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Sri Lanka’s main Marxist party Thursday quit the 14-month-old coalition government to protest sharing aid with Tamil Tiger rebels, but kept the door open for reconciliation with the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga.
   The JVP, or People’s Liberation Front, said its decision to leave had gone into effect at midnight, leaving Kumaratunga’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party as a minority administration backed by smaller parties.
   JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe said the party might still return to the fold if the president agreed to reconsider her plan for a joint mechanism with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   ‘This is not the first nor the last alliance between the SLFP and the JVP,’ Amarasinghe told reporters here.
   However, he said the JVP’s 39 legislators would take their seats alongside the opposition as an independent entity, but declined to say how they would vote in the 225-member assembly.
   Amarasinghe said the party strongly believed that Kumaratunga’s plan to share aid with the rebels through a joint mechanism would compromise the country’s sovereignty and national security.
   ‘The LTTE is not going to perform miracles when they join the mechanism,’ Amarasinghe said. ‘The LTTE has a warfare machinery, but not a welfare machinery.’
   Amarasinghe said the JVP’s withdrawal from the coalition could lead to Kumaratunga losing her grip on power ‘within weeks’ in the national parliament as well as on several local council bodies.
   Kumaratunga in a letter to the JVP Wednesday vowed she would go ahead on the aid-sharing deal and asked her Marxist coalition partner to change its hardline stand.
   The withdrawal of the party has not led to the immediate collapse of the government because Chandrika has secured the support of others in the parliament to survive.
   ‘We have made it clear that we will not make use of this crisis to bring the government down,’ a spokesman from the right-wing opposition United National Party said.
   After the split, the party represents the largest single group in the assembly with 88 legislators compared to 66 of Kumaratunga’s own SLFP.
   ‘Quite to the contrary, we want the president to establish the ‘joint mechanism’ as quickly as possible,’ the spokesman said.
   International donors who pledged three billion dollars in aid to rebuild Sri Lanka’s tsunami-hit coastal areas have asked the government and the rebels to set up the joint mechanism to ensure the equitable distribution of relief.
   The Colombo government is unable to carry out work in some of the areas of the island’s northeast without the cooperation of the guerrillas and need the proposed joint mechanism to undertake reconstruction work.
   There was no immediate reaction from the LTTE to the latest developments.
   Amarasinghe said the JVP’s four ministers would quit the cabinet ‘during the course of the day.’
   The JVP and the SLFP came to power in April last year after Kumaratunga sacked the previous right-wing UNP government charging it with making too many concessions to Tiger rebels in peace talks.
   A previous alliance between Chandrika and the JVP ended after just five weeks in October 2001 when she called snap elections.
   Chandrika has in the past accused the JVP of assassinating her actor-turned-politician husband in February 1988.
   The JVP led two uprisings against the government in 1971 and 1987. Both were crushed with the loss of some 80,000 lives. The Marxists eventually entered the political mainstream in 1994 and have since gained substantial support.

The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, said there was ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ in the long-standing dispute with India over Kashmir but warned flexibility was needed on both sides to resolve the issue.
   Musharraf, on the first visit to Australia by a Pakistani head of state, said a process of rapprochement was underway and there was a genuine desire for peace among the peoples of India, Pakistan and India’s Muslim-dominated Kashmir.
   ‘I am optimistic, I see light at the end of the tunnel, I only feel that if we show sincerity in our approach and show flexibility ... we can come to a central point of agreement,’ he told and Asia Society function in Sydney.
   ‘That means flexibility, giving up set positions, giving up fast, cemented positions of the past 50 years.
   ‘There are extremists on both sides who would derail the process, whatever’s decided, we need to be bold enough to stand up to them.’
   He said the Pakistani people were sentimentally and emotionally involved in fate of Kashmir and the issue had to be resolved.
   ‘The Kashmir dispute needs to be addressed, it relates to the fundamental rights of the Kashmiris’ he said. ‘It cannot be wished away.’
   Musharraf said he was suited to the role of peacemaker having had the ‘dubious distinction’ of serving in two of the three wars between Pakistan and India over Kashmir.
   ‘I am eminently qualified to bring peace because I understand the ravages of war,’ said.
   A delegation of moderate separatist leaders from revolt-hit Indian Kashmir was due to return home Thursday from a from a historic trip to Pakistan for talks about the region’s future.
   Kashmir has been wracked by separatist violence since 1989 in a revolt that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
   
