Brazil And Argentina Are Ready To Stop Using U.S. Dollars To Trade
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 10:49 am
Brazil and Argentina are ready to stop using U.S. dollars to trade goods between them.
Brazil’s president tells the Buenos Aires-based newspaper that exports and imports between the two nations will be bought and sold in local currency reals and pesos.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva did not say when the measure would take effect.
Silva says the move will boost bilateral trade, which reached $US17.6 billion so far this year through July.
During that time, Brazil sold more to Argentina than it bought, building a US$3 billion trade surplus.
Freedom Fighters’ Commanders Shot Dead In Held Kashmir
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 9:10 am
HELD KASHMIR: Indian troops shot dead six freedom fighters, including two senior members of Pakistan-based fighter groups, in separate gun battles, police said on Sunday.
After a fierce firefight, soldiers shot dead two “divisional commanders” of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad fighter groups in Sopore area of north Kashmir, a police spokesman said.
Another freedom fighter and one soldier were killed in a separate clash in a remote area, police said. They said Indian soldiers also killed three suspected freedom fighters late on Saturday when they tried to sneak into Kashmir, northwest of Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital.
New Delhi says Islamist guerrillas regularly slip into India under cover of shooting by Pakistani troops to join an anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir. Islamabad denies the charge. The latest clashes came on a day when police had to fire teargas shells to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators protesting against Indian rule in Kashmir.
At least five policemen and three protesters were injured in day-long clashes in many parts of Srinagar, police said. A dispute over forestland near a Hindu shrine has sharply divided Hindu-majority Jammu and mainly Muslim Kashmir, the two main parts of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Government forces in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley have killed at least 36 protesters since last month and 1,000injured in some of the largest pro-independence rallies since are volt against New Delhi’s rule began in 1989.
Ike Kills 47 In Haitian Village: Prime Minister
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 9:07 am
PORT-AU-PRINCE:Hurricane Ike killed 47 people in Cabaret, a village close to the Haitian capital, Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis said Sunday.
Two swollen rivers flooded the town, destroying and damaging many homes, a legislator from the village said.
The toll adds to the 500 deaths already recorded by the United Nations over the past week as massive storm flooding caused a humanitarian crisis that was worsening by the day.
Damaged infrastructure and continuing rains left aid organizations struggling to bring emergency assistance to hundreds of thousands of storm victims.
Five Injured In Blasts At Two Bulgarian Nightclubs: Ministry
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 9:04 am
SOFIA:Explosions overnight Sunday at two nightclubs in the Bulgarian capital Sofia injured five people, three of them seriously injured, the interior ministry reported.
A blast at the Casablanca club left two men, aged 30 and 53, in critical condition, said the statement. Two women were also injured in the explosion.
A blast at a strip club, Pantera (Panther), seriously injured a 36-year-old man.
Bulgaria’s criminal underworld regularly uses bomb attacks as a means of settling scores with their rivals. An explosion on Tuesday evening near the capital’s law courts injured two people, who were reportedly trying to set the bomb in front of lawyers’ offices.
Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, has been regularly criticised by Brussels for its failure to take more effective action against crime and corruption in the country.
Protests Greet Turkish President In Armenia
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 9:02 am
YEREVAN: Thousands of Armenians lined the streets of the capital Saturday, protesting the Turkish president who drove past in the first ever visit by a Turkish leader. Many held placards demanding justice for massacres that took place nearly 100 years ago.
Abdullah Gul arrived in Armenia to watch a Turkey vs. Armenia World Cup qualifier game with President Serge Sarkisian that many hope will help the two countries overcome decades of antagonism rooted in Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians.
Gul is the first Turkish leader to set foot in Armenia since the ex-Soviet nation declared independence in 1991. The two neighbors have no diplomatic ties and their border has been closed since 1993.
Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
As Gul left the airport, the presidential motorcade drove along streets lined with thousands of people holding up placards, mostly in English and Armenian, that read: “We want justice,” “Turk admit your guilt,” and “1915 never again.”
Iran Will Launch 3 Day Anti-Aircraft Exercise
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 8:58 am
TEHRAN:Iran’s official news agency says that the country will launch on Monday a three-day anti-aircraft exercise.
The IRNA report says the maneuver is aimed at improving defensive capabilities and will involve new weapons and tactics.
