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Formation of new KABUL, Oct 19: Afghanistan has stepped up the process of raising a new national army having representation from all sects, including Pashtuns, . .....more Stalin’s favourite cartoonist still drawing at 104 MOSCOW, Oct 19: Adolf Hitler wanted him executed as soon as German forces took Moscow. His mocking cartoons of the Soviet Union’s ideological .....more Undecided voters big mystery in US election WASHINGTON, Oct 19: The fate of the 2004 US Presidential election could come down to undecided voters but nobody knows how many there are and ......more Bird
flu may have killed TAK, THAILAND, Oct 19: The bird flu epidemic that has killed 31 people in southeast Asia this year may also have killed 23....more |
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Student stabbed by intruder at Japan middle school TOKYO, Oct 19: A junior high school girl was slashed with a knife today by an intruder who entered a school in the western Japanese......more Migrants, crime swamp Mexico-US Indian nation SELLS, ARIZONA, Oct 19: Indian tribal leader ned Norris remembers a time when illegal migrants from Mexico would be welcomed to his land after a ......more US planes to help deploy African troops in Darfur BOCA RATON, FLA, Oct 19: The United States said it would provide two US military transport planes to help expand an African peacekeeping force in ....more S Korea PM says does not want collapse of north VIENNA, Oct 19: South Korea would not want to see a sudden collapse of communist North Korea, Prime Minister Lee-hae-Chan said, as he called on ....more |
Formation of new Afghan army stepped up KABUL, Oct 19: Afghanistan has stepped up the process of raising a new national army having representation from all sects, including Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks and would shortly deploy them in Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad which faces the vulnerable durand border line with Pakistan. International trainers of the army say that extreme care is being taken to form an "apolitical force" to avoid internal revolts on ethnic grounds as witnessed in the past. The raising of the new army has been speeded up with its strength already shooting up to 16,000 troops, US army officers, who are training them, said. "We are screening the personnel to ensure that bad apples don’t find their way in and that ethnic balance is strictly maintained," Brig Gen Richard Moorhead, head of the US-led task force phoenix training the new Afghan army told visiting Indian journalists. He said the force would be deployed at its peak strength of 40,000 to 45,000 personnel by 2007. He said screening was being done to ensure that no remanants of Al-Qaeda, Taliban or other ultra fundamentalist elements find their way into the force. It is going to be an army with "international flavour," assert the US army trainers who said that screening was being done to ensure that balance was maintained in the induction of soldiers from the erstwhile Northern Alliance and raw recruits and that the soldiers vowed allegiance to the constitution than political or royal figures. "Past blunders leading to the fall of republican President Daud Khan and socialist Najibullah will not be allowed to be repeated", the US trainers said in a reference to Soviet infiltration of Daud Khan’s army in 1978 and mass desertions leading to crumbling and ultimate downfall of Najibullah regime in 1993. The new Afghan army would be five corp strong with three deployed at Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad facing the vulnerable durand line border with Pakistan, two in Tajik northern area and Herat to the west facing the Iranian border. The army, moorehead said, "would also have powerful motorised and heavy weapons detachments, but at present there is no proposal to have a fighter based Afghan air force" implying that US-led coalition forces would continue to give vital air support to land forces in the landlocked nation. "We propose to give Afghan a small tactical airlift capability of smaller two engine cargo planes with a 3,000 man air force" he said. Even as the army is being raised, members of the new Afghan national army have begun to take on major tasks of disarming the warlord armies as well as participate in strike operations against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants along with American special forces. He said unlike the norther alliance armies, the new Afghan national army would have balanced representations of all sects like Pushtuns, Tajiks, Uzbek, Hazara as well as smaller minorities like Ismailis. The new army would have nato rank structure and among the international training group includes detachments from US, UK, Romania, Mongolia, Bulgaria and France. Pointing out that the doctrine of the Afghan national army was essentially to "deter and defeat terrorism within its border," Brig Moorehead said already a command and control headquarters had been located in all five major regions of the country. In August this year members of the Afghan national army demonstrated its training when on short notice it was flown to Shindand air base between Kabul and Kanadhar to disarm Tajik commander Ismail Khan militia and retake the airbase. "The Afghan army is now capable of being deployed anywhere in the country via coalition or ISAF aircraft", the American General said. However, it is not allowed to operate on its own and are accompanied by embedded trainers from the task force phoneix. Afghan experts believe that the acid tests for the new force would come when they are tasked to take on heavily motivated fundamentlist terrorist groups on their own. (PTI) |
