning point in the European Union's ambitions to boost its political role to match its role as a global economic force, they say.

The entire future direction of the half-century old European project has been called into question by the stunning French and Dutch rejections of the EU charter, designed to streamline decision-making in the expanding bloc.

"The 'no' votes are hugely damaging to the EU's aspirations to play a greater role on the world stage," said Alasdair Murray of the Centre for European Reform in London.

"More infighting over the EU institutions is the last thing Europe needs at a time when it is trying to develop stronger policies towards countries such as Iran, China and Russia," he added.

Specifically, the demise of the EU charter-a real possibility after the ballot blows from two of the EU's six founder members-would spell the end of key reforms designed to help the bloc speak with one voice.

Under the historic text, the Union would replace its unwieldy musical-chairs rotating presidencies with a full-time EU president, while creating a new job of EU foreign minister.

The EU has been looking forward to finally being able to answer Henry Kissinger's famous question about who to call to talk to Europe: Javier Solana has been widely tipped to become the first full-blown foreign minister.

Solana-who currently has the snappy title of Secretary-General of the Council of the EU, and High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy-has not publicly expressed disappointment.

Indeed, privately his staff insist that the EU's foreign policy clout will continue to grow. And they deny the bloc is going to be so busy grappling with its own future that it won't have time to act diplomatically.

"The EU is not looking inward," said one EU diplomat, citing notably continuing talks with Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear plans, as well as new projects like helping in Darfur or Indonesia.

"Anything we could do yesterday we're still able to do today. We are as effective as partners for our many third country partners now as we were before," added another official.

But she conceded: "What we're not able to do is to improve our ways of working in ways that we want to do through the constitution." The United States has also voiced concern about the turn of events in the 25-member bloc, which has notably sought to boost its political role in the reviving Middle East peace process.

"We want a Europe that is outward-looking," said US Assistant Secretary of

State for European Affairs Daniel Fried, whose country is watching closely its efforts to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions. But the political dynamics are complicated. One key foreign policy issue almost forgotten amid Europe's constitutional turmoil has been its plans to lift a 16-year-old ban on arms sales to China. In theory the EU had been planning to lift the embargo by the end of this month. But an EU official told AFP any such hope is all but dead, and appears unlikely to be ressurrected anytime soon.

Closer to home, the EU's influence also risks being weakened by its crisis:the "no" votes were fueled in part by opposition to expansion, raising questions over Balkan states' hopes of joining the rich European club. But ultimately, analysts say, it is difficult to predict what the fallout will be.

"The principal security threats to Europe emanate from the instability in neighbouring regions, such as the former Soviet Union and the Middle East," said Murray.

"But the EU will find it harder to develop effective foreign policies for these areas if its members are arguing over the shape of the Union."

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

AP, WASHINGTON

June 12: A staff paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair eight months before the invasion of Iraq concluded that US military officials were not planning adequately for a postwar occupation, The Washington Post reported.

"A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," authorities of the briefing memo wrote, according to the Post. "As already made clear, the US military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

The eight-page memo was written in advance of a July 23, 2002, meeting at Blair's Downing Street offices, the Post said in Sunday editions.

It said the memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith of the London Sunday Times and that excerpts made available to Post were confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The Post said the introduction to the memo - "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" - said US "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

The July 21 memo was produced by Blair's staff in preparation for a meeting with his national security team two days later that has become controversial since last month's disclosure of official notes summarizing the session.

According to those minutes - known as the Downing Street Memo - British officials who had just returned from Washington said the Bush administration believed war was inevitable and was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Blair denied at a news conference with President Bush last week that intelligence was manipulated to justify the war.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Ethiopians flocked to churches to pray for peace after deadly election-related clashes last week, while the opposition renewed a pledge of non-violence in a bid to halt a harsh police crackdown.

The Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) said it was firmly committed to the pledge it made on Friday, two days after at least 29 people were killed when police opened fire on crowds protesting alleged electoral fraud.

"The CUD re-affirms that it will do everything in its powers to support the non-violent transition of society in Ethiopia to a society based upon respect for individual human rights and democratic values," it said in a statement. The pact was brokered by alarmed foreign donors after violence on Wednesday in which at least 29 people were killed when police opened fire on crowds during protests over alleged fraud in last month's disputed elections.

