Flaws in flight preparation and poor pilot training led to the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other top officials in April 2010, Russian investigators said in a new report released on Wednesday.
"The technical commission has established that serious organizational flaws, poor pilot training and preparation of this particularly important flight at a special [Polish] air regiment base led to the catastrophe," said Tatyana Anodina, the head of Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK).
She also said the presence of Kaczynski and other high-ranking state officials on board the Tu-154 plane influenced the pilot's decision to attempt a landing in poor weather conditions and low visibility.
Investigators dismissed the poor condition of infrastructure and landing equipment at the airfield, as well as actions by air traffic controllers, as factors that could have contributed to the tragedy.
Head of the MAK technical commission Alexei Morozov said on Wednesday that air traffic controllers did not give the plane permission to land at a critical altitude of 100 meters (328 feet).
The crew was allowed to descend to 100 meters, and in line with the international rules had to make a decision whether to land or go for a second landing attempt.
"However, no reports came from [the crew], and the plane continued descending on its own," Morozov said.
In essence, the new report does not change much the conclusions of the first report released by Russian investigators in October of last year.
The first MAK report was first presented to the Polish authorities on October 20, and blamed pilot error for the crash in heavy fog, but in mid-December Poland sent it back to Moscow with 150 comments and queries. Prime Minister Tusk said that parts of the report were "unacceptable."
Polish experts said they were dissatisfied with the documents provided by Russia. Most of the complaints concerned a lack of technical details about the Severny airport in Smolensk at which the plane was due to land.
Afghan officials say a suicide bomber on a motorbike killed four people in an attack close to the country's parliament Wednesday.
Afghanistan's Interior Minister Zemarai Bashary said the blast in the capital Kabul took place near a minibus carrying Afghan intelligence personnel.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which wounded some 30 people.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, coalition officials and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul separately condemned the attack.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan killed a senior Afghan intelligence officer.
The attacks came as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden completed a two-day visit to the country.
Biden was on an unannounced fact-finding mission to assess progress in Afghanistan. He said he believed U.S. troops with local security forces are breaking the momentum of Taliban insurgents.
Biden also assured President Karzai that the United States will not abandon his country after 2014 when, under an agreement reached last year, coalition forces plan to hand over control of security to the Afghans.
NATO officials have said they expect levels of violence to remain high through Afghanistan's winter months when fighting traditionally eases as a sign that the coalition and Afghan forces are putting pressure on Taliban strongholds.
Mahinda Rajapaksa had to cancel his helicopter trip from Polonnaruwa in the east to the badly affected coastal city of Batticaloa 120km (75 miles) away.
The downpour is continuing after two weeks of rain in the centre and east.
The floods have inundated farmland and destroyed rice fields.
Emergency
The eastern cities of Ampara and Batticaloa have been worst affected by the deluge, which has left some stretches of railway line under nearly a metre of water.
Officials in Ampara say the rainfall there since Saturday has been the highest ever recorded in such a short time.
A number of big reservoirs have burst their banks, destroying paddy fields in a major rice-growing area.
People in some areas have told the BBC they have seen no sign of aid agencies or government relief, and that some people in makeshift camps have been missing out on meals.
The air force has helped evacuate people and drop food supplies to some cut-off communities.
The government has made an emergency appeal for ordinary people's help in sending dry rations, mattresses and bottled water.
Clean water and food supplies have been sent by official and international agencies to the worst-hit areas.
But the deputy disaster management minister Duleep Wijesekara said some places, such as Mutur, have been difficult to reach.
"I boarded a high-speed navy boat to get there [to Mutur], but due to the huge waves we had to turn back after sailing for about 15km. After that we had to send food in by air," he added.
The floods bring a risk of disease, including the mosquito-borne dengue fever, which even in normal times is a severe problem in the country.
"This 34-year-old woman who intended to enter Iran at the Norduz terminal on January 5 left Iran's borders after her situation became clear and legal procedures were followed," IRIB quoted an unnamed "high ranking security official" as saying.
Conflicting news articles had suggested that the woman was either American or was suspected of working for U.S. intelligence, but the official quoted by IRIB denied reports she had been filming the border area.
Adding to the confusion, IRIB said she had been held at Norduz, on Iran's border with its northern neighbor Armenia, whereas other news agencies said she had tried to enter at Jolfa, some 50 km (30 miles) to the west, on the border with Azerbaijan.
IRIB said the woman was seeking an Iranian visa and never entered Iranian territory. She was denied entry and returned to Armenia on Saturday, it said.
The news comes at a time of high tension between Tehran and Washington, which have been in a long-running dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.
The two countries have had no diplomatic relations since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution but both will be represented at talks in Istanbul later this month which Western countries hope will address the nuclear stand-off.
Three Americans -- two men and a woman -- were arrested in July 2009 near the Iran-Iraq border on suspicion of spying. The woman, Sarah Shourd, was released on bail a of $500,000 in September and returned to the United States. She has said the three of them strayed across the border while hiking in Iraq.
Her two companions remain in jail awaiting trial, which was postponed in November due to Shourd's absence.
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations Meron Reuben has submitted a complaint to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the UN Security Council over Tuesday's Qassam rocket attack in which a teenage girl was lightly wounded in the Ashkelon area, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.
