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At least 19 people have been killed in fresh violence in Sri Lanka, officials said Sunday, as Tamil Tigers vowed a ‘war’ to deploy their navy even though truce monitors say it violates a ceasefire.
   Thirteen of the victims were gunned down in separate incidents in the northern islet of Kayts on Saturday night, the military said. Two more people were killed in the restive northeastern port district of Trincomalee.
   Another two were gunned down at Atchchuvely in the northern Jaffna peninsula, police said. On Sunday, a soldier was killed when suspected Tigers lobbed grenades at troops, the military said, adding that it retaliated and killed one of the attackers.
   Authorities were investigating if the killings were linked to the ongoing Tamil separatist conflict amid a spate of tit-for-tat attacks in the north and east in recent weeks.
   More than 200 people have died in clashes over the past month despite a four-year truce between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in an ethnic conflict that has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.
   The president, Mahinda Rajapakse, 60, said in an interview with the island’s Sunday Times that the government is still committed to a four-year ceasefire. However, he said he ordered recent air attacks against rebel positions as ‘preventive action to avert another war.’
   ‘If they insist on continuing their attacks, I have to defend my country,’ Rajapakse said.
   The LTTE’s naval wing chief, Thillaiampalam Sivanesan, better known as ‘Colonel Soosai’, raised the stakes at the weekend by insisting that the rebels were ‘not prepared to relinquish sovereign rights to the seas’ following a major naval battle last week.
   ‘We will not hesitate to wage war with anyone who attempts to prevent us from exercising our freedom,’ Soosai said in remarks published on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website.
   The remarks came after Scandinavian truce observers known as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission said in a statement last week that it was reviewing its practice of putting monitors on government vessels following the sea battle Thursday which it said violated the ceasefire.
   Eighteen sailors were killed when the Tigers sank a gunboat that was escorting a ship transporting troops. The Tigers said four of their Sea Tigers were dead but the military said it killed about 30 guerrillas.
   The Sri Lankan navy said the SLMM monitors had not boarded their craft since the sea battle, but the navy is continuing its patrols off the north and east.
   ‘We have in fact stepped up our operations,’ navy spokesman PDK Dassanayake said.
   Soosai has strongly criticised the monitors for their ruling that the LTTE are in violation of the February 2002 ceasefire if they venture out onto the Indian Ocean or use Sri Lankan airspace.
   He said the LTTE’s naval arm, the Sea Tigers, had lost 1,200 men and women in the past 15 years and would not halt operations.
   ‘Even during intense war, we were able to establish sea links with distant lands at our will. No party was able to stop us then. How can anyone, especially within a period of peace, try to scuttle this ability?’ he said.
   The Tigers have been increasingly taking their fight to the seas thanks to their secretive and lethal rebel ‘navy,’ a rarity among the world’s guerrilla forces.

Thousands of villagers have fled one of Indonesia’s most dangerous volcanoes as its crater spewed blazing lava and spat out toxic heat clouds Sunday—but many also ignored orders to evacuate.
   Officials in one district alone relocated more than 5,000 people from villages near the crater to dozens of temporary shelters after Mount Merapi sent two massive heat clouds swirling two kilometres down its slopes.
   As of 1000 GMT Sunday, officials in Magelang district southwest of Merapi had taken 4,072 residents from 11 villages deemed to be at immediate risk of the heat clouds and moved them into shelters, said Edi Susanto, head of the district evacuation team.
   ‘We have not yet encountered any problems and so far things are moving quite well,’ he said.
   Nobody panicked, Susanto said, adding that efforts continued because ‘there are a lot of residents that need to be evacuated.’
   All the villages evacuated so far were ‘located very near Merapi and we fear that the head clouds’ could reach them, He said.
   ‘There are a lot of people who need to be evacuated, including babies, pregnant women and elderly. It’s not easy to perform an evacuation but this is something that we continue doing,’ he said.
   In Sleman district officials had so far transported 5,093 people from seven villages to shelters, said Ani, of the district evacuation agency.
   No immediate figure was available for the number of residents still to be moved. But vice president Yusuf Kalla said Thursday around 34,000 people living below Merapi’s crater should be evacuated.
   Susanto said that about 17,000 people from 21 villages across Magelang could be in danger from lava flows, but said only 11 of the villages needed immediate evacuation.

