Kabul, June 10
Taliban guerrillas made a failed attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai with a rocket attack today, narrowly missing a building where he was giving a speech, Taliban and government spokesmen said. Rockets fell several hundred metres from the government building southwest of Kabul and some of the audience began to flee, but Karzai urged them to stay and finished his speech, a government official and a witness told Reuters.

No one was hurt and Karzai, who has already survived two assassination attempts in recent years, was whisked away after his speech under heavy security, the witness said.

Several helicopters operated by Western forces, part of Karzai’s security arrangement, were hovering above the site of the meeting at the time of the strike, he added.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the Taliban knew that Karzai would be attending the meeting in Andar district of Ghazni province and they fired 12 rockets.

Karzai has been leading Afghanistan since the Taliban’s removal from power by US-led forces in 2001, but his critics call him “mayor of Kabul” because they feel his power does not extend beyond the capital, which is fortified by foreign troops. — Reuters

Sheffield (Yorkshire), June 10
‘Rang de Basanti’ walked away with top honours, including for best film, in most of the categories it was nominated for the eighth IIFA Awards as glamour, emotion and an electric atmosphere combined to make for an unforgettable star-studded ceremony here.

Besides being adjudged the best film, ‘Rang de Basanti’, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s take on modern day patriotism, bagged as many as 11 awards, including for best actress in a supporting role for Soha Ali Khan.

The glittering ceremony, which began last night and ended early today, was interspersed with electrifying performances from Abhishek Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Salman Khan, Govinda and Shilpa Shetty, and was watched by thousands of expatriates from all over Britain.

While Rani Mukerjee won the Best Actress trophy for her performance in ‘Kabhie Alvida Na Kehna’, the Best Actor award went to Hrithik Roshan for his superhero act in ‘Krrish’.

Other major winners included Raj Kumar Hirani as the best director and Arshad Warsi as the best supporting actor for ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’. Some of Bollywood’s biggest names, including IIFA brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai, attended the marathon four-hour function, along with more than 50,000 people.

The evening hit an emotional note during the presentation for the Lifetime Achievement Award to Dharmendra, who got standing ovation from the audience as he was presented the trophy by Amitabh Bachchan.

“Very few people know that it was on Dharmendra’s insistence that I got the role of Jay in ‘Sholay’. If it were not for him, I would never have been a part of this great film. My wife describes him as a Greek God, but for me, he has always been a very good human being,” Bachchan said.

“I was a small town boy in Phagwara and I used to look at this magical world of cinema and wonder if I would ever be a part of it. From those days to this stage, it has been a very eventful journey,” Dharmendra said.

The IIFA awards also honoured veteran filmmaker Basu Chatterjee with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The awards also recognised Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan as the most glamorous stars of the year, while filmmaker Deepa Mehta got a trophy for outstanding achievement by an Indian in international cinema.

The loudest cheers were, reserved for an impromptu jig by father-son duo Amitabh and Abhishek who danced to the hit number from their latest blockbuster ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’. — PTI

Washington, June 10
It was hailed as a “grand bargain”, a please-all panacea, before it came unstuck at the first hurdle. But what hit President George W Bush’s wonder immigration bill wasn’t the amnesty bugaboo, but a new animal called "cloture’’.

For the uninitiated, ‘cloture’ is a device to overcome a filibuster with a three-fifths majority in the 100-member Senate, where a member can speak as long as he wishes to on any subject relevant or not. But here opponents used it to snub Bush without criticising him by refusing to accept cloture not once but twice.

If passed by the Congress, the bill would have offered America’s 12 million gatecrashers, including some 300,000 Indians, a chance to become honest citizens. To die-hard purists it promised tougher border security and a crackdown on undocumented workers to beat back another immigrant invasion.

To Bush himself, it looked like a golden opportunity to notch a major domestic policy achievement that would perhaps overshadow his failure in Iraq. But that was not to be. He had won over opposition Democrats who now controlled the Congress, but he found his own Republicans a harder nut to crack.

Even all the party’s presidential candidates barring one chose to take pot shots at the compromise legislation hammered out by a bipartisan group with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani dubbing it “a typical Washington mess”.

Everyone had a beef with the bill and as the legislation stalled, they all debated how it affected them. Translated simply it would have made it easier for an Indian engineer and more difficult for a Hispanic worker, said some. Others countered it would have made it harder to get enough techies from India.

Unmindful of the fact that 14 Democrats had also voted against cloture, Senate majority leader Harry Reid laid the blame squarely at Bush’s door. If the president has any clout at all with his own Republican senators, shouldn’t he be pushing what he called “his bill”?

Nursing a little stomach bug at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Bush made a last ditch bid to resurrect the bill admitting it was “not perfect” but said was the best solution to repair the country’s broken down immigration system. What he left unsaid was that it also offered him one last chance to check his slide into a lame duck presidency!

When a popular black Democrat lawmaker was caught in 2005 with $90,000 in cold cash stuffed in his freezer, the question raised was how much time would he have to spend in the cooler! — IANS

Jakarta, June 10
Southeast Asian nations are battling a surge in dengue cases, amid signs that climate change could make 2007 the worst year on record for a disease that often gets less attention than some higher-profile health risks.

The spread of dengue, which is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito and is endemic in much of the region, has also accelerated in recent years due to increasing urbanisation and travel or migration within the region, experts say.

Efforts to develop a vaccine are proving difficult because dengue can be caused by four viruses. So the only real method to fight the disease at present is to eliminate likely breeding spots for mosquitoes from discarded tyres to plant pots.

''The threat of dengue is increasing because of global warming, mosquitoes are becoming more active year by year and their geographical reach is expanding both north and south of the Equator,'' said Lo Wing-lok, an expert in infectious diseases. ''Even Singapore, which is so affluent and modern, can't exercise adequate control,'' Hong Kong-based Lo added.

Dengue cases in Hong Kong usually involve people returning from hotter parts of Asia, but Lo warned that warmer temperatures meant the disease could ultimately become endemic in southern China.

In Indonesia, where concerns over bird flu more frequently grab headlines, dengue saw a dramatic peak earlier this year after much of the Jakarta area was flooded. — Reuters