Today's other world stories in brief
Girl's heart transplant refusal upheld
LONDON - A teenage girl has won the right to refuse a potentially life-saving heart transplant after health authorities agreed to drop legal action to force her to undergo treatment.
Terminally ill Hannah Jones (13) persuaded health officials in Herefordshire not to pursue a court order after she decided she wanted to spend her remaining time with her family rather than risk a heart transplant.
Ms Jones has spent much of the past eight years in hospital wards undergoing treatment for leukaemia and the crippling heart condition cardiomyopathy. - (Reuters)
Man accused of Rwanda genocide
AMSTERDAM - Prosecutors have demanded a life sentence for a Hutu man accused of mass murder and other crimes during Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Joseph Mpambara (40), who denies the charges, had shown "contempt for human values and shocking sadism", the prosecutors said yesterday.
He is accused by the Dutch state of murders of women and children, rape, assault and kidnapping in 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days by the Hutu-led government and ethnic militias. - (Reuters)
Police break up Harare protest
HARARE - Zimbabwean police have broken up an anti-government protest with tear-gas and batons and detained the leader of the group behind the demonstration, according to the group.
Hopes are fading in Zimbabwe that a power- sharing deal agreed in September between Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will end the ruinous political and economic crisis. - ( Reuters)
Two men jailed for child's death
LONDON - The British government has ordered a nationwide review of child protection measures after two men were convicted for the death of a toddler who died of shocking injuries despite being on a council's "at risk" register.
The 17-month-old child, known as Baby P, was used as a "punch bag" and suffered a broken back and over 40 horrific injuries. - (Reuters)
Ten arrested for train sabotage
PARIS - French anti- terrorist police have arrested 10 members of a violent anarchist movement for sabotaging power cables on high-speed train lines, the interior ministry has said.
The "anarcho-autonomous" movement had been under surveillance for several months by domestic intelligence services and anti-terrorist police. - (Reuters)
Turkish minister 'misunderstood'
ISTANBUL - Turkey's defence minister says he was misunderstood when he apparently praised the deportation of Greeks and Armenians after the fall of the Ottoman Empire as an important step in creating modern Turkey.
Vecdi Gönül's statement yesterday, during a ceremony to mark the death of the republic's revered founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, may reignite decades-old issues that have left deep scars in Turkey and in neighbouring Greece and Armenia. - (Reuters)
Woman killed by husband's coffin
BRASILIA - A woman in Brazil was killed by the coffin carrying her late husband when the hearse they travelled in was hit by another vehicle, local media reported yesterday.
Marciana Silva Barcelos (67) was on the way to a cemetery to bury her husband, Josi Silveira Coimbra (76) who died of a heart attack the night before at a dance. - (Reuters)