WORLD IN BRIEF

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Kazakh President Approves Elimination of Term Limits

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has approved constitutional amendments allowing him to stay in office for life, a move the opposition condemned. The United States welcomed the changes, which include additional responsibilities for an expanded parliament, as a "good step forward for democracy in Kazakhstan."

Parliament proposed last week to allow Nazarbayev, the president since 1991 whose current term expires in 2012, to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms in the oil-rich state. Nazarbayev signed the amendments Monday, and they achieved full validity with official publication Tuesday.

asia

· SHANGHAI -- The maker of a Chinese toothpaste found to contain a potentially deadly chemical said he was under investigation but called the product safe.

Chen Yaozu, general manager of Danyang Chengshi Household Chemical Co., said his firm had exported toothpaste to Panama containing diethylene glycol, a chemical blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in Panama after it was mixed into cough syrup.

But Chen said the chemical, a thickening agent often used as a low-cost substitute for glycerin, was permitted under Chinese rules and was safe in small amounts.

· MANILA -- Southeast Asian nations appealed to Burma to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy leader who has spent more than 11 of the last 17 years in detention. Calls for Suu Kyi's freedom have been growing as her latest term nears completion Sunday.

· MANADO, Indonesia -- Prosecutors have moved to overturn a ruling that cleared a local unit of Newmont Mining Corp. in a high-profile pollution case, officials said. On April 24, a court in Manado cleared PT Newmont Minahasa Raya and its American president, Richard Ness, of charges related to the dumping of toxic waste into a bay near a gold mine in North Sulawesi and making people sick.

the middle east

· TEHRAN -- Iran raised gasoline prices 25 percent in a new blow to consumers already disgruntled over high inflation. The government said it would begin rationing fuel in two weeks.

Iran produces 4.2 million barrels of crude oil a day but can refine only about 10.5 million gallons of gasoline a day. It imports gas to meet increasing demand.

· GENEVA -- Iraqi children are caught in a rapidly worsening tragedy as violence tightens its grip on their homeland, the U.N. Children's Fund said Wednesday.

Four million Iraqis -- nearly 15 percent of the population -- have fled their homes since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, UNICEF said. Half the refugees are children.

europe

· LONDON -- The archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of 77 million Anglicans worldwide, has not invited two wayward U.S. bishops to a major conference next year, which could further roil the divided communion.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has sent invitations to more than 800 Anglican bishops asking them to attend the Lambeth Conference in July and August 2008 but has not invited Gene Robinson, the Anglican Church's first openly gay bishop, and Martyn Minns, head of a new Nigerian-based church branch in the United States designed as a refuge for orthodox believers.

· BELFAST -- Britain formed a new Catholic-Protestant panel to oversee Northern Ireland's police force. For the first time it will include officials from Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, which had boycotted the Northern Ireland Policing Board since its creation in 2001.

· MOSCOW -- Sergei Mavrodi, who fleeced millions of people of their savings, was freed from prison, ending a saga that symbolized the chaotic free-for-all of 1990s Russia.

· MINSK, Belarus -- Two opposition activists, whose three-year prison sentences prompted condemnation by the United States and European Union, were freed a year early. Paval Sevyarynets and Mikola Statkevich were sentenced in 2005 for organizing protests after a disputed 2004 referendum that allowed Alexander Lukashenko a third term.

africa

· NEW YORK -- Three journalists for the New York Times were arrested by the Ethiopian military and held for five days, the newspaper reported. The journalists were detained May 16 near the Somali border. Nairobi bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman and two others were interrogated at gunpoint and released Monday without being charged, the paper said.

-- From News Services