Deutsche Welle English Service News 17.06.2004, 16:00 UTC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Attention: Due to e-mail manipulation, many e-mails are being sent from e-mail accounts that resemble Deutsche Welle mail accounts. Many of these mails contain viruses. We would like to inform you that Deutsche Welle (DW-WORLD) is not responsible for sending such mails. We are are doing our best to put an end to external e-mail manipulation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Euro 2004 Tip Pool Beat the odds. Test your soccer know-how with TIP 4 THE TOP. Enter the tip pool on your own or with friends and colleagues and win great prizes from DW-WORLD: http://www.dw-world.de/english ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD: Jury Convicts 'Beast of Belgium' A Belgian court finds Marc Dutroux guilty of a series of abductions and murders of teenage girls that rocked Belgium for the greater part of the last decade and set the stage for the country's trial of the century. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1433_A_1238730_1_A,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Multiple guilty verdicts at Dutroux trial A jury has announced multiple verdicts at Belgium's Dutroux trial, finding the main accused guilty of murdering two teenage girls in 1995. Jurors also found Marc Dutroux guilty of abducting and raping those victims, An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks, and of leading a criminal gang. Dutroux was also found guilty of murdering a male accomplice and of abducting and raping four other girls. Two of them died in captivity. For that jurors found Dutroux's ex-wife Michelle Martin guilty of fatal abduction. A third accused, Michel Lelievre, was found guilty of kidnapping. The jury was split, however, on the role of a fourth accused, businessman Michel Nihoul, who had been charged with complicity. Judges will have the final say on him. Sentencing in the town of Arlon is likely next week. The parents of the two murdered girls said they were relieved by the verdicts. Bomb targets Iraq army recruits Car bombs have killed at least 41 people in and around the Iraqi capital, with 35 dying in a single attack on an army recruiting centre in Baghdad. A car packed with artillery shells was reportedly driven into a crowd of about 100 people queuing to volunteer outside the Baghdad centre. Some 138 people were injured.A second bomb killed six Iraqi troops north of Baghdad. Four other members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps were wounded when the car bomb went off outside the town council in Yethrib. These are the latest in a series of attacks by insurgents against Iraqi targets as the US-led coalition prepares to hand over power to the Iraqi government in two weeks time. 9/11 panel says air defense uncoordinated A special commission has said that US air defence was disastrously unprepared for the 11 September 2001 attacks. A report for the 9/11 inquiry panel concludes fighters had no chance to intercept the ill-fated aircraft, much less shoot them down. The document, released at a public hearing, says unprepared officials had to improvise a response. It was the final day of public hearings before the commission's final report is released next month. The commission met as President George W. Bush personally disputed its day-old claim that there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the attacks. Former Rwandan mayor jailed for genocide A former Rwandan mayor has been sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to 30 years in prison for organising the slaughter of 20,000 people during the 1994 genocide. Sylvestre Gacumbitsi led the massacre of thousands of people sheltering in a Church, which was one of the worst events in the genocide. The former mayor of Rusamo, told Tutsis they would be safe in the church but then led militias there to kill those inside. He distributed weapons and urged ethnic Hutus to kill and rape their Tutsi neighbours. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 1994. EU opens summit on constitution European Union leaders are starting their final constitution negotiations at a two-day summit in Brussels. The talks come six months after a deal fell apart by differences over voting rights and other key issues. Ahead of the summit, the EU's Irish presidency put forward a compromise package on major sticking points to help hammer out an agreement. EU leaders are also due to decide who will replace outgoing President of the European Commission Romano Prodi. Several names have been suggested,- including the current prime ministers of Belgium, Ireland and Luxembourg,- but Prodi has said there is no obvious successor to him. Immigration compromise reached in Germany Germany's governing Social Democrats and opposition conservatives have agreed on compromise draft legislation on immigration. If passed by parliament, it would regulate the arrival and integration of newcomers, for example, through German language courses. It also includes provisions to deport terror suspects. Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily said the compromise, after three years of negotiations, was historic, because for the first time immigration was acknowledged in Germany as a fact. The chairman of Germany's Catholic Bishops Conference, Cardinal Lehmann, said the bill was a important step forward because it replaced a patchwork of rules, some up to 60 years old, and would ensure better protection of refugees. Greens, who are coalition partners in government, say they will back the latest text after previous civil rights objections. Germayn honours victims of 17 June revolt Germany's parliament has honoured participants in a nationwide revolt against communist rule in East Germany 51 years ago that was crushed by Soviet tanks, killing more than 100 people. Parliament speaker Wolfgang Thierse, the highest ranking national politician from the east, praised the protestors for standing up against dictatorship and paving the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. More than 1 million people took part in the rebellion against Stalinist rule that culminated with street battles in East Berlin on 17 June 1953. The protests lasted for five days, and as many as 15,000 people were arrested. Putin to try to prevent YUKOS collapse Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his government will do what it can to avert the collapse of the oil giant YUKOS. Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying the survivial of YUKOS was in the interest of the country's political and economic authorities. His comments prompted a sharp rise in YUKOS's share price. They come a day after the opening of proceedings against the company's former head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on charges of fraud and tax evasion. Russian authorities are demanding that YUKOS immediately pay more than 3 billion dollars in back taxes, a move analysts say could force the company into bankruptcy. UN admits error in Iran nuclear report The UN nuclear watchdog has admitted that it had wrongly accused Iran of withholding information about imports of potentially weapons-related machinery. Iran is likely to seize on the admission to call into doubt the investigations into what Tehran says is a peaceful nuclear power programme but what Washington says is a front for developing atomic weapons. Iran has welcomed the fact that the IAEA has corrected the mistake, however, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that it was a minor error on part of the agency, and one that the Iranians could have helped to correct before it got into the report. Spitting costs Italy's Totti three games European soccer's governing body EUFA has imposed a three-match ban on the Italian forward Francesco Totti for spitting. Television footage from Monday's Italy-Denmark draw had shown Totti spitting on Denmark's Christian Poulsen. As a result, Totti will miss the remaining two Group C games at the European Championships in Portugal, and the quarter-finals if Italy get that far. Italy's football association has 24 hours in which it can appeal the ruling by EUFA's disciplinary committee. EUFA said it would not tolerate such behaviour. Denmark's association had made a formal complaint. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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