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<B> JOHANNESBURG. Nelson Mandela celebrates 88th birthday. </B>South Africans marked former President Nelson Mandela’s 88th birthday Tuesday with tributes and praise, and the man who led his country out of apartheid celebrated privately with his children and grandchildren at his Johannesburg home. Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, announced in 2004 that he was retiring and has made few public appearances since then. Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against apartheid. He was released in 1990 to lead negotiations to end decades of racist white rule and was elected president in the country’s first free elections in 1994. He left office in 1999 but continued to play an active role in the fight against poverty, illiteracy and AIDS in Africa.
© LAHORE. Three gang-rape convicts hanged in Pakistan. </B>Three men found guilty of gang-raping a woman were hanged in eastern Pakistan, raising number of such executions to 12 in the country in less than a month, an official said yesterday. The executions took place in the eastern city of Lahore. The men had raped the woman in the nearby town of Sheikhupura in 2000 in front of her family, said Bashir Ahmed Khan, a deputy superintendent of the prison where the men were hanged.
<B>SRINAGAR. One killed in gun battle near famed Kashmir shrine.</B> Suspected Islamist militants fired at a police patrol near Kashmir’s holiest Muslim shrine yesterday, killing a policeman. The shootout took place outside the Hazratbal shrine premises where security forces have cordoned off the area and a search operation is going on, according to a police official. Indian security officials say separatist violence has increased in the state in recent months as snow on mountain passes has melted, allowing militants to move more easily from Pakistani-held territory. Elsewhere, soldiers shot dead four suspected militants in separate gun battles across Kashmir in past the 24 hours, police said. More than 45,000 people have been killed in the region in an Islamic insurgency against Indian rule since 1989.
<B>TOKYO. Eight dead as storms sweep Japan. </B>At least eight people died and 12 went missing in Japan yesterday as torrential rains swept through a wide swathe of the country, triggering mudslides and floods, local media reported. More than 60 cm (23.62 inches) of rain has fallen in the last few days, disrupting rail and road traffic. Weather forecasters warned that the rain could continue and might trigger more mudslides and floods in central and western Japan. About 200 troops joined hundreds of rescue workers in searching collapsed houses and swollen rivers for those missing in the region.
<B>© ABIDJAN. Ivorian youths block roads in ID scheme protest. </B>Youths loyal to Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo blocked roads in the main city Abidjan on Wednesday to protest against an identity scheme for elections due by end-October, police and witnesses said. he scheme, part of a UN-backed peace plan in the war-divided West African state, aims to issue identity papers to around 3.5 million people who are not legally registered. But the country’s ruling party has vowed to block the process, arguing that pro-opposition foreigners may fraudulently gain nationality and voting rights.
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