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Bush ridicules Kerry MANCHESTER, Oct 2: President George W Bush accused democrat John Kerry of new contradictions and ridiculed his call for a summit on Iraq as he .....more India, Nepal agree on joint efforts to check floods KATHMANDU, Oct 2: Nepal and India today agreed to carry out "joint surveys" and take necessary steps to mitigate the inundation problems,.....more Pakistan ups security, Shi’ites mourn bomb victims SIALKOT, PAKISTAN, Oct 2: Pakistan beefed up security today as minority Shi’ite Muslims prepared to bury .....more Palestinians and Israelis mobilise for major showdown JEBALIYA CAMP (GAZA STRIP), Oct 2: Palestinian gunmen have taken up positions and armoured Israeli vehicles ......more |
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British father pleads LONDON, Oct 2: The father of a seriously ill baby girl fought against a hospital’s request to allow her to die if she stops breathing, saying he and......more S Korea on alert after purported Al-Qaeda warning SEOUL, Oct 2: South Korea put its security forces on alert after Muslims were urged to resist the United States and its allies around the world in an .....more Sharon says Israel’s Gaza pullout on track: Peres UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2: Israel’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza remains on track despite a sharp escalation ....more Release of French hostages fails, mediator says DAMASCUS, Oct 2: A self-appointed mediator said the release of two French journalists held in Iraq since August fell through when a group of ...more |
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Bush ridicules Kerry call for summit on Iraq MANCHESTER, Oct 2: President George W Bush accused democrat John Kerry of new contradictions and ridiculed his call for a summit on Iraq as he sought to rebound from a debate that many Americans thought Kerry won. The day after the first Presidential debate, Bush swept into two battleground states, Pennsylvania and new Hampshire, and many of his jabs against Kerry sounded like what he wished he had said at the Miami encounter on Thursday night. Bush advisers grudgingly conceded that Kerry gave an articulate performance — "a slick debater," in the words of one — after snap polls taken after the debate showed kerry won the first of three debates. But as for the substance, Bush took great issue with many of Kerry’s positions and wasted little time in aggressively attacking them, particularly his pledge that if elected he would call a summit to seek more international help on Iraq. "I’ve been to a lot of summits. I’ve never seen a meeting that would depose a tyrant or bring a terrorist to justice," Bush said at a rally in Allentown, Pa. Traveling with Bush was Arizona republican Sen John Mccain, a one-time Bush rival who considers Kerry a friend on the other side of the aisle. Mccain said Kerry had handled the debate well and Bush should not underestimate him in the next two. But he differed with Kerry. Despite Kerry’s assurances he would seek more international support in Iraq, Mccain said, "we’re not going to get additional support. The burden is going to be carried by the Americans, and British and our other coalition partners." He said Kerry’s call for direct US talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program was a failed policy from the previous Clinton administration. Bush prefers six-party talks involving China. Bush, who held a lead in national polls going into the debate, also accused the Massachusetts senator of new contradictions on Iraq by first saying that "the President made a mistake in invading Iraq" but then saying Americans were not dying in Iraq for a mistake. "You can’t have it both ways," Bush said. "You can’t say it’s a mistake and not a mistake. You can’t be for getting rid of Saddam Hussein when things look good, and against it when times are hard." And in Manchester, he lashed out at Kerry’s contention that the United States had the right to take preemptive action abroad if it "passes the global test, where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons." Bush said: "Sen Kerry said that America has to pass some sort of global test before we can use our troops to defend ourselves. Think about that. He wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign Government." Bush campaign advisers praised their man for his plain-spoken delivery at the debate. "We always expected him (Kerry) to be an articulate debater," said Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman. But he said "Americans aren’t electing a debater-in-chief, they’re electing a commander-in-chief." He also dismissed the relevance of instant polls, and pointed to the same polls that gave democrat Al Gore a victory in his first debate with Bush when later it was generally felt that Bush had won the encounter. "Instant polls focus on the fine points of college debating," Mehlman said. Bush advisers also dismissed democrats who drew attention to the way Bush scowled and looked irritated at times when Kerry was speaking. "That wasn’t irritated. I know irritated," said senior Bush Adviser Karl Rove. Instead, he said Bush was "pensive" and "focused". (AGENCIES) |
