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Pakistan’s controversial madrassahs urged the government Thursday to withdraw its ambassador from Denmark over cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammed.
   Joining the outcry in the Muslim world over the drawings published in a Danish newspaper and now in other European dailies, a group representing around 12,000 of the Islamic religious schools demanded an apology.
   ‘We demand the Pakistani government withdraw its ambassador from Denmark for allowing blasphemous cartoons of the Holy Prophet Mohammed,’ Qari Hanif Jallundhari, a senior leader of the Ittehad Tanzeemat Madaris (madrassahs union), said in a statement.
   Jallundhari said Saudi Arabia had recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen while Libya had closed its embassy there, and Pakistan should also take action over the publication in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten in September.
   ‘These blasphemous caricatures have hurt millions of Muslims in the world. We demand a clear and public apology from the Danish government for the crime which had hurt Muslims,’ he said.
   If Denmark failed to act ‘we would be forced to call for a boycott of Danish products like other Muslim states,’ the federation leader said.
   The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, while apologising if Muslims were offended, has refused to apologise for their publication, saying that would constitute meddling in press freedom.
   Copenhagen altered its travel advisory for Pakistan in November after it said an official from the leading Jamaat-e-Islami religious party announced a reward for the deaths of the cartoonists.
   The party denied putting up the reported 500,000-rupee (8,333-dollar) bounty.
   Pakistan’s madrassahs teach tens of thousands of children a strict Islamic curriculum but the schools have also been accused of being breeding grounds for extremism.
   Pakistan ordered some 1,400 foreign students studying in madrassahs to leave the country after it emerged that at least two of the July 7 London bombers may have visited one of them before the attacks.
   Meanwhile, Palestinian gunmen besieged the Gaza Strip headquarters of the European Union on Thursday after cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed were published in several European countries.
   The militants scrawled the words ‘Closed Until Further Notice’ on the front door of building in Gaza City, which had not even opened for business on Thursday for fear of violence.
   Two armed groups, the Popular Resistance Committee and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, had earlier threatened to target Danes, French and Norwegians in the Palestinian territories after the cartoons were printed in newspapers or magazines in each of the countries.

The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said on Wednesday the issue of Kashmir was vital to better relations with nuclear rival Pakistan.
   ‘We are committed to working with Pakistan to create an environment in which India and Pakistan can have the friendliest possible relations,’ he said in an annual media conference.
   ‘I attach great importance to that object.’
   He said there had been movement in the two-year-old peace process between the South Asian neighbours.
   While confidence building measures undertaken by the two countries have strengthened transport, cultural, sporting and commercial links since starting the peace process, they have made little headway on Kashmir, the cause of two of their three wars since independence from British rule in 1947.
   ‘We have said we are committed to finding pragmatic, practical solutions to all outstanding issues between India and Pakistan including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir,’ Singh said, but added he did not have a mandate to negotiate the transfer of Indian territory.
   Singh said he was ready to hold fresh talks with the main political separatist alliance, The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, to push for a peaceful resolution of a 15-year-old Muslim separatist revolt in Jammu and Kashmir, mainly Hindu India’s only Muslim-majority state.
   ‘Our doors are open to every shade of opinion.’ Singh said. He had held talks with Hurriyat leaders last September but the dialogue made little progress.
   New Delhi had rejected proposals made by the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, last month to demilitarise three Indian Kashmir cities in an attempt to push talks over the disputed Himalayan region forward.
   More than 45,000 people have died in the revolt in Indian Kashmir and New Delhi says Islamabad is not doing enough to crack down on Islamic insurgents filtering from the Pakistani sector into its part of the region through the military Line of Control.

