World

Wellington, January 23: New Zealand police said Saturday they were hunting a prisoner who was nearly naked and handcuffed with his arms behind him when he escaped from custody by diving head first over a cliff.

The man, named as Werimu Rangi Hauraki, had only some weed-matting wrapped around him when he got away while being taken to a police station in Whakatane, a seaside town on the east coast of the North Island.

Police believe Hauraki, who has long dreadlocks, is hiding out in a local house.

–IANS–

Geneva, January 23: A Swiss court issued a ruling Friday halting the transfer of UBS AG client data to the United States, putting in doubt a landmark agreement reached over the summer between the US and Swiss governments.

The Swiss Federal Administrative Court said failure to fill out a tax form for the US authorities was not “tax fraud” and therefore under Swiss laws the client’s information should not be disclosed.

New York, January 23: Major US stock indices plummeted Friday, marking the worst three-day stretch since March as President Barack Obama pushed for a major crackdown on the risky behaviours of Wall Street.

Financial firms led the stock declines for the second straight day after Obama proposed Thursday to curb the size of banks and stop them from engaging in proprietary trading that doesn’t benefit clients.

London, January 23: The British government raised its threat level Friday evening from substantial to severe, meaning an attack is “highly likely”, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said.

He said that despite the raised threat level, there was no intelligence to suggest an attack was imminent.

“The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has today raised the threat to the UK from international terrorism from substantial to severe,” he said. “This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely, but I should stress that there is no intelligence to suggest than an attack is imminent.”

Madrid, January 22: Argentine winger Eduardo Salvio has signed a five-year contract with Atletico Madrid, the Spanish club said on Friday.

Salvio, 19, who joins from Buenos Aires club Lanus, is Atletico’s second January signing after Portuguese midfielder Tiago, who has been taken on loan for six months from Juventus.

Tiago made a goal scoring debut Thursday in the disappointing 1-1 draw at home to second division Celta Vigo in a King’s Cup quarter-final first leg clash.

Port-au-Prince, January 22: Haiti, already devastated by a earthquake last week, was hit by an aftershock measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale at 7.54 am (1254 GMT) Friday.

The epicentre of the aftershock was reported by the US Geological Survey to be 25 km north-west of the capital Port-au-Prince.

According to the Geological Survey, aftershocks from the magnitude 7 earthquake Jan 12 would likely continue for months or even years.

Washington, January 22: US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke says India was not formally part of his mandate, but he considered India as centrally important for America’s success in the Af-Pak region.

“I want to be sure that everyone here recognises how centrally important India will be to this (the US success in Afghanistan and Pakistan),” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday at a hearing on “Civilian strategy for Afghanistan” ahead of the London conference on Afghanistan Jan 28.

Cairo, January 22: Making a public statement for the first time on the deadly attack on Coptic Christians, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said that sectarian strife is threatening the country’s unity.

Mubarak’s comments have come at a time when Egyptian Copts living in the US and the UK are planning to carry out a protest march outside the White House and the British Parliament respectively on the issue.

“The criminal act in Nagaa Hammadi has bled the hearts of Egyptians,” Mubarak was quoted as saying by the official news agency MENA.

Madrid, January 22: Spain wants Washington to publicise a mistake by the FBI which used the features of a prominent Spanish politician, who is critical of US polices, in a new computer-generated photo of Osama bin Laden, the foreign minister said Thursday.

The FBI’s contemporary representation of the Al Qaeda leader, with greying hair and a stubble and using the forehead and hair of Gaspar Llamazares, was visible for several hours on the most wanted “Rewards for Justice” website, before it was removed.

New York, January 22: An Orthodox Jew’s prayer rituals, including wearing a sacred box on his head, triggered a bomb scare Thursday aboard a US passenger plane, a security source said.

The Chautauqua Airlines jet bound from New York to Louisville, Kentucky, diverted to Philadelphia International Airport after what authorities described as a security incident caused by a “disruptive passenger.”

“It appears that it was a misunderstanding with a religious passenger wearing a religious item and praying loudly,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

Washington, January 22: Yemen’s emergence as a hotbed for Al-Qaeda militants has not come as a surprise, top US General David Petraeus said Thursday, adding he had been concerned about the country for some years.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has dug in near the Yemeni capital amid a military crackdown.

That the group has emerged there “is not something that is a total surprise for us at all,” Petraeus, the top commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Tripoli, January 22: Libya plans to tighten its visa rules for citizens of some European countries in retaliation for its own citizens being denied European visas, a senior official said on Thursday.

The move would come into force “in a few days”.