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India, Nepal agree on joint efforts to check floods KATHMANDU, Oct 2: Nepal and India today agreed to carry out "joint surveys" and take necessary steps to mitigate the inundation problems, which lead to devastating floods on both sides of the border. During the 13th meeting of the Nepal-India Standing Committee on Inundation Problems (SCIP), India raised the issue of floods in its areas due to the anti-erosion works carried out by Nepal in Chandani-Dodhara area, Shital Babu Regmee, Director General, Department of Water Induced Disaster Prevention who led the Nepalese side, said. "The discussions were very fruitful and there was no difference of opinion in any issue," C B Vashista, Chairman of Ganga Flood Control Commission, who headed the Indian delegation, told PTI. "We have agreed to conduct joint survey wherever required to sort out issues," he added. "Appropriate measures will be taken to mitigate the problem." The two sides reviewed the implementation of the decisions taken at the previous meetings and agreed to hold meeting of SCIP alternatively in India and Nepal every six month, according to a joint statement issued after conclusion of the meeting today. During the meeting Nepal highlighted the issue of inundation problem it is facing due to the construction of Mahalisagar bund in India, Regmee said. Both the countries have agreed to take appropriate measures to sort out these problems, he said. "We discussed the impact of rivers on both sides of the border from Mechi in the east to Mahakali in the west and agreed to mitigate the problems through mutual understanding," Regmee said. The next meeting of the SICP will be held in Patna in April 2005. Earlier, Indian delegation led by Vashista called on Nepalese Minister of State for Water Resources Thakur Prasad Sharma and Water Resources Secretary Mahendra Nath Aryal. (PTI) |
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Pakistan ups security, Shi’ites mourn bomb victims SIALKOT, PAKISTAN, Oct 2: Pakistan beefed up security today as minority Shi’ite Muslims prepared to bury victims of a suicide bomb attack on a Mosque in the eastern town of Sialkot that killed at least 30 people a day earlier. Extra police were deployed at cities throughout Pakistan after the suicide bomber detonated the device as hundreds of worshippers were crowded in the Zainabya Mosque for Friday prayers. "Security has been tightened all over the country," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told . The death toll rose to 30 as several died of their injuries and more than 50 people were wounded, police said. Today, mourners gathered in front of the Mosque to chant incantations praising Allah and the 8th century founders of the Shi’ite sect while others made funeral arrangements. Police were on alert for any sectarian backlash in the town, 170 km southeast of the capital Islamabad. Several hundred angry Shi’ites rampaged through Sialkot on Friday, setting fire to a petrol station and two police vehicles and hurling stones at buildings in the neighbourhood. Local traders announced a two-day closure of shops to protest against the killings. In the southern port city of Karachi, a scene of major sectarian violence in recent years, additional police were deployed to guard Mosques and Shi’ite religious centres that were the targets of a spate of attacks earlier this year. "We have taken extra security measures to avert any untoward incident," said Fayyaz Leghari, a deputy Inspector General of Police in Karachi. In the capital, Islamabad, police checked cars and trucks on main roads and around neighbourhood markets. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing but the Information Minister has said it might be retaliation for the killing last Sunday of the most wanted Pakistani militant, Amjad Hussain Farooqi. Seen as the main link between Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and local militant groups, Farooqi was a key suspect in two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf last December. Musharraf condemned the attack and said it "clearly shows that terrorists have no religion and are enemies of the mankind". UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also condemned the attack. Sunni Muslim extremists were blamed for a series of attacks on Shi’ite Mosques in Karachi earlier this year. Shi’ites account for 20 percent of Pakistan’s 150 million people, and Sunnis almost all of the rest. Christians and other minorities account for five percent. Some Sunni groups have forged closer links with the Al-Qaeda network amid anger over Musharraf’s support for the US-led war on terror since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Karachi was put on alert against a possible terrorist attack this week after the shooting of Farooqi, a known leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a splinter faction of another outlawed radical Sunni group, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. Both groups consider Shi’ites to be heretics and police blame Lashkar-e-Jhangvi for many killings of Shi’ites in recent years. Farooqi was also wanted in connection with the kidnapping and murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. (AGENCIES) |
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Palestinians and Israelis mobilise for major showdown JEBALIYA CAMP (GAZA STRIP), Oct 2: Palestinian gunmen have taken up positions and armoured Israeli vehicles massed along the border with the Gaza Strip as Israel pushed ahead with a massive military operation in the strip’s largest refugee camp to stop Palestinian rocket fire. At least 39 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed in the latest round of bloodshed, which is drawing the Israeli army back into Gaza as the Government prepares to exit the area. The Israeli cabinet approved what is shaping into one of the largest offensives of the four-year Palestinian uprising after a rocket launched by Hamas militants killed two Israeli preschoolers in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday. Underscoring the difficulty of stopping such attacks, another homemade Qassam rocket crashed into Sderot yesterday even as the Israeli army took control of a 9-kilometre Strip of Gaza to keep Israeli towns out of rocket range. That device caused no injuries, but the Israeli incursion into Jebaliya- one of the most densely populated places on earth- is already inflaming passions and escalating a conflict that has killed some 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis in the past four years. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the security cabinet that he was determined to stop the rocket fire. "What can we do," a participant quoted sharon as saying. "the Jews, too, have a right to live." In Washington, the state department called on Israel to temper its military response to the rocket attack. (AP) |
