Early morning quake rocks UK

(CNN) -- A magnitude 5.3 earthquake shook Britain early Wednesday, centered on the east coast north of London, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

This image provided by the British Geological Survey shows the seismogram registering the earthquake at Market Rasen, England on Wednesday.
The British Geological Survey put the preliminary magnitude for the earthquake at 5.3 on the Richter scale, according to the British Press Association.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The quake's center was about 125 miles (205 km) north of London, or about 30 miles (50 km) south of Kingston upon Hull, the USGS said. It struck just before 0100 GMT.
"It felt pretty scary," Haydn Jones of Nottingham, who lives in a third-floor apartment, told CNN. He said he has lived abroad in Japan and knew immediately what it was, but felt that a lot of those in England "didn't really know what was going on."
Jones likened the feeling to "someone very big and angry jumping on the ceiling below you, rather than the floor."
He believed the shaking lasted about 10 seconds, but said, "time sort of stands still for you." He said there was no damage in his area.
The USGS classifies earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 to magnitude 4.9 as "light."
Earthquakes frequently hit Britain -- between 200 and 300 annually, according to the British Geological Survey, although most have a magnitude of less than 2. Earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.0 to 4.9 hit mainland Britain about once every two years and strike beneath the North Sea about once per year.
Britain's strongest recorded quake was the North Sea quake of June 7, 1931, with a magnitude of 6.1. It was felt across the British isles and in northwestern Germany. The quake killed one person.
The most powerful onshore quakes occurred on July 19, 1984, in north Wales (magnitude 5.1) and on April 2, 1990, along the Welsh border with England (5.1 magnitude).
A 4.6 magnitude quake in Colchester on April 22, 1884, was Britain's most damaging earthquake, knocking spires from churches and masonry from roofs. Turrets and parapets also fell, and brick walls and chimneys collapsed. Two people were killed.

Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean

UK scientists working in Antarctica have found some of the clearest evidence yet of instabilities in the ice of part of West Antarctica.
If the trend continues, they say, it could lead to a significant rise in global sea level.
The new evidence comes from a group of glaciers covering an area the size of Texas, in a remote and seldom visited part of West Antarctica.
The "rivers of ice" have surged sharply in speed towards the ocean.
David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, explained: "It has been called the weak underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and the reason for that is that this is the area where the bed beneath the ice sheet dips down steepest towards the interior.
"If there is a feedback mechanism to make the ice sheet unstable, it will be most unstable in this region."
There is good reason to be concerned.
Satellite measurements have shown that three huge glaciers here have been speeding up for more than a decade.
The biggest of the glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, is causing the most concern.

Inhospitable conditions
Julian Scott has just returned from there. He told the BBC: "This is a very important glacier; it's putting more ice into the sea than any other glacier in Antarctica.
"It's a couple of kilometres thick, its 30km wide and it's moving at 3.5km per year, so it's putting a lot of ice into the ocean."

The team drove its skidoos for thousands of km across the iceIt is a very remote and inhospitable region. It was visited briefly in 1961 by American scientists but no one had returned until this season when Julian Scott and Rob Bingham and colleagues from the British Antarctic survey spent 97 days camping on the flat, white ice.
At times, the temperature got down to minus 30C and strong winds made work impossible.
At one point, the scientists were confined to their tent continuously for eight days.
"The wind really makes the way you feel incredibly colder, so just motivating yourself to go out in the wind is a really big deal," Rob Bingham told BBC News.
When the weather improved, the researchers spent most of their time driving skidoos across the flat, featureless ice.
"We drove skidoos over it for something like 2,500km each and we didn't see a single piece of topography."

Long drag
Rob Bingham was towing a radar on a 100m-long line and detecting reflections from within the ice using a receiver another 100m behind that.
The signals are revealing ancient flow lines in the ice. The hope is to reconstruct how it moved in the past.
Julian Scott was performing seismic studies, using pressurised hot water to drill holes 20m or so into the ice and place explosive charges in them. He used arrays of geophones strung out across the ice to detect reflections, looking, among other things, for signs of soft sediments beneath the ice that might be lubricating its flow.

The Pig - Pine Island Glacier - is a major draining feature on the WaisHe also placed recorders linked to the global positioning system (GPS) satellites on the ice to track the glacier's motion, recording its position every 10 seconds.
Throughout the 1990s, according to satellite measurements, the glacier was accelerating by around 1% a year. Julian Scott's sensational finding this season is that it now seems to have accelerated by 7% in a single season, sending more and more ice into the ocean.
"The measurements from last season seem to show an incredible acceleration, a rate of up to 7%. That is far greater than the accelerations they were getting excited about in the 1990s."
The reason does not seem to be warming in the surrounding air.
One possible culprit could be a deep ocean current that is channelled onto the continental shelf close to the mouth of the glacier. There is not much sea ice to protect it from the warm water, which seems to be undercutting the ice and lubricating its flow.

Ongoing monitoring
Julian Scott, however, thinks there may be other forces at work as well.
Much higher up the course of the glacier there is evidence of a volcano that erupted through the ice about 2,000 years ago and the whole region could be volcanically active, releasing geothermal heat to melt the base of the ice and help its slide towards the sea.

Geothermal activity may be playing its part, says Julian ScottDavid Vaughan believes that the risk of a major collapse of this section of the West Antarctic ice sheet should be taken seriously.
"There has been the expectation that this could be a vulnerable area," he said.
"Now we have the data to show that this is the area that is changing. So the two things coinciding are actually quite worrying."
The big question now is whether what has been recorded is an exceptional surge or whether it heralds a major collapse of the ice. Julian Scott hopes to find out.
"It is extraordinary and we've left a GPS there over winter to see if it is going to continue this trend."
If the glacier does continue to surge and discharge most of it ice into the sea, say the researchers, the Pine Island Glacier alone could raise global sea level by 25cm.
That might take decades or a century, but neighbouring glaciers are accelerating too and if the entire region were to lose its ice, the sea would rise by 1.5m worldwide.

By Martin Redfern
Rothera Research Station, Antarctica

Pakistan 'sparks YouTube outage'

Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for an almost global blackout of the video website for more than an hour on Sunday.
BBC News has learned that the outage was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and Asian internet service provider PCCW.
A leading net professional said the global outage was "probably a mistake".
Pakistan ordered internet service providers to block the site because of content deemed offensive to Islam.
The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site.

Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address.
But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet from PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by internet service providers around the world.
The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by engineers at YouTube.

A leading net professional told BBC News: "This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was malicious."
IP hijacking involves taking over a web site's unique address by corrupting the internet's routing tables, which direct the flow of data around the world.
No-one at YouTube or PCCW was immediately available for comment.
Cause of ban
Reports said Pakistan made the move because YouTube content included Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have outraged many.
But one report said a trailer for a forthcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam in a negative light, was behind the ban.
"They [Pakistan's telecommunications authority] asked us to ban it immediately... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers.
The government decision has caused uproar in Pakistan, according to Wahaj-us-Siraj:
"Users are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything.
"The government has valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular websites, people will stop using the internet."
Other countries that have temporarily blocked access to YouTube include Turkey and Thailand.

The Oscars 2008

(BBC) - No Country For Old Men has won four Oscars, including best film and best director, a category awarded jointly to brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.
Javier Bardem also won best supporting actor for his role as a hitman in the film, thanking his family in Spanish.
All of the acting prizes went to Europe, with UK stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Tilda Swinton named best actor and best supporting actress respectively.
France's Marion Cotillard earned the best actress prize for La Vie En Rose.
"I'm speechless now," said Cotillard, who played legendary torch singer Edith Piaf in the movie.
"Thank you life; thank you love. It is true there are some angels in this city."

Day-Lewis, who picked up his Oscar from Dame Helen Mirren, joked it was "the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood".
It was the 50-year-old's second Academy Award, having been recognised for My Left Foot in 1990.
Elsewhere at the ceremony, exotic dancer-turned-scriptwriter Diablo Cody took best original screenplay for the quirky, verbose comedy Juno - her first ever movie.
"I'm shocked by the popularity of the film," she said.
"I mean, when you write basically an independent movie about, you know, a pregnant teenager and you make it for seven million dollars you never, ever think it's going to become this phenomenon."
Birthday
The ceremony, at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, marked the 80th anniversary of the Academy Awards.

