A round-up of today's other stories in brief
UK smoking Bill to exempt private clubs
LONDON - The British government will publish a Bill to ban smoking in pubs in England today, health secretary Patricia Hewitt said yesterday.
But private members' clubs will be exempted from the ban and pubs where no food is served will be able to choose whether they permit smoking or not, Ms Hewitt said. - (PA)
Policemen held for murder
BELGRADE - Serbia has arrested nine policemen for the murder of 48 Kosovo Albanians who were killed in 1999 and buried with hundreds of others in a mass grave just outside Belgrade, according to a Serbian court official.
It was the first arrest linked to the 2001 discovery of mass graves containing the remains of more than 800 victims of the 1998-99 Kosovo war. The biggest was in Batajnica, close to the capital Belgrade, in a police compound. - (Reuters)
Haider plans exit from politics
- Austrian right- wing politician Jörg Haider says he plans to withdraw from national politics and retreat to his home province after his new party failed to enter regional parliaments this month.
Mr Haider, who had split from Austria's Freedom Party earlier this year, said yesterday he would hand over leadership of his new Union for Austria's Future to vice chancellor Hubert Gorbach and help find a new front-runner for next year's national poll. - (Reuters)
Arab body resists Syria sanctions
BEIRUT - The Arab League has joined Russia in opposing a Franco-US threat to impose sanctions on Syria if it does not co-operate fully with a UN probe into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri.
In Paris, Mr Hariri's son Saad said yesterday he too did not want Syria to be punished in this way. "I'm not with sanctions against Syria," he told reporters after talks with President Jacques Chirac. - (Reuters)
Property returned to Jewish family
- Germany's highest administrative court has upheld claims to property in Berlin by heirs of a Jewish family who lost their department store fortune under the Nazis.
The ruling is a victory for the Wertheim heirs and a setback to KarstadtQuelle, which had fought the family's claim to the site of its former downtown Berlin department store near the city's redeveloped Potsdamer Platz square, worth millions of dollars. - (AP)
Russian jailed for killing air controller
- A Swiss court has jailed a Russian man for eight years yesterday for the premeditated killing of an air traffic controller he held responsible for an air crash in July 2002, in which 69 people died, including his wife and children, aged 10 and four. - (Reuters)
Biggs's bid for early release fails
- British Home Secretary Charles Clarke has rejected a plea by Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs (76) to be released from prison on compassionate grounds.
Biggs, who has recently suffered minor strokes and heart attacks and contracted MRSA, has been told his bid to leave Belmarsh on grounds of his persistent poor health had been turned down because his illness was not deemed terminal. - (PA)
MEPs ban car air conditioning gas
- Modern air-conditioning in cars is fuelled by a gas which has a global warming potential 1,500 times greater than carbon dioxide, according to Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies.
He was speaking as MEPs in Strasbourg voted to ban the gas as a menace to the environment. - (PA)