The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Hyderabad

A pair of almost simultaneous bombings blamed on Islamic extremists tore through a popular family restaurant and an outdoor arena on Saturday night, killing at least 42 people in this southern Indian city plagued by Hindu-Muslim tensions.

The restaurant was destroyed by the bomb placed at the entrance. Blood-covered tin plates and broken glasses litered the road outside.

The other blast struck a laser show at an auditorium in Lumbini park, leaving pools of blood and dead bodies between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel. Some seats were hurled 100 feet away. Officials said Sunday that foreign-based Islamic extremists may have been behind the atacks.

"Available information points to the involvement of terrorist organizations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan," Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, told reporters after an emergency state Cabinet meeting.

Reddy did not name any groups, but Indian media reports, quoting unnamed security officials, identified the Bangladesh-based Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami. Reddy declined to provide more details. "It is not possible to divulge all this information," he said.

Harkatul, which is banned in Bangladesh, wants to establish strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws. The Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry said Dhaka had not been informed of these allegations.

Witnesses described chaotic scenes in the aftermath of the bombings.

"We heard the blast and people started running out past us. Many of them had blood streaming off them," said P.K. Verghese, the security manager at the laser show. "It was complete chaos. We had to remove the security barriers so people could get out" Most of the dead were killed in the Gokul Chat restaurant at Hyderabad's Kothi market, said K. Jana Reddy, the state home minister. By Sunday morning, the death toll had risen to 42 as victims succumbed to injuries. Some 50 people were injured in the two blasts.

Hindu-Muslim animosity runs deep in Hyderabad, where a bombing at a historic mosque killed 11 people in May. Another five people died in subsequent clashes between security forces and Muslim protesters angered by what they said was a lack of police protection. Two other bombs were defused in the city Saturday, one under a footbridge in the busy Bilsukh Nagar commercial area, and another in a movie theater in the Narayanguba neighborhood, a police official said. Late-night movie showings were canceled across the city.

"This is a terrorist act," said Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister for Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located.

Much of India's Hindu-Muslim animosity is rooted in disputes over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, divided between India and mostly Muslim Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both countries.

Reuters, Patna

Flood victims in eastern India were eating raw wheat flour to survive as devastating monsoon flooding in South Asia continued to spread misery among millions.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed by snake bites, drowning, diarrhoea and in house collapses since July when swollen rivers burst their banks, inundating huge areas in eastern India and Bangladesh.

The toll rose by 74 over the weekend. In Bihar, villagers were eating wheat flour after mixing it with water because they could not cook, underlying the inadequacy of government relief efforts, even after weeks of flooding. "My family has been chewing flour soaked in water to survive as we do not have access to firewood to make rotis (bread)," said Genu Sada, 90, in Begusarai district on Sunday.

At least 60 bodies were found by authorities since Saturday, pushing the death toll to 480 in Bihar since floods began in mid-July, officials said.

Angry at meagre relief supplies, villagers blocked roads on Saturday evening at eight places in the state, demanding more food, witnesses said.

"We are doing whatever we can to help the people in crisis," said Satish Chandra Jha, a senior government official.

AFP, Tokyo

Israeli President Shimon Peres said in an interview published here Saturday that he hoped to have an outline of a peace deal with the Palestinians before an international conference in November.

He told the Nikkei business daily that he would seek to make peace with the Palestinians by promoting economic aid and political negotiations in tandem.

"I think we have a good chance now because the whole world is supporting (Palestinian president Mahmoud) Abbas," he told the paper.

"To work out the details (of the political if not the geographical outline of a future Palestinian state) will take more time, but (as for) principles, yes, we can achieve an agreement" before the autumn peace conference, he said.

Improved economic conditions in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority will lead to a greater likelihood of it accepting the idea of peaceful coexistence with Israel, Peres said.

"We shall go in a policy of two tracks, economic development and political negotiations, one complementary to the other but not dependent upon it," he said.

Japan resumed direct financial aid to the Palestinians this month when Foreign Minister Taro Aso signed a multi-million dollar aid package for the Western-backed government

Aso signed the deal with Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank town of Ramallah during his regional tour.

Japan has tried to increase its visibility in the Middle East in line with its aspirations for a greater global role.

AP, Baghdad

The number of Iraqis who have fled their homes under threat of sectarian violence has more than doubled since the start of the year, despite the increase in American troops that began in February, a humanitarian organization said.

The number of displaced Iraqis shot upward from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization said Saturday.

Though the addition of some 30,000 U.S. troops since February has brought down violence in Baghdad, it also led to increased clashes with militants.

"Does this surge have anything to do with it? We don't know," said Saeed Haqi, head of the Iraqi Red Crescent - the local partner organization of the International Commitee of the Red Cross. "But they're leaving because of the security situation in general."

In addition to those who have fled their homes but have stayed within the country, some 2 million Iraqis have fled, with many now living as refugees in neighboring Syria and Jordan.

In its midyear assessment last month, the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration also reported a spike in internally displaced people, saying the trend started with the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, which sparked fierce sectarian fighting.

It said 63 percent of those assessed reported that they fled direct threats to life, and that more than a quarter had been forcibly displaced from their property. Ninety percent said they were targeted because of their religious identity.

AP, Columbus

Hundreds of thousands of people were without power after their homes were batered by fierce winds and flooding rainstorms that slammed the rain-soaked Midwest

Tornado warnings were issued Saturday afternoon for parts of central and southeast Ohio. Downed trees and power lines were reported in the southern part of the state, said National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Hatzos.

Flooding this week spread across an 80-mile swath through the northwest and north central parts of the state. Gov. Ted Strickland toured some of the damaged areas Saturday.

