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At least 7,200 people have died of AIDS in India, the world’s second worst affected nation, since an official count began two decades ago, a top health official said on Sunday.
   The figure was a cumulative estimate which most likely suffered from under-reporting, said SY Qureshi, director of the state-run National Aids Control Organisation which deals with every aspect of the disease in India.
   ‘Till June, the number of dead from AIDS was about 7,200. This cumulative figure is based on anonymous estimates,’ he said.
   ‘The actual casualty figure could be more, but what happens is that many AIDS deaths are attributed to secondary causes like tuberculosis.’
   India’s health department began keeping count of AIDS deaths in 1986.
   Worldwide, about 39 million people have HIV/AIDS, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
   NACO estimates said 1,114 people died of AIDS in 2004-05 and 1,514 the previous year in India.
   The United Nations estimates around 5.1 million people are HIV-infected in India, second only to South Africa.
   Of them, NACO says around 103,000 people have full-blown AIDS. Health NGO’s believe the number is much higher.
   Qureshi said his organisation went only by reported cases.
   ‘There are many people who are completely unaware they have HIV/AIDS. Then, the fear of stigma prevents many more from disclosing they are infected or seeking treatment,’ he said.
   He estimates less than one per cent of India’s more than one billion population could be infected with HIV, compared to some African countries where the figure is as high as 30 per cent.
   ‘This, however, is not a consolation,’ he said. ‘Even one per cent of our population is a huge number.’

Following a 13-month hiatus in negotiations, North Korea said Sunday it would ‘do its utmost’ to achieve progress at a fresh round of six-way talks later this month aimed at ending its nuclear weapons drive.
   The pledge by the North’s foreign ministry followed the Stalinist state’s announcement Saturday that it would return to talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in the week beginning July 25.
   ‘The resumption of the talks itself is important, but the most essential thing is for the talks to have an in-depth discussion on ways of denuclearising the Korean peninsula to make substantial progress in the talks,’ a ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency.
   ‘The DPRK will do its utmost for it.’
   The spokesman put a positive spin on the six-way talks, citing success in a meeting between US and North Korean chief nuclear negotiators in Beijing Saturday which led to an agreement to resume the dialogue process.
   ‘The outcome of the DPRK-US contact clearly proves that it is possible to settle any problem when the parties concerned directly come out to solve it,’ he said.
   North Korea had boycotted the talks since a third round in June 2004, but last month the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il, told a South Korean envoy that his country would return to the talks as early as July.
   Koh Yu-Hwan, a North Korea expert and professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said he expected positive developments at the upcoming round of talks.
   ‘As North Korea’s supreme leader has thrown himself into the issue this time, producing no tangible results at the new round of talks would trouble his leadership,’ Koh said.
   ‘Given the North’s ruling nature, it would be a huge burden at home to show that their leader could fail,’ he said, referring to the leadership cult Kim has cultivated.
   The North’s spokesman praised all dialogue partners, except Japan, for making efforts to jump-start the six-way talks. ‘But Japan has done nothing for it,’ he added.
   The spokesman repeated that North Korea wants the Korean peninsula to be nuclear-free through peaceful dialogue.

