World briefs 7/16

At least 50 reported dead in Nepal landslide

KATMANDU, Nepal -- A landslide swept through two mountain villages, killing at least 50 people early Monday, independent Kantipur Radio reported.

The landslide hit Dipsung and Sikundel villages in the Khotang district, about 120 miles east of the capital, Katmandu.

The villagers were asleep and at least 20 houses were crushed, the station said, adding that four people were rescued from the debris. At least 20 people buried by the landslide were sleeping in the same house.

Bad weather and a lack of roads in the remote region were hampering rescue efforts. The village is at least six hours by foot from the nearest town, and rescue crews hadn't reached the area by Monday afternoon.

Every year, landslides and floods triggered by monsoon rains kill hundreds of people in Nepal.

Group takes message to Kremlin by riverboat

MOSCOW -- A small but vocal political group that opposes the Russian government's war in Chechnya used a riverboat Monday to deliver an anti-war message to the seat of Russian government itself: the Kremlin.

Members of the Transnational Radical Party boarded one of the ferries that takes tourists on cruises along the Moscow River, and unfurled a banner calling for immediate peace talks as the boat chugged past the crenelated red brick walls of the Kremlin.

There was no visible reaction from the Kremlin, where President Vladimir Putin's office is located, and Putin's press service declined to comment.

The group is seeking talks between Putin and Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. A Transnational Radical Party member, Andrei Rodionov, said the action was meant to "draw society's attention to the need for an end to the war in Chechnya through peace negotiations." The banner read "Putin-Maskhadov negotiations immediately."

U.S. journalist battles deportation order

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- An American journalist acquitted of publishing a false story under Zimbabwe's tough new media laws battled Monday to reverse a government order giving him 24 hours to leave the country.

Andrew Meldrum, a correspondent for Britain's Guardian newspaper who has lived in Zimbabwe since 1981, met with Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo, but the minister refused to discuss the order.

Maldrum was ordered deported shortly after being acquitted by Judge Godfrey Macheyo. Macheyo found that Meldrum took all reasonable steps to verify his story on the killing of an opposition supporter by ruling party militants. The report was later proved false.

Meldrum, 50, could have been jailed for up to two years.

"I feel I am vindicated. I am delighted," he said.

But the acquittal was overshadowed by the deportation order. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said it was signed last week, "suggesting there was never any intention of a just result."

-- From wire reports