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2011-12-07T07:11:00.001-08:00

Alleged LA-area pepper-spraying shopper surrenders

2011-11-27T06:51:00.000-08:00

Authorities in Los Angeles say a woman who allegedly fired pepper spray at other customers during a Black Friday sale has surrendered to police.

Pakistan buries troops amid fury over NATO strike

2011-11-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

Cargo trucks, including those carrying supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan, are seen halted along the Pakistan-Torkham border, after it was shut down to traffic November 26, 2011. NATO helicopters attacked a military checkpoint in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing up to 24 troops and prompting Pakistan to shut vital supply routes for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.

Pakistan today buried 24 troops killed in a NATO cross-border air raid that has pushed a crisis in relations with the United States towards rupture.

The attack was the latest perceived provocation by the United States, starting with the secret raid which killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May, and the question is whether ties will break or whether the two sides will remain stuck in a bad marriage of convenience.

NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two Pakistan military outposts yesterday, killing the soldiers in what Pakistan said was an unprovoked assault.

NATO and US officials expressed regret about the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers, but the exact circumstances of the attack were unclear.

“US stabs Pakistan in the back, again,” said a headline in the Daily Times, reflecting fury over the attack in Pakistan, a regional power seen as critical to US efforts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan.

Television stations showed the coffins of the soldiers draped in green and white Pakistani flags in a prayer ceremony at the headquarters of the regional command in Peshawar.

Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan – used for sending in nearly half of the alliance’s land shipments – in retaliation for the worst such attack since Islamabad uneasily allied itself with Washington following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

That is unlikely to cool tempers in a country where anti-American sentiment runs high even when ties between Islamabad and Washington are smooth.

About 500 members of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s most influential religious party, staged a protest in Mohmand tribal area, where the NATO attack took place.

“Down with America” and “Jihad is The Only Answer to America”, they yelled.

Around 40 troops were stationed at the outposts at the time of the attack, military sources said. Two officers were reported among the dead.

“They without any reasons attacked on our post and killed soldiers asleep,” said a senior Pakistani officer, requesting anonymity.

BLUNT STATEMENTS

The border is often poorly marked, and Afghan and Pakistani maps have differences of several kilometres in some places, military officials have said.

Pakistan responded with unusually blunt statements condemning the incident as a violation of its sovereignty and it reserved the right to retaliate.

Pakistan is a vital land route for nearly half of NATO supplies shipped overland to its troops in Afghanistan, a NATO spokesman said. Land shipments account for about two thirds of the alliance’s cargo shipments into Afghanistan.

A similar incident on Sept 30, 2010, which killed two Pakistani service personnel, led to the closure of one of NATO’s supply routes through Pakistan for 10 days. NATO apologised for that incident, which it said happened when NATO gunships mistook warning shots by Pakistani forces for a militant attack.

US efforts to repair ties with Pakistan have suffered several big setbacks starting with the unilateral US special forces raid that killed bin Laden in a Pakistani town where he had apparently been living for years.

Pakistan condemned the secret operation as a flagrant violation of its sovereignty, while suspicions arose in Washington that members of Pakistan’s military intelligence had harboured the al Qaeda leader.

The military came under unprecedented criticism from both Pakistanis who said it failed to protect the country and American officials who said bin Laden’s presence was proof the country was an unreliable ally in the war on militancy.

Pakistan’s army, one of the world’s largest, may see the NATO incursion from Afghanistan as a chance to reassert itself, especially since the deaths of the soldiers are likely to unite generals and politicians, whose ties are normally uneasy.

Pakistan’s jailing of a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, and US accusations that Pakistan backed a militant attack on the US embassy in Kabul have added to the tensions.

“From Raymond Davis and his gun slinging in the streets of Lahore to the Osama bin Laden incident, and now to the firing on Pakistani soldiers on the volatile Pakistan-Afghan border, things hardly seem able to get any worse,” said the Daily Times.

Islamabad depends on billions in US aid and Washington believes Pakistan can help it bring about a peace in Afghanistan ahead of a combat troop withdrawal at the end of 2014.

“The fact is that such incursions of our sovereignty have become routine and we have become so dependent on the US that we just have to grin and bear it,” said an editorial in Pakistan’s Express Tribune.

Unseen Jackson film valued at RM25m goes unsold

2011-11-27T06:40:00.000-08:00

Jackson performs “Dangerous” during a taping of “American Bandstand’s 50th... A Celebration” in Pasadena, California, April 20, 2002.