A gas explosion at a Chinese coal mine has killed at least 23 miners, state media reported on Thursday, in the latest accident to hit the world’s deadliest mining industry.
   Another 53 people were hospitalised after breathing toxic gases from the blast at the Sihe Coal Mine in the northern province of Shanxi, the official Xinhua news agency said.
   Nearly 700 miners were working underground at the time of the explosion on Wednesday, the report said, citing an unnamed official with the provincial coal mine safety supervision bureau. Search and rescue work ended early on Thursday.
   The government has been trying to clean up China’s mining industry, which killed more than 5,500 in the country in 2005, but a spate of accidents has made a mockery of safety campaigns.
   Booming demand and high prices for coal, which accounts for about 70 per cent of China’s energy, mean regulations are often ignored, production is pushed beyond safe limits and mines that have been shut down reopened illegally.
   The central government says local officials, who have turned to mines as a source of revenue, are sabotaging the campaign to close unsafe mines.
   China produces about one-third of the world’s coal but accounted for more than 80 per cent of global coal mine deaths in 2004 and the death rate at its mines is 100 times that for pits in the United States.

Rights group Amnesty International urged Nepal’s government Thursday to free almost 900 people it said were detained in the runup to the first anniversary of King Gyanendra’s seizure of power on February 1.
   ‘More than 1,350 people have been arrested since 19 January for either organising or participating in political demonstrations,’ said an Amnesty statement.
   ‘Of those, at least 888 are believed to still be detained.’
   Nepal’s home ministry disputed the figures but did not provide details. ‘All the political detainees will be released gradually,’ said spokesman Gopendra Pandey.
   About 50 people, including 30 journalists, were detained in protests in Kathmandu on Wednesday but a mass demonstration against the king’s rule fell flat after police moved in to prevent crowds gathering.
   The journalists were released later Wednesday but many political leaders remain under house arrest, local rights activists say.
   ‘You did not see a mass mobilisation because the senior leaders who could mobilize people are in jail and have been for the last 10 to 12 days,’ said Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of Himal South Asia magazine, who was held briefly on Wednesday.
   ‘But there were spontaneous protests nationwide,’ added Dixit.
   Gyanendra sacked the elected government on February 1, 2005, saying it had not done enough to quell a Maoist insurgency, had failed to hold elections and was responsible for widespread corruption.
   On Wednesday the king marked the first anniversary of his takeover with a promise to push ahead with controversial local elections as part of his ‘road map’ to democracy.
   The main political parties are boycotting the elections and the Maoists have said they will ‘take action’ against those participating in the polls.
   The rebels, who mark their the 10th anniversary of their uprising on February 13, have called a weeklong nationwide strike against the elections starting Sunday.

Governments most affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami too often ignore the human rights of survivors, according
   to a report released by non-governmental organisations Wednesday.
   The report said many survivors were complaining of lack of government protection against discrimination, land grabs and violence while the poorest, particularly women, were subjected to sexual abuses.
   ‘Tsunami response: A human right assessment’ is the fruit of research conducted in India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand by three non-governmental organisations: ActionAid Intern- ational, the People’s Movement for Human Rights Education and Habitat International Coalition.
   The study of more than 50,000 people in the five countries found that in many places, survivors had been driven from their land, denied food, clean water and a secure home.
   It said compensation programmes had ignored the needs of vulnerable groups including women, farm labourers and migrant workers.
   ‘Widows and other single women have frequently been denied compensation which has ... been handed out to male members of the family,’ the report said.
   It added that groups experiencing discrimination included Mokens (Sea Gypsies) in Thailand, Dalits (so-called untouchables) in India and war-displaced people in Sri Lanka.
   ‘The governments in these five countries have grossly failed to uphold the human rights of these vulnerable people,’ said Ramesh Singh, executive director of ActionAid.
   ‘This is unjust, outrageous and unacceptable and for those people at the receiving end, women, fishing folks, sea gypsies, migrant workers, this is apartheid and slavery put together in their lives,’ he said.
   ‘We call upon the governments of these countries to take the responsibility to uphold the human rights of these people.’
   Singh said the report showed that there had been ‘a breach of trust, the trust offered by supporters who had emptied their pockets and offered their solidarity in the names of the people who suffered and survived the tsunami.’
   ‘We also flag a warning to the international development community, particularly international financial institutions who are pouring in money in response to the tsunami, to make sure that human rights standards are embraced in their plans
   and programs, not just economic growth indicators,’ he added.
   Former US president and UN special envoy for tsunami recovery Bill Clinton last month pledged to continue leading UN efforts to rebuild communities devastated by the giant killer waves, notably in the Indonesian province of Aceh and in Sri Lanka.
   Tsunamis triggered by a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on December 26, 2004 killed about 220,000 people in 11 Indian Ocean countries.

