■TIBET
Dalai Lama starts EU tour
The Dalai Lama began a European tour in Denmark on Friday, meeting Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen for what he called a “mainly spiritual and educational” visit. On leaving the Danish premier’s official residence north of Copenhagen, the Tibetan spiritual leader said the 45-minute encounter was not political. The meeting came despite China warning European nations against welcoming the Dalai Lama.
■CHINA
US lashes out over lawyers
The US says it is “deeply disturbed” by reports that China has refused to renew the licenses of human rights lawyers. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters on Friday that the US was urging “that rights lawyers in China be given full scope to practice law.” He said the US would continue to raise concerns about China’s treatment of rights lawyers with Beijing. Lawyers in China say authorities have met or talked on the phone with senior members of at least nine law firms in recent weeks. They say authorities urged them to not seek the renewal of licenses for certain lawyers or to submit partial applications that would allow authorities to reject them on technicalities.
■CHINA
US school group released
A group of 21 students and three teachers from a Silver Spring, Maryland, private school has been released from quarantine after being held by the Chinese government over fears about swine flu. The students from the Barrie School had just one day left to wrap up their tour of Guizhou Province before they return home today. They arrived a week ago and were quarantined in their hotel for five days, beginning on Monday.
■AFGHANISTAN
Blast injures governor
A roadside bomb ripped through the motorcade of a provincial governor in the northeast yesterday, injuring the official and his driver, a security official said. Mohammad Omar, the provincial governor of Kunduz Province was injured when a remote-controlled bomb, similar to those used by Taliban insurgents, struck his vehicle, said Abdul Majeed Azimi, the local intelligence chief. “The governor was returning from [the neighboring] province of Takhar. Along the road a remote-control mine struck his vehicle, injuring him and his driver slightly,” Azimi said, adding that the two men were hospitalized with “slight injuries.”
■HONG KONG
Boy hacker ‘mentally stable’
A man who hacked a 3-year-old boy to death with a meat cleaver in front of horrified lunchtime crowds had been declared mentally fit by psychiatrists just weeks earlier, news reports said on Saturday. The 39-year-old man surnamed Leung was released from a psychiatric unit in 2006 after being an inpatient for two years. He attended a scheduled checkup on May 8 and was diagnosed as mentally stable by a senior psychiatrist, the South China Morning Post said. Leung attacked the boy, who was a neighbor, as he played on Friday in the street with his father outside a busy market. Horrified witnesses described how Leung suddenly ran out at the boy and sank the cleaver into his head several times as his father tried to defend him, pleading: “Do not chop my son. Chop me!”
■PHILIPPINES
Schools open despite flu
More than 23 million students were cleared to head back to schools next week despite the threat of swine flu, officials said on Saturday. The new school year will start as scheduled today with 21 million expected at elementary and secondary schools along with 2.6 million others at colleges and universities, the education department said. Health Secretary Francisco Duque played down fears raised by some politicians who have called for the start of the school year to be delayed until the outbreak of influenza A(H1N1) has subsided.
RSS