From the World-Wide Resourses of the Western Australia Reserch Senter(*) OIL THE NEWS THAT FITS MY VIEWS #84 =============================== In the Run-Up to World War III, Reliably Reporting the News Relevant to Extreme Right-Wing Democratic Socialists Everywhere (validated for RiteThink(tm) by the Office of Our Man in Can-berra). Visit Our Home Page At: http://www.chickenhead.com/loserscopes/ See the Undeniable Evidence At: http://www.evil-doers.org/evidence This Stuff Blogged At: http://kymhorsell.blogspot.com/ Also Kindly Archived At: http://www.kymhorsell.com/OIL/ US Centcom News Releases: http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/release_list.asp UN Mailing List: http://www.kymhorsell.com/UN/ Iraqi Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ [6,087+ as at 15 Aug 2003]. ------------------------------------------------------------ Selecting latest news stories and other data for you... ------------------------------------------------------------ Those who killed [Sergio Vieira de Mello] have committed a crime, not only against the UN but against Iraq itself. -- UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan, 19 Aug 2003. The UN Sec-Gen cancelled HIS holidays. We will leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators of this attack. -- Gov Paul Bremer, Baghdad, 19 Aug 2003. Coal'n forces have taken up geology. It's probably easier than all other things they were never trained for but are expected to do anyway. Like police work, running PTA's, fixing power lines, telephone exchanges and water mains. Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime. -- US Pres Bush Jr, Crawford GHQ, 19 Aug 2003. Still on his 29-day vacation, Pres Bush says al-Qaeda and the Fedayeen Saddam have little cause for worry at this time. The men here are unemployed and the Americans shoot at them when they go near the dump but they go anyway because they need money. -- Milad Ali Hussein, Tikrit, 19 Aug 2003. 12 unemployed former Iraqi soldiers were blown up in an ammo dump explosion. I said: 'The drier the better, cut the rhetoric'. There were areas where the language was too colourful. I also said the more intelligence-based it was, the better. -- Alastair Campbell, PM's info chief, 19 Aug 2003. We've had it wrong all this time. Mr Campbell didn't "sex up" anything. He was the chief of the "sex it down, please" group in the PM's office. A recent poll shows 6% of Brits trust the PM over the BBC. 52% trust neither. Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by US troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks ... -- Nazmi Dana, Jerusalem, 19 Aug 2003. Nazmi is the brother of a cameraman killed by a US tank crew when they mistook his camera for a grenade launcher. In light of the info received, it was of vital importance that we investigated, to ensure that there was nothing suspicious. -- DCI Stephen Naylor, Merseyside Police, 19 Aug 2003. A trick of the torchlight. A burglar was alert and alarmed and called the cops after he found a "pickled human head in a bottle". It was a mistake... but it wasn't meant to exert additional influence [raucous laughter]. -- Territories Min, Wilson Tuckey, 20 Aug 2003. Mr Tuckey tried to use his position in fed parl to get a $190 fine against his son dropped. He wrote 2 letters to the SA Police Min, but was told he was wasting his time and Commonwealth watermark. Let me say at the outset... I think the Minister was foolish and wrong... -- PM John Howard, 20 Aug 2003. Mr Howard's "standards of Ministerial accountability" have been modified to endorse acts that are technically still legal. Generally most people realise it's a political witchhunt, people who aren't even in the party. We have people all the time saying 'what are they doing to Pauline', you know most people agree with her. -- Brian McRae, VP of One Nation W AUS, 20 Aug 2003. Pauline? Witch hunt? It's an old joke, but ON reps keep trotting it out. Mrs Hanson spent much of the last NSW election campaigning for tougher penalties... now she's got one. -- Mark Latham, 21 Aug 2003. Pauline Hanson had copped 3 y for electoral fraud. Some opp'n MP's have called on the Qld govt to put her in protective custody, considering the number of Asian and aboriginal prisoners who may wish to do her harm. ---------------------------------------- Wed, 20 Aug 2003. US stocks push higher. Housing drives Wall Street up NY. Stock prices on Wall Street have moved ahead with a muted reaction to the bomb blast at the UN HQ in Baghdad. Investor sentiment has instead been buoyed by another jump in new housing starts in America. Commerce Dept figures show home construction commencements have risen 1.5% in Jul to a 17-y high. However, some of the gloss has been taken off the housing data by a slip in US consumer sentiment, as measured by a University of Michigan survey. On the NY Stock Exchange, there has been a modest increase in share values, with the Dow Jones industrial average finishing 16 points higher at 9,429. On the high-tech Nasdaq market, prices are up 1.25%. The Nasdaq composite index has gained 21.5 points to 1,761. The Brit share market has taken its cue from the disappointing consumer confidence data in the US. The banking sector has been in decline along with oil majors like BP. London's FT-100 index has fallen back 21 points to 4,251. Oil prices steady after fears over Iraq and Nigeria London. Oil prices steadied on Tue, dropping very slightly from the previous day as traders pondered the impact of sabotage to a key Iraqi pipeline and unrest in Nigeria's main oil city. The price of reference Brent N Sea crude oil for Oct delivery fell 4 c/bbl to $28.60 in early trading. NY's light sweet crude benchmark Sep contract showed a fall of 14 cents to $30.75/bbl in out-of-hrs electronic deals. Prices had risen strongly and then fallen back on Mon in the wake of a presumed sabotage attack on N Iraq's main oil pipeline to Turkey as well as spiralling unrest in S Nigeria. The market was now awaiting the response of industry cartel OPEC at its scheduled meeting next m, analysts said. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries is informally committed to increasing production if prices stay above target levels, but also faces deep uncertainty about when Iraqi production might begin in earnest. "We are set to sit here until we have a bit of insight into what OPEC is likely to do in Sep," said Jon Rigby of Commerzbank. "Obviously they have a degree of freedom." Under a non-compulsory price mechanism, OPEC members increase production if the price of a "basket" of 7 crudes selected by the cartel stays above $28 for 20 days, which it has now done for nearly a fortnight. However Rigby stressed that this by no means made a production hike certain. "The OPEC basket price won't act as a trigger, given that it [the price] is not significantly above $28 and there are uncertainties about when Iraq is to come back into the market," he said. "It is over-emphasised and the policy clearly supports more the bottom than the top of the range." Following Fri's blowing up of a section of Iraq's main oil pipeline from its N oilfields around Kirkuk to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan, prices looked fundamentally strong, Rigby said. "There is not only the time it will take to repair the N Iraqi pipeline, but also it is becoming increasingly clear that Iraqi exports will not be significant and regular any time soon," he said. "There is a big risk that they will continue to be interrupted, because it is becoming a patent of behaviour," he added, referring to a string of earlier attacks on pipeline in the country. Also worrying traders was renewed ethnic fighting between ethnic militants and security forces in Nigeria's S oil centre of Warri. Similar clashes in Mar forced oil majors to halt work, slashing Nigerian production by 40%. "The market is also focusing on the troubles in Nigeria, although I am not sure how significant that is the moment," said Rigby. "It obviously adds to the pressure on prices." US, Canada gathering info on blackout Cleveland (AP). It might have been the unexplained voltage swings that rippled across the power grid here. Or maybe the tree branch that shorted the high-voltage line south of town. The failures of a coal-fired generator and an automated warning system might have played a part. More likely, say experts, is that these 4 otherwise innocuous events -- which appear to have started on the NE Ohio power grid owned by FirstEnergy Corp -- combined to raise a destructive tsunami that smothered the lights across a huge patch of the eastern US and Canada. "In order to have a big problem, you have to have 3 or 4 bad things happen all at the same time," said Hoff Stauffer, a power transmission consultant with Cambridge Energy Research Associates. To get to the bottom of it, a posse of US and Canadian investigators will take over several separate probes that have mined details from utility computer logs across the region. Officials close to the investigation have said an interim report on last wk's blackout could be released by mid-Sep. But a final report may be ms away. "It is way too early to engage in speculation about the role any [incident] might have had in the overall problem," US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told reporters at a news conference in Washington. Abraham said he felt that there needed to be "one ultimate finding" by a single investigation and that an industry watchdog group -- the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) -- would work with a US-Canadian task force. Abraham and Canada's Min of Natural Resources Herb Dhaliwal will co-chair the task force to investigate Thu's power outage and to identify ways to prevent a recurrence. Abraham and Dhaliwal plan to discuss the investigation for about an hr in Detroit on Wed. Abraham also plans to stop in Ohio to brief state and utility officials. Girding for the Detroit summit meeting, utility and regulatory officials are combing their computer logs for records that could point to outages on their grids that may have caused -- or been triggered by -- the surging blackout. Grid operators in NY, Michigan, Ohio and NJ -- which lost power -- and New England, which mostly did not, have gathered data to hand over to the bi-nat'l investigation. Abraham said Dept of Energy investigators are already seeking the cause of the outage. And technicians from the Fed Energy Regulatory Commission will be joining the US-Canadian task force, FERC commissioner William Massey said Tue. Massey echoed statements made by Bush and members of Congress since the blackout, saying Congress ought to approve mandatory reliability standards and sanctions. "This blackout should not have occurred. We need mandatory rules for the grid and we need tough penalties for violators," said Massey, one of 3 FERC commissioners. In Washington, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La, said Tue that his panel would hold a two-day hearing on the blackout on Sep 4-5. Tauzin said he sent 15 letters to fed, state and local officials, as well as utility operators, asking for info on the blackout's cause. Experts say investigators may not find a single event that triggered the cascade of shutdowns. None of the single glitches would be enough to kill a city's lights on a normal day, and the grid is designed to work around one or 2 failures, but not more, Stauffer said. Akron-based FirstEnergy was beset by at least 3 collapses Thu. The company said unexplained voltage swings knocked out a generator in its Eastlake plant. Later, a high-voltage power line tripped off. Soon after, another power line, heated by the extra voltage it absorbed from previous failures, drooped into a tree and shorted. "There are a lot of people looking for easy answers and there aren't any easy answers at this point," said Carol Murphy, rep for the NY System Operator, which oversees the state's grid. Rep Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, a Democratic presidential candidate and longtime critic of FirstEnergy, is calling for state regulators to revoke FirstEnergy's operating license, rep Doug Gordon said. FirstEnergy rep Ralph DiNicola, who said the company is assisting the bi-nat'l investigation, called the Kucinich petition "speculative and irresponsible." The big questions that need answering, Stauffer said, are the reasons behind intra-grid failures that allowed the blackout to spread like a computer virus from FirstEnergy's lines around Cleveland into the neighbouring utility network in Michigan. After darkening Detroit, the plague spread into Ontario, darkening Toronto, and then south into NY state, where it surged the length of the Empire State, finally toppling the mighty grid that feeds NY City. Amid such debacles, many things worked as they should have, Stauffer said. Power networks that lock into FirstEnergy -- including those operated by PJM Interconnection and American Electric Power -- did seal themselves off from the storm, saving Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, and other cities from the same fate. "Why didn't Michigan separate itself from FirstEnergy, like PJM and AEP?" Stauffer asked. "If they'd have done that Detroit would have been all right. Ontario would've been all right. And NY would've been all right." New high-tech switches and software monitors might've isolated the problem grid sections, said Paul Gilbert, a power consultant and member of the Nat'l Academy of Engineering, who chaired report for Congress on energy systems in 2002. But, Gilbert said, transmission lines are chronically overtaxed, running at 90 to 95% capacity. When one line fails, switches are supposed to reroute its power to other lines. "When they get an added load they've got no place to put it," he said. "You've got to have more lines." Suicide bomber takes deadly toll Abbas speaks out: Palestinians condemn "terrible" attack White house response: US condemns "vicious" blast Tel Aviv (AFP). Israeli PM Ariel Sharon has decided to freeze all contacts with the Palestinians after a massive suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem, a senior govt official said today. "Based on the horrifying terror attack tonight and that the Palestinians did nothing whatsoever, PM Sharon has decided to suspend all contacts with the Palestinians for the time being," said Gideon Meir, deputy director-general of the foreign ministry. Sharon had also decided "to freeze all further gestures and obviously not to transfer the 2 cities", Meir said in reference to the West Bank towns of Jericho and Qalqilya which had been the subject of talks about an imminent hand-over of security responsibility. Israel cancels handover after bombing Jerusalem (AP). A Palestinian suicide attacker detonated a bomb packed with bits of metal on a Jerusalem bus carrying Jewish families returning from evening prayers, killing at least 20 people, including five children and an American. The attack Tue night was one of the deadliest Israel has seen in the past 3 y of violence. More than 100 people were injured, 40 of them children, hospital officials said. 2 more people died Wed, raising the toll to 20. The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for the attack, which marked perhaps the most serious blow yet to the US-backed "road map" peace plan unveiled 3 m ago. Israel immediately froze all contacts with the Palestinian Authority and cancelled the planned handover of 2 West Bank towns to Palestinian control, a move that had been expected later this wk. The Israeli army also closed border crossings to seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Early Wed, police heightened their patrols throughout Israel. Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack and said it "cannot serve the interests of the Palestinian people." He ordered Palestinian security forces to investigate. The Palestinian Authority also decided to cut all dialogue with Islamic Jihad and Hamas and instead use security forces to take action against the groups in the coming days, a Palestinian official said on condition of anonymity. It was unclear what sort of action was planned. Abbas was meeting with Islamic Jihad leaders in the Gaza Strip at the time of the explosion, to persuade them to halt attacks. The suicide bomber, who police said was disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, blew his bomb up in the centre of the tandem bus, which has 2 passenger sections, shortly after 9 pm on a main thoroughfare in central Jerusalem. Many Jewish worshippers had stepped aboard at the Jewish holy site, the W Wall. The bus was headed to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood on the city's outskirts. "I had just come home from praying at the W Wall and was heading home," said Zvi Weiss, an 18-yo seminary student from NY City who sat in the front of the bus and escaped unharmed. "The bomb went off at the back of the bus. Everything went black. I climbed out of the broken window and started running," Weiss said. "All around me there were people covered in blood, screaming, some with limbs missing." NY State Assemblyman Ryan Karben, who represents Rockland County, said Goldie Taubenfeld, 43, of New Square, NY, was among those killed. He said Taubenfeld's teenage daughter survived and her 6-mo son is missing. Taubenfeld, a mother of 13, was visiting Israel with her family. Police said the bomb had been packed with bits of metal for greater deadliness. The road map plan requires Palestinian security forces to dismantle militant groups, something Abbas has said he cannot do for fear of setting off internal fighting. The militants declared a unilateral truce Jun 29, but have repeatedly broken their pledge since then. However, Israeli analysts predicted the sides would continue trying to implement the road map. Alex Fishman, a military correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, said the US would likely increase its pressure on the Palestinian Authority to round up militants. "It is absolutely necessary to continue on the political track because the alternative is a return to the never-ending cycle of blood," Fishman wrote. The bombing drew statements of condemnation and condolences from the US, the European Union, Brit and the UN. UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan urged Abbas "to take decisive action to arrest the instigators of this attack and prevent such attacks from happening again," UN rep Fred Eckhard said in NY. Annan also urged Israel to "act with restraint in the face of this provocation, and not contribute to a renewed cycle of violence and revenge." Since the intefadeh began in Sep 2000, more than 2,400 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and more than 800 on the Israeli side. Last wk, Islamic Jihad threatened attacks on Israelis to avenge the killing of a snr operative, Mohammed Sidr, in an Israeli arrest raid in the West Bank city of Hebron. In a phone call to The Associated Press, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Tue's bombing, saying it was in revenge for the killing of Sidr, whom Israel had accused of plotting attacks. But later Hamas distributed fliers in Hebron saying the bombing was carried out by one of its supporters, identified as Raed Abdel-Hamed Mesk, 29, a mosque preacher from Hebron. Mesk was a close friend of Sidr, Israel Army Radio reported. Hamas released Mesk's farewell video. The plump man with a bushy beard said he was a member of the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, and accused Israel of violating the cease-fire offered by Hamas. After the bombing, Israeli troops arrested 9 wanted Palestinians in the West Bank, the army said. Palestinian Authority cuts ties with militants after attack Jerusalem (AFP). The Palestinian Authority has cut ties with Islamic militant groups in the wake of last night's suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem, which killed at least 20 people and injured 80. Palestinian PM Abu Mazen, also known as Mahmoud Abbas, said the decision had been taken to stop all forms of dialogue with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Israeli govt rep Gideon Meir says the Palestinian Authority must do more to clamp down on violence carried out by extremist groups. "The Palestinian Authority must make up his mind, do they want peace with Israel, or do they want peace with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Those don't go hand in hand," he said. 2 Palestinian militant groups say they are responsible for the attack. The blast tore the bus apart, spraying passengers with shrapnel. Among the dead were several children who were travelling with their parents to one of Jerusalem's ultra Orthodox neighbourhoods. Police suspect a Palestinian man disguised as an ultra Orthodox Jew boarded the evening bus and detonated an explosives belt. It is the 1st major attack in Jerusalem since Palestinian militant groups declared a cease-fire nearly 3 m ago. 2 groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have claimed responsibility for the bombing. In response, Israel has cancelled the scheduled handover of 2 West Bank cities, Qalqiliya and Jericho, to the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian PM calls off Hamas talks Jerusalem. Palestinian PM Abu Mazen has condemned the "terrible" bus bombing in Jerusalem and has cancelled planned talks with a hardline faction which claimed responsibility for the attack. The suicide bombing ripped apart a bus in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish area of Jerusalem, killing at least 20 people including children and dealing a deadly blow to a truce. "I strongly condemn this act in Jerusalem," Abu Mazen said. "It is a terrible act against the Israeli civilians and this is not helping the interests of the Palestinian people." Abu Mazen said he had ordered his Security Min Mohammed Dahlan to open an inquiry into the incident. He was speaking in Gaza where he was due to have held talks with leaders from Hamas which claimed to have carried out the bombing. Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem attack. Abu Mazen was holding talks with Islamic Jihad leaders when the blast went off shortly after 9.00 pm local time. Senior Islamic Jihad figure Mohammed Al-Hindi said that his organisation had affirmed its commitment to the truce during the talks with Abu Mazen. A statement issued later by the Palestinian leadership, which includes the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, also condemned the attack. "The Palestinian leadership is always against the targeting of civilians," it said. The statement also warned that the attack would play into the hands of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon who wanted to block the US-backed road map for peace. "Sharon and his Govt will use it to reject the road map and to have more assassinations against our people," the statement said. A snr Govt official later said that Mr Sharon had decided to freeze all contacts with the Palestinians after the suicide bomb attack. Truck blast at UN's Iraq HQ kills 20 Baghdad (AP). [At 10 pm AEST the toll has risen to at least 24]. A cement truck packed with explosives devastated the UN HQ in Iraq on Tue, killing the top UN envoy and 19 other people in an unprecedented attack against the world body. At least 100 people were wounded. The bombing blasted a 2-m-deep crater and shredded the facade of the Canal Hotel, which housed the UN offices. The suicide attack stunned an organisation that had long been welcomed by Iraqis, even by many who protested the presence of US-led occupation forces. Except for a newly built concrete wall, UN officials at the HQ refused the sort of heavy security that the US military has put up around some sensitive civilian sites. The United Nations "did not want a large American presence outside," Salim Lone, the UN rep in the Iraqi capital, said. Emergency workers pulled bloodied survivors from the rubble and lined up the dead in body bags. Survivors reported other victims still buried. The 4.30 pm blast may have specifically targeted Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top UN envoy, said L Paul Bremer, who heads the US-led Admin in Iraq. "The truck was parked in such a place here in front of the building that it had to affect his office," Bremer said. Vieira de Mello -- a 55-yo veteran diplomat serving in what one UN rep called the world body's toughest assignment -- was meeting with other UN officials in his office when the explosion brought the room down around them. Vieira de Mello was wounded and trapped in the rubble, and workers gave him water as they tried to extricate him. Hours later, the UN announced his death. "Those who killed him have committed a crime, not only against the UN but against Iraq itself," UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan said in a statement, calling the Brazilian diplomat "an outstanding servant of humanity." The dead also included Richard Hooper, 40, of Walnut Creek, Calif, who was special assistant to the UN Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs. Other UN workers who were killed came from the Philippines, Egypt, Brit and Canada. UN officials vowed to continue their mission in Iraq. But the blast, the shock at being targeted and the death of a rising star beloved in the organisation struck deep. All the nat'l flags that ring the UN HQ' entrance in NY were removed from their poles, and the blue-and-white UN flag was lowered to half staff. Staffers, tears in their eyes, gathered in hallways and watched in shock as televisions reported on his death. Pres Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, called the bombers "enemies of the civilised world." "These killers will not determine the future of Iraq," Bush said. "Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime." UN and US officials called the bombing a "terrorist attack," but there was no immediate claim of responsibility. The bombing came nearly 2 wk after a car exploded and killed 19 people at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad and after a string of dramatic attacks on oil and water pipelines in Iraq. Like the remote-controlled explosion at the Jordan Embassy, the suicide bombing on the UN HQ focused on a high-profile target with many civilians inside and resembled attacks blamed on Islamic militants elsewhere in the world. It was far more sophisticated than the guerrilla attacks that have plagued US forces, featuring hit-and-run shootings carried out by small bands or remote control roadside bombs. As FBI agents joined the investigation, Bernard Kerik, the former NY City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, told reporters that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing. But he said it was "much too early" to say if Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was behind the attack. "We don't have that kind of evidence yet." US forces have been focusing on trying to put down Saddam Hussein loyalists thought to be behind the guerrilla campaign against American troops. But the military has also warned of foreign Islamic militants slipping into the country and has said an al-Qaeda linked group, Ansar al-Islam was a possible suspect in the Jordanian Embassy bombing. Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said the attack fits "the ideology of al-Qaeda. They consider the UN one of the internat'l actors who helped the Americans to occupy Palestine and, later, Iraq." UN rep Fred Eckhard said that if Tue's attack was confirmed to be a suicide bombing "it would, to my knowledge, be the first on a UN facility." It was the worst attack on a UN facility since Israeli forces, responding to a Hezbollah attack, bombarded a UN compound at Qana in S Lebanon in Apr 1996, killing 91 refugees. In Tue's attack, a cement truck -- packed with twice the amount of explosives as the embassy blast -- detonated at the concrete wall outside the three-story Canal Hotel. The blast occurred while a news conference was under way in the building, where 300 UN employees work. 15 bodies in white bags were counted by a UN worker at the hotel, and a survey of Baghdad hospitals by The Associated Press found five other people who had died in the blast. UN officials said 14 of those killed were UN workers and 100 people were wounded. An AP reporter counted 40 wounded people lying in the front garden and receiving 1st aid. Some were loaded into a constant stream of helicopters that ferried the injured away. A snr UNICEF official also was seriously wounded in the blast, UN officials said. "I can't move. I can't feel my legs and arms. Dozens of people I know are still under the ruins," Majid Al-Hamaidi, 43, a driver for the World Bank, cried out. Bremer, the top US administrator, walked through the scene of destruction as workers dug through the rubble with their hands. Dozens of US Humvees were at the scene and at least 2 Black Hawk helicopters hovered above. Bremer had tears in his eyes and hugged Hassan al-Salame, an adviser to Vieira de Mello. A part of the building collapsed nr him. People cried: "Watch out. Watch Out." "We will leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators of this attack," he said. 1 wounded man had a m-long, 2-cm-thick aluminium rod driven into his face just below his right eye. He identified himself as a security consultant for the Internat'l Monetary Fund, saying he had just arrived in the country over the weekend. Vieira de Mello began work Jun 2 and would have finished his assignment at the end of Sep, though his rep Lone said many UN officials wanted him to stay on. Deputy Syrian ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose country holds the Sec Council presidency, said "such terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the internat'l community" and that UN programs would continue. The UN distributes humanitarian aid and is developing programs aimed at boosting Iraq's emerging free press, justice system and monitoring of human rights. UN weapons inspectors worked out of the hotel during the period before the war. World outrage over UN HQ attack NY. There has been internat'l outrage over the bomb attack on the HQ of the UN in Baghdad. A truck bomb killed 17 people including the UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The UN Sec-Gen, Kofi Annan, denounced the bombing as an inexcusable act of un-provoked and murderous violence. The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said security measures would be re-examined but the attack would not deter the UN or the American-led occupation forces. Strong condemnation has also come from the leaders of AUS, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and Pakistan. In Cairo, the Arab League strongly condemned the bombing and urged Iraqi political forces to help prevent such acts from happening again. UN to evacuate workers from Iraq NY (AFP). The UN will transfer all foreign employees from its HQ in Baghdad to Jordan, a UN security officer told AFP. "All UN internat'l employees who worked at the Canal Hotel are going to be sent to Amman. Five planes are expected at the Baghdad airport," he said. No further details were available. The decision came after a truck bomb at the hotel, the main UN compound in Baghdad, killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 100, a UN rep said. Among the dead were the top UN official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and a host of foreigners hailing from the US, Philippines, Egypt, Canada and Brit, among other nations. Brazilian Vieira de Mello was the most snr UN official killed in a Middle East terrorist attack since Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish UN mediator, was slain by Zionist radicals in Sep 1948. The attack, possibly by a suicide bomber, appeared to be an attempt to evict the internat'l community from Iraq, a country reeling from chaos and anarchy after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in Apr by a US-led coalition. UN to pull out some Baghdad staff NY. The UN says it will transfer some of its foreign employees from its HQ in Baghdad to Jordan following the devastating bomb attack. A UN security officer says some of the internat'l employees who worked at the damaged Canal Hotel are going to be sent to Amman today. The withdrawal comes after a huge truck bomb rocked the building, killing 17 people including the UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. About half of those killed are Iraqis. The head of the UN Development Programme, Mark Malloch Brown, says the bombing will have an effect on the UN's aid work. "A lot of our ability to get out and assess the damage and the future reconstruction plans will at least, I suspect, temporarily be on hold as we take stock of how we can better protect our staff," he said. Annan pledges UN will continue work in Iraq NY. The UN Sec-Gen, Kofi Annan, says the UN will continue its work in Iraq, despite the bombing of its HQ in Baghdad in which at least 17 people were killed. Rescue work at the site has ended and US officials are now scouring the area looking for clues about who may have been responsible. Kofi Annan, speaking while on his way to NY for a meeting of the UN to decide its future in Iraq, says he will carry out the mandate given by the Sec Council. But he has expressed concern concern that the security situation is still not under control more than 3 m after Saddam Hussein was defeated. "We are all aware of the security environment," he said. 'We had hoped that by now the coalition forces would have secured the environment for us to be able to carry on sanction work of political and economic reconstruction and institution building, and for Iraqis to carry on with their work. "That has not happened, and all efforts are being made to bring the security situation under control. When this will happen, I do not know." Workers sift through Baghdad wreckage Baghdad. Recovery work is continuing through the night in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, for any victims still under the rubble of the UN HQ. The 3-storey building was torn apart by what is believed to be a truck laden with explosives, apparently driven by a suicide bomber. The casualty toll is 17 dead and 86 in hospital. But UN officials in Baghdad fear the fatalities will rise because of the wounds suffered by some of those in hospital and the likelihood that people are still lying under the tonnes of concrete that came down when the front corner of the building collapsed. Among the dead was the UN's special representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The UN's chief rep, Fred Eckhard, paid tribute to Mr Vieira de Mello. "In Iraq, where he spent the last m of his life, he was working day and night to help the Iraqi people regain control of their own destiny and build a future of peace, justice and full independence," he said. "It is tragic that he has now given his life in that cause along with others who, like him, were devoted and much loved servants of the United Nations." PM John Howard says it is understood one or 2 Aussies received minor injuries in the attack on the UN in Baghdad. Mr Howard has described the blast as a cause for incredible distress and sadness. He says the bombing is another grim chapter in world terrorism. He has described Mr Vieira de Mello as a fine diplomat and a tireless crusader for peace. "He was the last person in the world in that sense who deserved to be the target of people who in some perverted way felt they had a just cause," Mr Howard said. He says the deaths of the UN workers underline the fact that nobody is safe from terrorists. Labor's Kevin Rudd says the UN staff were in Iraq for the sole purpose of helping the Iraqi people. "It is obscene beyond description that workers for peace could be murdered in this fashion," he said. For Min Alexander Downer says AUS is doing its utmost to protect its own staff in Baghdad, with 70 personnel guarding diplomats and workers. Tap broader expertise to tackle new Gulf illness Op/Ed (USA TODAY). Army Spc Joshua Neusche, a strapping former high school track star, died Jul 12. The 20-yo was one of 2 soldiers to succumb to a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia that has affected more than 100 US troops in Iraq and the region since Mar 1. Though the Pentagon has dispatched 2 emergency medical teams to investigate, Neusche's parents in Missouri worry that the investigation may not find the truth. The Neusches' fears echo frustrations voiced in 1991, when veterans of that Gulf War began to fall ill with what came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome . For ys, the Pentagon dismissed the mysterious symptoms, from fatigue to neurological problems, that eventually plagued about one-third of all veterans of the 1st Gulf War. 12 y later, much separates the pneumonia outbreak from Gulf War Syndrome, which emerged more gradually and with less-identifiable symptoms. To date, the pneumonia outbreak is far more limited. And with 2 medical teams currently conducting an investigation, the Pentagon is taking it seriously. But the military is repeating one mistake from its Gulf War experience. It is limiting the involvement of the fed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC could provide the best comprehensive probe into the pneumonia cases and head off suspicions that the Pentagon is putting troops' health at risk or hiding info. The Pentagon missed that opportunity once; it shouldn't again. When early symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome surfaced, the Pentagon failed to ask for a full CDC investigation. Yet, CDC teams are trained to move quickly to identify illnesses, their causes and how to treat them. Their expertise and their independence from the Pentagon make them best qualified to: * Ensure proper data collection. Congress in 1997 mandated thorough health screenings for troops being deployed in any conflict as well as detailed monitoring of battlefield conditions. The aim is to avoid a lack of comprehensive data from the 2nd Gulf War. The Pentagon insists that it has fully complied, but Gulf War veterans' groups disagree. * Accurately assess the outbreak. The Pentagon says the more than 100 cases of pneumonia do not "exceed expectations," since 400 to 500 US military personnel are hospitalised with pneumonia every y. Still, it's concerned that 2 soldiers have died and 18 have been sick enough to require a ventilator. The CDC can best evaluate whether, as the Pentagon maintains so far, no evidence suggests the cases are linked and there is no indication they are caused by chemical or biological weapons, SARS or environmental toxins. A CDC rep said teams were ready to deploy to Iraq if asked. But a Pentagon spokesperson said that the CDC's current role is sufficient. It is using CDC experts as consultants, including one who last wk joined a team analysing data from hospitalised patients in Iraq and Germany. In the 1990s, the Pentagon's refusal to give the CDC a key role in investigating Gulf War Syndrome needlessly added to the suspicions and questions about how the military handled the illness. The Neusches wrote Def Sec Donald Rumsfeld last wk and asked for an independent assessment of how their son died. Honouring the request would help put their worries and the public's to rest. Grenade attack wounds 2 US soldiers in Iraq Tikrit. A RPG and gun attack on a US convoy north of Baghdad wounded 2 American soldiers overnight, the US military said. Lt Col William MacDonald of the 4ID said the convoy was attacked nr Balad, a town in the "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad where support for fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein remains strong. At least 7 Iraqis were killed on Mon in a blast at an ammunition dump north of Saddam's home town of Tikrit. MacDonald said US troops investigating the blast found one body at the scene and Iraqi police later found a further 6. The identities of those killed were not known, but soldiers said the ammunition dump had been often targeted by looters. In Ramadi, another Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad, witnesses said a US convoy was attacked with RPGs on Tue morning and at least one soldier was wounded. A US Army rep had no immediate info. On Mon afternoon an American soldier was killed by a bomb in Baghdad. Attacks on occupying troops have killed 61 US and 7 Brit soldiers since the start of May. In Tikrit, where the 4ID has mounted scores of raids hunting Saddam loyalists blamed for the guerrilla attacks, US soldiers opened fire on an ambulance during a battle with gunmen in another vehicle. "Last night we had a vehicle with armed men apparently using an ambulance to mask its movements after curfew," said Lt Col Steve Russell. "Reports from Iraqis and also our soldiers said the vehicle engaged our soldiers from the vicinity of the ambulance. Our soldiers returned fire resulting in the wounding of an Iraqi male in the ambulance and the slight wounding of a 2nd man." Human rights groups say Iraqi civilians have been killed or wounded by US soldiers in several incidents, either mistakenly shot or caught in the crossfire during battles. On Sun, award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, a Palestinian, was shot dead by a US soldier while filming outside a prison on the W outskirts of Baghdad. The US military said the shooting was a "tragic accident." In N Iraq, engineers worked to repair the main oil export pipeline to Turkey, a crucial lifeline for the floundering economy. The pipeline reopened last Wed for the 1st time since the war, but was shut down just 2 days later after an attack by saboteurs set it ablaze. Before the war, the sabotaged pipeline pumped 700,000 bpd to Turkey, nearly a 3rd of Iraq's total prewar export capacity of 2.2 mn bpd. Sabotage and theft of power cables have also caused repeated electricity blackouts in the south of Iraq and have badly hit exports from the country's S oilfields. Paul Bremer, the US governor of Iraq, said that sabotage had cost the economy "literally bns of dollars." The US-led Admin in Iraq is relying on income from Iraq's vast oil reserves -- the world's 2nd largest -- to provide the bns of dollars needed to rebuild the country. Internat'l donors will also be asked to pledge bns in aid at a conference in Madrid in Oct. Ammunition dump blast kills 12 Iraqis Iraq (Reuters). 12 former Iraqi soldiers were killed when an ammunition dump they were looting in a village nr Saddam Hussain's hometown of Tikrit blew up, locals said yesterday. "12 people were killed in the explosion and they were all unemployed men who had been officers in the army," said Kazem Hassan, 32, a former tank regiment sergeant now living in the village of Hammad Shehab, some 175km north of Baghdad. While the US military confirmed the incident, placing the first of 2 explosions at 8:30 pm Sun, it said only one body had been discovered in the ashes. "A team of investigators recovered the remains of one unidentified body," said Col Bill MacDonald, rep for the 4ID, which controls N Iraq. Al Jazeera satellite channel said the men had broken into the dump to loot copper from artillery and other shells which they would then resell. "The men here are unemployed and the Americans shoot at them when they go nr the dump but they go anyway because they need money," said villager Milad Ali Hussein. MacDonald said the site was a former arms dump of deposed ruler Saddam's military. It is now being used as a store for weapons and ammunition confiscated from suspected Iraqi resistance fighters. US Army engineers, meanwhile, battled a blaze yesterday on Iraq's main oil export pipeline after 2 attacks by saboteurs last wk set it on fire. They were using helicopters yesterday to douse the flames with water, as a column of thick black smoke rose into the sky above the N Iraqi desert. Officials said it could be 2 wk before the pipeline was working again. In Baghdad, the US military said it was investigating the death of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, shot dead by an American soldier on Sun as he filmed outside a prison. The US military acknowledged that one of its soldiers had killed Dana, saying the journalist's camera had been mistaken for a RPG launcher. "Last night we had a terrible tragedy," US Army rep Col Guy Shields told reporters. "I can assure you no one feels worse than the soldier who fired the shots." Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer called for "the fullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy". The NY-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Sans Frontieres [Reporters Without Borders] in Paris also urged US authorities to conduct a full inquiry. Reuters cameraman killed for filming US graves: brother Occupied Jerusalem. The brother of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana said he was deliberately murdered for discovering mass graves of US troops killed in Iraqi resistance attacks. "The US troops killed my brother in cold blood," Nazmi Dana told IslamOnline.net in exclusive statements. "The US occupation troops shot dead my brother on purpose, although he was wearing his press badge, which was also emblazoned on the car he was driving," he said. He also recalled that his brother had obtained a prior permit from the US occupation authorities in Iraq to film in the site. On Sun, Aug 17, US troops shot dead the award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming nr the US-run Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad. His last pictures show a US tank driving toward him outside the prison walls, several shots ring out from the tank and the camera falls to the ground. "Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by US troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said. "He also told me that he found US troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his findings." Nazmi said that the US occupation troops were slowing down the transfer of his brother's body to his hometown city of Al-Khalil [Hebron] in the West Bank. "At the very beginning, the Americans refused to transfer his body outside Iraq. After Reuters intervened they offered to allow us to take the body to Jordan by road but we refused because of the state of insecurity in Iraq," he said. "Thanks to Reuters internat'l and diplomatic contacts, the US troops reluctantly agreed to transfer the body on an army plane to Kuwait. From there, the body will be flown to Jordan and finally Palestine to be laid to rest," added the grieved brother. Mazen's wife, Umm Hamza, did not rule out that the US troops targeted her husband personally, noting they had agreed to give him a permit to film Abu Gharib prison and then he was directly shot dead by 2 US tanks. Resolved as she was, Umm Hamza said the death of her husband came as a bombshell, especially that she expected him to be killed while covering the developments in Palestine for his bravery and rare heroism. "Filming Abu Gharib was his last mission; he was scheduled to leave Baghdad after getting the job done. "I lost the dearest man to my heart, he was caring and was loved by all his friends and relatives," she lamented. Mazen's camera was the Israeli settlers' archenemy, given that he exposed to the entire world their terrorism against the Palestinians and their wildcat outposts sprawling in 4 Al-Khalil posts. His death cast a pall of sadness over the Palestinian territories and reporters, who mourned him as "a matchless colleague." All internat'l and local news agencies sent cables of condolences to his family, lauding his patriotism and determination to uncover the truth wherever it was. The Palestinian info ministry and press syndicate issued 2 separate statements, condemning the attack on Mazen and the continued targeting of journalists. The 2 statements demanded the US to show some respect for human beings, particularly reporters, pointing out that Mazen was a distinguished journalist who did his best to serve his country and cause. The ministry further urged all Arab and internat'l press unions "to open a probe into this crime and expose to the entire world the murderers who have blood on their hands and put them on trial." Furthermore, dozens of Palestinian journalists protested on Tue morning in Al-Khalil at the killing of Mazen. The marchers put on a peaceful demo from the House of the Palestinian Press established by the deceased and other journalists. In Bethlehem, journalists also held a mock funeral for Mazen, denouncing the US occupation of Iraq and displaying placards condemning his "assassination." A US military inquiry has recently exonerated an American tank crew for firing on a Baghdad hotel housing journalists, killing 2 foreign reporters and wounded 3 others. Blair aide denies sexing-up Iraq threat London. Brit PM Tony Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, has rejected allegations he hyped the case for war in Iraq. Mr Campbell says he even urged intel chiefs to cut the rhetoric from a dossier on Baghdad's weapons. Facing interrogation at a potentially explosive inquiry, Mr Campbell said he never sought to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to justify an unpopular war. Instead, he says he wanted the dossier's colourful language toned down. Mr Campbell went so far as to say he had "no input, output [or] influence" on the dossier at any stage, despite accusations by a BBC reporter that the hype was all his. "I said: 'The drier the better, cut the rhetoric'," Mr Campbell said. "There were areas where the language was too colourful. I also said the more intel-based it was, the better." Mr Blair used the dossier to justify his case for defying public opinion to join the US-led invasion of Iraq. Widespread suspicion among voters that the danger from Iraq's banned weapons was exaggerated has hit Mr Blair's popularity and provoked the most serious crisis of his 6-y rule. Mr Campbell is viewed as a master of political spin whose influence on Mr Blair extends far beyond message management. He is at the centre of a vicious row with the BBC over a report that he "sexed up" the weapons intel to win over war sceptics. Weapons scientist David Kelly, who was found dead nr his home of an apparent suicide in Jul, was identified as the source for the report just days before his death. The inquiry into the events leading to Mr Kelly's death is a key test for Mr Blair, who is due to testify after his holiday. Mr Campbell denied he had played any role in a Govt decision to confirm Mr Kelly as the probable BBC source. He did say that it helped undermine the broadcaster's case that its story was based on a snr intel source. "I did not do anything to bring that about because I was under strict instructions not to," he said. Arriving at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, Mr Campbell, 46, faced jeering from about 30 demonstrators waving banners protesting against the Iraq war. Mr Campbell repeated his emphatic denial that he inflated evidence about Iraq's weapons by giving undue prominence to a claim that Saddam could launch weapons at 45 minutes' notice. Asked whether he had any influence on whether the 45-minute claim was in the dossier or not, he said: "None whatever." He said the words in the published dossier were the same as the ones in the draft version he saw on Sep 10. "I had no input, output, influence upon them [the words] whatsoever at any stage in the process," he said. But sceptical Britons may not be convinced and any mud that sticks to Mr Campbell in the inquiry will reflect badly on his boss, given the pair's close relationship. An ICM poll for the Guardian newspaper showed 52% of the public trusts neither the Govt nor the BBC to tell the truth. It found that only 6% trust Mr Blair's Admin more than the public broadcaster. Mr Campbell, reading from his diary, gave a flavour of how he feared trust was slipping away as the drama unfolded. "It's grim," he said, quoting from his May 30 entry. It's grim for me, it's grim for TB [Tony Blair]." Gilligan e-mail to MP exposed Kelly as source, inquiry told London. Downing Street appeared to regain the initiative in its battle with the BBC last night when an explosive e-mail showed that Andrew Gilligan "outed" David Kelly to a Liberal Democrat MP investigating the Iraq dossier affair -­ at a time when the corporation was steadfastly refusing to confirm that Dr Kelly was its source. The e-mail, which suggests that Mr Gilligan was trying to influence the questions asked of Dr Kelly by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, emerged at the Hutton inquiry. In it, Mr Gilligan tells a Liberal Democrat researcher that David Chidgey, the party's MP on the committee, should ask Dr Kelly what kind of a threat Iraq posed in Sep 2002. "If he is able to answer frankly, it should be devastating," Mr Gilligan wrote. Details of the e-mail were broadcast on BBC's Newsnight last night. It states that Dr Kelly spoke to "my colleague Susan Watts, science editor of Newsnight, who described him as a snr official intimately involved in pulling together the dossier". During his own evidence to the committee, Mr Gilligan had refused to name Dr Kelly as his source and Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC, had insisted that the source should be protected. The e-mail suggests Mr Gilligan was, however, prepared to identify the scientist as the source of his colleague's reports, if not his own. The e-mail was due to be posted on the Hutton inquiry website last night but a technical hitch meant that it would not be available for public view until 8 am today at the earliest. Mr Chidgey is bound to face criticism because he falsely suggested during the select committee's hearing that he had spoken to Miss Watts. Referring to Miss Watts' quote of an anonymous source, Mr Chidgey said to Dr Kelly: "I understand from Miss Watts that is her record of a meeting she had with you. Do you still agree with those comments?" Dr Kelly replied "I do not recognise those comments". Newsnight said that Mr Chidgey had admitted last night that he had not spoken to Miss Watts. The journalist had told only her editor at the time of the identity of her source. Giving evidence to the Hutton inquiry yesterday, Alastair Campbell, Downing Street's director of communications, said he felt it was a "good thing" for Dr Kelly's identity to be exposed in an effort to prove that Mr Gilligan had embellished his report claiming the Govt had manipulated the Iraq dossier. Dr Kelly was a "strong and resolute character", Mr Campbell believed. Questioning Mr Campbell, James Dingemans QC, counsel for the Hutton inquiry, said: "A game of chicken was being played by 2 great big institutions with Dr Kelly in the middle." Like Mr Gilligan, Mr Campbell was seeking to use Dr Kelly's appearance before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 15 Jul to his advantage. Three days later, the scientist was found dead in an Oxfordshire wood after he had apparently committed suicide. The inquiry also heard evidence that Tony Blair acted as a moderating force, overruling an earlier call from Mr Campbell and Geoff Hoon, the Def Sec, for Dr Kelly to appear before the committee. Mr Campbell vehemently denied any responsibility yesterday for the leaking of Dr Kelly's name to the media after the scientist had admitted discussing the dossier with Mr Gilligan. In a robust performance, Mr Campbell also rejected the claim that he had inserted into the dossier the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch WMD attacks within 45 minutes. Asked by Lord Hutton whether he thought it desirable for the source to be made public, Mr Campbell said: "I felt it was inevitable and ... possibly the only way we were going to be able to establish in the public and parliamentary mind that the Today allegations were false. From my perspective, it will have been a good thing but I emphasise that I did not do anything to bring it about." Mr Campbell had told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the 1st draft he saw of the dossier, on 10 Sep, included the 45-minute claim. Yesterday, asked about a draft he saw on 5 Sep, which did not have the claim, he said that was not a dossier at all. He said a fresh dossier was being drawn up by John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intel Committee. A rep for the BBC last night refused to confirm the contents of Mr Gilligan's e-mail. "We are looking at this e-mail and will deal with it in the context of the Hutton inquiry." Mr Campbell said in evidence that the e-mail was "quite extraordinary", but Downing Street refused to comment on the revelation. Mr Dingemans said that the e-mail "rather looks like Mr Gilligan is using the Foreign Affairs Select Committee as a chance to get at the Govt". Helen Liddell, the former Scottish secretary, said that the revelation was "a very serious situation for the BBC" because it appeared to show that Mr Gilligan had tried to influence the line of questioning of the Commons inquiry before which he had appeared as a witness. However, Michael Portillo, the former defence secretary, told the BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight that MPs often received guidance for questions. "If I had been on that committee I would have rung Gilligan up," he said. Mali hostages arrive in Germany Cologne. 