Reuben said that Israel held the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip responsible for the rocket fire and he called on the international community to send a "clear and resolute" message that such rocket attacks were unacceptable.
On Tuesday morning, a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza exploded in an open field near a kindergarten in the Ashkelon area and a teenage girl was lightly wounded in a nearby building.
Some 13 rockets fired from Gaza have struck Israel over the last several days.
Responsibility for Tuesday's rocket attack on the Ashkelon area was claimed by a group calling itself the Army of Islam, which has the same "global jihad" ideology as the Al- Qaida movement. It said it was responding "to the massacres committed by the Zionist enemy."
The Israel Air Force responded to the rocket attack with an airstrike later on Tuesday on a Hamas 'terror center' in the Gaza Strip.
According to the IDF spokesman's office, over 200 Grad missiles, Qassam rockets and mortar shells have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory this year.
The leaders of Britain, the United States, France and China preceded Medvedev's arrival Tuesday with acknowledgments of India's growing global stature and strong bids to take advantage of its booming economy.
Accompanied by large business delegations, they have struck deals to supply India with energy and military equipment. They have also sought ways to more fully integrate Asia's third-largest economy into the world economy and have promoted India's role in the governance of the global financial system.
President Obama left India with more than $10 billion worth of deals to help create jobs in the United States; Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, last week claimed $16 billion worth of new business during a three-day visit to New Delhi.
In return for such deals, the leaders of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have offered recognition of India's standing as the world's largest democracy and pledged support for a greater role for New Delhi in multilateral institutions - in particular, a future seat on the Security Council.
Describing Russia as a "major energy power," Medvedev on Tuesday stressed his country's role as a key energy supplier. Among the 15 agreements that he and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed were a pact to align India's oil and gas companies with powerful Russian state-owned energy companies such as Gazprom and an agreement to cooperate in developing two nuclear reactors.
Like his peers, Medvedev spoke of the ways in which his country's economy complemented India's; he also pushed for "modern" engagement across sectors, including pharmaceuticals, defense and space technology.
"I believe that trade between us does not nearly reflect our privileged partnership," Medvedev said. "India is a comfortable partner, especially in energy."
He and Singh agreed to work toward doubling bilateral trade to $20 billion within five years to reenergize ties forged in the decades after India's independence. Those ties face stiff competition from India's warming relationships with Western powers and from the regional dominance of the Chinese economy.
Obama, in a genially received address to the Indian Parliament, described India as an "emerged" power and market rather than an emerging one.
The succession of visitors also addressed India's concerns about security in South Asia and the threats of extremism and terrorism emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan. The top-level bilateral engagement was spearheaded by Singh, who enjoys a high international standing as a statesman and a development economist.
His reception of world leaders has left him looking more assured in the face of a raft of domestic graft scandals that have paralyzed Parliament and threatened to tarnish his clean image. The opposition has been in an uproar over the alleged mishandling of telecommunications licenses that an official audit claimed had cost $39 billion in potential state revenue.
"It's a shame that when India is doing so well in the world, we have this crisis at home," one top Indian diplomat said.
A 67-28 procedural vote yesterday limited debate and demonstrated that the administration has enough support to reach the constitutional threshold of a two-thirds Senate majority for treaty approval.
Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to the U.S. Capitol before the vote, meeting with Arizona Republican Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl in an effort to resolve their remaining objections and win with a margin more in keeping with previous arms-control treaties. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, predicted a final vote today following consideration of the last amendments.
A lobbying push that incorporated a classified briefing and calls and letters from Obama and his top advisers, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, helped drive support over the minimum needed in a chamber where Democrats control 58 votes.
Eleven Republicans joined 54 Democrats and two independents in yesterday’s vote to proceed to final action on the treaty.
“This was a bipartisan vote,” Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and the first in his party to back the treaty, told reporters after the procedural vote. “I’m hopeful Republicans will contribute more votes on final passage.”
Russia’s parliament is ready to start the ratification process this week, said Andrei Klimov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house, or State Duma.
If the Senate passes the accord as is, the Duma may approve it on Dec. 24, its last session of the year, Klimov said by phone today. The treaty also needs the approval of the upper house, or Federation Council, which probably won’t happen until after the January holidays, Klimov said. Russia’s first working day of 2011 is Jan. 11.
“I don’t see any problem per se with ratification,” Klimov said. “This is not a political but a technical issue.”
The Senate approved ratification of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1992 by a vote of 93-6. Four years later, START II won approval, 87-4. The 2002 Moscow Treaty, which drew on the same verification procedures as in START, was approved by the Senate 95-0.
‘Rigorous’ Inspection
New START, as the current accord is known, would limit each side’s strategic warheads to no more than 1,550, from 2,200 allowed previously, and sets a maximum of 800 land-, air- and sea-based launchers. A program enabling each side to verify the other’s nuclear arsenal was suspended when the previous treaty expired in December 2009.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said New START would improve security. Its terms require lower numbers of weapons, provide a “rigorous” inspection system and offer the flexibility the U.S. needs to pursue missile defenses against attacks from potential adversaries, such as Iran.
“This treaty stands on its merits, and its prompt ratification will strengthen U.S. national security,” Gates said in a statement yesterday.
Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the accord in April as part of a push to restore relations between the two nations and reduce the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Missile Defense
In more than a dozen public hearings and classified briefings, the administration has struggled to gain the support of Senate Republicans. The opposition has been led by Jon Kyl of Arizona.
Citing concerns such as treaty language that they said would limit U.S. options for developing a missile-defense system, opponents pushed to delay a vote until next year and reopen negotiations with Russia.
Any delay would have forced the Obama administration to win over a Senate with a slimmer Democratic majority, based on election results last month. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has ruled out any additional negotiations on the pact.
Missile defense was the primary subject of an amendment that McCain and Kyl were co-sponsoring with Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mark Kirk of Illinois.
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, said much of McCain’s proposal is already addressed in the resolution of ratification that lawmakers will consider in the final vote.
‘Reasonable Way’
“There is a lot in the McCain amendment that we are prepared to accept,” Kerry, who met separately with Biden and Clinton, told reporters. It will be “up to him to decide whether it accomplishes his goal,” Kerry said.
Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana and Ron Wyden of Oregon weren’t present for yesterday’s vote and will be in favor of ratification today, giving the treaty at least 70 supporters, Kerry said.
“In today’s Washington and today’s Senate, 70 votes is yesterday’s 95,” Kerry said.
Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Senate’s No. 3 Republican, helped tip the balance yesterday when he announced his support in a Senate.
Alexander said he was persuaded in part by the president’s commitment to an $85 billion program to modernize the U.S. nuclear-weapons arsenal. In a failed effort to win support from Kyl, the administration added $5 billion in recent weeks to its 10-year, $80 billion plan unveiled earlier this year.
“It leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come,” Alexander said.
In addition to Alexander, the Republicans who supported the treaty yesterday were Lugar, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Robert Bennett of Utah, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and George Voinovich of Ohio.
--With assistance from Kate Andersen Brower, Mark Drajem, Ryan Donmoyer, Roger Runningen, Flavia Krause-Jackson, David Lerman and Nicholas Johnston in Washington, Balazs Penz in Budapest and Henry Meyer in Moscow. Editors: Steven Komarow, Robin Meszoly.
NEW DELHI: India is "very keen" to get information and technology from the US for counter-terrorism efforts but provides "little in return", says a US embassy cable made public by WikiLeaks .
The cable, dated Feb 23, 2007 and reproduced by The Guardian, also came down heavily on Indian security forces, calling them corrupt and poorly trained and said they did not "conduct solid forensic investigations".
The cable explained the American assessment of why New Delhi remained a distant partner vis-a-vis the US on counter-terrorism efforts.
"India's lingering zero-sum suspicion of US policies towards Pakistan, its fiercely independent foreign policy stance, its traditional go-it-alone strategy toward its security, and its domestic political sensitivities over the sentiments of its large Muslim population, have all contributed to India's caution in working with us on a joint counter-terrorism strategy," the cable said.
It pointed out that while "India has been very keen to receive information and technology from us to further its counter-terrorism efforts, India provides little in return, despite our belief that the country should be an equal partner in this relationship.
"India frequently rebuffs our offers of support for their police investigations of terrorist attacks and our offers of training and support are often met with a stalled logistical pace."
Making another point, the cable said it had to be kept in mind that "our perception of India's lack of cooperation on US CT (Counter Terrorism) concerns often stems in part from India's lack of capacity to manage these issues bureaucratically".
It said that Indian police and security forces were "overworked and hampered by bad police practices, including the widespread use of torture in interrogations, rampant corruption, poor training, and a general inability to conduct solid forensic investigations.
"India's most elite security forces also regularly cut corners to avoid working through India's lagging justice system, which has approximately 13 judges per million people.
"Thus Indian police officials often do not respond to our requests for information about attacks or our offers of support because they are covering up poor practices, rather than rejecting our help outright."
"She presents an intriguing enigma of a warm private personality that remains concealed and is available only to her closest confidants and family members.
Dec 18 (Reuters) - Bank of America was quoted as saying late on Friday that it was joining other financial institutions in declining to process payments to WikiLeaks, which has angered U.S. authorities with the mass release of U.S. diplomatic cables.
"Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks," the bank said in a statement, quoted by McClatchy Newspapers.
No one at Bank of America was immediately available to comment.
WikiLeaks has said it will release documents early next year that will point to "unethical practices" at a major U.S. bank, widely thought to be Bank of America.
Several companies have ended services to WikiLeaks after the website teamed up with major newspapers to publish thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that have caused tension between Washington and some of its allies.
"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the Bank of America statement added.
WikiLeaks later issued a message on Twitter urging its supporters to leave the bank.
"We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America," it said on the social networking medium.
"Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advice is to place your funds somewhere safer," WikiLeaks said in a subsequent tweet.
In a backlash against organizations that have cut off WikiLeaks, cyber activists have been targeting companies seen as foes of the website.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released on bail this week from a jail in Britain, where he is fighting extradition to Sweden over alleged sexual offenses.
Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, said on Friday that he was the target of an aggressive U.S. investigation and feared extradition to the United States was "increasingly likely."
