China has evacuated more than 150 000 people living below a swollen lake formed by this month’s devastating earthquake amid fears it could burst and trigger massive flooding, state media said on Wednesday. Tokyo’s Jiji news agency said China had called on Japan to send its military to help with relief operations.
South Africa’s aspirations to lead the continent are being shredded by the xenophobic mobs who have hacked, shot and beaten to death at least 42 African migrants in the land where apartheid was defeated. The mobs accuse the immigrants of depriving South Africans of scarce jobs and fuelling crime.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon flew to Burma on Thursday to press the ruling generals to allow a full-blown international aid effort for 2,4-million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis. The government’s official toll is 77 738 people killed and 55 917 missing, and it also estimates the damage to the economy at -billion.
China vowed on Wednesday to deal severely with anyone found responsible for shoddy state building work, as parents demanded to know why last week’s quake destroyed so many schools, killing thousands of children. Nine days after the massive tremor hit the mountainous Sichuan province in south-western China, rescuers were still finding survivors.
China on Wednesday denied that a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe had managed to get its cargo to the landlocked African nation, saying the ship and the weapons were on their way back to China. Zimbabwe would not comment at the weekend on reports that his government had finally taken delivery of a consignment of arms.
From tent cities in stricken Sichuan province to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, sirens wailed and millions of Chinese stood for three minutes on Monday to mourn tens of thousands who died in last week’s earthquake. The moment was observed across the vast country of 1,3-billion people at 2.28pm local time, exactly a week after the quake struck.
The Dalai Lama accused China of ”suppression” and demanded autonomy for Tibet as he arrived Thursday in Germany to start a Western tour ahead of the Beijing Olympics. ”The Chinese political authorities’ reaction, as before, was suppression. So it is very sad,” he said of China’s military crackdown.
The death toll from China’s massive earthquake rose to at least 20 000 on Thursday as rescuers struggled to help survivors and hopes faded for a further 25 000 buried under rubble for more than three days. Three days after the quake, hopes of pulling survivors from the ruins dimmed.
Conditions are neither safe nor fair yet for a run-off election in Zimbabwe in which the opposition hopes to unseat President Robert Mugabe, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said on Wednesday. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is to face Mugabe in the second round after failing to secure an absolute majority in a disputed poll.
A devastating earthquake is the latest in a series of disasters and controversies that have turned what China had hoped would be an Olympic year of celebration into one of turmoil and tragedy. With tens of thousands of people either dead or missing, Monday’s quake in the south-west of the country has plunged China into mourning less than 90 days before the Games.
Sudan on Wednesday urged the international community to list the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) as a terrorist group, after its lightning weekend assault on the capital. The assault was only halted at the bridge leading to central Khartoum, army headquarters and the presidential palace.
The United Nations food agency suspended aid flights to cyclone-struck Burma on Friday after the military government seized two deliveries at Rangoon airport, apparently determined to distribute supplies on its own. Governments around the world have been pressing Burma’s ruling generals to open the country’s borders to desperately needed assistance.
Burma will accept foreign aid but distribute relief itself, an official newspaper said on Friday, after a disaster rescue team from Qatar that arrived in Rangoon on an aid flight was turned back. Outside frustration is mounting at delays by the generals in giving visas to aid workers and landing rights for flights.
France needs to improve its tarnished image across Africa where it was once a powerful colonial power but now competes with countries like China for influence, according to a Foreign Ministry report. The ministry asked ambassadors stationed in Africa for their views on France’s image on the continent and summarised them in a report last autumn.
The Dalai Lama on Friday welcomed China’s offer to meet his envoy for talks after weeks of protests over Tibet and repeated calls from the exiled spiritual leader for dialogue with Beijing. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that talks would take place in the coming days, which the Dalai Lama’s spokesperson described as "a step in the right direction".