14 Europeans who spent several m as hostages in the Sahara Desert after being seized in Algeria have arrived at a German military air base. The 9 Germans, 4 Swiss and one Dutchman flew to the base outside Cologne from the desert state of Mali, where they had been handed over to officials following negotiations for their release. They were abducted in Feb and Mar by suspected Islamic extremists. US to resume Colombian anti-drug flights Washington. The US has announced aerial patrols over Colombia will be resumed to stop planes carrying drugs. The program was suspended in 2001 after Peruvian jets working with the US surveillance flights mistakenly shot down a plane carrying American missionaries. Colombia's defence minister Marta Lucia Ramirez says she has been told the flights will restart within days. Washington insists that safety measures are in place to ensure that there can be no repetition of that tragedy. The reintroduction of the joint effort between the 2 countries was revealed to coincide with a visit to Colombia by US Def Sec Donald Rumsfeld. Ms Ramirez has already stated that she will ask Mr Rumsfeld for further assurances that there will be no more cases of mistaken identity, and for more sharing of intel from the satellite listening stations and spy planes that the US has dedicated to Colombia. Iran will never give up N-technology, says Khamenei Tehran. Iran's supreme leader has said his country will never give up its nuclear technology under pressure from the US and others, who are urging Tehran to agree to more stringent inspections of its programmes. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian ambassadors late Mon that the position of the US and certain W countries, which require Iran to give up nuclear technology is unsuitable, "unjust and oppressive, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will never accept these requests." "The conditions in which the US deals with the rest of the world as a creditor, always asking for more, make any weakness and surrender the greatest strategic error," the state news agency IRNA reported him as saying. "Iranian nuclear science is indigenous and peaceful, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on religious principles, will never use weapons of mass destruction," Khamenei added. On Mon Tehran said it was still discussing with the Internat'l Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) whether to allow snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites. "We are still discussing the additional protocol" to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]," foreign ministry rep Hamid-Reza Asefi said. Tehran is under strong internat'l pressure to prove it is not secretly developing atomic weapons by signing the extra NPT clause, which would allow UN inspectors to descend on suspect sites without warning. The IAEA's board of governors will review the Iranian case on Sep 8, with the threat that it might be forwarded to the UN Sec Council. Asefi told reporters to wait and see what will happen during the [Sep 8] meeting. "Any decision will depend on the explanations given by the agency, on the ambiguities that exist [over the additional protocol], our responsibilities and those of the internat'l community with regard to Iran," he added. Two IAEA delegations of inspectors and lawyers visited Iran last wk to try to ease fears over the implications of the additional protocol and to inspect nuclear sites. Following the visit, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Islamic republic's atomic agency, said Wed that discussions with IAEA experts had eased some of Iran's uncertainties, particularly with regard to military secrets and strategy. He said Tehran and the IAEA should reach positive results by Sep over the additional protocol. But the Iranian press quoted diplomatic sources as saying that IAEA inspectors found traces of enriched uranium. Questioned about this by reporters, Asefi said: "It was not up to the diplomats to speak about such a technical and expert subject without knowing the details. It is up to the agency to judge and to give its point of view. We will wait until Sep." Computer virus hurts Air Canada system Toronto. A computer virus designed to inoculate against another infection brought down some computer networks Tue, forcing Air Canada to check in passengers manually at airports across the country. Long lines formed at counters at Vancouver Internat'l Airport as the virus slowed Air Canada's computer system, rep Laura Cooke said. The virus, of the self-spreading kind known as a "worm," affected the airline's call centre in Toronto and check-in systems across the country, she said. Symantec, an Internet security company, designated the worm a "Level 4" threat -- the second-highest -- due to reports of severe disruptions on corporate networks. Called the "Welchia" worm by antivirus companies, it targets computers infected with the "Blaster" worm, which debuted last wk. Once it deletes the "Blaster" worm, the computer attempts to download a patch of the Microsoft update site, installs the patch and reboots the computer. However, Welchia is preventing computer administrators from cleaning up Blaster, according to Vincent Weafer, snr director of Symantec Security Response. "The worm is swamping network systems with traffic and causing denial of service to critical servers with organisations." The Blaster worm also affected some computers of Ontario's emergency response system dealing with the aftermath of last wk's huge blackout across a swath of the province and 8 US states. Dr James Young, the Ontario commissioner of public safety, said the problem was "making our job more difficult." China on war footing against invasion of plague-carrying gerbils Beijing. Unnoticed by the outside world, a vast army has been ploughing a path through an area as large as Switzerland. Its soldiers have at their disposal a massive underground system, extensive food supplies and survival skills that would be the envy of the SAS. They have excellent communications systems, although these rely not on cyberspace and satellites but the more traditional method of whistling. Some even carry a biological weapon of mass destruction. And they colonise tirelessly as they advance. Washington has done nothing. There have been no invasions, no damning UN resolutions, no dodgy dossiers, no packs of playing cards bearing pictures of their whiskery, beady-eyed faces. The war waged on the far side of the planet by the Great Gerbil will go down in history as one of the least covered conflicts of the 21st century. But yesterday, the China Daily newspaper finally broke the story. It revealed that burrowing by Great Gerbils (Rhombomys Opimus) and other rodents has damaged 11.76 mn acres of grassland in W China -- an area about the size of Switzerland. About 81,500 acres have been destroyed. In some places as many as 790 burrow holes have been found per 2.5 acres. The newspaper quoted Xiong Ling, a regional official in charge of locust and rodent control, declaring that the country faced the "most severe rodent disaster since 1993". Henceforth, the paper said, eagles will be dispatched to the affected area by the authorities in the hope that the birds will eat the gerbils, wiping them out at the peak of their reproductive cycle. To assist them, the govt plans to use poison as well. These are ruthless tactics. But the rodents are not quite the same as the winsome balls of fluff which you find in cages in Brit pet shops. Great Gerbils can grow up to 16 in from fang to tail. They can withstand the worst temperatures Asia -- from Iran to Mongolia -- can throw at them. The Brit Nat'l Gerbil Society speaks of a rodent which is not without charm. They appear sociable, sexually broad-minded, enthusiastic gardeners and foodies. They love nothing better than amassing piles of food up to a metre high and 3 m wide. Yet their minus points cannot be overlooked. Quite apart from their cavalier handling of China's environment, they are also known to be carriers of the bubonic plague and round-the-clock posters to aus.politics. Mugabe orders aid agencies to surrender food Harare. Zimbabwe has ordered the UN and other relief agencies to surrender their emergency food aid to ruling party officials. The move, revealed yesterday, may be designed to ensure Pres Robert Mugabe's regime can resume food aid deliveries, which could then be used as a political weapon to punish opponents in the run-up to provincial and district elections. Representatives of aid agencies, who had won agreement from the govt to distribute aid without interference, expressed shock at the decision. The World Food Programme (WFP) is among agencies that had insisted on distributing its own food aid after Pres Mugabe denied food to people accused of supporting the main opp'n party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In a surprise directive to the UN food agency and its partner aid agencies, Jul Moyo, the public service, labour and social welfare minister, ordered them to hand food to local Zanu-PF party officials. Mr Moyo said beneficiaries of food aid were now to be selected from the village, ward and neighbourhood committee registers. These structures are all staffed by supporters of Mr Mugabe. "Where the food is delivered ... the ward and village food distribution committees, with the assistance of local govt structures, will be responsible for the physical distribution of food," Mr Moyo's directive said. "No internat'l donor can tell us that the govt should not be involved in food distribution when we are the ones who asked for the food in the 1st place," he added. The WFP office in Harare said it was consulting its partner NGOs and Zimbabwe govt authorities on the practical implications of the decision. The WFP has been feeding part of the 3.3 mn Zimbabweans it estimates to be in need of emergency aid. The number is expected to rise to about 5.5 mn -- nearly half the population -- in a few m after pockets of harvests from this y's agricultural season are exhausted. Mass famine in Zimbabwe has been averted only by donor agencies chipping in with relief food to fill the gap caused by Mr Mugabe's campaign of seizing productive white-owned farms for redistribution, mainly to his cronies. The WFP recently said that although food supplies in many southern African countries had improved, it remained dire in Zimbabwe. About 60% of food aid from the West to S Africa now goes to Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe's attempts to take charge of food distribution are being made shortly after the European Union donated 25 mn euros to help in the relief effort in Zimbabwe. The MDC said Mr Mugabe's food aid directive was part of a wider plot to rig the provincial and district elections due in 2 wk. "The whole idea is for the regime to ensure that it starves to death all those who are likely to vote for the opp'n," said an MDC agriculture rep. "We have seen this brutal victimisation of opponents of this regime before and donors must stand up and say no to the politicisation of their food relief." Recent by-elections have shown the opp'n, which commands popular support in urban areas, gaining ground in rural districts, usually Mr Mugabe's power base, because of the mounting economic problems that have seen the inflation rate reach 364%. Mr Mugabe's desire to take full charge of aid relief is seen as a ploy to reassert himself in these areas by using food as a political weapon. Last y, ruling party thugs seized donated food, forcing relief agencies to suspend distribution in the affected constituencies. The Pres has been taking steps to secure his personal wealth in the event that he retires from office. He has signed legislation that pegs his pension benefits to the salary and benefits of any sitting president. The wording of the new law is such that only Mr Mugabe and his family qualify for the generous pension benefits. It disqualifies his predecessor, Canaan Banana, who served as Pres until 1987 when Mr Mugabe overthrew him and combined the roles of Pres and PM. Troops expect long service in Solomons Honiara. The AUS soldier heading up the internat'l military contingent supporting police in Solomon Islands says troops are likely to be involved in restoring law and order for several ys. Commander of the 2nd battalion of the Royal AUS Regiment based at Townsville's Lavarack Barracks, Lt Col John Frewin, says the troops have already had some success, including the arrest of warlord Harold Keke. However he says troops providing engineering and logistical support can expect to be in for the long haul. "It's very hard to put a time on that in terms of the combat related troops... the infantry in particular," he said. "We will endeavour to have them out of here as soon as we can, but at this stage we can't really put a time frame on that. But you can anticipate the logistic support troops will be here beyond the combat troops because the police will be here for many years." Concerns raised over defence equipment plan Canberra. A Fed Govt think tank says AUS's 10-y Defence equipment plan is undeliverable, un-affordable and uncertain. The policy paper was released in CBR by the AUS Strategic Policy Institute. The institute says the problem is more than Defence not delivering on time, suggesting that escalating costs mean Defence cannot build what it wants with the funds allocated. The study says the 10-y defence equipment program announced in the 2000 White Paper is looking decidedly shaky. It says Defence has been unable to spend $200 mn of capital funds in each of the past 2 y and another $645 mn is being rescheduled over the next 4 y. Gaps in defence capability could open up and the equipment program could face a death of a thousand cuts. Costello promises to refocus defence spending Canberra. Treas Peter Costello has promised changes to defence programs to meet AUS's strategic needs. Mr Costello was launching a report by a Govt think tank which says AUS's ten y military equipment program is undeliverable, un-affordable and uncertain. The Treasurer did not accept these claims in the study by the AUS Strategic Policy Institute. He says the defence budget is 25% higher than was anticipated 5 y ago. Mr Costello says the Govt is reviewing defence capability to meet changing needs. "When we were setting down the kind of capability we thought AUS would want back in the late 1990s, it was a pre-Timor, pre-Iraq, pre-Afghanistan, pre-Solomon Islands world," he said. "And our capabilities have to adjust and the govt will ensure that we will have a capability which meets our strategic needs and our strategic doctrines." Hanson, Ettridge jailed for 3 y over fraud Brisbane (Reuters). Former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and former One Nation director David Ettridge have been sentenced to 3 y jail after being found guilty of electoral fraud in the District Court in Bris. Hanson was also given a concurrent 3-y sentence for dishonestly obtaining $500,000 in electoral funds from the Qld Electoral Commission. Hanson cried from the dock and protested her innocence when she was sentenced. Pauline Hanson's lawyer, Chris Nyst, says she will appeal against her conviction and jail