 |
|
Osama tape offers gold for killing Bremer,
Annan
500 die in attack on Nigerian Muslim
village
Surgery can halve stroke
risk
Freedom Tower to rise from WTC ashes
British troops face new abuse charges
Afghan cultural treasure vanishing
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Scientists excited over new Mars
discoveries
Patient robbing patient nabbed by injured cop
|
|
Osama tape offers gold for killing Bremer, Annan
Cairo, May 7 The 20-minute recording, dated May 6, appeared on two websites known for militant Islamic messages. The voice sounded like that of Bin Laden and the words were laden with Quranic verse, but the authenticity of the recording could not immediately be verified. The CIA is looking into the statement, a spokesman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Bin Laden had never been known to offer rewards for missions he had described as followers’ religious duty to carry out. “You know that America promised big rewards for those who kill Mujahedeen (holy warriors),” the speaker said. “We in Al-Qaida will guarantee, God willing, 10,000 grams of gold to whoever kills the occupier Bremer, or the American Chief Commander or his deputy in Iraq.” He was referring to L. Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator in Iraq, and top military officials. “For security reasons, the rewards will be given as soon as conditions permit, God willing,” the voice said. “As for those who die while killing an occupying solider, the great prize will be for us and for him when God grants him martyrdom, and the smaller prize (the gold) will be for his family.” The USA has offered rewards of its own for information leading to the capture or death of Bin Laden and his top lieutenants, as well as for top figures in the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. The price on Bin Laden’s head now stands at $ 50 million - far more than the nearly $ 125,000 that 10 kg of gold is worth. The recording promised the same reward for the deaths of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his envoy to Iraq, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi. “The United Nations is nothing but a Zionists’ tool, even if it worked under the cover of providing humanitarian aid,” the voice said. “... Whoever kills Kofi Annan or the head of his commission in Iraq or a representative like Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, will be awarded the same prize of 10,000 grams of gold.” The speaker promised a lesser prize - 1,000 grams of gold - to anyone killing a citizen of countries he called “the masters of the veto like Americans and Britons”-_ a reference to nations with veto power on the UN Security Council. And he offered 500 grams of gold to anyone killing citizens of countries he called “slaves of the Security Council who are in Iraq, like Japan and Italy.” The context indicated the rewards applied to citizens of those countries who are in Iraq.
— AP |
|
500 die in attack on Nigerian Muslim village
Yelwa (Nigeria), May 7 Although the exact death toll was not known, Red Cross workers “estimate 500 to 600 dead” after interviewing witnesses and inspecting a mass grave site where hundreds were apparently buried, said Red Cross official Umar Abdu Mairiga. He was leading a Nigerian Red Cross team visiting the Hausa-speaking Muslim town of Yelwa yesterday following raids on Sunday and Tuesday by fighters from the largely Christian Tarok tribe. One hundred people were reported missing following the attacks, many of them women and children allegedly abducted by the attackers, Mr Mairiga added. “We have done what we could do” to treat 58 injured residents still in the town, he said. At least 100 other wounded civilians were evacuated along with thousands of others whose homes were destroyed, other Red Cross officials said. Nigerian police — who traditionally downplay casualty tolls in order to try to prevent retaliatory attacks — had initially reported 80 killed, a figure repeated by the Nigerian Red Cross president Emmanuel Ijewere. On Wednesday, residents showed an AP reporter a 160-square-foot area of freshly upturned soil, behind a mosque in a field smelling of rotting flesh, saying it was the burial site for 280 persons killed in the raids by mainly Christian, ethnic Tarok militants. —
Reuters |
|
London, May 7 Severe narrowing of the carotid artery that carries blood to the brain raises a person’s chance of having a crippling or fatal stroke, which accounts for 10 per cent of the 55 million deaths that occur each year worldwide. However, researchers at St George’s Hospital in London said a two-hour operation, under general or local anaesthesia, can alleviate the narrowing. “It’s clear from our trial that immediate surgery is the best option for some patients with severe narrowing of the carotid artery,” said Alison Halliday, a vascular surgeon who reported the finding in The Lancet medical journal. In a trial of 3,000 patients from 126 hospitals in 30 countries, she and her colleagues found that surgery halved the risk of stroke from 12 to 6 per cent in high-risk patients after a five-year follow-up. “Most of the patients found to have benefitted were under the age of 75,” Halliday said in an interview. Stroke is the second leading cause of death, after Ischemic heart disease, according to the World Health Organisation. It is also among the five most important causes of disability and occurs when a blockage stops the flow of blood to the brain. But it is also largely preventable with efforts to reduce blood pressure and raised cholesterol levels. Although surgery itself can cause stroke, the risk is much less than it would be without an operation. Anyone with a 70 to 90 per cent blockage in the artery would be a candidate for surgery, according to Halliday. —
