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Eighteen Palestinians, including women and children, were killed when shells slammed into their Gaza homes Wednesday in an attack slammed by the international community and the Palestinian leadership.
   The deaths, with another five Palestinians killed in a pre-dawn raid in the occupied West Bank and another in a Gaza refugee camp, prompted moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to accuse Israel of destroying chances for peace, and calls from Hamas and Fatah for renewed suicide attacks.
   While Israeli leaders offered regret for the ‘tragedy’ and humanitarian assistance for the wounded, the international community called for a halt to the Gaza operations, which have killed more than 300 Palestinians since a soldier’s capture in late June.
   But while the defence minister, Amir Peretz, ordered a halt to all artillery fire in the coastal strip pending an inquiry into the deaths, a senior official said the four-month operation against Gaza militants firing rockets into Israel, launched after the capture of a soldier, would go on.
   ‘Israeli fire killed 18 people, including women and children,’ said Khaled Radi, a Palestinian health ministry spokesman. Among the dead were two boys and two girls, as well as four women, Palestinian medics said.
   Eleven of the dead were from the same family while another 40 people were wounded during the shelling that slammed into a row of five apartment blocks.
   ‘I ran away and saw a second shell strike the houses. A shell fell on people who had run out into the street,’ said local resident Ataf Ahmed, 22, following the attack, one day after Israel ended a deadly ground operation in Beit Hanun.
   Another Palestinian was killed in the nearby refugee camp of Jabaliya and five others, including four militants, were killed in a pre-dawn Israeli raid near the flashpoint city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, medics said.
   The international community reacted with shock and revulsion on Wednesday to the Israeli army attack.
   Condemnation poured in from the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey for what Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called a ‘black day’ for his people.
   Of the four members of the international quartet overseeing the moribund Middle East peace process–the EU, the UN, Moscow and the United States–only Washington remained silent.
   In Cairo, the Arab League denounced the Palestinian deaths as a massacre and called an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from its 22 member nations.
   Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey also rebuked Israel for excessive and disproportionate use of force.
   In Russia, the Kremlin said Israel’s attacks on Palestinians ‘go beyond the stated aim of preventing rockets being fired into Israel from Gaza and only serve to worsen Israeli-Palestinian relations’.
   In Brussels, EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the shelling by Israel of civilian homes in Beit Hanun was ‘a profoundly shocking event’.
   Israel voiced regret over the deaths in Gaza but vowed to continue its military offensive there. The operation began after Palestinian militants abducted an Israeli soldier in June and has killed more than 300 Palestinians.
   The failure of the international community to staunch the bloodshed in the Middle East came in for sharp criticism on Wednesday from the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories.
   A Hamas leader and spokesman for Abbas’s Fatah party called for a resumption of suicide attacks in Israel, nearly two years after factions agreed to abide by an informal truce in such bombings inside the Jewish state.

Indian troops guarding the country’s only land transit point to Pakistan have halted an aggressive military ceremony ahead of a resumption of talks next week, officials said Wednesday.
   When Troops from the nuclear-armed rivals shut the Wagah border post every evening, they usually do so with an elaborate ceremony involving a furious goose-step and the slamming of gates.
   The ceremony draws thousands of spectators every day, and even triggered an exchange of gunfire almost a decade ago.
   But India’s Border Security Force said it was toning down the ‘body language’.
   ‘Soldiers have been told to refrain from high-rise stomping of feet,’ the BSF’s Wagah commander, Pradeep Katyal, told reporters after Indian troops staged a ‘conventional drill’ late Tuesday.
   ‘The new gesture speaks of friendship while the earlier body language bordered on hostility—a display of might,’ Katyal said.
   Witnesses said the Pakistani contingent did not reciprocate the gesture.
   The re-fashioned Wagah parade comes ahead of the resumption of peace talks November 14. The talks between the two nuclear rivals were put on hold following July train bombings that killed 186 people in India’s financial capital Mumbai.
   India said the bombers had links to Pakistan’s spy agency, a charge denied by Islamabad.
   India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, since the subcontinent’s 1947 independence from the British.
   
