World News joined 5

[OMEN]

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SPITZER QUITS: Embattled New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has resigned following a report from the New York Times he was caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a prostitute.
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has resigned amid a scandal over a $US1,000-an-hour prostitute, cutting short a career built on pugnacious investigations of Wall Street crimes.
Lieutenant Governor David Paterson will replace him on Monday, Spitzer said.

"I am resigning from the office of governor. At Lt. Gov. Paterson's request, the resignation will be effective Monday, March 17," Spitzer announced.

Spitzer, a Democrat, had faced intense pressure to resign and impeachment threats from Republicans since the New York Times reported on Monday that he was caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a prostitute.

Spitzer, 48 and married with three children, is a former New York state chief prosecutor who rose to prominence by investigating financial crime with a vigour that earned him the nickname Sheriff of Wall Street.

He also broke up prostitution rings as attorney general.

Spitzer had apologised to his family and the public on Monday for what he called a "private matter," but gave no details of what he was apologising for and then shuttered himself in his New York City apartment for two days.

Some 70 per cent of New York voters wanted Spitzer to quit, according to a WNBC/Marist poll conducted on Tuesday.

Spitzer, who attracted wide publicity but also resentment on Wall Street with his pursuit of financial crimes while he was the state's attorney general, became governor with nearly 70 per cent of the vote in November 2006 on pledges to clean up state politics.

The Times, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, reported on Monday that Spitzer was the man identified as "Client 9" in a federal affidavit revealing details from an investigation into a prostitution ring.

Client 9 arranged to meet with "Kristen," a prostitute who charged $US1,000 an hour, on February 13 in a Washington hotel and paid her $US4,300, the court document said.

The complaint unveiled last week charged four people with running a prostitution ring dubbed The Emperors Club.

It was not known if Spitzer would face any charges stemming from the case.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the read.

[5be92]

have you guys seen a picture of the girl he paid? she's one hot lady...woooo!!

[OMEN]

The Samoan-born baby called Miracle is recovering from more life-improving surgery in the United States - this time to her face.

Six-month-old Miracletina Nanai, who was born with severe deformities, has survived her second operation.

Eight days ago Miami Hospital surgeons removed a fluid sac from her back, caused by spina bifida.

Surgery on her face was not scheduled till the end of the month, but she recovered after five days in intensive care and doctors agreed to bring her surgery forward.

Her parents and supporters gathered in the hospital chapel to sing songs and pray during the five-hour surgery.

Last night Miracle was recovering from surgery on her lip, cleft palate, eyes, and an amniotic band on her leg.

The baby and her parents were refused visas to enter New Zealand because of an unfavourable medical assessment, but Miami surgeons John Ragheb and S Anthony Wolfe offered their services free.

The family is expected to be in the United States for six months.

The Dominion Post

[OMEN]

Shops have been set on fire in violence in Tibet's capital of Lhasa, witnesses said, as the region was hit by a fresh wave of rare street protests.

Chinese rule in remote, Buddhist Tibet has become a focus for critics ahead of the Beijing Olympics, with global marches this week to mark the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Communist rule spilling into Tibet itself.

Hundreds of people had again taken to Lhasa's streets in defiance of Chinese authorities and despite a heavy police presence and reports of a lockdown on monasteries, sources with knowledge of the region said.

"The police are everywhere," said one cafe owner reached by phone in Lhasa. "There are big problems."

A report from China's Xinhua news agency cited witnesses as saying a number of shops were burnt and nearby businesses closed.

On Friday, 300 to 400 residents and monks demonstrated in Lhasa, a source cited a witness as saying, capping a week of daily protests led by the Buddhist clergy, an echo of the anti-government protests that rocked neighbour Myanmar last year.

"Some are angry and some are scared. The security forces are checking houses to see if any monks are hiding," said the source, who is in touch with Tibetan residents.

Hundreds of monks from the Labrang monastery in the northwestern province of Gansu also led a march through the town of Xiahe, the Free Tibet Campaign said, citing sources in Dharamsala, home to Tibet's government-in-exile.

More than 10 monks had been arrested and tanks were patrolling the square near the Potala Palace, the person said, referring to one of the architectural wonders of the world once the winter residence of Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

"It's very chaotic. I haven't heard any shots fired, but all the police have come out," said one Lhasa resident.

"The monks and nuns have been marching and protesting," the woman said, adding residents were afraid to go out.

"Now it's very chaotic outside," another resident said. "People have been burning cars and motorbikes and buses. There is smoke everywhere and they have been throwing rocks and breaking windows. We're scared."

A businesswoman surnamed Xia said: "It's martial law. . .There are People's Armed Police out, and they've been fighting the lamas."

Martial law could not be confirmed and China's State Council Information Office declined to comment, referring only to remarks made on Thursday by a Foreign Ministry spokesman, who said the protesters were "seeking to spark social turmoil".

RESTIVE

This week's shows of defiance are precisely what the Chinese government has been trying to avoid as it seeks to secure a stable environment for the Olympics, which open on August 8.

The region has been periodically restive since Chinese troops invaded in 1950. Nine years later, the Dalai Lama staged a failed uprising against Chinese rule and fled into exile in India.

China imposed martial law in Tibet in 1989, the same year as the Tiananmen Square protests were crushed in Beijing, to quell anti-Chinese demonstrations, when President Hu Jintao was the Communist Party boss in the region.

On Monday, 500 monks from the Drepung monastery marched in Lhasa. That was followed by action from monks at the Lhasa-area Sera and Ganden monasteries. Security personnel fired tear gas on at least one of the demonstrations, reports said.

The Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet said authorities had sealed off all three monasteries, citing tourism operators.

"There is an intensified atmosphere of fear and tension in Tibet's capital," the group said in a statement.

The US-government-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported monks from Sera were on a hunger strike, demanding withdrawal of Chinese paramilitary forces from the monastery compound and the release of monks detained earlier this week.

Two monks from Drepung were in critical condition after attempting suicide by slitting their wrists, RFA said.

The number of Tibetans detained could not be confirmed, but the watchdog groups said they expected government reprisals.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the read.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for this.

[JohnCenaFan28]

A top al-Qaeda figure suspected of having close ties to Osama Bin Laden has been taken to the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Pentagon says.


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The man, named as Muhammad Rahim, helped arrange Bin Laden's escape from his Tora Bora hideout in Afghanistan in 2001, US officials say.

He was transferred to the Pentagon from CIA custody, a Pentagon spokesman said.

It is not yet clear when or where the CIA captured him, or how long he has been in US custody.

'Most trusted'

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Rahim was a close associate of Bin Laden and had ties to al-Qaeda groups throughout the Middle East.

"He is one of [Osama Bin Laden's] most trusted facilitators and procurement specialists," Mr Whitman said.

"He helped prepare Tora Bora as a hideout for Osama Bin Laden. He assisted al-Qaeda's exodus from the area in late 2001."

US forces are believed to have come closest to trapping Bin Laden in a complex of caves in the mountainous Tora Bora region near the Pakistani border.

The hunt for him began following the 11 September, 2001, terror attacks on the US by al-Qaeda operatives.

BBC News

[wedge]

While it's always great to hear this, it is starting to lose its meaning. We seem to capture a "top" guy every few months, but we never seem closer to getting Bin Laden or making substantial progress it the WOT.

[wedge]

Glad to see he's manned up and accepted the blame and did the right thing by stepping down. "Kristin" is pretty good looking. Kind of hard to miss her pictures, she's been shown half naked all over the media.

[wedge]

Best of luck to Miracle.

[JohnCenaFan28]

A global campaign aimed at reducing the marketing of unhealthy food to children has been launched.

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More than 50 consumer groups are backing a voluntary code of practice which includes tight restrictions on television and internet advertising.

It also calls for a ban on unhealthy food promotion in schools and an end to the use of celebrities and cartoon characters.

UK food manufacturers said removing adverts was no "silver bullet".

World Health Organization figures suggest that up to 177m children worldwide are threatened by obesity-related diseases, and it is predicted that 2.3 billion people over 15 years old will be overweight by 2015.

The new measures have the backing of the London-based International Obesity Task Force, which says that the several billion pounds spent each year advertising food or soft drinks is partly to blame.

Its chairman, Professor Philip James, said: "It is vital that, as well as governments, food industry leaders support the new standards we propose.

"We challenge the giants of the food and beverage industry to throw their weight behind this and demonstrate they really do want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem."

The code concentrates on foods high in fat, sugar and salt, and, in addition to a ban on advertising between 6am and 9pm, asks for a complete halt to internet and new media advertising, and no use of celebrities or cartoon characters, competitions or free gifts.

Sue Davies, the chief policy officer of Which?, one of the 50 groups, said: "With rising rates of obesity and diet-related disease escalating globally, food companies need to take a more responsible approach to the way they market their foods to children, whichever part of the world they are trading in."

UK rules

In some parts of the world, including the European Union, there are some restrictions on marketing.

The UK television regulator Ofcom introduced a ban on marketing unhealthy foods in adverts during shows aimed at children. This came into force in January.

A spokesman for the Food and Drink Federation, which represents the UK industry, said: "As far as marketing in the UK is concerned, we are now one of the most heavily-regulated markets in Europe.

"As a result the marketing landscape has dramatically changed recently - for example in addition to the new regulations, many of our leading member companies are developing new codes of practice or strengthening their existing ones.

"These codes of practice apply to products popular with children, and the codes are implemented globally.

"Restricting advertising of food and drinks to children is not the silver bullet to solve the complex issue of obesity."

BBC News

[OMEN]

Chinese officials have declared a "people's war" of security and propaganda against support for the Dalai Lama in Tibet after riots racked the regional capital Lhasa, and some sources claimed the turmoil killed dozens.
Residents of the remote city high in the Himalayas said on Sunday that anti-riot troops controlled the streets and were closely checking Tibetan homes after protests and looting shook the heavily Buddhist region.

Two days ago Tibetan protesters, some in Buddhist monks' robes and some yelling pro-independence slogans, trashed shops, attacked banks and government offices and wielded stones and knives against police.

China has said at least 10 "innocent civilians" died, mostly in fires lit by rioters.

But an outside Tibetan source with close ties in Lhasa said that number was far too low. He cited a contact who claimed to have counted many more corpses of people killed in the riots or subsequent crackdown.

"He said there were 67 bodies in one morgue alone," the source told Reuters. "He saw it with his own eyes."

The self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India has said some 30 people were killed in clashes with Chinese authorities. Beijing bans foreign reporters from freely reporting in Tibet, so the conflicting claims cannot be easily checked.

The convulsion of Tibetan anger at the Chinese presence in the region came after days of peaceful protests by monks and was a sharp blow to Beijing's preparations for the Olympic Games in August, when China wants to showcase prosperity and unity.

The monks took to the streets on Monday to mark the 49th anniversary of an earlier uprising.

The protest later spread to Chinese areas inhabited by Tibetans. Xiahe in Gansu province saw hundreds of monks and lay residents march in peaceful defiance, to judge from pictures sent to reporters.

Chinese authorities have now signalled a sweeping campaign to redouble security in the region and attack public support for the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 after that year's failed uprising.

"This grave incident of fighting, wrecking, looting and burning was meticulously planned by reactionary separatist forces here and abroad, and its goal was Tibetan independence," a Saturday meeting of senior regional and security officials announced, according to the official Tibet Daily on Sunday.

"Fight a people's war to oppose separatism and protect stability ... expose and condemn the malicious actions of these forces and expose the hideous face of the Dalai clique to broad daylight."

The meeting was attended by Tibet's hardline Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, and senior central government security officials, and it strengthens signs that China has no patience with international calls for a lenient response to the riots.

Authorities have already set an ultimatum to rioters, urging them to hand themselves in to police by Monday midnight and gain possible clemency, or face harsh punishment.

The government has mobilised officially favoured Buddhist monks to denounce the protests and the Dalai Lama, the Tibet Daily reported.

"The Party's policies on religious freedom have been very well observed," one said, according to the paper.

"But monks in a few monasteries don't study the scriptures well ... and co-ordinate from afar with the Dalai clique."

International pressure has mounted on China to show restraint. Australia, the United States and Europe have urged China to find a peaceful outcome, and Japan has expressed concern.

Lhasa residents contacted by telephone, including some who spoke relatively freely a day or two ago, were frightened and reluctant to say much even anonymously.

"There are police checking our homes and handing out warnings," said a shopkeeper who lives near the old Tibetan part of Lhasa that saw torrid rioting. "Now is not the time to talk."

The Dalai Lama earlier released a statement urging China not to use "brute force" against protests, and his representatives have said the charge that they organised the violent protests was ridiculous.

The Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, has said he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet. To the great majority of Buddhist Tibetans, he remains a powerful and venerated figure.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Bombs have killed two men and wounded 18 other people in two separate attacks in Thailand's troubled Muslim deep south, police said.

A 20-kg remote-controlled bomb, hidden in a car near the entrance of a hotel in the city of Pattani, killed one man and wounded 13 others on Saturday, police said.

Three were injured seriously in the blast which destroyed more than a dozen cars and damaged the front of the CS Pattani hotel where officials visiting from Bangkok often stay.

Pattani is one of three far south provinces where more than 2500 people have been killed in mostly gun and bomb attacks since a separatist insurgency erupted in January 2004.

Hours after the hotel bombing, suspected militants used a mobile phone to detonate a 5kg bomb at a Pattani school, killing one firefighter and wounding five others. The firefighters were trying to put out a fire at the school when the bomb went off.

As security forces rushed the wounded to hospital, they were ambushed by insurgents. One soldier was wounded seriously, police said.

Security personnel along with Buddhist monks and government school teachers are prime targets for militants in the region, an independent sultanate until annexed by Thailand a century ago.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for attacks in the deep south, where most people speak a Malay dialect and where the government has stationed several thousand troops in a so far unsuccessful attempt to quell the unrest.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Pro-Tibetan demonstrators hurled eggs and water bottles at China's consulate in Melbourne today in protest against China's rule over the Himalayan kingdom.

More than 100 Tibetans and their supporters began demonstrating outside the consulate, in leafy Toorak in Melbourne's east, at 10am (AEDT), following a similar event outside Chinese consular offices in Sydney yesterday.

What began as a peaceful affair turned rowdy as a handful of demonstrators repeatedly surged towards the consulate's gates, before being pushed back by federal, Victorian and mounted police officers.

At one point, a car driven by an unidentified Chinese man was pelted with eggs and battered with flagpoles as it swept into the consulate compound.

A female protester who sneaked past the police line and followed the car inside was chased by police and frogmarched back outside before being cautioned.

Australia Tibet Council campaigns coordinator Simon Bradshaw said that despite the Tibetans' proud history of non-violence and peaceful dissent, the protesters were releasing decades of pent-up frustration at China's occupation of their homeland.

"One of the frustrating things for the Tibetans at the moment is that the dialogue process between Tibet and China has stalled, so there's a lot of frustration around, here in Melbourne, in Sydney yesterday, in Tibet and around the world," Mr Bradshaw told AAP.

"Everyone's now aware of the way things have escalated in Lhasa. I think it's made it very clear that China's rule in Tibet isn't working and there's a need more than ever for them to engage in constructive dialogue with the Tibetan government in exile."

The demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney follow deadly clashes on Friday between Chinese authorities and protesters in the Tibetan capital Lhasa which, Tibet's exiled government said, left as many as 30 dead.

Four pro-Tibet activists were arrested following yesterday's protest outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney's inner west suburb of Camperdown.

Kesang Wangmo, one of the demonstrators at the Melbourne protest, said China's oppression was hurting her homeland.

"The Chinese say they come to liberate us, to make our life better, but they didn't. It's time the world stands up," an emotional Ms Wangmo said.

"Tibet has lots to offer to the world. I appeal to the Australian public, I know they have good hearts, please be aware of what's happening in Tibet."

Police said one woman was cautioned after breaching the consulate compound but no arrests were made.

AAP

[OMEN]

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MY DAUGHTER'S BACK: Karen Matthews, Shannon's mum, smiles outside her Dewsbury home after she was reunited with her daughter.
The mother of nine-year-old Shannon Matthews says she was overwhelmed at being reunited with her daughter and "just couldn't stop crying."

Detectives are trying to find out what happened to the girl between her disappearance from the gates of her school in Dewsbury and her dramatic rescue 24 days later.

She was discovered in the base of a bed at a flat in the area after police smashed their way in on Friday. A 39-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of abduction.

Police said the schoolgirl had spent a "comfortable and settled night and is starting on the road to recovery following her ordeal".

She spent the night watching DVDs and has been playing with a kitten.

Her mother Karen Matthews said "When I first saw Shannon again I was overwhelmed. I just couldn't stop crying, knowing she's back where she belongs and she's safe."

"I never gave up hope and now she'll be able to come home and sleep in her room again. We've got her new pink bedding which she will love," she added.

Shannon's father Leon Rose was equally overjoyed, saying "I am buzzing over it, especially since Shannon has been found alive. I'm over the moon."

Matthews had been missing for nearly four weeks, sparking a massive police search which involved about 10 percent of the West Yorkshire police force.

Detectives said they will begin to talk to Matthews, who is the subject of an emergency police protection order, following medical checks.

"The interviews may be a long process but throughout this enquiry our main focus has been and continues to be Shannon's welfare," police said in a statement.

The order will remain in place until police have "had time to establish the full facts of what happened in the time since her disappearance".

Matthews was found after detectives broke down the door of the house a mile from her family home in Dewsbury.

Neighbours said the girl appeared "quite calm" when she emerged from the house in Batley Carr.

Locals later ripped up "Missing Shannon" posters and threw them in the air like confetti in celebration of her safe return.

Matthews had gone missing on February 19 after a swimming trip, prompting one of the biggest investigations in the area since the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry of the late 1970s.

Reuters

[OMEN]

A US warplane has fired missiles at a house in a Pakistani region known as a haven for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, killing at least 9 militants and wounding nine.
Latest Pakistan bomb shows move to 'soft targets'

Four missiles were fired at the house in Shahnawaz Kheil Dhoog, a village near the town of Wana in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, just after 3pm, the intelligence official said.

"It was apparently an American plane that fired precision guided missiles at the house," the official, who requested not to be identified, told Reuters.

Three foreigners, an Arab and two Turkmen, were among those killed, according to the intelligence official.

Villagers put the death toll at 18.

"Except the boundary walls, the house has been destroyed," said a senior district government official who declined to be identified.

"The place has been used for some time as a militant hideout," he said.

The attack came a day after a Turkish woman was killed and five Americans were among 11 people wounded in a bomb attack at a restaurant popular with foreigners in the capital, Islamabad.

A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the Islamabad bomb, the latest in a surge of attacks that began in July after troops stormed a radical mosque complex in Islamabad.

Hundreds of people, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, have been killed in bomb attacks since then, raising fears for stability in the nuclear-armed US ally.

US forces have used pilotless drone aircraft to fire missiles at militants on the Pakistani side of the border several times in recent years.

The intelligence official said Sunday's attack was not carried out by a drone, although villagers believed they recognised the engine noise.

A missile believed fired by a US drone killed 13 suspected militants in South Waziristan in late February. On Jan. 28, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, Abu Laith al-Libi, was killed in a strike in North Waziristan.

Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said there were reports of blasts and some casualties in the area and the military was checking.

He said Pakistani forces had not conducted any operation in the area and he did not know who carried out the strike or what type of weapon was used.

Neither US nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm US missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which would be an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.

There is widespread public opposition in Pakistan to the US-led campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan says it would not allow foreign military operations on its soil.

Many al Qaeda members, including Uzbeks and Arabs, and Taliban militants took refuge in North and South Waziristan, as well as in other areas on the Pakistani side of the border after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

From sanctuaries in the lawless border belt, the Taliban have orchestrated their insurgency against the Afghan government and the US and Nato forces supporting it.

Increasingly, so-called Pakistani Taliban have been mounting attacks in Pakistani towns and cities, many aimed at security forces and other government targets.

Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for an umbrella organisation of Pakistani militant groups, said the Pakistani Taliban were responsible for the blast in Islamabad on Saturday and twin blasts in the city of Lahore on Tuesday that killed 24 people.

"These attacks were a reaction to operations being carried out by the military against our people. We will continue this if they don't stop killing our people," Omar said by telephone.

Reuters

[OMEN]

A grouping of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters have backed UN-led efforts to forge a global pact to fight climate change but disagree on a sectoral approach to curb emissions from industry.

G20 nations ranging from top carbon emitters the United States and China to big developing economies Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa held three days of talks near Tokyo to discuss ways to tackle rapidly rising emissions.

"It's not so much these two groups are at loggerheads with each other, they are also thinking of how they can co-operate collectively," Halldor Thorgeirsson of the UN Climate Change Secretariat told Reuters.

The developing world is demanding rich states do more to curb their own emissions and help poorer countries pay for clean technology.

Both sides managed to bridge differences in Bali last December to launch two years of talks on a pact that binds all nations to emissions curbs to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

"The whole debate on climate change is moving away from just being an issue of targets to being an issue of how to reduce emissions," said Thorgeirsson, who was pleased with the G20 talks that were billed as a dialogue, not a negotiation.

"This is a very good sign that the good spirit of Bali will prevail in Bangkok as well," he said, referring to the March 31-April 4 meeting in the Thai capital, the first UN-led climate meeting of nations that backed the "Bali roadmap".

But some G20 members and delegates voiced concern over Japan's proposal for sectoral caps for polluting industries.

Japan wants top greenhouse gas emitting nations to assign near-term emissions targets for each industrial sector which, added up, would then form a national target.

But it was unclear if this target was mandatory or voluntary and developing nations said the scheme needed to take into account their individual circumstances.

"It is clear that developed and developing countries are still far apart on sectoral approaches," South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told Reuters.

Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, was more guarded.

"We all agree that a sectoral approach is needed," said Andrej Kranjc of Solvenia's Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning.

"Only this Japanese proposal is a little different from the understanding of others, including the European Union. Let's say it has potential, we all agree on that."

Indonesia called for more funding and the transfer of clean energy technology. Otherwise a sectoral approach would not work.

"The goal is the same for developed and developing countries, but there are big differences in thinking," said Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari.

The talks in Chiba, near Tokyo, also sparked a row over big developing nations being labelled "major emitters", a term US officials used at the gathering.

South Africa, Indonesia, India and Brazil told the meeting they objected to the label since on a per-capita basis, their carbon emissions were a fraction of the roughly 24 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent produced by the average American.

Developing nations also called for more clarity on the funding and management of schemes to pay for clean energy technology projects in their countries.

Van Schalkwyk said on Saturday it was crucial developing nations had greater involvement in the management of clean technology funds, particularly recently announced funds to be managed by the World Bank with money from Japan, the United States and Britain.

About 190 nations agreed in Bali to try to find a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009. Under the Bali roadmap, all nations would be obligated to curb carbon emissions under Kyoto's successor from 2013.

Kyoto first phase ends in 2012 and binds only rich nations to emissions curbs.

But rapidly rising emissions from developing nations means the pact is no longer effective in trying to limit dangerous climate change that scientists say will cause rising sea levels and greater extremes of droughts and floods.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Dozens of right-wing Jewish activists have stormed the Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem of a Palestinian gunman who killed eight Israelis at a Jewish seminary earlier this month, police and witnesses said.

Dozens of protesters broke through police barriers and hurled stones at cars and houses in the neighbourhood of Jabal Mukaber, where the family of the seminary attacker lives.

About 200 people had gathered outside the village and a number of the protesters broke through the police barrier, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

"Stones were thrown and 13 people were arrested," Rosenfeld said. No one was injured in the violence, police said.

The attacker, Ala Abu Dhaim, was buried at night on Thursday after about a week's delay because police feared a public funeral might trigger protests and violence.

The attack on the Jewish seminary earlier this month was the deadliest Palestinian attack on Israelis in two years and the first major attack in Jerusalem in four years.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for this story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for this story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Great news, thanks.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown.


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Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.

Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe.

Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator.

Estimates for 2006 indicate shrinkage of 1.4 metres of 'water equivalent' compared to half a metre in 2005.

Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary General of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP), said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year.

"There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice.

Litmus test

He said that action was already being taken and pointed out that the elements of a green economy were emerging from the more the money invested in renewable energies.

Mr Steiner went on: "The litmus test will come in late 2009 at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen.

"Here governments must agree on a decisive new emissions reduction and adaptation-focused regime. Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for manoeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply melt away."

Dr Ian Willis, of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said: "It is not too late to stop the shrinkage of these ice sheets but we need to take action immediately."

The findings were compiled by the World Glacier Monitoring Service which is supported by UNEP. Thickening and thinning is calculated in terms of 'water equivalent'.

Glaciers across nine mountain ranges were analysed.

Dr. Wilfried Haeberli, director of the service, said: "The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight.

"This continues the trend in accelerated ice loss during the past two and a half decades and brings the total loss since 1980 to more than 10.5 metres of water equivalent."

During 1980-1999, average loss rates had been 0.3 metres per year. Since the turn of the millennium, this rate had increased to about half a metre per year.

The record annual loss during these two decades - 0.7 metres in 1998 - has now been exceeded by three out of the past six year (2003, 2004 and 2006).

On average, one metre water equivalent corresponds to 1.1 metres in ice thickness. That suggests a further shrinking in 2006 of 1.5 actual metres and since 1980 a total reduction in thickness of ice of just over 11.5 metres or almost 38 feet.

In its entirety, the research includes figures from around 100 glaciers, with data showing significant shrinkage taking place in European countries including Austria, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier thinned by almost 3.1 metres in one of the largest reductions.

BBC News

[Punisher]

yeah that doesnt sound too good there

[JohnCenaFan28]

Male fertility problems are determined in the womb, research from the University of Edinburgh suggests.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44490000/jpg/_44490675_sperm_cright_apacey.203.jpg

Common genital disorders, low sperm count and testicular cancer could all be linked to hormone levels early in pregnancy, studies in rats suggest.

It was found that levels of male hormones, such as testosterone, in a critical "window" at 8-12 weeks determine future reproductive health.

The results are published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Problems with reproductive development such as the testes not descending properly into the scrotum (cryptorchidism) or the urinary tract opening in the wrong place on the penis (hypospadias) are fairly common in young boys.

Other disorders, such as low sperm counts and testicular cancer, are thought to be part of the same pathway.

Using the mouse model, researchers at the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit found the disorders resulted from low levels of male hormones - or androgens - at the equivalent to 8-12 weeks human gestation.

They also found that the level of androgen hormone at this time was related to the distance between the base of the penis and the anus.

This measurement could be an early warning system of future reproductive problems in baby boys, they said.

It could also give insights into links between hormones in the womb and fertility problems in later life.

Timeline

Study leader, Dr Michelle Welsh, said: "We know from other studies that androgens work during foetal development to programme the reproductive tract.

"But our assumption was that it would be much later in pregnancy."

She added the anogenital measurement would be a useful tool.

"Say a clinician were to examine a 30-year-old man with testicular cancer - previously there would have been no way of knowing what hormones he was exposed to in the womb.

"We would suggest that this measurement, even at this later stage in life, could offer an indication of hormone exposure."

"For example, the shorter the distance, the less confident we can be that hormones have acted correctly and at the right time."

Co-author, Professor Richard Sharpe, said around 7% of boys had cryptorchidism and low sperm counts affect as many as one in five young men.

Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said scientists had been worried for many years about the increasing incidence of problems resulting from disrupted development of the male reproductive system during pregnancy.

"Understandably, this is almost impossible to study in humans directly and so animal models are needed to unravel the precise details.

"To use the adult anogenital distance as a proxy marker of foetal exposure in utero is a good suggestion and I would encourage studies to investigate how well this correlates with problems of the male reproductive system."

BBC News

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/709570.jpg
GRIPPING: Police arrest a Tibetan protester in the Nepali capital Kathmandu. Tibetan refugees in Nepal are demanding justice in front of the UN office in Kathmandu over the crackdown on Tibetans by Chinese authorities, just one of the many protests going on worldwide.
Ethnic Tibetan students have staged a candle-lit vigil in Beijing, saying it was to pray for the dead, hours before a midnight deadline warning anti-Chinese rioters in the Tibetan capital to surrender.
Police kept reporters well away from the peaceful protest by dozens of apparently ethnic Tibetan students gathered inside the Central University for Nationalities.

It was a small, rare show of defiance in the host city of this year's Olympic Games, where Communist Party authorities are especially eager to prevent public shows of dissent.

"It was only to pray for the souls of the dead," said an ethnic Tibetan student from northwest China's Gansu province, who was kept away from the sit-in by security guards.

The vigil was broken up by authorities hours before a deadline in Tibet's regional capital, Lhasa, for protesters who rioted through the city on Friday to hand themselves in to police or face harsher treatment afterward.

Exiled representatives of Tibet in Dharamsala in India on Sunday put the death toll in Friday's protests against Chinese rule at 80.

Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet regional government, said only 13 "innocent civilians" had been killed and dozens of security personnel injured.

A Tibetan shopkeeper near Lhasa's marketplace, badly hit by the violence, said he had not heard of anyone surrendering to the police or informing on suspected rioters.

"We are just waiting for the time to pass," he said.

As the deadline approached, a Chinese spokesman told reporters his government would not compromise with Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, or re-examine its policies in Tibet.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the often bloody unrest had been organised by the Dalai Lama's followers at home and abroad.

"It's not an ethnic issue, not a religious issue or a cultural one," he said. "At the root, it's the fundamental problem of the Dalai clique seeking to separate Tibet from China."

The Dalai Lama says he wants autonomy for Tibet within China but not outright independence, and he has strongly rejected the allegation that he launched the protests.

RESTRAINT AND TROOP CONVOYS

China said it had shown great restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans and Lhasa was returning to order.

Troops poured into areas neighbouring Tibet which are largely inhabited by ethnic Tibetans but ethnic Tibetan people there said angry anti-Chinese demonstrations were still sporadically erupting.

An ethnic Tibetan in remote, mountainous Aba prefecture in Sichuan province said fresh protests flared near two Tibetan schools on Monday, with hundreds of students facing police and troops.

About 40 students from a high school for Tibetans in Maertang county, Aba, were beaten and arrested for protesting, the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy later said. Repeated calls to the school went unanswered.

The resident, who asked not be identified, said 18 people, including Buddhist monks and students, had been killed when troops opened fire on Sunday. Earlier a policeman was burned to death, he said. His account could not be immediately verified.

The violence of the past week is likely to weigh uncomfortably on the Chinese state, anxious to polish its image in the build-up to the Games.

"If the Tibetans in Lhasa take to the streets again in large numbers and really challenge the Chinese authorities, I think we'll see a very harsh crackdown," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.

INTERNATIONAL REACTION

The European Union has called on both authorities and protesters to refrain from violence and said a boycott of the Olympics would not be the right answer.

Russia said it hoped China would do what was necessary to curtail "unlawful actions" in Tibet. A brief Russian Foreign Ministry statement made no criticism of Beijing.

There have been daily pro-Tibet protests around the world since last Monday. On Sunday, French police used tear gas against around 500 demonstrators at the Chinese embassy in Paris, and there were incidents at missions in New York and Australia.

"We strongly condemn the violent action of Tibet independence activists," spokesman Liu said, denouncing attacks on its missions abroad.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and set up a government-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India.

Spokesman Liu said the riots were a blow to the Dalai Lama's claim to support peaceful protest. "His act is getting harder and harder to keep up," Liu said.

Reuters

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/709662.jpg
MARKET DIVE: Stocks have tumbled across world markets following yesterday's rock-bottom sale of troubled bank and Wall St icon Bear Stearns.
Global stocks have fallen sharply overnight following the sale of stricken Wall St bank Bear Stearns at a rock-bottom price.
Global markets were driven by fear that the US Federal Reserve's move to back JPMorgan in taking over Bear Stearns reflected a widening of worldwide credit crisis that could engulf other banks and market participants.

In New York, however, equities were lifted by several rally attempts in morning trading and overall loses were half the level of other global markets.

"Much to everyone's shock," the Dow was not completely mired in negative territory, said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The need for a Fed bailout, however, kept trading cautious and jittery.

"We're in a position now where really the Fed is the only entity out there that can really help, to get the market back on track," said Kenny.

The dollar tumbled and investors piled into the safety of government debt following steep sell-offs of equity markets in Europe and Asia. US stocks opened sharply lower but pared many losses and the Dow went in and out of positive territory.

Efforts by the US Federal Reserve to restore battered investor confidence may have taken the edge off a grim mood in global markets. In an emergency move on Sunday the Fed cut a key lending rate and announced new measures to stabilize credit markets rocked by rising defaults on US mortgage debt.

Reacting to signs of continuing instability. government debt prices surged in a flight to safety. US And European short-term inter-bank lending rates jumped, while spreads of US banks' credit default swaps widened, signalling growing fears of counter-party risk in the banking system.

Bids for cash instruments were so sharp that the yield on 3-month US Treasury bills fell below 1 per cent to levels not seen in 50 years.

Traders reported that money markets were near stand-still with banks increasingly wary of lending to each other after news that JPMorgan would buy Bear Stearns for just $US2 a share.

Banking shares in the United States and Europe tumbled -- Lehman Brothers was down 25 per cent, UBS fell 10 per cent and Citigroup shed 6.5 per cent -- leading benchmark stock indexes lower.

The market had a positive view on the move by JPMoran, which rose 9.85 per cent. Investors saw it as a rock-bottom price of $US236 million -- a tiny fraction of the fifth-largest US investment bank's market value a year ago.

US stock indexes fell almost 2 per cent shortly after opening and European shares fell more than 4 per cent, following a sell-off in Asia, where Japan's leading indexes shed 3.7 per cent.

A bounce in the Dow proved short-lived and the broader market remained in the red amid investor concerns that the global credit crisis may be spiraling out of control.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI dropped 114.39 points, or 0.96 per cent, to 11,836.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX shed 23.44 points, or 1.82 per cent, to 1,264.70. The Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 44.78 points, or 2.02 per cent, to 2,167.71.

The financial sector tumbled, as Lehman Brothers sank 23.9 to $US29.86 and Citigroup dropped 7.3 per cent to $US18.35. The Standard & Poor's financial index was down 3.6 per cent.

The US dollar hit new lows against the euro and a basket of six major currencies. Oil hit a new high of nearly $US112 a barrel on the weaker dollar.

And investors dived into safe haven assets, lifting gold to more than $US1,030 an ounce at one point and sending yields on short-dated euro zone debt below 3 per cent for the first time in more than two years.

"The markets are in a complete state of panic and in such situations there is no such thing as valuation or value in any asset," said Michael Klawitter, FX strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Frankfurt.

In a shock move late on Sunday (Monday morning NZT), the Fed lowered the discount rate it charges on direct loans to banks to 3.25 per cent from 3.50 and implemented steps to provide cash to a wider range of financial firms, using tools last used in the Great Depression.

LIQUIDITY SQUEEZE

Investors are now nearly fully pricing in a 1 percentage point cut in the main federal funds rate at or before the Fed's policy meeting on Tuesday.

That would take US rates down to just 2.0 per cent.

There were also signs of continuing liquidity worries.

The Bank of England said it would offer 5 billion pounds of three-day funds later on Monday in an exceptional fine-tuning operation designed to bring overnight interest rates down.

Market strategists said there was a deep distrust between banks when it came to lending.

"It's quite illiquid this morning. If you want unsecured cash you're really going to have to pay up for it. It's really quite an intense situation," said David Keeble, head of rate strategy at Calyon.

Concern swirled that problems were not contained to Bear Stearns. Merrill Lynch fell 7.9 per cent and Goldman Sachs declined 6.2 per cent.

STOCKS, DOLLAR DOWN SHARPLY

European shares tumbled. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 3.4 per cent, having pared losses from an earlier decline of 4.4 per cent.

Earlier, Japanese stocks fell to about a 2&frac; year closing low, dragged down by exporters worried about a rising yen.

The Nikkei average fell 3.7 per cent or 454.09 points to end at 11,787.51, its lowest finish since August 8, 2005.

The broader TOPIX index shed 3.7 per cent or 43.58 points to 1,149.65, the lowest close since June 2005.

The US dollar plunged across the board.

