The Israeli navy on Thursday intercepted and boarded a Gaza-bound Lebanese aid boat at sea and was escorting it to the Israeli port of Ashdod, the defence minister, Ehud Barak, said.
   ‘At first the ship understood we were prohibiting it from heading to Gaza and steered towards El-Arish,’ in Egypt, Barak said.
   ‘From Egyptian territorial waters it tried to slip into Gaza waters. That is when the Israeli navy boarded it, and it is now taking it to Ashdod,’ he said.
   The military said the crew would be questioned by police and that any humanitarian goods aboard would be taken to the Gaza Strip.
   It dismissed claims the navy fired at the vessel.
   ‘No gunshots were fired on board during the boarding and capture of the cargo boat,’ the military said in a statement. One of the organisers of the shipment claimed earlier that the Israeli military had fired at the vessel.
   ‘We were informed by the crew that Israeli forces boarded the ship after firing shots at it,’ Maen Bashur said. He said the Israeli navy had asked the crew to turn back before seizing the vessel.
   ‘Two Israeli gunboats intercepted the ship on Wednesday night while it was in international waters trying to reach territorial waters in northern Palestine,’ Bashur said.
   ‘The ship was asked to turn back as two Israeli military helicopters flew over the area and fired flares. The aid boat moved away, but it has been trying since early Thursday to reach Gaza through Egyptian territorial waters,’ he added.
   The Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, called on the international community to press Israel to allow the vessel which was carrying medical supplies, food, clothing and toys, to reach Gaza.
   On board the ‘Brotherhood Ship’ were eight people including the former Greek-Catholic archbishop of Jerusalem, Monsignor Hilarion Capucci, who left Jerusalem in the 1970s after serving time in an Israeli jail for membership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
   The Togolese-registered Tali had passed via the nearby Mediterranean island of Cyprus where authorities inspected the cargo before it headed for Gaza.
   An Israeli military spokesman said that by entering Gazan coastal waters, the crew ‘raised suspicion, as it could threaten security concerns, or furthermore, the boat could be used for smuggling banned equipment (weaponry, etc.) into or out of the Gaza Strip.’
   He stressed in a statement that ‘any organisation or country that wishes to transfer humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, can do so via the established crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip with prior coordination.’

Pakistan must cooperate with India and fully investigate November’s militant attacks in Mumbai, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said on Wednesday.
   Ban, in Pakistan after a stop in Afghanistan, also announced the setting up of a UN inquiry into the December, 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
   Relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have been strained since militants killed 172 people in the attacks in India’s commercial capital. India has put dialogue on hold.
   Ban said the United Nations wanted India and Pakistan to resume dialogue and resolve outstanding disputes peacefully.
   ‘(Pakistan) must have a full investigation into this issue and fully cooperate with the Indian government,’ Ban told a news conference with the Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani.
   India blamed the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group for the attacks and said there must have been support from Pakistani security agencies.
   Pakistan has denied any involvement by state agencies and says it is investigating a dossier of information from India.
   Gilani said last month that Pakistan would release details of its investigation ‘very soon’.

Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets on Thursday to denounce Indian rule in Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority Himalayan state divided between India and Pakistan.
   A public holiday, Kashmir Solidarity Day supports the region’s right to self-determination under UN resolutions that call for a plebiscite in Kashmir on whether it should be ruled by Hindu-majority India or Muslim Pakistan.
   Relations between nuclear neighbours India and Pakistan, who fought two of their three wars since independence over Kashmir, have become increasingly tense after 10 gunmen killed 172 people in Mumbai last November.

