The New Nation - Internet Edition

'McCain-Bush' wars with 'Obama-Carter’

AFP, Washington

Republican White House contender John McCain is reaching back through history to portray Barack Obama as an old-fashioned tax-and-spend liberal who would destroy jobs and growth.

On Tuesday, a day after Obama painted McCain as a clone of President George W. Bush, the Republican tied his Democratic foe to 1970s president Jimmy Carter and to that era's big government spending and over-regulation.

In a speech here to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which lobbies for owners of small enterprises, McCain said Obama would enact "the single largest tax increase since the Second World War."

"Under Senator Obama's tax plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise-seniors, parents, small business owners, and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market," he said.

Obama's policies, including linking the federal minimum wage to inflation, were "a sure way to add to your costs and to slow the creation of new jobs," McCain added.

The Democratic hopeful, 46, is capitalizing on profound disquiet about rising unemployment and home foreclosures, plus opposition to the Iraq war, to accuse McCain of offering "four more years" for the hugely unpopular Bush.

"Frankly, John McCain's agenda simply continues the same economic approach that we've had over the last eight years," Obama said in a National Public Radio (NPR) interview.

"It's not working, and it's time for us to try something different."

McCain, 71, has a new line of retort, saying Obama would represent a "second term" for Carter, a throwback to a time of queues at gasoline stations, surging inflation and economic stagnation.

His attack at the NFIB hinged on Obama's promise to roll back multi-billion-dollar tax cuts enacted under Bush and levy higher taxes on those earning more than 250,000 dollars a year.

In riposte, Obama said McCain-who once opposed the Bush tax cuts-was guilty of fuzzy mathematics and again mocked the Republican's self-confessed weakness in economic matters.

"I've said that John McCain is running to serve out a third Bush term. But the truth is when it comes to taxes, that's not being fair to George Bush," the Democrat told reporters in St Louis, Missouri.

"Senator McCain wants to add 300 billion dollars more in tax breaks and loopholes for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and he hasn't even explained how to pay for it," he said. Obama on NPR blasted McCain's "irresponsible" budgeting and warned that the corporate tax cuts were "going to burden future generations."

The 250,000-dollar threshold for annual income would mean that 98 percent of workers would pay no more taxes, Obama said, and middle-class families would get tax relief starting at 1,000 dollars to offset surging costs of living.

The Illinois senator also took aim at McCain's incremental approach to reform of healthcare, whose rocketing costs are one of the biggest headaches for small businesses, along with gasoline prices topping four dollars a gallon.

Touting his own plan to dramatically increase healthcare, Obama earlier went on ward rounds with a hospital nurse in St Louis, on the second day of a two-week campaign tour that is taking him deep into Republican territory.

An Obama trip Wednesday to Iowa was canceled due to floods in the midwestern state, and the candidate planned an event in his home city of Chicago instead. McCain was set for a "town hall meeting" with voters in Philadelphia. The economy has dominated the two contenders' hard-hitting exchanges since Obama's opponent in the Democratic nomination battle, Hillary Clinton, quit the race at the weekend.

In Washington Tuesday, Democrats put on a show of unity after the bruising primary season, detailing how the party will merge its activities into the Obama campaign's to pursue an election strategy across all 50 states. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a message for the angry Clinton supporters who are now threatening to vote for McCain in protest at Obama's primary triumph.

"Women and blue-collar workers, whatever their race, have the most to gain by the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States and the most to lose by the election of John McCain," she told reporters.

Afghan officials: 31 killed in airstrikes

AP, Kabul

Officials says 31 people died in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary says most of the 31 people were foreign fighters. But Khalid Farooqi, a lawmaker from Paktika, says at least nine civilians were killed.

The U.S.-led coalition says four civilians were killed and that several militants died in the clashes in northern Paktika province early Wednesday. Twelve militants were detained.

Farooqi says the operation apparently targeted militant commander Mullah Mohammad Nabi and fighters who served under him.

Civilian casualties have been a problem for the U.S.-led coalition over the years, though fewer civilian deaths have been reported so far this year than in 2007.

At least 33 killed in Sudanese airliner blaze

Reuters, Khartoum

A Sudanese airliner coming from Amman and Damascus burst into flames after landing in Khartoum on Tuesday night, killing at least 33 of the 217 people on board, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday.

Doctors and officials said the local mortuary had received 28 bodies by 3 a.m. on Wednesday (8 p.m. EDT) and witnesses said they saw rescue teams remove five more bodies from the charred wreckage of the plane after daybreak.

