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Taliban close BBC office in Kabul, expel correspondent ISLAMABAD, Mar 14: Afghanistan’s radical Islamic Taliban regime today closed the office of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Kabul and ...more US, Kuwait investigate deadly jet bombing KUWAIT, Mar 14: An American Investigation Board headed by a three-star general heads for Kuwait today to examine how a US jet on exercises ... ..more Dennis The Menace turns 50, still same cute kid LOS ANGELES, Mar 14: A little boy who never ages, loses his freckles, learns to read or write or do anything that is not cute or funny ..more US bans EU meat, livestock imports due to disease WASHINGTON, Mar 14: The U.S. Government said it would scrub the shoes of American travelers returning from the European countryside to ..more |
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SUVA, Mar 14: Ratu Tevita Momoedonu, a minister in Fiji’s Army-backed post-coup Government, has been sworn in as Prime Minister by ..more $10m
chicken set for HONG KONG, Mar 14: A unique breed of chicken that is claimed to be both tastier and meatier will soon be available on Hong Kong menus.........more S
Korea to deliver first SEOUL, Mar 14: South Korea expects its first exchange of mail with North Korea in more than 50 years tomorrow despite Pyongyang abruptly ........more Singapore breaks up Tamil tiger fundraising ring SINGAPORE, Mar 14: Singapore has broken up a fundraising network for Sri Lanka’s Tamil tiger rebels and banned two members from the city state ..........more |
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Taliban close BBC office in Kabul, expel correspondent ISLAMABAD, Mar 14: Afghanistan’s radical Islamic Taliban regime today closed the office of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Kabul and gave its correspondent, Kate Clark, 24 hours to leave the country, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency said. AIP quoted a statement by the Taliban Ministry of Information and Culture as alleging that the BBC recently intensified its propaganda against the Taliban and had been ignoring the Taliban point of view. It particularly took offence to the description of the Taliban by an American University teacher in a BBC Pushto language broadcast as "ignorant" and their destruction of ancient statues as "an act of ignorance". The statement blamed the alleged inimical attitude on the Afghan staff of the Pushto and Persian language services of the BBC region. It said they were remnants of the communist regimes of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The ban on the BBC in Kabul was announced as a BBC television team was on its way to Kabul after securing visas from the Afghan embassy in Pakistan to try to film the destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas in central Afghanistan. (DPA) |
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US, Kuwait investigate deadly jet bombing KUWAIT, Mar 14: An American Investigation Board headed by a three-star general heads for Kuwait today to examine how a US jet on exercises bombed an observation post, killing five American soldiers and a New Zealander. US officials in Washington said a forward air controller directing the night-time bombing run had cried "abort" to try to stop the F/A-18 hornet dropping its load of 500-pound (227 kg) bombs, but too late to prevent Monday’s accident. Navy Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters at a briefing in Washington that the evidence indicated two of the three unguided gravity bombs loosed by the F/A-18 had hit the air traffic control area on the range where the forward air controllers operated. One US Army Medic, three explosives specialists, one US Air Force tactical Air Controller and a New Zealand Liaison officer died. It was not clear if the controller was the one who had directed the run. Kuwaiti Defence Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Hamad Al-Sabah told Reuters today that his country has formed a three-man investigation team which will be joined by the US Investigation Board. "The Americans will be here early tomorrow and investigation work will immediately start," the minister said. The investigation teams are expected to visit the accident site which has been secured and sealed off. The accident occurred at Udairi training range northwest of the capital Kuwait city and just south of the border with Kuwait’s former occupier and much larger neighbour Iraq. US President George W Bush and senior officials, including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, expressed sadness and regret. "Tragedies such as this occur without warning and for reasons that are difficult to understand. We will work hard to take care of the families involved, and to find out how such an accident could occur," Rumsfeld said in a statement. The US Central command in