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The Argentine police reinforced security Thursday in the mountain resort of Bariloche, where a summit of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) is to be held on Friday.

Some 3,000 policemen from the National Police (GNA) and the Federal Police (PFA) will guard the summit venue, a hotel in Bariloche, 1,627 km southwest of Buenos Aires.

Bariloche’s airspace is to be closed from 12:00 a.m. local time(1500 GMT), but commercial flights will continue without restrictions till 6:00 p.m. local time (2100 GMT).

After that time only planes carrying the attending presidents will be allowed to fly over the area, and all the other passengers will be evacuated from the airport.

From 12:00 a.m. local time (1500 GMT) the city will not provide any service of leasing cars, while private vehicles will be moved to a military quarters to avoid being targeted by criminals.

Kuomintang Chaimran Wu Poh-hsiung Wednesday expressed appreciation on behalf of the party to the Chinese mainland for support and help to Taiwan in dealing with the devastation left by Typhoon Morakot.

Wu asked Wang Jianzhou, president of the mainland-based China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC), to convey his gratitude to all those on the mainland who made donations after the typhoon struck on Aug. 8, claiming at least 400 lives.

Wang is leading a visiting delegation to the island to seek partners for its communications business in Taiwan.

Taiwan people would not forget General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Hu Jintao’s heart-warming speech and condolences and mainland donations of almost 4 billion New Taiwan Dollars, Wu said.

The mutual support and care shown by the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait after last year’s May 12 earthquake and the typhoon would bring the people closer together and make relations more stable, Wu said.

Wang Jianzhou said that in addition to a 10-million-yuan donation, CMCC had prepared emergency communication vehicles ready to be shipped to Taiwan.

Wang said the mainland’s economic development provided opportunities for telecommunications companies on both sides to benefit from cooperation.

Mobile Plate Hunter 900 (MPH-900), a high-tech camera that resembles the Pixar movie character WALL-E, has been deployed in police stations across the United States to fight crimes and check traffic violations.

According to ELSAG North America, manufacturer of the camera that catches offenders in the click of a digital eye, the MPH-900 is an automatic license plate recognition system.

Mounted on a police cruiser or in any fixed location, the progressive infrared camera is capable of scanning the license plates of passing cars in seconds, translating the digital pictures into data and then cross-referencing that information with databases for wanted drivers and immediately relaying the information to police personnel.

“This technology has been extremely well-received by law enforcement personnel and citizens in large urban metropolises, medium-sized cities and rural towns all across America,” said Mark Windover, president and CEO of ELSAG North America.

According to its manufacturer, the camera allows a police force to query thousands of license plates each day, many more than officers could do by manually inputting the data.

MPH-900 systems have many applications and have not only aided in traffic safety, but in intelligence gathering as well, according to the manufacturer.

The camera allows communities to create a “hot list” of vehicles that are being sought in connection with local crimes.

Deputies use the device to scan passing license plates, and instantly compare them to license numbers of wanted felons, stolen vehicles and other vehicles being sought by authorities.

A Gwinnett County deputy in Georgia arrested a convicted felon recently by using this high-tech device and found nine guns and more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle.

Some university campuses have also used the new technology to check for parking and traffic violations.

However, opponents said the system infringes on people’s rights, but so far none of the law enforcement actions has been challenged in court.

Xinhua News Agency and China Telecom, one of China’s three leading mobile telecom carriers, on Saturday launched a Xinhua TV News channel through the high-speed third-generation network (3G) in Shanghai.

Subscribers in Shanghai can get multimedia news services of Xinhua with their “e surfing” cell phones provided by China Telecom, said Zhang Weihua, general manager of China Telecom Shanghai Branch.

Xinhua will provide China Telecom Shanghai Branch with exclusive news about the Shanghai Expo, analysis reports and various news items, while the latter will offer telecommunications services, according to the deal.

Lu Wei, vice president of Xinhua, attended the ceremony to launch the service. Xinhua started its video news service on March1 this year.

High-quality information services are needed to build Shanghai into an international financial center as well as an international shipping center, said Zhang.

State-owned China Telecom boasted 214 million fixed-line telephone subscribers, 35 million mobile phone subscribers and 47 million broadband customers at the end of 2008.