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said his government was considering using the U.S. Espionage Act, under which it is illegal to obtain national defense information for the purpose of harming the United States, as well as other laws to prosecute the release of sensitive government information by WikiLeaks.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and Latino rights groups Friday made an 11th-hour plea to lawmakers as the Senate prepared to vote on a contentious immigration bill that could provide citizenship to foreign-born immigrants.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to hold a Senate vote on a procedural measure today to cut off a Republican filibuster and move the so-called DREAM Act to the full Senate for approval.
Supporters of the bill concede they lack the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, but they spent the waning hours making telephone calls to more than a half dozen Senate Republicans seeking their support for the bill.
Seeking support
President Barack Obama was calling lawmakers, urging them to vote for the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
"He's talking with those whose votes are tremendously important," Gibbs told a group of regional reporters.
Obama did not contact Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Republicans, who vocally oppose the DREAM Act and are targeted by immigration activists lobbying them to change their vote.
Hutchison, through a spokeswoman, claims the DREAM Act would expand the number of illegal immigrants eligible for citizenship beyond the children it was initially meant to help.
Republicans argue that the bill would create a "chain migration" and "amnesty" for illegal immigrant relatives and spouses.
Supporters argue that if the so-called DREAMers meet all the requirements for eventual citizenship, they will be awarded conditional residency for a period of 10 years, during which they must complete two years of college or military service and stay out of trouble.
After becoming a permanent resident, the applicant must wait an additional three years before applying for citizenship.
Once U.S. citizens - which could be 15 to 20 years after they first applied under the act - DREAMers could petition for parents or siblings to gain legal status.
The House voted mostly along party lines last week to pass the bill, 216-198.
As the Senate vote neared, Obama administration officials sought to dismiss Republican concerns and highlight aspects of the bill.
Brought by parents
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the nation needs the contributions of thousands of youth who go to college or the military, but who were brought to this country by illegal immigrant parents.
"DREAM Act students are in a bind. It goes against the basic American sense of fairness to punish children for the choices of their parents," Duncan said.
Duncan estimates that the DREAM Act would provide legal status for 65,000 high school graduates a year.
Opponents, meanwhile, cited a report by the Center for Immigration Studies saying the law would result in 1 million illegal immigrants entering state universities and colleges at cost to taxpayers of $6.2 billion a year.
Those eligible for eventual citizenship under the law would have to be under age 30, brought to this country before age 16, have lived here for more than five years, graduated from high school and willing to spend two years in college or serve two years in the military.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An official of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s top spy organization, angrily denied on Saturday that it was responsible for revealing the name of the Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Pakistan. “We absolutely deny this accusation, which is totally unsubstantiated and based on nothing but conjecture,” a senior ISI official said in a background briefing at the headquarters of the spy organization in Islamabad.
The top C.I.A. officer in Pakistan was removed yesterday after American officials said the C.I.A. station chief had received a number of death threats since being publicly identified in a legal complaint sent to the Pakistani police this week by the family of victims of earlier drone campaigns.
“This organization has immense tolerance. We have cooperated to the hilt despite constant allegations leveled against us. But this story is the biggest bomb shell,”the official said referring to the article published in The New York Times yesterday.
Claiming that the allegation had greater implications, the official said that the article seemed “intended to create rifts between the ISI and C.I.A.”
Some American officials had said that they strongly suspected that operatives of Pakistan’s powerful spy service had a hand in revealing the C.I.A. officer’s identity, possibly in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last month implicating the ISI chief in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008. The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not immediately provide details to support their suspicions.
The ISI officials, in turn, pointedly denied these accusations.
The briefing by two senior officials included a litany of complaints as the officials accused western news organization, and specifically the New York Times, of continuously publishing news reports that “cast aspersions on the credibility of the spy organization.”
Both officials claimed in the briefing that ISI had an excellent working relationship with their counterparts in the C.I.A. “We regularly deal with the C.I.A. and it has never communicated to us that they have doubts on our sincerity and credibility,” said one official. “Such accusations and insinuations only appear in media.”
In the briefing, the officials suggested that the conduct of C.I.A.’s top officer might itself have been responsible for blowing the agent’s cover. “Americans have a vast access in Pakistan. They openly interact with civil society members, attend dinners and meetings,” one official said.
A program error caused a Russian Proton-M carrier rocket to deviate from its course and lose a booster carrying three Glonass-M satellites, a source in the Russian space industry said on Monday.
Sunday's launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket was supposed to deliver satellites for the completion of Russia's Glonass satellite navigation system.
However, the rocket, which blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, deviated from its course by 8 degrees, resulting in the loss of the DM-3 booster with the satellites. According to unofficial reports, the spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean to the northwest of Hawaii.
"According to preliminary information, there were no technical problems with the Proton itself during lift-off. A range of specialists consider that program errors in Proton's onboard computer led to the engines failing to function as normal, giving the rocket an extra boost and taking it into the wrong orbit," the source said.
The Proton's onboard computer was developed by specialists of the Russian Pilyugin space equipment construction center, he said.
Glonass is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, and is designed for both military and civilian use. Both systems allow users to determine their positions to within a few meters.
Russia currently has a total of 26 Glonass satellites in orbit, and all but three are operational. The three lost Glonass-M satellites would have allowed Russia to operate a complete Glonass network of 24 operational satellites and have several satellites in reserve.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded an investigation into the loss of the satellites and ordered Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to carry out a check on spending on the Glonass system.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A pair of suicide bombers disguised as policemen killed 50 people Monday in an attack targeting a tribal meeting called to discuss the formation of an anti-Taliban militia in northwest Pakistan, officials said.
