2:49 PM
JERUSALEM (AFP) - - Israel on Sunday was due to reopen a Gaza border crossing point for commercial goods, closed after Palestinians fired rockets five days earlier in violation of a truce, a military spokesman said.
Authorities initially decided to reopen two key crossing points, but later reconsidered. "We finally decided to only reopen Sufa for the time being," said spokesman Peter Lerner.
"Around 80 trucks filled with goods and humanitarian aid should be authorised to enter the Gaza Strip on Sunday," he added.
The Nahal Oz terminal for fuel shipments was reopened on Friday.
Egypt negotiated the June 19 truce between Gaza's ruling Hamas movement and the Jewish state, aiming to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel's lifting of its blockade of Gaza.
Islamic Jihad on Tuesday fired three rockets at Israel in what it said was revenge for the death of one of its commanders in a firefight with Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Israel responded by again shutting Gaza's commercial goods border crossings. It has not however resumed the near-daily air strikes and ground incursions it carried out in the months leading up to the truce.
The Erez passenger crossing, used by diplomats, journalists, and Gazans requiring medical care in Israel or abroad, has remained open.
2:33 PM
OH YEAH NOW GOING TO TWO WEEKS AFTER I SAID THAT I WOULD BE GOING TO MALAYSIA TWO WEEKS AGO.ANYWAY WE SAT COACH TO THE PLACE CALL CAMERON HIGHLAND AND I THINK THE DISTANCE BETWEEN SINGAPORE AND CAMERON HIGHLAND WOULD BE AROUND 500 TO 600KM,SO WE TOOK ABT 7HRS SITTING IN THE BUS TO REACH TO THE DESTINATION PLUS 1 HRS GOING UPHILL TO THE CAPITAL TOWN IN THERE CALLED BRINCHANG.THE JOURNEY WAS FINE ACEPT THE JOURNEY GOING UPHILL THAT WAS TURNING LEFT THEN RIGHT THAT MAKE ME FEEL DIZZY.LOLZ AS WE GO UP THR I FEEL COLDER THEN USUAL COS IS IN THE EARLY MORNING ABT 6AM THAT WHY IT WILL BE COLDER THAN USUAL.ANYWAY AFTER REACHING THE TOWN,HAVE A BREAKFAST THEN WENT TO OUR FIRST TOUR BEFORE CHECKING INTO MY HOTEL,SO WE WENT TO THE LESIURE TOUR THAT GO TO THE PLANTATION AND FARMS.LOLZ THEN CHECK INTO OUR HOTEL,THE NEXT DAY WE WENT TO THE NATURE TOUR AND THE PLANTATION TOUR,I MISS THE NATURE TOUR AS WE WENT INTO THE FOREST,THE CONDITION THERE IS QUITE DAM AND MUDDY THAT DIRTY MY PANTS BUT WORTH IT COS I LIKE NATURE AND ITS LIKE A JUNGLE,DIFFERENT FROM SINGAPORE FOREST,THE AIR THERE IS ALSO VERY FRESH AND COOLING COS U NOE,ON TOP THE HIGHLAND.AFTER THAT GO TO THE TOUR ON TO THE HIGHEST ACCESSABLE PLACE OF CAMERON HIGHLAND,THEN GOT ONE I THINK 7 STORY TOUR WITH A VERY STEEP LADDER OVER THERE ,WAH DAMN DIFFICULT TO CLIMB UP BUT WHEN REACH TO THE TOP,CAN SEE SPECTECULAR VIEW SO I THINK THE EFFORT IS PAID OFF.SO NEXT TIME IF WANT TO GO TO THE WWW.TITIWANGSATOUR.COM OR MAYBE SEARCH THE NET FOR IT AS THIS WEBSITE I PLACED IS NOT REALLY ACCURATE.LOLZ
2:19 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - - Pakistani forces pressed ahead with an anti-militant offensive near the Afghan border for a second day Sunday, in a move aimed at easing US fears over Islamabad's talks with insurgents.
Soldiers were setting up checkposts in the northwestern Khyber tribal district, a day after launching the operation and demolishing the house of a leader of an Islamist group accused of threatening the main city of Peshawar.
The operation is the first by the new government since it began negotiating with Taliban militants after elections in February -- although officials said the targeted rebel warlord, Mangal Bagh, had no direct links to the Taliban.
"The situation is under control. There has been no resistance," senior local administration official Mehmood Afridi told AFP. Officials said earlier that one militant had been killed in an exchange of fire.
"Paramilitary forces have taken up positions near Bara (the main town in Khyber district), they are setting up a number of checkposts and bunkers while several key roads have been sealed," he added.
After the offensive was launched on Saturday, television footage showed tanks and camouflaged armoured personnel carriers rumbling into the area, while officials said troops had fired several mortar rounds at militant hideouts.
A senior security official said the aim of the operation was to keep control of Khyber's main town and "clear it of elements making incursions into Peshawar, threatening CD and video shops and carrying out kidnaps for ransom."
Several CD shops have been blown up in recent months by militants seeking to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in the troubled tribal belt bordering Afghanistan and in the adjoining North West Frontier Province.
Security officials said Bagh's men had also been raiding trucks on the Khyber pass, the main supply route for US and NATO troops who are fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for Bagh's hardline Lashkar-e-Islam group said the security forces had demolished his house and the rebel group's headquarters in Bara.
"But we have decided not to fight them (security forces). We are not Taliban," the spokesman, Commander Wahid, told AFP.
The senior security official said authorities were deciding to push forward into the Tirah district, which is closer to the border with Afghanistan and where a Taliban-linked group, Ansar-ul-Islam, is active.
That group is under the sway of Pakistan's top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who on Saturday said he was halting two-month-old peace talks with the authorities because of operations against his men.
Mehsud is accused by authorities of orchestrating the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December.
However a spokesman for Mehsud also denied that Bagh was connected to the Taliban.
Pakistan has come under growing pressure to crack down on militants, with the United States and other NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan expressing concerns over the government's negotiations with the rebels.
Mehsud, who was named by Time Magazine this year in its list of the world's most influential people, has earlier vowed to continue attacking US and NATO troops in Afghanistan despite the peace talks.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said this week that the failure of Pakistan's new government to put pressure on Taliban forces on the Afghan border was a "concern."
2:19 PM
BANGKOK, Thailand - More than 30,000 Myanmar refugees living in camps in Thailand have been sent to third countries in what the United Nations said Wednesday had become the world's largest refugee resettlement operation.
Most of the refugees are Karen ethnic minority people who had been sheltered in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said 30,144 refugees have left Thailand to start new lives abroad since the resettlement operation began in January 2005. A UNHCR statement described it as the world's largest refugee resettlement operation.
But the camps remain home to 123,500 refugees and asylum-seekers.
"Some of the refugees have been here for nearly two decades. Some were born in refugee camps, grew up there and are now raising their own families in refugee camps," UNHCR regional representative Raymond Hall said Wednesday. "For them resettlement offers a way out of the camps and the opportunity for a fresh start in life."
The United Nations and human rights groups say that over the years the Myanmar military has burned villages, killed civilians and committed other atrocities against the Karen, who have long fought for autonomy from the central government.
Some activists have charged that Myanmar's ruling junta is waging a genocidal campaign against the Karen and other rebellious ethnic groups.
Hall said prospects for the refugees to return to Myanmar or settle permanently in Thailand were dim.
Nearly 21,500 of the resettled refugees have gone to the United States, while Australia has received 3,400 and Canada 2,600.
Other resettlement countries are Britain, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.
Myanmar refugees are now leaving Thailand for resettlement at an average rate of more than 300 a week, the UNHCR said.
2:17 PM
KHYBER AGENCY, Pakistan - Pakistan's newly elected government launched the first major assault against militants in the country's volatile northwest on Saturday, destroying a militant leader's headquarters and shelling suspected hideouts of other fighters.
The offensive in the Khyber tribal region appeared to mark a refinement in strategy by the new government, backing its calls for peace deals in the tribal areas along the Afghan border with the threat of forceful action against militants who get out of line.
The United States said such deals were giving militants the freedom to regroup for attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. With growing militant threats to the nearby Pakistani city of Peshawar — and to the key Khyber supply route for U.S. forces in Afghanistan — Pakistan took action.
Late Friday, 700 troops from the paramilitary Frontier Corps moved into Kyber in preparation for the offensive, a round-the-clock curfew was imposed in the Bara area, and heavy contingents of troops blocked the main road from Peshawar into Kyber, local officials said.
By Saturday afternoon, the Frontier Corps began shelling suspected militant hide-outs in the mountains, local official Muhammad Siddiq Khan said.
Authorities blew up the headquarters of militant leader Menghal Bagh in a scene broadcast on national television. Bagh fled to the remote Tirah Valley along the Afghan border, a military intelligence official in the frontier said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself would compromise his work.
In recent weeks, Bagh's fighters waged attacks in Peshawar in what provincial officials say was an attempt to prove they wield influence outside the tribal regions and to intimidate the population. Bagh's followers also have been accused of threatening supply convoys bound for coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Maj. Gen. Alam Khattak, head of the Frontier Corps, said his troops destroyed three militant centers in Bara and killed one attacker in the operation, which was expected to last up to a week.
"We have occupied, captured all important heights, and we have taken control of the area," he said. Hinting the offensive would not be last, he said, "Other pockets of resistance and crime will also be visited."
The operation was also expected to target Haji Namdar, whose Vice and Virtue Movement is suspected of attacks against coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. Namdar has sought to impose his own strict brand of Islamic law in the region.
"If the government thinks there is any issue to address, that should be resolved through talks, not by the use of force," said Munsif Khan, spokesman for Namdar's group. "We are ready for talks with the government."
In response to the offensive and other confrontations with security forces, Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, said he was suspending talks between his allies and the government. He implied his forces could cause trouble in Pakistan's main cities.
"Peace cannot be brought with force and aggression. This will be very unfortunate for the Pakistani nation if fighting starts again," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
The new government elected in February eclipsed former army strongman and U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf. In a policy shift, the new administration supported peace talks with Taliban militants to try to curb an explosion in violence in the northwest.
But as militant activity grew, Pakistan's top political and military leaders signaled they would use force if necessary to combat militancy.
Concern has grown in recent weeks about militant threats to Peshawar. Two weeks ago, a Taliban force from Khyber entered the city and briefly kidnapped 16 Christians.
Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal regions, said the Taliban took advantage of a leadership vacuum in Islamabad, where the coalition government is paralyzed by infighting, to take control of the tribal regions along the border. Now, the Taliban "are on our doorstep" around Peshawar, he said.
"The situation is like water flowing into a field and until you have some obstruction to stop it, you will drown. We are drowning," he said.
Taliban have posted notices in some villages outside Peshawar telling residents to shun the judiciary and seek justice through their courts, he said.
Misrri Khan, who works for a tribal paramilitary force that patrols Khyber, said the militants kidnapped 16 of his fellow officers and threatened to behead them — and then to take more captives — if they did not abandon checkpoints in the area. Khan said the force refused.
Afrasiab Khattak, chief negotiator for the provincial government, said the province was considering a second operation in the Swat area, which is wracked by violence despite a peace deal between the provincial government and a radical pro-Taliban cleric.
Police in Swat found the bodies Saturday of four people apparently killed by militants and defused three bombs weighing a total of 45 pounds that had been planted along a main road, Swat police chief Waqif Khan said.
4:11 PM
SHANGHAI - Tropical storm Fengshen brought another bout of wet misery to southern China on Wednesday with heavy rains and strong winds after killing hundreds in the Philippines as a typhoon.
China's southeast was already trying to recover from flooding earlier this month that killed at least 63 people, forced the evacuation of at least 1.66 million and caused billions of dollars in damage in a region anchored by the country's manufacturing capital, the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province.
Fengshen made landfall Wednesday morning with winds of up to 51 mph (83 kilometers per hour) in the economic boomtown of Shenzhen, whose meteorological station forecast up to almost 8 inches (200 millimeters) of rain Wednesday and Thursday, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Both Shenzhen and nearby Hong Kong stopped school classes Wednesday, and more than 13,000 ships in Guangdong Province came back to harbor before the storm made landfall, Xinhua reported.
The Hong Kong government also closed all courts and financial markets in the morning after a weather alert was issued late Tuesday. There have been at least nine reports of flooding in various parts of the city, the government said in a statement
Flood control authorities in Shenzhen told the news agency that no deaths had been reported as of Wednesday morning.
Xinhua quoted meteorologists in the region as saying the tropical storm was expected to weaken as it moved north and further inland.
The China Central Meteorological Station said Fengshen's heavy rains also will affect the provinces of Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi and Hunan, according to the news agency.
Fengshen left more than 800 passengers and crew members missing in the Philippines this week after a ferry capsized in the rough weather. Four dozen survivors have been found. The storm's toll on shore in the Philippines included 227 dead and 275 missing in the worst-hit area, with dozens reported killed elsewhere by floods and landslides.
China has given little attention to this month's flooding in its southern region, instead keeping the focus firmly on relief for last month's earthquake in central Sichuan Province. The death toll from that disaster is expected to pass 80,000, Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu said Tuesday.
4:09 PM
HONG KONG - Tropical storm Fengshen brought more heavy rains and strong winds to Hong Kong on Wednesday, shutting down the city's financial markets, schools and courts.
Fengshen, which battered the Philippines over the weekend, passed through Hong Kong late Tuesday and was about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the city Wednesday morning, the Hong Kong Observatory said.
The average wind speed was 39 mph (63 kilometers per hour) or more across Hong Kong, the observatory said. It was not immediately clear how much rainfall was recorded.
The storm was headed north or northwest toward the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and was moving at about 8.7 mph (14 kph).
The Hong Kong government closed all schools, courts and financial markets in the morning after a weather alert was issued late Tuesday. There have been at least nine reports of flooding in various parts of the city, the government said in a statement.
Fengshen's strength weakened from a typhoon to a tropical storm Tuesday.
Typhoon Fengshen pounded the Philippines over the weekend, killing dozens in flooded communities in the central part of the country. It may also have left hundreds dead after a ferry capsized in heavy weather.
4:09 PM
JERUSALEM (AFP) - - Three rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip hit southern Israel on Tuesday, slightly wounding two people and straining an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and the Islamist movement.
Two of the rockets struck inside the hard-hit town of Sderot, causing some damage, and another struck a field outside town, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The rockets were the first to be fired from the Palestinian territory since a truce between Israel and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers went into effect on June 19.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad told AFP it had carried out the attacks. "The rockets are a response to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation in the West Bank," he said.
The group, which was responsible for many of the attacks launched from Gaza in the months leading up to the ceasefire, did not agree to the truce but had vowed not to violate it.
The attacks came hours after Israeli troops killed a senior Islamic Jihad fighter and another man in the northern town of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, which was not included in the truce.
Overnight Tuesday a mortar round fired from northern Gaza hit Israel but caused no damage.
"Any fire from the Gaza Strip is a gross violation of the understanding reached with Egypt," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev told AFP after the attack, referring to the truce agreement.
Hamas blamed Israel for Tuesday's violence, saying it had "provoked" Palestinian armed factions with the killing of the two men in Nablus.
"It is clear that it was the Israeli occupation that provoked the feelings of the Palestinian people and the resistance groups by committing these sorts of vile crimes in Nablus," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP.
"We in Hamas affirm that we are adhering to the truce and working for its success and continuation and we will work with all the Palestinian factions to guarantee this."
Olmert, meanwhile, returned from Egypt where he met with President Hosni Mubarak on the truce and a parallel track of indirect talks with Hamas aimed at securing a prisoner swap for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Egypt played a key role as mediator in brokering the ceasefire as Israel rejects direct contact with Hamas, which it blacklists as a terrorist group. Hamas in turn refuses to recognise the Jewish state.
The truce, which called on Israel to cease all military operations in Gaza and for Palestinian militants to halt their near-daily rocket and mortar attacks, also called for the easing of a year-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Egypt told Israel that it will keep its Rafah crossing with Gaza closed until the fate of Shalit is resolved, a senior Israeli official said.
But Mubarak chided Israel, saying it was unrealistic to link Shalit's release to the truce.
To link the fate of "one soldier" to so many dead on both sides is "unrealistic," he said in an interview with Israeli television of which excerpts were published by the official MENA news agency.
"Let's be realistic and live the reality of the truce (or) they will continue firing rockets and you will attack them and you will die and they will die, for one soldier," Mubarak said.
"But the soldier is another track we're working on. Why mix everything up? Let's be realistic. We should not mix all issues and ruin everything" he said.
Israel has eased its year-old blockade of Gaza as part of the truce by allowing larger amounts of basic goods to enter, but made any opening of Rafah, the only crossing that bypasses it, conditional on Shalit's release.
Israel has also said it must keep up military operations in the West Bank to protect its citizens, and many feared an escalation in violence there could jeopardise the agreement.
Meanwhile, the international quartet for Middle East peace called during a Tuesday meeting in Berlin for the truce to "be respected in full."
"The quartet expressed its continuing support for Egyptian efforts to restore calm to Gaza and southern Israel and welcomed the period of calm that began on June 19," the grouping comprising the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States said in a statement.
The statement also called for an immediate freeze to Jewish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and the dismantlement of outposts built since March 2001.
