PERMIT PAINS: The DPP is accusing the Taipei mayor of double standards over the city's refusal to grant it a permit for its torch relay while allowing the KMT to go ahead
By Mo Yan-chih
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday dared the Taipei mayor to arrest him over his government's plan to hold a torch relay to promote its UN membership bid, which the city administration insists is illegal.

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Pakistan did everything it could to protect former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on her homecoming, a top government official insisted yesterday, dismissing accusations that officials may have been complicit in the attack that she escaped but that killed at least 136.

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STRONG WORDS: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan wants Baghdad to close all the Kurdistan Workers' Party camps in northern Iraq and to hand over all its leaders
Iraq's Kurdish region vowed on Friday to fight off any attack as Washington said it was willing to help Baghdad crack down on rebels there to stave off a threatened Turkish incursion.

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Hezbollah on Friday denounced a senior Pentagon official's call for a US "strategic partnership" with the Lebanese army, saying US attempts to boost military ties were a ploy for domination and could turn the country into another Iraq.

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The US Air Force says it has punished 70 airmen involved in the accidental, cross-country flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber following an investigation that found widespread disregard for the rules on handling such munitions.

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