Organisers celebrated "Oscar's birthday" with film montages celebrating past winners and memorable Oscar moments - including the streaker who ran behind David Niven during 1974's ceremony.
However, this year's understated show was unlikely to provide many clips for future compilations.
It was put together in just a matter of weeks after the writers' strike - which had threatened to force the cancellation of Hollywood's biggest night - was called off.
That meant there were no large-scale song-and-dance numbers or lovingly-crafted movie spoofs from host Jon Stewart.

Returning for his second stint at the helm of the awards show, Stewart acknowledged the impact of the strike on Hollywood.
"These past three and a half months have been very tough. The town was torn apart by a bitter writers' strike," he said.
"But I'm happy to say that the fight is over. So tonight, welcome to the make-up sex."
No Country For Old Men, a dark comedy about a drugs bust gone wrong, had long been the frontrunner to win best film.
Its win cements the reputation of the Coen siblings as Hollywood's favourite leftfield film-makers.
Accepting their award, older brother Joel recalled that the duo had been making films since childhood.
"What we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we were doing then," he said.
"We're very thankful to all of you out there for continuing to let us play in our corner of the sandbox."

Tilda Swinton gave the most spirited speech of the night while picking up her best supporting actress award.
"I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this," she said, referring to her Oscar statuette.
"Really, truly. The same shape head and, it has to be said, the buttocks."
She also poked fun at her Michael Clayton co-star George Clooney, by referring back to his critically-derided stint as superhero Batman.
"Seeing you climb into that rubber batsuit from Batman and Robin, the one with the nipples, every morning under your costume, on the set, off the set, hanging upside-down at lunch... You rock, man."
Parties
One awkward moment came as musical duo Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova ran out of time during their acceptance speech for most original song.

Hansard, who sings for Irish band The Frames, had just finished his thank-yous and stepped aside for petite Irglova to make her speech when the orchestra struck up, forcing her off stage.
After a commercial break, Irglova was invited back to rapturous applause from the audience.
"The fact that we're standing here tonight, the fact that we're able to hold this, it's just proof that no matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible," she said.
With the main ceremony over, a question mark still lingers over the glitzy post-Oscars parties. The high-profile Vanity Fair bash was cancelled during the writers' strike.
Other casualties included People magazine's party, and that of socialite Dani Jannssen, whose annual gathering attracts the likes of Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood.
However, pop stars Madonna and Prince have stepped into the breach with hastily-arranged parties in their Hollywood homes.

Experimental anti-HIV gel safe, tolerable for women

(AFP) - The quest to develop a vaginal gel to prevent HIV infection took a step forward Monday when researchers announced that one such gel is safe for women to use on a daily basis.
The announcement comes a week after researchers announced that the first prototype to complete advanced clinical trials was ineffective in preventing infection.
Microbicides are one of the most eagerly-sought avenues in the war on AIDS, where at present there is neither a cure nor a vaccine and prevention depends on the condom or abstinence.
Scientists are grappling for a means by which women, who are physically more at risk from AIDS infection than men, can protect themselves without having to rely on male consent to wear a condom.
A number of different gels are currently being tested around the world but none have been proven to be effective and some have even increased the risk of contracting HIV.
This latest attempt by researchers in the United States and India is still in the early stages.
Researchers asked 200 sexually-active, HIV-negative women in New York and Pune, India to apply the gel either daily or before intercourse for a period of six months. They were also asked to use condoms in addition to the gel.
The researchers found no disruption of liver, blood or kidney function and found a significant willingness among the women to follow the treatment guidelines.
More than 90 percent of the women said they would serious consider using the gel if it were approved to help prevent HIV infection and more than 80 percent had followed the experimental regime.
"Based on what we have learned we can proceed with greater confidence on a path that will answer whether tenofovir gel and other gels with HIV-specific compounds will be able to prevent sexual transmission of HIV in women when other approaches have failed to do so," said lead investigator Sharon Hillier, director of reproductive infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine.
The findings were presented Monday at an international microbicides meeting in New Delhi.
An estimated 33.2 million people, in a range from 30.6 to 36.1 million, are living with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it, the specialised UN agency UNAIDS says.

Israel warns Hamas ahead of 'human chain' Gaza protest

(AFP) - Israel warned Hamas on Sunday it would defend its territory if there were any disturbances during a planned mass rally in Gaza on Monday against the Jewish state's blockade of the territory.
"Israel will not intervene in demonstrations inside the Gaza Strip but it will ensure the defence of its territory and prevent any violation of its sovereign borders," said a joint statement from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Media reports said the Israeli army is preparing for a possible rush on the border fence around the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip aimed at breaking a months-long economic blockade on the impoverished territory.
"Israel will work to avoid a deterioration of the situation but declares unequivocally that Hamas must assume full responsibility if that happens," the statement said.
According to Israeli army radio, the Islamist movement which seized control of Gaza in June has may stage a mass march on the border to protest at Israel's closure of Gaza, where most of tbhe 1.5 million population depend on aid.
Israel's Haaretz newspaper has reported that Israeli forces have increased their presence along the border, adding that there were fears of casualties if troops try to halt such a march.
The Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), a politically independent group headed by Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, has called for a mass demonstration on Monday against the siege.
The group has announced it will attempt to construct a human chain from the sealed Rafah crossing on the southern Gaza border with Egypt to the Beit Hanun crossing in northern Gaza along the territory's main highway.
Hamas has said it backs the demonstration but did not organise it.
Palestinian militants blasted several holes in the border barrier between Gaza and Egypt on January 23, sending a tide of hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the Sinai on a mission to replenish depleted stocks.
Hamas gunmen and Egyptian troops resealed the border on February 3.
Israel has sealed the territory off from all but vital humanitarian supplies since Hamas violently seized power there in June, in a bid to halt rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
But Palestinians and several international agencies have said the sanctions amount to collective punishment of its civilian population.

News Bulletin

(AFP) Top Middle East stories on Sunday:

* Turkey-unrest-Kurds-Iraq
CIZRE, Turkey
The Turkish army said at least 112 Kurdish rebels have been killed in a major offensive in northern Iraq and warned Iraqi Kurds not to shelter militants fleeing the fighting after confirmed a helicopter had been destroyed.

* Iraq-unrest
HILLA, Iraq: A suicide bomber blew himself up amid a crowd of Shiite pilgrims south of Baghdad, killing at least 40 people, police and medical officials told AFP.
Iran-nuclear-politics-UN

* TEHRAN: Iran warned it would hit back with an appropriate response to new UN Security Council sanctions over its contested nuclear programme, as Western powers stepped up efforts to punish Tehran.

Mideast-diplomacy
* JERUSALEM: The top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators hosted the first round of talks of work teams tasked with discussing the technical details of a future peace deal.
Mideast-Israel-Japan-diplomacy-economy

* JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert headed to Japan on a rare visit expected to focus on economic ties as well as efforts to halt Iran's controversial nuclear drive.

* Palestinian-unrest-Hamas
KOBAR, West Bank: Thousands of West Bank Hamas supporters vowed revenge at the funeral of an imam from the Islamist movement who died while in the custody of Palestinian security forces.

* Iraq-Maliki-health
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki left for London for further medical tests, his second visit to a British hospital in two months, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP.

* Yemen-oil-unrest
SANAA: Yemeni security forces have foiled an attempt to blow up an oil pipeline which was hit by a bomb blast last year, the official Saba news agency reported.
Israel-Egypt-immigration

* JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered security authorities to deport to Egypt migrants who enter the country illegally across their common border.

* Denmark-media-Islam-Jordan
AMMAN: At least 18 Jordanian media outlets will launch a campaign to protest the reprinting of a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in Danish newspapers, organisers said.

