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Sunday,
August 17, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Uganda dictator Idi Amin dead Power restored to New York Indian restaurant
provided free meals
Over 4,000 Pakistanis killed in Kargil |
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Pak declines India’s offer to deal with oil spill
Blackwill gets new assignment 16 Nepalese soldiers die in landslides In graphic: Israel agrees to release more cities to Palestinians
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Uganda dictator Idi Amin dead
Jeddah, August 16 “We can confirm that Mr Idi Amin has died from complications due to multiple organ failure,” the source at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah said. Ugandan embassy in the kingdom would not comment on Amin’s death, referring all queries to his family. Amin, one of the bloodiest despots in Africa, has been living in exile, chiefly in Saudi Arabia, since being ousted from Uganda in 1979. He was in his late 70s. It was not immediately clear what would happen to Amin’s body. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had said that if Amin died abroad, his body could be taken home for burial. Amin, who was in near-death condition for weeks, had received death threats by the telephone, prompting the hospital management to post guards at his bed in the intensive care unit. A man who expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, Amin was denounced inside and outside Africa for massacring tens of thousands of people — some estimates say more than 100,000 — under his despotic 1971-79 rule. Exiles accused him of having kept severed heads in the fridge, feeding corpses to crocodiles and having one of his wives dismembered. Some said he practiced cannibalism. He was driven from Uganda in 1979 by forces from neighbouring Tanzania and Ugandan exiles, and was given sanctuary by Saudi Arabia in the name of Islamic charity. A Muslim, Amin had lived quietly in Jeddah on a government stipend with four wives.
— Reuters |
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Power restored to New York New York, August 16 Major cities and towns from Midwest to New York were slowly brought back online, but after-effects of the outage would be felt for quite sometime. There were still areas without electricity and some of them might remain dark for another day or two, officials said. In New York local trains were still not functioning, in Cleveland, water supply was yet to be restored and in several areas gas supply was yet to stabilise. Officials said the effects of the power failure would leave a more permanent mark on their budgets though it would take a few days to calculate the cost. In almost nine seconds on Thursday afternoon, power supply failed in parts of eight states in the USA and of southern Canada. American President George W Bush, who is monitoring the situation from California, blamed the outage on an “antiquated” distribution system and called for the modernisation of the delivery system. The task force, that would also seek solutions to help prevent such failures in future, would be jointly chaired by US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Herb Dhaliwal, the White House said. Federal, state, provincial, and local authorities, as well as private sector electricity providers, would be invited to contribute to the work of the task force. As the experts debate the cause, analysts expect the power failure to remain a hot issue in Washington for months to come and might even find an echo during the campaign for the next year’s presidential elections. The administration blamed the Democrats for holding up Mr Bush’s energy initiative and the Democrats fired back saying that the White House lacked any clear policy. While officials were still unable to explain exactly what caused such a rapid collapse in the power grid, Americans expressed relief that they had not been the victims of a terrorist act. US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said there was “no evidence it was an intentional act.” Emergency procedures designed to evacuate people from subways and elevators worked well. People took the inconvenience with good humour and law and order prevailed in most places. The police in Ottawa reported some looting and also attributed two deaths to the outage. New York reported only one death, a 40-year-old woman who died of a heat-related heart attack during a building evacuation. In Washington, the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee said it would convene hearings on the blackout when Congress returned next month from its summer break. —
PTI, Reuters |
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Indian restaurant
provided free meals during blackout New York, August 16 When the lights failed on Thursday night, several restaurants downed shutters. Those that remained open doubled or tripled their prices but the stranded had nowhere else to go. As ATM machines did not work and credit cards became useless, those with little cash had a tough time. But in this greedy jungle, ‘Madras Mahal’ on Lexington Avenue, owned by Nitin Vyas, offered free meals to the hungry. More importantly, it provided free cold water when the going rate for a small drinking water bottle was $ 5 compared to usual $ 1. The restaurant served rice with the Punjabi dish ‘channa-bhatura’ and tea which was much in demand. Even last afternoon, there was a queue of hungry people outside the restaurant waiting for a free meal.