Meanwhile the faithful packed churches in even greater numbers than usual for a Sunday, with many saying they were praying for peace. Wednesday's deaths brought to 30 the number killed in such clashes since Monday, when students began to defy a government ban on demonstrations by protesting provisional results from the May 15 polls that show a ruling party victory.

But immediately after the deal was signed, a CUD official said it was "naive" and "absurd" to think the deal would be implemented given the police actions, the government's defense of its tactics and the crackdown. The government responded by accusing the CUD of violating the agreement "even before the ink has dried" and on Saturday the opposition reported that its chairman and spokesman had been placed under virtual house arrest. The CUD also claimed Saturday that more than 3,600 of its members and supporters had been rounded up by police and were being held at a military camp outside the capital, apparently prompting the new reconciliation pledge.

It disavowed any suggestion that it had placed conditions on its adherence to Friday's vow and "retract(ed) any elements of its statement that may have given this impression."

"The CUD would like to once more unequivocally and without reservations declare that it accepts all the provisions of the declaration," it said.

"It further undertakes to implement forthwith the provisions of the agreement." There was no immediate response to the statement from the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has accused the CUD of inciting illegal protests and violence.

Attempts on Sunday to reach CUD chairman Hailu Shawel were unsuccessful as callers to his cellular phone heard a recorded message saying "the incoming call of this subscriber is prohibited."

The European Union, Britain, Canada, the United States and UN chief Kofi Annan have all called for calm in the aftermath of the violence, the worst in Addis Ababa since student riots killed more than 30 people in 2001. Meanwhile, Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical worshippers packed services around Addis Ababa as residents in parts of the city settled into their normal languid Sunday routine of prayers and socializing in homes and cafes. Many in this deeply religious nation prayed for peace and an end to the clashes.

"God is merciful, he will cool down everything, that is what I prayed for," said Almaz Lemma, a woman in her early 50s as she left St. Stefenos Church in the center of Addis Ababa, where the worst clashes took place on Wednesday.

"I hope we will not have to experience bloodshed like we saw in the last days, may God give us the wisdom to say enough is enough," she told AFP. Forty-five-year-old Pasteur Daniel expressed similar sentiments as he trekked to an evangelical church in the east of the city.

"No one is in favor of violence," he said. "Violence damages the image of people and country and costs dear lives which can not replaced. Prayer could help to bring to an end to violence. God is merciful." Provisional results from the vote released by the national election board show the opposition making significant gains but give the EPRDF, which has ruled the country for 14 years, an overall majority in parliament. The CUD maintains the government stole the election through massive ballot rigging.

The election board has delayed certification of final results until July 8 due to the volume of complaints it has received.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

AP, AMHERST, MASS.

Two eighth-graders who spent months working on a science project to prove how dangerous BB guns can be were disqualified from the state middle school science fair. The reason for the dismissal: BB guns are too dangerous.

Nathan C. Woodard and Nathaniel A. Gorlin-Crenshaw spent seven months researching and testing their hypothesis that BB guns can be deadly and should not be used by children.

The students spent about $200 on ballistics gelatin, which has the same density and consistency as human flesh, to use during their tests.

Nancy G. Degon, vice president of Massachusetts State Science Fair Inc. and co-chair of the middle-school fair, said fair rules prohibit hazardous substances and devices.

"The scientific review committee does not consider science projects involving firearms to be safe for middle school students," Degon said.

The boys were invited to present their findings to some judges and receive a certificate of accomplishment, but they rejected the offer because they were not allowed to compete.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

Los Angeles police are trying to figure out how a robbery suspect managed to cut a hole in the wall of a cell and escape through a 15-by-9-inch (38-by-23-centimetre) hole in the space of an hour.

The suspect, described as a 20-year-old homeless man, 5 feet 6 inches (1.7 metres) tall and weighing 160 pounds, escaped from a holding cell at a police station early Thursday morning.

Police said he appeared to have cut or torn a hole in the cell's drywall and ripped up a metal security mesh sandwiched inside the wall before crawling out and leaving through a fire exit.

He had been searched before being put in the cell, but when police checked on him an hour later he had vanished.

"I'm reluctant to put any blame on anyone at this point," said police Lt. Carlos Islas. "Clearly there's a hole in the wall. Whether it's a construction flaw will be determined at a later date."

