N. Korea ‘building launch facilities’
TOKYO, Dec 8 — North Korea is developing three underground facilities capable of launching ballistic missiles, Japan’s public broadcaster reported today.

Pressure to free Pinochet
LONDON, Dec 8 — Pressure on the British Government to free Augusto Pinochet increased today as one of the law lords who ruled he should face extradition to Spain was reported to be linked to Amnesty International.

China for early talks
BEIJING, Dec 8 — Buoyed by the results of Taiwan’s recent local poll that dealt a stinging blow to the pro-independence opposition, China has called for early reunification talks with Taiwan.

2 space stations linked
SPACE CENTRE, (USA), Dec 8 — Spacewalking astronauts successfully hooked up 40 electrical connections between the first two pieces of the international space station, allowing power and data to flow from one side to the other.

“Hidden” planets
MUNICH, Dec 8 — Astronomers believe there may be large, as yet undiscovered, planets around 25 to 30 billion km out in the universe.

Troops seize 400 kg explosives
COLOMBO, Dec 8 — Sri Lankan troops have seized more than 400 kg of high explosives and detonators, enough to make 50 landmines, the Defence Ministry said today.

Plea to allow cloning for human spares
LONDON, Dec 8 — Scientists advised Britain today to allow cloning research involving the use of human embryos to provide spare parts to treat serious illnesses.

N. Korea ‘building launch facilities’

TOKYO, Dec 8 (AP) — North Korea is developing three underground facilities capable of launching ballistic missiles, Japan’s public broadcaster reported today.

US spy satellites had confirmed what appeared to be three missile-launch bases under construction in the northern part of North Korea, NHK Television quoted Japanese defense agency sources as saying.

The three facilities were being built at varying depths ranging from 562 ft to 1,125 ft below ground, the report said.

A defence agency spokesman contacted by Associated Press had no comment.

The report comes as former US Defence Secretary William Perry, the newly appointed US Government policy coordinator for North Korea, is on a three-nation Asian tour.

SEOUL (AFP): South Korea has urged Washington to normalise ties with North Korea and ease economic sanctions, instead of pushing Pyongyang into a corner over its suspected nuclear programme, officials said on Tuesday.

South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung told visiting US envoy William Perry on Monday that if Stalinist North Korea cooperated with Seoul and Washington, the starving nation could be offered food aid.

“We (South Korea and the USA) should give North Korea what it needs and also demand what we need,” a government official quoted Kim as saying.

Kim said South Korea and the USA should help North Korea if it cooperated, and retaliate if the unpredictable state became provocative.

The comments came after a senior Western academic said in Tokyo that the USA had stretched itself too far in Asia forcing it to overreact to supposed military threats, particularly from North Korea.

Kim also urged that this was the time to ease economic sanctions imposed on North Korea, which was under pressure to open up its suspected nuclear site at Kumchangni, north-west of the Yongbyon nuclear complex which was shut down in 1994 under a deal between Washington and Pyongyang.

The US Congress has expressed dissatisfaction at the administrations policy towards North Korea and it recently threatened to scrap the 1994 deal signed in Geneva unless it allowed unconditional inspections of the site.

Pressure to free Pinochet

LONDON, Dec 8 (AFP) — Pressure on the British Government to free Augusto Pinochet increased today as one of the law lords who ruled he should face extradition to Spain was reported to be linked to Amnesty International.

As a delegation arrived from Chile to petition for the former dictator’s release. The Guardian newspaper said Lord Hoffman had been a director of a charity affiliated to the human rights group for seven years.

It added that Amnesty had admitted that Hoffman was one of two directors of the fund-raising Amnesty International Charity, in a letter to Pinochet’s lawyers.

The organisation insisted that Hoffman’s work was unrelated to its campaign to have Pinochet extradited to Spain to face trial on charges of terrorism, torture and genocide.

Nevertheless, the revelation could not have come at a worse time for those campaigning for the 83-year-old’s extradition.

Already, lawyers for Pinochet are reported to have asked for Pinochet’s release on the grounds that Hoffman’s wife is an administrative assistant for Amnesty in London.

And today, a Chilean delegation, including wives of soldiers killed under Pinochet’s command when he overthrew Leftist President Salvador Allende in 1973, will hand in a petition to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office.

British Home Secretary Jack Straw must decide by Friday whether he will allow the proceedings to go ahead in the English courts.

santiago: A British rock group has called off a concert in Santiago amid violence connected with the arrest in London of ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, the event’s organiser has said.

The group called Iron Maiden acted on British Government advice to its citizens to avoid travel to Chile except under exceptional circumstances until tension over the former military ruler’s detention lessens, a spokesman explained on Monday.

Iron Maiden was to have participated in the ‘monsters of rock’ festival with US groups Slayer and Helloween and local bands Criminal and Panzer.

The spokesman added that US rock group Anthrax would stand in for the British band.

