World Briefs

Pope Benedict yesterday blessed the coffin of Cardinal Pio Laghi, the Vatican peace envoy dispatched by Pope John Paul II to Washington in 2003 in an effort to avert the US-led invasion of Iraq, during his funeral in St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.

Cardinal Laghi, 85, died on Sunday, of a blood-related illness that he had been suffering from for some time.

A seasoned diplomat, Cardinal Laghi served in the Vatican diplomatic service in Jerusalem, Latin America and the US. He became a cardinal in 1991.

A personal friend of US President George W. Bush's family, Cardinal Laghi met him at the White House just before war broke out and handed over a personal letter from the pope urging him to avoid war and seek a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi crisis.

He was also sent to Jerusalem in 2001 to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to broker a ceasefire in their conflict.

Woman arrested boarding plane with dead baby

Police in Papua New Guinea have detained a woman for trying to smuggle a dead baby through security checks and onto a plane in the capital Port Moresby, reports said yesterday. The husband fled the scene, the Post-Courier newspaper said.

The baby was wrapped in cloth in a traditional string carry-bag. The couple were attempting to board a flight from Port Moresby to Lae, the country's second-largest city, where they planned to bury the body.

Police said the woman had no documents to transport the body and authorities could not confirm the woman was the child's mother, the paper said.

There have been reports that most Papuans can no longer afford to pay for coffins and funerals, leading to overcrowding at the morgue, where the daily storage charge for bodies is equivalent to the daily wage.

US pilot bails out of plane to fake death

A pilot wanted on financial fraud charges parachuted out of his plane over Alabama and allowed the aircraft to crash in neighbouring Florida in an apparent attempt to fake his death, said sheriff's investigators. The pilot, identified as Marcus Schrenker, 38, was the only person aboard the plane that took off for Florida from Anderson, Indiana.

Over Alabama, the pilot made a bogus emergency call, saying the plane's windshield had imploded and he was bleeding profusely. He then put the plane on autopilot and parachuted out, investigators said.

Military jets were scrambled to aid the plane, a Piper PA-46 Turbo Prop, and the military pilots noticed the Piper's door was open. They followed the empty plane to northwest Florida, where it crashed near the city of Milton, in a swampy area within a few hundred yards of houses.

Two men stoned for adultery, third escapes

Two men convicted of adultery in Iran were stoned to death in December, but a third convicted man escaped while the punishment was being carried out, the judiciary said yesterday.

Iran has been heavily criticised by the EU, rights groups and the UN for stoning criminals and there are official Iranian recommendations the practice should not occur. The last officially reported stoning in the Islamic Republic was carried out in 2007.

"We had three instances of stoning in the city of Mashhad," judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi told a news conference, referring to a city in eastern Iran.

"The stonings were carried out on two (men) who had been charged with crimes such as having adulterous relationships with married women, and the third (man) managed to escape from the pit," he said.

German elite police detained after off-duty brawl

Three elite Frankfurt police officers who were involved in an off-duty brawl at a brothel have been detained by police and are under investigation for assault, a Frankfurt police spokesman said yesterday.

Confirming a report in Bild newspaper, the spokesman said the three officers of the elite SEK anti-terrorism unit had been transferred to another department pending the outcome of the investigation by the state prosecutors' office.

The three officers, aged 30, 32 and 35, were in a red-light district of Germany's financial capital after an office party.

They got into a dispute with the brothel's bouncers that turned violent. Police arriving detained the three off-duty colleagues.