The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, New York

Millions staged midnight parties at iconic landmarks around the world to see in 2008, but bomb attacks and security fears quickly darkened New Year festivities.

In New York, hundreds of thousands of revelers crowded fabled Times Square, braving cold temperatures and stringent security measures to see Mayor Michael Bloomberg release the New Year's Eve ball on its 100th lowering, with a dazzling display of new environmentally-friendly lights.

Hours earlier, more than one million people lined Sydney harbour for fireworks which set off the global party. Hundreds of thousands packed Hong Kong streets and historic European venues such as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the Champs Elysees in Paris.

An estimated 700,000 people were out on the damp London streets and crammed on riverbanks to watch the 10-minute fireworks display on the Thames, which focused on the giant London Eye observation wheel, police said. "It's amazing to be in one of the world's most vibrant cities on a night like this, when the whole of London is just out having fun," said Londoner James O'Shea, 32, who arrived three hours early to secure a good spot.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh, around 95,000 people packed into Princes Street, the Scottish capital's main thoroughfare, for the Hogmanay street party, organisers said.

But bombs planted by suspected separatist rebels at discos and other entertainment centres rocked Thailand's troubled south as revelry was at its peak, killing one person and injuring dozens, police said.

Bombs in the Thai capital at the last New Year's party killed three people.

In Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, police stopped thousands from attending a traditional gathering on a beach overlooking the Arabian Sea amid security fears after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Belgian authorities cancelled a traditional fireworks show in Brussels as the country went on maximum alert over possible terror threats.

French authorities put 13,000 police on the streets of Paris and its troubled suburbs to deter any repeat of riots last month. Youths still hurled cans at the car of Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie as she toured potential trouble spots.

But an estimated 400,000 French and foreign visitors still turned the Champs Elysees into a mass of car-honking festivities.

AFP, Kisumu

At least 66 bodies were discovered in Kenya following another night of police raids and tribal killings, police said Tuesday, bringing the toll for five days of post-election bloodshed to 251.

Forty-eight bodies, most of them with fresh bullet wounds, were brought to the morgue in the western Kenya city of Kisumu, a mortuary attendant told AFP Tuesday.

"They brought in 48 bodies, including three children, 44 had fresh bullet wounds, four were hacked with machetes," the mortuary attendant said.

Police raids and tribal clashes over the past two days had already claimed 53 lives in Kisumu, the country's third city and a stronghold of defeated presidential challenger Raila Odinga.

"In total since yesterday, we have 101 bodies lying in the mortuary," the attendant added amid fears more victims would be discovered.

In Kisumu's Kondele slum, "there are three uncollected bodies lying on the ground," John Otieno, a local resident, told an AFP correspondent on the scene.

"Police went on a killing spree overnight. They have been shooting indiscriminately at people," he added. At least 18 other people were killed overnight in the nearby town of Eldoret and its surroundings, police said.

AP, Islamabad

Parliamentary elections in Pakistan are set to be postponed by several weeks despite opposition demands they go ahead as planned on Jan. 8, officials said Monday, setting up a new political standoff after Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

A Pakistani election official said Tuesday "it looks impossible" for the country to hold elections as scheduled on Jan. 8 in the wake of the violence that followed the assassination.

However, a final decision would not be made until Wednesday, after the Election Commission consulted all the political parties, commission spokesman Kanwar Dilshad said. Critics have said the commission is stacked with officials loyal to President Pervez Musharraf.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, now the country's most prominent opposition leader, has threatened street protests if the vote is delayed. "We will agitate," he told The Associated Press. "We will not accept this postponement."

Western governments are urging the government to go ahead with the polls without major delays. They see the elections as a key step in U.S.-backed plans to restore democracy to the nation as it battles Taliban and al-Qaida militants. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the government should set a specific date for new elections, but he said the timing was "up to the people of Pakistan."

Bhutto's party, now effectively controlled by her husband, and Sharif's opposition movement both feel they could be helped at the polls by widespread sympathy at Bhutto's killing last week at a campaign rally and accusations that allies of Musharraf had a role in the murder.

