At least 40 people have been killed in landslides triggered by heavy rains on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, and dozens more are still missing, officials said Saturday.
   Entire houses were washed away by flash floods, and authorities said rescue teams had still not been able to reach some of the affected areas.
   Around 80 people were reported missing and presumed dead buried by landslides and washed away by flash floods. However, only 40 bodies were recovered as of Saturday evening.
   ‘Of 73 people reported (missing), we have recovered 40 bodies. Four people were found alive and we are still searching for 29 more people,’ district police chief Santoso Ginting said on MetroTV.
   The injured were being treated in the local subdistrict health centre. No further details were available on their condition.
   ‘As of 6:45pm (1045 GMT) evacuation efforts are still underway,’ Johnny Erasmus from the disaster management coordination office here said.
   He said search and rescue efforts will continue for the next seven days.
   East Manggarai district head Christian Rotok earlier said local residents were themselves organising relief efforts since access to affected areas was limited.
   ‘The Ruteng-Cibal road will be totally impassable for the next one or two days, this means the district capital will be paralysed,’ Rotok later told ElShinta radio, adding that the road is the main distribution line especially for fuel.
   He said people were taking refuge in churches since they have been ‘warned through local radio to move away from critical areas near the big river.’
   He also said that many rice fields were destroyed by the landslides, which will lead to food shortages in the district in the near future.
   Houses in two other districts were reported to have been washed away by flash floods that followed five days of heavy rain in the area.
   Authorities are preparing to send food supplies to displaced people in the affected areas.
   Erasmus pleaded for help from the central government and aid agencies for ‘body bags, rubber gloves, masks, gum boots and also mosquito nets for the refugees, medicines, kerosene lamps and tents.’
   ‘We have sent staff to help ... including sending 100 body bags,’ ministry of health official Rustam Pakaya told state new agency Antara from Jakarta.

A stinging report on the government’s handling of the Hezbollah rocket barrage against northern Israel during last summer’s war in Lebanon is due next week, public radio reported on Saturday.
   State comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss will submit an ‘extremely severe’ report to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday after a lengthy investigation into the government’s handling of the north’s rocket-battered residents both before and during the 34-day war, the radio reported.
   The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who saw his approval ratings plummet in the war’s aftermath, refused to be interviewed for the report and declined even to answer written questions submitted by Lindenstrauss, the radio report said.
   Tuesday’s preliminary findings precede a final report, to be released at a still undisclosed date, which will address the military’s performance during the controversial and inconclusive conflict.
   During the war against Hezbollah last July and August, the Shia militia fired more than 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, forcing more than a million Israelis to spend a month in underground bomb shelters and scores more to flee south.
   More than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, were killed in the war which failed to achieve its main objectives–to stop Hezbollah from being able to fire rockets into Israel and to secure the release of two soldiers seized by militants in the July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the conflict.
   Israel was also slammed abroad for the devastating use of its firepower in Lebanon, where more than 1,200 people–mostly civilians–were killed, and thousands of homes and infrastructure targets were bombed.

US and Pakistani agents were interrogating the Taliban’s former defence minister Saturday in the hope that he can help them hunt down other militant leaders, security officials
   said.
   Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, who had a one-million-dollar bounty on his head posted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, was arrested with four other suspects on Wednesday in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.
   Pakistani officials said Akhund, a key aide to Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar and an insurgent commander in southern Afghanistan, was flown to the capital Islamabad by helicopter after his capture.
   ‘He is being interrogated by a joint team of Pakistani and US officials in Islamabad,’ a senior security official said.
   The official did not specify which US agency the officials were from, although the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation are operating in Pakistan in small numbers.
   US officials have been involved in the questioning of several key al-Qaeda and Taliban figures captured by Pakistani forces since thousands of militants fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
   Pakistan has also handed a number of suspects to the United States, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks.
   ‘Obaidullah is an important figure in the militant network and the authorities will want to know the strength of the group and its tentacles in Pakistan,’ the official added.

