BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the target of anti-government protesters who have blocked parts of Bangkok for weeks, has left the city and is staying 150 kilometres away, her office said on Monday, without specifying the location. The protests, punctuated by occasional gunfire and bomb blasts, including one on Sunday that killed a woman and a young brother and sister, are aimed at unseating Yingluck and erasing the influence of her brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra who is seen by many as the power behind the government.

BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the target of anti-government protesters who have blocked parts of Bangkok for weeks, has left the city and is staying 150 km (90 miles) away, her office said on Monday, without specifying the location. The protests, punctuated by occasional gunfire and bomb blasts, including one on Sunday which killed a woman and a young brother and sister, are aimed at unseating Yingluck and erasing the influence of her brother, ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, regarded by many as the real power behind the government.

TOKYO: Japan will lift an exclusion order on an area around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, allowing some residents to return to live for the first time since the disaster, officials said Monday. “The formal lifting of the evacuation order will come on April 1, affecting around 300 people” whose homes are in part of Tamura city, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of the wreaked plant, a Cabinet Office official told AFP. Over the next two years, up to 30,000 people will be allowed to return to their homes in the original exclusion zone, thrown up in a bid to protect people from the harmful effects of leaking radiation, he added.

PHOENIX: Arizona lawmakers gave final approval on Thursday to a bill that would allow businesses to refuse service to customers when such work would violate the irreligious beliefs, in a move critics describe as a license to discriminate against gays and others. Under the bill, a business owner would have a defense against a discrimination lawsuit, provided a decision to deny service was motivated by a “sincerely held” religious belief and that giving such service would have substantially burdened the exercise of their religious beliefs. “The Arizona legislature sent a clear message today: In our state everyone is free to live and work according to their faith,” said Cathi Herrod, president of the conservative Center for Arizona Policy, which helped write the bill.

KIEV: Ukraine’s president and opposition have agreed to initial a deal to resolve their bloody standoff, the presidency announced on Friday after the deadliest day in a three-month crisis left more than 60 people dead. “The parties agreed on the initialling of an agreement to resolve the crisis,” the presidency said in a statement, adding that the sides were expected to sign the agreement at 1000 GMT. No details were released on the deal, which was reached after all-night talks between President Viktor Yanukovych, the opposition, EU foreign ministers and a Russian envoy, the statement said. The crisis in Ukraine flared in November when Yanukovych declined to sign an EU integration deal in favour of closer ties with historical master Russia, and has evolved into a Cold War-style standoff between Moscow and the West over the future of the strategic nation sandwiched between them.

SYDNEY: An investigation into deadly clashes this week at an immigration detention centre in Papua New Guinea will examine possible misconduct by private security contractors, Australia’s immigration minister said on Friday. One asylum seeker was killed and more than 60 were injured during riots at a facility on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea that houses asylum seekers as part of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s tough policies to deter them from coming to Australia. Several detainees allege they were set upon with make shift weapons by Papua New Guinea police and PNG employees of Britain’s G4S, the world’s biggest security group, which is responsible for security at the facility.

GROMBALIA: A Libyan army medical plane crashed south of Tunis early on Friday, killing all 11 people on board, Tunisian emergency services said. “The plane crashed at 1:30 am (0030 GMT) with 11 people on board — three doctors, two patients and six crew members,” spokesman Mongi El Kadhi said. He said there were no survivors from the accident in the Grombalia area, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital. “The whole plane was completely burnt out. The emergency services went to the crash site and recovered the charred bodies.” Shortly before the plane disappeared from radar screens, the pilot radioed the control tower at Tunis airport to say an engine had failed, emergency services told an AFP journalist at the crash site.

FORT MEADE: A Saudi detainee at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay pleaded guilty Thursday to terror charges in connection with the 2002 suicide bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen. Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi, the brother-in-law of one of the September 11, 2001 plane hijackers, admitted to planning, aiding and supporting an attack on the MV Limburg which killed a Bulgarian sailor, injured a dozen and caused a large oil spill in the Gulf of Aden. Darbi — who has been held in Cuba for more than a decade — likely faces up to 15 more years in prison, the chief prosecutor, Army Brigadier General Mark Martins, said in a statement.

BEIJING: China on Friday urged US President Barack Obama to cancel a planned meeting with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. “China is firmly opposed to this,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement on its website. “We urge the US side to treat China’s concern in a serious way and immediately cancel the planned meeting.” China calls the Dalai Lama a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and accuses him of seeking independence for Tibet.