Russia ‘designing’ new N-arms
WASHINGTON, Jan 25 — Three small underground nuclear tests which Russia conducted last fall have prompted some government intelligence analysts to suggest that Moscow may be trying to design a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons, says the Washington Post, quoting administration sources.

‘A million songs stolen per day’
CANNES, France, Jan 25 — Around a million songs a day are being illegally downloaded from the Internet on to recordable CDs, depriving artistes of a fortune in royalties, say industry experts at the Midem Music Show which opened yesterday in Cannes.

Taliban rules out talks
ISLAMABAD, Jan 25 — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia have ruled out any possibility of talks with the USA on Washington’s demand to hand over the terrorist mastermind and Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden

Enron ‘abused’ rights on Dabhol

NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters)— A US-based human rights group has accused Enron Corp of complicity in beating and harassment of people opposed to the development of the Dabhol Power Project in Maharashtra.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) claimed Enron, whose Dabhol project is the single largest foreign investment in India, shared the responsibility for the actions of hired security and the police at the plant.

The 166-page HRW report alleges private security forces and the local police beat protesters with bamboo canes, attacked crowds with tear gas and arbitrarily detained local villagers opposed to the world’s largest private power project.

It cited local doctors’ evidence of bone fractures and other injuries, and residents’ accounts of ill treatment while in detention.

But Houston-based Enron said Dabhol Power Corporation (DPC) did not tolerate human rights abuses by its employees or contractors, adding the HRW report detailed allegations that had been ‘put to rest’ during the past four years.

“Much of the human rights watch report deals with concerns over state police actions over which we have no control,” Enron said in a statement. “It is misleading for the human rights watch to allege so.”

Enron is the principle shareholder in Dabhol Power Corporation, a joint venture between three US companies — Enron General Electric and Bechtel — and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board.

Monica’s testimony needed ‘to get at truth’

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (AP) — At a critical juncture in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, House prosecutors who interviewed Monica Lewinsky for almost two hours asserted her testimony would help the Senate “determine the truth.”

After a session that triggered partisan convulsions even before it was held yesterday, Ms Lewinsky’s lawyer, Mr Plato Cacheris, said she added “nothing to the record that is already sitting before the Senate right now.”

Yet all three House managers who participated in the interview called the session productive.

“I believe she would be a witness that would help them determine the truth, and that’s what we are all endeavouring to do during this process,” said Rep. Asa Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican. Rep. Bill McCollum, of Florida, said Ms Lewinsky “might be a very helpful witness to the Senate if called.” Rep. Ed Bryant, a Tennessee Republican, called the former White House intern “an impressive person.”

Mr Cacheris said his client was “candid, forthright and extremely truthful” but he insisted that anything she told the Senate would cover familiar ground. He urged the managers to tell their colleagues that it is unnecessary to call Ms Lewinsky as a witness, so that her “long nightmare” could come to an end.

The House prosecutors were set to meet today, the deadline for submitting a witness list to the Senate. Senators then will debate whether to call witnesses before taking two votes: first on a motion to dismiss the case and then on the decision to take depositions of witnesses.

Earlier yesterday, three Republican Senators said they wanted a swift end to the case and two of them expressed hope for a conclusion this week.

Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine, Slade Gorton of Washington and Richard Shelby of Alabama sought a fast conclusion to the trial. Snowe even predicted, “I think we will reach a conclusion by the end of this week” with “a chance to vote up or down on the articles of impeachment.”

Mr Gorton also said he hoped a solution could be found this week, said both parties should agree on a final vote and get to it ... Promptly, added Mr Shelby: “Let’s close this thing out. Let’s vote on it up or down.”

The prosecutors also indicated they wanted to talk to presidential friend Vernon Jordan, who helped Ms Lewinsky in her job search. Separately, former Clinton political adviser Dick Morris was interviewed by House impeachment investigators. He said he was asked about his conversations with Mr Clinton as the Lewinsky scandal was breaking a year ago. House managers, in presenting their case to the Senate, said Mr Clinton’s state of mind was important when he asked Morris for a poll on Americans’ opinion of his conduct with Ms Lewinsky.

Senate majority leader Trent Lott, meanwhile, said he would go ahead with a plan to submit written questions to Mr Clinton, even though White House lawyers who first suggested the questions now say the attorneys would respond rather than the President.