   Special court to be set up for Mumbai train bombs
   India will set up a special court for the July Mumbai train bombings to speed up justice for the families of the nearly 200 people killed in the attacks, officials said on Wednesday.
   The police have accused 19 people, mostly Muslims, in the July 11 attacks on crowded commuter trains and platforms. Charges against them would be filed by the end of November, the police said.
   India’s criminal justice system, burdened by millions of cases and a shortage of judges, typically takes years to grind through trials.
   Special courts are often established for high-profile cases in an attempt to speed things up, but even then verdicts often take time–a special anti-terrorism court is only now handing out verdicts for 1993 bombings in Mumbai that killed 257 people.

Some 100 North Koreans held a protest outside Japan’s parliament on Wednesday to voice concerns over growing harassment of the community since Pyongyang’s nuclear test.
   The two-hour protest was rare for Japan’s North Korean community, which usually keeps a low profile due to tension between the two countries.
   The protesters, mostly third-generation North Koreans in their 20s and 30s who were born in Japan, distributed fliers and held banners saying, ‘Violence and threats against children in Korean schools must not be tolerated.’
   ‘The participants in the rally wanted people in Japan to understand that the bad image (of North Korea) has resulted in serious violations of human rights against the members of our community,’ said an official with the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, also known as Chongryon.
   The association is affiliated with North Korea and serves as the de facto embassy of Kim Jong-Il’s regime in the absence of diplomatic relations.
   Chongryon-run schools across Japan have regularly received threatening phone calls since North Korea’s announcement on October 9 that it tested its first atom bomb, said the official.
   Similar protests will be held across Japan this week, including in the western cities of Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka, he said.
   Japan is particularly sensitive about North Korea as it fired a missile over its main island in 1998 and abducted Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s.
   The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who took office in September, gained national popularity as a hardliner against North Korea.

A senior Malaysian cabinet minister called on the country’s ruling party to ditch peacemaking efforts with former premier Mahathir Mohamad, calling the moves a waste of time, a report said Wednesday.
   International trade and industry minister Rafidah Aziz, a one-time protege of Mahathir’s, said her former boss had ‘crossed the line’ with his bitter attacks against prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in recent months.
   ‘If you ask me, I would say, forget (making peace) because he not only attacked the party and the government, but also talked about the prime minister needing to be replaced, and that cannot be tolerated,’ Rafidah was quoted as saying in the Star newspaper.
   Mahathir’s criticisms of Abdullah, which include allegations of economic mismanagement, nepotism and corruption, have shocked the ruling United Malays National Organisation and raised fears of divisions within the party.
   Hopes of a reconciliation were dashed last month when a meeting between the two men failed to resolve an increasingly bitter feud, instead yielding heightened attacks from both sides.
   The row is expected to take centre stage at UMNO’s key annual political meeting next week, and Rafidah called on party members to rally around Abdullah.
   ‘We have no sides in UMNO and the present UMNO is led by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. No UMNO member, whether a past president or past prime minister, has the right to hold sway over three million members who just want unity,’ said Rafidah, one of the most senior figures in the government.
   Rafidah last year publicly clashed with Mahathir over a controversial car imports scheme which the elder statesman said was undermining national automaker Proton.
   The fallout saw Rafidah severely criticised by UMNO over the permit scheme, with calls from some quarters, including from Mahathir, for her resignation,
   The minister, who famously wept when Mahathir announced his retirement from politics in 2002, also said she would never forgive him for the accusations.