China Mobile Thursday reported its first drop in net profit since 1999 because of rising competition from rivals China Telecom and China Unicom and its weak 3G performance.

The world’s biggest telco posted a net profit of 30.1 billion yuan (US$4.42 billion) in the second quarter, compared with 30.6 billion yuan a year ago.

Analysts had previously forecast a net profit of 31.4 billion yuan for the period.

“A macro-economic slowdown, a rising mobile communications penetration rate and changes in the competitive environment of the telecommunications industry in China have posed challenges to the development of the business in the first half,” China Mobile said in a statement.

In the first six months, China Mobile posted a net profit of 55.3 billion yuan, a 1.4 percent annual growth. Its revenue totaled 212.9 billion yuan, an 8.9 percent rise from a year ago.

China Mobile’s monthly average revenue per user, a key index of the industry to monitor a telco’s profitability, was 75 yuan in the first half, about 10 percent less than a year ago.

China Mobile added 35.87 million users in the first half to total 493 million by the end of June. The telco had 957,000 3G users since it started a trial 3G service in April.

In the first half, China Mobile took 66 percent of the total new additional mobile users, compared with 85 percent a year ago, due to the “changed competitive landscape,” the company said.

“The gap between China Mobile and other rivals will become narrow but it will still dominate the market for about two years,” said Wu Wenzhao, a telecommunications analyst of Analysys International.

In January, China issued 3G licenses to China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

A British man fell to his death off a hotel building Friday afternoon in this capital city of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, local police confirmed.

Police received the report at about 2 p.m. that the man was found dead outside the Chuncheng Star Hotel on Beijing Road.

The man probably fell from a stairway window between the 12th and 13th floors, police said after initial investigation.

He hit a parked car before he died.

Police found nothing on the man to identify him, but only his mobile phone helped find some clues, with which police later knew that the man was from Britain and taught at a college under the Kunming University of Science and Technology.

Police are investigating the cause of the death.

The Australian government had risked 250,000 jobs by failing to clarify the “country of origin” labeling on manufactured goods, the Opposition agriculture spokesman John Cobb said on Friday.

Cobb said figures from the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) from February to May 2009 showed just under 240,000 kilograms of home brand peanut butter was imported from China.

More than 994,000 kilos of nuts and 454,706 kilograms of prawns and shrimps were imported from China alone, he said.

Currently, while fresh food in supermarkets has to stipulate where it comes from, manufactured or processed food on shelves in supermarkets is not subject to the same regulations.

Australia’s food manufacturing sector was the largest remaining that employed more than 250,000 people and there was a danger of those jobs going the way as the nation’s clothing and manufacturing sector, Cobb said.

“The government promised to end the confusion surrounding food labeling by ‘clarify country of labeling requirements’,” he said. “However, Australians still don’t have a clue about where their food is being grown and manufactured.”

U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser James Jones said Thursday that he hoped former president Bill Clinton’s visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) could “lead to good things.” “We certainly hope it will lead to good things … but I wouldn’t draw any other conclusions beyond the fact,” he said.

Jones reiterated that Clinton’s visit to the DPRK was purely a “humanitarian mission” to secure the release of two U.S. female journalists. He also denied that the visit would change U.S.-DPRK relations.

Clinton returned home after his 20-hour visit to Pyongyang Wednesday with two U.S. journalists. White House and State Department officials claimed that Clinton’s visit was a “solely private mission.”

The U.S. officials insisted that Clinton did not discuss any issues beyond the journalists’ release.

They also denied a statement by the DPRK’s official Korean Central News Agency, which said Clinton apologized on behalf of the two jailed women and conveyed President Barack Obama’s message to Kim Jong Il.

Clinton’s visit came at a time when the DPRK insisted that it would never return to the six-party talks while the United States was attempting to gather support for more international sanctions against it.

The DPRK announced earlier this year it was abandoning the six-party disarmament talks which involve the DPRK, South Korea, Japan, Russia, China and the United States.

Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket, conducted a nuclear test, test-fired a barrage of ballistic missiles and restarted its atomic program in defiance of international criticism and the UN Security Council resolutions.

Nepali Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal said on Friday that the agreements he would sign with India during his upcoming visit from Aug. 18, would not give rise to disagreement among political parties, local newspaper The Kathmandu Post reported on Saturday.

