World News joined 2

[OMEN]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he had requested talks with senior Myanmar general Than Shwe over a humanitarian crisis in the country.

In a separate statement issued by his office at the UN headquarters, Ban suggested that it might be "prudent" for Myanmar's government to postpone a referendum on a military-drafted constitution because of the cyclone that has devastated the country.

The United Nations estimates 1.5 million people have been "severely affected" by the cyclone that swept through Myanmar.

The United States has expressed outrage at the delays in allowing in aid.

"We're outraged by the slowness of the response of the government of Burma (Myanmar) to welcome and accept assistance," US Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters.

"It's clear that the government's ability to deal with the situation, which is catastrophic, is limited."

In Myanmar, desperate survivors cried out for aid nearly a week after 100,000 people were feared killed by Cyclone Nargis.

The United States is awaiting approval to start military aid flights. The UN food agency and Red Cross/Red Crescent said they had finally started flying in emergency relief supplies after foot-dragging by the military junta.

US ambassador Eric John told a news conference in Bangkok earlier that the United States and Thailand thought the Myanmar generals had agreed to let a US military cargo plane fly in supplies to the reclusive southeast Asian country.

But that turned out to be premature.

"We don't have permission yet for the C-130 to go in, but I emphasize 'yet'" John said.

Approval for such a flight would be significant, given the huge distrust and acrimony between the former Burma's generals and Washington, which has imposed tough sanctions to try to end 46 years of unbroken military rule.

Witnesses have seen little evidence of a relief effort under way in the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta region.

"We'll starve to death if nothing is sent to us," said Zaw Win, a 32-year-old fisherman who waded through floating corpses to find a boat for the two-hour journey to Bogalay, a town where the government said 10,000 people were killed.

AID PLANES ARRIVE

The storm pulverized the delta on Saturday with 190 km winds followed by a massive 12 ft wave that caused most of the casualties and damage, virtually destroying some villages. It was the worst cyclone in Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people were killed in neighboring Bangladesh.

The United Nations estimated at least 1.5 million people in Myanmar have been "severely affected", Holmes said. He was "disappointed" with the lack of progress being made in getting UN aid in, he said.

State television on Thursday night did not give an update of the death toll, which stood at 22,980 with 42,119 missing as of Tuesday. Diplomats and disaster experts said the real figure is likely to be much higher.

"The information that we're receiving indicates that there may well be over 100,000 deaths in the delta area," said Shari Villarosa, charge d'affaires of the US embassy in Myanmar.

About 1 million were left homeless.

UN officials who had earlier complained the generals were putting up obstacles to an emergency airlift, said a half-dozen cargo planes had been allowed to land at Yangon airport.

The Red Cross/Red Crescent confirmed its first aid plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, carrying six tonnes of shelter materials.

World Food spokesman Paul Risley said aid agencies normally expect to fly in experts and supplies within 48 hours of a disaster, but nearly a week after this cyclone, few have been able to send reinforcements into Myanmar.

France suggested invoking a UN "responsibility to protect" to deliver aid to Myanmar without the government's approval, but its bid to make the Security Council take a stand was rebuffed on Wednesday by China, Vietnam, South Africa and Russia.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called his Myanmar counterpart Nyan Win on Thursday and urged him to make it possible for international aid workers and relief organisation to reach the areas hit by the cyclone.

Some opponents accuse the junta of stalling because they do not want an influx of foreigners into the countryside during Saturday's referendum on an army-drafted constitution that looks set to cement the military's grip on power.

Medicins sans Frontieres, which has 1,238 people in Myanmar, said it was ferrying aid into the delta via trucks and boats.

"We are focusing on those still alive; 50 percent of them have wounds and they are infected," MSF official Frank Smithius in Myanmar told Australian radio. "Because of the winds and high water, people got smashed around."

Jean-Michel Grand, executive director of Action contra la Faim in London, said the logistical obstacles were formidable.

"The roads are very poor or destroyed, and in many cases there were no roads before. Everybody's looking at boats as an alternative. It's going to be a massive logistics challenge.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej failed to reach Myanmar's generals on Thursday after US President George W. Bush asked him to intervene over the aid delays.

"We couldn't reach them because the communication towers have been damaged," government spokesman Wichianchot Sukchotrat said.

Amid the death and destruction, life asserted itself. Than Win, who lost seven of her 10 children to Nargis gave birth on Wednesday to a boy, she named "First Love".

"After what happened, this is a beautiful present," she said, lying on a wooden table in one of the few houses left standing in Bogalay town.

reuters

[OMEN]

Murder squad detectives have been called in to investigate the circumstances in which a man died in an explosion which destroyed a house in north London, police said.

The body of the man, who has not yet been identified, was discovered in the rubble of the house in Harrow late on Wednesday.

Two other people, a man and a woman, were hurt and have been taken to hospital with non life-threatening injuries. The man had head injuries and the woman burns.

Police said they had originally been called to reports of a gas explosion.

"The cause of the explosion has yet to be determined, however it is being treated as suspicious at this early stage," police said, adding that officers from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command had been sent to the scene.

