Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplement «

Asian nations have been passing tougher laws to protect women from violence at home, but ingrained cultural taboos and limited resources still leave them vulnerable, activists say.
   From Afghanistan to Vietnam, activists believe the abuse of women remains unchecked. But much of it is hidden behind closed doors, making it impossible to gather precise figures.
   ‘It’s epidemic,’ said Paul Greening, programme officer for the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan, referring to the situation there.
   ‘It is not talked about, not seen, it is accepted,’ he said, noting that this kind of violence is typical in post-conflict situations but has been made worse in Afghanistan by the culture.
   ‘Here it is officially a crime, but it is considered a family issue, as it was in the West not too long ago,’ he said. ‘They never talk about it. Afghan women often don’t leave the house. Who would they talk to about it?’
   In India over 7,000 deaths in 2004 were blamed on dowry demands even though the practice was formally banned in 1961. Activists say even though the law is due to be tightened, Indian women still feel under pressure.
   ‘There are a lot of social and society pressures stopping women from complaining. They think getting slapped or being beaten is part of life and they accept it,’ said Tenzing Choesang, a member of the Lawyers’ Collective which advises on human rights issues.
   In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, authorities only started to recognise violence against women as a rights issue after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, said Martha Santoso Ismail, from the UNFPA in Jakarta.
   A law on violence in the home was passed in October 2004 but ‘it’s a new law, people are still very ignorant and denial is key,’ she said.
   And Indonesian women too are not comfortable seeking help.
   ‘Basically the root cause is cultural, because the woman doesn’t know her rights. There is a lot of education that we need to provide to both sides—men and women,’ Ismail said.
   In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, violence against women has emerged as a big social issue, said Sultana Kamal, the president of the Law and Justice Centre.
   ‘But at the individual level the awareness is not there, which results in increasing violence against women,’ she said, adding that enforcement of laws to protect women was lacking, particularly for crimes related to dowries.

Afghanistan fuelled a row with Pakistan Tuesday when it reiterated calls for its neighbour to stop cross-border raids by militants in the way it did during Afghan elections nearly two years ago.
   The comment was the latest in an escalating tiff between the US ‘war on terror’ allies about Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents whom Afghan officials say are directing a deadly insurgency from across the border.
   President Hamid Karzai’s office agreed with comments by the Pakistani leader, Pervez Musharraf, that Afghanistan’s October 2004 presidential poll would not have been so peaceful without Islamabad’s deployment of thousands of troops along the frontier.
   If ‘Pakistan’s cooperation can effective in Afghanistan’s elections, this cooperation can also be effective in fighting against terrorism,’ spokesman Karim Rahimi told reporters.
   ‘That is why Afghanistan has repeatedly been asking for the sincere cooperation of Pakistan in regards to fighting terrorism...’
   In particular it wanted ‘Pakistan to take measures slowly but effectively in cities and in tribal areas where terrorists have training centres, they get support and trained there and get organised.’
   Musharraf slammed Karzai in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying he was ‘oblivious’ to events in his own country and blasting intelligence provided by Kabul about the presence of Taliban leaders in Pakistan as ‘nonsense’.
   Rahimi reiterated the government’s defence of the intelligence, which included alleged sightings of the Taliban’s fugitive leader Mullah Omar in Pakistan. Islamabad denies that the one-eyed militant is sheltering on its soil.
   ‘If some of the information Afghanistan has given them is old as they say, this doesn’t mean that the information is inaccurate... it shows that the problems exists and terrorists and terror networks can change positions there,’ Rahimi said.
   The lower house of Afghanistan’s parliament condemned Musharraf’s remarks Monday.
   A parliamentary statement said Pakistan’s ‘fingerpointing’ and questioning the integrity of government intelligence and defence offices was ‘obvious interference’, legislator Shukria Barakzai said.
   Afghanistan is trying with the help of about 30,000 foreign troops to crush an insurgency led by insurgents loyal to the Taliban regime that was removed from power in 2001 for not handing over al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

