US President Raises Tibetan Rights Issue with Xi Jinping

DHARAMSHALA: President Barack Obama raised the Tibet issue during a joint press conference in Beijing on Wednesday with Chinese president Xi Jinping, the Daily Mail reported.
‘We are not in favor of independence,’ President Obama said at the press conference.

‘But we did encourage Chinese authorities to take steps to preserve the unique cultural, religious and linguistic identity of the Tibetan people,’ he said.

Syrian rebels burn and plunder religious sites – Human Rights Watch

Syrian rebels have looted and burned minority religious sites in Northern Syria, US-based Human Rights Watch says. The attacks highlight the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict as the bloodshed continues unabated.
The three incidents took place in November and December of last year in religiously mixed areas.
Rebels looted two Christian churches in separate villages in the relatively peaceful western governorate of Latakia, local witnesses told the rights watchdog.
They also destroyed a Shiite ‘husseiniya’ – a religious site devoted to Hussein, a martyr in Shiite tradition – in Idlib governorate.
In all three cases, Human Rights Watch found evidence showing the attacks on the religious sites were directly connected to the areas coming under the control of the armed rebels.