|
TAIPEI: Taiwan's new President Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party renewed his call on Beijing to set aside sovereignty disputes and reopen negotiations with the island Saturday. KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung will travel to China Wednesday to meet President Hu Jintao to discuss their measures and anticipation of the future.The KMT government in Taipei and the ruling communists in Beijing say they are the sole legal government of the whole of China despite the fact the two sides have been governed separately since 1949 at the end of a civil war.
-- AFP
JAKARTA: One-hundred-forty students are arrested during a raid in Jakarta's National University by the Indonesian police Saturday. The students burned tires, threw cocktail explosives and blockaded major streets in the capital to express their protest against fuel price hike of 28.7 percent that was announced Friday evening. Just after dawn Saturday, the police raided the campus of National University that was believed to be the gathering point of the students.
-- Xinhua
CHENGDU: The death toll from China's earthquake has topped 60,000 and may surpass 80,000, Premier Wen Jiabao said Saturday during talks with UN Chief Ban Ki-moon. China has already said that over 5.47 million people have been made homeless by the quake and more than 11 million others are expected to be housed in refugee camps as dangerous areas in the quake zone are evacuated. The United Nations has earmarked $8 million in relief supplies to China from its Central Emergency Response Fund.
-- AFP
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq: Surge in violence against women with both so-called "honor" killings and female suicide is evident, Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said Saturday. A doctor said 14 women were recorded to have died on the first 10 days of May- seven of them suicide, the other seven were murdered in unexplained circumstances. According to Kurdish regional government figures, in Sulaimaniyah province alone more than 50 women attempted to burn themselves to death in the first four months of the year and another eight attempted to hang themselves. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq has regularly highlighted "honor" killings of Kurdish women as among Iraq's most severe human rights abuses.
-- AFP
BANGKOK: More than 1,000 farmers blocked a highway in Thailand's northernmost province Chiang Rai Saturday, protesting the low price offered by local rice mills for glutinous paddy rice they grow. They charged that the government had guaranteed the price of sticky rice grain at 8,000 (about $250) per metric ton but rice millers were willing to offer only 6,040 baht (about $189) per ton for farmers. The protesting farmers demanded the government to step in and enforce guaranteed prices as it had promised earlier.
-- Xinhua
BANGALORE: India's new Bangalore international airport opened yesterday despite protests by residents and businesses who said getting there by road could prove a nightmare. The state-of-the-art $630 facility sprang into life after a court threw out pleas by local people to keep the existing airport open for commercial flights. The arrival of Indian Airlines flight IC609 from Mumbai, carrying 110 passengers and crew, signaled the opening of the airport 36 kilometers (22.5 miles) north of the choked center of the high-tech southern city.
-- AFP
TOKYO: Two-hundred-sxity-eight people were officially recognized suffering mental disorders due to job-related stress and overwork in Japan for 2007 to March 2008, the government declared. A government survey recently found almost 20 percent of Japanese adults have considered killing themselves, with half the respondents saying movies and television are contributing to the high suicide rate. The country recently saw dozens of suicides and attempts using hydrogen sulphide gas produced according to instructions easily sourced from the Internet.
-- AFP
YANGON: Myanmar's biggest industrial zone Hlaingtharya in Yangon, which was seriously destroyed in a recent severe cyclone storm, has partly resumed operation with half of the 800 factories going into production again, the local weekly Voice reported Saturday. Quoting the industrial zone administration authorities, the report said the zone has restarted to produce food, construction material and plastic after half of the 157 collapsed lamp-posts which carry electricity were rapidly reinstalled and repaired. The industrial zone sustained a property loss of 3 billion Kyats ($2.7 million), the report added.
-- Xinhua
SRINAGAR: Islamic separatists staged a general strike in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar on Saturday to protest a visit by India's president to the revolt-hit region. Businesses closed and schools and colleges declared the day a holiday in line with the strike call by the hard-line wing of the separatist Hurriyat Conference alliance. The strike to protest the visit of President Pratibha Patil was also backed by the powerful Islamic rebel group Hizbul Mujahedin, which is fighting New Delhi's rule in India's only Muslim-majority state.
-- AFP
YINGXIU: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged Saturaday 10 million dollars to a global effort to help Myanmar overcome the devastation left by the cyclone that struck the neighboring nation this month. Wen pledged the 10 million dollars at the meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who toured the destroyed epicenter of the May 12 earthquake that struck southwest China. Ban had one day earlier held talks in Myanmar with the ruling generals and said he had persuaded them to accept international relief some three weeks after Cyclone Nargis, which left 133,000 people dead or missing.
-- AFP
BAGHDAD: Iraqi and US troops detained dozens of people in search operations in two Shiite neighborhoods of southwest Baghdad on Saturday, witnesses said. The search operations lasted from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Al-Amal and the neighboring district of Al-Bayaa, a stronghold of Sadr's movement. A Sadr movement spokesman in Al-Amal, Hamadallah al-Rikabi, said that Iraqi and US soldiers picked up more than 400 people including old men and even children without arrest warrants.
-- AFP
|
