TV SHOWS N TOP NEWS: news

Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Iran unveils more advanced centrifuge for nuclear work Iran unveiled a third generation of domestically built centrifuges Friday as the Islamic Republic accelerates a uranium enrichment program that has alarmed world powers fearful of the nuclear program's aims.

The new machines are capable of much faster enrichment than those now being used in Iran's nuclear facilities, and Iranian officials praised the advancement as a step toward greater self-sufficiency in the face of international sanctions targeted at choking off the nuclear work.

During a ceremony marking Iran's National Day of Nuclear Technology, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled back a white curtain to reveal one of the tall, cylindrical machines to a crowd of assembled dignitaries. The display capped months of announcements about the development of the new machines.

Ahmadinejad declared there was no way back for Iran's nuclear work despite opposition from the United States and other world powers, though he insisted it had only peaceful aims like power generation.

China says sanctions 'cannot solve' Iran nuclear issue China said Tuesday that sanctions were not the answer to the stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme, after US officials said Beijing and Washington had agreed to jointly push for new punitive action.

But foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu also said China backs a "dual-track strategy" -- continued dialogue with Tehran while considering the possibility of sanctions if that fails to halt sensitive nuclear work.

She was speaking after talks between Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President Barack Obama in Washington on the issue, after which US officials said the two sides had agreed to push forward with a new UN resolution on Iran.

"China always believes that dialogue and negotiation are the best way out for the issue. Pressure and sanctions cannot fundamentally solve it," Jiang told reporters.

But she added: "The actions of the Security Council should help turn around the situation and properly solve the issue through dialogue and negotiation."

After the Hu-Obama talks in Washington, Jeff Bader, senior director for Asia on the US National Security Council, said: "The Chinese very clearly share our concern about the Iranian nuclear programme.

Iran unveils first home-made anti-aircraft missile Iran's first indigenously built anti-aircraft missile, dubbed Mersad, is ready for use, a media report said Sunday.

The medium-range missile is said to be more powerful than the US-made Hawk missile. Mersad features cutting-edge technology to "destroy modern aircraft at low and medium altitudes", Press TV reported citing defence minister Ahmad Vahidi.

The missile is equipped with sophisticated radar signal processing technology, an advanced launcher, as well as electronic equipment for guidance and target acquisition.

"The state-of-the-art technology used in Mersad provides it with the unique ability to combat electronic warfare," he explained. The features in the missile are superior to those in the Hawk missile that Iran purchased in the 1970s.

Vahidi said mass-production of Mersad has begun and a sizeable number of the medium-range missile would be delivered to the armed forces by the end of the year.

Vahidi said the production of Mersad marks a technical breakthrough in Iran's defence capabilities and proves that the country's armed forces have achieved high levels of self-sufficiency.

Cruality:Tied and raped by hubby, Yemeni child bride dies SHUEBA: A 13-year-old Yemeni child bride who died shortly after marriage was tied down and raped by her husband, her mother said.

Nijma Ahmed, 50, said late on Friday that just before her daughter lost consciousness she described how her 23-year-old husband had tied her up and forced himself on her. She bled to death hours later. Elham Assi died April 2, four days after she was married. A forensic report said her vagina and rectum were deeply ripped, causing her to hemorrhage.

The practice of marrying young girls is widespread in impoverished Yemen. Traditional families prefer young brides and poor families can be lured with hundreds of dollars in gifts. The UN child agency, UNICEF, says one of three girls in Yemen is married before the age of 18.

Tribal custom also plays a role, including the belief that a young bride can be shaped into an obedient wife, bear more children and be kept away from temptation.

Last month, a group of the country's highest Islamic authorities declared those supporting a ban on child marriages to be apostates. A February 2009 law set the minimum age for marriage at 17, but it was repealed and sent back to a parliamentary committee for review after some lawmakers called it un-Islamic.

Iraqi TV executive loses legs in car bombing BAGHDAD: An Iraqi television executive had his legs blown off when a booby trap bomb attached to his car exploded in Baghdad on Tuesday, a journalist and security officials said.

Omar Ibrahim Rasheed, director of public relations for Rasheed television, lost his legs when the bomb exploded in the Dora district of the Iraqi capital as he travelled to work, said Majid Hamid, a journalist with the channel.

Two of Rasheed's neighbours, whom he was giving a lift, and six passersby were also wounded in the attack, said an interior ministry official.

