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Eight children killed in China school attack BEIJING, Nov 26: A man broke into a Chinese school dormitory and stabbed eight children to death in their sleep, the .....more Indonesia
earthquake JAKARTA, Nov 26: At least 11 people were killed and 65 injured when a strong earthquake shook Indonesia’s ........more India, Pak journalists stress on verifying incidents ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: The Indian and Pakistani journalists have called for direct communication links for reporting .......more Myanmarese
rally MANDALAY, Nov 26: Human chains welcomed India-ASEAN rallyists as the 60-car convoy trundled past busy cities and hilly terrain in ...more |
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Saradapeeth, historic
pilgrimage Centre in PoK, MUZAFFARABAD (PoK), Nov 26: The centuries-old Sharadapeeth temple, a major pilgrimage centre for Kashmiri Pandits ....more Mixed signs cast doubt on Bush’s spy reform push CRAWFORD, TEXAS, Nov 26: Months of mixed signals from the White House and the Pentagon are raising ......more Eradication the aim of Nairobi landmine summit NAIROBI, Nov 26: A landmine ripped apart Edgar Moreno’s left leg as he herded cattle ......more Frenchman, 70, gets life for murdering 7 women AUXERRA, FRANCE, Nov 26: A French court jailed a 70-year-old retired driver for life for the murders of seven women........more |
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Eight children killed in China school attack BEIJING, Nov 26: A man broke into a Chinese school dormitory and stabbed eight children to death in their sleep, the latest in a wave of school attacks in China, the official Xinhua news agency said today. The middle school students were sleeping at the Ruzhou no.2 senior middle school in Pingdingshan in the Central province of Henan last night when the attack happened, it said. "The killer escaped after the killing and is still at large," Xinhua said. "Local police said that they are trying their best to hunt down the suspect." No motive was given. It was the sixth attack on schoolchildren in just four months, prompting schools in Beijing and other cities to recruit professional guards to protect students. China executed on Wednesday a bus driver who stabbed 24 primary school children with a kitchen knife and kidnapped a nine-year-old girl at a primary school in eastern Shandong province in September. The same month, a man with a knife and homemade bombs attacked 28 children in a Kindergarten in the city of Suzhou, near Shanghai. None was killed. In August, a Janitor stabbed 17 at a Beijing Kindergarten, killing one child. Chinese police arrested a man accused of killing a 5-year-old boy and his teacher at a Beijing Kindergarten last month. (AGENCIES) |
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Indonesia earthquake kills 11, hurts 65 JAKARTA, Nov 26: At least 11 people were killed and 65 injured when a strong earthquake shook Indonesia’s Papua province today, collapsing buildings and starting fires, officials said. A series of aftershocks continued to rattle the coastal town of Nabire, 3,000 km northeast of Jakarta, hours after the morning quake that measured 6.4 on the richter scale by the national earthquake centre. "We’re still in panic," Jahron, a pilot who lives in Nabire, told by telephone. People were setting up tents outside their houses because they were afraid to be inside, he said. "Eleven people have died, including three children, and 30 are now being treated at hospitals," Paminto, a coordinator at the health crisis centre in Jayapura, the provincial capital to the east of Nabire, told by telephone. Lieutenant-Colonel Toto Surono, a Jakarta-based army official, said at least 65 people were injured, although not all of them where taken to hospitals. Nabire airport had been closed due to damage, said Slamet Suyitno, an official at the meteorology and geophysics agency in Jayapura. "Planes cannot land, even the smallest plane. The tower might be collapsed. The indosat building and several Churches collapsed," he said. Indosat (Pt Indonesian satellite corp TBK) is the country’s second-largest telecommunications firm. The epicentre of the earthquake, which struck at 0755 hrs ist, was on land, some 17 km (10 miles) to the south of Nabire. The Hong Kong observatory and geoscience Australia recorded the earthquake at 7.2 on the richter scale. Earthquakes often occur in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands that lies along the Pacific ring of fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt. A quake in the Nabire area in February killed at least 37 people. In December 1992, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the open-ended richter scale killed about 2,200 people on the island of flores southwest of Nabire. Many of those who died were killed by massive waves triggered by the earthquake. (AGENCIES) |
