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A Palestinian blew himself up while trying to board a bus in southern Israel Sunday in the first suicide attack since the evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip, puncturing hopes that the historic pullout would break the cycle of violence.
   Around 40 people were taken to hospital after the blast in Beersheva, the vast majority of them suffering from shock, although two were in a serious condition, medical sources said.
   More serious carnage appeared to have been averted after security at the city’s main terminus prevented the attacker from boarding.
   Police and witnesses said the attacker had blown up himself after being challenged by two security guards and a bus driver.
   The attack comes almost exactly a year to the day after 15 Israelis were killed in a twin attack on two buses in Beersheva.
   There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attack but it came just four days after five militants were killed by Israeli troops during an arrest operation in the West Bank town of Tulkarem.
   The Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, told reporters that he condemned the attack, describing it as a ‘terrorist operation.’
   His national security advisor Jibril Rajub said however Israel had to expect the consequence of its ‘crime’ in Tulkarem.
   ‘Israel must know that if it continues with this state terrorism it will lead to more violence in the region,’ Jibril Rajub said.
   Israel’s internal security minister Gideon Ezra said that the action of the bus driver and security guards ‘had averted a major disaster’.
   Ezra said Israel would ‘not hesitate to respond’ to the attack which he said underlined how ‘the Palestinian Authority must dismantle the terrorist groups.’
   But he also expressed hope that it would not herald a start to a new round of bloodshed.
   ‘I think and I hope that this attack does not mark the start of a wave of terrorism,’ Ezra said at the scene of the blast.
   The bus driver who alerted the security guards said that he had challenged the bomber as he had ‘a suspicious air’.
   ‘He was very pale so I warned the guards,’ Eli Horech said.
   In a speech on the eve of the start of the forcible evacuation of settlers from Gaza, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, warned of an unprecedented response if attacks continued.
   Sharon has argued that his controversial pullout of settlers and troops, the first time that Israel has ever left occupied Palestinian territory, would improve the security of Israelis.
   Right-wing critics however claimed that it encourages militant groups who have been portraying the pullout as an act of surrender.
   Groups such as Islamic Jihad and the larger Hamas movement are meant to be observing a truce agreement.
   However, while there has been a significant decline in Palestinian attacks since the start of the year, the truce has been less than watertight.
   Five Israelis were killed on July 13 when an Islamic Jihad activist blew himself up near a shopping mall in the coastal city of Netanya.
   The pullout of settlers from Gaza, which was completed last Monday, passed off largely peacefully with Israeli authorities expressing their satisfaction with the levels of security cooperation from the Palestinian Authority.
   The Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, has said he expects all Israeli troops to have left the territory by mid-September after which control of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is expected to be handed over to the Egyptian authorities.
   The Israeli cabinet was meeting on Sunday when it was expected to approve the plan for some 750 Egyptian border to move up to Rafah.
   While nearly all soldiers were due to be withdrawn from Gaza as part of the so-called disengagement plan, Israel had intended to keep a small contingent on the Rafah border which has been a major conduit of arms smuggling.
   However Egypt and Israel have been locked in discussions for several months in order that Egyptian soldiers take responsibility for the border in the aftermath of the pullout.
   Meanwhile, the president, George W Bush, demanded on Saturday that the Palestinians respond to the Israeli pullout from Gaza and portions of the West Bank by cracking down on terrorism.
   It was Bush’s most direct call for the Palestinians to act against militants since the withdrawal, and the Islamic militant group Hamas responded with defiance by saying it was committed ‘to the arms of resistance.’

The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, Sunday became the first Indian premier to visit Afghanistan in nearly three decades, pledging with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to battle terrorism amid rising violence in the war-battered country.
   'The two leaders condemned global terrorism as a threat to democracy and declared that there can be no compromise with those who resort to terrorism,' said a joint- statement issued by the pair after talks.
   Afghanistan, which is expected to hold its first post-Taliban parliamentary elections next month, is beset by an increasingly deadly insurgency waged by Islamic militants which has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the year.
   At a joint press conference in Kabul, Karzai denounced the militant attacks and vowed that the Afghan people would not be deterred from voting on September 18.
   'There will be threats. There will be terrorist activity, but that will not deter the Afghan people from participating as it did not deter the Afghan people from participating in the presidential elections,' he told reporters
   Singh's two-day visit is the first by an Indian head of government to Afghanistan since 1976 when then premier Indira Gandhi flew to Kabul.
   Indian analysts have said the trip provided a chance to blunt the influence of regional rival Pakistan, and Singh announced a fresh assistance package of 50 million dollars, mostly earmarked for grassroots development projects.
   India, one of the six top donors to Afghanistan, has pledged 500 million dollars in aid to Kabul since 2002 and Singh said the country's recovery was of political and strategic interest to India, as well as the region.

