The attack wounded at least five people, according to the source, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.
The strike happened in the area of Machi Khel in North Waziristan, a part of northwestern Pakistan that has been the scene of clashes between Taliban militants and the Pakistani military.
The U.S. military is believed to have carried out several drone strikes in the region, as well.
Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal inaugurating the South-east Asia regional conference of health ministers in Kathmandu on Monday.
Chairman of the UCPN-Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ Monday said the movement his party had started would create thunder to establish civil supremacy, claiming that the roar his party blew in 1996 had resulted in the establishment of republican order in the country.
Addressing a mass meeting here organised by United National People’s Movement-Nepal, the former Prime Minister stated that the mass meetings were means for exchanging suggestions and opinions with the people to constitute the roar for establishing civil supremacy and accomplishing peace and constitution writing processes.
"The other parties which are standing against civil supremacy have compelled us to roar for peace, constitution and state restructuring," the leader of the main opposition said, "This roar will definitely drive away those which are opposing civil supremacy and the people will emerge victorious."
The Maoist chief claimed that his party had given birth to the peace process and the same could only take the process to its logical conclusion as per the mandate of the people. "We gave birth to the peace process, not the CPN-UML and Nepali Congress, and we have the responsibility to conclude it logically."
Prachanda accused the other parties of plotting to abort the peace process and warned of stringent movement to foil the conspiracy.
He also claimed that the present government would collapse at any moment at it had neither ground to hold nor a support to cling to.
The former PM urged the people to raise voice for establishing a university in Surkhet saying the present government was plotting against the decision of the previous government. He said that the state had discriminated the Bheri-Karnali region since long and that it had to pay back with interest.
Meanwhile, Maoist vice-chairman Dr. Baburam Bhattarai instructed the party cadres to uphold the peace flag firmly and not to deviate from the spirit of the ongoing peace process.
Addressing a cadres’ training in Biratnagar, Dr. Bhattarai said if the government ignored the demands put up by his party, the movement would turn into a mass revolt.
Dr. Bhattarai defended the protests saying that they were for peace, constitution, civil supremacy and national independence.
The shortage has dealt another blow to consumers who have been reeling under skyrocketing prices of daily commodities.
Housewives say they visit several shops but find no sugar. Shopkeepers express sadness that they have to send back customers empty-handed. Rama Khanal, a housewife of Maitidevi, said she has been unable to find sugar in the market, though she is ready to pay more.
A grocer of Tahachal, Arjun Adhikari, said his shop is running out of sugar, thus he has been sending back customers visiting his shop to buy sugar.
Consumer forums blame the sugar shortage on hoarding by traders to exert pressure on the government to raise the price and believe that the sugar shortage issue is artificial. "There is sugar in the market, but traders are hoarding it," said Jyoti Baniya, general secretary of the Consumer Rights Protection. Retailers on the other hand say they are also victims of the sugar shortage.
We have been unable to bring in sugar, said chairperson of the Retailers Trade Association Pabitra Bajracharya.
The government has been preparing to import 50,000 tons of sugar from India. "We are hoping that the shortage will ease once the sugar is brought in from India," said joint-secretary at the Ministry of Commerce, Ganesh Prasad Dhakal, assuring the consumers that there would be an adequate supply of sugar.
According to Dhakal, National Trading Limited will distribute the sugar being imported from India at a discounted rate of Rs. 53 per kgGanesh Thapa was elected unopposed as the ANFA president on the last day of nomination filing day. Along with Thapa, eight vice presidents were also elected on the same day.
The election of the 22 members gives the working committee 31 full members as stated in the new statue of the association. Among the 22 members, 14 of them are new faces while the remaining are continuing their next term.
The general assembly also approved the ANFA's estimated budget of Rs. 70.3 million. The amount will be spent on various activities of the association. The new budget is 36.73 percent higher than last year’s Rs. 40.6 million.
A jury at a London court found Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Assad Sarwar, 29, and Tanvir Hussain, 28, guilty of conspiracy to murder by detonating explosives on aircraft while they were in-flight.
Four other alleged conspirators — whom the prosecution said were to have smuggled liquid explosives onboard jetliners disguised as soft drinks — were acquitted of conspiring to blow up planes. The jury could not reach a verdict on an eighth man.
British and U.S. security officials said the plan — unlike many recent homegrown European terrorist plots — was directly linked to al-Qaida and guided by senior Islamic militants in Pakistan, who hoped to mount a spectacular strike on the West.