Previously unseen footage of Michael Jackson’s 1993 “Dangerous” tour, which had been expected to fetch £4-5 million pounds (RM19.8–RM24.7 million), failed to sell at auction in Britain yesterday.

“At this stage it has not sold,” said a spokesman for The Fame Bureau auctioneers, who specialize in pop memorabilia. “We are still talking to people, but online it did not sell.”

He said he was confident a buyer would be found, although “nothing is a certainty.”

The auction house said it had been forced to remove a brief clip of the video from its website before the online auction after Jackson’s record label made a “copyright claim.”

The fact that a successful buyer may not be able to use the film for commercial purposes may have dampened demand given the hefty asking price, but the spokesman played down the copyright dispute.

“I don’t think that was a problem at all,” he said, adding that any serious potential buyer would be fully aware of the issue.

Nearly two hours long, the footage was shot by Jackson’s own production crew and meant to be an intimate portrait of Jackson on tour.

But the singer was unhappy with the quality and gave the only copy to his driver, who was now trying to sell the footage, the auction house said.

It was made during Jackson’s “Dangerous” tour in 1993 at a stop in Argentina.

A DVD of the “Dangerous” concert tour, filmed in Bucharest, was released in 2005 and is still available on Amazon.com and other retailers for about US$12 (RM37).

Items related to Jackson have skyrocketed in value since his death in 2009.

The red and black leather jacket he wore for his 1983 “Thriller” video sold for US$1.8 million in Los Angeles in June.

Pakistan stops NATO supplies after deadly raid

2011-11-27T06:35:00.000-08:00

Student supporters of Islami Jamiat Talaba, a student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, protest against NATO forces in front of a burning tyre in Lahore, November 26, 201

NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan yesterday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging US-Pakistan relations deeper into crisis.

Pakistan retaliated by shutting down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in nearly half of the alliance’s land shipments.

Islamabad also said it had ordered the United States to vacate a drone base in the country, but a senior US official said Washington had received no such request and noted that Pakistan had made similar eviction threats in the past, but did not follow through.

NATO and US officials expressed regret about the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers, indicating the attack may have been an error; but the exact circumstances remained unclear.

The attack was the worst incident of its kind since Pakistan uneasily allied itself with Washington following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar spoke by telephone yesterday, a senior State Department official told Reuters, offering no details on the substance of their conversation.

However, a senior Obama administration official said US officials had contacted their Pakistani counterparts from Islamabad, Kabul and Washington to express “our desire to work together to determine what took place, and our commitment to the US-Pakistan partnership which advances our shared interests, including fighting terrorism in the region”.

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan confirmed that NATO aircraft had probably killed Pakistani soldiers in an area close to the Afghan-Pakistani border.

“Close air support was called in, in the development of the tactical situation, and it is what highly likely caused the Pakistan casualties,” said General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

He added he could not confirm the number of casualties, but ISAF was investigating. “We are aware that Pakistani soldiers perished. We don’t know the size, the magnitude,” he said.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said the killings were “an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty”, adding: “We will not let any harm come to Pakistan’s sovereignty and solidarity.”

The Foreign Office said it would take up the matter “in the strongest terms” with NATO and the United States, while the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, said steps would be taken to respond “to this irresponsible act”.

“A strong protest has been launched with NATO/ISAF in which it has been demanded that strong and urgent action be taken against those responsible for this aggression.”

Two military officials said up to 28 troops had been killed and 11 wounded in the attack on the outposts, about 2.5km from the Afghan border. The Pakistani military said 24 troops were killed and 13 wounded.

Early morning attack

The attack took place about 2am in the Baizai area of Mohmand, where Pakistani troops are fighting Taliban militants. Across the border is Afghanistan’s Kunar province, which has seen years of heavy fighting.

“Pakistani troops effectively responded immediately in self-defence to NATO/ISAF’s aggression with all available weapons,” the Pakistani military statement said.

The commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen, offered his condolences to the families of Pakistani soldiers who “may have been killed or injured”.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said Defence Secretary Leon Panetta was aware of reports of the incident and was monitoring the situation.

“(The defence secretary) shares General Allen’s regret for any loss of life and supports the general’s work to immediately investigate,” said spokesman Captain John Kirby.

There was no immediate comment on the report of US forces being asked to vacate a Pakistani base or on the closure of the Pakistani border crossing to trucks carrying supplies for ISAF forces.

