Denmark

Bush: Kyoto treaty was harmful to U.S. economy

President Bush said in a Danish TV interview aired Thursday that adhering to the Kyoto treaty on climate change would have “wrecked” the U.S. economy, and he called U.S. dependence on Gulf oil a “national security problem.”

“I couldn’t in good faith have signed Kyoto,” Bush told the Danish Broadcasting Corp., noting that the treaty did not include other nations – including India and China – that he called “big polluters.”

In Bush’s view, the Kyoto treaty’s mandatory limits also would not ensure that climate risks would be addressed unless countries like China also make emission cuts. He also says more study is needed to determine whether human activity is primarily to blame for rising temperatures.

The interview was recorded Wednesday at the White House. Bush will visit Denmark next week before going to a G-8 summit in Scotland.

Moscow

Men sentenced in activist’s death

A St. Petersburg court Thursday convicted an organizer and a gunman in the slaying of one of post-Soviet Russia’s most prominent pro-democracy figures, sentencing the men to long prison terms. But many mysteries in the case remained unresolved, including whether someone else ordered the killing. The 1998 murder of lawmaker Galina V. Starovoitova, widely viewed as a political assassination, provoked a wave of anger and shock across the country and around the world.

Six people from the Bryansk region, 210 miles southwest of Moscow, were tried for allegedly organizing and carrying out the killing.

Yuri Kolchin, a former military intelligence officer with ties to a former ultranationalist member of Russia’s lower house of parliament, was convicted as an organizer and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. Vitaly Akishin, convicted as a gunman, was sentenced to 23 1/2 years in prison.

Aruba

Prosecutor: Case can be tried without body

Aruba’s attorney general said Thursday she could prosecute a case in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway even if the Alabama teenager’s body is not found.

Caren Janssen also said investigators have found no evidence to suggest that the 18-year-old Holloway, who disappeared May 30, was dead.

“There are no traces or facts to come to the conclusion that Natalee is no longer alive,” Atty. Gen. Caren Janssen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t prosecute without a body. It’s difficult but not impossible.”

Three young men remain in custody in Holloway’s disappearance, but none has been charged.

Dutch teenager Joran van der Sloot, 17, and his friends, Surinamese brothers Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18, were the last people seen with Holloway the night she vanished. The three were questioned in the days after the disappearance but were not arrested until June 9.