The officials said British plotters were likely just days away from mounting their suicide attacks when police rounded up 25 people in dawn raids in August 2006.
Their arrests led to travel chaos as hundreds of jetliners were grounded across Europe. Discovery of the plot also triggered changes to airport security, including new restrictions on the amount of liquids and gels passengers can take onto flights.
Prosecutors said suspects had identified seven specific flights from London's Heathrow airport to New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal, as their targets.
British authorities estimate that, if successful, around 2,000 passengers would have died. If bombs were detonated over U.S. and Canadian cities, hundreds more would have been killed on the ground.
Plotters planned to assemble bombs in airplane toilets using hydrogen peroxide-based explosives injected into soda bottles.
"They were to be detonated in-flight by suicide bombers," including several of the accused, prosecutor Peter Wright said.
Tests by scientists who replicated the bombs in a laboratory showed the devices could produce powerful explosions, though there is no evidence that the terrorist cell had perfected the technique.
Wright told the trial that the group's suicide attacks were planned by "men with the cold-eyed certainty of the fanatic" and intended as "a violent and deadly statement of intent that would have a truly global impact."
He said the plot would have caused "a civilian death toll from terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale."
All eight defendants had denied most charges against them, claiming they were planning a stunt — and not a terrorist attack — to expose failings in Western foreign policy.
Prosecutors were unable to produce evidence that the men had produced a single viable bomb. The trial was the second to take place in a case which has frustrated prosecutors.
Last year, Ali, Sarwar and Hussain were convicted of conspiracy to murder, but the jury could not reach a verdict on whether they specifically targeted aircraft. The jury at that trial failed to reach verdicts against other four defendants.
Jurors on Monday cleared Donald Stewart-Whyte, 23, of all charges. They found Umar Islam, 31, guilty of a charge of conspiracy to murder, but could not decide if he was involved in targeting aircraft.
They found three other men: Ibrahim Savant, 28, Arafat Waheed Khan, 28 and Waheed Zaman, 25, not guilty of planning to blow up airliners, but could not reach verdicts on whether the three men were guilty of conspiracy to murder.
Each defendant, except Stewart-Whyte, had pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Prosecutor Adina Ezekiel said authorities will announce if they will seek a third retrialCritics say such heavy-handed tactics violate international principles and threaten to undermine support for the war against the Taliban. The American military said it was investigating the allegation, which comes on the heels of a furor over disputed reports that up to 70 Afghan civilians died in a NATO airstrike in the country's north last week.
Civilian deaths and intrusive searches have bred resentment among the Afghan population nearly eight years after the U.S.-led coalition invaded to oust the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime, which was sheltering al-Qaida terrorist leaders.
On Monday, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division forced their way into the charity's hospital to look for insurgents in Wardak province, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) southwest of Kabul.
"This is a clear violation of internationally recognized rules and principles," said Anders Fange, the charity's country director. No one was harmed in the raid, but Fange said it violated an agreement between NATO forces and aid groups working in the area.
U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker confirmed that the hospital was searched last week but had no other details. She said the military was looking into the incident.
"We are investigating, and we take allegations like this seriously," she said. "Complaints like this are rare."
Fange said U.S. troops kicked in doors, tied up four hospital guards and two people visiting hospitalized relatives, and forced patients out of beds during their search late Wednesday night.
They also barged into the women's wards, he said, adding that strange men entering rooms where women are in beds is a serious insult to the local Muslim culture and word of it could turn the community against international troops.
When they left two hours later, the soldiers ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded insurgents were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, he said.
The staff refused. Fange said informing on patients would be an ethical breach, put the staff at risk and make the hospital a target. He demanded guarantees the military would not enter hospitals without permission in future.
"If the international military forces are not respecting the sanctity of health facilities, then there is no reason for the Taliban to do it either," he said. "Then these clinics and hospitals would become military targets."
While the search operation may have sparked outrage and goes against common practice, it's not clear whether it broke any international rules of war. International humanitarian law, which includes the Geneva Conventions, requires that civilian hospitals be respected and also protects medical personal and the sick and wounded from combat operations. However, it does not specifically address search operations.
Violence has surged across much of Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ordered 21,000 more U.S. troops to the country this year. Two Canadian troops were killed Sunday when their patrol hit a roadside bomb near Kandahar, Canada's Defence Ministry said. A third service member died of wounds sustained in a separate gunbattle with insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO said without giving a nationality.
