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BEIJING: Blogs, chatrooms and mobile phones have helped information
about Tibetan protests to stream out faster than ever, but China is
also harnessing technology to stem the flow. Internet users,
journalists and campaign groups are all scrambling for information
as they try to build up an independent picture of deadly protests
and clampdowns in Tibet and elsewhere in China in the past few days.
Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org that monitors China’s media,
said that new technology has forced the authorities to promptly
acknowledge events like the Tibetan protests.
-- AFP
TOKYO: Japan on Tuesday became the latest
country to recognize Kosovo, despite a flare-up in violence a month
after the territory declared independence from Serbia. “We hope
Kosovo will contribute to regional stability in the long term,”
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said. Japan had earlier signaled it
would recognize Kosovo but did not want to take a high profile on
the politically sensitive dispute. Japan’s recognition came as the
worst violence flared in Kosovo since its independence declaration
on February 17.
-- AFP
SINGAPORE: The Airbus A380, the world’s
biggest passenger plane, took off Tuesday from Singapore’s Changi
Airport for its inaugural commercial flight to London, the jet’s
first European destination. Flight SQ308, operated by A380 launch
customer Singapore Airlines (SIA), departed Changi Airport’s new
Terminal 3 at 9:19 a.m. (0119 GMT), an Agence France-Presse reporter
at the airport said. The flight, carrying 449 passengers, is
scheduled to land at London’s Heathrow Airport around 12 to 13
hours later with the return leg to arrive in Singapore on Wednesday
afternoon.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: Democrat Barack Obama was to address
inflammatory language by his flamboyant former pastor on Tuesday as
he bids to lance a controversy dogging his White House campaign. The
uproar around Chicago preacher Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at
Obama’s wedding and baptized his two daughters, has threatened to
undermine the candidate’s promise of racial healing. In an
interview with PBS Television, Obama said he would address
Wright’s remarks—disclosed in newly unearthed videos—that
America had brought the September 11, 2001 attacks on itself because
of its “terrorism.”
-- AFP
TOKYO: A Japanese university said Tuesday it
would return some 250 vintage animation works from classic Walt
Disney films to the US entertainment company. The rare collection
had traveled to Japan in the early 1960s for exhibits at department
stores and museums but then faded from view. The current owner,
state-run Chiba University in suburban Tokyo, said it decided to
return the collection to The Walt Disney Co. to ensure it was well
preserved for future generations.
-- AFP
JAKARTA: The Indonesian government expects the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Charter to be
ratified by July after receiving informal approval from the
parliament, an official said Tuesday. “We held two discussions
with the House [of Representatives] members and, in summary, they
will ratify the charter,” I Gede Ngurah Swajaya, the Asean
politics and security director at the Foreign Ministry, told The
Jakarta Post.
-- Xinhua
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s feuding sectarian factions on
Tuesday began a conference aiming to resolve their differences amid
international concern that insufficient progress has been made
toward national unity. The two-day national unity conference comes
ahead of Thursday’s fifth anniversary of the launch of the US-led
invasion. The conference opened in Baghdad and was attended by Iraqi
leaders like Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and parliament speaker
Mahmud Mashhadani, and several other leaders from the three Shiite,
Sunni and Kurdish factions.
-- AFP
KARBALA, Iraq: The death toll from a bomb attack
near a revered Shiite shrine in the central Iraqi city of Karbala
has risen to 52, a health official told Agence France-Presse
Tuesday. A bomb exploded near the shrine of Imam Hussein, a
pilgrimage destination for Shiite Muslims in the center of the city,
on Monday. The Karbala police chief, Brigadier General Raed Shakir,
said the insurgents planted the bomb in the area, although other
police and health officials said the attack was carried out by a
female suicide bomber.
-- AFP
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