The Myanmar leader senior general, Than Shwe, remains in good health and in charge of the country, the information minister, Kyaw Hsan, said Sunday, denying rumours to the contrary that have circulated this week.
   'Senior general Than Shwe's health is good and he continues to handle his responsibilities,' said Kyaw Hsan. These are concerted efforts by dissidents, with the manipulation of foreign powers, to try to destabilise the nation by coming up with all these fabrications,' he told a press conference.
   'Everything is normal here,' he added. 'Myanmar is being ruled under a collective leadership with senior general Than Shwe at the head.'
   Rumours of a coup within the military regime emerged on Tuesday, apparently triggered by an interview on the BBC's Burmese-language radio that said the junta's number-two, general Maung Aye, had overthrown Than Shwe.
   Later in the week, stories began circulating that 73-year-old Than Shwe, who has a history of ill-health, had been flown to Singapore for medical treatment.
   'He has not travelled anywhere, and right now he is at the war office (military headquarters), where he goes every day to do his duty,' Kyaw San said.
   The Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, had on Thursday discounted the rumours, and diplomats in the capital Yangon said they were extremely sceptical that there had been any change in the leadership.
   The speculation died down by the end of the week, but not before causing the kyat currency to weaken and sending the price of gold higher as citizens reacted to the uncertainty.
   Access to information is tightly controlled in Myanmar, the former Burma, and citizens rely on foreign radio broadcasts as well as an active rumour mill to find out what is going on in their own country.
   Obviously stung by the affair, the notoriously secretive regime organised Sunday's rare press conference, where Kyaw Hsan also announced that three government officials had been appointed to handle such queries in future.
   Representatives at the foreign ministry, the information ministry and the home ministry were named as official media liaisons.
   'These three people will be given the responsibility to answer any questions by anybody who is interested to know the truth,' Kyaw Hsan said.
   The speed with which the rumours spread is an indication of how on edge Myanmar's population remains after a sweeping purge last October that removed the junta's number-three, prime minister Kyin Nyunt.
   Since then the regime has been conducting an ongoing campaign to reorganise the hierarchy and promote its staunchest loyalists, with two sets of reshuffles in recent months involving powerful military leaders and government ministers.

The Sri Lankan president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, on Sunday vowed a ‘free and fair election’ in the conflict-torn island state after the Supreme Court last week ruled that her 11-year reign ends this year.
   ‘The president’s fervent wish is that the election campaign should focus on the issues and challenges that lie ahead and that we ensure a shared future, together, as a nation of diverse peoples,’ her office said in a statement.
   Chandrika pledged that the elections, which have to be held between October 22 and November 21, will be orderly despite heightened security fears amid a shaky ceasefire with separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
   She also said she was committed to ensuring a ‘free and fair election’.
   ‘The difficult security situation in the country and the deterioration in the ceasefire arrangements in the north and east need to be addressed urgently,’ said the statement, referring to Tamil strongholds areas.
   Meanwhile, LTTE demanded an end to a state of emergency imposed this month, saying the expanded police powers could derail proposed talks on a fragile ceasefire.
   Chandrika declared a state of emergency after the murder, which many have blamed on the Tamil rebels.
   The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have denied any role in the murder and said Sunday that the sweeping powers now given to police and security forces were targeted at the Tamil minority.
   ‘If the state of emergency is to continue for long ... one foresees a tragic situation in which even direct talks may not be of any use,’ said the LTTE’s official publication, the Viduthalaippuligal, or Liberation Tiger.