sentence. Chief Judge Patsy Wolfe said the pair had undermined public confidence in the political process and she made no recommendation for parole. Hanson and Ettridge embraced in the dock before Ettridge was led off. Hanson embraced family members and supporters before she was also taken away. Former One Nation director David Oldfield says Hanson and Ettridge are paying a very high price for what he believes was a simple mistake. "They did not receive a penny personally in any way for this having occurred, so I think it's all a bit harsh given those circumstances," he said. He says the jailing of Pauline Hanson does not necessarily mean the end of ON. The VP of One Nation in W AUS, Brian McRae, says the party is devastated. He says he does not believe the convictions will bring the party into disrepute. "Generally most people realise it's a political witchhunt, people who aren't even in the party," he said. "We have people all the time saying 'what are they doing to Pauline', you know most people agree with her." Before the sentence was handed down, Qld Prem Peter Beattie said the verdict would not spell the end of One Nation. He says Hanson may now become a martyr. "There will be people who will see her as being martyred," he said. "I just say to all those people who think that way that this process has been followed in accordance with the law, there has been no political interference, this has been due process." One Nation has 2 MPs in the Qld parliament. Leader Bill Flynn disagrees with the verdict but says it is not the end of the party. "I'm not going to go into conspiracy theories, we think there was a weight of opinion in certain areas of influence to make sure that this happened," he said. "They felt that if they could nobble the rider, the horse would wander off on its own." The Qld Nat'l Party leader, Lawrence Springborg, says no-one should take pleasure from the Hanson verdict. "The jury has made this decision, I don't think anyone should gloat over it and I believe it's now time to move on," he said. Man charged over hoax rail security scare Sydney. A man has been charged with making a hoax phone call which led to a big security operation on the SYD rail network. Police say the 59-yo was charged after allegedly making a false call to the Crime Stoppers hotline on Aug 13. The call resulted in 100s of police converging on trains and station platforms checking identification and searching bags. At the time police said they had received info that 4 men may have been planning to plant a package on a train. The man has been granted conditional bail and is to face court next m. Tuckey denies wrongdoing over son's fine Canberra (ABC TV). Fed Liberal front-bencher Wilson Tuckey has denied doing anything improper in appealing to the SA Police Min to consider revoking a driving fine against his son. The Fed Opp'n is calling for PM John Howard to sack his Regional Services Min, who Labor says has breached the ministerial code of conduct. The ALP has accused Mr Tuckey of attempting to use improper influence in the matter. Mr Tuckey used his ministerial letterhead to write to SA's then-police minister, Patrick Conlon, about his son's case, describing it as a constituent matter. That point was disputed by Labor's Gavan O'Connor. "Can the Min confirm that in these letters, the Min described his son as a constituent when in fact his son does not live in the Minsiter's electorate?" Mr O'Connor said. Mr O'Connor says it is up Mr Tuckey to clarify the matter and says Mr Howard should take immediate action. "The fact is that the Min has clearly breached ministerial guidelines in statements to the house he made yesterday," he said. "It's very important now for the PM to uphold the standards of the Parliament, [and] come into the house today and sack Wilson Tuckey." But Mr Tuckey says his son was entitled to his help. "I would do it and I think I have done it for other people in my electorate," he said. "If your own children are not entitled to the same representation from a member of Parliament as somebody else then the members of the Opp'n have a very funny idea of family," Mr Tuckey added. mr Tuckey denied pressing the matter, although he wrote to the S AUS Min 3 times. He also denied breaching the PM's ministerial code of conduct by using his public position to pursue a private matter. The fine was imposed on Mr Tuckey's son for driving his truck in SA without a logbook. Mr Conlon, now the Min for Infrastructure, Energy and Emergency Services, has questioned the approach Mr Tuckey took to request that the fine be dropped. He says he was taken aback by the approach. "I can say I was very surprised to have been asked the question and I was even more surprised to see the abusive way in which the answer was received," he said. "But perhaps they do things differently in CBR and W AUS but it's certainly not how we would do things here." Mr Conlon says Mr Tuckey's behaviour is a matter for the PM and his colleagues to deal with. He says he went through all the proper processes in dealing with the matter. "It's not something I'd do. It's not something any of my colleagues would do," he said. "At the end of the day it's a matter for the standards that are set in CBR, not the standards set in SA. "What I can say is that I think the standards set in SA have been of the highest order, I'm not sure about those in CBR." Tuckey foolish over son's fine: PM Canberra (ABC TV). PM John Howard is considering whether to take action against Regional Services Min Wilson Tuckey, who asked the SA Govt to drop a traffic fine against his son. Mr Howard says Mr Tuckey's use of his ministerial letterhead to request that the driving fine against his son be dropped was foolish. Yesterday, Mr Tuckey confirmed he had written to the then-SA police minister asking for the penalty to be dropped. Mr Howard says his minister made a mistake. "I think it was very foolish of him to have done that," Mr Howard said. Mr Tuckey denied in Parliament yesterday he had done anything improper, saying he considered it a constituent, rather than a private, matter. But today Mr Tuckey has admitted his comments may have been misleading because his son does not live in his W AUS electorate. "Mr Speaker, any representations that I make on behalf of others, wherever they reside, I have always treated as a constituent matter to differentiate it from official business," he said. "However, I wish to advise the House that if my words yesterday were construed as indicating my son is an elector in the seat of O'Connor I wish to correct the record." Mr Tuckey also apologised for using the wrong stationery. "I think we have an entitlement as we all have to make a proper representation in that matter," he said. "But I do apologise to the House that I made it on ministerial letterhead." Labor frontbencher Mark Latham says it is extraordinary for Mr Tuckey to claim he was carrying out constituent rather than official duties. The Opp'n says Mr Tuckey should be sacked, claiming he breached the ministerial code of conduct. Tracking device planned for white whale Brisbane. The Qld Govt is moving to protect Migaloo, the world's only known white humpback whale, by fitting it with a radio-tracking device. [As of this evening, there appear to be 2 white whales on the Qld coast. One now has what was described as a "brush mark" on its back after a collision with a yacht. The other -- located some distance from the accident -- appears unmarked]. Env Min Dean Wells says after a yacht hit the whale off Townsville on Sat, the Govt has decided to do more to protect it. The skipper of the yacht says he accidentally hit and injured Migaloo with his trimaran when the whale surfaced in front of him. Qld Parks and Wildlife officers found the humpback swimming nr the Palm Islands yesterday. Wildlife authorities say the whale does not appear to have suffered any serious injuries in the incident. "The white whale Migaloo is well and swimming freely and doesn't appear to be injured," Mr Wells said. Mr Wells says a tracking device will help authorities monitor Migaloo's movements. "My plan is to have the white whale Migaloo tagged with a transistorised tracking device so that we will be able to locate him and that way better ensure his safety," Mr Wells said. "We'll continue to monitor the whale to ensure that it is in fact not injured," he added. "The fact that it is swimming freely doesn't mean that it hasn't been penetrated by the yacht but at least the whale is swimming freely and that is good news." Burglar finds bacon head, calls police London (Reuters). A Brit burglar who stumbled on a work of art that he mistook for a human head in a pickle jar was so spooked that he summoned the police to a house he had robbed. Conceptual artist Richard Morrison had made the head from bacon wrapped around a wire frame floating in a jar of formaldehyde. After the burglar phoned, police bashed down Morrison's door to raid his house, nr Liverpool in N England. Morrison returned home to find that his house had been broken into twice, once by the burglar and once by the police. "In light of the info received, it was of vital importance that we investigated, to ensure that there was nothing suspicious," Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Naylor of Merseyside Police said in a statement on Tue. "The reason for the damage was explained to Mr Morrison and we apologised. Arrangements are in place to replace the door." Morrison told The Times newspaper he understood why the burglar might have been confused by his artwork. "It's obviously a very macabre piece of work and I suppose at a glance it looks like a head, but I never expected it to get this reaction," he said. "I gather the police were bracing themselves for a 'Silence of the Lambs' moment when they broke into my flat." Morrison said the police told him the scare had set the burglar on the straight and narrow. "He had a crisis of confidence and confessed his crimes to his mother." Growth rates point to economic pick-up Canberra. There are more pointers to a pick-up in economic activity in AUS in the 1st half of next y. The Westpac/MEL Institute Leading Index of Economic Activity has registered an annualised growth rate of 5.5% for Jun. This is the 3rd consecutive m which has produced an above-trend result. The index acts as a gauge of actual activity 6 to 9 ms ahead suggesting there will be a significant improvement in the early part of 2004. Westpac says it expects export growth to recover from a small contraction this y to substantial growth of 6.5% next y, which should offset an easing in domestic spending growth. Share market closes at 12-m high Sydney. The AUS share market managed to close at a 12-m high after inching up 3 points to 3,168. After rising 3%, AMP shares retreated to finish 2% or 11 cents lower to $4.61, after the company posted a record interim loss of $2.16 bn. The massive loss was due mainly to write-downs on AMP's UK operations. The company says its de-merger plans remain on track and will not require new capital. The Commonwealth Bank has reported a 24% slide in full-y profit to $2.01 bn. Its shares rose 19 cents to $29.80. Elsewhere in the sector ANZ lifted 19 cents to $17.87, the NAB fell 7 cents to $32.52, and Westpac shed 31 cents to $15.95. BHP Billiton retreated 18 cents to $10.55, Woodside Petroleum eased 6 cents to $13.59 and Rio Tinto gained 12 cents to $33.12. Oil and gas producer Santos has announced an interim net profit of $136 mn, down 17%. Santos shares fell 8 cents to $6.07. Media giant News Corporation picked up 4 cents to $12.52, Fairfax lost three cents to $3.14, PBL fell 12 cents to $10.56. Retailer David Jones recovered five cents or almost 4% to $1.39, Woolworths advanced 11 cents to $11.85 and Foodland surged 47 cents to $18.89. Telstra was steady at $4.74. The AUD is trading at 65.5 US cents, 41.3 pence sterling, 77.7 Japanese yen and 59 euro cents. Spot gold is worth $US361.90/oz and West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil is at $US30.76/bbl. In Japan, the Nikkei added 118 pts to end at 10,292. The Hang Seng lost 34 pts to close at 10,475. {{ Midnight. As the search begins for those responsible for the bombing in Baghdad, the UN is contemplating its future without Sergio Vieira de Mello. The UN and many leaders around the world at digesting the news of the bombing of the UN HQ in Baghdad. AUS Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove is personally mourning the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, after working with him in East Timor. Among those who have had the strongest possible condemnation of the Baghdad attack is US Pres George W Bush, who also says the Coalition will not be intimidated. An adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council says he believes the Council was a indirect target of the bomb attack in Baghdad. A NZ army officer was among those wounded in the Baghdad suicide bombing. The Hutton inquiry has been told a top Blair aide doubted the level of the Iraq threat before GWII. And it's been told the initial draft dossier revealed no Iraqi threat. Witnesses say Blair's info sec, Alastair Campbell, wanted scientist Dr Kelly exposed to resolve the dossier row. Charges continue to follow the shocking bashing of a dad and baby girl. A 4th man has been charged over the bashing of the SYD father and 3 mo baby daughter. A Chinese airline has payed for a lucky phone number. Meanwhile, the death toll has tripled in the latest China mine disaster. Foreign accountants have taken over the Solomons purse-strings. France feels hot blast of nuclear reliance. The heat wave across Europe has caused authorities to cut power production because power stns were not designed to operate in temps over 40 C. Super-heroes have been banned at some AUS childcare centres because they set a bad example. 10 policemen have been killed in worsening Afghan violence. Researchers have found that clothes are 70,000 y old. }} ---------------------------------------- Thu, 21 Aug 2003. NY. MARKETS! The Dow Jones closed down 31 pts amid mixed news and renewed fears. Gold jumped 4.10 to $US366.28/oz. Oil was up 40 c to $US31.16/bbl. In London, the FTSE also lost 33 pts to close at 4,217. The German Dax lost 3 pts to end the session at 3,501. Lisbon. 