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India, Pak journalists stress on verifying incidents ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: The Indian and Pakistani journalists have called for direct communication links for reporting and verifying incidents on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) to counter the Government-sponsored propaganda. They also said that due to non-existence of communication links between the journalists on both sides of the LoC, the media in India and Pakistan was reporting exaggerated and one-sided version of the events. The mediapersons were speaking about their working conditions and experiences of reporting at a programme organised by the Rawalpindi-Islamabad press club for the visiting Indian media delegation led by SAFMA Secretary General (Indian chapter) Vinod Sharma. The journalists said in the present age of satellite, it was difficult for any government to cover up human rights violations taking place in any part of the world. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Sharma expressed the hope that the ongoing peace process would yield positive results as the Governments in India and Pakistan had decided to demolish barriers. "There are different phases, and perhaps sometimes results are not achieved according to the expectations, but we are moving in the right direction," he added. Mr Sharma said the Indian journalists were not in Pakistan with any political agenda, but to empower public views. He said in the past 57 years, several myths had been created in the region which were now being demolished. However, the SAFMA Secretary General said, the normalisation of the situation would take time as it was a gradual process. The journalists also said earlier there was no dialogue and contact between the people and journalists of Kashmir, but due to the efforts of SAFMA, it was possible for both the sides to cross-check the facts. The Indian mediapersons stressed the need for real time reporting of the events in the Valley. Once the real time reporting will start on both sides, the propaganda machinary will automatically fail, they added. (UNI) |
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Myanmarese rally for friendship MANDALAY, Nov 26: Human chains welcomed India-ASEAN rallyists as the 60-car convoy trundled past busy cities and hilly terrain in Myanmar on its fourth day today. Thousands of people came out on the streets in this second largest Myanmarese city, once the capital of the country, to cheer the rallyists from India and nine south east Asian countries. Union Heavy Industry Minister Santosh Mohan Deb and Indian High Commissioner to Myanmar R L Bhatia, welcomed the nearly 250 participants, who began their "friendship journey" form Assamese capital Guwahati on Tuesday. "The rally will usher in a new era in India’s relationship with our neighbouring country of Myanmar," said Mr Deb, who was here to attend an India-Myanmar seminar on trade yesterday. The rally crossed the morch border town in Manipur into the 1st ASEAN country Myanmar, on Wednesday night with hundreds of school children waving Indian and Myanmarese flags. Passing through a treacherous terrain in the south-east, the rally reached Mandalay last night, but will skip capital Yangoon, to enter its next destination of Thailand, tomorrow afternoon. Tight security is being maintained for the rally with guntoting soldiers guiding the convoy along its route. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who flagged off the rally on Monday, will join ASEAN heads of state to receive the rallyists when they arrive in Laos capital Vientiane on November 30 coinciding with the ASEAN-India summit there. (UNI) |
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Saradapeeth, historic pilgrimage Centre in PoK, in shambles MUZAFFARABAD (PoK), Nov 26: The centuries-old Sharadapeeth temple, a major pilgrimage centre for Kashmiri Pandits situated in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), is in a bad shape and needs immediate face-lift. "The temple is not in a good condition because of continued tension on the Line of Control (LoC) and requires an immediate face-lift. Now since the tension has eased considerably, we plan to carry out the necessary works," Mufti Mansoor, Minister for Archaeology in the `Azad Kashmir’ Government, told PTI here. The Mufti, who is a legislator from the Sharadapeeth area, also said that his Government was ready to facilitate the movement of Kashmiri Pandit pilgrims "once the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service begins and they are allowed to come in". He said the local Government was ready to carry out renovation of the centuries-old temple. The Kashmiri Pandits in India have been urging the Union Home Ministry as well as the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi to allow them to visit the shrine every year. The Pandits have been pleading for quite some time that the pilgrimage be allowed in line with that of the Sikhs to Pakistan and the Pakistan-based Hindus to Indian shrines. (PTI) |
