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First, Do No Harm

2007-01-31T11:33:00.000-08:00

Governor Schwarzenegger's health insurance plan is premised on a false assumption about the uninsured.
Universal coverage is, once again, the new big idea in health care. In mid-January the AARP and the service employees' union teamed up with the Business Roundtable to demand affordable, quality care for all. Massachusetts is implementing reforms aimed at covering everyone. In a dozen more states legislators are considering large-scale efforts to expand insurance. Even President Bush is talking about a sweeping tax reform package that would help millions of self-employed individuals pay for health care.

Of all the new proposals, the most ambitious, and likely most influential, comes from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's a scary prospect. The governor has based his plan, heavy on government expansion and interference, on a faulty diagnosis of the uninsured. If politicians really want to achieve "affordable, accessible and equitable" health care, as the governor suggests, they will need to consider less government intervention, not more.

The governor advocates a massive expansion of Medicaid and other government programs. He wants to regulate not only how insurance companies sell their policies but also how much they should spend on patient care. He proposes a host of new taxes and spending, ultimatums to force businesses and individuals to buy insurance and a raft of new regulations. Some ideas, like the new fees he wants to impose on physicians, have already provoked angry objections. Yet practically everyone praises the governor for his vision of universal coverage.

The uninsured are depicted in popular culture as lost and forgotten--the single mother in the emergency room struggling to make ends meet for her three children. But the uninsured are a heterogeneous group. Drawing on Census Bureau data, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found in a 2003 report that a third of the uninsured have family incomes of more than $50,000 a year, and for 16% of the uninsured, incomes exceed $75,000 a year. A Health Affairs study on nonpoor uninsured Californians pegs their average annual health spending at $200 per person. Many people have done the math and have decided not to get coverage. In addition, a third of the uninsured already qualify for Medicaid or some other type of program. Of the remaining third, many are without insurance for only a brief period, usually less than a year.

To be sure, there are 8 million Americans who slip through the cracks, unable to get coverage. But that's far fewer than the commonly quoted disaster figure of 46 million.

What needs to be done? The governor should start by ending the universal-coverage obsession so common in political circles. That includes his plan to cover children in public programs, even kids in families with incomes as high as $60,000 a year.

He should propose a two-pronged plan. First, he should make health insurance more affordable. For decades, state legislators have demanded increased coverage for various services, including in vitro fertilization, clinical trials and visits with chiropractors, social workers and acupuncturists. Only six states have more mandates than California. A small business in Los Angeles can't buy no-frills health insurance. Coverage mandates must be scrapped. And Schwarzenegger should work to make health care itself less expensive. Get rid of laws that protect providers from competition and create cartels of hospitals and other institutions.

Health savings accounts, authorized by Congress in 2003, should be popularized. Give millions of state employees this option. Level the tax playing field by giving individuals the same tax deductions (on state returns) that employers get when buying health insurance, since the federal tax code presently favors the latter group.

California should focus government aid on those who need help. Nationally, roughly $35 billion is already spent on the uninsured, but the money funds a labyrinth of bureaucracies and programs. Instead, government should provide vouchers to cover part of the cost of private insurance.

How many of these recommendations are contained in the governor's plan? Exactly one: greater tax fairness for people who don't get health insurance on the job. The rest of the plan is quite unhealthful.

David Gratzer, M.D. Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Author of The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Encounter Books).

Source :Forbes

Preview:Death of a President

2006-09-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

A film that depicts the fictional assassination of President GEORGE W. BUSH doesn't hit theaters until October 27, but tonight, we have your first look at the movie's trailer!

The fictional drama, 'Death of a President,' mixes archival footage with narrative elements, and focuses on the assassination of President Bush in the style of a retrospective documentary. The movie, which quickly became one of the most talked about movies at the recent Toronto Film Festival, will be distributed by Newmarket Films. Newmarket also released the controversial 'Passion of the Christ.'

"It's a striking premise which may be seen as highly controversial," said the film's writer and director, GABRIEL RANGE. But it's a serious film which I hope will open up the debate on where current US foreign and domestic policies are taking us."

In the film, President Bush arrives in Chicago and is confronted by anti-war protesters. As he leaves a venue where he has just made a speech to business leaders, he is shot and killed by a sniper. While the world reacts to the stunning turn of events, a nation-wide manhunt for his killer sweeps through the United States.

Hailed by those who've seen it as breathtakingly original and dangerous, the ninety-minute film is shot in such a way that every inch of the fictional murder of the president appears real, frightening and highly plausible.

Be sure to catch the film's trailer on tonight's "Insider"!

Business 2 Business world, find your global business partner in a click – b2bbusinessworld.com

2006-09-12T01:34:00.000-07:00

Revolution for Business 2 Business world, find your global business partner in a click – b2bbusinessworld.com

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On this big net, b2bbusinessworld helps new businesses to get the world exposure. It facilitates new business to find the business partner according to their needs.

It has never been so easier to find your business to business partner from any part of the world. With around fifty categories to choose from, you will definitely find the perfect category to list your business. Whether you are a farmer and want to sell your agriculture products, or you are just a small trader of electronics goods; everyone is welcome to expand their business.

As with retail market, business to business market is growing by leaps and bounds. The growing need of retail market to supply the necessary goods, b2b is the fastest growing market. It does not matter what you are selling, you just need the buyers who can buy from you, and that is exactly what b2bbusinessworld does.

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29 dead as plane catches fire in Iran

2006-09-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian airliner caught fire after a tire burst on landing at an airport in the northeast of the country on Friday, killing 29 of the 148 people aboard, state television said.

Earlier reports had suggested a death toll of 80.

Nourollah Rezai-Niaraki, head of Iran's civil aviation organization, told state TV that 43 people on board the plane had been injured but the rest escaped unharmed.

Television pictures showed a broken-up plane with parts of its fuselage charred. The cockpit appeared to be largely unaffected by the fire, as did much of the rear portion of the aircraft.

Firefighters were shown extinguishing fires in parts of the smoldering wreck and clambering over other areas of the fuselage, carrying out corpses covered in blankets.

The plane, a Russian-built Tupolev 154, caught fire at 1.45 p.m. (1015 GMT) after slipping off the side of the runway when a tire burst on landing at the city of Masshad, site of Iran's holiest shrine, state media said.

"The flight crew and the pilot of this flight survived, and this will be a great help to find out the cause of the accident as soon as possible," Roads and Transport Minister Mohammad Rahmati told Iran's students news agency ISNA.

An Iranairtour official, who asked not to be identified, said the airline was contacting families of the victims. He also said flights to Mashhad had been canceled after the crash.
Pilgrims flock to Mashhad throughout the year to visit the tomb of Imam Reza, the eighth Muslim Shi'ite imam. It was not clear if any of those on board the Iranairtour flight were making the pilgrimage.

The southern city of Bandar Abbas, where the plane began its journey, is the Islamic Republic's main port and is located near the popular Iranian holiday destination of Qeshm island.

Air safety experts say Iran has a poor safety record with a string of crashes in recent decades, many involving Russian-made aircraft.

U.S. sanctions on the Islamic state have prevented it from buying new aircraft or spares from the West, forcing it to supplement its aging fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes with aircraft from the former Soviet Union.

The last major plane disaster in Iran involved a military plane which crashed in January, killing at least 11 people. Another military plane hit a tower block in Tehran in December, killing 94 people on board and at least 22 people on the ground.

The most recent Iranian civil aviation disaster involved a Kish airlines Fokker-50 plane, which crashed in February 2004 during landing in Sharjah airport in the United Arab Emirates killing 43 of the 45 passengers and crew aboard.

Russian airplane crashed near Donetsk, 170 people killed

2006-08-24T02:50:00.000-07:00

ST. PETERSBURG, August 24 (RIA Novosti) - Uncertainty remains over the number of passengers and crew who lost their lives when a Russian airliner crashed in stormy weather in eastern Ukraine Tuesday.

The Russian Emergency Situation Ministry and Ukraine's transport minister reported earlier Thursday that 171 bodies had been recovered from the crash site.

But Pulkovo Airlines, which owned the three-engine Tu-154 jet, reiterated Thursday that a total of 170 people were on board the plane when it came down and exploded in Ukraine Tuesday. It previously announced the figure on Wednesday.

The St.-Petersburg-based air company said: "According to our data, 170 passengers and crew had checked in for the flight."

The Soviet-designed Tu-154 was flying from the popular Black Sea resort of Anapa to Russia's second city, St. Petersburg, when it crashed 30 miles from the city of Donetsk with the loss of all the passengers - including 45 children - and crew.

Pulkovo said it was unlikely that a passenger had boarded the plane bypassing check-in, but promised to double-check the possibility the same day.

With a lightning strike being considered to be a possible cause of the tragedy, aviation officials also said Thursday they would start work to decipher the plane's flight recorders later on the day.

Thursday has been declared a day of mourning in Russia.

Passenger describes scene aboard diverted plane

2006-08-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - A Northwest Airlines plane flying from Amsterdam to India was escorted back to the airport by Dutch F-16 fighter jets Wednesday, and police arrested 12 passengers whose behavior had aroused the crew's suspicion.

Coincidentally, among the 149 passengers aboard Northwest Flight NO0042 was the tipster who first alerted the FBI to al-Qaida operative Zacarias Moussaoui's odd behavior at a Minneapolis-area flight school five years ago.

Tim Nelson, who was seated in the forward business-class section, said by phone from Amsterdam that he watched the plane dump fuel as it circled back toward the airport, while several federal air marshals appeared in the front of the cabin, hanging their badges around their necks to keep order.

"It was tense," Nelson said, but he said the marshals never flashed weapons. He praised the marshals and flight crew for doing "an outstanding job."

Nelson said it remained unclear whether the flight crew was responding to a serious terrorist incident or "it was just a misunderstanding, where you had unsophisticated people flying."

U.S. government officials, who requested anonymity, said crew members and air marshals observed the passengers in the rear of the wide-bodied DC-10 trying to use cell phones and passing them around during and shortly after takeoff from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Cell phone use is barred on both U.S. and international flights. Some of the passengers also were trying to change seats, they said.

The Dutch Defense Ministry said that while the plane was over German airspace just after takeoff, the pilot radioed for permission to return to Schiphol and asked for an escort of jet fighters, the Associated Press reported. It said two F-16s scrambled from a northern military airfield, and routine security measures were swiftly put in place.

Nelson and a fellow flight-school program manager have been hailed as heroes for their phone calls that led to Moussaoui's Aug. 16, 2001, arrest and brought the FBI tantalizingly close to uncovering the Sept. 11 terror plot.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts in 2005 and, after a jury narrowly spared him the death penalty last spring, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of release from a "supermax" prison in Colorado.

Dutch police spokesman Rob Staenacker told the AP that he couldn't disclose the nationalities of those arrested Wednesday or the nature of the suspicions against them. Nelson said he watched Dutch police come aboard in threes and escort a dozen men, 10 of them appearing to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern descent, from the plane one by one in a remote parking area at the airport.

"Some they handcuffed before they took them out," he said. "One guy was a white guy, with a tie-dyed shirt, a beard and dreadlocks. He looked like a hippie. There was an older man who appeared to be of Indian descent."

A few of the others had beards, and some were dressed in shalwar kameez - traditional long shirts and baggy pants, Nelson said.

The incident was the latest of several terror alerts and flight diversions in the two weeks since British police shut down an alleged Islamic plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard aircraft and detonate them, possibly with cell phones.

Nelson said he was with a flight crew for a Northwest subsidiary, Classic Aviation, en route to Bombay, India, to ferry a plane with a mechanical problem back to an Amsterdam repair facility.

About 15 minutes into the flight, he said, members of the cabin crew hurried past him and stood in the front of the cabin, pointing to the rear.

Nelson said the lead flight attendant then made an announcement over the plane's broadcast system advising everyone to remain in his or her seats.

"They needed to get a head count. People were moving around in the back, and they needed to get back in their proper seats," Nelson said.

Then the flight attendant made a second announcement, saying that something was going on and that air marshals were aboard.

Nelson said several marshals stood near him at the front of the cabin, but he couldn't see what was going on behind him. Nelson said he and his fellow crewmembers advised flight attendants that they were available to help if needed, but that was unnecessary because everyone remained calm.

Bombers targeted U.S. flights; Terrorists planned to use drink bottles: U.S

2006-08-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

Bombers targeted U.S. flights; Terrorists planned to use drink bottles: U.S

CAROLINE MALLAN

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

British tactical officers stand guard outside London's
Ministry of Defence Aug. 10. The entire British capital
was in a heightened state of readiness after this
morning's terror arrests.

British police carry out forensic investigations at a
house in the Waltham stow area of north London,
during a raid by British police

Thursday Aug. 10, 2006.

LONDON - The terrorist attack foiled by British authorities today was aimed at blowing up as many as 10 airplanes on transatlantic flights and plotters had hoped to stage a dry run within the next two days, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The actual attack would have followed within days. Early reports allege the involvement of the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT.

The test run was designed to see whether the plotters would be able to smuggle the needed materials aboard the planes, the officials said. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

As a result of the revelations, much of the world was plunged into a full-scale terror alert.

British authorities arrested 24 people based partly on intelligence from Pakistan, where authorities detained up to three others several days earlier. More arrests were expected, the official said. The suspects were believed to be mainly British Muslims, at least some of Pakistani ancestry, and the official said some had gone to Pakistan recently.

A senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said the suspects, whose ages ranged from 17 to the mid-30s, were looking to sneak at least some chemicals on the planes in sports drink bottles. Teams of at least two or three men were assigned to each flight, the schedules for which they had researched on the Internet, the official said.

A U.S. law-enforcement official in Washington said at least one martyrdom tape was found during continuing raids across England on Thursday. Such a tape, as well as the scheme to strike a range of targets at roughly the same time, is an earmark of al Qaeda.

Raids were carried out at homes in London, the nearby town High Wycombe and in Birmingham, in central England. Searches continued throughout the day and police cordoned off streets in several locations. Police also combed a wooded area in High Wycombe.

Hamza Ghafoor, 20, who lives across the street from one of the homes raided in Walthamstow, northeast of London, said police circled the block in vans Wednesday and they generally swoop into the neighbourhood to question “anyone with a beard.”

“(He) didn’t do nothing wrong,” Ghafoor said, referring to a suspect.

“He played football. He goes to the mosque.”

“He’s a nice guy.”

U.S. counter-terrorism officials said United, American, and Continental airlines bound for New York, Washington and California were targeted by the terrorists. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the individuals plotted to detonate liquid explosive devices on as many as 10 aircraft bound for the United States.

A British police official said the suspects were “homegrown,” though it was not clear if they were all British citizens. He said authorities were working with Britain’s large South Asian community.

In Paris, French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy said the group “appears to be of Pakistani origin,” but did not provide the source of his information. Britain’s Home Office, which announced the arrests, refused comment.

In Pakistan, an intelligence official said an Islamic militant arrested near the Afghan-Pakistan border several weeks ago provided a lead that played a role in “unearthing the plot” that helped British authorities arrest suspects in Britain.

A senior Pakistani government official said “two or three local people” suspected in the plot were arrested a few days ago in Lahore and Karachi.

Early news reports in the U.K. singled out Continental, American and United airlines as the targeted carriers for the waves of simultaneous attacks, 10 of which were allegedly planned in total.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the terrorists planned to use liquid explosives disguised as beverages and other common products and detonators disguised as electronic devices.

In response, many world airports _ including Canada - banned carry-on luggage. And no liquid - bottle water, soda pop, coffee - save for baby formula is being allowed into the cabin.

Heathrow was closed to most flights from Europe, and British Airways cancelled all its flights between the airport and points in Britain, Europe and Libya. Numerous flights from U.S. cities to Britain were cancelled.

There are also delays at Toronto's Pearson International Airport as new security measures forced back-ups in loading passengers.

Planes to New York, for example, were being delayed by up to an hour because of the increased security, the Star's Sunaya Sapurji reported from New York.

"The problem in Toronto was that the flight crew also had to go through increased security and that held up our plane," she said from New York's LaGuardia Aiport.

"Here in New York, it's insane. The lineup to go through the security gates is so long that it's stretched almost out to the baggage claim area, although a security officer I spoke to said domestic flights are only delayed about 30 minutes at this point."

Sapurji said security personnel at Pearson were going around the terminal, as well as making announcements over the loudspeakers, asking passengers checking in to get rid of any liquids they might have in their carry-on luggage.

"People had to either finish or throw away bottled water or coffee before they were allowed to board."

Canadian officials said the increased security measures would be in effect for at least 72 hours.

Tony Douglas, Heathrow’s managing director, said the airport hoped to resume normal operations Friday, but international passengers would still face delays and a ban on cabin baggage "for the foreseeable future."

British authorities only began publishing the perceived risk of a terror threat last month – a year after London’s transportation system was targeted by suicide bombers who killed 52 commuters - and yesterday raised the alert to critical, the highest possible level. That effectively means that police consider the country to be under attack.

The suspects were “homegrown,” though it was not immediately clear if they were all British citizens, said a British police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Police were working closely with the South Asian community, the official said.

The suicide bombing assault on London subway trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, was carried out by Muslim extremists who grew up in Britain.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is on vacation in Barbados and reportedly phoned U.S. President George W. Bush overnight to tell him about the terror sweep that was underway.

At Heathrow this morning, travelers were coping with the prospect of long delays and heightened security with considerable understanding.

Janet Kellogg, her husband Dennis and daughter Katelyn were lining up to check in for their American Airlines flight home to Chicago after spending 10 days on a cruise around the British Isles.

"They’re telling us what they can and they’re doing the best they can and you can’t ask for much more," Janet Kellogg said of the large number of airline and airport security staff on hand to answer questions from beleaguered passengers.

Kellogg said she and her family will not be deterred from flying despite the abrupt end to the holiday.

"When it’s your time, it’s your time and these people aren’t going to stop us from living our lives. It’s as simple as that from my point of view," she said.

All hand luggage was banned from all flights taking off in Britain. Only passports, small wallets and essential medication and eyeglasses were allowed on the planes. Permitted items had to be put in clear plastic bags being distributed by security staff.

At security, each passenger was being hand-searched and all shoes were removed for inspection.

All liquids were banned with the exception of bottled baby milk and formula, which parents were required to drink in front of security staff before being allowed to board the plane.

Similar new security measures were being enacted in airports across North America.

Even airline staff, including pilots, were carrying their passports and security tags in clear plastic bags.

Michael and Anne Marie Gibbons were waiting for news on their cancelled flight from London to Donegal in Ireland.

Traveling with two small children, Anne Marie Gibbons said not being able to take games, books and toys on board the plane would be a challenge.

"We’re lucky it’s only a short flight, so we’ll be fine once we eventually get going," she said, adding that she feels for parents facing long-haul flights with no way to amuse their children.

The security operation in London extended beyond the city’s four airports to major train stations as well.

At London’s Paddington station, where passengers catch an express train to Heathrow, armed police were inspecting passports and luggage on the platforms before allowing passengers to board the trains.

