QUOTE OF THE DAY “It is quite ridiculous.” Researcher Karim Medhat Ennarah, after 529 Egyptians were sentenced to death in a
mass trial for the murder of a police officer Article, this page Taiwan police oust China-pact protesters
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Baton-wielding riot police on Monday cleared Taiwan’s Cabinet offices of scores of angry protesters opposed to a trade pact with China, escalating tensions over the island’s rapidly developing ties with the communist mainland.
Authorities said they arrested 58 protesters and that 137 were injured, including 24 who were hospitalized. The crackdown came five days after mainly student demonstrators occupied the nearby Legislature to protest the ruling party’s decision to renege on a promised line-byline review of the trade agreement.
Political protests in Taiwan are common, but violent confrontations are relatively rare, reflecting the high level of civil discourse resulting from the transition from one-party dictatorship to democracy in the mid-1990s.
China’s government has not commented on the protests, although an editorial Monday in the official newspaper Global Times was harshly critical.
“The Taiwanese students lack the courage and determination to commit to regional economic integration, fear losing out and change and only wish to defend the status quo,” the editorial read.
U.N. ties ’13 extremes to climate change
GENEVA - The head of the United Nations weather agency said Monday that recent extreme weather patterns are “consistent” with human-induced climate change, citing key events that wreaked havoc in Asia, Europe, the U.S. and the Pacific Ocean region last year.
Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said his agency’s annual assessment of the global climate shows how dramatically people and lands everywhere felt the effects of extreme weather such as droughts, floods and tropical cyclones.
“Many of the extreme events of 2013 were consistent with what we would expect as a result of human-induced climate change,” he said.
The U.N. agency called 2013 the sixth-warmest year on record. Thirteen of the 14 warmest years have occurred in the 21st century.
Fruit container yields cocaine harvest
DAVAO, Philippines - A large stash of high-grade cocaine was uncovered in the Philippines when several hidden packets tumbled from the ceiling of a shipping container in a private wharf, officials said Monday.
The find, made Saturday, totaled more than 110 pounds.
Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said he believed that the Philippines was a transit point for the drugs, which could be intended for more lucrative markets in the United States or Europe, and the government would seek Interpol’s help to determine the drugs’ origin and destination.
Regional director Emerson Rosales of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency said the cocaine, wrapped in plastic packs, was concealed in the container ceiling and accidentally tumbled down.
The wharf was being used by a banana-exporting company, but Duterte said he believed that company officials were unaware that one of their leased containers held illegal drugs.
The container was transported by ship to Manila from Hong Kong last December then arrived in Davao, in January. Investigators were trying to identify people who had access to the container, which was used to transport bananas and other fruits, Rosales said.
Kosovo kin receive rampages’ 46 dead
PRISTINA, Kosovo - The remains of 46 ethnic-Albanian civilians killed by Serb forces during the 1998-99 Kosovo war and hidden for years in mass graves were handed over to their families Monday.
Arsim Gerxhaliu, head of Kosovo’s Forensic Department, said a funeral for some of the victims will take place Wednesday, the 15th anniversary of the killings, in the town of Suva Reka.
The victims were killed in two separate rampages in March 1999 by Serb forces in western Kosovo just days after NATO began a bombing campaign to stop Serbia’s onslaught against separatist ethnic Albanians.
Some of the victims were buried by Serb forces at a military air base near Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, to cover up the killings. Other victims were found in mass graves in Kosovo.
Over 1,000 people still remain missing, most of them ethnic Albanians.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/25/2014