Other world news stories in brief
Three guilty of terrorist bomb plot
UK: A court found three British Muslim men guilty yesterday of planning to kill people as part of a terrorist plot involving home-made liquid bombs.
After a five-month trial, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were found guilty of planning to kill "persons unknown", but the jury did not find that they had planned to carry out the attacks on transatlantic airliners as the prosecution had alleged.
A total of eight men were tried as part of the airline bomb plot. The jury failed to reach a verdict on four of them and the remaining one was found not guilty on all counts. - (Reuters)
Angola ruling party takes lead
ANGOLA: Angola's ruling MPLA took an insurmountable lead in a parliamentary election and is on track to extend its 33-year rule, despite opposition protests that the poll was badly flawed.
With almost 80 per cent of the vote counted from the two-day poll, the MPLA is winning about 82 per cent of the vote versus just over 10 per cent for UNITA, the former rebel group and largest opposition party in the oil-rich nation. - (Reuters)
Former diplomat on murder charge
GREECE: Greek prosecutors have charged a former Japanese ambassador to the Vatican and his wife with the murder of their 36-year-old daughter, police said yesterday.
The 77-year-old former diplomat, Masami Tanida, and his Greek wife (65) were arrested on Saturday after police discovered the body of their daughter in the bathroom at their home on the island of Evia.
The couple deny murder and say their daughter took her own life. - (Reuters)
Indecent images in Shannon case
UK:The former partner of the mother of kidnapped schoolgirl Shannon Matthews was accused yesterday of possessing more than 100 indecent images of children.
Prosecutor David Holderness said police had found 133 indecent child pictures on a computer found at the west Yorkshire home of Craig Meehan (22) which he shared with Shannon's mother Karen.
Shannon was reported missing in February.
Her disappearance sparked a massive police hunt that ended 24 days later when the nine-year-old was discovered at a house about a mile from her home. - (Reuters)
Cholera fears after Iraq deaths
IRAQ: Local Iraqi authorities declared a state of emergency yesterday after cholera killed eight people in Babil province south of Baghdad in three days, with another 500 suspected to have contracted the disease. - (Reuters)