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Democrats are still struggling to find a strategy that will let them push a health care overhaul through the Senate and fulfil president Barack Obama’s goal of signing a bill this year.
   A day after Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Democratic bill would include the option of a government insurance plan, moderates in his own party lost no time Tuesday in voicing their displeasure. Reid, D-Nev., needs every Democrat to break the filibusters Republicans are vowing to mount. But some of the moderates refuse to say whether they’ll stick with their leader on procedural votes, let alone those on the merits of the bill.
   ‘We are a long way from reaching conclusion,’ said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-ND. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in a similar position in the House. Efforts to draft a consensus health care bill for a vote have been stalled for more than two weeks because of disagreements among Democrats.
   There are nine weeks left in the year to deliver a bill to Obama’s desk.
   Intense days and nights lie ahead, said senator Bill Nelson, D-Fla. senators who don’t like the bill will find themselves the focus of a ‘prayer session,’ said Nelson. ‘They will pray that the retribution of God doesn’t come down on them,’ he joked.
   Nonetheless, moderate Democratic senators who control the balance of power on health care were holding their ground. Republican opposition stiffened, and party leaders announced they would attempt to strangle the bill before formal debate begins.
   Despite the obstacles, senior Democrats cast Reid’s draft legislation as a turning point. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said there is now a ‘sense of inevitability ... that, yes, we’re going to pass health care reform.’
   The government insurance option long ago emerged as the biggest flashpoint in both the House and Senate as Democrats try to pass legislation that extends coverage, bans insurance practices such as denial of coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions and slows the growth of health care spending nationally.
   But before any substantive issue can be joined on the Senate floor, Reid’s first challenge is to gain 60 votes — the number needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans — just to bring the bill up, a parliamentary manoeuvre so routine that a vote is rarely required.
   But senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced that in this case, even procedural votes will count. That’s because, in his view, the underlying bill would ‘cut Medicare, raise taxes and increase health insurance premiums.’ He suggested Democrats could expect campaign commercials next year on the basis of the vote and recalled that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was ridiculed in his 2004 presidential campaign for having once said he voted for a bill before he voted against it.
   Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said he may seek changes on the Senate floor, a move likely to be welcomed by moderates. He backs a government role in states where one or two insurers control the market and premiums are high, along the same lines as a plan supported by senator Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
   That general approach, in which a lack of competition in an individual’s state would trigger a government insurance option, ‘is still alive,’ said senator Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
   While Reid is expected to eventually secure all 60 Democratic votes on the critical first test to bring the bill to the Senate floor, senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas all declined to say on Tuesday how they would vote.

The United Nations’ top official for human rights called Tuesday for a UN convention outlawing discrimination based on caste, which affects some 250 million people around the world.
   ‘This is the year 2009, and people have been talking about caste oppression for more than a hundred years,’ said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
   ‘It’s time to move on this issue,’ she said in an interview published in the weekly US magazine The Nation.
   ‘Slavery and apartheid could be removed, so now (caste) can be removed through an international expression of outrage,’ the South Africa-born judge said of the hierarchical social system that consigns millions at birth to a life of grinding poverty and back-breaking labour.
   ‘Caste is the very negation of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. It condemns individuals from birth and their communities to a life of exploitation, violence, social exclusion and segregation,’ said Pillay, echoing calls by human rights groups and various religious organisations.

Pakistan must ‘destroy’ militant groups operating on its soil, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said Wednesday during a visit to the disputed region of Kashmir.
   With security tightened across the Kashmir valley for his trip, Singh also reiterated his government’s willingness to hold talks with all political parties in the region, including separatist groups opposed to Indian rule.
   India and Pakistan have fought two wars over divided Kashmir and Singh said it was time for Islamabad to wipe out the militants whose attacks on India have repeatedly blocked peace talks between the South Asian rivals.
   ‘It is the solemn duty of the government of Pakistan to bring them to book, to destroy their camps and to eliminate their infrastructure,’ he said at a ceremony to inaugurate a railway line in the southern Kashmiri district of Anantnag.
   ‘They should destroy these groups wherever they are operating and for whatever misguided purpose,’ he said.
   If Pakistan takes the necessary action, India ‘will not be found wanting in our response,’ Singh promised, offering talks on issues ranging from trade to divided families and prisoner swaps.
   A 20-year insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir, which New Delhi accuses Pakistan of arming and abetting, has claimed more than 47,000 lives.
   The levels of violence have declined sharply in the Muslim-majority region following the launch of a peace process by India and Pakistan in 2004.
   But India suspended the dialogue in the wake of last year’s attacks on Mumbai which were blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
   Insisting that ‘the era of violence and terrorism is coming to an end’ in Kashmir, Singh said his government was ready for a dialogue with all shades of political opinion.
   ‘We are willing to talk to anyone who has any meaningful ideas for promoting peace and development,’ he said during the speech in the company of the president of India’s ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi.
   Hardline separatists had called for a general strike against Singh’s visit, which came a day after the Kashmir valley closed down to protest against the start of Indian rule on October 27, 1947.

