News in brief

Car bombs, shootings kill 30 in Iraq
Reuters, Basra

Attacks across Iraq targeting mainly Shia Muslims killed at least 30 people yesterday, police and medics said, intensifying fears of a descent into all-out sectarian war.
Ten years after the US-led invasion that toppled Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, a stable power-sharing compromise between Iraq's Sunni, Shia and ethnic Kurdish factions is still elusive and violence is on the rise.
More than 1,000 people were killed in militant attacks in May, according to the United Nations, making it Iraq's deadliest month since the inter communal strife of 2006-07.
Regional sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the conflict in Syria, Iraq's neighbor, where Sunni rebels are fighting to overthrow a leader backed by Shia Iran.
Two car bombs exploded minutes apart in the predominantly Shia southern oil hub of Basra, 420km southeast of Baghdad, killing at least five people and tearing off shop fronts.

US-bound Egypt plane diverted after threat
Ap, London

A plane from Cairo bound for New York was diverted by fighter jets to an emergency landing in the UK after a passenger discovered a letter threatening the aircraft, officials said Saturday.
Police said late Saturday there had been no arrests, and that authorities are working to ascertain who wrote the note in a lavatory which forced Flight 985 carrying around 300 passengers en route to John F Kennedy Airport to make an emergency landing at Glasgow's Prestwick Airport.

Mandela getting better: Zuma
Reuters, Johannesburg

Nelson Mandela continues to recover in hospital from a lung infection but remains in a serious condition, South African President Jacob Zuma said yesterday.
Mandela has been in a Pretoria hospital for a week, the fourth time the 94-year-old former president and anti-Apartheid leader has been admitted to hospital since December.

Hunt on for Prince William's distant cousins in India
Tnn, London

Scientists have launched a hunt for possible distant cousins of Britain's Prince William after it emerged he shared Indian ancestry. A day after DNA results revealed that the young royal carried an Indian gene, scientists said they are now looking to find his distant relatives in Surat in Gujarat.
"It's a great thing to unite people across the distances ... It shows commonality," said Dr Jim Wilson, a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh and chief scientist at Britains DNA.
Dr Wilson said Eliza Kewark - Prince William's great, great, great, great, great grandmother- gave birth to two children. Katherine Scott Forbes, born in 1812, was Prince William's great-great-great-great grand mother. The second child, Alexander, was born two years later. "Alexander went back to India and did not die early," said Dr Wilson. "He may have descendants there today." Katherine later married James Crombie, a member of the coat-making family.