At night, 22-year-old Indian mathematics research student Gurpreet Singh logs on to the Internet to teach students sitting thousands of kilometres away in the United States.
   Using an electronic pen, his colleague Varinder Kumar highlights areas on his interactive computer screen where US students are making simple mistakes and suggests solutions real time.
   India's outsourcing industry, which usually covers services such as software programmes, customer management and accounting for companies abroad and at home, has discovered a new market for its talents.
   Employing part-timers and staff tutors, outsourcing firms believe they have tapped a potential goldmine in what they call 'e-tutoring' or 'e-mentoring'.
   Educomp Datamatics Ltd, where Singh and Kumar work, is one of a small clutch of players in the market and its staff teach mathematics to around 800 students in the United States.
   'Six months ago, we thought we would launch a pilot project and see the response,' said Shantanu Prakash, chief of Educomp Datamatics, a firm which provides technology solutions such as digital content for the education sector.
   'To our surprise, the response was phenomenal. Now we're stretched to capacity and instead of an earlier estimate of having 1,000 students by year-end, we're on course to touch 2,000,' Prakash said.
   Singh, who has been working with the company since it started e-tutorials six months ago, said he liked the work so much, 'I might even take it up as a full-time career.'
   The company has three outlets giving instruction to US students and is the largest player in the country's nascent Internet tutoring industry. So far at least half a dozen companies in India offer such tuition, said Prakash.
   The firm has 20 math tutors, who work at night to bridge the 12-hour time gap between India and the United States, teaching students ranging from the sixth to 12th grades.
   Educomp charges 20 dollars to 40 dollars an hour, according to the grade taught.
   'India, which invented the numerical zero, has enough qualified teachers. Indians pick up mathematics pretty fast while in the US the kids are very weak,' official Prakash said.
   'Statistics show 40 per cent of students in grade seven in the US fail mathematics every year. In India, the failure rate is five to 10 percent,' he said. 'To add to the problem there's an acute shortage of teachers in the US.'

Two Tamil men directly involved in planning the assassination of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar have been arrested, the police chief Chandra Fernando said Sunday.
   The two men were taken into custody here and were being interrogated, Fernando said, adding that evidence so far suggested the involvement of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   ‘This is a major breakthrough,’ the police chief said. ‘We have now uncovered
   how they carried out the attack. We also know who was involved.’
   He said the two men had travelled to the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi and visited a rebel military camp.
   They were arrested ‘a couple of days ago.’

A district tribunal indicted son of Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, Omri Sunday in connection with a corruption probe into the funding of his father's leadership campaign, judicial sources said.
   Omri, who is an MP for his father's main governing right-wing Likud party, was charged by the tribunal in Tel Aviv with providing false testimony and falsifying documents in connection with the 1999 campaign for the Likud leadership.
   Attorney general Menachem Mazuz decided to press the charges last month but had to wait until a bill was passed which limited MPs' immunity against prosecution.
   Prosecutors have said that a company controlled by Omri, named Annex Research, took contributions from companies in Israel and abroad worth some 1.3 million dollars, which were all illegally ploughed into his father's campaign.
   The prime minister himself has always insisted that he had no knowledge of the financing of his campaign, saying it was run exclusively by his son who is one of his closest advisors.

Two Pakistani soldiers were killed and another wounded when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb in a remote tribal region near the Afghan border, the military said Sunday.
   The blast occurred on Friday in the North Waziristan district of Zoisedki, around three kilometres from the border.
   'Two soldiers were martyred and another wounded when an improvised explosive device hit their vehicle during a routine patrol,' military spokesman major general Shaukat Sultan said.
   Security forces have been battling militants linked to al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's former Taliban regime in the lawless tribal region where tens of thousands of troops remain deployed.
   Islamabad recently sent in reinforcements to the region ahead of Afghanistan's historic parliamentary elections scheduled for September 18 to prevent the cross-border movement of militants.

The Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, would attend a fund-raising musical show featuring qawwalis in New York when he visits the US next month.
   Conceived and arranged by Chairman National Commission for Human Development Naseem Ashraf, the show would be a sequel to a play - Anarkali - staged the last time Musharraf visited New York, the ‘Daily Times’ reported.
   To be held at one of the five-star hotels in mid-Manhattan, an ordinary entry ticket has been priced at USD275 while students pay a confessional price of USD125. A table for 10 costs USD5,000 and USD2,500 respectively.
   Those buying the high priced tickets would be able to get themselves photographed with Musharraf.
   The show is also being sponsored by the Human Development Foundation and the UN Development Programme.