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Mixed signs cast doubt on Bush’s spy reform push CRAWFORD, TEXAS, Nov 26: Months of mixed signals from the White House and the Pentagon are raising questions about President George W Bush’s commitment to push for a deal to overhaul the nation’s spy agencies, congressional aides and people close to the Sept 11 Commission say. While Bush made a public appeal to Congress this week to revive a white house-backed compromise, democratic critics say he has done little of the personal lobbying that could help break the deadlock and has not launched a full-court press as he has for other legislative priorities. "He’s trying to have it both ways," a senior congressional aide involved in the negotiations said of Bush. "If he really wanted to get this done, he could." The White House says it is pushing hard for a deal, and Bush declared on Sunday, "I look forward to going back to Washington to work with the interested parties to get it passed." "They’re doing enough as to avoid the appearance that they’re willing to let it die, but not enough to get it done," said a former counter-terrorism official. Even some fellow republicans are expressing frustration with the White House and have accused Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials of saying one thing in public and saying another in private — a charge Rumsfeld denies. "He spoke publicly for the bill, but trashed it when he met with members (of Congress)," rep. Christopher Shays, a connecticut republican, told Fox of Rumsfeld. "Maybe he’s kind of on board, but he’s sending mixed signals." The republican chairman of the senate intelligence committee, sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, also cited opposition from within the White House "despite what the President has said." The White House cites Bush’s calls to two key republicans — Duncan Hunter of California, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a key Rumsfeld ally, and James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. But Bush’s calls did not stop hunter and Sensenbrenner from blocking the compromise, and they are showing no sign of backing down. The White House says it knows of no other calls by the President about the bill since then. Shays says Bush "needs to confront those who oppose the bill and make his arguments." The White House says Vice President Dick Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card have also pressed lawmakers, and spokeswoman Claire Buchan said administration officials will keep up the pressure at next week’s republican retreats. Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that he supports Bush’s position, which he described as "evolving as the negotiation evolves." But Air Force Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, stuck with comments he made in a letter to hunter last month warning against diluting the authority of the Pentagon on intelligence issues as proposed in the White House-backed bill. Several congressional aides and former Sept 11 Commission staff members questioned how hard Bush and Cheney were really pushing for a deal. They said Bush’s two phone calls on intelligence reform were a far cry from the full-court press that he mounted for the top legislative priority in his first term — tax cuts. When Bush’s long-sought trade negotiating authority was in danger of failing, he had his Commerce Secretary offer textile mill protections to a key south Carolina lawmaker, who switched votes at the last minute to secure a White House victory. But congressional aides have long questioned Bush’s commitment to the Commission and its reforms. Bush initially opposed creation of the Commission, and, at first, balked at giving full budget authority to a proposed National Intelligence Director. The administration sent "minders" to Commission interviews, restricted the panel’s access to documents and some of its own notes, and initially balked at extending its deadline. The White House says it provided the Commission with unprecedented access to documents and top officials. Under pressure from the White House and house republicans to compromise, the Commission’s supporters in the senate agreed to accept more limited budget powers for a national intelligence Director than the Commission initially proposed. The White House also prevailed in its insistence on keeping the overall intelligence budget secret, and has so far only agreed to study whether the defense department should run covert paramilitary operations as recommended by the Commission. (AGENCIES) |
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Eradication the aim of Nairobi landmine summit NAIROBI, Nov 26: A landmine ripped apart Edgar Moreno’s left leg as he herded cattle through a gate in Colombia in 1992. Another destroyed Saba’a-al-Jaradi legs as she collected firewood near her Yemeni village in 1990. In 1982, Saleh-al-Dahyani was 12 when a landmine stole both his legs while he took his last carefree boyhood walk with his friends through the Yemeni mountains. But the blasts were just the start of their agony. Dahyani only lost consciousness after five hours, when he reached a hospital. Jaradi lay bleeding in a taxi racing toward help in the city of Sanaa for just as long. Moreno, in the back of a beer truck, reached a hospital after three days’ drive through the jungle, twice held up by rebels who believed he was an injured Colombian soldier. Now all three are working to make the difficult journeys they took back to normalcy easier for other victims. Moreno is a gold medal paralympic cyclist, Dahyani a lawyer with the Yemeni Government and Jaradi a counselor for mine victims. "Automatically after I lost my leg, I became an anti-mine activist," Moreno said. From millions of stories like these — most without such fortunate endings — springs the Nairobi summit for a mine free world, to be held November 29-December 3 in the Kenyan