Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang blasted a new human rights report released by the US Department of State as being inconsistent with "basic facts" Saturday, characterizing it as unsubstantiated and slanderous to the human rights conditions in China. The annual report on US efforts to support human rights and democracy abroad was delivered to Congress Thursday in compliance with the FY 03 Foreign Relations Authorization Act.

The report criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) for suppressing the human rights of those "perceived to threaten the legitimacy or authority" of the party; Qin responded that China has received international acclaim for its protection of human rights, freedom of expression and fundamental liberties of all of its various ethnic groups. Qin noted that there is a consensus amongst the international community that the "United States is not in the position to depict itself as a human rights watchdog," and that the United States should examine its own human rights practices, and refrain from applying double or multiple standards as a pretext to intervene in the domestic affairs of states. Qin stated that doing so would remove the barriers between serious interstate dialogue concerning human rights.

The report, the fifth annual submission, is intended to complement the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which highlight and publicize foreign rights abuses. Since 1998, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has published a responsive annual report titled the Human Rights Record of the United States.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on governments on Friday to take immediate action following the release of a UN report on impacts of climate change.

The secretary-general welcomed the release of the findings of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a statement issued by his spokesperson said.

"He notes with concern that the impacts of climate change are increasingly noticeable, and likely to become more so in the future as extreme weather events intensify," it said.

"Adequate, large-scale adaptation measures have the potential to alleviate some of the worst consequences outlined in the report, if governments take action without delay," the statement said.

"The secretary-general hopes that the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change will work decisively towards a comprehensive framework to replace the existing regime once it expires in 2012,"it said.

"He hopes the parties will avail themselves of the opportunity to make progress towards such a framework at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December this year," it added.

Climate experts on the IPCC warned in the report that impacts of global warming, ranging from water and food shortages to rising seas, are set to adversely affect human's living environment. ?

Orwig says he began looking for a job with a private firm prior to the controversy involving the Department of Justice and eight U.S. Attorneys who claim they were removed for political reasons.

He says the move to a private firm is the best decision for his family.

"I have two children in college with a third soon to join them," Orwig told KFDM News in a telephone conversation Friday afternoon. "A move to private practice was inevitable."

Orwig officially took office as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas on January 13, 2002.

Monica M. Goodling, one of the key aides who took part in planning the firings of eight US Attorneys who was formerly on voluntary leave from her post as special counsel to the US Attorney General, submitted her resignation without cause Friday. Goodling's resignation, effective Saturday, is the third by a Department of Justice official involved in the controversy. On Tuesday, Goodling told the House Judiciary Committee that she would not speak to the committee about her role in the firings, and stated through her lawyer, John Dowd, that she would seek protection under the Fifth Amendment if the committee issued her a subpoena.

Documents and records released by the DOJ in late March show that Goodling participated in multiple meetings planning the firings over a period of 12 months. Goodling was also involved in a April 6, 2006 telephone conversation with Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM). Domenici had complained to the Bush administration concerning the speed of former Albuquerque US Attorney David Iglesias' investigation of local Democrats before the November 2006 elections. Dowd characterized any questioning of his client a "perjury trap" while citing the recent conviction of Lewis Libby in the CIA leak case.

On Monday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, rejected attempts by the Bush administration to move up the date that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled to testify. In March, Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Gonzales, who had resigned, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the prosecutors were fired for political reasons rather than for poor performance as the Justice Department has claimed.

Thailand blocked YouTube on Wednesday after its owner, Google Inc., refused to remove the slideshow of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The initial video, which was withdrawn Thursday, showed pictures of feet over the king's head -- a major cultural taboo in Thailand, where feet are considered dirty and offensive -- and graffiti scrawled over the 79-year-old monarch's face. At least one still frame from the video remained on the site.

A variation of the withdrawn video reappeared Friday, along with another one that showed a picture of the king superimposed with a monkey's face. It also carried messages with profanities and said Thailand's "leaders are evil and hate free speech."

YouTube said Thailand's information ministry was having difficulty blocking individual videos.

"While we will not take down videos that do not violate our policies, and will not assist in implementing censorship, we have offered to educate the Thai ministry about YouTube and how it works," said Julie Supan, head of global communications for YouTube.

"It's up to the Thailand government to decide whether to block specific videos, but we would rather that than have them block the entire site," she said.

Insulting the monarchy in Thailand is a crime. Last week, a Swiss man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for vandalizing portraits of the king.

If convicted, the officers face a maximum five-year sentence. The captain, chief mate, second mate, third mate, chief cabin steward, and housekeeper of the Greek-flagged vessel were arrested after the accident, a merchant marine ministry spokeswoman said earlier on Saturday. All were released pending further investigations.

Missing tourists

Two French passengers are still missing after the sinking of the Sea Diamond, which hit rocks on Thursday and sank off the coast of the Greek island of Santorini. The rest of the 1,154 passengers and 391 crew were safely evacuated. The 469ft vessel hit a well-marked and charted reef in fair weather inside Santorini's sea-filled crater. The ship had been due to dock a few minutes later. The sinking vessel was evacuated in a three-hour rescue operation, but Jean-Christophe Allain, 45, and his 16-year-old daughter, Maud, from Doue-la-Fontaine in western France were later listed as missing, feared to have been trapped in their flooded lower-deck cabin.

Largest Greek rescue

The ministry spokeswoman said the search for the two continued, while divers continued to investigate the hulk of the Sea Diamond. Officials were also carrying out a clean-up effort for fuel that leaked out of the 21-year-old vessel, which sank 15 hours after the accident.

"The vessel maintained the highest level of safety standards and was equipped with the latest navigation systems," said Giorgos Stathopoulos, spokesman for the ship's operator, Louis Cruise Lines. Thursday's evacuation was the largest Greek rescue operation since the September 2000 Express Samina ferry disaster, which killed 80 people near the holiday island of Paros when it struck rocks in the night and sank. It also created a major headache for officials in Greece's key tourism industry - which accounts for an estimated 18 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product.

"Whoever is responsible for this will be held accountable in the strictest way," Fanny Petralia, the tourism minister said. "Greece is a major tourism destination and incidents like this must not be allowed to occur. Authorities handled the rescue very well."

'Orderly evacuation'

Manolis Kefaloyannis, the merchant marine minister, said the evacuation "was orderly and successful. "Every decision was taken in a way that would not endanger lives". But some passengers complained of an insufficient supply of life vests, little guidance from crew members and being forced into a steep climb down rope-ladders to safety. Most of the passengers were American, but there also were groups from Canada and Spain.

The report, issued Friday, paints a bleak picture of Earth's future: hundreds of millions of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction.

Despite its harsh vision outlining devastating effects that will strike all regions of the world and all levels of society, the report was quickly criticized by some scientists who said its findings were hijacked by some governments.

"The science got hijacked by the political bureaucrats at the late stage of the game," said John Walsh, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped write a chapter on the polar regions.

"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit (by global warming)," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report is also, in a sense, a more pointed indictment of the world's biggest polluters -- the industrialized nations – and a more specific identification of those who will suffer, said the paper.

Thus, some nations lobbied for last-minute changes to the dire predictions. Negotiations led to deleting some timelines for events, as well as some forecasts on how many people would be affected on each continent as global temperatures rose, the paper noted.