|
|
|
|
|
MEMOGATE: Ijaz deposes before Pak judicial panel
Koran protests claim 8 lives in Afghanistan
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Train crash in Argentina kills 49 Buenos Aires, February 22 A packed commuter train plowed into the buffers at a Buenos Aires station during morning rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least 49 persons and injuring more than 600 others, officials said. They said the train was unable to stop, presumably due to faulty brakes, and it slammed into the buffers inside the centrally located "Once" station. More than 800 passengers were aboard the train. A police spokesman said 49 people had been killed. — Reuters
Oz Foreign Minister Rudd quits
|
|
MEMOGATE: Ijaz deposes before Pak judicial panel
Islamabad, February 22 Ijaz came to the Pakistan High Commission in London to record his statement through video conferencing while the three-judge commission appointed by the Supreme Court conducted the proceedings from Islamabad. Ijaz, the main accuser in the memo scandal, had earlier refused to travel to Pakistan to record his testimony citing security concerns. The businessman read out a statement that he had submitted earlier to the Supreme Court but did not provide any new evidence to back up his claims about the alleged memo, TV news channels here reported. Recounting his contacts with Pakistani leaders, Ijaz said he had met then ISI chief Gen Ehsan-ul-Haq in Brussels in 2003. He said he had met former military ruler Pervez Musharraf in London in 2005 and that he had last met President Asif Ali Zardari in 2009. Ijaz said he met current ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha in a London hotel last year. He acknowledged that he currently had few contacts with Pakistani leaders. He claimed his contacts with Pakistan's former envoy to the US Husain Haqqani, for the alleged memo, began on May 3 last year - a day after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. He claimed Haqqani had told him that the military was pressuring Zardari and the government. In Islamabad, Attorney General Anwar-ul-Haq told the commission it would be necessary to conduct forensic tests on the BlackBerry messages that Ijaz had produced to support his claims. Haq said the commission's secretary, who was in London for the video-conferencing, was not an expert on electronic devices and could not verify the authenticity of the BlackBerry messages. Earlier in the day, Ijaz drove to the Pakistan High Commission in a cab. He told reporters before going inside that he would tell the truth and expose the reality about the memo.
— PTI Testifying from London
|
|
Koran protests claim 8 lives in Afghanistan
Kabul, February 22 In Kabul and in provinces to the east, north and south of the capital, furious Afghans took to the streets screaming "Death to America", throwing rocks and setting fire to shops and vehicles as gunshots rang out. In the eastern city of Jalalabad, students set fire to an effigy of President Barack Obama, and the US embassy in Kabul went into lockdown. In Kabul, hundreds of people poured onto the Jalalabad road, throwing stones at US military base Camp Phoenix, where troops guarding the base fired into the air and black smoke rose from burning tyres, an AFP photographer said. Afghanistan is a deeply religious country where slights against Islam have frequently provoked violent protests and Afghans were incensed that any Western troops could be so insensitive, 10 years after the 2001 US-led invasion. The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, apologised and ordered an investigation into the incident, admitting that religious materials, including Korans "were inadvertently taken to an incineration facility". Allen and US deputy defence secretary Ashton Carter called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai today to apologise again for the incident at Bagram airbase, the President's office said.
— AFP
|
|
Two journalists killed in Syria
Paris, February 22 The website of photo agency IP3 Press which was founded by 28-year-old Ochlik said he was an award-winning photojournalist who had covered events including the 2004 rioting in Haiti and the Arab world upheaval last year. Colvin, from Oyster Bay, New York, was a war reporter who had covered conflicts from Sri Lanka to Syria. She had been a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times in Britain for the past two decades. They were killed when rockets struck and demolished the house they were staying in, activists and witnesses in Homs told Reuters by telephone. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, trying to hammer the city of Homs into submission, on Wednesday killed 19 more persons.
— Agencies
|
|
Iran defiant as UN nuclear talks fail
Tehran, February 22 “The Iranian nation has never been seeking an atomic weapon and never will be. It will prove to the world that a nuclear weapon cannot create supremacy,” Khamenei told Iranian nuclear scientists. “The path of scientific development, particularly the nuclear field, should continue strongly and seriously,” he said. “Pressure, sanctions, threats and assassinations will not bear any fruit and Iran will continue its path of scientific development,” Khamenei said. The forceful restatement of Iran’s long-held position came after a five-strong delegation from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency left empty-handed following two days of talks focusing on suspected military aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme. The delegation’s leader, UN chief nuclear inspector Herman Nackaerts, said on arrival in Vienna that, although it had “approached this trip in a constructive spirit,” no agreement with the Iranians on elucidating worrisome activities was forthcoming. “We could not get access” to Iran’s military site in Parchin where suspected nuclear warhead design experiments were conducted, Nackaerts said.
— AFP
|
|
Oz Foreign Minister Rudd quits
“The simple truth is that I cannot continue to serve as Foreign Minister if I don’t have Prime Minister Gillard’s support,” 54-year-old Rudd said at a media conference in Washington DC, which was broadcast live in Australia. “I therefore believe the only honourable course of action is for me to resign,” he said. A “disappointed” Gillard, who ousted Rudd as Prime Minister in June 2010, said he did not inform her in advance that he would resign. “I am disappointed that the concerns Mr Rudd has publicly expressed ... were never personally raised with me, nor did he contact me to discuss his resignation prior to his decision,” 50-year-old Gillard, who was in Adelaide, said in a short statement.
— PTI
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | E-mail | |
Ijaz said he met then ISI chief Gen Ehsan-ul-Haq in Brussels in 2003, former military ruler Pervez Musharraf in London in 2005, had last met President Asif Ali Zardari in 2009 and met current ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha in a London hotel last year.
Melbourne, February 22