World briefs 8/20/02

Attorney seeks release of suspect in Pearl killing

KARACHI, Pakistan -- The attorney representing a Pakistani man allegedly detained in connection with a Wall Street Journal reporter's slaying said Monday he again will try to win his client's release.

Malik Nasir Mehmood said past attempts to win the release of Fazal Karim, who reportedly has not been charged, failed because of legal technicalities. He said he hoped to convince the court that Karim's detention was illegal.

Karim was picked up by plainclothes police May 16 in Nazimabad and has not been seen since, the attorney said.

Police have never acknowledged officially that they are holding Karim.

However, police sources said Sunday that Karim and two other militants admitted their involvement in the kidnapping and slaying of reporter Daniel Pearl.

Pearl, 38, was kidnapped Jan. 23 in Karachi while researching links between Pakistani Islamic extremists and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami while allegedly trying to ignite explosives in his shoe.

Russians give Bass Friday deadline to pay

MOSCOW -- The Russian space agency has given 'N Sync singer Lance Bass five days to come up with payment for a trip to the international space station this fall, a spokesman said Monday.

Konstantin Kreidenko, spokesman for the agency, said that if payment is not received by Friday, Bass will not be permitted to take part in the mission, scheduled to begin Oct. 28. The price tag for such a "space tourist trip" is said to be about $20 million.

Bass, who is hoping to be the third tourist to travel to the station, has been training since July at Star City, the Russian cosmonaut center outside Moscow. Bass, 23, would be the youngest person yet in space.

Bass' supporters have blamed paperwork problems for the delay in transferring payment to Russia.

Nigerian court upholds stoning sentence

FUNTUA, Nigeria -- An Islamic high court in northern Nigeria rejected an appeal Monday by a single mother sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex out of wedlock.

Clutching her baby daughter, Amina Lawal cried as the judge delivered the ruling.

Lawal, 30, was first sentenced in March after giving birth to a daughter more than nine months after divorcing.

The judge said the sentence would be carried out as soon as Lawal finishes breast feeding her baby. In June, the court postponed her execution until January 2004 for this reason.

Lawal was given 30 days to appeal the ruling and released on bail. Her lawyers said they would take the case to a higher court.

Lawal is the second Nigerian woman condemned to death for having sex out of wedlock since Islamic law, or Shariah, was introduced in a dozen northern states.

The first, Safiya Hussaini, had her sentence overturned in March by an Islamic appeals court in the city of Sokoto.

Brand-name American food arrives in Cuba

HAVANA -- The first brand-name American food sold directly to Cuba in over four decades arrived this weekend -- a 132-ton shipment of butter, margarine and cereals.

The load, which arrived Sunday, is the first half of a $750,000 order Cuba placed with Marsh Supermarkets Inc. of Indianapolis for its Marsh brand products. The second half of the order is expected to arrive later this month.

With the shipment, Cuba now has purchased about 770,000 tons of American food worth about $125 million since the communist government started taking advantage of a U.S. law easing the 40-year-old American trade embargo to allow direct food sales.

-- From wire reports