The Philippines’ influential Roman Catholic bishops criticised embattled president Gloria Arroyo over a political scandal but said they would not join mounting calls for her resignation.
   The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, after a four-day meeting, said Arroyo had further eroded public trust in the political system.
   ‘In the spirit of humility and truth, we declare our prayerfully discerned collective decision that we do not demand her resignation,’ the conference said in a statement read by its president Archbishop Fernando Capalla.
   ‘Yet, neither do we encourage her simply to dismiss such a call from others.’
   Any demand by the 85 bishops for Arroyo to quit would have sealed her fate in the overwhelmingly Catholic country. Arroyo is clinging to power after eight ministers and two other cabinet officials resigned last Friday and urged her to follow suit.
   In 1986 and 2001, the church led army-backed popular uprisings that toppled graft-tainted presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada.
   Arroyo is under fire over wiretapped conversations released by the opposition last month, in which a woman sounding like her can be heard appearing to conspire with senior election official Virgilio Garcillano to fix the result of the 2004 presidential vote.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on Sunday rejected calls by a regional grouping headed by Russia and China for a deadline for US forces to pull out of bases in Central Asia, including Afghanistan.
   The presidents of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which also comprises Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, signed a declaration at a summit last week calling for deadlines to be set on the closure of airbases used by US forces in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
   The bases were set up after the United States launched a military campaign to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
   Afghanistan is not part of the regional grouping and did not sign the agreement.
   ‘The one country that said that the United States should stay in Afghanistan was Afghanistan,’ Rice said on the last day of her visit to China as part of a four-nation Asia tour.
   ‘I think that since Afghanistan is sovereign, since Afghanistan in fact has an elected president, who was elected freely and fairly, then the relationship we have with Afghanistan is with that government.’
   Meanwhile, the United States is concerned about China’s ‘significant’ military buildup, but that does not mean it sees Beijing as a threat, Rice said Sunday.
   ‘There is no doubt that we have concerns about the size and pace of the Chinese military buildup and it’s not just the Pentagon. I’ve made clear to people this is a view held by the US government,’ Rice told reporters.
   ‘This does not mean that we view China as ‘a threat’,’ she said after meeting with Chinese officials on the first leg of a four-nation Asia tour.

More than 28 years after being dumped in the street as a newborn baby, an Indian woman is suing her biological parents for one million rupees (about 23,000 dollars) for abandoning her.
   A separate criminal action Dimple Menezes plans to bring could send her mother Harbhajan Kaur and father Sukhdev Singh, a Sikh priest, to prison for up to seven years, lawyer SP Chopr said in this north Indian city.
   The case, the first of its kind in India, is set down for hearing on July 20 in the High Court of Chandigarh, capital of Punjab state, where Menezes was abandoned outside a hospital in the dusty town of Taran Tarn soon after she and her twin sister were born on May 7, 1977.
   ‘It was hot like a furnace that day when I finished work at the St Mary’s Hospital and stepped out to find this child wailing, surrounded by hungry, stray dogs,’ said Sulochana Christbell Karanjia, foster mother of Menezes.
   Karanjia, 65, who was medical superintendent of the Catholic-run hospital, took custody of the baby after she could not find the woman who had given birth to twins but left for home with only one of them.
   ‘How can I forgive? It was their duty to care for me; instead I was abandoned. Do you know what it is like to grow up without a father’s hug? A kiss, just one kiss from a mother? They should have strangled me when I was born,’ Menezes said, her voice cracking with emotion during a telephone interview.
   Menezes, now a computer science graduate, says as a child fellow students, neighbours and even teachers questioned her legitimacy and taunted her because she was baptised into the Christian faith by foster mother Karanjia, who has a daughter of her own.
   Karanjia said Menezes’ biological mother returned to Taran Tarn from her eastern hometown of Gorakhpur to reclaim the child when she was 12.
   ‘Her mother kept pestering us. Kaur even took Dimple away for a few days but my daughter returned,’ said Karanjia, a gynaecologist.
   Menezes said she harboured too much bitterness towards her mother to want to stay with her.
   ‘She threw me away. She did not feed me. Did she hold me? And then after 12 years she came to me. How can there be any love?’ she said, speaking from Taran Tarn where she works at an information technology services centre.
   She also did not get on with her siblings, especially her twin sister who was ‘quite opposite in nature to me’.
   Kaur reappeared on the scene in 2003 when Karanjia found a Christian groom for Dimple, Chandigarh-based financial consultant Jude Eric Menezes.
   Kaur opposed the Christian marriage and wanted Dimple to marry into a Sikh family.
   ‘My mother dumped me because she did not want to pay dowry for me and then she came to hurt me again when I wanted to marry the man of my choice,’ Menezes said.
   She ignored her mother and wed her husband on May 9, 2003.
   Indian parents favour boy babies, mainly due to exorbitant dowries expected by grooms and their families.

