Israel 'destined' to fall, says Mashaal

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal hails the release of 19 Palestinian detainees, describing the prisoner swap as a prelude to liberation of all Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

In a televised speech late on Friday in Damascus, Hamas' political leader called the release of the Palestinian women held by Israel a 'bright spot' in the history of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.

He congratulated the Palestinian nation on the freedom of 19 detainees in return for a one-minute video of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in June 2006.

Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, Mashaal said resistance fighters were able to capture more Israeli soldiers to exchange for more Palestinian prisoners.

The Palestinian leader said the Israeli occupation was "destined to end" and the Zionists would have to leave.

Mashaal called for a united front of the Arab nations and the Muslim community to confront 'the Zionist scheme and the greed of foreign powers'.

He strongly rejected divisions within the Islamic Ummah as against Islamic teachings and said that all Muslims from North Africa through the Middle East to Malaysia must unite into a single bloc.

The senior Hamas official condemned Israeli efforts to give al-Quds a Jewish identity and smother its Palestinian and Islamic sanctities through establishment of numerous synagogues in the area and closing the al-Aqsa mosque on Palestinian worshipers.

The liberation of al-Quds, which Tel Aviv tries to hold back from any negotiations, will not be achieved by holding talks with Israel, but will be accomplished through sustained resistance, he said.

Mashaal further vowed that his movement would not compromise on the Palestinian territory and continue its struggle for the return of all Palestinian refugees and prisoners to their homes, stressing that Hamas reserved the right to resistance.

The Palestinian leader urged reconciliation between all Palestinian factions and called on rival Fatah leaders to voice their support for the Palestinian cause.

Obama agrees to cover up Israel's nukes: report

Israel has reportedly received an assurance by US President Barack Obama that it would not be pressured into accounting for its alleged nuclear arsenal or signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In a meeting with, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu obtained President Obama's guarantee that the White House would continue a 4-decade-old secret deal to allow Israel keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, The Washington Times reported on Friday quoting officials familiar with the matter.

"The president gave Israel an NPT treaty get out of jail free card," said a Senate staffer speaking on the condition of anonymity. "What this means is that the president gave commitments that politically he had no choice but to give regarding Israel's nuclear program."

"However, it calls into question virtually every part of the president's nonproliferation agenda."

Israel, which has allegedly introduced nuclear weapons in the volatile Middle East, maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity and has so far refused to sign the NPT- a treaty which seeks to limit the spread of such weapons of mass destruction.

The tacit agreement prolonged the nuclear understanding reached between President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969.

In a reference to the May meeting with President Obama, the Israeli premier said in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 last week he had received "an itemized list of the strategic understandings that have existed for many years between Israel and the United States" regarding the nuclear arsenal.

"It was not for naught that I requested, and it was not for naught that I received [that document]," Netanyahu said.

Avner Cohen, author of the revelatory Israel and the Bomb, which has drawn upon thousands of documents and tens of interviews on the Israeli nuclear firepower, said the accord amounted to "the United States passively accepting Israel's nuclear weapons status as long as Israel does not unveil publicly its capability or test a weapon."

In 1958, Israel began building its suspected plutonium and uranium processing facility near Dimona in the Negev desert. The regime claims the facility - which was originally revealed as "textile factory" - is a "research reactor."

In early June, George Washington University's National Security Archives declassified a 1960 report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which had explained how Tel Aviv was to benefit from a nuclear arsenal.

"Possession of a nuclear weapon capability, or even the prospect of achieving it, would clearly give Israel a greater sense of security, self-confidence and assertiveness," the documents said.

Rio Wins Bid for 2016 Olympic Games

By JULIET MACUR and LYNN ZINSER

COPENHAGEN — The Olympics were awarded to a South American city for the first time when the International Olympic Committee on Friday voted for Rio de Janeiro to be host of the 2016 Games.

Rio de Janeiro was the winner over Madrid in the final round of voting. The committee delivered an unexpectedly early knockout blow to Chicago, which was eliminated in the first round. Tokyo was ousted in the second.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the committee, made the announcement, sending crowds in Rio de Janeiro into celebration.

Tens of thousands of people began partying early in Rio on the Copacabana beach. Musicians played samba music from a main stage flanked by large screens, as people danced, held towering cones of cotton candy and showed off the national colors of Brazil by donning yellow-and-green wigs or yellow-and-green bikinis. A beach ball bounced above the crowd, marked with the words, “It’s Rio’s time.”

The scene was different earlier in Chicago as throngs in Daley Plaza gasped in disappointment when Rogge announced that Chicago was out. It was a surprisingly early exit, especially after President Obama’s whirlwind trip to boost the bid of his adopted city. Mr. Obama was the first American president to make an in-person appeal for a bid city and the first lady, Michelle Obama, had also come here this week to lobby I.O.C. members for votes.

Chicago’s bid leaders had worked for nearly four years and spent close to $50 million to bring the Summer Olympics to the United States for the first time in 20 years. Chicago had been considered among Olympic insiders as a favorite to win the Games, along with Rio.

Instead, the I.O.C. delivered a crushing blow to American hopes for the second straight time. New York’s bid was eliminated in the second round of voting for the 2012 Olympics.

United States Olympic Committee leaders appeared stunned by the news and had no comment as they left the voting hall. Mr. Obama was flying back to Washington at the time of the vote.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had led Rio’s emotional appeal to win the Games and the urge to make history tugged at the I.O.C., which voted it the winner over Madrid.

Former I.O.C. president Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who is 89, had made a passionate and personal appeal for Madrid in its presentation, including a tug at the members’ heartstrings.

“Dear colleagues, I know I’m very near the end of my time, I’m 89 years old,” he said. “I ask you to consider granting my country the honor and also the duty to organize the Games and Paralympic Games in 2016.”

To win, Rio’s bid leaders had to overcome sentiment for Samaranch and concerns about security in the teeming Brazilian city. There were also concerns that the country would already be overextended in hosting the 2014 World Cup.

Chicago had plenty of its own hurdles, with many issues idling in what is often a strained relationship between the Euro-centric I.O.C. and Olympic efforts in the United States. Chicago hoped to do better than New York fared in the last bidding process, but recent turnover at the United States Olympic Committee and a now-scrapped idea to start an American Olympic network over I.O.C. objections did not help Chicago’s chances.

That made Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s visit critical. Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama also came to work on behalf of Madrid and Tokyo.

Voting was done electronically and by secret ballot. It was done in rounds until one city earned a majority of votes. I.O.C. members from the countries of the bid cities do not vote while those cities are still in contention. Chicago received the fewest votes in the first round, eliminating it and that fate befell Tokyo in the second round.

United States Olympic Committee leaders appeared stunned by the news and had no comment as they left the voting hall. Mr. Obama was flying back to Washington at the time of the vote.

Teams from the four candidate cities delivered their final presentations to the 104-member I.O.C. and answered every lingering question about the strengths and weaknesses of their bids earlier Friday.

The 10-person Chicago bid team, led by the president and Mrs. Obama, put on a presentation heavy on emotion and visual images without getting too deep into he details of the bid.

“To host athletes and visitors from every corner of the globe is a high honor and a great responsibility,” Mr. Obama whose Chicago home is a short walk from the prospective Olympic Stadium. “And America is ready and eager to assume that sacred trust.”

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.”

Mrs. Obama tapped the bid leader Patrick G. Ryan, so Mr. Obama could field that question.

“One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world,” he said, before adding that the White House and State Department would make sure that all visitors would feel welcome.

Tokyo went next and tried to overcome impressions conveyed by I.O.C. evaluations that its bid was lacking. The bid team emphasized to the committee how environmentally friendly its plans are and the positive impact an Olympics would have on the youth of Japan.

“A lot of I.O.C. members suggested that we needed more passion and emotion,” bid leader Dr. Ichiro Kono said afterward. “We wanted to show that.”

Rio de Janeiro followed Tokyo and Da Silva gave an impassioned speech to the membership about South America’s quest for the Games. He said that of the top 10 economic powers in the world, Brazil is the only one not to host an Olympics.

“For the others it would be just one more Games, for us it would be an unparalleled opportunity,” he said. “It would send a message the Olympic Games belong to all people, all continents and all humanity.

He added, “Give us this chance and you will not regret it, be sure.”

Rio leaders worked to dispel worries about crime.

“We know that some of you have questions about security,” Rio de Janeiro state Governor Sergio Cabral said, as he addressed the committee. “Changes have been made, happily as a result of sport.”

Cabral pointed out that at the 2007 Pan American Games, which were held in Rio de Janeiro, “saw no incidents large or small.”

Madrid gave its presentation last, as Spain made is fourth consecutive pitch to host an Olympics. Madrid was voted out of the competition for the 2012 Games in the third round after gathering the most votes in the previous round.

Presenters focused on the mantra, “Sport makes us equal. It makes us better,” and emphasized that Madrid enjoys more support among its residents than competing cities. In an opinion poll commissioned by the I.O.C. for the last technical evaluation, the Games had 85 percent support in Madrid and 86 percent nationally.

“Our candidacy is reliable because it is united politically and united with the feelings of the population and because it has shown that it could learn and improve,” Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said when addressing the I.O.C. members.

After Madrid finished, the I.O.C. began the voting. Chicago was eliminated because it received the fewest number of votes in the first round, the fate the befell Tokyo in the second. Voting was done electronically and secretly, with sitting out until their city was eliminated. (The United States has two I.O.C. members.)

