Thanks for the news.
Printable View
Thanks for the news.
BBC NewsQuote:
France's human rights minister has denied setting conditions for President Nicolas Sarkozy's attendance at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
Rama Yade said Le Monde newspaper had misquoted her as listing "conditions" for Mr Sarkozy's presence at the event.
"The word 'conditions' was never used," she said. Le Monde stood by its story.
Ms Yade had been quoted as saying Mr Sarkozy would miss the event unless China freed political prisoners and agreed to talk to the Dalai Lama.
Le Monde had quoted Ms Yade as saying: "Three conditions are essential for him to attend: an end to violence against the population and the liberation of political prisoners; light shed on the events in Tibet; and the opening of a dialogue with the Dalai Lama."
Torch in Paris
A presidential spokesman declined to comment on Ms Yade's interview, but Mr Sarkozy himself has not ruled out boycotting the opening ceremony.
He said last month that although he was opposed to a full boycott of the Games he could "not close the door to any possibility" when it came to his own attendance.
With the Olympic torch due to arrive in Paris on Monday, it may be that the French government chose this moment to spell out to Beijing that its threat of staying away from the opening ceremony is a real one, correspondents say.
US President George W Bush plans to attend the Olympic opening ceremony on 8 August, while UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown intends to go to the closing ceremony.
Several Western nations have called for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, but China has accused him of orchestrating the recent violence.
Saturday's dispute coincides with new reports of riots in a Tibetan area of western China.
BBC NewsQuote:
The naming of Kenya's new coalition cabinet is to be delayed after a last-minute disagreement between the country's two main parties.
An opposition spokesman said all major ministries had been set aside for the party of President Mwai Kibaki, contrary to an earlier agreement.
President Kibaki's party blamed the opposition for the delay, saying it had failed to submit a list of nominees.
Disputed presidential elections last December led to widespread violence.
A power-sharing deal was reached earlier this week.
Wrangling
"The widely expected announcement tomorrow of a new Cabinet that all Kenyans were so keenly awaiting has been delayed," said Salim Lone, spokesman for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
President Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) called for a meeting with ODM leader Raila Odinga on Sunday morning to break the deadlock.
"Today, President Mwai Kibaki requested Hon Raila Odinga to submit his proposals for appointments into the cabinet," said Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman.
"The president is yet to receive the list."
Changes to Kenya's constitution had been made to allow the PNU and the ODM to join a grand coalition, in which power would be shared on a 50-50 basis.
But the two sides have since been wrangling over the allocation of key portfolios in the 40-member cabinet.
The constitutional amendment bill also created the post of prime minister and two deputies.
The National Accord and Reconciliation Act, which was also approved, states that the coalition will be dissolved if one party decides not to participate in the arrangement.
But it does not provide for the holding of a fresh election in the event that the coalition collapses.
Some 1,500 people died and 600,000 were displaced during the violence that followed December's disputed elections.
Many thousands have yet to return to their homes.
BBC NewsQuote:
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, have revealed they earned more than $100m (£50m) in eight years.
Since 2000, the former first couple took in nearly $110m, with more than $20m made in 2007, and gave more than $10m to charity in the same period.
Almost half of the income was made from the former president's speeches.
Sen Clinton had been under pressure to release her returns since rival Barack Obama disclosed his for 2000-2006.
Both Sen Obama and John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, have said they will reveal their 2007 returns later this month.
Both Democratic candidates are keen to show they have nothing to hide from voters as they fight for their party's nomination, the BBC's Jack Izzard reports from Washington.
Many Americans will pore over these figures, which show just how much the Clintons are worth, he adds.
Lucrative books
"The Clintons have now made public 30 years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service," said Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman.
"None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information."
The Clintons paid around $34m in taxes between 2000 and 2007, their returns show.
The last time the former first couple publicised their finances was in 2000 - the year they left the White House. In that year they reported a gross income of $416,000.
Since leaving office, though, Bill Clinton has given speeches around the world, as well as becoming involved in numerous business ventures.
He has also made $30m from his two books, My Life and Giving.
For her part, Mrs Clinton made more than $10m from her book Living History.
She donated all the proceeds from another work, It Takes a Village, to charity.
Although the New York senator revealed highlights of tax returns from 2007, she requested an extension for their full disclosure, citing the need for more information on a blind trust dissolved last year.
Beer distributor
Last week Mr Obama published seven years of tax returns on his website.
The data showed he earned nearly $1 million in 2006, nearly half of it coming from the publication of his second book, The Audacity of Hope.
In previous financial disclosures, Sen McCain has listed his primary sources of income as his Senate salary of $170,000 and his Naval pension of around $56,000.
Although Mr McCain's wife is heiress to a stake in Hensley & Co, one of the largest beer distributorships in the US - reportedly worth more than $100 million - a prenuptial agreement means most of her assets are kept in her name.
BBC NewsQuote:
An Argentine couple have been jailed for illegally adopting a baby girl born 30 years ago to parents who were kidnapped by the military government.
