Globetrotting — UN takes over human genome

TBILISI: Death sentence has been abolished in Georgia with parliament yesterday overwhelmingly approving a special law signed by President Eduard Shevardnadze last weekend. Lawmakers voted 148-1 in favour of the ban on capital punishment, then celebrated the passage with champagne toasts.

Irish President

DUBLIN: Ireland’s new president Mary McAleese, took office today affirming her determination to build bridges across the political and religious divisions of the island. McAleese, a 46-year-old Roman Catholic law professor, is the first of Ireland’s eight presidents to come from British-ruled Northern Ireland.

Russian cut

MOSCOW: Russia’s armed forces will decrease by 20 per cent to 30 per cent by next year as part of the reduction ordered by President Boris Yeltsin, the nation’s top military official has said. Yeltsin wants to cut the bloated armed forces by 1999, end conscription and phase in a smaller, professional force.

Mine tragedy

SHANGHAI: Atleast 23 miners were killed and 15 others reported missing in a coal mine explosion in a village in south western Chongging municipality, a newspaper said here today. Of the 77 miners working in the Gaoshougiao coal mine in Yuhuang village, four escaped on their own and 35 were rescued after the blast on Saturday.

Spiderman in net<.B>

NEW YORK: A 42-year-old man, known to the police who captured him as “spiderman”, has been accused of reckless endangerment and criminal trespass for a pre-dawn attempt to climb a tower of the 107-storey world trade center in new york’s financial district. Tibet quakeLHASA: A powerful earthquake of magnitude 5.1 shook a remote area in the Kunlun mountains of northwestern Tibet early yesterday, but no deaths were reported. The quake was an aftershock of the magnitude 7.5 quake that struck the area on Saturday. The quake yesterday struck a sparsely populated area northwest of the town of Mani in the district of Nagqu.