Frustrated with what she saw as corporate influence and political bias in Thailand’s print media, Chiranuch Premchaiporn helped launch a news web site in 2004 to try and filter out the spin.
   For a while, it worked as thousands of people visited Prachatai.com every day to read stories they did not see in newspapers and to air their views on the web site’s lively chat boards.
   But everything changed after a 2006 coup ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra and launched more than two years of highly-charged political turmoil.
   ‘After the coup for a month I got contact from the Information and Communication Technology ministry warning us about some of the comments on our web board,’ said Chiranuch.
   Since then, she has been summoned by the police eight times to answer questions about content on her site, while 20 pages on Prachatai.com have been blacklisted and blocked by the authorities in the last five months.
   Activists say the blossoming of blogs and internet chat rooms poring over the kingdom’s tumultuous politics have unnerved the authorities, prompting a crushing campaign of censorship to suppress dissenting voices.
   The government installed by the coup-makers enacted a law in 2007 policing the internet, and the current administration of the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, appears to be implementing it with vigour.
   More than 4,800 web pages have been blocked since March last year, an ICT official said, notionally because they contain content deemed insulting to Thailand’s deeply-revered royal family.
   The monarchy’s role in the recent political upheaval remains one of the most sensitive subjects in the kingdom, with few local newspapers willing to touch the issue.
   ‘The Thai media is now being completely made tame. They don’t dare report lese majeste (insulting the monarchy) cases or any anti-government positions,’ said Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political science professor.
   ‘So people express themselves through the internet, and the government wants to try and put a stop to this.’
   Abhisit came to power in a parliamentary vote on December 15, 2008 after ongoing protests by the People’s Alliance for Democracy helped topple the Thaksin-linked ruling party less than a year after it won elections.
   The PAD openly claimed the support of the monarchy, while critics of Abhisit say his Democrat Party enjoys the backing of the powerful military. All the intrigue provided grist for the thriving chatrooms.
   ‘It encouraged people to talk more and the internet is the most liberal space in Thailand,’ said Supinya Klangnarong of media group Thai Netizen.
   Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Thailand has more than 14 million internet users, and in January put out a statement asking if Thailand was the world’s ‘new enemy of the internet’.
   They deplored the recent arrest of one user after authorities claimed to have matched his computer’s internet address to one used to post online messages deemed defamatory to the monarchy.
   At the same time, analysts have said that a record number of investigations are being conducted into lese majeste cases, which carry a jail term of up to 15 years. Many of them have targeted the media.
   Australian writer Harry Nicolaides was jailed for three years on January 19 for defaming King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn in a short passage in a 2005 novel.

A dream job looking after a tropical island in Australia has attracted over 11,000 applicants — including Osama bin Laden who failed to make the shortlist.
   A spokeswoman for Tourism Queensland said the group had received over 11,000 video applications since advertising the A$150,000 ($96,000) ‘best job in the world’ as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.
   One of the applications was a 30-second prank video showing the world’s most wanted man, with nonsensical sounds dubbed over his real voice.
   Using subtitles, bin Laden argues his case for the six-month contract, describing himself as ‘outgoing’, ‘familiar with sandy areas’ and experienced with ‘large scale event coordination.’
   He lists his interests as arts, crafts and renovating. Videos showing bin Laden speaking are widely available on the internet.
   A spokeswoman for Tourism Queensland said a person using bin Laden’s identity had lodged an official application with required video that has made its way onto video sharing web site YouTube, but the application has been rejected.
   ‘While Tourism Queensland encourages people to be creative in their applications, they have to meet the selection criteria, including appropriate content, if they want to be considered for the job,’ said the spokeswoman.

Israel admitted Wednesday that one of its tanks killed three girls whose father’s cries on live television shocked viewers in the final days of the Gaza offensive, but said the action was ‘reasonable.’
   An Israeli army investigation found that two tank shells were fired at a building housing the apartment of Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish on January 16 — two days before the end of its assault on the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip.
   ‘Investigations were held on many levels ... the conclusions found that two shells were fired from an IDF tank resulting in the death of Dr Aboul Aish’s daughters,’ a statement said.
   It was the first finding from four investigations launched by Israel into allegations involving civilian deaths in Gaza, which numbered about 700 out of a total of 1,300 killed.
   Israel has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields and of launching attacks from heavily populated areas.
   The January 6 shelling of more than 40 Palestinians trying to find shelter at a UN school was internationally condemned, but the case of the doctor’s daughters gained more attention in Israeli media.
   In its statement, the army said soldiers fighting in a populated area near his house thought they had identified militants on the roof of the building.

A US warship docked Thursday in Nagasaki to the protests of residents and a boycott by local leaders who said the visit was in poor taste in a city obliterated by a US atomic bomb.
   The USS Blue Ridge, which is stationed in Yokosuka near Tokyo, sailed to Nagasaki with a stated goal of promoting friendship between Japan and the United States.
   Hundreds of residents including atomic bomb survivors chanted, ‘We are opposed to the port call!’ as the 19,600-ton vessel arrived in the southwestern city.
   ‘We don’t want to see the US flag flying at this port and this feeling will not change until the United States takes a policy towards the elimination of nuclear weapons,’ Osamu Yoshitomi, an official at Nagasaki city, said.

A six-member team of US investigators arrived in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Thursday to probe the kidnapping of a top American UN official, local police and security officials said.
   The Federal Bureau of Investigation team visited the crime scene for a briefing by Pakistani officials on how John Solecki, head of the UN refugee agency in Quetta, was kidnapped in the city, a security official said.
   Solecki was abducted at gunpoint and his driver killed when his UN vehicle was ambushed on Monday. The incident happened near the UNHCR office.
   The FBI officials came for an on-the-spot assessment, asked questions and sketched the scene, the official said.
   They later met the police chief of Baluchistan province, Asif Nawaz Waraich, to discuss Pakistani inquiries, a senior police officer said.
   The Pakistani police and security officials refused to give further details.
   Asked about the reported FBI involved, the US embassy declined to speak on the subject.
   ‘I cannot comment,’ spokesman Lou Fintor said in Islamabad.
   ‘We are cooperating with UN and Pakistani authorities to determine the facts,’ he added, confirming only that an American working for UNHCR in Quetta had been abducted on Monday.