The department said it was inspecting cells at all 19 of the city's police stations. The man was still at large on Friday.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

Naked save for their regulation crash helmets, a group of militant cyclists held anti-car protests in several Spanish cities, calling for "more human and liveable cities," less pollution and more room for pedestrians and bicycles.

The initiative, launched by a group calling itself the Aragon cyclonudists, took place in the capital Madrid and in Zaragoza, Pamplona, Barcelona and Huesca.

Slogans included "Naked against the traffic: This city is mine."

"We propose a type of city in which residents retake possession of their own outdoor spaces, where less travel is needed and in which the emphasis is on pedestrians and less polluting forms of transport," the organizers said in a statement.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: A French reporter and her Iraqi driver released after being held hostage in Iraq for five months are in good health, President Jacques Chirac said on Sunday.

"They are in good health," Chirac said in a televised speech, adding that reporter Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi driver, Hussein Hanun al-Saadi, had been released. Aubenas was on a plane heading for France, he said.

Aubenas and her driver were taken hostage after leaving their Baghdad office.

Meanwhile, "Florence Aubenas is on her way to France," a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry told Reuters, adding the reporter would arrive at Villacoublay airport outside Paris later in the day.

Her Iraqi driver Hussein Hanun al-Saadi was also released, she said. He would stay in Iraq with his family. Aubenas, who works for French newspaper Liberation, and her driver were taken hostage after leaving their Baghdad hotel on Jan. 5.

Little had been known about their fate since then. Insurgents in Iraq released video footage of Aubenas on March 1. Looking distraught and fragile, she made an appeal for help.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

AP, ROME

June 12: Italians voted Sunday in national referendums on whether to loosen assisted fertility legislation, after weeks of intense campaigning that has pitted the Vatican against those who say the law hurts scientific research and infringes on reproductive freedom.

Turnout is crucial for supporters of the changes. Unless more than 50 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, the results don't count. The referendums would throw out several provisions of the tough law, including one which prohibits egg or sperm donation from outside the couple and another which bans scientific research using embryos.

Among the early voters was President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who, as head of state, is a widely respected figure in Italy. Fellow voters at the public school in Rome where he and his wife, Franca, came to vote cheered when they arrived.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Mississippi is hoping to bury its racist past with the trial from Monday of a former Ku Klux Klan leader accused in the shocking 1964 murder of three civil rights activists, a case familiar to many around the world thanks to the film "Mississippi Burning.

Ray Killen, 80, a former sawmill employee and Baptist minister, was charged in January with organizing the murders, after living quietly for more than 40 years a few kilometers (miles) from the scene of the crime. During "Freedom Summer," in 1964, thousands of activists from northern US states, most of them white, traveled to the segregationist south, trying to lay groundwork for change by registering blacks to vote. Among them were two Jews from New York, Michael Schwerner, 24, and Andy Goodman, 20, who met up with a black comrade, 21-year-old James Chaney, in central Mississippi. The three were returning from visiting a black church that had been burned when they were stopped, on June 21, on the false pretense that they had been speeding.

After several hours in the police station in the small town of Philadelphia, they were released in the dead of night. Following a terrifying chase, two carloads of men-Klan members and police-ambushed them, seething with hatred.

The three never re-emerged from the woods.

Their bodies, beaten and riddled with bullets, were pulled 44 days later from a dam, following an intense FBI manhunt, with a horrified nation watching.

Amid hostile silence from locals and under smothering heat, federal agents carried out a dogged investigation, evoked on screen in Alan Parker's 1988 "Mississippi Burning" starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe. Killen's trial was delayed in March after he wounded himself while chopping wood. He has pleaded innocent.

He is the first and only person ever charged with the murders that shocked America more than any other race-related event in the 1960s, a decade of powerful racial tumult and a clarion call of civil rights advances. Killen is accused of having orchestrated the murders but the men suspected of carrying them out, according to long overdue witness accounts, are no longer alive.

About 20 clan members including Killen were indicted in 1964. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury of violating the dead men's civil rights and sentenced in 1967 to prison terms of three to ten years. But Killen was acquitted. A woman on the jury said she could not bring herself to condemn a preacher.

Local authorities reopened the case in 2004 and Killen was arrested on three counts of murder in January 2005.

