http://myrepublica.com/portal/news_rss.php MYREPUBLICA RSS en-us Tue, 21 May 2013 22:28:40 NPT Tue, 21 May 2013 22:28:40 NPT http://myrepublica.com INFO@MYREPUBLICA.COM nilesh_man@hotmail.com http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54989 WASHINGTON, May 20: A powerful tornado swept through an Oklahoma City suburb on Monday, tearing down blocks of homes and at least two schools and leaving at least 51 people dead, local officials told US media. The state medical examiner´s office released the latest death toll but the number was climbing rapidly, as emergency crews combed through smashed homes and the collapsed remains of an elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma.[break] Stunned weather forecasters reported a two-mile (three-kilometer) wide swathe of vicious winds and television news helicopters tracked a dark and deadly funnel plowing through densely-packed suburbs. "We´ve had a massive tornado, a huge one that has passed through this community," Oklahoma´s Governor Mary Fallin told a news conference. "We know there are a lot of injuries. We know we´ve lost a tremendous amount of structures throughout this community and throughout the state," she said, as the Moore police chief urged people to leave the area. "There are a lot of safety issues, gas lines, power lines, things of that nature, that we have to take into consideration and there´s just not much else that can be done there at this time," police chief Jerry Sillings said. Reporters for local broadcaster KFOR-TV saw children as young as nine being pulled out of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, a residential community of 55,000 just south of Oklahoma´s state capital. Anxious parents were being kept at a distance while search and rescue workers scrambled to free the students. According to KFOR, as many 24 could be trapped under the rubble and at least seven children died at the school. A second elementary school, Briarwood, was also hit but did not appear to have sustained casualties. From its news helicopter, KFOR´s cameras captured scenes of widespread destruction, with street after street of single-story homes in Moore stripped of their roofs and cars piled atop each other like toys. Utility lines were down and gas lines exposed, triggering localized fires. The Moore Medical Center was evacuated after it sustained damage, and state authorities called out the National Guard to help rescue efforts. On Twitter, the National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF-4, indicating that it packed winds of 166 to 200 miles per hour (267-322 km/h) -- more severe than a category five hurricane. In downtown Oklahoma City, tornado sirens went off at least three times and the Interstate 35 highway -- a busy north-south artery through the American heartland -- was closed to all but emergency vehicles. In Moore, live images from KFOR showed people wandering among the debris and even a couple of untethered horses from a local stable that somehow managed to survive the punishing storm. "I had no idea it was coming," said a stable worker, who told how he survived the "unbearably loud" twister by taking cover in one of the stalls. Monday´s tornado followed roughly the same track as a May 1999 twister that killed 44 people, injured hundreds more and destroyed thousands of homes. Tornadoes frequently touch down on Oklahoma´s wide open plains, but Monday´s twister struck a populated urban area and raised fears of a high casualty toll. Because of the hard ground, few homes are built with basements or storm shelters in which residents can take cover. Oklahoma City lies inside the so-called "Tornado Alley" stretching from South Dakota to central Texas that is particularly vulnerable to tornadoes. On Sunday, a powerful storm system churning through the US Midwest spawned tornadoes in Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, destroying homes and killing at least two people, US media reported. Fallin had already declared a state of emergency for 16 Oklahoma counties due to the tornado threat on Sunday, and added five more on Monday after the storms hit her capital. In Washington, a White House official said President Barack Obama was getting updates "as information come in from the ground" and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stood ready to provide assistance. "The administration continues to urge all those in affected or potentially affected areas to follow the direction of state and local officials as this severe weather continues," the official added. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54955 RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, May 20: A Pakistani court Monday granted bail to former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over the murder of Benazir Bhutto, an official said, but the retired general remains under house arrest. Musharraf has been detained in his farmhouse on the edge of Islamabad since April 19 on charges of conspiracy to murder two-time prime minister Bhutto, who was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack in 2007 in Rawalpindi. [break] "General Musharraf´s bail has been confirmed" by an anti-terrorism court in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, court official Mohammad Aslam Joya told AFP. The bail does not mean his automatic release as he also faces legal cases over the sacking of judges when he imposed emergency rule in 2007, and the 2006 death of a Baluch rebel leader. Judge Habibur Rehman has ordered Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008 after seizing power in a coup, to pay two bonds worth one million rupees ($10,000) each, he added. Musharraf´s government blamed Bhutto´s killing on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement and was killed in a US drone attack in 2009. The 69-year-old returned from exile in March to stand in last week´s general election, vowing to "save" the country from militancy and economic collapse but he was barred from running over charges dating back to his time in power. Taking the former chief of army staff into custody was an unprecedented move in a country ruled for more than half of its life by the military and was seen by many as a challenge to the armed forces´ power. Since Nawaz Sharif, ousted by Musharraf´s coup in 1999, won the May 11 general election there has been speculation a deal would be reached to allow Musharraf to leave Pakistan without facing the courts. But his lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasuri told AFP he would not flee. "He will get free from all cases one by one. He has got bail in Benzair Bhutto murder case today and will get bail from other cases very soon," he said. "He will stay in the country and won´t go abroad. He will stay very much here. Rumours that he will go abroad before Nawaz Sharif takes charge of the prime minister office are false." Prosecutor Chaudhry Azhar told AFP he opposed bail for Musharraf, saying there was a risk he would leave the country. The main prosecutor in the case, Chaudhry Zulfiqar, was shot dead on his way to court on May 3. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54945 (Updated) NEW DELHI, May 20: The Indian and Chinese premiers pledged on Monday to finally resolve a border dispute that has soured ties for decades, saying good relations between the two Asian giants were key to world peace. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, making his first foreign visit since taking office, said that Beijing was determined to build up trust with New Delhi as he and a team of ministers signed a series of joint agreements with India. [break] His host, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also stressed he regarded a good bilateral relationship as crucial to the wider region´s development. Li´s visit comes after a flare-up last month in a long-running border dispute between the two countries in a remote Himalayan region. New Delhi accused Chinese troops of intruding nearly 20 kilometres (12 miles) into Indian-claimed territory, triggering a three-week standoff that was resolved when troops from both sides pulled back. The Line of Actual Control between the nuclear-armed neighbours has never been formally demarcated, although they have signed accords to maintain peace since the border region saw a brief Indo-Chinese war in 1962. Singh said there was now a mutual desire to finally resolve the dispute and that a joint working group would be established to reach a lasting agreement. "We agreed that our special representatives will meet soon to continue discussions seeking an early agreement on a framework for a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable boundary settlement," Singh said after talks with Li. "Peace and tranquillity on our border has to be preserved," the Indian leader added at a joint news conference in New Delhi. Li said the border dispute was a historical hangover and that there was a desire on both sides to overcome it. "We have established the principles for settling the question," Li said. "Both sides believe we need to improve the border mechanisms that have been put into place and make them more efficient.. and appropriately resolve our differences. "The two sides should continue to advance the negotiations on the boundary question and jointly maintain peace and tranquillity in the border area," he added. Speaking earlier, Li had said that good relations between India and China would "be a true blessing for Asia and the world". "World peace... cannot be a reality without strategic trust between India and China," he added. The news conference followed signing ceremonies on a series of issues ranging from agriculture to tourism and trade. There was also an agreement to resolve a dispute over a Chinese plan to build three more hydropower dams across the cross-border Brahmaputra river, known in China as the Yarlung Tsangpo. Singh said he had raised Indian concerns about the Chinese activities "on the upper reaches of our shared rivers". Li is also scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and senior figures from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party before heading Tuesday to India´s financial hub, Mumbai. China is India´s second-largest trading partner, with two-way commerce totalling $66.5 billion last year, and the two countries are hoping that figure will reach $100 billion by 2015. Several major roads in the Indian capital have been closed to prevent Tibetan protestors from disrupting Li´s visit, and exile groups have complained of heavy-handed policing in their neighbourhoods. Police detained three Tibetan protesters near the luxury Taj Palace in the Indian capital where the Chinese premier was staying, an AFP photographer said. After wrapping up his visit to India, Li is due to travel to neighbouring Pakistan before heading to Switzerland and Germany. and Germany. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54896 KARACHI, May 19: Gunmen have killed a Pakistani politician from Imran Khan´s party in the southern port city of Karachi on the eve of a partial re-run of May 11 polls that were marked by more than 150 killings. Zohra Hussain, 59, vice president of the women´s wing of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the province of Sindh, was targeted by three gunmen on a motorcycle outside her home in an upmarket part of the city late Saturday.[break] Former cricket star Khan was quick to pin the blame on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party, which represents the Urdu-speaking majority, and specifically its boss, Altaf Hussain, who lives in exile in London. "I hold Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder as he had openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts," Khan said on his Twitter feed, describing the killing as "a targeted act of terror". "I also hold the British Govt responsible as I had warned them abt Br citizen Altaf Hussain after his open threats to kill PTI workers," he said, adding that he was "shocked and deeply saddened by the brutal killing". Firdous Shamim, a local PTI leader, told AFP that Hussain "was leaving her home for some work when three gunmen attacked her. She thought they wanted to snatch her purse and handed it over to them but they killed her". Police said all three gunmen escaped after the attack. "They shot her with one bullet near her chin and she could not survive," senior police official Nasir Aftab told AFP. The motive behind the shooting was unclear and there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. The killing came hours before voting was due to start at 43 polling stations in Karachi in a partial re-run ordered due to allegations of rigging in last weekend´s polls, which marked Pakistan´s first democratic transition of power. Tensions have been running high between PTI and the MQM, Karachi´s dominant party, after Khan´s party accused its rival of widespread vote rigging. MQM has denied the charge and announced a boycott of the re-run. PTI and the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party have staged nationwide protests against the alleged irregularities. Pakistan´s election commission ordered the partial re-run due to allegations of ballot stuffing in a constituency known as NA-250 -- largely an affluent neighbourhood of the financial capital. Voting in seven constituencies in Karachi last weekend was extended by three hours after complaints that polling stations opened late in the city, which last year saw record violence linked to ethnic and political tensions. The election saw some 50 million Pakistanis vote, with centre-right former prime minister Nawaz Sharif emerging the winner nearly 14 years after he was deposed in a coup. The Taliban, who denounce democracy as un-Islamic, killed more than 150 people during the election campaign, including 24 on polling day. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54894 JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, May 19: A Saudi woman, Raha Muharraq, on Saturday reached the summit of Everest, the world´s highest peak, in a first for the conservative Muslim kingdom where women´s sports are severely restricted, her proud father said. "She reached the summit of Everest on Saturday morning. We have been able to contact her and she is very exhausted and now resting," Hassan Muharraq told AFP.[break] "She is very happy and we, the family, are very happy with her achievement, which was not easy." He said that Raha, a 25-year-old graduate of the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, left her home in the Saudi city of Jeddah on April 3 and underwent rigorous training before the climb. With Everest, she had achieved her ambition of climbing the seven highest peaks in the world after having climbed mountains in Europe, Tanzania, the South Pole and Argentina. "Her dream was to prove that with determination and self-denial she can bear difficulties because she believed that humankind can overcome" all tests, he said. Saudi Arabia, which implements a strict form of Islam and imposes a segregation of the sexes, this month gave the green light for girls at private schools to play sports, under certain conditions. Under pressure from international sports bodies, it sent two women athletes to the London Olympics last summer. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54815 PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 17: Twin bomb attacks on Friday killed at least 13 people outside mosques in northwest Pakistan, where the party of cricket star Imran Khan is forming a coalition government, officials said. The blasts targeted the two mosques in the Baazdara area of northwestern Malakand region, senior local administration official Amjad Ali Khan told AFP. [break] "The two blasts killed at least 13 people and wounded 48 others," Khan said. "Eight of the injured people are in a critical condition," he added. The bombs were detonated by remote control but information was slow to filter through from the far-flung, mountainous area where there is no mobile phone coverage. Administration official Imran Khan also confirmed the death toll had risen to 13. "One blast took place inside a mosque and the second one occurred at the main gate of the second mosque," he told AFP. Officials had earlier put the death toll at eight. Survivors told AFP that the bombs exploded as people were leaving the mosques at the end of the weekly Friday sermon. Iqtidar Khan, 28, said he sustained head injuries. "I came out of mosque after saying prayers when something pulled me with full force," he told AFP by telephone from hospital after the attack. "A piece of brick hit my head after a big bang. I could see nothing but smoke and blood on the stairs of the mosque," he added. He said the front gate and the roof on the veranda of the mosque were destroyed by the blasts. Northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is on the frontline of a nearly seven-year Taliban insurgency and abuts the semi-autonomous tribal belt where Pakistani troops are fighting against homegrown militants. The attack came just one day after Khan´s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said it was forming a coalition with the right-wing religious Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and secular Qaumi Watan Party (QWP). "Our province has badly suffered due to terrorism and we need unified efforts to bring peace," Pervez Khattak, PTI´s nominee for provincial chief minister, told a news conference on Thursday. PTI emerged as the largest party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by securing 35 out of the 99 directly elected seats in the provincial assembly. JI and QWP secured seven seats each. Its electoral success appears rooted at least in part in Khan´s call for an end to military operations and peace talks with the Taliban. Friday´s attack was the deadliest in Pakistan since last Saturday´s general election, won by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, giving him an historic third term as head of the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N party. The Taliban, who denounce democracy as un-Islamic, killed more than 150 people during the election campaign, including 24 on polling day last weekend. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54756 KABUL, May 16: A powerful suicide car bomb targeting a NATO military convoy in Kabul killed six Afghan civilians on Thursday in the first major attack in the capital for more than two months. Government officials said six bystanders died in the explosion in the Shah Shaheed residential district in the southeast of Kabul, while the NATO coalition were unable to give details of any casualties.[break] One NATO sports utility vehicle was completely destroyed in the blast and surrounding streets were cordoned off as US troops arrived at the scene. Schoolgirls fled the area in tears as the clean-up operation began. "At around 8:00 am (0330 GMT) this morning, terrorists detonated an explosives-packed (Toyota) Corolla car near a convoy of foreign forces," Hashmat Stanikzai, the Kabul police spokesman, told AFP. Afghan health ministry official Sayed Kabir Amiri said local hospitals confirmed six people had died and 37 were wounded, all of them civilians. "Some of the bodies are badly damaged and can´t be identified," he added. Lieutenant Quenton Roehricht, a spokesman for NATO´s US-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed a coalition vehicles had been targeted in Kabul and said further information would be released shortly. "I was at home when I heard a terrible explosion and our whole building shook," Mustafa, a young local man, told AFP. "All our windows are shattered. I rushed outside to bring my little brothers and sisters from school. I saw five or six people covered in blood who were being taken away in police vehicles." Police added that at least 10 houses had been severely damaged. It was the first major attack in Kabul since March 9 when a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed nine people outside the defence ministry during a visit by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. It comes just weeks after the Taliban launched their annual "spring offensive" on April 27, opening a crucial period for Afghanistan as local security forces take the lead in offensives against the insurgents. The Islamist militants said multiple suicide bombings, "insider attacks" by Afghan soldiers and "special military tactics" would target international airbases and diplomatic buildings to inflict maximum casualties. All NATO combat missions will finish by the end of next year and the 100,000 foreign troops deployed across Afghanistan have already begun to withdraw from the battlefield. More than 11 years after the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, efforts to seek a political settlement ending the violence have so far made little progress, but pressure is growing ahead of the NATO withdrawal. In the most recent NATO casualties, a roadside bomb killed three US soldiers in the volatile province of Kandahar on Tuesday. Three Georgian soldiers were killed in neighbouring Helmand province on Monday when a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle laden with explosives. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54661 NEW YORK, May 14: A US abortion doctor could face the death penalty after being found guilty of murdering three babies with scissors after they were born alive in his filthy Philadelphia clinic. Kermit Gosnell, 72, was said to work out of a facility resembling a house of horrors, a place that smelled of animal urine and had fetal remains scattered about in jars and jugs.[break] He was convicted by a jury in a Philadelphia court, the district attorney´s office said. Judge Jeffrey Minehart set Tuesday of next week as the day for starting the death-penalty hearing for Gosnell. The other possible penalty for first degree murder in Pennsylvania is life in prison with no chance of parole, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The jury returned guilty verdicts on the three babies, an acquittal in the alleged murder of a fourth, and a guilty verdict in the involuntary manslaughter of a woman on whom he was performing an abortion, DA´s spokeswoman Tasha Jamerson said. The jury, which had earlier Monday declared itself unable to decide on two counts before going back to try again, had been deliberating for 10 days. Gosnell´s crimes horrified Americans on either side of the intense national debate on abortion. Prosecutors said he performed late-term abortions in a state where the limit is set at 24 weeks and that when babies emerged still alive, he used scissors to sever their spines. However, he denied this, insisting that all babies were already dead as a result of the drug he was using in the abortion. Gosnell appeared "as enigmatically placid as ever" as the 12-member jury filed back into court after reaching a decision and the verdict was read out, reports said. Defense Attorney Jack McMahon, limited by a gag order from commenting on the case, said Gosnell was upset by the verdict. "Obviously, the jury has spoken. The prosecution should be commended," McMahon said, according to the Inquirer. During one operation in the clinic, a woman who´d come in for an abortion died from a heart attack after an overdose of anesthesia. Gosnell´s business, called the Women´s Medical Society, was "decrepit and unsanitary," prosecutors said, staffed with unlicensed personnel who would "practice medicine on unsuspecting patients, unsupervised, and directed them to heavily drug patients in his absence." The grand jury report indicting Gosnell described the outwardly professional looking brick building where he worked as a house of horrors. "The clinic reeked of animal urine, courtesy of the cats that were allowed to roam (and defecate) freely. Furniture and blankets were stained with blood. Instruments were not properly sterilized. Disposable medical supplies were not disposed of; they were reused, over and over again," the report said. "Scattered throughout, in cabinets, in the basement, in a freezer, in jars and bags and plastic jugs, were fetal remains. It was a baby charnel house." The grand jury itself noted that the story would be "used" by both sides in the abortion debate. Opponents have raised the case as evidence of abortion´s fundamentally violent, criminal nature, while backers of abortion see the main lesson as the need to provide women -- especially the uneducated poor -- access to reliable, safe services. John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, called it "a sad and horrific case -- one that reminds us there is no one more defenseless, or more in need of our protection, than the unborn." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54660 YANGON, May 14:  A boat carrying up to 150 Rohingya Muslims fleeing a cyclone has capsized off Myanmar´s coast, the UN said Tuesday, heightening fears over the storm which threatens camps for tens of thousands of displaced people. The boat hit trouble on Monday night after it left Pauktaw township in Rakhine state, said a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, adding there were an unknown number of missing as "they were travelling to another camp ahead of the cyclone".[break] A Rohingya Muslim living in Pauktaw said a boat carrying some 200 people had left seeking higher ground along the coast and told AFP by telephone that many were feared dead at sea. About 140,000 people displaced by communal violence last year are living in flimsy tents or makeshift housing across coastal areas of Rakhine -- exposed to Cyclone Mahasen, which is gathering strength in the Bay of Bengal. The cyclone is expected to make landfall somewhere near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border on Thursday night, according to an update by Myanmar´s Department of Meteorology and Hydrology. Bangladeshi authorities on Monday warned millions of people that the cyclone could barrel into their coastal homes, while Myanmar´s army has been deployed to help evacuate those most at risk. The UN and other aid agencies have for months warned of the dangers this year´s monsoon poses to displaced people in Rakhine. Most of them are stateless Rohingya Muslims uprooted by two outbreaks of deadly religious violence since June last year. "If the government fails to evacuate those at risk, any disaster that results will not be natural but man-made," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The warnings revived memories of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar´s Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008 and killed about 140,000 people. The UN´s disaster assessment agency said Sunday that preparations were under way to provide shelter for up to 13,000 displaced people in the state capital Sittwe, amid fears a tidal surge could sweep through camps in low-lying areas. There were signs of increasing desperation among displaced people Tuesday in areas near Sittwe as warnings over the cyclone intensified. Some people reportedly refused to leave their shelters for fear of having nowhere else to go. "We are very worried about the cyclone... we do not have enough food to eat. Many people are in trouble. But we have no idea what we should do," one displaced Rohingya told AFP by telephone. The cyclone threatens to worsen the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine, which was sparked by last year´s deadly violence that saw around 200 people killed and the homes of tens of thousands of people razed. Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship. Thousands of Rohingya have since fled in rickety and overcrowded boats and scores have died making the perilous journey south towards Thailand and Malaysia. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54571 LAHORE, Pakistan, May 12: Nawaz Sharif was Sunday poised to form the next government in Pakistan after declaring election victory, but was facing an uphill task in forming a coalition and tackling the country´s major problems. The partial, unofficial results represented a stunning comeback for a man deposed in a 1999 military coup, after nearly 60 percent of the 86 million electorate turned out to vote, defying polling day attacks that left 24 dead. [break] The party of his main rival, cricket star Imran Khan, whose promises to end corruption struck a chord with middle-class and youth voters, conceded defeat but vowed to form the next provincial government in the northwest. The main outgoing Pakistan People´s Party appeared to have suffered a crushing defeat, going from 125 seats in the national assembly to being neck-and-neck with Khan´s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which won only one seat in 2002. The historic polls mark the first time an elected civilian administration completed a full term to hand power to another through the ballot box, in a country where there have been three military coups and four military rulers. Flanked by his brother Shahbaz and his daughter Maryam, a relaxed and satisfied Sharif gave a victory speech to hundreds of jubilant supporters at his centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N party headquarters in Lahore. "We should thank Allah that he has given PML-N another chance to serve you and Pakistan," he said. He struck a conciliatory tone following a high-voltage campaign that saw him clash with Khan, who was credited with inspiring the high turnout even if he lost one of the seats he contested in his hometown Lahore. "I appeal for all parties to come to the table and sit with me and solve the country´s problems," Sharif said. Prime minister twice before in the 1990s, his historic third term will begin only after he brokers a deal with political rivals to form a coalition. With official results sluggish to emerge, TV projections suggested no single party would win a simple majority of 172 seats in the national assembly, raising the prospect of a weak coalition government. Political analyst Imtiaz Gul said the result would most likely be a hung parliament in which PML-N would have to team up with their former opponents from the outgoing government. The election was fought over the country´s tanking economy, an appalling energy crisis that causes power cuts of up to 20 hours a day, the alliance in the US-led war on terror, chronic corruption and the dire need for development. Analyst Hasan Askari told AFP that delivering a strong government would be far harder than forming a strong opposition. "He needs to solve the issue of terrorism and other problems crippling the economy. If he delivers quickly, fair enough, if not then he will face crisis and criticism," Askari warned. Sharif has publicly called for talks with the Taliban as a means of ending a nearly seven-year domestic insurgency despite strong support from the current army chief for military action. "I don´t know what kind of approach he can adopt to challenge the Taliban, and will they negotiate with him? Will the Nawaz Sharif government bring changes in the policy on terrorism?" said A.H. Nayer. "We will have to see if the government and the amy are on the same page on this important issue. Will there be soft and hard action as in the past or will there be negotiations and concessions?" Chief Election Commissioner Fakharuddin Ebrahim praised the authorities, for their cooperation "which enabled us to hold free and fair elections" and recorded a turnout of nearly 60 percent, the highest since 1977. Both Sharif and Khan won at least one of the seats they had contested, but PTI, which had promised a "tsunami" of support, quickly conceded defeat. Assad Omar, a senior PTI leader, sent his congratulations to PML-N and said Khan, who is flat on his back in hospital with a fractured spine after falling from the stage of a campaign rally, would react later on Sunday. "I will say he knows how to win and how to lose, and after losing, how to come back. He is taking these results like a sportsman," Omar said. Newly elected PTI member Shaukat Yousafzai said: "It is very clear that PTI has emerged as the largest party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, so we will form our government here with the help of like-minded political parties." Besides the 342-member national assembly, voters also elected four provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. More than 600,000 security personnel deployed to protect the vote and Pakistan sealed its border with Afghanistan and Iran to boost security after pre-election violence killed at least 127 people, according to an AFP tally. In Pakistan´s financial hub Karachi, voting was marred by allegations of rigging from rival parties, and the election commission ordered a re-vote in 40 polling stations in one constituency over accusations of ballot stuffing. Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami boycotted polls in Karachi after accusing the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which controls the city, of fraud and violence. The MQM denied the allegations. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54546 WASHINGTON, May 11: The West Wing of the White House was temporarily evacuated Saturday morning after a minor electrical problem set off a smoke alarm, a White House official said. "Early this am, an electrical transformer near the West Wing malfunctioned and set off a smoke alarm in the West Wing. The transformer problem was quickly resolved.[break] "Electricity and personnel access to the West Wing has returned to normal. The first family was unaffected," the official said. The West Wing houses the Oval Office and the offices of President Barack Obama´s key staff. The president and his family live in the porticoed residence that stands between the East and West Wings. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54529  (Updated) ISLAMABAD, May 11: Pakistanis queued up to vote in landmark elections on Saturday, defying Taliban attacks to cast their ballots in polls marking a historic democratic transition for the nuclear-armed state. Turnout appeared enthusiastic in the capital, in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, but was thinner in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, gripped by separatist and sectarian violence, AFP reporters said.[break] More than 86 million people are eligible to vote for the 342-member national assembly and four provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. Polls close at 5:00 pm. In Karachi, Pakistan´s financial hub, a Taliban bomb killed 11 people and wounded 36 others, targeting a candidate for the provincial assembly for the Awami National Party, one of the secular parties in the outgoing government. An AFP photographer said a child aged three to four was among the dead laid out in the morgue and police said one of the candidate´s guards was also killed. The target, Amanullah Mehsud, escaped unhurt, senior police official Mazhar Nawaz said. The Taliban, who consider democracy un-Islamic and have vowed to disrupt the vote with suicide attacks, quickly claimed responsibility. "We proudly claim responsibility for this attack, we carried it out and will carry out more of the same," spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. Another bomb wounded eight people outside a women´s polling station in Peshawar and temporarily suspended voting, police said. Pre-election violence killed at least 127 people, according to an AFP tally, and the campaign has been called the bloodiest in the country´s history. Queues gathered outside polling stations in Pakistan´s main cities where some people said they were nervous about security, but others spoke enthusiastically about exercising their democratic right and voting for change. "We have already spent a lot of time being scared of terror threats. Today, we have to take a decision and bury this state of fear once and for all," said Suhail Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Peshawar. The vote marks the first time that an elected civilian administration has completed a full term and handed power to another through the ballot box in a country where there have been three military coups and four military rulers. The front-runner is ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) but much of the campaign has been electrified by cricket star Imran Khan with promises of reform and an end to corruption. The charismatic 60-year-old leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) tapped into a last-minute surge of support after fracturing his spine when he fell from a stage at a campaign rally on Tuesday. Although he is expected to make a full recovery, he is flat on his back in hospital and aides say he will not be able to vote. The outgoing centre-left Pakistan People´s Party (PPP) has run a lacklustre and rudderless campaign, with its chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, too young to run and largely hidden from public view due to Taliban threats. In Karachi, there were queues outside polling stations in some areas, but voting was more sluggish in other parts of the city where people spoke of security fears. "This time I am more enthusiastic about voting than in the last elections. The media played a good role in motivating people... that they should not let their vote go waste," said Mehar Rehman, 29, who works for a private company. An AFP reporter said voting was delayed at 12 polling stations he visited, as officials awaited the delivery of ballot boxes and papers. Election commission official Najeeb Ahmed said that any delays at polling booths would be compensated by extending voting hours. Commentators are divided on whether a wealth of enthusiastic first-time voters and Taliban threats will make turnout higher or lower than the 44 percent at the last elections in 2008. The main issues are the tanking economy, an appalling energy crisis that causes power cuts of up to 20 hours a day, the alliance in the US-led war on Islamist militants, chronic corruption and the dire need for development. More than 600,000 security personnel have deployed nationwide and around half the estimated 70,000 polling stations have been declared at risk of attack, many of them in insurgency-torn parts of Baluchistan and the northwest. The PML-N and PPP have dominated politics for decades, led by two of the richest families in the country, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos. But Khan has sought to galvanise a young, urban middle class with promises of sweeping change. With no reliable polling data, Sharif has been earmarked the most probable winner but if PTI do well enough to become a formidable opposition, there are concerns that the emergent coalition will be weak and possibly short-lived. Sharif served as prime minister from 1990-93, when he was sacked for corruption, and from 1997-99, when he was deposed by the military, although his family say he is a changed man who will this time govern more successfully. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54478 DHAKA, May 11: Bangladeshi rescuers pulled a woman alive from the ruins of a collapsed garment factory complex on Friday after she spent 17 days trapped in a basement under the rubble. Hours after officials had announced the death toll had surged past the 1,000 mark, recovery teams who had long given up any hope of finding more survivors were stunned to hear the voice of a woman calling for help.[break] They managed to extract her from the ruins in an operation broadcast live on television and watched by crowds at the scene who were asked by clerics to pray for her rescue. Cries of "Allahu Akbar" -- "God is great" -- rang out from the crowd as the woman, identified as Reshma, was pulled out of the rubble. Bangladeshi rescuers retrieve garment worker Reshma from the rubble of a collapsed building in Savar on May 10, 2013, seventeen days after an eight-storey building collapsed. The death toll from last month´s collapse of a garment factory complex in Bangladesh rose past 1,000 as piles of bodies were found in the ruins of a stairwell where victims had sought shelter. (AFP) After she was brought out, she was whisked away to a waiting ambulance, but managed a weak smile to the people gathered at the ruined Rana Plaza complex on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka. "I called but nobody heard me. I heard noises, but nobody listened to me," she told Somoy TV later in an interview. Rescuers said she appeared to have lost a lot of weight but there were no other signs of injury. Her family, from a remote northern village, was elated at her survival. "It was a miracle. We lost all hopes of finding her alive. We visited every hospital in Dhaka and Savar. We visited the mortuaries and checked every dead body they pulled out," Reshma´s brother, Zahidul Islam, told AFP. "Then the news came this afternoon that a woman called Reshma has been found alive," said Islam. "I saw her face as they brought her out. There she was -- my sister," he said, adding she was 18 and used to work as a sewing machine operator in the factory. A doctor at the Savar Combined Military Hospital said that Reshma appeared to be in good health despite her ordeal. "Her heart is fine. Her breathing is fine. Her brain is functioning well. We (will know more) after getting her biochemical report," he said. Bangladesh´s fire service chief Ahmed Ali told AFP that Reshma was found in a gap between a beam and column in the wreckage of the nine-storey complex, which caved in on April 24, and appeared to have had access to water. The army officer who brought Reshma out of the rubble said she had been found standing amid the ruins. "We first saw a pipe moving. We removed some gravel and concrete. We found her standing," Major Moazzem, who uses only one name, told Somoy TV. "We gave her food and assured her she would be rescued. We conducted the rescue work for 45 minutes. We brought her out by using light hammers, hand saws and drilling machines." Jamil Ahmed, a fire service officer who was part of the rescue team, told AFP the bulldozers and cranes which had been turning over the rubble in search of bodies were ordered to stop as soon as it was learnt Reshma was alive. "We dug a hole and there she was -- standing up. She told us: ´My name is Reshma, please save me, please save me, brother´," he said. "There was an air pocket inside and she had enough space to crawl about comfortably," he added. "Major Moazzem slipped into the hole and took her into his arms and then we pulled her out." Another rescuer said Reshma had access to food supplies for the first fortnight of her ordeal but had run out two days ago. A government minister told reporters Reshma wept tears of joy during a brief phone conversation with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Reshma´s rescue is one of the most remarkable of recent years, although it is not the longest survival on record. In Pakistan, on December 12, 2005, a 40-year-old woman was rescued from the ruins of her house in Kashmir, two months after a quake ravaged the region. A 27-year-old man spent 27 days buried under the rubble of an earthquake which flattened large parts of Haiti in 2010. News of the rescue came as recovery teams were preparing to wrap up their work at the site after discovering scores more corpses in the tangle of concrete. A spokesman for the army, which is overseeing the recovery operation, said the death toll had reached 1,053, making it one of the world´s worst industrial disasters. More than 3,000 workers were on shift on the morning of April 24 when the building suddenly caved in. Most were earning around $40 a month to make clothing for Western brands such as Italy´s Benetton, Britain´s Primark and the Spanish label Mango. A preliminary government probe blamed vibrations from four giant generators on the upper floors for triggering the collapse. Police have arrested 12 people including the plaza´s owner and four factory bosses for forcing people to work on the day of the disaster, even though cracks appeared in the structure the day before. The collapse was the latest in a string of disasters to blight the textile industry, with a factory fire last November killing 111 workers. Bangladesh is the world´s second-largest apparel maker and the $20 billion industry accounted for up to 80 percent of annual exports last year. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54454 DHAKA, May 10: The death toll from last month´s collapse of a garment factory complex in Bangladesh rose past 1,000 Friday as piles of bodies were found in the ruins of a stairwell where victims had sought shelter. Brigadier General Siddiqul Alam Sikder, the army officer overseeing the operation on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, told AFP that the death toll now stands at 1,035 after dozens more remains were discovered overnight.[break] Alam said that many of the bodies were now little more than skeletons, 17 days on from the implosion of the nine-storey Rana Plaza compound in Savar. And the stench from under the rubble suggested that many more bodies are still to be located, he said. "We have found a huge number of bodies in the stairwell and under the staircases. When the building started to collapse, workers thought they would be safe under the staircases," he said. "Each time we moved a slab of concrete, we found a stack of bodies." Around 3,000 workers were on shift at Rana Plaza on the morning of April 24 when the building suddenly caved in. Most of the employees were earning around $40 a month job to make clothing for Western brands such as Britain´s Primark and the Spanish label Mango. Survivors who are now without work say the levels of compensation are inadequate and won´t even cover the medical costs for victims who have suffered serious injuries, including amputations. Efforts to identify the victims are being hampered by the decomposition of bodies, although some were found with mobile phones in their pockets or identity cards around their necks. Recovery workers, who are drawn from the ranks of the army and fire service, are having to wear masks and use air freshener. The preliminary findings of a government probe have blamed vibrations from four giant generators on the compound´s upper floors for triggering the collapse. The building´s architect told AFP he designed the structure to house a shopping mall and offices, not factories. Police have arrested 12 people including the plaza´s owner and four garment factory owners for forcing people to work on April 24, even though cracks appeared in the structure the previous day. Factory workers have held protests calling for those responsible for the disaster be executed, as well as demanding improved safety regulations. The building collapse was the latest in a string of deadly accidents to hit the textile industry, with a factory fire last November killing 111 workers. On Thursday, disaster struck again as a fire in another garment factory in Dhaka killed eight people, including its owner. The cause of the fire was not known, but authorities said it broke out during the night on the third floor of an 11-storey building housing garment factories of the Tung Hai group in Dhaka´s Darussalam district. Fire is a common problem in the 4,500 garment factories in Bangladesh, with many operations based in badly constructed buildings with sub-standard wiring. Bangladesh is the world´s second-largest apparel maker and the $20 billion industry accounted for up to 80 percent of annual exports last year. But it has a shocking safety record and Western retailers have been threatening to pull out unless authorities come up with a credible programme to raise standards. Disney has already done so. Western firms have criticised the factories for not ensuring worker safety, but major brands continue to place orders and critics say they turn a blind eye to the endemic problems. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54427 MULTAN, Pakistan, May 9: Gunmen on Thursday kidnapped a son of a former Pakistani prime minister on the final day of campaigning for landmark elections which the Taliban have vowed to bomb. Ali Haider Gilani, 27, was seized in a hail of gunfire on the outskirts of the city of Multan in Punjab province. Police said his secretary was killed and five people wounded, including one of his guards.[break] "People came on a motorbike. They also had a car with them and they opened fire and abducted Yousuf Raza Gilani´s son Ali Haider in a black Honda," police officer Khurram Shakur told reporters. The ex-premier´s family is one of the most powerful in Multan and a key clan in the Pakistan People´s Party (PPP). The party´s campaign for re-election has been dramatically curtailed by threats from the Pakistani Taliban. The insurgents, who have dismissed the elections as unIslamic, say they have sent suicide bombers to mount attacks on polling day Saturday. There was no claim of responsibility for the abduction of Haider, a provincial assembly candidate for the secular PPP whose two other brothers are standing for the national assembly. Gilani senior was disqualified after being sacked and indicted by the Supreme Court last year for refusing to reopen corruption cases against the president. "We will not allow people to sabotage the election," he told reporters after the kidnapping, calling on PPP activists to remain "quiet and peaceful". He said the family had not been provided with security despite being threatened. Police officer Chaudhry Maqbool Jatt told AFP the abduction was under investigation "from different angles, including the possibility of election rivalry" but Taliban involvement could not be ruled out. Saturday´s vote will be a democratic milestone in a country ruled for half its history by the military. But the campaign has been marred by Taliban threats and attacks which have killed at least 116 people since mid-April. In the southwestern province of Baluchistan Thursday, gunmen opened fire at a candidate for the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party which is tipped to win the election, killing one of his supporters and wounding two others. Regional assembly candidate Akbar Askani escaped unharmed, provincial home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani told AFP. In the northwest tribal district, a bomb killed one person and wounded six others at a gathering of the right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party in the troubled district of North Waziristan, officials said. Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud has personally ordered suicide bombings on polling day, one of his commanders told AFP. "The Taliban has dispatched several of fedayeen (suicide bombers) to carry attacks on election across Pakistan," he said on condition of anonymity. AFP saw a copy of a letter apparently sent from Mehsud to Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, mapping out the nationwide plan for bombings. Pakistan has said it will deploy more than 600,000 security personnel on polling day, when the electorate of more than 86 million will choose a national parliament and four regional assemblies. The Taliban have singled out the PPP and its coalition partners in the outgoing government for threats, forcing them to take a low profile and allowing former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and cricket legend Imran Khan to steal the limelight. Sharif is a billionaire steel tycoon seeking a historic third term as prime minister as head of the centre-right PML-N. The charismatic Khan is a sporting hero who has also sought to capitalise on a sympathy vote after fracturing vertebrae in a fall at a rally on Tuesday. He will address supporters from his hospital bed. While Sharif is considered most likely to win, some believe the PPP can still emerge the second largest party thanks to a rural vote bank. Despite his electrifying campaign, a question mark hangs over how well Khan will do, considering he won only one seat in 2002. Sharif is scheduled Thursday evening to address a final rally at the 11th century Data Darbar sufi shrine in his political heartland in the city of Lahore. Khan will also address a final rally for his centre-right Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party in Islamabad by video link from his hospital bed. Doctors have ordered the 60-year-old to remain immobile after he suffered fractured vertebrae and a broken rib on Tuesday when falling from a stage at a rally in Lahore. Officials say he cannot leave hospital even to vote. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54406 AMRITSAR, India, May 9: A Pakistani prisoner who was attacked in an Indian jail died on Thursday, hospital officials said, after suffering injuries in an apparent tit-for-tat assault last week. "His condition was extremely critical. He died early morning," a senior doctor at a government hospital in Chandigarh told AFP on condition of anonymity.[break] Sanaullah Ranjay suffered massive head injuries in a prison in the northern city of Jammu, in an attack shortly after the death of an Indian prisoner, Sarabjit Singh, who was assaulted in a Pakistan jail. Ranjay, who was admitted to the Chandigarh hospital in a serious condition, had suffered renal failure late Wednesday, the doctor said. The hospital would hand over the body to two of his relatives who had arrived in India on Tuesday "as per the instructions of the government", the doctor added. Ranjay, a convicted murderer from the Pakistani city of Sialkot, was attacked by a prisoner identified as a former Indian army soldier just 24 hours after Singh´s death in a Lahore jail. Last weekend demonstrators took to the streets in Pakistan-administered Kashmir to protest against the attack on Ranjay. The prison violence could fuel tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, whose relations were hit by a border flare-up earlier this year. The neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir, which they each control in part but claim in full. New Delhi says 535 Indian prisoners, including 483 fishermen, are in Pakistani jails, while 272 Pakistani prisoners are behind bars in India. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54405 DHAKA, May 9:  A fire at a garment factory killed at least eight people Thursday in the latest disaster to hit Bangladesh´s textile industry, still reeling from the deaths of nearly 900 people in a building collapse. The cause of the fire was not known but authorities said it broke out during the night on the third floor of an 11-storey building housing two garment factories in the capital´s Darussalam district.[break] The owner of the Tung Hai sweater factory was among the victims, but there were no workers among the casualties as there was no overnight production, police and fire service officials said. "It was a big fire but we managed to confine it on one floor," Mahbubur Rahman, operations director of the nation´s fire service department, told AFP. He said the victims died of suffocation after rushing into a stairwell and becoming overwhelmed by "toxic smoke from burnt acrylic clothing". Local police chief Khalilur Rahman told AFP the fire killed "eight people including the owner, his four staff, a senior police officer, and a low-level police official". "We have identities of seven people. But we have not identified the eighth," he added. The fire comes as recovery teams are still finding bodies in the ruins of the nine-storey Rana Plaza garment factory complex that caved in on April 24 while some 3,000 garment workers were on shift. Scores more bodies were recovered overnight, according to the army, which is overseeing the operation at the town of Savar, a suburb of Dhaka. An army spokesman, Lieutenant Sadiq Walid, told AFP the overall toll now stands at 892. Bangladesh is the world´s second-largest apparel maker and the $20 billion industry is a key driver of the impoverished country´s economy, accounting for up to 80 percent of Bangladesh´s annual exports last year. But it has a shocking safety record and Western retailers have been making threats to pull out of the country unless the authorities can come up with a credible programme to raise standards. Disney has already done so. The government announced on Wednesday that it had ordered the closure of 18 garment plants, days after it promised to give "the highest consideration" to safety after talks with the International Labour Organization. Fire is a common problem in the 4,500 garment factories in Bangladesh, with many operations based in badly constructed buildings with substandard wiring. In November at least 111 people died after a fire engulfed the Tazreen Fashion factory outside Dhaka, in the worst blaze in the history of the country´s garment industry. And in January eight people died in another factory blaze, including two underaged workers as they were making clothing for Spanish retailer Inditex, the parent group of the popular Zara brand. Around 700 people have been killed in garment factory fires in the country since 2006, according to the Amsterdam-based Clean Clothes Campaign activist group. Western retailers have criticised the factories for not ensuring worker safety, but major brands continue to place orders and critics say they turn a blind eye to the endemic problems. Two senior US officials spoke Wednesday with American companies that buy garments from Bangladesh and encouraged them to relay concerns about factory conditions to the Dhaka government. "Both the United States and Bangladesh have a shared interest in ensuring that the growth of Bangladesh´s export sector does not come at the expense of safe and healthy working conditions or fundamental labor rights," said a statement from the State Department. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54404 KUALA LUMPUR, May 9: Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim called a protest tour over elections he says the ruling regime stole, as the White House urged authorities to "address concerns" about voter fraud. Anwar late Wednesday addressed a rally of supporters dressed in black, to protest Sunday´s polls, who filled a stadium and spilled out into surrounding areas, swamping a corner of the capital Kuala Lumpur in hours-long gridlock.[break] Declaring the elections the "death of democracy", he called for a sustained campaign against electoral bias and cheating that he says props up an "arrogant, racist regime". "We will go to every corner of this country," Anwar declared, prompting roars from the multi-racial crowd. "We will continue to struggle and we will never surrender!" The huge turnout and the charismatic Anwar´s call for similar rallies across the country upped the ante in a campaign by the opposition to paint the elections as a fraudulent victory for the regime that has ruled Malaysia for 56 years. Anwar has said he would soon produce evidence to prove the elections were riddled with fraud by what he calls an "illegitimate" Barisan Nasional (National Front) government headed by Prime Minister Razak. Najib´s government has hotly denied the allegations and urged its opponents to accept the result gracefully. In the United States, a spokesman for Barack Obama congratulated Razak on the win but said: "We note concerns regarding reported irregularities in the conduct of the election, and believe it is important that Malaysian authorities address concerns that have been raised." Spokesman Jay Carney added: "We look forward to the outcome of their investigations." Razak said before Wednesday´s rally that the gathering was "calculated to create unrest". But the crowd was more festive than angry, waving opposition party flags and sounding vuvuzela horns. Supporters filled the stadium´s 25,000 seats, with at least twice that many on the football pitch. Thousands more clogged surrounding neighbourhoods. Pictures circulated on social media sites showing Anwar being whisked to the venue on the backs of motorcycles to beat the standstill. "The government has stolen it. This is not the people´s will," said Kenny Lim, 32, an engineer. "We come out peacefully to fight for a clean election -- that´s why we are here." Police had earlier threatened to arrest participants at Wednesday´s rally but with tension high over the country´s closest-ever election result, no security presence was seen. Anwar has battled Barisan since he was ousted from its top ranks in 1998 and jailed for six years on sex and corruption charges widely seen as trumped-up. He called for another rally in his northern home state of Penang on Saturday, with more to follow around Malaysia. The opposition has made a host of electoral fraud allegations including suspicious handling of ballot boxes and suspected foreigners being drafted in to cast ballots. Meanwhile, indelible ink -- meant to thwart multiple voting -- easily washed off. A report released Wednesday by two independent watchdogs said the polls were marred by "serious flaws" in the electoral system. The election was "only partially free and not fair", said the report by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs and the Centre for Public Policy Studies. The vote was touted as the first in which the opposition had a chance to unseat the ruling coalition, which has governed since independence in 1957. Barisan retained a firm parliamentary majority despite winning less than half the popular vote, a factor blamed on Barisan´s tinkering with electoral districts. The opposition had campaigned on a vow to free up Malaysian society, end what it calls the divisive race politics of the Malay-dominated Barisan, and reform controversial policies that give majority Malays advantages. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54377 BEIJING, May 8: While the recent troop standoff in a remote Himalayan desert spotlights a long-running border dispute between China and India, the two emerging giants are engaged in a rivalry for global influence that spreads much farther afield. From Africa to the Arctic, the world´s two most populous countries are bumping up against each other in their search for resources and new markets. Their rivalry is spilling over into global diplomacy and international institutions where Beijing and Delhi have elbow-jabbed over development loans and a seat for India on the UN Security Council.[break] It is visible in the building of infrastructure in nations like Ghana, which is rich in gold, cocoa and timber and is a new oil producer. Ghana´s government moved into a presidential palace financed by India in February. A month later, China handed over a new foreign ministry building. An outright clash between the two remains unlikely. But bickering on the global stage could make bodies such as the World Bank and the United Nations less efficient, and send ripples through institutions that are increasingly important in guiding global trade, commerce and diplomacy and influence policies that affect people around the world. "They have their tentacles throughout this global infrastructure," said Ashwin Kaja, an American lawyer leading an initiative to establish a China-India institute at Beijing´s Renmin University and Jindal University in Sonipat, India. "If they start fighting, the threat becomes bigger and bigger as their influence grows. They are one third of humanity; it´s not a small figure. They are not just countries." Though the two nations once celebrated a shared vision as leaders of developing nations in the 1950s, that amity was shredded by a 1962 border war that still clouds relations. The recent crisis began April 15 when about 50 Chinese soldiers pitched tents on territory that both countries claim and set off finger-pointing about territorial grabs. On Monday, Beijing and New Delhi announced an end to the three-week standoff, agreeing for troops on both sides to pull back before the fracas threatened several high-level meetings. The two governments are publicly trying to put the best face on relations, accentuating the positive benefits of trade and diplomatic cooperation. The Indian foreign minister travels to Beijing on Thursday to prepare for a visit to Delhi later this month by Li Keqiang, his first overseas trip since becoming Chinese premier in March. Neither country wants to threaten booming business ties. China became India´s biggest trading partner in 2011 when two-way trade hit nearly $75 billion, up from $5 billion in 2002. It declined slightly last year because of the global economic downturn, and it is also heavily skewed in China´s favor. Next month, China will host its first South Asian trade expo, designed to lure companies from India and elsewhere in the region. But distrust runs high. China is a longtime ally and weapons supplier to Pakistan, India´s bitter rival, and has been building strong ties with Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, feeding Indian fears of encirclement. China is wary of India´s growing ties with the United States. Chinese dam-building on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River has raised fears in India that Beijing might one day reduce or turn off critical water supplies. A dispute over territorial claims in Arunachal Pradesh led to Beijing in 2009 trying to block part of a loan to India from the Asian Development Bank earmarked for a flood control project there. China was upset in 2011 when India´s state oil company, Oil and Natural Gas Corp., accepted an invitation from Vietnam to explore for oil and gas in the disputed South China Sea, bringing New Delhi into a festering territorial spat on China´s doorstep. "You can never avoid flash points," Kaja said. "The US and China have lots of flash points but the difference I think is that between the US and China, there is a lot more dialogue ... and those are the kinds of channels that need to be created." Their competition extends far beyond their immediate neighborhoods. Both are pushing to gain a foothold in the Arctic, where melting ice is opening passages for shipping and could create a boom in the extraction of fossil fuels and minerals. Both China and India, along with other Asian nations and the European Union, have applied for observer status at the obscure Arctic Council. "Neither China or India have any basis to claim to be Arctic nations, but because of the rush for minerals and resources there is a fear that we will be left behind if we don´t also stake our claims in these distant parts," said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of Jindal´s School of International Affairs. Both countries are building up their navies to project influence, and the Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is expected to grow. David Shinn, a former US ambassador in Africa, expects China´s navy to make more frequent visits to port cities across the Indian Ocean — in South Asia, the southern Middle East and on the east coast of Africa — within the next 10 years and to expand its reach to North African ports on the Mediterranean Sea. "India will be concerned by a growing Chinese naval presence in the western Indian Ocean, which it has always considered its preserve. It has tolerated a significant US presence there, but it has never considered the US an enemy," said Shinn, who now teaches international affairs at George Washington University. This more permanent Chinese presence "will push India to ensure good military, particularly naval relations, with all the countries in the western Indian Ocean and along the east African coast," he said. In the recent border standoff, neither side engaged in much more than posturing. "They were just staring at each other. So I guess that in a way is a metaphor for the relationship," Chaulia said. "There is no way that India and China can be comrades or brothers and sisters. I don´t think we can be that rosy-eyed. But certainly we can manage the problems." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54305 NEW DELHI, May 7: More than 300,000 babies die within 24 hours of being born in India each year from infections and other preventable causes, a report said Tuesday, blaming a lack of political will and funding for the crisis. India accounts for 29 percent of all newborn deaths worldwide, according to the charity Save the Children which published the findings at the launch of its annual State of the World´s Mothers report.[break] The report on 186 countries showed South Asia -- which accounts for 24 percent of the world´s population -- recording 40 percent of the world´s first-day deaths. Bangladesh and Pakistan also have large numbers of yearly first-day deaths at 28,000 and 60,000 with chronic malnourishment of mothers one of the major factors for the fatalities in the region. "Progress has been made, but more than 1,000 babies die every day on their first day of life from preventable causes throughout India, Pakistan and Bangladesh," said Mike Novell, the regional director of the charity. The charity identified three major causes of newborn deaths -- complications during birth, prematurity and infections -- and said access to low-cost, life-saving interventions could cut down the figures by as much as 75 percent. "What is lacking is the political will and funding to deliver these solutions to all the mothers and babies who need them," it said. A decade of rapid economic growth has allowed India to boost spending on poor and rural communities but Save the Children said most such programmes had not benefited those most in need. More than half of all Indian women give birth without the help of skilled health care professionals, leading to infections and complications. In far-flung areas, doctors and hospitals are rare and villagers often put the health of their children in the hands of poorly trained substitutes. But even in cities such as New Delhi with relatively better healthcare facilities women are delivering at home, said Sharmila Lal, a Delhi-based gynaecologist. "Even if hospitals are near at hand, the women are having babies at home in a highly unsafe and unhygienic environment just because of lack of awareness," Lal added. Lal said India must invest in creating a pool of paramedical staff trained in childbirth to take the load off doctors "who often don´t have time or patience to explain simple life-saving measures to expectant mothers". The charity said the problem of infant mortality could be addressed by closing the equity gap in a developing country like India where economic benefits have been shared unequally. "If all newborns in India experienced the same survival rates as newborns from the richest Indian families, nearly 360,000 more babies would survive each year," the report said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54304 KUALA LUMPUR, May 6: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak began a second term Monday after the coalition which has ruled for 56 years held on to power in elections branded as fraudulent by a bitter opposition. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim called for a rally in two days´ time to protest at a victory he said was achieved via the "worst electoral fraud in our history" and which saw the ruling camp win with a minority of the vote.[break] Najib´s Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition, which has ruled since independence in 1957, held off a spirited opposition challenge to retain a firm parliamentary majority. But the opposition called a rally for Wednesday in a stadium on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur to denounce what it called foul play as the United States acknowledged concerns over "irregularities". "I call upon as many Malaysians to join hands and express our rejection and disgust at the unprecedented electoral fraud committed by Najib Razak and the EC (Election Commission)," Anwar said in a statement. The conduct of the polls was a "crime" against Malaysians, the 65-year-old told AFP earlier in an interview. "The government has lost its legitimacy." Supporters of the three-party Pakatan Rakyat (People´s Pact) opposition alliance were left bitter and despondent. Barisan won 133 seats in the 222-member parliament, two fewer than in the last parliament. The opposition alliance won 89 seats, an increase of 14, largely at the expense of non-aligned candidates. But the ruling bloc won just 48 percent of the popular vote compared with nearly 52 percent for the opposition. This makes Najib the first leader in four decades to win with a minority of the ballots, according to Malaysian media. Critics said the figure proved the electoral system was skewed in the government´s favour. Najib, 59, who had promised free and fair polls and has since brushed off numerous allegations of irregularities, was sworn in by the king at the ornate national palace in Kuala Lumpur. Shortly after his victory, he acknowledged that the election -- which indicated that ethnic Chinese had continued a trend of deserting Barisan -- had laid bare deep racial divisions in the majority Malay nation. "Overall, the results show a trend of polarisation which worries the government. If it is not addressed it can create tension or division in the country," he said, promising to pursue reconciliation. Anwar said the opposition would look into fraud allegations in dozens of constituencies and decide "whether (to file) election petitions or to go to the courts". US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell congratulated Barisan on its win but he added: "We are aware of concerns about voting irregularities and note that the opposition parties faced significant restrictions on access to the media." Azizuddin Sani, a politics expert at Universiti Utara Malaysia, said it would be "very difficult" to challenge the result. "Anwar can complain, but I don´t think it will change the results," he said. Pakatan has made major inroads in recent years under Anwar -- a former Barisan star who was ousted and jailed by the regime in a 1998 power struggle -- by capitalising on public fatigue with corruption and authoritarianism. Outraged voters took to the Internet in droves to complain that indelible ink which Najib touted as a guarantee against multiple voting was found to easily wash off. Videos, pictures and first-hand accounts of angry citizens confronting purportedly foreign "voters" at polling centres also went viral online. Anwar has alleged there was a scheme to fly tens of thousands of "dubious" and possibly foreign voters to sway the outcome in key constituencies. Analysts had said Najib could have faced an internal party challenge in his United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the ultimate power in the ruling coalition, had he lost significant ground but that risk may have receded. Najib, who took office in 2009, has faced rising public calls for reform. He has responded with limited liberalisation moves dismissed by critics as cosmetic steps that dodge deep change to avoid upsetting a ruling Malay elite. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54297 MOSCOW, May 6: Thousands of protestors on Monday filled a square in central Moscow to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin one year into his new Kremlin term, as the opposition seeks to recover the momentum of their challenge to his rule. Organisers said tens of thousands attended the rally, which marks one year since a chaotic May 6, 2012 anti-Kremlin protest that descended into violence, and Putin´s return to the presidency a day later. Police estimated the numbers at 7,000.[break] The long-awaited protest was however clouded by the death of a worker earlier Monday when he was crushed to death by a massive loudspeaker as he was helping to erect the stage for the event. The tragedy forced a last-minute shakeup of logistical plans, with organisers turning a truck into an impromptu stage at Bolotnaya Square over the Moscow river from the Kremlin. After some called for the rally to be cancelled altogether, the organisers decided to go ahead with the original plan. "The whole square is full. There are tens of thousands of us," former government member turned Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, clutching a bunch of white roses, told the rally from the truck. Anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who is standing trial on what he says are trumped-up charges, joined a host of prominent Russians including actors who showed up at the rally. Speaking earlier to reporters, Nemtsov also said the rally should go ahead despite the tragedy. "We do not have the right to forget about the people who came to this rally," he told reporters. Some flowers were placed by a railing in memory of the worker. Meanwhile a van from the Investigative Committee was parked right behind the stage as the investigation into the worker´s death continued. The worker was not an opposition activist but the employee of a firm contracted to prepare the stage, organisers said. Monday´s rally marked the protests on the eve of Putin´s inauguration for a historic third presidential term that resulted in more than 400 arrests after scuffles with riot police. The opposition also hopes the latest rally will breathe new life into the sputtering protest movement following what observers say is the toughest crackdown on dissenters of Putin´s 13 years in power. "I think something decisive will happen today. I want real changes," said Tatyana Pereverzova, an activist from Saint Petersburg who works for a security firm. One protester held a hand-written placard reading "Do not let them trample the heroes of Bolotnaya" square, while another participant held a placard saying "While someone is in chains no one is free." More than two dozen people now face jail over their involvement in last year´s rally in a criminal probe activists have condemned as a throwback to the Stalin era. One activist was already jailed for four and a half years for purportedly using violence in the 2012 rally, while another was sentenced for two-and-a-half years. Anti-corruption blogger Navalny, who faces up to 10 years in prison on charges of embezzling half a million dollars in a timber deal, said before the start of the rally that Russians should not remain indifferent to the future of the country. "Life is always about the struggle of good and evil," Navalny, the most charismatic of the opposition´s leading figures, wrote in a blog post. "And about the imminent victory of good in the end." Prosecutors warned the opposition against any provocations including any attempts to hold a march through the city in addition to the rally. The US embassy in Moscow called on US nationals to stay away from the protest, saying: "The potential for confrontation cannot be ruled out." In Russia´s second city Saint Petersburg some 500 people gathered in the city centre, some holding white balloons featuring Putin. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54262 DHAKA, Bangladesh, MAY 6: At least 28 people have been killed in pitched battles between Bangladeshi police and thousands of hardline Islamists in the capital Dhaka. In some of the fiercest violence to rock the capital since independence four decades ago, hundreds more people were reported to have been injured as riot police broke up a mass rally. [break] Police used a water cannon, sound grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse at least 70,000 Islamists who were camped at a key commercial district in a push for a new blasphemy law. "We were forced to act after they unlawfully continued their gathering at Motijheel," Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman said. "They attacked us with bricks, stones, rods and bamboo sticks." Hundreds of bankers, insurance officials and stock traders had to sleep in their offices as the sound of gunfire echoed around the Motijheel Commercial Area through much of the night. Islamist protestors set fire in the streets during clashes with police in Dhaka on May 5, 2013. (AFP) Witnesses say shops were torched while trees were been torn down and thousands of rocks littered the ground. Police say the protesters have now dispersed. Police inspector Mozammel Haq, at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, says 11 bodies were taken to the clinic. He says the bodies include several who had been hit by bullets, and a policeman who had been hacked in the head by protesters with machetes. Eleven other bodies were taken to three other clinics, while hospital officials said hundreds of people were injured. The violence erupted on Sunday afternoon and continued until the early hours of Monday morning. It came after hundreds of thousands of Islamists demanding a new blasphemy law blocked highways and fought running battles with police on Sunday, leaving 10 people dead and hundreds injured in the Bangladeshi capital. Chanting "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is greatest!") and "One point, One demand: Atheists must be hanged", activists from the hardline Hefajat-e-Islam marched along at least six highways, blocking transport between Dhaka and other cities. Police say about 200,000 people marched to central Dhaka, where fierce clashes erupted between thousands of rock-throwing protesters and security officials, with police beating back demonstrators with batons. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has ruled out a new law, insisting she will not cave into the demands of hardliners who have been infuriated by bloggers whom they accuse of insulting the Prophet Mohammed. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54194 BOSTON, May 4: A funeral home director was scrambling to find a cemetery that would bury a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, ignoring protesters gathered outside his business and saying everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of his or her death. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died from "gunshot wounds of torso and extremities" and blunt trauma to his head and torso, said Worcester funeral home owner Peter Stefan, who has Tsarnaev´s body and on Friday read details from his death certificate. [break]The certificate lists the time of his death as 1:35 am on April 19, four days after the deadly bombing, Stefan said. Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with authorities who had launched a massive manhunt for him and his brother, ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago. Police have said he ran out of ammunition before his younger brother dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing. Tsarnaev´s family was making arrangements Friday for his funeral as investigators searched the woods near a college attended by 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured less than a day after his brother´s death. Tamerlan Tsarnaev´s body was released by the state medical examiner Thursday. It initially was taken to a North Attleborough funeral home, where it was greeted by about 20 protesters, before being taken to Stefan´s Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors, which is familiar with Muslim services. "My problem here is trying to find a gravesite. A lot of people don´t want to do it. They don´t want to be involved with this," said Stefan, who said dozens of protesters gathered outside his funeral home, upset with his decision to handle the service. "I keep bringing up the point of Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh or Ted Bundy. Somebody had to do those, too." Meanwhile, two US officials said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators that he and his brother initially considered setting off their bombs on July Fourth. Boston police said they planned to review security procedures for the Independence Day Boston Pops concert and fireworks display, which draws a crowd of more than 500,000 annually and is broadcast to a national TV audience. Authorities plan to look at security procedures for large events held in other cities, notably the massive New Year´s Eve celebration held each year in New York City´s Times Square, Massachusetts state police spokesman David Procopio said. Gov Deval Patrick said everything possible will be done to assure a safe event. As part of the bombing investigation, federal, state and local authorities were searching the woods near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student. Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, could not say what investigators were looking for but said residents should know there is no threat to public safety. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a backyard in Watertown, a Boston suburb, faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Three of his college classmates were arrested Wednesday and accused of helping after the bombing to remove a laptop and backpack from his dormitory room before the FBI searched it. The April 15 bombing, which used pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails, ball bearings and metal shards, killed three people and injured more than 260 others near the marathon´s finish line. The brothers decided to carry out the attack before Independence Day when they finished assembling the bombs, the surviving suspect told interrogators after he was arrested, according to two US officials briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. Investigators believe some of the explosives used in the attack were assembled in Tamerlan Tsarnaev´s home, though there may have been some assembly elsewhere, one of the officials said. It does not appear that the brothers ever had big, definitive plans, the official said. The brothers´ mother insists the allegations against them are lies. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security ordered border agents to immediately begin verifying that every international student who arrives in the US has a valid student visa, according to an internal memorandum obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The new procedure is the government´s first security change directly related to the Boston bombings. The order from a senior official at US Customs and Border Protection, David J Murphy, was circulated Thursday and came one day after President Barack Obama´s administration acknowledged that one of the students accused of hiding evidence, Azamat Tazhayakov, of Kazakhstan, was allowed to return to the US in January without a valid student visa. Tazhayakov´s lawyer has said he had nothing to do with the bombing and was shocked by it. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54167 MOFFETT AIRFIELD, United States / California, May 4: The first-ever manned airplane that can fly by day or night on solar power alone landed in the dark at a major southwestern US airport, a live feed from the organizer´s website showed early Saturday. Solar Impulse, piloted by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard, touched down at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona at 0730 GMT after departing from California more than 18 hours earlier on the first leg of a cross-country journey.[break] A ground crew met the plane as it landed and pushed it to a safe area where Solar Impulse co-founder Andre Borschberg, a Swiss engineer and ex-fighter pilot, climbed up to the cockpit on a ladder to greet Piccard, who raised his arms in triumph. "I´m happy to be here, happy to have landed in Phoenix," a visibly elated Piccard told reporters, as a small crowd assembled on the tarmac cheered his arrival. Piccard said he was impressed by the scenery as he overflew the southwestern United States, first over California then over the Arizona desert and his nighttime approach to Phoenix. When he landed he said he still had three-quarters of his battery power left. The Solar Impulse plane sits on the tarmac early in the morning before takes off on a multi-city trip across the United States from Moffett Field NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., Friday, May 3, 2013. (AP) The US journey is being billed as the plane´s first cross-continent flight. The plane, which has a slim body and four electric engines attached to an enormous wingspan, flew quietly at an average speed of about 30 miles (49 kilometers) per hour. Energy provided by 12,000 solar cells powered the plane´s propellers. The project aims to showcase what can be accomplished without fossil fuels, and has set its "ultimate goal" as an around-the-world flight in 2015. The plane can fly at night by reaching a high elevation of 27,000 feet (8,230 meters) and then gently gliding downward, using almost no power through the night until the sun comes up to begin recharging the aircraft´s solar cells. The US itinerary allows for up to 10 days at each stop in order to showcase the plane´s technology to the public. Other stops are planned for Dallas, Texas, and the US capital Washington, before wrapping up in New York in early July. That will allow Piccard and Borschberg to share duties and rest between flights. A dashboard showing the live speed, direction, battery status, solar generator and engine power, along with cockpit cameras of both Piccard and his view from the plane, were online at live.solarimpulse.com. The aircraft completed its first intercontinental journey from Europe to Africa in June on a jaunt from Madrid to Rabat. Longer trips have already been successfully completed by the plane, which made the world´s first solar 26-hour day and night trip in 2010. However, the cockpit has room for just one pilot, so even though the plane could likely make the entire US journey in three days, Piccard decided it would be easier to rest and exchange flight control with Borschberg at the stops. Solar Impulse was launched in 2003. The slim plane is particularly sensitive to turbulence and has no room for passengers, but Piccard has insisted that those issues are challenges to be met in the future, rather than setbacks. "Instead of speaking of the problems, we want to demonstrate solutions," Piccard said earlier as he was flying toward Phoenix, stressing that renewable technologies already exist and are well known to science. "Now we need to put them on a big scale everywhere in our daily life." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54124 SRINAGAR, India, May 3:  A Pakistani prisoner in India was fighting for his life Friday after being attacked by inmates, an official said, in apparent tit-for-tat violence that has strained relations between the neighbours. Sarabjit Singh, an Indian jailed 16 years ago in Pakistan for spying and over deadly bombings, died on Thursday after being savagely beaten in Lahore prison, sparking a furious response from Indian politicians.[break] Singh was to be cremated with state honours on Friday in his native village in northwestern India where angry demonstrators shouted "Down with Pakistan!" as they gathered to pay tribute to him. The injured Pakistani prisoner -- a convicted murderer named as Sanaullah by a police source -- was assaulted early Friday in the northern city of Jammu, a day after India´s home ministry ordered stepped up security for jailed Pakistanis. "He has been admitted in GMC Hospital with grievous head injuries," an official at the prison in Jammu told AFP on condition of anonymity. Sanaullah was photographed with a swollen black eye and a bloodied beard as he was rushed into hospital in Jammu. Indian media reports said he was likely to be moved to a hospital in the larger city of Chandigarh. "This obvious retaliation to the death of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh is condemnable," said a statement from the Pakistan foreign ministry which asked for a police probe and the best treatment available for Sanaullah. "We would also remind the government of India of its responsibility in ensuring the safety and security of all Pakistani prisoners lodged in Indian jails," it added. Rajesh Kumar, the police chief for Jammu province, told AFP that police had registered a case and had begun investigating. The violence is likely to cause further friction between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan whose ties were hit by a border flare-up earlier this year which undermined efforts to build trust. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the "barbaric and murderous attack" on Sarabjit Singh and New Delhi complained that its diplomats were denied access to the prisoner as he fought for his life. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and Sarabjit Singh´s family attacked the government for being too soft on Pakistan, while the parliament´s lower house passed a resolution condemning the death. On Friday, hundreds of mourners gathered in Bhikhiwind to pay their last respects to Singh at a public ground where the body was displayed in a wooden coffin wrapped in the Indian flag. The chief minister of Punjab state, Prakash Singh Badal, and junior foreign minister Preneet Kaur were expected to attend the last rites which would be held on the outskirts of the village close to the India-Pakistan border amid tight security. Sarabjit Singh was convicted for espionage and for his alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Pakistan´s Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990. His mercy petitions were rejected by the courts and former president Pervez Musharraf. His family insists he was a farmer who became a victim of mistaken identity after inadvertently straying across the border while drunk. India´s government also denies he was a spy. The body was set to be handed over to the family for cremation at 1400 local time (08:30 GMT). http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54104 ISLAMABAD, May 3:  Pakistan´s main state prosecutor in the 2007 murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the 2008 Mumbai attacks was shot dead in Islamabad en route to court Friday, police said. Chaudhry Zulfiqar was shot multiple times after gunmen intercepted his vehicle shortly after he left home in a busy, middle-class neighbourhood of the capital. His bodyguard was also wounded and a woman passer-by killed.[break] The assassination comes just days before Pakistan holds historic general elections on May 11, marking the first time that a civilian government completes a full-term in office and hands over to another at the ballot box. Zulfiqar was given extra government security last year after he was mentioned in threats received by police investigators working on the Bhutto case. The source of the threats was unclear, but one investigator said he was told not to appear in court at Zulfiqar´s behest by an unknown caller using a number in Afghanistan. "Chaudhry Zulfiqar was driving his car. He lost control and the car crushed a woman passer-by," police officer Mohammad Yousuf told AFP. Medics said he died of his injuries before arriving at hospital. The gunmen, who are believed to have attacked from at least two different angles, fled and officers refused to speculate who was responsible. President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto´s widower, condemned the killing and ordered a thorough investigation to "expose the real culprits involved in the murder", his office said. Zulfiqar had been on his way to the latest hearing of the anti-terrorism court hearing the Bhutto case in the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi. He lost control of his car after being shot and hit the woman, who died instantly, witnesses and officers said. Abdul Mateen, who works at a nearby guest house, said he heard heavy gunfire. "When I came out I found a car moving out of control. It then descended into a side road. The man in the drivers´ seat was bleeding profusely with multiple bullet injuries on his head, shoulder and the back," he said. "People rushed to the area, put him into a taxicab and took him to hospital." Zulfiqar´s white Toyota Corolla was badly damaged in the attack. Its wind shield was smashed and there were multiple bullet marks on both sides of the car and at the front. Pieces of broken window lay inside and on the road. There was blood on the car seats and on the road, an AFP reporter said. Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf was this week placed under two-week house arrest over charges that he conspired to murder Bhutto. "We very strongly condemn this incident. We are colleagues. If it can happen to him today, it can be us tomorrow," Musharraf´s lawyer Afshan Adil told AFP. Nobody has ever been convicted or jailed for Bhutto´s assassination in a gun and suicide attack after a campaign rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. Musharraf´s government blamed the killing on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement and was killed in a US drone attack in 2009. Bhutto´s son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the outgoing main ruling Pakistan People´s Party, has accused Musharraf of her murder. In 2010 a UN report said Bhutto´s death could have been prevented and accused Musharraf´s government of failing to give her adequate protection. Zulfiqar was also the main government prosecutor who indicted seven alleged conspirators in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people and which were blamed on Pakistan´s Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistan indicted the seven in 2009 but has since said it needs to gather more evidence in India before proceeding further. India accuses Lashkar-e-Taiba of training, equipping and financing the attack with support from "elements" in the Pakistani military. "I cannot comment. I´m in a state of shock," Zulfiqar´s deputy Azhar Chaudhry told AFP when asked to comment. Musharraf, who ruled from 1999-2008, returned to Pakistan on March 24 to contest next week´s election, but has been barred from running for parliament and is under house arrest in the Bhutto case and for sacking judges in 2007. The Taliban have threatened the main parties in the outgoing government and attacks directly targeting politicians and political parties have killed more than 60 people since April 11, AFP tally said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54073 SEOUL, May 2: North Korea said Thursday it had sentenced a Korean-American tour operator to 15 years´ hard labour for "hostile acts", stoking tensions with the United States which had pleaded for his release. Kim Jong-Un´s isolated regime is likely to use the detainee as a bargaining chip, experts said, as it seeks concessions from the United States following weeks of bellicose threats of missile strikes and of nuclear war.[break] Pae Jun-Ho, known in the United States as Kenneth Bae, was arrested in November as he entered the northeastern port city of Rason. He has been accused of trying to "topple the DPRK" (North Korea). "The Supreme Court sentenced him to 15 years of compulsory labour for this crime," according to the North´s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which said his trial was held on April 30. Pyongyang has not specified the basis of the offences allegedly committed by Bae, who is reported to be aged 44, but KCNA has previously said that he admitted his crimes. Seoul-based activist Do Hee-Yoon has told AFP that he suspected Bae was arrested because he had taken photographs of emaciated children in North Korea as part of efforts to appeal for more outside aid. The United States had urged North Korea to free the detainee on "humanitarian grounds", pointing out that he entered the country on a valid visa. A senior US State Department official said Washington was "working to confirm the reports" of Bae´s sentence through the Swedish embassy, which represents US interests in the North in the absence of diplomatic ties. US politician Bill Richardson failed to secure Bae´s release when he visited North Korea in January with Google chairman Eric Schmidt. Richardson, a former New Mexico governor and ex-ambassador to the United Nations, was unable to even meet Bae during his trip, which was criticised by Washington as ill-timed following Pyongyang´s rocket launch in December. Tensions have been running high between the United States and North Korea since Pyongyang carried out a third nuclear test in February. The North reacted furiously to the use of nuclear-capable B-52s and B-2 stealth bombers in recent joint US-South Korean military drills. In a commentary published on Thursday, KCNA blamed the United States for the current standoff. "The escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula is entirely attributable to the US heinous hostile policy toward the DPRK," it said. "The US is seriously mistaken if it thinks it can cover up its sinister scenario by talking about dialogue though it is the arch criminal who drove the situation to the brink of a nuclear war." Several Americans have been held in North Korea in recent years. In 2011 a US delegation secured the release of Eddie Jun Yong-Su, a California-based businessman who had been detained for apparent missionary activities. In 2010 former US president Jimmy Carter won plaudits when he negotiated the release of American national Aijalon Mahli Gomes, sentenced to eight years of hard labour for illegally crossing into the North from China. On another mercy mission a year earlier in 2009, former president Bill Clinton won the release of US television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, jailed after crossing the North Korean border with China. Experts believe the North is likely to try to use Bae to extract concessions from Washington. "The North will surely try to take advantage of Kenneth Bae as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the US," said Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. "But the whole atmosphere is quite different from when similar hostage disputes erupted in the past. The diplomatic and military situation is so tense that the US is unlikely to dramatically change its stance or try to open dialogue with the North just to save this guy," he said. Last month Pyongyang demanded an end to UN sanctions and to US-South Korean military drills in exchange for talks -- conditions that Seoul dismissed as "absurd". http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54057 LAHORE, Pakistan, May 2: Pakistan has charged two prisoners with the murder of an Indian man jailed for espionage, officials said Thursday. Sarabjit Singh, who was sentenced 16 years ago over deadly bombings, died in the early hours of Thursday from injuries suffered in an attack on April 26.[break] "We have added a murder clause to the police complaint," Tariq Mehmood, a police official at Lahore´s Kot Lakhpat police station, told AFP. The two suspects were taken into custody immediately after last week´s attack. Pakistani police say Singh was hit with bricks and other blunt objects by two inmates, who have been identified only by single names Aamir and Mudasir. The motive has been unclear, but police say an initial investigation pointed to an exchange of "hot words" with Singh. Singh´s lawyer Owais Sheikh said his client had received threats following the execution of a Kashmiri separatist in India. Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in New Delhi on February 9 for his part in a deadly attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54051 WASHINGTON, May 2:  Around 100,000 people were chosen from several million Wednesday to get a head-start on a US Green Card, in what could be the last such annual lottery, slated to vanish under proposed reforms. Created in 1995, the lottery system leads to the awarding of 50,000 permanent residency permits each year to people from countries that send relatively few emigrants to the United States.[break] But it has long been in the crosshairs of US Republican lawmakers, who control the House of Representatives and have included a plan to scrap it in the comprehensive immigration reforms currently being debated in Congress. A final vote on the reforms is not expected before this summer, but if they pass, the so-called diversity visas would vanish from next year. This year´s crop of hopefuls did now know when they applied that this might be their last chance, as would-be immigrants had to file a free online application in October 2012. From 1600 GMT on Wednesday, the candidates were finally able to check their status on the government website www.dvlottery.state.gov, using their personal confirmation number. For Yuri Jacquet, 28, this is his sixth failed attempt to win a visa. "It´s a little discouraging," admitted the entrepreneur, who has built a website selling clothes and works between Martinique and the US state of Florida. "Each time, you tell yourself the next time will be the one." Some 100,000 names were selected in a first round, because not everyone will complete the process for a visa, and a maximum of 50,000 Green Cards will ultimately be given out. In last year´s lottery, 7.9 million people, with 4.6 million spouses and children, submitted applications. More than 18,000 Africans got Green Cards through the lottery the year before, the most from any continent. Half of the lottery is reserved for applicants from Africa, who could now lose out. Mamina Ezra, a 28-year-old Ethiopian, was one of the lucky ones this year -- her 11th try. "I´m still in shock," she told AFP. "I was so used to losing that this has really shocked me." Ezra, who earned an advanced business degree in New York, was going to have to return to Ethiopia this summer if she couldn´t find an employer willing to sponsor her for a visa. French engineering student Nathaniel Assayag, 23, at New York´s Columbia University, wasn´t as lucky, but he is one of the people who may fare better under the proposed reforms. "Participating in the lottery was, for me, a way to take the fast lane" to immigration, he said. "Getting an H-1B work visa (a temporary visa) is very difficult because, even if your company is ready to sponsor you, the quotas are much lower than the demand," he said. The proposed reforms massively increase the number of Green Cards and visas allocated to highly qualified workers -- and, in particular, students like Assayag, getting degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math. The winners of this year´s lottery will be given interviews from October, where they will have to show proof of a high school diploma or at least two years of work experience, as required under the program. Countries that sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the past five years are excluded from the lottery. This year that includes a range of countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, mainland China, Mexico, Pakistan, South Korea, and Britain, except Northern Ireland. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54040 (Updated) NEW YORK, May 1: US police announced on Wednesday that they had arrested three more suspects as part of their investigation into a bomb attack on the Boston marathon that left three dead and more than 260 wounded. "Three additional suspects taken into custody in Marathon bombing case. Details to follow," the Boston Police Department said on Twitter, later adding: "Please be advised there is no threat to the public."[break] One of two ethnic Chechens, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is already in custody and has been charged with carrying out the bombing. His brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed on April 18 during the manhunt for the pair. The brothers are alleged to have detonated backpacks holding pressure cookers packed with explosives near the finish line of the April 15 race. They are also accused of killing a police officer during their time on the run. Police did not immediately offer more details of the arrests, but the Boston Globe newspaper reported that the new suspects were college students who are alleged to have helped Dzhokhar after the attack. Television network NBC reported the new suspects are accused of helping their fellow student gather his belongings from his campus accommodation and may have attempted to mislead authorities. US authorities are investigating a recent period Tamerlan spent in the volatile North Caucasus region of Russia and intelligence reports that he had developed an increasingly radical view of his Islamic faith. But investigators have not suggested the pair were part of a larger group. US lawmakers have said the pair´s mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, is suspected of having playing a role in radicalizing them. She is currently in the Dagestan region of Russia and denies that her sons had any role in the bombing. Police also searched the home of Tamerlan Tsarnaev´s widow, 24-year-old Katherine Russell, after female DNA was found on debris from the pressure cookers. US President Barack Obama has defended the counter-terror work of the FBI, after it was revealed that Russian authorities had warned the US agency as early as 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had suspected extremist ties. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54014 NEW DELHI, May 1: A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck parts of northern India on Wednesday, rattling buildings in the capital New Delhi, a government official and witnesses said. The epicentre was located around 450 kilometres (280 miles) north of New Delhi, according to an official at the Indian Meteorological Department.[break] "The quake measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and struck along the border of the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh," the official, who declined to give his name, told AFP. There were no immediate reports of any damage or casualties. The US Geological Survey gave the magnitude of the quake in eastern Kashmir as 5.7. Minor tremors were felt in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. A powerful earthquake that hit Iran last month also shook buildings in New Delhi, causing frightened office workers to run into the streets. India´s capital regularly experiences minor tremors, usually from distant earthquakes in remote areas of the Himalayas. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54006 PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 1: A Pakistani court on Tuesday banned former military ruler Pervez Musharraf from running for public office for the rest of his life, the latest blow since he returned from exile last month to make a political comeback. The ban came as Pakistan´s powerful army chief pledged in a rare speech that the military would do everything in its power to ensure the parliamentary election is held as scheduled on May 11, despite the Taliban´s attempt to disrupt the vote by attacking candidates.[break] One of Musharraf´s lawyers, Saad Shibli, said he would go to the Supreme Court to challenge the ruling against his client, claiming the former leader should not be singled out for punishment for his actions while in power since others were involved. "About 500 officials at different levels and institutions were part of Musharraf´s actions, and if those actions come under scrutiny, all those people should be involved in this matter," Shibli said. Judges had previously barred Musharraf from running in the parliamentary election scheduled for May 11. The Peshawar High Court handed down the lifetime ban Tuesday after hearing an appeal by Musharraf´s lawyer to allow him to run in the upcoming election. Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March after four years in self-imposed exile, but his fortunes have gone from bad to worse since he arrived. He is currently under house arrest in connection with a pair of court cases against him. One involves his decision to fire senior judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, while in power. The other relates to the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved — allegations he has denied. Musharraf seized power in a coup in 1999 when he was serving as army chief and ruled for nearly a decade. He stepped down in 2008 because of growing discontent with his rule. He returned to Pakistan despite Taliban death threats, but was met by only a few thousand people when his plane landed in the southern port city of Karachi. Analysts said the response showed how little public support he enjoyed in the country. The run-up to next month´s parliamentary election has been marred by violence, much of it carried out by the Pakistani Taliban. On Tuesday, gunmen killed a politician running for a provincial assembly seat in southwestern Baluchistan province in an attack that seemed to be the result of a political rivalry, said local government official Saeed Ahmad. The Taliban have killed at least 60 people in attacks on candidates and party workers since the beginning of April. Many have targeted secular parties, raising concerns the violence could benefit hard-line Islamic politicians and others who take a softer line toward the militants. The military plans to deploy troops on election day to provide security. Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said Tuesday that the soldiers will do everything they can to limit disruptions. "I assure you, that we stand committed to wholeheartedly assist and support in the conduct of free, fair and peaceful elections to the best of our capabilities and remaining within the confines of the constitution," Kayani said in a televised speech in Urdu marking the day dedicated to fallen soldiers. "This indeed is a golden opportunity, which can usher in an era of true democratic values in the country." The election marks the first transfer between democratically elected governments in a country that has experienced three military coups since it was founded in 1947. Kayani insisted that the fight against the Pakistani Taliban was vital for the security of the country, hitting back at critics who have claimed the state is fighting Islamic militants only at the behest of the United States. "There is no room for doubts when it comes to dealing with rebellion against the state," Kayani said. The Pakistani Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years, killing thousands of security personnel and civilians. They seek to impose Islamic law and break the alliance with the United States. "We sincerely desire that all those who have strayed and have picked up arms against the nation return to the national fold," Kayani said. "However, this is only possible once they unconditionally submit to the state, its constitution and the rule of law." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53963 STRASBOURG, France, April 30: The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday ruled that Ukraine´s detention of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was unlawful, in a decision the opposition leader´s camp saw as a key step towards her release. "The Court considered that the detention had been arbitrary and unlawful during the entire period," the judges of the Strasbourg-based court said.