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[John]

Thai protests force PM to delay speech until Tuesday

Thai premier Abhisit Vejjajiva was forced to delay his maiden policy speech until Tuesday after thousands of protesters blockaded parliament in the latest twist to the kingdom's political crisis.

Red-shirted supporters of ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a 2006 coup, sealed off the gates to parliament Monday and said they would stay until the newly installed Abhisit called fresh elections.

The siege brought a sense of deja vu for many Thais, with protesters copying the tactics of rival, yellow-clad activists who launched a street campaign that helped to bring down a government led by Thaksin's allies in December.

"The house speaker has decided to postpone the session until tomorrow (Tuesday)," British-born Abhisit told a press conference, adding that the speech could continue until Wednesday.

The speech was meant to start Monday morning but had already been delayed twice.

"We have negotiated all day and it was not successful, but we will continue our efforts. What has happened today will not affect the government's plans," he said.

The pro-Thaksin protesters earlier said they would allow the Oxford-educated Abhisit and his cabinet to walk into parliament but not come by car. Authorities said it was unsafe for legislators to do so.

Police said around 9,000 "red-shirts" descended on parliament overnight after at least 20,000 Thaksin supporters had gathered on Sunday night at a city centre parade ground several kilometres (miles) away.

"We call for the government to dissolve the house and return power to the people," said pro-Thaksin leader Chalerm Yoobamrung.

Oxford-educated Abhisit won a parliamentary vote two weeks ago to become Thailand's third premier in four months, after a court on December 2 dissolved the former ruling People Power Party (PPP) loyal to Thaksin.

That verdict followed months of protests by the royalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), an anti-Thaksin group that blockaded Bangkok's airports earlier this month, causing huge damage to the economy.

Supporters of Thaksin, who is living in self-imposed exile to avoid a jail sentence for corruption, said the verdict in a vote fraud case was a "disguised coup" against the former government.

Abhisit rose to become prime minister with the help of defectors from the PPP and coalition parties previously allied with it.

The policy address to the upper and lower houses of parliament is a constitutional requirement before the government can start work on a raft of economic and social challenges facing Thailand.

Abhisit, 44, has vowed a "grand plan of reconciliation" and a 300 billion baht (8.6 billion dollar) economic stimulus package, but caused controversy by appointing a vocal supporter of the PAD's airport blockade as his foreign minister.

Abhisit reiterated on Monday that he had ordered police to avoid a repeat of clashes at parliament on October 7, when the PAD tried to stop then-premier Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's brother-in-law, delivering his policy speech.

The violence left two people dead and around 500 injured.

He said he had no plans to declare a state of emergency around parliament, but said that he would call elections only "at the appropriate time" and wanted to build confidence in the government first.

Twice-elected Thaksin is still loathed by the Bangkok-based elite in the military, palace and bureaucracy, who backed the PAD and see Thaksin as corrupt, authoritarian and a threat to their traditional power base.

But his populist policies won him huge support among the urban and rural poor, especially in his native north and northeast, where many of Sunday's protesters hailed from.

"I don't want the Democrat Party to form the government, and I don't want Abhisit Vejjajiva to be prime minister," company worker Saeng Arun said at the protest.

-Yahoo.

[John]

Israel bombs Gaza in 'all-out war' on Hamas

Israel bombed Gaza for a third day on Monday in an "all-out war" on Hamas, as tanks massed on the border and the Islamists fired deadly rockets to retaliate for the blitz that has killed nearly 320.

Anger over the mammoth bombing campaign spiralled in the Muslim world as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon once again deplored the violence, and efforts to hold talks between Syria and Israel were suspended as a result of the bombardment.

With Israeli tanks idling along the border of the battered Palestinian enclave , the army declared the area a closed military zone -- a move that in the past has often been followed by ground operations.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who has warned of a possible ground offensive, declared that the Jewish state was in "an all-out war with Hamas and its proxies."

"We will avoid as much as possible hitting civilians while the people of Hamas and other terrorists deliberately hide and operate within the civilian population," he told a parliamentary session.

At least 51 civilians, including children, have died as a result of the Israeli bombardment, a spokesman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency said.

