World Digest
Japan seeks word that U.S. won't arrest 1965 deserter

	Charles Jenkins
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TOKYO — Japan has asked the United States to allow Charles Robert Jenkins, a soldier who deserted to North Korea in 1965, to move to Japan without fear of prosecution, according to Japanese sources.

The idea is to allow Jenkins, 63, to live in Japan with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga. She was abducted by North Korea decades ago, married Jenkins there, and was released more than a year ago.

North Korean officials have indicated they wanted to send Jenkins and the couple's two grown daughters to Japan along with family members of other Japanese held in North Korea. But releasing Jenkins would put him in danger of arrest for desertion. The United States and Japan have an extradition treaty.

Jenkins was a 24-year-old Army sergeant stationed in South Korea when he walked across the demilitarized zone. Aside from occasional appearances in North Korean propaganda, little was seen or heard of him until October 2002, when the North Koreans admitted that they had, as alleged for years, abducted Japanese citizens. They said that one of the Japanese abductees was married to Jenkins.

Presidential candidate reported missing in Russia

MOSCOW — Russian authorities are searching for presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin after his wife filed a missing-person report, saying he disappeared Thursday.

Rybkin is a strident critic of President Vladimir Putin, accusing the Russian leader of "state crimes" and the destruction of democracy in Russia. Political analysts predict that Rybkin, one of seven officially registered candidates, will get only a tiny fraction of the vote in the March 14 election; Putin has repeatedly been forecast to take 60 to 70 percent.

In the 1990s, Rybkin was a senior figure in the government of President Boris Yeltsin, serving as head of the National Security Council, chairman of parliament's lower house and chief negotiator with Chechen rebels. He has held no senior government posts since Putin became president in 2000.

Berbers, fighting for rights, will boycott Algerian election

ALGIERS, Algeria — This North African nation's ethnic Berber minority will boycott the presidential election April 8 and stage street protests after failing to gain official status for their own language, Tamazight, alongside Arabic, a Berber leader said.
 
Representatives of the Berber community, North Africa's original inhabitants before the seventh-century Arab invasion, want more language, cultural and democratic rights.

Berbers make up one-fifth of Algeria's 32 million population.

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, a Berber, has insisted Tamazight could become an official language only if approved by national referendum.

Swiss voters OK life terms for 'incurable' criminals

GENEVA — Swiss voters yesterday approved an initiative that will allow sex offenders and violent criminals to be jailed for life if they are deemed incapable of reform. The measure got 54 percent approval.

Under the proposal, violent criminals or sex offenders who are considered very dangerous to society will be examined on conviction by two independent psychiatrists.

If the two experts agree that the offenders are incurable, then they must be jailed for the rest of their lives. They could be released only on the basis of new scientific evidence that a cure is possible.

The government opposed the initiative, saying it could violate international human-rights treaties.

Police in England arrest 5 in shellfish hunters' deaths

LONDON — Police said today they had arrested five people on suspicion of manslaughter in the deaths of 19 Chinese workers killed as they searched for shellfish in an English bay.

Lancashire police said three men and two women were arrested yesterday and were being questioned. They had not been charged and were not identified.

The workers were killed by powerful tides Thursday in Morecambe Bay, a rich cockle-hunting area in northwest England known for its treacherous sands and tides.

Police said some of the dead were recent immigrants living in crowded and often squalid conditions and employed at low wages by "gangmasters."

Militant sentenced to life for role in Bali bombings

BALI, Indonesia — A Muslim militant who helped make the bombs that tore through two Bali nightclubs in October 2002, killing 202 people, today was sentenced to life in prison by an Indonesian court.

A panel of judges found that Suranto Abdul Ghoni, also known as Umar and Wayan, took part in the meetings that hatched the bombing attack, which killed dozens of young Australian tourists.

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