Two US soldiers killed in action in Baghdad

(AFP) - Two US soldiers were killed in action in separate incidents in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, the US military announced.
One soldier was killed "when an improvised explosive device struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in northern Baghdad," the Baghdad military command said in a statement.
The second soldier was killed "by small-arms fire during combat operations" in southern Baghdad, the US military added.
The latest deaths bring to 3,972 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.

Communist wins Cyprus presidential vote

(AFP) - Communist party chief Demetris Christofias won the presidential election in Cyprus on Sunday and immediately agreed to talks with the rival Turkish Cypriot leader in a new bid to reunify the island.
His jubilant supporters -- some in luxury convertibles -- cruised the streets of Nicosia, the world's last divided capital, waving Cypriot and banners of communist icon Che Guevara, their car horns blaring.
Greek Cypriot parliament speaker Christofias, 61, secured 53.36 percent of the vote against 46.64 percent for conservative former foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides in an election billed by the local media as one of the most crucial in the history of Cyprus.
"Tomorrow is a new day and there will be many difficulties before us, we need to gather our strength to achieve the reunification of our homeland," said Christofias, who is due to be sworn in later this week.
Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, head of the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, called Christofias and the two have agreed to meet, an aide to Talat told AFP.
"Talat congratulated Christofias and both of them agreed that they should meet," the official said.
Christofias pledged during the election campaign to renew contacts with the Turkish Cypriots in a bid to end the partition of the strategic eastern Mediterranean island after negotiations stalled under outgoing president Tassos Papadopoulos.
Christofias becomes the European Union's sole communist head of state and his victory makes Cyprus the only European country with a communist president apart from ex-Soviet Moldova -- over 16 years after the Soviet Union collapsed.
The island's continued division has been a key stumbling block in Turkey's own efforts to join the EU.
Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since Turkish troops invaded in 1974 in response to a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at union with Greece. A UN peacekeeping force has been deployed on the island since communal unrest first broke in 1963.
Kasoulides, a 59-year-old MEP who won the first round a week ago when voters dumped Papadopoulos, pledged to work with his rival in efforts to solve the Cyprus problem.
Christofias -- whose AKEL party has close ties to Moscow -- was barely 1,000 votes behind Kasoulides in the first round, but on Sunday beat him by more than 33,000 votes after winning the endorsement of three smaller parties that had backed Papadopoulos.
Local media reported that Christofias had promised the centre-right DIKO party of Papadopoulos three ministries including the foreign affairs portfolio and the socialist EDEK party two.
The deal could limit his freedom of manoeuvre on the Cyprus problem as the two centre parties historically take a far less flexible approach than either AKEL or the right-wing DISY.
"I hope he will be the man to solve Cyprus' problems but it will be more difficult now because of the promises he has made to other parties to win their support," said student George Xinisteris, 21.
There is also concern over how he will handle the economy as AKEL is not known for its love of the free market or as a convert to globalisation. It has a Eurosceptic tendency and is wary of NATO, but Christofias has rejected claims he is anti-European, and insisted he will not nationalise the economy or discard any international agreements.
Cyprus has no post of prime minister and executive power rests essentially with the president who is elected for a five-year term.
The international community hoped that the ouster of Papadopoulos would lead to a revival of efforts to reunite the island after his hardline policies led to stalemate. He last met Talat in September but their talks went nowhere.
He led Greek Cypriots in voting down a UN reunification plan that was overwhelmingly endorsed by Turkish Cypriots in referendums in April 2004. One month later a divided island joined the European Union and on January 1 Cyprus entered the eurozone.
About half a million Greek Cypriots were eligible to vote, along with some 400 Turkish Cypriots living in the government-run south of the island.
Cyprus hosts two large British military bases that house a string of super-sensitive listening posts that provide Western powers with intelligence on the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.


by Charlie Charalambous

Iraq warns Turkey over incursion

(BBC) Iraq's foreign minister has warned that any escalation of Turkey's operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq could destabilise the region.
Hoshyar Zebari said the "limited" raid into a remote, uninhabited area should end "as soon as possible".
And the Kurdish regional leader said a "massive resistance" would be mounted if civilians were attacked.
Both Turkey and the rebels have given conflicting casualty figures. The US and the UN have urged restraint.
Correspondents say the aim is to isolate rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, and to prevent them using northern Iraq as a launch-pad for attacks on Turkish soil.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began fighting for a Kurdish homeland in south-eastern Turkey in 1984.
The US, the EU and Turkey consider the PKK to be a terrorist organisation.
Infrastructure targeted
Turkey said its ground forces had crossed the border to tackle rebels late on Thursday after an air and artillery bombardment.
Ankara says 79 Kurdish rebels and seven Turkish soldiers have been killed in two days of fighting. Rebels said they had killed 22 Turkish soldiers - with "not more than five" PKK soldiers wounded. There is no confirmation.
Reports from Turkey on the size of the assault force have varied from 3,000 to 10,000 soldiers.
Without confirming any figures, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, has said the offensive is limited in scale and troops will return as soon as possible.
Iraq's foreign minister said his government had only had been informed of the Turkish incursion "in the last minute" - and did not approve it.
"This is a limited military incursion into a remote, isolated and uninhabited region," Mr Zebari told BBC.
"But if it goes on, I think it could destabilise the region, because really one mistake could lead to further escalation."
Mr Zebari said despite a Turkish promise to Baghdad that Turkish troops would "avoid targeting the infrastructure", a number of bridges had already been destroyed.
Kurdish region leader Massoud Barzani said the regional government would not be a part of the conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK fighters.
"But at the same time, we stress that if the Turkish military targets any Kurdish civilian citizens or any civilian structures, then we will order a large-scale resistance," a statement from Mr Barzani's office said.
Turkey has carried out at least one ground incursion, as well as frequent air and artillery strikes, against suspected PKK targets in Iraq since parliament authorised the army to act in October 2007.
But this operation's timing is unusual as the mountainous border area is still covered with heavy snow, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from Istanbul.
Nor have there been any major PKK attacks inside Turkey for some time, she adds.
Washington said it had been informed of the incursion in advance and that it had urged the Turks to limit their action to precise targeting of rebel Kurdish targets.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern about the situation.
"The protection of civilian life on both sides of the border remains the paramount concern," he said.

UN says its flag to be flown to space station

(AFP) A United Nations flag is to be flown to the International Space Station in April before returning to earth to be displayed at a space exhibition in Vienna, the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs said Thursday.
The office said the blue and white emblem would be ferried to the orbiting space station by South Korean astronaut Ko San who is to conduct scientific experiments there for eight days in April.
On its return to Earth, the flag is to be presented to UN boss Ban Ki-moon before being taken to Vienna later this year to be prominently displayed at the space exhibition at the International Center in the Austrian capital.
The tradition of astronauts taking the UN flag to outer space began during the earliest manned space missions. The flag has orbited the Earth, flown aboard space stations and reached the moon.

