A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Freak accident on Moscow metro line
MOSCOW - Workmen digging a hole above a Moscow metro underground train line drove a concrete pillar into the roof of a moving train, Russian officials said yesterday. No one on the train was hurt.
A fire broke out after the impact but all passengers were evacuated, said emergencies ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov.
Prosecutors said they had begun a criminal investigation into suspected violations of the building safety code. - (Reuters)
Kurd separatists jailed in Syria
DAMASCUS - A Syrian court sentenced six Kurdish separatists to jail terms yesterday, a human rights lawyer said, the latest move against a banned Kurdish party. The State Supreme Security Court sentenced the six members of the Democratic Union Party to terms of between six months and seven years on charges ranging from belonging to a banned movement to seeking secession. - (Reuters)
Germans urged to increase birth rate
BERLIN - Political leaders vowed at the weekend to push through new policies to encourage Germans to have more children after alarming new data showed the country is bottom of the world's birth rate rankings.
Figures issued on Friday estimated that between 680,000 and 690,000 children were born in Germany in 2005, among the lowest birth rates per woman in the 25-nation EU and the lowest total since the office began measuring births in 1946. - (Reuters)
10 drug runners killed in Iran
TEHRAN - Iranian police have killed 10 armed drug runners on the border with Afghanistan, a senior police officer said yesterday.
"Police officials at the border area of Chahsorkh in Tayyebat killed 10 armed bandits," Iskandar Momeni, a police commander in the northeastern city of Mashhad, said. - (Reuters)
Jenkins calls for reinvestigation
LONDON - Sion Jenkins has called for a reinvestigation of the brutal murder of his foster daughter Billie-Jo, as he criticised police and prosecutors for their "despicable" attempts to smear his character. In his first interview since walking free from court in February, the former deputy head teacher says he is seeking justice - and reveals his world "fell apart" when he found the 13-year-old bludgeoned to death. - (PA)
Tsvangirai out to pressure Mugabe
HARARE - Zimbabwe's main opposition party re-elected veteran leader Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday after he called for mass action to increase the pressure for change on president Robert Mugabe's government. Delegates of the Movement for Democratic Change from all 12 of Zimbabwe's provinces endorsed a new term for him at the end of a two-day congress. - (Reuters)
Egypt's second case of bird flu
CAIRO - Egypt reported its second human case of avian flu yesterday while Israel continued its precautionary culling of hundreds of thousands of birds. An Egyptian man, who worked on a chicken farm in the province of Qalyoubiya, was the second human infected by the virus in Egypt, the health ministry said. - (AP)