For some, Myanmar is ultimate frontier market

For some, Myanmar is ultimate frontier market

For some, Myanmar is ultimate frontier market

Posted: 04 Nov 2010 01:03 AM PDT

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Asset manager Douglas Clayton calls it the ultimate frontier market: a country rich in natural gas, timber and gemstones strategically located between China and India with enormous potential for infrastructure.

Four "UK-linked terrorists" arrested in Iran - state TV

Posted: 04 Nov 2010 12:29 AM PDT

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian authorities have arrested four people they say were paid by someone based in Britain to carry out assassinations, state-run Press TV reported on Thursday.

Clinton to meet Israel PM Netanyahu in U.S. next week

Posted: 04 Nov 2010 12:29 AM PDT

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday she plans to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the United States next week.

Qantas grounds giant A380s after engine failure

Posted: 04 Nov 2010 12:29 AM PDT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Qantas Airways suspended flights of its Airbus A380s on Thursday after one of the aircraft was forced to land in Singapore with engine trouble, one of the most serious incidents for the world's largest passenger plane in its three years of commercial flight.

Haiti storm threatens cholera recovery

Posted: 04 Nov 2010 12:19 AM PDT

Tropical storm Tomas is threatening Haiti, even before the Caribbean nation has had a chance to recover from last January's devastating earthquake.


Qantas grounds A380 flights after engine failure

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 11:24 PM PDT

SINGAPORE, Nov 4 — Qantas Airways suspended flights of its Airbus A380s today after one of the aircraft was forced to land in Singapore with engine trouble, one of the most serious incidents for the world's largest passenger plane in its three years of commercial flight. The Airbus A380, which had originated in London and was carrying 459 people, ...


More evacuated as Indonesian volcano erupts again

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 03:18 PM PDT

WUKIRSARI: Indonesia ordered thousands more people to evacuate their villages today as the country's most active volcano erupted again, shooting deadly gas and ash into the sky.

Volcanologists said the "high intensity" eruption was the strongest yet from the 2,914-metre (9,616-foot) Mount Merapi, but there were no reports of new casualties after 36 people were killed last week.

"Today's eruption is bigger than yesterday's. Heat clouds and volcanic material were shot 10km (six miles) into the sky," a government scientist said in Yogyakarta, which lies south of the volcano.

An avalanche of heat clouds that can kill anything in their path streamed nine kilometres down the slopes of the volcano, a sacred landmark in Javanese tradition whose name translates as "Mountain of Fire".

Residents of an emergency shelter in Wukirsari village of Sleman district, about 20km from the volcano's peak, said it spat heat clouds and debris for about three hours after dawn.

Scientists however said it had erupted throughout the night but the extent of the debris – which reached almost as high as the altitude of cruising jetliners – had only become visible after sunrise.

Officials said the number of people at safety shelters rose to 90,000 from 75,000 yesterday, when the official exclusion zone was widened from 10km to 15km around the volcano.

"The emergency shelters are now overcrowded," emergency response field coordinator Widi Sutikno said.

"We've started to move facilities and equipment from the previous shelters to the new locations," he added.

In Magelang district military official Ida Bagus Surya said volcanic debris ripped 10 tents yesterday.

- AFP

Airbus makes emergency landing

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:52 PM PDT

A giant Airbus A380 from the Australian airline Qantas has made an emergency landing in Singapore after developing engine trouble


German female rabbi to make history

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 11:13 PM PDT

Germany will ordain a female rabbi at a ceremony in Berlin on Thursday, for the first time since 1935.


Americans sicker but English die quicker says study

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:46 PM PDT

LONDON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Older Americans suffer more chronic disease than their English counterparts, but the English die earlier, according to a study on Thursday that could revive debate about whose health system is better.

U.S. border cops find massive Mexico drug tunnel

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:46 PM PDT

SAN DIEGO, California (Reuters) - U.S. border police have found a sophisticated drug smugglers' tunnel the length of six football fields linking Southern California with Mexico and arrested two people, authorities said on Wednesday.

FACTBOX - Airbus A380, the world's biggest passenger jet

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:46 PM PDT

No injuries were reported.

Obama must ‘move in our direction’, says Republican

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:39 PM PDT

WASHINGTON, Nov 4 — US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, defending remarks that Barack Obama should be a one-term president, will say on Thursday his party's goals can be accomplished only when an ally is in the White House. After Republicans wrested control of the House of Representatives from Democrats and picked up seats in the Senate ...


