Month: February 2010

Wellington, Feburary 02: A 14-year-old New Zealand girl told Tuesday how she beat off a shark which grabbed her in shallow water off a southern beach by hitting it with her body board.

Lydia Ward said she stood on the 1.5-metre shark while body-boarding at Oreti Beach, near Invercargill, Monday evening and it lunged at her, wrapping its jaws around her hip.

As the sand shark’s teeth penetrated her wetsuit and her skin she bashed it with her polystyrene body board until it let go.

Manila, February 02: The Philippine government has offered a power-sharing deal to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country’s biggest Muslim group, to settle the decades-long conflict in the south.

“In enhanced autonomy, the president is offering to share powers,” chief negotiator Annabelle Abaya told.

Under the proposed deal, MILF will have control on tax collections and natural resources areas in the Muslim-majority south.

Beijing, February 02: China has rejected the Dalai Lama’s demand for greater autonomy in the Tibetan speaking areas of China, which includes four provinces besides the Tibetan autonomous region.

This is the only aspect of the 5-day long negotiations between envoys of the Tibetan leader and officials of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee, which was revealed on Monday. There were signs that the 9th round of talks got deadlocked in almost the same manner it did during the 8th round 15 months back.

Paris, February 02: Amid a heated debate about the Muslim veil, the French Catholic church warned Monday, February 1, against banning face-veils, calling on the European country to respect rights of its Muslim minority.

“The result could be the opposite of what is desired and lead to a reaction that increases the number of women wearing this garment,” said Bishop Michel Santier, the top French Catholic official for interreligious dialogue in a statement.

He said that very few women wore face-veil in the country.

Washington, February 02: President Barack Obama urged Sudan on Monday to cooperate in efforts to stabilize the country or Washington will conclude that engagement is not working and seek “additional pressure” on Khartoum.

Obama, answering questions submitted via YouTube, said the United States, United Nations and other countries were working to broker a series of agreements to stabilize the country and allow refugees back to their homes.

Melbourne, February 02: Opposition to the Australian government’s emissions trading scheme has lifted conservatives to their strongest position since losing power in 2007 and ahead of elections expected later this year, a survey showed on Tuesday.

As the government prepared to return twice rejected carbon trade laws to parliament, a Newspoll in the Australian newspaper showed the conservatives leading the Labour government in primary votes for the first time since 2007.

New York, February 02: The father of an Afghan-born airport shuttle driver accused of plotting an al Qaeda-inspired bomb attack on New York City has been charged with conspiring to alter, destroy and conceal evidence in the case.

The indictment against Mohammed Wali Zazi was unsealed by Brooklyn federal prosecutors on Monday, hours before he appeared in U.S. District Court in Denver and waived his right to contest his transfer to New York.

Washington, February 02: A U.S. attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile mimicking an attack from Iran failed after a malfunction in a radar built by Raytheon Co, the Defence Department said.

The botched $150 million test over the Pacific Ocean coincided with a Pentagon report that Iran had expanded its ballistic missile capabilities and posed a “significant” threat to U.S. and allied forces in the Middle East region.

Washington, February 02: 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville island on Tuesday, but there were no reports of damage or sea level changes.

The quake’s epicenter was 78 miles (125 km) west of Arawa on Bougainville at a depth of 46.4 miles (75 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said in Washington on Monday.

“We have not received any reports from Bougainville,” said a spokesman for the Papua New Guinea National Disaster Emergency Services in the capital, Port Moresby.

Washington, February 02: President Barack Obama has sought $3.1 billion in non-military aid for Pakistan and $4.0 billion for Afghanistan ‘to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda’ by better ‘governance, reconstruction, and other development activities to counter extremists’.

The non-military assistance is in addition to almost $30 billion more proposed for the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq with $548.9 billion outlay for defence in Obama’s record $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 sent to the US Congress Monday.