   Musharraf said his military has ‘broken the back’ of al-Qaeda and reduced the terrorist organisation to small isolated bands hiding in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border
   Musharraf, on the first visit to Australia by a Pakistani head of state, called on the United States to help undermine one of the root causes of terrorism by resolving the Palestinian issue.
   The president said he valued his country’s role as a leading moderate Islamic state and was determined to stamp out terrorism and extremism.
   ‘Terrorism will be confronted with force, we have done that and we have been successful,’ Musharraf told an Asia Society function in Sydney.
   ‘Terrorists are on the run, al-Qaeda in the mountains; we got about 700 in our cities and deported them.
   ‘Then we went into the mountains, today 70,000 troops are operating in the mountains, we’ve paid a heavy price, 250 soldiers have died.
   ‘But ... we have occupied their sanctuaries, they are on the run.’
   Musharraf said al-Qaeda’s command structure had been disrupted, hampering its ability to act in a coordinated manner.
   ‘We have broken the back of al-Qaeda by breaking their lateral and vertical linkages, they are on the run,’ he said.

Myanmar’s military rulers have intensified their crackdown on political opponents and stepped up the arrests of activists, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said Thursday.
   Some 1,350 political prisoners are being held incommunicado, without access to lawyers and subjected to torture or mistreatment, said an Amnesty report released three days before pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's 60th birthday.
   The Nobel laureate is the best-known of the political prisoners, having spent most of the last 15 years under house arrest, and her supporters are organizing worldwide protests on her birthday Sunday to call for her release.
   Five opposition members of parliament-elected in 1990 polls but never allowed to take office-were jailed in February and March, more than in the previous 21 months, the report said.
   'Myanmar's political prisoners are being held hostage by the authorities,' said Amnesty's secretary general Irene Khan.
   'The continued use of detention to remove senior leaders from the political process is a major obstacle in resolving the political deadlock that has existed in the country since 1988,' she said in a statement.
   'The justice system, which should be protecting the human rights of all the citizens of Myanmar, is being systematically misused to deny and restrict the right to peaceful exercise of freedom of expression, association and assembly.'
   At least 10 ethnic Shan leaders were also arrested in February, including Khun Tun Oo, the leader of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy party.
   Other prominent prisoners include 75-year-old Win Tin, jailed since July 1989 for trying to tell the United Nations about human rights abuses in Myanmar, Amnesty said.
   Late last year the junta released nearly 20,000 prisoners following a purge which ousted prime minister Khin Nyunt, but only 110 of them were believed to be political prisoners.
   Meanwhile, Britain on Thursday demanded that Myanmar release detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who turns 60 at the weekend, labelling her treatment by the ruling junta 'indefensible'.
   Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent some years living in Britain, where her two half-British sons are still based, has spent most of the last 15 years under house arrest, and has been largely cut off from the outside world for the past two.

China Thursday stepped up its opposition to any hasty expansion of the United Nations Security Council, and vowed to fight for increased representation by developing countries.
   State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, the former foreign minister, said the purpose of any reform must be to strengthen rather than weaken the United Nations.
   ‘Any plan must take the opinion of most countries as a basis and have broad consensus, which is the most pure manifestation of democracy in international relations,’ he said at a meeting of the Chinese-Arab Cooperation Forum here.
   ‘It will inevitably intensify the conflict among many countries if an immature plan is put to the vote or adopted.
   ‘The United Nations will find it difficult to operate normally with its authority and influence severely weakened. We would not like to see such a result and that should be avoided through strenuous efforts.’
   Earlier this month China said it would block any move to give Japan, India, Brazil and Germany—the so-called Group of Four—permanent seats in an enlarged United Nations Security Council.
   The Security Council currently has five members with the right to veto—China, the United States, France, Britain and Russia—as well as 10 rotating non-permanent members without veto power.
   Only the General Assembly can change the makeup of the council, by a two-thirds vote of the 191 member states, although any of the five permanent members could block the reform simply by withholding its approval.
   China has long advocated multilateralism and a stronger representation of developing countries in the Security Council and Tang, cited by Xinhua news agency, repeated this stance.
   ‘That is why the expansion of the council was put on the agenda,’ he said.

Australian scientists say they have found a way to make blood cells in volume out of human master cells, which could eventually lead to production of safe blood cells for transfusions and organ transplants.
   Synthetically produced red blood cells would, in theory, overcome the concerns about dangerous infections that can be transmitted from blood donors to patients worldwide.
   But researchers said it would probably take years for scientists to get to the stage where blood cells could be made in large enough quantities for transfusions.
   ‘What would be nice is if it opens the possibility for the future of making large quantities of blood cells in a controlled environment which could be used to treat patients,’ said Andrew Elefanty, who led the research at Monash University in Melbourne.
   Writing in the US journal Blood, the researchers said they were able to turn human embryonic stem cells into red and white blood cells using a system that makes more blood cells more rapidly and more safely, with fewer animal ingredients, than others have done.
   ‘The other thing we think is important is that the way we’ve made the cells develop into blood is something which could be applied to other types of cells as well,’ Elefanty said.
   The team’s system was able to stimulate the stem cells specifically into becoming red or white cells.
   Elefanty said the research showed that the path that human embryonic stem cells take in becoming blood cells was similar to experiments done in other animals, like mice.
   While other researchers have used serum from cows as the medium for growing cells, the Monash team used a cocktail of salt and electrolyte solutions with amino acids and fats.
   The system was not completely free of animal proteins, as the albumin was purified from cows. The team plans to use synthetic albumin eventually when it becomes available.

The Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo, said Thursday she would not testify at a congressional hearing into allegations she stole last year’s elections, accusing the opposition of trying to sabotage the economy.
   The House of Representatives had asked Arroyo whether she wanted to take the stand at a planned public hearing next week intended to probe the authenticity of illegally tapped telephone conversations released by the opposition.
   In the recording, Arroyo allegedly asked a senior election official to make sure she came out on top in the May 2004 presidential vote. Election officials later declared her the winner over movie star challenger Fernando Poe.
   Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said that the president would not attend the public hearing.
   ‘We respect the investigation initiated by our lawmakers, but to insist on the president’s response relative to this dubious audiotape is inappropriate as far as we are concerned,’ Bunye said in a statement.
   ‘The real issues are, first, whether the president cheated in the last election, which she did not, and second, whether a destabilisation plot exists and it does exist.’

The UN atomic agency signed Thursday an agreement with Saudi Arabia that limits inspections of its nuclear facilities, limitations the United States, EU and Australia had resisted, diplomats said.
   The signing at the 35-nation board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency ends months of haggling over Saudi Arabia signing a Small Quantities Protocol, an arrangement in effect since 1971 to reduce inspections in nations with small nuclear programmes.
   Saudi Arabia, a key state in the tense Middle East, is not believed to be a direct nuclear proliferation threat, but diplomats were seeking to calm fears amid a major battle of wills with nearby Iran, which US officials suspect of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Stalinist North Korea, which is under US pressure to return to nuclear disarmament talks, said Thursday that Washington’s ‘hostile’ policy towards it remains unchanged.
   The North cites what it calls US hostility as the main reason for its year-long boycott of the six-nation talks aimed at halting its nuclear weapons programme.
   ‘The US hostile policy against our republic has not changed at all,’ the number two leader Kim Yong-Nam was quoted by South Korean pool reports from Pyongyang as saying.
   ‘(The United States) puts pressure on us in various sectors such as politics, economics and military. But we are unfazed and stepping up economic construction.’