“We will continue to prepare a letter in hopes that the President will respond to the Senators’ interrogatories,” Mr Lott said in a statement. A response by Mr Clinton attorneys is not a substitute for the President answering the questions, he said.

In Reno, Nevada, former President George Bush said on Saturday night that he was deeply concerned by what appears to be a lack of respect “for the presidency by Mr Clinton. But Mr Clinton’s predecessor said the case will soon pass away and once again our country will be respected and strong around the world.”

In a move that shattered the Senate’s bipartisan approach to the impeachment trial and caught Senators from both parties off guard, independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s office obtained a court order to help the House schedule the interview with Ms Lewinsky.

Mr Starr told reporters outside his home yesterday that his office took the appropriate action “and was not in any way participating other than responding to requests” from House managers.

Anwar claims $26m damages from Mahathir

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 25 (AFP) — Lawyers for Malaysia’s ousted Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim today filed a defamation suit against Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad seeking 100 million ringgit ($ 26.3 million) in damages.

Karpal Singh, one of Anwar’s lawyers, said additional defamation suits were also being prepared against a Malaysian daily along with the Atlanta-based Cable News Network (CNN) and the weekly magazine “Newsweek”.

“This is certainly not a publicity stunt. It is a very serious matter. Severe humiliation has been subjected upon him and his family,” he told reporters.

A statement said Mahathir allegedly defamed his former deputy in remarks made at a news conference on September 22, two days after Anwar was arrested following a massive rally calling on the Prime Minister to step down.

The announcement came ahead of the resumption of Anwar’s corruption trial, which enters its 13th week tomorrow. The trial was adjourned on January 14 to give defence lawyers time to review the case after prosecutors amended the charges to focus on abuse of power instead of allegations of sexual misconduct.

“In light of the expunging of evidence in Anwar’s trial related to his sexual misconduct, it has substantial prejudice,” Karpal Singh said.

Russia ‘designing’ new N-arms

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (UNI) — Three small underground nuclear tests which Russia conducted last fall have prompted some government intelligence analysts to suggest that Moscow may be trying to design a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons, says the Washington Post, quoting administration sources.

But the sources said the Russians could also have been testing the safety and reliability of stockpiled Russian nuclear weapons rather than new designs. The tests were small enough to be permitted under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Department of Energy regularly conducts similar so-called sub-critical tests to maintain the reliability of U.S nuclear weapons.

“Given the new doctrine, it should be no surprise if they are developing new weapons,” the daily says quoting Joseph Cirinicione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is no treaty to stop them and I’m not aware of anything to prohibit them.”

But the US intelligence data is not clear. “The Russian tests were so small that we can only speculate what they were doing,” said one intelligence official familiar with intelligence reports about the tests. Almost all analysts agreed that with tests at that low level, Russia could not be developing new strategic or long-range nuclear weapons, sources added.

‘A million songs stolen per day’

CANNES, France, Jan 25 (DPA) — Around a million songs a day are being illegally downloaded from the Internet on to recordable CDs, depriving artistes of a fortune in royalties, say industry experts at the Midem Music Show which opened yesterday in Cannes.

According to an estimate from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, there are at least 80,000 music files on the worldwide web, available from 2,000 web sites in 30 countries.

Using a CD recorder linked to a PC, Internet users can create their own custom CDs by downloading music titles from the largely illegal sites. Recently, more than 400 artistes appealed to the European Parliament to secure their rights in the digital age.

Taliban rules out talks

ISLAMABAD, Jan 25 (PTI) — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia have ruled out any possibility of talks with the USA on Washington’s demand to hand over the terrorist mastermind and Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden saying “Osama is the trust of Muslim Ummah with the Afghan nation.”

“There is no possibility of dialogue with the USA on Osama and reports in this connection are totally baseless,” Taliban’s charge d’affaires in Islamabad, Maulvi Saeedur Rehman Haqqani, told reporters yesterday.

Spielberg war film wins Golden Globe

LOS ANGELES, Jan 25 (DPA) — Steven Spielberg’s shockingly realistic war movie “Saving Private Ryan” won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe award for best drama, also earning Spielberg the prize for best director.

In addition to thanking his family and his friend and lead actor Tom Hanks, Spielberg expressed his gratitude to the veterans of the US military for “saving the world” and ending the holocaust.

