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Four bombs exploded in Pakistan's port city of Karachi on Monday injuring at least 40 people and killing one.

The explosions occurred in Banaras Chowk, Oraangi town, Shahrah-e-Noor area and Paharganj areas, rescue workers said.

At least 16 people were injured in two blasts in Banaras in Karachi while five others were injured in Shahra-e-Noor Jahan, near Sohail mosque.

Five more people were injured in a blast near a school in Hyderi.

Funerals have been held in Pakistan for the victims of a suicide bomb attack in the capital, Islamabad.

Yusuf Reza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, on Monday denounced the bombing that killed at least 20 people - mostly police - near a police station.

Sunday's attack was carried out just several hundred metres from the site of a rally marking one year since a deadly government raid on the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque).

After visiting some of the 50 people wounded by the blast, Gilani said: "This is against humanity. The law will take the culprits in its grip."

Police continued to investigate at the scene, discovering a severed head in bushes beside the road where the attack took place, according to Reuters news agency.

The heads of suicide bombers are often severed by the explosives strapped to their torsos.

Rehman Malik, the interior ministry chief, said a teenage boy was the suspected attacker.

Speaking to Geo TV hours after the explosion, he said: "All witnesses say that a 15- or 16-year-old boy, who had a light beard and wore a white shalwar kameez ... he came walking toward our police and blasted himself."

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said that the explosion happened on the edge of the security cordon.

People were leaving the mosque after the mostly peaceful rally when the attack targeting the police occurred, he said.

Rally marred

Thousands of police had been deployed across the capital for Sunday's memorial and a tight ring of security was in place around the gathering in front of the mosque.

Barbed wire and fences had been put up to prevent vehicles from entering the area while pedestrians had to pass through metal detectors.

Hyder said the bombing was likely to jeopardise the government's attempts to engage the leaders of armed groups carrying out attacks in the country.

There was some evidence to suggest that there were splinter groups that were not in favour of rapprochement with the government, he said.

Imtiaz Gul, a political analyst in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera that the attack came after threats from the Pakistani Taliban in northwest regions bordering Afghanistan.

"Baitullah Mehsud had indicated and threatened that if his people, with whom the government was talking ... if their prisoners are not released ... they would take revenge," he said.

"They clearly indicated it would be in Islamabad, Lahore or another big Pakistani city."

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast.

Pakistani troops surrounded the mosque last July, clashing with pro-Taliban and alleged al-Qaeda members who were holed up inside before storming the building.

More than 100 people were killed in the military operation.

'Rooting out terrorism'

Pervez Musharraf, the president who ordered last year's assault, reiterated the government's "commitment to root-out terrorism in all its forms and manifestations", the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency said.

He urged Gilani's government to do more to combat anti-government groups, warning that otherwise there would be "Red Mosques everywhere".

The level of violence in Pakistan has fallen since last year, but attacks are still relatively frequent.

In June, a suicide car bomber killed at least six people near the Danish embassy in Islamabad.

A statement attributed to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that blast, which was believed to have targeted Denmark over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Flames raise in front of a police building in Weng'an China on Saturday, June 28, during a protest over officials' reaction to a student's death.

Aftershocks from the huge protests that took place on June 28 in the remote town of Weng'an continue to reverberate, with news breaking Friday that both the local Communist Party commissar Luo Liaping and the chief of police, Shen Guirong have been dismissed for what official media reports described as "severe malfeasance." Such speedy and decisive action by Beijing is, to put it mildly, unusual. That reflects both the gravity of the riot, which involved up to 30,000 people, and a desire by the central authorities — currently consumed by the build up to the Olympics — to stop the protests from continuing. But there are other signs that the incident is more than a mere pre-Olympics anomaly and may be part of a new, more open approach by Beijing to outbursts of long-simmering rage.

On June 28, tens of thousands took to the streets of Weng'an, a rural town in remote Guizhou Province, to protest what they believed was a cover up by the local authorities of the alleged rape and murder of a 15 year-old schoolgirl, Li Shufei. The protesters torched upwards of 20 cars and set fire to both the local police station and the Communist Party headquarters. Even before the dismissals of top local officials, it was clear this incident was going to be treated differently. On July 3 the provincial governor, Shi Zongyuan, made an unusually blunt statement condemning the conduct of the local police. His words drew a surprisingly revealing picture of the reasons behind the incident. Although on the surface it was sparked by the controversy over the schoolgirl's death, the governor said, the real reasons for the scale and violence of the protests were the suppressed anger at the behavior of local officials. He cited the demeanor of local government officers in denying residents the economic benefits of mining (read, large scale corruption) and the use of force during the resettlement of migrants and forced demolitions to make way for development projects

The governor's comments were particularly unexpected given that such protests in a remote county like Weng'an would normally be relatively unremarkable. Even the central government admits that such "mass event," as it terms them, are common, noting that some 87,000 occurred in 2006 (though the definition of what exactly constitutes a mass incident is vague).

Coverage of the "mass event" by the state media was also surprising. Normally such stories are ignored or simply dismissed by noting, for example, that a dozen farmers were arrested for disturbing social order. But this was different. Xinhua, China's official news agency, responded quickly and produced unusually long investigative stories. China's two largest websites, Sina and Sohu, published a headline about the incident on their front pages and updated their stories every few hours. And the local Guizhou television network broadcast live coverage up to 24 hours after the incident occurred, even showing the Weng'an police headquarters in flames, usually a strong taboo in China.

