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The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmud Abbas, won approval Tuesday to hold a snap vote on a statehood plan which implicitly recognises Israel, despite opposition from the Hamas-led government.
   The decision by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to endorse Abbas’s plan for the referendum sets the scene for a showdown at the polls in July between the two executive branches which have been at loggerheads for months.
   Confirmation that the PLO had backed its own chairman’s strategy came from the former cabinet minister and executive committee member Yasser Abed Rabbo, who said an exact date for the plebiscite would be decided in a matter of days—still leaving open the possibility of a last-minute compromise agreement.
   ‘The executive committee approved Mahmud Abbas’s decision to organise a referendum,’ Abed Rabbo said.
   ‘President Abbas will announce the start of preparations for the holding of the referendum and its date by the end of the week. This gives Hamas additional time to change its position.’
   Another executive committee member said there would be no need for a referendum should Hamas accept the blueprint at any stage before polling day.
   ‘The referendum is not itself a goal,’ former parliament speaker Rawhi Fattuh said. ‘It’s a way to break the isolation imposed on the Palestinian people.’
   There is little expectation, however, that Hamas is about to change its tune, although a new poll showed the vast majority of Palestinians back both Abbas’s call for a referendum and intend to vote in favour.
   The document calls for a national unity government, an end to attacks in Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on land conquered by the Jewish state in 1967.
   Such a blueprint would undercut Hamas’s long-time platform of refusing to recognise Israel or disavow the use of violence even within the Jewish state’s borders, as well as bounce it into a coalition government with Abbas’s Fatah faction whom it trounced in a January parliamentary election.
   In a bid to end growing financial and security crises, Abbas had served Hamas last month with a 10-day deadline which expired at midnight to agree on solving the crisis and accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, or he would put a statehood initiative to a referendum within 40 days.
   The Hamas government’s hardline stance has led it to be boycotted and starved of aid from the EU and US, bringing the Palestinian Authority to the brink of financial meltdown.
   A power struggle between the Fatah-controlled security services and Hamas has furthermore disintegrated into deadly feuding in the Gaza Strip.
   Hamas greeted the passing of the deadline with a call for more negotiations, but Abbas was unmoved.
   Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya was on Tuesday to chair the weekly Palestinian cabinet meeting in Gaza City after the PLO’s decision.
   The movement’s chief spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, earlier called the referendum a ‘manoeuvre’ to undermined the Hamas government’s legitimacy.

Indonesia’s defence minister bluntly warned the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, Tuesday that an overbearing US approach the war on terrorism has led many in the world to view US power as a threat.
   The tough words came in Rumsfeld’s meetings here with the defence minister, Juwono Sudarsono, to discuss closer US military cooperation with Indonesia, including exercises, exchanges and sales of spare parts for its F-16 fighter jets.
   Fears of militant Islamic groups mushrooming since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States have spurred Washington’s efforts to deepen security ties with Indonesia.
   Sudarsono said it was best to leave anti-terrorism measures to local governments and ‘not to be too overly insistent about immediate results arising from your perceptions about terrorists’.
   ‘It’s important to us because as the world’s largest Muslim country we are very aware of the perception, or misperception, that the United States is overbearing and ... overwhelming in every sector of life in many nations and cultures,’ he said.
   ‘So I was telling the secretary just recently, just two minutes ago, that your powerful economy and your powerful military does lend to misperception and a sense of threat by many groups right across the world, not just in Indonesia,’ he told a news conference here with Rumsfeld at his side.
   Rumsfeld interjected, saying that the minister’s points were ‘not unreasonable’, but he insisted that the United States had encouraged other countries to participate in the war on terrorism however they saw fit.
   It was not immediately clear if the Indonesian was referring to a specific incident or issue.
   But he indicated Indonesia has reservations about the Proliferation Security Initiative, a US-led effort to get countries to work together to stop the movement by sea of nuclear materials and technology.
   Sudarsono said president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had directed his ministers to study the issue but said Indonesia was concerned that it would affect its territorial sovereignty.
   ‘Perhaps we can agree on a limited framework of cooperation rather than a multilateral permanent structure of PSI,’ he said.
   The discordant notes overshadowed Rumsfeld’s talks with the Indonesians on restoring a military to military relationship that has been in a deep freeze for much of the past decade over the Indonesian military’s poor human rights record.