[break] The European Union is mulling a trade and association accord with the ex-Soviet republic and has clearly said it wanted Kiev to release the charismatic Tymoshenko. Her daughter described the ECHR´s decision as a "first victory" and her lawyer argued that her nemesis President Viktor Yanukovych now had no option but to release her. The judges also found that "the lawfulness of her detention had not been properly reviewed" by the Ukrainian judiciary "and that she had no possibility to seek compensation for her unlawful deprivation of liberty." However they threw out a complaint over alleged ill-treatment during her transfer to hospital last year. Tymoshenko, who lost a disputed presidential election to Yanukovych in 2010, was jailed for seven years on what she says are trumped-up charges of overstepping her authority while premier to sign a gas deal with Russia. Western governments have condemned her jailing as the result of selective persecution by the authorities and it has led to a sharp deterioration in ties with the European Union, which Kiev wants to join. "I urge president Yanukovych not to appeal this decision and to instead follow this ruling. The only thing left to do now is to free Mrs Tymoshenko immediately," her lawyer Sergiy Vlasenko said. "The president is afraid of Mrs Tymoshenko because she is the only politician capable of defeating him in any election. That´s why she is in prison," he said. The court gave that suggestion some level of backing by arguing in its ruling that Tymoshenko´s "right to liberty had been restricted for other reasons" than those permissible under the rights convention. "Today we are saying that this is the first victory, the first step to her full political rehabilitation and her immediate release," said Yevgenia Tymoshenko, the daughter of the 52-year-old opposition leader. "The president on the basis of the court ruling has every opportunity to release my mother," she said. "We hope that he will make this humane decision in the nearest term." Kiev has three months to appeal the ruling but the European Commission is set to formulate a recommendation in May on whether the bloc should sign the association agreement with Kiev. Yanukovych earlier this month unexpectedly pardoned Tymoshenko´s close ally and former interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko who had been jailed in a hugely controversial embezzlement case. However the president has as yet shown little inclination of making a similar gesture towards Tymoshenko, noting that her appeals process has not been exhausted and she is involved in a murder case. The fiery 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution co-leader has since her conviction seen other legal troubles pile up, including a separate trial on tax evasion and embezzlement charges while head of Ukraine´s main power utility in the 1990s. Even more gravely, she has also been charged of involvement in the 1996 gangland-style shooting of Ukrainian lawmaker Yevgen Shcherban. Tymoshenko has dismissed all the charges against her as politically motivated. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53956 DHAKA, April 30: Bangladesh on Tuesday defended its decision to snub foreign aid after the collapse of a factory complex as anger flared at the recovery operation and towards the building´s owner when he appeared in court. With the death toll from the country´s worst ever industrial disaster now standing at 382, Western retailers offered compensation to the victims of last Wednesday´s tragedy on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka.[break] The government announced plans for another blitz of inspections after it came under pressure from Western brand names for a "credible" safety regime in an industry that has a shocking record of disasters. While foreign aid has been a regular feature of rescue efforts following other large-scale disasters, the Bangladeshi government decided it could handle the situation on its own. "The need for immediate foreign assistance was not felt because our rescue operation has been sufficient and exemplary," Home Secretary Mustak Ahmed told AFP, adding that the government was "grateful" for the offers from Britain among others. Although the exact number of people still missing is not known, there were around 3,000 workers on shift at the time of the disaster and more than 2,400 were rescued from the ruins. "Our army, firefighters, police and volunteers did a very good job. We also have enough equipment," Ahmed added. However, distraught relatives who have stayed at the site of the disaster for news were becoming increasingly critical of the recovery operation, fearing that the bodies of their loved ones could be damaged. Rescuers began using heavy lifting equipment, including cranes, on Monday for the first time after determining that there was little chance of finding anyone else alive in the tangle of concrete. "Our target is to complete the rescue work as fast as possible," armed forces spokesman Shahinul Islam told AFP. "But we´re doing things carefully. Some dead bodies could still be seen under the rubble." But Yunus Khan, who was among a group of around 100 people still awaiting news at the site, told reporters that he feared "the use of this heavy equipment will dash any chances of recovering the bodies". "The equipment will flatten the bodies," he said. "We want a manual search in the way that they have been doing things from the beginning." Grieving relatives have also turned their anger on the owner of the eight-storey building, Sohel Rana, who made his first appearance in court late Monday after being detained on the border with India. There were chants of "Hang Rana, Hang the Killer!" as he was brought before the court in Dhaka on charges of causing death through negligence. He was remanded in custody for a further 15 days. Britain´s Primark, which was among the retailers to confirm that their clothing products were being made at the Rana Plaza compound, announced on Monday that it would compensate victims of the collapse. Primark said it was working with a local non-governmental organisation to assess the needs of the victims, including providing emergency food aid to families. "Primark will also pay compensation to the victims of this disaster who worked for its supplier," the low-cost fashion retailer said in a statement. "This will include the provision of long-term aid for children who have lost parents, financial aid for those injured and payments to the families of the deceased." Canadian supermarket giant Loblaw made a similar announcement, saying it was "working to ensure that we will deliver support in the best and most meaningful way possible". The firm said it would provide compensation but did not give an estimate of the sum or the toll among its supplier´s workers. The disaster was the latest in a string of tragedies to befall the garment industry in Bangladesh which is a mainstay of the economy. A fire at another factory last November killed 111 people and the representatives of Western retailers made clear at a meeting on Monday in Dhaka with industry bosses that they were considering their presence in Bangladesh. Cabinet Secretary Musharraf Hossain told AFP that the government was now ordering a new round of safety inspections. "The cabinet decided to form a committee headed by a state minister. They will inspect all garment factories and see their conditions and safety standards. The aim is to prevent this kind of disaster," he said. The government made a similar announcement after the November fire but subsequent inspections were widely derided and resulted in few arrests. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53953 RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, April 30: Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf will spend Pakistan´s general election day under lock and key after a court Tuesday extended his house arrest over the murder of Benazir Bhutto. An anti-terrorism court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, put Musharraf on 14-day judicial remand over the death of the former prime minister, who was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack in 2007. [break] Musharraf returned to Pakistan last month to stand in the May 11 general election, vowing to "save" the country from militancy and economic collapse but he was barred from running and will now spend polling day in his Islamabad villa, which has been designated as a jail. The retired general was already under a two-week house arrest order set to expire on May 4, over the sacking of judges when he imposed emergency rule in November 2007, and did not appear in court in person. "The court granted a 14-day judicial remand and ordered that Musharraf be kept in a judicial lock-up until May 14," prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar told AFP. The order was made to give investigators time to work on the case and the regular hearing is due to begin on May 3. Musharraf is accused of conspiracy to murder two-time prime minister Bhutto, whose Pakistan People´s Party (PPP) came to power in February 2008 on a wave of sympathy over her death. It is the second of three cases, dating back to his 1999-2008 rule, for which Musharraf has been arrested since returning to Pakistan on March 24 after four years of self-imposed exile. Musharraf is being held at his palatial house on the edge of Islamabad where his party complained that he has been confined to two rooms and stripped of his personal staff. He also has been threatened with death by the Taliban. Nobody has ever been convicted or jailed for Bhutto´s assassination. Musharraf´s government blamed the killing on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement and was killed in a US drone attack in 2009. But Bhutto´s son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is PPP chairman, has accused Musharraf of her murder. In 2010 a UN report said Bhutto´s death could have been prevented and accused Musharraf´s government of failing to give her adequate protection. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53947 KUALA LUMPUR, April 30: When Malaysian voters cast ballots in Sunday´s general election it will be the first time in the country´s history that they do so without knowing the eventual winner. The ruling coalition headed by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is among the world´s longest-serving governments, unbeaten since independence in 1957 thanks to decades of economic growth and authoritarian rule.[break] But the rising Pakatan Rakyat (People´s Pact) opposition alliance has tapped into UMNO fatigue with promises to end authoritarianism and corruption, and many observers say the vote is hard to predict. "It´s going to be really close. I think (the ruling coalition) will win but with a reduced majority. But there is a real chance Pakatan might do it," said Wan Saiful Wan Jan, head of the Malaysian think tank IDEAS. Controlled by the Muslim ethnic Malays who make up 55 percent of Malaysia´s population, UMNO´s Barisan Nasional (National Front) ruling coalition has vastly greater resources and a chokehold on traditional media. Premier Najib Razak can tout steady economic growth of 5.6 percent in 2012 and a torrent of populist handouts as he seeks his first mandate -- he was installed by UMNO when it pushed out his predecessor over a 2008 polls setback. But the multi-racial opposition led by charismatic former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim is no longer a pushover after seizing a third of parliament in 2008, tripling its seats and shocking the country with its best showing ever. With Anwar vowing a "Malaysian Spring", the three-party opposition can claim the momentum and point to success governing four states won in 2008. It pledges a national shake-up including reform of policies favouring Malays in business and education that irk the sizeable Chinese and Indian minorities and are criticised as a drag on national competitiveness. Anwar also promises to free state-controlled traditional media and break cosy ties between politics and business. Sensing the mood, Najib has made cautious reforms including replacing some repressive laws. But despite solid personal approval ratings, surveys show his government´s image has not improved. "The reality is that UMNO has not reformed in the key areas needed -- corruption, arrogance of power, racial inclusion and a fundamental vision for where to take the country," said Bridget Welsh, a Malaysia politics expert at Singapore Management University. The Barisan coalition has 135 of parliament´s 222 seats to Pakatan´s 75, and a reduced Barisan majority is widely forecast. But dozens of seats are considered too close to call. The stakes are high for both sides. A Barisan loss threatens a Malay elite accustomed to political dominance and its rich business perks. Najib, meanwhile, is under pressure to improve on 2008´s showing and could face a career-ending UMNO leadership challenge if he fails, party insiders say. If the opposition falls short it must confront life after Anwar, who says he would step aside as its figurehead in that event. Anwar was once UMNO´s heir-apparent but was ousted in 1998 and jailed for six years on sex charges after a power struggle with his boss, then-premier Mahathir Mohamad. The episode altered Malaysian politics by giving the previously ineffectual opposition a formidable campaigner with top government experience. But Pakatan has no one else approaching his stature and pan-racial star power. The occasionally fractious Pakatan includes Anwar´s multi-racial party, a secular party dominated by ethnic Chinese, and a conservative Islamic party representing Muslim Malays. "This election will decide Malaysia´s future," Najib said in emailed comments to AFP, determining who will "set the direction for Malaysia through the 2020s and beyond". One wild card is a new generation of voters -- 2.5 million of the 13.3 million registered to vote are under age 30 -- raised on pro-opposition views that have exploded on Malaysia´s uncensored Internet in recent years. An electoral reform group that has staged huge rallies in the past two years warns it will be Malaysia´s "dirtiest" election, alleging widespread fraud by Barisan in voter rolls, which the government denies. Tempers have flared during campaigning, with police reporting hundreds of cases of election violence. Economists warn, meanwhile, of long-term fiscal damage from the promises each side has made under their similarly populist platforms. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53945 CARACAS, April 30:  Venezuelan authorities on Monday began a partial audit of the disputed election won by the late Hugo Chavez´s handpicked successor, as the opposition rejected the move as insufficient. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who says he was the real winner of the April 14 presidential vote, has accused election officials of rejecting his appeal for a full recount on the orders of the ruling Socialist Party.[break] The National Electoral Board has ruled that President Nicolas Maduro -- the leftist heir to the late Chavez -- won by 1.49 percent of the vote, amending an earlier tally that had Maduro up by 1.8 percent. The Board has insisted it is legally impossible to carry out a full recount, and that no audit can reverse Maduro´s win. The 40-year-old Capriles has said he will not accept anything short of a full recount, and in a Twitter posting on Monday he lashed out at Maduro, 50, calling him a "laggard who illegitimately has stolen the presidency." Ruling party leader Diosdado Cabello meanwhile questioned the holding of the audit -- which could last until early June -- "when the party who requested this is not even taking part." Capriles now appears focused on seeking a new election while taking the fight to international arenas. "The next step, as I have indicated, will be for me to request annulment of the results, and in so doing eliminate the matter legally as a domestic issue," Capriles said. He has until May 6 to take his fight to the Supreme Court. "I have no doubt that this will end up before an international body," Capriles added. Capriles -- a businessman, lawyer and Miranda state governor -- alleges that some voters cast multiple ballots or even voted on behalf of the dead. Both the government and the opposition have urged their supporters to turn out for massive street protests planned for May 1. Spain has meanwhile offered to mediate between the two sides "to guarantee peace, prosperity and stability in Venezuela," top diplomat Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo said in Washington. There was no immediate reply from Caracas. Chavez, the most prominent face of the Latin American left for over a decade, was Venezuela´s president for 14 years before his death last month. Venezuela sits atop the world´s largest proven oil reserves, and Chavez had harnessed its wealth to support popular social programs and provide aid to fellow leftist leaders across the region. Maduro, a former bus driver and union organizer, was a member of Chavez´s inner circle throughout the late leader´s reign, serving as his vice president and foreign minister. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53911 KOLKATA, India, April 29: A daredevil Indian who held the Guinness World Record for the distance travelled on a zip-line while hanging by his hair has died while performing a new stunt, officials said Monday. Sailendra Nath Roy, a 49-year-old police driver, was attempting to cross the turbulent River Teesta on Sunday in the state of West Bengal on a 180-metre (594-foot) wire above the water.[break] After attaching his shoulder-length hair to a pulley on the zip-line, Roy had completed about half of the distance when his pony-tail became entangled and he found himself unable to move, an AFP photographer at the scene said. Hundreds of spectators initially cheered him on, but then began screaming in horror when they saw the married father of two sons making increasingly desperate attempts to move forward. "Roy tried frantically to get hold of a second rope to reach the finishing point," senior local police officer K. Jayaraman told AFP. Indian stuntman Sailendra Nath Roy is watched by onlookers as he hangs on a rope while attempting to cross the River Teesta on the outskirts of Siliguri. (AFP) After about 20 minutes, he became motionless and was eventually rescued by local people. No ambulance or a doctor was present during the performance, which was watched by his family. The driver, who had taken the day off work to perform, was admitted to hospital in Siliguri, 450 kilometres (280 miles) away, where he was declared dead by doctors of a suspected heart attack. "Preliminary investigations suggest that Roy suffered an heart attack caused by a nervous breakdown after remaining suspended for several minutes," said B.R. Satpathi who heads West Bengal state´s medical services. The results of a post-mortem are expected later Monday. Roy, who was wearing a life-jacket over his shirt and carrying the Indian flag, achieved the Guinness World Record in 2011 after covering 82.5 metres on a zip wire while attached by his hair at a hotel in the desert state of Rajasthan. Last year he used his pony-tail to drag an engine and four coaches of the heritage Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Roy´s younger brother Benoy, who was witnessing his brother´s stunt for the first time, told AFP: "We were proud of his bravery. He was sure to win but destiny has taken his life and the most beloved member of our family as well." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53907 NEW DELHI, April 29: An Indian businessman who let his nine-year-old son cruise around in his Ferrari has been arrested after posting footage of the youngster at the wheel on YouTube, police said on Monday. Mohammed Nisham, from the southern state of Kerala, uploaded the 88-second clip of his son driving the Ferrari F430 with his five-year-old brother as co-passenger on the video-sharing website.[break] "The police cyber cell alerted us of it and we questioned Nisham who admitted he encouraged his son to drive the car on April 6," said Biju Kumar, an officer in the Peramangalam district of Kerala, where the incident occurred. "We have booked Nisham under relevant laws," Kumar told AFP by phone from Peramangalam, a suburban neighbourhood. The video can be watched on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYUnp7G9fBo. A total of 131,834 people were killed in road accidents in India in 2011, according to the latest official government records. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53904 DAMASCUS, April 29: Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi escaped an assassination bid on Monday, surviving a blast that targeted his convoy in Damascus, Syrian state television reported. One of his bodyguards was killed in the attack which left a second bodyguard and his driver seriously injured, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said.[break] "The terrorist explosion in Mazzeh was an attempt to target the prime minister´s convoy and Dr. Wael al-Halqi was unharmed," state television reported. The Observatory reported that a car bomb targeted Halqi´s convoy as it passed through the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the bomb appeared to have been detonated from a distance. State television said the explosion happened near a public garden and a school in the neighbourhood, a well-secured district that is home to embassies, government buildings, intelligence facilities and several political figures. A handout picture released by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on April 29, 2013, shows people gathered at the scene of a blast in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. (AP) "I was walking in the street when suddenly there was a very powerful explosion and I saw a car burning and people running," a young man told AFP at the scene. "I heard glass shattering," he added, saying he had tried to hide for fear a second explosion would follow. An AFP photographer at the scene said several vehicles were destroyed in the blast, including a bus burned out by the explosion. The windshields of other cars nearby were also blown out. State television al-Ikhbariya broadcast footage of Halqi attending a government meeting, but without indicating whether the images were from after the attack or not. Mazzeh is an upscale neighbourhood in western Damascus, home to a number of senior regime figures. Halqi was appointed prime minister in August 2012 after his predecessor Riad Hijab defected to the opposition. The last major attack in Damascus was on April 9, when a massive blast killed at least 15 people in the centre of the capital. Some of the groups fighting with the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad´s regime have resorted increasingly to the use of car and suicide bombs to target senior government figures. In July 2012, a suicide bomb attack killed Syria´s defence minister and deputy defence minister and left the country´s interior minister seriously wounded. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53894 YANGON, April 29: It is Aung San Suu Kyi´s mantra for embedding democratic reform, but for many who endured Myanmar´s authoritarian and deeply corrupt former junta the "rule of law" remains a distant hope. Flashpoint issues such as land grabbing have intensified fears that the country´s anaemic legal structures are failing to protect the poor and vulnerable despite sweeping reforms. [break] Rights groups also say impunity for recent outbreaks of communal unrest -- and alleged army abuses in ethnic conflicts -- have shown the law is struggling to keep pace with tumultuous political, social and economic change. "We are still fighting for a fair system that applies to everybody... the law must be king," said Khin Maung Win, a former political prisoner who was jailed for three years in 2002 for distributing anti-state leaflets while he was a law student. Now secretary of advocacy group the Myanmar Legal Aid Network, he told AFP that his country´s legal system remains arbitrary, unprofessional and corrupt. "We have had a bad history," he said. "In order to move on, ordinary people now must be entitled to legal rights and be involved in the process of change." During the ulcerous junta era, experts say secret and summary jail terms were commonplace, deaths and disappearances blamed on the state went unpunished and courts were in cahoots with vested interests, including the brutal army rulers who milked the country´s wealth. Judges could be easily bought or cowed by powerful businessmen and politicians, while prosecutors and police wielded unconstrained power. A fledgling parliament now debates legislation under changes imposed by a quasi-civilian government which took power in 2011, but the operation of the courts remains opaque and analysts say legal institutions are too weak to underpin reforms. The law must quickly win legitimacy in the eyes of the public, said veteran lawyer Aung Thein, who is representing villagers who say they were forced off land near a controversial Chinese-backed copper mine in central Myanmar. That issue, which saw Suu Kyi face accusations that she had sided with the mine owners in a report on the project, fired concerns that laws will be strengthened to reassure investors, rather than protect the rights of Myanmar´s people. "The administration still pressures the judiciary to act on its behalf," Aung Thein told AFP, warning that the country "will not advance" if political interference continues. President Thein Sein has stressed his commitment to fixing the legal system and echoes Suu Kyi´s clarion call for the rule of law to be binding. Some repressive laws have been repealed or their enforcement eased. The press has been freed from the harshest rigours of the censor´s pen and protest is now allowed -- albeit with police consent. Efforts are also under way to retrain some district judges and local police officers, to educate them about their duties and the limits of their powers. Even the powerful military has pledged accountability before the law -- although ongoing allegations of rights abuses during ethnic conflict in northern Kachin State and Buddhist-Muslim violence in western Rakhine state cast doubt over its sincerity. Authorities have also released hundreds of political prisoners in amnesties -- a key demand of the West as it boosts engagement with the former pariah. Dozens of jailed dissidents were pardoned last week, but rights groups say scores remain behind bars, accusing the government of using headline-grabbing prisoner releases for political gain and failing to address the question of accountability for their imprisonment. The legal system must be re-wired, starting with amendments to the nation´s army-drafted constitution of 2008, says Aung Thein, who was jailed by the former junta over his representation of dissidents. Under that document the military maintains wide emergency powers, legal immunities and the right to appoint 25 percent of lawmakers. And while it enshrines some basic rights, it does so for "citizens" only, excluding some minority groups -- such as the Muslim Rohingya. Other major hurdles remain, including streamlining the tangle of laws established from British colonial rule through to the junta era. But former jailed dissident Khin Maung Win said there are glimmers of a shift in attitude, if not the capabilities, of those who once exercised repression by reflex. He has held talks with judges, prosecutors and senior police officers in Yangon and believes they are ready to address their shortcomings. "I think they really want to change -- I never believed they would, the police most of all, but they really do," he explained. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53840 FORWARD OPERATING BASE CONNOLLY, Afghanistan, April 27: The Americans could be spotted waiting for the Chinooks in the 2 a.m. darkness only by the shape of their night-vision goggles, as they shared a cigarette with glowing embers in quick drags among the kneeling assaulters in the chilled dark. They would be on the first two helicopters to drop into the villages of the Khogyani district in the shadows of the Tora Bora mountains, kicking off a four-day operation against the Taliban by roughly 175 Americans and 1,250 Afghan troops, in a teeth-clenching test of U.S. mentoring and training.[break] The Afghans were lined up behind the Americans, leaning back on their 130-pound backpacks, saving their strength to carry the loads onto the Chinooks for their first air assault, and without the Americans´ high-tech goggles, letting their eyes adjust to the dark for the assault to come. They didn´t talk much. A Predator drone feed showed the groups landing in the darkened district — dark spots trudging slowly up hills and sometimes falling into ditches — U.S. and Afghan alike. They set up a post to oversee the insurgent-ridden villages they would be guarding for the next four days as Afghan police cleared them out house by house. In this March 26, 2013, photo, Afghan elders express relief that the force that raided their villages overnight was mostly Afghan, hours after a combined force of roughly 1,250 Afghans and 175 Americans encircled the town in a pre-dawn raid. U.S. Brigade commander Col. Joseph "J.P." (AP) Intelligence intercepts showed most of the insurgents already had fled to the farthest village just beneath Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden escaped his American pursuers, after watching the Afghan troops and police mass the day before. The Afghans and their American security advisers from the U.S. Army´s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, were less interested in pursuing them than in making sure they could not return, making way for the Afghan local police who would take their place. In the daylight, village elders were invited to meet with the Afghan general who led the attack, and they said they welcomed the troops because they were Afghans, not foreigners. The U.S. brigade´s commander, Col. Joseph "J.P." McGee, sat quietly in a corner, making the briefest of comments. This was an Afghan-to-Afghan conversation. Overall in the operation, there were tactical missteps that Americans pointed out privately to the Afghan commanders, tactfully out of earshot of their subordinates. There were shortfalls in supplies, and requests were sometimes denied for U.S. air support for nighttime bombing runs or medical assistance. But in The Associated Press´ visits to Khogyani district and some of the country´s most contested southern and eastern provinces — Helmand, Nuristan, Kunar and Nangarhar — multiple operations were led or carried out mostly by Afghans. Their officers were doing the bulk of the planning and execution, responding without U.S. aid to large-scale Taliban attacks or choosing targets the Americans sometimes disagreed with, if the U.S. advisers were consulted at all. The uneven but steady progress is encouraging for the U.S. commanders trying to hand off responsibility ahead of the December 2014 drawdown of most U.S. forces, from roughly 66,000 Americans at the start of this year, to an as-yet-undetermined residual force of NATO troops that have been estimated will be around 8,000 to 10,000. The Afghans are paying heavily for that lead role, with casualty figures rising steadily, more than doubling from 550 Afghan soldiers and police killed in 2011 to more than 1,200 last year, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. This year is bloodier still, with 300 security personnel, mostly police, killed in March alone, according to a top Afghan security official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to discuss the unpublished figure. That monthly average is roughly equivalent to the total number of U.S. forces lost in 2012, according to AP´s own count of 297 U.S. troops killed, out of a total of 394 coalition forces. In this March 25, 2013, photo, Afghan Maj. Mahboob, who goes by one name, of the Afghan national army’s 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps, leaping to his feet and gesturing across the table for emphasis while arguing with Afghan colleagues about a future operation at the Afghan army’s Sarkani Base, next to Forwarding Operating Base Joyce, in Kunar province, in eastern Afghanistan. (AP) About 660 militants were reported to have been killed by coalition and Afghan forces so far this year, compared with close to 3,000 militants last year. The NATO command does not issue reports on the number of insurgents its troops have killed, and Afghan military figures, from which the AP compiles its data, cannot be independently verified. Still, there is little public outcry over the Afghan losses. While the Afghan army´s attrition rate spiked to 4.1 percent in January, it has dropped back closer to the annual average of 2.6 percent. The combined Afghan army and police roster remains in excess of 332,753, according to figures provided by NATO´s training mission, and the combined forces are clawing back some new ground from the Taliban, U.S. and Afghan officials say. Arrayed against the green Afghan forces is a still-formidable force of Taliban and other militants. Their numbers are small, at an estimated 20,000 to 30,000, compared with the Afghan security forces´ strength. But they are knitted into the rural fabric of much of Afghanistan, well-versed in guerrilla tactics and local terrain, well-supplied with explosives and ammunition and plugged into enough local tipsters to ambush Afghan security forces when they are at their most vulnerable. By summer´s end, the U.S., the Afghans and the Taliban should know whether Afghan forces have what it takes to hold their ground, Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the AP. "If the Afghans perform in a manner that we expect them to, that´s going to have a demoralizing effect on the Taliban," he said in his headquarters office in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "It´s going to reduce the capabilities of the Taliban psychologically, and as importantly, it´s going to cause the Afghan people to be more confident" in their forces and less likely to support or join the Taliban, he added. Senior administration and coalition officials said the goal is to reach a sort of bloody equilibrium, where the Afghan security forces hold the populated areas and major trade routes to allow commerce to grow, and thereby slowly diminish the ranks of the Taliban by providing other employment opportunities for would-be fighters. "What they need to be able to do is to secure key areas ... and eventually wait out and let the insurgency wither away," said McGee, at his headquarters in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangahar province. "It would be folly to try to roll up into every valley and fight these guys. It is what we used to do," McGee said. "I think (the Afghans) will pursue a very different approach than we did .... more patient, more focused on endurance as opposed to attrition of the enemy, and I think eventually the Taliban will lose relevance and support over time," he said. The Taliban know this is a make-or-break season for the Afghan forces and are targeting accordingly. From November 2012 through the end of January, 75 percent of attacks were against coalition forces and only 25 percent were targeted at Afghans, according to a senior coalition intelligence official, who spoke anonymously as a condition of discussing the confidential statistics. This past winter, the numbers were reversed, with 75 percent of the attacks now striking Afghans and 25 percent targeting coalition or coalition and Afghan joint patrols. The police remain the Afghans´ most vulnerable target. They´re usually in lightly defended posts, in remote areas and still considered far less trained, with incidents of drug use and corruption still common. But NATO deputy commander Lt. Gen. Nick Carter said five of Afghanistan´s 26 army brigades, each with 450 to 600 troops, can operate independently, and an additional 16 are capable of operating with limited advice from the U.S.-led international coalition. U.S. military officers who monitor performance say they´ve tracked a marked improvement in Afghan army units during the past 12 months, with 101 units improving and only seven dropping in the ratings. One of those newly independent Afghan army brigades is in Helmand province, scene of some of the fiercest fighting, and worst losses, for U.S. Marines. Now the once-bustling Camp Dwyer, a satellite base a 20-minute flight south from the larger Camp Leatherneck, has shrunk from some 5,000 Marines and support staff to roughly 800. About 60 of those Marines are living in a smaller base, next to the Afghan National Army´s 1st Brigade, 215th Corps headquarters. The last time Marines there went on joint patrols with the Afghans was in the fall, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Philip Treglia, who leads the security force adviser team. "We´re shrinking from 60 to 24 advisers," this spring, Treglia said. "This summer I´m recommending we go down to five," he added. "The Afghans just aren´t going to need us." Treglia´s Afghan counterpart, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Sujai, bolstered that prediction only weeks earlier by conducting a four-day, 650-man army and police operation to clear insurgents and opium-producing poppy fields out of Trek Nawa, a known Taliban safe haven. He only told the Americans about the operation when it was done. "It was a test," Sujai said. "I wanted to prove we could do it alone." Treglia described another incident, this one watched by the Americans on aerial surveillance. About 80 Taliban fighters approached the town of Marjah from the north, stopping at a mosque to let the locals know they were coming back to take over. By the time they´d reached a second mosque, residents had called the Afghan security forces — army, police and the militia-like local police, who happened to all be interrelated by marriage. Some of them were even former Taliban, Treglia said. A 400-man force headed north and intercepted the would-be invaders. The Americans counted at least 30 bodies left on the battlefield, all Taliban, according to Sujai. The rest fled. Treglia said sometimes the Afghans don´t want the Americans there, because they don´t want them watching, such as when the police shake down local farmers for bribes, in return for burning only part, instead of all, of their poppy crops. The police then demand the farmers turn in the Taliban when they visit to collect the drugs, thus both lining their pockets and bumping up their arrest record, Treglia explained. "We used to try to stop it. Now, we let the Afghan general know — and he knows — and it´s up to them to sort it out," the American said. In some cases, the Americans are forcing the Afghans to take charge before they want to, hoping to wean the Afghans of support that soon won´t be available as the U.S. forces shrink in southern Afghanistan in the coming months. If the Afghans are wounded on an operation, the Marines get them to describe the injuries and only send a U.S. aerial medevac crew if the wounds are life-threatening, explained U.S. Marine Maj. Christopher Bourbeau, deputy commander of the mission. Bourbeau traded flying combat helicopters over southern Afghanistan to join the adviser team and has watched the Afghans develop over a four-year period of rotations through the area. Bourbeau has enlisted Marine medics and the doctors and nurses at the U.S. medical facility at neighboring Camp Dwyer to teach the Afghans how to transport their less severely wounded troops by road. The troops got a grim reminder to pay closer attention when they were hit a few months ago, however, and failed to tie tourniquets on the wounded men. "They lost guys because no one did that simple thing," Bourbeau. He launched a brigade-wide refresher course after the losses and demonstrated the results by staging an impromptu pop quiz of one of the Afghan bomb technicians as he walked around the Afghan base. He tossed a tourniquet at the man, said, "Go," and the Afghan had tied a tourniquet on the American officer´s leg in just over 30 seconds. There was a similar spirit of just-say-no tough love at Forward Operating Base Joyce in Kunar province. When the U.S. refused to supply a remote Afghan guard post in the hills above their side-by-side bases, the Afghans built a road to it themselves. "They secure the camp better than we do now," said U.S. Army security adviser Lt. Col Bryan Laske. By the numbers, they are finding 20 percent more improvised explosive devices, or IEDs on average than the Americans did, Laske added. When Col. Hayatullah, who uses only one name, agreed to clear the Pech Valley, he addressed the villagers before the operation alone. "I told them I am a fellow Muslim," said the commander of the Afghan army´s 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps, gesturing to the Arabic inscription "God is great" on one shoulder of his uniform. "I told them I come with a Quran in one hand and a sword in the other. Your actions determine which one I use." The troops took the valley and are holding it, something the Americans never could in a decade of battle, Laske said. In a planning meeting for another clearing operation to come, the Afghan army commanders and a group of police and intelligence chiefs argued over how the operation would unfold, with the Americans sitting silently at the far end of the crowded conference table. "We´re not going to leave the enemy sitting a kilometer away from us and do nothing," shouted Afghan Maj. Mahboob, who also goes by one name, leaping to his feet and straining across the table for emphasis. "The coalition is going to leave, and we have to be able to do this!" he said. The officer´s words were translated by a U.S. military translator, but he later repeated what was said in English when asked. In the operation McGee oversaw to the south, the 1,250 Afghans took and held the towns, leaving Afghan local police in their stead, McGee said. "There were no civilian casualties, and the villagers are supporting it and at least 100 local police have started work," said Khogyani district´s administration chief, Abdul Wahab Momand. But even as that operation was going ahead, up to eight suicide bombers hit a police headquarters in nearby Jalalabad, about 75 miles east of Kabul, killing least five officers. On the same day in Helmand province, a car bomb struck a British base, killing one of the coalition troops. Those are grim reminders that militants intend to keep fighting. "Do we still have challenges? Sure we do," Dunford said. "Literacy, logistics ... technical capabilities. ... But in terms of their ability to provide security to the Afghan people in 2013 and beyond, I´m confident that they´ll be able to do that," he said.FORWARD OPERATING BASE CONNOLLY, Afghanistan (AP) — The Americans could be spotted waiting for the Chinooks in the 2 a.m. darkness only by the shape of their night-vision goggles, as they shared a cigarette with glowing embers in quick drags among the kneeling assaulters in the chilled dark. They would be on the first two helicopters to drop into the villages of the Khogyani district in the shadows of the Tora Bora mountains, kicking off a four-day operation against the Taliban by roughly 175 Americans and 1,250 Afghan troops, in a teeth-clenching test of U.S. mentoring and training. The Afghans were lined up behind the Americans, leaning back on their 130-pound backpacks, saving their strength to carry the loads onto the Chinooks for their first air assault, and without the Americans´ high-tech goggles, letting their eyes adjust to the dark for the assault to come. They didn´t talk much. A Predator drone feed showed the groups landing in the darkened district — dark spots trudging slowly up hills and sometimes falling into ditches — U.S. and Afghan alike. They set up a post to oversee the insurgent-ridden villages they would be guarding for the next four days as Afghan police cleared them out house by house. Intelligence intercepts showed most of the insurgents already had fled to the farthest village just beneath Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden escaped his American pursuers, after watching the Afghan troops and police mass the day before. The Afghans and their American security advisers from the U.S. Army´s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, were less interested in pursuing them than in making sure they could not return, making way for the Afghan local police who would take their place. In the daylight, village elders were invited to meet with the Afghan general who led the attack, and they said they welcomed the troops because they were Afghans, not foreigners. The U.S. brigade´s commander, Col. Joseph "J.P." McGee, sat quietly in a corner, making the briefest of comments. This was an Afghan-to-Afghan conversation. Overall in the operation, there were tactical missteps that Americans pointed out privately to the Afghan commanders, tactfully out of earshot of their subordinates. There were shortfalls in supplies, and requests were sometimes denied for U.S. air support for nighttime bombing runs or medical assistance. But in The Associated Press´ visits to Khogyani district and some of the country´s most contested southern and eastern provinces — Helmand, Nuristan, Kunar and Nangarhar — multiple operations were led or carried out mostly by Afghans. Their officers were doing the bulk of the planning and execution, responding without U.S. aid to large-scale Taliban attacks or choosing targets the Americans sometimes disagreed with, if the U.S. advisers were consulted at all. The uneven but steady progress is encouraging for the U.S. commanders trying to hand off responsibility ahead of the December 2014 drawdown of most U.S. forces, from roughly 66,000 Americans at the start of this year, to an as-yet-undetermined residual force of NATO troops that have been estimated will be around 8,000 to 10,000. The Afghans are paying heavily for that lead role, with casualty figures rising steadily, more than doubling from 550 Afghan soldiers and police killed in 2011 to more than 1,200 last year, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. This year is bloodier still, with 300 security personnel, mostly police, killed in March alone, according to a top Afghan security official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to discuss the unpublished figure. That monthly average is roughly equivalent to the total number of U.S. forces lost in 2012, according to AP´s own count of 297 U.S. troops killed, out of a total of 394 coalition forces. About 660 militants were reported to have been killed by coalition and Afghan forces so far this year, compared with close to 3,000 militants last year. The NATO command does not issue reports on the number of insurgents its troops have killed, and Afghan military figures, from which the AP compiles its data, cannot be independently verified. Still, there is little public outcry over the Afghan losses. While the Afghan army´s attrition rate spiked to 4.1 percent in January, it has dropped back closer to the annual average of 2.6 percent. The combined Afghan army and police roster remains in excess of 332,753, according to figures provided by NATO´s training mission, and the combined forces are clawing back some new ground from the Taliban, U.S. and Afghan officials say. Arrayed against the green Afghan forces is a still-formidable force of Taliban and other militants. Their numbers are small, at an estimated 20,000 to 30,000, compared with the Afghan security forces´ strength. But they are knitted into the rural fabric of much of Afghanistan, well-versed in guerrilla tactics and local terrain, well-supplied with explosives and ammunition and plugged into enough local tipsters to ambush Afghan security forces when they are at their most vulnerable. By summer´s end, the U.S., the Afghans and the Taliban should know whether Afghan forces have what it takes to hold their ground, Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the AP. "If the Afghans perform in a manner that we expect them to, that´s going to have a demoralizing effect on the Taliban," he said in his headquarters office in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "It´s going to reduce the capabilities of the Taliban psychologically, and as importantly, it´s going to cause the Afghan people to be more confident" in their forces and less likely to support or join the Taliban, he added. Senior administration and coalition officials said the goal is to reach a sort of bloody equilibrium, where the Afghan security forces hold the populated areas and major trade routes to allow commerce to grow, and thereby slowly diminish the ranks of the Taliban by providing other employment opportunities for would-be fighters. "What they need to be able to do is to secure key areas ... and eventually wait out and let the insurgency wither away," said McGee, at his headquarters in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangahar province. "It would be folly to try to roll up into every valley and fight these guys. It is what we used to do," McGee said. "I think (the Afghans) will pursue a very different approach than we did .... more patient, more focused on endurance as opposed to attrition of the enemy, and I think eventually the Taliban will lose relevance and support over time," he said. The Taliban know this is a make-or-break season for the Afghan forces and are targeting accordingly. From November 2012 through the end of January, 75 percent of attacks were against coalition forces and only 25 percent were targeted at Afghans, according to a senior coalition intelligence official, who spoke anonymously as a condition of discussing the confidential statistics. This past winter, the numbers were reversed, with 75 percent of the attacks now striking Afghans and 25 percent targeting coalition or coalition and Afghan joint patrols. The police remain the Afghans´ most vulnerable target. They´re usually in lightly defended posts, in remote areas and still considered far less trained, with incidents of drug use and corruption still common. But NATO deputy commander Lt. Gen. Nick Carter said five of Afghanistan´s 26 army brigades, each with 450 to 600 troops, can operate independently, and an additional 16 are capable of operating with limited advice from the U.S.-led international coalition. U.S. military officers who monitor performance say they´ve tracked a marked improvement in Afghan army units during the past 12 months, with 101 units improving and only seven dropping in the ratings. One of those newly independent Afghan army brigades is in Helmand province, scene of some of the fiercest fighting, and worst losses, for U.S. Marines. Now the once-bustling Camp Dwyer, a satellite base a 20-minute flight south from the larger Camp Leatherneck, has shrunk from some 5,000 Marines and support staff to roughly 800. About 60 of those Marines are living in a smaller base, next to the Afghan National Army´s 1st Brigade, 215th Corps headquarters. The last time Marines there went on joint patrols with the Afghans was in the fall, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Philip Treglia, who leads the security force adviser team. "We´re shrinking from 60 to 24 advisers," this spring, Treglia said. "This summer I´m recommending we go down to five," he added. "The Afghans just aren´t going to need us." Treglia´s Afghan counterpart, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Sujai, bolstered that prediction only weeks earlier by conducting a four-day, 650-man army and police operation to clear insurgents and opium-producing poppy fields out of Trek Nawa, a known Taliban safe haven. He only told the Americans about the operation when it was done. "It was a test," Sujai said. "I wanted to prove we could do it alone." Treglia described another incident, this one watched by the Americans on aerial surveillance. About 80 Taliban fighters approached the town of Marjah from the north, stopping at a mosque to let the locals know they were coming back to take over. By the time they´d reached a second mosque, residents had called the Afghan security forces — army, police and the militia-like local police, who happened to all be interrelated by marriage. Some of them were even former Taliban, Treglia said. A 400-man force headed north and intercepted the would-be invaders. The Americans counted at least 30 bodies left on the battlefield, all Taliban, according to Sujai. The rest fled. Treglia said sometimes the Afghans don´t want the Americans there, because they don´t want them watching, such as when the police shake down local farmers for bribes, in return for burning only part, instead of all, of their poppy crops. The police then demand the farmers turn in the Taliban when they visit to collect the drugs, thus both lining their pockets and bumping up their arrest record, Treglia explained. "We used to try to stop it. Now, we let the Afghan general know — and he knows — and it´s up to them to sort it out," the American said. In some cases, the Americans are forcing the Afghans to take charge before they want to, hoping to wean the Afghans of support that soon won´t be available as the U.S. forces shrink in southern Afghanistan in the coming months. If the Afghans are wounded on an operation, the Marines get them to describe the injuries and only send a U.S. aerial medevac crew if the wounds are life-threatening, explained U.S. Marine Maj. Christopher Bourbeau, deputy commander of the mission. Bourbeau traded flying combat helicopters over southern Afghanistan to join the adviser team and has watched the Afghans develop over a four-year period of rotations through the area. Bourbeau has enlisted Marine medics and the doctors and nurses at the U.S. medical facility at neighboring Camp Dwyer to teach the Afghans how to transport their less severely wounded troops by road. The troops got a grim reminder to pay closer attention when they were hit a few months ago, however, and failed to tie tourniquets on the wounded men. "They lost guys because no one did that simple thing," Bourbeau. He launched a brigade-wide refresher course after the losses and demonstrated the results by staging an impromptu pop quiz of one of the Afghan bomb technicians as he walked around the Afghan base. He tossed a tourniquet at the man, said, "Go," and the Afghan had tied a tourniquet on the American officer´s leg in just over 30 seconds. There was a similar spirit of just-say-no tough love at Forward Operating Base Joyce in Kunar province. When the U.S. refused to supply a remote Afghan guard post in the hills above their side-by-side bases, the Afghans built a road to it themselves. "They secure the camp better than we do now," said U.S. Army security adviser Lt. Col Bryan Laske. By the numbers, they are finding 20 percent more improvised explosive devices, or IEDs on average than the Americans did, Laske added. When Col. Hayatullah, who uses only one name, agreed to clear the Pech Valley, he addressed the villagers before the operation alone. "I told them I am a fellow Muslim," said the commander of the Afghan army´s 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps, gesturing to the Arabic inscription "God is great" on one shoulder of his uniform. "I told them I come with a Quran in one hand and a sword in the other. Your actions determine which one I use." The troops took the valley and are holding it, something the Americans never could in a decade of battle, Laske said. In a planning meeting for another clearing operation to come, the Afghan army commanders and a group of police and intelligence chiefs argued over how the operation would unfold, with the Americans sitting silently at the far end of the crowded conference table. "We´re not going to leave the enemy sitting a kilometer away from us and do nothing," shouted Afghan Maj. Mahboob, who also goes by one name, leaping to his feet and straining across the table for emphasis. "The coalition is going to leave, and we have to be able to do this!" he said. The officer´s words were translated by a U.S. military translator, but he later repeated what was said in English when asked. In the operation McGee oversaw to the south, the 1,250 Afghans took and held the towns, leaving Afghan local police in their stead, McGee said. "There were no civilian casualties, and the villagers are supporting it and at least 100 local police have started work," said Khogyani district´s administration chief, Abdul Wahab Momand. But even as that operation was going ahead, up to eight suicide bombers hit a police headquarters in nearby Jalalabad, about 75 miles east of Kabul, killing least five officers. On the same day in Helmand province, a car bomb struck a British base, killing one of the coalition troops. Those are grim reminders that militants intend to keep fighting. "Do we still have challenges? Sure we do," Dunford said. "Literacy, logistics ... technical capabilities. ... But in terms of their ability to provide security to the Afghan people in 2013 and beyond, I´m confident that they´ll be able to do that," he said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53831 BERLIN, April 27: They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler´s food taster. Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler´s food to make sure it wasn´t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his "Wolf´s Lair," the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.[break] "He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there," Woelk said of the Nazi leader. "And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him — that´s why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself." With many Germans contending with food shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler´s food had its advantages. Margot Woelk, one of the food testers of Adolf Hitler, shows an old photo album and points to a picture taken prior to the WWII and showing the way to the later built Fuehrer Headquarters "Wolf´s Lair", during an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Thursday, April 25, 2013. (AP) "The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta," she recalled. "But this constant fear — we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal." The petite widow´s story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II. Only now in the sunset of her life has she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis, although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story as she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917. Woelk first revealed her secret to a local Berlin reporter a few months ago. Since then interest in her life story has been overwhelming. School teachers wrote and asked her for photos and autographs to bring history alive for their students. Several researchers from a museum visited to ask for details about her life as Hitler´s taster. Woelk says her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives about 435 miles (700 kilometers) to the east in Rastenburg, then part of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war. There she was drafted into civilian service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf´s Lair complex, located a few miles (kilometers) outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person — only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the women. Hitler´s security fears were not unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the Wolf´s Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000 people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the bomber. "We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang," she said of the 1944 bombing. "We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting ´Hitler is dead!´ But he wasn´t. " Following the blast, tension rose around the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives´ home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound. This undated file picture shows the German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun while dining. (AP) With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf´s Lair. She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding. Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home. "Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls," she said. It was after Soviet troops overran the headquarters in January 1945. When she returned to Berlin, she found a city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and British planes was grinding the city center to rubble. On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS and Hitler Youth fighters. After about two weeks of heavy fighting, the city surrendered on May 2 — after Hitler, who had abandoned the Wolf´s Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe. For many Berlin civilians — their homes destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone — the horror did not end with capitulation. "The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too," Woelk said. "They took me to a doctor´s apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That´s why I could never have children. They destroyed everything." Like millions of Germans and other Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe. She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from the war but died 23 years ago, she said. With the frailty of advanced age and the lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece stops by frequently, she said. Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story. "For decades, I tried to shake off those memories," she said. "But they always came back to haunt me at night." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53814 KABUL, Afghanistan, April 27: The Taliban on Saturday announced the start of their spring offensive, signaling plans to step up attacks as the weather warms across Afghanistan, making both travel and fighting easier. The statement comes toward the end of a month that already has been the deadliest of the year.[break] The militant group´s leadership vowed that "every possible tactic will be utilized in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors." It said that will include more so-called insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces against their colleagues or foreign troops. Such attacks threaten the strength of the Afghan forces as they work to take over responsibility from international forces. The latest one occurred in March, when a member of Afghanistan´s government-backed militia program shot and killed five of his colleagues in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan. In a sign of Taliban´s determination to replace Afghanistan´s government with one promoting a stricter interpretation of Islamic law, they named their new offensive after a legendary Muslim military commander, Khalid ibn al-Walid. Also known as "the Drawn Sword of God," he was a companion of Islam´s Prophet Muhammad. U.S.-backed efforts to try to reconcile the Islamic militant movement with the Afghan government have so far failed. Insurgents intensified attacks this spring as they try to position themselves for power ahead of national elections and the planned withdrawal of most U.S. and other foreign combat troops by the end of 2014. April has already been the worst month for combat deaths so far this year. According to an Associated Press tally, 257 people — including civilians, Afghan security forces and foreign troops — have been killed in violence around the nation. During that time 217 insurgents have died. Last year during the month of April, 179 civilians, foreign troops and Afghan security forces were killed and 268 insurgents. Still, the top U.S. commander in Kabul, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, said Wednesday that the security situation has improved across the country. "As the traditional fighting season begins, the insurgency will confront a combined " Afghan force of 350,000 soldiers and police, he said. "The insurgency can no longer use the justification that it is fighting foreign occupiers — that message rings hollow," Dunford said in a statement. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53813 SEOUL, April 27: North Korea said Saturday that it would put a US citizen on trial for trying to overthrow the communist regime, in the face of soaring tensions between Pyongyang and the West. The North´s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Pae Jun-Ho had admitted to the charges and would soon face "judgment".[break] The announcement follows a months-long standoff on the Korean peninsula stoked by the North´s nuclear test in February, which prompted the UN Security Council to impose fresh sanctions on the isolated nation. Pae, who is believed to be a Korean-American tour operator, was arrested in November as he entered the northeastern port city of Rason. KCNA said a "preliminary inquiry" had been completed. "He admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK (Democratic People´s Republic of Korea) with hostility toward it. His crimes were proved by evidence. "He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment," according to the report, which did not say what the charges were based on. Seoul-based activist Do Hee-Yoon told AFP that he suspected Pae was arrested because he had taken photographs of emaciated children in North Korea as part of efforts to appeal for more outside aid for them. The North´s announcement came hours before US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se for talks in Seoul. The US diplomat did not publicly comment on the trial. Several Americans have been held in North Korea in recent years. In 2011, a US delegation led by Robert King, the US special envoy for human rights and humanitarian issues, secured the release of Eddie Jun Yong-Su, a California-based businessman, who had been detained for apparent missionary activities. In 2010, former US president Jimmy Carter won plaudits when he negotiated the release of American national Aijalon Mahli Gomes, sentenced to eight years of hard labour for illegally crossing into the North from China. On another mercy mission a year earlier in 2009, former president Bill Clinton won the release of US television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, jailed after wandering across the North Korean border with China. Relations between the two Koreas have worsened markedly in recent months, with Seoul announcing on Friday a complete withdrawal from a jointly run industrial park in the North after Pyongyang rejected its ultimatum to join formal negotiations on restarting the stalled operations. The move plunged into doubt the future of the Kaesong complex -- once a rare symbol of cooperation across the world´s most heavily militarised border, and a crucial source of hard currency for Kim Jong-Un´s isolated regime. A total of 126 workers from the site returned to South Korea on Saturday in dozens of vehicles loaded with assembled goods and other materials. The roughly 50 people remaining -- mostly government employees who manage the site as well as telecom and electrical engineers -- are expected to be pulled out on Monday. South Korean companies with factories in Kaesong have expressed shock at the abrupt withdrawal. "We´re dismayed at the sudden government decision to pull out of Kaesong. We´re concerned this would eventually result in its closure," a representative of the 123 South Korean firms with interests there told reporters. Established in 2004, the complex lies 10 kilometres (six miles) inside the North, which remains technically at war with the South after the 1950-53 Korean War was concluded with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53802 (Updated) SAVAR, Bangladesh, April 27: Bangladesh made a string of arrests on Saturday over the collapse of a factory complex which killed at least 351 people as exhausted rescuers battled to find more survivors among the corpses. Twenty-nine people were pulled alive on Saturday from the rubble of the eight-storey Rana Plaza compound which caved in Wednesday morning while thousands of garment workers were stitching clothes for Western brands.[break] Emergency workers, gulping breaths of air freshener to mask the stench of rotting bodies, warned their task was getting tougher as survivors were losing their strength to call for help. "There are many dead bodies but our top priority is finding those who may still be alive," said Mahbubur Rahman, the fire service´s director of operations. "There are some survivors. We can hear their feeble cries or hear them talking to each other," he told AFP. News of the arrests of two factory owners along with two engineers came after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vowed those responsible for the country´s deadliest industrial disaster would be hunted down. Proprietors Bazlus Samad and Mahmudur Rahaman Tapash were detained soon after midnight and faced preliminary charges of causing death by negligence, Dhaka´s deputy police chief Shyaml Mukherjee told AFP. The government has launched a massive search for owners of three other factories and the overall proprietor of the complex, reportedly a ruling party official, after a minister alleged he built the compound without permits. The local government deputy minister, Jahangir Kabir, identified the compound owner as Sohel Rana as police reported the man had gone into hiding. Another building near the disaster site Rana allegedly owns was sealed after cracks appeared in the structure, Dhaka district administrator Yusuf Harun told AFP. Senior investigating officer Kaiser Matubbor said two municipal engineers who gave the building the all-clear after an inspection on Tuesday were also arrested and could face charges of death due to negligence. Survivors said the complex developed cracks Tuesday, but bosses ordered staff to return to the production lines. Five factories were based in the complex at Savar, just outside Dhaka. Thousands of relatives of missing workers massed at the site to watch as bodies were pulled from the debris and laid on a school ground for identification. Dhaka police officer Badrul Alam told AFP the "death toll is now 351", but was set to rise as more bodies could be seen. There is no official figure of the number of people still missing. Akram Hossain, a deputy director of the fire service, said there were still some survivors trapped between the pancaked floors but warned their chances were "diminishing by the minute" in the sweltering tropical heat. Rahman, the fire service´s director of operations, said rescuers were trying to carve tunnels through the wreckage and bodies could be seen everywhere. "Pillars and beams are the biggest problem. Sometimes, even if we can locate survivors, we can´t reach them because of these beams. They take a lot of time to cut through," he said. Rescuers were only using hand tools like cutters and drills, fearing heavier equipment could dislodge masonry. Although the discovery of more survivors gave fresh impetus to the rescue effort, there was mounting anger over its slow pace. "I´ve been here since Wednesday. We still don´t know what happened to my aunt and sister-in-law," said Harunur Rashid, clutching photos of his relatives. "There are so many people, yet too little work," he said. Merina Begum, among those rescued on Saturday, said she and seven fellow workers trapped in the same area had been without food or water for days. "When the rescuers brought juice, ice cream and cold water, it was the tastiest food I´ve ever had," she told AFP. With many of Bangladesh´s 4,500 factories shut due to protests, bosses declared Saturday and Sunday a holiday. Several thousand garment workers protested on Saturday near the disaster site but they were dispersed by police firing rubber bullets and tear gas. Bangladesh is the world´s number-two garment manufacturer and the industry is the mainstay of the economy. But it has a shocking safety record, with a factory fire killing 111 people in November. Britain´s Primark and Spain´s Mango have acknowledged their products were made in the block, while other brands including Walmart are investigating. The accident has prompted new accusations from activists that Western firms place profit before safety by sourcing their products from a country where textile workers often earn less than $40 a month. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53801 MOSCOW, April 27: Russian police and security agents detained 140 people at a mosque in Moscow on Friday on suspicion of involvement with Islamic extremism. A statement from the Federal Security Agency reported by Russian news agencies said among those detained were 30 citizens of unspecified foreign countries. The detentions come a week after the two suspects in the fatal Boston Marathon bombings were identified as Russian-born ethnic Chechens who sympathized with Islamic extremists.[break] There were no immediate reports of charges being filed. The security agency referred The Associated Press to a district office, where the telephone was not answered. The reports cited the agency as saying the mosque previously has been visited by people who had been involved in preparing or carrying out terrorist attacks. A Chechen separatist insurgency that began in the 1990s increasingly took on a fundamentalist Muslim character and spread to neighboring Russian Caucasus regions, including Dagestan, where Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and their family lived for a period before emigrating to the United States in 2002 or 2003. The Tsarnaevs´ parents later returned to Dagestan, and Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police last week, made a long visit in 2012. Investigators are trying to find out details of what he did on the six-month sojourn, especially whether he met with any extremists. Caucasus extremists have carried out gruesome attacks on civilians in Russia, including the 2004 seizure of a school in the town of Beslan that ended in the deaths of 330 people, about half of them children. They also claimed responsibility for the 2011 bombing of Russia´s busiest airport, killing 36 people. In 2011, U.S. authorities questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev at Russia´s request, but found nothing that sparked their interest and stopped watching him. On Friday, officials briefed on the investigation told the AP that U.S. intelligence agencies had added the mother of the suspects, Zubeidat, to a government terrorism database 18 months before the bombings. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the ongoing case. The mother called the information "lies and hypocrisy" and said she has never been linked to crimes or terrorism. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53798 NEW DELHI, April 27: New Delhi on Friday alleged Chinese soldiers have advanced nearly 20 kilometres (12 miles) into Indian-claimed territory after intruding across the disputed border earlier this month, a report said. Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma and other military officials presented a report on the incursion to a parliamentary watchdog, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported, marking a renewal of tensions between the Asian neighbours.[break] Sharma also told MPs attending the meeting that India has deployed troops in the contested region to "keep a close watch on the border", it quoted unnamed sources as saying. India and China have an unresolved boundary dispute, and relations are often prickly and marked by mutual suspicion -- a legacy of a brief border war in 1962. A senior defence ministry official confirmed to AFP the meeting took place and that Sharma briefed MPs on the alleged Chinese advance but he did not elaborate. "The officials told the committee that Indian army patrols reported on April 16 the presence of Chinese People´s Liberation Army pitching tents 19 kilometres inside the LAC (Line of Actual Control)," PTI quoted a source as saying. The LAC is the de facto border that runs across the Himalayas. The meeting came a day after Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid announced he would head for China on May 8, saying both countries had a mutual interest in not allowing the dispute to "destroy" long-term progress in ties. A foreign ministry official also confirmed reports that the new Chinese Premier Li Keqiang would travel to New Delhi India late next month, without giving an exact date. Lower-level talks have so far failed to break the impasse in the dispute in the western part of India-administered Kashmir´s Ladakh region. According to officials in New Delhi, a platoon of Chinese troops set up a camp inside Indian territory on April 15. India has since called on the Chinese soldiers to withdraw, but several meetings between local army commanders and diplomats from both sides have failed to resolve the stand-off. China has denied any wrongdoing. In 1962, China gave India a bloody nose in the war fought in the Himalayan regions of Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. Small incursions are not uncommon across the LAC but it is rare for either country to set up camps in disputed territory. In recent years, the two countries have increased their military presence on each side of the border and hold frequent meetings to defuse tensions. Despite the border tensions, trade between the Asian giants has soared in recent years. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53760 WASHINGTON, April 26: European scientists said Thursday that a new laboratory experiment shows the Earth´s core is likely much hotter than last reported 20 years ago. It´s not that the iron core of our planet has warmed, but rather that the technique used to estimate its heat previously was flawed, researchers said in the journal Science.[break] Newer techniques have allowed experts at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility to determine the temperature near Earth´s center to be 6,000 degrees Celsius (10,832 degrees Fahrenheit). That is about 1,000 degrees C hotter than an experiment conducted by German researchers in 1993. Researchers are analyzing the solid iron core of the Earth, where extreme temperatures and pressure result in a hard center, while the surrounding iron at lower temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Celsius remains liquid. "We have developed a new technique where an intense beam of X-rays from the synchrotron can probe a sample and deduce whether it is solid, liquid or partially molten within as little as a second, using a process known diffraction," said Mohamed Mezouar from the ESRF. "And this is short enough to keep temperature and pressure constant, and at the same time avoid any chemical reactions." The X-ray technique is believed to be superior to the optical technique used by Germany´s Reinhard Boehler, who reported a result about 1,000 degrees cooler based on the observation of recrystallization which was interpreted as melting. "These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1,500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field," the French team said of its findings. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53756 WASHINGTON, April 26: For years, millions of immigrant applicants hoped they would be lucky enough to win the US green card lottery. Under reform being considered in Congress, they may soon be asking: "Am I skilled enough?" By 2017, according to a proposed revamp of laws governing admission to the United States, permanent residency permits known as green cards could be doled out not on luck but "on merit," via a points system that would put more qualified applicants at the front of the line.[break] Are you a French computer scientist with a strong command of English, already living in the United States on a visa but whose employer is reluctant to sponsor you for permanent residency? The new system may work in your favor. Nothing is set in stone yet, but an 844-page measure, the most comprehensive immigration reform in a generation, is working its way through the Senate, and members of the House say they, too, are hopeful a bill can be signed into law this year. Ten criteria for immigrant applicants will be taken into account in the system, which has a theoretical maximum of 100 points. Under the new system, a university degree will be worth five points, a master´s degree 10 and a doctorate 15. Each year of work experience will provide an applicant from zero to three points, depending on the employment level, for a maximum of 20 points. Are you a programmer, computer scientist, or software developer? 10 points. If your job is in an occupation related to your degree: 8-10 points. A TOEFL English language proficiency score of 80 or more? Chalk up another 10. Contractors who employ at least two people: 10 points. Clearly, skills and experience count under the proposed system -- but so does youth. Those age 25 and under will receive eight points; 25-32 year old are awarded six points; and age 33-37 years, four. Those age 38 or above receive no bonus. A sibling of a US citizen earns 10 points, as does the married child, 31 or older, of a US citizen. Community service will help. Those who can prove their "civic involvement" will be allocated five points. A final clause gives five points to those from countries with low immigration, which rules out Mexicans, Chinese and Indians. 120,000 green cards by 2017 Unlike other countries that have adopted the points scheme, including Britain and Canada, the exact bar for immigration admission under the proposed US system remains a mystery: other factors are also at play. But if your score is among the top 60,000, you will gain a green card. Another block of 60,000 will also be awarded permanent residency based on criteria that favor lower-skilled labor such as construction. The merit system will come into force from October 2017, provided that the immigration reform law passes President Barack Obama´s desk this summer. Over the years, the number of green cards could rise to 250,000. "For many at a bachelor level," or for someone whose employer doesn´t want to serve as a sponsor, "you´re in a bind," immigration attorney Gregory Siskind told AFP. "So the points system will give you an alternative to relying on your employer to get a green card," he added. "For a lot of people, that´s going to mean freedom." Until 2013, a lottery offered 55,000 visas per year. But Republican lawmakers have sought to end the program, which makes no distinction between skilled and unskilled immigrants. In addition to the points system, the Senate proposal provides quota-free green cards for extraordinarily qualified researchers, scientists and graduates of US universities. "I don´t think that the long waits that we´ve had for a while are going to be a problem for a couple of years." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53746 RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, April 26: A Pakistani court on Friday slapped a three-day house arrest order on former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over the murder of Benazir Bhutto more than five years ago, a prosecutor said. Musharraf is already serving a two-week house arrest, set to expire on May 4, for sacking judges when he imposed emergency rule in November 2007 and will serve the fresh order concurrently. [break] The retired general appeared in court in Rawalpindi for his remand hearing under tight security. He is accused of conspiracy to murder former prime minister Bhutto, who died in a gun and suicide attack in December 2007. It is the second of three cases dating back to his 1999-2008 rule for which Musharraf has been arrested since returning to Pakistan on March 24 after four years of self-imposed exile, promising to contest elections. "We requested a three-day remand of retired general Pervez Musharraf and judge Chaudhry Habib-ur Rehman gave a three-day remand and adjourned the case until Monday," prosecutor Chaudhry Azhar told AFP. Musharraf is being held at his plush villa on the edge of Islamabad where his party complained that he has been confined to two rooms and stripped of his personal staff. He is also barred from running in next month´s general election on May 11 and has been threatened with death by the Taliban. Nobody has been convicted or jailed for Bhutto´s assassination. Musharraf´s government blamed the killing on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement and who was killed in a US drone attack in August 2009. In 2010 a UN report said Bhutto´s death could have been prevented and accused Musharraf´s government of failing to give her adequate protection. But Bhutto´s son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the outgoing Pakistan People´s Party, has accused Musharraf of her murder. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53745 CARACAS, April 26: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles vowed Thursday to take his challenge of this month´s presidential vote to court and repeated his demand for a do-over of the contested election. Capriles had demanded that Venezuela´s National Electoral Board begin reviewing the balloting procedures for the April 14 election he narrowly lost. He set a deadline of Thursday for the panel to begin its review in an ultimatum announced the night before.[break] When the election board failed to respond, Capriles announced he would resort to the court system to get a full recount or election re-do. "The next step is the rejection of the election, with all the evidence that we´ve collected," he told Globovision television, vowing to take the case to the Supreme Judicial Tribunal. He further upped the ante, insisting that he would only accept an election audit that examined voters´ signatures and fingerprints. Capriles lost the April 14 election to Nicolas Maduro, political heir to late president Hugo Chavez, who died last month. The margin of victory was just 1.8 percent, according to the National Electoral Board. Capriles and his supporters claim voter fraud, alleging that some voters cast multiple ballots or even used ballots belonging to people who had died. The election board, which has said that a full vote recount is legally impossible, agreed last week only to a partial review of ballots, which Capriles rejected as insufficient. Political tensions soared on Wednesday when both the government and Capriles called massive street rallies for May 1. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53739  (Updated) MOSCOW, April 26: Thirty-eight people, mostly psychiatric patients, were killed in a fire that raged Friday at a psychiatric hospital in the Moscow region, trapping the inmates inside behind barred windows. The deadly blaze raised new questions about security standards at Russia´s medical institutions, in particular psychiatric hospitals, after a string of fires in the last years.[break] The fire broke out on the roof and spread rapidly throughout the hospital in the small town of Ramensky around 40 kilometres (25 miles) outside Moscow, the health ministry said. "According to preliminary reports, 38 people were killed, including two medical staff," said ministry spokesman Oleg Salagai, cited by the RIA Novosti news agency. The emergency situations ministry said in a statement that 41 people were in the building at the time. It listed those missing as two female members of staff and 36 patients. "Twelve bodies have been found" so far, it said as firefighters searched through the rubble after more than 100 battled to extinguish the fire. Russia´s Investigative Committee said in a statement it had opened a criminal probe into failure to observe fire security regulations, causing multiple death. Two patients and one member of medical staff escaped the fire in the one-storey brick building which had a partly wooden roof, the emergency situations ministry said. Most of the patients apparently died in their sleep from inhaling fumes, but they would have been unable to escape from the fire which raged through the building with bars on the windows, Rossiya 24 television reported, citing law enforcement officials. The patients slept soundly as they had taken medication in the evening, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported, citing a spokesman for the rescue operation. The smoke alarms did activate in the hospital and woke a nurse who managed to save two patients, the rescue operation spokesman said. "When the nurse came out into the corridor, the fire was burning and the flames were spreading quickly. She managed to bring out only two patients: a woman and a young man," the spokesman said. Channel One television said that the emergency services had been slow to react, with the fire brigade taking an hour to get there. "There were bars on all the windows of the hospital. Most of those killed died in their beds and it appears that they were not even able to save themselves," a security source told the Interfax news agency. Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyev, a protege of President Vladimir Putin from the ruling United Russia party, was already at the scene, officials said. The Moscow region announced a day of mourning to be held on Saturday. The fire was the latest tragedy to hit a medical institution in Russia which still suffers from outdated Soviet-era infrastructure. May 2007 two died and 12 injured in a village psychiatric hospital in Russia´s southern Rostov region. In December 2006, a fire in a Moscow drug rehabilitation clinic killed 45 women. Many of the victims were trapped by metal bars on the windows that staff could not open and an emergency exit was boarded up, officials said. In March 2006, a fire in a nursing home in southern Russia killed 63, also due to violations of fire safety regulations and the lack of a nearby firefighting station. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53695 (Update II) SAVAR, Bangladesh, April 25: Dozens of workers were found alive Thursday as they huddled in the wreckage of a collapsed garment factory bloc in Bangladesh, a rare success for rescuers who have pulled out 250 bodies. In an announcement greeted by wild applause from thousands of relatives at the scene, an army spokesman initially announced that 40 survivors had been discovered together in a room, but the figure was later revised to 24.[break] Screams filtering through the cracks in the concrete suggested more survivors were awaiting help, but a steady stream of bodies saw the recorded death toll almost double on Thursday and hundreds remain unaccounted for. The collapse of the building on Wednesday on the outskirts of the capital is the worst industrial accident in the country´s history and is the latest in a spate of tragedies in the "Made in Bangladesh" clothing sector. It prompted new criticism of Western brands who were accused by activists of placing profit before safety by sourcing their products from the country despite its shocking track record of deadly disasters. Hundreds of thousands of workers walked out of their factories in solidarity with their dead colleagues on Thursday as flags flew at half mast and a national day of mourning was held. "The death toll is now 250," Moshiuddowla Reza, a senior police officer of Dhaka district, told AFP from the disaster site, adding more bodies were being recovered and that most of those who died are female garment workers. Safety problems and poor working conditions plague the textile industry in Bangladesh, the world´s second-biggest clothing exporter after China. Last November a blaze at a factory making products for Walmart and other Western labels left 111 people dead, with survivors describing how fire exits were kept locked by site managers. Only British low-cost fashion line Primark and Spanish giant Mango have acknowledged having their products made in the collapsed factory bloc, while a host of brands including Wal-Mart and France´s Carrefour are investigating. Italian fashion line Benetton denied having a supplier in the building but a local workers´ group provided documents showing apparent orders from the company in August and September last year. The company did not reply to repeated requests from AFP for comment. Survivors said the building developed visible cracks on Tuesday evening, but factory bosses had demanded staff return to the production lines despite a police evacuation order. One manager for the New Wave Styles company, one of the five manufacturers in the building, told how the owner had consulted an engineer but then ignored his warnings. "Those who´re involved, especially the owner who forced the workers to work there, will be punished," Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told lawmakers. "Wherever he is, he will be found and brought to justice." At the scene of the disaster, relatives desperate for news descended in their thousands, clutching photographs and hoping to see their missing loved ones pulled out by firemen and soldiers. "I became so thirsty that at one stage I drank my urine," said an ecstatic Abul Hossain, 23, as he was dragged from the ruins more than 25 hours after the disaster struck at around 09:00 am (0300 GMT) on Wednesday. But others were less lucky, with body after body laid out on the grounds of a nearby school for identification. "I´ve seen all the bodies. My sister was not among them. She is also not in any of the hospitals," said Mukta Begum, holding the photo of her younger sibling Suryaban, a garment worker. Babul Akhter, head of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation, told AFP that the factory owners -- who have gone into hiding -- would likely escape justice despite the outcry. "Garment entrepreneurs are above the law here. There is hardly any example of an owner being prosecuted for this kind of outright murder," he said. "The Western retailers are also complicit because they give a blind eye to the manufacturers´ shoddy practices." Before the 24 were found, Ahmed Ali, the national fire service chief, told AFP that 20 people had been rescued. "We could still hear desperate cries for help from several places underneath the concrete heaps. Volunteers sent food and water to them through holes," he said, adding that rescuers would work through the night under floodlights. "We´re confident we can find more people alive even on Friday." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53684 CARACAS, April 25: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles, refusing to concede defeat, accused Nicolas Maduro´s government Wednesday of stealing the country´s recent presidential elections. "The truth -- and it is as big as our country is wide -- is that you stole the election. That is the truth. You stole this electoral process, and you have to explain that to this country and to the world," a defiant Capriles told a news conference.[break] Maduro, Hugo Chavez´s political heir, won the April 14 elections to replace the late leader by a very narrow 1.8 percent, according to the National Electoral Board. But opposition members allege cases of voter fraud, claiming some cast multiple ballots or even used ballots belonging to people who had died. Capriles demanded that the National Electoral Board begin reviewing the balloting process and electoral proceedings. He wants a full recount, which the board says is legally impossible. "We are giving you your deadline: it´s tomorrow. We are not going to wait any more," Capriles said in a nationally televised address. "You (the board) made a commitment to the Venezuelan people. Well, I made a commitment to the Venezuelan people too." The board had agreed last week to a partial review of ballots, yet all the while insisting that whatever the outcome, it would not, and could not, change the outcome of the election. The board also never said when the partial electoral review would begin. Patience clearly has run out, and the South American OPEC member sitting atop the world´s largest proven crude reserves again was plunging into political uncertainty. Indeed, just as Capriles challenged the government, television transmission of his speech was interrupted by mandatory government broadcasting on all TV and radio networks. The interruption showed video footage in which Capriles was blamed for unleashing post-electoral violence that left nine dead and scores wounded. In reaction to the cutoff, some Capriles supporters immediately started a pot-banging demonstration in some areas of Caracas. "So why is the (government) feed being piped in now? To keep people from hearing the truth?" Capriles asked, claiming the interruption was another clear sign of the government´s fear that the people would learn the truth. Political tensions had already soared earlier Wednesday when both the government and Capriles called massive street rallies for May 1. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53631 (Update III) SAVAR, Bangladesh, April 25: Workers trapped in the wreckage of a collapsed factory building in Bangladesh cried out for help Thursday, as rescuers struggled to reach survivors of a disaster that killed at least 149 people and reignited questions about the often lethal conditions the county´s garment industry. Army Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder said many people are still trapped in the building, which housed a number of garment factories employing hundreds of people when it came tumbling down Wednesday morning. A clearer picture of the rescue operation would be available by afternoon, he said. The disaster came less than five months after a factory fire killed 112 people and underscored the unsafe conditions faced by Bangladesh´s garment workers, who produce clothes for global brands worn around the world. Workers said they had hesitated to enter the building on Wednesday morning because it had developed such large cracks a day earlier that it even drew the attention of local news channels. Just hours later it came tumbling down. Searchers worked through the night to cut holes in the jumbled mess of concrete with drills or their bare hands, passing water and flashlights to those pinned inside the building. "I gave them whistles, water, torchlights. I heard them cry. We can´t leave them behind this way," said fire official Abul Khayer. Abdur Rahim, who worked on the fifth floor, said a factory manager gave assurances that the cracks in the building were no cause for concern, so employees went inside. "After about an hour or so, the building collapsed suddenly," Rahim said. He next remembered regaining consciousness outside. On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters the building had violated construction codes and "the culprits would be punished." Abdul Halim, an official with the engineering department in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, said the owner was originally allowed to construct a five-story building but he added another three stories illegally. Local police chief Mohammaed Asaduzzaman said police and the government´s Capital Development Authority have filed separate cases of negligence against the building owner. Habibur Rahman, police superintendent of Dhaka district, identified the owner as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of ruling Awami League´s youth front. Rahman said police were also looking for the owners of the garment factories. Among the textile businesses in the building were Phantom Apparels Ltd., New Wave Style Ltd., New Wave Bottoms Ltd. and New Wave Brothers Ltd., which make clothing for major brands including The Children´s Place, Dress Barn, and Primark. Jane Singer, a spokeswoman for The Children´s Place, said that "while one of the garment factories located in the building complex has produced apparel for The Children´s Place, none of our product was in production at the time of this accident." "Our deepest sympathies go out to the victims of this terrible tragedy and their families," Singer said in a statement. Dress Barn said that to its knowledge, it had "not purchased any clothing from that facility since 2010. We work with suppliers around the world to manufacture our clothing, and have a supply chain transparency program to protect the rights of workers and their safety." Primark, a major British clothing retailer, confirmed that one of the suppliers it uses to produce some of its goods was located on the second floor of the building. In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, Primark said it was "shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling incident." It added that it has been working with other retailers to review the country´s approach to factory standards and will now push for this review to include building integrity. Meanwhile, Primark´s ethical trade team is working to collect information, assess which communities the workers come from, and to provide support "where possible." John Howe, Cato´s chief financial officer and executive vice president, told The Associated Press that it didn´t contract with any of the factories directly but it´s currently investigating what its "ties" were. Howe said that one of Cato´s domestic importers could have used one of the factories to fulfill some of the orders the retailer had placed. It´s expected to have more information by Thursday. Spanish retailer Mango denied reports it was using any of the suppliers in the building. However, in an email statement to the AP, it said that there had been conversations with one of them to produce a batch of test products. Kevin Gardner, a spokesman at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the second-largest clothing producer in Bangladesh, said the company is investigating to see if a factory in the building was currently producing for the chain. "We remain committed and are actively engaged in promoting stronger safety measures, and that work continues," Gardner added. Workers said they didn´t know what specific clothing brands were being produced in the building because labels are attached after the products are finished. Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, which has an office in nearby Dhaka, says his staff is investigating the situation. He´s hoping his team, working with local workers´ groups, will be able to find out which brands were having their products made at the time of the collapse. "You can´t trust many buildings in Bangladesh," Kernaghan said. "It´s so corrupt that you can buy off anybody and there won´t be any retribution." Sumi, a 25-year-old worker who goes by one name, said she was sewing jeans on the fifth floor with at least 400 others when the building fell. "It collapsed all of a sudden," she said. "No shaking, no indication. It just collapsed on us." She said she managed to reach a hole in the building where rescuers pulled her out. Tens of thousands of people gathered at the site, weeping and searching for family members. Firefighters and soldiers with drilling machines and cranes worked with volunteers to search for survivors. An enormous section of the concrete structure appeared to have splintered like twigs. Colorful sheets of fabric were tied to upper floors so those inside could climb or slide down and escape. Rescuers carried the body of a young boy from the building, but it was not immediately clear what he had been doing inside. The building housed a bank and various shops in addition to the garment factories. An arm jutted out of one section of the rubble. A lifeless woman covered in dust could be seen in another. Rahim said his mother and father, who worked with him in the factory, were trapped inside. Mosammat Khurshida wailed as she looked for her husband. "He came to work in the morning. I can´t find him," she said. "I don´t know where he is. He does not pick up his phone." The morgue of the medical college echoed with the sobs of people waiting for the bodies of their loved ones. "Where´s my mother? Where´s my mother? Tell me, tell me, oh Allah, oh Allah!" Rana Ahmed cried. Asaduzzaman, the local police chief, said nearly 100 bodies had been handed to their families as of Thursday morning. The November fire at the Tazreen garment factory drew international attention to working conditions in Bangladesh´s $20 billion-a-year textile industry. The country has about 4,000 garment factories and exports clothes to leading Western retailers. The industry wields vast power in the South Asian nation. Tazreen lacked emergency exits, and its owner said only three floors of the eight-story building were legally built. Surviving employees said gates had been locked and managers had told them to go back to work after the fire alarm went off. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53661 TUNCELI, Turkey, April 24: They dropped their language and religion to survive after the 1915 genocide, but close to 100 years on Turkey´s "hidden Armenians" want to take pride in their identity. Some genocide survivors adopted Islam and blended in with the Kurds in eastern Turkey´s Dersim mountains to avoid further persecution.[break] Several generations down the road, the town of Tunceli hosted a landmark ceremony Wednesday for Genocide Remembrance Day, something which has only ever happened in Istanbul and the large city of Diyarbakir. The massacre and deportation of Ottoman Armenians during World War I, which Armenians claim left around 1.5 million dead, is described by many countries as genocide although Ankara continues to reject the term. Speaking in front of the ruins of the Ergen church -- one of the few remnants of Christian Armenian heritage in the region -- Miran Pirginc Gultekin, president of the Dersim Armenian Association, explained it was still rare to declare oneself openly as Armenian in Turkey. "We decided that we had to get back to our true nature, that this way of living was not satisfactory, that it was not fair to live with another´s identity and another´s faith," he said. Despite converting to Alevism, a heterodox sect of Islam, and taking Turkish names, the ethnic Armenians who stayed on their ancestral land suffered from continued discrimination and the elders often struggle to summon their memories. "My mother told me how her family was deported. She was a baby at the time and her mother considered drowning her in despair," said Tahire Aslanpencesi, a sprightly octogenarian from the village Danaburan. "My mother used to say all the misery that came after would have been avoided had her mother drowned her," she recalled. After converting to Islam, many of the so-called "crypto-Armenians" said they still faced unfair treatment: their land was often confiscated, the men were humiliated with "circumcision checks" in the army and some were tortured. Hidir Boztas´ grandfather converted to Islam, gave his son a Turkish name and the clan intermarried with a Kurdish community in the village of Alanyazi. "We feel Armenian nonetheless and in any case the others always remind us of where we come from. No matter how many of their daughters we marry, and how many of ours we give them, they will continue to call us Armenians," he said. The Armenian community shared the Kurds´ suffering when the regime cracked down on Kurdish rebellions, from the 1938 revolt to the insurrection started by the PKK group in 1984. For a long time, only those who had left the ancestral homestead dared to make their Armenian roots known. "Armenians in Istanbul are in a big city, they have their neighbourhoods, their churches, nobody can do anything to them. But in these villages, there´s rejection and insults," said Hidir Boztas, 86. Human rights campaigners gathered Wednesday in downtown Istanbul carrying portraits of genocide victims. They were only a handful but they argued that the simple fact that such an event was authorised and groups such as theirs invited proved that attitudes were changing. "Ten years ago, such an event was impossible in Turkey," said Benjamin Abtan," a European activist. One of Hidir´s nephews, 42-year-old Mustafa, a businessman, is one of a growing number of Muslim Armenians who want to be proud of their identity. Mustafa has decided to name his construction firm Bedros after Hidir´s grandfather, who was deported during the genocide. "It symbolised my past. My great-grandfather was called Bedros, and I wanted his name to live on. I am against radicalism, and I don´t do this through racism or religious extremism, but I don´t deny my origins -- everyone knows them." He said he hoped the unprecedented ceremony in Tunceli Wednesday would encourage more members of the community to come out in the open. "The aim is to allow people to assert their identity more freely and also to generate more interest for the little Christian heritage left in the region," said Miran Pirginc Gultekin. His society was created three years ago and has around 80 members. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53635 ISLAMABAD, April 24; A 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, with strong tremors felt in the capital Kabul and Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan. The quake struck at 0925 GMT at a depth of 65 kilometres (40 miles), 25 kilometres northwest of Jalalabad, the main town in eastern Afghanistan close to the Pakistani border, the USGS said. Pakistan´s meteorological office put the magnitude at 6.2.[break] There were no immediate reports of any damage. Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. In June 2012, two quakes in the area triggered landslides that killed at least 75 villagers. Wednesday´s tremors came a week after a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake centred in Iran affected thousands of people in remote southeastern Pakistan and killed 41 people. Pakistan was hit by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake on October 8, 2005, that killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless, mainly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53627 BEIJING, April 24: Twenty-one people, including police officers and social workers, were killed in violent clashes in China´s ethnically-divided western region of Xinjiang, a local official said Wednesday. "Twenty-one persons were killed in all... including social workers and policemen," an official surnamed Cao from the provincial government´s news office said of the incident, which, he added, occurred on Tuesday.[break] Gun fights broke out in Bachu county, in the west of the province, after police went to search the home of locals suspected of possessing guns, a report on Tianshan Net, a government-run news website, said. The report described the fighting as a "violent terror incident". It said 15 of those killed were either police or social workers, with 11 of them being members of China´s Uighur ethnic minority, who live mainly in Xinjiang. A further six "gang members" were shot dead in the violence, the report said, without giving their identities. Cao confirmed the contents of the report, but said he did not know how many police were among the dead. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53581 BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 23: Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty after being charged Monday for his alleged role in the attacks that left three people dead and 200 wounded. The 19-year-old was said to be alert as he was arraigned in his hospital bed on charges of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, and malicious destruction of property by means of deadly explosives, the US Department of Justice said.[break] The charges came as Boston marked the one-week anniversary of the twin marathon bombings with a moment of silence observed across the nation, including the White House to the New York Stock Exchange. If Tsarnaev, a naturalized US citizen of Chechen descent, is convicted of the federal charges, he faces time behind bars -- or even death. "We´ve once again shown that those who target innocent Americans and attempt to terrorize our cities will not escape from justice," said US Attorney General Eric Holder. A first court hearing was set for May 30. The unsealing of the federal charges against Tsarnaev, who suffered gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs and hand before his capture late Friday, came as White House spokesman Jay Carney said he would not be deemed an "enemy combatant." "We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice," Carney said after some Republicans had called for Tsarnaev to have the same status as the "war on terror" detainees held in Guantanamo Bay. Tsarnaev was caught after a massive manhunt that virtually shut down Boston and its suburbs on Friday. His brother and alleged accomplice Tamerlan, 26, had been killed in a chaotic overnight shootout with police. A clearer picture of Tsarnaev´s role in the attacks emerged with the release of an affidavit from an FBI agent on Monday, which revealed the teenager had been caught on film planting the second backpack bomb. Surveillance footage showed Tsarnaev calmly walking away from the scene after the first bomb was detonated, according to the affidavit. Tsarnaev, who remains bedridden and hospitalized, spoke only one word aloud at his bedside hearing Monday, responding "no" when asked whether he could afford an attorney, according to a transcript of the hearing released Monday. Otherwise, the record showed he nodded when asked whether he understood the process and the charges against him. The federal judge said she found him "alert, mentally competent, and lucid," according to the transcript. As counterterrorism agents trained in interrogating "high-value" detainees waited at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to learn more from the teen, Bostonians attempted to put the traumatic week behind them. The city honored the victims of the blasts with a moment of silence at 2:50 pm (1850 GMT) that was also observed in Washington, by President Barack Obama and lawmakers, and in New York, at the city´s stock exchange. Hundreds gathered outside the security cordon set up near the blast sites at the marathon finish line on Boylston Street to honor the dead and wounded. Some prayed, others left flowers. Church bells rang out across the city. FBI investigators are still hoping to get answers from Tsarnaev about the brothers´ possible motive, and learn whether other attacks were in the works. An unnamed US government source told CNN that "preliminary interviews with Tsarnaev indicate the two brothers fit the classification of self-radicalized jihadists," and that international groups were not involved. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said Sunday that the brothers, who had been living legally in the United States for more than a decade, had more homemade explosive devices and appeared to have been planning more attacks. He said federal authorities were trying to track down how and where the two suspects obtained firearms and explosive devices. An M-4 assault rifle was recovered in the boat where Dzhokhar was captured, The New York Times reported. The brothers also apparently used two handguns and a BB gun in the shootout with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown. They are also believed to have shot dead a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Investigators are now probing a six-month trip made by Tamerlan in 2012 to Russia´s troubled regions of Dagestan and Chechnya, and whether he was radicalized or trained there. US Senator Lindsey Graham said the FBI and Russian intelligence may have missed warning signs and made basic errors like misspelling Tamerlan Tsarnaev´s name, allowing him to travel to Russia undetected. "I´ve been told by the FBI that the reason that his name did not pop up in the system was because it was misspelled," Graham said. "We don´t know if he misspelled it," or if it was the fault of the airline, identified by Graham as Russian flagship Aeroflot. "We certainly missed it here." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53576 LAGOS, Nigeria, April 23: Fighting between soldiers and Islamic extremists in northeast Nigeria killed at least 187 people, the worst single incident of violence in the region since an insurgency there began three years ago, an aid agency said Monday. Nigeria´s military blocked access for relief officials to enter the town of Baga, which sits along the shores of Lake Chad in the nation´s far northeast, said Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a Red Cross spokesman. Another 77 people are receiving medical care there in the ruins of a town where some 300 homes burned down, he said. Local residents blamed angry soldiers for burning down neighborhoods where they knew civilians were hiding.