SYDNEY: Papua New Guinean officials were today riday trying to piece together how a passenger plane crashed in dense forest, killing 28 people – but leaving four survivors – in the nation’s worst air disaster. The survivors were the Australian and New Zealand pilots, a flight attendant, and a passenger believed to be a Chinese national, who reportedly escaped the fiery wreckage through a crack in the fuselage. The Airlines PNG flight from the mountain gateway city of Lae to Madang, believed to be carrying parents travelling to see their children ahead of their university graduation, went down yesterday as a heavy storm closed in. “We had 32 people on board. Four survived and the rest sustained fatal injuries in the crash,” the head of Papua New Guinea’s Accident Investigation Commission David Inau told AFP via telephone. “This will be the worst (crash) in terms of fatalities. This is the biggest, the highest fatality figures we’ve had.” Papua New Guinea authorities said the weather had been poor when the Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft came down in dense forest near the mouth of the Gogol River, about 20km (13 miles) from its destination. But they were unable to confirm whether the

SYDNEY: The Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea was jolted by a 6.7-magnitude undersea earthquake today, but no tsunami warning was issued.
The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at a depth of 45km (28 miles), 103km east of the mountain…

BANGKOK: Thailand’s prime minister moved today to reassure Bangkok’s 12 million residents over a looming flood crisis, after one of her ministers briefly sparked panic with an evacuation warning. Science Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi rushed out of a flood briefing late yesterday to say that several areas in Bangkok’s northern suburbs were at risk of being submerged by up to one metre (3.3 feet) of water after a dyke burst. But the authorities quickly backtracked, causing confusion among residents who have been braced for floodwaters to reach the capital after causing havoc across northern and central Thailand. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said today that the situation was under control. “The water level is stable and not increasing. So I would like to ask people not to panic,” she told reporters. “Minister Prodprasob wanted to update the people about the situation because he was concerned that they were anxious about it,” Yingluck explained. “So he just reported about the possibility of what might happen to the people, and nothing happened. Everything was normal.” Unusually heavy monsoon rains have killed at least 289 people, destroyed crops, inundated hundreds of factories and damaged the homes and livelihoods of millions of people in Thailand, according

BEIJING: A fighter jet crashed at an air show in northern China today, state media reported, but it was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties.
China’s state-run television CCTV showed images of the Chinese-made Flying Leopard pl…

BEIJING: Police in China arrested a man 28 years after he was accused of hugging a woman against her will – a serious charge at the time – only to find he had married his “victim”, state media said today. Chen Zonghao was accused of “hooliganism” – a charge that no longer exists under Chinese law – in the 1980s, at a time when China toughened measures against “immoral” behaviour, the official China Daily newspaper said. He had allegedly hugged a female colleague against her consent in the southern island of Hainan and the woman’s parents reported the incident to the police, prompting Chen to flee to his hometown in nearby Guangdong province. Hainan police officers finally arrested Chen in Guangdong on Oct 3 – three decades on – after driving 1,100km (680 miles) in a strong typhoon, the report said. But they found he had married the alleged victim. The couple now have two sons and a daughter and run a shop together. An officer at Hainan’s Wanning police station, who would not give her name, confirmed the case when contacted by AFP. “He is on bail and it’s not clear yet what we will do next, the police

VIENNA: Even after a string of UN sanctions, the assassination of its scientists and a computer bug attacking its systems, Iran is still defiantly pressing ahead with its nuclear programme. So a number of think-tanks are coming out and urging the West to seize on new signals from Tehran, repeated last week, that it might be prepared to halt the most sensitive area of its activities. This is the enrichment of uranium to 20-percent purity, something Iran began doing last year, taking it closer to the 90-percent level that could potentially be used in a nuclear weapon, experts say. Iran plans to triple output and is moving its production to a difficult-to-bomb mountain bunker, and although analysts differ on how close Iran is to actually having The Bomb, most agree on the direction. The most alarmist prediction is from Greg Jones of the US-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, who thinks Iran could make enough fissile material within eight weeks of deciding to do so. By the end of 2012, it could take just four weeks. Olli Heinonen, IAEA inspections head until 2010 and now at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, thinks it won’t

Aussie Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not have enough backing to change the migration laws to allow the refugee swap.

DENPASAR: Indonesia’s resort island of Bali was struck by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake today, shaking buildings and sending tourists running out of hotels. There were no immediate reports of any casualties. The epicentre of the quake was about 100 miles (160km) southwest of the island’s capital Denpasar, the US geological survey said. Caroline Mercier, a 40-year-old tourist in the island’s cultural centre of Ubud, said she was used to feeling quakes in California, but never like this one. “It started at my feet and went all though my heart and head – it made me nauseous. My first reaction was to get out of the house. I was very confused when the roof started shaking,” she told Reuters. Novotel Bali Benoa, one of the many resorts in the luxury southern beach area of Nusa Dua, evacuated its guests as the hotel shook for a minute. “The funny thing is that the foreign guests who were sitting in the lobby did not feel the shaking. They started running when hearing people say ‘there’s an earthquake’ while running down the lobby,” hotel worker Ariyanti told Reuters. Endro Tjahjono, head of information at Bali’s meteorology agency, said there was no tsunami potential and

PUNAKHA:  Bhutan’s hugely popular king married a 21-year-old student in a colourful ceremony showcasing the rich Buddhist culture of one of the world’s most remote and insular countries. Amid clouds of incense and chanting monks, the 31-year-old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck crowned his queen at the end of a series of rituals in the 17th-century fortified monastery chosen for the occasion. After a brief purification ceremony to start, they walked hand-in-hand and smiling to the inner sanctum of the monastery where an hour of blessings, prostrations and prayers culminated in the queen taking the throne. The “Dragon King”, an Oxford graduate who came to power in 2008 at the start of democracy in Bhutan, married Jetsun Pema, the daughter of an airline pilot widely admired for her beauty and her impact on the love-struck monarch. Proceedings were beamed live across the country of 700,000 people and signalled the start of three days of joyful celebrations, with dancing, singing and drinking in towns and villages. Bhutan banned foreign television until 1999 and is the only nation in the world whose government pursues “Gross National Happiness” for its people instead of economic growth. “You can be sure that our happiness is

MANILA: President Benigno Aquino declared that there would be no hero’s burial for late former President Ferdinand Marcos under his watch. He said that it would be the “height of injustice” to give honor to a person who made the people suffer during the martial law years. “It really would be the height of injustice to render any state honor to the person who was the direct mastermind of all of this suffering. I will not be sanctioning a burial for the late President Marcos… not under my watch,” President Aquino told members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines during the traditional question-and-answer portion of the open forum. The President said that many of those who suffered under martial law were yet to be compensated and the Marcos family was yet to apologize to the victims. Thousands of political opponents went missing or were killed under the Marcos regime and the Marcos family was accused of plundering up to $10 billion from the nation—according to one government estimate. Successive governments have launched an array of lawsuits and other legal efforts to recover the funds but they have largely failed and no member of the Marcos family has gone

