International

By IANS Panama City : A small plane with four people aboard was reported missing in western Panama, according to the local civil aviation authority, Spain's EFE news agency reported Tuesday. The Cessna 172 aircraft, piloted by a Panamanian, disappeared Sunday between Isla Seca in the Pacific and Volcan in the western province of Chiriqui, said Victor de la Hoz, spokesman for Panama's Civil Aviation Authority. The passengers were three US citizens, a man and his two children, who were travelling to Volcan, which is located in a forested and inaccessible area.

By IANS, Chennai : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi Tuesday once again called for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka despite most of the opposition parties boycotting an all-party meet called to discuss the plight of minority Tamils in Sri Lanka. "We will continue to demand the declaration of a ceasefire in Sri Lanka and start of political negotiations between the island's government and the Tamil minority there... (but) will not embarrass the centre through mass resignations of our MPs or withdrawal of support to the United Progressive Alliance government," Karunanidhi told reporters.

By DPA Yangon : In the wake of increased sanctions against the regime, Myanmar's state-run media Sunday called upon detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, belittling her as "Aunty Suu," to make concessions that could lead towards a political dialogue. "No dialogue can achieve success without sacrifices and concessions," said an open letter that appeared in The New Light of Myanmar Sunday and was repeated in other state-run media.

By RIA Novosti, Tbilisi : Georgia's Foreign Ministry has responded with a sense of humor to Russian media reports concerning an imminent Georgian military operation in its breakaway republic of Abkhazia. "The Georgian leadership advises the anonymous representatives of the Russian security agencies...to take a few drops of valerian [a traditional herbal sedative]. However, Georgian doctors believe that valerian will not be potent enough...and they would be better off taking Valium," Georgia's acting foreign minister, Grigol Vashadze, was quoted as saying by a ministry spokesman.

By IANS Caracas : Venezuela's Coca-Cola Femsa , the leading bottling unit of Latin America, has announced that it has reached a truce with the former employees who had been blockading part of its installations since Feb 5 demanding reinstatement. "Operations will return to normal soon following the truce, which was the only way to solve the crisis," Rodrigo Anzola, the legal chief of the company, said Friday at a press conference here, Spain's EFE news agency reported Saturday.

By DPA, New York : A rise in oil prices helped drive US stocks higher Wednesday together with improved forecasts for some of the country's top banks. Crude oil jumped 4.1 percent to $68.81 per barrel in New York, spurring a rally in energy companies including Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Financial stocks gained as some analysts recommended buying the shares of prominent banks, including Goldman Sachs, which could be granted approval to pay back government loans as soon as next week.

By DPA, Seoul : North Korea Thursday released a photograph of leader Kim Jong Il's son and likely successor for the first time, a news report said.

By IANS, Beijing : China will create 400,000 jobs this year for ethnic minorities in the country's western Xinjiang Uyghur region, the government said Thursday.

By Xinhua, Havana : Russia has provided a $150-million loan to Cuba and signed pacts with the Caribbean nation for oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, a media report said. The money will be provided in instalments over two years, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. The agreements signed between Cuba's state-owned firm Cubapetroleo and Russia's Zarubezhneft company will allow the firms to jointly explore crude oil off the coast of Cuba. Russian Vice President Igor Sechin and Cuban Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas participated in the signing ceremony.

By IANS, Toronto : US Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said he will close the Guantanamo Bay prison if he is elected to the White House in November. Addressing the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa Friday, McCain said he agreed with the public opinion in Canada against the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison. "Many Canadians have objected to the policies of the United States in dealing with terrorists and enemy combatants held at the Guantanamo prison.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Two Russian Il-76 airplanes are to deliver 60 metric tons of humanitarian aid to Myanmar on Thursday, as the Southeast Asian country attempts to recover from a cyclone that has left some 100,000 people dead and thousands homeless, an emergencies spokesperson said. Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar on Saturday, devastating large parts of the country. The death toll is likely to rise further as rescue workers struggle to reach remote settlements, while the nationwide number of displaced people could reach millions.

By IANS,

By M.R. Narayan Swamy, IANS New Delhi : Sri Lanka's decision to scrap its ceasefire agreement (CFA) with the Tamil Tigers will have "negative consequences" and only spark more violence, warned a Norwegian minister who helped broker the truce in 2002. Minister of International Development Erik Solheim, who for years was Norway's Special Envoy to Sri Lanka and continues to oversee the now shattered peace process, added that Colombo's move was "not totally unexpected".

By IANS/AKI, Rome: At least 50 Syrian soldiers have deserted the army and joined rebel forces, Syrian activists said.

By Xinhua, Washington : The US Saturday removed North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, the State Department announced. "The secretary of state has rescinded the designation of North Korea as a state terror sponsor," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a briefing. The announcement was made after the US and Pyongyang reached an agreement on a series of verification measures of North Korean nuclear facilities. McCormack said North Korea would resume disablement of its nuclear facilities.

By IRNA-Itar-Tass Moscow : The rate of crimes committed in the Russian armed forces went down considerably last year, Russia's Deputy Prosecutor-General, Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told the Russian army daily Krasnaya Zvezda. "The levels of crime were down in all arms and services by 20 percent (Civil Defense troops excluded)," Fridinsky said, adding that was largely a result of joint efforts by prosecutors and military commanders.

