Beijing

China sends envoys to Taiwanese funeral

Two senior Chinese officials flew to Taiwan Tuesday to attend the funeral of a deceased Taiwanese leader, the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures from Beijing designed to lower tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

The two — Sun Yafu, deputy director of the government’s Taiwan Affairs Office, and Li Yafei, secretary general of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait — were dispatched to Taipei to attend ceremonies for Koo Chen-fu, who conducted historic talks with the mainland in 1993. Koo died Jan. 3 of cancer.

The pair will stay one day, Chinese officials announced, and no formal business was planned. Nevertheless, the display of respect for Koo and his family was seen as another signal from Beijing that it wants to improve the atmosphere and perhaps get talks started again with the self-governing island.

Egypt

Police, militants clash; bombing suspect killed

Security forces clashed with Islamic militants in the mountains of Sinai on Tuesday, killing a suspect in last year’s deadly bombings of beach resorts on the peninsula, the government said.

The gunbattle erupted as police were chasing militants believed involved in the October bombings at the Sinai resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, which killed 34 people, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry identified the suspect killed Tuesday as Mohammed Abdel Rahman Badawi, saying he took part in the Sinai bombings and was found armed with an automatic rifle and a handgun.

Witnesses said two people were killed in the shootout — a policeman and a militant — outside Ras el-Sudr, a Red Sea town 25 miles south of Suez. But the ministry said only that a policeman was wounded.