Jakarta, December 26
Landslides caused by torrential rains overnight have left 81 persons dead and many missing in Indonesia’s Central Java province, the Emergency Response Agency said today.

A provincial official said the landslides were the worst to hit the region in quarter of a century, as thousands of people moved to rescue shelters after their homes were buried or washed away.

Rescue workers and the police were struggling to reach the affected areas as roads were cut off by floods following the rains, said the provincial police spokesman Syahroni.

The National Disaster Management Agency said 24 bodies had been recovered and another 37 persons were missing following landslides in at least nine villages in Karanganyar district near the banks of the famous Bengawan Solo river.

Another 14 persons are missing in Wonogiri district 30 km south of Karanganyar, but lack of heavy equipment was slowing down rescue efforts.

“It is difficult for any help to reach the area, so the local teams are left on their own,” said Julianto, an official with the provincial government.

“The landslides took us by surprise. This is the first time in the last 25 years that anything of this scale occurred here in Central Java.”

Thousands of villagers in areas, who lost their homes to floods or landslides, have moved into temporary shelters in buildings and tents set up by local emergency response teams, Julianto said.

Metro TV showed residents wading through neck-high water.

Landslides are frequent in Indonesia, where tropical downpours can quickly soak hillsides and years of deforestation often means there is little vegetation to hold the soil. — Reuters

Dubai, December 26
A row over excess baggage charges by Air India has left nearly 130 Haj pilgrims from India stranded at Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah airport after the flight they were scheduled to board took off without them.

“The nearly 130 passengers (out of the total 270 on Air India flight to Jaipur, the first Haj flight) are left at the airport without water or any alternative accommodation by the carrier,” an Indian official told PTI.

However, an Air India spokesman from Mumbai said since the passengers could not get out of the airport after having checked-in, they were provided lunch and dinner by the airline.

Indian Consulate officials said they have referred the matter of excess baggage charges by the Indian national carrier to the authorities in India.

“Pilgrims are allowed to carry 45 kg of checked-in luggage and 10 kg as hand baggage free of cost, compared with 20 kg of checked-in luggage and 7 kg of hand baggage in commercial flights. Some of these pilgrims were carrying luggage much beyond the allowed capacity,” the spokesman said.

The flight left the Haj terminal last night carrying only 140 of its scheduled 270 passengers after they raised an outcry over an excess baggage charge of Rs 581 per kg that the airline was demanding from the pilgrims.

The spokesman said 56 of the stranded passengers were airlifted to their homes today.

Maintaining that the excess baggage charge was the standard practice fixed for the Haj flights, K.M. Kurian, Air India’s Western Province Manager, said some of the passengers did not board the flight since they did not have the money to pay for the excess baggage.

“In fact, the 100-odd passengers chose not to board the flight as they needed time to send their excess baggage by cargo,” Kurian said.

Today, there are eight Haj flights by Air India and Saudi Airlines. The flight bound for Lucknow for which over 200 passengers had checked-in left around 9 am local time.

“Our rules for excess baggage for passengers stand at Rs 581 per kg for those purchasing return tickets in India and Rs 137 per kg for those holding tickets purchased in the Kingdom,” Kurian said.

Asked why the pilgrims were not informed in advance about the increase in charges, Kurian said, “Air India had communicated to the Haj Committee of India (HCI) and it was the responsibility of the HCI to inform the pilgrims.”

Pilgrims are facing another problem in Madinah. For the first time ever, Air India has not opened a counter there to deal with queries relating to lost tickets and other problems.

Till last year, Air India used to have an extension counter in Madinah.

“Our experience shows that it is not worthwhile to station one or two Air India staff in Madinah as there were few inquiries last year,” Kurian said.

Sohel Ajaz Khan, Consul Haj, at the Consulate General of India, said, “We are in touch with Air India officials, the carrier has to make alternative arrangements for the pilgrims’ transport and accommodation.”

Airline sources claimed the problem was created by four individuals who had large quantity of excess baggage preventing others from checking-in and demanding that the excess baggage charge should not be taken. — PTI

Colombo, December 26
Sri Lankan Navy and the Sea Tigers have locked in fierce clashes in the northern seas today leaving heavy damages on both sides in terms of man and materials at a time when the country is marking the third anniversary of the tsunami disaster.

Sri Lanka’s defence ministry claimed that six LTTE attack boats, including two suicide craft, were destroyed during a heavy sea battle erupted this morning in seas south off Delft.

“According to latest information, Navy fast attack craft triumphed destroying six LTTE boats, while unconfirmed sources reveal at least 40 terrorists were killed during the hours long sea confrontation,” the defence ministry said.

