2 investigated in case of missing student
ORANJESTAD -- The attorney for two former security guards arrested in the disappearance last month of an Alabama honors student said yesterday his clients were being investigated for murder and kidnapping. The men have not been charged in the disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway and authorities have not said she was a victim of foul play. Earlier in the day, police said they had not ruled out accidental death in the case. A judge was to determine today whether authorities have enough evidence to continue to hold the two men, who deny any connection to the high school graduate, said defense lawyer Chris Lejuez. (AP)
SWEDEN
World spent $1 trillion on armies, group says
STOCKHOLM -- Global military spending in 2004 broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time since the Cold War, boosted by the US war against terror and the growing defense budgets of India and China, a European think tank said yesterday. Led by the United States, which accounted for almost half of all military expenditure, the world spent $1.035 trillion on defense, equal to 2.6 percent of global gross domestic product, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said. Besides its regular defense budget, the United States has allocated $238 billion since 2003 to fight terrorism, according to the report. (AP)
RUSSIA
Government to launch 24-hour TV in English
MOSCOW -- Faced with international criticism over the Yukos Oil crackdown, the war in Chechnya, and a perceived rollback of democratic freedoms, the Russian government announced yesterday it would launch a 24-hour satellite television station in English to offer an alternative glimpse of the world through Russian eyes. Officials overseeing the $30 million-a-year project, dubbed ''Russia's BBC" by its backers, said the broadcast would remain outside direct government control but would present a Russian perspective on issues from the war in Iraq to the proposed European Constitution, not usually heard in the international mass media. Backers hope to have the service, Russia Today, operating by year's end. Financing for the first year's budget will come from a combination of government and private lending sources that have yet to be determined. (Los Angeles Times)
Uzbekistan crackdown is called a massacre
MOSCOW -- A human rights group yesterday called Uzbekistan's crackdown on protesters last month a ''massacre" and urged Washington to suspend talks on long-term plans for the US military base there until the Central Asian nation agrees to an international investigation. Human Rights Watch said it interviewed 50 victims and witnesses who testified that government troops fired repeatedly on demonstrators in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan on May 13 and killed many others as they fled. It said that it couldn't give a precise number of casualties but that hundreds had been slain. ''The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre," the New York-based group said. (AP)
AFGHANISTAN
Al Qaeda suspect flown to the US
KABUL -- Human Rights Watch urged Washington to respect the rights of a senior Al Qaeda suspect arrested in Pakistan as the American military confirmed he had been transferred to US custody and flown to the United States. Abu Farraj al-Libbi, who is accused of masterminding two assassination attempts against Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, was captured after a shootout with Pakistani agents in the country's northwest on May 2. Colonel James Yonts, the US military spokesman in neighboring Afghanistan, said in an e-mail that Libbi was taken from Pakistan to the United States and was not brought to Afghanistan. He gave no other details. (AP)
