The Jerusalem Post accused Leb-anon of "sheltering" the notorious Okamoto - failing to point out that Israel had itself imprisoned him for 13 years but then blithely let him go free in return for captured Israeli soldiers. The five defendants would like to spend the rest of their lives in Leb-anese retirement, which is more or less what they were doing last February when Lebanese security police arrested all five in Beirut and charged them with forging visa stamps and holding false passports.Needless to say, their original arrest was accompanied by a good deal of rhetoric. The Japanese government would like to try them for a score of crimes and lock them up for the rest of their lives; hence the presence of the grim-faced Mr Sei in court. Needless to say, Kozo Okamoto - who led a 1972 attack on Tel Aviv airport which left 24 pilgrims dead - Kazuo Tohira, Masao Adachi, Haruwo Wako and the only woman, Mariko Yamamoto, will all appeal against the sentence and against the court's decision to deport them from Lebanon when they are released from prison.

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Nor is it difficult to see why. They were allowed to relax in Beirut's Roumieh prison yesterday while Judge Abdul-Samad briskly convicted all five - once regarded as among the most dangerous killers in the world - to a mere three years in prison for illegally entering Lebanon.

Only the ageing defendants from the Japanese Red Army - whom Mr Sei would like to pack off to Tokyo for more serious trials - were missing. So was the ice- cold figure of the Japanese embassy's first secretary, Tamotsu Sei, his well-groomed black moustache set above unsmiling lips, stiff white shirt beneath a grimly dark suit in the stifling summer courtroom. The might of the Japanese press corps was there; 16 journalists, including representatives of five television channels. The leading lights of the Leb-anese judiciary were in court, five judges led by the incorruptible Soheil Abdul-Samad in his red, black and white robes. The move was largely a response to pressure from the city's black majority. Mr Barry, who like most of the councillors is black, benefited. But his conduct during his first term, which included being discovered smoking crack cocaine with a prostitute in the lobby of a hotel (he insists it was a set-up), made him even more controversial.His race, and his influence with the black majority, guaranteed him re- election when he left prison.But it also ensured city politics would be perpetual guerrilla war between Washington's growing black population and its declining white population.Mr Barry's return to office prompted many whites to move from the Washington- administered District of Columbia into the adjacent states of Maryland and Virginia, a process that continues.Now joined by better-off blacks, they complain not just of poor city services, but of mismanagement, corruption and neglect of the infrastructure that leaves Washington unworthy to serve as a showcase for the US..

It is the latest stage in a struggle for control of the capital, which for decades was administered by the federal authorities until it was decided in 1973 that it should have an elected administration, just like any other US city. Mr Barry, re-elected in 1994 after serving a jail term for drug offences, will have to hand control of nine committees, including public works, housing, personnel, schools and police, to a federally appointed financial-control board whose job will be to ensure probity and sound accounting. Marion Barry, the much-criticised Mayor of Washington DC, faces losing the bulk of his powers under proposals agreed yesterday. Conservationists argue that Thredbo has been over-developed with too many lodges on the fragile mountain slope, and that the landslide was a tragedy waiting to happen.. They feared that any survivors who might be trapped in air pockets would succumb to hypothermia after a day and two nights in freezing temperatures.Even as the rescue operation got under way, questions were being asked about the cause of the disaster. As darkness fell yesterday evening, and temperatures dropped below freezing, a chain of about 200 rescuers prepared to work through the night under floodlights.Their hopes dimmed after sound recorders and cameras lowered into the debris failed to detect any signs or sounds of life.