4:08 PM
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysia's prime minister denied Tuesday that his deputy's wife was involved in the sensational killing of a young Mongolian woman, and said that action will be taken against the prominent blogger who made the allegation.
Blogger Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin signed a sworn statement earlier this month, claiming he has information linking Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak's wife, Rosmah, to the October 2006 slaying of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a 28-year-old freelance translator and interpreter.
"Raja Petra's actions are unacceptable. It is not right," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters Tuesday. "I don't believe that Najib and Rosmah are involved."
Raja Petra's claim came on top of another article he wrote earlier this year in which he implied that Najib was involved in the slaying. He was charged with sedition in May for making that claim, but pleaded innocent to the charge. That trial is scheduled to start in October.
Najib and Rosmah have denied any role in Shaariibuu's killing.
Prominent political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, a close associate of Najib, is charged with abetting the murder. Two policemen are accused of killing her and destroying her body with explosives in a jungle clearing outside Kuala Lumpur. The three have been on trial since June 2007.
Abdullah said the attorney general has told him that Raja Petra is being investigated and "action will be taken against him."
He also rejected Raja Petra's allegation in the sworn statement that Malaysia's military intelligence had given him a report about Rosmah's alleged role.
Abdul Razak, who has top-level government contacts in addition to being close to Najib, has confessed in court to having an eight-month affair with Shaariibuu.
The prosecution contends Abdul Razak had her killed because she pestered him for money after he ended their affair. They say he used his connections to get the policemen to carry out the killing and to obtain the military-grade explosives that were used to destroy her body.
Some of Malaysia's most popular blogs offer strongly anti-government commentaries and present themselves as a substitute for mainstream media, which are controlled by political parties or closely linked to them.
In March, a court ordered Raja Petra to pay 4 million ringgit (US$1.25 million) to the state-run Universiti Utara Malaysia and its vice chancellor for publishing an allegedly defamatory article. Raja Petra has refused to pay.
4:05 PM
MANILA, June 24, 2008 (AFP) - Ferry operators in the Philippines need to upgrade their ageing fleets, a top transportation official said Tuesday, after the sinking of a large passenger ship left more than 850 people feared dead.
"We really have to modernise, our average age of the ships is about 28 years old," Transportation and Communication Secretary Leandro Mendoza told a news conference.
The 24,000-tonne Princess of the Stars, a 181-metre (594-foot) vessel built in 1988, sank Saturday in the eye of Typhoon Fengshen after its engine failed and it ran aground off the central island of Sibuyan.
Rescuers continued to look for its passengers and crew, most of whom have not been found.
4:05 PM
OFF SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines (AFP) - - Philippine rescue divers said they found many bodies Tuesday inside the ferry that sank with more than 850 people on board, confirming the worst fears of desperate relatives.
Anxious and angry family members had been clinging to hope their loved ones might still be found alive inside the doomed Princess of the Stars, which capsized and sank Saturday when it got caught in the path of a typhoon.
But with blame flying over how the 24,000-tonne ferry was allowed to set sail with the storm looming, shaken rescue divers said they had discovered the worst when they finally worked their way into the submerged ship Tuesday.
"We saw 15 bodies trapped in one section of the ship,"said coast guard diver Lieutenant Commander Inocencio Rosario.
"The bodies are floating inside," he said, adding that most of them were not wearing life jackets.
"Two men were on the bridge, wearing the Sulpicio Lines uniform. One was holding the radio. He must have been an officer," Rosario said.
Passage through the ship was hampered by fallen furniture, equipment and broken glass, he said, adding that they did not have enough underwater flashlights or batteries to dive for long.
The vessel is sitting upside down on a coral reef off San Fernando, Sibuyan Island, with most of the bottom of its hull protruding from the water.
At least three bodies were removed from the ship and placed in cadaver bags aboard a coast guard vessel, said an AFP reporter at the scene.
Philippine civil defence chief Anthony Golez said 57 people, some of whom made it onto lifeboats, survived the sinking -- one of the worst maritime disasters in the country's history.
But many passengers reportedly had little time to react when the vessel, trapped when Typhoon Fengshen suddenly changed path, began tilting and then quickly capsized off the central island of Sibuyan.
Sulpicio Lines, however, said it had recorded 59 survivors and 15 dead after names were checked against the ferry's manifest.
Radio dzMM reported the Coast Guard was checking reports 16 passengers had been rescued by a fishing vessel, off Sibuyan Island. But this report could not be confirmed late Tuesday.
The Coast Guard said their figures showed 43 found alive and 12 dead but admitted the figures had not been updated since Tuesday morning.
The ferry reportedly developed engine trouble while trying to make it to safety.
Vice-President Noli de Castro, who inspected the recovery operations on Tuesday, said they still hoped that survivors might be found in an air pocket inside the ship.
But he warned that rescue efforts would have to proceed slowly to avoid fuel leaking. Oil spill booms were seen being set up around the sunken vessel.
A US navy supply ship and a maritime patrol plane have joined the search, and the local military said the Americans had deployed an unmanned aerial vehicle to hunt for survivors.
The tragedy was the fourth for Sulpicio Lines since 1987, when the Dona Paz collided with a tanker and sank, killing more than 4,000 people.
The government slapped an immediate ban on Sulpicio's vessels from leaving port on Monday, though the company said it was still selling tickets because it had not been formally notified of the move.
Sulpicio is one of the largest ferry operators in the Philippines, where people are heavily dependent on ferries to get around the country's more than 7,000 islands.
"We are at a loss as to what really happened," vice president Sally Buaron said.
She said the captain, Florenio Marino, sent a distress call moments before giving the order to abandon ship.
"As long as there's small hope that there is an indication that people are still in the waters, we will continue to search," Golez said.
Another ship, the transport vessel Lake Paoay, went down in the same area during the storm on Saturday, leaving three dead and 17 missing.
Officials were trying to make sure they do not mix the survivors or casualties from the different vessels when accounting for those on the Princess of the Stars.
President Gloria Arroyo on Monday ordered the coast guard to review sailing guidelines, especially those relating to typhoons.
10:55 AM
GAZA CITY (AFP) - - A fragile truce entered its second day in the Gaza Strip on Friday amid scepticism over how long the Egyptian-brokered deal between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement would hold.
The six-month truce is the first since the Islamists seized the impoverished Palestinian territory just over a year ago , triggering a crippling Israeli blockade.
"Hamas is determined to respect the truce and guarantee its success," its spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said after the ceasefire took hold Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said the Jewish state "will respect all the commitments it made."
As the truce went into effect, Olmert's office announced the premier will travel to Egypt next Tuesday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel is due to fly to Egypt the same day to resume talks on a proposed prisoner swap with Hamas, a senior defence official said.
Israel wants Hamas to release Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid two years ago.
"Israel knows it will have to pay a heavy price for Shalit's release and free many Palestinian terrorists," a senior defence official, who asked not to be named, said.
But Shalit's father Noam lashed out at the truce in an interview with Israeli television on Thursday.
From the moment when we no longer have any means of pressure, Hamas can drag out the negotiations (on Gilad's release) for two more years, or five years, or 10 years," he said. "And we might never see Gilad again."
The deal also entails a gradual easing of Israel's blockade of the overcrowded strip of land where most of the 1.5 million population depend on outside aid.
Israeli authorities said this should start on Sunday with an increase of goods allowed into the Palestinian enclave.
The deal was concluded after months of indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, which had been mulling a wider military offensive in Gaza in a bid to halt rocket fire.
Israel made it clear the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt , the territory's only one that bypasses the Jewish state, would be reopened only if Shalit is released, the Ynet news website said.
Olmert warned on Wednesday that the ceasefire would be "fragile" and could be "short-lived," saying the army stood ready to intervene if it is breached.
The White House cautiously welcomed the deal saying it hoped it meant that Hamas would "give up terrorism."
The United States, the European Union and Israel blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organisation despite its 2006 victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called the truce "a very welcome development."
"I hope it will provide momentum for the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he hoped it "will both provide security and an easing of the humanitarian crisis in impoverished Gaza, and end rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli targets."
Middle East Quartet envoy and former British prime minister Tony Blair called the truce "a positive development."
"We should be under no illusion, however, that this calm is fragile," said Blair, who represents the diplomatic Quartet made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose powerbase has been limited to the West Bank since Hamas seized Gaza, hailed the deal as "good news for us".
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad called on Israel to halt military operations in the occupied West Bank too.
"All those Israeli military operations in areas under our control must cease," said Fayyad, whose government's writ has been limited to the West Bank since the Hamas movement's seizure of Gaza in June last year.
Syria, home to Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal, said it supported the deal while the 22-member Arab League said it would be "an important step towards inter-Palestinian reconciliation."
10:50 AM
BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand's revered king urged the prime minister Thursday to keep his promises to do good for the nation in a televised meeting that could undercut plans for a massive demonstration to call for the government to step down.
The protesters, spearheaded by the People's Alliance for Democracy, claim the government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is a proxy for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted by a 2006 military coup.
The alliance led mass demonstrations before the coup demanding Thaksin step down for alleged corruption and abuse of power.
They now accuse Samak's government of interfering with corruption charges against Thaksin and trying to change the constitution for its own self-interest.
Although facing criminal charges for alleged corruption, Thaksin remains a powerful figure in Thailand.
The demonstrators _ claiming their ranks will swell to 100,000 Friday as reinforcements converge from across the country _ have been in Bangkok's streets for the past three weeks.
They have pledged to ring Government House, where the prime minister's offices are located, until Samak's administration resigns.
Police said they would not be allowed to march there from their current rally site nearby.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej addressed Samak when the prime minister presented two new Cabinet ministers to take their oaths of office, and the address was broadcast on the evening television news, as is normal for such occasions.
"I expect that you will do what you have promised and when you can do that, you will be satisfied," the king said. "With that satisfaction, the country will survive. I ask you to do good in everything, both in government work and other work so that our country can carry on and people will be pleased."
The king's address to Samak and his appointees was about five minutes long and was not critical of the government.
Coming on the eve of the planned protest, it could be to Samak's advantage as it suggested his government's legitimacy. The protesters have repeatedly asserted they are defending royal interests.
Suriyasai Katasila, one protest leader, said more than 100,000 people were expected to gather Friday.
"People are coming from everywhere," he said. "They want to show their solidarity with us and they want to express their discontent with the government who has been serving no one but themselves."
Samak's People Power Party won general elections last December. His Cabinet is packed with Thaksin's allies and critics say rehabilitating the former leader is among the government's top priorities.
10:49 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan - A string of lights spells out the name of the bar in the back of the basement in capital letters, PARADISE. A dozen Chinese women in skintight miniskirts and halter tops flit around clusters of beefy Western men and flirt in broken English.
Now and then, a man and woman climb the stairs to the upper reaches of the house, where Paradise does its real business.
Paradise is a brothel in an unmarked residential compound in an upscale Kabul neighborhood where prostitutes from China cater to Western men. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, thousands of Westerners working for security firms, companies and aid groups have poured into Afghanistan. Not long after came Chinese prostitutes, in some cases trafficked into the country.
The International Organization for Migration helped 96 Chinese women who were deported in 2006. They told IOM they were deceived by a travel agency in China and promised employment in a restaurant for US$300 a month. But when they arrived, they said, the Chinese restaurant owner denied them salaries and forced them to provide sexual services by night.
An IOM staffer said one Chinese woman thought she was going to work in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and had no idea she had instead landed in Kabul.
Afghan officials deny these claims.
"They come here of their own will. They want to do business here. Police caught them red-handed," said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of Kabul's criminal investigations.
In recent years, Afghan authorities have carried out a campaign against moral corruption, raiding brothels fronting as restaurants and deporting the Chinese prostitutes in front of TV cameras. Last year in Kabul, 180 female prostitutes were arrested _ 154 "foreigners" and 26 Afghans, Paktiawal said. He would not give the nationalities of the foreign prostitutes, but many raids in recent years have been at Chinese restaurants.
Many Afghans blame prostitution on immoral Chinese women and Western men and say it is un-Islamic. The highly publicized crackdown on Chinese prostitutes has led to rampant harassment of women of East Asian origin. Police often single out Asian women in spot checks on Kabul's streets.
In Paradise, the women speak Chinese among themselves. One says she is from a town outside Beijing.
The brothel has two identical doors in the back of the building. One leads down to the well-stocked basement bar where the women mingle with potential clients. The other leads up to the main part of the house, where every nook and cranny that can be closed off has a spartan twin bed mattress with no sheets.
A Pussycat Dolls pop song pumps on the speakers, "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" One man rubs the belly of a girl in a gauzy pink miniskirt.
A frequent customer at the bar says it costs US$70 to take a woman upstairs, and US$150 to have her company for the night.
10:48 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - - A desperate hunt was under way Saturday for more than 1,100 prisoners who escaped a jail in southern Afghanistan when Taliban rebels blasted it open, killing 15 guards, officials said.
The prisoners, some of them Taliban militants, fled when the rebels attacked the facility in the city of Kandahar late Friday, blasting it open with suicide bombs before shooting the guards.
The NATO force in Afghanistan said more than 1,100 prisoners were on the loose after what deputy justice minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai called the rebels' most sophisticated attack yet.
"A massive operation is under way to find the escaped inmates. The Afghan security forces are searching for them within the city and along the main and secondary roads," Hashimzai told AFP in the capital, Kabul. None has yet been caught, he added.
An AFP reporter based in the southern city said large numbers of security forces including those of the US-trained Afghan national army had been deployed to search vehicles.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said the rebels used suicide bombs and detonated a bomb-laden water tanker in the attack.
"First we exploded two suicide attacks and then our mujahedin (holy warriors) riding motorcycles entered the prison and killed the remaining security guards.
"We successfully freed all prisoners, including our jailed Taliban and other prisoners," he told AFP.
Authorities had so far recovered the bodies of at least 15 security guards, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and a brother of President Hamid Karzai told AFP.
"We've discovered the bodies of 15 security guards who were killed in the attack. The casualties might be more," Karzai added.
"Several hundred prisoners including Taliban have escaped," he said, without giving a precise figure.
The Taliban have been battling Hamid Karzai's government since they were toppled from power in a US-led operation for failing to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2001.
The raid is a blow to the president, coming one day after world donors pledged 20 billion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan at a conference in Paris but also called on him to strengthen the rule of law.
Despite the presence of about 70,000 international troops mainly operating under NATO, the insurgency aimed at toppling the US-backed government in Kabul has gained pace in the past two years.
Most of the Taliban attacks include suicide and roadside bomb blasts as well as small-scale gunfights targeting security forces. But the Islamic rebels have launched some of their most sophisticated raids in recent months.
In January 2008 several Taliban militants wearing suicide vests raided a five-star hotel in the capital, Kabul, and killed eight people including three foreigners.
And on April 27, Taliban gunmen opened fire on a military parade attended by President Hamid Karzai, missing the President but killed three other people including an MP.
10:48 AM
TOKYO - A 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked a rural, mountainous area of northern Japan on Saturday, killing at least two people, triggering landslides, stopping train service and knocking down a bridge. With roads closed, military aircraft and helicopters were mobilized to assess the damage.
Kyodo News agency said at least 100 people were injured. Officials confirmed 69 injuries and seven people missing. Another 100 people were trapped at a hot springs, according to the government's Disaster Agency, but details of their situation remained unclear.
Two nuclear power plants in the area were being inspected, but there were no immediate reports of damage, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura. Ten nuclear reactors at the two power plants in Onagawa and Fukushima were running normally, operators Tohoku Electric Power Co. and Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
However, electricity had been cut to about 29,000 households in the quake zone.
One of the deaths was a man who ran out of a building in fear and was hit by a passing truck, and the other confirmed death was a man who was buried in a landslide while he was fishing, Machimura said.
There was no danger of tsunami, but several aftershocks, including one with a magnitude of 5.6, struck the area in the hours after the initial temblor. Meteorological Agency official Takashi Yokota said at least 40 aftershocks occurred in the area and could trigger further damage to buildings or cause landslides.
The 8:43 a.m. (2343 GMT Friday) quake was centered in the northern prefecture (state) of Iwate about 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, and was located about 5 miles (8 kilometers) underground _ revised from an initially estimated depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers). It was felt as far away as the capital.
"It shook so violently that I couldn't stand still. I had to lean on the wall," said Masanori Oikawa, an Oshu city official who was at home near the epicenter when the quake struck. "When I rushed to the office, cabinets had been thrown onto the floor and things on the desks were scattered all over the place."
The government said 69 people were confirmed injured, but reports gathered from local authorities indicated at least 100 people had been hurt.
"Damage appears to be growing, but we can't even go out there to assess the situation with roads closed off because of landslides," said Norio Sato, a city official in one of the hardest-hit cities, Kurihara.
In that city, a landslide swallowed 15 construction workers, leaving three of them still missing, while the remaining managed to climb out on their own. Four people at Komanoyu hot springs were also missing after a separate landslide hit the resort hotel, according to another city official, Katsuyuki Sato.
The Defense Ministry dispatched a dozen helicopters and patrol aircraft to the region to conduct flyovers and assess the extent of damage. The government also sent a CH-47 helicopter carrying Disaster Minister Shinya Izumi to the region.
Local governors had asked for more troops to help in rescue and assessment operations.