NEW YORK:  One-time hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam, convicted in the biggest Wall Street insider-trading case in decades, hears his punishment in court on Thursday with all signs pointing to a lengthy prison term. Rajaratnam, 54, whose Galleon Group managed $7 billion at its peak, could face almost 25 years in prison. His lawyers are asking for a shorter term, arguing he is in poor health and does not deserve a two-decade prison term akin to what a violent offender would receive. A sentence of 15 years for Rajaratnam may suit the crime and send a warning to others on Wall Street, said St. John’s University business professor Anthony Sabino. “The court has to balance he is a first offender, that this is stock fraud, not murder,” Sabino said. A Sri Lankan-born U.S. citizen, Rajaratnam is the central figure in a sweeping insider trading case that touched some of America’s top companies, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Intel Corp, IBM and the elite McKinsey & Co consultancy. It is the biggest insider trading case since the 1980s-era prosecutions of speculator Ivan Boesky and junk-bond financier Michael Milken. The Galleon founder was arrested in October 2009 after an investigation marked by

SINGAPORE:  Businesses along Singapore’s famous Orchard Road shopping street plan to deploy trained hawks to scare off thousands of birds whose droppings rain down on pedestrians’ heads, a report said Wednesday.
The Straits Times said r…

YANGON: Myanmar freed a prominent monk who led street protests in 2007 and dozens of other “prisoners of conscience” today as one of the world’s most reclusive states begins to open up after half-a-century of iron-fisted authoritarian rule. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking to Reuters before Myanmar began a general amnesty for 6,359 inmates that was expected to include political detainees, said she was encouraged by “promising signals” of reform but it was too early to announce steps Washington might take in response. The US, Europe and Australia have said freeing an estimated 2,100 political prisoners in Myanmar is essential to even considering lifting sanctions that have crippled the pariah state and, over years, driven it closer to China. “We’re encouraged by the steps we see the government is taking… we’re going to take them at their word,” Clinton said in an interview in Washington, although she added it was premature to predict how the US might respond. “But we want to see actions. And if they are going to release political prisoners that would be a very positive sign.” The most prominent dissident released was Shin Gambira, a leader of the All-Burmese Monks Alliance which played a

The Wall Street protests may be part of a global popular backlash that started in the Arab countries against the ruling elites.

KIEV: A Ukrainian court today jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko for seven years over a 2009 gas deal with Russia, threatening its ambition to agree a first step to joining the European Union. In acknowledgment of the potentially devastating consequences for Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovych insisted that the decision was not final and that he understood the European Union’s anxiety over the trial. Amid emotional scenes in the packed court in central Kiev, judge Rodion Kireyev said Tymoshenko was guilty of exceeding her authority to force the state gas company to sign a 10-year contract for gas imports from Russia. “The court rules that YV Tymoshenko intentionally used her powers to criminal ends,” Kireyev said in his judgment. “The court finds her guilty and sentences her to seven years in prison.” Tymoshenko, her hair plaited intricately around her head and wearing an immaculate beige dress, defiantly shouted “Glory to Ukraine!” to her supporters in the court, who proclaimed “Glory to the Heroes! in response. “We will fight and defend my good name in the European court. We have to be strong and defend Ukraine from this authoritarianism. Today the court showed that the justice system has been crushed. Fight,

YANGON: Myanmar announced a mass prisoner amnesty Tuesday, raising hope for the imminent release of hundreds of political detainees in what would be a major sign of change in the authoritarian state. More than 6,300 prisoners will be pardoned from Wednesday “on humanitarian grounds”, state television announced, without saying whether political prisoners would be among them. The fate of the country’s estimated 2,000 political detainees, who include pro-democracy campaigners, journalists, monks and lawyers, has long been a top demand of Western nations that have imposed sanctions on Myanmar. The announcement came just hours after a government-appointed human rights panel called for a pardon for the country’s “prisoners of conscience”. The National Human Rights Commission said freeing detainees “who do not pose a threat to the stability of state” would allow them to participate in “nation-building”, according to an official English-language newspaper. It noted that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and foreign governments were calling for “the release of what is referred to as ‘prisoners of conscience’,” in a rare official acknowledgement of their existence. On Monday a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that political prisoners were expected to be freed within days. Their release would be

YANGON:  A new official human rights body in Myanmar urged the president on Tuesday to release “prisoners of conscience” in an open letter in state media, the clearest sign yet that the reclusive state may free political prisoners within days. The United States, Europe and Australia have made the release of an estimated 2,100 political prisoners a key condition before they would consider lifting sanctions imposed in response to human rights abuses, including a bloody army crackdown on a 1988 student uprising. One lawmaker in Myanmar’s parliament, who attended a meeting on Friday in the capital, Naypyitaw, told Reuters the release of political prisoners could come “in a few days.” He said that was the message given by Shwe Mann, the Lower House speaker. Prisoners who did not pose “a threat to the stability of state and public tranquility” should be released, Win Mra, chairman of Myanmar National Human Rights Commission, wrote in the open letter published on Tuesday. “The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission humbly requests the president, as a reflection of his magnanimity, to grant amnesty to those prisoners and release them from the prison,” the letter ended. The commission was formed last month by the president. The

THIMPHU: Bhutan’s king, an Oxford graduate and “prince charming of the Himalayas”, is set to marry on Thursday at what promises to be an emotional moment for the 700,000 adoring subjects of his isolated nation. Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, 31, a mountain-biking fanatic and Elvis fan crowned in 2008, will wed a photogenic student 10 years his junior called Jetsun Pema, the daughter of an airline pilot. The main wedding ceremony takes place on Thursday in a stunning 17th-century fortress surrounded by mountains and built at the confluence of two fast-running rivers in the ancient capital Punakha. The newlyweds appear in public for the first time on Saturday at a sports stadium in the sleepy present-day capital Thimphu, where thousands of Bhutanese are expected to turn out in colourful national dress. The announcement of the nuptials in May broke the hearts of the king’s many admirers — he was once mobbed on a trip to Thailand by weeping teenagers — but it has brought joy to his people, who idolise the royal family. Cheerfulness abounds on the streets of the country that invented “Gross National Happiness” — a development philosophy that sees the government measure the mental well-being of citizens,

BANGKOK:  Thai rescue workers scrambled on Monday to prevent a humanitarian disaster as the worst flooding in half a century swamped large sections of the country, shut factories and stranded thousands of people. Nearly 270 people have been killed in heavy monsoon rains, floods and mudslides since July that have battered 30 of Thailand’s 77 provinces, authorities said. About 3.4 million acres (1.38 million hectares) of farm land is under water — about 13 times the size of Hong Kong. More then 700,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged. In the hard-hit central province of Ayutthaya, 198 factories in a big industrial estate, including an assembly plant of Honda Motor Co Ltd , closed after flood waters breached a wall of sandbags at the weekend. “There will certainly be some impact on production due to the flooding in Ayutthaya,” Ammar Master, a senior market analyst at the Asian unit of J.D. Power and Associates, a California-based industry research firm. “While automakers will have components in stock, we expect a slowdown in production in the immediate term,” he said. “Measures taken are likely to be similar to those implemented in the immediate aftermath of the (March earthquake) disaster in Japan.” Industry

CHENNAI: At least 600 suspected cases of “rat fever” were reported in Kerala with close to 100 deaths this year as post-monsoon diseases threaten the state.
Health authorities are on high alert, mainly in northern Kerala, to tackle the outb…