Sunday’s announcement comes amid heightened tension in Iran following Israel’s major military exercises involving war planes over the eastern Mediterranean in June. The exercise was described in the U.S. press as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iran Not To Expel Registered Afghan Refugees: UNHCR Chief
Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 1:35 pm
TEHRAN:The United Nations refugee chief said on Saturday that Iran was committed not to expel more than one million registered Afghan refugees.
“Iran is committed not to expel registered Afghans,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters in Tehran.
Guterres said however that there is no international law concerning those who entered “illegally for economic” reasons.
“However we still want them to be screened to see whether they need protection,” he told a news conference.
Asked about reports of Afghan refugees being expelled by the Iranian authorities, Guterres said: “We have to distinguish between (registered) Afghan refugees and those who have recently came in for economic reasons.”
According to figures provided by the head of Iran’s bureau of alien and foreign immigrant’s affairs (Bafia), there are 832,000 registered Afghans with around 200,000 of their offsprings who were born in the past six years.
Iran, Aghanistan and the UNHCR signed a tripartite agreement for the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees six years ago.
According to Iranian figures only 88 Afghans returned home voluntarily since the beginning of the current year which started in March.
“The decrease in repatriation is mostly due to social and economical problems and not as much to security,” Guterres said.
“Not that security is not a problem in Afghanistan but social issues such as education are a bigger concern to refugees,” he added.
Iran estimates there are about 1.5 million Afghans living illegally within its borders. It began to force the illegals out around a year ago. But the pace has slowed down after Kabul said that it can not cope with this kind of influx.
Tehran has expressed frustration with the condemnation of its crackdown on illegal refugees, arguing that no European country had provided sanctuary to such a large number of refugees for so long.
“Confronting unregistered immigrants are based on internal laws of any nation and has nothing to do with international organisations or other nations,” said BAFIA chief Sayed Taghi Ghaemi.
“We do not have figures on how many unregistered Afghans enter Iran every year,” Ghaemi told the news conference, adding that the numbers change according to the season and depending on the availability of jobs.
Since 2002, the year after the fall of the Taliban government, the UNHCR has helped more than four million Afghans return home but there are still about two million in Pakistan and one million in Iran.
Afghanistan is battling to defeat a growing Taliban-led insurgency that is hampering development. Its weak economy and unemployment rate of about 40 percent has led many men to cross into Iran illegally to work.
Guterres also described the refugee issue as a “political one and not humanitarian”, adding that the UNHCR cannot totally cure the problem.
Malaysia’s Anwar Faces Sternest Test As ‘Power’ Deadline Looms
Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 1:34 pm
KUALA LUMPUR:Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim faces one of the sternest tests of his tumultuous political career in coming days, as the deadline he has set to seize power approaches.
The former deputy premier will also be summoned to court on Wednesday for a hearing that could launch a new trial on sodomy accusations — the same charge that saw him sacked and jailed a decade ago.
Anwar has pulled off a string of spectacular successes in recent months, including snatching a third of parliamentary seats in March general elections, and recapturing the seat he lost after his fall from grace in 1998.
But despite disarray in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, there are doubts that the 61-year-old maverick can achieve his new goal of toppling the government by September 16 with the help of defecting lawmakers.
“The hope is there, but I don’t think it will happen on September 16,” said Mohammad Agus Yusoff, a leading political analyst from the National University of Malaysia.
“But it will happen eventually, if the present scenario continues and the Barisan Nasional government doesn’t reform.”
Anwar is riding a wave of deep public discontent with the Barisan Nasional, a coalition of race-based parties which has ruled since independence from Britain, and which has been flummoxed by the resurgent opposition.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, a grandfatherly figure seen as weak and ineffective by critics including elements within his ruling party, has fended off calls to quit over his failure to check Anwar.
The spiralling cost of food and fuel, a slowing economy and fears of rising “Islamisation” by his party which represents majority Muslim Malays, has alienated voters, particularly from the ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.
Anwar meanwhile has transformed his Keadilan party — which helms a three-member opposition alliance — into Malaysia’s first pan-racial party with support from all three major ethnic groups.
His unerring political footwork makes pundits wary of completely writing off his chances of persuading 30 coalition lawmakers he needs to switch sides within the next few days.