Hezbollah chief blasts Israel in ceremony marking militant deaths

(AFP) Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday vowed to avenge the death of one of his group's top militants through the destruction of Israel, which he said was destined to disappear.
"The disappearance of Israel is inevitable, it is divine law," Nasrallah said at a ceremony to mourn the death of Hezbollah top commander Imad Mughnieh and other militants killed in attacks blamed on Israel.
"The presence of Israel is but temporary and cannot go on in the region," Nasrallah added in comments transmitted via video link to thousands of Hezbollah supporters massed in southern Beirut.
"Oh Hajj Imad, I swear by God that your blood will not have been spilled in vain."
As Nasrallah spoke, supporters of the Hezbollah chief fired two rocket-propelled grenades into the air, a security official said. There were no reports of any injuries.
Mughnieh was killed in a car bombing in Damascus on February 12 in an attack Hezbollah has blamed on Israel.
Although Israel welcomed his death, it has denied any involvement.
Nasrallah said that Mughnieh's killing was a clear sign that Israel was preparing a new war against Lebanon but said his troops stood ready for a new "victory."
"We will kill you in the fields, we will kill you in the cities, we will fight you like you have never seen before," said Nasrallah, whose Shiite Muslim group fought a devastating 34-day war with Israel in 2006.
"Israel will be left without an army, and without an army Israel cannot exist."
He also questioned why countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and France had upgraded security measures in Lebanon, telling them that Hezbollah's only enemy was Israel.
"We tell them that they have nothing to fear from us because Israel is our sole enemy," he said at the ceremony which also paid tribute to slain Hezbollah secretary general Abbas Mussawi who was killed by an Israeli missile in 1992.
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia this week advised their citizens to avoid travel to Lebanon and France shut down two of its cultural centres in the south and north of the country for security reasons.
Their actions followed Nasrallah's declaration of "open war" on Israel following Mughnieh's death.
Lebanon has been mired in its worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
The country has been without a president since November because of a standoff between the Western-backed ruling majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition backed by Syria and Iran.
So far, 14 attempts to hold a parliament vote to choose a new head of state have been cancelled, and political tensions in recent weeks have occasionally boiled over into street clashes in Beirut.
Parliament is next due to convene on February 26 in the latest attempt to elect a new head of state.

Turkish president approves amendment lifting headscarf ban

(AFP) Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Friday approved constitutional amendments allowing women to wear Islamic headscarves at universities, defying objections that the move is an attack on secularism.
Gul also called on the government to take steps to dispel concerns over the impact of the amendment package and to give priority to rights reforms that will boost the country's aspiration to join the European Union, a statement from his office said.
The amendments, drawn up by the governing Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP), were adopted by an overwhelming parliamentary majority on February 9, as tens of thousands gathered in capital Ankara to protest against the move.
The president "did not find the amendments in contradiction with the general principles of law, the basic tenets of the republic and procedural rules governing constitutional amendments," a statement said.
"It is been understood that the amendments aim to strengthen the principle of equality before the law and the right to education by elucidating and confirming pre-existing clauses in the constitution," it added.
Secularist forces -- among them the army, the judiciary and academics -- see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance against the strict separation of state and religion in Muslim-majority Turkey.
They say easing the restriction in universities will put pressure on women to cover up and pave the way to lift a similar ban in secondary education and government offices.
Leading academics have warned there could be clashes on campuses and a boycott of classes by some female academics,
The secular main opposition party has threatened to take the amedments to the constitutional court on the grounds that they fall foul of the country's secular order.
Gul believes there is a "necessity to be understanding of the concerns of some of our citizens and to implement arrangements that will dispel these concerns," the presidential statement said.
"The president believes it is necessary to show the utmost sensitivity and care in alleviating these concerns," it added.
The government must also "accelerate arangements to strengthen other basic rights and liberties, and give priority to reforms required by European Union membership process," it said.
The AKP says the headscarf ban, which was imposed after the 1980 military coup, is a violation of the freedom of conscience and the right to education.
But many are wary of the party's roots in a banned Islamist movement and suspect it of having a secret agenda to introduce religious rule in Turkey.
Some have criticized the AKP of favouring its own grassroots at the expense of EU-demanded democracy reforms, underlining that it is yet to fulfill a months-long pledge to rid the penal code of an article that many say is an obstacle to free speech in the country.
The constitutional amendment package changes the code to read that the state will treat everyone equally when it provides services such as university courses and that no one can be barred from education for reasons not clearly laid down by law, an allusion to women who wear headscarves.
Some constitutional experts have warned that the amendments may not be enough on their own to allow Islamic headscarves in universities as the country's highest courts have upheld the ban on the grounds that no one can wear religious symbols to school.
The AKP has said it plans to amend the higher education law next to specifically say that nobody can be barred from education on account of their headscarf, but it is yet unclear when it will move ahead with the plan.

Six powers to meet Monday on Iran nuclear program

(AFP) Six major powers are to meet Monday in Washington for fresh talks on how to make Iran give up its contested uranium enrichment activities, a top US diplomat official said Friday.
The State Department's number three Nicholas Burns said foreign ministry officials of the six -- the five UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany -- would review a proposed third UN sanctions resolution against Iran.
"We will review our strategy (launched at the United Nations) in New York, the pace of the resolution," Burns told reporters.
The six powers want Iran to stop enriching uranium, a process which they suspect Tehran aims to use to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only seeking nuclear power for civilian purposes.
Britain's and France's ambassadors to the UN on Thursday formally submitted to the Security Council members the text of a resolution for new sanctions, which they hope to see passed as soon as possible.
The poposed sanctions include economic and trade restrictions and a travel ban against officials involved in the nuclear program.
The five permanent council members are Britain, the United States, France, China and Russia.
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, complained in a recent report that the Islamic Republic had supplied only patchy details of its activities to its inspectors.

25 killed in Saudi bus crash

Twenty-five people were killed on Friday when a bus overturned in southwest Saudi Arabia, police said.
Eight other people were injured, some seriously, when the Saudi Public Transport Co. (SAPTCO) bus overturned in Abha, a spokesman for the police in the Asir region, where Abha is located, told the official SPA news agency.
An initial investigation indicated that the accident was caused by faulty brakes, said the spokesman, Colonel Abdullah bin Ayedh al-Qarni.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has one of the world's highest rates of traffic accidents, according to its transport ministry. Road deaths have exceeded 35,000 over the past decade, with more than 200,000 people injured.

News Bulletin

ANKARA - Turkish ground troops crossed into northern Iraq in
their hunt for Kurdish PKK rebels, the military said on Friday,
describing the start of a campaign one report said could last 15
days.
- - - -
TEHRAN - A U.N. nuclear watchdog report on Iran's disputed
atomic programme shows Tehran's activities are peaceful and it
is a victory for the Islamic Republic, its chief nuclear
negotiator said on Friday.
- - - -
BELGRADE - The European Union told Serbia on Friday to
protect embassies after attacks over Western support for
Kosovo's secession, and suggested such violence could harm its
prospects of closer ties with the bloc.
- - - -
BAGHDAD - Powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr extended
his Mehdi Army militia ceasefire by six months on Friday, a
decision U.S. officials said would help foster reconciliation
among Iraq's divided communities.
- - - -
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's opposition election winners were
trying to forge a coalition on Friday, raising the prospect of a
government intent on forcing U.S. ally President Pervez
Musharraf from power.
- - - -
BEIRUT - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed on
Friday to avenge the assassination of his senior commander Imad
Moughniyah and threatened to deal Israel a crushing blow if it
attacked Lebanon again.
- - - -
AUSTIN, Texas - Was it a pivotal moment that could change
the campaign, or the swan song of a candidate who may be nearing
the end of her U.S. presidential bid?
- - - -
BARINAS, Venezuela - A Venezuelan passenger plane slammed
into the sheer face of an Andean mountainside shortly after
takeoff from a tourist city and all 46 people on board were
killed, officials said on Friday.
- - - -
HAVANA - Fidel Castro steps down as Cuba's head of state on
Sunday after 49 years at the helm, but at least for the coming
months is likely to retain influence over all aspects of Cuban
life as head of the ruling Cuban Communist Party.
- - - -
NAIROBI - Negotiators for Kenya's political rivals broke off
talks on the post-election crisis for the weekend on Friday
despite growing local and international calls for a quick deal.

American - Iranian relations

Iran and the United States were likely to hold a new round of talks soon about the security
situation in Iraq, a senior Iranian official said on Friday.

A meeting scheduled for earlier this month was postponed by Iran for what it called technical reasons, prompting Washington to question Tehran's commitment to dialogue.

"This (next) round ... is at the level of experts and will be in line with deepening and trengthening the security of the Iraqi people and I think it will take place soon," said Saeed
Jalili, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

Jalili, also Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, did not give a date when he made his remarks at a news conference called to give Tehran's reaction to a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog on the country's disputed atomic activities.

