Honduras

President hospitalized after emergency landing

A small plane carrying Honduran President Ricardo Maduro went down in the Caribbean Sea near the shore Sunday after its engine failed, and Maduro was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, the president’s spokesman said.

“The airplane had a mechanical problem and fell into the sea,” just beyond the end of the runway at Tela, a city on the Caribbean coast, said presidential spokesman Jorge Barrios. “It is believed that the plane’s engine stopped when it was making its approach for landing.”

Maduro, 59, his daughter, Lorena, and the plane’s pilot “were all unharmed” after they were plucked from the water by local residents, Barrios said.

“The president is recovering at a hospital in Comayagua,” a central Honduras city, he added.

Maduro, who has fought a fierce battle against street gangs in Honduras, was on his way to a meeting in Tela with Mayor Daniel Flores about a government development project.

Barrios said Maduro would have a news conference when he returned to the capital.

Jerusalem

Israel, Turkey to set up hot line, Sharon says

Israel and Turkey agreed to set up a hot line for instant communication between the nations’ leaders, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday during a visit by his Turkish counterpart.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Israel seeking to mend Turkey’s relations with the Jewish state and join in a new wave of Middle East peace efforts.

Israel and Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim state, have long had strong military ties and important trade links. But relations grew strained last year when Erdogan, whose party has its roots in Turkey’s Islamic movement, strongly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

The hot line will boost joint anti-terror efforts and other coordination.

“We learned from experience that even when you have close intelligence contacts there is great significance to contacts between leaders and between countries at the highest level,” Sharon said, noting that Israel already has such hot lines with the United States, Britain, EU and Russia.

China

Taiwan leader visits grandmother’s grave

Thousands turned up to catch a glimpse of Taiwan’s opposition leader and his family on Sunday as they paid their respects to his grandmother’s mainland grave for the first time in 60 years.

Nationalist party chairman Lien Chan’s trip to Xi’an, the city where he was born and his grandmother died during World War II, follows a landmark visit to Beijing where he met China’s President and Communist Party leader Hu Jintao.

That meeting was the highest level contact between the two parties since China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.

“To come here today is very moving,” Lien said. “For more than 60 years, because of the situation across the Taiwan Strait, no one from the Lien family could come.”

As many as 15,000 townspeople lined the hills around the grave site to wish him well, smiling, clapping and cheering when he arrived. Some waved banners saying “Welcome Home Lien Chan.”

Lien, his wife, and three of their grown children knelt on cushions and bowed before the black gravestone set in a small garden on the outskirts of Xi’an. Traditional offerings of candles, incense and fruit were set in front of the grave.

Massive crowds have greeted Lien at every stop of his mainland tour since he arrived at the former Nationalist capital of Nanjing on Tuesday.

Mexico City

Country envisions seaport to rival L.A.’s

Desert scrub, rows of broccoli and a few scattered Airstream trailers are about all that dot the seaside landscape at Punta Colonet. But Mexican officials hope an ambitious development plan will transform the Baja California cove into a seaport as busy as that in Los Angeles.

The site, 120 miles south of Tijuana, is where the Mexican government and major shipping and freight concerns envision a massive ocean freight container port to compete with those north of the border. Next year, government officials hope to begin receiving construction bids from major global shipping companies to start work on the harbor, berths and terminals.

Mexican officials hope the port will open in 2012 and will include about 20 slips for container cargo ships, Mexican port and merchant marine coordinator Cesar Reyes Roel said.

Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., are the U.S. gateways for Asian goods, and some officials at those ports are skeptical that Punte Colonet could handle 7 million cargo containers a year, as does the Port of Los Angeles, the largest U.S. seaport.

Wary of losing valuable cargo trade to Mexico, the proposal has provoked concern at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and among California state officials. Sacramento is studying how to speed cargo through the Los Angeles area, including new night and weekend port hours to be added this summer.