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43 Philippine soldiers, rebels killed in clash: army

Writer: AFP

Published: 13/08/2009 at 08:00 AM

At least 23 soldiers and 20 Abu Sayyaf militants were killed when the army raided a training camp run by the Al-Qaeda-linked rebels in the southern Philippines, the military said Thursday.

An unidentified wounded Philippine Marine receives a medal at a hospital in the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga a day after soldiers and members of the Islamic extremist Abu Sayyaf group clashed in Basilan island. At least 23 soldiers and 20 members of the Abu Sayyaf group were killed while fourteen other soldiers were also wounded.

Fourteen other soldiers were also wounded when the military launched a major offensive on the Islamist militants' camp in the town of Ungkaya Pukan on the remote island of Basilan Wednesday, officials said.

Government troops managed to overrun the camp, but reports from the field said day-long clashes that followed were fierce and led to the heavy casualties, regional commander Major General Benjamin Dolorfino said.

Numerous home-made bombs, ready for detonation, were recovered along with 13 high-powered firearms, he said.

The fighting was the heaviest since at least 29 soldiers were killed in two separate clashes with the Abu Sayyaf in July and August 2007 -- with the bodies of 10 soldiers later being found mutilated.

The military "launched a decisive law enforcement operation targeting the Abu Sayyaf's main training camp in the province", army spokeswoman Lieutenant Steffani Cacho said.

"Recovered from the camp were sizeable quantities of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) rigged to explode while others were ready for use," she said.

The military said they were going after about 200 Abu Sayyaf militants who were involved in the clash and that additional troops may be poured into the remote area.

"The terrain is really very difficult to penetrate," said Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner, overall armed forces spokesman in Manila.

"Follow (up) operations are ongoing and we hope we will be able to get the remnants of this Abu Sayyaf group."

He said the military was "studying whether we need to pour in more troops into the area."

Soldiers who airlifted their dead comrades to a military base in nearby Zamboanga City said those who died were hit by sniper fire.

The clashes were over, General Dolorfino said, but troops were still clearing the area to ensure no insurgents remained.

The Abu Sayyaf was formed in the early 1990s by Islamic firebrand Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani upon his return from Afghanistan, where he fought the Soviets alongside Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Janjalani formed the Abu Sayyaf (Bearers of the Sword) ostensibly to fight for an independent Islamic state.

He was however killed in a 1998 clash with police, and the group quickly degenerated into a terror organisation specialising in bombings and high-profile kidnappings.

The group has raised money by ransoming hostages but has also killed some, mostly through beheading, when they were not paid promptly.

While the Philippine military has killed and captured many Abu Sayyaf leaders -- partly with US assistance -- the extremists remained active and in January they held three international Red Cross workers hostage for several months.

Two hostages were freed in April while the last, Italian Eugenio Vagni, was released on July 12 after nearly six months in captivity.

The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to be working alongside some 30 foreign militants from the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) who are operating in the southern Philippines.

The JI, blamed for the 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia that killed 202, is said to be working with the Abu Sayyaf in plotting bombings in this mostly Catholic nation of 90 million, intelligence officials earlier told AFP.

Filipino intelligence officials said JI militants may also have helped the Abu Sayyaf carry out a spate of bombings in Mindanao in July that killed eight people.

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Climate change turning Aussie birds smaller: study

Writer: AFP

Published: 13/08/2009 at 04:00 PM

Australian birds have shrunk over the past century because of global warming, scientists have found.

A bird is seen during a Taronga Zoo Bird Show in Sydney. Australian birds have shrunk over the past century because of global warming, according to scientists.

Using museum specimens, researchers measured the size of eight bird species and discovered they were getting smaller in an apparent response to climate change.

Australian National University (ANU) biologist Janet Gardner said modern birds were up to four percent smaller than their forebears, a discrepancy she said was statistically significant.

"Birds, like other animals, tend to be smaller in warmer climates, because smaller bodies lose heat more quickly than larger bodies," she said.

"As a result, individuals of the same species tend to be larger near the poles and smaller near the equator."

She said the study showed that modern birds in Sydney had shrunk to the same size as those previously found in sub-tropical Brisbane, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) north and seven degrees of latitude closer to the equator.

