A corpse amid the rubble in Beichuan in southwest China’s quake-hit Sichuan province on Monday. Hope is fading fast in finding more survivors after the May 12 earthquake caused massive damage and loss of life. — AFP

Beijing, May 19
Flags flew at half mast and sirens wailed across China today, bringing the country to a standstill, as it began a three-day mourning for the victims of the devastating earthquake while aid poured in from India and other nations amid mounting casualties that crossed 71,000.

From the disaster zone in the mountainous region to Tinanmen Square, the Communist giant’s historical and political nucleus, the Chinese paused for three minutes at 2.28 pm (local time), exactly a week after the 8 magnitude earthquake that unleashed horror on a scale not seen in generations.

A top Communist party leader in Sichuan put the toll at 32,173 killed, 9,509 buried and 29,418 missing, while China’s Cabinet said 34,073 had died and 5,260 were trapped.

Three more persons were pulled out of the rubble alive today, while the region continued to reel under power aftershocks, including one of magnitude 5.4 on the Richter scale.

Authorities said more than 200 rescuers were buried in the past two days by frequent mud flows and their fate was not known.

Chinese authorities have ordered suspension of all cinema screenings during the national mourning, the first ever for victims of a natural disaster since the People’s Republic was found in 1949 and the most extensive since the death of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1976.

The national flag at the Tiananmen Square was lowered to half-mast as Chinese President Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao, along with the cream of Communist leadership dressed in dark suits with white paper flowers pinned to their chests, bowed their heads in solemn silence. — PTI

Johannesburg, May 19
A wave of xenophobic attacks spread through South African townships on Monday, as mobs thrashed foreigners and set some ablaze in scenes reminiscent of apartheid era violence.

Two people were killed and more than two dozen shacks were torched in Tembisa township near Johannesburg, the South African Broadcasting Corporation said.

The police, struggling to restore order, said at least 13 people were killed over the weekend.

Immigrants from South African neighbours are accused by many in the townships, among the poorest areas, of taking away jobs and fuelling the high rate of violent crimes. Local media report about 20 dead since trouble broke out a week ago.

The unrest is an embarrassment for a country that has vaunted its tolerance since the end of apartheid and an indicator of growing disaffection among South Africa’s poor.

Meanwhile, president Thabo Mbeki and ruling ANC party leader Jacob Zuma have called for an end to the violence, which threatens a new strain on an economy struggling with rising inflation, power and skills shortage.

Hundreds of immigrants have taken refuge in police stations, churches and government offices. “At the moment some of the people have been taken to the city hall to ensure their safety, but some of them are still running around and do not know where to go,” police spokesman Veli Nhlapo told SABC.

Police fired rubber bullets at gangs of youths, who patrolled unruly streets, armed with sticks, rocks and knives. Scores have been arrested. South African newspapers carried photos of a man who was set alight by a mob on the weekend. Callers to radio stations have urged the authorities to impose curfews and bring in the army to restore order in some of the most violent areas.

Among the immigrants are an estimated three million Zimbabweans who fled the economic collapse at home. The immigrants said they are more often the victims of crime than perpetrators. The Zimbabweans, like others on the continent, have been lured by work in South African mines, farms and homes, and by one of the world’s most liberal immigration and refugee policies.

Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres said the situation in the townships now amounted to a humanitarian crisis. — Reuters

Islamabad, May 19
Taking note of “major and significant developments” in the Indo-Pak ties, US President George W Bush has said the Kashmir issue is “ripe” for resolution.

“The Kashmir issue is ripe for solution,” Bush was quoted as saying by Pakistani officials during a meeting yesterday with premier Yousuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum for West Asia in Egypt.

Bush's remarks came ahead of a meeting between external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi here on May 21 to review the composite dialogue process.

During the hour-long talks in the resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, Bush said he saw “major and significant developments” in Pakistan-India relations, but he did not elaborate.

He said he was happy to note that the two sides had made a lot of progress in their talks on Kashmir and for comprehensive peace in the region.