A landmark India-US nuclear pact will in no way hurt India’s nuclear deterrent capability or its national interests, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said Tuesday,
   ‘The ability to maintain a minimum nuclear deterrent is intact,’ Singh told parliament, adding, ‘there will be no capping of our strategic programme.’
   A deal reached last Thursday during a visit by the US president, George W Bush, would give India access to long-denied civilian technology in exchange for allowing international inspection of some civilian nuclear facilities.
   Under the agreement, still to be approved by the US Congress where opponents have promised a stiff fight, New Delhi will separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and put 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors under international inspection.
   Singh also said India had decided to place under safeguards all future civilian thermal power reactors and civilian fast breeder reactors.
   But ‘the government of India retains the sole right to determine such reactors as civilian,’ he said.
   ‘This means India will not be constrained in any way in building future nuclear facilities, whether civilian or military, as per our national requirements,’ said Singh.
   ‘The integrity of our nuclear doctrine and our ability to maintain a minimum credible nuclear deterrent is adequately protected.’
   At the same time, Singh told parliament ‘our nuclear policy will continue to be guided by restraint and responsibility.’
   Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, and came close to a fourth war in 2002.
   While the two rivals are engaged in a slow-moving peace process aimed at settling their row over Kashmir, some Indian critics of the deal feared it might hurt India’s defence capabilities.
   But Singh said, ‘The separation plan will not adversely affect our strategic (military) programme.’
   ‘The separation plan ensures adequacy of fissile material and other inputs to meet the current and future requirements of our strategic programme, based on our assessment of the threat scenario.’

China has now deployed almost 800 missiles which could paralyse Taiwan’s communications and transportation and command centres in a 10-hour bombardment, the Taiwanese defence ministry said Tuesday.
   The ministry highlighted the mounting military threat, and declassified data on the 1996 missile crisis, in an apparent bid to lobby support for a proposed huge arms purchase from the United States.
   The move came amid escalating tensions after Taiwan’s independence-leaning the president, Chen Shui-bian, scrapped an advisory council on unification with the Chinese mainland, provoking fury in Beijing.
   ‘Ten years ago, they were already able to precisely project their ballistic missiles into their targeted areas,’ a defence ministry official said.
   ‘Now they have deployed 784 ballistic missiles with the entire island coming within their range, with the precision margin narrowing from 600 meters to 50 meters,’ he said.
   ‘Armed with the missiles, they can launch five waves of intensive bombings for 10 hours’ targeting the island’s military commands, communications centres, airports and harbours, army lieutenant colonel Chen Chang-hua told reporters.
   The People’s Liberation Army flexed its missile muscle in March 1996 by lobbing four missiles into waters off Taiwan. Three of the dummy warheads landed only 30 miles southwest of Taiwan’s Kaoshiung harbour and the fourth one only 20 miles east of Keelung harbour.
   ‘The purpose was to display their capabilities to blockade Taiwan should war break out in the area, and their attempts to influence the outcome of Taiwan’s first direct presidential polls in 1996,’ defence ministry spokesman Liou Chih-jein told reporters while showing a map.
   The war games were intended to deter Taiwanese from re-electing President Lee Teng-hui, regarded by China as a ‘splittist’. Lee was re-elected despite the missile threat.
   The crisis ended only after Washington sent two carrier battle groups to waters off Taiwan.
   Taiwan’s ruling party initially sought approval for a 19 billion dollar US arms package to be purchased over 15 years, but has since scaled back the amount after the opposition blocked it in parliament.