Florida, which oversees American military operations in the Gulf, said its own deputy head, Marine Corps Lieutenant General Mike Delong, would lead the investigation team heading for Kuwait. Two Kuwaitis were injured in the accident along with five US servicemen, including another air traffic controller. The Pentagon said only three Americans remained in hospital, with injuries that were not life-threatening. Several US jets from fighter squadron VFA-37 based on the carrier Harry S Truman had been taking part in Monday’s exercise at the range. US defence officials in Washington said the Squadron’s Commander himself — David Zimmerman, a veteran of more than 3,000 flying hours who has been flying hornets for eight years — had been piloting the jet that dropped the bombs. The routine "close air support" exercise was designed to practise air operations against hostile ground targets in close proximity to friendly forces. A Kuwaiti soldier wounded in the accident, Mansour Al-Mutairi, told Kuwait state television that the ground crew "marked the targets with lasers, clear markings so they can see the target...At that point the (bomb) fell on us." The Kuwaiti Defence Minister told reporters: "Such accidents do happen in training, and you recall that during the (1991) gulf war there was also friendly fire." The Udairi range is a regular training site for Gulf war coalition forces based in Kuwait since Iraqi forces were driven out of the oil-rich state after a seven-month occupation. Monday’s accident occurred a month after a US Navy submarine sank a Japanese trawler by mistake, killing nine civilians on board. (AGENCIES) |
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Dennis The Menace turns 50, still same cute kid LOS ANGELES, Mar 14: A little boy who never ages, loses his freckles, learns to read or write or do anything that is not cute or funny has turned 50 years old with his creator vowing that he will never grow up. But while "Dennis The Menace " remains the same little golden-haired five-year-old midget mountain of mischief he was in 1951 — there are signs that the world around him in his cartoon panel has changed, although barely. What’s that in the background? a computer? a palm pilot? a television set? a skateboard? but, wait, his mom still stays at home and his neighbors, the Wilsons, haven’t high-tailed it down to Florida to get away from the spunky little pest in overalls. "It is inevitable I guess that cartoon characters always end up more popular than their creators. When I became 50 it was no big deal, but when dennis does, holy smokes, it’s a cause celebre," said Hank Ketcham, 81, a onetime film animator whose cartoons helped promote the sale of bonds during World War II. The International Museum of Cartoon Art in Boca Raton, Fla., will help Ketcham celebrate Dennis’s birthday with a 50-year retrospective that opens on May 25 and runs through September. The more than 1,000 newspapers that feature the cartoon panel daily around the world in 48 countries and 14 different languages have been running a best of dennis down through the decades for the past week. Today at universal studios in Orlando, Fla., there will be a Dennis the menace look-alike contest, judged by Ketcham and Jay North, who played Dennis in the original TV series. Ketcham created the strip inspired by the antics of his own four-year-old son Dennis. "He was doing his thing and his mother marched into me and declared ‘your son Dennis is a menace.’ So I started out with a name and I gave him a mother and a father and a dog and a Pal, Joey. The neighbors, the Wilsons, became surrogate grandparents and I set the whole thing in Wichita, Kan., and as a result I got made an honorary mayor of Wichita. I made it there because Henry Mitchell, Dennis’s father, is an aeronautical engineer and there are firms doing that there," Ketcham said. "My son Dennis is now in the middle west. We parted company and his mother died. We were not close and we just parted. Unfortunately that just happens in some families," Ketcham, who now lives in Northern California, said. When he began drawing the strip, one editor did not see it as lasting and warned Ketcham, "There’s only so much you can say about a five-year-old kid." Apparently there wasn’t and Ketcham says he has been able to do the strip 365 days a year without ever having to repeat himself -that often. Every so often he thinks he may have done a panel similar to one he did a few years ago. Although he no longer draws it, he still rules over the strip —working closely with the two artists, Marcus Hamilton and Ronald Ferdinand, who now produce it. He confers with them via fax machine, working about three weeks in advance and carefully checking the calendar to make sure christmas trees do not show up in may. "I just drew from my friends and family and I am thankful that someone knows about dennis. A writer writes for himself and doesn’t realize that people are following your every move," Ketcham said. He added that while Dennis hasn’t changed except to look better. "When I started, he looked dreadful and he evolved. The only thing that changes in the panel is the toys — when I started there was no television, then I let them get a black and white set and finally a color set, not to mention a motorized lawn mower, a computer, a telephone answering machine." "The chemistry of the characters always stays the same. Alice, dennis’s mother, doesn’t have a job because I think she has a full-time job — taking care of Dennis."’ "The only political thing i ever did was in 1964 when barry goldwater from arizona was running against Lyndon Johnson from Texas and I did a panel in which Dennis, who has his cowboy hat on, says to Joey, ‘relax, Joey, whoever gets to be President will be a cowboy.’ I stay away from politics. I am the last of the straight arrows." "My characters are real people with real emotions in the spirit of cartooning. When Dennis gets kicked out of the Wilson’s house, he flies through the air. I am not trying to sell anything — I just want the reader to have an amusing day." (REUTERS) |
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US bans EU meat, livestock imports due to disease WASHINGTON, Mar 14: The U.S. Government said it would scrub the shoes of American travelers returning from the European countryside to prevent the financially devastating foot-and-mouth disease from hitchhiking into the United States. The Government also banned yesterday all imports of live animals and raw meat products from the European Union after the disease surfaced at a cattle farm in France. Washington took the actions to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, a virus that cripples cattle, pigs, goats, sheep and deer and is so infectious it can be spread by gusty winds or truck tires. All EU meat products shipped to the United States since Feb 21 will be quarantined and inspected. Canada immediately followed with its own ban on EU imports. "All EU products are put on hold," said Kevin Herglotz, a U.S. Agriculture Department spokesman. "Any shipment en route to the United States since around Feb 21 would be held for inspection." The ban does not affect imported cooked foods such as Italian Prosciutto, German Bratwurst and Danish Hams. A detailed list of banned products was to be released on Wednesday, USDA officials said. The USDA urged American tourists bound for Britain to avoid visiting farms, zoos or other animal facilities for five days prior to returning. Any soiled shoes, luggage, cameras, laptops or cellphones should be disinfected with a water and bleach solution, the Government said. Travelers arriving at 110 U.S. ports of entry will be asked by U.S. customs if they visited a farm while in Europe. If so, they will undergo a disinfection procedure, the USDA said. Although USDA officials cleared some 500 million passengers in fiscal 1999, a relatively small number was expected to be affected by the new procedure. The highly contagious disease jumped from Britain into France, despite farm travel restrictions, disinfection procedures, and other extraordinary precautions. France yesterday reported its first case of foot-and-mouth disease since 1981 in a herd of 114 cattle in a northwest province. Separately, Argentina confirmed an outbreak in its Central Buenos Aires province and Colombia said it detected its first cases of the disease this year. The disease spreads like wildfire throughout pigs, cattle, sheep and goats, causing huge financial losses for farmers. The virus, which rarely endangers humans, is easily spread on clothing, on car tires and by the wind. The British outbreak has meant the slaughter of nearly 120,000 cattle, sheep and pigs. Sports events have been canceled, and highway checkpoints set up in affected areas. After discovering the French outbreak, the EU immediately banned exports of french livestock and halted shipments of milk, meat and meat products from the area hit by the disease. The U.S. Government’s action was a sign of heightened concern about the unfolding foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, and could affect up to 400 million dollars of EU goods annually. Herglotz said "400 million dollars at most would be involved" in lost EU exports to the United States. Last year, the United States imported about 237.8 million worth of EU beef, veal and pork products. Italy, the Netherlands and Britain ranked as the biggest EU suppliers. That amount is tiny in comparison to total U.S. imports of beef and pork of more than 3.19 billion, USDA data showed. In terms of live animals, the new ban will have the biggest impact on pigs. The united states imported 290 million dollars worth of EU pigs last year, mostly from Denmark. Total U.S. imports of live cattle and pigs came to about 1.29 billion dollars last year, according to the USDA data. The United States has not imported any cattle or beef products from Europe since 1997 because of concerns about the unrelated mad cow disease. (REUTERS) |
