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World News Quick Take

■ Indonesia
Australian couple released
Indonesian authorities yesterday released an Australian couple detained in war-torn Aceh province after they sailed ashore there to seek shelter from a storm. Humphrey Jones, 57, and his wife Claire Susan Jones, 58, sailed out of Banda Aceh harbor on board the 31-foot "Brumby" escorted by an Indonesian navy vessel. Aceh Immigration spokesman Imron Zubandi said the couple -- detained Thursday on an island just north of Banda Aceh -- had committed no crime. "I feel very good thank you," Humphrey told reporters, adding that he and his wife planned to sail to the Maldives.

■ North Korea
Court decision protested
North Korea yesterday protested a court decision last week to convict six South Korean officials for their involvement in a secret money transfer to the communist state ahead of a historic 2000 summit. "History will prove that those people who have been unfairly punished are innocent," North Korea's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said in a statement, according to the North Korean Central Broadcasting Station. On Friday, the Seoul District Criminal Court found the six, including two key aides of former President Kim Dae-jung, guilty of involvement in the money transfer.

■ Australia
Sheep still at sea
Australia was still negotiating with several countries yesterday to resolve the plight of 50,000 sheep stranded at sea despite hopes that officials could reach a resolution by the weekend. "Negotiations are still proceeding at diplomatic and commercial levels to endeavour to find a place to unload the sheep," Agriculture Minister Warren Truss told the Australian Ten Network's Meet the Press television program. "Those negotiations are quite sensitive, quite difficult, but our priority is to try and find a place to unload them as quickly as possible because the welfare of the sheep are the priority," he said.

■ Kashmir
Soldiers steal body parts
Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been stealing body parts as trophies during clashes along their disputed border in Kashmir, a news report said yesterday. Pakistani soldiers chopped off the head of one of four Indian soldiers killed during a cross-border skirmish into Indian-controlled Kashmir last month, and carried it back with them into Pakistani territory, The Hindustan Times reported, quoting an unidentified Indian army officer. Indian forces retaliated earlier this week by crossing the Line of Control dividing the disputed Himalayan region and returning to Indian Kashmir with the heads of two Pakistani soldiers, the newspaper reported.

■ Pakistan
Suspension extended
Foreign ministers of the Commonwealth nations decided Saturday to extend Pakistan's suspension from decision-making councils of the 54-nation group. The Commonwealth said in a statement at the end of a two-day meeting that a deadlock between the government and opposition in Pakistan made it clear that more needed to be done toward restoring a democratic civilian government. The grouping of Britain and its former colonies suspended Pakistan from its decision-making councils following the military coup in 1999 led by General Pervez Musharraf, now the country's president.

■ Algeria
Troops kill cave-dwellers
Some 150 Islamic extremists have been killed over the past two weeks as Algerian troops combed an area 300km east of Algiers, press reports said Saturday. Sources close to officers involved in the operation said these "early figures" were compiled on Thursday, the El Watan and El Youm newspapers reported. The operations took place in the Babor hills near Setif. According to the reports, the dead were members of Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, including 105 whose charred bodies were found in a cave following intensive shelling from the army.

■ France
PM staunch on euthanasia
Wading into a revived national debate about euthanasia, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin insisted Saturday that France doesn't need changes to its ban on mercy killings. Much of France has been transfixed over the case of Vincent Humbert, a severely disabled man who died Friday after his mother allegedly injected him with barbiturates during a hospital visit. Humbert had repeatedly expressed a desire to die, and the case touched of a new national debate over whether France should legalize mercy killings. Raffarin, said he was "very hesitant" about whether to allow a new debate in parliament.

■ Italy
Vatican refused to oust Hitler
Before Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini formally sealed their wartime alliance, Italy's Fascist dictator privately suggested that the Vatican consider excommunicating the Nazi leader, a historian said Saturday, citing a document recently opened by the Holy See. Experts were surprised by the document, but noted that Mussolini's remark came in April 1938, the year before he and Hitler joined in a formal alliance. Professor Emma Fattorini pointed out that Hitler had invaded Austria shortly before Mussolini's reported remark. The Italian dictator was worried about his own borders, she said.

■ United States
Pot judge suspended
The State of Michigan Supreme Court has suspended a judge who was spotted smoking marijuana at a rock concert after he admitted during a misconduct investigation that he used the drug about twice a year. A woman told court officials last October that she saw District Judge Thomas Gilbert smoke a joint at a concert in Detroit, 402km from Traverse City, where Gilbert works. The woman was from Elk Rapids, a town near Traverse City that lies within Gilbert's district. Gilbert apologized in a written statement and blamed alcoholism for his drug use. He said he did not plan to resign.

■ United Nations
Taylor may face tribunal
Liberia's exiled leader Charles Taylor could one day face trial at home for war crimes, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, where Taylor now enjoys asylum, said on Saturday. Branded a "psychopath" by the top UN official in Liberia, Taylor is largely blamed for a 14-year cycle of violence in his homeland and neighboring Sierra Leone in which more than a quarter of a million people have been killed. Nigeria gave him asylum as a way of ending the carnage in Liberia but has come under growing pressure to bring Taylor to book or hand him over to the UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone.

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