By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

ANXIAN, China - China grappled with backed-up rivers and reservoirs in danger of collapse, along with looming storms that threatened Monday to compound damage from the country’s worst earthquake in three decades.
 
Two weeks after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake centered in Sichuan province, the confirmed death toll rose to 65,080 with 23,150 people still missing, the Cabinet said. The government has said the final number of dead is expected to exceed 80,000.

Many of the disaster victims were children, prompting officials to clarify the country’s strict one-child policy guidelines.

The Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of Sichuan province said Monday that families whose children was killed, severely injured or disabled in the quake can get a certificate to have another child.

Chen Xueyun’s 8-year-old son, Weixi, was killed when the family’s apartment in Qingchuan collapsed. Chen said he searched three days before finding the boy’s body. He wears his son’s blue plastic watch as a reminder.

Monday’s announcement could offer some parents some hope, Chen said, after their grief subsides.

“If they are still sad and depressed, it’s impossible to talk about another baby,” he said. “But in the future, it could be quite helpful for them.”

On Monday, 1,800 soldiers arrived on foot at the new Tangjiashan lake in Beichuan county to fight the flood risk, each carrying 22 pounds of explosives to blast through the debris, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The lake is 2 miles upstream from the center of Beichuan county. Thousands of people who remained there after the initial earthquake have been evacuated in recent days as a precaution.

With weather clearing that had prevented helicopter flights, heavy equipment was also lifted in the area to help remove debris, state media reported.

But thunderstorms were forecast for parts of Sichuan later Monday and Tuesday, the China Meteorological Administration said, adding they “could increase the risks posed by river blockages in some quake-hit areas.”

The rains were likely to put more pressure on dams and reservoirs weakened by the quake. The storms herald the start of the summer rainy season that accounts for more than 70 percent of the 2 feet of rain that falls on the area each year.

The backed-up lake is one of several dozen in Sichuan.

In An country, about 30 miles to the south of Beichuan, a landslide blocked the Chaping river, submerging Shuangdian village.

Residents say the lake has been rising by about 7 1/2 feet a day.

“The water was covering the road, and two days later I could not see the roof of my house anymore,” said Liu Zhongfu, 31, a truck driver who built his two-story wooden house himself, standing on a mountain overlooking the new lake. A sofa and bits of wood that were once part of houses could be seen floating among the debris in the milky green water.

Liu was working away from home when the earthquake hit. His wife, 3-month-old daughter and 60-year-old mother all were unhurt.

“I thought I could go back but I have nothing now. My village, it’s all become a sea,” he said.

Water there was backed up 2 miles along the river, said Wang Li, county Communist Party secretary.

“We need to take care of this soon, this is a serious situation,” he said.

Elsewhere, 600 people were voluntarily evacuated from Guanzhuang in Qingchuan county because of landslide worries.

“There’s no danger for this exact moment from flooding but we are very worried because the whole mountain is loose,” said Ma Jian, a local official.

Problems with dams and reservoirs from the earthquake and its aftershocks also have been reported in other provinces.

The Water Resources Ministry said Monday that three small reservoirs in Shaanxi province, just north of Sichuan, were in danger of collapse after the strong aftershock Sunday. A total 2,383 reservoirs were in danger across the country, the ministry said.

China’s top Communist Party leaders said relief efforts should now focus more on resettlement and post-quake reconstruction, but that work to find survivors should not stop.

The shift was announced at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee presided over by President Hu Jintao, Xinhua reported.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry said it would investigate whether flawed school construction contributed to collapses.

“We will punish those who cut corners during school building construction and will have zero tolerance for corruption and shoddy school projects,” spokesman Wang Xuming said in Beijing.

In Mianzhu city, the Communist Party secretary pleaded with protesting parents — whose children were killed in a school collapse — not to complain to higher authorities, the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper reported Monday.

Despite Jiang Guohua’s pleas, the parents of the 127 children who died kept marching Sunday and eventually met with higher officials, who told them the government would investigate.

The march was the latest example of growing anger among Chinese about the quake, especially the fact that nearly 7,000 schoolrooms were destroyed while school was in session. Parents at several schools have held protests, defying the government’s general disapproval of such demonstrations.

A photograph on the newspaper’s Web site shows Jiang on his knees, his arms outstretched in vain.

“Please trust that the Mianzhu party committee can solve this problem,” he begged the parents. “Don’t go!”

But the parents marched on, carrying photos of their children.

“We have no more tears,” one mother told the newspaper.

Also Monday, Xinhua reported that one of the two pandas still missing after the earthquake had been found.

The panda was recovered earlier in the day, but there were no immediate details given on its condition.

The pandas had been missing from the famed Wolong panda reserve, located near the epicenter in central Sichuan province. The center suffered heavy damage from the quake and five staff members were killed.

