Indian authorities circulated sketches on Saturday of three suspects believed to be behind a series of blasts outside courts in three cities that left at least
   13 dead and more than 40 wounded.
   The police said the blasts in northern Uttar Pradesh state on Friday afternoon were targeting lawyers.
   They are questioning a cyber cafe owner in connection with a threatening e-mail sent just before the blasts, media reports said.
   ‘Now the Islamic raids (sic) which is going to take place against lawyer within minutes,’ said the message received by some television news channels, the Indian Express daily reported on Saturday.
   The e-mail accuses lawyers in the state of beating up people falsely accused by the police of terrorism, adding the advocates ‘refused to take their cases and didn’t allow others to take their cases.’
   The e-mail also said the Indian police would be attacked next, the Express said.
   Lawyers in Uttar Pradesh have repeatedly refused to defend Islamic militants facing charges of orchestrating terror attacks in the state.
   In Lucknow – one the three cities where the blast occurred – lawyers last week allegedly beat up three suspected Islamic militants accused of plotting an attack on Rahul Gandhi, son of ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi.
   ‘We owe a duty to defend our clients,’ Uttar Pradesh bar council chairman Amarendra Nath Singh said on Saturday, condemning Friday’s blasts as ‘an attack on democracy and the judiciary.’
   He added that some local bar associations may have decided independently not to defend certain suspects.
   ‘Ultimately lawyers are also human beings. When you have terrorism going on for two decades, people are very much hurt,’ said Singh, adding that provisions should be made for trying accused terrorists away from the public.
   ‘When they gather in mobs, lawyers or anyone can lose their patience when terrorists are produced in court.
   The terrorists can even run away and this is a failure of the administration.’
   Analysts say Islamic extremist groups are attempting to stoke religious tensions to derail an India-Pakistan peace process over the disputed region of Kashmir and damage India’s booming economy.
   Uttar Pradesh home secretary official Javed Ahmed said on Saturday sketches of three suspects had been released but would not comment further on the investigation.
   In the holy Hindu city of Varanasi, where nine people including three lawyers died Friday, the state police chief said the blasts were similar to other recent explosions in the state.
   ‘We will identify and zero in on the local modules of terror outfits,’ said Vikram Singh, the Times of India reported.
   Four people were also killed in the city of Faizabad, near Ayodhya, a hotbed of Hindu-Muslim rivalry where Hindus tore down a 16th-century mosque in 1992 sparking nationwide riots that left 2,000 died.
   Singh said earlier the bombs were transported to the courthouses of Varanasi – where a string of powerful explosions killed 23 people in March 2006 – Faizabad and Lucknow by bicycles which were then abandoned.
   India’s leaders condemned the blast, including home minister Shivraj Patil, who has come under flak from the media as India has suffered a series of bomb attacks at religious shrines and other public places in the last year.
   ‘I strongly condemn the blasts,’ Patil said.
   ‘The government will continue to fight terrorism in a resolute manner.

The Annapolis talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must match peace pledges with ‘clear and concrete steps’ to end ‘grave’ rights abuses such as killings, Amnesty International said Saturday.
   Measurable benchmarks should be laid down with a clearly-defined implementation mechanism to ensure both sides respect fundamental civil liberties, said the London-based human rights group.
   The US president, George W Bush, has invited leaders and diplomats from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and some 40 other countries to Annapolis in Maryland in an attempt to re-start the Middle East peace process.
   The discussions, with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, at the centre, kick off Tuesday.
   If the talks are to make progress towards a ‘just and durable’ solution, ‘peace pledges must be accompanied by clear and concrete steps to halt and redress the grave human rights abuses and serious violations of international humanitarian law that continue to destroy lives on both sides,’ Amnesty said.
   The group called for the Annapolis parties to agree on deploying international human rights monitors in Israel and the Palestinian territories to check compliance and then report publicly.
   Issues ‘feeding the spiral of violence and impeding progress on other fronts’ had to be tackled, including ‘unlawful killings’ and attacks on civilians, the group said.
   