TAIPEI: Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou said today that unification with China was not on the agenda for now, speaking a day after his Chinese counterpart called for the two rivals to reunite. Ma also urged China to emulate Taiwan’s democracy, as he addressed an audience gathered here for the 100th anniversary of the revolution that set the stage for the Republic of China, the island’s official name. “We are maintaining the status quo of ‘no unification, no independence, and no use of force’,” Ma said. “This has greatly relaxed tensions across the Taiwan Strait and garnered the international community’s affirmation and support.” China and Taiwan have been separated since the end of a civil war 62 years ago, but Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island and has vowed to get it back. Yesterday, Chinese President Hu Jintao marked the same 100th anniversary by stating that “reunification through peaceful means is what most suits Chinese people’s fundamental interests, including Taiwan compatriots”. Officials at the Presidential Office here could not immediately confirm whether Ma had adjusted his prepared speech after Hu’s comments were delivered. The Taiwanese president said in his speech that the aspiration of the founders of the Chinese republic

SYDNEY: Embattled carrier Qantas was forced to cancel or delay nearly 80 flights today despite aircraft engineers calling off strike action after the airline threatened to withhold pay. Line maintenance engineers, who check aircraft on the tarmac, were planning to stop work for four hours as part of a labour dispute in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. But just hours before walking off the job the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) cancelled the strike, saying Qantas had threatened to withhold up to seven hours’ pay for the time not worked. “The airline is playing dirty pool with our members by threatening them for taking lawful industrial action,” ALAEA Federal Secretary Steve Purvinas said. “To ensure our members are not unfairly disadvantaged by Qantas management’s last-minute curve ball, we have decided to reassess our position on today’s planned action. “We are currently seeking legal advice and if necessary we will launch legal action against the airline for unlawful adverse action against our members,” he added in a statement. It is the second time in less than a week that unions have threatened to strike then called it off at the last minute, creating confusion. On Friday, a planned stoppage by baggage

TIMIKA: Indonesian police shot and killed one protester and wounded another as they clashed with striking workers today at a mine run by US company Freeport McMoran, a union official said. More than a thousand workers were involved in the clashes at the sprawling Grasberg complex, one of the world’s biggest gold and copper mines, in Indonesia’s remote Papua province. “A protester was killed from a gunshot fired by police and another was shot in the chest,” said Virgo Solossa, an official for the mine workers’ union, identifying the dead man as 30-year-old Petrus Ayemsekaba. Papua police spokesman Wachyono said police officers fired warning shots into the air after the striking workers pelted them with stones. “Seven policemen were injured from being pelted with stones by workers. They have been taken to hospital,” Wachyono told AFP. A doctor at the Mimika district government hospital confirmed that one person was killed by a gunshot, and said that six other protesters were wounded. The clash erupted when police tried to stop more than 1,000 workers, who began their strike on September 15, from entering a facility at the mining complex, Solossa said. An AFP reporter at the scene said that workers damaged

SIRTE: Deposed strongman Muammar Gaddafi called on Libyans to turn out in their millions to demonstrate against the country’s new rulers, as his forces launched a counter-attack in his besieged hometown Sirte. Gaddafi’s plea, made in a poor quality audio message broadcast late yesterday on Syria-based Arrai television, came as US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta was holding talks in Naples with Nato officers on the future of the Libyan air war. “I call on the Libyan people, men and women, to go out into the squares and the streets and in all the cities in their millions” to reject the National Transitional Council (NTC), the deposed leader said. “I say to them, do not fear anyone. You are the people, you belong to this land,” said Gaddafi, whose whereabouts are unknown but is widely thought to still be in Libya. “Make your voice heard against Nato’s collaborators,” he said, in reference to the new regime of the NTC. His message came as fighting raged in Sirte, his hometown on the Mediterranean coast, where his loyalists tried to break a three-week siege of the city by NTC fighters. Fighting on Sirte’s northeastern front erupted yesterday morning after Gaddafi’s diehards advanced under

STOCKHOLM: Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind, was announced winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature . The Swedish Academy said it recognized the 80-year-old poet “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” In 1990, Transtromer suffered a stroke, which left him half-paralyzed and unable to speak, but he continued to write and published a collection of poems — “The Great Enigma” — in 2004. “Waking up is a parachute jump from dreams. Free of the suffocating turbulence the traveller sinks toward the green zone of morning,” the poem reads. “Things flare up. From the viewpoint of the quivering lark he is aware of the huge root systems of the trees, their swaying underground lamps. But aboveground there’s greenery — a tropical flood of it — with lifted arms, listening to the beat of an invisible pump.” The Nobel prize, worth US $1.5 million is the largest and most prestigious literary award in the world. Its value to the publisher or promoter of a laureate’s novel, poetry or play is estimated to be in the tens of millions. Nominees are selected by a special

DEOBAND: “Are women allowed to do a full body wax?” Just an everyday question for the “fatwa” desk at Darululoom Deoband, a famed cradle of conservative Islamic thought in north India. Hundreds of queries seeking guidance on every aspect of social and religious life are posted to the school each week and dutifully noted in a green leather-bound register by Habibur Rahman, a 21-year-old student. The answers issued in response are a far cry from the common western perception of fatwas – largely restricted to the 1989 death sentence passed on British writer Salman Rushdie for his novel “The Satanic Verses”. But they are important. “In the theological universe, our fatwas are equivalent to a verdict by a full constitutional bench of any top court in any country,” said Rahman, who spends much of his time translating queries in English or Hindi into Arabic and Urdu. Founded 150 years ago in the city of the same name, Deoband has trained thousands of imams who have spread its conservative brand of Deobandi Islam across South Asia and beyond to Europe and North America. As a result, its rulings carry enormous weight with many Sunni communities across the world, and in 2008

His death was mourned like that of a pop icon.

PEA REANG: Massive floods have ravaged vast swathes of Asia’s rice bowl, threatening to further drive up food prices and adding to the burden of farmers who are among the region’s poorest, experts say. About 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of paddy fields in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have been damaged or are at risk from the worst floods to hit the region in years, officials say. Heavy rains in Laos and Cambodia have also led to big losses in recent weeks, and experts say flood waters have now drained into Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a key global rice producer, making it the latest to be inundated. Further west, flooding of rice and other farmland in Pakistan’s arable belt has cost that country nearly US$2 billion in losses. “The whole region will now suffer from rising food prices as potential harvests have now been devastated. The damage is very serious this year and it will be some time before people can resume normal lives,” Margareta Wahlstrom, the United Nations chief of disaster reduction, said in a statement. Cambodian rice farmer Nou Nem, 30, standing waist-deep in water in his rice field at Pea Reang east of Phnom Penh, said

WASHINGTON: Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin ruled out Wednesday running for the US presidency in 2012, telling supporters that she could help the Republican cause more by working to elect others. “After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States,” Palin said in a letter carried by US media. “I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office — from the nation’s governors to congressional seats and the presidency,” she wrote. “In the coming weeks I will help coordinate strategies to assist in replacing the president, re-taking the Senate, and maintaining the House.” Palin, a darling of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement who was Senator John McCain’s surprise running mate in 2008, had tantalized supporters for months, launching a bus tour with stops in crucial early-voting states. But her showing in the opinion polls never really lived up to the media hype. And independent observers didn’t believe she could make a credible run and unseat President Barack Obama in next year’s November election. Her decision came the day after

The following address was delivered by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, at Stanford University’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

Apple fans flood Twitter and Facebook to voice their sorrow at the passing of the man who helped put mini computers in the shape of phones in millions of pockets.

