Today's other stories in brief
Poles threaten to veto EU voting system
BRUSSELS - Poland has threatened to wreck this week's EU summit on a new treaty to replace Europe's failed constitution by calling for the reopening of talks on how power is wielded within the Union.
Amid the worst row in years between Poland and Germany, which is driving the new treaty and seeking to salvage as much as possible from the defunct constitution, Warsaw made it plain that it could block a deal unless its views were accommodated.
The Poles circulated a document arguing that they wanted a new system of voting in EU councils that balanced the interests of small, medium and large member states. - ( Guardian service)
Comedian Bernard Manning dies
LONDON - Comedian Bernard Manning (76), who courted controversy for decades with gags branded sexist, racist and homophobic, died yesterday, a hospital spokesman said. He had been in hospital reportedly suffering from diabetes and a kidney problem.
After years working as a singer and comic in northern England clubs, Manning found fame on ITV's The Comedians" in the 1970s with comedians such as Frank Carson and Stan Boardman. - (Reuters)
Riga becoming 'Baltic Bangkok'
RIGA - Latvia's capital risks becoming a "Baltic Bangkok" and local girls need to be steered away from one-night stands with tourists, organisers of a media campaign to stop sex tourism said yesterday.
Like other eastern European capitals, Riga has become a popular destination for groups of men on stag nights. This has led to a boom for pubs, clubs and strip bars and concern over a growing sex industry.
- (Reuters)
Lebanese troops killed in clashes
LEBANON - Three soldiers were killed in combat yesterday as Lebanese troops advanced on Islamist militants at a Palestinian refugee camp where the army made major pushes after a month of fighting.
A Lebanese security source and a Palestinian political source said the army appeared to be close to its main goal of crushing all of Fatah al-Islam's positions on the outskirts of the coastal Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon. - ( Reuters)
13 people killed in German bus crash
BERLIN - A tour bus crashed on a highway near the eastern German city of Magdeburg yesterday, killing 13 elderly passengers and injuring 31 people.
The bus was carrying a group of senior citizens to Dresden and had about 48 people, all adults, aboard. - (Reuters)
Hindus guilty of Muslim murders
SXNA PATNA, India - An Indian court convicted 14 Hindus yesterday of killing 116 Muslims during one of India's bloodiest communal riots nearly 20 years ago.
More than 1,000 people - most of them Muslims - were killed in Bhagalpur district in the eastern state of Bihar during a month of rioting in 1989. - ( Reuters)