It slid as much as 3 per cent in early Monday trading as low as 95.77 yen according to Reuters data, the lowest since 1995, and set fresh all-time lows at 0.9637 Swiss francs.

It later recovered to 96.91 yen and 0.9834 Swiss franc.

The euro soared as high as a new record $US1.5904 before dropping back to $US1.57533.

A record low dollar and an emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve also fueled buying in gold, and traders expected choppy business ahead of a rate-setting decision by the US central bank on Tuesday.

He active gold contract for April delivery GCJ8 in New York rose $US12.70 to $US1,012.20 an ounce after hitting a new record of $US1,033.90.

Oil dropped from a record high as a part of wider commodity sell-off sparked by growing concern over the health of the world's largest economy.

US crude CLc1 was trading at $US106.87 by 1359 GMT, down $US3.34 from the previous close. Earlier, it hit a new record of $US111.80 and then fell to a session low of $US105.11.

The gold contract for April delivery GCJ8 in New York was up $US12.70 to $US1,012.20 an ounce, after hitting a record $US1,033.90.

Reuters

[OMEN]

US Vice President Dick Cheney has declared the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavour" in a visit to Iraq that was overshadowed by a suicide bombing that killed at least 27 people.
"If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour ... and it has been well worth the effort," Cheney told a news conference in Baghdad after meeting Iraqi leaders.

The Iraq war is a major issue in the US presidential campaign. As it enters it sixth year, the war has cost the US economy $US500 billion and seen nearly 4,000 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed.

Shortly after Cheney spoke, a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in a cafe in the southern holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, killing 27 people and wounding 50, police and health officials said. Bombs in Baghdad killed four and wounded 13.

Cheney, an architect of the invasion, arrived as Republican presidential candidate John McCain was meeting Iraqi leaders as part of a Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission.

"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense that, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation," Cheney said after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Cheney said there had been a "remarkable turnaround" in security after 30,000 extra troops were sent to Iraq last year to help reduce sectarian violence that threatened civil war.

Despite the improved security, however, some 4 million Iraqis are still displaced, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report on Monday that millions were still deprived of clean water and medical care.

Like McCain, Cheney is in Iraq as part of a wider tour to the Middle East. Cheney will also visit Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, Turkey and Oman on a nine-day tour.

Both men have been staunch supporters of the US troop build-up that Washington says helped drag Iraq back from the brink of all-out sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Muslims who were dominant under Saddam.

"The surge is working," McCain, referring to the troop build-up, told CNN in an interview in Baghdad.

REUTERS

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/709579.jpg
ROLL ON: French NATO peacekeeping troops protect the UN court compound during clashes in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Serbs have attacked a UN convoy carrying Serb detainees from a raid in Kosovo, enabling several detainees to escape, witnesses said.
Serbs have fired guns and thrown grenades at UN police and Nato troops in Kosovo in the worst violence since Albanian leaders declared Kosovo's independence from Serbia a month ago.

Nato said its troops came under automatic gunfire in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo in clashes with Serbs, who oppose independence. The clashes began after UN special police backed by Nato peacekeepers stormed a UN court that had been seized by Serbs on Friday.

Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were wounded. UN police said 63 officers were injured, in addition to a dozen members of the Nato-led KFOR peacekeeping force.

The clashes highlighted the risk of Kosovo's partition along ethnic lines following the independence declaration on February 17. Serbia's ally Russia demanded restraint by Nato and Serbia said it was consulting Moscow on joint steps to protect Kosovo Serbs.

A Serbian party leader said Nato was behaving like the Nazi occupiers of World War 2. But a Nato spokesman said KFOR would not give in to violence.

It was the third major challenge to Nato and UN authority in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo since protesters burned down two border posts last month. A European Union office was also forced to move out because of security threats.

A Serb hospital director said three Serbs were badly hurt, one shot through the head "by a sniper". A Nato spokesman said warning shots were fired into the air, not into the crowd.

UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko said several hundred UN police and nine civilian staff had been moved from north Mitrovica to the south, but would return "as soon as the security situation permits".

Mitrovica calmed down, but with KFOR soldiers securing key points rather than the UN and Kosovo police who normally patrolled the town before the independence declaration.

"Nato condemns in the strongest form the violence we have seen in northern Kosovo today," Nato spokesman James Appathurai said. "KFOR will respond firmly to any acts of violence, as is its mandate from the United Nations," he said.

Serbia blamed the UN and Nato for heavy-handed action.

Serbia's caretaker prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, accused Nato of "implementing a policy of force against Serbia" and said Serbia and Russia were discussing moves to stop "all forms of violence against Kosovo Serbs".

This raised the prospect of Serbia inviting Russian troops into Serb-dominated northern Kosovo as peacekeepers, undermining the authority of the Nato-led KFOR mission, creating potential for conflict, or heralding a partition of the territory.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, recalling the March 17, 2004, Albanian riots in which 19 people were killed and hundreds of Serb homes burned down, warned of the risk of provoking a fresh Albanian "pogrom" against Kosovo's 120,000 minority Serbs.

Tomislav Nikolic of Serbia's largest party, the hardline opposition Radicals, called it "a brutal and savage action" against Serbs, the state news agency Tanjug reported.

He said it reminded him of actions "Hitler's occupying regime carried out against Serbs" in World War 2.

DAWN RAID

The clash began at dawn when several hundred UN special police backed by Nato peacekeepers stormed the UN court and arrested dozens of people.

Hundreds of Serbs fought back with stones, grenades and powerful firecrackers, forcing the UN police to pull back and leave KFOR to face the rioters. Rioters attacked UN vehicles, breaking doors to free 10 of those detained in the raid.

Nato said shots were fired at troops.

"We used automatic weapons to respond but fired only warning shots," French spokesman Etienne du Fayet de la Tour said. "We shot in the air, not into the crowd."

A KFOR spokesman said eight French KFOR soldiers were injured by "grenades, stones and Molotov cocktails". UN police ordered a pullout "after attacks with explosive devices suspected to be hand grenades, and firearms" a statement said.

Fourteen Ukrainian police in UN uniforms were injured when "fighters" attacked their police station", Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko said. Poland said 13 officers were hurt.

Serbia's minister for Kosovo in the caretaker government, Slobodan Samardzic, said the United Nations had broken its word by moving in to evict the court-building occupiers.

"This what they have done to us. We'll pay them back," he told a crowd in Mitrovica. Serbs should trust Belgrade, he said.

Asked if the violence would force the European Union to halt or delay deployment of its planned rule-of-law mission numbering some 2,000 police and magistrates, EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana said: "Let me be very clear. The answer is No"

But Russia, which says the EU mission is illegal, blamed Kosovo's "illegitimate" secession for the rioting.

"A turn of events which leads to violence and clashes cannot be allowed," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "The international presence should show restraint and act strictly in accordance with its (United Nations) mandate."

Reuters

[OMEN]

Premier Wen Jiabao has defended China's crackdown in Tibet, accusing the Himalayan region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of organising the rioting that may have left dozens dead.

"There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," Wen told a news conference.

"This has all the more revealed the consistent claims by the Dalai clique that they pursue not independence but peaceful dialogue are nothing but lies."

The Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959, has denied Chinese accusations he incited the rioting. The god-king of Tibetan Buddhists says he wants autonomy for Tibet within China but not outright independence.

Monk-led pro-independence protests, the biggest in almost two decades, erupted in Tibet's regional capital Lhasa last Monday and by the weekend spilled into nearby Chinese provinces with significant Tibetan populations.

Some turned ugly, weighing uncomfortably on China, anxious to polish its image in the build-up to the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

Western nations have called on Beijing to exercise restraint, but International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told Reuters in Trinidad on Monday there had been "absolutely no calls" from governments for a Beijing Games boycott.

Exiled representatives of Tibet in India put the death toll from last Friday's protests against Chinese rule at 80.

But Chinese authorities said security forces exercised restraint in response to the Lhasa burning and looting, using only non-lethal weapons, and only 13 "innocent civilians" died.

There was no word from Lhasa of any action taken after the passing of a Monday midnight deadline for people involved in the rioting to surrender to police or face harsher treatment.

Foreign journalists are not allowed to travel to the Himalayan region of Tibet without permission.

In neighbouring Sichuan province, an ethnic Tibetan man said he knew of no fresh outbreaks of unrest since Monday.

"Now they are bringing back stability," he told Reuters by telephone, requesting anonymity out of fear for his safety.

"There are so many police and People's Armed Police it will be difficult for anything to spread," he said.

"I'm sure the People's Liberation Army is waiting too. In the background waiting, if the situation really gets out of hand."

Reuters

[OMEN]

A man accused of murdering an elderly Australian woman in Vanuatu is back behind bars after breaking out of jail.

Jacky Saul threatened guards with an axe during his escape from a Port Vila jail on March 4. He showed up at his parents' house on Sunday, but they contacted police and turned him in.

Saul is the chief suspect in the murder of Australian woman Lyndall Jaques, 69, who was found with her throat cut in her Port Vila home in January.

Vanuatu's Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police, Arthur Caulton, said Saul, 21, was a high-risk offender who escaped while on kitchen duties.

"He was involved in some cooking. He was with an axe chopping up wood to light a fire and he threatened correctional services officers with the axe and then took off from the prison," Caulton said.

Saul's March 4 escape came three days before a mass break-out of 20 inmates from the same jail; 14 were recaptured at the weekend with a manhunt continuing for the other six.

Caulton said all of the escapees were suspected of serious crimes such as murder or rape.

He said the mass break-out occurred after a guard accidentally left a door open.

"A guard left the door open. She was talking to her parents who were visiting at the time. The prisoners took the chance to leave," Caulton said.

"During the main escape three guards were assaulted when they tried to stop the men from leaving."

Saul is expected to appear in court on murder charges later this month.

AAP

[OMEN]

A Singaporean man swallowed more than $A500,000 ($NZ581,000) worth of heroin and then tried to smuggle it into Australia, a court has been told.

The Supreme Court in Brisbane was told Ng Teck Boon, 40, had 91 packets of heroin in his stomach when he was arrested at Brisbane International Airport on June 27 last year.

He pleaded guilty today to one count of importing a marketable quantity of a border controlled drug.

Commonwealth prosecutor Paul Huygens told the court Ng had arrived on a flight from Hong Kong and was questioned by Customs officers after looking "nervous".

Ng quickly admitted to having swallowed a large amount of heroin before boarding the flight.

He was arrested by Australian Federal Police and spent two days in hospital while he passed all the packages.

The court was told Ng had swallowed almost 500g of powder, and that the pure weight of the heroin was 286.1g.

The drugs had an estimated street value of $A572,000.

Defence barrister Simon Lewis said Ng had agreed to courier the drugs to Australia out of desperation for money.

Mr Lewis told the court his client had travelled to Hong Kong in search of work but had been lured into becoming a mule with the promise of a $US5000 payment.

He was given just $US400 and a mobile phone before leaving for Australia, and told immigration officials the purpose of his trip was for a holiday.

Justice John Byrne today sentenced Ng to nine years jail with a non-parole period of five years.

AAP

[OMEN]

Vietnam, one of the countries hardest-hit by bird flu, will start a human vaccine trial this month, a military medical official has said.

The official did not give a specific date but said the Health Ministry had approved testing that would last eight months at the Military Medical Academy in Ha Tay province near Hanoi.

"We are going to conduct the tests at the academy, with people joining on a voluntary basis, including students and employees," said the official, who asked not to be identified in the media.

The academy had been licensed by the Ministry of Health to conduct the trial but it still required permission from the Ministry of Defence, the official said.

A company run by the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology said in a statement on its website that it would produce six million doses per year for application on both humans and poultry should the tests be successful.

Five people have died of bird flu in Vietnam so far this year out of six reported H5N1 infections. The World Health Organisation has recorded 51 deaths in Vietnam since late 2003 out of 235 people killed among 372 known cases globally.

WHO in Vietnam said it was not directly involved in the Communist-run Southeast Asian country's development of a human vaccine for the H5N1 virus.

"Our understanding is that this would be for local issue only and that the Ministry of Health has rigorous guidelines for quality control," said Dida Connor, WHO spokeswoman in Hanoi.

The Company for Vaccine and Biological Production No.1, known as Vabiotech, said in its statement that the vaccine used for poultry would be 1.5 microgram per dose, or one tenth the dose for humans.

On March 2, GlaxoSmithKline company said a vaccine it designed to protect people against H5N1 may be effective in warding off a few different sub-types of the virus.

In an Asian clinical trial involving 1206 adults in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, the vaccine produced antibodies that not only neutralised the H5N1 virus found in Vietnam, but also the variant now dogging Indonesia.

A vaccine designed using a current H5N1 strain might not offer protection against other strains and might even be useless against any eventual pandemic strain because viruses mutate all the time.

Still, experts say the process of making vaccines will lay down the necessary infrastructure so that the time used to make an eventual pandemic vaccine - anywhere between 4 to 6 months after a pandemic begins - can be shortened.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has offered to resume talks with self-ruled Taiwan which China claims as its own but warned the island that passage of a contentious referendum on UN membership would disrupt ties.

Taiwan, ruled separately from China since the end of a civil war in 1949, will hold a referendum on UN membership alongside presidential elections on Saturday, ignoring warnings from the United States, France, Japan and China.

"We hope to resume peace talks across the Straits as soon as possible under the one China principle. Any questions can be addressed, including such major issues as ending the hostile state between the two sides," Wen told a news conference.

"Anyone who wants to separate Taiwan from the motherland will not succeed and is doomed to fail," Wen said.

China opposed the referendum because it would change Beijing's cherished policy that both the island and the mainland belong to a single country, Wen said.

China insists the democratic island should eventually be returned to the fold, by force if necessary.

Su Chi, deputy manager for Taiwan's main opposition Nationalist Party candidate Ma Ying-jeou, who favours closer ties with China, said there was nothing new in Wen's comments.

"It looks like there's no change," Su told Reuters. "It's just reiteration. So we will reiterate that the future of cross-Strait relations is for the 23 million citizens of Taiwan to decide."

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, the island's main policy making body for China relations, had no immediate comment.

Reuters

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A group of Liberian women refugees who have held naked protests by the roadside are to be deported from Ghana, a minister has told the BBC.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44499000/jpg/_44499760_liberians203.jpg

Hundreds of the women were arrested on Monday and taken away from a refugee camp in 10 buses, witnesses say.

They were protesting at plans to send them home with $100 - they demand $1,000 and to be resettled in the West.

Stripping naked is a traditional form of protest amongst poor and powerless women in Africa.

Interior Minister Kwamena Bartels said that the Liberian war had ended. He denied it was forced repatriation.

He said they had broken local laws by not informing the police of their protest.

"When women strip themselves naked and stand by a major highway, that is not a peaceful demonstration," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

He said they would be deported later this week.

Some 27,000 Liberians are in Ghana after years of conflict at home.

But the civil war ended in 2003.

Some of the refugees told the BBC they had been beaten by the Ghanaian police at Buduburam camp, west of the capital, Accra.

They refuse to be integrated into local society and say they will continue protesting at the UN refugee agency's offer.

"$100 is not anything you can start life with. We are all lost," one woman said.

BBC News

[wedge]

Never would have though stripping naked was a form of protest.

[OMEN]

AN Australian woman faces execution in Vietnam, after an appeals court upgraded her life jail term for heroin trafficking.

The Court of Appeals yesterday accepted a proposal by prosecutors in Ho Chi Minh City to upgrade the sentence for Jasmine Luong, 34, an Australian of Vietnamese origin, the state-run Liberation Saigon newspaper said.

She now has 15 days to appeal against the sentence to the president.

Luong was arrested at the city's Tan Son Nhat International Airport while boarding a flight to Melbourne in February last year after Customs officials found 1.55kg of heroin in her shoes and luggage.

Trafficking of more than 600 grams of heroin is punishable by death or life imprisonment in Vietnam. Executions are carried out by firing squad.

Several Australians of Vietnamese descent have been arrested for trafficking heroin to Australia from Vietnam in recent years

reuters

[OMEN]

US-led coalition troops killed three men, two children and a woman, in a raid in southeastern Afghanistan, the district chief and village residents said today.

They said the victims, from the families of two brothers, were all civilians, but the US military said the two brothers were involved in conducting improvised explosive device operations.

The issue of civilian casualties is a sensitive one as it undermines public support for the presence of foreign troops and the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai.

"We will join the jihad'' and "Death to Bush'', chanted residents of the village of Muqibel in the province of Khost where the incident happened overnight.

Foreign troops raided two adjacent houses belonging to two brothers and killed three men, two children and a woman from the two families, district governor Gul Qasim said.

The children, both boys no older than 10-years-old bore bullet wounds to the head and chest, a witness said.

A large angry crowd of men gathered as villagers helped the local imam wash the bodies before burial. Women could be heard screaming and wailing from inside the houses.

Troops were searching the compounds for one of the brothers when they came under fire, the US military said.

"Several armed militants, two of whom were barricaded in a building, opened fire on coalition forces after they entered the compound,'' coalition spokesman Major Chris Belcher said in a statement.

"Coalition forces returned fire killing Bismullah, his brother Rahim Jan, as well as several other armed militants.''

Troops discovered the bodies of a woman and a child in the buildings after the fighting, the statement said, blaming the militants for putting the woman and child in harm's way.

Two men were detained during the raid, the US military and residents said.

The US-led coalition has about 7,000 troops in Afghanistan, separate from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), involved in anti-terror operations.

The killings came a day after two members of parliament said ISAF planes had killed more than 30 people, including civilians, in the southern province of Helmand.

ISAF denied any civilians were killed in the airstrike which it said killed around 12 Taliban insurgents travelling in three vehicles on an isolated road some distance from any houses.

It was impossible to independently verify the conflicting accounts.

reuters

[OMEN]

CHINA has warned of a "life and death" struggle against the Dalai Lama, as it sought to end a wave of protests in its Tibetan regions with arrests and tightened political control.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accused the Tibetan spiritual leader of masterminding the protests - which culminated in a riot on Friday in Tibet's capital, Lhasa - from his base in the Indian town of Dharamsala, where he lives in exile.

"We are in the midst of a fierce struggle involving blood and fire, a life and death struggle with the Dalai clique," Tibet's Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, told a teleconference of the region's government and Party leaders.

"Leaders of the whole country must deeply understand the arduousness, complexity and long-term nature of the struggle," he said in remarks carried online by the China Tibet News.

Mr Zhang also suggested greater political control in the region.

"We must continue to deepen our nationalist education and practically strengthen the building of political power at the grassroots," he said.

China's authorities are keen to stem the violence quickly and regain stability in the remote far-west before August's Olympic Games in Beijing, which they hope will showcase their country's prosperity and unity.

The Tibetan unrest adds to the ruling Communist Party's headaches ahead of the Olympics, including the risk of social instability due to mounting inflation after years of breakneck growth and criticisms of the pollution levels in Beijing.

Some activists overseas have called for the mountainous region to be withdrawn from the Olympic torch relay that starts on Monday.

France is reportedly considering boycotting the opening ceremony of the Games.

Mr Wen dismissed calls for a boycott, and in Tibet, Mr Zhang repeated Mr Wen's charge that the protests were aimed at undermining the Games, which open on August 8.

China's state-run media says 105 people surrendered to police for taking part in the Lhasa protests after authorities set a midnight deadline for rioters to turn themselves in over the violence that the Dalai Lama's officials believe killed 99.

China, whose Communist troops entered Tibet in 1950 after taking power in Beijing, puts the death toll in Lhasa at 13.

"Epicentre of lies"

A human rights watchdog has called on China to allow independent monitors to have access to detained Tibetans and said the government should publish names of those in custody.

"Only by giving access to independent monitors can China give the world some confidence that detainees are not being tortured or mistreated," Brad Adams, Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, has said.

Despite reports that Lhasa was returning to normal, with tight security but schools and businesses operating as usual, overseas groups reported continuing protests in ethnic Tibetan towns and villages in western China.

Tibetan monks were being prevented from leaving the region, a Beijing-based Buddhism scholar said.

The Free Tibet Campaign said it had two, independent accounts of a peaceful demonstration in the Gansu province town of Gannan, and the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said there had been unrest in Sichuan province.

Both groups also cited a protest in Bora, near Gannan. The reports could not be independently confirmed. Witnesses have also reported that the monastery in the ethnic Tibetan town Lithang was surrounded by troops and that there had been arrests of Tibetans in that area.

The Dalai Lama called for an end to the violence in Tibetan regions on Tuesday, and said he would step down as the head of Tibet's exiled state if that would stop the bloodshed.

But China's official media called Dharamsala an "epicentre of lies", repeating Mr Wen's assertion that the unrest was "organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique".

"The Dalai clique maintained real-time contacts, sources say, through varied channels with the rioters in Lhasa, and dictated instructions to his hard core devotees and synchronised their moves," the state news agency Xinhua reported.

The Dalai Lama says the rioting, which followed several days of peaceful marches by Tibet's Buddhist clergy, was spontaneous.

Reuters

[OMEN]

THE parents of Madeleine McCann won £550,000 ($1.2 million) in libel damages today from newspapers that repeatedly alleged they killed their missing daughter and covered up her death.

Kate and Gerry McCann received an apology at the High Court in London from the publishers of the Daily Express and the Daily Star over more than 100 defamatory stories.
"It is difficult to conceive a more serious allegation than to be falsely accused of being responsible for the death of one's daughter," their lawyer Adam Tudor told the court.

The McCanns said the money would be donated to the fund set up to find their daughter. The family has not yet decided whether to take action against other newspapers.

Tudor told the court that the articles included a variety of false claims, including that the McCanns killed their daughter, sold her to pay off debts or were involved in "wife-swapping".

"The general theme of the articles was to suggest that Mr and Mrs McCann were responsible for the death of Madeleine," he said.

The Daily Express and Daily Star published rare front-page apologies and said there was no evidence to support the claims.

The papers' lawyer Stephen Bacon told the court: "Express Newspapers regrets publishing these extremely serious, yet baseless, allegations."

In a statement read by their spokesman outside court, the McCanns said: "We are pleased that Express Newspapers have admitted the utter falsity of the numerous grotesque and grossly defamatory allegations that their titles published about us on a sustained basis."

Madeleine McCann disappeared shortly before her fourth birthday while on holiday in Praia da Luz, prompting a huge police investigation and blanket media coverage.

Media commentator and former Daily Mirror editor Roy Greenslade said "wild claims" about the McCanns had undermined British journalism.

"This was no journalistic accident, but a sustained campaign of vitriol against a grief-stricken family," he wrote in his blog.

"The stories were not merely speculative, but laced with innuendo."

The McCanns believe their daughter was abducted from their flat while they had dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant.

They hired private investigators to help find their daughter after police named them as suspects in September.

The investigation dominated newspaper front pages and TV bulletins for months, with many stories questioning the role of the girl's parents in her disappearance.

Despite a string of possible sightings, her whereabouts remains a mystery.

Reuters

[OMEN]

TWO men were jailed for life today for the murder of South African historian David Rattray, a friend of Britain's Prince Charles.

Simphiwe Ndlovu, 25, and Sibonela Mponza, 28, were sentenced in the Pietermaritzburg High Court in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province more than a year after they shot and killed Rattray in a botched robbery at his home, the SAPA news agency reported.

Three other members of their gang were earlier jailed for 25 years each.

The murder of 48-year-old Rattray, an expert on the Anglo-Zulu war, had caused international shockwaves.

South Africa has one of highest crime rates in the world, with nearly 20,000 murders reported in the country of 48 million every hear.

Agence France-Presse

[OMEN]

MEXICO captured a high-ranking Tijuana drug cartel hitman yesterday, the public security ministry said, the second big arrest to hit the organisation in five days.

Saul Montes de Oca, known as "El Ciego" (the blind guy) and close to cartel bosses, was arrested as he was about to take part in a car race in the tourist resort of San Felipe, the Baja California state attorney general's office said.

Mr Montes de Oca is suspected of being a top killer at the powerful cartel, also called as the Arellano Felix Organisation and known for its gruesome torture and execution methods.

He also faces extradition to the US where he is wanted on organized crime charges, the ministry said.

Police had been tracking him for five months and got a breakthrough this week when they dismantled a kidnapping ring whose leaders said they reported to him.

The capture was also helped by the arrest on Tuesday of another senior Tijuana operative, Gustavo Rivera Martinez, who is being extradited to the US to face drug charges.

Mr Montes de Oca worked for Rivera Martinez, handling drug cargo movements and abductions, the security ministry said.

The arrests were the latest in a series of victories for President Felipe Calderon's 15-month-old army crackdown on drug traffickers and the latest blow to the Tijuana gang, which has seen a string of its leaders jailed or killed in recent years.

The feared Arellano Felix family controls drug routes in the northwestern state of Baja California, including around the busy border crossing of Tijuana, where it fights for turf with the Sinaloa alliance that controls most of western Mexico.

Montes de Oca was involved in a 1997 assassination attempt on a renowned Tijuana journalist who exposed drug gang crimes.

Half a dozen raids on the Tijuana cartel this year have put around 30 mid-level operatives behind bars. A bust this month of one of its safe houses turned up a huge arsenal of weapons, including guns decorated with gold skulls.

One former Tijuana cartel boss was released from a US jail this month and returned home, but with many of the rest of the clan of sibling leaders still in prison, analysts believe a sister is now in charge.

Mr Calderon sent some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to drug hotspots on taking office in December 2006,

reuters

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has abandoned a lawsuit against a magazine which alleged that he offered to take back his former wife.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44503000/jpg/_44503216_sarkozybruni_b203_afp.jpg

The Nouvel Observateur said Mr Sarkozy had made the offer in a text message to Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz - a week before marrying his current wife, Carla Bruni.

Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy now says Mr Sarkozy has withdrawn the complaint after she received an apology.

But despite apologising, the reporter refuses to retract the story entirely.

In the article, Airy Routier alleged that eight days before Mr Sarkozy's marriage to Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy on 2 February, he sent a text message to his former wife, saying: "If you come back, I'll call it all off."

On Wednesday, Mr Routier's letter of apology to Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy was reprinted on the website of Le Nouvel Observateur.

Message claim

Mr Sarkozy remarried on 2 February - less than four months after the end of his volatile marriage to Ms Ciganer-Albeniz.

The allegation that just days before the wedding, he offered to call it off in a text message to his former wife, prompted Mr Sarkozy to file a suit against the weekly Nouvel Observateur.

However, in Wednesday's Le Monde newspaper, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy says her husband decided to withdraw the complaint after they received a letter of apology from Mr Routier.

In an opinion article entitled "Stop the slander", she accuses Le Nouvel Observateur of failing to check the allegation.

Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy goes on to berate the media for falling standards of accuracy, asking: "If, from now on, rumour is used as the basis for news, if fantasies become scoops, where are we headed?

"If major newspapers fail to sift out rumour from facts, who will do it?

"If, like the trashiest of magazines, Le Nouvel Observateur, betraying its charter, its calling and even its name, ceases to observe but makes up the stories it tells, what defence is left to us against the hysteria of the age?"

'Indelicacy'

But in a statement written in response to Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy's, Mr Routier insists the story was not wrong.

"I have absolutely not modified my position on the authenticity of the contested SMS," he says.

He said that - of his own initiative - he did indeed write a "private letter" to Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy apologising for having hurt her feelings by publishing the allegation.

"This letter should, in my view, have remained private. [But] Carla Bruni has had the indelicacy of referring to it publicly while distorting the meaning. Therefore, with regret, I have decided to publish the entire contents of the letter," Mr Routier writes.

Reports say Ms Ciganer-Albeniz denies ever having received the text message in question - and according to Reuters news agency, Mr Routier acknowledges not having seen the message himself.

But, the agency says, Mr Routier insists he received the information from a strong source.

BBC News

[OMEN]

US President George W. Bush says he has no regrets about the unpopular war in Iraq despite the "high cost in lives and treasure" and declared that the United States was on track for victory.
Marking the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion with a touch of the swagger he showed early in the war, Bush said in a speech at the Pentagon, "The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable."
ÍßÍ
With less than 11 months left in office and his approval ratings near the lows of his presidency, Bush is trying to shore up support for the Iraq campaign, which has damaged US credibility abroad and is sure to define his legacy.

But he faced the challenge of winning back the attention of war-weary Americans more preoccupied with mounting economic troubles and increasingly focused on the race to pick his successor in the November election.

Bush's Democratic critics used the anniversary to press accusations that Bush launched the invasion based on faulty intelligence, mismanaged the war and failed to put together an exit strategy.

"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," Bush told an audience of top military officers and about 200 Defense Department employees.

"The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win," he said.

Rejecting calls from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for a timetable for early troop withdrawal, Bush touted the security gains from a troop buildup or "surge" he ordered early last year and said those needed to be consolidated.

He insisted that "retreat" would embolden al Qaeda and Iran and put the United States at risk.

"The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror," Bush said, hailing increased cooperation of Iraqi Sunnis in fighting al Qaeda.

Such an assertion could come back to haunt Bush if the situation deteriorates. War critics have roundly mocked Bush for his premature declaration in May 2003 that "major combat operations" in Iraq were over as he stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

UPBEAT BUT TEMPERED ASSESSMENT

Possibly mindful of that, Bush stopped short of promising outright victory in Iraq, as he had earlier in the war before sectarian violence brought the country to the brink of civil war.

"No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure, but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq," he said.

Not all anniversary assessments were as upbeat as Bush's. A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the war was not worth waging.

Told about the poll result in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," Vice President Dick Cheney, in Oman after a visit to Iraq, said: "So?" He added: "I think we cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls."

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "The cost to our national security has been immense -- our military is stretched thin and our reputation in the world is damaged. And now, the war in Iraq has become a threat to our economy."

The war has cost the United States $500 billion. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and millions displaced. Nearly 4,000 US soldiers have been killed, as well as 175 British troops and 134 from other countries.

Bush -- a Republican who had huge public support after the attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants on September 11, 2001 -- has long described Iraq as a central front in the battle against Islamic extremists.

But Democrats say his administration has been distracted from what they see as a more vital struggle in Afghanistan.

In his speech, Bush hailed the increased role of Iraqi Sunnis in the fight against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda as the "first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network."

A number of Sunni tribal chiefs have joined against al Qaeda, responsible for many of the worst attacks, but progress remains slow bridging the national sectarian divide.

Violence across Iraq has dropped 60 percent since 30,000 extra US troops became fully deployed in June. But a recent spate of attacks showed that Iraq was far from safe and Bush noted that "the gains we've made are fragile and reversible."

Bush's speech was the second in the lead-up to the next status report that Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker will give to Congress in early April.

The US military is on track to complete the withdrawal of about 20,000 troops by July, leaving about 140,000 in Iraq.

Bush reiterated any decision on bringing more troops home would depend on recommendations from commanders on the ground.


Reuters

[OMEN]

President Robert Mugabe's supporters have used violence to intimidate opponents before next week's Zimbabwe election, Human Rights Watch said.

However, the head of a Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission said it believed the political environment was conducive to a free election.

Mugabe faces the strongest challenge to his 28-year rule in presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections on March 29 because of defections by senior officials of the ruling ZANU-PF party and a deepening economic crisis.

"As in previous elections, local government authorities, ZANU-PF supporters, and security forces including the police and central intelligence, are the main perpetrators of the violations. . .," Human Rights Watch, a US-based rights group, said in a report released in Johannesburg.

Opposition groups have accused Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980, of rigging previous elections, allegations he denies.

"Despite some improvements on paper to the election regulations, Zimbabweans aren't free to vote for the candidates of their choice," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director of Human Rights Watch.

"While there are four candidates running for president and many political parties involved, the election process itself is skewed."

The head of the SADC mission said the voters' register was published late "and there could be other irregularities".

"SADC does not operate on the principle of all-or-nothing basis because no election process can ever be perfect," Jose Marcos Barrica told a news conference.

Barrica said his SADC team did not believe that statements by two senior security officials they would not accept an opposition victory represented the official position.

The statements have generated controversy in a largely peaceful election campaign for the March 29 votes. Mugabe hopes to fend off challenges from long-time rival Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the biggest faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and former finance minister Simba Makoni, who was expelled from ZANU-PF.

Zimbabweans are suffering from the world's highest inflation rate – officially put at more than 100,000 per cent – and chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.

The government has used state-subsidised food and farming equipment as a tool to gain political advantage, Human Rights Watch said.

Prices of some basic goods, including the staple maize meal, bread, cooking oil and soap, have risen by up to 300 per cent since the start of this month.

Mugabe blames the country's economic troubles on Western foes, especially former colonial master Britain.

Addressing a rally in Chinhoyi, west of Harare, on Wednesday, Mugabe gave businesses a one-week ultimatum to reduce prices or face a government crackdown.

"Those who have raised prices must bring them down quickly. Otherwise we will bring both the prices and those profiteering down," Mugabe told supporters in a packed stadium.

ßÍÍÍ

[OMEN]

Convicted serial killer Steve Wright has sought permission to appeal the life sentence he was handed last month for murdering five prostitutes in his hometown of Ipswich.

Wright, 49, formally applied for permission to challenge the sentence, handed down by a judge after a jury at Ipswich Crown Court deliberated for two days, less than a month into his sentence, a spokeswoman for the Suffolk police said.

"We have been informed by the Crown Court that he has put in an application for leave to appeal against his convictions," she said, but declined to comment further.

Wright, a former forklift truck driver and worker on the QE2 cruise liner, killed the five drug-addicted women during a six-week campaign of violence in late 2006.

He was sentenced to a whole life term without the prospect of parole, meaning he will never be released, for crimes the judge said had revolted the public.

"It is right you should spend your whole life in prison," Justice Peter Gross told Wright, whose father disowned him after the convictions were handed down.

Wright, labelled the "Suffolk Strangler" by the media, murdered the women while his 63-year-old partner Pamela was working night shifts.

Their bodies were found in the space of just 10 days around the city, two of them arranged in a cruciform pose with arms outstretched.

Media reports have said police are now set to question Wright over the unsolved murder of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, who is believed to have died more than 20 years ago.

She went missing in July 1986 after leaving her office in Fulham, west London, to meet a mysterious "Mr Kipper". She and Wright had worked together on the QE2.

The spokeswoman declined to comment on whether police had interviewed Wright in relation to other crimes.

Reuters

[OMEN]

The last time a high-profile Dutchman made a film critical of Islam he paid for it with his life.

Stabbed to director Theo van Gogh's lifeless chest by his Dutch-Moroccan killer was a note warning other critics of Islam they would be similarly "silenced".

Three and a half years on the Netherlands is bracing for another film on Islam, made by a right-wing Dutch lawmaker who says multiple death threats could not deter him from his mission to expose the dangers of Islam.

Long contentious at home for his anti-Muslim populism, 44-year-old Geert Wilders has now generated global uproar, triggering a fury among Muslims thousands of miles away that has seen the Dutch flag join the Danish on protesters' fires.

In the months before the film's release, Wilders has sat back and watched as protests spread and temperatures rose, to the alarm of the Dutch government.

Meanwhile support for his Freedom party has grown among an electorate wary of the consequences of the film but largely supportive of his right to free expression.

"Wilders sets the agenda and has others eating out of his hand," said political scientist Andre Krouwel of Amsterdam's Free University. "He is a very clever politician."

Having first appealed to Wilders not to show the film, then considered banning it, the Dutch government has been forced to marshal European support for the likely fall-out, and plan both an overseas charm offensive and campaign of damage limitation.

While the government braces for a repeat of the violence sparked in 2006 by the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, an indignant Wilders has washed his hands of all responsibility and blamed the prime minister for his panicked response.

Wilders, who has warned of a "tsunami of Islamisation" in a country which is home to almost 1 million Muslims, is expected to air the film at the end of the month on the website www.fitnathemovie.com, making it available to audiences worldwide.

He has given few details about the content of his 15-minute film, which no television broadcaster is prepared to air, leaving people to infer it will take a similar tone to his earlier pronouncements on Islam.

"Islam is a violent religion. If Mohammad lived here today I could imagine chasing him out of the country tarred and feathered as an extremist," Wilders said in an interview with De Pers daily last year.