British prime minister Tony Blair’s office was warned over a year before the July London bombings that the war in Iraq was fuelling Muslim extremist recruitment in Britain, a newspaper said Sunday.
   The Observer weekly published a leaked letter from the Foreign Office’s permanent secretary Michael Jay to cabinet secretary Andrew Turnbull, who provides administrative support to Blair, dated May 18 2004.
   The letter said British foreign policy was a ‘recurring theme’ in Britain’s Muslim community, ‘especially in the context of the Middle East peace process and Iraq.’
   ‘British foreign policy and the perception of its negative effect on Muslims globally plays a significant role in creating a feeling of anger and impotence among especially the younger generation of British Muslims.
   ‘This seems to be a key driver behind recruitment by extremist organisations.’
   In the wake of the July 7 London terror bombings, which killed 56 people, Blair has repeatedly said Iraq was just the latest excuse being used by Islamist extremists carrying out terrorist atrocities.
   The attacks on three London subway trains and a bus were carried out by four alleged suicide bombers, all British. Three were British-born of Pakistani origin while the fourth was a naturalised Briton from Jamaica.
   A second wave of attacks on July 21 failed when the bombs did not detonate fully.
   The Observer said a strategy document was attached to the letter saying Britain was viewed as a “crusader state” on a par with the United States as a potential target after participating in the US-led March 2003 invasion.
   The docment said: ‘Muslim resentment towards the West is worse than ever.’
   ‘Though we are moving on from a conflict to a reconstruction phase in Iraq, there are no signs of any moderation in this resentment.
   ‘Our work on engaging with Islam has therefore been knocked back. Mr (Mike) O’Brien (then a Foreign Office minister) has expressed his concern.’
   The Foreign Office said it refused to comment on leaked documents while a spokesman for Blair’s Downing Street office told AFP that Blair had made his position clear on the suggestion of links between the war in Iraq and Islamist extremism.
   Blair told a press conference on August 5: ‘I’ve never said that those people who are engaged in extremism won’t use Iraq as a way to recruit or motivate people.’
   ‘What they are actually doing in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan when the people have voted for democracy, is to try and stop them getting it.’
   Britain still has around 5,000 troops in Iraq. The war in Iraq has cost the lives of 92 British troops.

Iran does not consider Britain, France and Germany to be its sole nuclear negotiating partners and the three European states could be marginalised from future diplomatic efforts to resolve the stand-off, the foreign ministry said Sunday.
   ‘Iran does not want to substitute them as negotiating partners,’ the foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said of the so-called EU-3, who have been engaged in close to two years of tough talks with the Islamic republic.
   ‘We will continue negotiating with them, but on the other hand we will not restrict our negotiations to being with just these three countries,’ he added, saying Iran had also been talking with countries such as Japan, Malaysia and South Africa.
   ‘We want to have negotiations with other countries, it is up to the Europeans not to remove themselves from the negotiations,’ he said, accusing the EU-3 of refusing to recognise Iran’s right to the nuclear fuel cycle.
   The EU-3 have been trying to convince Iran to totally abandon fuel cycle work—which Iran says is for peaceful purposes only but which could be diverted to military use—in exchange for a package of incentives.
   Iran has rejected such a deal, arguing it has the right to an atomic energy programme and fuel cycle as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

US federal agents have searched the US home of the Nigerian vice president, Atiku Abubakar, as part of an international anti-corruption probe, officials disclosed late Saturday.
   The State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore said, the search of the house located in an upscale Maryland suburb of the US capital took place on August 3, but declined to provide details. ‘All inquiries about the search of the United States residence of Nigerian vice president, Atiku Abubakar, should be directed to the Department of Justice,’ Moore said.
   She added that the State Department as a rule did not comment ‘on ongoing federal law enforcement investigations.’ Justice Department officials declined any comment.
   But a source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the search was part of a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe of a proposed telecommunications deal that allegedly involves Nigeria as well as US Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana.
   According to the report, federal agents were looking for evidence of illegal payments made or arranged by the Louisiana Democrat for Abubakar, other Nigerian government officials as well as the Ghanaian vice president, Alhaji Aliu Mahama.

