LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s more important to get it right than to get it quick.”
Noel Dempsey,
Ireland’s transport minister, on the terms of a $115 billion bailout loan for the country Article, 13A
Burmese dissident, U.N. envoy meet
RANGOON, Burma - Released Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Saturday with a senior U.N. official and said she hopes the talks will be the first of many with the world body to solve the country’s problems.
Suu Kyi met for more than an hour with Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy to the military-controlled country.
Nambiar met earlier with Burma’s foreign minister, but details of the talks were not available.
Suu Kyi said her talks with the U.N. envoy were “very valuable.”
Since her release Nov. 13 from more than seven years of continuous house arrest, Suu Kyi has been busy talking with diplomats, politicians and international agencies.
The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has made it clear she plans to pursue her goal of a democratic Burma but has been careful not to verbally challenge the ruling junta.
The ruling generals and Suu Kyi have had no contact since she was freed. A long line of U.N. officials, including Ban, has attempted to broker talks between the opposing sides, but have failed to bring them together.
Qantas’ superjumbos back in sky
SYDNEY - A Qantas A380 carrying more than 450 passengers, including the airline’s chief executive, took to the skies Saturday in the first flight by one of its superjumbos since a midair engine explosion three weeks ago triggered a global safety review.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said he was flying the first leg of the Sydney-Singapore-London flight as a sign of the airline’s conviction that it had completed all modifications and other checks on the Rolls-Royce engines, and the planes were safe to fly.
“We are 100 percent comfortable with it,” Joyce said. “If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be restarting the operations today.”
Qantas grounded its six A380s after a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on one of the superjumbos disintegrated shortly after takeoff from Singapore on Nov. 4, sending shrapnel slicing through a wing and causing multiple problems for the pilots before they managed to safely land the jetliner back in Singapore.
Lebanon lobbies for support in Iran
TEHRAN, Iran - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed concerns for stability in the Middle East as he began a visit to Tehran on Saturday to rally Iran’s support for his efforts to keep Lebanon stable amid tensions over a U.N.
probe into the assassination of his father, Rafik Hariri.
The visit follows President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s October tour of Lebanon, during which the Iranian leader reinforced Tehran’s ties to the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, a longtime protege of the Shiite powerhouse.
The exuberant welcome the Shiite Hezbollah staged for Ahmadinejad in Lebanon threw Hariri’s Western-backed factions in the government on the defensive.
Lebanon’s fragile unity government, which includes Hezbollah, has been struggling ahead of expected indictments by the U.N. tribunal investigating former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s 2005 slaying.
Speculation that Hezbollah members will be indicted in the case has fueled fears of a new political crisis and violence in Lebanon, and raised concerns over what Iran would do in that case.
Taiwan’s ruling party wins 3 of 5 races
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan’s ruling Nationalist Party won three out of five mayoral races Saturday, providing a boost for President Ma Ying-jeou’s policy of improving relations with China ahead of the island’s 2012 presidential poll.
But the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which wants to slow the process of reconciliation with the mainland, won about 50 percent of the overall mayoral vote, signaling that it will provide strong opposition to Ma’s expected re-election bid - stronger by far than seemed possible only six months ago.
With 95 percent of the votes counted, the Central Election Commission results showed the Nationalists had insurmountable leads in Taipei, the new Taipei suburban constituency of Xinbei, and the central city of Taichung. DPP candidates were in unassailable positions in two large cities in the party’s southern heartland - Kaohsiung and Tainan.
Together the five constituencies account for about 60 percent of Taiwan’s population of 23 million.
The commission said the DPP’s overall share of the mayoral vote stood at 49.9 percent, against 44.2 for the Nationalists and 5.9 percent for independents.
Front Section, Pages 14 on 11/28/2010