Over 100 slain in South Sudan cattle raid

MORE than 100 people including women and children have been killed in a cattle raid by heavily-armed rebels in South Sudan's troubled Jonglei state, the governor says.

The people of Walgak in Akobo County were migrating north to the wetlands with cattle on Friday "and were being escorted by an army platoon when they came under attack by a huge force using automatic weapons", Jonglei governor Kuol Manyang said on Sunday.

He said 103 people were killed, including 14 soldiers from the platoon, while the rest were civilians, mostly women and children.

Deputy military spokesman Kella Kueth confirmed the incident and said some 500 people were still missing.

He was not however able to confirm the military casualties.

Manyang said the raiders were a mixture of civilians and armed rebels and were all ethnic Murle from Pibor County in Jonglei.

Six months after South Sudan declared independence from Sudan, its eastern Jonglei state was engulfed in ethnic violence when thousands of youths from the Lou Nuer tribe marched on Pibor vowing to wipe out the Murle.

The UN says more than 600 people were killed in that attack and about 300 more in smaller reprisal attacks. Local estimates were much higher, running into the thousands.

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Chinese 'ping pong diplomacy' figure dies

ZHUANG Zedong, a key figure in 1971's groundbreaking "ping pong diplomacy" between China and the United States, has died, China's official Xinhua News Agency reports.

Zhuang was 72 and had struggled with cancer since 2008.

A three-time world champion in table tennis, Zhuang won new fame by presenting a gift to American player Glenn Cowan, who had inadvertently boarded a bus carrying the Chinese team at the World Championships in Nagoya, Japan, in 1971.

Zhuang and Cowan were photographed together, creating an international sensation at a time when China and the US were bitter Cold War rivals.

Under orders from Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the 15-member American team was then invited to China at the end of the Nagoya championships for an ice-breaking visit.

Ten months later, President Richard Nixon made a surprise visit to China, leading to the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1979.

Zhuang became a favourite of Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, a member of the notorious Gang of Four, which held sway over China's cultural scene during the radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Jiang appointed Zhuang to a number of political posts in the sports ministry.

Zhuang came under investigation after the Gang was deposed and Jiang imprisoned following Mao's death in 1976, and subsequently spent years coaching the provincial team in the northern province of Shanxi.

He returned to Beijing in 1985 and coached young players for several years.

Zhuang was married twice and had one daughter.

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Britain rules out 'panic' EU meat ban

BRITAIN'S food minister has ruled out imposing a ban on importing meat from EU countries due to the horsemeat scandal unless there is a threat to human health.

Owen Paterson dismissed the idea of slapping an immediate ban on such imports but warned he would not hesitate to do so if public health was at risk.

Eating horse is considered taboo in Britain and tests have found some frozen ready meals produced in mainland Europe and labelled as processed beef actually contained up to 100 per cent horsemeat, triggering a Europe-wide scandal.

Asked by Sky News television on Sunday about imposing a ban, he said: "Arbitrary measures like that are not actually going to help. Firstly we are bound by the rules of the European market.

"Should this move from an issue of labelling and fraud and there is evidence of material which represents a serious threat to human health, I won't hesitate to take action.

"But at the moment we do not have evidence that these materials are a threat to human health; they are a case of mislabelling.

"That is not the basis for a panic measure stopping all imports, which would be in breach of the rules of the market."

Paterson said he feared there could be a "criminal conspiracy" afoot to hoodwink consumers by passing off horsemeat as beef.

The head of the British parliament's food affairs scrutiny panel earlier called for a ban on EU meat imports.

Anne McIntosh, chair of the House of Commons' Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, urged consumers to buy British beef to reassure themselves that it is not contaminated with equine flesh.

"I believe there should be a moratorium on the movement of all meat until such time as we can trace the source of the contamination and until we can establish whether there has been fraud either of the meat or of the labelling," she said.

"None of our meat, none of our slaughter houses, are implicated and we should be buying as local as possible and we should be buying fresh meat from the butcher, farm shop and supermarket," she said.

Meanwhile Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he was "very confident" that hospitals were making sure they were not providing horsemeat dressed up as beef to patients.

"All hospitals have a responsibility to make sure that the food they're serving is safe," he told BBC television.

"We don't believe at the moment that there are public safety issues," he said.

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Mali troops, rebels battle in Gao

A GUN battle between Malian soldiers and suspected Islamist rebels has erupted in the streets of Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, which has been rocked by suicide bombings each of the past two days.

