Lebanon's Maronite patriarch calls for national unity

Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir believes the fact that there is no national unity cabinet in Lebanon is the source of all the country's problems.

Thus, he has called on the authorities to speed up their efforts to establish a national unity government.

"The government lineup should be quickly handed over to the president in a bid to preserve Lebanon and national unity," Sfeir said on Monday.

Lebanese prime minister-designate Saad Hariri abandoned his first attempt to form a national unity cabinet last month after the Hezbollah-led opposition rejected a team he proposed.

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the line-up would only further confuse the situation in Lebanon.

Demo for Al-Aqsa Mosque held in Istanbul

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Istanbul to protest against Israeli security forces' recent attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (al-Quds).

The demonstrators marched toward the heavily guarded Israeli consulate and burned an Israeli flag. They shouted slogans like "We will protect Al-Aqsa Mosque", "Close the Zionist embassy" and "Greetings to Hamas, continue to resist" during the anti-Israeli rally.

Israeli security forces attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning, firing rubber-coated bullets and tear gas canisters.

The clashes erupted earlier Sunday when Israeli troops using stun grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets broke into the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, beating Palestinian worshipers with the butts of guns and clubs.

At least 30 Palestinians were wounded and up to 20 others arrested during the fierce confrontations between Palestinian activists using stones, shoes, and bare fists and armed Israeli troops in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry released a statement in which it expressed deep concern over the tension around Al-Aqsa Mosque, saying Turkey expected the people who were arrested during Sunday's incidents to be released as soon as possible.

Many Muslims believe the frequent Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound are part of a Judaization campaign that targets the holy city of Al-Quds.

New Delhi concerned over attacks on Indians in Australia

An Indian official has expressed serious concern about yet another attack on an Indian citizen in Australia, calling it a "very serious matter."

"Certainly, this matter of attacks on people of Indian origin in Australia is a very serious matter and the government of India is very concerned over this matter," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash told reporters on Monday in Bangalore, the capital of the southern state of Karnataka.

A 22-year-old Sikh was punched in the head by a group of Australians who also removed his turban while he was sleeping at a bus stop in Melbourne on Sunday.

"The matter has been taken up at the highest level with the Australian side," Prakash said, adding that measures have to be taken to put an end to these racist incidents.

He went on to say that Australia had assured India twice that it will follow the "policy of zero tolerance" - first after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier this year spoken to his Australian counterpart and then when Indian External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna visited the country in August.

But although Australia has taken a number of steps to ensure the safety of foreigners, the attacks against Indians continue.

Over 250,000 people of Indian origin live in Australia and 90,000 Indian students are studying in the country.

3 Iranian schools closed to contain swine flu

At least thee Iranian schools have been closed as a precaution against the spread of the A/H1N1 flu among students.

Seyyed Ali Yazdikhah, the director of the Education Organization of Tehran Province, told the ILNA news agency on Monday that the schools were closed in line with a circular issued by the Education Ministry to prevent the spread of swine flu in schools.

The circular says if 15 percent of students of a school have been infected with the A/H1N1 flu, the educational institution should be closed.

Earlier, the director of the Health Ministry's Center for Disease Control, Mohammad-Mehdi Gouya, urged parents to keep any child with flu-like symptoms, such as a fever, cough, or sore throat, at home until the symptoms are gone.

Iran's health officials have stressed that adopting simple precautionary measures such as frequently washing hands, using a tissue to cover the mouth when coughing and sneezing, and avoiding kissing can help contain the virus from spreading.

The Health Ministry's latest reports indicate that swine flu has claimed the lives of 16 people across the country as the national tally of infections has risen to 1194.

Internet regulator emphasizes 'world' in World Wide Web - Feature

Seoul - A simpler World Wide Web for non-English speakers is on the horizon, according to the world's "internet regulator," which is hosting its 36th International Public Meeting this week in South Korea's capital Seoul. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, brings together some 1,000 Web gurus, including its board members and stakeholders, to review policies. That includes one that could pave the way for web addresses written completely in, say, Korean characters - or Chinese or Arabic, for that matter.

"This would be the biggest change technically to the internet since it was invented 40 years ago," ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said at a opening press conference on Monday.

"We'd take multiple different scripts and safely and consistently convert them into Web addresses."

