THE TORCH IS BURNING

Thousands of protesters waving Tibetan flags and shouting "Shame on China" tried to spoil the torch's run through London on Sunday, the British leg of the international relay billed by Beijing as the "harmonious journey".

At least 35 people were arrested by police, who at one point were forced to rush the flame onto a double-decker bus in the city centre when about 100 protesters tried to seize it.

"As for the vile misdeeds of the 'Tibet separatist' activists who tried to disrupt the torch relay, many local residents also expressed their total resentment," the Xinhua report said.

The torch represents the Olympic ideals of "peace, friendship and harmony" and China's decision to send it on a global procession was to encourage people "to together build a more harmonious, better tomorrow", the Beijing spokesman said, according to Xinhua.

The Olympic flame is expected to remain a magnet for anti-Chinese protests ahead of the August Games in Beijing, with campaigns aimed at China's crackdown in Tibet and its links with the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region.

The flame arrives in Paris on Monday before crossing the ocean to San Francisco, both places where the atmosphere is likely to be tense.

From the relay's starting point in Ancient Olympia, in Greece, demonstrators breached tight security and tried to hijack the torch lighting ceremony.

The Olympic torch will pass through Tibet in June, and Tibet's Communist Party chief has warned officials to be vigilant against any disruptions of the relay there.

After travelling throughout China, the flame is due to return to Beijing on August 6, two days before it will be used to light the cauldron at the Olympic opening ceremony.

Shouting "Shame on China!" and waving Tibetan flags, pro-Tibetan demonstrators and others protesting Chinese human rights abuses turned the running of the Olympic torch through the streets here on Sunday into a tumult of scuffles. The police said that one man broke through a tight security cordon and made a failed grab for the torch, and 35 people were arrested.

The torch completed a seven-hour journey from the Wembley soccer stadium in northwest London to the principal site for the 2012 Summer Olympics in Stratford on the city's east side.

Along the way, protesters seeking to reach the torch were wrestled to the ground by police. One man carrying a fire extinguisher narrowly failed to reach the person carrying the torch, but he set off the extinguisher anyway, dousing police officers with foam.

The torch's London relay was the fourth stop of a global itinerary that began last month in Greece, where pro-Tibetan demonstrators briefly interrupted the torch's lighting and its subsequent progress through Athens.

Tibetan organizations have said they plan protests at every stop on the torch's 21-nation tour. Its next stops are Paris, where it arrived late Sunday, and San Francisco, its only American stop, on Wednesday. The monthlong tour is scheduled to end in Vietnam in three weeks. That is to be followed by a six-week, 46-stop tour of China.

Judging by the events in London on Sunday, the tour could prove jarring for Beijing. What organizers had billed as an occasion to celebrate the Olympics' sporting ideals of peace and harmony turned into a daylong contest between China's supporters and demonstrators protesting China's crackdown in Tibet and its wider human rights record.

To get the torch safely to its destination, more than 2,000 police officers were deployed along the route. The security cordon around the torch was so dense that the flame and those carrying it were barely visible to crowds along the route for much of the day.

Caught in the middle on the issue was the British government, which has sought to protect delicate trade and diplomatic relations with China while supporting the Games and yet to also placate those who oppose holding the Olympics in a country with one of the world's harshest records for punishing dissent.

The centerpiece of the torch parade — and the focal point of the protests — was a stop at 10 Downing Street, where the Chinese torch contingent was greeted by the prime minister, Gordon Brown.

Brown, like President George W. Bush, has said he plans to attend the Games' opening ceremonies in Beijing in August. That stand has drawn contrasts with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has hinted that he may not attend if China's recent crackdown on Tibetans does not relent.

Under pressure from human rights groups in Britain, Brown has said that he sympathizes with the Tibetan protests. He has also said that he will meet the Dalai Lama in Britain next month, and that he has informed China's leaders about the symbolic step.

The most intense scuffles in London occurred as the torch moved through the heart of the city.

The torch, which was carried by a chain of British sports heroes and television celebrities, was protected by an inner guard of Chinese security men in blue and white Olympic tracksuits and an outer cordon of yellow-jacketed British police officers. Some were on foot, while others rode bicycles, motorbikes or horses.

At points along the route, Scotland Yard security chiefs had deployed double rows of crush barriers in an effort to keep protesters back.

For one long stretch, where streets narrowed and crowds were heavy, the torch was placed in the back of a single-decker bus and driven past the crowds until the police judged it safe for the runners to resume.