The U.S.-Iranian talks on Iraq are one of the few forums in which officials from the two arch-foes have direct contact. Diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran have been frozen for almost three decades. The United States accuses Iran of destabilising Iraq. Tehran blames the U.S. military presence for the unrest. The U.S. military said this week it had proof Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militias in Iraq were increasingly using secret weapons stores to attack U.S. and Iraqi forces. Washington says the militias get weapons, funding and training from Iran. Iran regularly dismisses such charges.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Iraq on March 2, a trip analysts say Tehran aims to use to show it has close relations with the Iraqi government despite the U.S.
allegations. Tehran says it wants a stable and secure neighbour.

The trip will be the first to Baghdad by a president of the Islamic Republic, which fought an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian)

REUTERS

Abbas and Olmert meet after deadly Gaza clashes

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met on Tuesday in a bid to advance peace talks as Israeli troops continued to strike the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Less than three months after relaunching the peace process at a conference in the United States with a commitment to try to ink a deal by the end of 2008, the negotiations appear to be stalled amid persistent violence in Gaza.
Israeli troops shot dead a 10-year-old boy and a Palestinian gunman in separate incidents on Tuesday, medics said, bringing to at least 188 the number of people killed since the peace talks resumed, according to an AFP count.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops operating in the area responded when a group of Palestinians opened fire on them.
The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June said it had fired 13 mortar rounds at an Israeli foot patrol.
In Jerusalem, Olmert met Abbas and top negotiators from both sides for dinner before the two leaders held one-on-one discussions.
The discussions "were deep, and tonight the prime minister and the Israeli delegation upheld their obligation to negotiate all final status issues," Saeb Erakat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, told AFP after the talks.
In the days leading up to the meeting, the two sides had been at loggerheads over Jerusalem, with Olmert vowing to leave it to the end of the talks and the Palestinians insisting it should be discussed alongside other core issues.
A senior Israeli official who attended Tuesday's talks told AFP the subject was not raised by either side.
Erakat said the Palestinians "assured the Israeli delegation that we would study the issue of Jerusalem but we did not discuss all the issues in detail."
Abbas did however "emphasise that it was not possible to postpone any particular final status issue or advance one issue at the expense of another," Erakat said.
"The president said we want complete and total solution for all the issues," he said, referring to the core issues of the decades-old conflict, including Jerusalem, borders, Jewish settlements, and Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinians had criticised Olmert for saying on Sunday that Jerusalem would be tackled last after a key coalition partner, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said it would quit his government the moment the issue was raised.
Israel has declared the entire city its "eternal, undivided capital", a move not recognised by the international community or the Palestinians, who have repeatedly demanded east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
Palestinians have repeatedly bemoaned the lack of progress, not only on the issue of Jerusalem, but with regard to the other core disputes.
"Not enough has happened over the past three months that could suggest to me that a treaty, per se, is going to be possible by the end of 2008," Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said on Tuesday.
But the senior Israeli official insisted both sides were still focused on concluding a "comprehensive agreement" by the end of the year.
The renewed peace talks have been marred by violence in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where Israel launches regular air and ground raids in a bid to curb near-daily rocket fire from the territory.
Abbas -- whose forces were driven from Gaza in June -- called for a reciprocal ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians "on all Palestinian lands" and asked Israel to increase its humanitarian aid and ease restrictions on Gaza.
Israel "promised there would not be a humanitarian crisis but no one promised the reopening of the crossings," the senior official said.
Israel's decision to seal all crossings into Gaza has sparked fears of a humanitarian crisis among the population of 1.5 million.
Hamas officials held talks with Egyptian security officials on Tuesday in a bid to reopen the Rafah border, the sole Gaza crossing point not connected to Israel, a security source said in Egypt.
And at a conference in Amman, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Robert Serry urged Israel to halt its "collective punishment" of the Gaza population.


by Ron Bousso

Roadside bomb kills three US soldiers in Baghdad

A roadside bomb hit a US patrol in northwestern Baghdad, killing three soldiers, the American military announced on Wednesday.
The attack took place around 10.30 pm (1930 GMT) on Tuesday, a military statement said without giving further details.
The latest death brings to 3,966 the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.
Roadside bombs, especially highly lethal explosively formed penetrators which shoot out a slug of molten metal that can cut through armoured vehicles, are the biggest cause of US casualties in Iraq.
American commanders say they are usually the "signature" of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

US floats NATO troop plan for West Bank: Israeli report

The United States is floating an idea to temporarily deploy NATO troops in the West Bank after Israeli troops eventually withdraw, a newspaper said on Wednesday, quoting Israeli defence officials.
General James Jones, the US special Middle East envoy, is spearheading the idea, the Jerusalem Post reported.
It said Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak had been briefed but had not finalised his position. Israel has traditionally been hostile to any suggestions of using foreign troops to help achieve peace in the region.
Under such a deal, third-party troops would be stationed in the West Bank to secure the area between the time of an Israeli withdrawal and when the Palestinian Authority is able to take over full security control.
"The deployment of such a force has come up in talks, and Jones is known to be working on it," a senior defence official was quoted as saying. "At the moment, it's just an idea and yet to be accepted or adopted by Israel."
Asked about the report, US embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said only that "General Jones hasn't said anything in public about any discussions he may be having in private, and it is very early in the process."
Jones, a former commander of the US Marine Corps and NATO military chief, was named in November as US envoy on Middle East security issues.
One concern for Israel is the degree to which its troops would still have freedom of operation in the West Bank under such a deal, the Post said.
"If they fire a Qassam rocket into Israel, will we be able to respond, or will we need to rely on the foreign troops staioned there?" one defence official was quoted as asking.

Iran hangs 10 criminals in one day

Iran hanged 10 criminals on Wednesday, the latest in a growing number of executions in the Islamic republic that officials say are aimed at improving public security, the Fars news agency reported.
Six criminals were executed in prison for armed robbery in the northern city of Zanjan while four convicted murderers were hanged in Tehran's Evin prison, the agency said.
The hangings bring to at least 48 the number of executions in the Islamic republic so far this year. The number of executions soared last year to 298, according to an AFP count.

Dissident ayatollah says freedom lacking in Iran

Iran's most prominent dissident cleric has complained freedom is being "sacrificed" in the Islamic republic, pointing to the mass disqualification of candidates for March parliamentary elections.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, once seen as the successor as supreme leader to revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, also denounced "wrongdoings" which he said were giving Islam a "violent image".
"People who have paid dearly for the slogans of independence and freedom are being snubbed," the reformist Etemad newspaper quoted Montazeri as saying.
"We have succeeded in achieving independence. But freedom, which is advocated by Islam and the constitution, has been sacrificed."
"A clear and deplorable example of that is the mass disqualifications which have taken place regardless of the law and national interests and only out of political bias," he said.
Reformists have complained their chances of success in March 14 parliamentary elections have been wrecked by the mass disqualification of their candidates in preliminary vetting.
A conservative electoral watchdog has reinstated over 800 of hopefuls but reformists complain they are still not able to compete in all constituencies and their chances of mounting a serious challenge are weak.
"Continuing on the present path would weaken the country on an internal and international level," commented Montazeri.
Angered by the ayatollah's open criticism of social and political restrictions in the country, Khomeini demoted Montazeri from his position as his designate successor.
The Iranian authorities then put him under house arrest in 1998 from which he was released in January 2003.
From his home in the clerical epicentre of Qom, Montazeri is one of few prominent figures inside Iran who dares to openly criticise the policies of its Islamic leaders.
"People were not to have economic problems and we were not supposed to have innocent people imprisoned after the revolution" that ousted the US-backed shah in 1979, he said.
"But unfortunately, wrongdoings are being committed which portray a violent image of Islam as they are carried out under the name of Islam."
He also spoke out on relations with the United States, saying Khomeini's order for a severing of ties with the "Great Satan" was not meant to last for ever.
"Such a ruling is clearly temporary and it is possible to change according to conditions," Montazeri said.
"It should be examined without party interests and bias whether resuming ties would benefit the country," he said. "Zionists in America are against relations and in our country some seek their interests in tension and lack of ties."