A cloud hung over the future of Nepal’s god-king Gyanendra after Maoist republican rebels and the government clinched a historic peace agreement.
   The deal capped five tumultuous years since Gyanendra, 60, was vaulted to the throne by the massacre of his brother and most of the royal family staged by a drink-and-drug fuelled crown prince who later killed himself.
   King Gyanendra’s Shah dynasty has a 238-year history in Nepal, and while the rebel Maoists insist they want a democratic republic, others still see the monarchy as important for the tiny country wedged between India and China.
   But even if Gyanendra remains monarch, he has already been reduced to a ceremonial role, stripped of his political powers and job as head of the army.
   The government has also passed legislation turning the world’s once only Hindu kingdom into a secular state.
   Nepal’s kings have for centuries been revered as incarnations of the Hindu Lord Vishnu, the god of protection.
   But republican sentiment has climbed sharply since Gyanendra sacked the government and seized direct power in February 2005 in what he said was a bid to crush the Maoist rebellion that has claimed over 12,500 lives.
   Massive pro-democracy protests in which crowds burnt him effigy and called him a ‘murderer’ forced him to restore parliament last April.
   Since then the Maoists and the government have been inching towards Tuesday’s deal under which the rebels would form part of the government.
   The rebels, fighting for the past decade to make Nepal a republic, have agreed to abide by the outcome of a people’s assembly that will decide the monarchy’s future.
   Since Gyanendra handed back power to parliament, the once high-profile monarch has virtually disappeared from public view. The royal motorcades that used to clog streets of the capital have halted as have his whistlestop helicopter tours of rural areas.
   Gyanendra’s isolation was apparent in June when he marked his 60th birthday without the usual crowds of schoolchildren at the event and government ministers skipped the ceremony.
   The rotund monarch has been far less popular than his brother King Birendra, slain in what came to be known as the ‘Palace Massacre’ that left ten royals dead.
   Shocked Nepalis found the official verdict that Crown Prince Dipendra was responsible for the massacre hard to believe, and Maoist rebels accused the king of stage-managing the killings.
   Conspiracy theories still abound in Nepal, questioning how Gyanendra happened to be away from the palace when the killings occurred and how his only son, Prince Paras, who was at the palace escaped unhurt from the bloodbath.
   The playboy and wild driving reputation of Paras–last in line in the ‘eternal’ Shah dynasty–deepened Gyanendra’s unpopularity.
   The prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, has said he would like a ceremonial role for the king, but other politicians, including some from his own Nepali Congress Party, have said Nepal should become a republic.
   During political upheavals in 1950, Gyanendra was declared monarch at the age of five after being left behind as insurance when then-king Tribhuvan–his grandfather–fled to India. The crown reverted back to his grandfather when the family returned a year later and Birendra became king in 1972.
   Gyanendra, educated at a Jesuit school in Darjeeling, India, was said to be one of the world’s wealthiest royals. But lately the government has seized some of his properties. It is Gyanendra who people have a problem with, not the concept of monarchy, said Kapil Shrestha, a political science professor at Nepal’s Tribhuvan University, recently.
   ‘People have hatred for the king for what he did but they are not totally against the monarchy,’ Shrestha said.

Japan’s opposition on Wednesday sought foreign minister Taro Aso’s resignation over his calls for a debate on going nuclear following North Korea’s nuclear test.
   Prime minister Shinzo Abe, a conservative who took office in September, has repeatedly said he will not consider developing nuclear weapons, a long-time taboo in the only nation to have suffered atomic attack.
   But Japan’s four opposition parties decided in a meeting to visit Abe and urge him to sack Aso.
   ‘The four opposition parties agreed we will demand the foreign minister’s resignation for recommending discussion on having nuclear weapons,’ said Hirotaka Otaki, an official of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

A first batch of Indonesian peacekeepers will leave on Wednesday to join the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, a military spokesman said.
   Armed forces deputy spokesman Ahmad Yani Basuki said around 125 members of the 851-strong Indonesian force would leave later in the day. He said the rest of the team would leave on November 24.
   Indonesia’s contingent had been scheduled to head to Lebanon in early October but the departure was delayed on several occasions because of logistical difficulties.
   Israel, which does not have diplomatic relations with mainly Muslim Indonesia, had initially objected to the involvement of Indonesia in the UN force.
   The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was expected to see off the contingent Wednesday, ElShinta news radio reported.

Thailand’s military-installed prime minister has launched a fresh charm offensive ahead of key international summits, outlining his plans and the reasons for the anti-Thaksin putsch.
   Addressing foreign correspondents on Tuesday night, Surayud Chulanont strongly attacked the policies of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and made an all-out effort to justify the September 19 military intervention.
   ‘What Thailand experienced over the last five years may have had the form of democracy, but certainly not the content,’ he said reporters in Bangkok.
   ‘It was a camouflage of electoral policies subverting the true democratic principles and rule of law.’