European Union leaders had billed the summit as a chance to renew their vows of unity after French and Dutch voters soundly rejected a proposed constitution for Europe.
   Instead, Thursday’s summit risks degenerating into an unsightly squabble over the EU’s $120 billion annual budget.
   France refuses cuts in the generous handouts to its farmers; Italy says it will veto a deal that axes aid to its poor south; Germany wants to reduce its contribution to the EU’s accounts; Britain is clinging to the $6 billion rebate former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, won a decade ago by telling the continentals: ‘we want our money back!’
   The bickering has exasperated the EU, which is desperate to show the drive for a united Europe can bounce back from its mauling by the French and Dutch.
   On the eve of the summit, the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, pleaded for unity.
   ‘If we don’t achieve this, the union will be involved in permanent crisis and paralysis,’ he told a news conference. ’I appeal to all governments; each must contribute to find a solution.’
   Thursday’s talks are scheduled to focus on the future of the constitution, leaving Friday for the budget battle. EU nations are split over whether to press ahead with the charter’s ratification.
   France, Poland and Germany have said the other countries should go ahead with their own votes on the constitution, which must be ratified by all EU members in order to come into effect. However, the leaders of Denmark and Portugal are considering following the British prime minister, Tony Blair, in freezing national referendum plans.
   Ten nations have ratified the constitution; Spain in a referendum and the others in parliamentary votes.
   ‘Stopping the ratification process now would threaten further integration of the EU,’ the Czech prime minister, Jiri Paroubek, told parliament in Prague.
   The Czechs and Spanish are proposing a one-year extension of the 2006 deadline for the constitution’s ratification by all 25 members.
   Barroso also called for ‘pause for reflection’ on the constitution – a document which supporters defend as essential for streamlining EU decision-making and detractors criticize as a blueprint for a bureaucratic super-state.
   The constitution debate has hardened governments’ position in the fight over EU funding, as leaders heed voters’ concerns that decisions from the EU’s Brussels headquarters override their national interests.
   Determined to fight, the French president, Jacques Chirac, insists the agriculture subsides that eat up half the EU’s budget – and favour French farmers – are untouchable.
   Chastened Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, insists his compatriots – already the biggest contributors to the EU budget – will not have to pay more to Brussels. Blair threatens to veto any deal that tampers with Britain’s rebate.
   In a speech to the German parliament before the summit’s opening in Brussels, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder conceded that he had ‘little hope’ of his country’s EU partners reaching a compromise on the bloc’s 2007-2013 spending.
   Schroeder singled out Britain and that country’s lucrative budget rebate as the culprit.

Iranians vote Friday in the tightest presidential election in the Islamic republic’s history, with conservative frontrunner Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani facing a tough twin challenge from pro-reform and hardline candidates.
   A former president and long considered a sure-fire winner, Rafsanjani was expected to be forced into an unprecedented second round run-off with either reformist doctor Mostafa Moin or hardline former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
   But Rafsanjani, 70, is hoping his image as a savvy deal-maker and pragmatic centrist can lure the voters who want to see the country—under pressure over its nuclear programme—ease its way out of international isolation.
   With campaigning banned on the day before the election, Moin’s camp was anxiously waiting to see if its natural support base—pro-reform youth disgruntled by broken promises of change—would be motivated to vote.
   While opinion polls in Iran are to be treated with the utmost of caution, they have indicated Rafsanjani will fall far short of the 50 per cent required to win outright amid a late charge by both Qalibaf and Moin.
   After what has been a fiercely-fought election campaign, the president, Mohammad Khatami, issued a stark warning that an ‘organised movement’ was bent on disrupting the vote, already marred by smear campaigns and violence.
   ‘I see with regret and worry from the reports that it seems there is an organised movement to hurt and to harm the healthy and the glorious process of the elections,’ he said, quoted by official media.
   The infringements ‘include disruption of gatherings, beating people up, the distribution of illegal pamphlets, spreading of lies in order to ruin the reputation of candidates regardless of their political inclination,’ he said.
   There is little doubt Iran has never known an election campaign like this—finely balanced until the very last moment and with candidates using every conceivable media outlet to spread their message.
   The country has been plastered with colourful campaign posters of the candidates while the state broadcasting apparatus has, for the first time, given the hopefuls a relatively equal say.

The US House of Representatives has rebelled against president for a second time in just three weeks by voting to shield libraries and bookstores from government investigators trying to collect information on terrorism suspects.
   By a vote of 238-187, the chamber on Wednesday approved an amendment to a bill funding the justice department that prohibits it from using a section of the USA Patriot Act enabling agents to gain access to customer reading records from US libraries and bookstore.
   The vote in defiance of a presidential veto threat, followed last month’s passage of legislation allowing new federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, also in spite of Bush’s repeated threats to veto it.
   Enacted barely six weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the USA Patriot Act is seen by the Bush administration as a key legal tool in the war on terror.
   It gives the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other US law enforcement agencies greater search and surveillance powers by streamlining procedures and eliminating red tape. But critics have charged that the law threatens to undermine key civil liberties by making Americans more vulnerable to government intrusion.
   Section 215 of the act has drawn particularly strong fire because it has empowered federal agents to access the reading records of Americans in both libraries and bookstores after securing an order from a secret court.
   A similar amendment to protect US readers, offered by independent Congressman Bernie Sanders last year, failed to pass by just one vote.
   But on Wednesday, the pendulum clearly swung in his favour as 38 Republicans joined most of the Democrats in a bid to remedy the situation.
   ‘The passage of this amendment helps reign in an administration intent on chipping away at the very civil liberties that define us as a nation,’ an elated Sanders said in a statement.
   ‘We must do all we can to protect Americans from terrorism, but we must do it in a way that does not undermine the basic constitutional rights that makes us a free country,’ he added.
   The amendment passed just one day after the White House publicly threatened to veto the whole bill that funds the justice, state and commerce departments, if the Sanders measure ever saw the light of day.

The full spectrum of Russian political parties, from the Communists to rightists, has joined forces to call on President Vladimir Putin to do away with ‘political censorship’ and provide air time on television channels.
   Russia’s committee on defending the freedom of expression, created on May 22 and uniting 35 political groups and rights watchdogs, on Wednesday voted for a declaration addressed to the Russian leader and a letter due to be sent to television channels.
   The text calls for the ‘abolition of political censorship both open and hidden, in television, radio and press,’ as well as the ‘abolition of blacklists of
   subjects and people forbidden on central television channels’ now mostly controlled by the state.
   The committee also demanded a ‘return to live discussions on federal broadcasters with participation of representatives from a larger spectrum of civil organisations, associations and political parties.’
   The vote followed a spirited discussion, with Alexander Ryklin of the ‘2008 the free election’ committee arguing that it was wrong
   even to address Putin on the issue because doing so would amount to an acknowledgment of his authority over the media.
   However the leader of the Yabloko liberal party, Grigory Yavlinsky, warned that the fight for freedom of expression had to begin, while Oleg Kulikov of the Communist party pointed out that the fact that such diverse groups got together at all on the issue was progress in its own right.
   So far all attempts to form a union of opposition parties have failed.
   Since Putin’s ascension to power in 2000, broadcasts of political debates and discussions have gradually disappeared or been toned down, with only the Moscow press remaining fairly independent.

British police fear that African children are being smuggled into the country to be used as human sacrifices, while others are killed after being labelled witches, a report said on Thursday.
   A confidential investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police warned that officers faced a ‘wall of silence’ because of fear within the groups concerned, according to BBC radio, which said it obtained a leaked copy of the document.
   The report follows the jailing earlier this month of three people convicted of torturing an eight-year-old orphan brought to Britain from Angola, who they accused of being a witch.
   According to the BBC, police began the investigation following the death in 2000 of Victoria Climbie, who was tortured to death by her great aunt after being sent to London from Ivory Coast.
   Officers in the capital were also alerted after the torso of a young African boy was found in the Rover Thames in 2001 following what experts believe was a ritualistic killing.
   The police probe, compiled with the help of social workers, rights lawyers and race relations experts in ethnic minority groups, was described by the BBC report as ‘absolutely chilling’.
   Among claims in the investigation were that young boys were brought into the country to be used for sacrifices inside churches, and that other youngsters were trafficked as domestic slaves.
   Others were feared murdered because their parents and careers believed them to be possessed by evil spirits.
   According to the BBC, the authors of the report point out that the claims are only allegations, but note that there were ‘countless examples’ of such forms of abuse.
   A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman confirmed that the report had been compiled, but said it would not be published until later this month.
   In May, police investigating the child’s torso found in the Thames said that enquiries to schools in London found that around 300 boys of African origin could not be accounted for.
   There was nothing to necessarily suggest that the children had been murdered, but a lack of immigration records made it impossible to trace them, officers said.
   The BBC cited John Azah, an independent adviser to London police on the issue, as warning there were worries the police were only touching the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
   ‘A few weeks ago the Met (Metropolitan Police) put out a number of 300 black children missing from schools,’ he said.
   ‘There’s no evidence that any of these children have been traced. Therefore perhaps there’s something terrible happening out there which we are not aware of.’