At all airports, police sniffer dogs were visible, as were armed tactical unit officers.

At Heathrow’s Terminal 1, where most flights for the day were cancelled, police had to block off the entrances to the terminal because of the number of people filling the departure hall.

At the Air Canada check-in at Heathrow’s Terminal 3, students Hilary Weddell and Jordan Schriner, both 19, were hoping to board their flight home to Vancouver after spending a year in Britain volunteering at local schools.

The pair said they heard the news on the radio first thing this morning and were waiting to phone their families in Kamloops once they had a better idea of what was going on.

"I’m pretty nervous and I am really looking forward to getting home, it’s been a year," said Weddell of the long delay ahead of her. "I don’t want to worry my family until I know more, so I’ll hold off and call once it’s morning there."

Dorothy and Paul Ryan from Birmingham were in the snaking line-up for a flight to Toronto for their first trans-Atlantic trip and a two-week vacation touring Canada.

"I figure this is one of the safest days to fly, they’re being very careful," said Paul Ryan of the trip ahead of them.

Dorothy Ryan said while the news was upsetting, she and her fellow travelers understood that the security precautions needed to be taken.

British Home Secretary John Reid made the dramatic announcement about the terror arrests in a televised early morning address, an extremely unusual step for a British cabinet minister.

"Overnight, the police have carried out a major counterterrorism operation to disrupt what we believe to be a major threat to the U.K. and international partners," a stone-faced Reid told reporters. "The police, acting with the security police MI5, are investigating an alleged plot to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions, causing a considerable loss of life."

The deputy commissioner at Scotland Yard, Paul Stephenson, went even further, saying that the plans amounted to "mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

"We believe that the terrorists’ aim was to smuggle explosives onto airplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in-flight," Stephenson told reporters.

Early reports allege the involvement of the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and say that some of the accused may have travelled abroad for training.

The home of the group’s former leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, was raided this morning. But officials did not connect this raid and Saeed’s house arrest with the London case.

Saeed is being detained for what Pakistani officials say are “security reasons.” He led LeT until the group was banned in 2002 and is currently the leader of the Jamaat al-Dawat group.

Saeed was expected to lead a rally at a public park in Lahore on Saturday to mark Pakistan’s independence from British rule on Aug. 14, 1947, Associated Press reports.

LeT was formed as a Pakistani separatist group fighting for independence in Kashmir against India. India’s intelligence agency has accused the group of orchestrating last month’s synchronized train bombings that killed 182 people in Bombay and claim the group is internationally funded with a base in London.

In recent years, Western intelligence agencies have warned that the group intends on taking its fight beyond the borders of Kashmir, and have aligned with the Taliban and support an “Al Qaeda ideology.”

There are also unconfirmed reports of new camps run by the group in Bangladesh, close to the border with India.

Both Canada and Britain have designated LeT as a terrorist organization.
With files from the star's Michelle Shephard and the Associated Pre

France takes lead role on Lebanon

2006-08-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

France is at the centre of intense diplomatic
efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Lebanon,
in the face of grave risks that the conflict could
spread out of control. Does France hold the key to
peace in the Middle East?

France now has the key role, with the US, in achieving a ceasefire agreement through the UN Security Council.

French diplomats speak of the need to take due account of Lebanese and other Arab states' objections to the draft UN resolution, as well as core Israelidemands. They face a painfully hard task to reconcile the wishes of
both sides.

France's big foreign policy idea also faces its toughest test yet: it is that the US has destabilised the Middle East through its mistakes, like the invasion of Iraq, and that France can do better as the champion of an alternative European strategy.

The reputation of French President Jacques Chirac is at stake, too. His dismally low support rating shows signs of improving thanks to recent high-profile French diplomacy.

Mr Chirac may hope to score a dramatic international success before next May, when his long political career is expected to end. Success or failure over Lebanon could spell the difference between glory and shame for him and his Gaullist ideas about shaping the world.

US challenged

So while the world watches in dismay the latest outbreak of a deep-rooted armed conflict across the Israel-Lebanon border, another long-standing rivalry is being played out from New York to Beirut - the diplomatic
struggle between the US and France.

The French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, revealed the huge importance Paris attaches to this contest.

"An important victory for French diplomacy" is how he described the 1 August agreement by EU foreign ministers to follow the logic of France, calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

France insisted there could be no military solution to the crisis - so Israel must stop the shooting, as well as Hezbollah. The French also led European protests at what was called Israel's "disproportionate" military response to Hezbollah's provocation.

But the Americans, backed by Britain, placed top priority on allowing Israel to severely weaken Hezbollah for its own long-term security - by that logic an early ceasefire should not be imposed on Israeli forces before that goal is achieved.

The circumstances of this crisis uniquely favour a central role for France:

France is the former colonial power in Lebanon, and a self-styled "friend of the Arab world"; it is the only Western power to have cultivated close links with Arab governments of all kinds, including the former regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq
America is politically weakened: militarily stretched in Iraq, and widely seen as having lost the moral authority needed to dictate events
Britain, the other ex-great power in the region, is seen in the Arab world as compromised by its closeness to the US. It has declined to send troops to a multinational force for Lebanon, leaving France as first choice to lead it.

This could just be a French win-win situation. Their Lebanon diplomacy is helping to mend bruised relations with the Americans.

But Mr Douste-Blazy has also openly fuelled the impression that his country is seeking to fulfil an old ambition - to replace US dominance in global affairs with a European alternative led by France.

He hailed recent events as proof that "a political Europe exists", and that we live in a "multipolar world" - a phrase much used by President Chirac to challenge American authority in 2003 over the invasion of Iraq.

EU support

The active French stance enjoys wide support in the European Union. Many leaders are frustrated or angry about what they see as America's culpable failure to advance the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians - the key element needed for the region's long-term stability.

Most Arab states would also welcome a bigger European say in the region's affairs.

Europe has also offered - yet again - to help rebuild Lebanon once the violence is over.

Informally, it is said that France might provide 5,000 troops for a multinational force of around 15,000 in southern Lebanon.

Yet France must also weigh up the acute military and diplomatic risks in taking on the lead role in any outside effort to sort out the Lebanon crisis on the ground:

Peacekeeping: whatever UN resolutions may say about a ceasefire binding on Israel and Hezbollah forces, any peacekeeping mission in Lebanon will be dangerous. France lost 58 marines killed in a suicide bombing in Beirut in 1983, during an earlier attempt to impose order; the US suffered 241 deaths on the same day

Like France, other nations including Turkey, Norway and Italy say any commitment to send troops to Lebanon would be conditional on satisfactory terms. Germany, the largest EU state, has ruled itself out because of other commitments and sensitivities towards Israel related to the Nazi-era Holocaust

Syria: France's traditionally strong ties with Damascus may be useless, after the two nations fell out over Syria's alleged role in last year's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the forced withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Yet without Syrian consent no long-term settlement will be secure

Iranian contradictions: France is committed, with the EU and US, to a tough stance towards Iran over its nuclear programme. Yet Iran, as Hezbollah's other main backer, has the power to wreck any agreement and to threaten Israel. The contradiction was plain when the French foreign minister met his Iranian counterpart in Beirut and lauded Iran as a "stabilising force" in the region

The French homeland: Mr Chirac says he fears angry Muslim passions over the Middle East may be imported into France itself; that risk would grow if France leads a controversial peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

France has won general praise for being willing to lead efforts to bring peace to Lebanon. But the hardest part still lies ahead.

New push into Lebanon by Israel

2006-08-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

BOURJ AL-MULOUK, Lebanon - Israel renewed airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs Thursday, and Hezbollah retaliated by firing more than 130 rockets at northern Israel, killing at least seven people in Acre and Maalot. It was the bloodiest day in Israel since eight people were killed July 16 near a train maintenance depot.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a taped television speech that his guerrillas are "fighting until the last breath and last bullet." But Nasrallah also offered to stop firing rockets on Israeli cities if Israel stops attacks on Lebanese towns.

Three weeks into the conflict, six Israeli brigades — roughly 10,000 troops — were locked in fighting with hundreds of Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon, and the battle looked likely to be long and bitter.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz told top army officers Thursday to prepare to push Israeli control 18 miles into south Lebanon to the Litani River, senior military officials said.

Launching the next phase of the operation would require further approval by Israel's Security Cabinet.

The army said that it already had taken up positions as far as five miles inside Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said more than 900 people had been killed and 3,000 wounded, but he did not say whether the new figure — up from 520 confirmed dead — included people missing.

More than 1 million people, a quarter of Lebanon's population, have been displaced, he said, adding that the fighting "is taking an enormous toll on human life and infrastructure, and has totally ravaged our country and shattered our economy."

At the United Nations, France circulated a revised resolution calling for an immediate cessation of Israeli-Hezbollah hostilities.

It also spells out conditions for a lasting solution to the crisis, including: deploying peacekeepers; creating a buffer zone in south Lebanon free of Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops; the release of two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah; and the "settlement of the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel."

So far, Washington has resisted calls for a cease-fire without simultaneous steps to deploy peacekeepers and tackle Hezbollah's disarmament. France insists the fighting be halted first to pave the way for a wider peace.

Elsewhere, an emergency meeting of the Islamic world's biggest bloc demanded that the United Nations implement an immediate cease-fire and investigate what it called Israel's flagrant human rights violations. Iran's hardline president said the obliteration of Israel would cure the Middle East's woes.

Amid the diplomatic wrangling, Hezbollah's chief spokesman said his group will not agree to a cease-fire until all Israeli troops leave Lebanon.

"Declaring a cease-fire is not the concern of the people of Lebanon as long as there is one Israeli soldier on Lebanese soil ... It is the right of every Lebanese to fight until liberation," Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahal said in a live interview with Al-Jazeera television.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his country would stop its offensive only after international peacekeepers were in place in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said its soldiers had taken up positions in or near 11 towns and villages across south Lebanon as they try to carve out a five-mile-wide Hezbollah-free zone ahead of deployment of a multinational force there.

Most of the villages are near the Israel-Lebanon border; the one deepest inside Lebanon, Majdel Zoun, is about four miles from the frontier. However, many tanks pushed farther north, controlling open areas from higher ground, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.

In fighting Thursday:

_Three Israeli soldiers were killed when a rocket hit their tank in the Lebanese border village of Rajmil, the army said.

_In the border village of Taibeh, an Israeli missile crashed into a two-story house, killing a couple and their daughter, Lebanese security officials said. Guerrillas clashed with Israeli troops, destroying a tank and two bulldozers and wounding its crew members, Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said. The Israeli army said only a tank was lightly hit.

_In the first air raids on Beirut in almost a week, witnesses said at least four missiles hit the southern suburb of Dahieh, a Shiite Muslim area repeatedly shelled by Israel. Lebanese television said the attacks targeted a Hezbollah compound that includes a center for religious teaching. The compound already was damaged by earlier raids.

_In the southern town of Nabatiyeh, Israeli jets struck an ambulance working for a local Muslim group. Two people were injured in Israeli air raids on villages nearby, and artillery landed near a Lebanese army base in the town, Lebanese security officials said.

_Israeli warplanes fired more than a dozen missiles at roads and suspected guerrilla hideouts in the southeastern town of Rashaya, the security officials said. They said the attacks were part of Israel's strategy to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure.

_Other strikes hit targets near the northern border with Syria overnight, Lebanese radio said. It was the second attack in the area in 24 hours, after a bridge linking the zone to the northern port of Tripoli was destroyed Wednesday.

On Wednesday, two Israeli soldiers were killed and four wounded in heavy ground battles around the southern village of Ayt a-Shab, the Israeli military said Thursday. It said four Hezbollah fighters were killed and two wounded; there was no confirmation from Hezbollah.

Also Wednesday, Hezbollah landed its deepest hits yet, with missiles landing in the West Bank and Beit Shean, Israel, about 42 miles from the border. An Israeli-American man was killed and 21 others were wounded as Hezbollah fired a record 230 rockets.

Meanwhile, an Israeli military inquiry into the bombing Sunday of a building in the southern village of Qana, which killed mostly women and children, admitted a mistake but charged that Hezbollah guerrillas used civilians as shields.

"Had the information indicated that civilians were present ... the attack would not have been carried out," a statement from the inquiry said.

While Lebanese officials said 56 died in Qana, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday there were 28 known dead and 13 missing. The AP on Thursday interviewed officials in the Lebanese Red Cross and Civil Defense Corps and reached the same numbers. George Kitane, head of Lebanese Red Cross paramedics, said 19 children were among the dead.

Using those revised totals from Qana, at least 520 Lebanese have been killed since the fighting began three weeks ago, including 445 civilians confirmed dead by the Health Ministry, 25 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas.

In all, 67 Israelis have been confirmed dead — 41 soldiers in fighting, 26 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The prospect of a longer war already has raised tensions across the Mideast, where anti-Israeli and anti-American hostility is high.

In Malaysia, leaders of key countries in the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference issued a declaration calling for a U.N.-implemented cease-fire and warning that the Israeli-Hezbollah fighting would fan Muslim radicalism worldwide.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who has in the past called for Israel to be wiped off the map — said "the main solution (to the Mideast conflict) is for the elimination of the Zionist regime." He added that all Muslim states should cut political and economic ties with Israel and "isolate" the United States and Britain for supporting the attacks against Lebanon.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, a key U.S. ally, issued an ominous warning to America and Israel that the prolonged battle in Lebanon has weakened moderates all across the Mideast. Even if Hezbollah is destroyed, the hostility toward Israel is so high that another such group may pop up in Syria, Egypt, Iraq — or even his own country, King Abdullah II, a key U.S. ally, said, according to published reports.

"The Arab people see Hezbollah as a hero because it's fighting Israel's aggression," he said. "This is a fact that the U.S. and Israel must realize: As long as there is aggression, there's resistance and there's popular support for this resistance."

Sri Lanka Fighting Escalates as Tamil Tigers Say Cease-Fire is Dead

2006-07-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

In Sri Lanka, regional leaders from the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group say a cease-fire with the government is dead, and the country's civil war has resumed. Government officials say they remain committed to the truce, despite government forces making their first attempt to regain territory from the rebels since that cease-fire was signed in 2002.

Tamil Tiger rebel takes position bunker at base in undisclosed location in northern Sri Lanka
The Tamil Tigers say they are close to launching retaliatory attacks against government forces, which have tried to seize rebel territory in violation of the cease-fire.

On Sunday, the Sri Lankan army moved into rebel territory in Trincomalee district in the northeast. It was the first time, peace monitors say, that the government has tried to take rebel-held territory since the cease-fire was signed four years ago.

Thorfinnur Omarsson is a spokesman for the European cease-fire monitors. He said the rebel group, also known as the LTTE, sent a letter to the monitors early Monday declaring that they may strike back at government forces.

"They put the responsibility on the government side, he said. "They say that if the attacks from the air and from the ground from the government sources continue, the LTTE will have no option but to retaliate. That's their standpoint."

Officials in the capital Colombo say the offensive aimed to take control of an irrigation channel that the rebels had blocked, to keep water from flowing to government-held land. Four days of air strikes preceded the offensive.

The government and the Tamil Tigers signed a cease-fire in 2002 to end two decades of ethnic war. The rebels had demanded independence for areas in the north and east of the country where the Tamil minority is predominant.

For months, the cease-fire has been slowly unraveling. The rebels are accused of placing land mines on roads and dispatching suicide bombers to Colombo, while the government has used air strikes on rebel territory.

Many political analysts and combatants on both sides say the cease-fire exists in name only.

Mr. Omarrson says the letter from the Tamil Tigers' senior leadership said nothing about dropping their commitment to the cease-fire. But regional commanders have been declaring the ceasefire to be over for weeks.

Elilan is the alias used by the Tamil Tigers political chief in Trincomalee district. He spoke to VOA several weeks ago.

He says the cease-fire is only limited to a piece of paper. The real situation is that there is war. He says that whatever was happening during the war years, it is happening now.

The government has said it remains committed to the cease-fire. It says the air strike Sunday was to open the irrigation channel for humanitarian reasons.

Mr. Omarsson says Norway is expected to send a special peace envoy to Sri Lanka later this week, to meet with rebels and government officials.

The envoy is expected to ask the rebels to lift their order that cease-fire monitors from European Union countries leave the country - a demand they made after the EU listed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization.

Israeli minister says airstrike suspension not end of offensive

2006-07-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said on Monday that a 48-hour suspension of Israeli aerial bombardments on south Lebanon did not mean the war was about to end, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported.

"This (suspension) decision will allow us to continue the war over time and it will take off some of the political pressure, so I am sure this is the right decision for now. It is not stopping the war," Ramon told Israel's Army Radio.

He warned at the same time that Israel would mount attacks if Hezbollah guerillas tried to take advantage of the ceasefire and bring in weapons.

"If there is an attempt to take advantage of the ceasefire and return weapons through passages in the Lebanese-Syrian border, this ceasefire in this case will not apply to such an chance," Ramon said.

The Israeli minister made the comments after Israel announced a 48-hour suspension of airstrikes on south Lebanon on early Monday following a deadly air raid against the Lebanese southern village Qana, which killed over 50 civilians.

The attack, the deadliest since the violence broke out nearly three weeks ago, sparked worldwide demands for truce in Lebanon.

Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed the Israeli suspension of strikes and voiced optimism of hammering out a ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon this week.

The top U.S. diplomat held two rounds of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday and headed back to Washington on Monday morning.

Rice, who returned to Israel on Saturday in her second tour to the Mideast region in a week, cancelled a scheduled visit to Beirut on Sunday after the Israeli air raid on Qana.

Israel expressed "deep regret" for the deaths in Qana and said it would investigate the incident, which drew widespread international condemnation.

But Olmert said on Sunday that Qana was used as a Hezbollah base for launching hundreds of rockets at Israel and that he told Rice Israel needed 10-14 days to finish the ongoing conflict.

Violence between Israel and Hezbollah entered the 20th day on Monday since it started on July 12 following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

Source: Xinhua

Heavy Israeli toll in fierce fighting

2006-07-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

Israel's army suffered heavy casualties in a battle with Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon on Wednesday and Al Jazeera Television said at least nine soldiers had been killed.

Al Arabiya Television said 12 were killed during fierce clashes in the town of Bint Jbeil, a key militia stronghold 4 kilometres in Lebanon. The stations gave no further details.

Such a toll would be the heaviest for Israel's army since it launched an offensive against Hezbollah more than two weeks ago.

Israeli media said up to 13 soldiers had been wounded. An army spokesman said he could only confirm several soldiers were wounded.
Israeli forces have been battling for days to take over Bint Jbeil, since seizing a village closer to the border last week.

Hezbollah earlier said in a statement in Beirut that fierce clashes were raging around Bint Jbeil. It said guerrillas had confronted Israeli forces trying to advance towards the town from a nearby hill.

The army estimates it has killed up to 30 guerrillas in the battle for the Bint Jbeil stronghold, home to 4000 people.

