World briefs - March 9, 2004
March 09, 2004 Edition -1
Mubarak warns on US plan
Paris - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has warned against a unilateral US plan to democratise the Middle East. The French newspaper Le Figaro yesterday quoted him as saying: "Modernisation of the region can under no circumstances be imposed from the outside." The Egyptian leader said that reforms which the population rejected would only serve to support terrorism.
Jails bursting at the seams
London - Prisons in England and Wales are close to bursting point, with a record 75 007 behind bars. The total prison population - just 184 short of what the Prison Service yesterday called "usable operational capacity" - was blamed on excessive use of prison to punish non-serious offenders. Scotland last year reported "the highest annual level ever" - a total of 6 523 prisoners.
A royal beauty
Beirut - Jordan's Queen Rania during the opening session of the Arab Women's Forum in Beirut, Lebanon, yesterday. The opening of the two-day forum coincided with International Women's Day celebrations.
Call for prison after crash
Milan - Prosecutors have called for eight-year prison sentences for three aviation officials charged with manslaughter over Italy's worst airline disaster. The 2001 crash killed 118 people. The men are on trial for what prosecutors have said was a string of errors that led a Scandinavian Airlines SAS passenger jet to plough into a private Cessna plane as it was taking off in thick fog at Milan's Linate airport.
Athens faces Cyprus test
Nicosia - The new Greek government faces an early test as UN peace talks on Cyprus enter a crucial phase. Greek Cypriots expect to continue their close ties with Athens in efforts to unify their island before it enters the EU on May 1. They are even hoping that the New Democracy party, which swept into power on Sunday, will strengthen their hand in negotiations with Turkish Cypriots.
Chicken genome mapped
Washington - US scientists have mapped the genome of the chicken, the first avian genome to be sequenced. Researchers at Washington University in St Louis made their mapping of the genome of the red jungle fowl, the ancestor of domestic chickens, and said it contained 1-billion base pairs of DNA, compared to the 3-billion found in humans.
Designed to save brother
Sydney - Doctors here have made Australian history by creating a "designer baby" to treat his brother for a life-threatening genetic illness. Scientists at a Sydney clinic helped the parents conceive a brother who will be an exact tissue match for the 4-year-old, identified only as BJ. They will use stem cells from the discarded umbilical cord for a transplant to cure BJ of the rare Hyper IgM syndrome.
Couture behind bars
Nairobi - The catwalk fashions of Paris and Milan came to a women's prison in the Kenyan capital yesterday, where inmates celebrated International Women's Day by turning on the style. Prisoners dressed in traditional and contemporary outfits sashayed across a courtyard at Langata Women's Prison as rock music played in the background and fellow inmates clapped and cheered.
Cyclone kills 18 on island
Antananarivo - Eighteen people were killed when a tropical cyclone hit the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. National radio yesterday said two people were killed by a falling tree, another person was electrocuted and 10 others drowned as the cyclone swept across the island at the weekend. Tropical cyclone Gafilo approached the island on Saturday, gaining speeds of up to 200km/h.
Nude queen may go to Iraq
London - The British Museum has bought a
4 000-year-old Mesopotamian sculpture and hopes to send it on loan to a museum in Iraq - known as the Cradle of Civilisation. The museum bought the Queen of the Night - a terracotta relief of a winged naked woman standing on lions and flanked by owls - from a private collector for £1,5-million (about R18,3-million).
Aiming for a fast record
Beijing - A Chinese herbalist says he will fast for 49 days in a bid to beat the 44-day record set last year by magician David Blaine. The US magician achieved the feat suspended above London's River Thames in a glass box. Fifty-year-old Chen Jianmin, a second-generation doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, will begin the fast on March 20, consuming only water and no food.
