World
Roundup
From Herald Wire Services
JORDAN
ISRAELI DIAMOND DEALER
KILLED IN AMMAN HOME
AMMAN -- An
Israeli diamond trader living in Jordan was shot and killed in what
Jordanian officials said Tuesday appeared to be a financial dispute.
Gunmen killed the Israeli on Monday night,
hours after he had returned from Israel to his residence in the
Jordanian capital of Amman, a senior Jordanian official close to the
investigation said on condition of anonymity.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Yaffa Ben-Ari
identified the slain diamond trader as Yitzhak Snir.
His body was found Tuesday morning in the yard of the house where
he lived during frequent visits to Jordan, said an Israeli Embassy
spokesman.
ZIMBABWE
RULING PARTY
MILITANTS ATTACK WHITES FOR LAND
HARARE -- Ruling party militants
attacked whites and stoned cars Tuesday near where at least 23 white
farmers were arrested the day before for alleged violence against
land occupiers.
Three white women were assaulted and cars driven by whites were
stoned, witnesses said. Militants also dragged another white person
from a shop and attacked a black woman who implored them to stop.
The militants have occupied at least 1,700 white-owned farms in
Zimbabwe.
The government of President Robert Mugabe backs the seizure of
the farms for redistribution to blacks who are landless, despite a
Supreme Court ruling that the occupations are illegal.
VATICAN
MARRIED ARCHBISHOP
MEETS WITH POPE
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II
met on Tuesday with an archbishop who was married in one of the Rev.
Sun Myung Moon's mass weddings and broke his vow of celibacy. The
Vatican said it was the start of a dialogue, but its threat to
excommunicate the archbishop remains.
The Rev. Emmanuel Milingo had his audience with the pope at the
pontiff's summer retreat outside Rome. A Vatican statement said it
hoped the meeting could ``lead to positive developments.''
But the Vatican has already threatened to kick Milingo out of the
church if he doesn't leave his wife by Aug. 20, sever ties with
Moon's movement and remain celibate.
TURKEY
25 PROTESTERS AGAINST
SHARON VISIT DETAINED
ISTANBUL -- Police detained 25
people protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
visit to Turkey this week, Turkish media reported Tuesday.
The protesters, many of them women wearing black Islamic head
scarves, gathered on a crowded passenger street in central Istanbul
to shout slogans denouncing Sharon and Israel.
GHANA
TRIBE'S HONORARY KING
IS BELGIAN BUSINESSMAN
AGBOZUME -- Draped in brightly
colored kente cloth, a Belgian businessman has been named the
unlikely king of a traditional community in Ghana's lush eastern
Volta region.
Muskets blasted and dancers swirled as King Kofi Arthur Paes, 45,
was sworn in as honorary leader of about 60,000 people from the Ewe
tribe living in the market town of Agbozume and surrounding
villages.
The ceremony took place July 14.
Grasping a traditional sword, he pledged to promote development
in the largely agricultural region of West Africa -- paying
attention to improving the local secondary school.
Paes returned home to Maasmechelen soon after the ceremony, but
has promised to make frequent visits to Ghana, where he hopes to
help promote local industries, including pineapple and salt
production.
SPAIN
BIRD-CATCHING BATS
FEAST IN MID-AIR
MADRID -- Spanish scientists say a
species of giant bat whose habitat includes a park in downtown
Seville catches birds and eats them in mid-air.
Many of the 1,000-plus bat species eat insects, although others
like fruit and a few drink mammal or bird blood.
About a dozen species in tropical areas eat birds occasionally,
usually as they roost or sleep, said Javier Juste, a biologist based
at the Donana Nature Reserve in southern Spain.
But the species known as the greater noctule bat, which has a
wing span of up to 1 1/2 feet -- making it Europe's largest bat --
seems to be the first known to systematically capture birds in
flight and devour them in mid-air, Juste said.
