Dissidents press for talks with Dalai Lama

BEIJING — A group of 29 Chinese dissidents is urging Beijing to hold direct talks with the Dalai Lama and allow an independent investigation of the wave of protests that has rocked China’s Tibetan regions.

The dissidents, led by writers Wang Lixiong and Liu Xiaobo, circulated a letter on the weekend with 12 suggestions on how to resolve the Tibetan crisis, which has erupted in violence and sparked a heavy police crackdown over the past two weeks.

Mr. Wang and his wife, the well-known Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser, have been held under house arrest since the Tibetan protests began on March 10, according to a report on the weekend by Radio Free Asia.

Dalai Lama supports Olympics

Guergis didn’t visit Martin during Mexico trip: CP

OTTAWA — Brenda Martin languished in a Mexican prison while the member of Parliament then handling her file mingled with Canadian expatriates at a private reception nearby, The Canadian Press has learned.

Conservative MP Helena Guergis rubbed elbows in late January with Guadalajara’s Canadian diaspora as they nibbled on hors d’oeuvres and sipped soft drinks and Coronas, say sources who attended the social function.

Guergis, secretary of state for foreign affairs, visited Mexico on Jan. 29 and 30 to meet with government officials in Mexico City and Guadalajara.

Dextre stands on guard for thee outside space station

Canada’s “way cool space bot” is now standing on guard for thee, bolted to the outside of the International Space Station.

This week Dextre, the space robot, passed all of its installation tests – the power flows, the arms and wrists bend, and more importantly, they stop when they’re told to.

Astronauts from the Shuttle Endeavour installed the $209 million robot, whose official name is Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, this week on three spacewalks. They even gave the mechanical handyman a tool belt with space gadgets, mostly equipment for changing batteries and video cameras on the outside of the station.

Young great white shows speed on 1,000-mile trip journey

They are calling him Streak. The juvenile white shark caught up in fishing nets off the Californian coast last summer became a major attraction at a Monterey Bay aquarium, but that was nothing compared to the level of interest in his journey away from captivity.

That is because, since his release, Streak has travelled more than 1,000 miles to the warmer seas off the Mexican Pacific coast in barely six weeks, making him the fastest young white shark to have been tracked, and providing scientists with important clues on the juvenile habits of a creature that grows into one of the most fearsome in the oceans.