World News joined 5

[OMEN]

Australian tourists briefly held hostage in China by a lone man armed with explosives told of their ordeal as Canberra urged holidaymakers to heed travel warnings ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

The man attacked a group of 10 Australian travel agents visiting the northwest city of Xi'an, famed as home of the Terracotta Warriors, on Wednesday before he was shot dead by a police sniper.

"He was pacing up and down the bus, they couldn't understand what he was saying. Then he turned around, opened up his jacket and he had a bomb strapped to him," said Sue Wynne, a friend of hostage Rhiannon Dunkley, after speaking to her.

Nine of the hostages were released by the man, but a 48-year-old woman was held captive for several hours before the gunman was killed.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said there was nothing to suggest the Australians were deliberately targeted and the motive for the attack remained unclear.

"We've asked for a full briefing to try to understand the motivation," Smith told journalists in Melbourne.

The travel agents were on an educational tour to Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai, organised by a Sydney-based travel wholesale company, when the attack took place.

As the Australians boarded flights for home from Shanghai on Thursday, the company's General Manager Jimmy Liu said China was a safe destination for the Olympics in August and described the attack as "very rare".

Smith said Australian travel danger warnings for China were set at a very low level, but urged travellers planning trips to the country for the Olympics to read them for their security.

"This is an unusual event for China and the Chinese authorities are no doubt putting their minds to the motivation behind it," Smith said.

Australian foreign ministry advice for China warns that foreigners have been assaulted and robbed, "particularly in popular expatriate gathering areas".

The official Xinhua news agency said police believed the man was named Xia Tao and was a worker in Xi'an. Police investigators did not offer an explanation for the attack.

China has been preparing for an influx of foreign visitors for the Beijing Olympics, and the government has been at pains to highlight the security steps it is taking.

"I don't view this case as an embarrassment to China. Such things happen in every country and what matters is how you handle it," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Interesting, thanks.

[OMEN]

Sri Lanka's government is responsible for widespread abductions and disappearances as it fights a new phase in a 25-year civil war with the Tamil Tigers, Human Rights Watch said, calling for a UN monitoring mission.

Rights groups have reported hundreds of abductions, disappearances and killings blamed on one side or the other since the civil war, which has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983, resumed in 2006 as a truce collapsed on the ground.

"President Mahinda Rajapaksa, once a rights advocate, has now led his government to become one of the world's worst perpetrators of forced disappearances," Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Elaine Pearson said in a statement, launching a 241-page report.

The report, entitled "Recurring nightmare: State responsibility for disappearances and abductions in Sri Lanka", features interviews with relatives of 'disappeared', some of whom describe how police had paid visits shortly before abductions.

Others describe relatives disappearing after being interrogated at gunpoint by police in broad daylight, or being bundled into white vans by unidentified gunmen. Police then deny their relative has been arrested.

"We absolutely deny the exaggerated allegations reflected in the Human Rights Watch Report," said Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona. "The report talks about a situation which is getting worse by the minute, and I think it is not only unfair, it is malicious.

"There are all these allegations and they are not exactly serious allegations. They are concocted in our view or exaggerated in order to give the country a bad name," he added. "Over the last 12 months, the situation has improved considerably. . ., a result of measures put in place by the government."

After formally scrapping a 6-year truce with the Tigers in a wider bid to win the war militarily, Rajapaksa's government banished Nordic truce monitors who had blamed troops and rebels for repeated abuses.

The former Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission enraged the government by accusing state security forces of massacring 17 local staff of international aid group Action Contre la Faim in 2006 – the worst attack on aid workers since the 2003 bomb attack on the UN office in Baghdad.

The government has rejected calls for a UN human rights monitoring mission, and has publicly vilified UN officials who have questioned its rights record.

Rajapaksa himself has dismissed reports of abductions and disappearances, some from areas under tight military control, as propaganda aimed at tarnishing his government's reputation.

Some government officials have said reported disappearances and abductions were cases of love-struck youths eloping or going on holiday.

Hundreds of relatives of Sri Lankan civilians who have disappeared as the war has escalated demand answers.

