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Syria grants UN access to chemical weapons site
Situation merits serious response: US, UK
Iran warns US
Bo calls top witness abominable liar
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Karzai visits Pak today to seek release of Taliban leader
UN rights chief in Lanka for first-hand assessment
Talks only option to tackle terror: Pak
Chinese-American billionaire blogger held on ‘sex charges’
1 mn cockroaches flee China farm
Pak claims two killed in shelling by Indian Army
Don’t repeat mistakes, Russia tells US Mubarak trial adjourned
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Syria grants UN access to chemical weapons site
Beirut, August 25 "The Syrian Government and the United Nations agreed on a common understanding ... to allow the United Nations to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in Damascus suburbs on August 22, 2013," the statement said, giving the wrong date for the mass poisoning, which took place on August 21. Many hundreds of people were poisoned to death on Wednesday before dawn in what appears to have been the world's worst chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein's forces gassed thousands of Iraqi Kurdish villagers in 1988. Syria has denied that it was to blame for last week's incident. Rebels and many Western officials believe the poisoning was caused by a chemical agent used in a rocket attack carried out by government forces. The incident took place just three days after a UN chemical weapons team arrived in Syria to investigate other smaller allegations of poison gas use. The inspector team's movements must be coordinated with the Syrian authorities. The Syrian statement said that the date and time of the inspectors' visit to the site had been agreed, but it did not say when it would take place. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem met UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane - who was in Damascus to negotiate access - on Sunday morning, it said. Moualem "stressed Syria's readiness to cooperate with a team of investigators to uncover false allegations by terrorist groups that Syrian troops used chemical weapons in Damascus.” US President Barack Obama and top advisers are debating options for responding to the reported use of chemical weapons in Syria amid what Britain called "increasing signs" that the Syrian Government was responsible for the attack. — Reuters
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Situation merits serious response: US, UK
Washington, August 25 Obama and Cameron spoke on the telephone for 40 minutes yesterday and both leaders were "gravely concerned" by the "increasing signs that this was a[n]... attack carried out by the Syrian regime", The British Prime Minister's office said. “The UN Security Council has called for immediate access for UN investigators on the ground in Damascus," Downing Street said in a statement. "The fact that President Assad has failed to co-operate with the UN suggests that the regime has something to hide." It said Cameron and Obama had "reiterated that significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response from the international community and both have tasked officials to examine all the options". The statement said the two men had agreed it was "vital that the world upholds the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons and deters further outrages". They would keep in "close contact", it added. Syrian opposition activists accuse forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad of killing between 500 and more than 1,000 civilians in several suburbs east and west of capital in the early hours of August 21. The Syrian government has denied any use of chemical weapons, blaming rebel fighters instead. Meanwhile, Obama earlier convened his National Security Council to discuss options on Syria. US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the American military, which is repositioning naval forces in the Mediterranean, was ready to act. Meanwhile, the American naval forces continued to move closer to Syria, as the Obama Administration, considered its options on possible military intervention. US Secretary of State John Kerry also reached out to his counterparts in the region and across the globe. Hagel said that the Obama administration is still assessing intelligence information about the deadly attack. "When we have more information, that answer will become clear," he said in Kuala Lumpur when asked when will the US take military action against Syria. — PTI
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Tehran, August 25 The Iranian military leader warned Washington, its Western allies and Israel against playing with "fire". "Those who add fire to the oil will not escape the vengeance of the people," added Jazayeri. — AFP
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Bo calls top witness abominable liar
Beijing, August 25 The trial is due to resume tomorrow morning but there is no certainty as to when it would end and could go on for a while, state-run CCTV reported. The whole court investigation phase of this case was completed, according to the official media and Bo and prosecution was expected to argue their cases. Bo, 64, a politburo member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the head of the Chongqing city, was sacked last year after allegations of his wife Gu Kailai's involvement in the murder of a British businessman Neil Heywood in November 2011 surfaced early last year. Bo, a hardline Maoist and critic of CPC reformist ideology unleashed his anger on Wang Lijun, the police chief of Chongqing whose defection to US Consulate in Chengdu blew the lid over the case. Wang, 53, who reportedly suffered paralytic attack recently while serving a 15-year jail term, was so afraid of Bo's wrath over the investigation into Gu's involvement that he fled to the US mission to protect himself. Had Wang not defected to US consulate, Bo would have continued as top leader and perhaps would have been elected to the seven-member Standing Committee headed by Xi Jinping that now rules the country, Prof Li Zhaojia of Tsinghua University told CCTV today emphasising on the importance of the case. It was only subsequently that other charges of bribery and embezzlement were levelled against Bo, he said. As the court heard yesterday and today of the abuse of power specially his efforts to cover-up Gu's involvement in the murder, Bo hit back at Wang calling him an "abominable liar". Such was the intense questioning that Bo's lawyers even called for medical examination of his claims of illness. Bo says that Wang is a person of "extremely abominable character", the South China Morning Post quoted court transcript as saying. Bo said he could not have punched Wang, because he has no boxing experience and lacks the necessary physical strength. Wang was "clearly lying", he said while admitting he slapped him.— PTI
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Karzai visits Pak today to seek release of Taliban leader
Islamabad, August 25 Ties between the two countries nosedived after Pakistan and the US supported a Taliban office that opened in Doha in June to foster talks and also over a reported statement by Pakistan's National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz that Kabul should cede some provinces to Taliban for lasting peace. Aziz reportedly proposed this to Afghan ambassador Umer Duadzai in a meeting in Islamabad in June.—
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UN rights chief in Lanka for first-hand assessment
Colombo, August 25 Pillay was received at the Colombo international airport by UN resident officials on her first visit to the country. Her visit came after the government, already under pressure from Canada for a boycott of a Commonwealth summit here in November, dropped public hostility towards her and promised access to former war zones. A South African national of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay will meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa and travel to former war zones in the northern and eastern provinces. She will hold interaction with politicians and rights groups, senior judicial figures, members of the National Human Rights Commission and the committee monitoring the National Plan of Action on the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt Reconciliation Commission. Pillay will provide a first hand assessment on Sri Lanka at the September session of the UN Human Rights Council. She will provide a full formal report in March 2014, in accordance with the resolution adopted by the Council earlier this year. The UN official's visit followed the UNHRC's adoption of two anti-Sri Lanka resolutions in 2012 and this year. "She will be here on the government invitation which she kept open for two years", Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Human Rights envoy said.— PTI
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Talks only option to tackle terror: Pak
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said that dialogue was the only option
under consideration of the government right now to address the issue of terrorism and extremism.
