In short

A roundup of today's other stories in brief.

A roundup of today's other stories in brief.

Pope's warning on marriage annulments

ROME -Pope Benedict XVI has warned Vatican judges to get tough on couples who ask the Catholic Church to annul their marriages.

The pope ordered the clampdown after new figures showed that the church's appeals court allowed 69 annulments in 2005 for reasons that included husbands being too attached to their mothers.

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... The court, known as the Sacra Rota, considers petitions from couples claiming their marriages were never truly valid. - (Guardian service)

Train passengers electrocuted

HYDERABAD -At least eight Shia Muslims were electrocuted and more than 30 injured in southern Pakistan yesterday after being hit by live wires while travelling on the top of a train, a railway official said.

The victims were travelling from Rawalpindi to a religious ceremony in Rohri during the Islamic month of Moharram, when the country's Shia minority mourns the death of one of their sect's heroes. - (Reuters)

Cameron to speak on role of Muslims

LONDON -David Cameron will today issue a call for an end to the oppression of Muslim women who are prevented from going out to work or attending university.

In a keynote speech on social cohesion, he will warn that difficult issues must not be avoided by hiding behind "a screen of cultural sensitivity". - (Reuters)

67-year-old 'tricked' doctors over IVF

LONDON -The oldest woman ever to give birth deceived doctors to get the fertility treatment that let her have twins at 67 last month, a newspaper said.

Carmela Bousada, who gave birth to twins Christian and Pau on December 29th, convinced a Los Angeles clinic she was 55, the cut-off age for their in-vitro fertilisation programme, the News of the World said.

"They didn't ask for my age or my passport. I may look tired now but before the births I did look slim and a lot younger," the British newspaper quoted Ms Bousada as saying. - (Reuters)

Clinton challenges Bush over Iraq

IOWA -Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Iowa yesterday that US president George Bush should find a way out of Iraq before he leaves office and called it "the height of irresponsibility" to leave the problem to the next administration.

... "The president has said this is going to be left to his successor," the New York senator said.

"I think it's the height of irresponsibility . . . we should expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office." - (Reuters)

Crackdown on Islamic party

CAIRO -The Egyptian government placed a temporary freeze on the assets of 29 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood yesterday in the latest crackdown on Egypt's largest opposition movement, judicial sources said.

The sources said the government had barred the brotherhood members - including a deputy to the group's leader Mahdi Akef - and their wives and children from making currency or property transactions pending a court hearing tomorrow. - (Reuters)