Laden ‘causes Cohen to change tour plan’
WASHINGTON, July 17 — US Secretary of Defence William Cohen abruptly cancelled a trip to Albania this week after US officials determined that supporters of Saudi-born bombing suspect Osama bin Laden were looking to strike a “high-profile target,’’ ABC News reported.

Over 1,400 held in Iran
TEHERAN, July 17 — Teheran students said today that a young schoolgirl was killed and more than 1,400 persons arrested in the recent violence in the Iranian Capital and demanded the immediate release of all detainees.

Black couple gets black baby
NEW YORK, July 17 — A New York judge awarded permanent custody of a black baby to a black couple on Friday after the child was born to a white couple because of an embryo mix-up at a fertility clinic.

Beware of Y-2K scams
WASHINGTON, July 17 — A research firm predicted on Friday that someone would make off with more than $ one billion in a scam linked to year 2000 computer upgrades and that companies might lose billions.

Barak briefs Arafat on Clinton meeting
RAMALLAH, July 17 — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak telephoned Palestinian President Yasser Arafat early this morning and briefed him on his meetings in the USA, Mr Arafat’s advisor Nabil Abu Rudeineh said.

Israeli jets hit South Lebanon
RASHAYA (Lebanon), July 17 — Israeli warplanes today blasted suspected guerrilla targets in South Lebanon after artillery fire struck posts inside the Jewish state’s occupation zone, security sources and witnesses said.

Saddam vows to resist USA
BAGHDAD, July 17 — A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein today vowed that Baghdad would continue to resist the “despotic” USA and urged oil-producing nations to unite.

Albright to hold talks with Jaswant Singh

WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) — Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will meet Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in Singapore later this month in a bid to encourage the resumption of direct talks between New Delhi and Islamabad, a senior official said.

“That meeting is on,’’ the official said yesterday.

It will mark the highest US-Indian contact since Pakistan agreed to withdraw forces from the Indian side of the Line of Control after an incursion that sparked the worst clashes between the two South Asian nuclear rivals in 30 years.

Ms Albright’s decision to schedule early talks with Mr Jaswant Singh reflects a heightened US attention to the problems of the subcontinent and Washington’s keen interest in improving ties with India.

The meeting will take place on the fringes of the annual meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations which Ms Albright will attend from July 24 to July 27. An exact date has not been announced.

“We want to have the Lahore dialogue resumed and get these issues between India and Pakistan resolved ... we’re prepared to be helpful,’’ said the senior US official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

UNI adds: Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone has come out in opposition to the proposed amendment, seeking to withhold American military assistance to India on the basis of its voting record in the United Nations which is reportedly not favourable to the USA.

The amendment, expected to be offered by Republican Congressman William Soodling, would prohibit foreign military assistance to countries which fail to support the USA at least 25 per cent of the time in the UN General Assembly. India figures in the list of such nations.

Mr Pallone, in his speech in the US House of Representatives yesterday, called on his congressional colleagues to oppose the Goodling Amendment. The legislation is scheduled to be debated in the House beginning Monday and Mr Pallone pledged to work with his colleagues to defeat the anti-India measure.

Two Congressmen — Gary Ackerman (Democrat) and James Greenwood (Republican) — had already made known their resolve to oppose the move in the overall interest of US-India relations.

Anti-spying reforms

WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) — A US House of Representatives panel moved to withhold $ 1 billion to force the Energy Department to overhaul its counter-espionage programmes after China’s alleged theft of US nuclear secrets.

An appropriations subcommittee agreed during a closed session on Thursday to bar the Energy Department from spending $ 1 billion of the roughly $ 4 billion it was slated to use on nuclear weapons next fiscal year till its security programmes were restructured or spun off to a separate agency.

Representative Ron Packard, a California Republican who chairs the subcommittee, accused the department of failing to protect weapon secrets “through chronic security and counter-intelligence problems,’’ and said the money should be blocked till reforms were made.

The nuclear weapons measure was part of a $ 20.2 billion Bill to fund programmes at the Energy Department and army Corps of Engineers in fiscal 2000, which starts October 1.