"So long as soldiers and police can commit disappearances with impunity, this horrific crime will continue," Human Rights Watch's Pearson said. "The Sri Lankan government's rejection of a UN monitoring mission reflects badly on its commitment to human rights.

"While the government dawdles, many Sri Lankans will continue to pay the price."

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for this.

[OMEN]

The NSW State Rail Authority (SRA) was not responsible for the rape of a woman who could not flee her attacker because she broke her ankle weeks earlier at a Sydney station, an appeal court has ruled.

A District Court judge last year decided the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, would not have suffered a sexual assault at a private home had she not been injured and immobilised because of her fall at the railway station.

He also found the sexual assault was a "foreseeable" consequence of the SRA's "breach of duty".

But the NSW Court of Appeal overturned the findings, concluding it was not her lack of mobility that principally constrained her from leaving her attacker's room.

"In my view, it was not reasonably foreseeable that a young woman who was immobilised to the extent of having to use crutches would thereby be exposed to a criminal sexual assault," said Acting Justice Jane Mathews.

The Taiwanese woman, who was 31 at the time and in Australia to study English, fell while walking down slippery, wet stairs at Sydenham railway station in December 2002.

She successfully sued the SRA, but her $A239,405 ($NZ282,217) damages award was today reduced to $A217,324.

The original amount was reduced by the $A71,245 awarded in relation to the psychological damage relating to the rape.

But her lawyers successfully argued for a $A49,164 increase in the award for her future economic loss.

AAP

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the read.

[Black Widow]

School Bans Hugs Over 2 Seconds
Students Don't Embrace 'Public Display Of Affection' Policy


MESA, Ariz. -- A school policy banning student hugging prompted dozens of east Valley students to protest with a giant group hug across the street from campus.

"I think it's ridiculous," said Chelsea Branham, a 14-year-old student at Shepherd Junior High School in east Mesa.

Branham said she got detention this week for hugging her friend after school.

"It's not like it's supposed to mean anything," she said. "It's not like I was making out with him or something."

Branham joined her classmates on Friday for a 20-minute, public hug-a-thon.

"She's taking a stand and I'm standing behind her to do it," said Stephanie Wiegold, her mother.

The "no-hugging" rule had previously been in the student handbook. After many students began expressing concern about public hugging and kissing in the hallways, the school began reinforcing the guideline by punishing huggers, which led to Friday's protest.

Prior to the demonstration, the district said the principal and students brokered an agreement to clarify the "no-hugging" rule. According to the guidelines, small hugs, less than two seconds, are permitted but longer ones and kissing are not.

"We can only hug two seconds? That's ridiculous," Branham said. "It's barely even a hug."

"What we're doing here is hoping to help kids understand what's happening," said Kathy Bareiss of Mesa public schools.

The district said a list of acceptable and non-acceptable behaviors will be handed out to students on Monday.

kpho.com

[JohnCenaFan28]

I remember seeing a show with this in it...

[Stamkos]

That's extremely stupid. I could understand if it was inappropiate hugging or something like that, but just a normal hug that is over two seconds isn't allowed? Bullshit. Schools are getting more ridiculous with their rules each day. The students won't follow it, guarenteed.

[Pretty Fly Guy]

Back in my day we showed up to school naked and weren't allowed hugs under 60 seconds.

[Bad Boy]

^lmao...

anyhoo... this is a crappy rule... glad tat my school life is getting over very soon, cuz if that rule was enforced in my school, their would be serious problems... lmao...

[JohnCenaFan28]

A Russian man suspected of being one of the world's biggest illegal arms dealers has been arrested in Thailand.



Viktor Bout - who has been dubbed the "merchant of death" - was picked up by police at a luxury hotel in Bangkok.

The Thai authorities acted on a warrant issued by the US, which accuses Mr Bout of supplying arms to Colombian rebels.

He has also been accused of breaking UN embargoes on arms sales to many countries from central Asia to Africa, but has never been prosecuted.

When Belgium and Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for him in 2002, Mr Bout returned to Russia, where he was protected from extradition by the country's constitution.

Deportation

Lt Gen Pongpat Chayapan, head of the Thai Crime Suppressino Bureau, said Mr Bout was arrested at a hotel in Bangkok shortly after he arrived in Thailand while attempting to "procure weapons for Colombia's Farc rebels".