Wilders' love of the limelight and appetite for political controversy first brought him to prominence at home five years ago as he tapped into unease in Dutch society about Muslim integration and slammed the impotence of the political elite.

Stepping into the shoes of anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn, killed by a leftist activist in 2002, the strikingly tall man with a shock of dyed-blonde hair rapidly found a following as he began a series of audacious campaigns.

These included calls to ban the burqa and halt Muslim immigration and the building of mosques, and Wilders questioned the loyalties of the Netherlands' first Muslim ministers, suggesting they be forced to relinquish their dual nationality.

Over the last year the Koran has become Wilders' particular bugbear – he has compared it to "Mein Kampf", urged Dutch Muslims to ditch it, and suggested it be banned because it is an incitement to violence.

The film is just a logical next step for a man seeking to gain political capital and raise his international profile by exploiting liberal anxiety over the boundaries of free speech, his critics say.

It also stirs painful memories in the Netherlands of the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh, who together with Somali-born lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali made a film critical of Islam's treatment of women.

That murder unleashed an unprecedented period of violence and social tension in the country traditionally viewed as a paradigm of tolerance.

Although calm was swiftly restored, Wilders has kept tapping away at latent anti-Muslim sentiment, timing his announcements and campaigns to reap maximum media exposure.

What motivates him, he says, is his desire to uphold traditional Dutch freedoms such as freedom of speech and to shake-up political culture, although he does not wish to enter government himself.

"He is transforming Dutch politics and it is fascinating to watch. The traditional parties are flabbergasted and they don't have an answer which is the most dangerous thing," said Krouwel.

Clearly Wilders' message has struck home. The public voted him "Politician of the year" in 2007.

In the last general election in 2006, his newly created Freedom party took nine seats of the 150 available – according to latest opinion polls he could now take 15.

Wilders' political roots are on the moderate right. He entered parliament in 1998 for the VVD Liberals, also the former party of Hirsi Ali, but left in 2004 after repeated clashes over his opposition to Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

He continued in parliament as an independent before forming the Freedom party.

Little is known about the private life of the man who hails from the Catholic South of the Netherlands, and who has been subject to life under close guard since 2004. He was even forced to live in a prison cell when he first went into hiding.

Dutch media say his wife is of dual Dutch-Hungarian citizenship and he lists his hobbies only as "reading and writing".

Reuters

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[OMEN]

A New Zealand man will stand trial after his four-wheel drive allegedly mounted a footpath and struck three pedestrians in Sydney's Chinatown, killing one of the victims.

Poasa Logova, 30, of Punchbowl in Sydney's south-west, appeared in Downing Centre Local Court charged with dangerous driving under the influence causing death and two counts of dangerous driving under the influence causing grievous bodily harm.

Police said Logova's Landcruiser 4WD mounted a footpath in Sussex St on June 23 last year and hit three pedestrians, killing a 35-year-old woman and injuring a 61-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman.

Defence lawyer Michael O'Connor entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of Logova today, saying he would waive his right to a committal hearing and stand trial later this month.

Magistrate Julie Huber accepted Logova's application and committed him to stand trial in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court next Friday.

He was granted conditional bail.

AAP

[OMEN]

Chinese demands that Mount Everest be closed so it can be used in their Olympic torch plans has left Nepalese in a dire situation, New Zealand expedition leader Guy Cotter says.

He has arrived in Khatmandu ready to lead one of the 32 expeditions scheduled to climb the world¹s highest peak over the next couple of months.

But China, ahead of the Olympic Games, has closed their side of Everest and has pushed Nepal to close their side.

In a statement from Katmandu Cotter said the situation for the Nepalese and the expeditions had become dire.

"I urge the international community to collectively encourage China and Nepal to offer an immediate resolution to the issue and to recognise that a lot more than a few crampons scratching the summit of Mt Everest is at stake here," he said.

"I have appealed to the NZ Government to step into the Chinese-Nepalese closure of Mt Everest."

He said his company's situation was becoming desperate as they were about to receive all the clients for the expeditions but cannot get going until climbing permits are issued.

"The Nepalese Ministry of Tourism said today there is no closure on Everest which is totally incorrect because they are not issuing permits for Everest.

"The responsibility for delaying the decision has been passed on to the secretary (for the ministry) so the minister does not have to be held responsible for not opening the mountain and issuing permits for Everest."

The Sherpa climbing community is already in a state of shock after the 11th hour closure of expeditions to Tibet and the "non opening" of expedition peaks within Nepal will only exacerbate the issue.

Hundreds, if not thousands of climbing Sherpas will lose their annual income they derive from their intense but relatively highly paid efforts on Mt Everest, Cotter said.

"The fault lies firstly with China for placing such pressure on Nepal so it can have a well publicised spectacle on Everest with the Olympic torch carrying procession.

"But this situation shows that for the two seconds of television coverage they are prepared to allow many people to lose their livelihood."

This is the first time since Nepal opened its borders to foreigners in 1951 that climbing Mt Everest has been closed.

Fairfax Media

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/710316.jpg
TORTURE CLAIMS: A Canadian terror suspcet held in Guantanamo Bay is accusing his captors of threatening him with rape as a way of getting him to talk.
A young Canadian prisoner held at Guantanamo said in legal documents that US interrogators repeatedly threatened to rape him and Canadian government visitors told him they were powerless to do anything.

The claims were part of an affidavit sworn by Omar Khadr, 21, who is charged in the Guantanamo war court with murdering a US soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan when Khadr was 15.

Khadr has long claimed he was abused by American interrogators in Bagram, Afghanistan, after his capture in July 2002 and at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval base in Cuba, where he was taken a few months later.

The previously undisclosed allegations of the rape threats were part of a nine-page affidavit released by the US military on Wednesday, with some of the names and details blacked out.

"On several occasions at Bagram, interrogators threatened to have me raped, or sent to other countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Israel to be raped," Khadr said in the document.

He said interrogators told him at one point that the Egyptians wound send "Soldier No 9" to rape him.

Khadr was shot twice in the back and suffered shrapnel wounds in the eye during the battle that led to his capture at a suspected al Qaeda compound.

After treatment at a field hospital, he was taken to a prison in Bagram, where he was hooded, threatened him with barking dogs and had water thrown on him, he said in the document.

Khadr said he was often shackled for hours during interrogations and denied use of a bathroom, forcing him to urinate on himself.

FLOOR CLEANING

"While my wounds were still healing, interrogators made me clean the floors on my hands and knees. They woke me up in the middle of the night after midnight and made me clean the floor with a brush and dry it with towels until dawn, carry heavy buckets of water," he said.

Later at Guantanamo, Khadr said an Afghan with a US flag on his pants threatened to send him back to Afghanistan unless he cooperated, telling him: "They like small boys in Afghanistan."

Khadr said he gave "answers that made interrogators happy" to protect himself from further harm, but the information was untrue.

The US military has said captives at Guantanamo are treated humanely and that claims of abuse are an al Qaeda tactic. They have confirmed that Canadian government representatives visited Khadr at Guantanamo.

During one such visit in 2003, Khadr said, he complained about his treatment and a man claiming to be a Canadian government representative told him:

"'The US and Canada are like an elephant and an ant sleeping in the same bed' and there was nothing the Canadian government could do against the power of the US"

Khadr is charged with murdering US Army sergeant Christopher Speer and injuring other American soldiers with a grenade during the firefight.

He is also charged with attempted murder, providing material support for terrorism and conspiring with al Qaeda. He could face life in prison if convicted.

He was scheduled to go to trial in May in the Guantanamo tribunal created by the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists.

But a judge last week postponed the trial indefinitely to allow military defence lawyers more time to receive and review evidence they accused prosecutors of withholding.

Reuters

[OMEN]

The shooting apart of a crippled US spy satellite last month created no significant new space debris, with all but small bits burning on re-entry to the atmosphere, the mission commander said.

"We thought there would be much larger pieces," Rear Admiral Alan Hicks, who heads the Pentagon's Aegis ballistic missile defence programme, said in the most comprehensive report yet on the destruction of the satellite known as USA-193.

In fact, none of the debris was larger than a football, he told a briefing at an annual conference of the US Navy League, a booster group for the navy.

"That was a very very good thing," Hicks said, citing the force of a collision at about 35,000km per hour between the satellite, tumbling and rolling in decaying orbit, and the Raytheon Co ship-launched Standard Missile-3 that slammed into its fuel tank.

The Bush administration has said its goal was to protect populated areas from the spacecraft's unused supply of deadly hydrazine propellant by destroying it in space. Minimizing the debris field was a secondary objective, he said.

"We achieved both," said Hicks, of the Pentagon's Missile defence Agency.

The satellite and its fuel tank were destroyed on February 20 250km over the Pacific using arms designed for the ship-based leg of a multibillion-dollar shield against ballistic missiles.

Thirteen months before, China used one of its aging weather satellites, in polar orbit at 850km, for target practice.

The US Air Force Space Command said last April the resulting debris increased the risk of a collision with a spacecraft by up to 40 per cent in some orbits.

Of the debris from USA-193, Hicks said: "There's very little left up there of any size. We're down to where there are very very small particles that will burn off as they come down in the atmosphere."

In addition, no reports had been received of any USA-193 shards landing on earth, he said.

Although the satellite shoot-up showed the flexibility of Aegis ballistic missile defence, it was a one-time mission, he said.

Hicks said about 250 people took part in planning and rehearsing starting about six weeks before the interception took place. They used a wide range of radar and other sensors around the world to maximize the chance of a bulls-eye while minimizing space debris, he said.

The Bush administration has insisted it was not trying to show off anti-satellite capabilities of the Lockheed Martin Corp-built Aegis ballistic missile defence, although experts said the event's effect was just that.

Hicks said the biggest lesson was the gains to be had from stitching together data from sensors "that normally don't work together on a daily basis."

"When you bring them together, and you can co-ordinate them, integrate them, you can get a lot more value added."

Reuters

[OMEN]

Convicted serial paedophile Raymond Horne will arrive in London today - to the outrage of child advocacy groups - after his deportation from Australia.

Horne, 61, who moved to Australia aged five, has a 43-year history of sexual assaults on under-age boys.

The Times today reported the notorious child sex offender, who has spent a total of 14 years in jail for offences against boys as young as 13, was likely to reoffend.

Australian immigration officials, who escorted Horne on the flight from Brisbane yesterday, are expected to hand him over to Scotland Yard upon arrival.

After his most recent stint in jail, the Department of Immigration declared Horne an unlawful person to be deported back to England. He will be placed on a sex offenders' register but will largely be free to go where he pleases.

English child protection official Paul Roffey told the Daily Mail that Horne was a danger to local children and should have stayed locked up in Australia, where he committed all his crimes.

"Let's make it English children instead of Australian children, that seems to be (the) attitude," he said. "Someone like Horne who has lived most of his life in Australia would have little or no residual networks here so he will be even more isolated and that will increase the risk of him reoffending."

Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence said Australia "would be well rid of him".

"His heinous crimes speak for themselves. If he wasn't being thrown out of the country we would have applied to the court to have him kept in jail," she said.

"I'm told UK authorities know he's coming. My advice to them is to keep him under close supervision."

The Age

[OMEN]

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatened the European Union with grave punishment on Wednesday over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

In an audio recording posted on the internet, Bin Laden said the cartoons were part of a "crusade" in which he said the Catholic Pope Benedict was involved.

The message was released on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The cartoons were first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 but a furore erupted only after other papers reprinted them in 2006.

At least 50 people were killed in the protests against the publication of the cartoons, which Muslims say are an affront to Islam. Newspapers which have reprinted the cartoons argue they are defending the right to media freedom.

Bin Laden's message was entitled "The Response Will Be What You See, Not What You Hear", according to the password-protected Ekhlaas Web, which carries messages and statements from al Qaeda-affiliated groups around the world.

The banner message appeared in bright red, labelled "urgent" with plain Arabic text. It carried no picture of the Saudi-born militant leader nor the insignia of al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab, which usually releases his videos and audio tapes.

The message apparently is the first by bin Laden since November 29 when he urged European countries to end military participation with US forces in the Afghan conflict.

The al Qaeda leader, blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on US cities, issued a number of messages late last year after a hiatus of well over a year raised speculation that he might be dead or incapacitated.

Bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in remote areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, has tended to release messages to mark significant dates or events.

On September 7, 2007, bin Laden appeared in a videotape marking the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and said the United States remained vulnerable despite its economic and military power. He then eulogised a September 11 hijacker in an al Qaeda tape that appeared on the anniversary date itself.

Later the same month bin Laden vowed to retaliate against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the killing of a rebel cleric and a raid on his mosque.

Bin Laden is blamed for masterminding a series of attacks on US targets in Africa and the Middle East in the early 1990s.

His wealthy family has disowned him and he has been stripped of his Saudi citizenship.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Floods that ravaged a broad swathe of the US Midwest from Missouri eastward to the Ohio Valley have contributed to deaths of more than a dozen people.
President George W Bush declared 70 Missouri counties as disaster areas, and the National Guard was deployed in hard-hit areas of the state after deadly storms that dumped up to a foot (0.3 metres) of rain sent rivers out of their banks.

Media and official reports across the US Midwest region said more than a dozen people had died, some swept away by flood waters, others in traffic accidents blamed on the storms and high waters.

"The worst of the rain is over with," said Rob Miller, a meteorologist with AccuWeather. But he said flood waters will not peak in some areas until Saturday.

The Missouri Emergency Management Agency reported dozens of homes destroyed or damaged across the state, and widespread evacuations. It listed five flood-related deaths in the state and said state roads were closed by high water at more than 200 points.

Forecasters meanwhile greeted the first day of spring with winter weather warnings, with a new storm expected to dump up to 6 inches (15 cm) of snow from southeastern North Dakota through southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, eastward to the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia on Friday and Saturday.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Chinese police opened fire and wounded four protesters earlier this week in unrest in a Tibetan town, its first admission that lethal weapons were used by its security forces to crack down on anti-government demonstrations.
Citing police sources, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Thursday that police acted in self-defence when they fired on protesters on Sunday in Aba county, an ethnic Tibetan part of the western province of Sichuan.

Tibet authorities also said they had arrested dozens of people involved in the wave of protests that have swept the mountain region and prompted Beijing to pour in troops to crush further unrest.

China's response to last week's violence – which it says was orchestrated by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader – has sparked international criticism and has clouded preparations for the Beijing Olympics.

Earlier on Thursday, in a phone call with her Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for China to show restraint toward protesters and resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

China says 13 "innocent civilians" were killed in riots last week in Tibet's capital Lhasa that capped several days of peaceful protests. Exiled Tibetan groups say as many as 100 Tibetans have died.

Mindful of the legacy of its military crackdown on pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989, China says its security forces in Lhasa exercised "maximum restraint" and did not use lethal weapons.

But the Xinhua report makes clear the same did not apply in other parts of western China, where it has been sealing Tibetan areas from foreigners and tightening security.

State television on Thursday broadcast pictures of protests in Sichuan as well as Gansu province, both home to Tibetan communities, which showed men on horseback crying out Tibet independence slogans, burning cars and raising the Tibetan flag.

The report said the situation was now calm and showed pictures of barricades and police in riot gear. In Gansu's Gannan region, eight police and three government officials were injured in the unrest, it said.

In Kangding, a Tibetan town in Sichuan, roads were crowded with troops who blocked most travel. Notices on walls warned locals not to protest and to stay away from the "Dalai clique".

ARRESTS

In Lhasa, the prosecutor's office said 24 people faced charges of "endangering national security as well as beating, smashing, looting, arson and other grave crimes" in last Friday's riots, the Tibet Daily reported.

They were the first arrests since rioting erupted across the remote region. Some outside groups say hundreds of Tibetans may have already been detained, and the China News Service reported Lhasa has broadcast wanted pictures of more suspects.

"The facts of the crimes are clear and the evidence is solid, and they should be severely punished," a Lhasa deputy chief prosecutor, Xie Yanjun, said.

Xinhua reported that so far more than 170 people involved in the riots have given themselves up.

"Most of the people who surrendered themselves were ordinary members of the public who did not understand the true situation," it said.

China's unyielding response to the unrest has brought demands for a boycott of the opening ceremony for the August 8-24 Games from pro-Tibetan independence groups and some politicians.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was no change in U.S. President George W. Bush's plans to attend the ceremony, and said the spotlight on Beijing could be a good thing.

"... That way the Chinese can hear how people feel and then maybe have an opportunity to either explain their position or maybe even change the things that they are doing," Perino said.

The Olympic torch relay across 19 countries that starts next week, and which will also pass through Tibet, is also likely to be dogged by protests.

"READY FOR TALKS"

The Chinese government has resisted international calls for dialogue over the unrest and expressed serious concern that Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to meet the Dalai Lama during a visit to Britain in May.

"If those acts can be tolerated, is there any law in the world? Is there any justice in the world?" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference when asked to respond to a call for dialogue from Pope Benedict.

The Dalai Lama, speaking in his exile home in the Indian town of Dharamsala, said he was ready to travel to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders, calling on Tibetans to end the violence.

Beijing has long said it would meet him only if he forsakes claims to Tibet's independence. The 72-year-old monk says he just wants greater autonomy for his homeland.

China has struggled to convince the international community that the Nobel Peace Prize winner orchestrated the violence and that its own policies are free from blame.

On Thursday, six fellow Nobel laureates sent an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, urging restraint in Tibet.

"We call on you to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the men and women of Tibet to address their legitimate concerns and genuine grievances," the letter said.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Osama bin Laden has urged Palestinians to use "iron and fire" to end an Israeli blockade of Gaza, in a recording after the Vatican rejected accusations by the al Qaeda chief of a "new crusade".
In an audiotape broadcast by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite channel on Thursday, bin Laden urged Muslims to keep up the struggle against US forces in Iraq as a path to "liberating Palestine". The tape was released around the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.

"My speech is about the Gaza siege and the way to retrieve it and the rest of Palestine from the hands of the Zionist enemy," the Saudi-born militant said.

"Our enemies did not take it by negotiations and dialogue but with fire and iron. And this is the way to get it back."

On Wednesday, an Islamist website had issued another bin Laden recording which threatened the European Union with grave punishment for the publication of cartoons mocking Islam's Prophet Mohammad.

In that recording, which coincided with the birthday of Islam's founder, bin Laden said the drawings were part of a "crusade" against Muslims in which Pope Benedict was involved.

The Vatican has rejected those accusations.

"These accusations are totally unfounded," chief Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said.

Italian security officials said they were examining the new bin Laden message and its impact on the Pope, who is preparing for busy Easter weekend celebrations.

"Obviously we can't ignore it but at this moment that doesn't mean the threat is being taken seriously," said an Italian security source.

Bin Laden's message showed he regards Europe as fertile soil for al Qaeda, especially at a time of tension between free speech and Muslim values, but is unlikely to signal an imminent attack, security analysts and officials said.

There is no evidence bin Laden's statements contain coded instructions to al Qaeda operatives and he has no track record of delivering warnings immediately before an attack, they said.

Bin Laden said Europe would be punished for the cartoons, which were first published by a Danish paper in September 2005. The images ignited bloody unrest among Muslims when other newspapers around the world reprinted them the following year.

Last month, some Danish papers republished one of the cartoons in solidarity with the cartoonist after three men were arrested on suspicion of plans to kill him, sparking more anger.

"Your publications of these drawings -- part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican has a significant role -- is a confirmation from you that the war continues," said bin Laden, addressing "those who are wise at the European Union".

US officials said the CIA was confident the voice was that of the fugitive leader of al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Last month, the Vatican's top official for relations with Islam, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, condemned the cartoons. Lombardi pointed out Pope Benedict recently launched a permanent official dialogue with Muslim leaders.

Al Qaeda has criticised the Pope before. Many Muslims were offended by a 2006 speech he made which they perceived as depicting Islam as a violent faith.

The group's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri said in December Benedict had "insulted Islam and Muslims".

Responding to the bin Laden statement, a spokeswoman for the EU presidency said: "The European Union and its member states apply the principle of freedom of expression and freedom of religion, these are parts of our values and traditions.

"The EU and its member states respect Islam."

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said there was currently "a heightened threat from militant extremists abroad against Denmark and Danes and Danish interests abroad", and that the bin Laden comments did not change that assessment.

The Netherlands has said it fears a Muslim backlash when a right-wing lawmaker releases a film critical of the Koran.

Reuters

Will somebody please just put a bullet in Bin Ladens head and make him shut the hell up.....

[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

Fourteen medical workers in Kyrgyzstan have been charged with malpractice and negligence after 42 children were infected with HIV.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44506000/jpg/_44506333_childincot2_ap203b.jpg

The health workers, from the southern Osh region, are accused of negligence while administering injections and blood transfusions.

A spate of infections of HIV, the virus that causes Aids, has shocked the central Asian republic.

Kyrgyzstan has about 1,500 people with HIV out of a population of 5 million.

Those accused include doctors, nurses and a chief administrator. If convicted they face prison terms of between five and 10 years.

The BBC's Natalia Antelava in Almaty, in neighbouring Kazakhstan, points out that this is not the first such case in central Asia, and says the outbreak shows a dangerous trend of hospitals becoming the cause, rather than the cure, of infectious diseases across the region.

Concern over conditions

Last year, 21 medical workers were sentenced to prison terms for infecting 150 children with HIV in Kazakhstan.

The Kyrgyz case has deepened public concern over conditions in hospitals and the quality of health workers.

At least 30 other children tested positive for HIV since the investigation into the outbreak first began last summer, and new cases continue to emerge all the time.

The outbreak is surrounded by secrecy and confusion.

Our correspondent reports that in this predominantly Muslim and deeply traditional region, HIV care is an enormous stigma, and families are extremely protective of the identity of their children.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one international aid worker in Kyrgyzstan said that this stigma and the atmosphere of secrecy meant that outbreaks of hospital-acquired infections were extremely common, but most of them simply did not get reported.

BBC News

[OMEN]

Tibetans in China's tense southwestern province of Sichuan believe several people were killed in anti-Chinese riots there this week, disputing official claims that none died.

China's official Xinhua news agency reported overnight that police shot and wounded four protesters this week in a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of the province, where protests broke out after anti-Chinese riots in neighbouring Tibet a week ago.

The unrest has alarmed China, keen to look its best in the run-up to the August 8-24 Olympic Games in Beijing when it hopes to show the world that it has arrived as a world power.

Tensions remain high in Tibet, Sichuan and other neighbouring areas where the government has poured in troops.

Kangding, a heavily Tibetan town in Sichuan and a gateway to the restive region, was crowded with troops, some on patrol, some loudly practising martial arts moves in the town square.

Students at the local Tibetan-language school were locked in unless they had special permission to leave. Drivers said they were unwilling to travel into tense mountain towns.

"I'm in this to make money, but no matter how much you pay me I won't go that way," one Kangding driver said.

Two residents of Aba prefecture, where rioting began on Sunday, told Reuters they believed several died when police fired on protesters attacking officials and state buildings.

"Everyone here believes that our people died, maybe 10 or more," said one ethnic Tibetan resident.

"I'm not a supporter of violence and I oppose attacking people just because they're Han," he said, referring to the country's majority Han Chinese population.

Another Tibetan man said he hid in his home during the riot.

"I'm sure people died. We all know," he said in a brief telephone conversation. "We don't dare go out. They are arresting many people after what happened."

Both men asked not to be named, fearing punishment for talking to reporters. Other residents refused to say anything.

Troops and anti-riot police have set up roadblocks and are keeping out foreigners.

"With all the troops that have gone up there, it's under control now. They have tried for all those years to gain independence and failed. So it won't happen. Not now – it's impossible," said Ran Hongkui, a Chinese shopkeeper on the road between Kangding and Chengdu where convoy after convoy of armed police has passed.

Radio Free Asia, a US-funded broadcaster, said on Thursday up to 2,000 Buddhist monks and laypeople continued to protest in Huangnan Prefecture, Sichuan. The report could not be verified.

Authorities said they had arrested dozens of people involved in the Tibet protests.

More than 170 rioters have handed themselves in, the report said, offering a phone number for locals to inform on suspected protesters in return for secrecy and rewards.

State-run Tibet television continued to show footage of last week's riots, including scenes of maroon-robed monks hurling rocks at police, protesters kicking in shop fronts and plumes of black smoke from burned-out cars in the local capital Lhasa.

Its newsreaders echoed the central government insistence that the violence was orchestrated by exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, and his "Dalai clique" to agitate for independence and embarrass Beijing ahead of the Olympic Games.

The 72-year-old monk, who fled Tibet in 1959, says he is against the violence, only wants greater autonomy for his homeland and is willing to travel to Beijing for talks.

The Chinese press never gives the Dalai Lama sympathetic treatment, but has recently intensified its vilification of the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The Tibet Daily called him "a faithful tool of Western anti-China forces, the general source of social chaos in Tibet".

And in a commentary the previous day, it wrote: "Since defecting abroad, the Dalai clique and its hangers-on have... never given up on hoping to restore their corrupt, dissolute theocracy and their privileges as feudal rulers and serf masters."

China's response to the rioting has triggered international criticism and some calls to boycott the Games opening ceremony.

In a phone call with Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China to show restraint towards protesters. Yang told her the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, was to blame for the riots.

"They attempted to exert pressure on the Chinese government, disturb the 2008 Beijing Olympics and sabotage China's social stability and harmony," Xinhua quoted him as saying.

China says 13 "innocent civilians" died in anti-Chinese riots last week in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, after police broke up earlier peaceful protests led by monks. Exiled Tibetans say as many as 100 Tibetans have died.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has dismissed suggestions he might take on the job of mediating in the Darfur crisis in Sudan.

A Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), on Sunday demanded direct peace talks with the Sudanese government and said Annan should mediate.

Annan, who recently brokered an end to a crisis in Kenya, told reporters in New York part of the reason for his success there was having a single mediator speaking with one voice for the international community.

Asked whether he might get involved in Sudan, Annan said: "I think we have some very able people dealing with that and we should leave it with them."

UN envoy Jan Eliasson and African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim are leading efforts to mediate between various rebel groups and the Khartoum government to end a war that began in 2003 when non-Arab rebels took up arms.

Annan said he had talked with Salim and Eliasson about the rebel group's call for him to get involved, and advised the two mediators to carry on doing their jobs.

Salim and Eliasson had hoped to end the conflict with negotiations that started in the Libyan city of Sirte in October. But JEM and other prominent rebel bodies boycotted the talks and they fizzled out.

Eliasson and Salim have been trying to persuade rebel groups to arrange fresh negotiations ever since, but only a handful of factions have agreed.

International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes in the five years of revolt in Darfur.

Washington calls the violence genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use and Khartoum rejects.

Annan said the crisis raised doubts about whether the international community, through the United Nations, was living up to its "responsibility to protect" – a principle adopted by UN member states officially in 2005.

In a speech at a dinner later where he was accepting the MacArthur Award for International Justice from the MacArthur Foundation, which promotes human rights and justice, Annan said the world should have learned from the genocide in Rwanda and its failure to stop war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

He said the responsibility to protect placed a heavy burden on the Security Council and its members.

"It is fair to question whether all of them have yet fully lived up to that responsibility, notably in Darfur," he said, according to a text of the speech issued in advance.

A joint UN-African Union mission took over peacekeeping duties on December 31, but with only 9000 of the required 26,000 troops and police on the ground it has not been able to do its job properly.

Western powers have tried to raise pressure on Sudan through the UN Security Council but China, which holds a veto, has blocked sanctions against its close ally, Khartoum

Reuters

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/710444.jpg
LIQUID LAYER: An artist's illustration of hydrocarbon pools, icy and rocky terrain on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. Some astronomers believe an ocean of water and ammonia may lie beneath the surface of the moon.
A vast ocean of water and ammonia may lurk deep beneath the surface of Titan, the intriguing, orange moon of Saturn already known for its blanket of clouds and dense atmosphere, scientists said.

Astronomers have not directly observed this ocean. But they said observations made by the Cassini spacecraft of Titan's rotation and shifts in the location of surface features suggest an ocean exists perhaps 60 miles under the surface.

Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the second biggest in the solar system, only slightly smaller than Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Titan's diameter of about 3,200 miles is larger than the planet Mercury and the dwarf planet Pluto.

Cassini, exploring Saturn and its moons in an ongoing US-European mission, collected measurements using radar that penetrated Titan's thick clouds during 19 passes over the moon from October 2005 to May 2007.

Data from the early observations allowed researchers to establish the locations of 50 landmarks including lakes, canyons and mountains on Titan's surface. They looked at later radar data and discovered that prominent surface features had shifted location by up to 19 miles.

The spin of Titan's crust is linked to winds blowing through its atmosphere, the scientists said. But the type of broad displacement of surface features seen on Titan would be hard to explain unless its crust were separated from its core by an internal ocean, allowing the crust essentially to float.

"It's because Titan's crust seems to be so mobile that we infer this internal ocean," Ralph Lorenz of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, who directed the research published in the journal Science, said in a telephone interview.

Lorenz said this ocean was probably mostly water with "a few per cent" ammonia.

Its atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen, with other hydrocarbon elements that give Titan its orange colour.

Titan's atmosphere consists of compounds that may have existed in the Earth's primordial atmosphere, but Titan may have more of certain chemicals like methane and ethane.

"Titan is definitely one of the most Earth-like, if not the most Earth-like, landscapes in the solar system – and probably has the most Earth-like weather," Lorenz said.

"It's very much colder than the Earth. But the same processes that go on in our own weather, particularly the formation of clouds and rain, happen on Titan – but with liquid methane not with water," Lorenz added.

Titan is thought to have hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, with hydrocarbons raining from the sky and collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.

Scientists have found evidence suggesting underground oceans on other moons in the solar system including Jupiter's Europa, Callisto and Ganymede and Saturn's Enceladus.

Reuters

[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/03/21/obama-richardson-cp-4552823.jpg
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, left, embraces New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Friday at a campaign stop in Portland, Ore., where Richardson announced his endorsement of Obama.
Barack Obama has called for Congress to investigate the U.S. State Department after it was revealed on Friday that its workers breached security by looking at passport files of all three presidential hopefuls.
The State Department revealed on Friday that the passport files of presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and John McCain had also been breached by its workers.

Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the latest breaches were not discovered until Friday, a day after it became public that three contractors had peeked at Obama's passport files.

The agency's inspector general is investigating and the Justice Department is monitoring in case a criminal investigation is warranted.

Two department employees were fired and another disciplined after they unnecessarily looked at Obama's files. The government has not released their identities or the name of the company that employed them.

"At this point, we just started an investigation," he said. "We want to err on the side of caution."

McCormack said the individual who accessed both candidates' files is the one who has been reprimanded.

The employee has been reprimanded. "We are reviewing our options with that person" and their employment status, McCormack said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she spoke with at least Obama and Clinton on Friday, and expressed her regrets. Department officials planned to brief the staffs of all three candidates on Friday.
Rice said she told Obama she was sorry, and "that I myself would be very disturbed."

Republican Senator John McCain, who was travelling in Paris, said any breach of passport privacy deserves an apology and full investigation.

Clinton's office released a statement saying she had been contacted by Rice about the unauthorized breach, which occurred in 2007.

Department spokesman Sean McCormack has said that in Obama's case, it appears the three breaches of personal information were nothing more than "imprudent curiosity."
Calls for probe of 'outrageous breach'

The department was trying to make sure that the actions were not politically motivated.

It was unclear whether the contractors just viewed basic personal data required in passport applications such as place of birth, name and the social security number.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama's presidential campaign, has called for an investigation into the matter, calling it an "outrageous breach."

He demands that the investigation reveal the identities of the employees who looked at Obama's passport file, for what purpose and why it took so long to reveal the security breach.

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," Burton said. "Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."

The separate incidents happened on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14.

An internal State Department computer check revealed the breaches through computer flags that tip off supervisors when someone tries to view certain records.

CBC

[OMEN]

http://www.foxnews.com/images/354320/4_25_032008_floods_midwest.jpg
March 18: Motorists try to navigate through floodwaters along a highway in Wayne County, Mo.
A body found near a creek was confirmed to be that of a 14-year old boy who was swept away by floodwaters and sucked into a drainage pipe, authorities said.

Searchers found the body Thursday afternoon and later determined it to be that of Shaun Hebert, Mesquite, Tex., officials said. The boy and a friend were playing near a creek bloated by heavy rains that pounded North Texas when he was swept away Tuesday. His friend was able to swim to safety.

More than 100 people, helicopters and search dogs combed a densely wooded area after Shaun vanished.

The boy's tragic story was one of many tied to the severe weather and floodking this week across the country's midsection.
Midwesterners fought Friday to save their homes and businesses from rivers spilling over their banks after rainstorms blamed for at least 16 deaths moved through the region. Thousands of people from Arkansas through Ohio were staying in shelters or with relatives as flood waters lapped against their homes.
Major Byron Medloch of the Salvation Army said Friday that 1,000 people displaced by the Meramec River in eastern Missouri were housed in shelters. Another 1,000 were in shelters near Poplar Bluff in far southeast Missouri, where the surging Black River breached several levees.

"People are tired," Medloch said. "Tired of fighting and tired of waiting. They're just frustrated because they can't get back into their homes."

To the north, a fresh snowstorm blew through Minnesota and Wisconsin and into the Chicago area, and forecasters said the storm could leave as much as 9 inches of heavy snow in the region. About 350 flights were canceled and numerous others were delayed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

A blizzard warning remained in effect in northern Maine, where fierce winds had already scattered a foot or more of snow.
"Even though it was spring yesterday, we still have winter on our doorstep," spokeswoman Ginny Joles of Maine Public Service Co., northern Maine's major electric company, said Friday.

Thursday, the first day of spring, brought much-needed sunshine to some flooded communities, but many swelling rivers were not expected to crest until the weekend in Arkansas, Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana and Kentucky.

The worst flooding happened in smaller rivers across the nation's midsection. Major channels such as the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers saw only minor flooding.

In Fenton, a St. Louis suburb, Jeff Rogles joined dozens of volunteers to fill sandbags and pile them against downtown businesses near the fast-rising Meramec River, which was expected to reach more than 20 feet above flood stage in some spots.

"I think we have enough volunteers out here to stave off disaster," said Rogles, 27, who joined the effort because he remembered the devastating Great Flood of 1993.

Parts of Missouri got a foot of rain over a 36-hour period this week, causing widespread flash flooding and swelling many rivers. Police in Pacific, Mo., went door-to-door evacuating about 50 homes in low-lying areas.

In southwest Indiana, Todd Ferguson has spent most of the week building a sandbag wall around his sister-in-law's Evansville home. Pigeon Creek normally flows about 200 yards from Valerie Ferguson's house, but the water had crept to within 10 feet and was not expected to crest until Sunday.

In 2006, the Fergusons piled more than 1,000 sandbags around their home and still sustained about $1,000 in damage. This time, they don't have help from Valerie's husband, Tim, who is serving in Iraq with the Indiana National Guard.

"We won two years ago, but I don't know if we're going to win this one," Todd Ferguson said. "Only time will tell, I guess."

In the tiny community of Edgewater, Ohio, relatives helped Judy Lambert move out of her double-wide mobile home. Her detached garage had a foot of water in it from the flooding Great Miami River.

"We're getting all the valuables out and trying to salvage what we can," said Lambert's son, Sean, 34. The flood is "knocking at the back door."

Rivers receded Friday in Ohio, however, but several areas were still under flood warnings. About 70 state roads were closed or partly blocked by flooding; crews were trying to pump water off a major route into Columbus, according to the State Highway Patrol.

At least 16 deaths have been linked to the weather over the past few days, and at least two people were missing.

Searchers in Texas recovered the body of a teenager from waist-deep water Thursday; the boy had been washed down a drainage pipe. Two people in Arkansas whose vehicles were swept away by rushing water Tuesday were still missing.

Government forecasters warned that some flooding could continue in the coming days because of record rainfall and melting snow packs across much of the Midwest and Northeast.

FOX

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Very interesting, thanks.

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Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

A car bomb has exploded outside a Guardia Civil barracks in the north of Spain after a warning call from Basque separatists, police say.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44508000/jpg/_44508104_scene_afp203bo.jpg

The explosion at the city of Calahorra, in the Rioja wine region, left one policeman with a minor injury.

