Month: September 2009

London, September 06: Tony Blair will be thrust into the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi with questions in Parliament over a secret meeting the then Prime Minister orchestrated that brought Libya in from the cold.

MPs are set to demand the minutes of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger summit in London between British, American and Libyan spies held three days before Mr Blair announced that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was surrendering his weapons of mass destruction programme.

Bangkok, September 06: Myanmar’s military junta may have taken Aung San Suu Kyi out of the picture ahead of elections next year, but it could face an even greater challenge from rising ethnic unrest, analysts said.

The regime has recently stepped up its decades-long campaign against minority groups, with offensives against ethnic Chinese rebels in the northeast in August and Christian Karen insurgents near the Thai border in June.

Washington, September 06: The United States can begin flying troops and arms to Afghanistan through Russian airspace beginning Sunday after the July deal between the two countries’ leaders.

“As of September 6, this agreement gives us another option to choose from in our flight planning process,” a defense official told AFP.

The official declined to provide further details.

In early July, US President Barack Obama sealed an agreement with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev allowing Washington to supply Western forces in Afghanistan via Russia.

Seoul, September 06: Six South Koreans camping and fishing along a river flowing from North Korea were missing Sunday after it suddenly rose, possibly because a new dam in the North released a large amount of water without warning, officials said.

About 200 rescuers were trying to locate the missing people along the Imjin River, fire official Park Ju-il said. He said their identities were not immediately available.

Gyeonggi provincial official Choi Kwon-rak said a North Korean dam just north of the border may have released large amounts of water without notice.

Jerusalem, September 06: Yousef Majlaton moved into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev for such comforts as proper running water and regular garbage pickup. But he represents a potentially volatile twist in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the holy city.

The hillside sprawl of townhouses and apartment blocks was built for Jews, and Majlaton is a Palestinian.

Pisgat Zeev is part of Israel’s effort to fortify its presence in Jerusalem’s eastern half which it captured in the 1967 war.

Belgrade, September 06: Five workers at a munitions factory in Serbia where a series of blasts this week killed seven people have been arrested in connection with the incident, the news agency Beta reported Saturday.

The four men and one woman are suspected of being responsible for negligence in security measures which may have led to the blasts at the Prvi Partizan factory in Uzice, southwest Serbia, the news agency said, citing police.

The Serbian government declared Saturday a national day of mourning for the deadly explosions, which also left some 14 people injured.

Cape Canaveral, September 06: A pair of spacewalking astronauts from the U.S. shuttle Discovery worked outside the International Space Station on Saturday to lay power cables for the orbital outpost’s last connecting node.

The node, named Tranquility, was due to arrive in February, leaving NASA with four supply runs to outfit the $100 billion station before the space shuttles are retired.

The last flights will include delivery of a Russian docking module and the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics experiment involving 60 agencies in 16 countries.

Beijing, September 06: Chinese leaders sacked the head of a western city wracked by communal violence and a bizarre string of needle attacks, hoping to calm uneasy mobs and end protests that percolated for a 3rd day.

The removal of Urumqi’s Communist Party Secretary Li Zhi on Saturday came amid reports of police again using tear gas to disperse crowds outside Urumqi’s government offices, and more unconfirmed reports of hypodermic attacks, including one on an 11-year-old boy in a downtown square.

Pyongyang, September 06: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il has suspended a propaganda campaign to promote his youngest son as future leader after apparently winning the regime’s support for the succession plan, analysts say.

After securing acceptance of Jong-Un’s position as eventual heir, Kim may be concerned not to weaken his own authority in the interim, they say.

Succession speculation began in earnest after Kim, now 67, suffered a stroke around August 2008.

Manila(Philippine), September 06: At least three people drowned and more than 800 terrified passengers, many roused from their sleep, were rescued early Sunday from a ferry that listed and then sank in the southern Philippines, officials said. More than 80 people were missing.

Coast guard chief Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said 880 of 964 passengers and crewmen on board the Superferry 9 were transferred to two nearby commercial ships and a navy gunboat hours after the ferry began to list off Zamboanga del Norte province before dawn.

Washington, September 06: North Korea’s pursuit of a second path to nuclear weapons by enriching uranium is a problem likely to persist and Pyongyang needs to come clean about its intentions, a US envoy for the reclusive state said.

North Korea, which has produced enough plutonium for an estimated six to eight bombs, said on Friday it had made advances in uranium enrichment, a move analysts saw as a tactic to put pressure on regional powers after a month of conciliatory gestures.