Campaigners fighting to block female succession to the Japanese throne said Thursday they had picked up new support from more than 75 lawmakers in their bid to block changes to the world’s oldest monarchy.
   Starting with just 100 MPs last week, the campaign reached 176 signatures on their petition—still short of a majority of the 722 members of parliament needed to pass legislation.
   No boys have been born to the imperial family since 1965, spelling crisis for the tradition of male-only succession, which according to legend has lasted more than 2,600 years.
   The prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has pledged to submit to parliament by June a bill that would put four-year-old Princess Aiko in line to the Chrysanthemum Throne, making her Japan’s first female monarch in three centuries.
   But opinion is divided on maternal succession.

Two junior researchers working for South Korea’s disgraced cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk were forced to give their own eggs for his work, a state bioethics committee said Thursday.
   In the latest of a series of damaging revelations about Hwang, who could be facing criminal charges, the National Bioethics Committee said he handed out consent letters for egg donation, which the women were forced to sign.
   ‘Professor Hwang had kept lying about the provision of human eggs from his researchers. This greatly damaged the integrity of (his) scientific research,’ the committee’s acting chairman Cho Han-Ik said.
   Hwang has admitted receiving eggs from junior researchers in breach of accepted international ethical standards, but has denied forcing his staff to contribute eggs to his now discredited stem-cell research.
   An expert panel last month found that his work had been fabricated and that he had failed to create any patient-specific stem-cell lines, which had been hailed as a breakthrough that could lead to new treatments for disease.
   The committee said Thursday that Hwang even drove one researcher to a fertility hospital to extract eggs in March 2003.
   It also said Hwang’s team received 2,221 eggs obtained from 119 women at four medical institutions between November 2002 and December 2005.
   Of the 119 women, 66 were paid up to 1.5 million won (1,550 dollars) each.
   The committee said it was looking into allegations that a woman’s clinic provided Hwang’s team with more than 100 ovaries from dubious sources. One ovary usually contains more than 10 immature eggs.

A report to the United Nations found that Australia actively lobbied to delay East Timor’s independence vote in 1999 and prevent its separation from Indonesia, the national broadcaster said.
   The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said it had obtained a copy of the report by East Timor’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which accused Australia of violating its duties under international law.
   The commission produced the 2,500-page report after spending three years collecting evidence about Indonesia’s 25-year occupation of East Timor.
   It said the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, indicated Canberra preferred for East Timor to remain legally part of Indonesia and actively lobbied the government in Jakarta to delay the independence vote, ABC said.
   The commission said Australian policy after the 1975 invasion by Indonesia was influenced by a desire to negotiate a favourable outcome on the maritime boundary in the oil- and gas-rich Timor Sea.
   The report said Australia’s actions were in violation of its duties under international law to support and refrain from undermining the East Timorese people’s right to self-determination.

Sessions in Sri Lanka’s parliament were held up Thursday while the police with sniffer dogs combed the premises following a bomb threat.
   The assembly opened half an hour behind schedule and Speaker WJM Lokubandara then cancelled sittings scheduled for Thursday and Friday. He ordered parliament be opened on the next scheduled date—February 14.
   The scare effectively cost two days of sittings in parliament, which usually meets only eight days a month.
   ‘In view of the security situation, party leaders agreed to put off sittings (scheduled for Thursday and Friday) till February 14,’ the Speaker said on the floor of the house after policemen and sniffer dogs were withdrawn.
   He did not elaborate on the threat but officials said nothing was found in the sprawling complex located on a man-made lake island.
   The police dogs were called in for the first time to the inner chamber of the red-carpeted parliament building, officials said. Even an opposition legislator’s chair anchored to the floorboards was removed during the search.

