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Somalia remains the world’s most dangerous country for minority groups, followed by Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Myanmar, a leading human rights group said Thursday.
   The five were in unchanged positions from last year’s Minority Rights Group International’s list of countries where groups or peoples are most at risk of genocide, mass killing or other systematic violent repression.
   In Somalia, the latest round of bloodletting in two decades of civil war kicked off in May when hardline Islamist groups launched a fresh offensive aimed at removing internationally-backed president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
   Meanwhile, the report says that despite a reduction in the violence, Iraq remained a highly dangerous place, with between 300 and 800 civilians a month still dying violently over the last year.
   Since the last report, MRG says the situation has deteriorated in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Niger, Kenya, and Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
   In Pakistan, the report says minorities are at particular risk from the fight against violent extremism, specifically the conflict between different Islamist groups in the northwest and tribal areas, repression of dissidents elsewhere and what it calls ‘growing violence in national politics’.
   The MRG director, Mark Lattimer, said, ‘Ethnic and religious minorities across West Asia are under greater threat than ever before as a result of escalating military operations against Islamic extremists.’
   Half the top 20 countries in the ‘Peoples under Threat 2009’ report are African and six are in Asia.
   Completing the top 10 are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Palestinian territories, where the report said the war earlier this year in Gaza ‘leaves a continuing grave risk’ to the lives of civilians.
   ‘If the current push for peace led by the US administration and Arab states founders, there is a real risk of further radicalisation on both sides,’ it added.

Coup leaders in Honduras vowed that ousted president Manuel Zelaya will ‘never return to power’ despite mounting international pressure and an ultimatum by the Organisation of American States.
   The crisis entered its fifth day Thursday with no break in the impasse between the international community and backers of a military coup that pulled Zelaya out of bed on Sunday and sent him into exile in his pajamas.
   The OAS threatened Honduras with suspension if it did not restore Zelaya to power in 72 hours, but interim president Roberto Micheletti said in an exclusive interview, ‘We can’t negotiate anything.’
   ‘We can’t reach an agreement because there are orders to capture the ex-president Zelaya here for crimes he committed when he was an official,’ he said, speaking in the half-deserted presidential palace after swearing in new members of his cabinet.
   ‘He’ll never return to power,’ Micheletti said of Zelaya, a leftist who angered the political establishment here by trying to hold a referendum to make constitutional changes that would allow him to run for a second term.
   Zelaya was biding his time in Panama where he attended the inauguration of that country’s new president Wednesday after meeting with US officials in Washington.
   He had vowed to return to Honduras on Thursday but put it off while the clock ticked on the OAS ultimatum.
   ‘We will wait 72 hours in order to continue with this process,’ Zelaya told reporters in Panama City.
   If the OAS suspends Honduras, it would be only the second country to be thrown out since Cuba in 1962.
   The New York Times reported that OAS officials said they had begun informal discussions with ‘political actors’ close to the new government to find common ground for a peaceful resolution.
   An OAS official told the Times that the organisation’s secretary general, Jose Miguel Insulza, was headed to Tegucigalpa on Thursday for further talks.
   Meanwhile, the international community continued to pour pressure on Honduras.
   The Inter-American Development Bank on Wednesday halted aid, following a similar move by the World Bank.
   The United States indicated it may follow suit, saying it would wait until Monday before making a decision.
   The Pentagon suspended all military activities with Tegucigalpa until further notice, a spokesman said.
   Italy on Wednesday joined France and Spain in recalling its ambassador to Honduras, while the 27 nations of the European Union agreed to have no contact with the leadership of Sunday’s coup.