But for all the safeguards, the organizers had many tense moments when the denouement many had feared — the torch's being seized or extinguished — was only narrowly avoided. In one incident in the Notting Hill area, a man broke through the police cordon and struggled for control of the torch with a popular children's television host, Konnie Huq. He was wrestled to the ground by police officers and was led away in handcuffs.

The warmest reception for the torch came as it passed through the Chinatown area of central London. It was a diversion from the announced route that was adopted to let the Chinese ambassador to Britain carry the torch.

There, and elsewhere where knots of Chinese supporters had gathered, there were chants of "one world, one dream," the motto of the Beijing Games. A Chinese spokesman, Qu Yingpu, said Chinese officials were grateful to the police "for their efforts to keep order." He added: "This is not the right time, the right platform, for any people to voice their political views."

The BBC reported on Sunday that Chinese state television eliminated any references to protests in its coverage of the London relay. But, according to Reuters, China's state media on Monday condemned the "vile misdeeds" of the London protesters.

One protester who broke through the police cordon, David Allen, said his anger flared at the sight of British sports stars being guarded in the streets of London by Chinese security men.

"What really got my goat was our sporting heroes being surrounded by the Chinese security heavies guarding the torch. It makes us complicit in the regime's repression. You have to ask: Where were these security men last week? Beating up people in the villages of China, no doubt."

One of the protesters who sparred verbally with pro-China groups in Trafalgar Square was David Phillips, a 25-year-old American from Austin, Texas, who said he had worked for six months at the American Embassy in Beijing.

Now working at a travel agency in London, Phillips said he had witnessed human rights abuses in China. "There are serious human rights violations going on, and you can't ignore that. And this is an appropriate place for us to voice our feelings."

STILL DREAMING

On the 40th anniversary of his assassination, Rev. Martin Luther King is to be honored as a champion of peace in the city where he died. The whole nation flinched" when King was killed by a rifle shot on April 4, 1968.

King advised his followers to keep working for equal rights for all citizens, "to keep on moving," no matter what obstacles they faced, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain were scheduled to take part in the anniversary day events that were to include a "recommitment march" through Memphis and the laying of wreaths at the site of King's assassination. Sen. Barack Obama will be campaigning in Indiana.



King was cut down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel while helping organize a strike by Memphis sanitation workers, some of the poorest of the city's working poor.

His son, Martin Luther King III, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that the nation is still plagued by poverty. He urged presidential candidates to vow to appoint a cabinet-level officer who would help the poor.

The National Civil Rights Museum opened in 1991 at the former motel, which now holds most of the exhibits tracing the history of America's struggle for equal rights. The museum also encompasses the flophouse across the street from which confessed killer James Earl Ray admitted firing the fatal shot. Ray died in prison in 1998.

King was a champion of nonviolent protest for social change, and his writings and speeches still stir older followers and new ones alike.

Other tributes were being held around the country. In Congress, House and Senate leaders and lawmakers who once worked with the civil rights leader marked the anniversary with a tribute Thursday in the Capitol's Statuary Hall.

In Indianapolis, Ethel Kennedy was scheduled to make brief remarks during a ceremony Friday evening at what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Her late husband Robert Kennedy gave a passionate speech there the night of King's assassination that was credited with quelling violence in the city.

In Atlanta, the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site was commemorating the anniversary with the opening Friday of a special exhibit chronicling the final days and hours before King's death, as well as his funeral procession through his hometown five days later.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is the wagon that was drawn by two mules as it carried King's casket from his funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College, his alma mater.

Christine King Farris was sewing an Easter dress for her daughter in their Atlanta home one rainy April evening when the nightly news was interrupted by a special report.

The newscaster announced that Farris' younger brother, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Another update came minutes later: King was in critical condition.

"It was a horrible moment," Farris said of that night in 1968. "I tried to call my sister-in-law; the lines were busy. I tried to call my parents; the lines were busy. I couldn't get anybody."

While boarding a plane for Memphis, Farris learned that her brother was dead. It was the beginning of a string of family tragedies. Her only surviving sibling, younger brother A.D., drowned the next summer. Her mother, Alberta, was shot dead five years later while playing the "Lord's Prayer" on an organ in church on Sunday morning.

Farris, 80, said in her office at Spelman College, surrounded by photographs of her famous brother and other civil rights leaders she once knew.

This year, the civil rights community will gather in Memphis on April 4 to mark the 40th anniversary of King's assassination, but Farris will not join them. She is talking publicly about the death of her younger brother for the first time, but a return to Memphis is not part of her agenda.