Such Web addresses, which use characters outside the usual range of A to Z, 0 to 9 and hyphens, are referred to as Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

The kinds of IDNs currently available require use of at least some Roman text, such as ".com" or ".org."

Using the conference, which runs until Friday, ICANN's board of directors plans to review measures that could enable Web users to type internet domain names entirely in non-Roman script by the end of the year.

"This change is very much necessary for not only more than half the internet users today but more than half of all future users," said ICANN president and chief executive officer Rod Beckstrom.

Of the approximately 1.6 billion Web users today, 60 per cent are non-English speakers - nearly 35 million of them in Korea alone - according to Internet World Stats.

"Since we started with English domain names in Korea, some people feel like the internet is kind of an Anglo-Saxon community," said Kwon Hyun Joon, secretary general of the Korea Internet & Security Agency's web address dispute resolution committee.

"The internet should be provided to all people around the globe equally, regardless of their languages."

As for how the Western world would access non-Roman web addresses, Beckstrom suggested search engines would play a large role in surfing such sites. Thrush added, "People will be developing new technologies to deal with this new situation."

Other topics up for discussion include improved internet security, more global accountability for ICANN - which, until September 30, reported its progress only to the US government - and a broader range of suffixes available for use in web addresses, known as generic top-level domains.

"Roughly 15 billion times a day, human beings type a domain name into a web browser," Beckstrom said.

"Six keystrokes - .co.kr - if those are no longer necessary that adds up to a lot of (saved) human keystrokes."

Instead, the endings of web addresses could take a variety of different forms, like .berlin, to use Thrush's example. Such domains would not only be more convenient for users, but also enhance consumer confidence, he argued.

ICANN is a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation that coordinates Web addresses and names around the world. Formed in 1998 and headquartered in Marina Del Ray, California, it holds international conferences three times per year in different regions of the globe.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/291775,internet-regulator-emphasizes-world-in-world-wide-web--feature.html.

Philippines imposes oil price freeze in wake of devastating storms

Manila - Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered an oil price freeze to avoid major increases in the wake of devastation from two previous storms, a top aide said Monday. Executive secretary Eduardo Ermita said Arroyo signed the order Friday directing industry players to maintain the prices of petroleum products to the levels prevailing on October 15.

The prize freeze was issued "to prevent unreasonable increase in the prices of petroleum products during a state of calamity," the order said.

It added that the move was necessary "at this time when the Filipino people are reeling from the effects of the catastrophic devastation caused by successive calamities."

The order said the price freeze would be in effect while the northern region of Luzon is under a state of emergency, which Arroyo declared following storm Ketsana and typhoon Parma's onslaught.

Ermita said Arroyo directed a joint task force of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Justice to monitor the order's implementation and file complaints against violators.

The Philippines deregulated the oil industry in 1998.

But the order noted that the liberalization law authorized the DOE "to temporarily take over or direct operations of any person or entity engaged in the industry in time of national emergency."

Nearly 1,000 people were killed and more than 8 million affected by the worst flood in over 40 years caused by Ketsana on September 26 and landslides triggered by Parma one week later.

The two cyclones also caused damages to agriculture and infrastructure worth more than 652 million dollars.

Israel sets up team to collate findings from Gaza fighting probes

Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to form a team of legal experts and Foreign Ministry officials to collate all material gathered by the military in its investigations of the Israel offensive in the Gaza Strip at the turn of the year. Israel Radio reported Monday that Israel will present these findings as a probe which it is conducting into the offensive, instead of an investigative committee, as demanded by a United Nations Human Rights Council Commission which looked into the fighting.

The Goldstone Commission report found that both Israel and the Islamic Hamas movement, which administers the Gaza Strip, may have committed war crimes during the December 27 - January 18 fighting.

It said both sides must set up credible investigations into the charges within six months.

According to the Jerusalem Post daily, the Israeli team will make use of existing material, and present its findings as an internal investigation refuting the accusations contained in the Goldstone report.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday night that no Israeli military officer or soldier would be investigated, a point Netanyahu has also made.

Israel refused to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, charging that its original mandate was biased, since it called for an investigation only into Israel's actions, and not those of Hamas as well.

Human rights groups say up to 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the fighting.