“He, however, was not articulate on whether or not he would sign an arms-deal with India,” the report said.

The prime minister, who was responding to questions raised by members of the Constituent Assembly Committee on International Relations and Human Rights, appealed to all not to harbour any suspicion about his “goodwill visit”.

“No bilateral agreement signed during my India visit will create differences among parties,” said the prime minister responding to committee members, including senior leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha of the single largest opposition party the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN-M), who had demanded clarification on whether he would sign any arms deal with India as suggested by Defence Minister Bidhya Bhandari on Thursday.

However, Prime Minister Nepal was much more articulate on otherissues, including the border disputes. He brushed aside the possibility of signing on the 98 strip maps prepared by the Nepal-India Joint Boundary Committee. “It’s not that 98 percent of the border disputes have been resolved, but that a total of 98 strip maps have been prepared. And we are not going to sign those maps,” said Nepal.

The reported intimidation and violence meted out by Indian security forces, said the prime minister, have drawn the government ’s attention and this will be discussed during the visit. He said that Nepal also had to establish a mechanism to monitor incidents of intimidation.

He said that problems associated with water resources, Nepal-India Friendship Treaty of 1950, bilateral trade, problems of double taxation and Indian investment in Nepal would also be agendas during his India visit.

“We are preparing a final draft of the agreements on promoting Indian investment in Nepal and addressing the problem of double taxation,” he said.

“It is purely a goodwill visit and we are not going to discuss the peace process,” he added, “But I am hopeful that this visit will give new heights to Nepal-India relations.”

Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala, who was also present at the meeting, said Nepal would seek Indian assistance in controlling criminal activities in the Terai bordering India and also for monitoring the open border.

“Since the open border has been one of the major reasons behind the frequent incidents of violence and crime in the Terai, Indian assistance in maintaining peace and security in the region is indispensable,” said Koirala. Koirala will leave for New Delhi on Aug. 11 to prepare the ground for Nepal’s scheduled visit.

Will the testy relationship between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) thaw a bit now that former U.S. President Bill Clinton is back home with two American journalists who had been detained for four months in the DPRK?
Some analysts say the amnesty the DPRK granted the two journalists, sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally, could become an opening for the two countries to begin direct discussions.

The release of Euna Lee and Laura King was “a manifestation of the DPRK’s humanitarian and peace-loving policy,” the official KCNA news agency said about Clinton’s surprise 20-hour humanitarian trip to Pyongyang.

The DPRK announced earlier this year it was abandoning the six-party disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and the U.S.

The DPRK also launched a long-range rocket, conducted a nuclear test, test-fired a barrage of ballistic missiles and restarted its atomic program in defiance of international criticism and the U.N. Security Council.

Clinton’s successful visit came at a time when the DPRK insisted that it would never return to the six-party talks while the United States was attempting to gather support for more international sanctions against it.

At a meeting of Southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the DPRK to renew the talks.

She reiterated that the United States and the other parties would push for a package of incentives and opportunities, including normalizing relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

In response, the official KCNA news agency broadcast a statement by the Foreign Ministry on July 27 saying there was a “specific and reserved form of dialogue” available, hinting a one-on-one dialogue with the United States.

During Clinton’s landmark stay in Pyongyang, he was received by the DPRK’s top leader, Kim Jong Il, and accorded honors typically reserved for heads of state. Senior officials met his private unmarked plane as it arrived Tuesday morning.

The KCNA said Clinton and Kim “had candid and in-depth discussions on the pending issues between the DPRK and the U.S. in a sincere atmosphere and reached a consensus of views on seeking a negotiated settlement of them.”

Clinton conveyed a verbal message from U.S. President Barack Obama to Kim, “reflecting views on ways of improving the relations between the two countries,” the report said.

The White House was trying to limit Clinton’s visit to a “purely private humanitarian mission” and separate it from the nuclear issue.

But it can’t be denied that Clinton’s visit marked the highest-level American contact with the DPRK since former U.S. President Jimmy Carter made a similar trip to Pyongyang in June 1994.

Although Clinton’s trip was successful in terms of its humanitarian mission, analysts believe it was far from marking a turning point on the standoff on the nuclear issue.

More efforts are needed to thaw DPRK-U.S. ties and reopen the six-party talks, analysts said.