Thai courts and election officials are to begin planning new elections this week, but analysts warn an end to months of turmoil could still be a long time coming.
   The process is already off to a bumpy start, less than a week after the Constitutional Court invalidated last month’s snap polls that left the country without a functioning parliament and forced prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to step aside.
   The leading opposition parties, which boycotted the last elections, have refused to attend a meeting Monday with the Election Commission and court officials to decide when new polls should be held.
   The parties insist they still plan to contest the next election, but have called on the commission to resign since the court tossed out the April 2 vote.
   ‘It would be difficult for this Election Commission to organise the next polls as a free and fair election, because the public has no faith in them,’ Democrat party spokesman Ong-art Klampaiboon said.
   The court—which only took action after the king publicly castigated the judges—ruled that the campaigning period for the last election was too short, and that the polling booths did not provide enough privacy as voters ticked their ballots.
   Hundreds of other cases are still pending, including claims that Thaksin’s party illegally financed campaigns by fringe groups.
   The timing of the election carries important consequences, because Thai law requires that candidates belong to their parties for at least 90 days before the vote.
   If the election is delayed until late this year, that could encourage a defection from Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party, said political analyst Thitinan Pongsudhirak from Chulalongkorn University.
   ‘I don’t think any factions will flock to TRT,’ he said. ‘I think the factions could leave TRT.’
   ‘The longer it is until the election day, the better it is for the opposition,’ he added.
   Few expect the elections could happen within the next month, because Thailand is busy preparing for the 60th anniversary of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s accession to the throne in June.
   ‘The celebrations place restrictions on timing, so they shouldn’t rush it,’ said Mike Nelson, a visiting scholar at Chulalongkorn.
   ‘They should proceed in an orderly way. This is a very important celebration, but as soon as they’re over one can have the elections.’
   He expected the polls could take place no sooner than late July.
   The other burning question is whether Thaksin, who tearfully stepped aside on April 4, will decide to run again for prime minister.
   So far, Thaksin has been deliberately vague, calling himself ‘jobless’ one day, and resuming his official duties to preside over an important royal ceremony on another.
   The billionaire businessman remains his party’s leader and its most important financier.

The president, Vladimir Putin, meets Monday with Mahmud Abbas, raising questions about how Russia will balance its diplomacy between the Palestinian leader’s Fatah faction and the radical group Hamas, also welcomed to Moscow earlier this year.
   ‘This is a meeting of two friends,’ the Palestinian ambassador to Russia, Baker Abdel Munem, insisted ahead of the meeting between Putin and Abbas in the Black Sea town of Sochi, a location he said was reserved by the Russian leader for receiving only particularly honoured guests.
   With relations between Fatah and Hamas at their lowest since Hamas swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in January, Abbas intends to make the most of the meeting with the Russian leader, analysts said.
   ‘This visit is very important for Abbas,’ said Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Moscow Centre policy think tank.
   ‘He is going to do his utmost to convince Moscow that Hamas is only a temporary partner’ and is coming to talk with Putin ‘to see to what extent Russia really supports Hamas. He wants to probe Russia’s position,’ Malashenko said.
   Precisely where Moscow stands in its relationship to the Palestinians however is a matter of speculation and it was not certain that Abbas would leave Russia with any more clarity on this issue.
   ‘Russia faces a choice,’ according to Malashenko. ‘It has to decide who its supports: Abbas or Hamas.’
   Moscow has opted for a dialogue with Hamas and criticised the United States and the European Union when they scrapped direct financial aid to the Palestinian administration, before a compromise was negotiated at the United Nations on a temporary international aid mechanism.

