COLOMBO, Sri Lanka
Tamil rebels open to peace monitoring
Tamil rebels agreed Saturday to talk next month with Sri Lanka’s government about allowing peace monitoring by Nordic officials, a Norwegian envoy said.
The decision was likely to ease fears that the island nation is sliding back into full-scale war.
Five Nordic countries have been monitoring a Norway- brokered cease-fire that was signed by the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels four years ago.
Surging violence since April has killed nearly 300 people, raising fears the country could be slipping back to the full-scale fighting that killed more than 65,000 people before the 2002 cease-fire accord halted 19 years of open warfare.
BEIJING
Case refiled against newspaper researcher
A Chinese researcher in The New York Times’ Beijing bureau will be tried next month for fraud and divulging state secrets despite a court’s earlier decision to drop the charges, his attorney said Saturday.
The trial of Zhao Yan, 44, was tentatively set to begin June 8 in Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court after the charges were refiled, attorney Mo Shaoping said a court official told him Friday.
The charge of revealing state secrets is regarded as particularly serious under Chinese law, and acquittals are rare in such cases.
The prosecutor’s move to refile the charges, and the court’s acceptance of them as the basis of a trial, means President Hu Jintao apparently has decided to disregard repeated requests from President Bush for Zhao’s release.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip
Hamas’ use of militia risks more violence
The Hamas-led government’s private militia returned to the streets of Gaza on Saturday after a one-day absence, complicating efforts to end an increasingly bloody standoff with President Mahmoud Abbas’ rival Fatah movement.
Although the force was out in limited numbers, angry Fatah officials said the move risked setting off more violence and accused Hamas of using the militia as a bargaining chip in the stalemate with Abbas.
Abbas has issued an ultimatum to Hamas to accept a plan for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The plan implies recognition of Israel, and accepting it would effectively mean an end to Hamas’ stated aim of destroying the Jewish state.
UNITED NATIONS
More than 2 million children HIV-positive
More than 2 million children younger than 15 are living with HIV, almost all in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is no access to treatment and death is almost certain, seven leading child advocacy organizations said.
“We are failing children,” said Dean Hirsch, chairman of the Global Movement for Children, which issued an urgent appeal to governments, donors and the pharmaceutical industry to recognize a child’s right to treatment as fundamental.
The movement released a report Friday that painted a grim picture of the impact of the disease on children. About 700,000 children were infected with the HIV virus in 2005, bringing the total to 2.3 million, and 570,000 died of AIDS – one every minute.
BEIJING
Bank officials arrested in coal mine flooding
Authorities arrested two bank officials they say were partially responsible for a coal mine flood thought to have killed up to 57 workers in China’s deadliest mining accident this year, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Su Rijun and Bai Xiaozhong of the Agricultural Bank of China have been “found to have correlated responsibility for the flooding accident” in Shanxi province, Xinhua said, citing Bai Yulong, spokesman for the rescue headquarters.