China for early talks

BEIJING, Dec 8 (PTI) — Buoyed by the results of Taiwan’s recent local poll that dealt a stinging blow to the pro-independence opposition, China has called for early reunification talks with Taiwan.

In a speech made public days after the poll, which saw an emphatic victory for the ruling Kuomintang Party, a Chinese official urged the Taiwanese authorities to open cross-straits political talks as soon as possible.

“The issue of China’s reunification should not be postponed indefinitely,” Xinhua news agency quoted Vice-Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Zhang Kehui as saying.

Taiwan should value the progress made in recent talks between top negotiators of both sides and join hands in striving for early reunification, Mr Kehui said.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted a Chinese offical as saying that the outcome of Saturday’s poll was a vindication of Beijing’s policies on Taiwan.

In the first reaction to the verdict, an official of the state council’s Taiwan affairs office said: “We fully respect our Taiwan compatriots’ lifestyle and their wish and right to run their own affairs, while opposing forces pursuing splittist activities in the name of democracy.”

China heaved a sigh of relief after the defeat of incumbent Mayor Chen Shui-Bian in Taipei, a stronghold of the Democratic Progressive Party, advocating independence for Taiwan.

2 space stations linked

SPACE CENTRE, (USA), Dec 8 (AP) — Spacewalking astronauts successfully hooked up 40 electrical connections between the first two pieces of the international space station, allowing power and data to flow from one side to the other.

To nasa’s surprise, yesterday’s critical wiring job took less time than expected.

Mr Jerry Ross, nasa’s most experienced spacewalker, deftly snapped the connectors together as Mr James Newman handed him the attached cables. They were impressed with the seven-storeyed station towering above them. “This is sure a beautiful piece of hardware,’’ Mr Newman said.

Mr Ross worked nonstop from the end of Endeavour’s robot arm, (15 metre), starting at the bottom with the American-made Unity module. He attached jumper cables there before being hoisted more than 12 metres to the Russian-built Zarya stacked on top.

“Jerry, how’s the view?’’ Mr Newman called out from below. Fantastic if I had time to look,’’ Mr Ross replied.

Mr Ross and Mr Newman completed the electrical connections four hours into their planned over 6-hour spacewalk, the first of three scheduled for this week. About one and a half hours later, flight controllers turned on the power inside the fledgling station where electricity had been shut off to the cables before the spacewalk for safety.

Endeavour’s crew used the robot arm and thruster rockets on Sunday to snap together Zarya and Unity, forming a 23-metre, 35-tonne tower in Endeavour’s cargo bay. Construction of the space station hinged on making the electrical hookups, said nasa’s lead flight director Bob Castle.

Unity, a connecting passageway, needs the solar power generated by the Zarya control module to survive. The computers, heaters and fans inside Unity began humming for the first time in orbit once the electricity started flowing from Zarya.

“Hidden” planets

MUNICH, Dec 8 (DPA) — Astronomers believe there may be large, as yet undiscovered, planets around 25 to 30 billion km out in the universe.

They have been led to this conclusion, European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomer Richard West explained, by the discovery of a series of small planets, observed with the aid of the new VLT telescope at the ESO base in Chile.

Experts have known for the past six years of the existence of these minor bodies, measuring up to 100 km in diameter. They are remnants of the birth of a planet, far enough away from the sun to have been preserved “as in a refrigerator”, said Mr West.

The new, extremely powerful telescope will make it possible to explore the surface of these minor bodies. The focus of interest is whether, in addition to ice and dust, it will be possible to identify organic molecules there, something nobody has so far succeeded in doing.

The scientists hope that the minor bodies will provide them with further clues as to how the solar system emerged. Observation is being concentrated on the Kuiper belt, stretching across a distance of between 5 km and 30 km from the Earth.

Canada to change rules of citizenship

OTTAWA, Dec 8 (AFP) — Canadian Immigration Minister Luceinne Robillard has introduced a proposal that changes the rules for obtaining Canadian citizenship.

Under the measure before Parliament, new immigrants would be required to live in Canada for 36 months over a period of five years before qualifying for citizenship.

“That’s a direct message to permanent residents, to immigrants to this country,” Ms Robillard said at a press conference.

New immigrants would also have to be functional in one of the two official languages: English and French.

Jobless father burns daughter

ISLAMABAD, Dec 8, (AFP) — A jobless Pakistani labourer driven mad by poverty set fire to his teenaged daughter, who was injured seriously, it was reported today.

Parvez Mehram flew into a rage when his 12-year-old daughter taunted him about stealing a rooster in their slum, on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, the newspaper Jang quoted his wife as telling the police.

The man, frustrated after finding no work for several days, hurled a burning oil stove at the girl, setting her clothes on fire, and threatened to kill other family members, the woman told the police.

Troops seize 400 kg explosives

COLOMBO, Dec 8 (AFP) — Sri Lankan troops have seized more than 400 kg of high explosives and detonators, enough to make 50 landmines, the Defence Ministry said today.

The troops raided a house in the Alaveddi area of the northern Jaffna peninsula late Sunday following information from local residents and seized the explosives, the ministry said in a statement.

