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Relatives of the dead, injured and missing from Mumbai’s devastating train bombings tearfully trawled the city’s hospitals Wednesday, searching for people who failed to return from work.
   Manuel Fernandes said he was looking for his brother. He had already travelled to six of the 31 hospitals where the 714 injured were taken after Tuesday evening’s rush hour blasts that killed at least 183 people.
   ‘He was on one of the trains but he hasn’t come home,’ said Fernandes, aged in his 40s, from Mumbai. ‘There have been no calls, nobody knows where he is.’
   Families were ferried to and from the mortuary by staff at the Bhabha hospital, where 22 were certified dead and 72 injured, to try to identify some of the dead. One family emerged after identifying their 19-year-old son.
   Others were wandering around the hospital campus in shock at what happened and examining boards with lists of the wounded. Some sat in corners weeping and others were talking non-stop on their mobile phones giving updates to their families.
   Many only started looking for their relatives Wednesday after being stuck in the city during Tuesday’s traffic chaos.
   Mumbai police listed the names of the injured and their medical conditions, on their website to help people trace them. For those who did not find their loved ones alive, authorities waived cremation fees.
   Twenty-four-hour television news channels scrolled the names of those in hospital and messages for the missing.
   Parents urged their children to call them to allay their fears.
   ‘How are you? Please call home - father,’ read one.
   ‘I have done no wrong to anyone,’ said one patient at Bhabha hospital, Nilesh Raphod, who was on one of the trains when a bomb in the first-class compartment exploded.
   Lying in a bed with bandages wrapped around his legs and hand, he said: ‘I don’t know why this has happened to me. I’m lying in great pain now but at least I’m happy to be alive.’
   Mukesh Shah, who was in another bed with bandages around his stomach said the sound of the bomb exploding in his carriage was like nothing he had heard before.
   ‘It was so loud and I saw dead bodies lying all over. Luckily I was able to call to my family and tell them I was alive,’ he said.

Pakistan placed security forces on high alert at railway stations, airports and embassies Wednesday after deadly blasts in India’s financial hub of Mumbai, officials said.
   The police were deployed in the capital Islamabad, the eastern city of Lahore and Quetta in the southwest, while paramilitary rangers were also guarding sites in southern Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city.
   ‘We have declared a high alert after the Mumbai blasts,’ said Rashid Alam, an interior ministry official for Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital.
   Government sources also confirmed a nationwide state of alert since Tuesday night, when a series of bombs blew apart trains in Mumbai.
   President Pervez Musharraf and prime minister Shaukat Aziz have both condemned the attacks. A foreign ministry statement issued from Islamabad late Tuesday said the blasts were a ‘despicable act of terrorism’.
   The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has blamed ‘terrorists’ for the bombings but declined to speculate on who might be responsible.
   Meanwhile, New York reinforced security on the city’s vast public transit network Tuesday in response to deadly bomb attacks on commuter trains in India’s financial capital Mumbai, as US officials condemned the ‘horrific’ blasts.
   ‘We are stepping up security throughout,’ a police spokesman said.
   Day duty officers will be held over to provide extra personnel during the evening rush hour, while the frequency of random bag searches on the subway will be expanded, the spokesman said.
   The bag searches were introduced last year in the wake of the July 7 bombings on the London transport system.
   In Washington, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, condemned the blasts, which ripped through rush-hour trains in Mumbai, as ‘horrific.’

From Bali to Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Mumbai, Asian civilians are increasingly at risk of dying in bombings by militants, analysts said Wednesday.
   ‘Actually there has been a very significant shift in the terrorist strategy,’ said Kusnanto Anggoro, researcher at Jakarta’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies. ‘They are focused instead on the civilian targets.’
   In Asia’s latest deadly attack, seven bombs exploded in trains and stations in the Indian financial capital Mumbai Tuesday night, killing at least 183 people and wounding more than 600 others.
   ‘I’d say that there’s certainly more focus on civilian targets since 9/11,’ said Clive Williams, a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
   He was referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States which killed about 3,000 people and for which al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
   There was no immediate claim of responsibility in the Mumbai blasts, the latest of many to hit the city over the past 13 years. The police have blamed most of the previous attacks on Muslim underground figures or Kashmiri separatists.
   The list of Asian countries where civilians have either been deliberately targeted or killed as bystanders in recent years is long and includes Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
   In Sri Lanka last month, authorities blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for a landmine explosion that ripped through a bus, killing 64 passengers and injuring 39 in one of the country’s deadliest attacks on civilians. The Tigers denied involvement.
   The world’s worst terrorist attack since 9/11 occurred on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in October 2002 when Islamic militants targeting Westerners killed 202 people. Militants killed another 20 civilians in renewed bombings last October in Bali.
   ‘The most favoured tactic of the terrorist group is to bomb,’ said Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
   Williams, the Australian terrorism expert, said that before the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, international militancy was often related to the Israeli-Palestinian issue with, for example, attacks on synagogues.
   Anggoro in Jakarta said ‘first-generation terrorists’ were linked to territorial-based nationalist movements. Like the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, they depended on public support and preferred military targets.
   The current ‘third-generation’ are different, he said.
   ‘They are basically unable to confront the security apparatus face-to-face’ and have turned to easier-to-hit civilian targets, Anggoro said.

At least 16 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Wednesday, including nine from the same family who died when aircraft bombarded a house belonging to a Hamas leader, medics said.
   The nine Palestinians, seven of them children, died when an F-16 jet demolished a house north of Gaza City, belonging to a leader of the governing Hamas movement, Nabil Abu Salenyeh, security and medical sources said.
   More than 30 people were also wounded in the attack.
   In the central Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian policeman when Israeli troops opened fire near Abu el Ajin village, which they had surrounded east of the Deir al-Balah refugee camp, security sources said.
   Another two Palestinians were killed by Israeli shelling east of Deir al-Balah. A further two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike against their vehicle north of the central town of Khan Yunis, medics said.
   Furthermore, a Palestinian policeman was killed and two others wounded when an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a police station, in the village of Qarara, east of Khan Yunis, local medical and security sources said.
   Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia captured two Israeli soldiers Wednesday prompting the first Israeli ground operation into Lebanon since its 2000 troop pullout.
   The soldiers’ seizure opened a new front in the troubled Middle East after the capture of another Israeli soldier on the Gaza border by Palestinian militants two weeks ago plunged the region into chaos.
   The raid by Hezbollah came amid intense cross-border exchanges that left at least four civilians wounded in northern Israel and another four in south Lebanon, including a correspondent of Hezbollah television.

Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed two Sri Lankan policemen and a soldier in mine ambushes on Wednesday, officials said, while diplomats feared that a recent lull in violence could be followed by a dramatic new attack.
   More than 700 people have died so far this year, over half of them civilians and almost all since early April. But in the first 10 days of July, truce monitors say they know of only 19 confirmed deaths—still too many, but a definite fall.
   But the military said one soldier died in a claymore fragmentation mine ambush on the northern Jaffna peninsula on Wednesday. Later in the day, they said another mine ripped through a police pick-up truck, killing two policemen and wounding two more.
   Both sides say they want peace and some hope they might have decided they cannot afford an all-out war that would hurt both the poor, Tamil-dominated north and the richer majority-Sinhalese south. But others fear much worse is to come.
   There are still few signs of life in the island’s peace process. The government may be working on constitutional reform to give more power to minority Tamils but the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who want a separate Tamil homeland, steadfastly refuse to return to talks.
   ‘I don’t know why it is quiet,’ said one western diplomat. ‘But I don’t particularly like it. The LTTE have a habit of attacking when you least expect it. I still think both sides are going for an escalation.’
   Some fear Tamil Tiger rebels may simply be biding their time before a new attack, perhaps in the capital or maybe in the east, where both the Tigers and a group of rival ex-rebels—who the LTTE say are army-backed—are both said to be building up.
   Two suicide attacks in Colombo this year that killed one top general and wounded the army chief have proved the rebels’ ability to strike at the country’s capital and economic heartland, analysts say.

A US envoy has said that diplomacy could still resolve the standoff over North Korea’s missile tests as China and Russia stood firm against a push at the United Nations to impose sanctions.
   Japan, however, refused to back down in its Western-backed draft resolution to punish Pyongyang, although it also clarified earlier statements of a theoretical pre-emptive strike that set off fury in both North and South Korea.
   South Korea, which opposes strong reprisals against the North, hoped to use diplomacy to resolve the crisis, warning a high-level visiting delegation from the North against firing more missiles.
   Christopher Hill, the top US envoy on North Korea, was back in Beijing on a regional tour, hoping to hear from foreign minister Li Zhaoxing on a Chinese delegation’s ongoing talks with Pyongyang’s reclusive leadership.
   When asked by reporters if time was running out to settle the crisis through negotiations, Hill responded: ‘No, I wouldn’t use that. Obviously, we are going to evaluate every day how we are (doing) on the diplomacy.’
   ‘The DPRK is in a historic moment,’ Hill told reporters in Beijing, referring to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
   ‘They must decide further isolation or to join the rest of the world. Yet they cannot decide what to do with this historic moment,’ he said.
   North Korea on July 5 test-fired seven missiles, including a new Taepodong-2 which was said to be able to hit Alaska or Hawaii but quickly crashed into the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
   Pyongyang declared last year it had nuclear weapons and has warned that it would consider sanctions an ‘act of war.’
   The communist regime walked out of six-nation talks in November that aimed to end its nuclear programme and ease concern over its missiles.
   Hill refused to cede to the North’s demands for re-entering talks—lifting US financial sanctions on a bank in Macau alleged to launder and counterfeit money for the impoverished regime.
   ‘How much money laundering would you suggest we allow? A small amount, a medium amount?’ Hill said.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court Wednesday acquitted a man of involvement in a failed plot by Islamic extremists to assassinate president Pervez Musharraf in 2002, lawyers said.
   Naveedul Hasan, an alleged member of the banned militant group Harkatul Mujahideen-al-Alami, was arrested in 2004, his lawyer Samiullah Khan told reporters.
   The court in the southern city of Karachi, where the attempt on Musharraf’s life took place, acquitted Hasan ‘after the prosecution failed to prove any charges against him,’ he said.
   Prosecution lawyer Naimatullah Randawa said he would consult the government before deciding whether to challenge the verdict in the high court.
   An anti-terrorism court in 2003 convicted and jailed three members of the same organisation for their involvement in the plot, including its chief Mohammad Imran Bhai.

Protesters hoping to oust the Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, on Wednesday called off a new rally set for this week, saying they would refrain from mass action because the king is in poor health.
   The People’s Alliance for Democracy, which spearheaded months of street protests against Thaksin earlier this year, said it would not hold the rally and sit-in outside the premier’s office as planned on Friday.
   Instead, a group of protest leaders will walk to foreign embassies to urge the international community not to support Thaksin, PAD spokesman Suriyasai Katasila said.

A former Philippine government official embroiled in an election-related scandal surrounding president Gloria Arroyo has been arrested in the United States, the foreign department said Wednesday.
   Ex-agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante, whom the opposition portrays as Arroyo’s bagman, was detained by immigration officials on arrival at Los Angeles airport on July 7 after his visa was cancelled.
   Bolante is to appear before a US immigration court next week, foreign office spokesman Gilberto Asuque said, adding that it was unclear why Bolante’s visa was revoked. Asuque said it was too early to say whether Manila would seek custody of Bolante.
   Bolante left the Philippines after the legislature last year summoned him to a public hearing to explain allegations of corruption.
   Arroyo’s foes charged that Bolante used some 2.8 billion pesos (53.8 million dollars) in fertilizer funds at the agriculture department’s disposal to reward politicians who helped campaign for Arroyo in the hotly contested May 2004 presidential election.

Air India has warned it will not spare crew members suspected to have filched bottles of whisky from the official jet of prime minister Manmohan Singh while he was on an overseas jaunt.
   ‘We have already ordered an inquiry (and) those found guilty will be severely punished,’ managing director of India’s international carrier V Thulasidas said late Tuesday. One of the prime minister’s security officials said six bottles of Scotch whisky were removed from a sealed bar while Singh was on a trip to Germany and Uzbekistan in April.
   The discovery of the broken seal triggered a bomb scare and a search led to the discovery of 29 bottles of whisky in the luggage of 14 crew members, with the captain and an attendant found holding five bottles each.

The investigative arm of the US Congress has openly questioned if victory in Iraq can be achieved without a significant overhaul of president George W Bush’s strategy, arguing the outcome of the war was presently ‘unclear’.
   The findings by the Government Accountability Office mark the first time a non-partisan US government agency publicly doubted whether the geo-strategic undertaking that Bush made the defining element of his presidency, could be successful.
   ‘It is unclear how the United States will achieve its desired end-state in Iraq given the significant changes in the assumptions underlying the US strategy,’ the GAO wrote in its report unveiled Tuesday at a hearing in the House of Representatives.
   The review focuses on the ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,’ a glitzy document released by the White House with great fanfare last November.
   Nine months later, congressional investigators found these high hopes were resting on shaky premises that are quickly melting away.
   The bedrock foundation of the president’s strategy–a permissive security environment — ‘never materialised,’ said the authors of the report, describing the Iraqi insurgency as ‘active and increasingly lethal.’
   The overall number of attacks increased by 23 per cent from 2004 to 2005 and rose to the highest ever level of intensity last April, the investigators pointed out.
   In the absence of security, the document continued, efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged country or even to return key segments of its economy to their pre-war level have hit a roadblock.
   If before the 2003 US-led invasion, crude oil production averaged in Iraq 2.6 million barrels a day, it stood at only two million barrels a day this past March, according to the report.
   
   31 killed as Rumsfeld flies in Baghdad
   At least nine people were killed in two bombings in Baghdad Wednesday as the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, arrived to review the security situation in Iraq, security sources said.
   A suicide bomber walked into a restaurant in the capital’s eastern suburb of Baghdad Jadida, killing seven people, an interior ministry official said. Two people were killed and two others wounded in a car bomb attack against a police patrol in the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiyah.
   Rumsfeld flew into Iraq unannounced as a security precaution for talks with the prime minister Nuri al-Maliki that are expected to focus on a national reconciliation plan he unveiled last month aimed at stemming the violence.

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran would not negotiate on its ‘undeniable right’ to have a nuclear programme, again rejecting international demands that the Islamic republic freeze sensitive atomic work.
   ‘We are for negotiations, we are for dialogue. But of course we will not negotiate our undeniable rights with anyone,’ the president told a rally in the north-western town of Shabestar.
   Quoted by state radio, the president said Iran would be ready to ‘negotiate about the world’s problems, and common concerns and ways of disarmament in the world, and the prevention of (peaceful) nuclear technology being diverted.’
   ‘We are ready to negotiate in a fair atmosphere, but if it becomes unfair, the Iranian people will stand up and will not give up an iota of their rights,’ he added.
   Iran insists its nuclear programme is strictly peaceful and considers uranium enrichment work to be an ‘undeniable right’ under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   But enrichment to make reactor fuel can be extended to make weapons, resulting in demands the country suspend the process and show greater cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
   
   US, EU turn up pressure ahead of Paris meet
   The United States and European Union stepped up pressure on Iran on Wednesday, warning it could face UN Security Council action for not accepting an offer of incentives aimed at defusing a nuclear standoff.
   Foreign ministers of the world’s top powers meet in Paris later on Wednesday to decide how to handle Iran after Tehran said it needed more time to consider the June 6 offer.
   France, Britain, Germany, the United States, China and Russia agreed last month on the as yet undisclosed package of measures aimed at convincing Iran to abandon large-scale uranium enrichment, which produces fuel for power plants or weapons.
   They also told the Iranians that they wanted a clear response before this weekend’s Group of Eight industrialised nations meeting in Russia.
   ‘The time for Iran to give a clear indication that we are on the path of negotiations, not on the path of the Security Council, has come and the indications are that the decision will be forced tonight,’ the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said.
   ‘We have to decide tonight which path we are on. ... If we have not received that, ‘Yes we are on the path of negotiations’, then I think it is pretty clear by process of elimination that we are on the path of the Security Council.’

Supporters of Mexico’s leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hit the streets Wednesday to demand a vote recount, as president elect Felipe Calderon urged calm and said he would accept a partial recount.
   Lopez Obrador’s Democratic Revolution Party said demonstrators would gather at Mexico City’s Zocalo square, the starting point of a nationwide protest against what they consider was a tainted July 2 presidential election.
   Lopez Obrador, a populist former Mexico City mayor who trails Calderon by half a percentage point, claims to have videos showing irregularities during the vote, and late Tuesday vowed to take the election dispute ‘as far as the people want it to go.’
   Calderon told The Washington Post in an interview that he would not call out his followers to avoid an ‘escalation of tensions,’ but said he fully expected his rival to incite protest because he was ‘a man who has habitually not respected the law.’
   Lopez Obrador late Tuesday shot back calling Caledron and his followers ‘fascists.’
   ‘Its a fascist thing to say that an adversary represents a danger to Mexico. That’s fascism... we won’t leave the country in the hands of these people,’ he said in an interview with Televisa channel.
   Lopez Obrador on Tuesday showed two videos taken at polling stations he said ‘show the need to reopen the electoral packets’ and conduct a recount, but backed off earlier claims that the videos were ‘irrefutable proof’ of fraud.
   According to PRD campaign officials, the videos released since Monday show ballot stuffing, especially in the north, which voted heavily for Calderon’s conservative National Action Party.
   However, the Federal Electoral Tribunal said images in one video showed instead an election official removing eight or 10 congressional ballots, which he had found incorrectly cast in the presidential ballot box, and depositing them in the congressional box.

The US president, George W Bush, arrives for the G8 summit of key world leaders in Russia with Washington’s dominance shaken by global instability and the ascent of Moscow and Beijing.
   With its military stretched from Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States is forced to court Russia and China to help tackle the world’s most sensitive diplomatic challenges — the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
   But both countries are reluctant bedfellows at best, resisting calls for democratisation from the Bush administration, which holds that individual liberty is the best antidote to terrorism.
   ‘Everybody in the world knows that the US is bogged down politically and militarily in Iraq and no amount of effective diplomacy is going to change that,’ Shapiro said, noting that while Washington was not suddenly powerless, it was still ‘weaker than it has been in previous years.’ It was Sergei Ivanov, the foreign minister of Russia — which has strong economic interests in Iran — who in May convinced the UN Security Council to offer Iran new incentives for halting uranium enrichment before it took stronger actions that Moscow had fought.
   Since then, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice — who had lobbied for months in favour of sanctions against Tehran — had been champing at the bit, demanding that Iran respond to the offer before leaders of the world’s most powerful nations meet in Saint Petersburg July 15-17.
   When North Korea launched seven missiles last week, including a long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly able to reach Alaska, Washi-ngton turned specifically to Beijing to help convince Pyongyang to be more cooperative.

The Bush administration is prep-aring a crackdown on intelligence leaks to the media and will try to pursue prosecutions in some recent cases, the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelli-gence Committee on Tuesday.
   Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra also suggested some unauthorised leaks could have been deliberate attempts to help al-Qaeda. ‘More frequently than what we would like, we find out that the intelligence community has been penetrated, not necessarily by al Qaeda, he said.
   ‘I don’t have any evidence. But from my perspective, when you have information that is leaked that is clearly helpful to our enemy, you cannot discount that possibility,’ he added.
   In recent months, two major intelligence operations were leaked to the media: the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programme and the Treasury Department’s tracking of international banking transactions.

The tiny South Pacific Ocean archipelago of Vanuatu is the happiest country on Earth, according to a study published Wednesday measuring people’s wellbeing and their impact on the environment.
   Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica and Panama complete the top five in the Happy Planet Index, compiled by the British think-tank New Economics Foundation.
   The index combines life satisfaction, life expectancy and environmental footprint—the amount of land required to sustain the population and absorb its energy consumption.
   Zimbabwe came bottom of the 178 countries ranked, below second-worst performer Swaziland, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ukraine.
   The Group of Eight industrial powers meet in Saint Petersburg this weekend but have not much to smile about, according to the index.

The president, Hugo Chavez, rejected a US government report accusing Venezuela of funding efforts by Cuba’s Fidel Castro to subvert democracy in Latin America, saying it indicated Washington’s aggressive intentions toward Havana.
   ‘They’ve launched what I consider a new imperialist threat,’ Chavez said Tuesday in a televised speech. ‘They’ve publicised a plan of transition, they think Fidel is going to die.’
   ‘This is what I say to US imperialism: Now is when Venezuela will support the Cuban revolution,’ Chavez added. ‘Long live Fidel — brother, comrade and partner!’
   Chavez was responding to Monday’s release of a report by the Presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba that accused Havana of forestalling a transition to democracy in the communist country and charged that Chavez is using Venezuela’s vast oil revenues to prop up Castro.
   ‘There are clear signs the (Cuban) regime is using money provided by the Chavez government in Venezuela to reactivate its networks in the hemisphere to subvert democratic governments,’ the report said.

‘Malaysia may turn to nuclear energy’
Malaysia may turn to nuclear power stations to reduce dependence on oil, a junior minister said Wednesday amid current high oil prices. In the past Malaysia had repeatedly said that it would not embrace nuclear power for its energy needs. ‘Current resources are sufficient. But the government is not totally rejecting the use of that (nuclear) technology,’ Shaziman Abu Mansor, deputy energy, water and communications minister, was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency. Malaysia is an oil-exporting country. Prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last month said the era of ‘cheap oil’ was over and the world now faces an energy crisis as emerging economies and developed nations compete for scarce resources.

