Activist cries danger as China hints at solution

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng's high-profile pleas for U.S. sanctuary upped the pressure Friday on Washington and Beijing to resolve his fate, with China saying he could apply to study abroad.

Robert S. Wang, center, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, walks with an unidentified U.S. embassy staff outside the hospital where blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng is recuperating in Beijing Friday, May 4, 2012. The blind Chinese activist at the center of a diplomatic standoff between the United States and China said Friday his situation is "dangerous," and that American officials have been blocked from seeing him for two days and friends who have tried to visit have been beaten up.

The slight concession, offered in a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement, pointed to a possible way out of the diplomatic standoff. Even so, he remained in a guarded Beijing hospital ward, unable to see U.S. officials. His wife's movements are being monitored, he said, and the couples with their two children feel in danger.

"I can only tell you one thing. My situation right now is very dangerous," Chen said. "For two days, American officials who have wanted to come and see me have not been allowed in." 

A self-taught lawyer and symbol in China's civil rights movement, Chen embroiled Washington and Beijing in their most delicate diplomatic crisis in years after he escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy last week. He left six days later under a negotiated deal in which he and his family was to be safely relocated in China. But he then upended the agreement by saying they wanted to go abroad.

Since his release to a Beijing hospital where he was reunited with his wife, son and daughter, Chen's calls to The Associated Press, other foreign media and friends have resonated around the world, and even become part of Washington politics in a presidential election year. 

On Thursday, he called in to a congressional hearing in Washington, telling lawmakers he wanted to meet U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, who is in Beijing for annual security talks.

"I hope I can get more help from her," Chen said.

While publicly Washington has said little and Beijing has shown little inclination to budge, contacts have taken place. Clinton met Chinese President Hu Jintao and other top leaders, though officials declined to say if Chen's case was discussed. The Foreign Ministry statement was among the first signs of progress. In it, a spokesman said Chen as a normal citizen may apply to study overseas.

"Chen Guangcheng is currently being treated in hospital. As a Chinese citizen, if he wants to study abroad he can go through the normal channels to the relevant departments and complete the formalities in accordance with the law like other Chinese citizens," the statement said without elaborating. At a later briefing spokesman Liu Weimin declined to elaborate.

While the statement only reiterates the normal rights of a Chinese citizen, it underscored the government's openness to letting him go and that Chen faces no criminal charges. Though he has lived under arrest at his rural home along with his family for 20 months, his treatment has appeared to be the retribution of local officials angry at Chen's activism.

Chen has exposed forced abortions and other abuses in his community as part of China's population controls.

Clinton urges China to protect human rights

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called on China to protect human rights amid a dispute over the status of a blind dissident who has appealed to Washington for help.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned China to protect human rights Thursday, in remarks that rejected Beijing's criticism of the U.S. for getting involved in the case of a blind dissident whose fate overshadowed the opening of annual talks between the powerful countries.

Clinton told the opening of annual talks with China on foreign policy and economic issues that the U.S. believes "all governments have to answer our citizens' aspirations for dignity and the rule of law and that no nation can or should deny those rights."

Clinton's comments Thursday came after a blind Chinese dissident who took refuge in the U.S. Embassy appealed to Washington for more help. He said later from his hospital room in Beijing that he fears for his family's safety unless they are all spirited abroad.

Her comments came as the dissident, Chen Guangcheng, pleaded for more help from Washington. The blind, self-taught lawyer took refuge in the U.S. Embassy after escaping house arrest, but left Wednesday to get treatment for a leg injury at a Beijing hospital. He initially said he had been assured that he would be safe in China, but hours later he said he fears for his family's safety unless they are all spirited abroad.

China already demanded an apology from the U.S. even before Chen balked at a deal in which he would remain in his homeland. Now that he wants to leave, the case could overshadow talks in which Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are to discuss foreign policy and economic issues with their Chinese counterparts.

ADDS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT LEGAL ADVISOR HAROLD KOH AT LEFT In this photo released by the US Embassy Beijing Press Office, blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng is wheeled into a hospital by U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke, right, and an unidentified official at left, in Beijing Wednesday May 2, 2012. At left is U.S. State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh.