About 40 troops were stationed at the outposts, military sources said. Two officers were reported among the dead. “They without any reasons attacked on our post and killed soldiers asleep,” said a senior Pakistani officer, requesting anonymity.

The border is often poorly marked, and Afghan and Pakistani maps have differences of several kilometres in some places, military officials have said.

However, Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said NATO had been given maps of the area, with Pakistani military posts identified.

“When the other side is saying there is a doubt about this, there is no doubt about it. These posts have been marked and handed over to the other side for marking on their maps and are clearly inside Pakistani territory.”

The incident occurred a day after Allen met Kayani to discuss border control and enhanced cooperation.

A senior military source told Reuters that after the meeting that set out “to build confidence and trust, these kinds of attacks should not have taken place”.

Blocked supplies

Pakistan is a vital land route for nearly half of NATO supplies shipped overland to its troops in Afghanistan, a NATO spokesman said. Land shipments account for about two-thirds of the alliance’s cargo shipments into Afghanistan.

Hours after the raid, NATO supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar, officials said.

The border crossing at Chaman in southwestern Baluchistan province was also closed, Frontier Corps officials said.

A meeting of the cabinet’s defence committee convened by Gilani “decided to close with immediate effect NATO/ISAF logistics supply lines”, according to a statement issued by Gilani’s office.

The committee decided to ask the United States to vacate, within 15 days, the Shamsi Air Base, a remote installation in Baluchistan used by US forces for drone strikes which has long been at the centre of a dispute between Islamabad and Washington.

The meeting also decided the government would “revisit and undertake a complete review of all programmes, activities and cooperative arrangements with US/NATO/ISAF, including diplomatic, political, military and intelligence”.

A similar incident on September 30, 2010, which killed two Pakistani service personnel, led to the closure of one of NATO’s supply routes through Pakistan for 10 days. NATO apologised for that incident, which it said happened when NATO gunships mistook warning shots by Pakistani forces for a militant attack.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan were strained by the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US special forces in Pakistan in May, which Pakistan called a flagrant violation of sovereignty.

Pakistan’s jailing of a CIA contractor and US accusations that Pakistan backed a militant attack on the US embassy in Kabul have added to the tensions.

“This will have a catastrophic effect on Pakistan-US relations. The public in Pakistan are going to go berserk on this,” said Charles Heyman, senior defence analyst at British military website Armedforces.co.uk.

Other analysts, including Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, predicted Pakistan would protest and close the supply lines for some time, but that ultimately “things will get back to normal”.

Arab ministers impose travel sanctions on Syrian officials

2011-11-27T06:33:00.000-08:00

Arab finance ministers have agreed to impose sanctions on Syria including a ban on its senior officials' travel and suspension of trade links after Damascus ignored a deadline to end a violent crackdown on opposition protesters.

Russia’s Putin accepts presidential nomination

2011-11-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

Pedestrians walk beneath a poster of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin along a street in central Moscow November 26, 2011. Russians will vote in a parliamentary election on December 4

Vladimir Putin accepted his ruling United Russia party’s nomination today as its candidate in a March 4 presidential vote, paving the way for his return to the country’s top office after four years as prime minister.

The timing of the announcement, which was a certainty after Putin revealed in September that he planned to return to the Kremlin next year, appeared aimed to give United Russia a boost in a parliamentary election next Sunday amid flagging support.

Putin accepted the nomination before it was even subject to a final vote at a United Russia congress also attended by President Dmitry Medvedev. Putin and Medvedev had announced plans to swap jobs next year at party meeting on Sept. 24.

That plan was met with mixed reactions among Russians, raising fears of increasing stagnation in the world’s top energy producer and prompting complaints that Russia’s political future had been determined behind closed doors.

Polls suggest Putin, president from 2000-2008, will win the presidency despite recent declines in approval ratings, but they show his party could lose its constitutional two-thirds majority in the State Duma lower parliament house in the Dec. 4 election.

Afghans Say Pakistan Fired First in NATO Attack

2011-11-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

As Pakistan's top leaders gathered Sunday to bury 24 Pakistani soldiers killed by NATO airstrike, Afghan officials said Pakistani forces fired first and challenged the Pakistani claim that the helicopter attack was ...

