World at a glance

Pak scribes no to press councilISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Federal union of Journalists PFUJ on Sunday opposed the creation of a press counci...

Pak scribes no to press council

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan8217;s Federal union of Journalists PFUJ on Sunday opposed the creation of a press council and adoption of a code of ethics for the print media alone. A resolution adopted by the organisation at its biennial meeting said the government was not prepared to apply the code to the vast electronic media that it controlled. It rejected the proposals to set up a press council and to adopt a code of ethics as 8220;a new step of the government to curb the freedom of press8221;. The PFUJ reminded the owners of newspapers, who have agreed to the proposals, that in the countries where independent press councils were working on voluntary basis, the government exercised no controls over the print and the electronic media.

Lanka-India tea wars are a mighty beverage for Pakis

COLOMBO: Angered by the Indian government8217;s refusal to grant Sri Lankan tea duty free access into its huge market under a landmark bilateral trade treaty, the island republic in now eyeingthe lucrative Pakistani market.A delegation of top Lankan officials will visit Pakistan soon to press for a 45 per cent duty concession for its tea to edge out arch rival Kenya, director of Sri Lankan tea promotion bureau Hasitha de Alwis said.

Ironically enough, India and Lanka who signed a landmark free trade treaty last December will now vie with each other for a the Pakistani tea market, the third largest tea market in the world.

The decision to send a team to Islamabad comes in the wake of similar announcement by Indian tea board chairman S S Ahuja to revive tea exports to Pakistan. Tea exports to Islamabad stood at five million kilos in 1997.

Reds in grip of Tiananmen scare

BEIJING: Police have detained at least 15 Chinese political activists to stop them from planning commemorations of the Tiananmen square democracy demonstrations on the tenth anniversary of their violent end, a rights group said today. Police in the city of Acheng in Heilongjiang province detained six activists fromHeilongjiang and two other north-eastern provinces who were discussing anniversary plans at a restaurant on Saturday afternoon, the information center of human rights and democratic movement in China said in a statement. Their whereabouts remained unknown on Sunday, it said.

In Changsha, capital of the southern province of Hunan, police detained eight activists and told them to sign a guarantee that they would not participate in a commemoration, but they refused, the Hong Kong-based centre said. They were all released by Saturday afternoon, but police were watching them, it said. Three of them also had been detained earlier in the week.

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Zhu zhengming, a member of the banned China Democracy Party in Hangzhou, an eastern city where the would-be opposition party has been especially active, was seized by police on Saturday after he left the home of a local activist, the centre reported. He was released after five hours.