Today's other stories in brief
Nasa building cleared after gunshot heard
HOUSTON - Nasa evacuated a building at Johnson Space Center yesterday after a person with a gun was seen and a gunshot was reportedly fired, a Nasa spokeswoman said.
Space agency spokeswoman Brandi Dean said it was not known if anyone was hurt, but
Houston police and Nasa security personnel were on the scene. - (Reuters)
Mother sentenced over child cruelty
LONDON - A mother who forced her two-year-old son and three-year-old daughter to fight each other as she and three other women filmed them was given a suspended jail sentence yesterday.
The four women, all members of the same Plymouth family, were given one-year suspended sentences for child cruelty offences. - (Reuters)
Franco's courts to be deemed illegal
MADRID - Spain's governing Socialists are to pass a law declaring the political courts that operated under dictator Gen Francisco Franco to be illegitimate, thus opening the way for thousands of sentences to be declared null, according to Spanish politicians.
A new law will declare Franco's courts martial, public order tribunals and courts set up specifically to pursue communists and Freemasons as "contrary to the law" and "illegitimate", said the United Left leader, Gaspar Llamazares. - (Guardian service)
Azeri journalist gets 30 months
MOSCOW - An Azeri court sentenced the country's leading investigative journalist to 30 months in jail yesterday for committing "defamation of the armed forces" in an article alleging the mass killing of civilians in 1992. Einulla Fatullayev, editor of newspaper Real Azerbaijan, called the trial a "farce". - (Reuters)
Two Nato soldiers killed in blasts
KABUL - Two Nato soldiers have been killed in separate bomb blasts in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said yesterday.
In line with a new Nato policy, the statement did not say where the incidents happened because that could identify the nationalities of the victims. - (Reuters)