   Two Palestinians killed
   Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces overnight in the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian hospital sources said Saturday.
   They said the two brothers in their forties, Talal and Rafat Abu Shrena, were trying to cross into Israel in search of work.
   The Israeli army confirmed to AFP that one of its units had opened fire and hit two suspects who were approaching the security barrier between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

The Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, vowed on Saturday to help elect a new president in Lebanon, left in limbo after its president stepped down at the end of his term with no elected successor.
   President Emile Lahoud left office shortly before midnight Friday amid a raging feud over who was in charge in the politically divided nation.
   Siniora, whose government effectively took charge of the country in line with the constitution on Saturday, told reporters ‘we will exert all efforts to carry out as soon as possible the election in line with the constitution.’
   ‘We, as a government, will continue to carry out our duties as provided by the constitution,’ he said after meeting on Saturday with Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, from whose community Lebanese presidents are drawn.
   The crisis has prompted fears that two rival governments could be formed, as was the case at the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
   Siniora dismissed Lahoud’s parting statement on Friday in which he said that he was handing over responsibility for the country’s security to the army on the grounds that conditions existed ‘which could lead to a state of emergency’.
   ‘There is no need for a state of emergency...the army is carrying out its duties,’ Siniora said.
   The Lebanese army has been maintaining order on the streets of Lebanese cities since the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri which then triggered massive protests.
   With even more tanks and troops on the streets of Beirut this week to maintain security, the situation was calm Saturday with no reports of unrest or clashes.
   Newspapers said Lebanon had been plunged into an organised political chaos pending a parliament session next Friday to elect Lahoud’s successor.
   ‘Lahoud’s era ends with a republic with no head of state,’ the leading An-Nahar daily said, adding that ‘security and political guarantees rule during the transitional period’ until next Friday.
   Al-Balad ran an empty box on its front-page with a headline that read: ‘The republic without a president’.
   The daily As-Safir, close to the opposition, said the country’s political leaders had managed to agree on only one thing Friday, ‘a political vacuum’. ‘This truce is only protected by the fear each party has of the other.’
   The United States, the European Union and other countries appealed for calm and urged both sides to quickly negotiate an end to the crisis and spare the country further turmoil.
   Washington offered its support to Siniora’s government and urged ‘all Lebanese political groups to do their part to maintain calm and promote security for Lebanon’s citizens.’
   And Russian foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin, whose country maintains close relations with Syria, voiced ‘deep concern’ over the situation in Lebanon and said ‘priority remains the avoidance of open or even armed confrontation.’
   Lawmakers from the Western-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition had been scheduled to convene on Friday in a final bid to elect Lahoud’s successor.
   But the session was postponed, for the fifth time in two months. A new vote has been scheduled for November 30.
   The ruling coalition had called on all MPs to attend Friday’s session but the opposition boycotted the vote and warned against any attempt to elect a president without a two-thirds quorum.
   The standoff began after the Shia militant group, empowered by its 34-day war with Israel last year, pulled its ministers from the cabinet in November 2006 to gain more representation in government.

Myanmar should release its child soldiers, stop recruiting youths under 18 in its army and allow UN officials access to remote areas where armed groups also use child soldiers, the United Nations said in a report released on Friday.
   The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said in the report that restrictions on access around the country made it difficult to give an accurate picture, but credible reports of the use of child soldiers showed a worrisome trend.
   The report covers the period from July 2005 to September this year, just before a bloody crackdown by the country’s military rulers on peaceful demonstrations that sparked international outcry.
   Western diplomats say many more people were killed than the official toll of 15. The protests were the biggest threat to the junta since a 1988 rebellion.
   The report issued to the Security Council said that despite an official policy of not recruiting children under the age of 18, there are extensive reports of children being recruited, sometimes through brokers who are paid around $30 and a bag of rice for each recruit.
   ‘There is reportedly enormous pressure to accelerate (army) recruitment rates,’ Ban said, citing a pattern of underage recruitment in which poor, vulnerable children are offered food and shelter to lure them in.
   Others without identification papers are offered a choice of arrest or joining the army.
   Ban said Myanmar had pledged to punish those responsible and provided lists of children released from the army, but UN officials had been unable to verify that such action had been taken.
   The report said children also were commonly recruited by rebel groups in Myanmar, some of which have signed cease-fires with the government. The former Burma is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Southeast Asia, comprising 10 main ethnic groups and at least 135 subgroups.
   Multiple insurgencies broke out soon after independence from Britain in 1948 when promises of autonomy failed to materialize. In the 1980s and 1990s the junta offered some autonomy to rebel groups in return for ending their armed struggle. Many agreed, but some are still fighting.