In India, Obama searches for big gesture

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 01:51 PM PDT

By Shaun Tandon

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will be looking for a way to prove his love for India during a visit, as he tries to end suspicions in the world's largest democracy that his interest lies elsewhere.

Obama, smarting from an election defeat at home, starts a four-nation Asian tour on Saturday in India, whose relations with the United States have rapidly warmed in the past decade.

Obama has described India as one of the few global partners for the United States and last year honoured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the pomp of Obama's first White House state dinner.

But many Indians have been uneasy about Obama's early efforts to build bridges with fellow Asian giant China and to assist India's historic rival Pakistan. Obama got off on the wrong foot with New Delhi before his inauguration by musing about mediating over divided Kashmir.

However, US presidents have proven they can quickly break the ice in India. Bill Clinton is remembered fondly there for his amiable visit in 2000, just two years after sharp exchanges over New Delhi's nuclear tests.

George W Bush also faced doubts due to his wartime partnership with Pakistan but quickly earned admirers in New Delhi by working to build an alliance, symbolised in a landmark deal on civil nuclear cooperation.

Robert Blackwill, who served as US ambassador to New Delhi under Bush, said Obama should use a speech before Parliament to pledge support for one of India's top goals – a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Famed eloquence

Such a declaration "would get them on their feet with rapturous applause", said Blackwill, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If he uses more equivocal language, of course the Indian scribes will take it apart.

"I don't have any doubt that the president is going to wow the Indian masses," Blackwill added, noting Obama's famed eloquence during his presidential campaign.

A study for the Center for a New American Security led by Richard Armitage and Nicholas Burns, both senior diplomats under Bush, called for the United States to explicitly support India's global aims, including a UN seat.

The study also said the United States should ease export controls to allow India to buy high-end military equipment, encourage a greater Indian role in Afghanistan and look for ways to cooperate on fighting climate change.

Pakistan has repeatedly rejected an Indian role in Afghanistan. The Obama administration has put a priority on improving uneasy ties with Pakistan, recently announcing a new military package.

Burns, now a professor at Harvard University, recognized the need to cooperate with Pakistan but said the United States should reject Islamabad's complaints about India's aid to Afghanistan.

"I kind of worry that sometimes our extreme, acute focus on that short-term interest with Pakistan might crowd out the longer-term interest in building a strategic partnership with India," Burns said.

Partisan divide

Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Obama had a "historic opportunity" to demonstrate US support for India's ambitions.

Tellis acknowledged that many Indians saw a drift in US ties but said the change was "ironically a function of India's success."

"Consequently, it has not received the attention that is understandably showered on the Obama administration's worst headaches," Tellis added.

India enjoys support across the partisan divide in Washington, a striking change from the Cold War era, when many US politicians were suspicious of New Delhi's coziness with the Soviet Union.

However, George Perkovich, vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, offered a contrarian view and said the United States needed to be more "realistic" about ties with India.

Perkovich said US-Indian interests diverged over key areas, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. He predicted an India on the Security Council would be frequently at odds with the United States, pointing to New Delhi's reluctance to get tough on Myanmar and Sudan over human rights.

"India and the United States share the virtue of being democracies, but this may be more its own reward than a source of abiding friendship or useful cooperation," he said.

- AFP

 

Mountains of trash fished from China's Three Gorges Dam

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 01:41 PM PDT

BEIJING: Workers in central China have fished 3,800 tonnes of rubbish out of the Three Gorges Dam in just six days, state media said today, as the trash threatened to jam up the massive structure.

The clean-up process, which began on Oct 26 when the water level in the dam's reservoir hit its maximum capacity, saw 100 people sent out in 15 boats daily, the China Daily quoted Wang Yafei, head of the operation, as saying.

Over six days, the workers in Hubei province pulled out more than 600 tonnes of trash a day – or a total of 3,800 tonnes – which consisted mainly of tree trunks, branches and straw, the report said.

Household garbage is also a problem, as more than 150 million people live upstream from the dam, and trash is sometimes dumped directly into the Yangtze river because nearby municipalities are unequipped for waste disposal.

