WESTERN EUROPE

ITALY MAY REVISE ABORTION LAW, CABINET MINISTER SAYS

ROME – Italy’s law permitting abortion might be up for revision, a Cabinet minister suggested in an interview published yesterday, after a Vatican-backed voter boycott helped defeat efforts to ease restrictions on assisted procreation and embryo research.

“Today’s Italy has proven to be different from that of yesterday, more attentive to the values of the Catholic tradition,” Regional Affairs Minister Enrico La Loggia told the newspaper La Stampa. “These principles for the protection of life that are being affirmed today must be taken into account.”

Revision of the abortion law would not occur in the immediate future, Mr. La Loggia said, but he added, “I don’t rule out opening a reflection on that to see if everything worked well, to see if it’s possible to push toward solutions that are more apt for today.”

However, other ministers and a top church official suggested the abortion law wouldn’t be touched – an indication of how sensitive the issue is in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic but largely secular country.

Abortion in the first three months of pregnancy has been legal in Italy since 1978. The law survived several attempts to overturn it, including a referendum backed by the Vatican in 1981. Italians upheld abortion on that occasion, dealing a blow to the late Pope John Paul II, who campaigned vigorously against abortion.

– Associated Press

WOMAN WINS RIGHT TO FIGHT FOR SHARE OF SAUDI KING’S FORTUNE

LONDON – A woman who claims to be married to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia has won the right to fight publicly in British courts for a share of his fortune.

A British appeals court granted Janan Harb, 57, the right to appeal a lower court ruling that said the ailing 82-year-old monarch is immune from any lawsuit outside his country. The court also reversed the lower court judge’s decision to grant the king’s request for anonymity. The Saudi Embassy said yesterday that it would continue to assert the king’s immunity from prosecution. To keep the case private, a High Court judge had given it a false name: Maple v. Maple.

– Associated Press

CENTRAL ASIA

CHOLERA OUTBREAK KILLS AT LEAST EIGHT IN KABUL

KABUL, Afghanistan – An outbreak of cholera in the Afghan capital has killed at least eight people, is feared to have infected more than 2,000 others, and is on the verge of turning into an epidemic, a senior epidemiologist working to stem the spread of the disease warned yesterday.

Health officials in the war-shattered city of 4 million – where rubbish and sewage fill roadside ditches, and water wells are polluted – disputed the figures and claimed the threat had been contained. Nevertheless, dozens of tents were being pitched in hospital gardens to isolate patients should the number of cases spike.

“An epidemic is about to break out here,” an epidemiologist and technical director for a U.S. Agency for International Development-backed program, the Rural Expansion of Afghanistan’s Community-based Health Care, Fred Hartman, said. “Cholera is an explosive disease. As soon as water sources are contaminated, it spreads.”

The disease has been detected in wells, the source of drinking water for most Kabul residents, and irrigation ditches. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 sick people have been reported with symptoms that “meet the case definition of cholera,” said Mr. Hartman, who has combatted outbreaks of the disease around the world for 30 years and has been directly involved with efforts to contain it in Afghanistan.

He told the AP that eight or nine people had died in the past two weeks, and warned the disease could spread quickly throughout Kabul and to other provinces.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

MICROSOFT AIDS CHINA IN CENSORING BLOGGERS

SHANGHAI, China – Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, better choose their words carefully – the censors are watching.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corporation’s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities – such as democracy, freedom, and human rights.

“Prohibited language in text, please delete,” the message says.

However, the restrictions appear to apply only to the subject line of such entries. Writing them into the text, with a more innocuous subject heading, seems to be no problem.

Microsoft’s Chinese staff could not be reached immediately for comment.

A spokesman at the tech giant’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., acknowledged that the company is cooperating with the Chinese government to censor its Chinese-language Web portal.

Microsoft and its Chinese business partner, government-funded Shanghai Alliance Investment, work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, a global sales and marketing director for MSN, Adam Sohn, said. But he added, “I don’t have access to the list at this point so I can’t really comment specifically on what’s there.”

Online tests found that apart from politically sensitive words, obscenities and sexual references also are banned.

– Associated Press

MIDDLE EAST

HARIRI HOPEFUL OF ELECTORAL REBOUND

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Lebanese opposition leader Saad Hariri said he’s hopeful of an electoral rebound in the last stage of parliamentary elections after a surprisingly strong showing by his rival, the former military commander Michel Aoun.

The son of slain former premier Rafik Hariri urged supporters in northern Lebanon, where the final stage of the election will be held on Sunday, to “get up and go vote for what we believe in.”

“We’re very confident,” Mr. Hariri, a political novice thrust into leadership of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian forces, said in an interview with the Associated Press.

“I think we have to fight [for seats]. This is what democracy is all about,” he said.

Mr. Aoun – a longtime Syrian foe now allied with pro-Syrian forces – and his allies won 21 of the 58 seats contested Sunday in central and eastern Lebanon, putting the brakes on the anti-Syrian opposition’s quest for a majority in the 128-member legislature.

– Associated Press

SOUTHERN AFRICA

SWAZILAND ADOPTS CONSTITUTION

MBABANE, Swaziland – Lawmakers in this tiny African kingdom have adopted a long-awaited constitution that seeks to meld centuries-old traditions with Western democratic principles.

A joint sitting of the House of Assembly and Senate approved the bill late Monday by a show of hands. King Mswati III must approve the document before it becomes law.

King Mswati, Africa’s last absolute monarch, has been under international pressure to bring reform to his kingdom of about 1 million people. The country has been ruled by royal decree since 1973, when the king’s father, King Sobhuza II, banned political parties.

The new constitution, written by a committee headed by the king’s brother, Prince David, is the product of more than eight years of consultations, including public meetings in all the chiefdoms.

It has a detailed bill of rights, including the right to life, liberty, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and religion, and equal treatment for women. Freedom of expression and assembly also are guaranteed, but political parties are barred from contesting elections.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

SOME LAWMAKERS OPPOSE APPOINTMENT OF FIRST FEMALE CABINET MEMBER

KUWAIT CITY – Several lawmakers – mostly Muslim fundamentalists and tribal representatives who oppose women’s political rights – are challenging the appointment of Kuwait’s first female Cabinet member as unconstitutional, one of them said yesterday.

Ten legislators had signed a request to discuss the appointment in Parliament, a step that could lead to taking it to the Constitutional Court, a legislator, Faisal al-Mislim, said.

An American-educated university teacher and women’s rights activist, Massouma al-Mubarak, was appointed Sunday but has not assumed her post. She is awaiting a decree from the emir or his deputy the crown prince, both of whom are ailing. The measure is only procedural. Ms. al-Mubarak’s appointment became possible when lawmakers in this tiny, oil-rich country granted women the right to vote and run for Parliament on May 16. Kuwaiti women had been kept out of the political scene by a 43-year-old election law that limited political rights to men.

On Sunday, Ms. al-Mubarak was given the planning and administrative development portfolios in Cabinet.

– Associated Press