Footage shot from media helicopters showed landslides on rural roads running along knots of mountains separated by long stretches of rice fields.
Footage aired on national broadcaster NHK also showed a bridge that collapsed. NHK said four people were seriously injured while riding on a bus over a bridge when the quake hit, but it was unclear whether it was the same one.
"We must assess the situation as quickly possible and do utmost in our relief activities," said Machimura.
Footage from the closest large city, Sendai, showed the force of the quake shook surveillance cameras for 30 seconds. NHK interviewed an official from Miyagi prefecture, where Sendai is located, who said he saw tiles coming off the roofs of some homes.
"It was scary. It was difficult to stand up," said Sachiko Sugihara, a convenience store worker in Oshu in a separate interview with NHK. "The TV fell over and the refrigerator shook."
Windows broke at a nursery school in the area and NHK said some teachers and children were injured, though it was unclear how seriously.
Sendai appeared largely unscathed.
"So far we have not received any reports of damage or injuries. Everything is normal," Hideki Hara, a police official in Sendai, told the AP. "Phone lines, water and electricity are all working right now."
Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world. The most recent major quake in Japan killed more than 6,400 people in the city of Kobe in January 1995.
10:47 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, Afghan officials said Saturday.
The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among those who fled the prison during the attack late Friday.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force put the number of escapees slightly higher, at around 1,100, according to spokesman Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco. He conceded that the assault was a success.
"We admit it," Branco said. "Their guys did the job properly in that sense, but it does not have a strategic impact. We should not draw any conclusion about the deterioration of the military operations in the area. We should not draw any conclusion about the strength of the Taliban."
The complex attack included a truck bombing at the main gate, a suicide bomber who struck a back wall and rockets fired from inside the prison courtyard, setting off a series of explosions that rattled Kandahar, the country's second biggest city.
The rockets demolished an upper prison floor, said Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, a deputy minister at the Justice Ministry. Nine police were killed in the attack, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary.
There were no indications that the militants received help from the inside, but as a precaution the prison's chief official, Abdul Qabir, was placed under investigation for possible involvement, Hashimzai said.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked Sarposa Prison.
NATO was providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to help track fleeing militants, Branco said.
Afghan officials warned that the Taliban essentially boosted its force by 400 fighters because of the prison break, but Branco said NATO officials didn't think it would change the military situation.
"OK, they got some more fighters, more shooters," Branco said. "These guys who escaped from the prison are not going to change the operational tempo and they do not provide the Taliban with operational initiative."
A man who claimed to be one of the militants who escaped, Abdul Nafai, called an Associated Press reporter and said the insurgents had minibuses waiting outside the prison during the attack and that dozens of militants fled in the vehicles. Other witnesses and officials said the militants fled on foot into pomegranate and grape groves behind the prison.
Hashimzai said the jail did not meet international minimum standards for a prison. The Kandahar facility was not built as a prison but had been modified into one, he said.
A delegation of deputy ministers from the Justice and Interior ministries left for Kandahar early Saturday.
"Plans are under way to renovate all the prisons around the country," said Hashimzai. "Kandahar was one of them, but unfortunately what happened last night is cause for concern."
Kandahar was the Taliban's former stronghold and its province has been the scene of fierce fighting in the past two years between insurgents and NATO troops, primarily from Canada and the United States.
Qabir, the chief of Kandahar's Sarposa Prison, said the assault began when a tanker truck full of explosives detonated at the prison's main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post, killing all the officers inside.
Soon after, a suicide bomber on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison, Qabir said.
Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, said militants had been planning the assault for two months.
Canadian soldiers with NATO's International Security Assistance Force helped provide a security cordon after the attack.
Last month, some 200 Taliban suspects at the prison ended a weeklong hunger strike after a parliamentary delegation promised that their cases would be reviewed.
6:36 PM
YEA!!!!!!!THIS FEW DAYS GOING TO MALAYSIA FOR TOUR , HMM....WOULD'N SEE ME POSTING LOLZZZZ WILL BE BACK ON NEXT WEEK WHOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5:32 PM
AMSTERDAM - Unlucky for some? Dutch statisticians have established that Friday 13th, a date regarded in many countries as inauspicious, is actually safer than an average Friday.
A study published on Thursday by the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics showed that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays.
"I find it hard to believe that it is because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home, but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th," CVS statistician Alex Hoen told the Verzekerd insurance magazine.
In the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7,800 traffic accidents each Friday, the CVS study said. But the average figure when the 13th fell on a Friday was just 7,500.
There were also fewer incidents of fire and theft, although the average value of losses on Fridays 13th was slightly higher.
12:25 PM
SINGAPORE, June 12, 2008 (AFP) - Singapore's military has suspended its physical and endurance training for three days after two soldiers died this week, the defence minister said Thursday.
"I support the decision of the SAF to take a time-out on physical and endurance training for three days," Minister of Defence Teo Chee Hean said in a statement.
A pilot trainee collapsed Wednesday afternoon while undergoing jungle orientation training in Brunei and died later in hospital.
In the other incident, a recruit fainted a day earlier during a two-kilometre (1.2-mile) walk at a Singapore training centre and also died in hospital.
The defence minister said the suspension "will allow the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) to review and refocus on such activities to ensure that proper procedures are in place and being followed before such training resumes."
Singapore has one of Asia's most modern armed forces, to which young men are drafted for national service.
"While the SAF needs to carry out realistic training, this will be done without compromise to safety," the minister said.
1:39 PM
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - - The United States insisted Thursday that its forces were retaliating against a "hostile act" when an air strike killed 11 Pakistani soldiers on the murky border with Afghanistan.
Islamabad has accused US-led forces in Afghanistan of making an unprovoked and "cowardly" attack on the checkpost in Pakistan's volatile Mohmand tribal zone, further straining ties between the "war on terror" allies.
In response, Washington said it regretted the "reported loss of Pakistani life" but insisted its forces were targeting militants.
Whatever the circumstances, it is the worst incident of its kind since the Pakistani government sided with the United States in 2001 in its fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremism.
It also comes amid growing unease in Washington and Kabul over Pakistan's efforts to negotiate with Taliban militants.
"The timing is terrible," said Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute analyst as well as a former CIA officer and top advisor to three US presidents on South Asian affairs.
"Whatever little pressure Pakistan has been putting on Al Qaeda is likely to get even smaller," he told AFP.
Pakistani security officials say Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy a strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, in an area long disputed between the countries.
The Afghan troops were repulsed, the officials say, after which coalition forces bombed the area, also killing around 15 Taliban nearby.
In an unusually harsh statement, a Pakistani army spokesman "condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act" and warned that it had "hit at the very basis" of cooperation in the anti-terror fight.
Islamabad later summoned US ambassador Anne Patterson to lodge a protest.
In Kabul, the coalition admitted carrying out an air and artillery strike, but insisted it was targeting militants hiding near the outpost -- and that it had informed Pakistani forces.
The United States is "sad to see the reported loss of Pakistani life," a US State Department spokesman said in Washington.
"However, our troops were defending themselves against a hostile act, which they have the right to do," spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told AFP.
The Pentagon took a similar line. Spokesman Geoff Morrell said that "every indication we have is that it was a legitimate strike in self-defense against forces that had attacked the coalition forces."
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf backed the toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, but his support has angered many Pakistanis and drawn the wrath of militants.
Earlier this year his party was voted out of office and the new government, led by the former opposition, has sought to strike peace deals with militants in the restive tribal zones bordering Afghanistan.
Insurgents fighting the Afghan government and the NATO- and US-led forces shoring it up regularly cross into the tribal zones, where they find refuge as well as a steady supply of weapons, ammunition and new recruits, experts say.
The US-led coalition said it had informed Pakistan that troops were coming under fire from "anti-Afghan" forces in a wooded area near the checkpoint.
Unmanned drone aircraft identified the militants and "in self defence" the coalition fired artillery rounds and used close-air support "until the threat was eliminated."
No coalition troops crossed the border, it said.
Pakistan has protested over a spate of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months.
Several Pakistani soldiers have also been killed by stray shells, but it appears to be the first time any have been killed by a targeted air strike by US forces.
The attack came two days after a think-tank funded by the US Department of Defence said members of Pakistan's intelligence services and its paramilitary forces were supporting the
12:23 PM
OTTAWA (AFP) - - Canada's prime minister officially apologized to natives for more than a century of abuses at boarding schools set up to assimilate its indigenous peoples.
"The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in the House of Commons Wednesday.
"We are sorry."
Flanked by MPs, native leaders in traditional garments and Indian Residential School alumni, many holding back tears, Harper said: "The treatment of children in Indian Residential Schools is a sad chapter in our history."
He acknowledged "two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their home, families, traditions, and cultures and to assimilate them in to the dominant culture.
"These objectives were based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal," he said.
"The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage, and language."
Beginning in 1874, 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis children in Canada were forcibly enrolled in the 132 boarding schools run by Christian churches on behalf of the federal government in an effort to integrate them into society.
Many survivors alleged abuse by headmasters and teachers, who stripped them of their culture and language.
As well, they say their education left them disconnected from their families, communities and feeling "ashamed" of being born native.
It was "the darkest chapter in Canada's history," said Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations. "They tried to kill the Indian in the child, to eradicate any sense of Indian-ness from Canada," he told AFP.
Wearing an Indian feather headdress, his voice cracking, Fontaine told the House, following Harper: "The attempts to erase our identities hurt us deeply. But it also hurt all Canadians and impoverished the character of this nation."
"The memories of residential schools sometimes cut like merciless knives at our souls," he said. "But this day will help us to put that pain behind us."
"For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness today in this House that our survival as First Nations peoples in this land is affirmed forever."
"We still have to struggle, but now we are in this together," Fontaine said.
His words were echoed by native leaders who formed a "healing circle" with Fontaine and the oldest of the alumni, 104-year-old Marguerite Wabano of the Attawapiskat First Nation, on the floor of the House of Commons.
And they were cheered by tens of thousands gathered at community centres nationwide to watch the solemn telecast event.
"This apology will help us all mark the end of this dark period in our collective history as a nation," said Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and a former Canadian ambassador.
"It's a day for us to move forward," said Clement Chartier, president of the Metis National Council.
Later, the prime minister presented dignitaries with tea and tobacco, and participated in a native smudge ceremony, as Metis fiddles and Inuit drums played.
There are some 1.3 million aboriginals in Canada, out of a total population of 33 million.
Most of Canada's Indian Residential Schools, modeled after US Indian industrial schools of the period, were shut down in the 1970s. The last one closed in 1996 in Saskatchewan province.
The government's apology is part of a 1.9-billion dollar (Canadian, US) settlement with 80,000 former students in 2006 -- the largest court settlement in Canadian history.
A five-year commission headed by Canada's top aboriginal jurist was also appointed in April to probe abuses at the schools, as part of the deal.
It plans to hear testimony from thousands of survivors and officials, as well as gather and review millions of government and church documents to be made public for the first time.
12:22 PM
SYDNEY (AFP) - - The Dalai Lama on Thursday appealed to Tibetans not to disturb the Olympic torch relay as it passes through the capital Lhasa, saying he fully supports the Beijing Olympics.
The torch is expected to pass through Tibet over the next week, although exact details of its schedule are being kept secret following unrest in the province against Chinese rule in March.
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader said he did not want the torch to spark protests in Lhasa similar to those that erupted when the relay passed through London and Paris on its round-the-world journey.
"The Olympic Games we fully support, the Olympic torch is part of that," he told reporters in Sydney, where he is conducting a series of meditation seminars.
"Over a billion Chinese brothers and sisters feel very proud of it, we must respect this, therefore we should not disturb it."
Some groups critical of China's rule in Tibet have said taking the torch to the Himalayan region is an insult considering the massive Chinese security clampdown after the March unrest there.
Exiled Tibetan leaders say 203 people died in the crackdown, while China says it killed no one and that "rioters" were responsible for 21 deaths.
China has largely blamed the Dalai Lama for fomenting the unrest and accused him of seeking to sabotage the Olympic Games.
Despite such accusations, Beijing in early May restarted a dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama over the remote, Himalayan region.
China "peacefully liberated" Tibet in the early 1950s, which resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing the region in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
In recent years, the Dalai Lama has renounced Tibetan independence and, while acknowledging that the region is a part of China, has urged greater political and religious autonomy for his homeland.
12:03 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - - Pakistan said a "cowardly" air strike by US-led forces killed 11 Pakistani troops on Wednesday near the Afghan border and warned that it had harmed cooperation in the war against terrorism.
The army accused the US-led coalition in Afghanistan of launching an unprovoked attack on a checkpost in Pakistan's volatile Mohmand tribal zone while the foreign office demanded an investigation.
In Kabul, the coalition admitted carrying out an air and artillery strike in Pakistan but said it was targeting militants hiding near the paramilitary outpost and that it had informed Pakistani forces.
The incident, the worst of its kind since Pakistan joined the "war on terror" in 2001, comes amid growing unease in Washington and Kabul over Pakistan's efforts to negotiate with Taliban militants.
In an unusually harsh statement, a Pakistani army spokesman "condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act" and said 11 soldiers died in the overnight air strike, including an officer.
"The incident had hit at the very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the coalition in the war against terror," the statement quoted the spokesman as saying.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the incident, telling parliament: "We will take a stand to preserve the sovereignty, dignity and respect of the country."
President Pervez Musharraf backed the US-led toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the 9/11 attacks on the US, but his support for Washington has angered many Pakistanis and attracted the wrath of militants at home.
The foreign office condemned the "senseless use of air power" by the coalition, adding that the "attack also tends to undermine the very basis of our cooperation with the coalition forces and warrants a serious rethink on their part of the consequences that could ensue from such rash acts."
Islamabad later summonsed US ambassador Anne Patterson to lodge a protest.
The official Associated Press of Pakistan reported that Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir conveyed the "resentment from the government to the ambassador".
Pakistani security officials said the deaths came after Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy the strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, which borders eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province.
The post was in an area long disputed between the countries.
Pakistani troops repulsed the Afghan soldiers and the coalition then bombed the area. Coalition aircraft also killed around 15 Taliban about a kilometre (half a mile) away, the officials said.
Heavily armed Pakistani tribesmen with rocket launchers and Kalashnikov rifles gathered near the checkpost in the mountainous Gora Prai area to show their support after the attack, residents said.
The dead soldiers' bodies had been sent to their hometowns for burial, state media said.
The US-led coalition said an investigation was ongoing but did not specifically refer to the Pakistani allegations about the deaths.
In a statement, it said its soldiers had repelled a militant attack during an operation in Afghanistan that was previously coordinated with Pakistan.
Coalition forces informed the Pakistani army that they were coming under fire from "anti-Afghan" forces in a wooded area near the Gora Prai checkpoint in Pakistan, it said.
Unmanned drone aircraft identified the militants and "in self defence" the coalition fired artillery rounds and then used close-air support "until the threat was eliminated."
No coalition troops crossed the border, it said.
"We always reserve the right of self defence in these matters," a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said in Washington.
Later the US State Department called the deaths "regrettable". Spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos added: "We're sad to see the loss of life among the Pakistani military, who are our partners in fighting terror."
"This is a reminder that better cross-border communications between forces is vital," the director of press relations said, reading from a statement.
A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants, Maulvi Omar, said eight "mujahedeen (holy warriors)" were killed by coalition helicopters.
Pakistan has protested over a series of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months.
Several Pakistani soldiers have also been killed by stray shells, but it appears to be the first time any have been killed by a targeted air strike by US forces.
The attack came two days after a think tank funded by the US Department of Defence said members of Pakistan's intelligence services and its paramilitaries were supporting the Taliban.
12:01 PM
BANGKOK (AFP) - - Thai truck drivers threatened Wednesday to go on strike next week and block roads to the capital with 400,000 lorries unless the government helps them pay for soaring fuel costs.
The Confederation of Transportation of Thailand (CTT) has handed over its demands to government ministries and Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, giving them a deadline of next Tuesday.
"If there are no measures from the government before June 17, you will see hundreds of thousands of trucks heading to Bangkok from all over the country," said Thongyoo Khongkhan, secretary general of the CTT.
"We will drive slowly, probably at 10 kilometres (six miles) per hour, on the left lane around Bangkok," he told AFP.
Thongyoo said that thousands of trucks were already parked at the side of roads across Thailand after the cabinet refused to address their concerns at their weekly meeting on Tuesday.
"The government already realises that it's very hard for truck drivers to survive under present oil prices and inflation," he said.
"But yesterday we were very disappointed that the government did not even mention our plight."
Thongyoo said that more than 400,000 lorries nationwide are members of his confederation are ready to comply with the strike.
Demands include that the government provides low price fuel and helps truckers convert their vehicles to use natural gas.
Benchmark global crude prices stormed past the 100-dollar mark for the first time at the start of the year, reaching a record 138 dollars this month.
In Thailand, diesel prices sat at a record high of 41.34 baht (1.25 dollars) per litre on Wednesday.
Thousands of truck drivers in Europe are protesting against soaring petrol prices, while demonstrations against fuel price hikes in India left 20 people injured on Tuesday.
12:00 PM
NEW YORK (AFP) - - Oil prices jumped above 135 dollars a barrel Wednesday in the wake of a US government report which showed that American crude reserves sank for the fourth week in a row.
