International

By Xinhua, Phnom Penh : Sam Rainsy, president of the eponymous opposition party, here Wednesday found no staff members at the local court to receive his evidence over the defamation charges filed against him by Cambodian foreign minister Hor Namhong. Rainsy went voluntarily to the court to submit documents in his defense, but no prosecutors showed up to receive them. "The prosecutors all fled. They are scared by Sam Rainsy," he told reporters as left the court. Court officials could not be reached for comments immediately.

By IANS, New Delhi : India will make its first high-level contact with the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama when Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon goes to the US next week to meet key figures of the transition team. Menon is likely to meet influential figures in the transition team that includes Wendy Sherman, the co-chair of the state department's Agency Review Team, which is tasked with preparing policy and personnel for the soon-to-be-named secretaries.

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS Kathmandu : Doleful eyewitness accounts started pouring in as Nepal grappled with its worst accident in recent times after a bridge collapsed in the remote midwest, killing at least 15 and causing hundreds to fall into the icy-cold river below.

By DPA,

By IANS, Moscow : Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for joint efforts by Russia and the US to address the thorny issue of a missile shield, Xinhua reported.

By RIA Novosti, Rome : Billionaire and twice former premier Silvio Berlusconi has won his third general election in Italy, but faces major challenges reviving the country's economic slowdown. With almost all votes counted, Berlusconi's conservative People of Freedom party (PDL) won 46.7% of the vote ahead of his center-left rival Walter Veltroni with 37.6% in the lower house, and by a similar margin in the upper house.

By Arun Kumar, IANS,

Islamabad: The Pakistan foreign ministry Thursday said an employee of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested this week for carrying ammunition does...

By Xinhua, Geneva : The World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday that the risk of a pandemic caused by the A/H1N1 virus was still very high and there was still the possibility to raise the alert level to Phase 6 from the current Phase 5. "At the present time, I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent because we are seeing the disease spread," Michael Ryan, the agency's director for global alert and response, told a news briefing in Geneva. "This is the time for us to prepare, and be ready," he said.

By P. Karunakharan, IANS, Colombo : Floods and landslides due to heavy rains in several parts of Sri Lanka have left at least 11 people dead and over 150,000 displaced amid warning of further rains and strong winds, officials here said Monday. Colonel Keethi Ekkanayake, national coordinator of the Disaster Management Centre, said the overnight death toll of four increased to 11 by Monday noon when seven people including children were reported dead due to floods and fresh landslide in the southern Kalutara district.

By IANS, Tokyo : Japanese Defence Minister Naoki Tanaka ordered the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Friday to intercept a North Korean rocket launch, if necessary.

By IANS, Cadiz (Spain) : Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba Saturday said that talks with the Basque terrorist group ETA are over and the government will not renewed it again. "At this point, everybody ought to know that nobody in the government will negotiate with ETA again," Rubalcaba said in a statement, the EFE news agency reported. The interior minister's statement came after Esperanza Aguirre, President of Madrid regional governmnet, expressed her fear Friday that Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government might resume negotiations with ETA again.

New Delhi: India has dismissed as "petty, to the point of being ludicrous", the criticism over Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif walking up to...

By Xinhua, Paris : France's plan to create a sovereign wealth fund is a part of the country's efforts to guarantee its economic security in the current world financial crisis. The fund, announced by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week, is designed to protect the strategically important French enterprises threatened by the global credit crunch and prevent those companies from foreign takeover, the latest manifestation of economic patriotism of the country.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Recently-established government corporations will be gradually prepared for initial public offerings (IPOs), President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at his final Kremlin news conference. "We'll seek to ensure that these companies are prepared, within several years of receiving state capital investment and improving their technology and market capitalization, to hold initial public offerings to make them part of the market economy," Putin said.

By IRNA, Berlin : A major German peace group on Saturday called for the closure of all US military bases in Germany and the removal of all American nuclear bombs. Talking to IRNA, the spokesman of the Westpfalz Peace Initiative, Detlev Besier said, "It would be nice, if the bases close but we are aware that this won't happen so soon. The long-term goal is not to have any military here. The co-existence of people must be ensured without the military."

By IANS, Beijing : Chinese authorities have halted 180,000 online publications for spreading pornographic content since the country launched an Internet clean-up campaign in March.