The Civil Aviation Authority said it had counted 113 survivors but that other people had left the site of the incident and gone straight home without informing the authorities.

Presidential adviser Ghazi Salahaddin said that 50 to 60 people were unaccounted for. In the confusion during the night other officials gave contradictory figures. The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known but diplomats who have examined the manifest said that almost all the names appear to be Arabic. Airport officials said they thought the vast majority were Sudanese.

The Sudan Airways plane, identified by Sudanese television only as an Airbus without any model details, was carrying 203 passengers and 14 crew on the flight from the Jordanian capital. A dust storm and heavy rain hit the airport on Tuesday and the plane was initially diverted to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Sudan's Minister of State for Transport, Mabrouk Mubarak Salim, said there was an explosion in the airliner's right wing engine area. "So far we don't have precise information but we think the weather is a main reason for what happened," he said.

Sudanese television showed emergency workers using hoses to spray water on the burning fuselage of the airliner.

"The operation to recover bodies from the plane is going on now," police deputy director general Al Adel Ajeb said in a television interview. "It is a difficult operation because some bodies are completely burned and there are body parts."

Iran says West fails to stop its nuclear “victory”

Reuters, Tehran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Western threats and pressure had failed to stop Iran's nuclear program, which the United States and others suspect is aimed at making bombs.

"With God's help today (the Iranian nation) have gained victory and the enemies cannot do a damned thing," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the western city of Shahr-e Kurd broadcast live on state television.

His comments came a day after the United States and the European Union told the Islamic Republic they were ready to impose more sanctions over its nuclear activities, which Tehran says are solely aimed at generating electricity.

"They've tried by military threats t and political pressure to stop you from your luminous path but today they have seen that all their planning has failed," Ahmadinejad told the crowd. "And today the Iranian nation is standing on the nuclear height," he said.

A joint communique after President George W. Bush's final summit with the 27-nation EU, in Slovenia, said both sides were ready to take additional measures on top of three rounds of United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran since late 2006.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana is due to travel to Iran at the weekend to present a new offer by major powers of incentives for it to suspend the program but he has played down prospects of a breakthrough.

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, has repeatedly ruled out giving up nuclear enrichment in exchange for trade and other benefits from world powers.

Washington has pressed the EU to deny some Iranian banks access to the world financial system. European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said on Tuesday further EU steps could entail a freeze on Iranian bank assets.

Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for power plants and, if refined much further, provide material for bombs.

A month after quake, Chinese wait for housing

AP, Zundao

The sun is low in the mountains as Wang Wenying fries up potatoes, beans and chunks of braised duck over an outdoor wood fire.

Behind her is the camouflage-patterned tent that she and five other family members have occupied since shortly after their once-bustling village was toppled May 12 by the worst earthquake to hit China in three decades. "The living conditions are poor. It's hot in the tents, the lines are long for water. t I don't know when things will improve. The sooner the better," said the 38-year-old Wang, a rotund pharmacist with a ready laugh despite the hardships.

One month after the magnitude-7.9 quake centered in Sichuan province killed more than 69,000 people and left 5 million homeless, tents - and for some, the lack of them - are defining life in the disaster zone.

The lucky ones have already moved into prefabricated homes being erected by the government. But most remain in hundreds of tent communities that have sprung up on fields, mountains and city sidewalks as refugees try to regain a semblance of normal life. Many are small and haphazardly planned. Others resemble miniature villages, with row after row of bright blue, government-issued emergency tents converted into homes, schools and shops.

Still, there are not enough of them. As of Tuesday, more than 1 million tents had been delivered to the earthquake zone, short of the 3 million the government says is needed. Relief workers had put up 68,000 temporary houses and were at work on another 23,400.

Some survivors complained that only those with connections to local officials got tents. Others said they simply did not know how to get them.

Bush visits German chancellor Merkel

AP, Meseberg

President Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both want to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons but they're standing on opposite sides of a revolving door. He's on his way out of office. She's trying to stay in.

Bush's desire to resolve the nuclear standoff with Tehran before his presidency ends was a highlight of talks Wednesday with Merkel at a baroque palace in the countryside outside of Berlin. With her and other European leaders this week, Bush was urging solidarity against Iran in the form of tougher sanctions if the country doesn't stop its uranium enrichment program.

