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HANOI: The future food security of millions of people is at
risk because over-fishing, climate change and pollution are
inflicting massive damage on the world’s oceans, marine scientists
warned this week. The two-thirds of the planet covered by seas
provide one-fifth of the world’s protein, but 75 percent of fish
stocks are now fully exploited or depleted, a Hanoi conference that
ended Friday was told. Warming seas are bleaching corals, feeding
algal blooms and changing ocean currents that impact the weather.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: Tibet’s spiritual leader, the
Dalai Lama, arrived in the US Thursday on his first foreign trip
since China’s crackdown on protests in the Himalayan territory
that drew a global outcry. The exiled 72-year-old saffron-clad
leader flew into Seattle, the western coastal city in Washington
state, for a five-day lecture series on spirituality, but groups
close to him did not rule out meetings with US politicians and
discussions on the turmoil in Tibet.
-- AFP
TOKYO: Japan on Friday extended sweeping
sanctions against North Korea for another six months, saying the
communist state has not shown progress in impasses over its nuclear
drive and abductions of Japanese citizens. The sanctions, which ban
all imports from cash-strapped North Korea including goods such as
clams, crabs and high-end matsutake mushrooms, were set to expire on
Sunday. Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said Japan was ready to
lift the ban at any time if North Korea makes progress.
-- AFP
JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki met
with a key opposition leader of Zimbabwe to discuss that country’s
election crisis ahead of a regional meeting on the matter,
opposition members said Friday. “They have already met. They met
yesterday [Thursday] at half past five,” Nqobizitha Mlilo,
spokesman for Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) told AFP, of talks in Pretoria between the South African
president and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. “The details of it are
not at this stage for public consumption.”
-- AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel prepared Friday for
retribution against Hamas, blaming the Palestinian Islamist group
for a deadly explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip that followed a
month of relative calm. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, addressing
supporters of his Kadima party, vowed Thursday to put an end to
Palestinian attacks from the impoverished strip. “Hamas today runs
the Gaza Strip, and this organization and all its members bear
responsibility for the incessent terror and it will have to bear the
inevitable price for its actions,” Olmert said.
-- AFP
TOKYO: Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura
will visit Russia this weekend in the latest bid for progress in a
long-running territorial dispute, officials said Friday. Komura is
to leave Tokyo on Saturday for a four-day visit to Moscow and Saint
Petersburg that will include talks with his Russian counterpart
Sergei Lavrov, the Japanese foreign ministry said in a statement.
-- AFP
PRISTINA: Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci
announced Thursday that his government will open its first three
diplomatic missions immediately after the new constitution takes
effect in June. During a government meeting held in the ethnic
flashpoint town of Mitrovica, Thaci asked nominated foreign minister
Skender Hyseni to take all necessary steps for the timely opening of
diplomatic missions in New York, Washington and Brussels. Thaci said
the respective ambassadors for these priority embassies would be
appointed soon.
-- Xinhua
HAVANA: Five people have died and over 60 others
have been injured in protests of food shortage and high cost of
living in Haiti, said media reports from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s
capital, on Thursday. Half of the injured people suffered bullet
wounds during the protests, hospital sources were quoted as saying.
Protests and looting in the capital have lasted for three days due
to food prices that rose some 50 percent over the past few months.
-- Xinhua
WASHINGTON: As they battle for blue-collar votes
in Pennsylvania, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are
jostling to prove who is toughest on free-trade deals that unions
blame for thousands of lost jobs. The Democratic-led House of
Representatives delayed a vote on a new free- trade agreement with
Colombia Thursday, putting the issue on the backburner probably
until after November’s general election. Among the presidential
hopefuls, only Republican John McCain backed the Colombia deal.
-- AFP
SHANGHAI: Former Shanghai Communist Party boss
Chen Liangyu was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Friday, state
press said, the most senior Chinese official to be convicted of
graft in over a decade. Chen, 61, was sentenced by a court in the
northern city of Tianjin after being convicted of taking bribes and
abusing power, Xinhua news agency said.
-- AFP
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