Failed suicide attack kills bomber in Azad Kashmir

MUZAFFARABAD: A man blew himself up in a botched suicide bombing Sunday in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, an official said.

The bomber's explosives went off as he was heading to a target in Rawalakot district, 120 kilometres south of regional capital Muzaffarabad.

“The bomber was trying to hit some sensitive installations but the explosive went off before time, when he was on his way to hit his target,” Chaudhry Raqeeb, the top administrative official in Rawalakot, told AFP.

He said the bomber was identified as a local resident.

Attacks blamed mostly on the Taliban have killed more than 3,700 people across Pakistan since July 2007, concentrated in the northwest and major cities rather than the northern mountains and eastern border with India.

In a separate incident, police defused a timed device hidden in a pressure cooker in a shop after being tipped off by a local security guard in a congested market in Muzaffarabad, administrative official Chaudhry Imtiaz said.

On January 6, a suicide bomber killed four Pakistani soldiers near the demarcation line with India, and officials blamed that attack on Taliban insurgents based in the northwest near the Afghan border.

Kashmir was split in two in the bloody aftermath of independence from British rule over the subcontinent in 1947. India and Pakistan each control a part of the mountainous land but both claim the region in full.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in a nearly 20-year revolt in Indian-administered Kashmir, where militants have fought against New Delhi's rule, but bomb attacks are rare in the Pakistani-administered zone.

Iran ready to release US hiker woman on bail: prosecutor

TEHRAN: A senior prosecutor said on Sunday that Iran is ready to release Sarah Shourd, one of three US hikers held for more than a year and accused of spying, on bail of around 500,000 dollars.

“For the female defendant (Shourd), bail has been set at five billion Iranian rials (around 500,000 US dollars),” the official IRNA news agency quoted Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying.

“She can be freed by posting the bail... Her lawyer has been informed.”

Shourd was arrested with fellow hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal on July 31, 2009 after straying across the border from neighbouring Iraq.

The three have been accused of illegally entering the Islamic republic and of spying.

Dolatabadi said that there were “enough reasons to accuse the three of espionage.”

“The case is nearly complete and the judge has issued an indictment for the three Americans accused of spying,” he said, adding that Bauer and Fattal had been remanded in custody.

Several Iranian officials had said on Thursday that Shourd would be released on Saturday. But legal technicalities delayed her release, Dolatabadi said on Friday. – AFP

Biography says French first lady’s demure image is facade

PARIS: An unauthorised biography of French first lady Carla Bruni paints an unflattering picture of the Italian ex-supermodel claiming she lives a solitary life, neglects her charitable works and forces her husband to socialise with her former lovers.

“Carla, A Secret Life” by former journalist Besma Lahouri discloses that following her marriage to President Nicolas Sarkozy a presidential adviser was assigned to help re-brand Bruni, whose former lovers include Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, as a demure political wife.

It also alleges that Bruni, 43, has had extensive plastic surgery despite denials, and had a 20-year relationship with a Paris surgeon.

The disclosures appeared in a report Saturday in British newspaper The Times, which has been given the book ahead of publication along with the French weekly Marianne.

Describing, Bruni as a “female Don Juan”, the book, which the author says the Elysee Palace tried to discourage, says she has maintained contact with former paramours.

“Since he married the woman that some called a ‘man-eater’, (Mr Sarkozy) has to put up every day with this burdensome tribe. Singers, philosophers, lawyers, bosses, men of the press or politics.”

No less than three such men were house guests at Bruni’s Riviera villa last year during Sarkozy’s first holiday there.

Bruni had finally met her match in her marriage to Sarkozy with a “man even more unpredictable than her”, Lahouri said.

After their whirlwind romance and 2008 marriage, the Elysee Palace embarked on a carefully managed image makeover of the new first lady led by presidential aide Pierre Charon.

“Carla had warned me ‘they are going to say a lot of things about me, about my past life. Things, photographs are going to come out’... So we had to help give her a new image. That of a shy young woman...,” he told Lahouri.

That image was successfully projected during Bruni’s state visit to London in March 2008 when she was feted by the British media for her effortless chic.

Behind the scenes, however, the book says she lives a solitary life and Lahouri describes her foundation to fight AIDS as “an empty shell”.

Lahouri, also the author of a best-selling biography on French footballer Zinedine Zidane, spent two years interviewing family friends and Bruni colleagues.

She found her to be “attractive and impetuous, free and calculating...faithful in friendship and fickle in love.”

But she added that she believed Bruni’s true nature was a long way from that of the “well-brought up girl with her head bowed.”

“I did not set out to be unkind but to reveal what she really is... The image of Carla Bruni is totally false,” she said.

Lahouri says Charon attempted to deter her from writing the book, warning her, “It’s not worth it. It’s too complicated.”