Iraq electricity minister seeks more funds

Iraqi Electricity Minister Karim Wahid urged the government to double his ministry's budget to allow swifter rehabilitation of the country's battered power network in comments published on Wednesday.
"We have asked for four billion dollars to rebuild the power network but the 2008 budget gave us 1.4 billion dollars," Iraqi newspapers quoted Wahid as saying.
"We need 1.5 billion dollars to repair power stations and 2.5 billion dollars to buy new ones."
According to Wahid, Baghdad is receiving less than half of its electricity needs because oil and gas pipelines that supply power stations in the Iraqi capital have been destroyed.
"Baghdad is getting only 1,000 megawatts instead of the 2,500 megawatts it needs," he said.
"Baghdad power stations are not producing electricity because the eight oil and gas pipelines that supply them have been destroyed."
He also complained that power is not being distributed equally to all parts of the city, and blamed this on armed groups.
"If power was distributed equally, it could help resolve the problem. But armed bands threaten to kill employees in distribution centres if their neighbourhoods face power cuts," Wahid said.
The beleaguered minister urged foreign firms to help rehabilitate the power sector which suffered from serious under-investment under Saddam Hussein's regime before being heavily battered by the US-led invasion of 2003 and subsequent sabotage by insurgent groups.
Wahid said in September that Iraq needs 25 billion dollars between now and 2016 to rehabilitate the power network.

Palestinians should follow Kosovo example: negotiator

A senior Palestinian official on Wednesday called for a Kosovo-like declaration of independence in the absence of progress in peace negotiations with Israel.
But Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas insisted he will continue negotiating and that he was "optimistic and hopeful" about the recently revived talks.
"Our people have the right to proclaim independence as the people of Kosovo did. We were occupied long before the Kosovo problem emerged," Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the Palestinian negotiators, told AFP.
"Measures must be taken with a view to a unilateral declaration of independence as Kosovo did, and the world will then have to ensure the end of the occupation of our land," he said.
He pointed out that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat symbolically proclaimed independence in 1988 but that "it never was applied on the ground as we wanted this to be done through negotiation."
"Today we want to unilaterally proclaim our independence on the ground and through peaceful means, and will call on our people to protect their state, borders, institutions and the future of their children," Abed Rabbo said.
Palestinians should consider this option as talks with Israel "have made no progress" since they were relaunched in November.
"Israel is seeking to gain time to grab more land and impose facts on the ground that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders, that is a truncated state in the West Bank," he charged.
Abbas distanced himself from the remarks, and expressed optimism following a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday in which the two leaders discussed the core issues of the conflict.
"We have begun 'final status' negotiations and we feel optimistic and hopeful, and we hope to God that this year will not end without our people seeing independence and the end of the occupation," Abbas said at a meeting in Ramallah.
In an earlier statement he said he would continue negotiations aimed at a peace accord in 2008.
"If that becomes impossible and we reach a deadlock we would refer to the Arab nation (world) so the decision is taken at the highest level," he said.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat also played down Abed Rabbo's comments, telling journalists that "independence is not just a declaration and the Palestinian cause is not like that of Kosovo."
He added that Palestinian leaders were not considering a unilateral declaration of independence.
Israel expressed surprise at Abed Rabbo's statement, with foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel telling AFP it "does not coincide with the position of the Palestinian leadership that is currently negotiating with Israel."
Kosovo on Sunday declared independence from Serbia, which vowed never to recognise the move.
Several countries including the United States and Britain have recognised Kosovo as a new state, but Israel has said it "will formulate its position later on."
"We will not be part of the first wave of countries that recognise Kosovo," said an Israeli official who asked not to be named.
"We believe such issues should not be determined by unilateral steps but through negotiation," he said, warning of what he called "possible repercussions in this area."
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where Palestinians hope to establish their state, have been occupied by Israel since 1967 although Israel pulled out troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.


by Nasser Abu Bakr

Sadr ceasefire in Iraq may not be renewed: clerics

The six-month ceasefire order given by Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to his Mahdi Army militia may not be renewed, his aides warned on Wednesday three days before the "freeze" expires.
"All possibilities are open concerning the prolongation or not of the halt of activities of the Mahdi Army. The matter is in the hands of Moqtada al-Sadr," spokesman Salah al-Obeidi told AFP.
"The deadline is next Saturday," Obeidi said from Sadr's office in the central shrine city of Najaf, adding that an announcement could be made during the weekly Friday prayers.
If Sadr "does not make a pronouncement and no statement is issued, that would signify the end of the period of cessation of activities of the Mahdi Army," Obeidi said.
Hazim al-Aajari, a cleric and confidant of Sadr, told AFP it was certain that an announcement would be made during Friday prayers.
But, he added, "I cannot say whether Moqtada al-Sadr will renew the truce or not."
Sadr ordered a six-month freeze in his militia's activities on August 29 after allegations that his fighters were involved in bloody clashes in the shrine city of Karbala, near Najaf.
Under the Muslim calendar, the ceasefire expires on Saturday.
Powerful members of the Sadr movement, including its MPs, have urged him not to renew the truce on the grounds that Mahdi Army fighters and other Sadrists are being targeted by Iraq's security forces.
Militiamen in Sadr City, the cleric's bastion in east Baghdad, complain that they are being singled out for raids and detentions by the US military.
The suspension of the militia's activities is cited by US commanders as one of the factors behind a 62 percent reduction in violent attacks across Iraq since June.
US military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith had nothing but praise for Sadr on Wednesday.
"Moqtada al-Sadr's efforts in the ceasefire have been productive," he told a news conference in Baghdad. "Overall we are witnessing a decrease in violence" since the ceasefire.
Sadr and his supporters "recognise the responsible role they play in the Shiite community", Smith said. They have "been very positive in reducing violence, and we expect to continue to see that trend."
But he blamed "Iranian-backed special groups" -- dissident Mahdi Army fighters -- for the upsurge in rocket attacks in Baghdad in recent days.
"These are signature Iranian types of weapons," Smith said, adding that the reason for the uptick was not clear.
"We are uncertain what has been the motivation," he added.
On Monday a barrage of 16 Katyusha rockets fired at Baghdad's international airport and the adjoining Camp Victory military base killed five Iraqis and wounded two US soldiers.
Another barrage of rockets slammed into two US outposts in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday, wounding four soldiers.
The truck from which the rockets were launched exploded as bomb disposal experts approached it, killing 15 members of Iraq's security forces, Iraqi officials said.
Smith said that US and Iraqi forces arrested six men, "all of them testing positive for explosive residue," after the Monday rocket attacks on Camp Victory.

Israeli ultra-Orthodox MP blames gays for earthquakes

A Jewish ultra-Orthodox MP on Wednesday blamed homosexuals for a recent earthquake that struck Israel and the region.
Speaking at a parliamentary committee on the country's preparedness for quakes, Shas MP Shlomo Benizri lashed out at homosexuality, considered an abomination under Jewish law and in its religious text, the Gemara.
"We are looking for earthly solutions, how to prevent them," Benizri said.
"I have another way to prevent earthquakes. The Gemara says that one of the reasons earthquakes happen -- which the Knesset (parliament) legitimises -- is homosexuality."
"God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up," he added.
The Israeli parliament decriminalised homosexuality in 1988, and has since passed several laws recognising gay rights.
A tremor measuring 5.0 on the open-ended Richter scale rocked Israel and the region on Friday, drawing new warnings by seismology experts in the country of a major earthquake within years because of a major faultline in the region.

