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UN officials warned Thursday against potential disease outbreaks among two million Pakistanis displaced by an army offensive against the Taliban, reiterating that aid money was running out.
   The UN has appealed for 543 million dollars to help the displaced, but Daniel Baker, from the UN Population Fund, said the health sector had so far received only 11 per cent of the requested amount.
   ‘With the monsoon season fast approaching, concerns are growing about an increase in avoidable sickness and death due to disease outbreaks, such as acute respiratory infection, acute diarrhoea, malaria and meningitis.’
   He added: ‘69,300 women are pregnant. Nearly six thousand women displaced in the conflict are expected to give birth within the next month.’
   UN officials said donors had only pledged 22 per cent of the total money needed for food, medicine, shelter and other assistance. ‘More and more people are coming in the camps. Their hosts are running out of money — we will face very severe problems if we have no sufficient funds,’ said Manuel Bessler, head of the UN humanitarian agency in Pakistan.
   ‘Some sectors have already indicated that supplies such as food and essential medicines may not be sustainable beyond early July unless the international community rapidly and generously responds to these acute needs.’
   The military launched its operation in the districts of Lower Dir on April 26, Buner on April 28 and Swat on May 8, after Taliban fighters advanced to within 100 kilometres of Islamabad.
   
   All kidnapped staff,
   students freed
   Taliban militants Thursday freed all remaining Pakistani staff and students from an army-run boarding school who were snatched three days ago, drawing a line under the brazen mass abduction.
   At least 42 students and two staff from a college in the tribal area of North Waziristan, where Washing-ton says al-Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West, were released to tribal elders, officials and the Taliban said.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, fought for his political life on Thursday as the public voted in European and local elections that could push him closer to the brink.
   An email letter was being circulated around his Labour Party’s lawmakers calling for him to quit, while a looming cabinet reshuffle could see senior ministers revolt if he demotes them.
   Speculation that Brown was preparing to step down sent the British pound crashing against the euro and dollar. Brown’s spokesman described the rumour as ‘complete nonsense’.
   Addressed to the prime minister, the email highlights Brown’s ‘enormous contribution to this country and to the Labour Party, and this is very widely acknowledged’.
   ‘However,’ it added, ‘in the current political situation, you can best serve the Labour Party and the country by stepping down as party leader and prime minister, and so allowing the party to choose a new leader to take us into the next general election.’
   Brown is struggling to assert after four government ministers — two cabinet members and two junior ministers — quit in two days over an expenses scandal that has rocked the British parliament.
   Business secretary Peter Mandelson urged colleagues not to sign the letter against Brown.
   ‘British politics is in a bad old state, nobody is happy and it’s affecting all the parties,’ he told the BBC, admitting that lawmakers were in a ‘grumbly mood’.
   ‘Don’t please, through your actions, make it any worse for the Labour Party than for the other parties who have all got to come to grips with this crisis affecting British politics.’
   In power since 1997, the Labour party has borne the brunt of public outrage at revelations of dodgy expenses claims made by lawmakers, a row made worse by the fact Britain is struggling to climb out of its worst recession in decades.
   Britain’s 72 seats in the European parliament were up for grabs in Thursday’s elections, while voters in various parts of England were also choosing 2,318 local councillors and three mayors.

India’s new government Thursday said it would seek to mend ties with Pakistan as long as Islamabad ‘confronted’ militant groups operating on its soil.
   The comments came two days after New Delhi said it was disappointed by the decision of a Pakistani court to free the head of an Islamic charity which New Delhi says was linked to last year’s Mumbai attacks.
   The president, Pratibha Patil, outlining the foreign policy of India’s newly elected government, said it was ready to mend fences with its nuclear-armed neighbour.
   ‘My government will seek to reshape our relationship with Pakistan depending on the sincerity of Pakistan’s actions to confront groups who launch terrorist attacks against India from its territory,’ she told parliament.
   India says the 10 Islamist gunmen who attacked Mumbai last November were Pakistan nationals backed by ‘official agencies.’

Bollywood’s biggest labour union said Thursday its members would refuse to work in Australia until attacks on Indian students there ceased.
   Two Bollywood movies — including one by Bollywood’s largest producer, Yash Raj Films — were to be shot in Australia this month.
   ‘None of our associate members will work in Australia until the racism issue is resolved,’ Dinesh Chaturvedi, head of the Federation of Western India Cine Employees.
   FWICE, which represents 250,000 workers, including actors, lighting and sound technicians, camera operators and dancers, issued a notice to all Bollywood producers announcing the boycott.
   It was the latest snub by Bollywood over a wave of assaults on Indian students which have strained diplomatic relations between India and Australia.
   Last weekend, Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan rejected an honorary doctorate from a Brisbane university, in protest against the attacks on Indian students.
   Three recent Bollywood box-office hits — Salaam Namaste (Greetings), Chak de India (Go India) and Heyy Baby — were shot extensively in Australia.
   The union’s announcement came a day after another attack on an Indian student was reported in Australia.
   The police said a 21-year-old Indian student was confronted Tuesday by five men in a college campus car park in the suburbs of the southern city of Melbourne, where many of the attacks have taken place.
   They demanded money and cigarettes from the man, then attacked him when he refused to comply, with one slashing him across the chest with a weapon believed to be a box cutter, causing minor lacerations.
   The issue came to world attention late last month when student Sravan Kumar Theerthala was left comatose after being stabbed with a screwdriver by gatecrashers at a Melbourne party.

