Other world news in brief
UN team to investigate Gaza offensive
GENEVA – UN human rights investigators will travel to the Middle East this weekend to examine the three-week offensive Israel launched in Gaza last December, a UN spokesman said yesterday.
It was not yet clear whether the four-member team headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone had been granted entry into Israel or would travel to Gaza through Egypt, spokesman Rolando Gomez told a news briefing in Geneva.
“I understand that the mission is actually leaving over the weekend and will be in the region next week,” Mr Gomez said when asked about the investigation.– (Reuters)
Zhao’s dramatic memoirs sell out
BEIJING – The Chinese-language version of former Chinese Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang’s explosive memoirs have gone on sale in Hong Kong bookstores, writes Clifford Coonan.
The first print-run of 14,000 copies had already been sold out by yesterday, according to the book’s publisher New Century Press. The memoirs detail Zhao’s years in power and his ousting by party hardliners after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when tanks and troops crushed the pro-democracy demonstration, killing hundreds. – (Reuters)
Grave concern for health of Suu Kyi
YANGON – The party of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi expressed “grave concern” yesterday for her health while she is in prison facing charges that carry a jail term of up to five years.
It is learnt that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has not been able to sleep well at night because she gets cramps in her legs day after day, the National League for Democracy (NLD) said. – (Reuters)
US denies Iran mosque bombing
WASHINGTON – The US State Department yesterday strongly rejected claims by an Iranian official that the United States was involved in the bombing of a mosque in southeastern Iran.
“We condemn this terrorist attack in the strongest possible terms,” said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly of Thursdays attack on the mosque, which killed more than 20 people. “We do not sponsor any form of terrorism in Iran,” he added. – (Reuters)
Fruit pickers in ‘slave’ conditions
STRASBOURG – About 50 women from eastern Europe were employed as fruit pickers in Alsace in eastern France under conditions that approached “slavery”, the CGT trade union said yesterday.
The women were paid 25 cent a kilo for picking strawberries, well below the legal rate and housed in unfit conditions in temporary barracks, Jacky Wagner, a local CGT official said. – (Reuters)