Discovery astronauts undertake spacewalk
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida), May 30 — With their flawless docking behind them, Discovery’s astronauts went on a spacewalk to spruce up the outside of the new international space station.

Kennedy’s casket was ‘thrown into sea’
WASHINGTON, May 30 — The US government buried at sea the bronze casket that carried to Washington the body of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas in 1963, ABC television has reported.

Huge march marks Tiananmen event
HONG KONG, May 30 — More than 2,000 people marched through central Hong Kong today to mark the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing and called for an end to one-party rule in China.

Lion gobbles up tourist guide
LONDON, May 30 — A British couple on a safari holiday in Africa and seven other tourists experienced a moment of sheer terror as they saw their guide eaten alive by a lion, a London newspaper reported today.

• Lanka to tighten curbs on Press
• Death sentence to drug dealers

Russian envoy’s talks make little headway

MOSCOW, May 30 (AP) — Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin met with Russia’s Balkans envoy and other officials to map out Russia’s strategy on resolving the Kosovo crisis, news reports said.

Mr Stepashin met Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Balkans envoy, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev and Mr Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, to discuss Russia’s next moves, Itar-Tass news agency said. The meeting was ordered by President Boris Yeltsin.

Participants examined in detail the development of the situation around Yugoslavia and mapped out moves to be taken by Russia in order to stop the tragedy in the Balkans.

Although Moscow wants to find a political solution, it has made little progress to date despite frequently raising international hopes of success.

Mr Chernomyrdin returned here on Friday from Belgrade, where he spent about nine hours meeting with President Slobodan Milosevic, before travelling there.

Mr Chernomyrdin said he was satisfied with the Belgrade talks, and thought he had made enough progress that he would be able to return to Belgrade with Mr Ahtisaari within a few days.

Mr Milosevic’s office issued a statement reiterating that Yugoslavia accepts the general principles of a plan sketched out earlier this month by the G-8 Russia and the world’s top seven industrial countries.

Meanwhile, NATO missiles rained down on Belgrade again on Sunday, crippling telecommunications relay stations, amid growing signs of a major NATO build-up.

Local reports said missiles hit telecommunications centres in Serbia and Kosovo. Belgrade, NIS and other cities were hit.

Powerful explosions were heard in the industrial district of Rakovica as well as at the Batajnica military airport and the suburb of Bubanjpotok.

Earlier, Beta news agency reported that two people were killed when NATO aircraft bombed a bridge spanning the Jablanica river in southern Serbia. Another person was killed during NATO bombings of the industrial city of NIS. The bombs landed on a suburb adjoining the industrial zone. Four people were injured in the attack.

In related developments, the conviction of two Australian aid workers on charges of “spreading military secrets” in Yugoslavia were described today as “incomprehensible” by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Lawyers for Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace will lodge an appeal against the verdict by a Belgrade court that they and a Yugoslavian colleague passed on secret information.

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who has campaigned for the release of the pair, urged Yugoslav President Milosevic to overturn the convictions.

WASHINGTON (AFP): The US Defence Department yesterday announced the deployment of 68 additional aircraft to assist in NATO’s military campaign in the Balkans.

“The additional aircraft will deploy with a full complement of aircrew and support personnel,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

Officials said the aircraft will begin to deploy next week.

The additional aircraft include 12 F-16cjs and 36 F-15es aircraft, as well as 20 KC-135s from the US Air Force Air Mobility Command, and bring the number of US aircraft in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s Kosovo operation to 769 — three-fourths of the aircraft currently used in the campaign.

News that the United States of America plans to intensify the air campaign against Yugoslavia came as Washington said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had given no indication that he was ready to end the conflict.

Conservative is Iran Speaker again

TEHERAN, May 30 (Reuters) — Iran’s conservative Speaker of Parliament Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri was re-elected for another one-year term today, defeating a moderate rival.

Deputies chose Mr Nateq-Nouri over his Leftist reformist rival, Mr Majid Ansari, by 161 votes to 85, in a secret ballot during a session broadcast live on radio.

The result of the vote was similar to last year, when Mr Nateq-Nouri, who has been Speaker since 1992, defeated Mr Ansari by 165 votes to 84. Mr Nateq-Nouri lost the 1997 presidential elections to the moderate Mohammad Khatami, though conservatives have retained control of key institutions such as Parliament and the judiciary.

Other members of the presiding board — all conservatives — were also re-elected, including two Deputy Speakers.

Meanwhile, Fereydoun Verdinejad, the Managing Director of the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), was arrested on Saturday in a new blow to the moderate press close to reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

Verdinejad, around 40, was arrested and imprisoned in his capacity as the director of IRNA daily, an official newspaper published by IRNA, on the orders of a special court which deals with cases involving government officials.

Some 30 complaints were filed against Verdinejad.