The attack occurred on the grounds of the main government compound in Mohmand, part of Pakistan's militant-infested tribal region. It was the latest strike against local tribesmen who have been encouraged by the government to take up arms against the Taliban.
The explosions also wounded more than 100 people, many of them critically, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
One of the reasons the attacks were so deadly was because the bombers had filled their suicide jackets with bullets, said Amjad Ali Khan, the top political official in Mohmand, who was at the compound in Ghalanai town when it was attacked.
"These bullets killed everyone who was hit," said Khan.
Both of the bombers were disguised in tribal police uniforms, said Khan. One of them was caught at the gate of the compound, but he was able to detonate his explosives, he said.
One of the wounded in the attack was 45-year-old Qalandar Khan, who came to the compound to visit an imprisoned cousin and was hit by the second explosion.
"There was a deafening sound and it caused a cloud of dust and smoke and a subsequent hue and cry," said Khan, laying in a hospital bed in his blood-soaked clothes. "There were dozens on the ground like me, bleeding and crying. I saw body parts scattered in the compound."
The dead and wounded included tribal elders, police, political officials and other civilians. Two of the dead were local TV journalists who were at the compound reporting on stories, said Shakirullah Jan, president of the Mohmand press club.
The Pakistani army has carried out operations in Mohmand to battle Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the area, but it has been unable to defeat the militants.
The military has encouraged local tribesmen to form militias to oppose the militants. These groups have had varying degrees of success and have often been targeted in deadly attacks.
A suicide bomber attacked a mosque in northwestern Pakistan in early November that was frequented by elders opposed to the Pakistani Taliban, killing 67 people. The attack occurred in the town of Darra Adam Khel, a militant stronghold on the edge of the tribal region.
"We are not scared of such attacks and will keep on taking these enemies of humanity to task until they disappear from society," said Hussain, the information minister.
Tourists visiting an Egyptian resort have been warned to be alert after a series of shark attacks that have left one woman dead and several people seriously injured.
The German woman died Sunday after being attacked by a shark in waters off Sharm el-Sheikh, prompting Egypt's tourism ministry to close the beach until the animal responsible is found.
Thousands of tourists flock to Sharm el-Sheikh each year, attracted by its warm climate and clear waters, but the UK Foreign Office on Monday amended its travel advice for people visiting the area.
A statement on its website read: "Attacks by oceanic white tip sharks are extremely rare and shark attacks of any kind are very unusual in the Red Sea.
"If you are considering diving or snorkelling in any of the Red Sea resorts be aware that safety standards of diving operators can vary considerably.
"A basic rule is never to dive or snorkel unaccompanied. Where possible make any bookings through your tour representative.
"Unusually cheap operators may not provide adequate safety and insurance standards."
After the attacks authorities ordered people to stay out of the water around Sharm el-Sheikh. On Thursday, the Environment Ministry said two sharks suspected of the maulings were caught.
Jochen Van Lysebettens, general operations manager of the Red Sea Diving College in Sharm el-Sheikh, said employees at the Hyatt Regency resort told him the attack happened about noon (5 a.m. ET) in a protected swim area off the resort. Van Lysebettens has three dive-instruction operations in the area, including one at the Hyatt Regency.
The 70-year-old woman, a regular guest at the resort, was snorkeling near a reef when she was attacked, he said. She called for help, and a lifeguard brought her to shore, but she had lost too much blood and resuscitation efforts failed, Van Lysebettens said. The woman's arm and leg were severed, he said.
A British tourist described witnessing one of the shark attacks. Ellen Barnes, 31, of Horsham, West Sussex, told The Sun newspaper: "The water was churning like I was in a washing machine. I was being thrown around in the blood."
After the Sunday incident, the Chamber of Diving and Watersports called on its members in the region "to stop any snorkeling activities happening from any boats or shore." The chamber is under the umbrella of the Egyptian Tourist Federation.
Van Lysebettens said all tourists were ordered to stay out of the water at least through Monday. The dive community is organizing volunteer expeditions to find the shark, he said, and about 40 people will search Monday.
On Friday, two sharks were caught and killed near the South Sinai National Park on the Sharm el-Sheikh coast, according to the Chamber of Diving and Watersports.
The chamber said that as of Friday, the condition of three injured snorkelers -- two Russian women and a man from the Ukraine -- were unchanged. One of them was critical, the chamber said in a statement, but did not say which one. The three were attacked in a 24-hour period November 30 and December 1, the chamber said.
Van Lysebettens said he is not a marine biologist, but many have speculated an oceanic white-tipped shark was responsible for the German woman's death, as well as the other attacks. Divers are upset because the two sharks killed Friday are thought to be innocent. They were a mako shark and another oceanic white-tipped shark -- which did not match pictures taken by someone accompanying one of the injured snorkelers, he said.
Officials at the national park did not provide details on "why the animals could not be relocated to remote waters as was previously suggested," the chamber's statement said, adding it "does not wish to see any harm to any further sharks."
Exploratory dives were taking place on Friday, Van Lysebettens said.
Officials are not sure what triggered the feeding behavior, described as highly unusual.