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SUVA, Mar 14: Ratu Tevita Momoedonu, a minister in Fiji’s Army-backed post-coup Government, has been sworn in as Prime Minister by newly-reappointed President Josefa Iloilo, reports said here today. Fiji radio reported that Momoedonu was installed at a ceremony near Lautoka, the west coast sugar town today. Momoedonu was the Labour Minister in the interim Government installed after last year’s nationalist coup and headed by acting Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. News of the appointment came after deposed Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry was formally dismissed as the first step by Iloilo in the country’s return to constitutional rule. Chaudhry said he had received a letter from Iloilo notifying him of the sacking. This followed a decision by the Great Council of Chief on yesterday to comply with an appeal court ruling declaring the army-backed interim Government illegal. The powerful 55-strong council, Fiji’s supreme indigenous authority, also said it had agreed Parliament should be dissolved and the interim Government formally appointed in a caretaker role pending new elections. The Council wants the administration’s blueprint setting out affirmative action policies for indigenous Fijians to be continued and a constitutional review committee to resume work despite it having been declared illegal by High Court. Chaudhry, who became Fiji’s first Indian Prime Minister in May 1999 elections only to be ousted in a coup a year later, said he regarded the dismissal as unconstitutional and intended to write to the President challenging it. "It is clear that the President has been wrongly advised to make way for the interim administration to take over office and to avoid consultations with me on the appointment of the country’s President and Vice President," Chaudhry said. (AFP) |
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$10m chicken set for Hong Kong menus HONG KONG, Mar 14: A unique breed of chicken that is claimed to be both tastier and meatier will soon be available on Hong Kong menus. The hybrid bird is the result of a 10 million Hong Kong dollars 1.3 million US dollars) Government-funded research project carried out by local zoologists after local poultry farmers complained that their chickens were getting too bland. "Cross-breeding between chinese and western breeds through the years has resulted in a loss of flavour in chickens," Professor Daniel Chan, director of the Kadoorie Agriculture Research Centre at Hong Kong University told Reuters. Chan said that while chickens bred in the west tend to be faster growing and more disease resistant, they don’t taste as good as native Chinese varieties. Now, after five long years, Chan’s team has come up with a new hybrid bird — the "Kadoorie yummy chicken" — which they claim offers consumers the best of both worlds. Chan hoped the breed would appeal to health-conscious eaters. "The chicken couldn’t be too fatty but had to taste delicious. That was the toughest part," said Chan, explaining his task. "The texture had to be just right — not too soft and not too tough." Having sorted out the taste, Chan then set about making the birds look good, giving them a round body, a beard, short, hairy legs and a "rose comb" that splits at the back. The "yummy" bird has been tailor-made for Southern Chinese cuisine in which chicken dishes are hugely popular during major festivals like the lunar new year. They are expected to sell for around HK 80, comparable to the price of top quality chickens already on the market. A Government vet stressed that the breed was not genetically-modified and does not pose any health risks. "This is not gm. Genetic engineering involves changing the actual genes of the actual cells. This is no different from any other chicken on the market," Dr Howard Wong of the agriculture, fisheries and conservation department told Reuters. The precise make-up of the hybrid, though, is being kept a secret and chicks will only be distributed through the Government and farmers will not be able to breed them themselves. All chickens farmed in Hong Kong are currently consumed locally but Chan said the formula could potentially open up a new export market for the territory. "The formula is compatible with cuisine in France, Spain and Italy," Chan said. (REUTERS) |
