Death toll in Syria Friday protests rise to 44-group

AMMAN: Syrian security forces shot dead at least 44 civilians in attacks on pro democracy demonstrations that had erupted across Syria on Friday, the Syrian National Organisation for Human Rights said on Saturday.

Prominent rights campaigner Ammar Qurabi, who heads of the organisation, said more than half were killed in the northwest province of Idlib, where tanks deployed on Friday to crush large demonstrations against autocratic rule.

Hamas leader says group will never recognise Israel

GAZA: A large crowd of Palestinians cheered a Hamas leader’s pledge on Tuesday never to recognize Israel and celebrated the Islamist movement’s 23rd anniversary at a Gaza rally punctuated by sonic booms from Israeli jets.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whose group runs the Gaza Strip, said the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headed by Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas had made a “historic mistake” by recognising Israel.

“We said it five years ago and we say it now. we will never, we will never, we will never recognise Israel,” Haniyeh told the gathering which some organisers said was attended by around 250,000 people.

Haniyeh had raised speculation last month about a change in Hamas’s charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction, by suggesting the group could accept a referendum on any peace treaty giving the Palestinians a state on land Israel

Iranian president sacks foreign minister

TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked the foreign minister on Monday and appointed the country’s top nuclear official as the caretaker for the key position, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“I appreciate your diligence and services as the foreign minister,” Ahmadinejad said in a letter to Manouchehr Mottaki, IRNA reported.

Ahmadinejad appointed head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi, a close ally to the president, as the caretaker for the ministry, state television reported.

A reformist website said Mottaki had been critical of Ahmadinejad’s policies.

“Mottaki failed to adjust himself to the president’s view points and his foreign policy,” the Mardomsalari website reported. AGENCIES

Australia says to provide Assange with consular help

Australian diplomats will support detained WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd vowed Wednesday, even after Assange accused Canberra of disgraceful pandering to his foes.

Australia’s consul-general to Britain has already spoken to Assange, arrested in London Tuesday on a warrant seeking his extradition to Sweden on sex assault charges, while diplomats attended his court hearing, officials said.

We have confirmed that we’ll provide (consular support), as we’d do for all Australian citizens, Rudd said a day after his boss Prime Minister Julia Gillard branded WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked diplomatic cables grossly irresponsible.

We’ll be providing him with a letter soon which indicates we’ll be prepared to provide consular visits and any other level of consular support concerning his wellbeing and his legal rights, Rudd said on commercial television.

His comments came hours after Assange turned himself in on charges his lawyers have branded politically motivated as his organisation’s snowballing revelations sowed panic and fury in governments across the world.

Malarial drug resistance spreads in Asia

GENEVA: The World Health Organisation warned Thursday that resistance to malaria drug artemisinin appeared to be spreading in the region from the Cambodia-Thailand border, where it was first detected.

“There is some early evidence that resistance to artemisinins may also be emerging on the Myanmar-Thailand border,” said the WHO in a statement.

“There is also concern that resistance could spread from the Cambodia-Thailand border to Africa, as it did with anti-malaria drugs such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in the 1960s and 1970s,” it added.

Pascal Ringwald, who co-authored a WHO study into the issue, said the WHO is undertaking “complementary studies to confirm that it is indeed drug resistance. That should take a year.”

In February 2009, anti-malarial drug resistance was confirmed by the WHO at the Cambodia-Thailand

Mirza warns CPLC chief to get neutral or face axe

Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza warned on Wednesday CPLC Chief Ahmed Chennai to end his political involvement immediately or face removal from his post.
Speaking in the public complaints center in his office, Mirza told the media that the CPLC is a public service organisation, which is supposed to provide help indiscriminately. Mirza said that the chief of this organisation should therefore have no affiliation with any political party.
Mirza said that Chennai has been appointed as chief of CPLC on a temporary basis for one year and if within this year he does not end his political affiliations then the Interior Ministry will take strict action. He said that target killings in Karachi were politically motivated and various workers from all political parties were involved in these crimes.

No information of further plane bombs–UK minister

LONDON: Interior minister Theresa May said on Monday British officials were not aware of any further attempts to put bombs on planes after two devices were discovered on Friday on cargo flights in Britain and Dubai.

“At this stage we have no information to suggest that another attack of a similar nature by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is imminent,” May told parliament.

“But this organisation is very active. It continues to plan other attacks in the region, notably against Saudi Arabia.

“We therefore work on the assumption that this organization will wish to continue to find ways of also attacking targets further afield.”

May also said Britain would extend a ban on unaccompanied air freight from Yemen to Somalia. She also announced that air passengers would be banned from carrying toner cartridges over 500 grams in their hand luggage on flights

Malaria deaths in India 13 times more than thought – study

NEWDEHLI: Malaria kills more than 200,000 people in India each year, 13 times higher than UN estimates, according to a paper published online Thursday by The Lancet.

The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) says that the malarial death toll in India, the most populous country where the disease is endemic, is around 15,000 annually, comprising 5,000 children and 10,000 adults.

But the new study says the WHO’s reporting method is flawed, as it depends indirectly on patients who have been diagnosed by a doctor.

Many deaths in India occur at home, rather than in a hospital or a clinic, which means the underlying cause of many malaria fatalities is likely to be misattributed, it says.

Investigators sent out field workers to 6,671 randomly-selected areas of India to interview relatives or careworkers of 122,000 people who had died between 2001 and

India orders probe into Delhi Games corruption

NEW DELHI: The Indian government has launched an official investigation into allegations of corruption and mismanagement during the preparations for the Delhi Commonwealth Games, reports said Saturday.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) national watchdog ordered the probe into various Games-related projects a day after Thursday’s closing ceremony, the Press Trust of India said.

“The audit work for the Commonwealth Games is related to work payments, contracts and leasing of sports equipment among others,” the official news agency said.

A high-powered panel of investigators headed by a former chief of the CAG will submit its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by January.

The panel will look into “the organisation and conduct of the Games, fix responsibility for the alleged irregularities and also prepare a dossier on the lessons learnt for

Iran says UN atom body in credibility crisis

VIENNA: Iran said on Monday that the U.N. nuclear watchdog was suffering a crisis of ‘moral authority and credibility’, underlining increasingly strained ties between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, criticised the IAEA’s latest report on the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear programme as unfair and suggested that Western powers had influenced it.

The report showed Iran pressing ahead with its atomic work, which the West suspects is aimed at developing nuclear arms, in defiance of tougher international sanctions. Iran says its work is for peaceful uses only.

“It appears that the agency is suffering from (a) moral authority and credibility crisis,” Salehi told the IAEA’s general assembly in Vienna, speaking in English. AGENCIES

Next Page »