Rasheed, 40, was formerly a producer with the Al-Baghdadia television channel, before moving to Rasheed television, a satellite channel owned by a Sunni businessman, when it launched two years ago.

The Baghdad-based Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a media defence organisation, says 247 media staff, the vast majority of them Iraqis, have been killed since the US-led invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

In its Press Freedom 2009 index published last October, Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq at a lowly 145th place for media freedom out of 175 countries.

India says Nepal politicised passport deal KATHMANDU: Stung by the adverse reports in the media about its aborted passport deal with Nepal’s coalition government, India finally broke its silence on Tuesday, saying the agreement had been politicised. The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu issued a statement that also said it was regrettable that a confidential letter written by the Indian ambassador to Nepal, Rakesh Sood, to Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala, who had batted for Indian state undertaking Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India, had been leaked.

“India agreed to supply the machine-readable passport booklets through its government Undertaking, Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), at a concessional price, as a gesture of goodwill and in keeping with the friendly relations between the two countries,” the statement said. “In the spirit of mutual cooperation, the government of India further agreed to provide, at its cost, technical assistance, which included supply of software and hardware equipment, installation of these equipment at the Central passport Office in Kathmandu and training of Nepal officials for personalization of the passports.”

The statement pointed out that the arrangements agreed with the government of Nepal would have allowed it to issue the new passports by early-June 2010. The Indian undertaking and the Government of India had already initiated action.

Cruel Father:Man rapes daughter, fathers child NEW DELHI: In a case that reminds one of the horror story of Joseph Fritzl in Austria, a man here raped his own daughter over a period while still living with his wife. He even fathered her child, who was later abandoned by the victim. The girl, now 21, suffered in silence for years and then mustered enough courage to file a complaint against him.

Fritzl had confined his daughter to a cellar in his house for 24 years and repeatedly raped her, fathering seven children.

After a four-year long trial, a sessions court has convicted the man in this city for raping and threatening (criminal intimidation) his daughter. The court has fixed April 19 for pronouncement of sentence.To ensure that the child, who was abandoned by the victim, gets a good life, the court has sought documents from the Child Welfare Committee for his adoption at the next hearing.

Seema (name changed) was 16 when her father, Santram, raped her for the first time in 2005. Seema's parents had separated a long time ago but her mother had come back to her husband to give their marriage another try. One day, when her mother was away, Seema's father raped her and threatened her with dire consequences if she spoke of it. More

Anti-Naxal ops: Centre pushes for 6,000 CRPF personnel NEW DELHI: Centre is pressing more paramilitary troops — 6,000 CRPF personnel — to ramp up anti-Naxal operations but will let the state police take “lead” in the operations against the extremists.

In a significant re-configuration of its approach in the wake of the Dantewada massacre, the home ministry is going to tell the state governments that the role of paramilitary forces will be limited to “assist” the state forces. This may not be different from what was, in any case, supposed to be the case on paper.

In reality, however, it is the central forces who became the vanguard of the anti-Maoist operations, with poorly-trained state forces happily taking the back seat. The change has been necessitated because of the realisation that the political damage the Maoists inflicted when they ambushed the CRPF patrol could have been less if Centre had not taken the ownership of the offensive.

Tactically too, it is being felt that greater involvement of state police was an imperative because of their familiarity with the terrain as well as better ability to gather intelligence from local communities. The issue of involving states pro-actively was discussed in detail as part of post-mortem exercise of the Dantewada incident in a high-level meeting, chaired by home secretary G K Pillai here on Monday.

Kaczynski: The other Lech who changed Poland's face

Though he didn't come from the dockyard in Gdansk, Lech Kaczynski honed his political skills under the leadership of the legend with whom he shared his first name. Kaczynski joined Lech Walesa's Solidarity in the 1980s and became an important leader of the anti-communist movement as he spent time in jail on the charges that he had worked in illegal union activities. Out of jail and back to their union activities, Lech and identical twin brother Jaroslaw were involved in negotiations between the Solidarity movement and the government. Later, in 1990, the Kaczynski brothers became the driving force behind Walesa's election as president, when Poland held its first free election after the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe.

As Walesa put Poland on the path of post-communism reconstruction in the early 1990s, the Kaczynski brothers fell out with the Polish president over the issue of Solidarity leadership and found themselves outside mainstream politics. Not used to lying low, the brothers who shot to fame at the age of 12 as stars in the film 'Two boys who stole the moon', founded the Law and Justice party, which stresses the traditional values of the Roman Catholic Church, in 2001.