Chicago spent nearly $50 million preparing its bid and is trying to bring the Summer Games to the United States for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The last time a United States city hosted any Olympics was the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

Smiling and waving as he left the convention center to fly home, Mr. Obama said, “The only thing I’m upset about is that they arranged for me to follow Michelle. That’s always bad.”

The United States Olympic Committee chairman, Larry Probst, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and two athletes — Olympic champion decathlete Bryan Clay and former Paralympian Linda Mastandrea — also spoke during the 45-minute presentation that was designed not to be too flashy.

“Our intent was to demonstrate to them we will be good partners and that we are people they could trust,” Doug Arnot, director of sports and operations for Chicago 2016.

The delegation’s presentation started with a video montage of Chicago, including bikini-wearing volleyball players on Lake Michigan beaches. The song, “Sweet Home Chicago” played in the background. “It made me miss home,” Mr. Obama said.

The last time around, in the competition to host the 2012 Games, London beat Paris by the slim margin of 54-50. Every bid team brought distinguished leaders, including King Juan Carlos for Spain and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama for Japan.

Dozens of Olympians have flooded the city to lobby for their city’s cause, including the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé.

With Mrs. Obama and Oprah Winfrey headlining the delegation, the Chicago team had been reminding I.O.C. members of their Olympic plan, which would have put the Games along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and in century-old city parks, with Chicago’s dramatic skyline as the backdrop. The Chicago City Council voted 49-0 to cover any financial shortfalls, which was a first for a U.S. bid.

“Some of what the I.O.C. considers has nothing to do with the strength of the bids themselves,” said Frank Lavin, the former U.S. ambassador to Singapore, who worked on New York City’s failed bid to host the 2012 Games.

“A lot of it is political and that encompasses different levels: international politics, personalities, internal I.O.C. politics,” he said.

Turkey to take over ISAF's Kabul command

Fri Oct 2, 2009

The Turkish military says it is set to beef up its Afghanistan contingent before taking over the command of security in and around Kabul for a year.

The number of troops will increase from around 900 to some 1,700 before November, when Turkey assumes the Kabul regional command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Anatolia news agency quoted Gen. Metin Gurak as saying.

The head of the communication office of the Turkish General Staff stressed the mission of the Turkish force would not change and that "they will not be involved in fighting terrorism, combating drug-trafficking and mine clearing."

Turkey plans to train and equip 450 Afghan soldiers by May and continue helping in reconstruction efforts, he told reporters during a Friday press briefing. Turkish troop deployment for the mission began late in September and would be completed within ten days, Gurak said.

Despite US calls on other NATO member states to step up their role in the Afghan war, many countries, including Turkey, have shown reluctance.

Instead, Ankara prefers to engage in improving services for the Afghan people, and rebuilding the country's infrastructure shattered in years of relentless war with foreign troops and, Taliban and al-Qaeda-fueled insurgency.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/107664.html.

Cleric says Iran takes pride in new nuclear plant

After Iran and world powers held talks on global issues, an Iranian cleric says the country's nuclear program is solely aimed at the civilian applications of the technology.

Tehran Friday prayers leader Hojjatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi pointed to Iran's announcement of an under construction plant south of Tehran to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said Iran's Fordu nuclear facility is "a source of honor and a matter of national pride."

"The arrogant powers could not tolerate the existence of Fordu site and found it as a subject to raise hue and cry," said the Iranian cleric.

In a letter to the UN nuclear watchdog on September 21, Tehran announced the existence of the plant, some 12 months earlier than Iran's IAEA Safeguards Agreement obliges the country to inform the agency of new developments.

The announcement provoked an outcry from the US, Britain and France. Iran, however, says it is shocked by the reaction, arguing that it needs to be praised for informing the agency a year in advance.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the plant was perfectly legal and open to inspection by the UN nuclear watchdog.

Hojjatoleslam Seddiqi said, "We do not seek atomic weapons but we demand access to industrial and technological achievements to generate electricity and meet the country's medical, agricultural and industrial needs."

Iranian representatives and diplomats from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, China, France, Britain and the US - plus Germany (P5+1) held high-level talks in Geneva on Thursday. They agreed on key issues including continuation of talks by the end of October.

During the talks, the Iranian delegation headed by top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili reiterated that the site was open to UN inspection, while insisting that Tehran will never give up its "absolute" right to pursue a civilian nuclear technology.

Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), accuses nuclear-armed states, particularly the US, Britain and France of having breached international regulations by violating NPT articles in the last 40 years.

Chicago Loses Bid for 2016 Olympic Games

By JULIET MACUR

COPENHAGEN — Chicago was stunningly eliminated in the first round of voting for the 2016 Olympics on Friday, with Rio de Janeiro and Madrid still in contention in the final round of voting by the International Olympic Committee. Tokyo was eliminated in the second round.

I.O.C. president Jacques Rogge made the announcement as the first round of voting concluded, a surprisingly early exit, especially because of President Barack Obama’s whirlwind trip to boost the bid of his adopted city. Chicago and Rio had been considered the favorites among Olympic insiders.

Mr. Obama was the first American president to make an in-person appeal for a bid city and first lady Michelle Obama had also come earlier this week to lobby I.O.C. members for votes. Chicago’s bid leaders had worked for nearly four years and spent close to $50 million to bring the Olympics to the United States for the first time in 20 years.

Throngs watching the voting in downtown Chicago’s Daley Plaza gasped in disappointment as the announcement was made.

United States Olympic Committee leaders appeared stunned by the news and had no comment as they left the voting hall. Mr. Obama was flying back to Washington at the time of the vote.

The announcement of the winner is expected at 6:30 p.m. local time, 12:30 Eastern time.

Teams from the four candidate cities — Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo — delivered their final presentations to the 104-member I.O.C. and answered every lingering question about the strengths and weaknesses of their bids earlier Friday.

A 10-person Chicago bid team, led by the president and Mrs. Obama, put on a presentation heavy on emotion and visual images without getting too deep into he details of the the bid.

“To host athletes and visitors from every corner of the globe is a high honor and a great responsibility,” Mr. Obama whose Chicago home is a short walk from the prospective Olympic Stadium. “And America is ready and eager to assume that sacred trust.”

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.”

Mrs. Obama tapped the bid leader Patrick G. Ryan, so Mr. Obama could field that question.

“One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world,” he said, before adding that the White House and State Department would make sure that all visitors would feel welcome.

Tokyo went next and tried to overcome impressions conveyed by I.O.C. evaluations that its bid was lacking. The bid team emphasized to the committee how environmentally friendly its plans are and the positive impact an Olympics would have on the youth of Japan.

“A lot of I.O.C. members suggested that we needed more passion and emotion,” bid leader Dr. Ichiro Kono said afterward. “We wanted to show that.”

“It would be the best Olympic Games for the preservation of the world,” Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said, referring to how green Tokyo’s Games would be.

Rio de Janeiro, considered by Olympic insiders a front-runner along with Chicago, followed Tokyo.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, gave an impassioned speech to the membership, focusing Rio de Janeiro’s hope to host South America’s first Olympics. He said that of the top 10 economic powers in the world, Brazil is the only one not to host an Olympics.

“For the others it would be just one more Games, for us it would be an unparalleled opportunity,” he said. “It would send a message the Olympic Games belong to all people, all continents and all humanity.

He added, “Give us this chance and you will not regret it, be sure.”

The Rio bid also tried to dispel worries about crime.

“We know that some of you have questions about security,” Rio de Janeiro state Governor Sergio Cabral said, as he addressed the committee. “Changes have been made, happily as a result of sport.”

Cabral pointed out that at the 2007 Pan American Games, which were held in Rio de Janeiro, “saw no incidents large or small.”

Madrid gave its presentation last, as Spain made is fourth consecutive pitch to host an Olympics. Madrid was voted out of the competition for the 2012 Games in the third round after gathering the most votes in the previous round.

Presenters focused on the mantra, “Sport makes us equal. It makes us better,” and emphasized that Madrid enjoys more support among its residents than competing cities. In an opinion poll commissioned by the I.O.C. for the last technical evaluation, the Games had 85 percent support in Madrid and 86 percent nationally.

“Our candidacy is reliable because it is united politically and united with the feelings of the population and because it has shown that it could learn and improve,” Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said when addressing the I.O.C. members.

Former I.O.C. president Juan Antonio Samaranch went as far as asking the I.O.C. members for a personal favor when he addressed the crowded room.

“Dear colleagues, I know I’m very near the end of my time, I’m 89 years old,” he said. “I ask you to consider granting my country the honor and also the duty to organize the Games and Paralympic Games in 2016.”

After Madrid finished, the I.O.C. disappeared behind closed doors to vote. The eligible voters cast their votes electronically – and secretly. The members from countries vying for the bid must sit out until their city is eliminated. (The United States has two I.O.C. members.) If no city receives a majority of the votes in the first round, the city with the lowest number of votes is dropped from the ballot. If there is a tie in the final round, I.O.C. President Jacques Rogge steps in to vote or asks the I.O.C. executive board to break the deadlock. The United States does not have a member on that board.

