Beijing

China vows to block Taiwan independence

In measured but resolute terms, China’s leader warned Taiwan on Friday against pursuing “creeping independence” and said Beijing would thwart any step by the independently ruled island toward declaring sovereignty.

President Hu Jintao spoke as legislators gathered to consider a draft law that would codify China’s legal right to attack Taiwan and seek unification by military means.

“We will never tolerate Taiwan independence and never allow the Taiwan independence forces to make Taiwan secede from the motherland under any name or by any means,” Hu told a preliminary session before today’s start of an annual 10-day meeting of the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The island has governed itself since Nationalist forces fled there in 1949, when Communists took power on the mainland. Many Taiwanese view prosperous and democratic Taiwan as already sovereign, even without a formal declaration.

Brazil

125-year-old may be world’s oldest woman

An elderly woman living in a small, wooden shack in rural southern Brazil could be the world’s oldest living woman, according to a Brazilian record-keeping organization.

Maria Olivia da Silva, who recently celebrated her 125th birthday, “is definitely the oldest living woman in Brazil and possibly in the entire world,” said Iolete Cadari, administrative director of RankBrasil, this country’s equivalent to the Guinness World Records.

Da Silva’s birth certificate shows she was born Feb. 28, 1880, in the city of Itapetininga, Sao Paulo state, Cadari said. She currently lives in the small town of Astorga, some 370 miles west of Sao Paulo in the state of Parana.

Laura McTurk, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records in London, said the organization was researching its records for any information on da Silva.

According to the Guinness World Records Web site, the world’s oldest woman is 113-year-old Hendrikje Van Andel-Schipper, who was born June 29, 1890.

Berlin

Court: Jewish heirs can reclaim valuable land

The heirs of a Jewish family that lost its department store fortune under the Nazis are entitled to reclaim land in central Berlin, a German court ruled Friday in rejecting an appeal by one of the country’s biggest retail chains.

The ruling is a victory for the Wertheim heirs, and delivers a setback to KarstadtQuelle, which has been fighting a decision by Berlin’s restitution agency awarding the family rights to a parcel of land around the city’s glitzy Potsdamer Platz square worth millions of dollars.

The court did not give KarstadtQuelle the right to appeal, but the company will petition for the opportunity to do so, possibly extending the battle for another year, company spokesman Joerg Howe said.

Descendants of the Wertheim family have battled with German authorities and the retail chain for years to get back real estate that was part of a bustling department store empire before the rise of the Nazis. Once among the wealthiest families in Germany, the survivors were scattered during the Nazi era and lost their fortune.

United Nations

Commission adopts women’s platform

Facing overwhelming opposition, the United States on Friday abandoned attempts to amend a declaration reaffirming the blueprint to achieve equality for women, saying it was satisfied the document did not guarantee the right to abortion.

Hours after the United States backed down, the 45-member U.N. Commission on the Status of Women unanimously adopted the declaration endorsing the platform for action adopted at the 1995 U.N. women’s conference in Beijing.

The U.S. attempt to amend the declaration has taken the spotlight at the two-week review meeting, angering many governments and some 6,000 representatives of women’s and human rights organizations. They had hoped to focus on obstacles to women’s equality in the economy, family, education and political life — not on the abortion issue.

Vatican City

Pope’s role in Easter celebrations uncertain

Even if Pope John Paul II is released from hospital in time for Easter at the end of the month, he is unlikely to fully participate in services marking Christianity’s most solemn holiday.

But the Vatican insists the 84-year-old pope, while adapting his papacy to limitations imposed by age and infirmity, doesn’t have to utter a word to inspire the Roman Catholic faithful.

Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Friday the pope was expected to make an appearance Sunday at a window at Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic hospital, as he did last week. A final decision would be made today, Navarro-Valls said.

“The pope will give the blessing with his hands,” not with his voice, still fragile after Feb. 24 surgery to insert a breathing tube into his throat, the spokesman said.

The Holy See said this week it was possible the pope could leave the hospital in time for Easter on March 27. Navarro-Valls said the Vatican was going ahead with its Easter schedule and that if the pope was out of the hospital, his participation would be worked out.

United Nations

Images show Iraqi sites stripped, razed

Satellite imagery has revealed approximately 90 sites in Iraq subject to U.N. inspection and monitoring have been stripped of equipment or razed, the chief U.N. weapons inspector said in a report Friday.

Demetrius Perricos said experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which he leads, also noted repairs and new construction at 10 sites.

The commission previously reported the looting and razing of sites that contained equipment and materials subject to inspection because of their potential for use in chemical or biological weapons or the long-range missiles to deliver them. Friday’s report to the U.N. Security Council was the first to provide information on the extent of the disappearance and destruction.

While the U.S.-led military is in Iraq and the chief U.S. arms hunter Charles Duelfer found no evidence of weapons programs, the insecurity in the country — and the disappearance of equipment and the reappearance of some pieces in scrapyards in Jordan and the Netherlands — has raised concerns.