The left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have been seeking to overthrow the Colombian government for more than four decades.

"We have followed him for several months. He just came back to Thailand today," Gen Pongpat said.

"We will take legal action against him here, before deporting him to face trial in another country, likely the US."

The US warrant stemmed from an earlier one issued by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he said.

Unconfirmed US media reports say Mr Bout was arrested during negotiations to sell weapons in a sting orchestrated by a DEA special operations unit.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Bangkok congratulated Thai police on the arrest, but could not provide any details about the possible role of US officials.

The US treasury department imposed sanctions on Mr Bout's businesses in October 2006, seizing his fleet of cargo planes and freezing many of his assets.

UN embargoes

Mr Bout, 41, is said to have graduated from Moscow's military institute in the early 1990s and was a major in the Soviet KGB.

According to a 2007 book about him - entitled Merchant of Death - Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible - he set up a network of companies using redundant Soviet military planes.

A 2005 report by the human rights group, Amnesty International, said Mr Bout was "the most prominent foreign businessman" breaking UN embargoes on arms sales to countries such as Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

He has also been accused of supplying weapons to supporters of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Taleban in Afghanistan and even al-Qaeda during the 1990s.

Mr Bout's life is believed to have been the inspiration for Nicolas Cage's character in the 2005 film, Lord of War.

Although he has been investigated by the authorities in several countries, Mr Bout has never been prosecuted for arms dealing.

BBC News

[OMEN]

A group of South Korean women were falsely lured to Australia and forced to work up to 20 hours a day in a Sydney brothel, police say.

Federal Police officers raided six inner-Sydney properties yesterday, arresting three women and two men allegedly linked to a sex trafficking syndicate worth more than $A3 million a year.

"Police will allege the syndicate recruited women in Korea by deceiving them about the conditions under which they would be employed and then organised their entry into Australia under false pretences," the Australian Federal Police said in a statement.

A 46-year-old woman from Greenacre in south-west Sydney, a 42-year-old woman from Hornsby in north-western Sydney and 35-year-old Korean woman are due to appear in Central Local Court today.

They are charged with offences including people trafficking, deceptively recruiting for sexual services, dealing in the proceeds of crime worth more than $A1 million, and arranging a non-genuine marriage.

Two Sydney men, aged 23 and 28, have been charged with knowingly conducting a business involving the sexual servitude of others and will appear in court at a later date.

AAP

[OMEN]

IN CHARGE: Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani.
Pakistan's army chief has called for harmony as a coalition opposed to President Pervez Musharraf prepares to form a government that could force him from power.

Recent opinion polls showed the vast majority of people would like US ally Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a coup in 1999, to step down.

A crushing defeat suffered by his allies in a parliamentary election last month has raised the prospect that he could be forced out by a hostile National Assembly.

General Ashfaq Kayani, who became army chief after Musharraf quit the army to become a civilian leader in November, expressed optimism that there will be a "harmonized relationship between various pillars of the state, as provided in the constitution".

A military statement quoted Kayani as telling army commanders in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, that "any kind of schism, at any level, under the circumstances would not be in the larger interest of the nation."

Pakistan has been reeling since mid-2007 from a suicide bomb campaign mounted by al Qaeda inspired Islamist militants.

There have been four suicide attacks in the past week, and the country's state of political flux has raised international concern about the risks of instability in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 160 million people.

The party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto won the most seats in the election while the party of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf deposed, finished second.

Both parties are set to join hands with another opposition party to form a coalition that could threaten Musharraf's rule.

Musharraf has rejected calls for his resignation and has said he was ready to work with whoever forms the government.

He is expected to convene the National Assembly in the coming days and invite Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to nominate a prime ministerial candidate to form a government.

Generals have led Pakistan for more than half the 60 years since the country was carved out of the partition of India following independence from Britain in 1947.

Kayani reaffirmed that the army fully stood behind the democratic process and was committed to play its constitutional role in support of the elected government.

He said army would stay out of the political process and expressed his hope it would not be dragged into any unnecessary controversy.

Kayani, who met with Musharraf this week, said an impression was being created that the army was distancing itself from the president and he emphasized the importance of "the constitutional relationship between army and the National Command Structure".