[break] "Our volunteers are on standby," Nwakpa said. "We are yet to be provided clearance." The fighting in Baga began Friday and lasted for hours, sending people fleeing into the arid scrublands surrounding the community. By the time Borno state officials could reach the city Sunday, a local government official said at least 185 people were killed, something not disputed by a brigadier general who attended the visit. Officials could not offer a breakdown of civilian casualties versus those of soldiers and extremist fighters. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition in fires that razed whole sections of the town, residents said. Those killed were buried as soon as possible, following local Muslim tradition. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed shock and sadness at the high civilian casualty toll and large number of homes destroyed and called on extremist groups to cease their attacks, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said. "The secretary-general reiterates his firm conviction that no objective sought can justify this resort to violence," Nesirky said. "He underscores the need for all concerned to fully respect human rights and safeguard the lives of civilians." Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who appeared at an event Monday on the nation´s power supply at the Aso Rock presidential villa in the country´s capital, did not comment on the killings there. A few hours after Ban´s statement, Jonathan´s office issued a release saying he had ordered "a full-scale investigation into reports of high civilian casualties." The "administration will continue to do everything possible to avoid the killing or injuring of innocent bystanders in security operations against terrorists and insurgents," the statement read. "Rules of engagement for the military and security agencies are already in place for this purpose and the investigation ordered by President Jonathan into the incident in Baga is to amongst other things, determine whether or not these rules were fully complied with." The statement also said "casualty figures being reported by the foreign media may be grossly exaggerated." The statement did not offer any tolls for the injured or dead, nor did it explain what military officials already had told the presidency about the fighting. Members of the Islamic extremist network Boko Haram used heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault Friday, which Brig. Gen. Austin Edokpaye said began after soldiers surrounded a mosque they believed was housing Boko Haram members. Extremists earlier had killed a military officer, officials said. The military said extremists used civilians as human shields during the fighting — implying that soldiers opened fire in neighborhoods where they knew civilians lived. However, local residents who spoke to an Associated Press journalist who accompanied the state officials said soldiers purposefully set the fires during the attack. Violence by security forces in the northeast targeting civilians has been widely documented by journalists and human rights activists. A similar raid in Maiduguri, Borno state´s capital, in October after extremists killed a military officer saw soldiers kill at least 30 civilians and set fires across a neighborhood. Eric Guttschuss, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who studies Nigeria, said his organization continued to study what happened, though it already had deep concerns about the allegations surrounding the soldiers´ conduct. "We are investigating this extremely serious incident," he said. "In the past, Nigeria has simply denied or tried to cover up security force abuses." The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group´s leader died in police custody in an apparent execution. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,548 people before Friday´s attack, according to an AP count. Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria´s north, has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and Nigeria to adopt strict Shariah law across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. While Jonathan has started a committee to look at the idea of offering an amnesty deal to extremist fighters, Boko Haram´s leader Abubakar Shekau has dismissed the idea out of hand in messages. Friday´s violence marked the worst attack linked to Nigeria´s Islamic insurgency. In January 2012, Boko Haram launched a coordinated attack in Kano, northern Nigeria´s largest city, that killed at least 185 people, the previous worst attack. However, casualty numbers remain murky in Nigeria, where security and government officials often downplay figures. Despite the deployment of more soldiers and police to northern Nigeria, the nation´s weak central government has been unable to stop the killings. Meanwhile, violent atrocities committed by security forces against the local civilian population only fuels rage in the region. Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima, who visited Baga on Sunday, did not directly implicate the military for the killings in this attack, though anger could be heard in his voice. "If the harassment continues, I will personally relocate from Maiduguri to here and let me be harassed along with the rest of the people," Shettima said at the time. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53573 LUXEMBOURG, April 22: EU foreign ministers agreed Monday to lift the last of the bloc´s trade, economic and individual sanctions against Myanmar, hailing "a new chapter" with the once pariah state. "In response to the changes that have taken place and in the expectation that they will continue, the Council (of ministers) has decided to lift all sanctions with the exception of the embargo on arms," said a statement approved without a vote.[break] "The EU is willing to open a new chapter in its relations with Myanmar/Burma, building a lasting partnership," it added. The European Union began easing sanctions against Myanmar a year ago as the military, in power for decades, progressively ceded power to civilians and implemented wholesale reforms of the economy. Ministers noted, however, that there were "still significant challenges to be addressed", in particular an end to hostilities in Kachin state and improving the plight of the Rohingya people. New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday that Myanmar has waged "a campaign of ethnic cleansing" against Rohingya Muslims, citing evidence of mass graves and forced displacement affecting tens of thousands. HRW Asia head Phil Robertson said lifting the sanctions was "premature and regrettable", warning that the move lessens leverage over Myanmar. Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship. To help Myanmar´s economy, the EU will look at the feasibility of a bilateral investment agreement, as well as more development assistance. To help it deal with inter-communal violence, the EU is also studying the possibility of assisting reform of the police service, in partnership with its parliament, the statement said. In April last year, foreign ministers agreed to a one-year suspension of measures targeting almost 500 individuals and more than 800 firms to bolster a reform process which the same month saw opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi´s election to parliament. Among the sanctions, hundreds of people were targeted by a travel ban and asset freeze, while on the economic front the EU had barred investments and banned imports of the country´s lucrative timber, metals and gems. During a visit to Brussels last month, the first by a Myanmar head of state, President Thein Sein urged the EU to lift sanctions, saying "we are one of the poorest countries in the world". He received pledges of EU economic assistance coupled with calls to protect his country´s ethnic minorities. Since the former premier took over the presidency in March 2011, hundreds of political prisoners have been released and elections held. EU development aid since has more than doubled to around 150 million euros ($195 million) for 2012-2013. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53563 PULI ALAM, Afghanistan, April 22: Afghanistan´s Taliban insurgents have seized 11 civilians including eight Turks after their helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing, officials said Monday. Police sent to the area where the helicopter came down Sunday, in a rugged rural area of Logar province south of Kabul, had a firefight with the militants but pulled back for lack of support, the Logar police chief said.[break] The Taliban claimed the 11 were US military personnel. After the helicopter came down in bad weather, they "were captured alive and were then transferred to the most secure region of the nation", the militants said in a statement. The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said no foreign military were involved and the helicopter was a civilian one. Turkey´s foreign ministry said eight of its nationals were seized and its diplomats were holding "intensive talks" with Afghan authorities to trace their whereabouts. Russia´s foreign ministry said two pilots -- a Russian named Pavel Petrenko and a Kyrgyz national who was not identified -- were among those captured. An Afghan was also detained. The Afghan-based charter firm Khorasan Cargo Airlines, which operated the MI-8 helicopter, said the Turks were working on a road project. The Afghan interior ministry said a police team had been sent to the area and a search for the passengers and crew had begun. It could not confirm the number or nationality of those held. "Police were sent to the area where the helicopter made an emergency landing and engaged in a firefight with the Taliban," Abdul Saboor Nasrati, Logar provincial police chief, told AFP. "We pulled the police back because there was no help from the Afghan army or foreign forces. The police were unable to secure the area, which is very rural, and we were worried," Nasrati said. Hamidullah Hamid, governor of Azra district near where the helicopter came down, said the detained Afghan was acting as an interpreter. ISAF is preparing to withdraw all its foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, handing over to Afghan troops and police despite widespread fears about instability in the country. An ISAF spokesman said NATO troops were ready to assist Afghan security forces but there had been no request so far. A Logar provincial government spokesman, Din Mohammad Darvish, said provincial officials have been talking to village elders to try to persuade the Taliban to release the captives. The helicopter had been travelling from the eastern city of Khost to Kabul when it was forced to land. The Taliban, ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion, claimed it had 11 US military members, including two translators, on board. "The foreign forces, by disassociating themselves from the helicopter, are trying to make it seem as the detainees are civilians but denial will not benefit them as all were captured while wearing American military uniforms," it said. Attacks by the Taliban and other guerrillas soared in the first quarter of 2013, according to a study by an independent group released on Saturday. The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office reported 2,331 insurgent attacks in January-March, a 47 percent rise on the first quarter of last year. Helicopter mishaps are common in mountainous Afghanistan. Last month five foreign soldiers died in a crash in the south of the country. In February this year a NATO helicopter came down in the east but there were no fatalities. Turkey, one of only two Muslim-majority members of NATO, has around 1,800 soldiers serving with ISAF. But unlike its European allies, their mission is limited to patrols and its troops do not take part in combat operations. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53537 (Updated) ISLAMABAD, April 22: Pakistan´s caretaker government told the Supreme Court on Monday it will not file treason charges against former military ruler Pervez Musharraf but will leave the decision on that to the winner of the upcoming election. The petitions before the Supreme Court alleging Musharraf committed treason while in power constitute just one of several legal challenges he is facing following his recent return to Pakistan from self-imposed exile.[break] The former military strongman was placed under house arrest over the weekend in connection with a different case, which involves his decision to fire senior judges while in power. Musharraf´s detention was the latest in an array of setbacks he has faced since returning home last month with hopes of making a political comeback. Lawyers have filed private petitions before the Supreme Court alleging Musharraf committed various treasonable offenses, including toppling a civilian government, suspending the constitution and declaring a state of emergency. But according to Pakistan´s constitution, the government is the only one with authority to file treason charges against Musharraf. Attorney General Irfan Qadir submitted a statement to the Supreme Court on Monday, saying caretaker officials have decided not to file treason charges because it was not part of their mandate. The caretaker government should avoid controversial matters that are not reversible by the winner of the May 11 parliamentary election, Qadir said. Instead, he added, caretaker officials are focused on routine matters, such as ensuring security for the upcoming election. However, Law Minister Ahmad Bilal Sufi indicated that caretaker officials would not defy the Supreme Court if the judges ordered the government to act. "At present all the focus, the attention is on the election arrangement," Sufi told reporters in Islamabad. "But we will be ready to proceed according to what the court asks us to do." The interim government took over last month and will hold power until a new government is formed after the vote. At this point, it´s unclear how the next government will choose to proceed in the case of treason charges against Musharraf. The front runner to become the next prime minister is Nawaz Sharif, who was toppled by Musharraf in a military coup when he was serving as premier in 1999. Musharraf held power for nearly a decade until he was forced to step down in 2008 because of growing discontent with his rule. He returned despite Taliban death threats and an array of legal challenges. But upon his homecoming, Musharraf encountered paltry levels of public support and was disqualified to run in the upcoming election because of his actions while in office. Things got even worse last week, when Musharraf fled a court in the capital Islamabad to avoid arrest after a judge rejected his bail and ordered his detention. The arrest order was connected to Musharraf´s decision in 2007 to dismiss senior judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, apparently out of concern that they would challenge his re-election as president. Musharraf was eventually placed under house arrest at his heavily guarded compound on the outskirts of Islamabad until the next hearing on May 4. In this Monday, April 15, 2013 photo, Pakistan´s former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf addresses his party supporters at his house in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP) http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53531 MOSCOW, April 22: The father of the suspected Boston bombers insisted in an interview published Monday that his sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were innocent and could not have carried out the bombings. Their plans for the future had included returning to work in Russia, Anzor Tsarnaev said in the telephone interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda daily, adding that he hoped to travel to the United States where his younger son Dzhokhar is in hospital after his capture with serious injuries.[break] "I only know what they are showing on television. We plan to go and see him in America if Allah permits." His two sons "were studying and working" in the United States, he said. He said that he last spoke to his elder son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after the bombings. His son told him then that he had received a phone call saying he was a suspect, he said. The men´s father argued that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by the FBI, who he said "kept my Tamerlan constantly under surveillance." "They just wanted to set up Tamerlan and Dzhokhar just turned out to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "Tamerlan was driving him to school when they started shooting at them," he claimed. "This is a set-up, a political order, a Hollywood show." "Tamerlan changed jobs a few times: he delivered post, he changed tyres, he was a boxing trainer and in recent months a baby sitter -- he sat at home with his three-year-old child. His wife worked. She looked after disabled people." Tamerlan last visited Russia in January to get a new passport after turning 25, he said, although he apparently referred to January 2012, since Tamerlan was 26. "He didn´t want to leave. he said that he wanted to bring his family over here. He didn´t like it there, although he was a famous boxer in Boston." He denied that Tamerlan held radical Islamist views. "Tamerlan did get religious after getting married. He went to the mosque every Friday. He prayed five times a day. He was a righteous Muslim, and could not have done what he is accused of." His other son, Dzhokhar, "was an ´A grade´ student at Cambridge. He worked as a lifesaver at a pool. He had big plans: to become a doctor, to open a business, to come over here," Anzor Tsaraev said. "He said: ´Dad, don´t worry. I´ll finish studying and come over, I´ll help you.´" http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53490 NEW DELHI, April 21: A doctor says the condition of a 5-year-old girl who was allegedly kidnapped, raped and tortured by a man and then left alone for two days in a locked room in India´s capital has improved. D. K. Sharma said Sunday that the girl was responding well to treatment and that her condition was stable.[break] Police say the girl went missing April 15 and was found two days later by neighbors who heard her crying in a room in the same New Delhi building where she lives with her family. A 24-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident. For the second consecutive day, hundreds of people protested Sunday outside police headquarters, angry over allegations that police had ignored complaints by the girl´s parents that she was missing. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53458 PYONGYANG, North Korea, April 20: North Korea´s newest batch of future soldiers — scrawny 11-year-olds with freshly shaved heads — punch the air as they practice taekwondo on the grounds of the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School. Students and teachers here say they´re studying harder these days to prepare for a fight. Across the country, banners, slogans and artwork have been redrawn to focus on fighting "the imperialist Americans and their traitorous followers," a reference to South Korea. [break]Slogans on improving North Korea´s economy had dominated since 2009, but anti-American propaganda has re-emerged over the past year, particularly following U.S.-led censure of North Korea´s decision to launch a long-range rocket and test a nuclear bomb. At the military school, where students work on desktop computers without Internet access and practice their English with chants such as "The respected Marshal Kim Jong Un is our father," classwork is infused with conflict. "Because of the present situation, I am trying to study harder, because I really think that´s how I can get my revenge on the American imperialists: by getting top marks in class," one student, Jo Chung Hyok, told The Associated Press. "It´s my revolutionary duty," Jo said. "I´m working extra hard to get top marks in military subjects like tactics and shooting." The uptick in anti-American sentiment comes on the heels of international condemnation and U.N. sanctions for North Korea´s long-range rocket launch in December and its underground nuclear test in February, which Pyongyang accuses Washington and Seoul of instigating. Joint U.S.-South Korean military drills south of the border also have incensed Pyongyang. In this Thursday, April 18, 2013 photo, students at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, in Pyongyang, North Korea work on computers. (AP) The anti-American campaign also comes as North Korea prepares to mark the 60th anniversary in July of the close of the Korean War. The three-year conflict pitting North Korea and China against U.S.-led U.N. troops ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The continued division of the Korean Peninsula, and the presence of 28,500 American troops in South Korea, has rankled North Korea´s leadership. For weeks, North Korea has threatened to attack the U.S. and South Korea for holding joint military drills and for supporting U.N. sanctions. Washington and Seoul say they´ve seen no evidence that Pyongyang is actually preparing for a major conflict, though South Korean defense officials say the North appears prepared to test-fire a medium-range missile capable of reaching the American territory of Guam. Both sides have said that in order for dialogue, the other side needs to act. The U.S. says Pyongyang must bring down tensions and honor previous disarmament agreements before talks can begin. North Korea laid out a long list of preconditions for resuming talks Thursday, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions, the end of U.S.-South Korea military drills, the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons assets from the region a halt to criticism of North Korea. On Friday, it reiterated a warning to South Korea to apologize for offending its leadership before any talk of dialogue to defuse tensions. South Korea´s Foreign Ministry called North Korea´s demands illogical, but in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put a more positive spin on Pyongyang´s response. "It´s the first word of negotiation or thought of that we have heard from them since all of this has begun," he said Thursday before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. "I´m prepared to look at that as at least a beginning, not acceptable obviously, and we have to go further." The U.S. remains open to "authentic and credible negotiations," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One. But he said the U.S. has not seen any commitment from North Koreans that they are willing to end their nuclear program. Inside the sprawling compound of the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, students are made aware of their government´s latest invectives against its foes, in addition to usual subjects of study: biology, history, foreign languages. "At the moment, the situation on the Korean Peninsula is tense, and America is being bad to us," said Lt. Col. Kim Hak Bin, an administrator at the military academy. "But you can see that the students here look just as bright as usual, and life and classes are carrying on the same as before. "Our students are ready to go to the front lines whenever a war breaks out, and they are now studying harder than usual," he said Thursday. The school, located near the birthplace of North Korea´s first leader, Kim Il Sung, was created in 1947 to house, feed and educate the sons and daughters of soldiers killed while fighting the Japanese who occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945. Today, the girls are housed in a separate academy named after Kim Il Sung´s mother, the Kang Pan Sok Revolutionary School in the western port city of Nampho. Late leader Kim Jong Il attended the academy for eight months during the Korean War, school records show. His son, current leader Kim Jong Un, did not. His military education came from studying at the Kim Il Sung Military University next door. During his 17-year rule, Kim Jong Il elevated the importance of the army and poured much of the nation´s meager resources into defense. Military life became an integral part of the North Korean identity. The students here are being groomed to serve as the "core" of the Korean People´s Army, said biology teacher Ri Kyong Hui. A visit to the military academy offered a peek into how young North Koreans learn to march and chant with such startling precision as displayed in parades held on major anniversaries. A group of students, dressed in uniform, struggled to get their march just right as an instructor adjusted their arms. One boy grimaced in frustration. Inside, other students rehearsed for a performance, using fake rifles as props. But boys will be boys, and the 11-year-olds who just joined the academy at the start of the month were hardly examples of discipline. Suited up in light green and blue tracksuits, they squirmed, giggled and made faces as they practiced taekwondo. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53457 SEATTLE, April 20: The hunt for the bombers behind the deadly Boston Marathon attacks didn´t take place only on the streets with professional police officers and SWAT teams. In an era of digital interactivity, it also unfolded around the country from the desks of ordinary people. Fueled by Twitter, online forums like Reddit and 4Chan, smartphones and relays of police scanners, thousands of people played armchair detective as police searched for men who turned out to be suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechen brothers who had immigrated from southern Russia years ago.[break] But as amateur online sleuths began identifying possible culprits, people were wrongly accused or placed under suspicion by crowdsourcing. It showed the damage that digital investigators can cause and posed a question: In the social-media generation, what does law enforcement unleash when, by implication, it deputizes the public for help? "The FBI kind of opened the door," said Hanson R. Hosein, director of the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media program. "It was almost like it was put up as challenge to them, and they rose to it. ... They can be either really helpful or mob rule." This image made on Friday, April 19, 2013 from the a post on the imgur.com online image hosting service by user "gdhdshdhd" shows analyses overlaid on photographs of the site in Boston where one of two explosives were detonated at the finish line of Monday´s Boston Marathon. (AP) The bombings have been the highest-profile case in which the public has joined an active investigation, using ever-evolving crowd-sourcing tools, showing the pitfalls and benefits of new technology. It´s certainly not vigilantism, but it´s not standard policing, either. It´s perhaps something new — the law-enforcement equivalent of citizen journalism. Reddit users began piecing together clues in the pictures and videos. They pointed out men who were wearing backpacks standing in the crowd. They looked at the straps of backpacks to compare with the one thought to have carried the bomb. They analyzed the bombs´ blasts and people´s gazes. In one particular photo thread, posted on imgur.com shortly after the bombing, a user attempted to pinpoint exactly where the bomb was placed. Eventually, efforts and pictures posted in the sub-section dubbed "r/findbostonbombers" and elsewhere on Reddit were picked up by news organizations, giving it greater exposure. Another wave of detective work happened after the FBI released pictures and videos of the Tsarnaev brothers and as initial reports of a shooting at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday night. While listening to the police scanner, Reddit and Twitter users thought they had heard the name of a Brown University student missing since March, and one user posted a news story about his disappearance. That assumption proved wrong — and there was a cost. The missing student´s family, besieged with ugly comments, temporarily took down a Facebook page asking for help finding him. A few hours later, the online detectives said sorry — in the words of one moderator, for "any part we may have had in relaying what has turned out to be faulty information." Several Reddit users who posted on r/findbostonbombers did not immediately return messages seeking comment. President Barack Obama seemed to acknowledge this Friday night, speaking after the second suspect was captured. "In this age of instant reporting, tweets and blogs, there´s a temptation to latch on to any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions," Obama said. "But when a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it´s important we do this right." The rush to informal sleuthing began Monday soon after the smoke clear as pictures and videos from the marathon began to circulate on the Internet. Salah Eddin Barhoum, a 17-year-old track star who was a spectator at Monday´s race, had his picture posted all over the Internet and ended up on the cover of the New York Post. He told The Associated Press on Thursday that he is now afraid to leave his house. Some of the amateur police work didn´t sit well with the professionals. Boston´s police department, for example, has a very active Twitter account with more than 220,000 followers, but the onslaught of misinformation proved to be too much. At one point, Boston police asked people to stop tweeting information from their scanner traffic. While Reddit and 4Chan have been around for several years, their prominence has grown of late. More and more news organizations have learned to use them to mine information. For Hosein, sub-sections on Reddit have become something like local newspapers, except it´s the users providing the content. "Citizens think they almost have an obligation to rise up to do the work," he said. Hosein says that the FBI´s call for help was no different than a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" poster from the 1800´s — albeit with much more amplification and distribution. But he feels that after this week´s saga, people will eventually learn to exercise caution. "There´s a sense that we´re learning collectively quickly, that we actually have to take on some of the sourcing rules that journalists have had in the past," Hosein said. "I´ve seen more restraint like, ´Wait guys, hold on, there´s gotta be more confirmation.´ I know we´re learning. I don´t think it´s going to be repeated." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53432 (Updated) ISLAMABAD, April 20: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday extended former military ruler Pervez Musharraf judicial remand to prison for two weeks for sacking judges during his rule, officials said. "The court has sent General Musharraf on judicial remand for two weeks," Muhammad Amjad, spokesman for Musharraf´s All Pakistan Muslim League party, told reporters.[break] "Our lawyers denied the allegations that General Musharraf sacked judges and kept them and their families under house arrest for six months. It is absolutely untrue," Amjad said. "We had requested the court to send General Musharraf on judicial remand, so that we can go to higher courts for relief," he added. Musharraf appeared before the anti-terrorism court amid tight security, as hundreds of lawyers opposing him scuffled with security personnel and shouted slogans against the former ruler. He had spent the night at police headquarters in Islamabad, officials said, and was moved back there after his court appearance, but it was unclear whether he will be kept there or in a prison. "It depends upon the district administration whether they send him to jail or keep him at any secure place," a senior police official told AFP. Musharraf was moved into police custody after being arrested on Friday, an unprecedented move against a former army chief of staff ahead of key elections. The arrest relates to Musharraf´s decision to sack judges when he imposed emergency rule in November 2007, a move that hastened his downfall. Live television footage showed Musharraf getting out of his white bullet-proof SUV and being surrounded by dozens of security guards as he was brought into the courthouse. Lawyers have petitioned Pakistan´s top court to try him for treason for imposing emergency law -- which would be punishable by death or life in prison -- but it would have to be the state that initiates any trial. He also faces charges of conspiracy to murder opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and over the death of a rebel leader during a 2006 military operation. Musharraf´s supporters say the arrest order was nothing more than a settling of scores for his dismissal of judges nearly six years ago. On Thursday, Judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui added terrorism to the charges, accusing him of spreading "fear in the society, insecurity amongst the judicial officers, alarm in the lawyers´ community and terror throughout Pakistan". Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup, which was widely welcomed at the time in Pakistan, but he was forced out and threatened with impeachment in 2008. The elected prime minister he ousted, Nawaz Sharif, is now the front-runner in the general election campaign. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53431 PATNA, India, April 20: I Indian police on Saturday arrested a man over the brutal rape of a five-year-old girl that has sparked fresh protests against sexual violence in the country. The child was being treated at a top government hospital in New Delhi and the latest medical bulletin issued late Friday described her as being in a critical condition.[break] The suspect, 22-year-old Manoj Kumar, was captured in eastern Bihar state after fleeing to his father-in-law´s home in a village 70 kilometres (43 miles) from local capital Patna, police said. Police accused the garment factory worker of repeatedly attacking the child inside a locked room over 48 hours after abducting her Monday in a lower-middle class area of New Delhi. "It is the act of a monster," senior Patna police official Ravindar Kumar told AFP, saying the suspect was booked on charges of rape, attempted murder and illegal confinement, and that he would be returned to New Delhi to face trial. Newspapers splashed the attack, which comes just four months after the gang-rape and death of a young woman shook India, on their front pages with headlines such as "Delhi shamed again" and "Depraved Delhi". Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement late Friday he was "deeply disturbed" over the rape, calling it a "shameful incident", and asked society "to work to root out the evil of rape and other such crimes". The child, who had last been seen when she went outside to play, was found after people heard her cries. Injuries to her neck suggested her attacker may have tried to strangle and left her to die, according to R.N. Bansal, one of the doctors who treated her. Doctors said the girl was mutilated during the attack, suffering serious internal and other injuries and was also fighting an infection. The attacker was reportedly a tenant in the victim´s house. The assault sparked new public outrage over crimes against women and children reminiscent of protests that swept the capital in December after a 23-year-old student was savagely gang-raped by six men and died nearly two weeks later. "We want justice," shouted demonstrators gathered outside New Delhi´s All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital where the child was being treated. Protesters were angered by reports that police, who have been under heavy public pressure to reduce the number of rapes, were reluctant to register the case and offered the father money to forget the assault. Though rapes and sexual harassment have been commonplace in India, since the December rape there has been an outpouring of criticism of the treatment of women in Indian society and violent sex crime. The city has a burgeoning population of at least 16 million and has long had a reputation of being the country´s "rape capital" as it records the highest number of rapes annually. In 2012 there were around 700 rapes reported in New Delhi, a 23 percent rise from the previous year, police said. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party attacked the police department, saying speedy action could have prevented the attack. If the investigating officers "had done a good job in finding the child, then possibly this brutality could have been avoided", BJP´s Smriti Irani told the Times Now television station. India´s Information Minister Manish Tiwari called for renewed "soul searching" over why women are ill-treated in India. In wake of the December gang-rape, India´s parliament last month approved a new bill toughening punishment for sex offenders. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53430 BAGHDAD, April 20: Iraqis voted on Saturday in the country´s first polls since US troops departed, a key test of the country´s stability in the face of a spike in attacks that has claimed more than 100 lives. But the credibility of the provincial elections has come into question, with attacks on candidates leaving 14 dead and a third of Iraq´s provinces -- all of them mainly Sunni Arab or Kurdish -- not even voting.[break] "I came this early because I was very excited to vote. I think some of the current provincial council members did not do a good job," university student Abdulsahib Ali Abdulsahib, 22, told AFP at a polling station in central Baghdad after voting began at about 7:00 am (0400 GMT). "Security is the most important problem that all of them should be working for; without this, life would be so difficult. I hope this is the first thing they work towards." Voters were searched twice before being allowed to enter, and Iraqi security forces had a heavy presence in the area. Only pre-approved vehicles were allowed on the streets, which were largely deserted except for police and soldiers. The elections are the first since parliamentary polls in March 2010 and also the first since US troops withdrew from Iraq in December 2011. An estimated 13.8 million Iraqis are eligible to vote for more than 8,000 candidates, with 378 seats being contested. The polls are seen as a gauge of the popularity of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki´s Shiite-led government ahead of a general election next year, but major issues affecting voters such as poor public services and rampant corruption have largely been ignored during the campaign. "I don´t believe this election will provide a magic solution for the problems of Iraqis, and the problems in the country," said Ihsan al-Shammari, a politics professor at Baghdad University. But, he said, a well-run vote with a high turnout could bolster Iraqi belief in democracy a decade after US-led forces ousted now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein. "The results will show the popularity of the various parties and, because of this, we see that party leaders are themselves leading campaigns," Shammari said. The lead-up to the vote was blighted by a rise in violence that left more than 100 people dead in the past week and 14 election candidates killed since campaigning began. Six of Iraq´s 18 provinces are not participating -- two because authorities say security cannot be ensured, and four because of various political disagreements. Those two factors have led diplomats to worry about the credibility of the election, as they could result in low voter turnout, leading to results that are unrepresentative or not broadly accepted. Iraqi forces were responsible for security on polling day, the first time they have been in charge without support from American or other international forces during elections since Saddam was toppled. "We will use all of our forces in the interior and defence ministries to control the situation," said interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan. While violence in Iraq has fallen significantly since the height of its sectarian war, it still faces significant security challenges, mainly from Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda who launch attacks in a bid to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government. Provincial councils are responsible for nominating governors who take charge of the provinces´ administration, finances and reconstruction projects, and have sway over key local issues such as sewerage and other services. But while several contentious issues fall under the purview of the provinces, campaigning is rarely on ideological or policy lines. Candidates generally appeal to voters on the basis of shared sectarian, ethnic or tribal identities. As a result, many key concerns such as poor public services, widespread corruption and high unemployment have gone largely unaddressed. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53425 (Update II) YA´AN, China, April 20: More than 150 people were killed and 5,700 injured when a strong earthquake hit a mountainous part of southwestern China on Saturday, destroying thousands of homes and triggering landslides. The shallow earthquake struck Sichuan province on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau just after 8:00 am, prompting a major rescue operation in the same area where 87,000 people were reported dead or missing in a massive quake in 2008.[break] Nearly 13 hours after the quake hit Lushan county in the city of Ya´an, the death toll stood at 157, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Ministry of Civil Affairs which said more than 5,700 had been injured. At least 10,000 homes were destroyed, the Sichuan government said as rescue workers searched through the rubble for survivors. Local seismologists registered the quake at magnitude 7.0 while the US Geological Survey gave it as 6.6. More than 260 aftershocks followed, the People´s Daily said on its website. The shaking was felt in the provincial capital Chengdu, which lies to the east, and even in the megacity of Chongqing several hundred kilometres (miles) away. Panicked residents fled into the streets, some of them still in their slippers and pyjamas. "Members of my family were woken up. They were lying in bed when the strong shaking began and the wardrobes began shaking strongly," said a 43-year-old Chongqing resident surnamed Wang. "We grabbed our clothes and ran outside." About 6,000 soldiers and police were heading to the area to help rescue work and five drones were sent to capture aerial images, Xinhua said. Some teams had to contend with roads blocked by debris, state television CCTV reported, while one military vehicle carrying 17 troops plummeted over a cliff, killing one soldier and injuring seven others, Xinhua said. "There are mountains on all sides, it is very easy to trigger mudslides and very dangerous," one user wrote on Sina Weibo microblog site. The disaster evoked comparisons to the 2008 Sichuan quake, the country´s worst in decades, and President Xi Jinping ordered all out efforts to minimise casualties, Xinhua said. Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Sichuan in the afternoon and took a helicopter to the quake zone. The first 24 hours was "the golden time for saving lives", he was quoted as saying. "Life is the most important thing and the top priority is saving lives," he said. Amid the rescue efforts, a 30-year-old pregnant woman surnamed Zhao was pulled out of the rubble along with a young child and sent to hospital for treatment, the People´s Daily said on its Weibo account. "We have pulled 13 people out of the rubble, including 10 alive," local official Luo Bin told Xinhua in the village of Gucheng. "We are not sure whether more people are buried underneath but the search will go on," he said. CCTV showed one survivor receiving stitches for his head on the street, and another elderly man being pushed in a wheelbarrow padded with blankets past a row of tents set up outside a Lushan hospital. A local TV journalist due to get married on Saturday turned up instead for work and a photograph of her holding a microphone in her wedding dress with bright makeup and a corsage was widely circulated online. Meanwhile Ya´an residents were offering to donate badly needed blood, the People´s Daily said. But volunteers outside the city were discouraged from flocking to Ya´an to help with relief efforts, Xinhua said, to avoid blocking already busy phone lines and worsening road congestion. "A fair amount of telecoms facilities have been damaged," it said. Pandas at a reserve less than 50 kilometres from the epicentre were not harmed, Xinhua said, citing an employee. Users of weibo microblogs in other cities reported feeling tremors. The 2008 Sichuan quake, which struck west-northwest of Chengdu, generated an outpouring of support, with volunteers rushing to the scene to offer aid and then-premier Wen Jiabao also visiting. But there was public anger after the discovery that many schools fell while other buildings did not, creating suspicion of corruption and corner-cutting in construction. The deaths of the children became a sensitive and taboo subject in the heavily controlled domestic media and social media websites. Earthquakes frequently strike the country´s southwest. In April 2010, a 6.9 magnitude quake killed about 2,700 people and injured 12,000 in a remote area of Qinghai province bordering the northwest of Sichuan. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53424 BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 19: US police on Friday captured an ethnic Chechen teenager suspected of staging the Boston Marathon bombings, after a desperate manhunt that virtually paralyzed the city and its suburbs. Responding to a tip from a local resident, police found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, hiding in a boat in a suburban backyard in Watertown, wounded and weary after a gun battle overnight in which his accomplice brother was killed.[break] "Captured!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody," the Boston police department said on Twitter after Tsarnaev was taken away to applause from relieved residents. Hundreds of people later descended into the streets of Boston to celebrate, chanting: "USA! USA!" Some climbed onto car roofs while others danced in the streets. A neighbor alerted police after finding Tsarnaev "covered with blood" in the boat where he had taken refuge, Boston police chief Ed Davis told reporters. The University of Massachusetts student was surrounded by a small army of police for a final showdown which lasted nearly two hours. Attempts to negotiate with him failed as he was "not communicating," Davis said. "We exchanged gunfire with the suspect who was inside the boat, and ultimately, the hostage rescue team of the FBI made an entry into the boat and removed the suspect," Davis told a press conference. Following his capture, Tsarnaev was taken to hospital, where he was in serious condition. "We will determine what happened. We will investigate any associations that these terrorists may have had. And we´ll continue to do whatever we have to do to keep our people safe," President Barack Obama said after the capture. The arrest ended a dramatic four days after two bombs exploded at the marathon finish line, killing three people and wounding about 180 in the worst attack on the United States since the September 11, 2001 atrocities. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan were named as the main suspects. They were also at the center of a violent spree in which one policeman was killed and a second officer wounded. The bombings traumatized the city with investigators at first seeming to be struggling to find the attackers. A major breakthrough came when the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday released video and picture images of the Tsarnaev brothers as they walked in Boylston Street where the attacks took place. Within hours of that press conference, the brothers embarked on a final rampage through the Boston suburbs. A police officer was killed in a "vicious assassination," Davis said, and the suspects then carjacked a Mercedes, sparking a high-speed police chase to Watertown. Police said the two men hurled explosives out of the car window before the elder brother was shot. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died of bullet wounds and injuries from explosives strapped to his body, a hospital doctor said. Police launched a huge manhunt on Friday with 9,000 police surrounding Watertown and parts of nearby districts hoping to isolate the teenager who was believed wounded in the shootout in which his brother was killed. Boston ground to a standstill as authorities halted all public transport, ordered schools and universities closed and told people in most of the region to stay in their homes. The Tsarnaev brothers are ethnic Chechen Muslims who moved to the United States about a decade ago. Their social media pages appeared to express sympathy with the struggle of Chechnya, which has been ravaged by two wars since 1994 between Russia and increasingly Islamist-leaning separatist rebels. The suspects´ father Anzor Tsarnaev told Russia´s Interfax news agency his sons had been "set up by the secret services because they are practicing Muslims." But an uncle, Ruslan Tsarni said the pair had put "shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity." "Somebody radicalized them," he said of his nephews. "It´s not my brother." The FBI acknowledged on Friday that an unnamed foreign government had asked about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 but they had found no key information. Obama said the bombing suspects had failed to achieve whatever it was they were seeking. "They failed because the people of Boston refused to be intimidated," he said. "They failed because as Americans, we refuse to be terrorized." Boston has held emotional tributes to the dead -- eight-year-old Martin Richard, Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi of China and Krystle Campbell, a restaurant manager. More than 100 of the wounded have left Boston hospitals and fewer than 10 remain in critical condition. Trail of blood led to Boston marathon bomber WATERTOWN, Massachusetts, April 19:  A trail of blood led to accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as he hid inside a boat after eluding one of the biggest manhunts ever staged in the United States. Exhausted and wounded, the 19-year-old, whose brother was killed earlier Friday, staged a final gun battle with his pursuers before he gave in to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) negotiators. Tsarnaev was in "serious condition" at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital in Boston as the city celebrated his capture with street parties. Those festivities could so easily have been a new night of anguish for the Boston region, facing growing tension after the bombs left at the marathon finish line on Monday killed three people and injured about 180. Boston investigators had just held a press conference at which they virtually admitted that Tsarnaev had escaped when the lucky break came. Tsarnaev had already been wounded overnight in a gun battle with police in which his elder brother Tamerlan was killed. "We know he didn´t go straight to the boat," which was outside a security zone that had been painstakingly searched by thousands of heavily-armed officers, said Boston police chief Ed Davis. "We found blood in the car that he abandoned, we found blood inside the house behind the perimeter," he added. "We had no indication that he had gotten outside of the perimeter. It was very chaotic." "A man had gone out of his house after being inside the house all day" because of a lockdown ordered by authorities, Davis explained to reporters after the dramatic capture. "He saw blood on a boat in the backyard. He then opened the tarp on the top of the boat and he looked in and saw a man covered with blood." The man telephoned police and at the same time, a police helicopter used infra-red equipment to determine there was a human in the boat. "We exchanged gunfire with the suspect who was inside the boat, and ultimately, the hostage rescue team of the FBI made an entry into the boat and removed the suspect who was still alive," Davis told a press conference. The negotiation team had tried to make Tsarnaev give himself up. Police teams also fired flash grenades in a bid to stun the suspect into surrender. Tsarnaev was given first aid on the lawn next to the boat before being taken away in an ambulance. The boat had not been searched before because it was outside of the police perimeter set up as the hunt intensified. Noisy celebrations erupted on Franklin Street, where the standoff unfolded, and beyond after the arrest. Crowds cheered and applauded police as they packed up equipment and drove away from the house. There were also festivities around Boylston Street in central Boston -- scene of Monday´s carnage. "Let´s Go Boston" and "USA, USA," crowds chanted, with some people climbing onto car roofs while others danced in the streets. "It has been so tense all week," said neighbor Susan Nolan. "I was so nervous when I heard that the police were planning to pull out and he had not been caught." Macabre tweet to Boston from terror suspect: ´stay safe´ WASHINGTON, April 19: Just hours after Monday´s Boston Marathon bombings, one of the brothers accused of staging the attack urged his followers on Twitter to "stay safe people." As the authorities hunted for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, attention focused on the 19-year-old´s social media accounts for clues about his life and potential motivation for allegedly setting bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 180. Tsarnaev was captured in the Boston suburb of Watertown late Friday, less than 24 hours after his 26-year-old brother and alleged accomplice Tamerlan was killed in a gunbattle with police. Friends of Tsarnaev confirmed he was an active Twitter user, firing off messages under the handle @J_tsar. "Ain´t no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people," he tweeted at 8:04 pm on Monday, just hours after Boston was rocked by twin explosions that police say he set with his brother. It was one of a dozen messages he posted on the microblogging site in the hours and days after the tragedy. A tweet one week prior to the blasts may have offered cryptic hints at what was to come: "If you have the knowledge and the inspiration all that´s left is to take action," @J_tsar tweeted on April 8. "Tat my name on you girl so i know it´s real oh and make sure to spell it right, its spelled Dzhokhar," he posted on May 5. His followers soared to more than 58,000 in the hours after he was named a prime suspect. His Twitter page is adorned with the emblem of the FC Anzhi Makhachkala soccer team, in the southern Russian region of Dagestan where, according to his uncle, Dzhokhar was born. A perusal of the 1,099 tweets posted by @J_tsar portray an everyday kid with a wide variety of interests: sports, hip-hop lyrics, girls, Islam, TV shows like "Breaking Bad" and cars. "I need me a tall beautiful woman, but just beautiful works too," he wrote last April. On January 23, he sounded down on college life. "Back to terrible food, hot pockets and school bs." Some friends who say they went to high school with him have posted their disbelief at how their classmate could be responsible for the worst terror attack on US soil since the September 11, 2001 suicide plane strikes. "Yeah he went to rindge, he graduated with me and we had a few classes together," wrote longtime Twitter friend "Samantha," referring to their time at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, in Massachusetts. Dzhokhar had exchanged tweets with Samantha as far back as November 2011. One message from August 2012, a response to a user who has since locked his tweets and made them unviewable, provides a jolt to those scrolling through Dzhokhar´s account. "Boston marathon isn´t a good place to smoke tho," he wrote. The final message on his account is a Wednesday retweet of a comment by Mufti Ismail Menk of Zimbabwe. Menk later condemned the Boston attacks on his own Twitter feed, saying "the perpetrators must face justice." One of Dzhokhar´s post-bombing tweets was a hair-raising response to a fellow Twitter user. "What ´god hates dead people?´ Or victims of tragedies? Lol those people are cooked," Dzhokhar wrote. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53423 CARACAS, April 19: Nicolas Maduro was sworn in as president of Venezuela on Friday, in a ceremony replete with drama as he replaced the late Hugo Chavez and urged dialogue with the opposition to build a better country. To cheers in the National Assembly, Maduro dedicated his oath of office to "the eternal memory of the supreme commander" Chavez, who dominated this oil-rich South American country for 14 years until dying from cancer in March.[break] But the new leader´s speech was briefly disrupted when a man in a red shirt rushed onto the stage and roughly pushed Maduro aside to grab the microphone, a breach that led to national television coverage of the event being suspended. The intruder was removed from the stage and Maduro returned minutes later, clearly angry at the disruption. "Security has absolutely failed. They could have shot me here," he said, but shaking it off, then declared: "Incident overcome." Maduro, 50, said in his address that he wanted to begin his presidency "with a call to all Venezuelan men and women to continue to build a better fatherland of peace, an inclusive fatherland for everyone, by everyone." He urged the opposition to "converse in the different settings where conversations can be held. I am ready to converse even with the devil." But he then resumed his attacks on those same foes, highlighting what has been a week of soaring political tensions since he was declared the winner of Sunday´s snap elections by a narrow margin of 1.8 percentage points. Looking on were foreign leaders, lawmakers and other dignitaries who packed the assembly chamber for the swearing-in. Close allies Presidents Raul Castro of Cuba and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in the audience, along with the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua, and neighboring Colombia. Maduro had met the night before in Lima with regional leaders who extended their congratulations to the new government and urged all sides in the bitterly contested elections to accept "the official results." The endorsement came just hours after Venezuelan election authorities announced they would conduct an expanded audit of Sunday´s ballot returns in response to opposition demands for a full recount. Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles immediately accepted, congratulating his followers on their "struggle for the truth." Violent post-election protests left eight people dead and dozens hurt, igniting a crisis as Maduro and Capriles traded fiery accusations over who was to blame. For Maduro, the election was the culmination of a political career that took him from one-time bus driver and union organizer to Chavez´s handpicked successor. "I am the first post-Chavez president in history," Maduro said on the eve of his swearing-in. The new first lady, Cilia Flores, is a heavyweight in her own right in the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela. But Maduro also lost the votes of hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters to Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor who was defeated by the comandante in October by an 11-point margin. The weak election performance suggested Maduro has yet to step out of Chavez´s giant shadow with a mandate of his own. "Maduro is Chavez´s legacy. To support him is to support the supreme commander," said Jose Rendo, a 38-year-old electrician who joined hundreds of other Chavez supporters in the nearby Plaza Bolivar for the inauguration. As Maduro entered the National Assembly, supporters showered him with cheers of "Chavez lives, the struggle continues." Later at an esplanade dedicated to the country´s founders, military leaders pledged their loyalty to Chavez´s socialist revolution and their new commander-in-chief. "The military revolution of Bolivar and Chavez continues, you can be sure of that," Maduro told them. Air defense missiles, tanks and armored vehicles paraded past along with honor guards, military units and civilian "missions" as Maduro watched through pouring rain from a covered reviewing stand. Maduro singled out Russia and China, major suppliers to the Venezuelan military, for thanks at the end of the parade. Ensuring the loyalty of the military could be tricky for Maduro, who has never served in uniform and must contend with an officer corps that has played key political roles under Chavez, a former coup leader who was himself briefly ousted from power. While backed fiercely by the ruling PSUV and the deep pockets of Venezuela´s state oil industry, Maduro must also contend with an emboldened opposition and a somber economic outlook. Soaring inflation, a weak currency, shortages of basic necessities, and fiscal constraints are a growing challenge to the costly social programs that were among Chavez´s signature achievements. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53422 ROME, April 19: Italy´s polarized Parliament failed in a second day of balloting Friday to elect a president, as the high-profile candidacy of ex-Premier Romano Prodi fell far short of the votes needed. The rebuff deepened the political paralysis gripping the eurozone´s third-largest economy. Prodi, the only politician to defeat media mogul Silvio Berlusconi for the premier´s office, was the center-left latest choice to be Italy´s next head of state, replacing President Giorgio Napolitano, whose 7-year term expires next month.[break] Berlusconi bitterly opposed the bid to tap Prodi, a onetime archrival who had defeated him twice for the premiership. The president´s duties include tapping someone to try to form Italy´s next government and end two months of political gridlock. Berlusconi ordered his forces to boycott the vote Friday afternoon, and they did. In the latest fourth round of balloting, Prodi garnered 395 votes, far short of the 504 simple majority needed. In theory, it should have been easier for Parliament to elect a president, because the previous three rounds of voting had required a two-thirds majority. But center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who was frustrated in forming a government following inconclusive nationwide elections in February, was humiliated again, this time by his own splintering party, and he also failed to draw enough support outside his bloc to rally behind the widely-respected Prodi, a former European Union commission president. Bersani and fellow Democratic leaders huddled into the night, trying to regain a grip on their unraveling party. Italian media quoted sources inside the closed-door session as saying he blasted traitors within the party´s ranks, after calculating that about one-quarter of its lawmakers didn´t vote for Prodi. Bersani was also quoted as saying he would quit the party leadership once a president is finally elected. A fifth round of voting was scheduled for Saturday, when Bersani loyalists planned to cast blank ballots in a stalling tactic until they can come up with a new candidate. "I think Prodi´s candidacy is finished," said Matteo Renzi, an upstart rival of Bersani in his Democratic Party. Speaking to reporters in Florence, where he is mayor, Renzi was quick to blame Prodi´s defeat in the secret vote on defectors in their bickering party. One possibility for another candidate touted by commentators was Massimo D´Alema, an ex-premier and former leader of the now defunct Italian Communist Party, which eventually morphed into the Democratic Party. Berlusconi´s bloc is generally considered open to him. The push for Prodi by the center-left, which controls the Chamber of Deputies, took shape after a candidate backed by both the left and the right failed to win in two rounds of voting a day earlier. But the Prodi candidacy seemed to only further polarize lawmakers. One right-wing lawmaker, Alessandra Mussolini, sported a protest T-shirt as the fourth round of voting began. "The devil wears Prodi," read the shirt´s back, which the granddaughter of late dictator Benito Mussolini showed off to photographers in the Chamber of Deputies. The slogan riffed on a popular film about the fashion world. The Italian president has no political role, but retains powers to dissolve Parliament, call new elections and tap a candidate to form a new government — thus playing a critical role in resolving Italy´s political crisis. Caught in political gridlock since elections two months ago, Italy is being governed by caretaker Premier Mario Monti. Voters, fed up with Monti´s austerity program of higher taxes and spending cuts and stubborn unemployment, rejected his bid in February elections to stay in office. Monti´s centrists were pushing Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, who received several dozen votes Friday, to be Italy´s president. A statement from his office described her as a "personality who unites, not divides." A veteran Interior Ministry civil servant, Cancellieri is considered apolitical. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53395 WATERTOWN, Massachusetts, April 19: One of the Boston marathon bombing suspects was killed in a shootout early Friday as police raced on a house-to-house search for the second, with the entire city placed on lockdown. NBC News reported that the two young men believed to be responsible for Monday´s deadly carnage at the finish line of the prestigious race are brothers of Chechen origin who were permanent legal residents of the United States.[break] The police order means that roughly 900,000 people in the greater Boston area have been told to stay put, virtually shutting down one of America´s main cities after the twin attack that left three people dead and 180 wounded. "We´re asking people to shelter in place," Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick told reporters. "Stay indoors with the doors locked, and do not open the door for anyone other than a properly identified law enforcement officer." This undated image released by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center shows a Wanted Poster of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is the subject of a April 19, 2013 manhunt in the Boston area. (AFP) The two men, dubbed "Suspect One" and "Suspect Two" by the FBI, led police on a violent cavalcade that left inhabitants of Boston and nearby towns cowering in their homes as gunfire and explosions erupted through the night. Public transport was suspended throughout the region and all schools closed as police chased the second suspect, identified as 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The dead man was identified as 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev. One police officer was killed and another wounded in the operation, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said, confirming that the dead man was Suspect One as labeled in photos released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The man died after suffering multiple gunshot wounds and an injury in an explosion, a doctor at Beth Israel hospital told reporters. The surviving fugitive was "armed and dangerous," Davis said. "We believe this to be a terrorist, we believe this to be a man who has come here to kill people." Police said the dead suspect had explosives on his body, and there were fears the second suspect still at large was also strapped with bombs. The pair first tried to rob a convenience store late Thursday in Cambridge, across the river from Boston, Davis said. They then proceeded to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world´s top universities, where one campus police officer was shot dead, the commissioner added. The pair then hijacked a Mercedes car and eventually let the driver out in Watertown, which is close to MIT, Davis added. The chase went on through Watertown where the two were seen throwing explosives out of the car, local media said, citing police reports. Blasts and gunfire were heard in several districts. During a shootout, the first suspect was shot and killed, Davis said. Another police officer was also wounded. The second suspect, who has been shown in pictures wearing a white baseball cap, managed to escape. Police with rifles flooded the streets of Boston, and search helicopters patrolled the skies. Sirens blared across the city as bomb squads carried out house-to-house searches. The attack in Boston, which sent a hail of nails and shrapnel into a crowd of thousands at the end of the marathon, was the worst terror assault on the United States since the September 11, 2001 suicide airliner attacks. Just hours before the chaotic manhunt unfolded, the FBI on Thursday released pictures and video of the two suspects, appealing for help to identify the pair, who were carrying large backpacks. Both appeared to be young men, one dressed in a white baseball cap and the other in a black cap. The FBI named them only as Suspect One and Suspect Two. The men are seen in the video walking calmly, one a few paces behind the other, weaving between crowds on Boston´s Boylston Street where the race finished. President Barack Obama vowed to the people of Boston Thursday that the "evil" bombers would be brought to justice. "Yes, we will find you, and yes, you will face justice," Obama said at a service at Boston´s Cathedral of the Holy Cross attended by 2,000 people including blast survivors, relatives of the dead, rescuers and city leaders. "If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us," Obama said, "it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it." Boston has held emotional tributes to the dead -- eight-year-old Martin Richard, Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi of China and Krystle Campbell, a restaurant manager. Obama paid tribute to all three at the service. More than 100 of the wounded have left Boston hospitals and fewer than 10 of those still in hospital remain in critical condition. some with horrific injuries. Some will require new operations, doctors said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53391 WASHINGTON, April 19: Using a potent NASA space telescope to scan the skies for planets like ours where life might exist, astronomers said Thursday they have found the most Earth-like candidates yet. Two of the five planets orbiting a sun-like star called Kepler-62 are squarely in what astronomers call the habitable zone -- not too hot, not too cold and possibly bearing water, researchers said in the journal Science.[break] "These two are our best candidates that might be habitable," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA´s Ames Research Center. The two planets are slightly larger than ours, and at least a couple of billion years older. The first, 62e, is about 40 percent larger than Earth. It might be warm, maybe even a waterworld, and may experience flashes of lightning, said Borucki. The second, 62f, is about 60 percent larger than our planet, and orbits its star every 267 days, close to Earth´s annual trajectory of 365 days. The planet may have polar caps, significant land masses and liquid water, Borucki said. Both are orbiting a seven-billion-year-old star some 1,200 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. They are close enough to their star to be warm, but not so near as to boil the oceans. They are far enough to maintain the likelihood of water without freezing the seas solid, Borucki explained. Scientists do not yet know if their surfaces are rocky or watery, or if they have atmospheres that could sustain life. But their location and size suggest they "could plausibly be composed of condensable compounds and be solid, either as a dry, rocky super-Earth or one composed of a significant amount of water," said the study. Other studies have indicated that planets with a radius under 1.6 times that of the Earth, like these two, "have been found to have densities indicative of a rocky composition." Astronomers detected the planets by observing their star dim when the planets pass in front of it, in what is known as a "transit." "These are the most similar objects to Earth that we have found yet," said Justin Crepp, assistant professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame. Crepp first saw a dot near Kepler-62 about a year ago, and has studied the movements of the system for months in order to confirm the discovery. A third potentially habitable planet, Kepler 69c, is on the "inner edge of what has been considered to be the habitable zone," said Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, California. However, that one may be small and hot and more like Venus, the second planet from our sun, said Barclay, whose research was published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal. "We´re not sure yet," he told reporters. Its host star, Kepler 69, is about 2,700 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. All together, the latest findings add seven new planets -- four of which are outside the habitable zone -- to the tally that Kepler has found so far, totaling more than 2,700 candidates and confirmed planets. In late 2011, NASA confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system -- Kepler 22b, spinning around its star some 600 light years away. However, the large size of that exoplanet, at 2.4 times the size of the Earth, has left some doubt over whether the planet is rocky, gaseous or liquid. Another large planet that Kepler has confirmed in the habitable zone, Kepler 47c, is also much bigger than Earth. Kepler, launched in 2009, is NASA´s first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours. It is equipped with the largest camera ever sent into space in its search for planets as small as Earth, including those orbiting stars in a warm, habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53388 BAGHDAD, April 19: Violence spiked as Iraq readied Friday for its first elections since US troops withdrew, with 27 people killed in a late-night bombing at a Baghdad billiards cafe frequented by young men. The attack raises further questions about the credibility of Saturday´s provincial elections, with 14 candidates already having been killed and a third of the country´s provinces not even voting amid an ongoing political crisis.[break] The polls are seen as a key test of Iraq´s stability and security, and will provide a gauge of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki´s popularity as he grapples with infighting in his national unity government and months of protests by Iraq´s Sunni Arab minority. The latest bombing struck at 10:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Thursday in the west Baghdad suburb of Amriyah, leaving 27 dead and more than 50 others wounded, security and medical officials said. Among the dead were at least three children and a woman. It exploded at the Dubai cafe, which lies on the 2nd floor of a small shopping mall in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood that is filled with families as it contains restaurants and clothes shops. The cafe itself, however, is mostly frequented by young men playing billiards and video games. Security forces restricted movements in Amriyah on Friday in the wake of the blast. The bombing is the latest in a wave of violence, with 50 people killed in nationwide attacks on Monday, and March having been the deadliest month in Iraq since last summer, according to an AFP tally. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda frequently set off bombings in both Sunni and Shiite neighbourhoods across the capital, and the country, in a bid to undermine confidence in the government and security forces. Officials and diplomats also complain that a long-running spat that has pitted Maliki against several of his erstwhile government partners has been exploited by insurgent groups who use the political differences to enhance their room for manoeuvre on the ground. An estimated 13.8 million Iraqis are eligible to vote on Saturday for more than 8,000 candidates, with 378 seats being contested. It is the first vote in Iraq since March 2010 parliamentary polls, and the first since US forces withdrew from the country in December 2011. Diplomats have raised questions over the credibility of the vote, however, as attacks against candidates have left at least 14 dead and others withdrawing for fear of being targeted, while six of Iraq´s 18 provinces will not be taking part, including two where authorities say security cannot be ensured. Iraqi forces are solely responsible for polling day security, the first time they have been in charge without support from American or other international forces during elections since dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53367 ISLAMABAD, April 19: Police say they have arrested former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf in connection with a case involving his decision to fire senior judges while in power. Police officer Mohammed Khalid said Friday that authorities arrested Musharraf overnight from his home on the outskirts of Islamabad. He fled there from court Thursday after an Islamabad High Court judge rejected his bail and ordered his arrest. [break] Khalid said Musharraf was presented before a judge at Islamabad District Court on Friday who will decide whether he will be taken to jail or held under house arrest. Local TV footage showed Musharraf entering the court in Islamabad amid high security. Musharraf’s lawyer Malik Qamar Afzal says the judge asked police to keep Musharraf in their custody. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53365 BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 18: The FBI released pictures and video on Thursday of two men suspected of planting the Boston marathon bombs, appealing for help to identify the pair who were carrying large backpacks. The dramatic twist in the hunt came just after President Barack Obama vowed to the people of Boston that the "evil" bombers behind the three dead and about 180 wounded, would be brought to justice.[break] Investigators consider the suspects to be "armed and extremely dangerous," said Rick DesLauriers, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) chief in Boston, warning that no-one should approach them. Authorities stepped up checks on the Canadian border as they released the images. And the clamor to see the pictures was so great that the FBI´s website, www.fbi.gov, crashed minutes later. Both appeared to be young men, one dressed in a white baseball cap and the other in a black cap. But the FBI gave no details of their identities or origin, naming them only as Suspect One and Suspect Two. Two bombs were placed around the marathon finish line on Monday, spraying nails, ball bearings and other metal fragments into the crowds, many of whom suffered horrific injuries. "Identifying and locating those responsible is now our highest priority," DesLauriers said. "The images from Monday are indelible and the horror of that day will remain with us forever." The men are seen in the video walking calmly, one a few paces behind the other, weaving between crowds on Boston´s Boylston Street where the race finished. DesLauriers said other images indicated the man in the white cap placed a bomb outside a restaurant in the street in the minutes before the blasts tore through the crowds. At a special service at Boston´s Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Obama vowed: "Yes, we will find you, and yes, you will face justice." "We will find you, we will hold you accountable," he told a congregation of 2,000, including relatives of the dead, survivors of the blasts, rescuers and city leaders. "If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us," Obama said, then "it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it." Obama met the family of Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old who was killed, at the cathedral before the service, and later went to Massachusetts General Hospital to talk to some of the wounded. Americans had seen "the face of evil" in the attacks, the president told the service where Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Greek Orthodox religious leaders spoke. No claim of responsibility has been made in connection with the worst terror attack in the United States since the September 11 atrocities in 2001. The FBI says it has launched a "worldwide" hunt. An AFP reporter who crossed into Canada from Vermont state said US agents were checking all cars and trucks and asking whether drivers had been in Boston. The FBI had already released photographs of the metal remnants of a pressure cooker believed to have been used as a bomb. More than 100 of the wounded have left Boston hospitals and fewer than 10 of those still in hospital remain in critical condition. Some will require new operations, doctors said. At least 12 people have lost at least one of their legs because of the blast from the bombs. Boston has held emotional tributes to the dead -- eight-year-old Martin Richard, Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi of China and Campbell, a restaurant manager. Obama paid tribute to all three at the service. Doctors at Boston Medical Center said a second Chinese student caught in the blast had come out of a coma and was improving. The girl´s family was expected in Boston soon. Meanwhile a special fund set up for victims has raised more than $10 million in less than two days, local media reports said. The One Boston Fund (www.onefundboston.org) was set up on Tuesday by city mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53361 NEW YORK, April 18: Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani school girl and advocate for girls´ education who survived a would-be assassin´s bullet, is among the 100 most influential people in the world, Time magazine said Thursday. Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban for campaigning for girls´ education, is one of seven honorees to also appear on one of the various covers that the magazine has devoted to the list.[break] The 15-year old, who also has been nominated for this year´s Nobel Peace Prize, had surgery in February to repair the hole left in her skull by a gunman´s bullet, and now lives in exile in Britain. The annual list picks luminaries from art, business and politics whose achievement make them among the world´s most vital and vibrant figures. Making Time´s list this year were Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day Lewis and Britain´s Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. President Barack Obama appears on the list for an eighth time, and his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, made it, too. Other politicians tapped by Time include US Senator Rand Paul, China´s Xi Jinping, Myanmar´s Aung San Suu Kyi and North Korea´s Kim Jong-Un. SpaceX founder and entrepreneur Elon Musk is mentioned, as is the newly installed Pope Francis. Pop music is represented by Justin Timberlake and Jay Z and his wife Beyonce, among others. In the world of sports, Italian football player Mario Balotelli was included, as was US basketball star LeBron James and Alpine skiing star Lindsey Vonn, although her beau, top world golfer Tiger Wood, alas, does not. Short bios of each of the honoree appear in the magazine, penned in many instances by equally prestigious figures in their fields. The profiles can be seen at http://time100.time.com/?iid=obinsite http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53346 KARACHI, Pakistan, April 18: When Bindiya Rana, a transgender candidate in Pakistan´s elections, went door to door in the Karachi slum she hopes to represent, few people seemed to care about which gender she identifies with. They were more interested in what she was going to do to combat the street crime and electricity outages in their neighborhood if elected. For the first time in Pakistan´s history, transgender people are running as candidates. The development marks a sign of progress for transgender people in this conservative country, where they have long been met by abuse.[break] Transgender refers to people who present themselves to the world in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. In Pakistan, that usually means people born as men who now dress like women and wear makeup. They identify as a "third gender" rather than as male or female but usually ask to be referred to by the feminine pronoun since there is no third-gender pronoun. In this picture taken on Monday, April 15, 2013, Bindiya Rana, a transgender candidate in Pakistan´s elections, applies lipstick before leaves for campaign in Karachi, Pakistan. (AP) Rana has always been active in her community and works at an organization that helps promote the rights of transgender people as well as street children and other social issues. But she decided to run for office as well after a Supreme Court ruling in 2011 allowed members of the transgender community to get national identity cards recognizing them as a separate identity — neither male or female — and allowing them to vote. She´s vying for a provincial assembly seat in the May 11 national elections. "People ask if we will win or lose in the elections. But I won when my nomination papers were submitted," she said. The Supreme Court´s decision didn´t explicitly say that transgender people could run for office, but by getting the identity cards and the right to vote the road was opened for them. Before the court´s decision, transgender people could get identity cards only if they identified themselves as men. Almas Boby, president of the Pakistan Shemale Foundation, which advocates for members of the transgender community, said she knows of at least five transgender candidates taking part in the elections. Two, including Rana, are running in the southern port city of Karachi, and one each from the cities of Jehlum, Gujrat, and Sargodha in Punjab province. "The Supreme Court of Pakistan gave us our rights. Now transgendered people are also contesting elections, and our thousands of people will vote for them," Boby said. "If our people manage to reach assemblies, we will get a better treatment in society," she said. Male and female roles are clearly defined in Pakistan, and transgender people often face harassment and abuse — even from their own families. Some are pushed out of the home when they are young and end up prostituting themselves to earn a living. One role where they are tolerated is as dancers at weddings and other celebrations at which men and women are strictly segregated. In between the dancing and showers of rupee notes, they must fend off groping from drunken guests. They can also be seen begging for money in the streets, wearing female dress and makeup. Many earn money by blessing newborn babies, which reflects a widespread belief in Pakistan and other South Asian nations that God answers the prayers of someone born underprivileged. Rana herself faced harassment from her own family, when she started to realize at the age of 12 that she was different than the other kids around her. When she was 14, she ran away from home and found work dancing at weddings and celebrations. Running for office — and the possibility of actually serving in office — is a way to highlight the role of transgender people in Pakistan, said many of the candidates. "If I win, I will also become a strong voice for transgendered people, who are often victimized and humiliated," said Lubna Lal, who is running for a Punjab provincial assembly seat in the city of Jehlum, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Islamabad. "I am not worried about defeat. I am contesting elections to prove that now we are also part of the society, and we also have equal rights," she said. But in many ways, the issues that the transgender candidates are most concerned with are no different from that of the average voter. Most say they want to cut unemployment, address the country´s widespread poverty and electricity blackouts and loosen the grip of Pakistan´s ruling parties on the political process. "For me it is a jihad to contest elections, and God willing, I will win as I don´t have huge funds. All I have is the love of the people," said another candidate, Resham. Like some transgender people in Pakistan, Resham only uses one name. She is running for a national assembly seat from the city of Gujrat. Resham also said voters in her area encouraged her to contest the elections after becoming fed up with all the political parties. That´s a common complaint in Pakistan where many voters rail at the corruption that they feel permeates the political system. "All political parties have disappointed people. Now they want a change, and I am the best choice for them as my past record is clean and flawless," she said. Most of the candidates have few financial resources and are relying on door-to-door campaigning and word of mouth to drum up votes. None is running with a political party, said Boby. All are independents. Boby said she will also be traveling to the districts to help candidates campaign. "Our campaign will be different. We will not be holding big rallies. We will go to homes to get votes, and you will see we will get a lot of votes," she said. Boby said she was not worried about the security of the transgender candidates, and none has reported any harassment on the campaign trail. In the slum where Rana knocked on nearly 50 houses in her door-to-door to campaign, there was little animosity from residents. No doors were slammed, and people greeted her with smiles. Rana has lived in this neighborhood for the last 20 years, and many see in her someone who is downtrodden and poor just like them. "Bindiya must contest. It is everybody´s right. And we believe that being poor like us, she may understand issues better," said Hameeda Bibi, a resident. "Because those who we thought were our own people and elected to assemblies, they did not do any good for us." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53336 (Updated) WEST, United States / Texas, April 18: A Texas fertilizer factory exploded in a huge fireball Wednesday, destroying nearby homes and killing between five and 15 people, with one official likening the blast to a "nuclear bomb." Smoke and a strong burnt smell lingered in the air hours after the blast in the small town of West, near Waco, and officials expressed fears that toxic fumes could settle over the town.[break] There was also concern that a second fertilizer tank could explode, stoking anxiety in a nation already on edge after the nerve-jangling Boston marathon bombings, which left three dead. The death toll "is estimated anywhere from five to 15 at this point," while three area hospitals had treated more than 160 people with varying injuries, Waco police sergeant W. Patrick Swanton said, adding that those figures could still rise. Earlier KWTX television, citing the director of West emergency services, George Smith, had reported a toll of up to 60-70 dead. Keith Hopkins, an administrator with Providence hospital in Waco, told AFP that emergency personnel in West had also given him the figure of 60 to 70 fatalities. An apartment complex and a nursing home were destroyed, local residents flooded into emergency shelters, and at least 100 patients were hospitalized following the blast, which US seismologists said had a magnitude of 2.1. "It´s like a nuclear bomb went off," West Mayor Tommy Muska, who is also a volunteer firefighter, told CNN of the explosion in the southern US state, which witnesses said sent a huge fireball into the air. A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, D.L. Wilson, told reporters he could not "confirm or deny" the figure, saying: "We have confirmed fatalities. The number is not current yet. It could go up by the minute." House-by-house searches were being conducted to find any additional victims, Wilson said. The United States was already on edge in the wake of Monday´s deadly twin bombings on the Boston marathon, and a scare in Washington over mail apparently laced with the poison ricin sent to President Barack Obama and a US senator. The huge blast also came just before the 20th anniversary on Friday of a deadly confrontation in Waco between federal authorities and heavily armed members of a religious group, the Branch Davidians. The explosion at the West Fertilizer plant, sparked by an enormous blaze, occurred just before 8:00 pm (0100 GMT), Waco Assistant Fire Chief Don Yeager told AFP by phone. The cause was not immediately known but Yeager said it was an anhydrous ammonia explosion. Flames continued to flare at the plant, sparking fears more explosions could widen the disaster that the mayor said had leveled up to 80 homes in the small Texas town of 2,500 people. As a precaution, the Federal Aviation Administration declared a no-fly zone over the area around West, over fears another blast could bring down small aircraft. But Swanton told reporters firefighters had brought the fire in that part of the plant "under control and I don´t think that´s any longer a threat." Power and gas has been cut to some areas of the town as a precaution, Swanton added. But he said "air quality is a concern," adding that authorities were watching the wind patterns and "where the cloud may drift," and expect they will need to order further evacuations. Mark Felton, executive director of the Waco-based Heart of Texas Red Cross, told AFP that people were "flowing into the shelters" set up for evacuees and those whose homes were destroyed, without providing a specific figure. "There are hundreds of emergency response vehicles lined up," Felton said. Witnesses said they were stunned by the sheer force of the blast. "It knocked me down, it knocked me back. It was like the whole road just picked up," resident Cheryl Marich, whose home was destroyed and whose husband was fighting the blaze, told CNN. Jessica Turner, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, told AFP that experts "were able to see the ground motion that the explosion created," putting the magnitude of the shockwave at 2.1. The mayor told CNN that six or seven firefighters who had attempted to tackle the blaze were unaccounted for. "It exploded just like the Oklahoma City bomb," Jason Shelton, a clerk at the Best Western Czech Inn in West, told The Dallas Morning News, referring to the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people. "I live about a thousand feet from it and it blew my screen door off and my back windows. There´s houses leveled that were right next to it." Another witness, Bill Bohannan, told the Waco Tribune-Herald: "It knocked us into the car... Every house within about four blocks is blown apart." In the 1993 Waco siege, following a 51-day standoff, the group´s compound burned down after an assault was launched. Dozens of people were killed in an incident that many far-right groups see as a symbol of egregious US government overreach. Blown out plate glass windows lay shattered on the sidewalk and street after the West Fertilizer Company exploded April 18, 2013 in West, Texas. (AFP) http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53335 ISLAMABAD, April 18:  Former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf and his security team pushed past policemen and sped away from a court in the country´s capital on Thursday to avoid arrest after his bail was revoked in a case in which he is accused of treason. Local TV broadcast footage of the dramatic scene in which Musharraf jumped into a black SUV and escaped as a member of his security team hung to the side of the vehicle. He sped away to his large compound on the outskirts of Islamabad that is protected by high walls, razor wire and guard towers. [break] This week has gone from bad to worse for Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999 when he was serving as army chief and spent nearly a decade in power before being forced to step down in 2008. He returned last month after four years in self-imposed exile to make a political comeback despite legal challenges and Taliban death threats, but has since faced paltry public support. In this Monday, April 15, 2013 photo, Pakistan´s former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf arrives under tight security to address his party supporters at his house in Islamabad, Pakistan. Musharraf and his security team pushed past policemen and sped away from a court in the country’s capital on Thursday after his bail was revoked in a case in which he is accused of treason. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash) A court in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday disqualified Musharraf from running in the parliamentary election scheduled for May 11, likely squashing his hopes for political comeback. The case before the Islamabad High Court on Thursday involved Musharraf´s decision in 2007 to detain senior judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, when he declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution. The decision outraged many Pakistanis, and further fueled a nationwide protest movement by lawyers that eventually resulted in Musharraf stepping down under the threat of impeachment. Lawyers shouted, "Look who is running, Musharraf is running!" as Musharraf fled the court Thursday. Before he returned to the country, Musharraf obtained pre-arrest bail for the judges´ case and two others, meaning he could not be arrested when he landed — a feature of Pakistan´s legal system. The Islamabad High Court refused to extend that bail on Thursday and ordered his arrest, said police officer Ali Asghar. The court previously agreed to extend his bail in the case for six days on April 12. It´s unclear why they chose to reject it this time. Policemen were deployed at the court who could have detained the former military ruler, but he managed to escape, said Asghar. Many of the policemen and paramilitary soldiers at the court did not seem to try to prevent Musharraf from leaving as he pushed past them. Musharraf´s lawyer, Ahmad Raza Kasuri, complained that the court didn´t listen to their arguments. "It is a one-sided decision," said Kasuri. The former military ruler´s legal team will contact the Supreme Court on Thursday to challenge the decision, said the secretary general of Musharraf´s party, Muhammad Amjad. Musharraf´s decision to flee the court could put the Pakistani army in an awkward situation. The former general is protected by paramilitary soldiers who officially report to the Interior Ministry, but are headed by senior army officers. Ali Dayan Hasan, the director of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, called on the military authorities protecting Musharraf to comply with the court´s order and ensure that he presents himself for arrest. "General Musharraf´s act today underscores his disregard for due legal process and indicates his assumption that as a former army chief and military dictator he can evade accountability for abuses," said Hasan in a statement sent to reporters. "Continued military protection for General Musharraf will make a mockery of claims that Pakistan´s armed forces support the rule of law and bring the military further disrepute that it can ill afford," Hasan said. Pakistan has a long history of the army seizing power in military coups, and the service is considered the most powerful institution in the country. If convicted of treason, Musharraf could face the death penalty or life in prison. But the federal government would have to file charges against the former military ruler, which it has not yet done. The petitions in Islamabad High Court accusing Musharraf of treason were all filed by individuals. Musharraf faces similar accusations from petitions filed before the Supreme Court. He also faces legal charges in two other cases. One involves allegations that Musharraf didn´t provide adequate security to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide attack in 2007. The other relates to the death of a nationalist leader in Baluchistan in 2006. Given the legal challenges and Taliban threats against Musharraf, many experts have been left scratching their heads as to why he returned. Some have speculated he misjudged the level of public backing he would get, while others guessed he was simply homesick. Musharraf flew to the southern city of Karachi from Dubai on March 24. He was only met by a couple thousand people at the airport, a sign of how little support analysts say he enjoys in the country. A few days later, an angry lawyer threw a shoe at Musharraf as he was walking through a court building in Karachi. The former military ruler applied to run for parliament from four different districts in Pakistan, which is allowed by the country´s political system. Judges initially rejected three of his applications, but an official in the remote, northern district of Chitral gave him approval to run. That changed Tuesday when the High Court in the northwestern city of Peshawar disqualified Musharraf in Chitral. He can appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, but legal experts speculated that chances the decision would be overturned were remote. Dozens of police and elite commandos blocked the main road leading to the compound where Musharraf was holed up on the outskirts of Islamabad on Thursday and residents were asked to use another route to go to their homes. About 20 Musharraf supporters who gathered near the compound held banners and shouted slogans in favor of the former military ruler. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53332 CARACAS, Venezuela, April 18: Venezuela´s opposition watched its options dwindle Wednesday after the head of the Supreme Court said there could be no recount of the razor-thin presidential election victory by Hugo Chavez´s heir, leaving many government foes feeling the only chance at power is to wait for the ruling socialists to stumble. Opposition activists and independent observers called the judge´s declaration blatant and legally unfounded favoritism from a purportedly independent body that is packed with confederates of President-elect Nicolas Maduro, Chavez´s hand-picked successor.[break] The recount issue isn´t before the court, but its president, Luisa Morales, appeared on television at midday to declare that the opposition call for an examination of each and every paper vote receipt had "angered many Venezuelans." It was an unsubtle reminder that virtually every lever of power in Venezuela sits in the hands of a ruling party unafraid to use almost all means at its disposal to marginalize its opponents. "In Venezuela the system is absolutely automatic, in such a way that manual recounts don´t exist," Morales said. Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles kept silent, shying away from what experts called his only remaining option: public protest. By late afternoon, the normally vociferous state governor had simply called on Twitter for his followers to remain calm and resist provocations to violence from the government. A day earlier, Capriles canceled a march in the capital planned for Wednesday, saying the government planned to react with violence. That decision came after Maduro urged his own supporters to take to the streets Wednesday. With the Capriles march called off, only a small crowd of Chavistas rallied outside the electoral council´s offices. Maduro hectored the opposition during a 45-minute live appearance on state television Wednesday, calling his opponents "fascists" who are plotting to overthrow the government. "Superman could not win an election here," Diego Arria, a former U.N. ambassador and conservative member of the opposition coalition, said resignedly. "We´re left with the option of calling the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, but that won´t have any impact here," Arria told The Associated Press. "If the population stands down, we lose." Political scientist Jorge Restrepo of the CERAC think tank in Bogota, Colombia, said Maduro´s problem isn´t institutional power but "the fragility that will come from the economic side." The government´s strength is in its absolute control of the world´s largest oil reserves, Restrepo said. Yet Chavez´s diversion of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues to finance one of the world´s most generous welfares states has not brought prosperity. The PDVSA state oil company is saddled with mounting debt and declining profits while price and currency controls imposed under Chavez have failed to stem inflation or the flight of dollars and are strangling private firms and contributing to shortages of food and medicines. Venezuela is also afflicted with one of the world´s highest homicide and kidnapping rates and chronic power outages that have worsened since Maduro took over from Chavez. For the short term, however, the government appears politically strong and even the United States appeared to soften its insistence on a recount, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leaving open the possibility of recognizing Maduro as president even the votes aren´t reviewed. The Obama administration has stood almost alone, along with Paraguay and Panama, in insisting on a recount as other governments congratulated Maduro, who is scheduled to be formally sworn in Friday. Maduro´s government said 15 countries had confirmed they were sending high-level delegations, among them Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Haiti, Uruguay and Argentina. Kerry said there was no plan to send a U.S. diplomat, but when asked about whether the U.S. would recognize Maduro as legitimate, he said, "I can´t give you a yes-or-no answer on that." "If there are huge irregularities, we´re going to have serious questions about the viability of that government. But that evaluation has to be made, and I haven´t made it yet," Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Capriles has not formally filed a request for a recount with the National Electoral Council, which on Monday ratified Maduro as the winner with 50.8 percent of the vote to Capriles´ 49 percent. Capriles has, however, presented a series of allegations of vote fraud and other irregularities that he contends easily add up to more than Maduro´s 262,000-vote winning margin out of about 14.9 million votes cast. In addition, the electoral council says about 100,000 votes from abroad had not been counted by Wednesday, and Capriles got about 90 percent of such overseas ballots in the October presidential election won by Chavez. The list of alleged problems includes: — Government backers forced pro-Capriles observers out of 283 polling places at which 722,983 votes were cast, and the lack of witnesses raises the possibility of fraud, including double voting. — Menacing bands of government supporters turned pro-Capriles voters away from the polls. — There were 3,535 damaged voting machines, representing 189,982 votes. — Voting rolls included 600,000 dead people. Morales, the Supreme Court chief, said Venezuela´s voting system is so automated that a manual count doesn´t exist. Technically, however, a recount is possible as paper receipts are issued for every vote cast and can be checked against tallies done by each voting machine, voter registries and centralized records. The non-partisan Academy of Political and Social Sciences at the Central University of Venezuela said paper ballots are explicitly described in Venezuela´s election law as a tool for investigating vote irregularities. "Recounting votes, along with protests and peaceful demonstrations, is one of the legitimate means of democratic co-existence," it said. Maduro and his ruling circle have accused Capriles of inciting post-election violence by "neo-Nazi gangs" that the government said claimed seven lives and injured 61. Maduro has further charged that the violence was being bankrolled and directed by the United States. On Wednesday, he took another dig at the United States, which he last month accused of somehow being responsible for Chavez´s cancer. "Enough interventionism!" he boomed. "Take your eyes off Venezuela, John Kerry! Get out of here! http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53302 LONDON, April 17: Thousands of well-wishers applauded Margaret Thatcher´s coffin as it passed through the streets of London on Wednesday before a funeral filled with pomp and splendour for Britain´s polarising former prime minister. Queen Elizabeth II led the British establishment and representatives of 170 countries in bidding farewell at St Paul´s Cathedral to the Iron Lady, who had a profound impact on her country and helped end the Cold War.[break] But in a sign of the bitterness her legacy still provokes at home, several hundred protesters turned their backs as her funeral cortege went by, booing and chanting "Maggie, Maggie Maggie! Dead, dead, dead!" Tens of thousands of members of the public turned out to watch Thatcher´s coffin travel from parliament to St Paul´s, many breaking into spontaneous applause and throwing flowers. The family of British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher looks at her coffin as the Bearer Party made up of personnel from the three branches of the military carry it away out of St Paul´s Cathedral at the end of her ceremonial funeral in central London on April 17, 2013. (AFP) Some 700 soldiers, sailors and airmen in full ceremonial uniform lined the route as the coffin was carried first by hearse and then by horse-drawn gun carriage, as a military band played funeral marches. Some 4,000 police officers were deployed along the procession, amid heightened security following the bombings at the Boston Marathon and fears of disruption by left-wing groups. At the cathedral, Queen Elizabeth II led the mourners countries in a rare tribute from the monarch, who had not attended a prime ministerial funeral since Winston Churchill died in 1965. Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of Thatcher´s Conservative party, led a cast of three former premiers -- John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown -- and politicians from across the political divide. Global figures including Thatcher´s fellow Cold War warrior Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, and showbusiness stars Joan Collins and Shirley Bassey joined the former prime minister´s family in paying their respects. In his address, Bishop of London Richard Chartres said Thatcher was a polarising figure but insisted there was no place for politics at her funeral. "After the storm of a life led in the heat of political controversy, there is a great calm," he told the 2,300 assembled guests, all clad in black. "The storm of conflicting opinions centres on the Mrs Thatcher who became a symbolic figure -- even an -ism. Today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher are here at her funeral service." Thatcher´s coffin had arrived at St Paul´s following an hour-long procession from Parliament, during which parliament´s famous Big Ben bell was silenced. It was draped in the Union Jack flag and dressed with flowers and a card reading "Beloved Mother -- Always in Our Hearts", a message from her twin children, 59-year-old Mark and Carol Thatcher. -- The ´best prime minister since Churchill´ -- The pavements along the route were packed by well-wishers, many of whom had risen at dawn to travel to London. "I wanted to pay my respects to the best prime minister since Churchill," said Gloria Martin, a property developer in her 60s with an array of "I Love Maggie" badges pinned to her chest. "She was strong, she was resolute, and she put her country first above any idea of popularity." The crowd included veterans of the Falklands war, viewed by many of her admirers as Thatcher´s finest hour and which played a central theme of the ceremony. Servicemen from units that fought in the 1982 conflict with Argentina carried Thatcher´s coffin into St Paul´s while two brothers who served in the war walked behind. Argentina was pointedly not represented among the mourners at the service, who included the prime ministers of Canada, Israel, Italy, Poland and Kuwait. But the pomp and splendour -- paid for with millions of pounds of public money -- have sparked criticism from those who argue that Thatcher was too polarising a figure to merit such a state-sponsored send-off. Some in the crowd turned their backs as the funeral cortege went by to protest at the damage wrought by her radical free-market economic reforms, which created mass unemployment in Britain´s industrial heartlands. "We´re spending £10 million (11.7 million euros, $15.3 million) on it and that´s disgraceful and unacceptable at a time of austerity," said 22-year-old student Casper Winslow, who held a placard reading "Rest of us in poverty". The government has yet to disclose the costs of the funeral but insists it will be less than the reported £10 million. Cameron insisted it was right to give Thatcher a proper farewell. "It is a fitting tribute to a great prime minister respected around the world," he told BBC radio. "And I think other countries in the world would think Britain got it completely wrong if we didn´t mark this in a proper way." The funeral included Christian hymns reflecting Thatcher´s strict Methodist upbringing, and Bible readings by Cameron and Thatcher´s granddaughter Amanda, followed by a blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Her body was to be cremated in a private family ceremony. Britain´s first female prime minister, who was in office from 1979 to 1990, had suffered from dementia and was rarely seen in public for the final years of her life. She died from a stroke aged 87 nine days ago. Her death prompted tributes poured in from around the world for the role she played in bringing down the Iron Curtain, but sparked renewed debate at home over her legacy. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53294 SYDNEY, April 17: A 6.6-magnitude earthquake shook Papua New Guinea´s north Wednesday in a region where a huge tsunami killed more than 2,000 people in 1998, with reports suggesting the area escaped serious damage. The quake, at a depth of just 13 kilometres (eight miles), hit 23 km east of the small town of Aitape, with a population of around 8,000 on the Pacific nation´s north coast, the US Geological Survey said.[break] "We are aware of the earthquake off Aitape in Papua New Guinea. There have been no reports of serious damage or injury," a spokeswoman from Australia´s foreign office told AFP. No destructive tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center but it cautioned that earthquakes of this size could sometimes generate local tsunami waves. A giant tsunami in 1998 smashed into the coastline around Aitape following an off-shore earthquake that triggered waves measuring up to 10 metres, which swept away churches, schools and other buildings. Phone lines to Aitape appeared to be down but the PNG National Disaster Centre said it had been in touch with officials in the town of Vanimo some 150 kilometres away and no tsunami waves had been seen. "If there was going to be a tsunami it would have been there by now," Chris McKee from the disaster office said. Geoscience Australia said around 60,000 people would be in the exposure zone. "There is the possibility of considerable damage. It certainly could bring buildings down," seismologist Steve Tatham told AFP. "This would include outlying local villages," he said, adding that there would have been "a high level of shaking". Police, ambulance and church officials in Aitape could not be reached but the PNG National Broadcasting Corporation said it had spoken to community leader Paul Reptario in the town. "He says his whole house was shaking while his vehicle almost overturned," the broadcaster said. "He ran down to the beach to check for signs of tsunami like receding waves but there was none. Reptario says houses and other infrastructure in his village were not damaged," it added. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also cited an Aitape local as saying there had been no unusual waves and no significant damage, but said that people had panicked. "They were all running around the street. They were frightened maybe the sea will come up," said Max Kamave from the Aitape Resort Hotel. Personnel at Wewak Hospital, about 150 kilometres from the coastal epicentre, said they too felt the tremor but there was no immediate reports of damage from their town. "It was a strong one. This is a solid building -- not iron but solid -- and it was shaking," hospital spokesman Morris Iuandu told AFP. He estimated that the swaying had lasted at least three minutes. Wewak resident Gregory Moses described it as a "huge earthquake". "Everything literally was shaking and I thought the roof was going to cave in any minute but thank God its now over," he said on Facebook. Quakes of such magnitude are common in impoverished PNG, which sits on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire", a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates. A 6.6-magnitude quake struck the country´s Bougainville Island on Sunday, but there were no reports of damage or injuries. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53293 BEIJING, April 17:  China´s Internet users on Wednesday mourned a female Chinese national killed in the Boston marathon bombing as others attacked the exposure of the victim´s name despite a family request for anonymity. Thousands posted messages online after the consulate in New York said a Chinese citizen was among three people killed in the explosions in the US city on Monday.[break] "Terrorism has no national limits, the victims have no national limits. Together we condemn, together we mourn," one user of Sina Weibo, a social networking site similar to Twitter, wrote. "Poor child, go peacefully," wrote another. The consulate said relatives had requested the deceased not be identified. But Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television named the victim as well as a friend, Zhou Danling, whom it said was injured, adding that both were watching the race. The dead Chinese student was studying for a masters degree at Boston University after graduating from the Beijing Institute of Technology, the report said. She came from the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, the local Shenyang Evening News reported. Other users posted photos of the victim but many condemned the naming. "Please respect the family´s wishes, and delete the name," a Sina Weibo user wrote. "The family requested anonymity, please respect this," another said. Zhou, a Chinese national and Boston University graduate student, was in a stable condition after surgery, China´s state news agency Xinhua said. The two bombs, which exploded 13 seconds and about 100 metres (yards) apart, sprayed shrapnel into the crowd of thousands of people lining Boston´s Boylston Street to watch the runners cross the finish line. Three people were killed and at least 180 injured, according to the latest toll. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53287 (Update) BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 17:  US investigators told Tuesday how two suspected pressure cooker bombs sprayed nails and metal pellets into Boston marathon crowds, killing three people and injuring more than 180. But with no claim of responsibility made and police not committing to blaming foreign or domestic militants, Boston harbored widespread questions about the perpetrators as the city and the nation paid tribute to the dead.[break] US President Barack Obama condemned Monday´s attack at the marathon finish line as "an act of terror." He will attend a special service for the victims in Boston on Thursday. US authorities threw virtually every investigation agency into the hunt with more than 1,000 officers working in Boston alone, said Rick DesLauriers, head of the FBI´s Boston office. "This will be a worldwide investigation," DesLauriers told reporters. "We will go to the ends of the Earth to identify the subject or subjects responsible for this despicable crime," he added. DesLauriers said fragments of suspected pressure cookers used to pack the bomb had been found and were being put together by experts. He added that metal pellets and nails had also been recovered. Similar easy-to-make devices are used as roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shreds of black nylon bags believed to have been used to carry the bombs were also found, the agent said, adding that "the range of suspects and motives remains wide open." Doctors, who carried out at least 13 amputations, some at the scene, gave details of the bomb impact. "These bombs contained small metallic fragments more consistent with pellets and other small pieces of metal, but also spiked points that resembled nails without heads," said George Velmahos, head of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Roger Walls at Brigham and Women´s Hospital said a dozen carpentry nails were taken from the body of one victim. The two bombs, which exploded 13 seconds and about 100 meters (yards) apart, sprayed the shrapnel into the crowd of thousands of people lining Boylston Street to watch the runners cross the finish line. Three people were killed and at least 180 injured, according to the latest toll. Some 17 people were in critical condition. The dead and injured were aged between two and 71 and included nine children. Among the dead was eight-year-old Martin Richard, who had been waiting at the finish for his father to cross the line. His mother suffered a grievous brain injury and his sister lost a leg. A Chinese national also died, China´s Xinhua news agency reported. The woman was believed to be a graduate student at Boston University but her name was not given. The third fatality was named as Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Massachusetts. A candle-lit vigil for Richard drew 1,000 people to a park near the family home in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. Hundreds attended another vigil in central Boston and a church service near the scene of the bomb blasts. Most of the 23,000 runners in the 26.2-mile (42-kilometer) race had finished when the bombs went off. More tragic stories emerged. Liz Norden tearfully told the Boston Globe how two of her sons, both in their 30s, lost legs in the blast. Boston relived the horror in the many videos taken with telephone cameras that investigators also pored over in the hunt. Police appealed for the public to send in pictures or videos. Armed National Guard troops and police patrolled Boston airport, commuter trains and buses and authorities warned that tight security would last several days, particularly as Obama was to be in the city on Thursday. "There were no intelligence warnings that we know of," said Representative Peter King, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, who highlighted that it was not known whether foreign or domestic attackers planted the bombs. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and several other major US cities boosted security as Russian President Vladimir Putin led global condemnation, describing the twin explosions as "barbaric." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said "nothing justifies such a malicious attack on people attending a peaceful sporting event." Iran also strongly condemned the blasts. The national flag over the White House was lowered to half-staff and the New York Stock Exchange held a minute of silence before trading started. Organizers of Sunday´s London Marathon said the race would go ahead, but security arrangements were under review. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53274 BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 16: Eight-year-old Martin Richard died near the 26-mile marker of the Boston marathon -- the one dedicated to the young victims of the Newtown massacre. The lad was among the three dead and more than 170 injured when two bombs went off within seconds of each other on a sunny Monday afternoon near the finish line of the world´s oldest international foot race.[break] "This is how bad this is," wrote Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen. "I went out Monday night and bumped into some firefighters I know. They said one of the dead was an 8-year-old boy from Dorchester who had gone out to hug his dad after he crossed the finish line." "The dad walked on; the boy went back to the sidewalk to join his mom and his little sister. And then the bomb went off. The boy was killed. His sister´s leg was blown off. His mother was badly injured." Just days earlier, organizers of the Boston marathon said they were dedicating the 26-mile marker to the 20 children and six educators shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, four months ago. Those children -- gunned down by a 20-year-old with an assault rifle who had earlier killed his mother and who went on to take his own life -- were six and seven years old. Marathons are 26.2 miles long, or a tad under 42.2 kilometers, so the 26-mile marker would have been just 1,056 feet (nearly 322 meters) from the finish line. Overnight and into Tuesday, surgeons performed amputations on many of the injured, although an overall figure from all Boston area hospitals was not immediately available. "If I have my numbers are right, we have performed four amputations" at Massachusetts General Hospital, its chief of trauma surgery, George Velmahos, told reporters. "There are two more limbs that are at risk, but I hope that we will save those legs... This bomb obviously was placed probably low on the ground, and therefore lower extremity injuries are to be expected." Velmahos said he knew of patients at his hospital as young as 28 and as old as 71. At Boston Children´s Hospital, meanwhile, one of eight children admitted after the blast was reportedly a two-year-old with a bleeding head injury. Liz Norden, a mother of five, told the Boston Globe how two of her sons had lost a leg in the blast. Both had gone to Boylston Street to see a friend finish the race. She said she was taking groceries into her home in Wakefield, north of Boston, when her phone rang. She picked up to hear her 31-year-old, in an ambulance, say: "Ma, I´m hurt real bad." He didn´t immediately know where his 33-year-old sibling was, but in the ensuing hours the terrible news emerged -- both lost a leg, from the knee down. The two had been taken to separate hospitals. Lucky to be alive and unhurt was avid runner Bill Iffrig, 78, of Lake Stevens in Washington State, who fell onto his knees as he neared the finish line and the first blast went off to his left. He told his local newspaper, the Everett Herald, that he briefly saw an object that resembled a coffee can, which he thinks might be a remnant from the explosive device. "Then all this smoke was coming from someplace, and I wasn´t able to see too much," said Iffrig, who amid the melee got back up on his feet and ran the roughly final four yards (meters) to complete the race. Obama: Boston attacks ´cowardly´ act of terror WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Tuesday branded the Boston bombings a "cowardly" act of terror, but said it was still unclear if a foreign or domestic group or individual was behind the attacks. "This was a heinous and cowardly act," Obama said at the White House. "Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror." Obama said while the impact of the attacks near the finish line of the Boston marathon on Monday, which killed three people and wounded more than 170 others, were clear, the motives and the identify of those responsible was not. "What we don´t yet know, however, is who carried out this attack or why, whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual," he said. But the president again vowed to bring whoever was behind the assault to justice, and warned that America would not be cowed by terrorism. "We also know this -- the American people refuse to be terrorized," he said. In frank and direct language, Obama vowed to keep Americans up to speed with developments in the investigation and asked them to remain vigilant. "What I have indicated to you is what we now know. We know it was bombs that were set off. We know that obviously they did some severe damage. We do not know who did them," he said. "We don´t have a sense of motive yet. So everything else at this point is speculation." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53239 ISLAMABAD, April 16: Pervez Musharraf was Tuesday disqualified from contesting Pakistani elections next month, crushing his ambition to ´save´ the troubled nuclear-armed country just weeks after his return from exile. Pakistan goes to the polls on May 11, marking the first time a civilian government has handed over power at the ballot box after completing a full term in office in a country used to extended periods of military rule.[break] The Pakistan election campaign has got off to a lacklustre start and been marred by violence and Taliban threats. On Tuesday, a bomb targeted a convoy of the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N (PMLN) party, killing four people. Election officials disqualified Musharraf just one day after he unveiled his All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) party manifesto at a press conference overshadowed by questions about a series of legal cases dating back to his nine years in power. The retired general is on bail over the 2007 killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the 2006 death of a rebel leader from the region of Baluchistan, and for sacking judges when he imposed emergency rule in 2007. Supporters of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf place election banners featuring Musharraf photographs at their party office in Islamabad on April 16, 2013. (AFP) But he told reporters Monday: "The only thing in my heart was to save Pakistan and now I am here I have the same commitment, that I will save Pakistan." The Taliban threatened to assassinate him on the eve of his return to Pakistan on March 24, where he was welcomed by only a few hundred ardent supporters. The 69-year-old applied to run for parliament in four seats but was rejected immediately from all but the northern district of Chitral, on the Afghan border. Lawyers appealed against his approval in Chitral and on Tuesday a court official said Musharraf´s nomination had been thrown out on the grounds that he violated the constitution in 2007. Musharraf´s team have vowed to appeal against the decision in the Supreme Court, which is also hearing a separate petition from lawyers demanding that Musharraf face trial for treason dating back to his 1999-2008 rule. Lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasuri said the decision was an insult to "an internationally known person" and would show the world "what democracy we have". "Let us see what the Supreme Court decides. We are hopeful we will get justice," close Musharraf aide and APML candidate in Islamabad, Mohammad Amjad, told AFP, denying that the decision would have any impact on the party´s campaign. Musharraf´s main rival in Chitral told AFP that he asked for him to be disqualified for violating the constitution, killing Bhutto, seizing power in 1999 and raiding an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007. "I also requested the tribunal to disqualify him on grounds of killing Akbar Bugti and allowing America to invade Afghanistan," Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali, a candidate for the religious Jamaat-e-Islami party. Tuesday´s attack in the Khuzdar district of southwestern province Baluchistan was the third deadly attack on politicians or political parties in as many days. Sanaullah Zehri, head of the PMLN in Baluchistan, survived but his son, brother, nephew and their guard were all killed, officials said. "An improvised explosive device went off as Zehri, leading a convoy of more than 20 vehicles, left his home to campaign in Khuzdar," provincial home secretary Akbar Durrani told AFP. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Pakistani Taliban have said they were behind two deadly roadside bomb attacks in the northwest on Sunday. Zehri survived a murder attempt two years ago that was claimed by the rebel Baluch Liberation Front. In Peshawar, a candidate for the Pakistan People´s Party (PPP) which led the national government from 2008 told AFP he escaped a grenade attack at his home unhurt on Tuesday. On Monday gunmen killed two election campaigners for an independent candidate running in the lawless northwestern tribal regions, a day after a roadside bomb in the Swat valley killed a local leader of the Awami National Party (ANP). On Thursday a grocer standing in the polls for the secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) was shot dead in the southern city of Hyderabad, an attack also claimed by the Taliban. Pakistan´s caretaker interim prime minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso ordered an immediate tightening of security for all candidates in the wake of that shooting. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53238 (Updated) TEHRAN, April 16: A powerful earthquake rattled southeastern Iran and was felt across the Gulf and South Asia on Tuesday, reports from around the region said. Iran´s Seismological Centre reported on its website that the 7.5 magnitude quake struck at 3:14 pm (1044 GMT) about 80 kilometres (50 miles) the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. [break] It also shook buildings and forced high-rise offices to be evacuated in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, as well as across northern India, including the capital New Delhi where tremors rattled buildings and caused office-workers to run into the streets. The website of the US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake at 7.8, and said it struck near the Iranian city of Khash, in the southeastern province of Sistan Baluchistan. The head of Iran´s Red Crescent rescue corps, Mahmoud Mozafar, told ISNA news agency that evaluation teams were dispatched to the affected area. The quake also shook large parts of Pakistan including Islamabad, where buildings swayed, and the largest city Karachi, where tremors also prompted many to flee buildings in terror. The earthquake was not felt in the Iranian capital Tehran, however. It comes a week after a strong earthquake struck near Iran´s Gulf port city of Bushehr, killing at least 30 people and injuring 800 but leaving Iran´s only nuclear power plant intact. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53226 CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela´s government-friendly electoral council quickly certified the razor-thin presidential victory of Hugo Chavez´ hand-picked successor Monday, apparently ignoring opposition demands for a recount as anti-government protests broke out in the bitterly polarized nation. People stood on their balconies in Caracas apartment buildings banging pots and pans in protest as the electoral council´s president proclaimed Nicolas Maduro president for the next six years.[break] Across town, thousands of students clashed with National Guard troops in riot gear who fired tear gas and plastic bullets to turn the protesters back from marching on the city center. Students threw stones and pieces of concrete. The city was otherwise peaceful, although protests were reported in provincial cities. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Maduro was elected Sunday by a margin of 50.8 percent to 49 percent over challenger Henrique Capriles — a difference of just 262,000 votes out of 14.9 million cast, according to an updated official count released Monday. Sworn in as acting president after Chavez´s March 5 death from cancer, Maduro squandered a double-digit advantage in opinion polls in two weeks as Capriles highlighted what he called the ruling Chavistas´ abysmal management of the oil-rich country´s economy and infrastructure, citing myriad woes including food and medicine shortages, worsening power outages and rampant crime. By contrast, Chavez had defeated Capriles by a nearly 11-point margin in October. Until every vote is counted, Venezuela has an "illegitimate president and we denounce that to the world," Capriles tweeted Monday. One of the five members of the National Electoral Council, independent Vicente Diaz, also backed a full recount, as did the United States and the Organization of American States. But the electoral council president, Tibisay Lucena, said in announcing the outcome Sunday that it was "irreversible." At the proclamation ceremony Monday, she called Venezuela "a champion of democracy" and defended its electronic vote system as bullet-proof. Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor, had demanded the proclamation be suspended. He convoked the pot-banging protest and asked supporters to gather outside the electoral council Tuesday Capriles claimed that members of the military, "an important group in various cities," had been detained for trying to guarantee a free and fair election. He said they had been ordered to ignore abuses they witnessed. Capriles did not offer further details, such as how many were involved. He said a vote count by his campaign produced "a different result" and it received more than 3,200 complaints of irregularities — all by pro-government forces. He demanded every single ballot be recounted. Maduro´s campaign manager, Jorge Rodriguez, called Capriles´ actions "a coup attempt," while Maduro alleged such a plot was in preparation. Risa Grais-Targow, an analyst with Eurasia Group, said Capriles´ goal in demanding the recount without ever uttering the word "fraud" appears to undermine Maduro´s legitimacy without provoking a political crisis or jeopardizing his role as opposition leader. The winner is to be formally inaugurated Friday for a six-year-term. Maduro said during his victory speech Sunday night. He did not, however, endorse a manual recount of individual ballots. In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said a "100 percent audit" of the results would be "an important, prudent and necessary step to ensure that all Venezuelans have confidence in these results." The secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, also called for a "full recount." Under Venezuela´s voting system, 54 percent of the tallies printed out by individual voting machines are routinely audited and that was done Sunday night, Lucena said. Individual ballots are not included in such audits. No independent observer teams monitored the election as Chavez´s government in recent years has rejected them. Instead it invited witnesses to "accompany the process." The challenger´s camp has not explained how it intends to proceed with the recount demand. Venezuelan election law does not specify how a recount might proceed or whether a candidate even has the right to demand one, said Dashiell Lopez, coordinator of the independent voting rights group SUMATE. He said an attempt to carry out a recount in December in Bolivar state failed because it wasn´t sought in the legally required seven days. The logistics alone are daunting. A total of 39,319 boxes of paper ballot receipts were emitted by Venezuela´s electronic voting system Sunday. They are now stored in warehouses under the control of the military. Those receipts would need to be checked against vote count printouts emitted by each individual voting machine. Those results would then be checked with the electoral council´s central tally. The electronic voting system itself was never questioned by the opposition and it has drawn praise from institutions such as the Carter Center as among the most reliable. Analysts called the election result, which followed an often ugly campaign full of mudslinging, a disaster for Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver believed to have close ties to Cuba. A lackluster public speaker whose standard rhetoric features attacks on "the extreme right" that he says is constantly conspiring against him, Maduro must now endeavor to hold together a movement built around the magnetism of the now-departed Chavez. A hint of internal trouble to come came in a tweet by National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, who many consider Maduro´s main rival within their movement. "The results oblige us to make a profound self-criticism," he said. Few outside Venezuela had bigger stakes in the race than Cuban President Raul Castro, whose country receives generous subsidized oil exports from Venezuela in exchange for sending doctors, military advisories and other help to Venezuela. Capriles had promised to end that exchange, as well as end close ties with other countries with questionable human rights and democracy records including Belarus and Iran. Castro issued a statement congratulating Maduro for "this transcendental triumph." Maduro, a longtime foreign minister to Chavez, had counted on a wave of sympathy for the charismatic leader, and in victory, asked his spirit for help, holding up a crucifix pinned to a card showing Chavez. The late president built up immense loyalty among millions of poor beneficiaries of government largesse and constructed a powerful state political apparatus. Among the problems facing the new president are, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation and one of the world´s highest homicide and kidnapping rates. The opposition said that only worsened after Chavez disappeared to Cuba in December for what would be his final surgery. Maduro will face no end of hard choices, and political scientist Javier Corrales, of Amherst College, said he has shown no skills for tackling them. Maduro has "a penchant for blaming everything on his ´adversaries´ — capitalism, imperialism, the bourgeoisie, the oligarchs — so it is hard to figure how exactly he would address any policy challenge ..." Maduro inherits a presidency made far more powerful under Chavez, who often succeeded in getting the National Assembly to let him rule by decree. The ruling socialists dominate the assembly, and legislative elections will not take place for another two years. The opposition´s main legal tool for ousting Maduro is a possible recall referendum, but that cannot take place until midway through his six-year-term. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53225 BOSTON, Massachusetts, April 15: Two explosions struck one of America´s top sporting events Monday, killing at least three and wounding more than 100 as the Boston Marathon erupted in a maelstrom of blood, screams, smoke and panic. As cities from New York to Los Angeles went on high alert, Americans with ever-vivid memories of the September 11, 2001 suicide airliner attacks automatically wondered if the country had been hit again by terrorists.[break] President Barack Obama went on national television to say it was not yet clear who was behind the blasts. He said the perpetrators would pay. He did not utter the word "terror." "We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn´t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts," Obama said. "But make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this, and we will find out who did this, we´ll find out why they did this." A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said later that "any event with multiple explosive devices -- as this appears to be -- is clearly an act of terror." At the blast scene, a horrific chorus of high-pitched wailing and screaming rang out as bewildered runners and spectators fled the carnage and debris. News reports said one of the fatalities was an eight-year-old boy and that some of the injured lost limbs. One woman told CNN the blast was the loudest sound she had ever heard, and it made the ground shake. The thunderous blasts struck near the finish line of the marathon, long after the winners had crossed. Competitors who were still running when the blasts rocked downtown Boston were diverted elsewhere. Some 27,000 people were entered to take part in the event. Video footage on American TV showed the moment when the first blast apparently struck: the detonation came on the left side of the course, behind spectators and a row of colorful national flags showing how runners come from around the world to take part. Security people in yellow jackets threw their hands to their ears as the blast took place and at least one runner was thrown to the ground as white smoke billowed upward. The already waving flags whipped violently with the shockwave of the explosion. Grisly accounts abounded. "We saw people with their legs blown off," Mark Hagopian, owner of the Charlesmark Hotel, told AFP from the basement of a restaurant where he had sought shelter. "A person next to me had his legs blown off at the knee -- he was still alive." "It was bad, it was fast," he said. "There was a gigantic explosion... we felt wind on our faces... Police were saying: ´Get out, get out, leave, leave there may be more bombs.´" Boston police chief Ed Davis raised the death toll from two to three at a late evening news conference at which other officials fended off a barrage of questions about the investigation into the explosions. FBI special agent Rick DesLauriers did say: "It is a criminal investigation that is a potential terrorist investigation." More than 100 were injured, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick said, without giving an exact figure. The Boston Globe said it was at least 125. NBC News, citing officials, reported that police had found "multiple explosive devices" in Boston, raising the possibility of a coordinated attack. The twin explosions come more than a decade after nearly 3,000 people were killed in airplane strikes on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The sense of panic in the immediate aftermath of the blasts, and fear of more explosions, was so acute that Boston authorities urged people not to congregate in large crowds. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she believed the blasts were in fact an attack but it was unclear if the perpetrators were homegrown or foreign. Asked if this was terrorism, she told reporters: "It looks that way." Security was stepped up in New York and Washington -- both sites of 9/11 attacks -- as well as in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the Big Apple, police said they were boosting security at hotels and "other prominent locations in the city." The blasts in Boston rattled US markets, sending the Dow and the S&P 500 down at the close. The Boston Marathon is one of the biggest annual athletic events held in the United States. Racers must qualify to compete and there are tens of thousands of spectators. The race attracts world-class athletes, most of whom would have likely completed the race a couple of hours before the blast went off. The video clip of the blast showed the marathon timeclock at 4:09:44. Hours later, the flag at the majestic white dome of the US Capitol in Washington was lowered in honor of the blast victims. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53205 PYONGYANG, North Korea, April 15: North Koreans celebrated the birthday of their first leader Monday by dancing in plazas and snacking on peanuts, with little hint of the fiery bombast that has kept the international community fearful that a missile launch may be imminent. Pyongyang fired off a rocket ahead of the last anniversary of Kim Il Sung´s birth — the centennial — but this time the day was simply the start of a two-day holiday for Pyongyang residents who spilled into the streets.[break] Girls in red and pink jackets skipped along streets festooned with celebratory banners and flags and boys on inline skates took a break to slurp up bowls of shaved ice. There was no sense of panic in the North Korean capital, where very few locals have access to international broadcasts and foreign newspapers speculating about an imminent missile launch and detailing the international diplomacy under way to try to rein Pyongyang in. Elsewhere in the region, however, the focus remained on the threat of a launch as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up a tour to coordinate Washington´s response with Beijing, North Korea´s most important ally, as well as with Seoul and Tokyo. A North Korean child covers the eyes of her father as she sits on his shoulders watching mass folk dancing in front of Pyongyang Indoor Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP) In Seoul, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin told a parliamentary committee Monday that North Korea still appeared poised to launch a missile from its east coast, though he declined to disclose the source of his information. Kerry warned North Korea not to conduct a missile test, saying it would be provocation that "will raise people´s temperatures" and further isolate the country and its impoverished people. He said Sunday that the U.S. was "prepared to reach out," but that Pyongyang must first bring down tensions and honor previous agreements. Foreign governments have been trying to assess how seriously to take North Korea´s recent torrent of rhetoric warning of war if the U.S. and South Korea do not stop holding joint military maneuvers just across the border. Officials in South Korea, the United States and Japan say intelligence indicates that North Korea, fresh off an underground nuclear test in February, appears ready to launch a medium-range missile. North Korea has already been slapped with strengthened U.N. sanctions for violating Security Council resolutions barring the regime from nuclear and missile activity. North Korea has warned that the situation has grown so tense it cannot guarantee the safety of foreigners in the country and said embassies in Pyongyang should think about their evacuation plans. But British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Monday that although there is reason for concern over the "frenetic and bellicose" rhetoric, Britain believes there has been "no immediate increased risk or danger" to those living in or travelling to North Korea. He said Britain does not see an immediate need to draw down embassy staff, but is keeping that under constant review. He added that, from discussions with other governments, the U.K. does not believe any foreign embassy in Pyongyang plans to close. While concerns over North Korea continued to dominate headlines abroad, Pyongyang´s own media gave little indication Monday of how high the tensions are. The Rodong Sinmun, the Workers´ Party newspaper, featured photos and coverage of current leader Kim Jong Un´s overnight visit to the Kumsusan mausoleum to pay respects to his grandfather. There was only one line at the end of the article vowing to bring down the "robber-like U.S. imperialists." Kim Jong Un´s renovation of the memorial palace that once served as his grandfather´s presidential offices opened to the public on Monday, the vast cement plaza replaced by fountains, park benches, trellises and tulips. Stretches of green lawn were marked by small signs indicating which businesses — including the Foreign Trade Bank recently added to a U.S. Treasury blacklist — and government agencies donated funds to help pay for the landscaping. Starting from early in the morning, residents dressed in their finest clothing began walking from all parts of Pyongyang to lay flowers and bow before the bronze statues of Kim and his son, late leader Kim Jong Il, as the mournful "Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung" played over and over. Their birthdays are considered the most important holidays of the year in North Korea, where reverence for the Kims is drummed into the people from the time they are toddlers. The largest basket of flowers at Mansu Hill was from Kim Jong Un, whose elaborate offering was cordoned off with ropes. With that ritual out of the way, many stopped at food stalls set up at the base of Mansu Hill to warm up with tea and snacks. They queued at roadside snack stands for rations of peanuts, a holiday tradition. "Although the situation is tense, people have got bright faces and are very happy," said Han Kyong Sim, who works at one of the beverage stands. Later, as the day warmed up, scores of young women in a rainbow of sparkling traditional dresses thronged the parking lot outside Pyongyang Indoor Stadium for North Korea´s version of square dancing. Monday marked the official start of the new year according to North Korea´s "juche" calendar, which begins with the day of Kim Il Sung´s birth in 1912. But unlike last year, the centennial of his birthday, there are no big parades in store this week, and North Koreans were planning to use it as a day to catch up with friends and family. North Korea is believed to be saving its parades and big parties for July 27, the 60th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, and the 65th anniversary in September of the founding of the nation. But while there was little sense of crisis in Pyongyang, North Korea´s official posture toward the outside appeared to be as hardline as ever. A top North Korean leader, Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People´s Assembly, told officials Sunday that the North must bolster its nuclear arsenal further and "wage a stronger all-out action with the U.S. to cope with the prevailing wartime situation," according to state TV. North Korea has also pulled workers from the Kaesong factory complex on its side of the Demilitarized Zone, the last remaining symbols of inter-Korean rapprochement, in a pointed jab at South Korea. South Korean-run factories provided more than 50,000 jobs for North Korea, where two-thirds of the population struggle with food shortages, according to the World Food Program. On Sunday, Pyongyang rejected Seoul proposal to resolve tensions through dialogue. A Unification Ministry spokesman in Seoul, Kim Hyung-suk, called the response "very regrettable" on Monday. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53178 MUMBAI, April 15: An Indian court on Monday convicted a man over a blast which killed 17 people and wounded dozens more at a busy restaurant in the city of Pune three years ago, the prosecutor said. A lower court in Pune in western India found Mirza Himayat Baig guilty of criminal conspiracy and murder for the attack on the packed German Bakery, where five foreigners were among those killed.[break] "Baig has been found guilty of all the key charges. He was a co-conspirator," special public prosecutor Raja Thakare told AFP. Thakare said that the court found Baig guilty of criminal conspiracy, murder and also under sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Explosive Substances Act, among other counts. Baig´s sentence will be handed down on April 18. Several others who are co-accused on the chargesheet are still at large. "We will file an appeal to the high court," Baig´s counsel A. Rehman told reporters after the verdict was delivered in Pune, a small city located 150 kilometres (94 miles) from India´s financial capital Mumbai. The prosecution told the court that the conspirators planned the attack at a meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where Baig was trained to make a bomb, but the defence team denied this and said he was not in Pune at the time of the blast. The bombing on February 13, 2010 in Maharashtra state was the first major attack in India after the November 2008 assault on Mumbai by Islamist gunmen, which left 166 dead. The Pune explosion -- caused by a bomb left in a rucksack -- ripped through the building, creating a hole in the wall measuring six feet by four feet (1.8 metres by 1.2 metres) and sending those inside fleeing for their lives. Baig, who used to run a cyber cafe in Maharashtra, was arrested after several months of investigation. The German Bakery was popularly known as "Pune´s Cafe Leopold" -- named after the hangout popular with tourists and young people in downtown Mumbai, which was targeted in the 2008 attacks. Pune was hit again last August by a string of low-intensity blasts targeted a bustling restaurant and centrally-located shopping area in the city, injuring one person. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53175 CARACAS, Venezuela, April 15: Hugo Chavez´s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has won Venezuela´s presidential election by a stunningly narrow margin that highlights rising discontent over problems ranging from crime to power blackouts. His rival demanded a recount, portending more headaches for a country shaken by the death of its dominating leader. [break] One key Chavista leader made known his dismay over the outcome of Sunday´s election that was supposed to cement the self-styled "Bolivarian Revolution" of their beloved president as Venezuela´s destiny. National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, who many consider Maduro´s main rival within their movement, tweeted: "The results oblige us to make a profound self-criticism." Maduro´s victory followed an often ugly, mudslinging campaign in which the winner promised to carry on Chavez´s legacy, while challenger Henrique Capriles´ main message was that Chavez put this country with the world´s largest oil reserves on the road to ruin. Venezuelan elected President Nicolas Maduro celebrates following the election results in Caracas on April 14, 2013. Fireworks erupted after the National Electoral Council announced that near complete results showed Maduro had won with just 50.66 percent of the vote compared to 49.1 percent for opposition rival Henrique Capriles -- a difference of less than 300,000 votes. (AFP) Despite the ill feelings, both men sent their supporters home and urged them to refrain from violence. Maduro, acting president since Chavez´s March 5 death, held a double-digit advantage in opinion polls just two weeks ago, but electoral officials said he got just 50.7 percent of the votes compared to 49.1 percent for Capriles, with nearly all ballots counted. The margin was about 234,935 votes. Turnout was 78 percent, down from just over 80 percent in the October election that Chavez won by a nearly 11-point margin over Capriles. Chavistas set off fireworks and raced through downtown Caracas blasting horns in jubilation. In a victory speech, Maduro told a crowd outside the presidential palace that his victory was further proof that Chavez "continues to be invincible." But analysts called the slim margin a disaster for Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver in the radical wing of Chavismo who is believed to have close ties to Cuba. At Capriles´ campaign headquarters, people hung their heads quietly as the results were announced by an electoral council stacked with government loyalists. Many started crying; others just stared at TV screens in disbelief. Later, Capriles emerged to angrily reject the official totals: "It is the government that has been defeated." He said his campaign came up with "a result that is different from the results announced today." "The biggest loser today is you," Capriles said, directly addressing Maduro through the camera. "The people don´t love you." Venezuela´s electronic voting system is completely digital, but also generates a paper receipt for each vote, making a vote-by-vote recount possible. Armed forces joint chief, Gen. Wilmer Barrientos, called on the military to accept the results. A Capriles´ campaign staffer told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the candidate met with the military high command after polls closed. But campaign official Armando Briquet later denied that a meeting was held. Capriles, an athletic 40-year-old state governor, had mocked and belittled Maduro as a poor, bland imitation of Chavez. Maduro said during his victory speech that Capriles had called him before the results were announced to suggest a "pact" and that Maduro refused. Capriles´ camp did not comment on Maduro´s claim, though Capriles began his speech by declaring he doesn´t "make pacts with lies or corruption." Maduro, a longtime foreign minister to Chavez, rode a wave of sympathy for the charismatic leader to victory, pinning his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of government largesse and the powerful state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated. Capriles´ main campaign weapon was to simply emphasize "the incompetence of the state." Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe his government not only squandered, but plundered, much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his 14-year rule. Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime — one of the world´s highest homicide and kidnapping rates — that the opposition said worsened after Chavez disappeared to Cuba in December for what would be his final surgery. Analyst David Smilde at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank predicted the victory would prove pyrrhic and make Maduro extremely vulnerable. "It will make people in his coalition think that perhaps he is not the one to lead the revolution forward," Smilde said. "This is a result in which the ´official winner´ appears as the biggest loser," said Amherst College political scientist Javier Corrales. "The ´official loser´ —the opposition — emerges even stronger than it did six months ago. These are very delicate situations in any political system, especially when there is so much mistrust of institutions." Many across the nation put little stock in Maduro´s claims that sabotage by the far right was to blame for worsening power outages and food shortages in the weeks before the vote. "We can´t continue to believe in messiahs," said Jose Romero, a 48-year-old industrial engineer who voted for Capriles in the central city of Valencia. "This country has learned a lot and today we know that one person can´t fix everything." In a Chavista stronghold in Petare outside Caracas, Maria Velasquez, 48, who works in a government soup kitchen that feeds 200 people, said she voted for Chavez´s man "because that is what my comandante ordered." Reynaldo Ramos, a 60-year-old construction worker, said he "voted for Chavez" before correcting himself and saying he chose Maduro. "We must always vote for Chavez because he always does what´s best for the people and we´re going to continue on this path," Ramos said. The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn, get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed the backing of state media as part of its near-monopoly on institutional power. Capriles´ camp said Chavista loyalists in the judiciary put them at glaring disadvantage by slapping the campaign and broadcast media with fines and prosecutions that they called unwarranted. Only one opposition TV station remains and it was being sold to a new owner Monday. At rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves. Capriles showed Maduro none of the respect he earlier accorded Chavez. Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles´ backers "heirs of Hitler." It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland. Maduro focused his campaign message on his mentor: "I am Chavez. We are all Chavez." He will face no end of hard choices for which Corrales, of Amherst, said he has shown no skills for tackling. Maduro has "a penchant for blaming everything on his ´adversaries´ — capitalism, imperialism, the bourgeoisie, the oligarchs — so it is hard to figure how exactly he would address any policy challenge other than taking a tough line against his adversaries." Venezuela´s $30 billion fiscal deficit is equal to about 10 percent of the country´s gross domestic product. Many factories operate at half capacity because strict currency controls make it hard for them to pay for imported parts and materials. Business leaders say some companies verge on bankruptcy because they cannot extend lines of credit with foreign suppliers. Chavez imposed currency controls a decade ago trying to stem capital flight as his government expropriated large land parcels and dozens of businesses. Now, dollars sell on the black market at three times the official exchange rate and Maduro has had to devalue Venezuela´s currency, the bolivar, twice this year. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53141 CARACAS, April 14:Venezuelans headed to the polls Sunday to elect Hugo Chavez´s successor, with his political heir, Nicolas Maduro, hoping to continue his socialist revolution and rival Henrique Capriles vowing change in the divided nation. One month after Chavez died, supporters of acting President Maduro played military-style bugles to wake up people before dawn and later voters stood in lines, from the capital´s hillside slums to its wealthier districts.[break] Riding a wave of sympathy over his mentor´s death, led opinion polls as he promised to continue the oil-funded policies that cut poverty from 50 to 29 percent through popular health, education and food programs. But Capriles hopes that discontent over the nation´s soaring murder rate, chronic food shortages, high inflation and regular power outages will give him an upset victory after 14 years under Chavez. Chavez named Maduro -- a former bus driver and union activist who rose to foreign minister and vice president -- as his political heir in December before undergoing a final round of cancer surgery. He died on March 5 aged 58. "We will break turnout records in our mobilized democracy," Maduro wrote on Twitter. Late Saturday, Maduro presided over a ceremony in the old military barracks where Chavez was laid to rest to commemorate the late leader´s return to power after a his brief ouster in a coup on April 11-13, 2002. "You know that comandante Chavez gave me a difficult job and I accepted it like a son. I feel at peace," Maduro, 50, told members of a civilian militia formed by Chavez after the coup. "I will be loyal to him until the last moment." Capriles accused the government of "abusing power, abusing state resources" by staging televised events up until the eve of the election even though official campaigning ended on Thursday. "Let´s go vote! Hope, faith and courage," Capriles wrote on Twitter. During the campaign, Capriles avoid criticizing Chavez and pledged to maintain his social "missions." He lost to Chavez by 11 points in the October 7 presidential election -- the opposition´s best score against him. "I´m not the opposition, I´m the solution," said the 40-year-old Miranda state governor, who represents the youthful face of the once fractured opposition. But he blamed the government for the nation´s economic woes and vowed to cut the "gift" to Cuba -- a deal in which Caracas ships 100,000 barrels of oil per day while Havana sends doctors and other experts to Venezuela. Maduro and Capriles engaged in an acrimonious campaign marked by insults, government allegations of assassination plots against the acting leader and the transformation of Chavez into a saintly figure. Maduro called his rival a "little bourgeois" while Capriles derided the tall, broad-shouldered acting president as a "bull-chicken." Opinion polls gave Maduro leads ranging between 10 and 20 points, though the last survey conducted by Datanalisis last week gave him a narrower, 9.7-point edge. "The opposition was able to excite its people," Ignacio Avalos, a sociology professor at Central University of Venezuela. "Maduro has two very important weapons in his favor: Chavez´s last wish and the state machinery," he said. The phrase "Chavez, I swear, my vote is for Maduro" was recited in songs and rallies by Chavistas. "The commitment to the revolution is very strong and the people are here. The people will massively go out and vote to defend his legacy," said Denis Oropeza, 33, a museum employee voting in the poor "January 23" neighborhood where Chavez used to vote. Opposition supporters say Maduro would continue policies that they deem disastrous for the economy of a nation that, despite its oil wealth, imports most of its food. "When I look at Venezuela, with all that oil, and see what is going on around me today, it makes me so terribly disappointed," said Alexis Chacon, 74, who runs a chemical company. "The Hugo Chavez nightmare has sunk this country." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53137 RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories, April 14: Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad resigned late on Saturday, ending months of rising tension with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, despite US efforts to keep him in place. The resignation of the US-educated economist, who won broad international acclaim for his state-building efforts since becoming premier in 2007, comes just days after Washington made a fresh push to revive long-dormant peace talks.[break] Rumours that Fayyad would either resign or be told to step down by Abbas have been rife in recent weeks after long-standing differences between the two came to a head over the finance portfolio. Abbas accepted Fayyad´s resignation at a brief meeting at the Muqataa presidential compound in Ramallah, but officials said he had asked the 61-year-old to stay on in a caretaker role until a new prime minister can be appointed. "Fayyad met Abbas for half an hour in the president´s headquarters in Ramallah and officially handed him his written resignation," a Palestinian official told AFP. Fayyad, a political independent, has come under increasing criticism as the Palestinian Authority lives through its worst-ever financial crisis, with Abbas´s ruling Fatah movement openly deriding his economic policies as "confused" earlier this month. But Washington has lobbied hard for the former World Bank official to be kept on. As rumours surfaced on Thursday he was planning to resign, a senior State Department official poured cold water on the idea, saying: "As far as I know he´s sticking around." And late on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Abbas to urge him to find common ground with his prime minister, Palestinian officials said. Following Saturday´s developments, Washington hailed "the important roles played by both president Abbas and prime minister Fayyad" in the push towards a Palestinian state, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. "Prime Minister Fayyad has been a strong partner to the international community and a leader in promoting economic growth, state-building and security for the Palestinian people. We look to all Palestinian leaders to support these efforts." Long-running tensions between Fayyad and Abbas came to a head six weeks ago over the resignation of finance minister Nabil Qassis, with Fayyad agreeing to the move but Abbas, who was abroad at the time, rejecting it. Fayyad himself was finance minister for five years from 2002, and after being appointed premier in 2007, he continued to hold both portfolios until Qassis took over in May 2012. He was deeply unpopular with the Islamist Hamas movement which rules Gaza, with spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri accusing him of "riddling our people with debt." Abbas´s Palestinian Authority is in the grip of its worst-ever financial crisis, partly due to a shortfall in promised foreign aid, as well as by Israel´s withholding of tax monies for several months, although the decision was recently reversed. But Fayyad was widely respected by the international community, which credited him with building a sound institutional framework for the Palestinian Authority. Although Israel made no official comment on Fayyad´s resignation, the left-leaning Haaretz said senior political figures "expressed much regret" over his departure in what the paper described as "a dramatic development." "Its ramifications won´t just reverberate in the part of the West Bank under Palestinian control, but will also affect Israel and the Obama administration´s efforts to renew the peace process, as well as the European Union´s policy towards the Palestinians," wrote Barak Ravid. Fayyad´s departure would probably impact on foreign aid donations as well as moves announced last week by Kerry to revive the West Bank economy and remove barriers to growth, he said. "Without Fayyad guarding the public coffers, it´s not certain that the countries currently providing the Palestinian Authority with aid will continue to do so. Israel will also hesitate to promote economic measures in the West Bank with Fayyad away from the steering wheel," Ravid wrote. While Israel was not connected to his departure, the government´s "ambivalent" attitude towards him did not help, he said. "The policy of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu´s government certainly didn´t help Fayyad´s survival on the job." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53089 BEIJING, April 13: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday pressed North Korea´s patron China to help defuse sky-high nuclear tensions, telling President Xi Jinping the world was facing a "critical" moment. The region has been engulfed by threats of nuclear war by Pyongyang in response to UN sanctions imposed over its recent rocket and nuclear tests, and there are fears it could soon fuel the crisis by firing a medium-range missile.[break] "Mr President, this is obviously a critical time with some very challenging issues," Kerry told China´s new leader in the Great Hall of the People, on the second leg of an Asian tour that has been swamped by the Korea crisis. As well as "issues on the Korean peninsula", he cited Iran´s nuclear ambitions, Syria and the Middle East, and the world´s economic woes. Kerry flew in from talks in South Korea with President Park Geun-Hye, where he offered public support for her plans to initiate some trust-building with the North. Washington is seeking to persuade Beijing to help rein in the bellicose threats from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and bring Pyongyang back to the negotiating table over its suspect nuclear programme. Without giving specifics, he said after his meeting with Xi that they "could not have had a more constructive and forward-leaning conversation". Earlier in Seoul Kerry said: "I think it´s clear to everybody in the world that no country in the world has as close a relationship or as significant an impact on the DPRK (North Korea) than China." Beijing has backed Pyongyang since the 1950-53 Korean War and could wield tremendous leverage over the isolated communist regime thanks to the vital aid it provides, including almost all of its neighbour´s energy imports. But analysts say it is wary of pushing too hard for fear of destabilising North Korea, which could send waves of hungry refugees flooding into China and ultimately lead to a reunified Korea allied with the United States. A Chinese city on the border with North Korea and Russia, Hunchun, held an air raid drill Friday but an official told AFP it was a routine exercise. Strains in the relationship between the United States and China, the world´s top two economies, have been simmering on an array of diplomatic fronts such as Syria and Iran, as well as trade. The US Treasury Department on Friday said China´s yuan currency remains "significantly undervalued" but stopped shy of accusing Beijing of manipulating the currency to gain an unfair trade advantage. In opening remarks in the presence of reporters, Xi did not mention Korea but said the China-US relationship was "at a new historical stage and has got off to a good start" since his ascension as head of state last month. But in a commentary issued minutes later, China´s official Xinhua news agency said America´s strategic "pivot to Asia" could breed mistrust, and Washington should "help seek reasonable and workable solutions to regional issues". "While accusing Pyongyang of reckless provocation and intolerable disregard of international wishes, Washington itself has also been fanning the flames," it said, citing a recent US military buildup in support of South Korea. China is estimated to provide as much as 90 percent of North Korea´s energy imports, 80 percent of its consumer goods and 45 percent of its food, according to the US-based Council on Foreign Relations. Despite intelligence reports that the North is ready to stage a highly provocative medium-range missile launch, Park has in recent days made some conciliatory overtures, saying the South should meet with the North. While Kerry berated Pyongyang´s "unacceptable" rhetoric and warned that any missile launch would be a "huge mistake", he also stressed US backing for Park´s initiative. In Beijing, the secretary of state also met with Premier Li Keqiang and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and on Sunday will head to Tokyo. Kerry said he hoped China, Japan and the United States can find the "unity" required to offer a "very different set of alternatives for how we can proceed and ultimately how we can defuse this situation" on the Korean peninsula. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53087 DENPASAR, Indonesia, April 13: A passenger jet operated by budget airline Lion Air -- which recently sealed blockbuster orders for new planes -- missed the runway at Bali airport Saturday and landed in the sea but everybody on board survived. The Boeing jet carrying more than 100 passengers missed the runway as it came in to land in good weather conditions at Denpasar airport on the Indonesian resort island, transport ministry official Herry Bhakti told AFP.[break] Bhakti initially said the plane overshot the runway, but later clarified his comments to say that it landed straight in the water. Images of the incident site showed the plane partially submerged in the water with inflatable slides deployed from the front exits and a large crack in the fuselage towards the rear of the aircraft. Passengers in life jackets could be seen in the water. An injured passenger (C) from the Lion Air plane that missed the runway at Bali´s international airport is helped at hospital as people arrive for treatment in Kedongan near Denpasar on Bali island on April 13, 2013. (AFP) "The plane was about to land when suddenly it fell into the sea. People on board panicked and began screaming," a passenger named Dewi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP, her voice still shaking. She received light head injuries and was taken to Denpasar hospital where an AFP correspondent saw another nine people receiving treatment. A Lion Air spokesman said the 737-800 was carrying 101 passengers and seven crew members. The passengers included 95 adults, five children, and one baby. Bhakti initially said it had been carrying more than 130 passengers. He said the aircraft started operating in 2012 and was new. The national transportation safety committee "will investigate the cause of the incident", he said. It was not immediately clear how many people were injured in the incident or what the nationalities of the passengers were. Lion Air, a little-known carrier launched 13 years ago with just one plane, has in recent times struck two of the world´s largest aircraft orders in a staggering $46 billion bet on Indonesia´s air transport boom. France announced last month that Indonesia´s fastest-growing airline had agreed to buy 234 medium-haul A320 jets worth $23.8 billion (18.4 billion euros) from European aerospace giant Airbus. It came after Lion Air astounded the industry with a $22.4 billion deal for 230 Boeing 737 airliners, inked in 2011 as a visiting US President Barack Obama looked on. Bali is a hugely popular holiday destination, welcoming millions of foreign tourists from around the world every year. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53083 CAIRO, April 13: An upbeat and alert-looking Hosni Mubarak was wheeled into a Cairo courtroom on Saturday for his retrial for alleged complicity in the killing of demonstrators during the 2011 revolt that ousted him, but the session quickly ended when the judge recused himself. The 84-year-old ousted Egyptian president, wearing brown-tinted glasses, waved from his wheelchair inside the courtroom cage. He was airlifted to the court from a Cairo hospital. [break]His two sons Alaa and Gamal and his former interior minister Habib al-Adly, currently held in prison for separate cases, were also in the courtroom cage. Mubarak had not been seen in public since his initial conviction in June 2012. Unconfirmed reports have emerged several times in the past year suggesting that he was on the brink of death. Judge Mostafa Hassan recused himself and referred the new case to an appeals court to select a new judge to oversee the trial. He did not specify the conflict of interest behind this decision. Egyptian medics and army personnel carry former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to a helicopter ambulance in Maadi Military Hospital to attend his trial in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, April 13, 2013. (AP) Hassan caused an uproar in October among Egyptian political activists when he ordered the acquittals of 25 Mubarak loyalists who had been accused of organizing an attack in which assailants on horses and camels stormed Tahrir Square during the 18-day revolt. Mubarak´s retrial was granted by an appeals court that overturned his life sentence in January, citing shoddy procedures. He has remained in custody since, spending some time in a prison hospital before being transferred to a military one. If convicted again, the life sentence passed against Mubarak and el-Adly would be upheld. They could also have their sentence reduced or even be acquitted. It is considered unlikely that they would draw a heavier sentence, like the death penalty, Also standing trial are six police generals. Five face the same charges as Mubarak while the sixth is accused of gross negligence. All six were acquitted in the first trial, but are being tried again. The presiding judge of that first trial said the prosecution´s case lacked concrete evidence and failed to prove the protesters were killed by the police, indirectly giving credence to the testimony of top Mubarak-era officials that "foreigners" were behind the slayings between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1, 2011. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53074 PYONGYANG, North Korea: North Korea has denied involvement in a cyberattack that shut down nearly 50,000 computers and servers at South Korean broadcasters and banks last month. The General Staff of the Korean People´s Army issued the denial Saturday through the official Korean Central News Agency. Seoul on Thursday said Pyongyang was responsible for the March 20 computer crash.[break] The denial comes as tension remains high on the Korean Peninsula. U.S. and South Korean officials say North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch a mid-range missile that could fly as far as Guam. The North has released a chain of warlike threats since Seoul and Washington began joint military drills last month. Pyongyang is also angry over new U.N. sanctions punishing it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53073 BEIJING, South Korea, April 13: US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Beijing on Saturday to seek China´s help to rein in a belligerent North Korea and provide a foundation for Seoul to lower soaring tensions with Pyongyang. Kerry flew to the Chinese capital from South Korea where he held talks Friday with President Park Geun-Hye and offered public US support to her plans for initiating some trust-building with the North.[break] The Korean peninsula has been engulfed by escalating military tensions and dire threats of nuclear war ever since North Korea conducted a rocket test last December and a nuclear test in February. Despite intelligence reports that the North has prepared what would be a highly-provocative, medium-range missile launch, Park has in recent days made some conciliatory gestures to the regime in Pyongyang. In a meeting with her ruling party officials on Friday, Park said that the South should meet with the North and "listen to what North Korea thinks". While Kerry berated Pyongyang´s "unacceptable" rhetoric and warned that any missile launch would be a "huge mistake," he also took pains to stress US backing for Park´s initiative. "President Park was elected with a different vision for the possibilities of peace and we honour that vision ... and we hope that vision is the one that will actually take hold here," he said. "We´re prepared to work with conviction that relations between North and South can improve and they can improve very quickly," he added. In another sign of US hopes to defuse tensions, Kerry did not visit the truce village of Panmunjom, a common stop for foreign leaders visiting Seoul. In a joint statement released just before Kerry left for Beijing, the United States said it welcomed the "trust building process" proposed by Park. But Kerry also made it clear that reducing tensions would require cooperation from all sides, and in particular China, whose trade and aid have propped up its ally North Korea since the end of the Cold War. "China has an enormous ability to help make a difference here, and I hope that in our conversations when I get there that we´ll be able to lay out a path ahead that can defuse this tension," Kerry said. He added: "And I think it´s clear to everybody in the world that no country in the world has as close a relationship or as significant an impact on the DPRK (North Korea) than China." Kerry will hold talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi later on Saturday and meet the country´s new president, Xi Jinping. Without naming any countries, Xi said last weekend that "no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains". French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday China´s leaders were "very concerned" about the crisis and were working to reduce tensions. "The Chinese have told us that they are doing their utmost to ease the tension," he said in Beijing after meeting Xi. After China, Kerry heads to Japan which is also deeply involved in the North Korea issue and which deployed Patriot missiles around Tokyo this week ahead of the North´s expected missile launch. Kerry said he hoped China, Japan and the United States would be able to find the "unity" required to offer a "very different set of alternatives for how we can proceed and ultimately how we can defuse this situation". Although China holds far more leverage over North Korea than any other country, it has been frustrated by Pyongyang´s persistent defiance of its warnings and admonitions. Observers say China could push harder but is wary of destabilising North Korea for fear it might collapse and be replaced by a reunified Korea allied with the United States. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53067 PARIS, April 12: Some 70 ceremonial masks originating from Arizona´s Hopi tribe were sold for more than 900,000 euros ($1.2 million) on Friday after a legal challenge failed to prevent an auction decried by opponents as "sacrilege". The sale of the brightly coloured "Kachina" visages and headdresses by the Neret-Minet auction house took place only hours after a court rejected a request for an injunction from representatives of the Native American tribe, who say the objects are sacred and should be returned to them.[break] Bidders crowded into the auction house for the sale, which saw the masks fetch a total of 931,435 euros from several buyers. High-profile figures including actor Robert Redford and the US ambassador to Paris had called for the sale to be cancelled or delayed, but the court ruled that the auction did not violate the law. The auction outraged members of the 18,000-strong Hopi tribe, who say the items are blessed with divine spirits. Two Arizona museums had also called for the sale to be cancelled. Neret-Minet said there were no grounds to halt the sale because the items were acquired legally by a French collector during a 30-year residence in the United States. It welcomed the court´s ruling, saying a ban would have set a dangerous precedent. "It seems important not to create a precedent banning the sale of all objects of a sacred nature, whatever the culture concerned," the auction house said in a statement. "Our goal has always been to showcase Hopi culture and to make it accessible to the greatest number of people in the strictest accordance with the law." But Bo Lomahquahu, a 25-year-old Hopi and student in Paris who attended the auction, said the sale should never have been allowed to take place. "They aren´t just art objects, we believe they have a spirit in them," he told AFP. Lomahquahu said the objects were part of private rituals and were not meant to even be on public display and that he hoped buyers would return the masks to the Hopi. In the court ruling allowing the sale, judge Magali Bouvier said that while the masks may be considered to have a "sacred value or religious nature", they did not qualify to be banned for sale. "The mere fact that these objects can be qualified as religious... does not confer on them the character of property the sale of which would be manifestly illegal," the judge wrote. A French lawyer for the tribe, Pierre Servan-Schreiber, described the ruling as "restrictive and ill-founded", but said he hoped opponents´ efforts had raised public awareness. "It is the beginning of a real awareness in public opinion that not everything can be bought and sold, especially not something that is so intimate and sacred," he said. In a letter of support to the tribe, Hollywood star Redford had written that the masks "belong to the Hopi and the Hopi alone". "To auction these would be, in my opinion, a sacrilege -- a criminal gesture that contains grave moral repercussions. "I would hope that these sacred items can be returned to the Hopi tribe where they belong. They are not for auction," added Redford, who described himself "as a close friend" of the tribe. US ambassador to Paris Charles Rivkin had also urged a postponement and said through Twitter on Friday that he was "saddened" by the sale of the "sacred Hopi cultural objects". At least one buyer at the auction, the Fondation Joe Dassin named after a French singer-songwriter who died in 1980, said it would be returning a mask bought for 3,700 euros to the tribe. A representative said Dassin, a popular musician in the early 1970s, had been "adopted" by a Hopi tribe while studying in the United States in the 1960s. The sale of sacred Native American artefacts has been outlawed in the United States since 1990 -- legislation which has allowed the Hopi tribe to recover items held by American museums in the past -- but the law does not extend to sales overseas. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53037 PYONGYANG, North Korea, April 12: As the world watches to see what North Korea´s next move will be in a high-stakes game of brinksmanship with the United States, residents of its capital aren´t hunkering down in bunkers and preparing for the worst. Instead, they are out on the streets en masse getting ready for the birthday of national founder Kim Il Sung — the biggest holiday of the year. The festivities leading up to Kim´s birthday come amid fears that North Korea may be planning to test launch a new missile in retaliation for what it claims are provocative war games by U.S. and South Korean troops just across the Korean border. [break]Even at such a seemingly innocuous setting as a flower show in Kim´s honor, North Korea´s warning that it is prepared to strike back if pushed too far is on prominent display. This year´s exhibition of "Kimilsungia" — which North Koreans claim their scientists have turned into the most beautiful orchid in the world — is built around mockups of red-tipped missiles, slogans hailing the military and reminders of the threats that North Koreans feel are all around them. "It is because we have a nuclear deterrent like nuclear weapons that we are able to live our normal lives and have a beautiful flower exhibition like this," said Kim Sung Sim, a Pyongyang greenhouse worker who contributed to the display, which opened Friday. North Korean children hold up red scarves to be tied around their necks during an induction ceremony into the Korean Children´s Union, the first political organization for North Koreans, held at a stadium in Pyongyang on Friday, April 12, 2013. (AP) The escalation of tensions comes as North Korea is also celebrating a slew of anniversaries for its young leader, Kim Jong Un, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, longtime leader Kim Jong Il. He was named head of the Workers´ Party a year ago Thursday, and marks his first year as head of the National Defense Commission, the top government body, on Saturday. Whether this year´s celebrations will include a missile launch or some other action that could escalate the tensions remains to be seen. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived in Seoul on Friday for talks with South Korean officials, warned the North not to test fire a missile. "If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it´s across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community," Kerry told reporters. He said the test would be a "huge mistake" for Kim. A senior U.S military official told reporters there was no sign of military movements in the North backing up its threats, and no real prospect of war. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he wasn´t authorized to speak publicly about military intelligence. But that doesn´t mean North Korea won´t put on some sort of a military show. During last year´s celebrations, North Korea failed in an attempt to send a satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket. The U.S. and its allies criticized the launch as a covert test of ballistic missile technology. North Korea tried again in December and succeeded. That was followed by the country´s third underground nuclear test on Feb. 12. Officials in Seoul and Washington say Pyongyang appears to be preparing to test-fire a medium-range missile designed to be capable of reaching Guam. Foreign experts have dubbed the missile the "Musudan" after the northeastern village where North Korea has a launch pad, and say it has a range of 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles). A medium- or long-range missile test would be particularly significant because North Korea may now be capable of arming a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in an assessment revealed Thursday. Kerry refused to comment specifically Friday on that intelligence report, but said the North is still some time away from having a nuclear bomb that is "small, light and diversified." South Korean officials have said they do not believe Pyongyang can place a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile yet, but have put their military on high alert. Japan has also deployed PAC-3 missile interceptor units around Tokyo to protect its capital. A Chinese city near the border with North Korea staged an air raid drill on Thursday amid the tensions, state media said. Authorities in Huichen, a city of 250,000 people in Jilin province, sounded alarms in residential areas and led participants to underground shelters, the China News Service reported. It wasn´t clear how long the drill had been planned or how many people took part. Calls to the city´s spokesman and civil air defense office rang unanswered. Kerry, who is also visiting China and Japan, is hoping to get Beijing to join the United States in pressuring Pyongyang. China backed North Korea with troops during the 1950-53 Korean War and has been a major economic pipeline for the impoverished country. With little arable land, North Korea has struggled to feed its people, with two-thirds of the population of 24 million grappling with chronic food shortages, according to the World Food Program. In Pyongyang on Friday, thousands of schoolchildren were amassed at Kim Il Sung Stadium for the induction of second-graders from around the country into the Korean Children´s Union, one of the first steps into North Korea´s political structure. They pledged to study hard and to build up strength to defend their nation. Retired military officers helped them tie on red scarves to complete the ritual. "The U.S is our sworn enemy," said Ri So Hyang, a 13-year-old taking part in the ceremony. She said her brother had just enlisted. "I hope he´ll fight well against the U.S. imperialists since I cannot." Elsewhere around the city, workers tidied up buildings and roads alongside banners that read "Defend to the death" and called on citizens to become "human bombs" for leader Kim Jong Un. Though few North Koreans have access to international media, and instead get their news from state media, they said they were aware of the tensions with the U.S. At the flower exhibition, a guide called the current political situation "complicated." "I don´t know whether there will be a missile launch test, but if we do I think it will be just for national defense," Kim Jong Gum said. "And I think there´s no need for other countries to try to tell us what to do and what not to do." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53030 SEOUL, April 12: US Secretary of State John Kerry slammed North Korea´s "unacceptable" rhetoric Friday, while voicing US support for South Korean moves towards a possible dialogue with Pyongyang. Speaking to reporters in Seoul, Kerry said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un would be making a "huge mistake" if he pushed ahead with an expected missile launch, and pressed China to exert more leverage over its allies in Pyongyang.[break] But with military tensions on the Korean peninsula at their highest level for years, Kerry said Washington also chose to "honour" the vision of South Korea´s new President Park Geun-Hye, who was elected on a pledge of greater engagement with Pyongyang. "President Park was elected with a different vision for the possibilities of peace and we honour that vision," Kerry said. "We´re prepared to work with conviction that relations between North and South can improve and they can improve very quickly. "I think we have lowered our rhetoric significantly and we are attempting to find a way for reasonableness to prevail here," he added. US Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks to the US Chamber of Commerce in Seoul on April 12, 2013. (AFP) Kerry, making his first trip to Asia as Secretary of State, met earlier with Park, who in recent days has made a series of statements that were seen as offering Pyongyang a dialogue. On Friday, Yonhap news agency quoted Park as telling ruling party officials that the South should meet with the North and "listen to what North Korea thinks". There was no indication what form such a meeting might take. "We want to emphasise that the real goal should not be reinforcing the fact that we will defend our allies -- which we will -- but it should be emphasising for everybody the possibilities of peace," Kerry said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=53021 ROME, April 12: Italy´s Silvio Berlusconi on Friday said he could consider supporting a candidate for president from his rivals on the left but only on condition that they form a grand coalition government with him. "We are certainly ready to discuss it," the scandal-tainted former prime minister, who leads a centre-right coalition that came a close second in February elections, told La Repubblica daily.[break] "If we agree a path to the presidency, then on the other side we need a grand coalition, with ministers chosen together. Otherwise, no deal," the 76-year-old billionaire tycoon said. The centre-left, which won the elections but failed to garner enough votes for a majority, on Thursday denied that its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, had been mooted as a possible president. Presidents in Italy are elected by parliament and agreement on a candidate is seen as key to ending the deadlock on forming a new government, which has dragged on since the inconclusive elections. Berlusconi, who has been convicted of tax fraud and is on trial for allegedly having sex with an underage prostitute, also denied that he wanted a president who would give him a legal amnesty. "Nobody wants an amnesty," Berlusconi said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52997 WASHINGTON, April 12: President Barack Obama urged North Korea to end its "belligerent approach" Thursday, as US officials sought to downplay a leaked intelligence report suggesting Pyongyang could fire a nuclear-tipped missile. The alarming assessment of the North´s nuclear capabilities, revealed by a US lawmaker at a congressional hearing, came as tensions on the Korean peninsula mounted over an expected missile launch by Pyongyang in the coming days.[break] A senior official traveling with US Secretary of State John Kerry to Seoul, where he was due on Friday, again pressed China to encourage its wayward ally to stop its destabilizing nuclear activities and threats to the region. The North´s December rocket launch and February nuclear test, along with UN sanctions imposed for each, are at the core of the current crisis that has seen Pyongyang threaten nuclear strikes against the United States and its allies. Speaking at the White House, Obama said "nobody wants to see a conflict" with the North, but emphasized that the United States was ready to take "all necessary steps to protect its people" and defend its allies in the region. "We both agree that now is the time for North Korea to end the kind of belligerent approach that they´ve been taking," Obama said, appearing by the side of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon after talks in the Oval Office. "It´s important for North Korea, like every other country in the world, to observe basic rules and norms." The top US official traveling with Kerry, who will also visit Beijing and Tokyo during his trip to Asia, said China had a key role to play in the crisis. "China has a huge stake in stability, and the continued North Korean pursuit of a nuclear-armed missile capability is the enemy of stability," the official said. In Washington, Congressman Doug Lamborn, reading from an unclassified portion of a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report, said Pyongyang could be capable of launching a nuclear warhead, albeit an unpredictable one. "DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles," said the report, according to the Republican lawmaker. "However, the reliability will be low." But the Pentagon and the director of national intelligence quickly threw cold water on the assessment. Pentagon spokesman George Little said that while he could not speak to the report in its entirety, "it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed, or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced" by the lawmaker. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper concurred, stressing in a statement that the passage read by Lamborn "is not an Intelligence Community assessment." "Moreover, North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile," Clapper added. The leaked intelligence, however, marked the first time the US government had suggested North Korea may have succeeded in a years-long quest to miniaturize a nuclear device so that it could be placed on a missile. Foreign spy services and arms experts have struggled to track North Korea´s progress in this effort. UN chief Ban earlier told CNN there was no independent confirmation of the DIA report. Intelligence officials in Seoul say the North has two mid-range missiles ready for imminent launch from its east coast, and South Korea and Japan remained on heightened alert for any test. But the North´s state media focused its attention on Thursday´s first anniversary of new leader Kim Jong-Un becoming head of the ruling Workers´ Party and next Monday´s birthday celebrations for late founder Kim Il-Sung. "History has never seen any socialist leader like him," the official party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said in praise of Kim Jong-Un, calling him the "No. 1 man of conviction and will." In apparent reference to its missiles, North Korea said its units were on standby for a launch. Although Pyongyang has not announced any launch, many observers believe it will take place during the build-up to the April 15 birthday anniversary. Yonhap news agency quoted military sources as saying the North was moving multiple missiles around in an apparent bid to confuse outside intelligence gatherers about its intentions. The North last week told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang they had until April 10 to consider evacuation, and warned foreigners in South Korea to get out ahead of a possible "thermo-nuclear" war. The European Union said the seven EU countries with embassies in North Korea saw no need to leave, adding it saw no risk to EU citizens in the South. Despite the assurances, there is still growing global concern that sky-high tensions might trigger an incident that could swiftly escalate. The mid-range missiles mobilized by the North are reported to be untested Musudan models with an estimated range of up to 2,485 miles (4,000 kilometers). That would cover any target in South Korea and Japan, and possibly even US military bases on the Pacific island of Guam. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52986 SEOUL, April 11: North Korea kept the world on edge Thursday over an expected missile launch while turning its own energies to celebrating leaders past and present amid soaring tensions on the Korean peninsula. The United States warned North Korea it was skating a "dangerous line", as South Korea remained on heightened alert for any missile test that could start a whole new cycle of tensions in a region already on a hair-trigger.[break] G8 foreign ministers meeting in London drove home the message, condemning "in the strongest possible terms" the North´s nuclear activities and threats to the region. The North´s state media focused its attention, however, on Thursday´s first anniversary of new leader Kim Jong-Un becoming head of the ruling Worker´s Party and next Monday´s birthday celebrations for late founder Kim Il-Sung. The official party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun praised Kim Jong-Un as the "No. 1 man of conviction and will" and credited him with the success of the country´s long range-rocket launch in December and February´s nuclear test. "History has never seen any socialist leader like him," the newspaper said. The launch and test, along with the UN sanctions imposed for each, are at the core of the current crisis that has seen Pyongyang threaten nuclear strikes against the United States and its allies. South Korean intelligence says the North has prepared two mid-range missiles for imminent launch from its east coast, despite warnings from ally China to avoid provocative moves at a time of soaring military tensions. In apparent reference to its missiles, North Korea said its units were on standby for a launch. "The powerful strike means of our revolutionary armed forces are on standby for launch with precise coordinates of targets input into warheads," the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement on state media. If fired, they will turn enemy strongholds into "a sea of fire", it said. Although Pyongyang has not announced any launch, many observers believe it will take place during the build-up to the April 15 birthday anniversary. State media said foreign delegations had already begun arriving in Pyongyang for the event, one of the most important dates on the North´s calendar. The missile launch may also coincide with some high-profile visits to South Korea, with both US Secretary of State John Kerry and NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Seoul this week. Rasmussen held talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se on Thursday and they agreed Pyongyang should halt its bellicose rhetoric and provocative actions, Yun´s office said. Yonhap news agency quoted military sources as saying the North was moving multiple missiles around in an apparent bid to confuse outside intelligence-gatherers about its intentions. "North Korea... with its bellicose rhetoric, its actions, has been skating very close to a dangerous line," US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday. "Our country is fully prepared to deal with any contingency, any action that North Korea may take or any provocation that they may instigate," Hagel added. The North last week told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang they had until April 10 to consider evacuation, and warned foreigners in South Korea to get out ahead of a possible "thermo-nuclear" war. The European Union said the seven EU countries with embassies in North Korea saw no need to leave, and added that it saw no risk to EU citizens in the South. Despite the reassurances, there is still growing global concern that sky-high tensions might trigger an incident that could swiftly escalate. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned against heating up the crisis, and stressed that Moscow and Washington were cooperating closely. "On North Korea we have no differences with the United States," Lavrov said after meeting John Kerry on the sidelines of the G8 meeting. In a statement after their talks, ministers "condemned in the strongest possible terms the continued development of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes by the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK), including its uranium enrichment". They warned of further sanctions in case of a missile launch. The mid-range missiles mobilised by the North are reported to be untested Musudan models with an estimated range of up to 4,000 kilometres (2,485 miles). That would cover any target in South Korea and Japan, and possibly even US military bases on the Pacific island of Guam. Japan, whose armed forces have been authorised to shoot down any North Korean missile headed towards its territory, has deployed Patriot missiles in its capital as a pre-emptive defence measure. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52964 BEIRUT, April 11: Six children were among at least 57 people killed in southern Syria as the army launched an all-out assault on two towns in Daraa province, a watchdog said on Thursday. "At least six children, seven women, 16 rebel fighters, 16 other unidentified men and 12 army troops were killed on Wednesday, in fighting, shelling and summary executions waged after the army launched an assault on Al-Sanamein and Ghabagheb," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.[break] Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP the army´s assault came a day after a dozen troops defected from a nearby military post to join the rebels. "The defectors took refuge in the area of Al-Sanamein and Ghabagheb, which up until then had remained somewhat more calm than other areas of Daraa," said Abdel Rahman. "The army launched its assault, and shelled several houses," he added. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52961 DHAKA, April 11: Bangladesh police arrested the editor of an influential pro-opposition newspaper on Thursday after he was accused of sedition and inciting religious tension in the Muslim-majority nation. The arrests follow a nationwide crackdown on the opposition including the detention of more than 200 senior officials of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the entire leadership of the largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami.[break] Police said Mahmudur Rahman, 59, the editor of the Bengali daily Amar Desh, was arrested from the newspaper office on charges that the daily published stories violating the country´s laws. "We have arrested him in a case filed against him in December," Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman told AFP, adding that he was also accused of publishing false and derogatory information that incited religious tension. The December case against Rahman was related to hacking and publishing of leaked calls between a judge of the country´s controversial war crimes tribunal and an expatriate legal expert, he added. Mahmudur Rahman, who served as a deputy minister for energy in the cabinet led by (BNP) leader Khaleda Zia between 2001 and 2006, bought Amar Desh in 2008. He became its acting editor and made it an opposition mouthpiece. Amid rising political tensions, strikes and deadly protests, Amar Desh´s circulation has increased six-fold in recent months to 200,000 daily and is now one of the most visited Bangladeshi news websites. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52927 LONDON, April 10: British scientist Robert Edwards, who was awarded a Nobel prize for his pioneering work in developing in vitro fertilisation (IVF), died on Wednesday aged 87, his university announced. Edwards spent his career making the dream of having a baby come true for millions of people worldwide, running into conflict with the Catholic Church and fellow scientists on his way. [break] He was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 2010, three decades after the birth of the world´s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978, and five decades after he first began experimenting. "It is with deep sadness that the family announces that Professor Sir Robert Edwards, Nobel prizewinner, scientist and co-pioneer of IVF, passed away peacefully in his sleep on April 10, 2013 after a long illness," the University of Cambridge said in a statement. "He will be greatly missed by family, friends and colleagues." Edwards was too frail to pick up his Nobel prize in Stockholm in 2010, leaving that to his wife Ruth, with whom he had five daughters. However, he remained a fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge until his death. His work was motivated by his belief, as he once described it, that "the most important thing in life is having a child. Nothing is more special than a child". "Bob Edwards is one of our greatest scientists," said Mike Macnamee, chief executive of Bourn Hall, the IVF clinic that Edwards founded with Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecological surgeon. "His inspirational work in the early 1960s led to a breakthrough that has enhanced the lives of millions of people worldwide." He added: "It was a privilege to work with him and his passing is a great loss to us all." Born in Yorkshire in northern England on September 27, 1925, into a working-class family, Edwards served in the British army during World War II before returning home to study first agricultural sciences and then animal genetics. Building on earlier research which showed that egg cells from rabbits could be fertilised in test tubes when sperm was added, Edwards developed the same technique for humans. In a laboratory in Cambridge, eastern England, in 1968, he first saw life created outside the womb in the form of a human blastocyst, an embryo that has developed for five to six days after fertilisation. "I´ll never forget the day I looked down the microscope and saw something funny in the cultures," Edwards once recalled. "I looked down the microscope and what I saw was a human blastocyst gazing up at me. I thought: ´We´ve done it´." But Edwards and Steptoe, who died in 1988, were forced to defend their work in the face of severe opposition, from the media, the Catholic Church -- and fellow scientists. At a conference on biomedical ethics in Washington in 1971, the Nobel laureate James Watson, who with Francis Crick had discovered DNA, said IVF research would necessitate infanticide. Addressing the conference, Edwards defended his work with the passion and energy that characterised all his work, and received a standing ovation. He remained convinced to the end that the Catholic Church is wrong to object to IVF, saying clergy who condemn the technique are "totally mistaken". "Catholics are told not to do it and yet Catholics go and do it. All the popes have done for themselves is teach their people to disobey them," he argued. Such was the controversy surrounding the birth of Louise Brown that her mother had to give birth in secret to avoid the media, but Edwards always spoke of it with great pride. Celebrating Brown´s 30th birthday in 2008, he said: "I think the whole thing is incredible." "Few biologists have so positively and practically impacted on humankind," said Peter Braude, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Kings College London. "Bob´s boundless energy, his innovative ideas, and his resilience despite the relentless criticism by naysayers, changed the lives of millions of ordinary people who now rejoice in the gift of their own child. He leaves the world a much better place." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52926 NEW DELHI, April 10: An Indian court on Wednesday ordered federal investigators to reopen a case against a ruling Congress party leader over deadly 1984 riots that killed at least 3,000 members of the Sikh community. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had earlier cleared Jagdish Tytler and closed the case but a local judge in New Delhi ruled that his alleged role in the November 1984 riots must be investigated again.[break] "The court today gave directions to the CBI to record the statements of the witnesses who had (allegedly) seen Tytler lead the mob," H.S. Phoolka, lawyer for one of the riot victims, told reporters outside the court. The court also asked the CBI to investigate whether Tytler had incited a mob that killed three Sikh men at a shrine in Delhi during the riots, Phoolka added. A CBI report filed in 2009 was challenged by Lakhwinder Kaur, whose husband was among those killed in the riots triggered by the October 1984 assassination of then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. In this photograph taken on June 7, 1984, an Indian Sikh militant throws a tear gas canister back at Indian police after it was fired to breakup violence around the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, also known as Golden Temple, for the second day, as the news of the death of the Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale spread in Amritsar, Punjab. (AFP Files) Kaur argued that the CBI had not recorded the testimony of two key witnesses who had moved to the United States following the riots. The assassination was carried out in revenge for Gandhi´s decision to send the army to flush Sikh separatists out of the Golden Temple -- Sikhism´s holiest shrine located in the northern Indian city of Amritsar. The government says nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the riots following her killing, while human rights activists say the figure was 4,000. Activists accuse Congress of having turned a blind eye to the killing of Sikhs and say some of its leaders, including Tytler, may have helped incite mobs. Tytler, a former minister, denies any wrongdoing. Kaur on Wednesday said she was "relieved" by the ruling. "Women lost their husbands and children were orphaned in the riots. We had started to lose hope (of any action)," she said. A Congress spokeswoman said the party would wait for the court to come to its conclusions before taking any action. "Once the court comes out with something conclusive, it will be examined," Renuka Chowdhury told a news conference in Delhi. Sikhs make up around two percent of Hindu-majority India´s population of 1.2 billion. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52909 TEHRAN, April 9: A powerful earthquake struck near Iran´s Gulf port city of Bushehr on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people and injuring 800 but leaving Iran´s only nuclear power plant intact, officials said. Shocks from the quake were felt across the Gulf in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, provoking panic and the brief evacuation of some office towers, residents and media said.[break] Bushehr provincial Governor Fereydoon Hasanvand told state television at least 30 people were killed while more than 800 people were hurt and and receiving medical attention. There were no immediate details on where the casualties occurred, but the head of Iran´s Red Crescent rescue corps, Mahmoud Mozafar, said initial reports indicated that at least one village near Khormoj had been razed. He said major damage was probable considering the rural nature of the stricken area, home to some 12,000 inhabitants. Media reports said search and rescue teams accompanied by security forces were dispatched to the area, to which telephone connection and electricity had been cut. Tents, blankets and food have also been sent to the area, the Fars news agency reported. Meanwhile, Hasanvand told state television "no damage at all has been caused" to the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, nearly 90 kilometers (55 miles) northwest of quake´s epicenter. The facility´s chief engineer, Mahmoud Jafari, told Arabic-language Al-Alam television that "no operational or security protocols were breached" by the quake. The 6.1 magnitude quake hit at 4:22 pm (1152 GMT) with a depth of 12 kilometres (7.5 miles), in the area of Kaki, according to the Iranian Seismological Centre which has registered more than a dozen after shocks, the strongest at 5.3 magnitude. The US Geological Survey, which monitors quakes worldwide, ranked the quake at a more powerful 6.3 magnitude. In Dubai, hundreds of kilometres down the Gulf from Bushehr and home to the world´s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, local media reported that several high-rise buildings were briefly evacuated. "We felt a mild earthquake in Dubai a while ago. Chandeliers were shaking," Tweeted one resident. There were no reports that Burj Khalifa, which stands at 828 metres (2,717 feet) high, had been evacuated. Residents also said there were some evacuations in Bahrain. In nearby Abu Dhabi, one resident said: "I was watching television when suddenly the whole building started shaking. It was very scary." Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating. A double earthquake, one measuring 6.2 and the other 6.0, struck northwest Iran in August last year, killing more than 300 people and injuring 3,000. In December 2010, a big quake struck the southern city of Bam. It killed 31,000 people -- about a quarter of the population -- and destroyed the city´s ancient mud-built citadel. The nuclear power plant in Bushehr, a long-delayed project finished by Russia, is yet to become fully operational. On November 16, an International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran, the only country with an operating nuclear reactor that does not adhere to the post-Chernobyl Convention on Nuclear Safety, has unloaded fuel at the Bushehr plant, shutting down the country´s only functioning nuclear power station. Iran´s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said at the time the move was a "normal technical procedure" but Western diplomats said it raised fresh questions about safety there. Iran is at loggerheads with world powers over its development of a controversial nuclear programme, which the Western and Israel suspect is aimed at military objectives despite repeated denials by Tehran. Tuesday´s quake coincided with Iran unveiling a uranium production facility and two extraction mines in centre of the country. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52863 TEHRAN, April 9: Iran insisted on Tuesday it will not suspend its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent nor will it ship out its existing stockpile -- two keys demands of world powers in failed nuclear talks with Tehran. "We will continue to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity as long as it is needed to fuel the Tehran research reactor," atomic chief Feryedoon Abbasi Davani told reporters in remarks published by the ISNA news agency.[break] Iran, he said, will neither "ship out its stockpile nor dilute the material" -- which at 20 percent purity is only a few technical steps short of bomb-grade enriched uranium. The two issues have been at the centre of nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers in Almaty, which ended in deadlock at the weekend. The so-called group of P5+1, comprising the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany, are engaged in a diplomatic effort to convince Iran to curb its nuclear activities in return for some sanctions relief. But Abbasi Davani said those offers need to be upgraded to a more "logical proposal". He did not elaborate. According to the latest report by the UN´s atomic watchdog agency, Iran has amassed 280 kilograms (617 pounds) of uranium enriched to 20 percent, 115 kilos of which have been converted into fuel. Iran´s insistence that its controversial nuclear programme is aimed only at developing a peaceful energy programme are disputed by Western powers, who along with Israel believe the Islamic republic is masking efforts to build an atom bomb. Iran has been slapped with a set of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to halt its enrichment work. Those measures, reinforced by multiple sanctions by the United States and the European Union choking Iran´s access to global banking sector and its vital oil income, have worsened an already ailing economy struggling with high inflation and unemployment. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52855 KABUL, Afghanistan, April 9: The 21-year-old Afghan woman said she fled her abusive husband only to be raped at gunpoint by a stranger who was supposed to help her. The man then settled in front of a TV set, putting the gun on a table by his side. Choosing her moment, Mariam grabbed it and shot her assailant in the head, then turned the gun on herself.[break] "Three days later I woke up in the hospital," said Mariam, shyly removing a scarf from her head to reveal a partially shaved head and a long jagged scar that ran almost the length of her head where the bullet grazed her scalp. From the hospital, Mariam was sent to a police station and from there to Afghanistan´s main women´s prison, Badam Bagh, which in Pashto means Almond Garden. She is one of 202 inmates in a jail mostly filled with women serving time for so-called "moral" crimes. Many had sought justice for domestic violence or tried to run away from an abusive situation. Picture taken March 28, 2013 shows an Afghan female prisoner outside her cell at Badam Bagh, Afghanistan´s central women´s prison, in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP) Under international pressure, Afghanistan has made some progress in advancing women´s rights after years of repressive Taliban rule that banned girls from going to school and forced women to wear all-encompassing burqas and leave their homes only when accompanied by a male relative. But the country remains a deeply conservative society run by men who most often turn to tribal jirgas that routinely hand down rulings offering up girls and women to settle debts and disputes. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Badam Bagh prison, built by the Italian government six years ago to house female inmates from the Kabul area. The Associated Press recently was given rare access to the facility. More than two-thirds of the 202 inmates are serving sentences of up to seven years for leaving their husbands, refusing to accept an arranged marriage, or leaving their parents´ home with a man of their choice, according to the prison´s director, Zaref Jan Naebi. The rest face theft, assault or narcotics charges. Two women are in jail on murder. Some of the women were jailed while pregnant, others with their small children. Naebi said 62 children are living with their imprisoned mothers, sharing the same gray, steel bunk beds and napping in the afternoon behind a sheet draped from the upper bunk, oblivious to the chatter and the crackling noises from the small TV sets shoved off to one side of the rooms. Before the two-story prison, named for the sprawling almond orchard across the street, was built, female prisoners were held in rundown cement cellblocks in the center of Kabul in a jail that predated the Taliban. Others were locked up in the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi jail, which also houses 1,300 male inmates. At Badam Bagh, six inmates live in cells originally intended to house four. Mariam has spent the past three months in one of them, without any idea of why she was imprisoned, what charges she faces or when she can leave. "I haven´t gone to court. I am just waiting," Mariam told the AP, hugging a ratty brown sweater to protect her from the damp cold of the prison. While it might not be against the law to run away or escape a forced marriage, the courts routinely convict women fleeing abusive homes with "the intent to commit adultery," which are most often simply referred to as "moral crimes," says a United Nations report released last month. It also said most cases of abuse go unreported. The director-general of prisoners, Gen. Amer Mohammad Jamsheed, said about 650 women are jailed nationwide, and "most are in jail for moral crimes." It was not possible to determine whether this represents an increase from previous years, though Georgette Gagnon, director of human rights with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan, said that more women are now reporting abuses and that many wind up being charged as a result. Zubaida Akbar, founder of the volunteer Haider organization, which fights for women´s rights and sends lawyers and other representatives to the women´s prison to defend the inmates in court, said women often risk being jailed themselves if they seek justice against the violence. "Perceptions toward women are still the same in most places, tribal laws are the only laws followed and in most places nothing has changed in the basics of women´s lives. There are policies and papers and even laws but nothing has changed," Akbar said. In the overwhelmingly male-dominated legal system, Akbar said even when a female inmate gets in front of the judge, "He says ´it is her husband, she should go back and make it work. It is her fault and not her place to leave him — not in our society.´" Surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire, the children being kept with their mothers at the Badam Bagh prison play in a single small open space. Nearby women hang out their laundry. On balconies obscured by mesh and steel bars women sit and smoke. Naebi, the jail´s director, said inmates attend a variety of classes during the week, ranging from basic literacy, to crafts and sewing, so they will have a skill after they are released. The women interviewed by AP agreed to tell their story on condition that only their first names were used for fear of being stigmatized after their release from prison. Nuria, dressed in maroon from head to toe, quieted her infant boy as she told of going to court to demand a divorce from a husband she was forced by her parents to marry. "I wanted to get a divorce but he wouldn´t let me go. I never wanted to marry him. I loved someone else but my father made me. He threatened to kill me if I didn´t," Nuria said. "When I went to court for the divorce, instead of giving me a divorce, they charged me with running away," she said. The man she wanted to marry also was sent to jail. When she went to court Nuria said she didn´t know she was pregnant. Her son was born in jail. After he learned he had a son, her husband offered to drop the charges if she returned home. Nuria, who has eight months left to serve, refused. "He wants me to come home now because I have his son but I said no," she said. Adia, who is now seven months pregnant, said she left her drug-addicted husband, then ran away with another man when her parents insisted she go back — though she insists it was a platonic relationship. "I was desperate to get away and he said he would help me," said Adia, 27. "But he didn´t, he just left me. I went to the court. I was angry. I wanted him charged and my husband charged, but instead they charged me and sentenced me to six years. I went back to court to appeal the conviction and this time I was sentenced to seven and a half years." At 60, Fauzia is the oldest inmate in the facility. She stared out of the prison bars. Already seven years in jail, Fauzia is serving a 17-year sentence for killing her husband and her daughter-in-law. Expressionless as she told her story, she rolled up her sleeve to display a mangled elbow that she said her husband smashed with a stick. She was his fourth wife. "I was in one room. I came into the next room and they were there having sexual relations. I found a big knife and killed them both," she said in a voice empty of emotion. Naebi, the prison director, confirmed the charges against the prisoners who spoke with the AP, but she did not provide details. Zubeida, the women´s activist, said despite what she calls a veneer of progress in Afghanistan, little is different for most Afghan women. "We have the appearance of everything, but when you dig deep down below the surface nothing fundamentally has changed. It has been tough. It has been really tough," she said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52810 (Updated) LONDON, April 8: Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the controversial "Iron Lady" who shaped a generation of British politics, died following a stroke on Monday at the age of 87, her spokesman said. Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister David Cameron led tributes to Britain´s first woman premier, a right-wing titan and key figure in the Cold War.[break] "It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning," spokesman Lord Tim Bell said, referring to Thatcher´s children. The former premier, who led Britain from 1979 to 1990, suffered from dementia and has appeared rarely in public in recent years. She was last in hospital in December for a minor operation to remove a growth from her bladder. The former Conservative Party leader remains the only female premier in British history and was the 20th century´s longest continuous occupant of Downing Street. Her daughter once revealed that the former premier had to be repeatedly reminded that her husband Denis had died in 2003. She was told by doctors to quit public speaking a decade ago after a series of minor strokes. "The Queen was sad to hear the news of the death of Baroness Thatcher. Her Majesty will be sending a private message of sympathy to the family," Buckingham Palace said. Cameron said: "It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Lady Thatcher. We have lost a great leader, a great Prime Minister and a great Briton." Michael Howard, Conservative leader from 2003-2005, told Sky News television: "It´s terribly sad news. She was a titan in British politics. "I believe she saved the country, she transformed our economy and I believe she will go down in history as one of our very greatest prime ministers." Right-wingers hailed her as having hauled Britain out of the economic doldrums but the left accused her of dismantling traditional industry, claiming her reforms helped unpick the fabric of society. On the world stage, she built a close "special relationship" with US president Ronald Reagan which helped bring the curtain down on Soviet Communism. She also fiercely opposed closer ties with Europe. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925 in the market town of Grantham, eastern England, the daughter of a grocer. After grammar school and a degree in chemistry at Oxford University, she married businessman Denis in 1951 and two years later had twins, Carol and Mark. She was first elected to the House of Commons in 1959 and succeeded former prime minister Edward Heath as opposition Conservative leader in 1975 before becoming premier four years later. Her enduring legacy can be summed up as "Thatcherism" -- a set of policies which supporters say promoted personal freedom and broke down the class divisions that had riven Britain for centuries. Pushing her policies through pitched Thatcher´s government into a string of tough battles, though. When Argentina invaded the remote British territory of the Falkland Islands in 1982, Thatcher dispatched troops and ships, securing victory in two months. Margaret Thatcher: ´Iron Lady´ who changed Britain LONDON, April 08: Margaret Thatcher, Britain´s first female prime minister, who died on Monday aged 87, will be remembered as "The Iron Lady" who helped end the Cold War and whose economic reforms divided the country. Behind the bouffant hair, trademark handbag and schoolma´am voice was an uncompromising Conservative who regularly cut her male colleagues and opponents down to size with a sharp tongue and even sharper political brain. Right-wingers hailed her as having hauled Britain out of the economic doldrums but the left accused her of dismantling traditional industry, claiming her reforms helped unpick the fabric of society. On the world stage, she built a close "special relationship" with US president Ronald Reagan which helped bring the curtain down on Soviet Communism. She also fiercely opposed closer ties with Europe. But in the final years of her life, Thatcher -- the 20th century´s longest continuous occupant of 10 Downing Street, from 1979 to 1990 -- cut a subdued figure. After a series of minor strokes, she was told by doctors to quit public speaking in 2002 and, as dementia took hold, she appeared increasingly rarely in public. Her daughter Carol revealed the former premier had to be repeatedly reminded that her husband Denis had died in 2003. Meryl Streep portrayed both her rise to power and her period of failing health in the Hollywood film "The Iron Lady", which hit the screens in December 2011. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925 in the market town of Grantham, eastern England, the daughter of a grocer. After grammar school and a degree in chemistry at Oxford University, she married businessman Denis in 1951 and two years later had twins, Carol and Mark. She was first elected to the House of Commons in 1959 and succeeded former prime minister Edward Heath as opposition Conservative leader in 1975 before becoming premier four years later. Her enduring legacy can be summed up as "Thatcherism" -- a set of policies which supporters say promoted personal freedom and broke down the class divisions that had riven Britain for centuries. Pushing her policies through pitched Thatcher´s government into a string of tough battles, though. When Argentina invaded the remote British territory of the Falkland Islands in 1982, Thatcher dispatched troops and ships, securing victory in two months. Two years later, an Irish Republican Army bomb planted at her hotel in Brighton on the southern English coast, nearly killed her and her Cabinet during the Conservatives´ annual conference. And her government crushed a coal miners´ strike against pit closures in 1984-1985 after a bitter struggle, and union powers were curbed. But it was the same uncompromising style that initially earned her respect which eventually proved her undoing. One of her closest allies, Geoffrey Howe, resigned in 1990 with a devastating speech which blamed Thatcher´s fierce Euroscepticism. She faced a leadership challenge soon afterwards and quit after failing to receive the expected level of support, to be replaced by her finance minister John Major. After a tearful departure from Downing Street, she was appointed to the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. She also wrote her memoirs and delivered lectures around the world. But her public appearances became increasingly scarce in recent years as her health deteriorated. She was even forced to miss a planned 85th birthday party at Downing Street. Thatcher did, however, live long enough to see another Conservative, David Cameron, return to Downing Street after a gap of 13 years -- albeit at the head of a coalition government. "We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton," Cameron said following her death. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52807 NEW DELHI, April 8: Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, whose family still dominates India´s ruling party, may have been a middleman for an arms deal in the 1970s, according to diplomatic cables published Monday. The Hindu newspaper, accessing new information compiled by WikiLeaks, cites confidential US embassy cables stating that Gandhi was employed by Swedish group Saab-Scania to help sell its Viggen fighter jet.[break] Gandhi, who was then outside politics and working as a commercial pilot, was the "main negotiator" for Saab-Scania and was paid because of his access to his mother Indira Gandhi who was prime minister at the time, the cables say. They cite information given by Swedish embassy officials but also state that US officials were unable to confirm or deny the information. "We would have thought a transport pilot is not the best expert to rely upon in evaluating a fighter plane, but then we are speaking of a transport pilot who has another and perhaps more relevant qualification," a US diplomat was quoted as noting wryly in one of the cables. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991. His Italian-born widow Sonia is now head of the ruling Congress party and their son Rahul is positioned as a prime ministerial candidate before elections scheduled for next year. After entering politics reluctantly, Rajiv was later tarnished by a scandal involving Swedish gun manufacturer Bofors, which was accused of paying bribes to middlemen including an Italian businessman close to the Gandhis. The Congress party lost elections in 1989, a defeat partly attributed to the Bofors scandal. Saab-Scania ultimately lost in its bid to sell its Viggen jets to India. British-made Jaguar planes were selected for the tender. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52804 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 8:  Pakistan´s top court has ordered former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf to appear before the judges in connection with allegations that he committed treason while in power. The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a notice to be sent to Musharraf to appear in court the following day. [break] In this Sunday, March 24, 2013 photo, Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, gestures upon his arrival to Karachi airport, Pakistan. Musharraf was given approval on Sunday, April 7, 2013 to run for parliament in a remote northern district after being rejected in two other parts of the country, his aide said. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) The judges were responding to several petitions filed alleging that Musharraf committed treason by suspending the constitution and sacking senior judges, including the Supreme Court´s chief justice, while in office. Musharraf seized power in a military coup in 1999 but was forced to step down almost a decade later under threat of impeachment by Pakistan´s main political parties. Musharraf left Pakistan in 2008 and spent over four years in self-imposed exile before returning last month. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52772 ASAD ABAD, Afghanistan, April 7:  A NATO air attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed at least 10 children, officials said Sunday. The children were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province bordering Pakistan late on Saturday.[break] "Ten children and eight militants were killed in the strike, six women were wounded," Wasifullah Wasifi, the spokesman for Kunar province, told AFP. Shigal district governor Abdul Zahir confirmed the death toll and said people had brought the children´s bodies to the centre of the town. The wounded women were taken to Kunar´s central hospital, he said. An Afghan official involved in the operation who declined to be named said the air support was called in after local and coalition forces came under attack, resulting in the death of an American and injuries to several Afghans. The official said the force did not know there were women and children in the houses that were hit. Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces have been one of the most contentious issues in the campaign against Taliban insurgents, provoking harsh criticism from President Hamid Karzai and angry public protests. Sayed Rahman, security commander of Shigal, said one women was also among the dead. "We have reports that 10 children and one woman have been killed in the air strike," he said. A spokesman for NATO´s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the strike, but said up to 10 women and children were wounded in the attack rather than killed. A US civilian died in a militant attack at the spot, he said. The interior ministry said in a statement the attack by coalition forces killed six Taliban including two senior commanders. A NATO air strike on Thursday killed four Afghan police and two civilians in Ghazni province. That attack happened after Taliban insurgents raided a local police post before dawn and NATO planes were called in to support the officers. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52747 NEW YORK, April 6: Young supporters hold signs outside Hillary Rodham Clinton´s speeches urging her to run for U.S. president. Audiences listen with rapt attention as she discusses the plight of women and girls in developing countries. Even a long-expected book deal announcement generates lots of buzz. Not long after Clinton stepped down as President Barack Obama´s secretary of state this year, the "´will she or won´t she" question is already following her around like the supporters who held "Ready for Hillary" signs outside speeches this week in Washington and New York City — her first public talks since stepping down.[break] The runner-up of the 2008 Democratic presidential race is already the focus of the 2016 one. Tina Brown, editor in chief of Newsweek and the Daily Beast, which sponsored the Women in the World conference where Clinton spoke Friday, captured the buzz when introducing her. "Of course," Brown said, "the big question now about Hillary is, what´s next?" That elicited loud cheers — but no answer. Pointing to the U.S., Clinton said America´s position as a world leader demands that it devote full attention to empowering women to participate in the economy and society fully. She called for equal pay for women and encouraging women and girls to pursue careers in math and science. This image released by Women in the World shows former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking at the Women in the World Conference on Friday, April 5, 2013, in New York. (AP) "This truly is the unfinished business of the 21st century, and it is the work we are called to do," Clinton said. "I look forward to being your partner in all the days and years ahead." The 65-year-old former first lady has said she has no plans to pursue the White House again but has refrained from ruling anything out. Many Democrats view her as a worthy successor to President Barack Obama, with whom she waged a fierce struggle for the party´s nomination in 2008. Her popularity soared as secretary of state, although that may have been in part because she cast aside the sharp brand of politics that made her a polarizing figure at times in the past, in favor of diligent diplomacy. Some Clinton loyalists note that the last presidential election was only six months ago. But James Carville, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, signed on with the Ready for Hillary political action committee on Thursday, urging supporters to help lay the groundwork for a Clinton campaign. Carville said the "enthusiasm and hunger" for a Clinton presidency was "unlike anything I´ve ever seen." "We need to convert the hunger that´s out there for Hillary´s candidacy into a real grassroots organization," Carville said. Clinton is not expected to make a decision anytime soon and has outlined plans to write a memoir about her time at the State Department, advocate on behalf of women and girls and give speeches. With her book due out in the middle of 2014, she´ll have an opportunity to travel the country in the months before the midterm elections in 2014. Her biggest splash was her video announcement in support of gay marriage last month, a move that put her in line with most Democrats. Clinton had limited her comments on domestic policy as secretary of state, and her departure has freed her to speak more openly. What remains clear is that until she makes a choice, her every word, appearance and association will be scrutinized. And she´ll get plenty of encouragement. "I´ve been waiting for five years — all of us have been waiting for five years," said Aaron James Darr, a 22-year-old actor who recently formed a Broadway for Hillary 2016 group. Democrats see Clinton in a uniquely powerful spot and are willing to wait — for now. "It´s the most enviable position to be in because all you have to do is breathe the air every day," said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who advised her husband´s presidential campaign. "What political figure has that luxury?" http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52746 JOHANNESBURG, April 6: Nelson Mandela left hospital Saturday after a 10-day stay during which the 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon was treated for pneumonia, the South African president´s office said. "Former president Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital today, April 6, following a sustained and gradual improvement in his general condition," presidency spokesman Mac Maharaj said in a statement.[break] "The former president will now receive home-based high care." This latest stay in hospital was Mandela´s third since December. Last month he was admitted for a night for a scheduled check-up and in December he was hospitalised for 18 days for a lung infection and gallstones surgery. That stint was his longest since he walked free from 27 years in jail in 1990. Maharaj said Saturday that President Jacob Zuma extended his gratitude to all South Africans and people around the world for their support. "President Zuma thanks the hard-working medical team and hospital staff for looking after Madiba so efficiently," he said, using Mandela´s clan name. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52724 SEOUL, April 6: Foreign diplomats in North Korea appeared to be staying put Saturday, ignoring a warning by Pyongyang that they should consider evacuating their missions amid soaring nuclear tensions. Pyongyang had informed embassies it could not guarantee their safety if a conflict broke out as concerns grew that the isolated state was preparing a missile launch.[break] But most of their governments made it clear they had no immediate plans to withdraw personnel, and some suggested the advisory was a ruse to fuel growing global anxiety over the current crisis on the Korean peninsula. "The security of the German embassy and its exposure to danger are continually being evaluated," the German foreign ministry said in a statement. "For now, the embassy can continue working." A British Foreign Office spokeswoman, commenting on the North´s advisory, said: "We believe they have taken this step as part of their country´s rhetoric that the US poses a threat to them." The head of EU missions in Pyongyang had been scheduled to meet Saturday, but Britain said it was a routine gathering and no major decision was expected. In South Korea, a government official was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying diplomats would ignore the North´s appeal to leave. "Most foreign governments view the North Korean message as a way of ratcheting up tension on the Korean peninsula," the official said. Western tourists returning from organised tours in Pyongyang -- which have continued despite the tensions -- said the situation on the ground appeared calm, with life going on as normal. "We´re glad to be back but we didn´t feel frightened when we were there," said Tina Krabbe, from Denmark, arriving in Beijing after five days in the North. The embassy warning on Friday coincided with reports that North Korea had loaded two intermediate-range missiles on mobile launchers and hidden them in underground facilities near its east coast. "The North is apparently intent on firing the missiles without prior warning," the South´s Yonhap news agency quoted a senior government official as saying. They were reported to be untested Musudan missiles which are believed to have a range of around 3,000 kilometres (1,860 miles) that could theoretically be pushed to 4,000 kilometres with a light payload. That would cover any target in South Korea and Japan, and possibly even reach US military bases located on the Pacific island of Guam. White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday that Washington "would not be surprised" by a missile test, which would fit the North´s "current pattern of bellicose, unhelpful and unconstructive rhetoric and actions". North Korea, incensed by UN sanctions and South Korea-US military drills, has issued a series of apocalyptic threats of nuclear war in recent weeks. The North has no proven inter-continental ballistic missile capability that would enable it to strike more distant US targets, and many experts say it is unlikely it can even mount a nuclear warhead on a mid-range missile. Nevertheless, the international community is becoming increasingly skittish that, with tensions showing no sign of de-escalating, there is a real risk of the situation spiralling out of control. The latest expression of concern came from Communist icon Fidel Castro, who warned the danger of a nuclear conflict erupting was higher than it had been at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. If war broke out on the Korean peninsula "there would be a terrible slaughter of people", Castro wrote in a front-page article in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party´s newspaper. The United Nations said it had no plans to pull staff out after the North Korean warning message to embassies and NGOs in Pyongyang. According to the British Foreign office spokeswoman, embassies and organisations were told to inform the Pyongyang authorities by April 10 what assistance they would require should they wish to evacuate. "Our understanding is that the North Koreans were asking whether embassies are intending to leave, rather than advising them to leave," the spokeswoman said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was consulting with China over the warning, as well as the United States and other members of the stalled six-party talks on North Korea. North Korea refused on Saturday to lift a ban -- in place since Wednesday -- on South Koreans accessing their companies in the Seoul-funded Kaesong industrial zone on the North side of the border. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52720 WASHINGTON, April 6: US President Barack Obama has apologized to California´s top prosecutor after describing her as "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country," his spokesman said Friday. On a day that saw Obama´s wife, Michelle, also forced to backtrack during an interview in which she termed herself a "busy, single mother," the White House said the president telephoned Kamala Harris to say sorry.[break] "The president did speak with Attorney General Harris last night after he came back from his trip, and he called her to apologize for the distraction created by his comments," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. "They are old friends and good friends, and he did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general´s professional accomplishments." Obama made the remarks on Thursday during a fundraiser for his Democratic Party in the Golden State. His slip-of-the-tongue came after he lauded Harris as brilliant, dedicated and tough as he introduced her at the event. "She is exactly what you´d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country," he said. On Friday, Carney noted that Obama´s "best looking" remark about Harris came after the series of comments that praised her effectiveness as a prosecutor, but critics said the president´s conduct was nevertheless inappropriate. "It´s not a compliment. And for a president who has become a cultural model for many of his supporters in so many other ways, the example he´s setting here is disgraceful," said Jonathan Chait, of New York Magazine. The first lady, meanwhile, also ran into trouble when speaking to a CBS News affiliate in Vermont about the strains of being a working parent. "Believe me, as a busy single mother," she said, before correcting herself. "I shouldn´t say single. As a busy mother. Sometimes, you know, when you´ve got a husband who is president, it can feel a little single. But he´s there." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52715 ALMATY, Kazakhstan, April 6: Iran and world powers met Saturday for the second and final day of new talks aimed at breaking a decade-old deadlock over Tehran´s nuclear drive, with the clock again ticking down again on efforts to find a solution. The two sides held an indecisive first day of negotiations in the Kazakh city of Almaty on Friday that ended with only an agreement to meet again and Western officials admitting the positions were still far apart.[break] They most notably failed to resolve the main issue on the table -- whether Iran will accept some demands concerning its nuclear programme in return for relief on the sanctions that have hurt the Islamic republic´s economy in the past two years. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton started the day Saturday by meeting chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili. "During Ms Ashton and Dr Saeed Jalili´s meeting this morning the latest situation of the negotiations and different aspects of each side´s stances were discussed in detail," said an Iranian official. "The sides also exchanged views on ways to progress along the path of negotiations," said the official. The Iranian delegation also met separately with French and Chinese diplomats before all sides went into a full plenary session that is expected to conclude the Almaty talks. Iran resolutely insists on international recognition of its right to enrich uranium and wants that condition be a part of any deal. The world powers on the other hand say the onus is on Iran to take the first step. They insist on it ending enrichment to high levels and shuttering the Fordo mountain bunker where such activity takes place before any recognition for Iran´s nuclear rights are granted. The talks concluded on Friday after two plenary sessions lasting a combined six hours with Iran answering a series of questions about its list of demands. A Western official said the two sides still had strongly differing visions of ways to solve the dispute. "We had a long and substantial discussion on the issues, but we remain a long way apart on the substance," the Western official said after Friday´s talks. "We are now evaluating the situation and will meet again tomorrow (Saturday)." Russian negotiator Sergei Ryabkov summed up the day by saying that the difficulty at the talks proved their seriousness. "The answers prompted more questions," Russian news agencies quoted Ryabkov as saying. "But this proves that these talks are serious." And US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also sought to sound upbeat. "They were talking about the real issues at hand, which, as you know, has not always been the case," she told reporters in Washington. "But that´s a different matter than whether they actually made progress that we can report yet." Iran in particular wants to see an end to the biting sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States that limit the Islamic republic´s banking activities that cut the amount of cash it can get for the oil it still manages to sell abroad. The powers -- comprised of the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany and known collectively as the P5+1 -- argue that such a sweeping gesture does not correspond with their persistent concerns over the possible military dimensions of Iran´s work. The P5+1 grouping is particularly worried about Iran´s enrichment to levels of up to 20 percent and want Iran to ship out its existing stockpile of 20-percent enriched material. Iran denies it is developing the atomic bomb and argues that it needs its nuclear programme for peaceful medical and energy needs. Iran has reportedly been offered the right to deal in some precious metals and perform small financial transactions now prohibited by international sanctions. Tehran says it is being asked too much for too little in return. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52704 MOSCOW, April 6: North Korea has warned diplomats in Pyongyang that it can´t guarantee the safety of embassies in the event of a conflict and suggested they may want to evacuate their staff, Russia´s top diplomat said Friday. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is demanding an explanation from the North Koreans — asking whether the warning is an order to evacuate the North Korean capital or merely a proposal to consider doing so.[break] "This proposal has been sent to all the embassies in Pyongyang," Lavrov said. "We are now trying to clarify the situation. We asked our North Korean neighbors a few questions that need to be asked in this situation." About two dozen countries have embassies in North Korea. Lavrov said during a visit to Uzbekistan as saying that Russia is in touch with China, the United States, Japan and South Korea — all members of a dormant talks process with North Korea — to try to figure out the motivation behind the warning. "We are very much worried by inciting of tensions, even though it´s verbal so far," Lavrov said. "We would like to understand the reasons behind the proposal to evacuate the embassies, whether it´s a decision of the North Korean leadership or a proposal. We were told it´s a proposal." North Korea´s government did not comment on the embassy warnings. Tensions have been roiling in the past few weeks following a North Korean nuclear test and the country´s subsequent warnings to South Korea and the United States that it would be prepared to attack. A South Korean analyst said North Korea is "advertising to the world" tensions on the Korean Peninsula as a follow-up measure to its announcement last week that it had entered a "state of war" with South Korea. "It appears to be a ruse to draw the attention of as many countries as possible to the tension and make it an international issue," said Chang Yong-seok, an expert at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. "Pyongyang is telling the nations with diplomats in Pyongyang that something needs to be done about it." Britain´s Foreign Office confirmed that it had received the warning, which it called part of ongoing rhetoric from Pyongyang to portray the U.S. as a threat. "The British Embassy in Pyongyang received a communication from the North Korean government this morning saying that the North Korean government would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organizations in the country in the event of conflict from April 10th," it said in a statement. Britain said it was "considering next steps" and had no immediate plans to withdraw from Pyongyang. Sweden said North Korea´s foreign ministry had a meeting with foreign diplomats but didn´t order them to leave. "It was a meeting that dealt with the security situation in the country, where the North Koreans asked whether there was any need for assistance in case of an evacuation," Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Teo Zetterman said. Sweden also represents the United States, which doesn´t have an embassy or any direct diplomatic presence in North Korea. Any Americans in North Korea would be NGO workers or tourists but it´s not officially known how many might be there. "This is just an escalating series of rhetorical statements, and the question is, to what end?" U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington. "This is an unpredictable regime and an unpredictable situation," Nuland said. "Our posture remains to be prudent, to take appropriate measures, in the defense and deterrence sphere, both for ourselves and for our allies, but to continue to urge the DPRK to change course, because this is not going to end their isolation." The U.S. Embassy in Seoul also issued a notice to Americans in South Korea, saying it had "no specific information to suggest an imminent threat to U.S. citizens or facilities." The U.N. says its staff was continuing to work in North Korea while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon studied the North Korean message to consider evacuating U.N. personnel. U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said a U.N. representative joined diplomats at a meeting Friday in Pyongyang and that U.N. staff "remain engaged in their humanitarian and developmental work throughout the country." Asked whether Ban would go to Pyongyang, Nesirky said the U.N. chief has offered to facilitate dialogue "to help to bring people together." "Dialogue is what´s needed to try to turn the volume down. The volume has been turned up tremendously high in recent days and the volume needs to be turned back down again and the secretary-general is certainly keen to help," he said. Nesirky added that the U.N. was "providing very important life-saving assistance to people, particularly children" in North Korea. Russia has appeared increasingly upset with North Korea, strongly criticizing its neighbor for its "defiant neglect" of U.N. Security Council resolutions. "We are counting on maximum restraint and composure from all sides," a Russian foreign ministry statement said Friday. Other nations with diplomatic missions in North Korea, such as the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and India, also said they were weighing the situation carefully. The Czechs said they had no plans to withdraw; the Romanians and Bulgarians were speaking with the 27-nation European Union about the situation. "Naturally, we assess that there is no outside threat to North Korea whatsoever," said Marcin Bosacki, spokesman for Poland´s Foreign Ministry. "In our opinion, the current military rhetoric is exclusively directed to the internal audience and does not reflect the true international intentions of the country." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52703 LAGOS, Nigeria, April 6: An official says at least 36 people have been killed in a bus crash in which a gasoline tanker exploded in southwest Nigeria. The explosion happened Friday afternoon in Nigeria´s Edo state.[break] Federal Road Safety Corps spokesman Jonas Agwu said three people survived the collision between the large bus and the tanker. Agwu said the crash resulted in a fire that burned for hours, making it difficult for officials to know how many people died in the crash. Nigeria has some of West Africa´s worst roads, despite its oil wealth. Massive potholes and poor paving, coupled with aggressive drivers, are blamed for many crashes. World Health Organization data shows Nigeria suffers from one of the world´s highest traffic fatality rates. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52634  (Updated) MUMBAI, April 6:  The death toll in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally in India´s financial capital rose to 62 Saturday amid diminishing hopes of finding any survivors alive, police said. Another 70 people were injured when the eight-story building on forest land in the Mumbai suburb of Thane caved in into a mound of steel and concrete Thursday evening, police said.[break] Police officer Dahi Dhule said that rescue workers with sledgehammers, gasoline-powered saws and hydraulic jacks worked through Friday night to break through the tower of rubble in their search for possible survivors. Six bulldozers were brought to the scene. Prithviraj Chavan, the top elected official of Maharashtra state, said a government probe has been ordered into the accident, and that a deputy municipal commissioner and a senior police officer have been suspended for dereliction of duty. At the time of the collapse, between 100 and 150 people were in the building. Many were residents or construction workers, who were living at the site as they worked on it, said Sandeep Malvi, a spokesman for the Thane government. More than 20 people remained missing and three floors of the building remained to be searched, said R.S. Rajesh, an official with the National Disaster Response Force who was at the scene. "All the three floors are sandwiched ... so it´s very difficult for us," he said. The dead included 17 children, police said. A nearby hospital was filled with the injured, many of whom had head wounds, fractures and spinal injuries. Hospital officials searched in vain for the parents of an injured 10-month-old girl who had been rescued. At least four floors of the building had been completed and were occupied. Workers had finished three more floors and were adding the eighth when it collapsed, police Inspector Digamber Jangale said. It was not immediately clear what caused the structure to collapse, but local police commissioner K.P. Raghuvanshi said it was weakly built. Police were searching for the builders to arrest them, he said. Police with rescue dogs were searching the building, which appeared to have buckled and collapsed upon itself. Raghuvanshi said rescue workers had saved 15 people from the wreckage. Building collapses are common in India as builders try to cut corners by using poor quality materials, and as multi-storied structures are built with inadequate supervision. The massive demand for housing around India´s cities and pervasive corruption often result in builders adding unauthorized floors or putting up illegal buildings. The neighborhood where the building collapsed was part of a belt of more than 2,000 illegal structures that had sprung up in the area in recent years, said Malvi, the town spokesman. "Notices have been served several times for such illegal construction, sometimes notices are sent 10 times for the same building," he said. G.R. Khairnar, a former top Mumbai official, said government officials who allowed the illegal construction should be tried along with the builders. "There are a lot of people involved (in illegal construction) — builders, government machinery, police, municipal corporation — everybody is involved in this process," he told CNN-IBN television. The building that collapsed was illegally constructed on forest land, and the city informed forestry officials twice about it, Malvi said. A local resident, who did not give his name, said the site was meant to hold a smaller structure and accused officials of turning a blind eye to the problem. "They made an eight-story building of what was supposed to be a four-story building. People from the municipality used to visit the building but the builder still continued to add floors," he said. In one of the worst recent collapses, nearly 70 people were killed in November 2010 when an apartment building in a congested New Delhi neighborhood crumpled. That building was two floors higher than legally allowed. Indian rescue workers and local residents gather near the debris of a collapse building in Mumbra, on the outskirts of Mumbai on April 4, 2013. Over twenty people have died and up to 50 more were injured when an unauthorised building under construction collapsed on the outskirts of Mumbai, Indian police said. Photo: AFP http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52663 TOKYO, April 5: Scientists in Japan said Friday they had found a way to "read" people´s dreams, using MRI scanners to unlock some of the secrets of the unconscious mind. Researchers have managed what they said was "the world´s first decoding" of night-time visions, the subject of centuries of speculation that have captivated humanity since ancient times.[break] In the study, published in the journal Science, researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, in Kyoto, western Japan, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to locate exactly which part of the brain was active during the first moments of sleep. The scientists then woke up the dreamers and asked them what images they had seen, a process that was repeated 200 times. These answers were compared with the brain maps that had been produced by the MRI scanner, the researchers said, adding that they later built a database, based on the results. On subsequent attempts they were able to predict what images the volunteers had seen with a 60 percent accuracy rate, rising to more than 70 percent with around 15 specific items including men, words and books, they said. "We have concluded that we successfully decoded some kinds of dreams with a distinctively high success rate," said Yukiyasu Kamitani, a senior researcher at the laboratories and head of the study team. "Dreams have fascinated people since ancient times, but their function and meaning has remained closed," Kamitani told AFP. "I believe this result was a key step towards reading dreams more precisely." His team is now trying to predict other dream experiences such as smells, colours and emotion, as well as entire stories in people´s dreams. "We would like to introduce a more accurate method so that we can work on a way of visualising dreams," he said. Kamitani, however, admits that there is still a long way to go before they are anywhere near understanding a whole dream. He said the decoding patterns differ for individuals and the database they have developed cannot be applied generally, rather it has to be generated for each person. The experiment also only used the images the subjects were seeing right before they were woken up. Deep sleep, where subjects have more vivid dreams, remains a mystery. "There are still a lot of things that are unknown," he added. Kamitani´s experiment is the latest in a government-led brain study programme aimed at applying the science to medical and welfare services, government officials said. "Our expectations from the dream study are quite high," said an official of the science and technology ministry´s brain research promotion programme. The ministry spent around 3.4 billion yen ($35 million) on the dream and other neuroscience studies for the fiscal year that ended on March 31. "This technology may help disabled people to be able to move artificial limbs with their brain, or it may lead to a remedy for dementia or other brain-related diseases in the future," the official said. "But we are looking carefully at the ethical aspects of the technology, which may allow a third person to look at somebody else´s thoughts in the future," she said. In 2011, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, used an MRI system to capture images from the brains of subjects who were awake and later reconstructed them as video clips. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52635 SHANGHAI, April 5: A sixth person has died of the H7N9 strain of bird flu in China, state media said Friday, after authorities carried out a cull of poultry at a Shanghai market where the virus has been detected. The 64-year-old farmer died in Huzhou, in China´s eastern province of Zhejiang, local officials said according to the official Xinhua news agency.[break] He is thought to be among the 14 human cases of H7N9 that were previously confirmed, and is the second person from Zhejiang to die from the H7N9 virus, with the other four fatalities coming from the commercial hub of Shanghai. Authorities in Shanghai are also monitoring a person who had been in close contact with one of the dead, who is being treated for flu-like symptoms. The poultry cull was carried out at a market in a western suburb of Shanghai following the discovery of the virus in pigeon samples. State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported Friday that health ministry officials were meeting with agricultural personnel to draw up an action plan aimed at "preventing the spreading of the disease". http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52632 QUITO, April 4: Amazon tribesmen killed at least 18 people in an apparent revenge attack against a rival group in Ecuador, an indigenous leader said Thursday. Citing a person who participated in the attack, Gilberto Nenquimo told AFP that elderly men and women were among the dead, along with an unknown number of children. He was speaking from the southeastern town of Puyo.[break] According to Huaorani leaders, several members of the clan attacked a settlement of the Taromenane clan over the weekend in retaliation for the March 5 spearing deaths of a Huaorani leader and his wife. On Wednesday, Huaorani of Ecuador president Cahuetipe Yeti said the attackers also took two Taromenane girls to a Huaorani community. Nenquimo, vice president of Yeti´s group, said that Huaorani leaders had negotiated with the attackers so that the two girls -- aged between eight and nine years old -- would be returned to their clan to avoid further reprisals. This type of attack is common among tribes in the vicinity of Yasuni National Park. A 2003 raid allegedly conducted by the Huaorani against a Taromenane settlement left 23 women and children dead. There are no official figures on the two tribes, but Nenquimo estimated they number about 200 members together. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52608 Earlier this week, a bird flu virus never before found in humans grabbed world attention after it infected and killed people in China. Scientists have since been scrambling to understand how it happened and, more importantly, whether it poses a risk to public health or could potentially spark a global pandemic. The good news is that so far there´s no sign that the H7N9 virus is spreading from person to person, but experts say it has mutated in a way that has them a bit worried. [break]Here´s a crash course in Bird Flu 101 to help explain what´s known about the strain and why it matters: What is the H7N9 virus and what do we know about it? The H7N9 strain — named for the combination of proteins on its surface — has infected at least nine people in China since February, killing three of them. Symptoms include fever and respiratory problems, including severe pneumonia. Much still remains unknown about the virus, including how people are getting infected, but scientists say it contains genetic markers that could help it infect humans. It is circulating in poultry stocks, but is considered a "low pathogenic" virus is not sickening birds. This can allow it to spread in flocks unnoticed, making it much harder to track and also possibly creating more contamination in the environment because the birds are surviving and spending more time on farms, in markets and elsewhere. How concerned should the public be about the H7N9 virus? At this point, experts say there is no cause for alarm, but they are watching it closely. No evidence exists that the virus is spreading from person to person, and no cases have been reported outside China. Samples are being collected from patients, and the genetic sequence is being shared with outside scientists by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This allows the world´s top flu experts to study the virus and look for genetic changes that could make it more dangerous. Poultry and its products are safe to eat as long as they are properly cooked. Is there a vaccine? No vaccine exists, but the World Health Organization and its partners are already working to identify possible candidate viruses that could be used to make a vaccine if necessary. What changes are scientists seeing in the virus and why is this important? Although it is not yet clear, the virus appears to have mutated in a way that makes it easier to adapt and grow in mammals. Scientists are working to figure out which species could now be playing host to the virus, and one possibility is pigs. Swine are important because they share some basic biological similarities with humans, and they can serve as "mixing vessels" if infected with different flu strains at the same time. Other possibilities are that the mutations could be occurring in poultry or they are being generated after people are infected by birds. "To me, the most important question to find out is: What is the actual host of this virus?" said Richard Webby, director of a WHO flu center at St. Jude Children´s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. "It really looks like there´s been some mammalian host involved." How is this bird flu different from the H5N1 strain everyone has been so concerned about in the past? Unlike the H7N9 strain, the H5N1 virus is highly lethal in birds, making it easier to identify and stamp out outbreaks. H5N1 remains an avian influenza and has not taken root in another species, such as pigs. Most human infections have been linked to contact with infected birds. Scientists have been closely watching the virus since it first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997. It resurfaced in 2003 and decimated poultry stocks across Asia. It has since killed at least 371 people. It kills about 60 percent of those infected, and experts have long feared the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person, possibly sparking a pandemic. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52611 NEW DELHI, April 4: Rahul Gandhi, often described as India´s prime minister-in-waiting, said Thursday in a keynote address designed to raise his profile that the poor must see the benefits of economic growth. Faced with a sharply slowing economy and ballooning budget deficit, the ruling Congress party vice-president told business leaders he wanted to forge a long-term partnership with them to help the poor and release the nation´s "beehive" energies.[break] "This country is only going to move forward if we all stand together," Gandhi, 42, told the annual meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry in a sometimes rambling address. Gandhi, one of a string of big guns Congress wheeled out at the meeting to woo the business community before 2014 polls, said "inclusive growth is win-win for everybody". "We have to carry the poor and weak with us," he added. Indian National Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi addresses the special plenary session of Confedration of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi on April 4. (AFP) In his first speech to a major corporate audience, the media-shy leader talked of the need for better education, infrastructure and political responses, but was short on policy detail and gave no hints about his own ambitions. He said that instead of the usual references to India as a slow-moving elephant, a far more apt comparison would be to a complex beehive. Such complexity, he said, gave India the edge internationally and over its Asian rival China. "India is complex. China is simple. And that is why India can´t give simple answers when the West and other investors demand them," he said. "And you, the Indian corporates, are the masters of this. You are the masters of complexities." Gandhi -- who comes from a line of three prime ministers and is second in the party´s hierarchy after his mother, Sonia Gandhi -- was non-committal about whether he would be a prime ministerial candidate in 2014. "Whether I will become prime minister, this an irrelevant question -- it´s all smoke," he said, adding that his goal was to "help one billion people find their voices". Business figures said they were impressed by Gandhi´s sincerity. But some highlighted how he had failed to propose solutions to the country´s problems such as poor infrastructure, red tape and low business confidence. "It´s wonderful he spoke so much from the heart, but he also needs to speak from the head and be more pragmatic," said Amarjit Singh, a director of multinational Motherson Automotive. India goes to the polls in early 2014, with the ruling Congress party struggling with an economy which is growing at decade-low levels, as well as a string of corruption scandals. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52607 PARIS, April 4: In a double blow, bald men may be at higher risk of coronary heart disease, said a study Wednesday, but only if the hair is lost at the crown. Men who bald from the front appear to carry no significant added risk for the clogged artery disease that can cause heart attacks, said a report in the online journal BMJ Open.[break] Researchers from the University of Tokyo´s Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases analysed six studies on male pattern baldness and coronary heart disease conducted between 1993 and 2008 with nearly 40,000 participants in the United States and Europe. They showed that men who had lost most of their hair were more than a third more likely to develop coronary artery disease than those with hair. The severity of baldness influenced the degree of risk, but again, only if the balding was at the crown, or vertex. "These findings suggest that vertex baldness is more closely associated with systemic atherosclerosis (coronary heart disease) than with frontal baldness," said the study. "Thus, cardiovascular risk factors should be reviewed carefully in men with vertex baldness, especially younger men, and they probably should be encouraged to improve their cardiovascular risk profile." They also urged further studies to confirm the findings. The study said about 30 to 40 percent of adult men suffer from male-pattern baldness -- and up to 80 percent by the age of 80. The reasons for the association were unclear, but the authors pointed to previous links drawn between baldness and insulin resistance, diabetes, chronic inflammation or sensitivity to testosterone -- all of which may lead to cardiovascular disease. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52606 KHAR, Pakistan, April 4: A Pakistani housewife, who cannot read or write despite being married to a headteacher, has made history by becoming the first woman approved to run for election in the Taliban-infested tribal belt. Badam Zari, 53, may have little chance of winning, but her enthusiasm has been seized upon as a step towards emancipation in one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan, where women live in purdah and few even vote.[break] "I am contesting the election with passion, with a clean heart and a clear conscience. My passion is to educate the future generation, girls and women, and to serve them," she told AFP in a telephone interview from Bajaur district. "I know I am the first woman to contest and I am hopeful that I will win." Her father initially sent her to the village school, but when other relatives said it was inappropriate for her -- a young girl of only six or seven -- to walk through the market to class, she was kept at home. In this photograph taken on April 2, 2013, Pakistani Badam Zari, 55, a candidate for upcoming general elections looks on while speaking to potential voters during her campaign in Khar, the main town of Bajaur, one of seven districts in country´s semi-autonomous tribal belt, where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have carved out strongholds used to plot attacks on Pakistan. (AFP) Bajaur is one of seven districts that make up Pakistan´s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The semi-autonomous region of mountains, valleys and caves is one of the most deprived and ill-educated in the country. It has been a stronghold for Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Pakistani militant groups, and for years a battleground between the army and insurgents. Zari says she has never been threatened but acknowledges she cannot campaign in public, confining herself to going door-to-door among women´s quarters. "I have no fear, I have never been threatened by anyone," she said. Reforms introduced in 2011 in a bid to lessen the grip of militancy, mean political parties can contest elections for the first time in FATA, but Zari is standing as an independent. There are 1.7 million registered voters in the tribal belt, just 600,000 of them women, the lowest rate in the country. None of the 60 seats reserved for women in the lower house of parliament is in FATA. Zari and her husband, 55-year-old Mohammad Sultan, have put together a short manifesto, pledging to solve the problems of people in Bajaur, even diverting the benefits she would receive in parliament to her constituents. "Bajaur is an area which lacks all basic facilities. It´s a deprived area. We have no women´s education, no health facility, no electricity and no roads," she told AFP by telephone. "Sometimes women living in the mountains die because of lack of health facilities. We don´t even have clean drinking water and I want to struggle for it." She registered to run on Sunday but was only told by election commission officials on Wednesday that her application had been accepted. Under Pakistani law, being illiterate and uneducated is no bar to running for parliament. Noor Ul Wahab, an election officer in Bajaur, confirmed to AFP on Thursday that Zari´s papers had been approved, clearing the way for her campaign. Zari´s husband, who has a masters degree in international relations, confirmed his wife can write only her name and cannot read a newspaper, yet declined to say why he had not educated her. Two of his brothers are doctors. The couple have been married for 26 years but have no children. Although her chances are remote, Ijaz Khan, who teaches political science at the University of Peshawar, told AFP that it was an interesting move. "She will not be able to get many votes, obviously," he told AFP. "For a woman to come up and say ´I will represent you better than all men and women´. Just saying that is a big change." Zari is the first woman to stand in FATA, but two women from tribal communities in the southwestern province of Baluchistan were elected to parliament, in 2002 and in 2008. The first woman, Zubaida Jalal, served as education minister under military ruler Pervez Musharraf. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52597 SEOUL, South Korea, April 4:  North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, South Korea´s defense minister said Thursday, but he added that it is not capable of hitting the United States and there are no signs that Pyongyang is preparing for a full-scale conflict. The report came hours after North Korea´s military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. It was the North´s latest war cry against America in recent weeks, with the added suggestion that it had improved its nuclear technology.[break] South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin dismissed reports in Japanese media that the missile could be a KN-08, which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit the United States. Kim told lawmakers at a hearing that the missile´s range is considerable but not far enough to hit the U.S. mainland. He said he did not know the reasons behind the missile movement, saying it "could be for testing or drills." Experts say North Korea has not demonstrated that it has missiles capable of long range or accuracy. Some suspect that long-range missiles unveiled by Pyongyang at a parade last year were actually mockups. "From what we know of its existing inventory, North Korea has short- and medium-range missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula (and perhaps reach Japan), but we have not seen any evidence that it has long-range missiles that could strike the continental US, Guam or Hawaii," James Hardy, Asia Pacific editor of IHS Jane´s Defence Weekly, said in a recent analysis. Kim said the South Korean military has spotted no signs that North Korea is preparing for a full-scale conflict. Those signs include the mobilization of a number of units, including supply and rear troops, but South Korean military officials have found no such preparations in North Korea, he said. "(North Korea´s recent threats) are rhetorical threats. I believe the odds of a full-scale provocation are small," he said. But he added that there is still the possibility of North Korea mounting a localized, small-scale provocation against South Korea. He cited the 2010 shelling of a South Korean island, an attack that killed four people, as a possible example of such a provocation. Pyongyang has been railing against joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises taking place in South Korea and has expressed anger over tightened U.N. sanctions for its February nuclear test. At times it has gone beyond rhetoric. For a second day Thursday, North Korean border authorities denied entry to South Koreans who manage jointly run factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong. A North Korean government-run committee threatened to pull out North Korean workers from Kaesong as well. On Tuesday, Pyongyang announced it would restart a plutonium reactor it had shut down in 2007. A U.S. research institute said Wednesday that satellite imagery shows that construction needed for the restart has already begun. North Korea´s military statement Thursday said its troops had been authorized to counter U.S. "aggression" with "powerful practical military counteractions," including nuclear weapons. "We formally inform the White House and Pentagon that the ever-escalating U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and its reckless nuclear threat will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means," an unnamed spokesman from the General Bureau of the Korean People´s Army said in a statement carried by state media, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea. "The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation." The Pentagon announced that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington is doing all it can to defuse the situation, echoing comments a day earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry. "Some of the actions they´ve taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat to the interests, certainly of our allies, starting with South Korea and Japan, and also the threats that the North Koreans have leveled directly at the United States regarding our base in Guam, threatened Hawaii, threatened the West Coast of the United States," Hagel said Wednesday. South Korea´s Defense Ministry said its military is ready to deal with any provocation by North Korea. "I can say we have no problem in crisis management," deputy ministry spokesman Wee Yong-sub told reporters. This spring´s annual U.S.-South Korea drills have incorporated fighter jets and nuclear-capable stealth bombers, though the allies insist they are routine exercises. Pyongyang calls them rehearsals for a northward invasion. The foes fought on opposite sides of the Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953. The divided Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war six decades later, and Washington keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect its ally. North Korea´s nuclear strike capabilities remain unclear. Pyongyang is believed to be working toward building an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a long-range missile. Long-range rocket launches designed to send satellites into space in 2009 and 2012 were widely considered covert tests of missile technology, and North Korea has conducted three underground nuclear tests, most recently in February. "I don´t believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles, and won´t for many years. Its ability to target and strike South Korea is also very limited," nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said this week. "And even if Pyongyang had the technical means, why would the regime want to launch a nuclear attack when it fully knows that any use of nuclear weapons would result in a devastating military response and would spell the end of the regime?" he said in answers posted to CISAC´s website. In Seoul, a senior government official said Tuesday it wasn´t clear how advanced North Korea´s nuclear weapons capabilities are. But he also noted fallout from any nuclear strike on Seoul or beyond would threaten Pyongyang as well, making a strike unlikely. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn´t authorized to speak publicly to the media. North Korea maintains that it needs to build nuclear weapons to defend itself against the United States. On Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un led a high-level meeting of party officials who declared building the economy and "nuclear armed forces" as the nation´s two top priorities. Hecker has estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium to make several crude nuclear bombs. Its announcement Tuesday that it would restart a plutonium reactor indicated that it intends to produce more nuclear weapons material. The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies has analyzed recent commercial satellite imagery of the Nyongbyon nuclear facility, where the reactor was shut down in 2007 under the terms of a disarmament agreement. A cooling tower for the reactor was destroyed in 2008. The analysis published Wednesday on the institute´s website, 38 North, says that rebuilding the tower would take six months, but a March 27 photo shows building work may have started for an alternative cooling system that could take just weeks. Experts estimate it could take three months to a year to restart the plant. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52590 LA PLATA, Argentina, April 3: Argentina´s government declared three days of national mourning from Wednesday after massive flooding killed 54 people in Buenos Aires and the nearby university city of La Plata. At least 46 people died as flood waters hit La Plata about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of the capital, following historic rains that swept through the streets, submerging cars as people cowered on rooftops. Most of the victims were found after a second day of record rainfall hit the area.[break] "The bodies began to appear as the water subsided," said Governor Daniel Scioli, as officials confirmed the death toll and locals piled up chaotic heaps of soaked mattresses and destroyed refrigerators. A senior city official, Santiago Martorelli, told local television the floods were a "catastrophe," and said La Plata´s schools and government offices had been closed. "There are people on rooftops, in trees waiting for us to rescue them," Martorelli said, adding that firefighters, civil defense workers, police and soldiers have been deployed to the area to help in rescue operations. The fatalities in La Plata, a bustling university city of just under one million, followed at least eight others in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, when a storm knocked out power lines and downed trees. President Cristina Kirchner made a surprise visit to La Plata, surveying the devastation by helicopter. Kirchner spent much of her childhood in La Plata, and her mother, Ofelia Wilhelm, still lives in the same two-story home where the president grew up. "Mom has lost her power and gas but she does not want to leave her home because the water is close to the door, and she is afraid it might start raining again," Kirchner told reporters. A staggering record 40 centimeters (16 inches) of rain fell on La Plata during a two-hour period late Tuesday into Wednesday, officials said, knocking out phone lines and leaving about half the city in the dark. In Buenos Aires, more than 15 centimeters of rain -- an April record -- fell between late Monday and early Tuesday, the weather service said. Flood waters reached two meters (6.6 feet) in some places, turning roadways in La Plata into a raging river. "This has never before happened in La Plata," said Argentine Security Minister Sergio Berni. In nearby Tolosa, meanwhile, 50 cars and other vehicles were stuck after high water encircled part of the town, cutting off roads and preventing authorities from rescuing stranded motorists and passengers. "We have no batteries, no power," lamented Vanessa Silletti as she spoke by phone to local radio, stranded in her vehicle with a 10-month-old infant. "I can nurse my baby, but that´s about it. We are stuck here, powerless, unable to move," Silletti said. Authorities said around 2,500 people were still unable to return home as they wait for flood waters to subside, and have taken refuge in emergency shelters. Maximiliano Miceli, 34, told AFP he was stunned by the flooding in La Plata, where he has never seen heavy rain, nor such devastation. "This is the first time that this has ever happened," he said, as he wiped away muddy water from inside his ruined car. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52589 KABUL, Afghanistan, April 4: Insurgents wearing Afghan army uniforms launched a suicide attack and stormed a courthouse Wednesday in a failed bid to free Taliban inmates, killing at least 44 people, half of them shot in the basement. Nine attackers were killed. The attack — one of the deadliest in the more than 11-year-old war — began about 8:30 a.m. when nine men wearing suicide vests drove into the capital of Farah province in western Afghanistan, evading checkpoints by using army vehicles, according to the provincial police chief. The standoff ended some eight hours later when the last gunman was killed.[break] Insurgents have stepped up assaults targeting the Farah provincial government in recent months as they vie for control of an area bordering Iran to the west and Helmand province to the east. Farah has become increasingly volatile as the site of a growing drug trade after military offensives in neighboring areas. "The Taliban seem to be exploiting the opium harvest and the unpopular eradication efforts by the government to further establish their presence," Fabrizio Foschini, of the independent research group Afghan Analysts Network, said in a recent blog. Militants have staged high-profile complex attacks across Afghanistan in a bid to show their strength and undermine confidence in the central government. Wednesday´s assault was among the most brutal for civilians, raising fears of deteriorating security as international combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014 and hand over control to Afghan security forces. The attack began when two assailants blew themselves up inside one of the vehicles while the others jumped out and ran toward the courthouse and prosecutor´s office, provincial police chief Agha Noor Kemtoz said. Guards opened fire, killing one of the attackers, as the others engaged in a fierce gunbattle that left civil servants and government officials holed up in their offices. Other civilians fled to the basement of the courthouse, where gunmen found them and killed 21 people, officials said. Kemtoz said the attack aimed to free more than a dozen Taliban prisoners who were being transferred to the courthouse for trial, which had not yet started. "Definitely the plan was to free the prisoners with this attack, but thank God, they did not succeed," he said. "All the prisoners are accounted for." Deputy provincial governor Yonus Rasouli, however, said one of the inmates had escaped. He said the suspects had been arrested in different places and faced a range of charges, including planting roadside bombs. Provincial Gov. Akram Akhpewak said those killed included 34 civilians, including judges and prosecutors, 10 members of the security forces and the nine attackers. Dr. Abdul Hakim Rasouli, chief of the Farah hospital, said 80 people also were wounded. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message sent to reporters, although some witnesses questioned whether the assailants were Afghans. Provincial lawmaker Humaira Ayobi said a recent police operation targeting the drug trade may have been a factor in the audacious attack. It was the deadliest strike since Oct. 26, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside a mosque packed with senior regional officials in the northern Afghan province of Faryab, killing 41 people on a major Muslim holiday. In Kabul, meanwhile, Afghanistan´s intelligence chief Asadullah Khalid returned to Kabul on Wednesday nearly four months after he was seriously wounded by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a messenger of peace. Billboards in the capital welcomed home the director of the National Directorate of Security, saying he has fully recovered and "is ready to continue his duty to provide peace, security and prosperity to his homeland." In other violence, Taliban gunmen attacked a local police patrol late Tuesday in southeastern Paktika province and six insurgents were killed in the fighting, according to a statement from the governor´s office. A roadside bomb then struck a police vehicle as it was leaving the area, killing four police, it said. Four police officers also were killed and one was wounded Tuesday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northeastern Kunar province during an operation to clear the area of explosives, government spokesman Wasifullah Wasifi said. ___ http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52542 (Updated) KUALA LUMPUR, April 3: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak dissolved parliament Wednesday in preparation for a general election seen as the toughest challenge yet for the ruling coalition after 56 years in power. "This morning I met the king and asked for his consent to dissolve the parliament," he said. "This dissolution will pave the way for the 13th general election." [break] The election commission will meet shortly to decide on a date for the poll, which is likely to take place within the next few weeks. Analysts predict the election will be the closest ever amid concerns over corruption, the rising cost of living and crime under the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957. The 13-member coalition is dominated by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which is led by Najib, who has worked hard to rebrand it by launching a series of reforms aimed at boosting the economy and granting greater civil liberties. The opposition three-party Pakatan Rakyat (People´s Pact), led by the charismatic Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy premier, made unprecedented inroads in the last polls in 2008. It currently holds 75 of 222 parliamentary seats and controls four of the country´s 13 states. "For Pakatan Rakyat it is the best possible chance to offer a viable alternative for democracy and a more responsible government. I think the chances of winning are very good amid signs of desperation in the leadership of Najib," Anwar told AFP. "My major concern is they may resort to fraud during the polls and violence in the run-up to the elections," he added. Activists and the opposition have demanded free and fair elections, staging several mass rallies calling for change, including a clean-up of the electoral roll which they say is marred with irregularities. In response, Najib´s government has taken steps including the introduction of indelible ink to prevent multiple-voting and allowing Malaysians abroad to vote by post. But the opposition says these moves fall short of creating a level electoral playing field. In his announcement of the dissolution of parliament, which was broadcast on national television, Najib urged political parties to observe the rule of law and promised a smooth transition of power if the opposition wins. "If there is change in power, it will and must happen peacefully. This is our commitment," he said. He appealed to the electorate not to "gamble" away their votes by choosing the opposition. Part of the reason the ruling party has stayed in power is due to decades of economic growth. Malaysia, Southeast Asia´s third biggest economy, grew a better-than-expected 5.6 percent last year spurred by consumer spending supported by pre-election direct cash handouts and other incentives. But criticism of its authoritarian rule has gained traction and the opposition is promising a new era of political liberalisation and an end to entrenched corruption. It dismisses Najib´s reforms as window-dressing, and is pledging to stamp out graft and channel money now allegedly given to government cronies towards free education, cutting taxes and increasing subsidies. It is also vowing to address complaints of discrimination against minority ethnic Chinese and Indians, who account for about a third of the population. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52516 BEIJING, April 2: Noted Tibetan political prisoner Jigme Gyatso has been released after 17 years in a Chinese prison and is reported to be in poor health as a result of his treatment, an overseas Tibetan spokesman and U.S.-backed broadcaster said Tuesday. The 52-year-old former monk has returned to his hometown in an ethnic Tibetan area in the northwest province of Gansu, according to Tashi Phuntsok, spokesman for the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile in India. [break]He said Jigme Gyatso had been released about one year early, likely because of poor health due to harsh treatment in prison. Radio Free Asia also reported the release, saying he appeared "very weak" upon returning home Monday after being released two days earlier from Chusul prison near Tibet´s regional capital Lhasa, where many political prisoners are held. It said friends reported him as walking with a limp and complaining of problems with his heart and vision and other physical complaints related to poor nutrition or lack of medical treatment. It was no immediately possible to confirm Jigme Gyatso´s release. Chusul prison has no listed phone number and government and police officials in Lhasa said they had no information on the case. Tibet remains off-limits to foreign reporters without special permission. Jigme Gyatso was among Tibet´s better-known political prisoners, with numerous organizations including Amnesty International calling for his release. He met also in 2005 with then-United Nations special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, who called the following year for him to be set free. Arrested during a crackdown on dissent in 1996, he was sentenced to 15 years on charges of "inciting splittism" and the now-abolished crime of "counter-revolution." Initially held at Lhasa´s notorious Drapchi prison, he was among a group of prisoners who were reportedly beaten and tortured following a pro-independence protest in 1998 coinciding with a visit by European Union delegates. His sentence was then extended by three years in 2004 after he shouted slogans in prison in support of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. China says Tibet has been its territory for centuries, while many Tibetans say theirs was an independent state. China has used overwhelming force to crush successive waves of anti-government activism among Tibetans, the latest in 2008 when bloody rioting in Lhasa sparked a wave of protests across Tibetan regions. The fate of many of those detained remains unknown, while numerous Tibetans arrested earlier on state security charges continue to serve long sentences. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52502 MIAMI, April 2: They came from all over to hear her speak. Old Cuban ladies with wrinkled faces and pristine makeup. Young students with iPhones and digital cameras. Men and women who fled Cuba decades ago and just last year, on makeshift rafts and planes. When Cuban dissident and blogger Yoani Sanchez entered the room to speak Monday, dressed simply in white, they all stood up in applause and the politics that divide Cubans, even here in Miami, temporarily disappeared.[break] "In the Cuba that so many of us dream of, there is no need to clarify what type of Cuban you are," she said. "We´ll be just Cubans. Cubans, period." The crowd of several hundred stood on their feet, chanted "Freedom!" and applauded. Sanchez, a Cuban mother and wife who turned to blogging just five years ago, has gained a following and accolades worldwide for her candid descriptions of modern life in Cuba on her blog Generation Y. In 2008, she was named one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" by Time magazine. She is currently on an international tour that has taken her to three continents after being allowed to leave Cuba for the first time in nearly a decade. Carlos Espinosa, 57, left, holds a sign in support of the Cuban Five, who are serving prison sentences in the U.S., outside of where blogger and activist Yoani Sanchez, of Cuba, speaks at the Freedom Tower of Miami Dade College, Monday, April 1, 2013, in Miami. (AP) She went to Brazil, where boisterous protesters backing the Cuban government called her a "mercenary" financed by the CIA and even tugged at her hair. She incited controversy when, in an ironic tone, she suggested the U.S. should let five Cuban men convicted in 2001 of attempting to infiltrate military installations in South Florida free because of all the money Cuba could save and spend on more important matters than campaigning for their release. She has met with young Cuban-Americans born in the U.S. with dreams of a homeland they have known only in photographs and stories. And she has shaken hands with some of the most powerful politicians in Washington, while calling on the U.S. to end its longstanding embargo against the communist island. But the most anticipated stop of her 80-day tour has been Miami, the heart of the exile community. When she arrived last Thursday, one of Sanchez´s first stops was to La Ermita de la Caridad, a shrine to our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba´s patron saint. She walked along a stretch of Miami´s shoreline she called the city´s "Malecon," a reference to Havana´s coastal boulevard. After spending the weekend catching up with her sister, brother-in-law and niece, Sanchez made her first public appearance. The site was aptly chosen: Miami´s Freedom Tower, a golden yellow Mediterranean style building where thousands of Cubans fleeing the 1959 communist revolution were processed, given food and connected with social services. A line of men and women who did not have tickets but hoped to still get in stretched down the block. Among them were sisters Magaly Consuegra, 65, and Maria Santa Cruz, 74. "This is a historical building for us," said Consuegra, who remembered standing in a line in that same spot, when she first arrived five decades ago. "I admire her so much because she had the courage that so many Cubans don´t have." Consuegra came when she was 15 and sometimes, she regrets that she did not stay or go back, like Sanchez has vowed to do. There are an estimated 1 million Cubans in exile in the U.S., most in Miami, almost one-tenth the size of the island´s population. Enormous box trucks drove by repeatedly, the words, "Welcome Yoani Sanchez" stretching along the side. Others held signs calling for Raul Castro to step down as president and for the years of communist rule to end. Just one small group of about a dozen exiles held a protest, demonstrating against Sanchez´s position against the embargo and her comments on the Cuban spies. But they dispersed before the event began as a few rain clouds rolled in. Sanchez told the story of leaving Berlin on a train the first time she left Cuba years ago. She struck up a conversation with a young man who asked her, "You´re from Cuba? From the Cuba of Fidel or from the Cuba of Miami?" "My face turned red, I forgot all of the little German I knew and I answered him in my best Central Havana Spanish, ´Chico, I´m from the Cuba of Jose Marti,´" Sanchez said, referring to Cuba´s most famous national hero and poet. "That ended our brief conversation," Sanchez said. "But for the rest of my life, that conversation stayed in my mind. I´ve asked myself many times what led that Berliner and so many other people in the world to see Cubans inside and outside the island as two separate worlds, two irreconcilable worlds." While she is widely read outside her country, within Cuba she is less well known and has been publicly chastized by the government. She said she was standing there, before exiles, "to make sure that no one, ever again, can divide us between one type of Cuban or another." "Without you our country would be incomplete, as if someone had amputated its limbs," she said. Sanchez lived in Switzerland in 2002, but soon decided to return, believing she was better off with her family and vowing to live in Cuba freely. Since starting her blog in 2007, she had tried to leave dozens of times to accept prizes and speak at universities, but was consistently denied an exit permit. In October, Cuba eliminated the permit that had been required of islanders for five decades and she was allowed to leave. Cuban authorities can still deny travel in cases of defense and "national security," and some dissidents face restrictions. Her visit has been seen as a test of the new law, one of the most significant reforms Castro has made in his ongoing revision of the economy, government and society. Before she left the Freedom Tower, she was bestowed with keys to the city of Miami, perhaps the only Cuban still living on the island to receive such an honor. And in a display of the unity she´d just spoken on, people in the audience commented how it seemed to be the first time they could recall where Cubans from so many different generations, who had arrived at different times, and had different opinions on the embargo were all under one roof, applauding the same speech. Alejandro Barreras, who runs a blog in Miami called On Two Shores, said he sat behind a man who had yelled at him not so long ago for attending a concert of Carlos Varela, a Cuban folk musician. Now they were sitting one behind the other, equally captivated by Sanchez´s words. "You can´t help but feel hopeful," he said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52492 PESHAWAR, Pakistan, April 2: Dozens of gunmen attacked an electricity plant in northwest Pakistan, killing seven people and disrupting power to 100,000 people overnight, officials said Tuesday. It was the latest audacious assault underscoring rising violence in the northwest as Pakistan prepares to hold general and provincial elections on May 11, which are due to mark the country´s first democratic transition of power.[break] Around 50 militants targeted the plant in Badh Bher a suburb of Peshawar, a key electoral battleground and the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which is rife with Al-Qaeda-linked militants and Taliban insurgents. "They attacked the power station at around 2:30 am (2130 GMT). They killed two officials on the spot and abducted 10 others," Javed Khan, a senior police official in the area, told AFP. "They threw five dead bodies of the kidnapped officials in the fields close to the power house on Monday morning. Five others are still missing." There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. A spokesman for the Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (PESCO) said four of its staff and three policemen were killed. "One PESCO employee and one policeman were killed on the spot. The militants then kidnapped seven PESCO employees and three policemen. Later, we found the bodies of three PESCO officials and two policemen," said Shaukat Afzal. "Four power house employees and one policeman are still missing." The attack shut down electricity for five hours, affecting around 100,000 people in surrounding areas, the spokesman said. "We later restored electricity in those areas through alternate sources," Afzal said. There are fears that rampant insecurity could prove a major challenge for the vote, not least in Peshawar, home to 2.5 million on the edge of the tribal belt on the Afghan border, Pakistan´s premier Taliban and Al-Qaeda stronghold. The Tirah Valley has offered Pakistan´s umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) a new base in the tribal district of Khyber, beyond the reach of ground troops and posing a heightened threat to Peshawar. On Sunday, a bomb attack near an election rally killed two people and injured six, including a candidate in the northwestern town of Bannu. TTP claimed responsibility for the bombing and threatened more attacks against the ANP, the secular Awami National Party that headed the outgoing government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Pakistani Taliban have threatened the main secular parties who backed army operations against the Islamist militants. Pakistan says more than 35,000 people have been killed as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52485 CAIRO, April 2: The Islamic militant group Hamas on Monday re-elected longtime leader Khaled Mashaal, officials said, choosing a relative pragmatist who has sparred with movement hardliners in the past over his attempt to reconcile with Western-backed Palestinian rivals. The secretive Hamas did not issue an announcement, but Mashaal´s re-election was confirmed by two Hamas officials. The vote late Monday capped a year of internal elections spread over several countries and shrouded in mystery.[break] The Qatar-based Mashaal, 56, has led Hamas since 1996 and won another four-year term. He ran unopposed and won the support of a majority in Hamas´ Shura Council which has about 60 members, said the two Hamas officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss the secret election with reporters. Mashaal enjoys the backing of regional powers Turkey, Egypt and Qatar, countries where Hamas´ parent movement, the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, is influential. It´s not clear if his re-election will give him enough clout to pursue reconciliation or if hardliners, particularly those based in the Gaza Strip, will be able to veto a deal. Hamas wrested Gaza from Mahmoud Abbas, the internationally backed Palestinian president, in 2007, leaving him with only parts of the West Bank. Since then, the rivals have established separate governments that have become increasingly entrenched in their respective territories. Last year, Mashaal and Abbas, who have cordial relations, reached a deal whereby Abbas would head an interim government of technocrats in the West Bank and Gaza. This government would have paved the way for general elections. However, the deal never got off the ground because of opposition from Hamas leaders in Gaza and senior figures in Abbas´ Fatah movement. Hamas leaders in Gaza were particularly vehement in their objections, apparently fearing that a unity deal would give Abbas a new foothold in Gaza and weaken Hamas´ grip on the territory. Last week, the emir of Qatar proposed holding a reconciliation conference in Egypt in coming weeks to set up a timetable for forming the interim government and holding elections. Mashaal´s re-election could further distance Hamas from long-time patron Iran, which has supplied cash and weapons to the Hamas government in Gaza. Hamas broke with another long-time ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, more than a year ago, over Assad´s brutal crackdown on a popular revolt that turned into an armed insurgency. Mashaal´s relations with Iran cooled after he refused to back Assad, an Iranian ally, and Mashaal last visited Tehran in November 2011. Other senior Hamas figures continue to visit Tehran and ties have not broken off, but Mashaal has found a new home in Qatar, one of Iran´s regional rivals. Hamas was founded in Gaza in 1987, as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has four components — activists in Gaza, in the West Bank, in exile and those imprisoned by Israel. In the internal elections, each of the four groups chose local leaders as well as delegates to the Shura Council. This council selects a decision-making political bureau and the head of that body — the stage that was wrapped up in Cairo on Monday. Details about the composition of the political bureau were not available Monday. Mashaal is seen as a member of the more pragmatic wing of Hamas, in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He and others in Hamas insist the movement will not recognize Israel and renounce violence — Western conditions for dealing with Hamas. Mashaal has suggested he could accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel, though he has not said if such a state would end the conflict, or be an interim step to an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, including what is now Israel. Mashaal has also come out in support of so-called popular resistance against Israeli occupation, a term Palestinians use for marches and stone-throwing protests. In previous rounds of conflict, Hamas gunmen and suicide bombers have killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52484 (Updated) YANGON, Myanmar, April 2: Thirteen people, including children, were killed after a fire broke out on Tuesday in a Muslim school in Yangon due to a suspected electrical fault, police in Myanmar´s main city said. The blaze comes against a backdrop of heightened Buddhist-Muslim tensions in Myanmar following recent sectarian clashes, but police said initial indications suggested that the blaze was accidental.[break] "Thirteen people, mostly children, were killed during a fire at a Muslim religious school in downtown Yangon," a police officer at the scene told AFP. "We assume that it was due to an electrical short circuit." Firefighters extinguished the blaze, which broke out in the early hours of Tuesday morning, he said. Police called for calm and promised to establish a committee -- including Muslim leaders -- to look into the cause after an angry crowd gathered at the scene demanding answers, according to an AFP reporter. The building housed a mosque and a religious school where children were staying while taking a summer class. Local residents said the victims were believed to be orphans. A second police officer said the 13 dead were among more than 70 people sleeping at the school when the fire broke out. "The rest of the children were rescued," he said. The Myanmar Police Force reported on its official Facebook page that the victims died from burns or smoke inhalation. "According to the investigation by township police officers, the fire was caused by excessively high (electric) voltage," it added. Safety standards are generally poor in impoverished Myanmar, which is emerging from decades of military rule. A wave of sectarian violence that began on March 20 has left 43 people dead and mosques and homes burned in several towns in central Myanmar, prompting the government to impose emergency rule and curfews in some areas. Yangon has been tense but mostly peaceful following the clashes, which were apparently triggered by an argument in a gold shop that triggered a riot which later spread. The conflict poses a major challenge for Thein Sein, who has won international praise for his reform efforts since taking office two years ago. The situation has calmed in recent days after the former general on Thursday vowed a tough response over the violence, which he blamed on "political opportunists and religious extremists". Sectarian strife involving Buddhists and Muslims in the western state of Rakhine last year left at least 180 people dead. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52465 PARIS, April 01: YouTube is shutting down, Twitter users have to pay for the use of vowels, and the new Google Nose search engine will bring a whiff of wet dog or daisies right to your computer or smartphone. Smells fishy? These Internet giants went all-out to try and bamboozle their users with April Fool´s gags on the most mischievous day of the year.[break] YouTube, the world´s largest video sharing site, revealed it had merely been an eight-year contest to find the best video and would be closing to review all the entries. The winner would be announced in 2023. "We are so close to the end. Tonight at midnight, YouTube.com will no longer be accepting entries. After eight amazing years, it is finally time to review everything that has been uploaded to our site and begin the process of selecting a winner," said Tim Liston, named as "competition director". In keeping with its prankster reputation, Google also unveiled a complex search engine that would offer "the sharpest olfactory experience available". The search engine claims to have a database of smells from all over the world. Users can search for "new car smell", or "Egyptian tomb", sniff their screen and even share it with a friend. Meanwhile micro-blogging site Twitter said it had decided to shave off even more characters by providing a new vowel-free service to users. "Trd th nw Twttr yt? Mr tm fr mr twts" (Translation: "Tried the new Twitter yet? More time for more tweets") the site announced. Of course, vowels would still be available but only to premium users willing to pay five dollars a month. Several recent newsmakers were targeted in April Fool´s Day pranks, with North Korea cropping up twice. South Africa´s Daily Maverick newspaper carried a story headlined "Exclusive: Oscar Pistorius signs up for North Korea´s inaugural Friendship Run." The paper said the double-amputee paralympian sprint star who is charged with killing his model girlfriend will lead SA´s team in Kim Jong-Un´s bid to build bridges between less understood world regimes and less understood global figures. "Just days after being allowed to travel while on bail, Oscar Pistorius has received an unexpected honour: A personal invitation from North Korea´s newly minted and beloved leader, Kim Jong-Un, to join the many worthy celebrities participating in his Friendship Run, a 10km race through the exquisitely manicured streets of Pyongyang. When he heard of the invitation, Pistorius said: "I´ll take it." On hearing that the race was not going to be his favourite 400m sprint, but 25 times longer at 10km, Pistorius curtly replied: "I´ll be fine", the paper reported. Meanwhile German news website Tagesschau.de reported that actor David Hasselhoff, known for roles in Baywatch and Knight Rider, had been asked by the US State Department to mediate in North Korea. "Until now, diplomatic efforts have gotten us nowhere, as have resolutions and sanctions. Why not try less controversial methods for once?" the newspaper cited State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland as saying. Hasselhoff is very popular in Germany, where he had a number one hit with his song "Looking for Freedom" which he sang in front of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He recently sang the song to massive crowds in the German capital protesting the removal of a part of the wall for a construction project. From the call to politics to the call of nature, environmental organisation WWF unveiled a revolutionary urinal equipped with an electric turbine which could allow men to generate power while peeing. It said that if just one-tenth of Swiss restaurants adopted the system, the country could shut down a nuclear power plant. The WWF said developing a similar toilet for women was a more complex process, but that researchers hoped to have one ready by 2016. The Huffington Post news website reported that the wealthy Qatari backers of London´s Shard skyscraper were building the "Shlide", a heart-stopping thrill ride curving all the way down the 72-floor building. Providing an image of the slide, the site quotes project coordinator "Dizzy" Lizzy McGovern, who said there had been some teething problems in the project. "We wish Brian, the initial tester, a speedy recovery after the operation to replace both his knees." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52446 NEW DELHI, April 1: India´s Supreme Court rejected Monday a patent bid by Swiss drug giant Novartis in a landmark ruling that activists say will protect access to cheap generic drugs and save lives in developing nations. Novartis fought a seven-year legal battle to gain patent protection for an updated version of its blockbuster cancer drug Glivec, arguing that the compound was a significant improvement because it is more easily absorbed by the body.[break] But in a ruling that went to the heart of patent law in a country known as the "pharmacy to the world", the top court said the compound "did not satisfy the test of novelty or inventiveness" required by Indian legislation. The court dismissed the Novartis´ case "with legal cost", which means the firm must pay undisclosed legal expenses. India´s law restricts pharmaceutical companies from seeking fresh patents for making only small modifications -- an industry practice known as "evergreening" -- and the ruling enables generic drugmakers to continue copying Glivec. The case is the most high-profile of several battles being waged in India. It was seen as having far-reaching implications in defining the extent of patent protection for multinational drug firms operating in the lucrative market. "The ruling has come as a big relief," Leena Menghaney, a lawyer with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said outside the courtroom. "It will save a lot of lives -- not only in India but across the developing world." "The ruling doesn´t mean no patents will be granted in India, but the abusive practice of seeking many patents for one drug will be curbed," she added. MSF says Glivec -- often hailed as a "silver bullet" for its breakthrough in treating a deadly form of leukaemia -- costs $4,000 a month in its branded form while the generic version is available in India for around $73. Novartis, which reported net profit of $9.6 billion in 2012 on sales of $56.7 billion, condemned the judgement, saying in a statement it "discourages innovative drug discovery essential to advancing medical science for patients". "This ruling is a setback for patients that will hinder medical progress for diseases without effective treatment options," said Ranjit Shahani, managing director of Novartis India. Shares of Novartis India, the local unit of the Basel-headquartered group, were down 4.31 percent at 573.00 rupees while Indian generics giant Cipla climbed 2.12 percent to 387.80 rupees. The Supreme Court upheld the view of India´s Intellectual Property Appellate Board, which refused to grant Novartis protection in 2009 on the grounds that the amended form of Glivec was not vastly different from the earlier version. The Madras High Court had also rejected Novartis´ arguments in 2007. Lawyer Anand Grover, representing the Cancer Patients Aid Association in the case, said he was "ecstatic", adding that the ruling will "go a long way in providing affordable medicine for the poor". India´s huge generic drug industry has been a major supplier of copycat medicines to treat diseases such as cancer, TB and AIDS for those who cannot afford expensive branded versions across the developing world. The copycat drugs industry, which supplies one-fifth of the world´s generics, grew into a powerhouse because the country did not issue drug patents until 2005 when it began complying with World Trade Organisation rules. Pratibha Singh, a lawyer acting on behalf of generics group Cipla, said the judgement "makes it clear you cannot patent a drug by just making some minor modifications -- the key Section 3(d) of the patent law has been upheld by the court". Global drugmakers say India´s generics industry reduces commercial incentives to produce cutting-edge medicines and Novartis has warned it might stop introducing new drugs in India. At the same time, the market is difficult to ignore and is set to touch $74 billion in sales by 2020 from $11 billion in 2011, according to industry estimates. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52422 ISLAMABAD, March 31: Pakistan´s political parties organised huge rallies on Sunday but campaigning for historic general elections in May was marred by a bomb attack which killed two people in the country´s northwest. The Pakistani Taliban have issued threats against the three main secular parties that made up the outgoing government and who backed army operations against the Islamist militants.[break] But that did not deter politicians from holding processions on Sunday to attract voters on May 11, an election which stands to mark the country´s first democratic transition to power. A roadside bomb attack killed two and injured six others including a candidate in the town of Bannu, marring an election rally by the liberal Awami National Party, which has borne the brunt of Taliban attacks in the restive northwest. Elsewhere in the region, ex-cricketer Imran Khan, who heads the Movement for Justice party, drew an impressive crowd in Mingora, home to teenage rights activist Malala Yousafzai who was shot in the head by the Taliban last October. "It is a matter of only six weeks, prepare yourselves for elections, we will establish a new Pakistan," Khan told his supporters, while vowing to bring peace to the troubled border areas where Islamists have in recent years waged an insurgency. Pakistan says more than 35,000 people have been killed as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Authorities in the eastern city of Lahore meanwhile shut down mobile phone networks as a security precaution ahead of a huge rally organised by Islamist party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) headed by cleric Fazlur Rehman. Despite their pro-militant views, Pakistan´s Islamist parties have also come under attack by the the Taliban who reject democracy and seek to govern the country according to their brand of Sharia law. In the port city of Karachi, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a political party which dominates the metropolis of 21 million people also organised a public rally, as did the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Islamic party. Last week, the frontrunner in Pakistan´s election race, opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, attracted tens of thousands to a rally in northwestern town of Mansehra where he promised development and economic success. Pakistani media reported hundreds of candidates and their supporters were seen gathering outside election commission offices across the country after authorities extended a deadline for the submission of nomination papers to midnight. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52368 KARACHI, Pakistan, March 30: A corrupt, low-level cop with a healthy dose of street smarts rises to control hundreds of illegal gambling dens in Pakistan´s largest city. By doling out millions of dollars in illicit proceeds, he protects his empire and becomes one of the most powerful people in Karachi. The allegations against Mohammed Waseem Ahmed — or Waseem "Beater" as he is more commonly known — emerged recently from surprise testimony by a top police commander before a crusading anti-crime Supreme Court judge. [break]The story has given a rare and colorful glimpse into the vast underworld in Karachi, a chaotic metropolis of 18 million people on Pakistan´s southern coast. The sprawling city has become notorious for violence, from gangland-style killings and kidnappings to militant bombings and sectarian slayings. Further worrying authorities have been signs that the Pakistani Taliban are using the chaos to gain a greater foothold in the city. For months, the Supreme Court´s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has been leading special hearings on Karachi´s crime, berating the city´s top police officers for failing to act. This past week, he demanded they move in to clean up so-called "no-go" areas — entire neighborhoods where police fear to tread — according to local press reports. In this Wednesday, March 20, 2013, photo, Pakistani men play cards in a field in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP) Further fueling the problem is rampant police corruption, undermining efforts to combat the city´s violent gangs and extremists. Among the public, the police nationwide are seen as the country´s most crooked public sector organization, a high bar given claims of pervasive corruption throughout the government. The allegations surrounding Ahmed further fuel questions about the overlap between Karachi´s underworld and its police forces. After the testimony to the Supreme Court earlier this year, police officials in Karachi provided The Associated Press with additional details over his reported rise. The AP made repeated attempts to contact Ahmed, who has been removed from the force and fled to Dubai, but was not successful. Ahmed came from a poor family in Karachi´s old city and joined the police force in the 1990s. He soon started working as a "beater," a low-level thug who works for more senior cops to collect a cut from illegal activities in their area, such as gambling, prostitution and drug dealing, said half a dozen police officers who knew him personally at the time. They all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Ahmed, who sports a bushy black mustache and usually dresses in a simple, white shalwar kameez, earned a reputation for carrying out his illicit work efficiently, said two police officers who have known him ever since he joined the force. That reputation helped him forge relationships with more senior figures, and eventually he was collecting money for some of the top police officers and civilian security officials in Karachi, they said. The heavyset 40-year-old also attracted the attention of a local boss who controlled the largest concentration of illegal gambling dens in Karachi, located in the city´s rough and tumble Ghas Mandi area, where Ahmed worked, said the policemen and a local journalist. The two teamed up to expand their gambling empire to other parts of Karachi and surrounding Sindh province. Gambling was not always illegal in Pakistan, a nation of 180 million people that gained independence from Britain in 1947 as a sanctuary for Muslims who did not believe they could thrive as part of what is now India, a majority Hindu state. Despite the religious undertones of Pakistan´s founding, the country´s major cities, such as Karachi and Lahore, were relatively liberal places in the first few decades after independence. Alcohol flowed freely in nightclubs filled with dancing girls. But in 1977, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned gambling and alcohol for Muslims in an attempt to appease Islamic hard-liners. Drinking and gambling, which are forbidden in Islam, didn´t stop, but much of it was driven underground. The gambling dens in Ghas Mandi are hidden behind nondescript facades down dark alleyways with tangled electrical wires hanging overhead in one of the oldest and densest populated parts of Karachi. In one den, a dozen men dressed in shalwar kameez sat in a semicircle on the floor playing a local card game, mang patta, beneath bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The men sipped tea and tossed 100 rupee ($1) poker chips at the dealer. In an adjacent room, a handful of men played chakka, a game that involved guessing the numbers that would appear when the dealer rolled three dice out of what looked like an old leather Yahtzee cup. Rupee notes were placed on a table as bets and held in place by a large metal washer. Everyone stopped their games when the Muslim call to prayer came over a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque — and they promptly resumed the dice and cards once the prayer ended. Ahmed earned tens of thousands of dollars each day from hundreds of such gambling dens, said the policemen and journalist who knew him. He also collected extortion money from drug dealers and brothels and smuggled diesel fuel into Karachi from neighboring Iran, where it is much cheaper, they said. He distributed cash to senior officials, and the pay-outs made him one of the most powerful people in Karachi´s police force, said his acquaintances. He won significant influence over who was posted to senior positions, thus providing him with protection, they said. Known as a man of few words who rarely loses his cool, Ahmed also handed out money to Karachi´s powerful criminal gangs and traveled with roughly a dozen armed guards as an insurance policy. He was sailing smoothly through the underworld until one of the Supreme Court sessions in January. A petitioner outlined to the court allegations of Ahmed´s illicit activities and his power in the police force. Chief Justice Chaudhry then asked senior police officers and civilian officials who were present about the allegations. They all expressed ignorance. But Deputy Inspector General Bashir Memon spoke up and backed the petitioner´s claims. "I said yes, Waseem ´Beater´ is present among the ranks of the Karachi police. He controls the gambling business in Karachi," Memon told The Associated Press. "I also confirmed that he is involved in the transfer and posting of junior and senior police officers." Another senior police officer in Sindh province, Sanaullah Abbasi, also testified that he knew Ahmed and that he controlled gambling dens in Karachi. Chaudhry lambasted the senior officials for not going after Ahmed and asked Memon whether he was concerned about contradicting his colleagues. "I replied, ´I only told you the truth,´" Memon told the AP. As a sign of Ahmed´s power, Memon said he was told the same day he would be transferred out of Karachi, but the Supreme Court canceled the transfer order. Ahmed was dismissed from the police force after the Supreme Court hearing, according to two senior police officers, and government records indicate he flew to Dubai and has not returned. Hassan Abbas, an expert on the Pakistani police at the New York-based Asia Society, said Ahmed´s case provides a stark illustration of the level of corruption in the Karachi police force, which he described as the worst in any of Pakistan´s major cities. Criminal cases are currently pending against 400 police officers serving in Karachi, said Abbas. Civilian officials, who also benefit from corruption, have shown no willingness to reform the system, making the force relatively ineffective in cracking down on criminal gangs and Islamist militants in the city, said Abbas. "The chaos in Karachi provides criminal gangs with the cover they need to operate," said Abbas. "Corruption provides an incentive to continue that chaos." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52351 SEOUL, South Korea, March 30: The outside world focuses on the messages of doom and gloom from North Korea: bombastic threats of nuclear war, fantasy videos of U.S. cities in flames, digitally altered photos of leader Kim Jong Un guiding military drills. But back home, North Koreans get a decidedly softer dose of propaganda: Kim portrayed as a young, energetic leader, a people person and family man.