President-elect Barack Obama stumbled in his quest for a smooth transition on Sunday when New Mexico governor Bill Richardson withdrew as his nominee for commerce secretary in the face of a legal inquiry.
   Richardson, a former Democratic presidential candidate and one of the country’s most prominent Hispanic politicians, became the first casualty among Obama’s Cabinet picks 16 days before the new administration takes office.
   Obama, who was headed to Washington on Sunday to begin the final work ahead of his January 20 inauguration, said in a statement that he accepted Richardson’s withdrawal with ‘deep regret.’
   Richardson denied any wrongdoing in connection with the probe of a California-based financial company that had done business with the New Mexico state government.
   But he said an investigation lasting possibly weeks or even months ‘would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process.’
   Richardson had been expected to win easy confirmation by the Democrat-controlled Senate, which will begin vetting Obama’s cabinet picks this week.
   But an extensive public discussion of the New Mexico case, which news reports have said involves a probe of payments by a California company to political action committees run by Richardson, could embarrass an Obama camp that has already had to distance itself from a ‘pay-to-play’ scandal involving the Democratic governor of Illinois.
   Richardson served as US ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration and is a former member of the US House of Representatives.
   He became an early Obama supporter after dropping his own presidential ambitions, and said on Sunday he planned to remain as New Mexico’s governor.
   ‘Let me say unequivocally that I and my Administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact,’ Richardson said in his statement.
   Obama said he would move quickly to name a new head for the commerce department, who will serve as his government’s chief spokesperson for business.
   Among those mentioned in the past as potential candidates for the job are Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, trade law expert Scott Harris and former media executive Leo Hindery.
   A transition aide said Obama has picked Virginia governor Tim Kaine to head the Democratic National Committee.
   Richardson’s announcement follows news that a federal grand jury in Albuquerque is investigating whether CDR Financial Products improperly won more than $1.4 million in work for the state of New Mexico shortly after making contributions to political action committees linked to Richardson.
   The FBI and federal prosecutors are investigating how the company won lucrative fees from the New Mexico Finance Authority in 2004 soon after donating $100,000 to two Richardson organisations, the Washington Post reported in December.
   The investigation is described as part of a nationwide investigation into ‘pay-to-play’ practices in local government bond markets.
   Richardson’s withdrawal was the latest headache for the president-elect’s Democratic Party since the November election in which it won the White House and expanded its control of Congress.
   Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is under investigation on charges of trying to sell the Senate seat Obama recently vacated. Democrats vow to block Blagojevich’s appointee to the Senate, calling the selection tainted.
   In Congress, Rep Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House of Representatives’ tax-writing committee, is the object of an ethics probe into his finances.
   The news about Richardson broke just a couple of hours before Obama left Chicago to join his family in Washington.
   Obama told reporters travelling with him on an Air Force plane that he ‘choked up’ a bit as he left his house for the last time before taking up residency in Washington.

Sri Lankan troops battling Tamil rebels Monday captured part of the highly strategic Elephant Pass in a second major success just days after taking the guerrillas’ political headquarters, the army said.
   Military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara said the southern part of Elephant Pass, a causeway linking the northern Jaffna peninsula to the mainland, fell to troops advancing north from Kilinochchi which was seized on Friday.
   ‘Troops are now consolidating in the southern part of Elephant Pass,’ he said.
   Tamil Tiger rebels had held the Elephant Pass since April 2000. There was no immediate comment from the ethnic rebels, who have seen their northern fiefdom crumble in recent months in the face of a massive government onslaught.
   The Sri Lankan army’s advance to the causeway, if confirmed, would deal another serious blow to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   The fall of Elephant Pass would enable government troops from the south to link up with government forces in Jaffna who have been cut off from the rest of the island by LTTE positions.
   The advance also further isolates Tamil Tiger rebels in a section of northeastern coastal jungle around Mullaittivu, the last remaining town in the hands of the LTTE.
   Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the Tamils launched their struggle for an autonomous homeland in 1972, but the government pulled out of a ceasefire last year and launched a major offensive to crush the Tigers.