Comic Jim Carey won the best drama actor award for his role in the satire “The Truman Show’’ while Cate Blanchett picked up a gilded orb as best actress for her part in the historical drama “Elizabeth”.

Romantic comedy “Shakespeare in Love” turned out to be a foreign press favourite, sweeping three Golden Globe awards for best screenplay, best actress in a comedy and best comedy at the 56th annual awards ceremony.

“This movie ... Celebrates our industry,” said “Shakespeare” producer David Parfitt. “We have our moments of jealousy and envy ... But most of all I find this to be an incredible industry to be in and the people to be the most generous and the most caring and this is a movie that celebrates that: the magic of writing and the work that is so collaborative. We put on a show and when they’re good it’s a mystery to all of us. Thank you.”

Best foreign movie was the Brazilian film “Central Station”.

Earlier, Gwyneth Paltrow was moved to tears by her golden globe award for best actress in a comedy for her role in “Shakespeare in Love”, the first movie of the evening to pick up two prizes after scriptwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard won best screenplay.

Ed Harris picked up the first prize of the evening when he was named best supporting actor in a motion picture for his role in “The Truman Show”. The evening’s second award, that for best supporting actress, went to Lynn Redgrave for “Gods and Monsters.”

Best actor in a motion picture musical or comedy went to Michael Caine for his role in “Little Voice”.

The Globes, handed out each year by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, are viewed as a precursor to the Academy Awards, the film industry’s top honours given out in March, and “Central Station’s” win makes it a frontrunner for an Oscar.

21 die in bus mishap
CAIRO: A bus plunged from an overpass in Cairo on Monday, killing 21 persons and injuring 20, an interior ministry official said. He said the bus, which had come from the Nile town of Sohag, 400 km south of here, fell into the crowded Giza Square at about 0930 hrs IST. — Reuters

18 killed in crash
VIENNA: Eighteen persons, many of them teenagers, were killed when a bus carrying Hungarians on a ski trip crashed in southern Austria on Sunday, Austrian News Agency APA has reported. It quoted rescue workers as saying about 32 persons were injured when the vehicle skidded off the road between Deutschlandsberg and Trahuetten, south-east of Graz. The cause of the accident was not known but the road was said to be free of snow and ice at the time. — Reuters

McCartney’s charge
LONDON: Sir Paul McCartney claimed on Monday that his late wife Linda was being censored by British broadcasting media, saying they were refusing to play her posthumous record because it contained strong language. The former Beatle took out a half-page advertisement in The Times to rail at disc jockeys, saying it was up to parents to decide if they wanted their children to hear Linda’s last song. The single “The light comes from within”, which went on sale on Monday, hits at the press for mocking Linda’s vegetarianism and campaigning for animal rights. — AFP

Dance computers
TOKYO: Karaoke-obsessed Japanese have now discovered a new passion: dance computers. They are a combination of computer game and a kind of karaoke for the feet. While ordinary karaoke machines require the singer to follow text on a monitor, the new machines show coloured arrows to which the player must dance. The arrows show up in time to the music on a screen which the player must dance to on a “dance floor” made up of four sensor fields. The more skillful the dancer in following the screen, the more points he will collected. Dance computers have become the latest trend in Japan’s countless gaming halls. — DPA

E-mail stress
MUNICH: E-mail use at work is increasing drastically. As a result, many users feel overwhelmed, according to Munich-based computer magazine PC-Welt. In a recent survey of 2,200 workers from the USA, Canada, and the UK, some 42 per cent subjects stated that they received six or more E-mail messages per hour. Thirtyfive per cent of the respondents indicated that they received between three and five E-mails per hour. The new means of communication “increases the amount of information” and superfluous contacts. It also results in fewer personal conversations and telephone calls, increasing the amount of stress perceived by workers, the magazine said. — DPA

Talking car computers
STUTTGART: Drivers will soon be able to communicate with their vehicles in a very human way. A computer for cars that can listen and speak will be released in the USA, according to Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Clarion, a Japanese company, has developed the first computer for cars ever to respond to spoken commands, such as “turn the radio on.” If the computer is mounted in cars equipped with a navigation service, it can be asked to find the right directions to a destination, or to help drivers find their way home if they’re lost. — DPA