■ Iraq
Newsman still in US custody
A Reuters cameraman remained in US military custody in Baghdad on Tuesday, two days after surviving an incident in which his soundman was shot dead, apparently by US troops. US officers said they were continuing to question Haider Kadhem, 24, about "inconsistencies" in his statements after he was taken from the car in which soundman Waleed Khaled was killed by multiple shots while on a news assignment. Iraqi police said US troops fired on the team, both Iraqis.
■ United Kingdom
Clarke in Tory-leader bid
Former UK finance minister Kenneth Clarke launched a bid for the leadership of the main opposition Conservative Party on Tuesday. Clarke, 65, announced his third attempt to lead his party in yesterday's edition of the conservative Daily Mail newspaper. "I am determined that Britain should be governed better than it has been under [Prime Minister Tony Blair's] New Labour," he told the tabloid. "I am horrified by a government run on a basis of spin. The political health of Britain has deteriorated very sharply. The Conservative Party must do something about it, and I am the man to do it."
■ Canada
Gay affair is adultery: court
A Canadian woman won a divorce on Tuesday after a Vancouver court conceded that her husband's affair with another man did in fact amount to adultery. In the first case of its kind in the country, the British Columbia Supreme Court granted a woman it named only as Ms. P. an immediate divorce from her husband of 17 years after he admitted to having an affair with a younger man. In February Justice Nicole Garson had declined to grant the divorce, arguing that the common-law definition of adultery does not include homosexual relations.
■ United States
S Korean a conspirator
A South Korean man was sentenced to nearly three years in prison on Tuesday by a Boston US District Court for his role in a scheme to buy military engines for Black Hawk helicopters and then divert them to China. Kwonhwan Park and his Malaysian company, SGS, claimed that the two engines were either for the Malaysian Army or the South Korean Army in an application to the US State Department but the shipment actually was sent to China from Malaysia.
■ United Kingdom
Death threats over bill
A man was sent a letter threatening him with hospitalization and horrors worse than the London bombings if he failed to pay his phone bill. The Royal Mail customer was warned in an unsigned letter on official notepaper that the London terrorist attacks would be nothing compared to the suffering heading his way, the Daily Mirror reported yesterday. Kevin Harding, 39, from Carlisle in northwest England, switched phone line provider to Royal Mail as it promised cheaper calls to his girlfriend in the US.
■ United Kingdom
Bomb hoaxer sentenced
A man who planted a fake bomb outside an Indian restaurant, hoping to strike fear into the immigrant community following the London bombings in July, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Tuesday. Graeme Maynard, 39, of London, assembled a fake bomb from a cooking oil container, some wires and a mobile phone after drinking eight cans of beer on July 29, prosecutors said. It was placed outside the Asia Restaurant in Rochdale, northwest England.
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