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Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels reacted angrily Sunday to the election of hardline the president, Mahinda Rajapakse, and his inaugural speech, saying they showed the country’s Sinhalese majority had no understanding of Tamil aspirations for a homeland.
   Rajapakse, after assuming office Saturday, reiterated his opposition to the Tamil Tigers’ demand for an independent state on the Indian Ocean island. But he also said he did not want to return to war.
   The rebels have demanded wide autonomy in the country’s northeast, where most of the 3.2 million ethnic Tamils live, saying they can only prosper away from the domination of the Sinhalese majority.
   ‘The pillars of the Tamil demand, namely, Tamil homeland, Tamil nation, and Tamil self-determination will never be accepted by them,’ the rebels said Sunday on their official Web site, referring to Rajapakse’s hard-hitting speech and his supporters.
   ‘There is no space to talk of a federal solution,’ they added.
   Rajapakse narrowly defeated opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who favoured granting the rebels more autonomy. An election boycott by the rebels prevented thousands of ethnic Tamils from casting ballots.
   Rajapakse sought the support of hardline Sinhalese Buddhist and Marxist groups by promising to review the Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire that has grown increasingly fragile in recent months. The truce brought an end to fighting after nearly two decades of civil war.
   The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels have fought since 1983 for a Tamil homeland in the northeast, where they already run a de facto state. The war has claimed some 65,000 lives. The government and the rebels held six rounds of inconclusive peace talks before they were halted in April 2003 over the rebels’ sweeping demands for autonomy.
   Most of Sri Lanka’s 14 million Sinhalese are Buddhists who live in the southern and central parts of the tropical island.
   In a speech after taking the oath of office Saturday, Rajapakse said he wanted an honourable peace.
   ‘War is not my method,’ he said. ‘I will initiate a new round of talks with all those who have a stake in the solution of the national question.’
   But Rajapakse said dividing the country is not the answer.
   ‘During the presidential election, the overwhelming majority of people said that the country should not be divided,’ Rajapakse said. ‘It is this aspiration that would be the basis of my policy for achieving peace.’
   He also rejected direct foreign tsunami aid to the insurgents, who have repeatedly demanded access to some of the $2 billion promised to Sri Lanka so they can run their own relief effort. The December 26 tsunami killed at least 31,000 people in Sri Lanka and swept away the homes or livelihoods of 1 million others.
   On Sunday, Rajapakse visited the Temple of Tooth in the Buddhist holy city of Kandy, the president’s spokesman Chandrapala Liyanage said. The shrine next to a lake houses what Buddhists believe is a tooth relic of Buddha, the founder of the faith. Rajapakse, a devout Buddhist, was also to visit other shrines.
   The Temple of Tooth was attacked and partly destroyed by a rebel bombing in 1998.
   Observers say Rajapakse faces a giant task trying to reunite the country after winning the election with only 50.29 per cent of the vote. Wickremesinghe, who favoured granting concessions to the rebels, received 48.38 per cent.

Myanmar has expanded its military presence in the centre of the country since the reclusive junta set up a new administrative capital in Pyinmana, north of Yangon, a source said Sunday.
   The military set up a new regional command in the mountainous town, 200 miles north of Yangon, to handle security operations there, the source close to the military said.
   While Pyinmana is already part of Myanmar’s regional command overseeing security in central areas, the military has decided to set up ‘Naypyidaw Regional Military Command’ in line with the creation of the new capital.
   ‘The Naypyidaw Regional Command with its headquarters in Pyinmana will control the region where the administrative capital and war office are located,’ the source said.
   The new Pyinmana command brings to 13 the number of Myanmar’s regional military commands.
   The relocation of the government has been under preparation for several months. But it is unclear why Myanmar’s military rulers have chosen to move the government to Pyinmana.
   On November 7, brigadier general Kyaw Hsan, Myanmar’s information minister, announced the military was moving the capital from Yangon to Pyinmana.
   In a country as secretive as Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962, theories have ranged from astrological predictions to worries over urban unrest in Yangon to fears of a US invasion.
   The US and European Union have imposed sanctions for its suppression of the pro-democracy movement, including the detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

China will not tolerate Taiwan’s independence, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, told his US counterpart George W Bush during a meeting.
   ‘I reaffirmed to the president, Bush that the Chinese government and Chinese people are committed to peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits,’ Hu said in a statement after their meeting.
   ‘And we’re ready to do our utmost with all sincerity to strive for the prospect of a peaceful reunification of our country.
   ‘This being said, we will by no means tolerate so-called Taiwan independence.’
   Meanwhile, Taiwan is keeping a close eye on the meeting between the Hu and Bush, the foreign ministry said.
   Taipei believes its interests will not be dented during Bush’s China visit, acting foreign ministry spokesman David Wang said, adding however: ‘It’s reasonable to be cautious towards the closed-door meeting because we don’t know what’s going on there.’
   But ‘as of now, our observation is that the two sides have not reached an agreement, with Bush voicing his stance on democracy and freedom while Hu renewing ‘one China’,’ Wang said.
   Under its ‘one-China’ policy, Beijing defines Taiwan as part of its territory to be reunified, by force if necessary.
   Hu told Bush he appreciated the US president’s stated opposition to Taiwan moving towards formal independence and his commitment to abiding by the ‘one-China’ policy, under which Beijing defines Taiwan as part of its territory.
   However, he urged Bush to continue to discourage Taipei’s pro-independence moves, arguing that doing so was in the interest of the United States.
   ‘To oppose and check so-called Taiwan independence and safeguard peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits serves the common interests of China and the United States,’ Hu said.
   Taiwan separated from mainland China in 1949 at the end of a civil war but Beijing insists it is still a part of its territory that must eventually be reunified, by force if necessary.
   Despite switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, the United States remains Taiwan’s biggest arms supplier and is bound by US law to help the island defend itself against any attack.
   Beijing has said the Taiwan issue is at the core of Sino-US relations and is the most sensitive issue affecting the relationship.

Israel’s Labour party was set on Sunday to approve the withdrawal of its eight ministers from the ruling coalition as the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, pondered whether to quit his right-wing Likud party and go it alone in a general election early next year.
   With parliament due to be dissolved later this week, members of Labour’s central committee were to meet in Tel Aviv to rubber stamp the party’s decision to pull out of Sharon’s governing coalition.
   The decision to withdraw was made following this month’s surprise election of Amir Peretz as Labour’s new dovish leader—a move which has propelled the country towards early general elections.
   Labour’s eight ministers and three deputy ministers have already signed their resignation letters which are due to be submitted Monday, and will come into effect 48 hours later.
   As the country began gearing up for general elections, expected in February or March, Sunday’s headlines were dominated by the speculation over Sharon’s political future.
   The hawk-turned-pragmatist Israeli leader is widely expected to make an historic break from the right-wing faction he helped found, but which has increasingly become an albatross around his neck.
   Sharon has long been tipped to quit Likud, many of whose members are furious with him for pulling troops and Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
   Close aides say Sharon knows he will face massive opposition within party ranks if he tries to follow up the Gaza pullout with similar moves in the West Bank in the next term of parliament.

The number of new HIV cases in India, home to the second highest infections in the world, is far more than what official data shows and epidemics in some pockets were alarming, the UN AIDS chief said.
   India, which has 5.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS—second only to South Africa—announced earlier this year that new infections had fallen dramatically to 28,000 in 2004 from 520,000 in 2003, sparking disbelief among voluntary groups.
   Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, said he did not believe that India could have witnessed such a drop.
   ‘India having only 28,000 new infections is plainly impossible,’ Piot said in an interview late on Saturday.
   He said some districts across the country with populations of several million had about four per cent or more adults infected and a 400 per cent fall in 2004 would be a ‘miracle’.
   ‘There are a number of states where reporting of cases is weak,’ Piot said in Guwahati, during a visit to push authorities in the region to do more to fight AIDS.
   Piot did not say what UNAIDS felt the real number of new cases was in 2004. His comments came ahead of the release of the UN annual global report on AIDS in New Delhi on Monday.
   Piot said two of India’s most populous states—Uttar Pradesh and Bihar with a combined population of more than 250 million—had poor surveillance.
   ‘We don’t know exactly what is going on there,’ said Piot. ‘I don’t think there is a conspiracy to suppress information but it (surveillance) is not well-organised to say the least.’
   India’s state-run National AIDS Control Organisation says 0.92 per cent of the country’s adult population is living with HIV and there are six states, and possibly a seventh, with a infection rate of more than one per cent.
   Piot said the AIDS picture in India, which has 29 states and more than a billion people, was complicated with new infections falling in some areas and rising in others.
   For instance, new infections were falling in urban areas but rising in rural areas in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
   The spread of the deadly HIV virus was being fuelled by millions of poor male migrants who go to cities for work.
   Some of them get infected after visiting prostitutes and pass it on to their wives in rural areas, experts say.

A Japanese medical research team has discovered drinking a cup of coffee or two a day could lower the risk of high blood pressure, a report said Sunday.
   The team led by a researcher at Keio University conducted the study on 4,554 men aged from their 20s to 70s who visited Tokyo clinics for checkups on lifestyle-related disease from October 2003 to March 2004, the Tokyo Shimbun said.
   The study found that people who drank no coffee had the biggest ratio of high blood pressure, with the lowest risk of high blood pressure in the category drinking three cups or more, it said.
   ‘It would be good for young and middle-aged people to drink a cup of coffee or two everyday,’ the newspaper said, citing the researcher.
   ‘Chlorogenic acid, a type of polyphenol contained in coffee, is considered to have the effect of expanding blood vessels,’ it said.
   ‘But there also is a report that drinking coffee may lead to a cerebrovascular disorder for the elderly. Taking too much caffeine also induces excess stomach acid.’
   Another Japanese research team has found a cup of coffee a day halves the risk of colon cancer among women, according to a recent news report.

Pakistan is flush with the success of raising nearly six billion dollars to help it recover from last month’s massive earthquake, but the pressure is now on for it to deliver.
   The sum pledged at an international donors’ meet Saturday exceeded the government’s appeal for 5.2 billion dollars for reconstruction and ongoing relief after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people.
   Having been chastised by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, for a ‘weak response’ to the October 8 quake, a host of countries, international banks and other groups pledged more than 5.8 billion dollars in grants, loans and aid.
   ‘It was, from the point of view of Pakistan, a roaring success in that they actually obtained more pledges than they had asked for,’ political commentator Mohammad Afzal Niazi said.

The Vietnamese prime minister, Phan Van Khai, has warned that bird flu could spell national ‘disaster’ and said tardy health officials would be punished for failing to stem poultry outbreaks, the state press said Sunday.
   ‘If we let a human pandemic occur, it would be a huge disaster for the nation,’ Khai was quoted as saying by the communist party newspaper Nhan Dan at a government meeting on avian influenza Saturday.
   ‘The risk of a human pandemic would be very high if avian influenza is not checked in a timely manner in the country,’ he said. ‘The epidemic (among poultry) is continuing to break out and become more and more serious.’

Nepal’s veteran former prime minister GP Koirala said he has appealed to Maoist rebels to ally with mainstream parties to restore democracy in the insurgency-racked nation.
   King Gyanendra sacked the coalition government in February and seized power in a move he said was aimed at stemming the Maoist revolt.
   ‘I asked them to come to the political mainstream and I told them your future is only in mainstream politics,’ Koirala told reporters at the airport on his return to Kathmandu from a nine-day private visit to New Delhi.
   Koirala, who leads the Nepali Congress, Nepal’s largest democratic party, said he spoke to the Maoists by telephone. He did not say who he talked to or when the conversation took place.
   Koirala, who has served as premier of the Himalayan kingdom four times, made no comment on a statement by a Nepalese communist leader Friday that the rebels were willing to accept multi-party democracy and give up their armed struggle which has claimed more than 12,000 lives since 1996.

Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was sent home on bail on Saturday after being detained for violating restrictions imposed following his release from prison in 2004, a police spokesman said.
   Vanunu was taken for questioning on Friday after border policemen spotted him on a bus passing through a West Bank checkpoint.
   ‘He was released on bail this evening by a court and is under house arrest at the moment,’ said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. ‘He will appear before the court tomorrow morning (Sunday) for a further hearing.’
   Vanunu all but blew away Israel’s nuclear secrecy by discussing his work at the Dimona reactor with a British newspaper in 1986.
   His disclosures to the Sunday Times led independent experts to conclude that Israel had 100 to 200 nuclear bombs. Israel, which does not comment on its atomic capabilities, jailed him for 18 years.
   ‘All the world knows about the nuclear weapons in Dimona. Nuclear weapons are not in Iran or Iraq, they are here in Israel,’ Vanunu told reporters.

Iran says it will not bow to UN nuclear agency demands to visit a military site in Tehran unless the UN provides ‘concrete proof’ to justify an inspection.
   The foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, nevertheless said a new report by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei does ‘not contain any negative points’ and insisted a two-year-old probe should be closed.
   The report also says Iran is still denying access to ‘military-owned workshops and research and development locations’. The IAEA wants to return to the Lavizan-Shian area in Tehran, site of a physics research centre that was dismantled and the ground razed before IAEA inspectors paid an initial visit in June 2004.
   ‘We only work within the framework of the safeguards, and if they come up with concrete proof within the framework of the safeguards and NPT we will consider it,’ Asefi said.
   Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is not obliged to provide access to such sites but has allowed some access as a ‘confidence-building’ measure.
   ‘They cannot just say we want to talk to this or that person and keep on dragging out the dossier. They should tell us their aims, and these aims should be towards closing the case,’ Asefi argued.
   Iran insists it only wants to make electricity, and is losing patience with the two-year-old IAEA probe of its activities. The agency has uncovered suspect activity, but no ‘smoking gun’ that proves a weapons programme.
   ‘We have cooperated with the IAEA and will continue doing so. But we will only work within the framework of the NPT and the safeguards, and will not accept anything further,’ Asefi repeated.
   The IAEA board of governors will meet this week to consider whether to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions for not complying with the NPT.
   Concerns over Iran’s activities have been raised by the submission by Tehran of a document which describes how to make what could be the explosive core of an atom bomb.
   The document—which Iran said came from a black market offer in 1987 that it never acted upon—gives ‘procedural requirements for... the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms,’ the IAEA report said.
   Asefi said the significance of the document was being exaggerated.
   The US and some of its allies, when they saw ElBaradei’s report did not contain any negative points, tried to tarnish it,’ he said.
   ‘There is no legal and rational reason to send Iran’s case to the Security Council. But we have a few days to go before the session and I do not rule out a politicisation of the case,’ he added.

Angela Merkel is to be elected as Germany’s first woman chancellor on Tuesday at the head of a coalition government tasked with turning round an ailing economy.
   Two months later than she hoped, the parliament will vote to make Merkel the first woman leader of a major European country since Edith Cresson had a brief stint as French prime minister in the early 1990s.
   When neither Merkel’s Christian Democrats nor the Social Democrats managed to build a working majority with their favoured partners after the September 18 general election, the two parties were eventually forced into their unusual marriage.
   ‘There is no meaningful alternative to the coalition with the SPD,’ Merkel said last Monday.
   But the 51-year-old trained scientist from the former communist East Germany will have to control a government of traditional political rivals last seen in the late 1960s.
   At least the unusual alliance will guarantee that the Bundesrat upper house of parliament will no longer block proposed reforms as it repeatedly did during the past seven years of the Social Democrat-Greens coalition.
   Having seen off the challenge of outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who initially refused to stand down, Merkel now faces a daunting task to inject new life into the biggest economy in the European Union.
   She has said her government will be judged on its record of bringing down an unemployment rate stuck above 11 per cent.

Iraqi leaders resumed efforts Sunday to prepare a reconciliation conference for the war-torn country, facing deep sectarian differences heightened by a wave of violence at home.
   The first of the three days of Arab League-sponsored talks on Saturday was marked by bitter recriminations between the war-torn country’s factions and a brief walkout from one session by Shiite and Kurdish delegations.
   Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, who was sacked earlier this year as head of Iraq’s Waqf or Islamic endowment body, told reporters that a February 25-March 1 date was being considered for the reconciliation conference itself.
   ‘We don’t have too high expectations. The purpose of this meeting is to develop an agenda. If we reach an agreed agenda, this will already be a big step,’ Iraqi government spokesman Leith Kubba said Saturday.
   Three committees tasked with preparing a wider reconciliation conference in Baghdad, with ‘building confidence’ and drafting the Cairo gathering’s final statement began meeting Sunday.
   Jawad al-Khalsi, an influential Shia imam who has been central to recent dialogue efforts, did not hide his disappointment when the first day of talks came to an end.
   ‘We are divided between parties who are opposed and others who are favourable to the occupation. But we’re still at square one since we were not given the opportunity to discuss in depth the crucial issue of a withdrawal timetable,’ he said.
   The Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, set the tone of the meeting at the opening on Saturday, when he firmly vetoed the participation of members of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime.
   Egypt and Arab League chief Amr Mussa had pressured the Iraqi government to allow former members of the now banned Baath party ‘with no blood on their hands’ to be included in the talks.
   ‘I appreciate Amr Mussa’s efforts that led to this meeting, but here’s what I tell him: it may be difficult to gather all the protagonists but it is even more difficult to deal with the reality on the ground, when the other is carrying arms and spilling blood,’ Jaafari said.
   His comments prompted an angry reaction from the Committee of Muslim Scholars, the leading Sunni religious authority in Iraq.
   The rest of the day was marked by deep confessional divisions and news of yet another deadly suicide bombing by the Sunni-dominated insurgency in Iraq targeting the majority Shiite community.
   A representative of the Baath party in Cairo told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television that his movement welcomed the planned reconciliation conference, although it did not officially take part in the talks.

British police continued to question five men and a woman on Sunday over the fatal shooting of a policewoman during a robbery in northern England, which has reignited debate over officers carrying firearms.
   All six were taken under armed guard on Sunday to west Yorkshire police stations for questioning over the killing of the officer and the wounding of a female colleague. The six were arrested Saturday in London.
   Senior police officers and politicians have rejected the idea of automatically arming police in the aftermath of the shootings.
   Sharon Beshenivsky, 38, died after being shot in the chest when she and colleague Teresa Milburn, 37, who was shot in the shoulder, tried to foil a robbery at a travel agency in Bradford on Friday.
   More firearms officers are needed on the streets of Britain, according to Jan Berry, chairwoman of the Police Federation, an organisation representing approximately 124,000 police officers in England and Wales.
   ‘We believe that the number of authorised officers remains too low.’
   Fewer than five percent of British police officers in England and Wales are trained to carry firearms, she added.
   Some 6.4 percent of London’s Metropolitan Police are authorised to use firearms, while 10 percent have firearm-related training, according to official data. The Met employs 31,141 officers throughout the British capital.
   ‘There are some areas that clearly face a greater risk from gun crime than others, where officers and the public are at a greater risk,’ Berry said, adding that would justify ‘increasing the number of firearms officers’.
   Around 160 policemen and women have been killed in service since 1900, according to Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency.

Branded a ‘lap dog’ of imperialism, the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, has earned contempt from leftist Latin American leaders for his close ties to the United States, and little in return from Washington.
   A plan to let more immigrants work legally in the United States—Mexico’s headline foreign policy goal—has become bogged down in Congress after five years of lobbying from Fox.
   That is despite Fox taking flak from critics of the United States in the region for defending US proposals for regional free trade. Mexico also feels let down by US criticism of its fight against drug gangs on the border.
   The president, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina this month harangued Fox for promoting a planned Americas-wide trade pact known as the FTAA which left-wing leaders complain will be slanted to benefit the United States.
   Mexico and Venezuela withdrew ambassadors last week as Chavez refused to apologise for calling Fox a US lap dog and warned, ‘Don’t mess with me, mister, or you’ll get stung.’
   The dispute was similar to a fight Fox had with Cuba last year about human rights and Mexico’s good relations with its northern neighbour.
   Although Fox has defied Washington over the war in Iraq, the former Coca-Cola executive is still seen as one of George W Bush’s main allies in Latin America, where public sentiment is wary of the US president.
   In spite of his pro-US credentials, Fox has failed to persuade the United States to overhaul immigration legislation to allow millions more Mexicans to work there legally.
   ‘That didn’t work very well for the administration of Fox. There is no question that Mexico was hoping for a lot more. It did not come away a winner from the United States over the past years,’ said Peter Hakim, head of the Inter-American dialogue think tank in Washington.
   Senior Mexican government officials acknowledge privately they doubt that US lawmakers will pass a planned guest worker program, a watered-down version of immigration reform sought by Mexico, in the year Fox has left in office.

Britain’s finance minister Gordon Brown is blocking efforts by Blair’s office to buy a new aircraft, nicknamed ‘Blair Force One,’ for his official trips, a newspaper reported Sunday.
   Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, made clear at a meeting last week that there would be no new funds to buy the jet and two other aircraft for ministers, according to The Sunday Times.
   Ministers currently borrow aircraft from 32 Squadron, known as the Queens Flight. But the ageing fleet is unable to fly long distances and the prime minister has often had to charter commercial jets for long-haul flights.
   Brown is arguing that at a time when public funds are tight, there are bigger priorities than ‘prestige’ travel for prime ministers, despite support for the plan from the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, the weekly said.
   Blair’s plane, likely to be a jet with up to 40 seats, would be equipped with beds and communications equipment, it added.
   However, ‘Blair Force One,’ a reference to the US presidential jet, ‘Air Force One,’ is not likely to take off anytime soon.
   ‘Gordon has thrown a spanner in the works and rejected plans to spend additional money,’ a treasury official was quoted as saying.

The killing brings the total death toll for UK soldiers in Iraq to 98.
   A British soldier has been killed and four were seriously injured following a roadside bomb attack in Basra, southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said.
   The MoD confirmed that the soldier died from injuries sustained in the attack, which occurred around 1230 local time.
   It said an investigation into the attack had already been launched. Army spokesman major Steve Melbourne said the attack was to the north of Basra.
   The latest killing brings the death toll for UK soldiers in Iraq to 98.
   The MoD spokesman would not comment on the extent of the injuries sustained by the four wounded soldiers.
   BBC security correspondent Paul Wood said the device was likely to be one of a new type of explosive device which has killed British soldiers since August.

Eight people were killed when a small airplane crashed in the Moscow region, officials at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport said early Sunday.
   Air traffic controllers lost contact late Saturday night with the Cessna 208 plane, which had six passengers and two pilots on board, the airport’s press service said in a statement.
   The plane, belonging to Ivolga-Avia airlines, was flying from the southern city of Voronezh and was due to land at Domodedovo.

The most active Atlantic hurricane season on record turned deadly again as at least nine people were killed and 14 others missing after Tropical Storm Gamma flooded parts of northern Honduras, authorities said Sunday.
   The government said it had made an urgent request for US helicopters to help rescue dozens of people left stranded on rooftops by floods and mudslides in the area of the Honduran northern Caribbean coast, said the Permanent Commission on Contingencies.
   Commission official Hugo Arevalo said the government had asked for assistance from the US army helicopters which operate from the Palmerola Air Base north of the capital.
   The helicopters took part in distributing emergency rations to victims of earlier hurricanes this year.
   More than 11,600 people have been evacuated from areas struck by tropical storm Gamma on Friday and Saturday, the commission said.
   Gamma, the 24th named storm in a record Atlantic hurricane season, was drifting erratically off the Honduras coast.
   In Cuba the Meteorological Institute warned Saturday that the storm could threaten the island as it was expected to move slowly northward.
   ‘Pay attention to the development of the coming weather system,’ because ‘the unusual storm comes with a cold front,’ said Jose Rubiera, head of storm predictions at the institute.

With the last of his turkeys slaughtered and ready for Thanksgiving, Rick Undesser has begun the tedious task of sanitising his farm.
   Pens are swept clean. Floors are scrubbed. Cages are bleached. Even the trucks get a wash.
   It is a ritual he goes through three times in spring and once in winter to make sure that each new batch of turkey chicks cannot be infected by the ones that came before.
   And it is just one in a long line of defences US poultry farmers have taken to protect their flocks from threats like the deadly avian influenza currently spreading across Asia and Europe.
   While the bio security measures promoted and enforced by the United States Department of Agriculture have not eliminated the possibility that the deadly avian flu will reach North America, they have greatly reduced the opportunity for the disease to spread among flocks, said Ron DeHaven, the administrator of the USDA’s animal and plant health inspection service.

Osama evades Pakistani troops
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist, has evaded capture by Pakistani troops by just 30 minutes as they zeroed in on him in a remote village close to the Afghan border, a media report claimed here on Sunday. Data from a mobile phone used by one of bin Laden’s closest aides helped the Pakistani troops to pinpoint his hideout but by the time they could mount a raid, the al-Qaeda chief had slipped away, ‘News of the World’ tabloid reported. Details of the operation earlier this year were revealed to American TV interviewer Daphne Barak by the Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, it said. ‘It was in the spring. We acted on intelligence reports and were close.
— PTI

Chinese leader urged to invite Dalai Lama
the US president, George W Bush, said Sunday that he had urged China’s leaders to invite the Dalai Lama to hear for themselves that the spiritual leader has ‘no desire’ for an independent Tibet. ‘I talked about the Dalai Lama. I thought it would be wise for the Chinese government to invite the Dalai Lama, so he can tell them exactly what he told me in the White House the other day, that he has no desire for independent Tibet,’ Bush told reporters. Bush, on an Asia tour, Sunday met the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. the vehicles managed to escape.
— AFP

Seven dead in China coal mine flood
Seven miners have been killed and another seven are missing after a coal mine flooded in north China’s Hebei province, state media reported Sunday. The latest disaster to strike China’s notoriously dangerous coal mining industry occurred around 5:00 am on Saturday in Xingtai City, Xinhua news agency said, citing local government officials. No reason for the accident was given. China’s mines, many of them illegal, are considered the world’s most dangerous, and work has become even riskier in recent years with demand for raw materials escalating to help fuel the nation’s economic growth. More than 6,000 miners died in accidents in China last year, according to previously released government figures.
— AFP

Communist guerrillas kill 10 in Philippines
Communist rebels killed 10 security personnel and wounded more than 20 people in separate attacks in the Philippines, the military said Sunday. New People’s Army guerrillas killed nine soldiers and wounded 20 people in an ambush on a military convoy in Calinog town on the central island of Panay late Saturday, said army spokesman major Bartolome Bacarro. The NPA fighters detonated a landmine and then fired on the army trucks, Bacarro said. An undetermined number of rebels were hit during the ensuing gunbattle, he said. In a separate clash, a policeman was killed and three others wounded on Saturday when they pursued a group of NPA rebels who had attacked a cellphone tower south of Manila, a military report said.
— AFP

Tension high in second round of Egypt election
Egyptian forces arrested 200 supporters of the Muslim Brothers before the second round of Egypt’s parliamentary election kicked off Sunday, amid fears of government attempts to curb the Islamist movement’s political surge. The focal point of the second phase of the month-long election was the Islamist bastion of Alexandria, where tensions were running high between supporters of the Muslim Brothers and the ruling National Democratic Party of the president, Hosni Mubarak. While the NDP’s dominance is not in doubt after securing 112 out of 164 seats up for grabs in the first phase, the officially banned but tolerated Brotherhood won a surprise 34 constituencies, twice its tally in 2000. With the second phase including many of their traditional strongholds, the Muslim Brothers could be on course to have 100 MPs in the 454-seat People’s Assembly.
— AFP

Bush to visit
Mongolia
The US president, George W Bush, will use his flying visit to Mongolia on Monday to show his nation’s support for a young democratic state that is sandwiched between powerful neighbours, analysts say. Bush will also take the opportunity during his three-hour visit, the first ever from a sitting US president to Mongolia, to thank the land-locked country for sending 180 troops to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, they say. ‘Mongolia has proven to be a stalwart ally in the war on terror,’ White House national security council spokesman Fred Jones said in the lead-up to Bush’s visit, which will come at the end of an Asian tour that has taken him to Japan, South Korea and China.
— AFP

Bosnia to mark 10 yrs since peace deal
Bosnia on Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the Dayton peace agreement which ended more than three years of bloody inter-ethnic war and divided the country into a shaky system of separate but equal entities. On November 21, 1995, the then presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia agreed on a US-brokered peace plan after marathon talks in Dayton, Ohio, concluding the war which left about 200,000 people dead and half the country’s people homeless. Bosnia’s leaders will again converge on the United States to mark the anniversary on Monday, but also to debate constitutional changes required to prepare the former Yugoslav republic for European integration.
— AFP

France’s Socialists reach consensus
France’s opposition Socialists, deeply split since a May referendum on the European constitution, patched up their divisions after a marathon meeting here early Sunday, leaders told journalists. Their three-day congress in this western city was aimed at finding a semblance of unity between three main tendencies ahead of the 2007 presidential elections as France emerges from one of its worst crises in recent history, with three weeks of rioting erupting in high-immigration suburbs. Party First Secretary Francois Hollande declared after five hours of closed-door negotiations: ‘There is now an alliance of all the Socialists, we have found a new dynamic, and it’s a collective success.’
— AFP

Uganda president to stand again
The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has said he will stand for re-election in next March’s polls. Museveni, who came to power 20 years ago, was due to step down but speculation had been rife for the past two years that he would stand again. His announcement comes at the end of a week of riots and controversy surrounding the arrest of his main political rival. Dr Kizza Besigye is in prison awaiting trial for treason and rape. It came as no surprise at all when Museveni announced that he would run for power in the forthcoming election. Addressing thousands of delegates from his political party, he said he was confident of victory.
— BBC