This was the period that saw Lech's metamorphosis from a backroom boy to a politician who was not afraid to appeal to populist sentiments. In 2004 and 2005, as mayor of Warsaw, Kaczynski made the controversial decision of banning the city's gay rights parade. Poland was subsequently convicted at the European Court of Human Rights of being in contravention of EU law. But his right-wing on many issues found ready reception among many Poles, especially traditionalist and rural voters, and Lech won the nations presidency in 2005 as he travelled around the country telling people that they needed a president who would stand up for their interests. After assuming presidency, he lost no time in naming the other Kaczynski as the prime minister.

Boy, 7, sent to Russia with 'take back' note:Russia Take back: MOSCOW: The boy was only 7, but he walked off the plane that arrived in Moscow from Washington all alone, carrying a knapsack with magic markers and candy, along with a single typewritten note. It was from a woman in Tennessee who had adopted him in Russia last year, became overwhelmed by what she described as his emotional problems and now wanted nothing more to do with him. Take him back, the note said.

"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child," she wrote. The boy's plight prompted the Russian government to say on Friday that it would suspend all adoptions of Russian children by Americans until safeguards could be put in place. Russia was the third leading source of adoptive children in the US in 2009, according to State Department figures.

The boy, Artyom, who was named Justin by his adoptive American mother, landed in Moscow on Thursday, and Russian officials gained custody over him after he presented them with the note. His mother, Torry Ann Hansen, a registered nurse from Shelbyville, Tennessee, wrote in the note that the boy "is violent and has severe psychopathic issues."

She added that she "was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers" about his troubles. Local officials in Tennessee said they did not believe that Hansen or his adoptive grandmother, Nancy Hansen, had records of child abuse or neglect, but would now examine their conduct in Artyom's case.

Kyrgyzstan buries uprising victims as nation mourns BISHKEK: Kyrgyzstan held funerals on Saturday for 16 victims of bloody riots this week that saw the opposition seize control of the Central Asian nation and toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev flee south.

With the future of the strategic country still uncertain, the United States suspended all flights carrying troops to support operations in Afghanistan from its Manas base outside the capital Bishkek.

Some 7,000 people gathered in a sea of flowers at a cemetery outside the capital for today's mass burials, as the country mourned 79 people who died in the uprising during which security forces opened fired on protesters.

The victims' coffins, swathed in bright red Kyrgyz flags, were laid out as the crowd sang traditional songs and chanted prayers.

Key figures of the new government were dotted among the throng of mourners at the mountain Atta-Beiit cemetery some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Bishkek.

Interim chief Roza Otunbayeva promised the weeping families of the victims justice for their loss.

"The regime became the enemy of the people when it opened fire on its patriots, the best sons of the nation, and we -- we will do our best to install a just power in Kyrgyzstan," she told the crowd.

Her deputy prime minister Omurbek Tekebayev also renewed opposition pledges for a "true democracy" in the ex-Soviet state.

"We will build a true democracy or else the souls of those dead will never forgive us!," he told the crowd.

The interim government suspects Bakiyev of trying to restore his five-year grip on power and rallying support in his native south of the country.

However, Janibek Karibjanov, a special envoy from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) told journalists in Bishkek that the new government yesterday had made its first attempt at negotiating with Bakiyev -- a claim the government quickly denied.

Otunbayeva has urged the toppled president to take her offer of safe passage out of the Central Asia nation in exchange for his resignation -- while it still stood.

Also Saturday a planned rally was cancelled in Jalalabad, the multi-ethnic stronghold of the ousted president where supporters of Bakiyev's regime were to gather.

The head of the local council of elders, Adych Kochkorov, told a crowd of around 300 people in the city that the rally had been delayed because of a day of mourning across the nation.

Climate change: No room for further setbacks this yr, warns UN PARIS: Another failure in the quest for a treaty on climate change would cripple trust in the United Nations' ability to tackle global warming, the UN's climate pointman warned as more talks ground into their final day here today.

In an interview with AFP, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said the global process hinged on a November 29-December 10 meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

After the disappointment of last December's Copenhagen Summit, it was vital for Cancun to yield a "functioning architecture" on big questions, including agreement on how to curb carbon emissions and provide aid for poor countries, said de Boer.

"We reached an agreement in Bali (in 2007) that we would conclude negotiations two years later in Copenhagen, and we didn't," de Boer said.

"The finishing line has now been moved to Cancun, and I wouldn't be surprised if the final finishing line in terms of a legally binding treaty ends up being moved to South Africa," at the end of 2011.