By EFE, Miami : A US federal judge reduced the sentence of one of the five Cuban intelligence officers convicted in 2001 of spying on the US from life in prison to 30 years and trimmed a little more than a year from the 19-year term handed down to another spy. Ramon Labanino, shackled and wearing a beige prison uniform, embraced defence attorney William Morris when District Judge Joan Lenard announced she was cutting his sentence to 30 years. Fernando Gonzalez, serving a 19-year prison term, saw his sentence reduced to 17 years behind bars plus five years of probation.

By IANS, Beijing : An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale hit Xigaze prefecture of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region early Sunday morning, a report said. The quake struck the area bordering the Ngamring and Saga counties at 4.08 a.m. and no casualties have been reported so far, a Xinhua report quoted National Seismological Network as saying. The report said that the epicenter of the earthquake was detected at 29.4 degrees north latitude and 86.1 degrees east longitude, with a depth of about 33 km.

By IANS, Beijing : Floods caused by torrential rains damaged pipelines leaving 300,000 people without water in Tonghua city in China's Jilin province, an official said Monday. Wang Ruimin, head of the public utility bureau in Tonghua, said four water pipelines had been damaged since Sunday, cutting water supply to the whole city. Wang said the bureau has mobilised 300 workers to repair the pipelines, but no deadline could be given as to when water supply would be resumed.

By DPA, Singapore : An Indian national who was severely burned in a shipyard explosion died in a Singapore hospital, officials said Tuesday. Karuppan Arjunan, 42, had suffered burns to 90 percent of his body when the explosion and blaze rocked a Belize-registered ship being painted Sunday. He was one of 15 foreign shipyard workers and crewmen who were injured, but died Monday at Singapore General Hospital. The Tamil Nadu native, who had been working in Singapore for three years, was thinking about returning to India, a relative told The Straits Times.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russian warships from the Pacific and Northern fleets will conduct exercises in the Indian Ocean later this year. "Pacific and Northern fleet warships will meet and jointly perform a series of combat training missions in the Indian Ocean," Russian Navy spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said.

By IANS, London : The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) says it has yet to reach an agreement to broadcast the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi despite the claims of chairman of Organising Committee Suresh Kalmadi that they have struck "good deals with broadcasters in Australia and Britain". Kalmadi last month had said that they had earned 37.5 million pounds -- 12.5 milion pounds more than the original target. Australian broadcasters' Network Ten and Foxtel announced two years ago that they had secured TV rights for Delhi in a shared deal.

By DPA New York : After being named a Messenger of Peace for the UN, Academy Award winner George Clooney got a taste of superpower play when Russia barred him from attending a meeting of governments that send troops to UN missions. Clooney came to the UN headquarters in New York Thursday to receive a certificate naming him to the position and a dove pin from Deputy Secretary General Asha Rose Migiro and was to appear before a committee of troops contributing countries to peacekeeping missions, which includes all major powers.

By DPA,

By NNN-APP, United Nations : UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro has called on lawyers to play a greater role in ensuring that countries live up to their commitments to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In an address to the American Bar Association in New York, Ms. Migiro said the fight to bring an end to impunity for such crimes is one of the most important ways of ensuring that the rule of law is put into practice worldwide.

By IANS, Moscow/Kiev (Ukraine) : Ukraine may integrate its early warning missile system with Europe or propose other countries use its missile defence capabilities, the foreign ministry has said. Earlier in the year, Russia and Ukraine had withdrawn from an agreement on Moscow's renting radar sites in Ukraine. The agreement, signed in 1992, defined the main principles for using early-warning missile systems located in Ukraine and funding for their modernization and reconstruction.

By DPA Belgrade : Serbia's incumbent and pro-European President Boris Tadic has won the presidential runoff, according to partial results by the election authorities and projections by pollsters. "I can announce that we won in these presidential elections," Tadic told a crowd of supporters gathered outside his Democratic Party (DS) headquarters Sunday. Tadic was leading ultra-nationalist challenger Tomislav Nikolic with 51 percent to 47 percent, with roughly half of ballots counted, the central election commission said, announcing raw figures, not a projection.

By DPA, Luxembourg : The European Union has reached a deal on a package of sanctions against Iran on top of those decided last week by the United Nations Security Council, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Monday. Western powers suspect that Iran's nuclear programme is designed to create an atomic bomb, something that Tehran denies. As a result, the country has been the subject of several rounds of UN sanctions, the last of which was approved Wednesday. Westerwelle said the EU's decision to add to them was "an important signal of determination".

Toronto, Canada : The Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) at the University of Toronto (UoT) hosted last week the Annual Islam Awareness Week at the...