"What I've tried to do and what we've all tried to do is let these folks know t that we are working to get assistance to them as rapidly as possible," Strickland said.

Powerful storms rolling through the Upper Midwest during most of the past week caused disastrous floods from southeastern Minnesota to Ohio that were blamed for at least 18 deaths.

In southern Michigan, the skies were clearing but more than 100,000 customers were without power, utilities said. The National Weather Service confirmed multiple tornadoes touched down Friday in a 12-mile area in Livingston, Genesee and Oakland counties.

Damage in Fenton was extensive, Mayor Sue Osborn said Saturday. "I have seen houses that have trees go right through them," she said. Only residents were being allowed into the city, she said.

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush insisted Saturday his new war strategy in Iraq showed promise but needed more time to bear fruit as the White House fought to rebuff calls for a withdrawal of US troops.

"We are still in the early stages of our new operations," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "But the success of the past couple of months have shown that conditions on the ground can change -- and they are changing." In a clear jab at critics demanding a drawdown of US troops, Bush added: "We cannot expect the new strategy we are carrying out to bring success overnight" The president said that every month since January, US forces have killed or captured on average more than 1,500 Al-Qaeda fighters and other insurgents in Iraq.

Bush's positive portrayal of the unpopular war, part of a broader campaign by the White House to fend off calls for an early withdrawal of US forces, came despite a plea by a prominent Republican senator to begin at least a symbolic pullout of troops.

John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Commitee and an influential voice on military issues, jolted the White House on Thursday when he called for a withdrawal of up to 5,000 US troops to "send a sharp and clear message" to the Baghdad government that the US commitment was not open-ended.

AFP, Kuwait City

Health Minister Maasuma al-Mubarak, Kuwait's first female cabinet member, has resigned following a deadly hospital fire, preempting plans by Islamist MPs to call her to account in parliament The government of the oil-rich Gulf emirate announced on Saturday that Mubarak's resignation, tendered on Friday night, had been accepted. Hours earlier, two Sunni Islamist lawmakers tabled a request to grill her over Thursday's blaze, which killed two patients and injured 19 others, as well as over alleged financial abuses in her ministry and deteriorating health services. Mubarak made history when she became the first female minister in the conservative Arab state in June 2005, taking the planning and administrative development portfolio, one month after parliament passed a bill granting women political rights. The US-educated liberal and leading women's rights activist, who wears the Muslim hijab or head cover, has since also served as communications minister and was given the health portfolio in the cabinet formed last March.

Mubarak, in her late 50s, also became the first woman MP when she joined the government, because cabinet ministers automatically become members of parliament in Kuwait

AFP, Washington

The United States is worried about weakening Italian and German military commitments in Afghanistan as casualties increase in the fight to stem the bloody Taliban insurgency, officials said.

Debate is raging in Italy and Germany, and to a lesser extent the Netherlands and Denmark, on whether they should remain in the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), already grappling with a shortage of troops in the face of one of the most intense military engagements in decades. "There is a good prospect that we are going to lose some" contributions from certain countries, a US administration official told AFP, as European nations face upcoming votes at home on their reconstruction, military and training commitments in Afghanistan. The NATO-led 37-nation ISAF and a separate US-led coalition, in total about 50,000 foreign soldiers, are together with Afghan security forces fighting to block the return to power of the Taliban after the hardline Islamic militia was ousted in late 2001.

AFP, Washington

The largest civil rights organization of American Sikhs has expressed outrage at a new US airport security policy that it said allows arbitrary searches of turbans, a sacred headdress for members of the religion. The Sikh Coalition said Saturday it had been informed by the Transportation Security Administration that under its new guidelines, turbans could be subject to manual pat-downs even if their wearers had passed a metal detector test "Telling screeners to search people in turbans is the same as telling them to search black people or Arabs or Muslims," Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition, said in a statement "The policy allows screeners to single out travelers on the basis of their religion."

Singh argued that the message the new TSA policy sends to the public is that "people who wear turbans are dangerous."

"That atitude challenges the spirit of religious pluralism on which our country was built," he stated.

TSA spokeswoman Lara Uselding, reached by AFP by telephone late Saturday, acknowledged that on August 4, the agency that oversees security at 450 US airports as well as railroads, ports and mass transit systems revised its screening procedures for head coverings.

But she denied the changes that will be carried out by all 43,000 US airport screeners had anything to do with religious beliefs espoused by travelers.

AFP, Athens

Fires raged unabated Sunday on the Peloponnese peninsula of southern Greece where at least 51 people have died in the flames, and officials at the inferno's frontline said the situation remained critical.

The death toll climbed to 51 after two more charred bodies were found near the town of Megalopoli in central Peloponnese. Most of the victims of the fire since Friday have been found in the region of Zacharo, to the west of the peninsula, and include seven children, according to police. "The situation is still very critical," a spokesman for the firefighers at the front of the batle against the violent blazes told AFP. Fires have also erupted on Euboea, the second-largest Greek island, north of Athens, where several seaside resorts have been evacuated. In all some 40 villages have been evacuated in the Peloponnese and on Euboea, the spokesman said, adding that "we are ready to organise new evacuations at any time."

Greece was forced to declare a state of emergency on Saturday as the country began three days of national mourning.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a message to the nation on Saturday that action was being was taken "to mobilise all means and all forces" to put out the worst fires in a decade and help those affected.

He pointed the finger at arsonists for starting the fires in areas hit hard by summer droughts and multiple heatwaves, and said his government would "do everything in its power to find and punish those responsible."