"Copenhagen was the last get-out-of-jail-free card and we cannot afford another failure in Cancun," de Boer said, referring to a card in the board game of Monopoly.

"I think if we see another failure in Cancun, that will cause a serious loss of confidence in the ability of this process to deliver."

Negotiators today headed into the final day of a three-day meeting in Bonn that aimed at picking up the pieces after Copenhagen.

Far from being the glittering triumph envisaged in Bali, Indonesia in 2007, the summit ended rancorously and with a deal lashed by many as lamentably threadbare.

The main achievement was the "Copenhagen Accord," brokered by a couple of dozen countries, which set the goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius, earmarked some USD 30 billion in short-term aid and sketched a target of mustering USD 100 billion annually by 2020.

Kaczynski's body arrives in Warsaw; Russia, Poland mourn

MOSCOW: The flag-draped coffin of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash, arrived in Warsaw on a special aircraft from Russia, where Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday paid tributes with full military honours to the departed leader at a solemn ceremony.

The body of Kaczynski arrived in Warsaw from Russia where he was killed along with his wife Maria and 94 others when his Russian-built jet came down in thick fog near Smolensk yesterday on the way to a memorial service for 22,000 Poles massacred by Soviet troops in World War II.

The coffin carrying body of Kaczynski was received at Warsaw Airport by the president's identical twin brother Jaroslaw, a former premier. Poland's national anthem was played and a guard of honour was given to the late leader.
Tens of thousands of people lined the route taken by the hearse carrying Kaczynski's body from airport to the presidential palace.
Earlier in Russia, Putin placed flowers on the coffin with the remains of Kaczynski at the tarmac of the military aerodrome Severny in Smolensk region.

The national anthems of Poland and Russia were played following which the guard of honour saluted the Polish leader and his body was loaded into the aircraft and sent to Warsaw.
"This is first and foremost Poland's tragedy and that of the Polish people, but this is also our tragedy, and we mourn with you and grieve with you," Putin was quoted as telling Polish television.
Ambassador Bar of Poland, who was present at the ceremony, told reporters that the body of Kaczynski's wife Maria has not been identified and would be sent later, RIA Novosti reported.
A probe headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has blamed pilot error as the cause of the crash in dense fog on the approaches of the Severny military aerodrome, in which top polish political and military leaderships were wiped out.

India to seek Headley's extradition during PM's US visit WASHINGTON: Determined to seek the extradition of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley and access to him, India will raise the issue with US at the official-level during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's four-day visit here.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who is accompanying the Prime Minister, will raise the issue during his meeting with his counterpart Gen (Retd) James Jones.

"We will keep pushing...This will be one of the issues...we will use every occasion to seek access (to David Headley)," sources said.

New Delhi's preference is extradition of the LeT operative as the crime was committed in India, they said.

However, if it takes some time then India would like to have direct access to him through legal process so that it (the information provided by Headley) is admissible in courts in India, the sources said.

It was not certain whether Singh will raise the issue during his meeting with President Barack Obama at the Blair House here tomorrow.
Singh is here to attend the two-day Nuclear Summit beginning Monday.
India wants to interrogate David Coleman Headley, who has confessed to plotting the Mumbai carnage, to unravel the entire conspiracy.
Headley had last month pleaded guilty to all terror charges before a US court on March 18.
49-year-old Headley, who faces six counts of conspiracy involving bombing public places in India, murdering and maiming persons in India and providing material support to foreign terrorist plots and LeT; and six counts of aiding and abetting the murder of US citizens in India, could have been sentenced to death if convicted.

Tremendous scope for strengthening ties with China: Tharoor GUWAHATI: Seeking to downplay the dispute with China on Arunachal Pradesh, Union minister Shashi Tharoor today said both the countries are developing economies and stand a lot to benefit from mutual cooperation.

"It is high time we should look beyond geographical barriers and build up a good relation with China in the 21st century," Tharoor told reporters on the sidelines of a book release function here.

"There remains tremendous scope for building relationships with China in which both the developing countries could benefit," he said.
"Both China and India are developing economies and we stand a lot to benefit from mutual cooperation."
Earlier speaking at the release function of Ranjit Barthakur's environment-related book Naturenomics, Tharoor said though being a developing economy India's carbon emission was one of the lowest in the world.
"In fact other countries should take a lesson from us that despite being a developing economy, pollution to the economy from our country's side is one of the lowest."

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and state Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma were present on the occasion.