The clamour is growing for Rahul Gandhi, scion of India’s most powerful political dynasty, to step into the spotlight after steering his mother Sonia Gandhi to a landslide by-election win.
   ‘Son Rises,’ said the Times of India in a headline after Sonia racked up a record 417,000-vote victory margin last Thursday in the family bastion of Rae Bareli in politically pivotal Uttar Pradesh state.
   Indian newspapers called the clean-cut politician’s role as manager of Sonia’s campaign ‘Rahul’s launchpad’ while cries from ruling Congress members for him to take a leading party role have been getting louder.
   Italian-born Sonia had triggered the by-election by quitting as MP to defuse a bitter controversy about elected politicians holding other paid posts.
   While thanking voters, Sonia who is Congress president, credited her win in equal measure to ‘Rahul Gandhi and the team of Congress who made it possible,’ and spoke of finding a role for her son in the party organisation.
   Asked whether Rahul, 35, who bears a powerful resemblance to his assassinated father Rajiv, would take on a bigger role, The Hindustan Times quoted Sonia as saying: ‘Yes, this could be thought about now.’
   His sister Priyanka, whose charisma is highly rated but who has pushed her bachelor brother forward while she focuses on raising two children, also said he would have to ‘shoulder larger responsibilities in the future’.
   ‘The expectations now are very high. People expect he will be named general secretary or to some other high post after a party meeting’ in late March, said political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan.
   Until his sortie for his mother’s campaign, Rahul had been almost politically invisible as a parliamentarian following the party’s surprise electoral win in May 2004 over the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
   Rahul has spent his time tending his constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh and travelling around the nation learning the political ropes, saying leadership has to be built ‘brick by brick’.
   But now, party members believe his apprenticeship is over.
   ‘Rahul Gandhi is an upcoming star and a ray of hope,’ said one federal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal. ‘Given his performance during the Rae Bareli campaign, even our party president has realised he can be given an organisational post.’
   Many party members believe Rahul could be a future Congress prime minister. Such is the family’s aura, many cannot conceive of a future without a Gandhi in charge.
   The family has produced three prime ministers—his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi.
   ‘There is little doubt that the glue that holds the party together is the Gandhi family—take that away and the party may break up into little pieces,’ said TN Ninan, editor of the Business Standard.
   Rahul has been mum on his future, saying only he is ‘a soldier of the Congress party. If I am ordered by my seniors to do something, I will do it’.
   But Rahul faces a daunting task if he takes a big organisational role as the party is in poor shape on the ground, analysts say. And there are doubts about Rahul’s ability to campaign on the hustings.
   Priyanka, who resembles her grandmother Indira Gandhi, is considered shrewder than Rahul, is a natural speaker and has an ability to connect with voters.
   In contrast, Rahul’s public performances are stumbling. He has spoken rarely in parliament and, when he did, read hesitantly from prepared speeches.
   ‘He will become more of a player but he’s so inexperienced now,’ said national pollster Yogendra Yadav.
   But Rahul is rated highly for his attention to detail and ‘common touch’—sitting down on mud floors with farmers to drink tea. And he is mobbed like a movie star when he appears in public—even if says nothing.
   Whatever role he takes on ‘it will enthuse the rank-and-file of the party, there will be another new face but we will have to see whether he can deliver—nobody should expect him to wave a magic wand,’ said Indian Express political columnist Neerja Chowdhury.

Myanmar’s information minister has criticised the United States for moving to accept refugees that support an armed group fighting the ruling military junta.
   ‘Actually, the majority of the so-called refugees are KNU terrorists, their families, relatives and hard core supporters,’ brigadier general Kyaw Hsan said Saturday.
   The Karen National Union is the oldest and largest rebel force still battling the junta. Fighting has escalated since February, in a campaign that rights groups say has forced up to 11,000 people from their homes.
   The United States was ignoring the attacks by KNU forces, and spreading propaganda about the displaced villagers, Kyaw Hsan told journalists in Thabyay Nyunt village in Karen State, about 320 kilometres north of Yangon.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry Sunday denied allegations that the president, Chen Shui-bian bribed Indonesian officials in order to make a surprise one-night stopover in the country.
   Chiu Yi a member of the opposition Kuomintang party had alleged that Chen paid Indonesian officials in order to be allowed to stop in Batam island on his way back from a Latin American trip.
   ‘The arrangements were made after Chen bribed Indonesian officials...via a company run by an ethnic Chinese’ who is close to Taiwan, said Chiu, citing a retired high-ranking foreign ministry official as his source.

Malaysia and Indonesia have signed a deal which will offer better protection from abuse for Indonesian maids, a report said Sunday.
   Malaysia depends heavily on foreign maids but they enjoy little protection under labour laws. The maids often live in and work all day every day to earn about 100 dollars a month.
   ‘Although the problems involved only a small number, this MoU (memorandum of understanding) will settle the issue once and for all as the Indonesians were worried,’ the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was quoted as telling reporters in Bali, by the Star daily.
   ‘We just want them (maids) to come and work for us, so please take care of them as they are also human beings,’ he said.

