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BBC NewsQuote:
Influential Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr says he has postponed a mass rally against the US presence in Iraq five years on from Saddam Hussein's fall.
The protest had been due in Baghdad on Wednesday and was set to have been one million strong, the Shia cleric said.
A statement published online said he feared attacks on those taking part.
The move comes a day after Iraq's prime minister threatened to exclude the Sadr movement from politics unless it disbanded its Mehdi Army militia.
Mr Sadr also threatened to call off a Mehdi Army ceasefire which has kept curbs on the level of violence in Iraq since last year.
"If necessary the ceasefire will be lifted in order to implement our aims, ideology, religion, principles, nationhood," the statement said, adding that such a move would come in a separate communique.
In recent weeks, Mr Sadr's followers have clashed with Iraqi government troops and US forces in southern Iraq and Baghdad as the government tried to impose a crackdown on militias.
Wednesday's march would have coincided with the fifth anniversary of the symbolic moment when US troops pulled down a large statue of late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad.
"I call those beloved Iraqi people who wish to demonstrate against the occupation to postpone their march, out of my fear for them and my concern to spare their blood," Mr Sadr said about the proposed demonstration.
The statement also called for a clear timetable for US forces to leave Iraq.
BBC NewsQuote:
The next UN investigator into Israel conduct in the occupied territories has stood by comments comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due.
Professor Falk is scheduled to take up his post for the UN Human Rights Council later in the year.
But Israel wants his mandate changed to probe Palestinian actions as well.
Professor Falk said he drew the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi record of collective atrocity, because of what he described as the massive Israeli punishment directed at the entire population of Gaza.
He said he understood that it was a provocative thing to say, but at the time, last summer, he had wanted to shake the American public from its torpor.
"If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison," he said.
That reluctance was, he argued, based on the particular historical sensitivity of the Jewish people, and Israel's ability to avoid having their policies held up to international law and morality.
These and other comments from Professor Falk comments are, if anything, even harsher than the current UN investigator, John Dugard, who himself has been withering about Israel's actions.
A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Israel wanted the UN investigator's mandate changed, so that he could look into human rights violations by the Palestinians as well as Israel.
If that were not to happen, the Israeli government may consider barring entry to the new UN investigator.
BBC NewsQuote:
Iran has begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its main nuclear site in Natanz, state media quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying.
He made the comments during a visit to mark Iran's national nuclear day.
Iran is already thought to have some 3,000 centrifuges - which are used to enrich uranium - at the Natanz plant.
The US and Western allies accuse Iran of wanting to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons, but Iran vehemently denies this.
Iran says it is enriching uranium for a civilian nuclear energy programme and has continued to defy the UN Security Council's demand that it cease enrichment.
Last month, the Council approved a third round of sanctions against Iran.
Iran's national nuclear day commemorates the April 2006 anniversary of its first production of uranium that was sufficiently enriched to make atomic fuel.
BBC NewsQuote:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that potential losses from the credit crunch will reach $945bn (£472bn) and could be even higher.
The IMF says that losses are spreading from sub-prime mortgage assets to other sectors, such as commercial property, consumer credit, and company debt.
It says that there was a "collective failure" to appreciate the risky borrowing by financial institutions.
And it warns that tough measures and government intervention may be needed.
The IMF's Global Stability Report warns that "despite unprecedented intervention by major central banks, financial markets remain under considerable strain, now compounded by a more worrisome macroeconomic environment, weakly capitalised institutions, and broad-based deleveraging."
The IMF, which oversees the global economy, says that the effects of the credit crunch are likely to be "broader, deeper and more protracted" than in previous downturns, due to the "degree of securitisation and leverage in the financial system".
It blames lax regulation by governments and poor supervision by banks for allowing the situation to develop.
And it warns that national governments must prepare contingency plans "for dealing with large stocks of impaired assets" if "writedowns lead to significant negative effects on the real economy".
The report comes ahead of a gathering of world financial leaders at the IMF's spring meeting in Washington DC.
Who's to blame?
The report is sharply critical of banks and other financial institutions.
It says they were "too complacent" about liquidity risks - the problems that would happen if they ran out of ready cash - and too ready to rely on wholesale money markets and central banks to help them if they got into trouble.