Countries across a swathe of central and eastern Europe were counting the cost on Sunday of a flood crisis that left at least 70 people dead, thousands evacuated and a massive reconstruction bill.
   In Switzerland, where six people died as torrential rain spilled from the Alps, rescue workers continued to supply the resort of Engelberg by helicopter because of damage to roads.
   Residents of other flood-damaged communities in the country’s centre and east were returning home, notably in the region around the capital Bern.
   In nearby Oey-Diemtigen, however, authorities said up to 70 people would have to wait weeks if not months before their homes would be fit to live in again.
   In Bern itself, some 340 residents of the low-lying Matte district along the Aare River— which burst its banks last week— were able to go home. But many others remained in temporary accommodation because their residences lacked electricity and gas.
   Religious services were held to mourn the victims, including two people killed last week when a landslide crashed through the picturesque lakeside town of Brienz.
   Further east, in the central Lucerne and Obwalden regions, residents were still forced to boil drinking water because of damage to supply pipes. Authorities urged people to use water sparingly.
   Insurers said the nationwide cost would likely reach a billion Swiss francs (646 million euros, 795 million dollars)–including 10 million Swiss francs of damage to farmland.
   In neighbouring Austria, thousands of soldiers, fire-fighters and volunteers—including a hundred asylum seekers—were at work cleaning up in the western Vorarlberg and Tyrol provinces.
   Authorities said the priority was to remove debris from river beds to reduce the risk of renewed flooding.
   According to initial estimates, flood damage to the two provinces’ railway networks reached 15 million euros, while the motorways were facing a five million-euro bill.
   Many local roads were still out of action, notably in the Paznau valley in Tyrol and in Vorarlberg, where the damage was expected to reach 30 million euros.

A code-breaking book which aims to change the image of William Shakespeare and reveal him as a subversive who embedded dangerous political messages in his work is to be published in Britain.
   Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith’s new book Shadow play. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England’s future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.
   ‘It has not been picked up on before because people have not had the complete context,’ she explained this weekend. ‘I am braced for flak, but we now know we have had the history from that period wrong for a long time because we have seen it through the eyes of the Protestant, Whig ascendancy who, after all, have written the history.’
   It is now widely accepted that the era was not a period of political consensus, says Asquith. Instead, it was a time in which opposition voices were banished and censorship meant the burning of illegal pamphlets and printed works.
   As a result the Catholic resistance, which had been going for 70 years by the time Shakespeare was writing, had already developed its own secret code words; a subversive communication system which the playwright developed further in his work.
   ‘They inevitably had a hidden language, and Shakespeare used it rather like the composer Shostakovich used political codes in the 20th century,’ she said.
   Asquith, the wife of a British diplomat said that while she was living in the Soviet Union she began to understand how ‘dissident meanings’ worked in live theatre.
   Shakespeare, she claims, adopted some of the more general Catholic code terms that were current, such as the use of the words ‘tempest’ or ‘storm’ to signify England’s troubles, but he also used new ciphers. Asquith argues, for example, that his obsession with the theme of romantic love was much more than a crowd pleaser.
   Constancy in love was Shakespeare’s way of alluding to the importance of a true faith in the ‘old religion’, she says.

Invocations of radical Islam no longer resonate in Finsbury Park mosque as it puts its militant past—including its links with the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001–behind it.
   ‘A new beginning for the mosque,’ says a banner that hangs over the doorway of the north London mosque, which Friday drew Muslims of all ages, backgrounds and dress.
   But in the wake of the London bombings last month that killed 56 people, including four apparent Islamist suicide bombers, there is a degree of scepticism over the government’s attempts to clamp down on radicalism.
   Once the lair of hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza, the mosque—whose more notorious worshippers have included ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with September 11–reopened under new administration in February.
   Some 500 attend the mosque on average, mostly Muslims of Somalian, north African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani background, said Mustafa al-Mansur, the mosque’s spokesman, who is himself from Bangladesh.
   ‘There are two types of people. There are people who stopped coming because of the previous management because they didn’t feel safe or comfortable, and there are people who didn’t care,’ he told AFP.
   ‘We don’t see any recognizable faces any more,’ he added. ‘Since Abu Hamza left, the mosque was closed for several months. When Abu Hamza left there was a sigh of relief... Even some Abu Hamza supporters thanked us.’
   Egyptian-born Abu Hamza was detained by the British authorities in May 2004 on a US demand for his extradition to face charges of aiding al-Qaeda and setting up an alleged terrorist training camp in Oregon State.
   He had already lost his grip on the mosque, in January 2003, when police raided the premises, leaving him to preach on the sidewalk.
   In his day, Finsbury Park mosque saw a number of would-be terrorist suspects pass through its doors, including Reid, Moussaoui—once branded the 20th September 11 hijacker—and Djamel Beghal, convicted in France for plotting to attack US interests in 2002.
   This past Friday a Pakistani imam, Souhaib Hassan, preached to his fellow Muslims in English—seasoned with quotations in Arabic—on morality and the qualities one needs in order to marry in the Islamic faith.
   ‘The mosque does not set an agenda for Friday prayers (but) we try to make sure that whoever we bring here to speak respects certain boundaries,’ Mansur explained.
   ‘I think Muslims can police themselves within their religious practice,’ he added, criticising what he called ‘draconian rules’ set out by Prime Minister Tony Blair in the wake of the London bombings.
   Those measures notably include deportation of foreign-born Muslims deemed to be sympathetic to terrorism.
   Outside the mosque Friday, two members of the Islamist party Hizb-ut-Tahrir collected signatures on a petition to protest the government’s measures and Blair’s intended ban on their movement.
   ‘Tony Blair has made himself a laughing stock,’ said Mansur of the prime minister who was already unpopular among many Muslims in Britain for having sided with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
   ‘He is the new sheikh for the Muslims. You will hear names like ‘mufti Blair’ or ‘Sheikh Blair’.’
   Mansur cast doubt on the effectiveness of Blair’s strategy, saying that if Muslims are ‘radicalising’, it is not because of people hearing fiery sermons, ‘but because of what they see in the media’.
   ‘Muslims will sympathise with other Muslims in the world. They look for a channel to vent their anger.’