Commonwealth leaders were thrashing out a declaration on climate change on Saturday but Pakistan was still looming large on their summit agenda with the appointment of an Indian as secretary general.
   The 53-nation federation of mostly former British colonies comprises some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases such as Britain, India and Australia.
   But some members are also very much in the front line of climate change’s effects such as the Maldives and Kiribati, a Pacific island group in acute danger of being washed away by rising sea levels.
   The summit in the Ugandan capital Kampala comes shortly ahead of next month’s crucial climate change talks in Bali where nations will be discussing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on lowering harmful emissions.
   The Commonwealth’s outgoing chairman Lawrence Gonzi called Friday for leaders to send a strong message of support to Bali and said that greenhouse gas emissions must be at least halved from 1990 levels by 2050.
   But some Commonwealth leaders were likely to be opposed to a declaration calling for binding targets that do not include all countries and in particular economic powerhouse China.
   Commonwealth member Australia has not ratified Kyoto but with an election taking place – set to result in a change of government – no minister was present to represent the country in Uganda.
   Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper’s office said in a message to Commonwealth leaders that he wanted a declaration that made clear that all countries must take part in any cuts.
   ‘We would not support a binding target only for some emitters, especially if that excludes major emitters,’ Harper’s statement said.
   Britain’s Prince Charles, attending his first overseas Commonwealth summit along with his mother Queen Elizabeth II, did his best to ensure that climate change was centre stage, saying it was ‘the greatest challenge facing mankind.’
   The Commonwealth’s newly appointed secretary general in waiting, Kamalesh Sharma, was upbeat about the talks in a retreat on the shores of Lake Victoria.
   ‘Climate change is one of those areas where we are beginning to push the envelope. This particular CHOGM (Commonwealth summit) will certainly be recognised as having come out with a roadmap and a declaration,’ he said.
   Saturday’s appointment of Sharma, an Indian, made sure however that Pakistan was still a talking point in Kampala two days after Commonwealth foreign ministers suspended it.

