Hong Kong will delay disputed security law
In a surprise reversal, Hong Kong’s leader has agreed to delay an anti-subversion bill that has set off massive street protests and thrown his government into its biggest crisis since the territory returned to Chinese rule.
The legislation has raised fears it will lead to China-style repression of dissident viewpoints. It would outlaw subversion, sedition, treason, and other crimes against the state, with life prison sentences for many offenses.
Critics see it as a betrayal of the “one country, two systems’’ form of government that was promised — along with Western-style civil liberties — at the Hong Kong handover.
Tung was forced to back down after a key legislative ally, James Tien of the pro-business Liberal Party, resigned from Tung’s top policy-making on July 6. Tien said the bill should be delayed to allow for further public consultation.
The decision reflected Tung’s tenuous position after half a million Hong Kong residents protested on Tuesday against the bill, saying it would threaten the territory’s freedoms of speech, press, and assembly. (AP)

Chirac shortens José Bové jail term
French President Jacques Chirac has cut four months off a 10-month prison sentence anti-globalisation leader José Bové is serving as part of the head of state’s traditional clemency decree for Bastille Day, Chirac’s office and the justice ministry said Thursday.
Bové, the 50-year-old leader of France’s farmers’ union who gained worldwide notoriety for his actions against McDonald’s restaurants, genetically modified crops and multinational corporations, was taken away on June 22 in a spectacular police raid on his home to serve his current sentence.
Unionists and anti-globalisation protesters have held frequent demonstrations across France to demand his release.
His supporters and lawyers also pressured Chirac to give him a total pardon for Bastille Day.
Chirac, who every Bastille Day traditionally signs a partial reduction of prison sentences for most of those behind bars in France, decided to lop two months off terms for all prisoners except those convicted of terrorism, pedophilia, crimes against humanity, drug felonies, assaulting police officers, or of fatal driving offences.
Bové will also get an additional two months’ reduction as an individual clemency from the president, Chirac’s office said. (Agence France Presse)

Belgium scraps war crimes law which angered US
Belgium said Saturday it has decided to scrap a controversial war crimes law which has seen cases launched against President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said his new government, sworn in Saturday, has decided as one of its first acts to scrap the law which has angered the United States.
The 1993 law gave Belgian courts the power to try war crimes cases no matter where they were committed.
In future, the right to launch cases would be restricted to Belgians or people resident in the country. All cases apart from those involving Belgians would be dropped, he said.
The norms of international immunity would also be respected. Any cases that were launched would take into account Belgium’s agreements with NATO allies and other European Union members.
country if the country was democratic and could handle the suit properly.
Such was the fate of the cases launched against Bush and Blair over the war in Iraq. But US officials had said it was better if such suits never came up in the first place.
The case against Sharon, filed by survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by Lebanese Christian militias, was suspended as the court decided he had immunity as a leader who was still in office. (Reuters)

Indonesian parliament bombed
A bomb rocked Indonesia’s parliament today, shattering windows and damaging a wall, just days after police captured nine suspected Islamic militants and seized a huge quantity of explosives.
No one was injured in the early morning attack, which blasted nails and concrete over a wide area of the parliamentary complex in central Jakarta.
Parliament is on its summer break.
Police said that Jemaah Islamiah, a south-east Asian Muslim network blamed for October’s Bali bombings that killed 202 people, is one of two prime suspects in today’s blast. The other is the Free Aceh Movement, a rebel group fighting for an independent state in the western province of Aceh.(AP)

Alberta premier gets pie for breakfast
Just as Alberta Premier Ralph was beginning a speech at this year’s annual Stampede breakfast, he was hit in the face with a banana cream pie.
Klein had just started to address the crowd and was commenting on what a great job Agriculture Minister Shirley McClellan was doing with the mad-cow crisis when a man, who appeared to be in his 20s, hit Klein with the pie.
The man was tackled by members of the public as he tried to get away.
Klein, who hosts the flapjack breakfast every year, did not finish his speech, heading into a nearby government offices to take a shower. He later returned to speak with reporters. (Toronto Globe and Mail)

Truman diary reveals antiSemitism
President Harry Truman is remembered for his stunning 1948 election victory—winning a second term in office—and his strong backing for the birth of Israel. A year earlier, though, he made a sensational secret offer to relinquish the Democratic presidential nomination to Dwight Eisenhower, and delivered a furious anti-Semitic tirade.
The Jews, mused Truman, “I find are very very selfish. They care not how many Latvians, Finns, Poles, Estonians, and Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DPs [displaced persons] as long as Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler or Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment for the underdog.”
Truman wrote this diatribe in July 1947, in a diary that he kept intermittently during the year that marked the nadir of his political fortunes, in a gloomy, lonely White House that he described as “this great white jail.”
The writings have lain unopened in the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, for more than 35 years. They were finally noticed by a librarian who recently rearranged the shelves.
The Jewish material has also raised many eyebrows, given Truman’s role in securing the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, over the objections of the State Department. (Independent Digital (UK))