The British government has been accused of wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds of African aid in Malawi.
   BBC’s Five Live Report found more than £700,000 was spent on hotel bills and meals for US workers over four years.
   The National Audit Office said it may mount an investigation into the use of consultants by the Department for International Development (DFID).
   The DFID said it had found ‘no cause for concern’ in the expenses spent in its Malawi projects.
   ‘For poverty to be reduced in Malawi, it needs an effective parliament and strong civil society organisations,’ the DFID said in a statement.
   One project in Malawi funded by the DFID has been accused of using international flights to fly in pens and notebooks bought in Washington DC.
   Patrick Watt of charity Action Aid said: ‘(This is) another example of aid money not really getting down to people who most urgently need to benefit from it.’

Hurricane Katrina, churning toward New Orleans, was upgraded Sunday to a category five storm capable of causing the most severe damage, the US weather service announced.
   ‘That’s now a catastrophic hurricane,’ Chris Cisco, an expert with the National Hurricane Centre, said.
   He said sustained winds reaching about 257 kilometres per hour had been detected by a US Air Force plane that flew over the eye of the hurricane at about 12:00am GMT Sunday.

Fed up of soaring prices back home, Britons are travelling to India, Malaysia and South Africa for cheaper cosmetic surgery, a newspaper said Sunday.
   More than 10,000 Britons per year are being tempted abroad by plastic surgery firms for tummy tucks, breast enlargements and facelifts with a recuperation beach holiday thrown in, The Independent on Sunday said. The newspaper said a tummy tuck can cost up to 6,500 pounds (9,500 euros, 11,700 dollars) in Britain but only 1,500 pounds abroad with a full holiday deal included.
   Med de Tour flies patients out to Madras in India and has seen the number of Britons jetting out double.
   ‘The big advantage for us is that the (British) National Health Service is pretty much run on Indian doctors and nurses. They are trusted,’ Prem Singh, the firm’s marketing director, told the newspaper.
   Joanna Jones, 35, from Cheltenham in southwest England, said she had flown to Malaysia earlier this year for breast enlargements, liposuction and a tummy tuck.
   ‘The hospital was like a five-star hotel and the surgeon had trained in the UK and had been doing it for 25 years,’ she said.
   She paid 4,500 pounds in total for the trip. Similar treatment in Britain would have set her back up to 10,000 pounds more—without three weeks in the sun.
   Sonja Evans, 40, went to South Africa for a tummy tuck three years ago.
   ‘The cost was a third of what I was quoted in Britain,’ she told the newspaper. The rules are very strict in South Africa and the service was incredible. It was a much better experience than it would have been in Britain.’
   But Norman Waterhouse, a former president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, warned many of the deals could be more expensive in the long term.

