New death cult in USA
Washington, Jan 31 — A new and dangerous cult has emerged in the American homosexual community — non-infected gays seeking the “gift of death” by seeking unprotected sex with aids-infected men, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Iraq’s no to UN move on panels

DUBAI, Jan 31 (PTI) — Iraq today angrily brushed off a U.N. Security Council move to set up three technical panels to review its overall ties with Baghdad as “procrastination” intended to maintain an “unjust” embargo on Baghdad.

“The work of the three panels on Iraq set up by the U.N. Security Council will take months and will mean nothing but procrastination and maintaining the unjust embargo on Iraq,” the official INA news agency quoted a spokesman as saying shortly after a high-level meeting in the Iraqi capital.

The meeting, presided over by President Saddam Hussein, was attended among others by Vice-Chairman of Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim, Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan and other senior officials.

“Baghdad has not been consulted by the Security Council on its decision yesterday to set up these panels, therefore, such a measure does not mean anything to us,” the spokesman said, casting serious doubts over the UN’s latest proposal.

“Iraq demands a condemnation of the aggression...and the immediate and unconditional lifting of the embargo,” he said, a day after Anglo-US forces patrolling no-fly zones in the country’s north and south launched heavy attacks on Iraqi air defences.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP): The UN Security Council has reached an agreement on convening three panels to assess UN relations with Iraq, the council President announced.

The 15-member council last night, reached a compromise on a reference to the UN Special Commission, currently charged with Iraqi disarmament, providing for a panel involving “the participation and expertise from UNSCOM”, according to the final text.

Displaying rare unanimity, the 15-member council decided to put off contentious issues till a later date and agreed to create the panels to assess the status of Iraqi disarmament, fallout of sanctions and fate of missing Kuwaiti soldiers.

Speaking to reporters shortly after the meeting, outgoing council president Celso Amorim of Brazil expressed satisfaction that “we were able to re-establish the unity of the council and start working seriously on the Iraq question.”

Under a compromise formula hammered out by members, UNSCOM, under a cloud over allegations of spying for the U.S.A, will have a limited role in all future U.N. disarmament operations. Iraq has vowed to never allow UNSCOM back.

The three panels set up at Canada’s initiative will be led by the UN council chief Amorim. Security Council members will organise the panels and recommend any future action against Iraq.

Jeddah: The head of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called today for a new mechanism to disarm Iraq, in place of the UN Special Commission.

“The mechanism in place... has shown itself to be ineffective and inadequate,” Secretary-General Ezzedin Laraki said in a statement published by Saudi Newspaper Al-Madina.

“That’s why we must now deal with Iraq on a new basis guaranteeing Baghdad’s implementation of UN resolution,” said the head of the 54-country group based in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

“But we must not allow the current incidents to carry on indefinitely,” Mr Laraki said, referring to the escalation of US military strikes on air defences in northern and southern Iraq.

Monica’s taped deposition today

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) — Monica Lewinsky, the woman at the centre of the scandal that engulfed the White House, returned to Washington to face another round of questions about her affair with President Bill Clinton.

House prosecutors in Clinton’s impeachment trial and White House lawyers will take a deposition from Lewinsky tomorrow in a closed-door, videotaped session.

The Senate’s trial of Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice stems from his attempts to cover up an affair with Lewinsky.

Meanwhile, independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr is convinced he has the power to seek an indictment of President Bill Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice charges before he leaves the White House in January 2001, The New York Times said today.

As the US Senate moves forward with the impeachment trial Mr Starr is seriously considering whether to ask a federal grand jury to indict the President before the end of his second term, the report said.

Citing unidentified Starr associates, the daily said he has not decided what steps to take. But Mr Starr has concluded that the US constitution and legal precedent would give him the green light to pursue the indictment that could led to a spectacle unprecedented in US history — the trial and conviction of a President while in office, the report said.

House prosecutors have won the right to depose Lewinsky and two other witnesses next week. After Lewinsky, Clinton’s friend Vernon Jordan on Tuesday and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal on Wednesday.

A Newsweek poll released yesterday showed Americans about evenly divided over whether the three witnesses should be deposed, with 48 per cent in favour and 47 per cent opposed.

Clinton left for Camp David, the presidential retreat in nearby Maryland, earlier in the day with his wife, Hillary, and mother-in-law, Dorothy Rodham.

The President rearranged a trip to Central America to be in Washington on February 12 for the expected final vote in his impeachment trial, the White House said.

Republican representative Ed Bryant of Tennessee, a former Federal prosecutor, will question Lewinsky for the House team.

Lewinsky’s lawyers were not talking yesterday. “We’re not talking to anyone today, thank you,” a man who answered the phone at attorney Plato Cacheris’ office said.

House prosecutors and the White House will have up to four hours each to question Lewinsky at the deposition.

“The risk here is that this will just drag on endlessly and people will get even more cynical about what goes on here in Washington,” the White House’s Lockhart said.