Some 50 children per day are raped in South Africa as the country struggles with the legacy of apartheid, AIDS and an influx of sexual material into a society which remains somewhat puritanical.
   That is according to the official figures, which specialist groups say grossly underestimate the true scale of the phenomenon depicted in police reports.
   Regular police reports recount girls as young as five being raped, sometimes by boys who are barely in their teens.
   South Africa is notorious for the number of rape cases and, according to Captain Percy Morokane, some 40 per cent of the victims, or 20,000 a year, is under the age of 18.
   But according to organisations such as Rape Crisis, the total of all rapes reported, more than 52,000 a year, is far from the real figure which they put at more than a million.
   Luke Oambrecht, head of the Teddy Bear Clinic, part of Johannesburg’s hospital service which treats young rape victims, says that 91 per cent of perpetrators are people who know the child.
   Of them, ‘about 20 per cent are people acting in the capacity of father in other words, the mother’s boyfriend, the mother’s living partner, the stepfather, the biological father.
   ‘And another 20 per cent are juveniles under 18 years old, other children, which is another worry.’

United Nations nuclear monitors say Iran has admitted to misleading them over its experiments with plutonium.
   The UN’s nuclear watchdog is expected to confirm later that Iran continued experimenting with plutonium – a key component of atomic bombs - until 1998.
   Iran had previously told the body it had ended its experiments in 1993.
   Correspondents say these latest inconsistencies in Iran’s account will fuel suspicions about the real aims of its nuclear programme.
   Iranian presidential favourite Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has told the BBC that Iran did not report all nuclear work.
   ‘It’s possible that at times, Iran has not reported its activities,’ Rafsanjani told the BBC’s News night television programme.
   And he accused the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, of neglecting its duty to help Iran make peaceful use of nuclear technology.
   Mr Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president seen as a frontrunner in Friday’s presidential election, insisted his country would not abandon its nuclear programme.
   But, he said, there was no risk of war with the US because Iran was not pursuing a nuclear bomb.
   According to a draft speech to be delivered on Thursday to the IAEA’s board of governors, the agency’s deputy director Pierre Goldschmidt will confirm that Tehran has changed its version of events.

The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice leaves, Friday on her first major Middle East trip seeking to boost momentum for US efforts to bring peace and democratic reform to the volatile region.
   Rice will visit the West Bank, Jerusalem, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia before stopping in Brussels for a conference on Iraq and London for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrial powers.
   It will be Rice’s first big swing through the Middle East since becoming chief US diplomat in January. She made a brief stop in Israel and the West Bank in February and a lightning trip to Iraq in May.
   The six-day journey will hit the pillars of US Middle East policy, from the quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace to the drive to stabilise Iraq and nurture reforms in conservative Arab states.
   If the United States has been basking in a fledgling spurt of pro-democracy sentiment in the region since Iraq’s landmark elections in January, critics say the movement appears to have lost some steam.

Superstar Michael Jackson might leave the United States following his acquittal on child molestation charges this week, his brother Jermaine Jackson said Wednesday.
   ‘I would be right with him,’ Jermaine Jackson replied when asked by CNN presenter Larry King if his famous brother might leave America after his ordeal. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Jermaine Jackson added.
   Jaackson was Monday cleared of 10 charges including child molestation and plotting to kidnap his accuser’s family in a stunning defeat for prosecutors. Jackson denied all charges.

Three killed in Lanka violence
Unidentified gunmen shot dead three people in two separate incidents in eastern Sri Lanka in suspected factional violence among Tamil rebels, a defence ministry spokesman said Thursday. Two men loyal to the main faction of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were shot dead in the eastern town of Kalmunai Wednesday, spokesman Daya Ratnayake said. He said the third man who was gunned down was believed to be a supporter of a splinter group from the main rebel outfit. The killings came a day after Sri Lanka’s main international donors asked the Colombo government and Tamil Tiger rebels to take action to stop escalating violence and stem a wave of political killings undermining a fragile truce.
— AFP

Laden, Mullah Omar not in Afghanistan: US
Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are not in Afghanistan, the US ambassador said Thursday, a day after a top Taliban commander said the pair were alive and well. ‘Mullah Omar is not in Afghanistan. I do not believe that Osama is in Afghanistan,’ envoy Zalmay Khalilzad told a press conference. Khalilzad did not say where the two were thought to be hiding but added that the hunt for bin Laden continued. ‘Symbolically, it is very important that he is brought to justice,’ he said, adding that progress had been made in the fight against the al-Qaeda network, with some of its top leaders arrested and its financial capabilities weakened.
— AFP