Chicago spent nearly $50 million preparing its bid and is trying to bring the Summer Games to the United States for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The last time a United States city hosted any Olympics was the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

Smiling and waving as he left the convention center to fly home, Mr. Obama said, “The only thing I’m upset about is that they arranged for me to follow Michelle. That’s always bad.” The United States Olympic Committee chairman, Larry Probst, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and two athletes — Olympic champion decathlete Bryan Clay and former Paralympian Linda Mastandrea — also spoke during the 45-minute presentation that was designed not to be too flashy.

“Our intent was to demonstrate to them we will be good partners and that we are people they could trust,” Doug Arnot, director of sports and operations for Chicago 2016.

The delegation’s presentation started with a video montage of Chicago, including bikini-wearing volleyball players on Lake Michigan beaches. The song, “Sweet Home Chicago” played in the background. “It made me miss home,” Mr. Obama said.

The last time around, in the competition to host the 2012 Games, London beat Paris by the slim margin of 54-50. New York City’s bid was eliminated in the second round of voting.

Every bid team brought distinguished leaders, including King Juan Carlos for Spain and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama for Japan.

Dozens of Olympians have flooded the city to lobby for their city’s cause, including the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé.

“In these last few days, it’s all about momentum,” one I.O.C. member, Dick Pound, of Canada, said. “Every city knows that.”

With Mrs. Obama and Oprah Winfrey headlining the delegation, the Chicago team has been reminding I.O.C. members of their Olympic plan, which would put the Games along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and in century-old city parks, with Chicago’s dramatic skyline as the backdrop. The Chicago City Council voted 49-0 to cover any financial shortfalls, which is a first for a U.S. bid.

“Some of what the I.O.C. considers has nothing to do with the strength of the bids themselves,” said Frank Lavin, the former U.S. ambassador to Singapore, who worked on New York City’s failed bid to host the 2012 Games.

“A lot of it is political and that encompasses different levels: international politics, personalities, internal I.O.C. politics,” he said.

In Hamas video, captive Israeli says he is well

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – In the first glimpse since his capture more than three years ago, a thin but healthy-looking Israeli soldier says in a video released Friday that he is being treated well by his Palestinian captors and appeals to Israel's leader to bring him home.

In exchange for the two-minute video handed over by Hamas militants, Israel released 19 Palestinian women prisoners earlier Friday in a deal that is the first tangible step toward defusing a key flash point in Israeli-Palestinian hostilities.

The images of Sgt. Gilad Schalit were the first to be released since his capture 3 1/2 years ago by Hamas-linked militants in the Gaza Strip. Dressed in olive drab military fatigues, Schalit rose from the chair where he read a prepared statement tucked behind an Arabic-language newspaper, apparently to demonstrate he could stand on his own.

Speaking lucidly and reading clearly in Hebrew, he sent his love to his parents, recalled in detail a 2005 visit his family paid to his military base and appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "not to squander this opportunity" to bring him home.

"I read the paper to find material and hope to find any material about my release and my imminent return home," he said, smiling often throughout the video.

Schalit, 23, said he was in good health and that his captors were treating him "excellently." He was clean-shaven and his hair was closely cropped, but he was not wearing glasses, as he did before his capture.

The video's arrival in Israel, together with the Palestinian prisoners' triumphant return home to a flag-waving and cheering crowd, gave hope to each side that a wider, long-awaited prisoner swap was in the offing.

Hamas is demanding freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as their price for Schalit, whose capture and drawn-out captivity has touched a raw nerve in a country where most families have loved ones in the military.

Friday's deal could also herald an end to a crippling, Israel-led blockade of Gaza that has prevented the territory from rebuilding after Israel's war there in December and January.

Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas, a violent group backed by Iran and Syria, seized power in Gaza two years ago. Israel has made it clear that it will not ease the embargo before the serviceman is freed.

Hamas' prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, hailed the deal as a "triumph" for the armed Palestinian resistance against Israel.

The video opened with Schalit holding a daily Arabic-language newspaper published in Gaza on Sept. 14 — Hamas' proof the footage was taken recently. He gave his name, his parents' names and his Israeli identity card number.

"I have longed for a long time for the day I will be released," he said. "I hope the current government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu will not squander now the opportunity to reach an agreement and that I can finally realize my dream to be released.

"I want to send greetings to my family and tell them I love them and miss them very much and wish for the day I will see them again," he added.

Channel 10 TV commentators said Israel had demanded that Schalit get up and take a few steps to prove he was able-bodied. The details about his family visit, they said, were meant to prove the man reading the text was not an impostor.

A spokesman for Netanyahu, Nir Hefetz, said that "although the path to Gilad's release is still long and arduous, the fact that he is healthy and well encourages us all." He also held Hamas responsible for the soldier's well-being.

Israel's lead negotiator in prisoner swap talks viewed the video first in Tel Aviv to determine its authenticity before ordering the Palestinian women released. The video was then transferred to Jerusalem, where Netanyahu viewed it.

A copy of the disc was delivered by helicopter to the Schalit family in northern Israel.

About 200 people waving Palestinian flags greeted vans carrying 18 of the women into the West Bank. The prisoners, wearing the headscarves of devout Muslim women, blew kisses to the crowd through the vehicles' open windows.

Later, the prisoners were greeted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his walled compound as elated relatives threw fistfuls of candy in the air.

Zhour Hamdan, arrested in 2003, was reunited with her eight children and saw her first granddaughter, 1-year-old Selina, for the first time. Her daughter Nasreen, 26, said she had not been able to visit her mother for more than a year because of Israeli movement restrictions.

"It's indescribable," Nasreen said of the reunion. "We are preparing a tremendous celebration at home."

Abbas told the women their "sacrifice will not go in vain" and prayed for the release of other prisoners.

Another woman, 41-year-old Fatima Ziq, returned to her home in Gaza City, where she received a hero's welcome and was greeted by Haniyeh in a chaotic scene.

Haniyeh called Friday's swap "a day of victory for the Palestinian will, for the Palestinian resistance, for Palestinian steadfastness," he said.

Another prisoner will be released to Gaza on Sunday, bringing to 20 the total number of women freed as part of the exchange, Israel's prisons service said.

The women had been jailed for relatively minor offenses and were close to release.

Reporters and cameramen thronged the Schalit home as an army general walked in with a manila envelope containing the video. Policemen stood guard outside the house.

A spokeswoman for the family said the Schalits would have no immediate public comment.

Schalit was captured in June 2006 by Hamas-linked militants in Gaza who tunneled under the border into Israel, killed two other soldiers and dragged him bleeding into Palestinian territory. Before Friday, the only signs of life had been three letters and an audio tape.

Israel and Hamas shun each other, and German and Egyptian mediators have been acting as go-betweens in swap talks.

The Palestinians want Israel to trade up to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Schalit, including many convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis.

Circus tycoon clowns around aboard space station

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer

KOROLYOV, Russia – A Canadian circus billionaire boarded the International Space Station on Friday after a smooth ride up from Earth, and promptly played the entertainer by donning a red clown nose for a camera.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte became the seventh paying space tourist to travel to the station, where he plans to mix clownish fun with a serious message about the growing shortage of clean water on the planet 220 miles (355 kilometers) below.

Laliberte floated onto the orbiting outpost along with American astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev two days after the three had launched in Soyuz craft from the Kazakh steppe.

Laliberte returns to Earth on Oct. 11, while Williams and Surayev will live on the station for nearly six months.

"I'm adapting pretty good. I love that thing — but I ain't staying six months," Laliberte said in a video linkup to Russian Mission Control outside Moscow, where his five children and partner Claudia Barilla watched the Soyuz TMA-16 docking on a big screen.

He chatted with his children in French — "Allo, Papou," a son said; "Je t'aime, Papou," said a daughter. He put on a red clown nose and wagged an index finger at his audience, stealing the show as he crowded in with the space station's eight other occupants in zero gravity.

Laliberte also asked one of his children why she wasn't wearing a clown nose, and she said she had forgotten it.

"We were happy he didn't get space sick," Barilla told The Associated Press while cuddling their 2-year-old daughter.

An experienced acrobat, fire-eater and stilt-walker, Laliberte also had put on a clown nose before Wednesday's launch, and brought several to the station for crew mates to try on. He warned he would tickle them while they sleep.

But he has a serious mission as well. He planned to read a poem dedicated to water conservation in a satellite linkup to be shown in 14 cities from Oct. 9. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, pop singer Peter Gabriel and Irish rock group U2 also will participate.

Quebec-born Laliberte, 50, is worth an estimated $2.5 billion.

On his return to Earth, he will accompany two of the station's current crew members aboard one of three Soyuz crafts now docked at the station.

The former street performer is worth an estimated $2.5 billion and holds a 95 percent stake in Cirque du Soleil, which he founded 25 years ago.

But Laliberte may be among the last space tourists for several years, with NASA planning to retire its shuttle fleet next year and rely on Russia to ferry U.S. astronauts to the station — meaning fewer extra seats on the delivery craft.

Russian space agency chief Anatoly Perminov said Friday that Russia will be unable to send tourists to the station if the United States does not continue its shuttle flights.

Third-time space traveler Williams, 51, and first-timer Surayev, 37, will be in orbit for 169 days.

"We are really proud of him," said Surayev's wife, Anna, who watched the docking along with their two daughters. "Glad his dream came true, because it took him 12 years to achieve it."

Hamas wants peace but reserves right to armed resistance

Hamas says it is after peace, but will nonetheless resume armed resistance, should Israel refuse to cease its regular attacks on the Gaza Strip.