The United States opposes a Japanese compromise proposal to expand the UN Security Council by six seats and would be happy if only Tokyo became a new member, the US envoy to the UN was quoted Thursday as saying.
   Japan had originally joined Brazil, Germany and India in proposing 10 extra seats—four new permanent seats for themselves plus another six new members of the Security Council, which now comprises 15 nations.
   The plan failed last year and Japan declined to join the other three countries in resubmitting the proposal, saying it was doomed to fail due to US opposition.
   Japan instead suggested creating a maximum of six new seats on the council.
   But US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said that Washington had not agreed on the idea with Japan, its closest Asian ally.
   ‘We have not yet found another model which satisfies our need not to have a huge expansion of the council, but that also satisfies Japan’s desire to get a permanent seat,’ Bolton told The Asahi Shimbun.

The Palestinian Authority expects Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE to provide at least $33 million in emergency funding as early as Thursday to help pay Palestinian employees after Israel halted tax payments.
   ‘We expect that employees can withdraw salaries next week,’ Jihad al-Wazir, the acting Palestinian minister of finance, said.
   Israel froze automatic monthly tax payments to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, one week after the election victory of the Islamic militant group Hamas.
   It had been scheduled to transfer $55 million on February 1.
   The Palestinian Authority would face a financial crunch if Israel continued to withhold the tax money.

Iran's nuclear programme is not an ‘imminent threat,’ the head of the UN nuclear watchdog said Thursday as his agency met to hear a call to haul the Islamic Republic before the UN Security Council.
   The International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said Iran needed to do ‘confidence building’ but that the international crackdown on Tehran's nuclear ambitions, which the United States says involves making atomic weapons, ‘is not about an imminent threat. I should make that very clear.’
   ‘We are reaching a critical phase but it is not a crisis situation,’ ElBaradei told reporters.
   Western intelligence estimates say Iran is from several years to a decade away from being able to make a nuclear weapon, something Tehran denies it intends.
   Iran set off the current crisis on January 10 when it moved ahead on work on enriching uranium, a process that makes fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors but can also produce atom bomb material.
   The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors is debating a European Union draft resolution to report Iran to the UN Security Council, calling on it to suspend all nuclear fuel work and to cooperate fully with a now three-year-old IAEA investigation into its nuclear programme.
   The resolution is a compromise to Iranian ally Russia's demands as it allows for a month-long pause before the Council can move ahead on any action, which could include punitive sanctions.
   ‘I think what the board is trying to do is to send a very clear message to Iran but also to provide a window of opportunity’ for diplomacy, ElBaradei said.
   The message is that ‘Iran needs to take more confidence-building measures,’ such as suspending enrichment and other nuclear fuel work, ElBaradei said.
   He said full cooperation by Iran could lead to the Security Council backing off from sanctions.
   ElBaradei said that in speeches Thursday board members had made clear that the goal ‘is simply a continuation of diplomacy by having the council lend its weight to the agency's effort, to my effort, and everybody is stressing renewing the commitment to negotiation,’ ElBaradei said, referring to now broken-off talks between Iran and the EU.
   There is a ‘window of opportunity until I submit my report in March,’ ElBaradei said, referring to a report on Iran's cooperation with the watchdog's investigation that is to be filed before the next IAEA board meeting March 6.

