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300 held as strike brings Chandrika pleads for clear mandate
7 new cases of bird flu in China India-China group to meet on Feb 18 |
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Aborigines riot in Sydney
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300 held as strike brings Bangladesh to halt
Dhaka, February 16 Main opposition Awami League led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina began the “oust-government” agitation after the expiry of the Opposition’s one-month ultimatum asking the government to stop “terrorism, corruption, price-hike and political repression”. Opposition sources claimed that more than 100 workers suffered injuries during clashes with the police in Dhaka City and nearly 300 workers, including women activists, were arrested. With today’s dawn-to-dusk strike, the police has arrested more than 500 Awami League workers and more than 300 have been injured, including senior party leaders and members of Parliament, since February 12, when the first shutdown was enforced across the country, they added. Witnesses said most shops, business centres, schools and private offices were closed and automobiles remained off the streets in the capital during the shutdown called by the Awami League’s youth front, Awami Juba League, to protest against police atrocities on its president, Jahangir Kabir Nanak, and many others during the second strike on Saturday. Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is in the third year of office, issued a tough warning against the Opposition for “creating anarchy and destruction, impeding her government’s road map to development”. She also instructed the police to be tough against the “law breakers” and “trouble mongers”. “This is no democracy, this is anarchy, we wont tolerate this,” she told a public rally at in the eastern district of Sylhet yesterday. She also threatened her political opponents and said: “Those who are calling hartals would be confined in their houses.”
— UNI |
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Chandrika pleads for clear mandate
Colombo, February 16 Addressing a party convention at Mahara on the outskirts of Colombo yesterday, President Kumaratunga said the country could not move forward with executive powers in her hand and Parliament powers with another party, Daily News, a newspaper presently under the President’s control, reported. Reiterating her commitment for a negotiated political settlement with the LTTE and other relevant parties to usher lasting peace in the country, Ms Chandrika said she was not “prepared to have discussions with the LTTE without a clear mandate from the people”. Slamming Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Front government, the President said she was not ready to sell the country or put the country at stake as was done by the UNF government under the “guise of the so-called peace talks”. President Kumaratunga also stated that the newly formed alliance between her party and the radical Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) was “ready with a clear programme to be implemented within two weeks after establishing a government after the forthcoming general election.” The President’s comments drew a sharp contrast with the remarks of JVP propaganda secretary Wimal Weerawansa, who had reportedly said the new alliance would not abide by the truce between the UNF government and the LTTE as it was a clear threat to national security. He said the new alliance instead would try to negotiate a new CFA. Describing for the first time the reasons for her decision to dissolve Parliament, the President said she was compelled to do so “considering the grave situation the country was moving towards owing to the actions taken by the UNF government.” Admitting that another election would be a drain on the country’s economy and cause hardship to the people, the President said she had to take that decision “as there was no alternative.” — UNI |
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7 new cases of bird flu in China
Beijing, February 16 The confirmed outbreaks included five separate epidemics in central Hubei province, one in Guangdong province and one in Lhasa, Tibet, Jia Erling, spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture told Xinhua news agency. The seven cases had earlier been reported as suspect cases, while the case in Tibet became the first confirmed case in the Himalayan region. The ministry also announced that a suspect case of the bird flu had been reported in Baicheng city, Jilin province, the province’s first suspected case of the virus. The new reports bring the total in China to 41confirmed outbreaks and nine suspected ones in 16 provinces and provincial-level municipalities. BANGKOK: Bird flu has recurred in eight provinces in Thailand and a fresh outbreak has been reported in another, Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchop said today. “We have found 14 spots in nine provinces,’’ Newin told reporters. Eight of the provinces were former “red zones” where chickens had been culled within a 5 km radius of an outbreak. The latest outbreaks had been found among fighting cocks and ducks, he said. — AFP, Reuters |
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India-China group to meet on Feb 18 Beijing, February 16 The fourth meeting of the EPG, which would be held here on February 18-19, will play a “positive role in promoting mutual understanding and friendship between the two sides,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhang Qiyue said. “Discussions will focus on strengthening communication and cooperation between the two in the fields of politics, economy, science and technology and culture and make suggestions to the governments of the two countries,” Zhang told PTI here. While the Chinese side would be led by former Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Shuqing, the Indian delegation would be headed by former Minister of State for External Affairs R.L. Bhatia. Zhang noted that the India-China EPG was an authoritative governmental consulting organisation comprised of famous personalities from the two countries. The meeting will take place in the backdrop of improved relations between India and China, especially after the successful visit to China by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpyee in June last year. — PTI |
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Baghdad, February 16 Another US soldier was wounded in the Baghdad attack. The victims were part of a three-vehicle military police patrol from the 1st Armored Division, which is due to leave Iraq in the coming weeks and be replaced by the 1st Cavalry Division. The latest death brings to 539 the number of US service members who have died since the USA launched the Iraq war in March. Most have died since President George W. Bush declared an end to active combat on May 1. On Saturday, gunmen in a white sedan opened fire on a taxi that was taking the Americans from a religious group from the site of the ancient city of Babylon back to Baghdad. The three wounded were taken to a hospital in Mahmudiyah, about 25 km south of Baghdad, the US military said today. US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division learned of the attack while patrolling in Mahmudiyah. The statement did not identify the religious group with which the Americans were affiliated, but a number of Christian humanitarian groups are working in Iraq.