"I can't go," she said. "I've not been there since the time we went to gather my brother. My memory of Memphis is not a pleasant one. It's one that I cannot erase."

Farris is remembering her brother in another way. She is writing a memoir about her life with him called "Through It All."

When April 4, 1968, did come, Farris says, others stepped in to help her shoulder her grief. Sen. Robert Kennedy dispatched a plane to Atlanta to take her and King's widow to Memphis.
Her voice remains level as she talks about the plane ride. Then her eyes start to mist.

She says she never left the plane when it arrived. She watched her brother A.D. come on the plane with the Rev. Andrew Young and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, two of King's closest aides.

"They were crying like babies," she said.

Yet she and her son shrug off any suggestion that her family, like the Kennedy clan, is somehow marked for tragedy. "God never puts on us what we can't bear," she said.

Forty years after her brother's untimely death, Farris will return to Memphis, but only through her memories.

"I thought about all that I've been through and all these memories and sometimes it gets tough," she said. "By being the lone survivor, if I don't do this, a part of history will be left out."

PEASANT REVOLUTION IN THE PAMPAS

Angry truckers tried to break up a farmers' roadblock in central Argentina on Thursday as an escalating farm revolt over taxes that has emptied meat counters and paralyzed exports entered its third week.

The farm protests against higher taxes on soy and other key exports have become a major crisis for President Cristina Fernandez, who planned to speak at a rally of supporters on Thursday to counter earlier pro-farmer rallies.

Groups of small and large farmers maintained road blocks on key rural highways, preventing farm goods from getting to market, and held marches and protests in cities throughout the country.

The strike has halted grain exports from Argentina and is affecting soy buyers in Europe and China.

The government and farmers have refused to negotiate, despite calls from church leaders and local governments, the first wants the blockade to be lifted before the meeting, and the others doesn´t want to step down if the economical measures are not reviewed.

Truck drivers fed up with days stuck at a farmers' barricade tipped over a 4x4 pickup in the central province of Cordoba on Thursday morning, but they were chased off before they could dismantle the roadblock.

In cities, middle class protesters banged pots and pans in the streets for the second night running on Wednesday to support farmers.

Those sounds were eerily reminiscent of pan-banging protests that ousted a president in 2001, but the government responded sending thugs to break the protest, acting like nazi SA stormtroopers of Ernest Rohm in Germany, 75 years ago. A bitter past for a country that was heaven for hundreds of war criminals after World War II, accepted for the founder and leader of the political party now on goverment (Juan Peron).

The farmers are protesting a new sliding-scale tax, which would replace a fixed tax and make levies on soy exports significantly higher at current prices. They say the higher tax would harm smaller farmers.

But they are also expressing frustration with Fernandez' authoritarian style.

Ironically, Argentina has been one of the main beneficiaries of a global surge in commodities prices and the economy has been booming for five years, rebounding from a deep crisis in 2001-2002.

The standoff illustrates the country's deep disagreement over how to spread around the windfall profit -- Argentina's soy receipts totalled $13.47 billion (6.72 billion pounds) last year.

Fernandez says farmers are getting wealthy off cheap labour and subsidized fuel, and argues the higher export taxes on soy and other products will help the 25 percent of Argentines who are poor.

Daniel Scioli, governor of Buenos Aires province, spoke with farm leaders on Wednesday night and although the government denied he will lead negotiations, some media said he is the choice to bridge the divide between the two sides.

Scioli is an ally of the Kirchners, but he is trying to keep his own agenda becacause wants to run for next president election on 2011. His province contains much of the country's rich farmland and is also home to 40 percent of Argentines and almost half the country's economy.

President Cristina Fernandez refused to ease tax hikes on agricultural exports Tuesday, facing down angry farmers embroiled in a nationwide strike that has all but halted production in one of the world's biggest beef-exporting nations.

At least 9,000 cattle normally enter this capital's sprawling stockyard each day for slaughter, yet not a single animal arrived this week due to the farm and ranch strike.

South America's second-largest economy — a leading exporter of soybeans, beef and wheat — is in full farmbelt rebellion over a new sliding-scale increase in export taxes. Soybean taxes are being hiked from 35 percent to 45 percent, with smaller increases on corn and other farm products.

"Bad policies by the government are leaving people without food, without beef," complained Mario Llambias, one of the farm protest organizers who announced Tuesday a 13-day old strike would now continue "indefinitely."

But Fernandez appeared undeterred as she delivered a televised address later in the evening. Vowing not to "give in to extortion," the new president declared that her government will not grant any concessions to the striking farm and ranch workers.