Among the latest deaths were four girls from the same family, aged from one to 12 years old, who were killed in an air raid that targetted a mosque near their home, medics said.

In all, the Israeli blitz, unleashed on Saturday in retaliation for ongoing rocket and mortar fire from Gaza, has killed at least 312 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,400 others, according to Gaza medics.

Hamas militants remained defiant on Monday, firing nearly 40 rockets into Israel.

One of the projectiles slammed into a construction site in the southern city of Ashkelon some 13 kilometres (eight miles) north of the Gaza border, killing an Israeli Arab and wounding eight other people.

Amid mounting international concern over the humanitarian situation in aid-dependent territory of 1.5 million that Israel has kept virtually sealed since Hamas violently seized power there in June 2007, the Jewish state on Monday allowed the passage of basic supplies.

Some 80 truckloads of medicine and food were expected to pass through the Kerem Shalom crossing in Gaza's south, a military spokesman told AFP.

In another development, Turkey, one of Israel's leading allies in the Muslim world, announced that it was ending efforts to organise peace talks between Israel and Syria.

"The continuation of the talks under these conditions is naturally impossible," Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told reporters after discussions with Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul Gheit.

"To make war on the Israeli-Palestinian track and at the same time make peace on the Israeli-Syrian track -- these two cannot go together," he said.

Parliament in Jordan -- one of two Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel -- demanded that the government " reconsider " relations with the Jewish state.

Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement branded a terror group by Israel and the West, has lashed out at the world for not doing enough to end the blitz.

Israel is "committing a holocaust as the whole world watches and doesn't lift a finger to stop it," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told reporters.

The Islamists have warned they could resume suicide attacks against Israel for the first time since January 2005 to retaliate for the blitz.

Since the start of the Israeli onslaught on Saturday, Gaza militants have fired more than 250 rockets and mortars into the Jewish state, killing two people and wounding nearly two dozen more.

The Israeli offensive has sparked protests across the world, with demonstrations held in European capitals, Turkey, Egypt and Syria.

At a rally in Tehran on Monday, thousands shouted "Down with Israel" and "Down with the USA" as they carried banners reading "We should all rise and destroy Israel."

Israel unleashed "Operation Cast Lead" against Hamas in the middle of Saturday morning, with some 60 warplanes bombing more than 50 targets in just a few minutes.

The Israeli blitz came after days of spiralling violence since the expiry of the Gaza truce. It comes less than two months before snap parliamentary elections in Israel called for February 10.

-Yahoo.

[John]

Bangladeshis flock to peaceful polls

Bangladeshis turned out in their droves Monday to vote in elections marking the end of two years of emergency rule, with a pair of rival former prime ministers vying to reclaim power in the impoverished nation.

Amid tight security, the first polls since 2001 saw a turnout as high as 70 percent, with none of the violence that forced the last scheduled vote to be cancelled and an army-backed interim government take control.

Long queues formed early outside voting stations as hundreds of thousands of police and troops stood ready to avert clashes between party activists or any attacks by Islamic extremists.

Despite efforts by the caretaker regime to shake up a political system long seen as deeply corrupt, the two leading candidates were former prime ministers who ruled alternately since 1991 and whose mutual hatred paralysed the country politically.

Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League, and Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), wooed voters with promises of cheaper food, action against Islamic militancy and curbs on corruption.

The women, who were themselves jailed on corruption charges by the current regime before being released to contest the elections , warned of voter fraud but said they would not challenge the result.

After voting in the capital Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina questioned how some ballot papers had been distributed but insisted, "I want the election to take place peacefully. Whatever the result is, we all should accept it."

Zia appeared confident of victory. "If a free and fair election takes place today, we will win with a landslide victory like 2001 election," she said.

Analysts say the result is far from certain with a third of the 81 million electorate voting for the first time, and there are concerns a smooth transfer of power could prove difficult if no clear winner emerges.

Election commission secretary Humayun Kabir said the turnout had been about 70 percent. Final results were due after midnight (1800 GMT Monday).

Some 50,000 armed troops were on alert nationwide, while 600,000 police officers were deployed to crack down on voter fraud or disruptions at the 35,000 polling booths.

