China calls on Obama to cancel Dalai Lama meeting

China has complained about US President Barack Obama's scheduled meeting on Saturday with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

China's foreign ministry urged Mr Obama to cancel the White House engagement, which is expected to last half an hour.
The private discussion is intended to show Mr Obama's support for Tibet's identity, the White House said.
Mr Obama's last meeting with the Dalai Lama in February 2010 drew strong condemnation from Beijing.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement on Saturday: "We firmly oppose any senior foreign government officials meeting with the Dalai Lama in any way."
The White House did not immediately return a call seeking comment about Beijing's displeasure.
But the White House said earlier in a statement announcing the meeting: "The president will highlight his enduring support for dialogue between the Dalai Lama's representatives and the Chinese government to resolve differences."

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Police: 39 dead in Pakistani city after days of clashes

(CNN) -- Ongoing sectarian violence has left 39 people dead in a southern Pakistani city in the last few days, police said Thursday.
Ten people were killed on Tuesday, 18 on Wednesday and 11 on Thursday after clashes in several neighborhoods in Karachi, said Arslan Umar, a police official in the city.
The clashes have been blamed on a bitter rivalry between the political parties of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP).
The MQM mostly represents Urdu-speaking people, who migrated to Pakistan from India during partition in 1947, while the Awami National Party, represents Pashto speakers -- more of whom are moving to Karachi from northwest Pakistan in search of jobs.
Violence between supporters of the two parties and other turf wars in Karachi have killed hundreds in recent years

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Militants kill 10 Yemeni soldiers By the CNN Wire Staff

(CNN) -- Militants gunned down 10 soldiers at a military checkpoint in southwestern Yemen, authorities said Thursday.
The incident occurred Wednesday in the town of Lawdar, security officials said.
In an unrelated incident Wednesday, the Yemen Defense Ministry said it had killed Waleed Osairi, an al Qaeda commander, along with several other suspected al Qaeda militants.
The deaths occurred in Abyan province and is part of an effort to clear the area of the terror group, the government said.
Yemen has been consumed by unrest for months as protesters have demanded an end to the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule. Saleh and other senior officials were wounded June 3 in an attack on the mosque at the presidential palace. Saleh is being treated in Saudi Arabia. Officials have said he will return when he has recovered.

In recent weeks, government troops have battled both tribal forces and Islamic militants, including al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

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Hacking scandal exposes secrets at Murdoch's tabloid