Fernandez said farm producers have profited from a boom in commodity prices and it is only fair to tax them more to redistribute wealth to poorer parts of society. "This seems like ... comedy," she said.

Late Tuesday, thousands of angry middle-class residents of Buenos Aires and other cities responded to her speech by banging pots in a raucous, spontaneous outpouring of support for the farmworkers.

"Argentina! Argentina!" some 5,000 people, including mothers with strollers and others banging on pots joined a surging and unexpectedly strong challenge to the government.

Other protesters in farm-dependent cities and hamlets across Argentina's farmbelt waged similar pot-banging protests.

"This is a pretty ugly wakeup alarm for the government after just a few months in power," said one angry protester Hector Bernardino, among the 5,000 who thronged the main Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.

He said middle class Argentines, like the farmers, are weary of taxes and double-digit inflation he said the government has sought to conceal behind praise for years of robust recovery.

After a searing 2002 economic meltdown, the government replenished its coffers through taxes on surging grain exports and soaring commodity prices. The cash influx powered an economic growth rates topping 8 percent annually.

Argentina's economy is back on track — and agriculture remains one of its most profitable sectors. It's only fair that farmers and ranchers be taxed on more of that wealth, according to Economy Minister Martin Lousteau, who announced the controversial tax overhaul on March 11.

Growing demand for foodstuffs in China and other teeming nations, high oil prices and other shifts in the global economy have all helped pushed grain prices to new highs in recent months.

But the agriculture industry is howling at having to pay more.

The farmers are demanding to sit down and negotiate a rollback on the new taxes, which Buzzi calls "extortion" against farmers. The government says it won't start talks until the protests stop.

And so the daily demonstrations have continued, with belching tractors and giant harvesters blocking rural highways nationwide, occasionally sowing monstrous traffic jams.

During the long Easter holiday weekend on routes from the capital to South Atlantic beaches, many Argentines stuck in the traffic applauded the demonstrators, saying they too are fed up with government taxes.

The protests have spread far beyond the capital, with sugarcane workers beating cane stalks along highways in north-central Tucuman province and soybean farmers dumping mounds of beans near the border with Uruguay.

Police have managed to keep the most important routes open without widescale arrests or violence. But the confrontations have been tense.

And now Argentina's consumers are beginning to feel the pinch. In the country's main stockyard Tuesday, the Liniers market, a lone cowhand galloped on his horse past empty cattle pens where thousands of cattle usually jostle.

More than two years of tensions between Argentina's government and the country's powerful farm sector have exploded as farmers have set up roadblocks and refused to release their production to protest an export tax increase on some products.

On Tuesday, farmers had mounted some 150 roadblocks throughout this 40 million-person country, snarling traffic on some of the country's principal highways. They also have refused to release much of their production, leading to shortages at markets.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner added fuel to the fire Tuesday night by strongly denouncing the farmers and accusing them of ingratitude for protesting while earning record profits. Farmers and their supporters reacted immediately, filling streets around the country condemning the speech.

''I will not yield to any extortion,'' Fernández de Kirchner said in the televised speech from the presidential palace. ``I can understand the interests of the sector, but I want them to understand that I have to govern for the interests of all Argentines.''

According to TV reports, cars honked and thousands of protesters poured into the streets in several areas of Buenos Aires and in front of the presidential palace, banging pots and pans, waving flags and holding signs denouncing the speech.

The demonstrations, which will hit the two-week mark Wednesday, target a new system of export taxes on soybeans and sunflowers that farmers say would bankrupt small- and medium-sized farms. The new system also slightly lowered taxes on wheat and corn exports.

Government officials counter that farmers have earned record profits as international commodity prices have soared over the past two years and can afford to pay the higher taxes. The new system raises taxes when prices rise and reduces them when prices fall.

The new taxes now claim 40 percent of revenue from soybean exports, according to the Argentine Agrarian Federation. Soybean production is booming and accounts for almost 60 percent of all land used in Argentina for agriculture.

Manufactured farm products and raw materials, which include agricultural products, constituted 64 percent of the country's exports in January, according to government figures. Much of the country's farm products go to China, Europe and the United States.

''There's a threshold that's been crossed and expectations that haven't been met,'' said Argentine political analyst Felipe Noguera. ``The farmers feel like they haven't been listened to, and it's fed into this outburst of anger.''

Tensions have simmered since former President Néstor Kirchner began imposing export bans two years ago on some cuts of beef to control rising prices. Price controls and export bans on wheat and other products followed, further enraging farmers.