1000S DIE FROM HEAT WAVE IN PORTUGAL! Following revelations that up to 5,000 people may have died in France from the European heat wave, Portuguese health authorities say 1,316 people have died in that country from the heat. News agency Lusa reports the numbers are from a preliminary Health Min'y report on deaths between late Jul and Aug 12. The heat wave was the hottest and longest on record in Portugal. It fanned the country's worst forest fires in more than 20 y, which killed at least 15 people. The heat affected much of Europe, causing forest fires and deaths from the W to the E of the continent. Detroit. 3 KIDS SHOT DEAD IN DETROIT! 4 children aged from 1 to 12 yo, 3 of them shot to death, have been found in the basement of a burning building in Detroit. Police are now searching for their father, who's wanted for questioning. Police officer Christopher Cole says 1 child has survived -- a 9 yo girl -- but is in critical condition at Sinai-Grace Hospital. Cole says neighbours reported the father had been raising the children and he was in the middle of a divorce with the children's mother, who hadn't been seen for about 1 m. NY. FINGER POINTING FOLLOWS ATTACK ON UN! The UN and US have blamed each other for gaping security holes at the UN HQ in Baghdad following yesterday's massive truck bomb attack. UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan criticised the US for failing to ensure security for internat'l humanitarian workers in Iraq. He says the occupying power is responsible for law and order and the security of the country. [In other reports, the US-appointed Iraq governing council says the UN had turned down an offer of increased security because the UN didn't want to present an image of being an appendage of the US military machine. Kofi Annan later said if the report is true, UN officials in Baghdad had made a mistake in turning the offer down]. Baghdad. RESCUE WORKERS SEARCHING RUBBLE! Rescue workers in Baghdad have searched through the rubble of the UN HQ, as the world body vows to stay in the strife-torn nation after its top envoy and 23 others died in a deadly truck bombing. Meanwhile, a US citizen working as an interpreter has been killed and 2 US soldiers have been wounded in a small arms and RPG attack in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit. UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan says the world body won't abandon Iraq even as it finds itself targeted. Washington. US WARNS CITIZENS OF NEW ATTACKS! The US has warned its citizens of new terror threats in Yemen as OBL's al-Qaeda network seeks to re-establish itself in the region and elsewhere. The State Dept says there could be attacks by extremist individuals or groups against US citizens, US facilities, US businesses, and perceived US interests in Yemen. The latest alert renews a May warning for Americans to avoid all travel to Yemen. Hebron. ISRAEL SEEKS REVENGE FOR TERROR ATTACK! Israeli troops have demolished the family home of the suicide bomber who killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus this wk. Another 100 people were injured in the attack by 29 yo mosque preacher Raed Mesk. Mesk's family had hastily moved out, along with some possessions, expecting their home would be demolished by the Israeli govt. The army regularly destroys the family homes of suicide bombers. They say it acts as a deterrent, but an "eye for an eye" is also mentioned from time-to-time. Nabil Mesk, a 42 yo cousin of the dead terrorist, says he can't see the sense of the policy. Seoul. N KOREA REJECTS US DEMANDS! NK has rejected a US demand for an early inspection of its nuclear facilities as "absolutely unacceptable", toughening its stance ahead of 6-nation talks. The statement by the NK official KCNA came as SK's For Min Yoon Young-Kwan warned against expectations of a settlement at next wk's nuclear crisis talks in Beijing. KCNA says Washington is insisting on forming a new team of inspectors from China, Japan, Russia, SK and the US -- all parties to the talks to be held on Aug 27 to 29. Santo Domingo. 1 KILLED IN DOMINICAN REP DEMO! Witnesses say 1 person has been killed and 20 injured in the Dominican Rep when police fired on a protest against the IMF. The dead man's been ID-ed as 23 yo student Carlos Eusebio Reyes. The demonstrators also were demanding Pres Hipolito Mejia's govt improve electrical service and provide it at a lower cost as the Dominican Rep struggles through an energy crisis. Denpasar. PEACE PROTESTERS ATTEND BALI TRIAL! White-robed Muslim pacifists have staged a protest against terrorism at the Bali trials in Denpasar. Some 35 members of the Jakarta-based Salamullah organisation arrived at the District Court to express their opp'n to violent acts like last Oct's bombing. They say the Bali attackers who killed 202 people have given Islam a bad name and made life more difficult for moderate Muslims. Honiara. SPY PLANES FLY OVER SOLOMONS! Australia's pilotless spy planes have been busy flying missions over parts of the Solomons ahead of today's expiry of a nation-wide gun amnesty. The AUS-led force had given Islanders 3 wks to hand in their guns or face up to 10 y in prison and/or a $S25,000 fine. The recent amnesty, which follows 5 y of ethnic fighting, has netted 2,500 guns and 300,000 rounds of ammo. So far, about 1,500 illegal weapons have been handed in. Officials estimate [based on practically no evidence] that about 70% of the country's heavy weapons have been handed in. Amongst the heal are 535 military weapons, such as assault rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers. Accra. LIBERIANS CHOOSE BUSINESSMAN! Delegates from all Liberia's warring factions have chosen a businessman to guide their country to elections. Monrovia businessman Gyude Bryant is widely seen as the most politically acceptable of the 3 short-listed candidates. Delegates from rebel factions and the govt say W Af mediators will announce the appointment later. Bryant, from the Liberia Action Party, is regarded as a canny politician capable of building consensus. San Francisco. NEW WORM WORKS ITS MAGIC! Internet security experts have warned of a damaging new worm spreading across the Internet, sending torrents of junk email and allowing hackers to seize control of infected machines. News of the new worm, dubbed SoBig.F, came on the heels of the MSBlaster worm which is still at large. Security experts warn that users could be facing the worst wk ever for computer attacks. On computers running M/S Wintox, the new worm spreads via email with the subject line "Re: Details". Brisbane. HANSON SPENDS FIRST NIGHT IN PRISON! Law and order and anti-Asian advocate, Pauline Hanson, has spent her first night of a 3-y sentence behind bars as her lawyer prepares to lodge an appeal against her conviction for electoral fraud. The red-haired former fish and chip shop owner declared her innocence from the dock, branding the trial and the guilty verdict a "joke" after it was handed down at 2.32 pm yesterday. Ms Hanson and former One Nation nat'l dir David Ettridge were both sentenced to 3 y jail. In a TV interview, exiled dir David Oldfield said it was probably a simple mistake that caused ON to lodge an application for registration as a political party using the names of 500 members of a non-voting supporters group. Canberra. PM STAND BY HIS MAN! PM John Howard is standing by Regional Services Min Wilson Tuckey, despite branding his intervention to quash his son's traffic fine "foolish" and "wrong". Mr Tuckey has apologised to parliament for using his ministerial letterhead to urge the SA police to drop a $190 fine against his son. He also apologised for several misleading comments he'd previously used in defence of his action. Labor accused Mr Tuckey of improperly using his office on family business, and then misleading parliament over [now, it turns out] 3 letters he wrote trying to badger the SA Police Min Patrick Conlon. Sydney. SYD RAIL NEEDS 5 Y FOR WORK! SYD's rail system reportedly needs 5 y of work before it can be broken into 5 lines and unclog the existing jumble of criss-crossing tracks. The SMH says that under proposals to be unveiled today by NSW Transp Min Michael Costa, rail planners have foreshadowed a series of changes over 5 to 10 y to overhaul the system. It's reported Mr Costa says the break up would make the network more reliable. Brisbane. QLD POP SET TO DOUBLE! A new study shows Qld's population is set to double to 6.5 mn over the next 50 y. The study, by the state treasury and Uni of Qld (QU), shows the current 3.6 mn pop'n will grow to 5.3 mn by 2026, and 6.5 mn by 2051. Treasurer Terry Mackenroth told state parliament around 3/4 of the growth will occur in the state's SE, with the Wide Bay and FNQ coastal regions also experiencing a "strong surge". Canberra. NEW HERITAGE-LISTINGS! Anzac Cove, the Kokoda Track [?], and the SYD Opera House could be heritage-listed under a controversial new protection regime. The Fed Senate has finally voted to set up a new nat'l heritage regime after ys of negotiations on its content. An AUS Heritage Council will be established to advise the Env Min on listing places of heritage. AUS will be able to engage with other govts to protect AUS's heritage O/S. The Commonwealth will be able to intervene in relation to state heritage issues. Canberra. AUS AND BRIT SIGN TAX TREATY! AUS and Brit have signed a new tax treaty which Treas Peter Costello says will benefit AUS businesses and the economy. He says the new arrangements will make it easier for Aussie firms to repatriate profits from the UK and to borrow money from UK lenders. Mr Costello says many multinational companies use the UK as a base for operations in Europe, and many multinat'l companies have their Asian HQ in AUS. He says the updated treaty on double taxation will improve internal transfers and money flows for multinationals operating in the 2 countries. Adelaide. SA APPOINTS 4 WOMEN JUDGES! 4 women have been appointed to the SA judiciary -- the largest single announcement of female appointments in the state's history. The announcement also marks the first time in SA that 2 women have sat on the Supreme Court bench at the same time, with newly-appointed Justice Ann Vanstone joining Justice Margaret Nyland. A-G Paul Holloway says given the tradition of male dominance in the field, it's great to see women recognised as the outstanding candidates. SA was the first country in the 19th C to pass the female franchise. Sydney. MARKETS. The All Ords added 2 pts to end the session at 3,170. Analysts say the ASX is likely to end its 7th straight wk of rises tomorrow. In Japan, the Nikkei added 71 pts to close at 10,363. The Hang Seng rocketed up 168 pts to end at 10,644. Oil is lower at 31.21/bbl. The AUD is trading around 65.68 US c. {{ 2 am There have been unseasonal flash floods in Nevada, cutting the main road from LV to S Cal. NBC reports 80 mm fell within the last 12 hrs, but the drainage system can only deal with 50 mm of rainfall. Emergency services were called out to dozens of stranded motorists. Several had to be winched to safety from choppers from their submerged MV's. 6 am AUS is reportedly "divided" over the 3-y sentence handed down to Pauline Hanson over electoral fraud. The division seems to come from the members of One Nation, who say Hanson will "do it hard" behind bars and the sentence is "too harsh". One Nation has previously advocated harsh jail sentences for property and petty crimes. The Iraqi Governing Council says the US had been warned of an impending attach against the UN in Baghdad. Reps also say the UN had been offered increased security, but the offer had been turned down. Observers are still waiting for the response from the Israeli govt from yesterday's horror bombing of a bus that killed around 20 passengers returning from the W Wall. Midday. The FBI has joined the hunt for the Baghdad bombers. Gov Paul Bremer concedes US forces Iraq are "up against the war on terrorism". The US is expected to seek a new mandate for Iraq at the UN, and re-define its presence in the country. UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan says if it's true UN officials in Baghdad turned down an offer of extra security, they should not have been allowed to turn it town. Ahmed Chalabi says the Governing Council had info that there were be a "major attack" on a soft target in Baghdad. Qld Prem Peter Beattie has released a list of 366 Qld boarding houses that breach new fire safety rules, in a move aimed at shaming them into compliance. But the plan has apparently back-fired, with one operator saying the campaign is unfairly tarnishing his business. The ASX was almost even at noon, with a weaker AMP weighing on the bourse. At 12.05 the All Ords was down 1 pt to 3,167. 6.30 pm Brazil has declared 3 days of mourning for UN envoy de Mello, who was regarded as the country's peace envoy to the world. Tributes have been flowing in from around the world. There has only been a muted response from the Israeli govt following yesterday's bombing of a Jerusalem bus. While the govt says it's mounting a major military op in Nablus, so far there have been only 3 arrests. The 2 groups that claimed responsibility for the attack -- Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- appear to have isolated themselves from other Palestinian groups. The US has again dispatched a top envoy to hold talks with both sides. Argentina's Senate has abolished a number of laws that protected former politicians and military leaders. Qantas has announced it's first-ever loss. The company dipped $9 mn into the red in the y to Jun. Chairman Dixon has announced 1/4 of Qantas staff will now be casualised to cut costs. Unions say that could mean up to 40% in some areas of the company. The ACTU and unions have been taken by surprise by the announcement. Greg Combet says Mr Dixon has decided to "take the back of the axe" to the company's workforce. A new report from the EC says climate change has cut some crop yields in the S, but has been a benefit in the N. French Pres Chirac has ordered an inquiry into the real death toll related to the European heat wave. The announcement came after funeral directors said the true toll might be as high as 10,000. Scientists say the hole in the ozone hole over Antarctica will grow to 3 times the size of AUS this y. They warn there will be a larger chance of UV exposure this y in SA, and S America. 7.20 pm Legislation to sell the rest of Telstra has passed the House of Reps. The leg'n now goes to the Senate where the govt is seeking support from the minors and independents. 