The Italian police have been accused of botching investigation after an Italian court cleared American student Amanda Knox of murdering a British student.

BANGKOK:  Thailand scrambled Wednesday to airlift condoms and other emergency health supplies to victims of its worst floods in decades to prevent a feared surge in unplanned pregnancies. Five helicopters began transporting medicine and other provisions from the Public Health Ministry in Bangkok to seven locations in the central province of Lop Buri, which has been severely inundated. “Local volunteers told us that villagers have nothing to do during the floods, so to prevent a baby boom we added condoms too,” an official at the Emergency Medical Institute of Thailand told AFP. The unusually severe monsoon floods have killed 237 people and affected three-quarters of the country, including the northern city of Chiang Mai and the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, both popular tourist destinations. Millions of people have suffered damage to their homes or livelihoods because of the floods, which are several metres deep in places. The military has been deployed to help victims and army camps are being opened to evacuees. Authorities were battling to stop the floods reaching the centre of low-lying Bangkok, as forecasters warned of more stormy weather to come. Science and technology minister Plodprasop Suraswadi admitted the government was fighting a losing battle. “We can’t

SEATTLE: Student Amanda Knox could make millions of dollars if she decides to sell her story in book, television and even big-screen movie rights, according to industry experts. While her family has said little about her plans – mostly suggesting she wants to spend some time away from the limelight to readjust to freedom – experts agree she is sitting on a goldmine. “Amanda Knox is going to be big, because she is so young and she’s so all-American looking, and we go by how things look,” said Charlotte Gusay, a Los Angeles literary agent, after the 24-year-old arrived home. “I suspect she’ll get a lot of money. She’s gonna get book deals, she’s gonna get movie deals … she will go on tours, she will be asked on the top shows, if she wants to,” she told AFP. A still-tearful Knox arrived back in Seattle with her family, a day after being acquitted of murder and rape charges and freed from an Italy jail, where she had spent four years. At a brief press appearance at the airport, she put the focus on getting her normal life back. “My family’s the most important thing to me right now. I

SYDNEY:  Qantas boss Alan Joyce has received a death threat, managers have been sent menacing letters and strike-breaking workers bullied amid a bitter industrial dispute, the airline said Wednesday. Qantas is facing industrial revolt from all three of its staff unions — the Transport Workers Union and those representing pilots and engineers — after announcing plans to cut 1,000 workers as it focuses business towards Asia. The carrier said Joyce had been the victim of threats, without going into details, but one letter reportedly told the Irish chief executive: “It’s coming soon Paddy. You can’t even see it.” “The Unions will fight you… Qantas is our airline, started & staffed by Australians, not foreign filth like you,” the Sydney Daily Telegraph reported the typed threat as reading in part. The letter said Joyce’s “evil plans” would come back to haunt him and he would be kicked out of the country, the Telegraph reported. The paper also said senior Qantas staff had their car windows smashed and houses damaged after refusing to strike. A spokeswoman for the airline confirmed that Joyce had received a death threat but added: “We can’t go into any details.” Qantas corporate affairs director Olivia Wirth, who

STOCKHOLM:  Two poets, one Swedish and the other Syrian, are leading the betting to win the 2011 Nobel Literature prize, a bookmaker said on Tuesday, though past prizes have often defied the predictions. British betting firm Ladbrokes have the 81-year-old Syrian poet known as Adonis at odds of 4/1 and Swede Tomas Transtromer, 80, at 7/1 to win the 10 million crown ($1.5 million) prize, to be announced on Oct.6. Japan’s Haruki Murakami was third at 8/1. All three have been on the betting list of candidates before, but an award to Adonis, a champion of democracy and secular thought, would chime well with Arab Spring revolts in several Middle Eastern nations — though he has not been without his critics who view his support for the uprisings as too muted. Apart from his political engagement, Khaled Mattawa, who has translated many of Adonis’ works into English, said the Syrian — named Ali Hamid Saeed at birth — deserved to be recognised for his artistry. “When I think of Adonis as a poet … I think of people like Picasso or Matisse, people who opened up a new way of envisioning experience,” Mattawa, an associate professor at the University of

VATICAN CITY:  Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, are attacking Christians with impunity, the head of Indonesian bishops said on Tuesday during a visit to the Vatican. “Muslim fanatics are staging violence and denying basic religious freedom and stopping the construction of places of worship and the practice of Christianity,” Martinus Dogma Situmorang told the Vatican’s l’Osservatore Romano daily. “Alas, these incidents are being tolerated or authorities are turning a blind eye without taking any legal action because in their eyes it is less serious even though they were accompanied by violence,” Situmorang said. Indonesia’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion but rights groups say violence against minorities including Christians and the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect has escalated since 2008. In February, a 1,500-strong mob of Muslims set two churches alight and ransacked a third in the town of Temanggung, on Java island, as they demanded that a Christian man be sentenced to death for insulting Islam. Situmorang said even if extremists and radicals behind these attacks were brought to justice, the “punishments accorded are not proportionate to their acts.” He said fanaticism was on the rise but security forces appeared to have got weaker. More than 80

LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson’s doctor had packages of the powerful anesthetic propofol sent to his girlfriend’s home while he was caring for the singer in the spring of 2009, a Los Angeles court heard yesterday. Dr Conrad Murray is on trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter stemming from Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009, from an overdose of propofol and sedatives. Prosecutors told jurors last week that Murray received 255 propofol vials at the apartment of girlfriend Nicole Alvarez, containing a total of more than 4 gallons (15 litres) of the substance. Alvarez testified yesterday that after she gave birth to his son, the physician was living with her in the beach city of Santa Monica and treating Jackson at the singer’s rented Los Angeles mansion. She acknowledged receiving packages from a pharmacy in Las Vegas but said she did not know what they contained. “I do remember receiving shipments… every now and then,” Alvarez said in a sometimes testy exchange with prosecutors. Tim Lopez, the former owner of Applied Pharmacy in Las Vegas, said on the witness stand that he sent 255 vials of propofol by express delivery to the Santa Monica apartment after Murray, who had practices

PARIS: Lung damage caused by smoking could cause an additional 18 million cases of tuberculosis and 40 million extra deaths from TB by 2050, according to a study published yesterday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The estimates derive from a math…

NEW YORK: The United States expressed “outrage” at the UN Security Council’s failure yesterday to pass a resolution on Syria and its ambassador walked out of the chamber in protest at a speech by Syria’s envoy. US ambassador Susan Rice demanded “tough, targeted sanctions” by the international community against President Bashar al-Assad for his deadly crackdown on opponents. Rice led a US walkout from the council chamber as Syria’s ambassador launched a tirade against Western countries in a speech to the 15-member body. Britain’s ambassador Mark Lyall Grant also walked out in protest. “The United States is outraged that this council has utterly failed to address an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security,” said Rice after Russia and China vetoed a resolution that threatened possible measures against Syria. Rice condemned opponents of the resolution on the 15-member council who she said “would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime.” “Today two members have vetoed a vastly watered down text that doesn’t even mention sanctions,” she told the council. “Let me be clear: the United States believes it is past time that this council assumed its responsibilities and imposed tough targeted sanctions and an arms