It did not said if there had been any arrests following the discovery. However, the ministry said a member of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was killed in the same region yesterday.

The troops killed the man at Muruthankerini in the peninsula, the ministry said. It also said that a civilian was killed trying to handle a rebel mine in the north-eastern district of Trincomalee yesterday.

A senior ministry and the top military brass escaped on Sunday in a Tiger mortar bomb attack that killed five persons and wounded 40.

Plea to allow cloning for human spares

LONDON, Dec 8 (Reuters) — Scientists advised Britain today to allow cloning research involving the use of human embryos to provide spare parts to treat serious illnesses.

In a report that sparked immediate protests from a leading pro-life group, a panel of experts supported the government’s ban on human reproductive cloning but left the door open to use the technique to create cloned tissue and organs.

They said cloning techniques could be helpful in treating people with brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and various types of cancer in the coming years.

"New treatments might also be developed for diseased or damaged tissue. This would entail growing cells or tissue in culture and not involve human reproductive cloning," Sir Colin Campbell, chairman of the Human Genetic Advisory Commission (HGAC), said in a statement.

We believe that it would not be right at this stage to rule out limited research using such techiques, which could be of great benefit to seriously ill people.

The recommendations were made in a joint report by the HGAC, and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which licenses the country’s fertility clinics.

Plane crash
BAIE-COMEAU (Quebec): A twin-engine plane with 10 persons aboard crashed on Monday in Shallow, frigid waters near the mouth of the St Lawrence river, three persons were rescued, and five bodies were found by military divers in the wreckage. The other two persons remained missing. The authorities said their bodies might have drifted down the river. The plane was carrying a pilot and nine passengers. A coast guard vessel and rescue aircraft were sent to the scene. The plane went down about a mile from Baie-Comeau, on the north shore of St Lawrence, 300 km northeast of Quebec city. — AP

Iraq off list
WASHINGTON: President Bill Clinton removed Iran from the official list of drug problem countries, concluding that the Islamic Republic had carried out a successful programme to eradicate opium poppies. In a letter to members of the Congress on Monday Mr Clinton said while Iran continued to serve as a transit point for opiates heading for Europe, there was no evidence to suggest that significant quantities arrived in the USA. He also deleted Malaysia from the list, which has now been reduced to 28. — AP

Cindy injured
MALIBU (California): Super-model Cindy Crawford was slightly injured on Sunday in a car accident that sent shards of glass into her eyes, said the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office. The accident occurred in Malibu, on a road along the Pacific Ocean, when Crawford’s husband, Randy Gerber lost control of the car while avoiding a horse and hit a cement block. — AFP

20 cult members held
SHANGHAI: China has arrested more than 20 members of an unofficial religious group in the southern province of Hunan, accusing them of swinding believers, the Wenhui daily said on Monday. The police recently arrested key members of the group, called Zhu Shen Jiao, or main god religion, the newspaper said. The group cheated some of its 10,000 believers out of ornaments and 300,000 yuan ($36,232) in cash. Zhu Shen Jiao told followers to prepare for a great calamity and that it was safer to keep belongings with the group, the newspaper said. — Reuters

Kennedy tapes
SAN FRANCISCO: US President John F. Kennedy and former California Governor Edmund G. Pat Brown were recorded referring to Richard Nixon as ‘’nuts” and “psycho” after Brown beat Nixon in the 1962 Governor’s race. “You reduced him to the nut house,” Kennedy said after Nixon’s infamous last news conference, “which followed his loss to Brown. That last farewell speech of his.... shows that he belongs on the couch.” After the defeat, Nixon bitterly told reporters: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” — AP

Moon rock recovered
MIAMI: US Customs Service agents in Miami said they had recovered a piece of the moon that had been smuggled illegally into the USA. The rock. brought to earth in 1972 by US astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 mission, had been presented by US President Richard Nixon to the Government of Honduras, but was smuggled back into the USA following a government shakeup in the central American country. A Miami man had kept the rock in a bank safe deposit box for years, until he spotted a newspapers advertisement seeking to purchase moon rocks. — DPA

Tallest tower
MELBOURNE: What is being billed as the world’s tallest tower may be going up in Melbourne. Victorian State Premier Jeff Kennett announced on Monday that the Grollo tower had won the bid for the Docklands site on Melbourne’s western fringe. He said the Grollo Group had four months to prove its financial capacity and to satisfy conditions set by the Docklands authority. The 1,837-foot tower, estimated to cost 1.5 billion Australian dollars would include apartments, a luxury hotel and offices. — AP

Diamond dress
NAPLES: An Italian bride has tied the knot in a $ 6-million dress dripping with diamonds, some of which she said she planned to donate to an AIDS charity after the ceremony. Sabrina Battaglia (31) turned up for her wedding on Monday in the church of San Francesco Di Paola in an ivory dress studded on the bodice and skirt with 6,000 glittering gems. — Reuters