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British father pleads for life of ill baby girl LONDON, Oct 2: The father of a seriously ill baby girl fought against a hospital’s request to allow her to die if she stops breathing, saying he and his wife were not yet ready to let her go. Portsmouth hospitals NHS trust is seeking a court order to allow Charlotte wyatt to die with dignity if she stops breathing again. They want permission not to resuscitate her. But her father, 33-year-old Darren Wyatt, told Justice Hedley at London’s High Court yesterday he considered his 11-month-old daughter was "a fighter" and that everything possible should be done to keep her alive. "When you get to the stage when you grow to love someone, you can’t just throw them away like a bad egg and say you will get a different egg," said Wyatt, whose 23-year-old wife Debbie was also in court. Charlotte has fought for survival all of her short life. When she was born three months early at St Mary’s hospital in Portsmouth almost a year ago she weighed just one pound and was only five inches long. Since then, she has remained in hospital and her breathing has stopped three times as a result of serious heart and lung conditions. She is fed through a tube and needs oxygen all the time. Specialists say she cannot survive beyond infancy and do not believe she will ever be able to leave hospital. However, Wyatt and his wife, who are now expecting a third child, say they have grown to love her and believe things can still be done to help prolong her life. Wyatt said that if the stage were reached where all hope had gone then he and his wife would be prepared to hold and comfort her for her last moments and "let her go." "But at the moment she is not at that stage," he told the Judge. The hospital trust, however, has told the Wyatts it would be against the child’s interests to artificially resuscitate her because she lives in constant pain and has a very poor quality of life. The hearing continues. (AGENCIES) |
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S Korea on alert after purported Al-Qaeda warning SEOUL, Oct 2: South Korea put its security forces on alert after Muslims were urged to resist the United States and its allies around the world in an audio tape believed to be from Al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, local media said today. Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young, who heads the National Security Council that oversees all security portfolios — including intelligence, defence and foreign affairs — convened an emergency meeting on Saturday, Yonhap news agency said. Security was stepped up at airports, ports, Government buildings and other key sites at home and abroad, it said. Other media had similar reports. Officials were not immediately available for comment. The tape, aired by Al-Jazeera television, said resistance should carry on if Al-Qaeda leaders were killed or arrested. "We should not wait until US, British, French, Jewish, South Korean, Hungarian or polish forces enter Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria before we resist," said the tape, attributed to Ayman-al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant. "Let us start resisting now. The interests of America, Britain, Australia, France, Poland, Norway, South Korea and Japan are spread everywhere. They all took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq or Chechnya or enabled Israel to survive." Three South Korean civilians have been killed in Iraq in the past year, one of them an Arabic interpreter and devout Christian with missionary aspirations who was beheaded by Islamic militants in June. The militants who killed interpreter Kim-sun-il had demanded that South Korea withdraw its 600 troops from Iraq and cancel plans to send 3,000 more soldiers. Those extra troops have now been deployed, and on Friday they assumed military responsibility for northeast Iraq at a ceremony in the Kurdish capital Arbil. (AGENCIES) |
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Sharon says Israel’s Gaza pullout on track: Peres UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2: Israel’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza remains on track despite a sharp escalation of violence in the coastal strip, Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres said after talking with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "I think in spite of the events that took place over the last couple of days, the Israeli plan for a unilateral withdrawal remains intact, including the dates. Nothing will be changed," said Peres yesterday, the leader of Israel’s Labor Party. "I just spoke this morning to the Prime Minister and that’s what he told me," Peres told reporters after meeting at United Nations headquarters with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Sharon wants to evacuate 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza next year under his plan to "disengage" from Palestinians in revolt since 2000. But the timetable has been thrown into question by strong opposition from Sharon’s right-wing critics and by an Israeli ground offensive that has poured troops into Gaza in an effort to root out militants firing rockets into Israeli towns. The military operation followed the killing of two Israeli preschoolers by a Qassam rocket in the border town of Sderot on Wednesday. Militants fired off another rocket on Friday but caused no casualties. Peres said Israeli forces were taking measures in Gaza "to increase the gap between the missiles and our settlements, to make sure that they won’t fall on houses and people." "But the dates that were published (for the withdrawal) will be kept," he said. Sharon’s conservative critics say his withdrawal plan has emboldened militants trying to give the impression that Israel is being driven out. But peres said the plan, though in trouble on the right, was strongly backed by the general public. "Politics in a democratic country cannot be run by a minority," he said. Peres also predicted the nearly dead road map peace plan put forward by the "quartet" of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations would see new life after the Nov. 2 US Presidential election. "The road map in my judgment remains the only viable plan for the future," he said. (AGENCIES) |