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Stalin’s favourite cartoonist still drawing at 104 MOSCOW, Oct 19: Adolf Hitler wanted him executed as soon as German forces took Moscow. His mocking cartoons of the Soviet Union’s ideological foes in the west, ordered by dictator Josef Stalin himself, prompted angry diplomatic protests. At 104, Boris Yefimov’s eyesight is failing and he is very hard of hearing. But Stalin’s favourite lampoonist still has the steadiness of hand to sketch every day and a bubbly sense of humour at helps him confront the ghosts of his past. "I got orders from Stalin. And this is sad for me to say but I often had to ridicule people whom I respected. There was no way to refuse because...,’’ his voice trails off and he draws the edge of his hand across his neck to indicate execution. For most of the 20th century — from the Bolshevik revolution to M ikhail Gorbachev’s "Perestroika" reforms — Yefimov dutifully served the Soviet state, creating caricatures of Moscow’s foes for the consumption of the masses. In the bleak years of World War 2, they sustained the morale of Soviet front-line forces in the cold war, they sought to convince people the capitalist world was ultimately doomed. In a telegram to Yefimov on his September 28 birthday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man with a dry wit himself, paid tribute to his "bright talent, depth, humour and wisdom". Designed to get a blunt point across to an unsophisticated public, his cartoons published in the leading soviet newspapers of the day, were far from subtle. Hitler was a crazed, often wretched-looking, figure. In the cold war, the US superpower foe was a mean-looking uncle sam bristling with missiles — a dollar sign thrown in just in case a reader might miss the point. "You know, the point about my work is that it was a weapon. Cartoons have to flog, to beat with their sharpness, to expose and to mock," he said. A tiny figure still remarkably spry on his feet, he lives in a Moscow riverside apartment where his eventful past crowds in around him in books, albums, photos. He sketches every day largely for pleasure. But he no longer draws political cartoons, he says, because post-soviet russia doesn’t lend itself to the genre. "Can you imagine now that we have contract killings in our country? Every day they kill this director or that businessman. This is not a subject for caricatures. I don’t see how I can make humour from such awful happenings," he said. His own age knew a greater terror, though, from above. Stalin’s Pu rges carried off his brother in the lowest moment of his life. Like millions of others he prudently kept silent. Families of the intelligentsia were arrested en bloc in those days and Yefimov recognises his obedience and his skill as a cartoonist kept him alive where others perished. "It was pure economics for him (Stalin). He was the master of the whole country. He realised he had a good caricaturist that he needed so he said ‘let him live’," Yefimov said. A Jew, he ridiculed Hitler almost daily during the war. When told Hitler had ordered his execution as soon as Moscow was taken, Yefimov is said to have replied he would rather confront an angry hitler than face Stalin. Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill became a regular target after the war. And, when Stalin personally ordered it, he pencilled in more weapons onto a cartoon of US General Dwight eisenhower so that he was "armed to the teeth." His friendship with Stalin’s rival co-revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, still troubles him and he recalls his last meeting him in 1928, on the eve of Trotsky’s exile to Soviet central Asia, with the clarity of an event yesterday. "I told him ‘you know, I think a rest from politics will do you good.’ Trotsky replied: ‘I do not intend to take a rest from politics. Nor will you. You’ll continue drawing your cartoons because you do it well’." They parted friends but Yefimov had nonetheless to lampoon Trotsky on Stalin’s bidding, something that weighs on his conscience. After moving around several countries, Trotsky was killed in Mexico by one of Stalin’s followers in 1940. Yefimov reserves huge praise for Gorbachev — the Soviet Union’s l ast President and the only Russian leader who actually invited him to the Kremlin. "He removed the threat of nuclear war. That is why he has my respect. He brought a new leadership style after people like Leonid Brezhnev who could only read from bits of paper,’’ he said. After all these years, it is the death of his brother, journalist Mikhail Koltsov, in the purges of the 1930s that haunts him. Editor of the communist party newspaper Pravda, Koltsov was arres ted in 1938 by Stalin, spirited away and executed after torture. He was 40. Yefimov links this now, wistfully, to his own longevity. He gestures towards a portrait of his brother on the wall. "It may be superstition," he said. "Now I think that somewhere, in the place where the fate of people is decided, those years that were taken from him were passed on to me. That’s how I consider now my many years." (AGENCIES) |
