World

Colombo, April 30: Slain Tamil Tiger chief Vellupillai Prabhakran’s ancestral house in the Jaffna peninsula has been demolished, a Tamil politician said on Thursday.

M K Sivajilingam from the Tamil National Liberation Alliance told over phone from Jaffna that Prabhakaran’s house, located in Valvettithurai, about 30 km from Jaffna town, was “gradually” demolished in the last few weeks.

Prabhakaran was killed on May 18. “The house was slowly demolished by security forces in the last few weeks as it was becoming a tourist attraction.

Washington, April 30: The nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea pose a threat to a key nuclear treaty designed to prevent the spread of atomic weapons, a top US official warned Thursday.

North Korea’s withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003 and Iran’s intent to develop nuclear weapons by masking it as an energy programme undermine the goals of the treaty, said Ellen Tauscher, under secretary of state for arms control.

Havana, April 30: More than 200 artists from 20 countries will participate in an international cultural festival in the eastern Cuban city of Holguin in May.

Artists from Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada and the Caribbean countries will participate, Prensa Latina reported Thursday.

Poets, folklore groups and fine arts creators will take part. Exhibitions, film shows and musical programmes will be organised.

Beijing, April 30: China will offer discounted loans and other incentives to companies to boost foreign investment in the country’s inland regions, the commerce ministry has said.

The government is eyeing investment in sectors like agriculture, processing industry, finance, education, culture and tourism, among others, in the provinces of Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei and Hunan, Xinhua reported Thursday citing the ministry.

London, April 30: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown laughed off a campaign gaffe and stressed his economic credentials in a final election debate, trying to convince voters he was the man to secure future growth.

The economy is a key issue ahead the May 6 election as Britain struggles with sluggish growth and a deficit running at more than 11 percent of GDP.

The run-up to Thursday’s debate had been overshadowed by a blaze of bad publicity after Brown, whose ruling Labour party are behind in the opinion polls, was caught calling a supporter of his Labour Party “bigoted” on Wednesday.

Athens, April 30: Police fired teargas to disperse a few hundred protesters outside Greece’s finance ministry who were demonstrating against austerity measures.

“There were minor scuffles and rounds of teargas fired,” a police official said.

The protesters, mostly supporters of the Coalition of the Left opposition party carried anti-IMF banners.

Greece’s socialist government is negotiating the terms of an emergency funding package with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to deal with its debt crisis.

—Agencies

Washington, April 30: The Navy announced on Thursday that women will start serving on U.S. submarines as early as next year, lifting a symbolically important barrier to women in the U.S. armed forces.

Women, who account for about 15 percent of the more than 336,000 members of the U.S. Navy, can already serve on its surface ships.

But critics long argued that submarines were different, pointing to long deployments below the sea and cramped quarters where some crews share beds in shifts — a practice known as “hot bunking.”

Washington, April 30: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran’s president on Thursday he will not get a warm welcome at U.N. nonproliferation talks next week if he seeks to sow confusion about Iran’s nuclear program.

The United States and some of its Western allies believe that Iran is using its civil nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons, something Tehran committed not to do under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

California, April 30: Wikipedia has strongly rejected its departed co-founder’s accusation that the online encyclopedia is knowingly distributing child pornography in their products.

“Our community abhors issues around pornography and pedophilia and they don’t want to provide opportunities for these things to take place,” The Age quoted Jay Walsh, Wikipedia spokesman, as saying.

“We don’t have material we would deem to be illegal. If we did, we would remove it,” he added.

New Delhi, April 30: At a meeting without aides, Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani invited his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to visit Islamabad and Dr. Singh said he would look forward to visiting the country, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told journalists here on Thursday.

Mr. Qureshi described Dr. Singh as a visionary and academic. He said the Indian Prime Minister had his heart in the right place and he was a well-meaning person. “He is a well-meaning man. He is an academic. He is a visionary. He wants to move on.”

Brussels, April 30: The lower house of the Belgian parliament approved a draft law Thursday banning the wearing of burqa in public and other types of Islamic veils, the Belga news agency reported.

However, the law criminalising Muslim women who hide their faces in public is unlikely to enter into force soon, as it still has to be approved by the upper house of parliament, the Senate.

Progress of the bill would also be wiped out if the political crisis gripping the country would lead to parliament being dissolved – an inevitable option, according to all political commentators.

New York, April 30: PM Manmohan Singh, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, bio queen Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and author Chetan Bhagat are among the nine Indians named in Time magazine’s annual list of 100 most influential people.

The other Indians on the list are: Eye doctor Perumalsamy Namperumalsamy, humanitarian worker Sanjit Buker Roy, writer Chetan Bhagat, Indian-America doctor and Harvard professor Atul Gwande, paramedic from Toronto Rahul Singh and entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.

