Ruling Palestinian Islamist party Hamas on Saturday rejected a US plan put to Israel and the Palestinians to end rocket fire in exchange for eased restrictions on Palestinian movement.
   ‘We forcefully reject this abject and terrorist plan because it calls for killing the Palestinian people and legalising the occupation of Palestinian territory in exchange for security’ in Israel, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said.
   The document sets out a timetable for implementing measures aimed at easing Israeli restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and addressing Israeli security concerns about militant rocket fire.
   ‘The American administration is concerned about the security of the Israeli occupation and offers no protection to the Palestinian people. It wants to destroy the resistance and reinforce on side at the expense of the other,’ said Barhum.
   The document, a copy of which was obtained by Israel’s Haaretz daily on Friday, sets out a timeline for implementing steps on security and movement.
   In exchange for eased Israeli restrictions, the Palestinians would have until June 21 to establish a detailed plan to prevent the launching of rockets that are regularly fired by Gaza-based militants into the Jewish state.
   Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said on Friday that the plan was ‘a very good approach.’
   ‘It is a timeline with monitors that sets out obligations by the Palestinians and the Israelis and is aimed at deeds, not words,’ he said, adding that the Palestinian government would discuss the plan further with the Americans.
   The US State Department on Friday confirmed it had circulated guidelines to Israelis and Palestinians about the next confidence-building measures to be taken, but played down the notion of a strict timetable.
   The United States, Israel’s main ally, has increased efforts during the past several months aimed at jumpstarting the peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, which have been stalled for six years.

The passage of a landmark nuclear deal between India and the United States has hit a fresh snag with senators in Washington piling the pressure on New Delhi to keep its distance from Iran, officials said.
   Although the US Congress agreed in December to let talks on the energy deal move forward, Indian and US officials are still at odds over the fine print of an accord seen as the centrepiece of a new post-Cold War relationship.
   There was some cause for optimism after talks in Washington earlier this week, with Indian diplomats saying problem issues like the treatment of spent fuel and India’s right to test nuclear weapons could be overcome.
   But in the aftermath of the talks on how India should get previously forbidden nuclear technology, seven US senators wrote to the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, telling him not to cosy up too much with Iran.
   Washington is trying to isolate Tehran over its disputed nuclear programme and alleged support for terrorism.
   ‘We are deeply concerned by India’s increasing co-operation with that country,’ said the letter, which was widely published in the Indian media.
   The senators–who still have a say over whether the nuclear accord can go through–objected to ‘the exchange of visits between high-level officials, enhanced military ties, and negotiations of agreements to establish closer economic relations.’
   The text also singled out India’s hopes to buy Iranian gas via a multi-billion dollar pipeline–a project which, like the nuclear energy deal with the US, is seen as crucial for energy-hungry India to fuel long-term economic growth.
   These problems, the senators said, ‘have a significant potential to negatively affect the relationship between the US and India.’
   Indian officials, however, are putting on a brave face over the letter—the second in as many months.
   ‘It is a pressure point no doubt, but I would not regard it as a deal breaker,’ a senior government official said.
   But an Indian foreign ministry official said the US pressure over how his country chooses to conduct its traditional non-aligned foreign policy could leave the government exposed to more domestic criticism over the deal.
   ‘In that sense, it could have a bearing on the US-India nuclear talks,’ the official said.
   Influential opposition Hindu nationalists and even communist allies of the government already argue the deal will compromise India’s nuclear weapon’s programme by forcing a separation and inspection of civilian atomic facilities from military sites.
   In a stormy parliament session on Friday, several lawmakers were furious over a letter they saw as an ‘open threat’ and interference in India’s ‘internal affairs.’

The Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, was confronted by the then CIA chief George Tenet with evidence of AQ Khan’s nuclear proliferation network, warning him of the ‘devastating’ consequences if Islamabad’s nuclear know how reached Libya, Iran or even al-Qaeda, reports Press Trust of India on Saturday.
   ‘If a country like Libya or Iran or God forbid an organisation like the al-Qaeda gets a working nuclear device and the world learns that it came from your country, I’m afraid the consequences would be devastating,’ Tenet warned Musharraf during a September 24, 2003 meeting when the general visited New York for the United Nations session.
   In his memoir ‘At the Centre of The Storm: My Years with the CIA’, the former director of the US spy agency described the probe into Khan’s network as ‘among the closely held secrets within the Agency.’
   ‘What we don’t know is how many networks similar to Khan’s may still be out there–operating undetected– and offering deadly advice and supplies to anyone with the cash to pay for them.
   ‘In the current marketplace, if you have a hundred million dollars, you can be your own nuclear power,’ Tenet says.
   Referring to the ‘Four Eyes’ meeting with Musharraf with no handlers or note takers, Tenet said he told the general ‘AQ Khan is betraying your country.
   He has stolen some of your nation’s most sensitive secrets and sold them to the highest bidders. Khan has stolen your nuclear weapons secrets. We know this because we stole them from him.’ ‘Thank you George, I will take care of this,’ was Musharraf’s response according to Tenet.

Sri Lanka’s navy sank two of a fleet of 26 rebel boats in a clash off the island’s northeast coast overnight, killing an estimated 10 insurgents, the military said on Saturday.
   The clash with the Tamil Tiger rebels comes amid daily land and sea battles between the foes as a new chapter of a two decade civil war that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983, deepens.
   In a separate incident troops shot dead a suspected rebel in the northeastern district of Trincomalee.
   ‘Two Tiger boats were destroyed in a naval battle last night as 26 of their boats were sailing south from (rebel-controlled) Mullaithivu,’ said military spokesman brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe.
   ‘Our navy Dvora (Israeli-built attack boats) have engaged them. We suspect 10 of them were killed, as they were two large boats,’ he added, saying four rebel suicide vessels were also sighted but got away.
   The Tigers, who are fighting for an independent state in north and east Sri Lanka for minority Tamils, were not immediately available for comment and there was no independent confirmation. Analysts say both sides inflate enemy losses and play down their own amid a parallel propaganda war.
   The attack comes after the military claimed it killed more than two dozen rebels since the weekend in a spree of clashes, and as analysts fear a war that has killed around 4,000 people in the past year-and-a-half alone is set to intensify.
   It also comes after a rebel air raid on oil facilities north of the capital on Sunday which the Tigers have warned will be followed by more similar raids using their homegrown airforce of converted light aircraft smuggled into the country in pieces.

Streets in Indian Kashmir’s main city were deserted on Saturday after separatists called a strike to protest against alleged human rights violations by security forces, witnesses said.
   A senior hardline separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, said the shutdown was also a response to damage to a mosque.
   ‘We appeal to people to observe a complete strike on Saturday to protest human rights violations and damage to the mosque,’ he said in a statement.
   Witnesses said schools, shops and businesses stayed shut in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, where India has been struggling to quell a 17-year revolt.
   Indian forces are frequently accused of carrying out extra-judicial killings, torture and disappearances. But authorities deny any systematic violation of human rights in Kashmir, and say all reports are investigated and that they punish those found guilty.
   A two-centuries old mosque inside the historic Hari Parbat fort, which overlooks Srinagar, was found to be damaged when the fort was opened to visitors late last month for the first time in 17 years after Indian troops stationed there left.
   Last week, several people, including four news photographers, were hurt in Srinagar when the police fired teargas at hundreds of Muslim demonstrators angered by the damage.