The Bill must go through the full committee and the House. The senate in June passed its version of the Bill without the funding restriction.

Responding to reports of lax security at the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons laboratories and allegations that China stole nuclear secrets over 20 years of espionage, Packard and some other Republicans want nuclear weapons programmes to be put under a separate agency.

Plans also circulated largely among Republicans to put weapons programmes, including the three nuclear weapons laboratories, under a semi-autonomous agency within the Energy Department.

But other lawmakers urged a cautious approach to restructuring, with top Republican and Democratic members of the House Commerce Committee and Science Committee urging careful deliberations.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has said he would accept a semi-autonomous operation within the agency, as long as the Secretary keeps oversight of it.

USA admits N-illness

WASHINGTON, July 17 (PTI) — The US Government has admitted that nuclear weapons production during the cold war era has caused illness in thousands of workers and promised to compensate them for medical care and lost wages.

“The US Government is acknowledging that we made a mistake. We need to right this wrong,” Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told the New York Times on Thursday.

Announcing the compensation plans after years of government rejection of the health claims, he depicted the workers as victims of the rush to produce nuclear weapons in the cold war.

He was joined by other Congress members from some of the regions where many of the former weapons workers live or were employed.

The safety standards, which had evolved since the 1940s, had been established in good faith but had since been deemed too weak to have protected workers, he said.

The workers suffered from cancers and lung diseases after exposure to beryllium, asbestos, mercury, uranium and other materials. “I am reversing a policy of denial of compensation,” said Mr Richardson.

The workers are mostly men in their 50s or older who spent decades in skilled blue-collar employment from the World War II Manhattan atomic weapons project to the present.

About 9,000 workers have so far been screened. At least 5,000 more will be. Hundreds of them are showing job-related health problems.

Flood victims face starvation

DHAKA, July 17 (Reuters) — Bangladesh relief officials today struggled to deliver food supplies to flood victims facing starvation in remote areas of eastern Comilla district, officials said.

“We have sufficient food in stock, but are unable to carry it to all the needy people quickly as the floods have damaged most of the roads,’’ Mr Chowdhury Golam Mawla, Deputy Commissioner of Comilla, told Reuters.

Many of the 5,00,000 people in about 70 villages in the region were cut off from the district headquarters and could not be reached by relief workers, another government official said.

“(Still) some 45,000 people are regularly supplied with food in 48 shelters and in distant villages where boats can reach,’’ Mr Mawla said.

Mr Mawla said more than 1,700 km of internal roads in the district had been damaged by severe flooding after the collapse of a section of the Gomti river embankment at Ebderpur, 115 km south-east of Dhaka, early last Sunday.

‘We need several boats to reach food and drinking water to them. Only 120 boats are engaged so far for the relief operations,’’ Mr Mawla said.

The army had set up water treatment plants and 100 medical teams were supplying water purification tablets to those in shelters and swamped villages.

Officials yesterday said more than 85,000 people were left homeless by the floods.

Mr Mawla said there had been no reports of disease outbreaks in the flood-hit areas.

Army engineers were today working near Comilla to fix a steel bridge damaged yesterday to restore a link between the south-eastern and north-western districts of the country, the police said.

Mr Mawla said the breaches in the Gomti embankment would be plugged next week when the water level was expected to fall.

The floods had damaged more than 7,500 houses, 200 educational institutions and 120,000 acres of rice crops in Comilla, the officials said.

Laden ‘causes Cohen to change tour plan’

WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) — US Secretary of Defence William Cohen abruptly cancelled a trip to Albania this week after US officials determined that supporters of Saudi-born bombing suspect Osama bin Laden were looking to strike a “high-profile target,’’ ABC News reported.

The network yesterday said that Mr Cohen was not believed to be a target but scrapped the travel plans on the advice of Gen Wesley Clark, NATO’s Supreme Commander.

ABC said US intelligence officials had received reports in recent weeks that indicated Bin Laden’s operatives might plan to use Albania as “the staging area for an attack” against a “target of opportunity.”

