GENEVA, Jan 24:  The first talks between Syria’s warring sides were off to a rough start today after the United Nations failed to convince regime and opposition delegates to sit in the same room.
Pulled together by the UN, Russia and the United States, delegations from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the opposition had been due to sit down at 11:00 am (1530 IST) at UN headquarters in Geneva.
UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi spent yesterday trying to convince them to be in the same room for the start of the talks — the biggest diplomatic effort yet to stem the bloodshed in Syria’s devastating civil war.
But UN spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told reporters that Brahimi would instead meet with the Syrian government delegation at 11:00 am and then the opposition at 4:00 pm.
“Both meetings will be bilateral,” she said.
“This process is shaping up, so there have been changes to previous declarations,” Vellucci said. “We are going step by step.”
Sources within the delegations told AFP the opposition had refused to sit in the same room unless the regime accepted the need for a transitional government without Assad.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Moqdad told reporters the opposition was obstructing the talks.
“The problem is that these people do not want to make peace, they are coming here with pre-conditions,” he told reporters.
“Of course we are ready to sit in the same room. Why are we coming here then?”
Nazir al-Hakim, a member of the opposition delegation, told AFP it was only willing to negotiate on the basis of the agreement reached at the “Geneva I” peace conference in 2012, which called for the creation of a transitional government.
“We agree to negotiate on the application of Geneva I. The regime does not accept that,” he said.
“We will be in the same room when there is a clear agenda for negotiations. We need guarantees that Geneva I will be discussed,” Hakim said.
The regime rejects the opposition’s contention that the Geneva I agreement requires Assad to go. (Agencies)
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SEOUL, Jan 24: North Korea urged an end to military hostilities today in the latest in a series of apparently conciliatory gestures to South Korea, which has so far reacted with scepticism.
The latest olive branch came in the form of an “open letter” sent to the South Korean authorities by the North’s top military body on the direct orders of leader Kim Jong-Un.
“What is important for paving a wide avenue for mending North-South relations is to make a bold decision to stop all hostile military acts, the biggest hurdle stoking distrust and confrontation,” the letter from the National Defence Commission said.
A week earlier, the NDC had sent a series of proposals urging South Korea to cancel scheduled joint military exercises with the United States and proposing a mutual moratorium on mud-slinging by the two rivals.
Seoul dismissed the overtures as a “deceptive” propaganda exercise, and warned that Pyongyang may well be laying the ground for a provocative act aimed at triggering a confrontation.
“Regretfully, the South Korean authorities still remain unchanged in its improper attitude and negative stand,” the NDC letter said.
The South “should not thoughtlessly doubt, misinterpret and rashly reject our sincere, important proposal,” it added.
Temperatures on the Korean peninsula traditionally rise ahead of the annual South Korean-US drills, which Pyongyang condemn as a provocative rehearsal for invasion.
Last year, they witnessed an unusually sharp and protracted surge in tensions, which saw the North threatening pre-emptive nuclear strikes, and nuclear-capable US stealth bombers flying practice runs on the peninsula.
In its letter, the NDC stressed that its opposition lay solely in the participation of US forces in the exercises.
North Korea “did not urge the South Korean authorities to stop ordinary military drills,” it said.
“It urged them to halt drills for a war of aggression to be staged against their compatriots in collusion with outside forces.”
The NDC said it had also taken the “unilateral” step of halting all cross-border “slandering”, despite the South’s dismissive response to its proposal a week ago.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry had scoffed at the idea, arguing that the only “slander” was propagated by Pyongyang’s propaganda machine. (AGENCIES)

SYDNEY, Jan 24: A shallow magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands early today, with seismologists putting its epicentre at just one km deep, but no immediate tsunami warning was issued.
The US Geological Survey said the moderate quake struck at about 4:26am (local time).
Its epicentre was located in the ocean 70 kilometres south-southeast of Chirovanga, 424 kilometres from the capital Honiara.
There were no immediate reports of damage after the quake.
In 2013, the islands were struck by a major 8.0 magnitude quake that generated small but deadly tsunami waves which washed away houses and reached as far away as Japan.
In 2007, a tsunami following an 8.0-magnitude earthquake killed at least 52 people in the Solomons and left thousands homeless. The quake lifted an entire island and pushed out its shoreline by dozens of metres.
The Solomons are part of the “Ring of Fire”, a zone of tectonic activity around the Pacific that is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In December 2004, a 9.3-magnitude quake off Indonesia triggered a catastrophic tsunami that killed 226,000 people around the Indian Ocean. (AGENCIES)

BEIJING, Jan 24:  An activist in a grassroots group whose members have called for the overthrow of China’s ruling Communist Party went on trial today, his lawyer said, the latest step in Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on dissent.
Liu Yuandong, a member of the Southern Street Movement, a loose network of laymen-activists campaigning on a broad civil rights agenda, faced a charge of “disturbing public order” after taking part in anti-censorship protests last year, his lawyer Liu Zhengqing said.
Liu is the latest of several Chinese activists to face trial this week, in what has been seen as a coordinated attempt by the ruling Communist Party to quash challenges to its rule.
The charge, being heard in a court in Guangzhou in the southern province of Guangdong, carries a maximum five-year jail term.
In the most prominent of the current cases, the founder of the separate New Citizens Movement Xu Zhiyong was tried in Beijing on Wednesday, and his lawyer said the verdict against him would be announced Sunday.
US ambassador to China Gary Locke has called for Xu and other “political prisoners” to be released, and his arrest was condemned by the EU.
China has dismissed such criticism as “interference” in its internal affairs.
Liu and the other defendants are almost certain to be found guilty by China’s politically controlled courts.
The Southern Street Movement organised around a dozen small-scale rallies in Guangdong last year, which sometimes saw protesters holding placards calling for an end to “one-party dictatorship”, but several of its members have since been detained. (Agencies)
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WASHINGTON, Jan 24:  Facebook has debunked the recent study by the Princeton University that the social networking website would lose 80 per cent of its users by 2015-2017.
Facebook’s data scientists have used the Princeton study’s “correlation equals causation” methodology of tracking Google search volume to show the university would lose all of its students by 2021.
“Our research unequivocally demonstrated that Princeton may be in danger of disappearing entirely,” Facebook Data Scientist Mike Develin posted on the website.
The Princeton study made a strained epidemiological analogy comparing Facebook to a “disease” that users eventually “recover” from.
The critical error in the non-peer-reviewed study is stating that since the volume of searches for “Facebook” began declining in 2012, it must mean there’s an ongoing decline in Facebook usage, according to a report in Techcrunch.Com.
Since 2012 Facebook has kept growing to its current 1.19 billion users, and it has never had an overall decline in user count, the report said.
“The report that Princeton put out is utter nonsense,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
“While we are concerned for Princeton University, we are even more concerned about the fate of the planet — Google Trends for “air” have also been declining steadily, and our projections show that by the year 2060 there will be no air left,” Develin said.
“We don’t really think Princeton or the world’s air supply is going anywhere soon. We love Princeton (and air). As data scientists, we wanted to give a fun reminder that not all research is created equal – and some methods of analysis lead to pretty crazy conclusions,” said Develin. (PTI)
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