CALCUTTA NEWS Oct. 1, 2008 - Day and night curfew was re-imposed in nine towns of Orissa's Kandhamal district following the burning of several houses and the death of a woman in clashes between Christians and Hindus, police said.

'We have re-imposed a day and night curfew in nine towns,' Kandhamal Superintendent of Police S. Praveen Kumar told IANS.

A mob set fire to several houses in Behera Gaon village in the district Tuesday night. Earlier in the day, a mob set fire to Christian homes and a church in Rudangia village under Udayagiri police station Tuesday morning. The two sides then clashed using country made guns and other weapons. Police were forced to open fire to disperse the mob. Forty-year-old Rukmini Nayak was killed in the violence and over a dozen people were injured.

About 10 people were arrested by police for their involvement in the violence.

The region has been witnessing communal violence since Aug 23, when Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his aides were shot dead by unidentified gunmen at his Jalespata Ashram. The VHP accused Christians of the murders, a charge strongly denied by Christian organisations.

Since then, thousands of people have been rendered homeless, many churches attacked and at least 33 people killed in the state. Prohibitory orders are still in force in the district and night curfew was earlier imposed in most towns.

Orissa is not new to communal violence between Hindus and Christians. On Jan 22, 1999, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, 10-year-old Philip and six-year-old Timothy, were burnt alive by a Hindu mob in their vehicle in Keonjhar district.

India's vengeful Christians turn to murder as Hindus step up their killing campaign

ORENBURG (South Urals), September 26 (RIA Novosti) - President Dmitry Medvedev said on Russia must upgrade its nuclear deterrent and fully supply the Armed Forces with modern weaponry by 2020.

He said Russia would make the modernization of its nuclear deterrent and Armed Forces a priority in light of the recent military conflict with Georgia. Moscow launched a five-day military operation "to force Georgia to peace" in response to an attack by Georgian forces on South Ossetia on August 8.

"A guaranteed nuclear deterrent system for various military and political circumstances must be provided by 2020," Medvedev told a meeting with commanders of military districts during the Center-2008 military exercises at the Donguz testing range in the Orenburg Region.

"We must ensure air superiority, precision strikes at land and sea targets, timely deployment of troops. We are planning to launch large-scale production of warships, primarily, nuclear submarines with cruise missiles and multi-purpose attack submarines," Medvedev said.

"We will also build an air and space defense network," he added.  

All flights in Pakistan have been suspended after a string of bomb warnings at airports across the country.

(SkyNews) - The country's civil aviation authority is said to have instituted a state of emergency. Benazir Bhutto International Airport has been evacuated after a phone call saying the building would be blown up.

Sky's Asia correspondent Alex Crawford said there had been at least two separate threats, and the country was in a state of "high anxiety". The first threat came in a call to Pakistan International Airline's call centre. The second threat was made to the media warning of attacks at airports across the country.

By the time committee investigators finally began briefing the senators in secret sessions in early spring, 1992, the issue of live POWs had become, as McCain later described it, "white hot;" this not only because of intense public interest in the plight of the POWs, but also because Texas businessman and longtime POW advocate H. Ross Perot had entered the presidential race, and had done so amid press accounts that he thought President Bush was not doing enough to bring the POWs home. By late May Perot was in first place in the national polls, ahead of President Bush, who was in second place, and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Governor Bill Clinton, who was in third. What would the committee find? Might a ruling that 69% of the American people were right and that, in fact, there were live POWs still held half a world away throw the election to Perot? How could it not?

Enter John McCain

Given his wartime experiences as a POW in Vietnam, Sen. John McCain was by default the most powerful and influential member of the Select Committee. Members on both sides of the aisle deferred to his judgment; reporters hung on his every pronouncement. And so when McCain, his chief of staff Mark Salter and their allies on the Select Committee joined forces with top Bush administration officials to assail, ridicule, attack, discredit, photoshop, retouch, manipulate, massage and/or "cherry-pick" the intelligence in order to destroy its intelligence value and keep the matter of live POWs from becoming an issue in the 1992 election, the live POWs never had a chance.

How McCain and Salter and the others went about doing this is a case study in how powerful government officials can manipulate intelligence to make it say what they want it to say - and the main reason we believe that John McCain must not be Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces.

SEVASTOPOL, September 2 (RIA Novosti) - The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Dallas left Sevastopol after anti-NATO protests in Ukraine's Crimean port. (U.S. Coastguard cutter Dallas enters Sevastopol Harbor - video)

The USGC Dallas, which recently delivered humanitarian aid to Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi, docked yesterday at the Crimean port, where Russia has a naval base, at the invitation of Kiev.

