LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I was really, really terrified, and I’m still terrified.”
Lee Chun-ok,
54, a resident on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island whose house collapsed during North Korean shelling Article, 1ADalai Lama aims to shed a leader role
NEW DELHI - The Dalai Lama wants to give up his lesser-known role as the ceremonial leader of the Tibetan government in exile, an aide said Tuesday, in what appeared to be another step in the aging leader’s efforts to prepare his people for life after he dies.
However, he will remain the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the focal point of Tibetan national aspirations, said spokesman Tenzin Taklha.
As head of the dominate Gelug branch of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is the top religious leader for Tibet.
Many of his predecessors also served as Tibet’s political ruler, and the Dalai Lama served as head of government there after Chinese troops marched into his Himalayan homeland in 1950.
Amid increasing tensions with the Chinese, the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 and set up a government in exile.
In recent years, the 75-year-old has sought to reduce his active role in that administration. Since the 2001 election of a Tibetan prime minister in exile, the Dalai Lama has considered himself semiretired, Taklha said.
The Dalai Lama now hopes to give up ceremonial duties like addressing the parliament and signing resolutions, Taklha said.
He is expected to raise the issue at the next session of the Tibetan parliament in exile in March.
Bone on beach not Holloway teen’s
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A jawbone found on an Aruba beach does not belong to missing Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, prosecutors in the Dutch Caribbean island said Tuesday.
The jawbone is human, and it is unclear who it belongs to.
Dutch investigators compared the lone tooth on the bone with dental records supplied by Holloway’s family and “it can be ruled out that the bone fragment came from Natalee Holloway,” the prosecutors said.
The bone was found recently by a tourist on a beach, and Aruba prosecutors had asked forensic scientists in the Netherlands to analyze it.
They assured that the Holloway case has “the constant attention from law enforcement on the island.”
Tuesday’s announcement once again eliminates a hope of evidence about the fate of the Mountain Brook, Ala., student who disappeared while on a high school graduation trip in 2005, when she was 18.
Miners thought dead after 2nd blast
GREYMOUTH, New Zealand - All 29 workers missing underground in a New Zealand coal mine are believed to have died after a second explosion, police said.
Police superintendent Gary Knowles said the second explosion occurred midafternoon today, almost exactly five days after the first blast in the Pike River mine.
Potentially explosive methane gas had been swirling in the mine since the initial blast, keeping rescuers from entering to search for the men.
“Today there was another massive explosion underground and based on that explosion no one would have survived,” said Knowles, the head of the rescue operation.
“We are now in recovery mode.”
Rio police target roadblock robbers
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilian officials sent 1,200 extra police into the streets of Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday to halt an upsurge of roadblocks and mass robberies by gangs that they say are challenging police for control of slums.
The military-run police announced they had ordered the officers off desk work and into the streets to quell the attacks, which have renewed concerns about security for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
Rio has been hit by a spike in violence since Sunday, with at least five mass robberies of motorists on key highways, including the one leading to the international airport.
Witnesses say the armed men have blocked roadways with cars, then moved down the line of trapped vehicles, yanking people from their cars and robbing them in broad daylight. One man who resisted was shot to death in a poor area of northern Rio, police said.
Officers seized drugs, cells phones and various weapons, including a Kalashnikov in the action. Two men died in confrontations with police Tuesday, officials said. Eleven have been arrested.
Thirteen shantytowns have been pacified over the past two years. The plan is to free 40 slums - a small fraction of Rio’s more than 1,000 slums - of gang control by the time of soccer’s World Cup.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 11/24/2010