The public needs to be convinced about the threat of climate change so governments are under pressure to adopt strong policies and extend a UN pact to fight climate change in Copenhagen this December, experts say.
   Persuading the public that the long-term effects of climate change could be averted by action now should be a top priority, psychology experts said at a climate change psychology conference in London this week.
   Just two more high-level meetings of ministers from over 190 countries are scheduled before a climate summit in Copenhagen on December 7-18, and they are still haggling over a new deal.
   ‘Progress can sometimes happen without much public involvement but climate change is not one of those issues,’ said Paul Stern of the US National Research Council, which advises the US government on issues such as health and science.
   Scientists say rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, from greater fossil fuel use, mass deforestation and increased transportation, will lead not only to flooding, but widespread drought, famine and disease, especially in poor countries.
   Statistics have shown that people’s interest in and understanding of climate change in certain countries has fallen recently, partly because the economic crisis has made the environment less of a priority.
   Less than half of Britons believe climate change will affect them during their lifetime and less than a fifth think it will impact their children, a UK government survey found this month.

US drone strikes against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan could be breaking international laws against summary executions, the UN’s top investigator of such crimes said.
   ‘The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators (which are) particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan,’ UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston told a press conference.
   ‘My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law,’ he said.
   US strikes with remote-controlled aircraft against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan have often resulted in civilian deaths and drawn bitter criticism from local populations.
   ‘The onus is really on the United States government to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary extrajudicial executions aren’t in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons,’ he added.
   Alston said he presented a report on the matter to the UN General Assembly.
   He urged the United States to be more forthright about how and when it uses drone aircraft, something about which the US Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency usually keep silent.
   ‘We need the United States to be more up front and say, ‘OK, we’re willing to discuss some aspects of this programme,’ otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line that the CIA is running a programme that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws,’ Alston said.
   Since August 2008, around 70 strikes by unmanned aircraft have killed close to 600 people in northwestern Pakistan.

An apple a day may keep the doctor away but a fibre-filled diet could also hold the key to keeping asthma, diabetes and arthritis at bay, according to Australian research released Thursday.
   Scientists at Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research say that fibre not only helps keep people regular, it boosts the immune system so it can better combat inflammatory diseases.
   When foods high in fibre, such as dried fruit and beans, reach the gut, bacteria convert them to compounds known as short chain fatty acids. These acids are known to alleviate some inflammatory disease in the bowel.
   Researcher Charles Mackay said that the team, which worked with scientists in Australia, the US and Brazil, was able to draw a clearer picture of this relationship, work which has implications for other diseases.
   They demonstrated that a molecule used by immune cells and previously shown to bind short chain fatty acids also functioned as an anti-inflammatory.
   ‘The important point about our work is that we provide the molecular explanation that links fibre in the diet to the micro-organisms in our gut to the affect on the immune response,’ professor Charles Mackay said.
   The research, published in the latest edition of Nature, indicated that diet may have profound effects on immune responses or inflammatory diseases, he said.
   ‘We believe that changes in diet, associated with western lifestyles, contribute to the increasing incidences of asthma, Type 1 diabetes and other auto-immune diseases,’ he said.

Sri Lanka’s agreement to probe war crimes allegations related to its defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels is a smokescreen to avoid an international inquiry, a human rights group said Wednesday.
   The New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Sri Lanka of trying to buy time and questioned the sincerity of the government’s decision to investigate the allegations detailed in a US State Department report.
   ‘The government’s committee is merely an effort to buy time and hope the world will forget the bloodbath that civilians suffered at the end of the war,’ HRW Asia director Brad Adams said.
   ‘Pretending that this is a serious attempt to investigate would betray the memory of the victims of war crimes and other abuses.’
   The State Department report, submitted to the US Congress on Thursday, cited ‘credible’ claims that Sri Lankan troops or government-backed paramilitaries abducted and killed Tamil civilians during their final offensive against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
   The report covered the period from January — when fighting intensified — until the end of May, when Sri Lankan troops defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to end a decades-old ethnic conflict.
   It also highlighted claims that Tiger leaders reached a surrender agreement with government forces but were then executed.
   Colombo announced Monday that it would probe the allegations. ‘The government is once again creating a smokescreen inquiry to avoid accountability for abuses,’ said Adams.
   ‘Only an independent international investigation will uncover the truth about this brutal war and ensure justice for the victims,’ he added.