Spanish media said the area was cleared before the device went off at 1300GMT.

The Socialist Party of recently re-elected Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said it "forcefully condemns this new attack by Eta".

A man claiming to represent Eta telephoned highway police stating the location, make and colour of the vehicle, at around 1230 GMT, half an hour before the blast, Spanish media reported.

A blue Honda, stolen at gunpoint hours earlier from a couple who were later found trussed up and abandoned in a rural area, was used in the attack, according to Spanish media.

Eta was blamed for the killing of a former town councillor in the Basque region two days before the Spanish general election earlier this month.

The organisation, which ended a 15-month ceasefire in June 2007 after failed peace talks, seeks independence for regions in northern Spain and south-west France.

For more than three decades it has waged a bloody campaign that has led to more than 800 deaths.

Many of those killed have been members of the Guardia Civil, Spain's national police force, and both local and national politicians opposed to Eta's separatist demands.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

Six people have been killed in a US air strike near the Iraqi town of Samarra, with some reports suggesting they were US-allied anti-al-Qaeda Sunni fighters.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44509000/jpg/_44509168_awake_ap_203b.jpg

The US denied claims by a police source and a militia member that those killed at the checkpoint were members of an Awakening Council.

The US-funded groups are credited with helping to curb the level of violence.

It came as four more US soldiers were killed in Iraq, bringing the death toll since the 2003 invasion close to 4,000.

Three soldiers died when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle near Baghdad on Saturday, the US military said.

Another US soldier died after a rocket or mortar attack on Friday.

Denial

Independent website icasualties.org - which keeps a count of US deaths in Iraq - says the latest American fatalities would bring the death toll to 3,996.

Iraq this week marked the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion.

US President George W Bush said the invasion had been "the right decision" and had made the world better.

He said the US military's co-operation with Sunni Arab militias was yielding the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama Bin Laden, and that last year's US troop surge had opened the door to a major strategic victory.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said the "liberation of Iraq" by US-led forces had been the start of a new era, but he also warned that today's Iraq was still gravely threatened.

The campaign group, Iraq Body Count, says the civilian death toll since March 2003 is between 82,000 and 89,000, although it warns many deaths may have gone unreported.

BBC News

[legolas4792]

i guess they were playing hardcore team deathmatch :P

[OMEN]

Baghdad's heavily fortified "Green Zone" has come under heavy rocket or mortar attack, and police said at least two people had been killed outside the government and diplomatic compound.

In a separate incident, gunmen in three cars opened fire on pedestrians in a religiously mixed southern Baghdad district, killing at least seven and wounding 16, police said.

The US-protected Green Zone in central Baghdad area was often hit at the height of sectarian violence a year ago, but attacks have become rarer with improved security across Iraq.

In northern Mosul, a suicide truck bomber killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 30, including civilians, in an attack on an Iraqi army base, the Interior Ministry said. US commanders describe Mosul as al Qaeda's last urban stronghold in Iraq.

The US military said it killed 12 insurgents in a raid on a house east of Baquba after local media reported an operation in the town of Balad Ruz, 70km (45 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

"Six of the terrorists killed had shaved their bodies, which is consistent with final preparation for suicide operations," spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said.

Mosul and Baquba are the capitals of two of four northern provinces where offensives were launched this year against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda fighters who regrouped there after being driven out of strongholds around Baghdad and western Anbar.

While there was no immediate indication of who was responsible for Sunday's Green Zone attacks, the US military has blamed past missile strikes on rogue elements of anti-US Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.

Sadr last month renewed a seven-month-old ceasefire for his militia, which the US military has credited for contributing to sharp falls in violence across Iraq.

However, there are fears the ceasefire may be unraveling after Mehdi Army fighters clashed with Iraqi and US forces in the southern city of Kut and southern Baghdad last week.

The Iraq war last week moved into its sixth year, US President George W Bush marking the anniversary of the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein with an upbeat speech in which he said the United States was on track to victory.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in the insurgency and sectarian violence between majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni Muslims since the invasion, although attacks across Iraq have fallen 60 per cent since last June, US commanders in Iraq say.

With the number of US troops killed in Iraq nearing 4,000, the war remains a major issue in the US presidential campaign.

BARRAGE

The first barrage of about a dozen blasts aimed at the Green Zone started just before 6am (0300 GMT). Unusually, a second barrage of about eight more followed about four hours later.

Police sources said two people were killed and about 10 wounded by apparent misfires or randomly aimed Katyusha rockets, one in northeast Baghdad and one in central Bab-al-Sheikh.

US embassy officials confirmed "indirect fire" attacks on the Green Zone, a term used to describe rocket or mortar fire.

"The assessment at this time is that it caused no deaths or major casualties," US embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said.

A large plume of thick black smoke could be seen rising from one part of the Green Zone, which houses many government ministries and diplomatic missions, including the US embassy. Sirens could be heard warning people to take cover.

Two US attack helicopters circled over an area in the Iraqi capital's northeast soon after the first attack on the 10 sqkm (4 sq mile) Green Zone, located on the western bank of the Tigris River that cuts through Baghdad.


Reuters

[OMEN]

Four policemen and a militant have been killed after a gun battle in Kashmir's main city, police said.

The encounter, the first in past eight months in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, broke out after police raided a militant hideout.

"Militants hiding in a house fired indiscriminately. We have lost four policemen," Srinagar police chief Syed Ahfadul Mujtaba said.

He said a top militant of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group was also killed.

The violence comes days after rebels exploded a powerful bomb in the heart of Srinagar, killing one person and wounding about two dozen.

Rebel violence has fallen across Kashmir after India and Pakistan, who claim the region in full but rule in parts, started a slow-moving peace process in 2004, officials say.

But people are still killed in daily shootouts and occasional bomb attacks.

On Saturday, suspected separatist guerrillas dragged out a village headman from his home and killed him by slitting his throat in north Kashmir, police said.

The Indian army said this month it expected militant incursions from Pakistani Kashmir to increase once the snow starts melting along the mountainous border region as summer approaches.

More than 42,000 people have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir, mainly Hindu India's only Muslim majority state, since a revolt against New Delhi broke out in 1989.

Reuters

[OMEN]

An unidentified man apparently suffering from economic hardship in military-ruled Myanmar has set himself ablaze in the country's historic Shwedagon Pagoda, witnesses said.

The man in his 30s did not shout anti-government slogans, but complained about difficulties in his life and the rising cost of living, before setting himself ablaze on Friday's Tabaung Full Moon Day, a significant religious day for Buddhists, witnesses said.

"It was about 8.40 when he poured petrol on his body and ignited himself with fire from a candle," a woman who was among hundreds of worshippers at the pagoda that night, told Reuters. "There was chaos when some eyewitness shouted that there was a fire."

Security is generally tight at the pagoda, one of the holiest Buddhist shrines in the capital of the former Burma and guards and police quickly closed the gates of the pagoda for about a half-hour, she said.

The pagoda has been a focal point in previous political uprisings, including last year's pro-democracy demonstrations. A sharp spike in fuel prices sparked the biggest protests in 20 years last August and September, with tens of thousands of monks and civilian demonstrating in Yangon and other cities.

The rallies prompted a brutal crackdown on protesters, in which the United Nations says at least 31 killed.

A government medical source told Reuters the man had burns on 70 percent of his body and was being treated in a Yangon hospital, but declined to give further details.

The opposition National League for Democracy said the protester was not one of its members.

Reuters

[OMEN]

US vice-president Dick Cheney has said that Washington was doing its utmost to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations while dealing with emerging threats in the Middle East.
Cheney, who began a visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank on Saturday, kicked off a day of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders by attending an Easter service in a small stone chapel at the US Consulate in Jerusalem.

He then met Israeli President Shimon Peres, who told him "time is of the essence" in US-brokered negotiations with the Palestinians that Washington hopes can lead to a peace deal by the time George W Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Bush made his first presidential visit to Israel and the West Bank two months ago. He is expected to make another trip soon.

"We're obviously dedicated to doing all we can as an administration to try to move the peace process forward and also obviously actively involved in dealing with the threats that we see emerging in the region, not only threats to Israel but threats to the United States as well," Cheney said.

He did not elaborate on the nature of the dangers.

Palestinians accuse Israel of undermining the talks through settlement building on occupied land in and near Jerusalem and by refusing to remove West Bank roadblocks and mounting offensives against militants firing rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Cheney was to visit the occupied West Bank later in the day and meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well as Prime Minister Salam Fayyad before leaving for Turkey, his last stop on a nine-day visit to the Middle East.

IRAN

Cheney met Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Saturday, who said their talks would include concerns about Iran and Syria, as well as the peace process with the Palestinians.

Israel believes Iran's nuclear program is aimed at building atomic weapons and could pose a threat to the existence of the Jewish state.

Oil-rich Iran, one of Israel's most bitter enemies, denies it is seeking atomic arms and says it is pursuing its nuclear program and uranium enrichment for power generation.

At a joint news conference with Olmert on Saturday, Cheney said Washington's commitment to Israel's security was "enduring and unshakable".

He said Israel had a right to protect itself always against "terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction".

Israel tightened its economic and military cordon around the Gaza Strip after Hamas Islamists routed Abbas's more secular Fatah forces and seized control of the coastal territory in June.

The United States, Cheney said, would never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called Cheney's comments "provocative and completely biased in favor of the Israeli occupation".

Reuters

[OMEN]

Three Bali bombers on death row over the 2002 bombings could soon be executed after a dramatic end to their final appeal today.

Their lawyer Fahmi Bachmid today withdrew from their last-ditch legal appeal, bringing it to an abrupt end.

Outside court, Chief Judge Ida Bagus Putu Madeg said the judges would now treat the appeal, known as a judicial review, as if it had "never existed".

"With this, whatever happened in the previous hearings is considered to not exist," Madeg told AAP after the hearing for convicted terrorist Imam Samudra.

"We will not convey this (case) to the Supreme Court because it's not something for which a decision is needed.

"So the case will stay here. It is considered that the judicial review request never existed."

Denpasar District Court had held three separate judicial review hearings, one for each of the three terrorists: the so-called smiling assassin Amrozi Nurhasyim; his brother Ali Ghufron (alias Mukhlas); and Imam Samudra.

The trio played key roles in the Bali nightclub bombings on October 12, 2002, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

But the hearings became weighed down by a protracted bid to either have the bombers brought to Bali to testify or to have the appeal held in Cilacap District Court, off central Java, closer to their island prison.

No witnesses were called to testify in any of the four hearings.

In court today, Bachmid presented a letter formally objecting to the decision not to move the hearing or bring the convicted terrorists to the Bali court.

"We really object to the judges' decision," Bachmid said.

"The reasons are really unreasonable according to the existing law."

But after a brief adjournment, Chief Judge Madeg said the judges retained their position.

Bachmid then thanked the judges, but said he had no alternative but to withdraw from the case.

"I will give it (the case) back to Amrozi, Samudra and Ali Ghufron, whether to continue with the judicial review or not," he said.

Outside the court an angry Bachmid rejected accusations the entire case had been a tactic to stall the executions.

He said the trio must now send a letter if they wanted to formally withdraw the appeal, a point disputed by prosecutors.

The prosecutor in Amrozi's case, I Wayan Suila, said there was no obligation for the judges to ask the convicted terrorists if they wanted to withdraw the case, and it was now considered closed.

Indonesia's Attorney General's Office had said the execution would not be carried out until after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the appeal.

Asked if today's events meant the executions were now back on track, Attorney General's Office spokesman BD Nainggolan said: "Yes".

"They are not submitting a judicial review but there is still other legal avenues available (to them)," he added.

"We will ask them whether they are going to submit for clemency or not.

"If they don't submit the clemency (request), then the process of execution could be started.

"We don't know when this process will start because we haven't received the report from Bali."

AAP

[OMEN]

Taiwan's president, stung by the rejection of a referendum on UN membership that angered China and other major powers, is taking a last stab at swaying world opinion to get a seat on the body, a senior official said.

President Chen Shui-bian instructed Taiwan diplomats abroad to tell their host governments that despite the referendum's failure on Saturday, Taiwan people still wanted UN membership.

The referendum asked whether Taiwan should apply to enter the UN under the name "Taiwan".

"Even though this referendum didn't pass, Taiwan still wants to get in," Joseph Wu, Taiwan's top envoy to the United States, told Reuters by phone. "Taiwan is a bit afraid that China will distort this into saying we have no urge to join.

"This, I think, isn't right," Wu said. "So we here have told the relevant personnel to spread the word."

The diplomatic foray could be Chen's last after almost eight years in office, Wu said.

Chen is an anti-China firebrand who often upset Beijing and irritated Taiwan's strongest ally, the United States. On May 20, the opposition Nationalist Party's Ma Ying-jeou takes over as president.

China has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. It has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control and has repeatedly blocked Taiwan's attempts to join the United Nations.

Taiwan lost its UN seat, which it had held under its legal name, the Republic of China, to Beijing in 1971.

China welcomed the rejection of a referendum, Taiwanese media reported. The United States, Russia and Britain had also criticised the referendum.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Suspected militants in Pakistan have attacked oil tankers supplying fuel to foreign forces in Afghanistan, destroying 36 tankers and wounding up to 70 people.

The attack took place on Sunday night in Torkham, the main crossing point on the Afghan-Pakistani border just west of the Khyber Pass, where about 100 oil tankers were parked in a field.

"We have reports of 60 to 70 injured but none in critical condition," said a senior official in Jamrud, the main town in the Khyber tribal region.

The militants set off two bombs that started a fire and many people who had gathered in the field were hurt when some of the tankers exploded, said the official, who declined to be identified.

"There were huge flames. People began running when the fire spread," said witness Waheed Afridi.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, the second on oil tankers bound for Afghanistan in two weeks, but the official blamed militants.

Foreign forces fighting the Taliban in land-locked Afghanistan get many of their supplies via Pakistan, where militants have been stepping up attacks on supply lines.

Pakistan has been battling militancy in its lawless tribal lands on the Afghan border since US-backed forces toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Pope Benedict called for an end to injustice worldwide in his Easter message and expressed joy at continuing conversions to Christianity hours - after he baptised a prominent Italian Muslim convert.

The pope celebrated an Easter Mass for tens of thousands of people in driving rain in St Peter's Square as Christians around the world commemorated Christ's resurrection.

The wind and rain that has whipped most of Europe did not spare Rome as the German pontiff, wearing white and gold vestments, said Mass while the crowd huddled under umbrellas.

The mass came some 12 hours after an Easter vigil service on Saturday night where, in a surprise move, the pope baptized Muslim-born convert Magdi Allam, 55, an outspoken journalist and fierce critic of Islamic extremism.

At the morning Mass, the pope read a prayer saying that after Christ's resurrection some 2000 years ago "thousands and thousands of people converted to the Christian faith" and he added: "This is a miracle that still renews itself today".

The Egyptian-born Allam's conversion to Christianity - he took the name "Christian" for his baptism - was kept secret until the Vatican disclosed it in a statement less than an hour before the Saturday night service began.

Allam, who is a strong supporter of Israel and who an Israeli newspaper once called a "Muslim Zionist," has lived under police protection following threats against him, particularly after he criticized Iran's position on Israel.

Writing in Sunday's edition of the leading Corriere della Sera, the newspaper of which he is a deputy director, Allam said he realized that he was in greater danger but he has no regrets.

"INNATE EVIL"

Allam wrote: "... the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual".

His conversion, which he called "the happiest day of my life," came just two days after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused the pope of being part of a "new crusade" against Islam.

The Vatican appeared to be at pains to head off criticism from the Islamic world about the conversion of Allam, who defended the pope in 2006 when the pontiff made a speech that many Muslims perceived as depicting Islam as a violent faith.

"Conversion is a private matter, a personal thing and we hope that the baptism will not be interpreted negatively by Islam," Cardinal Giovanni Re told an Italian newspaper.

Still, Allam's highly public baptism by the pope shocked Italy's Muslim community, with some leaders openly questioning why the Vatican chose to shine such a big spotlight it.

"What amazes me is the high profile the Vatican has given this conversion," Yaha Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, told Reuters. "Why could he have not done this in his local parish?"

In his twice-yearly "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message delivered after the Mass, the pope decried "the many wounds that continue to disfigure humanity in our own day".

"These are the scourges of humanity, open and festering in every corner of the planet, although they are often ignored and sometimes deliberately concealed; wounds that torture the souls and bodies of countless of our brothers and sisters," he said.

He called for "an active commitment to justice ... in areas bloodied by conflict and wherever the dignity of the human person continues to be scorned and trampled," mentioning Darfur, Somalia, the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon and Tibet.

He then wished the world a happy Easter in 63 languages.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

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Thanks for the story.

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Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

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Thanks for the news.

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[JohnCenaFan28]

A Chinese-born engineer found guilty last year of conspiring to export sensitive US defence technology to China has been sentenced to 24.5 years.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42910000/jpg/_42910465_mak_ap203b.jpg

The court in California had also convicted Chi Mak, 67, of acting as a foreign agent and of making false statements to federal agents.

Mak had worked on submarine propulsion systems for defence contractor Power Paragon in Anaheim.

The FBI found defence CDs in luggage of Mak's relatives at Los Angeles airport.

Prosecutors had alleged that Mak gave thousands of documents to his brother, who handed them to Chinese authorities.

Hong Kong flight

Mak said during last year's six-week trial that he copied sensitive documents from Power Paragon and kept copies in his office.

Mak, a naturalised US citizen, said he had not realised at the time that making copies was illegal.

Mak was arrested in October 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong.

Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in their luggage that contained documents including one on a propulsion system that could make submarines virtually undetectable.

Mak had pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was not formally charged with espionage as the information was not officially deemed to be classified.

Mak sought a new trial this year but his request was turned down.

BBC News

[OMEN]

Iraqi security forces have fought fierce gunbattles with powerful Shi'ite militias in Basra in a major operation aimed at bringing the southern oil city under government control.

The operation targeted six districts in central and northern Basra where the Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has a strong presence.

A Reuters witness in the city reported seeing columns of black smoke and hearing explosions and machinegun fire. Television pictures showed Iraqi troops running through empty streets and helicopters flying overhead.

"There are clashes in the streets. Bullets are coming from everywhere and we can hear the sound of rocket explosions. This has been going on since dawn," resident Jamil said by telephone as he cowered in his home.

The head of Sadr's office in Basra called for calm and negotiations to end the fighting.

The Mehdi Army, which has thousands of fighters, has kept a relatively low profile since Sadr called a ceasefire last August. But the militia has chafed at the truce and on Tuesday there were signs that the unrest was spreading.

Gunmen and police clashed in the southern city of Kut, where last week Mehdi Army fighters battled police. A Reuters witness said he could hear the sounds of gunfire. The streets were empty and shops closed. Police said a curfew had been imposed.

In Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling slum of about 2 million people that is Sadr's biggest stronghold, residents said armed Mehdi Army fighters had appeared on the streets and ordered Iraqi police and soldiers to get out of the district.

In several other districts, Mehdi Army militiamen continued what they called a "civil disobedience campaign", forcing shops to shut. Hundreds of protesters marched in two districts demanding the release of Sadrists in detention, witnesses said.

An Iraqi army commander in Basra said "many outlaws" had been killed in the operation to reassert government control over the semi-lawless city, whose surrounding oilfields hold 80 per cent of Iraq's oil wealth.

At Basra's al-Mawana hospital, police major Abbas Youssef said four bodies and 18 wounded had been received.

MALIKI IN BASRA

Major Tom Holloway, a spokesman for British forces in Basra, said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in the city to oversee the operation.

"It will be very difficult for the central government to regain control," said Joost Hiltermann, an Istanbul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group think-tank.

"You have many armed groups that are looking to keep hold of their share of the oil wealth."

Sadrists and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the two most powerful Shi'ite factions in Iraq, have been vying for control of Basra, Iraq's second city and gateway to the Gulf, along with a smaller Shi'ite party, Fadhila.

Basra's oil fields are the source of most government revenues. Iraqi oil industry sources said the fields, which exported 1.54 million barrels of oil per day in February, were operating normally on Tuesday.

Iraqi army Major-General Ali Zaidan, the commander of Iraqi ground forces in the operation, said the offensive would continue "until we achieve our target".

"The target is to wipe out all the outlaws. There were clashes and many outlaws have been killed," Zaidan said, adding that he had no death toll.

The operation was launched after Maliki, accompanied by his defense and interior ministers, arrived in the city on Monday vowing to reimpose his government's control over the city.

"We are ready to negotiate," said Harith al-Ithari, the head of Sadr's office in Basra, calling for calm and accusing Maliki's government of trying to crush the Sadrist movement.

The British military said no British ground forces were involved in the operation, but warplanes from the US-led coalition were carrying out aerial surveillance.

Iraqi security forces took control of Basra from British forces in December, although 4,100 British troops remain at an airbase outside the city to offer assistance if needed.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Israel will let Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deploy hundreds of his security forces in the West Bank city of Jenin after they complete US-funded training in Jordan

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak will inform Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the decision when they meet on Wednesday, the officials said about a move that could blunt US frustration with Israel and boost slow-moving peace talks.

Israeli officials said the planned deployment in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, could include up to 500 to 600 men. Palestinian forces took up positions in the larger West Bank city of Nablus in November as part of a law-and-order campaign.

Fayyad and some US officials have accused Israel of undermining Palestinian Authority security efforts in Nablus by refusing to curtail army raids into the city.

Both Jenin and Nablus have long been seen by Israel as bastions for anti-Israeli militant activity, although in recent months the cities have been relatively calm.

Israeli troops clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians in a Nablus refugee camp on Tuesday but no injuries were reported.

Israel has been under increasing US pressure to take steps to bolster Abbas, whose authority has been restricted to the occupied West Bank since Hamas Islamists routed his more secular Fatah forces and seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.

US-sponsored peace talks, launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement before US President George W Bush leaves office next January, have shown little sign of progress so far.

In addition to allowing Abbas's forces to deploy in Jenin, Barak is expected to ease travel restrictions for Palestinian business owners within the West Bank.

But citing security concerns, Barak has balked at removing checkpoints as demanded by the Palestinians.

"CALCULATED RISK"

"It is clear we need to exhaust every possible option – if it does not conflict with Israel's security needs – to help the chances of improving the atmosphere in the talks with the Palestinians," Barak told reporters.

Speaking ahead of a weekend visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Barak voiced a willingness to take "a calculated risk" by easing restrictions on Palestinians.

Rice says neither Israel nor the Palestinians have done enough to fulfill their obligations under a long-stalled, US-backed peace "road map".

Under the plan, Israel is required to halt all settlement activities and the Palestinians are to rein in militants.

Nearly 700 members of Abbas's National Security Forces crossed into Jordan in January to begin the four-month-long, US-funding training course.

A separate group from Abbas's Presidential Guard has also gone to Jordan for advanced training.

Washington wants to train the backbone of a Palestinian gendarmerie that can both police civilians and rein in militants who could try to block any future peace deal.

While acknowledging improvement in some parts of the West Bank, Israel asserts that Palestinian security forces are still unreliable and include large numbers of anti-Israel militants.

Russia agreed last week to deliver armoured vehicles without mounted guns to Abbas's forces, as demanded by Israel, Israeli officials said.

But Israel has prevented equipment like body amour from reaching Abbas's men.

Reuters

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/711092.jpg
SORRY: US President George W Bush has praised the courage of troops in Iraq, while expressing sorrow that the war has cost the lives of 4000 American soldiers.
US President George W Bush has expressed sorrow as the number of US troops killed in Iraq hit 4000, days after he marked the fifth anniversary of the unpopular war.

"One day people will look back at this moment in history and say 'thank God there were courageous people willing to serve' because they laid the foundation for peace for generations to come," Bush said after a roadside bomb killed four US soldiers, pushing the toll to the new milestone.

Recent opinion polls show around 60 per cent of US voters disapprove of Bush's handling of the war and roughly the same number believe the loss of American life was not worthwhile.

Last week, on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion, the Republican president said the United States was on track for victory.

Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton praised the heroism of US troops while promising that if elected they would come home.

Obama said the war should never have been waged and troops should be brought home soon. Clinton pledged to respond "by bringing a responsible end to this war, and bringing our troops home safely."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has said US troops could remain in Iraq for 100 years, told a veterans' group in Chula Vista, California, that his thoughts and prayers go out to families of troops killed in the war "every day, not just on the day that 4000 brave young Americans are sacrificed."

After a State Department briefing with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush, who will leave office in January, offered words of comfort for the families of the troops killed in Iraq.

"I hope their families know that citizens pray for their comfort and strength, whether they were the first one who lost their life in Iraq or recently lost their lives in Iraq," he told reporters.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "Every single loss of a soldier, sailor, airman and Marine is keenly felt by us in the department, by military commanders, by families, friends, both in theatre and here at home."

Precise Iraqi casualties are not known but the widely cited human rights group Iraq Body Count said this month that up to around 89,300 civilians have been killed since 2003.

The war has cost the United States $US500 ($NZ635) billion.

The president chaired a meeting of his National Security Council on Monday and was briefed by Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador in Baghdad, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top US military officer in Iraq.

Bush and his advisers are trying to decide whether to continue to reduce troop levels in Iraq after last year's increase, which is credited with lowering violence there.

Some experts are urging a pause in troop reductions to avoid losing the gains made in recent months.

The deaths that pushed the US toll in Iraq to 4000 happened as new violence burst out, including sustained mortar fire against the US-protected "Green Zone" in Baghdad.

Whitman said that despite the new casualties, violence overall was down compared to last year.

"Both coalition and Iraqi security force casualties are down significantly from about May of '07," he said. "Iraqi civilian casualties has also been on a downward trend since December of '06."

"Would we like to reduce the casualties to nothing? Of course we would. Are there still going to be casualties in the days ahead? Most unfortunately there will be."

Reuters

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A big motorway pile-up in western Austria has left one person dead and 30 injured, police say.


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The crash, involving at least 60 vehicles, was near the town of Seewalchen, on the main motorway linking Vienna and Salzburg.

A police spokesman said that low visibility caused by a major snowstorm was to blame for the accident.

Some victims were trapped in their vehicles, and falling snow was hampering rescue efforts.

Helicopters attempted to land at the scene, but some had to abort the rescue mission because of the heavy snowfall.

Around 40 Red Cross rescue vehicles have been sent to the scene, where they are working alongside the emergency services.

The Red Cross said a bus was involved in the incident.

At least five of the injured were in a serious condition and local hospitals have been put on stand-by to deal with the casualties.

The motorway has been closed in both directions.

This is not the first incident along this section of the motorway.

The Seelwachen to St Georgen section has seen several fatal crashes, mostly because of fog, in which 10 people have died since 2002.

BBC News

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Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has been challenged over claims that she came under sniper fire during a trip she made to Bosnia in the 1990s.


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Video shown on US TV network CBS shows the then First Lady walking calmly from her plane. Her campaign has said she "misspoke" about landing under fire.

Aides to Barack Obama, her rival to be the party's presidential nominee, argue she overstates her foreign experience.

Rivalry between the pair has increased ahead of 22 April's Pennsylvania vote.

Meanwhile, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain addressed the nation's economic concerns at a campaign event in California on Tuesday.

The Arizona senator is keen to counter arguments that he lacks experience in that field, as the US economic downturn continues.

'Heads down'

The row over Mrs Clinton's 1996 Bosnia visit follow a speech she made on Iraq last week, in which she described herself and her daughter Chelsea being at some risk as they arrived.

She said: "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

The video clip played by CBS on Monday shows Mrs Clinton and Chelsea walking across the tarmac smiling and waving before stopping to shake hands with Bosnia's acting president and meet an eight-year-old girl.

The Obama campaign issued a statement which carried links to the clip on the YouTube video networking site.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement that the story "joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policy-making".

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Mrs Clinton "misspoke" on one occasion about the incident.

In her book, she described how the airstrip greeting had been cut short because of sniper fire on a nearby hillside - and that was the account she had given many times, he said.

Options open

Mrs Clinton is continuing to campaign in Pennsylvania this week, while Mr Obama has taken a brief holiday from the campaign trail.

He is to embark on a six-day bus tour across the state on Friday, his aides said.

Mr Obama is ahead of Mrs Clinton in terms of the number of delegates won in primary elections so far.

The delegates will choose in August which candidate is to be the party's nominee in November's presidential election, standing against Mr McCain.

Mr McCain, speaking in Orange County in southern California on Tuesday, said he would leave all options open for dealing with current US economic troubles and would "not allow dogma to override common sense".

"I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis," he said.

"I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now."

BBC News

[OMEN]

Militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have clashed with Iraqi security forces in Basra and Baghdad for a second day in fighting that has killed more than 50 people and wounded hundreds.


The fighting between government forces and Sadr's followers has spread to other towns in the south where Sadr wields wide influence, as a ceasefire he imposed on his Mehdi Army militia last August unraveled.

US officials say the ceasefire has been a major factor in a reduction in violence in recent months in Iraq where Shi'ite militias have been vying for control in some cities, including oil-rich Basra.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has traveled to Iraq's second largest city Basra to oversee a military operation to impose government control, said fighters would be spared if they surrendered within 72 hours. Sadr has threatened a countrywide "civil revolt" if attacks on his followers continue.

The worst fighting was in Basra, where a health official said 40 people had been killed and 200 wounded.

In the capital, a health official said 14 people were killed and more than 140 wounded in clashes in Sadr City, the Shi'ite slum named for the cleric's slain father.

Three US citizens working for the US government in Baghdad were seriously wounded in a mortar attack in the Green Zone, the diplomatic and government compound, a US embassy spokeswoman said.

Police said Sadr fighters had seized control of seven districts in the southern town of Kut. A Reuters witness heard heavy clashes near a government building in the town centre.

The crackdown on Sadr militia is the largest operation yet conducted by Iraq's military without US or British support, an important test as Washington aims to bring 20,000 troops home and British forces disengaged in the Shi'ite south last year.

Basra police said heavy gunbattles restarted early Wednesday in five districts of Basra after a brief lull. Mortars or rocket attacks regularly struck Iraqi security checkpoints and bases.

Ground commander Major-General Ali Zaidan said his forces had killed more than 30 militants on the first day of the operation, which began before dawn on Tuesday. More than 25 were wounded and around 50 were captured, he said.

"The operation is still going on and will not stop until it achieves its objectives," he said. "It is on the same scale as yesterday."

"Now there is heavy gunfire and I have heard the sounds of explosions. I also saw a group of gunmen planting roadside bombs," said Abbas, a Basra resident who would only give his first name.

Several mortar rounds struck a police compound in Basra where prisoners were being held. Seven police and three prisoners were wounded.

FACTIONS

Two powerful factions of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Sadr's followers, are fighting for power in Basra along with a smaller Shi'ite party, Fadhila. Sadr's followers say the security forces and US-led troops are siding with the Council against them.

British forces, which patrolled Basra for nearly five years, withdrew to a base outside the city in December and have not been involved in the fighting.

Washington aims to bring 20,000 of its 160,000 troops home by July after a build-up of troops reduced violence dramatically last year. But violence has increased in the past few months.

Maliki's government is under pressure to show it can maintain security on its own. US Democratic candidates who hope to succeed President George W Bush next January are calling for a speedy withdrawal from an unpopular war.

Several towns in southern Iraq were under curfew as authorities sought to prevent further outbreaks of violence.

"We have a shortage of doctors because the American troops are not letting them into Sadr City," said Ali Bustan, general director of the health office for eastern Baghdad.

Sadr, an influential leader who has not been seen in public for months, issued a statement calling on Iraqis to stage sit-ins all over Iraq and said he would declare "civil revolt" if attacks by US and Iraqi forces continued.

Streets in Basra were largely empty except for Iraqi security forces, and shops remained closed. At least four Iraqi helicopters could be seen hovering over the city.

"The situation is so tense. I did not go to work today. Nobody is going to work," said Kareem, a Basra resident who would only give his first name. "There are gunmen at every intersection."

An official with Iraq's Southern Oil Company said fighting had not affected Basra's oil output or exports, which provide the vast majority of government revenues.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Five people are missing after an apartment building in Norway's western coastal town of Aalesund collapsed.

Media reports said about 21 people lived in the building and that several had been taken to hospital with minor injuries.

Police said the chances of finding more survivors were slim.

Police said a rock slide had contributed to the disaster.

"We early on knew that part of the mountain had come off, but whether that is the direct or indirect cause, is uncertain," police spokesman Magne Tjoennoey.

The apartment block, which was built against a mountainside, moved several metres, several eyewitnesses told public broadcaster NRK.

The lower floors of the building then caught fire, hampering rescue workers as they searched for those missing, police said.

"We are currently not inside the building, which is crushed," Tjoennoey said, adding expert help was on the way.

A second rockslide in the area had prompted the police to evacuate a number of nearby buildings, the police said.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Nato forces have sent jets to escort two Russian long-range air force bombers patrolling neutral skies near Alaska.

Russia's military has resumed its Cold War practice of flying regular patrols far beyond its borders, and in the last year has also sent turbo-prop Tu-95s over US naval aircraft carriers and the Pacific island of Guam.

Accompanied by two Il-78 refueling tankers, the two Tu-95 "Bear" bombers flew for 15 hours over the Arctic and Pacific oceans, Interfax news agency quoted Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying.

"In the course of the air patrol, long-range aviation aircraft were escorted by Nato jets in the region of Alaska," said Drobyshevsky.

Originally designed to drop nuclear bombs, the Tu-95, Russia's equivalent of the US air force's B-52, is a Cold War icon refitted for surveillance and maritime patrols.

Russia, in the eighth year of an economic boom driven by high global oil prices, has raised military funding after years of neglect following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Russian navy has finished construction of mothballed submarines and restarted large-scale naval exercises that shortages of fuel and spare parts had made a rarity.

Analysts say the Kremlin is using its reviving military might to support a policy of projecting Russia's power again on the world stage.

But some military observers say the Russian armed forces are still hampered by a shortage of combat-ready assets and that the exercises are primarily a public relations exercise.

Reuters

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Two teenage Bulgarian sisters have been rescued by Italian police from a circus in which one of them is said to have been forced to swim with piranhas.


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Police say that while the 19-year-old sister had to swim in a transparent tank, the 16-year-old had snakes draped across her body and suffered bites.

Four members of the family have been freed from what has been described as a "circus of horrors" south of Naples.

Three men have been arrested and charged with holding them in slavery.

The women were paid 100 euros (£78) a week, forbidden to leave the camp and forced to work 15- and 20-hour shifts, according to police.

The Bulgarian family has now been moved to a safe house but their case highlights the plight of people caught up in human trafficking networks in Europe.

The European Union estimates that 500,000 people are affected by trafficking every year in Europe.

In 2006, more than 100 Polish workers were freed from forced labour camps in the Puglia region of Italy where they had been promised seasonal farm-work.

BBC News

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Singapore Airlines has grounded a second Airbus A380 super-jumbo because of a fuel pump problem.


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The carrier said the move delayed passengers bound for Sydney on Monday who had to switch to smaller planes.

It added that the A380 in question was now back in service. A similar fuel pump problem grounded another of the airline's A380s back in February.

Singapore Airlines is currently the first and only carrier to enter the A380 into commercial service.

London visit

"The problem is similar to the problem which affected another aircraft a month or so back, but it is important to mention, it is not the same problem, and not the same aircraft," said Singapore Airlines spokesman Stephen Forshaw.

"The problem last time was identified to be with the electrical relay powering the pump, rather than the pump itself," he said.

Mr Forshaw added that this time the problem involved a "premature failure of the pump".

At present the airline has three of the planes, with another 16 on order.

Last week it flew an A380 into London's Heathrow Airport for the first time.

It first introduced the plane in October, on its Singapore to Sydney route.

Other orders

Dubai-based Emirates will become the second airline to use the A380 when it takes its first delivery in August.

British Airways has ordered 12 of the airliners, due to be delivered from 2012, while Virgin Atlantic has ordered six, to arrive from 2013.

The airliner's wings are made at Broughton in north Wales and at Filton in Bristol. The Rolls-Royce engines that power Singapore's fleet are built at Derby.