— AP |
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Aborigines riot in Sydney Sydney, February 16 Dozens of police were injured, many with broken bones, in one of the worst outbreaks of civil unrest in Sydney in at least a decade. Armed with garbage bins filled with paving bricks and beer bottles, Molotov cocktails and fireworks, about 100 aborigines attacked the police and set fire to a railway station in
Redfern, an inner-city suburb that is home to a notorious aborigines area called ‘’The Block’’. Protesters, some bare-chested with T-shirts wrapped around their faces, pelted lines of riot police with bricks and bottles, and at one stage pushed a burning garbage bin on wheels towards police and set off fireworks among them. ‘’They were throwing Molotov cocktails both at police and at Redfern railway station during the course of the riot,’’ Assistant Police Commissioner Bob Waites said
today. Waites said rioters had eight garbage bins loaded with paving bricks to be used as missiles and large tubs of beer bottles. It took 200 police nine hours to bring the rioters under control, with about 40 policemen injured. Eight police officers remained in hospital today. It was not immediately clear how many aborigines were injured or exactly how many were arrested.
— Reuters |
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‘Lord of Rings’ bags top British award London, February 16 “Return of the King,” was nominated for 12 of the awards, known as
BAFTAs, and won five: best picture, cinematography, adapted screenplay and special effects, yesterday as well as the film of the year award, voted by members of the public. The third installment in the hugely successful “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is favourite to clean up at the Academy Awards on February 29. “Return” beat Anthony Minghella’s Civil War saga “Cold Mountain,” Sophia Coppola’s quirky “Lost In Translation,” Tim Burton’s whimsical “Big Fish” and Peter Weir’s seafaring saga “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” to take the best film prize from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. “Return” director Peter Jackson lost out to Weir in the best director category. Naval adventure “Master and Commander” won four awards in all. Renee Zellweger was named best supporting actress for “Cold Mountain.” The civil war drama led the nominations with 13, but won only two awards — Zellweger’s and the prize for best music.
— AP |
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Pasadena (USA), February 16 “We are confident it is the most distant known object,” California Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis said yesterday of the galaxy, which lies roughly 13 billion light years from earth. The team uncovered the faint galaxy using two of the most powerful telescopes — one in space, the other in Hawaii — aided by the natural magnification provided by a massive cluster of galaxies. The gravitational tug of the cluster, called Abell 2218, deflects the light of the distant galaxy and magnifies it many times over. The magnification process, first proposed by Albert Einstein and known as “gravitational lensing,” produces double images of the galaxy. “Without the magnification of 25 afforded by the foreground cluster, this early object could simply not have been identified or studied in any detail with presently available telescopes,” said astronomer Jean-Paul Kneib, of Caltech and the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees in France. The discovery gives a rare glimpse of the time when the first stars and galaxies began to blink on, ending a period that cosmologists call the Dark Ages, said Robert
Kirshner, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
— AP |
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Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga has urged the people to give the Sri Lanka Freedom Party a “clear mandate” during the general election in April, enabling it to end the prolonged bloody ethnic conflict through discussions with the Tamil Tiger rebels and other relevant parties.
