Beijing, March 30
Nearly 36 hours after a massive landslide buried 83 gold mine workers in Tibet, the Chinese authorities today recovered one body even as no signs of life have been detected.

The body was found after more than 30 hours of digging by hundreds of rescuers, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

The disaster struck a workers' camp of the Jiama Copper Polymetallic Mine in Maizhokunggar County, about 68 km from Provincial Capital Lhasa in the early hours yesterday.

Rescuers are still digging with their bare hands, as the narrow and damaged local roads had prevented much large-scale machinery from entering, Xinhua reported.

A rescue worker had described the chance of survivors being found as "slim", the report said, as teams using sniffer dogs and radar combed the mountainside in a hunt for survivors that was hampered by bad weather, altitude sickness and further landslides.

The disaster zone is located 4,600 metres above sea level. Temperatures as low as minus three degrees Celsius have affected the sniffer dogs' senses of smell.

The report quoted a rescue worker saying there were cracks along nearby mountains, which indicated further landslides were possible.

Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, said at the site that an expert team has been formed to investigate the cause of the landslide.

A spokesman for the regional government said at a press conference that the identities of the buried miners have been confirmed as rescue work was continuing.

The victims were workers from Tibet Huatailong Mining Development Company, a subsidiary of the China National Gold Group Corporation, a state-owned company and the nation's biggest gold miner by output.

The landslide engulfed a 3-km area and 30 metres deep in average, covered with about two million cubic metres of mud, rock and debris.

As of noon time, more than 3,00,000 cubic meters of debris had been removed, according to Jiang Yi, an armed police officer engaged in the rescue. — PTI 

Kabul, March 30
US special operations forces handed over their base in a strategic region of eastern Afghanistan to local Afghan commandos today, a senior US commander said.

The withdrawal from Nirkh district meets a demand by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the US forces leave the area after allegations that the Americans' Afghan counterparts committed human rights abuses there.

"We're coming out of Nirkh," said Maj Gen Tony Thomas, the top US special operations commander in Afghanistan, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor of Wardak province outside Kabul in which Nirkh is located, confirmed that US special operations forces withdrew and were replaced by a joint Afghan security forces team.

The transfer of authority ends a controversial chapter in which Karzai accused US troops and an interpreter working with them of torture, kidnapping and summary execution of militant suspects in Nirkh. The charges were denied by US officials, including top commander in Afghanistan Gen Joseph Dunford. The incident shows the larger struggle of Karzai's government to assert its authority over security matters, even as its green security forces try to assume control of much of the country from coalition forces on a rushed timeline, ahead of the scheduled withdrawal of most of coalition forces by December 2014.

Karzai had originally demanded the US special operations forces pull out from the entire province, a gateway and staging area for Taliban and other militants for attacks on the capital Kabul. But he scaled down his demands to just the single district after negotiations with Dunford and other US officials. — AP

Pakistan's former ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf will contest from three seats while Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan will be candidate on four seats in the upcoming election.

Musharraf on Saturday filed nomination papers in Karachi, Chitral and Islamabad. He is pitching on support from the MQM and retired military officials who dominate in the constituency.

Imran Khan filed papers for four constituencies that include his home constituency NA-71 (Mianwali), NA-126 (Lahore-IX), NA-56 (Rawalpindi) and NA-1 (Peshawar-I). Senior Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf leader Ayla Malik has filed her papers as a cover candidate for her party chief in NA-71. Both have skipped Balochistan, while Imran has also not filed paper from any seat in Sindh.

Imran's decision to contest on Lahore's NA 126 has jeopardised the party's understanding with Jamaat Islami (JI) for seat-to-seat adjustment. JI's senior leader Liaquat Baloch is also a candidate for this seat.

The PTI has also taken exception to JI's talks with PML-N for the same arrangement. Imran had made it clear that the JI cannot have electoral understanding with both the parties.

The PML-N had also struck an accord with the JUI of Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman. However Fazal had reacted strongly over PML-N's abrupt withdrawal of the name of retired Justice Shakirullah Jan from the list of prospective caretaker premier accusing him of collusion with the PPP to promote Jan's candidature.

Meanwhile, Imran has launched what he called the 'Naya Pakistan Fund' campaign to finance party candidates who couldn't afford to run election campaigns on their own.

Speaking on the occasion, he said the PTI was the only party which is fielding common people from lower strata of society. It had begun the fund raising programme so that people belonging to lower classes could take part in politics, he said.

He once again declared that his party would not form any election alliance with other parties.

Without naming any group, he said his party would not go for seat adjustment with terrorists. In the past, Imran had criticised the PML-N for maintaining links with militant organisations for political purposes.

Sit Kwin, March 30
The Muslims of Sit Kwin were always a small group who numbered no more than 100 of the village's 2,000 people. But as sectarian violence led by Buddhist mobs spreads across central Myanmar, they and many other Muslims are disappearing.

Their homes, shops and mosques destroyed, some end up in refugee camps or hide in the homes of friends or relatives. Many have been killed.

"We don't know where they are," says Aung Ko Myint (24), a taxi driver in Sit Kwin, a farming village where on Friday Buddhists ransacked a store owned by the town's last remaining Muslim. "He escaped this morning just before the mob got here."