New satellite photographs show intensified activity at a North Korean nuclear plant suspected of producing weapons-grade plutonium, Yonhap news agency said Sunday.
   The agency published satellite images taken by Global Security on January 5 of the Yongbyon site. Compared with photos taken previously, the latest images showed not only new vehicles, containers and paved roads but also thicker plumes of smoke from the reactor chimney.
   The Yongbyon site is at the centre of a standoff over the Stalinist state’s nuclear ambitions because its five-megawatt reactor is suspected of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Pervez Musharraf may resign as Pakistan’s president next year and get re-elected for another five-year term by the present national and provincial assemblies before they are dissolved and general elections held, a close confidant of the general has indicated.
   ‘If the president has to seek re-election from the present assembly, whose term lasts till November 16, 2007, he can do so by resigning any time earlier than that day,’ said SM Zafar, a former law minister and a constitutional lawyer.
   ‘To put it simply, if the president were to resign in September 2007 or earlier, and if the present electoral college is not dissolved by then, he may, after a contest, be re-elected for another term of five years, which will start from the day he takes oath,’ said Zafar, who is considered as a legal advisor to Musharraf.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Sunday Iran would not accept any offer made by European states if it included a demand that Tehran stop what he called peaceful nuclear activities.
   Three European Union countries–France, Britain and Germany—are drawing up incentives to offer Iran in exchange for cooperation in ending enrichment work, which the West believes Tehran is using to develop atomic bombs.
   ‘Any proposal that obliges us to stop peaceful (nuclear) activities would not have value and would not be valid,’ Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast on state television.
   The United States and its Western allies suspect Iran’s declared civilian nuclear energy programme is a smokescreen for building atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying it wants nuclear technology for producing electricity.
   Washington and its European allies have been seeking a UN Security Council resolution that would oblige Iran to halt all uranium enrichment work or face possible sanctions.
   But Russia and China have resisted the move and Washington has agreed to let the European first devise a package of benefits for Iran in return for cooperating, putting back a decision on a possible resolution.
   European ministers will on Monday discuss a new proposal in Brussels to end the long-running stand-off.
   The plan includes incentives for cooperation in ending uranium enrichment but also a threat of targeted sanctions if Tehran is seen as obstructionist. Iran insists its aims are peaceful and argues its right to enrich uranium is enshrined in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   ‘I think the best incentive is that they implement the regulations of the NPT–especially on Articles 2 and 4,’ the president said.
   Article 2 of the NPT says signatories should not develop nuclear weapons and Article 4 says nations should be allowed to research, develop and produce nuclear energy.
   Western diplomats say Iran would be entitled to produce atomic fuel only if it could prove its aims were entirely peaceful but the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency says it still cannot give Iran a clean bill of health.
   Ahmadinejad accused the Europeans of living in a ‘colonialist world’ and said Tehran would not accept any decisions reached at the Brussels meeting.
   ‘If they want to decide things that concern us in a place where we are not present, then that body does not have any legal validity or credibility in decision-making,’ Ahmadinejad said.
   ‘We do not understand what is going on in their heads and who they think they are dealing with. The Iranian nation–can decide for itself,’ he added.
   Iran accuses the three main European negotiators—Britain, Germany and France—of unilaterally cancelling a round of talks on Iran’s nuclear row in August 2005 shortly after Iran resumed its nuclear research and development activities.

More than 30 people were killed in a spate of attacks on Sunday, including 14 dead in a double suicide bombing near Baghdad airport, Iraqi and US security officials said.
   Meanwhile, two British soldiers were killed and one other wounded in a roadside bombing in the southern port city of Basra on Saturday, the defence ministry in London said.
   Fourteen Iraqis were killed and six wounded in the two suicide car bombings near a US base close to Baghdad international airport, the US military said.
   Two vehicles packed with explosives were detonated in a parking lot near a Victory Base checkpoint, it said in a statement, adding that the attacks did not target the base itself.
   ‘This was not an attack on the compound. Instead, it targeted Iraqis congregated in a parking lot,’ the military said.
   Earlier, the interior ministry had said mortars fell on the parking lot and a checkpoint at the entrance to the airport, wounding 18 people and temporarily closing the road to the facility.
   On a day of multiple attacks, five Iraqis were killed in a blast on Baghdad’s Palestine Street that targeted a passing police patrol, Iraqi security officials said.
   The roadside bombing in the east of the capital missed the police patrol but killed the bystanders and wounded four others, a defence ministry source said. Al-Kindi hospital said two of the five dead were women.
   Three policemen were killed when their patrol was targeted by a bomb in the traditional Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiyah in north Baghdad. Ten civilians and three other policemen were injured.