NATO was also investigating last week's U.S. airstrike in northern Kunduz province. The strike came despite new rules for foreign forces limiting use of airpower to avoid civilian casualties. An Afghan human rights group said Monday the strike on two hijacked fuel tankers may have killed as many as 70 villagers, but a spokesman for the provincial government said all but five of the dead were insurgents.
The increasingly violent Taliban insurgency has killed more civilians in bombings and other attacks than international forces have. On Monday, the government said three militant rockets landed overnight in the capital, Kabul, hitting a house and killing three people. In central Uruzgan province, a remote-controlled bomb targeting a police vehicle exploded in a busy market, killing two children and wounding 16 other people, according to local police official Gulab Khan.
A United Nations report in July said the number of civilians killed in conflict in Afghanistan has jumped 24 percent this year, with bombings by insurgents and airstrikes by international forces the biggest killers. The report said 1,013 civilians were killed in the first half of 2009, 59 percent in insurgent attacks and 30.5 percent by foreign and Afghan government forces. The rest were undetermined.
Of the 47 appellate court justices, 10 are appointed as 'additional'. Seventy percent of the new appointees are law practitioners. Minister for Law and Justice Prem Bahadur Singh said the JC had given special attention to make the appointments inclusive and fair.
"We invested a lot of energy to make our decision inclusive and we are successful in that," Singh told the Post. Of the total appointees three are women-- Sharanga Subedi from Kaski, Nita Gautam Dixit from Bara and Sushmalata Mathema from Chitwan. They are appointed as justices of Butwal, Pokhara and Hetauda appellate courts respectively.
Amid tight security, the priests – Girish Bhatt and Raghavendra Bhatt–performed rituals at the shrine on Saturday morning.
The priests—Girish Bhatt and Raghmendra Bhatt—visited 11 different temples of Lord Shiva in the Pashupati area. As per their assignment, Girish and Raghmendra performed puja at the northern gate of the temple and in Bashuki Nag Temple, respectively.
The government stepped up security at the temple after Unified CPN (Maoist) and Priest Appointment Joint Struggle Committee (PAJSC) members beat up the priests, even snapping off their janai (sacred thread). The act invited strong reaction from New Delhi on Saturday.
“The attack on the newly appointed Indian priests, Girish Bhatt and Raghavendra Bhatt, at the revered and sacred Pashupatinath temple on September 4 has caused deep anguish and serious concern in India. The matter was immediately taken up through our Embassy in Kathmandu at the highest levels in the Government of Nepal and our concerns conveyed,” India's Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
The Nepalese authorities at the highest level have assured us that they are taking additional steps to ensure the safety and security of Indian priests in Nepal, according to the statement. “We strongly believe that this unprovoked and criminal act of violence goes against the grain of the civilisational ties of friendship that have existed since time immemorial between the peoples of Nepal and India. The safety and security of Indian citizens abroad is an abiding and core concern of the Government of India and we continue to closely monitor the situation surrounding yesterday's unfortunate incident in Kathmandu.”
Shortly before the statement was issued, Minister for Culture, Minendra Rijal and Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood inspected the temple.
Minister Rijal said the attack was politically motivated. “Nationality and appointment of priests are two different issues,” Rijal said. Sood condemned the attack.
The Pashupati area witnessed demonstrations despite the government's prohibitory order. The protesters burnt tyres and shouted slogans against the government at Purano Baneshwor, Gaushala, Chabahil and Battisputali. They were demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Minister for Culture and review of the PADT decision to appoint the Indian priests.
PAJSC has been protesting since last week following the Indian priests' appointment. It has been demanding the appointment of Nepali priests and greater transparency on the utilisation of money that worshippers offer.
In its bid to keep untoward incidents at bay, the PADT barred devotees from the temple for sometime. The temple, however, opened from 6 to 8 pm on Saturday evening to allow evening prayersNine people died and more than 30 were missing though rescue efforts saved about 900 terrified victims on the Superferry 9 early Sunday after it turned on its side 9 miles (15 kilometers) off Zamboanga del Norte province.
The vessel's violent rotation roused frightened passengers from their sleep and sent many jumping in the darkness into the water, coast guard chief Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said.
Many aboard panicked as the huge ferry listed, said passenger Reymark Belgira. He said he saw parents tossing children to people on life rafts below, but he could not immediately jump himself.
"I held on to the ferry for hours until daybreak. I couldn't jump into the water in the dark," Belgira said.
