World News joined 2

[OMEN]

A helicopter has crashed into a building in a busy central district of Panama City, killing several people, officials and emergency workers said.
Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro said two senior Chilean military personnel visiting Panama for an anti-terrorism conference were in the helicopter, and said that at least one of them was dead.
Emergency workers said there could be several more dead, either more passengers or people in the building, which houses a store. A Reuters reporter at the scene saw body parts on the ground as the building blazed. The back end of the helicopter was torn off in the crash and landed on a nearby office building.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Israel's foreign minister has deepened the uncertainty over Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's ability to survive a corruption scandal by saying their party had to prepare for a possible early election.
Olmert has responded with a business-as-usual approach to a demand by Defence Minister Ehud Barak that he step aside.
But the comments by Olmert's deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and other members of their centrist Kadima party could increase pressure on the prime minister to go.
Livni, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, said Kadima should "take decisions" and start preparing for "any scenario", including an early general election and an internal leadership vote.
Widely regarded as a top candidate to replace Olmert, Livni did not call for Olmert to step down but said "values and norms" must be upheld in Israeli politics.
Addressing members of his left-leaning Labor faction, Barak said he would force the issue if Olmert failed to act.
"The prime minister has to make decisions. Factions have to make decisions, and if they don't, we will make the decisions for them," said Barak, whose party is Olmert's largest coalition partner.
Olmert has made clear through aides that he has no intention of stepping down. At a welcoming ceremony for Denmark's prime minister on Thursday, Olmert made no reference to Barak's call to go on leave or quit.
"I intend to discuss with the visiting prime minister ... the international effort to stop Iran's nuclear (program), the regional peace process, the war against terror and the strengthening of radical Islam in the Middle East and worldwide," Olmert said, hitting his usual talking points.
Olmert plans a three-day visit to Washington next week for talks with President George W. Bush and a speech to the annual policy conference of a pro-Israel lobbying group.
POLITICAL TURMOIL
Barak threatened on Wednesday to pursue an early election, which would trigger political turmoil that could derail Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, after a U.S. businessman told an Israeli court he had handed Olmert envelopes with thousands of dollars in cash.
Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz convened prosecutors and police officers on Thursday to discuss the way forward in the investigation against Olmert.
Mazuz issued a statement after the meeting saying the investigation would be speeded up "in order to complete it as soon as possible". He gave no precise timeframe for a decision on whether to indict the prime minister.
Olmert has ridden out similar storms in the past. He has pledged to resign if charged and denied any wrongdoing in accepting what he has described as above-board election campaign contributions.
Barak, a former prime minister, has been hazy on what steps he might take, and when.
He stopped short of making a move that would immediately bring down the government and trigger a snap election. Polls suggest the right-wing Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu would defeat Labor if a vote, not due until 2010, were held now.
A top Likud lawmaker, former foreign minister Silvan Shalom, predicted an election would be held in November.
A cartoon in Israel's most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, illustrated what some commentators saw as Barak's failure to take stronger action.
It showed Barak wearing bunny ears and holding a carrot, an allusion to Hebrew slang in which "rabbit" means "coward".
The American Jewish businessman at the centre of the case, Morris Talansky, is due back in Israel in July when he will be cross-examined by Olmert's lawyers.
Chief prosecutor Moshe Lador said after Talansky testified on Tuesday it was too early to tell if charges would be brought against Olmert.

Reuters

[OMEN]

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has defended the Bush administration's record in Iraq after sharp criticism of the war in a new book by a former White House spokesman.
"The one thing that I am certain was not a mistake was to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein," said Rice, who was national security adviser when the Iraq war began in 2003.
Speaking at a news conference ahead of an international conference on Iraq, Rice said she had not read the book by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, but added that removing Saddam was "the right thing to do".
In his book, McClellan accuses President George W Bush of using propaganda to sell the Iraq war - a dramatic break from the close-knit Bush inner circle.
Rice said she would not comment on a book she has not read, but said people often did not understand the full implications of events until long after they had happened.
But she said liberating Iraqis from "the monster that was Saddam Hussein" was neither unilateral nor a mistake.
"It was not the United States of America alone that believed that he had weapons of mass destruction that he was hiding," Rice said.
The Iraq war was fought over charges that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction based on intelligence that later proved to be faulty.
"So the story is there for everyone to see. You can't now transplant yourself into the present and say we should have known things that we in fact did not know in 2001, 2002, 2003. The record on weapons of mass destruction was one that appeared to be very clear," Rice said.
She added: "If the world did not believe that at the time, then I would ask why was Iraq under some of the most severe sanctions that the international community has ever imposed?"

