Clinton: No U.S. deal on settlements
WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says there have never been any informal agreements between Washington and Israel allowing West Bank settlement growth.
Speaking Friday in Washington after a meeting with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Clinton forcefully denied claims by Israeli leaders they had an understanding with the Bush administration that Jewish expansion in the occupied West Bank was permitted in certain instances under the "road map" for peace, The Washington Post reported.
"We have the negotiating record, that is the official record, that was turned over to the Obama administration by the outgoing Bush administration," Clinton said. "There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements."
The Post quoted Israeli 2003 "road map" negotiator Dov Weissglas as saying that a series of understandings with Bush administration officials -- some written, some spoken -- were reached to allow some settlement expansion, even though the peace plan states Israel "freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."
U.S. President Barack Obama has pushed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in recent days to halt settlement growth, including growth from natural population expansion, the newspaper reported.
Chinese landslide may have left 106 buried
CHONGQING, China, June 6 (UPI) -- A government spokesman in China said Saturday a landslide near Chongqing city may have left 106 people buried, including 26 miners.
Spokesman Liu Jianchun told China's official state-run Xinhua news agency a massive search is under way for those survivors, but the search has been hindered by the inability of heavy machinery to be transported across unsafe terrain.
Liu said Friday's landslide in a valley on Jiwei Mountain buried an area mine and destroyed 12 homes.
Police rescuer Jiang Yong said rescue efforts are occurring despite the presence of possible secondary disasters in the area. Jiang said the landslide created unstable mountain slopes littered with large rocks.
The BBC said, citing a state TV report, 26 people died Friday's landslide while eight others were rescued from the wreckage.
While the efforts to rescue any potential survivors are under way, workers are also attempting to drain a nearby lake the landslide created by blocking off a river, the BBC reported.
Lee: No compromises with N. Korean threat
SEOUL, June 6 (UPI) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Saturday he has no intentions of compromising in the face of a nuclear threat from North Korea.
The Yonhap News Agency said Lee was insistent his government would remain steadfast in the face of increased missile and nuclear tests by South Korea's neighboring country.
"I would like to make it clear that there will be no compromise against things that threaten our people and security," Lee said. "North Korea is threatening the peace and safety of our people as well as the world by conducting a nuclear test and launching missiles."
Speaking in honor of Memorial Day, Lee also urged North Korean officials to consider denuclearization efforts as well as improving international relations.
"North Korea must keep its promise of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and come back to the six-party and inter-Korean talks," the South Korean leader said.
Yonhap said after North Korea's May 25 nuclear tests, officials in Japan and South Korea, as well as the U.N. Security Council, began discussing sanctions against the country as an international response.
Bodies from missing airplane located
PARIS, June 6 (UPI) -- The Brazilian air force said Saturday bodies and debris discovered in the Atlantic Ocean likely belong to missing Air France Flight 447.
Air force spokesman Jorge Amaral offered few details regarding the discovery at a news conference in the Brazilian city of Recife, but did confirm human remains experts would be used to identify the located bodies, the BBC said.
"We confirm the recovery from the water debris and bodies from the Air France plane," Amaral said Saturday.
CNN said the air force also confirmed a vessel had located a seat and a suitcase suspected of being part of the wreckage from the missing flight.
Flight 447 disappeared Monday nearly 220 miles off the northeast coast of Brazil after encountering stormy weather.
Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France's accident investigation bureau said Saturday the airplane's computers issued 24 automated error messages prior to the flight's disappearance.
CNN said investigators suspect the messages likely meant the plane was in trouble, perhaps flying too fast or too slowly through the stormy weather.
Sessions blasts court 'empathy standard'
WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., says that while he is impressed by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, he's worried about her impartiality.
Sessions, speaking Saturday in the Republican Party's weekly radio address, said that President Barack Obama's decision to include whether Supreme Court candidates can put themselves into the shoes of petitioners -- the "empathy standard" -- as a criteria would undermine the "great tradition" of a neutral and independent judiciary, the Washington publication The Hill reported.
"With this view -- that a judge should use his or her personal feelings about a particular group or issues to decide a case -- it stands in stark contrast to the impartiality that we expect in the American courtroom," Sessions said. "If a judge is allowed to let his or her feelings for one party in the case sway his decision, hasn't that judge then demonstrated a bias against the other party?"
Obama said during his presidential campaign that judges should have "the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young, teenaged mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old," The Hill reported.