"This incident has clearly shocked our community, and the CDWS is continuing its investigation into why this may have happened," Hesham Gabr, head of the Chamber of Diving and Watersports, said in the statement. "It is clear from our initial discussions with shark behavioral experts that this highly unusual spate of attacks by an oceanic white tip shark was triggered by an activity, most probably illegal fishing or feeding in the area."
Several divers in the area saw carcasses of dead sheep in the water last week, Van Lysebettens said. It's not known how they got there, he said, but they could have washed out to sea or fallen off a boat. The shark may have been attracted by the carcass, he said, and could now be attacking slow-movin
The Israeli forest fire that took 42 lives and forced some 17,000 people to flee their homes is almost extinguished, with only one small blaze left to put out, police said.
Firemen remain on standby in the country’s north, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said by phone today. He confirmed that a senior police officer died after suffering critical injuries as she tried to rescue passengers from a burning bus on Dec. 2, bringing the death toll from the fire to 42.
The blaze destroyed more than 10,000 acres (4,050 hectares) of forest and has been described by officials as the worst in the country’s history. It forced Israel to call on allies to send firefighting support, receiving more than 30 firefighting aircraft from countries including the U.S., Greece, Turkey and Russia. The aircraft began departing last night.
The daily Ma’ariv yesterday estimated fire damage at 985 million shekels ($272 million), without saying how it did the calculation. The government doesn’t yet have an estimate, Shlomi Sheffer, a Finance Ministry spokesman, said by phone.
The Welfare Ministry has allotted about 500 million shekels to municipalities affected by the fire, said Pnina Ben Ami, a spokeswoman. The Finance Ministry set aside several million shekels to help local governments, minister Yuval Steinitz’s office said in an e-mailed statement today.
Most damage to private property is insured and the insurance companies are covered by reinsurance policies, the Finance Ministry said on Dec. 3. Most of the damage to public property is also insured, it said.
‘Fiasco’
“There hasn’t been such a fiasco since the establishment of the state,” Haim Klein, a former police superintendent, said on Army Radio. “We don’t need an inquiry. We need to launch a criminal investigation for criminal negligence.”
Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who is responsible for the fire department, said on Army Radio: “I don’t remember any other minister fighting as much as I have for a budget increase.”
Two people under the age of 18 were arrested yesterday on suspicion of starting the fire, Rosenfeld said, adding that the blaze appeared to be caused by negligence and not arson.
The fire began in the Carmel hills south of Haifa, a city with a population of 266,000, and exceptionally dry conditions helped it spread rapidly. About 12,500 acres of forest have been destroyed, Efi Stenzler, chairman of the Jewish National Fund, which plants trees in Israel, told Channel 2 television.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net.
PARIS— Six world powers began two days of talks with Iran on Monday to seek reassurances that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
Ahead of the talks in Geneva, Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council said the United States and its allies are looking to see if Iran will enter into discussions “with the seriousness of purpose required to begin to address international concerns.”
British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said on Saturday that the talks — the first in more than a year — needed to make a serious start toward resolving the issue, The Associated Press reported. “We want a negotiated solution, not a military one — but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome,” he said. “We will not look away or back down.”
The Obama administration has become increasingly skeptical that Iran will seriously take up an offer for wide-ranging talks about all issues but based on an agreement to stop or at least suspend nuclear enrichment. Iran denies that it is seeking the capacity for a nuclear bomb to add to its significant missile capacity. Very few in Western governments or in the Middle East believe Tehran’s denials.
In addition to the United States and Britain, the other countries at the talks are China, Russia, France and Germany.
Iran on Sunday claimed for the first time to have used domestically mined uranium ore to make the material needed for uranium enrichment. It called the step a major advance in its atomic program, sending a defiant message before a new round of talks on Iran’s suspect nuclear activities. Western experts said the progress appeared to be more symbolic than substantive and did not bear immediately on whether Iran could accelerate its efforts at enriching uranium, which can fuel either reactors or atom bombs.
But Iran’s successful processing of uranium ore from a domestically mined source, which it has been working on for years, suggested the Iranians had found a way to bypass United Nations sanctions that ban them from importing raw uranium. The announcement also reflected Iran’s intention to show it remains undaunted in its pursuit of nuclear capabilities despite some significant recent setbacks.
Those setbacks include increased economic isolation from a range of United Nations sanctions, the mysterious bombing attacks on two Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran last week and an acknowledgment by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that some of Iran’s centrifuges, used to purify uranium, had been successfully singled out by Internet saboteurs using malignant software.
The White House said Sunday that Iran’s announcement was not unexpected but that it reinforced international suspicions about Iran’s motives for enriching uranium at all. In Tehran on Sunday, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear program who is leading his country’s delegation in Geneva, said the country had succeeded for the first time in domestically producing uranium concentrate from uranium ore mined inside Iran.
The concentrate, known as yellowcake, is a precursor to the uranium fed into spinning centrifuges for enrichment. “This means that Iran has become self-sufficient in the entire fuel cycle,” Mr. Salehi declared. He said at a televised news conference that the announcement meant “we will be taking part in the negotiations with strength and power.”
Mr. Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the yellowcake was produced at the Gachin uranium mine in southern Iran and delivered to the uranium conversion facility in the central city of Isfahan for processing into uranium destined for the thousands of centrifuges of Natanz.
