The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

22 killed in attack on Yemen police academy

Sanaa, July 11
A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police academy in the Yemeni capital today, killing at least 22 persons, many of them young police cadets, in an attack investigators said bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaida. Policeman Fadel Ali told Reuters that the cadets were leaving the college when the bomber attacked. "We ran to the place and found dozens of cadets covered in blood. Blood was everywhere. The scene was horrific."

Another witness said he saw a man in his 20s enter the crowd as cadets gathered in front of the academy. "A loud explosion shook the area and I saw cadets lying on the ground with blood everywhere."

The bombing Sanaa followed a similar attack in the capital in May, when a suicide bomber in army uniform killed more than 90 people during a rehearsal for a military parade.

That attack, claimed by Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), along with Wednesday's bombing - showed quite how far the Yemeni government is from defeating the Islamist insurgents despite a US backed military offensive which drove them out of their southern strongholds.

The insurgents have vowed to carry their fight across Yemen. Theodore Karasik, director of research and development at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said AQAP appeared to be adopting methods used in Iraq. "It's the same kind of tactics that we see al Qaeda using in Iraq, targeting police academies and the military. There is a migration of tactics from Al-Qaida in Iraq to Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula," he told Reuters.

The insurgents had been emboldened by waning government control over Yemen during last year's protests that ousted former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, seizing several southern cities before being driven out this year.

The United States has been using drone missile strikes to target Islamist insurgents in Yemen, in an expansion of a secretive programme which has raised questions both at home and abroad.

A police source said that the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack was not killed instantly, but died later in a police hospital. — Reuters

Opposition chief presses Russia to change stance on Syria

Demonstrators hold opposition flags during a protest against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. — Reuters

Moscow, July 11
The head of Syria's main exiled opposition group sought today to convince Russia to drop all support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, saying there was no hope of a political transition. Syrian National Council chief Abdel Basset Sayda told Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in rare talks at the Russian foreign ministry that Moscow needed to understand his country was in the throes of a revolution.

"The events in Syria are not disagreements between the opposition and the government but a revolution," Sayda told Lavrov, comparing the events in his country to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

However in his opening remarks, Lavrov offered no hope of breakthrough in disagreements between Moscow and the Syrian opposition, which has been scathing of the Russian position in the Syrian crisis.

"Sometimes your organisation has questions about what we are doing and we want to clear up these questions today so that there are no doubts," Lavrov said.

He added that Russia wanted to understand in the talks if there are "prospects" of the opposition groups uniting and joining a platform for dialogue with the Syrian government.

Moscow has repeatedly refused to call on Assad to quit power, saying that Syria's political future cannot be imposed from the outside and must be decided via a dialogue involving all parties.

However, the Syrian National Council has repeatedly said it had no patience with the idea of a political transition in Syria that would include members of the current regime.

"No dialogue with the ruling regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political system," SNC spokeswoman Bassma Kodmani said in Moscow one day ahead of the talks.

"Russia is one of the most important states for Syria. It plays an important role that we hope can help us turn the page on the old regime." — AFP

Japan, China in fresh territorial controversy
Tokyo summons Chinese ambassador

Tokyo, July 11
Japan today summoned the Chinese ambassador as a diplomatic row flared over a remote chain of islands, with Beijing asserting its "indisputable sovereignty" to the uninhabited territory. The row erupted after three Chinese patrol boats approached the islands, and led China's Foreign Minister, meeting with his Japanese counterpart at a forum in Cambodia, to insist the islands had been Chinese "since ancient times".

The dispute, which centres around islands in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, is the latest such territorial spat involving China and its neighbours. The Japanese coastguard said the Chinese vessels entered Japanese waters around the islands early today.

"It is clear that historically and legally Senkaku is an inherent territory of Japan," top government spokesman Osamu Fujimura told a press briefing.

The crews of the vessels, which had since left the islands' immediate vicinity, initially rebuffed Japanese orders to leave. "We are conducting official duty in Chinese waters. Do not interfere. Leave China's territorial waters," the crews said, according to the coastguard.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin rejected Tokyo's summoning of its ambassador, telling reporters in Beijing: "China does not accept Japanese representations over this." In Phnom Penh, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met Japanese counterpart Koichiro Gemba and "reaffirmed China's principled position" on the islands, according to a statement from the Chinese delegation.

"He stressed that Diaoyu Islands and their affiliated islets have always been China's territory since ancient times, over which China has indisputable sovereignty," it said.

The islands lie in rich fishing grounds and it is thought they may also contain valuable mineral reserves. Tokyo recognises a private Japanese family as their owner and the city government has said it plans to buy the islands from them.

Yang's meeting with Gemba came at a gathering of ASEAN meant to address some of the recent frictions over competing territorial claims in the resource-rich South China Sea.

The 10 members of Southeast Asian regional body ASEAN have been trying to agree a long-stalled "code of conduct" for the disputed area to help settle overlapping claims. — AFP

Diplomatic row

The dispute, which centres around islands in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, is the latest territorial spat involving China and its neighbours

The islands lie in rich fishing grounds and are thought to also contain valuable mineral reserves. Tokyo recognises a Japanese family as their owner and the city government plans to buy the islands from them

The waters around the disputed islands have been the scene of previous territorial spats, including the arrest of a Chinese trawlerman in late 2010 when he rammed his boat into two Japanese patrol boats

Afghan women protest over public execution

Kabul, July 11
Dozens of Afghan women's rights activists took to the streets today to protest against the recent public execution of a young woman for alleged adultery, which was captured in a horrific video.