The case was brought by the adopted woman, Maria Eugenia Sampallo, whose real parents were among the 30,000 said to have been killed in the "Dirty War".
Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez were convicted of falsifying documents and hiding their daughter's identity.
The pair were sentenced to eight and seven years in prison respectively.
A former army captain, Enrique Berthier, was found guilty of taking Ms Sampallo and giving her to the couple. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
'Not my parents'
The case at the federal criminal court in Buenos Aires represented the first time a child born of prisoners who disappeared during the Dirty War pressed charges against the adoptive parents.
After the judgement, human rights groups outside the court expressed mixed emotions, saying they were pleased the three had been found guilty but that they were disappointed by the reduced sentences.
Ms Sampallo had called for her adoptive parents to be sentenced to 25 years in prison - the maximum allowed under Argentine law.
"They are not my parents - they are my kidnappers," she said.
Ms Sampallo learned in 2001, as a result of DNA tests, that she was the daughter of missing political prisoners Mirta Mabel Barragan and Leonardo Ruben Sampallo.
The left-wing activists were kidnapped by the military authorities in December 1977, when Mrs Barragan was six-months pregnant.
Ms Sampallo was born in a clandestine detention centre in the capital and taken from her mother shortly afterwards. She probably never saw her father.
The BBC's Daniel Schweimler, who was at the court, says that nothing more has ever been heard about her parents - they "disappeared" along with an estimated 30,000 other victims of the military regime between 1976 and 1983.
After being taken by the authorities, Ms Sampallo lived with her adoptive parents, suspecting nothing, until 2001, when a group formed by grandmothers of the stolen babies, tracked her down and revealed her true identity.
It is believed some 500 children were given to families sympathetic to the military government. Eighty-eight have since been tracked down and those behind this case are hoping the publicity will provoke more questions, our correspondent says.
Rivas and Gomez have not commented publicly on the case.
BBC NewsQuote:
Hopes of Heathrow's Terminal 5 operating its first full schedule of flights have been scuppered by a new glitch with the baggage system.
Airport operator BAA's computer system which sorts bags before they are loaded onto flights malfunctioned and manual sorting had to be carried out.
British Airways cancelled 24 flights to and from Terminal 5 on Saturday due to the latest baggage problems.
The terminal suffered baggage problems within hours of opening nine days ago.
A spokeswoman described the situation on Saturday as "incredibly disappointing" but said the airline was working with BAA to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
BAA said the problem was entirely its responsibility.
Minimise disruption
A spokeswoman said: "We apologise to BA and all passengers who have been affected, and we assure them that our specialist staff are working hard to resolve the problem and keep disruption to BA's operation to a minimum.
"We know what the problem is. We have a potential solution and we are having to carefully consider how and when we apply this to avoid further problems."
BA had hoped to operate a full schedule on Saturday for the first time since the problems which hit the terminal's opening day.
Almost 250 flights in and out of T5 were cancelled during its first four days because of glitches with its new baggage-handling system, a temporary suspension of luggage check-in and staff familiarisation problems.
Before Saturday's baggage problems emerged, it was thought that about 9,000 bags still need to be returned to their owners - down from 28,000 which were delayed during the past week.
The airline said its problems were expected to cost it about £16m.
ReutersQuote:
A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed Sri Lanka's highways minister and at least 11 others gathered for a marathon race near the capital, the government said.
"Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle is dead from the explosion," Laksman Hulugalla, director general of the media centre for national security, told Reuters.
A former top Sri Lankan marathon runner, K.A Karunarathne, was among those killed while 100 people, some of them participants in the race to mark the upcoming New Year, were wounded.
The attack comes amidst an offensive launched by the Sri Lankan military on the northern strongholds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in which at least 100 rebel fighters were killed last week, the military said.
The rebels have in the past hit back with bombings in the capital, Colombo, and in the relatively peaceful south of the war-ravaged island when they have come under military pressure in the north and east.
Sunday's attack took place in the town of Weliveriya, 30 km from Colombo, where Fernandopulle had gone to flag off the marathon race.
Television footage showed a ball of fire moving towards the minister as he signalled the start of the run.
"Its a suicide attack, definitely by the LTTE," said a bomb squad official, speaking on condition of anonymity from the scene.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa condemned the killing, blaming it on the LTTE, but said it would not weaken his government's resolve to put down terrorism.
ReutersQuote:
Afghan and Nato forces have killed 15 insurgents in clashes in the violence-plagued south, the Afghan Defence Ministry said.
The violence came days after the United States and its Nato partners reaffirmed long-term commitment to Afghanistan.
The United States has urged allies to redouble efforts in the face of rising Afghan violence and is sending an extra 3,500 extra Marines. France has promised another 700 troops for Nato's 47,000-strong Afghan force.
The insurgents were killed in two clashes on Saturday, about 40km west of Kandahar city, the ministry said, in an area where Nato and Afghan forces have repeatedly battled the Taliban in recent years.
The Taliban, ousted by US-led forces in 2001, have vowed to step up their violent campaign to expel foreign forces and bring down the Western-backed government.