China considers the US$22-billion Three Gorges Dam a modern wonder. Since its completion in 2008, it has pumped out much-needed hydroelectricity, increased shipping on the Yangtze and helped reduce flooding.

The garbage was threatening the operation of the dam's 26 power generators, the report said.

"All of the salvaged garbage will be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. There will be no disposal in rivers and nearby places," Wang was quoted as saying.

Ecological damage

In August, heavy rains and floods in the area had washed a lot of rubbish into the Yangtze, China's longest waterway, causing concern as it created a pile-up threatening to jam the dam.

The garbage was so thick in parts of the river that people could walk on the surface, state media reported at the time.

Chen Lei, an official with the China Three Gorges Corporation, said in August up to 200,000 cubic metres (seven million cubic feet) of garbage – the equivalent of 80 Olympic-sized pools – is collected from the dam every year.

The corporation spends about 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) per year to clear floating waste, the newspaper said.

Critics charge the dam has caused ecological damage and increased landslides in the area. About 1.4 million people were displaced by the dam, the construction of which put several heritage sites deep underwater.

- AFP

South Korea police inspect mail bound for G20 summit

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 01:39 PM PDT

SEOUL: South Korean police said today they have started inspecting all mail delivered to the venue of next week's G20 summit in Seoul amid heightened security fears after a Yemen parcel bomb plot.

Seoul will host world leaders including US President Barack Obama for the Group of 20 summit from Nov 11-12, in what is considered the nation's biggest appearance on the world stage since the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

The military and police have been put on the highest level of security alert to guard the summit against any disruptions by North Korea or international terrorists.

The summit will take place at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in southern Seoul, which houses hundreds of companies.

Police said all mail and parcels addressed to COEX are being inspected by X-ray scanners and sniffer dogs.

They said parcel delivery services to COEX would be not allowed next week. Recipients should collect their packages in person at separate storage sites and pass through security checkpoints to bring them into the centre.

Police will also strengthen X-ray inspections at airports and hotels where G20 leaders will stay.

The move came after parcels sent from Yemen and containing explosives were uncovered in Britain and Dubai on cargo planes en route to the United States.

A Greek parcel bomb plot has seen packages mailed to European leaders and foreign embassies in Athens. The government said Wednesday the plot is not linked to organised international terrorism.

- AFP

Qantas plane lands safely in Singapore after scare

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:13 PM PDT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Qantas Airways passenger plane carrying 459 people was forced to shut down an engine and return to to Singapore's Changi airport on Thursday, ending speculation that it had crashed, the airline and Singapore state TV said.

FACTBOX - Qantas, an airline that has never had fatal accident

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 10:13 PM PDT

* The name is an acronym for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services".

A380 makes emergency landing in Singapore

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 01:18 PM PDT

SINGAPORE: A Qantas A380 superjumbo made a dramatic emergency landing in Singapore today after experiencing engine trouble over Indonesia, in the first mid-air emergency involving the giant Airbus plane.

The double-decker plane, which had taken off from Singapore bound for Sydney carrying 433 passengers, dumped fuel over Indonesia before returning to the city-state's Changi Airport trailing smoke.

Six fire engines swarmed the A380 on landing, spraying liquid on it, according to an AFP reporter.

One of the engines on the left wing looked to be missing, and the area around it was black, the reporter said.

Plane debris including what appeared to be part of the tail of a Qantas jet was found in the Indonesian town of Batam, after a mid-air explosion was heard on the ground.

"I didn't see a plane crash but I heard a loud explosion in the air. There were metal shards coming down from the sky into an industrial area in Batam," witness Noor Kanwa said.

A spokesman for Australia's Qantas Airways said the plane was carrying 433 passengers and 26 crew and there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Qantas, which has never suffered a fatal crash in its 90-year history, said earlier there had "definitely" not been a crash involving one of its planes over Indonesia.

"We're just waiting on a report," a spokeswoman said. "At this stage there's definitely been no crash."

The A380's very first commercial flight operated by Singapore Airlines was on the same Singapore-Sydney route in October 2007.

Since then, fuel and computer glitches have grounded several A380s and at least one Air France flight was forced to turn around and land in New York after problems with its navigation system in November 2009.

- AFP

Clinton to meet Israel PM Netanyahu in U.S. next week

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 09:39 PM PDT

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the U.S. next week, Clinton said at a news conference in Wellington on Thursday during a visit to New Zealand.

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