World Scene

CUBA

Cabinet minister fired over power crisis

HAVANA — The Cuban government yesterday dismissed its most powerful Cabinet minister, who is related to President Fidel Castro, blaming him for an electricity crisis that has weakened the economy and caused long blackouts.

Basic Industry Minister Marcos Portal was denounced for failing to warn the country’s leadership of the energy shortage and “serious errors” in management of the key nickel exporting industry, the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma said.

Mr. Portal, who is married to one of Mr. Castro’s nieces, is a member of the party’s political bureau and sits on the council of state.

CHINA

Border agreement signed with Russia

BEIJING — China and Russia settled the last of their decades-old border disputes yesterday during a visit by President Vladimir Putin, signing an agreement fixing their 2,700-mile-long border for the first time.

The struggle over border areas resulted in violent clashes in the 1960s and 1970s, when strained Sino-Soviet relations were at their most acrimonious, feeding fears abroad that the conflict could erupt into nuclear war.

Beijing and Moscow had reached agreements on individual border sections as relations warmed in the past decade. But a stretch of river and islands along China’s northeastern border with Russia’s Far East had remained in dispute.

BRITAIN

Assets frozen for Zarqawi’s group

LONDON — The Bank of England is ordering a freeze on any assets belonging to a terrorist group that claimed responsibility for kidnapping and beheading two Americans and a Briton in Iraq.

Treasury chief Gordon Brown told lawmakers in the House of Commons yesterday that he instructed the bank to direct all financial institutions in Britain to freeze any assets of the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The group has been at the forefront of the opposition to U.S.-led forces in Iraq and has claimed responsibility for attacks on American troops and Iraqis, and for the beheadings of several foreign hostages, including American engineers Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley and British engineer Kenneth Bigley.

CANADA

Cargo plane crashes, killing seven

HALIFAX — A Boeing 747 cargo jet bound for Spain with a crew of seven crashed in a fireball after its tail section apparently broke off during takeoff at Halifax International Airport early yesterday, killing all aboard.

The MK Airlines jet loaded with lawn tractors and 58 tons of lobster and fish crashed shortly before 4 a.m. local time into a largely wooded area near an industrial park north of Halifax, a spokesman in Britain for the Ghana-based carrier said.

The flight had originated from Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Conn., and stopped in Halifax for refueling en route to Zaragoza, Spain.

QATAR

Deposed emir returns from exile

DOHA — The former emir of Qatar, Sheik Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, returned home from exile yesterday, eight years after he was ousted by his son, Sheik Hamad, the official Qatari News Agency reported.

The former emir was returning to attend the funeral of his wife, reports said.

Sheik Hamad toppled his father on July 27, 1995, days after Sheik Khalifa left Doha on a trip abroad, and arrested 36 of his followers. Since then, Sheik Khalifa has been living in exile in France.

From wire dispatches and staff reports