The ship's arrival was met by thousands of anti-NATO protesters chanting "Yankees go home!" and waving banners with the slogan "NATO Stop!" Police cordoned off the area around the ship.

Ukrainian customs officers who boarded the ship and met the commander said they had been prepared to lay on buses for the U.S. crew to give them a tour of the city, but apart from a few officers, no one left the vessel.

Tensions between Russia and the West have been exacerbated by the build up in the Black Sea of U.S. and NATO naval vessels delivering humanitarian aid to Georgia. In an apparent response, Russia sent a group of warships last week, including the Moskva missile cruiser, to Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia.

A Russian warship, the Smetlivy patroller, has meanwhile returned to Sevastopol after being involved in peacekeeping operations off the Abkhazian shore, a Russian Black Sea Fleet command source said.

"Smetlivy returned to its base this morning. Everyone on board is safe and sound. A group of ships has remained near the Abkhazian shore to ensure the republic's maritime security," the source said.

Most of Russia's naval group have returned to the Black Sea bases of Novorossiisk and Sevastopol.

SANAA (Reuters) - Two explosions followed by heavy gunfire went off outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen, and smoke was seen rising from the heavily-fortified compound, witnesses said.

Al Arabiya Television said that the initial blast was caused by a suspected car bomb and that there were believed to be casualties.

Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, has grappled with a spate of al Qaeda attacks this year, including one on the U.S. embassy, another near the Italian mission and others on Western tourists.

An al Qaeda-affiliated group claimed responsibility in March for a mortar attack that missed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa but wounded 13 girls at a nearby school.

The United States ordered non-essential staff to leave Yemen in April, a day after an attack on a residential compound.

BBC Timeline Yemen

(AP) - The last straw, the McCain campaign said, was in July, when Monegan planned to travel to Washington to seek federal money for a plan to assign troopers, judges and prosecutors who could exclusively handle sexual assault cases -- one of the state's most intractable crime problems.

In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor's special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: The governor hadn't agreed the money should be sought, and the request was "out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. (Ted) Stevens."

Four days later, Monegan was fired.

(TimesOnline) - As the doctor walks between rows of bodies, people lift funeral shrouds to reveal the faces of children and babies, some with severe head injuries.

Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.”

The grainy video eight-minute footage, seen exclusively by The Times, is the most compelling evidence to emerge of what may be the biggest loss of civilian life during the Afghanistan war.

Firedoglake: Ollie North Rides Again – To An Afghan Massacre

KABUL, Afghanistan - "In light of emerging evidence pertaining to civilian casualties in the August 22 counter-insurgency operation in the Shindand District, Herat province, I feel it is prudent to request that U.S. Central Command send a general officer to review the U.S. investigation and its findings with respect to this new evidence," Gen. David McKiernan -- the senior U.S. officer in Afghanistan and the commander of the 40-nation NATO-led mission -- said in a statement.

A police officer looks at a house destroyed in the air strike on Shindand (Sky News)

The attack has further strained relations between Afghanistan's U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai and the foreign forces operating against the Taliban and al-Qaida in the country.

Do we want another gun toting VP with lifelong membership of the NRA and an advocate of conservative policies favoring big oil (preference national Alaskan companies) ... an AIP opinion.

Sarah Palin spent $400,000 of state money to "educate" Alaskans about aerial hunting of wolves and bears.  State tax money was used to directly influence the outcome of proposition 2 which would have limited aerial shooting of predators.  Since Alaskans had previously voted twice to ban aerial shooting of predators, Palin used state tax money to buy support for aerial shooting. Buying votes with tax money worked - proposition two was voted down on 8/26/08.

Read more about Governor Palin's "predator control" policies and the use of state money to slaughter bears and wolves.  This year the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game will exterminate 1,400 bears out of a population of 2,000 in an area west of Anchorage. The Alaskan Board of Game even approved the hunting of black bear mothers and cubs with the goal of killing 60 percent of the black bear population.  Although biologists have known since the 60's that predators actually keep prey populations healthy, Alaskan wolves and bears are being exterminated (using cruel practices such as baiting, trapping, and aerial shooting) to boost dwindling moose populations.  Do we really want a vice president who doesn't believe in science?  

Sarah Palin sues the federal government over listing polar bears as a threatened species.  Why?  Because it could restrict the oil industry that fills her pockets.  This is the same reason she wants to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Read Governor Palin's ignorant op-ed piece here.  Palin believes that global warming is a myth.

Bear viewing in Alaska generates $100,000,000/yr.
yet Palin refuses to even learn about the industry

It was a task of epic proportions, inspiring comparisons with Commando magazine, Mad Max, the battle of Arnhem in 1944 and the relief of the siege of Mafeking in 1900.