But a UN-funded digital electoral roll, which has eliminated 12.7 million fake names, appeared to have resolved many of the problems that have hit previous Bangladesh elections.

At one polling station in Dhaka, voters lined up with their new photograph ID cards in hand.

"I'm a first-time voter and the atmosphere couldn't be any better," Mamun Howlader, a 21-year-old mechanic, told AFP.

"There's a festive atmosphere. It's fun."

Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former banker who has run Bangladesh under the interim administration, said the polls would "bring back power to an elected government and the country can prosper."

The vote was monitored by some 200,000 electoral observers, including 2,500 from abroad.

Police captured two dozen militants in recent days and seized explosives, grenades and bombs, but campaigning and voting was otherwise free of the widespread unrest witnessed previously.

In one of the few incidents reported Monday, 12 people were injured in a brawl between rival supporters outside a polling booth in the south.

Elsewhere, about 25 people were arrested early Monday for handing out cash bribes, and there were minor scuffles between Awami League and BNP supporters.

The army-backed government took power in January 2007 following months of political unrest in which at least 35 people were killed.

The deaths prompted President Iajuddin Ahmed to cancel elections and impose a state of emergency that was lifted only on December 17.

Bangladesh, a desperately poor nation of 144 million people, has a history of coups and counter-coups since winning independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The Awami League and the BNP have often been accused of anti-democratic tactics, with both crippling the country during their spells in opposition by boycotting parliament and staging national strikes.

The winner of Monday's election, either a single party or a coalition, needs a simple majority of the 300 seats in the National Assembly.

-Yahoo.

[John]

South Africa says Zimbabwe arrests should not delay unity

South Africa said on Monday that the arrest of a leading human rights campaigner should not delay the formation of a unity government, despite opposition threats to pull out of a power-sharing deal over the issue.

Jestina Mukoko, head of a local rights group, and eight other activists were last week charged with recruiting or attempting to recruit Zimbabweans to undergo military training to topple the government.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will ask his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party to suspend negotiations with President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF if abductions of MDC members continue and if the arrested activists are not brought to court by Thursday.

"We think the most important step is to form a unity government," South African Presidential spokesman Thabo Masebe told Reuters. "There are many issues that need to be addressed by a unity government. This is one of them."

Influential South Africa is the continent's biggest economy and current chair of regional group of nations SADC.

Zimbabwe has appealed to its highest court against a High Court ruling ordering the release of Mukoko and her co-accused to a local hospital. The court also ordered 23 other mainly opposition activists to be freed from police custody because their detention was illegal.

The activists' lawyers said police were using delaying tactics to keep them in custody.

They appeared in court on Monday in green uniforms with their hands and feet shackled. The session was expected to start shortly.

South Africa has reversed an earlier decision to hold back $30 million in agricultural aid to Zimbabwe until a unity government is formed, said Masebe.

He said a humanitarian crisis made worse by a cholera epidemic that has killed over 1,500 people had become too serious and agricultural and other supplies were badly needed.

SADC has failed in mediation to pressure Zimbabwe's rival parties to implement the power-sharing deal seen as the best chance for easing an economic crisis marked by hyper-inflation and severe shortages of basic goods.

Tsvangirai won the first round of voting in March but fell short of the majority needed to become president, triggering a run-off which Mugabe won after the MDC leader pulled out citing violent attacks on his supporters.

-Yahoo.

[John]

Afghan suicide bomb kills at least two

A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a government office north of the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday, killing at least two people and injuring more than a dozen, an official said.

The attack happened as Afghan provincial authorities and U.S. forces held a weekly meeting inside the office of the governor of Parwan province in the local capital of Charikar, a politician from the province told Reuters.

A U.S. military vehicle was hit by the blast and was on fire, the politician said.

U.S. forces had blocked off the area in Charikar, 60 km (37 miles) north of Kabul, she added.

Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary, in Kabul, said no provincial officials were killed in the attack, the latest in a spell of intensifying violence this year in Afghanistan.

"The suicide car bomber blow himself up outside the governor's office on the road," Bashary said.

