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LOS ANGELES: Rescuers said Monday they were distraught by
their failure to locate six miners buried underground in Utah a week
ago, but grimly insisted they had not given up hope of finding the
men alive. As efforts to reach the trapped miners entered an eighth
day, officials said they were preparing to drill a third shaft into
the cavern where the men were believed to have been working at the
Genwal Mine in Crandall Canyon. A video camera reinserted into the
chamber late on Sunday shed no further light on the fate of the men,
who have not been heard since last Monday’s cave-in that entombed
them around 450 meters (1,500 feet) underground.
BEIJING: The US envoy on North Korea said
Tuesday he was confident nuclear disarmament talks this week would
go smoothly, following a “business-like” meeting with his
Pyongyang counterpart. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill
met with North Korea’s Kim Kye Gwan on Monday night amid
preparations for two days of meetings involving host China and other
nations beginning later this week. He was to hold further talks
Tuesday afternoon with Wu Dawei, China’s representative in the
six-nation effort to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons. Hill said
he hoped to meet also with the Japanese and South Korean envoys
ahead of the main talks opening Thursday.
TOKYO: US President George W. Bush has
dropped a plan to visit Japan next month to see embattled Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe due to a highly awaited report on Iraq, Japanese
media said Tuesday. Bush had initially planned to stop in Japan, a
close US ally, on his way home from an Asia Pacific summit in
Sydney, Kyodo News said, quoting unnamed sources in Washington. But
Bush decided to cancel the visit to Japan due to the Iraq report in
mid-September, it said. A US Embassy spokesman in Tokyo declined
comment. The report will likely set off a new battle between the
White House and Congress, controlled by the rival Democratic Party.
KUALA LUMPUR: The driver of a bus that
crashed killing 20 people in Malaysia’s worst road accident had
two outstanding arrest warrants for reckless driving, initial
results of an investigation showed Tuesday. Rohizan Abu Bakar, 28,
who was among the dead, also had 13 summonses from police, the
Bernama news agency said. It was not clear however why he had
managed to evade arrest or why the operator of the express bus hired
him despite his record. Transportation authorities said Rohizan
apparently fell asleep at the wheel while driving down a hill on a
highway in northern Penang state.
DENPASAR,
Indonesia: Dry holidays may be looming for tourists on
the Indonesian resort island of Bali with an alcohol shortage
already hitting hotels and bars, officials and industry workers said
Tuesday. The shortage comes as the island reported its first human
bird-flu death on Monday, triggering fears that a tourism recovery,
finally gaining momentum in the wake of bombings by Islamic
militants in 2002 and 2005, could stall. A quota allowing alcohol
imports is usually issued every six months to the state-run
Indonesian Trading Company but the one for the second half of 2007
has been delayed.
ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf
marked Pakistan’s 60th anniversary Tuesday saying the battle
against terrorism is being waged for his own country’s sake and
not America’s. Al-Qaeda and other militant organizations using
Pakistani border regions as a base for operations posed a threat to
Pakistan and it was time they were dealt with, he said in comments
marking Independence Day. “It is time that the entire nation rises
against them,” Musharraf said, referring to Taliban and al-Qaeda
cells in the northwestern tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
“We are not confronting terrorism for America, we are doing it for
ourselves,” he said.
MOSCOW: Chinese President Hu Jintao
begins a tour of three ex-Soviet neighbors on Tuesday aimed at
reaching a delicate balance between Beijing’s energy and security
goals and easing regional tensions. Hu kicks off his tour of
Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Kazakhstan on Tuesday by visiting the Kyrgyz
capital Bishkek, where the headline event will be a summit of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Moscow-and Beijing-led
security group.
--AFP
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