A roundup of today's other world stories in brief:
Sudan floods kill 101 people, wipe out crops
KHARTOUM- Floods across Sudan have killed 101 people, spread disease and destroyed livelihoods by wiping out agricultural crops, officials said yesterday. On Tuesday, the United Nations appealed for $20 million to provide clean water, food and shelter to more than 3 million people in what Sudanese officials have called the worst floods in living memory.
"The floods have made at least 200,000 people homeless, and destroyed more than 42,000 hectares of crops, the UN humanitarian aid agency (OCHA) said in a statement.
- (Reuters)
New president approves cabinet
ANKARA- The newly elected Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, yesterday approved a strongly reformist cabinet nominated by prime minister Tayyip Erdogan a day after Mr Gul's election. After meeting Mr Gul at the presidential palace, Mr Erdogan named Ali Babacan as Mr Gul's successor as foreign minister.
Babacan will also remain in his role as chief negotiator in the country's EU accession talks. Mr Erdogan said Kemal Unakitan will also remain in the key post of finance minister.
- (Reuters)
Officer to get Abu Ghraib reprimand
WASHINGTON- The only US army officer to face court-martial over the scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison will be reprimanded for disobeying an order not to discuss an investigation into the abuse of inmates at the jail.
Army Lieut Col Steven Jordan faced a maximum punishment of five years in prison and dismissal
from the army, but a court-martial panel of 10 officers decided on the milder penalty, the army said in a statement yesterday. The court-martial acquitted Col Jordan of being responsible for cruel treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
- (Reuters)
Dolphin,thought extinct, filmed
BEIJING- A Chinese man has videotaped a large white animal swimming in the Yangtze river, which experts say is a dolphin species unique to China and feared extinct, the official Xinhua agency reported. The last confirmed sighting of the long-beaked, nearly blind baiji was in 2004.
After an international team failed to find a single dolphin on a six-week expedition last year the species was classified as critically endangered and possibly extinct.
- (Reuters)
Death of premier under Pompidou
PARIS- Former French prime minister Pierre Messmer, a faithful Gaullist, has died at the age of 91.
"France has lost one of its greatest servants," president Nicolas Sarkozy said of Mr Messmer, who was prime minister under president Georges Pompidou from 1972 till 1974. Mr Messmer's political career was inextricably linked to former president Charles de Gaulle.
- (Reuters)
Croatian was dead in flat for 8 years
ZAGREB- A Croatian man lay dead for eight years in his flat in central Zagreb before a neighbour discovered the body, a local newspaper reported yesterday. Ivan Bosanac, born in 1918, went missing in February 1999.
His nephew reported his absence to police, who conducted a brief search of the small attic flat just off Zagreb's main square - but found nothing.
"The flat was full of garbage, literally up to the roof. The policeman had a look inside and concluded there was nobody there," the nephew, Drazen Bosanac, told the Jutarnji Listdaily.
Eight years later the next door neighbour, Sasa Mersinjak, decided to clean up the place. "I put my gloves on and, after digging through the rubble for an hour, I found the body," she said.
- (Reuters)