Pakistan successfully test-fired a short-range nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface ballistic missile on Saturday, the military said.
   The Hatf-II Abdali had a range of 200 km, it said in a statement. ‘The test was aimed at validation of the desired technical parameters which has been successfully achieved.’
   Pakistan and arch-rival India routinely carry out missile tests, and have agreed to inform each other of tests in advance.
   The foreign ministers of Pakistan and India met in New Delhi in February and signed an accord to reduce the risk of accidents linked to their nuclear arsenals.
   Last week Pakistan test-fired a long-range nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface Hatf VI missile which can hit targets within 2,000 km.
   Pakistan’s Hatf series of missiles is named after an ancient sword mentioned in Islamic historical books.
   The Hatf-II was last reported to have been tested in February 2006.
   Diplomats have discerned no pattern in the timing of missile tests in the past.

A panel of the UN’s top court urged India on Saturday to scrap a draconian law giving the military sweeping powers to curb insurgencies.
   Eight legal experts appointed by the International Commission of Jurists Friday met officials including the Indian home minister, Shivraj Patil, to press for a repeal of the 1958 legislation, the group said in a statement.
   The act allows the military to arrest without warrant and to shoot-to-kill in disputed Kashmir and seven insurgency-hit northeastern states.
   ‘We informed the Indian government that there was a broad consensus that recommendations of the review committee to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act should be given effect,’ said former South African chief justice and panel chairman Arthur Chaskalson.
   A government forum last year also called for the scrapping of the law.
   Premier Manmohan Singh promised a review of the law after large protests when Indian soldiers allegedly raped and murdered a 32-year-old rights activist last July in troubled Manipur state.
   The AFSA, originally designed to stem strife in India’s remote northeast, was later extended to Kashmir where Islamic separatist militancy has claimed more than 44,000 lives since 1989.
   Chaskalson said the ICJ panel also discussed rights violations during sectarian riots that left 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead in western Gujarat state in 2002.
   ‘We specifically asked the government officials about the reports of human rights violations in the Gujarat riots,’ Chaskalson said.
   The riots erupted after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a train fire initially blamed on Muslims. Analysts hailed the United Nations’ call for repeal of the AFSA.
   ‘The AFSA was borrowed heavily from laws passed during the British colonial era and is a dark legacy,’ said Delhi University political analyst AS Ojha.
   ‘It’s not only the ICJ but many global forums which have said its repeal will solve half of the region’s problems,’ he said.
   ‘The panel is of the view that counter-terrorism measures in South Asia should go in conformity with the international human rights standards,’ panel chairman Chaskalson said.

Sri Lanka is stepping up security for diplomats following a Tamil rebel attack against a helicopter in which envoys were travelling, the foreign ministry said Saturday.
   The ambassadors of Italy and the United States and a UN coordinator were among more than a dozen people wounded in a shell attack carried out by Tamil Tiger rebels on Tuesday.
   ‘The government will take immediate measures to enhance security for embassies or international organisations,’ the ministry said in a statement.
   It said diplomats had expressed concern about security following the attack, one of the worst against foreigners in the country’s civil war.

The UN refugee agency has estimated that some 250,000 Afghan refugees could return home this year from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.
   ‘The planning figure for returns from Pakistan and Iran in 2007 is 250,000 Afghan returnees,’ the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.
   The UNHCR was unable to give a breakdown between the two countries.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, appealed to faction leaders on Friday to finish choosing ministers for a unity government and said further delay could embolden opponents of the deal.
   Haniyeh had asked president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction and other groups to submit their choices by Friday, ahead of a planned meeting with Abbas in the Gaza Strip, but this deadline has been pushed back.
   Following a late night meeting between Haniyeh and Abbas aide Azzam al-Ahmed in Gaza, the prime minister said Hamas would present its list of ministers on Saturday and Ahmed said the Fatah list could be released by Sunday.

