Mr Yeltsin ordered the justice ministry to work out measures to put this into practice, but set no timetable.
Reuters – Moscow. 44 hurt at Deep Purple concert
Around 44 people were injured when a sound and lighting tower collapsed in a packed stadium at the start of a concert in Chile by British rock group, Deep Purple, officials said yesterday. The accident happened on Thursday night at the Santa Laura stadium in Santiago.
It was an inauspicious start to the Latin American tour by the group, whose 1970s hits include “Smoke on the Water”. Dozens of people had climbed up on to the metal tower to get a better view, but the structure had crumbled under their weight and crashed down on to spectators Reuters – Santiago. Oklahoma bomb confession
The Oklahoma City bombing suspect, Timothy McVeigh, has told his defence team that he bombed the Alfred P Murrah federal building during the day to get a “body count” and send a strong message to the government, the Dallas Morning News reported yesterday.
In a special report published on its Internet page, the newspaper reported that it had seen defence team documents summarizing several interviews with McVeigh in which he detailed some of the preparations for the attack, on 19 April 1995, in which 168 people died.Reuters – Dallas. Peter Smerdon
Reuters
Nairobi – Zairean rebels yesterday seized the eastern town of Kindu and foreign aid workers fled a major eastern refugee camp for fear of rebel attack, aid agency and UN sources said.
Rebels said they were four miles from Tingi Tingi but were delaying an advance for the sake of refugees.The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, encouraged by France, said he hoped to persuade member-states to reconsider sending a multinational force to eastern Zaire in light of a serious humanitarian situation.A UN source said the rebels captured Kindu and its airport on Thursday but in Kinshasa a defence ministry official said Kindu, a transport hub and base for operations in the war zone, remained in army hands. The UN source added that all 2,000 Zairean troops in Kindu fled without a fight after looting the town and were heading towards the town of Katako- Kombe, 100 miles away.Kindu had the northernmost working station on a rail line to South Africa It also had a large airport used by the military. The aid officials said an immediate evacuation of all expatriates had been ordered from Tingi Tingi, 160 miles north-east of Kindu, after camp leaders were warned that the camp would be attacked by another rebel force last night.Aid workers said Zairean troop reinforcements and mercenaries arrived from the city of Kisangani in Tingi Tingi, backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships. Tingi Tingi has some 170,000 Rwandan and Burundian refugees who fled earlier rebel advances. Meanwhile, Laurent Kabila, the rebel leader, was reported to have returned from exploratory peace talks in South Africa and headed for his headquarters in Goma. Some 500 Rwandan Hutus, including officers of the former Hutu Rwandan army, have escaped to Kenya from Tingi Tingi in the last two weeks by air at a cost of pounds 500 seat, Hutu sources said.. Nuclear protest in Germany
About 1,000 protesters tried to block the transport of nuclear waste to a temporary holding site in southern Germany.
Police said 114 people were detained when anti-nuclear activists blocked roads and a bridge as three nuclear-waste containers were transported by truck from Neckarwestheim to nearby Walheim in Baden-Wurttemberg state. Another container was brought by train to Walheim from Grundremmingen in Bavaria. Two more containers also arrived from a nuclear waste reprocessing plant at La Hague in France. The containers will be loaded on a train for the trip to the nuclear waste storage site at Gorleben AP – Stuttgart.
India proposes to slash tax
The Indian government proposed slashing corporate and personal income taxes with a new budget plan.
Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, announced that the government planned to reduce the tax on domestic corporations to 35 per cent from 40 per cent, and to abolish a tax on dividends. Mr Chidambaram also proposed scrapping a 7.5 per cent surcharge on corporations. He added that the budget, which must be approved by parliament, would cut personal income- tax rates across the board and bring down the maximum rate to 30 per cent from 40 Reuters – New Delhi. Smokers’ check
United States government regulations on cigarettes that went into effect yesterday require vendors to check the identification of all cigarette- buying customers who look younger than 27. The Food and Drug Administration rules are intended to thwart mature-looking youths under the legal smoking age of 18 Failure to comply could cost store owners $250 AP – Washington. Peking – China’s election year formally kicks off this morning with the start of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s parliament.