The United States imposed sanctions Wednesday on an al-Qaeda backer and three leaders of Pakistan-based Islamist group Laskhar-e-Taiba, which was blamed over last year’s Mumbai attacks.
   The US Treasury said it was imposing an assets freeze on the four, identified as Fazeel-a-Tul Shaykh Abu Mohammed Ameen al-Peshawari, Arif Qasmani, Mohammed Yahya Mujahid and Nasir Javaid.
   Peshawari allegedly provided assistance, including funding and recruits, to al-Qaeda and the Taliban militia fighting to regain control of Afghanistan and battling government forces in Pakistan.
   Qasmani is said to be the chief coordinator for Laskhar and Mujahid the head of the group’s media department while Javaid had served as its commander in Pakistan.
   Laskhar is widely thought to have been behind last November’s 60-hour bloodbath in India’s Mumbai city which led to 166 deaths.
   The US Treasury said its action came two days after Peshawari, Qasmani and Mujahid were added to a UN blacklist of individuals and entities linked with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
   All UN member states are obligated to freeze the funds and other assets of listed individuals and entities included on the blacklist, and to apply other sanctions, such as travel ban and arms embargo, a Treasury statement said.
   Qasmani was also linked in the Treasury statement to the July 2006 train bombing in Mumbai that killed 186 people and the February 2007 Samjota Express bombing in India’s Panipat city which killed 68 people.
   He allegedly conducted fundraising activities on behalf of Lashkar in 2005 and utilised money that he received from an alleged Indian crime figure and terrorist supporter Dawood Ibrahim to facilitate the July 2006 train bombing.
   But the head of one of Pakistan’s biggest charities — widely viewed as a front for LeT — condemned the sanctions and charged that the men were welfare workers rather than members of the militant group.
   ‘None of the four belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba. They are welfare workers in Jamaat-ud-Dawa. None of them have a bank account in the USA or any country abroad,’ the head of the Dawa charity, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, said.
   ‘The USA has never produced any proof about the involvement of Dawa in terrorism. We are a private NGO working to promote education, medical cover for the poor and need, and rehabilitation in calamity-hit areas,’ he added.
   President Barack Obama’s administration has been piling pressure on Pakistan to bring those guilty of last year’s Mumbai attacks to justice, a senior US diplomat said recently.

More than 800 animal and plant species have gone extinct in the past five centuries with nearly 17,000 now threatened with extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported on Thursday.
   A detailed analysis of these numbers indicates the international community will fail to meet its 2010 goal of bolstering biodiversity — maintaining a variety of life forms — a commitment made by most governments in 2002.
   Based on data released in 2008 in the union’s Red List, the new IUCN analysis is being released now to precede the 2010 target year and to draw a connection between crises in the financial and environmental realms, said report editor Jean-Christophe Vie.
   ‘We don’t want to make a choice between nature and the economy; we just want to bring nature to the same level when you have to take a decision,’ Vie said by telephone from Switzerland.
   ‘Jobs are important but not jobs to the detriment of nature,’ he said. ‘We have done that too much and look where we have arrived.’
   The new analysis shows 869 species became extinct or extinct in the wild since the year 1500 while 290 more species are considered critically endangered and possibly extinct.
   At least 16,928 species are threatened with extinction, including nearly one-third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals.
   By comparison, the 2004 Red List showed 784 extinctions since 1500.
   The report said this is not a comprehensive list with only 2.7 per cent of the 1.8 million described species analysed.
   The number of extinctions is ‘a gross underestimate but it does provide a useful snapshot of what is happening to all forms of life on earth,’ the study authors wrote.
   ‘It’s much more severe than the economic crisis or the bank crisis,’ Vie said. ‘You can lose a core industry but you can rebuild one. In nature, if you lose it, you lose it, and you’re losing a lot of capital that cannot be replaced.’
   He said the notion that biodiversity is secondary to economic health is largely a view held by countries in North America, Europe and elsewhere, where the connection to natural products is less direct.
   In less developed areas, there is a direct line between human prosperity and biodiversity.
   In much of the world, Vie said, ‘The main problem every day is not to find a job, it’s to find food ... and in most places this comes from biodiversity, from nature, from fish and plants.’