SEATTLE: A tearful Amanda Knox thanked supporters for believing in her, saying she was “overwhelmed” as she arrived home yesterday after a four-year ordeal behind bars in Italy. Speaking for the first time since being released in Perugia on Monday after her acquittal on murder and sexual assault charges, she said her return home seemed unreal. “I’m really overwhelmed right now,” she said, fighting back tears as she made a brief statement to the media after landing with her family in her home town of Seattle on the US west coast. “I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn’t real,” she added, shortly after her family’s lawyer had described the past four years as a “nightmarish marathon.” “What’s important for me to say is just thank you to everyone who’s believed in me, who’s defended me, who has supported my family,” she said. “My family’s the most important thing to me right now. I just want to go be with them.” She preceded her remarks by saying: “They’re reminding me to speak in English because I’m having problems with that” – refering to the fluent Italian she has developed over her time fighting for freedom

TOKYO: Japan will go ahead with its annual whale hunt in Antarctica while boosting security to guard against possible harassment by environmental protesters, the agriculture and fisheries minister said Tuesday. This undated file photo, a handout from the Australian Customs Service, shows a whale (front) and another (submerged, right) being dragged on board a Japanese ship after being harpooned in Antarctic waters. Japan will go ahead with its annual whale hunt in Antarctica while boosting security to guard against possible harassment by environmental protesters, a Japanese minister said Tuesday. “Japan will conduct the research whaling while strengthening measures against acts of sabotage, including dispatching Fisheries Agency escort ships,” said Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano. In February, Japan for the first time cut short its Antarctic fleet mission for the 2010-2011 season by one month, when it had taken only one fifth of its planned catch, citing interference from Sea Shepherd’s vessels. The US-based Sea Shepherd, which says its tactics are non-violent but aggressive, hurled paint and stink bombs at whaling ships, snared their propellers, and moved its own boats between harpoon ships and their prey. Since cutting short its whaling operation, Japan has studied whether the country should

BANGKOK: Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced it is pulling out of Thailand after 36 years because of government interference reported Australian Network News.
The move could leave thousands of migrants in the country without acc…

BANGKOK:  Thailand’s worst monsoon floods in decades have killed 224 people and affected three quarters of the country, including part of the ancient city of Ayutthaya, officials said Tuesday. Two months of flooding have inundated 58 of Thailand’s 77 provinces — with 25 still severely affected — and damaged the homes or livelihoods of millions of people, according to the government. “It’s the worst flooding yet in terms of the amount of water and people affected,” said an official at the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation who preferred not to be named. Wat Chaiwatthanaram, one of Ayutthaya’s best known temples, has been closed to visitors after a makeshift dyke was breached at the former capital, a popular tourist destination north of Bangkok. “The water level inside the temple grounds is now 1.50 metres,” said Supoj Prommanoch, head of the Fine Arts Office in Ayutthaya, located north of the capital Bangkok. But he said the authorities were confident they could prevent the floods from reaching Ayutthaya’s main World Heritage Park, which is located further away from Chao Phraya River. The northern city of Chiang Mai, another popular tourist destination, has been badly hit and the authorities are battling to stop

WASHINGTON: As a new poll suggested that a majority of Americans expect him to be a one-term president, Barack Obama called himself an “underdog” with a faltering economy seriously impairing his chances of re-election in 2012. “Absolutely,” he told ABC News Monday when asked about whether the odds were against him come November 2012, given the economy. “I’m used to being the underdog. But at the end of the day people are going to ask – who’s got a vision?” The American people, he conceded, are “not better off” than they were four years ago. “The unemployment rate is way too high,” he said of the 9 percent jobless rate, the highest in more than half a century. With a job approval rate is hovering at around 40 percent, Obama would not handicap the 2012 election. But he called the 2012 race a “contest of values and vision” and a referendum on whether Americans believed the government should invest now in long-term improvements in education and infrastructure. Meanwhile, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll just 37 percent Americans expect Obama to win re-election in November 2012, while 55 percent instead expect the eventual Republican nominee to win. Democrats

The Nobel Medicine Prize jury has been caught off guard by honouring a Canadian scientist who died just days before the announcement, with prize rules forbidding posthumous awards. The committee was not aware that Ralph Steinman, who was named the 2011 Medicine Prize laureate together with Bruce Beutler of the US and Luxembourg-born Frenchman Jules Hoffmann, passed away just days before yesterday’s announcement, the head of the committee said. Steinman, 68, died of pancreatic cancer on September 30, according to a statement issued by Rockefeller University in New York where he worked. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute that awards the prize held a meeting late yesterday to discuss how to handle the situation, deciding ultimately that Steinman would remain a Nobel laureate. “The events that have occurred are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize,” the committee said in a statement. The statutes of the Nobel Foundation stipulate since 1974 that the award may not be given posthumously, but a person may be awarded the honour if he or she dies between the time of the announcement in October and the formal prize ceremony in December. “An interpretation

PERUGIA:  Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend left prison after four years Monday when an Italian appeals court cleared them of the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher. Seattle native Knox and Italian computer student Raffaele Sollecito, had appealed against a 2009 verdict that found them guilty of murdering the 21-year-old Kercher during what prosecutors had said was a drug-fueled sexual assault four years ago. A whoop of joy was heard in the court as the ruling overturning their sentences was read out but Knox herself broke down and was led out sobbing and supported by police officers. “As you could see from the images, Amanda was a nervous wreck who just collapsed. She wasn’t able to say anything other than ‘thank you’ in a flood of tears,” one of her lawyers, Maria Del Grosso, told reporters. Speaking to a crowd outside the courtroom, Knox’s sister Deanna thanked her legal team and supporters. “We’re thankful that Amanda’s nightmare is over. She suffered for four years for a crime she did not commit,” she said. “We are also thankful to the court for having the courage to look for the truth and to overturn the conviction.” The verdict, a severe

Analysts say the move is set to be futile as it is both illegal and immoral.

