World briefs 11/13/07

Fire breaks out at London Olympics site

LONDON -- A fire at an east London warehouse on the 2012 Olympics site sent a towering column of black smoke over the British capital Monday, authorities said. There were no reports of injuries. The blaze broke out shortly after noon on the western boundary of the Olympic Park site in Stratford, the Olympic Delivery Authority said. Police said there was nothing to suggest a suspicious cause. "We only know it's a fire," a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said. "There's nothing to suggest anything else at the moment." The industrial area, about 5 1/2 miles east of central London, is under extensive reconstruction for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Olympics officials said the fire broke out near the site where the main press center will be located.

Russia honors spies, including British agent

MOSCOW -- Russian intelligence on Monday honored one of Moscow's most important Soviet-era spies, stirring Cold War memories at a time when relations between Russia and the West are again going sour. The accolade for British double agent George Blake, and the award of the nation's highest medal to another prominent Soviet spy, came five months after Queen Elizabeth II honored Oleg Gordievsky, a high-level KGB man who defected to Britain in 1985. It's not known whether the Russian honors are a riposte to Britain, but they come as Russia is expanding its spying to Cold War levels or higher, according to U.S. and British officials. Britain's ties with Russia have been badly strained over the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer fatally poisoned last year in London by a radioactive isotope. Russia has refused to hand over Britain's sole suspect, another ex-KGB man.

Ahmadinejad: Nuclear critics are 'traitors'

TEHRAN, Iran -- Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blasted critics of his nuclear policies on Monday, calling them "traitors" who spied for Iran's enemies. His strongest rhetoric yet against domestic opponents raised concerns about a crackdown on dissent. The tough comments appeared aimed at silencing calls for Ahmadinejad to compromise with the West over Iran's nuclear program at a time of increasingly high-level criticism of his policies within the country's ruling establishment. Ahmadinejad has moved to exert greater control over the nuclear issue, replacing Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, with a close loyalist -- a step that angered even some conservative politicians.

Dying bamboo forces migration of pandas

BEIJING -- Giant pandas are being forced to move from a remote mountainous area in southwestern China due to food shortages as their staple bamboo withers, an animal expert said Monday. Most of the pandas' favorite arrow bamboo in a 217,000 square-mile region of Sichuan province is going through a once-in-60-year cycle of flowering and dying before regenerating, said Yang Xuyu, deputy head of the province's Wild Animal Preservation Station. The pandas are moving to other areas of Sichuan, which has about 40 reserves of various sizes. "No wild panda has been found dead of starvation," said Yang. But more than 80 percent of bamboo in the affected region, called Ruoergai, is now unfit for the animals to eat, he said. Pandas will not touch the plant once it flowers. About 1,200 pandas -- 80 percent of the surviving wild population in China -- live in several mountainous areas of Sichuan.

30,000 birds, countless fish killed in oil spill

PORT KAVKAZ, Russia -- More than 30,000 birds and countless fish have been killed in an "ecological catastrophe" wrought by thousands of tons of oil from a tanker that broke apart in a heavy storm near the Black Sea, the governor of the region said Monday. The tanker was one of up to 10 ships that sank or ran aground in the storm Sunday in the strait connecting the Black and Azov seas.

-- From staff reports