Today's other stories in brief
Blackwater 'evading tax', Congress told
WASHINGTON - Private security contractor Blackwater USA "engaged in significant tax evasion", a US congressman said as the company faced scrutiny over the killing of Iraqi civilians.
Henry Waxman, chairman of the US House of Representatives oversight and government reform committee, accused Blackwater of "failing to withhold and pay millions of dollars in social security, medicare, unemployment and related taxes."
Blackwater spokes- woman Anne Tyrrell said Mr Waxman argues Blackwater cannot treat its personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan as independent contractors and contends they must be treated as employees for IRS purposes. - (Reuters)
Afghan family killed in US raid
PUL-I-ALAM - Western forces have killed 11 members of an Afghan family in an air strike near Kabul, the head of a provincial council said yesterday. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan fuel resentment of foreign forces and the Western- backed government of Hamid Karzai who has beseeched US and Nato troops to do everything they can to stop the deaths of civilians. - (Reuters)
US space shuttle on 14-day mission
CAPE CANAVERAL - The US space shuttle Discovery blasted off yesterday for a rendezvous in two days with the International Space Station. Discovery's 14-day mission kicks off a two- month refurbishment of the $100 billion outpost that prepares the way for Europe's first permanent laboratory in orbit.
- (Reuters)
Prodi averts coalition collapse
ROME - Italian prime minister Romano Prodi appeared to have averted a government collapse yesterday by showing support for a minister who had threatened to quit, but the row exposed once more the fragility of his grip on power.
It was not the first time the justice minister Clemente Mastella had threatened to quit the centre-left coalition government, and strip it of a wafer-thin majority. His small Udeur party has more conservative, Catholic ideas than most of the coalition.
- (Reuters)
Hungarian PM urged to quit
BUDAPEST - Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Budapest yesterday to demand Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany quit during ceremonies to celebrate Hungary's 1956 uprising against Soviet rule.
The protests organised by the main opposition Fidesz party and by far-right groups were noisy but peaceful after clashes on Monday in which 19 people were injured as rioters hurled petrol bombs and overturned cars. Fidesz accused the Socialist government of fomenting the clashes. - (Reuters)
New French Bill passed on migrants
PARIS- The French parliament passed a Bill yesterday tightening immigration rules, including the introduction of language assessments and optional DNA tests to verify family ties. President Nicolas Sarkozy made immigration a theme of his election campaign, and the Bill, passed by both houses of parliament, builds on his previous immigration reforms. - (Reuters)
Children played with explosive
AMSTERDAM - Children played with a high-explosive second World War shell at a playground in the Dutch town Barneveld for months before authorities were warned and removed it, Dutch police have said. A unit specialising in clearing explosives detonated the shell in a safe area on Saturday. - (Reuters)