Indonesia

Japan confirms meeting with Chinese president

Japan said today that its Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao in an effort to settle an ongoing dispute over its handling of its wartime atrocities.

The meeting would take place tonight along the sidelines of a summit for Asian and African leaders in Jakarta.

“The prime minister said they will talk about friendship and cooperation, which are the key to prosperity of the region,” said Akira Chiba, a spokesman for Koizumi’s delegation. “We were very eager to meet each other and we are happy that it’s happening.

There was no immediate response from China.

Relations between the two Asian powers have plunged to a three-decade low, with massive anti-Japanese protests erupting in several Chinese cities in recent weeks over Tokyo’s handling of its wartime atrocities and its bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

At the start of the summit Friday, Koizumi apologized for his country’s World War II aggression in an apparent bid to defuse tensions with China, but Beijing urged Tokyo to back its words with action.

London

‘Shoebomb’ conspirer gets 13-year jail term

A British judge sentenced a Muslim scholar to 13 years in prison Friday after he admitted conspiring with shoebomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner in 2001.

Judge Adrian Fulford said he believed that Saajid Badat backed out of an alleged plot with Reid, who was subdued by passengers when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his shoe aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001, with 197 people on board.

Prosecutors said Badat, 25, of Gloucester, England, conspired to detonate a bomb in a shoe on a different flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to the United States in a plan coordinated with Reid. But he had second thoughts and never bought a ticket for the flight.

The U.S. destination of that flight was not specified in court.

Badat pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge two months ago. Had he been convicted at trial without pleading guilty, the judge said Friday he would have recommended a sentence of at least 50 years.

Rome

President asks for new Cabinet

Italy’s president Friday asked Silvio Berlusconi to form a new government, two days after the conservative media mogul stepped down as premier following a crushing defeat in regional elections.

The new government would be Italy’s 60th since the republic was founded in 1946.

Berlusconi must submit a list of new ministers to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, and those ministers could be sworn in as soon as today. Berlusconi also said he expected to go before parliament for a confidence vote next week.

The conservative leader said the government’s new platform would focus on aiding Italy’s underdeveloped south and financially pressed families — as demanded by some of his political allies, including the National Alliance party.

Berlusconi’s troubles stem from his conservative coalition’s embarrassing defeat in regional elections this month, where it lost 12 out the 14 regions at stake.

Voters have punished the premier mainly because of Italy’s sluggish economy, which grew by 1.2 percent last year, compared with an average growth of 2 percent in the 12 nations using the euro currency.

Germany

Court orders retrial in cannibal case

A German court Friday ordered a retrial for a man convicted last year of killing and eating another man, giving prosecutors a chance to get a tougher sentence than one imposed last year by a lower court.

Armin Meiwes was sentenced by a court in the city of Kassel to 8 1/2 years for manslaughter in the 2001 death of Bernd Juergen Brandes. Prosecutors appealing that sentence said he should be given a life sentence for murder.

The Federal Court of Justice overturned the conviction and sent the case to a state court in Frankfurt for retrial. No date was set for the new trial.

Meiwes confessed in the original trial to the March 2001 killing of Brandes at Meiwes’ home in Rotenburg, but he claimed the victim had agreed to be killed.

He said Brandes traveled from Berlin after answering Meiwes’ Internet posting for a young man for “slaughter and consumption.”

“Bernd came to me of his own free will to end his life,” Meiwes said.

However, he said he regretted the killing.

“I had my big kick and I don’t need to do it again,” he said. “I regret it all very much, but I can’t undo it.”