Faced with the biggest population timebomb in the history of mankind, Asia’s governments have rarely shied away from imposing themselves on the intensely private matter of birth control, but times may be changing.
   The region has three of the world’s four most populous nations—China, India and Indonesia—and policies in many countries have run the gamut from involuntary abortion to forced sterilisation and infanticide.
   Such measures may soon be consigned to a grim past, and perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future Asia may bid a complete farewell to its population policies, as family sizes will be regulated not by fiat, but by the market.
   ‘Child-rearing has become so expensive that some believe it will decline of its own accord,’ says Nigel Thomas, a population expert at Cardiff University.
   Raising a family in urban China, for example, is now a crushing financial burden, due especially to soaring tuition fees, and many couples would simply be driven to ruin by two children.
   While the market forces make their contribution to the changing demographics of the region, government employees are also gradually becoming more pragmatic in their daily work.
   Officials across the region are discovering that persuasion is more efficient than coercion, especially when addressing young couples with dramatically better education than their parents.
   Tina Agustina, an Indonesian family planning expert, says women in her country used to have 5.6 children on average, but that number has declined to 2.9, arguably without anyone being made to act against their own wishes.
   ‘Midwives are the most popular public and private dispensers of modern contraceptives, about 50 per cent of which are supplied through government facilities,’ she says.
   Even China—with a population of more than 1.3 billion—is introducing changes to its notorious one-child policy, allowing more flexibility according to local conditions.
   ‘The rules will definitely be relaxed over time,’ says Guo Youde, a demographer at Shanghai’s Fudan University. ‘Even now, local governments are allowed greater leeway in making adjustments based on their own population structure.’
   Some prosperous Chinese cities allow two children under special circumstances, and they are little by little shortening the time before the second birth can take place.
   Still, this does not mean the one-child policy is about to be scrapped, local experts agree.
   The generation born in the 1970s, members of a mini-baby boom taking place then, have still not left child-rearing age, and the reins cannot be loosened lest they produce more new recruits for China’s growing army of unemployed.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said Sunday she urged Chinese leaders to ‘reach out to the Dalai Lama,’ saying the exiled Tibetan leader is no threat to China.
   The Dalai Lama ‘is a man of considerable moral authority and is really of no threat to China,’ Rice told reporters after meeting with Chinese leaders, including president Hu Jintao, on the first leg of her four-nation tour.
   Five representatives of Tibet’s government-in-exile, based in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala, met Chinese officials in the Swiss capital Berne over two days last week, according to the Dalai Lama’s office.

At least three Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed and two seriously wounded Sunday in an ambush by militants in the northeast state of Manipur a day after a violent protests, officials said.
   A police spokesman said heavily armed militants attacked an Assam Rifles patrol near the village of Waithou, about 24 kilometres southeast of Manipur’s state capital Imphal around 11:00am (0530 GMT).
   ‘The militants used automatic weapons and fired indiscriminately on the security patrol killing three and seriously injuring two,’ he said, adding that the wounded were taken to an army hospital.
   Indian soldiers have been on high alert in Manipur after security forces fired on protestors when they went on the rampage, torching government buildings on Saturday.
   At least six protesters were injured when security forces opened fire on the mob of about 200 people in Ukhrul district, 85 kilometres north of Imphal.

A Pakistani farmer has killed his pregnant daughter and son-in-law for marrying against his will, police said Sunday.
   Iqbal Bibi, 19, and her husband Hazoor Bakhsh Ghazlani, 25, returned to her father’s home Saturday, six months after their secret marriage in the rural town of Muzaffargarh in central Punjab province.
   But that night Ghuman Hussain shot the couple dead while they were sleeping, Muzaffargarh police chief Irshad Mutawakal said. Bibi was six months pregnant.
   The police were searching for Hussain and his three accomplices, he said.
   In June, a husband poured kerosene over his sleeping wife and daughter and burned them to death over suspicions that his daughter was having an affair with a neighbour in the remote town of Samasatta near central Multan city.