Vegetation helped save Earth from runaway cooling that would have encased the planet in ice, according to a study published on Wednesday.
   The paper sheds light on the big natural mechanisms that over hundreds of millions of years have swung the globe like a pendulum between deep chill and intense heat.
   Around 50 million years ago, the planet’s poles were ice-free and crocodiles roamed the Arctic.
   But that was followed by a long period of cooling, in which levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal ‘greenhouse’ gas that traps solar heat, progressively declined.
   Belching volcanoes provided the main source of this CO2 — in contrast to today, when the gas comes overwhelmingly from burning fossil fuels and is driving dangerous climate change.
   But there was also a force which removed CO2: a chemical reaction that occurs when silica rocks are weathered.
   Over the aeons, the gas is dissolved into groundwater, which flows to the sea and eventually the carbon is sequestered on the ocean floor.
   Climate scientists have long puzzled about what happened at a key point in this weathering process.
   Around 25 million years ago, Earth was wrenched by a period of mountain building that threw up the Himalayas and the Andes.
   This created conditions that, in theory, should have sucked nearly all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and plunged the planet into a deep freeze. Yet it clearly did not happen, and the question is why.
   The answer, according to US geophysicists, lies in the buffering power of plants.
   Vegetation, especially trees, suck in atmospheric CO2 in the process of photosynthesis and also play a key role in the weathering of rocks.
   Their roots secrete acids that dissolve minerals, they hold soils and they increase the amount of CO2 dissolved in groundwater.
   As the CO2 levels plummeted, plants were starved of their essential gas for life, according to the team’s hypothesis.
   This slowed the weathering process down, and led to less burial of the carbon. As a result, there remained enough CO2 in the air to avoid the ‘Iceball Earth’ scenario.
   ‘As the CO2 concentration of Earth’s atmosphere decreased to about 200 to 250 parts per million, CO2 levels stabilised,’ lead author Mark Pagani, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University, said in a press release.
   The study, published in the British journal Nature, is based on simulations of the global carbon cycle and observations from plant growth experiments.
   If plants saved Earth from endless chill, they are unlikely to do the same when it comes to man-made warming, say the authors.

The US president, Barack Obama, faces one of the toughest diplomatic challenges of his young presidency next week as he seeks to persuade a reluctant Russia to salvage an expiring nuclear arms treaty.
   Clinching a deal on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a landmark Cold War-era disarmament agreement that runs out December 5, would indicate that Obama’s plan to ‘reset’ strained ties with Russia has borne fruit.
   It would also have far-reaching implications for global security and could boost Washington’s hand in dealing with Iran and North Korea, experts say.
   Obama, who arrives in Moscow on Monday, is expected to hold more than four hours of talks with the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.

The sole survivor of a Yemeni jet that plunged into deep water while attempting to land on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros was reunited with her father in France early on Thursday.
   Bahia Bakari, who can barely swim, clung on to floating debris for more than 12 hours before search teams spotted her in rough seas.
   ‘I am torn between relief and sadness. I am happy to see my daughter but her mother did not come back,’ Bahia’s father, Bakari Kassim, told reporters at Roissy Airport in Paris, shortly after greeting his daughter on her return from Comoros.
   Rescuers have failed to find any of the remaining 152 passengers and crew since the Yemenia Airbus A310 crashed in rough weather in the early hours of Tuesday.
   American and French military aircraft continued to scour the crash site on Thursday to locate the wreckage, thought to be in waters up to 500 metres deep.

The US ambassador to Venezuela has returned to Caracas, restoring diplomatic ties that were ruptured nine months ago with his expulsion in a row with the president, Hugo Chavez, the US embassy said.
   The US ambassador, Patrick Duddy, arrived here late Wednesday, the embassy said. Venezuela’s ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Alvarez, returned to his post in Washington on June 26.
   The two countries agreed to the return of their respective ambassadors last week, patching up a rift that opened September 12 when Venezuela declared Duddy ‘persona non grata’ and gave him 72 hours to leave the country.
   The Venezuelan foreign ministry said at the time that it was expelling Duddy in response to what it said was a US campaign to destabilise the government of the president Evo Morales, in Bolivia, a Chavez ally.

A mounting political crisis has become ‘dangerous’ in Niger, where the president has dissolved the parliament and constitutional court opposed to his plans to short-circuit term limits, France’s foreign minister said.
   ‘The situation is dangerous in Niger,’ Bernard Kouchner said Wednesday after arriving in Senegal.
   Kouchner pointed to ‘several demands of the president which weren’t satisfied, the reaction by the opposition, the dissolution which was announced and the desire of the president to stand for office again despite only two terms being allowed according to the constitution.’
   The president, Mamadou Tandja, dissolved the constitutional court and parliament which opposed his plan to hold a referendum on allowing him to stand for a third term as president.

