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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

World in brief: Protests against president growing

The Spokesman-Review

Pakistani police fired rubber bullets at protesters, ransacked a television station and detained key opposition leaders Friday, as anger swelled over Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s suspension of the nation’s chief justice.

Opposition groups pledged to hold larger demonstrations against the government, and Pakistani political analysts said Musharraf faces the greatest challenge to his presidency since he took office in a bloodless coup in 1999.

“This has shaken the country. It has shaken the government,” said Ayaz Amir, a columnist for the English-language newspaper Dawn. “It has all the potential of getting out of hand and turning into something bigger.”

Musharraf last week suspended the Supreme Court’s chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, citing unspecified abuses of authority.

Bogota, Colombia

Banana executives’ extradition sought

Outraged Colombians called Friday for the United States to extradite American banana executives after the Cincinnati-based fruit giant Chiquita acknowledged paying money for protection to illegal groups that carried out killings.

Chiquita settled a U.S. Justice Department probe by agreeing Wednesday to pay a $25 million fine and acknowledging that its wholly owned subsidiary Banadex paid $1.7 million to far-right paramilitaries labeled terrorists by the United States.

Chiquita also admitted funding Colombia’s two main leftist rebel groups, but the U.S. complaint offered no information about how much it paid them.

London

Last bottle of sauce rolls off factory line

More than 100 years of British tradition came to an end Friday as the final bottle of HP brown sauce – a popular alternative to ketchup – rolled off a production line at a factory in central England.

HP’s U.S. owner, H.J. Heinz Co., stuck by plans to switch production of the sauce to the Netherlands to save money, despite a high-profile campaign to keep it in Britain that saw protests outside the U.S. Embassy in London and lawmakers brandishing bottles of the condiment in the House of Commons.

A staple that is smothered over everything from fish and chips to the traditional English fry-up breakfast of sausages, bacon, baked beans and eggs, its advertising slogan proudly proclaims it is “The Official Sauce of Great Britain.”