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ISI briefs Pervez, Aziz on security
UN orders probe into vehicle use by militants
Cautious optimism in Spain after ETA |
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Factory blast kills 24 in China
Beijing, October 5 An explosion at a fireworks factory in China’s southwestern Guangxi province killed 24 persons and injured 28, Chinese media said today. The powerful blast on Monday afternoon flattened six factory workshops, blew out windows in buildings up to 4 km from the site and was heard 10 km away, the Beijing News said.
Aishwarya Rai to campaign against
breast cancer
Indian named US Bar leader
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ISI briefs Pervez, Aziz on security
Islamabad, October 5 Both the outgoing ISI chief, Lt-Gen Ehsan-ul Haq and the new Director-General, Lt-Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, attended the briefing yesterday at the ISI headquarters which was given by Maj -Gen Zaki, heading counter terrorism operations. General Haq has been made the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. General Musharraf, who returned from a high-profile visit to the USA, the Netherlands and Italy recently, was briefed on the overall security situation in the country and the efficiency of the special group raised within the ISI for eradication of terrorism. General Musharraf said Pakistan was fighting terrorism in its own interests, making it clear there would be no compromise on it. Referring to the recent suicide attack on a Shia mosque at Sialkot in which over 33 persons were killed and more than 70 injured, he said the elements targeting places of worship wanted to destabilise the country and should be dealt with sternly. The campaign against such forces would continue with full might, he said. General Musharraf said terrorists were carrying out their activities in small splinter groups due to sustained operations against them. Their central leadership had either been killed or captured, he pointed out. Hailing the performance of the ISI, the President said it had played a vital role in ridding the country of terrorism and promised to provide necessary resources to the spy agency to acquire latest technology and equipment. General Musharraf was also updated about the Al-Qaida militants killed or injured so far. Later, ISI officials briefed Mr Aziz, who was received by General Haq upon his arrival at the office of the premier intelligence agency. The Prime Minister was given a comprehensive briefing on both internal and external security matters, including the law and order situation in the country. The Prime Minister was also briefed about the activities of terrorists and the strategy of the ISI to counter these. Mr Aziz was also briefed on the situation at the borders, Kashmir and Afghanistan. The forthcoming elections in Afghanistan were the focal point of the briefing.
— PTI |
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Pervez unlikely to quit: analysts
Karachi, October 5 General Musharraf, the Army Chief-cum-President, who seized power in a bloodless coup in October, 1999, looks more determined than ever to retain the dual posts, in the face of Opposition outrage, to push through his agenda of stamping out Islamic militancy and pursuing peace with India, they said. For months, General Musharraf had been hinting in media interviews that he might abandon a pledge to shed his uniform by December 31 - a promise made late last year in a deal to win the support of the Islamist parties.
— AFP |
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UN orders probe into vehicle use by militants
United Nations, October 5 Taking exception to the claim, Secretary General Kofi Annan summoned Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman yesterday and asked to produce evidence in support of the charge. Israel had alleged that it had a videotape showing a Qassam rocket being loaded into the ambulance with the UN logo painted on the top. Reports said the video, taken by an Israeli unmanned reconnaissance plane, showed a man running towards the vehicle with a long thin object, which Israel said was a rocket. But the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), the UN arm helping the Palestinians, said it found no evidence that its ambulance loaded a rocket. An agency probe over the weekend and analysis of the footage, taken by an Israeli drone, has established that the object in question was a patient stretcher, UNRWA chief Peter Hansen said and demanded an apology from Israel for its “false” claim. “Given the technical means and military expertise at the disposal of the Israeli defense forces to enlarge and analyse the pictures taken by the IDF drone, it is inconceivable that the IDF could have made this egregiously erroneous allegation in good faith,” he said. He said, “such false allegations can lead to increased aggressive behaviour by Israelis towards the United Nations in general and the UN humanitarian staff in particular, and therefore seriously increase the risks which the UN personnel face in this zone of violent conflict.” The UNRWA chief also wrote to Israeli Foreign Minister Silvian Shalom demanding an apology for Israel’s claims. Chief UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York that the world body would like to see “whatever evidence” the Israeli Government might have regarding the allegations. He also said the information should be given to the UN team heading to the region tomorrow on a prescheduled visit to review the UN operations there. Eckhard said Annan had no reason whatever to doubt Hansen’s conclusion.