People who unwind with a cup of tea every night may have a lower risk of two common forms of skin cancer, new research suggests.
   In a study of nearly 2,200 adults, researchers found that tea drinkers had a lower risk of developing squamous cell or basal cell carcinoma, the two most common forms of skin cancer.
   Men and women who had ever been regular tea drinkers – having one or more cups a day – were 20 per cent to 30 per cent less likely to develop the cancers than those who didn’t drink tea.
   The effect was even stronger among study participants who’d been tea fans for decades, as well as those who regularly had at least two cups a day, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
   However, the findings do not mean it’s okay to bake in the sun as long as you have a cup of tea afterward. The researchers found no evidence that tea drinking lowered skin cancer risk in people who’d accumulated painful sunburns in the past.
   Nor did the study look at the relationship between tea drinking and malignant melanoma, the least common but most deadly form of skin cancer.
   Still, the findings support the theory that tea antioxidants may limit the damage UV radiation inflicts on the skin, according to the study authors, led by Dr Judy R Rees of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
   In particular, a tea antioxidant known as EGCG has been shown to reduce burning on UV-exposed skin.
   The current findings are based on interviews with 770 New Hampshire residents with basal cell carcinoma, 696 with squamous cell carcinoma, and 715 cancer-free men and women the same age.
   Tea consumption was linked to a lower skin cancer risk, even with factors such as age, skin type and history of severe burns considered. However, tea drinkers who’d suffered multiple painful burns in the past did not have a lower risk of skin cancer.
   It’s possible, the researchers explain, that the antioxidants in tea are enough to limit skin damage caused by moderate sun exposure, but not the ‘more extreme’ effects of sun exposure, such as cancer-promoting damage to the DNA in skin cells.

Pakistani police have detained hundreds of opposition workers to prevent them from joining a rally in support of a top judge sacked by president Pervez Musharraf, activists said Saturday.
   Opposition parties said police had raided the homes of their workers and detained hundreds ahead of the planned rally for Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
   Chaudhry, who is fighting a legal battle against his dismissal, is travelling by road from Islamabad to the eastern city of Lahore, where lawyers have promised him a ‘historic welcome.’
   Officials said police had blocked roads to prevent Chaudhry’s supporters from joining his caravan.
   ‘Thousands of people have joined the caravan of the chief justice despite the police preventing a large number of people from joining us,’ said Muhammad Ramzan, of the Pakistan Bar Council.

The death toll from flooding along Sri Lanka’s rain-drenched southwestern coast has risen to 11, while at least 50,000 people are now homeless and living in temples and schools, officials said on Saturday.
   Rains flooded many roads around Colombo on Thursday and Friday, causing traffic chaos and disrupting trade on the Colombo Stock Exchange because many traders were unable to get to work.
   Flood levels had subsided by Saturday morning, and rains abated. ‘We now have 11 dead, while there are around 50,000 homeless,’ said police media spokesman.
   National Disaster Management Centre officials said the number of people displaced could be as high as 80,000. Monsoon rains, which are due to arrive later this month and run through to September, typically cause widespread flooding and displacement.

Myanmar’s detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was in good health after her doctor and an eye specialist visited her for a routine check-up, a party spokesman said Saturday.
   ‘She is in good condition,’ said Lwin, a spokesman of Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party, the National League for Democracy. The two doctors saw her on Thursday, the spokesman said, but declined to give further details.
   ‘We don’t know exactly about her eye problem,’ said Lwin, who goes by only one name.
   Military-ruled Myanmar has put the 61-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest at her rambling lakeside home in Yangon for most of the past 17 years.
   Apart from her live-in maid, Aung San Suu Kyi is allowed no contact with the outside world, except for around once-a-month visits from her doctor, Tin Myo Win.

Sheikh Saeed Bin Nahayan Mubarak Al Nahayan, son of Abu Dhabi Group chairman Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, died in a road accident in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.
   UAE president Sheikh Khalid Bin Zayad Al Nahayan expressed deep shock at the death of Shaikh Saeed.
   Earlier, UAE vice president Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister and ruler of Dubai and other members of the royal family offered prayers in a mosque in Al Bateen, Dubai.
   After the prayers, the body of Shaikh Saeed was buried at Al Bateen.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has rebuilt its defences to face any new attack from Israel, the Shia militant movement’s deputy chief said in an interview with Al-Jazeera news channel.
   ‘We have new (military) plans. We have completed ... our ground work in preparing our men, as well as our land, so that we would be ready if the Israeli (government) thought one day’ of launching another attack, Sheikh Naim Qassim said in excerpts of the interview aired on Saturday.
   ‘We have evaluated the events of the second war on Lebanon ... and looked at the points of strength and weakness in a way that we would learn from the results of this war,’ he said referring to Israel’s devastating 34-day offensive last summer sparked by Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers.
   On Monday, an Israeli probe accused the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Israel’s top army brass of ‘serious failure’ in handling the war with Hezbollah, prompting calls on Olmert to step down.