"Now, for the most part they [Israelis] have stopped the daily aggression. That's why we're not firing rockets," said Ahmad Yousef, a foreign affairs adviser to democratically elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

Yousef warned that the Palestinian resistance movement reserved the right to defend itself, and would use “whatever weapons they have in their hands” against Israeli “aggression and incursions,” Ma'an news agency reported on Friday.

On the issue of the formation of a Palestinian state, Yousef stressed that Hamas' stance is 'crystal clear', adding that the resistance movement endorses a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. Moreover, he dismissed that the movement had become more moderate.

"Our political platform is clear in the sense that we will accept peaceful resolutions that liberate our people from occupation…Our political platform is consistent on the willingness to sit down and discuss issues including historic Palestine and the refugees' right of return."

"However, we will not relinquish our right to resistance," he underscored.

When questioned about the likelihood of another military confrontation with Tel Aviv, Yousef said if the condition on the ground did not change, armed resistance against Israel's occupation would be inevitable.

"If the situation will continue like this, if the world community doesn't do anything and also the occupation is still the same and the sanctions have not been lifted and Gaza is still under siege, then of course the people will resort to military resistance."

OIC Appoints Special Envoy For Kashmir

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 (Bernama) -- A grouping of 57 Islamic countries, OIC, has appointed a special envoy for Jammu and Kashmir, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Friday.

The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) made the announcement in this regard following the meeting of its Contact Group on Kashmir at the UN headquarters here.

The appointment of Abdullah Bin Adbul Rahman Al Bakr, a Saudi national, as the Special OIC Envoy on Jammu and Kashmir was welcomed by Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who also held a series of meetings with the leaders of the Muslim countries raising the issue of alleged violations of human rights in Kashmir.

Farooq said the appointment of the Special Envoy would help resolve the Kashmir issue according to the "aspirations" of the Kashmiri people.

The OIC Contact Group on Kashmir was addressed by Foreign Ministers of Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Niger.

Now that Pakistan and separatist leaders have been successful in having an OIC Special Envoy for Kashmir, they have started lobbying before the UN and its Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for appointment of a Special UN Envoy for Kashmir.

"We believe that an appointment of a special envoy on Kashmir by the United Nations will go a long way to hasten the process of peace and prosperity in the region of South Asia," Ghulam Nabi Fai, head of the Washington-based separatist Kashmir American Council, said.

Moscow to host international conference on Sudan October 6-7

MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow will host an international conference on Sudan on October 6-7, bringing together politicians, scientists and legal experts to discuss ways to resolve the situation in Darfur.

The civil war that broke out in the western region of Darfur in early 2003 has claimed the lives of more than 300,000, according to United Nations estimates, and forced 2.7 million people from their homes. The Sudanese side puts the number of dead at 10,000.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, where the fighting has involved numerous armed groups, Sudanese troops and government-linked militias.

In January the Russian president's envoy for Sudan, Mikhail Margelov, and Sudanese parliamentary speaker Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Tahir proposed holding an international conference on Darfur to "to look at the events from the outside and find ways of reconciliation."

The UN, EU, China, the Netherlands, the United States, Finland, Sweden, African Union leaders and Arab League countries, as well as humanitarian organizations, academics and a Sudanese delegation, have confirmed their participation.

Margelov's press service earlier announced participation of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit, but the Egyptian Embassy denied that the minister would attend the conference.

Source: RIA Novosti.
Link: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20091002/156326929.html.

Resolution of Kashmir only way for peace: Qureshi

Islamabad, Oct 2 (PTI) South Asian region is hostage to the unresolved Kashmir dispute and its peaceful resolution through uninterrupted dialogue between India and Pakistan is the only way forward, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said.

Qureshi made the remarks during an interaction with the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times.

Qureshi, currently on an official visit to the US, briefed senior editors of the daily about aspects of Pakistan's foreign policy, relations with the US and recent regional developments.

He said Pakistan is fully committed to peace, security and development in the region. Peace and stability in Afghanistan is crucial for the security and economic development of Pakistan, he said.

No country has suffered more than Pakistan due to the wars in Afghanistan, Qureshi said.

Qureshi highlighted the Pakistan government's successes in countering terrorism and extremism.

Mixed reaction in Kashmir over China's separate visa row

Friday 2nd October, 2009 (ANI)

Srinagar, Oct 2 : China's new practice of issuing special stapled visas on loose sheets of paper has evoked a mixed response among the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

On Thursday it was reported that for over a year now, the Chines Embassy in New Delhi has been issuing visas to the travelers from Jammu and Kashmir on a loose sheets of paper, and not stamped on their passports.

A Kashmiri youth Imtiyaaz said: "I would just like to say that China has done wrong. Whatever they are doing with Kashmir is for their own benefit. It will prevent the Kashmir students from going abroad. They do not have any sympathy for the Kashmiris. They are only trying to settle their dispute with India."

Kashmiris also feel that China's initiative is an attempt to try and settle its dispute with India.

"This is very wrong step, it has harmed the Kashmiris. The Indian government has also stopped Kashmiri students from going abroad. It is very bad. They should have taken this step earlier. Now they have made this move on their 60th anniversary, they just want to show their power to India," said Abdul Wahid, a local.

According to sources, the Chinese Embassy has so far issued over 100 such visas. China's initiative may have created a furore in the Indian political circles and the government, but the locals in Kashmir are happy to be treated as an independent entity.

"This is the best step China has taken that Kashmir is disputed since 1947. This is a very good step. It is good that they are issuing separate visas to Kashmiris," said Ghulam Nabi, a retired state government employee.

On Thursday in an exclusive interview to the ANI, External Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna asked China not to discriminate among the Indian nationals while issuing visas to travel to that country.

"It has come to the notice of the Government of India that China is issuing different visas to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. We are taking up the issue with Chinese Government," he said.

Krishna said: "We will tell them that visa related issue should be uniform, there should not be any discrimination among the Indian nationals while issuing visas."

"Jammu and Kashmir is a part of India so there should be uniformity while issuing the passport," the External Affairs Minister added.

Earlier, China issued separate stamped visas to those hailing from Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing claims as a disputed territory.

New Delhi feels that the action with regard to Kashmiri travelers is seen as an attempt by Beijing to question the status of Jammu and Kashmir as a part of India.

2 rescued days after Indonesia quake kills 715

By IRWAN FIRDAUS, Associated Press Writer

PADANG, Indonesia – Rescuers pulled two women alive from their collapsed college, nearly two days after a powerful earthquake devastated western Indonesia, as cries for help from a flattened hotel spurred the frantic search for more survivors Friday.

One of the survivors high-fived her rescuers as they carried her to safety.

The government said nearly 3,000 may still be trapped under the rubble after Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude quake toppled thousands of buildings on Sumatra island. At least 715 people are already confirmed dead. Paramedics laid out dozens of corpses, and the stench of decomposing bodies filled the air.

Some victims have yet to receive help. In a district north of the hard-hit city of Padang, stricken residents said they'd seen no rescue workers. Most structures there had been leveled, and people were using shovels and their bare hands to clear landslides and dig out bodies.

Against a grim backdrop of grief and destruction, rescuers found a reason to cheer: Ratna Kurniasari Virgo, 19, an English major sophomore, and a teacher, Susi Revika Wulan Sari, were found alive under the rubble of their college in Padang, the Foreign Language School of Prayoga.

Sari was extricated at 5:20 p.m. (1020 GMT, 6:20 a.m. EDT), almost exactly 48 hours after the college crumbled in the 5.15 p.m. quake on Wednesday. She spent the time pinned down by the rubble among dead bodies of her students. On Friday, she beamed and slapped the hands of the rescue workers as they carried her away.

"She was conscious. Only her legs and fingers are swollen because she was squeezed," said the institute's director, Teresia Lianawaty. "Thank God! It is a miracle."

Earlier Friday, Virgo was yanked out, also conscious, after a 40-hour ordeal of being trapped in the rubble.

With excited shouts and giving words of encouragement to each other, rescuers pulled Virgo hands-first from a hole drilled in the debris. Her olive-colored T-shirt almost spotless, Virgo was laid on a stretcher before being taken to hospital to be treated for a broken leg.

"She is fine, conscious and does not have any life-threatening injuries," said Nining Rosanti, a nurse, at the hospital.

Elsewhere in the city, at the site of the former Ambacang Hotel where as many as 100 were feared trapped, rescue workers detected signs of life under a hill of tangled steel, concrete slabs and broken bricks of the three-story structure, said Gagah Prakosa, a spokesman of the rescue team.

"We heard some voices of people under the rubble, but as you can see the damage is making it very difficult to extricate them," Prakosa said, as a backhoe cleared the debris noisily.

The voices were heard 44 hours after the disaster, giving hope that many lives could still be saved.

But as the first foreign relief teams made their way to the scene, Indonesian officials said a lack of heavy digging equipment was hampering the search.

"Heavy equipment and rescuers are our priority," said spokesman Priyadi Kardono of the Health Ministry's national disaster management agency.

Kardono said Friday that 715 people have been confirmed dead and 2,400 hospitalized. U.N. spokeswoman Laksmita Noviera in Jakarta said the United Nations fears the toll could rise to 1,100.

That appeared a conservative estimate. Kardono said nearly 3,000 people may still be trapped under rubble. It is the first confirmed government figure for the missing, suggesting that the final death toll could be in the thousands.