Egypt opposition to contest polls despite clampdown

The supreme guide of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood pledged on Wednesday that the country's leading opposition movement would still contest local elections in April despite a quickening crackdown on its members.
Egyptian police arrested another 90 members of the group earlier in the day, bringing to more than 170 the number of Islamists rounded up ahead of the key polls.
But Brotherhood supreme guide Mohammed Mehdi Akef insisted: "We are going to take part in the municipal elections and we are going to call on the whole people to take part.
"Since the Brotherhood's gains in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the government has been riding roughshod on everyone's freedoms, not just our assets."
Akef was alluding to the government's targeting of the opposition group's finances in the crackdown it has conducted in recent months.
The Brotherhood had previously been largely tolerated by the authorities, although it remains outlawed and was forced to field its candidates in the 2005 polls as independents.
Wednesday's arrests took place in Brotherhood members' homes in and around Cairo as well as in several towns south of the capital, a security source said.
"They were arrested for belonging to an illegal organisation," the source told AFP, adding that those held included engineers, accountants, doctors and students.
On Sunday police arrested 51 Brotherhood members "for activities related to the municipal elections," the source told AFP. "Any Muslim Brotherhood member caught preparing for these elections will be detained."
Another 36 Muslim Brothers were arrested on February 14.
Akef said the intensifying crackdown would serve only to "push the movement to confront the dictatorship."
"The Muslim Brothers have shown patience but it's got us nowhere," he said.
The municipal polls were postponed for two years in 2006, in what observers said was a way to avoid another success for the opposition group.
Traditionally controlled by the ruling National Democratic Party, the local elections are expected to draw fierce competition after a constitutional amendment was passed in 2005 requiring independent presidential candidates to secure the backing of municipal councillors.

Next plague likeliest to emerge from poor tropical countries

Scores of infectious diseases have emerged to threaten humans in the past decades as viruses leap the species barrier from wild animals and bacteria mutate into antibiotic-resistant strains, scientists reported on Wednesday.
Presenting the first-ever map of "hotspots" of new infectious diseases, they predict that the next pandemic is likeliest to come out of poor tropical countries, where burgeoning human populations come into contact with wildlife.
A three-year investigation led by four major institutions tracked 335 incidents since 1940 when a new infectious disease emerged.
The category includes HIV/AIDS, which has slain or infected more than 65 million people around the world, and outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and H5N1 bird flu, which have cost tens of billions of dollars to contain.
The emergence of new diseases have roughly quadrupled over the past 50 years, says the study, appearing in the British journal Nature.
Sixty percent of them are so-called zoonoses, or diseases that have been transmitted from animals to humans.
Most zoonoses come from wild animals, especially mammals, which are the most closely related species to humans. Novel pathogens that adapt to humans can be extremely lethal, as we have no resistance to them.
New zoonoses include AIDS, which is believed to have jumped from chimpanzees to humans, possibly through hunters who killed and butchered apes; SARS, whose natural reservoir is Chinese bats; and the Ebola virus, which holes up in three species of African fruit bat and infects animal primates and humans.
"We are crowding wildlife into ever-smaller areas, and human population is increasing," said co-author Marc Levy of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, affiliated to Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York.
"Where those two things meet, that is a recipe for something crossing over."
Areas that present the biggest potential source for a new zoonose are "the whole of the East Asia region, the Indian sub-continent, the Niger delta (and) the Great Lakes region in Africa," he said in a teleconference with reporters.
Some wild zoonoses end up infecting humans through an intermediary path, via livestock, such as the Nipah virus, which emerged in Malaysia, or via poultry, such as bird flu.
More than 20 percent of emerging infectious diseases derive from a growing imperviousness to drugs, such as extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), chloroquine-resistant malaria and verocytotoxigenic Escherichia coli, a highly dangerous strain of intestinal bug.
Many of these outbreaks have occurred in Western Europe or North America.
A spike in new infectious diseases occurred in the 1980s, probably because the AIDS pandemic unleashed a range of other new diseases, the authors believe.
El Nino weather patterns in the 1990s may also have helped spread mosquito-borne diseases, according to the study, amplifying concern voiced last year by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that global warming would spread such dangers.
The research is based on an exhaustive trawl through medical literature to identify new infectious diseases, which were then correlated with global patterns in human population density, changes in population, latitude, rainfall and wildlife biodiversity.
"Our hotspots map show that the next new important zoonotic disease is likely to originate in the tropics, a region rich in wildlife species and under increasing pressure from people," said Peter Daszak, executive director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine at Wildlife Trust, New York.
"The problem is, most of our resources are focussed on the richer countries in the North that can afford surveillance."
Daszak said the priority should be to set up monitoring networks in developing countries that would identify a threat from the outset and circumscribe it, rather than let it spread like wildfire around the globe thanks to jet travel and trade.
"If we continue to ignore this important preventative measure, then human populations will continue to be at risk from pandemic diseases."


by Richard Ingham

Saudi to link holy cities by high-speed train

Saudi King Abdullah on Wednesday gave the green light for a high-speed rail link between Islam's holy cities of Mecca and Medina via the commercial hub of Jeddah, the official SPA news agency reported.
It said the project, first mooted years ago to help transport the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who visit the kingdom for the annual hajj pilgrimage, will be financed by Saudi investment funds.
The train will travel at up to 300 kilometres (180 miles) per hour, allowing a Mecca-Jeddah journey time of half an hour and Jeddah-Medina in two hours, SPA quoted Transport Minister Jebarah bin Eid al-Suraisri as saying.
The agency did not give an extimated cost or timetable for the project.
Jeddah on the Red Sea is the required port of entry for millions of Muslims performing the year-round Umra, or minor pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.
It is also the port of entry for the main hajj which precedes the annual Feast of the Sacrifice, or Eid al-Adha, and brings together more than two million of the faithful.
Last April the Saudi government awarded three contracts totalling 1.9 billion dollars for the construction of railways covering 1,766 kilometres (1,100 miles).
SPA said at the time the work was expected to take 42 months to complete.

Yemeni kills four brothers before shooting himself

A Yemeni killed four of his brothers on Tuesday before turning his gun on himself after a row over a plot of land, the official Saba news agency reported.
The man opened fire on his brothers with a Kalashnikov rifle, killing four of them and wounding two, in the province of Dhamar, south of the capital, a local security official told the news agency.
The 45-year-old assailant was the youngest of the brothers. The eldest was 70.
Last year, Yemen banned people from bringing firearms into major cities in a bid to stem crime and violence in a country with one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world.
Owning a gun has long been seen as an essential part of the culture in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, which has an estimated 60 million firearms in private hands -- roughly three for every citizen.
Two students were killed and 24 wounded earlier this month when a man threw a hand grenade in a restaurant at Sanaa university, in an attack that was also linked to a family dispute.

Gaza boy shot dead during Israeli incursion

A 10-year-old boy was shot dead during an Israeli incursion into the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medics said, as the army kept up near daily operations in the Hamas-ruled territory.
The child, Tamer Abu Shaar, 10, was shot in the head by a bullet fired by the Israeli army during an incursion near the central town of Deir al-Balah, Doctor Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza emergency services, told AFP.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops operating in the area responded when a group of Palestinians opened fire on them, saying the "soldiers identified hitting only gunmen."
The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June said it had fired 13 mortar rounds at an Israeli foot patrol in the area.
Earlier Tuesday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian gunman during a firefight, medics and the army said.
An army statement said "a gunman approaching the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip opened fire at the force, which returned fire and identified hitting him."
At least 6,149 people -- the vast majority of them Palestinians -- have been killed since the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, according to an AFP count.
Of those, 188 were killed after Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks at a US-sponsored conference in November.

Anti-Qaeda family gunned down at home in Iraq

A couple and their son as well as a woman neighbour taking part in the fight against Al-Qaeda have been killed by gunmen near the restive Iraqi city of Baquba, police and relatives said on Tuesday.
"Armed men of Al-Qaeda attacked the home of Faraj Dahshem al-Zaydi in Sheikh village on Monday. They killed the 60-year-old man, his wife, their son Mustafa, 18, and a 35-year-old neighbour," police Liutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidi told AFP.
"The armed men put the three members of the family in a room of their home and gunned them down," he said.
The head of Baquba hospital's morgue, Ahmad Fuad, said four bodies were brought in.
Villagers and family members said at the hospital that they had joined one of the local "Awakening" groups which have sided with the US military in fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
An army officer, meanwhile, said Iraqi soldiers killed two Saudi nationals and an Algerian suspected of belonging to the Al-Qaeda terror network in a pre-dawn raid on Tuesday near the northern city of Samarra.
Iraqi special forces arrested a local Al-Qaeda leader, identified as Mahmud al-Rahmani, after an operation against a hideout in an industrial district of Samarra, Lieutenant Muthanna Shakir Mahmud said.
During an interrogation, Rahmani told the soldiers of a second hideout in a Samarra suburb. The soldiers raided the site and clashed with the Saudis and the Algerian, killing all three, Mahmud said.
Soldiers discovered a weapons cache at the site that included rockets and bombs, he added.
In Mosul, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up his car in an attack on security forces, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding three others.
And a police officer was killed when two gunmen fired into his vehicle near the city of Baquba, security sources said.
US and Iraqi forces have been seeking for more than a year to flush out Al-Qaeda operatives and have pacified several areas, including districts of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar.