Suicide attack in Afghanistan
kills student
A suicide attacker blew himself up near a US-led coalition supply vehicle in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday, killing a school student and wounding eight other people, officials said. The blast hit a district centre that comprises a school, government offices and a bazaar in eastern Khost province. It only slightly damaged the supply vehicle, the police said. ‘We received eight civilians wounded. Two of them are in critical condition,’ Khost public health director Amir Badshah Mangal said. ‘We have also received one school student dead, and his body is still in hospital.’ The coalition could not immediately confirm the attack in the Yaqubi district. The wounded included students, government employees and shopkeepers.

Swearing-in of E Timor’s cabinet delayed
The swearing-in of East Timor’s new government has been delayed, the premier’s office said Wednesday, as the tiny nation seeks to return to normal after deadly violence in May. A statement from the office said the ceremony would take place Friday, a day later than planned, due to a request from president Xanana Gusmao who met political parties to discuss the agenda of the new administration. ‘It’s just because of some internal issues, but surely the inauguration of the cabinet will be Friday,’ presidential spokeswoman Lusitania Lopes said. She said she could not comment further on the issues. One of the new cabinet’s most pressing priorities is the passage of the 2006-7 budget.

Hundreds flee homes amid Myanmar floods
Flooding and landslides in military-run Myanmar last week have forced hundreds of people to leave their homes for temporary shelters, state media said Wednesday. ‘Torrential rain has caused flooding in many parts of the country,’ the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported. The newspaper gave no details on casualties or the number of people affected, but said entire townships that are home to hundreds of people had been evacuated. The areas worst-hit by the floods and landslides were Bago division, Ayeyawady division, Mon state, Rakhine state and Taninthayi division, the paper said.
— AP

Kyrgyzstan
threatens to expel
US diplomats
Kyrgyzstan, home to a US military base, threatened to expel two American diplomats on Wednesday after accusing them of interfering in the Central Asian state’s domestic affairs. The US embassy in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek declined to say whether or when they might leave the country. The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said the diplomats were no longer welcome. ‘The decision was taken based on facts presented by Kyrgyzstan’s special services about their repeated involvement in the country’s domestic affairs,’ it said in a statement. A source in the Foreign Ministry told Reuters separately the diplomats were likely to be deported soon.
— Reuters

Astronauts begin final spacewalk to test repair technique
Two Discovery astronauts started a final spacewalk Wednesday to test shuttle repair material created after the Columbia disaster as part of NASA’s efforts to prevent another tragedy. Astronauts Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum ventured out of the International Space Station to see if a sealant produced to fix potential cracks on a shuttle’s heat shield works in zero gravity, according to NASA television images. Discovery has been docked to the ISS since last week. Columbia’s thermal protection was cracked by a piece of foam insulation that peeled off its external fuel tank during lift-off, causing the shuttle to break into a ball of fire as it returned to Earth in February 2003.
— AFP

Colombia’s ambassador
to US resigns
Colombia’s ambassador to the United States resigned Tuesday in anger over president Alvaro Uribe’s selection of a disgraced former Colombian leader as ambassador to France. Andres Pastrana, the main defender in Washington of Colombia’s cooperation in the war on drugs, said Uribe’s support for Ernesto Samper, whose US visa was revoked because of alleged ties to drug traffickers, ‘left him without a choice but to resign.’ ‘This changes Colombia’s policy and it changes it radically,’ said Pastrana, after more than six hours of closed-door meetings with officials in Bogota. Pastrana’s resignation, which caught Uribe and most Colombians by surprise, was deplored by the president in a written statement.
— AP

Central American leaders okay
border plan
Central American presidents agreed on a plan Tuesday to ease border controls and install a common customs system on the way to negotiating an eventual free-trade agreement with the European Union. The agreement signed by the leaders of Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize would allow residents to cross borders without passports or visas. ‘This accord will open huge opportunities to boost the development and well-being of the Central American people,’ Panamanian President Martin Torrijos said of the deal that still must be ratified in each country.
— AP

Darfur faces new wave of killings
Sudan’s Darfur region is facing a new wave of killings and rapes, with fighting between rebel factions displacing thousands of villagers despite a recent peace agreement, the UN humanitarian chief said. Humanitarian workers are being attacked every day, and ‘new front lines are opening all the time in new areas,’ Jan Egeland told a news conference Tuesday. He accused the Sudan Liberation Army faction led by Minni Minnawi, the only rebel group to sign the May 5 peace agreement with the government, of attacking villages held by SLA splinter groups.
— AP