The damage from the undersea quake was believed most extensive around Padang, a coastal town of 900,000 people and the capital of heavily populated West Sumatra province.

But about 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the north, in the rural, hilly district of Pariaman, which is home to about 370,000 people, an Associated Press reporter saw virtually no buildings still standing. The region was largely cut off and had received no outside help, leaving many to clear roads of landslides and dig out bodies using shovels and bare hands.

Officials said more than 10,000 homes and buildings had been destroyed there. It was unclear how many had died.

At a makeshift center for the homeless, dozens sheltered from the burning sun under a 15-by-30 foot (5-by-10 meter) canopy donated by a local business.

"It's too crowded here at night. We need more space and we need more shelter," said resident Ahmad Razali. "I'm worried about looters. They are out there and the police are too busy to do anything. We haven't gotten any help from the government yet."

Medical teams, search dogs, backhoes and emergency supplies, some of it given by other countries, were flown into Sumatra on Friday after Indonesia issued an appeal for international help.

"Please be patient," Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the crowd of people whose relatives are missing, assuring them that the government was doing everything in its power to save lives.

But death was pervasive as bodies began decomposing in the tropical heat.

Paramedics laid out dozens of corpses at the Dr. M. Djamil General Hospital, Padang's biggest, which also was partly damaged in the quake. The air was filled with the wail of ambulance sirens.

Anwari, who uses only one name, burst into tears when asked who he was waiting for outside the hospital.

"Don't ask me about my daughter ... She is still missing," Anwari said, between sobs. "Please don't ask me ... it reminds me of her." He was too distraught to say anything more.

With communications and power supplies still down in many areas, fuel was being rationed to focus on locating the missing.

Twenty-eight tons of supplies, including water, medicine and basic food provisions, were flown into regional airports to be distributed to the needy. Aid workers handed tents to some of the tens of thousands of people made homeless, disaster management spokesman Kardono said.

Russia sent two planeloads of supplies, along with doctors and nurses to treat the seriously injured.

Also donating millions of dollars in aid and financial assistance were governments and charities of Australia, Britain, China, Germany, Japan, the European Union, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Denmark and the United States, Indonesian officials said.

President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, pledged to support earthquake recovery efforts there, as well as provide assistance to the South Pacific countries of Samoa and American Samoa, which were hit by a deadly tsunami Tuesday. The United States pledged $3.3 million in immediate assistance to Indonesia.

Indonesia sits on a major geological fault zone and experiences dozens of quakes every year. Wednesday's quake originated on the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.

It was the deadliest since May 2006, when more than 3,000 people died in the city of Yogyakarta.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said the government has allocated $25 million for a two-month emergency response. She said the earthquake will seriously affect Indonesia's economic growth, because West Sumatra is a main producer of crude palm oil.

Obama meets with Afghanistan commander in Denmark

By JULIE PACE, Associated Press Writer

COPENHAGEN – President Barack Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan for a 25-minute meeting aboard Air Force One on Friday as part of his review of a war strategy that has divided the president's national security team.

Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Obama met just before the president returned to Washington from Copenhagen, where he was pitching the International Olympic Committee on Chicago's bid to host the 2016 games.

McChrystal had been in London, where he said in a speech Thursday that insurgents are gaining strength in Afghanistan and more troops are needed to "buy time" for the Afghan military and police forces to prepare to take control of the country in 2013.

A White House spokesman said the meeting was part of the ongoing discussion about Afghanistan and no decisions were made. The pair met in the president's cabin.

"The president wanted to take the opportunity to get together with Gen. McChrystal," spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard the presidential aircraft just before takeoff.

The meeting was the third conversation between the two since McChrystal disclosed in a television interview that aired Sunday that he had spoken with Obama only once since taking over the U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan. Obama tapped McChrystal in May to replace ousted Gen. David McKiernan.

Obama and McChrystal spoke on Wednesday before Obama convened a meeting later that day of his war council, which McChrystal joined by video conference. When Obama learned McChrystal would be in London, he asked him to meet him on the tarmac in Copenhagen after Obama made a last-minute pitch for Chicago's bid, Gibbs said.

Obama's strategy review was prompted in part by a critical assessment of the war effort that McChrystal sent him last month. He declared that the U.S. would fail to meet its objectives of causing irreparable damage to Taliban militants and their al-Qaida allies if the administration did not significantly increase American forces.

While the Pentagon has so far locked away specifics of McChrystal's troop request, he is widely believed to want to add between 30,000 and 40,000 to the current force of 68,000.

Wednesday's war council meeting, the second of at least five planned by Obama, exposed emerging fault lines within the administration over Afghanistan — with military commanders pressing for more troops and other advisers expressing skepticism.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and special Afghan and Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke appeared to be leaning toward supporting a troop increase, while White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Gen. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, appeared to be skeptical of troop increases. Vice President Joe Biden also has been reluctant to support sending more troops, favoring a strategy that directly targets al-Qaida fighters who are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

The assessment of divisions within Obama's inner circle came from a senior administration official who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity, because the discussions were private.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both support McChrystal's strategy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has remained noncommittal.

Irish vote again on European Union reform treaty

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer

DUBLIN – The future of the European Union hung in the balance Friday as Ireland's voters decided whether to ratify a treaty aimed at making the 27-nation body more powerful and effective.

Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty last year. A second "no" vote would doom the EU's painstakingly negotiated plans to improve its institutions in an age of rapid eastward expansion and growing challenges from cross-border crime, terrorism, energy needs and ecological threats.

If Lisbon becomes law, more policy decisions would be permitted by majority rather than unanimous votes in European summits and in the European Commission, the EU's executive branch. Those policies, in turn, would increasingly be shaped by the elected parliaments of each nation and the European Parliament, which currently has little say.

Projecting this more decisive EU abroad would be a new fixed-term president — in place of a decades-old system that rotates the presidency among governments every six months — and a new foreign minister.

The treaty can't become EU law unless every member ratifies it. Twenty-four nations have done so, while the Euro-skeptic heads of state in Poland and the Czech Republic are withholding their assent until Ireland's popular will has spoken.

Ireland is the only EU member requiring the treaty to win majority approval from voters. The country is voting again after EU leaders reaffirmed Ireland's military neutrality, control over tax policies and right to keep abortion outlawed in this predominantly Catholic country.

Results come Saturday.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen and opposition leaders, virtually all of whom support the treaty, said a second "no" would do the most damage to Ireland itself. The country over the past year has fallen into a deep recession and requires European Central Bank support to revive its banks and combat a runaway deficit. Cowen also said future foreign investment required Ireland to be seen as an EU enthusiast, not an outsider.

"With a `yes' vote, Ireland will retain the confidence that it is a positive and influential member of the union, and the union will be allowed to move forward to tackle urgent problems," Cowen said. "With a `no' vote, confidence in Ireland will inevitably suffer."

Treaty opponents charge that the EU is seeking greater powers to impose unpopular policies on Ireland, including higher taxes, lower wages, legalized abortion and euthanasia, and increased immigration.

"Governments try to steamroller us, whether it's in Dublin or Brussels. Just look what happens when we vote no. They make us vote again!" said Eugene Gorman, 27, who parked his bicycle — festooned with slogans saying "No. Seriously" — outside a polling station near Trinity College Dublin.

If Ireland does reject Lisbon again, the European Union would find itself in uncharted diplomatic waters. An alliance built on the principle of unanimous consent for key decisions would be faced with the reality that, under current rules, a country of barely 4 million can repeatedly block reforms designed to improve the lives of a continent of 500 million.

The response in that scenario could be negotiating a new treaty opening the door to a "two-speed Europe" — in which an inner core of like-minded nations could reach their own agreements, and unwilling nations like Ireland could tag along later. Most EU leaders consider this a dangerously divisive road but could be left with no viable alternative if the Irish shoot down Lisbon again.

Italian lawyers seek detention of CIA operatives

Italian prosecutors have pressed on with a bid to arrest 26 US Central Intelligence Agency officers over their 'grave crime' of abducting a 'terror suspect' in 2003.

Public prosecutors in Italy have called upon a Milan court to issue the arrest warrant for the CIA agents who participated in a 2003 kidnapping operation, as part of US 'renditions' of terrorism suspect authorized by former US administration, which led to the detention and 'harsh' interrogation of the Egyptian Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar.

The Italian lawyers have also urged the court to convict the CIA agents involved in the so-called US war on terror and put them behind bars for at least 10 to 13 years for their offense.

Moreover, they have requested the court to mete out similar imprisonment term for Italy's former head of secret service, Nicolo Pollari.

Under renditions program, the US spy agency relocated suspects to a third country where torture was exercised as an attempt to outsource the afflicting practice, human rights activists say.

Armando Spataro, a leading prosecutor on the case has also accused Italian governments of failing to formally request the extradition of the US spies and said that the presence of the American 'fugitives' was necessary in order to provide more testimonies for CIA's international undercover activities.

The US government has refrained to extradite the accused 'criminals' to Italy in order for them to give evidence on Abu Omar case.

Meanwhile, CIA has so far abstained to comment on the latest tribunal against its agents.

China, India lock horns over Kashmir

Indian authorities have lodged official protests with Beijing over a new practice of issuing special Chinese visas for residents of Indian-administrated Kashmir.