“As far as what people will testify to, it stands to reason that on the 25th time someone asks you questions, you answer in the same way you answered it the first 24 times,” he added.

House prosecutors hope to use Lewinsky’s deposition to rebut trial arguments made by the White House, such as Clinton’s assertion that he did not encourage her to file a false affidavit in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.

They will also question Lewinsky about the President’s insistence that he did not lie about having “sexual relations” with her or encourage her to conceal gifts he gave her.

Senators can begin to review the depositions next Tuesday, with the impeachment trial set to reconvene next Thursday.

The Newsweek poll, conducted on Thursday and Friday, showed that Clinton’s job approval rating remained strong at 63 per cent, up three points from the previous week.

NATO okays Kosovo air strikes

BRUSSELS, Jan 31 (Reuters) — NATO cleared the way for the use of military force to help impose a peace deal in Kosovo, authorising alliance Secretary-General Javier Solana last night to launch air strikes against Yugoslav targets if necessary.

“The council today has agreed in authorising (to order) air strikes against targets in Yugoslav territory,” Solana said in a brief statement to newsmen.

“I will take this decision in the light of both parties’ compliance with international commitments, with international requirements, including in particular assessment by the contact group of the response to its demands, to avert a humanitarian catastrophe....”

Solana said NATO was ready to act and had ruled out no options. If the international community’s demands were not met, the alliance was “ready to take whatever measures are necessary”.

He said his decision would also “take full account of the position and actions of the Kosovar (Kosovo Albanian) leadership and all Kosovar armed elements in and around Kosovo”.

The alliance has assembled an armada of warships and aircraft near the region ready to launch a limited air strike at Yugoslav military targets. Yesterday’s decision shortens the delay between a NATO decision to strike and actual intervention.

France gets tough with young offenders
from Jon Henley in Paris

THE French Government has announced a draconian package of measures to stem an increasingly violent tide of youth crime sweeping the country, promising 7,000 extra policemen to patrol the volatile suburbs of big cities and a fourfold increase in the number of juvenile detention centres.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, under heavy public pressure following the well-publicised annual new year ritual of burned-out cars and pitched battles between youth gangs and the riot police, said an extra 1,900 police would be on the streets this year, with the remainder in place by 2002.

Thirty new police departments are to be set up in areas with particularly high delinquency rates.

Fifty high-security emergency detention centres will also be built in the next three years to hold serious and multiple offenders aged between 13 and 16, and 100 re-education centres will be established by the end of 2000 for youths whom the authorities think must be “temporarily removed from their home environment”.

Provisional police figures released little more than a week ago show reported incidents of juvenile delinquency, from graffiti to murder, rose by more than 11 per cent last year, with more than 155,000 minors involved compared with 138,000 in 1997.

The figures have doubled since 1992, and juvenile crime now makes up 25 per cent of all police cases.

Grappling with the phenomenon has proved a difficult task for Mr Jospin’s Socialist-led coalition, which is split whether to take the route of education and prevention favoured by Justice Minister Elizabeth Guigou or adopt the far tougher measures called for by outspoken Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement. He has proposed withholding state benefits from families who fail to control their “little savages”.

Stressing that he is seeking a “balanced” approach to the problem that will tackle both youth violence and the reasons behind it, Mr Jospin also announced the recruitment this year of 10,000 teacher’s aides as well as 1,000 special youth educators for detention and re-education centres.

Nine police stations are to be opened in suburban railway stations in the greater Paris area, where thousands of public transport staff have gone on strike in recent months to protest at repeated attacks on them by youth gangs.

And to speed up the notoriously slow judicial process, which has been overwhelmed by the dramatic increase in juvenile crime over the past five years, the number of deputy prosecutors is to be doubled from 200 to 400 by the end of the year, 50 specialist judges are to be appointed and 80 posts created for court clerks handling juvenile cases.

Much of the country’s youth crime is centred on the sprawling high-rise outer suburbs of cities such as Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, where youth unemployment can be as high as 50 per cent and relations between the police and immigrant groups are permanently tense. Residents on many estates have complained of being abandoned by the police, and some have formed their own armed patrols.
— The Guardian, London

50 LTTE men killed

COLOMBO, Jan 31 (PTI) — Fifty LTTE militants were killed in different encounters with Sri Lankan security forces in north and eastern provinces, defence sources said here today.

At least 25 LTTE militants were killed yesterday when troops laid an ambush at Mankerni in eastern Batticaloa district, the sources said.

A big arms cache was recovered from the site of the encounter later, the sources said.

Nearly 17 LTTE militants were killed in another major encounter with the Army at Karakkankandi in northern Jafna yesterday, the sources said, adding the encounter took place after a group of LTTE rebels tried to ambush troops with heavy mortar and automatic machine gunfiring.

In another battle at northern Mankulam town, five LTTE militants were killed by Army snippers yesterday, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the LTTE has admitted that three “Majors” including a woman “sea tiger” were killed in a battle with the Sri Lankan Navy and its suicide boats off Chalai coast in north-eastern Mullaithivu district.