___

Associated Press Writer Cara Anna in Beijing contributed to this report.

by Amal Jayasinghe
NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - Iraq’s holiest Shiite city of Najaf had a blunt message for visiting US Ambassador Ryan Crocker — your arms are not welcome here, but your alms certainly are.
Najaf governor Assad Sultan Abu Gelal said he did not want the United States to replicate in his province the strategy of funding former Sunni insurgents, a move claimed to have reduced Al-Qaeda attacks in neighbouring Anbar.

“We told them (the Americans) we don’t need an Awakening Council like in Anbar,” Abu Gelal told reporters on Saturday in the presence of Crocker, who was on his second visit to Najaf this year.

“Because of the oppression we suffered under the previous regime we need to awaken our villages which were neglected” under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

The governor said he opposed arming militias and wanted to ensure that the remnants of militant groups were disarmed, not the other way round.

The Sahwa or “Awakening” movements consist of mainly Sunni former insurgents who joined the US side and are now battling Al-Qaeda. Such groups are armed and paid by the US military.

Abu Gelal said there had been no major attacks in Najaf, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Baghdad, for years and that it was the safest place in Iraq.

The last major attack was in February last year, when a suicide car bomber killed at least 13 people at a police checkpoint.

The shrine city houses the highly venerated Imam Ali Mosque, and nearby is what is believed to the largest cemetery in the Muslim world where several prophets are buried.

Iraqi forces took responsibility for security in Najaf from US troops in December 2006, nearly four years after the invasion. It was the first Iraqi province to be returned to full Iraqi army control.

Abu Gelal said security is no longer the pressing issue it remains in some other Iraqi provinces, but that jobs and utilities are badly needed.

Crocker was in Najaf to open a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) office that will spend on infrastructure, economic activity and improve local skills.

Previously an office in Hilla, capital of adjoining Babil province, had responsibility for Najaf.

“It just didn’t make sense” to operate from Hilla, Crocker said. “We need to move forward, not backwards.”

Earlier Crocker opened another PRT office in the nearby Shiite holy city of Karbala to the north. “Part of the strategy is to strengthen moderates” in the Shiite population, he said.

American forces have faced stiff opposition from anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose power base is derived from Najaf. His Mahdi Army militia has been fighting US forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City district.

Those battles have died down since the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, agreed a truce with the Sadrists on May 10 and deployed Iraqi soldiers in Sadr City, home to two million Shiites.

“The prime minister has clearly demonstrated that he is clearly determined to take (on) the extremists whether they are Shiite or Sunni,” the ambassador said, adding that he recognised the “Sadr trend is an important element.”

Crocker said he sees huge economic potential in Najaf for religious tourism. He wants international hotels to open in the city where an international airport is now under construction.

Millions of pilgrims visit Najaf annually — the city is to Shiite Muslims what the Vatican is to Roman Catholics.

The ambassador said he wanted part of the 10 million dollars immediately available for work in Najaf province to help prepare for upcoming provincial elections.

The vote was originally expected by early October, but Crocker said that was “more aspirational.”

“It is more important to get it right than to get it quickly,” he said.

Abu Gelal, who is not running in the provincial elections, wants water supplies, sewerage systems and electricity for the province’s 1.5 million population.

“We generate only 100 megawatts, but the demand is 400 megawatts,” he said, adding that residents had electricity for only a few hours a day.

Providing power to the villages and improving living standards will also dissuade young people from taking up arms, he said of impoverished neighbourhoods where the militias traditionally trawled for recruits.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Monday called Democrat Barack Obama the candidate most advanced on social issues running for U.S. president but said his speech on Cuba last week was a “formula for hunger.”
In one of his periodic newspaper columns published in Communist Party newspaper Granma, Castro said he had “no personal rancor” toward Obama, but “if I defended him I would do a huge favor for his adversaries.”

Obama, speaking before an influential Cuban-American group in Miami, said Cuba deprived its people of civil liberties and free elections, and vowed to maintain, with modifications, a 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island.

Obama has called for lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba and the amount of money people in the United States can send to relatives in Cuba.

“Obama’s speech can translate into a formula of hunger for the nation (Cuba), the remittances like alms and the visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable lifestyle that he sustains.

“How is the very grave problem of the food crisis going to be confronted? Grains must be distributed among human beings, domestic animals and fish, which year by year are smaller and more scarce in the over-exploited seas,” Castro said. “It’s not easy to produce meat from gas and oil.”

“Obama overestimates the possibilities of technology in the struggle against climate change, although he is more conscious than (President George W.) Bush of the risks and the little time available,” he said.

Obama “without doubt is, from the social and human point, the most advanced candidate” running for the U.S. presidency, Castro said. But he accused him of reviving the Monroe Doctrine, which stated in 1823 the United States would not permit European countries to further colonize or interfere in the Americas.

Last week, Castro blasted Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain in a newspaper column for their criticisms of the Cuban government. McCain, he said, showed why he finished near the bottom of his class in college.