The trial begins Monday with jury selection in Philadelphia, today a town of 7,000. Opening arguments could come soon after. The trial, which will be broadcast on cable television in the United States, is expected to last several weeks.

Among those expected to testify are the mothers of Goodman and Chaney and Michael Schwerner's widow. Schwerner, an ardent activist, lived for six months in Mississippi before his death, battling what he said was its deeply rooted, cancerous belief in white supremacy.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Around 600 supporters of Yukos oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky rallied at the headquarters of Russia's secret police on Sunday protesting against his sentencing last month to nine years in prison, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

Protestors listened to speeches and music and waved banners reading "No to Kremlin propaganda!" "No police state!" and "I'm free and have forgotten the meaning of fear!" outside the Lubyanka building, home to the FSB federal security service and previously the Soviet-era KGB.

Police initially tried to blockade protestors from entering the square, arguing that permission had been granted for just 53 people to attend.

But the police soon bowed to the protest's organisers, who included the the Yabloko opposition party as well as Khodorkovsky's defence team. Khodorkovsky, 41, once the wealthiest person in Russia, was sentenced on March 31 to nine years in a penal colony following a trial that lasted nearly a year.

Critics said the sentence amounted to Kremlin retribution for Khodorkovsky's well-financed forays into politics. Lawyers for the jailed tycoon lodged an appeal against the ruling earlier this month.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: The United States has enlisted a broad spectrum of countries to help pressure the Iraqi government to be more inclusive, and the June 22 international conference on Iraq is part of the campaign, the New York Times said Sunday.

Over 80 countries and international organizations have been invited to the conference, which is being co-hosted by the European Union and the United States at Baghdad's request "to provide Iraq with a vehicle to engage with the international community," organizers said earlier this month.

"The ostensible reason for the conference is for the international community to recognize the legitimacy of the newly elected Iraqi government," a US official told the Times on condition of anonymity. "The other reason, less stated publicly, is to get the Iraq government to commit to steps so that it is not a narrowly based Shiite regime."

The United States has found it hard to pressure Baghdad to do more to reach out to Sunni Arabs, because the new government in Iraq is less open to US influence, and because Washington is reluctant to be seen as manipulating Iraqi politics, the Times noted.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that ties between Turkey and the United States are strong despite recent tensions and played down suggestions that the two allies remain divided over Syria.

"The multi-dimensional relations between Turkey and the United States are becoming deeper and stronger every day... Our ties are based on common political values and a stategic partnership," Erdogan said late Saturday, Anatolia news agency reported.

The prime minister was speaking shortly after he returned from Washington, where he had talks with President George W. Bush in a bid to mend fences. Erdogan dismissed suggestions that the unprecedented bilateral crisis over the invasion of Iraq and differences over US policies in the Middle East continued to haunt the two countries.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |

June 12: British teaching unions Sunday cautiously welcomed government plans to extend school opening hours for pupils aged under 14 that are aimed at allowing parents to work longer and keeping kids out of trouble. Education Secretary Ruth Kelly was Monday to set out a 680-million-pound (1.02-billion-pound, 1.21-billion-dollar) programme to transform schools into community centres.

A senior Education Department source said: "Respect is a two-way street and we know that if we want to keep kids from hanging out and causing trouble, and if we want their parents to go out to work to support the family, the days of schools opening 9am-3pm are over." Responding to the news, a spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers said: "The 680 million sounds like new money but across 23,000 schools, it will be spread very thinly."

Schools did not necessarily have the capacity or resources to meet the government's wishes, she added.

Children would be able to turn up early to school for so-called breakfast clubs and stay late playing sport or doing homework under a shake-up of the school day to be known as "Kelly hours".

Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the government's plans for opening schools from 8am to 6pm would end the culture of "latch-key kids" coming home to empty houses after school.

Schools in Britain generally begin at 9am, closing six hours later, although some have begun already to extend the learning day. A prospectus for the scheme was to be sent to schools and local councils. Writing in the document, Kelly said: "From my visits to schools, I know that the best are delivering extended services already. "They know that children will be better placed to achieve their full potential if they are in childcare that allows them to complete their homework, keep fit and healthy and have fun."

Schools would be free to choose what activities they offered.

| Top of this page | Back to Index Page |