New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for July delivery, jumped 5.07 dollars to close at 136.38 dollars per barrel, after earlier spiking as high as 136.80.
The contract had surged to an all-time high of 139.12 dollars last Friday, when it won a record-breaking 10.75 dollars in one day's trade.
In London, Brent North Sea crude for July delivery rallied 4.00 dollars to settle at 135.02 dollars, after hitting a historic peak of 138.12 last week.
The latest price runs came after the US government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that American crude stockpiles dived 4.6 million barrels in the week ending June 6.
That was far heavier than market expectations for a drop of 1.5 million barrels and marked the fourth straight weekly fall.
Prices also rallied as more details emerged about a planned June 22 meeting of the world's biggest oil producers and consumers to discuss skyrocketing crude prices.
OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri said the meeting, to take place in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, will be at head-of-state level.
"The meeting in Jeddah will be the head of states and they will discuss why we have high energy prices," Badri told AFP on the sidelines of an energy conference in London.
Badri would not be drawn on which heads of state would attend the one-day gathering that was announced by Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
US energy secretary Samuel Bodman is due to represent Washington at the meeting.
Saudi Arabia's cabinet on Monday had asked Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi to convene a meeting of producer and consumer nations, and oil firms, "to discuss the jump in prices, its causes and how to deal with it objectively."
European countries, the European Commission, the International Energy Agency (IEA) -- the energy watchdog for industrialized countries -- and the heads of investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would be invited, he added.
Analysts in the Gulf said the call for the meeting was aimed at showing that OPEC states were not responsible for the price surge.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose members collectively produce about 40 percent of the world's crude, maintains that the oil market is well supplied and that current prices do not reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand.
Saudi Arabia, a close Western ally, has come under sustained US pressure to boost output.
Ahead of the Jeddah meeting, finance ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations will gather in Japan this weekend to discuss ways to limit the economic damage of soaring oil prices.
Oil prices have surged since breaking through the 100-dollar level at the start of the year, and some bullish analysts say prices could hit 150 dollars soon.
9:02 PM
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11:12 AM
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11:12 AM
SAQQARA, Egypt - Egyptian archaeologists unveiled on Thursday a 4,000-year-old "missing pyramid" that is believed to have been discovered by an archaeologist almost 200 years ago and never seen again.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief, said the pyramid appears to have been built by King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years.
In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned it among his finds at Saqqara, referring to it as number 29 and calling it the "Headless Pyramid" because only its base remains. But the desert sands covered the discovery, and no archaeologist since has been able to find Menkauhor's resting place.
"We have filled the gap of the missing pyramid," Hawass told reporters on a tour of the discoveries at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, about 12 miles south of Cairo.
The team also announced the discovery of part of a ceremonial procession road where high priests, their faces obscured by masks, once carried mummified sacred bulls worshipped in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.
The pyramid's base — or the superstructure as archeologists call it — was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past year and a half by Hawass' team.
Hawass said the style of the pyramid indicates it was from the Fifth Dynasty, a period that began in 2,465 B.C. and ended in 2,325 B.C. That would put it about two centuries after the completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza, believed to have been finished in 2,500 B.C.
Another proof of its date, Hawass says, was the discovery inside the pyramid of a gray granite lid of a sarcophagus, of the type used at that time.
The rectangular base, at the bottom of a 15 foot-deep pit dug out by workers, gives little indication of how imposing the pyramid might have once been. Heaps of huge rocks, many still partially covered in sand and dust, mark the pyramid's walls and entrance, and a burial chamber was discovered inside.
Archaeologists have not found a cartouche — a pharaoh's name in hieroglyphs — of the pyramid's owner. But Hawass said that based on the estimated date of the pyramid he was convinced it belonged to Menkauhor.
Work continues at the site, where Hawass said he expected to unearth "subsidiary" pyramids around Menkauhor's main one, and hoped to find inscriptions there to back up his claim.
The partial ceremonial procession road unveiled Thursday dates back to the Ptolemaic period, which ran for about 300 years before 30 B.C.
It runs alongside Menkauhor's pyramid, leading from a mummification chamber toward the Saqqara Serapium, a network of underground tombs where sacred bulls were interred, discovered by French archaeologist August Mariette in 1850.
A high priest would carry the mummified bulls' remains down the procession road — the only human allegedly allowed to walk on it — to the chambers where the bulls would be placed in sarcophagi, Hawass said.
Ancient Egyptians considered Apis Bulls to be incarnations of the city god of Memphis and connected with fertility and the sun-cult. A bull would be chosen for its deep black coloring and would be required to have a single white mark between the horns. Selected by priests and honored until death, it was then later mummified and buried in the underground galleries of the Serapium.
The procession route's discovery "adds an important part to our knowledge of the Old Kingdom and its rituals," Hawass said.
The sprawling archaeological site at Saqqara is most famous for the Step Pyramid of King Djoser — the oldest of Egypt's over 100 pyramids, built in the 27th century B.C.
Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt for some 200 years, Hawass says only a third of what lies underground in Saqqara has been discovered.
"You never know what secrets the sands of Egypt hide," he said. "I always believe there will be more pyramids to discover."
1:56 PM
SANTANDER, Spain (AFP) - Spain laboured to a 1-0 Euro 2008 warm-up victory over the USA here on Wednesday night, badly missing injured striker David Villa and midfielder Andres Iniesta.
Xavi Hernandez scored the only goal of the game in the 78th minute for a side which lacked ideas, particularly in the playmaking role in which Iniesta excels and up front where Valencia's Villa would have made a difference.
Villa is suffering from a right quadriceps injury after a training ground incident on Tuesday and tests revealed a major bruise. Iniesta missed the match because of food poisoning.
Aragones almost fielded the same side which had trouble beating Peru 2-1 last Saturday, though Santiago Cazorla and Cesc Fabregas came in for Iniesta and Villa against Bob Bradley's American side.
As for the USA, Kansas City Wizards striker Eddie Johnson caught the eye with a shot and a headed chance before and after the break.
Liverpool's Fernando Torres, who was playing despite ankle problems, had a great chance midway through the first half though American keeper Tim Howard was up to the task.
Torres eventually came off for Dani Guiza, the Spanish league's top scorer, which gave the attack more pace.
The United States, who are using this match as a build-up to their June 15 World Cup qualifier against Barbados, worked hard and tried to hit on the counterattack throughout the match.
Spain travel to Austria on Thursday for the June 7 to 29, 16-nation Euro 2008 finals, playing their first match against Russia, who beat Lithuania 4-1 in a friendly on Wednesday night.
1:55 PM
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Al-Qaeda Wednesday claimed in Internet statements to have carried out a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad which left at least six dead, SITE monitoring services said.
Monday's attack was said to be in revenge for the publication in Danish newspapers of cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammed according to statements posted on Islamic militant forums, SITE said.
"One of the heroes of 'Qaedat al-Jihad' carried out a suicide operation on the morning of Monday," said the statement signed by one of the terror network's leaders, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid.
The attack was "in revenge against the state of infidelity, called 'Denmark', that posted cartoons hostile to the messenger of Allah," he added, according to an English translation provided by the SITE intelligence group.
"This operation is a warning to the infidel state and those who ride with it, so that they are deterred from their sin... and so that they apologize for what they did," Yazid added.
SITE, a US-based group which monitors Islamic militant Internet websites and chat rooms, said the message was posted Wednesday on several forums.
Danish intelligence officials said earlier Wednesday that the attack had been meticulously planned for a "long time."
"Preliminary information gleaned from the car used in this suicide attack seems to indicate that it had been planned for a long time with precision," said the PET intelligence service in a statement.
Denmark's secret services have sent three experts to Islamabad as part of their investigation.
One Danish citizen of Pakistani origin and two Pakistani employees were among the dead in the blast that badly damaged the embassy and the offices of a UN-backed aid agency.
Al-Qaeda extremists called for attacks on Danish targets after Danish newspapers ran caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Danish newspapers first published the controversial cartoons in 2005, sparking violent protests in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Several dailies reprinted the sketches in February this year.
Yazid said Al-Qaeda congratulated "the Pakistani mujahideen ... the pioneers of the religious fervor and Islamic zeal, who participated" in the attack. And he added the group would soon publish the will of the suicide bomber.
1:54 PM
CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader called on Muslims to launch a holy war to break Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, in an audio recording posted Wednesday on an Islamic militant Internet site.
In the 11-minute tape, a voice purportedly belonging to Ayman al-Zawahri says in Arabic that the "salvation of the Muslim nation is through the march of its sons on the path of jihad."
An accompanying banner says the message was issued to mark the 41st anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, during which Egypt lost the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Syria lost the Golan Heights and Jordan lost the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Trying to minimize the shock of the defeat, Arabs have long called the war the "naksa" — "setback" in Arabic — but it remains a deep wound.
In al-Zawahri's recording, titled "In Memory of the Naksa ... Break the Siege of Gaza," Osama bin Laden's deputy blames Arab regimes for the 1967 defeat. He says Arab governments were "impotent and unable to protect the Muslim nation, its sanctuaries and its wealth."
"The sons of the nation should break the shackles of the treacherous regimes and move to wage jihad, which has become a duty," al-Zawahri says.
The tape follows a audio message from Bin Laden on May 18 in which he criticized Arab states for not waging war against Israel.
Al-Zawahri's message seemed especially directed at Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized control of the Gaza Strip last June in fighting with supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas' government is now based in the West Bank, leaving the Palestinian territories split.
Hamas' seizure of Gaza and its near daily firing of rockets at towns in southern Israel has prompted Israel to impose a blockade on the strip and mount airstrikes and occasional ground operations in Gaza.
Al-Zawahri lashes out at Egyptian authorities in his new message, declaring Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his troops "criminal traitors" for perpetuating Israel's blockade by sealing its own boundary with Gaza.
"You have the right to enter Egypt whenever you like and destroy the treacherous siege," al-Zawahri tells Gazans. "Those who confront you should not blame anyone but themselves."
Just hours before al-Zawahri's message was released, Abbas called for renewed dialogue with Hamas.
Al-Zawahri often issues audio and video recordings, speaking on a wide range of topics. He has frequently discussed Palestinian issues.
12:30 PM
LOS ANGELES - NASA's newest spacecraft got down and dirty on Mars, taking its first practice scoop of Martian soil ahead of the actual dig expected later this week, scientists said Monday.
The test dig made Sunday by the Phoenix Mars Lander's 8-foot-long robotic arm uncovered bits of bright specks in the soil believed to be ice or salt.
"We see this nice streak of white material," said Pat Woida, senior engineer at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which is directing the mission. "We don't know what this material is yet."
Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains May 25 on a three-month hunt to study whether the far northern latitudes could support primitive life. Its main task is to excavate trenches in the permafrost in search of evidence of past water and organic compounds considered the chemical building blocks of life. The cost of the mission is $420 million.
Close-up images beamed back by the lander over the weekend revealed that its three legs are resting on what appears to be a slab of ice. It apparently was uncovered when the spacecraft's thrusters blew away the topsoil. Also over the weekend, engineers fixed a nagging short-circuit problem on one of the lander's instruments.
With the practice dig out of the way, scientists will scour the landscape for a prime spot for the lander to perform three side-by-side digs. Phoenix will deliver the scoopfuls of dirt to its miniature ovens, and vapors from the heating will be analyzed for traces of organic compounds. Later digs will focus on bringing samples to its microscope and wet chemistry lab.
"We're ready to go," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, who is known by team members as the "dig czar." "We're pretty excited to get on with business here."
Since Phoenix's arrival, scientists have roped off no-digging zones to preserve parts of the landing site. They've also named rocks and other geologic features after fairy-tale and nursery rhyme characters, including "Humpty Dumpty" and "Alice."
11:39 AM
VIENNA (AFP) - - The UN atomic watchdog sits down Monday for a week-long meeting during which it will discuss what its inspectors term "alarming" indications that Iran may have been working to build a nuclear bomb until just a few years ago.
The 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency holds its regular summer board meeting until Friday.
Topping the agenda will be the latest report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei on the agency's long-running investigation into Tehran's controversial nuclear drive.
Iran insists its atomic programme is entirely peaceful, but western countries, and the United States in particular, are convinced the Islamic republic is covertly seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
In the sternly-worded report, the IAEA expressed "serious concern" that Iran is hiding information about alleged weaponisation work, as well as defying UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.
According to intelligence gathered by 10 different countries, Iran may have been looking into high explosives of the sort used in implosion-type nuclear bombs, and exploring modifications to missiles consistent with making them capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.
Iran has repeatedly dismissed the intelligence as fake and fabricated.
Nevertheless, in the report, the IAEA insisted that "substantive explanations are required from Iran."
The alleged weaponisation work "remain a matter of serious concern. Clarification of these is critical to an assessment of the nature of Iran's past and present nuclear programme."
In preparation for the board meeting, the agency's head of safeguards Olli Heinonen briefed diplomats on the technical aspects of the report.
According to diplomats who attended the meeting, Heinonen expressed "alarm" that Iran has in its possession a document describing the process for making what could be the core of a nuclear weapon.
The 15-page document describes the process of machining uranium metal into two hemispheres of the kind used in nuclear warheads.
Iran has told the IAEA that it received the document back in 1987 along with design information for the so-called P1 centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
Tehran insists it did not request the uranium metal document.
But the IAEA argues it needs to understand the precise role of the document to be able to determine the true nature of Iran's nuclear activities.
11:38 AM
SINGAPORE: Some Singaporeans said they may cut back on trips to Malaysia once the proposed ban on the sale of petrol and diesel to foreign registered vehicles within a 50—kilometre radius of Malaysia’s borders takes effect.
The ban is expected to kick in as early as this Friday in a move to prevent abuse of heavy fuel subsidies.
However, Malaysia’s Domestic Trade Minister, Shahrir Samad, said on Tuesday that the ban is a temporary one. It will be lifted once a new subsidy mechanism to replace the existing scheme, where everyone is subsidised, is put in place.
Still, the move is expected to affect hundreds of motorists who regularly cross over the border for cheaper oil.
Malaysia’s diesel and petrol prices are among the lowest in Asia due to high government subsidies.
The ban is expected to affect up to 300 petrol stations in the country. And Singaporeans who head to Johor Bahru for cheaper petrol will be the most affected.
For example, Loy Cheong, a businessman who is a regular traveller across the border, said he will cut back on his trips.
Mr Cheong, Business Development Manager, Medo Enterprises Holding, said: "Buying cheap petrol is one of the privileges and what attracts the Singaporean to go there. But with this implementation, it may deter people from visiting Johor.
"We go normally once a week or once in every two weeks. But if they implement this, maybe we will go less often, like once a month."
Also facing problems are Malaysians who are Singapore permanent residents.
Koh Ming Li, a Singapore permanent resident, lives near the border and has been coming to Singapore almost every day for the past two years for work.
He said: "The problem now is that it prohibits me from driving directly into JB. And as for the 50—kilometre radius from JB, I would say (there’s) almost no petrol kiosks within JB that I can pump petrol from."
Petrol kiosk operators who violate the ban face the possibility of a S$110,000 fine (RM$250,000) or a three—year jail term or both. — CNA/vm
11:36 AM
SINGAPORE - Malaysia has put off plans to ban foreign-registered vehicles from filling up on subsidized gasoline in its border areas with Singapore and Thailand, a top Malaysian official said Sunday.
The ban was originally due to start Monday at up to 300 stations within 30 miles (50 kilometers) of Malaysia's borders with the two countries, where gasoline costs up to twice as much.
But Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is in Singapore to attend a security summit, told reporters that an anti-inflation Cabinet committee would meet Tuesday to review the plan.
"We have to find a new effective date because there are other matters, like for example, can we have separate pumps because the Singaporeans are saying that they don't mind paying the market rate," he said.
The statement indicated that the government may allow foreigners to buy higher-priced fuel, whereas the earlier plan was to impose a total ban on foreigners buying fuel.
Najib declined to elaborate, only saying that the postponement was made following requests by Singaporeans.
The move is part of Malaysia's measures to curb soaring subsidies, which are expected to cost the government 45 billion ringgit (US$14 billion; �9 billion) this year as global oil prices skyrocket.
Thousands of Singaporeans cross the border every day into Malaysia's southern Johor state, many of them to shop for groceries and to fill up on gasoline to take advantage of lower prices.
Many Malaysians who work in Singapore have also complained they should be allowed to enjoy subsidized rates for their Singapore-registered vehicles, he said. Many Thais also cross into Malaysia from the northern border to buy the cheaper fuel.
The government last raised prices for gasoline, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas in February 2006, when crude oil futures were near a then-record high of about US$70 (�44) a barrel.
Crude oil prices recently breached US$130 (�82.5) a barrel, piling new pressure on the Malaysian government's finances as it grapples with an economic slowdown and rising inflation.
Regular gasoline in Malaysia costs 1.92 ringgit (US$0.61; �0.40) a liter, or 7.27 ringgit (US$2.34; �1.52) a gallon. In Singapore, the same grade gasoline costs S$2.05 (US$1.48; �0.96) per liter, or S$7.76 (US$5.63; �3.65) per gallon.
Thailand sells regular gasoline at 31.59 baht ($1.01; �0.73) a liter, or 120 baht (US$3.87; �2.51) per gallon.
