Category: news

Mo Shaoping said many people had been stopped from leaving the country recently

A Chinese lawyer who represents jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo says he has been prevented from leaving the country.

Mo Shaoping says he was stopped by border police at Beijing airport, and told that if he were allowed to leave it could “threaten state security”.

Mr Mo says he was on his way to a lawyers’ conference in London.

But he says authorities suspected he could have been planning to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Liu.

China has reacted with fury to the awarding of the Nobel prize to Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December on subversion charges, after co-authoring a petition calling for political reform which was signed by thousands.

The lawyer said immigration officials had stopped him at Beijing’s airport as he prepared to board a flight to the UK to attend the conference.

“I was with a friend when we were stopped by the police on our way to board the plane,” Mr Mo told the BBC from the airport.

“We were taken to a room where we were told that we would not be allowed to travel overseas. The police told us that this could threaten state security.”

He said officials did not explicitly cite the award as the reason he was denied permission to travel, but he believed his connection to Liu was the reason he was stopped.

He said he wanted visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron to raise the issue of Liu Xiaobo while he was in China.

Mr Mo said he believed he was among a group of people who had recently been prevented from leaving China, apparently out of fear that one of them would seek to accept the award on Liu’s behalf at the 10 December ceremony in Norway.

Chinese authorities reacted with outrage to the selection of Liu by the Nobel Committee, calling it an “obscenity” and saying it was tantamount to “encouraging crime”.

Liu’s wife Liu Xia has been placed under house arrest, and diplomats in the Norwegian capital Oslo say they have received letters implicitly warning them not to attend the prize-giving.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The stories of love, celebration and sadness found in every family’s dusty photo album can help paint historical pictures in the wider communities where they took place.

In Liverpool, a new website – filled with snapshots from the past – hopes to become the central hub for the city’s social history. Take a look at some of the images that help tell People’s Stories – Liverpool Lives.

Music by The Beatles, The Searchers, Gerry and the Pacemakers – and Franz Liszt, Consolation No 3 in D Flat Major, performed by Helen Krizos.

Slideshow production by Paul Kerley and Stephanie Power. Publication date Tuesday 9 November 2010.

More audio slideshows:

The last Lewis’s

Liverpool’s year of culture

Talking Pictures

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The government plans big changes for the Post Office network

Plans to modernise the Post Office are to be unveiled later by the government.

The proposals are likely to introduce the idea of Post Offices being banking centres for their community, providing access to bank accounts even if they are held elsewhere.

They could also offer more government services, such as linking with Job Centre Plus.

The government is also likely to pledge to increase Post Office opening times and reduce queues.

Last month, the government announced that the Post Office was to receive £1.3bn of extra funding over the next four years to reform the network.

“The vision is that the Post Office will become a refreshed, central point of our community life again where it will have more services,” Postal Affairs Minister Ed Davey told the BBC ahead of the announcement.

“We hope to announce later today that a major new High Street bank is going to sign a contact with Post Office Ltd.

“What we want to do is to ensure that 100% of bank current accounts can be accessed over the Post Office network.

“At the moment you can actually do that for 60% of bank current accounts – when we’ve made this announcement later today we’ll be up to nearly 80%.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

George W Bush is publicising his new memoir

Former US President George W Bush has defended some of his most controversial decisions, in his first television interview since leaving office.

He told US network NBC that use of the interrogation technique waterboarding – simulated drowning – had prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives.

Mr Bush, who is is publicising his memoir Decision Points, said the invasion Iraq in 2003 was not wrong.

History would judge him a success, he added, but he would be dead by then.

“I just didn’t want to get out there anymore,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer of his absence from the media since he left the White House in January 2009.

“I didn’t want to get back into what I call ‘the swamp’,” he said.

On the interrogation of terror suspects, he said his legal adviser had told him that the use of waterboarding on several Guantanamo inmate prison was legal.

“He said it did not fall within the anti-torture act. I’m not a lawyer. But you’ve got to trust the judgement of people around you and I do,” Mr Bush said.

“I will tell you this; using those techniques saved lives. My job was to protect America. And I did.”

Mr Lauer asked him of the “sickening feeling” he describes in Decision Points every time he thinks about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

“Was there ever any consideration of apologising to the American people?” Mr Lauer asked.

“I mean, apologising would basically say the decision was a wrong decision,” Mr Bush replied. “And I don’t believe it was the wrong decision.”

He said it might be some time before history is able to judge his presidency.

“I hope I’m judged a success. But I’m gonna be dead, Matt, when they finally figure it out,” he said.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Raul Castro announced the party conference during a meeting with his Venezuelan ally Hugo Chavez

Cuban President Raul Castro has called the first congress of the ruling Communist Party in 14 years.

He said the congress, to be held in April next year, would address Cuba’s economic problems.

The party congress is supposed to be held every five years but has been repeatedly postponed.

Since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2006, Raul Castro has taken steps to reduce the state’s almost total control of the economy.

“The sixth Congress will concentrate on solving problems in the economy, on the fundamental decisions on updating the Cuban economic model, and will outline the economic and social policy of the party and the revolution,” President Castro said.

He urged all Cubans to help prepare for the meeting, saying that unity between “revolutionaries, the leadership and the majority of the people” was vital to the “future perfection of socialism”.

Raul Castro has taken steps to promote small private enterprise.

In September, he announced plans to lay off around a million state employees – around a fifth of the workforce – and encourage them to find work in the private sector.

He also said restrictions on private enterprise would be eased, with small businesses allowed to employ staff, borrow money, and sell services to government departments.

Cuba’s state-run economy has been gripped by a severe crisis in the past two years that has forced it to cut imports.

It has suffered from a fall in the price for its main export, nickel, as well as a decline in tourism. Growth has also been hampered by the 48-year US trade embargo.

President Castro made the announcement during a meeting in Havana with his ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

They extended a 10-year-old co-operation agreement between the two countries. President Castro said there would be a “strategic union”.

Venezuela is Cuba’s biggest trading partner and supplies it with oil at preferential prices in exchange for the work of thousands of Cuban health workers and other specialists in Venezuela.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.