Talking to The News here, the Interior Minister said that the government and the Pakistan army are on the same page and completely support the option of dialogue as the top priority to check terrorism and extremism in the country.
He said that he does not want to talk of any other option in case the dialogue option does not work. “Our priority is dialogue and we don’t want to talk of anything else right now,” he said. Nisar said that the PML-N has been opposed to the post-9/11 policies of the Musharraf regime. Criticising military ruler General Musharraf's decision to throw Pakistan into the American-led war on terror after 9/11, Nisar said: “We need to understand that action leads to reaction". He added that no Pakistani was involved in 9/11 but still Pakistan has been dragged into this war. Now, our people, our children and our security forces are being killed. Meanwhile, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) seems to have split on the issue of response. To Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's offer of dialogue, it has fired the head of the Punjabi Taliban for welcoming the government’s offer. The sacked leader, Asmatullah Muawiya, said the TTP had no authority to remove him. |
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Chinese-American billionaire blogger held on ‘sex charges’
Beijing, August 25 Venture capitalist Xue, one of the country's most popular bloggers, was detained by Beijing police on Friday evening. His arrest comes as authorities have been stepping up controls on the country's freewheeling web users in recent weeks. Billionaire Xue is an avid blogger who posted his last message on China's hugely popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog site at 5:41pm (0941 GMT) Friday, hours before he was detained. He has previously backed a campaign to release transparent details on pollution in China, and also highlighted the problem of child trafficking. His detention dominated weibo discussion, with his Chinese name Xue Manzi the most searched phrase today. Beijing police said on their verified weibo account they had arrested a 60-year-old man surnamed Xue and a 22-year-old female. "The two of them candidly confessed about the fact of the prostitution. They are currently under administrative detention," the statement said, adding that the arrest followed a tip-off from local residents. It also emerged today that a journalist had been detained for "fabricating rumours" after he made online accusations of wrongdoing against a former senior official in Chongqing, the megacity once headed by fallen politician Bo Xilai. The police in Beijing said the journalist with the News Express tabloid, whom they identified only by his surname Liu, "has been put under criminal detention according to the law for fabricating and spreading rumours". New Express journalist Liu Hu was handcuffed and taken away by police on Friday from his home in Chongqing, earlier Chinese media reports cited his wife as saying. On his own weibo account, Liu last month accused Ma Zhengqi, a former Chongqing vice mayor, of dereliction of duty in the restructuring of a state-owned company in the city, leading to losses of dozens of millions of yuan (millions of dollars), the reports said. "I call on the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and other authorities to immediately suspend Ma Qizheng's public office and start an investigation," he said, referring to the Communist Party's anti-corruption department. Ma is now a deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. — AFP
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1 mn cockroaches flee China farm
Beijing, August 25 The cockroaches fled the facility in Dafeng, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, for surrounding cornfields earlier this month after an "unknown perpetrator" destroyed the plastic greenhouse where they were raised, the Modern Express newspaper said. — AFP
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Pak claims two killed in shelling by Indian Army Islamabad, August 25 It reported that another woman was killed while a minor girl was injured at Datot area. Deputy Commissioner Kotli Masoodur Rehman told the state-run radio channel that the Indian troops resorted to "unprovoked shelling" on the civilian population on LoC late last night. He accused Indian troops of having directly targeted civilian populations for the first time since their alleged violations of the Line of Control. Tensions at the LoC have increased in the last few weeks especially after the killing of five Indian soldiers on August 6. Both sides blame each other for LoC violations and say their action was retaliatory in nature. — PTI
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Don’t repeat mistakes, Russia tells US Moscow, August 25 The Russian Foreign Ministry said its statement was a response to US actions to give it the option of an armed strike against Syria. It drew a parallel between reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces had used chemical weapons and Washington's 2003 intervention in Iraq following accusations by then-President George Bush's administration that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. "We once again decisively urge (the US) not to repeat the mistakes of the past and not to allow actions that go against international law," the ministry said. "Any unilateral military action bypassing the United Nations will ... lead to further escalation (in Syria) and will affect the already explosive situation in the Middle East in the most devastating way." Moscow said any military action would severely hamper joint US-Russian efforts for an international peace conference to end a civil war. — Reuters
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Buddhists in Myanmar torch Muslim homes, shops Bombs across Iraq kill 42 persons Aussie dragged away by crocodile US woman shows up alive after funeral NASA to launch Moon mission next month |
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Syria has agreed to allow UN inspectors access to sites in suburbs of Damascus where alleged chemical attacks occurred last week, the Syria Foreign Ministry said in a statement broadcast on state television.