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Undecided voters big mystery in US election WASHINGTON, Oct 19: The fate of the 2004 US Presidential election could come down to undecided voters but nobody knows how many there are and what they may do. Traditionally, voters who remain uncommitted in the late stages of an election tend to vote more for challengers and against incumbents, which would be a good sign for democrat John Kerry. But political analysts are not sure that rule will hold this year. "All the traditional wisdom needs to be thrown out of the window this year. This race is not following a historical pattern," said Scott Reed, a political consultant who was manager of republican Bob Dole’s unsuccessful Presidential campaign in 1996. This time, reed believes undecided voters are being pulled in two directions: They feel more comfortable with President George W Bush leading them in the war on terrorism but trust Kerry more on the economy. "They seem to want to feel comfort that they are choosing a chief executive to sustain national security," said David Birdsell, a political scientist at Baruch college in New York. To the extent that security and Iraq remain the central issue in the race, Bush will probably benefit. If people are thinking more about the economy when they enter the polling booth, Kerry may be the winner. Some undecided voters in St Louis who took part in a focus group watching last week’s third Presidential debate, expressed that sentiment. "I keep hoping Kerry will convince me. I hear the right words from him but I need to feel more depth and more comfort. Otherwise, my default position will be to vote for Bush," said Myra Mengwasser, an executive recruiter. According to pollster Andrew Kohut of the pew research center, truly undecided voters probably amounted to around 6 to 9 percent of the electorate — still more than enough to swing a very tight race one way or the other. But as many as one in five voters still say they might change their minds before election day on Nov 2. "Undecided voters tend to be unhappy about the state of the nation and with the economy but give Bush better marks on handling terrorism and Iraq," Kohut said. Kohut also said fluctuations in recent public opinion polls have been driven largely by changes in sentiment among women while the male vote has remained more stable. "Women are more concerned about terrorism than men and trust bush more on security, but they are also more critical of him on domestic issues than men," said Kohut. Many of those still undecided probably won’t vote at all, said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of a widely-read political newsletter in Washington DC. "These people tend to be less politically involved than those whose minds are made up. A lot of them are casual voters who vote infrequently. They are not ideologically driven, they can be affected by style over substance and they are also influenced by what’s in the news a day or two before the election," he said. Mike Alderson, a business school lecturer who took part in the St Louis focus group, expressed this feeling. "The President did say some things that made me feel safer but my vote still depends on what happens in the next couple of weeks, especially in Iraq," he said. (AGENCIES) |
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Bird flu may have killed Thai tigers: Minister TAK, THAILAND, Oct 19: The bird flu epidemic that has killed 31 people in southeast Asia this year may also have killed 23 tigers at a zoo in eastern Thailand, a cabinet minister said today. "I’ve received a report this morning that 23 tigers have died and some others have been sick," deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang told reporters. "Their preliminary symptoms showed they might have caught bird flu," said Chaturon, who is in charge of the thai battle against bird flu. (AGENCIES) |
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Student stabbed by intruder at Japan middle school TOKYO, Oct 19: A junior high school girl was slashed with a knife today by an intruder who entered a school in the western Japanese metropolis of Osaka, but her life was not in danger, a fire department official said. The unidentified man entered the school in Toyonaka city, Osaka prefecture, while students were changing classes and attacked the girl when she was alone in a classroom, the official said. Police were looking for the man and the girl has been taken to hospital, the official said. Japan was shocked in 2001 when Mamoru Takuma, an unemployed man who had received treatment for mental illness, burst into an elementary school near Osaka, went on a rampage and stabbed eight children to death. Takuma was executed last month. (AGENCIES) |
