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Indonesian plane crash kills 90
First socialist Senator for USA
Holiday over, Bush set to wrestle with Iraq
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Iraq to probe filming of Saddam death video
Iran warns West of ‘historic slap’
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Indonesian plane crash kills 90
Jakarta, January 2 “The plane is destroyed and many bodies are around there,” said local police chief Col Genot Hariyanto. The plane crashed in a mountainous region in Polewali, west Sulawesi province. Local Mayor Ali Bahal said at least 90 persons were killed. There was no word on the fate of the remaining 12 passengers of the Boeing 737-400, which was on a domestic flight from Java island to Sulawesi when it disappeared late yesterday. — AP
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First socialist Senator for USA
Burlington (Vermont), January 2 In a country where most people think of North Korea rather than democratic Scandinavian nations when they hear the word "socialism", the 65-year-old Sanders will be a new phenomenon in the staid two-party system of Washington. The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland is hardly an extreme leftist. But those in his home state used to his gruff, straight-spoken ways say he could stir up the debate over the policies of President George W Bush as he assumes his role as a key ally of the new but slim Democratic majority. Sanders swept to victory with a decisive 65 per cent of the vote in the Vermont senatorial race last November. Running officially as an independent but never hiding his socialist ideas, he trounced a businessman who spent seven million dollars of his own fortune in the race. But it was hardly surprising after a three decade career in Vermont politics, where people have learned that his dishevelled air of a college professor and his strong accent from his native Brooklyn, New York, don't pose a threat to US democracy. — AFP
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Holiday over, Bush set to wrestle with Iraq
Washington, January 2 A day after the US death toll in Iraq passed 3,000, the President and First Lady Laura Bush arrived back in Washington yesterday from his Crawford, Texas, ranch. They stopped briefly at the White House before going to Capitol Hill where the body of former President Gerald R. Ford lay in state. But overtures of a storm to come over a strategy shift on Iraq already were present in a poll published by Military Times, a private newspaper. A questionnaire mailed to subscribers found just 35 per cent of active-duty personnel approved of how Bush is handling Iraq and 42 per cent disapproved. — Reuters
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Iraq to probe filming of Saddam death video
Baghdad, January 2 A video film showing Saddam being taunted by Shiite witnesses, including one who shouted the name of a radical Shiite cleric, has spread like wildfire on the Internet and by mobile phone messages since Saturday's hanging. The footage is more graphic than a brief clip released on state television and the revelation of the sectarian jibes have contributed to a dramatic rise in tensions between Iraq's warring Sunni and Shiite communities. "An investigation has been launched into who cried out during the execution, and into who filmed it and put it out there," said a senior Shiite close to Maliki's office, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity. In the two-and-a-half minute tape, one of those present at the execution can be heard shouting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!" at a sneering Saddam as hooded executioners fit the former leader with a noose, prior to his hanging. Moqtada al-Sadr is a radical Shiite cleric and the leader of the Mahdi Army, a 60,000-strong militia which US commanders say is now the most dangerous unit carrying out sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians. That someone in the party executing Saddam should be a Sadr supporter has angered Sunnis, who look back on Saddam's rein with nostalgia and blame the United States and Maliki's government for the violence gripping Iraq. — AFP
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Sunnis protest Saddam’s hanging
Baghdad, January 2 The demonstration in the Golden Dome, shattered in a bombing by Sunni extremists 10 months ago, suggests that many Sunni Arabs may now more actively support the small number of Sunni militants fighting the country's Shiite-dominated government. The February 22 bombing of the shrine triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiia, in the form of daily bombings, kidnappings and murders. Yesterday's protest came on a day that saw the US military kill six Iraqis during a raid on the offices of a prominent Sunni political figure, who was suspected of giving al-Qaida in Iraq fighters sanctuary. Until Saddam's execution Saturday, most Sunnis sympathised with militants but avoided taking a direct role in the sectarian conflict, despite attacks by Shiite militia that have killed thousands of Sunnis or driven them from their homes. The current Sunni protests, which appear to be building, could signal a spreading militancy. Sunnis were not only outraged by Saddam's hurried execution, just four days after an appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence. Many were also incensed by the unruly scene in the execution chamber, captured on video, in which Saddam was taunted with chants of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada." Saddam a ‘nationalist’
Phnom Penh: Former Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea hailed Saddam Hussein as a nationalist and said he pitied the ousted Iraqi dictator as he watched his hanging on television, a Cambodian newspaper reported Tuesday. "Saddam Hussein had a spirit of national love," Nuon Chea was quoted as saying by the Cambodia Daily, adding that Saddam's treatment at the hands of his executioners Saturday, when he was taunted, was "too extreme". "I really pity him," said Nuon Chea, who served as Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's chief lieutenant and is likely to face prosecution for crimes committed during the communist regime's brutal 1975-79 rule. "He was from a farmer's family so I love him," Nuon Chea told the Cambodia Daily. The 80-year-old is one of a handful of former regime leaders living freely in Cambodia who are likely to be called before a joint UN-Cambodian tribunal for their role in the Khmer Rouge. As many as two million people died of starvation, overwork and execution as the regime emptied Cambodia's cities and forced the entire population onto vast collective farms in its bid to create an agrarian utopia. Nuon Chea has repeatedly denied responsibility for Cambodia's genocide, and instead defended the Khmer Rouge as nationalists trying to protect the country from foreign invaders.
— (AP, AFP)
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Iran warns West of ‘historic slap’
Tehran, January 2 "Even if all powers who stood behind Saddam Hussein during the sacred defence war are resurrected again against Iran, the Iranian nation will give them an historic slap on the face," Ahmadinejad said in a speech. The President was addressing thousands gathered in Ahvaz, the capital of the western Khuzestan province which Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980 and sparked a devastating eight year war with the Islamic republic. "The Iranian nation stands by its nuclear rights and will do its best to defend them," said Ahmadinejad as he maintained Iran's defiance over its atomic programme. Ahmadinejad shrugged off a resolution passed last month by the UN Security Council imposing sanctions over the Iranian nuclear programme, saying it was illegal and in any case would not hurt the Islamic republic. "The resolution lacks validity and is completely political and unlawful," he told the cheering audience. "It is a political resolution adopted under pressure from the United States and Britain, although the content of the resolution is not very significant. "It was adopted with two objectives. Firstly, to create psychological war and propaganda against Iran and also to give an opportunity to scare some people inside the country under the pretext of a hollow resolution." — AFP
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Paparazzi spoils Kidman’s trip Kuwait to tighten visa rules Spears spends night in club Prince Harry quits smoking
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Jakarta, January 2
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