TEHERAN - IRAN'S opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi accused the authorities on Sunday of using 'medieval torture' to extract confessions from protesters on trial over the wave of post-election unrest.
Former president Mohammad Khatami also said Saturday?s mass trial of 100 protesters and prominent reformists was against the constitution, putting him at loggerheads with hardliners who openly accused him and Mousavi of 'treason.'
BEIJING- POLICE in the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang have arrested hundreds of people in connection with disturbances that left at least 197 people dead, state media reported on Sunday.
Citing a police announcement in Urumqi, the regional capital that was the epicentre of the unrest on July 5, the Xinhua news agency said 319 people had been detained.
BEIJING - CHINA cut its average energy consumption by 3.53 per cent in the first half of 2009 from a year ago, helped by massive stimulus spending on green projects, the government said on Sunday.
The figure compared with a decline of 2.89 per cent in the first quarter of the year, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement on its website.
YANGON - LAWYERS for Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Sunday they still hoped she would be 'freed unconditionally', despite widespread fears of a guilty verdict in her prolonged prison trial.
The Nobel peace laureate faces up to five years in jail if convicted on charges of breaching the terms of her house arrest following an incident in which an American man swam across a lake to her heavily-secured villa in May.