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Migrants, crime swamp Mexico-US Indian nation SELLS, ARIZONA, Oct 19: Indian tribal leader ned Norris remembers a time when illegal migrants from Mexico would be welcomed to his land after a long trek over the parched deserts of the US border. In keeping with a long tradition of hospitality, residents of the Tohono O’odham nation gave them food, drink and sometimes even a bed for the night. But now that has changed. "That was when we were dealing with less than 100 in a month’s time frame, but now we are getting more than 1,500 a day, and it has created a lot of problems," Norris said in the Sun-baked town of Sells on the Tohono O’odham reservation. In the past three years, the Tohono O’odham, whose ancestral lands reach over the US border into the state of Sonora in northern Mexico, has become a superhighway for undocumented migrants and drugs entering the United States. Community leaders on the reservation, which has a resident population of some 14,000 people scattered across a wilderness area the size of connecticut, are counting the soaring social and environmental costs of the boom. Trash piles up by the ton, thousands of smugglers’ vehicles lie abandoned and police say members of the tribe, whose name means the desert people, are being lured into a life of crime. "Almost every family out here is affected one way or another, meaning either somebody in their household or somebody next door has been involved in crimes involving either people or drugs," police sergeant Vincent Garcia told . "It has got out of hand." (AGENCIES) |
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US planes to help deploy African troops in Darfur BOCA RATON, FLA, Oct 19: The United States said it would provide two US military transport planes to help expand an African peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region. The White House said President George W Bush directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to make the planes available for two weeks starting later this month to help deploy the African union force, which is expected to total about 3,500. The first 1,000 troops were expected to come from Rwanda and Nigeria, and the White House said their immediate task will be to monitor a cease-fire and "help create conditions to increase the free flow of humanitarian assistance to the people of Darfur." The statement was yesterday issued by the White House during a campaign stop in Boca Raton, Florida. Australia has also offered to provide two C-130 hercules to airlift African troops, the White House said. "We believe that an AU decision to deploy additional African troops by the end of October will greatly help to improve security and create conditions in which humanitarian assistance can be more effectively provided to the people of Darfur," White House spokesman Scott Mcclellan said. The United States renewed its call on the Sudanese Government and the Darfur rebels to adhere to the cease-fire, allow for the free movement of relief workers and supplies, and "to work in good faith toward a negotiated settlement." The United Nations says about 70,000 people have died from hunger and disease since the Darfur conflict began. There are no reliable estimates of those killed by the fighting. Sudan’s Government has said it would accept additional troops to monitor a shaky cease-fire in Darfur. Rebels launched a revolt in early 2003 after years of skirmishes between African farmers and Arab nomads over land. They accuse the Government of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to crush them and their civilian sympathizers, a charge Khartoum denies. Peace talks between the Government and rebels, which collapsed last month, are due to reconvene on Oct 21. (AGENCIES) |
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S Korea PM says does not want collapse of north VIENNA, Oct 19: South Korea would not want to see a sudden collapse of communist North Korea, Prime Minister Lee-hae-Chan said, as he called on the impoverished state to abandon nuclear weapons and open up to the outside world. The end of communist rule in former east Germany had highlighted the problems associated with a sudden political change, Lee told reporters yesterday after meeting Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel during a visit to Europe. "In no way do we want a collapse of North Korea," Lee said in response to a question. "We have learned from the collapse of the GDR (the former German democratic republic) that it is not desirable to have a collapse of North Korea." "This is the common view of China, Japan and the United States as well," he said speaking through an interpreter. "The common view is that North Korea should abandon its nuclear weapons programme and should open up." South and North Korea are technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean war ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty. North Korea is one of the region’s poorest, most isolated countries. In an interview with Austria’s die presse newspaper, Lee pointed to the upheaval in Germany following the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the economic consequences of reunification, which continue to dog the nation. "Germany had a huge problem. This is an example for us of what quick and radical change could bring," he was quoted as saying. "But we have of course prepared ourselves for all eventualities, including a possible collapse." North Korea has broken off slow-moving six-country talks —involving the United States, Russia, Japan, China as well as the two Koreas — aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programmes. It has also boycotted a series of scheduled talks with the south since July, when Seoul successfully airlifted more than 460 North Korean refugees from Vietnam, angering Pyongyang. A mid-1990s famine thought to have killed a million people drove many to flee North Korea. (AGENCIES) UK report unveils major education overhaul LONDON, Oct 19: Plans for the biggest overhaul of Britain’s education system for more than 50 years were unveiled, with a proposal to replace gcse and a-level exams with a single diploma system. A review of teaching for 14 to 19-year-olds