Global warming, Afghanistan and relations with Russia also were expected topics at Bush's meeting with Merkel at Schloss Meseberg, the German government's main guesthouse. After a countryside bike ride that seemed to invigorate Bush, he and Merkel had breakfast and then took a camera-ready stroll through the formal, manicured gardens next to the cream-colored castle.

Bush seemed to want to stay as far as possible from the line of media, steering Merkel down a path that took them away. But minutes later, Merkel steered them back and the two chatted briefly with reporters before moving inside.

The two were also all smiles when the president arrived by helicopter Tuesday night for a dinner that opened their talks. They were to end their discussions over lunch, squeezing in a news conference in the palace's cobblestone courtyard.

Bush is close with Merkel, and has hosted her at his Texas ranch - the less-grand diplomatic equivalent of his invitation here to Schloss Meseberg. Their relationship hit a bump at a recent NATO summit in Romania when they split over whether to give Georgia and Ukraine a path to membership in the alliance, but still is a hugely improved over U.S.-German ties under Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.

11 Pakistan soldiers killed in border missile strike

AFP, Peshawar

At least 11 Pakistani troops were killed and nine wounded early Wednesday when a missile fired from Afghanistan hit their border post after clashes with Afghan forces, officials said.

The incident followed intense fighting between Pakistani paramilitary troops deployed in the troubled Mohmand tribal region and Afghan forces who claimed the area was part of their territory, the Pakistani officials said.

Troops from both countries as well as US-led and NATO forces based in Afghanistan are fighting Taliban militants in the rugged region, but relations across the frontier are often strained.

"Sometime after midnight a missile fired from the Afghan side struck our post resulting in the martyrdom of at least 11 soldiers including a commanding officer. Nine soldiers were wounded," one security official told AFP.

"The injured and the dead bodies have been retrieved. The troops are still holding on to the post."

Officials said Pakistani forces repulsed an attempt by Afghan forces to capture strategic heights in the Soran Dara area, which borders the Afghan province of Nangarhar and is claimed by Pakistan as part of its territory.

The paramilitary Frontier Corps sent reinforcements to the area on Tuesday.

Pakistani and Afghan military spokesmen were not immediately contactable while the US-led coalition in Afghanistan declined to comment.

Pakistan has protested over a series of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months, including one in the tribal region of Bajaur in May that killed more than a dozen people.

Disputes over the porous, 1,500-mile (2,500-kilometre) frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, both key allies in the US-led "war on terror," have flared up several times in recent years.

There has been also discord over allegations by foreign forces and the government in Kabul that Pakistan is going soft on the insurgents.

Nepal's ousted king prepares to leave palace

AFP, Kathmandu

Nepal's ousted king Gyanendra was Wednesday packing his belongings and set to leave his main palace in the capital, closing the door behind him on a centuries-old Himalayan monarchy.

Palace officials said Gyanendra, whose throne was abolished by a Maoist-dominated constitutional assembly last month, would be moving to a former royal hunting lodge in the suburbs of Kathmandu.

"He is leaving today. He is in the process of packing up," Phanindra Raj Pathak, the chief of the palace press secretariat, told AFP.

He said the ex-king, who has maintained a studied silence since Nepal was declared a republic on May 28, would read out a statement to the nation at around 5:00 pm (1115 GMT).

Gyanendra ascended the throne in June 2001 after a palace massacre in which the then crown prince-who was drunk and on drugs and furious at being prevented from marrying the woman he loved-killed most of the family and himself.

The abolition of Nepal's monarchy was the culmination of a 2006 peace deal reached between Maoist insurgents and mainstream parties, who joined forces to push aside Gyanendra after he tried to assume dictatorial powers.

Ex-Vietnamese prime minister Kiet dies

AP, Hanoi

Former Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, an economic reformer who led the Communist nation away from poverty and isolation and backed the normalization of ties with the United States, died Wednesday. He was 85.

Kiet, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1997, died in a Singapore hospital, where he was taken Saturday after suffering a stroke, government officials said.

His body was to be transported later Wednesday to Ho Chi Minh City, the city in southern Vietnam where he held a number of top Communist Party and government posts. Born into a peasant family in southern Vinh Long province on Nov. 23, 1922, Kiet fought the French and Americans for almost four decades, joining Communist revolutionary forces at the age of 16. As prime minister, Kiet helped craft policies that attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment, vastly expanded trade and enabled the economy to grow at an annual rate of better than 8 percent. Impatient with Communist Party functionaries trying to protect their own turf, Kiet argued that the party could only stay in power if it loosened its tight hold over the government and business, allowing them to become more efficient.