London (CNN) -- In 2005, the best-selling weekly UK tabloid News of the World published a seemingly mundane story about Prince William's injuring his knee.
It was just another exclusive for a newspaper that had made its reputation on hard-hitting exclusives, often exposing the embarrassments of celebrities and politicians.
Britain's newspaper culture which developed around London's Fleet Street, nicknamed the "Street of Shame" by satirical magazine Private Eye, has long been based on cut-throat competition and dirty dealings -- anything goes, if you can land the big story.
But this scoop was different from the others. Royal officials realized that it could only have been sourced by the illegal interception of Prince William's mobile phone voicemail, and complained to the police.
This started a chain reaction of allegation and scandal that enveloped not just members of the royal family and celebrities but also murder victims and those injured in terrorist attacks. It is linked to the office of UK Prime Minister David Cameron whose judgment has been called into question by opposition lawmakers, including Labour leader Ed Milliband for later employing the editor of the paper as his press spokesman. The growing scandal implicates London's police force and now threatens one of the biggest assets of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
News of the World, the world's top-selling English-language newspaper, is owned by News International, which also owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times in Britain. Murdoch's News Corps media empire also encompasses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Harper Collins publishers.
The initial complaint led to the arrest of News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Both were convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to intercept phone messages and jailed.
The paper's editor Andy Coulson also resigned, saying he knew nothing about the hacking of phones but accepted "ultimate responsibility." But he continued to attract flak after his resignation, especially when he became Cameron's media spokesman.
A series of investigations by police and the country's newspaper watchdog followed the arrest of Goodman and Mulcaire, all of which concluded that phone hacking was not widespread at the Sunday tabloid, and there was no evidence executives knew about the practice.
But the story refused to die, thanks to the doggedness of the left-of-center newspaper The Guardian which published a series of stories about the scandal. Celebrities and public figures also came forward alleging their phones had been hacked; some launched legal actions against the paper and the police for allegedly failing to investigate.
When asked for comment by CNN about the allegations, the Metropolitan Police said prosecutors are re-examining the evidence from the original phone hacking investigation, and therefore the police will not comment further.
In a New York Times article last year former News of the World journalist Sean Hoare alleged that phone hacking was common practice at the newspaper.
Police launched a new investigation this year into hacking by journalists in response to widespread complaints from politicians, celebrities and other high-profile figures who fear they have been targets. News of the World's parent company News International paid out compensation to various victims, including actress Sienna Miller and publicist Max Clifford, and issued a public apology in April.
News International said in its statement: "Following an extensive internal investigation and disclosures through civil legal cases, News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria."
The company added that it has asked its lawyers to set up a compensation fund to deal with "justifiable" claims -- but would contest cases that it believed were without merit.
"That said, past behavior at the News of the World in relation to voicemail interception is a matter of genuine regret. It is now apparent that our previous inquiries failed to uncover important evidence and we acknowledge our actions then were not sufficiently robust."
In January, amid growing speculation he knew about the hacking, Coulson resigned as Cameron's official spokesman. Cameron said Coulson -- who continues to deny the claims -- was quitting because of the continuing pressures on him and his family. The former newspaper editor also believed that the focus surrounding the issue was "impeding his ability to do his job and was starting to prove a distraction for the government," Cameron added.
The story was only propelled onto the front pages in July when police revealed that News of the World possibly hacked into the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, and victims of the London bombings.
The allegation stunned media watchers. "Outside of the political elite in Britain, this story has had little traction until now," said Roy Greenslade, a former editor of the Daily Mirror and an assistant editor of the Sun, a sister paper of News of The World.
"The allegations about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone have the potential to change that. This is a step change: before we had hacking of celebrities and politicians, but here we have the interference of a murder inquiry involving a 13-year-old girl."
The father of one victim of the London bombings of 2005, in which 52 people died, said police also told him he was a possible hacking target.
The allegations sparked outrage, with opposition lawmakers demanding a full public inquiry as well as the resignation of the paper's then-editor, Rebekah Brooks, who was promoted to chief executive of News International in 2009. Several advertisers including Ford Motor Company said they were reviewing their accounts with News of the World.
In a memo to News International staff, widely circulated in the UK media, Brooks said it was "inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations."
"It is almost too horrific to believe that a professional journalist or even a freelance inquiry agent working on behalf of a member of the News of the World staff could behave in this way.
If the allegations are proved to be true then I can promise the strongest possible action will be taken as this company will not tolerate such disgraceful behavior."
Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott told CNN the failure of police officers to investigate the scandal properly pointed to the fact "something is rotten in the state of England."
Prescott, whose affair with a secretary was splashed across the front pages in 2006, said officers initially dismissed his fears that his voicemail had been intercepted and investigated his complaint only when he took legal action. Eventually he said police told him his phone had been hacked into on 44 occasions.
"You've got a very close relationship between the press and the police. Then a close relationship between them and the prosecuting officers," Prescott said.
"And it's now very clear that not all the information was made available, criminal acts were ... being committed by the papers and nobody really acted effectively on it. They just tended to deny it, that it was only one paper, a rogue reporter. Totally untrue."
One lawyer who is acting for up to 40 alleged hacking victims said the scandal showed some journalists had completely lost their moral compass.
"Phone-hacking was just one of the unlawful ways in which there was intrusion by journalists into the private lives of individuals," said Mark Lewis. "This was not just about celebrities, they didn't care whose lives they ruined.
"Phone hacking was too easy. It encouraged lazy journalism and dishonest practices. Journalists seemed to have no morals," he added.
One disillusioned former reporter for various newspapers said pressure contributed to the culture that led to illegal activities.
"Using private investigators to get a story gave you a great leap over rivals, so it's no surprise that phone hacking has reached the endemic level it has," said Dan Waddell, who added that he never himself hacked a mobile phone.