— PTI |
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Bush again leads Kerry
Washington, October 5 Mr Bush continues to lead Mr John Kerry among likely voters despite surging enthusiasm for Mr Kerry among Democrats and new doubts about whether the President has a clear plan to deal with terrorism and the situation in Iraq, according to the Washington Post tracking poll. Mr Bush currently leads Mr Kerry 51 per cent to 46 per cent among those most likely to vote, according to the polling conducted between Friday and Sunday. Independent candidate Ralph Nader claims 1 per cent of the hypothetical vote. Whatever Mr Nader gets will likely be at the expense of Mr Kerry. But the President held only a three-point advantage among all registered voters, down from 7 points in a Post-ABC News survey conducted before last week’s presidential debate. Mr Kerry is particularly popular among occasional voters — a sign that the election may hinge for Mr Kerry on his campaign’s ability to get newly-registered voters and those with only a spotty voting record to go to the polls. Mr Kerry’s strong debate performance also energised his supporters while Mr Bush’s lacklustre showing seems to have dampened the spirits of his partisans. Half of Mr Kerry’s voters now say they are “very enthusiastic” about him, up eight points since before the debate.
— PTI |
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Cautious optimism in Spain after ETA leaders’ arrest
The
Spanish Government warned against triumphalism yesterday after the seizure of two leading ETA leaders and enormous quantities of weapons and explosives in weekend raids on Basque separatists’ hideouts in France.
The crackdown was the most important since a raid in 1992 arrested the entire leadership, and has, in effect, decapitated ETA’s political and military structure. But widespread fear remains that ETA is not destroyed and can rebuild and hit back with a terrorist attack. “ETA has received a very important blow and is now in bad shape, but I appeal to you not to relax the anti-terrorist struggle in any way,” Jose Antonio Alonso, Spanish Interior Minister, warned. “We may feel satisfaction, but we mustn’t drop our guard for a single moment.” Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the action marked “an important step” against ETA, but added: “We know there is still a long road ahead.” The warnings followed co-ordinated police raids on houses around Pau and Bayonne in France’s Aquitaine region bordering Spain. In all, 21 ETA suspects were detained, including the organisation’s most senior and longest-serving leader, Mikel Albizu Iriarte, and his companion, also an ETA militant, Soledad Iparraguirre, both 43. The police seized almost a tonne of explosives and arsenals of some 60,000 projectiles, dozens of machine guns, grenades and heavy weaponry described as “armaments of war”. ETA now has a leadership vacuum unprecedented for 12 years, intelligence sources say. “There is a state of emergency in ETA”, one Basque observer said yesterday. Far from marking ETA’s death-knell, the crisis is expected eventually to produce a new, radicalised leadership committed to armed action. “They may lie low for a year or two, but I am sure ETA will return while the political problem remains unsolved,” Gorka Espiau, spokesman for the pro-dialogue Elkarri organisation, said yesterday. “The weaker they are, the stronger they must show themselves. They can shoot dead a policeman in San Sebastian tomorrow. You don’t need a big infrastructure for that,” he warned. — By arrangement with The Independent, London |
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Factory blast kills 24 in China
Beijing, October 5 The powerful blast on Monday afternoon flattened six factory workshops, blew out windows in buildings up to 4 km from the site and was heard 10 km away, the Beijing News said. Within 40 minutes of the explosion, 14 victims had been rushed to a simple nearby clinic on the backs of private motorcycles and other vehicles because the facility did not have an ambulance, the newspaper said. Three persons who sustained very serious burns were transferred to a larger hospital in Guangxi’s Pubei County, it said. ‘’Investigators found the accident was triggered by an explosion of firecrackers,’’ the Xinhua news agency reported. The incident was still under investigation, Xinhua said.
