World briefs 9/27/06

Unauthorized ordinations lead to excommunication

VATICAN CITY -- Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the charismatic Zambian prelate who defied the Holy See by getting married in 2001, has been excommunicated after installing four married men as bishops, the Vatican said Tuesday. Although Vatican authorities, including the late Pope John Paul II, had tried for years to coax Milingo into mending his ways, Rome lost patience with him over the unauthorized ordinations, which threaten papal authority. The Vatican said the 76-year-old prelate was "automatically excommunicated" under church law for the ordinations Sunday at a church in Washington, D.C. The four men also were excommunicated for being ordained, the Vatican said.

Suicide bombing in Afghanistan kills 18

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan -- A Taliban suicide bomber killed 18 people outside a provincial governor Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daoud Safi's compound Tuesday, including several Muslim pilgrims set to travel to Mecca -- another in a series of attacks directed at senior figures in President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government.Safi was in the compound but was not injured.

N. Korea blames U.S. for nuclear talks breakdown

UNITED NATIONS -- North Korea rejected further talks on its nuclear program and blamed the breakdown in negotiations directly on the United States Tuesday, claiming that Washington wants to rule the world. Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon said in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly that U.S. financial sanctions, imposed shortly after a joint statement was issued at six-nation talks on the communist North's nuclear program on Sept. 19, 2005, had convinced Pyongyang that the negotiations were not worth pursuing. In a speech that was peppered with anti-American rhetoric, Choe claimed North Korea has developed nuclear weapons as a deterrent solely for self-defense against pre-emptive strikes by the United States and was eager, in principle, to hold talks, but that Washington's "vicious, hostile policy" made negotiations unacceptable. Washington has denied it has plans to attack North Korea.

Auction house sells art attributed to Hitler

LOSTWITHIEL, England -- Watercolors and sketches attributed to Adolf Hitler sold for twice their estimated price at an auction Tuesday -- but the sale in a tranquil English town was interrupted by a noisy protest by two self-styled "comedy terrorists." The works, reputed to have been created by Hitler as he served in the German military during World War I, sold for $220,000 after security staff removed the gatecrashers. One protester, Aaron Barschak, gained notoriety in 2003 by dressing as Osama bin Laden and crashing Prince William's 21st birthday party. The protest exposed sensitivities over the sale of Hitler's artwork in Lostwithiel, a sleepy tourist town in Cornwall, a county in southwestern England. Chris Walton, a spokesman for Jefferys Auctioneers, said the 21 watercolors and two sketches, most of them landscapes, sold individually for prices from $6,100 to $19,975.

-- From wire reports