"The car belonging to foreigners was his target and the attack has resulted in the deaths of two Afghan civilians and 18 more were wounded," he said.

"A translator for the foreigners and possibly some of them have been wounded too."

The incident came a day after 16 people, 14 of them children, were killed in a suicide attack outside a government building in southeastern Khost province, according to NATO-led forces.

Afghanistan is going through the bloodiest period of violence since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001, despite the deployment of more foreign troops.

Nearly 5,000 people, including more than 200 foreign troops, have been killed this year in the country, which some analysts say may slide back into anarchy.

The al Qaeda-backed Taliban, who have made a comeback since 2005, are largely active in southern and eastern areas, dominated by ethnic Pashtuns who form the bulk of the militants near the border with Pakistan.

Factors such as endemic corruption, lack of the rule of law, insecurity, slow economic development and civilian casualties caused by foreign troops while hunting militants have helped the Taliban gain public support and attract recruits.

U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government after it refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted by Washington for masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States.

More than seven years on, several Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are still at large.

There are about 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, and the United States plans to send up to 30,000 more by the summer.

-Yahoo.

[John]

Stalin Is Given Surprise Honour

Mass-murdering tyrant Joseph Stalin has been voted the third greatest Russian ever in a national poll.



The Name For Russia survey, run by the Rossiya TV station and inspired by 2002's Great Britons poll, received millions of votes.

The top place went to medieval Russian king Alexander Nevsky, who defeated invading Teutonic crusaders from Germany and Sweden in a battle on the frozen River Neva in the 1200s.

In second place was Piotr Stolypin, a prime minister under Tsar Nicholas II who tried to modernise Russia in the years before the 1917 revolutions but was assassinated.

Stalin, the Georgian-born Soviet leader responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians, received 519,000 votes from the public - just 5,000 fewer than Alexander Nevsky.

His popularity in the long-running survey, which at one point he was leading, has raised eyebrows.

-SkyNews.

[John]

Saddam loyalists face new charges

An Iraqi court has opened a new trial against two members of Saddam Hussein's regime on charges of persecuting political opponents while in power.

The two defendants are Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz and the dictator's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali.

Majid has already received two death sentences by Iraq's courts.

Some of the alleged crimes were against members of current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party.

The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Baghdad says Aziz, Majid and more than 20 other defendants are charged with "crimes against humanity" over the alleged persecution of members of the Dawa party, founded in the 1950s.

Nouri al-Maliki, who became Iraq's prime minister in 2006, joined the Dawa party as a young man in 1970.

But he fled Iraq in 1979 and lived as an opposition leader abroad until 2003 and was himself sentenced to death in absentia by Saddam's Baath party government.

The other new charges put forward by the prosecutor in the Baghdad court centre on the arrest of up to 200,000 members of Iraq's political parties - many of whom were sent to jail or executed between 1981 and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Majid, considered by many to be Saddam Hussein's right-hand during his years of power, is currently being tried on separate charges over a gas attack that killed some 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988.

Earlier, he was sentenced to death for his role in crushing a Shia uprising in 1991.

And in February, the former defence minister was condemned to hang for genocide over the killing of 100,000 people during the 1988 Anfal campaign against Iraq's Kurds.

-BBC.

[John]

'Youngest' baby has brain glue op

A UK baby has become one of the youngest in the world to undergo an operation using glue to reduce the size of a brain tumour.

Madison Quartarone was just a week old when the procedure was carried out at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.

She was found to have a large, benign tumour, and glue was used to block the blood vessels supplying it, effectively starving it of nutrients.

The baby, from Bedford, is now said to be "doing well".

Neurosurgeon Dominic Thompson, who carried out the procedure, said he was not aware of any younger babies receiving it.

"If successful, it could be groundbreaking," he told the Bedfordshire on Sunday newspaper.

"Madison is not out of the woods yet but she does look remarkably well."

Madison, who is now eight weeks old, was born with an obviously swollen head, which meant that the tumour could be spotted quickly.

Mr Thompson said that it was "very unusual" for tumours to present themselves so early in life.

During the procedure, a tube was guided into the blood vessels connected to the tumour, and the glue passed through it to seal them.

