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TOKYO: Japan’s public security chief called on the
world’s major powers Thursday to help developing countries plug
legal “loopholes” benefiting international terrorism and
organized crime. “To shut loopholes in international terrorism and
elsewhere, it is important to make a concrete approach to countries
which lag behind in laying the groundwork for legal systems,” said
Shinya Izumi, head of Japan’s National Public Safety Commission,
in a speech fronting justice ministers and public security chiefs of
the Group of Eight rich nations.
--AFP
SYDNEY: The Dalai Lama on
Thursday appealed for Tibetans not to interfere with the Olympic
torch relay as it passes through the capital Lhasa, saying he fully
supports the Beijing Olympics. The torch is expected to pass through
Tibet the next week, although exact details of its schedule are
being kept. Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader repeated calls for
greater political autonomy but said he did not want the torch to
spark protests in Lhasa similar to those seen in London and Paris.
--AFP
KABUL: The US-led coalition in
Afghanistan on Thursday deflected accusations that it killed 11
Pakistani soldiers in an air strike, releasing video footage which
it says shows its forces targeting insurgents. Islamabad has accused
US-led forces in Afghanistan of launching an unprovoked and
“cowardly” attack on the check post in Pakistan’s volatile
Mohmand tribal zone, further straining ties between the “war on
terror” allies. In response, US officials insisted its forces had
carried out a “legitimate strike” in the early hours of
Wednesday.
--AFP
TOKYO: The Japanese House of
Representatives passed a confidence resolution in Prime Minister
Yasuo Fukuda Thursday afternoon to counter a censure motion against
the prime minister approved by the House of Councilors a day
earlier. Fukuda’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its minor
coalition partner the New Komeito Party, which hold two-thirds
majority in the lower house, handed in the confidence motion
immediately after the non-binding censure motion cleared the upper
house, which is controlled by the opposition bloc.
--Xinhua
KATHMANDU: Nepali Congress and
the Communist Party Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist reiterated that a
“process and a modality” must be developed for the adjustment
and rehabilitation of the 19,000 Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M)
combatants before the formation of a new government, The Himalayan
Times reported on Thursday. “We realized that the parties need to
work out the details of the process and modality to adjust and
rehabilitate the combatants,” NC Vice President Ram Chandra Poudel,
who took part in the meeting, told re0porters.
--Xinhua
OTTAWA: Canada’s prime minister
on Wednesday officially apologized to natives for more than a
century of abuses at boarding schools set up to assimilate its
indigenous peoples. “The government of Canada sincerely apologizes
and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country
for failing them so profoundly,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper
said in the House of Commons. “The treatment of children in Indian
Residential Schools is a sad chapter in our history.”
--AFP
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