Iran is stepping up efforts to encourage its two million-strong community of Afghan refugees to finally return home by 2010, the country’s top immigration official has said.
   Tehran’s aim remains to repatriate all Afghan refugees who fled the wars that devastated their country, currently 950,000 registered refugees along with a similar estimated number of illegal, Ahmad Hosseini said.
   ‘We have not set a target date but we are hoping that by 2010 with the help of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees the Afghan dossier will be closed,’ he said.
   Hosseini said the only Afghans who would be able to remain in Iran in the long term would be those with Iranian-born mothers who will qualify for Iranian citizenship under a new law passed by parliament earlier this year.

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party on Wednesday said it would back scandal-plagued president Chen Shui-bian to ensure he survived a fresh opposition motion to oust him.
   With the consensus–reached at a meeting of the central executive committee–the DPP’s 85 legislators were ordered to boycott the third recall motion engineered by the opposition, the party said.
   ‘In order to maintain social stability, the central executive committee has decided to object the third recall motion,’ DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun told reporters.
   ‘Any party members found violating the decision would be disciplined in accordance with party rules.’

Democratic gains in Congress were seen around the world Wednesday as a rejection of the US war in Iraq that led some observers to expect a reassessment of the American course there.
   The shift in power also was seen as a signal in some capitals that the United States would put a greater emphasis on trade policy and human rights.
   Many watching the election said the results were a significant blow to president Bush’s presidency.
   ‘Although his term will not end within the next year, I think Bush is already turning into a lame duck,’ Yuzo Yamamoto, 60, the manager of a Tokyo business consulting firm, said as Democrats won control of the House and challenged Republican dominance in the Senate in midterm elections Tuesday.
   Outside observers saw the bloodshed in Iraq as the major driving force behind the Democrats’ success.
   ‘Voters have punished the Republicans. They are not happy with the way the leadership has handled the Iraq war,’ said Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Malaysia-based think-tank International Movement for a Just World.
   Bush’s foreign critics cheered in Vietnam, and in Muslim-dominated countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
   ‘The Republicans lost in the election because the American voters are now fed up and bored with the war,’ said Vitaya Wisetrat, a prominent, anti-American Muslim cleric in Thailand. ‘The American people now realize that Bush is the big liar.’
   Echoing the sentiment of many in Muslim countries, Indonesian lawmaker Ahmad Sumargono hoped that the results would prompt a reassessment of American policies in Iraq and elsewhere.
   ‘I am optimistic that American people have now realised the mistakes made by Bush in foreign policy. We hope this leads to significant changes, especially toward the Middle East,’ he said.
   Abdul Hamid Mubarez, an Afghan analyst and former deputy Afghan information and culture minister, said he hoped that Democratic victories would lead to more reconstruction money for his war-torn nation.
   The prospect of a sudden change in American foreign policy could be troubling to US allies in Asia — such as Japan and Australia — that have thrown their vocal support behind the US-led invasion of Iraq.
   Some, however, doubted that there would be a major shift in Iraq, said Michael McKinley, a political science professor at the Australian National University.
   ‘There would have been some concern in policy making circles here if the Democrats had said, ‘We are definitely going to withdraw by Christmas,’ McKinley said. ‘But they’re not able to say that,’ he said.
   ‘They will have concluded that it is unlikely to have radical significance in the area of US foreign and strategic policy,’ he added.
   US policy on North Korea, which angered the world by testing a nuclear device on October 9, is also high on the agenda in the region. Despite the test, Pyongyang has pledged to return to stalled six-nation talks on its weapons program.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that his country would continue to acquire nuclear technology and challenge what he called ‘Western fabrications’, reports AP.
   Speaking to a crowd of thousands in Semnan, a city 155 miles east of Tehran, Khamenei said most countries believe that ‘nuclear energy should be taken away from the hands of a few powers,’ state media reported.
   ‘The Americans open their mouth and close their eyes and say whatever they want, such as ‘the world opposes enrichment,’ Khamenei said, referring to Iran’s enrichment of uranium, which the UN Security Council has called on Iran to cease.
   ‘No,’ Khamenei replied, addressing the United States, ‘it is you who do not know and does not see the world.’
   