One killed in Cambodia school hostage standoff
A Canadian child and two gunmen were killed on Thursday as Cambodian troops and police stormed a school in the resort town of Siem Reap to end a six-hour siege near the Angkor Wat temples, the police said. Witnesses said volleys of gunfire erupted at the school compound shortly before about two dozen policemen rushed out of the gates clutching children in their arms, in a confused ending to the drama. Six masked gunmen had stormed into the Siem Reap International School at around 9am and taken a teacher and 29 young pupils hostage, many of them children of expatriate hotel workers. Somehow, during the melee, the Canadian child was killed.
— Reuters

Jharkhand mine flooding kills 14
Fourteen miners were feared dead when a wall collapse flooded a mine in Jharkhand, a government official said on Thursday. Rescue officials were trying to pump out the water from the mine in Pataratu town in the mineral-rich state of Jharkhand after the mine was flooded on Wednesday, said NN Pandey, commissioner of Hazaribagh district. There was no contact with the miners, he added.
— Reuters

Australian military faces shake-up
The Australian military faces a major shake-up of its justice system after a senate committee Thursday issued a scathing report on widespread allegations of serious abuses of power. The bipartisan committee called for reform after considering submissions detailing suicides, racism and violence, major illicit drug use, serious abuses of power in training schools, flawed prosecutions and poor investigations. Senate opposition leader Chris Evans said he fully supported recommendations to strip the Australian Defence Force of much of its power to investigate allegations against its own members.
— AFP

Bomb-laden US military jet crashes
A US military jet carrying four 225 kilogram (500-pound) bombs Wednesday crashed into a residential suburb in the western US state of Arizona, forcing the evacuation of 1,300 homes, authorities said. The US Marine Corps Harrier jump jet ploughed into a garden of a house in the city of Yuma, injuring one civilian on the ground, but the pilot walked away for the crash site, military spokesmen said.’ A Harrier crashed in residential central Yuma,’ Marine Corps Private First Class Robert Botkin said. ‘The pilot ejected safely and walked away.’ But the spokesman for the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma said:’ They are evacuating a one-mile (1.6 kilometres) radius around the crash site as the jet was carrying live ordnance.’
— AFP

Five decapitated in Brazilian prison riot
Rioting inmates demanding transfers from an overcrowded prison decapitated five fellow prisoners and displayed their heads on the roof of their jail in southern Brazil, in addition to seizing 11 guards hostage. The police said the prison riot, which began on Tuesday, ended at midday Wednesday. The 11 guards were released unharmed. Police did not say whether they met the hostage-takers’ demands. The heads were displayed to passers-by on Tuesday, authorities said, as inmates demanded that prisoners who had served two thirds of their sentences be transferred to other facilities where regular leaves are allowed.
— AFP

Bird flu found in Indonesian man
Indonesia has confirmed its first case of bird flu in humans. A farm worker in South Sulawesi has tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, although he has shown no outward symptoms of the disease. In the past 18 months at least 53 people across Asia are known to have died of bird flu - all of them in Cambodia, Vietnam or Thailand. Millions of chickens and ducks have been slaughtered in an effort to control the spread of the disease. Indonesia’s agriculture ministry has reported sporadic H5N1 outbreaks in birds in various parts of the country, including Sulawesi, in the first three months of this year.
— BBC

Veteran civil servant declared HK next leader
Veteran civil servant Donald Tsang was declared Hong Kong’s new leader by election officials Thursday after securing the overwhelming support of a Beijing-backed committee that selects the Chinese territory’s chief executive. In a short statement, the Electoral Affairs Commission’s Returning Officer, Justice Carlye Chu Fun-ling said Tsang had been declared victor after emerging as the only valid candidate from a preliminary nomination round. Justice Chu said the popular Tsang, who had long been groomed to succeed former leader Tung Chee-hwa, had secured the backing of 674 members of the 800-strong election committee of mostly Beijing loyalists. Two other would-be candidates pulled out of the race on Wednesday after declaring they had failed to win the support of the 100 delegates needed to be including on the candidates’ list.
— AFP