While the debate over whether Saudi women should be allowed to drive rages on, Captain Hanadi Hindi will soon become the first woman to fly a plane with the private fleet of a prince.
   Hindi, 27, is preparing to take to the skies at a time when supporters and opponents of lifting the ban on women’s driving in the conservative kingdom are still fighting it out in the local press.
   ‘I never meant to be a pioneer. When I started learning to become a pilot, I did so for my father, who himself had aspired to be a pilot. I then got attached to flying,’ Hindi said by telephone from her home in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.
   Prince Al-Walid bin Talal’s decision to make Hindi part of his private crew has drawn criticism from some conservative Muslim scholars, who object to any easing of constraints that bar Saudi women from mixing with men other than relatives or travelling without the authorisation of a male guardian.
   But Hindi said the billionaire entrepreneur’s Kingdom Holding Company had also hired her father, Zakariya Hindi, as a legal consultant.

A bid by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan to join an overhauled UN Security Council faced spirited opposition from regional rivals as the General Assembly readied for debate on the four countries’ proposal to enlarge the exclusive UN club.
   UN diplomats said there was growing doubt that the so-called G4 would be able to muster the required two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly, meaning 128 votes out of 191, to change the make-up of the 15-member council.
   At present, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only permanent and veto-wielding members of the powerful UN body, which also has 10 rotating non-permanent members without veto power.
   ‘We are in a very delicate phase,’ an African ambassador told AFP while countries such as Pakistan and China urged the G4 countries to drop their plan to seek a vote on their proposal for an expanded security council, suggesting it would divide the world body.
   The General Assembly debate on the G4 text was to begin Monday at 3:00pm (1900 GMT) and might run until Tuesday depending on the number of speakers, according to assembly sources.
   The G4 draft provides for an expansion of the UN Security Council from the current 15 members to 25, with the creation of six new permanent seats without veto power and four non-permanent seats.
   The four countries are pressing for an early vote in the General Assembly after the debate.
   The draft does not indicate which countries would secure the new Council seats but diplomats said the six new permanent seats would go to the G4 and two African countries yet to be selected.
   Initially, the G4 wanted to act before the end of June, judging that time was running out to secure adoption of the council reform ahead of the World Summit in September, when a major overhaul of the world body is set to be approved.
   But the four decided to wait for the African Union summit July 4-5 in Libya and the Caribbean Community (Caricom) summit July 3-6 in St Lucia to submit their draft to the UN General Assembly.
   They hoped to gain the support of many African countries, arguing that Africa has a lot to gain from their proposal. Some diplomats say that, with its 54 members, the African UN group carries a great deal of weight in the debate over Security Council reform.
   But at their summit in Syrte, Libya, the Africans decided to press for a 26-member Security Council, with creation of six new permanent seats with veto power, including two for Africa, and five non-permanent seats, including two for Africa.
   UN observers said the African proposal was unrealistic as several current members of the Security Council are adamantly opposed to sharing their veto power.
   Thursday, the African group circulated a draft resolution based on conclusions reached at the summit in Libya. Algeria’s UN envoy Abdallah Baali said it would be officially submitted to the General Assembly Wednesday ahead of a possible vote.
   It provides for a 25-member council, but with no new permanent seat. The 10 new non-permanent members would be elected for two years as is the case at present, but with the possibility of immediate re-election.
   Pakistan’s UN ambassador Munir Akram, warned the G4 against putting its draft to a vote in the assembly, calling instead for dialogue and consensus.
   A vote ‘is going to be damaging to the reform process. It is going to be damaging to the United Nations, and it is going to be damaging to international relations in the regions concerned,’ he said.
   ‘It is a confrontation that nobody asked for. It is the selfish interests of a few countries that is going to destroy this house,’ Akram added.
   His Chinese counterpart, Wang Guangya, whose country adamantly opposes Japan’s admission to the Security Council, deplored the ‘great confusion’ created by the rival proposals.

