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BANGKOK: Ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday
after his return to Bangkok that he would not seek revenge against
the generals who ousted him 17 months ago. The billionaire
politician told reporters that he only wanted to clear his name of
corruption allegations in court and to spend time with his wife and
three children. “All of us are Thai, and we have interacted or
known each other one way or another. It will be best for all of us
to reduce our egos and our prejudice. All of us should compromise
and unite for our country and our beloved king,” he said.
-- AFP
CARACAS: Four Colombian former lawmakers freed
Wednesday by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
guerrillas spoke in Caracas of their years-long ordeal and of other
captives left behind in the jungles of Colombia. “It’s the
greatest feeling: to be born again. You can’t imagine the horrors
of living seven years in the subhuman conditions we were kept,”
Luis Eladio Perez told reporters after being picked up by Red Cross
officials flown in on Venezuelan aircraft. He explained he had
survived a heart attack, three diabetic comas and a kidney
malfunction because of tropical diseases.
-- AFP
GAZA CITY: Israel launched new air strikes on
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a day after the
first deadly rocket attack in nine months. Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert vowed to make Hamas militants pay a heavy price for
rocket attacks despite US concerns about civilians in the Gaza
Strip. Olmert held talks in Tokyo with US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who was winding up a three-nation tour of East
Asia and preparing for a visit next week to the Middle East to push
ahead the slow-moving peace process.
-- AFP
ANKARA: The Turkish army will remain in northern
Iraq “as long as necessary,” Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi
Gonul said Thursday, refusing to give a timetable for a troop
withdrawal. He said Turkey is targeting only rebel fighters of the
separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and has “no intention
to occupy any area” in the region.
-- AFP
HANOI: Fifty children in Vietnam have died per
day from such injuries as traffic accidents, drowning, poisoning,
burning and falling since 2006, the Pioneer newspaper reported
Thursday. In the 2001 to 2005 period, an average of 27,000
Vietnamese children died from injuries each year, equating 74 child
fatalities a day, the newspaper quoted a report of the Committee for
Culture, Education, Youths, Teenagers and Children under Vietnam’s
National Assembly, the country’s top legislature.
-- Xinhua
WASHINGTON: The U.S. National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) announced Wednesday that it has obtained
the highest resolution terrain mapping to date of the moon’s
rugged south polar region, with a resolution of 20 meters per pixel.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory collected the data
using the facility’s Goldstone Solar System Radar located in
California’s Mojave Desert. “There are challenges that come with
such rugged terrain, and these data will be an invaluable tool for
advance planning of lunar missions,” said deputy associate
administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Doug
Cooke.
-- Xinhua
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