The New Nation - Internet Edition

Britain to cut immigration due to weak economy

Reuters, London

Britain plans to reduce immigration in the face of a weakening economy and rising unemployment, the Times newspaper quoted Immigration Minister Phil Woolas as saying Saturday.

"If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny t It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and it's going to get harder," Woolas told the paper in an interview.

"This government isn't going to allow the population to go up to 70 million," Woolas said. "There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving."

At a time of economic difficulties, employers should put British people first or they will risk fuelling racism, Woolas said.

Immigration has been high under the Labor government which came to power in 1997, and the Times said net immigration is estimated to be more than 200,000 a year until 2012.

Woolas also said he opposed an amnesty for people who came to Britain illegally because it would encourage more illegal immigrants.

The government recently adopted a system under which would-be migrants are awarded points depending on their value to the British economy, designed to encourage skilled immigrants and reduce the number of unskilled economic migrants.

Britain's population is around 61 million.

Another report adds: the Bolivian government announced late Friday an agreement to buy all shares owned by the British company Ashmore Energy International in the local gas pipeline company Transredes.

The deal followed leftist President Evo Morales' decision in June to nationalize the pipeline, which had led Ashmore to file for international arbitration in a Swedish court.

According to local media report, Ashmore wanted 500 million dollars in compensation for its share in the pipeline.

The total value of the deal, under which Ashmore's 25 percent stake in Transredes will be transferred to Bolivia's national oil and gas company YPFB, has not been disclosed.

But a month ago, YPFB paid 120 million dollars to Dutch oil company Shell to buy its 25-percent stake in the pipeline.

"With this step, Bolivians have become owners of their oil gas, their pipelines and refineries," said Vice President Alvaro Garcia in announcing the deal.

He said the takeover will allow the national oil and gas company "to determine prices, production levels and market."

Transredes is one of the key companies supplying natural gas to Brazil. The deal puts YPFP in control of more than 97 percent of its assets.

Obama, McCain camps trade barbs in voter fraud spat

AFP, Chicago

Barack Obama's presidential campaign accused rival John McCain of using a false crusade against voter fraud to suppress legitimate votes in a growing spat over ballots ahead of the November 4 poll.

The Obama campaign's top lawyer, Bob Bauer, accused Republicans on Friday of recklessly "plotting" to suppress legitimate votes and to "sow confusion and harass voters and complicate the process for millions of Americans."

An estimated nine million new voters have registered for the hotly contested presidential election, and the Obama campaign says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one. The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warned that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public's faith in democracy.

Republicans have launched a slew of lawsuits aimed at preventing false ballots from being cast, the most high-profile an attempt to challenge as many as 200,000 of the more than 600,000 new registrations submitted in the battleground state of Ohio. That challenge was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling Friday. Republicans point to investigations into whether liberal-leaning community organization ACORN had submitted false voter registrations as proof of "rampant" and widespread fraud which McCain said Wednesday could be "destroying the fabric of democracy."

But Bauer told reporters the fact that senior officials from the Justice Department leaked news of an FBI investigation into ACORN a day after McCain lobbed that attack shows that "an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics" may have returned.

He said the matter should be turned over to a special prosecutor currently investigating allegations that US attorneys were fired by the Bush administration for failing to bring indictments of voter fraud and public corruption in the leadup to the 2006 election.

The McCain campaign dismissed Bauer's accusations as an "absurd" attempt to "criminalize political discourse."

"In case Senator Obama's lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls 'recent partisan Republican activities' are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates," spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement.

Gallup's latest national tracking poll of registered voters had Obama at 50 percent to 43 percent for McCain.

Polls of battleground states by CNN and Time on Wednesday showed Obama up five points among registered voters in Colorado, by eight in Florida, by three in Missouri and by a yawning 10 points in Virginia.

McCain, who campaigned Friday in Florida, is pinning his hopes for a late comeback on "Joe the Plumber," the unlikely blue-collar hero of his final presidential debate with Obama on Wednesday.

The Arizona senator is banking that the low-tax mantra espoused by Ohio tradesman Joe Wurzelbacher, 34, in a chance encounter with Obama this week will resonate with voters at a time of economic crisis.

"The question Joe asked about our economy is important, because Senator Obama's plan would raise taxes on small businesses that employ 16 million Americans," McCain told a rally in Miami.

"Senator Obama's plan will kill those jobs at just the time when we need to be creating more jobs. My plan will create jobs, and that's what America needs."

Obama says that only individuals making over 200,000 dollars and families making more than a quarter of a million will face higher taxes if he is president, and most middle-class people will pay less.

Obama was set to address a rally in St. Louis, Missouri on Saturday afternoon after spending the night at home in Chicago.

Pakistan army kills 60 militants in north

Reuters, Islamabad

Troops backed by helicopter gunships and artillery pounded militant positions in northwest Pakistan, killing 60 fighters and wounding many others, the military said Saturday.

The assault happened Friday evening in the Swat valley shortly before a senior U.S. official arrived in Pakistan for talks with leaders of a country vital to Western security concerns.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher held talks in Islamabad on Saturday morning with Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik and was expected to meet other leaders later in the day. He made no public comment.

U.S. officials, concerned about rising militancy in both nuclear-armed Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, have praised Pakistani efforts to clear Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds near its northwestern frontier.