The supremo of Palestinian radical group Hamas vowed Monday to continue armed struggle against Israel and declared that the Palestinian Authority had accomplished nothing by recognising the Jewish state.
   ‘The demand that Hamas and the resistance movements lay down their weapons and become political parties is unrealistic and has nothing to do with the Palestinian reality on the ground,’ said Meshaal in an interview broadcast on Dubai-based Arab news channel Al-Arabiya after the end of his landmark visit to Moscow Sunday.
   ‘This is why we are determined to hold on to our choices which are resisting and defending our people with the modest arms that we have while opting for peaceful politics to reorganise the internal Palestinian order.’
   Meshaal made clear his group, which has carried out dozens of attacks against Israel, had no plans to compromise its militancy in the face of diplomatic pressure.
   ‘We told Russian officials and we tell the whole world now, the solution is not in recognising Israel, it is in ending the occupation,’ said the Damascus-based Meshaal.
   Meanwhile, Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, warned that Hamas’s Palestinian prime minister-designate Ismail Haniya would not be immune from assassination if the radical Islamists carried out attacks.
   ‘From the moment when Hamas continues on the path of terrorism, nobody in the movement will benefit from immunity,’ Mofaz said when asked on army radio about the possibility of Haniya being subject to a targeted killing operation.
   Haniya has been tasked by the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, to form a government following Hamas’s massive victory in a January 25 general election.
   Hamas has carried out dozens of anti-Israeli suicide attacks during the course of a five-year Palestinian uprising although none in the past 12 months.
   Two Hamas leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdelaziz al-Rantissi, were killed in Israeli air strikes two years ago. Haniya was also present with Yassin during an earlier assassination attempt in September 2003.

The newly dominant Hamas faction flexed its muscles in the first working session of the incoming Palestinian parliament Monday by repealing a series of measures passed by the outgoing MPs.
   Fatah, the faction which had dominated the legislative council until it was thrashed by the radical Islamists on January 25, boycotted the vote having earlier staged a walkout from the chamber.
   The absence of the Fatah MPs meant that while 64 MPs voted to repeal the measures, there were no votes against and only six abstentions.
   On February 13, the outgoing parliament appointed Fatah men to key administrative posts and backed the creation of a constitutional court, whose members would be named by the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah member Mahmud Abbas.
   Deputies from Hamas believe that because the session was held after the ballot in which Fatah was roundly defeated, its decisions were invalid.
   Upon taking up his post last month, new Hamas speaker Aziz Dweik immediately froze those decisions and said they would be reviewed by the new house.
   Fatah’s walkout had been designed to buy time but the overwhelming vote was a rude reminder of the faction’s reduced status in the new-look chamber.
   In a statement issued after the vote, the Fatah MPs denounced what they called ‘the violations of the law which have been committed during this session and the manner in which proceedings have been handled’ by Dweik.
   ‘This is undermining any base for dialogue and partnership,’ they added.
   Monday’s session had got off to an orderly start when Dweik opened proceedings before 112 of the 132 MPs, many of whom took part via video-link from parliament in Gaza because of Israeli-imposed travel restrictions.
   The radical Islamic group controls the 132-member Palestinian Legislative Council, with 74 of its seats compared to 45 for Fatah.

Men still dominate Chinese politics despite rules and quotas aimed at increasing the number of women in China’s government, as reflected in the annual parliamentary meeting in Beijing this week.
   Only 20 per cent of the 2,988 delegates in the National People’s Congress are women, a percentage that has remained about the same since the 1980s and has even fallen slightly from 21 per cent in the 1990s.
   ‘Of course I hope to see more and more women in congress,’ said De Ji, one of only a handful of females from the Tibetan delegation to the parliament’s annual 10-day session that began on Sunday.
   ‘Women have their special ability and make a lot of contributions. They consider issues very carefully and they are very patient.’

