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Taliban using child bombers?
The warship that buried bin Laden
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All options open to get Mullah Omar: Kerry
Look who is on Twitter: The Taliban!
Targets inside India identified if attacked: ISI chief
Indian student assaulted in UK
Gillard could be first Oz PM to marry while in office
Julia Gillard and Tim Mathieson. — AFP
78 hurt in Egypt clashes
Evacuation begins from widened no-go zone near Fukushima plant
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Taliban using child bombers?
Kabul, May 15 They were told there would be two members of the Taliban waiting for them at the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province. Instead, members of the Afghan intelligence service, who had been tipped to the boys' plans arrested them at the border. “Our mullah told us that when we carried out our suicide attacks, all the people around us would die, but we would stay alive," Farooq said yesterday, sitting inside a juvenile detention facility in the Afghan capital. He was one of five alleged suicide bombers — all boys in adolescence or even younger — whom the Afghan intelligence service paraded before reporters at a news conference on May 7 in an effort to turn public opinion against the Taliban. Afghan intelligence officials say the Taliban turns to young boys because they are easier to recruit than adults and tend to believe what recruiters tell them. “The Taliban are recruiting children in their ranks and using them to carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan," Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, told reporters. The Taliban denies the accusation. In a statement issued a week ago, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgency's code of conduct prohibits young people from staying in military centers with fighters. Instead, he alleged that the youths were working for the Afghan police and public and private security companies. — AP
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The warship that buried bin Laden
US officials on Sunday welcomed visitors to the USS Carl Vinson warship, from which Osama bin Laden's body was buried at sea, but did not discuss the ultra-secretive attack that killed him, reflecting America's concern over possible retaliation. US defence officials were taking measures to ensure the security of the operatives involved in the May 2 assault on a walled fortress in Abbottabad, particularly the Navy Seal team that killed the world's most wanted
terrorist. President Benigno Aquino III, accompanied by senior members of his Cabinet and military chief of staff, were flown to the massive aircraft carrier yesterday as it travelled in the South China Sea toward the Philippines. A group of journalists were invited to tour and talk to sailors aboard the 97,000-ton Carl Vinson, which anchored off Manila along with three other warships today at the start of a four-day routine port call and goodwill visit. US Embassy spokeswoman Wossenyelesh Mazengia told the journalists that nobody aboard the carrier would talk about bin Laden. — AP
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All options open to get Mullah Omar: Kerry
Washington, May 15 Kerry, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan to patch up relations following the killing of Osama bin Laden, said the US wants Pakistan to be a real ally in combatting terrorism, media reports said. When he was asked if the US would conduct similar raids to get Mullah Omar, who could be hiding in Pakistan as well, Kerry said: “It’s a question that's on the minds of every American and lots of other people in the world." He said the US would “always reserve all of its options to be able to protect our people”. — PTI
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Look who is on Twitter: The Taliban!
Kabul, May 15 The move into the English language on Twitter is the latest sign that the Taliban are embracing modern technology in the propaganda battle that runs alongside the guerrilla war of ambushes, suicide bombings and mine explosions. When they ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, almost all electronic products were outlawed as un-Islamic. Photographs of living things were illegal, and ownership of a video player could lead to a public lashing. Today, they send out text messages and emails, release videos of attacks on US-led international troops, and run a website that evades repeated efforts to close it down. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan joined Twitter about six months ago,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told AFP, using the group’s name from its time in power. “We did it because we know Twitter is a popular social network in the West, and we want to make our voice heard. They used to hear only one-sided news about us from the invaders, but now they can know the reality.” Mujahid said an official Taliban page on Facebook had been shut down by the company earlier this year, but supporters still host personal pages passing on news and information. “We regard modern technology, including the Internet, as a blessing of God,” he said, declining to explain the Taliban's change of attitude since they were toppled for sheltering Al-Qaida after the 9/11 attacks. The Taliban's Twitter feed @alemarahweb - a reference to Islamic statehood - sends out several messages every day, mostly in the Pashto language, and is followed by 4,200 persons with the number growing rapidly since English was introduced. The NATO-led coalition force in Afghanistan yesterday used its own Twitter feed to post a response saying: “What's that? Taliban's tweeting in English? Lies are lies no matter the language.” Bizarrely, the Taliban's Twitter account follows tweets sent out by a British soldiers' charity, as well as a carpet-weaving development programme and a site linked to Islamist militants in the Caucasus. — AFP
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Targets inside India identified if attacked: ISI chief
Islamabad, May 15 Pasha’s warning came as he addressed the in-camera joint session of the Senate and National Assembly held behind closed doors on Friday. Pasha is facing fire over the inability of the ISI to track down Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, where he was living, before he was annihilated by US special forces in a covert operation on May 2. In an apparent response to statements from New Delhi that India too can carry out strikes inside Pakistan, Pasha said any attack from the east would invite a befitting response, the Dawn reported. He said a contingency plan is in place and targets inside “India had already been identified”. — PTI Pak stops intel sharing with US?