Last month, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright avoided Albania in part because of the presence there of Bin Laden’s supporters, ABC said.

The Pentagon spokesman, Lieut-Col Steve Campbell told Reuters that the main reason Mr Cohen changed his travel plans was that there were only about 600 US troops in Albania, compared to 6,000 in Bosnia.

“The primary reason was to visit as many troops as possible,” said Colonel Campbell.

Security concerns, however, were “a secondary reason” for the change, he acknowledged.

Over 1,400 held in Iran

TEHERAN, July 17 (AFP) — Teheran students said today that a young schoolgirl was killed and more than 1,400 persons arrested in the recent violence in the Iranian Capital and demanded the immediate release of all detainees.

Student representatives said in a statement that the arrests had been carried out by police forces as well as "pressure groups," a reference to Islamic extremists.

They said Nami Hamifar, the sister of a student, was killed during clashes between security forces and protesters at Teheran University, adding that members of the student representatives council were among those arrested during Wednesday’s massive government-sponsored rally which marked the end of the student protests in the Capital.

Six days of violence rocked Teheran after a student demonstration last week over the closing of a popular pro-reform newspaper erupted into bloody clashes between protesters and security forces.

Meanwhile, the students also demanded a personal meeting with supreme Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as President Mohammad Khatami.

Black couple gets black baby

NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) — A New York judge awarded permanent custody of a black baby to a black couple on Friday after the child was born to a white couple because of an embryo mix-up at a fertility clinic.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Diane Lebedeff Yesterdau also authorised a change in the name of the infant to Akiel from Joseph, the name given him by the white couple, Richard and Donna Fasano of Staten Island, N.Y.

Due to errors by a fertility clinic, Ms Donna Fasano gave birth late last year to two boys. One boy, who is white, is her biological child but the black infant is the biological son of other clinic clients, Deborah Perry-Rogers and Robert Rogers of Teaneck, N.J.

Beware of Y-2K scams

WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) — A research firm predicted on Friday that someone would make off with more than $ one billion in a scam linked to year 2000 computer upgrades and that companies might lose billions.

“The law of very large numbers dictates that we will have a vastly increased risk of electronic theft and fraud after the year 2000 remediation efforts,” Gartner Group Inc. said yesterday.

“Given the enormity of this undertaking...by 2004 there will be at least one publicly reported theft exceeding $ 1 billion,” added Joe Pucciarelli, the analyst who wrote the report “Year 2000 and the expanded risk of financial fraud.”

The firm, based in Stamford, Connecticut, has helped frame debate on the so-called millennium bug with its estimates of the potential costs.

It said likely perpetrators of a heist would be software engineers who might take advantage of year 2000 upgrades to take backdoor control of systems.

Companies worldwide are racing to prepare for the rollover from 1999 to 2000 for fear that computers’ old, two-digit date-fields could cause crashes or corrupt their data by mistaking 2000 for 1900.

Barak briefs Arafat on Clinton meeting

RAMALLAH, July 17 (DPA) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak telephoned Palestinian President Yasser Arafat early this morning and briefed him on his meetings in the USA, Mr Arafat’s advisor Nabil Abu Rudeineh said.

“Barak briefed President Arafat on his meetings with (U.S.) President (Bill) Clinton and reiterated his commitment toward implementing the Wye River (land-for-security) Agreement,’’ Mr Abu Rudeineh told Deutsche Presse-Agentur DPA.

He said the two leaders have agreed to meet again as soon as Mr Barak returns from his current trip to the USA.

Mr Barak met Mr Arafat last Sunday, the first meeting between the two men since Mr Barak took office earlier this month. Mr Barak, vowing to advance the stalled Middle-East peace process, was elected Prime Minister in May.

Mr Abu Rudeineh said the Palestinian Authority had received no official update regarding Barak’s reported intention to set a 15-month deadline for concluding peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.