At least six people were killed when a bomb exploded Tuesday at one of Hinduism’s most revered temples in the northern Indian holy city of Varanasi, a police spokesman said.
   ‘At least six people have died and more than a dozen others are injured,’ said Varanasi police inspector Madan Mohan Srivsatava.
   Police said the bomb went off at the Hanuman Temple, which was teeming with devotees who visit the complex every Tuesday to worship the god of strength which lends its name to the shrine.
   ‘It was a powerful bomb,’ Varanasi police chief Navneet Sikera said.
   Another blast occurred at the city’s main railway station within 10 minutes of the bomb, but there were no immediate reports of casualties in that incident.
   ‘The blast appears to have happened on board the Shivganga Express,’ said the police inspector Mohammed Hashmi.

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, on Monday was non-committal to a request by India to lift an embargo on uranium sales after the two countries signed trade and defence agreements.
   ‘Policies are not changed at a press conference,’ Howard said at a joint media briefing with the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, when asked whether Australia would review its decision on the ban.
   Howard, in India on a four-day visit, held hour-long talks with Singh earlier Monday. The two sides also signed six pacts on defence and trade.
   India’s talks with Australia on uranium supplies came just days after New Delhi and Washington reached a landmark agreement on sharing civilian nuclear technology.

The Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo, on Tuesday defended her use of emergency powers to foil an alleged coup plot, as authorities revealed they had detained another suspect in a widening crackdown.
   In her first live interview since the crisis erupted nearly two weeks ago, Arroyo said government moves to head off the supposed plot by ‘military adventurists’ and communist rebels had saved the economy and averted violence.
   She also denied opposition allegations that the state of emergency which was imposed for a week from February 24 had infringed civil liberties enshrined in the constitution.

Pakistani troops Tuesday searched for two pro-Taliban clerics accused of instigating the worst fighting near the Afghan border since the start of the ‘war on terror’, officials said.
   Sporadic clashes erupted overnight although the situation was mostly calm amid a curfew in the town of Miranshah, where 140 militants have died in days of fierce fighting that erupted on Saturday.
   Security forces arrested seven suspects in overnight raids in Miranshah, the main town in the troubled North Waziristan tribal region. Elders and local officials were in talks to end the violence.
   ‘We are desperately searching for the two main culprits, Maulvi Abdul Khaleq and Maulvi Sadiq Noor, but we still do not have any information about their whereabouts’ a senior security official said.

Nearly half of the people in the Thai capital want the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, to resign, a poll showed Tuesday, underlining growing public discontent with the embattled premier.
   Pollsters at Assumption University found 48 per cent of respondents wanted Thaksin to go, up from 39 per cent in a previous survey on March 1.
   While Thaksin is less popular in Bangkok, he commands strong support among rural voters.
   The university conducted the survey on Monday, one day after an anti-Thaksin rally drew at least 50,000 people in Bangkok. Pollsters surveyed 2,175 people in Bangkok and its suburbs.

Yigal Amir, the jailed Jewish extremist who assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, won permission Tuesday to artificially inseminate his wife, a legal source said.
   Israel’s justice ministry and prison service acquiesced to the request after denying the couple conjugal rights on the grounds that Amir could use his wife to pass on messages to sympathisers outside prison. Amir, 36, who has no natural children of his own, first sought permission last August for a sperm sample to be delivered to divorced mother-of-four Larissa Trimboler, whom he married by proxy from his prison cell.
   The extremist was jailed for life for the murder of Rabin. He is kept in solitary confinement in Beersheva prison in southern Israel, where he is under round-the-clock camera surveillance. Amir married Trimboler, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, in September 2004.
   But his requests for conjugal visits have been turned down by the supreme court on the basis that he has never expressed remorse for his assassination of Rabin in November 1995. Amir shot dead Rabin during a rally in Tel Aviv in protest at his stewardship of the Oslo autonomy accords agreed with the Palestinians.

