US President George W. Bush said yesterday he had used talks with Chinese leaders during the Olympic Games to press them to use their influence with Sudan to help end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
Wrapping up his Olympics tour, Bush said that in Sunday’s meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and other officials he raised US concerns, including human rights and religious freedoms in China and the situation in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.
“My attitude is if you’ve got relations with [Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir], think about helping to solve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur,” Bush said in an interview with NBC Sports. “That was my message to the Chinese government.”
Support for Sudan — China is a key investor in its oil industry and Khartoum’s biggest arms supplier — has been among the sources of international criticism of Beijing as the world’s spotlight has fallen on it for the Olympic games.
Bush has denounced the Sudanese government for its policies in the Darfur region, where conflict has taken some 200,000 lives and displaced some 2.5 million people since rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.
Bush has called it genocide, a charge the Sudanese government has rejected.
The US protested to China over its decision before the Games’ opening ceremonies to revoke the visa of Olympic gold medallist Joey Cheek, an activist for Darfur.
DESPERATE ACT
State media quoted police as saying that the man who murdered an American tourist in Beijing before throwing himself off a tower acted out of despair over failures in his life.
Tang Yongming, 47, stabbed Todd Bachman — the father-in-law of US Olympic volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon — to death in Beijing on Saturday in an attack that also left his wife, Barbara, seriously injured.
Police in his hometown of Hangzhou in east China, said Tang “took his anger out on society” in an example of “individual, extreme behavior,” Xinhua news agency said late on Sunday.
Tang had two failed marriages and his 21-year-old son was sentenced to six months in prison for theft earlier this year, the news agency said.
STILL MISSING
Meanwhile, a Christian activist who was detained on his way to a church service attended by Bush on Sunday has not returned home, his brother said yesterday.
Hua Huilin said he and his brother, Hua Huiqi, a member of Beijing’s underground Christian church, were stopped by security agents in two black cars on Sunday while they were cycling to the Kuan Jie Protestant Church around dawn.
The pair was taken away in separate cars and Hua Huilin said he was released a few hours later. He said his brother, however, remained missing.
“We’re so worried,” Hua Huilin said by telephone yesterday.
A man who answered the telephone at the spokesman’s office of
the Beijing Public Security Bureau said yesterday officials there were trying to find out what happened and would only comment when they had “an accurate answer.”
‘TERRORISTS’
Two women were among a squad of assailants that hurled homemade bombs at government buildings and police this week in violence that left 12 people dead in a Muslim region of China, officials said yesterday.
Police were still investigating whether the attackers belonged to a group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda that has threatened to disrupt the Games.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS