International

By Xinhua, ISLAMABAD : Two trucks to carry luggage for NATO forces in Afghanistan were destroyed Saturday in northwestern Pakistan, the NNI news agency reported. The private NNI news agency said that unidentified gunmen attacked a truck terminal at the Ring Road in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Police officer Muhammad Afaq said that dozens of armed men attacked the Bilal terminal with rockets which caused the destruction of two trucks.

By IRNA, London : American troops are stationed at nine military bases in the UK that are symbolic of the country's subservience to the US, according to Stop the War Coalition (STWC), Britain's biggest peace group. "You can only see these bases as part of a continuing strategy by the Americans to control militarily; not just their own military in their own country but also Britain and other countries in Europe," said STWC joint convener Lindsay German.

By RIA Novosti, Bishkek : One Russian officer was wounded in an attack by unidentified assailants near the Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in the Central Asian country said on Sunday. The incident occurred early on Sunday when several persons wearing the uniform of Kyrgyz police stopped a car with three Russian offices and tried to force them into their jeep. During the incident, one of the Russian officers was seriously wounded, the spokesman said. The officer has been hospitalized, the spokesman said.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By Eva Krafczyk, DPA, Nairobi : Nigeria's Akin Adesina, vice president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), sees the global food crisis as an opportunity as well as a challenge. "Over the medium and long term, the expansion of agriculture, not food aid, is the only solution," he remarked. Adesina said it was scandalous that Africa's agricultural output had declined over the past 30 years, with many African farmers producing too little to feed even their own families. "The agricultural sector in Africa has been neglected for decades."

By IANS Kathmandu : The World Bank has pledged $253 million to Nepal, its largest-ever support package to the impoverished Himalayan nation, for improving basic education, irrigation, rural roads and for bettering living conditions, livelihoods, and empowerment among the rural poor. The new support package doubles the amount of development resources offered by the bank to Nepal. Praful Patel, World Bank vice-president for South Asia, said the grant would support a development programme approved by the ruling coalition.

By DPA, New York: A federal jury in Boston Friday ordered a graduate student to pay $22,500 per song to four record labels, who sued him for illegally downloading and sharing music. Joel Tenenbaum, 25, was found to have illegally downloaded 30 songs and ordered to pay a total of $675,000 to the plaintiffs. He was only the second person in the US to have been sued for downloading music over the Internet. In the previous case, a Minnesota jury ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay $80,000 for infringing 24 songs, totalling $1.92 million.

By DPA, Geneva: The US Thursday asked the World Trade Organisation to rule on a European Union (EU) ban on US poultry treated with chemicals. The US contends the EU ban does not comply with international trade rules, saying methods used in the country which involve chemicals are safe. "The US poultry subject to the EU ban is safe. There is no scientific evidence that the use of pathogen reduction treatments pose any health risk to consumers," said Nefeterius McPherson, spokeswoman for the US trade representative.

By Xinhua Hanoi : At least seven people have been killed and two are reported missing in heavy floods in central Vietnam, officials said Monday. The provinces of Quang Ngai, Khanh Hoa and Binh Dinh reported two fatalities each, while one lost his life in Quang Nam province. According to Central Steering Committee for Flood and Storm Prevention, the floods also damaged over 46,500 houses, submerged many hectares of subsidiary crops, irrigation works and aquaculture ponds in the region.

By Anindita Ramaswamy, DPA, Washington : The image of US civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson slicing his hand as he whispered of wanting to castrate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has repeatedly played out on millions of TV and computer screens. When the furore eventually subsides, the crude gaffe might feature as little more than an inconvenient aside among larger and more substantive issues in the US presidential election. But it also laid bare some very fine fault lines and a deeper, generational shift among the country's black leadership.

Kathmandu : Most educational institutions here were closed Monday due to "problems in transportation management" in view of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit...

By Kavita Bajeli-Datt, IANS, Luoyang : Wearing yellow robes and chanting mantras, dozens of Buddhist monks received President Pratibha Patil who dedicated a grand Indian-style temple to China as a "gift from the people of India to a sister civilisation". As rows of monks in brown and yellow gathered at the courtyard of the temple, which adjoins the famous White Horse Temple (Baima Si), Patil could not but feel proud on the historic occasion, saying it will be "perceived by generations to come as a testimony of our friendship."

By IANS, Toronto : Barack Obama's victory is a "profound and good intervention" by people to regain America and get control over their lives, says award winning author Salman Rushdie. The Indian-born author, who is in the Canadian city of Edmonton to participate in the Festival of Ideas organised by Alberta University to mark its 100th anniversary, Thursday said that by electing Obama, the Americans have "rediscovered that sense of being able to affect change and regain control of your life".

By Joe Macaron NNN-KUNA Washington : A US official has acknowledged that there is a crisis in the Israeli leadership in the wake of a political storm following the release of a report sharply criticizing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's handling of the war on Lebanon. The State Department official told KUNA that Israel is a "tricky and sophisticated functioning democracy," expressing doubts that the Israeli government could function with a "leadership deficit."

By DPA Brussels : European Union (EU) leaders humbled French President Nicolas Sarkozy Thursday by watering down his ambitious plans to create a union of Mediterranean countries. They also gave British premier Gordon Brown thumbs down by opposing his idea of reducing VAT rates for environmentally friendly fridges and televisions. The EU's traditional spring summit in Brussels, which was due to end Friday, was largely devoted to finding ways of reviving the European economy, securing its energy supplies and stopping global warming.

By Xinhua, Wellington : The New Zealand government intended to introduce a Bill this year to strengthen police search and surveillance powers, Radio New Zealand reported on Sunday. Justice Minister Annette King announced the move at a conference on victims' rights organized by the Sensible Sentencing Trust in Wellington on Saturday. She said the law will be updated so computers may be searched and electronic data seized when a search is authorized.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, a rising star of opposition politics, can get a seat in the new government, according to president-elect Vladimir Putin.

By DPA, Paris : At least 60 journalists and one media assistant were killed around the world while carrying out their work this year, the press watchdog Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday. Some 673 journalists were arrested, 29 were kidnapped and 929 were physically attacked or threatened, the Paris-based organization said in its Press Freedom Roundup for 2008.

By IANS, Colombo : A report on the three-decade-long ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka was Friday presented to parliament, making it a public document, an official said.

By IRNA, Berlin : A remote-controlled crane struck an electric power cable outside a nuclear power plant in the southern city of Biblis, leading to the shutdown of one of two reactors, the press reported Wednesday. The operator of the Biblis nuclear power plant said the turbine linked to reactor B was automatically turned off after the crane clipped a high-voltage cable during construction work at a water treatment plant.

By DPA, Toyako (Japan) : The Group of Eight (G8) leaders warned Tuesday that spiralling oil prices were threatening global economic growth. Meeting in the northern island of Hokkaido, the heads of state and government of the world's most industrialized countries called for "concrete steps" to reduce the imbalance between supply and demand and agreed to hold a special energy forum to focus on energy efficiency and new technologies.

By DPA, Washington : US president-elect Barack Obama angered many liberals and the gay community who worked to elect him by choosing a prominent evangelical pastor who has campaigned against abortion and gay marriage to offer the opening prayer at his inauguration. To gay activists, the brief but prominent role given to Rick Warren is seen as a betrayal. But for the next US president, it's a culmination of what he said while campaigning: It's important for Americans to come together even if they disagree on some social issues.

By IANS, Kathmandu: Fate had written Girija Prasad Koirala, the man known as the Kennedy and Nehru of Nepal, would be at the helm of the Himalayan republic's politics, coming as he did from a family that was one of the biggest champions of democracy in Nepal. Born in Tadi in Bihar, he was the son of Krishna Prasad Koirala, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, who died in prison in Nepal for his pro-democracy convictions.

By KUNA, Tokyo : Representatives of foreign journalists in China said Wednesday that overseas reporters are operating in an increasingly hostile environment ahead of the Beijing Olympics, with death threats and intimidation of staff on the increase, media reports said. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) said at least 10 foreign journalists have received death threats in recent weeks after state-run media launched a campaign against alleged Western media bias in reporting of riots and antigovernment protests in Tibet, Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported from Beijing.

By DPA, Wellington : Former Fiji prime minister Laisenia Qarase, who was ousted in a bloodless military coup just over three years ago, faces a trial on corruption charges next week, according to news reports from the capital Suva. The trial is scheduled to start in Suva Tuesday, nearly two years after Qarase was first charged with five counts of abuse of office brought by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption, the Fijivillage news website reported Friday.

By IANS/ RIA Novosti,

By IANS, London : India Wednesday called for the world's most powerful countries to work together in order to dismantle the nuclear smuggling network run by A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani bomb. "On the A.Q. Khan network, we feel that there is a need for much more transparency, not only about what happened in the past, but there's a need for us to be certain that nothing like that will happen again," Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters here.

By Jean-Baptiste Piggin, DPA, Berlin : The recorded-music industry has attacked a law change in Germany, which it fears is likely to shelter small-scale illegal file sharers from draconian civil-damages claims. On the face of it, the law adopted Friday by the federal parliament gives the industry a new weapon to trace internet users who download music tracks without a copyright clearance. Internet service providers will have to reveal the names and addresses of pirates whose IP numbers - a kind of telephone number for the internet - are noted down when they help themselves to music.

