Today's other stories in brief
SARAJEVO - Bosnia's war crimes court issued its longest jail sentence yesterday, sending a Serb wartime military commander to prison for 26 years for the murder of 144 Muslims during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
The court convicted Marko Samardzija (70) of ordering a systematic attack on civilians in the northwestern Kljuc region on July 10th, 1992, in which at least 144 Muslim men were killed, Judge Zorica Gogala said.
The court also sentenced another Serb, Nikola Kovacevic, to 12 years in prison for war crimes against Muslims and Croats in the neighbouring Sanski Most region. - (Reuters)
BNP leader up on racist charge
LONDON - British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin told supporters Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith" that was turning the country into "a multiracial hell-hole", a court heard yesterday.
In a 2004 speech in Keighley, West Yorkshire - secretly filmed by the BBC - he urged a crowd to vote for his far-right party to help stop what he described as a campaign by Asian Muslims to take over the country. The 46-year-old BNP chairman and fellow activist Mark Collett (26) are charged with using words or behaviour intended to incite racial hatred. Both deny the charges. - (Reuters)
US building firm pulls out of Iraq
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration was accused yesterday of "cutting and running" from the Iraqi reconstruction effort after it emerged that Bechtel Corporation, one of the biggest construction firms in the world, was leaving the country after coming to the end of its last government contract.
Over three years Bechtel was paid $2.3bn (€1.8bn) for work repairing Iraqi infrastructure. Much of the work was carried out by local sub-contractors. In that time 52 workers were killed and 49 wounded.
- (Guardian service)
Six charged over Greek deaths
ATHENS - A Greek prosecutor filed involuntary manslaughter charges yesterday against six people, including a representative of the Thomas Cook travel agency, for the death of two British children holidaying on Corfu.
Autopsies showed the children probably died from carbon monoxide poisoning last week after fumes from a gas-fired boiler leaked into their hotel bungalow through a small hole in the wall. - (Reuters)
Orthodox leader to meet Pope
ATHENS - The head of Greece's Orthodox church, Archbishop Christodoulos, will meet Pope Benedict at the Vatican on December 14th in a rare meeting between leaders of the two churches, Greek church officials said yesterday.
A meeting between Archbishop Christodoulos and the late Pope John Paul II was to have taken place three years ago but was called off at the last minute. - (Reuters)
$60m overpaid to Gulf war claimants
GENEVA - The UN Gulf War reparations programme has overpaid more than $60 million to claimants for damages from Iraq's 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, programme sources said yesterday.
The UN Compensation Commission is to call on governments to return the funds now found to have been duplicate claims or other kinds of overpayment. - (Reuters)
Sharon back in intensive care
JERUSALEM - Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who suffered a stroke in January and has been in a coma since, was moved to an intensive care unit near Tel Aviv yesterday after a worsening in his condition. - (Reuters)