The Navy here said two rebel boats were destroyed in the fighting that took place on Friday.

New death cult in USA

Washington, Jan 31 (PTI) — A new and dangerous cult has emerged in the American homosexual community — non-infected gays seeking the “gift of death” by seeking unprotected sex with aids-infected men, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

They are using Internet to set up a site to solicit group sex in that dangerous game.

The authorities are concerned with the development as two decades into the epidemic has taken the lives of nearly 18,000 San Franciscans, the paper said yesterday.

In this new subculture, fringe elements in the homosexual community arrange “Russian roulette parties” in which healthy gays risk aids.

“There are only three rules”, said the paper. “No clothes, no condoms and no discussion on HIV”. It identified a house in San Francisco where there is a $ 8 admission for a night of such communal aids-spreading homosexual sex. The paper said that such a “party” was set for next month in Houston with the help of Internet.

“Only a tiny fraction of homosexual men are believed to frequent such venues”, said the paper. “Even so, many veteran aids activists, who championed the ‘safer sex’ ethic that has checked the spread of the aids virus since the 1980s, are disturbed by the trend”.

King Hussein
ROCHESTER: Jordan’s King Hussein has completed chemotherapy, and will be given bone marrow transplants on Tuesday and Wednesday that are intended to achieve a more successful remission of his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer, Hussein’s physician said. A statement attributed to his physician, Lt-Gen Dr Samir Farraj, said Hussein was in stable condition after completing his necessary course of chemotherapy at the Mayo clinic. A Mayo spokeswoman on Saturday said Hussein began undergoing chemotherapy treatments almost immediately after he arrived at the clinic last Tuesday. The 63-year-old King was rushed to the USA after doctors decided he should return for medical checks after intermittent fevers and a low blood count. — Reuters

British poets
LONDON: Like sinners consulting a priest, aspiring British poets are being given a chance to take to the confessional to see if their odes are any good. Professional poet Ian Duhig is to man the confessional-style booth at poetry workshops being staged in northern England. “A lot of people are embarrassed about their poetry,” said Robert Walters of Bradford Libraries Service, who came up with the idea. “Half an hour of a professional poet’s time, in confidence, seemed a good offer to make to people who normally only read to families and friends,” he told Daily Telegraph. — Reuters

Of flashes and fits
LONDON: Prince Charles and his long-time lover Camilla Parker Bowles marked a media milestone amid a blaze of flashing camera bulbs, but television viewers were warned that film of their “coming out” could make people ill. The British Epilepsy Association urged television producers not to screen more than five seconds of the couple leaving London’s Ritz hotel on Thursday night, a moment captured in the flashlights of 200 press photographers. About 15,000 people in Britain suffer from photosensitive epilepsy which is triggered by flickering lights. — Reuters

Chiang’s antiques
NORWALK: Hundreds of people braved freezing temperatures to snap up old furniture, appliances, and even pots and pans owned by Mrs Chiang Kai-Shek, the 101-year-old widow of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, at an auction. The 800 antiques and pieces of bric-a-brac were expected to fetch between $ 150,000 and $ 200,000, said Gary Braswell, owner of the Braswell Galleries Auction House in Norwalk, Connecticut. Mrs Chiang, who is revered by many Chinese-Americans, moved to the USA from Taiwan after her husband’s death in 1975. — Reuters

Govt view upheld
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Saturday declared that the Sindh Assembly Speaker or Acting Speaker could not summon the House upholding government’s last year’s move to suspend the relevant constitutional provisions. A seven-member Bench upheld government’s order issued in November last year suspending the provisions of Constitution empowering provincial Assembly Speaker to summon the session. Having imposed emergency and subsequently the Governor’s rule in the strife-torn Sindh province last year, the government through an order had suspended Clause 3 of Article 54 of the Constitution (the constitutional powers of the Speaker of the provincial Assembly to summon the Assembly. — PTI

Caine reminisces
LONDON: Michael Caine, his days of philandering and heavy drinking well and truly behind him, says “I’m too old to mess around with women”. At 65, the actor’s film career has taken on a new lease of life with his portrayal of a sleazy impresario in “Little Voice”, winning a Golden Globe award and sparking speculation that a Hollywood Oscar could be next. “I used to do a bottle of Vodka a day in the 1960s —no problem, you are just topping yourself up,” he said in an interview published on Saturday. — Reuters

Defendant weds witness
SPRINGFIELD, (Massachusetts): A man charged with vehicular homicide married the only witness against him just before his trial, effectively ending the case. A judge dismissed charges on January 22 against Michael Vega after his bride, Antoinette Marie Joseph, refused to testify. Judge Constance Sweeney called the timing of the marriage “a terrible violation of ordinary moral decency.’’ Last June, Vega, 30, was riding with Joseph, 32, and arguing with her when he allegedly grabbed the wheel. — AP