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

IMO, the war was not the right thing to do at all...

[JohnCenaFan28]

Interesting story, thanks.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the story.

[OMEN]

A female teacher who allegedly told a 15-year-old male student to treat her like a sex slave has been charged with sexually penetrating a child.

Nazira Rafei, 25, a Melbourne high school teacher, is charged with one count of sexually penetrating a child under 16 and four counts of an indecent act with a child under 16.

The incidents allegedly occurred at Roxburgh Park, in Melbourne's outer north, in February and March this year.

Police also accuse the teacher of making an unwarranted demand by harassing the student last Monday not to disclose the relationship.

During a brief filing hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates' Court today, Ms Rafei's lawyer Steve Pica indicated she would plead not guilty.

"This case is likely to attract a fair degree of media attention," Mr Pica told the court.

"I do want to place on the record that my client has been fully cooperative with police and is pleading not guilty."

Ms Rafei was not required to formally enter a plea.

Police allege Ms Rafei had sexual intercourse with a child under her "care, supervision or authority".

It is alleged on one occasion the teacher told the student to "treat her like a sex slave" as she lay on top of him pinching his nipples in the back seat of her car.

Another charge relates to Ms Rafei allegedly kissing the student on his lips and touching his genitals through clothing.

Two other indecency charges relate to her allegedly hugging in a "sexual context" and kissing on the mouth a child under 16 in her care.

Magistrate Felicity Broughton adjourned the case for committal mention on August 29.

Ms Rafei made no comment as she left court flanked by her lawyer

AAP

[OMEN]

Japan has shelved plans for its military to fly tents and blankets to China in the aftermath of the devastating May 12 earthquake, having found some within the Chinese government opposed to the move.

Japanese media said on Thursday that the military would deliver assistance in what would be its first deployment to China since the end of World War 2 and a step in strengthening Sino-Japanese ties, long troubled by their wartime past.

But the plan has been postponed, with tents and other aid to be sent by chartered commercial planes for now, newspapers said.

"We could not get a consensus from within the Chinese government," the Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted a government source as saying.

The Yomiuri Shimbun daily also said the plan to send the military had been shelved, citing Beijing's concern after messages on Chinese internet sites criticising the move by linking Tokyo's military with its wartime troops.

Japan sent rescue teams and a medical team to the devastated region shortly after the May 12 earthquake, and Japan said it had received a request from China for military assistance earlier this week.

Bilateral ties chilled during former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's 2001-2006 term over his visits to Yasukuni shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism because it honours some convicted war criminals along with the country's war dead.

Relations have since improved, but many Chinese harbour resentment over Japan's 1931-45 military aggression in China.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Texas overstepped its authority when it removed some 460 children from a polygamist ranch last month, the state's Supreme Court has said.

"On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted," the court said in a decision that upholds a lower court ruling.

"The state's Family Code gives the district court broad authority to protect children short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care," it said.

The ruling should pave the way for the children to be reunited with their parents. One of the legal options left for child welfare authorities is having court-imposed restrictions on reunifications where there is cause for concern.

These restrictions could include orders not to take the children beyond a certain area while investigations continue.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said in a statement that while it was disappointed, "we understand and respect the court's decision and will take immediate steps to comply."

"We will continue to prepare for the prompt and orderly reunification of these children with their families. We also will work with the district court to ensure the safety of the children," it said.

The saga has captivated America with lurid allegations of adolescent brides, teenage pregnancies and a secretive sect following its faith in a massive white temple in a remote area of west Texas.

The children were removed in early April after Family and Protective Services received a telephone call reporting that a 16-year-old girl named Sarah was being physically and sexually abused at the compound. "Sarah" was never identified.

The compound is run by followers of jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. They belong to a renegade Mormon sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy over a century ago and is at pains to distance itself from splinter groups such as the FLDS that continue to practice plural marriage.

Reuters