Hundreds of Islamic militants Saturday smashed car cassette players, camera cell phones and ordered tribesmen to grow beards in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, witnesses and officials said.
   Some 300 armed bearded men took dozens of cassette players from cars and snatched mobile phones with built-in cameras and destroyed them at two main markets near Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district, they said.
   The group which calls itself ‘Mujahedin’ (Islamic warriors) said music and photos were against Islamic sharia law and warned clean-shaven men of ‘strict action’ if they did not grow beards, an AFP reporter in the area said.
   The Mujahedeen also preached at local shopkeepers to stop carrying out various businesses which were against sharia.

The Taliban said Saturday it would decide the fate of a French hostage and three Afghans captured a month ago after the results of the presidential election in France.
   The extremist group had earlier set a deadline of Saturday for an agreement on the withdrawal of French troops or the release of Taliban prisoners in exchange for the hostages.
   A spokesman for the militants said they would now wait until after the results of Sunday’s French election to decide the fate of the hostages.
   The winning candidate is likely to be known by the time polls close at 1800 GMT, which is 10:30pm in Afghanistan.
   ‘For the sake of the French nation who have asked for the Taliban’s mercy we have extended the deadline for the French hostage and the Afghans until the end of the French elections,’ spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone.

The pro-independence nationalists’ one-seat win in the Scottish Parliament elections sets London and Edinburgh on a potential collision course, as parties jockey for position Saturday.
   Although the Scottish National Party is not yet guaranteed to form the next government in Edinburgh, their win will cause Gordon Brown some sleepless nights as he prepares to succeed Tony Blair as British prime minister within weeks.
   Brown played a major role in the Scottish election campaign but saw his party relegated to the second political force in its traditional heartland for the first time since 1955.
   If the center-left SNP does manage to strike a deal with smaller parties to rule in a coalition, Brown’s biggest headache will be the nationalists’ push for independence.
   He has said he will not work with a Scottish leader who wants to end the 300-year-old union with England and Wales, as SNP chief Alex Salmond does.
   Salmond said Friday he was ‘anxious’ to cooperate with the pro-union Brown, but the ideological differences between the two Scots are clear.
   That schism—and Labour’s severe loss of support across Wales and England, where local elections were also held Thursday—looks set to dominate the years before Britain’s next general election, due by 2010 at the latest.
   Salmond’s most immediate concern is striking a coalition deal with other parties to secure the 65-seat majority he needs to control the parliament, which has limited powers over areas like health and education.
   Many analysts predict the center-left Liberal Democrats are the preferred junior partner, but their 16 seats would not be enough for a majority, making the two Greens and one independent lawmaker’s key figures.
   But the Lib Dems have ruled out sharing power with the SNP if they stick to plans for a referendum on independence by 2010 and Salmond must overcome that sticking point, as parties begin behind-closed-door talks this weekend.
   With limited room for maneuver, the Labour-Lib Dem coalition which has ruled Scotland for the last eight years could continue if the SNP fails to find a willing partner.
   If no agreement on forming a new Scottish government is struck within 28 days, a new election will have to be held.
   There were already signs of a first clash between London and Edinburgh Saturday after the election saw as many as 100,000 spoiled ballots, delays in postal votes and serious problems with electronic counting machines.
   The British government’s Scottish Secretary, Douglas Alexander, rejected Salmond’s pledge to hold a wide-ranging inquiry into what went wrong in addition to a review already announced by the independent Electoral Commission.
   But Salmond said his probe—if he becomes first minister—would question decisions made at the highest level, including by Alexander’s office, which has legal responsibility for the election.