yesterday proposed scrapping the current system in a bid to improve basic skills like English and Maths. Under the new plans, GCSES, a-levels and vocational qualifications would be merged into a wider, four-tier diploma, with harder but fewer exams which pupils would sit when they were ready, not necessarily when they were the right age. Students would take a common core of English and Maths and decide at 14 whether to pursue a vocational or academic path or combine elements of both. They could then leave education at either 16 or 18 with the diploma, which would detail their achievements. Education Secretary Charles Clarke told Parliament the plans were "the biggest single reform of qualifications in any of our lifetimes". The review was led by Mike Tomlinson, former Chief Inspector of English schools, and hopes to answer criticisms by employers group the confederation of British industry which says its members are dissatisfied with the basic skills of school-leavers. "There must be no dead ends where students cannot progress further," Tomlinson said. Clarke welcomed the report, which he described as a "Cogently argued, challenging and compelling vision for the future", and said he would make "positive and detailed proposals" in a paper in January. "The ... Proposals now give us an opportunity to consider far-reaching reform that will shape 14-19 education for decades to come," he said. The main teaching unions have also backed the changes, which would take up to 10 years to implement if accepted by the Government. (AGENCIES) France’s top law enforcer caught speeding MARSEILLE, FRANCE, Oct 19: France’s Minister for Justice admitted on Monday his car broke the speed limit during national road safety week, but pleaded innocent because he had been in the back of the chauffeur-driven vehicle at the time. "I was indeed in the car, but I wasn’t driving it," Minister Dominique Perben told a news conference yesterday. "I generally work while on the motorway and it’s hard to gauge the speed," he said. The incident took place on Friday at the end of a week dedicated to road safety promotion in France. Perben said he had only learned that his car had topped the motorway speed limit of 130 km per hour through the media, which said his Government-provided peugeot 607 had been flashed by police at a speed of 160 kph but not stopped. "If there was an error, there must be a sanction, whoever the person concerned," Perben said, adding that his chauffeur was a careful driver and that all Government chauffeurs had instructions to obey the rules of the road. Perben is at least the third minister caught out since the conservative Government introduced new measures to combat excess speed, which is blamed for around half of France’s annual tally of 8,000 road deaths, one of the worst rates in western Europe. A year ago, Transport Minister Gilles De Robien and then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy — now Finance Minister — were caught over the limit as their cars raced to the unveiling of new speed-monitoring radars outside Paris. (AGENCIES) Jailed Sudanese Islamist turabi to stand trial: Source KHARTOUM, Oct 19: Jailed Sudanese Islamist Hassan-al-Turabi will face charges in court for trying to topple the Government, a high-level security source said. Turabi, formerly a close ally to President Omar-hassan-al-Bashir, was arrested at the end of March this year after his party was loosely linked to a plot by a group of military officers to topple the Government. He was later moved into a safe house outside Khartoum but went back to Kobar prison in Khartoum last month after the Government said his opposition popular Congress party had conspired to assassinate top leaders and blow up strategic places in Khartoum on Sept 24. The sources yesterday said the security services had now completed the investigation into the plot and would be presenting the case to the courts. "We are going to take them to court. We have finished our investigation and the police are now trying to get the case in front of the court for more than 60 of them," the source said. "Turabi, he’s now also inside the case." The source said all would face charges of trying to topple the Government. "There’s strong evidence against his people. He will also stand in front of the court," the source added. The Government has said it would take legal action against the party, which could lead to it being banned. (AGENCIES) 13 killed and dozens injured at road accidents in Nepal KATHMANDU, Oct 19: At least thirteen people were killed in road accidents in different parts of country, according to radio Nepal. The state run radio service said that at least nine people were killed and about five dozens injured when a bus plying from Kathmandu to Ramechhap skidded off of the road at Lakuridanda-1, in the Dolkha district yesterday. Eight people died on the spot and one died while undergoing treatment at hospital, radio Nepal said. The injured have been admitted to a hospital and rescue operation is underway on the accident site. In another incident, four people were killed and about two dozens injured when two buses collided at Paurahi area in Rautahat district yesterday, radio Nepal said. According to the radio, a bus from Kathmandu to Mahottari collided with a bus coming from Janakpur to Birgunj killing four people and injuring 25. The injured have been admitted to hospitals. (UNI) |
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