The UN atomic agency met in Vienna Tuesday amid a US-Russian rift over a compromise plan that could head off UN Security Council action against Iran’s suspect nuclear programme.
   The US government demanded Monday that the international community act to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, with a senior official saying Tehran had already ‘crossed the international red line’.
   Washington said it would not accept any uranium enrichment by Iran, appearing to reject a Russian proposal to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme by allowing Tehran to do small-scale nuclear fuel work.
   Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to discuss the Iran issue in talks with the president, George W Bush, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, in Washington on Tuesday.
   The International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, had said Monday he was hopeful of an agreement to ease Western fears about Iran’s atomic programme, as details emerged of the Russian package to avert punitive UN Security Council action.
   The Vienna-based IAEA began a meeting Monday that could lead to international sanctions against Iran, which the West suspects is trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a drive for civilian energy.
   The IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors is expected Tuesday, or Wednesday, to hear ElBaradei’s assessment on Iran, with the report then going to the Security Council.
   A top Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ali Meshkini called Tuesday for a ‘political and rational solution’ to the nuclear crisis, but said the Islamic republic could not accept demands it abandon sensitive atomic work.
   China urged Iran on Tuesday to cooperate with the IAEA over its atomic program while calling on all sides involved in the crisis to exercise restraint.
   ‘There is still time for a settlement of the issue within the framework of the IAEA,’ Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing said.
   Meanwhile, Pakistan would oppose any military action taken by its ally the United States against Iran over its disputed nuclear programme, Pakistani prime minister Shaukat Aziz said in London.
   ‘Pakistan’s view is that there should not be any military intervention and we would certainly not be party to any such action,’ Aziz told BBC television late Monday during a visit to London.
   The BBC had asked him about Washington’s refusal to rule out military action against Iran’s nuclear programme which US and European diplomats fear may be used for nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is peaceful.
   He said Pakistan has always supported a diplomatic solution to the crisis over Iran’s uranium enrichment program, especially through the forum of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
   ‘We think Iran should not proliferate. We’re against production of any nuclear weapons in the region. We think Iran does have the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under IAEA safeguards and guidelines,’ he said.

Most Americans believe the sectarian violence in Iraq is building up to a civil war, and more than half think US troops should begin to withdraw from that country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll published Tuesday.
   President George W Bush’s handling of Iraq met with a 59 per cent disapproval rating, and 65 per cent do not believe his administration has a clear plan for the troubled country.
   A full 80 per cent of the 1,000 people who took the survey between March 2 and 5 thought the recent upsurge in violence in Iraq made a civil war likely, and 52 per cent said the United States should begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq.
   Fifty-seven per cent said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting against 42 per cent who said it did; a two per cent swing up and down respectively since the last survey was taken in late January.
   Bush’s overall approval rating dropped one point to 41 per cent from late January, while his disapproval rating went up two to 58 per cent.
   On issues, Bush had negative approval ratings for his handling of Iraq, ethics in government, health care, prescription drug benefits for the elderly, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the US economy and international affairs.

The United States risks falling into the same trap in Iran as it did in Iraq if it takes military action over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, top Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani warned Monday.
   The US government was engaging in 'psychological warfare' in a bid to haul Iran before the UN Security Council, which could consider economic sanctions and eventually even military action, Larijani told BBC television.
   Just as in Iraq, the United States wants to suggest falsely it has international backing for its position, he claimed, insisting Iran had the right to build what he described as a peaceful nuclear program.
   'This will be a catastrophe... because we are just doing R and D (Research and Development) and they want to send us to the Security Council,' Larijani said.
   'I think some of what they (US officials) are saying and doing is psychological warfare. If they believe by engaging in this, they can deny us our inalienable rights, they are wrong,' Larijani added.
   When the BBC interviewer said some in the United States believe Iran would fall apart if US military strikes were launched, Larijani replied that a clique of 'Zionist Orientalists' were again giving Washington bad advice.
   'These same mistakes led to the Americans being bogged down in Iraq,' Larijani said. 'Today in Iran all the stratas of society... have unanimously supported the peaceful nuclear program.'
   Larijani dismissed any suggestions that US air strikes would be enough to bring Iran to heel.
   'This tells me about their weakness rather than their might,' Larijani said.
   'They might start something like this, but they cannot finish this. They are vulnerable, they are very vulnerable....They are miscalculating...,' Larijani said.
   In Washington, under secretary of state for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns accused Iran of having already 'crossed the international red line and engaged in (uranium) enrichment activity which no one wants you to do, and there must be a UN Security Council process to deal with that.'