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S Korea to deliver first mail to North in 51 years SEOUL, Mar 14: South Korea expects its first exchange of mail with North Korea in more than 50 years tomorrow despite Pyongyang abruptly cancelling planned talks this week, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said. "We expect the letters to be exchanged as scheduled," a ministry official said today. "We haven’t received notification from the north about any change." About 300 families cut off from relatives by the heavily fortified border are scheduled to send their first letters to each other since 1950. The exchange is a result of an historic summit last June in which leaders from the two sides vowed to end a half century of sometimes bloody confrontation. Breaking the decades of stony silence is an emotional issue for about 10 million people in the two Koreas who have family ties on the other side. The vast majority have not seen relatives since the 1950-53 Korea war. The Koreas remain technically at war under a 1953 armed truce but last June’s summit in Pyongyang between President Kim Dae-Jung and the north’s Kim Jong-Il started a thaw in their cold war stand-off. The leaders agreed to end a half-century of confrontation but mutual mistrust has at times made doing so difficult. The north abruptly called off talks scheduled to start in Seoul on Tuesday, setting off alarm bells because it came just days after President Kim returned from Washington where President George W Bush outlined a tougher stance on North Korea than his predecessor. "North Korea needs time to form its position on Washington’s harder-than-expected stance against it in the wake of the Kim-Bush summit," said Lee Chul-Ki, Professor of International Relations at Dongguk University. Last week, Bush told Kim he was sceptical about North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and Washington was thoroughly reviewing its policy towards the north. "Through the cancellation, pyongyang seems to want to send a message to Washington that it’s not happy with Washington’s policy changes (toward North Korea)," lee said. He expected pyongyang to reschedule this week’s talks soon. "Pyongyang knows improving relations with Seoul under the kim administration would benefit its interests," Lee said. There has been no word on when the cabinet-level talks might be rescheduled, which seoul officially said the north had cancelled citing "internal reasons". The two sides have held four rounds of minister-level meetings since last year’s summit. South Korea’s culture and Tourism Minister Kim Han-Gil has just wrapped up a four-day visit to pyongyang but remains in China because of poor weather. Officials from South Korea, Japan and United States plan to meet in Seoul later this month to coordinate policy on the north, local media have reported. South Korean officials declined to confirm the reports. (REUTERS) |
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Singapore breaks up Tamil tiger fundraising ring SINGAPORE, Mar 14: Singapore has broken up a fundraising network for Sri Lanka’s Tamil tiger rebels and banned two members from the city state while placing the leader of the ring under tight curbs. The Home Affairs Ministry said 13 people, including five permanent residents, were found to be involved in activities supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after a swoop by the Internal Security Department late last year. "The clandestine network was involved in covert fundraising and procurement activities in support of the LTTE," the ministry wrote in response to questions from Reuters. "The action taken was not in response to any request or in coordination with any foreign Government." The ministry gave no details of the amount raised or the nature of the procurement. More than 64,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka since the ethnic conflict flared in 1983 when LTTE rebels began fighting for a separate Tamil state in the North and East. The ring’s leader, a professional who obtained Singaporean citizenship, was put under a two-year restriction order in February that requires him to stop all ltte activities and seek official permission to travel abroad, move house or change jobs. "Administrative action has been taken under the immigration act to ban two of them, who were more seriously involved, from Singapore," the Home Affairs Ministry said. "The others in the network were warned." The LTTE is technically not allowed to exist as a group in Singapore because it is not officially registered. The city state expelled 10 Sri Lankans for similar activities in 1985. Britain, home to the LTTE’s international offices and a major fundraising network, has put the Tamil tigers on a list of groups to be proscribed under a new anti-terrorism law, which once implemented will lead to their banning and cut in fundraising. The Sri Lankan Army has rolled back most of the LTTE’s gains in the last six months. Fighting has died down recently, with the rebels observing a unilateral ceasefire that runs until March 24. The Colombo Government and the LTTE have been edging closer to talks but accuse each other of not being sincere. (REUTERS) |
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