BEIRUT, Lebanon, May 28--Israeli warplanes on Sunday bombed bases of a pro-Syrian Palestinian group in Lebanon after militants fired a rocket salvo deeper than ever before inside the Jewish state, AFP said.
Three Palestinian fighters and an Israeli soldier were wounded in the tit-for-tat attacks, according to the Israeli military and Lebanese police.
The air force launched raids on two bases of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), while Israel angrily announced it would lodge a complaint with the United Nations.
Israeli fighter bombers carried out several diving runs to fire 15 missiles at a base in Sultan Yaacub in eastern Lebanon, less than 10 kilometers from the border with Syria, wounding three militants, police said.
They then targeted a base in Naameh, some 10 kilometers south of the Lebanese capital, that comprises a network of underground tunnels and has been the target of several past Israeli air strikes.
Police said that more one hour later, Israeli jets were still violating Lebanese airspace, prompting a response from anti-aircraft guns of the Lebanese army and the PFLP-GC.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, militants in southern Lebanon fired several Katyusha rockets towards an army base in northern Israel, wounding a soldier and causing damage, an Israeli army spokeswoman said.
The rocket salvo hit a base near the town of Safed, situated 20 kilometers (15 miles) south of the international border with Lebanon, prompting the Israeli army to go on high alert.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his country would be making a formal complaint to the UN Security Council “on the aggression from Israel into Lebanon early this morning.“

aDemonstrators protest against government in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 28. (AP Photo)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 28--Malaysian police used batons and water cannons Sunday to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters in the capital, arresting around a dozen activists and beating several, AFP said.
Some 200 people, including opposition parties, non-government organizations and student groups gathered in front of Kuala Lumpur’s iconic Petronas Twin Towers in the latest of a series of rallies against steep fuel price rises.
Chanting “Protest!“ and carrying banners saying “Cronies get rich while workers are oppressed“, they also slammed a decision last week to raise electricity tariffs, the first hike in nearly a decade.
Some 100 riot police wielding batons and rifles stood guard in front of the towers, alongside several water cannon trucks, as helicopters flew overhead.
“Everybody is suffering from the fuel hike. Now electricity prices are also up. These two hikes will hit us hard, whether our pay is large or small,“ Hatta Ramli from the opposition Pan-Malaysia Islamic (PAS) party told the crowd.
“This price increase must be dropped, otherwise we will suffer even more,“ said Democratic Action Party (DAP) leader Ronnie Liu.
Police warned the crowds to disperse but ugly scenes erupted when the demonstrators were slow to act.
They used a water cannon on the demonstrators, and proceeded to push and beat up stragglers as shocked shoppers and tourists looked on. Several protestors were seen being kicked by police before being arrested.
Liu, PAS youth chief Salahuddin Ayub, and 16 other activists were arrested, said the opposition newspaper Harakah. Police were not immediately available to confirm the figures.
The government has said that fuel subsidies will eventually be scrapped to channel funds towards building schools and rural infrastructure.
Fuel prices in Malaysia are cheap compared to neighboring nations, but due to the lack of public transportation, people remain dependent on their vehicles.

LONDON, May 28--More than 60 minors, some as young as 14, have been held as prisoners at the US detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a London-based human rights group claimed in a report published on Sunday.
According to AFP, those detainees were under 18 when they were captured by US forces, and at least 10 of them still being held at Guantanamo were 14 or 15 when they were seized, held in solitary confinement, subject to repeated interrogation and allegedly tortured, the charity Reprieve was reported as saying.
Britain’s Independent on Sunday (IoS), which carried the allegations, suggested the charges could threaten the United States’ relationship with its closest ally in the “war on terror“, Britain.
“We would take a very, very dim view if it transpires that there were actually minors there,“ it quoted a British government official as saying.
Unnamed government sources said the allegations directly contradicted Washington’s assurances to London that no minors were held at Guantanamo.
Reprieve’s legal director and a lawyer for a number of detainees, Clive Stafford-Smith, told the newspaper the United States could have broken not only its own laws but all human rights conventions by putting children in adult jails.
“There is nothing wrong with trying minors for crimes, if they have committed crimes,“ he said.
“The problem is when you either hold minors without trial in shocking conditions, or try them before a military commission that, in the words of a prosecutor who refused to take part, is rigged.“
Stafford-Smith said that even if it were proved the 10 still held there--who are now all thought to have turned 18--were involved in fighting, they should be treated differently from adults.
According to the newspaper, Washington has admitted that only three Guantanamo inmates--later freed--were ever treated as children.

LONDON, May 28--Amnesty International marked its 5th anniversary on Sunday by launching a global campaign to stamp out state censorship of the Internet, Reuters said.
The human rights pressure group called on Web users to sign pledge calling on governments to stop censoring sites and urging technology corporations not to collude with them.
Arguing that online censorship is a new threat to freedom, Amnesty claimed to have uncovered Internet repression in areas around the world from China and Tunisia to Vietnam, Iran, Israel and the Maldives.
Calling for the release of “cyber dissidents“ jailed for expressing their political views online, Amnesty said Internet cafes are being shut down, computers seized, chat rooms monitored and blogs deleted.
“The Internet is a huge, powerful tool. We see governments censoring access to the Internet or locking people up for having conversations about democracy and freedom,“ said Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International.
Launching a new irrepressible.info Web site to challenge Internet censorship, Allen said “I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression and on companies to stop helping them do it.“
The world’s largest Internet providers have become embroiled in an international debate about Web censorship, especially in China.
Earlier this month, Yahoo Inc. said it was seeking the US government’s help in urging China to allow more media freedom after reports linking information it gave to Chinese authorities with the jailing of a dissident.
The case was the latest to highlight conflicts of profit and principle for Internet companies in the world’s second biggest Internet market.
Web search leader Google Inc, has come under fire for saying it would block politically sensitive terms on its new China site, bowing to conditions set by Beijing.
The new campaign for freedom on the information superhighway was launched in the Observer newspaper. In 1961, an article by Peter Benenson in the same newspaper, calling on governments to stop persecution, led to Amnesty being founded.

