World Digest
Taiwan leader is sworn in for second term

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Chen was sworn in for a second four-year term after campaigning on a China-bashing platform, which strained already tense relations with China. A civil war split Taiwan and China in 1949 and Beijing has threatened to use force to take over the island.

Chen's March 20 election victory — by a razor-thin margin of 0.2 percent — came one day after a gunshot grazed his stomach and hit his running mate. No suspects have been named, and opposition candidate Lien Chan has said he won't accept the vote's results until the incident is thoroughly investigated.

The vote dispute sparked violent street protests, and Lien demanded a recount, which has already begun and could take several more weeks.

U.S. allowed to upgrade radar in Greenland

COPENHAGEN — Denmark and Greenland have decided to let the United States upgrade a radar in Greenland to make it part of Washington's planned missile-defense shield, Danish media reported yesterday.

"We are satisfied with the result," the Politiken newspaper quoted Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller as saying, referring to talks with Greenland's government on a U.S. request to use the radar at Thule air base in northwest Greenland.

Upgrading of the radar would begin this year and the facility — located at the center of a chain of similar U.S. installations stretching from Alaska to Britain — would be part of the planned shield against any missile fired against North America from what the U.S. has labeled "rogue states," including Iran and North Korea.

EU lifts moratorium on new biotech foods

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Bowing to pressure from the U.S., the European Union lifted a six-year moratorium on new biotech foods yesterday by allowing onto the EU market a modified strain of sweet corn, grown mainly in the United States.

But even the company that developed the insect-resistant corn, Swiss-based Syngenta, conceded it could take a lot longer for skeptical Europeans to start buying — and eating — it.
 
"Whether (genetically modified) foods will be accepted or not will depend on the European consumers," Syngenta spokesman Rainer von Mielecki said. "We understand and accept this."

The Bush administration, which accused the EU last year of violating international trade rules, welcomed the approval yesterday but insisted its complaint at the World Trade Organization would go forward.

The initial ruling is expected in September.

While European leaders have stressed the importance of the biotech industry as an engine for growth in the 21st century, they are reluctant to be seen as promoting genetically modified foods, which remain widely unpopular in Europe.

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A boa constrictor triggered a 15-minute nationwide blackout when it slithered into a generator at El Cajon, a major hydroelectric plant that supplies 60 percent of Honduras' electricity, officials said yesterday. ... Troops seized 800 bullets soaked in liquid cyanide after clashes with leftist rebels in northeast Colombia, 160 miles northeast of Bogotá, after clashes in which two guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, were killed, Gen. Luis Antonio Coronado told local radio yesterday. ... A remote-controlled roadside bomb destroyed a vehicle carrying government workers in southeastern Afghanistan today, wounding at least four people, police said.