The United States and Britain are considering the withdrawal of more than 100,000 coalition troops from Iraq next year as one of many options but no decision has been made, the British defence ministry said.
   ‘We have always said that it is our intention to hand over the lead in fighting terrorists to the Iraqi Security Forces as their capability increases,’
   said a defence ministry spokeswoman.
   ‘We therefore continually produce papers outlining possible options... this is but one of a number of papers produced over recent months covering various possible scenarios,’ she said.
   The spokeswoman was referring to a document by the British defence secretary, John Reid, which was leaked to the Mail on Sunday.
   The document said Washington hoped to hand over control of security to Iraqi forces in 14 out of 18 provinces in the country by early next year, allowing it to slash US-led troop levels to 66,000 from 176,000.
   Britain, for its part, had a plan to cut its 8,500-strong contingent to 3,000.
   The document—entitled ‘Options for future UK force posture in Iraq’ and marked ‘Secret—UK eyes only’ said London would need to reach decisions later this year on troop levels.
   Britain, which heads a foreign military force in southern Iraq, wants to give back control of Al-Muthanna and Maysan provinces this October, followed by the other two provinces it handles next April, it said.
   ‘This should lead to a reduction in the total level of UK commitment in Iraq to around 3,000 personnel,’ a copy of the document said, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Nerves frayed as the hunt for the London bombers intensified amid a scare in Britain’s second city of Birmingham, where police evacuated some 20,000 people to investigate a suspect package.
   As distraught friends and relatives continued to search frantically for 25 missing loved ones following the carnage in London, bomb disposal squad officers carried out four controlled explosions on a bus in central Birmingham and probed a box with wires coming out and a switch on top.
   The assistant chief constable, Stuart Hyde, said the police acted following information on a ‘substantial threat’ late Saturday and said the evacuation of the area was ‘a proportionate response to the information.’
   However, Hyde discounted a direct link to the London bombing of three trains and a bus in carefully co-ordinate attacks Thursday which killed at least 50 people and left some 700 injured.
   ‘I do not believe that the incident that we are dealing with this evening is connected with the events of July 7 in London.’
   The heart of Britain’s second city in central England, 195 kilometres (120 miles) from London, was sealed off overnight but West Midlands Police said the cordon had largely lifted by 6:00am (0500 GMT).
   Andy Trotter, deputy chief constable of the British Transport Police, said the search for bodies still in London Underground train tunnels some 40 metres (100 feet) below ground in temperatures reaching 60 Celsius (140 Fahrenheit) was gruelling.
   ‘It is extremely hot, very dusty and it is a great challenge for them to continue their work to recover the remaining bodies from the train underground,’ Trotter told a news conference.
   ‘It is perfectly possible, given the attacks of Thursday, that terrorists could strike again,’ he added.
   As rescuers struggled to uncover more bodies from the bowels of the Underground system, Sunday was to witness a programme of remembrance and commemoration to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.
   Queen Elizabeth II and members of the royal family were to attend a special service at Westminster Abbey where the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was to preside.
   The queen was later to attend a veteran’s lunch at Buckingham Palace and then a commemoration show in central London prior to a fly-past of World War II aircraft.
   In his weekly radio address from Washington, the US president, George W Bush, vowed to ‘stay on the offence’ in his ‘war on terror’.
   ‘The free world did not seek this conflict, yet we will win it,’ he said.

A mosque was set on fire by some unidentified people in northwest England last evening. No loss of life or injuries was reported, though the mosque was partially damaged.
   The ill-fated Shahjalal Mosque is a part of an Islamic centre in Birkenhead.
   The local police suspect ‘two white men in their early 20s’ behind the arson. They say the two men, who are yet to be identified, were seen in the area just before the incident.
   The incident assumes significance as it occurred just two days after the Thursday’s serial bomb blasts in underground buses and trains killing around 50 people killed and injuring hundreds.
   The mosque has been sealed for a forensic search with the police keeping a close surveillance with the help of closed circuit television tapes.
   Quoting a Merseyside police spokesman, The News reported that the mosque door was burnt and there was some smoke damage inside.
   Mosque chairman Abdul Munim reportedly said: ‘We would like to condemn wholeheartedly the incidents in London and our sympathy goes out to the families and friends of the victims. What happened here was a dreadful act that could have been far worse had it not been for the fast actions of the police, fire and ambulance services.’
   