Thousands of US Marines poured into Afghanistan’s Taliban heartlands Thursday, launching the first major air and ground assault of president Barack Obama’s challenging new war plan.
   Dozens of aircraft ferried out the Marines from bases before dawn, aiming to take control of insurgent bastions of Helmand province in the country’s south ahead of landmark Afghan elections next month.
   Involving nearly 4,000 US soldiers, it was the Marines’ first major operation since they arrived in Afghanistan as part of Obama’s aggressive new strategy to turn the tide on a dragging conflict with the Taliban.
   ‘What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert,’ Marine commander Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said.
   Around 10 hours into the Marines’ biggest battle since Fallujah in Iraq in November 2004, Marine spokesman Lieutenant Abe Sipe said troops had encountered little resistance and suffered no major casualties.
   ‘There has been sporadic and light resistance involving small-arms fire,’ he said. ‘They (the insurgents) are withdrawing after light resistance. The operation to stabilise and secure the Helmand Valley is going forward.’
   The operation called Khanjar, which means dagger in Dari and Pashtu but was translated by the Marines as ‘Strike of the Sword’, also involved about 650 Afghan police and soldiers.
   The forces were to push south down the Helmand River valley, deep into insurgent-held areas where foreign troops have failed to establish a presence despite ousting the Taliban from power in 2001.
   ‘Our aim is for us to be meeting local people within hours, and that’s what we’ll be doing for the next seven or eight months,’ Nicholson said.
   In one small part of the operation, a fleet of helicopters lifted about 300 Marines from a desert camp called Dwyer at dawn, their commander confident they would have cleared a key road, secured a bridge and met villagers by evening.
   ‘I told my men everything they have done to prepare for this operation means they are ready to go,’ said Captain Junwei Sun, 39, commanding officer of 2/8 Infantry Battalion’s Fox company.
   Afghan security forces were driving out to their targeted area, where the forces would meet, he said. ‘We expect to encounter resistance and come into enemy contact,’ the captain added.
   Commanders said they would persuade locals that the Afghan security forces — backed by Western troops — offered them a better long-term future than the Islamist hardliners.
   ‘This is a big, risky plan,’ Nicholson told his men at a briefing at Camp Leatherneck in the run-up to the battle’s launch.
   ‘It involves great risks and amazing opportunities. These are days of immense change for Helmand province. We’re going down there, and we’re going to stay — that’s what is different this time.’
   Reflecting the new US strategy, he stressed that the security needs of Helmand’s residents came before killing Taliban.
   Key targets of the air and land assault include the districts of Nawa and nearby Garmsir, where many insurgents are said to take refuge and produce the opium that funds their activities.

A top Indian court issued a landmark ruling on Thursday decriminalising gay sex between consenting adults, overturning colonial-era legislation that outlawed homosexuality.
   The New Delhi High Court ruled that an existing statute prohibiting homosexual acts was discriminatory and therefore a violation of fundamental rights under the constitution.
   ‘It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is the antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual,’ the bench said in a 105-page judgement.
   The statute in question is a British colonial-era law banning ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature.’ Conviction carried a fine and maximum 10-year jail sentence.
   Although prosecutions were rare, gay activists said the police used the law to harass and intimidate members of their community.
   The High Court ruling was made on a petition brought by the Naz Foundation, a gay advocacy group fighting for equal rights and AIDS awareness.
   ‘This is a long-awaited and incredible judgement,’ said gay rights activist Gautam Bhan.
   ‘The judges in their verdict spoke about equality and dignity. They spoke about a vision of India as an open, tolerant society and to hear all this from the Delhi High Court was amazing,’ Bhan said.
   While the ruling is non-binding outside the Indian capital, lawyers supporting the petition said it set a precedent that effectively decriminalised consensual gay sex nationwide.
   The petition had been staunchly opposed by religious groups, particularly leaders of India’s Muslim and Christian communities who argued that all homosexual acts were ‘unnatural’ and should therefore be banned.
   ‘This is absolutely wrong,’ Ahmed Bukhari, imam at the Jama Masjid in Delhi, India’s largest mosque, said of the ruling.
   ‘We will not accept any such law,’ Bukhari said.
   Father Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, said the court’s decision would make no difference to the Church’s stand on gay sex.
   ‘While respecting the judgement of the court, we still hold that homosexuality is not an acceptable behaviour in society,’ he said.
   Gay sex has long been a taboo subject in conservative India, where many still regard homosexuality as an illness.
   In recent years, however, the country’s largely closeted homosexual community has raised its profile, organising gay pride marches in major cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai.
   ‘I feel very proud to be an Indian today. This was a very just ruling,’ said openly gay fashion designer Wendell Rodericks.