The Weng'an incident and its seemingly more open coverage are signs of the greater latitude enjoyed by the state media in the wake of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake. While the more lenient earthquake coverage appeared to be a spontaneous decision taken by Beijing, some observers believe that the extensive coverage of Weng'an could be a direct result of a policy change in Beijing signaled by a speech given in late June by Chinese President Hu Jintao. During a visit to offices of the Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, Hu stressed that the media needed to concentrate on molding the public's perceptions of news events and presenting their reports in a more attractive and innovative way. To close observers of the party, this appeared to signal a new policy direction. "It seems the party will allow the Chinese media to report more transparently," says Russell Moses, a Beijing based scholar, "though of course they still dictate the lines of authority."

If the traditional media's coverage of Weng'an was allowed to be more "open," however, the online censors didn't seem to have got the same memo. The struggle between the ever inventive Chinese users of the Web and the Great Firewall, the Chinese internet censorship system, could be seen in a sort of online game of whack-a-mole, as posts, pictures and video of the rioting and its causes were deleted within hours, or even minutes, of being posted. But the locals have continued to create new ways to avoid being blocked. Instead of posting on social discussion forums, where such topics are usually raised, netizens wrote about the incident on video game bulletin boards and other unrelated sites. They also used jocular code words for the incident ("bonfire party") and deployed special software that reversed sentence order so that lines ran from right to left and horizontally instead of vertically. Xiao Qiang, a Berkeley-based Chinese media expert thinks the government censors lost this round. "In this particular case, netizens' anger was just too strong to be suppressed," he says.

TOKYO (AFP) — The Group of Eight richest nations is likely to pledge at the upcoming summit to take the lead in efforts to halve emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, a newspaper said Sunday.

Leaders of the G8 -- France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Japan, Italy, Russia and the United States -- are to start a three-day meeting Monday in the northern Japanese spa report of Toyako.

At the previous summit last July, host country Germany overcame fierce US resistance and coaxed the rich nations' club into agreeing to "consider seriously" the goal of at least halving worldwide emissions by 2050.

For the Toyako summit, negotiations are in the final stages for a leaders' declaration saying "the G8 will take the lead in making efforts to halve" emissions or something similar, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

Europe and Japan want to upgrade the expression "consider" in Germany to "agree" but the United States has been seeking an accord that would include China, India and other major emitters, Japan's best-selling newspaper said.

Another major daily, the Asahi Shimbun, reported Sunday that developed countries, including the United States, are to agree to set their own mid-term targets in cutting gas emissions.

The developed nations' pledge for country-by-country mid-term targets will be in a leaders' statement of 16 countries, including the G8 and developing countries, to be held on Wednesday, the newspaper said.

Japan's environment minister, Ichiro Kamoshita, said Sunday that Japan was unlikely to volunteer to declare its mid-term target at the upcoming summit.

"We should weigh this against our national interest. We will have heated discussions on mid-term targets from now," he told public broadcaster NHK.

Japan has vowed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80 percent by 2050 but said it would only announce a mid-term goal next year.

TAIPEI (AFP) — The launch of regular direct flights between China and Taiwan has been hailed as a symbol of progress and a boon to tourism, but industry workers here are not all convinced.

Around 700 mainland tourists arrived on the island to much ceremony over the weekend after taking the charter route, seen as ushering in a new start and the most visible sign yet in the thawing of cross-strait relations.

Taiwan has restricted trade and travel since its split from the mainland in 1949 but the election of Beijing-friendly Ma Ying-jeou in March opened the door to warmer ties.

In a sign of rapprochement, the two sides last month held their first direct talks in a decade and signed agreements to launch the flights and treble the number of Chinese allowed to visit the island to 3,000 daily.

Tourism officials hope the extra visitors, beside promoting cordial people-to-people exchanges, will bring in 60 billion Taiwan dollars (1.97 billion US) annually, a big boost to local trade.

But some tour operators are sceptical.

"The agreements might look good on paper but I dare not think how much I can profit from that with a slow economy, rising inflation and high fuel prices," said Wu Shih-chih, who hires out yachts to tourists.

"I will not consider buying a new yacht or other equipment unless I can see a steady increase in business within six months," said Wu, who has four craft taking visitors around Sun Moon Lake, a popular destination in central Taiwan.

Others are concerned that Chinese tourists, sometimes seen as loud and ill-mannered, could drive away other international travellers.

"We have fewer Japanese visitors since the government opened up to more mainlanders," lamented a bus driver who works for a leading travel agency in Taipei.

"I am not thrilled at receiving the mainlanders because they can be proud and impolite, they think China is so important in the world," said the driver, who asked not to be named.

Jack Lee, manager of a Taipei travel agency, said he often gets complaints from restaurants or shops that Chinese tour groups are too noisy or pay no attention to no-smoking signs.

"Some waiters also complained that Chinese customers throw bones or leftovers on the floor instead of leaving them on the plates or let cigarette ash fall everywhere," Lee said, although most were willing to oblige when told.

Restaurateur Liu Ming-sung was blatant in expressing his dislike for mainland tourists, putting up a sign reading "refusing Chinese communists" at his establishment in southern Kaohsiung city.

"I think President Ma is wrong to see opening up to mainland investments and tourists as an elixir for Taiwan's economy," Liu said.

"Let's not forget that China is targeting Taiwan with thousands of missiles and they are still our enemies. Taiwan might be at risk under such rash moves," he said.

His sentiments mirror Ma's predecessor Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence rhetoric had angered Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

However, changes have been rapid since Ma took office in May.

Taiwan banks can now exchange Chinese currency, limits on Taiwanese investment on the mainland have been eased, and some Chinese media outlets which had been banned on the island now have clearance to work.

There will be 36 round-trip flights across the Taiwan Strait weekly, operating from Friday to Monday between six Taiwanese airports and five on the mainland.

Johnny Tsai, a manager at China Times Travel Service, called the weekend flights "a good start" to boost tourism although he expected a more tangible effect once the trips bed in.