A young pro-India Muslim was Monday sworn in as the new chief minister of revolt-hit Kashmir after elections that attracted a higher turnout than many politicians and voters expected.
   Omar Abdullah, the 38-year-old leader of the National Conference, took the oath of office at a tightly guarded auditorium in Jammu, the state’s winter capital.
   Despite a boycott call by separatists and Islamic rebels, more than 60 per cent of voters took part in the polls, which came after a period of direct federal rule.
   Kashmir is divided into Indian- and Pakistani-controlled zones and has been the trigger for two wars between the South Asian rivals since their independence from Britain in 1947.
   Abdullah was backed by India’s ruling Congress party for the top job, after polls in the troubled Muslim-majority region produced no single party strong enough to form the government on its own.
   ‘I swear to uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India,’ said Abdullah, wearing a long black coat and white shalwar at the ceremony, which was attended by Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi.
   English-born Abdullah inherited the party leadership in 2002 from his father, Farooq Abdullah, but is seen as more moderate.
   ‘Omar is more acceptable. He is young and understands the Kashmir dispute well. He has promised to facilitate talks between separatists and New Delhi,’ said Yasmeen Ali, a lecturer. ‘I am hopeful he will deliver.’
   The National Conference won 28 of the state assembly’s 87 seats, while the Congress Party bagged 17.

The shelling is incessant, hospitals are overwhelmed, children are shell-shocked, the Gaza nights are miserably cold in the windowless homes. And residents fear their nightmare could worsen.
   After days of intense bombardment from the air, artillery shells are now pounding the Gaza Strip, as militants return fire with rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli tanks.
   Children are traumatised, living in fear of the next explosion that will shake their home.
   ‘Many kids have stopped eating. They are inactive, they barely talk, they cling to their parents all the time,’ said Sajy Elmaghinni, who works for the UN Children’s Fund in Gaza.
   ‘Children are now scared of the dark, which is a major problem because there’s no electricity,’ says Elmaghinni, whose own home has been without power for five days.
   He has no way of heating his home where all the windows were blown out by a blast, but like others in the besieged Palestinian enclave he has become used to dealing with the cold. ‘We just wear a lot of clothes.’
   What does worry him is how he’ll get his nine-month pregnant wife to the hospital when she is due to deliver.
   ‘This is a major concern. At the beginning of the bombing she experienced some trauma when a neighbouring building was hit.
   ‘Everybody evacuated our building. We had to stay. I didn’t know what to do. I prayed to God my wife would not deliver in these conditions.
   ‘It’s very difficult to get an ambulance, they’re all busy with the wounded. We can’t walk to the clinic at night because drones pick up anything that moves.’
   Some of the missiles fired on Gaza are launched from unmanned aircraft that can be heard flying overhead.
   Virtually everyone has a tragic story to tell in this shell-shocked coastal strip already crippled by an 18-month-old Israeli blockade.
   At least 523 people have died in the onslaught unleashed by Israel on December 27 in a bid to silence the rocket fire from Gaza, an overcrowded territory of 1.5 million ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.
   Of the 90 killed since the ground offensive started on Saturday night, 27 were children and another 17 were women, according to Palestinian medics.
   Hospitals are completely overwhelmed.
   They used to have five surgeons to operate on a severely wounded patient. Now a surgeon might have to operate on as many as 10 patients in a day, doctors said.
   Amputations are increasingly frequent as doctors do not have time to try to save limbs. Many wounded people have died because they could not be treated in time, according to health authorities.
   In Gaza City the nightmare is compounded by uncertainty as Israel’s troops move closer. ‘The scariest part is not knowing when they will move into the city. When they do, there could be many civilians killed,’ says Elmaghinni.