2:49 PM
JERUSALEM (AFP) - - Israel on Sunday was due to reopen a Gaza border crossing point for commercial goods, closed after Palestinians fired rockets five days earlier in violation of a truce, a military spokesman said.
Authorities initially decided to reopen two key crossing points, but later reconsidered. "We finally decided to only reopen Sufa for the time being," said spokesman Peter Lerner.
"Around 80 trucks filled with goods and humanitarian aid should be authorised to enter the Gaza Strip on Sunday," he added.
The Nahal Oz terminal for fuel shipments was reopened on Friday.
Egypt negotiated the June 19 truce between Gaza's ruling Hamas movement and the Jewish state, aiming to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel's lifting of its blockade of Gaza.
Islamic Jihad on Tuesday fired three rockets at Israel in what it said was revenge for the death of one of its commanders in a firefight with Israeli troops in the West Bank.
Israel responded by again shutting Gaza's commercial goods border crossings. It has not however resumed the near-daily air strikes and ground incursions it carried out in the months leading up to the truce.
The Erez passenger crossing, used by diplomats, journalists, and Gazans requiring medical care in Israel or abroad, has remained open.
2:33 PM
OH YEAH NOW GOING TO TWO WEEKS AFTER I SAID THAT I WOULD BE GOING TO MALAYSIA TWO WEEKS AGO.ANYWAY WE SAT COACH TO THE PLACE CALL CAMERON HIGHLAND AND I THINK THE DISTANCE BETWEEN SINGAPORE AND CAMERON HIGHLAND WOULD BE AROUND 500 TO 600KM,SO WE TOOK ABT 7HRS SITTING IN THE BUS TO REACH TO THE DESTINATION PLUS 1 HRS GOING UPHILL TO THE CAPITAL TOWN IN THERE CALLED BRINCHANG.THE JOURNEY WAS FINE ACEPT THE JOURNEY GOING UPHILL THAT WAS TURNING LEFT THEN RIGHT THAT MAKE ME FEEL DIZZY.LOLZ AS WE GO UP THR I FEEL COLDER THEN USUAL COS IS IN THE EARLY MORNING ABT 6AM THAT WHY IT WILL BE COLDER THAN USUAL.ANYWAY AFTER REACHING THE TOWN,HAVE A BREAKFAST THEN WENT TO OUR FIRST TOUR BEFORE CHECKING INTO MY HOTEL,SO WE WENT TO THE LESIURE TOUR THAT GO TO THE PLANTATION AND FARMS.LOLZ THEN CHECK INTO OUR HOTEL,THE NEXT DAY WE WENT TO THE NATURE TOUR AND THE PLANTATION TOUR,I MISS THE NATURE TOUR AS WE WENT INTO THE FOREST,THE CONDITION THERE IS QUITE DAM AND MUDDY THAT DIRTY MY PANTS BUT WORTH IT COS I LIKE NATURE AND ITS LIKE A JUNGLE,DIFFERENT FROM SINGAPORE FOREST,THE AIR THERE IS ALSO VERY FRESH AND COOLING COS U NOE,ON TOP THE HIGHLAND.AFTER THAT GO TO THE TOUR ON TO THE HIGHEST ACCESSABLE PLACE OF CAMERON HIGHLAND,THEN GOT ONE I THINK 7 STORY TOUR WITH A VERY STEEP LADDER OVER THERE ,WAH DAMN DIFFICULT TO CLIMB UP BUT WHEN REACH TO THE TOP,CAN SEE SPECTECULAR VIEW SO I THINK THE EFFORT IS PAID OFF.SO NEXT TIME IF WANT TO GO TO THE WWW.TITIWANGSATOUR.COM OR MAYBE SEARCH THE NET FOR IT AS THIS WEBSITE I PLACED IS NOT REALLY ACCURATE.LOLZ
2:19 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - - Pakistani forces pressed ahead with an anti-militant offensive near the Afghan border for a second day Sunday, in a move aimed at easing US fears over Islamabad's talks with insurgents.
Soldiers were setting up checkposts in the northwestern Khyber tribal district, a day after launching the operation and demolishing the house of a leader of an Islamist group accused of threatening the main city of Peshawar.
The operation is the first by the new government since it began negotiating with Taliban militants after elections in February -- although officials said the targeted rebel warlord, Mangal Bagh, had no direct links to the Taliban.
"The situation is under control. There has been no resistance," senior local administration official Mehmood Afridi told AFP. Officials said earlier that one militant had been killed in an exchange of fire.
"Paramilitary forces have taken up positions near Bara (the main town in Khyber district), they are setting up a number of checkposts and bunkers while several key roads have been sealed," he added.
After the offensive was launched on Saturday, television footage showed tanks and camouflaged armoured personnel carriers rumbling into the area, while officials said troops had fired several mortar rounds at militant hideouts.
A senior security official said the aim of the operation was to keep control of Khyber's main town and "clear it of elements making incursions into Peshawar, threatening CD and video shops and carrying out kidnaps for ransom."
Several CD shops have been blown up in recent months by militants seeking to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in the troubled tribal belt bordering Afghanistan and in the adjoining North West Frontier Province.
Security officials said Bagh's men had also been raiding trucks on the Khyber pass, the main supply route for US and NATO troops who are fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for Bagh's hardline Lashkar-e-Islam group said the security forces had demolished his house and the rebel group's headquarters in Bara.
"But we have decided not to fight them (security forces). We are not Taliban," the spokesman, Commander Wahid, told AFP.
The senior security official said authorities were deciding to push forward into the Tirah district, which is closer to the border with Afghanistan and where a Taliban-linked group, Ansar-ul-Islam, is active.
That group is under the sway of Pakistan's top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who on Saturday said he was halting two-month-old peace talks with the authorities because of operations against his men.
Mehsud is accused by authorities of orchestrating the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December.
However a spokesman for Mehsud also denied that Bagh was connected to the Taliban.
Pakistan has come under growing pressure to crack down on militants, with the United States and other NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan expressing concerns over the government's negotiations with the rebels.
Mehsud, who was named by Time Magazine this year in its list of the world's most influential people, has earlier vowed to continue attacking US and NATO troops in Afghanistan despite the peace talks.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said this week that the failure of Pakistan's new government to put pressure on Taliban forces on the Afghan border was a "concern."
2:19 PM
BANGKOK, Thailand - More than 30,000 Myanmar refugees living in camps in Thailand have been sent to third countries in what the United Nations said Wednesday had become the world's largest refugee resettlement operation.
Most of the refugees are Karen ethnic minority people who had been sheltered in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said 30,144 refugees have left Thailand to start new lives abroad since the resettlement operation began in January 2005. A UNHCR statement described it as the world's largest refugee resettlement operation.
But the camps remain home to 123,500 refugees and asylum-seekers.
"Some of the refugees have been here for nearly two decades. Some were born in refugee camps, grew up there and are now raising their own families in refugee camps," UNHCR regional representative Raymond Hall said Wednesday. "For them resettlement offers a way out of the camps and the opportunity for a fresh start in life."
The United Nations and human rights groups say that over the years the Myanmar military has burned villages, killed civilians and committed other atrocities against the Karen, who have long fought for autonomy from the central government.
Some activists have charged that Myanmar's ruling junta is waging a genocidal campaign against the Karen and other rebellious ethnic groups.
Hall said prospects for the refugees to return to Myanmar or settle permanently in Thailand were dim.
Nearly 21,500 of the resettled refugees have gone to the United States, while Australia has received 3,400 and Canada 2,600.
Other resettlement countries are Britain, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.
Myanmar refugees are now leaving Thailand for resettlement at an average rate of more than 300 a week, the UNHCR said.
2:17 PM
KHYBER AGENCY, Pakistan - Pakistan's newly elected government launched the first major assault against militants in the country's volatile northwest on Saturday, destroying a militant leader's headquarters and shelling suspected hideouts of other fighters.
The offensive in the Khyber tribal region appeared to mark a refinement in strategy by the new government, backing its calls for peace deals in the tribal areas along the Afghan border with the threat of forceful action against militants who get out of line.
The United States said such deals were giving militants the freedom to regroup for attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. With growing militant threats to the nearby Pakistani city of Peshawar — and to the key Khyber supply route for U.S. forces in Afghanistan — Pakistan took action.
Late Friday, 700 troops from the paramilitary Frontier Corps moved into Kyber in preparation for the offensive, a round-the-clock curfew was imposed in the Bara area, and heavy contingents of troops blocked the main road from Peshawar into Kyber, local officials said.
By Saturday afternoon, the Frontier Corps began shelling suspected militant hide-outs in the mountains, local official Muhammad Siddiq Khan said.
Authorities blew up the headquarters of militant leader Menghal Bagh in a scene broadcast on national television. Bagh fled to the remote Tirah Valley along the Afghan border, a military intelligence official in the frontier said, speaking on condition of anonymity because identifying himself would compromise his work.
In recent weeks, Bagh's fighters waged attacks in Peshawar in what provincial officials say was an attempt to prove they wield influence outside the tribal regions and to intimidate the population. Bagh's followers also have been accused of threatening supply convoys bound for coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Maj. Gen. Alam Khattak, head of the Frontier Corps, said his troops destroyed three militant centers in Bara and killed one attacker in the operation, which was expected to last up to a week.
"We have occupied, captured all important heights, and we have taken control of the area," he said. Hinting the offensive would not be last, he said, "Other pockets of resistance and crime will also be visited."
The operation was also expected to target Haji Namdar, whose Vice and Virtue Movement is suspected of attacks against coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. Namdar has sought to impose his own strict brand of Islamic law in the region.
"If the government thinks there is any issue to address, that should be resolved through talks, not by the use of force," said Munsif Khan, spokesman for Namdar's group. "We are ready for talks with the government."
In response to the offensive and other confrontations with security forces, Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, said he was suspending talks between his allies and the government. He implied his forces could cause trouble in Pakistan's main cities.
"Peace cannot be brought with force and aggression. This will be very unfortunate for the Pakistani nation if fighting starts again," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
The new government elected in February eclipsed former army strongman and U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf. In a policy shift, the new administration supported peace talks with Taliban militants to try to curb an explosion in violence in the northwest.
But as militant activity grew, Pakistan's top political and military leaders signaled they would use force if necessary to combat militancy.
Concern has grown in recent weeks about militant threats to Peshawar. Two weeks ago, a Taliban force from Khyber entered the city and briefly kidnapped 16 Christians.
Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal regions, said the Taliban took advantage of a leadership vacuum in Islamabad, where the coalition government is paralyzed by infighting, to take control of the tribal regions along the border. Now, the Taliban "are on our doorstep" around Peshawar, he said.
"The situation is like water flowing into a field and until you have some obstruction to stop it, you will drown. We are drowning," he said.
Taliban have posted notices in some villages outside Peshawar telling residents to shun the judiciary and seek justice through their courts, he said.
Misrri Khan, who works for a tribal paramilitary force that patrols Khyber, said the militants kidnapped 16 of his fellow officers and threatened to behead them — and then to take more captives — if they did not abandon checkpoints in the area. Khan said the force refused.
Afrasiab Khattak, chief negotiator for the provincial government, said the province was considering a second operation in the Swat area, which is wracked by violence despite a peace deal between the provincial government and a radical pro-Taliban cleric.
Police in Swat found the bodies Saturday of four people apparently killed by militants and defused three bombs weighing a total of 45 pounds that had been planted along a main road, Swat police chief Waqif Khan said.
4:11 PM
SHANGHAI - Tropical storm Fengshen brought another bout of wet misery to southern China on Wednesday with heavy rains and strong winds after killing hundreds in the Philippines as a typhoon.
China's southeast was already trying to recover from flooding earlier this month that killed at least 63 people, forced the evacuation of at least 1.66 million and caused billions of dollars in damage in a region anchored by the country's manufacturing capital, the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province.
Fengshen made landfall Wednesday morning with winds of up to 51 mph (83 kilometers per hour) in the economic boomtown of Shenzhen, whose meteorological station forecast up to almost 8 inches (200 millimeters) of rain Wednesday and Thursday, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Both Shenzhen and nearby Hong Kong stopped school classes Wednesday, and more than 13,000 ships in Guangdong Province came back to harbor before the storm made landfall, Xinhua reported.
The Hong Kong government also closed all courts and financial markets in the morning after a weather alert was issued late Tuesday. There have been at least nine reports of flooding in various parts of the city, the government said in a statement
Flood control authorities in Shenzhen told the news agency that no deaths had been reported as of Wednesday morning.
Xinhua quoted meteorologists in the region as saying the tropical storm was expected to weaken as it moved north and further inland.
The China Central Meteorological Station said Fengshen's heavy rains also will affect the provinces of Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi and Hunan, according to the news agency.
Fengshen left more than 800 passengers and crew members missing in the Philippines this week after a ferry capsized in the rough weather. Four dozen survivors have been found. The storm's toll on shore in the Philippines included 227 dead and 275 missing in the worst-hit area, with dozens reported killed elsewhere by floods and landslides.
China has given little attention to this month's flooding in its southern region, instead keeping the focus firmly on relief for last month's earthquake in central Sichuan Province. The death toll from that disaster is expected to pass 80,000, Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu said Tuesday.
4:09 PM
HONG KONG - Tropical storm Fengshen brought more heavy rains and strong winds to Hong Kong on Wednesday, shutting down the city's financial markets, schools and courts.
Fengshen, which battered the Philippines over the weekend, passed through Hong Kong late Tuesday and was about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the city Wednesday morning, the Hong Kong Observatory said.
The average wind speed was 39 mph (63 kilometers per hour) or more across Hong Kong, the observatory said. It was not immediately clear how much rainfall was recorded.
The storm was headed north or northwest toward the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and was moving at about 8.7 mph (14 kph).
The Hong Kong government closed all schools, courts and financial markets in the morning after a weather alert was issued late Tuesday. There have been at least nine reports of flooding in various parts of the city, the government said in a statement.
Fengshen's strength weakened from a typhoon to a tropical storm Tuesday.
Typhoon Fengshen pounded the Philippines over the weekend, killing dozens in flooded communities in the central part of the country. It may also have left hundreds dead after a ferry capsized in heavy weather.
4:09 PM
JERUSALEM (AFP) - - Three rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip hit southern Israel on Tuesday, slightly wounding two people and straining an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and the Islamist movement.
Two of the rockets struck inside the hard-hit town of Sderot, causing some damage, and another struck a field outside town, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The rockets were the first to be fired from the Palestinian territory since a truce between Israel and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers went into effect on June 19.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad told AFP it had carried out the attacks. "The rockets are a response to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation in the West Bank," he said.
The group, which was responsible for many of the attacks launched from Gaza in the months leading up to the ceasefire, did not agree to the truce but had vowed not to violate it.
The attacks came hours after Israeli troops killed a senior Islamic Jihad fighter and another man in the northern town of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, which was not included in the truce.
Overnight Tuesday a mortar round fired from northern Gaza hit Israel but caused no damage.
"Any fire from the Gaza Strip is a gross violation of the understanding reached with Egypt," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev told AFP after the attack, referring to the truce agreement.
Hamas blamed Israel for Tuesday's violence, saying it had "provoked" Palestinian armed factions with the killing of the two men in Nablus.
"It is clear that it was the Israeli occupation that provoked the feelings of the Palestinian people and the resistance groups by committing these sorts of vile crimes in Nablus," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP.
"We in Hamas affirm that we are adhering to the truce and working for its success and continuation and we will work with all the Palestinian factions to guarantee this."
Olmert, meanwhile, returned from Egypt where he met with President Hosni Mubarak on the truce and a parallel track of indirect talks with Hamas aimed at securing a prisoner swap for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Egypt played a key role as mediator in brokering the ceasefire as Israel rejects direct contact with Hamas, which it blacklists as a terrorist group. Hamas in turn refuses to recognise the Jewish state.
The truce, which called on Israel to cease all military operations in Gaza and for Palestinian militants to halt their near-daily rocket and mortar attacks, also called for the easing of a year-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Egypt told Israel that it will keep its Rafah crossing with Gaza closed until the fate of Shalit is resolved, a senior Israeli official said.
But Mubarak chided Israel, saying it was unrealistic to link Shalit's release to the truce.
To link the fate of "one soldier" to so many dead on both sides is "unrealistic," he said in an interview with Israeli television of which excerpts were published by the official MENA news agency.
"Let's be realistic and live the reality of the truce (or) they will continue firing rockets and you will attack them and you will die and they will die, for one soldier," Mubarak said.
"But the soldier is another track we're working on. Why mix everything up? Let's be realistic. We should not mix all issues and ruin everything" he said.
Israel has eased its year-old blockade of Gaza as part of the truce by allowing larger amounts of basic goods to enter, but made any opening of Rafah, the only crossing that bypasses it, conditional on Shalit's release.
Israel has also said it must keep up military operations in the West Bank to protect its citizens, and many feared an escalation in violence there could jeopardise the agreement.
Meanwhile, the international quartet for Middle East peace called during a Tuesday meeting in Berlin for the truce to "be respected in full."
"The quartet expressed its continuing support for Egyptian efforts to restore calm to Gaza and southern Israel and welcomed the period of calm that began on June 19," the grouping comprising the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States said in a statement.
