RABAT - Moroccan authorities yesterday arrested a French national suspected of involvement in the May 16th suicide bombings in Casablanca that killed 43 people, the official MAP news agency said.
Quoting sources close to the investigation, the agency said Mr Robert Richard Antoine-Pierre, who used the aliases Lhaj and Abu Abderrahmane, was arrested in the northern city of Tangiers.
Thirty-one people were killed in the attacks, along with 12 suicide bombers who almost simultaneously targeted five sites in the sprawling city. - (Reuters)
Crash jet had metal fatigue
TAOYUAN - A probe into last year's crash of a China Airlines jet, which plunged into the sea killing all 225 people aboard, found metal-fatigue cracks that penetrated the skin of the aircraft, Taiwan investigators said yesterday.
The Boeing 747-200 disintegrated in mid-flight near Taiwan's Penghu islands on May 25th last year. - (Reuters)
'HIV rapist' jailed for 10 years
HELSINKI - a Finnish man who had unprotected sex with 23 victims over seven years in the full knowledge he had HIV has been jailed for 10.5 years.
George Kwasi Okoke Mensah (50), who was known as the "HIV rapist", was found guilty of 15 aggravated attempted assaults, six rapes, the sexual abuse of a child and one aggravated assault. - (Guardian Service)
Nine dead in slum rent dispute
NAIROBI - Thugs with machetes hacked nine people to death and wounded scores yesterday when a rent dispute triggered Kenya's worst slum violence for months.
Dozens of young men hired by a landlord to evict tenants rampaged through Nairobi's Mathare North shanty town, leaving bodies strewn in mud lanes and ditches. - (Reuters)
Court adjourns stoning appeal
KATSINA - An Islamic court in northern Nigeria yesterday adjourned for the second time an appeal against the sentence to death by stoning of mother of three Amina Lawa.
The Sharia Appeal Court in Katsina put off to August 27th the appeal by the 33-year-old mother against her conviction by a lower Sharia court in March 2002 for having sex outside marriage. - (AFP)
Three jailed over prostitution ring
LONDON - Two Thai sisters and a Sri Lankan man who ran Britain's biggest-ever Thai prostitution racket were jailed yesterday by a London court for a total of more than 30 years.
Sisters Bupha Savada (45) and Monporn Hughes (40) were described in court as the "controlling minds" behind the racket which lured Thai women to Britain and forced them to work as prostitutes. - (AFP)
Queen unfazed by Scottish 'boycott'
EDINBURGH - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II opened a new session of the Scottish parliament yesterday, unfazed by an apparent boycott by almost one in six members of the assembly.
The 129-seat chamber was set up in 1999. - (AFP)
Talks today to end war in Liberia
ACCRA - Liberia's President Charles Taylor and rebels challenging his rule were on their way to peace talks yesterday, amid mounting pressure to end a war that has turned their west African state into a regional pariah.
Taylor was due in Accra, the capital of Ghana, for the talks today on the future of his country after ordering the release of all prisoners of war, and vowing he would not pose an obstacle to peace. - (AFP)