Rescuers transferred 926 of 968 passengers and crewmen to two nearby commercial ships, a navy gunboat and a fishing boat, Tamayo said. A search was under way for 33 missing people.
"We really hope they're just unaccounted for due to the confusion," Tamayo told The Associated Press.
A coast guard statement said rescue efforts were continued through the night.
Passenger Roger Cinciron said he felt the ferry tilting at about midnight but was assured by a crewman that all was well. About two hours later he was awoken by the sound of crashing cargo below his cabin, he told DZMM radio.
"People began to panic because the ship was really tilting," he said as he waited for rescuers to save him and a group of more than 20 other passengers.
Navy ships were deployed and three military aircraft scoured the seas, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said. American troops providing counterterrorism training to Philippine soldiers in the region deployed a civilian helicopter and five boats, some carrying paramedics, to help, U.S. Col. William Coultrup said.
Teodoro said two men and a child drowned during the scramble to escape the ship. The bodies of two other passengers were later plucked from the sea by fishermen, the coast guard said, adding three people were injured.
A Canadian tourist, Jeffrey Predchuz, was among the survivors, officials said.
The cause of the listing was not clear. The ferry skipper initially ordered everyone on board to abandon ship as a precautionary step, said Jess Supan, vice president of Aboitiz Transport System, which owns the steel-hulled ferry.
There were reports the 7,268-ton vessel listed to the right because of a hole in the hull, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said.
Aerial photos from the navy showed survivors holding on to anything as the ferry tilted. Others climbed down a ladder on the side as a lone orange life raft waited below.
The ferry left the southern port city of General Santos on Saturday and was scheduled to arrive in Iloilo city in the central Philippines on Sunday but ran into problems midway, Tamayo said.
There were no signs of possible terrorism, he said.
Al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants bombed another Superferry in Manila Bay in 2004, setting off an inferno that killed 116 people in Southeast Asia's second-worst terrorist attack.
The weather was generally fair in the Zamboanga peninsula region, about 530 miles (860 kilometers) south of Manila, although a tropical storm was battering the country's mountainous north, the coast guard said.
Sea accidents are common in the Philippine archipelago because of tropical storms, badly maintained boats and weak enforcement of safety regulations.
Last year, a ferry overturned after sailing toward a powerful typhoon in the central Philippines, killing more than 800 people on board.
In December 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in the Philippines, killing more than 4,341 people in the world's worst peacetime maritime disaster.
"In the past the number of Nepali migrant labourers returning home due to lay off resorted to by destination countries used to hover around 80 a month. Now,the same figure is significantly low, media reports quoted a senior official of Foreign Employment Promotion Board (FEPB) as saying.
However, the number of returnees is said to have reached 211 since the beginning of 2009.
The FEPB, till date, has also provided compensation of over Rs 1.8 million to migrant workers who have returned home.
According to reports, as the countries where the concentration of Nepali labour force is high, are gradually coming out of the morass of global recession, the number of people applying for compensation has also witnessed a sharp drop in recent weeks.
The government and FEPB have been jointly providing those workers facing job crisis within six months and a year of their appointment a 40 percent and 25 percent of their cost respectively.
Both the sides have been bearing compensation liability on equal basis.
It is also learnt that the demands for Nepali workers in major labor destinations such as Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia has gradually increased in recent days.“With such large groups of people crossing borders in such a small span of time, it is quite impossible to take measures to effectively contain the virus,” says Dr. Jitendra Man Shrestha, Deputy Coordinator of Avian Influenza Control Project under MoH.
Government officials at MoH claim that they have taken measures to prevent the pandemic from entering, but warn that if the virus spreads in the community, it becomes a more difficult problem. Conceding the fact that the flu can spread at any time, unless people are well informed and take necessary precautions; Dr. Shrestha cautions, “It has not yet spread, but there is a high risk that it will during the festival.”
The virus is causing widespread panic in India, as over one hundred people have lost of their lives and hundreds others have been diagnosed. This is a problem for Nepal as thousands of migrant workers will be returning for the festival from across the border.As many as 31 cases of swine flu have been detected in the country since the first case was confirmed on June 29. Since the first case was detected in Mexico in April, World Health Organization (WHO) has reported cases of Swine Flu in 175 countries.
According to Dr. Shrestha, MoH has been ringing the alarm since 29 April. 40 rapid response teams have been organsed and a team of health professionals at stationed at Tribhuvan International Airport, as well as in seven other land-crossing areas in the Nepal-India/China border. Likewise, the government has also deployed surveillance teams across the country and improved hospital conditions- mainly Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital and Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital- to enable them to provide special treatment and stockpile the necessary drugs (namely Tamiflu) and masks. Ready now is a system capable of attending to 40,000 patients.
