Brazilian police retake poached hardwood

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Heavily armed federal police swarmed an Amazon town on Saturday, seizing more than 500 truckloads of illegally cut hardwood that were confiscated but abandoned last week when rioting residents and loggers drove out environmental authorities.

About 450 officers retook the town of Tailandia, patrolling on horseback and in pickups and standing guard outside sawmills.

At least 2,000 enraged residents burned tires, blocked roads and forced Environmental Protection Agency workers to flee the area Tuesday.

The force sent in Saturday loaded huge trunks of precious hardwood onto flatbed trucks to be taken away and auctioned off by the government, which plans to spend the proceeds on rain forest protection. Its value was estimated at estimated at $1.8 million, Globo TV said.

The Tailandia campaign is part of a larger government push to curb illegal logging and burning that threatens to reverse three years of declines in deforestation in the Amazon.

But many of last week's rioters work in the area's saw mills, which could suffer as a result of state efforts to audit companies and mills suspected of illegal logging, Brazil's Environmental Protection Agency said last week.

Tokyo

Japanese launch new satellite

Japan's space agency launched an experimental communications satellite Saturday designed to enable super high-speed data transmission at home and in Southeast Asia.

The domestically developed H-2A rocket carrying the satellite, Kizuna, was launched Saturday evening from the southern island of Tanegashima, according to a live Internet broadcast by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, known as JAXA.

The agency said it hoped to enable data transmission of up to 1.2 gigabytes per second at a low cost across Japan and in 19 different places in Southeast Asia. Japan launched its first satellite in 1970 and has achieved several major scientific coups in space — including launching a probe that collected samples from an asteroid.

Japan is racing to catch up with regional rival China, which has put astronauts in space twice since 2003 and was the third country to send a human into orbit after Russia and the United States. Japan has since announced plans to send its first astronauts into space and set up a base on the moon by 2025.

Lima, Peru

Machu Picchu area reopens after protest

Rail service to the famed Inca ruins at Machu Picchu reopened on Saturday after Peruvians ended two days of protests against new laws allowing more development near historic sites.

Authorities also restored service at the regional airport of Cuzco, which also had been shuttered since Thursday when protesters stormed the facility and piled rocks and trees onto roads.

With other local businesses closing down, the two-day demonstration cost the region an estimated $2.4 million, Cuzco tourism director Jean Paul Benavente told the Peru 21 newspaper.

Local leaders called the protests to oppose two laws — originally approved late last year — that permit the construction of new hotels and restaurants near archaeological and historic sites.

Tehran, Iran

Apology demanded over nuclear claims

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the U.S. and its allies Saturday to "apologize" for accusing Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a day after the U.N. nuclear watchdog released its latest report on Iran.

Ahmadinejad said the International Atomic Energy Agency report vindicated Iran and warned that Tehran would take unspecified "decisive reciprocal measures" against any country that imposed additional sanctions against Iran.

The IAEA report said many past questions about Iran's nuclear program had been resolved but it highlighted Tehran's continued refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

Iran is already under two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, technology that can produce both fuel for nuclear reactors and the fissile material for a bomb. Tehran insists its program is intended only to produce energy.

Also

Bus plunge: A bus plunged over a cliff Saturday in southern Saudi Arabia, killing at least 25 people on board, the state-run news agency said.

Toll grows: Searchers pulled the bodies of two more victims of a ferryboat wreck from the Amazon River on Saturday, Brazilian media reported, raising to 16 the number of dead after the vessel collided with a barge and sank near the isolated town of Itacoatiara. Ninety-two people were rescued.

Seattle Times news services