Afghan poll frontrunner releases audio to ‘prove’ fraud claims 
Kabul, June 22
The campaign team of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah today released audio recordings which they said contained evidence of fraud against a senior member of the country's Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Moscow, June 22
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that artillery was used in overnight fighting in eastern Ukraine and urged Kiev to cease fighting and begin dialogue with the rebels.

"Unfortunately, what we are seeing ... tells us that the fighting is ongoing and last night we saw some active use of artillery from the Ukrainian side," Putin said after laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark the 73rd anniversary of the Nazi troops invasion of the Soviet Union.

He said it was not clear whether artillery was used by the Ukrainian army or the "so-called paramilitary of the right-wing forces" supporting the government. "It is horrible that so many years after the start of the Great Patriotic War (the Russian name for the World War II period from 1941 to 1945) blood is being spilled on the territory of the former Soviet Union," he said, according to a statement published on the Kremlin website. "We need to ensure that all fighting is stopped."

He reiterated his support for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's ceasefire and his peace plan, saying a dialogue between Kiev and residents of Eastern Ukraine should begin. "The fact that Poroshenko announced a ceasefire is no doubt an important...part of the final (peace) resolution," he said.

"Without this it would be impossible to agree on anything and Russia will by all means support these intentions." The Ukrainian forces' seven-day ceasefire began at 10 p.m. last Friday, as part of Poroshenko's plan to end a rebel insurgency in the east of the country. Fighting resumed on Saturday after pro-Russian separatists attacked Ukrainian posts on the border with Russia and a military base and tried to storm an airforce base overnight into Saturday, government forces said.

The insurgency in the Russian-speaking east erupted in April after street protests in the capital Kiev toppled the Moscow-backed leader Viktor Yanukovich. Russia subsequently annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and the West has accused Russia of supporting the insurgency. — Reuters

Moscow, June 22
The first nuclear power plant in the world, which showcased the peaceful uses of atomic energy to the world, especially during the Cold War era, turns 60 this week.

Launched on June 26, 1954, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, who also strongly batted for India’s peaceful use of nuclear energy, visited the Obninsk plant.

When the plant was to be set up, the government started looking for an apt location and zeroed down on a village called Pyatkino, some 150 km from Moscow.

The design for the plan started in 1950 and construction started a year later. The reactor AM-1 (Atom Mirny) was built in only nine months.

One of the leading forces behind the establishment of plant was Igor Kurchatov, known as the father of the Soviet Atomic Weapons Programme. Despite this, the nuclear physicist was keen to use atomic energy for the benefit of “mankind”.

On June 26, 1954 at 5.45 pm the world’s first nuclear plant took commercial load, with electric generator power of 1500 kw. On June 27, commissioning of nuclear plant was announced.

The plant, with a capacity of 5 MW was, used to supply the town with electricity. But as new forays were made in the field of nuclear energy not only by Russia, but also by other countries, the reactor became economically inviable and decision to shut the plant was taken.

The plant closed in 2002. Interestingly, the person who started it in 1954, switched it off.

“The plant had to be shut down not for technical reasons but economic reasons. The capacity of the plant was just 5MW.

Although it worked well, its main motto was to use it as an experimental base for medicine and space,” said an official. — PTI 

Kabul, June 22
The campaign team of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah today released audio recordings which they said contained evidence of fraud against a senior member of the country's Independent Election Commission (IEC).

The accusation came as hundreds of Abdullah's supporters held protests against alleged irregularities for a second day across Kabul, as a political stalemate deepens in the country.

The protesters chanted "Long live Abdullah" and called for the death of Afghanistan's electoral commission chief, who is handling the fraud allegations.

Abdullah won the first round of the poll to succeed President Hamid Karzai, gaining 45 per cent of the vote while his nearest rival Ashraf Ghani won 31.6 per cent.

But he has boycotted the vote count after the second round run-off, accusing Karzai of interfering to favour his rival.

The dispute threatens to pitch Afghanistan into crisis as NATO combat troops withdraw from a 13-year war against Taliban insurgents.

A smooth election was seen as a key benchmark for the US-led coalition that has fought against the Taliban and donated billions of dollars in aid since 2001.

The allegations are centred around the secretary of the IEC, Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, accused of irregularities during the transporting of unused ballots during the June 14 poll.

Abdullah's team at a press conference released the recordings, which total 13 minutes of poor-quality audio and purport to be conversations between Amarkhail, other IEC officials and "a member of Ghani's team".

They include Amarkhail allegedly reassuring the member of Ghani's team that staff would be "used" to favour his election.

