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IRAN: Iran on Sunday launched
a tender for offers to build two new nuclear power stations
alongside a still unfinished facility in the southern city of
Bushehr, despite increasing Western pressure over its atomic drive.
“Iran is launching two tenders for the construction of two nuclear
power stations of between 1,000 and 1,600 megawatts capacity in
Bushehr,” the director of production of nuclear energy, Ahmad
Fayaz Bakhsh, told reporters. Bushehr is the location of Iran’s
first nuclear power plant which is being built by a Russian
contractor. However its completion, due for this year, has been held
up by a string of delays amid mutual acrimony. Fayaz Bakhsh said
Iran’s atomic energy agency would hand over the tender offer
documents Sunday for publication in the press in the next days.
“The offer ends on August 10,” he said. --AFP
RUSSIA:
Hundreds of riot police deployed in Saint Petersburg Sunday ahead of
a protest against President Vladimir Putin, a day after police
violently broke up a march in Moscow and arrested opposition leader
Garry Kasparov. Helmeted members of the paramilitary OMON force
encircled the square allocated to members of The Other Russia
coalition, which accuses Putin of authoritarianism. More police
waited in covered trucks, private transport was banned from adjacent
streets, and mobile phone connections did not work on the square.
One activist told Echo of Moscow radio that she and nine others had
been detained as they arrived by train in Saint Petersburg for the
event.--AFP
KABUL:
Afghan forces carried out a controlled explosion of Soviet-era
landmines here on Sunday, a senior police official said. The blast
was “planned by the security forces” and took place behind a
security perimeter, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, chief of Kabul’s
police criminal department. The explosion coincided with a suicide
attack in southern Afghanistan Sunday which killed four Afghan
employees of a US-owned private security firm--AFP
DUBAI: An
alliance of Sunni groups headed by al-Qaeda in Iraq said in an
Internet statement on Saturday it had kidnapped 20 Iraqi soldiers
and policemen and threatened to kill them in 48 hours if its demands
were not met. The self-styled Islamic State of Iraq posted still
images showing the purported captives dressed in brown and blue
uniforms, blindfolded and handcuffed. It demanded the release of
“Muslim Sunni sisters who are in the prisons of the interior”
ministry, in the statement posted on a website used by Islamist
militant groups. “The Islamic State of Iraq gives the government
of [Prime Minister Nuri] al-Maliki 48 hours to meet its demands or
it will execute the rule of God on them,” it said.--AFP
KUALA LUMPUR:
Malaysia is to take a tough stance against smoking after data
revealed that the percentage of women smokers has doubled in recent
years, a report said Sunday. Health Ministry parliamentary secretary
Lee Kah Choon said eight percent of the estimated six million
smokers in Malaysia were women, which adds up to 480,000, the Star
daily reported. “This may not seem much, but several years ago
women only made up of four percent of the nation’s smokers,” Lee
said.--AFP
BANGKOK:
About 60 teenage boys have broken out of a juvenile detention center
in Thailand to join Buddhist New Year festivities, police said
Sunday. The youngsters at the Ban Metta facility in a Bangkok suburb
escaped Saturday night to join the Songkran festival, which is
celebrated with five days of parties and water fights across the
country. Police Lieutenant Colonel Veerapong Chaowaphol said 52 of
the boys had been arrested and returned to the facility, while the
rest remained at large. He said that most of the youths were aged
about 16 or 17 and were serving sentences for robbery.AFP
WASHINGTON:
The US military has determined that more than 40 Afghan civilians
were killed or wounded by US marines after a suicide bombing in a
village near Jalalabad last month, The Washington Post reported
Sunday. Citing the US commander who ordered the probe, the newspaper
said there was no evidence that the marine special operations
platoon came under small-arms fire after the bombing, although the
marines reported taking enemy fire and seeing people with weapons.
The troops continued shooting at perceived threats as they traveled
miles from the site of the March 4 attack, said Major General Frank
Kearney, head of Special Operations Command Central, according to
the report.--AFP
KUALA LUMPUR:
Malaysia is to take a tough stance against smoking after data
revealed that the percentage of women smokers has doubled in recent
years, a report said Sunday. Health Ministry parliamentary secretary
Lee Kah Choon said eight percent of the estimated six million
smokers in Malaysia were women, which adds up to 480,000, the Star
daily reported. “This may not seem much, but several years ago
women only made up of four percent of the nation’s smokers,” Lee
said. He said the government was now formulating a Tobacco Products
Act that will force cigarette companies to print large images of
damaged lungs on packets.--AFP
KANDAHAR,
Afghanistan: Four Afghan employees of a US-owned private
security firm were killed in a suicide attack near a base housing
thousands of international troops on Sunday, police said. The
attacker, carrying explosives on a motorbike, targeted a US
Protection and Investigations (USPI) vehicle just a few hundred
yards from Kandahar airfield, a base for the NATO-led International
Security Assistance Force.--AFP
BAGHDAD: A
car bomb ripped through a popular market area in a southern Baghdad
suburb on Sunday, killing five people and wounding another 20, a
security official said. The car, packed with explosives, blew up in
the Al-Shurta al-Arabaa district, a crowded shopping area, on the
first day of the Iraqi working week. Initial reports said five
people were killed and 20 wounded. Car bombings and suicide attacks
have continued to blight Baghdad on a near daily basis in the two
months since Iraqi and US troops launched a security crackdown in
the capital, with tens of thousands of soldiers patrolling the
streets.--AFP
TAIWAN:
Thousands of people took to Taipei’s streets Sunday demanding the
government save a home for lepers due to be demolished to make way
for a transport depot, activists said. Some 3,000 protesters chanted
slogans and held placards highlighting their appeal for the
“Losheng” sanatorium, which was built in 1932 by the Japanese,
who then ruled Taiwan. The sanatorium still houses 45 elderly lepers
who refuse to move. Developers plan to knock down the remaining
13-hectare (32-acre) facilities, after some 17 hectares had already
been taken away for the construction of a subway line maintenance
depot.--AFP
KUWAIT CITY:
Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah has urged members of
the Al-Sabah ruling family to stop infighting, and denied plans he
intended to suspend parliament, newspapers reported Sunday. Official
media in Kuwait made no reference to the meeting, which was attended
by about 200 family members aged 40 and above. Last year, the ruling
family was plunged into an internal power struggle that resulted in
an unprecedented vote by the elected parliament to remove former
emir Sheikh Saad Abdullah al-Sabah on health grounds.--AFP
HANOI: A
detained Vietnamese cyber-dissident is expected to face trial soon,
possibly as early as this week, for “abusing democratic
freedoms,” say relatives and overseas-based prodemocracy
activists. The mother of 25-year-old Truong Quoc Huy said her family
had received a summons to attend his trial Monday afternoon in Ho
Chi Minh City, but a court official who refused to give his name
said the hearing had been postponed. Vietnam’s communist
government has in recent weeks arrested several political dissidents
and late last month sentenced one prominent activist, Catholic
priest Nguyen Van Ly, to eight years’ jail.
--AFP
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