However, agreeing on the fact that detection at TIA and other land-crossing areas is dependant more on the testimony of travelers, rather than the expertise of the medical staff on duty, Shrestha states, “The major channel that could let the deadly flu enter Nepal is the open border. Out of 50 major border points along the Nepal-India border, 18 are very busy. We know that the number of screening desks at 7 border checkpoints are simply not sufficient.”
What is most alarming- as has been the case in previous instances of flu viruses originating in animals- is the possibility of the air-borne virus mutating so that it can be transferred from one person to another. Shrestha recommends precautionary measures- such as wearing masks, washing hands, and maintaining distance an inter-personal distance- to all.
Three others including house owner Jaya Bahadur Sahi have been critically wounded.
According to District Police Office Ramechhap, the deceased are Sukmaya Sahi, 68, and Niraj Sahi, 11. The injured are Chinmaya Sahi, 30, and Saroj Sahi, 2.
Rescue operation is underway at the accident site, the police said.
But Yukio Hatoyama added that the target, more ambitious than the outgoing government's, was premised on a deal on ambitious goals being agreed by major nations.
"We can't stop climate change just with our country setting an emissions target," Hatoyama, who will take office on Sept. 16 after a vote by parliament, said in a speech to a symposium on climate change.
"We will also aim to create a fair and effective international framework by all major countries in the world."
The Democratic Party has said a tough 2020 target is needed for Japan to play a bigger role in U.N.-backed climate talks in Copenhagen in December.
The talks will try to work out a new agreement on reducing emissions to succeed the current Kyoto Protocol, the first phase of which ends in 2012.
But a government report issued earlier this year showed that pursuing a 25 percent cut from 1990 levels could hurt industries ranging from power generation, steel and cement firms to car and appliance makers, threatening jobs.
The outgoing government's 2020 target, announced in June, is equivalent to a cut of 8 percent below 1990 levels, and was chosen after lengthy consultations with the public and industry.
The Democratic Party's point person on climate change policies, Katsuya Okada, declined on Friday to say what Japan would do about its targets if an international deal including countries such as China and India were not on board.
"We are trying to reach an agreement, so we are not discussing what to do if there is none," Okada told Reuters in an interview."
OPPORTUNITY, NOT THREAT
Japan's top business group, Keidanren, is expected to lobby against the Democrats' emissions target. The auto industry lobby has said it is also worried about the feasibility of the target.
But Hatoyama said fighting global warming presented an opportunity, not a threat, for businesses.
"Tackling climate change aggressively will open a new frontier for the Japanese economy and create jobs in areas such as electric cars and clean energy technology, including solar power," he said.
"There are cautious people who worry that it will hurt the economy and livelihoods, but I think it will change things for the better."
Japan is under pressure for tougher climate policies after its emissions rose 2.3 percent to a record in the year to March 2008, putting the country 16 percent above its Kyoto Protocol target.
The U.N. climate chief said Hatoyama's new commitment was "laudable" and would spur change in Japan's economy.
"With such a target, Japan will take on the leadership role that industrialised countries have agreed to take in climate change abatement," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told the symposium.
Industrialised nations are planning average cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of between 10 and 14 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the new U.N. climate pact, according to a compilation of national data. This is far below the 25-40 percent reduction by 2020 recommended by the U.N. climate panel.
Hatoyama said industrialised countries should provide financial and technological support to developing nations working proactively to reduce emissions, adding that his new government would discuss steps soon after taking power.
He also wanted to present his stance on climate policy in more depth at a U.N. climate change meeting among world leaders later this month, he said.
To reduce emissions, Hatoyama's party has pledged to create a domestic emissions trading market with compulsory volume caps on emitters and introduce a "feed-in" tariff, or financial reward, for renewable energy to help expand capacity for clean energy sources.
It is also considering a new carbon tax, but other campaign pledges such as a plan to eliminate highway tolls and to end a decades-old surcharge on gasoline have drawn concern from green groups.
The deceased have been identified as Bhagawati BK, 18, of Wulung VDC-7 and Sanjamaya Tamang, 15. They died on the spot, Area Police Office Singati informed.
They died when the mudslide buried them while digging for the red soil at Bhimanei in Laaduk-5 at 7 am. Red soil is used for colouring the houses during festivals including Dashain
