India condemns US Quran burning, calls media blackout

NEW DELHI: India condemned Thursday a planned Koran burning ceremony in Florida, calling on US authorities to take “strong action” and for Indian media to impose a blackout on images of the event.

“The US authorities have strongly condemned the statement of the pastor, religious leaders all over the world have condemned this proposed action, we too condemn the proposed actions of the pastor,” Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram said.

“We hope the US authorities will take strong action to prevent such an outrage being committed,” said P. Chidambaram.

“While we await the actions of the US authorities we appeal to the media, both print and visual media, to refrain from telecasting visuals or publishing photographs of this deplorable act.” India has the world's third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan. – AFP

Suicide bombing kills 15 at Russian market

VLADIKAVKAZ: At least 11 people were killed on Thursday and dozens wounded in an apparent suicide bombing outside a crowded central market in the Russian Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz, officials said.

Russian investigators opened a probe into an “act of terror” and officials said the blast appeared to have been triggered by a suicide bomber in a car at the entrance to the market.

“The headless body of the presumed terrorist was found in the car which exploded opposite the central market,” Taimuraz Mamsurov, the head of the North Ossetia region of which Vladikavkaz is the capital, told ITAR-TASS.

The bombing created carnage around the market, with several cars reduced to wreckage by the blast and charred corpses laid out on stretchers, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.

The attack was the latest strike to hit the Caucasus region, plagued by an Islamist-inspired insurgency.

President Dmitry Medvedev ordered his envoy for the Russian North Caucasus region, Alexander Khloponin, to urgently fly to Vladikavkaz, the Kremlin press service said.

The ITAR-TASS news agency said that the power of the blast shattered windows of nearby buildings.

At least 15 people were killed and more than 60 wounded, the deputy health minister of North Ossetia, Taimuraz Revazov told reporters.

Mamsurov told Interfax that it is believed the suicide bomber drove up to the entrance of the market in a Volga 3102 car before igniting his charge.

North Ossetia lies in Russia's troubled Northern Caucasus region, north of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia over which Moscow and Tbilisi fought a war in August 2008.

It is the only majority Christian region in Russia's largely Muslim North Caucasus and neighbours the Muslim region of Ingushetia which has been beset by deadly attacks over the last months.

Interfax said the blast had been caused by explosives weighing 10 kilogrammes of TNT equivalent. ITAR-TASS said there was panic at the market amid fears there could be a second explosion.

“A second threat is not ruled out and at the current moment the perimeter of the market and nearby roads is being encircled,” a local interior ministry spokesman told ITAR-TASS.

It said the explosion went off at the entrance to the market, which is usually crowded as it is where employers recruit potential employees.

Although it has seen increasing unrest over the past years, North Ossetia has traditionally been more stable than the Muslim regions of the North Caucasus.

In November 2008, the mayor of the city was killed when an assassin shot him in the chest near his home.

Russia has been on a state of high alert after the double bombings carried out by two female suicide bombers on the Moscow metro on March 29 killed 40 and wounded more than 100.

The Kremlin fought two wars against separatist rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s but the insurgency has now become more Islamist in tone and has spread to neighbouring Ingushetia and Dagestan. – AFP

Karzai aims to limit foreign role in probes

WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai intends to impose rules restricting international involvement in anti-corruption investigations, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

Under the proposed rules, US and other foreign law enforcement specialists in two anti-corruption organizations in the Interior Ministry would have no direct involvement in investigations, the report said.

“The management will be Afghan, and the decision-makers will be Afghan, and the investigators will be Afghan,” Karzai's chief of staff, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, told the newspaper in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Foreign advisers, most of whom work for the US Justice Department, will be limited to “training and coaching, but not decision-making,” Daudzai was quoted as saying.

The planned changes have alarmed US officials in Kabul and Washington and prompted efforts to try to persuade Karzai and his advisers to soften the restrictions, the report said.

“What he's proposing would effectively neuter these two bodies,” a U.S. official involved in Afghanistan policy told the newspaper.

Karzai's advisers think that U.S. officials have de facto control over the key anti-corruption groups, the Post said.

“There is suspicion that the international partners have a decision-making role,” Daudzai said. But US officials insist that the Afghan leaders are in complete control, the report said.

