World Scene

CANADA

Cuban choir members said to seek asylum

OTTAWA — As many as half the members of Cuba’s 40-member National Choir skipped their downtown Toronto hotel Sunday to seek asylum in Canada, the president of the Cuban Canadian Foundation said yesterday.

Among the asylum seekers is baritone Ernesto Hermes Cendoya Sotomayor, foundation President Ismael Sambra said. He said some choir members had returned to their hotel for clothes “and were held by the state security officials.”

Government spokesmen said they had not been advised of the defections, but were checking into the case.

FRANCE

Mayor fined for ban on Muslim show

PARIS — A French court yesterday fined a mayor $900 for banning a fashion show that would have displayed a range of women’s outfits designed to respect Islamic tradition.

The administrative tribunal found that Jean-Pierre Brard, the communist mayor of the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil-sous-Bois, was wrong to have issued a municipal decree last year forbidding the show.

Mr. Brard banned the fashion show because, he said, it promoted the wearing of the Islamic veil, it barred men from being in the audience, and it “could result in a serious disturbance of the peace.”

SERBIA-MONTENEGRO

U.N. council backs start of Kosovo talks

NEW YORK — The U.N. Security Council yesterday endorsed starting talks on Kosovo’s future, clearing the way for tough negotiations on the status of an ethnically divided province run by the United Nations since NATO’s 1999 air war against Yugoslavia.

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