Thailand said Wednesday that it would strip fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra of his royal awards and his police rank as the government presses on with a campaign against its arch-foe.
   The announcement came amid tensions over an offer of shelter from neighbouring Cambodia for Thaksin, who was toppled in a coup in 2006 and is living in self-imposed exile to avoid a jail term for corruption.
   The billionaire remains an influential figure on Thailand’s turbulent political scene, stirring up mass protests from abroad against the government of the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva.
   Abhisit said the government’s legal advisory body, the Council of State, had recommended that the National Police Office should revoke Thaksin’s rank of lieutenant colonel from his days in the police force from 1973 to 1987.
   It should also confiscate the two highest royal awards given to Thaksin — the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant and the Most Illustrious Order of King Chula Chonklao, Abhisit said.
   ‘The National Police Office had sought the recommendation from the Council of State and the recommendation has come out, so it must act to comply with the ruling,’ he told reporters.
   Abhisit denied that the government was trying to tarnish Thaksin’s image after the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, angered the Thai government last week by offering Thaksin refuge in Cambodia and a job as his economic advisor.
   Thai and Cambodian forces have fought several deadly battles in the past year and a half in a row over disputed land around an ancient temple on their border.
   Twice-elected Thaksin fled Thailand last year before he was sentenced to two years in jail in a corruption case. His allies were driven from government in December after anti-Thaksin protesters occupied Bangkok’s airports.

Kuwait’s constitutional court on Wednesday rejected an action brought by four voters to declare invalid the election of two women MPs because they refuse to wear the hijab headscarf.
   The decision of the court, whose rulings are final, was announced to reporters by the chairman of the court, Yussef Ghanam al-Rashid.
   Two of the four women who were elected to parliament for the first time in May refuse to wear the hijab, which has also been spurned by the only woman appointed in May as minister in the Kuwaiti government.
   The emirate’s Fatwa Department, which issues religious edicts, ruled early October that Muslim women must wear the hijab in line with Islamic sharia law.
   Islamist MPs are demanding the authorities enforce the fatwa, but their liberal colleagues say it is non-binding, insisting the rule of law and the constitution should be the only points of reference.

German lawmakers formally re-elected Angela Merkel for a second four-year term as chancellor on Wednesday, this time at the head of a new centre-right coalition.
   In general elections on September 27, Merkel, 55, was able to ditch her previous partners, the centre-left Social Democrats, in favour of a tie-up of her conservatives with the pro-business Free Democrats.
   ‘I accept the result and thank you for your trust,’ she said, as lawmakers applauded and presented her with bouquets of flowers in the main chamber of the Reichstag parliament building.
   Out of the 612 MPs present in Germany’s lower house on Wednesday, the Bundestag, 323 voted in favour of Merkel, with 285 against and four abstentions. Her Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the FDP hold 332 seats.
   The new government has pledged to make Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, emerge from the global recession in better shape than before the financial crisis sent it into its worst recession since Second World War.
   It has promised 24 billion euros (35.6 billion dollars) worth of tax cuts, something that will push Germany’s mammoth national debt still higher and put it in breach of European Union deficit rules for several years to come.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the embattled Afghan president and a suspected drug trafficker, has been on the CIA payroll for most of the past eight years, The New York Times reported.
   The US spy agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, the newspaper said, such as fielding recruits for an Afghan paramilitary force operating at the CIA’s direction in and around his home city of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold.
   He also helps the CIA contact and sometimes meet Taliban followers.
   Karzai, who is said to have ties to Afghanistan’s lucrative illegal opium trade, has a ‘wide-ranging’ relationship with the CIA, the Times said, citing US officials.
   On top of helping the agency operate the paramilitary group that targets suspected violent militants — the Kandahar Strike Force, Karzai is also paid for allowing the CIA and US Special Operations forces to rent a large compound outside Kandahar that once served as the home of Taliban founder Mullah Omar.
   ‘He’s our landlord,’ a senior US official told the newspaper.

Iran’s envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog agency will present Tehran’s position on a draft nuclear fuel deal in Vienna today (Thursday), the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday.
   Mehr, citing an informed source, said Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh would personally give Iran’s response to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It said Soltanieh would leave for Austria on Wednesday.
   Echoing a report by Iranian state television on Tuesday, Mehr said Iran would accept the framework of the agreement but also propose changes, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions.