A roundup of today's other world news in brief:
Five dead in California shooting
Five people were found dead, three of them children, in what appeared to be a murder-suicide in a home across the street from the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, police said yesterday.
A 14-year-old boy called police about 11pm on Saturday to report that his father had shot him and his brother at their condominium, said Sgt Peter Rodriguez of the police department in Brea, which was investigating the shooting in neighbouring Yorba Linda. Police found the body of a woman on the doorstep. Inside, they found the bodies of a five-year-old boy and two girls, ages eight and nine.
Officers also found the body of a man with a shotgun beneath him. Police did not immediately know the motive for the shootings or the relationship of the victims.
- (Reuters)
Iran warns West
Iran warned Western countries yesterday that they would be the ones to suffer if they pass a new UN sanctions resolution on the Islamic Republic.
Iran has failed to convince world powers that its nuclear programme has only peaceful aims. Britain and France have said they hope the United Nations Security Council will vote next week on a third round of sanctions.
"Some Western powers are . . . choosing a wrong path and passing resolutions against Iran will be costly for them," Javad Vaeedi, deputy chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted by the official news agency IRNA as saying.
- (Reuters)
40 die in Sri Lanka clashes
Clashes between government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists killed at least 40 combatants across northern Sri Lanka, the military said yesterday, as air force jets bombed a rebel commanders' camp. The battles on Saturday in Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya districts left 39 insurgents and a soldier dead, a military official said. Yesterday air force jets bombed a camp occupied by rebel commanders in Mannar district, the military said in a statement.
- (Reuters)
Somali rebels kill troops
Heavily armed Somali rebels killed seven government soldiers and wounded eight others after briefly occupying a southern town yesterday in the latest show of strength by the nation's Islamists.
Since being ejected from Mogadishu at the end of 2006 after a brief, six-month rule of south Somalia, the Islamists have waged a bloody insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian military backers.
- (Reuters)
Hunger strike
Belarus's most prominent detainee, Alexander Kozulin, launched a hunger strike yesterday to secure permission to attend his wife's funeral. Kozulin challenged President Alexander Lukashenko's re-election in 2006 but was jailed after helping organise protests afterwards.
- (Reuters)