London: Pakistan’s intelligence agencies are reportedly refusing to share details of suspects or plots with their American counterparts in protest at the covert US operation to kill Osama bin Laden, the media said here on Sunday. — PTI
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Indian student assaulted in UK
London, May 15 Srivastava is a student at Derby University. He said he was “humiliated” after he was covered in fire extinguisher foam and beer during the attack recently, according to reports in Derby. A British Transport Police spokesperson said two men from Chaddesden, aged 26 and 32, and a 27-year-old man from Belper, were arrested following an appeal for witnesses. They have been released on bail until June. — PTI
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Gillard could be first Oz PM to marry while in office
Sydney, May 15 “I would like to ask her,” he was quoted as saying by Sunday Herald Sun, but said he was in no hurry. At the same time, Mathieson, who has been married before and has three children, said he has not yet discussed his plan with country's first female Prime Minister. “At the moment I’m really quite happy with our relationship the way it is. Like Julia, I don’t think we need to be cemented in any other way. We're just happy with the way we are, but I would hope if I did ask her that, of course, she would say yes. Absolutely. It's a natural thing,” he said. However, Gillard has played down the suggestions of an imminent wedding, saying she has no present plans to marry her partner Mathieson. — PTI
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Cairo, May 15 The clashes erupted yesterday night, when dozens of men from poor neighbourhoods in the vicinity of the state television building attacked a Christian sit-in with stones, Molotov cocktails and live ammunition, witnesses said. The Christian protesters have been holding their sit-in outside the building for nearly a week following deadly Christian-Muslim clashes that left a church burned and 15 persons dead. Earlier today, state television reported that two persons had died as a result of the fighting, but the health ministry later said none had been killed. The head of the Egyptian Coptic church has called on Christians to stop their week-long protest after fresh clashes. Pope Shenuda III said in a statement, read by his secretary on state TV, that the recent sectarian violence is harming the reputation of Egypt. A protest organiser told state TV the motorists had provoked the fight after refusing to be searched before entering the protest area, then provoking the protesters. — PTI
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Evacuation begins from widened no-go zone near Fukushima plant
Fukushima, May 15 The government designated Kawamata and Iitate on April 22 as part of the area from which residents would be required to leave in roughly one-month time, as cumulative radiation exposure is expected to exceed the yardstick of 20 millisieverts during the course of a year. Masahiro Kanno, a 34-year-old Kawamata resident with two sons aged 5 and 8, was unhappy with the evacuation order. The government set the additional no-entry area outside the original evacuation zone in the 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima Daiichi complex crippled by the March 11 mega earthquake and tsunami waves. — Kyodo
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The US will consider "all options" if it has intelligence that the elusive Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar was hiding in Pakistan, Senator John Kerry has said.
Kerry, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan to patch up relations following the killing of Osama bin Laden, said the US wants Pakistan to be a real ally in combatting terrorism, media reports said.
Sydney, May 15
Fukushima, May 15