Lebanese boy killed on Syria border

Syrian security forces shot dead a 14-year-old Lebanese boy as he was grazing livestock close to the common border on Tuesday, a Lebanese security source said.
The sector of the border in north Lebanon where the shooting took place has seen extensive activity by smugglers, the source added.
The authorities have opened an inquiry into the circumstances.

بان كي مون يدعو من جديد الى وقف العنف في دارفور

اعتبر الامين العام للامم المتحدة بان كي مون ان القصف الذي تعرض له مؤخرا مخيم للاجئين في دارفور امر "غير مقبول" ودعا الى وضع حد فوري لاعمال العنف الدائرة في هذا الاقليم السوداني.
واوضح الجهاز الصحافي لبان كي مون ان الاخير "يشعر بقلق شديد لاعمال العنف الاخيرة في غرب دارفور ويعتبر على الاخص ان القصف الذي استهدف في 18 و19 شباط/فبراير مخيما للنازحين في ارو شارو .. امرا غير مقبول".
واشار الى ان "معلومات اخرى قادمة من دارفور تفيد بان قوات حكومية وقوات ميليشيا تتجمع في منطقة جبل مون في غرب دارفور ما يشكل اشارة مقلقة الى ان اعمال العنف ستستأنف".
واضاف ان "الامين العام يدعو جميع الاطراف الى وقف اعمال العنف فورا والدخول في العملية السياسية التي يقودها الموفدون الخاصون للامم المتحدة والاتحاد الافريقي".
وقد اعلنت المفوضية العليا للاجئين التابعة للامم المتحدة ان غارات جوية جديدة جرت ليل الاثنين الثلاثاء وصباح الثلاثاء غرب دارفور.
وقالت جينيفير باغونيس المتحدثة باسم المفوضية للصحافيين في جنيف ان "المفوضية العليا اجبرت على سحب فريقها المكلف اللاجئين القادمين الى بيراك (تشاد) في المناطق الحدودية، اثر غارات جوية خلال الليل وصباح اليوم في غرب دارفور".
واضافت ان سبعة لاجئين قدموا الى تشاد ليلا، افادوا ان مخيم النازحين في آرو شارو الذي يقع شمالي بلدة جبل مون، استهدف بالغارات. واوضحت ان هؤلاء اللاجئين نقلوا جريحا توفي لدى وصوله تشاد بعد ان فقد ساقيه.

Abbas and Olmert meet after deadly Gaza clashes

JERUSALEM, Feb 19, 2008 (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met on Tuesday in a bid to advance peace talks as Israeli troops continued to strike the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Less than three months after relaunching the peace process at a conference in the United States with a commitment to try to ink a deal by the end of 2008, the negotiations appear to be stalled amid persistent violence in Gaza.
Israeli troops shot dead a 10-year-old boy and a Palestinian gunman in separate incidents on Tuesday, medics said, bringing to at least 188 the number of people killed since the peace talks resumed, according to an AFP count.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops operating in the area responded when a group of Palestinians opened fire on them.
The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June said it had fired 13 mortar rounds at an Israeli foot patrol.
In Jerusalem, Olmert met Abbas and top negotiators from both sides for dinner before the two leaders held one-on-one discussions.
The discussions "were deep, and tonight the prime minister and the Israeli delegation upheld their obligation to negotiate all final status issues," Saeb Erakat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, told AFP after the talks.
In the days leading up to the meeting, the two sides had been at loggerheads over Jerusalem, with Olmert vowing to leave it to the end of the talks and the Palestinians insisting it should be discussed alongside other core issues.
A senior Israeli official who attended Tuesday's talks told AFP the subject was not raised by either side.
Erakat said the Palestinians "assured the Israeli delegation that we would study the issue of Jerusalem but we did not discuss all the issues in detail."
Abbas did however "emphasise that it was not possible to postpone any particular final status issue or advance one issue at the expense of another," Erakat said.
"The president said we want complete and total solution for all the issues," he said, referring to the core issues of the decades-old conflict, including Jerusalem, borders, Jewish settlements, and Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinians had criticised Olmert for saying on Sunday that Jerusalem would be tackled last after a key coalition partner, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said it would quit his government the moment the issue was raised.
Israel has declared the entire city its "eternal, undivided capital", a move not recognised by the international community or the Palestinians, who have repeatedly demanded east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
Palestinians have repeatedly bemoaned the lack of progress, not only on the issue of Jerusalem, but with regard to the other core disputes.
"Not enough has happened over the past three months that could suggest to me that a treaty, per se, is going to be possible by the end of 2008," Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said on Tuesday.
But the senior Israeli official insisted both sides were still focused on concluding a "comprehensive agreement" by the end of the year.
The renewed peace talks have been marred by violence in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where Israel launches regular air and ground raids in a bid to curb near-daily rocket fire from the territory.
Abbas -- whose forces were driven from Gaza in June -- called for a reciprocal ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians "on all Palestinian lands" and asked Israel to increase its humanitarian aid and ease restrictions on Gaza.
Israel "promised there would not be a humanitarian crisis but no one promised the reopening of the crossings," the senior official said.
Israel's decision to seal all crossings into Gaza has sparked fears of a humanitarian crisis among the population of 1.5 million.
Hamas officials held talks with Egyptian security officials on Tuesday in a bid to reopen the Rafah border, the sole Gaza crossing point not connected to Israel, a security source said in Egypt.
And at a conference in Amman, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Robert Serry urged Israel to halt its "collective punishment" of the Gaza population.

by Ron Bousso

Rocket blasts kill 15 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Feb 19, 2008 (AFP) - Iraqi police said 15 people were killed on Tuesday when a series of rockets primed for attack in a southeast Baghdad neighbourhood exploded as security forces members were trying to defuse them.
At least 27 people were wounded in the powerful nighttime blasts in Al-Obeidi neighbourhood, a senior police officer said, declining to be named.
"Police found a truck that was being used as launching pad by insurgents for a rocket attack on a nearby US military base," the officer told AFP.
"Some of the rockets had been fired. As they were trying to defuse the others, there was a mishandling and they blew up."
Security officials had earlier said the truck had exploded when the security forces were inspecting it after insurgents firing the rockets fled.
The US military said two of its outposts in the area were hit by "indirect" fire within five minutes of each other, wounding a total of four soldiers. The military uses the term "indirect fire" for rocket and mortar attacks.
"In the first attack, we had one coalition soldier wounded," said US military spokesman Major Brad Leighton, adding that the outposts were near to each other."
"In the second attack, we had three coalition soldiers wounded," he said.
The rocket attacks are the second in two days against US military bases.
On Monday, a barrage of Katyusha rockets fired at Baghdad's international airport and the adjoining Camp Victory military base killed five Iraqis and injured two US soldiers.
Mortar and rocket attacks are usually blamed by the US military on Iranian-backed Shiite militias it terms "special groups."
US military spokesman Real Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters on Sunday that "special groups" were increasingly using stocks from hidden caches to target US and Iraqi forces.
"What we're seeing is an increase in the use of weapons by Iranian-backed special groups," he said.
The military uses the term special groups to describe what it says are "rogue elements" in the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who are ignoring his ceasefire order given almost six months ago and which expires at the end of February.