Washington fears widespread corruption is helping to boost the Taliban-led insurgency and complicating efforts to strengthen central government control so US and other foreign troops can begin withdrawing from July 2011.

Karzai promised that fighting graft would be his top priority when he was sworn in for a second five-year term, echoing demands from US counterpart Barack Obama, but frustration is growing over Karzai's willingness to tackle corruption.

Karzai has acknowledged that Afghanistan “like all countries” has problems with graft, but said the issue had been “blown out of proportion” by Western media. – Reuters

US court dismisses rendition lawsuit against Boeing

WASHINGTON: A US court dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday against a Boeing subsidiary for allegedly flying terror suspects to secret CIA sites for interrogation, saying the case could have exposed state secrets.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with President Barack Obama's administration that state secrets would be revealed if it allowed the case against Jeppesen Dataplan to go ahead.

The Boeing unit was accused of facilitating flights for the CIA's “extraordinary rendition” program, used by the administration of president George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The program involved the transfer of “war on terror” suspects by the CIA to countries known to practice torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the case in 2007 on behalf of five former detainees who said they were kidnapped, transported to foreign countries and tortured in the custody of foreign governments or the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Judge Raymond Fisher said the case presents a “painful conflict between human rights and national security,” but added that the court “reluctantly” came to the conclusion that the need to protect state secrets here superseded that of the plaintiff to present his case.

“Jeppesen's alleged role and its attendant liability cannot be isolated from aspects that are secret and protected,” he added.

Ben Wizner, an ACLU staff attorney who argued the case before the appeals court, said the group was disappointed in the ruling.

“This is a sad day not only for the torture victims whose attempt to seek justice has been extinguished, but for all Americans who care about the rule of law and our nation's reputation in the world,” he said in a statement.

“To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture program has had his day in court. If today's decision is allowed to stand, the United States will have closed its courtroom doors to torture victims while providing complete immunity to their torturers.”

The ACLU said it would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has not issued a major ruling on the doctrine of the government's privilege to state secrets in over 50 years.

In April 2009, the same appeals court — in a smaller panel of three judges — had backed the plaintiffs and ordered the case to go forward in a major victory for those seeking court sanctions against the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies.

But the Obama team — which has pursued a reform of major counterterrorism policies, including a more restricted CIA rendition program — after taking power from the Bush administration, appealed that ruling to the full appeals court.

Two of the five plaintiffs are still in custody -- one in Morocco and the other in Egypt. The other three were freed by the US government without charge.

Binyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian citizen who was released from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to Britain in February 2009, is the lead plaintiff in the case.

He claims he was secretly flown in 2002 to Morocco, where he was tortured before being taken in 2004 to Kabul, where he says he was also subjected to torture before being sent to Guantanamo.

Fisher, the appeals court judge, urged the federal government and Congress to consider granting the plaintiffs reparations if their allegations are found to be true in secret documents -- even if they can no longer seek judicial relief.

He cited as an example of precedent reparations made to Japanese Americans abducted from Latin America during World War II to be interned in the United States.

“The government, having access to the secret information, can determine whether plaintiffs' claims have merit and whether misjudgements or mistakes were made that violated plaintiffs' human rights,” Fisher added, also demanding the government pay the plaintiffs' litigation costs.

“Should that be the case, the government may be able to find ways to remedy such alleged harms while still maintaining the secrecy national security demands.”

But Judge Michael Hawkins, writing for the dissenting minority, criticised such a move.

“Permitting the executive to police its own errors and determine the remedy dispensed would not only deprive the judiciary of its role, but also deprive plaintiffs of a fair assessment of their claims by a neutral arbiter,” he wrote.

Roadside blast kills 10 in Kurram tribal region

PARACHINAR: A roadside bomb killed 10 people and wounded four in Kurram tribal region on the Afghan border on Thursday, a government official told Reuters.

The explosion happened in Palaseen village, about 65 km (40 miles) northeast of the region's main town, Parachinar.

“It was a remote-controlled bomb, which was detonated as soon as a passenger van got there,” said Hamid Khan, deputy administrator of the region. Those killed were all civilians. – Reuters

At least 17 killed as bus plunges into river in India

BHOPAL: At least 17 people were killed and a further 35 feared dead after a passenger bus plunged into a fast-flowing river in central India, police said Thursday.

The bus crashed into the river when trying to cross a flooded bridge in the state of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday evening.

