Deutsche Welle English Service News August, 15th, 2002, 16:00 UTC
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD: Rescuing Dresden's Cultural Treasures The Elbe River continued to swell, and officials in Dresden worked into the night to move paintings, porcelain and other historical objects from basement storage rooms in the city's Baroque Zwinger To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1430_A_610496_1_A,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Floods continue to devastate Europe Germany's cultural and historical jewel Dresden has suffered its worst flooding in more than a century and rising waters have already flooded many of its Baroque squares and palaces. As the tide advanced, about 600 hospital patients were evacuated to nearby towns. Massive damage has also been suffered by the Czech capital, Prague, where experts say about 3 billion euros damage have been caused so far, as flood waters continue to rise. As a huge wave of water flowed along central Europe's rivers, others towns and cities including the Slovak capital Bratislava remained on alert. Floods have killed more than 80 people from the Black Sea to the Baltic and destroyed billions of euros' worth of buildings, infrastructure and crops. In Austria, about 10,000 homes have been left uninhabitable by floods that have been described as the country's worst disaster since World War Two. Jakarta court acquits police, military over E.Timor An Indonesian court on Thursday acquitted a former East Timor police chief and five other security officers of crimes against humanity over East Timor's bloody independence vote in 1999. Indonesia's special human rights court said the accused were not guilty of the charges,for which they all faced the death penalty. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International labelled the rulings as absurd. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson expressed concern over the verdict, saying prosecutors had presented the killings and rights violations as the result of spontaneous conflict, between armed East Timorese factions rather than as part of widespread and systematic pattern of violence. East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was formally declared independent from Indonesia in May this year by the United Nations. Sri Lanka to lift ban on Tamil rebels before talks Sri Lanka's government is to lift a ban on separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, before peace talks that will begin mid September. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which signed a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire with the government in February, had said it would not continue the peace bid with a ban in place. The Colombo government outlawed the Tamil Tigers group, fighting since 1983 for an ethnic Tamil state in the north and east of the country, after it blew up a Buddhist temple in 1998. About half a dozen countries including India,the United States and Britain maintain a ban on the group. The ethnic war between the government and the Tamil separatists has been waging since 1983 and killed about 64,000 people. Pakistan frees Christian facing death for blasphemy Pakistan's Supreme Court today ordered the release of Ayub Masih, a Christian whose death sentence for blasphemy led to a bishop's suicide. He was sentenced to death in April 1998 for speaking favourably about British author Salman Rushdie in an argument with a Muslim neighbour in Punjab province. John Joseph, Roman Catholic bishop of Faisalabad and a leading human rights campaigner, shot himself outside the courtroom, 11 days after it handed down the death sentence. In 1989, the late Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Mr. Rushdie killed for alleged blasphemy against Islam in his book "The Satanic Verses". Pakistan's blasphemy laws date to the military rule of General Zia-ul-Haq.Nobody has yet been executed for blasphemy, but many people have been jailed for the offence. India and Pakistan trade accusations India's prime minister, using his strongest language against Pakistan, since the two countries pulled back from the brink of war in June, has accused Islamabad of cross-border terrorism in disputed Kashmir. Mr.Vajpayee's speech appeared to be in response to an address by Pakistan President Musharraf who said India's plans to hold elections in Jammu and Kashmir state in September and October were farcical. Both countries were marking 55 years of independence from British rule. India has long accused Pakistan of helping Islamic militants infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, to join a 13-year revolt against Indian rule. Spain to line coast with radar to stop immigrants The Spanish government has announced that Spain will set up a network of radar, sensors and cameras along its southern coast in a bid to intercept thousands of illegal immigrants. The project, said to be the first of its kind in Europe, will cost about 150 million euros. Many people wanting to enter Europe from Africa head for Spain because it is the nearest European country. Humanitarian organisations estimate that in the past few years tens of thousands have died trying to cross the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Spain from Morocco. United Airlines warns of bankruptcy United Airlines, the No. 2 U.S. air carrier has announced that it may file for bankruptcy later this year, if it cannot dramatically cut costs. This is its first such admission since losing record amounts of money after the Sept.11 attacks. United's bankruptcy warning was just the latest bad news in the aviation industry this week. On Sunday, US Airways Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Major U.S. airlines have lost more than 10 billion dollars since the Sept. 11 attacks decimated air travel and cheap fares increased. NATO troops spread out in search for Karadzic NATO troops have set up road blocks in Bosnia as part of a stepped-up campaign to find wartime Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. The NATO-led Stabilisation Force searched remote areas of Bosnia for a second day. Mr. Karadzic, twice indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for genocide during the 1992-95 war, is widely believed to be hiding in Bosnia or in neighbouring Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation. He is the U.N. court's most wanted war crimes suspect, but he remains popular among nationalist Serbs, especially in eastern Bosnia, still politically controlled by hardliners. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information please turn to our internet website at http://dw-world.de/english Here you'll find out what's happening in Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. News and background reports from the fields of current affairs, culture, business and science. And of course the DW website also has information about DW-RADIO and DW-TV programmes: topics, broadcast times and frequencies. You can even listen to all programmes as audio-on-demand. Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
