BRISTOL: An Indian born businessman was on Monday jailed for life for murdering his 26-year-old wife on a trip to India. Market trader and shop owner Mohan Kular then tried to make her death on a second honeymoon in 1987 look like a road accident in a bid to claim 800,000 pounds (1.3 million dollars) in life insurance payouts, Bristol crown court in southwest England said. He bribed local officials to obtain a death certificate for his wife Ninderjit and her body was cremated before a post-mortem examination could be held.

Drop in unionism

GENEVA: Trade union membership worldwide has dropped sharply during the 1985-1995 period, falling to less than 20 per cent of workers in 48 out of 92 countries surveyed, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said in a report. The 1997-98 edition of the ILO's World Labour report yesterday, attributed the decline in trade union membership to economic factors such as cutbacks in public-sector employment, intensified economic competition and the reduction in the manufacturing sector's share of total employment.

Jordan polls

CAIRO: Jordan went to polls on Tuesday to elect a new Parliament, though the main opposition party is boycotting the elections protesting against government policies including the peace pact with Israel. Apart from the largest opposition party, the Islamic Action Front, eight minor pan-Arab nationalist groups have also decided against joining the election process, the first since Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Oklahoma trial

DENVER: Federal prosecutors have accused Nichols of working ``side by side'' with Timothy Mcveigh to plot the Oklahoma city bombing, while defense attorneys say the two may have been army buddies but not co-conspirators. In the trial which began on Monday, both sides however agreed that Nichols, named as Mcveigh's accomplice, was at home in Herington, Kansas, on April 19, 1995, when a bomb stashed in a truck demolished the Alfred A Murrah federal building, killing 168 people.

Mir spacewalk

KOROLYOV: Two Russian cosmonauts conducted an apparently successful spacewalk of more than six hours outside the Mir space station on Tuesday despite a two hour delay caused by technical hitches ``The programme has been fulfilled,'' chief mission control spokesman Vsevoled Latyshev told reporters. The spacewalk had been scheduled to start at 0130 GMT but it was delayed after ground control realised that it was not receiving data transmissions from Solovyov's space suit.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.