Ban: Regime lacks 'fundamental humanity'
UNITED NATIONS, June 8 (UPI) -- Syria's Assad regime has "lost its fundamental humanity," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as Washington came close to writing off a U.N. peace plan.
The massacre of 78 people -- half of them women and children -- in the tiny farming hamlet of Qubeir in the west-central Syrian province of Hama is "shocking and sickening," Ban told the General Assembly Thursday.
He said U.N. monitors trying to investigate the massacre Wednesday were shot at by Syrian troops and prevented from reaching the scene.
The massacre was described by activists and nearby residents as resembling the May 25 killing of 108 people -- mostly women and children -- in the Houla agriculture area of western Syria northwest of Homs.
The United Nations attributed that massacre, which sparked an international outcry, largely to a pro-Assad mercenary militia known as Shabiha, made up of semi-criminal gangs who are members of a Shiite Islam offshoot known as the Alawite sect.
The Qubeir and Houla victims were all thought to be Sunnis.
Sunnis have formed the backbone of the Syrian uprising, which was inspired by the Arab Spring but has since spiraled toward a sectarian civil war.
Ban said it has been evident for many months that President Bashar Assad and his government had "lost all legitimacy," but now it is clear that "any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity."
IAEA, Iran resume talks on site access
TEHRAN, June 8 (UPI) -- Inspectors renewed talks with Iran on visiting a site where the U.N. nuclear agency believes scientists may have tested potential triggers for nuclear warheads.
Discussions Friday between the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and Iranian officials are separate from talks between Iran and world powers on its controversial nuclear program. Those talks are to resume in Moscow later this month.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said agency inspectors wanted access as soon as possible to a facility in Parchin because they think scientists may have tested explosives that could be used to trigger a nuclear warhead, The New York Times reported. Iran has denied the accusation.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is for civilian purposes but Western leaders say they fear it is to develop the capability to build nuclear weapons.
Earlier this week, Amano voiced concern about satellite images taken in May indicating the demolition of buildings at the Parchin site. Iran also denied this, saying the reports were propaganda from its Western adversaries and Israel.
Iranian officials suggested they wanted to see the documents the IAEA used as the basis for its suspicions before allowing inspections at Parchin, about 20 miles from Tehran.
In Beijing on Friday, Chinese President Hu Jintao urged visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be "flexible and pragmatic" during the Moscow talks June 18-19 and to cooperate with the IAEA, the Times reported.
Plane crash in Florida kills six in family
LAKE WALES, Fla., June 8 (UPI) -- A couple and their four children were killed in the crash of a single-engine airplane in central Florida, authorities said.
The plane was traveling from the Bahamas to Junction City, Kansas, when it went down Thursday near Lake Wales, The Palm Beach Post reported.
The cause of the crash was not known.
Officials said Ronald Bramlage, 45, was piloting the plane, and his wife, Rebecca, 43, and their four children were on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration's Web site indicated the plane was a Pilatus PC-12/47 registered to Roadside Ventures LLC of Junction City, the Post said.
Officials said parts of the plane were found 2 miles from the crash site.
The plane was the same one Casey Anthony, acquitted last summer of the major charges in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, flew in when she left Orlando after being released from jail. It was owned by Anthony's former attorney, who reportedly sold it earlier this year.
Obama, Aquino to meet amid China unease
WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama's meeting with Philippine President Benigno Aquino comes amid growing unease about China's flouting of international law, Aquino said.
A smoldering dispute between the Philippines and China over an area of the South China Sea known as Scarborough Shoal -- where Chinese fishing boats are operating in defiance of Philippine claims -- is just one example of Chinese territorial muscle-flexing, Aquino said before meeting with Obama at the White House Friday to discuss military and economic cooperation.
Other areas of dispute include access to gas and oil fields in the sea, he told The Wall Street Journal.
"If they do not conform to international law, there will be a lot of other countries that will find themselves like us, thinking, 'What should our relationship be with the Chinese?'" he told the newspaper.
Manila and Beijing both claim gas and oil fields near the Philippines' Palawan province, as well as the fish-rich Scarborough Shoal.
Philippine officials often arrest Chinese fishermen for allegedly using illegal fishing methods and catching endangered and protected species in the shoal.
U.S. oil giant Chevron Corp. and British-Dutch oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell PLC are heavily invested with Philippines National Oil Co. in the Malampaya and Camago fields.
China claims almost the entire 1.4-million-square-mile sea, connected to the Pacific Ocean, as territorial waters.