Mr. Salehi said the delivery was evidence that last week’s mysterious bombings of the Iranian scientists would not slow the country’s progress. One of the scientists died and the other was wounded.
Iran bought yellowcake from South Africa in the 1980s, but those supplies are running low. Even so, Western experts say Iran can keep the centrifuges at its Natanz plant in the desert running for decades because over the years it has converted so much yellowcake to uranium meant for enrichment.
“This is a face-saving announcement,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in an interview. “For years, they’ve been saying that they are mining. So here’s finally some proof.” In a statement, Mr. Hammer of the National Security Council said Iran’s yellowcake announcement was “not unexpected” given that Iran is now banned from importing the material under United Nations sanctions and that it has worked to develop its own program of mining and indigenous production.
“However,” he added, “this calls into further question Iran’s intentions and raises additional concerns at a time when Iran needs to address the concerns of the international community.”
Since 2006, the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly called on Iran to halt its program of uranium enrichment and has punished it with four rounds of sanctions. Tehran insists it wants enriched uranium to fuel reactors for making electricity and medical isotopes, while the West fears that it wants the material as a way to fuel atom bombs.
William J. Broad reported from New York.
Two Palestinian terrorists were killed on the Gaza border on Thursday morning, when IDF troops opened fire on a number of suspects on the northern end of the Strip. The terrorists were apparenlty trying to infiltrate a kibbutz on the Gaza border.
An office of Ivory Coast opposition leader Alassane Ouattara has been attacked in the main city Abidjan, with at least four people killed.
The violence broke out despite a night-time curfew, as a deadline passed to release the results of Sunday's presidential election run-off.
Supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo are preventing the results from being declared, saying there was fraud in the north, where Mr Ouattara is popular.
The election is the first for a decade.
It is intended to reunify the country, the world's largest cocoa producer, divided since a 2002 civil war. Former New Forces rebels still control the north.
Mr Gbagbo's spokesman said they would appeal to the Constitutional Court to annul the results from parts of the north.
'Atrocity'The BBC's Valerie Bony says there were large pools of blood in the courtyard of the office and blood-stained clothes and bullet holes in the offices.
The office of the RDR party that was attacked is in the Yopougon district in the west of Abidjan - seen as a pro-Gbagbo area.
The building was reportedly targeted by a group of armed men at 2300 local time (and GMT) on Wednesday night - just an hour before the deadline to release the election results.
"They climbed the walls and the door and at that point they started shooting at people," an RDR official, who did not wish to be named, told the BBC.
He said some of the assailants were wearing civilians clothes, others in gendarme uniform.
"I saw three people lying down, and then they left them for dead. I'm devastated. It was a horrible atrocity and it was hard for me to take - to attack people in front of your own eyes, isn't easy to watch."
There has been no independent confirmation that gendarmes were linked to the attack.
Official from Mr Gbagbo's FPI party say their local office was subsequently attacked in an apparent revenge raid.
Both the army and UN peacekeepers have been patrolling Abidjan's streets since Sunday to prevent an outbreak of violence.
Other parts of Abidjan are reported to be quiet, with many people staying at home and many banks and businesses closed.
Both former colonial power France, the US and the UN have urged the Ivorian authorities to announce the results.
The UN mission says it has received reports of violence in parts of the west and north on election day, but that overall the voting seemed to be peaceful.
"Generally speaking, globally speaking, it went well, because all candidates, people were voting in a peaceful manner," said UN spokesman Hamoudoun Toure.
On Tuesday evening, Mr Gbagbo's representative in the electoral commission tore up the first batch of results as the commission's spokesman was about to announce them.
Mr Ouattara's supporters say the Gbagbo camp is blocking the announcement of the results because he has lost.
France retains close military and economic ties to its former colony, and on Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said its forces would be able to intervene if French nationals or interests were affected by unrest in Ivory Coast.
Mr Gbagbo's supporters have previously accused France of bias, and French targets in the country have been attacked.
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures continued to disrupt travel across Europe as airports at cities including London and Edinburgh remained shut and Eurostar Group Ltd. canceled almost half its services.
London’s Gatwick airport, the U.K.’s second busiest, will remain closed until at least 6 a.m. local time tomorrow, according to its website. Edinburgh airport pushed back opening until at least 4 p.m., and London City was closed until 2 p.m. Airports in Dublin and Geneva opened this morning.
In the U.K., the earliest widespread snowfall since 1993 has frozen over roads, disrupting traffic, with freezing weather likely to last until at least Dec. 8, according to private forecaster British Weather Services. The worst-hit areas overnight were south London, Sussex, Kent and Hampshire with as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters), said Robin Thwaytes, a spokesman for the state-funded Met Office.
In northern England, Yorkshire and the surrounding regions have had “snow shower after snow shower for days,” he said in a phone interview, though blizzards are likely to dwindle across the country in the next 24 hours. “By this time tomorrow it will be fairly dry but frosty.”
Eurostar Services
Eurostar canceled seven services from Paris to London and six in the other direction, plus five each way between the U.K. capital and Brussels, to avoid a repeat of last winter’s breakdowns in the Channel Tunnel. Speed restrictions in both the U.K. and northern France will create delays of as much as 90 minutes for other services, Eurostar said on its website.