Until the latest fighting, nine Israeli troops had been killed in the ground offensive inside southern Lebanon.

Taking Bint Jbeil would be a morale-booster for Israel, which launched its Lebanese offensive after Hezbollah killed eight soldiers and abducted two others in a July 12 border raid.

Senior officers have described it as the main Hezbollah outpost in southern Lebanon.

Clearing Bint Jbeil could also be part of Israel's plan to establish a no-go zone for the guerrillas in southern Lebanon until an international force arrives to take over.

Defence Minister Amir Peretz said on Tuesday Israel would control a "security strip" along the 80-kilometre frontier and fire at anyone who entered.

He did not say how wide it would be. Israeli government sources estimated the zone's width at 3-4 kilometres.

According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah fighters are holed up in a network of tunnels and trenches around Shiite Muslim villages in southern Lebanon.

Israel ordered civilians out of 14 of the villages over the weekend.

Rockets slam into Haifa

Meanwhile, a fresh barrage of Hezbollah rockets slammed into the northern Israeli city of Haifa today, wounding several people, police said.

One rocket landed near a car, seriously wounding a driver, medics said.

The fresh strike came as the United Nations chief aid official, Jan Egeland, was visiting the coastal city, a favoured Hezbollah target.

At least 11 rockets also landed in the town of Carmiel. It was unclear if there were any casualties.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to take the war deeper into Israel, suggesting there could be strikes at cities south of Haifa.
Such use of longer-range missiles would most likely trigger massive Israeli retaliation.

Nasrallah, whose group ignited the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid, said: "We cannot accept any condition humiliating to our country, our people or our resistance.

"Yes, the limit of our bombardment will not remain Haifa, regardless of the enemy's response. We will move to the phase of 'beyond Haifa'."

The current conflict is the first in which Hezbollah rockets have hit Haifa, Israel's third largest city.

UN deaths add to pressure for ceasefire

Israel strove today to limit the diplomatic damage from its killing of four UN observers in Lebanon ahead of an international conference in Rome on how to end its 15-day-old war with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah vowed not to accept any "humiliating" truce terms.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he had told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan of his "deep sorrow" at the killing of the four UN observers, but voiced shock at Mr Annan's suggestion the attack was deliberate.

"The Prime Minister said he would never fathom the thought that the mistake that was made would be categorised by the UN as an action that was done intentionally," said a statement from Mr Olmert's office. He said he would order an investigation.

Mr Annan had demanded Israel probe the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the UN post in the village of Khiam yesterday.

Three bodies of UN observers recovered

Three of the corpses of the UN observers have been recovered and intense efforts were under way to recover the final body from beneath the rubble, a security source said today.

Fifty of the victims' former comrades from the Indian contingent of UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were desperately bidding to extract the remaining corpse with their hands or using improvised shovels, the source said.

The bodies of the three other soldiers were taken out some hours after the Israeli raid that destroyed their two-storey building in Khiam, equipped with an air raid shelter, which had served as their post.

Attempts to bring in a bulldozer were in vain but the Lebanese security source said that Israel had agreed to cease its bombardment to allow the recovery operation to continue.

China demands apology

China condemned the air raid, in which a Chinese national was killed. Its official Xinhua news agency said the other three observers were from Finland, Austria and Canada.

"The Chinese side is deeply shocked and strongly condemns this," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in a statement, adding that the strike had killed "many innocent victims".

"The Chinese side demands that all sides in the confrontation, especially Israel, take all measures to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers," the statement said.

Liu said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun had called in Israeli ambassador Yehoyada Haim this morning for an "emergency" meeting over yesterday's incident.

"The Chinese side ... demands that the Israeli side open a comprehensive investigation, apologise to the Chinese side and the victim's family and help the Chinese side in carrying out the mourning activities," the ambassador was told.

In contrast to the United States's stance, China said diplomacy, and not war, was the way to ensure stability in the region.

"We urge all parties to immediately implement a ceasefire and quickly return to the path of negotiation," Liu said.

"China will make more diplomatic efforts with the international community to push forward the resumption of peace and stability in the Middle East region."

Fighting in Bint Jbeil

An Israeli soldier was killed and five were wounded in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerillas in the southern town of Bint Jbeil today, Al Jazeera television said.

An Israeli army spokesman said only that several soldiers had been wounded in clashes around the town, which Israel says is a Hezbollah stronghold, four kilometres inside Lebanon.

UN officials said the air strike flattened the building housing the observers. Lebanese security sources said three of the bodies had been dug out of the rubble.

"This attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post at Khiam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire," Mr Annan said in a statement.

The war has already killed 418 people in Lebanon and 42 Israelis. Israeli bombing has forced an estimated 750,000 to flee their homes. Many are still trapped in war zones.

The first UN aid convoy left Beirut for the southern port city of Tyre. The 10-truck convoy was carrying 90 tonnes of supplies, enough to feed 50,000 people for three months.

"This is a small convoy. This is a litmus test for the security controls in place," Khaled Mansour, a UN spokesman, told Reuters as the convoy left Beirut port.

Lebanon and its Arab allies were to plead at the Rome talks today for an immediate truce, but Washington says a lasting solution needs to be agreed first.

Israel, with apparent US approval, has said it will press on with its offensive. It also said it planned to set up a "security strip" in Lebanon until international forces were deployed.

Gaza offensive

Israel has also been waging an offensive in Gaza since June 28 to recover a soldier seized by Palestinian militants. Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, including a three-year-old child and wounded 30, today, medics and witnesses said.

Israel has stepped up air strikes and launched raids in Gaza to retrieve the soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Altogether 129 Palestinians have been killed in the offensive.

Arab leaders and Mr Annan want the Rome conference to call a quick halt to the conflict but US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has visited Beirut and Jerusalem, says she prefers to get conditions right for "a durable solution".

Israel and Syria, Hezbollah's main ally along with Iran, have not been invited to the Rome conference.

Hezbollah wants a truce to be followed by talks on swapping the two Israelis for Arab and Lebanese prisoners in Israel.

The US demands Hezbollah free the soldiers unconditionally and pull back from the border before disarming.

The Rome meeting will also seek agreement on what kind of international force could be sent into southern Lebanon - a mission fraught with danger unless Hezbollah consents.

Agencies

Runaways among casualties in Bombay blast

2006-07-17T03:06:00.000-07:00

BOMBAY, July 16 (UPI) -- It may never be known how many of India's street children perished in the Bombay commuter-train explosions, it was reported Sunday.

Dozens of so-called railway children, who live on train platforms and beg and scavenge for food, were sent to hospitals and shelters for homeless children -- many with cuts, burns and shrapnel wounds, the Sunday Times of London reported.

An untold number were killed.

One 14-year-old boy who said his name was Mohammad was on the platform with his friend, Malik.

The blast killed Malik instantly, the newspaper said, and severed Mohammad's leg below the knee, leaving it hanging by the skin.

Had the attack been any later, there would have been 100 or so platform-sleepers there, the newspaper said.

The children, who typically make their living as "rag-pickers," sifting through trash left by commuters for materials they can sell for recycling, come from broken homes and large, poor families in India's most desperate states, including Bihar and Assam in eastern India.

Bombay is their city of choice, the Times said.

India third largest investor in Britain

2006-07-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

Indian companies nearly doubled their investments in Britain during 2005-06 to emerge as the third largest overseas investor in that country.

According to the UK Inward Investment Report, Indian companies invested 1.02 billion pounds during the year.

"India is now the third largest investor in the UK with Indian foreign investment projects into the UK increasing by a staggering 110 per cent in 2005-06," Mark Dolan, British trade and investment deputy director (inward investment) for India, told a news conference while releasing the report Mumbai.

"During 2005-06, the UK recorded a total of 76 investment projects from India, creating 1,449 jobs.

"The flow of Indian investments into the UK has turned from a trickle in the late 1990s to a flood, with the scope and breadth of projects rapidly expanding. While ICT (information and communication technology) remains the dominant sector for investment, there was strong growth in investments in pharmaceuticals and engineering too," Dolan said.

"At the same time, more Indian companies are looking outside London reflecting the deepening of our investment relationship."

The big rise was due to the Indian investors taking advantage of Britain's expertise in high-value activities such as R&D, science, cutting-edge technology, innovative design and as a base for European headquarters, he said.

The report said 1,217 foreign companies from around the world chose to invest in Britain during 2005-06, which was a 14.3 percent increase over the previous year.

"The US with 446 projects, Japan with 84 projects and India with 76 projects are the top three investors," it said.

The 76 new projects from India include 39 from Mumbai-based firms, 10 from New Delhi, 22 from Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, and 5 from Kolkata.

"Indian investment into the UK is now being given the recognition it deserves. This inward investment is amply exemplified by HCL that has created local employment of over 2,000 people and has contributed and made a tangible difference to the local economies in its own way," said HCL corporate vice-president (Europe) Rajeev Sawhney.

Other major Indian investors in Britain include Nicholas Piramal, Mahindra & Mahindra, State Bank of India, the Apeejay Surrendra Group, Essel Propack and the Godrej Group.

Nicholas Piramal, one of India's largest innovative healthcare and pharma solutions firm, acquired the global marketing rights and technical know-how of Inhalation Anaesthetics business from Rhodia Organique Fine Ltd of Britain for 8.9 million pounds in 2005.

It also completed a 100 per cent acquisition of another British company, Avecia Pharmaceuticals Ltd, for 9.5 million pounds during the same year. It also bought 25 per cent equity in Reaxa Ltd, a technology company based in Manchester.

Nicholas Piramal recently acquired a manufacturing plant from drug giant Pfizer in Northumberland, gaining a strong foothold in the British bio-pharma sector.

Mahindra & Mahindra, the flagship company of the Mahindra Group, recently acquired British firm Stokes Forgings for an estimated 7.5 million pounds.

Essel Propack Ltd, the largest speciality packaging company in the world with an estimated 32 percent global market share, acquired Arista Tubes and Telcon Packaging in Britain for a combined value in excess of 6.4 million pounds.

"Essel plans fresh investments worth 2.7 million pounds in Britain to manufacture laminated and seamless tubes catering to the oral care, cosmetics, personal care, pharmaceutical, food and industrial sectors," Dolan said.

The Godrej Group, a leading name in engineering and consumer products in India, has a presence in Britain through Godrej International, its trading arm.

Godrej Consumer Products recently acquired Keyline Brands, a London-based consumer products company, for 16 million pounds.

Dolan said that companies from Kolkata too see Britain as an investment destination with great potential.

"The Apeejay Surrendra Group, one of the largest producers of tea in India with a workforce of 40,000, acquired Typhoo, a 100-year-old iconic British brand, at 80 million pounds," he said.

Bikes to ride on car technology :Technology News

2006-06-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

Hero Honda launches model with this fuel-enhancing system, Bajaj to follow suit

Sanjiv Kumar

New Delhi: Bikes are all set to zoom off on a brand new road in technical terms. Leading two-wheeler firms are going to phase out the good, old ‘carburettor engine’ range and, instead, use fuel-injection (FI) technology in view of tighter emission norms in the country.

But the innovation does not come cheap. There may be a premium charged for the FI technology which offers superior and consistent engine performance with improved drivability, lower emissions, enhanced fuel economy and extended engine life.

Hero Honda first to change gears

Market leader Hero Honda has introduced fuel-injection technology in 125cc bike Glamour FI priced at Rs 49,990 (base model) and Rs 53,990 (with disk brakes) and will charge Rs 5,500 extra over the existing range of Glamour for FI.

It also has real time mileage indicator for achieving optimum mileage. “We will phase out Glamour with carburettor engine if the new technology takes over in terms of volume sales. Gradually, we will introduce FI across all our bikes,” Hero Honda Managing Director Pawan Munjal told Mumbai Mirror.

Technology already in use abroad

FI technology is already prevalent in many countries. In India, it is in use in cars and Japan-based Honda Motor Company is offering it in two-wheelers. Hero Honda’s Munjal said the company is introducing FI in lower segment to achieve larger volumes. “As volume peaks, prices of FI-loaded bikes will also fall,” he said, adding that Hero Honda has already dispatched the new FI bikes to 180 dealers and they would soon be available in the market.

Bajaj running a close second

Bajaj Auto is all set to roll out the 230 cc Pulsar DTS-FI but with a higher price tag. According to auto experts, rivalry among automobile manufacturers is eventually good for the customer as healthy competition leads to new technologies and pushes companies to challenge themselves and others to offer better products at lower prices.

“This is the technology of the future for all two-wheelers, with India going for tighter emission provisions. Many more motorcycle makers have to infuse FI in their product range,” they added.

Interesting moves in data integration : Biz News

2006-06-26T03:56:00.000-07:00

A couple of interesting announcements have been made within the integration space lately. The first is that Sunopsis and Trillium have formed a partnership. This is probably not surprising. With the recent acquisition of data quality vendors by both Informatica and Business Objects, Sunopsis needed a more robust data quality offering and it has done so by partnering with the leading quasi-pure player on the market. This also works for Trillium in that its major competitors are now owned by other companies so it too, needed a partnership with a leading data integration supplier.

Incidentally, as an aside for those that think of Trillium as a product you should only look at if you want to put a lab coat on—look again—the latest release is much more user friendly than was previously the case.

The second interesting announcement that I want to discuss was much less predictable. In fact, I defy anyone without insider knowledge to have predicted it: Sybase has acquired Solonde.

First, I’d better tell you what Solonde is. The company’s flagship product (TransformOnDemand) started as a research project at the University of Hamburg and is an ETL (data integration) tool designed from the ground up to run on a grid architecture. It is also particularly easy to deploy and use. The company also offers specific SAP integration capabilities through ExtractOnDemand. Three good reasons (apart from some blue chip clients) why the company might be an acquisition target. But why Sybase?

Let me step back a bit. Apart from its mobile offerings (the iAnywhere products) and development tools (PowerBuilder et al), what are Sybase’s major products? It has two databases, ASE in the OLTP market and IQ for data warehousing. Then it has a stand-alone replication product, which supports heterogeneous replication within a variety of environments. All of these it has had for some years. Then, a while ago now, it acquired Avaki, which is an EII (enterprise information integration) tool. So, now it has replication, federation and ETL all under one roof. That looks like a data integration platform to me.

Moreover, if Sybase is building a data integration platform is it just doing so to augment its data warehouse? I wouldn't think so. But does it then think that it can compete with the likes of Informatica, IBM, Sunopsis et al in the general purpose market. Possibly, but that would have to be a long shot. More likely, it has an eye on a bigger prize in an emerging market. And that market? MDM (master data management).

Now, I don't know whether Sybase will build or buy MDM but I am guessing that it will do one or the other, with Avaki supporting a registry/repository style federated approach and Solonde being leveraged for a hub-based solution to be stored, of course, in Sybase IQ. Doesn't that make sense? The company may or may not acquire a data quality vendor en route, or it may just partner but I think MDM must be the goal it is looking at.

Photog on Jolie-Pitt Watch Arrested

2006-06-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

by Natalie Finn
Jun 22, 2006, 6:30 PM PT

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are over the moon about their growing family, while a certain paparazzo is over the wall for Maddox.

Photographer Clint Brewer, 25, was arrested for trespassing Thursday morning after allegedly hiding in the bushes at Maddox Jolie-Pitt's Malibu daycare center, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed to E! Online.

Staff members at the Pacific Coast Highway preschool facility spotted Brewer at around 10:30 a.m. and made a citizen's arrest before he could get close to the famous four-year-old. The errant photog was then detained by security until sheriff's deputies arrived to take him to the Malibu/Lost Hills station, where he was booked on a misdemeanor trespassing charge and released on $1,000 bail.

Brewer is scheduled to appear at the Los Angeles. Superior Courthouse in Van Nuys on Friday to answer to the charge.

"School officials and myself feel that some of these paparazzi are like predators who will recklessly take and sell photos of innocent children for money," Rich Malchar, Pitt's head of security, said in a statement.

Brangelina and their three children have been back in the States for close to two weeks, with the media chronicling their movements nearly every step of the way.

Family photographs have been the hot commodity of late, with Hello! and People shelling out more than $4 million (with the proceeds going to charity) for the privilege of not even being the first to publish the coveted pics of newborn Shiloh--various Internet sites took the liberty of introducing the littlest Jolie-Pitt to the world before those issues hit newsstands.

Hello!, People and Getty Images announced June 7 that they would seek damages from the Websites they feel encroached on their legal territory.

Jolie dished last week with CNN's Anderson Cooper about giving birth ("everybody was so lovely"), sharing her millions with various charities (the United States' "priorities are quite strange" about what it chooses to spend its money on), and coping with one-year-old Zahara's jealousy upon Shiloh's arrival:

"Z is jealous because she's still a little girl," Jolie explained. "Maddox loves her. Because when Z came home she was older, she was seven months old. So for Mad it's like having this tiny little pet he can hold and look at."

And, ladies and gentlemen, rev your flashbulbs--Jolie also told Cooper that she and Pitt are planning to adopt again in the near future.

Al-Qaeda deputy calls for Afghan uprising

2006-06-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, has issued a call for young Afghans to rise up again the "infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands".

The call to civil war, made in a video which also refers to the Kabul riots last month and posted on an Islamic website last night, came as four American soldiers died in fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

Harmid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, responded to the video by calling al-Zawahri "an enemy of the Afghan people" and saying that his country could not tolerate the recent upsurge in violence.

Around 600 Afghans have been killed since May in the worst period of sustained unrest since the fall of the Taleban in November 2001.

The unrest may have been fuelled by an ongoing al-Qaeda propaganda campaign, that has produced six al-Zawahri videos and an audio recording of bin Laden in recent months.

The four American soldiers were killed in combat trying to block the movements of enemy forces in the province of Nuristan, which lies on the border of the Chitral region of northern Pakistan, according to a US military statement. Afghan and US forces have been looking for al-Qaeda and Taleban forces in the area since the middle of April.

A fifth soldier was wounded in the battle, which took place in the Kamdesh district of the province, but is in a stable condition. Nuristan, 5,000 square miles of nearly roadless mountains, forests and deep, terraced gorges, has a long history of independence from the rest of Afghanistan and a 250-mile border with Pakistan that remains largely unguarded.

The al-Zawahri video, which carried the stamp of al-Qaeda's in-house media unit, Al-Sahab Productions, appeared to have been made on May 30, the day after an American lorry ran out of control in Kabul, killing five people and prompting anti-Western riots that cost the lives of a further 20 people in Kabul.

Entitled "American Crimes in Kabul", the tape shows the Egyptian cleric seated in front a black backdrop with an automatic rifle. Unlike other tapes, it carried no English subtitles, only translations into Farsi and Arabic, suggesting it was aimed at Afghans rather than the West.

"I am calling upon the Muslims in Kabul in particular and in all Afghanistan in general and for the sake of God to stand up in an honest stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading Muslim lands," said al-Zawahri.

"I direct my speech today to my Muslim brothers in Kabul who lived the bitter events yesterday and saw by their own eyes a new proof of the criminal acts of the American forces against the Afghani people."