Scans have suggested that the treatment was having an impact, starving the tumour of nutrients and oxygen, and causing it to shrink.

Madison's grandfather Ian Chandler told the paper that she was now putting weight on, and the family was hopeful that the tumour would continue to reduce in size.

-BBC.

[John]

Pound hits new low against euro

The pound has hit a new record low against the euro as the grim outlook for the UK economy continues to put downward pressure on the currency.

Weak house price data and figures showing that homeowners are choosing to repay their mortgages rather than spending, pushed the currency lower.

Low trading levels in the foreign exchange markets also helped to force sterling down to 1.029 euros.

Many analysts believe parity with the euro is now only a matter of time.

The rate for tourists buying their currency before they travel has almost reached parity, where one pound buys one euro. At one major High Street currency exchange, 100 euros currently costs £99.11.

Downward pressure

Property consultants Hometrack predicted a 12% fall in UK property prices in 2009, while figures from the Bank of England showed that households were more keen to pay off their mortgages than borrow money against the value of their homes for spending.

Towards the end of October, one pound bought 1.287 euros. But a string a bad news about the prospects for the UK economy caused sterling to fall.

This time last year, a pound would have bought almost 1.5 euros. At its peak in 2000, the pound was worth more than 1.7 euros.

There are two main factors putting downward pressure on the pound, analysts suggest.

First, interest rates in the UK are lower than those in the eurozone, which makes the pound less attractive to foreign investors.

Analysts believe the economic slowdown in the UK will be more severe than in the eurozone, which means the Bank of England could be forced to lower interest rates from their current level of 2%.

Interest rates in the eurozone currently stand at 2.5% and the European Central Bank has hinted that further rate cuts are unlikely early in the New Year.

Second, trading levels over the holiday period are low, which means that any moves in exchange rates are exaggerated.

"Actual liquidity levels are painfully thin," said Daniel Baker at Informa Global Markets.

He believes parity with the euro is almost inevitable.

"The path to parity is self-fulfilling," he said.

-BBC.

[John]

Home loan repayments 'a priority'

UK homeowners are no longer cashing in on the value of their properties to fund spending, official figures show.

Quarterly Bank of England figures on housing equity withdrawal showed a second successive negative reading between July and September.

Housing equity withdrawal is when owners take out bigger mortgages, extracting money to spend on major purchases such as cars.

But households put £5.7bn of equity back into homes in the third quarter.

This came after they put £2bn back into their homes in the second three months of the year as property prices started to fall sharply.

This is in stark contrast to £5.6bn housing equity withdrawn in the first three months of the year and £11.1bn withdrawn in July to September last year.

The latest data shows that people are concentrating on repaying their mortgage, rather than adding to their debts.

Changing trend

Billions of pounds were extracted during the housing market boom as people saw the value of their property surge.
It was highest in the last three months of 2003 at £17.1bn, and was consistently above £11bn in each quarter of 2006.

This funded consumer spending, as it is defined in the figures as money that is not invested back into property or home improvements.

In April to June this year, the figure turned negative for the first time since the second quarter of 1998.

The latest statistic shows this trend has continued as it is the biggest injection of equity since the figures were first compiled in 1970.

"Not so long ago, an Englishman's house wasn't just his castle, it was his cash machine, too. This, very clearly, is no longer the case," said Andrew Montlake, partner at independent mortgage broker Cobalt Capital.

"People are scared stiff of recession and rising unemployment and are now paying down their debts rather than adding to them."

Lending squeeze

He added that for many people equity withdrawal was no longer an option, owing to the rapid dip in house prices.

The latest data from the Halifax showed the annual rate of house price falls dropped to 14.9% in November.

For those who still had equity in their homes, lenders were becoming more stringent as to whether homeowners could access it by extending their home loan, Mr Montlake said.

Mortgage lending as a whole has shrunk in the UK with the number of approvals from the major banks for house purchases 60% lower than a year ago, according to November figures from the British Bankers' Association.

Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said that housing equity withdrawal had "been used significantly to support consumer spending in recent years".

He added that the latest figures were further evidence that consumers were reluctant to spend, leading to UK economic growth contracting sharply in 2009.

-BBC.