   UN powers still deadlocked over Iran
   Six major UN powers wound up another round of informal bargaining Wednesday, still deadlocked over how to punish Iran for its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work, reports AFP.
   Envoys of the Security Council’s five permanent members–Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States–plus Germany huddled for one hour at France’s UN mission for yet another inconclusive session on sanctions proposed by three European nations.
   Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya described the six-way talks, which focused on the European draft as well as on amendments offered by Russia and the United States, as ‘inconclusive’ and spoke of differences ‘that cannot be bridged’.
   ‘We are not in serious discussion. I believe we need more time,’ he added. ‘There should be more reflection in the capitals and also we need to talk to each other.’
   His Russian counterpart Vitaly Churkin spoke of a ‘gap’ between his amendments and the European text but sounded a little more upbeat. ‘There’s a gap but I wouldn’t describe it as a fundamental difference. We’ll continue to pursue this objective of having a negotiated outcome’ to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
   ‘I thought the mood was okay–There’s room for further constructive discussion on the text we have on the table,’ Churkin said, hinting that protracted haggling was likely before agreement could be reached.

At least 38 people died in attacks on Wednesday as violence returned to Baghdad and other flashpoint regions of Iraq after the lifting of a curfew imposed during the sentencing of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
   The deadliest attack came 30 kilometres south of the capital in Mahmudiyah where a car bomb exploded in the centre of a popular market, killing six people and wounding another 26, security sources said.
   In nearby Iskandriyah, another bomb exploded in a residential area killing a man and his 13-year-old son.
   In Baghdad, the weapon of choice was the mortar with attacks all over the city, including one near the health ministry, which is controlled by followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in which three people were killed and five wounded, a security source said.
   At nearly the same time, a car bomb exploded near the Nida mosque in the northern Sunni stronghold of Adhamiyah, killing one person.
   Another mortar attack in downtown Jumhuriyah Street killed another person and wounded eight. Not long afterwards, a pair of mortars fell on Kadhimiyah neighbourhood, a Shia stronghold and home to two holy shrines, killing two people and wounding eight.
   Dueling mortar salvos between rival neighbourhoods has become an increasingly common manifestation of the capital’s instability.
   In Baghdad’s southwest Al-Amil neighbourhood, three civilians were killed and another three wounded in a car bomb attack, while a member of the National Police was killed in a suicide car bombing against a southern checkpoint.
   In the flashpoint region of Diyala, which was also under curfew along with Baghdad and Salaheddin province, at least 17 people were killed Wednesday, including four in a single car bomb attack, police said.
   The booby trapped car exploded in a market in Muqdadiyah town north of the provincial capital of Baquba, police said.
   
   Saddam genocide trial adjourned to Nov 27
   The genocide trial of Saddam Hussein was adjourned Wednesday to November 27 in order to give the defence team time to present its witnesses, marking the end of a key phase in the trial.
   Four Kurdish witnesses testified against the deposed dictator and six co-defendants in what appeared to be the final session for the prosecution’s eye witnesses in the trial.

