7,000 death row prisoners are reprieved

Islamabad Pakistan has reprieved 7,000 death-row inmates and commuted their sentences to life imprisonment (Zahid Hussain writes).

In one of the biggest amnesties of modern history, the Cabinet approved the reprieve to mark the 55th birthday of Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister, who was assassinated late last year.

Her Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP), which swept the national elections this year, now leads a four-party coalition government. The move will come into effect after endorsement by President Musharraf. Human rights activists said that the reprieve, the largest mass commutation of death sentence anywhere, would benefit almost one third of the world’s death-row population, which is estimated to be around 24,000.

Welcoming the amnesty, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded complete abolition of the death sentence. Pakistan is among 69 nations that retain the punishment. Radical mullahs called on Muslims to protest against the clemency, which is regarded as “un-Islamic”.

Pulsars confirm that Einstein was right

Washington Part of Einstein’s theory of relativity has been confirmed by astrophysicists who tested it against a unique configuration of two pulsars orbiting each other.

Pulsars are small, extremely dense objects left behind after massive stars explode. They spin at staggering speeds, generating huge gravity fields and emitting strong beams of radio waves from their magnetic poles which can be picked up on Earth.

Scientists know of more than 1,700 pulsars in our galaxy but of only one binary-pulsar system, discovered in 2003. It comprises two pulsars in orbit around each other, so close they could fit within the Sun. Because of its strong gravitational field, this system is the best place to test Einstein’s 93-year-old theory, the international team of astrophysicists reported in the journal Science.

“Einstein’s theory predicted that in such a field, an object’s spin axis should slowly change direction as the pulsar orbits around its companion,” Kaspi Lorne, one of the astrophysicists said. It does. (AFP)

Expatriates win healthcare battle Madrid

Britons living in the southeastern Spanish region of Valencia have forced the local government to drop plans to strip thousands of expatriates of the right to public healthcare, campaigners said yesterday.

Many Britons have moved to the Spanish coast, lured by property developers’ promises of a sunny retirement home overlooking the Mediterranean in resorts such as Alicante and Benidorm.

Recent arrivals have placed such a strain on Valencia’s health system that the regional government had planned to scrap cover for foreigners. It has agreed a deal whereby some 3,000 early retirees will continue to receive healthcare at “affordable prices”. (Reuters)

Missile shield hope Washington

The United States and Poland reached a tentative pact on a controversial missile defense shield, part of which Washington wants to site in the former communist country, a senior State Department official said. (AFP)

Coalition agreed Belgrade

A pro-Western group and the late Slobodan Milosevic’s political party signed a coalition agreement paving the way for Serbia’s next Government. The deal involves President Tadic’s Democratic Party and Ivica Dacic’s Socialist Party. (AP)

Party shooting Milwaukee

At least one gunman fired into a crowd of 100 people partying in the street, killing two women and two men, police said. No suspects are in custody and police are having difficulty getting witnesses to cooperate. (AP)

Games ‘sabotage’ Beijing

The Beijing Olympics, which begin on August 8, are threatened by sabotage and unrest, a senior security official said after a riot in Guizhou province, in which a police station was set on fire over an alleged rape cover-up. (Reuters)

Assisted suicide call Berlin

The German Upper House passed a motion calling for laws on assisted suicide to be tightened after Roger Kusch, a former Hamburg senator, advised Bettina Schart, 79, on how to prepare a lethal mixture of drugs that she took to kill herself. (AFP)

War criminal free Vilnius

A Lithuanian court rejected a prosecutor’s request to jail Algimantas Mykolas Dailide, 87, a Nazi-era security policeman found guilty of Holocaust crimes. It said that Dailide, who lives in Germany, was ill and posed no threat to society. (AFP)

La Scala is silenced Milan

La Scala has been forced to cancel three performances of Puccini’s La Bohème next week because of a strike by Milanese theatre workers. Unions want pay rises totalling €13 million (£10.2 million) but the opera is offering €11.5 million. (AFP)

Rebels mobilise after shelling Tbilisi

The rebel region of South Ossetia ordered residents to mobilise and threatened to use heavy weapons against Georgia after two people were killed by shelling.

South Ossetia said Georgian forces launched a large-scale attack on the region overnight. Georgia denied it had initiated the raid, saying its forces were forced to react after Georgian villages came under fire from South Ossetian rebels. ( AFP)

Toll rises in canoe accident Ljubljana

The toll in a Slovenian canoeing accident rose to eight people dead and five still missing after they were sucked under water by a hydro-electric dam on an outing on the Sava river. Only two survived, police said. ( AFP)

Irish jobless at nine-year high Dublin

Unemployment in Ireland soared to 5.7 per cent in June, the highest since 1999, and up from 5.4 per cent in May, officials said. Ireland faces a potential recession, with growth slowing in the first three months of the year. ( AFP)

Surgeon to pay for unkindest cut Bucharest

A Romanian surgeon must pay £400,000 to a man aged 33 for accidentally cutting off his penis during an operation. Muscle built an aesthetic organ, but the victim “does not have a good state of mind,” said his lawyer. (AP)

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