Pak ‘supplied’ Stingers to mercenaries

LONDON, May 30 (PTI) — Pakistan has supplied a large number of shoulder-fired surface-to-air Stinger missiles to mercenaries in Jammu and Kashmir increasing the possibilities of an Indo-Pak conflict and endangering air traffic over the state, western intelligence agencies have said.

The US-made Stinger missile that downed an Indian helicopter in the Kargil sector on Friday is reported to be one of such missiles stockpiled by the fundamentalist mercenaries, The Observer reported quoting western intelligence sources in Islamabad.

These sources say the possession of such a large number of Stingers by mercenaries creates a “serious risk” of the conflict escalating even if both India and Pakistan want to avoid further confrontation.

Though these missiles have been supplied by the Pakistan Army ostensibly to provide protection to mercenaries from Indian airstrikes, the paper noted “these missiles will put all civil air traffic over Kashmir to risk”.

Western intelligence sources believe that if such an attack was successful, the consequences for any dialogue between the two nations would be very serious. “It appears that hawks in the Pakistan Army, who have always frowned upon any dialogue with India, have scored over the doves”.

Pakistan’s ISI had earlier planned to supply these missiles to its mercenaries — not trusting the Kashmiri militants — but had been scared by strong Indian and western reaction to it, the sources said.

Discovery astronauts undertake spacewalk

CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida), May 30 (AP) — With their flawless docking behind them, Discovery’s astronauts went on a spacewalk to spruce up the outside of the new international space station.

Tamara Jernigan and Dr Daniel Barry Floated out of the space shuttle around 0300 GMT today. The seven-storey-plus station loomed above them, jutting straight out of Discovery’s cargo bay.

“Unbelievable” Jernigan said as she unlocked the hatch. Among their duties during the six-hour outing, attaching a pair of five-foot (1.5 meter) cranes to the exterior of the station, hanging out three bags of tools for future spacewalkers, installing a glare-reducing shroud over a docking target, and covering an exposed pin.

You’ve made the first docking with space station look effortless, and you’ve set the standard for all those who follow”, mission control told commander Kent Rominger, a Navy pilot who guided Discovery in.

The first order of business involved opening the outermost hatch of the space station and ducking a few feet (Metres) inside to take air samples and do a little rearranging. The hatch was then closed it won’t be opened again until tonight, when the crew ventures all the way in.

The NASA wanted the doors between the two spacecraft sealed in case there was an emergency during Saturday night’s spacewalk.

Rominger said before the flight that if one of the spacewalkers got loose and floated away, he’d ditch the station and chase after the astronaut.

Jernigan was a little anxious, but not because of any fear of snapped tethers.

Discovery will remain docked to the 77-foot (23-meter), 70,000-pound (31,752-kilogram) space station until Thursday night. Between now and then, the astronauts will lug nearly 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms) of gear into the station.

During the last station-assembly flight, astronauts took up an American-made component and connected it to a Russian-built control module that was already in orbit. Problems have since popped up with some of the electronics, so Discovery’s crew will spend time making repairs.

Universe younger than perceived

WASHINGTON, May 30 (PTI) — Earthlings can now heave a sigh of relief as contrary to popular belief, the Earth is not heading towards doomsday and that the universe is younger than perceived, if the conclusions of the US astronomers are to be believed.

Top astronomers of the Hubble space telescope key project team announced their conclusion yesterday adding the birth of the universe in a “big bang” explosion is dated between 12 and 13.5 billion years ago, which means it is much more recent than thought.

The expansion of the universe is accelerating and is likely to continue virtually into infinity rather than collapsing back on itself in a gravitational big crunch, the astronomers-stated.

Thanks to the 2.2 billion dollar Hubble telescope, said Wendy Freedman of the observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a leader of the large international research team, “we are finally entering an era of precision cosmology”.

The team took measurements of 800 special “cosmic yardstrick” stars known as Cepheids, a sampling of 18 galaxies ranging over a swathe of 150 million light years across, said The Washington Post.

They then combined their Cepheid technique with four different methods to gauge distances farther and farther out into space.

Kennedy’s casket was ‘thrown into sea’

WASHINGTON, May 30 (AFP) — The US government buried at sea the bronze casket that carried to Washington the body of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas in 1963, ABC television has reported.

For years, the whereabouts of the casket, considered a potential piece of evidence in investigations into the killing, was unknown.

Quoting Justice Department and General Services administration documents released earlier in the week, ABC yesterday said the casket was located 3,000 metres under the sea off the coast of Delaware.

It was thrown there from a military plane in early 1965, the documents revealed.

The news, which comes on the 82nd anniversary of Kennedy’s birthday, may rekindle suspicions that the popular President was killed as part of a government conspiracy.

According to David Lifton, author of a 1981 book on Kennedy’s assassination entitled “Best Evidence”, the body was transferred from the bronze casket to a grey metal casket prior to an autopsy at the Navy hospital outside Washington.

