A Pakistani Taliban commander pulled out of a peace deal with the government after it refused to withdraw the army from tribal lands on the Afghan border, the militant’s spokesman said on Monday.
   Tribal elders in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region have been trying to broker a peace deal between the government and Baitullah Mehsud, an al-Qaeda ally who leads the Taliban in Pakistan.
   Mehsud has been accused of being behind a wave of suicide attacks that have rocked Pakistan since mid-2007, including one that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December.
   ‘Our chief Baitullah Mehsud has announced the end of the dialogue process about an hour ago after tribal elders informed us that government is unwilling to pull out troops from Waziristan and other areas,’ Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Movement of Taliban), said by telephone.
   Government spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.
   Mehsud last week announced a ceasefire after authorities expressed optimism that a peace deal would be finalised in a few days.
   Omar said Taliban fighters would hold their fire if government forces did not attack them.
   ‘We don’t want war and can resume talks if the government is ready. But if they launch a military operation against us or attack our men, then we will respond, we will take revenge,’ he said.
   Omar said ‘hidden hands’ in Pakistani intelligence agencies were acting under the influence of ‘foreign forces’ to subvert the peace process.
   ‘The new government needs to get rid of these hidden hands if it wants peace in Waziristan and other tribal areas,’ Omar said.

An Indian rocket launched a record 10 satellites into orbit in a single mission Monday, underlining the nation’s emergence as a major competitor in the multi-billion-dollar space market.
   The PSLV rocket ejected all the satellites within minutes of each other after liftoff at 9:20am (0350 GMT) in clear weather from the Sriharikota space station in southern India, the Indian Space Research Organisation said. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle first put into polar orbit the remote-sensing Indian satellite, Cartosat-2A, fitted with a high-resolution camera and advanced scientific instruments.
   It also launched an 83-kilogram Indian mini-satellite and a cluster of eight so-called nano-satellites, each weighing between three kilograms and 16 kilograms, built by research institutions from Europe, Canada and Japan.
   The PSLV, the workhorse of India’s space programme, blasted off on its 13th flight leaving behind a massive trail of orange and white smoke.
   ‘The mission was perfect,’ said G Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation, after the launch was telecast live by public broadcaster Doordarshan.
   ‘It is a historic moment for us because it is the first time that we have launched 10 satellites in a single mission,’ he added, congratulating Indian scientists who broke into applause at the mission control centre.
   The flight, which Nair said had not deviated ‘even a dot’ from its specifications, broke the previous record of eight satellites launched at one go by a Russian rocket, according to Indian news reports.
   The marketing arm of ISRO, Antrix Corporation, charged a fee for the launch of the miniature foreign satellites.

Afghanistan was Monday investigating how militants could get within 500 metres of the president, Hamid Karzai, and other top leaders to carry out a brazen attack that left three Afghans dead.
   The insurgent Taliban movement said it launched Sunday’s attack to show it had the power to strike even the nation’s biggest annual military parade.
   The event, which was supposed to showcase the Afghan army’s growing strength after getting new training and equipment, mainly from the United States, had been weeks in the making with stepped-up patrols and roadblocks around Kabul.
   Karzai immediately announced an investigation to find out how the militants breached security to hammer bullets into the back of the stage where he was seated with a host of Afghan and foreign dignitaries as well as launch rockets.
   ‘First, it will investigate the plot and identify those behind the attack ... and second it will find out where the problem in providing security lay,’ the defence minister, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, told reporters.
   The inquiry would comprise the ministries of defence and interior, the intelligence agency and the presidential security guard, the general said.

Four children, aged one to five, their mother and a militant were killed in Israeli operations in Gaza on Monday as Palestinian factions prepared for talks in Egypt on a possible truce.
   Four siblings – aged one, three, four and five – were killed when a tank shell hit their home in the north Gaza town of Beit Hanun, and their mother died later of her wounds, doctors at the Kamal Radwan hospital said.
   Islamic Jihad fighters had clashed with Israeli troops near the house, close to Gaza’s border with Israel, Palestinian security officials said, and the group said one of its fighters was killed in the same area.
   ‘Palestinians fired anti-tank missiles and mortar rounds at IDF soldiers,’ the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement, adding that a soldier was lightly wounded during operations in Gaza, which included air strikes.
   ‘There was tank fire from the Israeli army. Armed men were hit,’ an army spokeswoman said.
   At least 443 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed since Israel and the Palestinians relaunched formal peace talks under US auspices at an international conference in November, according to an AFP tally.

