World Briefs

Six decades after his death, some of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes have been scattered off South Africa's coast.

An early morning service yesterday in a harbour in the eastern city of Durban on the anniversary of Gandhi's death included the laying of flowers and candles on the water's surface.

After Gandhi was killed by a Hindu hard-liner in 1948 in New Delhi, his ashes were divided, stored in steel urns and sent around the world for memorial services. It was not unusual for some of the ashes to have been preserved instead of scattered as intended.

Twelve die in suicide blast

A suicide bomber yesterday killed 12 people at a police checkpoint in a northwest Pakistani tribal area where the military declared victory over the Taliban and al Qaida last year.

Ten civilians and two police officers died in the suicide attack in the Bajur tribal region, while 24 people were wounded, local government official Bakhat Pacha said.

The attacker, on foot, struck a market area in the region's main town, Khar, he said.

The attack came a day after officials said security forces had killed 44 militants in three days of battles on the outskirts of Khar.

Snow deaths

Heavy snow and high winds have caused traffic chaos in Germany, leaving three people dead and dozens more injured.

Police say one person was killed and more than 40 injured in over 300 accidents yesterday and the day before in the northwestern state of North Rhine-Wesphalia alone.

Two other people were killed in separate accidents on slick roads in the southern state of Bavaria.

In the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania all public transit was shut down in the city of Rostock as the area was hit with high winds and 12 inches of new snow overnight.

Activist convicted of doctor's death

An activist who confessed to gunning down one of the only US doctors to offer late-term abortions faces a sentence of life in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

Jurors took just 37 minutes on Friday to convict Scott Roeder of putting a .22-calibre gun to Dr. George Tiller's forehead and pulling the trigger in the foyer of a church.

Roeder's attorneys had hoped to argue for a lesser conviction of voluntary manslaughter, based on the defendant's belief that the killing was justified to save the lives of unborn children. But the judge threw out that defence, leaving jurors to choose between a murder conviction or acquittal.

Abortion-rights advocates said the decision would send a message to the militant fringe of the anti-abortion movement.

Bin Laden blasts us for climate change

Terror chief Osama bin Laden sought to draw a wider public into his fight against the US in a new message, dropping his usual talk of religion and holy war and focusing instead on an unexpected topic - global warming.

The al Qaida leader blamed the US and other industrialised nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott US goods and stop using the dollar.

Bin Laden and other al Qaida leaders have mentioned global warming and struck an anti-globalisation tone in previous tapes and videos. But the latest was the first message by bin Laden solely dedicated to the topic. It was also nearly entirely empty of the Islamic militant rhetoric that usually fills his declarations.

The new message comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day. In the new tape, bin Laden refers to the December 18 climate conference in Copenhagen - indicating the message was made recently.