Nearly 40 per cent of married women in India endure physical or sexual abuse, a state survey reported Saturday, but social groups and police say the figure reflects just the tip of the iceberg.
   India’s latest National Family Health Survey said nationwide 37.2 per cent of women ‘experienced violence’ after marriage and cited lack of education as the main reason behind their woes.
   ‘Women with no education were much more likely than other women to have suffered spousal violence, the survey said.
   ‘However, spousal abuse also extends to women who have secondary or higher secondary level of education, with 16 per cent reporting abuse,’ it said.

The West’s failure to compensate Libya for abandoning its nuclear weapons programme is unlikely to prompt Iran and North Korea to do likewise, Libya’s leader Moamer Gaddafi has told the BBC.
   ‘Libya has not been properly compensated, so other countries, like Iran and North Korea, will not follow his lead,’ Gaddafi said in an interview published on the broadcaster’s website.
   ‘This should be a model to be followed, but Libya is disappointed because the promises given by America and Britain were not fulfilled–That destroyed the model–no-one is going to follow that model as a result.’
   Iran is widely suspected by the West of using what it claims is a programme to develop civilian nuclear power as a front for building atomic weapons.
   North Korea claimed last year to have successfully tested a nuclear warhead, to widespread condemnation.
   Iran is facing new United Nations sanctions after refusing to stop enriching uranium while questions remain whether North Korea still has a covert uranium programme, despite its recent pledge to cease all atomic-related activity.
   Gaddafi–for decades an international pariah because of his opposition to the West and alleged backing of terrorism–pledged in 2003 to give up attempts to develop nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
   That led to a normalisation of ties with Britain, France and the United States.

Iran is considering ‘proposals’ which it has received from the United States for talks about Iraq’s security, the foreign ministry spokesman said on Saturday.
   ‘The Americans have recently contacted Iran through different channels requesting talks about Iraqi issues and in particular that country’s security,’ Mohammad Ali Hosseini told state television.
   ‘We are studying these proposals,’ he added.
   Hosseini did not specify if he was referring to a security conference on Iraq planned for March which is set to include both the United States and Iraq’s neighbours including Iran.
   ‘We are ready to put all our resources at the Iraqi government’s disposal to improve stability and security,’ the spokesman added.
   Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani said last week that Tehran would take part in the conference so long as it was in the interests of its violence-plagued neighbour.
   Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since Washington severed ties in 1980 in the wake of the seizure of its embassy in Tehran by Islamist students.
   Any official contacts between the two sides would mark a major break in the frozen relations, which have been marked by mutual recriminations and enmity over almost three decades.
   Washington, which has repeatedly accused Tehran and its close ally Damascus of fomenting the violence in Iraq, said it would join the conference and would not rule out possible contacts between US envoys and Iranians.
   The move is seen as a potential policy shift for the United States, which also accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and is leading an international campaign to force Tehran to stop its controversial nuclear work.
   But the White House has rejected bilateral talks with Iran and Syria amid speculation that joining the conference together with these two countries was a sign of Washington’s warming toward the two US arch-rivals in the Middle East.

The Bush administration is more than $400 million short in its plan to send emergency food aid to developing countries, leaving 9 million people at risk of going hungry, a coalition of aid groups said on Friday.
   The administration has already requested $350 million in supplemental funding for fiscal 2007 to help crises in Afghanistan, the Darfur region of Sudan, and other parts of Africa. But the Alliance for Food Aid, a Washington-based group that includes World Vision and other aid organisations, argues that will not be enough, even if the supplemental request passes.
   ‘There would be a $434,866,000 shortfall in southern Africa, the Horn of Africa and Uganda, with 9,225,639 beneficiaries unnerved. An additional $100,000,000 would meet about one-fourth of this shortfall, serving an additional 2,300,000 people,’ the group’s director, Ellen Levinson, said in an email.
   That money would go through the government’s ‘Food for Peace’ programme, which is funded through the Agriculture Department and run by the US Agency for International Development.
   The Bush administration, in its annual budget request, has already proposed spending $1.2 billion for emergency food aid in fiscal year 2008. That would allow the donation of about 3.5 million metric tonnes of grain equivalent.
   But the Alliance believes more help is needed in the short run for the Horn of Africa, southern Africa, Uganda, the
   Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia, and North Korea.
   ‘While an additional $100,000,000 will not cover all the requirements, it will make the level more realistic,’ the group said.

