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Briefs

Zhao still unburied as Beijing, family quarrel

By Times wire
Published January 25, 2005

BEIJING - A week-old deadlock over how to eulogize ousted Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang - or whether to eulogize him at all - dragged on Monday with no public announcement on when his family would be allowed to bury him.

The deadlock underscored the dilemma China's leaders are in as they search for a political epitaph to give Zhao, a reformer who was tossed aside in 1989 after he sought to avert the killing of masses of prodemocracy students protesting in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Friends said Zhao's family objected over the weekend to a draft statement that Communist Party leaders hoped to issue at his funeral. The statement omitted any reappraisal of Zhao's role during the 1989 uprising and of his efforts to deepen political and economic reform before he was purged.

Zhao, 85, died Jan. 17 at a Beijing hospital. He had been under house arrest for 15 years in Beijing.

The government has set no deadline for its talks with the family.

LONDON - Reports that Prince Andrew spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for airborne transportation during the course of a year - including taking a helicopter flight to lunch - have triggered a royal flap in Britain.

Buckingham Palace defended the travel costs Monday, and the National Audit office said the expenses in 2003 and 2004 were all within the rules.

But eyebrows were raised by the expenditure of nearly $5,600 for a 50-mile helicopter flight to attend an Oxford lunch in honor of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was being escorted by the prince on his visit to Britain.

Details of the report on travel by Queen Elizabeth II's son first emerged in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. Andrew, the Duke of York, is fourth in line of succession to the throne.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Twenty-three terror suspects tried to hang or strangle themselves during a weeklong protest orchestrated in 2003 to disrupt operations and unnerve new guards at the U.S. military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. military said Monday.

Officials hadn't previously reported the incidents, which the military called "self-injurious behavior" aimed at getting attention rather than serious suicide attempts.

The coordinated attempts were among 350 "self-harm" incidents that year, including 120 "hanging gestures," at the secretive prison that opened after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Lt. Col. Leon Sumpter, a spokesman for the detention mission.

GERMANY: Two alleged al-Qaida members accused of plotting an attack in Iraq were ordered by a German federal judge Tuesday to remain in custody pending possible charges.

The men, arrested Sunday in the cities of Mainz and Bonn, were ordered held after the judge determined there was sufficient evidence to detain them, said Hartmut Schneider, a spokesman for prosecutors. The two men appeared at a closed-door session at a federal court in Karlsruhe.

The pair have been identified only as Ibrahim Mohamed K., a 29-year-old Iraqi, and Yasser Abu S., a 31-year-old Palestinian.

BRITAIN: Three terror suspects pleaded innocent on Monday in London to charges that they conspired to possess a radioactive substance and entered into funding arrangements linked to terrorism.

Roque Flaviano Fernandes, 43, Dominic Agnello Martins, 44, and Abdurahman Kanyare all denied that they conspired to possess a "radioactive mercury-based substance" for terrorist purposes between July 1 and Sept. 25, 2004.

The three men appeared at Old Bailey criminal court by video-link from Belmarsh high-security prison in the southeast of the capital.

WAXWORK VANDALISM: A law lecturer pleaded guilty in a London court Monday to vandalizing a waxwork nativity scene featuring soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria, a former Spice Girl, as the parents of Jesus.

James Anstice, 39, received a one-year suspended sentence after admitting to the attack at Madame Tussauds museum in December.

[Last modified January 25, 2005, 01:21:08]