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||| CHINA. Police arrest the two attackers

Attackers kill 16 border officers

||| Two men rammed a dump truck into a group of jogging policemen and then tossed grenades into their barracks, killing 16 officers and wounding others in Kashgar in China’s restive Central Asian border province.
 

Charles Hutzler | AP Writer

BEIJING – Two men rammed a truck into a group of jogging policemen and tossed explosives, killing 16 officers Monday in an attack in a restive province of western China just days before the Beijing Olympics, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Though it happened on the far side of the country, near the Afghan-Pakistan border, the attack came as security forces were on alert for the Games, which open Friday.
It was among the deadliest and most brazen attacks in years in Xinjiang province, site of a sporadically violent rebellion by local Muslims against Chinese rule.
About 20 people upset at having been evicted from their homes staged a brief demonstration near Tiananmen Square, Beijing's heavily guarded political center.
Uniformed police quickly surrounded the group until members of a neighborhood committee came and pulled the protesters away, scuffling with some.
In the Xinjiang attack, the two men drove a dump truck into the group of border patrol police officers as they passed the Yiquan Hotel during a routine 8 a.m. jog in the city of Kashgar, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
After the truck hit an electrical pole, the pair jumped out, ignited homemade explosives and "also hacked the policemen with knives," Xinhua said.

Local government officials declined comment Monday.

Fourteen died on the spot and two others en route to a hospital, and at least 16 officers were wounded, Xinhua said.
Police arrested the two attackers, one of whom was injured in the leg, the report said.
Authorities closed off streets, sealed the Nationalities Hospital down the street from the explosion, and ordered people to stay inside, said a man answering phones at the hospital duty office.
Local government officials declined comment on Monday. An officer in the district police de-partment said an investigation was launched.
Kashgar, or Kashi in Chinese, is a tourist city that was once an oasis trading center on the Silk Road caravan routes and lies 80 miles from the border with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyr-gyzstan.
Its mountainous, remote environs have allegedly provided cover for terrorist training camps, one of which Chinese police raided early last year.
Chinese security forces have been on edge for months, citing a number of foiled plots by Muslim separatists and a series of bombings around China in the run-up to the Olympics.
Last week, a senior military commander said radical Muslims who are fighting for what they call an independent East Turk-istan in Xinjiang posed the single greatest threat to the games.
A spokesman for Beijing's Olympic organizing committee said he did not have enough information to comment on the bombings.
But he said security arrangements were being increased around the Olympic venues. |||

||| SOUTH KOREA. The protests faded and meat shipments began

Bush to face protesters during visit

Burt Herman | AP Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – President Bush held off on visiting Seoul earlier this year when protesters held nightly candlelight vigils and clashed with riot police in anger over government plans to resume imports of American beef.
The protests faded and meat shipments began.
But Bush's arrival today is shaping up as a new flashpoint as anti-government demonstrators say they will raise their cries again, facing off against pro-U.S. groups planning a show of support for the country's longtime ally.
South Koreans remain generally positive in public opinion surveys about the United States, which helped repel North Korea in the 1950-53 Korean war and still deploys some 28,500 troops on the Korean peninsula to deter an attack.
Voters elected a conservative, pro-American president, Lee Myung-bak, who took office in February with promises to patch up relations with Washington that became strained under Seoul's previous decade of liberal governments.
Just hours before Lee's April meeting with Bush in Washing-ton, South Korea agreed to lift a ban on American beef that was imposed after the United States' first case of mad cow disease was discovered in late 2003. Lee's government said it would allow virtually unlimited imports.
The announcement set off a firestorm at home, setting the stage for weeks of angry street rallies fueled by a perception that South Korea ignored public concerns and caved in to U.S. pressure in Lee's haste to cozy up to the Americans.
While the rallies were never overtly anti-American and fo-cused on grievances with Lee, the candles were reminiscent of a series of anti-U.S. demonstrations that erupted in 2002 after two girls were killed in an accident with a United States military vehicle.
The protests mostly died down after Seoul won amendments to the beef deal that ban American meat from older cattle and other safeguards.
United States beef imports resumed July 29, although many larger South Korean stores and restaurants have refused to serve the meat due to the backlash.
Bush had been widely expected to come to Seoul last month while in Asia for a Group of Eight summit in Japan, but he didn't make a visit, apparently waiting for the demonstrations to calm.
His scheduled arrival today rekindled the issue, however.
The coalition that organized the earlier protests predicted it would gather 10,000 people for another candlelight vigil in central Seoul demanding that the beef deal be renegotiated yet again.
At the same time, pro-United States groups planned a Christian prayer service in front of Seoul City Hall that organizers claimed would draw 50,000 people, while another conservative group said its supporters would march near the protest rally carrying pictures of Bush. |||