■ VATICAN
Officials to meet Chinese
Representatives of China's official Catholic Church are to hold three days of talks later this month at the Vatican with Holy See officials, the Vatican said on Saturday. A commission, set up by Pope Benedict XVI and led by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, will meet from today to Wednesday to discuss relations, a statement said. China severed ties with the Vatican in 1951 when the Holy See recognized Taiwan. The Vatican says it will abandon ties with Taiwan if China guarantees religious freedom and allows the pope to name Chinese bishops.
■ INDIA
Autopsy suggests foul play
Doctors who conducted a fresh autopsy on a British teenager found dead on a beach in the resort of Goa believe she was murdered, officials said. The panel of three doctors recommended that police open a murder inquiry into the death of Scarlette Keeling. A first autopsy on 15-year-old Keeling concluded she had drowned, leading to charges by her family of a cover-up. The autopsy panel did not confirm rape but said that some of the injuries indicated sexual assault, the Times of India said yesterday. Keeling's body was found on the beach with her clothes partially removed on Feb. 18, while her family was on holiday in the state of Karnataka.
■ THAILAND
PM vows not to interfere
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej yesterday vowed not to interfere in the trial of his old ally Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted prime minister who is due in court this week to face corruption charges. "People said be careful, this government should not interfere with the justice system," Samak said on his weekly television address. "This government would not dare to interfere with justice." Thaksin returned to Thailand on Feb. 28 for the first time since his ouster in a military coup in September 2006. He is due in court on Wednesday when he is expected to enter a plea on charges of using his political office to win a property deal for his wife.
■ SRI LANKA
Military clashes with Tigers
At least 56 Tamil Tiger rebels and four government troops have been killed in heavy fighting across the embattled north over the weekend, the defense ministry said yesterday. Helicopter gunships were deployed against suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam strongholds in the coastal district of Mannar on Saturday, the ministry said. There was no immediate word from the Tigers, but the pro-rebel Puthinam.com Web site said the guerrillas had resisted the military offensive, killing 22 government troopers and wounding 72.
■ AUSTRALIA
Dig finds outlaw's remains
Archaeologists said yesterday they believe the remains of iconic outlaw Ned Kelly have been found in a mass grave at the site of a former prison. Kelly was hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1880, but documents show his remains and those of 32 other executed prisoners were exhumed and reburied at Pentridge Prison in 1929. Digs at the site of the former prison have unearthed unmarked coffins containing the badly decomposed remains of the prisoners. Kelly, a bank robber who killed three policemen, evaded capture for nearly two years before his gang faced a final showdown with the law on June 28, 1880. Three of the four gang members were killed and Kelly, wearing heavy armor made out of ploughshares, was wounded and captured.
■ FRENCH GUIANA
Cargo vessel put into orbit
An unmanned Ariane rocket successfully put a cargo vessel into orbit in Europe's first mission to carry supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), space officials said. The modified Ariane-5 launcher lifted off at 1:03am from Europe's spaceport in Kourou on the northeast coast of South America carrying a 20 tonne cargo module on top. Dubbed the Jules Verne in honor of the visionary 19th century French science fiction writer, the module is the first Automatic Transfer Vehicle that Europe has committed to its participation in the ISS program. "We are embarking on a real voyage," Jean-Jacques Dourdain, director general of the European Space Agency said.
