London/Islamabad, April 29
Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who was thought to have been killed in a US drone attack early this year, is alive and “basically OK”, claimed a senior ISI official.

An Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency official told The Guardian: “He (Mehsud) is alive... He had some wounds, but he is basically fine.”

Mehsud was believed to have died in a drone strike in South Waziristan in January. Though a Pakistani minister had then said that the Taliban chief had been killed, his death was not confirmed by either the US or Pakistani intelligence.

Mehsud, who claimed responsibility for several suicide attacks, including the one on the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, was made chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan after his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack in August last year.

The senior official said he had seen the video footage of the missile attack on Mehsud, but other intelligence reports had since confirmed that Mehsud had survived.

There has been a significant stepping up of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

“The US government is under pressure because it is unable to achieve much in Afghanistan. This is one way of hitting their Al-Qaida enemies, as they define them,” the official was quoted as saying.

Even if Mehsud has survived, he would have been left with a weakened Taliban due to a massive army assault in its South Waziristan stronghold, the official said.

His leadership has been challenged and “he may not be in the leadership position”. — IANS

London, April 29
Japanese scientists have developed a kite-shaped ‘space yacht’ that uses only solar power for propulsion.The spacecraft -- IKAROS -- would be launched into the space next month for a six-month mission to Venus. The £35-million IKAROS will be the first spacecraft to use such technology.

“Its name is an acronym for Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun. It also alludes to the Greek mythic hero Icarus who flew too close to the Sun and fell into the sea,” a spokesman for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

In space, the spacecraft’s short cylindrical pod will be separated from the rocket spinning up to 20 times a minute. This will help it unfold its flexible 46-feet sail, which is thinner than a human hair, the Daily Mail reported.

The square-shaped sail, equipped with thin-film solar cells, uses resistance created by the Sun’s energy in the same way as wind propels a yacht through water, thus providing the spacecraft with enough thrust to hover and rotate.

“Solar sails are the technology that realises space travel without fuel as long as we have sunlight. It is a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure. The availability of electricity would enable us to navigate farther and more effectively in the solar system,” Japanese Space Agency expert Yuichi Tsuda said.

The JAXA spokesman said: “This will be the world’s first solar-powered sail craft employing both photon propulsion and thin film power generation during its interplanetary cruise.”

The spacecraft propelled only by sunlight particles bouncing off its kite-shaped sails will blast off from Tanegashima Space Center. — PTI 

Beijing, April 29
Twenty-eight children were stabbed today by a 47-year-old man at a kindergarten in China’s Jiangsu province, a day after 16 primary school students were attacked by a mentally-unstable man in Guangdong province.

An unemployed man, identified Xu Yuyuan, carried out the attack at 9.30 am local time in Zhongxin Kindergarten in Jiangsu’s Taixing city, in which two teachers and a security guard were also injured, Xinhua quoted government officials as saying.

Yesterday, a mentally-unstable 33-year-old man, named Chen Kangbing, had stabbed 16 students and a teacher at the Leicheng First Primary School in Guangdong province’s Leizhou city.

Thursday's attacker Xu worked in an insurance company until he was fired in 2001. Since then, he has remained jobless, they said.

The children have been admitted in hospital and five of them are in a critical condition. Many of the injured children were four years old and studied in the same class.

Xu broke into the kindergarten classroom wielding a 20-cm-long knife and attacked the children and the two teachers. The security guard was injured when he tried to stop the man, the police said.

Meanwhile, five of the injured students in the Guangdong attack were still critical. The authorities were assessing the mental state of Chen, an art teacher at Hongguan Primary School, in Leizhou city.

Earlier, a mentally-unstable doctor who had stabbed eight school children to death in China’s Fujian province was executed yesterday. He was put in front of the firing squad.

Zheng Minsheng, 41, who murdered eight children on March 23 at Nanping Experimental Elementary School, had admitted in court that he had “intentionally” killed them. — IANS

At a time when main opposition party Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (UCPN-M) is rejuvenating its all efforts to topple the CPN-UML and Nepali Congress-led coalition government, the latter has received yet another blow from the judiciary.

The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday issued a stay order asking the government not to execute the decision recently made by the Constitutional Council (CC) that had recommended appointments in four constitutional bodies.

After carrying out preliminary hearing, a special bench comprising Justices Balram KC, Ram Kumar Prasad Shah and Mohan Prakash Sitaula directed the government not to implement the decision till the final verdict was issued in this regard.

Immediately, after the CC meeting recommended chiefs and members of different constitutional bodies, including the Public Service Commission and Election Commission, the UCPN-M chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, for the first time on Sunday filed a writ petition at the apex court seeking nullification of the decision.

As Prachanda, who is also a member of the seven-membered CC, refrained from attending the meeting, the government had decided to proceed unilaterally.

In the writ petition, Dahal had stated that the CC’s decision, which was taken without his party’s approval, violated constitutional and legal provisions.

Dahal claimed he was not informed about the meeting and knew about the CC decision though the media. However, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal on Wednesday had said he himself had telephoned Prachanda and requested repeatedly to attend the CC meeting.