The introduction of the A380 was delayed for more than a year due to wiring problems.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

South Korea is reported to be planning to challenge North Korea on its human rights record, indicating a harder line from Seoul's new government.


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Reports quoting unnamed officials say the South is set to vote for a draft UN resolution expressing deep concern over the rights violations in the North.

The South has frequently abstained from such votes, fearful of souring relations with its communist neighbour.

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva will consider the resolution this week.

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo quoted an official as saying the new government, which took charge in February, regards human rights as "a universal value".

"The government will show the first example of concrete action in the upcoming UNHRC vote," the official said.

The resolution expresses deep concern at what it says are continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights in the North.

In the past five years, the South has voted for only one such resolution - in 2006 after Pyongyang's test of a nuclear weapon.

The BBC's John Sudworth, in Seoul, says successive liberal governments have taken a careful line with Pyongyang.

They have feared that harsh criticism might upset the efforts for closer engagement between the old enemies, our correspondent adds.

Analysts say the approval of the UN resolution would be the first sign that new conservative President Lee Myung-bak is prepared to take a tougher stance towards the North.

BBC News

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Brazilian mining giant Vale do Rio Doce has abandoned talks to buy rival Xstrata, in what would have been the industry's biggest takeover.


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Vale said it had ended talks because Xstrata would not agree to its latest offer of cash and stock.

Vale is already the world's biggest iron ore miner. With Xstrata's mining assets it would have challenged the industry leader, BHP Billiton.

The deal was reportedly worth as much as $90bn (£45bn).

'Mutual decision'

In a statement Vale said it believed its offer "would have created significant value for both sets of shareholders".

Xstrata is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has mining operations in North and South America, South Africa and Australia.

"While Vale and Xstrata continue to believe that a combination of the two companies could realise significant value for both sets of shareholders, we have not been able to reach agreement," said the company's chief executive Mick Davis.

"We have therefore mutually decided to cease talks."

BBC News

[OMEN]

About 30 Tibetan monks have burst into a rare news briefing at a key temple in Lhasa, saying the authorities were lying about the situation after more than two weeks of unrest in the Himalayan region, a witness said.

The Chinese government brought a small group of foreign and Chinese reporters to Lhasa on Wednesday for a stage managed three-day tour of the city that was rocked by anti-Chinese violence on March 14.

The group of monks at the Jokhang Temple, the most sacred temple in Tibet and a top tourist stop in central Lhasa, disrupted a briefing by the head of the temple's administrative office.

"About 30 young monks burst into the official briefing, shouting: 'Don't believe them. They are tricking you. They are telling lies'," USA Today reporter Callum MacLeod said by telephone from Lhasa.

Some wept as they then told foreign reporters stories about a lack of freedom, he said.

Another reporter on the trip said some of the monks asserted that they had been unable to leave the Jokhang Temple since March 10.

The state-run Xinhua news agency said only that the media tour had been "disrupted" by monks, known as lamas in Tibet, but that it got back on track swiftly and that Lhasa was returning to normal after the unrest.

The Tibetan unrest and China's response are at the centre of an international storm ahead of the Olympics in August.

US President George W Bush encouraged Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday to talk with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.

Hu said the monk must renounce support for independence of Tibet and Taiwan and stop encouraging violence and illegal activities aimed at harming the Olympics. The Dalai Lama denies he wants anything more than greater autonomy for his homeland and has criticised the violent protests.

The unrest began with peaceful marches by Buddhist monks in Lhasa more than two weeks ago. Within days, riots erupted in which non-Tibetan Chinese migrants were attacked and their property burned until security forces filled the streets.

Protests have spread to parts of Chinese provinces that border Tibet and have large ethnic Tibetan populations.

China says 19 people were killed at the hands of Tibetan mobs. The Tibetan government-in-exile says 140 died in Lhasa and elsewhere – most of them Tibetan victims of security forces.

China has poured troops into the region, and Human Rights Watch said the United Nations human rights council should address the crisis in Tibet.

Human Rights Watch said Australia, the European Union, Switzerland and the United States raised human rights abuses in Tibet during a session of the UN Human Rights Council, but China blocked debate, backed by Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

"The council has not only the right, but the obligation to address the Tibet crisis," a statement quoted Juliette de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, as saying.

"It's scandalous that the council ends up silencing those who are trying to make sure it does its job."

Meanwhile, Beijing continued its propaganda blitz and Xinhua quoted "living Buddhas" condemning other monks who participated in the March 14 upheaval.

"According to Buddhist karma, they cannot reincarnate after death because of the sin they have committed," said Chubakang Tubdain Kaizhub, head of the Tibetan chapter of the Buddhist Association of China.

Taiwan's outgoing President Chen Shui-bian called for people to stand up "in the name of universal human rights, positively show they care, and light a candle for the people of Tibet".

He added: "I also call on the Beijing authorities to abandon the use of force and resolve the problem through peaceful dialogue."

Reuters

[OMEN]

Colombia said it seized at least 30kg of uranium from the country's biggest left-wing rebel group, the first time radioactive material has been linked to the four-decade-old guerrilla war.

The uranium was found in a rural area long considered a Marxist guerrilla stronghold just south of the capital Bogota.

It is being examined by government experts, the defence ministry said in a statement, although it did not say where the material came from or what it could be used for.

An expert on Colombia's cocaine-fuelled conflict said rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, do not have the facilities needed to make a bomb with uranium.

"This appears to have been part of a black market operation that the guerrillas were trying to use to make money," said Pablo Casas, an analyst at Bogota think-tank Security and Democracy.

"This is new for Colombia and could bring the FARC into the major leagues of black market terrorist transactions," he said.

The government said information about the stash of uranium was found earlier this month in computer files left behind by top guerrilla leader Raul Reyes, who was killed in a Colombian bomb strike against a FARC camp in neighbouring in Ecuador.

The March 1 raid sparked a major diplomatic dispute between Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative ally of the United States, and the left-wing leaders of Ecuador and Venezuela.

Colombia also claims the files show evidence that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has given financial support to the FARC.

The United States, which calls the FARC a terrorist group and has long considered Chavez a destabilising force in Latin America, said the evidence is "disturbing".

Chavez openly sympathises with the FARC but says Colombia's accusations are part of a US-backed plot to smear him. He has also questioned how the computer files could have survived the bombing raid.

The FARC took up arms in the 1960s and is now funded mostly by cocaine smuggling and extortion. The group says it is fighting a Marxist insurgency meant to close the wide gap that separates rich and poor in this Andean country.

"No one believes the FARC wants to blow up Bogota to further the revolution," said a diplomat based in the capital who asked not to be named.

"This seems more like a black market action than military action. It shows again how the FARC is behaving more like an organised crime group than a political group," the diplomat said.

The war kills, maims and displaces thousands of Colombians every year.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Fiji’s military strongman Voreqe Bainimarama has strongly attacked his regional critics and while saying he will still hold elections next year, he has warned they are not the solution.

He gave a speech in Suva today, 24 hours after the Pacific Forum Foreign Ministers meeting in Auckland demanded he honour his promise to hold elections by March next year.

They also said the restoration of democracy should not be held up by Bainimarama's plans to introduce a so-called People's Charter.

In a speech to the military government-established charter group today, Bainimarama - who staged a coup in December 2006 - made it clear he was not impressed with the forum.

“Elections are central to democracy but they are not always, on their own, a magic or quick-fix solution,” he said.

“How can an election, on its own, make a difference when it is based on divisive and race based communal electoral arrangements?

“How can an election, on its own, solve the deep differences that our constitution has perpetuated between the different races in our country?

“Unless there are fundamental reforms, how can an election succeed where it will take us straight back to the grimy old politics of self interest, cronyism and scam mongering?”

Without referring directly to yesterday’s Auckland meeting, the commodore said there needed to be more to international relationships than just discussions about elections.

“It is a risk for all of us in the Pacific for the international community to seem to ignore, until after any election, the many pressing issues that our country faces.”

Bainimarama attacked those inside and outside Fiji who had resisted change, stirred up controversy and disrupted the military government.

“It has not helped that some detractors have been concocting phony criticisms, lighting up little bushfires here and there, so that we spend more of our time and effort in responding to these.

“To all our opponents and detractors, I say this: your persisting efforts to block change will be in vain.”

Bainimarama called on the international community to stop its lecturing habits.

"Opportunities for cheap shots should be resisted as they only harden attitudes. As we know, emotional reactions have in the past accentuated difficulties. But encouragement helps."

Fairfax Media

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/711776.jpg
WE HAVE TOUCHDOWN: The space shuttle Endeavour lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida
The US space shuttle Endeavour has returned to Florida, capping a milestone flight that brought Japan fully into the International Space Station partnership with the delivery of the first part of its research laboratory.
Space shuttle lands in Florida

Unexpected clouds at the Kennedy Space Center prompted Nasa to skip Endeavour's first landing opportunity and delay touchdown, ending the 122nd shuttle mission in darkness, just as it began 16 days ago.

The shuttle dropped off at the space station a storage room for Japan's elaborate Kibo laboratory, as well as a Canadian robot to help astronauts maintain the $US100 billion outpost.

Endeavour brought back space station flight engineer Leopold Eyharts, who spend seven weeks aloft to set up a European laboratory, called Columbus, which was delivered on the last shuttle mission in February.

Nasa hopes to complete three more missions to the space station this year and a servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope, as it whittles down an 11-flight manifest that must be finished by the time the shuttles are retired in 2010.

Endeavour stayed at the station for 12 days, longer than any previous mission, and its astronauts conducted five spacewalks to install Kibo's storage room, assemble the massive Dextre maintenance robot and prepare the complex for the next wave of construction.

Nasa astronaut Garrett Reisman replaced Eyharts during the mission and will stay on the station until the shuttle Discovery visits in late May, carrying the main section of the Kibo lab.

Reuters

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Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders has posted a controversial film critical of Islam's holy book, the Koran, on the internet.


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The opening scenes show a copy of the Koran, followed by footage of the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001.

The 15-minute film was posted on video-sharing website LiveLeak.

Its planned release had sparked angry protests in Muslim countries. The Dutch government has distanced itself from the views of Mr Wilders.

The film is called "Fitna", a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife". Dutch broadcasters have declined to show it.

'Spiteful'

Graphic images from the bomb attacks on London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004 are also shown.

Scenes from a beheading and pictures of the Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a radical Islamist in 2004, are also included.

The film ends with someone turning pages of a Koran, followed by a tearing sound.

A text that appears on the screen says: "The sound you heard was from a page (being torn from a) phone book.

"It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Koran."

The film concludes: "Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom."

Two years ago the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked protests across the Muslim world.

BBC News

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Police have fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in the Comoran capital, Moroni.


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Crowds chanted anti-French slogans near France's embassy after a renegade leader, Colonel Mohammed Bacar, fled to the French-run island of Mayotte.

Col Bacar fled the island of Anjouan after government troops and an African Union force invaded the island.

He has asked France for asylum, but the Comoran government and the AU have asked France to extradite him.

The African Union's special representative for the Comoros, Francesco Maedeira, has called on France to recognise that Col Bacar is a political criminal and to hand him over to the Comoran authorities.

French officials have said he could be charged with illegally entering France's territory and weapons possession after he is transferred to the island of Reunion, reports the AFP news agency.

The operation against Col Bacar was launched after he refused to step down as president of Anjouan, and accept the authority of the federal government after a disputed election last year.

The BBC's Jonny Hogg in Moroni says the embassy is being protected by armed Comorian police, keeping the crowd some 200m away.

Anyone who appears to be French is being targeted with one group of young men making throat slitting gestures as they march past whilst others threw stones, our reporter says.

One government official told the BBC "if France is seen to be protecting Mohamed Bacar, God knows what will happen to their representatives here ''.

Amphibious assault

The island of Mayotte is the only one of the Comoros islands to have opted to remain French when the other islands gained independence in 1975 - but it remains a source of contention with both countries claiming sovereignty.

The BBC's Jonny Hogg says Col Bacar's arrival on the island follows reports last week that he had received backing from individuals on Mayotte during the eight-month political stand-off.

The government in the Comoros has expressed disappointment that he was able to flee to Mayotte.

A government spokesman warned that if Col Bacar was not returned to face justice it could cause a diplomatic crisis.

"We have notified France that we want Colonel Mohamed Bacar and all the fugitive rebels to be extradited to Comoros," acting Foreign Affairs Minister Houmadi Abdallah told reporters.

"We reminded the French authorities ... that the international arrest warrants against them are still in effect."

On Wednesday, the Comoros authorities appointed a new transitional leader for Anjouan - the vice-president of the Comoros, Ikililou Dhoinine.

"Ikililou Dhoinine will be the political authority in Anjouan until a transitional government is set up," a government spokesman told the AFP news agency.

Mohammed Desara, the Comoran chief of defence staff, said troops were continuing to pursue elements loyal to Col Bacar and secure the island fully.

It is not known how many people died in the fighting but Mr Desara said it was certain that at least some of Col Bacar's fighters had been killed.

About 600 Comoran and AU troops landed in an amphibious assault as dawn broke on Tuesday.

Residents of the island were pictured greeting the government forces with jubilation as they patrolled the streets.

The Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean has had a fractious history since independence from France, experiencing more than 20 coups or attempted coups.

The three main islands of the archipelago - Grand Comore, Moheli and Anjouan - lie 300km (186 miles) off Africa's east coast, north of Madagascar.

BBC News

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North Korea has expelled most of the South Korean managers from a joint industrial park on the border which has been a key symbol of reconciliation.


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South Korea's unification ministry said 11 of the 13 managers at the Kaesong complex had been pulled out.

Production will go on at the 70-factory zone, just north of the border.

No reason was given for the expulsion, but it came after Seoul said it would link progress at the park with progress on the North's denuclearisation effort.

The US and South Korea earlier warned Pyongyang that time was running out for it to declare the full extent of its nuclear capabilities.

'Sunshine policy'

For the past four years, the Kaesong industrial park has been matching cheap North Korean labour with South Korean capital and management expertise.

It was set up under the so-called "sunshine policy", whereby previous South Korean governments tried to win concessions through engagement with the North.

Rail links

Kaesong, just north of the demilitarised zone between the rival states, employs more than 23,000 North Koreans and hundreds of South Korean managers and technicians.

But now South Korea has a new conservative government, led by President Lee Myung-bak, which has demanded more in return for the aid and assistance provided to its communist neighbour.

The South's unification minister, Kim Ha-joong, said last week that the expansion of the complex was dependent on progress towards North Korea's denuclearisation.

The BBC's John Sudworth, in Seoul, says it would seem to be in reaction to this comment that North Korea has demanded the withdrawal of the government officials from Kaesong.

But despite this latest setback to the spirit of co-operation, production will continue, he adds.

The South Korean unification ministry expressed its "deep regret" at the expulsions and urged Pyongyang to normalise economic exchanges as soon as possible.

BBC News

[OMEN]

Tibetan monks have stormed a news briefing at a temple in Lhasa, accusing Chinese authorities of lying about recent unrest and saying the Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the violence, foreign reporters said.

The incident was an embarrassment to the Chinese government, which brought a select group of foreign reporters to Lhasa for a stage-managed tour of the city, where authorities say stability has been restored since violence broke out on March 14.

The government has also been saying security forces acted with restraint in response to international concern over the unrest ahead of the Olympics in August.

A group of uninvited young monks at the Jokhang Temple, one of the most sacred in Tibet and a top tourist stop in central Lhasa, stormed into a briefing by a temple administrator.

"About 30 young monks burst into the official briefing, shouting: 'Don't believe them. They are tricking you. They are telling lies'," USA Today Beijing-based reporter Callum MacLeod said by telephone from Lhasa.

Hong Kong's TVB aired television footage of the bold outburst in front of the first foreign journalists allowed into Tibet since the violence, showing the monks in crimson robes, some weeping, crowded around cameras.

The monks said they had been unable to leave the temple since March 10, when demonstrations erupted in Lhasa on the 49th anniversary of an abortive uprising against Chinese rule that saw Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, flee to exile in India.

"They just don't believe us. They think we will come out and cause havoc – smash, destroy, rob, burn. We didn't do anything like that – they're falsely accusing us," said one monk. "We want freedom. They have detained lamas and normal people."

Wang Che-nan, a cameraman for Taiwan's ETTV, said the incident lasted about 15 minutes, after which unarmed police took the monks elsewhere in the temple, away from the journalists.

"They said: 'Your time is up, time to go to the next place'," Wang said.

Reuters was not invited on the government-organised trip.

Chhime Chhoekyapa, secretary to the Dalai Lama, said the incident made clear "that brute force alone cannot suppress the long simmering resentment that exists in Tibet".

"We are deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of the monks and appeal to the international community to ensure their protection," he said.

On Wednesday, President George W Bush encouraged Chinese President Hu Jintao to hold talks with the Dalai Lama.

Hu said China was willing to continue engaging in "contact and discussions" with the Dalai Lama, but he must renounce support for independence of the Himalayan region and Taiwan, and "stop inciting and planning violent and criminal activities and sabotaging the Beijing Olympics", newspapers said.

RIOTS, PROTESTS

China has blamed the "Dalai clique" for the unrest and called him a separatist. The Dalai Lama denies he wants anything more than autonomy for his homeland and has criticised the violence.

The protesting monks at the Jokhang Temple also said the Nobel Peace Prize winning lama was not behind the violence, Japan's Kyodo news agency, which has a journalist on the scene, reported.

"The Dalai Lama is unrelated," it quoted them as shouting.

In a recent interview, the Dalai Lama said the Olympics were a chance for the world to remind China of its rights record.

"In order to be a good host to the Olympic Games, China must improve its record in the field of human rights and religious freedom," the Tibetan spiritual leader told India's NDTV news channel in an interview to be aired today.

Marches by monks in Lhasa turned within days into rioting in which non-Tibetan Chinese migrants were attacked and their property burned until security forces filled the streets.

Protests have spread to parts of Chinese provinces that border Tibet and have large ethnic Tibetan populations.

China says 19 people were killed at the hands of Tibetan mobs. The Tibetan government-in-exile says 140 died in Lhasa and elsewhere, most of them Tibetan victims of security forces.

China has poured troops into the region to keep order.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Thursday again called for people involved in the Lhasa violence to turn themselves in.

"We urge those lawbreakers involved in burning, smashing and looting who are still at large to hand themselves in," he said.

Human Rights Watch said the United Nations human rights council should address the crisis in Tibet.

The rights watchdog said Australia, the European Union, Switzerland and the United States raised human rights abuses in Tibet during a session of the UN Human Rights Council, but China blocked debate, backed by Algeria, Cuba, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

Reuters

[OMEN]

As Tania Burgess lay dying in a car park after being stabbed 48 times, the Australian schoolgirl managed to utter her attacker's first name, his school and his class.

In the NSW Supreme Court yesterday, the "gentle" 18-year-old youth who matched those details was found guilty of her brutal murder on the state's central coast.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, briefly looked over at his parents, who had sat in the front row of the public gallery every day of his three week trial.

On the other side of the public gallery sat the victim's parents, Mandy and Chris Burgess, who later told reporters they were "really happy" with the result.

The jury of seven women and five men only took 90 minutes to find the teenager guilty of murdering the 15-year-old schoolgirl in July 2005.

Tania was repeatedly stabbed on her way home from school, while walking through the car park of the Forresters Beach Resort.

As people rushed to help the dying girl, a resort worker asked if she knew her attacker.

Four witnesses said the girl then gave a boy's first name, a class and a high school – details that matched the accused teenager.

DNA in blood stains on clothing found at the boy's home matched the profile of the schoolgirl.

After his arrest – when he was found to have a cut on his palm – the teenager was sent to a detention centre which also housed an inmate who gave evidence at the trial.

"He told me that he stabbed a little girl. . . because he was jealous," the witness said.

"He got rejected. . . (by) the girl he stabbed.

"He was waiting behind the bushes and she got off the bus and he stabbed her."

The fellow inmate also told of another conversation in which he said the teenager spoke of seeing a girl being stabbed and trying to stop the attack.

Defence barrister Philip Hogan told the jury the details uttered by the dying girl could have referred to the person she believed had attacked her mother one month earlier.

While the jurors heard no evidence of this attack, Mrs Burgess told them of being confronted in her home by a young boy, dressed in a school uniform, in June 2005.

"I asked him what did he want," she said. "He said he was looking for somebody. He kept staring at me and walking around the house".

She then told Mr Hogan: "I did not know who attacked me".

While the jury was not present, Justice Robert Hulme was told that after Tania's death, Mrs Burgess identified the accused teenager as being her own attacker.

Five witnesses called by the defence described the teenager as being "gentle, non-violent and caring" and spoke of their shock at his being accused of the murder.

Mr Hogan contended this supported an innocent explanation of him having tried to intervene as another person attacked the schoolgirl.

But Margaret Cunneen, SC, for the crown, noted if that was so, he did not then try to get assistance from anyone else.

The judge will hear sentencing submissions on June 6.

AAP

[OMEN]

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, facing the toughest election battle of his 28 years in power, handed out hundreds of cars to doctors in what opponents say is a vote buying campaign.

Mugabe's opponents said the veteran leader was plotting to rig Saturday's presidential election, in which he faces old rival Morgan Tsvangirai and ruling party defector Simba Makoni.

Both accuse Mugabe, 84, of wrecking what was once one Africa's strongest economies and pauperising its people.

On national television, Mugabe blamed Zimbabwe's troubles on Western sanctions imposed on him and allies to try to force reform. Mugabe said the measures had harmed health care in Zimbabwe, one of the countries worst affected by HIV/Aids.

"Our health sector (once) operated in a regional and international context that was free of the illegal sanctions which weigh us down today," Mugabe said in a ceremony to give 450 cars to senior and middle-level doctors at government hospitals.

He promised the doctors houses within two years.

In a procedural move, Mugabe told his ministers the cabinet was dissolved ahead of the election.

"I told them that some would return to government, others will be left behind. The good performers will continue," Mugabe told a rally in the town of Bindura, 70km northeast of Harare.

Tsvangirai's main wing of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Thursday it had more evidence of planned ballot rigging and believed Mugabe was planning to declare victory with almost 60 per cent of the vote.

Tsvangirai, Makoni and Arthur Mutambara, leader of the MDC's smaller faction, told reporters after holding talks that Mugabe had put the credibility of the election in doubt.

"We believe there is a very well thought out, sophisticated and premeditated plan to steal this election from us," said Makoni.

Mugabe has also handed out farm equipment and public buses in what critics say is an attempt to win political favour ahead of the vote in a country where many can no longer afford even basic needs and food and fuel are in short supply.

The health sector suffers a shortage of drugs and skilled workers because many have gone abroad in search of better pay.

Nurses and doctors have been on strike to demand more pay and all state workers were promised higher salaries by Mugabe during the campaign, but inflation of over 100,000 per cent quickly makes pay rises meaningless.

Critics say Mugabe's policies, particularly seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks, have led to ruin.

The March 29 presidential, parliamentary and local council polls are seen as the most important since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, but few expect a fair vote.

Mugabe, who must win over half the presidential vote to avoid a second round run-off that might unite his opponents, rejects accusations of rigging three elections since 2000.

Tsvangirai told a rally in Chitungwiza just outside Harare that Mugabe had lost touch with reality.

"What Mugabe does not realise is that his system has collapsed," he said.

Reuters

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[OMEN]

US forces have been drawn deeper into Iraq's four day-old crackdown on Shi'ite militants, launching air strikes in Basra for the first time and battling militants in Baghdad.

The fighting has exposed a deep rift within Iraq's majority Shi'ite community and put pressure on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose forces have failed to dislodge fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from Iraq's second largest city.

Iraqi authorities shut down Baghdad with a strict curfew on Friday which seemed to reduce the rocket and mortar barrages that have wreaked havoc in the capital this week. Lawmakers, including those loyal to Sadr, met to seek an end to the impasse.

The government says it is fighting "outlaws", but Sadr's followers say political parties in Maliki's Shi'ite-led government are using military force to marginalize their rivals ahead of local elections due by October.

The Iraqi ground commander in Basra, Major-General Ali Zaidan, said his forces had killed 120 "enemy" fighters and wounded around 450 since the campaign began.

But Reuters television footage from Basra showed masked gunmen from Sadr's Mehdi Army still in control of the streets, openly carrying rocket launchers and machine guns.

A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said US warplanes had opened fire in Basra for the first time in support of Iraqi units on the ground. British troops, which patrolled Basra until December, have so far remained on a base outside the city.

GUNMEN SEIZE NASIRIYA

A Reuters witness said Mehdi Army gunmen had seized control of Nassiriya, capital of the southerly Dhi Qar province. Mehdi Army fighters have held territory or fought with authorities in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kerbala, Diwaniya and other towns throughout the Shi'ite south over the past several days.

In Baghdad there have been clashes in at least 13 mainly Shi'ite neighborhoods, especially Sadr City, the vast slum named for the cleric's slain father where his followers maintain their power base.

"There have been engagements going on in and around Sadr City. We've engaged the enemy with artillery, we've engaged the enemy with aircraft, we've engaged the enemy with direct fire," said Major Mark Cheadle, spokesman for US forces in Baghdad.

In one strike before dawn, a US helicopter fired a hellfire missile at gunmen firing from the roof of a building, killing four of them, Cheadle said. A Reuters photographer there filmed windows blown out of cars and walls pocked with shrapnel.

US forces said they killed 27 fighters in operations in the capital on Thursday.

In Nassiriya, a Reuters reporter said he could see groups of fighters with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The sound of sporadic gunfire echoed through the streets. Police appeared to be staying in their stations.

Militants have also taken control of the town of Shatra, 40km to the north, he said, citing witnesses.

Maliki on Wednesday gave militants in Basra 72 hours to surrender. With that deadline looming on Friday, he announced they would be given until April 8 to hand over some weapons.

"All those who have heavy and intermediate weapons are to deliver them to security sites and they will be rewarded financially," he said in a statement issued by his office.

Oil exports from Basra of more than 1.5 million barrels a day provide 80 per cent of Iraq's government revenue. An explosion at a pipeline damaged exports on Thursday, but they were back to normal on Friday.

Parliament speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani said representatives of Shi'ite and Sunni parties, including those loyal to Sadr, had agreed to attend a special session at 3pm (1200 GMT).

Sadr, who helped install Maliki in power after an election in 2005 but later broke with him, has called for talks with the government. But Maliki has vowed to battle what he calls criminal gangs in Basra "to the end".

The clashes have all but wrecked a truce that Sadr imposed on his Mehdi army last August, which Washington had said helped curb violence.

US President George W Bush has praised Maliki's "boldness" in launching the operation, the largest military campaign carried out yet by Maliki's forces without US or British combat units. Bush said it showed the Iraqi leader's commitment to "enforce the law in an even-handed manner".

Sadr's followers have staged a "civil disobedience" campaign, forcing schools and shops to shut, and Sadr has threatened a "civil revolt" if the crackdown is not halted.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Sectarian violence between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims has intensified in a tribal region of northwest Pakistan, with at least 22 people reportedly killed in gunbattles, a senior official said.

"Dead bodies are lying inside houses and in fields," said Qalb-e-Hassan, a newly elected provincial legislator from Kohat town.

Fighting overnight was concentrated in three villages of Kohat district of North West Frontier Province.

The tribesmen were armed with semi-automatic weapons, machine guns, mortars and rockets, and the civil authorities have asked for the army to help restore order.

"I have reports that at least 22 people were killed in fighting overnight," said Kamran Zeb, a senior administrator in Kohat, though he added it was too unsafe to verify how many people have been killed.

The latest clashes, between men from the Mishti and Kachai tribes, brought the toll to more than 50 in an outbreak of sectarian violence that began last week.

Some media reports put the toll higher.

At least six people were killed on Thursday in a suspected militant attack on a ambulance in Kohat's neighboring Kurram tribal region, which also has a long history of violence between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims.

While Kohat is plagued with sectarian unrest, al Qaeda-linked militants have unleashed a wave of violence on the rest of Pakistan. Nearly 600 people have been killed since the start of the year, many of them victims of suicide attacks.

Pakistani security forces are battling militants in several parts of NWFP, including Kohat, and in seven semi-autonomous tribal regions on the border with Afghanistan.

While ordinary Sunni and Shi'ite Pakistanis live together peacefully in most parts of the country, radicals from the two sects have inflicted a bloody toll in tit-for-tat assassinations and bomb attacks in recent years.

Reuters

[OMEN]

An Israeli minister said that the Jewish state was trying to revive peace talks with Syria and that the price of a deal was the occupied Golan Heights.

The comments by Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer came after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated this week that Israel was willing to make peace with its Arab neighbour and hinted at behind-the-scenes talks.

"Every effort is being made to bring Syria to the negotiating table," Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio.

"We know that sitting at the negotiating table is not to sing Hatikva (Israel's national anthem) but to sign an agreement, and we know very well the price of this agreement."

Asked if the price was to relinquish control of the Golan Heights, Ben-Eliezer said: "Exactly."

Israel captured the Golan, a strategic plateau, from neighbouring Syria during the 1967 Middle East War and annexed it in 1981 in a move that has not been internationally recognised.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria collapsed in 2000 over the extent of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. Tensions have risen since then with Israel accusing Syria of supporting the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizbollah and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas.

Russia has offered to host a Middle East peace conference this year to try to relaunch talks between the two countries.

Olmert on Wednesday appeared to signal reluctance about attending such a summit but said Israel was willing to make peace with Syria and that he hoped the two sides would be able to hold talks.

"That doesn't mean that when we sit together you have to see us," Olmert told foreign journalists in a news conference.

Israel has also raised concerns over Syria's close ties with Iran, the Jewish state's arch foe.

Reuters

[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/03/28/edm-williams.jpg
Reagan Williams, left, the pilot of the plane which crashed near Wainwright, Alta., on Friday, with his father, Allen, who was killed in a plane crash in October 2007.
Five people died Friday morning when a small airplane owned by an Edmonton engineering company and piloted by its president crashed while travelling from Edmonton to Winnipeg.

The wreckage was located shortly after noon MT approximately 12 kilometres northeast of Wainwright, Alta., RCMP said.
"Unfortunately, all five have been confirmed deceased," RCMP Cpl. Darren Anderson told CBC News from Edmonton.

Four males and one female on board the airplane were killed in the crash, he added.

The plane was en route to Winnipeg from Edmonton's City Centre Airport when it disappeared from radar at 8:12 a.m.

A.D. Williams Engineering spokesperson Sue O'Connor confirmed that the plane, a Piper PA-46 Malibu, was being flown by Reagan Williams, the company president.

Two of the others on board were staff members, the other two were contract employees, she said.

Reagan took over the company from his father, Allen Williams, 65, who was himself killed when he crashed his Cessna 172 in rugged terrain near Golden, B.C., in October 2007.

Searchers found his three-year-old granddaughter, Kate, safely strapped into a child seat in the upside-down plane's wreckage.

The company's chief financial officer, Steven Sutton, 49, was also killed in that crash.

CBC

[OMEN]

The Montreal businessman who became a cause célèbre as he suffered through 10 months of deplorable conditions in an Indian prison returned to Canadian soil on Friday afternoon.

Saul Itzhayek, 42, was met at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal by his family and supporters, as well as a mob of journalists.

He had an emotional reunion with his family in the airport's baggage area before emerging to talk to reporters.

Saying he was exhausted, he still took time to thank people who helped secure his release from prison, including reporters, politicians, and church activists.

Itzhayek said he was thrilled to be home with his family, and that he'll fight to clear his name in India.

He said he didn't do anything wrong, and he doesn't want to continue to have a record in India.

Even though the courts released him on Tuesday, his conviction for entering India on an expired visa still stands.

Itzhayek did not take any questions from reporters.

"I've been on the road for 80 hours. I'd really like to take a shower and get some rest," he said.

Itzhayek had been in Nepal on business when he was arrested in May 2007 and accused of crossing the border into India on an expired visa.

He was sentenced to three years in prison in October in spite of his claim that he was entrapped by Indian police at the border.

Itzhayek has said he sent his driver into India to pick up some money that was being wired to him. He said police stopped the driver at the border and seized documents that included Itzhayek's passport and visa.

Itzhayek has filed sworn statements that say Indian police offered him safe passage back into India to collect his documents, but instead arrested him for entering the country illegally.

He alleges he was asked to pay a bribe for his freedom.

"In the first three months of his incarceration, he lost 30 kilos," his sister, Sylvia Itzhayek, said earlier in the week.

"He suffered a prison riot, he [saw] this one murder. He's been contaminated by the water. He suffered food poisoning. He slept on the floor; he suffered rats and scorpions all around, sewage, he suffered a lot.

"He's aged considerably, he's really aged."

Concern about his safety arose earlier in March after he narrowly avoided injury in a pair of explosions that rocked the prison where he was being held.

He had reportedly not left his cell since the two bombs killed a local gangster. His family had feared he would be caught up in a prison gang war.

On Tuesday, Itzhayek's appeal on the charges was denied, but an Indian court released him because of the time he had already spent in jail.

On Wednesday, a Canadian consular official took him by car to Kathmandu in Nepal. From there, he flew to Montreal.

CBC

[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/03/28/zimb-cp-4584280.jpg
Simba Makoni, an independent presidential candidate, walks past campaign posters for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe in Harare on Friday.
Security forces in Zimbabwe went on full alert Friday, a day before elections that are the most serious challenge yet to the 28-year rule of President Robert Mugabe.

The country's national police chief, Augustine Chihuri, told a news conference in the capital Harare that the security forces would not let violence, coercion or protests disrupt the voting.
Israeli-made armoured personnel carriers patrolled the streets of Harare and Chinese-made fighter jets screamed overhead as the police chief was speaking.

A divided opposition is facing Mugabe's ZANU-FP party, which is blamed by many observers for Zimbabwe’s dismal economic performance in recent years.

Inflation in the once relatively prosperous southern African country is running at 100,000 per cent. Eighty per cent of the adult population is unemployed and nearly 4,000 people die every month from HIV/AIDS.

Mugabe, 84, led Zimbabwe to independence from rule by a tiny white minority in 1980. In recent years, his government has become increasingly authoritarian, redistributing land from white-owned farms by force and ejecting slum dwellers from shanty towns around Harare.

Opposition political parties, human rights activists and journalists have been harassed, arrested and beaten up.

Mugabe resoundingly won the last elections — in 2005 — in what most observers believe was a massively rigged poll.
Opposition fears rigging

There are widespread fears among Zimbabweans and international agencies of a similar strategy planned for this election.

CBC's Adrienne Arsenault is one of a small number of western journalists allowed into Zimbabwe to cover the elections and she says people are highly skeptical that the voting will be free and fair.

"President Robert Mugabe has been handing out cars to doctors, tractors to farmers and that's seen here as a classic attempt to buy more votes," Arsenault said.

"There are 5.9 million people registered to vote but nine million ballot papers printed," she said from Harare. "People believe this is simply a matter of the ruling ZANU-PF filling in what they want to grab this election yet again."

The main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has said he would win a free and fair vote, and he has warned of the possibility of violence similar to the bloodshed in Kenya after last year’s disputed polls there.

"He [Mugabe] knows that if he goes that blatant route what happens the day after?" Tsvangirai told London’s Financial Times newspaper on Friday.

"He can declare himself the president of the country [after a rigged election] but the following day the crisis will be looking him straight in the face," the opposition leader said.

Mugabe is equally bellicose in warning his opponents not to protest if they lose.

"Just they dare try it," he said at an election rally the week.

Human rights organizations are watching the elections closely, but from the outside. No well-known international groups are being allowed into Zimbabwe to monitor the vote.

Alexis Kontos of Amnesty International Canada said he is particularly concerned with the behaviour of the security forces in the run-up to the vote.

Kontos said in one incident, opposition campaigners were forced by police to take down election posters and chew and swallow them in front of armed officers.

CBC

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Dozens of detainees at a police station in the Angolan capital, Luanda, have been taken to hospital after the six-storey building collapsed.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44523000/jpg/_44523511_angola203.jpg

There are no reports of deaths, but teams of rescue workers have been sifting through the rubble, where the cries of victims can he heard.

