World Scene

CUBA

Abuse screamed at protesters

HAVANA | Hundreds of government supporters surrounded a small group of Cuban dissidents as they marched through Havana Thursday on the seventh anniversary of the arrests of their loved ones, screaming abuse but otherwise allowing the protest to proceed peacefully.

The Ladies in White, most of them mothers and wives of some of the 75 dissidents arrested in the March 18, 2003, crackdown, have vowed to protest every day this week to call attention to the plight of political prisoners, many of whom have been sentenced to decades behind bars.

Cuba’s human rights record has come into sharp focus since the death of dissident hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo last month drew international condemnation. Cuba has issued a series of biting responses to the criticism, saying it will not give in to pressure.

State television broadcast a two-hour program Wednesday denouncing the foreign press for participating in what the government sees as a coordinated anti-Cuba campaign, with Spanish media groups singled out for the harshest criticism.

UNITED NATIONS

Plan to ban export of bluefin rejected

DOHA, Qatar | Fishing nations won a victory over environmentalists Thursday when a U.S.-backed proposal to ban export of the Atlantic bluefin tuna was rejected overwhelmingly at a U.N. wildlife meeting.

Japan won over scores of poorer nations with a campaign that played on fears that a ban would devastate their economies. Tokyo also raised doubts that such a radical move was scientifically sound.

In another blow to conservationists, a proposal at the meeting to ban the international sale of polar-bear skins failed to pass.

With stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna down 75 percent because of the rapacious appetites of Japanese sushi lovers, the defeat of the proposal was a stunning setback for the Americans and Europeans and their conservationist allies, who had hoped the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, would protect the fish.

RWANDA

U.N. court upholds inciting conviction

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania | A U.N. court trying the masterminds of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide on Thursday upheld a 2008 conviction of a musician sentenced to 15 years for using a public address system to incite the killing of ethnic Tutsis.

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