The New Nation - Internet Edition

India mulling missile-shield work with US

Reuters, Washington

Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier, has been told India may be ready to look into possible U.S.-Indian collaboration on ballistic missile defense, a top company official said Wednesday.

"I would not be surprised if over the next couple of months we begin to have some exploratory discussions with various members of the government and with Indian industry," Richard Kirkland, Lockheed Martin's top executive on South Asia, said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Indian missile-defense cooperation with the United States could complicate relations with China, Russia and Pakistan.

Until now, India's policy has been to develop its missile shield domestically, closing a potential multibillion-dollar market to Boeing Co, Lockheed, Raytheon Co and Northrop Grumman Corp -- the biggest players in the emerging ground, air, sea and space based U.S. missile defense system.

But this may be changing in line with a "watershed" Indian decision made formal last week to buy Lockheed's C-130J military transport aircraft, Kirkland said in a telephone interview.

Israel kills 7 Palestinians in new strikes on Gaza

AFP, Gaza City

Six Palestinian fighters and a teacher were killed in Israeli raids on Gaza on Thursday, the latest deadly strikes on the Hamas-run territory since a suicide bombing in Israel earlier this week.

Escalating violence in and around Gaza this week has now seen 19 people, mostly militants, killed in Israeli strikes and several Israelis, including two young children, injured by militant rocket attacks.

In the first air strike on Thursday, four militants were killed near Jabaliya in the north of the territory by a missile fired from a drone, medics said.

Three of the gunmen belonged to the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the group said, and the fourth was from the radical Islamic Jihad movement.

The second air raid saw two militants killed near Tuffah north of Gaza City, while four others were wounded, two of them seriously, medics said.

Hamas said Israeli ground forces were also operating in the area, while an Israeli military spokesman said only that "an army operation is underway."

A teacher was also killed when an Israeli tank shell hit a high school in the northern town of Beit Hanun, wounding three students, medics said.

Gaza militants meanwhile launched at least seven rockets at Israel, with Hamas claiming six of them, lightly wounding two civilians.

Despite warnings, tornadoes kill 55 in US

AP, Lafayette

One man pulled a couch over his head. Bank employees rushed into the vault. A woman trembled in her bathroom, clinging to her dogs. College students huddled in dormitories.

Tornado warnings had been broadcast for hours, and when the sirens finally announced that the twisters had arrived, many people across the South took shelter and saved their lives. But others simply had nowhere safe to go, or the storms proved too powerful, too numerous, too unpredictable.

At least 55 people were killed and hundreds injured Tuesday and Wednesday by dozens of tornadoes that plowed across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. It was the nation's deadliest barrage of twisters in almost 23 years.

"We had a beautiful neighborhood. Now it's hell," said Bonnie Brawner, 80, who lives in Hartsville, a community about an hour from Nashville where a natural gas plant that was struck by a twister erupted in spectacular flames up to 400 feet high.

The storms flattened entire blocks, smashed warehouses and sent tractor-trailers flying. Houses were reduced to splintered piles of lumber.

Turkish lawmakers remove head scarf ban

AP, Ankara

Lawmakers voted early Thursday to approve a constitutional amendment allowing female students to enter universities wearing Islamic head scarves - a move that many secular Turks view as an attempt to impose religion on their daily lives.

Lawmakers voted 401-110 in a preliminary vote in favor of the government's proposed amendment to the secular constitution. The government has defended its plan as a reform needed to give its citizens religious liberty and bring Turkey in line with European Union human rights guidelines.

A second and final round of voting was slated for Saturday.

The government has the backing of a nationalist opposition party and together they have more than the two-thirds majority in the 550-seat assembly required to make the change.

Mourners bid goodbye to Bhutto before Pakistan poll

AP, Pakistan

Chants of Koranic verses and somber hymns resonated throughout Benazir Bhutto's ancestral village in southern Pakistan on Thursday as thousands gathered at the assassinated former prime minister's tomb to mark a 40th and final day of mourning.

Conspiracy theories still swirl over who was behind the gun and suicide bomb attack that killed the opposition leader in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on December 27. Controversy even rages over whether Bhutto, the most charismatic Pakistani politician of the last 20 years, was killed by a bullet or by a concussive injury caused by the bomb detonated after an assassin shot at her from close range. She was buried a day later, without an autopsy, at the imposing mausoleum she had built at Garhi Khuda Baksh in Sindh province for her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister.

Chad president declares victory, ICRC puts toll at 160 dead

AFP, Ndjamena

Chad President Idriss Deby Itno declared a "stunning victory" Wednesday over rebel forces and said he was back in control, as Red Cross officials put the toll from weekend clashes at more than 160 dead. "We have total control not only of the capital but of the country," said Deby at his first press conference since hundreds of insurgents poured into Ndjamena in a bid to overthrow his regime. Clad in military uniform, he said there were "rebels who have fled, there are some still in Ndjamena disguised as civilians, there are some trying to get back to the border" with Sudan. "We're at their heels and we shall catch them before they get back to Sudan," said the bespectacled 56-year-old leader, in power since 1990, adding that Chad had been "attacked from abroad".

Rice, Miliband make surprise visit to Afghanistan

AFP, Kabul

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband made a surprise trip to Afghanistan Thursday calling for NATO allies to step up support for the fight against the Taliban.

Rice and her British counterpart reiterated en route to Kabul that NATO allies should stump up more troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that is facing a tough task against the Taliban after a grim 2007. "Frankly, I hope that there will be more troop contributions and there need to be more Afghan contributions," Rice told reporters travelling with the pair. When asked what would happen if other NATO countries failed to contribute, she said: "In the final analysis, you will see more troop contributions." "The problem is we have to make sure they are the right troop contributions and in the right place," Rice added. "It is not an overwhelming number of forces being sought here -- this is a troop contribution level that NATO can meet and should meet."

AP confirms secret camp inside Gitmo

AP, Guantanamo Bay

Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban have been locked up for years, is a place even more closely guarded - a jailhouse so protected that its very location is top secret. For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby also provided a few details about the maximum-security lockup. Guantanamo commanders said Camp 7 is for key alleged al-Qaida members, who must be kept apart from other prisoners to prevent them from retaliating against long-term detainees who have talked to interrogators. They also want the location kept secret for fear of terrorist attack.

Climate change funds to help developing countries: UN

AFP, New Delhi

Developing countries will have to be given economic assistance if they are to be expected to considerably reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, a top UN official said Wednesday. "We have to recognise that developing countries can only be expected to engage if economic incentives are put in place," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). Boer said that a few countries such as the United States and Japan have contributed several billion dollars to a climate change fund to help other nations cut their emissions. "The World Bank is working to establish a number of new financial mechanisms. They have just created a new investment facility which the US has committed three billion (dollars) tot," de Boer said at a news conference.