The statement also called for an immediate freeze to Jewish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and the dismantlement of outposts built since March 2001.
4:08 PM
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysia's prime minister denied Tuesday that his deputy's wife was involved in the sensational killing of a young Mongolian woman, and said that action will be taken against the prominent blogger who made the allegation.
Blogger Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin signed a sworn statement earlier this month, claiming he has information linking Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak's wife, Rosmah, to the October 2006 slaying of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a 28-year-old freelance translator and interpreter.
"Raja Petra's actions are unacceptable. It is not right," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters Tuesday. "I don't believe that Najib and Rosmah are involved."
Raja Petra's claim came on top of another article he wrote earlier this year in which he implied that Najib was involved in the slaying. He was charged with sedition in May for making that claim, but pleaded innocent to the charge. That trial is scheduled to start in October.
Najib and Rosmah have denied any role in Shaariibuu's killing.
Prominent political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, a close associate of Najib, is charged with abetting the murder. Two policemen are accused of killing her and destroying her body with explosives in a jungle clearing outside Kuala Lumpur. The three have been on trial since June 2007.
Abdullah said the attorney general has told him that Raja Petra is being investigated and "action will be taken against him."
He also rejected Raja Petra's allegation in the sworn statement that Malaysia's military intelligence had given him a report about Rosmah's alleged role.
Abdul Razak, who has top-level government contacts in addition to being close to Najib, has confessed in court to having an eight-month affair with Shaariibuu.
The prosecution contends Abdul Razak had her killed because she pestered him for money after he ended their affair. They say he used his connections to get the policemen to carry out the killing and to obtain the military-grade explosives that were used to destroy her body.
Some of Malaysia's most popular blogs offer strongly anti-government commentaries and present themselves as a substitute for mainstream media, which are controlled by political parties or closely linked to them.
In March, a court ordered Raja Petra to pay 4 million ringgit (US$1.25 million) to the state-run Universiti Utara Malaysia and its vice chancellor for publishing an allegedly defamatory article. Raja Petra has refused to pay.
4:05 PM
MANILA, June 24, 2008 (AFP) - Ferry operators in the Philippines need to upgrade their ageing fleets, a top transportation official said Tuesday, after the sinking of a large passenger ship left more than 850 people feared dead.
"We really have to modernise, our average age of the ships is about 28 years old," Transportation and Communication Secretary Leandro Mendoza told a news conference.
The 24,000-tonne Princess of the Stars, a 181-metre (594-foot) vessel built in 1988, sank Saturday in the eye of Typhoon Fengshen after its engine failed and it ran aground off the central island of Sibuyan.
Rescuers continued to look for its passengers and crew, most of whom have not been found.
4:05 PM
OFF SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines (AFP) - - Philippine rescue divers said they found many bodies Tuesday inside the ferry that sank with more than 850 people on board, confirming the worst fears of desperate relatives.
Anxious and angry family members had been clinging to hope their loved ones might still be found alive inside the doomed Princess of the Stars, which capsized and sank Saturday when it got caught in the path of a typhoon.
But with blame flying over how the 24,000-tonne ferry was allowed to set sail with the storm looming, shaken rescue divers said they had discovered the worst when they finally worked their way into the submerged ship Tuesday.
"We saw 15 bodies trapped in one section of the ship,"said coast guard diver Lieutenant Commander Inocencio Rosario.
"The bodies are floating inside," he said, adding that most of them were not wearing life jackets.
"Two men were on the bridge, wearing the Sulpicio Lines uniform. One was holding the radio. He must have been an officer," Rosario said.
Passage through the ship was hampered by fallen furniture, equipment and broken glass, he said, adding that they did not have enough underwater flashlights or batteries to dive for long.
The vessel is sitting upside down on a coral reef off San Fernando, Sibuyan Island, with most of the bottom of its hull protruding from the water.
At least three bodies were removed from the ship and placed in cadaver bags aboard a coast guard vessel, said an AFP reporter at the scene.
Philippine civil defence chief Anthony Golez said 57 people, some of whom made it onto lifeboats, survived the sinking -- one of the worst maritime disasters in the country's history.
But many passengers reportedly had little time to react when the vessel, trapped when Typhoon Fengshen suddenly changed path, began tilting and then quickly capsized off the central island of Sibuyan.
Sulpicio Lines, however, said it had recorded 59 survivors and 15 dead after names were checked against the ferry's manifest.
Radio dzMM reported the Coast Guard was checking reports 16 passengers had been rescued by a fishing vessel, off Sibuyan Island. But this report could not be confirmed late Tuesday.
The Coast Guard said their figures showed 43 found alive and 12 dead but admitted the figures had not been updated since Tuesday morning.
The ferry reportedly developed engine trouble while trying to make it to safety.
Vice-President Noli de Castro, who inspected the recovery operations on Tuesday, said they still hoped that survivors might be found in an air pocket inside the ship.
But he warned that rescue efforts would have to proceed slowly to avoid fuel leaking. Oil spill booms were seen being set up around the sunken vessel.
A US navy supply ship and a maritime patrol plane have joined the search, and the local military said the Americans had deployed an unmanned aerial vehicle to hunt for survivors.
The tragedy was the fourth for Sulpicio Lines since 1987, when the Dona Paz collided with a tanker and sank, killing more than 4,000 people.
The government slapped an immediate ban on Sulpicio's vessels from leaving port on Monday, though the company said it was still selling tickets because it had not been formally notified of the move.
Sulpicio is one of the largest ferry operators in the Philippines, where people are heavily dependent on ferries to get around the country's more than 7,000 islands.
"We are at a loss as to what really happened," vice president Sally Buaron said.
She said the captain, Florenio Marino, sent a distress call moments before giving the order to abandon ship.
"As long as there's small hope that there is an indication that people are still in the waters, we will continue to search," Golez said.
Another ship, the transport vessel Lake Paoay, went down in the same area during the storm on Saturday, leaving three dead and 17 missing.
Officials were trying to make sure they do not mix the survivors or casualties from the different vessels when accounting for those on the Princess of the Stars.
President Gloria Arroyo on Monday ordered the coast guard to review sailing guidelines, especially those relating to typhoons.
10:55 AM
GAZA CITY (AFP) - - A fragile truce entered its second day in the Gaza Strip on Friday amid scepticism over how long the Egyptian-brokered deal between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement would hold.
The six-month truce is the first since the Islamists seized the impoverished Palestinian territory just over a year ago , triggering a crippling Israeli blockade.
"Hamas is determined to respect the truce and guarantee its success," its spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said after the ceasefire took hold Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said the Jewish state "will respect all the commitments it made."
As the truce went into effect, Olmert's office announced the premier will travel to Egypt next Tuesday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel is due to fly to Egypt the same day to resume talks on a proposed prisoner swap with Hamas, a senior defence official said.
Israel wants Hamas to release Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid two years ago.
"Israel knows it will have to pay a heavy price for Shalit's release and free many Palestinian terrorists," a senior defence official, who asked not to be named, said.
But Shalit's father Noam lashed out at the truce in an interview with Israeli television on Thursday.
From the moment when we no longer have any means of pressure, Hamas can drag out the negotiations (on Gilad's release) for two more years, or five years, or 10 years," he said. "And we might never see Gilad again."
The deal also entails a gradual easing of Israel's blockade of the overcrowded strip of land where most of the 1.5 million population depend on outside aid.
Israeli authorities said this should start on Sunday with an increase of goods allowed into the Palestinian enclave.
The deal was concluded after months of indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, which had been mulling a wider military offensive in Gaza in a bid to halt rocket fire.
Israel made it clear the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt , the territory's only one that bypasses the Jewish state, would be reopened only if Shalit is released, the Ynet news website said.
Olmert warned on Wednesday that the ceasefire would be "fragile" and could be "short-lived," saying the army stood ready to intervene if it is breached.
The White House cautiously welcomed the deal saying it hoped it meant that Hamas would "give up terrorism."
The United States, the European Union and Israel blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organisation despite its 2006 victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called the truce "a very welcome development."
"I hope it will provide momentum for the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he hoped it "will both provide security and an easing of the humanitarian crisis in impoverished Gaza, and end rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli targets."
Middle East Quartet envoy and former British prime minister Tony Blair called the truce "a positive development."
"We should be under no illusion, however, that this calm is fragile," said Blair, who represents the diplomatic Quartet made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose powerbase has been limited to the West Bank since Hamas seized Gaza, hailed the deal as "good news for us".
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad called on Israel to halt military operations in the occupied West Bank too.
"All those Israeli military operations in areas under our control must cease," said Fayyad, whose government's writ has been limited to the West Bank since the Hamas movement's seizure of Gaza in June last year.
Syria, home to Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal, said it supported the deal while the 22-member Arab League said it would be "an important step towards inter-Palestinian reconciliation."
10:50 AM
BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand's revered king urged the prime minister Thursday to keep his promises to do good for the nation in a televised meeting that could undercut plans for a massive demonstration to call for the government to step down.
The protesters, spearheaded by the People's Alliance for Democracy, claim the government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is a proxy for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted by a 2006 military coup.
The alliance led mass demonstrations before the coup demanding Thaksin step down for alleged corruption and abuse of power.
They now accuse Samak's government of interfering with corruption charges against Thaksin and trying to change the constitution for its own self-interest.
Although facing criminal charges for alleged corruption, Thaksin remains a powerful figure in Thailand.
The demonstrators _ claiming their ranks will swell to 100,000 Friday as reinforcements converge from across the country _ have been in Bangkok's streets for the past three weeks.
They have pledged to ring Government House, where the prime minister's offices are located, until Samak's administration resigns.
Police said they would not be allowed to march there from their current rally site nearby.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej addressed Samak when the prime minister presented two new Cabinet ministers to take their oaths of office, and the address was broadcast on the evening television news, as is normal for such occasions.
"I expect that you will do what you have promised and when you can do that, you will be satisfied," the king said. "With that satisfaction, the country will survive. I ask you to do good in everything, both in government work and other work so that our country can carry on and people will be pleased."
The king's address to Samak and his appointees was about five minutes long and was not critical of the government.
Coming on the eve of the planned protest, it could be to Samak's advantage as it suggested his government's legitimacy. The protesters have repeatedly asserted they are defending royal interests.
Suriyasai Katasila, one protest leader, said more than 100,000 people were expected to gather Friday.
"People are coming from everywhere," he said. "They want to show their solidarity with us and they want to express their discontent with the government who has been serving no one but themselves."
Samak's People Power Party won general elections last December. His Cabinet is packed with Thaksin's allies and critics say rehabilitating the former leader is among the government's top priorities.
10:49 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan - A string of lights spells out the name of the bar in the back of the basement in capital letters, PARADISE. A dozen Chinese women in skintight miniskirts and halter tops flit around clusters of beefy Western men and flirt in broken English.
Now and then, a man and woman climb the stairs to the upper reaches of the house, where Paradise does its real business.
Paradise is a brothel in an unmarked residential compound in an upscale Kabul neighborhood where prostitutes from China cater to Western men. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, thousands of Westerners working for security firms, companies and aid groups have poured into Afghanistan. Not long after came Chinese prostitutes, in some cases trafficked into the country.
The International Organization for Migration helped 96 Chinese women who were deported in 2006. They told IOM they were deceived by a travel agency in China and promised employment in a restaurant for US$300 a month. But when they arrived, they said, the Chinese restaurant owner denied them salaries and forced them to provide sexual services by night.
An IOM staffer said one Chinese woman thought she was going to work in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and had no idea she had instead landed in Kabul.
Afghan officials deny these claims.
"They come here of their own will. They want to do business here. Police caught them red-handed," said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of Kabul's criminal investigations.
In recent years, Afghan authorities have carried out a campaign against moral corruption, raiding brothels fronting as restaurants and deporting the Chinese prostitutes in front of TV cameras. Last year in Kabul, 180 female prostitutes were arrested _ 154 "foreigners" and 26 Afghans, Paktiawal said. He would not give the nationalities of the foreign prostitutes, but many raids in recent years have been at Chinese restaurants.
Many Afghans blame prostitution on immoral Chinese women and Western men and say it is un-Islamic. The highly publicized crackdown on Chinese prostitutes has led to rampant harassment of women of East Asian origin. Police often single out Asian women in spot checks on Kabul's streets.
In Paradise, the women speak Chinese among themselves. One says she is from a town outside Beijing.
The brothel has two identical doors in the back of the building. One leads down to the well-stocked basement bar where the women mingle with potential clients. The other leads up to the main part of the house, where every nook and cranny that can be closed off has a spartan twin bed mattress with no sheets.
A Pussycat Dolls pop song pumps on the speakers, "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" One man rubs the belly of a girl in a gauzy pink miniskirt.
A frequent customer at the bar says it costs US$70 to take a woman upstairs, and US$150 to have her company for the night.
10:48 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - - A desperate hunt was under way Saturday for more than 1,100 prisoners who escaped a jail in southern Afghanistan when Taliban rebels blasted it open, killing 15 guards, officials said.
The prisoners, some of them Taliban militants, fled when the rebels attacked the facility in the city of Kandahar late Friday, blasting it open with suicide bombs before shooting the guards.
The NATO force in Afghanistan said more than 1,100 prisoners were on the loose after what deputy justice minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai called the rebels' most sophisticated attack yet.
"A massive operation is under way to find the escaped inmates. The Afghan security forces are searching for them within the city and along the main and secondary roads," Hashimzai told AFP in the capital, Kabul. None has yet been caught, he added.
An AFP reporter based in the southern city said large numbers of security forces including those of the US-trained Afghan national army had been deployed to search vehicles.
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said the rebels used suicide bombs and detonated a bomb-laden water tanker in the attack.
"First we exploded two suicide attacks and then our mujahedin (holy warriors) riding motorcycles entered the prison and killed the remaining security guards.
"We successfully freed all prisoners, including our jailed Taliban and other prisoners," he told AFP.
Authorities had so far recovered the bodies of at least 15 security guards, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and a brother of President Hamid Karzai told AFP.
"We've discovered the bodies of 15 security guards who were killed in the attack. The casualties might be more," Karzai added.
"Several hundred prisoners including Taliban have escaped," he said, without giving a precise figure.
The Taliban have been battling Hamid Karzai's government since they were toppled from power in a US-led operation for failing to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2001.
The raid is a blow to the president, coming one day after world donors pledged 20 billion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan at a conference in Paris but also called on him to strengthen the rule of law.
Despite the presence of about 70,000 international troops mainly operating under NATO, the insurgency aimed at toppling the US-backed government in Kabul has gained pace in the past two years.
Most of the Taliban attacks include suicide and roadside bomb blasts as well as small-scale gunfights targeting security forces. But the Islamic rebels have launched some of their most sophisticated raids in recent months.
In January 2008 several Taliban militants wearing suicide vests raided a five-star hotel in the capital, Kabul, and killed eight people including three foreigners.
And on April 27, Taliban gunmen opened fire on a military parade attended by President Hamid Karzai, missing the President but killed three other people including an MP.
10:48 AM
TOKYO - A 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked a rural, mountainous area of northern Japan on Saturday, killing at least two people, triggering landslides, stopping train service and knocking down a bridge. With roads closed, military aircraft and helicopters were mobilized to assess the damage.
Kyodo News agency said at least 100 people were injured. Officials confirmed 69 injuries and seven people missing. Another 100 people were trapped at a hot springs, according to the government's Disaster Agency, but details of their situation remained unclear.
Two nuclear power plants in the area were being inspected, but there were no immediate reports of damage, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura. Ten nuclear reactors at the two power plants in Onagawa and Fukushima were running normally, operators Tohoku Electric Power Co. and Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
However, electricity had been cut to about 29,000 households in the quake zone.
One of the deaths was a man who ran out of a building in fear and was hit by a passing truck, and the other confirmed death was a man who was buried in a landslide while he was fishing, Machimura said.
There was no danger of tsunami, but several aftershocks, including one with a magnitude of 5.6, struck the area in the hours after the initial temblor. Meteorological Agency official Takashi Yokota said at least 40 aftershocks occurred in the area and could trigger further damage to buildings or cause landslides.
The 8:43 a.m. (2343 GMT Friday) quake was centered in the northern prefecture (state) of Iwate about 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, and was located about 5 miles (8 kilometers) underground _ revised from an initially estimated depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers). It was felt as far away as the capital.
"It shook so violently that I couldn't stand still. I had to lean on the wall," said Masanori Oikawa, an Oshu city official who was at home near the epicenter when the quake struck. "When I rushed to the office, cabinets had been thrown onto the floor and things on the desks were scattered all over the place."
The government said 69 people were confirmed injured, but reports gathered from local authorities indicated at least 100 people had been hurt.
"Damage appears to be growing, but we can't even go out there to assess the situation with roads closed off because of landslides," said Norio Sato, a city official in one of the hardest-hit cities, Kurihara.
In that city, a landslide swallowed 15 construction workers, leaving three of them still missing, while the remaining managed to climb out on their own. Four people at Komanoyu hot springs were also missing after a separate landslide hit the resort hotel, according to another city official, Katsuyuki Sato.
The Defense Ministry dispatched a dozen helicopters and patrol aircraft to the region to conduct flyovers and assess the extent of damage. The government also sent a CH-47 helicopter carrying Disaster Minister Shinya Izumi to the region.
