UNITED NATIONS: Another top UN official has been implicated in United Nations oil for food programme for Iraq as the investigation into the scandal-plagued programme unfolds.
The official is the UN’s top envoy for talks on North Korea, the Canadian-born millionaire, Maurice Strong, who decided on Wednesday to suspend his work as investigators probed into his ties to a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the UN oil-for-food scandal.
Secretary General Kofi Annan is also reconsidering a policy that Mr Strong and other part-time UN employees like him are not required to disclose their finances to avoid possible conflicts of interest, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
When asked about Mr Strong’s many financial deals which clearly suggested “conflicts of interests” and his previous record on business deals, he said: Yes, we’re putting together a chart for you on his various jobs within the UN system.”
Actor John Mills dies at 97
LONDON: British actor Sir John Mills, who won an Oscar in 1971 for his portrayal of a mute village idiot in “Ryan’s Daughter”, died on Saturday aged 97, a trustee for his estate said.
John Mills made his name in patriotic films during and after World War Two including “The October Man”, “Scott of the Antarctic”, “Dunkirk” and “Ice Cold in Alex”.
Handsome and dapper, he embodied to many the archetypal British war hero, either as the cool-headed gentleman officer or the resigned working class soldier.
His first big break came in 1946, when he played Pip in a film version of Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations”.
He won the best actor award at the Venice Festival for the film and went on to take an Oscar as best supporting actor a decade later for “Ryan’s Daughter”, directed by David Lean.—Reuters
Exploding toads baffle experts
BERLIN: Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported on Saturday: they exploded.
According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a metre.
It is like “a science fiction film”, according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.
“You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding.”
He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size.
Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds”, attack the toads, literally scaring them to death.
Cop kidnapped in Sri Lanka
By Our Correspondent
COLOMBO: A police inspector in charge of cracking down terrorist activities in the Colombo district is believed to have been abducted by members of the LTTE. Police Inspector T. Jeyaratnam who played a key role in tracking down LTTE suspects in Colombo is reported missing since Wednesday, police sources said.
The Inspector who was living with his family at the police quarters in the region of Mt. Lavinia had left home for duty on April 20 with a Tamil national identified as Manoj who had been residing in Colombo.
India-BD border
By Our Correspondent
DHAKA: India’s Border Security Forces (BSF) killed two Bangladeshi villagers in the frontier district of Jhenidah on Saturday, raising the death toll to four since April 16.
A spokesman for the Bangladesh Rifles said in Dhaka the BSF had fired on the villagers near the international border at Gopalpur while the two were talking to their relatives.
“They were shot at from point-blank range,” said Hasan Suhrawardi, the spokesman.
