A Vietnamese human rights activist and Catholic priest who was temporarily allowed to leave detention on Monday should be unconditionally and permanently released, Amnesty International urged on Tuesday.  

Father Nguyen Van Ly, who is serving an eight year jail term for spreading "propaganda" against the state in 2007, was released for a period of 12 months on humanitarian grounds to receive medical treatment.

Ly, 63, has already served three years in prison. He is one of the founders of the internet-based pro-democracy movement "Bloc 8406" and participated in banned political groups.

Images of Egypt's president have appeared for the first time since he underwent surgery in Germany over a week ago.

Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for nearly three decades, was said to be recovering well following the operation on his gallbladder, which had sparked concerns over the state of his health.

Egyptian state television released the video on Tuesday of Mubarak, 81, talking to two doctors.

"He was upbeat and in very good spirits as usual," Dr Markus Buechler, head of his medical team, said.

"His resolve and willpower ... was very obvious this morning as he looked forward to going back to his normal life."

An Egyptian government spokesman said Mubarak would address the nation by the end of the week.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dismissed the idea that US-Israeli relations are in crisis amid a row over Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.

She said the two nations had a "close, unshakeable bond" but made clear the US wanted both Israel and the Palestinians to prove their commitment to peace.

Earlier, US envoy George Mitchell postponed a planned visit to Israel.

Heightened tensions in Jerusalem have led to violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli police.

Israeli police said about 60 Palestinians had been arrested and medical officials said a number of people had been injured.

South African President Jacob Zuma has begun a three-day visit to Zimbabwe, aiming to ease tensions within the fragile year-old unity government.

It is thought Mr Zuma will assess the country's readiness for an election, which could take place next year.

He was greeted at Harare's airport by both President Robert Mugabe and PM Morgan Tsvangirai, who agreed to share power after disputed elections in 2008.

They are at odds over key issues and have struggled to revive the economy.

Thieves have stolen computers from a Kenyan charity helping with an inquiry into election-related violence.

Ndung'u Wainaina, of the International Centre for Policy and Conflict, told the BBC that the break-in appeared to be linked to the riot probe.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating the violence, which left hundreds dead after the 2007 poll.

Activists have accused the government of doing little to catch the leading perpetrators of the violence.

The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has told the BBC that he believes Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons.

Mr Erdogan said he was confident Iran's nuclear programme was for civilian purposes only and described President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "friend".

"I told him I don't want to see nuclear weapons in the region," he added.

Meanwhile, a top US general has said intelligence suggests Iran will not be able to build a nuclear bomb this year.

Gen David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, said Tehran's weapon development programme appeared to have suffered delays.

Thailand's red-shirt demonstrators have splashed blood under the gates of Government House in a protest against a leadership they say is illegitimate.

Earlier the protesters lined up to donate their blood, as the anti-government rallies entered a third day.

So far the protests have remained peaceful and both sides say they want to avoid violence.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Monday rejected a demand from protesters to quit and call elections.

The stand-off is the latest in a deep political schism in the country linked to the 2006 military coup which deposed former leader Thaksin Shinawatra.

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng continues following comments from China's foreign minister.

Yang Jiechi said the well-known lawyer had been sentenced after being charged with subverting state power.

But it was not immediately clear whether that referred to an old charge, or a new one brought against Mr Gao.

Iyad Allawi, the head of Iraqiya, a cross-sectarian bloc, has pulled ahead of Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, after a count of 80 per cent of the votes cast in last week's national polls.

However, the early results do not mean that Iraqiya is winning the race: al-Maliki's State of Law bloc has won in Baghdad, which accounts for a fifth of Iraq's 325-member Council of Representatives, as well as six other provinces, with Allawi taking five of the 18.

The results announced by Iraq's electoral commission on Tuesday showed that Allawi had a narrow lead of about 9,000 votes over Maliki's bloc.

However, analysts have cautioned against predicting any frontrunner for forming the next government if no bloc emerges with a big margin.
 

sraeli-Palestinian tensions erupted into violence today with clashes in East Jerusalem as the US postponed a visit by its Middle East envoy in protest at Binyamin Netanyahu's settlement policy.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, announced a "day of rage" after Monday's reopening of a synagogue in Jerusalem's Old City, clearly seeking to focus international attention on the issue.

The rival Fatah movement also urged Palestinians to flock to the al-Aqsa mosque, the most sensitive of Muslim sites in the divided city. Buses transporting worshippers were turned back.

Israel's Ynet website reported 49 Palestinians injured in confrontations with Israeli paramilitary border guards. Masked rioters burned tyres and threw stones. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

Passengers were told to shut up and ration Pringles after what was supposed to be a direct flight from Los Angeles to New York turned into a 16-hour nightmare, travelers told reporters after the weekend ordeal.

"It really wasn't the best situation," passenger David Martin said Tuesday. "Some of the flight crew seemed to lose control."

Martin, CEO of a social-networking firm, said what was to be a 5½ hour flight from LAX to JFK turned into an exhausting, drawn-out drama inside the airplane.

An Argentine business school with branches in various Latin American countries has brought an MBA program to Cuba... .
Last autumn, Mendoza's Alta Dirección Business School (ADEN in Spanish) began offering management courses to Cuban government functionaries and Latin American businessmen who were intrigued with the idea of taking MBA courses in Fidel's Havana. ADEN's president, Ricardo Greco Guiñazú, told the Argentine newspaper Diario Los Andes that it took a year to put together the Cuban MBA program due to that country's bureaucracy, but was able to proceed thanks to an alliance it made with the Cámara de Comercio in Havana.

The governments of China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and several other countries have blocked access to Wikileaks.org-type Web sites, claimed they have  the right to investigate and prosecute Wikileaks.org and associated whistleblowers, or insisted  they remove false, sensitive, or classified government information, propaganda, or malicious content from the Internet.

Description: Enacts an abuse of process law for vexatious requesters of public records.

[...]

Abuse of process.  (a)  An agency may request that the office of information practices declare that a person is a vexatious requester.

(b)  The office of information practices may declare that a person is a vexatious requester if it determines that the person has established a pattern of conduct that amounts to an abuse of a process set forth under this chapter.  When the person has been working in concert with another person to make requests, including making identical requests, both persons' requests may be considered as part of the person's pattern of conduct.  The office of information practices shall consider whether a person's pattern of conduct includes the following factors, provided that no one factor alone shall be sufficient to find an abuse of a process set forth under this chapter: