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India Friday repeated its support for Sri Lanka’s peace process but skirted a request by visiting president Mahinda Rajapakse to play a greater role in helping end conflict in the troubled island.
   A joint statement issued at the end of Rajapakse’s four-day visit to India said New Delhi had offered ‘to provide intellectual and academic resources in support of the peace process’ but made no mention of involvement at government level.
   Ahead of his visit, Rajapakse had said he hoped India would get more involved in efforts to bring peace to the island where an upsurge in violence has triggered fears of a slide back to civil war.
   India has sought to steer clear of the Sri Lankan conflict after its disastrous military involvement during the 1980s in which it dispatched a peacekeeping force to Tamil-held regions but ended up battling the rebels.
   New Delhi withdrew its forces after more than 1,200 Indian troops died.
   Since then, India has preferred to concentrate on economic cooperation with its neighbour where more than 60,000 people have died in three decades of ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils.
   In Friday’s statement, India ‘reiterated its support for a process of seeking a negotiated political settlement acceptable to all sections of Sri Lankan society...
   ‘The Indian side expressed the hope that a political settlement of the ethnic issue ... would emerge through negotiations between the parties concerned,’ it added.
   Rajapakse, it said, had apprised the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, of the surge of violence in Sri Lanka’s northeast which has cost 83 lives this month despite the truce that has been in place since February 23, 2002.
   ‘The two leaders deplored violations of the ceasefire, which could undermine the prospects for peace in Sri Lanka,’ it said.
   ‘Both sides emphasized the need for the strict observance of the ceasefire and immediate resumption of talks aimed at strengthening the ceasefire.’
   Rajapakse’s visit to India, which has a sizeable Tamil population, was his first foreign trip since winning the November 17 presidential election.
   The joint statement said India had agreed to help in the reconstruction and development of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, which have been ravaged by war and by last year’s devastating tsunami.
   Joint ventures such as the construction of a power station in the eastern Sri Lankan port of Trincomalee had been identified while it had also been decided to broaden cooperation in fields such as agriculture, information technology and renewable energy.
   The finalisation of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the statement said, ‘would further unleash the inherent synergies between the two countries.’

One-third of the editorial staff at a popular, outspoken Beijing newspaper have staged an unprecedented strike to protest the ousting of its chief editor and two deputies, reporters said Friday.
   ‘About 100 editors and reporters from three departments started striking last night,’ said a journalist at the Beijing News, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
   The paper’s editor-in-chief, Yang Bin, and two deputy editors, Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were removed from their posts Wednesday after they were called into a meeting by the heads of the parent company, the conservative Guangming Daily.
   Beijing News, or Xin Jing Bao, is also partly owned by the relatively liberal Southern Daily organisation, and most of its top editorial staff had worked at the group’s outspoken Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolitan Daily.
   The Beijing-based paper has a team of 300 editorial staff.
   Guangming Daily denied Friday that Yang was sacked, saying he had been transferred back to the Southern Daily group, where he used to work.
   ‘This is a normal transfer, not a dismissal. He has been transferred to the Southern Daily,’ said a staff member at the director’s office at Guangming Daily who declined to give her name.

Former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has announced he is to retire from active politics.
   He told a rally of his Bharatiya Janata Party in the western city of Mumbai that he would not contest the next general election.
   Vajpayee, 81, helped found the BJP and led a coalition government for six years until electoral defeat in 2004.
   His surprise announcement comes two days before the expected resignation of the current BJP president, LK Advani.
   They have both promised to continue to act as advisers as the party enters its new era.
   Vajpayee handed over the party presidency to Advani, another party founder, after losing the general election in June 2004.
   He remained a senior leader but has been winding down his role.
   ‘I will not participate in any electoral politics. There are many other leaders to take forward the work which I and other senior leaders have been doing,’ Vajpayee told the Mumbai rally.
   He said he would not be resigning from his seat in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh immediately.
   The BBC’s Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai, where the BJP is holding its silver jubilee celebrations, said party workers were genuinely taken aback by the announcement.
   Often described as the moderate face of the Hindu-nationalist BJP, Vajpayee had developed a wider appeal than his more hardline colleagues.
   He entered politics in the mid-1950s and was instrumental in the BJP’s rise to prominence.

Palestinian police added to the sense of anarchy in the Gaza Strip Friday by forcing a halt to crossings into Egypt as security forces continued their search for three kidnapped Britons.
   Around 100 members of the police force gathered outside the front of the Rafah terminal, prompting staff to retreat to their offices for a brief period, in protest against the killing of one of their colleagues on Thursday.
   An official at the terminal told AFP that it was a ‘peaceful protest’ and that the workers at the crossing had returned to their offices as a precautionary measure.
   ‘The crossing is on the point of reopening,’ the official added.
   Fearing that the protest could spiral out of control, Palestinian security chiefs told European Union observers at Rafah to move temporarily to their nearby headquarters several miles away from the terminal.
   ‘The Palestinian police, who are responsible for our security, told us to go to Kerem Shalom and we are waiting to see developments on the ground,’ said a spokesman for the EU mission, Julio de la Guardia.
   ‘When things calm down, we will go back to work,’ he said by phone.
   One policeman and a civilian were killed on Thursday afternoon in Gaza City when an argument between a local family clan and security forces degenerated into a gunfight.
   Security in the Gaza Strip has increasingly broken down in the weeks since Israeli troops withdrew from the territory and handed over total control to the Palestinian Authority in September.
   Despite pledges to reverse the tide of lawlessness, Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has proved incapable of addressing a culture of violence where gunmen from factions fighting in the name of ‘resistance’ to Israel largely operate above the law.
   The Black Panthers, an armed offshoot of his own Fatah faction, are believed to be behind the abduction at gunpoint of the three members of a British family on Wednesday.
   More than a dozen foreigners have been kidnapped in the territory since the summer but previous victims have usually been freed within a matter of hours.
   As the security forces continued their hunt for the kidnappers for a third day, sources admitted that they had so far struck a blank.
   Relatives of Kate Burton, a 24-year-old human rights worker based in Gaza, and her parents, Hugh and Helen, issued a statement which voiced their deep concern at the kidnapping.
   ‘We are a close family, and are naturally deeply concerned about our parents and sister,’ the relatives said in a statement released by Britain’s Foreign Office.
   ‘Kate is a warm and loving person, and has been working as a volunteer in Gaza for the past year, trying to do what she can to help the situation there.’
   Abbas’s failure to halt rocket firing from militants earlier this week led Israel to impose a ‘no-go zone’ in parts of northern Gaza which had been used as launch sites for the missiles.
   The imposition of the zone means that Israel has effectively reasserted control over a site where three of its Jewish settlements stood until they were evacuated over the summer.
   The rockets have been launched by followers of a series of factions, including Islamic Jihad which has continued to carry out suicide attacks against Israeli targets despite signing up to a truce in March.
   Jihad claimed responsibility for the latest such attack, when an Israeli officer and two Palestinian civilians were killed by one of its members near Tulkarem on Thursday.
   The army has said 19-year-old Suheib Ibrahim Ajami was on his way to Tel Aviv, where he planned to blow himself up in a crowded space, but was forced to detonate his load prematurely when he was challenged at a checkpoint.

The United States embassy in the Malaysian capital was shut down Friday due to an unspecified security threat, and the police presence around the building was beefed up, officials said.
   ‘The embassy will close effective today ... until further notice due to a security threat to the embassy,’ the embassy said in a statement.
   US embassy spokeswoman Kathryn Taylor said the mission, which is on a main thoroughfare in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, was closed at 11:40am (0340 GMT) but would not specify the nature of the threat.
   ‘Unfortunately I can’t say at this time because it’s something we’re actively looking to,’ she said.
   ‘The information applies specifically to the US embassy and does not apply to US citizens or private US interests in Malaysia as far as we’re aware.’
   Police in the city district where the mission is located said they had increased the numbers of patrol cars around the embassy, as well as the numbers of officers patrolling there.
   ‘The request from the US embassy to us is to increase our security around the US embassy,’ district police chief Hasnan Hassan told AFP. ‘It’s an increase of about 20 percent in manpower all around the clock.’
   Hasnan said the embassy had not given police any indication of the nature of the threat. The increased security would be maintained ‘until the US embassy is happy that there is no more threat to it and then we will call it off’, he said.
   Taylor said the situation would be reassessed on Monday, when the embassy is officially closed due to the New Year public holiday, and a decision made on whether to reopen on Tuesday.
   The US embassy here last shut down in September 2004, after it received a letter containing a suspicious powdery substance. Sections of the mission also closed in August 2004 due to similar deliveries.
   Police later said the incidents were hoaxes aimed at frightening Americans.

At least 24 people were killed in an avalanche while hunting precious stones in a remote mountain range in northwest Pakistan, police said.
   The incident happened on Tuesday in the rugged Karakoram range in Kohistan district, local police chief Ashfaq Ahmed said Friday. ‘There were around 120 people extracting gemstones when the avalanche struck, burying a number of them,’ Ahmed said.
   ‘Twenty-four were killed and the rest are fine. Locals have dug all the bodies out of the snow,’ Ahmed said.
   He said a military helicopter had been despatched to the hard-to-reach area and had so far brought back 12 bodies to Dassu, the main town in the region, where they were handed over to relatives.
   Police only learned of the avalanche late Thursday, when residents of the far-flung village of Sputmali in the highlands arrived at their police post.
   Kohistan is located in the region of Pakistan that was devastated by a massive earthquake in October, which killed more than 73,000 people. Since then, the mountainous area has been jolted by more than 1,500 aftershocks.

Former singer Gary Glitter paid $2,000 each to the families of two Vietnamese girls he is accused of sexually abusing, his lawyer has said.
   The money was paid two weeks ago ‘for co-operation’ in the upcoming legal case, Le Thanh Kinh said.
   Both families have since written to the authorities asking them to drop child rape charges, which they have done.
   But Glitter, who denies all charges, is still thought to be facing charges of child molestation.
   Police said they had not produced enough evidence to bring the child rape charges to court.
   If convicted on those charges, Glitter, 61, could have faced death by firing squad.
   ‘If we pay the money for the two families, when this case goes to court, maybe Mr Gary will receive a lighter penalty,’ his lawyer told the AP news agency.
   ‘After receiving the money, they informed the investigation bureau that they don’t want to go to court and they want to drop the case.’

At least 2,838 soldiers and rebels were killed in insurgent violence in the Philippines in 2005, according to military statistics.
   Soldiers accounted for 723 of the fatalities while the communist New People’s Army, who have been fighting for over three decades to set up a Maoist state, suffered 1,810 dead, the military said.
   The Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group linked by intelligence services to the al-Qaeda network, suffered 171 dead while the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front incurred 118 fatalities.
   The Abu Sayyaf has engaged in bombings and mass kidnappings while the MILF forged a ceasefire three years ago to negotiate peace with the government. But clashes with MILF commanders still take place sporadically.
   The remaining fatalities were among followers of Nur Misuari, a former Muslim leader who was made governor of a Muslim autonomous region as part of a peace deal.

Ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, a self-confessed ‘reluctant politician,’ has admitted to being finally comfortable in Indian politics—but still won’t say if she enjoys the life.
   ‘I was a reluctant politician,’ Italian-born Gandhi told India’s NDTV network in a rare personal interview aired Friday.
   ‘Circumstances compelled me to enter politics,’ she said, referring to the 1991 assassination of her husband, former premier Rajiv Gandhi.
   ‘I think I have got used to it,’ said Gandhi, clad in a traditional sari, the attire she has always worn in public since entering the rough-and-tumble of Indian politics.
   ‘I am quite comfortable in politics,’ said Gandhi, an unlined 59 whose jet black hair has barely a streak of grey.
   But asked whether she had finally come to like politics, Gandhi, who calls herself a ‘rather shy, private person,’ only smiled and shrugged non-committally.
   Gandhi had her revenge on critics who mocked her political abilities when she led Congress out of the political wilderness and back to power in 2004 after addressing rallies nationwide in fluent—if accented—Hindi.
   Analysts say Gandhi showed great grit in overcoming taunts about her foreign origins—the Hindu nationalists called her a ‘foreign doll.’
   Gandhi was dubbed ‘Saint Sonia’ by India’s media when she renounced the prime minister’s job after propelling Congress to its upset win over the BJP.
   But while respected economist Manmohan Singh became premier, she still enjoys huge clout as party president.
   Gandhi, seen as torchbearer of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has given the country three premiers, is also often in the limelight as first on the spot to console victims of India’s frequent disasters.

Nepal's opposition parties said Thursday they would hold a series of protests against local elections scheduled for February which they have threatened to boycott as a sham.
   An alliance of the seven main opposition parties, kicked out of power when King Gyanendra took total control in February, said it would hold a series of protest rallies and publicity campaigns next month in the capital Kathmandu and other cities against the February 8 polls.
   'By December 30, at least 10 million joint appeals signed by the senior leaders of the seven parties will be published explaining why the municipal polls should be boycotted,' it said in a statement renewing its call for boycott.
   The leaders of the parties urged voters to boycott the elections, saying the government was pushing the country towards further instability and chaos by announcing the polls.
   The local elections are
   part of the king's 'roadmap to democracy' plan, which proposes local elections next February and then general elections in 2007.
   Foreign powers have been urging the king to restore democracy to the troubled nation as soon as possible, but there has been no indication that the king is bowing to international pressure.
   Since 1996, Nepal has been wracked by a Maoist insurgency that has claimed at least 12,000 lives. Gyanendra sacked the government 10 months ago, claiming that it was corrupt and had failed to stem the rebellion.
   The Maoists have vowed to disrupt the elections and have called for a nationwide general strike on February 5-11.

An international team agreed Thursday to review Iraq’s parliamentary elections, a decision lauded by Sunni Arab and secular Shia groups who have staged repeated protests around Iraq complaining of widespread fraud and intimidation.
   The decision by the International Mission for Iraqi Elections to send a team of assessors should help placate opposition complaints of ballot box rigging and mollify those groups who felt their views were not being heard, especially among hardline Sunni Arab parties.
   ‘It is important that the Iraqi people have confidence in the election results and that the voting process, including the process for vote counting, is free and fair,’ the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said.
   He added that ‘these experts will be arriving immediately and we are ready to assist them, if needed.’
   The team was coming despite a UN observer’s endorsement of the December 15 vote, which gave the Shia religious bloc a big lead in preliminary returns. Sunni Arabs and secular Shias rejected Jenness’ findings, saying their concerns — which included political assassinations before the elections — were not addressed.
   There have been about 1,500 complaints lodged against the elections, including about 50 serious enough to alter the results in some districts. The overall result, however, was not expected to change.
   The Iraqi Accordance Front, which is the country’s leading Sunni Arab group, applauded the decision, as did the secular Iraqi National List headed by former Shia prime minister Ayad Allawi.
   ‘We are optimistic with this international response and hope that it will find a solution for this crisis,’ Accordance spokesman Thafir al-Ani told The Associated Press. It was unclear if the review would further delay final results, now expected in early January.
   Preliminary results from the vote have given the governing Shia religious bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, a big lead — but one which still would require forming a coalition with other groups.

Drought has triggered extreme food shortages in three East African countries, putting millions of people at risk of famine as the lean dry season approaches, a humanitarian group said.
   Pre-famine conditions have already emerged in eastern Ethiopia, including escalating malnutrition, reports of child deaths, early human and livestock migration and rising sorghum prices, the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said Thursday.
   A preliminary assessment showed that more than a million Ethiopian cattle herders will face serious water, pasture and food shortages in the first half of 2006. The crisis will peak from January to March, the group said.
   Drought has also led to food shortages in neighboring Kenya, where an estimated 1.2 million people are expected to be affected over the next two months, said Special programmes minister of State John Munyes. The government said it will take immediate emergency measures to deliver food to those at risk.
   That’s in addition to the 1.3 million Kenyans who receive food aid annually from the government because they live in semiarid or arid areas and never harvest enough food or don’t have sizable herds of animals to sell.
   In Somalia, about 2 million people need humanitarian aid, including food and water, medical supplies and security assistance. The drought has led to increases in admissions of severely malnourished children to feeding centres in the south.
   About 70,000 tons of food aid is needed through June to feed those hit by drought in Somalia, but only 18,000 tons are available, the UN food aid agency said.
   Eastern Ethiopia, one of the driest and least hospitable parts of the country, was hit by a catastrophic famine in 2000 that killed an estimated 50,000 people. Most residents eke out a living as nomads.
   An initial estimate from the regional Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Administration indicates that Ethiopia needs more than $40 million to provide emergency water, food and health care to people and animals affected by the drought.
   Western diplomats said Thursday that international donors will withdraw $375 million in direct budget assistance from Ethiopia’s government following its recent crackdown on the main opposition party and the independent press.
   The money will be reallocated to the UN and aid agencies working to combat poverty among the bulk of Ethiopia’s 77 million people, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity because they did not want to strain ties with officials.

Europe braced Friday for more freezing temperatures after blizzards swept through northern and central European countries, disrupting air, road and rail traffic and causing widespread power cuts.
   Much of the continent was battened down against the harsh weather, the coldest December in a decade in Britain, where temperatures plunged to minus 11 Celsius (12 Fahrenheit) in Scotland and north-eastern England. France reported a second death Thursday from freezing temperatures after snowstorms left thousands of people trapped in their cars in sub-freezing temperatures this week.
   Road conditions remained icy and dangerous in many areas, but the only serious disruptions were in western Brittany and around the Channel port of Calais in the north.
   A sea search was on overnight off Calvados on France’s Normandy coast after a yacht captain fell overboard in ‘difficult conditions’, the local maritime authority said.
   His two crewmates sounded the alarm late Thursday and an air and sea search began.
   Most of the country has gone on winter alert, opening extra shelters to protect homeless people from the cold, which claimed a second victim overnight.
   A 52-year-old woman was found dead of cold outside the wooden shack where she lived in the north-western town of Le Mans. Police said she had suffered from poor health and had a drinking problem. A homeless man in his 40s was found dead in a car on Tuesday in the central-eastern city of Lyon, thought to have died of cold.

At least five people were killed and 10 wounded when two car bombs exploded within seconds of each other in the centre of Baghdad Friday, security officials said.
   The explosions occurred on a street near a minibus stop.
   Meanwhile, Iraq’s deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi was put in charge of the vital oil ministry Friday after the minister was relieved of his duties following protests over fuel price hikes.

Tony Blair joined the top ten longest-serving British prime ministers on Friday, after overtaking World War II leader Winston Churchill earlier this week.
   Blair, who became prime minister on May 2, 1997 after winning the first of three straight general elections, will hold 10th place alone on Saturday when he overtakes Herbert Henry Asquith’s eight years and 244 days in power.
   Fifty-one men and one woman have been called British prime minister and held the keys to 10 Downing Street, the PM’s residence in London.
   Blair will also become the second-longest serving prime minister of the last 100 years behind Conservative titan Margaret Thatcher, who held the post throughout the 1980s.

Nearly one in 10 American teenagers experienced major depression last year and fewer than half were treated, according to government statistics released on Thursday that doctors say confirm the problem is still overlooked among young people.
   Overall, 9 per cent of teenagers, or 2.2 million, were depressed, with older teens more at risk than their younger peers, said the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA.
   About 12 per cent of youths aged 16 or 17 faced severe depression in 2004, compared with about 5 per cent of those 12 or 13 years old. Among those aged 14 or 15, 9 per cent experienced a major episode. ‘These new data serve as a wake-up call to parents. Mental health is a critical part of the overall health and well-being of their children,’ said SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie.

Ten Sudanese refugees were killed Friday when several thousand Egyptian riot police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside UN offices in Cairo.
   Police armed with sticks and shields stormed the small square where the Sudanese had been camping at around 5:00am (0300 GMT).
   ‘There was a stampede that left 30 of the protesters injured, most of them the elderly and young and they were immediately taken to the hospital where 10 of them died,’ the interior ministry said.
   An AFP reporter saw several people being dragged away from the mayhem as the refugees—including dozens of women and small children—tried to resist their evacuation.
   The refugees were forced into dozens of buses lined up on one of the main thoroughfares in Cairo’s upmarket neighbourhood of Mohandessin, ending a standoff that had lasted most of the night. The ministry said police intervened after all efforts to convince the protesters to end their sit-in peacefully failed and after they threatened to attack the UN offices.
   ‘Efforts to convince the (protesters) continued today from 1:00 am until 4:00 am, but in vain,’ the ministry said.
   It claimed that the protesters, some of them drunk, began throwing bottles at police and attacked them with sticks, injuring three officers and 30 policemen.
   ‘The police force had been deployed there to secure the evacuation and end the illegal settlement,’ the ministry said, adding that the refugees had been taken to ‘temporary camps’.
   It added the refugees would be allowed to return to their homes.

In 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be re-elected governor of California, Internet giant Google will suffer a setback–and Brazil will hang on to the World Cup.
   If Earth doesn't get wiped out by a giant comet first, that is.
   Maybe it will all come true and maybe not, but a legion of soothsayers–from business gurus to Bible decoders–is full of predictions for the year to come.
   Some use elaborate computer programs like ‘Torah4U’ to ferret out remarkably precise predictions allegedly hidden within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Torah.
   One Website complete with diagrammed excerpts from Holy Scripture, exodus2006.com, foresees the November re-election of Schwarzenegger along with the re-establishment of a military draft in the United States. It also predicts that August 3, 2006 will be a blood-drenched day –yet just a mere shadow of the calamity that will befall us in 2010.
   Annie Stanton, one of countless psychics plying her trade on the Internet, predicts that catastrophe will come this year in the form of a massive asteroid crashing into the planet.
   Another mystic seer, Anita Nigam from India, has extended her powers of the paranormal into another realm–sports betting.
   For a mere 50 pounds (88 dollars, 73 euros) a week, you can get her insights into the outcomes of English football's Premier League matches. World Cup rates are yet to be announced, but rumour has it she's keen on Brazil.

‘Gulf War syndrome’, a debilitating multi-symptom affliction identified in many soldiers after the 1991 conflict in Kuwait, is likely to strike US troops fighting in Iraq, a new study shows.
   The syndrome, which proved hard to diagnose because it manifested itself in many different afflictions, remained widespread among US troops 10 years after the Gulf War ended, according to the study, lead-authored by Melvin Blanchard, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Blanchard’s study will be published in January in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
   A comprehensive medical evaluation of some 2,189 Gulf War veterans between 1999 and 2001 found that 28.9 percent of those deployed suffered
   from the affliction a decade after the war. The rate for soldiers not deployed to the Gulf War was slightly more than half that, and usually not as severe.
   The study’s results suggest that soldiers fighting in Iraq today—many of whose tours of duty are much longer than those in the previous war—are likely to experience Gulf War syndrome as well.
   ‘It’s not unique to the Gulf,’ Blanchard said. ‘It probably means there is a baseline in
   the (deployed) population, and the non-deployed reflect what happens in the general population.’ ‘The military is trying to take better care of the soldiers’ mental health in the field and that may have some
   bearing on the outcome, but I still expect to see CMI in those soldiers who are in Iraq now when they return,’ Blanchard said.
   The long-term impacts could be severe, the study said, because those suffering from the syndrome were twice as likely to experience heart attacks, diabetes and liver disease.

The Washington couple at the heart of the CIA leak investigation had their cover blown by their small son as they tried to sneak away on vacation on Thursday.
    ‘My daddy’s famous, my mommy’s a secret spy,’ declared the 5-year-old of his parents, former diplomat Joe Wilson and retired CIA operative Valerie Plame.
   The former spy, who just retired from the agency, and the diplomat have been at the centre of a CIA leak scandal that has reached into the White House.
   They said they were headed to an undisclosed vacation location with their twins but stopped for a brief interview inside the airport terminal.
   A special prosecutor has indicted Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, a top aide to vice president Dick Cheney, for lying in the investigation and has opened a second grand jury.
   Plame’s cover at the CIA was blown after her husband accused the Bush administration of twisting pre-war intelligence to support military action against Iraq.

Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol appears to protect older women from developing type 2 or non-insulin-dependent diabetes, Dutch researchers report.
   Although an association between alcohol use and reduced diabetes risk has been observed previously, much exploration of this topic has centreed on men and few studies have involved older women, Dr. Michiel L Bots of University Medical Centre Utrecht and colleagues note in the journal Diabetes Care.
   Because diabetes increases with age and most type 2 diabetic patients are women, they investigated the relationship between alcohol and diabetes onset in older women. The team examined data from a cohort of more than 16,300 women aged 49 to 70 years who were diabetes-free at enrolment and were followed for an average of 6.2 years.
   During this period, 760 women were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Compared with abstainers, women consuming moderate amounts of alcohol (5 to 30 grams per week) were much less likely to develop diabetes. Ten grams of alcohol constitutes one standard drink.
   There was no association with type of drink. Lifetime alcohol consumption was associated with type 2 diabetes in a U-shaped fashion—in that it was increased in abstainers and excessive drinkers in comparison with those with moderate consumption.

Pakistani
airman hanged
A Pakistan air force technician was hanged on Friday after being convicted of killing six colleagues more than three years ago. Nasir Ali Bangash was executed in a jail at Mianwali in central Punjab province after a trial in a military court, prison authorities said. The airman went on a shooting spree after a fight with his colleagues at an air base at Sargodha in February 2002. It was not clear what caused the dispute. Bangash was sentenced to death in July this year by the military court. President Pervez Musharraf, who is also chief of the army, rejected his mercy petition last month. Officials said the body was handed over to his relatives for burial.
— AFP

4 policemen killed
in Afghanistan
Four Afghan policemen were killed and seven others were injured when a bomb planted by suspected Taliban militants exploded near a checkpoint, an official said Friday. The blast happened late Thursday in the Hazar Joft district of the insurgency-prone southern province of Helmand, local police commander Bahadur Khan said. ‘Four policemen were killed, seven others were wounded,’ Khan said. Violence blamed on the Taliban regime, which was ousted by a US-led military operation in late 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden, has soared this year in southern and eastern Afghanistan. A purported Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, said his guerrillas had planted the remotely detonated device.
— AFP

