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NASA test flight shatters speed record
Musharraf not involved in N-secret leak,
says Rumsfeld Pervez met Omar, sought Laden’s expulsion: report Laden planned attack on Heathrow Airport |
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French lawyer to defend Saddam
Hizbollah leader’s plea to Hamas
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NASA test flight shatters speed record San Francisco, March 28 “It’s been an outstanding, record-breaking day,” lead propulsion engineer Lawrence Huebner told a post-flight briefing. NASA’s 12-foot-long (3.6 meter) X-43A research vehicle — resembling a winged surfboard — hit slightly over Mach 7, about 8,000 km/h, during 11 seconds of powered flight before gliding at hypersonic speeds for several minutes and finally plunging into the ocean. The test, conducted off the southern California coast, marked the first time that a “scramjet,” or supersonic-combustion ramjet, has powered a vehicle at such high speed. “The ramjet-scramjet is the Holy Grail of aeronautics in my mind,” project manager Joel Sitz yesterday told the briefing. “If you go from ground to space, you need to use a ramjet-scramjet if you’re going to do it in the most efficient way you can.” Rather than carrying both the fuel and oxygen needed to provide acceleration, like a conventional rocket engine does, scramjet engines carry only hydrogen fuel and pull the oxygen needed to burn that fuel from the atmosphere. Researchers at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, on the western edge of the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, hope the new engine will revolutionize aviation, speeding the development of significantly faster aircraft and lowering the cost of launching payloads. Huebner said the test had set a world speed record for a craft powered by an air-breathing engine. “To put this in perspective, a little over 100 years ago a couple of guys from Ohio flew for 120 feet (40 meters) in the first controlled powered flight,” he said, referring to the Wright brothers. “Today, we did something very similar in the same amount of time, but our vehicle under air-breathing power went over 15 miles.” Project chief engineer Griffin Corpening said NASA had shown what was possible. “Now business and industry and the military can come forward with confidence that they can now use this kind of a propulsion system,” he said. The vehicle used in Saturday’s test will not be recovered from the ocean due to the high cost of such an effort.
— Reuters |
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Musharraf not involved in N-secret leak, says Rumsfeld Washington, March 28 “I do not believe that there is any evidence or any suggestion that President Musharraf was involved,” Rumsfeld said. He added that Musharraf was a person with a lot of courage who has been tremendously cooperative in the US war on terror. Asked whether high-level Pakistani military officials could have been involved, Rumsfeld said: “I am not going to say that.” “That is where — listen, you cannot prove a negative. You cannot say that I know that every person connected with the Pakistani military over some sustained period of time had no knowledge or participation whatsoever. That is silly. I
couldn't do that,” he said. — AFP |
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Pervez met Omar, sought Laden’s expulsion: report Washington, March 28 It said the meeting took place at the request of former US President Bill Clinton after he raised the issue during his visit to Pakistan on March 25, 2000. “The Pakistanis asked for evidence that bin Laden had really ordered the US Embassy bombings (in East Africa) a year and a half earlier. In a follow-up meeting the next day with Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, President Musharraf argued that Pakistan had only limited influence over the Taliban,” the commission report, quoted by the media, said. Despite these reservations, Musharraf “did meet Mullah Omar and did urge him to get rid of bin Laden,” it said. In early June, 2000, according to the report, Pakistan’s Interior Minister went to Kandahar with Pickering and delivered a joint message to Taliban officials. “But the Taliban seemed immune to such pleas, especially from Pakistani civilians like the Interior Minister,” it observed. “Pakistan did not threaten to cut off its help to the Taliban regime,” it said. The report also provided so far classified information about joint US-Saudi efforts to influence the Taliban regime on this issue. Their first joint effort to evict the Al-Qaida chief from Afghanistan began in May 1998 when President Clinton designated CIA Director George Tenet as his representative to work with the Saudis on terrorism. Tenet met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah twice and convinced him to make an all-out secret effort to persuade the Taliban to expel Osama for eventual delivery to the USA or another country, the report said. Riyadh decided to send Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal as Prince Abdullah’s special emissary to Kandahar. He also took with him a sealed indictment against Osama, issued by a New York grand jury. “Iran was already on the verge of going to war against the Taliban. The Saudis and Pakistanis feared that a further break might encourage Iran to attack. They also wanted to leave open room for rebuilding ties if more moderate voices among the Taliban gained control,” the report noted.