The Pentagon is seeking to dissuade China from building its military forces to a level not warranted by its security needs, and the issue is addressed in a new long-term Pentagon plan, a senior US official said on Wednesday.
   Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defence for policy, said Washington wanted to make sure the Chinese ‘have the forces necessary to provide for their genuine security needs and not to go beyond that.’ He gave no further details.
   He said the matter was addressed in the Quadrennial Defence Review, a blueprint for changes to US strategy and forces due to be sent to Congress on Monday with president Bush’s fiscal 2007 budget.
   The Bush administration frequently has voiced concern about China’s growing military spending. After as many as 17 years of double-digit defence spending increases, China is currently spending two to three times more than the $30 billion publicly announced as its defence budget, US officials estimate.
   According to a draft of the review made available by InsideDefense.com, a trade publication, the Pentagon is calling for a range of new weapons and capabilities ‘to help shape the choices of countries at strategic crossroads.’
   Michael Pillsbury, an advisor to the Pentagon who is author of two National Defence University books on the Chinese military, said the US goal was to discourage China and Russia among others from sinking large sums into ‘offensive, first-strike systems.’
   Henry, who advises the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on military strategy and national security policy, said the United States wanted China ‘to make what we would view as the right sort of choices, and that is addressed in the QDR.’
   The United States is eager to head off any showdown with China over Taiwan, the self-governing island off China’s coast over which Beijing claims sovereignty and has vowed to attack if it formally declares independence.

A fierce gunfight broke out before dawn Thursday between the Mehdi army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and US forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City, killing one woman, an interior ministry official said.
   The fighting occurred between 02:00am (2300 GMT Wednesday) and 04:00am (0100 GMT), the official said.
   ‘We have no information about the incident and are checking these reports,’ a US military spokesman said.
   Four US soldiers were killed Wednesday in two separate rebel attacks, the US military announced Thursday.
   Three soldiers died when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad, while the fourth succumbed to wounds suffered when his unit came under small-arms fire in the southwest of the capital, it said.
   The latest fatalities take the death toll of US military personnel in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,246, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
   Sadr’s militia and the US military have often clashed in the past, most dramatically in August 2004 when the fiery cleric waged a bloody rebellion against US forces in the holy Shiite city of Najaf in which hundreds of his men were killed.
   In other violence, a high ranking official at the industry ministry, Mary Hamza al-Rubai, was kidnapped on her way to work. Two cars filled with gunmen stopped her car, released her driver and took the woman away.
   On Wednesday, two Iraqi journalists were snatched after leaving a press conference at the headquarters of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party.
   In a separate incident, insurgents attacked an oil storage facility near the northern city of Kirkuk setting off a massive blaze, an official with the Northern Oil Company said.
   A number of bodies were discovered around the country on Thursday, including two in Nabaie north of Baghdad that were believed to be among an ill-fated expedition of police hopefuls from Samarra in mid-January.
   At least 60 young men from Samarra were returning from Baghdad after failing to be accepted by the police academy when their bus was stopped by insurgents and they were taken off into the desert.
   So far, police and medical sources have identified 39 corpses from the group, mostly in the region around Nabaie.
   The hospital in Samarra also reported receiving the body of a civilian shot in the head, with no information about how it happened.
   The body of a policeman kidnapped Wednesday was found in an eastern suburb of Baghdad, riddled with bullets.

With time running out, the House of Representatives agreed on Wednesday to a second brief extension of key provisions of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act while lawmakers try to settle differences over civil liberties.
   First passed after the September 11 attacks, the act expanded the power of federal authorities on such fronts as wiretaps and secret searches. With a number of provisions set to expire on Friday, the House approved a measure on a voice vote to extend them until March 10.
   The Senate was certain to provide its needed concurrence to allow more time to address concerns that the rights of law-abiding Americans are adequately protected, aides said.
   The provisions had been initially set to expire on December 31, but Congress and the White House earlier agreed to push back the date until this Friday.
   They did so after four Senate Republicans joined Democrats to block an earlier House-passed bill to permanently extend the provisions unless changes were made.
   Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, one of the four Republicans, said he and others had been in discussions with the White House and expected to reach an agreement soon.
   ‘We believe what we’re offering is important and does not tie the hands of law enforcement,’ Craig said, providing no details.
   One concern has been over the ability of the government to obtain an individual’s private records in a probe of terrorism, even if, critics complain, the individual has no ties to terrorism.
   House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, said the bill, which was blocked by the Senate, would provide new safeguards and again called for its passage.
   ‘I believe it is healthy to continue to debate the merits of the Patriot Act and to conduct vigorous congressional oversight ... but it is also imperative that we not play political games with the vital tools our law enforcement and intelligence communities need,’ Sensenbrenner said.

