Today's other stories in brief
Vietnamese homes still under water
HANOI - The homes of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese villagers are still under water after days of some of the worst flooding in decades that killed up to 67 people.
The northern province of Thanh Hoa and its southern neighbour Nghe An were worst hit by floods and landslides after Typhoon Lekima blew in last Wednesday night.
Officials there and in Ninh Binh province measured the highest river levels since the mid-1980s. Water levels were receding yesterday, but many buildings were still mostly submerged in the provinces 150 km (93 miles) south of Hanoi. - (Reuters)
New laws against homophobia
LONDON - The British government is to make it a crime to incite hatred against gay people, justice secretary Jack Straw announced last night.
The move to outlaw inciting homophobic hatred comes after ministers moved to criminalise such activity on religious grounds earlier this year.
Yesterday's announcement could cause a row over free speech, as the Government experienced over the religious hate crime measures. - (PA)
Politkovskaya killer known, paper told
MOSCOW - The killer of dissident reporter Anna Politkovskaya is known to Russian authorities but has not yet been charged, the chief investigator on the case said in an interview published yesterday in her former newspaper.
Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's human rights record, was shot dead in October last year, sparking a storm of international condemnation and heightening concerns about freedom of speech.
Russia's prosecutor- general Yuri Chaika said in August "serious progress" had been made towards solving the case, with charges now brought against 11 people.
However, lead investigator Petros Garibyan said the man who pulled the trigger was not one of them. - (Reuters)
First Australian Afghan death
SYDNEY - Australia suffered its first combat fatality in "the war on terror" yesterday when a soldier was killed in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan, said the Australian defence department.
Another soldier was wounded when an improvised explosive device was detonated next to their vehicle in Oruzgan province, the department said in a statement.
Australia, a close US ally, was one of the first nations to commit troops in late 2001 to the US-led war to oust the Taliban and al- Qaeda militants from Afghanistan. It also has about 1,500 troops in and around Iraq. - (Reuters)
Rising caviar costs keep sales down
MOSCOW - Russians only let the price, not the threat of extinction, come between them and caviar, according to a survey by the global conservation organisation WWF.
Russians are consuming less of the prized delicacy compared with a couple years ago, but only because the price of the tiny black sturgeon roe has increased, it said.
Rising prices discouraged 68 per cent of respondents from buying caviar, the WWF survey said, while only 4 per cent cited the collapse of Caspian Sea sturgeon stocks as a factor in the decline.
"We found that our countrymen don't think of the environment when they eat caviar, but the rising prices are making people buy less and less," WWF's Moscow spokeswoman Darya Kudryavtseva said.
WWF estimates that nine-tenths of all black caviar - the most expensive kind - have been taken illegally from the waters. - (Reuters)