China PM responds to outrage over school bus crash

2011-11-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the ASEAN-China Commemorative Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian island of Bali November 18, 2011. Wen pledged central and local government funds to improve and provide school bus service to China’s schools in the wake of a traffic accident that killed 18 pre-school children.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao today pledged central and local government funds to improve and provide school bus service to schools in the wake of a traffic accident that killed 18 pre-school children and sparked outrage across the country.

A school van with nine seats but crammed with 62 children and two adults crashed head-on into a coal truck in western Gansu province after the van swerved into oncoming traffic, television and other media reports said.

The two adults on board also died in the crash and 44 people were injured.

The tragedy prompted a swell of comments on the Internet and in the press calling for an overhaul of China’s badly managed and underserviced school transportation system. Rural areas in particular are known for unsafe transportation for children in aging, badly maintained vans and trucks.

The central and regional governments would provide funds for closer monitoring of manufacturing, renovation and allocation of school buses, Wen said at a conference on women’s and children’s affairs in Beijing, the Chinese government said on its official website.

Authorities would also work to improve management of bus systems and boost safety, Wen said.

Latest News Feeds.

2011-11-16T19:01:00.001-08:00

Michael Jackson Would 'Absolutely' Be Alive If Not for Conrad

2011-11-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

5 in the Conrad Murray trial, speaks out exclusively to "Good Morning America" about the tense moments inside the jury room. (ABC) Nearly all the 12 jurors

Video: Dr. Conrad Murray Placed on Suicide Watch‎

2011-11-09T19:47:00.000-08:00

Israel’s Barak dismisses talk of attacking Iran

2011-11-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak arrives to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on April 3, 2011

Defence Minister Ehud Barak today played down speculation that Israel intended to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, saying it had not decided to embark on any military operation.

“War is not a picnic. We want a picnic. We don’t want a war,” Barak told Israel Radio ahead of the release this week of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear activity.

“(Israel) had not yet decided to embark on any operation,” he said, dismissing Israeli media speculation that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had chosen that option. ― Reuters

Widely praised Mexico marines commit abuses in drug war, rights group says

2011-11-09T19:43:00.000-08:00

In its report, New York-based Human Rights Watch documents 234 cases which the group says represent serious abuse by US-trained marines and other security forces in several Mexican states.

Some Arab leaders offered haven for Assad: U.S.

2011-11-09T19:40:00.001-08:00

Some Arab leaders have told the United States they are willing to provide safe haven to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hasten his "inevitable" departure from power, a senior US official said on Wednesday.

Sarkozy told Obama he is fed up with Israeli PM

2011-11-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told President Barack Obama last week he was fed up with dealing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered him a liar.

Sarkozy made the comment during a private conversation with Obama during a G20 summit in the French riviera town of Cannes last week and the remarks were overheard by a small number of journalists but not initially reported.

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama during a frank exchange where the US president took him to task for backing a Palestinian request for membership of the UN cultural heritage agency UNESCO.

A Reuters reporter was among the journalists present and can confirm the veracity of the comments, which were relayed by a French internet outlet today.

Obama said he had to deal regularly with Netanyahu even if Sarkozy was fed up with the Israeli leader, according to the translation of a French interpreter during their Cannes exchange.

In their quest for statehood recognition, the Palestinians have requested membership of the over-arching United Nations system, in addition to its Paris-based UNESCO subsidiary.

France voted in favour of a UNESCO request that succeeded but said last week it would abstain in any vote on membership of the over-arching UN system, which Washington has vowed to veto. Paris and Washington are urging renewed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

US drone strikes must stop, says American lawyer

2011-11-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

A Global Hawk UAV is seen flying over an unidentified location in this US Air Force image.

Prominent international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was impressed by the 16-year-old boy who wanted to draw attention to civilian deaths caused by US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Tariq Aziz had volunteered to take pictures of people killed by the remotely piloted aircraft to help Stafford Smith highlight what he calls illegal killings.

Three days later, on October 31, he and his 12-year-old cousin were themselves killed by a drone missile strike in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, Stafford Smith said.

For the veteran lawyer, the deaths highlighted major flaws in the CIA-run drone campaign, which US officials say is invaluable in the war on militants.

“What they did to Tariq was absolutely disgusting,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Stafford Smith made his name defending death row inmates in the United States and prisoners at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He considers the drones as “scandalous” as the secret US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Eighty Pakistani tribesmen, including Aziz, recently met Stafford Smith and other Western lawyers for the first time, in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to complain about the drones.

The United States has sharply stepped up the number of drone attacks in Pakistan’s unruly ethnic Pashtun areas in the northwest, along the border with Afghanistan.