Go-Ahead Group Plc’s Southern Railways, which operates commuter services from southeast England into London, said it canceled all trains because of adverse weather.
Temperatures were expected to drop as low as minus-14 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) in northwest Scotland this morning, while London and southeast England will see temperatures of about minus-3 degrees Celsius, the Met Office said on its website.
The area affected most in the U.K. today was the south, from Kent through Dorset, said Paul Watters, a spokesman for the Automobile Association. The rescue service responded to 18,000 calls yesterday, and had 100,000 in the past six days, he said.
Germany, France
Fresh snowfall also blanketed Germany last night, exceeding 15 centimeters in some parts of the southeast. Temperatures will drop as low as minus-20 degrees Celsius in central Germany and very cold weather will persist until at least Dec. 4, according to the German Weather Service.
“We’re selling masses of scarves, woolly hats and gloves at the moment, said Hartmut Scheller, a store owner in Berlin’s southwestern suburb of Steglitz. “If temperatures persist at these lows, we’ll soon be out of stock.”
Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, canceled 40 flights as of 7:30 a.m. local time, largely because of closures at other airports, Fraport AG spokesman Thomas Uber said by telephone, adding that the main runway opened again after the wind died down overnight. Flight traffic in Munich was largely back to normal, said Florian Steuer, an airport spokesman.
France’s DGAC civil aviation authority ordered the cancellation of one in four flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle today and one in ten from Orly, the city’s other major airport, according to an e-mailed statement.
Hundreds of vehicles were stranded early this morning in northern and western France after renewed snowfalls. The main RN12 highway along the northern coast of Brittany was closed and hundreds of heavy trucks taken off the roads in Normandy, AFP reported, citing the French meteorological agency.
Power Demand
U.K. same-day natural gas rose for a fifth day, the longest upward trend since October last year, with gas for today rising as much as 3.6 percent to 64 pence a therm, according to broker data on Bloomberg. About 80 percent of the country’s homes and businesses use natural gas for heating. It’s also used to generate about half of Britain’s electricity supply.
U.K. baseload power for the next working day lost 10.50 pounds, or 15 percent, to 60.50 pounds ($94.50) a megawatt-hour, broker data show. The contract closed at 71 pounds yesterday, its highest level in almost two years. Baseload is delivered around the clock.
--With assistance from Chris Peterson, Benjamin Purvis, David Altaner and Catherine Airlie in London, Warren Giles and Dylan Griffiths in Geneva, Laurence Frost in Paris, Mike Gavin in Frankfurt, Andreas Cremer in Berlin, Elena Logutenkova in Zurich, and Stuart Biggs in Tokyo. Editors: Peter Branton, Chris Jasper.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard lambasted WikiLeaks on Thursday as the government braced itself for the publication of 1,500 diplomatic cables relating to Australia.
Sydney
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard lambasted the leaking of classified US documents as “grossly irresponsible” and “illegal” Thursday as the government braced itself for the publication of 1,500 diplomatic cables relating to Australia.
Ms. Gillard told 4BC Radio that Australian security officials were combing through the documents – released via the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks – to assess the implications. “I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website,” she said. “It’s a grossly irresponsible thing to do, and an illegal thing to do.”
The fall-out from “Cablegate” is being watched with particular interest in Australia, birthplace of the website’s founder, Julian Assange, although the country itself – a close ally of the United States – has not yet figured prominently in the documents.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), US Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich has briefed Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith on 1,500 cables that mention Australia. While their contents have yet to be divulged, one political commentator, David Penberthy, says they would be of considerable interest if they related to Australia’s military role in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The leaks story has received extensive coverage in Australia, with Mr. Assange’s nationality – he was born in Queensland and studied at the University of Melbourne – giving it extra punch. His mother, Christine, who recently moved back to Queensland to escape media scrutiny, gave two interviews this week before going to ground.
She said she was distressed by an International police agency (Interpol) notice issued for Mr. Assange’s arrest, on charges of raping two women in Sweden, and told Queensland’s Courier-Mail newspaper: “He sees what he’s doing as doing a good thing in the world – fighting baddies, if you like.”
Not all his compatriots agree. “The jury is out on whether WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is a whistleblowing hero or dangerous anarchist,” the Sydney-based Daily Telegraph wrote. “Is he an information warrior using the internet’s reach and anonymity to expose high-level global corruption … or is he an anarchist exploiting the noble cause of whistleblowing for the sake of self-promotion?”
To the disappointment of some Australians, the sole mention of the country to date in the leaked documents describes it as a “rock solid,” [as an ally] but not influential in the diplomatic arena.
David Burchell, an expert in Australian politics based at the University of Western Sydney, doubts the other cables will be any more explosive – or damaging to national security. “I don’t think there’s any particular reason for Australians to be quaking in our boots,” he says.
Mr. Penberthy, editor of a news commentary website, The Punch, says: “They could relate to our commitment to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, or to our relationship with neighbors such as Indonesia. But we’re not a global heavyweight and I can’t imagine there would be anything earth-shattering in them.”
He believes Australians are as mystified as everyone else about Assange’s motives. “I think they are just puzzled and bemused by this weird, blonde-haired bloke from Australia who has ended up terrorizing the entire Western world.”
