Mumbai attacker retracts statement, denies charges

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

New Delhi - The lone Pakistani gunman captured during the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks on Friday retracted his statement admitting his involvement in the carnage and said he was forced to confess, news reports said. In a dramatic confession before the special court in Mumbai in July, Ajmal Kasab admitted to his role in the bloodbath and asked to be hanged.

But on Friday, Kasab denied all the charges against him and told the court that he was made to confess and was tortured, the NDTV network reported.

Kasab made the statement in connection with evidence placed before the court by the prosecution, which concluded its case Wednesday, seven months into the trial after examining 610 witnesses.

The NDTV report said the development was unlikely to delay the verdict in the case, which was expected in about two months.

The court is to pass its judgment after recording statements of the accused and hearing arguments in the case.

Kasab, an accused member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group, faces 86 charges ranging from waging war on India to murder, kidnapping and destabilizing the government. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

Besides Kasab, two Indians, Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, are accused in the case. The charges allege key planners of the assaults included LeT leaders Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah.

The attacks damaged relations between South Asia's two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, and derailed their five-year peace process.

According to the prosecution, Kasab was arrested November 27, 2008, the morning after he and nine other terrorists landed in Mumbai by boat from Karachi and launched the attacks.

The terrorists attacked 13 places - including two hotels, a train station, a cafe and Jewish center - and by the time the siege ended three days later, at least 166 people, including 26 foreign nationals, were dead.

Severe winter weather slams Ukraine

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

Kiev- Severe winter in Ukraine has left thousands of drivers stranded and dozens of villages without power, local media reported Friday. Heavy snow that knocked down power lines left 158 villages and towns in the former Soviet republic without power, said officials from the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MES).

The worst-hit region was Ukraine's usually snow-free south and east, where high winds and heavy snow fall had piled up drifts in excess of a meter at some locations, MES director Ihor Krol was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Between five and eight thousand cars and lorries were stranded Thursday evening on a highway to the west of the Black Sea port city Odessa, forcing drivers and passengers to abandon their vehicles and seek shelter.

Road-clearing and emergency-assistance teams sent by local officials were assisting the motorists, the Odessa-based news agency Liga reported.

"There have not been any deaths or injuries, but some of the drivers are panicking, which is interfering with the assistance effort," said Denys Kostenko, a Odessa-based MES spokesman.

The traffic jam of stuck and abandoned vehicles blocked a 6- kilometre stretch of highway on Thursday, he said.

Anatoly Vorokhaev, Odessa deputy mayor, told the Korrespondent website that poor driver preparation for winter roads was contributing to the difficulties.

"One of the main reasons for ... the traffic jams is that motorists have not put winter tires on their vehicles, and lots of times they are just driving on bald tires," he said.

Stuck vehicles and delays of six hours and more were also reported on highways in Ukraine's eastern Kherson and Donetsk provinces.

Traffic police on Thursday evening closed a heavily traveled intercity roadway in Kherson province to nighttime use.

Spanish region discusses a ban on bullfighting

Barcelona - The parliament of the wealthy north-eastern region of Catalonia was Friday preparing to vote on what could become a ground-breaking ban on Spain's bullfighting tradition in the region. If the legal initiative launched by an anti-bullfighting platform wins preliminary approval by the regional parliament, Catalonia could become the second Spanish region to ban bullfights after the Canary Islands did so in 1991.

The anti-bullfighting platform Prou collected 180,000 signatures to back its initiative, nearly four times as many as needed to bring it before parliament.

Far-left and environmentalist parties supported the ban, conservatives opposed it while Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists and the large Catalan nationalist formation CiU gave their legislators freedom to vote for or against.

The ban was likely to be approved, analysts said.

The vote launched a debate about bullfighting in Spain where opinion polls show its popularity has declined.

Only 19 per cent of Spaniards younger than 24 years take an interest in the spectacle, according to a 2006 poll.

Criticism of bullfights is strongest in Catalonia, a region of 7 million, where the regional capital Barcelona and dozens of other municipalities have declared their opposition to the sport.

Two of Barcelona's three bullrings have been closed, though the last remaining one still draws crowds for top bullfighters.

Opponents of bullfighting see it as a form of animal torture during which the bullfighter's assistants stick long darts into the animal's neck to build up its fury.

In the final "moment of truth," the matador is expected to kill the bull with a single thrust of his sword into the back of its neck, but many bullfighters are not that skillful and wound the animal several times.

