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World in brief
Compiled from Times wires Abu Nidal buried in Iraqi capitalBEIRUT, Lebanon -- Abu Nidal, the terrorist mastermind who died in Baghdad last month under mysterious circumstances, was buried in the Iraqi capital, his organization said Tuesday. Iraqi intelligence handed over Abu Nidal's body Thursday to one of his relatives in Baghdad, the Fatah-Revolutionary Council group said. Abu Nidal, 65, was buried the same day "in the presence of a handful of his family members, and the participation of an Iraqi intelligence officer to make sure he was buried," the group said. The statement said Abu Nidal had wanted to be buried in the West Bank town of Nablus "but several Arab and Zionist intelligence agencies prevented that." On Aug. 21, the head of Iraqi intelligence Tahir Haboush told reporters that Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri al-Banna, killed himself with a gunshot to the head rather than face an Iraqi court for allegedly communicating with a foreign country. The official did not say when Abu Nidal died. Abu Nidal's group said he was assassinated by one of Iraq's intelligence agencies and asked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to order an investigation into his death. Chinese Communists block Google Web siteBEIJING -- China has blocked access to popular U.S. Internet search engine Google amid government calls to tighten media controls ahead of a major Communist Party congress. Attempts to look at the site through Chinese Internet services on Tuesday were rejected with a notice saying it couldn't be found. Users and technical consultants who monitor the Chinese Internet said the site has been blocked for several days. "We were notified by our users that access to Google in China had been blocked. We are working with Chinese authorities to resolve the issue," said Google spokeswoman Cindy McCaffrey. The government is preparing to hold a congress in November that is expected to begin shifting power to a new generation of leaders. China routinely tightens controls on news and information around politically sensitive dates, and state media quoted President Jiang Zemin as telling propaganda officials to create a "sound atmosphere" for the meeting. Google is hugely popular among China's 45-million Internet users because of its wide-ranging search capacity. Death toll in Korean typhoon put at 200GANGNEUNG, South Korea -- South Korea's government said Tuesday that nearly 200 people were killed or missing in a powerful typhoon that pounded the nation over the weekend, and the death toll was expected to rise. After battering the Korean peninsula, the storm moved north, bringing torrential rain to Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East, where it destroyed houses, washed away roads and cut power supplies for hours, authorities said Tuesday. No injuries were reported. South Korea's antidisaster center said 113 people were confirmed killed and 71 others missing after Typhoon Rusa swept through eastern and southern parts of South Korea. Up to 14 others were feared missing in floods and landslides. Letter from Capt. Cook found in picture frameLONDON -- Hidden for more than 200 years, a letter written by British explorer Capt. James Cook was found wedged in the back of a picture frame. The letter was written to the British Admiralty telling them he had returned safely from his first voyage to Australia. Bonhams Auction House said Tuesday that one of its employees found the letter in the library of Brancaster Hall, a country house on England's east coast. The note, valued at $31,200, will be auctioned in December. It details the hardships faced by the crew of Cook's ship, the Endeavour, during its three-year journey to chart the coasts of New Zealand, eastern Australia and Tahiti. Nearly a third of the Endeavour's crew was killed by malarial fever or dysentery, and in the letter Cook refers to "28 dead tickets" -- the names of dead seamen. Experts think Cook wrote the note off the coast of Kent and passed it to a fishing boat for delivery to London as he returned to England in 1771.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