By IANS, Washington : China is "denying there is a problem" between its government and Tibet despite reports of "suppression ... or restrictions" culturally and religiously of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama says. China claims Tibetans are "very happy ... much, much, much better than previous Tibet," the Tibetan spiritual leader told CNN Monday days after his controversial meeting with President Barack Obama last week.

By Xinhua Beijing : A 5,158-meter-deep well China drilled to get to know about the earth's crust could contribute to forecast earthquakes, said scientists. "Researchers will be able to record the movements of liquid and gas which lies five kilometers underground. While drilling the well they have found abnormal movements related to earthquakes," said Xu Zhiqin, the chief scientist of the China Continental Scientific Drilling Engineering Center and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

By IANS, London : Cherie Blair, the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair and a leading human rights lawyer, has appealed to the UN to recognise June 23 as International Widows Day. The appeal came Tuesday on the campaign's 5th anniversary celebrations at the House of Lords, Britain's upper house of parliament. "I am pleased to see that our campaign for UN recognition of International Widows Day is gaining support from all over the world and call upon the UN to bestow official recognition accordingly," Blair said.

Melbourne : Australian counter-terrorism police on Saturday arrested five men in Melbourne for an alleged terror plot. According to officials, two of the five men...

By IANS, London : A Chechen militant group has claimed responsibility for the bombings at two Moscow metro stations that killed 39 people, media reports said. In a video message posted on a Chechen rebel website, militant leader Doku Umarov said his group was behind Monday's double suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, BBC reported Wednesday. The rebel, who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, said attacks on Russian soil would continue.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By IANS, New Delhi : Environment organisation Greenpeace Tuesday held a demonstration to press their demand for justice for its two activists being tried in Japan for unravelling corruption in Japan's whaling industry. The authorities in Japan have demanded 18 months' jail term for Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, who exposed corruption in the "Japanese government sponsored the whaling industry".

By DPA, Seoul : Two South Korean airmen were killed Friday after an air force fighter jet crashed into the sea off the west coast, a media report said. The F-5F plane went down near the coastal city of Gangneung during a training flight, Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying. "Our rescue team has discovered bodies of the two pilots and are recovering the wreckage scattered in the waters," the official said. There was no information about the possible cause of the crash, which took place 237 km east of Seoul.

By IANS, Washington : Thirty-eight percent of all kidney transplants in the US are performed using living donors, but some patients who don't have access to such donors approach websites for the organ. Now ethical questions about this practice are being raised. Although these websites, known as 'Good Samaritan' donors accounted only for 71 and 68 kidney donations in 2005 and 2006 in US, respectively, they represent a source of hope for patients who cannot count on their family members or social networks.

By ADB News Mnila, Philippines : Asian Development Bank representatives are highlighting the continuing prevalence of poverty in the region during discussions over the replenishment of the Asian Development Fund (ADF), an endowment used to provide grants and low-interest loans to some of Asia and the Pacific's poorest nations. Despite the impressive progress made by Asia-Pacific nations over the past decade in fostering economic growth, 1.5 billion people in the region still live on less than $2 a day.

By IANS,

By IANS,

By IANS, Rio de Janeiro : Brazil's state-owned energy giant Petrobras would conduct a feasibility study to extract oil from oil shale in the US using technology developed by a Brazilian firm, EFE reported Tuesday. The oil major announced Monday it had struck a deal with Oil Shale Exploration Company, which will give the technology, and Japan's Mitsui group to conduct the study on extracting oil from oil shale in Utah. "Petrobras will conduct a technical, economic and environmental feasibility study testing the Petrosix process," said the Brazilian firm in a communique.

By DPA, Taipei : Taiwan was struck by 12 undersea quakes, including a powerful one on the eastern part of the island, but no damage or casualties were reported so far, the earthquake centre said Thursday. The first quake, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale occurred at 2.28 a.m. (1828 GMT), shaking the eastern county of Taitung. The second tremor struck 24 minutes later with a magnitude of 4.3 near Chengkung in Taitung, the centre said.

By KUNA, London : The Dalai Lama was due to arrive in London Tuesday at the start of a 10-day visit to the UK, the BBC said. The Tibetan spiritual leader will address Parliament and give evidence on human rights violations to a parliamentary committee during his trip. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will not receive him at 10 Downing Street but is due to meet him with the head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, at his official residence of Lambeth Palace, central London, this Friday.

By IANS,

By KUNA United Nations : The Security Council welcomed the "Agreement on the Principles of Partnership of the Coalition Government" between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his opponent Raila Odinga to resolve the crisis following the disputed elections last December.