In 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, there were 53 strikes, compared with 42 over the previous four years. In 2010, that number jumped to 118, followed by 68 this year, according to the New America Foundation.

The think tank’s statistics raise doubts about the success of the drones. It estimates as many as 471 civilians were killed by drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004-2011, a 20 per cent non-militant fatality rate.

US officials point to the deaths of senior al Qaeda and Taliban figures as proof the drones are highly effective, and no American troops are needed on the ground.

Missile-armed drones are playing a greater role than ever in US counterterrorism operations, as Obama winds down land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s focus expands to militant havens in countries such as Pakistan.

“Science fiction nightmare”

Stafford Smith says the strategy will cause more civilian deaths and create additional enemies for the United States.

“When you have warfare with no political costs at all, it becomes much too easy to resort to violence,” he said, adding his goal was to raise international awareness about the suffering caused by drone strikes.

“What we are seeing in Waziristan is a process that is alienating the population just as napalm in Vietnam did and it’s achieving very little benefit.”

Stafford Smith drew parallels between Guantanamo and the drone campaign in Pakistan, arguing both detentions and strikes were often based on dubious intelligence.

He suspects the death of Aziz was a prime example of that.

“We as America offer large bounties to different informants and these informants would sell their own mothers,” said Stafford Smith, 52, a dual US-British citizen who is the director of Reprieve, an organisation that advocates for prisoners’ rights.

“We don’t have proof but this (Aziz’s death) was the result of some Pakistani informants who want to show their paymasters they are doing their jobs. So they make up a story and a poor kid dies.”

Drone “pilots” based in the United States move joy sticks around as they watch live video feeds of militants, who are killed with the push of a button.

“We keep talking our way into a system of warfare that was in our science fiction nightmare 30 years ago and we really need to have an open debate on it,” said Stafford Smith.

He faces an uphill battle. US policy makers are encouraged by drone operations like the one that killed US-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September.

But Stafford Smith believes “justice” will prevail.

“In the early days of Guantanamo Bay people said ‘no one will pay attention’. It was difficult,” he said.

“I have no doubt the American people and everyone else will recognise what’s going on here and put an end to it.”

Calls for tougher sanctions against Iran following IAEA report

2011-11-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

A UN nuclear watchdog report is expected to show concern that Iran benefited from foreign expertise to help develop technology that could be used to build atomic bombs, Western officials said yesterday.

Tehran is “clearly trying to reach out to nuclear scientists around the world,” a Western diplomat accredited to the UN agency in Vienna said, suggesting it was a case of Iran contacting individuals rather than their governments.

Other Western officials painted a similar picture of suspected foreign involvement in providing know-how for activities seen as geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability, but it was unclear how extensive it had been.

Quake Kills at Least 3 in Turkey

2011-11-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake on Wednesday in the same region hit by a larger quake two weeks ago killed at least three people and trapped others who had moved into damaged buildings that collapsed Wednesday, the Turkish media ...

China protests Mongolia visit by Dalai Lama

2011-11-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

China said today that it had lodged a complaint with the Mongolian government about a visit to the vast and remote country by exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who Beijing considers a dangerous separatist.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had made “stern representations” to the government in Ulan Bator about the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

“We have always opposed any country providing a platform for the Dalai Lama to engage in activities to split China in any form,” he told a daily news briefing.

“The Dalai Lama always uses the opportunity of furtive visits to publicise Tibetan independence, smear the Chinese government and play up issues related to Tibet.”

The Dalai Lama, fresh from a visit to Japan, arrived in the Mongolian capital yesterday for a short lecture tour at a invitation of a Buddhist group.

Ulan Bator has restricted the Dalai Lama to one lecture today in the city’s new 4,000-seat Buyant-Ukhaa sports complex, which was built using Chinese aid.

Further lectures due to be delivered tomorrow and Thursday will be relocated to a less controversial location, Mongolian Transportation Minister Battulga Khaltmaa told reporters following a cabinet meeting.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama denies being a separatist, saying he only seeks autonomy for his homeland through peaceful means.

Buddhist monastic life, which took hold in Mongolia in the 1500s, was nearly wiped out within 15 years of communist rule, mostly during Stalinist purges in the 1930s when an estimated 17,000 lamas were executed.