Briefing reporters after the Bush-Gilani talks, the Pakistan Prime Minister's special assistant on finance Hina Rabbani Khar and additional foreign secretary Zameer Akram said Bush had appreciated the dialogue process between India and Pakistan and said he had no doubts in his mind that Kashmir was “ripe for solution”.

Khar said Pakistan's relations with neighbouring countries figured in the discussions between the two leaders, with specific focus on ties with India. — PTI

Islamabad, May 19
The release of Pakistan’s envoy to Afghanistan was part of a deal between the government and local Taliban under which they will swap about 330 prisoners after signing a formal peace agreement in the restive northwest tribal areas, a militant spokesman has said.

Maulvi Omar, the spokesman for Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, said yesterday that the release of Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin was part of the expected deal.

Azizuddin was handed over by militants to authorities at Razmak in North Waziristan on Friday evening three months after he was kidnapped from the tribal areas. However, Rehman Malik, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior Affairs, had said that no deal had been struck for the envoy’s release.

Omar told the Dawn newspaper by telephone from the Bajaur tribal region that the Taliban wanted 250 militants currently in the government’s custody to be swapped with 80 soldiers and government officials taken hostage by the rebels.

The two sides will exchange the prisoners after signing the peace deal, he said. Talks between the government and the Taliban are in progress and the former released over 50 militants in exchange for 18 security personnel last week.

Despite the peace talks, the Taliban yesterday carried out a suicide bombing in the cantonment of Mardan city in the NWFP last night, killing 13 people including four soldiers.

A Taliban spokesman said the attack was carried out in retaliation for military operations in Darra Adam Khel town of the NWFP. — PTI 

Kuala Lumpur, May 19
In a major setback for Malaysia's embattled Premier Abdullah Badawi, his mentor and influential predecessor Mahathir Mohammad today sprang a surprise by quitting the ruling party to press for leadership change following the party's recent electoral losses.

“I am quitting UMNO today. I will only come back when there is change in the leadership," Mahathir, 82, who was Prime Minister for 22 years before he handpicked Abdullah for the job, told cheering supporters in Kedah.

He urged other members of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party to quit too as a way of pressurising Abdullah to step down, but advised them not to join the opposition.

The two leaders had been involved in a war of words but the attacks became vicious after the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, of which UMNO is the largest component, received a drubbing in the March elections, losing two-third majority in Parliament and five states.

Abdullah, who had said he would defend his leadership in the party polls in December, said he was surprised by Mahathir's decision but refused to step down. — PTI

Kathmandu, May 19
Echoing the concerns expressed by political parties like the Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) regarding the alleged criminal activities of Maoist's youth wing, the Young Communist League (YCL), the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Nepal has called for an independent probe.

The human rights watchdog has urged the Nepal government to carry out an independent inquiry into various incidents of threat, intimidation and abduction allegedly perpetrated by the YCL.

''The NHRC has received complaints and information that the YCL has committed inhuman activities like abduction, murder, beating and issuing threats. The NHRC expresses serious concern over these activities,'' the watchdog said in a statement yesterday.

In the statement, the NHRC has listed 10 complaints it has received in recent days against the Maoist youth wing, which include the May 10 murder of Ram Hari Shrestha after abduction that has led to continued agitation across the country.

The other charges include serious beating of UML cadres Ram Singh Rai, Khagendra Kumar Rai, Dedraj Basnet and Kul Bahadur Rai at Kulung Bhojpur in Nepal.

The NHRC has said the YCL activities have violated the fundamental rights enshrined in the interim constitution, Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the international humanitarian laws. — UNI

London, May 18
Cherie Blair's former lover, who was being two-timed by her in the mid 1970s when their families believed they would marry, is appalled by the indiscrete manner in which his childhood sweetheart has revealed personal details about their relationship in her memoirs.

David Attwood, 54, whose name appears no fewer than 32 times in Cherie's autobiography “Speaking For Myself”, said he was taken aback by the volume of information his former girlfriend has made public, despite her previous insistence that her private life was off-limits.

"I haven't read the book and I haven't read the serialisation, so I'm not certain what's been said," said Attwood, now a happily married solicitor living in Southport, near Cherie's childhood home of Crosby, Merseyside.