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Release of French hostages fails, mediator says DAMASCUS, Oct 2: A self-appointed mediator said the release of two French journalists held in Iraq since August fell through when a group of Iraqis transporting them was bombarded by US forces. France’s Foreign Ministry had no comment on his account of events, which could not be independently verified. The US military in Baghdad said it knew nothing of such an incident. French MP and mediator didier Julia told journalists yesterday in Damascus Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were due to be released yesterday but the route they and their Iraqi guards were to take was blocked by a deployment of US soldiers. Julia and Philippe Brett, a shadowy figure with a history of political dealings in France and Iraq, are working for the journalists’ release as self-appointed mediators, but the French Government and French media have cast doubt on their activities. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told reporters yesterday: "We have information which is not complete at this stage." An aide to Julia said they were no longer in the hands of the Islamist militants who seized them on Aug 20, but in the custody of members of what he called the "Iraqi resistance" who aimed to bring them to Syria. He gave no details. (AGENCIES) Iraq kidnappers demand Indonesia cleric freed:TV DUBAI, Oct 2: An Iraqi militant group claiming to have kidnapped two Indonesian women said it would release them if Jakarta freed a Muslim cleric detained on suspicion of terrorist links, Al-Jazeera television reported today. "The Islamic army in Iraq put a condition to the Indonesian Government to release Abu Bakar Bashir in return for freeing the two Indonesian hostages," the Arab channel said, quoting what it said was a statement by the group. It gave no further details. (AGENCIES) US student dies from drinking police open probe MORMAN, OKLAHOMA, Oct 2: Oklahoma police said they were investigating the death of a university of Oklahoma freshman who died of alcohol poisoning during a fraternity function as a possible homicide. Police said yesterday Blake Hammontree, 19, was found dead Thursday morning at the sigma Chi fraternity, where he had attended a pledge party the night before. Autopsy results showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.42 — more than five times the state’s legal limit for driving —said Kevin Rowland, spokesman for the Oklahoma medical examiner’s office. Police said anyone who knowingly provided the student with alcohol could face possible criminal charges, including Manslaughter. University President David Boren said the fraternity was being closed immediately and all its activities would be suspended for the rest of the academic year. Two college students died in separate incidents in Colorado last month at fraternity houses. Samantha Spady, 19, died of alcohol poisoning at Colorado state university and 18-year-old freshman Lynn Gordon Bailey died at the university of Colorado in Boulder. (AGENCIES) Four commit suicide in Australia child porn case SYDNEY, Oct 2: Four Australian men have committed suicide after being caught up in an investigation into child internet pornography that has resulted in more than 200 arrested and charged for 2,000 offences, police said today. The four men, one in western Australia state, two in Victoria state and one in Queensland state, killed themselves after being interviewed by police. Two had been charged with pornography offences. Police launched Australia’s biggest child pornography crackdown on Thursday, raiding 400 premises and arresting hundreds of people, including police, teachers, clergy and a child-care centre owner. Those arrested in operation Auxin face a range of offences, ranging from sexual abuse, to downloading and distributing pornographic images to child sex tourism. More than 500 Australians could be involved and further arrests are expected, say police. (AGENCIES) Sword of Sultan Bayezid II found in Albania: Expert TIRANA, Oct 2: A Dutch expert has discovered a sword belonging to Sultan Bayezid II, who spread Ottoman rule in the Balkans, in an Albanian collection, and said Islamic art collectors might be ready to pay a hefty sum to own it. Professor Frederick De Jong of the chair of Islamic languages and culture at Utrecht university in the Netherlands said on Friday the 15th century Damascene steel blade with gold-inlaid Arabic letters was a fine piece of craftsmanship. "For (presented to) his majesty, the mighty Sultan Bayezid Khan, the son of Sultan Mehmed Khan, the son of Sultan Murat Khan. May his victory be sublime," read the inscription on the sword’s blade, De Jong said. "This is really high quality in all respects, from the technological as well as the artistic point of view. What is also striking is the quality of the calligraphy," he added. The sword, which dates back at least some 500 years, had been kept in a collection of 40 swords in the Albanian institute of popular culture in Tirana for nearly 60 years, according to the institute’s director. Bayezid II, or the just, consolidated Ottoman rule in the Balkans, Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean and successfully opposed the safavid dynasty of Persia. He was the elder son of Mehmed II, conqueror of Constantinople. The fact that the sword can be related to Bayezid II and the exquisite craftsmanship of its blade can make it an attractive piece for Islamic art collectors. De Jong said the blade must have been crafted in Istanbul, Bursa or Edirne. However, its 19th century European style hilt of cheap silver and horn segments and a more beautiful leathered sheath stitched with gold threads, make the item a hotchpotch, he said. He said collectors and museums preferred perfect items when asked to evaluate its market price, adding its auction price depended on interest from rich collectors. "If they start bidding against each other, it may fetch a million (dollars) or more," he said. (AGENCIES) |
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