Thimphu, April 30: Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh of India and Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan Thursday held their first talks in nine months here and agreed to think afresh on how to “honestly” take forward their peace process stalled after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

During their 50-minute talks at Bhutan House here, the two leaders directed their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries to work out modalities to restore trust that could pave the way for “substantive dialogue” between the two countries.

Moscow, April 30: A suicide car bomb killed two police officers and injured 17 other people on Thursday in Russia’s Muslim Dagestan region, a local police spokesman said.

A second blast in another tense North Caucasus province later injured two police, Itar-Tass news agency reported, although the cause of the explosion in the courtyard of a house was being investigated.

In the Dagestan bombing, a suicide attacker set off the explosive after police stopped his car at a checkpoint about 100 km (60 miles) north of Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, the police spokesman said.

Washington, April 29: A bipartisan US panel on global religious freedom has named Pakistan and 12 other nations as “countries of particular concern” while placing India on its ‘Watch List’ for the second year in succession.

In a report to the US Congress Thursday, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) termed India’s progress in protecting the rights of minorities as mixed and placed it on the second category watch list.

Luxembourg, April 29: Britain is wrong to restrict social security payments to the wives of terror suspects living there, the European Court of Justice ruled Thursday.

The decision by the Luxembourg-based court — which interprets EU law and ensures its equal application throughout the European Union — could affect some of Britain’s anti-terror laws.

Geneva, April 29: France faced grilling by UN anti-torture experts on Tuesday over its handling of overcrowding and suicide in its jails, and the rights of asylum seekers, minors in detention, and terror suspects.

Officials from the UN Committee against Torture raised concerns about jail overcrowding, in particular in France’s overseas territories where occupancy can reach 230 percent, as well its high prison suicide rates.

Strasbourg, April 29: Italy is violating Europe’s human rights convention by pushing boatloads of migrants back to the Libyan shores, a top anti-torture watchdog said Wednesday.

Last year Rome and Tripoli reached a controversial agreement that allows the Italian navy to intercept illegal migrants at sea and return them to Libya, triggering sharp criticism from the UNHCR and rights groups.

Libya, April 29: Italy’s Finmeccanica on Wednesday opened a helicopter assembly and maintenance factory in Libya in a joint venture with Tripoli at a cost of almost 18 million euros (24 million dollars).

The plant has been built in Abu Aisha, in the Tarhuna region, 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of the capital, by Liatec (Libyan-Italian Advanced Technology Company), a joint venture between the company and the Libyan state.

Taixing, April 29: A knife-wielding man attacked a kindergarten class of 4-year-olds in eastern China on Thursday, slashing 28 children in what an expert said was a copycat rampage of two other episodes at Chinese schools in the past month.

A 47-year-old jobless man, Xu Yuyuan, burst into a classroom at the Zhongxin Kindergarten early Thursday, waving an eight-inch (20-centimeter) knife and stabbing a security guard who tried to stop him, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

New York, April 29: A New York truck driver who spent nearly 19 years behind bars for a 1988 slaying he didn’t commit has walked free after DNA testing exonerated him and instead pointed to another prison inmate.

The exonerated inmate, Frank Sterling, 46, was convicted of murder in 1992 based on a confession that he later recanted.

Washington, April 29: Tiger Woods has confessed to cheating with as many as 120 women behind his wife’s back during their five-year marriage, it was claimed today.

But a one-night stand with the 21-year-old daughter of a neighbour in Florida was the final straw for Elin Nordegren, according to the National Enquirer magazine in the US.

The Enquirer claimed the distraught mother-of-two decided to sign divorce papers after learning it was investigating Woods’ alleged fling with Raychel Coudriet, whom he had reportedly known since she was just 14.

Washington, April 29: A Russian amateur model has been accused of being a secret agent for the Kremlin, allegedly luring government critics with the promise of sex and drugs.

Ekaterina “Katya” Gerasimova, 19, has been described as a modern-day Mata Hari after reportedly luring at least six of Vladimir Putin’s detractors into embarrassing sex “honeytraps” or online stings aimed at destroying their reputations, The Daily Mail said.

London, April 29: A Baby boy who survived a botched abortion at 22 weeks was simply wrapped in cloth and left to die by Italian doctors.

The infant’s mother had sought an abortion after scans revealed that the baby would likely be disabled, London’s Daily Telegraph reported.

Doctors in Rossano, southern Italy, carried out the procedure however the infant survived. It’s alleged that he was then wrapped in a sheet, umbilical cord still attached, and abandoned.

England, April 29: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to make a humiliating apology today after he was caught on microphone calling a senior citizen “bigoted”.

Mr Brown was confronted by the 66-year-old woman, Gillian Duffy, while election campaigning in Rochdale, northern England.

After spending nearly five minutes answering her questions about immigration and migrant workers from Eastern Europe, he told her, “It’s been very good to meet you,” before getting into a car.

However, a Sky New wireless microphone picked up his words to an aide as he was driven away.