IN SHORT: ROME - Italian Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition suffered a new setback in local elections yesterday where it trailed in a key race, hit by corruption scandals and its unpopular backing for the Iraq war.
The blow was dealt on the most contested battlefield of the two-round election - the right-held northeastern region of Italy, where the centre-left candidate, coffee magnate Mr Riccardo Illy, was leading with 53.8 per cent of the votes against 42.3 per cent for the right's incumbent, Ms Alessandra Guerra, in partial results. - (AFP)
Winslet and Mendes marry
LONDON - Titanic star Kate Winslet and American Beauty director Sam Mendes have married in a secret ceremony in the Caribbean. Kate Winslet's daughter, Mia, and three close friends of the couple were present, according to a statement. The pair have managed to keep a low profile, making their first British public appearance last year at the West End premiere of Mendes's second film, The Road To Perdition. - (AFP)
French forces land in Liberia
MONROVIA - French special forces swooped into Monrovia by helicopter yesterday to airlift hundreds of foreigners to safety as rebels crept closer to the centre of the Liberian capital. The thunder of mortars and heavy artillery echoed across the city as French troops whisked expatriates, many of them aid workers, to a naval vessel waiting off the West African coast. - (Reuters)
Croats tried for Serbian killings
ZAGREB - The trial opened yesterday of two Croats charged with the killing of 19 Serbian civilians in 1991 at the start of the inter-ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia. Mr Nikola Ivankovic (43) and Ms Enes Viteskic (33), then serving in the Croatian armed forces, are accused of killing the Serbs in revenge for the death of one of their comrades allegedly killed by Serbs. The trial is being held at Osijek, near the town of Paulin Dvor, where the atrocity is alleged to have occurred. - (Reuters)
Lords supports lavatory sex ban
The British government was defeated in the Lords last night when peers backed a Conservative move to ban sex in public lavatories. Voting was 133 to 95 on the report stage of the Sexual Offences Bill.
The move followed a string of protests from peers on all sides of the House that the government's plans to change the law would give the green light to gay men to have sex in public toilets.
Conservatives warned that "cottaging" by gay men was an increasing problem and grossly offensive. - (PA)
Heavyweight hoisted to hospital
LILLE - A 265-kg (585-pound) French woman who had not left home in six years was hoisted by crane from her apartment and taken to hospital yesterday.
The 49-year-old woman fell ill late on Sunday but was too large to be carried down the winding stairs of her apartment building in the northern town of Bruay-sur-l'Escaut.
It took 30 firemen six hours to extract her from the second-floor flat.
"After 28 years with the fire department, it's the first time I have taken part in this kind of operation. We even had to dismantle part of the window to evacuate the patient," said a Bruay fire service official. - (Reuters)
33 monkeypox cases in US
WASHINGTON - Some 33 people in three Midwestern US states are suspected of being infected with monkeypox, a potentially fatal smallpox-like virus, US health authorities said yesterday. - (AFP)