The Angolan police criminal investigation department building collapsed at dawn.

It is not known how many officers and detainees were there at the time.

"The most seriously wounded have been taken to the military hospital and others to the Sao Paolo prison hospital," Commander Eugenio Laborinho told AFP news agency.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

About 75 miners are feared dead after rainfall triggered the collapse of mines in Tanzania, the government says.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44524000/jpg/_44524119_miner203b.jpg

Seven bodies have so far been recovered in the Mererani region, about 40km (25 miles) south-east of Arusha in north-eastern Tanzania.

Rescuers say the flooding is hampering their efforts and there is little hope of finding anyone else alive.

The area mines Tanzanite, a valuable blue gemstone found only in a small area near Arusha.

Ten years ago more than 100 Tanzanite miners died in an accident caused by heavy rain.

Resource rich

A regional commissioner, Henry Shekifu, told Associated Press news agency the men went missing on Friday amid heavy rains.

The government is trying to deploy equipment that will drain the mines, he said.

Thousands of workers have been drawn to Mererani to mine the Tanzanite.

Tanzania is also rich in diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires and is Africa's third-largest gold producer.

The mining sector has boomed with economic liberalisation policies applied in the mid-1980s.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

Global oil prices have fallen in Friday trading on the news that an attack on an Iraqi export pipeline was not as serious as earlier thought.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44518000/jpg/_44518271_oil_ap203b.jpg

The price of benchmark US light sweet crude fell $1.96 to settle at $105.62 a barrel while Brent crude lost $1.23 to $103.77 at end of London's trading day.

"The [Iraqi] problem is not as serious as we thought," said oil analyst David Johnson of Macquarie Research.

A slightly stronger dollar had also lessened demand, analysts said.

Banking worries

The attack on the pipeline in Basra came earlier in the week as Iraqi government forces continued their assault on militias in the city and surrounding areas.

Last week US light crude hit a record high of $109.72 a barrel, driven by the continuing weak dollar.

Meanwhile the dollar was volatile in Friday trading, as continuing worries over the health of the US banking sector was tempered by positive news that the rate at which commercial banks lend to each other had come down slightly.

A weaker dollar generally increases the price of commodities such as oil and gold, as investors see them as a haven for their funds.

The dollar had edged higher against the euro and the pound, erasing earlier falls.

One euro was worth $1.5797, while sterling dropped below $2 at $1.9948.

But the dollar's gains were expected to be short-lived ahead of a week brimming with key US economic data, including March employment figures.

The dollar hit a record low against the euro of $1.5904 earlier this month.


BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

Police in Brazil are investigating claims by a 16-year-old boy that he has murdered 12 people.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44523000/jpg/_44523715_boyapbody.jpg

The boy made the claim after being arrested on suspicion of murder last week in the southern city of Novo Hamburgo, its police commissioner said. The teenager's identity has not been revealed because he is a minor.

Police said the boy claimed he had killed in fits of rage or to get revenge and in one case because someone wanted to date his sister.

'Trivial reasons'

The boy was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of killing a 39-year-old shop owner.

Police commissioner Enizaldo Plentz said: "The number of murders could be higher or lower.

"As of now we know that he is implicated in at least six murders. Perhaps he invented some of the murders."

Mr Plentz said the unemployed school dropout killed the six people with a shot to the head and then followed it with more shots to the body.

He said the boy had given "trivial reasons" as justification for the killings.

"He told me that he killed one man because he flirted with his girlfriend. He shot another who gave him a blow to the ear," Mr Plentz said.

"During interrogations, he spoke with the frightening cold-bloodedness of someone who enjoys killing people."

The teenager lives in a violent neighbourhood of Novo Hamburgo in Rio Grande do Sul state.

He will undergo psychological tests for the next 45 days.

BBC News

[DUKE NUKEM]

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[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/03/30/zimbabwe-cp-4593013.jpg
People scan sheets of paper with preliminary election results in the Harare surburb of Mbare on Sunday.
Zimbabwe's main opposition party is claiming an early lead in elections amid a warning from a government spokesman that declaring victory prematurely would amount to an attempted coup.

"It's a coup d'état, and we all know how coups are handled," government press secretary George Charamba told the state-owned Sunday Mail after the main opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told observers that early results showed it was headed for victory.

MDC, led by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, said it's leading the race against President Robert Mugabe with 67 per cent of the votes. Its assessment is based on returns from about one-third of polling stations.
The party's secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said MDC won nearly all parliament seats in the main cities of Harare and Bulawayo as well as in some traditional ruling party strongholds.

"This far, short of a miracle, we have won this election beyond any reasonable doubt. We have won this election," Biti told a news conference early Sunday.

Preliminary results were expected by Monday. Final official result may not be known until later in the week, according to election officials.

If no candidate wins more than 51 per cent of the vote, the election will go into a second round.

Meanwhile, MDC said it's investigating reports of vote rigging by the ruling ZANU-PF party to give Mugabe a sixth term in office.

Observers say the official rolls in some districts were inflated with a large number of phantom voters. Opposition reports suggest that hundreds and possibly thousands of Mugabe's opponents were turned away at the polls.

The election has presented Mugabe, 84, with the toughest political challenge to his 28-year rule, badly tarnished in recent years with an economic collapse that has seen inflation rise above 100,000 per cent and unemployment running at 80 per cent.

People in the once-prosperous south African nation, led by Mugabe since its independence in 1980, are also coping with chronic shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

Mugabe repeatedly dismisses his opponents as stooges of former colonial power Britain and accuses the West of sabotaging Zimbabwe's economy.

While visiting Jerusalem on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "the Mugabe regime is a disgrace to the people of Zimbabwe and a disgrace to southern Africa and to the continent of Africa as whole."

CBC

[OMEN]

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An Earth Hour before-and-after shot of two Toronto landmarks, the First Bank Tower and Scotia Plaza, seen from the CN Tower at 7:40 p.m., then and 8:08 p.m.
CN Tower, Peace Tower join lights-out landmarks around globe
Canadians joined communities around the world on Saturday in turning off the lights for this year's Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change.
Canadians in about 150 communities including Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, pledged to turn off their lights for 60 minutes at 8 p.m. local time Saturday night.

In Toronto, much of the downtown core went dark as Mayor David Miller pulled a ceremonial switch in Nathan Phillips Square to dim the lights at City Hall shortly before the hour approached.

Canadian singer Nelly Furtado then led the thousands gathered in the square in an acoustic version of her hit song Turn Out the Lights.

The CN Tower soon darkened in the city's skyline, along with highrises, sports arenas such as the Rogers Centre and Air Canada Centre.

Meanwhile, in restaurants across the city, people dined by candlelight.

In Ottawa, the Peace Tower and its four-faced clock above Canada's Parliament faded to black.

About 100,000 Canadians out of a total of 300,000 people worldwide registered online for the event — putting the country among top participants anywhere.
In Alberta, fire and oil put darkness on ice

Gordon Kubanek, left, Frank de Jong, middle, and Chris Bradshaw hold candles below the unlit Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Saturday.Gordon Kubanek, left, Frank de Jong, middle, and Chris Bradshaw hold candles below the unlit Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Saturday.
(Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

But the evening was not marked by total darkness in Canada's energy capital.

Officially, Calgary is marking Earth Hour, but patrons and bar owners were quick to point out the event coincided with a more historic Alberta tradition — a provincial battle on the ice between hometown Flames and the Edmonton Oilers.

Wayne Leong, owner of Calgary's Melrose Café and Bar, told CBC News he was expecting a packed house, so he wasn't shutting down anything.

"Not a chance, I'm sorry to say," Leong said with a laugh. "Let's celebrate Earth Hour at four in the morning. That will be a lot better time, I think."
Sydney Opera House dims lights

The campaign, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, was kicked off hours earlier Saturday in New Zealand and Fiji.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 100 businesses and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness, computers and televisions were switched off and dinners delayed for the hour-long period.

Suva, Fiji, in the same time zone, also turned off its lights.

Those cities were soon followed by others in Australia and Asia, as Sydney's iconic Opera House and Bangkok's famous Wat Arun Buddhist temple went dark. As the clock ticked forward, Asian cities to the west followed suit.

Hours later, darkness enveloped Rome's Colosseum, Dublin's Custom House, London's City Hall and other landmarks across Europe. But other countries — including France, Germany, Spain and European Union institutions — planned nothing to mark Earth Hour.

One of the last major cities to participate will be San Francisco — home to the soon-to-be dimmed Golden Gate Bridge.
Group aims 100 million participants

During the one-hour event, Sydney was noticeably darker, though it was not a complete blackout. The business district was mostly dark; organizers said 250 of the 350 commercial buildings there had pledged to shut off their lights completely, and 94 of the top 100 companies on the Australian stock exchange were also participating.

The number of participants was not immediately available, but organizers were hoping that this year's worldwide effort would eclipse last year's single-city debut, when 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses in Sydney shut off lights and appliances, resulting in a 10.2 per cent reduction in local carbon emissions during that hour.

"I'm putting my neck on the line, but my hope is that we top 100 million people," Earth Hour Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said.

The effect of last year's Earth Hour was infectious. This year, 26 major world cities and more than 300 other cities and towns have signed up to participate.

The Thai branch of the WWF said the campaign in Bangkok reduced the load on the electrical system by 73.34 megawatts and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 41.6 tons.

Organizers see the event as a way to encourage the world to conserve energy. While all lights in participating cities are unlikely to be cut, it is the symbolic darkening of monuments, businesses and individual homes they are most eagerly anticipating.

Even popular internet search engine Google put its support behind Earth Hour, with a black background to its main page and the words: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn."

CBC

[OMEN]

The Iraqi military has extended a round-the-clock curfew in Baghdad until further notice, government television said Saturday, amid a fifth day of fierce fighting between government forces and Shia militias in the country's south.

The curfew for the capital, which has left the streets of Baghdad largely deserted since late Thursday, was to have expired at sunrise Sunday.

The curfew was imposed in an attempt to curb violence in the capital, including continued mortar and rocket attacks on the heavily-fortified Green Zone, as well as clashes between government forces and militia fighters in the city's Shia neighbourhoods.

The increase in violence is part of a nationwide backlash by followers of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to the Iraqi government's crackdown this week on Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and criminal gangs in the southern oil port of Basra.

Meanwhile, U.S. jets struck again, launching air strikes near Basra to bolster the faltering Iraqi crackdown as gun battles were heard across the city throughout the day.
Sadr calls on fighters to defy weapons deadline

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has acknowledged he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash that his offensive, which began Tuesday, provoked in areas of Baghdad and other cities where Shia militias wield power.

As many as 200 people have been reported killed and hundreds of others wounded in violence around the country since Tuesday. Many fear the crackdown could lead Sadr to dissolve his unilaterally declared ceasefire with U.S. forces and end the relative calm that has existed in recent months ahead of the government offensive.

The Baghdad curfew extension was announced just hours after Sadr's Mahdi Army said it would defy the government's demand to surrender arms in Basra, where Iraqi forces remained locked in battle with militia fighters.

On Friday, Iraqi authorities gave them until April 8 to surrender heavy and medium weapons after an initial 72-hour ultimatum to hand them over was widely ignored.

But Sadr called on his followers Saturday to ignore the order, saying that the Mahdi Army would turn in its weapons only to a government that can "get the occupier out of Iraq," referring to the Americans.

CBC

[OMEN]

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Mohammed Rabbae said at a press conference at the El Ouma Mosque in Amsterdam that the film was 'less bad' than expected, but said Wilders was mistaken in asserting the Qur'an justifies violence.
Authorities in the Netherlands reported calm Friday following the release of an anti-Islamic film posted on the internet by a Dutch politician.
Dozens of Islamists in Pakistan protested the 15-minute film Fitna — the Qur'anic term for "strife" — which was released Thursday night by right-wing Dutch legislator Geert Wilders after broadcasters in the Netherlands refused to show it.

Both Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and Iran condemned the film.

But on Friday morning Dutch newspapers headlined that all was quiet the day after the film's release.

There have been fears the film could spark violent protests similar to those over the cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

Dutch media reported the film already had more than 5.5 million hits on the internet.
Muslim call for restraint

Some Muslim groups said the film is less offensive than they had thought.

Mohamed Rabbae, chairman of the moderate National Moroccan Council, said it was "less bad" than expected, but said Wilders was mistaken in asserting the Qur'an justifies violence.

He urged Muslims around the world to refrain from targeting Dutch interests in response to the film.

"Our call to Muslims abroad is follow our strategy and don't frustrate it with any violent incidents," he said.

The film quotes verses of the Qur'an alongside footage of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, at times showing graphic footage of bloody, mutilated bodies set to music, and even a beheading of a Caucasian man by men garbed in black.

"The government insists that you respect Islam, but Islam has no respect for you. Islam wants to rule, submit, and seeks to destroy our Western civilization," says text appearing near the film's end that eventually calls on Europeans to defeat the ideology of Islam.

The film ends with a caricature of Muhammad, his head drawn in the shape of a bomb that explodes into a crack of thunder and lightning.
Hate-speech ruling expected

A Dutch judge is scheduled Friday to review a petition from a Muslim group seeking an independent review of whether the film violates the country's hate speech laws.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said he rejects Wilders's views, but supports his freedom of speech.

"The government is heartened by the initial restrained reactions of Dutch Muslim organizations," he said. "The Dutch government stands for a society in which freedom and respect go hand in hand … Let us solve problems by working together."

Wilders — a well-known anti-Islamist who has called for a stop to immigration from Muslim countries and a halt to the building of new mosques in his country — has said he's not against Muslims but against their faith.

CBC

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

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Thanks for the news.

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Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

The Olympic torch has been handed over to Chinese officials at a ceremony in Athens, amid scuffles between police and pro-Tibet demonstrators.


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A small group of protesters tried to break through a police cordon to enter the stadium.

Thousands gathered as the flame was delivered and transferred to a lamp for its journey by plane to China.

The handover came as pro-Tibet protesters tried to storm the Chinese embassy in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu.

The torch's passage through Greece has been dogged by protests on human rights and Tibet.

The flame, which was lit in Olympia on 24 March, will be welcomed at a ceremony in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Monday.

It will then tour 20 countries before returning for the opening on 8 August.

See map of Olympic torch relay route

'Timeless symbol'

Sunday's formal handover was held in the Panathinaiko Stadium, where the first modern Olympics took place in 1896.

The Chinese and Greek flags were marched in by Greek athletes to the strains of a band, before a circle of white-clad actresses dressed as ancient priestesses surrounded a podium as the torch was brought in.

Minos Kyriakou, president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, passed the flame to chief Beijing organizer Liu Qi.

"The Olympic flame is the timeless symbol which stirs admiration, pride and faith [in] the Olympic ideals and values," said Mr Kyriakou.

"I hope the world community welcomes the flame and honours it".

Mr Liu pointed out that the summit of Mount Everest was on the torch's destination list, "testifying to the great strength of the Olympic movement in marking the progress of human civilisation".

Nepal protest

The protesters tried to unfurl a banner which said "stop genocide in Tibet", but failed to enter the stadium or disrupt the solemn ceremony.

At least six people were arrested.

Police had warned they would confiscate all banners, signs or objects that might be thrown.

Greek organisers had altered the torch's route ahead of the ceremony to nullify protests. The torch has had a police guard and a group of runners to protect it.

Meanwhile, in Kathmandu, police baton-charged Tibetan exiles and Buddhist monks who were trying to storm an office of the Chinese embassy, and arrested at least 100 people.

The city is home to hundreds of Tibetan exiles, and the protest was the third over Tibet in the past week. Those detained in the previous incidents were released within hours.

And in India's capital Delhi, exiled Tibetans launched an "independence torch" to tour the world in an anti-China protest.

The Tibetan alternative torch was unveiled in Delhi on Sunday and will next go to San Francisco on 9 April, when the Olympic torch is expected to arrive.

Tibet's government-in-exile, based in India, says about 140 people were killed in the crackdown on recent unrest by Chinese security forces. Beijing disputes this, saying 19 people were killed by rioters.

There has been little movement internationally towards a boycott of the Games, although French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said "all options are open" following the recent unrest in Tibet.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

About 65 miners are feared dead after rainfall triggered the collapse of mines in Tanzania, the government says.


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Six bodies have so far been recovered in the Mererani region, about 40km (25 miles) south-east of Arusha in north-eastern Tanzania.

Rescuers say the flooding is hampering their efforts and there is little hope of finding anyone else alive.

The area mines Tanzanite, a valuable blue gemstone found only in a small area near Arusha.

Ten years ago more than 100 Tanzanite miners died in an accident caused by heavy rain.

Resource rich

A regional commissioner, Henry Shekifu, told Associated Press news agency the men went missing on Friday amid heavy rains.

The government is trying to deploy equipment that will drain the mines, he said.

He said the flooding had affected 100 people - 35 had escaped the pit alive, six bodies had been found, and another 59 were missing.

He was jeered by some miners, as he addressed them at the pit entrance on Sunday, the French news agency AFP reported.

"You come with Land Cruisers instead of machines to help us pull out colleagues," said one of the miners.

Thousands of workers have been drawn to Mererani to mine the Tanzanite.

Tanzania is also rich in diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires and is Africa's third-largest gold producer.

The mining sector has boomed with economic liberalisation policies applied in the mid-1980s.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

Equatorial Guinea has issued an arrest warrant for Sir Mark Thatcher over his alleged role in a failed 2004 coup.


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The country's attorney general said that Sir Mark, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had provided money and transport.

In 2005, Sir Mark was given a fine and a suspended sentence in South Africa after pleading guilty to unknowingly helping to finance the plot.

However, he has always denied any direct involvement.

He told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper he was not worried by the arrest warrant.

"As far as I'm concerned the issue has already been dealt with," he was quoted as saying.

"I've been charged and tried in a court in South Africa on exactly those charges so I don't see what more they can do."

'Part of the team'

But Equatorial Guinea's Attorney General Jose Olo Obono said he had received new evidence against Sir Mark from Simon Mann, a former British army officer awaiting trial for his alleged role in the attempted coup.

"Mark Thatcher provided financing for a coup d'etat in Equatorial Guinea and then he organised all the transport for the coup d'etat," Mr Obono told the Associated Press.

"We don't understand how [South Africa] let him go with just this fine. With an issue like this, we can't just let it go."

In comments to AFP news agency, Mr Obono said that Interpol had been asked to help find Sir Mark, "because we really don't know where he is, no-one knows where he is living."

The Daily Telegraph said that Sir Mark was speaking from the resort of Puerto Banus on the Costa del Sol.

Mann is being held at the notorious Black Beach prison in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea.

He told a British television station recently that the plot did exist, but he was not the driving force behind it.

The ex-SAS officer also alleged Sir Mark Thatcher was "part of the team".

In the past, Sir Mark has always claimed he was an unwitting conspirator and that as far as he knew, he was helping finance an air ambulance business in West Africa.

The president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, took power in 1979, in a coup in which he killed his uncle.

Equatorial Guinea is now one of Africa's largest oil producers.

BBC News

[OMEN]

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ALLEGATIONS REJECTED: After almost six months listening to more than 250 witnesses, the judge told the jury in his summing up: "There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana's execution and there is no evidence that the security intelligence service or any other government agency organised it."
A coroner has said there was no evidence the Duke of Edinburgh ordered the "execution" of Princess Diana in a 1997 car crash, dismissing the conspiracy theories of her late lover's father.

Lord Justice Scott Baker, the coroner at the inquest into her death, described several witnesses as liars and dismissed allegations made by Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi also died when their car crashed in Paris as paparazzi pursued them.

Fayed, the owner of the luxury Harrods department store in London, had suggested Dodi and Diana were killed by security services on the orders of Prince Philip, because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son.

After almost six months listening to more than 250 witnesses, the judge told the jury in his summing up: "There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana's execution and there is no evidence that the security intelligence service or any other government agency organised it."

The judge said he had decided not to call Prince Philip as a witness because the evidence "provided no basis whatsoever in suggesting that he was involved in killing his daughter-in-law."

The inquest was delayed for 10 years because Britain had to wait for the French legal process and then a British police investigation to run their course before it could begin.

Both police inquiries decided it was a tragic accident because chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk and driving too fast. The car crashed in a road tunnel.

POSSIBLE VERDICTS

Scott Baker set out the possible verdicts the jury could reach, but said: "It is not open to you to find that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed in a staged accident."

He said possible verdicts included unlawful killing through gross negligence either by Henri Paul, by "following vehicles" or by both.

Other possibilities were accidental death or an open verdict if the 11-member jury felt there was insufficient evidence to support any substantive verdict.

Scott Baker, who said his summing up could take until Wednesday morning, told the jury that certain witnesses at the inquest had not told the truth.

"One of the regrettable features of this case is the number of people who have told lies in the witness box or elsewhere."

Among those he singled out were Diana's butler Paul Burrell, whose three days of testimony were described by lawyers as being "all over the place".

The judge said "You will probably want to take with a pinch of salt many things that he said in evidence because of the inconsistencies and, you may think, lies in what he told you."

Fayed had told the court that Dodi and Diana rang him up just one hour before the fatal crash to say they were engaged and she was pregnant.

"The issue fairly and squarely raises Mohamed al-Fayed's credibility. Is he a man on whose word you can rely?," Scott Baker said. "His beliefs may be genuine... but there is no doubt that many of them have no support in evidence at all."

Reuters

[OMEN]

Concern is growing that long delays in issuing Zimbabwe's election results hid attempts by President Robert Mugabe to cling to power by rigging.

Almost 48 hours after polls closed, only 52 of 210 parliamentary constituencies had been declared, showing Mugabe's ZANU-PF party one seat ahead of the main opposition MDC. Two of his ministers lost their seats.

No results were announced for the presidential vote, in which Mugabe faces the most formidable political challenge of his 28 years in power.

"It is now clear that there is something fishy. The whole thing is suspicious and totally unacceptable," said MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) spokesman Nelson Chamisa.

Mugabe, 84, is under unprecedented pressure from a two-pronged attack by veteran MDC rival Morgan Tsvangirai and ZANU-PF defector Simba Makoni, who both blame him for Zimbabwe's ruin.

Official results showed ZANU-PF with 26 seats, MDC with 25 and a breakaway MDC faction with one.

There was a chorus of concern over the delays, including former colonial ruler Britain, the European Union and both opposition challengers.

The MDC said unofficial tallies showed Tsvangirai had 60 per cent of the presidential vote, twice the total for Mugabe, with more than half the results counted. Private polling organizations also put Tsvangirai well ahead.

In his first public comments since the vote, Makoni criticised the way results were being announced. "We are very worried by the manner in which things are unfolding," he told Reuters.

CONCERN

The Save Zimbabwe Campaign, a coalition of civic, political and religious groups, also expressed concern at the delay which it said "gives reason to Zimbabweans to suspect that the electoral process is being manipulated by the incumbent."

Although the odds seemed stacked against Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, analysts believe his iron grip on the country and solid backing from the armed forces could enable him to ignore the results and declare victory.

Tsvangirai and some international observers accused Mugabe of stealing the last presidential election in 2002.

Zimbabwe is suffering the world's highest inflation of more than 100,000 per cent, chronic shortages of food and fuel, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep decline in life expectancy.

The MDC said its tally showed it had won 96 parliamentary constituencies out of 128 counted. Makoni had 10 per cent of the unofficial presidential vote count.

"In our view, as we stated before, we cannot see the national trend changing. This means the people have spoken, they've spoken against the dictatorship," MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Public Affairs Minister Chen Chimutengwende both lost their seats.

The state-run Herald newspaper accused the MDC of "preparing its supporters to engage in violence by pre-empting results, claiming they had won". The government has warned that any early victory claim would be regarded as an attempted coup.

Mugabe blames Zimbabwe's collapse on Britain and says Western sanctions have sabotaged the economy.

He rejects vote-rigging allegations.

Electoral Commission chairman George Chiweshe said the delay in results was due to the complexity of holding presidential, parliamentary and local polls together for the first time.

In previous elections, most results have been released by this stage.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement there should be no unnecessary delay in releasing the results.

"The international community is watching events closely," he said.

A spokesman for the European Commission said it would be "opportune" for the electoral commission to publish final results as soon as possible "to demonstrate its independence and to avoid unnecessary speculation."

Two South African members of a regional observer mission said the delay in announcing the election results "underscores the fear that vote-rigging is taking place".

Reuters

[OMEN]

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has sworn in 24 members of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's cabinet, six weeks after opposition parties won a general election.

There is strong speculation the new government will force US ally Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, to quit within weeks or months.

There has been some apprehension within Pakistani media and political circles that the United States could try to prop up Musharraf so that counterterrorism operations in the region are not disturbed by the changing of the guard in Islamabad.

"I expect from the international community that it will support democracy in Pakistan and will help us in strengthening democratic institutions," the country's new Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told reporters after being sworn in.

Eleven of the new ministers, including Qureshi, belonged to assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's party, which won the most seats in the February 18 vote. A further nine were from the party of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

Of the other four, one was an independent member of parliament and three were from two junior coalition partners.

Members of Sharif's party wore black armbands as they were sworn in, to protest against Musharraf, whom they consider an unconstitutional president.

"We took the oath because there is a larger objective and that is the restoration of the judiciary," Senior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, who was given the communications and farm portfolios, said.

Musharraf purged the judiciary in November when he resorted to emergency rule for six weeks to stop the Supreme Court ruling his re-election by the outgoing parliament was unconstitutional.

Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who succeeded her as leader of the Pakistan People's Party, and Sharif have promised to reinstate deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his colleagues through a parliamentary resolution within 30 days of forming a government.

That is likely to trigger a show-down with Musharraf, who will fear the judges will resurrect constitutional challenges to his re-election last October.

Pakistan's stock market set a life high last Thursday and appears insensitive to the doubts lingering over Musharraf's fate. The Karachi 100-share index lost almost 1 percent on Monday, but dealers said it was a temporary setback.

"Market fundamentals are still strong, and investors are cautiously optimistic about the new government," said Ashraf Zakaria, a dealer at brokers Ali Hussain Rajabali and Co.

The rupee eased slightly to close at 62.70/76 on Monday, still stronger than the six-year low of 63.11/14 struck on February 16, just before the election.

INVESTORS OPTIMISTIC

As expected, Ishaq Dar, a member of Sharif's party, was appointed finance minister, but he is taking over at a difficult time with inflation hitting Pakistan's poor, fiscal and current account deficits widening alarmingly, fears of recurrent grain shortages and increasingly frequent power cuts.

"Our economy is currently facing a lot of challenges," said Zubair Tufail, vice president, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

"We hope that he (Dar) and the government will give a solid plan to ease the pressures on the economy."

Dar, 60, was appointed commerce minister in a pro-business Sharif government in 1997.

He became finance minister a year later, when he had to negotiate an IMF rescue package to tackle an economic crisis triggered by sanctions over Pakistan's nuclear tests.

Dar was detained for nearly two years after Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a 1999 coup.

The four-party coalition is made up of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the ethnic Pashtun-based Awami National Party and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam religious party.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Chinese police have arrested a teacher linked to the rape and sexual assault of 16 schoolgirls, more than a year after he went on the run, a local newspaper reported.

Huang Shiming, a primary school teacher in Huima, a village in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was accused of raping six girls aged between eight and 11 between April 2004 and last September, the Beijing Times said.

He was also accused of sexually assaulting 10 other girls, and threatening victims with violence "to scare them so they would not tell their families", the paper said.

Huang disappeared after a victim's family reported him to police and eluded authorities for more than a year before being identified in the southern province of Guangdong.

Huang had been transported back to Sichuan and would face trial soon, the paper said.

Last month, a court in Sichuan's neighbouring Chongqing municipality sentenced a primary school teacher to death for raping 23 girls.

In January, a former national legislator was jailed for life for raping dozens of schoolgirls after a fortune teller advised him to have sex with virgins to improve his health and business.

Reuters

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[JohnCenaFan28]

All six members of a charity convicted of kidnapping 103 African children in Chad have been freed from their French prison, France's Justice Ministry says.


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The six, from the aid group Zoe's Ark, had initially been sentenced to eight years of hard labour in Chad, but were later moved to France.

Earlier Monday, Chad's President Idriss Deby pardoned the six.

They had said they were taking orphans from Darfur but most of the children were from Chad and were not orphans.

Two of the aid workers may still face criminal charges in France, and several law suits have been lodged against the charity by disappointed foster families.

Chad's government has also said it wants the children's families to receive compensation either from the aid workers or France.

Strengthening relations

President Deby also pardoned a Chadian intermediary for Zoe's Ark, Mahamat Dagot, who had been sentenced to four years of hard labour for complicity in the attempted kidnap of children.

A Sudanese refugee who also helped the aid workers has not been pardoned from his four-year sentence because, French news agency AFP reported, he had not asked for one.

The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says the pardons come at a time of strengthening relations between Chad and France, which helped Mr Deby beat back a rebel assault to overthrow him in February.

The six French aid workers were detained in Chad on 25 October last year at the airport in the eastern town of Abeche as they were about to put the 103 children on a flight to France.

They said the children were orphans or refugees from the Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.

An investigation found almost all the children to be Chadian and to have at least one living parent.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

A female agent of WWII was assessed as "not having the personality to act as a leader" before she was parachuted into France, files have revealed.


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Pearl Cornioley, who died in February, ended up in command of 3,000 French resistance fighters.

Documents released at the National Archives say Mrs Cornioley was later commended for "colossal bravery" and "outstanding powers of leadership".

She was eventually given her Parachute Wings at the age of 92.

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) wartime agent was born in Paris to an expatriate English couple.

She parachuted into France in September 1943 to work as a courier to a Resistance group.

In May 1944, she assumed control of 1,500 Resistance members and on D-Day was appointed to command some 3,000 members of the Maquis, who were the rural wartime French Resistance.

Medal decorations

Despite taking on these responsibilities, she was described in one British training report prior to her departure for France as not being leadership material, and it also suggested that she be best employed as a "subordinate".

But another training assessment described her as "probably the best shot - male or female - we have yet had" and that "this student, though a woman, has definitely got leaders' qualities. Cool and resourceful and extremely determined".

Mrs Cornioley, who died in France aged 93, was awarded the Legion d'Honneur and made a CBE by the Queen in 2004.

She was recommended for the Military Cross after the war, but was ineligible because she was a woman.

She was offered a civil MBE as an alternative,, which she refused. Instead she was appointed an MBE (military division) by the air ministry.

Of her offer of a civil MBE, she had said: "I do consider it to be most unjust to be given a civilian decoration.

"Our training, which we did with the men, was purely military and as women we were expected to replace them in the field."

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

A US defence department analyst has admitted giving classified information about military communication systems to a businessman working for China.


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Gregg Bergersen, 51, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to disclose national defence information "to persons not entitled to receive it".

Mr Bergersen faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on 20 June.

Correspondents say his admission comes amid growing concern in Washington about the activities of Chinese spies.

Four others were arrested in separate case last month for allegedly passing secret details about the space shuttle and other US aerospace programmes to China.

Air defence system

Mr Bergersen, a weapons systems policy analyst at the US Defence Security Co-operation Agency (DSCA), was arrested last month with joint Taiwanese-US national Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, a Chinese national living in the US.

The FBI said Mr Bergersen had received thousands of dollars for passing on classified information to Mr Kuo, a New Orleans-based furniture salesman who has also been accused of turning over that information to the Chinese government.

The US government said that Mr Bergesen thought Mr Kuo was closely affiliated with Taiwan's ministry of defence and was unaware he was in contact with Chinese officials.

Mr Bergesen's lawyer, Mark Cummings, said that there had been no explicit exchange of money for information. For instance, Mr Bergesen had won $3,000 from Mr Kuo in cash in a poker game in Las Vegas in April 2007, he said.

"In hindsight, he understands that the money was given to him in anticipation that he would provide documents," Mr Cummings added.

Ms Kang ferried the information between Mr Kuo and Chinese officials, the FBI alleged.

Mr Kuo, 58, and Mr Kang, 33, face a more serious charge of "conspiracy to disclose national defence information to a foreign government". They face up to life in prison if convicted.

The information passed on related to Taiwan's new Po Sheng air defence system. Taiwanese officials said that some damage had been caused by the disclosures, but that they had not compromised key technology.

The Chinese government has dismissed the espionage accusations as groundless and accused the US of "Cold War thinking".

BBC News

[OMEN]

Mexico's "Little Old Lady Killer," a female ex-wrestler who strangled and beat to death 11 elderly women in their homes after offering them domestic help, was sentenced to life in prison.

Juana Barraza, dubbed "Mataviejitas" in Spanish, murdered at least 11 people in the capital since 2000 and may have killed close to 40 in total, making her one of the worst serial killers in Mexico's recent history.

The muscular, ginger-haired former wrestler would cruise the streets of Mexico City, sometimes dressed up as a nurse, and win the confidence of frail old women by offering to wash their clothes or help with other household chores.

Once in their homes, she would strangle her victims with items like women's tights, a curtain cord or a phone cable, or bludgeon them to death with household objects.

She would also steal symbolic "trophies" like ornaments or religious items.

Barraza, who is about 50 years old, was sentenced to 759 years in prison for the crimes, but under Mexican law she can only serve a maximum of 50 years.

Her lawyers have 50 days to appeal the ruling.

She was arrested in 2006 after a witness spotted her fleeing from the home of woman in her 80s who had been strangled with a stethoscope.

She told police she killed to get revenge on older women after her mother gave her away to a man who sexually abused her when she was a child.

As a professional wrestler she was known as "The Silent Lady." She also worked as a popcorn vendor at fights.

After her arrest, police found an altar in her home to the death cult figure "Santa Muerte" (Saint Death), a folk saint popular with thieves and drug smugglers.

When she heard the court's ruling, she said: "Let God forgive me and not abandon me," Mexican media reported.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Riot police in armoured carriers deployed in two of Harare's opposition strongholds as suspicions grew that President Robert Mugabe was trying to rig Zimbabwe's most important election since independence.

A resident of one of the townships said a convoy of riot police in about 20 vehicles moved through the vast area. "There are a lot of patrols here," said the resident, adding people had been told to stay off the normally teeming streets.

More than 48 hours after polls closed, only 66 of 210 parliamentary constituencies had been declared, showing the ruling ZANU-PF one seat ahead of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Two of President Robert Mugabe's ministers lost their seats.

No results have been announced for the presidential vote, in which Mugabe faces the most formidable political challenge of his 28 years in power.

The opposition has accused the veteran leader of delaying the issuing of the results in a bid to steal the election, which Zimbabweans hoped would help rescue a country ravaged by an economic crisis.

"It is now clear that there is something fishy. The whole thing is suspicious and totally unacceptable," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

An independent Zimbabwean election monitoring group forecast Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the largest faction of the MDC, would win the most votes in the presidential poll but not by a big enough margin to avoid a second round.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said its projections giving him 49.4 percent were based on a random sample of 435 polling stations across the country's 10 provinces.

It predicted Mugabe would win 41.8 percent and ruling ZANU-PF party defector Simba Makoni would get 8.2 percent.

Seven European countries and the United States expressed concern over the delay, and called on Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission to quickly release the results, especially for the presidential election.

Electoral Commission chairman George Chiweshe said the slow pace was due to the complexity of holding presidential, parliamentary and local polls together for the first time.

FAIR AND CREDIBLE

Mugabe, 84, is under unprecedented pressure from a two-pronged attack by veteran MDC rival Tsvangirai and Makoni, who both blame him for Zimbabwe's ruin.

Zimbabweans are suffering the world's highest inflation of more than 100,000 percent, chronic shortages of food and fuel, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep decline in life expectancy.

And although the odds seemed stacked against Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, analysts believe his iron grip on the country and solid backing from the armed forces could enable him to ignore the results and declare victory.

He rejects vote-rigging allegations.

The U.S. State Department called on Zimbabwe's electoral commission to put aside "partisan sympathies" and "follow the letter and spirit of the law".

Marwick Khumalo, head of an observer group from the Pan-African parliament, said the elections themselves were free, fair and credible overall.

But he added: "The mission is concerned that two days after the closure of the polls, the overall outcome of the elections remains unknown."