But Keadilan vice-president Sivarasa Rasiah said the government was going all-out to prevent a mass defection, and that the September 16 deadline might not be achievable.
“It’s very difficult to be specific about it because the situation is quite fluid… so we’re not fixated on September 16 as a date, but we’re committed to getting the numbers to join us,” he said.
“What we’re trying to achieve is certainly doable but we also recognise that Barisan is also putting obstacles in the way.”
Abdullah last week vowed to crush any attempts to topple his rule, and in what is being seen as a precautionary measure, coalition lawmakers are being sent on an impromptu “overseas study trip” from September 7 to 19.
Both Anwar and Abdullah have journeyed to Sabah and Sarawak states on Malaysia’s half of Borneo island, seen as the source of likely defectors. Both sides have accused the other of buying the support of parliamentarians.
Amid the high-stakes negotiations, Anwar and his lawyers are also dealing with the threat of new sodomy allegations levelled by a 23-year-old former aide, which could send him to jail for 20 years.
After being formally charged last month, he must appear at the Sessions Court on Wednesday for a hearing that could set the date for his trial, pass the case to another court, or even withdraw his bail and send him to prison.
“We’re not sure, anything can happen. It could be transferred to the High Court, and there may be an attempt to revoke his bail. It’s going to be quite political,” said Keadilan’s information chief Tian Chua.
Another sexual misconduct conviction would effectively end Anwar’s political career, but Sivarasa dismissed the saga as a “sideshow” and was also upbeat about his prospects even if the September 16 deadline is missed.
“One wouldn’t be able to avoid a sense of disappointment, but what we’re going to say is that taking power is inevitable, it’s going to happen,” he said.
“Anwar’s had a lot of difficult times in the past… but in terms of his political rehabilitation, he is the proverbial comeback kid.”
Power In Australia’s Biggest State On Knife-Edge After Poll
Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 12:28 pm
SYDNEY:Government in resource-rich Western Australia state, the driver of the national economy, remained on a knife-edge on Sunday after no political party secured a majority in elections, officials said.
No one has declared victory in the poll, which threatens to break Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s centre-left Labour Party’s stranglehold on power in all states and territories and could influence the future of uranium exports.
Both the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Liberal Party appear to have won 24 seats each in the 59-seat Western Australian parliament, leaving the National Party with the balance of power, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.
While the National Party is traditionally more likely to form a coalition government with the Liberals, the National’s state leader Brendon Grylls said Sunday he was open to negotiations with both parties.
“The Nationals can work with anybody,” he told ABC.
Labour Premier Alan Carpenter, who has vowed to enshrine a ban on mining yellowcake in law if he is re-elected, said it could take some time for the outcome of the election to be determined.
But the opposition conservative Liberal Party said voters had clearly rejected the Labour government, with swings of up to 6.0 percent in some seats away from Carpenter’s administration.
“They (voters) have created the situation where we could — could — form a government,” opposition Liberal leader Colin Barnett said late Saturday.
“That is what I believe the people of this state want to happen.”
If Carpenter loses government he would be the first state Labour leader to do so in a decade and the first since Rudd swept long-time Liberal leader John Howard from federal office in November 2007.
With its vast iron ore, natural gas and other mineral deposits, Western Australia’s coffers are benefiting from massive demand for raw materials and energy from rapidly industrialising Asia.
China Coal Mine Flood Traps 23 Miners: Govt
Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 12:27 pm
BEIJING:A coal mine in central China flooded early on Sunday, trapping 23 miners underground, the government said, in the latest accident to hit the country’s notoriously dangerous mining industry.
The accident took place early Sunday in Henan province’s Yuzhou city, the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety said in a notice on its website.
It gave no further details.
State-run Xinhua news agency earlier reported that more than 50 miners were working underground at the time of the accident, and about 30 of them managed to escape.
China’s coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world, with safety standards often ignored in the quest for profits and the drive to meet surging demand for coal — the source of about 70 percent of the country’s energy.
Nearly 3,800 people died in Chinese coal mines last year, according to official figures, although independent monitors say the real figure is likely higher since many accidents are covered up.
A gas explosion at a coal mine in northeastern Liaoning province on Thursday killed 27 miners and injured six, state media reports said.
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