■ BELGIUM
Activist model found alive
Somali-born model and human-rights campaigner Waris Dirie, found alive after being missing for two days in Brussels, was simply lost in the city, prosecutors said on Saturday. "She said that she had roamed Brussels for those two-and-a-half days and that she stayed in hotel lobbies, not having money on her to allow her to pay for the hotel," prosecutors' spokesman Jean-Michel Meilleur said. "She said that she had not eaten during those three days," he told public broadcaster RTBF. Following questioning by police after she was found on Friday, Dirie, a UN ambassador in the campaign against female genital mutilation, said she "had not disappeared." "I never would have imagined causing all this," she said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Rally backs abuse victims
Hundreds of people joined a rally on the Channel island of Jersey on Saturday in support of alleged victims of a former children's home which is the focus of an abuse investigation. Police have dug up a child's skull and found traces of blood in a cellar of the Haut de la Garenne building where former residents say they were raped and subjected to repeated beatings. More than 100 people have come forward claiming they were abused at the home, while some 25 people including former senior staff are being investigated as suspects.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Lady explorer heads north
British explorer Hannah McKeand set out on Saturday from Canada's Ward Hunt Island in an attempt to become the first woman to reach the North Pole alone and unaided. McKeand, who in 2006 became the fastest person to ski unsupported to the South Pole, is expected to take 60 days to cover the 770km from Canada's northern coast to the pole, where temperatures can dip to minus 60OC. "She was in remarkable spirits with no hint of nerves or pressure," said McKeand's expedition manager Steve Jones. "Sang-froid of arctic proportions."
■ RUSSIA
Rescuers aid fisherman
Helicopters scrambled yesterday to pluck hundreds of fishermen from a drifting ice floe in the Sea of Okhotsk, news agencies reported. Helicopters and boats worked in relays to evacuate more than 450 people, while another 300 were helped by the emergency services to escape across a makeshift bridge, ITAR-TASS and Interfax reported. An Mi-8 helicopter from by the border guards "is now making a reconnaissance flight to confirm that there are no more people on the ice," an emergency situations ministry official for the far eastern Sakhalin region told Interfax.
■ SPAIN
General election held
People started voting in a general election yesterday, after a divisive campaign dominated by a cooling economy and concerns over immigration but jolted by a last-minute killing by Basque separatists. Public opinion polls suggest a win by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists, although by a margin that would leave them short of an absolute majority in parliament -- as is the case now. The voting was overshadowed by Friday's slaying of former a Socialist town councilor in the Basque region. The attack was blamed on the militant Basque group ETA.
■ TRINIDAD
Not guilty, then guilty
A truck driver got only 10 minutes to celebrate his not-guilty verdict. Kaleel McFarlane had already left the courthouse on Friday when a juror alerted the judge that the foreman meant to say the jury had cleared him of manslaughter, but found him guilty of reckless driving. The judge instructed police to return a puzzled McFarlane back to court, where he sentenced him to four-and-half months in prison. The decision sparked a revolt by McFarlane's relatives inside the courtroom. The reversal would have been illegal had the jury already disbanded, Trinidad senior counsel Israel Khan said on Saturday.
■ IRAQ
Mass grave discovered
A mass grave containing about 100 bodies has been discovered in a region north of Baghdad that has seen years of intense fighting between Shiites and Sunni extremist members of al-Qaeda. The grisly discovery on Saturday came as the Sunni parliament speaker called on Shiites and Kurds to work together with the minority he represents to pass an election law that would help reconcile warring sects and splinter groups. The grave, near Khalis in the Diyala Province about 80km north of Baghdad, is still being investigated, but the US military said the skeletal remains appear to have been there for a long time.
■ UNITED STATES
Four killed in heavy snow
A heavy winter storm walloped the Midwestern state of Ohio with more than 51cm of snow. Four people died after shoveling the heavy snow, authorities said. Snow plows and clean-up crews were to continue working overtime yesterday to dig out of a record-setting snow storm that buried many parts of Ohio and Indiana. Three men in the Cleveland area and one in the Columbus area died on Saturday while shoveling snow or shortly after, authorities said. High winds whipped the snow into 1m-tall drifts in some places and cut visibility to less than half a kilometer, the National Weather Service said.
■ UNITED STATES
Bush at Gridiron Club
President George W. Bush said an early farewell to political Washington, making his first appearance on the stage of the Gridiron Club of Washington journalists. Bush surprised the white-tie audience on Saturday night of more than 600, including Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members and lawmakers, by appearing as the final act of the club's annual revue. To the tune of Green Green Grass of Home, he sang about looking forward to his return to Texas. "As I step down from the plane and there to meet me is my mama and my papa, down the lane I look and here comes Barney, heart of gold and breath like honey," he sang.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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