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WORLD IN BRIEF
British soldiers wrap up tents, food and other supplies for earthquake victims in Pakistan before an airlift by British helicopters from an airport in Muzaffarabad.
(Achmad Ibrahim - AP)
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PARIS -- Parliament gave final approval to extending France's state of emergency for three months after the government said the powers were still needed to end the country's worst civil unrest in four decades. The extra powers allow officials to impose curfews and permit police searches at night.
THE HAGUE -- The trial of Slobodan Milosevic was adjourned until next week after the former Yugoslav president said he was feeling too ill to continue. The interruption came a day after Milosevic, 63, requested a six-week recess, citing a medical report that his heart condition has not stabilized. He has chronic high blood pressure.
AMSTERDAM -- The U.N. war crimes tribunal acquitted Sefer Halilovic, the highest-ranking Bosnian Muslim to stand trial in The Hague. The wartime Muslim commander was charged with murder for failing to prevent a massacre of Bosnian Croats in 1993, during the country's 1992-95 war.
THE AMERICAS
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet told a judge he did not believe there were excesses during his 17-year rule, and if there were, God would pardon him, a rights lawyer said.
"Everything I did, all my actions, all of the problems I had I dedicate to God and to Chile, because I kept Chile from becoming communist," Pinochet told a judge regarding the 1973 military coup that put him in power, according to Hernan Quezada, a lawyer for families of human rights victims.
Quezada said he viewed transcripts of Judge Victor Montiglio's recent interrogations of Pinochet. Montiglio is prosecuting a case known as Operation Colombo in which 119 leftists died in 1975. Pinochet, 89, is accused of responsibility.
GUATEMALA CITY -- Guatemala's anti-drug chief has been arrested in the United States for allegedly smuggling narcotics into the country when he was supposed to join a meeting on the war against drugs, Guatemalan officials said.
Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said Adan Castillo, head of Guatemala's anti-narcotics agency, was arrested with two other senior anti-drug officials Tuesday in Virginia. Vielmann said Washington had first alerted Guatemala that Castillo was involved in drug smuggling six months ago.
ASIA
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A video found last week in the hideout of one of Asia's most wanted extremists shows a masked man believed to be the fugitive threatening attacks against the United States, Britain and Australia. Police suspect the man is Noordin Mohammed Top, considered a key leader of the al Qaeda-linked group Jemaah Islamiah.
TOKYO -- A Japanese court on Thursday convicted a U.S. Air Force serviceman of molesting a 10-year-old Japanese girl on the island of Okinawa earlier this year. The Naha District Court gave Staff Sgt. Armando Valdez, 28, a suspended prison sentence of 18 months, a court spokesman said.
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- The United Nations and the British military launched a huge airlift of food and tents to earthquake survivors high in Pakistan's mountains Wednesday as Islamabad appealed to the world for more money. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, asked for more than $5 billion in aid. The Oct. 8 quake killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan, mostly in Kashmir.
-- From News Services