PERUGIA:  American student Amanda Knox broke down in court and pleaded for mercy on Monday as an Italian jury retired to consider its verdict in her appeal against convictions for murder and sexual assault. “I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I wasn’t there,” she told jurors, adding: “I am paying with my life for a crime I did not commit.” “I want to go home. I want to return to my life,” she said in a statement that she had to interrupt frequently as she struggled to contain her emotion. The 24-year-old also said that her faith in Italian police had been “betrayed” and that she had been “manipulated” during her four-year legal saga. Her sister Deanna cried as Knox spoke and the judge said she could sit down if she wanted to but Knox gathered her strength and stayed standing. She entered the courtroom with her head bowed as dozens of photographers, cameramen and Knox supporters crowded in for the final day of her appeal. Knox’s co-appellant Raffaele Sollecito, her boyfriend at the time of the killing, also made a statement ahead of the verdict saying: “I have never hurt anyone in my

DARWIN: Some locals in the city of Darwin say it is the drink that makes them fall over, bang into things and lose their inhibitions. But veterinarians like The Ark Animal Hospital’s Stephen Cutter question whether gorging on fermenting soft fruit is what makes red-collared lorikeets act as though they are drunk. “It’s definitely a seasonal thing because it’s linked to what they are at at the start of the wet season,” Cutter said. “There’s a low level (of drunken behaviour) all the year round but it reaches a peak from June to August.” Darwin locals say there has always been the phenomenon of drunken parrots in the streets at this time of year. They have trouble flying. They lose coordination, and they lose their fear of humans. All are agreed that each year more birds seem to display the behaviour and they do so at about the same time. But this might just be that people have become more caring, more likely to take a stricken bird to see a vet. “The drunkenness is not exclusive to lorikeets, but it does affect one type of lorikeet, the red-collared lorikeet, more than any other,” Cutter said. “In these birds what

MANILA:  Aging Muslim rebel leaders in the southern Philippines say stumbling efforts to end one of Asia’s longest and deadliest insurgencies risk slipping into “futility” and renewed violence. Moro Islamic Liberation Front chairman Murad Ebrahim expressed hope after an historic meeting with Philippine President Benigno Aquino in August that peace talks were on a “fast-track” and a final deal was within sight. But negotiations stalled soon after when the government offered its roadmap for peace, a document Murad called an “exercise in futility” and said could lead to reigniting a conflict that has claimed an estimated 150,000 lives. “There is an impression that it is even heaven and earth,” Murad told reporters recently at the MILF’s rural Camp Darapanan headquarters in the rural southern Philippines, in reference to the two sides’ positions. Murad insisted there would be no more direct talks between two sides’ peace panels until the government produced a more realistic and workable blueprint, however the government has rejected the MILF’s demand. The stalemate is the latest setback to 10 years of talks that some observers say are inevitably doomed because the national government will not be able to meet the MILF’s core requirement of an autonomous substate

MANILA:  Philippine authorities rushed aid Monday to thousands of people marooned in their flooded homes for nearly a week after deadly typhoons, but said the worst appeared over with waters receding. The subsiding water allowed relief workers to deliver food, medicine and dry clothes to families who had waited out the floods on their roofs and upper floors of their homes while being hit with back-to-back typhoons. “We have no food to eat, and no clean drinking water,” construction worker Orly Nabong told AFP as he joined hundreds of victims lining up for relief items on higher ground in Calumpit, one of the worst-hit towns. “The water is slowly going down so we think we can wait it out, but we need supplies.” Nabong, 52, said adult members of his extended family remained on the second floor of their home, including his siblings, although the children had already been taken to an evacuation centre. Calumpit, two hours’ drive north of Manila, is part of Bulacan province, a flat farming region that was particularly hard hit by the heavy rains of typhoons Nesat and Nalgae. Nalgae pummelled the Philippines’ main Luzon island on Saturday, hitting many of the same areas that

By Michael Georgy ISLAMABAD: A blindfolded man stands on explosives, trembling as he confesses to spying for the CIA in Pakistan. Armed men in black balaclavas slowly back away. Then he is blown up. One of his executioners – members of an elite militant hit squad – zooms a camera in on his severed head and body parts for a video later distributed in street markets as a warning. Al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network – blamed for a Sept 13 attack on the US embassy in Kabul – picked the most ruthless fighters from their ranks in 2009 to form the Khurasan unit, for a special mission. The Obama administration was escalating drone (picture below) strikes on militants in the Pakistani tribal areas on the Afghan border and something had to be done to stop the flow of tips used for the US aerial campaign. Militant groups don’t have the military technology to match the American drone programme, but they understand the value of human intelligence, and fear, in the conflict. So the Khurasan were deployed to hunt down and eliminate anyone suspected of helping the Americans or their Pakistani government and military allies. Just this week,

If Nato quietly stepped aside but fighting restarted, that would diminish Europe’s standing in Libya.

CHENNAI: To ensure their voice is better heard in the corridors of power, the marginalised transgender community in Tamil Nadu has begun venturing into politics. Perhaps, for the first time in the southern state, a third gender candidate is gearing to contest the Madurai corporation mayor’s post. Bharathi Kannamma, 51, a computer programmer and transsexual rights activist, would be among the six contesting the fierce polls on Oct 17. “Politicians promise but they never deliver. If elected, I want to make Madurai a more liveable city. Priority is to create jobs, not only for ‘Aravani’ (transgender) but for everyone,” the native of the temple city of Madurai told Bernama today. About 1,500 transgenders live in Madurai and there are over 100,000 in Tamil Nadu alone, one of the few states which gave special status to them. The often-isolated group is allowed to contest in elections, offered jobs, third gender ration cards and special healthcare facilities. After suffering prolonged prejudice, many dare to walk out of their cocoons to make a mark in the changing social and political realities. In Tamil Nadu, career-minded and socially conscious transsexuals are taking up jobs, ranging from computer programming, television talk-show hosting, to hair styling

BEIJING: China’s top leaders marked national day today with an appearance on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing after Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged greater “democracy” and rights for the people. President Hu Jintao, Wen and top Communist Party leaders descended on the vast square and bowed before the monument to revolutionary martyrs, as they marked the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In a speech last night, Wen pledged to address China’s biggest social issues, including rising inflation, a yawning income gap, unemployment, food safety, corruption, environmental destruction and social injustice. “We will make great efforts to guarantee and perfect democracy and resolve the problems that most concern the people and that most directly involve their interests,” Wen said in the speech posted today on government websites. “We will make great efforts to advance the opening and reform and continue to push forward economic, political, cultural and social system reform. We will make great efforts to safeguard social justice, and ensure the people’s democratic rights and judicial fairness.” But by “democracy”, China’s communist leaders do not mean multi-party competition for power at the ballot box, generally referring instead to discussions within the ruling elite. During

JAKARTA: All 18 people aboard a plane that crashed on Indonesia’s Sumatra island were found dead today, an official said, after two days of hampered efforts to reach the remote jungle site.
“Two teams were lowered to the crash site and they…

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani court today found a police commando guilty of murder and sentenced him to death for killing a liberal governor who had urged reform of a blasphemy law, a defence lawyer said.
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, one of Punjab governor Sal…

LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson may have died up to an hour before emergency paramedics even arrived, and his doctor then lied about the star’s condition and the key drug that killed him, a court heard yesterday. Conrad Murray was also described as looking like a “deer in the headlights” when a paramedic surprised him in Jackson’s bedroom, collecting items shortly after the seemingly-dead star was loaded into an ambulance at his LA mansion. The doctor in charge of the emergency room at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles recounted how she was ready to pronounce Jackson dead before he was even brought in, since efforts to resuscitate him had failed. “When the paramedics arrived, the patient had no signs of life, was clinically dead… and the estimated time down was at least 40 minutes,” said UCLA medic Richelle Cooper. “I made a determination based on that… to pronounce the patient dead in the field.” The senior medic’s testimony came at the end of the first week of Murray’s manslaughter trial over the King of Pop’s death on June 25, 2009, from an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol. Murray could be jailed for up to four years over Jackson’s

LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson’s doctor scrambled to hide equipment including a “milky white” liquid near the star’s bed minutes after he died, as his distraught children sobbed, a court heard yesterday. Amid frantic scenes, Jackson’s daughter Paris screamed “Daddy!” as she saw doctor Conrad Murray pumping her father’s chest, as he lay eyes open but seemingly already dead, according to testimony at the medic’s trial. Bodyguard Alberto Alvarez said Murray ordered him to help remove vials and a saline bag from an intravenous (IV) drip stand by the star’s bed, even before he had called 911 to rush paramedics to his Los Angeles home on June 25, 2009. Murray is accused of manslaughter in Jackson’s death, allegedly by giving him an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol, which the singer referred to as “milk” to help him sleep. “While I was standing at the foot of the bed, he reached over and grabbed a handful of vials, and then he reached out to me and said ‘Here, put these in a bag,’” Alvarez told the LA Superior Court, on the trial’s third day. With paramedics not yet on the scene, the doctor then asked him to remove the saline bag

NEW DELHI: Full-colour advertisements in leading newspapers reminded Indians that “daughters bring joy to life” in a campaign designed to tackle the country’s worsening gender imbalance.
Sex-selective abortions and female infantici…

YANGON: Myanmar’s new army-backed government has suspended a controversial US$3.6 billion hydroelectric power project following rare public opposition, a government official said today. Opposition to the dam has been building as pro-democracy and environmental activists test the limits of their freedom under the new nominally civilian regime, which is dominated by former military officers. President Thein Sein told lawmakers in the capital Naypyidaw that work on the Chinese-backed Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River in northern Kachin state would be halted during the term of the current government. “The president decided to stop the dam project because the government is elected by the people and the government has to respect the will of the people,” said the official, who did not want to be named. Environmentalists have warned the dam project would inundate dozens of villages, displace at least 10,000 people and irreversibly damage one of the world’s most biodiverse areas. For the people of Kachin, the Myitsone dam has come to symbolise the struggles they have faced for decades as a marginalised ethnic group in the repressed nation under almost half a century of military rule. Police last week arrested a man who staged a rare solo protest against

NEW DELHI:  India’s workaholic Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has not taken a holiday since he took the top job in 2004, according to a new in-depth profile published this week. The 12,000-word study in current affairs journal The Caravan of 79-year-old Singh, under fire for a series of debilitating scandals in his second-term, said he shunned opportunities to get away and take a break. Former media adviser Sanjaya Baru said the one-time economics professor had little interest in relaxation, recalling an official day-long visit to the popular tourist destination of Goa. “I said to him, ‘sir, it’s a weekend. Why don’t we stay Saturday night, spend Sunday morning on the beach and come back Sunday evening. You don’t miss a working day’. “You know what he asked? ‘But what do I do there?’ Only Manmohan Singh could ask what he could do in Goa,” Baru said. Singh’s daughter Daman Singh said she could recall her father taking only one vacation with the family in the last 40 years, a three-day visit to Nainital, a hill station 232 kilometres (144 miles) from New Delhi. “As children we just assumed that’s the way all fathers are. He hasn’t changed at all,” said

MUMBAI: Indian investigators were today probing the deaths of six construction workers who were killed when the bamboo scaffolding on which they were working collapsed. The six plunged to their deaths from the eighth floor of a newly constructed 14-storey building in the north Mumbai suburb of Bhayander yesterday afternoon. Three other workers were injured. The scaffolding had been erected while the building was being painted. Bamboo is frequently used as scaffolding in India and elsewhere in Asia. It is seen as a cheaper, versatile alternative to more expensive metal, as it can easily be cut to size and transported. Construction workers – many of them poor, unskilled migrant workers who are hired on a daily basis – can be seen balanced at great heights, barefoot and without basic safety equipment. Civic officials who inspected the site of yesterday’s accident told Indian newspapers that the bamboo was of poor quality and buckled under the weight of 14 workers, all of them labourers from the south of the country. “The workers were not given helmets or harnesses,” a senior local authority official, Sudhir Raut, was quoted as saying by the Mumbai Mirror newspaper. “Bamboo used in poles was of inferior quality

JAKARTA: There may be survivors from a small plane that crashed in Indonesia with 18 people on board after rescuers said the fuselage was intact and a door was open. The Casa 212 turboprop plane, carrying 14 passengers and four crew, went down in Sumatra island on Thursday after departing Medan city, in Sumatra, for the nearby province of Aceh. But the commercial flight run by Nusantara Buana Air sent a distress signal and crashed at 1,100 metres in the mountainous Bohorok area, around 70km northwest of Medan. A search-and-rescue team determined Thursday that the fuselage was largely undamaged and early on Friday morning they reported from a helicopter that a door to the aircraft had been opened. “They saw an open door, which makes us think that some passengers may be alive, so we are hopeful,” transport ministry aviation head Herry Bakti told AFP. The rescue team were unable to reach the site on Thursday because of poor access to the area and difficult terrain. “The first thing we’ll do today is place an emergency helipad at the site, and hopefully we can get on the ground soon,” Bakti said. Local daily newspaper Kompas reported that families of the

MONTREAL:  A 56-year-old Montreal man looking to shake off a mid-life depression walked around the world in 11 years, returning this week to Canada, looking radiant after realising a dream. A bit thinner and with a few more grey hairs, Jean Beliveau was pushing a three-wheel stroller that carried his sleeping bag, clothes and a first aid kit when reporters caught up with him 290km west of Montreal. Walking at a brisk pace, he expects to come full circle, arriving in Montreal on October 16 after skirting the north shore of Lake Ontario and passing through the capital, Ottawa. He stopped only briefly to nibble on some food and described some of his adventures on this trip to curious strangers, radiating a joy and peacefulness he gained from total freedom. He did not know where he would sleep that night, depending on no-one and with little money in his pocket. But he was not worried in the least – it has been this way for the past 11 years and he is fine with it. In Montreal, he will reunite with his longtime girlfriend Luce Archambault, who has supported him throughout his extraordinary adventure and even created a website detailing

RIYADH: Saudi King Abdullah has overturned a court ruling sentencing a Saudi woman to be lashed 10 times for defying the kingdom’s ban on female drivers, a government official said on Thursday.
The verdict took Saudi women by surprise, coming …

HONG KONG, September 30, 2011 (AFP) – A Hong Kong court on Friday ruled a law banning foreign maids from settling permanently in the city was unconstitutional, in a landmark case for domestic helpers.
The High Court said immigration laws barri…

HONG KONG: Hong Kong battened down today, suspending financial markets, schools and transport services as hurricane-force winds from the deadly typhoon Nesat buffeted parts of the territory. The Hong Kong Observatory issued a number eight tropical cyclone warning  and winds gusting up to 160kmh were recorded in some exposed areas. The high winds felled trees and kept most businesses closed, leaving the city’s normally bustling central business district eerily quiet during morning rush hour, with only a few people struggling to work on foot. At least three people were injured – two when a piece of scaffolding hit a taxi and another struck by a falling tree, according to public broadcaster RTHK. About 50 people were evacuated from their flats after a barge slipped its moorings and crashed into nearby railings, the broadcaster said. The government has opened typhoon shelters for people who want to seek refuge. Financial markets, courts, schools and government buildings are all closed during a number eight warning, and ferry services suspended. Hong Kong, a major shipping hub, also suspended port services. At least 38 flights at the Hong Kong International Airport were delayed as of 10.00am, a spokesman from the airport authority told AFP, and

