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BEIJING: China and France sought to patch up their
differences Tuesday amid anger over protests surrounding the Olympic
torch relay, but a Paris city honor for the Dalai Lama threatened to
scupper efforts. The tension was underlined with the
wheelchair-bound fencer Jin Jing saying that French President
Nicolas Sarkozy owed her an apology. On a visit to Shanghai on
Monday, French Senate President Christian Poncelet passed on a
letter from Sarkozy to the disabled athlete in which he condemned
the raucous demonstrations.
BEIJING: One person was killed and five were
critically wounded when police in southwest China clashed with
protesters trying to block construction of a mine, the government
and a rights group said Tuesday. According to the Chinese Human
Rights Defenders network, police fired on up to 100 villagers on
Monday in Saixi village in Yunnan province, killing one. The
coalition of domestic and overseas rights activists said more than
20 protesters were beaten and several taken away by police for
interrogation.
SYDNEY: Ship-borne activists said Tuesday they
had targeted fishing boats from South Korea, Taiwan and the United
States in high-seas protests against the “plundering” of tuna in
the Pacific. In the latest confrontation, crew from the Greenpeace
ship Esperanza boarded a Taiwanese boat, the Nian Sheng 3, to
inspect their catch, a spokesman said. The captain of the tuna boat,
which also contained hundreds of frozen shark fins and tails,
allowed the activists to board, Greenpeace campaign leader Lagi
Toribau told Agence France-Presse.
SINGAPORE: Maldives President Maumoon Abdul
Gayoom made an impassioned plea Tuesday for a cut in global
greenhouse gas emissions, warning that rising sea levels could
submerge his paradise island chain. He launched a book at the
UN-backed Business for the Environment conference to highlight the
threat to his South Asian tropical island chain favored by tourists
for its white sandy beaches, clear waters and swaying palm trees.
“This paradise is endangered,” he said.
YANGON: Myanmar’s ruling junta has blamed an
armed exiled student group for two recent bomb blasts in Yangon and
has released a security camera photograph of a suspect, the New
Light of Myanmar newspaper reported Tuesday. Two small separate
explosions went off late Sunday, damaging cars in downtown areas
near Yangon city hall and the Traders Hotel, but causing no
injuries. “The perpetrations were committed by a man dubbed Mone
Dine who was sent into the nation after attending explosive courses
conducted by Vigorous Burma Student Warriors,” it said.
DILI: East Timor’s chief prosecutor headed to
Indonesia on Tuesday to take custody of three men arrested over
assassination attempts against the country’s leadership, the
Timorese president said. President Jose Ramos-Horta, who was shot by
rebels outside his Dili home on February 11, said that even without
an extradition treaty, the men “should be sent back” as they had
entered Indonesia illegally. He said the Indonesian government had
been cooperating in efforts to bring the wanted men to justice.
PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s former king Norodom
Sihanouk has accused the Khmer Rouge of killing members of his
family as “retribution” for his resignation as head of state
under its regime. Sihanouk, 85, said the killings were committed
under the 1975 to 1979 regime despite pleas from Chinese communist
leader Mao Zedong, according to a handwritten statement by the
former monarch dated April 18, a copy of which was obtained by
Agence France-Presse Tuesday.
TEHRAN: A top UN nuclear official was on Tuesday
holding a second day of closed-door talks in Tehran seeking answers
from Iran over claims it has studied how to design nuclear weapons.
Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s deputy
director general, went into talks with Iranian officials mid-morning
Tuesday after a first round on Monday, the state broadcaster
reported. No information, even photographs or video footage, has
filtered out over the contents of the discussions so far.
-- AFP
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