Canadian street named after Gandhi
Toronto, August 16
A street in Canada's Winnipeg city has been named after Mahatma Gandhi on India’s 67th Independence Day. The street leading to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights will now be known as Honorary Mahatma Gandhi Way. At a ceremony on Thursday, Mayor of Winnipeg Sam Katz said it was appropriate the roadway leading to the museum be associated with an individual synonymous with the struggle for human rights.

Beirut, August 16
The death toll from a car bomb which ripped through the southern Beirut stronghold of Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah rose on Friday to 24, and the government said it was investigating whether the blast was a suicide attack.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said investigators were checking CCTV footage in the moments before the explosion to see whether the van which was believed to be carrying the bomb had been driven by a suicide bomber or detonated remotely. "The first hypothesis is that the driver blew himself up, while the second hypothesis says that the car may have been blown up from a distance," a news agency quoted Charbel as saying.

Hezbollah parliamentarian Ali Ammar in south Beirut said the death toll had reached 24, while Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said 21 bodies were taken to hospitals and another 335 wounded people had been treated. — Reuters

London, August 16
The UK’s busiest airport Heathrow has been put on high terror alert after credible intelligence emerged that Al-Qaida is plotting attacks, including strike by women suicide bombers with explosives concealed in breast implants, a media report said today.

Security checks have been beefed up after intelligence reports surfaced that Al-Qaida is plotting attacks on airlines flying out of London, The Mirror reported.

“There are genuine fears over this. We have been told to pay particular attention to females who may have concealed hidden explosives in their breasts. This is particularly difficult for us to pick up but we are on a high state of alert," an airport staff member was quoted by the daily as saying.

"It’s led to long queues here at Heathrow, much longer than usual at this time of the year. But because it’s the summer holiday season, no one has complained," the staff member said.

Al-Qaida’s chief bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri is understood to have developed the method of foiling airport scanners by concealing explosives in an implant or bodily cavity, the report said.

It is also feared there is no shortage of volunteers willing to take part in an atrocity after hundreds of extremists recently escaped from prison in Pakistan, it said.

"There is a great fear that Al-Qaida are planning on using internal devices to try and get through airport scanners. These explosives could be in breast implants," Andy Oppenheimer, an explosives expert, said. Another specialist said breast implant bombs could be set off by injecting another liquid.

"Both are difficult to pick up with current technology and they are petrified Al-Qaida are a step ahead here. It's pretty top secret and potentially grisly and ghastly,” the expert said.

Independent security analyst Paul Beaver said: “There are currently deeply serious concerns over body cavities and implants of all kinds, including breast implants, being used to hide explosives.” "It is taking longer to get through Heathrow and other airports in Europe and North America because of these fears. They are taking longer to screen people and there is definitely some sort of profiling going on," Beaver said.

Washington, August 16
The US National Security Agency (NSA) broke privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times since 2008, according to documents leaked by CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The US Congress granted sweeping new powers to the agency five years ago which resulted in the unauthorised electronic surveillance of US citizens, according to documents published by the Washington Post. The paper said the breaches had been revealed after analysis of an internal audit and other top secret documents, the details of which were made available by Snowden, a former NSA contractor.

The audit found 2,776 incidents of “unauthorised collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications,” the paper said. The revelations will increase pressure on the Obama administration, which has been defending the importance of the surveillance programmes, even as it offered new reforms and oversight measures to appease critics.

“Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorised use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders,” it said.

The paper said most incidents involved unauthorised surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the country.

In one instance, the agency intercepted calls from Washington because of confusion between area codes of DC and Egypt. Another time, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled a method of data collection unconstitutional, but only after it had been in use for months, according to the report.

The details in the report are the clearest window yet into the extent to which surveillance programmes overstep laws and other rules.

Meanwhile, the NSA responded to the Post’s story, saying “a variety of factors can cause the numbers of incidents to trend up or down from one quarter to the next.” "NSA's foreign intelligence collection activities are continually audited and overseen internally and externally," it said. — PTI

Islamabad, August 16
Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is wanted in India for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, has said he was not a terrorist, and asked for an independent probe by judges from India and Pakistan to find out whether he was guilty.

“You (India) are continuously calling me a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist, and if you are not satisfied, an independent judicial commission comprising senior lawyers and judges from India and Pakistan should investigate whether I am guilty,” the Dawn quoted Saeed as saying. “Whatever verdict the commission announces I will accept that,” he said.

Saeed addressed a meeting in Lahore on Pakistan’s Independence Day, where he rejected India’s demand to Pakistan to hand him over. “You (India) look to be eager to get me. Don’t worry, I myself will visit India,” Saeed said. He said everyone in India called him a terrorist, but they should see his party’s relief work for flood-hit people. “Saeed doesn’t threaten you but he is only exposing you before the world. India had ruined us through releasing floodwater into Pakistan,” he said. — IANS

Washington, August 16
India allowed the US to use one of its air bases for refuelling the CIA’s U-2 spy planes to target Chinese territories after its defeat in the 1962 war, a declassified official document said today.

The then Indian Prime Minister, Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, approved overflight by U-2 missions covering the border areas with China on November 11, 1962, the independent National Security Archive (NSA) said in a report based on the latest set of declassified documents it obtained from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act.

The use of Charbatia, an abandoned World War II base in Orissa, was agreed during a meeting between then US President John F Kennedy and Indian President S Radhakrishnan on June 3, 1963, but Indian work to improve it took longer than expected, so the missions resumed from Thailand’s Takhli, the NSA said, based on the 400-page CIA report released by it.

According to the report, which details the spying programmes conducted with the planes from 1954 to 1974, the U-2 mission on November 10, 1963, was the longest yet flown by a U-2, and the pilot was so exhausted that project managers limited future flights to 10 hours endurance. In fact, the longest U-2 mission to date was the one flown from Takhli on September 29, 1963, it said. The NSA said the first deployment to Charbatia in May 1964 ended because Nehru died. — PTI

Toronto, August 16
A street in Canada's Winnipeg city has been named after Mahatma Gandhi on India’s 67th Independence Day. The street leading to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights will now be known as Honorary Mahatma Gandhi Way. At a ceremony on Thursday, Mayor of Winnipeg Sam Katz said it was appropriate the roadway leading to the museum be associated with an individual synonymous with the struggle for human rights.

“Mahatma Gandhi was a spiritual and political leader whose influence is still felt today,” Katz told a crowd that included representatives from the Indian and aboriginal communities. “His teachings of non-violence and social change have given hope to millions of people facing oppression around the world,” Katz said. “Gandhi selflessly dedicated his life to human rights and made many sacrifices to ensure and to protect the freedom of others.”

He was the symbolic figure, a person who signified the struggle for human rights, said Krishnamurti Dakshinamurti, president of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre of Canada.

The Mahatma Gandhi name was originally set aside for a new street in Transcona. But civic officials reversed themselves in 2010 after a request from the Mahatma Gandhi Centre that the name be attached to a street near the museum, Winnipeg Free Press reported. — PTI