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Yudhoyono wins Indonesia
poll
21 killed, 96 injured in Baghdad blasts
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9 killed in US air raids
5 Palestinians killed by
Israeli fire in Gaza
MMA to launch stir if Pervez
does not quit
Two Americans bag Nobel for
medicine
File photo of US scientists Richard Axel (left) and Linda Buck who won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Medicine. — Reuters
photo
First New Zealand PM to visit India in 20
years
Cherie’s US lecture tour to pay mortgage
Blair’s popularity mounts: poll
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Yudhoyono wins Indonesia
poll
Jakarta, October 4 Final results released today gave Mr Yudhoyono 60.6 per cent of Indonesia's first direct leadership ballot while incumbent Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri took 39.4 per cent. In brief remarks to reporters, Mr Yudhoyono did not explicitly declare victory, but spoke just after the numbers had shown the magnitude of his win. "If that is the result, I thank the people of Indonesia and will soon form the next government and formulate a 100-day programme," Mr Yudhoyono said near his home south of Jakarta. "The government will work seriously to achieve our goals." Mr Yudhoyono asked the international community to work with the world's most populous Muslim nation. He did not elaborate, but Indonesia is on the frontline in the war on terrorism. The poll marked a major step forward in Indonesia's democratic transition following a violent and messy six years since the downfall of autocrat Suharto, a former general who ruled with an iron fist for 32 years. Jakarta stocks jumped two per cent in the morning session on expectations that Mr Yudhoyono would name a strong cabinet. Mr Yudhoyono (55) will be sworn in on October 20. He has said his cabinet will start working on that day. Unofficial counting in the days after the ballot showed Mr Yudhoyono had easily won, but Ms Megawati had said she would not concede defeat until the Election Commission announcement. —
Reuters |
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21 killed, 96 injured in Baghdad blasts
Baghdad, October 4 In the first explosion, a four-wheel-drive vehicle packed with explosives detonated outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the US Embassy and key Iraqi government offices, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. Yarmouk Hospital received 15 bodies and 81 wounded from the explosion. No US forces were believed hurt in the blast, which happened near a checkpoint at the western entrance to the complex. Troops cordoned off the scene and helicopters clattered overhead. The second car bomb exploded near a number of major hotels. At least six persons were killed and 15 wounded, said Tahsin al-Freiji of the US-trained Facility Protection Service, which guards major installations in the city. Speaking at the scene, al-Freiji said a pickup truck loaded with dates plowed into a convoy of three four-wheel-drive vehicles as they emerged from a parking area behind the hotels and exploded. Two escaped but one was destroyed in the blast. At least five cars were charred. No coalition forces member was hurt. A third car bomb exploded in Mosul, 360 km northwest of Baghdad. Two people believed to be transporting the explosives and a civilian bystander were killed. —
AP |
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9 killed in US air raids
Fallujah, October 4 US forces "conducted a precision strike against a building where approximately 25 anti-Iraqi forces network members were moving weapons on the outskirts of Fallujah," a military statement said. In a second raid, "Multi-National Force-Iraq once again struck members of the Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. —
AFP |
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5 Palestinians killed by
Israeli fire in Gaza
Gaza City, October 4 The army said those killed in the helicopter strike were about to plant a roadside bomb on a path used by troops. Two senior commanders with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas were also seriously injured in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in Gaza City overnight, Palestinian hospital and security sources said. Two rockes were fired at the men, Mohammad Al Simri and Hassan Al Jabari, and a Palestinian woman was also said to have been injured in the attack. Al Simri, a leading figure in the group’s armed branch, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, escaped a similar targeted killing attempt by the Israeli army earlier this year. This morning, two makeshift rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit the Israeli border town of Sderot, leaving one person with shrapnel injuries, the Israeli police and medical sources said. —
AFP |
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MMA to launch stir if Pervez
does not quit
Islamabad, October 4 “We would not tolerate him in uniform even for a single day after the cut-off date of December 31, 2004. If he doesn’t remove his uniform, we would refuse to recognise him as the President also,” senior MMA leader and chief of Jamat-e-Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmad said. The MMA had helped General Musharraf to continue in the post of the Army Chief by supporting the ratification of the constitutional changes in Parliament. Addressing the concluding session of a three-day conference of the JI at Azakhel in North-West Frontier Province, Mr Hussain along with MMA General Secretary Fazlur Rahman said the Islamist alliance would launch a mass agitation if General Musharraf went back on his promise made to the MMA and to the public last year. Mr Rahman, who headed the Jamat Ulema Islami, also ruled out any compromise on the issue of uniform. “We know General Musharraf is a dictator. But we are democrats and there is no way we would back down on the issue,” he said at the public meeting.—
