QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We have to admit that our life now is almost like a war.We have to cope with an

aggression that we do not understand.” Andrii Deshchytsya, the Ukrainian foreign minister, on the ongoing crisis in his country and the Russian takeover of Crimea Article, 2AExiled Tibetan urges young to act

DHARMSALA, India - Young Tibetans are leading the fight to free their homeland from Chinese rule, the leader of the community’s government-in-exile said on Monday’s 55th anniversary of an uprising that led to a bloody crackdown and drove the Dalai Lama to flee into India.

Within Tibet since 2009, 126 people have set themselves on fire to protest China’s heavy-handed rule.

“It is the younger generation of Tibetans in Tibet who clearly and loudly demand their identity, freedom and unity,” Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay told flag-waving exile Tibetans and their supporters in Dharmsala, where the Dalai Lama and the exile government are based.

China claims Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries. Tibetans say the Himalayan region was virtually independent until China occupied it in 1950.

Beijing accuses the self-proclaimed exile government of seeking to separate Tibet from China. But exiles and the Dalai Lama say they simply want a high degree of autonomy under Chinese rule.

Not changing WWII apology, Japan says

TOKYO - Japan said Monday that it is not planning to change its 1993 apology over a system of forced prostitution for its military during World War II, but will continue to re-examine a study on which it was based.

Japan has come under fire from Asian neighbors for setting up a group to verify the accuracy of interviews more than 20 years ago with women who said they worked as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers before and during the war.

Historians say tens of thousands of women served as sex slaves, called “comfort women” in Japan. Some Japanese nationalists have long insisted that women in wartime brothels were voluntary prostitutes, not sex slaves.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters Monday that the government has no plan to change its official apology, called the Kono statement after Yohei Kono, the government spokesman at the time who issued the apology.

“We are not thinking about changing the Kono statement,” Suga said.

But he said the government will continue the review of the evidence that backed the statement, but did not address what it might do if anything turned up that questioned the statement.

U.N. probes genocide reports in C. Africa

GENEVA - Leaders of a U.N. investigation of human-rights abuses in Central African Republic said they will look into “reports of genocide” as they launched the probe Monday.

The chairman of the investigation, Bernard Acho Muna, said he is concerned that hate propaganda used by both Christians and Muslims in the conflict will fuel more violence.

“We are hoping that our presence and the investigations we are doing will be a signal that the people who are making this hate propaganda will not move to action,” said Muna.

The U.N. panel is made up of Muna - a Cameroonian lawyer who was deputy chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda - former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda and Mauritanian human-rights lawyer Fatimata M’Baye. The three were flying later Monday to the capital, Bangui.

Israel displays arms seized in Red Sea

EILAT, Israel - Israel’s prime minister Monday triumphantly toured a display of dozens of rockets that navy commandos intercepted in the Red Sea last week, alleged to be on their way from Iran to the Gaza Strip, and accused the international community of ignoring Iranian support for militant groups and falling victim to a charm offensive by the new leadership in Tehran.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to this Red Sea port capped a six-day public-relations blitz aimed at persuading world powers to toughen their position in nuclear talks. So far, the international reaction has been subdued, illustrating the uphill battle the Israeli leader faces in his efforts to change the minds of world leaders about Iran’s outreach to the West.

“Iran, a brutal regime, has not abandoned its deep involvement in terrorism, its systematic efforts to undermine peace and security throughout the Middle East and its ambition to destroy the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/11/2014