"To be quite honest I don't think it's appropriate to talk about something that happened a long, long time ago," The Daily Telegraph of Britain quoted Attwood as saying.

He was clearly taken aback when informed that he was mentioned more than 30 times in the book. For 33 years, he has refused to entertain media requests to discuss his time with his childhood sweetheart Cherie Booth, the report said.

In her controversial memoirs, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair provides lurid account of her complicated sex life, and reveals that she cheated on Attwood by sleeping with two other men in mid-1970s when both of their families believed they might marry. Earlier, John Higham, a judge, named by Cherie as one of her other former lovers, denied the relationship she was referring to, prompting an apology from her. The memoir has created a political controversy and personal embarrassment to a number of senior politicians, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with the inclusion of revealing personal details of her life before and in 10 Downing Street.

The book, which is being serialised by The Times Daily of London, reveals how she first slept with Tony Blair before her marriage after they travelled on an "empty top deck of a double-decker bus" though she had two other men in her life at the time.

In an astonishing disclosure, Cherie also reveals that her fourth child, Leo, was conceived as she had failed to pack her usual contraceptive equipment while she was on a holiday with her husband as guests of the Queen. Many believe that Cherie, who is a part-time judge and presides over cases as a recorder, may have jeopardised her chances of becoming a High Court judge by the indiscrete discussions about her personal life. — PTI

United Nations, May 19
UN chief Ban Ki-moon will travel to Myanmar on Wednesday to try to persuade the leaders of military regime to allow large-scale foreign aid and humanitarian workers to provide assistance to millions of victims of Cyclone Nargis, which has killed over 100,000.

Ban's three-day visit comes as the world body estimated that hundred of thousands of victims are at the high risk of starvation and disease with the government refusing to allow large-scale foreign aid and rescue workers in the country.

The United Nations could not confirm the officials Ban was likely to meet but said that he would tour the areas hit by the cyclone, including the worst affected Irrawaddy delta and Yangon, the most populous city, which suffered heavily.

Ban's repeated efforts to contact Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe on telephone had failed but he had sent three letters to him urging him to allow accelerated foreign aid and humanitarian workers.

So far the government has not issued large-scale visas to foreign workers waiting in Thailand and has allowed only limited foreign aid, which is being mostly distributed by the government agencies.

“The whole purpose of the trip is to accelerate the pace of disaster relief. Ban hopes that his presence would ‘really make things go faster’. The Secretary-General will also hold meetings with senior officials in the Government of Myanmar,” chief UN spokesperson Michele Montas said yesterday, emphasising that the UN remained willing to work with authorities to try to improve the speed and distribution of relief aid.

Although the situation in the affected areas remained dire, it was ‘not too late to try to save more people’. Millions of people are either homeless or have seen their homes become badly damaged as a result of the cyclone and subsequent tidal surge.

Ban and other senior UN officials, including Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes, have voiced repeated concern that there has been slow progress in sending both aid and humanitarian workers to the areas most affected by the cyclone, which struck on the night of May 2.

Holmes, who is also Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, arrived in Myanmar yesterday to conduct his own assessment of the situation. Montas said that the coordination of help on the ground was better than she had anticipated. Holmes is due to brief Ban in Bangkok, the capital of neighbouring Thailand, before he goes to Myanmar.

Some UN aid officials are in Myanmar, working with an emergency team from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and others to try to bring humanitarian relief.

Ban and ASEAN officials have also agreed on holding a high-level pledging conference shortly to generate funds for further relief operations. — PTI

Chicago, May 19
Women who are stressed out about money, relationships and other problems during pregnancy may give birth to babies who are predisposed to allergies and asthma, US researchers said.

The findings, presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in Toronto, suggest that mother's stress during pregnancy may have lasting consequences on her child.

''This research adds to a growing body of evidence that links maternal stress such as that precipitated by financial problems or relationship issues to changes in children's developing immune systems, even during pregnancy,'' Dr Rosalind Wright of Harvard Medical School in Boston said yesterday in a statement.

