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-News from Tue 26 March to 27 March 2002
The following news clips are taken from
the BBC. Contact the BBC web site for more details on these
articles.
 Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat said he will not attend a key summit in Beirut after
Israel refused to drop its conditions for lifting a travel ban that has kept
him in the West Bank since December. Preparations for the summit have been
overshadowed by the row over Mr Arafat's attendance - and by the decision of
Egyptian and Jordanian leaders not to attend. The United States had been
putting pressure on Israel to allow Mr Arafat to attend the summit, but Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon says the Palestinian leader must first declare a
ceasefire. High on the agenda will be suggestions for Middle East peace
proposed by Saudi Arabia which could amount to a "collective peace treaty"
between Arab states and Israel, one official said.
 African leaders have agreed on an ambitious set of
yardsticks by which the continent can gauge its own performance on good
governance and economic reform. The aim is to underpin the promises which
constitute Africa's side of the deal on the proposed "Marshall Plan for Africa"
- the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).
 The chief of Andersen, who has battled to
defend his firm's role in the Enron scandal, has resigned. Joseph Berardino,
who had been with Andersen for 30 years, said he was leaving in bid to prevent
the firm's collapse. Andersen faces criminal charges over allegations of
destroying papers relating to the collapse of power giant Enron, which filed
for bankruptcy four months ago in the biggest ever US corporate failure.
 Tommy Suharto, youngest son of the former
Indonesian president, has said weapons alleged to belong to him were planted by
police. He was speaking in court on the second day of his murder trial, which
resumed on Wednesday a week after it opened. Tommy - real name Hutomo Mandala
Putra - is charged with masterminding the assassination of a judge who had
convicted him of corruption, and of illegal weapons possession. He denies any
involvement in the killing but, if convicted, faces the death
sentence.
 The Sri Lankan Government is
to hold historic face-to-face peace talks with Tamil Tiger rebels in May aimed
at ending the country's 18-year civil war. Justice Minister GL Peiris said
negotiations would open in the first week of the month, but declined to say
where they would take place. Official sources are quoted as saying Thailand is
being considered as a venue for the talks, which have been brokered by Norway.
 About 200 retired workers have
staged a protest in the Chinese capital Beijing to demand unpaid pension
benefits. The workers demonstrated outside the gates of the state-run Beijing
Automobile works on Wednesday morning, blocking traffic. Police initially
looked on - before eventually holding talks with the workers, who dispersed
peacefully.
 A man has been convicted in
the US of beating his ex-wife to death hours after they appeared on an episode
of the Jerry Springer television chat show. Ralf Panitz, a German citizen, was
found guilty of second-degree murder on Tuesday and could face life in prison
when he is sentenced in May. Panitz had appeared on the television programme,
known for the shock revelations by its guests, along with his ex-wife, Nancy
Campbell-Panitz, and his new wife, Eleanor Panitz.
 A day-long strike called to protest against the arrest
of Yasin Malik, leader of the separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF),
has shut down most of Indian-administered Kashmir. Mr Malik was detained on
Tuesday after a Kashmiri girl and her companion were detained and around
$100,000 was recovered from them. Officials say the money was being smuggled
from Nepal and was intended for Mr Malik, who denies this.
 North
Korea's parliament has opened its annual session to rubber stamp a number of
new laws. The official KCNA news agency said the parliament had passed a new
land use law which had helped turn rural areas "into a socialist land of
bliss".
 Hundreds
of rescuers are scouring the rubble of the town of Nahrin in northern
Afghanistan looking for survivors of a powerful earthquake thought to have
killed at least 2,000 people. As many as 700 volunteers dug with shovels
through mounds of mud and houses reduced to piles of debris, government
officials said.
 Aid workers estimate that
30,000 people have been left homeless by the earthquake which struck on Monday
evening. Officials from Afghanistan's interior ministry have warned that the
death toll is likely to rise as more bodies are found and heavy aftershocks
continue to rock the area.
 Senior political representatives of Angola's Unita
rebel movement have given their blessing to ceasefire talks with the
government. Negotiations headed by the group's Secretary-General, Paulo Lukamba
"Gato", began last week in the city of Luena, 700km (420 miles) east of the
capital Luanda. There had been concerns that the Unita representatives were
being held against their will by the Angolan army, but there is a growing
consensus among the group that the talks are genuine. Unita lawmakers in the
Angolan parliament voted on Tuesday to endorse the move.