Israeli jets hit South Lebanon

RASHAYA (Lebanon), July 17 (Reuters) — Israeli warplanes today blasted suspected guerrilla targets in South Lebanon after artillery fire struck posts inside the Jewish state’s occupation zone, security sources and witnesses said.

They said two rockets struck the Wadi Zelaya valley which borders the occupied strip.

Witnesses had said earlier that Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas fired mortars at positions belonging to the Israeli Army and its South Lebanon Army Militia, facing Zelaya.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in the raid, Israel’s latest on south.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli defence force confirmed the attack. "IDF fighter planes this afternoon attacked terrorist targets in the Zelaya area north of the eastern sector of the security zone,’’ a statement said. "All our planes returned safely to base.’’

The Jewish state has staged more than 100 air strikes against Lebanon this year and in June staged its heaviest attack in three years, killing eight persons and destroying key infrastructure in retaliation for cross-border Hezbollah rocket attacks which killed two Israelis.

Saddam vows to resist USA

BAGHDAD, July 17 (AFP) — A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein today vowed that Baghdad would continue to resist the “despotic” USA and urged oil-producing nations to unite.

Iraq is resisting “all attempts of Zionism and the despot of this age: the successive US Administrations,” the president said in a televised speech marking the 31st anniversary of the Baath revolution in Iraq.

He said the “Zionists” were “now using US capabilities... on behalf of Zionism, known for its hatred and vengeance upon the Arabs and the Muslims in general as well as against humanity at large.”

Nude photo shoot
NEW YORK: A Federal Judge has barred New York city’s police from stopping a photo shoot of 75 to 100 nude models in a residential neighbourhood on the big apple’s lower east side. US District Judge Harold Baer on Thursday ruled that photographer Spencer Tunick could proceed with his shoot of the nude models forming “an abstract shape” between 5.30 am and 6.30 am local time. Lawyers for the city immediately requested a stay of the order from the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. No decision had been reached according to initial reports. — Reuters

Pop star cheated
LONDON: British pop star Sir Elton John was quoted as saying he had been cheated of $ 30 million by his former manager whom he branded “a liar and a cheat”. John, 52, alleged in The Mirror on Friday that John Reid, whom he sacked a year ago after a 28-year partnership, had sold the rights of his first six albums for the equivalent of just $4.5 million. — DPA

Stone age tools found
CAIRO: An Egyptian-Belgian archaeological mission has found a cave with remains dating back to 7,000 BC at Al-Qoseir on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, the state-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper reported. It quoted Mr Gaballah Ali Gaballah, Secretary-General of the Supreme Antiquities Council, as saying that stone age tools and wall paintings recording daily life had been discovered inside the cave. — Reuters

8 killed in floods
DUBAI: Flash floods in north-western Iran have killed eight persons and left five others missing, Iran’s official television has reported. The floods hit the city of Mahneshan in Zanjan province on Thursday night, destroying 150 houses and damaging agricultural and dairy industry, the TV montored by the BBC said on Friday. — AP

Marijuana seized
RIO DE JANEIRO: Federal police have found five tons of marijuana worth an estimated $ 17 million in the country’s largest ever drug bust, news reports said. The police also arrested eight suspected drug traffickers in the raid on a farm near Tremembe, in south-eastern Sao Paulo state. Among those arrested was the gang’s suspected leader, a 29-year-old lawyer, the reports said on Friday. — DPA

Stealth fighter
WASHINGTON: A US House of Representatives panel backed a halt in production of the Air Force’s F-22 Stealth fighter, but supporters of the sophisticated warplane promised to keep pushing for its revival. The House Appropriations Committee on Friday unanimously approved a $266 billion fiscal 2000 spending bill that cuts six of the fighters and spends the $ 1.8 billion in savings on existing fighter fleets and a bonus programme to help retain pilots. — Reuters

Victims compensated
PARIS: Libya has transferred funds to France to compensate victims of the 1989 mid-air bombing of DC-10 UTA airliner, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday. The ministry statement put no figure on the compensation sent to France but said relatives of the 170 persons who died in the attack “can obtain the payment of amounts transferred by Libya to France”. — AFP