Election candidate killed in Afghanistan
Taliban insurgents have killed a parliamentary election candidate in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan in the latest attack aimed at disrupting the landmark elections, an official said Sunday. Hadji Hatiqullah was ambushed on Friday at around 6:00pm 32 kilometres south of the provincial capital Tirin Kot, Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammed Khan said. ‘He was attacked by Taliban while travelling in his car with two other people. The two others were wounded,’ he said. Afghanistan’s electoral commission could not confirm the killing, which would be the fourth assassination of a candidate before the September 18 parliamentary elections—the first in the country for 30 years.
— AFP

30 hurt in Philippines bomb attack
At least 30 people, including several children, were wounded Sunday in a bomb attack on a ferry believed to have been carried out by Abu Sayyaf Islamic militants, officials said. The explosion occurred while passengers were boarding the Dona Ramona ferry at the Basilan island port of Lamitan, which was built with American aid money and formally opened by US officials last week. The ferry was preparing to leave port for Zamboanga city, across the Basilan strait, when the bomb exploded causing extensive damage and chaos. National police spokesman Chief Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil said that prior to the blast police had received ‘advisories that there will be possibilities of terrorist incidents’.
— AFP

Japan, US consider floating runway
Japan and the United States are considering building a floating runway off southwestern Japan to ease noise pollution caused by night practice landings of US military planes, a report said Sunday. The runway would be sited about four kilometres off the US Marine Corps’ Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi prefecture, 700 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. The two governments plan to include the proposal in their interim report on the realignment of US forces in Japan to be drafted in October, the newspaper said. Construction costs for the planned floating runway are estimated at between 400 billion yen and 500 billion yen (3.6 billion to 4.5 billion dollars), the newspaper said.
— AFP

Opposition gains ahead of Japan election
Japan’s main opposition party is narrowing the gap with the ruling Liberal Democrats ahead of the September 11 general election, an opinion poll published on Sunday showed. Asked who they would vote for in the proportional representation section of the election, 24 per cent of respondents said they would support the Liberal Democratic Party and 16 percent would back the opposition Democratic Party, the daily Asahi Shimbun said. The findings of the poll, carried out on August 25 and 26, compared with 29 per cent backing for the LDP and 13 per cent for the Democrats, in the previous survey on Aug. 22 and 23, the newspaper said.
— Reuters

Ex-Kenyan president rejects draft constitution
The retired Kenyan president, Daniel arap Moi, who launched the process of revising the country’s independence basic law nearly a decade ago, on Sunday poured scorn on the new draft constitution, saying it ‘creates animosity, suspicion and mistrust among the people.’ The draft, which was published last week retains absolute powers for the presidency, allows religious courts, particularly Muslim ones and creates a potential for the legalization of on-demand abortion and an alleged loophole to allow gay marriage. ‘I cannot support a document which creates animosity, suspicion and mistrust among the people,’ Moi said in a statement released by his office.
— AFP

Anti-Chavez march turns violent
Six people have been injured in clashes between opponents and supporters of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The fighting broke out as opponents marched in the capital Caracas to demand electoral reform ahead of December’s parliamentary elections. Bottles, rocks, fireworks and tear gas were thrown in the worst violence between the two sides for months. Venezuela has been relatively calm since the president, Chavez, won a referendum on his rule in August 2004. But his opponents claim the vote was tainted by fraud, and believe the national electoral board is made up of his supporters - charges the board deny. Hundreds of people marched on the capital on Saturday to call for officials on the National Election Council to be replaced before December’s poll. — BBC

Ethiopia blames EU for post-poll violence
The Ethiopian government has accused EU observers of contributing to post-election violence during which about 40 people died. It said the EU mission ‘illegally and secretly leaked information’ to the opposition, prompting protests in June. The statement was issued days after an EU report said the 15 May polls failed to meet international standards. The coalition of the prime minister, Meles Zenawi, retained its majority but opposition parties gained many seats.
— BBC

Zimbabwe puts focus on homebuilding
Rarely does the television news go to air in Zimbabwe these days without a report on the success of the government’s homebuilding campaign launched in the wake of its sweeping demolitions. Cabinet ministers can be seen on state television touring housing projects around the country as construction crews’ toil away under Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle, or Live Well. But housing advocates are questioning whether the reconstruction drive—the first phase of which ends on Wednesday — is helping Zimbabweans who lost their homes in what the government described as an urban cleanup campaign that ended a month ago.
— AFP

Vatican plan to block gay priests
The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests. The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church’s training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI. It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week.
— Reuters