Jan 31 (Reuters) - Unidentified people torched the Sri Lankan office of a British-based website that regularly criticises the Sri Lankan government, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa immediately ordered an investigation into the arson.
The attack on the office of www.lankaenews.com, which has links to an opposition politician who fell out with Rajapaksa several years ago, is the latest in a series of assaults on media outlets or personnel.
"It is well to note that under ... Rajapaksa regime, the free media had suffered most and sustained losses to persons and property on an unprecedented scale in the media history of Sri Lanka," the website said in its report on the attack.
Since the start of the final phase of a 25-year civil war in 2006, at least 14 journalists have been killed and many more attacked or threatened in the Indian Ocean island nation.
Sri Lanka has a long history of violence and intimidation against journalists, stretching back as far as 1971, when the first of three separate insurgencies broke out and ushered in an era of impunity.
One of the website's employees, cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, has been missing since January 2010. Eknaligoda had been accused of arranging his own disappearance in an earlier instance.
The Indian Ocean island nation is regularly criticised by press freedom groups for tolerating attacks against journalists and failing to find the perpetrators. Sri Lanka routinely ranks among the most dangerous places for journalists to work.
However, the government has pointed to many cases where journalists have blamed the government or orchestrated attacks as ploys to get political asylum in Western nations or funding from aid donors
Pakistani Law Minister Babar Awan has spoken out over the case of a US man who killed two men in Lahore last week.
He said no foreign citizen was above the law.
The US embassy has called for the immediate release of Raymond Davis, saying he has diplomatic status and is immune from prosecution.
The authorities say he does not have diplomatic immunity and is not one of the foreign security personnel authorised to carry firearms.
Dr Awan said that although foreign diplomats enjoyed diplomatic immunity, "Pakistan has its own judicial system and everyone must respect it".
Magistrates have remanded Mr Davis in custody until next week while police investigate the shooting. He has been charged with the murder of the two men.
The US embassy in Islamabad has claimed diplomatic immunity on his behalf. They argue that he is a consulate employee who acted in "self-defence when confronted by two armed men on motorcycles" on 27 January.
Mr Davis is said to have told police that the motorcycle rider and his pillion passenger tried to hijack his vehicle at gunpoint.
Another person was run over and killed by a vehicle carrying Mr Davis's colleagues as they came to his aid.
Lawyers in Lahore have filed a petition to the High Court arguing that Mr Davis must stand trial in Pakistan and not be handed over to the US government.
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Pakistan says that speculation is rife over the true position of Mr Davis.
Our correspondent says that the US authorities pursued a soft tone immediately following the incident, but they have now hardened their stance and argued that he should be released according to the Vienna Convention
Burma's new parliament has convened for the first time, officially ending almost half a century of absolute military rule. But the two chambers in Naypyidaw are dominated by the military and its allies.
"Mohammed Abdulrahman, from Ahlia University, died last night in Omdurman hospital as a result of his ... wounds after he was beaten by police," an activist who took part in Sunday's protest told AFP.
"This morning (Monday) both Ahlia University and the Islamic University of Omdurman have been closed by a government decision," added the activist, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Sunday's demonstrations followed calls by the "30 January" Facebook group for Sudanese youth to take to the streets and stage peaceful anti-government rallies across Sudan.
The Facebook group, which boasts around 17,000 members, confirmed Abdulrahman had died, referring to him as a "martyr" who followed in the footsteps of another student killed in the October 1964 popular uprising that toppled the military regime then in power.
"Al-Gorashy was a martyr for us. And you are our martyr now, Mohammed Abdulrahman," it said in large red lettering.
Protesters on Sunday were confronted by a heavy police presence in different parts of Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman, and in El-Obeid, around 600 kilometres (370 miles) west of the capital.
The ensuing clashes resulted in at least 64 arrests and left many wounded.
Sudan's Vice-President Ali Osman Taha on Monday echoed earlier statements by senior Sudanese officials that the government does not fear popular protest of the kind that has shaken the regime of President Hosni Mubarak in neighbouring Egypt but said such actions must be "within the law.".
"The government is not afraid of anything. Freedom exists within the law, and anyone who wants to express himself has to do so within the law," Taha told a news conference in Khartoum.
Another senior member of the ruling National Congress Party branded Sunday's protests "illegal and isolated."
"These protests were illegal and isolated, and the political parties behind them were acting in an illegal way and this is not accepted," Rabie Abdul Ati told AFP.
The demonstrations came after nearly a week of turmoil in Egypt, and coincided with the first complete preliminary results from this month's vote on independence for south Sudan, which confirmed a landslide for secession.
In Omdurman, just across the Nile from Khartoum, around 1,000 demonstrators shouted slogans against President Omar al-Bashir and hurled rocks at riot police, who retaliated with tear gas and batons.
At the medical faculty of Khartoum University, security officers tried to prevent some 300 student protesters from leaving the campus, but they eventually forced their way out onto the street, shouting: "Revolution against dictatorship!"
Police and security officers attacked them with batons, arresting several and forcing the students back inside the university compound, which was later surrounded by more than 20 police trucksRamallah, Jan 31 (DPA) Israeli soldiers arrested Hamas lawmaker Muhammad Natsheh early Monday at his home in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Hamas officials said.
They said the soldiers searched Natsheh's home before taking him away.
Natsheh is the sixth Hamas lawmaker to be rearrested by Israel since December.
Israel arrested several members of Hamas' senior leadership in the summer of 2006, in retaliation for the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who is still being held captive in Gaza.
Israel gradually released most, but this winter detained several of them again.
Natsheh was released from prison in September after serving almost nine years, six of them in solitary confinement, said Hamas sources.
The ticklish question has been hovering in the background since the "Jasmine Revolution" street uprising toppled the president of Tunisia two weeks ago. It has only gained in urgency as the demonstrations spread to Yemen, Jordan and then Egypt - threatening President Hosni Mubarak's near-30-year-grip on power.
A Chinese blogger first posed the query to President Obama's chief Asia expert during a videoconference from the White House Situation Room with eight Mainland bloggers.
"In my view, many Chinese netizens and intellectuals believe that China's future is Tunisia-ization," noted the Beijing-based blogger, 2Keqi, in the web chat with Jeffrey Bader, the National Security Council's senior director for Asian affairs. "Does the American government make this same assessment and does it have a policy plan" in the event that China takes such a turbulent path?
Bader and another official, Ben Rhodes, deputy NSC adviser for strategic communications, declined to answer directly, instead repeating the administration's oft-stated position about the importance of human rights and the need to let people "realize their own aspirations."