Al-Qaeda’s supposed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was put on trial in absentia in a Paris court Monday, accused of plotting the 2002 suicide bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that left 21 dead.
   Sheikh Mohammed is in the US military’s Guantanamo Bay prison and will not attend the French hearings, but alleged accomplices German national Christian Ganczarski and Tunisian Walid Nawar, the bomber’s brother, appeared in court.
   The Kuwaiti-born militant, who according to US officials has confessed to being the architect of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, is thought to have been al-Qaeda’s military commander responsible for all foreign operations.
   The French trial, however, will focus on Ganczarski, a German of Polish origin who converted to Islam and allegedly played a leading role in al-Qaeda’s network of Islamist militants in Europe.
   Monday’s trial was held before a specially constituted panel of seven expert magistrates, rather than a jury, at the main criminal court in Paris.
   The hearing opened with a motion from Ganczarski’s lawyer Sebastien Bono, who argued that his client’s right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty had been violated and demanded the charges be dropped.
   Bono recalled that when Ganczarski had been detained France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was then serving as interior minister, had announced ‘the arrest of an al-Qaeda leader, in contact with Osama bin Laden.’

Taliban militants executed three people in a restive Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border after accusing them of spying for the United States, officials said Monday.
   The body of a 25-year-old local tribesman was found Monday hung upside down in a tree in the town of Naurak in North Waziristan, residents and security officials said. The man had been kidnapped from the region’s main town of Miranshah last week.
   The bullet-riddled bodies of two Afghan refugees were dumped on a roadside in the same area, a security official said.
   Notes found near the bodies said ‘they were found guilty of spying for the US forces in Afghanistan,’ he added.
   Militants have killed dozens of local tribesmen and Afghan refugees on charges of spying, mainly for the Pakistani government or US forces operating across the border in Afghanistan.

North Korea has sacked two top officials, including a once key aide to leader Kim Jong-Il, blaming them for worsening cross-border ties with South Korea, a South Korean newspaper said Monday.
   Yu Yong-Sun, a 68-year-old Buddhist leader, has replaced Choe Sung-Chol, deputy director of the United Front Department of the North Korean Workers’ Party, an influential state organisation, the JoongAng Daily said.
   Choe has stepped down because of his failure to accurately assess South Korea’s presidential election in December, 2007, and the direction of inter-Korean relations, it said.
   Choe, once deeply trusted by North leader Kim Jong-Il, played a crucial role in arranging the second inter-Korean summit in 2007, the daily said.
   It quoted an unidentified government official as saying Kwon Ho-Ung, the North’s chief negotiator for high-level talks with South Korea, also stepped down and has been put under house arrest.
   The South’s unification ministry, refused to confirm the report saying only that Yu had visited Seoul for inter-Korean talks.

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, is expected to form a new government by the end of February despite stalled talks with the main opposition party, the state-run Herald newspaper said Monday.
   The veteran leader, who started a month-long
   holiday this week, began preparations for a new administration last
   week when he fired nine ministers and three deputies who lost seats in last year’s parliamentary election.
   The move was seen as the clearest sign yet he had lost patience with talks on forming a power-sharing government with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
   The Herald said a senior ruling ZANU-PF party official, Nicholas Goche, met Sydney Mufamadi, the representative for mediator Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president, on Saturday to discuss ways of ending the impasse.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad on Monday called for a global boycott of the US dollar and US-made products, including Coca-Cola, in protest over Washington’s backing of Israel.
   Mahathir, who during his two decades in power was a leading voice in the Muslim world, said people had to take action against the United States over its support for Israel, which is conducting a military offensive in
   Gaza.
   ‘If you stop accepting US currency, the US can’t trade and can’t make any money, it will become very poor and it will have to stop the production of more and more weapons in order to kill people,’ he told a press conference.
   ‘We should not be buying all these weapons from the US, we can buy from the Russians if we must have aeroplanes and things like that,’ he added.
   ‘People must act... they won’t die if they don’t drink Coca-Cola.’

Pakistan Monday reopened during daytime hours a key northwest supply route for Western troops in Afghanistan, a local official said, as the army wrapped up an anti-militant drive in the area.
   The administrator of the Khyber tribal area in northwest Pakistan, Tariq Hayat, told reporters that the curfew along the Khyber Pass had been lifted from 8:00am until 7:00pm (0300-1400 GMT).
   ‘Now there is a free flow of traffic for every type of vehicle’ including NATO supply trucks, Hayat told reporters.
   ‘The active operation is over. Now we are engaged in the mopping-up phase of the operation against anti-social and anti-state elements,’ he said, referring to Taliban militants.