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SYDNEY: An Australian government ship has left
on a mission to track Japan’s whaling fleet and gather evidence
for a potential international court case against Tokyo, an official
said Wednesday. The customs vessel Oceanic Viking set sail from
Western Australia for Antarctic waters late Tuesday, with 50 crew
aboard, a spokeswoman for Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said. The
ship will spend 20 days gathering video and photographic evidence of
Japan’s slaughter of whales, fulfilling a pledge made by the
governing Labor Party during the campaign for last November’s
election. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has said the mission would
be linked with several days of aerial surveillance.
--AFP
OTTAWA: An unseasonable heat wave
is hitting Canada’s central Ontario and Quebec provinces, bringing
about unusually high temperatures and creating flooding concerns as
melting snow and rain threatens to overflow riverbanks. The town of
Vallee-Jonction, located southeast of Quebec City, was ordered to
evacuate Tuesday after a nearby river overflowed its banks.
--Xinhua
TOKYO: Japan’s embattled Prime
Minister Yasuo Fukuda Wednesday urged the opposition to support
resuming a naval mission backing the US-led “war on terror” as
the clock ticked for a parliamentary vote. But the opposition,
holding the first formal parliamentary debate with Fukuda since he
took power in September, refused to budge, saying the deployment
violated Japan’s pacifist constitution. Japan in November ended
the mission in the Indian Ocean providing refueling support to
coalition forces in Afghanistan after the opposition, which won one
house of parliament last year, refused to extend legislation.
--AFP
BEIJING: The government
will impose limits on the use of plastic bags starting on June 1, as
part of its dual campaign to protect the environment and save
energy. In a circular posted on the central government’s Web site
(www.gov.cn) on Tuesday, the General Office of the State Council
ordered a ban on the production, sale and use of ultra-thin bags
(defined as less than 0.025 mm thick) as of June 1. Supermarkets and
shops will be banned from giving free plastic bags to customers as
of that date. China thus joins many governments that have moved to
limit the manufacture, sale and use of plastic bags, according to
the circular.
--Xinhua
LARKANA, Pakistan: After
years of discord in Pakistan’s top political dynasty, Benazir
Bhutto’s sister-in-law has stoked up the family feud by saying she
wants the opposition leader’s son to join her rival party. Ghinwa
Bhutto has been estranged from the former premier since her husband,
Benazir’s younger brother Murtaza, was gunned down amid shady
circumstances in Karachi 12 years ago while Bhutto was still in
power. In the latest twist to the feuding that has torn the
country’s “royal family” apart, Lebanese-born Ghinwa said that
after Bhutto’s assassination she now hopes to woo Bhutto’s
19-year-old son Bilawal to her side.
--AFP
TEHRAN: Iranian Parliament
Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel has called U.S. accusations in the
recent confrontation between U.S. and Iranian ships in the Strait of
Hormuz as a “psychological and propaganda campaign,” local
Tehran Times daily reported on Wednesday. “We have always shown
that we believe in peace and avoiding tension, and we presume that
the U.S. media propaganda is part of its psychological and
propaganda campaign, which it is continuously conducting against
Iran,” Adel was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
--Xinhua
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