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54 Iraqis killed in gunbattle
Iran takes a dig at Bush UN unveils AIDS combat plan
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22 Istanbul bombing suspects repatriated Bashir cleared of treason charge Vega may have Earth-like
planet: astronomers Israeli incursion into West Bank
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54 Iraqis killed in gunbattle Baghdad, December 1 But local residents said troops fired randomly at people and that most of those who died were civilians caught up in the clash. Yesterday’s fighting was the bloodiest combat reported since the end of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime. A spokesperson for US military said the clash was initiated by attackers, many wearing uniforms of Saddam’s Fidayeen paramilitary force, who simultaneously attacked two US convoys at opposite sides of Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad. Television images showed scenes of devastation, with buildings pockmarked by hundreds of bullet holes, and about two dozen badly damaged cars, apparently run over by armoured vehicles. A bus abandoned in the middle of a street had its front sheared off. Fences and walls of several residential homes were destroyed, apparently by shelling. Lt Col William MacDonald of the Fourth Infantry Division said after barricading a road, the attackers opened fire from rooftops and alleyways with bombs, small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. US troops responded with 120 mm tank rounds and 25 mm cannon fire from Bradley fighting vehicles. The US fire destroyed three buildings that the attackers were using, MacDonald said. “It sounds like the attack had some coordination to it, but the soldiers responded, used their firepower, used tank and Bradley fire and other weapons available to them, to stop this attack and take the fight to the enemy,” he said. |
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Iran takes a dig at Bush Dubai, December 1 “Why this secret nocturnal Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad? If he (Bush) claims to be Iraq’s liberator, he must have arranged a magnanimous travel to have the Iraqi people to welcome him,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi said in Tehran yesterday.
— PTI |
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UN unveils AIDS combat plan Geneva, December 1 World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Jong-Wook Lee called the prevention and treatment of the deadly disease perhaps “the toughest health assignment the world has ever faced.” “The lives of millions of people are at stake. This strategy demands massive and unconventional efforts to make sure they stay alive,” he said on World AIDS Day, introducing the so-called “3 by 5” plan that would give half of the people worldwide in dire need of treatment a better chance at survival. Three million people died in 2003 from AIDS, akin to a fully-loaded Boeing 747 jumbo jet crashing about every 90 minutes. According to estimates from the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 40 million adults are living with HIV/AIDS all over the world, of whom an estimated 26.6 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. Of nearly 8,000 firms surveyed in 103 countries, the WEF said, only 21 per cent felt that HIV/AIDS would have a severe impact on their business, while 47 per cent felt it would have ‘’some impact’’. |
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22 Istanbul bombing suspects repatriated Istanbul, December 1 The suspects allegedly fled Turkey following the attacks in November on two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank, which occurred within a week of one another and killed 61 people. A paramilitary police statement cited by Turkey’s semiofficial news agency Anatolia yesterday said the 22 people included Hilmi Tugluoglu, whom it said was linked to Azat Ekinci, a key suspect in the blasts. News reports have named Ekinci as a key accomplice in the synagogue bombings, saying he used fake identities and cash to buy the pickup trucks containing the bombs. Reports said Ekinci had travelled to Iran, received military and explosives training in Pakistan between 1997-99 and fought in Chechnya. The statement didn’t elaborate about Tugluoglu’s alleged involvement. It said Tugluoglu’s wife was also brought to Turkey. The suspects were being questioned, the statement added.
— AP |
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Bashir cleared of treason charge
Jakarta, December 1 The court upheld Bashir’s conviction on lesser charges of forging identity documents. Bashir was convicted in September of treason in a plot to overthrow Indonesia’s secular government but cleared of charges of being the leader of al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asia terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. The decision was widely criticised by foreign governments who maintain that Bashir is the spiritual head of the group, which has been blamed for both the last year’s Bali bombings and the August 5 bombing of Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. A senior court official and Bashir’s defence attorney Ahmad Michdan said today that the appeals court had thrown out the treason conviction. Michdan added that his team was not satisfied with the decision and wanted all charges dropped. He said he would appeal to the Supreme Court. Keeping Bashir in jail for three years for forging identity papers was unfair, he said. “There is political pressure from America, Australia and Singapore,” he said. “The law has proved that Abu Bakar Bashir is innocent.” The decision to reduce the sentence and reverse the treason conviction was made last month by the Jakarta High Court but only revealed today. A court official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the court cleared Bashir of treason because there was not enough evidence to support the charge. Bashir (65) was arrested shortly after the Bali attack amid intense pressure on Indonesia to crack down on extremism. He has always maintained that he was not involved in terrorism. He was not charged with involvement in either the Bali or Marriott attacks. Bashir fled to Malaysia in the 1980s to escape a crackdown on militants by former dictator Suharto. Bashir runs a religious boarding school in Central Java. Many of its graduates are wanted by the Indonesian police on suspicion of terror attacks.
— AP |
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Vega may have Earth-like planet: astronomers Paris, December 1 Only 25 light years away and three times larger than the Sun, the youthful Vega has a giant gaseous planet, about the size of Neptune, that orbits at the roughly equivalent distance of Neptune, they say. This is good news because it means there is plenty of room inside that orbit for small rocky planets to develop, which could be similar to the Earth. The study was carried out by astronomers at the Britain’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, who made observations using a highly sensitive sub-millimetric camera at the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in Hawaii. The camera showed a disk of “very cold dust” whirling in orbit around the star, and at least one large gas planet that over an estimated 56 million years had migrated to a distant orbit. “The irregular shape of the disk (around Vega) hints at the likelihood of it containing planets,” lead author Mark Wyatt said in a press note. “Although we can’t directly observe the planets, they have created clumps in the dust around the star.” Planetary giants play a key role in the creation of solar systems. Their gravitational field attracts debris, essentially vacuuming up all the material in their neighbourhood.
— AFP |
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Israeli incursion into West Bank Ramallah (West Bank), December 1 Palestinian security sources said several dozen military vehicles were used in the operation, which took place in numerous areas of the city. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today rejected his Palestinian counterpart’s demand that Israel stop building a separation barrier through the West Bank as a condition for peace talks.— AFP/Reuters |
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