Wright and colleagues found that mothers who were the most distressed during pregnancy were most likely to give birth to infants with higher levels of immunoglobulin E or IgE - an immune system compound - even though their mothers had only mild exposure to allergens during pregnancy.

Studies in animals have found that a mother's stress amplifies the effects of allergen exposure on the immune system of the developing offspring. The Harvard team set out to see if they could find the same in humans.

They measured levels of IgE from the umbilical cord blood of 387 newborns in Boston.

Babies whose mothers were the most stressed out - but who had low exposure to dust mites at home - still had high levels of IgE in their cord blood, a finding that suggests that stress increased the immune response to dust exposure.

This was true irrespective of the mother's race, class, education or smoking history.

''This further supports the notion that stress can be thought of as a social pollutant that, when 'breathed' into the body, may influence the body's immune response,'' Wright said in a statement.

The study patterns recent findings in children who have undergone stress by Dr Andrea Danese of the University of London.

Researchers there followed 1,000 people in New Zealand from birth to the age of 32.They found that children who had undergone maltreatment - such as maternal rejection, harsh discipline and sexual abuse - had twice the levels of inflammation in their blood even 20 years later.

High levels of inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein, fibrinogen and immune cells increase a person's risk of heart disease and diabetes.

''Stress in childhood may modify developmental trajectories and have a long-term effect on disease risk,'' said Danese, who presented his findings last week at a conference in Chicago on how early influences affect health and well-being.

Danese said maltreatment in childhood might impair the ability of glucocorticoids -- hormones that inhibit inflammation -- to respond to stress later in life, which could lead to depression and other psychiatric ills. He said children who have survived maltreatment should get an early start on preventive care for common adult diseases. — Reuters

New York, May 19
A new analysis of the latest studies on trace gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores provides fresh evidence that greenhouse gases’ concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane have never been as high during the last 800,000 years as today, the researchers say.

This is further confirmation of the link between greenhouse gas levels and global warming, they stress.
“The fundamental conclusion that today’s concentrations of these greenhouse gases have no past analogue in the ice-core record remains firm,” says an associated professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, Edward Brook, who wrote a commentary for the Nature magazine on new studies.

“The remarkably strong correlations of methane and carbon dioxide with temperature reconstructions also stand,” he says.

“The latest research, done by members of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, extend the data on trace gases back another 150,000 years beyond any studies done prior to this,” Brook said. Ultimately, researchers would like to achieve the data going back as much as 1.5 million years.

The tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped in polar ice cores have been used to provide records of trace gases in the atmosphere at distant points in the past, and to better understand the natural fluctuations that have occurred, largely as a result of cyclical changes in Earth's orbit around the sun.

“These natural cycles that occur on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands of years can help us understand both the forces that have controlled and influenced Earth’s climate in the past, and the implications of current changes on future climate,” said Brook, who is co-chairman of an international group that organises global studies in this field.

According to the data, the current levels of primary greenhouse gases, those that are expected to cause global warming, are off the charts. The concentration of carbon dioxide is now a bit more than 380 parts per million, compared to a range of about 200-300 parts per million during the past 800,000 years. The current concentration of methane is 1,800 parts per billion, compared to a range of about 400-700 parts per billion during that time.

“In every case during that extended period, warm periods coincide with high levels of greenhouse gases. Of some interest, the latest studies are showing that the temperature increases have been even more pronounced during the most recent 450,000 years, compared to several hundred thousand years prior to that,” he said.

“It appears that there may be very long-term natural cycles that have operated on much longer periods of 400,000 years or more. We still have quite a bit to learn about these past cycles and all the forces that control them. Most of the time during the past 800,000 years, the Earth has experienced long, cooler periods about 80,000 to 90,000 years long, which eventually lead to ice ages. Those have been regularly interrupted by ‘interglacial’ periods about 10,000 to 20,000 years long that are considerably warmer -this is the stage the Earth is in right now,” Brook said.

Abrupt climate changes on much shorter timescales are also possible, researchers believe, possibly due to shifts in ocean circulation patterns or other forces.