While Sharif has been outspoken in his calls for Musharraf to go, Bhutto's widower and her political successor, Asif Ali Zardari, has avoided taking such a hard line, though both have vowed to banish the military from politics.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Jerusalem - The library of the rabbinical seminary was crowded for a night-time study session when the Palestinian gunman opened fire. Students scrambled to flee the attack, jumping out of windows. Holy books drenched in blood littered the floor.

The attacker killed eight students and wounded nine before he was shot dead on Thursday night. It was the first major attack in Jerusalem in four years.

Afterward, the Jewish seminarians gathered outside the library and screamed for revenge, shouting, "Death to Arabs," while in Hamas-controlled Gaza thousands of jubilant Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate.

Funeral processions for the dead students - one of them 26-years-old and the rest teenagers between ages 15 and 19 - were to depart from the seminary on Friday morning.

Abbas condemns attacks

Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president with whom Israel is negotiating a peace agreement, condemned the attack. But by Friday morning there were some Israeli lawmakers calling on the government to break off talks.

"The government must immediately halt all negotiations and eradicate terrorism in every way possible," said David Rotem of the hardline Yisrael Beiteinu party. "Later, when we have someone to talk with, we can hold negotiations," he told Israel Radio.

Others rejected that call. "It's the job of a responsible leadership, a logical leadership, to say in moments like these, looking at the blood, at the cries for revenge ... that we, at least we in Israel, will do everything we can in order not to be dragged into this cycle," dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Israel Radio.

Hamas militants, who have been battling Israel during a weeklong surge in violence in Gaza, praised the attack in a statement but stopped just short of claiming responsibility. "We bless the operation. It will not be the last," Hamas said in a statement sent to reporters by text message.

Israeli defence officials said the attacker came from east Jerusalem, where the city's Palestinians live. They have Israeli ID cards that give them freedom of movement in Israel, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said the attacker walked through the seminary's main gate and entered the library, where witnesses said about 80 students were gathered. He carried an assault rifle and pistol, and used both weapons in the attack. Rosenfeld said at least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor. Rescue workers said nine people were wounded, three seriously.

Massacre instead of Purim

David Simchon, head of the seminary, said the students were preparing a celebration for the new month on the Jewish calendar, which includes the holiday of Purim. "We were planning to have a Purim party here tonight and instead we had a massacre," he told Channel 2 TV.

The gunman was finally killed by a seminary graduate who is an army officer and lives nearby, Simchon said on Friday.

Witnesses described a terrifying scene during the shooting, with students jumping out windows to escape.

The seminary is the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, a prestigious centre of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. It serves about 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, and many of them carry arms.

Thursday's shooting was the deadliest incident in Israel since a suicide bomber killed 11 people in Tel Aviv on April 17, 2006.

AP

[OMEN]

Banja Luka - A runaway Bosnian bank teller has been arrested after a tip-off by her husband and faces charges of stealing $1.68m from bank depositors, police said on Thursday.

Sanja Meseledzija-Gvozdjar, 33, left on vacation from her job at Raiffeisen Bank in the Bosnian Serb capital in September last year and never returned home.

She was arrested this week in Belgrade, said criminal police chief Gojko Vasic.

She is suspected of embezzling funds from the bank's term deposit accounts from December 2006 to September 2007.

Her husband revealed her Belgrade hideout to the police and has reportedly filed for divorce and changed his name.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Washington - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday reported raising $55m in February, the highest ever amount of campaign donations recorded for a single month and $20m more than was reported last week by rival Hillary Clinton.

Obama's campaign said $45m were raised online, and more than 90% were donations of $100 or less. More than 1 million people have given money to date, the campaign said.

Obama won 11 straight contests during the money-raising month of February, but his momentum was stopped Tuesday when Clinton took three of four state primaries, including crucial contests in Ohio and Texas.

The two candidates are separated by only about 100 delegates, with some 3 000 already awarded in the series of state-by-state intra- party contests that have been running since early January.

Both Democratic candidates have consistently out-raised their Republican rivals since the race began in early 2007. John McCain, who captured the Republican nomination on Tuesday, reported raising only $12m in the month of February.