[break] Mixed in with the images showing Kim aboard a speeding boat on a tour of front-line islands, or handing out commemorative rifles to smartly saluting soldiers, are those of Kim and his wife clapping at a dolphin show or linking arms with weeping North Korean children. The pictures can look odd or obviously staged to outsiders. But they´re carefully crafted propaganda meant to give North Koreans an image of a country governed by a leader who is as comfortable overseeing a powerful military as he is mingling with the people. Analysts say the images also hint at something that often gets lost amid the threatening rhetoric: North Korea´s supreme commander isn´t an all-powerful, isolated monarch who can govern without considering his people´s approval. Kim is still busy building his reputation at home. FILE - In this March 11, 2013 file photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rides on a boat, heading for the Wolnae Islet Defense Detachment, North Korea, near the western sea border with South Korea. (AP) "Even dictatorships respond to public opinion and public pressure," said John Delury, a North Korea analyst at Seoul´s Yonsei University. "He´s expected to pay attention to and make improvements in the common people´s standard of living. They´ve put that promise out in their domestic propaganda." It´s a tall order. Living standards in Pyongyang, the capital, are relatively high, with new shops and restaurants catering to a growing middle class. But U.N. officials´ reports detail harsh conditions elsewhere in North Korea: up to 200,000 people estimated to be languishing in political prison camps, and two-thirds of the country´s 24 million people facing regular food shortages. When it comes to North Korean propaganda, much of the world focuses on the series of outlandish videos uploaded to the country´s YouTube channel and government website, largely for foreign consumption. In one fantasy, missiles rain down on a burning American city while an instrumental version of "We Are the World" plays in the background. In another, President Barack Obama and U.S. troops burn. But what most North Koreans see on state TV is a different propaganda message: Kim Jong Un bending down to receive flowers from children, Kim visiting families living in rustic homes on front-line islands, Kim mobbed by gushing female soldiers. As with any propaganda or PR, the images are carefully staged. And many make foreign news headlines only when experts and photo editors discover that North Korea is digitally altering them. For instance, in a picture distributed recently by state media, troops and hovercraft land on a barren, snow-dappled beach. Experts say some of the multiple hovercraft have been copied and pasted into the image. But North Korea´s propaganda makers aren´t concerned about the criticism abroad to their heavy-handed photo editing. "These efforts are aimed more at an unsophisticated domestic peasant audience than those of us who are more discerning," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank in Hawaii. The caring domestic persona being built for Kim by his image specialists is aided by his wife, Ri Sol Ju. She is young and glamorous, a chic and smiling presence at his side in many of the country´s propaganda images. The couple is often photographed at amusement parks, nurseries, factory tours and concerts. "It´s a more complex kind of image he has as a leader," Delury said. "The basis of his legitimacy domestically has to do with these other, non-military things." The propaganda machine in North Korea also worked to build up a caring image for Kim´s father, the late Kim Jong Il. He doggedly appeared at tours of factories, farms and military posts. But while Kim Jong Un puts his wife front and center and is a relaxed presence on camera, his father was stiff in photos and secretive about his family life. North Korea takes pains to select and sometimes alter photos so its leaders appear in the best light possible, said Seo Jeong-nam, a North Korean propaganda expert at Keimyung University in South Korea. For example, past propaganda specialists were careful not to pick photos that showed the large lump on the back of the neck of Kim´s grandfather, North Korean President Kim Il Sung, Seo said. When Kim Jong Il was alive, North Korean photographers tried to make him look taller in photos than he actually was, often positioning him slightly in front of others, Seo said. As for Kim Jong Un, Seo said North Korea´s propaganda mill chooses photos that show off his strong resemblance to his grandfather, who still is depicted on state TV as the loving father of the nation, surrounded by children and adoring citizens. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52345 JOHANNESBURG, March 30: Nelson Mandela is "in good spirits" and making progress as he spends a third night in hospital for a lung infection, South Africa´s government said, seeking to soothe fears over the anti-apartheid hero. Messages of concern for the ailing 94-year-old, one of the towering figures of modern history, have poured in since he was admitted to hospital late Wednesday and President Jacob Zuma´s spokesman gave an upbeat report on Friday.[break] "He was in good spirits, he had a full breakfast, and the doctors report that he´s making steady progress," Mac Maharaj told AFP. "He sat up and had his breakfast in bed." Mandela´s recent health troubles have triggered an outpouring of prayers but have also seen South Africans come to terms with the mortality of the revered Nobel Peace Prize winner. The former president is idolised in his home nation, where he is seen as the architect of South Africa´s peaceful transition from white-minority ruled police state to hope-filled democracy. Nearly 20 years after he came to power in 1994, he remains a unifying symbol in a country still riven by racial tensions and deep inequality. It is the second time this month that he has been admitted to hospital, after spending a night for check-ups on March 9. That followed a nearly three-week hospital stay in December, when Mandela was treated for another lung infection and underwent gallstone surgery. He was diagnosed with early-stage tuberculosis in 1988 during his 27 years in prison under the apartheid regime and has long had problems with his lungs. He has also had treatment for prostate cancer and suffered stomach ailments. Mandela´s ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela told public broadcaster SABC that "Tata (father) is doing well". "He´s responding very well to treatment," said Madikizela-Mandela, who attended a church service in Soweto where the congregation prayed for Mandela. But officials said doctors´ reports of Mandela´s steady progress should be taken in context. "Yes, indeed it is good news but we need to be cautious, bear in mind his age," said presidential spokesman Maharaj, who was a political prisoner with Mandela at Robben Island jail off the coast of Cape Town. -- ´Through him, we are where we are´ -- While Mandela´s legacy continues to loom large over South African politics, he has long since exited the political stage and for the large young population he is a figure from another era, serving as president for just one term. He has not appeared in public since South Africa´s football World Cup final in 2010. Labour unrest, high-profile crimes, grinding poverty and corruption scandals have effectively ended the honeymoon enjoyed after Mandela ushered in the "Rainbow Nation" but his decades-long struggle against apartheid resonates. Ajith Deena, who lives near eastern port city Durban, said Mandela is so beloved because he forgave his apartheid captors and said "´Let´s go forward together, let´s forget the past and let´s move forward as one nation, one country.´" He will leave South Africa on "a good footing", Deena said. "It will be a big loss to the country even though he´s not in the public eye. It´s through him that we are where we are." The name and location of the hospital where Mandela is being treated have not been disclosed to allow his medical team to focus on their work and to shield the family from the intense media interest. In the past he has been hospitalised at a clinic in Pretoria. Away from the public eye, Mandela has grown increasingly frail. His December hospital stay was his longest since he walked free from jail in 1990. English Premier League football club Sunderland is calling its clash Saturday with Manchester United "Nelson Mandela Day", in honour of the club´s association with Mandela´s charitable foundation. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52309 SEOUL, South Korea, March 29: Across North Korea, soldiers are gearing up for battle and shrouding their jeeps and vans with camouflage netting. Newly painted signboards and posters call for "death to the U.S. imperialists" and urge the people to fight with "arms, not words." But even as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is issuing midnight battle cries to his generals to ready their rockets, he and his million-man army know full well that a successful missile strike on U.S. targets would be suicide for the outnumbered, out-powered North Korean regime.[break] Despite the hastening drumbeat of warfare, none of the key players in the region wants or expects another Korean War — not even the North Koreans. But by seemingly bringing the region to the very brink of conflict with threats and provocations, Pyongyang is aiming to draw attention to the tenuousness of the armistice designed to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula, a truce North Korea recently announced it would no longer honor as it warned that war could break out at any time. It´s all part of a grand master plan to force Washington to the negotiating table, pressure the new president in Seoul to change policy on North Korea, and build unity at home — without triggering a full-blown war if all goes well. In July, it will be 60 years since North Korea and China signed an armistice with the U.S. and the United Nations to bring an end to three years of brutal, bloody Cold War fighting that cost millions of lives. The designated "Demilitarized Zone" has evolved into the most heavily guarded border in the world. It was never intended to be a permanent border. But six decades later, North and South remain divided, with Pyongyang feeling abandoned by the South Koreans in the quest for reunification and threatened by the Americans. In that time, South Korea has blossomed from a poor, agrarian nation of peasants into the world´s 15th largest economy while North Korea is struggling to find a way out of a Cold War chasm that has left it with a per capita income on par with sub-Saharan Africa. The Chinese troops who fought alongside the North Koreans have long since left. But 28,500 American troops are still stationed in South Korea and 50,000 more are in nearby Japan. For weeks, the U.S. and South Korea have been showing off their military might with a series of joint exercises that Pyongyang sees a rehearsal for invasion. On Thursday, the U.S. military confirmed that those drills included two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers that can unload the U.S. Air Force´s largest conventional bomb — a 30,000-pound super bunker buster — powerful enough to destroy North Korea´s web of underground military tunnels. It was a provocative play by Washington, a flexing of military muscle perhaps aimed not only at Pyongyang but at Beijing as well. In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un reacted swiftly, calling an emergency meeting of army generals and ordering them to be prepared to strike if the U.S. provocations continue. A photo distributed by North Korea´s official Korean Central News Agency showed Kim in a military operations room with maps detailing a "strike plan" behind him in a very public show of supposedly sensitive military strategy. North Korea cites the U.S. military threat as a key reason behind its need to build nuclear weapons, and has poured a huge chunk of its small national budget into defense, science and technology. In December, scientists launched a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket using technology that could easily be converted for missiles; in February, they tested an underground nuclear device as part of a mission to build a bomb they can load on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. However, what North Korea really wants is legitimacy in the eyes of the U.S. — and a peace treaty. Pyongyang wants U.S. troops off Korean soil, and the bombs and rockets are more of an expensive, dangerous safety blanket than real firepower. They are the only real playing card North Korea has left, and the bait they hope will bring the Americans to the negotiating table. Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at Japan´s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, isn´t convinced North Korea is capable of attacking Guam, Hawaii or the U.S. mainland. He says Pyongyang hasn´t successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. But its medium-range Rodong missiles, with a range of about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers), are "operational and credible" and could reach U.S. bases in Japan, he says. More likely than such a strike, however, is a smaller-scale incident, perhaps off the Koreas´ western coast, that would not provoke the Americans to unleash their considerable firepower. For years, the waters off the west coast have been a battleground for naval skirmishes between the two Koreas because the North has never recognized the maritime border drawn unilaterally by the U.N. As threatening as Kim´s call to arms may sound, its main target audience may be the masses at home in North Korea. For months, the masterminds of North Korean propaganda have pinpointed this year´s milestone Korean War anniversary as a prime time to play up Kim´s military credibility as well as to push for a peace treaty. By creating the impression that a U.S. attack is imminent, the regime can foster a sense of national unity and encourage the people to rally around their new leader. Inside Pyongyang, much of the military rhetoric feels like theatrics. It´s not unusual to see people toting rifles in North Korea, where soldiers and checkpoints are a fixture in the heavily militarized society. But more often than not in downtown Pyongyang, the rifle stashed in a rucksack is a prop and the "soldier" is a dancer, one of the many performers rehearsing for a Korean War-themed extravaganza set to debut later this year. More than 100,000 soldiers, students and ordinary workers were summoned Friday to Kim Il Sung Square in downtown Pyongyang to pump their fists in support of North Korea´s commander in chief. But elsewhere, it was business as usual at restaurants and shops, and farms and factories, where the workers have heard it all before. "Tensions rise almost every year around the time the U.S.-South Korean drills take place, but as soon as those drills end, things go back to normal and people put those tensions behind them quite quickly," said Sung Hyun-sang, the South Korean president of a clothing maker operating in the North Korean border town of Kaesong. "I think and hope that this time won´t be different." And in a telling sign that even the North Koreans don´t expect war, the national airline, Air Koryo, is adding flights to its spring lineup and preparing to host the scores of tourists they expect to flock to Pyongyang despite the threats issuing forth from the Supreme Command. War or no war, it seems Pyongyang remains open for business. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52296 KARACHI, Pakistan, March 29: An angry lawyer threw a shoe at former President Pervez Musharraf as he headed to court in southern Pakistan on Friday to face legal charges following his return to the country after four years in self-imposed exile, police said. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked the convoy of a paramilitary police commander in northwestern Pakistan, killing 11 people, including a four month-old infant, police said.[break] Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999 but was forced to step down nearly a decade later, is disliked by many lawyers throughout Pakistan because of his decision to suspend the chief justice of the Supreme Court while he was in office. The lawyer tossed his shoe at Musharraf as the former military strongman was walking down a hallway in the court building in the city of Karachi surrounded by a mob of security, supporters and journalists, said police official Nasir Aftab. The shoe did not hit Musharraf, and the lawyer was not detained because no charges were filed against him, said Aftab. Throwing a shoe at someone is an especially potent insult in Muslim countries because the sole is considered unclean. Local TV channels showed video of the incident, but it was impossible to identify the shoe thrower because he was hidden behind part of the corridor. Following the incident, judges granted Musharraf an extension of pre-emptive bail in three cases against him, meaning he cannot be immediately arrested. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, center, surrounded by guards, holds his head after a shoe was thrown at him as he headed to court to face legal charges in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, March 29. (AP) Two of the cases involve the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the killing of Akbar Bugti, a Baluch nationalist leader who died in August 2006 after a standoff with the Pakistani military. Musharraf was granted an extension of 21 days in those two cases. He was granted a 15-day extension in connection with a third case, in which he is accused of illegally removing a number of judges at the time, including the Supreme Court chief justice, said Shahadat Awan, the prosecutor general for surrounding Sindh province. Musharraf was also restricted from leaving the country during the period that his bail was extended, Pakistani state TV reported. Musharraf returned from exile last Sunday, seeking a possible political comeback despite the legal charges against him and death threats from Taliban militants. But he was only met by a couple thousand reporters when his flight from Dubai landed in Karachi, and analysts have said they don´t expect his party to attract much support in parliamentary elections scheduled for May 11. Musharraf seized power in 1999 when he was serving as Pakistan´s army chief. He was forced to step down in 2008 and eventually left the country amid discontent with his rule and threats of impeachment by the country´s main political parties. His decision to suspend the Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, played a key role in reducing his popularity. Chaudhry has since been reinstated. In Karachi, a group of lawyers protested outside the Sindh High Court on Friday as Musharraf entered. They chanted slogans against the former military strongman and jostled with his supporters. The attack on the paramilitary police commander´s convoy in northwestern Pakistan occurred in the city of Peshawar. The apparent target, Abdul Majeed Marwat, who heads the Frontier Constabulary, was not hurt, said police official Dost Mohammed Khan. The 11 dead included five members of the security forces and six civilians, said Khan. The civilians included two women, a young girl and a four month-old infant. Another 22 people were wounded, said Khan. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Peshawar is located on the border with Pakistan´s semiautonomous tribal region, the main sanctuary for Taliban militants in the country. The Pakistani Taliban have carried out many bombings in the city and other parts of the country targeting both security forces and civilians. There is concern that the militants could step up the pace of attacks ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52276 UNITED NATIONS, March 28: Iran, North Korea and Syria on Thursday held up agreement on the first global treaty on the $80 billion a year conventional arms trade. The three states twice blocked moves to adopt a treaty by consensus at the end of 10 days of arduous talks at the UN headquarters.[break] A coalition of countries from around the world said they would now take the treaty straight to the 193-member UN General Assembly next week for approval. It can be passed with a two thirds majority which is virtually assured. The move by Iran, North Korea and Syria, all facing sanctions or international reprimands for their weapons programs or trading, caused widespread anger at the conference. "This is not a failure, today is success deferred and deferred by not very long," said Britain´s chief negotiator Jo Adamson. "A good strong treaty has been blocked by the DPRK (North Korea), the Islamic Republic of Iran and Syria but most people in the world want regulation and those are the voices that need to be heard," she added. The Amnesty International rights group called the blocking move "deeply cynical". "The world has been held hostage by three states," said Anna MacDonald, Oxfam´s arms control specialist. All of the major arms producer -- the United States, Russia, Germany, France, China and Britain -- were ready to agree the treaty for which negotiations started in 2006. The first major arms accord since the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would cover tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, as well as small arms and light arms. It would aim to force countries to set up national controls on arms exports. They would also have to assess whether a weapon could be used for genocide, war crimes or by terrorists or organized crime gangs before it is sold. Conference president Peter Woolcott of Australia had been about to bring the gavel down on an accord when Iranian, North Korean and Syrian ambassadors raised objections. After an hour of closed talks, a second attempt brought the same result. "The inherent right of states to self-defense, to defend against aggression and preserve its territorial integrity is not addressed," Iran´s UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee told the conference. North Korea´s deputy UN ambassador Ri Tong-Il called the proposed treaty a "risky draft which can be politically manipulated by major arms exporters." The envoy railed against arms embargos such as one his country faces over its nuclear weapons tests. Syria´s UN ambassador Bashar Jaafari said the treaty should be more explicit on supplying arms to "terrorists" and "non-state groups." Dozens of countries made it clear to the three that they were isolated. UN leader Ban Ki-Moon was "deeply disappointed" that the treaty was not agreed, said a UN spokeswoman. The United States is the world´s biggest arms dealer but Assistant US Secretary of State for International Security Tom Countryman said the United States backed the text and US trade would not be "unduly hindered" by the treaty. Even if the treaty is now agreed in the General Assembly, it may not get universal acceptance. Countryman predicted that other countries would join the objectors in voting against the treaty at the General Assembly. But he added: "We think an overwhelming majority of states will vote in favor. I am happy to vote the opposite direction of such states as Iran, North Korea and syria on this text." Russia said there are "omissions" in the treaty and "doubtful" provisions such as the failure to control arms transfers to non-state groups. Russia is particularly worried about weapons getting into the hands of Chechen rebels. A Russian diplomat told the conference "we will be studying the draft extremely carefully" before deciding whether to sign it. India also cast doubt on whether it would sign the treaty. "The final draft has the telltale marks of behind-the-scenes carve outs of exclusive interests of a select few countries," India´s delegate Sujata Mehta said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52258 BEIJING, March 28: A photo of China´s new first lady Peng Liyuan in younger days, singing to martial-law troops following the 1989 bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, flickered across Chinese cyberspace this week. It was swiftly scrubbed from China´s Internet before it could generate discussion online. But the image — seen and shared by outside observers — revived a memory the leadership prefers to suppress and shows one of the challenges in presenting Peng on the world stage as the softer side of China.[break] The country has no recent precedent for the role of first lady, and also faces a tricky balance at home. The leadership wants Peng to show the human side of the new No. 1 leader, Xi Jinping, while not exposing too many perks of the elite. And it must balance popular support for the first couple with an acute wariness of personality cults that could skew the consensus rule among the Chinese Communist Party´s top leaders. The image of Peng in a green military uniform, her windswept hair tied back in a ponytail as she sings to helmeted and rifle-bearing troops seated in rows on Beijing´s Tiananmen Square, contrasts with her appearances this week in trendy suits and coiffed hair while touring Russia and Africa with Xi, waving to her enthusiastic hosts. In this photo taken Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009, Chinese singer Peng Liyuan, center, performs during the final rehearsal of the music and dance epic "Road to Revival" at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. (AP) "I think that we have a lot of people hoping that because Xi Jinping walks around without a tie on and his wife is a singer who travels with him on trips that maybe we´re dealing with a new kind of leader, but I think these images remind people that this is the same party," said Kelley Currie, a China human rights expert for the pro-democracy Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia. "It´s using some new tools and new techniques, for the same purposes: to preserve its own power." Peng, 50, a major general in the People´s Liberation Army who is best known for soaring renditions of patriotic odes to the military and the party, kept a low profile in recent years as her husband prepared to take over as Communist Party chief. Her re-emergence has been accompanied by a blitz in domestic, state-run media hailing her beauty and charm, in a bid to harness the singer´s popularity to build support for Xi at home and abroad. "Peng Liyuan: Let the world appreciate the beauty of China," declared the headline of a China News Service commentary that said the first lady´s elegant manners, conversation and clothing would highlight Chinese culture. Her presence on diplomatic trips would demystify the first family for the Chinese public, the commentary said. However, the government is stepping into little-charted and possibly treacherous waters for China. In 1963, the glamorous Wang Guangmei, wife of President Liu Shaoqi, wore a tightfitting qipao dress to a state banquet in Indonesia. When the political tides turned against Liu four years later, radical Red Guards forced Wang to don the same dress and paraded her through the streets as a shameful example of capitalist corruption. Revolutionary leader Mao Zedong´s wife, Jiang Qing, played a key role in the same radical campaign in which political opponents were mercilessly persecuted; after his death, she was put on trial and imprisoned, then moved to a hospital where she hanged herself. The lifespan of Peng´s Tiananmen image in the finicky world of the Chinese Internet has so far been short, and she remains a beloved household name with huge domestic popularity. The photo has circulated mainly on Twitter, which is blocked in China. The few posts on popular domestic microblogs did not evade censors for long. Many young Chinese are unaware that on June 3 and 4, 1989, military troops crushed weekslong pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing with force, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of people. Those who do know about the assault tend to be understanding of Peng´s obligations as a member of a performance troupe in the all-powerful People´s Liberation Army. At the time, her husband Xi was party chief of an eastern city. "The photo probably has a negative impact more so internationally than domestically," said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at City University of Hong Kong. He said more scrutiny of Peng is likely and such images could raise questions about Xi´s interest in reforms. "It has been several months now that Xi Jinping has assumed the top leadership role and certainly, we have found no indicator that he is interested in this stage to push serious political reform." The image is a snapshot of the back cover of a 1989 issue of a publicly available military magazine, the PLA Pictorial, according to Sun Li, a Chinese reporter who said he had taken a photo of it on his cell phone several years ago when it was inadvertently posted on his microblog. Sun said he quickly deleted it and had no idea how it resurfaced on the Internet years later. Microblog users can easily save images and recirculate them even after the original posts have been deleted. The picture spread further after it was tweeted by the U.S.-based China Digital Times, which tracks Chinese online media. Warren Sun, a Chinese military historian at Monash University in Australia, said he had little doubt about the authenticity of the image, citing a 1992 academic report as saying that after the crackdown, Peng performed a song titled "The Most Beloved People" in a salute to martial law troops. While most of her army career has been in singing, the militaristic overtones of many of Peng´s public appearances set her apart from Michelle Obama, former French first lady Carla Bruni and most of their counterparts in other countries. But for Peng, the Tiananmen photo was no one-off: She has been in the military since age 18 and has fronted TV music videos featuring dancing lines of men with combat fatigues and heavy weaponry. She also starred in a song-and-dance number in 2007 that has perky women in Tibetan garb sashaying behind her while she sings an ode to the army that invaded Tibet in 1959. "Who is going to liberate us? It´s the dear PLA!" go some of the lyrics. The video has provoked severe criticism from Tibetan rights groups. In an indication of Peng´s appeal in China despite her past, a man whose 19-year-old son was killed in the Tiananmen crackdown said he bears no grudges against her. "If I had known about this back then, I would have been very disgusted by it. But now, looking at it objectively, it´s all in the past," said Wang Fandi, whose son Wang Nan died from a bullet wound to his head. "She was in the establishment. If the military wanted her to perform, she had to go. What else could she do?" Wang was a teacher at the China Conservatory of Music when Peng had been sent there by the military to study singing in her 20s. Though he never taught her directly, Wang had known who she was and describes her as being modest, a talented folk singer and an outstanding student. "When I look back at history, I will look at it from other perspectives," Wang said. "Even if she had done something wrong, we shouldn´t make a fuss about it. What´s important is what happens in the future." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52249 WASHINGTON, March 28: A "bazooka" cyber attack described as the most powerful ever seen has slowed traffic on the Internet, security experts said Wednesday, raising fresh concerns over online security. The attacks targeted Spamhaus, a Geneva-based volunteer group that publishes spam blacklists used by networks to filter out unwanted email, and led to cyberspace congestion that may have affected the Internet overall, according to Matthew Prince of the US security firm CloudFlare.[break] The attacks began last week, according to Spamhaus, after it placed on its blacklist the Dutch-based Web hosting site Cyberbunker, which claimed it was unfairly labeled as a haven for cybercrime and spam. The origin of the attacks has not yet been identified. But a BBC report said Spamhaus alleged that Cyberbunker, in cooperation with "criminal gangs" from Eastern Europe and Russia, was behind the attack. The New York Times quoted Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who claimed to be a spokesman for the attackers, as saying that Cyberbunker was retaliating against Spamhaus for "abusing their influence." But Kamphuis told the Russian news site RT that Cyberbunker was just one of several Web firms involved, protesting what he called Spamhaus´s bullying tactics. "Spamhaus have pissed off a whole lot of people over the past few years by blackmailing ISPs and carriers into disconnecting clients without court orders or legal process whatsoever," he said. "At this moment, we are not even conducting any attacks... it´s now other people attacking them." CloudFlare, which was called for assistance by Spamhaus, said the attackers changed tactics after the first layer of protection was implemented last week. "Rather than attacking our customers directly, they started going after the network providers CloudFlare uses for bandwidth," Prince said. "Once the attackers realized they couldn´t knock CloudFlare itself offline... they went after our direct peers." Prince said the so-called distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), which essentially bombards sites with traffic in an effort to disrupt, was "one of the largest ever reported." Over the last few days, he added, "we´ve seen congestion across several major Tier 1 (networks), primarily in Europe, where most of the attacks were concentrated, that would have affected hundreds of millions of people even as they surfed sites unrelated to Spamhaus or CloudFlare." "If the Internet felt a bit more sluggish for you over the last few days in Europe, this may be part of the reason why," Prince said in a blog post called "The DDoS That Almost Broke the Internet." Prince noted that these attacks used tactics different than the "botnets" -- these came from so-called "open resolvers" that "are typically running on big servers with fat pipes." "They are like bazookas and the events of the last week have shown the damage they can cause," he said. "What´s troubling is that, compared with what is possible, this attack may prove to be relatively modest." A spokesman for the network security firm Akamai meanwhile told AFP that based on the published data, "the attack was likely the largest publicly acknowledged attack on record." "The cyber attack is certainly very large," added Johannes Ullrich of the US-based SANS Technology Institute, saying it was "a factor of 10 larger than similar attacks in the recent past." "But so far, I can´t verify that this affects Internet performance overall," he said. Spamhaus, which also has offices in London, essentially patrols the Internet to root out spammers and provides updated lists of likely perpetrators to network operators around the world. CloudFlare estimates that Spamhaus "is directly or indirectly responsible for filtering as much as 80 percent of daily spam messages." The attacks began after Spamhaus blacklisted Cyberbunker, a Web hosting firm that "offers anonymous hosting of anything except child porn and anything related to terrorism." Cyberbunker denounced the move on its blog. "According to Spamhaus, CyberBunker is designated as a ´rogue´ host and has long been a haven for cybercrime and spam," the Cyberbunker statement said. "Of course, Spamhaus has not been able to prove any of these allegations." Prince said of the latest incident: "While we don´t know who was behind this attack, Spamhaus has made plenty of enemies over the years. "We´re proud of how our network held up under such a massive attack and are working with our peers and partners to ensure that the Internet overall can stand up to the threats it faces." Experts said the attacks flodded Spamhaus servers with 300 billion bits per second (300 gigabytes) of data. Prior DDoS attacks have been measured at 50 gigabytes per second. Because of the way Internet traffic flows, these DDoS attacks created congestion and ripple effects around the Web. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52244 JOHANNESBURG, March 28: Former South African president Nelson Mandela has been readmitted to hospital with a recurrent lung infection, the presidency said Thursday. The 94-year-old was hospitalised "due to the recurrence of his lung infection" just before midnight on Wednesday, President Jacob Zuma´s office said in a statement.[break] It is the second time this month that the anti-apartheid hero has spent the night in hospital and follows a nearly three-week stay in December for the lung infection and for surgery to extract gallstones. Earlier this month, he spent a night in hospital for a "scheduled medical checkup". "Doctors are attending to him, ensuring that he has the best possible expert medical treatment and comfort," said the presidency. Zuma wished "Madiba", as he is fondly known in South Africa, a quick recovery. "We appeal to the people of South Africa and the world to pray for our beloved Madiba and his family and to keep them in their thoughts," he said. "We have full confidence in the medical team and know that they will do everything possible to ensure recovery." The name or location of the hospital was not provided. Mandela has had several health scares over the years. In early 2012, he was admitted for a minor exploratory procedure to investigate persistent abdominal pain. In 2011, he was hospitalised for two nights for an unnamed acute respiratory infection. The Nobel Peace Prize winner diagnosed with early stage tuberculosis in 1988 while serving a 27-year jail term during apartheid. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52241 MUMBAI, March 28: Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt broke down in tears on Thursday as he announced he was abandoning his battle to avoid being sent back to jail for buying weapons from Mumbai gangsters. Supporters had been urging Dutt to apply for a pardon after India´s Supreme Court last week sentenced him to five years for buying firearms from mafia bosses who orchestrated a series of bombings in 1993 which killed 257 people.[break] But in an emotional press conference, flanked by family members, Dutt said he would accept his fate and surrender to prison authorities before a deadline expires in three weeks´ time. "I will surrender...the court has given me time," Dutt told reporters. "With folded hands, I want to tell the media and the citizens of the country that when I have not applied for pardon, there is no debate," Dutt said, while repeatedly breaking down. "Let me be in peace till I go ... I have lots of work to complete," he added. He then hugged his sister and politician Priya Dutt, refusing to answer media queries. Messages of sympathy and solidarity have poured in for the star since last week´s verdict, with several high profile figures calling for the state governor to intervene and reduce Dutt´s term on "humanitarian grounds". The 53-year-old has already spent 18 months behind bars after his conviction by a lower court but he was released on bail in 2007 pending an appeal, which was struck down by the court last Thursday. Dutt, whose mother was Muslim and father Hindu, has admitted to buying the weapons but insisted they were only meant to protect his family during communal riots in 1993 following the destruction of the Babri mosque. The actor shot to fame in the mid-1980s in a string of action movies in which he performed his own stunts, earning him the nickname "Deadly Dutt". He is best known for playing a mobster with a heart of gold in the popular "Munnabhai" series. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52193 LOS ANGELES, March 26: Former CIA chief David Petraeus apologized Tuesday for the "mistake" that triggered his resignation last year, in his first public speech since quitting due to an extramarital affair. Addressing a military audience in Los Angeles, the four-star general voiced regret for the "pain" caused by his relationship with his biographer Paula Broadwell, pledging to try to "make amends to those I have hurt and let down."[break] "I join you keenly aware that I am regarded in a different light now than I was a year ago," Petraeus told over 600 veterans and Reserve Officers´ Training Corps students hosted by the University of Southern California (USC). "I am also keenly aware that the reason for my recent journey was my own doing," said the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and top US general who spearheaded the "surge" in Iraq. "So please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by reiterating how deeply I regret -- and apologize for -- the circumstances that led me to my resignation from the CIA and caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters," he said at the event held at a downtown LA hotel. Former CIA director David Petraeus addresses a University of Southern California event honoring the military on March 26, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (AFP) Petraeus, America´s most celebrated military leader in a generation, stepped down on November 9 as head of the CIA after admitting to an affair with Broadwell, a counter-terrorism expert and lieutenant-colonel. The FBI stumbled upon the affair when Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite and friend of the Petraeus family, asked investigators to look into threatening emails that turned out to be from an apparently jealous Broadwell. The probe that revealed Petraeus´ affair also uncovered potentially "inappropriate" emails between Kelley and the top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, although he was later cleared of any wrongdoing. In the wake of the scandal, Petraeus has kept a low profile over the last five months. He has received offers from the financial community and to give paid speeches, been asked to serve as a consultant to major companies and is exploring positions in academia, according to The New York Times. In his speech Tuesday, the ex CIA chief -- who was given a standing ovation at the start and end of his remarks -- called for greater efforts to help returning veterans transition to civilian life. His 25-minute address was also peppered with jokes: at one point he said he been briefed, before coming to the LA event, on the rivalry between USC students and those from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "I used to do intelligence," quipped the former head of America´s national spy agency. Towards the end he returned to his personal downfall, thanking those who had given encouragement to him and his family, saying: "This has obviously been a very difficult episode for us." "But perhaps my experience can be instructive to others who stumble or indeed fall as far as I did. One learns, after all, that life doesn´t stop with such a mistake. It can and must go on." He added: "I know that I can never fully assuage the pain that I inflicted on those closest to me and on a number of others." "I can, however, try to move forward in a manner that is consistent to the values to which I subscribed before slipping my moorings and, as best as possible, to make amends to those I have hurt and let down." "And that is what I will strive to do," he said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52183 TAIPEI, March 27:  A strong earthquake shook buildings in the Taiwanese capital Taipei on Wednesday, injuring at least 20 people and sparking a fire, emergency officials said. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 6.0 and said it struck at 10:03 am (0203 GMT), 48 kilometres (30 miles) east of Nantou county in central Taiwan at a depth of 20.7 kilometres.[break] Taiwan´s central weather bureau put the magnitude at 6.1 and said it was felt across the island. The national fire agency said at least 20 people were slightly injured in Nantou and nearby Changhua and Taichung counties during the quake, which also triggered a fire in Nantou that had since been extinguished. The agency said it had received five reports of people trapped in lifts during the quake but they had all found their way to safety. Cable news channel SET TV showed footage of one woman in Nantou being carried to an ambulance after she was hit in the head by fragments of a ceiling that came loose during the quake. Taiwan´s high speed rail company said it had suspended all trains pending safety checks while the metro system in the capital Taipei was also temporarily suspended. Many buildings in Taipei swayed while television footage showed some school children in Nantou fleeing their classrooms during the quake. Nantou county was the epicentre of a 7.6-magnitude quake in September 1999 that killed around 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island´s recent history. Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52153 ROME, March 26: From seductive "she-devil" to naive girl-next-door, the mystery over American Amanda Knox´s true character was key to a gruesome murder case which appeared far from over on Tuesday. In a dramatic twist, the country´s supreme court in Rome overturned her acquittal for murder and ordered Knox and a co-defendant to face a retrial.[break] With her fresh-faced good looks, blue-eyed Knox seemed an unlikely suspect for the brutal murder of her housemate Meredith Kercher in 2007, but from the start her accusers said the 24-year-old´s demure nature hid a "demonic" soul. Prosecutors depicted her as lascivious and slovenly -- a drug-using party goer who regularly brought strange men back to her room for sex and exasperated housemates by leaving vibrators and erotic underwear on display. They said Kercher was murdered after refusing to take part in a drug-fuelled sex game with Knox, her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and immigrant Rudy Guede. Kercher, 21, was found naked in a pool of blood with her throat slit. Knox was convicted in December 2009 and sentenced to 26 years in prison but acquitted in October 2011. Knox´s family presented a completely different picture of a loving, sporty girl who spoke proudly to her mother of her friendship with Kercher. A New York Times editorial in 2009 called her: "An Innocent Abroad". During her appeal, Knox herself asked: "How is it possible that I could be capable of such violence? How could I commit evil against a friend of mine?" A file picture shows Amanda Knox (R), US national accused of the 2007 murder of her housemate Meredith Kercher arriving at the court during the resumption of her appeal trial in Perugia on September 30, 2011. (AFP) Pleading before the court in her final appeal statement she said: "I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I wasn´t there." Overnight, the case become a media sensation, a whodunnit starring "Foxy Knoxy" -- the nickname Knox herself used on the social network MySpace, though she maintains it referred to her childhood football skills. Her "Angel Face" -- the title of a book about the case -- hit front pages across the world and prompted an upswell of support in the United States. The glaring media spotlight, combined with leaks to scoop-hungry tabloids during the investigation and stories about her racy past from former friends, prompted fears that the Seattle native may not have been given a fair trial. Friends of Amanda Knox groups sprang up in her hometown and on the Internet, with messages of support deploring the "warped image" created in the press. Her defence fiercely ridiculed the portrayal of Knox as a dominatrix "Venus in Furs" or a femme fatale who preys on weaker men, like the fictional "Jessica Rabbit" in the cartoon film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Speaking in her own defence during the trial, Knox said she was innocent and had lied to police at the start because she had been subjected to "a steady crescendo" of abuse during long periods of questioning without a lawyer. Though she was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 26 years in prison, Knox protested her innocence and her supporters slammed the Italian justice system and called vociferously for her release as the appeal got underway. Behind bars, the University of Washington student wiled away four years reading Dostoyevsky and Hemingway and praying, according to a member of the Italian parliament who has published a book based on numerous talks with Knox. In the collection of interviews, Knox dreamt of freedom and talked about her hopes of being an interpreter or a writer, her love for nature, her longing for motherhood as well as her interest in Buddhism and Christianity. Sobbing wildly as the appeal verdict was read, Knox returned to Seattle, from where she thanked "everyone who´s believed in me, who´s defended me, who has supported my family." She has since resumed her studies in languages at the University of Washington, according to her family spokesman, and her memoir titled "Waiting to be Heard" -- "a full and unflinching account of the events" -- is due out next month. Sollecito´s 2012 memoir, "Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox," which draws heavily on diaries, casts doubt over where Knox was the night of the murder and accuses her of "bizarre behaviour". He says he and Knox had smoked marijuana, clouding his memory of whether she stayed the night or left -- throwing her alibi into question -- and said her odd behaviour was unfathomable. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52111 BANGALORE, India, March 25: Police in India´s high-tech hub Bangalore are trying a new way to reduce traffic offences -- using cardboard cops to scare drivers into believing the long arm of the law is watching them. Road deaths have surged in India despite a low rate of car ownership with a lethal combination of poor law enforcement, untrained drivers and bad roads making the country one of the world´s leading centres of road deaths.[break] Many Indian drivers will only obey traffic rules if they think law enforcers will reach out and apprehend them "and we can´t be omnipresent", additional Bangalore police commissioner M.A. Saleem told AFP Monday. "Drivers in Indian cities violate traffic rules when there are no cops around -- they jump traffic lights and go the wrong way on one-way streets," he said. "These cutout cops are very effective and they can be on the job seven days a week," Saleem added. Such lifesize flatpack cutouts are frequently used in places like Britain and North America as a crime prevention measure but Saleem said he believed it was the first time such an idea had been employed in Indian cities. So far, three khaki-clad cardboard policemen have been deployed on major roads in the city, known as the home of India´s flagship outsourcing industry. One cardboard policeman was stolen last week but that has not discouraged Saleem who said the fake policemen will now be removed when it is dark to reduce chances of theft. He said he plans to install 10 more cardboard police on Bangalore´s roads. "It´s good. From a distance it looks like a real cop," one Bangalore driver told India´s NDTV, while another told the TV network he had been fooled by the cutouts. "Two or three times we thought it was a real policeman standing there and we slowed down," he said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52091 YANGON, Myanmar, March 25: Anti-Muslim mobs rampaged through three more towns in Myanmar´s predominantly Buddhist heartland over the weekend, destroying mosques and burning dozens of homes despite government efforts to stem the nation´s latest outbreak of sectarian violence. President Thein Sein had declared an emergency in central Myanmar on Friday and deployed army troops to the worst-hit city, Meikhtila, where 32 people were killed and 10,000 mostly Muslim residents were displaced. [break]But even as soldiers restored order there after several days of anarchy in which armed Buddhists torched the city´s Muslim quarters, the unrest has spread south toward the capital, Naypyitaw. A Muslim resident of Tatkone, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Meikhtila, said by telephone that a group of about 20 men ransacked a one-story brick mosque there late Sunday night, pelting it with stones and smashing windows before soldiers fired shots to drive them away. Speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, he said he believed the perpetrators were not from Tatkone. A day earlier, another mob burned down a mosque and 50 homes in the nearby town of Yamethin, state television reported. Another mosque and several buildings were destroyed the same day in Lewei, farther south. It was not immediately clear who was behind the violence, and no clashes or casualties were reported in the three towns. Three Buddhist monks walk on a road near a mosque in Meikhtila, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) north of Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, March 25. (AP) Edginess over the situation spread Monday to the nation´s largest city, Yangon, more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Meikhtila, although no actual unrest was apparent. Rumors circulated that a busy market called Yuzana Plaza would be burned down, leading many shopkeepers to close for the day. In Mingalartaungnyunt, an eastern suburb of Yangon, more rumors led to additional shop closings and police arrived to secure the area, although no violence took place. The upsurge in sectarian unrest is casting a shadow over Thein Sein´s administration as it struggles to make democratic changes in the Southeast Asian country after half a century of army rule officially ended two years ago this month. Similar violence that rocked western Rakhine state last year, pitting ethnic Rakhine Buddhists against Rohingya Muslims, killed hundreds and drove 100,000 from their homes. The Rohingya are widely denigrated as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and most are denied passports as a result. The Muslim population of central Myanmar, by contrast, is mostly of Indian origin and does not face the same questions over nationality. The emergence of sectarian conflict beyond Rakhine state is an ominous development, one that indicates anti-Muslim sentiment has intensified nationwide since last year and, if left unchecked, could spread. Sectarian and ethnic tensions are not new in Myanmar, which is also home to small Christian, Hindu and animist minorities. Muslims account for about 4 percent of the nation´s roughly 60 million people, and during the long era of authoritarian rule, military governments twice drove out hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, while smaller clashes had occurred elsewhere. About one third of the nation´s population is comprised of ethnic minority groups, and most have waged wars against the government for autonomy. Analysts say racism has also played a role. Unlike the ethnic Burman majority, most Muslims in Myanmar are of South Asian descent, populations with darker skin that migrated to Myanmar centuries ago from what are now parts of India and Bangladesh. The latest bloodshed "shows that inter-communal tensions in Myanmar are not just limited to the Rakhine and Rohingya in northern Rakhine state," said Jim Della-Giacoma of the International Crisis Group. "Myanmar is a country with dozens of localized fault lines and grievances that were papered over during the authoritarian years that we are just beginning to see and understand. It is a paradox of transitions that greater freedom does allow these local conflicts to resurface." "If a democratic state is the nation´s goal, they need to find a place for all its people as equal citizens," Della-Giacoma said. "Given the country´s history, it won´t be easy." The government has put the total death toll in Meikhtila at 32, and authorities say they have detained at least 35 people allegedly involved in arson and violence in the region. On Sunday, Vijay Nambiar, the U.N. secretary-general´s special adviser on Myanmar, toured Meikhtila, visiting displaced residents and calling on the government to punish those responsible. Nambiar said he was encouraged to learn that some individuals in both communities had helped each other and that religious leaders were now advocating peace. Muslims in Meikhtila, which makes up about 30 percent of the city´s 100,000 inhabitants, appeared to have borne the brunt of the devastation. At least five mosques were set ablaze from Wednesday to Friday, and most homes and shops burned were Muslim-owned. Chaos began Wednesday after an argument broke out between a Muslim gold shop owner and his Buddhist customers. Once news spread that a Muslim man had killed a Buddhist monk, Buddhist mobs rampaged through a Muslim neighborhood and the situation quickly spiraled out of control. Residents and activists said the police did little to stop the rioters or reacted too slowly, allowing the violence to escalate. One Muslim man in Meikhtila named Aung Thein, whose family has fled, said the situation was still tense there. People are still threatening Muslims who have attempted to return to their destroyed homes to sift through the rubble and salvage their belongings, he said. "We only want to return to our homes and rebuild our lives," he said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52057 BEIJING, March 24: Glamorous new first lady Peng Liyuan has emerged as Chinese diplomacy´s latest star, charming audiences and cutting a very different profile from her all-but invisible predecessors on her debut official visit abroad to Russia. A celebrated performer on state television, Peng featured prominently in Sunday´s Chinese media coverage of husband and President Xi Jinping´s activities in Moscow. The visit is Xi´s first since he assumed the presidency earlier this month.[break] Peng watched song and dance routines at a performing arts school on Saturday, but did not join in as some media reports had suggested she might. Xi´s trip continues this week with stops in Tanzania, South Africa and Congo, during which Peng is expected to hold other public events. An internationally popular first lady could help soften China´s sometimes abrasive international image and mark a victory in its so-far unsuccessful struggle to win over global public opinion. At the same time, she could boost the popularity of the country´s new leadership at a time when citizens are feeling increasingly alienated and are fed up with the ruling class´s corruption and regal airs. In recent years, the wives of China´s top officials have traditionally gone almost unseen at home and attracted little attention while accompanying their husbands on state visits abroad. That was in part a negative reaction to Mao Zedong´s wife, Jiang Qing, who was widely despised and later imprisoned for her role as leader of the radical Gang of Four, which mercilessly persecuted political opponents during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Recently retired Premier Wen Jiabao´s wife, Zhang Peili, became known for her role in the country´s gem trade and was never seen in public with her husband. Meanwhile, Bo Xilai, one of China´s most ambitious politicians, was brought down in spectacular style last year following his wife´s involvement in the murder of a British businessman, setting off the country´s nastiest political scandal in years. Women in general wield relatively little power at the top of the Chinese power structure, with just two sitting on the ruling Communist Party´s 25-member decision-making Politburo. Peng´s emerging high profile appears to be an extension of Xi´s own confidence as he consolidates his control on power and presses a more assertive role for China in global affairs, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Policy Institute at Britain´s University of Nottingham. Her training as a singer and stage performer offers the perfect preparation for such a role, he said. "Peng is projecting a certain poise and confidence that Xi himself is carrying and he doesn´t need to worry about what other (politicians) might think of her," Tsang said. Peng´s image was splashed across Chinese newspapers over the weekend, shown descending arm-in-arm with Xi as they descended from their aircraft after arriving in Moscow on Friday. Her visit to the arts school was carried by state broadcaster CCTV on its main Sunday news broadcast and reported in national newspapers. The popular Beijing News tabloid ran a full page of items on Peng´s appearances on Sunday, alongside a photo of her arriving at a speech Xi gave Saturday, dressed in an elegant Chinese-style silk tunic and skirt. "In her role as first lady on this visit abroad, Peng Liyuan is exhibiting China´s soft power," the paper quoted Wang Fan, head the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, as saying. "As a singer and artist and a long-term advocate for poverty relief and other causes, Peng has an excellent public image." Much of the coverage focused on her personal style, with a report on the mass-market sina.com website noting with satisfaction that the black leather clutch she paired with the outfit was made to order by a Chinese firm in the southwestern city of Chengdu, a flattering contrast with prominent Chinese female politicians scorned publicly for appearing decked head to toe in foreign designer brands. "In practical terms, this is an important show of support for China´s domestic industries, but in the larger sense, it should raise national self-respect and confidence," read a posting on China´s popular Weibo microblogging service left by Lin Zhibo, Gansu provincial bureau chief of the Communist Party´s flagship newspaper, People´s Daily. Chen Li, a real estate agent from the central city of Changsha, said Peng was well-known for her modest ways and calm, dignified manner. "She´s known to be elegant and fashionable, but she´s also very low-key and doesn´t seem arrogant in the way that you usually associate with the wives of top leaders," Chen said. Peng, 50, largely retired from public life after Xi was made China´s leader-in-waiting in 2007, but in recent years has won new acclaim as an ambassador for the World Health Organization. Among the issues she has worked on are tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS — diseases that still carry considerable social stigma in China. She also made headlines last year by appearing alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as part of a campaign to discourage smoking, a high-profile cause in a country where about two-thirds of men smoke. Peng is Xi´s second wife, and the two are separated in age by almost two decades. While Xi´s father was a leading revolutionary and former vice-premier, making his son a member of the "red aristocracy," Peng comes from relatively humble origins and joined the People´s Liberation Army when she was 18. The couple has one daughter, a student at Harvard who remains out of the limelight. While sometimes described as a folk singer, Peng holds the rank of PLA major general and is best known for her stirring renditions of patriotic odes, often while wearing full dress uniform. Although her rank is largely honorary, her military status could lead to awkward questions, said University of Nottingham´s Tsang. "Sooner or later, someone is going to ask whether that´s completely normal, even if she doesn´t have any real military or political ambitions," Tsang said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52031 ISLAMABAD, March 24: Pakistan Sunday finally selected a caretaker prime minister, a retired judge, to head up an interim administration to guide the country through its historic election period. Mir Hazar Khan Khoso, 84, was selected by the election commission after a parliamentary committee and rival parties failed to agree on a candidate. He comes from the troubled southwestern province of Baluchistan.[break] "We have picked Mir Hazar Khan Khoso after frankly and openly discussing all the four names forwarded to us," chief election commissioner Fakhruddin Ibrahim told reporters in Islamabad. The outgoing government had proposed Khoso and a former central bank governor, while the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, frontrunner to win the May 11 polls, put forward the name of another retired judge and a politician. Pakistani Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim (C) announces the name of caretaker Prime Minister at his office in Islamabad on March 24, 2013. Ibrahim announced the name of Mir Hazar Khan Khoso as caretaker Prime Minister for the upcoming elections. (AFP) Khoso was selected a week after parliament dissolved and four days after President Asif Ali Zardari set the date of the general election. The vote is set to mark the first time that an elected civilian government hands over to another in a country that has seen three military coups and four military rulers since partition from India in 1947. The announcement was made just minutes before former military ruler Pervez Musharraf landed back in Pakistan after more than four years in exile, defying Taliban death threats in a bid to contest the May election. Militant attacks and record levels of violence directed against the Shiite Muslim minority have raised fears about security for the polls in the nuclear-armed country of 180 million. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=52030 KARACHI, March 24: Pakistan´s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf returned home on Sunday after more than four years in exile, defying a Taliban death threat to contest historic general elections. The 69-year-old ex-dictator says he is prepared to risk any danger to stand for election on May 11, in what will be the first democratic transition of power in the history of a nuclear-armed country dominated by periods of military rule.[break] He seized power in a bloodless coup as army chief in 1999 and left the country after stepping down in August 2008, when Asif Ali Zardari was elected president after the murder of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf´s Emirates flight from Dubai landed at around 12:45 pm (0745 GMT) after a journey that saw his official Facebook and Twitter accounts provide a running commentary, posting messages and photographs of him on board. "Settled in my seat on the plane to begin my journey home. Pakistan First!" said one message posted on the @P_Musharraf Twitter account, with a picture of him wearing an off-white, traditional shalwa kameez outfit. Some of his supporters on the flight shouted "long live Musharraf", annoying other people among the regular passengers, according to an AFP reporter on board. Musharraf, who has been granted protective bail to lift the threat of immediate arrest on his return to Pakistan, told reporters before leaving for Karachi that he was "not feeling nervous" but admitted to some concerns. "I am feeling concerned about the unknown... there are a lot of unknown factors of terrorism and extremism, unknown factors of legal issue, unknown factors of how much I will be able to perform (in the elections)," he said. He was forced to scrap plans to address a public rally at the Karachi tomb of Pakistan´s founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah because of security fears and will instead address supporters at the heavily secured airport. Police withdrew permission for the downtown rally after the Pakistani Taliban threatened to dispatch a squad of suicide bombers to assassinate Musharraf. In one of the legal cases that has long ensnared Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated when he was running the country in December 2007, three months after she returned to Pakistan from her own self-imposed exile. Karachi, a city of 18 million, is already in the throes of record political and ethnic violence. On March 3, a huge car bomb killed 50 people in a mainly Shiite Muslim area of the city, the worst single attack in the city for years. Just hours before Musharraf´s homecoming, a suicide bomber killed 17 Pakistani soldiers by ramming a water tanker packed with explosives into a checkpoint in the tribal district of North Waziristan. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but North Waziristan is a known stronghold of the Taliban and operatives linked to Al-Qaeda. Pakistani troops have been fighting homegrown insurgents in the tribal belt for years. As ruler, Musharraf escaped three Al-Qaeda assassination attempts. He became a prominent target for Islamist extremists after making Pakistan a key US ally in the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks. In July 2007, he ordered troops to storm a radical mosque in Islamabad. The operation left more than 100 people dead and opened the floodgates to Islamist attacks in Pakistan, which have killed thousands since then. Meanwhile Bhutto´s son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the Pakistan People´s Party, has accused Musharraf of her murder. In 2010 a UN report said Bhutto´s death could have been prevented and accused Musharraf´s government of failing to provide her with adequate protection. His administration blamed the assassination on the Pakistani Taliban. Musharraf is wanted by the courts over Bhutto´s death, the 2006 death of Akbar Bugti, a Baluch rebel leader in the southwest, and for the 2007 sacking and illegal arrest of judges. Analysts say there is a real danger to his life, which outweighs his political future in a country where he is likely to win no more than a couple of seats for his All Pakistan Muslim League party. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51986 SYDNEY, March 23: Sydney´s skyline plunged into darkness on Saturday as the city cut its lights for the "Earth Hour" campaign against climate change, kicking off an event which will travel around the globe. Organisers expect hundreds of millions of people across some 150 countries to turn off their lights for 60 minutes on Saturday night -- at 8:30pm local time -- in a symbolic show of support for the planet.[break] Many of the world´s most iconic attractions, including the Empire State Building and Russia´s Kremlin building will take part. Sydney cut its lights at 0930 GMT to applause and cheers from a small crowd gathered to watch the skyline dim and to see the Sydney Opera House turn a deep green to symbolise renewable energy. "It´s really exciting," said Sydneysider Jessica Bellamy. "It´s been a very inspiring night because it´s all about hope and change." Last year more than 150 countries participated in the event which saw some of the world´s most iconic landmarks dim, and this year the movement has spread to Palestine, Tunisia, Suriname and Rwanda. In Australia, where Earth Hour originated with an appeal to people and businesses to turn off their lights for an hour to raise awareness about carbon pollution, the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge were among the first sites to participate globally. "What started as an event in Sydney in 2007 with two million people has now become a tradition across the country and across the world," said Dermot O´Gorman, head of WWF-Australia. "It´s now an organic, people-powered movement... which is fantastic." Newcomers to be plunged into darkness include Copenhagen´s Little Mermaid, the statue of David in Florence and Cape Town´s Table Mountain. "I think the power of Earth Hour is in its ability to connect people and connect them on an issue that they really care about which is the environment," said O´Gorman as the city stood in darkness. "Earth Hour shows that there are millions of people around the world who also want to do something." With restaurant diners eating by candlelight, Outback communities going dark and iconic buildings standing in shadows, O´Gorman believes Earth Hour has played a part in drawing attention to energy use. "Earth Hour has always been about empowering people to realise that everybody has the power to change the world in which they live, and thousands of people switching to renewable energy is a perfect example," he said. Sydney´s lights out will be followed by countries across the globe, with the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the Bird´s Nest in Beijing, and the Burj Khalifa all participating. In China, Shanghai´s famous Bund will turn off its lights while in the central city of Wuhan, the Yangtze River bridge will be plunged into darkness. In Japan, daily illuminations of the city´s signature Tokyo Tower will be switched off, with visitors able to pedal bicycles to generate power to illuminate an egg-shaped art work. In Japan´s northeast local residents are set to light candles to both show support for the campaign and mourn victims of the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster, organisers said. In Singapore, the affluent city-state´s skyline will darken for one hour from 8:30pm (1230 GMT) as more than 100 buildings take part, while Hong Kong´s famous skyline will also dim. Earth Hour will also see landmarks such as the Brandenburg Gate, London´s Buckingham Palace and Niagara Falls take part. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51985 MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, March 23: The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday threatened to assassinate former military ruler Pervez Musharraf when he returns to the country to contest elections after nearly five years in self-imposed exile. The 69-year-old escaped three assassination attempts when in office from 1999 to 2008, a target of Islamist extremists because of his alliance in the US-led "war on terror" and attempts to clamp down on militants.[break] "We have prepared a special squad of suicide bombers for Musharraf," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. "They will attack Musharraf after he arrives (in) Pakistan." Musharraf is due to fly into Karachi, his home town and Pakistan´s largest city of 18 million which is suffering from record levels of violence linked to ethnic and political tensions, on Sunday. When former prime minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi from eight years in exile on October 18, 2007, bomb attacks killed at least 139 people in what remains the deadliest single terror attack on Pakistani soil. She was later assassinated in a gun and suicide attack at the end of an election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. Her son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is chairman of the Pakistan People´s Party, has accused Musharraf of her murder. Musharraf is wanted by the courts over Bhutto´s death, the 2006 death of Akbar Bugti, a Baluch rebel leader in the southwest, who died during a military operation, and for the 2007 sacking and illegal arrest of judges. He went to the top of the Taliban hit list after ordering the army to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where radicals were holed up. The operation left more than 100 people dead and opened the floodgates to Islamist attacks in Pakistan. Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked groups went on the rampage, carrying out hundreds of attacks that have killed more than 5,700 people according to an AFP tally. In an interview with AFP in Dubai on Friday, Musharraf said he was prepared to risk any danger to his life in order to stand for election on May 11, polls which should mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistani history. "Two hundred percent! I am travelling back on Sunday to Pakistan," he said. "I will go by land, air or sea... even to the peril of my life, this is the oath I took for the country." On Friday a court in Karachi granted him protective bail for at least 10 days on charges of conspiracy to murder and illegally arresting judges, but analysts say the risk of arrest is less than the danger to his life. "Security will be a huge challenge for him," retired lieutenant general Talat Masood told AFP. It is not only the Pakistani Taliban, but Baluch groups, who hold him responsible for Bugti´s death, and hardline sectarian groups who want to kill him, said Masood. "Moreover he is arriving in Karachi where the security situation is very difficult. He wants to be part of the political landscape. He will have to move around to meet people and travel to other places," the retired general said. "I don´t know why he is taking the risk when he has not a bright future in Pakistan," he added. Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup when he was army chief of staff in 1999 and left the country after stepping down in August 2008, when Asif Ali Zardari was elected president. Last year he delayed a planned homecoming after being threatened with arrest and commentators say most of his powerbase has evaporated and that he will only secure, at most, a couple of seats for his All Pakistan Muslim League (APLM) party. He has presented himself as "a third alternative" to the PPP and to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, whom he ousted in 1999 and who is considered a frontrunner in the May vote, by promising to reverse economic decline and restore security. In 2010 a UN report said Bhutto´s death could have been prevented and accused Musharraf´s government of failing to provide her with adequate protection. Musharraf´s government blamed the assassination on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone attack in August 2009. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51984 LAHORE, Pakistan, March 23: A police official says a bus has overturned on a highway in eastern Pakistan after hitting a roadside electricity pole, killing at least 32 passengers. Senior police official Zulifiqar Cheema says 35 passengers were injured in the accident near the city of Sheikhura early Saturday. He says the apparent cause was driver negligence, as the bus was speeding. [break] Cheema says the bus was traveling from Lahore to Faisalabad, an industrial city which lies in the eastern Punjab province. Road accidents are common in Pakistan because of poor infrastructure and routine disregard of traffic laws. On March 16, a bus carrying Pakistani soldiers fell into a ravine in the northwest, killing 24. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51973 BANGKOK, Thailand, March 23: The toll from a blaze that swept through a camp in northern Thailand has risen to 42, a Thai official said Saturday, after hundreds of temporary homes for refugees from Myanmar were reduced to ashes. Dozens of people were injured in the fire, which broke out on Friday at the Mae Surin camp in Mae Hong Son province, with women, children and the elderly believed to make up the majority of the victims. [break] Rescue workers were on the scene at the remote mountainous camp area, Mae Hong Son provincial governor Narumol Paravat told AFP by telephone. "The latest death toll we can confirm through military walkie-talkies is 42," she said, adding the toll was likely to rise further as rescue workers search the area. Authorities believe the fire was sparked by an unattended cooking flame. A local district official said hot weather, combined with strong winds caused the fire to spread quickly among the thatched bamboo shelters. Police on Saturday said around 400 temporary homes had been incinerated, while the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Bureau said a school, clinic and two food warehouses had also been destroyed. The Thai government pledged an investigation into the fire at the camp, which houses roughly 3,700 refugees. Ten camps strung out along the Thai-Myanmar border house a total of about 130,000 people, who first began arriving in the 1980s. Many of the refugees have fled conflict zones in ethnic areas of Myanmar, also known as Burma. Families often live cheek-by-jowl in simple bamboo-and-thatch dwellings. Many of the camp residents have been registered with the UN as refugees, and an ongoing resettlement programme has allowed tens of thousands to move to third countries. After a new quasi-civilian government replaced the long-ruling junta in Myanmar two years ago, Thailand announced it wanted to shut the border camps, raising concern among their residents. But so far the displaced residents have been allowed to stay and the Thai government has stressed that it will only send them back when it is safe. Many of the refugees are from Myanmar´s eastern Karen state, where a major rebel group, the Karen National Union (KNU) signed a ceasefire deal with the new regime last year after decades of civil war. Vast numbers of people fled the former Myanmar junta´s counter-insurgency campaign, which rights groups say deliberately targeted civilians, driving them from their homes, destroying villages and forcing them to work for the army. Years of war have left the Karen region littered with landmines while development has been held back, leaving dilapidated infrastructure and threadbare education and health services. Hundreds of homes were destroyed at a different border camp in February last year by a fire that the authorities also blamed on cooking. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51974 BEIRUT, March 22: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced the resignation of his government on Friday, citing divisions on several domestic issues, and called for the formation of a national unity government. "I announce the resignation of the government, hoping that this will open the way for the major political blocs to take responsibility and come together to bring Lebanon out of the unknown," Mikati said. [break] He called for the "formation of a national salvation government in which all Lebanese political forces are represented in order to save the nation and deal with regional developments with a collective spirit of responsibility." His resignation comes as Lebanon buckles under the pressure of the conflict engulfing neighbouring Syria, which has exacerbated existing tensions in Lebanon´s multi-confessional population. The violence between opponents and supporters of President Bashar al-Assad has already spilled over into Lebanon, and Damascus has warned Beirut against allowing fighters and weapons to flow over the border. But Mikati´s decision, which automatically brings down the government, came after disagreements on two domestic issues, the formation of an elections supervisory commission and the extension of a security chief´s mandate. The government has held off on agreeing on the membership of the commission over fears it would ensure that elections scheduled for June are held on the basis of a decades-old electoral law. Mikati, along with the leader of Lebanon´s Druze community, Walid Jumblatt, is said to favour the existing law. It gives his Sunni community and the Druze disproportionate strength in parliament, but is vehemently opposed by Lebanon´s Christians, who say it fails to give them representative weight. Attempts earlier this year to approve an alternative election law failed, and both Mikati and President Michel Sleiman have called for preparations to move forward so the vote can be held on time. The 57-year-old´s resignation also came against the backdrop of his contentious bid to extend the term of the Sunni head of Lebanon´s Internal Security Forces, General Ashraf Rifi, which was opposed by a majority of the government. Miqati said he was willing to resign last year, after a car bombing that killed the police intelligence chief, but Sleiman rejected it and he stayed in office. He became prime minister in 2011, after five months of negotiations, positioning himself as a political moderate able to deal with all political parties. He headed a government dominated by the so-called March 8 coalition, made up of the Shiite Hezbollah group and its allies, and drew fire from Sunnis who accused him of betraying his community and siding with the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group. The resignation throws Lebanon into new uncertainty, and comes as the violence in Syria increasingly affects the country. Syrian warplanes bombed targets inside Lebanon for the first time on Monday, after Damascus warned that it would not tolerate the flow of weapons and fighters across its borders. There has also been violence in the northern city of Tripoli, with six people killed this week in battles pitting pro- and anti-Damascus neighbourhoods against each other. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51972 LAGOS, March 22: Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, the revered "father of modern African literature´, has died aged 82, his family said on Friday. Best known internationally for his novel "Things Fall Apart", which depicts the collision between British rule and traditional Igbo culture in his native southeast Nigeria, Achebe was also a strong critic of graft and misrule in his country.[break] "One of the great literary voices of his time, he was also a beloved husband, father, uncle and grandfather, whose wisdom and courage are an inspiration to all who knew him," his family said in a statement. Local media reported that he died in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He had lived and worked as a professor in the United States in recent years, most recently at Brown University in Rhode Island. A 1990 car accident left him in a wheelchair and limited his travel. A statement from the Mandela Foundation in South Africa said he passed away Thursday and quoted Nelson Mandela as referring to him as a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down." "The world has lost one of its finest writers and Africa has lost a literary gem," said Mike Udah, spokesman for Nigeria´s Anambra state, where Achebe was born. Apart from criticising misrule in Nigeria, Achebe also strongly backed his native Biafra, which declared independence from the republic in 1967, sparking a civil war that killed around one million people and only ended in 1970. The conflict was the subject of a long-awaited memoir he published last year, titled "There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra." In 2011, Achebe rejected a Nigerian government offer to honour him with one of the nation´s highest awards -- at least the second time he had done so. South African writer and Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer called Achebe the "father of modern African literature" in 2007, when she was among the judges to award him the Man Booker International prize for fiction. "Just as we read Shakespeare, it is not possible for any English student to graduate without" reading Achebe, Adeyemi Daramola, head of the University of Lagos´ English department, told AFP recently. "For Achebe to have been away for so long, we have indeed missed him," Daramola said. But while he was widely lauded worldwide, Achebe never won the Nobel prize for literature, unlike fellow Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, who became the first African Nobel literature laureate in 1986. Achebe was born the fifth of six children in 1930 in Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, where his Igbo ethnic group dominates, and grew up at a time of Christian missionaries and British colonialism. He described his parents as early converts to Christianity, with his father becoming an Anglican religious teacher and travelling the region with his mother to preach and teach. In an interview with The Paris Review, he said his reading evolved and he slowly became aware of how books had cast Africans as savages. "There is that great proverb -- that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter," he said. "That did not come to me until much later. Once I realised that, I had to be a writer." After graduating from the University of Ibadan in southwestern Nigeria, Achebe worked with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation before publishing "Things Fall Apart" -- his first novel -- in 1958. It met with positive reviews, and its legacy has grown since then. According to his publisher, more than 10 million copies have been sold in 50 different languages. Four more novels would eventually follow. "´Things Fall Apart´ turned the west´s perception of Africa on its head - a perception that until then had been based solely on the views of white colonialists, views that were at best anthropological, at worst, to adopt Achebe´s famous savaging of Joseph Conrad´s ´Heart of Darkness´, ´thoroughgoingly racist´," the London Guardian wrote in 2007. Nigeria, Africa´s most populous nation with some 160 million people, won independence in 1960 but it has experienced coups and conflict since then due to the country´s ethnic divisions and corruption. In 1967, Achebe´s native Biafra region declared independence largely in response to massacres of Igbos in the country´s north, sparking a brutal civil war. Achebe strongly backed Biafra and toured to speak on its behalf. Echoes of the conflict emerged in his writing, including his collection "Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems." Achebe also grew frustrated with the huge corruption that has plagued Nigeria, where most of the country still lives on less than $2 per day despite its oil wealth. He wrote about such issues, and the first sentence of his widely read 1983 essay on governance is still often cited here. "The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership," it reads. Achebe had limited such commentary in recent years amid health troubles. However, during January 2012 protests in Nigeria over a fuel price hike, Achebe issued "A Statement of Solidarity with the Nigerian People" that gained attention back home. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51931 NEW DELHI, March 22: Two Italian marines flew back to India Friday to face murder charges, defusing a bitter diplomatic stand-off sparked by an earlier announcement from Rome that the pair would not be returning. The Indian government hailed Italy´s last minute climbdown as a victory for diplomacy, after it had issued orders to immigration authorities to prevent Rome´s ambassador to New Delhi from leaving the country.[break] Italy meanwhile said it had received assurances the marines would not face the death penalty if convicted, as President Giorgio Napolitano paid tribute to the pair´s "sense of responsibility" in agreeing to return. Italy caused outrage in India by announcing on March 11 that Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone would not return to India after they were given bail to vote in an election, reneging on pledges made at the Supreme Court. But in a late night U-turn which came only hours before a deadline for the pair´s return, the Italian government said it had received "ample assurances" from India that the marines´ rights would be respected. "The government decided, also in the interests of the marines, to maintain the commitment taken when they were granted leave to take part in the elections to return to India by March 22," said a government statement. "The marines agreed to this decision," it added. India´s foreign ministry said the pair had taken an overnight flight. "They are on their way back to Delhi," ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told AFP. India´s NDTV news channel said the marines were being escorted by Italy´s deputy foreign minister Staffan de Mistura on a military aircraft. The marines´ lawyer said he did not expect them to appear in court on Friday. "There is no requirement for them to do so," Diljeet Titus told AFP. While Akbaruddin said the marines´ return was "no occasion for gloating", there was a deep sense of satisfaction in the Indian government. "I am happy that the integrity and dignity of the Indian judicial process has been upheld," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid hailed Italy´s decision as a success for diplomacy. "Diplomacy continues to work when everyone else thinks that everything is lost," he told reporters. In a later address to lawmakers, Khurshid said India had assured Italy the marines were in no danger of being executed as "this case would not fall in the category of matters which attract the death penalty". Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi confirmed that Rome´s concerns had been laid to rest. "The agreement with India is that the case does not include any possibility of the maximum punishment being applied,," Terzi told La Repubblica daily. Singh had warned of "consequences" if Rome did not return the marines, while Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of the ruling Congress party, had accused Italy of a "betrayal". After Italy said the marines would not return, Indian authorities forbade Italian ambassador Daniele Mancini from leaving the country, saying he had broken a written promise to the Supreme Court. Airports were even put on alert. India´s hardline stance caused alarm in diplomatic circles, with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton declaring on Tuesday that limiting Mancini´s movement ran "contrary to the international obligations". Italy had been insisting the pair should be prosecuted in their home country because the shootings involved an Italian-flagged vessel in international waters. India says the killings took place in waters under its jurisdiction. The two are accused of murder after they shot dead two Indian fishermen they mistook for pirates off the Indian port of Kochi last year. They were serving as security guards on an Italian oil tanker. The two countries do have a prisoner transfer agreement, raising the possibility that the marines could serve their sentence in Italy if convicted. Relations between the two countries have also been soured by corruption allegations surrounding a $748 million deal for the purchase of 12 Italian helicopters, which the Indian government is now threatening to scrap. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51928 MOSCOW, March 22:  Russian President Vladimir Putin and China´s new leader Xi Jinping are to hold landmark talks Friday in the hope of further cementing the two countries´ partnership with a range of strategic agreements. The Chinese leader chose Russia for his first trip abroad after China this month completed a power handover which will see Xi preside over the world´s second-largest economy for the next decade.[break] "China and Russia are the main and most important strategic partners," Xi said in an interview with Russian media, adding that he was looking forward to his meeting with Putin. "In many ways we speak a common language," he said on the eve of his Moscow trip. Putin for his part praised the two countries´ cooperation to promote "a more just world order." "The fact that the new Chinese leader is making his first foreign visit to our country confirms the special nature of a strategic partnership between Russia and China," he said in an interview released by the Kremlin ahead of Xi´s arrival. Experts say the two leaders will use the hugely symbolic talks to try and map out a cooperation plan for the next 10 years. "Essentially we are talking about a new epoch in relations between Russia and China," said Sergei Sanakoyev, a veteran China expert with links to the Russian government. Once bitter foes during the Cold War, Moscow and Beijing have over the past years ramped up cooperation as both are driven by a desire to counterbalance US global dominance. At the UN Security Council, China and Russia have both vetoed resolutions to impose sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad´s regime, which is locked in a two-year conflict with the opposition. Both Syria and North Korea are set to be high on the day´s agenda. But the economy is expected to be at the forefront of the talks between Russia, the world´s largest energy producer, and China, the world´s largest energy consumer. Putin and Xi are expected to oversee the signing of a number of energy and investment agreements. Russia, which wants to diversify its energy markets away from Europe, needs to finalise a potentially huge gas deal which could eventually see almost 70 billion cubic metres of gas pumped to China annually for the next 30 years. The Russian state´s natural gas giant Gazprom is likely to sign some sort of agreement although not a firm contract, said company spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov. The commercial contract has so far proved elusive as talks have become mired in pricing disagreements. Sanakoyev said Russia´s biggest oil company Rosneft may sign an agreement to double supplies to China from the current 15 million tonnes a year. A Rosneft spokeswoman declined to comment. Sanakoyev, general secretary of the Russia-China Chamber for Promotion of Trade in Machinery and Innovative Products, said the two countries will also sign a preliminary agreement allowing Chinese companies to help develop Russia´s remote Far East. "We are talking about attracting financing in the amount of $5 billion," he told AFP, adding that projects would range from road construction to telecoms. Dmitry Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said China would also seek to strengthen overall relations to boost its international standing. China´s "ties with the United States are complicated, there is a flare-up in relations with Japan, things with India are not easy," he told AFP. "They will benefit from sending the world a signal about good, strong ties with Russia." Russia and China are also members of the BRICS grouping of emerging economies, which also includes Brazil, India and South Africa and which will hold a summit in South Africa next week. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51927 COLOMBO, March 22:  Sri Lankan state media called Friday for the dismantling of the UN human rights chief´s office after Colombo was angered by a resolution calling for a probe into alleged war crimes in the island. A ruling coalition partner also urged Colombo to reconsider ties with nations that supported Thursday´s censure move at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.[break] The US-initiated move was passed with the support of 25 nations, including Sri Lanka´s immediate neighbour India. The Council pressed Colombo to "credibly investigate widespread allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances" and noted Sri Lanka had failed to adequately address serious charges of war crimes. The state-run Daily News, reporting the vote under the headline, "Sri Lanka rejects intrusive resolution," said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should be dismantled. "Sri Lanka should spearhead that demand with the support of like-minded countries," the paper said. "India joins USA to beat SL," the privately-run Daily Mirror said on its front page referring to New Delhi´s support for the resolution urging accountability over Sri Lanka´s military action that crushed Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009. Rights groups have said up to 40,000 civilians were killed by security forces in the final months of fighting, a charge denied by Colombo. Technology Research and Atomic Energy minister Champika Ranawaka in a statement urged the government not to grant trade concessions to Indian business interests after Thursday´s vote. "We strongly urge the government not to grant any trade or diplomatic concessions to India which does not respect our sovereignty," said Ranawaka who leads the National Heritage Party. However, the privately-run Daily FT of Colombo cautioned the government against stalling reconciliation and attracting more international criticism. "Stronger action by the international community is probable in the future if the Sri Lankan government continues to stall key reconciliation measures that could finally bring sustainable peace to this much-troubled but beautiful island," the Daily FT said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51915 MEIKHTILA, Myanmar, March 22: Two days of rioting between Buddhists and Muslims in a central Myanmar town has killed at least 20 and left residents too afraid to walk the streets, a lawmaker said Friday. There was no immediate sign of fresh violence Friday morning but the town of Meikhtila remained tense and dangerous, said Win Htein, a local lawmaker from the opposition National League for Democracy. [break] Fires set to Muslim homes continued to burn but angry Buddhist residents and monks prevented authorities from putting out the blazes, he said. At least five mosques were torched during the violence that started Wednesday, reportedly triggered by an argument between a Muslim gold shop owner and his Buddhist customers. A Buddhist monk was among the first killed, inflaming tensions that led a Buddhist mob to rampage through a Muslim neighborhood. Meikhtila is about 550 kilometers (340 miles) north of the main city of Yangon with a population of about 100,000 people, of which about a third are Muslims, Win Htein said. He said before this week´s violence, the community had 17 mosques. It was difficult to determine the extent of destruction in the town because residents were too afraid to walk the streets and were sheltering in monasteries or other locations away from the violence. "We don´t feel safe and we have now moved inside a monastery," said Sein Shwe, a shop owner. "The situation is unpredictable and dangerous." Occasional isolated violence involving Myanmar´s majority Buddhist and minority Muslim communities has occurred for decades. The violence in Meikhtila was the latest sectarian unrest after clashes between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya last year in western Rakhine state left more than 200 people dead and 100,000 homeless. It is also the latest challenge for the government as it tries to keep peace in the country and navigate the transition from military rule to fledgling democracy. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51902 GENEVA, March 22: The United Nations´ top human rights body unanimously approved Thursday a formal probe into North Korea for possible crimes against humanity. The 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council signed off on the resolution backed by the U.S., Japan and the European Union that authorizes an investigation into what U.N. officials describe as suspected widespread and systematic violations of human rights in North Korea.[break] Japan´s ambassador, Takashi Okada, denounced the abduction of foreign nationals and other disappearances in North Korea, and said the aim of the investigation is to "guide the international community in addressing this situation from an independent and impartial stand point." The vote follows the recommendations of U.N. special rapporteur Marzuki Darusman, who told the Geneva-based council in a report last month that the secretive Asian nation displays nine patterns of human rights violations. Darusman said the "grave, widespread and systematic violations of human rights" include having prison camps, the enforced disappearances of citizens and using food to control people. It paves the way for the creation of a "Commission of Inquiry" for one year with three members and calls on Pyongyang to cooperate with that team of independent experts, which will include Darusman. However, North Korea´s U.N. Ambassador in Geneva, So Se Pyong, fiercely denounced the move, calling the resolution "no more than an instrument that serves the political purposes of the hostile forces in their attempt to discredit the image of the DPRK and to change the socialist system chosen and developed by our people." He was referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea. The resolution itself was "political invectives with serious distortions, fabrications and accusations about the human rights situation of the DPRK," he added. "As we have stated time and again, those human rights abuses have totally nothing to do with the DPRK." In 22 previous reports over the past nine years and 16 resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, the world body of 193 nations has again and again condemned North Korea´s human rights record. The U.N.´s top rights official, Navi Pillay, also has urged such an investigation — the Commission of Inquiry authorized by the United Nations, but performed by independent experts. She has said the U.N. has amassed evidence indicating that up to 200,000 people are being held in North Korean political prison camps rife with torture, rape and slave labor, and that some of the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity. Julie de Rivero of Human Rights Watch in Geneva said the "long awaited inquiry will help expose decades of abuse by the North Korean government" and send a strong message to Pyongyang that the world is watching. But North Korea maintains that U.S. hostility and the threat of American troops in South Korea lurk as factors in the push for an international investigation. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Darusman has told the U.N. that little has changed under the country´s new leader, Kim Jong Un, who succeeded his father more than a year ago, and who has made it his top priority to strengthen the military while about 16 million of North Korea´s 25 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition. "For too long the population of the country has been subjected to widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses," said Ireland´s ambassador, Gerard Corr, speaking on behalf of the European Union. "For too long, the government of the DPRK has persistently refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council and the special rapporteur." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51872 PARIS, March 21: The European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday unveiled the most detailed map yet of relic radiation from the Big Bang, revealing new data it hopes will shed light on the creation and expansion of our Universe. The 50-million pixel, all-sky image of the oldest light adds an edge of precision to some existing cosmological theories, defining more precisely the composition of the Universe and its age -- about 80 million years older than previously thought.[break] "This is a giant leap in the understanding of the origins of the universe," the agency´s director general Jean-Jacques Dordain told a press conference in Paris. "This image is the closest one yet of the Big Bang. You are looking 13.8 billion years ago." The map is composed of data gathered by ESA´s Planck satellite, launched in May 2009 to study Cosmic Microwave Background -- the remains of ancient radiation emitted as the Universe started cooling after the Big Bang. "What we are seeing is a picture of the microwave sky, a picture of the Universe as it was 380,000 after the Big Bang," George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, told journalists. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51866 SEOUL, March 21: South Korea said Thursday it had sourced a damaging cyber attack on its broadcasters and banks to an IP address in China, fuelling suspicions that North Korea may have been responsible. Previous online attacks blamed on North Korea -- including one last year on the computer network of the conservative JoongAng newspaper in Seoul -- have also been tracked back to Chinese sources.[break] Internet security analysts in South Korea believe official North Korean hackers learned many of their skills in China and operate from there. The regulatory Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Wednesday´s attack had used the Chinese IP address to access the targeted computer networks and generate malware that crashed their systems. "The Chinese IP may trigger various assumptions," said Park Jae-Moon, the KCC director of network policy. "At this stage, we´re still making our best efforts to trace the origin of attacks, keeping all kinds of possibilities open," Park said. The attack on Wednesday completely shut down the networks of TV broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN, and halted financial services and crippled operations at three banks -- Shinhan, NongHyup and Jeju. Their networks were mostly back up and running Thursday, although a large number of individual PCs were not operational. "For geopolitical reasons, it´s convenient for North Korea to use Chinese IP addresses for such attacks," said Choi Yun-Seong, a security expert at the state-run Korea Information Technology Research Institute (KITRI). "However, domestic and foreign hackers can use them as well, so we cannot say for sure North Korea was behind this," Choi told AFP. China, North Korea´s main patron which has angrily denied being behind a spate of cyber attacks on US interests, also stressed the IP address location was meaningless. "We have pointed out many times that hacking attacks are a global problem," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. "It is anonymous and trans-national. By using other countries´ IP addresses, hackers attack some countries´ networks and this is a common practice," he said. Wednesday´s attack came days after North Korea accused South Korea and the United States of being behind a "persistent and intensive" hacking assault that took a number of its official websites offline for nearly two days. It also coincided with heightened military tensions on the Korean peninsula, following Pyongyang´s nuclear test last month. In testimony last year to the US congressional Armed Services Committee, the commander of US forces in South Korea, General James Thurman, said North Korea was employing "sophisticated computer hackers" trained in cyber attacks. "Such attacks are ideal for North Korea" because they can be done anonymously, and "have been increasingly employed against a variety of targets including military, governmental, educational and commercial institutions", Thurman said. North Korea was particularly blamed for cyber attacks in 2009 and 2011 that targeted South Korean financial entities and government agencies. Those attacks were so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks, which overload a site with data causing it to crash, and are relatively simple to carry out. Wednesday´s coordinated assault was more sophisticated, using malware that can wipe the contents of a computer´s hard disk as well as drives connected to the infected computer. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51865 YANGON, March 21: At least 10 people have been killed in riots in central Myanmar, a local MP said Thursday, provoking US concern at the worst communal violence since Buddhist-Muslim clashes in western Rakhine state last year. The United States said it was "deeply concerned" by the latest unrest, which according to police erupted on Wednesday after an argument in a Muslim-owned gold shop intensified and caused about 200 people to clash on the streets.[break] Win Htein, a member of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, said he had seen bodies at the scene of fresh fighting in the town of Meiktila on Thursday. "More than 10 people were killed," he told AFP by telephone from the town, which is his constituency seat. Police have so far confirmed that two people died -- including a Buddhist monk -- after sustaining severe burns in Wednesday´s fighting, while several mosques were also torched by angry mobs. A curfew was put in place overnight but witnesses said the violence erupted again on Thursday morning, with authorities struggling to stem it. A local resident, who asked not to be named, said he had seen "many dead bodies". "The situation is getting worse. The police cannot control the people. There are groups of people on the streets with knives and sticks," he told AFP. The unrest comes amid heightened tensions between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar. Communal conflict in Rakhine has left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced since June 2012. In a brief statement, the US embassy said it was closely monitoring events. "I am deeply concerned about reports of violence and widespread property damage," ambassador Derek Mitchell said. "We extend our deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives and property in the violence." Win Htein said that there were around 30,000 Muslims in Meiktila out of a total population of around 80,000 but no similar clashes had happened in his lifetime. "I think it is a consequence of what happened in Rakhine state last year," he added. A local police officer confirmed that "some people were injured" in fresh fighting in the town but did not give further details. Myanmar´s Muslims -- largely of Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi descent -- account for an estimated four percent of the roughly 60 million population, although the country has not conducted a census in three decades. Muslims entered Myanmar en masse as indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent during British colonial rule which ended in 1948. But despite their long history, they have never fully been integrated into the country. Pockets of sectarian unrest have occasionally broken out in the past across the country, with Rakhine state a flashpoint for tensions. Since violence erupted there last year, thousands of Muslim Rohingya boat people -- including a growing number of women and children -- have fled the Rakhine conflict in rickety boats, many heading for Malaysia. An initial report on the Myanmar Police Force´s Facebook page late on Wednesday said anger spread in Meiktila after one man was injured during the row in the gold shop. The report said a mob then descended on the area and destroyed some buildings. It said six people were hospitalised and the Buddhist monk and a Muslim man later died from their injuries. A subsequent police report omitted the religion of the second man. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51862 NEW DELHI, March 21: India´s top court upheld the death penalty Thursday for a mastermind of a series of bombings which killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993, the deadliest set of attacks in the country´s history. Yakub Memon, brother of the alleged main plotter and fugitive Tiger Memon, was the only one of 11 convicts to see his death sentence upheld by the Supreme Court for his role in the blasts which wounded more than 800 people.[break] The judges also handed down a five-year term for the prominent Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt for possessing illegal weapons bought from gangsters accused of orchestrating the bombings. Announcing the sentences, Supreme Court judge P. Sathashivam said the Memon brothers and another fugitive suspect who is said to be living in Pakistan "were archers and rest of the appellants were arrows in their hands". "They were the architects of the blasts," Sathashivam, one of two judges presiding over the case, said. The remaining convicts who had appealed against the death penalty saw their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Executions are only carried out for "the rarest of rare" cases in India but President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected a number of mercy pleas in the last few months, ending an unofficial eight-year moratorium. Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri separatist convicted of involvement in a deadly 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, was executed in New Delhi last month, triggering angry protests in the disputed region. The lone surviving gunman from the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, Pakistani-born Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, was hanged last November, in the first execution in the country since 2004. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51859 (Updated) CANBERRA, Australia, March 21: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard faced down a leadership challenge Thursday, emerging victorious from a party vote after former leader Kevin Rudd made a last-minute decision not to run. In a tense day of political manoeuvring, Gillard called the shock ballot as internal unrest reached fever pitch in a party which is floundering ahead of general elections in September.