A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Bush names date for global warming talks
WASHINGTON -President George Bush unveiled plans yesterday for global warming talks next month that will bring together the world's biggest polluters to seek agreement on reducing greenhouse gases.
Under pressure to take tougher action against climate change, Mr Bush invited the EU, the UN and 11 industrial and developing countries to the September 27th-28th meeting in Washington to work towards setting a long-term goal by 2008 to cut emissions. (Reuters)
Brown appoints Mideast envoy
LONDON -Britain appointed UN official Michael Williams as its Middle East envoy yesterday, putting an experienced hand in charge of an area that is a foreign policy priority for prime minister Gordon Brown.
Mr Williams will be responsible for Arab-Israeli issues as well as Iran and Iraq, the foreign office said. - (Reuters)
Fifty drowned as boat capsizes
FREETOWN -About 50 people were feared drowned and more than 100 were missing after their boat capsized in heavy rain at the mouth of the Great Scarcies river near Sierra Leone's northern border, police said yesterday. - (Reuters)
Maliki to visit Turkey for talks
BAGHDAD -Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki will visit neighbouring Turkey and Iran next week for talks which will focus on security, his spokesman said.
"He is going on Tuesday to Turkey for one day, and then to Iran," said spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
Security issues will be paramount, with Mr Maliki expected to discuss the presence of separatist PKK Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq with Turkish officials. - (Reuters)
Amin's son jailed for gang killing
LONDON -The son of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was one of a gang of men jailed for stabbing a teenager to death near a London underground station, a British judge revealed yesterday.
Faisal Wangita (25) was one of 13 men convicted over the killing of Mahir Osman in January 2006. Osman was stabbed more than 20 times in a feud between rival gangs. - (Reuters)
Eminent priest accused of abuse
ROME -One of Italy's best-known priests, Pietro Gelmini (82), is being investigated for sexually abusing drug-addicted young men treated at his rehabilitation centre, his spokesman, Alessandro Meluzzi, said yesterday.
Mr Meluzzi said the accusers were young men who had been kicked out of the centres and a lawyer representing Fr Gelmini said the accusations of abuse were "fruits of resentment". - (Reuters)
Poland to appeal Strasbourg ruling
WARSAW-Poland will appeal a European Court of Human Rights ruling against the government's decision to ban a gay rally in the capital in 2005, a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday.
"We want Poland to have a right to sovereign decisions in the matters of morality," the ministry's Robert Szaniawski said. - (Reuters)
Court rules against Plame
NEW YORK -The former spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of US vice president Dick Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, cannot disclose the dates she worked for the CIA because the details were never declassified, a federal judge has ruled. The decision was a victory for the CIA, which sought to block Valerie Plame Wilson from including the dates in her upcoming memoir, Fair Game. - (Reuters)