Official results so far showed ZANU-PF with 31 seats, MDC with 30 and a breakaway MDC faction with five.

The MDC said its tally showed it had won 96 parliamentary constituencies out of 128 counted. Makoni had 10 percent of the unofficial presidential vote count.

The MDC said unofficial tallies showed Tsvangirai had 60 percent of the presidential vote, twice the total for Mugabe, with more than half the results counted. Private polling organisations also put Tsvangirai well ahead.

"In our view, as we stated before, we cannot see the national trend changing. This means the people have spoken, they've spoken against the dictatorship," MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said.

In his first public comments since the vote, Makoni criticised the way results were being announced. "We are very worried by the manner in which things are unfolding," he said.

Tsvangirai and some international observers accused Mugabe of stealing the last presidential election in 2002.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Public Affairs Minister Chen Chimutengwende both lost their seats.

The government has warned that any early victory claim would be regarded as an attempted coup.

Reuters

[OMEN]

An international pilot was arrested as he landed in Sydney yesterday and charged with carrying suitcases stuffed with cash out of Australia in a multimillion-dollar drug-running and money-laundering operation.

The Australian Crime Commission has accused senior Vietnam Airlines pilot Quoc Viet Lai of taking bribes to smuggle almost $4 million in drug money out of the country in previous trips dating back to 2005.

He is alleged to have picked up suitcases of cash in Melbourne and Sydney and carried them onto planes back to Vietnam, using his privileged status as an airline pilot to bypass customs bag checks.

The experienced pilot was charged last night with 40 counts of money laundering and will appear in a Sydney court today.

The arrest gives a glimpse into one of the nation's most secretive and significant operations fighting organised crime.

In its last annual report, the Crime Commission revealed that since March 2005, Operation Gordian had arrested 63 people, stopped the sale of drugs worth $1 billion and tracked $93 million in drug money leaving Australia. That figure is believed to have ballooned since then.

Lai is the second international pilot from Vietnam's government-owned carrier to be arrested by the commission for allegedly carrying suitcases filled with drug money onto planes bound for Vietnamese airports.

The first pilot, Van Dang Tran, was jailed for 4½ years last August for attempting to smuggle $6.5 million out of Australia.

Lai, who was arrested yesterday morning after flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Sydney, is accused of collecting the proceeds of drug sales on 17 occasions in 2005 and 2006 from Vietnamese money remitters in Footscray and the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta.

Operation Gordian, which includes assistance from the Australian Federal Police, Austrac and state police forces, monitors drug money as it leaves Australia instead of retrospectively tracing proceeds of crime after a drug bust.

The operation has uncovered how several sophisticated drug syndicates send their money from drug sales in Australia back to South-East Asia via electronic money transfers and physical couriers.

John Broome, former chairman of the Australian Crime Commission's predecessor, the National Crime Authority, said Australia was a highly lucrative market for South-East Asian drug barons.

"If we don't stop the laundering of funds out of Australia, we are giving them enough to buy a huge amount of extra heroin to send back here," he said.

Recent media reports have revealed that Australian law enforcement agencies are concerned about an increase in the amount of heroin reaching Australia.

Mr Broome, who has been a critic of the lack of action taken by some agencies to combat money laundering, said it was too early to tell whether last year's changes to anti-money-laundering legislation were having an effect. He said an obsession with terrorism meant some agencies had "dropped the ball" on organised crime.

"If you ask what is more damaging to Australian society, major crimes like drug trafficking and money laundering or terrorism, the answer is clear: it is drug trafficking and money laundering."

It is estimated that between $2 billion and $3 billion is laundered in Australia each year.

The arrest of a second international airline pilot also puts the focus back on airport security. While recent changes, arising from the 2005 Wheeler report on airport security, would have reduced the alleged ease with which the pilots allegedly smuggled the drug money onto their planes, sources say vulnerabilities remain.

AAP

[OMEN]

A rights group report blamed local security forces for the massacre of 17 Sri Lankan tsunami aid workers in 2006 and accused the government of an outright cover-up.

At the time, the killing of the local workers from aid group Action Contre La Faim (ACF) in the island's northeast was the worst attack on humanitarian workers since the 2003 bombing of the United Nations compound in Baghdad.

The mainly ethnic Tamil workers, who had been involved in rebuilding after the 2004 tsunami, were found shot in the head and lying face down in the ACF compound in the predominantly Muslim town of Mutur in August 2006.

The military said they were trapped in fighting between troops and rebels.

The University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), a Sri Lankan group that has been criticised by both sides throughout the two decade civil war, named a local Muslim home guard – a police auxiliary – and two constables as the killers of most of the group.

"The evidence shows state security forces, including police, killed the 17 aid workers and that senior police officers covered it up," said Rajan Hoole of UTHR.

"The killing of civilians during time of conflict is a war crime. The perpetrators and their superiors should be brought to justice."

Most Mutur residents had fled the town by the time of the massacre. The first aid team into the town days later found the bloated bodies in the ACF compound, most shot at close range.

The Sri Lankan government has denied responsibility and blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

International monitors recently told the government they were withdrawing from the inquiry because of official interference and lack of internationally acceptable standards.

The report said the brother of a Muslim home guard had been killed by a Tiger gunman the previous day and he had vowed revenge.

It also said a special forces commander in the town ordered security forces to "finish off" any Tamil speakers in plain clothes if they had any suspicions after another rebel disguised as a civilian killed troops.

It said witnesses described an "air of celebration" at Mutur police station after the massacre, adding that the anger of the Muslim home guard appeared to have simply been "a pretext" and senior figures in the nearby northeastern town of Trincomalee apparently also backed the killings.

The report said the execution-style murder of five Tamil students in Trincomalee earlier in 2006 had also been covered up and one of the responsible officers promoted, fostering a culture of impunity as a 2002 ceasefire collapsed into open war.

International group Human Rights Watch described the report as a "brilliant piece of investigative work".

"It does more than name the names of those responsible for the brutal ACF killings," said Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser James Ross. "It shows the government investigations into the massacre were little more than a bad joke played out on the victims' families and the international community."

UTHR said publishing the report was not without risk, particularly as three witnesses had already been killed, a fourth had gone missing and others fled the country – part of a wider pattern of disappearances and killings.

Reuters

[OMEN]

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The Canadian government has asked for clemency in the case of Mohamed Kohail, who has been sentenced to death by beheading in Saudi Arabia.
Canada's ambassador to Saudi Arabia is set to meet Tuesday with a Montreal man facing execution in the Middle Eastern country.
Mohamed Kohail, 23, was convicted of murder and sentenced on March 3 to a public beheading following a schoolyard brawl in 2007 that left an 18-year-old student dead.

The ambassador will meet with Kohail, his family and legal counsel to discuss the young man's case, according to Foreign Affairs spokesman Rodney Moore. Kohail's appeal hearing Monday was not said to go well, after Kohail's lawyer was ejected from the courtroom during the proceedings.

A family spokesman, Mahmoud Al-Ken, said the judges threatened to revoke the lawyer's licence, although he did not say why.

Kohail's family has argued that he did not receive a fair trial in Saudi Arabia, and hoped the sentence would be changed through the appeal process.

Moore said the ambassador will also meet with officials from the Saudi Justice Ministry, in an effort to ensure that due process is being followed.

Kohail's younger brother Sultan, 17, was convicted of similar charges after the schoolyard brawl, and family members fear he will also receive the death penalty at his sentencing in early April. A Saudi national has also been charged.

The federal government has indicated it will seek clemency for Kohail at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Last Wednesday, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's department released a statement saying the minister brought up the case while meeting with the head of Saudi Arabia's general intelligence service, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.

"I reiterated the Canadian government's position that a review of the decision made by the Saudi judiciary be carried out with a view to ensuring a full and fair hearing," Day said in a statement.

"We urge Saudi authorities to overturn the death sentence."

Al-Ken said on Thursday that Day had met the wrong people, and should have asked to see someone higher up.

Liberal Opposition critic Dan McTeague had said on Wednesday that Day should have met with his direct counterpart in Riyadh, rather than his deputy, as well as with the Saudi justice minister, instead of that country's intelligence chief.

CBC

[OMEN]

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier says there's no rush to find a NATO partner for Canada's deadly combat mission in Afghanistan — although he expects a deal very soon.

Bernier made the comments Monday, just hours before Prime Minister Stephen Harper was to depart for a NATO leaders' summit in Bucharest.

It's been expected that Canada's demand for reinforcements in the volatile Kandahar region would be settled at the summit.

But both Harper and Bernier suggested Monday that the matter will take longer to resolve.

Harper said he's confident that Canada's military allies will come through with 1,000 additional troops and equipment "in the not too distant future."

Bernier later suggested the matter could be settled "in a couple of weeks," adding that there's no hurry.

"We have until February 2009 to find more troops and to find the equipment that we need, so we still have time," Bernier said.

Harper, with the support of the Liberals, won parliamentary support for a motion to extend Canada's military mission in Kandahar until the end of 2011.

However, the motion also makes it clear that the mission will end in February 2009 unless NATO steps up with 1,000 additional troops and battlefield helicopters and unmanned surveillance planes for use by Canadian troops.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae was surprised by Bernier's assertion that there's no rush for reinforcements.

"I think that's wrong," he said. "We owe it to our troops and we owe it to everyone else to get this settled much more quickly than that."

Rae noted that the government insisted on holding the vote to extend the mission several weeks ago, contending that parliamentary support would strengthen Harper's hand at the NATO summit. He questioned why Bernier has now changed his tune.

"My own view is it's not a matter just of Canada. I don't think NATO itself can afford this kind of indecision and this kind of delay. We owe it to our own people, we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to be clearer."

Only hours before his departure for the NATO summit, Harper reiterated the threat to withdraw from Kandahar if the 1,000 troops aren't pledged.

"I have always been clear; if our conditions are not met, we would withdraw," Harper told the House of Commons.

"That said, our discussions with our allies, and also our equipment procurement, continue to go very well. I have every reason to believe that these conditions will be fulfilled in the not too distant future."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has committed an additional 1,000 troops for Afghanistan but they are likely to be deployed in the eastern region, near Kabul. Such a move could free up American forces to join Canadian soldiers in Kandahar.

The United States has already deployed 3,200 marines in Kandahar but only for a brief seven-month stint to counter an anticipated spring offensive by Taliban insurgents.

Other NATO countries, including Spain and Germany, refuse to deploy troops in Kandahar, where the insurgency is extremely dangerous.

Poland, meanwhile, appears ready to increase its offer of helicopter support for Canadian troops in Kandahar.

CBC

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Thanks for the news.

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Thanks for the story.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

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Thanks for the story.

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Very interesting, thanks.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Australia experts say a Tasmanian Devil called Cedric could hold the key to the survival of the embattled species.


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The world's largest marsupial carnivore is facing extinction from a mystery facial cancer.

But scientists say Cedric appears to be naturally resistant to the contagious tumours which have killed half the devil population in Tasmania.

Cedric is the first Tasmanian Devil to have shown any immunity from the disfiguring disease.

Infected animals become so consumed by the cancer they can no longer eat or see and eventually die of starvation.

Breakthrough

Cedric was captured in western Tasmania last year, along with his half-brother, Clinky.

Both were injected by scientists with dead tumours. Clinky produced no antibodies, but Cedric did and appears to have built-in defences against the mystery illness.

The experiments have now moved up a gear.

Researcher Alex Kriess says the pair have had live cancer cells inserted into their faces.

"They haven't developed a tumour so far," he said. "We injected very few cells so it might take a while until they develop anything that we can see."

Cedric's apparent resistance to the disease has been seen as a significant breakthrough.

The facial tumours are decimating devil numbers on Tasmania's east coast. Cedric is from a genetically different population on the other side of the island.

Scientists hope marsupials that share his genetic pattern could also be immune to the cancer or capable of responding to a vaccine.

If real progress is not made soon, experts worry that the Tasmanian Devil could be extinct within 20 years.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

France's stock market regulator said it has uncovered evidence of insider trading and market abuse at Airbus parent firm EADS.


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The findings follow an 18-month AMF probe into whether managers at the firm were aware of problems affecting its A380 planes before they sold shares.

When details of delays to the superjumbo project were announced in June 2006, shares in EADS slumped.

EADS said that it would "exercise vigorously" its right to defend itself.

"EADS will support its managers in their defence, it intends to demonstrate that it has applied standards of excellence when communicating to the market and has acted with full transparency."

However it accepted that the proceedings may have "significant consequences on its image and reputation".

And one of its key shareholders, Lagardere, said that it was "confident of its ability to provide all explanations needed to clear it".

The regulator will now refer the case to Paris prosecutors.

It added that despite its findings no one had yet been found guilty of any illegal activity.

The trading in shares occurred shortly before news about delays to the A380 superjumbo were made public last June.

EADS denies it knew about delays when millions of euros of shares were sold.

The announcement wiped 26% off the value of the Franco-German aerospace giant.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

Israeli forces have killed two Hamas militants during a brief raid on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian and Israeli officials have said.


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The Israeli army said troops had identified and shot two Hamas gunmen.

Palestinian medical sources told AFP news agency that the two militants had been killed in a gun battle and that two civilians had been injured.

Israel carries out regular raids in the Gaza Strip in an effort to stop rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

There has been a lull in violence in recent weeks.

Egypt has been leading efforts to broker a ceasefire in the Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.

BBC News

[OMEN]

Prospects for a runoff in Zimbabwe's election appeared to increase yesterday after state media said President Robert Mugabe had failed to win a majority for the first time in nearly three decades.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai insisted on Tuesday that he would win an outright majority from last Saturday's election but projections by both the ruling ZANU-PF party and private monitors suggested he would fall short, forcing a second round.

Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change and a thorn in Mugabe's side for a decade, said he would release his tally of the presidential result on Wednesday. Official results have yet to be announced, fuelling suspicions of rigging.

Both Tsvangirai and the government dismissed widespread speculation that the MDC was negotiating with ZANU-PF for a managed exit for Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted for 28 years.

"There is no discussion and this is just a speculative story," Tsvangirai told a news conference.

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 but faced an unprecedented challenge in Saturday's elections because of the economic collapse of his once prosperous country, reducing much of the population to misery.

The state-owned Herald newspaper said on Wednesday MDC and ZANU-PF would tie in the parliamentary poll and projections for the presidential election showed neither Tsvangirai or Mugabe will get the 51 per cent majority needed.

"The pattern of results in the presidential election show that none of the candidates will garner more than 50 per cent of the vote, forcing a re-run," it said.

The prospect of a runoff has raised fears both inside and outside Zimbabwe that the three-week hiatus before a new vote would spark serious violence between security forces and militia loyal to Mugabe on one side and MDC supporters on the other.

The Herald also said the government had decided to immediately implement tax relief to cushion the effect of runaway inflation, officially over 100,000 percent but estimated to be much higher; the world's highest rate.

The widening of workers' tax-free threshold tenfold to 300 million Zimbabwean dollars per month; $10,000 (5,000 pounds) at the government's official rate but about $7.50 (3.80 pounds) on the black market – is widely seen as an attempt to curry favour with voters and suggests ZANU-PF is preparing for a runoff.

UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE

A senior Western diplomat in Harare told Reuters the international community was discussing ideas to try to persuade Mugabe to step down, "but I don't think there is anything firm on the table."

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the election stand-off in Zimbabwe could turn into violence but hoped the country would avoid the bloodshed recently witnessed in Kenya after disputed elections there.

No presidential results have been announced four days after polls closed, fuelling suspicions that Mugabe was trying to avoid defeat by rigging.

But two ZANU-PF party sources said on Tuesday its projections showed Tsvangirai getting 48.3 per cent against Mugabe's 43 per cent, with former finance minister Simba Makoni taking 8 percent.

Latest results from the parliamentary election showed ZANU-PF with two more seats than the mainstream MDC, and five seats going to a breakaway faction of the opposition. 189 seats have now been announced from a total of 210.

Seven of Mugabe's ministers have lost their seats.

Tsvangirai and many foreign governments urged the electoral commission to speed up result announcements.

The opposition and international observers said Mugabe rigged the last presidential election in 2002. But some analysts say the groundswell of discontent over an economy in freefall is too great for him to fix the result this time without risking major unrest.

Apart from the surreal inflation and a virtually worthless currency, Zimbabweans are suffering food and fuel shortages and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep drop in life expectancy.

The opposition is expected to unite behind one candidate if there is a runoff, which would be held three weeks after the March 29 election.

Reuters

[OMEN]

It was fugitive Frank Montoya's teeth, or lack of them, that contributed to his downfall.

As Montoya's new police mug shot shows, the man accused of torturing Australian tourist Robert Schneider by bashing him with a skateboard and then dropping him in a fire pit has a distinctive smile.

Montoya and co-accused Damian Maple had been on the run since the alleged February 27 attack on a beach in the southern California city of San Diego.

Both were arrested yesterday more than 1000km away.

Montoya, 46, was found sitting alone on a step outside a music hall in the city of Eugene in Oregon.

Maple, 21, was found by US Marshals and sheriffs hiding under a bed in a home in the sparsely populated community of Coolin, Idaho.

Both arrests followed tip-offs by outraged Americans following media coverage of the attack on Schneider, a 26-year-old electrician from Adelaide.

The attack left the Australian with third degree burns to 15 per cent of his body, a fractured skull, broken wrist and lacerations to his face and body.

On Monday morning a resident in Eugene called to tell police a man fitting Montoya's description, who he had seen on America's Most Wanted (AMW) TV show, was sitting on the steps of a local music hall.

Eugene police officer Kyle Evans checked out the information.

"The citizen that called in said Montoya was wearing a bandana and yellow sunglasses and I saw the bright yellow sunglasses hanging off his shirt," Evans told AAP.

"I could see the glasses from about a block and a half away."

Evans had also printed out a description of Montoya from the AMW site and held it in his hand when he approached.

"The AMW description said Montoya was missing his front teeth," Evans said.

When Montoya opened his mouth and flashed his lack of pearly whites, Evans knew he had his man.

Montoya surrendered without a struggle and during a court appearance today waived his right to fight extradition, meaning he will soon be back in San Diego to face charges of torture and aggravated mayhem.

Maple appeared in a court in Idaho's Bonner County and also agreed to waive extradition to California.

Maple is charged with assault with a deadly weapon, battery, torture and aggravated mayhem.

If convicted, both face maximum sentences of life in prison.

Law enforcement officers in Oregon and Idaho, horrified by the attack on Schneider, said they hoped the arrests would help the Australian and his family with their recovery.

"It sound like it's a pretty horrific crime that has occurred," Evans said.

"It's pretty neat to get a tip from a citizen and follow up on it and actually make the arrest.

"I'm sure it puts the family and the victim of the case at ease a little bit."

Schneider, on a backpacking trip around the world, was allegedly attacked at about 5.30am on February 27 as he celebrated his 26th birthday at San Diego's Ocean Beach.

Montoya and Maple are accused of picking a fight with the Australian and then bashing him with a skateboard before tossing him into the flames in a beach fire pit.

Montoya and Maple fled, but an onlooker dragged Schneider out of the flames.

Schneider's parents, Peter and Judy, flew from Adelaide to be with their son and say they are relieved their son's accused attackers are in custody.

"You just shake your head and think, what would make somebody do this sort of thing?" Peter Schneider told San Diego's NBC affiliate TV station.

The Schneiders said their son is recuperating well, is now able to walk and talk and could be released from hospital in the next couple of weeks.

AAP

[OMEN]

Japan will study the safety of cloned animals for food, after a report concluded there is no biological difference in the meat and milk of cloned and non-cloned cattle, officials said yesterday.

"The safety commission has been asked to deliberate on the matter," an Agriculture Ministry official said.

It was not immediately clear how long it would take for the Food Safety Commission, Japan's food safety watchdog which will be looking into the issue, to reach a conclusion.

"There is no prior case that we can compare it with," an official with the commission said. He said the safety of cloned cattle and also pigs would be studied.

Many Japanese consumers, notoriously sensitive to food safety, are likely to oppose moves to introduce meat or milk from cloned animals into the human food supply, however.

The farm ministry official said Japan has been breeding cloned cattle since 1998.

As of September last year, a cumulative total 535 cloned cattle had been bred in Japan, all for research purposes.

The United States is ahead of Japan as it has already made a final risk assessment.

The US Food and Drug Administration ruled in January that food from cloned cattle, hogs and goats and their offspring is as safe as other food, opening the door to bringing the meat and milk from cloned animals into the food supply chain.

US industry sources have said, however, it could take four or five years before clone-derived food becomes widely available to consumers.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Police in Western Australia are baffled by the mysterious disappearance of a family of three and their friend, who told family last July that they were going for a holiday to Brazil.

The missing person's unit has been investigating the case for several months but has so far drawn a complete blank, and is now appealing to the public for help.

Chantelle McDougall, 27, originally from Victoria, her English partner Simon Kadwell, 45, and their six-year-old daughter Leela had been living in a house 10km out of Nannup, in WA's south-west.

They lived in the town for about 18 months after moving down from Perth, while a friend, Antonio Popic, 40, was living in a caravan in the backyard.

Acting Sergeant Fiona Caporn said today Ms McDougall told her mother Cathy in July they were going away on holidays to Brazil.

They called their real estate agent to say they were leaving and he could have their furniture, packed up their belongings and on July 13 travelled to Busselton where they sold their car.

It was the last time they were seen.

"There's nothing to say where they are, their location and whereabouts are unknown," Sgt Caporn said.

She said the family largely kept to themselves, but there was no indication of foul play.

Police said the bank accounts of the three adults were untouched, and Centrelink, Medicare and immigration checks had revealed nothing.

Ms McDougall and her daughter were only reported missing in October when her parents called police, while Mr Popic's brother reported him missing in November.

"Chantelle's parents didn't report them missing for a while because they were under the belief they had gone on a holiday, but all our information at this stage states they are still in Australia," Sgt Caporn said.

Police say they have not yet identified Mr Kadwell's next of kin.

AAP

[OMEN]

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have accused potential White House opponent John McCain of favouring the wealthy and turning his back on struggling workers and middle-class families.

The Democratic presidential contenders, campaigning in Pennsylvania ahead of their April 22 showdown, took a break from attacking each other to portray the Arizona senator as uncertain and untested on economic issues.

In separate appearances but similar language, they said McCain would take his economic cues from President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

"John McCain admits he doesn't understand the economy - and unfortunately he's proving it in this campaign," Clinton told the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO union group.

"After seven disastrous years of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the stakes in this election couldn't be higher and the need to change course couldn't be more urgent. But John McCain is only offering more of the same," the New York senator said.

Obama, an Illinois senator, said all McCain offers "is four more years of the same George Bush policies that have gotten us into this pickle".

He noted McCain's support for extending Bush's tax cuts, which Obama said would help the wealthy, and his support for trade agreements that Obama said do not protect US workers.

"His response to the housing crisis amounts to little more than standing on the sidelines and watching millions of Americans lose their homes," Obama said in Wilkes-Barre.

The winner of the Democratic nominating battle between Clinton and Obama will face McCain in November's election, and in recent days both candidates have toned down their attacks on each other to focus more directly on McCain.

They have criticised the former Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam for saying he does not know as much about the economy as he does about national security and military issues.

McCain, on a week-long tour highlighting his military service and life story, visited his former high school outside Washington, DC, on Tuesday.

He said he will soon offer a plan with specifics to help homeowners who are having trouble paying their mortgages because of adjustable-rate loans.

"Senator Clinton's attacks on John McCain are a desperate attempt to change the focus away from the divisive battle within the Democratic Party," said Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant.

He challenged Clinton to explain how she will pay for her new spending proposals.

Clinton proposed a plan on Tuesday to create 3 million jobs through increased investments over 10 years in the US infrastructure, and proposed a $US10 billion ($NZ12.88 billion) emergency fund for critical repairs to bridges and highways.

"People ask me, `What are the issues in this campaign? I say, jobs, jobs jobs and jobs'," Clinton said at a rally in Wilkes-Barre.

On Wednesday, Clinton planned to announce "insourcing" initiatives that would produce $US7 billion a year in expanded tax credits and incentives to encourage companies to create and invest jobs in the United States, her campaign said.

Her proposals would eliminate incentives and close tax loopholes for companies that outsource jobs and use the savings to help create US-based jobs, the campaign said.

Part of the plan would be a $US5 billion tax credit for communities hard hit by global competition and trade, it said.

Clinton and Obama were in Pennsylvania on Tuesday ahead of the next contest when 158 pledged delegates will be at stake.

Some Democrats are concerned the prolonged campaign will hurt the eventual winner in the match-up with McCain.

But Clinton, who trails Obama in pledged delegates won in state-by-state contests, has rejected calls to step aside.

Neither candidate is likely to have the 2024 delegates needed to win the nomination after the contests end in early June, leaving the decision up to nearly 800 superdelegates - elected officials and party insiders who are free to back any candidate.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the campaign should continue through the end of voting, and repeated her view that superdelegates should not be perceived to overturn the will of the voters.

"I think the election has to run its course," Pelosi said on ABC's Good Morning America.

"I do think that it is important for us to get behind one candidate a long time before we go to the Democratic National Convention if we hope to win in November," she said.

Obama also played down worries the long campaign would hurt the eventual Democratic nominee.

"I think this contest has been good for the Democratic Party. We've brought in all kinds of new people into the process. And I think that bodes well for November," he said on NBC's Today show.

Reuters

[OMEN]

The victim didn't know why police had wanted her to come and see them. She certainly didn't know what they wanted to show her. She was aghast to find out.

Australian police played her video footage of herself and a man called John Xydias. She lay on a bed, apparently drugged.

The video showed Xydias undressing her and re-dressing her in his own female underwear.

Then he carefully repositioned her unconscious body and his video camera to best advantage for what was to come next: he raped her in every possible way.

If she began to stir, he would quickly move off the bed, cover her and turn off the light.

According to a prosecution summary tendered to the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday, the film showed Xydias assaulting her "time after time".

Watching the videos with police, the woman was distraught.

She felt so sick and was crying so hard she had to call a halt to the viewing.

She told police that she firmly believed Xydias had rendered her unconscious.

Six other women also endured the ordeal of watching themselves being raped and intimately assaulted while they were unconscious.

Four of the other alleged victims Xydias filmed have yet to be identified and two were conscious when he attacked them.

Police describe Xydias as one of Victoria's worst sex offenders. Yesterday he was committed to stand trial on 225 sex-related charges, including 69 of rape, related to 13 victims aged from about 20 to 45.

One woman was kept unconscious at his holiday home in Dromana and raped repeatedly over three days.

Xydias did not formally enter a plea yesterday but lawyer Remy Van de Wiel, QC, said he would plead guilty "to an appropriate presentment".

Xydias smiled dreamily as he entered court. Dressed in a pale blue denim shirt, his honey-blond hair tied back in a scraggly ponytail, he nodded his head rhythmically at various points in the proceedings. When he stood, he clasped his hands in front of his chubby stomach.

According to the prosecution summary of charges Xydias, 44, a Glen Iris chef, first came to the attention of police in March 2006. They were tipped off about a DVD that had once been in his possession that contained footage of "numerous women".

Police linked the footage to a hidden camera in the wall of a change room that was set up for cabaret singers and dancers at the bouzouki club Kinisi Live in Richmond's Church Street.

Police obtained warrants and raided Xydias' family home in Glen Iris and a holiday home in Dromana. They found many tapes, female underwear, photographs of female genitals, cameras and a video camera and tripod.

Thirteen video tapes and four video camera tapes were found to contain explicit footage of Xydias raping unconscious women.

The prosecution summary says Xydias had both legal and illegal supplies of the sedative Rohypnol (known as a date-rape drug).

It is suggested he used alcohol and cannabis and laced victims' coffee or other drinks with Rohypnol to render them unconscious.

One woman reported that he had an appetite for pornography.

Xydias met one of his victims through a phone dating service and others socially, including two through his friend Harry William Barkas, 45, of South Yarra.

Barkas was arrested on August 23 last year and is facing 77 charges including rape and abduction relating to attacks on 30 alleged victims. He is due to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates Court for a committal mention on May 2.

Xydias was arrested two months earlier, on June 15, and interviewed by the sexual crimes squad.

According to the prosecution summary, he appeared co-operative but provided few names of his victims and gave some incorrect names.

He acknowledged his presence in the videos and the sexual acts but said he was having consensual sex with conscious women and claimed some of the women had filmed him (a claim the victims denied).

The summary says: "The defendant stated that when he was sexually involved with a conscious victim, the free agreement carried on through their loss of consciousness.

"This is despite the fact that numerous victims have never been consensually sexually involved with the defendant.

"The defendant failed to admit he rendered the victims unconscious through the use of drugs or other substances, basically blaming the victim for her loss of consciousness."

He did not show any remorse and did not apologise for his actions: "It was clear the defendant was attempting to avoid prosecution for his actions with absurd explanations."

Xydias was remanded to appear in the County Court on April 29.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Flights to Canada and the United States were targets in an alleged plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic Ocean, British prosecutors said Wednesday in London.

Canadian officials say some of the targeted flights included Air Canada flights to Montreal and Toronto.

Prosecutors allege eight British men planned to carry small bombs — made with liquid explosives — in plastic drink containers on board the planes in 2006.

All eight are accused of conspiracy to murder and of planning acts of violence likely to endanger the safety of an aircraft. Both charges carry maximum sentences of life imprisonment.

The trial is set to begin Thursday in London.

Judge David Calvert-Smith told about 100 prospective jurors during a selection hearing on Wednesday that the trial would be long and complex.

"This case concerns an allegation that in 2006 a number of men planned to create bombs which some of their number would take on board passenger aircraft flying from London Heathrow to various destinations in Canada and the U.S.A.," Calvert-Smith said.

The suspects were arrested last August in a two-day operation that led to the cancellations of hundreds of flights in and out of Britain.

Ahmed Abdullah Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Umar Islam, Arafat Waheed Khan, Ibrahim Savant, Waheed Zaman, and Mohammed Gulzar are the eight charged.

CBC

[OMEN]

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Tendai Biti, secretary general of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe, addresses a news conference in Harare on Wednesday. Biti said his party had won the presidency, but was waiting for official results.
Zimbabwe's opposition parties have won a combined victory in the country's parliamentary election, according to highly anticipated results from the election commission, while the winner of the presidential race is still unclear.
The latest figures show the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has won 105 seats in the 210-seat House of Assembly, while one was taken by an Independent. President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party won 93 seats, making a majority impossible even if it takes the remaining 11 seats.

The Zimbabwe Election Commission's announcement Wednesday marked the first full release of official election results since Saturday's presidential and legislative vote. Official results for the presidential race have not been announced.

"Keep in mind this is a country where the bulk of the power rests with the president's office, with Robert Mugabe. Those are still the numbers we are waiting for," the CBC's Adrienne Arsenault reported from Harare, the capital.
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Zimbabweans read a newsletter distributed by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) updating its supporters on the latest election results in Harare on Wednesday.
"This is a critical moment to say that the ruling party has lost its majority in Parliament."

The MDC released its own unofficial results of the presidential vote Wednesday, claiming victory for its leader Morgan Tsvangirai with 50.3 per cent and Mugabe at 43.8 per cent. ZANU-PF has rejected the opposition's claim, saying it's waiting for official results from the commission.

The announcements came on the same day the state-run newspaper suggested Mugabe's party and the opposition may be headed to a runoff vote, after partial results from legislative elections showed each would win between 96 and 99 seats out of 210.

If no leader takes more than 50 per cent plus one vote, the parties have agreed to hold a runoff, as is required in Zimbabwe.

White House spokesperson Gordon Johndroe said in a statement Wednesday that Washington is monitoring the situation and expects "the will of the people of Zimbabwe to be respected."
Suggestion of regime change

"This matter of the state-run newspaper talking of a possible runoff is really rather remarkable," said Arsenault.

"For it to even contemplate printing anything that suggests anything other than a Mugabe win suggests a number of things," including the possibility that the newspaper is preparing for a regime change, she said.

MDC general secretary Tendai Biti said Wednesday that the unofficial presidential results, which give just 43.8 per cent of the vote to Mugabe, would rule out the legal requirement for a runoff.

"We maintain that we have won the presidential election outright without the need for a runoff," Biti told a news conference, adding that the party would be willing to participate in one if necessary.

The outcome of the weekend elections remains speculative until the commission announces full official results for the presidential race. It was not clear when the results would be announced.

The possibility of a runoff, which would be held three weeks from now, was met with frustration by Zimbabweans who questioned how fair such an election would be without foreign election monitors and journalists in the country.

"Their feeling is that the security forces that are out on the street will start to crack down, it will become a violent place, a dangerous place in the three weeks and at the end of the day, democracy will not have been delivered," Arsenault said.

Delay arouses suspicion

The delay in results has created an atmosphere rife with speculation and anxiety over who will be the south African country's future leader, prompting concerns it may be a sign of vote rigging and fraud. On Zimbabwe's fourth day without full results, new suggestions emerged that the commission might be buying time for closed-door negotiations between the parties.

"Diplomats will tell you privately here that there is a suggestion that there is some sort of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring. Obviously something is happening behind the scenes, because there is no logical explanation for why the results would take this long," Arsenault said.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai denied Tuesday his party was in talks with Mugabe's regarding a possible power transfer, dismissing such suggestions as rumours.

"Any speculation about deals, about negotiations, about reaching out, it's not there," Tsvangirai said during a news conference, insisting his party will not enter into any deals before official election results are released.

"We want to know who has won what before we can claim anything," he said.

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga also said there would be no negotiations until the results were announced.

The election has presented Mugabe, 84, the country's leader since it gained independence from Britain in 1980, with the toughest political challenge to his decades of rule.

Once praised for bringing health care and education to millions in Zimbabwe, Mugabe has lately been criticized for the economic collapse of his country that has spawned annual inflation above 100,000 per cent and unemployment of 80 per cent.

Food and fuel shortages are rampant, and the rising HIV/AIDS epidemic is said to be causing a steep decline in life expectancy.

Associated press

[OMEN]

A broad-based, full-fledged public inquiry should be launched into the past business relationship between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, the federal ethics committee has recommended.

The committee's sole recommendation is in contrast to what was advocated by a special adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who called for the inquiry to be narrow in scope.

The committee — which spent weeks hearing testimony from witnesses, including Mulroney and Schreiber — said the inquiry should look into their relationship dating back to the 1980s, CBC's Paul Hunter reported.

Hunter said the bulk of the report consists of highlighting contradictory evidence heard at the committee. He said there will also be three minority reports by individual parties.

One includes a recommendation by the NDP for the Justice Department to set aside a $2.1-million settlement awarded to Mulroney in 1997 over his libel suit against the federal government over the so-called Airbus affair.

The ethics committee report will be tabled Wednesday in the House of Commons. A copy will also be given to David Johnston, the president of the University of Waterloo, who has been asked to establish an inquiry mandate based on the investigation conducted by the committee, as well as his preliminary report.

Johnston has said the public inquiry should be narrow in scope, focusing on unanswered questions that are of true interest to the Canadian public. Johnston said the inquiry should not rehash the details already probed extensively in the RCMP investigations and lawsuits that have examined the 25-year history between Mulroney and Schreiber.

Johnston has been given until Friday to set the parameters for the hearings. Harper has said the inquiry will go ahead once the ethics committee had completed its task.

The committee had been investigating cash payments Mulroney said he received in 1993 to 1994 from Schreiber to lobby on behalf of Schreiber's client, Thyssen, a German armoured vehicle company.

Mulroney said he was paid $225,000 in cash envelopes at three meetings between the two men and insists the business arrangement was struck after he left office in June 1993.

While saying that accepting cash payments was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, Mulroney has said he has done nothing illegal.

But Schreiber has argued that the total was $300,000, and that the arrangement was reached while Mulroney was serving his last days as prime minister in 1993, something that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.

CBC

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Scientists have identified genetic variations that raise the risk of lung cancer for smokers and former smokers.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44532000/jpg/_44532846_cigarettes226.jpg

There is some evidence to suggest that they may make carriers more addicted to tobacco.

Three research teams, writing in the journals Nature and Nature Genetics, each pinpointed two key areas of variation on chromosome 15.

