IN BRIEF (Page 12)

Egypt

Saboteurs bomb gas pipeline

Saboteurs bombed an Egyptian gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula on Monday, sending flames shooting into the sky and cutting supplies to Israel and Jordan, a security official said.

Officials said a car had parked near the pipeline in the Bir al-Abd area, 80 kilometers from the northern Sinai town of El-Arish, shortly before the explosion.

They said the bomb was activated remotely. Emergency services were deployed to the area to try to bring the fire under control.

Germany

Habsburg dead at age 98

Otto von Habsburg, the oldest son of Austria-Hungary's last emperor and the longtime head of one of Europe's most influential families, died on Monday, his spokeswoman said. He was 98.

Habsburg died in his sleep at his home in Poecking in southern Germany, spokeswoman Eva Demmerle said.

Born on Nov 20, 1912, Habsburg witnessed the family's decline after the Habsburgs were forced into exile following World War I.

Mexico

6 missing after boat capsizes

One person drowned and six were missing after a fishing boat carrying 27 US tourists capsized in a storm and sank off Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, authorities said on Monday.

The 35-meter chartered boat left the port of San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez, a haven for windsurfers and sports fishermen, on Saturday but was struck by an electrical storm and capsized early on Sunday, port and navy officials said.

Emergency services officials in San Felipe said 27 of the 44 people on board were US citizens.

The Netherlands

Mladic disrupts Hague court

A defiant Ratko Mladic plunged his Yugoslav war crimes tribunal arraignment into chaos on Monday, repeatedly shouting at judges, defying their orders and refusing to enter pleas to 11 charges before the presiding judge threw him out of the hearing.

After a brief adjournment to have Mladic removed, Presiding Judge Alphons Orie resumed the hearing and formally entered not-guilty pleas on Mladic's behalf, in line with court rules for suspects who refuse to plead.

Mladic, 69, is accused of masterminding the worst Serb atrocities of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war that cost 100,000 lives.

He is accused of genocide as the top military official overseeing the 1995 killing of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Europe's worst mass killing since World War II.

AFP-AP-Reuters

(China Daily 07/05/2011 page12)