And its says that there was a failure of banks' risk management systems to appreciate that the new "structured finance vehicles" that they used to offload their risky sub-prime investments were not really viable.
It says that the new instruments increased the danger of a "liquidity spiral" in which markets and institutions' funding problems reinforced each other.
And it warns that banks will have to concentrate on rebuilding their balance sheets by raising additional funds and limiting future lending.
Tougher regulation
The IMF says that financial sector supervision and regulation "lagged behind the rapid innovation and shifts in business models, leaving scope for excessive risk-taking" and says more fundamental changes are needed in the medium term.
But it warns against "a rush to regulate" which could stifle innovation and make the credit crunch worse.
However, it says that there should be tougher rules to stop banks putting assets off the balance sheet, and requiring banks to put aside more capital to protect against losses.
It points out that it is not securitisation itself, but "lax underwriting standards in the US mortgage market, the extension of securitisation into increasingly complex and difficult to understand structures based on increasingly lower quality assets", and low interest rates which led to a situation where "risks were insufficiently appreciated".
And it suggests that central banks will have to take into account worries about excessive asset prices, such as house price bubbles, when setting interest rates.
Government intervention
In recent days, both the US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn have both urged major changes in international and national financial regulation.
Last week, Mr Paulson proposed a major shake-up of the US system of financial regulation, giving more power to the central bank, the Fed, to intervene to rescue stricken banks and other financial institutions.
And on Monday, Mr Strauss-Kahn said that the need for public intervention to tackle the credit crunch at the global level was "becoming more evident" every day.
This, along with more intervention in the banking sector, would offer a "third line of defence", Mr Strauss-Kahn said.
AAPQuote:
Professional surfers scrambled from the water today when a "massive" shark was sighted during a pro surfing competition at Margaret River in Western Australia.
Heats of the Drug Aware Pro event were put on hold for over two hours after women's world number four Amee Donohoe, from New South Wales' Central Coast, spotted a shark as she was paddling back out after catching a wave.
"I was paddling back out through the channel and saw this massive fin, it was really wide. I got a pretty good look at it, good enough to not want to stay in the water," Donohoe said.
"I've surfed all over the world with dolphins hundreds of times before and at places like Ballina on the east coast, so I knew when I saw the fin it didn't belong to a dolphin.
"The width and the girth of the shadow was massive."
Donohoe's reference to Ballina follows yesterday's fatal shark attack at the northern NSW town, which claimed the life of 16-year-old bodyboarder Peter Edmonds.
Director of the Margaret River men's and women's contest, Mike McAuliffe, called the surfers out of the water and sent out jet skis to patrol the area.
McAuliffe thinks the shark was probably a bronze whaler.
"We did see a little bit of thrashing five or 10 minutes after she actually saw the shark, on the other side of the reef.
"It looked like a four or five-foot shark that was feeding on salmon, and that's a common thing at this time of year in this area because we have schools of salmon coming through.
"And bronze whalers, that's their main source of food at this time of the year."
Under Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) rules, contests must be put on hold and the water cleared for a minimum of two hours after a shark sighting.
The shark was sighted at about 11am (4pm NZT) and the competition was restarted at 1.30pm.
The last fatal attack in the Margaret River area was in July, 2004, when local man Brad Smith, 29, was taken by two sharks while surfing near Gracetown.
ReutersQuote:
A gas leak has killed two people at a heavy water plant run by Pakistan's atomic energy agency in central Punjab province, a spokesman for the agency said.
The leak at the Khushab heavy water plant took place during its annual maintenance. The plant was closed at the time.
"The situation was immediately brought under control and two workers lost their lives while controlling the incident," a spokesman for Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) said.
He said all necessary steps had been taken to protect the plant, including evacuation of the personnel as a precautionary measure.
The spokesman said an inquiry had been ordered.
Asked if the leak was unconnected to any nuclear facility, the PAEC spokesman said there was no radioactive leak.
"No radiation was involved. It was some chemical gas. The situation is fully under control," he said.
"There is no threat to the public as all the leaking gas has been burnt in the flare system of the plant."