The two groups were trading gunfire in the centre of the city, near the central police station, an AFP correspondent said.

French-led forces reclaimed Gao on January 26 from al-Qaeda-linked rebels who had seized control of northern Mali for 10 months in the wake of a military coup.

The street battle comes after a suicide bomber blew himself up late Saturday at an army checkpoint at the entrance to the city, following a similar attack on the same spot the day before.

The two suicide blasts were the first such attacks in Mali.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Islamist groups that had occupied the north before being pushed out by the French intervention launched on January 11, claimed the first attack, and had threatened earlier Saturday that there would be more.

"We are dedicating ourselves to carrying out more attacks against France and its allies. We ask the local population to stay far away from military zones and avoid explosions," spokesman Abou Walid Sahraoui said.

The two suicide bombers were the only fatalities in the attacks.

One soldier was slightly wounded in Friday's bombing.

No one else was wounded in Saturday's attack, a soldier at the checkpoint said.

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Foodmaker to sue supplier over horsemeat

FROZEN food producer Findus Nordic says it will sue French firm Comigel and its suppliers after horsemeat was found in its beef lasagnes.

"This is a breach of contract and fraud," the head of Findus Nordic, Jari Latvanen, said in a statement on Sunday announcing the legal action.

"Such behaviour on the part of a supplier is unacceptable," he added, noting the meat in its lasagnes was supposed to be French, German or Austrian beef.

Findus has asked its suppliers to certify their meat, but Comigel was the only one to report irregularities, he said.

According to Latvanen, the system had actually worked well because it uncovered the fraud.

"No law can prevent someone from intentionally carrying out fraud, using horsemeat and falsifying documents," he said.

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Five dead in cruise ship accident in Spain

SPANISH officials say five people have been killed and three injured when a lifeboat fell into the sea off a cruise ship that was tied up at the port of Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands.

Citing the islands' Emergency and Security Co-ordination Centre, a government statement said rescue personnel were called to the dockside at 1205 GMT (2305 AEDT) on Sunday after "a lifeboat with occupants had fallen overboard from a cruise ship docked at the pier of Santa Cruz port in La Palma".

The nationality or sex of those who died was not known, the statement said, adding the injured were all men, two aged 30 and another, a Greek national, was 32 years old.

National broadcaster RTVE said the cruise ship was British registered.

British company Thomson Cruises issued a statement after the incident, saying it "is aware of an incident involving the ship's crew on board Thomson Majesty, in La Palma, Canary Islands".

"We are working closely with the ship owners and managers, Louis Cruises, to determine exactly what has happened and provide assistance to those affected by the incident," the statement added.

A reporter at the dockside said all of those in the lifeboat at the time of the accident were crew members.

Television images showed a small, white two-hulled lifeboat capsized beside the ship.

It was not immediately clear if there were any other people in the lifeboat when it crashed into the sea, or whether the Thomson Majesty ship had any passengers on it.

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Twins confound French police in rape case

FRENCH police investigating a series of rapes in the southern city of Marseille are confounded after tracing DNA evidence to a set of twins but not knowing which one may be to blame.

With telling the difference between the twins' DNA extremely difficult and expensive, police have in the meantime charged both men, 24-year-olds identified only as Elwin and Yohan, and are holding them without bail.

"It's a rather rare case for the alleged perpetrators to be identical twins," chief investigator Emmanuel Kiehl said.

Police admit that without far more extensive tests it will be difficult to figure out which of the twins was possibly behind the attacks or whether both men were indeed involved.

The two, both unemployed delivery drivers, deny any involvement in the rapes of six women between between September and January.

Police tracked them down through video footage recorded on a bus and a mobile telephone allegedly taken from one of the victims and found in the brothers' possession.

The victims' mobile phones were taken in each of the attacks, which took place in the corridors of buildings and involved women aged 22 to 76.

Police said the victims were also able to identify the suspects, but not to tell them apart.

Kiehl said DNA evidence was found at some of the crime scenes but that regular tests were incapable of differentiating between the twins. The cost of extensive-enough tests would be "onerous", he said.

Local newspaper La Provence reported that police were told it could cost up to 1 million euros ($A1.3 million) for the necessary tests.

It quoted a DNA expert saying that only the smallest of differences exist in the DNAs of identical twins.

"For a normal analysis we compare 400 base pairs," the expert said, adding that with twins: "We would be looking at billions."

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