But since the country emerged from decades of Soviet dominance in 1991, the Yellow Hat sect of Buddhism ― also practised in Tibet ― is making a comeback, and the Dalai Lama is recognised as one of the country’s spiritual leaders.

China has been accused by human rights groups of using its growing economic clout to pressure trading partners into refusing visits by the Dalai Lama. His plans to visit South Africa earlier this year were cancelled amid accusations that the government had refused to process his visa.

Mongolia won its political independence from China in 1912, but Beijing did not recognise its sovereignty until 1946, and many in Mongolia are concerned about Beijing’s growing economic hegemony.

Mongolia’s booming, mining-dependent economy is almost completely reliant on its southern neighbour, with 90 per cent of its exports going to China in the first half of this year.

During a previous tour by the Dalai Lama of Mongolia in 2002, China retaliated by closing the border rail crossing for two days, leaving 500 passengers stranded and severing one of the country’s few links with the outside world.

Mining companies based near the Chinese border said they were not aware of any disruptions to border transport so far.

Cemetery collector with 29 bodies arrested

2011-11-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

A still image taken from undated police footage shot inside the flat of Anatoly Moskvin and released to Reuters on November 8, 2011. It shows books, clothes and dressed figures, reportedly mummified bodies desecrated from cemeteries.

Russian police have arrested a man described by local media as the "cemetery collector" for digging up 29 corpses and dressing the remains in female clothing to display around his flat.

Grainy police video images of the man's cramped flat showed what look like several life-sized female dolls without faces, some with platinum blond wigs.

"During a search of his flat and garage, 29 self-made, life-size dolls dressed in the clothes of buried people were found," a spokesman for police in Nizhny Novgorod, 400km east of Moscow, said yesterday.

"It was ascertained that he used mummified human bodies from graves to make them (the dolls)."

Police described the man, who was arrested following the desecration of graves in the area, as a local historian and an expert in the study of place names.

Media cited friends as saying they had never seen the dolls and that he was a learned, if eccentric, man.

Thai PM pledges flood relief as fight for Bangkok goes on

2011-11-09T19:32:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra pledged more than US$4 billion (RM12.47 billion) today to help Thailand recover from the worst floods in half a century, as workers slowed the flow of water threatening the commercial heart of the capital, Bangkok.

Evacuation orders have spread to a third of Bangkok’s districts, mostly in the north of the densely populated city of 12 million people, since late October, as floodwater strewn with trash slowly seeps in from northern and northeastern provinces.

Yingluck, a political novice elected this year, said about US$3.9 billion had been set aside for a flood recovery effort, a figure that rises to US$4.2 billion when local government funds are added.

On the streets of Bangkok, few see an end to the slow-moving disaster that began after tropical storm Nock-ten battered Southeast Asia in late July. Since then, at least 529 people have been killed, many electrocuted or drowned, in floods that have affected 63 of Thailand’s 77 provinces.

Some hard-hit regions have started to recover since the end of the August-to-October monsoon season, with only 24 provinces now classified as flooded. But for low-lying Bangkok, the disaster is far from over, as the authorities struggle to keep inner-city neighbourhoods and business districts dry.

“I’m concerned about more water reaching Bangkok and I just want to know when it will recede. It’s rising and it should recede but when will that be?” said Bangkok resident, Nee Jiranantawat, 53.

Others said they feared they may run low on food and other supplies, especially in homes flooded in waist-high water.

Nikom Teo-au, a 56-year-old garage owner, said he was facing difficulty delivering food to his family at his home on a street under up to 1.5 metres of water in Bangkok’s Din Daeng neighbourhood, just 7km from the main Silom business district where buildings are ringed with sand bags.

Yingluck, a 46-year-old former businesswoman and sister of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said the money would ease the suffering of victims and repair damaged infrastructure.

She spoke at a special session of parliament called to debate the flooding and her management of the crisis a day after announcing she had pulled out of a weekend summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Hawaii to concentrate on relief work.

ECONOMIC TOLL

The toll on Thailand’s economy and hundreds of global manufacturers who rely on its low-cost factories keeps rising.

The central bank has slashed its economic growth forecast for this year to 2.6 per cent from 4.1 per cent, citing the repercussions of floods which forced seven big industrial estates to close in central provinces in October.

The economic impact will be even worse if Bangkok, which accounts for 41 per cent of gross domestic product, is overrun.

Workers and soldiers are trying to hold the line at the city’s Bang Sue canal, pushing water into the Chao Phraya river and stopping it from overflowing to the south. Reporters in the area said they had mostly achieved this so far.