The variants are common in the population - but they only raise lung cancer risk in those who have smoked.

Current or former smokers who carry two copies of both variants, one from each parent - about 15% of the total - have a raised risk of 70-80%.

Those who carry one copy of each variant have a raised risk of around 28%.


LUNG CANCER
Second most common form of cancer in the UK after breast cancer
Smoking and passive smoking cause nine out of ten lung cancers
Half of all smokers eventually die from lung cancer or another smoking-related illness. And a quarter of smokers die in middle age - between 35 and 69.
There are over 38,300 new cases, and more than 33,000 deaths from lung cancer in the UK each year
Men are more likely to be affected, although the number of women with lung cancer has been increasing

The researchers differ on exactly how the key variants influence lung cancer risk.

A team from Icelandic company deCODE Genetics - which carried out the largest of the studies - say their work suggests that carrying the variants makes people more addicted to tobacco once they start smoking.

But an international team, including scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research, the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, believe it is more likely that the variants interact directly with tobacco to cause lung cancer.

This may be by increasing the likelihood that nicotine will trigger the uncontrolled cell division associated with cancer.

All the researchers agree the work is a major stop forward in identifying people at risk for non-small cell lung cancer - which makes up 80% of all lung cancer cases.

Thousands studied

Each of the research groups studied the DNA of thousands of current and former smokers, but each worked with a different sample, atlhough all were people of European descent.

However, they all found that a particular pattern of gene variation at two points of chromosome 15 was more common among people who developed lung cancer, than among those who remained healthy.

It is unclear whether the key set of variations affect just one gene, or three closely connected genes.

Dr Lesley Walker, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "We know that smoking greatly increases the risk of lung cancer - causing nine out of ten cases of the disease.

"This research tells us there are some smokers who are even more vulnerable to lung cancer because of their genetic profile."

Professor Chris Amos, from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, and lead author of one of the studies, warned that lung cancer was a complex condition.

"There are so many different cancer-causing compounds in tobacco smoke that it is hard to separate them and we don't fully understand the mechanisms that cause lung cancer."

Smokers who do not have the variants are still more than 10 times more likely to get lung cancer than people who have never smoked, whose risk is less than 1%.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

Ecuadorian lawmakers have approved a constitutional change that would outlaw foreign military bases on its soil.


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The approval throws into doubt the future of a key US base in the South American country.

The US has its only South American base in the town of Manta but its 10-year lease is up for renewal next year.

The lawmakers' decision, if given final approval in a public vote, could signal the end of joint Ecuadorean and US efforts to fight drug cartels.

"Ecuador is a land of peace; foreign military bases or foreign installations with military purpose will not be allowed," read the amendment approved by the assembly, which is controlled by President Rafael Correa's Alianza Pais party.

Strained relations

The air base at Manta has great strategic value for the US military.

American officials say surveillance flights from Manta have led to more than half the illegal drug seizures in the region.

The coastal town also doubles up as a strategic look-out post for US forces monitoring warships heading north from the Middle East and Asia.

But Ecuador's left-wing president Rafael Correa, a political ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has said he would rather "cut off his arm" than allow the Americans to stay on at Manta.

The move to ban foreign bases in Ecuador was first proposed by the country's constituent assembly last month.

It is one of several constitutional changes to be put to a national vote later in the year.

The dispute over the base comes during a period of strained relations between Ecuador and its neighbour Colombia - the US's closest ally in the region.

Tension almost boiled over last month following a Colombian military raid inside Ecuador in which a top commander of the Colombian rebel group, Farc, was killed.

BBC News

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The Pentagon has declassified a legal memo from March 2003 which approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques for terror suspects held abroad.


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The US Justice Department memo, since overruled, said President George W Bush's war-time authority superseded international laws on interrogation.

It gave legal justification for aggressive methods, so long as interrogators did not intend torture.

Its release follows a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

It is the first time the 14 March 2003 document has been released in full to the public. It was rescinded nine months after it was issued.

An update to the army field manual published in 2006 prohibited the use of many aggressive interrogation methods. However, Mr Bush recently vetoed legislation that would have limited the techniques used by the CIA.

'Shove or slap'

The 81-page Justice Department memo was written by John Yoo, then deputy assistant general for the Office of Legal Counsel, to the Pentagon's general counsel, William Hayes.

Mr Yoo wrote: "Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion."

The memo also offered a defence in case interrogators were charged with breaking US or international laws, saying "necessity or self-defence could provide justifications for any criminal liability".

The document defines torture as "the sum" of a variety of acts and suggests that so long as torture is not the intent of prosecutors' questioning, they cannot be prosecuted.

Mr Yoo included legal arguments that some interrogation methods, such as sleep deprivation and hooding detainees, are not considered torture.

"This standard permits some physical contact," the memo said. "Employing a shove or a slap as part of an interrogation would not run afoul of this standard."

'No limit'

Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee, described the memo's declassification - requested by him four months ago - as "a small step forward".

He said the document reflected "the expansive view of executive power that has been the hallmark of this administration".

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security project, told the Associated Press that Mr Yoo's legal argument put "literally no limit at all to the kinds of interrogation methods that the president can authorise".

The memo formed part of a debate among civilian and military leaders about the kinds of interrogation methods that could be used by US forces at overseas facilities.

Mr Bush has repeatedly said that the US does not torture prisoners.

The US military has banned the use of water-boarding - a technique which simulates drowning and has been condemned as torture by rights groups - and other harsh methods.

The CIA, which admitted for the first time in February that it had used water-boarding in the interrogation of three high-profile al-Qaeda detainees, has not prohibited use of such techniques.

BBC News

[OMEN]

Alliance's pledge fulfils requirement outlined in Manley report
NATO members have agreed to Canada's demand for 1,000 more troops in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the military alliance says, in a move that secures Canada's participation in the mission for at least three more years.

Spokesman James Appathurai said French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered a battalion — normally about 700 to 800 troops — for the volatile eastern region of Afghanistan, which will free up U.S. forces to move to the southern region of Kandahar where Canadian soldiers are operating.

Appathurai made the comments late Wednesday after NATO leaders met for dinner in Bucharest, Romania, ahead of a two-day summit.

The CBC's Keith Boag confirmed the details with spokespeople for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office, with an official announcement on Thursday.

The privilege of announcing the troop commitment traditionally goes to the country providing the soldiers, Boag told the CBC's Don Newman on Wednesday from Bucharest.

Last month, the Conservative government, with support from the Liberals, passed a motion that would keep Canadian soldiers in Kandahar until 2011.

The motion was contingent on two recommendations of the Manley report on Canada's role in Afghanistan:

* NATO allies provide 1,000 extra troops.
* Ottawa secure access to unmanned surveillance drones and large helicopters to transport Canadian troops around the region.

Earlier in the day, in Bucharest, Harper would neither confirm nor deny a report that U.S. President George W. Bush made a personal pledge to Harper to provide the 1,000 extra combat troops.
Better 'political optics' if troops weren't Americans: Manley

Harper spoke during a panel discussion Wednesday with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

"I make it a habit never to speak on behalf of other people," Harper said. "We've had good discussions with our allies, and I am convinced that we will achieve our objectives and achieve it in a way that causes the overall level of troop commitment to Afghanistan to be increased, not merely shifted laterally."

Asked again about the report, Harper responded: "You'll have to ask Mr. Bush what his position is," but added, "we're very confident we'll get a commitment."

Speaking to CBC News, former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley said the additional troops could come from any NATO country. But he said that politically, it would look better for Canada if they didn't come from the U.S.

"A lot of Canadians are still confused between the mission in Afghanistan and what the Americans were doing in Iraq which is totally different situations. I think for political optics, I'd guess the prime minister would prefer that they be from somewhere else."

Canada has about 2,500 soldiers operating in and around Kandahar province, many of whom will be watching the NATO summit discussions with interest, the CBC's David McGuffin said.

"Certainly, there is a keen awareness of what's going on in Bucharest and a real hope that the promise that seems to be out there of more troops for Kandahar province and to help Canadians, that this will come through," he said.

Canadian soldiers interviewed by the CBC said that additional troop support would allow them to push out the security perimeter around Kandahar City, and the province as a whole.

Associated Press

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[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/04/02/harpernato-cp-4610993.jpg
Romanian President Traian Basescu welcomes Prime Minister Stephen Harper during an arrival ceremony for NATO leaders at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace in Bucharest on Wednesday before the start of the NATO summit.
A number of countries are expected to offer additional troops for the war in Afghanistan Thursday as NATO leaders hash out the details of France's promise to send a battalion to the eastern part of the country.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to formally announce the decision later in the day, although there were questions Thursday morning about the number of soldiers his country intends to commit. A battalion often consists of between 700 and 800 troops, but a copy of Sarkozy's speech released by his office did not indicate how many France will offer.

"France will play its full part in this collective action," Sarkozy's speech reads.

"I decided to ramp up France's military presence with a battalion to be deployed to the eastern region."

France likely not be the only nation, however, to come forward with extra troops during this week's NATO summit in Bucharest, according to a senior American official.

"There were also a number of countries who made very clear that they are going to increase their own contribution, whether in terms of military forces, in terms of training forces, in terms of further funds for reconstruction, further commitment on the civilian side," said the official, speaking to the Canadian Press on background.

He did not name the countries, but said they were expected to make formal announcements Thursday.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai gave news of Sarkozy's decision Wednesday evening in the Romanian capital after leaders met for dinner on the eve of summit talks.
French troops to allow shift in deployment

The additional French troops are expected to allow U.S. forces operating in the east to move to the southern region, including Kandahar province, where about 2,500 Canadian forces are stationed and in need of assistance.

When it happens, the soldier shuffle will at least partially meet conditions set by Canada to extend its mission past 2009.

The House of Commons passed a motion last month that would keep Canadian soldiers in Kandahar until 2011 on two conditions recommended by the Manley report on Canada's role in Afghanistan:

* NATO allies provide 1,000 extra troops.
* Ottawa secures access to unmanned surveillance drones and large helicopters to transport Canadian troops around the region.

There's no word yet on whether any of Canada's equipment requirements will be included in the deal.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper would neither confirm nor deny earlier on Wednesday suggestions that American troops were headed to southern Afghanistan.

Harper is slated to meet Thursday with the British and Australian prime ministers, as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

About 47,000 NATO soldiers are currently dispatched across Afghanistan, while the U.S. sent 3,500 soldiers to Kandahar earlier this year for a seven-month deployment aimed at fighting back a resurgent Taliban offensive.

There is no plan to replace those American soldiers when their tour expires, according to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen.

Mullen suggested the U.S. would find it difficult to maintain its front in Iraq and increase troop commitments in Afghanistan.

CBC

[OMEN]

Members of Parliament will hold closed-door meetings Thursday with RCMP, border and airport officials on the use of electronic stun guns in Canada, prompting some to question the need for secrecy.

The House of Commons committee on public safety and national security is holding two days of meetings at Vancouver International Airport, where Robert Dziekanski died after RCMP stunned him with a Taser last October.

The public safety committee is studying the growing use of Tasers in Canada, where more than 6,800 officers are armed with the stun guns, and investigating the events surrounding Dziekanski's death. A committee report will be provided to the House.

Committee member and Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh told CBC News he was surprised to learn the briefings would not be open to the public.

"These kinds of hearings where the RCMP tells us how they interact with the [Canadian Border Services Agency] and vice versa, how the airport authority manages these issues, they should all be public unless they can justify talking to us behind closed doors," said Dosanjh.

He said he plans to lobby other committee members to open up Thursday's discussions.

Representatives from the RCMP, Vancouver Airport Authority and Canada Border Services Agency are all scheduled to give private briefings to committee members, who last November voted unanimously in favour of the probe.
Public forum to follow

The committee clerk said the meetings — which will not be tape recorded but documented using notes taken by committee staff — were organized privately as a courtesy to participants. A public forum scheduled for Friday will feature presentations from Taser critics, the clerk said.

The decision to hold private meetings was decided by the committee in advance, according to Conservative member Gary Breitkreuz, who said he was limited on what he could comment on.

The decision to hold the meetings behind closed doors will not do much to instil public confidence in the use of Tasers, said the committee's vice-chair New Democrat Penny Priddy.

"That there won't be information about it, or that it is all in camera, I think simply raises more questions in the minds of people who are already questioning their use."

She said the witnesses scheduled for Thursday are all accustomed to presenting to committees and shouldn't have a problem addressing an audience.

The Vancouver Airport Authority and CBSA said they didn't ask to exclude the public from the meetings, but aren't planning on sharing any information that hasn't already been made public.

The RCMP has not responded to questions about its role in the committee briefings. Assistant commissioner Al Macintyre is one of several people scheduled to provide a private brief.

Witnesses who appear before parliamentary committees testify under oath, although their words can't be used against them in other legal proceedings.

The committee probe is one of several into Taser use in Canada, which include:

* The B.C. public inquiry.
* A review by the RCMP watchdog.
* An internal RCMP investigation.
* An internal report expected Friday from the Canada Border Services Agency.
* A review of Tasers by Nova Scotia in the wake of a death there.
* A review of Taser use by police in Manitoba.


CBC

[OMEN]

NATO leaders worried about the "increasing threat" of missile proliferation have endorsed the U.S. plan to build a missile defence shield in eastern Europe, officials say.

The project, opposed by Russia, will be adopted in a communiqué Thursday at the NATO summit in Bucharest.

It will recognize "the substantial contribution to the protection of allies … to be provided by the U.S.-led system," senior American officials told the Associated Press.

The document will say that "ballistic missile proliferation poses an increasing threat to allied forces, territory and populations."

The alliance will also call on Russia to drop its objections to the shield, and instead find ways to co-operate on the system, which proposes to set up interceptor rockets in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic.

The Russians view the project as a threat to their own deterrent system.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to target Russia's missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic if they participate in the U.S. proposal for missile shield installations.

In February 2005, then prime minister Paul Martin announced that Canada would not participate in a North American missile-shield program with the U.S.

Although critical of the decision at the time, in July 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he wasn't prepared to open the debate on whether Canada should reverse the Liberal decision and join the U.S. ballistic missile defence program.

The NATO endorsement of the project is considered a victory for U.S. President George W. Bush.

Bush suffered a diplomatic setback Wednesday when NATO allies rejected his pleas to put former Soviet Union republics Ukraine and Georgia on the path toward membership in the alliance.

Greece has also blocked Macedonia's request to join, saying the country must change its name, which is the same as Greece's northern region. Greece says the country's name implies a claim to the Greek region.

Only Croatia and Albania will be invited to become new members.

CBC

[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/04/03/hu-jai-cp-4613096.jpg
Hu Jia, right, and Zeng Jinyan, left, husband-and-wife activists, pose for a picture at their home in Beijing, China. The Chinese civil rights activist has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail.
China is facing international criticism after one of its most famous dissidents was sentenced Thursday to 3½ years in prison on charges of subversion.

Hu Jia, 34, a vocal critic of China's human rights record who has defended AIDS patients, farmers and women forced into sterilization, was found guilty last week of "inciting subversion of state power."
Hu had been under surveillance and house arrest in his Beijing apartment for months before he was arrested in December.

"This is a very serious charge in China. It means you're trying to undermine the authority of the government," CBC's Michel Cormier said.

Hu had become one of China's most famous "cyber dissidents" because he did most of his campaigning on the internet and had a popular blog where he posted corruption charges or cases of human rights violations, Cormier said.

"He became almost a Robin Hood here of human rights," the CBC reporter said.

His lawyer, Li Fangping, said his arrest was based on internet articles he had written and interviews he gave to foreign media that were posted on Boxun.com, a Chinese-language website that is banned in China.

"We're happy that he was not charged with a more severe crime, but three years and six months, we still think is unacceptable," Li said.

Hu has 10 days to appeal the sentence but has not yet decided whether he will, Li said.
U.S., EU call for activist's release

China is cracking down on dissidents because it is more sensitive to criticism in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics and wants to present itself as a harmonious society with no dissension, Cormier said.

But the latest move, along with the recent crackdown on anti-China protesters in Tibet, will only fuel criticism of the country, he said.

"There's obviously a misunderstanding from China on how the rest of the world sees dissent and political discussion in China and how it plans to deal with it leading up to the Olympics," Cormier said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing expressed disappointment over the verdict on the "specious" charge, saying the world was closely watching China's progress on human rights ahead of August's Summer Games.

"In this Olympic year, we urge China to seize the opportunity to put its best face forward and take steps to improve its record on human rights and religious freedom," Susan Stevenson said.

Amnesty International condemned the sentence, saying it "betrays promises made by Chinese officials that human rights would improve in the run-up to the Olympics."

The European Union is also calling for Hu's immediate release, spokesman William Fingleton said.

"We said clearly before the trial that he should not be detained in the first place, and he should be released," he said.

CBC

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Eight men planned to detonate bombs aboard flights from London across the Atlantic to create deaths on an almost unprecedented scale, a court has heard.


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Homemade devices were to be smuggled on to passenger aircraft and detonated mid-flight, Woolwich Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Peter Wright QC said the men planned to inflict heavy casualties, "all in the name of Islam".

The eight men all deny conspiring to murder others and endangering aircraft bound for the US and Canada in 2006.

After their arrests in August 2006, airport security was massively tightened in the UK, causing long delays at major airports.

Mr Wright told the court: "These men were, we say, indifferent to the carnage that was likely to ensue.

"Some of the men you see in the dock are those who were prepared to sacrifice their own lives."

Mr Wright said two of the men were watched by police as they met in Walthamstow on 9 August, 2006.

"The disaster they contemplated was not long off," he said.


EIGHT ACCUSED MEN
TOP ROW OF PICTURE (L-R):
Abdul Ahmed Ali, 27
Assad Sarwar, 24
Tanvir Hussain, 27
Mohammed Gulzar, 26
BOTTOM ROW (L-R):
Ibrahim Savant, 27
Arafat Waheed Khan, 26
Waheed Zaman, 23
Umar Islam, 29

The 'airliners plot' allegations

"They were prepared to board an aircraft with the necessary ingredients and equipment to construct and detonate a device that would bring about not only the loss of their own lives but also all of those who happened by chance to be taking the same journey."

Mr Wright said Mr Ali, Mr Sarwar and Mr Gulzar were the main men behind the plot.

"Unfortunately for these men, but to the considerable good fortune of those that were their intended targets of those devices, their activities had come to the attention of the police," he said

He said from what police had observed "it was realised that these men, together with others, were engaged in some sort of terrorist plot".

A computer memory stick recovered by police contained details of flight timetables, baggage information, security advice and other information about Heathrow airport, he said.

The jury heard the information focused on only one-way flights leaving Heathrow between August 2006 and August 2007.

The planes were destined to fly from London to cities across North America, including Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Washington, the court heard.

The seven daily flights highlighted from Heathrow's Terminal 3 were:

* 1415 United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco
* 1500 Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto
* 1515 Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal
* 1540 United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago
* 1620 United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington
* 1635 American Airlines Flight 131 to New York
* 1650 American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago

Mr Wright said there was evidence that the men planned to bring down more planes than just those seven.

The jury heard the main ingredient of the explosives would have been hydrogen peroxide mixed with other organic materials.

The liquid explosive would have been injected in to 500ml plastic bottles of soft drinks Oasis and Lucozade, Mr Wight said.

A sugary drink known as Tang would be mixed with the solution to add power to the explosion, he continued.

Mr Wright told the court the devices would be detonated using a substance called HTMD, concealed in AA 1.5-volt batteries.

He said of hydrogen peroxide: "It is capable of being detonated to deadly effect, as previous terrorist incidents have demonstrated."

The jury was shown pages from Mr Ali's handwritten diary which make apparent references to how the bomb materials would have been got on to the aircraft.

Mr Wright said the bombers would have used a syringe in the base of the bottles to insert the explosive material.

The detonator would have been ignited using a metal wire, a small bulb or the flash from a disposal camera.

The defendants are Abdul Ahmed Ali, aka Ahmed Ali Khan, 27, of Walthamstow, Assad Sarwar, 24, of High Wycombe, Tanvir Hussain, 27, of no fixed address, and Mohammed Gulzar, 26, of Barking.

Also charged, are Ibrahim Savant, 27, of Walthamstow, Arafat Waheed Khan, 26, of Walthamstow, Waheed Zaman, 23, of Walthamstow and Umar Islam, aka Brian Young, 29, of High Wycombe.

The trial, which is expected to last eight months, was adjourned until Friday.

BBC News

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A ruling to blacklist Kurdish rebel group the PKK as a terrorist organisation and freeze its assets has been overturned by an EU court.


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The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg said the 2002 decision was illegal under EU law.

The court said the EU had failed to tell the PKK in advance of the decision, as it was required to do.

The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, has been fighting Turkish troops in its campaign for greater autonomy.

Turkey has recently launched a series of cross-border attacks on Kurdish rebels who it says have used bases in northern Iraq to launch raids into Turkey.

'Procedural grounds'

A court spokesman said the ruling had been made "on procedural grounds" because the council of the EU had "failed to give the PKK an adequate statement of reason as to why they are on the list, which they are required to do".

A number of groups are listed by the EU as terrorist organisations, including the Basque separatists, Eta, the Tamil Tigers and Hamas.

Similar technical rulings have been made regarding other groups whose funds had been frozen: the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a Philippines' Communist Party official and Dutch group Stichting Al Aqsa.

The spokesman added that in the case of the People's Mujahedin, the council of the EU had responded to the ruling by keeping the group on its list but giving the group its reasoning for doing so.

That decision is currently being considered by the court.

BBC News

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The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has acquitted a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of war crimes.


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Ramush Haradinaj, who is also an ex-prime minister, was found not guilty on 37 counts, including murder, persecution, rape and torture.

But another ex-KLA commander, Lahi Brahimaj, was sentenced to six years for torture and cruel treatment.

The judge said much of the evidence had been inconclusive or non-existent.

But he also complained of witness intimidation, saying some witnesses had not testified because they had been afraid.

The third accused man, Idriz Balah, was found not guilty.

All three had denied committing war crimes in Kosovo in 1998 while fighting against Serb forces.

They had been accused of driving Serb and Roma civilians from their homes, and targeting Kosovo Albanians who were suspected of collaborating with Serb forces.

Prosecutors had asked for 25-year prison sentences for each of them.

Big following

Mr Haradinaj had been a KLA commander fighting Serb forces and later became prime minister in UN-run Kosovo.

He commanded Kosovo Albanian forces in the west of the country in 1998 against Serb security forces.

After the war he formed a political party - the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo - which came third in the elections of 2004.

It joined the governing coalition, and he was chosen as prime minister.

He resigned in 2005 when he was indicted by the war crimes tribunal.

Mr Haradinaj has enjoyed a big following within the Kosovo Albanian community - hundreds turned out to see him off when he flew to the Netherlands in 2005 to face the charges.

BBC News

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The campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has announced another sizeable haul of donations ahead of a key vote in Pennsylvania.


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Mr Obama raised $40m (£20m) in March after taking a record $55m in February.

The campaign of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, admitted it had been outraised but said it had enough funds to compete.

Mrs Clinton is hoping to peg back Mr Obama's lead when Pennsylvania holds its primary election on 22 April.

The latest count of pledged delegates to the National Convention in August, according to Associated Press, puts Mr Obama at 1,634 and Mrs Clinton at 1,500.

A total of 2,024 is needed to win the Democratic nomination.

Senator John McCain has already sewn up the Republican nomination and will fight the presidential election in November.

Analysts say the presidential campaign is shaping up to become the first billion-dollar US election.

McCain task

The key upcoming votes for the Democrats are Pennsylvania, with 158 delegates up for grabs, and North Carolina and Indiana in May.

The Obama campaign says it is relying heavily on small donors, with 442,000 contributing in March.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said: "Many of our contributors are volunteering for the campaign, making our campaign the largest grassroots army in recent political history."

Clinton campaign communications chief Howard Wolfson admitted Mr Obama had "outraised us over the last several months".

But he said: "I would remind everyone that he outspent us over two to one on television in Ohio and Texas... we were able to win despite being outspent."

The Clinton campaign will not reveal its March donations take until the deadline of 20 April.

A new telephone opinion poll by Quinnipiac University suggested Mrs Clinton held a nine-point lead over Mr Obama in Pennsylvania, down from 12 points two weeks before.

Neither candidate can secure the 2,024 delegates needed by winning the remaining primaries alone, analysts say, and will need the votes of so-called super-delegates who are not bound by pledges.

Mr McCain meanwhile has said he is pressing on with his task of finding a vice-presidential running mate.

"I'd like to get it done as early as possible. I'm aware of enhanced importance of this issue given my age," the 71-year-old Arizona senator said.

BBC News

[OMEN]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/04/03/harper-nato-cp-4614592.jpg
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, left, and Defence Minister Peter MacKay speak during the NATO summit in Bucharest on Thursday.
France's promise to send a battalion of troops to eastern Afghanistan represents a "significant and historic re-engagement" in NATO, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday, adding that conditions had been met to extend Canada's role in the region.
"Our NATO partners have agreed to a comprehensive new plan to balance and synchronize our military and civilian agendas," Harper said, speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Harper confirmed that France's proposal — which would free up U.S. soldiers to go to Kandahar — along with "considerable" progress in acquiring unmanned surveillance drones and large helicopters, met the demands Canada had set out to extend its mission to 2011.

Last month, the Tories, with support from the Liberals, passed a motion that would keep Canadian soldiers in Kandahar until 2011.

The motion was contingent on two recommendations of the Manley report on Canada's role in Afghanistan: that NATO allies provide 1,000 extra troops and that Ottawa secure access to unmanned surveillance drones and large helicopters to transport Canadian troops around the region.

"Today I can report that we have met these conditions," Harper said, adding that Poland has offered access to its aircraft.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy formally announced his decision to deploy troops in a speech Thursday, saying afterwards France intends to commit 700.

France "will play its full part in this collective action," Sarkozy said, adding that NATO must agree to a long-term commitment to the mission, implement a comprehensive military and political strategy and gradually hand over responsibility to the Afghan forces.

Harper said France's commitment was important and represented a significant number of troops.

"It represents in fairness a significant and historic re-engagement of France in NATO which we have seen coming really since the arrival of President Sarkozy in power," Harper said.

The "historic tension" that has existed between the U.S., Britain and some allies on one hand and France on the other has gone "a long way toward healing," he said.
More than meet needs: Harper

Harper said he anticipates the American deployment to Kandahar will more than meet Canada's needs. The prime minister didn't give an exact number of American troops that will be deployed.

"It is widely understood that Canada has made a disproportionate sacrifice in Afghanistan," Harper said.

Harper's comments come as a number of countries are expected to offer additional troops for the war in Afghanistan on Thursday.

"There were also a number of countries who made very clear that they are going to increase their own contribution, whether in terms of military forces, in terms of training forces, in terms of further funds for reconstruction, further commitment on the civilian side," said a senior American official, speaking to the Canadian Press.

He did not name the countries, but said they were expected to make formal announcements Thursday.

Harper is slated to meet Thursday with the British and Australian prime ministers, as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

About 47,000 NATO soldiers are currently dispatched across Afghanistan.


Associated Press

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[OMEN]

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's government has raided the offices of the main opposition movement and detained two foreign journalists in an ominous sign he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Police raided a hotel used by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and ransacked some of the rooms.

"Mugabe has started a crackdown," MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said.

"It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."

Biti said the raid at the Meikles Hotel targeted "certain people ... including myself."

Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai was "safe" but had cancelled plans for a news conference, Biti said.

He said the clampdown was a sign of worse to follow, but that the opposition would not go into hiding.

"You can't hide away from fascism. Zimbabwe is a small country. So we are not going into hiding. We are just going to have to be extra cautious," he said.

A leading US press freedom group today called for Zimbabwean authorities to immediately release two foreign journalists arrested earlier in Harare.

The two were detained on suspicion of reporting without press accreditation in the tense Zimbabwean capital, where voters were waiting to see if long-time President Robert Mugabe had been defeated in his quest for a sixth term.

New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak was one of the two reporters arrested, his newspaper said.

"We do not know where he is being held, or what, if any, charges have been made against him," the paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, said in a statement.

"We are making every effort to ascertain his status, to assure that he is safe and being well treated, and to secure his prompt release."

It described Bearak as "an experienced and respected professional who has reported from many places.

He won a Pulitzer prize in 2002 for his deeply affecting coverage of daily life in war-torn Afghanistan."

Joel Simon, the executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement his organisation was alarmed that journalsists had been detained.

"In light of the political situation, it is imperative that all journalists, foreign and domestic, be allowed to work freely. We call on authorities to immediately release all journalists currently being held," he added.

According to Zimbabwean police, the two foreign reporters were detained on suspicion of reporting without press accreditation.

"I can only confirm that we have arrested two foreign journalists at York Lodge," national police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said.

Zimbabwean authorities, who barred most foreign media from covering last Saturday's general elections, warned a week ago they would deal severely with journalists who sneaked into the country and were caught operating illegally.

The MDC has claimed Tsvangirai won the presidential poll outright.

There has still been no official word on the outcome five days after the ballot, but the election commission announced overnight that the MDC had won control of parliament.

Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission started issuing election results today of the country's upper house of parliament election.

So far opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC and President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF each won five seats in the 60-seat contest.

Reuters

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[OMEN]

Zimbabweans hoping elections will bring relief from an economic catastrophe anxiously awaited a leadership meeting expected to discuss the biggest challenge to President Robert Mugabe's 28-year rule.

Ruling ZANU-PF party sources said the president would chair a party leadership meeting called for Friday.

Senior ZANU-PF official Didymus Mutasa declined to comment on whether the party was planning for a runoff against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, although another official said earlier it was ready for a vote and would win it.

Mugabe faces deep discontent as Zimbabwe suffers the world's highest inflation rate of more than 100,000 percent, a virtually worthless currency and severe food and fuel shortages.

Delayed results of the election to the senate - which must precede presidential results - trickled in on Thursday night.

First results issued by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) showed Tsvangirai's MDC and Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF each winning five seats out of 60 contested for the senate, parliament's upper house.

Zimbabweans are most interested in word on Mugabe's intentions since he lost control of parliament's lower house for the first time.

They have been waiting since Saturday's election to hear whether he was also defeated in the presidential vote.

"I'm happy that the MDC has won the parliamentary elections, we needed the change and I think things will start getting better now but the presidency is the most important one and we need official results," said Kelvin Matongo, an information technology technician.

MUGABE'S NEXT MOVE?

"ZEC is being very unfair. If it is our right to vote then it is also our right to know the results as soon as possible after voting.

The problem is they (ZEC) are not explaining why they are delaying. All they are saying is 'be patient'."

The MDC, and many Zimbabweans, believe the unprecedented delay in issuing results masks attempts by Mugabe's entourage to find a way out of the crisis.

All the signs are that Mugabe, a liberation war leader still respected in Africa, is in the worst trouble of his rule after facing an unprecedented challenge in the elections because of the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy.

Analysts said Mugabe was believed to have convened the leadership to discuss their next move after ZANU-PF's first defeat in a parliamentary election and to gauge how much support there was for him running in a second round presidential poll.

"Everyone knows that the presidency is the main post and that's why those results are so important," said Tafara Butayi an account executive with a cellular service provider.

"Until we know those I think people will continue to be sceptical."

The United States voiced concern about possible manipulation of the vote count.

"Any fair-minded observer has to have serious concerns about the fact that these results have not been released yet," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged that the election results be declared "faithfully and accurately."

"Any attempt to tamper with these results would be rejected by the people of Zimbabwe as well as by the international community," he said in a statement.

ZANU-PF projections show Mugabe failing to win a majority for the first time since he took power after independence from Britain in 1980.

But they also show Tsvangirai falling short of the required absolute majority to avoid a second round.

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said the party was ready for a second round, in the strongest indication yet that Mugabe intends to stand, despite calls by the opposition to concede defeat and avoid embarrassment.

The MDC says Tsvangirai won an absolute majority, based on its own tallies, and no re-run is necessary.

In his first public appearance since the March 29 election, Mugabe met the head of an African Union election observer team at his residence in Harare, state television reported.

Asked about his meeting with Mugabe, Sierra Leone's former President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah told ZTV: "He looked very relaxed, and is of the view that the problems of the country will be resolved amicably, and he is very relaxed about it."

Reuters

[OMEN]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/713615.jpg
REVEALED: Wreckage strewn on top of HMAS Sydney's turret.
Bathed in an eerie blue light, the HMAS Sydney - the missing warship that had captivated Australia - can be seen up close and in remarkable detail for the first time in almost 70 years.

Last month, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the World War II warship had been located using sonar images at a depth of 2470 metres.

The Sydney's entire crew had gone down with the ship in the Indian Ocean in November 1941, after a fatal battle with the German raider, Kormoran.

The announcement that the Sydney had been found brought an end to Australia's foremost naval mystery.

Now, in the first ever photographs of the recovered wreck, released by The Finding Sydney Foundation, close-up photos reveal parts of the ship still intact, including gun barrels, propellers and teak deck, as well as extensive damage.

The Finding Sydney Foundation search director David Mearns said there had been "no mistaking" the wreck.

"Because we landed nearer to the stern we began moving slowly in that direction to see if we could locate Sydney's bell on the quarterdeck (sadly it was nowhere to be found) or possibly her name on the stern in case we were mistaken and her brass lettering hadn't been removed as part of her wartime preparations," he said.

"But there was no mistaking that the wreck before us was that of HMAS Sydney and that her damage matched perfectly to what we expected from the side-scan sonar imagery and from the German accounts of the battle."

The Finding Sydney Foundation director Glenys McDonald described the moment the Sydney first came into view: "All we could see was a blue screen with a bright light and the occasional fish.

"Then there was a shadow, and almost immediately HMAS Sydney appeared in front of us. It is impossible to convey to you the depth of feeling in that room as we watched in awe as the stern of Sydney and her “X” turret came into view.

"I cried as usual, I could not help it, because I could anticipate what these photographs were going to mean for so many of the relatives of the crew that I had come to know and love over the years."

The close-up view of the warship revealed extensive damage, said senior naval historian John Perryman.

"Soon the bridge and superstructure came into view and it was immediately obvious that this part of the ship had been subjected to severe punishment.

"As we continued forward we located the circular mounting for the aircraft catapult and the remains of the aircraft crane.

"At the same time we observed several large shell holes in Sydney’s port side above the water line.

"No evidence of any of Sydney’s boats remained and there was only a gaping hole where her forward funnel had once stood. The foremast too, had been carried away."

Based on the damage, Mr Mearns concluded that the Sydney hit the seabed stern first, and then slid 50 metres to her final resting place.

"Both funnels and masts were gone and all the lifeboats were missing from their cradle stands, but all four turrets were retained in place," he said.

"As per the German accounts the bridge and superstructure of Sydney withstood the worst damage as the heavy guns of Kormoran clearly had a devastating effect."

SMH

[OMEN]

Australia is committing another $A10 million ($NZ11.76 million) towards landmine clearance in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, speaking on International Mine Action Day, told of the appalling personal toll landmines inflicted on the people of Afghanistan.

There was also a significant economic drain on the country because vast areas of land could not be used productively.

"There is a terrible landmine problem in Afghanistan with many millions of mines left scattered," Mr Smith told ABC Radio.

"A lot of that dates back to the Russian invasion."

Afghanistan remains one of the most extensively-mined nations on earth.

It was a landmine that claimed the life of the first Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan -- Special Air Service regiment Sergeant Andrew Russell -- who died in February 2002 when his vehicle ran over an old anti-tank mine.

Australia has already devoted considerable cash and resources towards ridding Afghanistan of landmines.

The Australian army deployed 95 engineers to Afghanistan and Pakistan between 1989 and 1993 to train locals in mine clearance.

Mr Smith also spoke of Australia's substantial commitment of more than 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, saying more Nato countries should contribute more.

"Australia is doing a lot of the heavy lifting," he said.

"Our commitment is a substantial, it is the largest of the non-Nato commitment.

"We have a very strong view -- it is shared by the US and UK -- that there needs to be a more broadly-based commitment from Nato countries."

There also needed to be a greater commitment from the international community to humanitarian tasks.

Reuters

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