London Fire Brigade said in a statement that two houses on the road had collapsed following the explosion.

Residents said the blast could be heard some distance away.

"I heard an enormous explosion – bricks and shrapnel sort of sent into the house and through the windows – doors blown through, screams," neighbour Dan Llewelleyn-Hall told the BBC.

Harrow Council said it had provided accommodation for 29 people after nearby houses were evacuated. It was unlikely residents would be able to return home until Friday.

reuters

[OMEN]

A man seized by Iraqi forces is not the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, a senior US military official said, following an announcement by several Iraqi officials that Abu Ayyub al-Masri had been captured.

Iraqi security sources had already begun to cast doubt on the earlier announcement that Masri, an Egyptian also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had been captured in an operation in Mosul on Wednesday. One senior security source in Mosul said the man seized in that raid was an Iraqi.

"He has not been detained," the US military official told Reuters, without giving further details.

It is not the first time there has been confusion over the fate of Masri. Iraq's Interior Ministry said a year ago he had been killed, but soon afterwards Sunni Islamist al Qaeda released an audio tape purportedly from him.

The detention of Masri would have been another blow for al Qaeda, which has been forced to regroup in northern Iraq after a wave of US military assaults in the past year.

Earlier, Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said a detained associate of Masri took Iraqi security forces late on Wednesday to where the al Qaeda leader was hiding.

After being detained, the man confessed to being the al Qaeda in Iraq leader, he said.

Duraid Kashmula, the governor of Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital, had told Reuters he was certain the detained man was Masri.

Al Qaeda in Iraq was headed by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until he was killed in a US air strike in June 2006. His successor, Masri, was Zarqawi's close associate, and has a US bounty of $US5 million ($NZ6.55 million) on his head.

US officials blame al Qaeda in Iraq for most big bombings in the country, including an attack on a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that set off a wave of sectarian killings that nearly tipped Iraq into all-out civil war.

A build-up of US troops last year allowed the military to conduct a series of offensives against the group. The emergence of Sunni Arab tribal security units also helped to provide intelligence on al Qaeda activities.

The result was that al Qaeda has largely been pushed out of Baghdad and its former stronghold in the western province of Anbar to areas in northern Iraq, such as Mosul.

[I]Reuters[/

I]

[OMEN]

Australian police will continue to interview the mother of a five-month-old baby who died after being left alone in a car in Toowoomba in Queensland.

The mother left the girl in a parked car on Ramsay Street as she picked up her other children from St Thomas More's Catholic Primary School.

When the mother returned to the vehicle about 3.30pm (AEST), she discovered the baby dead inside her rear seat capsule.

It is not yet known how long the baby was left in the car, but it is believed school finished at 3pm.

Police had hoped a post-mortem examination would be conducted today, but that has now been pushed back to tomorrow.

Detectives interviewed the mother last night, and will speak to her again today along with other family members, a police spokeswoman said.

"The family is obviously distraught and is receiving support," the spokeswoman said.

Queensland Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech said her thoughts went out to the parents.

"The death of the child in Toowoomba is an absolute tragedy for all concerned," Ms Keech told reporters.

"My heart really does go out to the parents in particular.

"I'm advised by police that they are continuing their investigations and as a matter of course the department of child safety will investigate and support the police in their investigation."

Counsellors are at the school and teachers have been briefed on how to deal with students' questions.

AAP

[OMEN]

DON'T MENTION THE CYCLONE: Myanmar's military junta is pushing ahead with plans for a referendum, despite widespread damage from a recent cyclone.
Myanmar's junta is urging citizens to do their patriotic duty and vote for an army-drafted constitution, without mentioning the 1.5 million people clinging to survival a week after a devastating cyclone.

The constitution is a key step in the junta's seven-point "roadmap to democracy", which is meant to culminate in multi-party elections in 2010 and bring to an end nearly five decades of military rule in the Southeast Asian country.

It has been widely derided by the opposition and Western governments as a blueprint for the generals cementing a grip on the power they first seized in a 1962 coup.

"If you are patriotic and you love your nation you must give an affirmative vote," said one message broadcast on state-run MRTV on Friday.

Accompanying the appeals were performances by popular singers, actors and musicians and slogans such as "the approval of the draft constitution is the responsibility of every citizen, so go to the polling booth and approve the constitution."

The government announced on Tuesday it would go ahead with the vote in parts of the country not affected by Cyclone Nargis, but postponed it by two weeks to May 24 in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta.

Diplomats and disaster experts said the death toll is likely to rise to 100,000 people and the United Nations says 1.5 million people have been "severely affected".

Myanmar state-run radio and TV did not give an update on Friday of the official toll, which stood at 22,980 killed with 42,119 missing as of Tuesday.

While the military has appealed for outside help for disaster victims, it has been reluctant to allow a full-scale international relief effort, delaying the approval of visas and landing rights for aircraft carrying urgently needed supplies.

Some critics accuse the junta of stalling because they do not want an influx of foreigners into the countryside during Saturday's referendum.

The constitution gives the military an automatic 25 per cent of seats in parliament, control of key ministries and right to suspend the constitution at will.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

That's awful news...