World Digest
Pakistan uncovers hijack plans

ANAT GIVON / AP A visitor takes a look at a picture taken of herself next to soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army during a farewell ceremony for Chinese warships and submarines that left a naval base in Hong Kong.

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Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali said about four to six people who wanted to hijack a plane. Intelligence indicated they wanted to blow it up, he said.

Jamali would not speculate on whether the hijackers were Pakistanis or foreigners.

Chinese warships conclude five-day visit to Hong Kong

HONG KONG — Eight Chinese warships eased through Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor yesterday to conclude a five-day visit — Beijing's biggest show of force since it took over the former British colony in 1997.

Beijing dispatched the vessels — two destroyers, four frigates and two submarines — to Hong Kong to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army's navy.

But analysts say China is trying to instill nationalism in Hong Kong's longtime colonial subjects while sending a warning to rival Taiwan.

New Zealand's Maori group protests shoreline plans

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Thousands of Maori demonstrated outside parliament yesterday to protest against government plans to nationalize New Zealand's shoreline — which indigenous tribes say belongs to them.

The government says the controversial legislation is intended to protect public access to beaches while granting Maori "customary use" of their ancestral areas on the coast.
 
Maori say the plan will strip tribes of their customary ownership of coastal areas, contravening the Treaty of Waitangi. Signed in 1840, the treaty made Maori into citizens under British rule and guaranteed their rights to their lands, forests, fisheries, culture and language.

Maori, who make up 530,000 of New Zealand's 4 million people, are among the poorest.

Clashes erupt between Sudanese forces, rebels

KHARTOUM — Fighting has erupted between Sudanese government forces and rebels in the west of the country despite a cease-fire signed last month, military and security sources said yesterday.

Neighboring Chad said the fighting had spilled over the border and that its army clashed with Sudanese pro-government militia 15 miles inside Chadian territory, with seven people killed in the violence.

The sources in the impoverished region of Darfur, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that clashes on the Sudanese side of the border around Abu Gamra, 28 miles north of the town of Kebkabiya, had involved forces led by Sudan's army.

Irish Roman Catholic order apologizes for abuse of nuns

DUBLIN — An Irish Roman Catholic religious order apologized unconditionally yesterday for the "physical and emotional trauma" its nuns inflicted on children raised in its orphanages and schools.

The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, founded in 1831 to care for the poor and uneducated, said it accepted unreservedly that many children had been hurt while in its care.

The Sisters of Mercy were at the center of a scandal which shocked Ireland in 1996, when a television documentary exposed the extent of abuse at a Dublin orphanage in the 1950s and 1960s.

People raised there revealed how, as children, they were beaten with wooden chair legs and whipped with rosary beads. Children who misbehaved were trussed up and hung from door frames as punishment.

Inquest opened into death of British serviceman

TROWBRIDGE, England — An inquest opened yesterday into the death of a British serviceman who died almost 51 years ago during secret military experiments into the effect of deadly nerve agents.

Ronald Maddison, a 20-year-old Royal Air Force engineer, died in May 1953 following tests conducted by Ministry of Defence (MoD) scientists at Britain's Porton Down chemical- and biological-weapons laboratory.

Maddison collapsed shortly after scientists placed a 200 mg patch of the deadly chemical warfare agent sarin on his arm.

The original, 1953 inquest, held in secret for reasons of "national security," concluded he had choked to death and recorded a verdict of misadventure.

But London's High Court overturned the decision in 2002 and ordered a new inquiry.

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Pilot error caused the February air crash that killed Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski and eight other people in southern Bosnia, a Bosnian government report said Wednesday. ... Nicaragua's army destroyed 333 shoulder-fired missiles, capable of taking down a plane, that were left over from the 1980s Contra war, defense minister Jose Adan Guerra said yesterday.