Two firm admirers of Fidel Castro, the presidents of oil-and-gas-rich nations Bolivia and Venezuela, made clear at a protest rally that the anti-US, anti-imperialistic movement has a future.
   ‘We must dismantle, neutralise and make vanish this cynical empire,’ Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez told a cheering crowd Saturday of 1,600 in a conference hall in Vienna decked with pictures of Che Guevara, who was Cuban president Castro’s revolutionary comrade-in-arms. Che was killed in Bolivia in 1967.
   Chavez scoffed at the US war against terrorism saying that the United States has itself become ‘a terrorist state, itself a genocidal state.
   ‘We’re all threatened. This empire has no limits,’ Chavez said, speaking in Spanish as did the others at the rally.
   The Cuban vice president, Carlos Lage Davila spoke about the ‘criminal Yankee blockade of Cuba’ and the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, mentioned his ‘great admiration for Fidel.’
   The youthful crowd, some with painted faces, was anti-globalisation protestors at the final rally of an ‘anti-summit’ against a more august gathering of European Union and Latin American leaders at another congress center in Vienna.
   At the anti-summit, there were banners proclaiming ‘United States of Aggression,’ flanked by a portrait of Che and a masked man, and fervent chants of ‘The People, United.’
   And there were Chavez and Morales at the center of a stage also occupied by the Cuban vice-president, French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove, who once trashed a McDonald’s restaurant, and the daughter of Che Guevara.
   Morales told the crowd: ‘I came from your ranks. I am like you and our struggle led me to the presidency of my republic.’

The US vice president, Dick Cheney, argued in the weeks after the September 11 attacks that the National Security Agency should intercept domestic telephone calls and e-mails without warrants as part of its war on terrorism, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
   Cheney and his top legal adviser, David Addington, believed the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take such sweeping measures to defend the country, the newspaper said, citing two senior intelligence officials who spoke anonymously.
   NSA lawyers opposed the move and insisted that any eavesdropping without warrants should be limited to communications into and out of the country, a position that ultimately prevailed, the Times said.
   General Michael Hayden, the director of the NSA at the time designed the eavesdropping program and is certain to face questions about it when he appears at a Senate hearing on his nomination as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants for crimes against humanity resumes on Monday with the presentation of the first defence witnesses.
   Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi said it would be for the court to decide how many of the expected 60 defence witnesses would be heard in the new session.
   ‘It is up to authorities to decide if all the witnesses will be heard in this session,’ Mussawi said.

An explosive religious row over the origins of Christianity has turned ‘The Da Vinci Code’ into a global phenomenon that promises to make the film version of the cult novel a major blockbuster.
   As Christian churches launch theological attacks on the movie that will premiere Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, Dan Brown’s best-selling novel is still flying off shelves and generating furious debate across the world as its opponents brand it blasphemous and even ‘satanic.’
   The depth of passion from the United States to Spain, India and the Philippines over whether Ron Howard’s long-awaited film is fiction or based on obscure fact is drawing comparisons with Mel Gibson’s highly disputed and ultimately mega-successful 2004 biblical drama ‘The Passion of the Christ.’
   ‘Religion is now and has for centuries been one of the major areas of human interest and inquiry,’ said Robert Thompson, a media professor at the University of Syracuse in New York.
   ‘Popular culture has now identified this subject matter not as something to shy away from, but as something with which it can capture an enormous audience,’ he said, as giant posters for the movies posted across the world proclaimed ‘The silence will be broken.’
   While the Catholic Church rarely comments on films and books it finds objectionable, it—along with a quiver of other churches in the United States and abroad—some of its priests and organisations have declared open war on ‘The Da Vinci Code’ amid fears that its plot could damage the Church’s image, moving to debunk its assertions.
   The book, which has sold nearly 50 million copies, tells of an alleged conspiracy by the Catholic Church to hide for centuries the fact that Jesus Christ was a prophet, and not a god, who ultimately married Mary Magdalene.

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, has told members of his cabinet inner circle that he will step down in mid-2007 and hand power to finance minister Gordon Brown, The Independent on Sunday said.
   The IoS and two other newspapers, The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, all claimed the 53-year-old premier would go between next year’s local, Scottish and Welsh elections and the Labour Party annual autumn conference.
   Blair is said to have been forced into naming a date after increasing calls from parliamentary colleagues for a firm pronouncement on the matter as continued speculation could be harming the party long-term.
   He has until now said only he would serve a ‘full third term’ and not contest the next general election, which is due before 2010 at the latest.
   The newspaper said it asked one unnamed cabinet minister if Blair had told him he will step aside halfway through next year.
   Another was quoted as saying that Blair had now given ‘half the cabinet’ private assurances about a date but was not going public for fear it would play into the hands of the main opposition Conservatives.

