The New Nation - Internet Edition

34 Tamil rebels, 1 soldier killed in Lanka fighting

AP, Colombo

Government troops attacked separatist Tamil Tiger bunkers along the front lines in Sri Lanka's embattled north, triggering gunbattles that killed 34 rebels and one soldier, the military said Friday.

Army troops destroyed three rebel bunkers Thursday in the Vavuniya region, just south of the rebels' de facto state in the north, killing 20 guerrillas, a Defense Ministry official said.

There was no immediate comment from the rebels.north

In the clashes along the front lines in Vavuniya district, security forces killed 22 guerrillas while destroying three of their bunkers on Thursday, the ministry said in a statement.

It said another 17 rebels were killed in fresh fighting since Thursday in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, north-eastern Trincomalee and the north-western mannar districts.

There were no casualties reported among security forces.

There was no immediate word from the LTTE.

The government claims cannot be independently verified since journalists and human rights groups are not allowed to go to frontline areas or rebel-held territory.

According to the defence ministry, the rebels have lost at least 989 fighters since the beginning of the year, compared with just 42 government soldiers killed. The Sri Lankan government last month officially pulled out of a defunct truce with the rebels, who have fought for more than three decades for an independent ethnic homeland in the Sinhalese-majority island.

Sri Lanka's military said it destroyed six Tamil Tiger rebel bunkers during clashes that killed five guerrillas and one soldier, while a rights group warned that violence is escalating.

Soldiers attacked the rebel bunkers in their northern front lines in Muhamalai and Nagarkovil villages on Thursday and the two sides exchanged gunfire for about a half-hour, a defense official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Five rebels and one soldier were killed, he said. Clashes across three northern fronts Wednesday killed 23 rebels and wounded 11 soldiers, the official said.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International warned that violence by Sri Lankan authorities is escalating and said "threats to the media and media freedoms have increased dramatically."

China rushes to reconnect snow-hit areas

AP, Beijing

Emergency crews rushed to restore electricity to parts of southern China damaged by unusually heavy snows, and forecasters said Friday that new storms could lash the area next week.

In the midst of Lunar New Year festivities - the nation's biggest holiday of the year - Beijing sought to show that its emergency relief operations were bringing normalcy to central and southern provinces hard hit by a month of recurring snow and ice storms.

As of midday Thursday, work crews had reconnected nearly two-thirds of the 6,774 electrical lines cut during the storms and were repairing the remaining downed lines, according to a notice posted on the Web site of the State Council, China's Cabinet. Emergency shipments of 400,000 tons of potatoes, onions, turnips and other food and vegetables headed off potentially inflationary shortages, the statement said. "In some areas, the price of meat and vegetables even went lower," it said.

Gunman kills five at US city council meeting

AFP, St, Louis

A suburban city council meeting was transformed into a scene of carnage Thursday when an enraged gunman burst in and shot seven people, five fatally, police said.

He managed to kill two police officers and three city employees before police shot him dead, St Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus told AFP.

The man, who had a history of disturbing council meetings with off-point complaints about persecution by officials, rushed into the council chambers just as members were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at around 7 pm (0100 GMT), witnesses said. "He came from the back of the room," said Janet McNichols, a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter who was covering the meeting in Kirkwood.

"He kept something about, 'Shoot the mayor' and he just walked around shooting anybody he could."

The shooter first targeted a policeman in the meeting, said McNichols, who looked up to see officer Tom Ballman shot in the face. He then shot Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, who was also hit in the head, she said. "After that, I was on my stomach under the chairs," she said. "I laid on my stomach waiting to get shot. Oh God, it was a horror."

McNichols recognized the man, identified as Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, as a frequent presence at city council where he often directed angry words at Yost and the mayor.

The mayor, Mike Swoboda, was also shot, as was council member Michael Lynch, McNichols said.

Police would not release the names of the victims or their conditions but the St. Louis Post Dispatch confirmed that one of the dead was city council woman Connie Karr.

Britain to extradite Islamic leader Hamza to US

Reuters, London

Britain agreed on Thursday to extradite the radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri to the United States, where he faces terrorism charges linked to the setting up of an al Qaeda camp. The Home Office (interior ministry) ratified a court ruling of November 15, 2007, when a judge said there was nothing to prevent the Egyptian-born Hamza, 49, being sent to the United States to face justice. "This was a decision taken in the interests of justice," a Home Office spokesman said. Hamza has 14 days to appeal to the High Court. Hamza, who applauded the attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001, also faces charges of involvement in plotting the seizure of 16 Western hostages in Yemen in 1998. Four of the hostages, three Britons and an Australian, were killed when Yemeni troops stormed the militants' hide-out. The U.S. indictment accuses Hamza -- who wears a hook in place of a missing hand -- of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, from 1999 to early 2000, and also providing support to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Rice insists Afghanistan strategy is working despite warnings

AFP, Kabul

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied here Thursday the allied strategy to stabilise Afghanistan was failing, saying it was incomplete and needed innovation to crush "determined enemies." Rice made her case during a press conference in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband who accompanied her on a surprise visit here amid growing fears for Afghanistan's future. "You have determined enemies. We know that. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda continue to make life difficult" for ordinary Afghans, the top US diplomat told Karzai in the highly fortified and snow-covered presidential palace. She said the NATO-led force and Afghan security forces had to focus much more on fighting new Taliban tactics such as suicide bombings and kidnappings after large-scale offensives mounted by the militants had failed.

Uttar Pradesh starts business quotas for low castes

Reuters, Lucknow

The head of India's most populous state, the so-called "queen of the untouchables", is tentatively extending lower-caste quotas into the private sector, a move that may have major political and economic repercussions. India's lower castes and indigenous tribes already claim about half of government and public sector jobs, a scheme of affirmative action aimed at redressing the imbalance of Hinduism's ancient caste system. But Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh chief minister and champion of Dalits or "untouchables," is expanding this into any private projects undertaken with the state, a booming sector as India spends billions of dollars on infrastructure such as highways.

Most leading businesses have shunned the idea of quotas, worried it will worsen their competitiveness in a global market.

Tobacco could kill 1 billion by 2100

AP, New York

The World Health Organization warned in a new report Thursday that the "tobacco epidemic" is growing and could claim 1 billion lives by the end of the century unless governments dramatically step up efforts to curb smoking. In its first comprehensive report on tobacco use in 179 countries, the U.N.s health agency said governments around the world collect more than $200 billion in tobacco taxes every year but spend less than one-fifth of 1 percent of that revenue on tobacco control, it said. "We hold in our hands the solution to the global tobacco epidemic that threatens the lives of 1 billion men, women and children during this century," WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said in an introduction to the report. The WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008 calls on all countries to dramatically increase efforts to prevent young people from beginning to smoke, help smokers quit and protect nonsmokers from exposure to second hand smoke.

Knife-wielding woman tries to hijack NZ plane

AP, Wellington

A knife-wielding woman tried to hijack a regional domestic flight in New Zealand Friday, stabbing both pilots and threatening to blow up the twin-propeller plane before she was subdued, police said. The wounded pilots were able to land the plane safety in Christchurch, causing chaos at the popular tourist city's airport as police and emergency crews rushed onto the tarmac to arrest the suspect, evacuate the six passengers and search the plane for bombs. The airport was closed for about three hours. Air New Zealand, the national carrier who operated the flight through a charter company, said it was reviewing security measures nationally following the incident. In New Zealand, passengers and their luggage on short haul flights are not subject to security checks.