Violence surged last year with more than 6000 people killed, almost a third of them civilians.
ReutersQuote:
Iran's parliament speaker has called on Muslim nations to boycott Dutch products in response to a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Koran of inciting violence, Iranian media reported.
"The best reaction by the Islamic world is to avoid buying products made in those countries that allow themselves to insult Islam," Iran's state broadcaster IRIB quoted parliamentary speaker Gholamali Haddadadel as saying.
Haddadadel said European countries "would retreat from the path they are taking once they see their economies are in danger".
Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party in the Netherlands, launched his short video on the Internet last month, drawing condemnation from Muslim nations including Iran and Indonesia.
A group of about 40 hardline students held a peaceful demonstration outside the Dutch embassy in Tehran on Saturday.
Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to Tehran last month to protest against the video and called it "heinous and blasphemous".
Wilders' film urges Muslims to tear out "hate-filled" verses from the Koran, mixing images of bombings with quotations from Islam's holy book.
The video starts and ends with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, accompanied by the sound of ticking.
The cartoon, first published in Danish newspapers, ignited violent protests around the world in 2006. More than 50 people were killed in those riots in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
ReutersQuote:
Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party has called for a recount in last week's presidential election, saying there had been "errors and miscalculations" in the counting, the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper said.
The newspaper report came after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai accused President Robert Mugabe of deploying loyal forces and liberation war veterans for a "war on the people" to reverse the results, which have not yet been released.
"Militants are being rehabilitated," Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai told a press conference, adding that the central bank was printing money "for the finance of violence" ahead of a presidential runoff vote.
The MDC says it won the March 29 presidential election.
But the Sunday Mail said ZANU-PF had asked the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) "to recount and audit all its electoral material relating to last week's presidential election following revelations of errors and miscalculations in the compilation of the poll result".
"Consequent to the anomalies, the party has also requested that the commission defer the announcement of the presidential election result," the paper said in its online edition.
The newspaper also quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying ZANU-PF had rejected what Chinamasa described as an offer from Tsvangirai to form a unity government.
Official results do show the MDC won a parallel vote in which Mugabe's ZANU-PF lost control of parliament for the first time - the biggest defeat of the veteran leader's 28-year rule.
ZANU-PF and independent projections show Tsvangirai being forced into a presidential runoff after failing to win an absolute majority.
"The circumstances have changed, ZANU-PF has threatened, has deployed militias, has deployed war veterans," Tsvangirai said, adding Mugabe was "preparing a war on the people".
"It is unfair ... for President Mugabe to even hint at a runoff. Violence will be the new weapon to reverse the people's will. We won this election without the need for a runoff," said Tsvangirai, who called Mugabe a lame duck president and demanded that he concede.
State-owned radio reported that a group of pro-Mugabe war veterans had vowed to occupy all white-owned farms in Masvingo Province amid reports white farmers were returning to land seized by the government.
The war veterans have in the past been used to intimidate government opponents. Beginning in 2000 they led a wave of violent occupations of white farms as part of a government policy to redistribute land to blacks.
The electoral commission on Saturday announced the final results of the senate election, showing ZANU-PF had won 30 seats, the same as MDC and a breakaway opposition faction combined.
But control of the senate, which can block lower house legislation, will depend on who wins the presidential election. The head of state appoints 15 members and local chiefs, who are normally loyal to him, appoint the remaining 18.
The senate results had to precede the anxiously awaited presidential outcome. But despite growing impatience over the delay, the commission said it would only release the results "when they are ready".
Under electoral law a presidential runoff must be held three weeks after results are released. So the longer the results take, the more time ZANU-PF has to organise. Earlier the Zimbabwe High Court postponed until Sunday a legal bid by the opposition to force the release of the presidential results.
Armed police initially prevented MDC lawyers from entering the High Court before allowing them in.
Zimbabwe has the world's highest rate of inflation at more than 100,000 per cent, chronic food and fuel shortages and 80 percent unemployment.
A quarter of the population has fled abroad.
The opposition and Western governments blame Mugabe for Zimbabwe's economic collapse. He blames Western sanctions.
The last thing people needed was uncertainty in an election they hoped would bring relief from daily hardships.
"Personally I'm very disappointed because they're not giving us the results. We have been hearing all kinds of stories about the police and soldiers being sent to some areas and it's worrying," said Chamunorwa Matanga, a black market foreign currency dealer.
The veteran president had looked wounded earlier in the week after the parliamentary defeat. But a meeting of the party's politburo on Friday planned a fight-back and resolved he would contest a runoff against Tsvangirai.
Party officials alleged widespread MDC bribery of electoral officials and said they would legally challenge the results in 16 constituencies, enough to overturn the parliamentary result if successful.
Analysts believe Mugabe will use his control of state apparatus, including the security forces and pro-government militias, to intimidate MDC supporters before a runoff.
Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States, both of whom have applied sanctions on Mugabe and his top officials, have criticised the election delay and suggested it could be the precursor to a rigged result.