Pakistan built its first nuclear power station in 1972 in Karachi with Canadian help. But Western countries, under pressure from the United States, later halted cooperation amid suspicions that Pakistan was secretly developing nuclear weapons.
The atomic energy agency also runs a Chinese-supplied nuclear plant in Chashma in Punjab. A third plant is being constructed at Chashma.
The nuclear facilities at Karachi and Chashma are subject to IAEA safeguards, unlike those at Khushab.
Pakistan conducted five nuclear weapons' tests in May 1998 in response to those of rival India, to become a nuclear-armed state.
The Commission runs a nuclear facility at Khushab.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security reported last year that Pakistan was building a third plutonium production reactor at Khushab, though the government has not confirmed this.
ReutersQuote:
Zimbabwe's opposition accused have President Robert Mugabe of unleashing a campaign of violence since the March 29 elections and called on African states to intervene to prevent widespread bloodshed.The Movement for Democratic Change, which claims to have won the presidential and parliamentary polls, said Mugabe was trying to provoke a backlash as a pretext for declaring a state of emergency that could help him prolong his 28 years in power.
"I say to my brothers and sisters across the continent - don't wait for dead bodies in the streets of Harare. There is a constitutional and legal crisis in Zimbabwe," MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti told a news conference.
He said the ruling ZANU-PF had launched a violent campaign against opposition supporters following a stalemate over the election results and was trying to rig the polls so Mugabe could contest a runoff against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Election officials have yet to release the results of the presidential poll.
Tsvangirai says he won the vote outright and has demanded that Mugabe, whose critics accuse him of reducing a once prosperous nation to misery, step aside immediately to allow for the reconstruction of the economically devastated country.
Zimbabwe has inflation of more than 100,000 percent - the highest in the world - an unemployment rate above 80 percent and chronic shortages of food and fuel. Millions have fled abroad, most of them to South Africa.
ZANU-PF is pressing for a delay in issuing the presidential results pending a recount and is also alleging abuses by electoral officials in an attempt to overturn its first defeat in a parliamentary poll.
"Militias are being rearmed, ZANU-PF supporters are being rearmed... The long and short of it is that there has been a complete militarisation of Zimbabwean society since the 29th of March 2008," Biti added.
A farmers' union said independence war veterans, used as political shock troops by Mugabe, had evicted mostly white farmers from their land since the weekend.
"There is still a lot of trouble and lawlessness out there. Farmers are being forced out. In the last three days, we are looking at about 60 who have been evicted," said Trevor Gifford, president of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU).
Zimbabwe state television said Tuesday night war veterans had occupied 11 farms in the northeastern part of the country.
Gifford said the veterans forced the farmers to leave their homes with only the clothes they were wearing and that those evicted included at least one black farmer.
Police said they were not aware of the farm invasions.
The veterans have already spearheaded the eviction of most white farmers under a controversial Mugabe land redistribution programme designed to redress injustices dating back to the British colonial era.
Tsvangirai wrote in a newspaper article that Zimbabwe was on a "razor's edge" because of the 84-year-old Mugabe's efforts to cling to power.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on Mugabe on Tuesday to accept that he lost the presidential election and step down to ease tensions.
In a speech in San Francisco, the South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate said peacekeepers may be needed to help restore order in Zimbabwe and the country's shattered economy could benefit from a "mini-Marshall Plan" like the initiative which helped rebuild Europe after World War 2.
The opposition says Mugabe is delaying the presidential election result to give him more time to prepare for a runoff, and has asked the High Court to force the release of the outcome.
"ZANU-PF is trying to cook the election result in order to engineer and achieve a run-off," Biti said.
The High Court ruled on Tuesday it would treat the opposition's application as urgent and began hearing arguments in the case. It later adjourned until Wednesday.
Legal proceedings are already in their fourth day and could drag further, delaying the end of the stalemate.
Traders in neighbouring South Africa said the impasse was likely to weigh on the rand currency, briefly boosted last week when there was speculation Mugabe would stand down after his ZANU-PF party lost the parliamentary poll.
"Counting against the rand is the way in which the Zimbabwe elections are rapidly deteriorating into a farce," market analysts ETM said in a trading note.
