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90
killed, 114 injured in Iran road inferno
American
Indians detained under inhuman conditions N.
Korea N-test threat casts shadow on talks 55
killed in clashes in Yemen
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90 killed, 114 injured in Iran road inferno Teheran, June 25 “Ninety bodies have
been recovered, but the death toll could rise further,” a Red Crescent official in Zahedan, told the student news agency ISNA. He said 114 injured had also been evacuated from the scene of the accident, that occurred at a police post near Nosrat Abad, 110 km west of Zahedan late on Thursday night. The flames engulfed six buses and five other trucks, two of which were carrying tar, causing a massive inferno. The Red Crescent official said up to 200 person might have been killed. Zahedan’s governor, Mr Heydar
Ali Nuraye, said it was impossible to immediately given an accurate toll as a number of bodies and blackened human remains were yet to be
recovered. The tanker caught fire immediately after crashing, sending the flames spreading over a perimeter of around 50 metres. It said the cause of the fuel tanker crash was yet to be determined.
— AFP |
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American Indians detained under inhuman conditions Washington, June 25 “Potentially life-threatening conditions at many of the 74 detention centres pose dangers to inmates and guards alike,” Inspector General Earl E Deveney of the Interior Department, told the Senate panel. Federal investigators said that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) should immediately take steps to turn around the poorly managed Indian prison system that had seen at least ten inmate deaths and hundreds of escapes and suicide attempts over the past three years. Mr David W Anderson, Assistant Interior Secretary of Interior Affairs, assured lawmakers that changes were underway. “We have not treated this as business as usual,” he said. The 74 detention centres held 1,699 adults and 307 juveniles. The guards there lacked
professional training and most facilities were physically run down and “deplorably maintained,” Mr Deveney said. Even more troubling, he said, was the lack of response by correction officers and facility managers to such poor conditions. Investigators catalogued 209 suicide attempts and 413
escapes at the 27 prisons they visited. Five inmates had committed suicide. Another five suffered medical problems such as seizures,
appendicitis and alcohol poisoning.
— PTI |
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N. Korea N-test threat casts shadow on talks Beijing, June 25 The US officials said the threat, which came during a two-hour meeting between US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean negotiators in Beijing on Thursday, had been made by the Pyongyang in the past. But it has raised doubts that even faint progress can be made at the third round of crisis talks, now in their third day, between the North and South Korea, the USA, Japan, Russia and China. China’s Foreign Ministry abruptly cancelled the closing ceremony, which earlier on Friday it had said was scheduled for Saturday at the exclusive Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, but gave no indication whether the talks would be cut short or prolonged. Negotiations have been focused on a US offer of conditional aid and security guarantees aimed at breaking the 20-month deadlock in the nuclear crisis. North Korea has put forward its own plan calling for a “freeze for compensation” at the talks. While few had expected a breakthrough, the US proposal was the first detailed offer since U.S. President George W. Bush took office and branded the North as a part of an “axis of evil” alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq and had offered faint hope of progress at the talks. North Korea has issued no formal statement on the US proposal, and its test threat was another sign of how far apart the USA and North Korea, the protagonists in the crisis that has simmered since October 2002, remain. “In the course of that discussion, the North Koreans made a reference to testing and they made it as a part of an argument why we should accept their proposal right away,” said a Bush administration official. “It was a fairly transparent ploy.” The official said the bulk of the meeting, which he described as “thorough and serious”, covered a US proposal floated on Wednesday to allow other nations to supply energy aid to North Korea if it agreed to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its suspected nuclear programmes. “It is similar to things they have said before. Threats that North Korea has made before have really gotten them nothing; they have only increased North Korea’s isolation,” the official added. “The way out of that is not to threaten but rather to accept our proposals and resolve all these issues.” Japan urged North Korea to state clearly what it wants during six-party talks and suggested the chief negotiators sit down for a small group session.
— Reuters |
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55 killed in clashes in Yemen Sanaa, June 25 Dozens of soldiers and supporters of firebrand preacher Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi were also wounded in the fighting, which began late last Sunday in the Hidane region, 250 km north of Sanaa, a statement said. Fortythree extremists were captured and are being questioned, it added. A ministry source, meanwhile, told the state news agency SABA that the extremists “used mortars, landmines and rocket-propelled grenades against the Army.” “The rebels in custody are being interrogated and justice will be brought to them,” the source added. “The deviant defiant elements who broke the law and order under (Huthi’s) command are accused by the government of acts of vandalism, including the hoisting of the flag of another country instead of the Yemeni flag,” SABA said. Yemeni authorities accuse Huthi of stirring trouble by organising anti-US demonstrations after weekly Muslim prayers on Fridays. Yemen has cracked down on suspected Al-Qaida members and other Islamist militants since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the USA and a series of attacks at home, once a hotbed of armed Muslim extremism.
— AFP |
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