By IANS New York : The US will seek death sentences for six people who are to be charged for their key roles in the 9/11 terror attacks, the New York Times reported Monday. The charges would be announced at the Pentagon as soon as Monday and were likely to include numerous war-crimes charges against the six men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The former Al Qaeda operations chief has confessed to his role as the mastermind of the attacks on the twin towers of World Trade Centre, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : More than 3,000 people gathered in central Moscow Wednesday to remember the victims of the suicide bomb attacks on subway stations here, an official said. Thousands of candles were lit to pay tribute to the victims of Monday's bombings. At least 39 people were killed and 95 injured in the attacks on two subway stations in Moscow. The event was held at the Stone of Solovki, a memorial to the victims of political repression, in Moscow's Lubyanka Square within walking distance of the eponymous metro station, where the first bomb attack took place.

By Manish Chand, IANS,

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,

By DPA, Manila : Unidentified gunmen fired at a United Nations truck carrying rice to evacuees in southern Philippines, killing one Filipino worker, a UN representative said Tuesday. Stephen Anderson, the World Food Programme (WFP) representative in the Philippines, said the truck was attacked late Sunday in Calanogas town in Lanao del Sur province, 855 km south of Manila. "WFP strongly deplores the senseless loss of life of an individual who was assisting in the delivery of humanitarian assistance," he said in a statement.

By Prensa Latina, Singapore : The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is making big efforts to mediate in the Cambodia-Thailand dispute over the Preah Vihear Temple, a Humankind's Heritage site. The annual meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers opened under the impact of the dispute between two member countries, which failed to reach an agreement on Monday to settle their differences and keep their troops on alert on either side of the border. Cambodia reported the situation to the United Nations and informed its people on the deployment of Thai troops in the temple.

By IANS New Delhi : Himalayan glaciers are receding fast and may disappear within a few decades, seriously affecting the around 750 million people living downstream, a new UN report says. The report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that of the two glaciers monitored in the Lahaul and Spiti area of Himachal Pradesh, Chhota Shigri receded 1.41 metres of water equivalent (mwe) in 2006, while Hamtah receded 1.39 mwe.

By DPA, Sao Paulo : Five heavily armed men stormed into a Brazilian prison and freed 19 inmates Thursday, police said. The attackers forced their way into the jail in Palmital, around 400 km from Sao Paulo, around 3 a.m. They overpowered two guards and locked them in a cell. The action appeared to have been aimed at freeing a drug dealer. "That's one of the possibilities, but we can't say with certainty yet that that was the motive for the attack. The investigation is ongoing," Marcelo Armstrong Nunes, a police officer, told local media.

New Delhi : President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday extended his greetings to the King and people of Saudi Arabia on the occasion of their...

By RIA Novosti Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) : Tropical storm Noel, which has killed at least 115 people so far, is now ranked a category one hurricane and continues to batter the Caribbean with heavy rain and strong winds, local media reported Friday. The Dominican Republic has been hardest hit with 73 people dead since Monday. More than 60,000 people have been evacuated and a state of emergency has been declared in 28 provinces, including capital Santo Domingo.

By DPA,

By IANS, Madrid: Pesticide in food, water and air could be a risk factor for developing Type 2 diabetes, says a Spanish study.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Prague: Russia has proposed cooperation with the US in creating a global missile defence system, President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday. "We are interested in cooperating with our American partners on this issue as closely as possible," Medvedev told a press conference in Prague after he signed a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with his US counterpart Barack Obama.

By Bernama Kathmandu : Microsoft and Intel are set to launch the Intel Classmate PC (CMPC) for schoolchildren in Nepal soon, China's XINHUA news agency reported Wednesday quoting a local daily as saying. Tilden Wu of Intel said at a press meeting in the capital on Tuesday that the laptop would cost between US$200 and US$300 and would be available in Nepali market in a month or two. A part of Intel's World Ahead Program, the CMPC is targeted at providing one computer per student in emerging markets.

Kathmandu : Nepal is preparing to hold local body elections after a 16-year hiatus, a government minister said Sunday. The elections for the leadership of...

By Xinhua, Bangkok : Insurgents in Thailand's southernmost province of Yala launched a fresh attack against soldiers on Thursday afternoon, just hours after some so-called insurgency leaders issued a cease-fire announcement through Thai army-controlled TV 5. One soldier of an army patrol team was severely injured during the gun attack in Yala province, a military source told Xinhua.

By DPA

Washington : A US congressional committee voted to reduce funding for the Pentagon's plan to install missile defence in Europe, but left open the possibility of restoring the money once Poland and the Czech Republic agree to host the bases.