   Islamic centres attacked in NZ
   At least four Islamic centres in New Zealand have been vandalised following the
   deadly bombings in London claimed by Muslim militant groups, police said Sunday.
   Windows were smashed at the New Zealand Muslim Association mosque in Auckland on Saturday night as well as two other mosques and the Al Faroq Cultural Centre in Auckland’s south.
   No offenders or suspects were seen, inspector Scott Webb of the Auckland police said, although a vehicle was heard driving away from the cultural centre.
   The prime minister, Helen Clark, was quick to condemn the attacks.
   ‘New Zealanders across all communities are horrified by the terrorist attacks in London which are the work of evil people,’ Clark said.
   ‘But it is wrong to target the Muslim community here in retaliation. New Zealand’s Muslim community like all New Zealand’s communities is overwhelmingly a law-abiding and peaceful community,’ she said.
   ‘Times like these call for cool heads and for tolerance. The evil acts of some should not lead to scapegoat of minorities in our communities.’
   
   Italy arrests 142 in security sweep
   Italian police said Saturday they had rounded up 142 suspects in a massive security sweep across the northern Lombardy region in the 48 hours since the London bombings.
   The operation, which involved 2,000 Carabinieri officers, began in and around the area of Milan shortly after the London attacks, which have been claimed by al-Qaeda.
   Police said 83 of those arrested were illegal immigrants, of which 52 have been given expulsion orders.
   Lombardy’s Carabinieri commander, General Antonio Girone, said the security forces had concentrated on Milan, Italy’s business capital, because ‘it constitutes a possible prime target for possible terrorist
   aciton.’

Despite their ‘differences,’ the bombing attacks on London brought the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and the French president, Jacques Chirac, closer together in a common determination to defeat terrorism, EU commission president, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, said in a newspaper interview.
   As the longest-serving leader at the G8 summit conference in Gleneagles, Scotland last week, Chirac ‘was the first to encourage Tony Blair not to suspend the meeting and to go to London,’ Barroso said Sunday. ‘There was a special feeling of solidarity’ among participants at the meeting.
   Before the summit, Chirac had been openly at loggerheads over agricultural subsidies and Britain’s budget rebate from the EU.
   Chirac had even annoyed many Britons by making a derogatory remark about British cooking during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and by saying Britain’s only contribution to European agriculture was mad cow disease.
   Barroso alluded to such ‘differences of opinion over certain subjects’ in an interview with the daily El Mundo, but added: ‘The question of terrorism has brought them together.’
   Barroso said terrorism was a global threat ‘and the cost will be high to those who think they can protect themselves by being soft.’
   Barroso also said that in the European Union, security was no longer seen as a matter of national sovereignty and that there was not a single country that thinks it can deal with the problem on its own.

It was an unusual gesture, unprecedented, in fact, according to the British prime minister, Tony Blair: The leaders of the world’s major industrial nations personally signed the communique issued Friday containing their pledges to double aid to Africa and substantially increase assistance to other poor nations.
   The signatures were made at Blair’s insistence, because as the prime minister explained, ‘I wanted to symbolise the strength of our commitment.’
   But they were also a reminder of the weakness underlying the grand promises made at this past week’s summit to demonstrate more generosity toward the world’s poor. The amounts actually spent have a history of falling far short of the amounts pledged. That is especially true when–as in this case – the 2010 target for the aid increase comes well after those making the pledges are likely to leave office.
   That problem was one of the main reasons why many aid experts tempered their enthusiasm for the plan outlined by the Group of Eight nations, despite the size of the $50 billion in additional aid that was envisioned to begin flowing annually five years from now, with half of the increase going to Africa.
   ‘This represents probably the most significant change in attitude by the G-8 toward Africa since the end of the Cold War,’ said Steven Radelet, a scholar at the Centre for Global Development in Washington. ‘But there is a big difference between a proposal to increase aid and actually doing it.’
   Kumi Naidoo of South Africa, chairman of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, agreed. ‘One of the biggest problems—not just with the G-8, but other bodies—is there’s a huge compliance deficit,’ Naidoo said.
   Some experts, however, contend that it is hard to produce a sensible alternative, given the problems with pouring too much aid too quickly into poor countries.
   Still, the pitfalls involved in summit declarations were vividly on display the day the G-8 meetings ended, when the airy pronouncements from Gleneagles clashed with grim words from top officials of the World Trade Organisation over farm subsidies.
   The G-8 called for global trade negotiations to eliminate the billions of dollars paid to subsidise crop exports from rich nations. The resulting lower prices put farmers from poor nations at a competitive disadvantage.
   But at WTO headquarters in Geneva, officials expressed concern about intransigence among member countries–many of them the same countries represented in the G-8–on negotiating an end to farm subsidies. ‘I am afraid we have to face the facts,’ WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi told negotiators. ‘These negotiations are in trouble.’