Even so, with each week, the water has slowly drawn closer to the business district and the Ratchaprasong intersection, whose swanky shopping malls and five-star hotels were closed for weeks by political protests in April-May last year.

The major north-south Ratchadaphisek and Viphavadi-Rangsit roads were flooded in the vicinity of the Bang Sue canal. A reporter said the area was under 60cm of dark, foul-smelling water in places, with trash on the surface.

Chatuchak market, whose 11,000 stalls are a draw for tourists and residents alike, opened last weekend but was now submerged, with vendors’ carts and tables washed away and stray dogs taking refuge on the rooftops, the reporter said.

Barefoot soldiers were ushering people from the elevated Skytrain – still working across the capital, like the MRT underground railway – onto buses crammed with passengers.

In the east of the capital, floodwater still threatened two big industrial estates, Bang Chan with 93 factories including Nestle SA and Lat Krabang with 254 including Unilever Pcl and Honda Motor Co .

“The water level situation in Beung Kratiem on the north side of Bang Chan Industrial Estate is still a concern. Even with the water pumps there, water keeps rising,” said Thanes Weerasiri, secretary-general of the Engineering Institute of Thailand.

“The water level has risen by 3cm from yesterday,” he said, adding that efforts to divert the water into a major canal nearby had been stepped up. Channel 3 television said water had got into one factory compound.

However, the situation inside the Lat Krabang Industrial Estate was still normal.

The estates are about 10km north of Bangkok’s main Suvarnabhumi airport, which is functioning normally inside a reinforced dike at least 3 metres high.

The Chao Phraya river snaking through Bangkok has another phase of high tides from Thursday to Monday and riverside communities are braced for floods, especially on the relatively dry east bank, although a navy official said the river should not reach the record high levels seen at the end of October.

Thursday sees the Loy Krathong festival, when Thais like to float offerings of food, flowers and candles on rivers and lakes, a symbolic pushing away of bad feelings and bad luck.

But Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra has cancelled a big event on the fast-flowing river scheduled for Thursday and urged people not to float their offerings in flooded areas. They would add to the tonnes of rubbish lying in sodden piles in the streets, he said, and the candles were a fire hazard.

Big asteroid has close encounter with Earth

2011-11-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

This NASA radar image showing asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on November 7, 2011, at 11.45am PST (2.45pm EST/1945 UTC), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, or 1.38 million kilometres, from Earth.

A black asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier has zoomed past Earth, delighting astronomers who trained telescopes on the ancient body in hopes of learning more about its composition and origin.

With a diameter estimated at 400 metres, or about a quarter of a mile, Asteroid 2005 YU 55 is the biggest asteroid to make a close pass by Earth since 1976.

During its closest approach, which occurred at 6.28pm EST (2328 GMT) yesterday, it was inside the orbit of the moon, about 322,000km above the planet. It posed no threat to either.

Thousands of professional and amateur astronomers were tracking the asteroid with telescopes, seeking to learn more about what it is made of, how fast it spins and ultimately, where it came from.

“It was pretty easy to find,” astronomer Ronald Dantowitz, director of the student-run Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Massachusetts, told Reuters. “It’s moving differently than the stars are moving. It looks like a giant rock floating through space.”

With automated controls for tracking, the asteroid appeared to be fixed in position, while background stars were a blur, Dantowitz said. The asteroid, however, was moving at about 48,000kph.

Astronomers believe YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, nudged out of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter after a gravitational elbowing by Jupiter.

Computer models simulating the asteroid’s path for the next 100 years show there is no chance it will hit Earth or the moon during that time, said Don Yeomans with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Astronomers do not expect it will be a threat beyond that time either but have not run the models beyond 100 years.

Asteroids are of interest to scientists trying to piece together how the solar system formed.

“It costs millions of dollars to send a spacecraft for a close encounter with an asteroid,” Dantowitz said. “Instead, this one is coming to us. It’s literally streaming through our backyard.”

YU 55 is believed to be one of the more common type, carbon-rich asteroids, albeit a large one. Its ancient rocks may contain water, metals and other materials that could be useful for space explorers.

NASA’s next human space venture beyond the International Space Station, a US$100 billion orbital research outpost flying about 385km above Earth, is a mission to an asteroid, targeted for 2025.

Zsa Zsa Gabor returns to hospital

2011-11-09T19:28:00.001-08:00

Gabor and husband Frederic Prinz von Anhalt celebrate his 68th birthday, on June 18, 2011.

Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was rushed to a hospital yesterday for the second time in less than a month after complications arose from her recently replaced feeding tube, her husband said.

‘Her stomach is bleeding and her feeding tube is coming out,” Frederic Prinz von Anhalt told Reuters. “It’s not good.”

The 94-year-old actress was hospitalized just over two weeks ago due to complications with a feeding tube attached to her stomach. The tube was replaced and she returned home.

Gabor has been in and out of hospitals numerous times since July 2010, when she fell out of bed and broke her hip. Last January, doctors amputated a portion of her leg and in February, she was treated for a lung infection.

Woman accuses US presidential candidate Cain of groping

2011-11-09T06:58:00.001-08:00

Radio talk show host and former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza Herman Cain, speaks during the Reagan Centennial GOP presidential primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California September 7, 2011.

A woman accused US Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain yesterday of reaching under her skirt in 1997, adding to sexual harassment allegations that are threatening to derail his campaign.

Cain, a former pizza company executive, has led many opinion polls in the race to be the Republican nominee to face President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in next year’s election.

Sharon Bialek said Cain made the unwanted advance after dinner in Washington when she asked for help finding a job after she was laid off by the National Restaurant Association, which he then headed.

Bialek, who identified herself as a registered Republican and single mother from Chicago, put a public face on a growing problem for Cain’s campaign. The 65-year-old candidate quickly denied her account, saying all allegations of sexual harassment against him were “completely false.”

Bialek, looking composed and confident before a phalanx of television cameras, said she had not filed a complaint against Cain but was now coming forward to “give a face and a voice to those women” who did not wish to go public.

Two other women lodged formal complaints against Cain when he headed the restaurant association. One said through her lawyer last week she received a series of unwanted advances.

“I want you, Mr Cain, to come clean, to admit what you did, admit you were inappropriate to people and then move forward,” Bialek said. “Mr Cain, I am for you. Make this right.”

Bialek, appearing with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, said that after the dinner in July 1997, Cain drove her toward the restaurant association offices, parked nearby and offered what Allred called his version of a “stimulus package.”

“Instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch. I was very, very surprised and very, very shocked,” Bialek said.

“I said: ‘What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.’ Mr Cain said: ‘You want a job, right?’ I asked him to stop and he did. I asked him to take me back to my hotel, which he did right away.”

Allred said she had signed declarations from Bialek’s boyfriend at the time, a paediatrician, and a businessman whom Bialek viewed as a mentor. Both said Bialek told them about the incident shortly after it happened.

“She told the businessman that Mr Cain had been aggressive with her,” Allred said.

Allred said Bialek does not want to file a lawsuit against Cain and is not seeking any money.

CAIN DENIAL

Cain never harassed anyone, spokesman J.D. Gordon said, and the candidate attacked the news media for its focus on “gaffes, gotcha questions and time devoted to trivial nonsense.”

Cain said, as an executive, he had turned around Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza.

“At some point during a career like this, someone will not like things you do or how you do it. Someone will complain,” he said. “That is just the nature of things if you’ve ever done much in your life.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed the percentage of Republicans who viewed Cain favourably dropped 9 points, to 57 per cent from 66 per cent a week earlier.

A majority of Republican voters, and nearly six in 10 Tea Party supporters, say they are not concerned about the allegations against Cain, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday.

“It’s attempted sexual assault if it happened,” Bernie Grimm, a criminal defense lawyer in Washington, said of Bialek’s accusation.

He said there is a statute of limitations of five years but, even when an accusation is timely, prosecutors rarely bring a case if the only evidence is the accuser’s word.

Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said the latest accusations “can’t be good for Cain’s campaign.

“He’s now going to be asked about those questions again and, whatever the truth is, the more there are, the more they create doubt among people who might be inclined to support him,” Black said.

Bialek said she last saw Cain at a Tea Party event in Chicago a month ago and asked him: ‘Do you remember me?’“

“I guess I wanted to see if he was going to be man enough to own up to what he had done 14 years ago,” she said.

Bialek said Cain replied that he remembered her from the restaurant association’s education foundation and “looked uncomfortable” before being whisked away by handlers.

One of Cain’s Republican presidential adversaries called on Sunday for more information on the allegations.

“It has got to come out in total,” Jon Huntsman told NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme. “Legitimate questions have been raised and that information has to come forward.