With the Taleban mustering the largest fighting groups since 2001 and US commanders speaking of a likely increase in violence as Nato prepares to take over the military mission to the country, the Afghan President called al-Zawahri "first the enemy of the Afghan people, and then the enemy of the rest of the world".

"This ’War on Terror’ has been limited to Afghanistan soil," Mr Karzai told journalists in Kabul. "We can’t tolerate it forever... in the past three weeks five, six hundred people have died in the country. We want an end to this, a basic end to this."

Al-Qaeda deputy calls for Afghan uprising

2006-06-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

Football World Cup Diary

2006-06-21T06:10:00.000-07:00

Victory for England over Sweden still proves elusive as Sven’s men draw 2-2 with Lars Lagerback’s side in Cologne.

The result gives England the Group B leadership going into the knockout phase of the tournament, but comes at a particularly heavy price. Barely a minute has passed when Michael Owen breaks down near the touchline without a Swedish player anywhere in the vicinity. Post-game chat about scans and waiting and seeing hardly masks the likelihood that Owen will not return for the duration of Germany 2006.

If the prognosis on Owen is dire, the introduction of Peter Crouch in his absence represents yet more terror for England fans. On a booking from an earlier game, Crouch has to get through 89 minutes or more without getting himself suspended, thus reducing England’s striking options to a half-fit megastar and a young boy who seems to have bunked onto the plane without anyone noticing.

Crouch achieves this aim without any real alarm, but his actual contribution to the game is limited. Joe Cole is easily England’s best player, and as if to cement this fact rattles in an audacious volley to give his side the lead on 34 minutes. Six minutes after half-time that revered defender David Beckham is somehow left marking Swedish striker Marcus Allback who sends a deft header in past the despairing and frankly over-dramatic efforts of Ashley Cole on the line.

A tiring Wayne Rooney is then withdrawn for the previously rested Steven Gerrard, and it is the Liverpool man who again pops up to head England into what looks like a winning lead five minutes before time. However, more shambolic defending sees John Terry completely miss a long throw, an error compounded by Sol Campbell’s aimless hack which allows Henrik Larsson to steal a point at the death;

“We did not defend very well against set-pieces - we have to work on that before the next game.” says Sven, stating the bleeding obvious.

Unimpressed with his team’s first half display, Lagerback is more positive about the action after the break;

“It was better in the second half. We almost deserved three points. We were the better team in the second half.” he claims.

Sweden’s draw is enough to take them through to the second round, but they would have been there anyway thanks to Trinidad and Tobago’s inability to beat Paraguay in Kaiserslautern. The South Americans win 2-0 thanks to a Brent Sancho own goal on 25 minutes and Nelson Cuevas’ 86th minute goal;

“This victory doesn't mean much in the way of this World Cup, but it does give the young players, who are our future, something to build on.” suggests an optimistic Paraguay coach Anibal Ruiz;

“This has been a great experience. In future maybe our players will show a bit more confidence.” comments Trinidad and Tobago coach Leo Beenhakker, whose side finish bottom of Group B as a result of their loss.

England face Ecuador in the last 16 in Stuttgart on Sunday (June 25) after Luis Suarez’s side are soundly whipped 3-0 by Germany in Berlin. The Germans take Group A honours to set up a meeting with Sweden in Munich on Saturday (June 24) with a brace from the tournament’s leading scorer Miroslav Klose and a third from Lucas Podolski;

“We need to improve if we want to go any further in this World Cup.” concedes Suarez, though he is speaking some hours before watching John Terry and Sol Campbell defend throw-ins;

“The team know if we play to our full potential we need fear no one, but we must keep our feet on the ground.” warns German boss Jurgen Klinsmann.

Group A wooden spoonists are Costa Rica after they go down 2-1 to fellow also-rans Poland in Hanover. Ronald Gomez fires in a 24th minute free-kick for Los Ticos but a brace by Bartosz Bosacki gives the Poles all three points;

“It would have been a pity to go home without any points or goals.” says a slightly relieved Polish coach Pawel Janas, before turning his attentions to his future;

“I have not thought about resigning and I am not going to decide right now.”

Costa Rica boss Alexandre Guimaraes feels his side could have done better in all three of their Group A games;

“We paid dearly for our distractions. They cost us in all three matches.” he laments.

By Stephen Orford

21 June 2006

Where does Karzai go from here?

2006-06-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

Monday's riots in Kabul sent a wake-up call to the US-allied Afghan government for a stronger police force.
By Rachel Morarjee | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Mustafa surveys the broken shelves and shattered glass of his jewelry shop in Kabul, and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees soldiers from the Afghan National Army on the streets.

"Bringing the Army out is the only decent thing [President] Karzai has done in four years. Now the soldiers are here, the police can't steal and hassle people and we feel safe," he says, as a crowd of shopkeepers nod in agreement.

Their shops were at the heart of the worst street violence to hit the Afghan capital since 2001, after a US military traffic accident triggered a riot that engulfed the city leaving 14 dead and over 100 injured.

Haji Mohammed Akram, a shop owner who watched police flee their posts as guards from the Kabul bank opposite his shop fired on armed looters, says he can feel his hopes of peace ebbing. "If this is what happens when we have a traffic accident, can you imagine how quickly the city would fall if the enemy attacked?" he asks.

Four days later the streets are quiet, but confidence in President Hamid Karzai's government is at an all-time low. Residents and observers say that the government needs to restore credibility by reforming the Afghan police and insisting on better conduct for foreign troops.

"Clearly the government was totally unable to respond to the crisis. If this is the state of our police force then we are in serious trouble," says a Western diplomat, noting the violence unmasked weaknesses within the government. As the riots raged on Monday, Interior Ministry officials in charge of the police took their phones off the hook, while Karzai failed to make a public statement on TV until the riots - lasting some eight hours - had run their course.

"It was a wake-up call.... It underlined how badly things have gone and how we are nowhere near where we need to be," the diplomat adds.

After electing a Parliament and a president, Afghanistan has been hailed as a success story and frequently compared favorably with Iraq, where security is much worse. However, some of the initial accomplishments here are being overshadowed. Militias run riot, the police force barely functions, and most Afghans have seen little change in their lives, making it easier for a resurgent Taliban to recruit.

To halt the downward slide Karzai must look squarely at the reasons which fueled the riots, diplomats and businessmen say.

"The situation is not of his own making, but Karzai is locked in a palace and surrounded by people who tell him everything is hunky-dory. He needs to reach out," says Daud Sultanzoi, an MP for Ghazni Province where the Taliban insurgency has worsened. Palace officials could not be reached.

At the root of the problem is a corrupt, badly paid, and poorly organized police force with low morale. The force is chronically undersupplied, in some places lacking the basics of vehicles and weapons to do more than limited foot patrols. The Taliban often overrun poorly defended police stations in the south, sapping morale. Some police terrorize the general populace - and they are the only face of the government most Afghans see on a daily basis.

Monday's rioting in the capital demonstrated that for many police, concerns for personal safety and sympathy for those in the streets weighed more heavily than their duty to protect property and life. "The police took off their uniforms and joined the looters, so I am worried about the future," says Qasim, a security guard from Badakhshan who works in Kabul.

Lack of nonlethal weapons made crowd-control difficult.

"Why were the police so weak, why didn't they respond? We need special guns, water cannon, rubber bullets. There was no way to deal with unrest in the city," says Shukria Barekzai a legislator in Kabul.

Lack of jobs and a growing despair about the future further fueled the riot. Five years after the fall of the Taliban many parts of Kabul still have no sanitation, intermittent electricity, and open sewers running beside streets clogged with Land cruisers packed with foreigners and the new narco-elite. Reconstruction has come to Afghanistan - including schools, roads, and plans for pipelines - but many residents say it's too little and too slow.

Lastly, resentment against the foreign military presence is growing. US and NATO convoys drive around aggressively, frequently pushing Afghans off the road in their haste to reach destinations safely.

A week before the Kabul crash some 30 civilians had been killed by a US airstrike near Kandahar. Karzai paid a rare visit to the injured survivors and summoned the commander of coalition forces to a meeting over the incident. Such moves can deflect some of the anger - temporarily.

"This wasn't the first accident the Americans had and it won't be the last. They came to bring peace, but if they keep killing Afghans we will riot again," says a shopkeeper at the crash site in northern Kabul who asked not to be identified.

Yahoo, eBay join forces in defense against Google

2006-05-26T01:37:00.000-07:00

A broad alliance between Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc., unveiled Thursday, signals the growing fear of Google Inc. and the lengths to which onetime rivals will go to defend themselves against the fast-growing search engine juggernaut.

The deal gives Yahoo and eBay extra ammunition -- namely, access to a vastly bigger audience -- that they hope will strengthen their positions in the highly competitive Internet industry.

Under the agreement, Yahoo, the world's most heavily trafficked Web site, will sell search and graphical advertising on eBay, the world's biggest e-commerce company. EBay in turn will offer its PayPal payment service, used to transfer money, on the Yahoo site.

The partnership takes to the next level the fight against Google, which hopes to extend a winning streak in online search to an array of new products. Instead of firing bullets, Google's competitors now are lobbing grenades.

"The reason why eBay and Yahoo were thinking about this was to do a defensive move against Google," said Sasa Zorovic, an analyst for Oppenheimer. He said that eBay likely considered Google for the partnership, but given the threat of several new Google products, among them a free classified listing service, GoogleBase, and a payment service, "Google didn't have a chance."

The agreement combines the strengths of both companies and places some of their most lucrative offerings in front of larger audiences. By doing so, the companies stand to generate additional revenues, although executives declined to offer any estimates.

Testing of the Yahoo-eBay initiative is expected to begin over the next few months, although no financial impact is anticipated for 2006. Full implementation is expected in 2007.

Technology industry insiders had said in recent weeks that a merger or partnership was likely among some major Internet companies, and Yahoo and eBay were prime contenders. Their services were seen as the most complementary among the potential suitors, particularly because they have the least overlap of existing services.

Such "co-opitition" is sweeping the Internet industry, significantly shuffling the landscape. "Co-opitition" describes the complex relationship many Internet companies have with peers that are simultaneously business partners and rivals.

Although Yahoo and eBay will join forces in many arenas, they will continue to compete in online auctions. Yahoo plans to continue its modest U.S. auction business rather than replace it with eBay's dominant marketplace.

"Clearly there has been an increasing level of co-opitition, shall we say, among the various major players in the Internet over the last two or three years, which has been increasing pace over the last few months," said Derek Brown, an analyst for Pacific Growth Equities. "Google has in a relatively short period of time dramatically changed the playing field for quite a few industry giants."

An example of the change came Thursday when Google said it had completed a deal to distribute its search toolbar and other software in Dell computers. The agreement kicks sand in the eye of Microsoft Corp., whose software traditionally has been bundled on computers without other companies being able to do the same.

Analysts said that combining forces in the Internet industry is especially important given the continued success of Google, which has introduced a flurry of new products, many outside its search-engine roots. The alliance between Yahoo and eBay could help those companies combat Google's threat.

"This is good for business and good for users," said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer. "I think it's a very important deal for both companies."

Until now, eBay has made only limited efforts to capitalize on Internet advertising, a lucrative business for other Web sites. The company generated $36.6 million in ad revenue in the first quarter, compared with $1.39 billion in total revenue.

Most of eBay's money comes from small fees collected in its marketplace and from commissions from the PayPal payment service. PayPal has proved to be a solid revenue contributor, netting eBay a percentage of each transaction it handles.

Yahoo will be the sole supplier to eBay of graphical ads, which include banner ads and other colorful kinds of marketing messages. In addition, Yahoo will supply eBay with search engine ads on some of eBay's search-results pages.

Search ads provide a big part of Yahoo's revenue. Much like Google, clients use Yahoo to distribute their ads across its network. Each time a Web user clicks on one of these ads, Yahoo is paid a fee. In the case of the ads appearing on eBay, Yahoo plans to share the revenue.

EBay executives have underscored that its users enter a huge number of searches on the Web site daily. But they have avoided adding much search advertising because the ads would encourage users to go elsewhere and therefore infuriate eBay sellers.

But John Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces, said the ads will be done in such a way as to offer little competition to sellers. For example, he said a search for shoes would turn up only pitches for complimentary products, such as socks.

Additionally, in the agreement, the companies plan to explore so-called click-to-call advertising that will be accessible to users of Yahoo's instant messenger with voice capabilities, and eBay's Skype Internet calling service. The technology would allow users to simply click on an icon to call an online advertiser about making a transaction.

The companies also plan to introduce a co-branded version of the eBay toolbar to include Yahoo search and links to Yahoo's home page.

Thursday's deal applies only to U.S. operations of both companies. However, analysts believe that the agreement may be expanded elsewhere -- and to other products -- if it proves successful.

"Yahoo isn't as strong in Europe; eBay isn't as strong in Asia," said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst for Hoefer & Arnett. "From both sides, you'd want to partner in the same way in those markets."

Yahoo's shares were up $1.13 in trading Thursday to close at $32.92, or 3.6 percent. EBay's shares were up $3.68 to $33.88, or 12.2 percent.

Australian troops arrive in East Timor : World News

2006-05-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press

THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2006

DILI, East Timor Fierce gunbattles raged in Dili, the capital of East Timor Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding more than a dozen, as international troops arrived in the tiny nation to help it quell a rebellion by disgruntled ex-soldiers.

A South Korean bystander was shot in the neck and rushed to a hospital, Yonhap news agency said, as dozens of foreigners fled the country on the third day of fighting between soldiers loyal to the government and recently dismissed troops.

Firefights erupted in several areas around the capital - including near President Xanana Gusmao's office and the United Nations compound. Homes and business were torched, with plumes of smoke rising over virtually deserted streets.

The first international peacekeepers arrived in an Australian Royal Air Force plane, welcomed by hundreds of East Timorese seeking refuge at the airport who clapped, cried and shouted "Thank God!"

The Australian troops in full combat gear immediately fanned out across the airport on the outskirts of the capital, taking up positions in the grass.

Soldiers and police from New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia have also said they would help.

East Timor, the world's youngest nation, has been plagued by unrest since March when more than 40 percent of its armed forces were fired after going on strike to protest alleged discrimination in the military.

Some hard-liners fled the capital last month after participating in deadly riots, bunkering down in surrounding hills and threatening guerrilla warfare if they were not reinstated.

Two former soldiers and an army captain have been killed since late Wednesday, said the military and Lieutenant Gastao Salsinha, a spokesman for the ex-soldiers. Fourteen ex-soldiers were wounded, Salsinha said.

One soldier and one of the ex-soldiers died in gunbattles Tuesday.

The fighting - the worst to hit East Timor since the violence surrounding its bloody break with Indonesia in 1999 - has prompted the fledgling nation's government to ask for international troops.

"We can't control the situation," said Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, adding that his country needed help disarming "renegade troops and police rebelling against the state."

Australia, which led a U.N.-military force into East Timor after Indonesian troops and their militia proxies went on a rampage six years ago, killing 1,500 people, has offered 1,300 troops, ships, helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

The first batch, nearly 100 commandos, arrived Thursday to help secure Dili's airport.

"It's our expectation that this will ensure that the airport remains open and functioning normally," The Australian prime minister, John Howard, said in Canberra.

New Zealand said 60 of its police and soldiers were on their way. Portugal - a former colonizer of East Timor - and Malaysia also agreed to send forces.

Preparing for the worst, dozens of foreigners were fleeing East Timor, including 40 Australian Embassy staff and their families. The U.S. Embassy also ordered the evacuation of all nonessential personnel and advised Americans in the country to leave.

"I feel horrible, like a rat deserting a sinking ship," said Margaret Hall from Australia, who arrived in the country several months ago with an organization that provides maternal and child health care.

"But I'm confident we'll be back," she said as she waited for a flight to Queensland, Australia, with her husband. "The arrival of Australian and New Zealand troops ... will hopefully find a fair way out for everybody."

Meanwhile, the commander of the renegade forces - who is wanted dead or alive by he top military chief of East Timor - said bringing in peacekeepers was the only way to prevent an outbreak of civil war.

This is the only solution," Major Alfredo Reinado, commander of the breakaway force, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"There is no other way, or it will be war forever. The government has taken too long. It is not capable of resolving this," he said.

At the heart of the conflict are the former soldiers' claims they were being discriminated against because they came from the west of the small country, while the military leadership originates from the east.

Indonesia ruled East Timor with an iron fist for 24 years. Human rights groups say as many as 200,000 were killed under its occupation.

DILI, East Timor Fierce gunbattles raged in Dili, the capital of East Timor Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding more than a dozen, as international troops arrived in the tiny nation to help it quell a rebellion by disgruntled ex-soldiers.

A South Korean bystander was shot in the neck and rushed to a hospital, Yonhap news agency said, as dozens of foreigners fled the country on the third day of fighting between soldiers loyal to the government and recently dismissed troops.

Firefights erupted in several areas around the capital - including near President Xanana Gusmao's office and the United Nations compound. Homes and business were torched, with plumes of smoke rising over virtually deserted streets.

The first international peacekeepers arrived in an Australian Royal Air Force plane, welcomed by hundreds of East Timorese seeking refuge at the airport who clapped, cried and shouted "Thank God!"

The Australian troops in full combat gear immediately fanned out across the airport on the outskirts of the capital, taking up positions in the grass.

Soldiers and police from New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia have also said they would help.

East Timor, the world's youngest nation, has been plagued by unrest since March when more than 40 percent of its armed forces were fired after going on strike to protest alleged discrimination in the military.

Some hard-liners fled the capital last month after participating in deadly riots, bunkering down in surrounding hills and threatening guerrilla warfare if they were not reinstated.

Two former soldiers and an army captain have been killed since late Wednesday, said the military and Lieutenant Gastao Salsinha, a spokesman for the ex-soldiers. Fourteen ex-soldiers were wounded, Salsinha said.

One soldier and one of the ex-soldiers died in gunbattles Tuesday.

The fighting - the worst to hit East Timor since the violence surrounding its bloody break with Indonesia in 1999 - has prompted the fledgling nation's government to ask for international troops.

"We can't control the situation," said Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, adding that his country needed help disarming "renegade troops and police rebelling against the state."

Australia, which led a U.N.-military force into East Timor after Indonesian troops and their militia proxies went on a rampage six years ago, killing 1,500 people, has offered 1,300 troops, ships, helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

The first batch, nearly 100 commandos, arrived Thursday to help secure Dili's airport.

"It's our expectation that this will ensure that the airport remains open and functioning normally," The Australian prime minister, John Howard, said in Canberra.

New Zealand said 60 of its police and soldiers were on their way. Portugal - a former colonizer of East Timor - and Malaysia also agreed to send forces.

Preparing for the worst, dozens of foreigners were fleeing East Timor, including 40 Australian Embassy staff and their families. The U.S. Embassy also ordered the evacuation of all nonessential personnel and advised Americans in the country to leave.

