In short

A round-up of today's world stories

Ban on Indian nuclear trade to remain

VIENNA - A 45-nation meeting on whether to lift a ban on nuclear trade with India ended inconclusively yesterday after many raised conditions for the move, leaving the future of a controversial US-Indian nuclear deal unclear. The countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) will meet again on September 4th-5th to try to resolve the matter, diplomats said. - (Reuters)

Four Britons die in SA crash

SOUTH AFRICA - Four Britons died in a minibus crash in South Africa, the Foreign Office said last night. The victims — understood to be relations of Hollywood actress Helena Bonham Carter — were on a safari holiday when the vehicle they were travelling in lost control and overturned on Wednesday. Three of the dead were named as 14-year-old Eton schoolboy Marcus Egerton-Warburton, his grandmother Brenda Bonham Carter, 74 and step-grandfather Francis Kirkwood, 75. -(PA)

Ex-minister gets death sentence

BAGHDAD - Iraq's former culture minister, believed to be in hiding since last year, has been sentenced to death by hanging for involvement in the killing of another politician's two sons, a court spokesman said yesterday. A Baghdad court found former minister Saad al-Hashemi responsible in absentia for the 2005 deaths of secular Sunni politician Mithal al-Alusi's two sons. - (Reuters)

Rebel chief is new defence minister

KATHMANDU - Nepal's Maoist prime minister Prachanda picked a coalition cabinet yesterday and named ex-guerrilla commander Ram Bahadur Thapa as defence minister in charge of the army that once battled the rebels. Thapa is seen as a hardliner among the Maoists. - (Reuters)

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times