Malaysia’s newly elected lawmakers took the oath of office in parliament on Monday after March 8 general elections which changed the political landscape.
   The election saw unprecedented gains by a resurgent opposition, led by former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who formed an alliance to challenge prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Barisan Nasional coalition.
   Abdullah’s coalition has ruled Malaysia for more than half a century since the former colony gained independence from Britain but its showing in March was the worst in Barisan Nasional’s history.
   The Pakatan Rakyat opposition alliance claimed more than a third of parliamentary seats and five states in the polls, putting Abdullah under heavy pressure with calls from within his party to quit.
   Abdullah was the first one to be sworn in parliament, followed by his deputy Najib Razak and other cabinet ministers.
   ‘I, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, being chosen as a member of parliament, vow to honestly fulfil my obligations with all my strength.
   ‘I pledge my true loyalty to Malaysia and vow to preserve, protect and defend the constitution,’ Abdullah, who wore a black and gold traditional Malay outfit, said.
   King Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin will officially open the first session of the 222-member parliament on Tuesday.
   The parliament is set to record history. Ninety-nine MPs will be new faces while the opposition will be represented by 82 MPs, more than four times the number in the last parliament.
   Anwar last week confidently predicted he would be prime minister within three years, sketching out the first rough timetable for his political comeback.

Fierce clashes between Shia militiamen and US and Iraqi forces in east Baghdad killed at least 38 people, the American military said on Monday, amid new political efforts to end the bloodletting.
   Sunday’s heaviest fighting in weeks came on a day when militiamen blasted Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone with rockets and mortars, taking advantage of a blinding dust storm that grounded US attack helicopters.
   The biggest clash in the day-long battles came at dusk Sunday when ‘a large group of criminals engaging with small-arms fire’ attacked a security force checkpoint, a US military statement said.
   ‘US soldiers used 120 mm fire from M1A12 Abrams tanks and small-arms fire to kill ... 22 criminals, forcing remaining enemy forces present to retreat,’ the military said.
   ‘The criminals’ small-arms fire was ineffective and there were no US soldier or Iraqi security force casualties in the attack.’
   At about the same time, seven fighters who ambushed a patrol were killed by US troops. Other gunmen died in various skirmishes during the day when troops retaliated after being attacked with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said.
   Most of the fighting took place in Sadr City, the Baghdad bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who claim they are being deliberately targeted.
   US and Iraqi commanders say they are trying to halt rocket attacks from Sadr City on the Green Zone, where the Iraqi government and US embassy are based, by Iranian-backed militiamen using Iranian-supplied weaponry.
   Tehran strongly denies any involvement.
   The Green Zone was hit by waves of rockets and mortar rounds on Sunday evening, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
   With no US warplanes flying due to the dust storm, militiamen were able to launch their attacks without being targeted from the air.
   The latest deaths bring to around 440 the number of militiamen and civilians killed in a month of clashes in Sadr City, where violence erupted after the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, ordered a country-
   wide crackdown on militias on March 25, starting in the southern oil city of Basra.
   At least 15 US soldiers have died in Baghdad since the clashes began. Sadr’s office in the shrine city of Najaf said new efforts were being brokered by the president, Jalal Talabani, to try ‘to end the crisis between the Sadr movement and the government.’
   The meeting would see Talabani acting as mediator between government and Sadrist representatives, according to Sadr’s spokesman in Najaf, Salah al-Obeidi.
   ‘We are looking for assurances that the government will commit itself to the agreements. The government reneged on its commitments under the previous agreement,’ Obeidi said.