It said fierce clashes erupted when the Naval fast attack craft engaged routine patrol confronted a cluster 16 LTTE boats carrying warlike materials towards rebel-held Nachchikuda areas.

“Further information said, a dockyard built Naval craft was damaged when two suicide LTTE boats exploded in the Naval retaliatory attacks. The damaged boat is now being towed towards the Kankesanthurai harbour by the Navy,” the defence ministry said.

Meanwhile, a pro-LTTE Tamilnet website claimed that a Dvora fast attack craft of the Sri Lankan Navy was “completely destroyed” during the confrontation.

Further details are not available immediately.

It is exactly three years ago that the giant waves of tsunami destroyed two third of Sri Lanka’s coastal belt leaving nearly 40,000 persons killed and rendered one million homeless.

Although government has claimed that post-tsunami rebuilding is nearing completion with 80 per cent of the affected people being resettled, nearly 9,000 affected families are still living in temporary shelters. — UNI

Nigeria, December 26
At least 45 people were burnt to death on the outskirts of Lagos when the fuel they were siphoning from a buried pipeline caught fire, officials said today.

Such disasters are frequent in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and top exporter of crude oil.

Nine out of 10 Nigerians live on less than $2 per day and many are prepared to take huge risks to obtain free fuel.

On December 26 last year, more than 250 people were killed in a pipeline blast in another area of Lagos.

Philip Daferiogho, a Red Cross official who was still at the scene on Wednesday, said rescue workers had buried 45 charred bodies in three mass graves near Tuesday’s fire.

Blackened buckets and jerry cans littered an area of burned grassland about the size of a soccer pitch around a hole in the ground which had apparently been dug by fuel thieves to reach the pipeline.

Workers from the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC), which operates the pipeline, were still trying to extinguish several fires.

The site is located about 2 km from the shore of one of the numerous creeks in the Lagos area, a short boat ride from the business district of Lagos Island.

The village of Abagbo is the nearest settlement, but residents there kept away from journalists. People living close to vandalised pipelines in Nigeria often refuse to talk for fear of being taken for fuel thieves. — Reuters

Former premier Nawaz Sharif’s counsel Akram Sheikh has rejected Attorney-General Malik Mohammed Qayyum’s assertion that Sharif stands permanently disqualified for any public office because of his conviction in the case accusing him for hijacking Gen Musharraf’s plane on October 12, 1999, hours before he was toppled by Musharraf’s loyalist generals.

“Sharif is absolutely qualified to contest the elections, but he has opted not to appeal against the rejection of his nomination papers before judges who had taken oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) after the imposition of emergency on November 3,” Sheikh said in a statement.

The National Accountability Bureau had filed a reference against Sharif on February 28, 2000. In August the same year, the accountability court sentenced the former Prime Minister to a term of 14 years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 20 million and disqualification for 21 years from seeking an elected office.

Sheikh recalled that on December 10, 2000, then President Rafiq Tarar remitted all sentences awarded to Sharif, including the one recorded by the Anti-Terrorism Court, Karachi, in the plane hijacking case as modified by the Sindh High Court vide judgement of October 30, 2000, which included custodial and non-custodial sentences of fine and disqualification.

Sheikh said, “Keeping in view the constitution as interpreted by our Supreme Court and the global jurisprudence, Nawaz Sharif is absolutely qualified to contest the elections. He has opted not to approach the judges who had taken oath under the PCO. Therefore, he opted to stay within the ring. Otherwise, there are no fetters on his legal character to contest the present or future elections.”

Benazir Bhutto is supporting the anti-Islam policies of President Pervez Musharraf, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said.

Addressing a public gathering at Tank in support of his brother Maulana Attaur Rehman’s election campaign for the National Assembly Fazl said, “Musharraf has not dared to hand over Dr AQ Khan to the US, but Benazir is publicly saying that she will provide the US access to Dr AQ Khan.”

“Benazir is talking about abolishing the madrassas. How can she dare to do this if her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could not take any action against the madrassas?” he said.

Fazl, himself a strong contender for the office of the Prime Minister had been targeting Bhutto ever since her return to Pakistan. On certain occasions he also accused Nawaz Sharif of first dismantling the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy and now All Pakistan Democratic Movement by adopting wrong strategy.

He said those advocating boycott of the polls were not serving the cause of democracy because the elections are strong medium for electing representative institutions.

He said the Musharraf-led government had tried to drop the subject of Islamiat from schools’ syllabus, but the MMA government had resisted such bids.

