Protestant extremists rioted for a second straight night in Belfast and surrounding towns on Sunday, attacking police and burning cars because of a restricted Orange Order parade on Saturday. Chief Constable Hugh Orde, commander of Northern Ireland’s mostly Protestant police, said 40 officers were wounded Saturday and Sunday while fending off mobs of angry, often drunken Protestant men and teenagers in several parts of Belfast and in seven other predominantly Protestant towns and villages. Two civilians also were injured.
China: Clinton urges tolerance
China will have to tolerate more dissent as its economy grows and opens up to the rest of the world, former President Clinton said Sunday from Beijing. Clinton, who is on a four-day visit to China, also said he would have raised the case of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, imprisoned for allegedly providing state secrets to foreigners, when he spoke at a conference on Saturday but he had not been aware of the issue at the time.
China says Pope showed ‘no respect’
China has accused Pope Benedict XVI of showing “no respect” after the pontiff invited the country’s rival Catholic bishops to a meeting at the Vatican next month. The Vatican knew that old age and poor health would prevent the bishops from attending, the official Xinhua News Agency said late Saturday.
Indonesia: Human-bird flu link check
Indonesia is investigating a possible human case of the bird flu virus after a 37-year-old woman died showing symptoms of the disease, the health minister said Sunday. If confirmed, this would be Indonesia’s fourth human fatality from avian influenza. In July, Indonesia became the fourth country in Asia to record human cases, when a man and his two daughters died after contracting the H5N1 strain of the virus.
Egypt: Leader vows democracy
President Hosni Mubarak pledged Sunday to follow up his victory in Egypt’s first presidential elections with further democratic reforms in the Arab world’s largest country. In his first comments since Wednesday’s election, Mubarak thanked Egyptians for awarding him his fifth six-year term as president. Mubarak renewed promises of his three-week election campaign to amend Egypt’s constitution to give more powers to the parliament and reduce those held by the president’s office.
Afghanistan: No assassination try
Soldiers who fired at the defense minister’s convoy were not trying to assassinate him as initially believed, but were shooting at other troops they were angry with, a government spokesman said Sunday. Shots were fired at the convoy Saturday after it had dropped Defense Minister Rahim Wardak and some other Cabinet members at Kabul’s airport. One bullet hit a seat in Wardak’s car where he had been sitting just moments earlier.
From Herald news services
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