But militants are mounting stiff resistance including a string of suicide attacks that could fan widespread Pakistani concern that they are paying too high a price for their front-line role in the U.S.-led war on terror.

An army statement said Friday's offensive killed at least 60 militants and wounded many more near the town of Matta.

It was not immediately possible to independently confirm the casualties. Reporters cannot visit the area because of poor security and government restrictions. No Taliban spokesman was available for comment.

US, Russia to meet on arms control in November

Reuters, Washington

U.S. and Russian officials will meet in Geneva next month to discuss whether to extend a treaty limiting nuclear arsenals that expires late next year, the State Department said on Friday.

Russia has been asking whether Washington is serious about replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed in Moscow in 1991, which set ceilings on the size of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals.

The two countries have already held extensive discussions about a post-START agreement "and we expect to continue those discussions," the State Department said in a statement.

"The parties to a START will meet in Geneva in mid-November to initiate this process."

The parties were obligated to meet no later than a year before the START treaty expires next December to begin consideration of whether or not to extend the treaty.

State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said he thought the meeting would be held at the "working level"-meaning senior officials, below cabinet level.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this month that Washington was upsetting the nuclear arms balance by failing to offer a replacement for START. He said this was needed more than ever as the United States is planning to place elements of a defensive missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The United States contends the missile shield is needed to protect against possible missile attacks from what it calls rogue states, specifically Iran.

China to help Pakistan build two more power plants

AP, Islamabad

Pakistan's foreign minister says China has signed an agreement with this energy starved Islamic nation to help it build two more nuclear power plants.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi says the agreement was included among 12 accords and Memorandums of Understandings that were signed between the two sides during President Asif Ali Zardari's recent visit to Beijing.

China has already helped Pakistan set up a nuclear power plant about 124 miles southwest of the capital Islamabad. The work on a second such plant is in progress, and it is expected to be completed in 2011.

Quereshi says Pakistan will get an additional 680 megawatts of electricity after the completion of these two new nuclear power plants.

Farrakhan says 'new beginning’ for Nation of Islam

AP, Chicago

The Nation of Islam, a secretive movement generally closed to outsiders, has planned a rare open-to-the public event at its Chicago-based headquarters in what the Minister Louis Farrakhan deemed a "new beginning" for the group. Hundreds of religious leaders of different faiths have been invited to the event planned for Sunday, a rededication of the group's historic Mosque Maryam on the city's South Side. Farrakhan is scheduled to speak. "We have restored Mosque Maryam completely, and we will dedicate it to the universal message of Islam, and the universal aspect of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad," Farrakhan said in an invitation letter. "It represents for the Nation of Islam, a new beginning." The event comes just weeks after the death of Imam W.D. Mohammed, the son of Nation founder Elijah Muhammad, who broke with the group and moved thousands of African-Americans toward mainstream Islam.

The Nation purchased the mosque, a former Greek Orthodox church, in 1972 and has since been making renovations. The stately 1948 structure, embellished with a golden dome and topped with an Islamic crescent moon, is adorned with Quranic verses in Arabic.

Experts say opening the mosque's doors to the public is a calculated move.

Chinese PM says government partly to blame for milk scandal

AFP, Beijing

China's Premier Wen Jiabao said his government was partly to blame for the tainted milk scandal that has killed four infants and sickened 53,000 throughout the country.

In an interview with a US magazine, Wen said although contamination of milk had occurred at dairy companies in China, the government was responsible for monitoring the industry at the heart of the crisis.

"We feel that although problems occurred at companies, the government also bears responsibility, particularly in the area of monitoring," Wen told Science Magazine in an interview also posted on the central government's website Saturday.

"The important steps in the dairy industry-production of raw milk, collection, transport, processing, formulation and manufactured goods-all need to have clear standards and testing requirements," he said.

The scandal erupted when melamine, an industrial chemical normally used to make plastic, was discovered in Chinese-made dairy products, including milk powder, liquid milk and yoghurt.

The chemical was added to watered-down milk to make it appear higher in protein.

The scandal has hit China's dairy industry hard, and continues to escalate around the world as a growing number of multinationals and countries recall made-in-China milk products.

Zimbabwe opposition says power-sharing talks fail

AP, Harare

Zimbabwe's opposition leader said Friday that four days of "intense" negotiations have failed to break a deadlock in power-sharing talks and called for intervention by regional and African leaders.

Morgan Tsvangirai addressed reporters after talks with President Robert Mugabe ended late Friday evening without resolving the impasse that has left Zimbabwe rudderless.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki has been mediating talks since Tuesday.

Mbeki brokered a Sept. 15 deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai to form a unity government. The opposition narrowly won March parliamentary elections.

But the formation of the new government has been delayed over disagreements on the allocation of Cabinet posts.

The opposition has accused Mugabe of trying to hold onto too many key posts.

"Regrettably after four days of intense negotiations we have failed to agree on the first key issue which is the allocation of key portfolios and therefore a deadlock has been declared," Tsvangirai said.

Mugabe, who left the Harare hotel where talks have been taking place a little later, did not seem downbeat about the outcome.

"It (the discussions) went well t in the wrong direction," he said, adding that his party would make a detailed statement Saturday.

Mbeki struck a more optimistic note as he left some time later.