For Lifton, the casket switch is additional proof that Kennedy’s body had been tampered with before the autopsy.

Huge march marks Tiananmen event

HONG KONG, May 30 (Reuters) — More than 2,000 people marched through central Hong Kong today to mark the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing and called for an end to one-party rule in China.

“Hong Kong is the only place in China where people can commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre. It is important we fight on. We are a spark in China’s democratic movement”, said Mr Szeto Wah, a pro-democracy leader.

Demonstrators waved black-and-white placards reading “Vindicate June 4.” Others carried a black coffin with the slogan “End one party rule Butcher government.”

China’s Communist Government sent tanks into Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, to crush a student-led, pro-democracy movement, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands of people. China said the movement was aimed at overthrowing the government.

One group of Hong Kong marchers carried a placard that read “Forgive? forget?no way”, and chanted “Free all dissidents” and “hold those responsible for the massacre to account.”

A man who identified himself only as Lee brought his 10-year-old daughter to the march. “I want her have a better understanding of what happened on June 4, 10 years ago”, he said.

Lion gobbles up tourist guide

LONDON, May 30 (AFP) — A British couple on a safari holiday in Africa and seven other tourists experienced a moment of sheer terror as they saw their guide eaten alive by a lion, a London newspaper reported today.

British Judge Richard Groves and his wife Patricia, both 65, from Colchester, in eastern England, were in a tour group that witnessed the attack at a private lodge, outside Namibia’s capital Windhoek, said The Daily Mail.

“It was the most horrific thing we’ve ever seen in our lives,” Judge Groves told the newspaper.

Game warden Steyn Lusse, 28 who had worked at the lodge for two years was attacked on Thursday inside the lions’ enclosure on the popular Okapuka game farm as he tried to free a mechanism used to feed the lions, The Daily Mail added.

Lanka to tighten curbs on Press

COLOMBO, May 30 (AFP) — The Sri Lankan Government is planning to revive draconian laws to plug leaks from weekly Cabinet meetings, a media rights organisation and activists said here today. The government discussed the possibility of reviving a 46-year-old act on official secrets to muzzle the Press, newspapers here said publishing leaked reports from last week’s Cabinet meeting.

The rights group, the Free Media Movement (FMM), said they were distressed by the reported moves to bring back draconian laws to restrict Press freedom and urged people to be vigilant.

Death sentence to drug dealers

DUBAI, May 30 (AFP) — Two Indians have been sentenced to death after being caught trying to sell hashish in a sting operation in the Gulf Emirate of Dubai, a newspaper reported today.

Narootam Babir (41) and Manjela Bawabhai (36), charged with possessing and selling drugs, heard the verdict at the criminal court on Saturday. The two took 130,000 dirhams ($ 35,000) from an undercover police officer in a Dubai hotel last September in exchange for 11.12 kg of hashish, The Khaleej Times said.

Indian scientist expelled
WASHINGTON: The government expelled an Indian scientist who worked is a US weapons lab because he was connected with India’s nuclear-weapons programme, Newsweek reported on Saturday. The magazine did not report the scientist’s name or reveal its sources for the man’s removal from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Last year Los Alamos expelled an Indian scientist when it was discovered he had ties to India’s nuclear-bomb programme”, Newsweek said it has learned. The story did not say whether the scientist was fired or just moved from Los Alamos. — (AP)

Award for Kumaratunga
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has been chosen for the World Health Organisation tobacco-free World Award for her outstanding contribution towards addressing the health and economic problems to the consumption of tobacco. While awarding the title, the WHO has recognised the timely efforts taken by Mrs Kumaratunga, an official release from the President’s secretariat said. Mrs Kumaratunga, developed a national policy on tobacco to improve the health and well-being of all Sri Lankans, increase productivity and alleviate poverty by achieving a sustained reduction and the eventual elimination of all tobacco use and tobacco harm. — (UNI)

Ancient settlement
SMARA (Eritrea): One of sub-Saharan Africa’s oldest settled agricultural communities had been unearthed on the outskirts of the Eritrean capital, archaeologists said. Peter Schmidt, a university of Asmara Archaeology Professor and university of Florida Anthropology Professor, said on Saturday that the find significantly affects current theory about the rise of complex societies in the Horn of Africa. A statement from the university and national museum of Eritrea said radiocarbon tests date the settlement between 400 and 700 B.C. — (AP)

Ex-PM’s son weds
LONDON: James Major, son of former Prime Minister John Major, has married actress and model Emma Noble in a 13th century chapel at Parliament. Several hundred well-wishers waiting outside the main gates of the Palace of Westminster gave a warm cheer to the 27-year-old bride as she arrived for the ceremony on Saturday, which was attended by 160 relatives and friends. — (AP)