Tens of thousands of people are expected to gather near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica on Monday to mark the 10th anniversary of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.
   The commemoration of the killing of an estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces is expected to be tense, particularly since police last week found large quantities of explosives near the memorial cemetery in Potocari, just outside the town.

Jordan’s King Abdullah said the world must tackle Arab frustration over poverty and perceived injustices in the Israeli-Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts if it is to stem militant violence.
   Four bombs exploded in London on Thursday, killing more than 50 people. Three Islamic militant groups claimed responsibility.
   ‘There is tremendous frustration throughout the Middle East over–the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–that is the first thing that these extremists use to raise the level of tension,’ Abdullah said in an interview with CNN on Saturday.
   ‘The second one is Iraq, so if we deal with these core issues it does allow us to bring the level of tension down, but at the same time we do have to improve the lives of Arabs’.
   Abdullah said Thursday’s attacks were made all the more painful as they were ‘carried out in the name of Islam’.
   ‘With every terrorist incident there is a fatwa behind it ... these people who have nothing to do with Islam have tried to justify their actions by hiding behind religion,’ he said.
   Jordan, a US ally, is the birthplace of al-Qaeda militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who has led a campaign of bombings and kidnappings in post-war Iraq.
   Abdullah said half of those in the Arab world were young, unemployed and vulnerable to the messages of militant recruiters.
   Arab governments must work to improve their lives, he said, but the international community needed to help tackle the root causes of extremism.
   ‘The freedom of Palestinians and the freedom of Iraqis is what is used as a recruiting ground, so it is our responsibility to improve the lot but it is also the responsibility of the international community to work with us.’

Floods kill 65 in Sichuan province
Sixty-five people have been killed and 30 are missing following flooding in southwest China’s Sichuan province since late last month, state media said Sunday. The Sichuan Daily said the victims died or went missing during flooding from June 28 to July 8. Among them, were 20 people from Dazhou city, which is submerged in deep floodwaters. The official China Central Television Station, meanwhile, said 37 people have died and seven are missing from ‘recent’ flooding in Dazhou as well as six other cities in Sichuan. It did not specify the timing of the floods or give a breakdown of the deaths by city. The report said 420,000 people from the seven cities have been relocated, among 7.2 million people affected in those cities.
— AFP

Six killed as dam bursts in Mumbai
Six people were killed and 19 others missing and feared dead after a dam burst in India’s western state of Maharashtra, flooding two villages, the police said Sunday. The breach occurred because of heavy rains late Saturday in the Yewatmal district, nearly 400 kilometres northeast of the commercial capital Mumbai, a local police official said. ‘At least 25 people are feared dead at this stage. We have found six bodies, including three women and two children,’ he said. The official said sustained heavy monsoon rains overnight swelled tributaries leading to the Bhandari dam causing it to burst and flood the nearby villages of Digras and Nandgavan as people slept.
— AFP