"I feel horrible, like a rat deserting a sinking ship," said Margaret Hall from Australia, who arrived in the country several months ago with an organization that provides maternal and child health care.

"But I'm confident we'll be back," she said as she waited for a flight to Queensland, Australia, with her husband. "The arrival of Australian and New Zealand troops ... will hopefully find a fair way out for everybody."

Meanwhile, the commander of the renegade forces - who is wanted dead or alive by he top military chief of East Timor - said bringing in peacekeepers was the only way to prevent an outbreak of civil war.

This is the only solution," Major Alfredo Reinado, commander of the breakaway force, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"There is no other way, or it will be war forever. The government has taken too long. It is not capable of resolving this," he said.

At the heart of the conflict are the former soldiers' claims they were being discriminated against because they came from the west of the small country, while the military leadership originates from the east.

Indonesia ruled East Timor with an iron fist for 24 years. Human rights groups say as many as 200,000 were killed under its occupation.

Helicopter Crash Sparks Clash in Iraq : Iraq News

2006-05-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

Shiites in Basra Attack British Troops

By Nelson Hernandez and Omar Fekeiki

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 7, 2006; Page A22

BAGHDAD,May 6 -- A British helicopter crashed Saturday morning in the southerncity of Basra, touching off a confrontation in which hundreds ofcheering Shiite demonstrators pelted British soldiers with gasoline bombs.

The British Defense Ministry released a statement confirming that soldiers had been killed in the incident, but a military spokesman would not specify how many until their next of kin could be notified. Iraqi firefighters and police officials said they pulled four bodies from the wreckage, news services reported.

A British military spokesman, Maj. Sebastian Muntz, said the area was cordoned off by British soldiers and Iraqi police and that the troops were investigating the cause of the crash. Iraqi police officials quoted by news services said the helicopter appeared to have been hit by a rocket.

A witness who gave only his first name, Mohammed, for fear of retaliation, said in an interview that he had seen a rocket fired from an alley in the nearby Tamimiya neighborhood before the crash.

British armored vehicles and ambulances that rushed to the scene were soon surrounded by a crowd of supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The al-Jazeera television network broadcast images of demonstrators pumping their fists in the air as they chanted, "Victory to the Mahdi Army!" -- a Shiite militia loyal to Sadr.

British troops attempted to regain control of a street in the crowded, run-down neighborhood, which was filled with smoke from burning tires. Muntz said people in the crowd lobbed Molotov cocktails and makeshift grenades and that a smattering of gunfire could be heard. No soldiers were reported hurt.

Police said four Iraqi adults and a child were killed in the clashes and 30 civilians were injured, the Associated Press reported.

Other images broadcast on Iraqi television showed a British soldier firing his rifle into the air in an apparent attempt to quell the unrest. Other footage showed a group of people attempting to drag away an Iraqi man who had been wounded or killed. It was not clear how he had been hurt.

"It's been quite a volatile situation down there in Basra this afternoon," Muntz said. "It's probably too early to confirm what's happened there."

The incident illustrated the growing unruliness in Basra, which has experienced little of the sectarian strife that has affected other parts of the country. Basra's predominantly Shiite Muslim population generally opposed Saddam Hussein, and the city has been relatively tranquil since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. Yet violence has escalated as rival militia groups affiliated with Shiite political parties fight for influence.

Residents of Basra -- Iraq's second-largest city -- have also had an increasingly adversarial relationship with the British army, which has occupied the area since the invasion. The 8,000 British troops have repeatedly clashed with Sadr's militia, which is stridently opposed to the presence of foreign soldiers in Iraq. The British also attempted to disarm Iraqi police units earlier this year, arguing that they have been infiltrated by militia members.

Residents were enraged by the discovery in February of a video from 2004 showing British troops beating an Iraqi teenager. The governor of Basra province broke off relations with the British force after the video became public, but reestablished them in recent weeks. Prior to the helicopter crash, 104 British troops had died in Iraq.

The violence Saturday was not confined to Basra, as insurgents continued their assault on the Iraqi military. A suicide bomber blew himself up at an Iraqi army base in Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, killing three Iraqi soldiers, said Brig. Gen. Abdulaziz Muhammed Jasim, a spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

The bomber, dressed in an Iraqi army uniform, made his way into the base of the 4th Iraqi Army Division and exploded his explosive belt amid a crowd of soldiers, Jasim said. The attack came three days after 17 men were killed at a police recruiting station in Fallujah.

"This is a very normal scene now," Jasim said. "The terrorists realize that people are willing to join the security forces, and therefore they want to intimidate them."

At least 12 other Iraqis died in bombings and shootings across the country Saturday, according to police and news reports, and Baghdad police discovered the bodies of 13 people who had been kidnapped and killed.

A roadside bomb also killed a U.S. soldier traveling in Baghdad on Friday, the military said in a statement Saturday.

Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad, Hassan Shammari in Baqubah and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.

Rescuers turn to explosives : World News

2006-05-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

RESCUERS desperate to reach two trapped Tasmanian miners will use low-impact explosives to blast through the last section of rock, but warn the men are still many hours from freedom.

Frustrated by rock that is much harder than expected, rescuers have revised their strategy to reach Todd Russell, 34, and Brant Webb, 37, who have spent their 12th night trapped underground at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine.

About 50 small holes are being drilled into rock that is five times harder than concrete. Low-impact explosives will then be inserted to break it up.

Rescuers must mine horizontally through 1.5 metres of rock before moving upwards to the cavity where Mr Russell and Mr Webb have been trapped since the evening of April 25.

The decision to revert to explosives was made after a failed earlier attempt to ream out a pilot hole in the rock at the mine.

Residents of the small mining town, who have waited with bated breath since the miners were discovered alive last Sunday, had hoped the men might be out in the early hours of today.

But Australian Workers Union national secretary Bill Shorten today said it could be many hours until the men taste freedom.

"The rock that is being encountered is just a lot harder than expectations and the work is painstaking and could take many hours to come yet," he said.

"People within the (mine) organisation, the rescue, thought things might go well.

"But what's happened is when the (rescuers) are actually at the face of this one-metre tunnel, the rock is just incredibly difficult."

Rescuers had switched to drilling after they realised using jack hammers was like "throwing kleenex at rock," he said.

The narrowness of the rescue tunnel means only one rescuer can drill into the rock at any given time.

But he is helped by another rescuer kneeling behind him to help him hold the drill, which weighs up to 40kg.

He said about 50 small holes were being drilled into the rock.

"Then what they might do is (use) a very low-impact explosive ... perhaps gunpowder, comparable to a shotgun pellet," he said.

Mr Shorten said the plan could change, and warned rescuers would reach the men "later rather than sooner".

"We just need to go back to the mantra of slow and steady," he said.

He said the trapped men remained in good spirits.

The rescuers are on six-hour shifts.

"The hard work is being done by three men every six hours, Mr Shorten said.

"It's hard work, but none of the rescuers are sooks."

Earlier, medical experts said the miners would be kept together after their release to ease their readjustment to life.

Launceston General Hospital is preparing to treat the men and chief executive Stephen Ayre said they would probably share a room.

Psychologists had suggested that, and that they not (not) be separated quickly.

Doctors will assess the men for kidney function, deep vein thrombosis and other health problems, Mr Ayre said.

But he said their relative good health may mean they spend only a day or so in hospital.

He warned that the level of media interest in their story could compound their psychological trauma.

"I think probably one of the first things would be the psychological trauma or the shock of suddenly being inundated and being the focus of attention," he told the broadcaster.

"I mean, they're fairly isolated down there, they're only talking to a single person at a time."

Mr Ayre said any celebratory beer the men might have been fantasising about may have to wait.

"It'll depend on their clinical situation," he said.

"If their hydration isn't quite good enough, alcohol can make that worse."

Marathon boy Budhia Singh :India News

2006-05-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

For his armies of cheering fans in India's slums, he is a small but nimble miracle, destined to run his way into history as one of the world's greatest athletes.

Budhia Singh, a four-year-old urchin, can complete a 26-mile marathon faster than many runners who are twice his height and many times his age.

But just as fame and fortune beckon - and a trip to Britain to star in a television documentary - doctors who have examined the child phenomenon have laid down an early finishing line to his career.

Alarmed at television footage of him collapsing in the final stages of a record-breaking 43-mile run, Indian health officials ordered police to take him into hospital on Friday for tests to see if the intense exercise was damaging his young body.

Results delivered yesterday confirmed those fears - with doctors warning that he will soon be a physical wreck.

"Making a child this age run marathons on a regular basis will lead to him being physically burnt out in a few years", said Dr Manabendra Bhattacharya of the Sports Authority of India, who discovered that Budhia had abnormally high pulse and blood pressure readings. "It's not desirable to submit such a young body to so much stress and strain. Those who think they're doing the child a service by promoting him to run such long distances are causing him terrible damage."

Budhia - hailed as the world's youngest marathon runner, although he has no birth certificate to prove his age - is now the subject of a legal wrangle between the state authorities and his coach, who stands accused of exploiting and maltreating the boy.

The controversy is being played out amid huge media interest in the boy's story, a tale of rags to riches that has transfixed the Indian public. The son of an illiterate dishwasher mother and an alcoholic beggar father, Budhia was sold for 800 rupees (£10) to a street hawker after his father died three years ago.

His physical stamina was spotted by a judo coach, Biranchi Das, who caught him bullying another child near his club one day and ordered him to him run round an athletics track as a punishment. When he returned five hours later, expecting the child to be long gone, he found him still doing laps.

Since then Mr Das, who claims to have legally adopted him, has been training him up, feeding him a high-protein diet of meat, eggs, milk and soya beans. He runs up to 20 miles every second day, and has taken part in six big races, bringing offers of lucrative sponsorship deals, according to Mr Das.

But his achievements have been less well received by some government officials, who are anxious to counter India's image as a country that turns a blind eye to child exploitation. Pramila Malik, a minister of state for women and child welfare, accused Mr Das of turning the boy into "a performing
monkey".

Mr Das, 39, said that he was making no money out of Budhia and insisted he only had the child's interests at heart. "I have a doctor check on him every few days and he's fine," he said.

He has the backing of Budhia's mother, Sukanti Singh, 35, and her son is likewise unconcerned. "I love running, I never get tired," he said.

Budhia is due to fly to London on May 15 at the behest of British-based Touch Productions, which is making a documentary about him for Five and the Discovery Channel. Touch says that it is paying the expenses of the trip but that no fee is being paid to the boy, his mother or carers.

British experts sided with Dr Bhattacharya. Richard Godfrey, a sports science lecturer and former chief physiologist at the British Olympic Medical Centre, said: "This lad will probably stop growing soon because the impact from his running will have damaged the ends of his bones."

Malcolm Brinkworth, the executive producer of Touch Productions, stressed that the health concerns would be raised. "We are making an objective documentary, looking very carefully at the issues involved. We're not trying to be part of any process of exploiting this child," he said.

Microsoft Seals Massive Deal : Technology News

2006-05-05T11:57:00.001-07:00

By Keith Regan
www.EcommerceTimes.com
Part of the ECT News Network
05/05/06 10:21 AM PT

Microsoft made it clear that it is "deadly serious about ad-supported services, and about working closely, even humbly, with marketers," JupiterResearch analyst David Card said.

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Another piece of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) ambitious advertising distribution strategy fell into place Thursday with the software maker's announcement that it had closed its rumored purchase of in-game advertising pioneer Massive.

Microsoft did not disclose financial details, but analysts have estimated the sale would be worth between US$200 million and $400 million. Microsoft announced the deal at the wrap of its two-day Strategic Account Summit, an online advertising confab.

Targeting Specific Demographics
The deal "broadens Microsoft's commitment to providing advertisers with a highly effective means of reaching specific demographic groups," the company said.

"Advertisers are having a tough time connecting with the elusive 18- to 34-year-old male demographic, because this group continues to spend less time watching TV and more time playing video games," commented Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president of global sales and marketing and chief media revenue officer at Microsoft.

"Massive and Microsoft can help lead with our shared vision of delivering more targeted, measurable and effective opportunities for advertisers to reach today's youth audience in a largely untapped market," she added.

Microsoft also intends to target a new demographic with the technology, populating so-called "casual games" that are favored by women in the 30 to 35 age group with ads as well.

Massive's technology enables dynamic advertising to be placed in video games played by individuals or in online settings. The ads often appear similar to product placements in movies and TV shows, with advertising messages appearing on pizza boxes, soda cans and billboards and posters, as players move through the virtual gaming world.

Microsoft plans to keep New York-based Massive's employees at their current locations, with no staff reductions in the works. Massive will also keep offices in London, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Sydney, Australia, Cologne, Germany and Toronto.

The purchase -- reports first surfaced more than a week ago -- seems a fitting capstone to Microsoft's advertising summit, which focused heavily on how Microsoft aims to outdo Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) by providing tightly focused and demographically sensitive advertising to niche audiences on a range of platforms.

Gaining Traction
In addition to its obvious applications in the Xbox 360 and Xbox live gaming environments, the Massive technology is likely to help Microsoft create a dynamic ad delivery approach for other areas -- such as the Windows Live Web services platform or MSN , its now purely content-focused portal.

Massive CEO Mitchell Davis said the company would maintain its existing customer and business relationships, which include ties with several high-profile advertisers and some of the major game publishers -- even some that make titles for platforms that compete with Microsoft's Xbox.

"With Microsoft, we have the prospect of extending our technology into a vast array of new markets and online environments," Davis said.

Massive launched its ad system in 2004 and took in more than $15 million in venture funding over the last two years as it sought to build out its network of advertisers and game makers. It has built significant momentum lately, signing a deal with Major League Baseball and Take Two Interactive to populate MLB-branded games with dynamic advertising messages.

Not Kidding Around
Massive predicted the market for in-game ads will grow to some $2 billion by 2010, which may be optimistic, even though the industry is likely to enjoy robust growth. The market was worth $56 million last year, according to the Yankee Group, and will grow more than 10-fold to $732 million by 2010.

Whatever the amount, the prospect of growing ad revenue will undoubtedly be a strong incentive for game publishers to create new titles by improving the economics of game development, something that has taken a hit in recent years due to piracy and other issues.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is building out a varied landscape for advertisers to populate with their messages, according to David Card, an analyst at JupiterResearch. He said the Massive buy underscored the message Microsoft repeated all week -- that it would take the Google online ad model and go one better.

Beyond the bluster: Iran at a crossroads :Iran News

2006-05-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

The international nuclear standoff with Iran, which is likely to culminate in United Nations sanctions given the present state of affairs, now has the distinct possibility of pushing Iran back to where it was in the early and mid-1980s, that is, international isolation.

This possibility is already foreshadowed by the draft resolution that was circulated at the UN Security Council, calling on the world community to prevent the transfer of goods, material and technology that "could contribute to Iran's [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and missile programs".

In light of Russia's recent announcement of its intention to sell two new nuclear power plants to Iran, the pertinent question is, of course, whether or not President Vladimir Putin will be able to continue the Russia-Iran nuclear cooperation when such a cooperation would put him at odds not only with the Security Council but with the United States, Europe and the "international community."

The draft resolution calls on Iran to halt all uranium-enrichment-related activities as well as the construction of a heavy-water plant and threatens to take "additional steps" if necessary. It gives the International Atomic Energy Agency chief another chance to seek Iran's compliance with its, and the IAEA's, demands. And even if China and Russia as permanent members to the Security Council block a formal UN resolution, the chances are that the US will seek to put together a "coalition of the willing" to impose its own sanctions.

Assuming that Iran ignores the UN - "doesn't give a damn", as President Mahmud Ahmadinejad put it - the road ahead is rather straightforward, that is, the resort to Chapter VII of the UN Charter, declaring Iran's behavior a threat to international peace and security, barring all member states from any nuclear cooperation with Iran, as well as "targeted sanctions".

Implications for Iran's foreign policy
Iran is fairly well equipped to deal with the rather toothless sanctions posed by the US that date back to the hostage crisis of 1979. Short of an oil embargo, Iran can financially withstand any lesser sanctions such as travel bans, a freeze on assets of leaders and the like.

On the other hand, the Iranian economy will suffer grievously should foreign investors stay away, foreign contracts be canceled or put in indefinite limbo, and the bills for foreign imports skyrocket, translating into higher unemployment and economic stagnation. That would come on top of a war economy where more and more of the government's budget is swallowed up by defense spending. At a minimum, it will slow Iran's economic growth, about which Ahmadinejad boasted recently.

Thus, looking ahead, a year or so from now, with Iran under international isolation, the picture that emerges is rather bleak - an Iran turned into a Middle Eastern version of isolated North Korea. That is hardly what Iran's foreign-policy establishment aimed to achieve during the past two decades.

The pressure on Iran could, of course, worsen if there are additional punitive measures such as the exclusion of Iran from international sports, cultural and scientific events, as advocated by certain hawkish politicians in the West. The very stigma of becoming a pariah state is unwelcome news to Iran's foreign-policy decision-makers who have, over the years, expended considerable energy in cultivating Iran's foreign ties, regionally and internationally. Without doubt, the negative repercussions of UN actions against Iran would be far-reaching, adversely impacting the whole edifice of Iran's foreign policy.

To avoid or minimize the regime's vulnerabilities, Iran's behavior has been characterized by a fluid, mixed response, evincing the tough line in public - "we don't give a damn" - with an increasingly finessed diplomatic approach geared toward stalling the US-EU march to sanctions.

This might explain why Iran rebutted the recent statement by a military leader, regarding Iran's intention to attack Israel in case of an assault by the US, saying it was not "valid". The pendulum had swung too far in the direction of bellicose rhetoric supplanting diplomacy, and as Dr Hassan Rowhani, the former chief nuclear negotiator, has candidly stated, Iran welcomes dialogue and diplomacy.

The subtle diplomatic approach by Rowhani and his increasingly prominent role in formulating Iran's response to this dangerous crisis suggests that Iran is actually in the throes of a serious soul-search and quite another lurch "back to the past", that is, back to the prudent nuclear diplomacy prior to Ahmadinejad, dictated by the survival prerogatives of the regime and Iran's national interests.
It is not too late to prevent Iran's descent to another dark era of international isolation, bringing misery and deprivation to the Iranian people, who have already sacrificed so much. To demand from the present generation that it make another historic sacrifice, as it did during the eight-year war with Iraq (which might have ended sooner without the resistance from hardline politics), is asking too much, and it is doubtful that the educated middle-class Iranians would go for it.

First step: Acknowledging a crisis
Several months ago, Ahmadinejad questioned the applicability of the term "crisis" for the nuclear issue. Yet today there is no doubt that there is a crisis with the potential for war, something that Iran's former envoy to the UN, Deputy Oil Minister Hadi Nejadhosseinian, openly admitted in his recent trip to India.

His expressed concern about a possible war with the US is clearly shared by nearly all the top-ranking Iranian officials, many of whom are unhappy about the adverse impact it would have on their respective programs, be it oil, gas, trade, communication or construction.