Nepal’s Maoist rebels urged the prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, to seek the release of about 150 comrades jailed in India, during his visit to the giant neighbour beginning on Tuesday.
   Five recently appointed ministers will be travelling with the premier who is slated to meet the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Indian president, Abdul Kalam.
   Local media reported that Koirala is seeking a one-billion-dollar aid package over the next five years for Nepal. It is Koirala’s first trip abroad since he took power in April after weeks of street protests in the Himalayan nation forced King Gyanendra to restore parliament and end direct rule.
   The rebels and the new multi-party government have since agreed to hold elections for a special assembly to prepare a new constitution that would decide the future of monarchy.
   ‘The prime minister should take the initiative with Indian leaders to get our party leaders freed from jails,’ Dev Gurung, a senior Maoist leader, said.
   More than 13,000 people have died in the conflict.Maoist rebels, who have been fighting for a communist state since 1996, often escape into India after crossing the porous border. Many have been arrested by Indian police.

Around 1,000 people in trucks and on motorcycles have converged outside the offices of unpopular East Timorese prime minister Mari Alkatiri to demand his resignation.
   More than 40 trucks carrying around 20 people each plus hundreds more on motorcycles reached the government offices on the Dili waterfront escorted by a convoy of Malaysian peacekeeping troops.
   ‘Bring down Alkatiri,’ shouted protesters from trucks draped in banners, one saying, ‘Dissolve the government of Alkatiri.’
   Earlier, the head of country’s parliament, Fransisco Guterres, issued an order for rebel soldiers to hand in their weapons in 48 hours.
   East Timor plunged into chaos when the premier in April fired 600 soldiers, nearly half the tiny nation’s army, after they complained of discrimination because they came from the country’s west.
   ‘The eastern and western districts together bring down Alkatiri. If he doesn’t resign war will not end,’ read a banner on another truck as it headed into the capital.
   Some 21 people died last month as sporadic battles between rival soldiers unleashed a wave of lawlessness that descended into gang clashes and led the government to appeal for foreign help.
   More than 2,000 combat-ready foreign peacekeepers, chiefly from Australia, are deployed in Dili.
   Despite Alkatiri being largely blamed for the unrest, which continued Tuesday with the burning of more buildings, the popular president of the tiny nation, Xanana Gusmao, has so far refused to sack his embattled prime minister.
   ‘The most important thing is that Mari (Alkatiri) must resign and take responsibility for all that he has done,’ Augusto Junior, one of the rally organisers, said.
   After the rally reached the government officers its leader Augusto Araujo Taro met Gusmao in his office to explain the demonstrators’ demands.
   Junior explained that the rally leader was a friend of Major Alfredo Reinado, who says he is in command of the 600 soldiers sacked by the prime minister last month.
   Reinado is holed up in the mountain town of Maubisse, but has pledged his loyalty to Gusmao and says he will disarm when asked to by the international peacekeeping force.

The Indonesian earthquake has devastated the agriculture sector in the impacted area with more than half its farmers lacking money to plant rice this month, the UN’s food agency warned.
   Some 50,600 families rely on agriculture in Central Java’s worst-hit Bantul district and nearly two-thirds have either lost their houses or suffered severe damage to them, Ted Burke from the Food and Agriculture Organisation said.
   ‘We’re looking at a serious situation for these people,’ the operations officer, who is assessing the situation in Bantul, said in an interview late Monday.
   The number of families affected translates to some 250,000 affected people or 70 per cent of Bantul’s population. Nearly 5,800 Indonesians were killed in total by the May 27 quake. Of these, 4,280 were in Bantul.
   ‘There is definitely a need for us to help the farmers because their lives have been so disrupted that there is no way they are going to be able to get the capital to get back to normal farming right away,’ he said.
   ‘All the money they have now will not go into agricultural production but into rebuilding housing.’
   The island of Java is one of Indonesia’s rice bowls, with the crop being planted three times a year—in June, October and February. Other crops such as shallots are planted in July, while maize and groundnuts are in October.

Thai authorities keep a scrupulous watch over everything published about the king, but they have never managed to keep a lid on the story of a 19th century English teacher in the Thai court.
   Historians agree that Anna Leonowens richly embellished her biography of her time in the palace teaching the children of reformist King Mongkut, exaggerating her own importance in the court and her supposed romance with the monarch.
   Her story inspired novels, musicals, films and cartoons—most famously the 1950s Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film ‘The King and I’.
   It has also become the most noted example of how carefully Thai authorities try to protect the image of the monarchy—especially as Thailand this week celebrates the 60th anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej on the throne.
   The censorship board has allowed only one film version of Leonowens’ story to screen in Thailand, according to David Streckfuss, an American historian of the Thai monarchy.
   Some royalty in Bangkok saw the original 1946 movie starring Rex Harrison and Irene Dunne, and apparently found little offense in the portrayal of the current king’s great-grandfather, he said.
   But none of the film’s remakes have been allowed here, including the most recent 1999 version starring Jodie Foster and ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ star Chow Yun-fat.
   The producers had hoped to film that movie in Thailand, but the authorities never agreed to the script despite repeated changes, forcing them to film in neighbouring Malaysia.
   More concerning than the censors is Thailand’s lese-majeste law, which makes offending the king punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
   Most of the world’s surviving monarchies have similar laws, Streckfuss said, but Thailand’s law is invoked much more often in cases big and small.
   Thailand’s defence minister in 2001 threatened to fight with neighbouring Myanmar after the military’s state press ran articles critical of King Mongkut.
   The dispute only ended after Myanmar’s then-prime minister met with the king at his palace.
   A French businessman was charged with lese-majeste in 1994 after he uttered an expletive on an airline after a flight attendant asked him to turn off his reading light to avoid disturbing a nearby princess. The charges were later dropped.

A Taliban suicide car bomber rammed a US coalition convoy in the southeast Afghan province of Khost on Tuesday, wounding some troops, a US military spokeswoman in Kabul said.
   ‘We have very limited information, but there are no reports of coalition casualties, only reports of injured,’ said lieutenant Tamara Lawrence, adding that she did not know how many soldiers were injured or the extent of their injuries.
   The attacker blew himself to pieces and his vehicle was completely destroyed, while two US soldiers suffered slight injuries, according to Wali Shah Najar, secretary to the provincial governor.
   The latest attack comes during the bloodiest period in an insurgency that has been raging since US-backed forces ousted a Taliban government from power in late 2001.
   Some 400 people were killed last month alone, as the Taliban has stepped up attacks in the south in an apparent attempt to weaken NATO governments’ resolve as a US-led coalition will hand control of the southern provinces to the alliance’s peacekeeping force in July.

Supporters of Taiwan’s opposition People First Party are planning a second weekend protest in Taipei to call for the resignation of embattled president Chen Shui-bian, the party said Tuesday.
   ‘The turnout of our rally last week far exceeded our expectations. It showed that the public resented the scandal-plagued first family and decided to join forces demanding that Chen step down,’ said PFP spokesman Hsieh Kung-ping.
   The PFP said some 30,000 people showed up for the rally last Saturday outside the presidential office urging Chen to resign over a corruption scandal implicating his-son-in-law Chao Chen-ming.
   ‘It is likely that the rally this Saturday will be similar in scale,’ he said.
   Ma Ying-jeou, head of Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang, made a surprise appearance at last weekend’s rally and asked Chen to quit.
   Ma said that public anger was simmering over his failure to discipline his family and that people could no longer accept him as the president.

After years of praise for its humanitarian efforts in Asia, the United States faces resentment from Asian Muslims, angry about a string of controversies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
   As resentment grows, critics are asking whether Washington’s eagerness to offer quake relief in Indonesia is geared more towards improving America’s tarnished image than it is to bringing relief to stricken communities.
   From the swift deployment of military manpower after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, to the building of a US Marine field hospital in Indonesia’s quake-battered Java, Americans have been hailed as saviours in the region.
   But confidence in US efforts in Asian Muslim countries was undermined last week when a US military truck ploughed into civilian cars, sparking rioting in Kabul. About 20 people were killed in the crash and subsequent rampaging.
   The crash and reports
   of US gunfire intensified resentment among Muslims still seething over allegations that 24 civilians were killed in November by US troops during an attack in the Iraqi town of Hidatha.
   ‘I think the Americans have cheated the Afghans. I would never accept the concept that they’re here to help us,’ said Ashoob Amin, an Afghan government employee.
   ‘They’re here to help themselves and in my opinion it’s an occupation force.’

Sri Lanka accused Tiger rebels of exploding bombs outside a naval base near the capital Tuesday, two days ahead of a meeting between the two sides amid moves to salvage a collapsing ceasefire.
   Two Claymore mines exploded simultaneously outside the Welisara navy base and hit a civilian bus, navy spokesman PDK Dassanayake said, adding that the driver and conductor were injured. There were no passengers at the time.
   ‘It is obviously the work of the Tamil Tigers,’ he said, adding that it was fortunate there were no civilians on the bus at the time of the explosion.
   Neighbouring houses had their windows shattered and doors blown in by the huge pre-dawn explosion, while ceilings collapsed, residents said.

Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has agreed to a peace plan put forward by a high-level panel to end an insurgency in Muslim-majority provinces, a spokesman said Tuesday.
   The centrepiece of the plan announced Monday by the independent National Reconciliation Commission is to create a new regional body to mediate the conflict that has claimed 1,300 lives in the last two years.
   Government spokesman Surapong Suebwonglee said the premier had tasked his top deputy, Chidchai Vanasathidya, with implementing the plan.
   ‘He assigned Chidchai to properly implement the proposals made by the commission, immediately if possible,’ he told reporters.
   ‘But the prime minister asked Chidchai to report to him on which proposals would require passing new laws’, he said.

Iran on Tuesday gave a cautious reception to an international proposal aimed at resolving the crisis over its disputed nuclear drive, saying the offer contains ‘positive steps’ but also ‘ambiguities’.
   The package, presented by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, offers a variety of incentives and fresh multilateral talks if the Islamic republic agrees to suspend uranium enrichment work, which can make both reactor fuel and weapons.
   ‘There are positive steps in the proposal, and there are also some ambiguities that should be cleared up,’ Iran’s top national security official Ali Larijani said on state television.
   ‘We consider that the European will to solve the issue through talks is a correct step, and we welcome this,’ he said after receiving the proposal and holding two hours of talks with Solana.
   ‘We had good discussions,’ Solana said, while asserting that ‘there is a strong consensus between the six countries’ behind the package—drawn up by Britain, France and Germany and backed by the United States, Russia and China.
   ‘Now that the proposal is on the table, I hope we will receive a positive response which will be satisfactory to both sides,’ he said after also meeting foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and ending his flying visit to Tehran.
   Western officials have said Iran—which has so far refused to freeze enrichment work—will be expected to give its response within a matter of weeks.
   A string of tough comments from Iranian officials have left many diplomats fearing that the offer could prove to be dead on arrival—but Larijani asserted that it would be studied.
   ‘They submitted the proposals and the discussions were good. We have to examine these proposals and then we will give our response,’ he said.
   He did not elaborate on what the ‘ambiguities’ were—but Iran will undoubtedly have questions over the scope and duration of a nuclear suspension.
   Iranian officials have signalled they may be willing to hold off on industrial-scale enrichment, but they say ‘research’ work cannot be halted.
   While being offered carrots, Iran also faces the stick of robust Security Council action—including a range of possible sanctions—if it rejects the offer and continues what the West fears is a covert weapons drive.
   ‘I would counsel patience,’ White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters in Washington on Monday. ‘At this point, as we’ve said all along, let’s give it time. Let’s let the Iranians take a look at what the offers are, at the incentives and disincentives.’
   Although the United States has not ruled out taking military action, diplomats say it has helped sweeten the package by offering to lift certain sanctions if Iran agrees to an enrichment freeze.

Members of the US Congress and their aides took free trips worth nearly $50 million paid for by corporations, trade associations and other private groups between January 2000 and June 2005, according to a study released on Monday.
   Some of the 23,000 trips featured $500-a-night hotel rooms, $25,000 corporate jet rides and visits to popular spots such as Paris, Hawaii and Colorado ski resorts, said the study, by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University’s Medill News Service.
   The study found that many of those who picked up the tabs were at the same time seeking to shape legislation on Capitol Hill or win federal contracts.
   ‘In many instances, trip sponsors appeared to be buying access to elected officials or their advisors,’ the study said.
   While most excursions seemed to be legitimate fact-finding missions, others appeared to have been little more than ‘pricey vacations ... wrapped around speeches or seminars’ in which the lawmaker was often joined by family members, according to the study and researchers who conducted it.
   The data emerged from a nine-month-long review of congressional travel disclosure forms and coincided with ongoing federal investigations of political corruption and efforts to clean up how Congress does business.
   Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud charges in January and admitted he showered golf trips, sports tickets and other gifts on lawmakers in return for actions that would help his clients.

Relations between Russia and the United States are improving and the latest developments in the Iranian nuclear crisis are proof of increased cooperation between the two countries, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.
   ‘The context is evolving, obviously, but the content of our relations is changing for the better,’ Putin told the former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who visited him at his home here, around 10 kilometres (six miles) out of Moscow.
   ‘We are boosting our cooperation on the international scene. Our points of view are far from always coinciding, but the most important thing is that we understand one another and we find compromises. Our most recent moves over Iran have shown that,’ Putin told reporters.
   ‘Our relations in the fight against terrorism remain very important,’ he added.
   Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security advisor in the administration of president Richard Nixon, played down increasingly vocal differences between the United States and Russia. ‘In all of my public life I’ve believed that Russia and the US should not be adversaries, but should work together for the common good of mankind,’ he said, citing attempts to rein in Iran’s nuclear power ambitions as evidence of cooperation.
   Kissinger also expressed full support for Russia’s leadership this year of the Group of Eight club of industrialised democracies—a role criticised by opponents of Putin who say that Russia does not have sufficent democratic credentials.

The United States, seeking to counter the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, and rising anti-US sentiment across Latin America, warned the region on Monday not to be seduced by populists.
    ‘The pied pipers of populism will only lead people backwards, while globalization and the rest of the world looks ahead,’ said US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick.
   He was addressing foreign ministers and delegation heads from 34 member countries of the Organisation of American States in the Dominican capital for its 36th annual general assembly.
   ‘The divide we now face is not between left and right, but between democrats and authoritarians, whether or not elected,’ said Zoellick.
   He did not refer directly to Chavez, a close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro who regularly brands President George W. Bush as imperialist and portrays his self-styled ‘Bolivarian’ revolution as the sole cure for many of Latin America’s ills.
   But Chavez has thrown his support behind Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista and former US nemesis, in Nicaragua’s upcoming presidential race. And Zoellick warned in his speech that ‘old caudillos of corruption and communism’ were seeking to stage a comeback in Managua.
   Zoellick also urged the OAS to stand firmly behind Peru in a diplomatic spat with Venezuela.
   Peru’s foreign minister Oscar Maurtua has used the meeting to denounce what he called Chavez’s meddling in Peru’s internal politics, and he implicitly called for OAS sanctions against Chavez on Monday.
   Chavez also supported Ollanta Humala, a populist former army commander, in his bid for Peru’s presidency, but a runoff election was won by former President Alan Garcia, an outspoken Chavez critic.
   Highlighting US pleasure over outcome of the Peruvian election, Zoellick told reporters, ‘Chavez has overplayed his hand and people in the region are recognizing it.’

