A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Challenge to US over Italian agent's death
ROME- Italy has raised the stakes in a dispute with the US over the killing by a US soldier of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq, saying Washington must set things right by assuming responsibility for the death.
Foreign minister Massimo D'Alema openly challenged the US at a weekend commemoration of Nicola Calipari, the agent killed on March 4th, 2005 at a US checkpoint near Baghdad airport. Calipari became a national hero for securing freedom for kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena.
He died shielding her from gunfire at the checkpoint just after her release. - (Reuters)
Eritrea denies role in kidnapping
ADDIS ABABA- Eritrea has dismissed as "baseless fabrication" accusations by an Ethiopian official that Eritrean forces kidnapped a group of tourists, including Britons and Ethiopians, in a remote part of Ethiopia.
The Britons, believed to include diplomats from the British embassy in Addis Ababa, went missing last week in the remote and inhospitable Afar area in the northeast of the country. - (Reuters)
China increases military spending
BEIJING- Concerns about China's growing military power and a spiralling global arms race intensified yesterday when Beijing announced its biggest defence budget increase for more than 10 years.
Weeks after China stunned the world by test- firing its first anti-satellite missile, the government said it would increase spending by 17.8 per cent this year.
The sharp rise - almost double the pace of economic growth - will be used to modernise the People's Liberation Army, the world's largest military force. - (Guardian service)
Release of ETA prisoner opposed
MADRID- A decision to allow a Basque separatist to serve out a prison sentence under house arrest has drained support for Spain's government, with a majority thinking the socialists caved in to Eta.
Two polls published yesterday showed that 55-58 per cent of Spaniards thought the government was blackmailed by Eta and Inaki De Juana Chaos, a convicted killer who was allowed home to the Basque country to recover from a 115-day hunger strike. - (Reuters)
Jewish gravestones desecrated
BERLIN- Vandals have knocked over about 60 gravestones at an 18th- century Jewish cemetery in Bavaria, destroying more than half of them, police in the southern German state said yesterday.
The vandals also toppled 11 memorials to Jews who fought for Germany in the first World War, police in Mittelfranken said. - ( Reuters)
35 charged over Yemeni attacks
SANAA, YEMEN -A Yemeni court yesterday charged 35 suspected members of an al-Qaeda- linked group with taking part in foiled suicide attacks on oil and gas installations last year.
Prosecutors accused the men, six of whom were charged in absentia, of "forming an armed gang aimed at carrying out sabotage attacks" and involvement in the attacks on the installations in the Marib and Hadaramout provinces. - (Reuters)
Oil workers in Algeria attacked
ALGIERS- Three Algerians and a Russian were killed in a roadside attack on a bus carrying workers for a Russian gas pipeline construction company, the Russian foreign ministry said yesterday.
The bus was travelling 130km southwest of the Algerian capital, Algiers, with 21 workers from Stroitransgas, which is building a natural gas pipeline there. - (Reuters)