Opposition leader and chess legend Garry Kasparov was arrested Saturday after scuffling with riot police during a protest against the president, Vladimir Putin, a week before parliamentary elections.
   Kasparov and one of his bodyguards were grabbed by riot police and forced into a police bus which then drove them away from the scene where hundreds of opposition activists were in a tense standoff with security forces.
   ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ supporters shouted as the bus drove off in central Moscow, AFP journalists said.
   The arrest came during a march in central Moscow by members of The Other Russia coalition led by Kasparov and which brings together radical leftwingers, moderates and liberal reformers opposed to Putin’s policies.
   ‘We were posing no threat to public order,’ Kasparov told journalists after interior ministry forces surrounded him and his supporters. ‘We wanted to peacefully march to the election commission. The powers that be are simply afraid of people who express their dissent.’
   Kasparov was arrested after around 2,000 anti-Putin demonstrators held a rally, after which a few hundred marched toward the Central Election Commission office to deliver a petition denouncing the December 2 parliamentary vote.
   Putin’s United Russia party is set to win a strong majority in the vote held just three months before presidential elections that are to elect a successor to the Kremlin leader.
   The police said a total of 13 people were arrested following the demonstration. Kasparov was also arrested last April after an opposition march in central Moscow was violently dispersed by riot police.
   Russian nationalist writer Eduard Limonov, a senior leader in The Other Russia group, was arrested and candidate Maria Gaidar of the liberal opposition party Union of Right Forces was briefly detained, spokesmen said.
   ‘Putin is a coward. We elected a coward. He’s afraid of peaceful people,’ SPS leader Boris Nemtsov told demonstrators as hundreds of riot police stood by on a deserted street near the centre of the city.Intimidation from the authorities limited the number of people present, said Nemtsov, who was nominated on Friday by the SPS as the party’s candidate for the presidency.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, faced more discouraging polls Saturday after a bruising week that brought his honeymoon period to a grinding halt.
   A string of setbacks have rocked his government and surveys suggest his initial burst of popularity since taking over from Tony Blair in June is well and truly over.
   The ICM poll in The Guardian newspaper put support for the main opposition Conservatives on 37 per cent, Brown’s governing Labour Party on 31 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 21 per cent.
   A grim week for Brown has seen the revelation that the confidential data of 25 million people – approaching half the population – has been lost in the post.
   Finance minister Alistair Darling was accused of trying to cover up details of the fiasco.
   Furthermore, five former heads of the armed forces have accused Brown of neglecting the military and the bail-out of the Northern Rock bank has raised questions about the government’s competence and whether taxpayers will get all their money back.
   Bird flu-related culls and a probable new foot and mouth leak seem the least of Brown’s troubles.
   The Daily Telegraph newspaper listed ‘the week’s disasters’ and concluded Brown had ‘neither the people nor the structures in place to deal with tough times, let alone crises.
   ‘The British public does not forgive indecision in an era of rising anxiety,’ it said, calling for a cabinet reshuffle to restore confidence.
   The Daily Mail commented: ‘The waste, incompetence and folly revealed this week have already made an impact. The political climate is changing.’
   Citing its poll, The Guardian said Labour’s support had dropped to the ‘rock bottom’ level hit in the final months of Blair’s premiership. ICM interviewed 1,005 adults by telephone on Wednesday and Thursday.
   Meanwhile newspapers weighed into the debate on Brown’s attitude towards the military, which is losing troops in Iraq and fierce fighting in Afghanistan.
   A chorus of opposition politicians and top military men have said defence funding is not high enough to cope with fighting on two fronts.
   The five former heads of the armed forces on Friday strongly criticised Brown’s stance, with one suggesting he treated the military ‘with contempt’.

A cruise ship slammed into an iceberg and sank off Antarctica Friday, forcing 154 passengers and crew to take to lifeboats before they were rescued unharmed by another vessel and taken to nearby military bases.
   ‘There was wind, and it was very cold, and we were wet because of the waves,’ crew member Andrea Salas, 38, told Argentina’s radio Continental.
   She said the passengers and crew spent three to four hours on lifeboats before they were rescued by a Norwegian cruise ship Nordnorge. ‘They are in good condition. There is no hypothermia, they all have food and clothes. Everything is OK,’ Nordnorge captain Arnvid Hansen said by phone after the Titanic-style accident on the icy seas near the South Shetland islands.
   An attempt later to ferry the cruise passengers in small boats from the Nordnorge to King George Island, in South Shetland, had to be called off because of strong winds.
   Chilean Navy and Air Force personnel then ferried 84 people to Chile’s Frei military base, and the remaining 70 to Uruguay’s Artigas military bases, both in Antartica, for an overnight stay, a Frei spokesman told reporters.
   The Canadian GAP Adventures company that ran the ill-fated cruise said it was making arrangements to fly the 91 passengers, among them Australians, Britons, Canadians and Americans, to their respective homes.
   ‘Their families have been contacted and they have been able to contact their families.

The top United Nations human rights official urged states worldwide to take more action against rape, domestic abuse and all other forms of violence against women.
   ‘Every day, in all corners of the world, countless women and girls are killed, mutilated, beaten, raped, sold into sexual slavery or tortured,’ UN High commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said in a statement ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25.
   ‘This impunity is built on a foundation of discrimination and inequality ... unless these inequalities are addressed, including in the economic and social spheres, the violence will persist,’ Arbour said. ‘A woman will not report rape if we continue to stigmatise the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators,’ she added.