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CAPE CANAVERAL: The US space shuttle Atlantis
headed for the International Space Station early Saturday on this
year’s first mission, aimed at boosting the station’s
power-generating capacity. The shuttle rocketed into a clear blue
sky late Friday and reached orbit less than nine minutes after
liftoff. “It’s a very good day for NASA and this nation’s
space program,” said Rex Geveden, NASA associate administrator for
space operations, speaking at a press conference after the blastoff.
“What a great way to start the year and this mission,” gushed
shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach. “It’s a great launch,
it’s the first step in a very challenging mission.”
GAZA CITY: Israeli tanks
and troops pushed early Saturday into the southern Gaza Strip where
they traded gunfire with members of the armed wing of the Hamas
movement, the army and Hamas said. An army spokesman confirmed that
an incursion by tanks and infantry units was under way east of the
town of Rafah. “The military came under fire. They retaliated,
hitting an armed man,” the spokesman said, without elaborating.
Hamas in a statement confirmed the clash but made no mention of
casualties.
SYDNEY: Five people were
confirmed dead and another three were missing on Saturday as wild
storms continued to lash Australia’s east coast, smashing boats,
flooding roads and cutting power to 200,000 homes. The Hunter Valley
and Central Coast regions north of Sydney were declared disaster
zones after being pounded by gale-force winds and torrential rains
for a second day. Massive seas ran aground at least 12 pleasure
craft moored in Sydney Harbor, although fears eased that a massive
coal freighter stranded at Newcastle would break up and create an
environmental disaster. Police put the official death toll at five,
including a couple in their fifties whose car was washed off a
bridge. Searchers also found the bodies of three members of a family
of five—three children and a couple in their 30’s—carried away
when a highway collapsed.
ISLAMABAD: Three people
were killed and five wounded when a roadside bomb blasted a passing
bus in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province, officials
said Saturday. Police said the bomb was detonated by remote control
late Friday in the industrial town of Hub, not far from the harbor
city of Karachi. No one immediately took responsibility for the
explosion but authorities have blamed previous attacks on ethnic
Baluch rebels fighting for more autonomy and a greater share in
profits from the region’s vast mineral resources.
TOKYO: Taiwan’s former
president Lee Teng-hui, accused of being a “splittist” by
mainland China, said Saturday that the island was already virtually
independent and should ignore Beijing’s protests. “I won’t be
daunted at all by whatever China says about Taiwan,” Lee told a
news conference. “The people in Taiwan shouldn’t care about it,
either.”
ISLAMABAD: Islamic
militants have shot dead a 30-year-old man suspected of spying for
the US in a remote Pakistani tribal district near the Afghan border,
an official said Saturday. Rahim Khan’s bullet-ridden body was
found late Friday near the village of Alikhel, 12 kilometers (around
eight miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
“A note left on the body said Rahim was spying for the US forces
stationed across the border and has met his fate,” a security
official in Miranshah, where Pakistani forces are battling Taliban
and al-Qaeda fighters sheltering in the region, told AFP.
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians
were set to get a new first lady Saturday when widowed Prime
Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi gets remarried after finding a second
love with his former sister-in-law. Only close family members were
expected to be on hand for the private ceremony at his residence
when the 67-year-old premier takes the vows with Jeanne Abdullah, a
petite 53-year-old Eurasian beauty. The couple has never been seen
together in public and the premier had long brushed off speculation
about their romance, but on Wednesday he stunned the country by
announcing he was getting married again.
--AFP
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