11 pm Israel has struck back after the Jerusalem suicide bombing. It's launched a rocket attack that has killed a snr Hamas leader and 2 body guards. A car was trued into fireball on a street of Gaza City. 14 other people were also injured in the attack, 2 seriously. Israeli tanks are now mobilising for raids on the W Bank. Baghdad. Coal'n forces say they've finally arrested Chemical Ali. Earlier the cousin of Saddam Hussein had been reported killed during Coal'n advance. He's also been reported captured before. Don Rumsfeld is hopeful Chemical Ali may shed light on Iraq's WMD programs or weapons. The confirmed dead at UN HQ is now 23. In Sudan, the Nile has broken is banks, flooding towns, fields and villages. 20 have been killed and 10s of 1000s are threatened with homelessness. }} ---------------------------------------- Fri, 22 Aug 2003. NY. MARKETS! The Dow closed up 29 pts at 9,426. Gold has dipped 4.90 to $US360.70/oz. Oil is about even, at $US31.75/bbl. In London, the FTSE added just 6 pts to end at 4,224. The German Dax added 64 pts to close at 3,565. The AUS is lower at 65.38 US c. Gaza. ISRAEL KILLS HAMAS LEADER! Israel has killed political leader Ismail Abu Shabab in a missile attack, just days after a Jerusalem suicide bombing. 5 missiles were fired from a chopper at a MV in Gaza City, killing Shabab, and 2 body guards and inuring a dozen by-standers. The violence has prompted Islamic militant groups to call off the shaky 7-wk-old ceasefire. The collapse of the truce, agreed by militant factions under internat'l pressure, could sink the US-backed road map peace plan aimed at defusing the 36-mo uprising and creating a Palestinian state in the W Bank and Gaza by 2005. Canberra. MUSLIMS PRAY FOR PEACE! Aussie Muslims will pray today for peace in the Middle E following 2 deadly terrorist attacks in Israel and Iraq this wk. The Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations says it strongly condemns the bombing of the UN HQ in Baghdad and the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem. The 2 attacked killed at least 40 people and injured scores of others. FAIR dir Kuranda Seyit says in a statement he speaks on behalf of all Australian Muslims who detest all forms of extremism and aggression. Bagram. US SOLDIER DIES IN AFGHANISTAN! Centcom says an American soldier has died from wounds and another has been slightly injured by a bomb in separate incidents in the Afghanistan prov of Paktika. The statement on the Centcom web-site says a special ops service member died as a result of injuries rec'd during operations in the vicinity of Orgun. The statement comes after earlier comments from US military officials who said a US soldier had been slighted wounded by a bomb while on patrol in SE Afghanistan. Baghdad. CHEMICAL ALI CAPTURED! Saddam Hussein's feared council Ali Hassan al-Majid, AKA "Chemical Ali", is in US custody, ending the search for one of the former Iraqi regime's most ruthless members. Majid had been reported killed twice and captured once during GWII. He's a Saddam clansman who played a leading role in the violent suppression of Iraq's Kurdish and Shi'ite rebels and its 7-m occupation of Kuwait prior to GWI. In the late 80s Majid ordered the gassing of 5,000 Kurds in the village of Halabja. Canberra. AUS INTEL INQUIRY! A parl'y committee examining intel used by the Howard govt to justify the war on Iraq has begun taking evidence in CBR. The initial part of the inquiry is being held in public. Among those due to give evidence to the joint committee are former UN chief weapons insp Richard Butler, who's now Tasmania's governor-designate. Also giving evidence will be former ONA officer Andrew Wilkie, who resigned in protest before the US attack was launched. [The hearings have already been told the govt were "lying" in associating Bali with Iraq. Richard Butler -- who says he won't criticise the govt now he's to become a Governor -- called on the US to reveal what Iraqi prisoners are saying about Iraq's WMD programs]. Honiara. AUS FORCES SEARCHING FOR WEAPONS! The AUS-led intervention force in the Solomons has begun searching for hidden weapons after the nationwide gun amnesty expired overnight. It's the most dangerous phase of operations for the 2,000-strong force, which gave locals 3 wks to hand in their guns or face up to 10 y jail. Intervention chief Nick Warner yesterday said he hoped last-minute surrenders before the midnight deadline would boost the haul to 3,000. Melbourne. PM TO VISIT SOLOMONS! PM John Howard says he'll visit the Solomons briefly next wk to thank Aussie forces. About 1,200 Aussie troops and police are in the Solomons to restore law and order as part of an AUS-led intervention force. Mr Howard told radio 3AW he'll fly into the Solomons on Mon and return that night. He says it's just an opportunity for some publicity snaps with troops, and to say thank-you, well done, and the country's behind you. Sydney. AUS TO SEND TEAM TO PNG! AUS is to send a foreign aid team to Papua New Guinea to ensure its $1/3 bn aid program is not abused by corrupt govt officials. The Australian newspaper reports the fed cabinet has signed off on the deal which risks further straining relations with the N neighbour as AUS moves to lock in a more interventionist policy in the Pacific. The newspaper says on the back of successes at last wk's Pacific Islands Forum, PM Howard plans to ensure AUS aid is not used to prop up corrupt govts. Bamako. LIBYA PAYS RANDOM TO FREE EUROPEAN HOSTAGES! Libya has reportedly paid a $A8.5 mn random on its own initiative to the abductors of 14 European hostages who were released this wk after being held for ms in the Sahara desert. Diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity say the money passed neither through Malian nor German hands. Accra. NEW LIBERIAN GOVT WON'T PURSUE WAR CRIMES! The Liberian leader-in-waiting, Gyude Bryant, says he won't pursue anyone for civil war atrocities, and wants a general amnesty to exorcise the ghosts of nearly 14 y of bloodshed. Hrs after being picked by warring factions under a peace deal, Bryant says there's a role for everyone in the new Liberia -- except for exiled former Pres Charles Taylor, who began Liberia's ys of war in 1989. Bryant is a low-profile Monrovia businessman who had the task of re-uniting his faction-riven W Af country and preparing for elections by 2005. Belgrade. SERBS CHARGE 44 WITH ASSASSINATION! Serbian prosecutors have charged 44 people, incl the ex-cmdr of a notoriously brutal police unit, over the assassination of PM Zoran Djindjic. Djindjic, known for his pro-W stance, was gunned down on Mar 12 as he stepped from his car in front of govt HQ in Belgrade. Authorities have said Djindjic's killing was orchestrated by a group of underworld bosses and Serb nationalists who wanted to replace him with allies of former Yugoslav Pres Slobodan Milosevic. Wellington. HUGE QUAKE HITS NZ! There's been no reports of damage or injuries after a powerful earthquake hit NZ's remote SW Fiordland region. NZ's Inst of Geo'l and Nuclear Sciences says the shallow earthquake stuck 12 mins after midnight and measured 7.1 [some reports say 7.2] on the Richter scale. Geosciences AUS put it at 7.5. The NZ inst says the quake would have been felt strongly in the S of the S Is. The quake was felt in SYD by guests at the Hilton Hotel, nr the airport. Hobart. OZONE HOLE GROWING! Scientists say the ozone hole over Antarctica appears to be growing. The disturbing news emerged from a joint study by scientists from the AUS Antarctic Div and the Bureau of Met at Davis stn in Antarctica. AAD atm scientist Andrew Klekociuk says it's too early to predict if the hold will grow to a record size as the final result won't be known until up to late Sep. Sydney. NZ TRADE GROWING! Trade Min Mark Vaile says trade between AUS and NZ has grown 5-fold since the signing of an FTA 20 y ago. Mr Vaile says the Closer Economic Relations FTA had brought the 2 nations' economies much closer together. He says NZ is now AUS's 5th-largest export market, and AUS is NZ's principal trading partner. AUS is now the largest investor in NZ. Sydney. HANSON BREAKS DOWN IN JAIL! Former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson reportedly broke down uncontrollably and was under observation and being medicated in the hospital wing of Bris Women's Prison yesterday. The Daily Telegraph says the 49 yo has been placed under 24 hrs observation and is being closely monitored by staff as she comes to grips with life behind bars. The paper quotes a prison officer as saying it's not a suicide watch and she's been given medication to calm her down. The prison officer describes Hanson as "shaking and disillusioned". NY. NEW MAIL VIRUS BREAKS SPEED RECORD! An email security group says a new computer virus that spreads via email is the fastest growing infection ever recorded. MessageLabs says it's stopped more than 1 mn copies of the Sobig.F virus in the past 24 hrs. It says that makes Sobig.F the fastest-growing virus ever, surpassing the infamous LoveBug, Klez, and Kornikova viruses. The Sobig.F virus, first detected on Mon, is the 6th and most sophisticated variant of a mass emailing virus that can spoof the sender's address. {{ 6 am Key Palestinian groups have called off the shaky 7 wk old ceasefire following the targeted assassination of a snr Hamas leader. A previously-unknown group of Iraqi rebels has claimed responsibility for the UN HQ attack in Baghdad. They said in a video statement they would expel all foreigners from Iraq. UN and US officials believe the bombing was carried out by foreign fighters who are flooding into Iraq to wage a terror war against Coal'n forces. Bali bombing trials. Bomber Ali Imron says the Bali attack had origianlly been timed for the 1st anniversary of the WTC suicide bombing, but the bombs could not be made in time. At his own trial, accused JI leader Abu Bakar Bashir has dined any knowlege of Jemaah Islamiah or a series of bombings he accused of organising. 9 am Pauline Hanson has reportedly broken down in prison and has spent the night in the prison medical centre. There are conflicting reports on whether or not she'd been put on a suicide watch. PM Howard has rejected a US call for more troops in Iraq. The PM says there are 800 Aussies presently on duty in the region, and AUS will not be sending more. The US is pushing for a new UN resolution to allow internat'l troops to operate in Iraq, but Colin Powell indicates the US is working on wording that will not cede any power to the UN. Mr Howard has expressed surprise over the length of Ms Hanson's jail term. Sympathy for Hanson has dominated call-back radio for days. One Nation officials say there was political interference in the sentence. They've announced $1000s have been donated to a fighting fund that was set up yesterday. Qld Prem Beattie told talk-back radio the prosecutors had asked for 3 to 5 y, and the court had chosen the low end of the range. He says Hanson might be eligible for a minimum security jail within 18 m if she chose to behave. There's been a massive 7.2 quake in S NZ. Goods were shaken from shelves in some stores, but no damage was reported. It's believed the quake was centred far from shore. Officials say such a large quake is a once-in-a-decade event for NZ. The world's largest tiger shark in captivity has been set free off the Gold Coast. The 4-m animal named "Bonnie" was lifted by crane from its pool in Sea World and returned to the ocean, well off the coast. Bonnie was to be a star attraction at the park, but after an RSPCA investigation officials agreed to set her free. Steve "Croc Hunter" Irwin also helped secure the release. Bonnie was caught by a commercial fisherman on Jul 4. Midday. Andrew Wilkie, the only intel officer to resign over pre-GWII intel, has given evidence before an AUS parl'y inquiry into the govt's justification for the war. Previously, he'd said the govt had "exaggerated" the evidence. Today he went further, saying the govt had lied in associating Iraq with the Bali bombings and the war on terror. He said the govt fabricated evidence and created a "mythical Iraq". He said the govt had "[taken] the ambiguity out of the issue" in removing qualifications from intel assessments. He said the govt ignored words like "probably" and "could" and used terms like "mammoth" and "massive". Richard Butler has also given evidence. He said if the pre-GWII WMD info was so accurate, why haven't weapons or even evidence of programs been found yet? He said it's "unlikely" WMD were moved out of Iraq to other countries before the war. He says the US should "put us out of our misery" by revealing what captured Iraqi regime officials are telling their captors about WMD and WMD programs. As temporary morgues continue to be set up in France, a new poll shows the French think their govt has botched the emergency. 1/2 don't think the PM did not handle the crisis correctly. Only 40% do. Chirac has been criticised for remaining on holiday during the emergency. The opp'n is calling for the Health Min to be sacked. London. The Hutton Inquiry. It's been revelation of revelation at the inquiry into Brit pre-GWII support for war. On Feb 27 Kelly told a friend he'd been found dead in the woods if Iraq was invaded. Kelly said he'd been in contact with snr Iraqis. He said he'd told them if they co-operated with weapons inspectors they would have nothing to fear. If Iraq were invaded some of them would probably be killed and he'd be made a liar, he said. He was "a bit shocked" to find his name would be published in newspapers. Kelly said he'd "been through the wringer" as the govt tried to find the leak to the BBC. Gold has dipped to $US362.04/oz. Oil is about even, at $US31.75/bbl. The AUS is lower at 65.38 US c. MEL. About 100 oil rig workers are stranded on platforms in Bass Strait following an ind'l dispute over roster changes. An Esso rep says the workers have been stranded since the end of shift on Wed because of a strike by staff from 2 contractors. Anna Schulze says Esso workers on-shore are staging a secondary boycott in support of the construction workers, refusing to cross a picket line at the company's Longford heli-pad. At 12.08 the ASX is higher, supported by stronger resources. The All Ords has added 9 pts to 3,179. }} ======================================== (*) Who is responcible for W.A.R.S? A small group of dedicated sandgrubbers, bannana-lickers and 5th columnists on the run from support payments and sundry legalese in their home countries. Mention us at any Uncle Harry's Suburban Bunker and get a 10% discount on cop-killers! All speling macroizated for correctitood by Mcrosotf Speelchek. *** Please stand by for further orders from The Leader ***