Local governors had asked for more troops to help in rescue and assessment operations.
Footage shot from media helicopters showed landslides on rural roads running along knots of mountains separated by long stretches of rice fields.
Footage aired on national broadcaster NHK also showed a bridge that collapsed. NHK said four people were seriously injured while riding on a bus over a bridge when the quake hit, but it was unclear whether it was the same one.
"We must assess the situation as quickly possible and do utmost in our relief activities," said Machimura.
Footage from the closest large city, Sendai, showed the force of the quake shook surveillance cameras for 30 seconds. NHK interviewed an official from Miyagi prefecture, where Sendai is located, who said he saw tiles coming off the roofs of some homes.
"It was scary. It was difficult to stand up," said Sachiko Sugihara, a convenience store worker in Oshu in a separate interview with NHK. "The TV fell over and the refrigerator shook."
Windows broke at a nursery school in the area and NHK said some teachers and children were injured, though it was unclear how seriously.
Sendai appeared largely unscathed.
"So far we have not received any reports of damage or injuries. Everything is normal," Hideki Hara, a police official in Sendai, told the AP. "Phone lines, water and electricity are all working right now."
Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world. The most recent major quake in Japan killed more than 6,400 people in the city of Kobe in January 1995.
10:47 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, Afghan officials said Saturday.
The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among those who fled the prison during the attack late Friday.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force put the number of escapees slightly higher, at around 1,100, according to spokesman Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco. He conceded that the assault was a success.
"We admit it," Branco said. "Their guys did the job properly in that sense, but it does not have a strategic impact. We should not draw any conclusion about the deterioration of the military operations in the area. We should not draw any conclusion about the strength of the Taliban."
The complex attack included a truck bombing at the main gate, a suicide bomber who struck a back wall and rockets fired from inside the prison courtyard, setting off a series of explosions that rattled Kandahar, the country's second biggest city.
The rockets demolished an upper prison floor, said Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, a deputy minister at the Justice Ministry. Nine police were killed in the attack, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary.
There were no indications that the militants received help from the inside, but as a precaution the prison's chief official, Abdul Qabir, was placed under investigation for possible involvement, Hashimzai said.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked Sarposa Prison.
NATO was providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to help track fleeing militants, Branco said.
Afghan officials warned that the Taliban essentially boosted its force by 400 fighters because of the prison break, but Branco said NATO officials didn't think it would change the military situation.
"OK, they got some more fighters, more shooters," Branco said. "These guys who escaped from the prison are not going to change the operational tempo and they do not provide the Taliban with operational initiative."
A man who claimed to be one of the militants who escaped, Abdul Nafai, called an Associated Press reporter and said the insurgents had minibuses waiting outside the prison during the attack and that dozens of militants fled in the vehicles. Other witnesses and officials said the militants fled on foot into pomegranate and grape groves behind the prison.
Hashimzai said the jail did not meet international minimum standards for a prison. The Kandahar facility was not built as a prison but had been modified into one, he said.
A delegation of deputy ministers from the Justice and Interior ministries left for Kandahar early Saturday.
"Plans are under way to renovate all the prisons around the country," said Hashimzai. "Kandahar was one of them, but unfortunately what happened last night is cause for concern."
Kandahar was the Taliban's former stronghold and its province has been the scene of fierce fighting in the past two years between insurgents and NATO troops, primarily from Canada and the United States.
Qabir, the chief of Kandahar's Sarposa Prison, said the assault began when a tanker truck full of explosives detonated at the prison's main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post, killing all the officers inside.
Soon after, a suicide bomber on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison, Qabir said.
Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, said militants had been planning the assault for two months.
Canadian soldiers with NATO's International Security Assistance Force helped provide a security cordon after the attack.
Last month, some 200 Taliban suspects at the prison ended a weeklong hunger strike after a parliamentary delegation promised that their cases would be reviewed.
6:36 PM
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5:32 PM
AMSTERDAM - Unlucky for some? Dutch statisticians have established that Friday 13th, a date regarded in many countries as inauspicious, is actually safer than an average Friday.
A study published on Thursday by the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics showed that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays.
"I find it hard to believe that it is because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home, but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th," CVS statistician Alex Hoen told the Verzekerd insurance magazine.
In the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7,800 traffic accidents each Friday, the CVS study said. But the average figure when the 13th fell on a Friday was just 7,500.
There were also fewer incidents of fire and theft, although the average value of losses on Fridays 13th was slightly higher.
12:25 PM
SINGAPORE, June 12, 2008 (AFP) - Singapore's military has suspended its physical and endurance training for three days after two soldiers died this week, the defence minister said Thursday.
"I support the decision of the SAF to take a time-out on physical and endurance training for three days," Minister of Defence Teo Chee Hean said in a statement.
A pilot trainee collapsed Wednesday afternoon while undergoing jungle orientation training in Brunei and died later in hospital.
In the other incident, a recruit fainted a day earlier during a two-kilometre (1.2-mile) walk at a Singapore training centre and also died in hospital.
The defence minister said the suspension "will allow the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) to review and refocus on such activities to ensure that proper procedures are in place and being followed before such training resumes."
Singapore has one of Asia's most modern armed forces, to which young men are drafted for national service.
"While the SAF needs to carry out realistic training, this will be done without compromise to safety," the minister said.
1:39 PM
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - - The United States insisted Thursday that its forces were retaliating against a "hostile act" when an air strike killed 11 Pakistani soldiers on the murky border with Afghanistan.
Islamabad has accused US-led forces in Afghanistan of making an unprovoked and "cowardly" attack on the checkpost in Pakistan's volatile Mohmand tribal zone, further straining ties between the "war on terror" allies.
In response, Washington said it regretted the "reported loss of Pakistani life" but insisted its forces were targeting militants.
Whatever the circumstances, it is the worst incident of its kind since the Pakistani government sided with the United States in 2001 in its fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremism.
It also comes amid growing unease in Washington and Kabul over Pakistan's efforts to negotiate with Taliban militants.
"The timing is terrible," said Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute analyst as well as a former CIA officer and top advisor to three US presidents on South Asian affairs.
"Whatever little pressure Pakistan has been putting on Al Qaeda is likely to get even smaller," he told AFP.
Pakistani security officials say Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy a strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, in an area long disputed between the countries.
The Afghan troops were repulsed, the officials say, after which coalition forces bombed the area, also killing around 15 Taliban nearby.
In an unusually harsh statement, a Pakistani army spokesman "condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act" and warned that it had "hit at the very basis" of cooperation in the anti-terror fight.
Islamabad later summoned US ambassador Anne Patterson to lodge a protest.
In Kabul, the coalition admitted carrying out an air and artillery strike, but insisted it was targeting militants hiding near the outpost -- and that it had informed Pakistani forces.
The United States is "sad to see the reported loss of Pakistani life," a US State Department spokesman said in Washington.
"However, our troops were defending themselves against a hostile act, which they have the right to do," spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told AFP.
The Pentagon took a similar line. Spokesman Geoff Morrell said that "every indication we have is that it was a legitimate strike in self-defense against forces that had attacked the coalition forces."
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf backed the toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, but his support has angered many Pakistanis and drawn the wrath of militants.
Earlier this year his party was voted out of office and the new government, led by the former opposition, has sought to strike peace deals with militants in the restive tribal zones bordering Afghanistan.
Insurgents fighting the Afghan government and the NATO- and US-led forces shoring it up regularly cross into the tribal zones, where they find refuge as well as a steady supply of weapons, ammunition and new recruits, experts say.
The US-led coalition said it had informed Pakistan that troops were coming under fire from "anti-Afghan" forces in a wooded area near the checkpoint.
Unmanned drone aircraft identified the militants and "in self defence" the coalition fired artillery rounds and used close-air support "until the threat was eliminated."
No coalition troops crossed the border, it said.
Pakistan has protested over a spate of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months.
Several Pakistani soldiers have also been killed by stray shells, but it appears to be the first time any have been killed by a targeted air strike by US forces.
The attack came two days after a think-tank funded by the US Department of Defence said members of Pakistan's intelligence services and its paramilitary forces were supporting the
12:23 PM
OTTAWA (AFP) - - Canada's prime minister officially apologized to natives for more than a century of abuses at boarding schools set up to assimilate its indigenous peoples.
"The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in the House of Commons Wednesday.
"We are sorry."
Flanked by MPs, native leaders in traditional garments and Indian Residential School alumni, many holding back tears, Harper said: "The treatment of children in Indian Residential Schools is a sad chapter in our history."
He acknowledged "two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their home, families, traditions, and cultures and to assimilate them in to the dominant culture.
"These objectives were based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal," he said.
"The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage, and language."
Beginning in 1874, 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis children in Canada were forcibly enrolled in the 132 boarding schools run by Christian churches on behalf of the federal government in an effort to integrate them into society.
Many survivors alleged abuse by headmasters and teachers, who stripped them of their culture and language.
As well, they say their education left them disconnected from their families, communities and feeling "ashamed" of being born native.
It was "the darkest chapter in Canada's history," said Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations. "They tried to kill the Indian in the child, to eradicate any sense of Indian-ness from Canada," he told AFP.
Wearing an Indian feather headdress, his voice cracking, Fontaine told the House, following Harper: "The attempts to erase our identities hurt us deeply. But it also hurt all Canadians and impoverished the character of this nation."
"The memories of residential schools sometimes cut like merciless knives at our souls," he said. "But this day will help us to put that pain behind us."
"For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness today in this House that our survival as First Nations peoples in this land is affirmed forever."
"We still have to struggle, but now we are in this together," Fontaine said.
His words were echoed by native leaders who formed a "healing circle" with Fontaine and the oldest of the alumni, 104-year-old Marguerite Wabano of the Attawapiskat First Nation, on the floor of the House of Commons.
And they were cheered by tens of thousands gathered at community centres nationwide to watch the solemn telecast event.
"This apology will help us all mark the end of this dark period in our collective history as a nation," said Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and a former Canadian ambassador.
"It's a day for us to move forward," said Clement Chartier, president of the Metis National Council.
Later, the prime minister presented dignitaries with tea and tobacco, and participated in a native smudge ceremony, as Metis fiddles and Inuit drums played.
There are some 1.3 million aboriginals in Canada, out of a total population of 33 million.
Most of Canada's Indian Residential Schools, modeled after US Indian industrial schools of the period, were shut down in the 1970s. The last one closed in 1996 in Saskatchewan province.
The government's apology is part of a 1.9-billion dollar (Canadian, US) settlement with 80,000 former students in 2006 -- the largest court settlement in Canadian history.
A five-year commission headed by Canada's top aboriginal jurist was also appointed in April to probe abuses at the schools, as part of the deal.
It plans to hear testimony from thousands of survivors and officials, as well as gather and review millions of government and church documents to be made public for the first time.
12:22 PM
SYDNEY (AFP) - - The Dalai Lama on Thursday appealed to Tibetans not to disturb the Olympic torch relay as it passes through the capital Lhasa, saying he fully supports the Beijing Olympics.
The torch is expected to pass through Tibet over the next week, although exact details of its schedule are being kept secret following unrest in the province against Chinese rule in March.
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader said he did not want the torch to spark protests in Lhasa similar to those that erupted when the relay passed through London and Paris on its round-the-world journey.
"The Olympic Games we fully support, the Olympic torch is part of that," he told reporters in Sydney, where he is conducting a series of meditation seminars.
"Over a billion Chinese brothers and sisters feel very proud of it, we must respect this, therefore we should not disturb it."
Some groups critical of China's rule in Tibet have said taking the torch to the Himalayan region is an insult considering the massive Chinese security clampdown after the March unrest there.
Exiled Tibetan leaders say 203 people died in the crackdown, while China says it killed no one and that "rioters" were responsible for 21 deaths.
China has largely blamed the Dalai Lama for fomenting the unrest and accused him of seeking to sabotage the Olympic Games.
Despite such accusations, Beijing in early May restarted a dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama over the remote, Himalayan region.
China "peacefully liberated" Tibet in the early 1950s, which resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing the region in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
In recent years, the Dalai Lama has renounced Tibetan independence and, while acknowledging that the region is a part of China, has urged greater political and religious autonomy for his homeland.
12:03 PM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - - Pakistan said a "cowardly" air strike by US-led forces killed 11 Pakistani troops on Wednesday near the Afghan border and warned that it had harmed cooperation in the war against terrorism.
The army accused the US-led coalition in Afghanistan of launching an unprovoked attack on a checkpost in Pakistan's volatile Mohmand tribal zone while the foreign office demanded an investigation.
In Kabul, the coalition admitted carrying out an air and artillery strike in Pakistan but said it was targeting militants hiding near the paramilitary outpost and that it had informed Pakistani forces.
The incident, the worst of its kind since Pakistan joined the "war on terror" in 2001, comes amid growing unease in Washington and Kabul over Pakistan's efforts to negotiate with Taliban militants.
In an unusually harsh statement, a Pakistani army spokesman "condemned this completely unprovoked and cowardly act" and said 11 soldiers died in the overnight air strike, including an officer.
"The incident had hit at the very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the coalition in the war against terror," the statement quoted the spokesman as saying.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the incident, telling parliament: "We will take a stand to preserve the sovereignty, dignity and respect of the country."
President Pervez Musharraf backed the US-led toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime after the 9/11 attacks on the US, but his support for Washington has angered many Pakistanis and attracted the wrath of militants at home.
The foreign office condemned the "senseless use of air power" by the coalition, adding that the "attack also tends to undermine the very basis of our cooperation with the coalition forces and warrants a serious rethink on their part of the consequences that could ensue from such rash acts."
Islamabad later summonsed US ambassador Anne Patterson to lodge a protest.
The official Associated Press of Pakistan reported that Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir conveyed the "resentment from the government to the ambassador".
Pakistani security officials said the deaths came after Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy the strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, which borders eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province.
The post was in an area long disputed between the countries.
Pakistani troops repulsed the Afghan soldiers and the coalition then bombed the area. Coalition aircraft also killed around 15 Taliban about a kilometre (half a mile) away, the officials said.
Heavily armed Pakistani tribesmen with rocket launchers and Kalashnikov rifles gathered near the checkpost in the mountainous Gora Prai area to show their support after the attack, residents said.
The dead soldiers' bodies had been sent to their hometowns for burial, state media said.
The US-led coalition said an investigation was ongoing but did not specifically refer to the Pakistani allegations about the deaths.
In a statement, it said its soldiers had repelled a militant attack during an operation in Afghanistan that was previously coordinated with Pakistan.
Coalition forces informed the Pakistani army that they were coming under fire from "anti-Afghan" forces in a wooded area near the Gora Prai checkpoint in Pakistan, it said.
Unmanned drone aircraft identified the militants and "in self defence" the coalition fired artillery rounds and then used close-air support "until the threat was eliminated."
No coalition troops crossed the border, it said.
"We always reserve the right of self defence in these matters," a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said in Washington.
Later the US State Department called the deaths "regrettable". Spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos added: "We're sad to see the loss of life among the Pakistani military, who are our partners in fighting terror."
"This is a reminder that better cross-border communications between forces is vital," the director of press relations said, reading from a statement.
A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants, Maulvi Omar, said eight "mujahedeen (holy warriors)" were killed by coalition helicopters.
Pakistan has protested over a series of missile strikes attributed to US-led forces in Afghanistan in recent months.
Several Pakistani soldiers have also been killed by stray shells, but it appears to be the first time any have been killed by a targeted air strike by US forces.
The attack came two days after a think tank funded by the US Department of Defence said members of Pakistan's intelligence services and its paramilitaries were supporting the Taliban.
12:01 PM
BANGKOK (AFP) - - Thai truck drivers threatened Wednesday to go on strike next week and block roads to the capital with 400,000 lorries unless the government helps them pay for soaring fuel costs.
The Confederation of Transportation of Thailand (CTT) has handed over its demands to government ministries and Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, giving them a deadline of next Tuesday.
"If there are no measures from the government before June 17, you will see hundreds of thousands of trucks heading to Bangkok from all over the country," said Thongyoo Khongkhan, secretary general of the CTT.
"We will drive slowly, probably at 10 kilometres (six miles) per hour, on the left lane around Bangkok," he told AFP.
Thongyoo said that thousands of trucks were already parked at the side of roads across Thailand after the cabinet refused to address their concerns at their weekly meeting on Tuesday.
"The government already realises that it's very hard for truck drivers to survive under present oil prices and inflation," he said.
"But yesterday we were very disappointed that the government did not even mention our plight."
Thongyoo said that more than 400,000 lorries nationwide are members of his confederation are ready to comply with the strike.
Demands include that the government provides low price fuel and helps truckers convert their vehicles to use natural gas.
Benchmark global crude prices stormed past the 100-dollar mark for the first time at the start of the year, reaching a record 138 dollars this month.
In Thailand, diesel prices sat at a record high of 41.34 baht (1.25 dollars) per litre on Wednesday.
Thousands of truck drivers in Europe are protesting against soaring petrol prices, while demonstrations against fuel price hikes in India left 20 people injured on Tuesday.
12:00 PM
NEW YORK (AFP) - - Oil prices jumped above 135 dollars a barrel Wednesday in the wake of a US government report which showed that American crude reserves sank for the fourth week in a row.