Those defending bullfights see it as an ancient and important part of Spanish culture, which has inspired artists like the painter Pablo Picasso and the US writer Ernest Hemingway.

A ban on corridas would violate the basic freedoms of bullfighting fans, the Catalan bullfighting lobby said, arguing that the tradition should die a natural death if it was no longer popular.

The Canary Islands banned bullfights in 1991. The law in question did not specifically target bullfights, which were no longer taking place on the islands, but cockfights which remained popular there.

Namibia election challenge hearing postponed

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

Windhoek - A legal challenge by 10 Namibian opposition parties to the results of last month's elections was postponed Friday in the High Court of the south-west African country to give the state more time to prepare its defense. The parties earlier this week asked the court to order a full audit of the results of the November 27-28 presidential and parliamentary election, which the ruling party of 19 years, SWAPO, won by a landslide.

The opposition believes the elections were rigged.

Judge Collins Parker postponed the case until Tuesday, under mutual agreement between the opposition and the state.

The opposition parties seeking a complete review of the votes from polling stations and the final results to be able to prove their claim of irregularities in the vote count and voters roll.

Four different versions of the voters roll were made public by the Electoral Commission of Namibia in the run-up to the vote. The opposition also says more people voted in some places than were registered to vote.

"We jointly rejected the outcome of the recently held elections due to the discovery of very serious irregularities, which we felt could not be left unchallenged," the parties said.

The court challenge was "in the interest of our democracy and the people of Namibia," they said.

In the parliamentary election, which 14 parties contested, SWAPO fell just short of the three-quarters majority it had going into the vote, garnering 74 per cent.

SWAPO leader, President Hifikepunye Pohamba, also trounced his rivals in the presidential ballot, taking a little over 76 per cent.

Despite rising corruption and stubbornly high poverty in the country of around 2 million people, the former guerrilla movement SWAPO is still popular among voters for having won the country's independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990 and for having assured two decades of peace and stability.

Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians to get visa-free EU travel

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

Belgrade - Serbians, Macedonians and Montenegrins will be able to travel to most European Union countries without visas starting midnight Friday. The EU has decided to scrap the strict visa regime on November 30, 17 years after imposing it. At that time, wars raged in Croatia and Bosnia, as the Yugoslav federation was falling apart.

Brussels officials said the decision to place the three former Yugoslav republics on the so-called "white list" of nations on a visa-free regime was a signal affirming their European future.

All three are aspiring EU members, but only Macedonia has formally attained the status of a candidate. From the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia joined the EU in 2004, and Croatia is the next in line to join.

According to the new rules, visitors from the Balkans are allowed to stay in the EU for up to 90 days every six months.

They will also enjoy free travel to Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, which not EU member-states.

The visa-free regime for Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro does not apply to certain EU countries: Great Britain, Ireland, Bulgaria and Romania.

Merkel staves off mutiny to push tax-cut bill through

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives narrowly avoided a rebellion on Friday, as Christian Democrat (CDU) state premiers dropped their opposition to a tax cut bill just before a vote in the upper house of parliament. The premiers of the states of Schleswig Holstein and Sachsen, both CDU, said they would support the so-called Growth Acceleration Bill in a vote of the Bundesrat on Friday.

The Bundesrat represents Germany's 16 federal states, and premiers had been concerned that the bill would leave large deficits in state budgets at a time of falling tax revenue.

The bill is seen as a forerunner to a much larger round of tax cuts planned for 2010.

The premier of Schleswig Holstein, Peter Harry Carstensen, said the federal government had agreed to assist the states with their budgetary problems if they supported to the bill.

The bill was passed on December 4 by the lower house or Bundestag, and provides tax cuts and benefits for families and businesses, amounting to 8.5 billion euros (12.2 billion dollars).

Merkel's coalition with the Free Democrats won a general election in September, partly on promises to slash taxes in a bid to lead the economy to a full recovery after the global economic crisis.

15 killed in road crash in India's north-east

Fri, 18 Dec 2009

New Delhi - At least 15 people were killed Friday when a bus veered off the road and fell into a river in India's north-eastern state of Meghalaya, a news report said. Police and administrative officials told the IANS news agency that 34 passengers were injured when the bus fell into the river Lobo near Sonapur, about 120 kilometres north of Meghalaya's capital, Shillong.

"Till Friday afternoon, eight bodies, including that of a woman, have been recovered from the Lobo River," Manik Dey, a regional minister, told the IANS.

Officials told the news agency that the death toll was 15 although only eight bodies had been recovered so far.