"We have conveyed our well-justified concern to the Chinese government," India's foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said Friday.

"It is our considered view and position that there should be no discrimination against visa applicants of Indian nationality on the grounds of domicile or ethnicity," the AFP news agency quoted Prakash as saying.

The protests come as in recent months Kashmiris applying to the Chinese embassy in New Delhi have received visas issued on separate papers and not on passports.

Chinese officials have offered no explanation for the special visas.

The action is seen by the authorities in New Delhi as an attempt by China to question status of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India.

Kashmir has been the subject of a bitter territorial dispute between India and Pakistan since they secured independence from Britain in 1947.

Kashmir, currently divided between the South Asian rivals by a Line of Control, had triggered two full-scale wars.

China is also a party to the dispute in that it lays claim to a slice of Indian-run Kashmir.

The Chinese embassy has also issued similar visas for those hailing from Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing says is a disputed territory.

Over much of the last 40 years, China has been claiming Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory.

Beijing army and New Delhi forces fought a brief but bloody war over their Himalayan border in 1962.

Hamas hands over video in exchange for prisoners

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Hamas militants handed over a two-minute video showing a healthy-looking Israeli soldier held captive since 2006, and in exchange Israel freed 19 Palestinian women prisoners on Friday — the first tangible step toward defusing a key flashpoint in Israeli-Palestinian hostilities.

An Israeli official who saw the video of Sgt. Gilad Schalit said the 23-year-old looked good and spoke lucidly about something from his past. He gave no further details, and spoke on condition of anonymity because the footage had not been released to the public.

It was the first glimpse of Schalit since his capture nearly 3 1/2 years ago. Before Friday, the only signs of life had been three letters and an audio tape.

Local media reported that in the video Schalit held up an Arabic language newspaper dated Sept. 14, 2009 — Hamas' proof the footage was taken recently. It was not clear if Schalit was reading from a text or speaking off the cuff, though no notes could be seen in the video.

The Palestinian prisoners' triumphant return home to a flag waving and cheering crowd, together with the video's arrival in Israel, gave hope to each side that a wider, long-awaited prisoner swap is now in the offing.

Hamas is demanding freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as their price for Schalit, whose capture in a bloody cross-border raid has touched a raw nerve in a country where most families have loved ones in the military.

Friday's deal could also herald an end to a crippling, Israel-led blockade of Gaza, which has prevented the territory from rebuilding after Israel's winter war there.

Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas, a violent group backed by Iran and Syria, seized power in Gaza two years ago. Israel has made it clear that it will not ease the embargo before the serviceman is freed.

About 200 people waving Palestinian flags greeted vans carrying 18 of the women into the West Bank. The prisoners, wearing the headscarves of devout Muslim women, blew kisses to the crowd through the vehicles' open windows.

Later, the prisoners were greeted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his walled compound, as elated related relatives threw fistfuls of candy in the air.

Zhour Hamdan, arrested in 2003, was reunited with her eight children and saw her first granddaughter, 1-year-old Selina, for the first time. Her daughter Nasreen, 26, said she hadn't been able to visit her mother for more than a year because of Israeli movement restrictions.

"It's indescribable," Nasreen said of the reunion. "We are preparing a tremendous celebration at home."

Another woman returned to her home in Gaza. Yet another will be released to Gaza on Sunday, bringing to 20 the total number of women freed as part of the exchange, Israel's prisons service said.

The women had been jailed for relatively minor offenses and were close to release. Only a few were members of militant groups, and most were assigned supporting roles, such as helping bombers reach their targets, said Bothaina Duqmaq, a prisoners' rights activist in the West Bank,

Israel's lead negotiator in prisoner swap talks viewed the video first in Tel Aviv to determine its authenticity. The video was then transferred to Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak viewed it.

A copy of the disc was also delivered by helicopter to the Schalit family in northern Israel. Channel 1 TV said Schalit appeared healthy and clean-shaven, and that his hair had been trimmed.

Reporters and cameramen thronged the Schalit home as an army general walked with a manila envelope carrying the video inside. Policemen stood guard outside the house, which was shown continuously on Israeli TV stations.

Schalit was captured in June 2006 by Hamas-linked militants in Gaza who tunneled under the border into Israel, killed two other soldiers and dragged him bleeding into Palestinian territory.

Israel and Hamas shun each other, and German and Egyptian mediators have been acting as go-betweens in swap talks.

Israel had said the women would not be freed unless the video disc met three criteria: It had to be provably recent, Schalit had to be talking clearly into the camera, and the footage had to be at least a minute long.

The footage will not be shown to the public if the family doesn't want it released, and even if they agree, it wasn't clear whether it would be aired on Friday, an Israeli official said.

Hamas has said it must receive permission from the German mediator before authorizing the release of copies of the videotape to the media.

Israel has said Friday's deal was suggested by mediators as a "confidence-building measure." But Israeli officials have predicted that negotiations for a final deal would be long and difficult.

The Palestinians want Israel to trade up to 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Schalit, including many convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis. Talks have snagged over the specific prisoners the Palestinians want freed and where they are to go after their release.

Still, both Hamas and Israel appear eager to wrap up a deal.

Schalit's return would end a painful chapter in Israel, where military service is compulsory and his long captivity has touched a raw nerve.

Many Israelis have rallied behind the soldier and his family, holding protests calling for his release and decorating their cars with bumper stickers bearing his name. As speculation about a possible prisoner swap grows, however, arguments against his release have grown louder, because of the high price Israel would have to pay.

Hamas' profile, meanwhile, would be raised in Palestinian territories by the loosening of the blockade and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Prisoners enjoy an eminent status in Palestinian society because so many families have members in Israeli jails. A large-scale release would be a coup for Hamas as it jockeys for power against the moderate government led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

Video shows Israeli soldier well; prisoners freed

By Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A 2-minute video of an Israeli soldier held captive by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas for the past three years shows him "healthy and coherent" and speaking to the camera, Israeli officials said on Friday.

He was holding a newspaper dated Sept, 14, in the classic "proof of life" gesture, said one official who saw the video.

Recorded images of Gilad Shalit, 23, were handed over in exchange for Israel's release of 20 Palestinian women from its jails, one of whom brought home a 20-month-old boy born in prison to a joyful reception in Gaza.

The swap with Hamas, brokered by German and Egyptian diplomacy, could be a step toward a larger prisoner exchange and the release of Shalit, one of Israel's top priorities since his capture in a June 2006 cross-border raid.

"The success of the resistance in achieving this deal heralds further success in achieving a further deal," said Osama Al-Muzaini, a senior Hamas official close to the negotiations.

"There is active movement, and there is an energetic German role and we hope to be close to achieving the deal that would please us all," he told Reuters.

Israel had said Friday's deal was a confidence-building gesture before crucial stages in negotiations for Shalit's release, and added that lengthy and difficult negotiations were still ahead before any final swap.

Israeli officials said the video of Shalit was authenticated before 19 of the women were released. A copy was to be viewed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the parents of Shalit before any decision to make it public.

The video was handed over as a convoy of Red Cross jeeps carried 18 freed women prisoners over the Beitunya checkpoint into the West Bank. The 19th was taken into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip with her baby, and the final prisoner in the swap was due to be released on Sunday.

In both the West Bank and Gaza, the first stop for the liberated women was government headquarters, where official receptions and celebrations were prepared.

BABY GETS BIG WELCOME

The exchange is seen as one essential step toward a broader deal for Shalit's liberation, in return for the release of hundreds of long-term Hamas prisoners.

On the Gaza side of Israel's Erez Checkpoint, hundreds of Palestinians waving the green Hamas flag, the black banners of Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian national colors joined a convoy into the Mediterranean coast city with sirens wailing.

Hamas prime minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh sent his official car to pick up 40-year-old Fatima al-Zaq and son Youssef and bring them direct from the border to his office.

The baby was snatched from her arms in a media frenzy and passed overhead wailing into the embrace of Haniyeh, who held up the boy for the crowd and kissed him.

The al-Zaq house was decorated with posters and flags.

"We feel wonderful," said her husband Mohammed, who is a member of Islamic Jihad. "People are celebrating with us, from all factions ... the prisoners' release unites us."

There was no immediate word from the Shalit family.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has not visited Shalit and only a few letters and an audio tape have reached his family, which has waged a vocal campaign to get him freed.

Netanyahu said in a statement on Wednesday it was "important for the entire world to know that Gilad Shalit is alive and well and that Hamas is responsible for his well-being and his fate."

Israel holds more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas is negotiating for the release of hundreds of its members in exchange for Shalit, including militants behind deadly attacks who Israel has said in the past it would not free.

Shalit, who is also a French citizen, served in a tank unit. He was last seen when Islamist militants tunneled into Israel and killed two Israeli soldiers. Two attackers were also killed but the group successfully abducted Shalit.

Israel has said none of the Palestinian women freed on Friday were directly involved in killings or serving a sentence exceeding two years.

Turkish court to inquire into secret intel unit

A Turkish court is going to undertake a detailed inquiry into the existence of an overarching intelligence organization within Gendarmerie that allegedly perpetrated hundreds of murders in the country's southeast.

The decision to ask the General Staff about the existence and function of Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism center (JITEM) came during the trial of 11 former members-turned-informants of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a village guard and a civilian intelligence agent, according to a report published by Today's Zaman newspaper.

The defendants are accused of murder, bombing vehicles, assassination, abduction and extortion.

The clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit known as JITEM was founded by the retired major general Veli Kucuk, who was jailed following his capture in a police raid to crack down on Ergenekon operatives. According to Murat Belge at Istanbul's Bilgi University, JITEM is said to be the military wing of underground Ergenekon terror organization.

Abdulkadir Aygan, a former member of the PKK and later a JITEM member, confessed to the media on January, 19 that when retired Colonel Abdulkerim Kirca was the head of JITEM in Diyarbakir, the unit conducted dozens of executions in Turkey's southeastern province. The following day, Kirca committed suicide.

Chief of General Staff General Ilker Basbug, armed forces commanders, and a large number of military officers attended Kirca's funeral.

Aygan claimed that JITEM had executed between 600 and 700 Kurds in the 1990s, adding that “JITEM operations always ended in death… Those who were reported to JITEM as having any relationship with the PKK were executed.”

This is while Kurdish activists have been demanding that the acid wells of BOTAS, the Turkish petroleum company, be emptied, because former Ergenekon members have claimed that JITEM dumped some of its victims in them.

JITEM was subjected to parliamentary scrutiny during the Susurluk scandal when a relationship between Ankara government, the armed forces and organized crime surfaced at the peak of Turkey-PKK conflict in mid-1990s.

Israel frees other captives in Shalit video swap

Israel has set free the remaining nineteen Palestinian female captives in exchange for a one-minute video showing the fate of a captured IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Eighteen of the women crossed into the West Bank aboard Red Cross vans and got a tremendous welcome as relatives and friends reacted ecstatically to their release. The last woman crossed in a Red Cross van into Gaza through the Erez checkpoint.

The 15-year-old Bara'ah Malki was released late Wednesday after a judge ordered her freed. The girl returned to her home in the Jalazone refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The decision to free the twenty Palestinian prisoners came during a Security Cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning and in line with the proposal from the team negotiating the release of Gilad Shalit.

This is while Israel on Friday received a recently recorded video tape about Shalit. The tape clearly shows that the captive soldier enjoys a good health and shows he has no sign of wounds. The video was said to have been shot at a disclosed area in the Gaza Strip.

Shalit has been in Palestinian captivity since he was abducted by Gaza Strip fighters in a cross-border raid on June 25, 2006.

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has demanded Israel to release more than 1,000 Palestinians, including about 450 long-serving inmates, from its detention facilities in exchange for the freedom of the captured Israeli trooper.

Authorities ban anti-Israel rally in Jordan

Jordanian authorities have outlawed a rally which the country's Islamic groups were to stage in protest at the Israeli troops' breaking into the al-Aqsa Mosque earlier this week.

"The Amman Governor Samir Mobaydeen has rejected a request by Islamic leaders to organize the demonstration in downtown Amman after Friday prayers to condemn the desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque," the Islamic Action Front (IAF) said in a statement.

Clashes erupted early Sunday between Palestinians in the eastern part of al-Quds and the Israeli police as a group of Jewish radicals broke into the yard of al-Aqsa Mosque. About 16 Palestinians and several Israeli police were injured in the clashes, according to media reports.

Demonstrators in Amman on Monday set the Israeli flag on fire and called on the government officials to sever diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in reaction to Israeli soldiers' breaking into the Muslim sacred shrine.

Dozens of trade unionists and politicians meanwhile staged a sit-in in front of the headquarters of Jordan's Professional Association Council. Protesters held banners reading, "Our blood is shed for you, our souls are sacrificed for your sanctity. We swear to you, Aqsa, that we will never forget you".

Muslims consider the trespass into the al-Aqsa Mosque yard as part of a Judaization campaign that targets the holy city of al-Quds and a provocation of Muslim feelings.

On Alien World, It Rains Rocks

Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer

On Earth, strange things, including frogs and fish, sometimes fall from the sky, but on a distant extrasolar planet, the weather could be even weirder: When a front moves in, small rocks rain down on the surface, a new study suggests.

The exoplanet, COROT-7b, was discovered in February by the COROT space telescope launched by the French and European space agencies. Last month is became the first planet outside our solar system to be confirmed as a rocky body — most other known exoplanets are gas giants.

The planet is nearly twice the size of Earth and about five times the mass of our world. Calculations have indicated it has a density about that of Earth's, which means it is likely made up of silicate rocks, just as Earth's crust is.

The planet is likely much less hospitable to life though, as it is only about 1.6 million miles (2.6 million km) away from its parent star — 23 times closer than Mercury sits to the sun.

Locked and scorching

Because the planet is so close to the star, it is gravitationally locked to it in the same way the Moon is locked to Earth. One side of the planet always faces its star, just as one side of the Moon always faces Earth.

This star-facing side has a temperature of about 4,220 degrees Fahrenheit (2,326 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to vaporize rock.

So unlike the much cooler Earth, COROT-7b has no volatile gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrogen) in its atmosphere. Instead it's atmosphere consists of what might be called vaporized rock.

"The only atmosphere this object has is produced from vapor arising from hot molten silicates in a lava lake or lava ocean," said Bruce Fegley Jr., of Washington University in St. Louis.

Rocky weather forecast

To find out what COROT-7b's atmosphere might be like, Fegley and his colleagues modeled it. They found that COROT-7b's atmosphere is made up of the ingredients of rocks and when "a front moves in," pebbles condense out of the air and rain into lakes of molten lava below.

"Sodium, potassium, silicon monoxide and then oxygen — either atomic or molecular oxygen — make up most of the atmosphere," Fegley said. But there are also smaller amounts of the other elements found in silicate rock, such as magnesium, aluminum, calcium and iron.

The rock rains form similarly to Earth's watery weather: "As you go higher the atmosphere gets cooler and eventually you get saturated with different types of 'rock' the way you get saturated with water in the atmosphere of Earth," Fegley explained. "But instead of a water cloud forming and then raining water droplets, you get a 'rock cloud' forming and it starts raining out little pebbles of different types of rock."

Menagerie of minerals

The exoplanet's atmosphere condenses out minerals such as enstatite, corundum, spinel, and wollastonite.

Elemental sodium and potassium, which have very low boiling points in comparison with rocks, do not rain out but would instead stay in the atmosphere, where they would form high gas clouds buffeted by the stellar wind from COROT-7.

These large clouds may be detectable by Earth-based telescopes. The sodium, for example, should glow in the orange part of the spectrum, like a giant but very faint sodium vapor streetlamp.

Observers have recently spotted sodium in the atmospheres of two other exoplanets.

The new modeling finding is detailed in the Oct. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

U.S. Troops Call Afghanistan 'Vietnam Without Napalm'

The men of Bravo Company have a bitter description for the irrigated swath of land along the Arghandab River where 10 members of their battalion have been killed and 30 have been wounded since the beginning of August.

"Like Vietnam without the napalm," said Spc. Nicholas Gojekian, 21, of Katy, Texas.

A prime agricultural area of vineyards and pomegranate orchards, the 18-miles of valley that the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment patrols includes Taliban insurgents, booby traps and buried explosives. The troops call the area the "green zone," but unlike Iraq, where it's a fortified area in the heart of Baghdad, this green zone can be a hellish place.

The soldiers have one of the toughest tasks in Afghanistan: improving security and winning the support of villagers in an area where the Taliban have been gaining power.

The battalion arrived in southern Afghanistan this summer as part of a brigade of more than 3,800 soldiers from Fort Lewis, Washington. The unit took its heaviest losses in August, when it had the highest casualties in what was the deadliest month so far in America's eight-year war here.

So far, the Army mission here has been an uneasy mix of trying to woo elders with offers of generators, roads and other improvements while fighting a nasty war with an often-unseen enemy.

Bravo Company arrived in Afghanistan with 24 Strykers, the first of the eight-wheeled combat vehicles outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance gear to arrive in Afghanistan. A third of the vehicles are now out of service due to bomb attacks or maintenance.

The bomb threats are so pervasive that Stryker drivers have abandoned some stretches of road in favor of driving through the deserts on different routes. The road to one smaller outpost has so many homemade bombs that the soldiers usually arrive on foot, a treacherous hike due to buried land mines.

"We have had enemy contact almost every day," said Lt. Col. Jon Neumann, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment. "Until we do clearing, we can't hold or build here right now," a reference to the U.S. counter-insurgency tactic of "clear, hold and build."

Neumann said that a "perfect storm" of factors has bolstered the Taliban in the Arghandab. They include a successful spring insurgency campaign, the death of a strong tribal leader who supported the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the wounding of a charismatic police chief.

The Americans are up against a foe who's adept at creating unforeseen hazards. Often the Taliban fill large yellow water jugs with explosives - packing some underneath road culverts and burying others in the sandy desert soil.

Some battalion solders perished when their Strykers hit roadside bombs - known as IED's or improvised explosive devices - and others were killed by bombs that exploded while they patrolled on foot. On a single deadly day in August, a Bravo Company 1st lieutenant on a patrol had both his legs blown off by a mine, and explosions killed two soldiers temporarily attached to the unit as they walked through the green zone.

Civilian casualties also have climbed. IED's set by insurgents have blown up many. Villagers claim that other civilians have died or been injured in crossfires when U.S. forces and their Afghan allies fight insurgents.

Bravo Company is responsible for an area that's considered a key staging point for Taliban as they organize forays into Kandahar, a major southern city where the insurgents rule by night and set off bombs by day.