“The rescue work is ongoing and specialist teams are at the scene searching for bodies washed away by the water,” local inspector general of police Pawan Jain told AFP by telephone.

“We are uncertain of the number of people travelling in the bus, but it might have been between 70 and 80. About 25 people are being treated for injuries in hospital.”

The crash occurred at a crossing of the Bagdi river in Dewas district, about 100 kilometres from Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh.

India has the highest annual road death toll in the world, according to the World Health Organisation, with accidents caused by speeding, careless driving, poor roads, overcrowding and poor vehicle maintenance.

US can't afford to extend tax cuts for rich: Obama

PARMA, Ohio: President Barack Obama, fighting to keep Democrats in charge of Congress, said on Wednesday the United States could not afford to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the rich and accused Republicans of being fiscally irresponsible.

On a campaign trip to Ohio less than two months before Nov. 2 congressional elections, Obama admitted his economic policies had not worked as quickly as hoped, but said his party and proposals were still better placed to boost the US economy.

Obama's comments, laced with political rhetoric, came amid a growing verbal battle with Republicans over tax cuts for wealthy Americans enacted under former President George W. Bush and set to expire at the end of this year.

John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, called for a two-year freeze on current US tax rates and proposed the government cut spending for next year to 2008 levels, before the controversial federal bailouts and Obama's $814 billion stimulus plan.

Obama rejected that call but said his administration was ready to extend tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year.

“For any income over this amount, the tax rates would go back to what they were under President Clinton. This isn't to punish folks who are better off -- God bless them -- it is because we can't afford the $700 billion price tag,” he said.

Republicans blame Obama for inflating the deficit, forecast at a record $1.47 trillion in 2010, or 10 percent of GDP, with bloated stimulus spending they say failed to deliver jobs.

The White House is seeking to use a version of the same argument against the Republicans by saying extending Bush's tax cuts would increase the deficit too.

With the unemployment rate at 9.6 per cent, Obama's Democrats are struggling to keep control of the House in the November elections and may even lose the Senate.

Nodding to that threat, the president said Democrats must ensure the November vote is about policy differences between the two parties, not the poor performance of the economy.

“If the election is a referendum on 'are people satisfied about the economy as it currently is,' then we're not going to do well, because I think everybody feels like this economy needs to do better than it has been doing,” Obama told ABC News in an excerpt of an interview taped in Cleveland after his speech.

“My challenge, and the challenge of every Democratic candidate who is out there, is just making sure people understand that there is a choice here,” he said.

Boehner, who is from Ohio and would likely replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House speaker if Republicans win a majority, cited Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget director, who wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that extending the tax cuts to the rich would be worth it if that led to a deal in Congress.

“If the president is serious about finally focusing on jobs, a good start would be taking the advice of his recently departed budget director and freezing all tax rates, coupled with cutting federal spending to where it was before all the bailouts, government takeovers, and 'stimulus' spending sprees,” Boehner said in a statement after Obama's speech.

OBAMA VS BOEHNER

Ohio is a politically important state that often swings between supporting Democrats and Republicans.

Obama had especially harsh words for Boehner, who called recently -- during a speech in Ohio -- for the president to fire his economic team.

“When these same Republicans -- including Mr. Boehner -- were in charge, the number of earmarks and pet projects went up, not down,” Obama said, referring to expensive projects called “earmarks” lawmakers add to congressional bills.

“These same Republicans turned a record surplus into a record deficit ... And when you ask them what programs they'd actually cut, they don't have an answer. That's not fiscal responsibility. That's not a serious plan to govern.”

Boehner said extending the tax cuts would give certainty to small businesses -- a key constituency both parties see as crucial to boosting the sluggish economy.

Obama said the economy had improved since he took over from his Republican predecessor but the pace was slow.

“Not everything we've done over the last two years has worked as quickly as we had hoped, and I am keenly aware that not all our policies have been popular,” he said.

The White House hopes its latest policies will be winners with the public, despite dim chances Republicans will support them in Congress.

Obama proposed accelerating $200 billion in business tax write-offs; an infrastructure spending boost of at least $50 billion; and increasing and permanently extending a research and development tax credit costing $100 billion over 10 years.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC he believed there was support in Congress for the proposals and said the country was recovering slowly from a “savage” recession. – Reuters