Kenyan army officers tortured more than 4,000 people during a recent crackdown on a rebel group, said a report by a rights group on Monday, which characterised the abuse as a crime against humanity.
   The Independent Medico-Legal Unit said the army committed systematic abuses as it hunted members of the Sabaot Land Defence Force this year in the Mount Elgon region near the Ugandan border.
   Soldiers beat their victims, forced them to crawl naked on their stomachs over barbed wire while officers stepped on them, said the report by the Nairobi-based group.
   Some prisoners were also sexually assaulted and humiliated, as soldiers inserted gun barrels into the rectums of some victims, forced them to pull each other’s genital organs and suck each other’s breasts, it added.
   Prisoners were also denied food while detained in makeshift military camps.
   ‘The entire duration of torture lasted between two hours and six hours during the day and in some cases went on for up to five days,’ the IMLU said.
   ‘Seventy nine per cent of alleged had been tortured continuously more than a day while 21 per cent had been tortured continuously between two and three hours,’ it added.
   The report was compiled with independent doctors and lawyers.
   One victim identified as PKK described the experience. ‘All this time they were asking us to produce firearms. We were beaten from 11:00am to 1:00pm, they used whips and sticks. I was beaten on my legs and buttocks.
   The officers went for lunch and when they came back they beat us from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. They then left us in the rain,’ the victim said.
   The report said that ‘the systematic nature of torture and accompanying magnitude targeting a specific commununal group amounts to a crime against humanity.’
   The authorities have largely blocked media and aid workers from the area in the west of the country where the operati-
   ons took place, in what the IMLU branded a cover-up campaign.
   ‘The operation discloses a coordinated effort and cover-up by all security agents and state departments as well as complacency on the part of senior state officials including the president, Mwai Kibaki, and the prime minister, Raila Odinga,’ the report added.
   Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch group said the military killed people, forced others to flee and detained and tortured detainees in the cracdown.
   HRW also accused the SLDF militia of killings, mutilati ons, rapes and the destruction and theft of property in the Mount Elgon area.
   The defence minister, Yusuf Haji, last week rejected the allegations against the army and blamed locals for torturing suspects before handing them over to the military.

Australian scientists may have discovered how to help people lose weight without cutting back on food, a breakthrough that could pave the way for fat-burning drugs.
   Researchers in Melbourne found that by manipulating fat cells in mice they were able to speed up the animals’ metabolisms.
   They found that when a particular enzyme, known as angiotensin converting enzyme, was removed, mice were able
   to eat the same amount as other mice but burn more calories and therefore gain less weight.
   Animals without the enzyme were on average 20 per cent lighter than normal mice and had 50 to 60 per cent less body fat, senior researcher at the Howard Florey Institute Michael Mathai said.
   ‘It is very clear that they do have less body fat,’ he said.
   Mathai, who is also a lecturer in nutrition at Victoria University, said the slimmer mice also appeared to have less chance of developing diabetes because they processed sugar faster than normal mice.
   He said the research, to be published Tuesday in the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could be used to develop drugs to assist weight loss.
   Drugs which impair the action of ACE already exist and are mostly used to combat high blood pressure.
   ‘The drugs are out there because they are used for hypertension,’ he said.
   ‘So we know their safety and their tolerability. What we don’t know is whether or not they will work in humans. And we don’t know whether it will work in all obese humans.’
   Mathai said it could be a question of finding the right dosage of hypertension medication, or developing a new type of drug of the same class, to be used as weight-loss pills.
   ‘This might be one way in which you can increase metabolic rate in combination with managing nutrition to limit the intake of calories,’ he said.
   Mathai said the research, conducted at the Howard Florey Institute, Victoria University, La Trobe University, Deakin University, the Baker Institute and the University of Melbourne, was yet to pinpoint why the genetic manipulation led to weight loss.
   ‘Because we deleted the gene, the gene is gone from the whole body, that means that it is gone from all tissues including the brain,’ he said.
   ‘And so we don’t know whether it’s a direct effect of the deficiency in the tissue or whether it’s something coming from the brain.’