After 100 days without Fidel Castro at the helm, Cubans, including Castro himself, are not sure when he will return to run the Americas’ only communist state.
   Castro, the only leader Cuba has known for nearly five decades, handed the reins of power to his brother and defence minister Raul Castro, after undergoing intestinal surgery, saying on July 31 he would likely take months to recover.
   Cuba has defied the direst predictions of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Miami that the Cuban system could not survive without Fidel. For a hundred days, it has.
   Castro turned 80 on August 13, but asked that the celebration be postponed until December 2, the 50th anniversary of the day Castro and 81 bearded men, including brother Raul and Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, returned from exile in Mexico aboard a yacht named Granma to launch a military campaign that would topple US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
   However, Castro is not sure to make that date, either.
   The Guayasamin Foundation, in charge of Castro’s belated birthday, said the celebration was still scheduled, but was unsure whether the guest of honour would attend. ‘At the right moment in his delicate recovery, he will decide when he will be able to be with us here in Havana,’ the foundation, named for late Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin, said in a statement.
   The foundation planned a concert and an international gathering for August 10-13, but moved events to November 28-December 2, a date that has not slipped, said Alfredo Vera, of the foundation.
   Vera added that Fidel Castro had ‘given us the go-ahead’.
   Castro did not speak at the Non-Aligned summit held here last month nor did he address the UN General Assembly in September, leaving that task to Cuban National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon.
   But he has not been entirely absent from the world stage. Castro has met with his ally the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, and on Tuesday he congratulated former Marxist Daniel Ortega, who fought a war against US-backed guerrillas two decades ago, for his election as president of Nicaragua.
   Castro, once a staunch supporter of Ortega’s Sandinista administration, called the announcement Tuesday by Nicaraguan election officials of the results of Sunday’s vote a ‘grandiose victory.’

The White House reacted warily late Tuesday to the election of former Marxist Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua saying it would work with him based on his commitment to his country’s ‘democratic future.’
   ‘The United States is committed to the Nicaraguan people. We will work with their leaders based on their commitment to and actions in support of Nicaragua’s democratic future,’ said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
   Johndroe went on to emphasize that ‘the groundwork has been laid to allow for increased prosperity and opportunity for the Nicaraguan people’ through channels like the US-Central American Free Trade Agreement, US programmes to reward democratic and free market reforms, and debt relief.
   His comments came after Nicaraguan electoral officials said that Ortega, who fought a war against US-backed guerrillas two decades ago, had won the country’s presidential vote.
   With 91 percent of voting precincts counted, Ortega took 38 percent of the vote.
   Conservative candidate Eduardo Montealegre came in second with 29 percent followed by Jose Rizo, also a conservative, with 26.2 percent. Former US president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that US officials were willing to work with Ortega if he ‘reaches out’ first to his one-time enemy.
   Carter, who was in Nicaragua to monitor Sunday’s election, said on CNN television that he discussed Ortega’s election Tuesday with the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
   He quoted Rice as saying that if the election is certified by international monitors as ‘honest and fair, and if the Ortega government reaches out in a respectful and supportive way to the United States, then the United States will reciprocate.’

Pop-star Britney Spears has filed for divorce from dancer husband Kevin Federline, ending a two-year tabloid guessing game surrounding the couple’s stormy marriage.
   Court documents released Tuesday cited ‘irreconcilable differences’ as the reason for the 24-year-old multi-millionaire’s decision to seek a divorce from Federline, barely two months after the birth of the couple’s second child.
   Spears, who shot to fame in the 1990s with a string of hits including ‘Oops!–Did It Again,’ and ‘Toxic’, will seek custody of the couple’s children, documents lodged at Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday showed.

Five die in Japan family suicide
Three small girls and two adults were found dead Wednesday in a car in a Japanese forest in an apparent family murder-suicide using charcoal burners, the police said. The bodies of a man and a woman in their 30s and three girls, who appeared to be younger than 10, were found in a vehicle parked on a forest path at the foot of Mount Fuji, Japan’s most famous peak. An amateur photographer found the vehicle and reported it to police, said a spokesman at the Fuji Yoshida police station. ‘We are investigating the identity of the bodies. But it is highly likely that they are a family committing suicide,’ he said. Investigators were to study when the suicide took place and are trying to contact their family members, he said.

UNSC monitors envoy’s Myanmar visit
Top UN official Ibrahim Gambari will make his second visit this year to military-run Myanmar to press the junta for democratic reform and see detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. Gambari, the last foreigner allowed to see the 61-year-old Nobel peace laureate in more than two years, is expected to arrive in the isolated Southeast Asian nation Thursday for a four-day visit. The trip comes amid increasing international pressure on Myanmar’s repressive regime. The UN Security Council held discussions on the nation in September, with the US pressing for a resolution over its human rights abuses and lack of democratic reforms. US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who lobbied hard to put Myanmar on the council’s agenda–despite strong opposition from China–said the resolution would likely come after Gambari’s trip.

