Tripoli/London, March 31
Muammar Gaddafi suffered a major blow with his foreign minister Moussa Koussa, a former intelligence chief, defecting to London, the first key aide to dump the Libyan leader even as his forces today made rapid advances recapturing rebel-held Brega.

Koussa landed at the non-commercial airfield at Farnborough, south-west of London, “of his own free will”, said British Foreign Secretary William Hague. Koussa is believed to have been ferried in a British military plane, according to BBC but another report said he used an executive jet.

“The Libyan regime is crumbling from within,” Hague said as western powers expected more key aides of 68-year-old Gaddafi to abandon him.

“His resignation shows that Gaddafi’s regime, which has already seen significant defections to the opposition, is fragmented, under pressure and crumbling from within,” Hague said as Koussa was being questioned after his arrival.

But in a surprise move, Hague asserted that the Libyan leader was not being offered immunity from British or international justice.

He told us that he has resigned his post and had come from Tunisia where he had crossed over two days back,” the British Foreign Office spokesperson said.

Koussa is one of the most senior figures in Gaddafi’s government and his role was to represent the regime internationally, but during questioning he said he was no longer willing to represent Gaddafi.

The development came as Gaddafi’s tanks and rocket launchers stormed into Brega after rebels retreated from the town without a fight.

As the rebels were pressed hard by government forces, British and allied warplanes bombed Libyan tanks, armoured vehicles and surface-to-air missile sites at the key western city of Misurata, which has been under siege for almost two weeks.

The British air force spokesman in London said a number of tanks and missile sites had been hit and destroyed.

While confirming that NATO had taken over the full command of operations in Libya from the US, the alliance’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Stockholm that he did not agree with the US and British suggestions of arming the rebels against Gaddafi’s forces.

“We are there to protect the Libyan people, not to arm the people,” he said. Russia too has come out openly against any move to arm the people, saying this was beyond the mandate of the UN Security Council resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. — PTI

Nicosia, March 31
A London-based rights group close to the Muslim Brotherhood said today 25 persons were killed by security forces in Latakia, northwest of the country, in a “bloodbath.” “The security forces of the Syrian regime in the city of Latakia are committing a massacre... in which more than 25 peaceful citizens have been killed,” said the Syrian Human Rights Committee, in reference to violence in the multi-confessional port city yesterday.

The rights monitor “called upon the international community to work to stop the bloodbath taking place in Latakia, and to stop all massacres being committed by the security forces and militia men of the Syrian regime.”

Meanwhile, a political activist in Latakia said several had been wounded and killed yesterday, but the exact numbers remained unclear. “There were dozens wounded but the exact number of casualties is unknown. We estimate around four or five but that remains to be confirmed,” he said. — AFP

London, March 31
The erstwhile Soviet Union officials lied about the success of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic 1961 flight into space, and also covered up the fact that he had landed more than 200 miles away from the expected location, a new book has claimed.

The Soviet Union held up his mission, the first manned flight into space, as a major Cold War propaganda coup, portraying it as a glitch-free triumph of Communist ideology.

Now, 50 years on, the book, ‘108 Minutes That Changed the World’, has revealed that the Soviet scientists had twice miscalculated where Gagarin would land which is why there was nobody there to meet him when he finally touched down some 500 miles south of capital Moscow, The Daily Telegraph reported.

“For many years Soviet literature claimed that Yuri Gagarin and his Vostok landing capsule had come down in the area it was supposed to. (But) this information was far from the truth,” the book says, adding Soviet space planners were expecting him to land almost 250 miles further to the south.

“So it turned out that nobody was waiting or looking for Yuri Gagarin. Therefore the first thing he had to do after landing was set off to look for people and communications so he could tell the leadership where he was,” the book claims.

The Soviets lied too about the manner of his landing, claiming that he had touched down inside the capsule itself when in actual fact he had landed separately via parachute, according to the book. — PTI

Beijing, March 31
Beijing has become the second city in China after Shanghai to enjoy the benefits of a slightly relaxed family planning policy in what appears to be a gradual rollback of China’s three-decade-old one-child policy.

Under the new rules, fewer couples would be subject to the fines charged to those who violate China’s family planning policy by having a second child.

Beijing couples who give birth to a second child will now be charged fines only if both the mother is younger than 28 years and the second child is born within four years after the first, state-run China Daily reported today.

This is seen as a part of a larger move by the Chinese government to bring about gradual change in order to counter the ill-effects of a graying population. The new rules though will not benefit couples where either spouse has a sibling.

The idea is to discourage people born in families with more than one children to go for a second child.

Some experts believe the changes suggested in the new policy are not enough to suitably address the problem of low population growth in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

Mu Guangzong, a professor of population research at Peking University, was quoted by the local media as saying that the time had come to allow all couples in China to have two children. There was a need to push up the average fertility rate to 2.1 from the current level which is between 1.4 and 1.8, Mu said.

The country’s one-child policy has helped ease population pressures over the past three decades. — PTI

Pakistan’s hardline JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Thursday had a narrow escape for the second day in a row when a suicide bomber targeted his motorcade in the country’s restive northwest, killing at least 12 persons and injuring over 30 others.

The bomber struck just after the motorcade of 57-year-old Rehman, a member of the National Assembly or lower house of Parliament, entered Charsadda town in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, where he was to address a gathering at Darul Uloom Islamia seminary.

The powerful blast occurred near a government office and a private school, witnesses said.

Twelve persons, including two members of Rehman’s security detail and a woman, were killed while over 30 others, including policemen and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) workers, were injured, officials said.

“I am fine. There was a powerful explosion near my car and the windscreen was shattered. Another car in my motorcade was damaged,” Rehman told the media.