Briefly

UNITED KINGDOM

Driver admits to truck death charges

A British truck driver on Wednesday pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 39 Vietnamese migrants who were found dead in a refrigerated container last year. Maurice Robinson, 25, from Ireland, pleaded guilty to the 39 counts at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales in London. At the same hearing, co-defendant Gheorghe Nica denied 39 counts of manslaughter. Both men appeared via video-link at the hearing. The bodies of the Vietnamese were discovered in the refrigerated trailer at an industrial estate in Essex on Oct 23 last year. The trailer arrived in Britain on a ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium.

UNITED NATIONS

Guterres hunting for new Libya envoy

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has begun searching for a new envoy to Libya, diplomatic sources said on Wednesday, after the United States refused to endorse the previous candidate. Former Algerian foreign minister Ramtane Lamamra seemed to be all but confirmed in early March. But the US increasingly posed "questions" about his candidacy, even though "everyone else" supported him, a diplomat said. On Wednesday, during a closed-door meeting on Libya, a UN official told the UN Security Council that Guterres had begun a search for a new candidate, another source said.

RUSSIA

Finger pointed at US research group

Russia on Wednesday labeled the US research and analysis institute the Jamestown Foundation an "undesirable organization", potentially paving the way for the group to be banned in the country. The General Prosecutor's Office said it had studied the Washington-based group's publications and concluded that they aimed to fan separatism in some Russian regions, particularly in the North Caucasus, and constituted a security threat.

UNITED STATES

Clinton sex-scandal figure Tripp dies

Linda Tripp, the former US civil servant whose secretly taped telephone conversations with a former White House intern documented the sex scandal that led to then-president Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment, died on Wednesday at age 70. The Daily Mail in Britain said Tripp succumbed to a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. She became forever linked with the sex scandal that nearly brought down Clinton's presidency by way of her role in exposing the extramarital affair he had with Tripp's acquaintance Monica Lewinsky, the former intern.

China Daily - Agencies