Chen Guangcheng, sitting in a wheelchair and accompanied by his wife and two children, boarded United Airlines Flight 88 for the 12-hour flight to Newark, outside New York City, a few hours after Chinese authorities suddenly told him to pack and prepare to leave.
“Thousands of thoughts are surging to my mind,” Chen said at the airport. His concerns, he said, included whether authorities would retaliate for his negotiated departure by punishing his relatives left behind. It also is unclear whether the government will allow him to return.
A self-taught legal activist, Chen asked his supporters and others in the activist community for their understanding of his desire to leave the front lines of the rights struggle in China.
“I am requesting a leave of absence, and I hope that they will understand,” he said.
The Chens’ departure to the United States marks the conclusion of nearly a month of uncertainty and years of mistreatment by local authorities for the activist.
After seven years of prison and house arrest, Chen made a daring escape from his rural village in late April and was given sanctuary inside the U.S. Embassy, triggering a diplomatic standoff over his fate. With Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Beijing for annual high-level discussions, officials struck a deal that let Chen walk free, only to see him have second thoughts, forcing new negotiations that led to an agreement to send him to the U.S. to study law — a goal of his — at New York University.
Moments after his departure from Beijing, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Chen was
]]>The attack comes one day ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago, where the coalition intends to spell out its role in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.
“The bomber blew himself up in a crowded market and it was powerful,” said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, police chief of eastern Khost province.
He said the assailant was heading for a police checkpoint in the Ali Sher district along the border with Pakistan’s “lawless tribal areas”.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed six children, one civilian adult and three policemen.
Eleven years into the NATO-led war against the Taliban, the Islamist group holds large sway in Afghanistan’s restive south and east, where they enjoy enormous popular support.
Afghan security officials have said they expect this year’s summer fighting season to be bloody as the third phase of a security handover from NATO to Afghan forces gets underway.
(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)
]]>Fighter jets flew over Colombo and thousands of soldiers paraded in the streets flanked by tanks to mark the 2009 end to the 25-year civil war, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Sri Lanka’s foreign minister to demilitarize the north of the country and protect human rights.
Rajapaksa said reducing the military camps in the former war zone would be a risk to national security.
“There are many who shout that the security forces camps in these areas should be removed. They ask us why they are not removed,” he said, pointing out the north was under civilian, not military rule.
“We must ask if we are in a position to remove the armed forces camps in the north and reduce our attention to national security. That is not possible.”
Clinton met Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris in Washington on Friday. She stressed the importance of demilitarizing the north and of protecting human rights, including press freedoms, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a briefing.
Sri
]]>Fighting erupted late on Friday and carried on into Saturday on the outskirts of the southern city of Jaar, held by Islamist militants, who have stepped up their campaign during months of political turmoil.
Government troops, backed by U.S. drone strikes, have been trying to push the insurgents out of strongholds in the south of the country, which lies near oil shipping routes through the Red Sea.
Washington and Yemen’s neighbor Saudi Arabia both fear the instability in Yemen could give al Qaeda‘s regional wing a stronger foothold in the region.
“There is heavy fighting, and the armed elements are doing everything possible to stop the advance of (government) troops,” a government official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.
Government forces were about 1 km (0.6 mile) from Jaar, he added.
Twelve Yemeni soldiers and 17 militants were killed in the fighting and an air strike killed three militants on the outskirts of the city, the official said.
Another air
]]>The three Gulf states’ Foreign Ministries urged all those already in Lebanon – a favorite destination for wealthy Gulf tourists – to leave because of the “security situation” in the country, the official news agencies BNA, QNA and WAM reported.
Heavy fighting has rocked Lebanon’s northern port of Tripoli in the past week. The clashes, mainly between government troops and gunmen in a Sunni Muslim district, have highlighted how violence in Syria can spill into Lebanon, a country that was garrisoned by Syrian troops until 2005.
Tourists from Gulf states form the bulk of the wealthy visitors to Lebanon, whose vital tourism industry has been hit hard by unrest in neighboring Syria.
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Lebanon last month warned Saudis to stay away from Lebanon’s border areas, after two Saudi citizens were kidnapped and tortured for eight days, before being freed in a joint Saudi-Lebanese operation.
Israel borders Lebanon to the south and Syria is its eastern neighbor. There have also been several cases of kidnappings for money in recent years in Lebanon, usually in remote parts of the country.
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Deputy governor Badr el-Din Mahmoud told al-Sudani newspaper the central bank had received the foreign currency from “friendly” countries. “It arrived in the treasury of the central bank in the past few days,” he said, without elaborating.
“We will meet the country’s currency demands until the end of this and next year,” he said, adding that all requests to fund imports would be met.
He did not give any details of where the money came from or the terms under which it had been transferred to Sudan. Sudanese newspapers reported earlier this year Qatar would give Sudan $2 billion in aid but this was never confirmed by either country.
The deputy governor was not immediately available for comment on Saturday.
Sudan’s economy has been battered since the country lost three-quarters of its oil production to South Sudan when the latter became independent in July.
The loss of oil revenues, the main source of state income and dollar inflows, has hit the pound hard and driven up inflation. One dollars buys around 5.5
]]>The explosion, near the entrance of a school named after the wife of murdered anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, occurred as girls were arriving for the start of the school day, which in Italy includes Saturdays.
Authorities said at least two gas canisters appeared to have been placed in or near rubbish containers at the school, which local media said was located near the main court in Brindisi, a port city on the “heel” of the Italian peninsula.
The general director of the Perrino hospital in Brindisi, Paola Ciannamea, told local television that one girl was stable after surgery but in very serious condition, and at least six others were being treated for burns that were not life threatening.
“This is a tragedy,” Mimmo Consales, the mayor of Brindisi, told SkyTG24 television.
There was no claim of responsibility and no indication of who had planted the bomb, but initial suspicions were directed at the local mafia, known as the United Sacred Crown.
Consales noted that the incident occurred just a few days before the 20th anniversary of the murder of Falcone and his wife,
]]>After an early morning bilateral meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Cameron said he detected a “growing sense of urgency that action needs to be taken” on the euro zone crisis.
“We are addressing here the two biggest threats to all our economies and that is of course the euro zone crisis but also the very high oil prices that translate into high prices at the pumps and we are making progress on both,” he told reporters.
There has been speculation that Obama will use an energy session at the G8 to seek support to tap emergency oil reserves before a European Union embargo of Iranian crude takes effect in July. Cameron gave no details of what action was planned.
On the euro zone crisis, Cameron said “what is required is a sense of urgency and then clear actions for strong banks, strong deficit reduction plans, strong governance and strong contingency plans for whatever might happen.”
“On all those things I think there’s a good sense of talks taking place and a good sense that action needs to follow,” he said.
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