— PTI |
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Laden planned attack on Heathrow Airport London, March 28 Bin Laden had ordered an attack on Heathrow to punish British Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling him his “principal enemy”, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. It said Bin Laden told Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan last year, to prepare the strike on the airport at a meeting in Kabul soon after the attacks in US in September 2001. The Sunday Times claimed that it had seen transcripts of Mohammed’s long-running interrogation. These records relate to a period of four months after his capture in Pakistan just over a year ago and indicate that Al-Qaida terrorists were sent from Pakistan and Afghanistan to work on “the Heathrow operation”. The paper also said Bin Laden had planned to bomb nuclear plants, Library Tower in Los Angeles and Hollywood studios. “9/11 had originally been conceived as a two-pronged attack on five targets on the east coast of America and five on the west coast. Planners had considered targeting bridges, nuclear plants, landmark buildings such as Library Tower in Los Angeles and Sears Tower in Chicago and Hollywood studios,” it quoted Mohammed as saying in the transcripts. The transcripts also show Mohammed, mastermind of the September 11 onslaught, originally planned to hijack 10 planes and crash them into targets on the east and west coasts of America. Each interrogation is prefaced with a warning: “The detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead.”
— PTI |
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French lawyer to defend Saddam Paris, March 28 Jacques Verges yesterday told Reuters in a telephone interview he had received a letter from Ali Barzan al-Tikriti, whose father Barzan al-Tikriti is Saddam’s half-brother, asking him to defend the former Iraqi dictator, captured by US forces in December. The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad is setting up a war crimes tribunal to try Saddam on charges which may include genocide and crimes against humanity. Verges, who is also defending former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, said he had accepted the job of defending Saddam and suggested his strategy would focus on the role played by the USA and other countries in supporting the Iraqi leader in the 1980s.
— Reuters |
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| Sharon’s indictment recommended Jerusalem, March 28 The state attorney does not have the last say on the matter and the final decision is up to the attorney general, who is expected to rule within a month. However, today’s reported recommendation would carry considerable weight and was seen as a major step toward a possible resignation by Sharon. The Justice Ministry confirmed that state attorney Edna Arbel made a recommendation in the Sharon case today, but would not say what it was. Meanwhile, cabinet ministers and other lawmakers from his coalition joined the Opposition demand that he resign if indicted following State Prosecutor Edna Arbel’s recommendation. National Infrastructure Minister, Yosef Paritzky, of the second largest party in the coalition, Shinui, today called on Sharon to resign if charged in the corruption scandal. Shinui faction leader, Reshef Chen, said that if the Attorney General accepts Arbel’s recommendation to indict the Prime Minister, Sharon must suspend himself from office until the outcome of the trial. Lawmakers of the Left parties were more severe in demanding for resignation with the Hadash party head Mohammed Barakeh saying, “Sharon should go home as soon as possible.” — AP, PTI
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Hizbollah leader’s plea to Hamas Beirut, March 28 In a show of unity between the two Islamist groups, Hamas new chief Khaled Meshaal also addressed thousands of Hizbollah supporters at a memorial service for his predecessor Yassin yesterday, whom Israel assassinated this week. Nasrallah told him: ‘’Consider us in Hizbollah, from the secretary-general and leadership down to our fighters and women, members of Hamas, and soldiers under your command.’’ The two Islamist groups have long been allies and keep in regular contact. Hizbollah is a staunch supporter of a more than three-year-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, and the group attacked Israeli posts in a disputed border area on Monday in response to Yassin’s killing.
— Reuters |
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US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today that he had seen no evidence that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was involved in leaking nuclear secrets, but he could not say if Pakistan’s military was involved.
London, March 28
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