CHINA'S former drug regulator has received the death penalty — against a backdrop of growing international and domestic concern over the safety of food, pharmaceutical and other products made in China.

Zheng Xiaoyu, head of the State Food and Drug Administration from 1998 until his sacking in 2005, was convicted yesterday in a Beijing court of taking 6.49 million yuan (more than $1 million) in bribes and for dereliction of duty. Zheng, 62, was arrested last year and accused of accepting kickbacks to speed up drug approvals. In one case under Zheng's watch, a tainted antibiotic approved by his agency killed at least 10 patients last year.

The organisation in charge of ensuring the safety of China's exports recently announced that it would introduce the country's first food recall system after an outcry over tainted pet food and toothpaste.

Exported pet food, spiked with the chemical melamine, has been blamed for dog and cat deaths in the United States. The US has also stopped all imports of Chinese toothpaste after reports that some products sold in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama were tainted with diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze and brake fluid. Three southern US states have banned imports of catfish from China.

Zheng's sentence may be reduced on appeal. In 2000, another official of comparable rank was executed for accepting bribes.

China Daily, the English-language Communist Party newspaper, reported that the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, responsible for the safety of Chinese exports, said its proposed recall system was a response to recent safety scandals.

The administration's director-general, Wu Jianping, said it would focus on "potentially dangerous and unapproved food products", but cautioned that it would take time to implement. Draft regulations would be ready by the end of the year, Mr Wu said.

Another administration official said some foreign businesses should share the blame because they had imported illegally exported products from China.

Li Yuanping, head of food imports and exports, said more than 56 per cent of the substandard food products imported by the US from China last month had not been approved by China's entry-exit inspection and quarantine officials.

"It is these illegal products that have tarnished the reputation of all Chinese food products," Mr Li said.

In a separate report, the administration revealed that 20 per cent of locally made toys were substandard and injured 10,000 Chinese children every year. China is the world's biggest toy exporter, but industry spokespeople said most exported products were of a better quality than those sold in China.

Mexico's largest leftist party vowed Monday to defend a landmark Mexico City abortion law with street protests and political pressure in the face of attempts by the conservative federal government to overturn it in court.

The Democratic Revolution Party, which holds power in the capital, called its supporters to block federal government offices later this week in defense of the law, which legalized abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Elsewhere in Mexico, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape, when the mother's life is in danger or if the fetus has severe fetal defects.

On Friday, the federal Attorney General's Office and National Human Right's Commission filed legal challenges with the Supreme Court, arguing the Mexico City law violates a constitutional clause that guarantees the right to life and that city lawmakers cannot legally approve measures related to health.

"It's a political maneuver to satisfy a certain public opinion over this law," said Mexico City's leftist mayor, Marcelo Ebrard. "But legally, it's got no base."

The law's approval by Mexico City's assembly was bitterly opposed by conservative politicians and the Roman Catholic Church. Mexican bishops even argued that lawmakers who voted for the bill were excommunicating themselves from the church.

About 90 percent of Mexicans say they are Roman Catholic, and President Felipe Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, has spoken out publicly against abortion.

The abortion law is part of a package of socially liberal measures being passed by Mexico City's leftist assembly. Earlier this year, lawmakers approved gay civil unions, and they are debating a bill on euthanasia.

The only other Latin American countries that allow abortion are Cuba and Guyana.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday in an op-ed published in the Sunday Times that the country has chosen to protect the civil liberties of foreign nationals over national security and therefore could not blame the government for last week's reported disappearance of three terror suspects. Pointing to a series of court rulings favoring foreign suspects, he wrote:

Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism.

The three terror suspects who disappeared had been subject to control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and are believed to have been planning attacks on British or US troops. UK Home Secretary John Reid said judges and critics of the government were responsible for the lack of tougher rules to prevent disappearances and said he would introduce new anti-terror measures before he steps down from his post in June.

A Libyan court acquitted six foreign medics of criminal defamation Sunday. The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, previously convicted of knowingly infecting over 400 Libyan patients with the HIV virus and sentenced to death, faced defamation charges stemming from the medics' accusations that their confessions were obtained by torture by Libyan police officer Jumaa al-Mishri and doctor Abdul-Majid al-Shoul. Al-Mishri and al-Shoul sued the foreign medics, seeking $4 million in compensation. The Libyan court did not elaborate its reasoning for its decision.

The six medics have been imprisoned in Libya since 1999 but have consistently maintained their innocence, saying that they are being scapegoated for unsanitary conditions in the Libyan hospitals where they worked. Bulgaria and its allies, including the US and the European Union, contend that the nurses are innocent. The death sentence against the medics is still under appeal, but the a top Libyan official has said that the six will not be executed.

On Wednesday, Amnesty International in its 2007 annual report on human rights said that the 'war on terror' has eroded human rights in the US and other western nations, with Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan characterizing it as an attempt "to roll back some fundamental principles of human rights."

The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) said Wednesday that a controversial 700-mile fence along the US-Mexican border may violate the 1970 Boundary Treaty, which resolved all pending boundary differences between the United States and Mexico. Sally Spener, spokesperson for the IBWC, said that impermeable fences on US territory but between existing rivers and levees could violate the treaty by deflecting or obstructing the natural water flow. The treaty established the Rio Grande and the Colorado River as the international boundary between the two countries, and established provisions to avoid the loss of territory by either party as a result of changes to the river's flow due to causes other than natural lateral movement. Spener said that the IBWC is still waiting for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [official website] to submit specific proposals detailing the fence's design and location before it can make a final determination. The IBWC is a a bi-national body created by the United States and Mexico in 1889 to administer boundary and water-rights treaties between the two parties.

President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in October 2006. The legislation authorizes the construction of approximately 700 miles of fencing along the 2,000 mile US-Mexican border. Critics of the fence include locals in border communities, who feel that the the federal government has not addressed their concerns that a border fence would interfere with irrigation, harm wildlife, as well as disrupt Mexican consumers and investors that positively contribute to the local economy. The Vatican and the Mexican government have voiced strong criticism of the fence, characterizing it as "inhumane" and an embarrassment that "hurts bilateral relations and goes against the spirit of cooperation needed to guarantee security." The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it is scheduled to complete over half of the authorized fence by the end of 2008.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said Tuesday that the European Union should avoid any radical changes to the draft European Constitution, telling European Parliament members that a compromise on the treaty is not an adequate solution for Europe. Prodi told MEPs that Italy will likely not agree to any compromises, and instead proposed the idea of a "two-speed" Europe, in which some nations would not have to proceed with reforms as rapidly as others. Prodi said that:

We do not necessarily have to proceed all together at the same speed. Already now, some significant European projects, such as the euro and Schengen, have been implemented by only some Member States. Not "against" anybody and not to "exclude" anyone, but always keeping the door open.
Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged EU members to work together to advance the constitution, which has largely stalled since it failed in referendums in both France and the Netherlands in 2005.