The Arghandab valley is starkly divided between a flat, barren desert and the fertile stretch of irrigated orchards, vineyards and cornfields along the river. In the 1980s, Soviet troops spent more than a month in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat U.S.-backed mujahedeen forces that took refuge in the orchards.

From the green zone, the Taliban fan out to villages, which consist largely of mud brick homes inside mud-walled compounds that sprout out of the ground in the same dun colors of the surrounding desert.

The Taliban presence is strong enough in some areas that children are afraid to go to school, even abandoning a large school built in 2004 with the aid of Japanese funds. "If we send our children to school during the day, then the Taliban will come kill the parents at night," said one elder in a meeting with Bravo Company soldiers in the village of Adirah. McClatchy isn't using the elder's name to protect his security.

In the nearby village of Jelawur, the U.N. was able to complete a rebuilding project a few years after the fall of Taliban, an effort marked with a plaque on a wall. Seven years later, however, several dozen Bravo Company soldiers found a walk down the main street to be a tense one this week.

The soldiers were in full battle gear, scanning culverts for IED's and checked their gun sights to search the surrounding fields for signs of a Taliban attack. Some soldiers stripped off their shoulder patches to make themselves less of a target.

Villagers warily monitored their passage. A soldier threw out a piece of candy, and a shopkeeper quickly admonished a young boy to leave it alone.

The company had 152 soldiers when it arrived, which was more than a dozen short of its authorized strength. Since then, some platoons have been depleted by injuries, including concussions from bomb blasts.

"I don't have enough troops for everything they want me to do here," said Capt. Jamie Pope, the company commander, a West Point graduate from Sherrills Ford, North Carolina.

One platoon authorized to have more than 40 soldiers is now trying to get by with fewer than 32 soldiers. After guard duty is assigned, a platoon may be at less than full strength for patrols.

"We may go with 10 to 11 guys, when we like to have 14 to 21," said Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Dimico, a 1st platoon soldier from Yakima, Wash. Another platoon that arrived with 39 soldiers was operating this week with 22, according to Sgt. 1st Class Zalman Dass from Renton, Washington.

The tempo was set on one of the first patrols back on Aug. 10 as Bravo Company soldiers trekked through a cornfield and were attacked at close range by nearly a dozen fighters who fired from the edge of some orchards.

Spc. Richard Thiebault was one of the lead soldiers. He heard the slam of a rifle bolt, and then went down with a bullet in his chest from an RPK machinegun about 60 feet away. His ballistic vest probably saved his life: The bullet left a half-dollar sized dent in the armor, but it didn't penetrate.

"I'm still shook up to this day," said Thiebault. "I don't like going near the orchards."

Fossils May Turn 'Evolution On Its Head'

A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday.

The centerpiece of the diverse collection of primate, animal and plant fossils is the near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor that demonstrates our earliest forebears looked nothing like a chimpanzee or other large primate, as is now commonly believed. Instead, the findings suggest that the last common ancestor of humans and primates, which existed nearly 2 million years earlier, was a primitive creature that shared few traits with modern-day members of either group.

The findings, analyzed in a large group of studies published today in the journal Science, also indicate that our ancestors began walking upright in woodlands, not on grassy savannas as prior generations of researchers had speculated.

The discovery of the specimen called Ardipithecus ramidus "is one of the most important discoveries for the study of human evolution," said paleoanthropologist David Pilbeam of Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. "The find itself is extraordinary, as were the enormous labors that went into the reconstruction of a skeleton shattered almost beyond repair," he said in an e-mailed statement.

"It is so rare to get a more or less complete skeleton," said paleoanthropologist Andrew Hill of Yale University. "In the entire course of human evolution, at least until you get to Neanderthals, there are only three to four available. We can always tell so much more from a skeleton" than from the jawbones and skulls that are more commonly found.

The fossils described in the new studies were found 15 years ago in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia by a team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley. But White and his team have been relatively closemouthed about the fossils, and other researchers - some of whom have accused him of hoarding the fossils for his own use - have been eagerly awaiting more information.

Today, they are getting a surfeit: Eleven papers by 47 authors, and a similar number of short summaries prepared by each paper's authors.

The fossils were found in a layer of sediment sandwiched between two layers of volcanic ash, each dating from 4.4 million years ago - indicating that the fossils are also of that age.

In addition to the nearly complete fossil specimen of the female primate, which investigators have dubbed Ardi, the team found more than 100 fossils from 36 other members of the same species.

"These fossils are much more important than Lucy," the 3.2-million-year-old specimen of Australopithecus afarensis that was found in the Afar desert in the 1970s, said paleoanthropologist Alan Walker of Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the research. "The reason is that when Lucy was found, we already knew the major features of Australopithecus from fossils found in the 1940s. ... These fossils are of a completely unknown creature, and are much stranger and more primitive than Australopithecus."

The White team also found fossils of 29 species of birds, primarily small ones like doves, lovebirds, mousebirds, passerines and swifts, as well as several that were previously unknown. Animal fossils included 20 new species of small mammals, including shrews, bats, rodents, hares and small carnivores, as well as larger animals, including baboons, colobus monkeys and spiral-horned antelopes.

Fossilized wood, seed and other plant remains indicate the presence of hackberry, fig and palm trees. Collectively, these finds indicate that the environment was more humid and cooler than it is today, and contained grassy woodland with forest patches.

Today, the Afar is a desert. But go back in a time machine and "4.4 million years ago, this was really a different world," said White. "We look up in the trees and we see that they are full of monkeys. We look around on the ground and we see that there are a lot of kudus. And we see an occasional hyena. And we see elephants and we see lots of small mammals. And we know what all of these ... are because we have found evidence of them."

This whole collection of data "gives us information we have never had before about human evolution," said paleoanthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University, one of the primary authors of the papers. "The whole savanna theory goes out the window in terms of it being the explanation for upright walking. ... And the idea that we evolved from something like a chimpanzee also goes out the window."

Ardi stood about 47 inches tall and probably weighed 110 pounds. Many researchers had previously believed that such an early ancestor would, like modern chimps, be a knuckle-walker, using the knuckles for support while moving on all fours. Instead, Ardi appears to have climbed on all fours on branches, but walked upright on the ground. Her feet, like those of monkeys but not chimps, were designed more for propulsion than for grasping.

Her face had a projecting muzzle, giving her an ape-like appearance, but many features of her skull, such as the ridge above the eye socket, are quite different than those of chimpanzees. Her brain is about the same size as Lucy's.

Her hands lacked many of the specializations that allow modern-day African apes to swing, hang and easily move through trees. Those specializations apparently evolved in large primates after they separated from the last common ancestor with humans more than 6 million years ago. (Few fossils of such primates are available because they lived primarily in forests, which are not conducive to preservation of bone.)

The finds "are turning evolution on its head," said Lovejoy.

The most controversial aspects of the papers involve the authors' - particularly Lovejoy's - interpretations of what the fossils say about behavior. Of particular importance, he said, is that the sizes of males and females were about the same, and that the specimens do not have large, sharp canine teeth. Both findings suggest that the fierce, often violent competition among males for females in heat that characterizes gorillas and chimpanzees was absent in Ardipithecus.

That implies, Lovejoy concluded, that the males were beginning to enter into monogamous relationships with females and devoted a greater proportion of their time to caring for their young than did earlier ancestors.

"This is a restatement of Owen Lovejoy's ideas going back almost three decades, which I found unpersuasive then and still do," said Pilbeam. Hill was more blunt, calling Lovejoy's speculation "patent nonsense."

Iran champion gives gold medal to Ahmadinejad

The 2009 World Greco-Roman champion Hamid Sourian of Iran has given his gold medal to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a gift.

"Dr. Ahmadinejad is the real champion due to his strong presence at the United Nations General Assembly," Sourian said on Thursday.

"He [Ahmadinejad] has also gained pride and dignity for the Iranians and all the Muslims," he went on to say.

After receiving the gift, the Iranian president said that his country is proud of its young athletes even if they fail to win any medals.

"Iran's youth including Hamid Sourian are the country's real heroes with their magnanimity even if they don't earn any medals," Ahmadinejad said.

"Wrestling spreads morality, culture and values which human needs today," the chief executive added.

The president further asked Iran's Physical Education Organization to pay more attention to wrestling.

Sourian won the gold medal in the men's 55 kg Greco-Roman category on September 26 after he defeated his Armenian rival Roman Amouian in the final of the 2009 FILA World Championships in Herning, Denmark.

Sourian won both the Junior World Championships and Senior World Championships in 2005. He had also won gold medals in the World Wrestling Championships in 2006 and 2007 in China and the Azerbaijan Republic, respectively.

Israel to seal off West Bank border for 9 days

Israel has announced plans to shut down the West Bank border for almost ten days so that Jewish Israelis can celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot).

The closure will begin on Thursday, October 1 and will end at sunset on Saturday, October 10, the Israeli military spokesman announced.

The closure will begin from Thursday at midnight; a military statement said and added that persons in need of medical care will not be affected by the closure.

"The passage of humanitarian aid as well as doctors, medical personnel, NGO members, lawyers, religious workers and additional professional groups will be authorized by the District Coordination and Liaison office," the statement added, dpa reported.

Israel regularly seals off the Palestinian territories under the pretext of security reasons and Jewish festivals.