|
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania: US Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton faced increasing odds against her Monday
as a new opinion poll showed rival Barack Obama consolidating his
nationwide support. A Gallup tracking survey indicated the Illinois
senator extending his lead over Clinton among Democrats nationally
to 52 percent versus 42 percent, Obama’s largest lead of the year
so far. This marks the first time either candidate has held a
double-digit lead over the other since early February, when Clinton
led Obama by 11 percentage points, the polling firm pointed out.
KATHMANDU: Nepalese police detained more than
100 Tibetan protesters outside a Chinese embassy building in
Kathmandu on Monday as the exiles tried to demonstrate. At least 200
police officers surrounded the building and carted off the
protesters as they appeared in small groups in the capital, an
Agence France-Presse reporter witnessed. “We don’t know exactly
how many we have detained, but it’s more than 100,” a police
officer said on condition of anonymity. Some of the protesters
managed to sit down in front of the high-walled compound before
being dragged into waiting police vans.
BEIJING: China has banned the imports of Italian
mozzarella cheese after traces of the chemical dioxin, which may
cause cancer, were found in the food, the nation’s product quality
watchdog said. Importers must immediately stop selling the cheese
and recall any that has been sold, according to a statement on the
website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine. Other cheeses from Italy will be subject
to laboratory tests before they are allowed to enter the Chinese
market, the statement read.
VIENTIANE: Mekong region premiers meeting in
Laos on Monday pledged to strengthen transport, power and telecom
links between their six countries, saying closer integration will
boost trade and development at their Vientiane summit with the Asian
Development Bank (ADB). The prime ministers of China, Thailand,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos vowed to “deepen our economic
cooperation and integration efforts and to jointly tackle “the
emergence of health risks, human and drug trafficking, and growing
environmental threats, including those posed by climate change.”
PARIS: President Nicolas Sarkozy brings France
closer to NATO this week by committing more French troops to the
alliance’s shaky mission in Afghanistan, confirming a shift to a
more US-friendly stance. Sarkozy is to announce details of the
French reinforcements to Afghanistan at the first summit of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of his presidency in
Bucharest from Wednesday to Friday. The Afghan mission fits squarely
into Sarkozy’s plan for reintegrating France in NATO’s military
command, which it left in 1966 when Charles de Gaulle rejected US
predominance of the alliance.
WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush heads to
Europe Monday to push NATO allies for more support in Afghanistan
and to meet with his outgoing Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Demanding more troop contributions from alliance members for the
second front in the “war on terror,” where failure would be seen
as a personal blow, has emerged as a priority for Bush when he
attends his final North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit April 2
to 4 in Bucharest.
HARARE: Authorities began releasing the first
results Monday from Zimbabwe’s general election after being
accused of sitting on the outcome in a desperate bid to help
President Robert Mugabe cling to power. With riot police deployed in
Harare, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF)
party were running neck-and-neck after the first six results from
210 parliamentary seats were announced by the electoral commission.
The MDC won the first seat to be declared, the newly formed
constituency of Chegutu West, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west
of the capital Harare, commission spokesman Utoile Silaigwana told
reporters.
LONDON: Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal invited
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas to Gaza for unconditional talks
on the two factions’ divisions, in a television interview Monday.
He also told British broadcaster Sky News that Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit, captured by Palestinian militants in June 2006, is still
alive and being treated well. “We invite Mr. Mahmud Abbas to come
to Gaza to talk directly without any conditions to work together to
find a solution to the problems in Gaza and the West Bank,”
Meshaal said.
CHICAGO: Archeologists have unearthed a nearly
4,000-year-old necklace which shows that gold was being used as a
status symbol in the Americas much earlier than previously thought,
according to a study released Monday. The necklace is the oldest
gold artifact discovered in the Americas to date and was found in
the remains of a burial site in the Lake Titicaca basin of southern
Peru. It shows that the complex social developments, which lead to
status displays, were present while hunter-gatherers were just
beginning to settle into permanent villages.
-- AFP
|
