China promised Monday to better control emissions of greenhouse gases, unveiling a new national program to combat global warming, but rejected mandatory caps on emissions as unfair to countries still trying to catch up with the developed West.

The program offered few new concrete targets for reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that are believed to contribute to global warming. But the plan outlined steps China would take to meet a previously announced government goal of improving overall energy efficiency in 2010 by 20 percent over 2005's level.

One of China's chief objectives is "to make significant achievements in controlling greenhouse gas emissions," said the report, released by the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning agency.

Among the measures the government called for were stepped-up efforts to put the hard-charging but inefficient economy on a more sustainable footing, to research and deploy new energy-saving technologies and to plant more trees.

Given an economy that has been growing at better than 9 percent annually over the past 25 years, the plan's overall effect, if implemented, would be to slow the increase in greenhouse gases, not reduce their absolute amount.

China has fallen under increasing pressure internationally to take more forceful measures to curb releases of greenhouse gases. The country relies on coal among the dirtiest of fuels to meet two-thirds of its energy needs and is projected to surpass the U.S. as the world's No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases sometimes in the next two years.

In explaining the new program, the head of China's planning agency said global warming was largely caused by 200 years of unrestrained industrialization by the West, and it would be unfair to impose mandatory emissions caps on China and other developing nations.

"This would hinder the development of developing countries and hamper their industrialization," Ma Kai told reporters.

The report's release seemed in part an attempt to pre-empt criticism of China when Chinese President Hu Jintao attends an expanded summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Germany this Friday. The summit will feature a session on global warming.

A Bahraini detainee held without charges since January 2002 threatened suicide in a letter released by his lawyer last Sunday, citing despair at his open-ended detention and conditions at the facility. Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives passed an amendment to a defense spending bill that would require the Pentagon to develop a Guantanamo shutdown plan.

CHINA'S former drug regulator has received the death penalty — against a backdrop of growing international and domestic concern over the safety of food, pharmaceutical and other products made in China.

Zheng Xiaoyu, head of the State Food and Drug Administration from 1998 until his sacking in 2005, was convicted yesterday in a Beijing court of taking 6.49 million yuan (more than $1 million) in bribes and for dereliction of duty. Zheng, 62, was arrested last year and accused of accepting kickbacks to speed up drug approvals. In one case under Zheng's watch, a tainted antibiotic approved by his agency killed at least 10 patients last year.

The organisation in charge of ensuring the safety of China's exports recently announced that it would introduce the country's first food recall system after an outcry over tainted pet food and toothpaste.

Exported pet food, spiked with the chemical melamine, has been blamed for dog and cat deaths in the United States. The US has also stopped all imports of Chinese toothpaste after reports that some products sold in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama were tainted with diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze and brake fluid. Three southern US states have banned imports of catfish from China.

Zheng's sentence may be reduced on appeal. In 2000, another official of comparable rank was executed for accepting bribes.

China Daily, the English-language Communist Party newspaper, reported that the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, responsible for the safety of Chinese exports, said its proposed recall system was a response to recent safety scandals.

The administration's director-general, Wu Jianping, said it would focus on "potentially dangerous and unapproved food products", but cautioned that it would take time to implement. Draft regulations would be ready by the end of the year, Mr Wu said.

Another administration official said some foreign businesses should share the blame because they had imported illegally exported products from China.

Li Yuanping, head of food imports and exports, said more than 56 per cent of the substandard food products imported by the US from China last month had not been approved by China's entry-exit inspection and quarantine officials.

"It is these illegal products that have tarnished the reputation of all Chinese food products," Mr Li said.

In a separate report, the administration revealed that 20 per cent of locally made toys were substandard and injured 10,000 Chinese children every year. China is the world's biggest toy exporter, but industry spokespeople said most exported products were of a better quality than those sold in China.

Mexico's largest leftist party vowed Monday to defend a landmark Mexico City abortion law with street protests and political pressure in the face of attempts by the conservative federal government to overturn it in court.

The Democratic Revolution Party, which holds power in the capital, called its supporters to block federal government offices later this week in defense of the law, which legalized abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Elsewhere in Mexico, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape, when the mother's life is in danger or if the fetus has severe fetal defects.

On Friday, the federal Attorney General's Office and National Human Right's Commission filed legal challenges with the Supreme Court, arguing the Mexico City law violates a constitutional clause that guarantees the right to life and that city lawmakers cannot legally approve measures related to health.

"It's a political maneuver to satisfy a certain public opinion over this law," said Mexico City's leftist mayor, Marcelo Ebrard. "But legally, it's got no base."

The law's approval by Mexico City's assembly was bitterly opposed by conservative politicians and the Roman Catholic Church. Mexican bishops even argued that lawmakers who voted for the bill were excommunicating themselves from the church.

About 90 percent of Mexicans say they are Roman Catholic, and President Felipe Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, has spoken out publicly against abortion.

The abortion law is part of a package of socially liberal measures being passed by Mexico City's leftist assembly. Earlier this year, lawmakers approved gay civil unions, and they are debating a bill on euthanasia.

The only other Latin American countries that allow abortion are Cuba and Guyana.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday in an op-ed published in the Sunday Times that the country has chosen to protect the civil liberties of foreign nationals over national security and therefore could not blame the government for last week's reported disappearance of three terror suspects. Pointing to a series of court rulings favoring foreign suspects, he wrote:

Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism.

The three terror suspects who disappeared had been subject to control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and are believed to have been planning attacks on British or US troops. UK Home Secretary John Reid said judges and critics of the government were responsible for the lack of tougher rules to prevent disappearances and said he would introduce new anti-terror measures before he steps down from his post in June.

A Libyan court acquitted six foreign medics of criminal defamation Sunday. The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, previously convicted of knowingly infecting over 400 Libyan patients with the HIV virus and sentenced to death, faced defamation charges stemming from the medics' accusations that their confessions were obtained by torture by Libyan police officer Jumaa al-Mishri and doctor Abdul-Majid al-Shoul. Al-Mishri and al-Shoul sued the foreign medics, seeking $4 million in compensation. The Libyan court did not elaborate its reasoning for its decision.

The six medics have been imprisoned in Libya since 1999 but have consistently maintained their innocence, saying that they are being scapegoated for unsanitary conditions in the Libyan hospitals where they worked. Bulgaria and its allies, including the US and the European Union, contend that the nurses are innocent. The death sentence against the medics is still under appeal, but the a top Libyan official has said that the six will not be executed.