By acknowledging that Iran faces a formidable international crisis, the government can brace for the consequences better by preparing the population, as well as search more energetically, and diplomatically, for a formula out of it, since the present endeavors have not had the desired results - at least not yet.

By definition, a crisis is a moment of opportunity as well as danger, and to a large extent its evolution depends on the acumen, imagination and will of the political leaders to chart a course leading away from danger. That means seizing on the nuclear crisis's opportunity to reach a modus vivendi with the US, to make more transparent their singular commitment to protect Iran's national interests and define the limits of their commitments to purely religious and/or ideological values in conjunction with national-security interests.

For the moment, the chances of achieving a positive outcome are held back by the crisis's powerful momentum toward a complete breakdown - of Iran's relations with the West, with the UN and, indeed, with much of the international community. This is connected to a related breakdown in Iran's foreign-policy priorities and interests.

Post-populist politics
On a broad level, what Iran may need to pull itself out of the present crisis is a political housecleaning following the parameters of a yet-to-be-defined post-populist politics commensurate with Iran's needs and priorities unblemished by the ideological "noise" marring the picture of what Iran's national and security interests dictate both in the short and long terms.

The problem with this scenario unfolding is that, perversely, the present crisis fuels the very basis of populist politics in Iran, by forcing the government to increase its reliance on its mass base of "citizen soldiers". Yet a clue to the riddle of Iranian politics, as long as this pattern of politics continues, is how long Iran will keep on playing to the standards of what we may aptly refer to as the "heroic society".

To leapfrog to a "post-heroic" society is, however, what is precisely needed for Iran to come back down to earth and stop acting as it if speaking on behalf of the entire Muslim world, and limit its rhetoric to Iran's national concerns and priorities. The movement aspect of the Islamic Republic must be preceded by the strictly state aspect.

The dual revolutionist-statist orientation of the state has caused certain inconsistencies that must now be addressed, along with the serious side-effects of the new trend toward a greater emphasis on ideology.

This is exceedingly difficult given the multiple sources of populist politics in Iran epitomized by Ahmadinejad. It involves a politics of identity and "symbol-wielding" reliance on the linguistic reservoir of the revolution that makes any shrinking from the ideological and public commitments of the state problematic today.

Iran is caught on the horns of a dilemma: the very process of distancing itself from the core fundamentalist values, without having anything to replace them, has today caused a "restorationist" politics that, in the realm of foreign policy at least, amounts to a vicious circle.

Still outstanding after all these years is the answer to the question of which approach Iran should have to today's age of globalization, to the international system and to international relations. Iran's leaders have called for a long-term, 20-year economic policy, yet the foreign-policy dimension of this is hitherto absent and requires serious attention.

This aside, to call for a post-populist politics is not to be mistaken for jettisoning all those populist reservoirs of power in Iran, rather to reconstruct the state-making process along new lines whereby the harmful effects of "politics from below" are kept in check and rational decision-making is not put in jeopardy by political rhetoric.

Ahmadinejad and his circle of policymakers have repeatedly criticized the one-dimensional "politics of appeasement" under former president Mohammad Khatami, and their corrective militancy has not been entirely without positive aspects, such as in reasserting Iran's regional role, among others. But, as called for by various policy analysts and pundits in Iran today, a "balancing act" is required, and that inevitably means re-embracing some of the foreign-policy prescriptions of the Khatami era.

Iran's foreign policy is today at a critical crossroads, where there are alternative roads to the past, one being the isolationism of the 1980s and the other the integrationist approach of the 1990s. The worse remedy is a mixed approach that would seek in vain to retain elements from both eras. The way forward is to continue, in main essentials, the path of the Khatami era.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He is also author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

Pramod Mahajan losing grip in life’s battle : India News

2006-05-02T11:36:00.000-07:00

MIL/Agencies, May 2, 2006.

Mumbai, May 2 - Pramod Mahajan, BJP leader, who was shot by his brother, seems to be losing his life's battle. He has started Respiratory problem (breathing trouble), which the doctors say is dangerous for him.

Inspite of Doctors best attention, Mahajan's condition is not improving. Even though the next bulletin may come after two hours, his conditions on the whole do not support him.

It is really sad for all doctors who are doing their best and the relatives who are continuously praying for Mahajan's better health, since his improvement is showing little positive signs.

Doctors say that it is not possible for them to extract out all the bullets from his body, at least one shall stay there to keep him living.

The deteriorating condition is not due to operations performed on him but due to dialysis trouble and other complications like respiratory problems. Let us hope for the best for this great leader.

Medical students to continue anti-quota strike

2006-04-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

New Delhi: Students of four medical colleges here Thursday decided to continue their stir against a government proposal to hike reservation seats, even as Human Resource Minister Arjun Singh assured them that the matter will be considered after the assembly polls in five states.

"We met the minister and he assured us that he would speak to the prime minister after the assembly elections are over. We have been asked to give them (government) time till May 11 so that the government could discuss the issue," said Aatish Kumar, a doctor of the Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) who was part of the delegation.

The minister assured the students that he would raise the issue before the cabinet after the ongoing elections in five states were over as he was bound by the Election Commission's code of conduct.

On April 5, Arjun Singh had declared that the government was planning to reserve 27 percent of seats for other backward classes (OBCs) in 20 central universities, the Indian Institutes of Management, the Indian Institutes of Technology and other central government funded institutions.

Arjun Singh also apologised to the students for the police action against them Wednesday. Over 400 medical students had clashed with police after they were denied a meeting with the minister a day before.

The minister said that he was always open to meeting students and would meet them prior to raising the issue before the cabinet, according to the students.

Kumar said: "The doctors and the interns have decided to resume work in the hospitals so as not to cause inconvenience to people but all students would remain on strike till May 11. The future course of action would only be decided after the government comes out with its decision on the issue.

"We do not want to trouble the people unnecessarily but we would be forced to take extreme steps and intensify our agitation if the government does not listen to our demands," he added.

Kumar added that this time only the outpatient departments (OPDs) were on strike but all hospitals might stop work after May 11.

"We have also decided to boycott our ongoing examination to take part in the strike. If the government does not want to give us enough opportunities then there is no point for us to study hard and take examinations," said
Soumyendro Chaterjee of the University College of Medical Science (UCMS).

The students of Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC), Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College, Lady Harding Medical College and University College of Medical Science (UCMS) are taking part in the strike.

The strike did not cover the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where the flow of patients is very high, but protestors said its doctors and students were wearing black badges in support of the strike.

"Students from Rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Karntaka have also joined our agitation and we expect more students to come forward as the days progress," said Shewta Sardana of Lady Harding Medical College.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police deployed personnel in huge numbers outside Arjun Singh's Akbar Road residence and at the India Gate where the students were holding protest demonstrations.

Police begin recording statements of Mahajan family

2006-04-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

The police have started recording statements of the family members of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Pramod Mahajan in connection with the assault on him by his younger brother Pravin on Saturday.

* Pramod Mahajan Shot

A team of Worli police is camping at Hinduja hospital, where it is slated to record statements of Mahajan's wife Rekha, son Rahul and brother in-law and senior BJP leader Gopinath Munde.

Among these persons, Rekha and Rahul Mahajan were the closest to the place of the incident while Munde was among the first who had reached Mahajan's flat at Worli to take him to the hospital.

Mahajan was shot at by Pravin at the BJP leader's Worli residence on Saturday morning.

Mahajan's condition continued to be critical after suffering injuries to vital organs like liver, pancreas and small intestine.

Qaeda Video Vows Iraq Defeat for 'Crusader' US : USA News

2006-04-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 —

A man identifying himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, appeared in a video released Tuesday calling the American effort here a "crusader" campaign and denouncing the efforts to form a new Iraqi government.

The 34-minute video, posted on a Web site used by jihadist groups, shows a man who appears to be Mr. Zarqawi, speaking and mesturing,
meeting with his lieutenants, and firing long bursts from an American machine gun in a stretch of empty desert. He has a mustache and a beard, wears black
fatigues and a cap, and at one point Identifies himself by name. He also refers to himself as "the brains of Al Qaeda in Iraq."

The video predicted American "defeat and humiliation" while praising the insurgents in Iraq and urging them on, saying at one point, "They are slaughtering your children and shaming your women."

"God almighty has chosen you to conduct holy war in your lands and has opened the doors of paradise to you," he said. "So mujahedeen, don't dare close those doors."

He also mocked President Bush and accused him of lying to the American people.

"Why don't you tell about the reality of your soldiers and their failure to fight?" he said on the video. "Why don't you tell your people about the soldiers who commit suicide? Why don't you tell your people that your soldiers cannot have any sleep without taking drugs, which makes them like animals?"

He said American troops were "driven by your generals, who are like the crusaders and evangelists, to the slaughterhouse."

Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is believed responsible for dozens of car and suicide bombings here that have killed and wounded thousands of Iraqi civilians. He also took credit for the November bombing of three hotels in Jordan that killed at least 57 people.

While the authenticity of the video could not be verified, an American official said Tuesday night that intelligence agencies had completed an analysis of the video and concluded that the speaker was Mr. Zarqawi. The man who appears in the video bears a strong resemblance to various photos the American and Jordanian governments have distributed of him.

If it is authentic, the video would be the first time that Mr. Zarqawi had willingly shown his face to the world. And it would amount to a public resurfacing after several months of obscurity.

In January, Mr. Zarqawi's group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, declared that it had joined something called The Freedom Fighter Council with several other insurgent groups and submitted itself to the leadership of an Iraqi man, identified as Abdullah al-Baghdadi.

Al Qaeda then stopped taking credit for attacks altogether in Iraq, and the Freedom Fighter Council has not claimed responsibility for the kind of mass murder of civilians for which Mr. Zarqawi has been blamed.

Even so, the suicide attacks and car bombs have continued, and American officials said Mr. Zarqawi's group was the most likely culprit in the destruction of the Golden Shrine in Samarra, which had set off a wave of sectarian bloodletting and brought the country to the brink of civil war, one of his professed goals.

The video, titled "Address to the People," was part propaganda blast against the United States and President Bush, and part paean to the insurgency in Iraq. Though it makes references throughout to Al Qaeda, the video carried the signature of "The Freedom Fighter Council."

"Your mujahedeen sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns against a Muslim state," the speaker said, gesturing with an index finger. "They have stood in the face of this
onslaught for three years."

It wasn't immediately clear why Mr. Zarqawi would release such a video now. It was made public just two days after Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, released an audio tape accusing the West of a "Zionist-crusaders war on Islam," a statement similar in parts to Mr. Zarqawi's.

Many experts believe that there are elements of a rivalry between Mr. Zarqawi and Mr. bin Laden, despite the declaration in 2004 that Mr. Zarqawi was submitting himself to Mr. bin Laden's leadership. While Mr. bin Laden has been in hiding since late 2001, presumably in Pakistan, Mr. Zarqawi has become the world's most active terrorist.

The video released Tuesday opens with an excerpt of a speech by Mr. bin Laden urging men to take up a jihad against the West, and in it, the man identified as Mr. Zarqawi refers to Mr. bin Laden as "our prince."

everal other explanations for releasing the video also suggested themselves, including the possibility that the timing was meant to coincide with the first steps toward a new Iraqi government, which was agreed on last week after a five-month deadlock. The government is made up of leaders from the country's Shiite majority, as well as Kurds and Sunnis. The Sunnis form the backbone of the guerrilla insurgency.

Indeed, American and Iraqi officials have been hoping for months that the greater inclusion of Sunnis in the democratic process could begin to marginalize insurgents and terrorists like Mr. Zarqawi, who have hidden among the population.

In a letter obtained by American forces in January 2004 and believed to have been written by Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian expressed concern that his efforts in Iraq could be undermined by a functioning democracy. In the video, the Iraqi government is singled out.

"By God, you will have no peace in the land of Islam," the speaker says. "Your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse."

He then refers to the Shiites as "Rawafidh," which means, roughly, "rejecter."

"We believe that any government made up of rejecter or godless Kurds or people who call themselves Sunnis is only a collaborators' government, and that it would be a sword in the Islamic nation's body," he said.

Throughout the video, the man claiming to be Mr. Zarqawi spoke in classical Arabic, which did not reveal the Jordanian accent with which he is believed to speak ordinarily.

The video could have been intended to dispel any notion that Mr. Zarqawi is dead or unable to lead his movement. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia said last year that Mr. Zarqawi had been wounded while fighting in Iraq, and there was widespread speculation that he had died. Various statements, including ones believed to have been made by him, asserted that he had recovered from his wounds. There was no mention of any wounds in the video posted Tuesday.

Mr. Zarqawi is perhaps the single most hunted man in Iraq, with the Americans offering a $25 million reward for information leading to his death or capture. His picture, particularly the one taken from a booking photo at a jail, hangs on the walls of American and Iraqi checkpoints here. There are unverified reports that Mr. Zarqawi was in either American or Iraqi custody at some point after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003.

The man in the video cuts a vigorous figure. When he holds up the heavy machine gun, he shows his bare forearms. The scenery surrounding him is mostly flat and brown and bare, suggesting any number of places in Iraq or the Middle East.

In another frame, he is shown poring over a map, and in another he is meeting with someone referred to in a caption as "one of the commanders in Anbar Province," a large area in western Iraq.

Unlike Mr. Zarqawi, the other men in the video are masked. At one point in the tape, a printed imperative flashes across the screen.

"Don't forget to pray for us," it says.

News Source : The New York Times Company

Sri Lanka launches new strikes on Tiger territory :Asia News

2006-04-25T20:43:00.001-07:00

By Peter Apps

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's military launched new strikes on Tamil Tiger areas in the island's northeast on Wednesday, a day after a deadly suicide bomb attack in the capital blamed on rebels shattered a fragile ceasefire.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said Wednesday's strikes came after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fired on naval patrol craft off the eastern port of Trincomalee for a second day.

"The navy is heavily patrolling the area," he said. "They requested air support."

The government launched attacks on Tiger territory on Tuesday after a suspected suicide bomb in the capital killed nine and wounded the army commander.

The attacks were the first official military action since a 2002 ceasefire halted the two-decades-old civil war and raised fears that the Norwegian-brokered truce was on the brink of collapse.

More than 100 people had already died in the bloodiest two weeks since the truce even before a female suicide bomber, disguised to look pregnant, blew herself up at Colombo's high-security army headquarters.

The Tigers' political leader in Trincomalee district, S. Elilan, told the pro-rebel Tamilnet Web site (www.tamilnet.com) that the rebels, who deny all recent attacks, had not attacked the military and that the strikes on them were unprovoked.

He asked the Nordic staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), tasked with observing the ceasefire, if the war had resumed.

"We did not fire a single shot against the Sri Lankan troops
Tuesday," he said. "SLMM should inquire into our complaint and should inform us whether the Sri Lankan Army has launched a full scale war on the LTTE."

The Tigers on Tuesday denied responsibility for the suicide bomb attack, but scant mention was made of it on their Web site.

They indefinitely postponed peace talks that should have taken place last week in Switzerland, accusing the government of obstructing the transport of eastern rebel leaders to a pre-talks meeting.

But diplomats say they were just looking for an excuse to pull out, angry the government has not reined in renegade group of ex-rebels, the Karuna group, which has been attacking the mainstream Tigers in the east.

Some fear the Tigers may be planning a return to the battlefield to win their goal of a separate Tamil homeland.

The government has repeatedly said it will not be provoked, but it changed tactics following the suicide bombing.

Tamilnet said more than 150 shells and bombs had fallen on a stretch of northeastern rebel territory controlling the entrance to Trincomalee, causing "severe damage to the life and property of civilians".

Tamilnet said a primary school had been hit in the raid, but the military said they had no details on targets struck.

Nepal Maoists want "unconditional" elections : Nepal News

2006-04-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

Siddharth Varadarajan

They denounce the King's revival of Parliament; SPA accused of betraying the people's movement by walking into the monarchy's trap

Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala (centre) consults party members after the seven main opposition political parties declared him Prime Ministerial candidate.

KATHMANDU: Even as jubilant crowds took to the streets here on Tuesday, a day after King Gyanendra's climbdown in which he agreed to reinstate Parliament, the message to political leaders was loud and clear: Constitute a constituent assembly and do not deviate from the aims of the pro-democracy movement.

At an impromptu roadside meeting in Vasundhara, not far from the residence of Nepali Congress leader Girija Prasad Koirala, one speaker declared: "If Girija babu does something funny, we will hang him." The crowd around him cheered lustily.

The Seven Party Alliance (SPA), spearheading the anti-monarchy protests, issued a statement welcoming the King's latest proclamation and declaring that Mr. Koirala would be their candidate for Prime Minister.

"Restoration of the House of Representatives is only the beginning for us," the SPA declared, conscious of the mood on the streets. The parties also expressed their commitment to abide by the 12-point agreement reached with Maoists last November.

For the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which has formed a partnership of sorts with the SPA since November last, these assurances are clearly not enough. In a toughly worded statement issued in the name of party leaders Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists denounced the King's revival of Parliament and accused the SPA of betraying the people's movement by walking into the monarchy's trap.

"Continue agitation"

They called on the people to continue their peaceful agitation until "unconditional" elections to a constituent assembly were announced.

"The SPA's unilateral support for the revival of Parliament, without consulting the Maoists, in effect tried to break the spirit behind the 12-point agreement. Why should people believe that Parliament, which has come as a gift from the King, would have the resolve to hold unconditional elections to the constituent assembly?''

Despite the tough language of the Maoists' statement, independent analysts do not consider the gap between the Maoists and the parties to be insurmountable.

Devendra Nath Pandey, former Finance Minister and leading civil society campaigner for democracy who was released on Tuesday after months of incarceration, told The Hindu that the Maoist rejection appeared tactical. "The 12-point agreement had envisaged the reinstatement of Parliament. Though the Maoists had some reservations about it, they endorsed the overall agreement," he said. "I think the Maoist reaction [to the SPA's acceptance of the restoration of Parliament] may be tactical. They can't be seen as welcoming anything the King says. And they had never really been in favour of reinstatement of Parliament. But as long as parties move forward on the constituent assembly, the Maoists will come on board."

Acknowledging that there were procedural and methodological issues involved in an election to a constituent assembly which could not be resolved very quickly, Dr. Pandey stressed that once Parliament convened "it should not get bogged down in business as usual." Going for a constituent assembly has to be the first agenda item and since the Maoists have to be with them on this, negotiations with the Maoists have to begin almost immediately, he said.

Things going well

While it was legitimate for people to be suspicious of the parties, given their record, Dr. Pandey said they behaved very responsibly these past few weeks.

"The parties stood up to the King, to India and to the donor countries. This is very refreshing. Even on choosing a prime ministerial candidate, there wasn't the usual wrangling. Things are going well so far."

Senior diplomats also seemed convinced that the new all-party government's top priority had to be a dialogue with the Maoists structured around the goal of a constituent assembly.

"For this to happen, of course, there would need to be a two-way ceasefire, as well as the removal of the "terrorist" tag from the Maoists and the repeal of certain laws," a diplomat said.

