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Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 22, 2001
U.S. ship bypasses Havana
HAVANA -- An American cargo ship that was to arrive in Cuba early Saturday with donated goods bypassed the island for unexplained reasons, delaying plans for the resumption of regular shipping between the United States and Cuba after 40 years.
The vessel, owned by Crowley Liner Services of Jacksonville, was to unload in Cuba between 4 and 6 a.m. Saturday. But in a recorded telephone message, Crowley spokesman Mark Miller said that "a decision was made last night to bypass Cuba and sail on to Mexico."
Crowley was the first shipping company to get a federal license to bring goods to Cuba since Congress loosened the U.S. trade embargo by authorizing the limited sale of food and agricultural products to the Communist nation.
The decision to bypass Havana "was made by a senior Crowley official on the ground in Cuba," Miller said. He said more information would be available Monday.
HANOI, Vietnam -- Vietnam's ruling Communist Party officially picked new leadership Saturday, with a moderate ethnic minority member expected to replace an aging conservative in the country's top post.
The expected choice of Nong Duc Manh, 60, as party general secretary was all but sealed last week when the party's new Central Committee voted to oust Le Kha Phieu, 69.
Party officials were voting Saturday afternoon and the new leadership was set to be announced today, a government press official said.
Economic reforms have bogged down under the direction of Phieu, who fought a bruising battle to retain his post.
Manh, an ethnic Tay who has been speaker of the National Assembly for the past nine years, would be the first minority member to head Vietnam.
KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwait's Constitutional Court on Saturday cited a technicality in rejecting a case filed by two women who challenged the election law that prevents women from voting or running for political office.
The president of the country's highest court, Judge Abdullah al-Issa, said the lawyer for the plaintiffs did not have authorization to represent them in the Constitutional Court. The case was referred by a lower court in January.
Over the past year, the Constitutional Court has thrown out several similar cases by activists demanding the right to vote and run for office, saying they were improperly filed.
Like other suffragists, the plaintiffs, Hind al-Shalfan and Louloua al-Mulla, were hoping the court would rule that Kuwait's 1962 election law, which limits the right to vote and run for office to men, contradicted the constitution, which grants equal rights to men and women.
BEIJING -- China kicked off an intensified crime crackdown Saturday by sentencing to death 14 members of a notorious gang blamed for the bloodiest crime rampage in modern Chinese history.
State television broadcast the sentencing live, and afternoon newspapers reported it was watched by large audiences around the country.
Gang leader Zhang Jun and ten accomplices, including five women, were sentenced to death by the No. 1 Intermediate Court in the western city of Chongqing. Other defendants were sentenced at a court in nearby Changde city.
Zhang's gang is blamed for the murders of 28 people during 22 robberies of banks and jewelry stores across central China that netted $670,000.
China proclaimed Zhang public enemy No. 1 and mounted a nationwide manhunt for the gang after its most notorious crime: the attempted daylight robbery of an armored car in Changde on Sept. 1 that left seven dead.
Zhang was caught three weeks later during a rendezvous with a mistress.