A round-up of today's other world stories in brief
French rail workers end 9-day strike
PARIS- French president Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday pledged to press ahead with his controversial economic programme after transport workers decided to end a nine-day strike that has been the toughest test yet of his presidency.
The number of trains on the national rail system and the Paris underground approached near-normal levels for the first time since the dispute started on November 13th. - (Reuters)
Court action by Litvinenko's widow
LONDON- Alexander Litvinenko's widow is seeking a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that the Russian state was complicit in poisoning the former security agent with radioactive polonium, her lawyer said yesterday.
Louise Christian said she had obtained expert evidence that it was "highly likely" the polonium had come from Russia's Avangard plant, a state facility. - (Reuters)
Neo-Nazis carve swastika on girl
BERLIN- German police yesterday said they were searching for a group of neo-Nazis who scored a swastika on to a 17-year-old girl's hip, after she tried to stop them bullying a six-year-old girl of foreign origin. When the teenager told the four men, gathered outside a supermarket in the east German town of Mittweida, to leave the crying girl alone, they held her to the ground and scored the Nazi symbol on to her skin with a scalpel, police said. - (Reuters)
Pope to release second encyclical
ROME- Pope Benedict's second encyclical will be released next Friday, the Vatican said yesterday.
The encyclical, called Spe Salvi (Latin for saved by hope), is expected to be a largely philosophical and theological work. - (Reuters)
Raid on Karadzic family homes
PALE- EU peacekeepers yesterday raided the homes of family members of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, a genocide suspect on the run from the UN war crimes court. - (Reuters)