Iraq was plunged into political deadlock Tuesday as the dominant Shias opposed efforts by president Jalal Talabani to convene parliament amid bickering over who should lead the next government.
   The dispute came amid increasing violence which Tuesday morning saw at least eight killed and 22 wounded in a series of attacks, five involving car bombs.
   Talabani, a Kurd, along with Kurdish, Sunni and secular factions, opposes the reselection by the Shia United Iraqi Alliance of the outgoing prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, to head the a national unity government.
   The opening of Iraq’s new parliament, which Talabani wanted to convene on Sunday, has now fallen victim to the high-stakes political gamesmanship.
   One of the vice presidents, the Shia Adel Abdul Mahdi, has declined to sign the presidential council order for the assembly to meet, a top government official told AFP Tuesday.
   ‘All three members of the presidential council have to sign the order announcing the start of the parliament and Mr Mahdi has not yet signed for reasons best known to him,’ the official said on condition of anonymity.
   ‘Due to this there is a possibility that the parliament may not convene on March 12 as there is also a strong demand from the Shiite leaders to postpone it,’ he added.
   The presidential council consists of Talabani, Mahdi and vice president Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni.
   Parliament was elected nearly three months ago and its make-up only confirms the deep national split along sectarian and ethnic lines.

A UN human rights expert on Monday called on the international community to agree on a precise definition of terrorism to help prevent abuses occurring under the guise of counter-terrorist operations.
   The recently-appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, said in a report that a wide range of interpretations opened the door to both ‘deliberate misuse’ and ‘unintended human rights abuses’.
   ‘None of the 13 anti-terrorism conventions contain a comprehensive definition of the term ‘terrorism’’, he added.

The divide between conservative and liberal America was on full display at this weekend’s Oscars awards, in which many of the winners and losers championed social and political topics heralded by the left.
   But across the United States, in blogs and on call-in radio talk shows, conservatives seethed that their point of view was not represented in the choice films honored with nominations—let alone among those given awards.
   ‘This year’s Oscar nominees include stories of homosexual sheep herders, a transvestite, and Japanese prostitutes,’ the conservative Concerned Women for America group (CWA) lamented on its website.
   American conservatives, associated with the ‘red’ Republican Party, are accustomed to frowning at liberal Hollywood, but they were more disaffected than ever by the left-of-center themes of this year’s Oscar nominees.
   This year’s nominees, CWA wrote, promoted ‘a liberal bias on the issues of terrorism, police brutality, and communism during the Cold War.’
   The group complained that the few Hollywood films it approved of had loads of popular appeal and impressive box office, but ‘got the cold shoulder from Hollywood elitists.’
   Conservative America long has been at odds with liberal Tinseltown, championing films with religious overtones like the blockbuster ‘Passion of the Christ,’ which was snubbed at the 2004 Oscars.
   This year another hit with Christian overtones—’The Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’—has raked in more than 637 million dollars in ticket receipts around the world, but barely merited any interest from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which makes the Oscar nominations.
   The conservative Family Research Council noted that Narnia’s ticket sales nearly equaled those of the five best picture Oscar nominees combined.
   ‘This year’s anticipated Oscar-winning movies, reviewed in light of their box office appeal, reveal Hollywood’s true motives. They are far less concerned about entertaining people than they are with trying to shape the culture and advance a political agenda.’
   Hollywood’s liberal establishment said little at Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony to deny that with the most recent crop of nominees it had worn its left-leaning views on its sleeve.
   ‘We are a little bit out-of-touch in Hollywood every once in a while,’ actor and political activist George Clooney said in a speech accepting his Oscar for best supporting actor.
   ‘We’re the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular,’ he said.
   ‘I’m proud to be a part of this Academy. Im proud to be part of this community. I’m proud to be out-of-touch.’
   While no film receiving a major nomination had a perceptibly Christian bent, some social conservatives said they approved of the wholesome ‘March of the Penguins’—a documentary celebrating the monogamous mating rituals and domestic lives of the Antarctic birds. The film won the Oscar Sunday for best documentary.
   The movie for which Clooney received his Oscar—the anti-big business, anti-oil industry film ‘Syriana’—was hardly the edgiest, nor the one that raised the most eyebrows in the American heartland. That honor went to ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which addressed a secret homosexual affair between two cowboys.