But political instability and the technical challenges of holding the vote after nationwide riots following the killing led to widespread expectations that the balloting will be delayed.

AFP, New Delhi

Suspected Islamic militants armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked a paramilitary camp in northern India early Tuesday, killing eight people, police said.

The gunmen fought with police as they tried to enter a Central Reserve Paramilitary Force site in Uttar Pradesh state, police official Sanjiv Gupta told the Press Trust of India agency.

Seven policemen and a civilian were killed, the report said.

Police said they were hunting for the attackers and believed that two of them were injured. The NDTV news channel quoted home ministry sources as saying they suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba, a hardline Islamist militant group, was behind the attack.

India blames the group for an attack on its parliament in December 2001 and on a Hindu temple in western Gujarat state in 2002.

Tuesday's attack comes a little over a month after serial bomb blasts outside courthouses in Uttar Pradesh state left 13 dead and at least 40 injured.

AFP, Colombo

An ethnic Tamil Sri Lankan opposition MP has been shot dead by an unidentified gunman while attending a New Year service at a Hindu temple in the capital, police and hospital officials said Tuesday.

T. Maheswaran, a lawmaker from the United National Party (UNP), died after being admitted to the Colombo National Hospital following the shooting inside the Sivam Temple, hospital spokeswoman Pushpa Soysa said. "He had several bullet injuries, including to the head," Soysa said.

"Another 10 people who were wounded have been brought for treatment."

Maheswaran, who represents the embattled northern district of Jaffna, has been highly critical of the government's military campaign. He survived a similar attack two years ago.

Meanwhile, police said the gunman was mingling with devotees at the temple and pulled out a revolver and shot Maheswaran at close range.

Sri Lanka's top military commanders have vowed to win the decades-old war against Tamil separatists in the new year, a state-run daily said.

Army chief Sarath Fonseka said he hoped government forces would be able to dislodge the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from the line of bunkers guarding their de facto mini-state in the north of the island.

AP, El Fasher

A joint African-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur on Monday, a long-awaited change that is intended to be the strongest effort yet to solve the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

But many are already warning that its prospects are grim and that if it fails, it will only worsen the 4 1/2-year conflict, which has already killed more than 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

The force - at 9,000 soldiers and policemen - is only a little larger than the beleaguered and ineffectual African Union peacekeeping mission it replaces. Even in the best-case scenario, it will take months to build up to its planned strength of 26,000.

Western nations have not come through with equipment such as military helicopters and vehicles the U.N. says are vital for the new force to reach hotspots quickly and protect civilians. The Sudanese government, meanwhile, has thrown up numerous obstacles to the deployment.

Adding to the pressure on Sudan's government, President Bush signed legislation Monday to allow states and local governments to cut investment ties with Sudan because of the violence in Darfur. The bill permits state, county and municipal officials to adopt measures to divest their government investments from companies involved in the four sectors that provide vital revenue for Sudan's government - oil, power production, mining and military equipment.

Reuters, Karachi

There is an eerie quiet at Benazir Bhutto's Karachi home-cum-campaign headquarters where grief is giving way to hope that her legacy will live on through her son and heir.

Crowned her political successor on Sunday, Bhutto's 19-year-old son Bilawal will not be eligible to run for parliament for another six years, but banker and party stalwart Haseeb Ala can wait.

"Truly, Benazir left a great vacuum," said Ala, 48, sitting under an awning outside the towering fortress-like walls of the Karachi home Bhutto named after her only son.

"But the Bhutto name is a legacy. It's a binding force, because of their sacrifice. He is the future."

AP, Brussels

At least 134 media workers were killed on assignment in 2007, most of them in Iraq, which has become the most dangerous place for journalists since the start of the U.S.-led war there, a media group said Monday.

The Middle East was by far the deadliest region with 68 killings, followed by Somalia with eight killed, Pakistan with seven, Mexico and Sri Lanka each with six, and the Philippines with five, according to the International Federation of Journalists.