Travel ban sought against Suharto’s son
The Jakarta prosecutor’s office has filed a demand for authorities to maintain a ban on a son of Indonesia’s ex-president Suharto from travelling abroad, a report said Wednesday. Hutomo ‘Tommy’ Mandala Putra, 44, was freed from prison Monday after serving just a third of a 15-year sentence for murder. He walked free after registering for a one-year period of parole at Jakarta’s prisoner reintegration office. He became eligible for the parole after receiving a series of sentence cuts in the past five years. ‘We have made the report and asked the attorney general to continue the travel ban on Tommy,’ Darmono, the head of the Jakarta prosecutor’s office, was quoted by Detikcom news site as saying.

29 killed in Madhya Pradesh accident
At least 29 people were killed and 40 injured Wednesday when a truck carrying farm workers plunged into a river in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, officials said. The overcrowded truck lost control while negotiating a narrow bridge and plummeted into the river in Hoshangabad, 80 kilometres from state capital Bhopal, district administrator KK Singh said. ‘The accident occurred when the truck driver lost control while avoiding a head-on collision with another vehicle on the bridge,’ Singh said by telephone from Hoshangabad.
— AFP

Brown quizzed in cash-for-honours probe
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has been contacted by police probing claims that the governing Labour Party had offered privileges to wealthy lenders. Detectives have not asked to interview Brown in person, but want him to put ‘formally in writing’ what he knew about loans to the Labour Party, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday that Brown as well as Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott would be questioned by police investigating the so-called cash-for-honors claims. Officers are probing allegations that seats in Britain’s unelected upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords, were offered in return for financial contributions to political parties.
— AFP

Flooding prompts evacuations in northwest US
Record rainfall that brought heavy flooding to the Northwest, killing at least one person, causing evacuations and damaging roads and houses, began to ease Tuesday, as high waters continued to threaten some areas. Flood waters threatened nearly 300 homes and cabins in Washington after the Cowlitz River burst its banks and changed course near Packwood, south of Mt Rainier, said Deputy Stacy Brown of the Lewis County sheriff’s office. At least one house was swept away in the flood, she said. She said about 19 households in the area called for help, but mudslides and flooding had closed roads, making rescues more difficult.
— AFP

Ecuador candidate exploits child
labour: Chavez
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, on Tuesday accused the conservative front-runner in Ecuador’s presidential election race of becoming a very rich man on the back of child labour. Chavez, whose criticism of right-wing candidates in regional elections have often backfired, inserted himself into the Ecuadorean campaign by using a line of attack Rafael Correa, the leftist candidate he backs, has taken up in recent days. The Venezuelan called banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, who leads Correa in polls by about 16 percentage points, ‘the richest man in Ecuador, the banana king who exploits his workers and exploits children and puts them to work.’ Noboa has periodically clashed with his workers over their benefits–a theme Correa has increasingly used to try and persuade voters that he would abuse his power if elected in the November 26 run-off vote.
— Reuters

Seven Russian policemen killed
in Chechnya
Seven Russian police officers have been killed in an attack on their vehicles in southern Chechnya, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday citing a military source. The two all-terrain vehicles returning from an operation in the southern Shatoi region came under fire Tuesday afternoon, said a source in the Russian military staff headquarters in the Northern Caucasus. Another police officer was wounded in the attack. The source did not say how many police had been in the vehicles. The police officers are believed to have come from the same detachment from the central Russian republic of Mordovia.
— AFP

Blast rocks Australian power station
More than 150 staff were evacuated after an explosion at an Australian power station Wednesday before fire crews brought the resulting blaze under control, officials said. A large transformer exploded at the coal-fired Vales Point Power Station at Mannering Park near Newcastle in the eastern state of New South Wales, said fire brigade spokesman Glenn Lockhart. Ambulance crews and a rescue helicopter were put on standby, but no injuries were reported and all personnel were accounted for, he said.
— AFP