The UN has covered up claims that its troops in Democratic Republic of Congo gave arms to militias and smuggled gold and ivory, the BBC has learned.
   The allegations, based on confidential UN sources, involve Pakistani and Indian troops working as peacekeepers.
   The UN investigated some of the claims in 2007, but said it could not substantiate claims of arms dealing.
   UN insiders told the BBC’s Panaroma they had been prevented from pursuing their inquiries for political reasons.
   The UN peacekeeping operation in DR Congo is the largest in the world, with 17,000 troops, spread across the country.
   The BBC’s Martin Plaut says they have managed to bring a measure of stability since they were first established by the UN in February 2000.
   They have also helped disarm the warring factions, run democratic elections and assisted with reconstruction. But an 18-month BBC investigation for Panorama has found evidence that: Pakistani peacekeepers in the eastern town of Mongbwalu were involved in the illegal trade in gold with the FNI militia, providing them with weapons to guard the perimeter of the mines.
   Indian peacekeepers operating around the town of Goma had direct dealings with the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide, now living in eastern DR Congo. The Indians traded gold, bought drugs from the militias and flew a UN helicopter into the Virunga National Park, where they exchanged ammunition for ivory.
   The UN looked into the allegations concerning the Pakistani troops in 2007.

The Austrian police on Monday scoured a cellar at a house where a 73-year-old man – described by media as a ‘monster’– is accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven children.
   The incest abuse case is the latest in a series of horror abuse cases to have stunned Austrians and newspapers asked how authorities could again have failed to detect the woman.
   Josef Fritzl was arrested on Sunday and the police are searching the house at Amstetten in eastern Austria where Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were kept in rooms in the cellar where the ceiling was just 1.70 metres high.
   The father is to appear before an investigating magistrate on Monday. Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, has told police her father drugging her in August 1984 and kept her in the cellar of the family home, regularly abusing her over two decades.
   The incestuous relationship allegedly produced seven children. The case came to light when one of the children, now 19, was admitted to hospital in critical condition.

Barack Obama, struggling to win over more white Democratic voters, said in a Sunday television interview race would not be a factor in November’s election that could make him the first black US president.
   ‘Is race still a factor in our society? Yes. I don’t think anybody would deny that,’ Obama said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ ‘Is that going to be the determining factor in a general election? No, because I’m absolutely confident that the American people – what they’re looking for is somebody who can solve their problems,’ the Illinois senator said in an interview taped on Saturday.
   Obama and Democratic rival New York senator Hillary Clinton were focusing on Indiana, which with North Carolina will be the next big tests on May 6 toward picking a presidential nominee to face Republican John McCain in November.
   Obama is leading Hillary in the popular vote, states won and committed delegates to the party’s nominating convention in August, but her recent victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio have raised questions about his ability to win white voters.
   In Pennsylvania, Hillary won white union households and white Catholics – two important Democratic blocs – by about 70 per cent to Obama’s 30 per cent. About one in seven Pennsylvania voters said race was an issue and that group voted overwhelmingly against Obama.
   Obama said he had won many of those same voters in other states and after a Democratic nominee was decided, they would back the party’s candidate against McCain.

Iran has prepared a package of ‘serious’ proposals to help defuse a nuclear row with world powers, chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Monday after talks with a top Russian official.
   Iran said this month it would unveil ideas to help end the dispute over its nuclear programme, which the West says is aimed at producing nuclear bombs.
   Tehran, which insists its atomic programme is aimed only at generating electricity, has been hit by three rounds of UN sanctions since 2006 for refusing UN demands to halt sensitive nuclear work.
   ‘Iran ... has serious proposals regarding the nuclear issue, about what to do to minimise the nuclear threat around the world,’ Jalili said without giving details of the package.
   The proposals were discussed with Valentin Sobolev, acting secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, an Iranian official said. Further talks would be held on Tuesday, he added.
   Sobolev, speaking through an interpreter at a joint news conference with Jalili, said he had discussed the nuclear issue, as well as technical and military cooperation.
   ‘Iran’s activities are peaceful and not a threat against any country,’ the Russian said.
   The United States and Britain this month vowed a united effort to stop what they say is Iran’s bid to build a nuclear bomb, possibly by expanding sanctions.
   Russia, along with China, has been reluctant to back more sanctions in the past although it supported all three UN resolutions when it came to a vote at the UN Security Council.
   World powers are considering enhancing a package of trade and other incentives for Iran, previously proposed in 2006, if it stops enriching uranium, which can be used as nuclear fuel or, if so desired, provide material for bombs.