President Bush said Wednesday he understands why the nation he has led for five years has become more anxious, and he urged people to have confidence in him.
   Bush maintained his optimistic message in a lengthy speech at the Grand Ole Opry House that was designed to build momentum from the previous night’s State of the Union address. But in a rare acknowledgment of the troubled times on his watch, he tried to show empathy with the public’s worries.
   ‘People are uncertain, in spite of our strong union, because of war, and I understand that,’ Bush said.
   Democrats are trying to capitalise at the ballot box this year on uncertainty about Bush’s leadership and about ethics scandals in Congress.
   Bush said he is leading a strong nation that is protecting itself and spreading freedom. He said the economy is ‘roaring,’ despite concerns that people have after being forced to change jobs in the face of competition from China, India and elsewhere.
   ‘My worry is that people see that uncertainty and decide to adopt isolationist policies or protectionist policies,’ Bush said. ‘In other words, in uncertain times it’s easy for people to lose confidence in the capacity of this country to lead and to shape our future.’
   Bush said America’s challenge is to stay ahead of competition without withdrawing from the world. He planned to expand his thoughts on the issue in a tour to Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas on Thursday and Friday.
   Bush’s laid out his entire agenda in the 57-minute speech, going even beyond his State of the Union address. He touched on everything from war and education to technology in the automobile industry and medical malpractice suits.

President George W Bush’s new appeal for greater democracy in the Middle East and efforts to make drastic cuts in oil imports from the region was greeted Wednesday with doubts and some opposition.
   The president’s call for a 75 per cent cut in Middle East oil imports in the next 20 years was the centerpiece of his annual State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.
   Seeking to regain public support in an election year, he also pressed key allies in the Middle East to promote democracy and made new criticism of the Iranian regime.

Russian ex-president Boris Yeltsin took aim Wednesday at US foreign policy in an interview marking his 75th birthday.
   ‘I don’t like the continuing monopolistic policy of the United States,’ Yeltsin said, criticising the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003.
   ‘To give everything away into the hands of the Americans who would like to dictate conditions—the start of the war in Afghanistan, then in Iraq and who are now aimed at Iran—one can’t allow this,’ he said. ‘It’s not democracy when a dictator is walking around with a sword in his hand. This is inadmissible,’ Yeltsin said.
   The broadcast came as former US president Bill Clinton and former German chancellor Helmut Kohl joined Yeltsin for a glitzy birthday celebration in the Kremlin hosted by President Vladimir Putin.
   Yeltsin voiced support for Putin’s foreign policy and Russia’s current chairmanship of the Group of Eight (G8) club of major economic powers.

Two Lankan aid workers freed
Two Sri Lankan women out of 10 aid workers kidnapped in the island’s restive east have been freed, their charity group seen as close to Tamil Tiger rebels said Thursday. The Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation said the two women were released Monday, a day after being captured. But they only reported to the charity Wednesday after being told by their abductors ‘not to make a report to the police or anyone else and thus feared for their lives and the lives of their family,’ the TRO said in a statement. ‘The TRO requests that the government of Sri Lanka and civil society exert pressure to ensure the safety of these women.’

US warns travellers about rally in Thailand
The US embassy in Thailand Thursday urged its citizens to avoid an anti-government rally this weekend in Bangkok, warning that the protest could turn violent. Media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul expects to draw tens of thousands of people to the protest Saturday, during which he plans to petition the king to replace the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, over corruption allegations. ‘Bangkok demonstrations are usually peaceful in nature, but all demonstrations are unpredictable and conditions can change unexpectedly,’ the embassy said in a statement. ‘There are concerns that anti-Sondhi groups may attempt to confront the demonstrators, which could lead to violence.’