— PTI |
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Over 4,000 Pakistanis killed in Kargil war: Sharif Islamabad, August 16 Accusing President Pervez Musharraf of masterminding the Kargil conflict, during which militants backed by Pakistani troops occupied the mountain peaks of Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Sharif said the entire operation was launched without the knowledge of his government. Mr Sharif also admitted that Pakistan was defeated in Kargil, but said he covered it up by undertaking a visit to the USA, after which Islamabad announced a withdrawal. Had he accepted defeat then, it would have demoralised the army and India would have got an “opportunity” to invade Pakistan, Mr Sharif said in a message read out at a joint opposition rally organised by the 15-party Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) at Lahore on Thursday. Mr Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia, said more than 4,000 Pakistani troops and officials were killed in the Kargil operation. This was the first time that Mr Sharif disclosed the number of Pakistani casualties, which were kept a closely guarded secret. General Musharraf was the Chief of Army during Sharif’s tenure as Prime Minister. Mr Sharif was later overthrown in a military coup and sent to exile to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in 2000. He said the Kargil ‘plan’ had been prepared by General Musharraf without intimating his government. As a result, the Lahore process initiated by him and Mr Vajpayee to normalise relations between Pakistan and India was sabotaged. “Had Kargil not taken place, the Kashmir issue would have been resolved long ago,” Mr Sharif was quoted as saying in his message by local media today. He said instead of accepting responsibility and resigning voluntarily, General Musharraf overthrew his government under “dictation from some other quarters”. However, he did not identify which “quarters” he meant. In her message read out at the rally, Ms Bhutto said her party had held talks with the military leadership during the past three years to find an “honourable way” to establish a constitutional government in the country.
— PTI |
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Pak declines India’s offer to deal with oil spill Islamabad, August 16 “Pakistan is well equipped to deal with such a crisis and has no plans to seek external help,” Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said, reacting to the Indian offer of assistance to deal with the massive oil spill, off the Karachi port. “We appreciate the offer of assistance made by India, which we have referred to the authorities concerned in Pakistan. Since our authorities are well-equipped to deal with the situation, we are not seeking any external assistance at the moment,” he told reporters. Workers, meanwhile, were ready to siphon off remaining oil from the grounded tanker that broke into two, releasing large volumes of crude in the sea. Officials claim to have removed 20,000 tonnes of crude. The Karachi Port Trust has laid booms to contain the spill and started spraying chemicals to restrict the spread of 12,000 tonnes of crude oil.— PTI |
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Blackwill gets new assignment Washington, August 16 It said in a statement yesterday that Mr Robert Blackwill will work with other departments “to help develop and coordinate the mid-and long-term direction of American foreign policy.”
— AFP |
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16 Nepalese soldiers die in landslides Kathmandu, August 16 Five soldiers were still missing in the landslides even as the injured were being flown to Kathmandu for treatment, the radio said, quoting local army officials. The soldiers were deputed near Langtang National Park in Rasuwa district close to the Nepal-China border. According to the Rajdhani Nepalese daily, there were 70 soldiers sleeping at the army post, which was swept away in the landslides at around 10 p.m.
— UNI |
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Kathmandu, August 16 Yoshiteru Takahashi (60) and his six-member team left for the base camp at the foot of the Dhaulagiri mountain range in the Himalayas.
Takahashi, a house-fitter, said the team would set up camp on August 23 and then spend six weeks trying to capture the Yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, on film.
— AFP |
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Beijing, August 16 There was no immediate report of damage or the intensity of the quake which occurred just after 7 pm local time.
High-rise buildings in the embassy area here trembled for several seconds.
—
PTI |
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Jeddah, August 16
In video: Although the strong smell of crude oil was
slowly dissipating, the two beaches of Karachi have been closed
for the people.