President Hugo Chavez said Monday that Venezuela’s state oil company provided cut-rate fuel for the poor in the United States without political overtones.
   ‘Previously, Citgo, that is to say, Venezuelan money, went to presidential election campaigns, US congressmen. Now we direct our aid resources to the most needy, as it should be,’ he said in a statement released by Petroleos de Venezuela SA on Monday.
   Citgo is the US-based chain of 14,000 gasoline stations and is a subsidiary of state-owned PDVSA.
   With the onset of cold weather and the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, Chavez announced that residents where Citgo supplies auto and heating fuel, in Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Vermont, could receive up to a 40 per cent discount.
   Chavez has publicly and repeatedly scored President George W. Bush and his policies while lionizing Cuban President Fidel Castro. However, he also says he has no gripes with the United States or its people.

Australian officials Tuesday ordered an investigation into an incident in which an eminent Aboriginal woman was ignored for more than five hours after she collapsed at a busy city bus stop.
   Delmae Barton, 62, suffered a suspected stroke or diabetes attack and lay surrounded by dozens of commuters in a pool of her own vomit at the Brisbane bus stop last week before two Japanese men sought medical assistance for her. Speaking on ABC radio, Barton said that one man merely moved his briefcase so it was not near her.
   ‘And there were girls and young women who sat on the seat next to me and other seats around, they never came around to help,’ she said.
   Barton, a respected Queensland indigenous opera singer and elder, said she believes she was left unattended at the bus stop because of her race.
   ‘I think it did make a difference,’ she said.
   Queensland premier Peter Beattie apologised in parliament for the incident and urged people to get involved if they witnessed similar incidents.

Myanmar trip stalled: Malaysian
The Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, said Tuesday that his plans to visit military-ruled Myanmar to check on the progress of democratic reforms have been stalled. ‘My trip is still stalled,’ said Syed Hamid, who is acting as the envoy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. A trip planned for January was cancelled by Myanmar’s ruling generals and Malaysian officials said last month that it had been rescheduled for March, but Syed Hamid said there was now no date for the mission. ‘They have not given us a date. We recognise there is a communication problem since they relocated their capital,’ he said, referring to the ruling junta’s surprise decision last year to shift its administration from Yangon.

Koizumi rejects shrine criticism from China
The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, on Tuesday rejected criticism by China’s foreign minister comparing his visits to a war shrine to the worship of Germany’s Nazis after Second World War. Koizumi said he made his controversial annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo ‘for the entire war dead’. ‘Yasukuni no longer should be used as a diplomatic card,’ he said. The remarks came after Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing accused Koizumi of going to the shrine to ‘worship the class A criminals who led the war of invasion.’ Li compared visiting the Yasukuni Shrine to the worship in Germany of the country’s Second World War Nazi leadership. Koizumi has made five visits to Yasukuni since taking office in 2001. The shrine honours some 2.5 million war dead, including 14 deemed ‘Class A’ war criminals.