“Scientists are continuing to search for the optimal sites in Antarctica that will allow them to take the ice core records back even further,” Brook said. — PTI

Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has met President Pervez Musharraf to discuss with him the fourth round of the Pakistan-India foreign ministers’ talks.

According to a private TV channel, Shah Mehmood Qureshi today met President Musharraf to discuss the upcoming talks with Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee. 

Mukherjee is arriving in Islamabad for the talks today. 

Sources said during the meeting at the presidency in Islamabad, Qureshi and Musharraf discussed the progress made in the Pakistan-India talks during the first three rounds. 

Qureshi told the President that during the talks the two countries would discuss exchange of prisoners, visa policy and bilateral trade. 

It was decided that the Kashmir issue should top the agenda for the fourth round of talks, scheduled for May 21.

The Indian foreign minister would also meet with President Musharraf, PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N Nawaz Sharif during his stay in Pakistan.

Kathmandu, May 19 
An overloaded bus carrying 100 passengers, including 35 Indian pilgrims, plunged into the Rapti river in Dang district in south-west Nepal today, killing at least 20 persons.
About 28 persons were injured and 40 reported missing in the mishap, which took place at Lalmati village of the district this morning when the bus was heading from Krishna Nagar in Kapilvastu to Pyuthan district.

DSP Dhruba Mahara said 20 bodies had been recovered but the deceased were yet to be identified, the Himalayan Times reported. The accident occurred after the bus skidded off the road and fell down the ridge into the Rapti river.

Reports said 35 pilgrims were from India. Of the injured admitted to Nepalgunj Hospital for treatment, eight persons were critical.

The police arrested Jamaat-e-Islami chief Matiur Rahman Nizami on corruption charges late Sunday night amid protests by hundreds of his party workers braving a downpour in the capital.

Nizami, one of the most controversial figures in Bangladeshi politics for his reported war crimes during the country's liberation war in 1971, is a high-profile Islamist politician to be arrested . 

A police team had to wade through at least 200 protesters in front of Nizami's house in downtown Dhaka as news spread of his arrest last Sunday night after the court rejected bail for the Jamaat leader. 

BRIEFLY

18 killed as bus falls into river
Kathmandu: At least 18 persons were killed and 34 injured, 17 of them seriously, when a passenger bus, carrying mainly pilgrims, plunged into the Rapti river at Bagahasota highway of Lalmatiya VDC-3 in Dang district in mid-western Nepal on Monday. According to The Kathmandu Post, the seriously injured passengers have been taken to Nepalgunj for treatment, while others returned home after receiving first-aid at the local Lamahi health post. The death toll could rise significantly as many passengers were still missing and were believed to have drowned in the river. — TNS

8 killed IN GUN RAMPAGE
Manila: Eight people were killed, including four children, and six wounded in a shooting spree at a small farming community outside the Philippines capital on Monday. The unidentified suspect went amok using an automatic rifle while residents slept in Urnalan village, just south of Manila. The suspect also shot and killed farm animals in the area, leading the police to suspect the gunman might be mentally troubled. — AFP

6 Baha’is detained in Iran
London: The Iranian authorities have detained six members of the Baha'i faith, the Baha'i International Community said. Five men and one woman were detained on May 14 and taken to Tehran's Evin prison. It was not immediately clear what charges were levelled against the Baha'is, whose members say that they face discrimination and persecution in the Islamic Republic. — Reuters

Storm kills 12 in Philippines
Baguio (Philippines): Strong wind and rain killed 12 persons and injured nine others as a tropical storm sliced through the mountainous northern Philippines, blowing roofs off houses and toppling power poles, the officials said on Monday. In the northern Philippines, about 3,000 houses were destroyed. — AP

Turkey bans smoking in public
Ankara: A law banning smoking in public places came into effect on Monday in Turkey - a country where nearly 60 per cent of the men and 20 per cent of the women smoke. There are exemptions for special zones in psychiatric hospitals, retirement homes and prisons. Any establishment defying the ban will receive a written warning, followed by a fine of up to US $ 4,000. An individual caught illicitly smoking risks a fine of US $ 40. — AFP