At least nine people were killed Tuesday in attacks across Iraq, including mortars fired at the interior ministry, as police found nine severed heads in a box used to carry fruit.
   The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, meanwhile, ordered the phased release of 2,500 prison detainees, in what he described as a gesture to ‘promote national reconciliation’.
   The first batch of 500 prisoners were to be freed on Wednesday, from a total of 28,700 detainees being held in Iraqi and US prisons across the country, as of April 30.
   Two men were killed and seven wounded as insurgents fired three mortars which crashed near the interior ministry building, security officials and medics said.

Twelve men accused of scheming to blow up Canadian targets in a terrorist plot that authorities say was inspired by al-Qaida faced a formal hearing Tuesday on the charges against them.
   Police expect more arrests, while intelligence officers sought ties between the 12 men and five other teen suspects and Islamic terror cells in the United States and five other nations.
   The Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton, a small city just west of Toronto, said Monday the men arrested over the weekend were charged with participating in a terrorist group. Other charges include importing weapons and planning a bombing.
   The charges against the five minors were not made public.
   The Parliament of Canada, in Ottawa, is believed to be among targets the group discussed. The Toronto mayor, David Miller, said CN Tower, a downtown landmark, and the city’s subway were not targets as had been speculated in local media, but declined to identify sites that were.
   A Muslim leader who knew the oldest suspect, 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, told The Associated Press that Jamal’s sermons at a local mosque were ‘filled with hate’ against Canada.

The United States has been funnelling more than $100,000 a month to warlords battling Islamist militia in Somalia, according to a Somalia expert who has conferred with the groups in the country.
   The US operation, which former intelligence officials say is aimed at preventing emergence of rulers who could provide al Qaeda with a safe haven akin to Taliban-ruled
   Afghanistan, appeared to be seriously set back on Monday when an Islamic coalition claimed control of Mogadishu.
   US government officials refused to discuss any possible secret US involvement in the strategically placed Horn of Africa state, which has been wrecked by years of fighting.
   But former US intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said an operation to support the warlords’ alliance appeared to involve both the CIA and US military.

Eight killed in Kashmir clash
Indian troops Tuesday shot dead eight Muslim rebels along the de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the army said. The rebels were killed in northern Machil sector after they crossed the Line of Control—a demarcation that divides Kashmir between the two nuclear-armed rivals, Indian army spokesman Vijay Batra said. ‘All eight were killed along a barbed fence erected to stop infiltration of rebels into our territory,’ Batra said in the summer capital Srinagar. He said army commanders believe those killed were part of a group of a nearly a dozen heavily armed militants trying to cross into Indian Kashmir.

Thousands homeless in Assam floods
Thousands of people in Assam have moved to high ground after rivers burst their banks and swamped temporary homes they have been living in since massive floods in 2004, officials said on Monday. Low-lying areas of the oil-rich and tea growing region were under water following two days of torrential rains, with the Dhemaji district, 300 km east of the state’s main city, Guwahati, worst hit. ‘Some 15,000 people have moved to raised ground after floodwaters entered their temporary shelters,’ said Ananda Baruah, a senior flood control official. In 2004, thousands of villagers were rehoused in makeshift homes after severe flooding killed about 200 people and made more than 12 million homeless. — AFP

‘Dropping of Suharto’s case
was legal’
Indonesia’s attorney-general’s office argued Tuesday that its decision to drop a long-running corruption case against ailing former dictator Suharto was legal and within its authority. The South Jakarta district court on Monday heard lawyers from three separate groups demand that the court order the annulment of the decision, saying that the document they issued to halt the case was illegal. They argued that prosecutors could drop a case only when there was insufficient evidence or the defendant died.

