Mianyang, China—Chinese
authorities had evacuated nearly 200,000 people
by early Saturday and warned more than 1 million
others to be ready to leave quickly as a lake
formed by a devastating earthquake threatened to
breach its dam. The confirmed death toll from
China’s worst quake in three decades was raised
Saturday to 68,977, an increase of about 120
people from a day earlier. Another 17,974 people
were still missing, the State Council said. The
increase was the smallest since the government
started issuing a daily death toll shortly after
the quake hit. Hundreds of Chinese troops have
been working around the clock to drain
Tangjiashan lake in Sichuan province. The lake
formed above Beichuan town in the Mianyang
region when a hillside plunged into a river
valley during the May 12 quake that killed more
than 68,000 people.
Singapore— The Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have shown no sign
they are genuine about wanting peaceeven though
the door remains open for a return to
negotiations, a senior Sri Lankan official said
Saturday.
“We are looking for a negotiated end to this
conflict... so far they have shown no
inclination to enter into any constructive
dialoguewith a view to ending this conflict,”
Palitha Kohona, secretary with the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, told reporters on the side
lines of a regional security summit. He said
“the LTTE is free to come back to the
negotiating table but... must do so genuinely
with a commitment tonegotiating a sustainable
peace and for that it must also leave aside its
weaponry.”
AFTER reading enough in the local press about
the threat to and the ill-effects on our society
from the presence of a large number of migrant
and semi-skilled workers in this country, I have
to ask this question: Can we really get by
without their presence? Before I answer this
question myself, let me list some of the
activities these workers are currently engaged
in. Starting off with our municipal workers, it
is not hard to notice the large number of
expatriate workers industriously engaged in
keeping our roads and cities clean, and our
trash carted away. As our cities strain from a
growing population, so does the amount of litter
and garbage that has to be catered to, and it is
being judiciously done by the migrant workers.
Schangnau, Switzerland—Swiss
voters go to the polls Sunday in a referendum
proposed by the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP)
that would make it much harder for foreigners to
become naturalised citizens. The SVP has
transformed itself from a small farmers’ party
into a fiercely populist force with an
anti-immigrant message over the past few
decades, and scored 29 percent in last October’s
general elections. The controversial proposal
would give local communities the power to decide
by a popular vote which immigrants are granted
naturalisation, with no right to appeal.At
present, the decision is made by an ad hoc
commission, usually at cantonal or communal
level.
Seoul — North Korea has fired
three short-range missiles off its west coast,
Yonhap news agency reported Saturday. The South
Korean agency, quoting a government source, said
the missiles were fired on Friday into the
Yellow Sea off Jeungsan County, some 40
kilometres (25 miles) west of Pyongyang.The
testing was part of a military training exercise
involving Russian-designed Styx ship-to-ship
missiles with a range of 46 kilometres, the
report said. “The missile launch, like the
test-firing conducted on March 28, is part of
normal military training aimed at testing the
performance of the missiles and improving
operational readiness,” the source was quoted in
the report saying.
