Today's other stories in brief
US court rules against Bush on environment
WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling in favour of environmentalists and against President George Bush's stance on global warming.
The court judged yesterday that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had the power through a clean air law to restrict exhaust emissions and told the agency to re-examine the issue.
The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups frustrated with the Bush administration's lack of action. Individual states, led by California, have been imposing regulations of their own. - (Guardian service)
Yushchenko sets election date
KIEV - Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has signed a decree to dissolve parliament and set a new election to the assembly for May 27th.
The decision is one of the most dramatic steps by Mr Yushchenko, criticised by both allies and rivals for indecisiveness during two years in power.
Mr Yushchenko took office in January 2005 after winning a re-run of a rigged presidential poll in the aftermath of Orange Revolution mass protests.
- (Reuters)
OECD says West aid down 5.1%
PARIS - Aid from the West to tackle global poverty fell for the first time in a decade last year as the world's richest countries reneged on pledges to give an extra $50 billion in financial assistance by 2010, figures out today will reveal.
The annual overview of aid from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will show that despite a big increase in spending by the UK, the developed world as a whole is off track to meet promises to poor nations made at the 2005 Gleneagles summit.
Figures from the Paris- based group will reveal that aid fell by 5.1 per cent in 2006 to $103.9 billion, the first fall in real (inflation- adjusted) terms since 1997.
- (Guardian service)
Investigation into Italian euthanasia
ROME - An Italian doctor at the centre of a national debate over euthanasia says he is being investigated for "consensual murder" by a Rome judge for switching off the life support of a terminally ill patient.
Anaesthetist Mario Riccio divided Roman Catholic Italy in December when he removed the respirator of a paralysed muscular dystrophy patient who had asked to die. The patient, Piergiorgio Welby (60), had described his life as torture.
Prosecutors had asked Judge Renato La Viola to shelve the case against Dr Riccio last month, saying the doctor had acted within Welby's constitutional rights by refusing treatment. - ( Reuters)
Workers abducted in Niger Delta
PORT HARCOURT - Two Lebanese construction workers have been abducted in Bayelsa state in Nigeria's southern oil-producing Niger Delta, according to oil industry sources and local activists.
The sources said the men were working for Setraco, a Nigerian construction firm under Lebanese management. A source at Setraco confirmed the abduction and the men's nationality. - (Reuters)