18 killed in Thai road accident
At least 18 factory workers were killed and six people wounded when a car slammed into a bus that then hit a passing truck in central Thailand, the police said Tuesday. The bus carrying night shift workers from a Charoen Phokaphan animal food factory was pulling onto a highway when an oncoming the car collided into it. The force of the collision knocked the bus into the trailer of a passing truck Monday evening in Phetchaburi province, 125 kilometres south of Bangkok. ‘Seventeen of the victims were women aged between 20 to 30. They were night shift workers from a CP factory in nearby Samut Sakhon province,’ police lieutenant colonel Wasaphol Rueangjoy said. The drivers of the bus and the truck were both in hospital, he said.

Iran, Syria added to US blacklist of human traffickers
Iran and Syria were added to a US blacklist of countries trafficking in people, a State Department report said Monday, while raising concerns over an influx of sex workers to Germany for the World Cup soccer tournament. Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Laos and Belize were also on the blacklist for the State Department’s annual ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’ which analyzed efforts in about 150 countries to combat trafficking for forced labor, prostitution, military service and other purposes. The six countries join Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Myanmar among the ‘Tier 3’ worst offenders of human trafficking who could face sanctions if they do not take immediate measures within 90 days.
— AFP

Peru’s new leader faces huge
challenges
Alan Garcia, Peru’s new president-elect, pledges to do what few Latin American leaders have achieved: seduce Wall Street with prudent policies and simultaneously lift millions out of poverty. In a sign of the optimism surrounding Garcia, who aims to atone for his disastrous 1985-1990 presidency, stocks in Lima surged 2 per cent on Monday, thrilled by his pledges of strong economic growth and a low budget deficit. Peru’s foreign bonds also climbed and the sol currency touched a seven-year high in early trading. Hundreds of thousands of people danced in the streets on Sunday night shouting: ‘He’s going to give us a better life,’ ecstatic at the prospect of Garcia’s promises of loans, schools, drinking water and cheap gasoline.
— Reuters

Chile police, students clash during strike
Chilean police have clashed with school students who staged a second nationwide strike in less than a week to demand broad education reforms, shutting public schools across the country. In Santiago, at least 266 people were arrested and scores were injured, including 23 police officers, as students blocked roads with burning tires and ransacked several commercial establishments, officials said late Monday. Faced with the first major crisis of her three-month old term, president Michelle Bachelet proposed amending Chile’s constitution to guarantee quality education. But as her proposal was made, police fired water cannons and tear gas on about 1,000 high school students, and some adult supporters, at a barricade at the Plaza Italia in central Santiago.
— AFP

US troops take up duties on Mexican border
The United States on Monday deployed the first wave of up to 6,000 National Guard troops along its border with Mexico as it cracks down on illegal immigration, officers said. The Utah National Guard fielded 55 soldiers at the Arizona town of San Luis, about 330 kilometres southwest of Phoenix, near the California border, as part of Operation Jumpstart, said Major Hank McIntyre. ‘Our mission here is to provide a structure to support the border patrol,’ he told AFP by telephone from the border town where his unit will help extend a border fence and construct a new road to be used by border patrols.
— AFP

NY Mafia policemen ‘to get life’
A US judge has told two former New York policemen convicted of carrying out murders for the mafia that he will sentence them to life in jail. But the judge delayed formal sentencing until later in the month, when the pair will have a final day in court. Louis Eppolito, 57, and Stephen Caracappa, 64, were convicted for participating in eight murders. ‘This is probably the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse,’ the judge said.
— BBC