Bush rethinks course in Iraq; White House hails Saddam verdict

CRAWFORD, Dec 27: President George W Bush has gone to his ranch to rethink US involvement in Iraq as his spokesman hailed a Baghdad court's decision upholding the death sentence for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Saddam, who was deposed by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, is to be hanged within 30 days.

"Today marks an important milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law," deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel told reporters aboard Air Force One to Texas yesterday, where Bush was to meet this week with his national security team.

Iraq's highest appeals court yesterday upheld the November 5 sentence against Saddam for ordering the killing of 148 Shiites in Dujail in 1982, following an attempt on his life. Chief Judge Aref Shahin said the sentence must be implemented within 30 days, and could be carried out as early as today.

"Saddam Hussein has received due process and legal rights that he denied the Iraqi people for so long, so this is an important day for the Iraqi people," Stanzel said.

Bush, saddled with low approval ratings for his handling of Iraq, will host a National Security Council meeting tomorrow at the ranch, but is not expected to make any final decision on what he says will be a new way forward in Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley will attend the meeting.

Stanzel said there could be other National Security Council meetings before the president makes up his mind and delivers a speech to announce his decisions. The speech is expected before the State of the Union address on January 23. (AGENCIES)

Sanctions-hit N Korea selling off gold reserves: Report

TOKYO, Dec 26: North Korea, desperate for foreign currency under US-imposed sanctions, has started to sell its gold reserves on international markets, a Japanese newspaper said today.

The United States last year blacklisted a Pyongyang-linked bank in Macau, infuriating the communist regime which walked out of disarmament talks for 13 months during which it tested an atom bomb.

Since the US crackdown on the bank, North Korea has earned 28 million dollars in foreign cash by exporting gold to Thailand, which had not imported gold from Pyongyang for the previous five years, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

North Korea exported 500 kilograms of bullion to Thailand in April and another 800 kilograms a month later, the conservative Japanese daily said without identifying its sources.

North Korea's central bank, Choson Central Bank was also relisted on May 12 for trading on the London Bullion Market, said the newspaper, quoting a spokesman for the London market.

The North Korean central bank, which can issue currency, joined the London gold market in 1976 but was delisted in June 2004 due to inactive trading, the newspaper said.

The Yomiuri, citing South Korean data, said North Korea was estimated to have between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of gold reserves.

The United States blacklisted Macau's Banco Delta Asia in September 2005, saying it suspected that 24 million dollars in North Korean accounts was linked to counterfeiting or money-laundering. (AGENCIES)

Lightning shuts down Japanese nuke reactor, no radiation leak

TOKYO, Dec 27: A test nuclear reactor in northern Japan shut down automatically early this morning after lightning struck a power line serving the facility, the country's atomic energy agency said.

There was no radiation leak or damage, it said.

The 140,000-kilowatt Joyo experimental fast reactor at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's O-arai Research and Development Center in Ibaraki prefecture shut down shortly before 1:00 am today (2130 IST yesterday) after lightning hit a commercial power line serving the reactor, the agency said in a statement.

Power from the line was restored 1 1/2 hours later, the agency said. No other facilities at the site were affected.

The reactor was in the middle of a test operation that remains on track to run from December 11 to February 2, said O-arai spokesman Minoru Gunji. The reactor needs to be cooled down before it can be restarted, which the agency hopes will take place as early as this evening, he said. (AGENCIES)

Jallianwalah Bagh massacre to be taught in British schools

LONDON, Dec 27: The bloody massacre of hundreds of Indians by a British general in Amrtisar's Jallianwalah Bagh in 1919 will be taught in British schools as a history unit looking at the legacy of the Raj.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) has said the course for 11-14 year olds is intended to give a valuable insight into the shared history of Britain and India, The Times reported today.

The course, which is to be covered in 15 hours, would help pupils evaluate different interpretations of the massacre.

The massacre was one of the most notorious incidents of Raj rule when Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire on unarmed civilians holding a meeting in the park.

The massacre stirred nationalist feelings across India fuelling the call for full independence from British colonial forces.

In its guidelines, the QCA cautions that teachers "should be aware that this unit explores issues and events that may evoke strong feelings in some pupils. Care should be taken to present the unit in a manner that is sensitive, objective and balanced". (PTI)

Former US President Gerald Ford dies at 93

LOS ANGELES, Dec 27: Gerald R Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said. He was 93.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said yesterday in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments - including an angioplasty - in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, California, about 209 kilometers east of Los Angeles.

Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared "our long national nightmare is over."

But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal. (AGENCIES)

Crude prices lower in Asian trade as US weather dampens demand.

SINGAPORE, Dec 27: Crude oil prices were lower in Asian trade today with an unusually mild winter in the United States dominating trader attention, dealers said.

At 12:15 pm (0945 IST), Brent North Sea crude for February delivery was three cents lower at 61.07 US dollars a barrel from its closing levels yesterday.

Due to technical problems NYMEX figures were not immediately available.

"It is strictly down to the weather issue again," said Steve Rowles, an analyst with CFC Seymour in Hong Kong. "The cold snap (in the US) that we are waiting for might not even happen."