Castro, 81 and not fully recovered from intestinal surgery in July 2006, took power in a 1959 revolution but stepped aside in February and was succeeded as president by his younger brother Raul Castro. He is still head of the Communist Party and said to be involved in governing.

(Reporting by Jeff Franks; editing by Jackie Frank)

WASHINGTON - Anti-war Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, a strong backer of the Iraq conflict, were reaching out to veterans on Monday, the country’s Memorial Day holiday, as the presidential candidates inched closer to a likely faceoff in the November general election.
Obama’s longshot rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, continued to campaign Monday in Puerto Rico. The U.S. Caribbean territory’s primary next week is one of just three left as the intense battle for the Democratic race begun in January winds down.

On Sunday, Obama struck a conciliatory note with McCain, whom he had been hammering for days, and urged unity in service of a greater good in a speech to university graduates.

Obama was filling in for U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor last week and had planned to deliver the graduation address at Wesleyan University. Kennedy has endorsed Obama over Clinton and has campaigned for him.

“We may disagree as Americans on certain issues and positions, but I believe we can be unified in service to a greater good. I intend to make it a cause of my presidency, and I believe with all my heart that this generation is ready and eager and up to the challenge,” Obama told the graduating class of 2008.

Obama spent much of the week criticizing McCain, the Republican presumptive nominee, for opposing a college aid bill for military veterans, part of a strategy to link the conservative Republican to the deeply unpopular Bush administration. But he stepped back from the topic ahead of the Memorial Day holiday honoring fallen U.S. servicemen and women.

On Monday, Obama was holding a town hall meeting with veterans in Las Cruces, New Mexico. McCain visiting a memorial for veterans, also in New Mexico.

Over the weekend, McCain turned his attention to the search for a vice presidential running mate. He was hosting at least three potential running mates at his home in Sedona, Arizona — Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his former key rival, ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Clinton, meanwhile, was in Puerto Rico, where she hopes for a big primary victory June 1, Clinton told churchgoers that faith has sustained her through her arduous and faltering duel with the ascendant Obama.

“If I had listened to those who had been talking over the last several months we would not be having this campaign in Puerto Rico today,” she said, alluding to calls during the past few months for her to drop out of the race and support Obama.

Clinton is trailing Obama and has almost no chances of getting the Democratic nomination. Some prominent Democrats have been calling for her to step down, fearing that a protracted nomination battle might ruin the party’s chances in November.

The latest to do so was former President Jimmy Carter, who said Sunday during an interview with Sky News in London that Clinton should abandon her battle by early June.

But the former first lady spoke of her determination to stay in the race despite trailing Obama, who picked up three more superdelegates in Hawaii on Sunday, giving him a total of 1,977 delegates, just 49 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination. Clinton has 1,779.

After Puerto Rico, there are just two primaries left: Montana and South Dakota on June 3.

Puerto Rico has 55 delegates. Clinton is expected to win there, thanks partly to her ties to the large Puerto Rican community in her home state of New York.

Meanwhile, a third party on Sunday officially chose a former Republican congressman to be its candidate. Former Rep. Bob Barr will run on the Libertarian Party ticket in November. A third-party candidate has not won the presidency in the country’s modern history, but they have sometimes siphoned off voters from one of the two main party candidates.

[Source:Yahoo News]

LONDON (AFP) - Police in London have been given more time to question a 21-year-old man held on suspicion of fatally stabbing a teenager actor who played a role in the forthcoming Harry Potter film, Scotland Yard said on Monday.
Rob Knox, 18, was killed outside the Metro Bar in southeast London in the early hours of Saturday morning while reportedly trying to protect his brother from a man wielding a knife.

The teenager played the role of student Marcus Belby in “Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince”, which is due to be released in November.

Police arrested a 21-year-old on suspicion of murder and have been given more time to question him, Scotland Yard said on Monday, without giving further details.

Knox’s murder takes to 14 the number of teenagers violently killed in London this year, a figure which has caused alarm among police, politicians and campaigners.

The stabbing took place after a man entered the bar and was seen waving two knives around. A scuffle broke out and Knox and his brother Jamie were reportedly trying to protect each other.

Several others sustained knife wounds.

Tom Hopkins, 18, and Tarik Ozress, 17 - both of whom are friends of the Knox brothers - managed to pin the man down after wrestling with him for several minutes before police arrived.

Hopkins, who was stabbed in the head, said: “Rob was just trying to help out. He was like that. I grabbed the knife, I didn’t know at the time that he had another knife. It was just chaos.”

Knox was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Friends said there had been a row over a phone last week and believe it could have been a revenge attack.

“Rob was kind and thoughtful and would always help out others,” the teen’s parents Colin and Sally said in a statement. “The life and soul of the party, he was very outgoing, loved sports, and would always strike up a conversation with people.

“He was respectful to others and adored by all his family and friends.”

Film producers Warner Bros said: “We are all shocked and saddened by this news and at this time our sympathies are with his family.”