India buys Mahatma papers
NEW DELHI—The Indian government has bought thousands of letters, papers and photographs which shed light on the life of independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, days before they were to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London, a government official said. India paid around 60 million rupees or $1.1 million for the papers, which cover Gandhi’s time in South Africa, his return to India and his contentious relationship with his family. The auction that was to be held on July 10 has been called off. “These (papers) are of huge importance to India to carry out research on the Gandhian view on various things, that is why we decided to purchase them,” said a senior official at India’s ministry of culture in New Delhi, who asked not to be named. The documents will be placed with the National Archives of India in New Delhi. The documents previously belonged to relatives of Hermann Kallenbach, a German-born Jewish architect who met Gandhi in South Africa in 1904. THE HAGUE—Delivering its first sentence, the International Criminal Court jailed Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo for 14 years on Tuesday for recruiting child soldiers. Lubanga was found guilty in March of abducting boys and girls under the age of 15 and forcing them to fight in a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 and 2003. The sentencing was a landmark for the first permanent international criminal court, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. Presiding judge Adrian Fulford said the time Lubanga had spent in the court’s detention center in The Hague would be taken into account, meaning his sentence has only eight more years to run. Fulford criticized the ICC’s founding prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, who recently completed his term of office, for his conduct of the case. SEOUL—Park Geun-hye, the daughter of an assassinated South Korean dictator, will make history in a male-dominated society if her campaign to become the country’s first female president succeeds. Park, who on Tuesday declared her candidacy for the conservative ruling New Frontier Party, lost both her parents to gunmen while she was still in her twenties. She enjoys high popularity among many conservative and older voters nostalgic for the rapid economic growth under her father Park Chung-hee, who ruled from 1961 to 1979 after seizing power in a coup. Park, 60, is unlikely to face a serious challenge in her party’s primary and analysts say she stands a good chance of victory in the Dec. 19 poll. CARACAS—Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insisted on Monday he is “totally” cancer-free a little more than a year since he first revealed his diagnosis and said he was ready to take on a reelection battle. “Free, totally free,” he said, when asked by a reporter if he had beaten the disease, as he gears up for the campaign against rival Henrique Capriles ahead of the Oct. 7 vote. “Thanks to God, I am here and every day I feel in better physical condition, and I really don’t think this expression ‘physical restrictions’ will be a factor in the campaign,” he told a news conference. Chavez said he had worked “with a lot of discipline” in order to overcome cancer, adding that his last radiation treatment was two months ago. Chavez has undergone surgery twice since June 2011 to remove cancerous tumors from his pelvis. The exact location and nature of the cancer has never been revealed.