A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Tribunal halts deportation to Zimbabwe
LONDON - The British Government's policy on deportation to Zimbabwe was thrown into serious doubt yesterday after a failed asylum seeker won his appeal against Home Secretary Charles Clarke.
The man, who cannot be named, would be at risk of harm if he were returned to President Robert Mugabe's regime, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal said.
The Home Office confirmed it would consider the ruling carefully before deciding whether it could resume deportations to the southern African country. - (PA)
Somali pirates free UN aid ship
NAIROBI - Somali pirates freed a ship carrying United Nations food aid early yesterday, two days after seizing it in the latest hijacking off the country's dangerous coast, the world body said.
Six gunmen stormed the MV Miltzow freighter on Wednesday as its cargo of 850 tonnes of food aid was being offloaded in the port of Merka, and forced it to sail to Barawa. - (Reuters)
September the warmest ever
WASHINGTON - Worldwide, it was the warmest September on record, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday.
Averaging 1.13F above normal for the month, it was the warmest September since the beginning of reliable records in 1880, according to the US agency. The second warmest September was in 2003 with an average temperature of 1.02F above the mean. - (AP)
Artists protest over funding cuts
ROME - Oscar-winner Roberto Benigni led Italian actors, artists and directors yesterday in a protest against the government's plan to cut state funding of the arts by 35 per cent.
"To cut dreams is difficult, but they have managed to do it," Benigni, the actor and director whose poignant Holocaust film Life is Beautiful won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1998, told a crowd of Italy's most famous stage and screen artists. - (Reuters)
Singer took drug for medicinal use
LOS ANGELES - US singer Melissa Etheridge says she smoked medicinal marijuana to help with the side effects of chemotherapy during her treatment for breast cancer.
Etheridge (44), who was diagnosed over a year ago, is now cancer-free. "Instead of taking five or six of the prescriptions, I decided to go a natural route and smoke marijuana," she said in a TV interview. - (AP)
Tunisia urged to free prisoners
GENEVA - A UN human rights envoy yesterday urged Tunisia, which hosts an international conference on information and the internet next month, to allow full freedom of the press and free those jailed for their opinions.
Special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of opinion Ambeyi Ligabo said the World Summit on the Information Society could herald a "new era" for freedom of opinion. - (Reuters)
US warns Belgrade on crime suspects
BELGRADE - A senior US diplomat warned Serbia and Montenegro yesterday that the Balkan country would "suffer the consequences" for its failure to arrest Bosnian war crimes suspects Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. - (Reuters)