Iraqi forces launched a mission on Saturday to kill or capture the al-Qaeda guerrillas who kidnapped 14 policemen, slit their throats and then boasted about it on the Internet.
   Meanwhile, in Washington, president George W Bush’s administration sacked the civilian head of the US army in a bid to quell criticism of the treatment of wounded Iraq veterans once they are flown home.
   Both developments came against the backdrop of massive US and Iraqi security operations in Baghdad and in the western city of Ramadi, the epicentre of Iraq’s Sunni militancy, which residents said was under siege.
   Interior ministry operations director brigadier general Abdel Karim Khalaf told AFP that 14 officers missing after their convoy was ambushed on Thursday had been found dead in the streets of Baquba, north of Baghdad.
   ‘The minister is following this case closely and has given the order to hunt these people down and punish them. The police chief in Baquba has collected intelligence information, and the operation is under way,’ Khalaf said.
   Separately, the Iraqi defence ministry announced that it had killed three ‘terrorists’ and arrested nine more in Baquba, but it was not clear whether this was directly related to the hostage murders.
   On Thursday evening, around 55 members of the Iraq’s Shia-led interior ministry forces were travelling from Baquba to the nearby town of Khalis to go on leave when they were ambushed by Sunni guerrillas.
   The gang managed to capture 14 of them, Khalaf said.
   Shortly afterwards, a coalition of insurgent groups led by al-Qaeda said in an Internet message that the hostages would be killed to avenge the alleged rape of a Baghdad Sunni woman by Shia police.
   Late on Friday, a second message said the killings had been carried out and promised that a video of the murders would be released.
   Uday al-Khadran, the mayor of Khalis, said: ‘They were found in the streets of Baquba. Their throats had been cut and their hands were bound.’
   The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said the slaughter show how deeply these ‘hired killers’ hate the people of Iraq and warned Sunni politicians not to exploit public anger over the rape allegation, which he branded a lie.
   ‘We promise our people that the blood of these martyrs will not go unopened,’ he vowed.
   US and Iraqi troops were out in force in Baghdad on Saturday, almost three weeks after the official start of Operation ‘Fardh al-Qanoon’ (Imposing the Law), and an ambitious drive to quell sectarian violence in the capital.
   Just north of the capital on Saturday, US and Iraqi forces detained ‘nine terrorists,’ including two suspected of bringing foreign extremists to Baghdad, according to US spokesman Lieutenant colonel Chris Garver.
   At least three pairs of US army Apache helicopter gunship swept in low, tight circles over the city centre firing decoy flares while troops and armoured vehicles set up checkpoints and conducted targeted raids.
   In mainly-Shia east Baghdad three police and a civilian bystander were injured when a roadside bomb exploded, police said.
   US and Iraqi officials confirmed that this week Iraqi and American troops will build their first permanent base in the Baghdad Shia militia bastion of Sadr City, a joint security station at the edge of the slum district.
   It was a similar story in Ramadi, which al-Qaeda has declared to be the capital of an ‘Islamic Emirate of Iraq,’ where residents reported that US forces had sealed all entrances to the city.