A suicide bomber killed 15 people in northeastern Iraq on Thursday, shortly before election authorities were due to give the first official results of last week’s provincial ballot.
   The results are expected to show gains for the law-and-order bloc of the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, giving him a boost ahead of a parliamentary election late in the year and radically changing the political map of Iraq as violence begins to ease.
   The suicide bombing was the bloodiest attack in Iraq in weeks, a reminder of the fragility of recent security gains that had fuelled hope for an end to the years of sectarian slaughter that followed the 2003 US-led invasion.
   Maliki’s followers touted the dramatic fall in violence under his watch, and early indications were that voters rewarded him and his allies.
   Intense political manoeuvring is likely to ensue after the results are known, as poll rivals seek to bolster their gains and to stem losses through alliances, which will determine who dominates provincial councils and picks governors.
   ‘There is no red line. We deal with any winning party that we believe will benefit the Sadrist movement and the province,’ said Ahmed al-Massoudi a spokesman for the parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
   The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which once dominated most local councils in Iraq’s oil-rich and mostly Shia south, echoed the Sadrists in saying there was ‘no red line,’ or prohibitions, when it came to post election partners.
   The independent election commission was due to hold a news conference in the late afternoon.
   The election in 14 of Iraq’s 18 local councils was the most peaceful in the country since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, but tensions remain and insurgents such as al-Qaeda continue to stage devastating attacks.
   The police said Thursday’s suicide attack occurred at a popular restaurant in the town in Khanaqin on the border with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq’s north, which has seen a stand off in the past between government and Kurdish forces.

Terrorists are highly likely to attempt a nuclear or biological attack on United States in coming years, former US vice president Dick Cheney warned in an interview published on Wednesday.
   In an interview with Politico, Cheney said he feared policies favoured by the president, Barack Obama, would make such an attack more likely to succeed.
   ‘I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt,’ Cheney said, speaking two weeks after Obama took office.
   ‘Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts since 9/11 to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States,’ Cheney told said.
   He listed Bush administration polices which he said kept the United States safe from attack.
   ‘If it hadn’t been for what we did with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,’ he said.
   ‘Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the US.’
   Cheney also defended the Bush administration’s handling of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. Cheney said Obama would put the country at risk if he backtracked on Bush administration security policies.
   ‘When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,’ Cheney said.
   Protecting the country’s security is ‘a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,’ he said.

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament will vote next week on whether to shut a US air base which is an important staging post for US troops fighting in Afghanistan, Kyrgyz officials said on Thursday.
   Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev said on Tuesday Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic and a traditional Russian ally, would close the Manas base after he secured Russian financial aid at talks in Moscow.
   The government needs parliamentary approval to proceed with the closure but this is seen as a formality as the chamber is controlled by a pro-presidential party. A simple majority of votes is needed.
   ‘We have included this issue in our February agenda,’ said Avtandil Arabayev, deputy head of the ruling Ak-Zhol party.
   ‘We did consider the possibility of voting on it tomorrow but according to the rules it will be voted on next week.’
   Other deputies said the assembly was all but certain to vote in favour of Bakiyev’s decision. ‘I have no doubt about this,’ said Erik Arsaliyev, head of the foreign affairs committee.
   Kyrgyzstan’s move to shut the base sets a tough challenge for new US president Barack Obama, who plans to send additional troops to Afghanistan.
   The base has been used as a staging post by US-led forces fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and the Kyrgyz move comes as Washington seeks to reinforce supply routes that bypass Pakistan, where convoys face security risks. Moscow has said it would be flexible to US requests to allow supplies to be sent across Russia. It gave no details.
   Officials at the sprawling, heavily guarded air base outside the capital Bishkek said Manas continued to operate as usual as a support hub for coalition forces and cargo in Afghanistan.

