Deutsche Welle English Service News January 21st 2005, 16:00 UTC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's highlight on DW-WORLD:
Iran Denies Shifting Assets From Europe Iran on Saturday denied it has shifted funds out of Europe due to fears of economic sanctions over its nuclear program after a swirl of contradictory reports on whether such transfers had taken place. To read this article on the DW-WORLD website, just click on the internet address below: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1864047,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Week in Germany: The best from German culture, business and politics in a convenient weekly wrap-up. Read and subscribe at www.germany.info/twig ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kosovo's President Rugova dies Kosovo's President Ibrahim Rugova has died, aged 61. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer last year. In the early nineties, the author turned politician confronted the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic and embodied the quest by Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians for independence from Serbia. The European Parliament awarded Rugova the Sakharov Prize in 1998. The start of UN-mediated talks between Kosovo's and Serbia's officials planned for next week have now been postponed until February. Confusion over Iran funds withdrawal The governor of Iran's Central Bank has downplayed his announcement that the country's foreign reserves would be pulled from European banks, saying that there would be nothing unusual in such a move. Ebrahim Sheibani said it would be advantageous to Iran to begin withdrawals, backing away from a Friday statement that the process was already underway. On Friday, Iran's Students News Agency reported that Sheibani said Iran had already begun moving its foreign currency reserves as a pre-emptive measure against any possible UN sanctions over its nuclear program. It is estimated that Iran has over 40 billion euros banked around Europe. Palestinian security staff first to vote Ahead of next Wednesday's Palestinian parliamentary election thousands of Palestinian security force personnel have begun voting. The advance balloting from Saturday until Monday aims to free the personnel for guard duties on Wednesday, when Palestinian civilians will vote in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem. President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party is being challenged by the militant group Hamas for seats in the 132-member parliament. Sources within one of Israel's main political parties Labour say its willing to hand over Jerusalem's eastern Arab sector to the Palestinians if a final peace accord is reached. The newspaper "Haaretz" says the policy change is to be unveiled at Labour's convention on Sunday. Israel's parliamentary election is due on March 28. Clashes, arrests in Kathmandu In Kathmandu, Nepalese police have arrested 300 protestors as they converged for a pro-democracy rally called by several political parties in defiance of a ban. Police fired teargas. Activists chanted slogans. Some threw stones. The parties have demanded that King Gyanendra restore democracy, one year after he sacked the government and seized absolute power. The king's clampdown including arrests over the past week has been condemned by the United Nations, India, the EU and the USA. The king had cited the threat of Maoist rebel violence, which in the past decade has claimed 12,000 lives. Libya, Bulgaria discuss HIV fund Bulgaria in continuing talks with Libya about setting up a fund for families of children infected with HIV in Libya but without a cash figure being settled. This is expected to defuse a stand-off over five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been convicted in Libya of infecting the children with HIV. Families of the victims are seeking a total of around 4.3 billion euros in what they see as compensation, a definition rejected by Bulgaria, which says the nurses are not guilty of infecting the children. A retrial of the six is expected to begin in about a month. Strife at Alitalia limits flights Italy's troubled airline Alitalia has cancelled 130 flights this Saturday as staff continue industrial action. Some stayed away, others attended mass meetings. This follows disruption on Thursday and Friday and another strike is planned for Monday. Crews object to layoffs planned by management to avoid Alitalia's bankruptcy. A recovery plan was launched in 2004. Italian Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi says he cannot provide any more bailout funding. Occupation killed 103,000 - East Timor East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission in a report to the United Nations has blamed former Indonesian occupation forces for the deaths of 103,000 Timorese or one tenth of the population. The report, based on testimony from 7,000 survivors, alleges that Indonesia's military used starvation and sexual violence to suppress the former Portuguese colony between 1975 and 1999 when Indonesia quit during an intervention by UN-mandated peacekeepers. Indonesia's defence minister has rejected the report. It's been handed to UN chief Kofi Annan by Timorese President Xanana Gusmao. He urged the UN to learn lessons to prevent a repeat elsewhere. East Timor became independent in 2002 and remain's Asia's poorest country. Whale rescue underway in Thames The injured whale which lost its way and swum into London's Thames river has now been transferred to a barge and is being transported downstream. The bottle-nose whale's normal habitat is the deep, cold waters of the Northern Atlantic. Recent reports say the whale is in relatively good health. Arctic weather extends Freezing weather already gripping Russia has extended to Scandinavia and eastern Europe as far as Turkey. On Friday night, ice and snow disrupted air traffic at Denmark's Copenhagen airport. At Tromso in Norway 20,000 residents were left without power. And, in Latvia's capital Riga temperatures have neared minus 30 degrees Celcius. In Russia since Monday the arctic weather has killed at least 80 people. Five more died overnight. Snowfalls in Turkey have left up to 1,400 villages isolated. The winter freeze also grips central China, delaying crowds of rail passengers as they try to head home for lunar new year reunions. Japan's harshest winter in decades has reached Tokyo, bringing its heaviest snowfalls in five years. Boat show opens in Duesseldorf The world's largest water sports industry exhibition and boat show has opened in Dusseldorf in Germany. Over nine days, more than 1,600 exhibitors from 50 nations will display their boats and equipment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Receive DW-WORLD headlines and news reports straight on your desktop as RSS feeds: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1137115,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