The US president, George W Bush, urged Congress Saturday to approve a new and ‘responsible’ funding bill for the Iraq war, warning of new violence if the money fails to materialise quickly.
   ‘I call on Congress to work with my administration and quickly craft a responsible war spending bill,’ Bush said in his weekly radio address. ‘By working together, I believe we can pass a good bill quickly and give our troops the resources and flexibility they need.’
   On Tuesday, Bush vetoed a bill, which was to allocate 124 billion dollars in emergency funding for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, because it contained a call for US combat troops to start coming home by October 1 and for most of them to be withdrawn by March 2008.
   He has appointed a high-level team led by his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, to negotiate with Congress a new version of the measure.
   At the same time, he warned that if radical Islamists take control of Iraq, they would have control of a nation with massive oil reserves, which they could use to fund their ambitions and spread their influence.
   ‘The al-Qaeda terrorists who behead captives or order suicide bombings would not be satisfied to see America defeated and gone from Iraq,’ Bush said. ‘They would be emboldened by their victory, protected by their new sanctuary, eager to impose their hateful vision on surrounding countries, and eager to harm Americans.’

The Kremlin is turning back the clock to marshal Soviet-style patriotism in support of an increasingly anti-Western foreign policy that sparked verbal clashes this week with NATO, the European Union and United States, analysts said Friday.
   Ahead of a May 9 World War II Victory Day parade on Red Square, state television is feeding Russians a diet, morning and evening, of Soviet-era films depicting the defeat of Nazi invaders.
   Stay for the state-run news broadcasts and one might be forgiven for thinking war continues.
   Television gives blanket coverage of Estonia’s decision to relocate a Soviet war monument in the Baltic republic’s capital Tallinn and Kremlin-backed youth demonstrations against Estonian ‘fascists.’
   Newspapers and news agencies are filled with Russian officials’ attacks on a US plan to deploy a limited anti-missile defence system in new NATO countries of eastern Europe.
   Last week the president, Vladimir Putin, warned of mutual destruction. This week the armed forces chief of staff, general Yury Baluyevsky, forecast an ‘uncontrollable arms race.’
   And when NATO, the European Union and United States gave Estonia their diplomatic support this week, the Russian government and the media were livid.

Protests in favour of a secular state were held in Turkey on Saturday, a day ahead of voting in parliament on whether to name a former Islamist as the country’s new president.
   More than 50,000 demonstrators gathered in the small western city of Manisa, according to television reports, with protesters denouncing the governing Justice and Development party and calling for Turkey to remain secular.
   The party’s presidential candidate, the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, narrowly missed being elected president on April 27 and faces a new vote in parliament on Sunday.
   The prospect of an AKP president has alarmed secularists, with more than a million people rallying in Istanbul last weekend following a similar demonstration in Ankara on April 14.

The US defence department has notified Congress that it plans to sell small arms, ammunition and explosives worth over $500 million to Iraq and missiles costing $71 million to Turkey.
   The proposed arms sale to Iraq will include grenades, tracers and blasting caps, apart from associated equipment and services. The total value could be as high as $508 million. The sale ‘will enhance the ability of the Iraqi forces to sustain themselves in their efforts to bring stability to the country and prevent overflow of unrest into neighbouring countries,’ the Pentagon’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement on Friday.
   The agency said the proposed sale of equipment and support would not affect the basic military balance in the region, and there would be no adverse impact on US defence readiness.

The endless party that is Paris Hilton’s lifestyle was gatecrashed by the long arm of the law on Friday as the socialite was sentenced to 45 days in prison for a parole violation.
   The millionaire heiress to the Hilton hotel empire looked close to tears as she wailed ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ just moments before receiving her sentence at downtown Los Angeles’ Metropolitan Court.
   Hilton must start her sentence at the Century Regional Detention Facility on June 5 or else serve a 90-day jail term.
   Paris’ parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, both looked visibly upset as the sentence was handed down to their daughter, one of the world’s most photographed and famous women.
   After the hearing, an outraged Kathy Hilton shouted at prosecutors: ‘You’re pathetic!’ before asking sarcastically: ‘Can I have your autograph?’