"This is symptomatic of the pressure piled on journalists, especially on a tabloid, who must get the story at all costs. As a reporter you don't want to be the one who gets shouted at by your boss."

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British scandal sheet wracked by scandal of its own

(CNN) -- Britain's News of the World newspaper and its parent company News International will likely be seriously damaged by the phone-hacking scandal, analysts say.
Experts are divided, though, on how the paper's owner, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, will weather the storm.
News International also owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times in Britain. Murdoch's media empire also encompasses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Harper Collins publishers in the United States.
Journalists at News of the World, a tabloid that is the world's top-selling English-language newspaper, have been accused of hacking into the mobile phone account of missing British teenager Milly Dowler, intercepting messages in search of news.
They then allegedly deleted messages to keep her mailbox from filling up, giving her family and friends false hope that the schoolgirl -- later found murdered -- was still alive.
Police also are investigating suggestions the paper -- known for its exposes of celebrities and politicians -- may have targeted the relatives of other high profile crime victims, including at least one of those killed in the 2005 London bombings.

The controversy has sparked a "wave of revulsion" towards the weekly, prompting calls for a boycott by both readers and advertisers which look set to hit it this Sunday.
Hollywood star Hugh Grant, who says his own phone was hacked by News of the World, is among those encouraging Britons to "vote with their wallets."
And several experts have warned that even firing the reporters and editors responsible is unlikely to repair the paper's wrecked reputation.
Murdoch has condemned the allegations against News of the World as "deplorable and unacceptable," and said, "We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again."
But Murdoch insists he is standing by Rebekah Brooks, editor of News of the World at the time and now News International chief executive.
In a memo to the newspaper's staff, Brooks said, "it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations."
But Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff believes Brooks, whose relationship with Murdoch has often been compared to that of a daughter, is among the high profile heads likely to have to roll.
"Rebecca is toast," he told CNN. "It wouldn't be the first time that Rupert has thrown a family member overboard."


Even that, Wolff says, is unlikely to be enough to repair the damage.
"I think the question is, 'Is it too late to fix?' At one point, they could have come forward and said 'this is terrible,' they could have explained it was part of a culture that got out of control, they could have fired everybody, even closed the newspaper.
"Instead they covered it up, and once a cover-up has started, I'm not sure you can back out of it. It may be that the only way to fix it now is to purge the company of people called Murdoch."


Business strategist Simon Middleton, author of "Build a Brand in 30 Days," agrees that the company has gone well beyond the point of instituting basic damage limitation measures.
"It's a rare thing for a brand to be the focus of such a wave of revulsion around the country," he told CNN, predicting a "perfect storm" of trouble for the paper following the recent "skin-crawling" revelations.
"Firing somebody isn't going to fix this. It will take years," he said.
Middleton said the impact of the phone-hacking scandal could spread far beyond the News of the World -- and that the paper itself may not survive.
"It's like a family: If one member gets a bad reputation, the others can be tarnished too -- you get damage by association, and that could be the case for the other papers in News International stable.
"The whole Murdoch empire is tarnished by it. The wider Murdoch empire is big enough to survive, but I'm not so sure about the News of the World."
But media analyst Claire Enders said the scandal was unlikely to affect Murdoch's business on a global level. "News International is still immensely powerful. The story is not making much impact outside the UK."
Middleton said that - like an alcoholic recognizing he has a drink problem -- the paper's only hope was to acknowledge its faults and say it's sorry - before rebuilding from scratch.

"Brands that have made big mistakes have been forgiven in the past, but only after they recognized that they got it wrong, and apologized," he said.

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