Realistically speaking, say analysts, given the harvest and monsoon seasons as well as the festival of Dasein, the earliest that any elections can be held is November.

Dahab blasts pinned on suicide bombers :Egypt News

2006-04-25T04:47:00.001-07:00

At least two of the three deadly blasts that ripped through the Egyptian tourist resort of Dahab were caused by suicide bombers, security sources said on Tuesday.

"There were at least two suicide bombers involved in the attacks," an official said on condition of anonymity.

At least 23 people were killed in the triple bombings on Monday, the third such attack to strike tourist resorts in the Sinai peninsula in 18 months, according to the interior ministry.

Egyptian state television had initially ruled out suicide bombings and said the explosions were caused by remote-detonated devices.

It was too soon to tell whether any South Africans were killed or wounded in the blasts, the Foreign Affairs Department said on Tuesday.

"It's quite early in the day for us to be able to say," said spokesperson Nomfanelo Kota said shortly after 7am.

"We'll have a better idea when the SA consulate in Egypt is open."

The three explosions, which happened at around 7.15pm local time (5.15pm GMT), left the streets littered with body parts, glass and debris, and smoke billowing over the tourist bazaar.

Reports suggested bombs were detonated at two restaurants and a third at a supermarket in the coastal town. Ambulance workers said many of the dead were foreigners. Other rescue workers said they counted up to 30 dead.

An interior ministry statement said there were 23 dead, including a German boy and two unidentified foreigners. Those wounded included 20 foreigners, among them three Britons, two Italians, two Germans, two French people, three Danes, a South Korean, a Lebanese, a Palestinian, an American, an Israeli and an Australian.

The bombings came a day after the broadcast of a tape by Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaeda leader appeared to justify attacks on western civilians.

Joseph Nazir, who owns a safari company in Dahab, said one of the blasts had destroyed the Al Capone restaurant, one of the busiest in the town. "There is nothing there," he said. "The tables and chairs have gone, there is nothing left."

He said the explosion had covered an area of around 100 square metres and that many Egyptian holidaymakers had been in the area. "Everybody is panicking, a lot of people are crying," he said.

Dr Said Essa, who runs Egypt's Sinai Peninsula rescue squad, said he believed at least 18 people were killed and at least 150 wounded in an explosion at the el-Khaleeg hotel in the el-Masbat section of the town.

The interior ministry said that the three explosions occurred at the Nelson restaurant, Aladdin cafe and one at Ghazala supermarket.

Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said the attacks were carried out by "callous" terrorists who attacked a popular holiday resort on an Egyptian public holiday, he said. "Once again terrorists have demonstrated their callous disregard for human life."

United States President George Bush condemned the blasts as a "heinous act against innocent civilians". Bush, seeming to equate the perpetrators of the attacks in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsula, with al-Qaeda militants who carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States, said: "Today, we saw again that the terrorists are willing to try to define the world the way they want to see it. I strongly condemn the killings that took place." Bush, who was addressing a political fundraiser in Las Vegas, added: "The innocent life lost in Egypt is a heinous act against innocent civilians."

After offering condolences to the victims' families, Bush said: "And I assure the enemy this: we will stay on the offence. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will bring you to justice for the sake of peace and humanity."

Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, whose economy is heavily dependent on tourism, said the blasts were a "sinful terrorist action".

Paul McBeath, a British tourist who witnessed the blasts, said there had been no warning before the bombs ripped through the town. "There were just three loud bangs and people rushing around," he told Sky News. "Everybody is shaken."

One resident, who did not wish to be named, said: "There were body parts and debris in the street. There are ambulances and cars taking people to hospital."

Rene Overgaard, a shipping executive from Cairo who had travelled to Dahab for a long weekend, said he believed the blasts had been well planned and well coordinated. "There were three explosions very close together, near the water fountain close to the Ghazala supermarket," he said. "This was incredibly well coordinated. They went off within seconds of each other."

Dahab, which is on the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern side of the Sinai peninsula, is in its high tourist season, with hotels all along the coast at near capacity, mainly filled with Europeans, Israelis and expatriates living in Egypt.

Terrorist attacks have killed nearly 100 people at several tourist resorts in the Sinai region in the past two years. Bombings in the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, near the Israeli border, killed 34 people in October 2004. Suicide attackers in July in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh killed at least 64 people, mainly tourists.

The Egyptian government has said those who carried out those bombings were locals without international connections, but other security agencies have said they suspect al-Qaeda.

Israel's rescue service said it had raised the alert level. The country's Channel 10 TV reported that Israel had closed the border crossing at Taba, preventing vehicles from entering Sinai. It said a stream of Israeli vehicles was leaving Sinai, where many Israelis go for beach holidays.

Israel's ambassador in Cairo, Shalom Cohen, told Channel 10 that he did not know if any Israelis had been killed. He advised any Israeli tourists in the area to go home. He said the Israeli government had repeatedly warned against visiting the Sinai desert, where Israelis have been targeted in the past. "Unfortunately, the warnings came true," he said.

The Israeli rescue service, Magen David Adom, offered help through the International Red Cross and the Egyptian Red Crescent but has not received a reply, the service said in a statement. It said about 20 ambulances were standing by at the Taba crossing between Israel and Egypt.

On Sunday, the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television station broadcast a new audio tape in which Bin Laden seemed to urge his followers to open a new front in al-Qaeda's war against the west. A voice sounding like the al-Qaeda leader's said the western public shared responsibility for the deeds of their governments, and for what he described as "a continuous crusader-Zionist war on Islam". - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006, Sapa

Related articles :Deadly blasts rock Red Sea resort

5 killed, army chief among many hurt in Sri Lanka blast : Asia News

2006-04-25T04:47:00.000-07:00

By V.S. Sambandan

Colombo, April. 25: The Commander of the Sri Lanka Army, Sarath Fonseka, was injured in an attack by an LTTE woman suicide bomber inside the Army Headquarters complex in Colombo on Tuesday afternoon, the Sri Lankan Defence spokesperson’s office told The Hindu.

At least two others - the suicide bomber and an Army officer - were killed and several others injured in the blast. The severed head of the woman suicide bomber was found several yards away, sources said.

The blast occurred inside the Army Headquarters opposite the Army Hospital. Investigations are on to find out the modus operandi behind the attack, the Inspector General of Police, Chandra Fernando, said.

According to initial reports, the woman suicide bomber had gained entry into the Army Headquarters premises on the pretext of visiting the Army Hospital, which is located inside the complex. She had reportedly hurled herself on the car in which Lt. Gen. Fonseka was travelling.

The Commander of the Army was undergoing treatment at the National Hospital, Colombo, when reports last came in. A battle-hardened Infantryman, Lt. Gen Fonseka took charge as the Commander of the Sri Lanka Army on December 6, 2005.

Fonseka was seriously injured and five of his bodyguards were killed when the suicide bomber attacked the Army headquarters, police said, reports PTI

Ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion suspected to be carried out by Tamil Tiger rebels targeting the army chief against a backdrop of increasing guerrilla attacks on the security forces in recent months.

Initial suspicion pointed to a woman suicide bomber, although investigations were still underway, police said.

Five of Fonseka's bodyguards who were escorting him were killed on the spot, police said adding more than a dozen were wounded.

Fonseka is a high profile military commander who has taken a hard line against the Tamil Tigers, advocating a tougher stance against the rebels in the ongoing peace process.

It was the worst bomb attack in Colombo since July 7, 2004 when a woman suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to her body while being searched at a police station.

Google reaches further into the enterprise : Technology News

2006-04-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

Search giant's new enterprise box should simplify application searches

Google has launched a new search appliance for corporates that can trawl their back-end systems for data and present it to staff via a single, familiar search interface.

Google OneBox for Enterprise has been developed through a series of new partnerships with IT giants including Oracle, Cisco and SAS. The system lets staff retrieve data from business intelligence applications, databases or customer relationship management (CRM) systems via a Google front-end.

"It [used to be hard] to find information in an organisation with the problems of data [in separate] silos," said Google's Matthew Glotzbach. "But we asked what if from a single search box you could
have access to all the information [in your enterprise] securely, very fast and reliably?"

Google also launched an enterprise developer programme, with a web site for developers to access Google Enterprise SDKs. A new API in the Google Search Appliance (GSA) will let developers build OneBox modules and integrate them with home-grown legacy applications, Glotzbach added. The GSA also adds external metadata indexing capabilities and better security, with support for third-party authentication.

Angela Ashenden of analyst Ovum said Google was approaching the corporate search market from a "grass roots" perspective. "It's a good way of getting buy-in from the people in an enterprise who will be implementing this," she said. "There is some very sophisticated technology on the market, which is great for organisations that need configurability and flexibility, but a large proportion of the market doesn't want that complexity."

However, rival enterprise search vendors insisted they were unfazed by the competition. John Lervik, chief executive of Fast, said Google is trying to position itself as "owner of the desktop", ahead of Microsoft's Vista release. "This is a very small part of the enterprise search space [aimed at] the lower end of the market," he argued. "There are very few one-size-fits-all solutions. "

Google also launched a new edition of its Mini appliance, which it said is easier to set up, delivers faster results and supports more traffic.

Nepal's king pledges to return democracy to people

2006-04-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

By John Lancaster, Washington Post KATMANDU, Nepal

In an emergency television address, King Gyanendra declared yesterday that he would hand power to Nepal's main political parties, after 16 days of often-violent protests that have brought the Himalayan country to a standstill.

The king broke days of silence in an effort to calm a street movement that has gained momentum in the face of mass arrests and rushes by baton-wielding police, drawing support from diverse sectors of Nepalese society. Many young protesters demand nothing less than the abdication of Gyanendra, who assumed absolute power 14 months ago.

Early reaction from the street suggested his bid for conciliation would fail. Several leaders of the seven-party alliance coordinating the demonstrations said the statement fell short of their demands. The parties later issued a joint pledge that the protests would ''further intensify."

The unrest has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in Nepal, an impoverished, mostly Hindu country of 28 million people that the outside world knows mostly for its breathtaking Himalayan peaks, including Mount Everest. India, China, and the United States worry about long-term lawlessness and the need for international aid.

US officials have expressed concern that Maoist insurgents, who hold much of the country after a 10-year rebellion, could emerge as the winners if the protests continue.

The United States joined India yesterday in welcoming the king's statement. ''We urge the parties to respond quickly by choosing a prime minister and a Cabinet," Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said. That call could force the parties to choose between capitalizing on the momentum on the street or losing key international backing, especially if the anarchy spreads.

In a 7 p.m. address, a somber-looking Gyanendra, 58, promised that ''executive power of the kingdom of Nepal, which was in our safekeeping, shall from this day be returned to the people."

The king appealed to leaders of the party alliance to recommend a new prime minister who would oversee the naming of a new Cabinet and ''bear the responsibility of governing the country in accordance with the constitution."

Several key party leaders quickly responded that the statement failed to address their demands for the restoration of the last elected parliament, which was dissolved in 2002, and the convening of a national assembly to write a new constitution. Such a document could reduce the king to a ceremonial figure or eliminate the monarchy.

The king's statement also skipped over the parties' demand that any new government be vested with authority to negotiate a settlement with the Maoist rebels, whose fight to topple the monarchy has cost more than 12,000 lives.

In a brief phone interview after the king's speech, Ram Sharan Mahat, a former foreign minister and a leader of the Nepali Congress, the country's largest political party, described the statement as inadequate and short of many people's expectations. ''There are many ambiguities," he added.

Sher Bahadur Deuba, who was dismissed as prime minister by Gyanendra in 2002, told the Nepali-language newspaper Kantipur that the statement left ''no space for the parties to be hopeful."

Gyanendra's announcement was aimed at ending unrest that has claimed 14 lives and idled an economy already devastated by the insurgency. The protests have grown steadily in size and momentum; more than 200,000 people thronged the streets of Katmandu yesterday in defiance of a continuing curfew, according to estimates by UN observers and Nepalese media.

Thousands of protesters remained on the streets after the king's speech, and many dismissed it as a ploy. ''Democracy has been attacked by the royal palace so many times in the past," said Brijesh Sharma, 30, an engineer with the national telecommunications company. ''The protest goes on like this until we get what we are looking for."

The government's harsh crackdown on protesters and activists has sparked sharp condemnation from the United Nations and foreign governments, including the United States. Yesterday, before the king's statement, US Ambassador James Moriarty told reporters here that Gyanendra's hard-line stand placed his throne at risk.

''Time is running out," he said. ''Ultimately the king will have to leave if he doesn't compromise. And by 'ultimately' I mean sooner rather than later."

Protester at China summit has no regrets

2006-04-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Washington (dpa) - A protester who faces a possible six months in US prison for shouting at Chinese President Hu Jintao during a White House welcoming ceremony says she has no regrets.

Federal charges of intimidating a foreign leader were filed Friday against Wenyi Wang, 43, news reports said, a day after the Falun Gong supporter disrupted Hu's opening speech to President George W Bush at a US-China summit.

Wang screamed in English that Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned in China, "is good" and told Hu in Chinese that his "time is running out," according to court documents.

She faces up to six months in prison if convicted on charges of intimidating, coercing, harassing and threatening a foreign official, US media reported. A federal judge in Washington freed Wang pending a court hearing expected next month.

Asked Friday on Cable News Network (CNN) whether she had regrets, she said no.

She said her protest was "a personal act" meant to call attention to "unspeakable crime" she said Falun Gong was suffering in China.

Wang, a naturalized US citizen who reportedly lives in New York, entered Thursday's summit ceremony with a press pass for The Epoch Times, a Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper.

US administration officials say Bush expressed regret to Hu after the incident, but that Wang's press credentials were legitimate and no one knew she would use the occasion as a stage for protest.

Nepal's protesters return to face gunfire with flags : Asia News

2006-04-21T02:56:00.001-07:00

Maoists and anti-monarchist protesters were returning to the streets of Nepalese capital athmandu today for a second day of demonstrations in defiance of a shoot-on-sight curfew.

The royal government has pledged to face down the wave of unrest but international pressure was building for King Gyanendra to relinquish direct control and restore multi-party democracy to the Himalayan kingdom.

The United States, the United Nations and India have urged Nepalese security forces to exercise restraint. Yesterday, four activists were shot dead when police fired into the crowds. It is feared that their funerals could become flashpoints for further violence today.

Yesterday's curfew had been due to end at 9pm but was extended until 3am local time, giving families precious little time to dash outside to shops for food and milk before lockdown was imposed again from 9am (0415BST) today.

Residents scurried to the few stalls and grocers who opened after dawn. Piles of rubbish line the roadsides. Supplies of fuel are running short as a general strike enters its 16th day.

This morning a fresh wave of demonstrations began on the outskirts of the capital. In the western district of Kalanki, scene of the most violent protests yesterday, activists blocked roads with barricades of burning tyres. A large red and white message painted on the pavement read: "Martyrs’ square, long live the martyrs."

The seven opposition parties and their unlikely Maoist rebel allies are co-ordinating their demonstrations through text messages, mobile phones and the internet. Today's demonstrations began with large crowds assembling at a number of districts on the city's ring road at noon (0715BST). The protestors pledged to march through the lines of armed police and soldiers toward the royal palace.

"Our movement is successfully moving forward despite the state’s excessive use of force during demonstrations nationwide," the alliance said in a statement. "The strike will continue with more intensity in the capital and across the country until further notice."

Sabina Dhakal, a housewife, said that the deadlock and daily demonstrations were making life impossible. "The government should understand that curfew is not the answer to resolve the problem, it will just worsen the situation," she said.

At the Model Hospital, where many of the wounded protesters - including three of those killed - were taken, doctors wore black bands to protest at the shootings.

"It was terrible," said Dr Sarita Pandey. He said 66 wounded people, eight in critical condition, were brought in yesterday. He said the injured included a 10-year-old boy with a gunshot wound and a boy of 5 beaten by police.

The King seized absolute power in February 2005, claiming that the move was necessary to crush a Maoist insurgency that has cost 13,000 lives in the past ten years. But the guerrillas’ grip on rural Nepal has since escalated while the monarch has accelerated his curb on civil liberties.

Late last year the Maoists and political parties announced a coalition to unseat the King and calling for the restoration of multiparty democracy.

The king has been slow to respond to the growing crisis. This week five leading opposition politicians were released from custody in the first hint of a possible reconciliation, but observers say that a deal to return to the constitutional monarchy introduced by his father in 1991 may now be impossible.

Today, the pro-democracy Kathmandu Post said: "For the king time has run out," it said in an editorial. "No ruler can get away by killing innocent people. We believe the king has gone to the extent of no return. Even if he restores people’s sovereignty as per people’s wishes, he may not be able to protect the 237-year-old institution [of the monarchy]."

The state-owned Rising Nepal however urged negotiation and dialogue between the king and political parties in an editorial headlined "Shun Confrontation".

The demonstrations appear to encompass all sections of society. Housewives, lawyers and even civil servants have taken to the streets as anti-monarchy sentiment has grown across the country.

Delhi fears that Maoist movements in east India would be bolstered by the overthrow of the monarchy in Nepal, and is also worried about a possible exodus of refugees across the open border into the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Human rights experts from the United Nations also condemned the embattled government's use of violence against the protestors. "The law enforcement agencies have resorted to indiscriminate firing of rubber bullets - even on occasion live ammunition - into crowds, beatings, raids on homes and destruction of property," they said.

Tom Cruise cancels M:I promotions : Entertainment News

2006-04-21T02:56:00.000-07:00

New dad Tom Cruise has cancelled initial promotional appearances for his Mission: Impossible III movie to spend time with his fiancee Katie Holmes and their new baby Suri.

The Hollywood couple welcomed their seven-pound, seven-ounce daughter in Los Angeles on Tuesday, a little sister for Cruise's adopted children from his marriage to Nicole Kidman, Isabella and Connor.

Before the birth, Cruise stunned fans by scheduling appearances at the film's premieres in Europe, Mexico and his native US for next week, despite his admittance that Holmes was due any day.

Cruise was expected in Rome, Italy, on Monday for the action movie's world premiere, before journeying to London, Paris, Mexico City and New York City.

However, after the birth yesterday, a Paramount representative said Cruise had cancelled all press appearances.

Aust troops to quell Solomons riots

2006-04-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

Aust troops to quell Solomons riots

Australia is sending 110 soldiers to the Solomon Islands after a night of rioting and looting in the capital, Honiara.
An extra 66 Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers, equipped with riot gear, are also heading to the region.Prime Minister John Howard says the troops will arrive in the Solomons tonight.

"Starting at about 2.30pm this afternoon from Townsville, 110 soldiers of a unit that has been in readiness for just this eventuality will go to the Solomon Islands," Mr Howard said.

"They will be joined by ... additional Australian Federal Police officers and that will represent an immediate and needed injection of additional security forces to the Solomon Islands."

Mr Howard says the commitment follows a written request from the Solomon Islands Government.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has backed the extra measures.