Since 42 persons were killed in violence that erupted in Meikhtila town on March 20, unrest led by hardline Buddhists has spread to at least 10 other towns and villages in central Myanmar, with the latest incidents only about a two-hour drive from the commercial capital, Yangon.

The crowds are fired up by anti-Muslim rhetoric spread over the Internet and by word of mouth from monks preaching a movement known as "969". The three numbers refer to various attributes of the Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood. But it has come to represent a radical form of anti-Islamic nationalism which urges Buddhists to boycott Muslim-run shops and services.

Myanmar is predominantly Buddhist but about 5 per cent of its 60 million people are Muslims. There are large Muslim communities in Yangon, Mandalay and towns across Myanmar's heartland where the religions have co-existed for generations.

But as violence spreads from village to village, the unleashing of ethnic hatred, suppressed during 49 years of military rule that ended in March 2011, is challenging the reformist government of one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries. — Reuters

NAIROBI, March 30
Kenya's Supreme Court upheld Uhuru Kenyatta's presidential election victory on Saturday and his defeated rival quickly accepted the ruling, dousing fears of a repeat of the tribal bloodletting that blighted the country's last vote.

The decision cleared the way for Kenya's richest man to take the top job in east Africa's biggest economy, but left foreign powers with the headache of dealing with a leader charged with crimes against humanity at 
The Hague.

After the judgment, the police fired shots in the air and teargas at hundreds of stone-throwing youths in the western city of Kisumu, a stronghold of defeated presidential candidate Raila Odinga, who had challenged Kenyatta's win. Protesters looted shops and burned tyres in the street.

But shortly after, Odinga made a nationally televised statement, accepting the court's unanimous decision. "The court has now spoken," Odinga told a news conference. "I wish the president-elect, honourable Uhuru Kenyatta, and his team well," he said.

Kenya's outgoing president had called for calm ahead of the judgment which came five years after another ballot dispute triggered violence that left more than 1,200 dead. — Reuters

2 injured in riots

Nairobi: Clashes erupted on Saturday in the western city of Kisumu between the police and supporters of defeated presidential candidate Raila Odinga after the Supreme Court validated his rival, Uhuru Kenyatta's victory in March 4 polls. Two persons were injured in the clashes after the police was pelted with stones by angry youths. — AFP

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Johannesburg, March 30
South Africa might have had an Indian-origin First Lady if Amina Cachalia had agreed to a proposal of marriage from the country's first democratically elected President Nelson Mandela.

Mandela proposed to Amina, the widow of veteran ANC activist Yusuf Cachalia, after his 27 years of imprisonment and his marriage to Winnie Mandela ended. But, she dismissed his declarations of love, she wrote in her biography 'When Hope and History Rhyme'.

Amina, who died last month aged 83, revealed an intimate and affectionate side to the relationship between her and lifelong family friend Mandela in the book released after her death.

Her children Ghaleb and Coco Cachalia confirmed that their mother had confided in them about Mandela's marriage offer. — PTI

Washington, March 30
Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he felt a little “insulted and humiliated” standing before a judge in a Karachi court, where he appeared to seek extension of his pre-arrest bail in a series of cases.

Musharraf, 69, who ruled Pakistan for about a decade, following a military coup in which he overthrew Nawaz Sharif, appeared in a court in Karachi for the first time in his life.

“This is the first time, that I ever entered a courtroom in my life. If I was to be very frank with you on my feelings, if you want to know my feelings, the first feeling when I stand up for the judge when he entered which was the norm -- the norm which I had to follow, I did feel somehow a little insulted, a little humiliated,” Musharraf told CNN.

“But then I started thinking to myself that I have been saying that everyone is equal in the eyes of law. So I thought to myself, well, I have been saying this. The law applies to me also. So may be, would be upset for other -- that you yourself got involved,” said the former military ruler.

When asked if he trusted the judicial system, Musharraf said one has to face all the consequences.

“I know, my conviction is that there is nothing against me. And there were arrest warrants that were issued, for my nonappearance in the court,” he said.

“Now when I appeared on the cases in the court, there shouldn't be a reason for my arrest. And we should proceed with the cases. As far as the cases are concerned, they are politicised and there's nothing against me. From any point of view, there is nothing against me. So therefore, with that conviction, I'll face the courts,” he said.

Musharraf said at no point he was in danger when a shoe was thrown at him in the Karachi court room. “I didn't even see it. There was nothing that hit me. Later on, I was told that somebody hurled something. But nothing of that sort was visible,” he said.

“But later on they told me, those around me, there were hundreds of people who are my supporters. I think later on I was told that the man was really overpowered and he got a thorough beating or something. But I don't know who threw what. I didn't know at all,” he said.

Advocate Tajammul Lodhi yesterday hurled a shoe at Musharraf in the Sindh High Court corridor but it did not hit him.

Musharraf was required to appear in person in the court to extend the bail allowance. On March 22, a single-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Mushir Alam, had granted a 10-day bail period to the former President who returned home on Sunday after being in self-imposed exile since 2009.

The court extended by 15 days his pre-arrest bail period. The court had also granted Musharraf a pre-arrest bail in the Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto murder cases. — PTI