Gardner said the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, found that the birds appeared to be adapting to global warming by becoming smaller to minimise heat stress.

The bird species examined by the researchers from the ANU and government science body CSIRO included the grey-crowned babbler, the yellow-rumped thornbill and the variegated fairy-wren Read more!

Russian PM Putin visits breakaway Abkhazia

Writer: AFP

Published: 12/08/2009 at 06:00 PM

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Abkhazia on Wednesday on his first visit to the breakaway Georgian region since Moscow recognised it as independent last year, a spokesman told AFP.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gives an interview to Abkhaz media in Sochi. Putin has arrived in Abkhazia on his first visit to the breakaway Georgian region since Moscow recognised it as independent last year, a spokesman told AFP.

"That is his first visit" since Russia recognised Abkhazia and fellow breakaway Georgian region South Ossetia as independent following a five-day war with Tbilisi last August, the spokesman said.

Putin will meet the local leadership to discuss economic cooperation and other issues, he added.

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Galapagos face ecological disaster due to tourism: study

Writer: AFP

Published: 12/08/2009 at 06:00 PM

Mosquitoes brought into the Galapagos on tourist planes and boats threaten to wreak "ecological disaster" in the islands, central to Darwin's theory of evolution, a study said Wednesday.

File photo of a seal on the shores of San Cristobal island in the Galapagos. Mosquitoes brought into the Galapagos on tourist planes and boats threaten to wreak "ecological disaster" in the islands, central to Darwin's theory of evolution, a study said.

The insects can spread potentially lethal diseases in the archipelago off Ecuador's Pacific coast, used by Charles Darwin as the basis of his seminal work "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection".

"Few tourists realise the irony that their trip to Galapagos may actually increase the risk of an ecological disaster," said Simon Goodman of Leeds University, one of the study's co-authors.

"That we haven't already seen serious disease impacts in Galapagos is probably just a matter of luck."

The study found that the southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, was regularly hitching rides on planes from the South American mainland, and island-hopping on tourist boats between the different islands.

Species threatened by diseases such as avian malaria or West Nile include the islands' best-known residents, its giant tortoises, as well as marine iguanas, sea lions and finches.

Arnaud Bataille, another researcher on the eight-page study, said: "On average the number of mosquitoes per aeroplane is low, but many aircraft arrive each day from the mainland in order to service the tourist industry."

Worse, "the mosquitoes seem able to survive and breed once they leave the plane," he added.

Goodman noted that Ecuador recently introduced a requirement for all aircraft flying to the Galapagos to have insecticide treatment, but said similar moves are needed for ships, and the impact needs to be evaluated.

"With tourism growing so rapidly, the future of Galapagos hangs on the ability of the Ecuadorian government to maintain stringent biosecurity protection for the islands," he said.

The study, co-authored by Leeds University, the Zoological Society of London, the University of Guayaquil, the Galapagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Foundation, was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, Britain's de-facto academy of sciences.

Some 10,000 people, mostly fishermen, live on the volcanic Galapagos archipelago, which rose from the Pacific seabed 10 million years ago and became famous when Darwin visited to conduct research in 1835.

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Clinton takes good governance message to Nigeria

Writer: AFP

Published: 12/08/2009 at 04:01 PM

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took her campaign for good governance Wednesday to Nigeria, hoping to deepen ties with the African power but also help fight corruption and religious strife.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (right) speaks to a refugee as she tours a refugee camp on the outskirts of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo on August 11. Clinton has taken her campaign for good governance to Nigeria, hoping to deepen ties with the African power but also help fight corruption and religious strife.

On a whirlwind trip through Africa, Clinton was holding a day of talks in Abuja, the capital of the continent's most populous nation, including a meeting with President Umaru Musa Yar?Adua.

Clinton was also due to hold a roundtable discussion with religious leaders in the wake of recent violence, the latest part of US President Barack Obama's bid to reach out to the Islamic world.

Clinton's top Africa advisor said that ties with Nigeria were crucial to the US relationship with the continent due to the country's vast size and its major oil industry, much of which feeds the US market.

"Nigeria is undoubtedly the most important country in sub-Saharan Africa," Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for Africa, told reporters on Clinton's plane to Abuja from the Democratic Republic of Congo late Tuesday.