[break] Her decision followed senior cabinet minister Simon Crean openly urging a vote, with Gillard lagging badly in opinion polls and leadership speculation rampant. But Rudd, who was ruthlessly ousted by Gillard in mid-2010, indicated he did not have the numbers to topple the premier, after being roundly beaten when he resigned as foreign minister and launched a previous challenge in February 2012. Since losing that battle, he has repeatedly pledged his support for the prime minister and despite his backers campaigning behind the scenes, maintained Thursday he was a man of honour. "I´m not prepared to dishonour my word... others take such commitments lightly, I do not," he said just minutes before Labor parliamentarians were due to vote. "I have also said that the only circumstances under which I would consider a return to leadership would be if there was an overwhelming majority of the parliamentary party requesting such a return, drafting me to return and the position was vacant," said Rudd. "I am here to inform you that those circumstances do not exist." With Rudd out of the running, the ballot went ahead with Gillard retaining the leadership unopposed. Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan also retained his position after Crean withdrew as a candidate, according to Chris Hayes, returning officer for the Labor party vote who described the mood inside the caucus room as "sombre". A defiant Gillard said she now planned to get on with governing the country. "Today the leadership of our political party has been settled and has been settled in the most conclusive fashion possible," she said. "The whole business is completely at an end. It has ended now. "The government has a plan for the nation´s future and we plan to get on with it." However, as the elections approach Gillard is struggling to fend off concerns over her leadership and political strategy, and complaints over policy flip-flops that have seen her dubbed "Ju-liar". The latest polls showed Gillard´s personal ratings have risen against conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott but that the Labor Party stood a much better chance of victory under Rudd. The March 12 Newspoll found that that if Rudd were leader, Labor would win 56 percent of the vote, with minor parties stripped out, compared to 44 percent for the opposition. With Gillard at the helm, they would lose to Abbott´s coalition. Crean, another former Labor leader and party elder, sparked the ballot earlier in the day, warning that leadership speculation was "killing" the party and that the "stalemate has to end" to prevent it from imploding. "Something needs to be done to break this deadlock, to resolve the issue once and for all," he told reporters, handing his support to Rudd. Crean was subsequently sacked by Gillard from his position as arts minister in her cabinet. The prime minister has been dogged by leadership unrest for weeks, stoked by government mis-steps as it attempted to introduce media reforms that have united the industry in fierce opposition. Reports said the government was expected to withdraw its media reform bills from parliament Thursday in what would be a crushing failure. Gillard assumed the prime ministership in mid-2010, ousting Rudd who, at the time, had lost the support of powerful factional leaders. She called an election which she failed to win outright from a sceptical public, gaining power only after cobbling together a coalition with a Greens MP and several rural independents to form a majority in the lower house. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51823 TEL AVIV, March 20: Israel Wednesday gave an effusive welcome to Barack Obama, praising him for his "unshakeable" support and defence of the Jewish state at a ceremony as he arrived for his first visit as US president. Walking down the aircraft steps, Obama greeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres with an embrace before taking to the red carpet where he shook hands with scores of officials and politicians.[break] Speaking at a welcoming ceremony on the tarmac, Netanyahu said he wanted to extend "a simple thank you for standing by Israel at this time of historic change in the Middle East. "Thank you for defending Israel´s right to unequivocably defend its right to exist," he told Obama with whom he has had several very public disputes. "Thank you, Mr President, for upholding the Jewish people´s right to a Jewish state in our homeland and for boldly defending that right in the United Nations." US President Barack Obama walks down from his airplane upon his arrival at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on March 20. (AFP) Peres also heaped praised on Obama for America´s support for Israel, and said the closeness of the two allies had helped protect the Jewish state. "A world without your friendship would invite aggression against Israel," said Peres, 89, who is known for his warm relationship with the US leader. "In times of peace, in times of war, your support for Israel is unshakeable." Obama said the US bond with Israel was "eternal" but said his desire was to see Israel living in peace with its neighbours. "Our alliance is eternal, it is for ever," he said at the outset of his third trip to the Jewish state, but only his first as president. "The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend. "Peace must come to the Holy Land. We will never lose sight of an Israel at peace with its neighbours." Peres told Obama Israel wanted to end its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians and see them enjoying their own state. "We long to see an end to the conflict with the Palestinians. To see the Palestinians enjoying freedom and prosperity in their own state," he said. "We extend our hand in peace to all the countries of the Middle East." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51820 ANKARA, March 20: Despite their longstanding wish for a single homeland called Kurdistan, the Kurds are today scattered over four countries spanning half a million square kilometres: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Originally of Indo-European origin, the Kurds trace their roots back to the Medes of ancient Persia. Mainly Sunni Muslim, they live in mountainous regions straddling the four countries, and have kept their language, culture and tribal system.[break] While their population differs according to official or Kurdish sources, they number between 25 and 35 million. The largest number of Kurds lives in Turkey, where their numbers are disputed, but believed to be between 12 and 15 million. There are five million Kurds in Iran, about 4.5 million in Iraq and around two million in Syria. Large expatriate Kurdish communities also exist in the former Soviet Union, notably Azerbaijan and Armenia, and in Lebanon and some European countries such as Germany. As a large and distinct group Kurds are neither Arabs, Turks or Persians and are therefore seen as a political threat by all four of the countries that they inhabit. In past centuries the Kurds enjoyed periods of self-rule under Kurdish dynasties in semi-autonomous principalities, some of which survived until the mid-19th century when they were overthrown by the Ottoman empire and Persia, as Iran was formerly called. The Kurds´ claim for an ethnic homeland, which dates back to 1695, has been the source of their problems in a history that has been a long tale of harassment, discrimination and occasionally of slaughter. The traditional refuge of the Kurds has always been the mountains, with their steep pastures and fertile valleys. Following the Turkish defeat in World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman empire, Kurdish demands for an independent homeland were recognised under the Treaty of Sevres (1920), but promises received from London and Paris were never implemented. The Sevres treaty was re-negotiated at Lausanne in 1923 and the Kurdish demands were buried. With Soviet backing, Iran´s Kurds briefly declared a republic at the end of World War II, but it was soon crushed by the Iranian army. In recent decades, Turkey and Iraq have been equally ruthless in frustrating Kurdish demands. Ankara banned until 2002 the use of the Kurdish language, and even the words Kurd and Kurdish were banished from public discourse. Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein carried out a murderous campaign, systematically wiping out towns and villages using guns, planes and bulldozers. In April 1988, near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi warplanes attacked the Kurdish village of Halabja with poison gas, killing the entire population. The US-led invasion of Iraq 10 years ago, and the subsequent fall of the Saddam regime gave Iraqi Kurds new hopes and they now enjoy wide-ranging autonomy on most issues, have their own parliament and government. In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers´ Party (PKK) led by Abdullah Ocalan, who is expected to call for a ceasefire on Thursday, was formed in 1978 and in 1984 launched a campaign for a separate state, plunging southeast Turkey into a civil war in which some 45,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died. In Iran, the western province of Kordestan is dominated by Sunni Muslims and has seen deadly fighting in recent years between Iranian security forces and Kurdish rebels of the PJAK group operating out of rear-bases in neighbouring Iraq. PJAK (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) is closely allied with Turkey´s PKK. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51824 DHAKA, March 20: Bangladesh President Zillur Rahman, a veteran ruling party politician named to the largely ceremonial post in 2009, died Wednesday in a Singapore hospital, an embassy official said. He was 84. "The president died at a hospital here in Singapore at 6.47 pm local time," Bangladesh High Commissioner in Singapore M. Mahbubuzzaman told AFP by phone.[break] Rahman, who was suffering from kidney and respiratory problems, was flown to Singapore´s Mount Elizabeth Hospital by air ambulance on February 10 after his condition worsened. His secretary Shafiul Alam told AFP that Rahman, a close aide of the nation´s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had been suffering from "old age complications". The former deputy chief of the ruling Awami League party, the country´s 19th president, leaves a son who is a lawmaker and two daughters. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the parliament speaker, who has been discharging the day-to-day job of the president in Rahman´s absence, sent their condolences. Rahman´s wife Ivy Rahman, also a politician, died in August 2004 after she was critically injured in a grenade attack on an Awami League party rally that also killed 20 other people. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51809 CARACAS, March 19:  Nicolas Maduro, who succeeded the late Hugo Chavez as Venezuela´s interim president, has an 18 point lead over the opposition´s Henrique Capriles ahead of mid-April elections, a polling firm said Tuesday. The private Venezuelan pollster Hinterlaces said 53 percent of Venezuelans would vote for Maduro -- Chavez´s vice president and hand-picked successor -- while 35 percent would vote for Capriles.[break] That´s an even bigger lead for Maduro than in the last poll, published weeks before Chavez lost his two-year battle with cancer. In that survey half of those questioned indicated they would vote for Maduro, compared to 36 percent for Capriles. The youthful Capriles, governor of Miranda state, lost to Chavez in an October presidential election by 11 points -- a wide margin, but the best showing ever against the leftist leader. On April 14, he will take on Maduro in snap elections called to replace Chavez. Campaigning officially begins on April 2, but the candidates have already begun courting votes in a highly confrontational pre-campaign. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51804 ISTANBUL, March 20:  The man chosen to head the Syrian opposition´s new interim government is a Syrian-born American citizen who has spent decades in the United States working for technology companies and advocating for various Muslim causes. Members of the opposition Syrian National Coalition elected Ghassan Hitto in a vote early Tuesday to head an administration they hope will provide an alternative to President Bashar Assad´s regime and help coordinate the fight against his forces.[break] "The new government will work from the starting point of complete national sovereignty and the unity of the Syrian land and people, which can only by achieved through continued determination to topple Bashar Assad, his regime and all its pillars," he said in a speech in Istanbul. Much remains unknown about the body that Hitto will lead, including how many ministers it will have and if it will receive enough support to project its authority inside Syria, where it is supposed to set up operations. The head of the coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, threw his support behind the new body, and the head of the coalition´s military leadership, Gen. Salim Idris, did the same Monday before the results were announced. But the new government could find it difficult to become the top rebel authority in Syria. A patchwork of rebel brigades and local councils has sprung up in areas seized from government forces, many of them struggling to provide services and running their own security, prisons and courts. Hundreds of loosely affiliated rebels groups are involved in the civil war against government forces, and they are unlikely to submit to an outside authority unless it can provide them with aid such as arms and ammunition. Due to his many years in the United States, Hitto is little known inside Syria and even among some members of the mostly exile coalition. Coalition member Salah al-Hamwi, who is in charge of the coalition´s local councils in Hama province, said he had worked with Hitto to deliver aid and was impressed that he had left his life in the U.S. to use his skills for Syria. "He has the mind of an accountant, not an emotional mind, so he is very good at analyzing what needs to be done," he said. Others in the coalition complained of his selection. Veteran opposition figure Kamal al-Labwani said he suspected Hitto had been put in place by larger political powers, like Qatar, which has heavily financed the opposition, and the Muslim Brotherhood. He also said he as a coalition member never got to meet or question Hitto before his election. "I wanted to ask him what the women in Daraya wear and what´s the population of Homs?" he said, suggesting that Hitto was out of touch with Syria. "I wanted to ask him how many years he´s lived in Syria," he said. "He left when he was young." Hitto won 35 of the 48 votes cast by the coalition´s 63 active members. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland welcomed Hitto´s election, saying the U.S. was aware of his aid work. "This is an individual who, out of concern for the Syrian people, left a very successful life in Texas to go and work on humanitarian relief for the people of his home country," she said. She added: "We´re very hopeful that his election will foster unity and cohesion among the opposition." Hitto´s many years abroad and fluent English could facilitate his efforts to win international support for his government. He called on the international community on Tuesday to grant his government Syria´s seats at the Arab League and the United Nations. Hitto was born in Syria´s capital of Damascus in 1963 and moved to the United States as a young man, where he earned double bachelors´ degrees from Purdue University and an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University, according to the coalition. He worked for IT companies and advocated for a number of Muslim causes. After 9/11, he helped found the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which provides legal support to Arabs, Muslims and Asians. He also helped run an Islamic private school in Garland, Texas. Its website describes it as a place "where knowledge, faith, academics and character meet!" Hitto is a member of Syria´s Kurdish ethnic minority, though he is not considered a representative of the community, which has not joined the coalition. He is married to a teacher and has four children. In a speech to a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2012, he spoke of his son, Obaida, who was applying to law school when "he made up his mind ... to help the people of Syria." His son has since been in the embattled city of Deir al-Zour, shooting videos to post online. The elder Hitto left Texas late last year to move to Turkey, where he helped run the coalition´s aid program to Syria. In the video of the Fort Worth rally, posted online in September, Hitto criticized Assad´s regime for deploying its army to suppress political protests while not sending it to take back the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed. "They were faced with live bullets, with tanks, with soldiers, an army that did not bother to fire a single bullet to claim or to attempt to reclaim its own occupied land for 42 years," he said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51783 BAGHDAD, March 19: A wave of attacks and explosions in Iraq killed 50 people on Tuesday and officials delayed provincial polls, highlighting security concerns on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion. At least 20 explosions and two assassinations also left more than 170 people wounded in the country´s bloodiest day in more than six months, reflecting the brutal unrest and endless political crises that were sparked by an invasion that had aimed to build a democratic ally in the heart of the Middle East.[break] The attacks come amid a spike in violence that has raised fresh questions about the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces, with separate reports by Britain-based Iraq Body Count and researchers in The Lancet putting the overall death toll from the decade of bloodshed at over 112,000 civilians. Most of Tuesday´s attacks struck in Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad during morning rush hour, with security forces stepping up searches at checkpoints and closing off key roads, worsening the capital´s gridlock, an AFP reporter said. Soldiers and police also established new checkpoints, and unusually, were searching at least some government-marked vehicles that are typically allowed to pass uninspected. In all, at least 15 car bombs were set off, including two by suicide attackers, along with multiple roadside bombs and gun attacks, officials said. Tuesday was the deadliest day since September 9, when 76 people were killed. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the violence, but Sunni militants often target Shiite civilians and government employees in a bid to destabilise the country. Violence has spiked ahead of the 10th anniversary, with 114 people killed in the past week, according to an AFP tally based on reports from security and medical officials. Authorities later announced that provincial polls scheduled for April 20, which would have been Iraq´s first vote in three years, were delayed in two provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, citing security concerns including threats to the lives of candidates. Iraqi officials have not announced any ceremonies to mark the anniversary on Wednesday, with events more likely to be held on April 9, the day Baghdad fell. Launched with the stated goal of wiping out Saddam´s stores of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found, the focus of the divisive war quickly shifted to solidifying Iraq as a Western ally in an unstable region. Though the war itself was relatively brief -- it began on March 20, 2003, Baghdad fell weeks later, and then-US president George W. Bush infamously declared the mission accomplished on May 1 -- its aftermath was violent and bloody. Britain-based Iraq Body Count has said that more than 112,000 civilians have been killed since the 2003 invasion, while a study published in The Lancet put the figure at 116,000 from 2003 up to December 2011, when US forces pulled out. Violence, which remains high by international standards, was only brought under some measure of control from 2008 onwards, as the American troop "surge" coincided with Sunni tribal militias deciding to side with US forces. But political reconciliation, the strategic goal of the surge, was never fully achieved. From territorial disputes in the north to questions over the apportioning of the country´s vast energy revenues, a number of high-level problems remain unresolved, while Iraqis still grapple with daily struggles ranging from poor provision of basic services to high levels of unemployment. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki´s erstwhile government partners, meanwhile, have charged him with monopolising power, and little in the way of landmark legislation has been passed in recent years. Through it all, however, a bright spot has been Iraq´s booming oil sector, which has boosted the government´s coffers and is projected to expand still further. Since the American withdrawal, Iraq´s military and police are consistently described by Iraqi and American officials as capable of maintaining internal security, but not yet fully able to protect the country´s borders, airspace and maritime territory. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51772 RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif, March 19: She was just 16, a shy girl whose life revolved around school and homework, when the phone call came that would change her life. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and Victoria Hu couldn´t wait for her father to return from a business trip to China. She missed their family dinners and even their occasional golf games, although she never cared much for the sport. Soccer was her game. Still, like her brother, she enjoyed the time those outings provided with their workaholic father.[break] He had been scheduled to arrive the day after Thanksgiving when Victoria´s mother got word of a delay. She didn´t go into detail but assured her children their father would be home by Christmas. A month later, the house trimmed and the children asking incessantly — "When is Dad coming home?" — Victoria learned the truth. Her father, a Chinese-American engineer, had been arrested on charges of stealing Chinese state secrets. He wouldn´t be home that Christmas, or for many more. Victoria Hu, 20, right, and her brother Richard talk about their father at their house in Rancho Palos Verdes. (AP) That was in 2008. Today, Hu Zhicheng still isn´t home, thanks to a bizarre set of legal circumstances that prohibit him from leaving China even though authorities dropped all charges. In Shanghai, he lives life as a free man, able to do anything except depart the country. Six thousand miles away in California, his family remains locked in their own emotional prisons: The wife who was left to raise two children alone. The son, just 13 when this started, who speaks bitterly of missing out on father-son moments. And the daughter, who spent years yearning for her father´s return and now dedicates part of her life to bringing him home. "I fight because I believe justice will prevail," she has written, "because this is the right thing to do." Until that call four years ago, Victoria and her brother, Richard, had grown up as typical American teenagers. Their days were filled with school, soccer practices and hanging out with friends. Their parents, both born in China, met at Tianjin University. After earning doctorates in engineering, the couple moved to the United States in 1989, where Hu did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Victoria was born in Boston, and Richard three years later in New Jersey, where the family moved after their father took a job doing pioneering work in the development of emission-limiting catalytic converters for automobiles. By 2004 Hu was an internationally recognized expert in the field, and he decided to take that expertise back to China. In a place notorious for its horrific smog, he figured to get in on the ground floor helping create cleaner-running automobiles. Hu´s wife, Hong Li, was leery of the move. She and her husband had become U.S. citizens, and she worried they were too Americanized to fit in back in China. What´s more, they no longer had the personal connections, or "guanxi" as the Chinese call it, so valuable to doing business there. "But," she adds, "I didn´t want to be the (one) who, when the end day comes, he says, ´I had a dream and you didn´t let me do it.´" At first, things went well. Hu became chief scientist and president of a company trying to build top-grade catalytic converters and was even honored by the province of Jiangsu as one of its leading innovators. Li started her own business supplying materials to the company that employed her husband. The children were enrolled in school and began learning about their Chinese heritage. In summer, Li would bring them back to the states to attend academic camps and keep up with English and U.S. culture. In 2007, they were enrolled in a camp at the University of California, Los Angeles, when Li got the first inkling of trouble. A business rival had accused her husband of stealing information and providing it to Li´s company. Police were asking questions. Hu called his wife in California with a warning: "Don´t come back." Hu soon returned to the US, intent on settling in California with his wife and children. The family found a fixer-upper in Rancho Palos Verdes, a picturesque Los Angeles suburb of rolling hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But back in China, police wanted to talk with Hu. His company also wanted him to continue with his research. And so, in November 2008, he returned to his native land for what he thought would be a brief visit. On Nov 28, the day he was supposed to fly back to California, Hu was arrested. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51765 NEW DELHI, March 19: The second-biggest party in India´s ruling coalition announced Tuesday it was withdrawing from the government, heightening the risk of early elections before their scheduled date next year. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a regional party from the state of Tamil Nadu, had been pressuring the government to condemn Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes against ethnic minority Tamils during the island´s civil war.[break] Party leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi told a press conference in the city of Chennai that his party would pull out of the left-leaning United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition which has been in power since 2009. "We can´t accept the stand of the centre," said Karunanidhi. Unless a solution is found -- the DMK has threatened in the past to withdraw without following through -- the government would be more vulnerable to falling before the scheduled date for elections in the first half of 2014. The UPA is dominated by the Congress party run by the Gandhi political dynasty and has technically been a minority in parliament since September when another regional party withdrew. It has so far marshalled support from outside allies to pass legislation, and analysts said the DMK´s loss would be unlikely to trigger polls in the short term. "No one expects the government to fall, but the drop in numbers will affect its stability," Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, a political columnist for the DNA daily newspaper, told AFP. "The picture is that this government is in disarray, facing crisis after crisis." The DMK, which depends on Tamil voters who have close ties to their counterparts in Sri Lanka, is the second-biggest coalition member with 18 members of parliament and has five mostly junior positions in cabinet. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters Tuesday the government remained "stable" and Karunanidhi might be persuaded to stay if parliament passed a resolution condemning Sri Lanka. "He will review his decision if that resolution is brought before cabinet," he told reporters. The instability comes amid a sharp slowdown in economic growth, which has slipped to decade lows, and could affect the government´s declared intention to introduce more pro-market reforms. Shares on the Bombay Stock Exchange fell 1.32 percent to 19,038.98 points in early afternoon, despite a cut in interest rates announced by the central bank. The power of regional parties has risen steadily in India politics over the last decades, with often unwieldy coalitions a feature of power since Congress lost its outright majority in parliament in 1989. The Trinamool party in West Bengal state withdrew from the coalition last September after objecting to new policies that opened up the retail sector to foreign supermarkets. Chidambaram was among three senior ministers who rushed to Chennai at the weekend to seek a solution with the DMK, with the government trying to balance domestic political needs against a desire not to antagonise a neighbour. Karunanidhi had warned that the DMK would withdraw unless the government supported a resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that condemned "genocide and war crimes" in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan forces ended a decades-long civil war with a 2009 onslaught against Tamil Tiger separatists which has since been dogged by war crime allegations. The UN estimated that some 40,000 people were killed in the final months of the war, while rights groups put the death toll even higher. Sri Lanka denies that its forces killed civilians. The UPA coalition would control 230 seats in the lower house of parliament if the DMK withdrew, far short of a majority of 272. But the support of outside allies the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, which mostly vote in favour of the UPA, would give it 273 seats. Political columnist B.G. Verghese said the move was typical political brinkmanship. "I see the pullout as a lot of bluff and blackmail by the DMK," he told AFP. "I don´t see any threat to the Congress government. Minority governments have functioned in the past and done very well." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51761 VATICAN CITY, March 19: Pope Francis swept into St Peter´s Square on Tuesday to greet throngs of pilgrims before a sumptuous ceremony in which Latin America´s first pontiff will receive the formal symbols of papal power. Wearing his papal whites and standing in middle of an open-topped vehicle, the pope waved, smiled and gave the thumbs-up to the ecstatic crowds in the sun-drenched square.[break] The crowds had begun gathering from the early morning for a ceremony laden with centuries-old rituals and lavish imagery, which will begin with a first-time tour of the famous Vatican plaza by the Argentine pope. "With Pope Francis, the Church will be closer to the people and to the modern world," said Rodrigo Grajales, a 31-year-old Colombian priest in the crowd, where people waved flags from around the world and banners hailing the pope. The former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, has already won hearts in Rome with a disarmingly informal style which will contrast with Tuesday´s pomp and ceremony. Bergoglio was the surprise choice at a conclave of cardinals to find a successor to 85-year-old Benedict XVI, who last month brought a sudden end to a papacy that had often been overshadowed by scandal, saying he was too old to carry on. He was the first pope to resign since the Middle Ages. The jovial Francis has said he chose his papal name in honour of the mediaeval Italian saint St Francis of Assisi and has called for a "poor Church for the poor", warning the world´s cardinals against pursuing worldly glories. "Go Francis! We Will Be With You Wherever You Go!" read a sign held up by a group of Brazilian nuns on St Peter´s Square. Sister Rosa, an elderly Italian nun, said she expected the pope would be "another St Francis on earth for love, goodness, poverty and humility". The son of an Italian emigrant railway worker from a working-class quarter of Buenos Aires has been effusive in a way that is unusual in the Vatican, kissing pilgrims and doing impromptu walkabouts. The arrivals have already presented Francis with a first diplomatic headache in the form of a request from compatriot President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina to mediate in a row with Britain over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. Francis is still haunted by criticism at home for failing to speak out against the excesses of Argentina´s military rule during the dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. The Chinese government has also said it will not be sending any representatives after Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou said he was attending. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe also flew in, sidestepping an EU travel ban over human rights abuses that does not apply to the Vatican. Latin America will be heavily represented at the inauguration of the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years, with the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Paraguay all in attendance. Leaders of different Christian denominations were also in attendance, including Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Vatican radio said it was the first time a patriarch of Constantinople attended an inauguration since 1054 when the eastern and western halfs of Christendom split. The Vatican was in security lockdown for the event, with 3,000 officers deployed including sharpshooters on the rooftops and bomb disposal experts. Three Red Cross tents could be seen on the square and giant screens have been placed all down Via della Conciliazione -- the main avenue leading to St Peter´s. After his tour of St Peter´s Square, Francis will pray at the tomb of St Peter, who is considered the first pontiff in Catholic tradition. Francis will then receive from his cardinals the pallium -- a lambswool strip of cloth that symbolises the pope´s role as a shepherd -- and the "Fisherman´s Ring", a personalised signet ring representing his authority. The ring is named in honour of St Peter, a fisherman by trade. The mass proper is expected to include a homily by Francis, who has often strayed from prepared texts with off-the-cuff jokes, anecdotes and passionate exhortations for spiritual renewal. Church leaders have urged Francis to move quickly to reform the intrigue-filled Roman Curia, the central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, and his appointments in the coming weeks will be closely watched. Francis has indicated he will press for a friendlier faith that is closer to ordinary people and for social justice, although the moderate conservative is unlikely to change major tenets of Catholic doctrine. Vatican experts say he has also signalled he will pursue a more inclusive "collegial" style of leadership together with the cardinals and bishops. The Church is being challenged on many levels around the world -- growing secularism in the West, the rise of radical Islam and the ongoing scandal of abuses of children by priests that were hushed up for decades. Vast crowds meanwhile gathered on the other side of the Atlantic outside the Buenos Aires cathedral to dance and sing as they watched the inauguration. Catholic high school students chanted slogans praising Francis, while seminarians and nuns waved Vatican flags and signs supporting the new pope. "This pope has awakened deep emotions within me, not only because he´s from Argentina, but because of his warmth as a person," Celia Farias, 33, told AFP. "As a Catholic, it has renewed my faith." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51756 MUMBAI, March 19:  A speeding bus careered off a river bridge in western India Tuesday, killing 37 people and injuring another 14, police said. The pre-dawn accident happened in the Khed area of Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra state, 350 kilometres (220 miles) south of the state capital Mumbai.[break] "The bus was speeding and the driver probably lost control at the turning ahead of the bridge. It is unclear whether the driver was drunk," Mahendra Singh Pardesi, head of the Khed police station, told AFP by telephone. The bus was travelling from the holiday state of Goa to Mumbai. Most of the injured, including the driver, sustained head and arm injuries and were undergoing treatment at a local hospital, he said. Pardesi said there was one foreign tourist on the bus, a Russian woman who escaped without serious injuries. Images from the scene showed the bus lying on its roof next to a bridge. The vehicle had landed on a dried-up patch of land next to low-lying water in the Jagbudi River. About 110,000 people were killed in Indian road accidents in 2011 -- more than 300 every day -- according to the last available statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau. Bad roads, speeding vehicles and poor driving were among the contributing factors, and bus crashes with a double-digit death toll are far from rare. Tuesday´s crash came a day after a senior official revealed that more than 800 people have died in accidents on the Mumbai-Goa highway in the last three years. Maharashtra´s home minister R. R. Patil, in a written reply to a question, told the state legislature Monday that 828 people died and 2,411 were seriously injured between 2010 and the end of 2012, the Press Trust of India reported. The World Health Organisation´s global status report on road safety 2013 found that eight percent of India´s road user deaths were drivers or passengers of buses, while 32 percent were riders of motorbikes or three-wheelers. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51747 NEW DELHI, March 19: Italy has accused India of violating laws on diplomatic immunity by preventing its ambassador from leaving the country, in an escalating row over two marines who skipped bail while on trial for murder in New Delhi. India´s top judge said Monday that Italy´s ambassador Daniele Mancini had forfeited his diplomatic immunity over his role in securing the release of the pair who are accused of killing two Indian fishermen.[break] However, the foreign ministry in Rome said India was breaking diplomatic conventions by ordering the envoy to stay in India until the next hearing in the case on April 2. "The Supreme Court´s decision to prevent our ambassador from leaving the country without the court´s permission is a clear violation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations," it said in a statement Monday. "Italy continues to believe that the case of its two marines should be resolved according to international law," it said, adding that it "wants to keep friendly relations" with India. Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said Mancini, who had negotiated the Italians´ release last month so they could vote in an election, had waived his immunity by giving an undertaking to a court that the pair would return. The marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, are accused of shooting dead two fishermen off India´s southwest coast in February last year, when a fishing boat sailed close to the Italian oil tanker they were guarding. They say they mistook the fishermen for pirates. The pair had been given permission to fly to Italy to cast their votes in the election on the understanding that they would return, but the Italian government announced last week it would renege on its commitment to send the men back. New Delhi has warned of "consequences" and is reviewing its ties with Italy, while the case is being watched carefully by India´s allies because it could set precedents over the treatment of foreign diplomats. India has put its airports on alert to prevent Mancini from leaving the country and the Supreme Court issued instructions that "appropriate steps" should be taken to restrain him. Without legal protection he could be prosecuted for contempt of court. A lawyer for the Italian government argued at Monday´s hearing that Mancini still enjoyed diplomatic immunity and freedom of movement under international rules contained in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. However Kabir, who was heading a three-judge bench, said: "We have lost all trust in the ambassador." Katherine Reece-Thomas, an international law expert at City University London, agreed that India risked being in breach of its Vienna Convention commitments. "The only sanction available to the host state (India) is to declare the diplomat to be persona non grata and demand that he leave," Reece-Thomas wrote in an email sent to AFP. "India cannot stop the ambassador leaving against his will and any suggestion that he somehow waived his rights under the Convention is unfounded." In Brussels, the EU´s foreign service earlier Monday reacted cautiously to Kabir´s decision. India and Italy should "pursue all avenues for an amicable solution", said the spokesman for European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton. Italy insists the marines should be prosecuted in their home country because the shootings involved an Italian-flagged vessel in international waters, but India says the killings took place in waters under its jurisdiction. Relations between the two countries have also been soured by corruption allegations surrounding a $748 million deal for the purchase of 12 helicopters which the Indian government is now threatening to scrap. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51746 KANO, Nigeria,March 19:  At least 16 people were killed in an explosion that hit a bus station in Kano in northern Nigeria, a medic said Monday in the latest violence to hit this West African nation. The medic, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said at least 16 dead and dozens more injured people were brought to the Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital after Monday´s blast.[break] The blast occurred Monday evening in Sabon Gari area, a Christian enclave in the predominantly Muslim city of Kano. It was not clear if there had been one or multiple explosions, said National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Yushau Shuaib. He could not say if the explosion was caused by a bomb or if it was accidental. However, residents´ suspicion fell on the radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram, which has waged a campaign of bombings across Nigeria´s north. Top officials also believed the explosion was caused by Islamic extremists. "The federal government will not be stampeded, for any reason whatsoever, into abandoning its unrelenting war against terrorists in the country," said Nigerian presidential spokesman Reuben Abati in reaction to the Kano blast. The deadly explosion came hours after an attack blamed on Boko Haram killed a teacher and injured three students in the northeastern Nigerian of Maiduguri, the spiritual home of Boko Haram. Local military spokesman Sagir Musa said in a statement the security forces killed three sect members in a counterattack. As the extremists´ threat grows, the Nigeria government has been unable to stop the killings, even in main centers such as Kano. Monday´s attack comes more than a year after the Jan. 20, 2012 coordinated attacks by extremists on Kano which left more than 150 people dead. Boko Haram´s reach appears to be extending to neighboring countries. Earlier Monday, a video emerged showing a French family who were kidnapped in Cameroon and who said they were being held by Boko Haram. The family, kidnapped on Feb. 19, includes four children. President Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement late Monday that "the Nigerian Government will continue to do all that is required to ensure the safety of lives and property, including continued collaboration with local and international partners and stakeholders to check the menace of terrorism." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51713 NEW DELHI, March 18: Six men appeared in court on Monday over the gang-rape and robbery of a Swiss cyclist holidaying in India, an assault which has rekindled alarm about the safety of tourists and rising sex crimes. The six, who were detained after Friday´s attack on the 39-year-old victim in Datia district in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, were brought before a local magistrate.[break] "The magistrate sent the accused on a one-day police remand (custody)," said Datia district deputy police chief R.S. Prajapati. "These men will be now further questioned. The latest incident comes three months after the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in Delhi sparked nationwide outrage. Indian policemen escort gang rape suspects to be produced in court in Datia, about 75 kms from Gwalior in central Madhya Pradesh state, on March 18. (AFP) Five of the suspects, all farmers in their twenties, were paraded in front of television cameras in Madhya Pradesh late on Sunday. They were dressed in jeans and shirts but with black cloth covering their faces. The sixth man, 19, was detained in a neighbouring state overnight and brought back to Datia, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of New Delhi. Only four of them will be charged with gang-rape, which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years, because testimony from the victim said two of them were "only present at the crime scene", said M.L. Dhody, another Datia officer. All the men face robbery charges as police say the group stole a laptop, a mobile phone and 10,000 rupees ($185) from the victim and her 30-year-old husband, who was tied up before the sexual assault. "The six of them have confessed to their roles in the crime," Dhody said. Indian law does not permit statements made in police custody to be used as evidence during trial. The Swiss couple arrived in the country last month and were cycling through northern India on a trip that included a stop in the Taj Mahal city of Agra. The suspects allegedly saw the pair pitching their tent on Friday night in a remote forested area in Datia and attacked them. The Press Trust of India news agency said at least one of them was armed with a shotgun. After being treated in a local hospital, the couple are now in the capital recovering and have pledged to stay to help police identify the rapists. They have "expressed their readiness to fully cooperate in the ongoing investigation and identification process. They will continue to stay in India for the moment," a Swiss embassy statement said on Monday. Last month the Swiss foreign ministry issued an advisory for its nationals travelling in India, warning that sexual violence was on the rise across the country. The Delhi attack last December spurred countrywide protests over the treatment of women in Indian society and the inadequacy of laws dealing with sexual crimes. Under a new bill approved by the cabinet last week, rapists face a minimum 20-year jail term and the death penalty if the victim dies from injuries or is left in a persistent vegetative state. In January a South Korean student holidaying in Madhya Pradesh, India´s largest state, said she had been raped and drugged by the son of the owner of the hotel where she stayed. India´s Tourism Minister K. Chiranjeevi said in a statement that he was "anguished" by the "heinous" crime and called for tourists to take greater precautions. He "felt the need for a more concerted effort by involving all state governments, so that all tourists are advised to inform their nearest police station whenever they venture out into remote areas", a statement from his office said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51712 NEW DELHI, March 18: India´s top judge said Monday that Italy´s ambassador had forfeited his diplomatic immunity over his role in securing the release of two marines who skipped bail while on trial for murder in New Delhi. Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said Daniele Mancini, who had negotiated the Italians´ release last month so they could vote in an election, had waived his immunity by giving an undertaking to a court that the pair would return.[break] "A person who comes to court and gives an undertaking has no immunity," Kabir told a hearing, while ordering that the ambassador stay in India until the next hearing on April 2. Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, who are accused of murdering two Indian fishermen last year, had been given permission to fly to Italy to cast their votes in the election on the understanding that they would return. But the Italian government announced last week that it would renege on its commitment to send the men back, prompting fury in New Delhi. The Indian government has warned of "consequences" and is reviewing its ties with Italy, while the legally complex case is being watched carefully by India´s allies because it could set precedents over the treatment of foreign diplomats. New Delhi has put its airports on alert to prevent Mancini from leaving the country and the Supreme Court issued instructions that "appropriate steps" should be taken to restrain him. Without legal protection he could be prosecuted for contempt of court. A lawyer for the Italian government argued that Mancini still enjoyed diplomatic immunity and freedom of movement under international rules contained in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. However Kabir, who was heading a three-judge bench, said: "We have lost all trust in the ambassador." Katherine Reece-Thomas, an international law expert at City University London, said that India risked being in breach of its Vienna Convention commitments. "The only sanction available to the host state (India) is to declare the diplomat to be persona non grata and demand that he leave," Reece-Thomas wrote in an email sent to AFP. "India cannot stop the ambassador leaving against his will and any suggestion that he somehow waived his rights under the Convention is unfounded." India´s foreign ministry has also argued that Mancini may have waived his immunity by willingly submitting himself to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court by signing a personal affidavit guaranteeing the return of the marines. "We as officers of the government of India will abide by the directions of the court of India," foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters on Monday. The marines face murder charges in India after shooting dead two fishermen off India´s southwestern coast in February last year, when a fishing boat sailed close to the Italian oil tanker they were guarding. They say they mistook the fishermen for pirates. Italy insists the marines should be prosecuted in their home country because the shootings involved an Italian-flagged vessel in international waters, but India says the killings took place in waters under its jurisdiction. Italy said Friday it would seek a "friendly agreement" with India to resolve the dispute. "The Italian government is working on a friendly agreement with India based on international law," Italian President Giorgio Napolitano´s office said in a statement. Relations between the two countries have also been soured by corruption allegations surrounding a $748 million deal for the purchase of 12 Italian helicopters which the Indian government is now threatening to scrap. The case of the marines caused more uproar in the local assembly of southwestern Kerala, the home state of the dead fishermen. The opposition Communist party walked out of the assembly after their demand for an urgent discussion on how the Italian marines had been allowed to return home was dismissed by the ruling party. "It´s a shame on India that this case was dealt with casually," senior Communist leader P.K. Gurudasan told AFP. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51709 PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 18: At least three people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up and militants opened fire in a court complex in northwest Pakistan on Monday, officials said. Several gunmen and the bomber stormed the crowded complex in the city of Peshawar, less than two months before expected national elections.[break] "One suicide bomber blew himself up in the court of an additional sessions judge. The other was shot dead by police," said senior police officer Masood Khan Afridi. "It was an act of terrorism and the target was the judicial complex. Three civilians were killed and 30 people wounded, four of them police officials," he added. "We have cleared the whole area and a combing operation is continuing." Afridi denied reports that some judges and lawyers were being held hostage inside the courts. "There are no hostages, I have just come back from the site of the attack," he said. The exact death toll was unclear. Sayed Jameel Shah, a spokesman for Peshawar´s main Lady Reading Hospital, said the hospital had received four bodies and was treating 25 injured people. The nuclear-armed country of 180 million is due to elect new leaders by mid-May. But Taliban attacks and record levels of violence against the Shiite Muslim minority have raised fears about security for the polls. "Terrorists have attacked at a time when general elections are very near and the atmosphere for election is smooth," said the information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain. "It could be an attempt to disturb the peaceful atmosphere but elections should never be postponed." Pakistan´s Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on Saturday hailed parliament´s historic completion of a full term in office as a victory for democracy as he gave his farewell address to the nation. The polling date has yet to be announced but officials say the Election Commission has recommended May 8, 9 or 10. The attack is the second in Peshawar in less than a month. Militants including a suicide bomber attacked the office of a senior official there on February 18, killing six people. The heavily-guarded court complex is in front of a five-star hotel and close to government and official buildings. Khyber, part of Pakistan´s semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, is in the grip of intensified fighting as part of a long-running military operation against the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51706 MONTREAL, March 18: Two prisoners staged a daring escape from jail in eastern Canada using a hijacked helicopter, but one of the convicts was swiftly re-arrested while the other appeared to have been cornered by police, authorities said Sunday. Sunday´s incident marked the first time that a helicopter has been used in a jailbreak in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.[break] Police said two accomplices working from outside the Saint-Jerome prison near Montreal had hijacked a helicopter, forced its pilot to hover over the jail and, using a rope ladder, picked up Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau and Danny Provencal from a prison rooftop. The helicopter and its pilot were found some time later in Mont-Tremblant, according to the police. The pilot was unharmed but taken to hospital suffering from shock. Quebec Provincial Police said they swiftly detained Hudon-Barbeau, 36, who appeared to have been injured, along with his two outside accomplices. In a Twitter message, the police said that had also located Provencal, 33, and set up a security perimeter around him. Radio Canada said Hudon-Barbeau has ties to the Hell´s Angels motorcycle club, which is considered an organized crime syndicate. There was no word about Provencal´s background. Media reports suggested that the inmates had held a gun to the pilot´s head. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51656 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 17:  Pakistan´s government passed a major milestone Saturday, with the parliament becoming the first democratically chosen body to finish its five-year term in a country that has faced three military coups and persistent political turmoil. But after years of militant attacks, worsening electricity blackouts and faltering economic growth, the political party that took office five years ago on a wave of sympathy following the assassination of iconic leader Benazir Bhutto will likely find it more difficult this time to win voters to its side. [break] Underscoring divisions, politicians failed to reach agreement on a caretaker government in time for the final session of parliament before new elections are held. The country´s constitution calls for a vote within 60 days, although no date has yet been set. Backdropped by a banner showing Pakistan´s slain leader Benazir Bhutto, motor vehicles are stopped during a traffic jam, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Saturday, March 16, 2013. (AP) Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, who maintains his position in the meantime, hailed the peaceful transition as a success for his Pakistan People´s Party, "We have strengthened the foundations of democracy to such an extent that no one will be able to harm democracy in future," Ashraf said during a nearly hourlong televised address to the nation. Ashraf portrayed the problems in the country as something inherited from the previous regime of ousted leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf. One of the ruling party´s main achievements has been its sheer survival — no small feat in a country that has experienced three successful coups and many more unsuccessful ones. President Asif Ali Zardari has shown a remarkable ability to hold together a warring coalition government whose members threaten to quit every few months or so. He´s also managed a balance between the need for U.S. assistance amid a deteriorating relationship between the two countries and rising anti-American sentiment. Washington needs Pakistan´s help fighting al-Qaida and stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan, but a series of recent scandals have severely damaged ties. CIA contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two Pakistani men in Lahore, the U.S. unilaterally killed Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad and American forces accidentally killed 24 Pakistani troops along the Afghan border. "That the government has survived five years, despite rumors every three months that the government is going, should also be viewed as a kind of achievement," independent political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said. Zardari and the ruling party must share some of the credit. The army, traditionally eager to step in when they perceive Pakistan to be in crisis, has shown a reticence under Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to involve itself at least outwardly in politics. The main opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N led by Nawaz Sharif, has bypassed numerous opportunities to make life difficult for the PPP. Sharif has just as much invested in strengthening the civilian government as the PPP does, and is no friend of the army. Sharif´s party and one led by former Pakistani cricket star Imran Khan will present the greatest challenge to the PPP in the coming election. The government´s most high-profile accomplishments in the past five years have involved changing the power structure, rather than dealing with basic problems facing ordinary Pakistanis. Through a constitutional amendment passed in 2010 under pressure from the opposition, Zardari followed through on promises to strip the presidency of many of the powers it gained under Musharraf. The amendment prevents the president from unilaterally dissolving parliament and gives the prime minister a major role in appointing the country´s armed services chiefs. The amendment also transfers considerable powers from the central government to the provinces. But it´s questionable whether these moves will deliver many votes. It´s mostly the economy that will be on voters´ minds. "The economy has never been on the radar of the government. This was the most neglected area," said Ashfaque Hassan Khan, dean of the National University of Sciences and Technology´s Business School. He criticized the revolving door of ministers and officials in key economy-related government bodies. Many in the government argue that the economy hasn´t fared that poorly considering the catastrophic flooding of 2010, security problems that scare off foreign investors and the global economic downturn. But critics contend the government has failed to address major issues such as restructuring state-owned companies like the national airline, PIA. And then there are the blackouts. Pakistanis suffer from rolling blackouts — euphemistically referred to as load shedding — that can last as long as 18 hours a day in the summer. In the winter, natural gas supplies are intermittent at best. Under the PPP, the government has tried to address the energy crisis by employing so-called rental power projects under which the government imports power stations and links them to the national grid. But the projects have been unable to generate much electricity, and critics say they were just an opportunity for graft. The PPP insists it is tackling the energy problems. Zardari went to Iran on Monday for a high-profile ground-breaking ceremony on a pipeline intended to bring natural gas from Iran — despite American objections. One area where the PPP government has invested a lot of time and effort is the rural sector and helping the poor. Welfare programs like the Benazir Income Support Program have handed out small amounts of cash to the country´s most impoverished people and given small loans to businesses. The government has also tried to help rural communities by boosting the price of certain agricultural commodities, although that has contributed to price hikes in urban areas. The PPP may pay a price for ongoing terror attacks despite five years of military operations against the Pakistani Taliban and likeminded groups in the lawless tribal areas near the Afghan border. Just this year, more than 250 people have been killed in three bombings targeting members of the minority Shiite Muslim sect. Security in Karachi, the country´s largest city and economic heart, continues to unravel as political, ethnic and religious wars escalate. The PPP rose to power after the Dec. 27, 2007 assassination of Bhutto during a rally in Rawalpindi where she railed against terrorism. Her widower, Zardari, vowed to continue that legacy when he took over, but analysts say the government has failed to follow through on that promise. "I don´t think there has been any success in curbing militancy," said Zahid Hussain, whose books record the rise of militancy in Pakistan. "The government has failed to come out with a clear counterterrorism policy." Pakistani troops have been engaged in near-constant fighting against militants in the country´s northwest near the Afghan border since 2009. But in areas like the Swat Valley, where the military drove out the Taliban, the civilian administration has been unable to take over from the military. At the same time, Pakistan´s relationship with its longtime but wary ally, the United States, has gone through some extremely rocky periods. Zardari and the PPP have always struggled with a domestic perception that they are American stooges — an unpopular position in a country where anti-American sentiment is widespread. The view from Washington, though, has been that Pakistan is not doing enough to combat militancy within its borders. In response to the U.S. airstrikes that accidentally killed the 24 soldiers in November 2011, the Pakistanis cut off the NATO supply lines for seven months until the U.S. apologized. Relations have slowly improved since then, but politicians remain wary of being seen as too close to Washington as elections loom. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51609 BHOPAL, India, March 16: A Swiss female tourist was gang-raped in rural central India, police said on Saturday, the latest victim of sexual violence against women in the South Asian nation. The woman was on a cycling trip with her husband in impoverished Madhya Pradesh state, when seven to eight men attacked the couple on Friday night, sexually assaulting the woman and robbing the pair, police said.[break] The attackers "tied up the man and raped the woman in his presence", local police official S.M. Afzal told AFP, adding that they stole 10,000 rupees ($185) and a mobile phone from the woman. The attack comes just months after thousands took to the streets to protest against India´s treatment of women following the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi in December. The couple were on their way to the tourist destination of Agra, home to the iconic Taj Mahal monument, in northern India when they stopped to camp for the night in a village. Indian media reports said the men were wielding sticks when they attacked the couple. After the attack, the rape victim, aged about 40, was admitted to hospital in Gwalior city, 212 miles (342 kilometres) from state capital Bhopal, local police official M.S. Dhodee said. The victim was conscious on Saturday and speaking to authorities, police said. No other details of her condition were known. She told police that the couple were both Swiss, police said, but they added they had not yet seen their passports to confirm their nationality. "The victims, who belong to Switzerland, put up a tent to stay overnight" when the attack occurred, Afzal said. The other police official, Dhodee, told AFP that police were still investigating the case but added that "a rape case has been registered against seven unidentified people". A spokesman for the Swiss embassy in New Delhi could not be reached for comment. In 2003 a 36-year-old female Swiss diplomat was abducted in the car park of a popular New Delhi auditorium, driven away by two men and raped. She was freed later nearby. No one has been convicted for that attack. Concern remains high in India over the safety and status of women and girls in the country of 1.2 billion. Rape is one aspect of a wide range of violence, including domestic assaults, against women in India that claims many thousands of lives each year, according to rights workers. The Congress-led government has been under heavy pressure to strengthen legal protection for India´s women following the December attack on the student who died from internal injuries after being savagely assaulted by six men. Last Monday, Ram Singh, one of six accused on trial over the December assault was found hanged in his high-security jail cell in New Delhi. Police suspect he hanged himself, but his family says he was murdered. Under a new bill approved by India´s cabinet earlier in the week, rapists face a minimum 20-year jail term and the death penalty if the victim dies from her injuries or is left in a persistent vegetative state. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51607 INDIAN WELLS, California, March 16: Maria Sharapova reached her first final of 2013 on Friday, beating Maria Kirilenko 6-4, 6-3 in a semi-final slugfest to set up a title showdown with Caroline Wozniacki at Indian Wells. By reaching the final, Sharapova is projected to rise one spot to No. 2 in the world when the new rankings are announced on Monday.[break] "It´s better than three, right?" said Sharapova, who was more focused on capturing a first title since her 2012 French Open victory gave her a career Grand Slam. She is playing in only her third tournament of the year. After withdrawing from Brisbane with a right collarbone injury she reached the semi-finals at the Australian Open and Doha. The Russian lifted the trophy in the California desert in 2006 and was runner-up last year to Victoria Azarenka. But in Wozniacki, who outlasted fourth-seeded Angelique Kerber 2-6, 6-4, 7-5, she´ll be up against an opponent with an equally strong Indian Wells resume: a title in 2011 and a runner-up finish in 2010. "She´s always a tough opponent," Sharapova said of Wozniacki. "She´s a grinder. She makes you work really hard on the court and gets a lot of balls back." Although Sharapova built a 3-1 lead in the opening set, she thought she could have started even stronger against the 15th-seeded Kirilenko, whose triumph at Pattaya City made her the only semi-finalist to have won a title this year. "I felt like it could have been up 4-0," Sharapova said, adding that she wanted as much cushion as she could build against a player who had already beaten third-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska and fifth-seeded Petra Kvitova en route to the semi-finals. "She´s had a few comebacks in this tournament and really good results," Sharapova said. "So, yeah, I stepped it up in the second set." Five of Sharapova´s six aces came in the second frame, and she didn´t face a break point. "She likes to play those long points," Sharapova said. "My job was to be a little more aggressive than usual." Wozniacki turned the tables on Kerber, who had won their last three meetings, but she had to work two and a half hours to do it. The match featured 14 breaks of serve -- seven in the third set alone. "I just took it as it came - I was trying to figure out a way to win," Wozniacki said. "It doesn´t really matter how." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51606 COLOMBO, March 16: Sri Lanka denied entry to a British tourist sporting a Buddha tattoo on his arm because he showed disrespect to Buddhism, a newspaper report said Saturday. The unnamed Briton was turned back at Bandaranaike International Airport late Friday, according to the daily Lankadeepa Sinhalese.[break] "When questioned about the tattoo, he spoke very disrespectfully about Buddhism," an immigration official told the newspaper. "If he expressed such views after entering the country, it would have been a threat to his own safety." An airport official confirmed the report, but declined to give details. Sri Lanka, a majority Buddhist nation, is highly sensitive to what is perceives as threats to the religion. Last August, three French tourists were sentenced to six months in jail, which was suspended for five years, for kissing a Buddha statue in what the authorities considered was a sign of disrespect to Buddhism. In 2010, Sri Lanka prevented US rap star Akon from visiting over one of his music videos featuring scantily clad women dancing in front of a Buddha statue. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51605 BEIJING, March 16: China´s parliament on Saturday approved Wang Yi, a former ambassador to Japan and currently in charge of Taiwan affairs, to be the country´s new foreign minister. Wang replaces Yang Jiechi, who has served since 2007. The National People´s Congress (NPC) also approved Yang to become a member of the State Council, Wang Shengjun, NPC vice chairman, announced.[break] The changes are part of a broad revamp of personnel as China concludes a once-a-decade leadership transition that saw Communist party chief Xi Jinping elected president on Thursday. The change at the top of the foreign ministry comes at a time of heightened tensions with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, claimed by both countries. Wang, 59, served as ambassador to Japan from 2004 to 2007 and was also a diplomat in China´s embassy in Tokyo from 1989 to 1994. He reportedly speaks Japanese. He has been in charge of Taiwan affairs on the State Council since 2008. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51599 PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 16:  At least 23 Pakistani soldiers were killed on Saturday when their bus plunged into a ravine on the main Pakistan-China highway in the mountainous northern region, officials said. "According to initial information, 23 soldiers died in a road accident when their bus plunged into a ravine on the Karakoram Highway," said a senior military official.[break] The military said 27 people were on board the bus including 25 soldiers heading home on leave and a civilian driver and cleaner. The soldiers belonged to a battalion of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) and were deployed to the picturesque Swat valley, which was cleared of Taliban militants in 2009. A local administration official said they had dispatched teams to the remote accident site. "They were all proceeding on leave from Swat to Gilgit," the military official said. The journey in the mountainous northern districts is quite difficult and soldiers and civilians prefer to travel in groups. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51597 CARACAS, Venezuela, March 16: The road from the military academy where Hugo Chavez´s body has been lying in state to the hilltop museum where he´ll be displayed indefinitely is lined with some of the most dangerous slums on the planet. It runs under bridges in dire need of repair and past grocery stores with few groceries. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans gathered along that route Friday to watch the late president´s body cross the city in yet another choreographed show designed to keep Chavez supporters in thrall, at least until an April 14 election to replace him. Afterward, people will have to go on living with the problems that Chavez left behind.[break] This tense, relentlessly gray capital embodies many of Venezuela´s problems, with crumbling apartment towers and food lines often sharing the same sidewalk with cheering crowds eager to greet their departed Comandante. "More than anything, the government continues fighting with everyone, and does everything badly," said Francisco Olivero, a 54-year-old carpenter who lives with his wife and five children in the poor neighborhood of Catia, just blocks from the funeral route. Like many Venezuelans, Olivero said wartime-levels of street violence all over the city were his top worry. "They kill people here every day," he said. "I´ve lost friends, relatives." As thousands of bused-in police academy cadets gathered along the route to prepare for the procession, Olivero and his wife, Yelitza Acuna, hid from the sun while waiting in a block-long line to buy flour, coffee, butter and other food staples they said have been hard to come by for about two years. The store, which sits along the most trafficked part of the route, happened to be selling the rare goods Friday, drawing a crowd of people desperate for a few bags of flour. "The word spread in the street, and we all came running here," said Olivero´s wife, who is a cook´s assistant. Later, Chavez´s coffin traveled down the street in a black hearse, to the roar of thousands of admirers. Economists say government-imposed price controls designed to dampen inflation topping 20 percent have made it impossible for store owners to sell basic foods at a profit, sparking widespread shortages. For their part, officials have accused suppliers of hoarding the goods and have invaded warehouses looking for sugar, flour and other food items in short supply. "You can´t find anything," said 27-year-old lawyer Anglys Bericote, who rode a bus for four hours from the town of Cajigal to view the funeral cortege. Wearing a heart-shaped "I am Chavez" pin, she said she was taking the opportunity to also stock up on basic goods. People in her town have even had to go without toothpaste and toilet paper, she said. "It´s all the plan of the private businesses," she said, repeating the government´s line of attack. "They want to hold onto everything so that it riles up people." A few blocks from the military museum, where a ceremonial fire awaited the arrival of Chavez´s body, Jonathan Rodriguez watched government supporters pass by in red T-shirts bearing Chavez´s image. Raw sewage trickled from a broken pipe down the street, and the 37-year-old insurance agent scolded his two sons for playing nearby. "The majority of them don´t complain about the problems here," Rodriguez whispered about the passing Chavez supporters. "It´s as if they didn´t exist." Rodriguez said he doesn´t have that luxury. Violent crime is so bad in his part of town that he and his family shut themselves inside their home every night by 6 p.m., only opening the iron gate covering his front door the next morning. Yet for Rodriguez, staying indoors might not be enough to protect him and his family from the war outside. Several weeks ago, a stray bullet penetrated the zinc roof of a neighbor´s house. Almost all of Caracas´ streets empty of people by dusk as residents live under the pall of a homicide rate 20 times that of the United States. On Thursday, the U.N. Development Program issued a study finding Venezuela had the world´s fifth highest homicide rate, only behind Honduras, El Salvador, the Ivory Coast and Jamaica. Rodriguez blamed his working-class neighborhood´s ills on thugs who prowl the streets on motorcycles and said more police patrols could help retake the city. Many, however, believe the police are a big part of the problem. In an astounding revelation, former Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said in 2009 that police were responsible for up to 20 percent of the country´s crimes. "I just stay inside now," Rodriguez said. "Outside, it´s not safe." All along the funeral route were unmistakable signs that this 28 million-person country is not only unsafe, but that its basic services no longer work. Chavez´s hearse started from the military academy, which is surrounded by bare-brick slums that cling to hillsides rising almost vertically into the Caribbean sky. More Venezuelans have moved into such slums during Chavez´s government, casualties of a housing deficit that the human rights group Provea estimates at 2 million units. Official figures say the number of houses deemed "inadequate" in the country grew from 295,000 in 1999 to more than 404,000 in 2011. The growth of such neighborhoods has contributed to other problems. Due to crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure, sewage all over the city goes mainly to one place: the once-pristine Guaire River, which runs along most of Chavez´s funeral route. In 2005, Chavez had famously promised that Venezuelans would one day be able to swim in its waters. Trying to do that Friday, as soldiers and red-shirted Chavistas cheered on the hearse, would have been nothing less than life-threatening. Retired truck driver Miguel Mosquera said he remembered the idyllic scene there decades ago, when the river was a perfect place to spend a sunny day. He lives in the neighborhood of San Antonio, close to the river and within sight of the funeral route. "The city grew too much," the 67-year-old said. "In the ´30s and in the ´40s, people bathed in this river. ... Here, when it rains, it´s chaos, you see that the river sometimes spills over when it rains." Jose Leal, who had stopped by a bakery near the route, said he had given up on any change under the current government, led by Chavez´s hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro. "It isn´t easy, brother," Leal said as Chavez supporters headed to the river to watch the cortege pass. "It´s worrying. It creates stress, stress in the family, stress at work." The hearse ended its journey winding through the Chavez stronghold of the "23 de enero" slum and stopping in front of the military museum overlooking Caracas. Chavez´s coffin will remain at the museum, while authorities decide its final resting place. Maduro had said last week that Chavez´s body would be perpetually displayed, but Information Minister Ernesto Villegas announced Friday night that the government had discarded that option. With the nation watching, Maduro pledged that "we will construct socialism" as Chavez had attempted to do and that "we take on your cause." In a bakery at the route´s midpoint, Yaneth Solano said she wasn´t so sure about such grand promises anymore. "Nothing will change Venezuela now, only God." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51591 VATICAN CITY, March 16: The honeymoon that Pope Francis has enjoyed since his remarkable election hit a bump Friday, with the Vatican lashing out at what it called a defamatory and "anti-clerical left-wing" media campaign questioning his actions during Argentina´s murderous military dictatorship. On Day 2 of the Francis pontificate, the Vatican denounced news reports in Argentina and beyond resurrecting allegations that the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio failed to openly confront the junta responsible for kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents.[break] Bergoglio, like most Argentines, didn´t publicly confront the dictators who ruled from 1976-83, while he was the leader of the country´s Jesuits. And human rights activists differ on how much blame he personally deserves. Top church leaders had endorsed the junta and some priests even worked alongside torturers inside secret prisons. Nobody has produced any evidence suggesting Bergoglio had anything to do with such crimes. But many activists are angry that as archbishop of Buenos Aires for more than a decade, he didn´t do more to support investigations into the atrocities. On Thursday, the old ghosts resurfaced. A group of 44 former military and police officers on trial for torture, rape and murder in a concentration camp in Cordoba province in the 1970s wore the yellow-and-white ribbons of the papal flag in Francis´ honor. Many Argentine newspapers ran the photo Friday. The Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that Argentine courts had never accused Bergoglio of any crime, that he had denied all accusations against him and that on the contrary "there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time." He said the accusations against the new pope were made long ago "by anti-clerical left-wing elements to attack the church. They must be firmly rejected." The harsh denunciation was typical of a Vatican that often reacts defensively when it feels under attack, even though its response served to give the story legs for another day. It interrupted the generally positive reception Francis has enjoyed since his election as pope on Wednesday, when even his choice of footwear — his old black shoes rather than the typical papal red — was noted as a sign of his simplicity and humility. There was one clearly unscripted moment Friday, when the 76-year-old Francis stumbled briefly during an audience with the cardinals, but he quickly recovered. And for the second day in a row, Francis slipped out of the Vatican walls, this time to visit an ailing Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mejia, who suffered a heart attack Wednesday and was in the hospital. This upbeat narrative of a people´s pope who named himself after the nature-loving St. Francis of Assisi has clashed with accusations stemming from Bergoglio´s past. The worst allegation is that as the military junta took over in 1976, he withdrew support for two Jesuit priests whose work in the slums of Buenos Aires had put them in direct contact with the leftist guerrilla movement advocating armed revolution. The priests were then kidnapped and interrogated inside a clandestine torture center at the Navy Mechanics School. Bergoglio said he had told the priests — Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics — to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work. Yorio died in Uruguay in 2000. Jalics, who had maintained silence about the events, issued a statement Friday saying he spoke with Bergoglio years later and the two celebrated Mass together and hugged "solemnly." "I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed," he said. Bergoglio told his official biographer, Sergio Rubin, in 2010, that he had gone to extraordinary, behind-the-scenes lengths to save the men. The Jesuit leader persuaded the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so Bergoglio could say Mass instead and take the opportunity to successfully appeal for their release, Rubin wrote. Lombardi said the airing of the accusations following Francis´ election was "characterized by a campaign that´s often slanderous and defamatory." Earlier this week, Lombardi issued a similar denunciation of an advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse, accusing it of using the media spotlight on the conclave to try to publicize old accusations against cardinals. The accusations, Lombardi said, are baseless and the cardinals deserve everyone´s "esteem." The accusations against Bergoglio were fanned by Horacio Verbitzky, an investigative journalist who was a leftist militant in the 1970s and is now closely aligned with the government. He has written extensively about the accusations in Argentina´s Pagina12 newspaper, a left-wing daily known for advocacy journalism. Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta´s atrocities, said this week that "Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship." "Perhaps he didn´t have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," Esquivel said on Buenos Aires´ Radio de la Red. Argentine political analyst Ignacio Fidanza concurred. "What they´re demanding is that during the dictatorship he should have planted himself in the Plaza de Mayo and shouted against it," he told The Associated Press. "It was probably more effective to speak in silence, since it was an extreme situation." Human rights investigators in Argentina have been unable to make any other cases against Bergoglio from the junta years, other than the allegations concerning the two Jesuits and that he failed to help a family find their murdered daughter´s illegally adopted baby. But activists are also angry that as leader of the Argentine church, he has never acknowledged or apologized for what they describe as the church´s active institutional support of the military government, said Gaston Chillier, who tracks the country´s human rights cases as director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies. The church was so deeply in league with the dictators that when the Inter-American Human Rights Commission came for an inspection in 1979, the Argentine navy moved many detainees to an island owned by the diocese during the visit. "He is responsible during Argentina´s period of democracy for continuing a cover-up," Chillier told the AP. "His knowledge of these cases clearly shows that he cannot deny the torture and the systematic theft of babies." Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he didn´t know anything about baby thefts until well after the dictatorship. Since Bergoglio became archbishop in 1998, his church has issued several apologies for failing to do more to protect people from violence that came from both the right and the left. The latest, in October 2012, was the most forceful, and it also, for the first time, asked Catholics to come forward with whatever evidence they may have to support Argentina´s human rights trials. But Chillier says Bergoglio could have done more to make the church help identify children and the bodies of detainees as well as identify those responsible for atrocities. "It´s one thing to acknowledge what you failed to do, but another entirely to apologize for what you actually did," Chillier said. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51590 ISLAMABAD, March 16: The head of a U.N. team investigating casualties from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan declared after a secret research trip to the country that the attacks violate Pakistan´s sovereignty. Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said the Pakistani government made clear to him that it does not consent to the strikes — a position that has been disputed by U.S. officials.[break] President Barack Obama has stepped up covert CIA drone strikes targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan´s tribal region along the Afghan border since he took office in 2009. The strikes have caused growing controversy because of the secrecy surrounding them and claims that they have caused significant civilian casualties — allegations denied by the United States. According to a U.N. statement that Emmerson emailed to The Associated Press on Friday, the Pakistani government told him it has confirmed at least 400 civilian deaths by U.S. drones on its territory. The statement was initially released on Thursday, following the investigator´s three-day visit to Pakistan, which ended Wednesday. The visit was kept secret until Emmerson left. Imtiaz Gul, an expert on Pakistani militancy who is helping Emmerson´s team, said Friday that the organization he runs, the Centre for Research and Security Studies, gave the U.N. investigator during his visit case studies on 25 strikes that allegedly killed around 200 civilians. The U.N. investigation into civilian casualties from drone strikes and other targeted killings in Pakistan and several other countries was launched in January and is expected to deliver its conclusions in October. The U.S. rarely discusses the strikes in public because of their covert nature. But a few senior officials, including CIA chief John Brennan, have publicly defended the strikes, saying precision weapons help avoid significant civilian casualties. A 2012 investigation by the AP into 10 of the recent deadliest drone strikes in Pakistan over the previous two years found that a significant majority of the casualties were militants, but civilians were also killed. Villagers told the AP that of at least 194 people killed in the attacks, about 70 percent — at least 138 — were militants. The remaining 56 were either civilians or tribal police, and 38 of them were killed in a single attack on March 17, 2011. Pakistani officials regularly criticize the attacks in public as a violation of the country´s sovereignty, a popular position in a country where anti-American sentiment runs high. But the reality has been more complicated in the past. For many years, Pakistan allowed U.S. drones to take off from bases within the country. Documents released by WikiLeaks in 2010 showed that senior Pakistani officials consented to the strikes in private to U.S. diplomats, while at the same time condemning them in public. Cooperation has certainly waned since then as the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. has deteriorated. In 2011, Pakistan kicked the U.S. out of an air base used by American drones in the country´s southwest, in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. But U.S. officials have insisted that cooperation has not ended altogether and key Pakistani military officers and civilian politicians continue to consent to the strikes. The officials have spoken on condition of anonymity because of the covert nature of the drone program. However, Emmerson, the U.N. investigator, came away with a black and white view after his meetings with Pakistani officials. "The position of the government of Pakistan is quite clear," said Emmerson. "It does not consent to the use of drones by the United States on its territory and it considers this to be a violation of Pakistan´s sovereignty and territorial integrity." The drone campaign "involves the use of force on the territory of another state without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan´s sovereignty," he said. Pakistan claimed the drone strikes were radicalizing a new generation of militants and said it was capable of fighting the war against Islamist extremism in the country by itself, said Emmerson. A major reason why the U.S. has stepped up drone attacks in Pakistan is because it has failed to convince the government to target Taliban militants using its territory to launch cross-border attacks against American troops in Afghanistan. Emmerson met with a variety of Pakistani officials during his visit, as well as tribal leaders from the North Waziristan tribal area — the main target for U.S. drones in the country — and locals who claimed they were injured by the attacks or had lost loved ones. The tribal leaders said innocent tribesmen were often mistakenly targeted by drones because they were indistinguishable from Taliban militants, said Emmerson. Both groups wear the same traditional tribal clothing and normally carry a gun at all times, he said. "It is time for the international community to heed the concerns of Pakistan, and give the next democratically elected government of Pakistan the space, support and assistance it needs to deliver a lasting peace on its own territory without forcible military interference by other states," said Emmerson. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51546 WASHINGTON, March 15: A small French study of 14 HIV patients who have remained healthy for years after stopping drug treatment offers fresh evidence that early medical intervention may lead to a "functional cure" for AIDS, researchers said Thursday. The research, published in the US journal PLoS Pathogens, comes on the heels of a report last week that a baby in Mississippi appeared to be cured of HIV after aggressive antiretroviral drug treatment delivered within 30 hours of birth.[break] Experts agree that while parallels between the two studies are intriguing, the phenomenon is rare -- and warn that most of the 34 million people infected with HIV worldwide would develop full-blown AIDS if they stopped taking drugs to repress the human immunodeficiency virus. Myron Cohen, a well-known US expert on HIV and chief of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina, described the French study as "provocative." "It provokes us to think. Who in the universe of people treated early can come off treatment? They showed us some clues, but it is a question that demands more science," he told AFP. The study involves 14 adults, a group known as the VISCONTI cohort, which stands for Viro-Immunologic Sustained Control After Treatment Interruption. They were treated for HIV with a range of antiretroviral drugs, each within 10 weeks of infection, and stopped treatment around three years afterward on average. The group has been able to keep viral loads under control for a median of 7.5 years without drug treatment, said the study. The results are surprising as the individuals do not have the genetic characteristics of another rare group of people -- fewer than one percent of the population -- who appear able to spontaneously stave off HIV without medicine and are known as "natural" or "elite controllers." Those in the VISCONTI group, described as "post-treatment controllers," have not completely eliminated HIV from their bodies. They continue to maintain it at a low level in their cells and have not become sick. Researchers cautioned, though, that the mechanism that explains why these patients can fight HIV without drugs remains unclear. Several immunologic tests have not found a singular cause for their continued control of the virus. "These individuals reflect what a functional cure may represent because they have been actually controlling the infection for many years now," said lead researcher Asier Saez-Cirion of the Institut Pasteur in Paris. "I think this is proof of concept that this may be achieved in individuals," he said in a phone interview with AFP. "And that this happened thanks to early treatment onset." All of those in the study live in France and currently range in age from 34 to 66. They were infected with HIV in the 1990s and 2000s. Since they were handpicked for the study after they appeared to be able to control HIV upon stopping treatment, it is unclear what percentage of the population they may represent. Preliminary research on them was presented at the International AIDS Conference in Washington last year. Scientists are continuing to study the group for clues about how and why their bodies act the way they do. After an acute infection, HIV establishes viral reservoirs in cells that allow it to hide and return, even after prolonged treatment, meaning that most patients who stop taking medication see the infection return. "These reservoirs are what stand between us and a cure for HIV," said Rowena Johnston, amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) vice president for research. "The control of HIV infection even after therapy is stopped is an interesting phenomenon that hints at what antiretroviral therapy might be able to achieve over and above its use as ongoing treatment," she told AFP. The group could represent a new kind of natural HIV response worth studying, according to Mark Siedner, a postdoctoral fellow in the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "This information could be used to help consider new pathways for medicines or, best case scenario, novel vaccine development avenues," said Siedner, who was not involved in the research. But, he said, "It should be remembered that the vast majority of HIV-infected patients have an established viral reservoir and that stopping medicines will quickly result in viral replication, immune destruction, and eventual clinical AIDS." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51533 BEIJING, March 15:  China´s parliament installed bureaucrat Li Keqiang as premier Friday, putting him in charge of running the world´s second-largest economy in one of the final steps of a landmark power transition. Li, who is expected to be in office for a decade, faces the challenge of steering the country towards more balanced development, with domestic consumption by a larger middle class playing a greater role.[break] "I announce that comrade Li Keqiang has been chosen as premier of the People´s Republic of China," said Yan Junqi, a vice-chairwoman of the National People´s Congress (NPC), China´s rubberstamp parliament. To applause from delegates in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Li stood up, bowed and shook hands with Xi Jinping, who was formally appointed as China´s new president Thursday, and his predecessor as premier Wen Jiabao. Li received 2,940 votes out of 2,949 cast, with three votes against and six abstentions. Like Xi´s election the day before, the result had never been in doubt. Li, Xi and other top leaders took charge of the Communist party, where real power lies, four months ago, and their stage-managed selection to the top government posts during this week´s NPC formalises their authority. Xi has more authority to set policy than Li. In the past the premier has been the face of government, making public appearances when disaster strikes and looking to reassure the public. Both their terms officially last five years, but are normally followed by a second, totalling a decade in office. Li, a 57-year-old English-speaking career bureaucrat, will oversee a sprawling portfolio of domestic and economic affairs. He takes charge as China´s breakneck growth has steadily slowed and the need looms to rebalance away from investment and exports and towards domestic consumption. In his position as one of Wen´s vice-premiers observers praised him for helping China navigate the global financial crisis and pushing forward efforts to restructure the economy. But like Wen he may face resistance to change among the provinces and ministries. Li will run the State Council, or cabinet, along with a number of vice-premiers -- who will be named on Saturday -- and state councillors, and will oversee several dozen ministries and commissions. The son of a party official in the poor eastern province of Anhui, Li was sent to the countryside to do manual labour as were many youths during the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. While overseeing central Henan province in the 1990s, he was criticised for dealing poorly with an HIV/AIDS epidemic that resulted from a tainted blood donation scheme, targeting activists and the media rather than officials. He is expected to hold a rare press conference at the close of the NPC on Sunday. Visible reaction to his election on China´s heavily-censored Twitter-like microblogs was generally positive, if limited. One person took heart in Li having a doctorate in economics. "Now we can look forward to how (he) will change our country´s development model and formulate a national development strategy from a global perspective," wrote one poster under the name Han Wei. Zhou Qiang, a former Communist party secretary of Hunan province who is seen as an associate of ex-leader Hu Jintao, was named president of China´s supreme court. Legal specialists said Zhou could be an improvement over his predecessor, Wang Shengjun, a career official with no legal experience who said interests of the ruling Communist party came ahead of the constitution and the law. "His legal education means he might place more emphasis on using the law," said Pu Zhiqiang, one of China´s most celebrated human rights lawyers, who has represented dissident artist Ai Weiwei. But he added: "Basically Zhou is a politician... whether he promotes the development of China´s legal system depends on other officials." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51480 GENEVA, March 14: Physicists said Thursday they are now confident they have discovered a crucial subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson — a major discovery that will go a long ways toward helping them explain why the universe is the way it is. They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world´s largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. [break]The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle." Joe Incandela, who heads one of the two main teams at CERN that each involve several thousand scientists, said in a statement that "it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is." This 2011 image provide by CERN, shows a real CMS proton-proton collision in which four high energy electrons (green lines and red towers) are observed in a 2011 event. (AP0 The long-theorized subatomic particle would explain why matter has mass and has been considered a missing cornerstone of physics. Last July, scientists with the world´s largest atom-smasher announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51478 WASHINGTON, March 14: Scientists used an iPhone and a camera lens to diagnose intestinal worms in rural Tanzania, a breakthrough that could help doctors treat patients infected with the parasites, a study said on Tuesday. Research published by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene showed that it is possible to fashion a low-cost field microscope using an iPhone, double-sided tape, a flashlight, ordinary laboratory slides and an $8 cameral lens.[break] The researchers used their cobbled-together microscope to successfully determine the presence of eggs from hookworm and other parasites in the stool of infected children. "There´s been a lot of tinkering in the lab with mobile phone microscopes, but this is the first time the technology has been used in the field to diagnose intestinal parasites," said Isaac Bogoch, a physician specializing in infectious diseases at Toronto General Hospital and the lead author on the study. Intestinal worms infect two billion people around the world, mainly children, sometimes causing malnutrition. The malady can be difficult to diagnose, in part because of the high cost of a conventional microscope, which is priced at around $200. Scientists used the cell phone microscopes to evaluate some 200 stool samples from rural children infected with intestinal worms, and compared the results against findings obtained using a conventional microscope. They found overall that the iPhone microscope was able to detect the presence of eggs deposited by worms in about 70 percent of the infected samples. Although not as sensitive as the conventional device, the iPhone microscope can be made much more sensitive with refinements, Bogoch said. "We think cell phone microscopes could soon become a valuable diagnostic tool in poor, remote regions where intestinal worms are a serious health problem, particularly in children," he said. The researchers also pointed out that almost all medical staff already possess a cell phone, so the cost for a microscope cobbled together using the iPhone is deemed negligible compared to the cost for a conventional one. Intestinal worms such as hookworms and roundworms, also known as soil-transmitted helminths, are particularly problematic in young children, hindering their physical and mental development by causing chronic anemia and malnutrition. If quickly diagnosed, however, the negative health impact of the parasites can be greatly reduced. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51469 BEIJING, March 14: China´s new leader Xi Jinping capped his rise Thursday by adding the largely ceremonial title of president, though he will need cautious maneuvering to consolidate his power and build support from a public that is increasingly clamoring for change. The elevation of Xi to the presidency by the rubberstamp national legislature gave him the last of the three titles held by his predecessor, Hu Jintao. The move was expected after Xi was named head of the Communist Party and chairman of its military, positions of true power, last November in a once-a-decade handover to a new group of leaders that has been years in the making.[break] "I´m very happy. With President Xi leading us, China will be more prosperous and more powerful," said Zhang Rihong, chairwoman of a real estate company from northeastern Heilongjiang province who joined nearly 3,000 fellow delegates to the National People´s Congress in Beijing´s cavernous, red-carpeted Great Hall of the People. "This is welcomed by all," she said. Though Xi is now formally in charge, big challenges remain for him within the party´s top ranks — in which powerful people are often divided by patronage, ideology or financial interests. This will be doubly so if he follows through on his pledge to tackle the endemic graft he has pinpointed as detrimental to the party´s survival, said Willy Lam, a China politics watcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Graft is deeply ingrained in the party´s patronage-based culture and those at the top — many of whose families have benefited from their political connections — are believed to be most resistant to anti-corruption measures that diminish their prerogatives. "He has to walk a fine line," Lam said. "If he were really serious about going after senior cadres, he might establish his authority within the rank and file. However, that would also jeopardize his relationship with the power blocs and with the holders of vested interests." Xi´s accession marks only the second orderly transfer of power in more than six decades of Communist Party rule. He was the only candidate for president in Thursday´s ballot in the country´s figurehead parliament. The delegates voted 2,952-to-1 for Xi in balloting that amounts to a political ritual echoing the decisions of the party leadership. Three delegates abstained. After the result was announced, Xi bowed to delegates and turned to Hu, seated on his right. The two of them shook hands and posed for photos. Named vice president in a vote of 2,839-80 was Li Yuanchao, a liberal-minded reformer and a close ally of Hu for decades. The move breaks with the practice of recent years, because Li is not in the party´s seven-member ruling inner sanctum. It is seen as a concession to Hu´s lingering influence and as a reward to a capable if not wholly popular official. Xi takes charge at a time when the public is looking for leadership that can address sputtering economic growth and mounting anger over widespread graft, high-handed officialdom and increasing unfairness. A growth-at-all-costs model that defined the outgoing administration´s era has befouled the country´s air, waterways and soil, adding another serious threat to social stability. Underlying public unhappiness with the party is a deficit in trust. "At present, the party and the government have very little public credibility," said Zhang Ming, a China politics expert at the prestigious Renmin University in Beijing. "The way to regain credibility is to at least show some results, but at this point that can´t be seen and I predict there won´t be any real results later." Ahead of the votes on the government´s top slots, legislators approved a government restructuring plan only four days after it was introduced. Among other things, the plan abolishes the Railways Ministry and combines two agencies that regulate newspapers and broadcasters into a super media regulator. It also merges the Health Ministry with the commission that oversees the much-disliked rules that limit many families to one child. The restructuring also joins four agencies that police fisheries and other maritime resources into one bureau, to better assert China´s claims over disputed waters, potentially sharpening conflicts with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. In a reflection of China´s growing international engagement, the role of president has evolved from being purely ceremonial to, since the 1990s, a position the party hopes lends legitimacy on the world stage to the government it runs the country with. "As China opens up and becomes more engaged in the international community, it´s just impractical, it´s not convenient, for a party head to meet a foreign head of state," said Warren Sun, an expert on Communist Party history at Monash University in Australia. "It´s better to be in equal positions, representing the state and not just represent the party." Xi was already effectively the country´s No. 1 leader in mid-November after ascending to the helm of the ruling Communist Party, which holds ultimate power in China. And he has deftly handled his first months in power. The son of a revolutionary veteran, Xi cuts an authoritative figure with a confidence and congeniality that was lacking in his predecessor, the aloof and stiff Hu. He quickly moved to court the military after taking over from Hu as head of the party´s Central Military Commission, making high-profile visits to naval, air force and infantry bases and meeting with nuclear missile commanders. Xi has also sought to court other constituencies. He made a trip to the south to show he´s interested in economic reforms, repeatedly stated his staunch belief in party power to appeal to hardliners, visited the poor to burnish his common-man credentials and espoused the "Chinese Dream" to tap into middle class aspirations. But for Xi to consolidate his power within the party, he will come up against various interest groups such as the sons and daughters of communist China´s founding fathers who want to keep benefiting from their connections, or those with links to banks and state industries who don´t want their privileged positions threatened. Ideologically, there are those who believe China needs an even stronger, more authoritarian government that promotes more egalitarian economic and social policies. Others who want a transition to more democratic government. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51468 BUENOS AIRES, March 14: Elated and proud Argentines wept for joy and packed the Buenos Aires cathedral Wednesday to celebrate the stunning election of the former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis. When the news broke from the Vatican, the roughly 200 worshippers who were attending mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral, which overlooks the historic Plaza de Mayo, gave the new pontiff a rousing standing ovation.[break] The crowd grew and media crews quickly rushed to the area outside the cathedral where Francis used to give mass as archbishop of Buenos Aires and primate of Argentina. "Long live the pope! "Fran-cis-co!, Fran-cis-co!", the excited group chanted, raising their arms in the cathedral´s towering nave. "I am very happy, and very surprised because I did not expect this," Mariano Solis, 33, told AFP outside the majestic building. "Even when we saw the white smoke on television, we thought the Brazilian or Italian candidate would win," Solis said, referring to Sao Paulo Archbishop Odilo Scherer and Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola. "I was headed to the movies with a friend, but when we found out, we headed straight for the cathedral to be with our people." Solis was one of many who recited the rosary to pray for Francis. The faithful embraced each other and shed emotional tears on the square. "I am surprised; I did not think they would elect Bergoglio. He is the first Latin American pope and that is going to be a huge plus for the region," said Gaston Hall, 37, a publicist who described himself as a practicing Catholic. Even the official Church in Argentina was taken by surprise, according to spokesman Federico Wals. "Bergoglio traveled peacefully" to the Vatican to participate in the conclave to elect a new pope, Wals said inside the cathedral, adding he had a return ticket booked for next week. The Church was so convinced that its own would not be named that it had already advertised Bergoglio´s presence at mass on Easter Sunday, the spokesman said. Claudio Bonani, a 42-year-old businessman from Brazil who rushed to the church upon learning the news, predicted that Bergoglio would have a "great papacy." Argentina´s President Cristina Kirchner, who is Catholic but does not have a warm personal relationship with the pontiff, hailed his election as the first pope from Latin America, and wished him great success. "We wish him, as he takes the reins of the Church, a fruitful pastoral mission, with such tremendous responsibility on his shoulders, seeking justice, equality, brotherhood and peace among mankind," she said in a statement. Francis, elected to lead the world´s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, is a humble rail worker´s son who became a Jesuit priest and is seen as true to his working class roots. "He is a simple man, and he has a lot of compassion for those who are most in need," said monsignor Eduardo Garcia, the auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. "I hope for him, from my heart, that he will be able to achieve more brotherly treatment among people everywhere," President Kirchner said at a government technology event. In the past, the new pope´s sermons have slammed Kirchner´s government and that of her late husband Nestor over hot-button issues such as poverty, which has remained a serious concern in Argentina, and same-sex marriage, which Kirchner governments have backed. On his ultimate home turf, St Joseph´s Church in the Flores neighborhood, priest Father Gabriel, 46, said Bergoglio had his religious calling there, at age 17. "He has always been a very peaceful, calm, straightforward person and a great intellectual," the priest said, noting that the new pontiff was a chainsmoker in his a student years. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51466 (Updated) VATICAN CITY, March 14:  From "the end of the earth," the Catholic Church found a surprising new leader Wednesday, a pioneer pope from Argentina who took the name Francis, a pastor rather than a manager to resurrect a church and faith in crisis. He is the first pontiff from the New World and the first non-European since the Middle Ages. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires who has spent nearly his entire career in Argentina, was a fast and fitting choice for the most unpredictable papal succession — start to finish — in at least six centuries.