capital. Leaders from 143 nations who have signed the 1997 convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines, plus hundreds of anti-mine activists and mine victims, are coming to map future efforts to eradicate the pernicious weapons. The chief goal of the conference is to raise money to fund mine-clearing work, enhance medical, psychological and social care for victims and boost education. Particular attention will be paid to those countries that are required by the treaty to clear all mines by 2009 — most among the poorest on earth. The conference itself is mandated by the Ottawa convention, which the treaty has often been called since 123 countries signed it in the Canadian capital in December 1997, as a review of the progress so far. Since it entered into force in 1999, 2.7 billion dollars has been spent on mine clearance, destruction, education and victim aid. Thirty-seven million mines have been destroyed and 126 nations no longer have any stockpiled. The number of new mine victims each year is down to around 15,000-20,000, which activists says is good but not enough. Cambodia, Angola and Afghanistan, among the most mine-affected countries in the world, have joined and are clearing their minefields. But millions remain scattered across the world’s old battlefields, and Africa in particular is littered with them from decades of civil war. Paying for clean-up and victim rehabilitation is a problem. "The World Bank and other development actors ought to play an increasing role in these efforts," said Wolfgang Petritsch, the veteran Austrian diplomat leading the summit. One of the world’s biggest donors to the effort, the United States, is among the three military powers that have not signed on, along with Russia and China. Even though they would rather have them party to the treaty, mine activists say the United States has not used mines since 1991 and China has not since 1997. "The United States is spending lots of money on action. In many ways, the US is adhering to some of the principles of the mine ban," Petritsch said. He called it a hopeful sign that China, which has a moratorium on mine exports, is sending an official to the conference. Russia, meanwhile, is among 12 non-signatory nations that have used mines since 1997, including Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Israel and Vietnam, according to the international campaign to ban landmines. The treaty has one important weakness, organizers admit: It does not bind stateless organized military groups. For example, colombia is a party to the treaty, but rebel groups there continue to plant the explosives. "The problem is, in an age of asymmetric conflict, it is very important to keep in mind that this is not just state parties who pose the problem, it is non-state parties as well," Petritsch said. Getting rid of the sources of landmines will help eliminate the problem posed by armed groups, he said. So far, the best efforts in that respect have been made by Non-Governmental Organizations signing armed groups like rebels in southern Sudan and the Philippines to a commitment against the weapons. (AGENCIES) |
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Frenchman, 70, gets life for murdering 7 women AUXERRA, FRANCE, Nov 26: A French court jailed a 70-year-old retired driver for life for the murders of seven women who disappeared in the late 1970s. At the end of a 15-day trial yesterday, a court in the Central French city of Auxerre found Emile Louis guilty on seven murder counts even though the bodies of five of his victims have not been found. Two corpses were exhumed from shallow graves near a river after he indicated their whereabouts to police. The court ordered louis remain in prison at least 18 years, four fewer than demanded by the public prosecutor. Louis had already been sentenced to a 20-year jail term for the repeated rape of his second wife and his daughter-in-law. He has appealed that conviction and a retrial has been ordered. (AGENCIES) Top-selling author Arthur Hailey dies in Bahamas NASSAU, BAHAMAS, Nov 26: Top-selling British author Arthur Hailey, whose novels sold 170 million copies around the world, died in his sleep at his Bahamas home, his wife said. He was 84. The author who passed away yesterday of several bestsellers that became blockbuster movies, like "airport" and "hotel," had been ailing since suffering a stroke two months ago. But he had enjoyed dinner with two of his six children just a few hours before he died. "He had a wonderful life. His greatest ambition was to see his name on a book and he certainly achieved that," said his wife Sheila. Born in Luton, England, in 1920 as the only child of working class parents, hailey began writing after World War II, when a meal served on a DC-4 flight triggered a story idea that was to propel him to fortune. He began to wonder what would happen if the flight crew went down with food poisoning and penned his story "flight into danger" —the first of his successful works. Hollywood producers bought several of his books and he flirted with script writing himself before deciding that novels were his forte. He was known for his intricate research and wanted his readers to be both entertained and informed. He went on to see his books published in 38 languages in 40 countries. "Wheels," "the