The official said the stricter rules would apply to citizens of European countries that are part of the Schengen pact, which allows travellers to obtain a single visa that is good for travel to 24 European states.

Paris, January 22: US troops withdrawn from the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan for medical reasons from 2004 to 2007 were increasingly evacuated because of psychiatric problems, a study released on Friday reveals.

Only 14 percent of troops taken out of combat operations on medical grounds during this four-year period were because of a combat injury.

The biggest single cause for a pullout were musculo-skeletal and joint problems, which accounted for 24 percent of medical evacuations.

London, January 22: The debt owed by European scholars to their Muslim counterparts on everything from water pumps and blood circulation to engineering and map-making was unveiled in a London exhibition on Thursday.

The organisers of “1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World” hope to illuminate 1,000 years of neglected science from north Africa to China that provided a bridge between ancient and Renaissance scholarship.

In doing so, they expressed hope it would help improve understanding between the Muslim world and the West.

United Nations, January 22: UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday backed US-led efforts to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks on all final status issues, including Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

“I support the US-led efforts to bring about a resumption of meaningful negotiations on all final status issues, including the security of Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees and Jerusalem,” he said.

London, January 22: Prime Minister Gordon Brown has agreed to appear at Britain’s Iraq war inquiry before a general election due by June, rather than after as previously expected, the probe’s chairman said Friday.

John Chilcot had originally scheduled Brown’s appearance after the election to avoid it being used for party political purposes but said he had offered Brown the chance to appear ahead of national polls “as a matter of fairness.”

Washington, January 22: The US Supreme Court today gave a green signal to big business and unions to spend as freely as they like to support or oppose Presidential and Congressional candidates, a verdict sharply condemned by President Barack Obama and other lawmakers.

The nine justices of the apex court were divided 5-4 on the ruling that eased decade-old limit on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.

Washington, January 22: A new study indicates US troops who were withdrawn from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for medical reasons were increasingly evacuated for psychiatric reasons.

Psychiatric disorders rose from 2004 to 2007, despite an increased focus on treating mental health problems, the research study revealed on Friday.

Only 14 percent of troops taken out of combat operations on medical grounds during the four-year period were because of a combat injury, AFP reported.

Bangalore, January 22: Amid several reports asserting that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief V Prabhakaran is alive and safe, a proof hinting towards the authenticity of these reports has emerged.

A pro-LTTE website, tamilwin.com, claims that the the body shown by the Sri Lankan government as that of Prabhakaran was fake and that it belonged to a look-alike Sri Lankan soldier.

The website has extracted images of the soldier from a Lankan army video to show the similarities of the man’s facial features and that of the Tamil Tiger chief.

Seoul, January 22: South Korea’s foreign minister said on Friday he wants to see dormant international talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear arms programme resume in February without Pyongyang attaching conditions to its return.

North Korea has signalled it could end its year-long boycott of the six-nation talks with the South but muddied the waters recently by saying it first wanted U.N. sanctions lifted and direct discussions with Washington on a peace deal.

Beijing, January 22: China hit back hard against U.S. criticism of Beijing’s controls over the Internet, saying on Friday that Washington’s push against online censorship could harm relations between the two big powers.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech against Internet censorship on Thursday raised contention with Beijing over cyber policy, which flared after Google Inc last week warned it could pull out of China over hacking and restrictions.

Washington, January 22: Despite criticism for the US military presence in quake-stricken Haiti, Washington says it has a long-term plan to stay in the country.

“We are there for the long term, this is not something that will be resolved quickly and easily,” US Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff said on Thursday.

Just three days after a magnitude 7 earthquake jolted Haiti on January 12, the United States began to send military forces to the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Colombo, January 22: Unidentified persons today lobbed a bomb targeting the home of opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka’s campaign manager here, as violence escalated with just four days left for the polls.

The bomb severely damaged the house of businessman and opposition member Tiran Alles in the Western Province, and destroyed his car parked in the compound.

However, Alles and his family members escaped unhurt.

Washington, January 22: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirms that American security firms Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater, and DynCorp have been operating in Pakistan.

The two firms are operating in private capacities, Gates said on Thursday, adding that the companies were abiding by Pakistani laws.

However, he said that if the Pakistani parliament votes for a ban on the presence of the firms, the US government would comply with it.

Washington, January 22: At an unprecedented appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington yesterday, the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, warned that sending more troops to Afghanistan was all well and good but that a fresh political strategy had to be put in place also.

The Washington visit came one week before Britain hosts an international conference on future strategy for Afghanistan, to be chaired by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown – and two months after Barack Obama authorised a 30,000-strong surge of new US troops there.