World Briefs

Dalai heads for US

NEW DELHI: Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Wednesday headed for the United States and a long-awaited meeting with President Barack Obama that has infuriated China. For the 74-year-old Dalai Lama, recognition by the White House is crucial to maintaining a critical international spotlight on Chinese treatment of his Himalayan homeland. “The most important thing is that the meeting is taking place,” the Dalai Lama’s spokesman Tenzin Taklha said before leaving India with the Buddhist leader.

TV presenter arrested

LONDON: A veteran British broadcaster was arrested on suspicion of murder on Wednesday after admitting he smothered to death an ex-lover who had AIDS. Ray Gosling made the confession in a television programme aired this week, saying he killed the unnamed man as he lay seriously ill in hospital “in the early period of AIDS” — likely to be during the 1980s. A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire Police in central England, said officers “this morning arrested a 70-year-old man on suspicion of murder following comments on the BBC’s Inside Out programme on Monday evening.”

Bus plunge kills 22

NEW DELHI: At least 22 people were killed when a bus filled with wedding guests plunged into a river on Wednesday in northern India, police said. “Twenty-two bodies have been recovered and 13 people are still missing,” a police officer told AFP by telephone from Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow. Fifteen people survived the accident which occurred soon after midnight in the Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh.