New Zealand Herald

Speight Seized - Crash Erased - Concorde Background - Bush’s Running Mate - Camp David Failure - UN “Bluewashing” - International Space Station - Concorde Investigation - Concorde Crash - Democratic Convention

SPEIGHT SEIZED: Fiji coup leader George Speight and three of his men were arrested by the Army last night after shots were fired at a roadblock. The four men and Speight's 12-year-old niece were travelling to their base at Kalabu school, on the outskirts of Suva, when they were stopped at the Laqere Bridge roadblock by soldiers who fired five warning shots.

- CRASH ERASED: At Terminal 1, the new facility used by Air France and a handful of other international airlines at New York's JFK Airport, all indication of the doomed incoming Concorde flight had been erased yesterday. There was no mention of Flight AF4590 from Paris on the high-tech indicator boards. The main Air France desk at the upper departures level had a sign up - "Closed - ferme." It was deserted.

- CONCORDE BACKGROUND: Concorde is the travel choice of royalty, world leaders, pop stars and tycoons. But even before yesterday's disastrous crash, it was an endangered species. Concorde - slender, swift and graceful, carrying only jetsetters and royalty ...

- BUSH’S RUNNING MATE: WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney, Republican candidate George W. Bush's chosen running mate, ran the Pentagon during the 1991 Gulf War and is a man who speaks softly and carries a very big stick. Cheney, aged 59, is a courtly, somewhat portly figure, whose finest hour came in 1991 when he was Secretary of Defence under Bush's father, former President George Bush, and directed the massive US military operation to expel an Iraqi occupation army from Kuwait.

- CAMP DAVID FAILURE: WASHINGTON - The failure of the Camp David peace talks has once again seen a foreign policy success with which to burnish his scandal-tarnished legacy slip from President Bill Clinton's grasp. Instead, the collapse of the talks has sharpened his image as a would-be peacemaker who has tried tirelessly to leverage US superpower authority and his own political savvy - albeit with mixed results.

- UN “BLUEWASHING”: NEW YORK - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been accused of offering Nike, Royal Dutch Shell and other global giants the right to use the UN emblem to "bluewash" their images. Chief executives of 50 corporates have been invited by Annan to come to UN headquarters in New York today to sign up for a "partnership" scheme to end Third World sweatshops and environmental abuses.

- INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: MOSCOW - Russia docked its living quarters module to the International Space Station yesterday to create history's largest and costliest space ship capable of hosting people. Live television pictures showed the Zvezda living quarters module, which blasted off from the Baikanur space base two weeks ago, approaching the two pieces of the station already joined in orbit.

- CONCORDE INVESTIGATION: PARIS - Investigators probing the crash of an Air France Concorde, which killed 113 people this morning, have found the plane's "black box" flight recorders. The flight data recorder and the voice recorder could hold the key to what caused the plane to plunge in a ball of fire shortly after take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris.

- CONCORDE CRASH: GONESSE - An Air France Concorde carrying German tourists to a five-star cruise crashed in a ball of fire after take-off from Paris on Tuesday, killing 109 people on board and four more on the ground. Air France confirmed that one of the plane's four engines had caught fire on take-off, minutes before the aircraft crashed between two hotels in the town of Gonesse just southwest of Charles de Gaulle airport.

- DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION: LOS ANGELES - Embarrassed Los Angeles cannot find a public place for a party where its citizens can celebrate the Democratic National Convention. To the chagrin of nominee Al Gore, the guest list is swelling for a private bash at the politically incorrect Playboy Mansion.

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