He said the MMA would continue its struggle for the restoration of judiciary, and called for the freedom of media. He warned that if the government rigged the polls, his party would start agitation.

Islamabad, December 26
Sixty years after the creation of Pakistan, a small village in its Punjab province is still upholding the wishes of its ancestors and not letting women vote.

Mohripur village, 70 km from Multan, has about 7,000 registered women voters, none of whom has ever voted.

“We are following the decision of our ancestors, who had imposed a ban on women exercising their right of vote,” Ghulam Mustafa Aulakh, an advocate from Mohripur, told Frontier Post.

Aulakh contested polls to the local body and lost by about 150 votes, but he never asked the womenfolk to support him.

Over the years, a number of NGOs and rights organisations have tried to convince the men of Mohripur to send their women to vote.

But so far they have had no success. Interestingly, the literacy rate in Mohripur is much higher than that in neighbouring villages.

Mohripur’s population of over 30,000 comprises people from Aulakh-Jatt, Sahu, Kamboh and Sargana ‘biradaris’ or castes. The Election Commission usually sets up four polling stations in the village, two each for men and women, for every election.

Noor Sultan Sahu, a record-keeper, said “the elders of Sahu ‘biradari’ had prohibited the women from casting their votes in 1947.” Other ‘biradaris’ honoured the order and they are still complying with it.

An NGO activist was optimistic that women might turn up to vote for the January 8 polls. “I am optimistic that a few female voters would exercise their franchise,” said Syed Anjum Raza. — PTI

Dhaka, December 26
The Family Planning Association of Bangladesh (FPAB) has evolved a novel way to persuade pregnant women to break their silence on domestic violence.

This welcome intervention has become possible through a project funded by the Department for International Development.

The project titled “Combating Gender-Based Violence (GBV) during Pregnancy” is now in its third year.

It is aimed at protecting the rights and entitlements of women who are experiencing or are at the risk of GBV.

Halida Hanum Akhtar, director-general of the FPAB, says domestic violence is a huge problem in Bangladesh. Forty seven per cent of women in the country reportedly suffer gender-based violence.

Fourteen per cent of maternal deaths in pregnancy are reported as a result of injury or violence. In reality, the number of pregnant women dying due to violence may be much more.

Counsellors in four FPAB clinics in project districts, Barisal, Comilla, Mymensingh and Rajshahi, reach out to women during their routine visit to clinics that provide reproductive health and family planning services. After addressing their health problems, the staff screens the women according to a standard screening protocol developed by a team of staff members of the FPAB. A comprehensive checklist based on GBV issues is used as a tool to determine the kind of violence being faced by a woman.

Md. Gias Uddin, community development officer, FPAB, told TNS that pregnant women suffered physical and passive violence.

“They are denied access to healthcare, nutrition and rest. They are made to lift heavy objects. Violence during pregnancy impacts on the health and well-being of women and causes unwanted or mistimed pregnancies, an increased risk of miscarriage and abortion, premature labour, fetal distress and low birth weight. We give them ‘Mukti (emancipation) Fund’ to negotiate better health services and institutional delivery for safe motherhood. In Comilla, Mymensingh and Rajshahi districts, we have identified areas as zero tolerant to gender-based violence. We are confident that this will act as a deterrent for perpetrators.”

The Mukti Fund is a significant initiative as only 18 per cent of births in Bangladesh are attended by medically trained personnel, according to the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007.

Sources in the FPAB say health providers encourage women to discuss their problems by assuring them total confidentiality. Women visiting these clinics are asked if they have ever faced physical violence, psychological/emotional violence and sexual abuse. They are asked to name the perpetrators.

Leaving nothing to chance, the health workers ask women whether they would be safe when they return home. They are asked to identify the person in their matrimonial homes who may harm them. They are also asked to spell out what type of services they need. These include health check up, skill development training, emergency accommodation/shelter and legal support.

If the woman says she is in a violent relationship or is contemplating getting out of the relationship, she is assessed for danger on the basis of a questionnaire. Depending on the danger assessment, the health provider chalks out a safety plan with the woman.

The personal safety plan encourages each client to identify one or more neighhbours they can report the violence to and ask them to seek help if they heard a disturbance in their house.

Between October 2005 and March this year, the health providers in the clinics in the four districts screened 7,550 women. Of these, 1,899 were identified as GBV clients.

Kabul, December 26
A diplomatic row erupted today between Afghanistan and key aid partners after Kabul declared “persona non grata” a Briton and an Irishman working for the EU and the UN, accusing them of threatening the state security by meeting Taliban insurgents.

