UNITED NATIONS, Apr 17: Strongly condemning the attempted rocket launch by North Korea, the UN Security Council has tightened sanctions against Pyongyang, ordering new “entities and items” to be added to the black list.
In a presidential statement yesterday, the powerful 15-nation body said it “deplores that such a launch has caused grave security concerns in the region.”
US envoy to the UN Susan Rice, president of the UNSC this month, said the statement also provides for new sanctions.
The Security Council has directed its North Korea Sanctions Committee to “designate additional entities and items,” including North Korean companies, to be subject to an asset freeze, as well as to identify additional proliferation- sensitive technology to be banned for transfer to or from North Korea.
“The Committee will also take several other actions to improve enforcement of existing sanctions,” Rice said.
Condemning the attempted launch of the “application satellite,” the UNSC said the action as well as any other use of ballistic missile technology is a serious violation of the United Nations resolutions.
The statement came after North Korea’s Friday’s launch of the satellite, which reportedly rose for less than two minutes before exploding and plunging into the sea near the Korean peninsula.
The Council demanded that North Korea refrain from any further launches using ballistic missile technology and to comply with previous resolutions by suspending all activities related to the country’s ballistic missile programme.
Pyongyang must also re-establish its commitments to a moratorium on missile launches, the Council stressed. (PTI)

LONDON, Apr 17: Britain has assured India that it will continue to allow post-study work-experience permits to students, provided they get appropriate jobs commensurate with their qualifications or degrees, India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma has said.
After his meetings with Britain’s Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable here, Sharma told media last evening that he had raised the issue of Post Study Work Permits to students.
He shared with them India’s concern about its stoppage as large number of Indian students “come here, they study hard and they should have some practical exposure”.
“The Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Dr Vince Cable have assured that UK will continue to allow…The issue is how they are looking at it,” Sharma said.
“What they have shared with me is that they (students) should get appropriate jobs which are commensurate with their qualifications or degrees. Now that is something which could be discussed,” he added.
The minister said that the very fact that there is this reassurance at the highest level from the British Government, this issue will be resolved.
“I shall follow up my talks today with a communication and I hope that given our relationship, even the fact that a very large number of Indian students from middle class families, ordinary families, students who have taken loans, come and study here and we also are keen to engage more in education and skills sectors where UK has the strength, this issue will get resolved in a correct manner. That is what is communicated to me,” Sharma said.
He added, “They say they have no intention to deny. It is only they are looking at certain specifics so that the domain knowledge is utilised in Post Study Work. Let us leave it at that,” the visiting Indian minister said. (PTI)

SANTIAGO, Apr 17: A powerful 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck near Chile’s eastern coastal port of Valparaiso early today, shaking buildings as far away as the capital Santiago, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries and the country’s main copper mines were unaffected.
State emergency office ONEMI said a stretch of coastline was being evacuated as a precaution, but there was no tsunami alert.
The quake, which the US Geological Survey measured at magnitude 6.5, struck 42 km north-northeast of Valparaiso, and 112 km northwest of the capital Santiago at a depth of 25.9 km.
‘We have no reports of any damage or injuries so far,’ a spokesman for ONEMI told Reuters. Local media said basic services like power and telecommunications mostly continued to operate normally, although several thousand homes were without power outside Santiago.
The USGS initially said the quake was a magnitude 6.6. Apartment buildings in Santiago shook heavily, and state television broadcast images of lamps swinging in homes in the capital.
State mining giant Codelco, the world’s No.1 copper producer, said its operations were not impacted by the quake, as did global miner Anglo American.
State oil company ENAP also said its Bio Bio refinery was operating normally.
Chile is prone to earthquakes, and was hammered by a massive 8.8 magnitude tremor in early 2010 which ravaged the south-center of the country, devastating industries and triggering tsunamis, in a disaster that killed about 500 people.
The 2010 quake caused roughly $8 billion in insured losses and economic losses of at least twice that.
In the past two years, earthquakes have been a scourge of the insurance industry. In addition to Chile, quakes in Japan and New Zealand in 2011 caused record-breaking losses in the tens of billions of dollars. Mexico has also been rattled by a series of strong quakes in recent weeks.
(agencies)

CANBERRA, Apr 17: Australia will start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan this year and expects all international forces there to be playing a supporting role for Afghan forces by mid-2013, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said today.
Gillard will take her timetable for Australia’s troop to withdraw a year earlier than planned to a NATO conference on Afghanistan in Chicago in May.
‘I am now confident that Chicago will recognise mid-2013 as a key milestone in the international strategy,’ Gillard said in a speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra.
‘A crucial point when the international forces will be able to move to a supporting role across all of Afghanistan.’
All foreign combat troops are due to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and Australia had been expected to withdraw then too.
But US President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders are expected to define more clearly Western withdrawal plans at the Chicago conference and outline measures to ensure Afghanistan does not collapse into civil war when foreign troops go home.
Gillard rejected suggestions the faster timetable was being driven by Obama and his desire to have withdrawal plans finalised before the November US presidential election, saying it was reliant on progress agreed by Afghan and international forces.
A major assault in Kabul by the Taliban this week has raised questions about whether Afghan forces will be able to control security after foreign troops withdraw.
Gillard said she expected President Hamid Karzai to make an announcement on the transition in the coming months, and that it would take twelve to eighteen months to complete the pull-out.
Australia would argue at the Chicago summit for broad and substantial international support in Afghanistan, Gillard said.
‘I will go to Chicago prepared for Australia to pay our fair share. Australia will also be prepared to provide niche training to the Afghan national security forces after 2014,’ she said.
More than 10 years after the Taliban government was toppled following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, the U.S. administration appears settled on a steady withdrawal of most of its troops by the end of 2014, leaving only a small US force to advise Afghan forces and conduct targeted strikes against militants.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is facing a difficult re-election campaign, has announced he would pull French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2013.
US forces number about 90,000 among the 130,000-strong NATO-led force. France has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan and Britain 9,500. Australia has about 1,550.
With 32 Australian soldiers killed and hundreds wounded, the Australian government is under mounting pressure to withdraw troops, and faces an expected election next year which Gillard is forecast to lose. (agencies)