Prices are likely to come under further pressure in the short-term as the latest US weather reports predict temperatures will remain mild heading into January, Rowles said.

Latest figures from the US Department of Energy (DoE) last week showed US distillate products reserves, which include heating oil and diesel, increased 1.2 million barrels to 133.1 million in the week ended December 15. Analysts had expected a drop of 600,000 barrels.

However, inventories of crude oil slumped 6.3 million barrels to 329.1 million, more than triple the decline expected.

Traders will be watching out for the release later today by the DoE to see if demand for heating oil continues to fall, dealers said.

They are also keeping a close watch on developments in Nigeria where a group of armed separatists in the oil region of the Niger delta in the south of the country has threatened on Sunday to intensify its attacks daily in order to drive out foreign oil companies. (AGENCIES)

Pak says trade with India linked to political reality........

ISLAMABAD, Dec 27: Maintaining that trade relations with India are linked to "political reality" and cannot be viewed in "isolation," Pakistan has refuted a report in the media that New Delhi has managed to isolate it on the trade front in the South Asian region by forming the BIMST-EC trade bloc.

"Pakistan has gradually liberalised trade with India and just recently 203 new items have been made importable from India. The economic relations between the two countries are definitely linked with the political reality and cannot be viewed in isolation," an official statement here said last night.

"Pakistan's trade diplomacy is very active in South Asia to retain the existing share and increase our market share in these economies," the statement said pointing to Pakistan's free trade treaty with Sri Lanka and its plans to have similar arrangement with Bangladesh and Nepal

The statement was in reaction to a report in 'The News' on December 25 that India in retaliation to Pakistan's reluctance to implement South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) has "isolated" Pakistan by forming Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMST-EC).

"After the flat refusal by Islamabad to New Delhi with regard to equal treatment under SAFTA, India has discreetly managed to create another regional trading bloc, BIMSTEC," the report had said. (PTI)

Big bellies tied to greater heart disease risk.

NEW YORK, Dec 27: The more your belly sticks out, the greater your risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows.

''The message is really obesity in the abdomen matters even more than obesity overall,'' Dr Carlos Iribarren of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California in Oakland, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

Body mass index (BMI), a gauge of weight in relation to height, is a fairly crude way to judge a person's heart disease risk based on obesity, he noted. For example, muscular people may have a high BMI and be perfectly healthy.

In the current study, Iribarren and his team tested whether sagittal abdominal diameter, or SAD, which is the distance from the back to the upper abdomen midway between the top of the pelvis and the bottom of the ribs, would improve the accuracy of BMI in predicting heart disease risk.

Waist circumference is widely used to measure obesity in the abdominal area, Iribarren noted. But while there are many ways to measure a person's waist, he added, SAD, which is evaluated by a doctor or nurse with a caliper, is much more standardized, and therefore probably less subject to error.

He and his colleagues looked at 101,765 men and women who underwent checkups between 1965 and 1970, which included SAD measurements, and were then followed for about 12 years.

Men with the largest SAD were 42 per cent more likely to develop heart disease during follow-up compared to those with the smallest SAD, while a large SAD increased heart disease risk by 44 per cent for women, Iribarren and his team found.

Within BMI categories, the researchers found, heart disease risk rose with SAD; even among men of normal weight, heart disease risk was higher for those with bigger bellies.

The relationship between SAD and heart disease risk was strongest among the youngest men and women, which is not surprising, Iribarren said, given that people who develop central obesity younger in life would likely have more serious problems.

''I think it has important implications for prevention,'' he said. '' Don't let this happen to you when you're young, that's kind of the message.''(AGENCIES)

Jolie, Pitt spend Christmas with Colombia refugees .

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA, Dec 27: Hollywood golden couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt handed out presents on Christmas Day to Colombian war refugees in Costa Rica, the United Nations refugee agency said.

Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Pitt -- one of Hollywood's most high-profile couples -- were without their three children as they visited refugees who fled armed conflict in Colombia.

The lightning visit was only revealed to the media yesterday to avoid paparazzi photographers.

Dressed in white and sporting a bright blue UNHCR baseball cap, Jolie called for more awareness of the plight of refugees around the world.

''It is especially shocking that such a tragedy can go on, year after year, with the rest of the world paying so little attention to it,'' she said in the Costa Rican capital San Jose, according to the UN agency.

The Central American country is home to an estimated 10,000 Colombian refugees.

''My Christmas message to Colombian refugees and to the millions of displaced people in Colombia is that the world has not totally forgotten them,'' Jolie said.

Up to 3 million people have been forced from their homes in Colombia by a four-decades-old guerrilla war, according to UNHCR estimates, and another half a million are believed to have fled abroad.

Jolie is famous for her humanitarian work and her head-turning looks as well as her acting, and Pitt, who split from former wife Jennifer Aniston in 2005, often accompanies her on trips around the world.

The pair, who say they have no plans to marry, have formed one of Hollywood's most glamorous families with baby daughter Shiloh, adopted Ethiopian daughter Zahara and adopted Cambodian son Maddox.

During their Costa Rican trip, the pair visited Colombian businesses funded by micro-credits, including a bakery where they were given a Christmas cake, gave presents to Colombian families and watched traditional Colombian dancing. (AGENCIES)

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