World Digest
Iran council OKs ban on torture

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The turnabout came after the leader of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, a hard-line cleric, issued an order that banned torture and the extraction of confessions under duress.

Although banned by the Iranian Constitution, the use of torture and duress has been common in prisons and during interrogations. An Iranian-Canadian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi, died last year while in custody in Evin prison after being struck in the head by interrogators.

New airport in Iran closes, citing security concerns

TEHRAN, Iran — Citing security fears, the military yesterday closed Tehran's new international airport on its first day of scheduled flights.

However, the real reason likely was a dispute between a Turkish-Austrian consortium, Tepe-Akfen-Vie, which built the Iman Khomeini airport, and state airline Iran Air over who was going to run the airport.

Iran has said it planned to move all international flights to the $475 million airport by the end of July, but only one of six scheduled flights landed yesterday before the facility outside Tehran was shut down. The other flights were diverted to the old Mehrabad airport in central Tehran.

Sunni and Shiite Muslims clash; one passer-by dies

KARACHI, Pakistan — Rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims exchanged gunfire yesterday, killing at least one passer-by, in sectarian clashes triggered by a suicide bombing at a mosque the day before.

Two other people were wounded in the unrest, which occurred after Shiites mourning worshippers killed in Friday's blast pelted a Sunni mosque with stones in Karachi's Sohrab Goth district, police said.

Police fired tear-gas shells to disperse the crowds.
 
Friday's bombing, which killed 14 people and wounded more than 200, was the latest in a series of sectarian and terrorist attacks in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Intruders break into Toscanini family tomb

MILAN, Italy — Intruders broke into the family tomb of legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, opening his daughter's coffin and damaging her tombstone, police said yesterday.

The motive was unclear, given that nothing was believed to have been stolen in the Thursday-night break-in, but police didn't rule out the possibility that the culprits were searching for jewelry.

The damage was limited to the tomb of Wanda Toscanini Horowitz, the daughter of the conductor and wife of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. She died in 1998.

Toscanini was chief conductor at Milan's La Scala, then moved to the U.S. in 1908 to lead the Metropolitan Opera. He died in New York in 1957.

European shuttle prototype glides to successful landing

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — An unmanned prototype for the European space shuttle glided to a successful landing yesterday after being dropped from an altitude of 7,900 feet, a project spokeswoman said.

The German-designed prototype of the future European Shuttle, was dropped by a helicopter at 9:45 a.m. Guided by GPS satellites, the shuttle "landed perfectly" on the test runway after a 90-second flight. Project managers say a full-size version won't be ready for more than a decade.