Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 28, 2001
Protesters try to stop nuclear shipment
DANNENBERG, Germany -- Riot police used water cannons to break up anti-nuclear protesters Tuesday in northern Germany in one of a series of battles across the country with people trying to block a train delivering radioactive waste.
One police officer was injured when protesters threw stones, and several soaked protesters hurried to find shelter from the freezing weather after the clash at the railway depot in Dannenberg, the end of the rail portion of the voyage for the 60-ton convoy.
The delivery from France prompted Germany's biggest police operation in years, with as many as 20,000 officers.
The train was expected to arrive here late Tuesday and then complete the last leg of the 375-mile trip across Germany by road early today. Flatbed trucks will bring the six containers -- each with about 10 tons of radioactive waste sealed in 28 glass casks -- to the Gorleben waste dump.
The protesters object to what they say is highly dangerous radioactive waste being transported through Germany and hope to make the transports so costly the government will halt them.
BEIJING -- In its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China said Tuesday that she has confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman refused to elaborate or say for whom Gao Zhan allegedly spied. But he rejected Washington's requests that the Chinese-born political scientist be released.
"Evidence has shown that Gao Zhan accepted missions from overseas intelligence agencies and took funds for spying activities," spokesman Sun Yuxi said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said there was no substance to the accusations. "We still continue to urge the Chinese government to release Ms. Gao immediately so that she can be reunited with her family in the United States," Boucher said.
A research fellow at American University in Washington, Gao has written about Chinese politics and traveled twice to Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing views as a renegade province.
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Militiamen ambushed an aid convoy and attacked the compound of a French humanitarian group in Mogadishu on Tuesday, taking away nine relief workers.
Witnesses said at least eight Somalis were killed in the fighting, which grew out of a feud between a group hired to protect the Doctors Without Borders compound and a rival militia. As many as 30 people, mostly militiamen, were wounded.
A top official in the militia that assaulted the convoy said the nine relief workers were in three different places under the faction's control. None were injured, and "we'll release them soon," said Abdulkadir Mohamed Mohamud.
The nine included two Spanish members and one French member of the French aid group. The others were U.N. workers -- three Britons, an American, a Belgian and a sixth identified as French or Algerian.
8 KILLED IN TRAIN CRASH: An empty train riding on the wrong side of the tracks crashed into a crowded commuter train Tuesday in Belgium, killing eight people.