Lashkar commander killed in Kashmir
Indian troops killed a top commander of a hardline rebel group in revolt-hit Kashmir in a gunbattle early Tuesday, the army said. The commander belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba, one of several hardline rebel groups fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir, the army said. ‘A top Lashkar commander Mohammed Sultan, alias Khalid, was killed in an operation in Chithargul village of (southern) Anantnag district,’ army spokesman colonel Hemant Juneja said. The fighting erupted when soldiers raided a rebel hideout on a tip-off that militants were meeting there, Juneja said. Troops were combing the area to see if more militants were hiding in the area, the spokesman said. Over 44,000 people have died in Kashmir since an insurgency erupted against Indian rule in 1989. Separatists put the death toll at twice as high.

8 dead in Vietnam mine blast
Eight miners were killed in an underground blast in northern Vietnam in an accident likely caused when a spark ignited a methane gas bubble, an official said Tuesday. The accident happened Monday at the Thong Nhat Coal company at Cam Pha township, more than 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Hanoi, in Quang Ninh province, said Le Long, deputy director of the state-owned company. ‘We suspect that the eight miners, aged between 21 and 36, were burned on the spot when the driller hit a metal bag,’ Long said. ‘However, we are still investigating the cause of the blast.’ State press reported that only one man survived the accident, while the other eight bodies had been recovered by rescuers.
— AFP

US demands death penalty in 9/11 trial
Confessed al-Qaeda fighter Zacarias Moussaoui must be executed because his ‘lies’ prevented the FBI from defusing the ‘ticking time bomb’ of the September 11 attacks, prosecutors charged at the start of a sentencing trial Monday. But his court-appointed defence team pleaded with jurors not to hand him the martyrdom sworn al-Qaeda members crave, saying he did not deserve to be a hero. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, is the only man so far tried in a US courtroom in connection with the September 11 strikes in 2001. He lounged in a chair and stroked his thick, black beard as he was branded a ‘proud and unrepentant terrorist’ key to the September 11 plot.
— AFP

Sheehan arrested outside US UN mission
Four US anti-war protesters, including Cindy Sheehan, were arrested outside the US mission to the UN Monday as they tried to deliver a petition urging the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, fellow activists said. The four were detained as they tried to deliver a petition with 72,000 signatures organized by womensaynotowar.org to the US mission. They are to be charged with resisting arrest. Sheehan, who became a leading anti-war activist after her soldier son was killed in Iraq, gained prominence when she camped outside US president George W Bush’s Texas ranch last year to demand a meeting with the US leader. Arrested along with Sheehan were Medea Benjamin, Missy Beattie and Reverend Patricia Ackerman, fellow activists said.
— AFP

EU study common military research fund
European defence ministers studied a plan on Tuesday to pool their resources to boost military research and development but sharp differences remained over how the fund should work. The European Union’s 25 member states spend around one fifth the amount that the United States reserves for arms development, and the fledgling European Defence Agency is urging them to combine their efforts to close the gap. For many European countries, the fund would be a way to focus more resources on producing new and better weapons but others fear the common budget would overlap ineffectively on money already invested by individual nations.
— AFP

Morales calls for new Bolivian constitution
The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, moved Monday to write a new national constitution that he said was to ‘change the colonial state and neo-liberal model that have done much damage to the country.’ Morales signed a law late Monday to convene a Constituent Assembly to cast the new charter and to have a referendum on regional autonomy, with a target date for both of July 2. ‘We are making a fight for self-liberation,’ Morales said. ‘The neo-liberal model has divided us.’ The Constituent Assembly ‘will allow us (indigenous and excluded Bolivians) to join in refounding Bolivia and recover this land for Bolivians,’ he said, saying it would bring equality and justice.
— AFP

Tougher toilets planned for fatter Australians
Australians are getting so fat that toilet seats may have to be made stronger to bear their weight, the country’s standards association said Tuesday. Standards Australia said it had begun looking into the problem and expected to recommend ‘an increase in the strength of toilet seats to accommodate the increasing size of humans’. The percentage of Australians who are overweight or obese has jumped around 10 per cent in the past decade, to 62 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced recently.
— AFP