North and South Korea failed to reach agreement in talks Thursday about the fate of their last major joint business project, amid high cross-border tensions and the North’s continuing nuclear standoff with the world.
   The two sides could not narrow differences and did not set a date for the next round, Seoul’s unification ministry said.
   The meeting at the Kaesong joint industrial estate just north of the border lasted just one hour and 10 minutes, far shorter than their last discussions in June.
   The South rejected the North’s demands for huge wage and rent increases at the Seoul-funded estate. It insisted on the immediate release of a South Korean worker at Kaesong who has been held incommunicado by the North since March 30.
   ‘Our side said in a keynote speech that we cannot accept North Korea’s unreasonable demands that it has presented over the joint park after unilaterally scrapping existing contracts,’ Yonhap news agency quoted a unification ministry official as saying.
   Representatives of the 105 South Korean firms at Kaesong say many of them are already close to bankruptcy because of falling orders amid icy cross-border relations.
   At the first round of talks last month Pyongyang stunned Seoul by demanding a wage rise for its 40,000 workers to 300 dollars a month from around 75 dollars currently.

A former child survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime’s main torture centre sobbed Thursday as he told Cambodia’s war crimes court of his harrowing separation from his mother at the jail.
   Norng Chan Phal, who was around nine years old at the time, also described seeing bodies when Tuol Sleng prison was finally liberated after invading Vietnamese-backed forces toppled the 1975-1979 movement.
   He was testifying at the trial of jail chief Duch, who is accused of overseeing the torture and execution of around 15,000 people who passed through Tuol Sleng.
   ‘I could see my mother on the second floor with her hands on the bars of the window looking at me and she did not say even a single word to us,’ Norng Chan Phal said of the last time he saw her.
   Norng Chan Phal, now 39, said they had been promised they were going to meet his Khmer Rouge cadre father in the capital Phnom Penh, but they were locked in a room on their first night at Tuol Sleng and would never see him.
   ‘When my jeep took us to that location, I and my brother were happy because we could ride on a jeep. But then we were threatened and my mother was forced to get off the jeep and she was not very well,’ he told the court.
   ‘They (Khmer Rouge cadres) shouted and threatened her and I was also terrified,’ Norng Chan Phal said.
   He and his younger brother were then separated from his mother the next day, he said.
   In 1979 Vietnamese-backed troops found the two brothers hiding along with three other children at the prison, a former high school.
   He said the youngsters at Tuol Sleng were placed under the care of an old woman at a workshop and usually given two meals per day, but they never bathed and were not permitted to wander.
   In April 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed, the back entrance of the prison was flung wide open and ‘there seemed to be a rush’ of people leaving Tuol Sleng, he said.
   He remembered that the old woman insisted he leave through the back gate, but he hid near a pile of clothes instead.
   ‘I was behind the building. I was looking and waiting to see my mother,’ he said. ‘I saw an opened door and climbed upstairs to the second floor to look through the opened door, but I could not find my mother.’

The family of Michael Jackson ruled out holding a poignant funeral at the star’s Neverland estate on Wednesday as the details of the tragic pop icon’s will were made public for the first time.
   An army of journalists and crowds of fans had flocked to Jackson’s sprawling Neverland Ranch estate on Tuesday after reports the King of Pop’s body would be placed on display for a public viewing before a private service on Sunday.
   However the Jackson family dispelled frenzied speculation that the funeral could see Neverland evolve into a permanent resting place for the singer similar to Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis.
   ‘Contrary to previous news reports, the Jackson family is officially stating that there will be no public or private viewing at Neverland,’ a statement released by the family’s public relations firm said.
   ‘Plans are underway regarding a public memorial for Michael Jackson, and we will announce those plans shortly.’
   Local media reported a public memorial for Jackson may now be held at the Staples Centre or the bigger Los Angeles Coliseum, venue for the 1984 Olympic Games. Reports suggested a ceremony could be held Tuesday.
   The Jackson family’s representatives declined to comment.
   The confusion over Jackson’s funeral arrangements came as the picture surrounding the star’s estate appeared to clear with the emergence of a 2002 will filed at Los Angeles Superior Court.
   In yet another surprising twist to the aftermath of Jackson’s death, it was revealed that soul legend Diana Ross had been named as a back-up guardian to the singer’s children in the event of his mother Katherine’s death.
   The five-page document also revealed the singer’s assets were to be left in the Michael Jackson Family Trust but the terms of the trust were not disclosed.
   Documents filed in addition to the will valued Jackson’s estate at more than 500 million dollars, although it was not clear how that figure had been reached. Jackson was believed to be heavily in debt at the time of his death.
   While Katherine Jackson was named as carer for her son’s children, the 65-year-old Ross was named as guardian if the singer’s mother died before him.
   Three associates for Jackson — attorney John Branca, music executive John McClain and accountant Barry Siegel — were named co-executors of the will.
   There was no mention anywhere of Jackson’s father Joe in the will while the document also confirmed no provisions had been made for ex-wife Debbie Rowe.

