tribuneindia...Spotlight

			Saturday, December 12, 1998
weather today's calendar

40 die in Thai air crash
BANGKOK, Dec 11 (PTI) — Forty persons were killed when a Thai Airways airbus, with 132 passengers and 14 crew members aboard, today crashed in poor weather in southern Thailand. About 44 persons survived the crash after the plane caught fire and burst into flames while trying to make an emergency landing at an airport in Surat Thani, 640 km from here. Rescuers recovered 40 bodies, a Thai minister said. Among those rescued was the plane’s pilot while one of the dead was a member of parliament.

Relief for riot-hit
CHENNAI, Dec 11 (PTI) — Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu authorities to compensate the Sikh families affected by rioting in Coimbatore after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Ordering the government to pay 12 per cent interest on the amount due to the victims from the date of the single Judge's ruling till payment is made, the Bench directed the state to pay the amount within two weeks.

Koirala for poll
KATHMANDU, Dec 11 (PTI) — Nepal Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala today recommended to King Birendra to dissolve Parliament and called for a mid-term general election on March 31 after the Communist allies pulled out of his coalition government over differences on a power-sharing accord, state-owned Nepal radio said. Koirala, leader of the centrist Nepali Congress Party, was appointed Prime Minister of a minority government on April 13 this year, after his Nepali Congress Party (NCP) won the support of the opposition Nepal Communist Party (Unified Marxist-Leninist).

Jemima's tiles
ISLAMABAD, Dec 11 (PTI) — Pakistani customs authorities have seized a consignment of tiles belonging to cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s wife Jemima Khan and have begun investigations claiming that these have antique value and belong to the mughal period. The customs authorities seized the consignment of nearly 400 floor tiles at the Lahore dry port which had been booked by Jemima Khan for her mother in London and have started investigations into it, media reports said. The authorities have expressed their apprehensions that the tiles have antique value and belong to Mughal period with an estimated value running into crores of rupees and that these tiles had been stolen from Pakistani museums at different times.

Suspect held
KARACHI, Dec 11 (AFP) — Pakistani police said today they had arrested a suspect in the murder of six US nationals and in numerous other killings in Karachi. City police chief Farooq Amin Qureshi identified the suspect as 27-year old Pakistani National Saulat Mirza. He said Mirza, arrested on his arrival here from Thailand this week, was suspected of involvement in the murder of two US diplomats and four American oil company workers.

Media censorship
COLOMBO, Dec 11 (PTI) — The Sri Lankan government today lifted the six-month-old censorship on the foreign media for reporting the security operations against LTTE, an official spokesman said here. "The foreign media has been taken out of the purview of the censorship imposed on June 5 last," Arya Rubasinghe, Director of Information, said. However, the ban on local media for coverage of the war will continue, according to the presidential orders.