[break] He is the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit and the first named Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, the humble friar who dedicated his life to helping the poor. The last non-European pope was Syria´s Gregory III from 731-41. Pope Francis puts on his sash from the central balcony of St. Peter´s Basilica at the Vatican, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who chose the name of Francis is the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. (AP) "You know that the work of the conclave is to give a bishop to Rome," the new pontiff said as he waved shyly to the tens of thousands who braved a cold rain in St. Peter´s Square. "It seems as if my brother cardinals went to find him from the end of the earth, but here we are. Thank you for the welcome." The 76-year-old Bergoglio, said to have finished second when Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, was chosen on just the fifth ballot to replace the first pontiff to resign in 600 years. In the past century, only Benedict, John Paul I in 1978 and Pius XII in 1939 were faster. Francis´ election elated Latin Americans, who number 40 percent of the world´s Catholics but have long been underrepresented in the church leadership. On Wednesday, drivers honked their horns in the streets of Buenos Aires and television announcers screamed with elation at the news. "It´s a huge gift for all of Latin America. We waited 20 centuries. It was worth the wait," said Jose Antonio Cruz, a Franciscan friar at the St. Francis of Assisi church in the colonial Old San Juan district in Puerto Rico. "Everyone from Canada down to Patagonia is going to feel blessed." The new pontiff brings a common touch. The son of middle-class Italian immigrants, he denied himself the luxuries that previous cardinals in Buenos Aires enjoyed. He lived in a simple apartment, often rode the bus to work, cooked his own meals and regularly visited slums that ring Argentina´s capital. He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal battles, to be the essential business of the church. "As a champion of the poor and the most vulnerable among us, he carries forth the message of love and compassion that has inspired the world for more than 2,000 years — that in each other, we see the face of God," President Barack Obama said in a statement. As the 266th pope, Francis inherits a Catholic church in turmoil, beset by the clerical sex abuse scandal, internal divisions and dwindling numbers in parts of the world where Christianity had been strong for centuries. While Latin America still boasts the largest bloc of Catholics on a single continent, it has faced competition from aggressive evangelical churches that have chipped away at strongholds like Brazil, where the number of Catholics has dropped from 74 percent of the population in 2000 to 65 percent today. Francis is sure to bring the church closer to the poverty-wracked region, while also introducing the world to a very different type of pope, whose first words were a simple, "Brothers and sisters, good evening." He asked for prayers for himself, and for Benedict, whose stunning resignation paved the way for his election. "I want you to bless me," Francis said in his first appearance from the balcony of St. Peter´s Basilica, asking the faithful to bow their heads in silent prayer. Francis spoke by phone with Benedict, who has been living at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, and told cardinals he plans to visit the retired pontiff on Friday, according to U.S. Cardinal Timothy Dolan. The visit was significant because Benedict´s resignation has raised concerns about potential power conflicts emerging from the peculiar situation of having a reigning pope and a retired one. Earlier Wednesday, shouts of joy went up from the throng huddled under a sea of umbrellas when plumes of white smoke poured out of the copper chimney atop the Sistine Chapel a few minutes past 7 p.m. "Habemus Papam!" — "We have a pope!" — they chanted as the bells pealed in St. Peter´s Basilica and churches across Rome. After what seemed like an endless wait of more than an hour, they cheered again when the doors to the loggia opened and a cardinal stepped out and revealed the identity of the new pontiff, using his Latin name, then announced he would be called Francis. In choosing to call himself Francis, the new pope was associating himself with the much-loved Italian saint from Assisi known as a symbol of peace, poverty and simplicity. St. Francis was born to a wealthy family but renounced his wealth and founded the Franciscan order of friars; he wandered about the countryside preaching to the people in very simple language. He was so famed for his sanctity that he was canonized just two years after his death in 1226. St. Francis Xavier is another important namesake. One of the 16th-century founders of the Jesuit order, Francis Xavier was a legendary missionary who spread the faith as far as India and Japan — giving the new pope´s name further resonance in an age when the church is struggling to maintain its numbers. In choosing Francis, the cardinals clearly decided that they didn´t need a vigorous, young pope who would reign for decades but rather a seasoned, popular and humble pastor who would draw followers to the faith and help rebuild a church stained by scandal. Catholics are still buzzing over his speech last year accusing fellow church officials of hypocrisy for forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes. In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, Bergoglio has also shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly, according to his official biographer, Sergio Rubin. Bergoglio´s legacy includes his efforts to repair the reputation of a church that lost many followers by failing to openly challenge Argentina´s murderous 1976-83 dictatorship. His own record as the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina at the time has been tarnished as well. Many Argentines remain angry over the church´s acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements" in society. It´s one reason why more than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but fewer than 10 percent regularly attend Mass. Under Bergoglio´s leadership, Argentina´s bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church´s failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era´s violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies. "Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticized the leftist guerrillas; he doesn´t forget that side," Rubin said. Bergoglio´s own role in the so-called Dirty War has been the subject of controversy. At least two court cases directly involved Bergoglio. One examined the torture of two of his Jesuit priests who were kidnapped in 1976 from the slums where they advocated liberation theology. One accused Bergoglio of effectively handing him over to the junta. Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them — including persuading dictator Jorge Videla´s family priest to call in sick so that Bergoglio himself could say Mass in the junta leader´s home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until Rubin interviewed him for a 2010 biography. Rubin said failing to challenge the dictators was simply pragmatic at a time when so many people were getting killed, and attributed Bergoglio´s later reluctance to share his side of the story as a reflection of his humility. Francis will celebrate his first Mass as pope in the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, and will be installed officially on Tuesday, according to the Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi. One of his first foreign trips is expected to be World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in July, an event that will likely energize the continent given their native son will be presiding. Lombardi, also a Jesuit, said he was particularly stunned by the election given that Jesuits typically shun positions of authority in the church, instead offering their work in service to those in power. But Lombardi said that in accepting the election, Francis must have felt it "a strong call to service," an antidote to all those who speculated that the papacy was about a search for power. New York Cardinal Dolan gave an inside glimpse into the drama of the conclave, saying that when the tally reached the necessary 77 votes to make Bergoglio pope, the cardinals erupted in applause. And when he accepted the momentous responsibility thrust upon him, "there wasn´t a dry eye in the place," the American cardinal recounted. After the princes of the church had congratulated the new pope one by one, other Vatican officials wanted to do the same, but Francis preferred to go outside and greet the throngs of faithful. "Maybe we should go to the balcony first," Dolan recalled the pope as saying. Later, the new pope shunned a special car and security detail provided to transport him to the Vatican hotel. He decided to stay with the cardinals. "´I´ll just go with the guys on the bus,´" Dolan quoted him as saying. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51426 PARIS, March 13: Neanderthals´ bigger eyes and bodies meant they had less brain space to dedicate to social networking, which may explain why they died out and Homo sapiens conquered the planet, a study said Wednesday. An enigmatic branch of the human family tree, Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and Middle East for up to 300,000 years but vanished from the fossil record about 30-40,000 years ago.[break] Why they disappeared is one of the hottest topics in anthropology. Theories say they may have been victims of climate change or were massacred by their H. sapiens cousins. Now experts from the University of Oxford and the Natural History Museum in London suggest the answer could lie in available brainpower. Neanderthals were stockier than anatomically modern humans who shared the planet with them at the time of their demise, but their brains were the same size, the team write in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. As a result, Neanderthals "would have required proportionately more neural matter" to maintain and control their larger bodies, they say. Comparing the skulls of 32 H. sapiens and 13 Neanderthals, the researchers also established the hominids had bigger eye sockets, indicating bigger eyes and visual cortices -- those areas of the brain that regulate vision. "More of the Neanderthal brain would have been dedicated to vision and body control, leaving less brain to deal with other functions like social networking," explained Oxford anthropologist and lead author Eiluned Pearce. Among living primates and humans, the size of an individual´s social network is constrained by the size of specific brain areas, she said. The larger these areas are, the more connections an individual can maintain. The archaeological record seems to support the theory that Neanderthals were cognitively limited to smaller groups -- they transported raw materials over shorter distances and rare finds of symbolic artefacts suggest a limited ability to trade. The ability to organise a collective response would have been a key to survival when times turned harsh, like during the Ice Age, Pearce told AFP. "If Neanderthals knew fewer people in fewer neighbouring groups, this would have meant fewer sources of help in the event of, for example, local resource failure," she said. "Smaller groups are also more liable to demographic fluctuations, meaning a greater chance of a particular group dying out. Smaller groups are less able to maintain cultural knowledge, so innovations may be more likely to be lost." She added: "Overall, if Neanderthals had smaller groups/social networks, this could have led to their extinction along a variety of pathways." Neanderthals probably had larger eyes in the first place because they hailed from higher latitudes and had to deal with lower light than H. sapiens, who evolved in lower-latitude Africa. "While the physical response to high latitude conditions adopted by Neanderthals may have been very effective at first, the social response developed by anatomically modern humans seems to have eventually won out in the face of the climate instability that characterised high latitude Eurasia at this time," the study concludes. The relationship between absolute brain size and higher cognitive abilities has long been controversial, the authors admit. Their finding, that similar-sized brains had been differently organised, "could explain why Neanderthal culture appears less developed than that of early humans, for example in relation to symbolism, ornamentation and art." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51420 SRINAGAR, India, March 13: Five paramilitary police were killed Wednesday in an ambush on security forces in the main city of Indian Kashmir carried out by two militants who were then shot dead, a senior officer said. "Five of our CRPF jawans (officers of the Central Reserve Police Force) were martyred," a senior officer told reporters at the scene in the Bemina area of Srinagar which is home to a camp for security forces and a police-run school.[break] "We have neutralised two militants," he added. Another six to seven police were injured in the attack which was carried out on an open field where 25 officers were on duty and children were playing cricket, police said. Another police officer, speaking to AFP, had put the death toll at six, including four colleagues and two militants. Indian Kashmir, where a 20-year separatist insurgency has waned in recent years, has been tense since the execution in February of a local man over a deadly 2001 attack on the national parliament in New Delhi. Mohammed Afzal Guru, a local separatist, was convicted over the attack, but he retained widespread support in Kashmir where many doubted his guilt. Attacks in Srinagar have become rare in recent years, with the last major incident in October when gunmen attacked a popular hotel, killing a bellboy and leaving at least two other people injured. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51419 BUENOS AIRES, March 13: Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, her approval rating plummeting, has refused to recognize the results of a referendum in which the people of the disputed Falkland Islands voted to remain British. The vote in the sparsely populated South Atlantic archipelago that triggered a war between the two nations in 1982 was a "parody," she said. Even the United States, Britain´s firmest ally, acknowledged Argentina´s claim.[break] British Prime Minister David Cameron had earlier urged the Latin American country to respect the wishes of 99.8 percent of the islanders who voted "yes" to staying a self-governing British territory, according to official results. The islanders organized the vote in response to increasingly bellicose sovereignty rhetoric by Kirchner, and only three of the 1,517 valid ballots -- on 92 percent turnout -- were cast against the islands staying under British rule. Kirchner´s government had dismissed the referendum as meaningless and said it would not affect its claims on the Falklands which it calls "Las Malvinas". She reiterated her displeasure late Tuesday at an event at the presidential mansion. "What is important today is the United States´ position about this kind of parody of a referendum," Kirchner said. "The State Department spokeswoman said that they continue to recognize that there is a sovereignty dispute between Argentina and Britain." The United States earlier said it took "note" of the islanders´ vote, but refused once again to take sides in the dispute. "The residents have clearly expressed their preference for a continued relationship with the United Kingdom," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "That said, we obviously recognize that there are competing claims." Argentina failed to seize the islands back from Britain in the brief 1982 war. The announcement of the result overnight Monday sparked jubilation in the islands´ tiny capital Stanley, and Cameron said he was "over the moon" at the outcome. "The Falkland Islanders couldn´t have spoken more clearly. They want to remain British and that view should be respected by everybody, including by Argentina," he said. Cameron, who later telephoned the chairman of the islands´ legislative assembly to congratulate him on the result, also warned against any military action by Argentina. "People should know we will always be there to defend them," he said. Barry Elsby, a member of the legislative assembly, told AFP from Stanley as the numbers came in that the result "sends a message around the world." "There are hundreds of people outside the cathedral, celebrating, singing and waving flags." International observers from Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Paraguay, the United States and Uruguay monitored the referendum on Sunday and Monday and declared it "free and fair." However, Alicia Castro, Argentina´s ambassador to London, said the referendum was a "ploy" to detract from the "weakness" of Britain´s claims. "It´s a very predictable result, because the current inhabitants of the Malvinas are British. But the territory in which they live is not," she said. The referendum had sparked huge enthusiasm among the Falkland Islands´ 2,563 permanent residents, four-fifths of whom live in Stanley, with its typically British pubs and red telephone boxes. The remaining several hundred islanders are scattered in isolated sheep farms and tiny settlements. London has held the Falklands since 1833 but Buenos Aires says this is an occupation and the British residents are colonial implants with no right to self-determination. It says the United Nations had issued 40 resolutions calling on Buenos Aires and London to negotiate over sovereignty. Tensions between the two sides have increased in recent years against a backdrop of the discovery of oil reserves in the waters off the Falklands, the 30th anniversary of the 1982 war and domestic political difficulties facing both governments. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51411 VATICAN CITY, March 13:  Cardinals prepared for a second day of conclave behind the Vatican´s walls to elect a pope on Wednesday, with all eyes on a chimney that will signal when there is a new leader for the world´s 1.2 billion Catholics. The 115 cardinals held a first inconclusive vote in the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday as they began the process of finding a successor to Benedict XVI, who brought a troubled eight-year papacy to an abrupt end by resigning last month.[break] Black smoke billowed into the night air above the Vatican, indicating that no-one had gained the two-thirds majority needed to become the 266th Roman pope. White smoke -- produced by mixing the smoke from burning ballots with special flares -- would indicate that a new head of the Roman Catholic Church has been chosen. As they awaited the outcome of the first vote, suspense mixed with hopes among the tens of thousands of pilgrims in St Peter´s Square -- and in the Catholic Church worldwide, which is struggling in many parts with scandals, indifference and conflict. Among the cardinals Italy´s Angelo Scola, Brazil´s Odilo Scherer and Canada´s Marc Ouellet -- all conservatives like Benedict -- are the three favourites but there is no clear frontrunner and conclaves are notoriously difficult to predict. Some analysts suggest that Benedict´s dramatic act -- the first papal resignation in over 700 years -- could push the cardinals to take an equally unusual decision and that an outsider could emerge as a compromise candidate. Hopes are high in the Philippines for the popular Archbishop of Manila, Luis Antonio Tagle, and on the African continent for South Africa´s Wilfrid Napier, the archbishop of Durban, but in practice their chances are very slim. Two-thirds of the cardinals are from Europe and North America and the view among many experts is that only someone with experience of its inner workings can reform the scandal-tainted Vatican bureaucracy, the Roman Curia. The cardinals on Tuesday filed into the chapel, chanting a Latin hymn to ask for divine guidance and swearing a solemn oath never to reveal the secrets of their deliberations on pain of excommunication. The "Princes of the Church" are cut off from any contact with the outside world for the duration of the conclave. They eat and sleep in a Vatican residence where windows are locked shut and phones are for internal use only. Modern-day conclaves normally last no more than a few days. Benedict´s election in 2005 following the death of John Paul II took just two days. -- ´Like an orphan´ -- Dressed in their scarlet robes, traditionally symbolising the blood they are willing to spill in the service of the Church, the cardinals held a pre-conclave mass in St Peter´s Basilica where they prayed for unity. The cardinals burst into thunderous applause when the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, in his homily thanked the "beloved and venerable" Benedict -- who has kept well away from the run-up to the conclave. Pilgrims descended on Rome to attend what is usually an extremely rare landmark in the history of the Church and millions worldwide were following the smoke signals from the Vatican with religious devotion or simple curiosity. "Without a pope I feel bereft, like an orphan," said French priest Guillaume Le Floch, 35. "The Church needs a great leader now more than ever," he said. What many cardinals want is a leader who can re-ignite Catholic faith -- particularly among young people -- in the way the charismatic John Paul II did. At his last Sunday mass before the conclave, US Cardinal Sean O´Malley said the new pope should "make more visible the love of the Good Shepherd". There have been calls too from within the Church for a rethink of some basic tenets such as priestly celibacy, the uniform ban on artificial contraception and even allowing women to be priests as in other Christian denominations. The scandal of sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests going back decades -- and the cover-up of their actions by senior prelates -- also cast a long shadow on the Church that the next pope will inherit. The tradition of holding conclaves -- literally "with key" in Latin -- dates back to 1268 when cardinals were locked into the papal palace in Viterbo near Rome by an angry crowd because they were taking too long to choose a pope. Their conclave still dragged on for nearly three years, despite townspeople tearing off the roof of the palace and feeding them only bread and water. The 85-year-old Benedict announced on February 11 that he no longer had the strength of body and mind to keep up with the modern world. In a series of emotional farewells, the German-born pope said he would live "hidden from the world" and wanted only to be "a simple pilgrim". http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51368 NEW DELHI, India, March 12: The body of a man who died in a New Delhi jail while in the midst of a trial for rape has been released to his family after a post-mortem exam. Journalists outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences saw the body of Ram Singh loaded onto an ambulance and taken away accompanied by his family. [break] The 33-year-old was found dead in his cell at Tihar Jail early Monday. Authorities say he killed himself, but his family says he was killed. Singh was on trial for the gang rape and fatal beating of a woman on a New Delhi bus. Four other men and a juvenile remain on trial for the attack, which horrified India. A magistrate is investigating Singh´s death. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51360 STANLEY, Falkland Islands, March 12: An overwhelming 99.8 percent of Falkland Islands voters have backed keeping their government just the way it is: a British Overseas Territory. Of the 1,517 valid votes cast, only 3 islanders voted "no" to the question: "Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?" One vote was somehow lost, officials said Monday.[break] The referendum was aimed at showing the world that the residents´ self-determination must be considered in any discussion about the future of the remote South Atlantic islands that are claimed by both Britain and Argentina. Elections officials reported a 92 percent turnout among the approximately 1,650 Falkland Islands voters eligible to cast ballots in the referendum. International election observer Juan Henao said the process was completely normal. The islands´ 2,563 residents did all they could ahead of the vote to show their sympathies, waving Union Jack flags and dressing up in red-white-and-blue. "The referendum will show the world how we feel, that we are British and that we wish to remain British. We don´t want to have nothing to do with Argentina, at all," islander Barry Nielson said as he voted. The ballot didn´t consider any alternatives, such as full independence or some sort of political relationship with Argentina. The Falkland Islands Government had said that if a majority said "no," they could explore alternatives in a second vote later. The government barred from voting any visiting contractors or personnel from the sizeable British military deployment, as well as anyone who had not resided in the islands for the last 12 months, thus excluding several people with islander status who have chosen to live in Argentina. Argentines consider the "Islas Malvinas" to be part of their national territory, taken from them by the British more than 180 years ago. One group at the iconic obelisk in Buenos Aires said Monday that it had gathered 100,000 signatures supporting Argentina´s claim to the territory and the resource-rich seas that surrounds the archipelago. The islands´ community, which includes families that have worked the land for nine generations, is steeped in British culture, and British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in the tabloid The Sun on Sunday that "as long as the Falklanders want to stay British, we will always be there to protect them. They have my word on that." But islanders have worried that British support is not guaranteed. They well remember that Britain was preparing to hand over the islands to Argentina before the military government in Buenos Aires occupied them in 1982, prompting a war that killed 907 people. Defending them ever since by staffing a large military garrison 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) from London has been a costly sore point for Britons facing austerity measures. A Daily Mirror columnist complained about this on Monday, saying that "the result´s not in doubt when the Islanders are voting for ´free money.´ " The political columnist, Kevin Maguire, wrote that the UK "spends 75 million euros ($112 million) on troops, missiles, aircraft and warships to guard their sheep lands," an annual military subsidy he calculated at 44,856 euros ($67,000) per island voter. "It is glaringly obvious that a deal with neighbor Argentina remains the only sensible long-term answer to the Falklands-Malvinas," Maguire concluded. Argentina maintained that the vote was illegal and that islanders — an "implanted people" — have no voice in a dispute that must be settled bilaterally. The islanders hope the result will help them keep any deal off the table — and perhaps even persuade neutral nations such as the United States to come down on their side. Gov. Nigel Haywood is Queen Elizabeth´s representative in the islands, a mostly advisory role. The islanders directly elect members of a legislative assembly, and settle all their own affairs except for defense and foreign policy. "I think countries when faced with the outcome of this will look at it and say ... ´we´re in the 21st century, is it right that a country should want to try to take possession of these islands again against the freely expressed wishes of its inhabitants?´ Haywood told The Associated Press. "That´s just not how countries should act in the 21st century." Two Falkland Islands lawmakers were already on their way to Washington, preparing to hand-deliver the results of an overwhelming "yes" vote to the U.S. Congress. "Self-determination is what the United States was founded on and it is a fundamental right. It´s a right that they recognize. So I would hope that they would listen to what´s happening here today," said another member of the islands´ legislative assembly, Dick Sawle. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51354 VATICAN CITY, March 12:  Cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday to elect the next pope amid more upheaval and uncertainty than the Catholic Church has seen in decades: There´s no front-runner, no indication how long voting will last and no sense that a single man has what it takes to fix the many problems. On the eve of the vote, cardinals offered wildly different assessments of what they´re looking for in the next pontiff and how close they are to a decision. It was evidence that Benedict XVI´s surprise resignation has continued to destabilize the church leadership and that his final appeal for unity may go unheeded, at least in the early rounds of voting.[break] Cardinals held their final closed-door debate Monday over whether the church needs more of a manager to clean up the Vatican´s bureaucratic mess or a pastor to inspire the 1.2 billion faithful in times of crisis. The fact that not everyone got a chance to speak was a clear sign that there´s still unfinished business on the eve of the conclave. "This time around, there are many different candidates, so it´s normal that it´s going to take longer than the last time," Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Chile told The Associated Press. "There are no groups, no compromises, no alliances, just each one with his conscience voting for the person he thinks is best, which is why I don´t think it will be over quickly." None of that has prevented a storm of chatter over who´s ahead. The buzz in the papal stakes swirled around Cardinal Angelo Scola, an Italian seen as favored by cardinals hoping to shake up the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, and Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer, a favorite of Vatican-based insiders intent on preserving the status quo. Scola is affable and Italian, but not from the Italian-centric Vatican bureaucracy called the Curia. That gives him clout with those seeking to reform the nerve center of the church that has been discredited by revelations of leaks and complaints from cardinals in the field that Rome is inefficient and unresponsive to their needs. Scherer seems to be favored by Latin Americans and the Curia. He has a solid handle on the Vatican´s finances, sitting on the governing commission of the Vatican bank, as well as the Holy See´s main budget committee. As a non-Italian, the archbishop of Sao Paulo would be expected to name an Italian as secretary of state — the Vatican No. 2 who runs day-to-day affairs — another plus for Vatican-based cardinals who would want one of their own running the shop. The pastoral camp seems to be focusing on two Americans, New York archbishop Timothy Dolan and Boston archbishop Sean O´Malley. Neither has Vatican experience. Dolan has acknowledged his Italian isn´t strong — seen as a handicap for a job in which the lingua franca of day-to-day work is Italian. Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet is well-respected, stemming from his job at the important Vatican office that vets bishop appointments. Less well known is that he has a lovely singing voice and can be heard belting out French folk songs on occasion. If the leading names fail to reach the 77 votes required for victory in the first few rounds of balloting, any number of surprise candidates could come to the fore as alternatives. It all starts Tuesday with the cardinals checking into the Santa Marta residence on the edge of the Vatican gardens. The rooms are simple and impersonal, but a step up from the cramped conditions the cardinals faced before the hotel was put to use in 2005, when long lines would form at the Apostolic Palace for using bathrooms. At 10 a.m., the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, will lead the celebration of the "Pro eligendo Pontificie" Mass — the Mass for the election of a pope — inside St. Peter´s Basilica, joined by the 115 cardinals who will vote. This is followed at 4:30 p.m. with a procession into the Sistine Chapel, with the cardinals intoning the Litany of Saints, the hypnotic Gregorian chant imploring the saints to help guide their voting. After another chant calling on the Holy Spirit to intervene, the cardinals take the oath of secrecy, followed by a meditation delivered by elderly Maltese Cardinal Prosper Grech. Then the master of papal liturgical ceremonies gives the order "Extra omnes" — "Everyone out" — and all but those taking part in the conclave leave the chapel´s frescoed walls. During the voting that ensues, each cardinal writes his choice on a rectangular piece of paper inscribed with the words "Eligo in summen pontificem" — Latin for "I elect as Supreme Pontiff." Holding the folded ballot up in the air, each approaches the altar and places it on a saucer, before tipping it into an oval urn, as he intones these words: "I call as my witness, Christ the Lord, who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one who, before God, I think should be elected." After the votes are counted, and the outcomes announced, the papers are bound together with a needle and thread, each ballot pierced through the word "Eligo." The ballots are then placed in a cast-iron stove and burned with a special chemical. That´s when all eyes will turn to the 6-foot-high copper chimney erected atop the Sistine Chapel to pipe out puffs of smoke to tell the world if there´s a new pope. Black smoke means "not yet" — the likely outcome after Round 1. White smoke means the 266th pope has been chosen. The first puffs of smoke should emerge sometime around 8 p.m. Tuesday. If they are black, voting will continue, four rounds each day, until a pope is elected. Whoever he is, the next pope will face a church in crisis: Benedict spent his eight-year pontificate trying to revive Catholicism amid the secular trends that have made it almost irrelevant in places like Europe, once a stronghold of Christianity. Clerical sex abuse scandals have soured many faithful on their church, and competition from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa has drawn souls away. Closer to home, the next pope has a major challenge awaiting him inside the Vatican walls, after the leaks of papal documents in 2012 exposed ugly turf battles, allegations of corruption and even a plot purportedly orchestrated by Benedict´s aides to out a prominent Italian Catholic editor as gay. Cardinals heard a briefing Monday from the Vatican No. 2 about another stain on the Holy See´s reputation, the Vatican bank. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who heads the commission of cardinals overseeing the scandal-marred Institute for Religious Works, outlined the efforts to clean up the bank´s image in international financial circles. Massimo Franco, noted columnist for the leading daily Corriere della Sera, said the significance of the revelations about the bank and the Holy See´s internal governance cannot be underestimated, since they were factors in Benedict´s decision to resign and the major task faced by his successor. Franco, whose new book "The Crisis of the Vatican Empire" describes the Vatican´s utter dysfunction, said cardinals are still traumatized by Benedict´s resignation, leading to uncertainty heading into the conclave. "It´s quite unpredictable. There isn´t a majority, neither established nor in the making," he said — unlike in 2005, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had tremendous front-runner status going into the conclave that elected him pope after just four ballots. Dolan, a possible papal contender, seemed to think otherwise, though, and was bounding with optimism by the end of the pre-conclave meetings and the drama about to unfold. "I´m kind of happy they´re over because we came here to elect a pope and we´ll start it tomorrow with the holy sacrifice of the Mass, then into the conclave and look for the white smoke!" Dolan enthused on his radio show on SiriusXM´s "The Catholic Channel." Errazuriz, the cardinal from Chile, said the key isn´t so much where the next pope comes from, but what he brings to the papacy. Cardinals, he told AP, are looking for a pope "who is close to God, has love for people, the poorest, the ability to preach the Gospel to the world and understand the young and bring them closer to God. These are the categories that count." He argued that Latin America, counting 40 percent of the world´s Catholics, is underrepresented in the college of cardinals. "It doesn´t have 40 percent of the cardinals," he said. Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, also a leading papal contender, said he was going into the conclave still rattled by the fact that his mentor, Benedict, had resigned. "It made me cry. He was my teacher. We worked together for over 40 years," Schoenborn said during a Mass late Sunday. Nevertheless, Schoenborn said the cardinals had banded together to face the future. "It makes us brothers, not contenders," he said. "Such a surprising act has already begun a true renewal." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51350 MOSCOW, March 11: A new form of microbial life has been found in water samples taken from a giant freshwater lake hidden under kilometers of Antarctic ice, Russian scientists said Monday. Sergei Bulat and Valery Lukin said in a statement that the "unidentified and unclassified" bacterium has no relation to any of the existing bacterial types. [break]They acknowledged, however, that extensive research of the microbe that was sealed under the ice for millions of years will be necessary to prove the find and determine the bacterium´s characteristics. New samples of water retrieved from Lake Vostok earlier this year are expected to be delivered to St. Petersburg in May aboard a Russian ship. The Russian team reached the surface of the subglacial lake in February 2012 after more than two decades of drilling, a major achievement hailed by scientists around the world. They touched the lake water Sunday at a depth of 12,366 feet (3,769 meters), about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent. Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age and could have survived in the dark depths of the lake, despite its high pressure and constant cold — conditions similar to those which also are believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter´s moon Europa and Saturn´s moon Enceladus. At 250 kilometers (160 miles) long and 50 kilometers (30 miles) wide, Lake Vostok is similar in size to Lake Ontario. It is kept from freezing into a solid block by the kilometers (miles)-thick crust of ice across it that acts like a blanket, keeping in heat generated by geothermal energy underneath. Some have voiced concern that the more than 60 tons of lubricants and antifreeze used in the drilling may contaminate the lake, but the Russian researchers have insisted that their technology is environmentally secure. They said water from the lake rushed up the borehole once the drill touched the surface and froze, safely sealing the lubricants from the lake´s pristine waters. Bulat and Lukin said the research team has done a meticulous analysis of the samples to differentiate bacteria contained in lubricants from what they hoped could be a trace of new life forms. Initial studies only spotted bacteria associated with the lubricants, but scientists said they eventually found one bacterium that didn´t fall into any of the known categories. The researchers said that the small size of the initial sample and its heavy contamination made it difficult to conduct more extensive research. They voiced hope that the new samples of clean frozen water that are to arrive in St. Petersburg this spring will make it possible to "confirm the find and, perhaps, discover new previously unknown forms of microbial life." A U.S. team that recently touched the surface of Lake Whillans, a shallower subglacial body of water west of the South Pole, also found microbes. The scientists are yet to determine what forms of bacteria they found. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51321 BEIJING, March 11: China took another step toward completing its leadership handover Monday with the appointment of an official best known for his communist pedigree to head a top government advisory body. Yu Zhengsheng was selected by a vote of 2,188 to 4 to head the Chinese People´s Political Consultative Conference, a companion body to the country´s rubber-stamp legislature. There was no other candidate in the CPPCC vote.[break] Yu´s selection is the latest step in China´s once-a-decade political transition and kicks off a week of formal government leadership changes that were foreshadowed by promotions at the Communist Party´s congress in November. In China, the party is the pre-eminent political power and top government posts are held by its leaders. Yu was among seven leaders who ascended to the party´s top inner circle at the November conclave which also anointed Xi Jinping as general secretary. Yu is ranked fourth in the party. The governor of the People´s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, was named one of the vice chairmen of the advisory body, suggesting that he might be preparing to leave the central bank after 11 years at the helm. Yu Zhengsheng, left, bows after being announced as a new chairman of the Chinese People´s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), as the outgoing Chairman Jia Qingling applauds during a plenary session of the CPPCC held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Monday, March 11. (AP) This week, the largely ceremonial legislature known as the National People´s Congress will finalize the transition and approve appointments to top government posts: Xi is certain to succeed Hu Jintao as president while Li Keqiang, the party´s No. 2, is to be named premier, in charge of the Cabinet. When fully installed into government posts, Xi´s administration will confront domestic challenges that include public anger over official corruption that pervades all levels of society, and the degradation of the country´s water, air and soil that has resulted from decades of rapid economic growth. A rising middle class, empowered by social networking technology, is increasingly vocal about its demands for change and willing to organize demonstrations to that effect. Yu, 67, was Communist Party chief in the financial hub of Shanghai until shortly after his latest party promotion. He held the post of construction minister in the 1990s, when China suffered a series of building collapses that prompted the party to launch a campaign to improve construction safety. A missile engineer by training, Yu is best known for his status as a "princeling" — the label assigned to the politically influential sons and daughters of leaders who struggled alongside Mao Zedong in the early years of the communist state. Yu´s father was the ex-husband of a woman who later married Mao. His family history has been problematic, however: His brother, an official in the Ministry of State Security, China´s secret police, defected to the United States in the mid-1980s. Yu´s connections to patriarch Deng Xiaoping´s family are believed to have kept him in the running for promotion to the apex of power. Yu now heads a 2,200-plus advisory body made up of carefully selected entrepreneurs, intellectuals, religious clerics and celebrities. The group has no real power but in recent years has become more important as representatives have used the platform to advocate for hot-button issues of public concern such as food safety, pollution and land seizures. In one of the session´s more interesting vote counts, scandal-tainted politician Ling Jihua, formerly a top aide of President Hu´s, was among a few who received more than just a handful of opposing votes. Ninety ballots were cast against his appointment as one of the vice chairmen, though he got through anyway with more than 2,000 votes in his favor. The votes against Ling could be a sign of damage to his reputation caused by reports of a lurid scandal involving his son, who apparently died after crashing in a speeding Ferrari while playing some kind of high-speed sex game a year ago in Beijing. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51313 SEOUL, South Korea, March 11: North and South Korea staged dueling war games Monday as threatening rhetoric from the rivals rose to the highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010. Enraged over the South´s joint military drills with the United States and recent U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat, including vows to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. and to scrap the nearly 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War. [break]Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert. North Korea´s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had previously announced. The North followed through on another promise Monday, shutting down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South used for general communication and to discuss aid shipments and separated families´ reunions. The 11-day military drills that started Monday involve 10,000 South Korean and about 3,000 American troops. Those coincide with two months of separate U.S.-South Korean field exercises that began March 1. South korean Army soldiers set up barbed wire fence during an exercise against possible attacks by North Korea near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Monday, March 11. (AP) Also continuing are large-scale North Korean drills that Seoul says involve the army, navy and air force. The South Korean defense ministry said there have been no military activities it considers suspicious. Despite the heightened tension, there were signs of business as usual Monday. The two Koreas continue to have at least two working channels of communication between their militaries and aviation authorities. One of those hotlines was used Monday to give hundreds of South Koreans approval to enter North Korea to go to work. Their jobs are at the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation, the Kaesong industrial complex. It is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and knowhow and a mostly North Korean work force. The North Korean rhetoric escalated as the U.N. Security Council last week approved a new round of sanctions over Pyongyang´s latest nuclear weapons test Feb. 12. Analysts said that much of the bellicosity is meant to shore up loyalty among citizens and the military for North Korea´s young leader, Kim Jong Un. "This is part of their brinksmanship," said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea with the International Crisis Group think tank. "It´s an effort to signal their resolve, to show they are willing to take greater risks, with the expectation that everyone else caves in and gives them what they want." Part of what North Korea wants is a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War, instead of the armistice that leaves the peninsula still technically in a state of war. It also wants security guarantees and other concessions, direct talks with Washington, recognition as a nuclear weapons state and the removal of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. Pinkston said there is little chance of fighting breaking out while war games are being conducted, but he added that he expects North Korea to follow through with a somewhat mysterious promise to respond at a time and place of its own choosing. North Korea was responsible for an artillery attack that killed four South Koreans in 2010. A South Korean-led international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship that same year, killing 46 sailors. Pyongyang denies sinking the ship. Among other threats in the past week, North Korea has warned Seoul of a nuclear war on the divided peninsula and said it was cancelling nonaggression pacts. Its vow to scrap the 1953 armistice is one it has made previously, and it is believed to be incapable of making good on its threat to unleash a long-range nuclear missile on America. Still, South Korean and U.S. officials have been closely monitoring Pyongyang´s actions and parsing its recent rhetoric, which has been more warlike than usual. One analyst said Kaesong´s continued operations show that North Korea´s cutting of the Red Cross communication channel was symbolic. More than 840 South Koreans were set to cross the border Monday to Kaesong, which provides a badly-needed flow of hard currency to a country where many face food shortages, according to Seoul´s Unification Ministry. "If South Koreans don´t go to work at Kaesong, North Korea will suffer" financially, said analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. "If North Korea really intends to start a war with South Korea, it could have taken South Koreans at Kaesong hostage." Under newly inaugurated President Park Geun-hye, South Korea´s Defense Ministry, which often brushes off North Korean threats, has looked to send a message of strength in response to the latest comments from Pyongyang. The ministry has warned that the North´s government would "evaporate from the face of the Earth" if it ever used a nuclear weapon. The White House also said the U.S. is fully capable of defending itself against a North Korean ballistic attack. North Korea has said the U.S. mainland is within the range of its long-range missiles, and an army general told a Pyongyang rally last week that the military is ready to fire a long-range nuclear-armed missile to turn Washington into a "sea of fire." While outside scientists are still trying to determine specifics, the North´s rocket test in December and third atomic bomb test last month may have pushed the country a step closer to acquiring the ability to hit the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction. Analysts, however, say Pyongyang is still years away from acquiring the smaller, lighter nuclear warheads needed for a credible nuclear missile program. But there are still worries about a smaller conflict, and analysts have said that more missile and nuclear tests are possible reactions from North Korea. North Korea has a variety of missiles and other weapons capable of striking South Korea. Both the warship sinking and island shelling in 2010 occurred near a western sea boundary between the Koreas that North Korea fiercely disputes. It has been a recurring flashpoint between the rivals that has seen three other bloody naval skirmishes since 1999. Last week, Kim Jong Un visited two islands just north of the sea boundary and ordered troops there to open fire immediately if a single enemy shell is fired on North Korean waters. Kim was also quoted as saying his military is fully ready to fight an "all-out war" and that he will order a "just, great advance for national unification" if the enemy makes even a slight provocation, according to the North´s official Korean Central News Agency. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51300 NEW DELHI, India, March 11:  The main accused in the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi last December hanged himself in jail Monday while in solitary confinement, prompting outrage from the victim´s family. Ram Singh, one of six people on trial over the shocking attack, was found dead shortly before dawn after making a noose out of his clothing, according to officials at Delhi´s top-security Tihar jail. [break] "He tied all his clothes together and used the ceiling grill and a wooden stool to hang himself," the prison´s law officer Sunil Gupta told AFP by phone. A judicial magistrate has begun an investigation into the suicide which will probe any security lapses, Gupta added. But the father of the 23-year-old gang-rape victim told AFP it was clear that authorities had been negligent and that the family had been denied justice. "We don´t understand how could the police fail to protect Ram Singh. They knew he was the prime accused in my daughter´s case," said the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons. "How could they let him choose the way he wanted to die? The police have failed and I wonder what will happen to the case now." The victim´s mother said she was shocked to hear of the suicide. "I just wanted justice for my daughter. The main accused is dead. Maybe the guilt killed him?" she told AFP. Singh was making regular appearances in a New Delhi court where he faced murder, rape and kidnapping charges over the crime which ignited street protests and soul-searching about endemic sex crime in India. Four other men charged over the gang-rape face the death sentence if convicted in a special fast-track court, whose proceedings are subject to a media gagging order. They have all pleaded not guilty. A sixth 17-year-old suspect is being tried in a juveniles´ court where he faces a maximum three years imprisonment. The victim, who was studying physiotherapy, died on December 29 at a hospital in Singapore, 13 days after the attack. As well as being repeatedly raped, she was also violated with a metal bar, leaving her with massive internal injuries. Singh, a widower whose brother Mukesh is also an accused, was the regular driver of the white private bus alleged to have been used for the December 16 crime, which was normally used to ferry school children. Police say Singh and friends had enjoyed a meal together and had been drinking heavily before deciding to take the bus out for a night-time joyride, picking up passengers who mistook the vehicle for genuine public transport. Another senior police officer investigating the case, who asked not to be named, insisted that the suicide would not impact on the ongoing trial. "The (court) case will continue. There is no reason for the case to suffer," said the officer who also confirmed that Singh killed himself at 5:15 am. Another police officer deployed at Tihar Jail said Singh´s body had been taken to the government-run Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital and his brother Mukesh had been informed. "We tried to save him and even employed revival techniques but failed," he told AFP. Singh, originally from western Rajasthan state, lived in a New Delhi slum called Ravi Dass colony where neighbours described him and his brother as rowdy and heavy drinkers. "They were always drinking, abusing and getting into fights with us," one neighbour, who works as a domestic servant, told AFP. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51260 CARACAS, Venezuela, March 10: Venezuelans will vote April 14 to choose a successor to Hugo Chavez, the elections commission announced Saturday as increasingly strident political rhetoric begins to roil this polarized country. The constitution mandated the election be held within 30 days of Chavez´s March 5 death, but the date picked falls outside that period. Critics of the socialist government already complained that officials violated the constitution by swearing in Vice President Nicolas Maduro as acting leader Friday night.[break] Some people have speculated Venezuela will not be ready to organize the vote in time, but elections council chief Tibisay Lucena said the country´s electronic voting system was fully prepared. Lucena announced the date on state television while a small inset in the picture showed people filing past Chavez´s coffin at the military academy in Caracas, where his body has lain in state since Wednesday. Chavez´s boisterous state funeral Friday often felt like a political rally for his anointed successor, Maduro, who eulogized him by pledging eternal loyalty and vowing Chavez´s movement will never be defeated. Maduro is expected to run as the candidate of Chavez´s socialist party. Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, coordinator of the opposition coalition, immediately followed the election announcement by offering his bloc´s presidential candidacy to Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state who lost to Chavez in October. A Capriles adviser said the governor would announce his decision Sunday. David Smilde, an analyst with the U.S.-based Washington Office on Latin America, said the opposition needs to run a candidate in the presidential election even though he believes it will almost certainly lose. Smilde said he wasn´t sure Capriles will accept the candidacy. "If he says he doesn´t want to run I could totally understand that," Smilde said. "He is likely going to lose, and if he loses this election, he´s probably going to be done." In that case the opposition would be wise to run someone such as Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledesma or Henry Falcone, governor of Lara state and one of just three opposition governors, he said. That would give the opposition an opportunity to clearly articulate its platform and vision. "Really what this campaign would be about is allowing the opposition to put themselves in position for the future, to show that they have some ideas for the country," Smilde said. In his speech after his swearing-in Friday, Maduro took shots at the United States, the media, international capitalism and domestic opponents he often depicted as treacherous. He claimed the allegiance of Venezuela´s army, referring to them as the "armed forces of Chavez," despite the constitution barring the military from taking sides in politics. The opposition has denounced the transition as an unconstitutional power grab, while the government moves to immortalize Chavez. Since his death, the former paratrooper has been compared to Jesus Christ and early-19th century Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar, and the government announced that his body would be embalmed and put on eternal display. Edith Palmeira, a 47-year-old Caracas resident at a park Saturday in central Caracas, said she would vote for Maduro, but made clear her allegiance was based purely on her love of Chavez. "Imitations are never as good as the original," Palmeira said. "But I think he must have grown as a person during so much time at the president´s side. He must have learned to be a president." Elvira Orozco, a 31-year-old business owner, said she planned to sit out the vote to protest Maduro´s swearing-in Friday. "What they want is to say that here there´s a democracy, but here they violate the constitution and there´s no authority who says anything," Orozco said. Observers voiced mounting concern about the deep political divide gripping Venezuela, with half of it in a near frenzy of adulation and the other feeling targeted. "Everything that happened yesterday (with the funeral and Maduro´s speech) are outward signs of a fascistic aesthetic, complete with armbands," said Vicente Gonzalez de la Vega, a professor of law at Caracas´ Universidad Metropolitana. "It is the cult of the adored leader, an escape from reality. ... They are trying to impose on the rest of the country a new pagan religion." He said the ruling party was playing with fire with its strong nationalistic rhetoric and the implication that a vote against Maduro was somehow subversive. Capriles, too, has used emotionally charged language in his public comments. On Friday he denounced Maduro as a shameless liar who had not been elected by the people, and condescendingly referred to him as "boy." Opposition figures have said they are concerned about the election´s fairness, particularly given the public vows of allegiance to Chavez from senior military officials. Capriles lost to Chavez in Oct. 7 elections, but he garnered 45 percent of the vote, which was the most anyone had ever won against the late president. A boycott of 2005 legislative elections was widely seen as disastrous for the opposition, letting Chavez´s supporters win all 167 seats and allowing him to govern unimpeded by any legislative rivals. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51206 SEOUL, South Korea, March 9: Nearly two decades ago, South Koreans cleared store shelves after a North Korean threat to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire" raised war panic. On Saturday, South Koreans expressed some fear but mostly apathy and restraint after a week of warlike rhetoric from the North, including another "sea of fire" vow. Many South Koreans have grown up with a steady drumbeat of over-the-top threats from the North. [break]So while they are aware of soaring tensions as North Korea reacts with anger to major U.S.-South Korean military drills that start Monday and a new round of U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang´s recent third nuclear test, there´s skepticism that anything serious will happen. In downtown Seoul, people took photos and laughed as they walked below a giant electronic screen that flashed headlines about North Korea´s war threats. "The odds of dying from a North Korean bomb are probably smaller than being killed in a car accident. I´ll spend my time doing better things than worrying about war," said Oh Jin-young, a South Korean office worker out for a walk with his son. "North Korea knows that war will be like committing suicide." There is some fear, however. Visitors take their souvenir pictures near a military barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 6. (AP) South Koreans are well known for their ability to shake off North Korean threats. But the last several years have seen a rise of bloodshed. The deadly sinking of a South Korean warship — which Pyongyang denies torpedoing, despite a Seoul-led international investigation that found the North at fault — and an artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island in 2010 that killed four people have raised the specter of war among some South Koreans. North Korea vowed this past week to ditch the armistice that ended the Korean War and scrap a nonaggression pact with South Korea. It has also threatened Washington with pre-emptive nuclear strikes. People interviewed by The Associated Press in Pyongyang on Saturday expressed indignation over the U.N. sanctions. "I cannot control my anger," said Sin Myong Sil. "Some countries can launch satellites, and one country can conduct nuclear tests freely, and they are not blamed, but only our country is prohibited from doing nuclear tests and launching satellites. This is absurd and illogical." In South Korea, worry can be seen most clearly on the Internet, where some believe that South Koreans, world leaders in broadband access, are less afraid to express their honest, anonymous feelings. A user identifying herself as the mother of two posted on a cooking website Saturday that she was so scared by North Korea´s war threats that she took a day of leave from work on Friday. "I´m most worried that I might not be able to run to my kids quickly enough if something happens," she wrote, prompting a flurry of replies meant to sooth her. South Korean officials have tried to boost public confidence that the country can defend itself, issuing stern warnings of their own. Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said Friday that North Korea´s government would "evaporate from the face of the Earth" if it ever used a nuclear weapon. Despite North Korea´s threat of nuclear strikes on Washington, experts believe Pyongyang still lacks the technology to create a miniaturized warhead to place on a ballistic missile. South Korea´s new president, Park Geun-hye, told newly commissioned officers that any country — a clear reference to North Korea — would "bring destruction upon itself" if it focused on building nuclear arms instead of feeding its people. "North Korea makes me slightly worried, but I´m too busy running my food stall to be bothered," said 52-year-old Seoul resident Shin Jeong-sook. "I don´t hear customers speaking about North Korea, either. Don´t North Koreans do this all the time?" Bridget Hogan, a 24-year-old American who teaches English on South Korea´s southern island of Jeju, said most of her Korean friends were calm. "It´s probably not smart of me, but I´m not worried," Hogan, who is from California, said in Seoul, where she was meeting friends. It´s no surprise that South Koreans have grown accustomed to the state of confrontation that has lasted since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a fragile cease-fire, but they may also be unconsciously avoiding the uncomfortable thought of being thrust into war, said Kwak Keum-joo, a psychology professor at Seoul National University. "Being callous is their way of coping with threats because, otherwise, the fear would trouble them so much that they wouldn´t be able to live their lives normally. Imagine what would happen if everyone panicked over every threat?" she said. "Perhaps we do need to be more alert now." Even during the deadly artillery attack on Yeonpyeong island in 2010, people in other parts of the country remained generally calm and did not clear store shelves like they did in 1994, after the "sea of fire" threat, Kwak noted. "We live with the tension, and we probably will until we die," said Park Sin-young, a 22-year-old college student. "What else can we do?" http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51205 CAIRO, March 9: An Egyptian court on Saturday confirmed death sentences against 21 people for their role in a deadly 2012 soccer riot that killed more than 70 people in the city of Port Said. The court also sentenced the city´s former security chief, Maj. Gen. Essam Samak, to 15 years in prison.[break] Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid sentenced five more defendants to life in prison and nine beside Samak received 15-year jail terms. Six received 10-year jail terms and two were sent to jail for five years. A single defendant got a 12-month jail term, while a total of 28 were acquitted. The 21 death sentences were passed on Jan. 28. Most of those condemned to death are fans of Port Said´s Al-Masry club. The announcement led to violent protests in the city, which is located at the tip of the Suez Canal, that left some 40 people dead, most of them shot by police. The Feb. 2012 riot followed a league match between Al-Masry and Cairo´s Al-Ahly club, with Port Said supporters setting upon the visiting fans after the final whistle. The deadly melee is Egypt´s worst soccer disaster. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51188 CARACAS, Venezuela, March 9: Nicolas Maduro was sworn in Friday as Venezuela´s acting president, using the occasion to launch blistering attacks on the U.S. as well as the political opposition, which objected that the ceremony violated the country´s constitution. Late President Hugo Chavez designated Maduro as his successor before he died Tuesday of cancer. Maduro had been Chavez´s vice president.[break] The country´s 1999 constitution says the National Assembly speaker becomes interim president in the event of a president-elect´s death or inability to be sworn in. The constitution also says a presidential election should be called within 30 days. Maduro has been picked as the presidential candidate of Chavez´s socialist party. Opposition leader Angel Medina said earlier Friday that the opposition would boycott the swearing-in ceremony, and the vast majority of opposition legislators did not attend. Former U.S. presidential candidate, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, attended the ceremony as did Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. Stray fireworks exploded above the capital of Caracas as soon as Maduro was sworn in as president. Both Maduro and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello pledged to follow Chavez´s example and push his socialist-inspired agenda. "I swear by the most absolute loyalty to comrade Hugo Chavez that we will fulfill and see that it´s fulfilled the constitution ... with the iron fist of a people ready to be free," Maduro said. He also echoed accusations he made shortly before Chavez´s death that the U.S. had caused the leader´s fatal cancer. On Friday night, he referred to "this illness very strange for the speed of its growth and for other scientific reasons that will be known in their moment." He later duplicated Chavez´s penchant for slamming "the empire," his term for the United States. "We tell them: Sooner than later, the imperialist elites who govern the United States will have to learn to live with absolute respect with the insurrectional people of the ... Latin and Caribbean America," he said. Maduro also claimed the allegiance of Venezuela´s army, calling it "the armed forces of Chavez" as he pumped his fist in the air, a gesture that was reciprocated by the defense minister watching from the gallery. Critics have voiced increasing concern about the overt support the military has shown to the ruling party since Chavez´s death, despite a ban on the army´s participation in politics. He later named Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza, Chavez´s son-in-law, as his vice president. Arreaza had frequently been at the side of the dying president in his final weeks, sometimes providing updates about his health. Shortly before the swearing-in, opposition leader Henrique Capriles said Maduro had used Chavez´s funeral earlier in the day to campaign for the presidency. Capriles is widely expected to run against Maduro in the coming vote. A former bus driver and union leader, Maduro had served as Chavez´s foreign minister and was often seen on television accompanying the president during cancer treatments in Cuba. Chavez named Maduro his No. 2 after winning his third re-election in October. Since the death, Maduro was seen Wednesday leading a massive funeral cortege through the streets of Caracas as well as welcoming foreign dignitaries and delivering the eulogy at Friday´s funeral. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51187 NAIROBI, Kenya, March 9: Kenya´s election commission announced early Saturday that Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta prevailed in the country´s presidential elections by the slimmest of margins, winning 50.03 per cent of the vote. That result is likely to bring controversy in Kenya and an almost certain legal challenge from Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Kenyatta needed to break the 50 per cent barrier to avoid a run-off with Odinga, but he did so by only 4,099 votes out of more than 12.3 million cast.[break] Monday´s vote was the first since Kenya´s 2007 election sparked two months of tribe-on-tribe violence after a disputed election win was claimed by President Mwai Kibaki. More than 1,000 people were killed in attacks that included machetes, bows and arrows and police firearms. A win by Kenyatta could greatly affect Kenya´s relations with the West. Kenyatta faces charges at the International Criminal Court for his alleged role in directing some of Kenya´s 2007 post-election violence. His running mate, William Ruto, faces similar charges. Controversial candidate Uhuru Kenyatta, here casting his own ballot, won Kenya´s presidential election after winning just over 50 per cent of the vote. (AP) The U.S. has warned of "consequences" if Kenyatta, the son of Kenya´s founding father, wins, as have several European countries. Britain, which ruled Kenya up until the early 1960s, has said they would have only essential contact with the Kenyan government if Kenyatta is president. Odinga´s camp has indicated legal challenges could be filed. Monday´s presidential vote proceeded mostly peacefully, but the counting process has been stymied by a myriad of break-downs and errors. That the winner was quietly revealed overnight — at about 2:35 a.m. local time — came as somewhat of a surprise. Around midnight the electoral commission said it would give a formal announcement of the winner at 11 a.m. Kenya time Saturday. There was a belief among observers that the decision was made in part not to make a night-time announcement that could stir suspicions and put security forces at a disadvantage if rioting broke out. Diplomats said they believed Odinga was not likely to protest the vote in a manner that would increase the chances of violence, but rather honor his pledge to respect the result and petition the courts with any grievances. Odinga scheduled a news conference for later Saturday morning. The Kenyan capital has been sleepy since Monday´s vote for president, the country´s first election since its 2007 vote sparked tribe-on-tribe violence that killed more than 1,000 people. But security forces in riot gear took to the streets Friday in regions of the city that could turn tumultuous after results are announced. The prime minister´s supporters took to the streets in 2007 after Odinga said he had been cheated. In Kibera, Nairobi´s largest slum and a bastion of Odinga support, many believe this year´s results have been rigged as well. "If you look at the way the tallying is being done there is rigging," said Isiah Omondi, 27. "If Uhuru wins and wins fairly, we don´t have a problem with him. He can be our president. But not like this." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51184 CARACAS, Venezuela, March 8: With leaders from five continents on hand, Venezuela prepared for a day of distinctly different ceremonies — first the formal state funeral of Hugo Chavez, then the controversial swearing-in of his anointed interim successor, who the opposition charges has no constitutional right to the job. Friday´s funeral at the military academy where Chavez has been lying in state promises to be a final turn on the world stage for the former paratrooper after 14 tumultuous years at Venezuela´s helm, though in some ways he is not going anywhere: Venezuela announced Thursday that it would embalm Chavez´s body and put it on permanent display.[break] Presidents and other dignitaries began arriving by mid-morning for the ceremony, and were still streaming in after the funeral´s scheduled 11 a.m. start, with no clear sign when the event might begin. The Venezuelan government says more than 30 heads of state are expected to attend, from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Cuba´s Raul Castro, to the leaders of Mexico, Chile and Brazil. U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and former Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, represented the United States, which Chavez often portrayed as a great global evil even as he sent the country billions of dollars in oil each year. Other American VIPs were also expected to be in attendance. People gather outside the military academy where the funeral ceremony for Venezuela´s late President Hugo Chavez will take place in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, March 8. (AP) The Rev. Jesse Jackson tweeted that he would be there, and Hollywood star Sean Penn has also said he would attend. "It is a great pain for us because we have lost a friend," Ahmadinejad said upon his arrival at the airport overnight. "I feel like I have lost myself, but I am sure that he still lives. Chavez will never die. His spirit and soul live on in each of our hearts." Outside the academy, the line to see Chavez´s body stretched 1 ½ miles (2 kilometers). Progress for those already waiting since the early hours was halted for the funeral, with some expressing impatience. Government officials handed out water, and street vendors sold paper replicas of the presidential sash, which many people in the line slipped over their shoulder. Elsewhere, the normally traffic-choked streets of Caracas were empty, with schools and many businesses shuttered. The government also prohibited alcohol sales. Many Venezuelans, particularly Chavez supporters, said they were caught up in the pomp and circumstance of the past few days, and flattered to be the subject of world´s attention. "This is historic ...I have never seen anything like it," said Edila Ojeda, a 57-year-old janitor. "He was a world leader recognized internationally. I am speechless. It is impressive." Others said they were put off by what they saw as excess, particularly the plan to put Chavez´s body on permanent display. "He was a president, and I would say not a good one. Not a hero," said Gloria Ocampos, a retired office manager. "He should be buried, just like any other president. They are treating him like he was the father of the country ... It´s crazy." The government has given almost no details about the funeral, and has told the national and international media there will be no access, a measure of the strict control with which Chavez and his top lieutenants have controlled the country for years. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua appealed to local media not to publish critical political analyses "which could be a provocation for a pained people." Following the funeral, National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello was to swear in Vice President Nicolas Maduro as interim president, as Chavez desired, despite complaints by the opposition that Cabello is the rightful holder of that post under the constitution. Cabello announced that the swearing-in will be held at the same military academy complex where Chavez´s body is lying in state. Normally, presidents in Venezuela are sworn in at the National Assembly. The constitution says elections must be held within 30 days of Chavez´s March 5 death, though the government has not set a date. Maduro has announced he will be the candidate of Chavez´s ruling socialist party against likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, and many expect him to ride the wave of emotion following Chavez´s death to victory. Friday´s funeral promises a climax to three days of ceremony that have followed Chavez´s death, and Venezuelan media were filled with commentary about the outsized place the late leader held on the world stage. Jaua said countries from Cuba to China to Iran had declared days of national mourning for Chavez, highly unusual for the leader of another country. For many Chavez supporters, and the political insiders he left behind, the task ahead will be continuing the president´s political movement beyond his death. Maduro announced Thursday that the late president´s body will be embalmed and forever displayed inside a glass tomb at a military museum not far from the presidential palace from which he ruled. Analysts said the perpetual display was meant to keep Chavez´s power structure alive, long after his death at age 58. "Nicolas Maduro and his government are building an aura that makes it very difficult, I would say, that in the future, the opposition tries to promote an alternative to the government," said Oscar Valles, a political analyst at the Metropolitan University in Caracas. Heart-broken supporters were clearly in favor of the effort. "We must think about the future and how we are going to guarantee the continuity of the revolution," said Rolando Tarazon, a street vendor who was waiting with his wife to see Chavez´s body lying in state at the military academy late Thursday. Chavez was particularly beloved by the poor, whose lot he championed. But critics say he left his successors a monumental task, with inflation of more than 20 percent a year, and public debt quadrupling to more than $100 billion. Crime is endemic and Chavez´s chaotic management style has been blamed for a breakdown in infrastructure, particularly in the key oil industry. Yet for some lined up to see Chavez´s body early Friday, the road ahead meant continuing the late leader´s legacy. "Chavez, we swear to you, we´ll vote for Maduro!" they chanted. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51178 NEW YORK, March 8: Osama bin Laden´s son-in-law pleaded not guilty Friday to plotting against Americans in his role as al-Qaida´s top spokesman as a landmark case trying a terror suspect on U.S. soil moves forward. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith entered the plea through a lawyer to one count of conspiracy to kill Americans after being captured in Jordan over the past week.[break] The case marks a legal victory for the Obama administration, which has long sought to charge senior al-Qaida suspects in U.S. federal courts instead of holding them at the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Charging foreign terror suspects in federal courts was a top pledge by President Barack Obama shortly after he took office in 2009 — aimed, in part, to close Guantanamo Bay. Republicans, however, have fought the White House to keep Guantanamo open, and bringing Abu Ghaith to New York led to an outcry. Republicans in Congress do not want high-threat terror suspects brought into the United States, fearing that outcomes in a civilian jury trial are too unpredictable, compared to a military trial. This image made available by Al-Jazeera shows Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden´s son-in-law and spokesman. (AP) Attorney General Eric Holder announced the capture of Abu Ghaith on Thursday, saying "no amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to bring America´s enemies to justice." Holder reluctantly agreed in 2011 to try self-professed al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a Guantanamo Bay military court instead of a civilian court after a fierce Republican backlash. The Justice Department said Abu Ghaith was the spokesman for al-Qaida, working alongside bin Laden and current leader Ayman al-Zawahri, since at least May 2001. Abu Ghaith is a former mosque preacher and teacher and urged followers to swear allegiance to bin Laden, prosecutors said. The day after the Sept. 11 attacks, prosecutors say he appeared with bin Laden and al-Zawahri and called on the "nation of Islam" to battle against Jews, Christians and Americans. A "great army is gathering against you," Abu Ghaith said on Sept. 12, 2001, according to prosecutors. Kuwait stripped him of his citizenship after the 2001 attacks. In 2002, under pressure as the U.S. military and CIA searched for bin Laden, prosecutors said Abu Ghaith was smuggled into Iran from Afghanistan. Tom Lynch, a research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, described Abu Ghaith as one of a small handful of senior al-Qaida leaders "capable of getting the old band back together and postured for a round of real serious international terror." "His capture and extradition not only allows the U.S. to hold — and perhaps try — a reputed al-Qaida core survivor, further tarnishing the AQ core brand, but it also points to the dangers for those few remaining al-Qaida core refugees," Lynch said. Several Republican lawmakers said Abu Ghaith should be considered an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo, where he could be questioned more thoroughly than his lawyers likely would allow as a federal defendant on U.S. soil. Generally, Guantanamo detainees have fewer legal rights and due process than they would have in a court in America but could potentially yield more information to prevent future threats. Since 2001, 67 foreign terror suspects have been convicted in U.S. federal courts, according to watchdog group Human Rights First, which obtained the data from the Justice Department through a Freedom of Information Act request. By comparison, of the thousands of detainees who were swept up shortly after the terror attacks and held at Guantanamo Bay, only seven were convicted by military tribunals held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, the watchdog group said. The vast majority have been sent back overseas, either for rehabilitation or continued detention and prosecution. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51161 NAIROBI, Kenya, March 8: Kenya´s drawn-out race for president was coming down to the wire on Friday, with the leading candidate hovering right at the 50 percent mark needed to avoid a runoff with his top challenger. Security forces eager to maintain peace began appearing in the street. As the last ballots came in, the percentage held by Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta flipped and flopped over the 50 percent line. His opponent, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, needed a strong performance in the remaining ballots to force a second round runoff.[break] Kenya´s capital, Nairobi, has been sleepy since Monday´s vote for president, the country´s first election since its 2007 vote sparked tribe-on-tribe violence that killed more than 1,000 people. But groups of security forces in riot gear took to the streets Friday in regions of the city that could turn tumultuous after results are announced. At the national tallying center, agents for Odinga began getting rowdy, interrupting officials who were reading out election results. They accused the commission of making up some figures, echoing allegations by Odinga´s camp on Thursday that some figures had been doctored. The election commission denied the allegations. "They are adding figures to Uhuru and subtracting from Raila, and we will show the proof. I have completely lost faith in this thing," said Frederick Odhiambo, one of the Odinga agents. Riot police patrol a street in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, March 8. (AP) Eight candidates ran for president, so if any of the bottom six captures a significant portion of the outstanding ballots, that could also push Kenyatta below 50 percent. A Kenyatta win could have far-reaching consequences with Western relations. The son of Kenya´s founding father, Kenyatta faces charges at the International Criminal Court for his role in directing some of the 2007 postelection violence. The U.S. has warned of "consequences" if Kenyatta is to win, as have several European countries. Britain, which ruled Kenya up until the early 1960s, has said they would only have essential contact with a President Kenyatta. The U.S. Embassy in Kenya is larger than any American mission in Africa, underscoring Kenya´s strong role in U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. also has military forces stationed here near the border with Somalia. Kenya, the lynchpin of East Africa´s economy, plays a vital security role in the fight against Somali militants. Kenyatta´s ICC trial is set to begin in July and could take years, meaning that if he wins he may have to rule Kenya from The Hague for the first half of his presidency. Another option is, as president, to decide not to go. But that decision would trigger an international arrest warrant and spark even more damaging effects for Kenya´s standing with the West. Kenyatta has promised to report to The Hague even if he wins the presidency. Whether or not Kenyatta finishes with over half of the votes, most observers expected legal challenges to be launched after a myriad of failures in the systems Kenya´s electoral commission set up. The first problems were evident right as the voting began early Monday. An electronic voter ID system intended to prevent fraud failed across the country for lack of electricity in some cases and overheating computers in others. Vote officials instead used manual voter rolls. After the polls closed, results were to be sent electronically to Nairobi, where officials would quickly tabulate a preliminary vote count in order to maximize transparency after rigging accusations following the 2007 vote. But that system failed too. Election officials have indicated that computer servers overloaded but have yet to fully explain the problem. On Tuesday, as the early count system was still being used, election results showed more than 330,000 rejected ballots, an unusually high number. But after the count resumed with the arrival in Nairobi of manual tallies, the number of rejected ballots had dropped to almost nothing, and the election commission on Thursday gave the head-scratching explanation that the computer was mistakenly multiplying the number of rejected ballots by a factor of eight. Odinga´s camp on Thursday said some votes had been doctored and called for a halt to the tallying process. It said the tallying process "lacked integrity." A day earlier, Kenyatta´s camp accused the British high commissioner of meddling in the election and asked aloud why there were an unusually high number of British troops in the country. The election commission said it expected to have final results by the end of Friday, though observers said it was still possible the count would go into the weekend. There were fears going into the election that the violence that rocked Kenya five years ago would return. A separatist group on the coast launched attacks on Monday that ended in the deaths of 19 people, but the vote and its aftermath has otherwise been largely peaceful. However, it´s the announcement of results that could stir protests, especially if the supporters of either Odinga or Kenyatta feel robbed. Diplomats say that the public reaction to an election loss by the losing candidate will set the tone for whether violence breaks out. The political battle between the families of Kenyatta and Odinga goes back to the 1960s and to the two candidates´ fathers. Jomo Kenyatta was Kenya´s first president after the end of British colonial rule. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga served as the country´s first vice president then. The two later had a falling out. If a runoff is declared, it would be most likely held in late April, depending on how long legal challenges take. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51122 (Updated) CARACAS, Venezuela, March 8: Hugo Chavez´s body will be preserved and forever displayed inside a glass tomb at a military museum not far from the presidential palace from which he ruled for 14 years, his successor announced Thursday in a Caribbean version of the treatment given Communist revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh.[break] Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela´s acting head of state, said Chavez would first lie in state for "at least" seven more days at the museum, which will eventually become his permanent home. It was not clear when exactly he would be moved from the military academy where his body has been since Wednesday. A state funeral will be held Friday attended by more than 30 heads of government, including Cuban President Raul Castro and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and former Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, will represent the United States, which Chavez often portrayed as a great global evil even as he sent the country billions of dollars in oil each year. A large image of Venezuela´s late President Hugo Chavez is on display where mourners line up to view his body lying in state at the military academy in Caracas, Thursday, March 7, 2013. While Venezuela remains deeply divided over the country´s future, the multitudes weeping and crossing themselves as they reached the president´s coffin early Thursday were united in grief and admiration for a man many considered a father figure. (AP) Maduro said the ceremony would begin at 11 a.m., but did not say where. "We have decided to prepare the body of our ´Comandante President,´ to embalm it so that it remains open for all time for the people. Just like Ho Chi Minh. Just like Lenin. Just like Mao Zedong," Maduro said. He said the body would be held in a "crystal urn" at the Museum of the Revolution, a stone´s throw from Miraflores presidential palace. The announcement followed two emotional days in which Chavez´s supporters compared him to Jesus Christ, and accused his national and international critics of subversion. A sea of sobbing, heartbroken humanity jammed Venezuela´s main military academy Thursday to see Chavez´s body, some waiting 10 hours under the twinkling stars and the searing Caribbean sun to file past his coffin. On Thursday night, Castro and Uruguayan President Jose Mujica visited the viewing site. But even as his supporters attempted to immortalize the dead president, a country exhausted from round-the-clock mourning began to look toward the future. Some worried openly whether the nation´s anointed leaders are up to the task of filling his shoes, and others said they were anxious for news on when elections will be held. The constitution mandates they be called within 30 days, but the government has yet to address the matter. "People are beginning to get back to their lives. One must keep working," said 40-year-old Caracas resident Laura Guerra, a Chavez supporter who said she was not yet sold on Maduro, the acting head of state and designated ruling party candidate. "I don´t think he will be the same. I don´t think he has the same strength that the ´comandante´ had." At the military academy, Chavez lay in a glass-covered coffin wearing the olive-green military uniform and red beret of his paratrooper days and looking gaunt and pale, his lips pressed together. In a nod to the insecurity that plagues this country, mourners had to submit to a pat down, pass through a metal detector and remove the batteries from their mobile phones before they entered. As they reached the coffin, many placed a hand on their heart or stiffly saluted. Some held up children so they could see Chavez´s face. "I waited 10 hours to see him, but I am very happy, proud to have seen my comandante," said 46-year-old Yudeth Hurtado, sobbing. "He is planted in our heart." Government leaders had been largely incommunicado Wednesday as they marched in a seven-hour procession that brought Chavez´s body from a military hospital to the academy. They finally emerged before the cameras Thursday but offered no answers. Asked when an election would be held, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said only that the constitution would be followed. He continued to refer to Maduro as "vice president," though he also said the rest of the government was united in helping him lead the country. The foreign minister also struck the defiant, us-against-the-world tone the government has projected, which some critics fear could incite passions in a country that remains on edge. "They couldn´t defeat him electorally, they couldn´t assassinate him, they couldn´t beat him militarily," Jaua declared. "Chavez died as president ... Chavez died the leader of his people." Just hours before the 58-year-old president´s death on Tuesday, Maduro expelled two U.S. diplomats and lashed out at opponents at home and abroad. He implied that the cancer that ultimately killed Chavez was somehow injected into him by his enemies, a charge echoed by Ahmadinejad. While Maduro is the clear favorite over likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, the nation is polarized between Chavez supporters and critics who hold him responsible for soaring inflation, a growing national debt and a jump in violent crime. Opponents have also questioned the government´s allegiance to the rule of law, arguing that Maduro is not entitled to become interim president under the 1999 constitution. They have also criticized the defense minister, Adm. Diego Molero, for pledging support for Maduro´s candidacy despite a ban on the military taking political sides. Ana Teresa Sifontes, a 71-year-old housewife and opposition sympathizer, said Chavez did some good things for the nation´s poor. But she said he had mismanaged the economy and showed more interest in regional grandstanding than governing. She said she hoped his death would bring change. "Why do we have to pay for Cuba?" she asked, referring to the billions in Venezuelan oil Chavez sent to Havana each year in return for Cuban doctors and other experts. "Why do we need them here?" Venezuelan officials have yet to say what type of cancer he suffered from, but details were emerging of the former paratrooper´s final hours. The head of Venezuela´s presidential guard, Gen. Jose Ornella, told the AP late Wednesday that Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering. "He couldn´t speak but he said it with his lips ... ´I don´t want to die. Please don´t let me die,´ because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," said Ornella, who said he was with the socialist president at the moment of his death Tuesday. In Washington, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. hoped the upcoming vote would be held on a level playing field, and lamented the expulsion of the American officials. "We are obviously disappointed by these false accusations levied against our embassy officials," Nuland said. "This is part of a tired playbook of alleging foreign interference as a political football in internal Venezuelan politics." Other world leaders whose bodies are on display World leaders whose bodies have been preserved and put on perpetual display, as Venezuela´s government plans to do with Hugo Chavez: ___ VLADIMIR LENIN: Body of Soviet Union´s founder has been displayed since January 1924 in a mausoleum at Red Square. His tomb is one of Moscow´s most famous symbols and Communists consider it almost a shrine. The embalmment for display is considered the model for subsequent Communist world leaders put on exhibit. ___ JOSEF STALIN: Soviet dictator´s embalmed body was put on display next to Lenin on March 9, 1953. Soviet authorities ordered it removed from the tomb Oct. 31, 1961, and had it buried during a period of "de-Stalinization." ___ HO CHI MINH: Corpse of the Vietnamese revolutionary leader was put on display on Aug. 29, 1975. It rests in a glass sarcophagus in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi and is a popular destination for tourists. ___ MAO ZEDONG: Embalmed body of the founding father of the People´s Republic of China was unveiled on Sept. 9, 1977. It rests in the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in the center of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Long lines of people form daily to view the man commonly known as Chairman Mao. ___ KIM IL SUNG: Preserved body of the man considered the founding father of North Korea was unveiled on July 8, 1995. It lies under glass for viewing purposes in the Kumsusan mausoleum, a cavernous former presidential palace. ___ KIM JONG IL: The leader´s body, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, was unveiled on Dec. 17, 2012, the anniversary of his death. It rests a few floors below the body of his father, Kim Il Sung, in the Kumsusan mausoleum. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51121 SEOUL, South Korea, March 8:  North Korea is canceling a hotline and a nonaggression pact with South Korea and reiterating past threats in anger over a U.N. Security Council vote to impose more sanctions on the North for its third nuclear test. The statement the North issued Friday comes after the council leveled tough, new sanctions targeting the North´s economy and leadership. North Korea already has threatened of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.[break] North Korea says it will retaliate with "crushing strikes" if enemies intrude into its territory. It also says it is voiding past nuclear disarmament statements between North and South Korea. It previously said it was canceling a hotline with the United States and the armistice that closed the Korean War in 1953. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51117 (Updated) UNITED NATIONS, March 7: The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday for tough new sanctions to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test, and a furious Pyongyang threatened a nuclear strike against the United States. The sanctions drafted by North Korea´s closest ally, China, and the United States send a powerful message that the international community condemns Pyongyang´s ballistic missile and nuclear tests — and repeated violations of Security Council resolutions.[break] "Adoption of the resolution itself is not enough," China´s U.N. Ambassador Li Baodong said. "We want to see full implementation of the resolution." Li also urged calm and a resumption of the stalled six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. "The top priority now is to defuse the tensions, bring down heat ... bring the situation back on the track of diplomacy, on negotiations," Li said. North Korea´s nuclear test in February was the first since the country´s young new leader, Kim Jong Un, took charge amid questions of whether he would steer the country on a different course. The North´s threats sharpened Thursday with the first reference to a preemptive nuclear attack. Immediately before the vote, an unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang´s Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because Washington is "set to light a fuse for a nuclear war." The statement was carried by the North´s official Korean Central News Agency, which issued no immediate comment after the Security Council vote. In Pyongyang, Army Gen. Kang Pyo Yong told a crowd of tens of thousands that North Korea is ready to fire long-range nuclear-armed missiles at Washington, which "will be engulfed in a sea of fire." The White House responded by saying the U.S. is fully capable of defending itself against a North Korea ballistic missile attack. Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. It is believed to have enough nuclear fuel, however, for several crude nuclear devices. The United States has long been concerned that North Korea could eventually pose a missile threat to U.S. territory. The Defense Department first began to operate a ground-based missile defense system in late 2004 with such a potential threat in mind. "Taken together, these sanctions will bite, and bite hard," U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said after the vote. "North Korea must wake up from its delusion of becoming a ... nuclear weapons state and make the right choice," said South Korea´s U.N. Ambassador Kim Sook said. "It can either take the right path toward a bright future and prosperity, or it can take a bad road toward further and deeper isolation and eventual self-destruction." Tensions have escalated following a rocket launch by Pyongyang in December and its third nuclear test on Feb. 12. Both acts defied three Security Council resolutions that bar North Korea from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology and from importing or exporting material for these programs. The new sanctions resolution is the fourth against North Korea since its first nuclear test in 2006. It condemns the latest nuclear test "in the strongest terms" for violating and flagrantly disregarding council resolutions. It bans further ballistic missile launches, nuclear tests "or any other provocation" and demands that North Korea return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It condemns all of North Korea´s ongoing nuclear activities, including its uranium enrichment. But the resolution also stresses the council´s commitment "to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution" to North Korea´s nuclear program and urges a resumption of six-party talks. The success of new sanctions could depend on enforcement by China, where most of the companies and banks that North Korea is believed to work with are based. The resolution strengthens inspections of suspicious cargo heading to and from the country and calls on states to step up "vigilance" of possible illegal activity by North Korean diplomats. In a measure targeted at the reclusive nation´s ruling elite, the resolution bans all nations from exporting expensive jewelry, yachts, luxury automobiles and racing cars to the North. All countries would now be required to freeze financial transactions or services that could contribute to North Korea´s nuclear or missile programs. The resolution identifies three individuals, one corporation and one organization that will be added to the U.N. sanctions list. The targets include top officials at a company that is the country´s primary arms dealer and main exporter of ballistic missile-related equipment, and a national organization responsible for research and development of missiles and probably nuclear weapons. To get around financial sanctions, North Koreans have been carrying around large suitcases filled with cash to move illicit funds. The resolution expresses concern that these bulk cash transfers may be used to evade sanctions. The resolution also bans all countries from providing public financial support for trade deals, such as granting export credits, guarantees or insurance, if the assistance could contribute to the North´s nuclear or missile programs. It includes what a senior diplomat called unprecedented new travel sanctions that would require countries to expel agents working for sanctioned North Korean companies. The resolution also requires states to inspect suspect cargo on their territory and prevent any vessel that refuses an inspection from entering their ports. And a new aviation measure calls on states to deny aircraft permission to take off, land or fly over their territory if illicit cargo is suspected to be aboard. http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51092 NEW ORLEANS, March 7: In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered to send thousands of soldiers, firefighters and volunteers to help with the cleanup. He also pledged $1 million in aid plus fuel to help rebuild hard-hit cities like New Orleans. The offer, swiftly rejected, was part of a larger pattern: Chavez´s repeated attempts to provide humanitarian relief to low-income and distressed U.S. families. [break]Despite those efforts, he was never able to foster his image as a savior of the American poor like he did in Venezuela. More often, he was accused of orchestrating politically motivated ploys that in the end helped relatively few Americans. "Many people questioned his motivation," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas and Americas Society think tank. "Was this a true humanitarian gesture or was it an opportunity to stick it in the eye of the United States? I think many people in the U.S. thought it was the latter." Chavez died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, ending 14 years of rule and leaving the oil-rich Latin American nation divided over his fiery brand of socialism. Vice President Nicolas Maduro will run Venezuela as interim president and serve as the candidate for Chavez´s socialist party in an election that must be called, constitutionally, within 30 days. FILE - In this July 15, 2001 file photo, Venezuela´s President Hugo Chavez, center, his wife Marisabel with their daughter Rosa Ines watch a parade on Children´s Day in Caracas, Venezuela. (AP) While much of Chavez´s socialist vision would have been in line with that of some American liberals, he never gained widespread admiration in the U.S. Hollywood actor Sean Penn and director Oliver Stone praised him, but they were the exception, and many were hesitant to embrace a leader with military roots who shut down media outlets and abolished term limits. Complicating any potential ideological synergy, Chavez had a combative relationship with the U.S. leaders that went beyond politics. In 2006, he famously called President George W. Bush the devil in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president´s address. Chavez´s inner circle has also claimed the U.S. was behind a 2002 coup to overthrow him. Yet across the years, he kept up a lucrative oil-export relationship with the U.S. while also spreading his petroleum-funded largesse around Latin America. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept into Louisiana, busting federal levees, leaving New Orleans under a blanket of water and trapping tens of thousands in a chaotic landscape with no utilities, little food and a government that seemed unable to respond. Chavez was quick to step in, offering a planeload of aid and criticizing Bush as "the king of vacations" for being at his Texas ranch when the storm hit. "There were many innocent people who left in the direction of the hurricane," Chavez said in a speech. "No one told them where they should go." The U.S. government dismissed his offer. Bob Mann, who was communications director for then-Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, said he supported the decision because he believed the offer was motivated more by Chavez´s desire to embarrass Bush than any humanitarian concern. Looking back nearly eight years later, though, he might have chosen differently. "In retrospect, I think maybe we should have taken the money because we didn´t get the help we needed from the federal government," Mann said. Chavez did make some inroads through his heating oil program; more than 1.7 million people have received oil from Citgo Corp. to keep warm during the cold winter months over the last eight years, according to the state-owned oil subsidiary. The program was initially rejected in many states, but has now helped families in 25 states and Washington, D.C., as well as Native American communities. Former U.S. Congressman Joseph Kennedy II, who heads Citizens Energy, said Tuesday that Chavez cared about the poor at a time when "some of the wealthiest people on our planet have more money than they can ever reasonably expect to spend." A spokesman for Kennedy said Chavez and the people of Venezuela had donated about 200 million gallons in its collaboration with Citizens Energy. Thomas Boswell, a geography professor at the University of Miami, said the amount of money and oil he contributed was too small to have a sizable impact. Chavez´s contributions "didn´t really touch most of the poor in the United States," Boswell said, adding most Americans were unaware of Chavez´s efforts. There were many other reasons Chavez´s populist message didn´t resonate. In Venezuela, he could dominate the airwaves for hours on end. In the U.S., he faced a language barrier, among other hurdles. New York University professor Alejandro Velasco said Americans have long rejected the idea of a foreign country providing support to the U.S. population. Velasco said Chavez´s efforts to highlight the contradictions of the U.S. economic system were ultimately more successful in generating pride in Venezuela than gaining him a following up north. While initially Chavez may have curried favor among liberals in the U.S., support had eroded over the last decade as he continued to takes steps against private property, the media and his opposition. His fierce rhetoric against the U.S. during the Bush administration also won fewer admirers when President Barack Obama was elected as the nation´s first black president. "It´s hard to be a supporter of somebody today who is dismantling democratic institutions, from the left, right or center," Farnsworth said. He added that Chavez´s approach in Venezuela faced a different economic reality in the U.S. that proved to be a less fertile ground for shoring up political support. For example, Farnsworth noted the U.S. already has programs for the poor that include energy subsidies for heating oil. Today, Hurricane Katrina victims are divided over whether the U.S. should have accepted Chavez´s aid. "I don´t deal with that country. I don´t know what they´re about," said James Cager, 52, whose brick and stucco home in the Lower 9th Ward flooded to the rooftop. "If our government felt that it´s not a good idea to take from them, then we have to go with that." Others regret an offer to provide help in a desperate time was turned down. Mtangulizi Sanyika, 70, lived in New Orleans at the time of the storm and now resides in Houston. He said Katrina´s victims weren´t concerned with the ideological origins of the aid. "An offer from Mr. Chavez may be multidimensional," Sanyika said. "Yes, it might be said he was seeking to embarrass the United States. On the other side, he could have been genuine." http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=51094 UNITED NATIONS, March 7: Armed fighters linked to the Syrian opposition detained 21 U.N. peacekeepers from the Philippines on Wednesday in the increasingly volatile zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan Heights, a new escalation in the spillover of Syria´s civil war. The U.N. Security Council demanded their immediate and unconditional release.[break] In Manila, Philippine officials that Syrian rebels were holding 21 Filipino peacekeepers "as guests." Early Thursday, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the U.N. commander on the ground told him that negotiations were progressing. He said he was told "by tomorrow, they expect all of these 21 to be released." Philippine military spokesman Col. Arnulfo Marcelo Burgos said the peacekeepers were in a military convoy when they were "suddenly held at one Syrian rebel outpost. They were allowed to go through the first outpost but were stopped at the second outpost." The troops, part of a Philippine contingent of 300 peacekeepers, were taken to a "safe area" after their vehicles were taken, he said. The capture comes a week after the announcement that a member of the peacekeeping force is missing. The force, known as UNDOF, was established a year after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. It monitors the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces and maintains a cease-fire. Israeli officials have grown increasingly jittery as the Syrian war moves closer to Israel. There have been several instances in which stray fire has landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and Israel is concerned that Syrian weapons could fall into the hands of hostile groups and be used against Israel. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and Syria wants the land returned in exchange for peace. Russia´s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current Security Council president, said the capture of the peacekeepers "is particularly unacceptable and bizarre" because the UNDOF peacekeepers are unarmed and their mission has nothing to do with Syria´s internal conflict. "They are there on a completely different mission so there is no reason at all under any circumstances, any kind of sick imagination to try to harm those people," he said. Churkin said U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, who briefed the council behind closed doors, identified the captors as being from a group associated with the Syrian armed opposition. "There was no fighting, according to his briefing to us," Churkin said. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the capture of the 21 peacekeepers, U.N. deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey said. Del Buey said the U.N. observers were on a regular supply mission when they were stopped by about 30 armed fighters near an observation post that was damaged in heavy combat last weekend and had been evacuated. A video posted online by activists showed a group of armed rebels standing around at least three white U.N. vehicles with the words UNDOF on them, allegedly in the village of Jamlah in Daraa province. The video, circulated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, accuses the peacekeepers of assisting the Syrian regime to redeploy in an area near the Golan that the fighters had seized a few days ago in battles that left 11 fighters and 19 regime forces dead. A man identified as Abu Qaed al-Faleh, spokesman for the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigades, announced the group is holding the peacekeepers until Syrian President Bashar Assad´s forces withdraw from Jamlah. "They will not be released until after Bashar Assad´s forces withdraw from the village of Jamlah bordering Israel," the man said. Churkin urged countries with influence on the Syrian opposition to use it to help free the peacekeepers. He did not name any countries but Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are known to have been providing military aid to some Syrian rebel groups. The international community has been divided in its response to Syria´s conflict. The United States and other countries have supported Syria´s political opposition but have been reluctant to send weapons partly because of fears they may fall into the hands of extremists who have been gaining influence among the rebels. The Obama administration, however, announced last week that it would, for the first time, provide non-lethal aid directly to the rebels. Russia and China, meanwhile, have continued to back Assad´s regime. Human Right Watch, meanwhile, is investigating whether the same rebels linked to seizing the peacekeepers were involved in the executions of captured regime soldiers in another incident around Jamlah several days ago. The rights group began the investigation after recei