Kirchner's wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, became president in December promising to build a social pact among farmers, workers and other sectors to contain prices. Economists estimate inflation hit almost 20 percent last year in Argentina, more than double the widely questioned official numbers.

Farmers, however, said Fernández de Kirchner had unilaterally raised taxes instead of negotiating and that enough was enough. Nearly all of Argentina's soybean production is exported.

''The tariffs were the drop that overturned the entire glass,'' said Nicolás Bossio, a spokesman for the agrarian federation. ``The government is doing this purposefully to concentrate everything in their hands and take away resources from the sector. They're not interested in dialogue.''

Farmers said Tuesday that they would continue with the blockades and production strike until the government canceled the tax hike but would send milk and other more perishable goods into the market.

Police have cleared a few of the road blockades, while truck drivers allied with the government have confronted some farmers on highways.

Government officials said they imposed the new tax to protect the domestic market from international price fluctuations as well as to contain the growth of soybean cultivation, which they said was crowding out other crops.

The government has refused to negotiate with farmers until they stop the strikes. The protests effects have been felt in Buenos Aires, where 40 percent of butcher shops were closed Tuesday for lack of business and 90 percent of supermarkets also reported meat shortages, according to the nonprofit Consumer Education Center.

''In 30 years, I have never experienced an impact this severe, '' said Daniel Ramondy, owner of a Buenos Aires butcher shop.

Farmers in Argentina have pledged to continue a nationwide protest after the government refused to back down on tax rises on agricultural exports.

Two weeks of blockades by farmers have left many shops in the main cities short of meat and dairy products.

Amid the shortages, thousands of Argentines, banging pots and pans, took to the streets to back the farmers.

President Cristina Fernandez, in office since December, says the increased taxes on farm exports are justified.

Protesters have been stopping lorries carrying farm produce and either turning them back or dumping their goods on the road.

Speaking on national television, President Fernandez said the agricultural sector was one of the country's most profitable with global demand growing for Argentine beef, corn, wheat and soybeans.

"I'm not going to submit to extortion. I understand the industry's interests but I want them to know that I'm the president for all Argentines," she said, making it clear there would be no talks while the farmers' strike continued.

Soon after her address, demonstrators in Buenos Aires and other cities gathered on the streets to stage pot-banging protests.

"This is a pretty ugly wake-up call for the government after just a few months in power," protesters Hector Bernardino told Reuters.

He said middle-class Argentines, like the farmers, were tired of taxes and double-digit inflation.
Flashpoints

Argentina is one of the world's top exporters of soya, wheat and beef and any prolonged conflict will have a major effect on vital export earnings, says the BBC's Daniel Schweimler in Buenos Aires.

The farmers' strike is the biggest crisis faced by Ms Fernandez since she took office more than three months ago, succeeding her husband Nestor Kirchner, our correspondent adds.

The government has been using taxes on grain and commodity exports to boost state revenues.

Taxes on a range of goods including soybeans, sunflower oil and beef are being raised by up to 45%, increases that farmers have described as crippling.

"We will continue the strike for as long as necessary," said Eduardo Buzzi, president of the Argentine Agrarian Federation (FAA).

Trade at Argentina's largest grain and cattle markets has ground to a halt while many shops are reporting shortages of supplies.

There have been disputes between farmers and truck drivers, and armed police have been deployed at potential flashpoints.

OLYMPIC DICTATORSHIP

MUSIC FOR PEACE

Some of Latin music's biggest stars plan to join Juanes to perform a free concert atop a bridge linking Colombia and Venezuela in a show of unity among neighboring South American countries still recovering from a diplomatic crisis.

Others scheduled to perform: Juan Luis Guerra, Miguel Bose, Carlos Vives and Alejandro Sanz.
Juanes, the Grammy-winning Colombian rocker, said the "Peace Without Borders" concert — scheduled for Sunday — is an effort to ease tensions caused by a Colombian raid into Ecuador to kill a top rebel leader on March 1. In response to the attack, Ecuador and its ally Venezuela briefly sent troops to their Colombian borders.

"We want to consolidate the union between our peoples," he told reporters Tuesday by telephone from the Dominican Republic. "We are brothers and sisters, we are equals. We just have to raise one flag together, the flag of peace."

The artists will perform on the Simon Bolivar Bridge linking Cucuta, Colombia, and San Antonio del Tachira, Venezuela, while fans from both countries line the banks of the narrow Tachira River that marks the border, local officials said.