Carson said that the United States had a "very good relationship" with Nigeria over recent years and hailed the country's increasingly active regional profile, including efforts to stabilise Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"Despite our close relationship, Nigeria faces a number of major challenges," Carson said.

He pointed to attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta -- which cost the developing country hundreds of thousands of barrels in crude a day -- and a flare-up in religious strife in a nation with sub-Saharan Africa's biggest Muslim population.

Nigerian security forces late last month crushed an uprising by a self-styled Taliban fundamentalist group in several northern states, leaving more than 800 people dead, the majority of them sect members.

The Obama administration has made outreach to the Islamic world a signature US policy, hoping to assuage some of the bitterness among many Muslims over former president George W. Bush's policies, particularly in the invasion of Iraq.

Clinton was set to hold a roundtable discussion with religious leaders at the Yar'Adua Centre, named after Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, the late elder brother of the current president and advocate of democratic rule.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Clinton would listen to the religious leaders but that her main message would be on good governance and electoral reform.

Yar'Adua won a 2007 election that poll monitors said was riddled with problems. Nonetheless, some observers saw it as at least a small step forward in a regional giant that has only experienced few peaceful transitions of power.

"Nigeria is at something of a political crossroads. The last elections were deeply flawed," the senior US official said.

He said that Clinton would encourage Nigeria to undertake electoral reforms to ensure future polls can move forward without so much controversy.

Clinton will also hold a public forum with representatives of civil society on ways to fight Nigeria's notorious corruption.

Clinton has made good governance a key issue on her seven-nation trip. Obama in an address in Ghana last month called on Africans to take charge of their futures by standing up against corruption.

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Iran speaker rejects prison rape claims

Writer: AFP

Published: 12/08/2009 at 03:00 PM

Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani on Wednesday rejected claims that some election protesters had been raped in custody and rapped the opposition leader who raised the allegations.

File picture shows Iranian riot police on a street in Tehran in June during protests following presidential elections. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani dismissed on Wednesday allegations by an opposition leader that male and female election protesters had been savagely raped in custody

"The issue of detainees being sexually abused is a lie," Larijani told parliament, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Following an investigation of detainees in Kahrizak and Evin prisons, no cases of rape and sexual abuse were found," he said, referring to the jails where most people arrested after the June election were initially detained.

Defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi claimed in a letter to powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani that several male and female protesters had been raped in custody and called for an investigation.

"A number of detainees have said that some female detainees have been raped savagely. Young boys held in detention have also been savagely raped," Karroubi said in his letter dated July 29.

About 4,000 opposition supporters were arrested over the unrest that swept Iran after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election, officials said. Most have been released, but around 200 remain behind bars. At least 110 have also been put on trial.

Some protesters are still being held in the capital's notorious Evin prison, but the authorities have closed Kahrizak jail south of Tehran after an order from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Larijani issued a stern warning directed at Karroubi over the allegations.

"The contents of the letter were shocking and the letter was immediately published by foreign media. Considering the sensitivity of the issue, I asked a parliamentary fact finding panel to investigate," Larijani said.

He also asked Karroubi to submit any evidence or testimony about the rapes for a "serious probe" into the claims.

"This is also a warning to politicians to take care and not to make any claims to the media before a proper investigation is done so that it is not exploited by foreigners."

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Minister in Russia's Ingushetia shot dead

Writer: AFP

Published: 12/08/2009 at 03:00 PM

The minister of construction in Russia's turbulent Ingushetia region, Ruslan Amerkhanov, was shot dead Wednesday inside his ministerial office, officials said.

A Russian special forces soldier sits on an armoured vehicle in Russia's Ingushetia region. The minister of construction in Ingushetia, Ruslan Amerkhanov, was shot dead Wednesday inside his ministerial office, officials said.

"The construction minister has been shot dead in his office," Madina Khadziyeva, spokeswoman for Ingushetia's interior ministry, told AFP.

Russian news agencies said Amerkhanov was shot dead at point-blank range when a group of armed men burst into his office in Ingushetia's capital of Magas.

Overwhelmingly Muslim Ingushetia and other regions in Russia's northern Caucasus are battling Islamist militants who are waging a low-level but increasingly deadly insurgency against the pro-Kremlin local authorities.

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