But while Senator McCain will now be able to focus exclusively on raising money and uniting the Republican Party, Senators Clinton and Obama will likely be spending at least the next month-and-a-half using precious funds on each other.

The Democratic nomination contest next moves to Wyoming on Saturday and Mississippi on Tuesday, before the delegate-rich state of Pennsylvania votes April 22.

A poll published on Thursday showed both Democrats would beat McCain in a general election match-up. The Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Clinton with a 6 percentage point lead over McCain and Obama with a 12 percentage point lead. ?

Sapa-dpa

[OMEN]

New York - The United Nations peacekeeping chief has told his staff that he will step down this summer and end an eight-year stint in which he often voiced surprising criticism of UN operations.

Jean-Marie Guehenno of France, who has held the job longer than anyone previously, told staff within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Field Services that he intends to leave his post when his contract expires in mid-2008, UN deputy spokesperson Marie Okabe said Thursday.

During that time the number of UN troops has doubled from 50 000 to about 102 000 and his department's budget has tripled from $2.5bn to $7.5bn, with new missions added in places such as Sudan, East Timor, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Haiti.

He has overseen the UN's 17 peacekeeping operations and three peace-building missions.

Elusive peace

Working under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and for his predecessor, Kofi Annan, since October 2000, Guehenno has at times disagreed with the Security Council on the wisdom of sending peacekeeping missions into war zones where peace is elusive.

Recently, he voiced reservations in November about the challenges facing the African Union-UN peacekeeping force into Sudan's Darfur region, including the lack of helicopters and other equipment.

He also has fought to try to focus more public attention on the problem of sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and other places. His job is one of the top positions at the UN that countries such as France and the United States are interested in holding.

The US pays for almost 25% of the peacekeeping department's $7bn a year budget.

AP

[OMEN]

Activists have regularly attacked the Japanese with "stink bombs"
An anti-whaling campaigner says he has been shot by Japanese sailors while protesting over their hunting activities in the Antarctic.

Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd group, said his colleagues had been throwing stink bombs, but the Japanese responded with "flash grenades" and gunfire.

He said he felt a thud in his chest and found a bullet in his Kevlar vest.

But Tokyo denied any bullets had been fired, saying "warning devices" were thrown after their ship was attacked.

The foreign ministry said the Japanese coastguard on board the Nisshin Maru ship had thrown a baseball-sized device, which exploded near the activists' ship emitting a loud noise.

The device was not designed to hurt people, and the ministry said it was not aware of any injuries.

'Aimed at us'

Mr Watson told Australian radio that he found a bullet in his Kevlar vest.

"It bruised my shoulder but it would have hit my heart if I didn't have the vest," he said.


Mr Watson is captain of the Sea Shepherd vessel, the Steve Irwin

He told Australia's ABC News that there was no justification for the whalers opening fire.

"We were doing what we usually do, which is putting stink bombs on deck," he said.

"We go out of our way to make sure we don't throw them near anybody, but they were throwing the flash grenades directly at us."

Japan had planned to kill up to 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales during the expedition.

Tokyo says it carries out whaling for scientific research, but critics say the same data can be collected without killing the animals.

BBC

[OMEN]

Around 1000 Danish Muslims have demonstrated peacefully in Copenhagen against the reprinting of a satirical cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers last month.

On February 13, a number of Danish newspapers published the cartoon - one of 12 that prompted riots in many Muslim countries in 2006 - in solidarity with the artist after three men were arrested on suspicion of planning to kill him.

The organisers of Friday's protest said in a statement that while they valued freedom of speech, they also wanted the Danish government to react more forcefully against humiliation of religious symbols.

A number of other Western newspapers have also reprinted the cartoon, which depicts the founder of Islam with a bomb in his turban. Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet offensive.

Islamists held demonstrations in Pakistan's main cities on Friday to protest at the republication of the drawing.

A number of protests have been held in Muslim countries in the last three weeks, but none as violent as in 2006 when more than 50 people were killed in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The Netherlands on Thursday raised its terrorism threat warning level ahead of the launch of a film about Islam by a right-wing politician who has described the Koran as a "fascist" book.

Reuters