By RIA Novosti, Tbilisi : Georgia's United Opposition has begun forming committees of an 'alternative parliament', saying it will refuse to recognize the results of the recent parliamentary election, an opposition member said on Tuesday. President Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement won about 120 of 150 seats in parliament in the May 21 parliamentary polls. The United Opposition bloc, which received just 16 seats, has demanded that the president acknowledge the elections were rigged, and has called for the results to be annulled.

By DPA, Tokyo : Ten Taiwanese ships entered Japanese territorial waters in the East China Sea Monday near Diaoyu Islands to protest Japan's handling of a ship collision last week. The Japanese coast guard warned the Taiwanese vessels with 12 activists and 30 journalists onboard to leave the area, while patrol boats were sent to monitor the ships. A few hours after the warning, the ships left the waters, according to media reports. The sea protest came after a Japanese coast guard vessel sank a Taiwanese boat near the Diaoyus Tuesday.

By Arun Kumar,IANS,

By RIA Novosti United Nations : Russia's envoy to the UN said that Thursday's security council meeting failed to reach a consensus on independence for Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo, with those states in favor in the minority. Vitaly Churkin said, after a closed emergency session of the UN Security Council, there was no "clear cut support" for independence in Kosovo with only five of the 15 members backing unilateral sovereignty for the Albanian-dominated province.

By DPA, New York/Washington/Moscow : The US and Russia have completed arrangements for one of the largest spy swaps in history as 10 Russian spy suspects and four prisoners in Russian custody pleaded guilty to charges against them. In New York, the 10 Russian spies, who included a Peruvian-born US citizen, pleaded guilty in federal court to lesser charges of acting as illegal agents of a foreign government, US justice officials confirmed Thursday. They were to be deported quickly.

By DPA

Washington : US President George W. Bush Friday urged Congress to put politics aside and move forward on a defence spending bill to ensure US troops in Iraq are funded.

Bush faulted the Democratic controlled Congress for engaging in political theatrics rather than addressing the needs of the troops.

"The Democratic leaders chose to have a political debate on a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq," Bush said at the White House.

By IANS, London : Parts of Scotland's Glasgow airport were evacuated after a suspicious package was found, a media report said.

By IANS, Washington : Pentagon is planning to replace by 2020 some 30 percent of its soldiery with robots, which are quietly transiting from the realm of science fiction to the actual battlefield. Robots are increasingly taking over from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, there are unmanned aerial vehicles and ground robots for explosives detection. A report by Erin Fults quoted Doug Few and Bill Smart of Washington University, who are leading this cutting edge innovation, as saying that machines still need the human touch.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : North Korea said on Saturday that it would no longer consider Japan a party to the international talks on the North's nuclear disarmament, citing Tokyo's refusal to meet its obligations under a six-nation deal. "We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency. Japan "has not done anything to fulfill its commitment, and is still refusing to do so," the spokesman said.

By DPA Singapore : Civil society groups blasted the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Monday for its "abysmal human rights record" at a forum in Singapore marking the organisation's accomplishments two days before its 40th anniversary. Seventy-five delegates from the 10 countries belonging to ASEAN were attending the two-day Think Tank Forum co-organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and the Institute of Policy Studies.

By Xinhua, Talayan (Philippines) : At least 38 homeless people, including ten children, have died due to health problems in various evacuation centres, witnesses said Monday. The deaths took place at the evacuation centres amid the ongoing fighting between government troops and rebels in the southern Philippines. In a small marketplace where 1,257 families set up their makeshift dwellings in the township of Talayan in Maguindanao Province, 24 displaced people - six of whom are children - have died since August last year, said Hassan Kalupa, a leader of the evacuees.

By Prensa Latina, Hanoi : Vietnam will export some 3.2 million tons of rice by September and plans good crops to continue guaranteeing domestic and foreign supplies, official sources in Hanoi said on Tuesday. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, concerns about an alleged lack of grain in Vietnam are unfounded, and such rumors have caused the price of domestic rice to shoot up last week. The rice market will return to stability soon, said Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Nguyen Cam Tu, predicting good rice crops for May and June.

By DPA, Washington : Canadian scientists said Thursday that they have rediscovered the HMS Investigator, a famous British rescue ship that got trapped in Arctic ice 157 years ago while trying to track the fate of another Arctic expedition. Archaeologists located the well-preserved hull of the Investigator 11 metres below sea surface in Mercy Bay on Banks Island. Using sonar equipment, they found the remains of the ship along with three corpses within 15 minutes of searching, they said.

By Arun Kumar, IANS,

By DPA Tokyo : Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged Friday to make Japan a "low-carbon society" and set up a financial system to help developing nations tackle environmental problems. With a mind to host the Group of Eight summit meeting in July, Fukuda addressed lawmakers on the first day of the regular Diet session that he planned to develop innovative technologies to cut greenhouse gas emissions and create a financial mechanism to join the effort to fight global warming.

By Xinhua

London : The British military is planning to pull its troops out of Iraq in a year or so as to strengthen its combat capability in Afghanistan, the Sunday Telegraph reported citing a senior military official.