CAIRO, Egypt, May 28--Egyptian activists detained after taking part in demonstrations in support of reformist judges in Cairo began a hunger strike Sunday calling for an investigation into torture allegations of colleagues, and the release of political detainees, their lawyers told AFP.
“Six detainees have begun a hunger strike Sunday calling for the medical examination of Mohammed Al-Sharqawi and Karim Al-Shaer,“ said Khaled Ali, one of the lawyers for the detainees adding that others will join the strike if their demands are not met.
The Egyptian pro-reform Kefaya (Enough) movement accused police of torture after two activists--Mohammed Al-Sharqawy and Karim Al-Shaer--were arrested following a rally in Cairo in support of reformist judges on Thursday.
The group accused officers of having tortured Sharqawi and of sodomising him with rolled up carton.
In a statement posted on an Egyptian website, the detainees called for an investigation into allegations of torture and a medical examination by forensics to establish torture.
The detainees also called for the release of political prisoners supporting the judiciary in its call for independence from the executive authority.
“Our continued detention proves the regimes fear and terror of peoples opposition to its corruption, dictatorship and its systematic destruction of the country,“ read the statement.
The two activists had participated in a rally Thursday in support of reformist judges and to mark the first anniversary of a referendum day tarnished by violence against opposition activists.
Lawyers who visited Sharqawy in prison confirmed that he was badly hurt.
“I could see that he (Sharqawy) was tortured brutally,“ Gamal Eid, one of the lawyers present during interrogation of the two men, told AFP. “His eyes were swollen and there were shoe marks on his neck and chest,“ Eid added.
The movement to support the judges has been brutally repressed by police in recent weeks.

John Prescott

LONDON, May 28--Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, whose affair with his secretary has helped feed public criticism engulfing Tony Blair’s government, came under renewed attack on Sunday with reports of a plot to unseat him, Reuters reported.
The former ship’s steward, once hailed as a working class hero of the old-style Labour Party, was also mocked for playing a genteel game of croquet at the elegant, publicly funded country residence he kept after a cabinet reshuffle.
“There is absolutely no doubt that John Prescott’s situation has become a significant political issue for us,“ Labour parliamentarian Martin Salter told The Sunday Times, which said party members were plotting to oust him.
It said the issue is to be raised at the next regular meeting with Blair of a parliamentary committee of senior Labour backbenchers.
After Prescott admitted having an affair with his diary secretary, Blair stripped him of his department in a major reshuffle. He then came under fire for holding on to his 133,000-pound ministerial salary and two state homes.
In a mocking “Prescott At Work“ headline story, The Mail on Sunday showed photographs of Prescott playing croquet on the manicured lawns of Dorneywood House while running the country when Blair was in Washington for talks with President Bush.
Labour upper house peer Baroness Kennedy told BBC TV on Sunday: “There is an undermining of any kind of status that he might have within the party and I think people feel that a move on might be timely.“
Prescott was one of the most notable casualties when Blair overhauled his government earlier this month after one of the worst local election defeats of his nine-year premiership.
The shakeup followed accusations of government sleaze and incompetence that hit Blair at the ballot box and piled pressure on him to give his government new political impetus or step aside.
Blair has pledged to resign before the next national election, due by mid-2010 at the latest, with his longtime finance minister Gordon Brown expected to succeed him.

Alan Garcia

LIMA, Peru, May 28--Former President Alan Garcia holds a strong lead over his nationalist rival Ollanta Humala in the race for Peru’s presidency, a week before the runoff vote, a poll showed on Sunday.
According to Reuters, the Datum survey, which was ommissioned by one of Peru’s most popular television networks, Frecuencia Latina, showed Garcia would get 58 percent of votes in the June 4 election compared to 42 percent for Humala, unchanged from a May 22 poll.
The nationwide survey of 1,125 people between May 25 and May 26 had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
A CPI poll on Saturday also put Garcia well ahead with 59.9 percent to Humala’s 40.1 percent.
Humala, a retired army commander, is strongest in Peru’s southern Andes, where he has vowed to lift millions of Peruvians out of poverty, but has struggled to win support in Garcia’s stronghold of Lima and northern Peru.
Humala proposes to rewrite contracts with mining and natural gas companies, scrap a free-trade deal with the United States and industrialize production of coca, the basis for cocaine.
Garcia, whose 1985-1990 term ended in economic ruin, is seen by Peru’s middle class and investors as the more business-friendly candidate because he has presented himself as a moderate, centrist politician.
Both candidates are trying to win over the fifth to one-quarter of voters who say they are undecided or will spoil their vote.
Humala’s radical promises are too extreme for some Peruvians who say the former soldier would put the country’s economic stability at risk.
But many Peruvians say they are still scarred by the hyperinflation and food shortages of Garcia’s first term.

Cartoon by Stephane Peray