 And Unita's representatives in Europe issued a statement supporting
the talks, although they urged them to be moved to a different location where
they could be monitored by independent observers. Their support has bolstered
hopes of a breakthrough in Angola's long-running civil war, which had already
been raised by the death of Unita's founding leader, Jonas Savimbi.
 Bushmen from the Kalahari
desert are taking the Botswana Government to court, in an attempt to retain
their right to stay as nomads on the land of their ancestors. The San people -
as Kalahari Bushmen are known - say their 30,000-year-old way of life is being
destroyed. Since 1985 the Botswana authorities have relocated thousands of San
people to settlements outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Officials say
the programme is for the San's own good. Water, health and education services
are provided in the 63 resettlement villages, where most of the Kalahari San
people have already been moved.
 At least five workers are reported to have died in
Dubai after a dry dock flooded with sea water. The accident, which happened at
0930 (0530 GMT), occurred when two panels of a dock gate ruptured during
maintenance work. A statement by Dubai Drydocks, one of the world's biggest
shipping repair facilities, said 31 workers were missing. "The gate collapsed
and sea water rushed in, filling the dock in few minutes, drowning many people.
It was a horrible sight," a witness told Reuters news agency. Company officials
said the casualty figures might rise as divers began rescue operations after
the incident.
 The European Union has
approved a package of tariffs intended to protect European steel producers from
an expected upsurge in imports. The package is a response to the decision by
President George W Bush's administration in the US to slap surcharges of up to
30% on most steel coming into the US. European countries fear that, with the US
market cut off, steelmakers will redirect their exports across the Atlantic -
perhaps as much as 15 million tonnes, according to the European Commission.
"Unfounded, unnecessary and unfair US action has forced us to take temporary
steps to look after EU industry and EU workers," said European Trade
Commissioner Pascal Lamy. "But we have done this without indulging in
protectionism."
 Major
disagreements have erupted among delegates at the Arab summit in Beirut,
threatening the endorsement of a Saudi Arabian peace initiative for the Middle
East. However the US has praised the Saudi peace proposals and called on other
countries to build on them. At the summit, which has been marked by the absence
of key players, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah said the Arab world would offer
Israel normal relations if Israel pulled out of all Arab land it occupied in
1967. But he added that Israel must also recognise a Palestinian state with its
capital in Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees. Although there
appeared to be general backing for the plan, disagreements erupted over
Lebanon's blocking of a speech that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was due to
deliver via a satellite link from the West Bank. The Palestinian delegation at
the summit walked out in protest, while the United Arab Emirates announced it
was reducing the level of its delegation in solidarity with the Palestinians.
The Saudis have demanded an apology from Lebanon over the incident.
 Distraught relatives of those killed in a
shooting incident near Paris have been arriving at the scene of the crime to
identify the victims. Eight people died and 19 others were injured, at least
five seriously, when 33-year-old Richard Durn opened fire on a council meeting
in the western suburb of Nanterre. Mr Durn, a green sympathiser who was known
to have psychological problems, has been arrested. Crime is the number one
issue in France's forthcoming presidential election, and the two main
candidates, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and incumbent President Jacques
Chirac, rushed to the scene.
 Three years after
Nato's bombardment of Yugoslavia, United Nations scientists say they have found
areas where the soil and the air is still contaminated by depleted uranium
(DU). The study of six sites in Serbia and Montenegro, bombed at the time of
the Kosovo conflict, found "widespread, but low-level" contamination, says a
report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). "We did not find levels of
radioactivity that could pose a direct threat to the environment or to human
health. "Nevertheless, we strongly recommend taking precautionary measures,"
said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer.
 Mothers and fathers whose children persistently
misbehave in school could be brought before the courts and ordered to attend
"parenting classes" - or face a £1,000 fine, as the government seeks to
crack down on violence in schools. Until now, parenting orders could only be
used if a child had committed a criminal offence or persistently truanted, but
the Education Secretary Estelle Morris has announced plans to extend these
orders to cover pupils whose anti-social behaviour causes disruption in school.
The "tide had to be turned" on the minority of pupils whose unruly behaviour
stopped teachers getting on with their job, Ms Morris told delegates at the
Association of Teachers and Lecturers Association's annual conference in
Cardiff.
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