PTI |
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Two Americans bag Nobel for
medicine
Stockholm, October 4 In its decision to honour the pair, the Nobel Foundation said the human sense of smell was what “helps us detect the qualities we regard as positive. A good wine or a sun ripe wild strawberry activates a whole array of odorant receptors.” The work by Axel (58) of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Clumbia Universiy in New York, and Buck (57) of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Researh Center in Seattle, Washington, discovered a family of about 1,000 genes that give rise to a huge variety of proteins that sense particular smells. These proteins are found are found in cells in the nose which communicate with the brain. “Therefore, we can consciously experience the smell of a lilac flower in the spring and recall this olfactory memory at other times,” the foundation said. Axel is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of pathology at Columbia University, and he specialises in how the sensory information is received, filtered and understood by the brain. Buck, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, has specialised in how mammals detect and differentiate odors and pheromones and how the brain translates and perceives them. The medicine prize includes a check for $1.3 million and will confer on the pair for the work they jointly published in 1991.— AP |
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First New Zealand PM to visit India in 20
years
Wellington, October 4 “Our ties with India really do need to be updated,” Ms Clark said today, releasing details of her India tour which follows David Lange’s official visit in 1985. “We have the old Commonwealth connection, we have a cricket connection but I think what we often miss is that India has a very vibrant economy — moving ahead, very fast in areas like information communications technology (ICT), in film,”
she said. Ms Clark will visit New Delhi, Bangalore and Bombay on her way home from the Progressive Governance Summit in Hungary which will be attended by leaders from Britain, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Canada, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Korea and Ethiopia. She will also make a one-day stop in Singapore to meet new Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and discuss objectives for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) November summit. The Laos meeting is to consider an ASEAN free trade deal with New Zealand and
Australia. She leaves New Zealand on October 13 on her eight-day mission. —
AFP |
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Cherie’s US lecture tour to pay mortgage
Mrs Cherie Blair will begin paying off the Blairs' £3 million mortgage with the start of her money-spinning lecture tour of the USA at a ladies' luncheon in Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The Prime Minister's wife, who is expected to earn £ 90,000 for three speaking engagements in the USA, is sharing the billing at an annual forum for insurance agents with Mr Paul Bremer, US Ambassador, who headed the provisional government in Iraq, and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. As the UK's First Lady, Mrs Blair has proved to be big box office after hiring a leading East Coast agency for celebrity speakers. She is replacing actress Lauren Bacall who pulled out of the lunch for the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers' Conference. Politicians at Westminster were bemused by her decision to tour the USA, but reports that the Blairs are buying a £3.6 million town house in Connaught Square which may explain her cashing in on the speaking circuit. Mrs Blair can earn more than £ 1,00,000 a year in her legal practice as a leading specialist on civil rights and company law. Mr Blair is hoping to pay off their mortgage with his own speaking tours of the USA, following in the footsteps of Mr John Major and Baroness Thatcher, but for that he must wait for his retirement from frontline politics. The Blairs are understood to have put down a deposit of about 10 per cent (£ 3,60,000), drawn from savings, investments and the proceeds of the sale of their home in Islington in 1997. Stamp duty at 4 per cent would have cost £ 1,44,000, with solicitors' fees and survey costs adding an estimated £ 10,000. Mrs Blair has two further US lecture dates this month, one to the American Bar and the other to Harvard University. She has recently co-authored a book on life at No 10 called The Goldfish Bowl. — By arrangement with The Independent, London
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Blair’s popularity mounts: poll
London, October 4 Thirtyfive per cent of the respondents to the Populus Institute poll said they would vote for Mr Blair's ruling Labour Party if a general election were held now. The figure is a 3 per cent increase over a similar poll held a month ago, while support for the Opposition Conservatives was down 2 per cent to 28 per cent in the latest poll. The Liberal Democrats received 25 per cent of the support of those polled, one point up on last month. Regarding personal popularity, Mr Blair scored 5.31 out of 10 in the opinion poll, against 4.98 for Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy and 4.15 for Conservative Party boss Michael Howard. Mr Blair's popularity is thus the highest it has been since the end of major military operations in Iraq. — AFP |
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Jakarta, October 4
Baghdad, October 4
Stockholm, October 4