China appoints bishop without Pope’s approval
China’s state-run church oversaw Sunday the formal appointment of another Catholic bishop without papal approval in a move likely to further strain relations with Rome. Zhan Silu held a celebratory mass as the bishop of the Mingdong diocese in Gutian county marking his promotion as the district’s bishop, an official at the church in southeastern Fujian province said. ‘The ceremony was held today,’ the church official surnamed Bian said. ‘Bishop Zhan has been promoted by the state church, the Vatican was not involved with this.’ Over the past three weeks, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the state-run administrator of China’s Catholic Church, has overseen the ordination of three new bishops, two of which came without papal approval.

Suharto not out of critical stage yet
Ailing former Indonesian dictator Suharto remains under critical condition following two bowel operations earlier this month, doctors said Sunday. Suharto was ‘improving’ in general but there was still some water covering his lungs, said doctor Aji Suprayitno, head of the state-run Pertamina hospital. ‘The condition of the lungs is not satisfactory enough because there is an excess of water. The critical stage following the operations has not yet passed,’ Suprayitno told reporters. Suharto, 84, underwent a stomach operation to relieve pressure from gas and fluid on Thursday following an earlier operation last Sunday for intestinal problems. Joko Raharjo, Suharto’s urologist, also said that doctors had managed to stop bleeding in his intestines.

Guard killed near Pak tribal area
Suspected pro-Taliban militants seized a checkpoint and shot dead a guard near a restive Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said Sunday. Sultan Mahsud was shot dead late Saturday by militants at Jandola checkpoint near the troubled region of South Waziristan, a local official said. Meanwhile, suspected tribal rebels kidnapped and beheaded an administration official in the restive southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, officials said Sunday. The official, identified as Shahzad Bugti, was kidnapped along with two guards on Saturday and his headless body was found on Sunday near the town of Dera Murad Jamali, region’s administrator Abdul Samad Lasi said.

Sihamoni celebrates birthday
Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni marked his 53rd birthday Sunday with hundreds of rural families, palace officials said. Fifty-four monks – one for each year of the monarch’s life, plus one for next year—and some 300 families, held a low-key ceremony with the king in Kompong Speu province, about 100 kilometres from the capital Phnom Penh, palace press officer Heng Kim Kun said. King Sihamoni handed out food to the villagers and monks, Heng Kim Kun said, adding that the monarch had wanted to spend part of his birthday weekend among people in an isolated part of his kingdom.
— AFP

Thousands protest French immigration bill
More than 11,000 people marched through Paris on Saturday to protest a bill that would stiffen rules for immigrants in France and give authorities power to choose who can enter. Protesters shouted “Solidarity with immigrants!” Many wore stickers showing an immigrant being tossed into a trash can. Demonstrators marched to a square near the Interior Ministry and the headquarters of the governing conservative party. Police said 11,200 people turned out to protest interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s bill; organisers put the figure at 35,000. It was France’s largest march in support of immigrants in years. The bill would make it more difficult for poor immigrants with little education and few skills to start a new life in France.
— AP

Bandits kill 12 in south-east Iran
Armed bandits have killed 12 people and injured one other after halting traffic in Iran’s unruly southeast, state television reported Sunday. An eyewitness was quoted as saying three to five armed men stopped vehicles late Saturday some 35 kilometres outside the earthquake-destroyed town of Bam in Kerman province. The victims were reportedly handcuffed and shot in cold blood in a trench on the side of the road. Police said they are hunting for the gang, but did not give their possible motives. South-eastern Iran is a major thoroughfare for narcotics smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Europe and the Middle East.
— AFP

Cuban dissident to be honoured in US
A leading Cuban dissident is to be honoured in New York next week, but it is not clear if the communist government in Havana will let him travel to attend the event, a Columbia University spokeswoman said Saturday. ‘We have not heard, definitively, anything,’ Sheri Whitley, a spokeswoman for Columbia University, said of Oswaldo Paya, who is to receive an honorary doctorate in law from the prestigious university. ‘We are hoping, of course, that he can make it’ to the ceremony Wednesday, she said by phone. In a statement on Columbia’s website to be read at the event, the university praised Paya’s determination.
— AFP

UN rights chief to travel to Cambodia
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour is expected to arrive in Cambodia Monday for week-long talks amid strained ties between the world body and the country’s leaders. Arbour, in the first visit by a top UN rights official since 2002, will also hold discussions on the upcoming Khmer Rouge tribunal, which is being organised jointly by the Cambodian government and United Nations, the world body said.
— AFP