Kabul, October 20
Two Taliban gunmen killed a British woman aid worker in the Afghan capital on Monday, accusing her of spreading Christian propaganda, in an attack that could help further restrict humanitarian activities in Afghanistan.

Taliban insurgents have increasingly targeted aid workers this year in their campaign to spread an atmosphere of fear and undermine claims by the Afghan government and its Western backers that they are bringing security to the war-ravaged nation.

“She was walking to work this morning. There were two people on a motorcycle. They got off the motorcycle and shot her and then went away on the motorcycle. She was dead pretty soon afterwards,” said Mark Lyth, the board chairman of SERVE Afghanistan, the aid agency which employed the woman.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. “We killed her for spreading Christian propaganda,” Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the militant group, told Reuters by telephone.

SERVE Afghanistan is a British-based Christian aid organisation focusing on community development and education and training for people with disabilities.

Though NATO insists increased Taliban attacks this year bely its success in weakening the Islamist rebels, targeted Taliban assassinations, suicide and roadside bombs have increased the sense of personal insecurity among Afghans and foreigners alike.

A suicide bomber hit a convoy of German troops in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan on Monday, killing five children and two German soldiers, a senior police official said.

Keeping Berlin’s 3,300 troops in Afghanistan is already unpopular in Germany and the deaths will likely only increase calls for them to be withdrawn and put further strain on the alliance, which is struggling to contain the Taliban insurgency.

Three female aid workers and their Afghan driver were killed in an ambush outside Kabul in August, the bloodiest single attack on foreign humanitarian workers in Afghanistan in recent years. — Reuters

In a major blow to John McCain, President George W. Bush’s former secretary of state Colin Powell on Sunday formally endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential bid, calling the Democrat a “transformational figure” who will “electrify our country . . . (and) the world”.

Powell said he would be voting for Obama on November 4. “I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for senator Barack Obama,” Powell said on NBC's “Meet the Press”.

Powell, a retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was worried the Republican Party had “moved more to the right than I would like to see it”.

Powell, an African-American, criticised the “negative tone” of McCain’s campaign, including attempts by the Republican’s presidential campaign to link Obama to 1960s radical Bill Ayers. McCain has described Ayers as a “washed up terrorist” yet his campaign has been sending out “robo-calls” to voters talking about Obama’s tenuous links to Ayers.

“I think that's inappropriate. I understand what politics is about - I know how you can go after one another, and that's good. But I think this goes too

far, and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for,” Powell said.

Powell said one of the biggest considerations for him was how both candidates had responded to the financial crisis gripping America.

Describing this as their “final exam”, Powell said McCain appeared unsteady in dealing with it, while Obama “displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge”.

Justice Iftikhar addressed the last meeting of the executive committee of the SCBA, which was headed by Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan who makes way to the new president to be elected next week.

He arrived in the Supreme Court amidst high drama reminscent of the days when he and the lawyers faced barricades by security forces under orders of Gen. Musharraf to prevent them from entering the court premises.

Kathmandu, October 20
Sharp differences have come to the fore among the Nepalese political parties on the complex issue of integrating 19,000-strong former Maoists rebels into the army, with many politicians sensing in the move a threat of dilution of the force.

Most political parties, barring the dominant Maoists party, are opposing the merger and some like Madhesi groups have even gone to the extent of demanding a proportionate representation of the community in the armed forces.

The main opposition party, Nepali Congress, has rejected the idea raising the ire of the defence minister and Maoist leader Ram Bahadur Thapa ‘Badal’, who threatened to use force to suppress the opponents of the integration move. — PTI

BRIEFLY

Tata gives $50 m to Cornell varsity
NEW YORK: Noted industrialist and philanthropist Ratan Tata has gifted a $50 million to his alma mater, Cornell University in New York, to help recruit top Indian students to support joint research projects with the Indian universities in agriculture and nutrition. The gift from the Tata Trusts, a group of philanthropic organisations run by Tata - chairman of the business conglomerate Tata Sons Ltd, will allow Cornell to establish and expand partnerships with Indian scientists that build on its strength in applied agriculture research. Tata had graduated from Cornell in 1959. — PTI

Singapore launches Indian TV channel
SINGAPORE: Singapore has launched a full-fledged Indian television channel in order to cater to the growing demand of the audiences. Vasantham, mostly in the city state’s fourth official language Tamil, will telecast from 3pm to midnight, Mondays to Saturdays, and 1pm to midnight on Sundays. Programmes will include news and current affairs, interactive talk shows, a daily local drama and five movie slots weekly, according to a Channel News Asia report on Monday. — UNI

NASA launches interstellar explorer mission
New York: The US space agency NASA has launched Interstellar Boundary Explorer Mission (IBEX) to image and map dynamic interactions taking place in the outer solar system. Explaining the mission, the agency yesterday said just as an impressionist artist makes an image from countless tiny strokes of paint, IBEX would build an image of the outer boundary of the solar system from impacts on the spacecraft by high-speed particles called energetic neutral atoms. — PTI

Air strikes in Pak kill 6 militants
Islamabad: At least six militants were killed and several others injured when Pakistani fighter jets and artillery pounded suspected Taliban positions in the troubled Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan. The jets struck militant positions at several places in Charmang and Loisam sub-districts of Bajaur Agency, considered to be strongholds of the local Taliban militants. A number of militant hideouts were destroyed in the bombing, TV channels reported. — PTI

Quake hits Indonesia
Jakarta: A quake of 6.5-magnitude struck Indonesia’s Sulawesi island on Monday, the geophysics agency said. There were no immediate reports of damage and officials said no tsunami warning had been issued. Indonesian officials said the quake struck at sea at 11:54 am (1024 IST), some 96 km southwest of Tolitoli town in Central Sulawesi, at a depth of 110 km. — AFP