A US federal appeals court on Friday upheld a refusal to hear the case of a Lebanese-born German man who says he was tortured by the CIA, citing national security reasons.
   Khaled el-Masri claims was detained by the CIA for several months in 2004 on suspicion of links to terrorism.
   Masri, 43, filed suit in December 2005 saying he had been snatched while on a trip in Macedonia, taken to Afghanistan, jailed, beaten and harassed before being set free without charge after five months.
   He demanded an explanation and an apology from the United States for his detention, as well as 75,000 dollars in damages.
   The US government had urged the court to reject the appeal saying that for national security reasons it could not confirm or deny any of the allegations because they were related to the activities of the CIA.
   The court said that to make his case, el-Masri ‘would be obliged to produce admissible evidence not only that he was detained and interrogated, but that the defendants were involved in his detention and interrogation in a manner that renders them personally liable to him.
   ‘Such a showing could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organises, staffs and supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.
   ‘The defendants could not properly defend themselves without using privileged evidence,’ the decision said.
   American Civil Liberties Union director Anthony Romero said the court was wrong.
   ‘Regrettably, today’s decision allows CIA officials to disregard the law with impunity by making it virtually impossible to challenge their actions in court,’ he said in a statement.

Danish police fought night battles on Saturday with groups of youths who had set fire to cars during protests over the eviction of squatters from a Copenhagen youth centre.
   The police said at least 100 people were detained when an illegal but peaceful demonstration and a street party with live music in the multi-ethnic, working class Norrebro neighbourhood turned into clashes after midnight in St Hans Square. At least one person was injured and taken to hospital.
   ‘Some 100 people were taken into custody so far,’ said Copenhagen Police Spokesman Flemming Steen Munch.
   Witnesses said police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, who fought back with Molotov cocktails and stones. Television footage showed cars, including at least one police vehicle, on fire. A local school was also trashed by demonstrators.
   Local news agency Ritzau also reported that six or seven fires were seen around Norrebro, and also one near Christiania in the early morning on Saturday.
   Police had been expecting more unrest on Friday night after more than 200 people were arrested the night before during protests sparked by the eviction of the squatters from the youth centre in an early morning raid. Two police officers and two demonstrators were hurt in clashes on Thursday.
   Activists have vowed to keep up the protests to retake control of the youth centre, which the local government had sold to a religious group in 2000. They said more protests were planned later on Saturday.

Her coffin covered in a pink rhinestone-studded blanket, Anna Nicole Smith was buried Friday as she lived: extravagantly dressed in a designer gown and surrounded by a small cadre of competing admirers.
   The reality TV star was mourned at a lavish memorial service, but while her body was laid to rest, the fight over the former Playboy Playmate’s baby daughter — and a potential multimillion dollar inheritance — remains very much alive. Her companion Howard K Stern, her mother Virgie Arthur and her former boyfriend Larry Birkhead are battling for custody of 5-month-old Dannielynn.
   There were fewer than 100 guests at the service, even though an organiser said about 300—including an ‘Entertainment Toni-ght’ camera crew—had been invited. Rock guitarist Slash, formerly of Guns N’ Roses, was among the guests, and country singer Joe Nichols performed two songs, guests said.

Algeria said on Saturday its cooperation with Washington’s war on terrorism was ‘profitable’ but it would never agree to host a US military base on its territory.
   The United States has conducted joint training exercises in countries around the Sahel as part of the ‘Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative’ to counter militancy in the region.
   And it has reinforced military cooperation and intelligence sharing with Algeria, an OPEC member itself emerging from more than a decade of an Islamic uprising, igniting rumours in the Algerian media that Washington would like to set up a military base in the country.
   This month, the president, George W Bush, also authorised the creation of a new Africa Command, under which future African continental operations would be conducted.

The United States said Friday it had selected the design of next-generation nuclear warheads, a step toward the construction of new bombs for the sea-based nuclear arsenal to replace aging Cold War-era stock.
   The government chose a design by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California over a competing design by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico for the project, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration said in a statement.
   The programme, named Reliable Replacement Warhead, now will enter a new development phase and be subjected to cost estimation. After congressional approval, the new warheads were to be produced under the direction of the US Navy.