World’s temperature rose in ’05
The world’s average temperature rose in 2005 to its second highest level in more than 100 years in a sign of global warming caused by greenhouse gases, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Thursday. The temperature worldwide last year was 0.32 degrees Celsius higher than the average calculated figures between 1971 and 2000, the agency said in a statement. The 2005 figure was the second highest since 1891 when the agency began keeping the measurement. The record high was in 1998 when the gap from the average year stood at 0.66 degrees. ‘Especially since the mid-1980s average temperatures have risen more frequently,’ the agency said. ‘One factor of this upward trend in temperature is considered to be global warming along with increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide,’ it said.

Malaysia warns S’pore on talks
Talks between Malaysia and Singapore over irritants including a controversial new bridge linking the neighbours must not drag on indefinitely, the Malaysia’s foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, said. Malaysia will continue negotiations with Singapore but decisions have to be made, he said late Wednesday according to the state Bernama news agency. ‘We have been clear on this—that we do not want the talks to go on forever. There will be no outcome with talks that go on forever,’ he said. ‘We are now at the stage where we have identified the areas that we want resolved. If we cannot arrive at a decision, we will see what to do next.’
— AFP

Alito sides with inmate
New Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito split with the court’s conservatives Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection. Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri’s last-minute request to allow a midnight execution. Earlier in the day, Alito was sworn in for a second time in a White House ceremony, where he was lauded by president Bush as a man of ‘steady demeanor, careful judgment and complete integrity.’
— AP

Police drop charge against Sheehan
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and the wife of a powerful GOP lawmaker are free women, with apologies from the Capitol police chief for ejecting them from president Bush’s State of the Union address because they wore T-shirts with war messages. ‘The officers made a good faith but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol,’ Capitol police chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement late Wednesday. ‘The failure to adequately prepare the officers is mine.’ The extraordinary statement came a day after police removed Sheehan and Beverly Young, wife of Rep CW ‘Bill’ Young, R-Fla., from the visitors gallery Tuesday night.
— AP

Late pope considered resigning
The late Pope John Paul II, plagued by ill-health in his final years, had considered resigning but dismissed the idea because it would have set a ‘dangerous precedent,’ his private secretary is quoted as saying in a new book. According to the book by Spanish cardinal Julian Herranz, a Vatican expert in ecclesiastical law, the late pontiff asked him for advice about stepping down. Herranz, head of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, outlined the procedure to the pope’s then-private secretary Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz at John Paul II’s request. He quotes Dziwisz as saying that the pope was not personally attached to the high office but was simply ‘obeying the will of God.’
— AFP

Russian baby gets army marching
orders
One-year-old Dima Verenitsin cannot walk yet, but he’s already received his marching orders from Russia’s army conscription office, the Izvestia daily reported Thursday. An administrative mix-up led to a demand that baby Dima, who turned one on January 9, register with Volgograd’s enlistment point, a ritual usually reserved for boys of 16, the newspaper said. The infant’s grandmother, Lyubov Galushkina, told Izvestia that at first she thought the military was serious. ‘I wanted to go to the conscription point with Dima, but there was that cold snap and he got ill.’ Eventually both Galushkina and the military realised there had been a mistake.
— AFP

Bomb blast near barracks in Beirut
A bomb exploded overnight outside a Lebanese army barracks in Beirut, causing some damage but no injuries, police said early Thursday. The small bomb went of at 1:55am (2355 GMT Wednesday) outside the Fakhreddine Barracks in Beirut’s Ramlet al-Baida coastal district, police said. The device seemed to have been placed against the perimeter wall of the barracks. It was the first such attack in Lebanon since last December when a car bomb killed Lebanese Christian MP Gibran Tueni, a prominent anti-Syrian journalist, and three other people in a Beirut suburb.
— AFP