MIAMI: A 61-year-old Cuban man convicted of the 1978 murder of a US police officer was executed in Florida by lethal injection yesterday, after the Supreme Court rejected his petitions for a stay, prison authorities said. The execution of Manuel Valle – which Spain had tried to stop at the last minute – came a week after the controversial execution of Troy Davis, who went to his death for the murder of a policeman in Georgia. “Manuel Valle was executed tonight (last night). The time of death was 7.14pm,” a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections, Jo Ellyn Rackleff, said in a statement. Relatives of the victim, 41-year-old police officer Louis Pena, said they felt a “great relief that after 33 years, justice has finally been served for Louis and his family”. “Manuel Valle was tried, convicted and sentenced more than once by juries of his peers and there was absolutely no doubt of his guilt because there was an eyewitness, a policeman,” the statement said. Spain intervened at the last minute, asking the United States to stop the execution on humanitarian grounds and saying Valle was likely eligible for Spanish nationality. The US and Cuba do not have

LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson went regularly to a Beverly Hills dermatologist and sometimes emerged from the sessions talking slowly, witnesses said yesterday at the star’s manslaughter trial. The pop icon at times went almost every day to the doctor, said Arnold Klein, his head of security and his personal assistant, who testified on the second day of the trial of his personal doctor Conrad Murray. “There were times when he was going almost every day… it fluctuated,” said security chief Faheem Muhammad, who also referred to a “cream” that Jackson “wouldn’t want the world to know about” removed from the room where he died. News channel CNN cited lawyers for Murray as claiming that Jackson became addicted to another drug, Demerol, from the visits to Klein, and that this could have prevented the singer from sleeping, even with heavy sedatives. Jackson died from an overdose of medical anesthetic propofol on June 25, 2009, allegedly administered by Murray to help the singer cope with extreme insomnia. Jackson’s personal assistant Michael Amir Williams, who worked for Jackson during the last two years of his life, also said the visits to Klein’s office were regular. “At a certain point, it was very regular,”

SINGAPORE: Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell said Thursday that a major Singapore refinery was on fire and that firefighters have contained the blaze but were still working to completely extinguish it. “We believe it was an accident. A full investigation will be conducted once the fire is put out,” the company said in a statement. The fire broke out Wednesday at the Shell refinery in Pulau Bukom, an islet five kilometers (three miles) off Singapore, and prompted the evacuation of non-essential staff. About 100 firefighters from the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and 250 “essential” Shell personnel worked overnight to contain the blaze. The plant, Shell’s biggest in the world in terms of crude distillation capacity, produces fuels, lubricants and specialty chemicals, mostly for export. “The fire at Pulau Bukom Manufacturing Site… has been contained. We are working closely with the Singapore Civil Defence Force to put out the fire,” Shell said. “All staff are accounted for and non-essential staff have been evacuated to safety.” Shell said one company firefighter “sustained a superficial injury, and five other firefighters had heat exhaustion and pulled muscle.” Singapore’s civil defence force said in a separate statement that the fire involved petroleum products from pipes

Many Afghan women are feeling jittery as they watch Western allies’ attempt to broker a peace deal which could see the return of the Taliban.

BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has net assets worth 541 million baht ($17 million), an anti-corruption body said Wednesday, far less than the wealth of her fugitive brother Thaksin. Yingluck’s nine-year-old son has 4.4 million baht while her common law husband declared 76.8 million baht in assets, along with debt of 369.7 million baht, according to the independent National Counter Corruption Commission. Yingluck, whose assets include property and other investments, is not the richest member of her cabinet — that place goes to science and technology minister Plodprasop Suraswadi with 963 million baht. Before taking office, Yingluck was president of Thai real estate firm SC Asset Corp, and previously held various positions within her brother Thaksin’s business empire. In February 2010, Thailand’s Supreme Court confiscated $1.4 billion of Thaksin’s wealth — more than half his fortune — for abuse of power. Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon who lives overseas in self-imposed exile, remains a hugely divisive figure in Thailand, where he was convicted of corruption in his absence in 2008. His “Red Shirt” supporters held two months of opposition protests in Bangkok last year that triggered the worst civil violence in decades and ended in a military crackdown which

JAKARTA: A stampede triggered when a fire broke out on board a docked ferry in Indonesia left at least eight people dead and dozens injured today, officials said. More than 500 passengers panicked when a freight truck carrying onions overheated and caught fire around dawn aboard the KM Kirana IX, docked at the giant Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya, eastern Java’s biggest city. “The passengers heard there was a fire and they all panicked and ran off the boat,” Disaster Management Agency head Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said. “Eight people have died and others have been taken to hospital.” East Java’s provincial search and rescue team was still looking for one passenger who jumped overboard in panic. Subhan, a passenger, told TV One that he saw three passengers jump into the water. When he heard of the fire, Subhan threw his belongings into the sea hoping to have a chance to retrieve them if the ferry sank, and ran to find his wife and children. “Everyone was screaming and running to the exit gate,” he said. “The gate was so narrow, so people were pushing each other to find their way out.” The fire charred the front of the truck and

HONG KONG: Too old to learn taekwondo? Not for a group of Hong Kong grandmothers who became black belts after demonstrating their kicking and punching prowess, according to a report today. The seven women, aged 63 to 74, received the top ranking in the Korean martial art after passing a test at the southern Chinese city’s first taekwondo class for the elderly, the South China Morning Post reported. The main challenge, said the eldest woman in the group, was not physical but mental as they had to memorise all the moves. The test included standard kicks and four pre-set patterns of attack and defensive movements. “Luckily, we have a very nice classmate who wrote down every pattern in detail,” Lam Sai-mui, 74, told the Post, saying the written notes made it easier for her to practise the punching and kicking every day. “I was very lazy, and afraid that I couldn’t learn something new,” Lam said, adding that she had a sore foot problem for a long time but the pain was gone after she took up the taekwondo class last year. Taekwondo has different-coloured belts to indicate skill levels, ranging from white for beginners to black for masters. Chan

SHANGHAI: A metro crash in China’s commercial capital Shanghai sparked fresh fears today that safety may have been compromised in the country’s rush to develop its vast transport network. State media urged the government to “be more cautious” after the collision of two metro trains yesterday injured more than 270 people, just months after a deadly high-speed rail crash in the eastern city of Wenzhou killed at least 40. Most of the injuries were mild, but the accident, blamed on a signalling failure, occurred on one of Shanghai’s newest metro lines and is a blow to city authorities after an ambitious expansion programme ahead of the World Expo. Last year’s six-month Expo attracted more than 70 million visitors from around the world and was viewed as a major success for the city as it develops into a global commercial capital. The Global Times, an English-language daily, said China had no choice but to develop modern transport systems for major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but that it could not afford safety failures. “China should be more cautious and concentrated at avoiding risks,” the paper said in an editorial. “Although this is hard to do the tragedies in Wenzhou and

Russia is facing a choice between reform and dictatorship with the announcement that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin intends to return to the Kremlin.