World
In reconciliation meetings Sunday, Hamas and Fatah failed to agree on which should control the Gaza Strip but said they'll resume their talks, most likely on April 5. The session was seen as a step in bringing the rivals back together and perhaps ultimately persuading Hamas to return control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority in a unity government. As their representatives talked in Yemen, Vice President Cheney was meeting in the West Bank with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Cheney said lasting peace with Israel requires that "those who refuse to accept the basic right of the other side to exist" must be defeated.
Vehement new accusations against the Dalai Lama appeared in China's news media Sunday as the government sought to fill the information vacuum in Tibet with its own message. The People's Daily said the "Dalai clique" hoped to use the Beijing Olympic Summer Games to force "concessions to Tibetan independence." The Tibet Daily called the Buddhist leader's motives "evil" and said last week's antigovernment riots were "a life-and-death struggle between ourselves and the enemy."
A fourth straight day of violent clashes between police and Kurdish protesters in Turkey raised the casualty count to two deaths and dozens of injuries. As many as 300 people were arrested on Saturday alone, reports said. The trouble began Friday when celebrations of the Kurdish New Year turned into a rally for the separatist PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) and demands that imprisoned rebel chief Abdullah Oçalan be released.
A US Internet-hosting company suspended the website promoting next Monday's scheduled release of a Dutch film that's expected to criticize the Koran as "fascistic." Network Solutions Inc. said it had received complaints about the site and is investigating whether its terms-of-service agreement was violated. A protest against the film, produced by an anti-immigration member of parliament, Geert Wilders, drew a multiracial gathering estimated at 2,000 people to the central square of Amsterdam Saturday. Wilders has received death threats from Islamist extremists.
More than 3 million surplus ballots have been printed for Saturday's election in Zimbabwe, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) alleged, citing leaked government documents. In warning about the potential for vote-rigging, the MDC also said 600,000 absentee ballots had been ordered for diplomats overseas, soldiers, police, and civil servants, whereas their combined strength is a fraction of that number. President Robert Mugabe, who has held power without interruption since 1980, told supporters at a campaign rally Saturday that the MDC would "never" rule in his lifetime.
Leftist President Rafael Correa of Ecuador vowed to reopen the dispute with Colombia if DNA testing determines that a citizen of his country died in a March 1 cross-border raid against communist rebels. Leaders of the two countries shook hands after Colombia apologized for the attack, in which more than 20 rebels were killed. But Correa has yet to restore formal relations. He said in a radio broadcast over the weekend that "We will not let this murder go unpunished" if tests prove that one of the victims was Ecuadorean national Franklin Aizalia.
A homemade video posted to the YouTube Internet site by monks at an 875-year-old Austrian monastery has won them a recording contract with music giant Universal Classics. The label was seeking a performing group for an album of Gregorian chants in response to the hot-selling computer game Halo, which features the ancient music. The video was chosen over hundreds of professionally recorded "demos," reports said.