African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma said on Thursday it is not yet the time to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe in the wake of its undecided presidential election. ”I do not think we have reached the stage of an arms embargo in Zimbabwe,” Zuma told journalists during a visit to London.
A Chinese primary school teacher and a beautician have filed a suit against CNN in New York over remarks they say insulted the Chinese people and are seeking ,3-billion in compensation — per person in China, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.
Denmark has evacuated staff from its embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan because of terror threats following the reprint in Danish newspapers of a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad, officials said on Wednesday. The threat ”is so concrete that we had to take this decision”, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
A group of Chinese lawyers has sued CNN, saying remarks by commentator Jack Cafferty in which he called the Chinese ”goons” violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people, a Hong Kong newspaper said. The Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po said the Beijing court had yet to accept the case.
African National Congress president Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday Africa must send a mission to Zimbabwe to end a delay in issuing election results, which he called unacceptable. Zuma has made several forthright comments on the election delay, distancing himself from South African President Thabo Mbeki, the regional mediator.
China on Thursday snubbed an apology from CNN over remarks by one of its commentators as a wave of verbal assaults on foreign media raised concerns over coverage at this summer’s Beijing Olympics. CNN’s explanation that a commentator was referring to China’s leaders — not the people — as a ”bunch of goons and thugs”.
China has lodged a formal complaint against television network CNN for what it called a vicious attack by one of its commentators, who labelled the Chinese as ”goons”. In a statement late on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao condemned the comments by Jack Cafferty on CNN’s The Situation Room programme.
Newly appointed Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Monday urged the new government, comprising former rivals, to work together to enhance reconciliation in the deeply divided nation. ”The process of reconciliation has begun and the Cabinet must speak in one voice,” Odinga told reporters.
China on Tuesday denounced protesters who upstaged Olympic Games torch relays in London and Paris, with state media saying that saboteurs are bent on wrecking Games goodwill. An international Olympic official also criticised the protests, but said the relay would stay on its round-the-world course.
French authorities were working on Saturday to free a luxury cruise yacht and its 30-member crew taken hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia. ”The defence and foreign affairs ministries are working to act as quickly as possible. I hope … to try to obtain the release of the hostages,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
The internet must be open during the Beijing Olympics. That was the message a top-ranking International Olympic Committee (IOC) official delivered on Tuesday to Beijing organisers during the last official sessions between IOC inspectors and the host Chinese before the Games begin in just more than four months.
China’s president and the country’s top athlete launched the Beijing Olympics torch relay on Monday amid cheering, dancing and tight security, marking the symbolic start to a Games overshadowed by activism and unrest in Tibet. Chinese President Hu Jintao lit a cauldron on a red-carpeted rostrum on Tiananmen Square before handing the torch to World and Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang.
North Korea test-fired several short-range missiles on Friday, South Korea said, in what analysts saw as a show of anger at Washington and the new conservative government in Seoul. The launch comes a day after the North expelled South Korean officials from a joint industrial complex north of the border.
Tibetan monks stormed a news briefing at a temple in Lhasa on Thursday, accusing Chinese authorities of lying about recent unrest and saying the Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the violence. The incident was an embarrassment to the Chinese government, which brought a select group of foreign reporters to Lhasa for a stage-managed tour of the city.
China has criticised human rights demonstrators who disrupted the Greek torch-lighting ceremony for the Beijing Olympics as being ”disgraceful”. Just before the torch was lit on Monday inside the archaeological site that played host to the Olympics in ancient Greece, three demonstrators managed to break a tight police cordon.
Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, has won more than half the vote in Saturday’s election, the party said, auguring improved ties with diplomatic rival China. Ma had won more than seven million votes, the party said, more than half the total 13-million people who cast their ballot.
China ramped up security on Thursday to quell a Tibetan uprising as it expressed concern over British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s planned meeting with the Dalai Lama. Huge military convoys were seen heading towards Tibet, while a build-up of troops took place in nearby provinces after a week of violent protests against China’s rule of the region.