South African ruling party leader Jacob Zuma on Tuesday criticised the election delay and said it was wrong to keep Zimbabweans and the international community in suspense. He made the remarks one day after meeting Tsvangirai in Johannesburg.
Tsvangirai has appealed for help from outside powers to end Mugabe's uninterrupted rule since independence in 1980.
Associated PressQuote:
http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/ph...aeus080408.jpg
Gen. David Petraeus told a Senate committee that when those forces have pulled out, there should be a 45-day period of consolidation and evaluation.
No more American troops should come home in the weeks after the final brigades from the past year's military buildup pull out in July, the top U.S. commander in Iraq told politicians in Washington on Tuesday.
Gen. David Petraeus told a Senate committee that when those forces have pulled out, there should be a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation."
"At the end of that period we will commence a process of assessment to examine the conditions on the ground, and, over time, determine when we can make recommendations for further reductions," he said.
"This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable."
With last year's surge, which sent 30,000 troops to Iraq, the U.S. has about 158,000 troops in Iraq. That number is expected to drop to 140,000 by summer.
"As we look to the future, our task together with our Iraqi partners will be to build on the progress achieved and to deal with the many challenges that remain," Petraeus said. "I do believe that we can do this while continuing the ongoing drawdown of the surge forces."
'Significant but uneven security progress'
But under questioning by Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Petraeus said he could not predict when troop reductions would be resumed or how many U.S. troops were likely to remain in Iraq by the end of this year
Speaking seven months after his last appearance, Petraeus said there has been "significant but uneven security progress in Iraq."
Petraeus noted that levels of violence and civilian deaths have been "reduced substantially," extremists have been dealt serious blows and Iraqi security forces have improved.
But he warned that the situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory, noting that the progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible.
"Still, security in Iraq is better than it was when [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker and I reported to you last September," he said. "And it is significantly better than it was 15 months ago when Iraq was on the brink of civil war and the decision was made to deploy additional forces to Iraq."
The three presidential contenders took time off the campaign trail to appear in Washington Tuesday to question Petraeus, who appeared with Crocker, about Iraq.
Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all sit on committees that are to receive status reports.
McCain, the senior Republican on the armed services panel and Republican presidential hopeful, supports the war and the surge and has repeatedly praised Petraeus. Both Obama and Clinton have made withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as possible key planks of their campaigns.
At the Senate hearing, McCain said the U.S. is "no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and can look ahead to the genuine prospect of success."
Withdrawing troops before adequate security is established would create a "defeat that is terrible and long-lasting," he said.
Orderly withdrawal: Clinton
But Clinton said it's time to "begin an orderly process of withdrawing our troops."
There has not been sufficient progress in Iraq, she said, and the conditions Petraeus has proposed for further troop reductions lack specificity.
"How are we to judge, General Petraeus, what the conditions are or should be and the action you and the administration would recommend pursuing based on them?" she asked.
Petraeus said there are a number of factors to consider when making recommendations for further reduction of troops.
He said these factors are fairly clear and include the state of enemy forces, the strength of Iraqi forces and the local government, and the economic and political situations.
It's not a precise mathematical exercise he warned, and involves commanders sitting down with their Iraqi counterparts and assessing whether forces can be reduced.
During Petraeus's testimony last September, Clinton said his reports about the progress in Iraq "require the willing suspension of disbelief."
Obama calls for 'measured pressure'
Clinton's rival Obama, who spoke during the afternoon session, said Iraqi leaders need to feel "measured pressure," including a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal and increased diplomatic action in the region that includes Iran.
"If [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki can tolerate Iran, then we should be talking to [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] as well," said Obama. "I do not believe we're going to stabilize the situation without him."
Obama also questioned whether aiming for a stable, democratic Iraq that's free from al-Qaeda and Iranian influence is an unreasonable expectation, considering the cost of the war in money and lives.
"If our criteria is the messy, sloppy status quo, with no huge outbreaks of violence, an Iran that is not an al-Qaeda base and no threats to its neighbours, that seems like a measurable timeframe," said Obama.
Crocker responded that while he didn't want to sound like a broken record, that the situation in Iraq is "hard and complicated."