"Violence against journalists remained at extremely high levels for the third year in a row," IFJ President Jim Boumelha said. "Our colleagues have been targeted because of their work, or killed covering dangerous stories, often in the rush to cover breaking news."

AFP, Baghdad

Despite a drop in US casualties in the past six months, 2007 has proved the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq since the invasion, with at least 896 soldiers killed, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

The previous most lethal year for the American military since the US-led invasion of March 2003 was in 2004, when 846 soldiers died. Since May, when 126 soldiers were killed, casualty figures have been falling month by month with the December toll set to be the lowest since February 2004, when 20 soldiers died in the least deadly month of the war.

AP, Washington

The United States provided a steady stream of intelligence to Benazir Bhutto about threats against her before the former Pakistani prime minister was assassinated and advised her aides on how to boost security, although key suggestions appear to have gone unheeded, U.S. officials said Monday. Senior U.S. diplomats had multiple conversations, including at least two private face-to-face meetings, with top members of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party to discuss threats on the Pakistani opposition leader's life and review her security arrangements after a suicide bombing marred her initial return to Pakistan from exile in October, the officials told The Associated Press. The intelligence was also shared with the Pakistani government, the officials said.

AFP, Des Moines

Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton in Iowa by seven points among Democrats, according to a new poll, just two days of campaigning before the state opens the 2008 White House nominating race. The Des Moines Register poll of people likely to attend caucuses on Thursday, put Obama on 32 percent, with the former first lady on 25 percent, a point ahead of former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards. The poll, by the only statewide paper in Iowa, is highly respected in the state, which is notoriously difficult to survey and where voters traditionally make up their minds late. Among Republicans, the paper had former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee holding his lead on 32 percent over the ex-governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney on 26 percent. Arizona Senator John McCain, expected to make his first major stand of the 2008 race in the New Hanpshire primary on January 8, was third in the Republican field on 13 percent.

AP, United Nations

The political impasse over Kosovo's future cannot last much longer without "putting at serious risk" all the United Nations has achieved there, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon cautioned Security Council members Monday. Ban's quarterly report to the council painted a tense portrait of daily life in Kosovo. A 1999 U.N. resolution provided that Kosovo, a province of Serbia with a population that is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, should be administered by the U.N. and NATO troops. "Expectations in Kosovo remain high that a solution to Kosovo's future status must be found rapidly. As such, the status quo is not likely to be sustainable," Ban said. "Should the impasse continue, events on the ground could take on a momentum of their own, putting at serious risk the achievements and legacy of the United Nations in Kosovo."

AFP, Ramallah

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Monday that he was ready to "open a new page" with Hamas if the Islamist movement gave up its control of the Gaza Strip. But violence soon broke out in the southern Gaza Strip, with at least five people killed and 40 wounded in clashes between Fatah loyalists and Hamas police. "I call on those who carried out the putscht to open a new page," Abbas told Fatah officials gathered to mark 43 years since the secular party first declared itself an armed Palestinian resistance movement. Cooperation between the Palestinians' two main parties should be based "on a partnership in the heart of the fatherland and around the struggle for its liberations," he said. "No party should supplant another. The putsch and the military edge should not be a part of our vocabulary. Only dialogue should prevail."

AFP, Taipei

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian Tuesday called for the signing of a peace agreement with China, but said any accord would have to be unconditional. Chen was responding to Chinese President Hu Jintao's call in October for an agreement to formally end the state of hostilities across the Taiwan Strait. "We wholeheartedly welcome and look favourably on any proposal that might be conducive to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," Chen said in his New Year Address, broadcast live on television. But Chen said no such agreement would be possible under Beijing's "one-China principle," which regards the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary. The Taiwanese leader said he had called for cooperation with China in establishing a military buffer zone and a security consultative mechanism that would lead to the formulation of a code of conduct in the Taiwan Strait.