S Korea to cut
troop in Iraq
South Korea’s parliament Friday approved government plans to cut its troop numbers in Iraq, where it has the third-largest force, by one-third next year. The National Assembly voted by 110 to 31 for the defense ministry bill to cut the 3,200-strong South Korean troop contingent to 2,300 and extend its stay in Iraq for another year until the end of 2006. South Korean troops, whose numbers in the war-ravaged country are exceeded only by the United States and Britain, have been stationed in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil. The government plans to reduce the contingent in the first half of 2006. The defense ministry welcomed the vote saying the extended presence of South Korean troops in Iraq would help Seoul cement security ties with Washington.
— AFP

Eight get death penalty in Hanoi
Eight people, including two women, were condemned to death and nine others received life terms in prison after being convicted of drug trafficking, a Vietnamese court official said Friday. Fifteen other people were handed jail terms ranging from five to 20 years, following an eight-day trial in southern Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, the official said. They were arrested in June last year, charged with trafficking 80 kilogram of heroin from neighbouring Laos and Cambodia starting in 2002.
— AFP

Death toll from Yemen landslide
rises to 45
The death toll from a landslide that devastated a Yemeni village has risen to 45, an official said Friday as relatives and rescue workers clawed through the rubble, some with bare hands, to find survivors. Thirty corpses had been recovered Thursday after the landslide hit the small village of Al-Dhafeer, on a rocky hillside 70 kilometres (40 miles) west of the capital Sanaa, while dozens were reported missing. ‘The number (of dead) has increased to 45,’ an interior ministry official said, requesting anonymity. The death toll was expected to rise further as dozens of residents from the village of some 270 people were still missing and believed to be under the mud and rubble.
— AFP

‘Putin against cutting gas supply to
Ukraine’
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is not in favour of cutting Ukraine’s gas supplies, as threatened by Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom, the Ukrainian prime minister, Yury Ekhanurov, said. ‘Mr Putin declared that gas deliveries to Ukrainian consumers must be ensured,’ Ekhanurov told Ukraine’s Era FM radio, following crisis talks in Moscow between Putin, Gazprom and a Ukrainian government delegation. Talks were continuing in Moscow on Friday between gas industry experts, but the Ukrainian governmental delegation, including the energy minister, Ivan Plachkov, and the head of Ukraine’s gas company Naftogaz, had returned to Kiev overnight, Ekhanurov said. Russian state-controlled behemoth Gazprom has announced a more than four-fold increase in natural gas prices to neighbouring Ukraine.
— AFP

Galileo satellite phones home
British space engineers have received signals from the pioneer spacecraft for Europe’s satellite-navigation system. Giove-A is communicating with its ground station, they say, and all systems are performing well. The 600kg Galileo satellite was lifted into orbit on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday. It paves the way for a network of 30 satellites that will give Europe its own version of the US Global Positioning System. Giove-A was built by the small British company, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, a spin-off from the University of Surrey.
— BBC

Spirit, Opportunity still probing Mars
Nearly two years after landing on the Red Planet, NASA exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to send back amazing images and information about Mars in a mission long outpacing expectations. Since landing on opposite sides of Mars in January 2004, the US space agency’s two robotic explorers have plowed over five kilometres (three miles) of the planet’s surface and sent back more than 130,000 pictures, many of them stunning depictions of a desolate, arid but highly varied landscape. The two also continue to reveal Mars’ geological secrets, digging into soil and overturning rocks to provide evidence that water once featured on the planet’s surface.
— AFP

Texas remains under burning bans
Fire-fighters gained the upper hand on wildfires that raced through Texas and Oklahoma, killing four people, but officials worried about a forecast for more warm, windy and dry conditions leading up to New Year’s Day. Oklahoma and much of Texas remained under burning bans — particularly for fireworks. Gov. Rick Perry urged counties to prohibit fireworks around the holiday, warning ‘the state of Texas is a tinderbox.’ ‘We are at as high a level of opportunity for wildfires as you can have,’ Perry said Thursday as he toured Cross Plains, the town that suffered the most damage in the blazes.
— AP