■ Mexico
Cancun officials nabbed
The federal Attorney General's office fired its representative in Cancun on Wednesday and took a top city police official and a number of other suspects into custody in connection with the killings of nine people, including three federal agents. The firing of Miguel Angel Hernandez came a day after soldiers surrounded the headquarters of federal investigators in this resort city and Mexico's top drug and organized crime prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, said everyone who worked there was under suspicion for protecting or working for drug smugglers.
■ Bosnia
Steel mine plan hits snag
Survivors of a concentration camp in Omarska, and relatives of the hundreds killed there, are pleading with Britain's richest resident, Lakshmi Mittal, not to convert the site back to a mine without preserving some installations in commemoration of what happened there. The mine was the site of the infamous concentration camp of Omarska, operated by the Bosnian Serbs for the internment, torture and mass murder of Muslim and Croat prisoners during the summer of 1992. Mittal, who last month became the biggest steel producer in the world, aims to restart the Omarska iron ore mine.
■ France
Juppe gets light sentence
Former French Prime Minister Alain Juppe got a new lease on his political life on Wednesday when appeals judges reduced his sentence in a party financing scandal, opening the door for his possible return to office in elections in 2007. The court sentenced Juppe to a 14-month suspended prison sentence, down from the original 18 months, and barred him from elected office for just one year, instead of the potentially career-ending 10-year ban handed down in January in his first trial. The shorter ban could allow Juppe to run for office in 2007, when presidential and legislative elections are scheduled.
■ Germany
Einstein had booze fridge
He is best known as the last century's most famous genius. But as well as coming up with his theory of relativity, German scientist Albert Einstein was also responsible, it emerged Wednesday, for a less celebrated discovery -- a fridge. Nearly 80 years after he invented it, a group of German physicists are now building Einstein's unique alcohol-powered fridge for the first time. According to historians, the fridge reveals the great scientist was not merely a romantic theoretician but also a down-to-earth practical inventor. Jurgen Renn, director of the Max-Plank-Institute in Berlin said: "He came from a merchant family, he had to worry about money, and he was supposed to take over the family business."
RSS