In one recording, Amarkhail allegedly tells an IEC member from the northwestern province of Faryab to fire his entire staff and change them for Pashtuns and Uzbeks.

Ghani is a Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, which is strongest in the Taliban heartlands of the south and east. One of his running mates, infamous warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum is a popular Uzbek leader.

Abdullah's team has refused to disclose how it obtained the recordings and it is not possible to confirm their authenticity.

Amarkhail could not immediately be reached for comment. Baryalai Arsalai, Abdullah's campaign manager, today said the IEC had conspired with "senior members of the government...in supporting one candidate in the election, they have organised rigging, cheating and manipulation". — AFP

Hong Kong, June 22
Hong Kong citizens cast their ballots in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform today, as booths opened across the territory in a poll that has enraged Beijing and drawn more than 600,000 votes since it opened online.

Tensions are growing in the former British colony over the future of its electoral system, with increasingly vocal calls from residents to be able to choose who can run for the post of chief executive.

Hong Kong’s leader is currently appointed by a 1,200-strong pro-Beijing committee. China has promised direct elections for the next chief executive in 2017, but has ruled out allowing voters to choose which candidates can stand.

Beijing and Hong Kong officials have dismissed the poll as illegal, but participation since voting began online on Friday has beaten all expectations despite a major cyberattack that the organisers have blamed on Beijing.

Today thousands of voters, some toting umbrellas in the pouring rain, turned out to physically cast their ballots at the 15 polling booths set up around the city.

“I am just acting in accordance with my conscience and this is for our next generation too. As I am not familiar with computers, I came to the voting booth,” a 68-year-old retired teacher told AFP at a station set up at a teachers’ union.

Another voter, 18-year-old Lau I-lung, said: “I am happy I can use a vote to determine the future system of elections. I think it can make a difference.” “People were lining up to vote. It shows that Hong Kong people have a strong desire for genuine democracy,” said Benny Tai, one of the founders of the Occupy Central movement which organised the ballot.

The more than 603,000 who had voted both online and at the polling booths as of today afternoon represent a sizable chunk of the 3.47 million people who registered to vote at elections in 2012.

The “PopVote” website, built by the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, suffered a large-scale attack last week that Tai and the pro-democracy press said could only have been carried out by Beijing. — AFP

Electoral options

The poll allows residents to choose between three options on how the 2017 chief executive ballot should be carried out - each of which would allow voters to choose candidates for the top job and all therefore considered unacceptable by Beijing.

Jakarta, June 22
One of the two hopefuls in Indonesia’s presidential election has been accused of being a closet Christian, the other of being a foreigner and unfit to lead the nation. As the race for the presidency tightens, mudslinging between supporters of Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and ex-general Prabowo Subianto is increasing, forcing even the police to get involved.

Jokowi’s team asked the police this month to arrest the publisher of a little-known tabloid after it falsely reported that the Muslim governor from the Javanese city of Solo was an ethnic Chinese Christian. A national police spokesman said authorities were investigating the case against Obor Rakyat, or People’s Torch, a newspaper available in Islamic boarding schools.

Jokowi has been forced to defend himself against the attacks, which are mainly focused on his race and religion — potent topics in a country that is 95 per cent native Indonesian and has the world’s largest Muslim population. Some opinion polls show that Jokowi’s once huge lead over Prabowo has shrunk to single digits, a rapid decline that pollsters attribute to a successful smear campaign against the frontrunner ahead of the July 9 election.

Jokowi’s party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, recently posted a photo on social media showing the candidate among Haj pilgrims in 2003, proof, it said, that he is Muslim.

Majority of the negative campaigning has been on Prabowo’s human rights record as a top general, in particular during unrest that brought down his former father-in-law and long-serving autocrat Suharto in 1998. Wiranto, Prabowo’s former military boss and now a leader of a small party backing Jokowi, has released details of a military council’s findings which said Prabowo had deliberately misinterpreted orders and told troops who were not under his command to arrest political activists. — Reuters

Jerusalem, June 22
An attack from inside Syria on Sunday killed a 13-year-old Israeli boy on the occupied Golan Heights, the first fatality on Israel's side of the frontier since the Syrian civil war began, relatives and the military said.

Israeli tanks fired at Syrian army positions in response to what an Israeli military spokesman described as an intentional attack. The Defence Ministry said the teenager, an Arab citizen of Israel from a village in the Galilee, had accompanied his father, one of the ministry's civilian contractors, to the Golan, and that two other people were wounded in the incident.

A military spokesman said it was not yet clear whether a roadside bomb or an artillery shell or mortar round, fired from Syria across the frontier fence on the Golan, had struck the water tanker in which the group had been travelling. — Reuters