— Reuters |
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Physics Nobel goes to American trio
Stockholm, October 5 David Gross, David Politzer and Frank Wilczek had shown how the attraction between quarks — the basic building blocks of nature — was strong when they were far apart and weak when they were close together. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work on the ‘’strong force’’ between quarks helped give ‘’a unified description of all forces of nature ... from the tiniest distances within the atomic nucleus to the vast distances of the universe’’. It explains how ‘’an everyday phenomenon like a coin spinning on a table’’ is determined by fundamental forces between protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons are made up of quarks, bound by the ‘’strong force’’. The strong force functions a bit like an elastic band that is tauter when it is pulled. The three scientists, in a theory known as quantum chromodynamics, also showed that when quarks are close together at extremely high energies, they act like free particles, a state they called ‘’asymptotic freedom’’. Gross said the US trio had made a first step towards ‘’the theory of everything’’. A grand unified theory of life and the universe has eluded scientists who cannot yet reconcile the way subatomic particles behave with gravity. The three Americans’ research on quarks brought scientists closer to explaining the behaviour of subatomic forces, which also include electromagnetism and a ‘’weak force’’ dealing with radioactive decay. “Once you understand all these forces, it turns out that there are certain features that cry out for unification,’’ Gross said by phone from Santa Barbara, California. Wilczek, speaking in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the group’s theories had first appeared ‘’outlandish’’ when they emerged in the 1970s and Nobel recognition came as a ‘’great relief”. Gross from the University of California, Politzer from the California Institute of Technology and Wiczek at he Massachusetis Institute of Technology will share the 10 million crown ($ 1.36 million) prize.
— Reuters |
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Aishwarya Rai to campaign against
breast cancer
Islamabad, October 5 The campaign known as ‘Pink Ribbon’ was launched by an NGO, the Women Empowerment Group, last month. Rai is visiting at the invitation of the group, local daily Dawn quoted Omar Aftab, a representative of the ‘Pink Ribbon’ as saying. He said Rai had shown deep concern over the increasing number of breast cancer patients in Pakistan and lack of awareness about the disease. The former Miss World, he said, would stay in Pakistan for two days. During her stay, she would attend a dinner in Islamabad for fund raising. Aftab said Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is also expected to visit Pakistan in March, 2005, for the awareness campaign. ‘Pink Ribbon’ is an international symbol for support for breast cancer awareness for more than 10 years. Every year in October, citizens are urged to wear pink ribbons in honour of the women fighting against breast cancer. According to a study of the Pakistan Medical Association, 2003, Pakistan has the highest rate of breast cancer in Asia.
— PTI |
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Indian named US Bar leader
Los Angeles, October 5 The prestigious bar leadership award was given away to him by the former Governor of Georgia, Roy E. Barnes, who was the keynote speaker at the annual ABA convention luncheon at Atlanta. The ABA is one of the largest associations in the US with 3,50,000 members. This is for the first time that the award has gone to a South Asian American. The award recognised the significant contributions of a bar leader who has truly made a difference over the course of his leadership, ABA said. Chugh, 42, is an Attorney-at-Law, a Certified Public Accountant, and an MBA. He received his Master’s in Business Administration degree from the University of Southern California in 1985, and his Juris Doctorate from Western State University in 1992 under a President’s Scholarship. Navneet is the Managing Partner of the Chugh Firm which has a staff of 50 employees with 20 attorneys and CPAs and has offices in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, New Jersey and Bangalore, India. He is also a trustee for American India Foundation (AIF), the largest and most successful Indian charity based in the US. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is the Chairperson of AIF. He is the founder of Foster India Foundation, an organization that funds a boarding school for destitute children in India.
— INS |
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Islamabad, October 5
