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Rioters in Pakistan went on the rampage for a second day Monday, ransacking buildings to protest the killing of a tribal leader in a military assault, officials said.
   The latest unrest came after a call for a general strike in Baluchistan province over the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a locally powerful leader who had been a leading a tribal insurgency.
   Rioters ransacked offices of state radio, a bank and a hotel, and damaged private property belonging to settlers from other provinces in the coastal town of Gwadar, a police official told AFP.
   Protesters also laid siege to about a dozen shops belonging to non-Baluchis in Kharan district while shops were damaged elsewhere, local police officials said.
   ‘There is a complete strike in Baluchistan,’ Baluch National Alliance leader Hasil Bizenjo told AFP on Monday. He said the people had registered their ‘strong protest’ over Bugti’s death.
   Shops were closed in southern Karachi city’s Baluch-populated areas where youths burnt tyres and pelted vehicles with stones, residents said.
   Police said three nationalist lawmakers were meanwhile taken into custody for ‘inciting’ shopkeepers to close for the strike, which came a day after widespread violence that left three people dead and saw hundreds arrested.
   Sunday’s clashes in Baluchistan, where a rebellion has simmered over the past two years, saw demonstrators torch buses and buildings, exchange fire with police and set off a bomb at a government office.
   Bugti had been leading a violent struggle against the central government of president Pervez Musharraf over the region’s natural resources. He was killed in a military strike in the restive province on Saturday.
   At least seven soldiers and 17 tribal insurgents were killed in the fighting that led to the death of Bugti, a colourful British-educated tribal chieftain who was in his 80s.
   Baluchistan has been rocked by a near two-year insurgency blamed on autonomy-seeking tribesmen who also want a greater share of the gas-rich province’s natural resources.
   Officials say hundreds of people have died in the unrest that erupted in late 2004, which has seen a series of attacks on gas pipelines, railway tracks and government installations.
   The information minister, Muhammad Ali Durrani, said Bugti had not been targeted but that he had been killed ‘as a result of an encounter which took place due to the resistance against the state.’
   Analysts said they believed Bugti’s killing would likely radicalise the insurgency.
   Bugti had fled his former stronghold earlier this year following a crackdown by the military.
   The clampdown was sparked by a rocket attack during a visit by President Musharraf to Baluchistan in December.
   Pakistan crushed a similar rebellion by ethnic Baluch tribesmen in the 1970s, creating ill-feeling that has lasted until the present day.

At least two Sri Lankan soldiers were killed and 41 wounded as security forces launched a ground offensive Monday to push back guerrilla artillery threatening a strategic naval port, officials said.
   Troops backed by multi-barrel rocket launchers and artillery guns moved towards the rebel-held town of Sampur at the southern edge of the Koddiyar bay where the main naval port of Trincomalee is located, officials said.
   ‘A ground offensive was launched this morning and troops are moving towards Sampur,’ a military source said. ‘Troops are expecting close quarter fighting, but the casualties so far had been due to artillery and mortar bombs.’
   Hospital sources said 43 soldiers with shrapnel wounds were brought to hospitals in the region. Two of them died.
   Troops mounted the offensive with a barrage of rockets and artillery towards Sampur, a strategic location used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to hit the Trincomalee naval port and the nearby military airport.
   A military official in Trincomalee, 260 kilometres northeast of the capital, said the latest offensive was part of a move to secure the Trincomalee military facilities against long-range attacks by the Tigers.
   ‘The objective is to neutralise the heavy Tiger artillery pieces located at Sampur,’ the official said.
   There was no immediate reaction from the Tigers to the latest offensive in the Trincomalee district. It was also not clear if the guerrillas suffered any casualties.
   The rebels have shelled Trincomalee port, the main naval base for troops in the embattled northeast and the starting point for soldiers and cargo headed for the northern peninsula of Jaffna.
   Trincomalee, which was a staging post for Allied forces during the two world wars, has an oil storage facility that provides energy security to this nation of 19.5 million people.
   The oil tank farm is also within striking distance from Sampur, less than 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Trincomalee naval facility across the Koddiyar bay. The port was hit by Tiger artillery this month.
   The Tigers launched a major offensive against military camps in and around the Muslim-majority town of Muttur, southeast of Sampur earlier this month.
   President Mahinda Rajapakse told international donors last week that Sampur should not be allowed to be used by the rebels to threaten Trincomalee.
   The latest long-range attacks came a day after the Red Cross ferried 150 foreign nationals to Trincomalee from the Jaffna peninsula where troops and Tigers have been trading fire across a de facto front line since August 11.
   Passengers spoke of relief at leaving amid food shortages and communication problems as sporadic fighting continued on the peninsula where more than 40,000 have fled their homes in the worst violence since a February 2002 ceasefire.
   Both the government and the Tigers have said that they are committed to upholding the truce and described the latest upsurge in fighting as defensive action.
   Nordic truce monitors have said that the ceasefire is only holding even though at least 1,500 people have been
   killed in fighting since December when clashes began escalating.
   More than 60,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka’s drawn out Tamil separatist conflict and political talks on ending the violence have been on hold since April 2003.

The French president, Jacques Chirac, warned on Monday that fighting would resume in Lebanon unless there was a long-term settlement involving all parties in the conflict.
   ‘The choice is between a resumption of hostilities, creating a permanent rift between two neighbouring peoples, and the political option of a global and durable settlement,’ he told a meeting of French ambassadors in Paris.
   Chirac, whose country co-sponsored UN resolution 1701 on the conflict, said the text offered ‘the framework for a durable settlement based on Israel’s security and Lebanon’s sovereignty over its whole territory.’
   ‘The resolution outlines a process which must lead to the disarmament of militias and the settlement of border questions, including that of the Shebaa Farms,’ a disputed territory controlled by Israel, Chirac said.
   The UN text, with its promise of a robust international force in south Lebanon, laid the ground for the August 14 ceasefire that ended 34 days of fierce fighting between Israel and the radical Shiite militia Hezbollah.
   France will command the UN Interim Force in Lebanon until February and is sending 2,000 soldiers to form one of its biggest contingents.
   France has strong historical ties to Lebanon and Chirac was a close personal friend of the country’s murdered former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
   In a wide-ranging foreign policy speech to the diplomatic corps, Chirac appealed to both Israel and Syria—which backs Hezbollah—to help uphold a lasting settlement.
   He repeated a call for Israel to lift its six-week air and sea blockade of Lebanon, aimed at cutting Hezbollah’s supply lines, saying it was ‘seriously harming the Lebanese economy and is preventing the return to normal’.
   The French leader also called for Syria, which backs Hezbollah, to ‘move beyond its isolationist logic’, saying the Middle East ‘needs Syria to be active in the service of peace and regional stability.’
   And the president called for a rapid meeting of the so-called Middle East quartet—European Union, United Nations, United States and Russia—to relaunch the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

A suspected suicide bomber killed at least 17 people and wounded almost 50 in a crowded bazaar in southern Afghanistan on Monday, the latest attack in a surge of violence in the Taliban heartland.
   Several children were among those killed or hurt in the blast in Lashkar Gah, capital of the country’s prime drug-growing province of Helmand.
   The head of the city’s emergency hospital, Rahmatullah, said at least 47 people were wounded, all of them civilians.
   One of those killed was Naw Khan Noorzai, provincial police chief in the 1990s, Helmand government spokesman Mahaiuddin said.
   ‘There was a suicide incident, but we do not know what the target was,’ he said. Another official said the bomb may have exploded prematurely.
   Since their overthrow in 2001, the Taliban and their Islamic allies have carried out scores of suicide attacks against Afghan and foreign forces, often killing many civilians as well.
   Fighting across Afghanistan is now at its worst since 2001, mostly in the south and east bordering or near Pakistan, the Taliban’s former backer accused by some Afghan leaders and intelligence officers of still supporting its former protege.
   About 2,000 people, most of them militants, but also civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 90 foreign soldiers have been killed this year.
   The violence is a mix of opposition to Afghan authorities and foreign forces, the drugs trade, tribe wars and crime.

Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is locked in a bitter dispute with the government, has complained he is now a ‘pariah’ in the ruling party he dominated for two decades, reports said Monday.
   ‘I am the former party president yet they don’t want me to talk to the members. I can’t even meet them. Universities are barred from inviting me and newspapers are prevented from reporting about me,’ he told the New Straits Times.
   ‘I am becoming a pariah in the party,’ he said, adding that he was insulted over the attempts to gag him.
   Mahathir has been accused of attempting to bring down the government with strident attacks on Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who he now publicly regrets handing the top job when he stepped down in 2003.
   He has accused Abdullah of nepotism and corruption, and of damaging the economy and dismantling his legacy by reversing some major decisions including a plan to build a new bridge to Singapore.
   Mahathir’s recent proposal to address the November general assembly of the ruling party, the United Malaysia National Organisation, has received a lukewarm response from senior figures.
   ‘Many feel it is not appropriate for Dr Mahathir to do this,’ said deputy prime minister Najib Razak in the New Straits Times. ‘I follow the general feeling.’
   Najib has warned that UMNO, which has ruled since independence in 1957, could lose power over the dispute between Abdullah and Mahathir.
   But despite the immense influence he once held in Malaysia, Mahathir has now been accused of suffering from ‘post-ministerial syndrome’ and politicians have lined up to pledge their support for Abdullah.

The detention of a former leader of a banned Islamist militant group was declared illegal by a Pakistan court on Monday and his release ordered, the court and his lawyer said.
   Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder and former leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, was placed under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore on August 10.
   Authorities said he was detained because of fears his activities could disrupt law and order.
   The decision to hold him had nothing to do with an investigation into a plot foiled in London this month to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, Pakistan said.
   The Lahore high court said on Monday the government had failed to produce evidence to justify Saeed’s detention, his lawyer, Nazir Ahmed Ghazi, told Reuters.
   ‘The court found his detention illegal and ordered the authorities to immediately release him,’ Ghazi said.
   A court official confirmed the ruling.
   Saeed resigned almost five years ago from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group active in fighting Indian security forces in India’s part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
   The group has also been accused or suspected of involvement in numerous attacks in Indian cities.
   Saeed then become head of a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is regarded as a sister organisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
   The United States has designated both groups terrorist organisations. Pakistan has banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and put Jamaat-ud-Dawa on a watch list.
   Saeed was moved from his house in Lahore last week and his whereabouts were not known, a Jamaat-ud-Dawa spokesman said.

The Israeli army killed five Palestinians, including a civilian, in Gaza Monday as it kept up a two-month offensive in the coastal strip, hospital officials said.
   Sabet Edwan, 22, was killed by Israeli tank fire near the southern city of Rafah, they said.
   Earlier in the day, four Palestinians, including two Hamas militants and two members of president Mahmud Abbas’s presidential guard, were killed in Gaza City’s eastern Shejaya neighborhood.
   Palestinian security officials said the four were killed by an Israeli drone. The Israeli army said two were killed in exchange of fire with troops and two in an air strike.
   Medics discovered the body of another Palestinian, Fathi Abu al-Qumbarz, 50, at his home in Shejaya.
   Abu al-Qumbarz had been wounded by automatic gunfire while inside his home during Israeli operations in the area on Saturday, hospital officials said.
   Separately, a 20-year-old Palestinian, Wassim al-Masri, was killed early Monday when he refused to stop at a roadblock near the southern town of Khan Yunis and Hamas security forces opened fire on him.
   At least 193 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed in the Gaza Strip since June 28, when Israel launched a massive offensive.

A 14-year-old Nepali boy who is only 50 centimetres (20 inches) tall has been put forward for a Guinness world record as the world’s smallest person, his family and supporters said Monday.
   ‘We found out that a Jordanian boy holds a record in the Guinness Book of World Records and he is 25.5 inches tall. But Khagendra is 5.5 inches smaller than the Jordanian guy, so we sent an application to the Guinness Book of World Records,’ said Min Bahadur Rana, president of Khagendra Thapa Magar Foundation, an organisation set up to collect funds for the boy.
   Fourteen-year-old Khagendra Thapa Magar weighs only 4.5 kilograms and will be taken on tour round Nepal to raise money for his upkeep, his father told AFP.
   ‘We show him in exhibitions to collect fund for his education, health and future,’ said Rup Bahadur Thapa, his father.
   According to the website set up by his supporters, www.khagendratma.org, Thapa weighed only 600 grams at birth and his hobbies include ‘playing with pebbles’ and ‘worshipping Buddha.’

India said Monday that Pakistan’s killing of a tribal insurgency leader was a ‘tragic loss,’ comments destined to draw the ire of its neighbour and arch-rival.
   ‘Bugti played a prominent role in Pakistani politics for over four decades. His death leaves a vacuum that will be difficult to fill,’ the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.
   ‘Military force can never solve political problems,’ it said. ‘The unfortunate killing of the veteran Baluch leader ... is a tragic loss to the people of Baluchistan and Pakistan.’
   In January, India had expressed concern over Pakistan’s military crackdown against the Baluch rebels, drawing a sharp response from Islamabad that New Delhi should not comment on its internal affairs.
   Bugti was killed in a military operation late Saturday.

China has signalled its high priority to combating terrorism, concluding a major military drill with Kazakhstan and ratifying an anti-terror pact with Pakistan, analysts said Monday.
   Both moves come as security in China’s northwestern region becomes increasingly important, after the recent opening of an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan to supply an important new energy source for the booming economy.
   China is concerned about the perceived threat of Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang region, bordering Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
   The drill and the pact on Sunday target the so-called ‘three evil forces’ of terrorism, separatism and extremism in the area.
   In Beijing on Sunday, lawmakers ratified an agreement with China’s close south Asian ally Pakistan to also fight the ‘three evil forces’.
   The pact outlines the scope of cooperation between the countries, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, but did not give details.
   Originally signed in Islamabad in April 2005, the deal was ‘necessary as the three evil forces have threatened the lives of Pakistanis and Chinese working and living in Pakistan,’ according to vice foreign minister Wu Dawei.
   ‘The agreement will help safeguard China’s national interest and promote cooperation between the two countries in those areas,’ Wu was quoted as saying.

Indian police Monday seized illegal drugs worth two billion rupees (44 million dollars) as part of a stepped-up crackdown against domestic cartels with international links.
   Police said anti-narcotics agents seized 4.4 tonnes of methaqualone, a barbituate sold in the US under the name Quaalude, from a storehouse in New Delhi and added the contraband was destined for the United States.
   ‘The consignment was seized Sunday after we laid a trap and it is worth two billion rupees in the international market,’ deputy police commissioner Anil Shukla said.
   ‘Methaqualone is banned both in India and America and we have arrested one man and currently his links with international cartels are being investigated,’ Shukla said without disclosing the identity of the alleged American buyer.
   The bust comes eight days after the city police arrested a Canadian of Indian origin with 100 kilograms of ephedrine worth five million dollars.
   Ephedrine, a stimulant, can be used as a base to make drugs such as ecstasy and amphetamines.
   Deputy commissioner Shukla said stepped-up operations were on to bust cartels operating out of the Indian capital.

Iran said on Monday a US threat to form an independent coalition to impose sanctions if the UN Security Council failed to act over Tehran.
   The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, had indicated Washington was prepared to act independently with allies to freeze Iranian assets and restrict trade if the council did not.
   The United States has previously called for a swift response if Iran does not heed the Security Council’s Thursday deadline to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can make fuel for reactors or material for warheads.
   ‘These remarks (by Bolton) are an obvious insult to the Security Council,’ Iranian government Gholamhossein Elham told a weekly news conference.
   ‘These remarks are just bullying and baseless remarks and show that they (the US) are not competent to be a member of the Security Council.’
   The LA Times said Washington planned to introduce a resolution imposing penalties soon after the August 31 deadline if Iran’s position did not change.
   Analysts say opposition from veto-wielding powers Russia and China could delay any move.
   Iran has so far shown no sign it will halt enrichment, which the West says Iran is using to build atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies.
   ‘The Islamic Republic has repeatedly announced that using nuclear weapons is not in our defence policies,’ Elham said.
   Bolton said Washington was working on a parallel diplomatic track outside the United Nations if Russia and China did not accept the resolution, the LA Times reported.
   ‘You don’t need Security Council authority to impose sanctions, just as we have,’ Bolton was quoted as saying.
   The United States has had broad restrictions on almost all trade with Iran since 1987.
   The French president, Jacques Chirac, urged Iran to reassure the world about its intentions.
   ‘Once again, I urge Tehran to send the necessary signals to create the conditions for trust. There is always room for dialogue,’ Chirac said in a speech on Monday.
   Iran has said it is ready for immediate talks but has refused to suspend enrichment before negotiations start, which was proposed in an incentives offer made by the United States, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany.
   Iran has shrugged off the threat of sanctions, saying such a move would push already high oil prices higher still, hurting economies in industrialised countries more than Iran.
   Iran says it will press ahead with its atomic plans which it says are to produce electricity. It inaugurated a heavy-water production unit southwest of the capital on Sunday, which Western diplomats said was not a proliferation threat itself but was part of project that could eventually have military uses.
   Crude oil prices remain near record highs partly because of market fears that supply from Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, could be disrupted if the nuclear dispute worsens.
   Iran said it fired a missile on Sunday from a submarine in the Gulf as part of war games which analysts view as a signal that Iran could disrupt oil shipping in the area.

Iraq’s hard-pressed security forces fought fierce street battles with Shiite militia fighters in the central town of Diwaniyah Monday, amid a massive surge in violence across the war-torn country.
   The head of Diwaniyah’s health department, Hamid Taathi, told AFP that 19 soldiers and seven civilians had been killed in two days of clashes, and that 43 people had been treated for wounds sustained in the fighting.
   A security official in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many of the soldiers had been ‘executed’ after being captured by the militia and that government forces had lost control of several city districts.
   He said around 10 militiamen had been killed in the clashes, and that security forces were setting up a cordon around Diwaniyah after rogue elements of the Mahdi Army militia seized complete control of several neighbourhoods.
   ‘The militia has set up its own checkpoints and there are IEDs (improvised explosive devices) everywhere. Diwaniyah is too hot right now, but the Iraqi army is working to stop more militia arriving in the area,’ he said.
   An Iraqi army captain in Diwaniyah said: ‘We have also asked for more troops from other provinces because a big military operation has been planned.’
   The Mahdi Army is a loosely-organised militia force nominally loyal to the hardline Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose movement has ministers in Iraq’s coalition government and a large parliamentary bloc.
   Local leaders from Diwaniyah said the militiamen were rogue elements operating independently and had rejected a call from Sadr for them to put aside their weapons to take part in Iraq’s political process.
   ‘What is going on is an attempt by the government to get rid of an element which is trying to disturb the security of the town,’ said Abdumunaam Abu Tibikh of the provincial council of Qadisiyah, of which Diwaniyah is capital.
   A senior Sadr supporter in the nearby holy Shia city of Najaf, Sahab al-Ameri, disowned the fighters.
   ‘These acts have nothing to do with the Mahdi Army,’ he told AFP, blaming ‘infiltrators’ for carrying out the killings..
   The battle in Diwaniyah came as a suicide car bomber attacked the interior ministry in Baghdad, killing 14 people and injuring 45.
   The bomber struck as the interior minister, Jawad Bolani, was to hold a meeting with police chiefs, capping a torrid 24 hours of carnage in which more than 60 Iraqis and eight American soldiers had already been killed.

Former vice president Al Gore said Sunday ever-tighter political and economic control of the media is a major threat to democracy.
   Gore said the goal behind his year-old ‘interactive’ television channel Current TV was to encourage the kind of democratic dialogue that thrives online but is increasingly rare on TV.
   ‘Democracy is under attack,’ Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. ‘Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time.
   ‘Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralised.’
   He said that in many countries, media control was being consolidated in the hands of a few businesspeople or politicians.
   Gore said in Italy much of the media is owned by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. In Russia, the president, Vladimir Putin, has stifled dissent on television, and in South Africa, Gore said, dissent ‘is disappearing, and free expression is under attack.’
   In the United States ‘the only thing that matters in American politics now is having enough money to put 30-second commercials on the air often enough to convince the voters to elect you or re-elect you,’ he said. ‘The person who has the most money to run the most ads usually wins.’
   Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to George W Bush in disputed circumstances. Current TV was launched last year amid much scepticism, but anticipated the tide of user-generated content now sweeping the media world.
   His long-standing warnings about the threat from global warming have reached a mass audience thanks to ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ a slick, stark movie that has become one of the most successful documentaries in US history.
   Gore’s renewed popularity, and his high-profile book and movie tours across the United States, has spurred speculation of a White House run in 2008. He denied it again Sunday.
   ‘I don’t have any plans to be a candidate, I don’t expect to be a candidate,’ he said. ‘I really do not expect ever to be a candidate again.’
   Gore said there was a link between control of the media and a lack of political action to control climate change.
   ‘Questions of fact that are threatening to wealth and power become questions of power,’ he said. ‘And so the scientific evidence on global warming — an inconvenient truth for the largest polluters — becomes a question of power, and so they try to censor the information.’

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on Sunday warned North Korea may pose a threat as a weapons seller to terrorists and that America would consider taking the nuclear warheads off intercontinental ballistic missiles so they could be used against terrorists.
   Rumsfeld, in Alaska to visit a missile defence installation weeks after Pyongyang test-fired a long-range missile believed capable of reaching the United States, said North Korea is testing missiles to show the capabilities to potential buyers.
   ‘They sell anything to anyone,’ he said.
    ‘They sell our currency that they counterfeit. They’re selling illegal drugs. They’re selling basic missile technologies. There’s not much they have that they wouldn’t sell either to another country or possibly to a terrorist network.’
   In fact, Rumsfeld said North Korea is more a danger as proliferators than a military force to challenge South Korea.
   ‘I think the real threat that North Korea poses in the immediate future is more one of proliferation than a danger to South Korea,’ he told reporters.
   The defence secretary also met with the Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, on Sunday to discuss missile defence and cooperation on defence technologies, among other things.
   Rumsfeld, after that closed-door meeting, said the Pentagon was considering a plan to replace the nuclear warheads on some intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional weapons, a move that would make the missiles less lethal and therefore more conceivable for politicians to use in pre-emptive strikes against terrorist groups.

Dozens feared dead in Nepal landslide
Dozens of villagers were feared dead in western Nepal after a weekend landslide triggered by torrential monsoon rains swept away up to 80 homes, police said Monday. ‘A massive landslide struck Lyati village in Achham district on Sunday night,’ said Dilip Deuba, a regional police inspector. ‘There are 70 to 80 houses in the village. Those houses may have been swept away and dozens of people may have been killed,’ said Deuba, referring to the accident which took place around 950 kilometres (593 miles) west of Kathmandu. Detailed information was unavailable because the village is in a remote area, Deuba said. Monsoon rains that sweep Nepal and the rest of the subcontinent in the summer cause hundreds of deaths every year from flooding and landslides.
— AFP

Fake bomb found near Thai PM’s residence
A fake bomb was found near Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s Bangkok home Monday, police said, just days after an alleged assassination attempt on the controversial leader. An old battery tied with wire to an alarm clock and put in a paper bag was discovered by an ice delivery man near a back entrance to the compound, police Colonel Sathorn Sasomboon said. ‘It is a hoax by someone who wants to see the country in a mess,’ Sathorn said. ‘This kind of stuff could not have exploded.’ Police last Thursday defused a potent mix of TNT, plastic explosives, fertilizer and fuel oil left in the trunk of a car by an intersection near Thaksin’s house in what they said was an attempt to kill the prime minister.
— AFP

Myanmare workers
to be deported
More than 600 migrant workers from Myanmar who were arrested while attending a traditional celebration near Bangkok are to be deported, Thai police and immigration officials said Monday. Police colonel Krisakorn Pleetanyawong, head of Sam Pran district in Nakhon Pathom province, said police on Sunday arrested 674 Karen and ethnic Burmese after 10,000 people gathered at the sports ground of the Royal Police Cadet Academy. ‘We didn’t know there would be a big meeting of Myanmar workers here,’ he said, adding that one Thai had been granted permission to hold an annual good luck celebration in the compound about 70 kilometres from
Bangkok.
— AFP

Gunmen kill
Turkish worker
in Afghanistan
A Turkish road worker was murdered Monday in an armed attack on a key highway in southern Afghanistan, the Turkish embassy said, without being able to immediately give the circumstances of the incident. The man was killed on the highway between the southern city of Kandahar and the western city of Herat, a road that has seen several attacks blamed mostly on the extremist Taliban movement. ‘I can confirm that one Turkish road worker was murdered in an armed attack but we don’t know the circumstances or who was behind it,’ an official at the embassy said. Several Turkish road workers and engineers have been abducted, usually in the south, and some have been killed.
— AFP

Ernesto nears Cuba on track to Florida
Tropical Storm Ernesto bore down on southeastern Cuba on Monday after drenching Haiti with punishing rains, while forecasters issued a hurricane watch for the southern peninsula of Florida. The US national hurricane centre issued the watch from Deerfield Beach southward on Florida’s east coast and from south of Chokoloskee southward along the west coast. The watch, which means hurricane conditions could develop within 36 hours, remained in effect for all the Florida Keys. Florida, storm-weary after eight hurricanes in the past two years, declared a state of emergency on Sunday and ordered tourists out of the vulnerable Keys almost a year to the day since Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans.
— Reuters

Iran to hold Holocaust conference
Iran is to hold an international conference on the Holocaust in December that will allow historians to present ‘hidden aspects’ of the slaughter of Jews under Nazi Germany, newspapers reported on Monday. The two-day conference, entitled ‘Study of Holocaust, A Global Perspective’ is to start on December 11, according to reports widely printed in the Iranian press. It will touch on issues including the ‘reasons for anti-Semitism in Europe’, ‘the Holocaust and Zionism’, ‘the Holocaust in historical documents’ and ‘Holocaust: rules and media’, the reports said. According to the foreign ministry’s international and political studies office, ‘there should be scientific opportunities created for researchers to present hidden aspects of this most important event of the 20th century as transparently as possible’.
— AFP

Australian PM criticised as ‘sheriff’
The Australian prime minister, John Howard, was accused in the Papua New Guinea press Monday of wanting to be the ‘regional sheriff’ after announcing plans to expand the army to deal with instability in the Pacific. The country’s two major English-language newspapers, taking their cue from prime minister Michael Somare, carried angry editorials denouncing Howard for describing Papua New Guinea as ‘inherently unstable.’ Howard announced last week that Australia would boost its army by 2,600 troops and its federal police force by 400 to cope with international deployments.
— AFP

NTSB probes reason for Kentucky crash
Investigators probing the fiery crash of Comair Flight 5191 want to know why it tried to take off from a runway considered far too short for commercial passenger planes. All but one of the 50 people aboard died. Although Blue Grass Airport’s main runway is 7,000 feet, for some reason the plane departed Sunday from the 3,500-foot general aviation runway. The twin-engine CRJ-100 would have needed 5,000 feet to fully get off the ground, aviation experts said. There also were clues for the pilot: Signs marking the right way. And severely cracked concrete not the type of surface typically found on runways for commercial routes.
— AP

Four bombs in Istanbul, hurt 27
Four bombs at a popular Turkish coastal resort and in Istanbul wounded at least 27 people, including 10 British tourists, authorities said on Monday. Ten Britons and six Turks were wounded when their minibus blew up on one of the main streets of Marmaris on the Mediterranean coast. The British Foreign Office said three Britons were in intensive care. There were no immediate claims of responsibility. A Marmaris police official, who declined to be named, said 21 people were injured in the busy tourist town, including 16 people inside the minibus.
— Reuters