World in brief

New Zealand's Labour-led government survives poll with backing of Greens | DNA test on Pearl

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday she would form a centre-left government for three years with support from the Greens and other parties. With 99 per cent of the general election vote counted, Clark's Labour Party and its ally, the Progressive Coalition Party, won 54 seats in the 120-seat parliament.
'The Greens support us moving ahead to form a government now,' said Clark. When asked how confident she was about the new administration serving a full three-year term, Clark said she was 'as confident as I was with the last'.

She said the Greens, who have eight seats, would support her government, but the environmentalist party insists it will bring it down next year if a ban on the commercial release of genetically-modified organisms is removed.

Indian Vice-President dies

The Indian Vice-President, Krishan Kant, 75, died yesterday of a heart attack, hospital officials said.

Kant was admitted to a New Delhi hospital yesterday morning, after he complained of severe chest pain.

'He is dead. He was brought to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at 7.40 am (2:10am GMT) after a heart attack,' a spokesman at the institute told Reuters. Kant died about an hour after being admitted.

Grenade attack on disco

A hand-grenade blew up in a disco in western Austria popular with teenagers from former Yugoslavia, wounding 27 people, police said yesterday.

Police said the blast looked like a deliberate attack, but were still unsure why someone tossed the grenade into the club X-Large in the city of Linz, 111 miles west of Vienna, near the German and Czech borders.

None of the injured was in critical condition, but four had to undergo emergency surgery for shrapnel wounds, a surgeon at the Linz university hospital told reporters.

DNA test on Pearl

Authorities in Karachi said DNA tests showed that a decapitated body found in the Pakistani city in May was that of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. His remains can now be returned to the US.

The 38-year-old American disappeared on 23 January while researching a story on Islamic militants. A videotape emerged later showing he had been decapitated. British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death for Pearl's murder.