"The job these people are doing is immensely important and it must be supported and seen through successfully," he said.

The swearing-in yesterday of the new Solomons Prime Minister, Snyder Rini, sparked widespread riots and looting in the capital.

The protesters say Mr Rini's coalition Government is funded and influenced by the owner of the Honiara Hotel, Sir Thomas Chan, a naturalised citizen of Chinese origin.

Mr Rini has issued a statement denying that his Government is heavily influenced by Chinese businessmen and accusations that he bought the votes of MPs before the election ballot.

Chinese interests targeted

Honiara residents have been asked to stay indoors as the looters target shops and businesses in Chinatown.

Fred Olsson, an Australian education and health adviser in Honiara, lives in a flat above a

Chinese-owned business in the centre of town with three other expatriates.

He says they were aware that ethnic tension in Honiara would make the shop below them a target for looters.

"We could sense that danger and we said, 'Oh please not us'," he said.

"We didn't even think that Chinatown would go up or the restaurants close by, but it became very apparent and our staff and security said, 'Well look, the position is anything Chinese has to go'."

Seventeen Australian police serving in the country as part of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI) have been injured in the violence.

Two of the officers need surgery and will be evacuated to Australia for medical treatment.

Labor's Bob Sercombe says Australia's thoughts are with the officers.

"We all extend our best wishes for a speedy recovery," Mr Sercombe said.

RAMSI began in 2003 after the country plunged into ethnic violence.

It will be the second deployment to Honiara in 18 months for Townsville troops.

They were called in two days before Christmas in 2004 when an Australian policeman was killed in civil unrest.
Curfew
The commissioner of the Solomon Islands Royal Police, Australian Shane Castles, has met the Solomons Governor-General for talks about the unrest.

Commissioner Castles has suggested that the Government invoke a declaration under the Preservation of Public Security Act to help lock-down the capital Honiara.

"That will see a potential curfew come into play at 6pm this evening that will be effective until 6am tomorrow morning," he said.
"There's other other strategies also being developed to lock down the city and allow us to restore law and order"

San Franciso marks earthquake anniversary

2006-04-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Thousands of San Franciscans have turned out to mark the 100th anniversary of a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that devastated their city.

An estimated 3,000 people died in the minute-long quake, which sparked three days of fires that devoured 500 city blocks and left half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless.

Most of the survivors were infants when the quake hit, but still have tales to tell.

"I remember a cow running up the hill with its tail straight in the air," survivor Violet Lyman said.

Another woman, 99-years-old, said says she considers herself "a product of the earthquake" because she was conceived and born in one of the many tents erected for survivors in Golden Gate Park.

Mayor Gavin Newsom says San Francisco is an example to places devastated by disaster, such as New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year.

"Who would have imagined that just a few days after that people would literally dust off and step up and seek to resolve to rebuild their home in the miraculous way that we see it here today," Mr Newsom said.

Sirens were sounded and bars were open at dawn to enhance the anniversary commemorations.

Residents awoke to find a copy of the morning-after 1906 edition of The Call-Chronicle- Examiner newspaper on their doorsteps, with the headline "Earthquake and Fire: San Francisco in Ruins".

City vulnerable

But for all the celebrations of survival, the anniversary also has served as a reminder of how vulnerable the Bay Area is to the movements in the seven faults in its environs.

Seismic experts believe the Bay Area has a 60 per cent chance of a major earthquake in the next 25 years.

An earthquake today on the San Andreas fault of the magnitude of the 1906 disaster could kill thousands and cause $US150 billion in damage.

"I live on the Hayward fault and we are up for another one," Art Brandenburg, who came to the ceremony in long underwear, a coat and top hat, said.

"Everyone needs to carry a whistle and a flashlight."

Mr Brandenburg says he dressed for the occasion to emulate Enrico Caruso, the great Italian tenor who was similarly clad as he fled his room at the nearby Palace Hotel when the quake hit.

Caruso never came back to San Francisco.

Mob attacks tourist hotel : current news

2006-04-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

By David Braithwaite and Jano Gibson
April 19, 2006 - 1:16PM

Australian tourists have told today of huddling together in fear as they came under attack from rioters in their Solomon Island hotel rooms.

Troubled flared in the capital, Honiara, yesterday after the announcement of a new Prime Minister, Snyder Rini.

About 500 supporters of rival candidate, Job Dudley Tausinga, took to the streets, claiming the election was fixed and votes bought.

Parts of Honiara have been completely burned down and looting continues unabated today, according to Reverend Kevin Rietveld, 59, an Australian missionary who has lived in the Solomons for eight years.

Priest threatened

Rev Rietveld said he was threatened while driving through Honiara today.

"The mood is quite tense," he said. "There have been all sorts of people on the radio calling for peace and quiet.

"The thing that's happening now is people are just going out to see what they can get.

"It's no longer just a political backlash, it's now just greed and 'Let's see who we can rip off and how."

"I went out this morning to a place called Ranad. It's the industrial area about 3km from Chinatown. I passed two burning buildings, both of them owned by Chinese.

"I saw one building that had been burned out already and I saw another building in full flame. It was a grocery place and its containers were being looted. I saw people carrying boxes and bags of stuff all over the place."

Rev Rietveld said one of the looters was then confronted by one of the looters.

"One guy, when he saw my car and saw that I was white, picked up a stone to throw it at me. I stopped right next to him and was able to pacify him. He was drunk. Some friends came and dragged him away."

Chinatown charred

He described Chinatown as being "pretty well burnt out".

"[There are] probably about twenty buildings that have been burned out [there]."

Reverend Rietveld said the mood on the streets was tense and the introduction of more RAMSI security personal may have an adverse effect.

"On the one hand you don't want to create a further antagonism towards what RAMSI's doing her. I'm a little bit afraid that the influx of more armed personnel may create a backlash,' he said.

"On the other hand the absence of police in some of the danger areas is also a concern. If nothing is done, then things will just continue. So you are caught between a rock and a hard place."

Rioters hit

Robin Deamer, 33, an Air Vanuatu based in Honiara, was at the Pacific Casino Hotel when it came under fire about 2.30am.

Mr Deamer said the hotel was filled with Australian tourists, Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) officials and other staff from international aid organisations.

"Basically it was right outside the hotel. What happened was a wave of rioters moved up from town basically targeting any Chinese-owned business," he said.

"It was pretty scary. You [could] hear small rocks coming through and then they got bigger and bigger. You could tell they got bigger and bigger once they started hitting the concrete wall.

"There was one room that caught fire because they pelted a petrol bomb through one of the windows. The local security jumped in pretty quickly with a fire extinguisher and put that one out."

Mr Dreamer said tourists at the hotel were "pretty freaked out".

"They were bunching up in rooms. They jumped into their mates' rooms, especially the ladies. They thought they'd be safer."

The rioters were quelled about an hour later as police forces moved in.

"It took them about an hour getting through the rioters and the stones were flying everywhere. Once the police moved in, it came to a bit of a halt."

Mr Deamer said the hotel was attacked because it was owned by a Chinese man.

None of the hotel guests was injured during the incident but most of the tourists and RAMSI staff have since moved on to safer areas in the city, he said.

Scene of destruction

"You've got broken glass [all] over the place," Mr Deamer said. "They've done a good job of cleaning all that up. A lot of cars outside have got broken windows and are banged up inside. A couple of the brand new RAMSI police vehicles are burnt out just outside the front gates."

Hotel secretary Lyndall Helen said said several rooms had also been looted. "There was these young boys. They throw stones and they come inside and smash all the cars outside the hotel. All the windows and things are broken. They stole all the computers and the bedding."

Mr Deamer said Air Vanuatu had ordered him to leave the Solomon Islands today.

"We have just been told by Air Vanuatu that we should get out of here in case something happens to us or our aircraft," he said.

theage.com.au, with AAP

Bad-faith domains grow

2006-04-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

Karen Dearne
APRIL 18, 2006

THE number of "bad faith" domain-name registrations raises concerns that trademarks are increasingly being infringed online, the Advisory Council on Intellectual Property has found.

Bad-faith registrations are where a party deliberately and unlawfully sets out to benefit by registering a domain containing another party's business name and associated trademarks.
The present process of domain-name registration does not require the registrar to check whether the same or similar domain names are already listed.

The same situation applies to the registration of company names and business names.

"There is a public misconception that registrars check for existing prior rights, such as registered trademarks, when registering a domain name," ACIP says in a report.

"The result is that business owners conduct inadequate checks for common law and registered trademarks before embarking on a business activity.

"Business-name registrants often become aware that their name infringes a pre-existing trade mark only after they have made a major investment.

"A significant number of traders do not fully comprehend the legal significance or inherent differences between trademarks, business names, company names and domain names.

"Compounding this is the resulting confusion that exists in the business community as to the nature of rights, if any, associated with each identifier."

At present, people can set up a business, commence trading under a registered business name without knowing they are infringing an existing trade mark, federal Industry parliamentary secretary Bob Baldwin said. He said the Government would consider the ACIP report in detail when making decisions.

ACIP recommends mandatory searching of trademarks to ensure there is no conflict prior to registration; amending the Trade Marks Act to give registered business and company name owners protection against identical and confusingly similar registrations; and a single business name system to replace the state-based one used at present.

Any changes to the domain names registration system should be considered after the other matters have been resolved, the ACIP report says.

"Whilst evidence suggests that bad-faith registration of domain names has increased in recent years, the ACIP is satisfied the (domain bodies) have been dealing with the problem," it says.

* Clothing maker and retailer Supre operates more than 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

It first registered the name Supre as a trademark in 1990; it also owns the domain name supre.au.com.

In 2000, another party registered a business name that was very similar to Supre's trademark in Western Australia; and further registered a confusingly similar domain name in 2001. The business name was cancelled in 2003.

In 2004, Supre's lawyers lodged a complaint with the domain authority, claiming the other name should be transferred to them because it was "confusingly similar" to their brand. The other party did not respond, and the panel transferred the domain to Supre.

The Australian

Nine killed in Tel Aviv suicide bombing

2006-04-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

Less than two hours before the 17th Knesset was sworn in on Monday afternoon, terror struck in southern Tel Aviv as a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd at the entrance to a fast food stand, killing nine people and wounding close to 70 others.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing that ripped through the Rosh Ha'ir shwarma stand on Rehov Salome in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neveh Sha'anan, not far from the old Tel Aviv central bus station. The same restaurant was hit in a similar suicide attack three months ago, injuring 20 people.

Four of the victims were women, and five were men. Seven names have been released: Philip Balahsan, 45, from Ashdod, a father of two children who were wounded as well; Victor Erez, 60, from Givatayim; the restaurant's security guard Binyamin Hafuta, 47, from Lod; Ariel Darhi from Bat Yam; Lili Yunis, 42, from Oranit; David Shmuelov, 28, from Holon; Piroshka Boda, 50, and Rosalia Basalia, 48, both Romanian citizens;.

Erez's funeral was scheduled for 11 a.m. on Tuesday at the Yarkon cemetery. Shmuelov's funeral was also scheduled for the same time in Holon.

Thirty-six of the victims remained hospitalized overnight at Ichilov, Sheba and Wolfson Hospitals, and at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. The wounded included two children, a 60-year-old French tourist, and a 16-year-old American tourist who was listed in critical condition. Nine victims were listed in serious condition, 16 moderate and the rest in light condition.

The suicide bomber was identified by Israeli sources as Sami Hamad from the village of al-Gharakah, near Jenin. Media reports listed his age as 16, but his family said he was 21.

Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted at a harsh Israeli response following a consultation with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, "We will know how to respond, and will continue to act with all the means at our disposal to prevent further terror attempts," he said.

On Tuesday, Mofaz will meet again with Olmert to formulate an Israeli response to the attack. Security officials said Monday night that the recommendations would focus on targeting the Islamic Jihad, sealing off Samaria from the rest of the West Bank and cracking down on Palestinians illegally residing in Israel.

"Don't expect to see tanks rolling into Nablus," one official said. "But we will launch more widespread operations against the Islamic Jihad."

Iraqi parliament meeting delayed; four Marines among dozens killed

2006-04-17T00:56:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's top legislator postponed today's scheduled meeting of parliament, putting off "for a few days" an attempt to resolve a months-long deadlock over the formation of the country's new government.

Although the move was not entirely unexpected, it still represented a setback for U.S. officials and an Iraqi public that is losing patience with four months of political paralysis since Dec. 15, when the country held elections to form a long-term government.

The delay has coincided with a surge in sectarian killing between Iraq's Sunni Arabs and Shiites. At least 37 Iraqis died in shootings, bombings and other attacks Sunday, according to police officials and news reports. U.S. military officials also reported killing five insurgents in a raid, and said four Marines were killed in combat west of Baghdad.

The biggest political sticking point is whether incumbent Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari will serve a new four-year term. The leading coalition of Shiite parties nominated al-Jaafari in a close vote, but Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and even some Shiites are now demanding an alternate candidate, saying he is a weak leader.

In recent days, some officials in the Shiite alliance said they had agreed to replace al-Jaafari with another leader as part of a larger deal over who would hold the various posts.

When Adnan Pachachi, the acting speaker of parliament, called Wednesday for a meeting to solve the impasse, he said it was with the intention of pushing all sides toward making an accommodation by setting today as a deadline. But as politicians from each group continued to hold closed-door meetings Sunday, Pachachi announced the parliament meeting would be delayed "for a few days."

Politicians in the Shiite alliance said they wanted to present a complete package of nominees that resolved not only the al-Jaafari question but also who would serve as the president and the two deputy presidents. By Sunday night the matter appeared to be unresolved.

Adnan Ali al-Kadhimi, an adviser to al-Jaafari, said it was "still in dispute." He added that one of the leading candidates to replace al-Jaafari was Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite from al-Jaafari's party. Al-Adeeb appeared to have more support from Sunni Arabs, Kurds and secular parties than he did from his own Shiite alliance, al-Kadhimi said.

The Iraqi ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumidaie, also identified al-Adeeb as one of the leading candidates in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."

Al-Kadhimi said Jalal Talabani, the incumbent president and a Kurd, was likely to remain in office. He also said Ayad Allawi, a secular leader, and Adnan al-Dulaimi and Saleh al-Mutlak, both Sunni Arabs, were being bandied about as candidates for the two deputy presidents' slots.

Al-Mutlak acknowledged he was in the running for deputy president. But he predicted negotiations would go on for "weeks," and called al-Adeeb "an Iranian" — a grave insult in a country that fought an eight-year war with the Shiite theocracy in the 1980s.

"All of them are the same," al-Mutlak said of the Shiite candidates for prime minister. "They are not qualified to run the country. But nobody listens to us."

Meanwhile, a car bomb killed 11 people in Mahmoudiya, a town 20 miles south of Baghdad. The bomb exploded in a busy food and vegetable market in the morning, police said. Many of the shops were left ablaze after the blast, and at least four civilian cars were seen in flames.

U.S. military authorities reported killing five insurgents and capturing a suspected al-Qaida member and four other suspects during a pre-dawn raid in the town of Youssifiyah, about 15 miles south of the capital. A woman was killed in the crossfire and four women and children were wounded, the military said. Five soldiers also were slightly wounded.

Four Marines from Regimental Combat Team 5 were killed in two engagements in Anbar province, to the west of Baghdad, military authorities also said. The U.S. death toll for this month rose to 47 — compared with 31 for all of March, according to The Associated Press. The latest deaths raised to at least 2,376 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count

News source :http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

6 Killed in Sri Lankan Mine Explosions :World News

2006-04-17T00:20:00.000-07:00

Land mines blasts in northern Sri Lanka killed four soldiers and two Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday, raising the death toll from a week of bloody unrest to at least 50, police said.

The violence is some of the worse since a 2002 cease-fire that continues to be challenged by clashes between ethnic Tamils and the majority Sinhalese.

The soldiers were killed by a remote-controlled land mine in government-controlled Vavuniya, said police chief Gamini Silva. The town is 130 miles north of the capital, Colombo.

"Right now what we know is that four soldiers are dead and seven are wounded," Deputy Inspector General of Police Gamini Silva said.

In rebel-held Jaffna, north of Vavuniya, a similar device exploded during transport, killing two rebels, local police said.

Discrimination against the Tamils led the Tigers to take up arms in 1983, and a resulting war with government forces on this tropical island of 19 million left more than 65,000 people dead before Norway brokered the cease-fire.

On Sunday the rebels said they would not attend peace talks with the Sri Lankan government in Switzerland unless they can hold an internal meeting first.

Rebel commanders on Saturday canceled a trip to the internal meeting, saying they felt threatened by the presence of naval ships. The government said the four craft were there to ensure the rebels' safety.

The talks in Geneva have been scheduled for April 24-25.

Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority is made up mainly of Buddhists and accounts for about 14 million people. They dominate the military and police.

The Hindu Tamils, in contrast, number about 3.2 million, and are concentrated in the country's north and east and in the tea-growing hills of central Sri Lanka.

News Source: http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/04/17/ap2673238.html

2006-04-17T00:07:00.000-07:00

Govinda can be expelled for supporting Salman

Jaipur: The Rajasthan government on Sunday took strong exception to Congress MP and Bollywood star Govinda's presence during Salman Khan's bail hearing in the poaching case in Jodhpur court. It asked the Congress party to clarify its "stand" in the case.

"Congress leaders' presence during Salman's bail petition in the court was highly objectionable and it should tell the nation about its policy on poaching," said State Forest Minister and government spokesman L N Dave in a statement.

Similarly, former forest minister Beena Kak's presence was also deplorable, Dave said, alleging Kak, who acted as Salman's mother in Maine Pyar Kyon Kiya, had tried to save Salman in Gehlot government.

Both Govinda and Kak can be expelled from the Congress party as they have acted against the Wildlife Protection Act by supporting convict Salman, Dave said.

News Source: http://sify.com/

2006-04-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Salman released on bail
PTI

Jodhpur, April 13: After spending three days in the Central Jail here for killing an endangered animal, Bollywood heart-throb Salman Khan today secured bail from a local court here.

The 40-year-old actor, who was sent to jail after being sentenced to five years imprisonment for killing a Chinkara in September 1998, was given bail by the district and session judge, Mr G S Surana.

The judge directed him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh and two sureties of Rs 1 lakh each while granting him bail.

A large number of Salman’s fans and supporters, who had gathered outside the court since morning, reacted in jubilations when they heard about he being granted bail. The police had a tough time in controlling the crowd and had to made a mild lathi-charge.

Salman was not present in the court when the judge granted him bail after a lengthy arguments from both prosecution and defence lawyers. He had appeared before the court earlier in the day in connection with his appeal against another poaching case in which he has been sentenced to one year imprisonment.

The actor’s brother Suhail Khan, sister Alivera, his friend and model-turned-actress Katrina Kaif besides a number of Bollywood personalities, including Govinda, David Dhawan and Sajiid Nadiadwala, were present in the court.

His lawyers said that they would try to complete the formalities so that the actor is released from the jail by the evening.

http://www.navhindtimes.com