Chinese lawyer released after questioning
BEIJING — A prominent Chinese human-rights lawyer was released Saturday after two days of detention by secret police.
Teng Biao, 34, said police questioned him about articles calling for an independent and fair legal system that he has written for his blog and overseas Chinese websites. China’s Communist Party controls the judiciary, which routinely imprisons dissidents after convicting them in secret trials.
“I was released around 1:40 this afternoon, and they put me down at a place near my home,” Teng said in a telephone interview. “The police were from the Beijing Public Security Bureau, but they don’t allow me to tell any more details.”
Teng has defended dissidents and been an outspoken critic of human-rights abuses in China, especially as international scrutiny has increased ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games, which open here Aug. 8.
The Washington Post
Serbia to dissolve its government
BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia’s government collapsed Saturday over an impasse between the nationalist prime minister and the pro- Western president on how Kosovo’s independence affects the Balkan country’s pursuit of EU membership.
“The government, which does not have united policies, cannot function,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said. “That’s the end of the government.”
Kostunica said he will convene a session of the caretaker government Monday, which will propose to President Boris Tadic to dissolve the Parliament and call new elections for May 11.
Tadic said in a statement that he will call early elections because they are a “democratic way to overcome the political crisis.” But he disputed Kostunica’s claim that their clash was over Kosovo, the Serbian medieval heartland that proclaimed independence last month with the backing of the United States and several EU countries. “I believe the issue is that the Serbian government does not have a united position over European and economic perspectives of Serbia and its citizens,” he added.
Britain’s Thatcher spends night in hospital
LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spent the night in a London hospital for medical checks and returned home Saturday.
Thatcher, her arm held by a hospital staff member, waved to photographers before ducking into a Jaguar outside St. Thomas’ Hospital in south London, where she had been taken after feeling faint. She waved again as she stepped into her London home a few minutes later.
The 82-year-old former Conservative leader had felt unwell during dinner with friends near the House of Lords in central London, according to her private secretary, Mark Worthington, and her daughter, Carol.
President offers citizenship to purge victims
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s president led muted ceremonies Saturday marking the 40th anniversary of a communist-era anti- Semitic purge and pledged to return citizenship to the Jews who were stripped of it upon leaving the country.
“All of those who left then, and were forced to give up their citizenship, will have their citizenship returned to them if they want it,” President Lech Kaczynski said at Warsaw’s Gdansk Train Station.
A plaque marks the symbolic point from which an estimated 15,000 Jews — survivors of the Holocaust and their children — were driven from Poland by the country’s communist regime.
“I treat that as my contribution to rectifying those sad and shameful acts,” Kaczynski said.
The Associated Press