Aceh peace process heads for critical point
The fate of one of the world’s longest-running conflicts may be decided in a few days when negotiators representing the Indonesian government and rebels in Aceh province meet in Finland this week. It will be the fifth round of talks since peace negotiations resumed between the two warring sides under Finnish mediation in the wake of the December 26 tsunami disaster that flattened Aceh and left nearly 170,000 people dead or missing. It looks to be the most crucial. Earlier rounds have produced agreement in principle between the government and the Free Aceh Movement on many contentious issues, but the meeting expected to start on Tuesday is the one where delegates have to put pen to paper and agree on a draft document spelling out the specifics.
— Reuters

Miss Tibet ousted from beauty pageant
Miss Tibet has been barred from participating in a beauty pageant in Malaysia after Chinese officials complained that a woman who lives in India cannot represent a part of China. ‘Miss Tibet Tashi Yangchen made all the preparations but now she is not participating at this year’s Miss Tourism Pageant in Malaysia because the organiser of the Miss Tourism Pageant 2005 required Miss Tibet to participate as Miss Tibet-China,’ Ngawang Samdup, spokesman for Tashi, said Sunday. The pageant with contestants from 32 countries began on Saturday in Sarawak, Malaysia, with the final taking place on July 23.
— AFP

US Gulf Coast braces for Hurricane Dennis
Hurricane Dennis whipped up yet more wind speed early Sunday, becoming ‘extremely dangerous’ as it churned toward US coastal areas already battered by a deadly storm last year, forecasters said. At 3:00am (0700 GMT), as it roared northward over the Gulf of Mexico, Dennis was packing sustained winds near 145 miles (234 kilometre) per hour with higher gusts, the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said. More than one million people were ordered to evacuate threatened areas along the US Gulf Coast ahead of predicted landfall Sunday afternoon of the powerful hurricane that killed at least 15 people in the Caribbean.

Luxembourg’s yes to EU constitution
Luxembourg voters approved the EU’s constitution Sunday, according to official results of a referendum, giving a new breath of life to the moribund charter. With results in from nearly all polling stations, around 57 percent of voters had backed the treaty. The vote makes the tiny country the first to ratify the constitution by referendum since French and Dutch voters rejected it a little over a month ago. It also marks a victory for Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who had promised to step down if voters said “no” to the constitution.

Kyrgyzstan votes in presidential election
Kyrgyzstan held a presidential poll Sunday to choose a successor to ousted leader Askar Akayev, with front-runner and the interim president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, hailing the vote as a fresh start for the Central Asian country. Bakiyev, swept to office in March as protestors overran the seat of government, trumpeted the vote as the countries first genuinely free poll in many years. ‘For the first time in recent years the elections are actually elections.

New Sudanese govt leaders sworn in
Leaders of the Sudanese interim government of national unity were sworn in here on Saturday, marking the beginning of a six-year transitional period and the opening of a new chapter of peace in the history of the largest African country. At a ceremony in the presidential palace, Sudanese resident Omar Hassan al-Bashir signed a new interim constitution and took his oath of office as president of the interim government. John Garang, head of the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, was sworn in as the first vice president.

Chinese peacekeepers sent to Liberia
China has sent a third batch of peacekeepers—some 279 Chinese soldiers—to war-torn Liberia as its military steps up its presence in UN missions abroad. The troops which left for the West African country Saturday consisted of a 240-member transport contingent, 275 engineers and 43 medical staff. Prior to the latest dispatch, China sent a total of 1,116 peacekeepers in the first two batches to Liberia to participate in UN efforts to restore peace to the country of three million people where a ruinous, 14-year civil war raged until August 2003.

Cote d’ Ivoire rivals reach disarmament deal
The Cote d’ Ivoire army and the rebels who control the north of the country reached a disarmament agreement Saturday, officials said, and a crucial step in the return to peace for the civil war-ravaged African nation. The deal which officials said could open the way to the holding of a crucial presidential election in October, involves a timetable for disarming some 40,000 rebel fighters and 5,000 pro-government militants. Disarmament has been a crucial, and missed, step in the effort to reconcile the divided country since a failed rebel uprising in September 2002 unleashed a civil war.
— AFP