By Prensa Latina, Beijing : About 160,000 people, included several heads of State, are expected to attend the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games Friday night, this capital's government official reported Monday. The figure includes 70,000 guests, athletes and artists, while the rest are spectators, supporting staff and volunteers, Zhou Zhengyu, assistant director of the municipal communications committee, told press. He noted that organizers already approved a plan to transport that enormous figure of people until the Bird's Nest National Stadium.

By DPA, London : British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in an interview Sunday that he has made mistakes in office but will do better in future. Speaking to the BBC on the second day of the Labour Party's annual conference in Manchester, Brown said "you asked me had we made mistakes and I said yes ... Of course I always want to do better and I will do better." Brown described his cabinet as "pretty united." He has been under pressure from poor poll ratings and an attempt by a handful of junior government ministers last week to seek a leadership contest.

By DPA, Washington : US President Barack Obama vowed the government would conduct a thorough investigation of the country's worst mining accident in decades after the bodies of four missing US miners were found early Saturday. The final death toll stood at 29. "We did not receive the miracle we prayed for," said West Virgina Governor Joe Manchin. "This journey has ended and now the healing will start."

By IANS,

By DPA, Washington : A US federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction stopping expanded federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, which was part of a new policy outlined by the Obama administration last year. US District Judge Royce Lamberth Monday issued an order barring the Health and Human Services Department and the National Institutes for Health (NIH) from conducting studies on new human embryonic cell lines.

London, Jan 17, IRNA -- One of Britain’s leading banks is being targeted in the latest wave of anti-Israel demonstrations across the country, protesting against the ongoing slaughter of more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Protests were being held by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) Saturday at Lloyds TSB in Edinburgh and Glasgow after the bank stopped clearing the cheques of Britain’s largest Palestinian charity, Interpal.

By DPA, New York: Close to 12 million people in Benin, Liberia and Sierra Leone will be vaccinated against yellow fever in the largest-ever health campaign in Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Tuesday. "High vaccination coverage will prevent outbreaks of yellow fever, a disease that is very difficult to diagnose in the early stages of infection," said William Perea, coordinator of WHO's epidemic readiness and intervention unit. Recent yellow fever outbreaks in these three African nations have been severe.

By IANS, London : People with autism-related disorders are less likely to make irrational decisions and are less influenced by gut instincts, according to the latest research. Decision-making is a complex process, involving both intuition and analysis: analysis involves computation and more "rational" thought, but is slower; intuition, by contrast, is much faster, but less accurate, relying on heuristics, or "gut instincts". Previous studies have shown that our response to a problem depends on how the problem is posed - the so called "framing effect".

By DPA, London : A British nuclear-powered submarine has run aground near an island off the west coast of Scotland, the ministry of defence (MoD) said Friday.

Colombo : Heating up Sri Lanka's presidential race, several opposition parties Monday pledged to support common candidate Maithreepala Sirisena in the poll battle against...

By Xinhua, Phnom Penh : The Thai side has agreed to withdraw its troops from a temple at Cambodia's border province Otdar Meanchey and reduce its total number of soldiers within the border area, an advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen said here Tuesday. Either country will keep only 10 military personnel at the 13-century Ta Moan Thom Temple and Thailand is also to decrease its troops that have accumulated during the 22-day-long standoff with Cambodia near the border, said the advisor on condition of anonymity.

By IANS, London: Singer Demi Lovato and Britney Spears passed the time during breaks on the set of "The X Factor" playing games.

By IANS, Colombo : Fierce fighting broke out Saturday between the government troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka's restive north as the military claimed to be closing in on the rebels' "administrative capital". The defence ministry Saturday evening claimed at least 11 guerrillas of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were killed and 21 wounded when the advancing troops "confronted elements of the LTTE head-on during their forward push into the main garrison township Kilinochchi".

By DPA, Washington : US presidential candidate Barack Obama has voiced willingness to compromise on offshore US oil drilling as part of "comprehensive" energy legislation. In what was quickly seen as a significant reversal, Obama told Florida's Palm Beach Post newspaper in an interview Friday that he was open to offshore drilling if it would break a logjam on energy legislation in Congress. "My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices," Obama said.

By Manish Chand

IANS

New Delhi : China has told India that it has no issues with the coming visit of Taiwanese opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou as long as he does not sport a Taiwanese flag on his car or flaunt any independent Taiwanese insignia or identity.