East Timor upset over travel alerts
East Timor upset over travel alerts
EAST TIMOR: The world's youngest nation, East Timor, appealed on Monday for Australia to lift a travel warning alerting Australians of potential terror attacks in the poor, former Indonesian territory.
East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta told the Australian Associated Press that the warnings were destroying East Timor's attempts to promote tourism, and he was considering issuing travel alerts of his own in retaliation.
"We have no information of terrorists' attacks... If Australia has information like this, we would like to be told about what is happening in our own country," Ramos Horta told the Australian news agency on a visit to Melbourne.
"Don't go near schools in the United States, because students will shoot you," he said. "Don't go near houses in small country towns because deranged housewives with shotguns will shoot you."
The Australian government has issued a blizzard of travel warnings since 88 Australians were among the 202 people killed in a bomb attack on a nightclub on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Oct. 12 last year.
The alerts have sparked anger among several Southeast Asian countries dependent on foreign tourists.
Ramos Horta said he was thinking about issuing travel advisories for East Timorese not to go to the United States or Australia. -- Reuters
;REUTERS;ANJ; ANPAu..r.. ATW-Crime-China China jails orchid king for 18 years JP/11/ATW
China jails orchid king for 18 years
CHINA: China has sentenced a fallen flower baron once listed as the country's second-richest man to 18 years in prison for commercial crimes in a case underscoring the precarious position of China's entrepreneurial elite.
The guilty verdict brought to a close a dramatic reversal of fortune for Yang Bin, the orchid-growing Dutch national detained last year just days after North Korea named him head of a free- trade enclave planned on the Chinese border.
It also coincided with a brewing corruption scandal over improper loans in Shanghai that has cast a cloud over the empire of detained property tycoon Zhou Zhengyi.
"They sentenced him to 18 years," Yang's lawyer, Tian Wenchang, told Reuters after hearing the Shenyang Intermediate Court in the northeastern industrial hub announce the verdict. "They basically convicted him on all counts."
Yang, chairman of Hong Kong-listed Euro-Asia Agricultural (Holdings) Co. Ltd., who was charged with attempted bribery, fraudulent schemes and contracts, and occupying farmland illegally, remained defiant.
Tian said he had filed an appeal on Yang's behalf. "He disagreed with the verdict," he said.
The 40-year-old was ranked as China's second richest man by Forbes magazine in 2001 with an estimated fortune of US$900 million. He became the first of several high-ranking tycoons to run afoul of the law since last year, when the Communist Party invited the new capitalist rich to join their ranks in November. -- Reuters
;AFP;ANJ; ANPAi..r.. ATW-Cuba-music-Spain-obit Cuban singing legend Segundo dies JP/11/ATW
Cuban singing legend Segundo dies
SPAIN: Legendary Cuban musician Compay Segundo, one of the star's of Wim Wender's film Buena Vista Social Club, died in Havana overnight, aged 95, his record company in Spain said on Monday.
Segundo, whose real name was Francisco Repilado, suffered from a severe kidney infection and had to cancel a series of concerts scheduled for this summer in Europe.
Wenders released his documentary on the legendary Buena Vista Social Club musicians in 1999, recording their experiences as they performed in Cuba and abroad. -- AFP