President Bush called China’s President Hu Jintao on Wednesday and raised concerns about the crackdown in Tibet, joining a growing chorus of international protests about Beijing’s tough tactics. The White House said Bush encouraged Hu to engage in “substantive dialogue” with representatives of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet. The president also called on China to allow access for journalists and diplomats in Tibet.
The U.S. Navy expressed regret Wednesday that an Egyptian citizen was killed when a navy-contracted ship fired warning shots at approaching motor boats in the Suez Canal. In the immediate aftermath of the incident late Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Navy maintained that according to the security team aboard the vessel there were no casualties. But on Wednesday, an embassy statement said it “appears that an Egyptian in the boat was killed by one of the warning shots.”
South Korea will vote in favor of a U.N. resolution expressing concerns about human rights in North Korea, a senior official said Wednesday, a move that could anger the communist country amid a deadlock in international nuclear talks. The decision by the administration of conservative President Lee Myung-bak, who took office last month, marks a change from policies during the past decade of liberal governments, which were reluctant to publicly criticize North Korea. Lee has promised a tougher stance in dealing with South Korea’s isolated, impoverished neighbor.
Sales of new homes fell in February for the fourth straight month, pushing activity down to a 13-year low as the steep slump in housing continued. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that new home sales dropped 1.8 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000 units, the slowest sales pace since February 1995. The decline was slightly worse than expected. The median price of a home sold last month dropped to $244,100, down 2.7 percent from the level of a year ago.
A California aerospace company plans to enter the space tourism industry with a two-seat rocket ship capable of suborbital flights to altitudes more than 37 miles above the Earth. The Lynx, about the size of a small private plane, is expected to begin flying in 2010, according to developer Xcor Aerospace, which planned to release details of the design at a news conference Wednesday. The company also said that, pending the outcome of negotiations, the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded it a research contract to develop and test features of the Lynx. No details were released.
American Airlines canceled about 300 flights Wednesday so its crews could inspect some wire bundles aboard its MD-80 aircraft. The canceled flights represent about 13 percent of the estimated 2,300 flights that the nation’s biggest airline had scheduled for the day. The highest concentrations of the cancellations were in the airline’s hubs at Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O’Hare international airports.
The Los Angeles Times will conduct an internal investigation concerning the authenticity of documents used in a story that implicate associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs in a 1994 assault on Tupac Shakur, the editor of the newspaper said Wednesday. In a story posted on the newspaper Web site, editor Russ Stanton said he ordered the review after the editor of the Web site, The Smoking Gun, told the newspaper he had reason to doubt the validity of the FBI records that were supposed to back up the story. “We’re taking this very seriously and we have begun our own investigation,” Nancy Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the newspaper, told The Associated Press.