With Afghan President Hamid Karzai away in neighbouring Pakistan, a government official said acting European Union mission head Michael Semple and senior United Nations official Marvin Patterson had been expelled and must leave by tomorrow.

“It is the government’s last decision. They are persona non grata,” an official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Western diplomats in Kabul closed ranks and insisted the row was merely a “misunderstanding”, adding they hoped the pair would only have to leave for a short period.

Semple told Reuters that it would “not be appropriate” for him to comment on the matter at this time.

The government accused the pair, both old Afghan hands and experts in local languages and customs, of meeting Taliban members in the southern province of Helmand, heartland of Afghanistan’s drug-producing poppy industry and an insurgency stronghold.

“Not only did they hold talks with the Taliban, but also had given them money,” the Afghan official said.

“It is not clear whether they were supporting the insurgency or not.” He said it was also unknown if the meeting was a personal initiative or if they were acting in an official capacity, but 50 Afghans -- some of them colleagues of the pair -- have been detained and investigated over their links to the matter.

Western diplomats said it was highly unlikely the pair would have knowingly met official Taliban representatives and it was more likely they were talking to the tribal elders or chiefs.

Semple and Patterson have lived and worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade, even during the rule of the Taliban that was toppled by the US-led invasion in 2001.

Both are considered highly experienced, hands-on experts on Afghanistan, valuable skills in a country in which scores of international and non-governmental aid organisations are attempting to run reconstruction and development projects.

Aid organisations and analysts say the biggest threat to humanitarian work in the country had been the growing Taliban insurgency. This is particularly so in the south and east, where remnants of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network were stoking it.— Reuters

Calang (Indonesia), December 26
Indonesians marked three years since the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami today, with mass prayers as well as a major emergency tsunami drill in a coastal province.

Archipelagic Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake-triggered tsunami, with some 168,000 lives claimed by the catastrophic walls of water that lashed Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra island.

About 1,000 residents, school children and officials attended the main open-air prayer ceremony at a village outside Calang town in Aceh, which was among the areas most devastated in the 2004 disaster, an AFP correspondent said.

A photo exhibition chronicling the reconstruction in the hard-hit district was also being held to mark the day.

Smaller prayer ceremonies were held across the province, with some beginning yesterday evening, the correspondent said.

London, December 26
Britain is in secret talks with the Taliban in an attempt to instil peace in the war-torn Afghanistan, it has been revealed.

Agents from British secret service MI6 have staged discussions with senior insurgents in Afghanistan on several occasions in the recent past, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported here today.

“The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide ‘mentoring’ for the Taliban,” an intelligence source was quoted as saying.

The disclosure came only a fortnight after Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons: “We will not enter into any negotiations with these people.”

According to the daily, MI6’s meetings with the Taliban took place up to half-a-dozen times at houses on the outskirts of Lashkah Gah and in villages in the Upper Gereshk valley, to the north-east of Helmand’s main town.

The compounds were surrounded by a force of British infantry providing a security cordon. To maintain the stance that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government was leading the negotiations, “the clandestine meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials”.

“These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms. The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban,” the unnamed intelligence source said.

Opposition leaders in Britain have said that the Prime Minister had to respond to the report as he had pledged that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists.

“If this turns out to be untrue, the Prime Minister will have some explaining to do to the British public,” Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said. — PTI

Dubai, December 26
An Indian cab driver has been honoured for showing honesty by returning Dh 450,000 (nearly Rs 5 lakh) left behind by a passenger in his taxi.

Indian driver of Dubai Transport Company, Gorvendir Singh Karnail, was honoured by deputy director of Dubai Police’s Preventative Security department, Brig Adul Jalil Mahdi.

The driver had found an envelope containing the money in his taxi after dropping off a passenger.

London, December 26
Egypt mulls a law requiring royalities be paid whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.

According to Zahi Hawass, the Head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the move was necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country’s thousands of pharaonic sites and the law would apply in all countries.

“The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers 100 per cent copies.

“It is Egypt’s right to be the only copyright owner for these monuments in order to benefit financially so we can restore, preserve and protect Egyptian monuments,” Hawass was quoted by ‘The Daily Telegraph’ as saying.

However, according to him, the law would not forbid artists and designers from taking inspiration from Egyptian monuments “as long as they don’t make exact copies”.

The Luxor hotel in the US city of Las Vegas would also not be affected because it was not an exact copy of a pyramid and its interior was completely different, Hawass was quoted as saying.

But he said claims by the hotel that it was “the only pyramid-shaped building in the world” could no longer be made. — PTI