Former Philippine president Corazon Aquino has refused further chemotherapy or any other medical treatment in her battle against colon cancer, her spokeswoman said in comments published Thursday.
   The 76-year-old Aquino, who led the Philippines from 1986 to 1992 after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, was admitted to a Manila hospital last week, and is reportedly being fed intravenously.
   ‘The country’s icon of democracy is fighting the hardest battle of her life,’ spokeswoman Deedee Siyta-ngco wrote in an article published in the Manila Bulletin.
   Siytangco said Aquino had been moved to a private room, in a decision ‘she and her children made in consultation with her doctors.’ Family members are at her bedside, she added.
   ‘She is no longer receiving any chemotherapy or any other medical interventions,’ she said, quoting a family member.
   Members of the Aquino family and the former president’s doctors were not immediately available for comment. Reporters who converged at the hospital were asked to leave, an AFP photographer said.
   ‘The members of her family beg everyone’s understanding of their need for solitude and privacy at this delicate time,’ a statement on her official web site said.

Britain could have more than 100,000 cases of swine flu a day by the end of August if the current rate of infection is maintained, the health secretary, Andy Burnham, said on Thursday.
   ‘Cases are doubling every week, and on this trend we could see over 100,000 cases a day by the end of August, but I stress this is only a projection,’ Burnham told the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament.
   He said Britain now had nearly 7,500 cases of swine flu and was moving into a new ‘treatment phase’ as hundreds of new cases were confirmed every day.
   Antiviral drugs would be offered to all those who have contracted the illness with higher-risk patients given priority, Burnham said.

India is ready to keep talking to arch-rival Pakistan, but a stalled peace process can resume only if Islamabad acts against the planners of the Mumbai attack, India’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.
   ‘The stated position of India remains consistent that we are not afraid to talk. We certainly will keep talking,’ SM Krishna told reporters.
   ‘But at the same time we expect Pakistan to come out with certain concrete measures which are visible so that people of India and the world at large could realise Pakistan is serious about punishing those culprits and then reassuring India that such incidents will not occur.’

UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s visit to military-ruled Myanmar this week will be a ‘huge failure’ if detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is not freed, a leading rights group said Thursday.
   Human Rights Watch said Ban must take a firm stance with the junta during his two-day trip and press it to publicly commit to the release of all political prisoners and to engage in dialogue with the opposition.
   The Nobel Laureate was transferred from house arrest to prison in May to face trial on charges of breaching the terms of her detention after an American man swam to her house. She faces up to five years in jail if convicted.
   The New York-based rights group said Ban should not accept the return of Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest, instead of imprisonment, as a sign of a successful visit.

The Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, has lost a final bid to have his sodomy trial held in a lower court, ending a long wrangle over where the case should be heard, his lawyer said Thursday.
   The Court of Appeal rejected the application and affirmed an earlier decision that the politically charged case should be heard in the High Court. The trial is due to start July 8.
   Amid widespread doubts over the standards of Malaysia’s judiciary, Anwar’s supporters have said they fear authorities will be able to manipulate the case more easily in the High Court.
   ‘The decision is not appealable. I am most disappointed with the decision today,’ his lawyer Sankara Nair said.
   Anwar, 61, has repeatedly rejected sodomy allegations levelled by a 23-year-old former aide — the same charge that saw him jailed a decade ago — as a government conspiracy to derail his plan to topple the ruling coalition.
   Sodomy, even between consenting adults, is illegal in predominantly Muslim Malaysia and carries a penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment.
   Anwar is campaigning to unseat the Barisan Nasional coalition which has ruled Malaysia since 1957, after the opposition deprived the government of its two-thirds majority in an unprecedented performance in the 2008 elections.
   The opposition leader is currently out on bail pending his trial but his supporters have expressed fears that it might be revoked during the hearing.
   In a recent interview with AFP, Anwar voiced concern that false evidence could be introduced in a bid to jail him and end his political career.