Afghan election office attacked; 5 militants killed
Kabul, March 29
Afghan police today killed all five militants who attacked the election commission headquarters in Kabul with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, ending a four-hour standoff, according to a top government official.




Policemen run towards the site of attack in Kabul on Saturday. AFP

Temple set on fire in Pakistan
Karachi, March 29
A Hindu temple has been desecrated and set on fire by unidentified persons in Pakistan's southern Sindh province, two weeks ahead of an annual fair at the holy site.

4 militants charged in China knife attack case
Beijing, March 29
Four Uygur militants, including a woman, were today charged in connection with the brutal knife attack at a railway station in China's Kunming city that left 33 people dead.

Moscow, March 29
Russia today pledged it would not invade mainland Ukraine following its seizure of Crimea and said it favoured the ex-Soviet state becoming a federation as a way of defusing the crisis.

Tensions have run high after Russian President Vladimir Putin ripped up the post-Soviet order with Moscow's lightning takeover of Crimea from Ukraine, with the United States accusing Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine's eastern border.

But telephone talks between Putin and US counterpart Barack Obama late yesterday were the latest sign of a slight lessening in tensions between Moscow and the West and a search for a mutual solution in what remains the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hinted at what were Moscow's main demands in the negotiations -- that Ukraine should be made into a federation and commit to not joining NATO, while order should be restored to the Ukrainian capital Kiev where protesters have thronged the city centre for half a year.

Ukraine is now entering a crucial phase in its development after the fall of pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych in February, as the clock ticks down to May 25 presidential elections which are expected to cement Kiev's pro-West course.

With boxing champion turned politician Vitali Klitschko bowing out of the race, the overwhelming favourite to win those elections is pro-West confectionary tycoon Petro Poroshenko, a former economy and foreign minister.

Lavrov said in a major Russian television interview broadcast today that Moscow has absolutely no intention of ordering its armed forces to cross over the Ukrainian border and acknowledged the divisions between Moscow and the West on the crisis are narrowing.

“We have absolutely no intention and no interests in crossing the Ukrainian border," he said. "We (Russia and the West) are getting closer in our positions,” he added, saying recent contacts had shown the outlines of a "possible joint initiative which could be presented to our Ukrainian colleagues," he added. — AFP

Riyadh, March 29
US President Barack Obama flew home from Saudi Arabia today under fire for not doing more to raise human rights concerns on a visit dominated by smoothing policy differences with a longtime ally. Obama met a campaigner for the rights of women in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom before leaving today morning.

But despite appeals from US lawmakers, he did not raise any rights issues in his talks with King Abdullah late yesterday, which were dominated by policy on Iran and Syria, a source of friction between the allies, a senior US official said.

The official insisted that did not mean Obama did not share "significant concerns," merely that the conflict in Syria and Riyadh's concerns about Washington's diplomatic engagement with Tehran had left no time to discuss them.

"We do have a lot of significant concerns about the human rights situation that have been ongoing with respect to women's rights, with respect to religious freedom, with respect to free and open dialogue," the official said.

But "given the extent of time that they spent on Iran and Syria, they didn't get to a number of issues and it wasn't just human rights." Saudi Arabia has strong reservations about efforts by Washington and other major powers to negotiate a deal with Iran on its controversial nuclear programme. — AFP

Kabul, March 29
Afghan police today killed all five militants who attacked the election commission headquarters in Kabul with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, ending a four-hour standoff, according to a top government official.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault. It is the latest in a series of high-profile attacks by the militant movement as it steps up a campaign of violence to disrupt presidential elections due to be held in a week.

Deputy Interior Minister Mohammed Ayub Solangi said the attackers wore the all-encompassing burqa to sneak unnoticed into a building that looked on to the heavily fortified Independent Election Commission headquarters on the eastern edge of the capital.

The compound is located near the Kabul International Airport. It was shut for more than two hours and flights were diverted. — AP

Perth, March 29
The scouring for the crashed Malaysian jet intensified today with a Chinese aircraft making fresh sightings of objects in the Indian Ocean, including two bearing colours of the missing plane, even as the multi-nation search entered its fourth week without success.

The search for the crashed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 dramatically shifted 1,100 km further northeast in the southern Indian Ocean yesterday.

A Chinese aircraft today spotted three unidentified floating objects coloured white, red and orange, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

White and red were among the colours on the outside of the missing Boeing 777.

"Search activities for Saturday have concluded. Approximately 2,52,000 sq km were searched. Aircraft in the search area have continued to report sightings of objects similar to those reported on Friday,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said.

"A Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force Ilyushin IL-76 reported sighting three objects in the search area. A Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion also reported sighting multiple objects in a different part of the search area," AMSA, that is coordinating the search operations, said.

It said the objects sighted by aircraft cannot be verified or discounted as being from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 until they are relocated and recovered by ships.

Australian ship HMAS Success, the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration ship Haixun 01, China Rescue and Salvage Bureau ship Nan Hai Jiu and the Chinese navy ship Jinggang Shan arrived in the search area today and a further five ships are expected to arrive tomorrow.

The Haixun 01 and HMAS Success reported they have retrieved a number of objects from the ocean but so far no objects, which can be confirmed to be related to the plane, have been found. — PTI