New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for July delivery, jumped 5.07 dollars to close at 136.38 dollars per barrel, after earlier spiking as high as 136.80.
The contract had surged to an all-time high of 139.12 dollars last Friday, when it won a record-breaking 10.75 dollars in one day's trade.
In London, Brent North Sea crude for July delivery rallied 4.00 dollars to settle at 135.02 dollars, after hitting a historic peak of 138.12 last week.
The latest price runs came after the US government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that American crude stockpiles dived 4.6 million barrels in the week ending June 6.
That was far heavier than market expectations for a drop of 1.5 million barrels and marked the fourth straight weekly fall.
Prices also rallied as more details emerged about a planned June 22 meeting of the world's biggest oil producers and consumers to discuss skyrocketing crude prices.
OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri said the meeting, to take place in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, will be at head-of-state level.
"The meeting in Jeddah will be the head of states and they will discuss why we have high energy prices," Badri told AFP on the sidelines of an energy conference in London.
Badri would not be drawn on which heads of state would attend the one-day gathering that was announced by Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
US energy secretary Samuel Bodman is due to represent Washington at the meeting.
Saudi Arabia's cabinet on Monday had asked Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi to convene a meeting of producer and consumer nations, and oil firms, "to discuss the jump in prices, its causes and how to deal with it objectively."
European countries, the European Commission, the International Energy Agency (IEA) -- the energy watchdog for industrialized countries -- and the heads of investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would be invited, he added.
Analysts in the Gulf said the call for the meeting was aimed at showing that OPEC states were not responsible for the price surge.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose members collectively produce about 40 percent of the world's crude, maintains that the oil market is well supplied and that current prices do not reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand.
Saudi Arabia, a close Western ally, has come under sustained US pressure to boost output.
Ahead of the Jeddah meeting, finance ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations will gather in Japan this weekend to discuss ways to limit the economic damage of soaring oil prices.
Oil prices have surged since breaking through the 100-dollar level at the start of the year, and some bullish analysts say prices could hit 150 dollars soon.
9:02 PM
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11:12 AM
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11:12 AM
SAQQARA, Egypt - Egyptian archaeologists unveiled on Thursday a 4,000-year-old "missing pyramid" that is believed to have been discovered by an archaeologist almost 200 years ago and never seen again.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief, said the pyramid appears to have been built by King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years.
In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned it among his finds at Saqqara, referring to it as number 29 and calling it the "Headless Pyramid" because only its base remains. But the desert sands covered the discovery, and no archaeologist since has been able to find Menkauhor's resting place.
"We have filled the gap of the missing pyramid," Hawass told reporters on a tour of the discoveries at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, about 12 miles south of Cairo.
The team also announced the discovery of part of a ceremonial procession road where high priests, their faces obscured by masks, once carried mummified sacred bulls worshipped in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.
The pyramid's base — or the superstructure as archeologists call it — was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past year and a half by Hawass' team.
Hawass said the style of the pyramid indicates it was from the Fifth Dynasty, a period that began in 2,465 B.C. and ended in 2,325 B.C. That would put it about two centuries after the completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza, believed to have been finished in 2,500 B.C.
Another proof of its date, Hawass says, was the discovery inside the pyramid of a gray granite lid of a sarcophagus, of the type used at that time.
The rectangular base, at the bottom of a 15 foot-deep pit dug out by workers, gives little indication of how imposing the pyramid might have once been. Heaps of huge rocks, many still partially covered in sand and dust, mark the pyramid's walls and entrance, and a burial chamber was discovered inside.
Archaeologists have not found a cartouche — a pharaoh's name in hieroglyphs — of the pyramid's owner. But Hawass said that based on the estimated date of the pyramid he was convinced it belonged to Menkauhor.
Work continues at the site, where Hawass said he expected to unearth "subsidiary" pyramids around Menkauhor's main one, and hoped to find inscriptions there to back up his claim.
The partial ceremonial procession road unveiled Thursday dates back to the Ptolemaic period, which ran for about 300 years before 30 B.C.
It runs alongside Menkauhor's pyramid, leading from a mummification chamber toward the Saqqara Serapium, a network of underground tombs where sacred bulls were interred, discovered by French archaeologist August Mariette in 1850.
A high priest would carry the mummified bulls' remains down the procession road — the only human allegedly allowed to walk on it — to the chambers where the bulls would be placed in sarcophagi, Hawass said.
Ancient Egyptians considered Apis Bulls to be incarnations of the city god of Memphis and connected with fertility and the sun-cult. A bull would be chosen for its deep black coloring and would be required to have a single white mark between the horns. Selected by priests and honored until death, it was then later mummified and buried in the underground galleries of the Serapium.
The procession route's discovery "adds an important part to our knowledge of the Old Kingdom and its rituals," Hawass said.
The sprawling archaeological site at Saqqara is most famous for the Step Pyramid of King Djoser — the oldest of Egypt's over 100 pyramids, built in the 27th century B.C.
Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt for some 200 years, Hawass says only a third of what lies underground in Saqqara has been discovered.
"You never know what secrets the sands of Egypt hide," he said. "I always believe there will be more pyramids to discover."
1:56 PM
SANTANDER, Spain (AFP) - Spain laboured to a 1-0 Euro 2008 warm-up victory over the USA here on Wednesday night, badly missing injured striker David Villa and midfielder Andres Iniesta.
Xavi Hernandez scored the only goal of the game in the 78th minute for a side which lacked ideas, particularly in the playmaking role in which Iniesta excels and up front where Valencia's Villa would have made a difference.
Villa is suffering from a right quadriceps injury after a training ground incident on Tuesday and tests revealed a major bruise. Iniesta missed the match because of food poisoning.
Aragones almost fielded the same side which had trouble beating Peru 2-1 last Saturday, though Santiago Cazorla and Cesc Fabregas came in for Iniesta and Villa against Bob Bradley's American side.
As for the USA, Kansas City Wizards striker Eddie Johnson caught the eye with a shot and a headed chance before and after the break.
Liverpool's Fernando Torres, who was playing despite ankle problems, had a great chance midway through the first half though American keeper Tim Howard was up to the task.
Torres eventually came off for Dani Guiza, the Spanish league's top scorer, which gave the attack more pace.
The United States, who are using this match as a build-up to their June 15 World Cup qualifier against Barbados, worked hard and tried to hit on the counterattack throughout the match.
Spain travel to Austria on Thursday for the June 7 to 29, 16-nation Euro 2008 finals, playing their first match against Russia, who beat Lithuania 4-1 in a friendly on Wednesday night.
1:55 PM
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Al-Qaeda Wednesday claimed in Internet statements to have carried out a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad which left at least six dead, SITE monitoring services said.
Monday's attack was said to be in revenge for the publication in Danish newspapers of cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammed according to statements posted on Islamic militant forums, SITE said.
"One of the heroes of 'Qaedat al-Jihad' carried out a suicide operation on the morning of Monday," said the statement signed by one of the terror network's leaders, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid.
The attack was "in revenge against the state of infidelity, called 'Denmark', that posted cartoons hostile to the messenger of Allah," he added, according to an English translation provided by the SITE intelligence group.
"This operation is a warning to the infidel state and those who ride with it, so that they are deterred from their sin... and so that they apologize for what they did," Yazid added.
SITE, a US-based group which monitors Islamic militant Internet websites and chat rooms, said the message was posted Wednesday on several forums.
Danish intelligence officials said earlier Wednesday that the attack had been meticulously planned for a "long time."
"Preliminary information gleaned from the car used in this suicide attack seems to indicate that it had been planned for a long time with precision," said the PET intelligence service in a statement.
Denmark's secret services have sent three experts to Islamabad as part of their investigation.
One Danish citizen of Pakistani origin and two Pakistani employees were among the dead in the blast that badly damaged the embassy and the offices of a UN-backed aid agency.
Al-Qaeda extremists called for attacks on Danish targets after Danish newspapers ran caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Danish newspapers first published the controversial cartoons in 2005, sparking violent protests in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Several dailies reprinted the sketches in February this year.
Yazid said Al-Qaeda congratulated "the Pakistani mujahideen ... the pioneers of the religious fervor and Islamic zeal, who participated" in the attack. And he added the group would soon publish the will of the suicide bomber.
1:54 PM
CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader called on Muslims to launch a holy war to break Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, in an audio recording posted Wednesday on an Islamic militant Internet site.
In the 11-minute tape, a voice purportedly belonging to Ayman al-Zawahri says in Arabic that the "salvation of the Muslim nation is through the march of its sons on the path of jihad."
An accompanying banner says the message was issued to mark the 41st anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, during which Egypt lost the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Syria lost the Golan Heights and Jordan lost the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Trying to minimize the shock of the defeat, Arabs have long called the war the "naksa" — "setback" in Arabic — but it remains a deep wound.
In al-Zawahri's recording, titled "In Memory of the Naksa ... Break the Siege of Gaza," Osama bin Laden's deputy blames Arab regimes for the 1967 defeat. He says Arab governments were "impotent and unable to protect the Muslim nation, its sanctuaries and its wealth."
"The sons of the nation should break the shackles of the treacherous regimes and move to wage jihad, which has become a duty," al-Zawahri says.
The tape follows a audio message from Bin Laden on May 18 in which he criticized Arab states for not waging war against Israel.
Al-Zawahri's message seemed especially directed at Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized control of the Gaza Strip last June in fighting with supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas' government is now based in the West Bank, leaving the Palestinian territories split.
Hamas' seizure of Gaza and its near daily firing of rockets at towns in southern Israel has prompted Israel to impose a blockade on the strip and mount airstrikes and occasional ground operations in Gaza.
Al-Zawahri lashes out at Egyptian authorities in his new message, declaring Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his troops "criminal traitors" for perpetuating Israel's blockade by sealing its own boundary with Gaza.
"You have the right to enter Egypt whenever you like and destroy the treacherous siege," al-Zawahri tells Gazans. "Those who confront you should not blame anyone but themselves."
Just hours before al-Zawahri's message was released, Abbas called for renewed dialogue with Hamas.
Al-Zawahri often issues audio and video recordings, speaking on a wide range of topics. He has frequently discussed Palestinian issues.
12:30 PM
LOS ANGELES - NASA's newest spacecraft got down and dirty on Mars, taking its first practice scoop of Martian soil ahead of the actual dig expected later this week, scientists said Monday.
The test dig made Sunday by the Phoenix Mars Lander's 8-foot-long robotic arm uncovered bits of bright specks in the soil believed to be ice or salt.
"We see this nice streak of white material," said Pat Woida, senior engineer at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which is directing the mission. "We don't know what this material is yet."
Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains May 25 on a three-month hunt to study whether the far northern latitudes could support primitive life. Its main task is to excavate trenches in the permafrost in search of evidence of past water and organic compounds considered the chemical building blocks of life. The cost of the mission is $420 million.
Close-up images beamed back by the lander over the weekend revealed that its three legs are resting on what appears to be a slab of ice. It apparently was uncovered when the spacecraft's thrusters blew away the topsoil. Also over the weekend, engineers fixed a nagging short-circuit problem on one of the lander's instruments.
With the practice dig out of the way, scientists will scour the landscape for a prime spot for the lander to perform three side-by-side digs. Phoenix will deliver the scoopfuls of dirt to its miniature ovens, and vapors from the heating will be analyzed for traces of organic compounds. Later digs will focus on bringing samples to its microscope and wet chemistry lab.
"We're ready to go," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, who is known by team members as the "dig czar." "We're pretty excited to get on with business here."
Since Phoenix's arrival, scientists have roped off no-digging zones to preserve parts of the landing site. They've also named rocks and other geologic features after fairy-tale and nursery rhyme characters, including "Humpty Dumpty" and "Alice."
11:39 AM
VIENNA (AFP) - - The UN atomic watchdog sits down Monday for a week-long meeting during which it will discuss what its inspectors term "alarming" indications that Iran may have been working to build a nuclear bomb until just a few years ago.
The 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency holds its regular summer board meeting until Friday.
Topping the agenda will be the latest report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei on the agency's long-running investigation into Tehran's controversial nuclear drive.
Iran insists its atomic programme is entirely peaceful, but western countries, and the United States in particular, are convinced the Islamic republic is covertly seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
In the sternly-worded report, the IAEA expressed "serious concern" that Iran is hiding information about alleged weaponisation work, as well as defying UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.
According to intelligence gathered by 10 different countries, Iran may have been looking into high explosives of the sort used in implosion-type nuclear bombs, and exploring modifications to missiles consistent with making them capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.
Iran has repeatedly dismissed the intelligence as fake and fabricated.
Nevertheless, in the report, the IAEA insisted that "substantive explanations are required from Iran."
The alleged weaponisation work "remain a matter of serious concern. Clarification of these is critical to an assessment of the nature of Iran's past and present nuclear programme."
In preparation for the board meeting, the agency's head of safeguards Olli Heinonen briefed diplomats on the technical aspects of the report.
According to diplomats who attended the meeting, Heinonen expressed "alarm" that Iran has in its possession a document describing the process for making what could be the core of a nuclear weapon.
The 15-page document describes the process of machining uranium metal into two hemispheres of the kind used in nuclear warheads.
Iran has told the IAEA that it received the document back in 1987 along with design information for the so-called P1 centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
Tehran insists it did not request the uranium metal document.
But the IAEA argues it needs to understand the precise role of the document to be able to determine the true nature of Iran's nuclear activities.
11:38 AM
SINGAPORE: Some Singaporeans said they may cut back on trips to Malaysia once the proposed ban on the sale of petrol and diesel to foreign registered vehicles within a 50—kilometre radius of Malaysia’s borders takes effect.
The ban is expected to kick in as early as this Friday in a move to prevent abuse of heavy fuel subsidies.
However, Malaysia’s Domestic Trade Minister, Shahrir Samad, said on Tuesday that the ban is a temporary one. It will be lifted once a new subsidy mechanism to replace the existing scheme, where everyone is subsidised, is put in place.
Still, the move is expected to affect hundreds of motorists who regularly cross over the border for cheaper oil.
Malaysia’s diesel and petrol prices are among the lowest in Asia due to high government subsidies.
The ban is expected to affect up to 300 petrol stations in the country. And Singaporeans who head to Johor Bahru for cheaper petrol will be the most affected.
For example, Loy Cheong, a businessman who is a regular traveller across the border, said he will cut back on his trips.
Mr Cheong, Business Development Manager, Medo Enterprises Holding, said: "Buying cheap petrol is one of the privileges and what attracts the Singaporean to go there. But with this implementation, it may deter people from visiting Johor.
"We go normally once a week or once in every two weeks. But if they implement this, maybe we will go less often, like once a month."
Also facing problems are Malaysians who are Singapore permanent residents.
Koh Ming Li, a Singapore permanent resident, lives near the border and has been coming to Singapore almost every day for the past two years for work.
He said: "The problem now is that it prohibits me from driving directly into JB. And as for the 50—kilometre radius from JB, I would say (there’s) almost no petrol kiosks within JB that I can pump petrol from."
Petrol kiosk operators who violate the ban face the possibility of a S$110,000 fine (RM$250,000) or a three—year jail term or both. — CNA/vm
11:36 AM
SINGAPORE - Malaysia has put off plans to ban foreign-registered vehicles from filling up on subsidized gasoline in its border areas with Singapore and Thailand, a top Malaysian official said Sunday.
The ban was originally due to start Monday at up to 300 stations within 30 miles (50 kilometers) of Malaysia's borders with the two countries, where gasoline costs up to twice as much.
But Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is in Singapore to attend a security summit, told reporters that an anti-inflation Cabinet committee would meet Tuesday to review the plan.
"We have to find a new effective date because there are other matters, like for example, can we have separate pumps because the Singaporeans are saying that they don't mind paying the market rate," he said.
The statement indicated that the government may allow foreigners to buy higher-priced fuel, whereas the earlier plan was to impose a total ban on foreigners buying fuel.
Najib declined to elaborate, only saying that the postponement was made following requests by Singaporeans.
The move is part of Malaysia's measures to curb soaring subsidies, which are expected to cost the government 45 billion ringgit (US$14 billion; �9 billion) this year as global oil prices skyrocket.
Thousands of Singaporeans cross the border every day into Malaysia's southern Johor state, many of them to shop for groceries and to fill up on gasoline to take advantage of lower prices.
Many Malaysians who work in Singapore have also complained they should be allowed to enjoy subsidized rates for their Singapore-registered vehicles, he said. Many Thais also cross into Malaysia from the northern border to buy the cheaper fuel.
The government last raised prices for gasoline, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas in February 2006, when crude oil futures were near a then-record high of about US$70 (�44) a barrel.
Crude oil prices recently breached US$130 (�82.5) a barrel, piling new pressure on the Malaysian government's finances as it grapples with an economic slowdown and rising inflation.
Regular gasoline in Malaysia costs 1.92 ringgit (US$0.61; �0.40) a liter, or 7.27 ringgit (US$2.34; �1.52) a gallon. In Singapore, the same grade gasoline costs S$2.05 (US$1.48; �0.96) per liter, or S$7.76 (US$5.63; �3.65) per gallon.
Thailand sells regular gasoline at 31.59 baht ($1.01; �0.73) a liter, or 120 baht (US$3.87; �2.51) per gallon.
