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At 89, Mugabe sworn in as Zimbabwe Prez again
Mubarak freed from jail; may face house arrest
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New radiation spots found at Fukushima
NSA illegally intercepted domestic mails
Beginning with Bhullar, halt executions: Rights body
India traveller’s heaven, woman’s hell: US student
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At 89, Mugabe sworn in as Zimbabwe Prez again
Harare, August 22 Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980, has told critics of his re-election to "go hang" and has vowed to press ahead with nationalist policies forcing foreign firms to turn over majority stakes to black Zimbabweans. He took his new oath of office before bewigged Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku at a ceremony held in a 60,000-seat football stadium in Harare witnessed by thousands of cheering supporters, diplomats and delegations from the region. His longtime rival and opponent in the last three elections, Morgan Tsvangirai, boycotted the ceremony. He has denounced the July 31 election as a "huge fraud" and a "coup by ballot", alleging massive rigging by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. Mugabe and his ruling party have rejected these allegations. This will be Mugabe’s fifth term as President of the southern African state. He had also served two terms as prime minister after 1980 independence ended white minority rule in the country previously known as Rhodesia. Mugabe and senior officials from his ruling ZANU-PF party are the target of sanctions imposed by governments in the West, which has accused them of staying in power through massive humanrights violations and vote rigging. vote as free and peaceful and called on all parties to accept its results. Britain today said Mugabe's re-election could not be deemed credible without an independent investigation into allegations of voting irregularities. — Reuters Fifth term
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Mubarak freed from jail; may face house arrest
Cairo, August 22 The 85-year-old ailing ex-President was taken from Cairo’s Tora prison by medical helicopter, following a court ruling which ordered his release. He was initially taken to a military hospital in Maadi, a suburb in southern Cairo, Al Jazeera reported. A small crowd of supporters gathered outside the prison and cheered as the helicopter took off. Meanwhile, the April 6 youth movement has called protests on Friday against his release. Prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi said last night that Mubarak would be placed under house arrest following his release. It was unclear where he would be held, in Cairo or elsewhere.
— PTI
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New radiation spots found at Fukushima
Tokyo, August 22 The announcement comes after Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said this week contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation was leaking from a storage tank. A tsunami crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi power plant north of Tokyo on March 11, 2011, causing fuel-rod meltdowns at three reactors, radioactive contamination of air, sea and food and triggering the evacuation of 160,000 persons. It was the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986 and no one seems to know how to bring the crisis to an end. In an inspection carried out following the revelation of the leakage, high radiation readings — 100 millisieverts per hour and 70 millisieverts per hour — were recorded at the bottom of two tanks in a different part of the plant, Tepco said. Although no puddles were found nearby and there were no noticeable changes in water levels in the tanks, the possibility of stored water having leaked out cannot be ruled out, a Tokyo Electric spokesman said. The confirmed leakage prompted Japan’s nuclear watchdog to say it feared the disaster was "in some respect" beyond Tepco’s ability to cope. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday said it viewed the situation at Fukushima "seriously" and was ready to help if called upon. China said it was "shocked" to hear contaminated water was still leaking from the plant, and urged Japan to provide information "in a timely, thorough and accurate way".
— Reuters
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NSA illegally intercepted domestic mails
Washington, August 22 Officials disclosed the history of that unlawful surveillance test, releasing three partially redacted opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that detailed the judges’ concerns about how the NSA had been siphoning data from the internet in an effort to collect foreign intelligence. The documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group based in San Francisco. According to a redacted 85-page opinion by the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the NSA may have been collecting as many as 56,000 wholly domestic communications each year. “For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D Bates, the then surveillance court’s chief judge wrote in his October 3, 2011 opinion. — PTI Miranda wins UK injunction on Snowden leaks London: The partner of US journalist Glenn Greenwald, who helped publish Edward Snowden’s leaked files, won a limited injunction on Thursday from Britain’s High Court protecting material seized during his detention at a London airport. The injunction stops the British government and police from "inspecting, copying or sharing" data seized from David Miranda during his detention at Heathrow Airport. — AFP
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Chinese rebel Bo puts up defiant show
Beijing, August 22 Appearing in public for the first time after he was taken into custody in March last year, Bo (64) took full advantage of the "open trial" at the Jinnan Intermediate Court in eastern China and went back on his earlier testimonies, catching the prosecutors unawares. Over 100 persons were permitted to attend the trial in which five of his relatives 19 journalists were present while the updates on the trial were posted on the court’s Twitter account. Regarded as the most charismatic of contemporary Chinese leaders, Bo kept his rebel image by denying accepting 1.1 million yuan ($1,80,000) from Tang Xiaolin, General Manager of Dalian International Development Co Ltd, when he was Chief of Dalian city."I had gone against my heart and admitted (accepting bribes from Tang on three occasions) while the Central Disciplinary Commission investigated me," Bo was quoted as saying by the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post. "I had no knowledge of these details back then, my brain was blank," he said responding to the presiding judge's query if he had accepted the money. Bo questioned his wife Gu Kailai's testimony saying that it doesn't suggest he had put money he earned through corrupt means into their shared safe deposit box.
— PTI
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I am a woman, says Manning
Washington, August 22 Manning received the sentence yesterday for giving more than 700,000 secret files, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. His lawyers had argued the former Army intelligence analyst suffered a sexual identity crisis when he leaked the files while serving in Iraq in 2009 and 2010. "As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning, I am a female,” Manning, 25, said in the
statement. "Given the way that I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible," Manning said. "I also request that starting today you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun." Manning's lawyer David Coombs said on the TV programme he expected his client to get a pardon from US President Barack Obama. Manning was convicted last month on 20 charges, including espionage and theft.
— Reuters
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Beginning with Bhullar, halt executions: Rights body
New York, August 22 "The government should instead declare an official moratorium, commute all existing death sentences to life in prison, and then work towards abolishing the death penalty once and for all." In its statement, Human Rights Watch urged the Indian Government to demonstrate its commitment to international human rights obligations by halting all executions starting with Devinderpal Singh Bhullar, who was sentenced to death in 2001 for a 1993 bomb attack that killed nine persons. The Supreme Court had on August 14 dismissed the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) terrorist's plea seeking a review of its verdict refusing to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment on the ground of delay in deciding his mercy plea by the government. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment. — Agencies
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India traveller’s heaven, woman’s hell: US student Washington, August 22 In a powerful account posted on CNN iReport under the username RoseChasm, Michaela Cross says upon her return, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is now on a mental leave of absence from the school after a public breakdown in the spring. Her story "India: The Story You Never Wanted to Hear" has struck a chord around the world, racking up more than 800,000 page views as of Wednesday morning, CNN reported. Cross, a fair-skinned, red-haired South Asian studies major, who left India a few days before the deadly gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi, said that helped others understand what she and her classmates went through. On her return, Cross struggled to find a way to talk about a cultural experience that was both beautiful and traumatising, CNN cited her as saying in her essay. She writes: “Do I tell them about our first night in the city of Pune, when we danced in the Ganesha festival, and leave it at that? Or do I go on and tell them how the festival actually stopped when the American women started dancing, so that we looked around to see a circle of men filming our every move? Do I tell them about bargaining at the bazaar for beautiful saris costing a few dollars a piece, and not mention the men who stood watching us, who would push by us, clawing at our breasts and groins?” — IANS
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Pakistan by-polls: Women unable to vote in some seats UN chief for probe into Syria attack Maldives quash flogging of rape victim Russia, Palestinians discuss peace talks ‘Now, Bobby Jindal least popular leader’ 
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