Reuters |
|
Freedom Tower to rise from WTC ashes
New York, May 7 Freedom Tower would help New York City contest for the world’s tallest skyscraper. The 541 metres tower should top other existing buildings when completed in 2009 even though only the first 70 floors will be occupied while the top will be a spire and an antenna. New York officials, from Governor George Pataki to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said the addition of the antenna would bring the tower to a total height of 609 metres. The original 1776-foot tower is symbolic of America’s year of independence. Freedom Tower will join the fray of cities that claim to have the world’s tallest building. —
DPA |
|
British troops face new abuse charges
London, May 7 The unnamed territorial army soldier was quoted as saying that he had seen four incidents of prisoners being punched and kicked by soldiers in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. The regiment is already under investigation by Royal Military Police (RMP) after the Daily Mirror printed photographs on Saturday apparently showing its troops beating and urinating on an Iraqi prisoner. “This is a new soldier with what might be new allegations,” a defence ministry spokesman told AFP late yesterday. —
AFP |
|
Afghan cultural treasure vanishing
Bamiyan, Afghanistan, May 7 He soon peers out. “It’s empty,’’ says Hussain after nimbly scaling a narrow path up the sheer rockface. “It’s been looted.’’ Afghanistan’s cultural treasures are vanishing in illegal excavations that are growing bolder and more sophisticated since U S-led forces toppled the ultra-conservative Taliban regime in 2001, as smugglers feed on lawlessness outside the capital Kabul. “It’s a nightmare,’’ said Roland Besenval, director of the Delegation Archeologique Francaise en Afghanistan (DAFA), which pioneered Afghan excavation work in 1922. “After maybe two, three or four years it will be impossible to reconstruct the history of some areas of Afghanistan because all the archaeological sites will be completely destroyed.’’ Nearly all of Afghanistan’s 2,800 known excavation sites, spanning 100,000 years of human history, are suffering from some form of pillaging, said Abdul Wasey Feroozi, director general of
Afghanistan’s National Institute of Archaeology.’’ “The government does not have the power to control all areas,’’ he said from an office in Kabul where a lean budget had kept his staff of 40 on typewriters instead of computers. “How is it possible for us to control all these areas?’’ Archaeologists say many sites are at the mercy of militia commanders, or “warlords’’, who nominally answer to the government but operate with impunity and often protect smugglers for a fee. “This country is crowded with wonderful archaeological treasures. There are thousands of sites. Looting is happening at almost every one,’’ said Martin Hadlow, head of the United Nations’ cultural arm, UNESCO. —
Reuters |
|
Scientists excited over new Mars discoveries
Pasadena, USA, May 7 Scientists at the Mars mission headquarters in Pasadena said Yesterday the pictures were taken by the robot rover Opportunity from the rim of a football-stadium sized crater reached after a six-week trek across martian flatlands. The crater, dubbed Endurance, is lined by multiple layers of exposed bedrock resembling cliffs that mission scientists said was completely different from anything they had seen since the ground-breaking Mars mission began in January. “It’s the most spectacular view we’ve seen of the martian surface, for the scientific value of it but also the sheer beauty,’’ principal science investigator Steve Squyres told a news conference. “It looks fundamentally different from anything we’ve seen before. It’s big. It’s massive. It has a story to tell us.’’ The Endurance crater is about 500 metres from the Eagle crater where Opportunity landed and where scientists announced in March that they had found geologic evidence of a body of salty water once deep enough to splash in. Since then they have been trying to fill in the picture of the environment on Mars before the water evaporated. Eagle Crater “was the last dying gasp of a body of water,’’ Squyres said. —
Reuters |
|
Patient robbing patient nabbed by injured cop
Washington, May 7 Mr James Lant (59), a police officer in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park, had injured his knee on Tuesday while responding to a fire at a vacant house. He later want to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit for treatment in the emergency department. Another patient, Tyrone Allen (41), was on a gurney near another man who was lying motionless. Lant said that he saw Allen reach over, shake the man and ask “Hey, hey, you awake?” Allen then slipped the watch off the man’s arm, pocketed the timepiece and pretended to go to sleep. A minute later, Allen allegedly rifled through the man’s pockets. Mr Lant, prompted to intervene despite being hobbled by the knee injury, stood over Allen and declared, “I’m a police officer. You’re under arrest.” —
DPA |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | National Capital | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
In video (