moneychangers" and "strong medicine," were some of his other novels that were made into movies. Hailey emigrated from Britain to Canada after the war and worked in marketing and public relations before launching his literary career. It took him about three years to complete each book. After publishing "detective" in 1997, when he was 77 years old, he decided to retire. He and his wife lived at Lyford Cay, Nassau, for more than 40 years. Hailey was never influenced by critics or literary awards. During his career, he chiseled out just 600 words a day. "I have never been able to write quickly or easily. I am too self-critical for that. I am never satisfied," he once said. (AGENCIES) Paraguay seizes 300 kg cocaine at Brazil border ASUNCION, PARAGUAY, Nov 26: Paraguayan anti-drug agents seized their biggest cocaine haul in 15 years after searching a small airplane near the border with Brazil, a state prosecutor told reuters. Agents seized 300 kg of cocaine in a shoot-out on Wednesday that killed one of the suspects, prosecutor Francisco De Vargas said. Eight people were arrested. The drugs were confiscated at a Ranch in Alto Paraguay province, some 400 km north of Asuncion. De Vargas said yesterday the cocaine was presumed to have originated in Colombia and was en route to Europe. Among those detained was Brazilian Ivan Mendes Mesquita, whom officials identified as the smugglers’ ringleader and who had an outstanding arrest warrant in Brazil. US and Brazilian officials helped track Mendes Mesquita’s movements in the last year, said Luis Rojas, Paraguay’s Director of anti-narcotics operations. "The structure led by this person (mendes mesquita) was quite big and quite complex. He trafficked drugs with an incredible Shrewdness," Rojas said. (AGENCIES) Eight executed in Cancun drug killings MEXICO CITY, Nov 26: Suspected drug gangsters murdered eight people execution-style in and around the Caribbean beach town of Cancun this week as a wave of brutal killings hit Mexico. Narco murders are frequent in gritty towns on Mexico’s US border but are rare in tourist resorts like Cancun, famed for its white beaches and warm, turquoise waters. Police found five bullet-ridden bodies in a plot of land in Cancun yesterday. Three of the dead were federal policemen. "They were blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs and one of them handcuffed, all five of them facing the floor," police official Joaquin Hernandez told by telephone. Three other bodies were found on Monday by the side of the highway linking Cancun with the city of Merida, the local prosecutor’s office said. Police had originally said the bodies were found on Wednesday. The victims, who were tortured, had their hands and feet tied behind their backs and their heads wrapped in plastic bags. All eight killings were probably drug related, Hernandez said. "It can’t be anything else but that. It’s not at all normal, it’s a surprise to us, all this in cancun." Four other bodies, all severely burned, were found in a car near where the five Cancun corpses were discovered, but police said it was not clear if there was any link to the drug murders. Although murders are not common there, Cancun and the Yucatan Peninsula are on the drug route from Colombia to the United States. Mexico has been shocked by a recent wave of high-profile murders. On Tuesday night a frenzied mob beat and burned two federal police officers to death in a square in San Juan Ixtayopan, close to Mexico city. Television pictures of the killings were widely broadcast and police have been criticized for failing to save the pair, whose ordeal lasted hours. Also on Tuesday, a businessman was shot dead at a well-known restaurant in the capital’s fashionable Condesa district. (AGENCIES) German police search Mosque for militant videos BERLIN, Nov 26: German police raided a Mosque in the northern town of Wismar searching for Islamic extremist videos and leaflets which state prosecutors said pointed to suspected militant activity. During the raid yesterday police questioned 13 people who were in the Mosque at the time and confiscated a large amount of computing equipment, mecklenburg-vorpommern state prosecutors said in a statement. State Interior Minister Gottfried Timm said Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was no refuge for Islamic extremists, but he could not rule out that organisations in the area may be preparing attacks or recruiting people for armed conflict. "Therefore security forces are rigorously pursuing any clues to identify any possible planned attacks as early as possible." Germany introduced tighter controls over Islamist organisations after the country became a focal point of investigations into the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Three of the four suspected suicide pilots, including alleged plot leader Mohamed Atta, had lived in the northern city of Hamburg. But the murder of an outspoken filmmaker and the discovery of a suspected radical Muslim cell in neighbouring Netherlands this month has renewed calls in Germany for tougher monitoring of outspoken imams and some religious organisations. Last Sunday, more than 20,000 predominantly Muslim protesters marched through cologne to demonstrate against violence and extremism. (AGENCIES) |
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