China's President Hu Jintao said at the opening of the talks that China and the United States "must know how to respect each other" even if they disagree.

U.S. officials verified that account. But they adamantly denied his contention that one American diplomat had warned him of a threat from the Chinese that his wife would be beaten to death if he did not get out of the embassy. They also denied his claim that American officials have left the hospital where he is being treated for a leg injury suffered in his escape.

"I think we'd like to rest in a place outside of China," Chen told the AP, appealing again for help from Washington. "Help my family and me leave safely."

"There were U.S. officials in the building," the spokesman told reporters. "I believe some of his medical team was in fact with him at the hospital." He said U.S. officials would continue visiting Chen while he was there.

It is not clear how the U.S. could be party to an agreement on Chen's safety inside China when it has no power to enforce the conditions of his life there.

Nobel laureate Maathai dies

Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai dies of Kenya.

NAIROBI: Kenya's Wangari Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her environmental work, has died of cancer, the campaigning movement she founded announced on Monday.

"It is with great sadness that the family of professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25th September 2011 at the Nairobi hospital after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer," the Green Belt Movement said in a statement.

Born in 1940, Maathai became a key figure in Kenya since founding the movement in 1977, staunchly campaigning for environmental conservation and good governance.

Since its founding, her organisation has planted some 40 million trees across Africa. In the 1970s, she also headed the Kenya Red Cross.


Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her environmental work and reforestation in her native Kenya.

She was the first woman in east and central Africa to earn a PhD, and also the first African woman and Kenyan to receive the Nobel Peace prize.

Outside Kenya, Maathai was involved in efforts to save central Africa's Congo basin forest, the world's second largest tropical forest.

Woman mauled new face shows by chimp

A full face transplant  of a woman in May after being mauled by a chimpanzee in 2009 revealed her new face in a photo released on Thursday.

Charla Nash, 57, who was photographed in her hospital bed at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, appears dramatically different with a new nose, lips and facial skin.

"I will now be able to do things I once took for granted," Nash said in a statement.

"I will be able to smell. I will be able to eat normally. I will no longer be disfigured. I will have lips and will speak clearly once again. I will be able to kiss and hug loved ones."

Nash was hurt after a friend's 200-pound (91 kg) pet chimpanzee went on a rampage two years ago. She lost her hands, lips, nose and eyes, leaving her blind and disfigured after the attack. The animal was eventually shot and killed by police.

Nash's full face transplant was the third surgery of its kind performed in the United States, all at the same hospital.

An anonymous female donor provided face, hands and other tissue material that made the surgery possible. The hand transplant was deemed successful but the hands did not thrive after complications from pneumonia and were removed.

The world's first full face transplant was completed in Spain in 2010.

Woman's  body recover, husband suspected

Recovered the body of a woman, by the police on Sunday night, suspected to be killed by her husband, at Ghashipara in Dinajpur town of Bangladesh.

The deceased was Mokima Akhter Moon, 32, wife of Shahjahan Mahmud, a lecturer at Setabganj Degree College.

The Kotwali police said that elder brother of the deceased Mobin Haque Chowdhury suspected that Shahjahan Mahmud had beaten his wife to death.

The police recovered the body, breaking the lock of their rented house, and sent it to the Dinajpur Medical College Hospital of Bangladesh morgue for post-mortem.

The UN officially declared famine in southern Somalia

UN declares famine in southern Somalia

The displaced Somali mother attends her malnourished child at southern Mogadishu's' Banadir hospital on Tuesday where medics have said most of the displaced children are ill and have been treated for severe malnutrition. Mortality rate in June reached 7.4 deaths per 10,000 a day, triggering an outcry from international community for help.

 

UN's definition of famine:

--Acute malnutrition of more than 30 percent of children

--Two deaths per 10,000 people a day

--Access to less than four litres of water and 2,100 kilocalories a day

--Complete loss of assets or income

--Large-scale displacement of people and civil strife

The UN officially declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia yesterday as the world slowly mobilised to save the 12 million people battling hunger in the region's worst drought in 60 years.

"If we are not able to intervene immediately, tens of thousands more Somalis may die," the UN added.

Somalia, which has been affected by almost uninterrupted conflict for 20 years and become a by-word for "failed state", is the worst affected nation but parts of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti are also hit.