The mission was to take 220 tonnes of turbine and other equipment, worth millions of pounds, across 100 miles of some of the most hostile and heavily mined territory in Afghanistan.

Plaquemines Parish officials are trying to open the Caenarvon Mississippi River diversion to ease pressure on a levee that is being overtopped in Braithwaite. Since power is out in the area, however, they are trying to open the diversion gates manually.

Plaquemines Parish workers have been furiously working on the levee along the Clearwater Canal since mid-afternoon. Floodwaters spilling over the top of the levee threaten the Braithwaite Park subdivision. (bottom right)

The levee has not breached, but authorities are not hopeful

"We don't think our efforts are going to be successful so we need to get everyone out now,'' Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

Officials said opening the diversion would allow some of the floodwater to be diverted into the Mississippi River, which is lower.

Meanwhile, St. Bernard Parish is sending firefighters, deputies and other workers to the area to help with the efforts.

The canal is on the east bank of the parish. The subdivision is off Louisiana 39. The 8-foot-tall levee is a parish levee that is not part of the federal levee protection system, officials said. Officials said the same levee is also being overtopped further south at Scarsdale.

GENEVA - A prominent human rights group says Georgia has admitted dropping cluster bombs in its military offensive to assert control over the restive province of South Ossetia.

Human Rights Watch says it has received an official letter from Georgia's Defense Ministry that acknowledges use of the M85 cluster munition near the Roki tunnel that connects South Ossetia with Russia.

A mine expert inspects a cluster bomb with its bomblets in Lebanon.   (Keystone)

The M85 is the same weapon that was used extensively by Israel in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

HRW arms division researcher Bonnie Docherty told reporters in Geneva that Russia undoubtedly used cluster munition in several places during the conflict. However, Russia has denied using the weapon.

Israel's Mercenaries in Georgia

ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan suspended fighting in the volatile northwest for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and some of the 300,000 people displaced by air strikes and gunbattles started packing up belongings to return to their shattered homes.

The military warned, however, that any provocations in the Bajur tribal region, a rumoured hide-out of Osama bin Laden near the border with Afghanistan, would bring immediate retaliation.

Pakistan's five-month-old government at first tried peace talks with militants, but those efforts bore little fruit. It has turned to force in recent weeks, including using helicopter gunships and jets to strike suspected insurgent hide-outs.

The operation in Bajur began in early August. Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said it has killed more than 560 insurgents. Mr. Malik did not commit to a formal end to the operation but said an estimated 300,000 people displaced from Bajur could return to the region "without any fear."

Some started gathering their belongings from sweltering, mosquito-infested relief camps so they could go home for Ramadan. But others, barely scraping by, said they could not afford to make the journey and would remain with their families in cramped tents for the holy month.

Defence analyst Talat Masood said the suspension of massive military operations in Bajur, which began in early August, risked squandering any gains made by security forces so far.

"Definitely it will give a fair chance to the militants to regroup, consolidate their strength and stage a come back," he said. "This has happened in the past."

Bajur has been the primary focus of military operations against insurgents, though there have also been clashes in the northwestern Swat Valley, a formerly popular tourist resort.

It was not immediately clear whether authorities were also suspending fighting there, but Taliban militants said, in any case, they intended to keep up their activities.

"This is not a war, but jihad, and this is our faith that rewards for good deeds and that is multiplied during the holy month," said Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman in Swat.

(News of the World) - TERRORISTS tried to KILL Gordon Brown during his visit to Afghanistan last week. Taliban fanatics were in position . . . and ready to SHOOT down his helicopter as he flew over the capital Kabul.

But the assassination bid was foiled with just MINUTES to spare when the two gunmen were spotted on a rooftop directly beneath the chopper's flight path.

The drama unfolded in the early afternoon as Mr Brown was about to board the Chinook military helicopter at the British Embassy in Kabul after talks with officials at the end of his one-day trip. The PM, his closest aides, and a police and army protection team were just about to walk up the rear ramp of the Chinook when the alarm was sounded.

A security source said: "The Prime Minister was told two hostiles had been spotted with guns on a nearby roof. He was rushed back to the compound and local forces dealt with the situation."

Reconstruction of Afghanistan is central to British foreign policy (Telegraph)

But as Afghan police rushed to the rooftop scene the two gunmen are understood to have realised they had been spotted--and escaped.

The PM spent another 45 minutes sheltering inside the embassy in the Kabul "Green Zone" until a massive security operation swung into action for the 10-minute flight to the city's international airport.

American Black Hawk helicopters were brought in to provide extra protection during the flight from the centre of Kabul.

Brown makes surprise trip to Afghanistan as Taliban step up attacks