Children in the United States are at risk of ‘recession obesity’ as parents substitute cheap, fast food for healthy meals to try to weather the economic slump, a report pu-blished Wednesday showed.
   ‘There is concern with ‘recession obesity’ apart from the general trend toward an increasing number of obese American children,’ said Kenneth Land, project director of the Child Well-Being Index, which tracks how American children are faring socially, emotionally, in terms of education and health.
   ‘There is a concern that parents will substitute fast food, high carbohydrate and high sugar-content food, for healthy food and that this will cause an uptick in the rate of overweight children and adolescents,’ Land, a sociology professor at Duke University, said at the launch of the 2009 report.
   A study published one year ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that nearly 32 per cent of US children were overweight and 16 per cent were obese.
   The obesity rate had tripled between 1980-1999, creating an epidemic blamed on a poor diet heavy on fat and sugar with little consumption of fruits and fresh vegetables and lack of exercise, the report in JAMA said.

A North Korean navy patrol boat Thursday crossed into South Korean waters and stayed almost one hour before retreating, further fuelling military tensions after Pyongyang’s nuclear test last week.
   A Seoul minister said Pyongyang’s recent aggressive moves are probably motivated by leader Kim Jong-Il’s desire to bolster his authority before handing over power to one of his sons.
   Since the May 25 atomic test the North has launched six short-range missiles, renounced the truce which ended the 1950-1953 Korean War and threatened attacks on the South.
   South Korean and US troops in the peninsula have gone on heightened alert. Seoul has deployed a high-speed patrol boat armed with ship-to-ship missiles near the disputed Yellow Sea border with the North, the scene of bloody clashes in 1999 and 2002.
   The boat crossed the Yellow Sea border and stayed for 50 minutes before retreating to its own side after three warnings from South Korean craft, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
   A spokesman said it apparently was chasing Chinese boats that were operating illegally in the rich crab fishing area, but did not exclude the possibility it was a planned intrusion to raise tensions further.
   About 70 of some 90 Chinese fishing boats withdrew overnight from the area, Yonhap news agency said.
   The unification minister, Hyun In-Taek, who is in charge of cross-border relations, said Kim, 67, may be ‘accelerating a procedure to transfer power to his son due to his worsening health.’
   Kim reportedly suffered a stroke last August.
   South Korean lawmakers, quoting the country’s intelligence service, said Tuesday he had nominated his third and youngest son, 26-year-old Jong-Un.
   Hyun said there was no confirmation of which of the three sons was selected.
   Analysts believe Kim staged the May 25 nuclear test to shore up his authority among the party and military in preparation for an eventual power transfer.
   Hyun agreed that Kim’s ‘anxiety over the uncertain future of his regime’ is behind the North’s ‘provocative activities towards the outside world as well as recent developments inside North Korea.’

A young man hurt in protests against the alleged rape and murder of two women in Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir died in hospital Thursday, sparking fresh demonstrations, the police said.
   The man, a 25-year-old shopkeeper, was seriously injured Monday when a tear gas shell hit him on the head in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar during violent clashes with police.
   ‘His death has sparked fresh tensions in parts of Srinagar,’ the police officer Masood Ahmed said, adding the riot police
   had been deployed in strength to deal with new protests.
   Thousands of Kashmiris chanting, ‘We want freedom’ and ‘We will spill blood for blood,’ carried the body of the man shoulder-high through central Srinagar, the urban hub of a two-decade-old insurgency against New Delhi’s rule.

Air France bosses told families waiting at Charles de Gaulle airport for news of the missing Rio-Paris flight that there is no hope anyone on board is alive, a victims’ help group said Thursday.
   Chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta met relatives in a hotel near the airport Wednesday and said there was ‘no hope that there are any survivors,’ said Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, a spokesman for the support group who attended the meeting.
   Many families of the 72 French victims of the mid-Atlantic crash on Monday have been staying in hotels in the airport in the hope of being reunited with their loved ones or at least to receive news of their fate.

Myanmar’s military regime detained two women and four children on Thursday after they held a rare protest asking the US embassy to help obtain the release of a prisoner, an official said.
   The group unfurled a banner asking for assistance as the husband of one of the women had earlier been arrested by Myanmar authorities, the official said.
   ‘Two women and four children have been detained for questioning as they staged a small protest in front of the American embassy,’ the official said.
   The banner said ‘Please help as my husband was arrested unjustly,’ according to the official.

Three Hamas members and a Palestinian policeman were killed on Thursday in a gunbattle in the northern West Bank in the second such incident in less than a week, an official said.
   The shoot-out erupted in the northern town of Qalqiliya between the members of the Palestinian police and Hamas militants who had holed up in a house, an official with the security services said.
   The house belongs to a Hamas member held in detention by the Palestinian Authority and those who were said to be inside included Mohammed Ateyeh of Hamas’s armed wing, though it was unclear whether he had been killed.

Australia’s defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon stepped down Thursday after a series of scandals, in the first major embarrassment for the prime minister, Kevin Rudd.
   Rudd, who announced the resignation at a hastily organised news conference, said Fitzgibbon had paid a ‘high price’ for his mistakes.
   ‘I’ve made clear to my ministers over a long period of time the government expects high standards of accountability on the part of its ministers,’ Rudd said.
   ‘All my ministers are familiar with that and it’s on that basis the minister has extended his resignation.’
   Rudd had been a staunch backer of Fitzgibbon despite some damaging revelations, including his links to a Chinese-Australian businesswoman accused of spying for Beijing.