The 22-year-old victim was shot dead as dozens of men cheered in a village about 100 km north of the capital Kabul.

The execution was blamed by the authorities on Taliban militants and caused global outrage, with world leaders denouncing the Islamists, who are waging an insurgency against the Western-backed government.

"We want justice," the protesters, almost all women, shouted as they marched from the women's affairs ministry towards the UN headquarters in Kabul.

"The execution of the woman by the Taliban was a crime... the government must do everything to bring the culprits to justice," parliamentarian Shinkai Karokhail, who joined the march, told AFP.

"This is the duty of the government to deliver justice." President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing as un-Islamic and unforgivable, while security forces have launched a manhunt for those responsible.

The commander of NATO's 130,000 troops in Afghanistan, General John Allen, offered to help local security forces track and capture the men involved in what he called "an atrocity of unspeakable cruelty".

Public executions of alleged adulterers were common when the Taliban were in power from 1996 until 2001, when they were ousted by a US-led invasion for harbouring Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. — AFP

Phone-hacking: 2 journalists held

London, July 11
Two journalists were arrested today by Scotland Yard, probing allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials as part of an investigation related to the phone-hacking controversy at media baron Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid.

The two journalists, including Sunday Mirror crime reporter Justin Penrose, were arrested under Operation Elveden, which is the police investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials for information to be used in news stories, BBC reported.

Daily Star Sunday's deputy news editor Tom Savage is the second man being held, it said, adding that his name has not been officially confirmed by Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that the two, who are 37 and 34 years old, were arrested "on suspicion of conspiracy to corrupt (contrary to the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906) and of conspiracy to cause misconduct in a public office (Contrary to Common Law)".

The two journalists are being questioned at police stations in Kent and south-east London, the police said.

Operation Elveden is being run along with Operation Weeting, the investigation into the phone-hacking of mailboxes.

Yard said: "Today's arrests relate to suspected payments to a public official and are not about seeking journalists to reveal confidential sources in relation to information that has been obtained legitimately". — PTI

Spain PM Rajoy unveils new austerity package
Angry miners rally against subsidy cuts

Blood flows down the face of a protester injured during clashes between supporters of Spanish coal miners and the riot police in Madrid. — Reuters

Madrid, July 11
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced today a 65 billion euro ($80 billion) austerity package to avert financial collapse as angry miners rallied against subsidy cuts.

Rajoy, interrupted by howls from opposition members as he outlined the cuts, performed a U turn by ramping up value added sales tax having promised he would not raise it, and took an axe to state expenditure.

"These are not pleasant measures but they are necessary," said the bearded 57-year-old leader of the conservative Popular Party.

Spain's premier said new spending cuts and other measures, including notably a rise in value added tax would bring in 65 billion euros by the end of 2014 to help trim the annual deficit.

The EU had demanded a VAT rise along with a series of other tough measures as it gave Spain an extra year to bring its bulging public deficit back to agreed limits.

Among the new measures announced by Rajoy, VAT goes up to 21 per cent from 18 per cent, and the reduced rate on some products such as food goes up to 10 per cent from eight percent. — AFP

NATO Supplies
Militants vow to attack soldiers, govt installations
Afzal Khan in Islamabad

Militants have threatened to carry out more attacks on soldiers and government installations similar to Monday’s assault on an army camp in Gujrat that killed eight soldiers, according to a pamphlet found by the police. More attacks were forthcoming if NATO supply routes to Afghanistan were not closed immediately, an intelligence agency report cited the pamphlet as saying.

Another intelligence agency’s report stated that terrorists linked with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) involved in Pir Chambal incident near Gujrat, about 160 km from Islamabad, were planning more attacks on government installations.

The agency’s report reads “……an unregistered motorcycle with a time bomb was found and the bomb was defused. At 7:30 am on Monday, a hand grenade lying in bushes also exploded but caused no damage, the police found a pamphlet in which it has been threatened that their activities would continue in future due to restoration of NATO supplies.”

Sadar Police Station SHO Saeed Warraich told The Express Tribune that the terrorists have warned the public, through a pamphlet, to stay away from the police, security forces and intelligence agencies’ personnel because their attacks would continue everywhere in Pakistan, particularly in Punjab due to restoration of NATO supplies.

Pakistan copter crashes, 5 killed

Islamabad, July 11
A Mi-17 helicopter of the Pakistan Army crashed in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region today, killing all five persons on board who were returning from a sortie to the Gyari sector of Siachen.

The helicopter of the army's aviation wing was on its way back from the Gyari sector when it caught fire and crashed at the airport in Skardu town, police officials were quoted as saying by TV news channels.

The army confirmed the incident in a brief statement and said five persons on board, including two pilots, were killed. The statement said the helicopter was on a routine test flight.

It could not immediately be ascertained if the accident had resulted in any damage on the ground. The army's aviation wing has a base at Skardu, one of the main towns of Gilgit-Baltistsan region. — PTI