The Elysee had also tried to obtain a copy of the manuscript and was now hinting at possible legal action, she said.

The book is in contrast to another biography due to be published this month which was produced with Bruni’s cooperation.

In “Carla et les Ambitieux” (Carla and the Ambitious), authors Yves Derai and Michael
Darmon concentrate instead on her life as first lady.

Lahouri's biography will be published on Wednesday by Flammarion. – AFP

Swift to sing about West debacle this year at VMAs

NEW YORK: Be warned, Kanye: Taylor Swift has written a song about you, and she’s singing it at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.

The country superstar’s win for best female video last year was marred when Kanye West got on stage and said it should have gone to Beyonce.

Swift wrote a song about the experience earlier this year, and a source familiar with the show said Saturday the 20-year-old will sing the new song at the VMAs, which will be aired live on MTV. The source did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The song is on Swift’s upcoming album “Speak Now,” due out in October. The source said Swift performed it during a secret rehearsal in Los Angeles for the VMAs on Friday.

Though the West-Swift moment only lasted but a few minutes, it has endured for what seems to be a lifetime. It became a cultural watershed moment and gave West the most intense backlash of his career, despite an apology delivered later.

He dropped out of the spotlight, and last week on Twitter, said that he endured death wishes, had to cancel a tour and let go of employees. He again apologized to Swift and said he wrote a song for her and hoped she would sing it – and if not, he would perform it for her.

But instead, Swift will be singing her own song. The Grammy-winner is known for writing intensely personal songs, and skewering a few former boyfriends along the way.

After initially expressing her hurt, Swift has avoided addressing the matter.

West will also be a performer at the awards show; both are nominees. It's not clear what song he will sing.

Though there was anticipation of possible fireworks related to last year with West’s performance, Swift’s song all but guarantees it. – AP

Nato claims killing five insurgents in Afghanistan

KABUL: A Taliban commander who planned attacking polling stations during next week's elections and four other insurgents have been killed in eastern Afghanistan, Nato said.

The military alliance said in a statement Sunday that Nato and Afghan forces killed the five on Saturday night in a village compound in the Nangarhar province after they displayed “hostile intent”.

It said intelligence reports indicated that the Taliban commander was planning to conduct rocket attacks against voting centres during the September 18 parliamentary elections. The Taliban have vowed to attack polling stations and warned Afghans not to participate in what it called a sham vote.

Toll rises to six in California gas blast

SAN BRUNO: The toll in a huge gas pipeline blast in California rose to six after two more bodies were found Saturday, authorities said.

“I can confirm that two more bodies have been found this morning. I have no other details,” Steve Firpo, a spokesman for San Bruno township near San Francisco told AFP.

The two bodies raised to six the number of fatalities from the huge gas pipeline blast late on Thursday that also injured 52 people — three with third degree burns — and destroyed 37 homes leaving seven others severely damaged.

The blast-triggered fire consumed four hectares of property and was completely extinguished by Friday night.

The initial death toll was put at four, but California Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters in San Bruno Saturday morning that two people were still missing after the blast.

Firpo could not say for sure whether the two missing persons were those found dead earlier Saturday.

Emergency workers said they had searched over 75 per cent of the smouldering ruins.
But Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado — standing in for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is on a trade trip to Asia — was more cautious, stressing that a quarter of the inferno site had yet to be checked.

President Barack Obama on Saturday called Schwarzenegger “to express his condolences for the tragic loss of life in San Bruno and his concern for those still recovering from injuries,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in a statement.

Three of the fatalities have been identified so far. They include a mother and her 13-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old woman, the San Mateo forensic institute said.

Local utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) said a natural gas main ruptured in the town near San Francisco International Airport.

Several San Bruno residents said they had complained of gas smells over the past few weeks and some said they saw PG&E crews in the area who apparently did not take any measures.

PG&E President Chris Johns told a press conference Saturday that the company was “reviewing all the phone records...as of right now, we have not been able to confirm any calls...in that vicinity, happening in the first nine days of September.”

Both PG&E and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the blast.

Local authorities on Saturday still did not know when people evacuated from the blast area could return to their homes, as PG&E announced it would cover the cost of all emergency housing.

Saudi diplomat seeks asylum in US

WASHINGTON: A Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles reportedly has asked for political asylum in the United States, claiming his life is in danger if he is returned to Saudi Arabia.

The report Saturday by NBC News quoted the diplomat, Ali Ahmad Asseri, as saying that Saudi officials have ordered him back to his country because he is gay and had become a close friend to a Jewish woman. Asseri in a letter also reportedly criticised the role of militant imams in Saudi society.

NBC said that Asseri, who is first secretary of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, was questioned by the Department of Homeland Security after he applied for asylum.

The department declined comment to The Associated Press when asked about the diplomat. A call to Asseri's lawyer was not returned Saturday.