One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Aribert Heim or ‘Doctor Death,’ lived for years as a quiet, pious Muslim in a small hotel on the edge of Islamic Cairo, where he was known as Doctor Tarek.
   Concealed in the labyrinthine streets of the largest city in Africa and the Middle East, the man wanted for killing hundreds of concentration camp victims with horrific medical experiments found refuge until his death in 1992.
   ‘He was like a giant, not very chatty but he never missed a prayer at the mosque,’ remembers Gamal Abu Ahmed, who today lives in Dr Death’s former room on the sixth floor of the Qasr el-Medina hotel.
   When Abu Ahmed is told about the true identity of the former Nazi, as revealed by Germany’s ZDF television and the New York Times on Wednesday, the former clothes shop owner does not seem taken aback.
   ‘I knew him when I was 17 years old, I knew that Doctor Tarek, who I saw every day, was German and Muslim, and it never intrigued me,’ he said.
   It was in the Qasr el-Medina hotel that the ‘butcher of Mauthausen’ arrived on the run after converting to Islam and taking the name Tarek Farid Hussein.
   Abu Ahmed says he doesn’t know exactly when Heim got to Cairo, but that the Nazi had good relations with the Doma family, which owned the hotel, and with the manager, a German-speaking former Egyptian soldier called Mohammed Sherif.
   More than 100 personal documents that were in the Doma family’s possession as well as the testimony of Heim’s son Rudiger, led to the unveiling of the true identity of the doctor who had been in hiding since 1962.
   German public television channel ZDF said in a statement that Heim died of bowel cancer in 1992, citing his son and acquaintances in Cairo.
   Abu Ahmed says that Doctor Tarek’s outings in the last 10 years of his life were as rare as the friends who visited him — none of whom were German despite the fact that several former Nazis settled incognito in Egypt.
   Born in Austria on June 28, 1914, Heim joined the Nazi party before Germany annexed Austria, when membership of the party was still illegal.
   He then became a member of Hitler’s elite SS guard in 1940 and, after stints at camps in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen in Germany, was posted to the infamous Mauthausen camp in Austria.
   It was at Mauthausen that he became known as ‘Doctor Death’ after performing sadistic and grotesque medical experiments. Survivors of Mauthausen allege the father of three cut prisoners open, removing their livers, among other things.

US president Barack Obama should keep his eye on Venezuela and its leftist allies, and nurture ties with close friends in Latin America including Mexico and Brazil, experts and lawmakers told a hearing Wednesday.
   ‘I hope we keep committed to focus on Venezuela,’ said Connie Mack, Republican minority leader on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere that convened the hearing.
   Venezuela under socialist president Hugo Chavez has been a thorn in Washington’s side since he was elected 10 years ago. Mack said the February 15 referendum that could allow Chavez unlimited re-election was an alarm signal the US should take heed of.
   Polling expert Sergio Bendixen told the hearing Venezuela had close links to other leftist regimes in the region including Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, which he called the ‘socialist group.’
   ‘They are not friends, they have worked to diminish [US] power’ in Latin America, he added.

Sweden is preparing to resume construction of nuclear power stations, in contrast to previous intentions to close down its plants in the next 30 years, the Swedish TT news agency reported on Thursday.
   ‘The four conservative parties [in power] have reached an agreement on energy policy. This means that the moratorium on new construction [of plants] is lifted,’ the agency said.
   ‘I am not confirming the report for the moment,’ government spokesman Niclas Bengtsson told AFP, saying that a press conference would be held later in the day.
   Nuclear power generation accounts for half of the electricity produced in Sweden.
   The country had planned to wind down its nuclear energy capacity, ending it in about 30 years’ time or when the installations came to the end of their lives.

The Norwegian government announced Wednesday that it will allow Muslim women police officers if they choose to wear the Islamic head scarf.
   ‘After advice from police management, it has been decided that rules on police uniforms will be modified to allow for the wearing of a religious scarf with the uniform,’ the justice ministry said in a statement.
   The Islamic scarf, the hijab, is worn to cover the hair and surround the face.
   The police management said it was in favour of permitting the scarf to be worn with the uniform in order to improve the possibility of recruiting in Norway’s Muslim community.
   ‘We think it’s necessary to recruit widely and to develop a police force which reflects all classes in society, regardless of beliefs and ethnicity, which is more important than demanding a neutral uniform,’ wrote police chief Ingelin Killengreen.
   Several other European countries, including Sweden and Britain, have already allowed the wearing of religious headgear by their police officers.

An arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court against the Sudanese president, Omar al-Beshir, might have an adverse impact on UN personnel in Sudan, the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, warned in a report issued Wednesday.
   ‘I am concerned about remarks by some of its officials that the (Sudanese) government may redefine its relationship with UN mission in Sudan should an arrest warrant be issued against president al-Beshir,’ he said in his latest report on Sudan.
   ‘I call upon the (Khartoum) government to fulfil its obligations to ensure the safety of United Nations staff and of nationals of state members of the United Nations in Sudan,’ he added.
   The ICC, which started work in 2002 as the world’s first permanent tribunal on war crimes, is expected to decide as early as this month whether to issue an arrest warrant against Beshir, accused by the court’s chief prosecutor last July of 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
   UNMIS was set up to support implementation of the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.
   The signing of the CPA by the SPLM, its armed wing and Khartoum in 2005 ended 21 years of war between north and south that Sudan killed at least two million people and displaced millions more.