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INTERNATIONAL Forest fire forces 2,000 to evacuate in Spain VALENCIA: Firefighters battled a forest fire whipped up by strong winds in the Spanish region of Valencia yesterday, forcing the evacuation of about 2,000 people, officials said. The blaze broke out Sunday afternoon and spread quickly, threatening villages about 50 kilometres (30 miles) inland of the eastern city Valencia, which lies on the Mediterranean coast. About 2,000 people have been evacuated from villages in the area since it broke out Sunday afternoon and several roads were cut off, Valencia officials said. Some 500 firefighters on the ground, backed by 27 aircraft, were attempting to get the fire under control, they said. “We are trying to protect areas of housing,” said senior Valencia region government policymaker Turkey clips military’s wings in landmark verdict Court jails more than 300 officers ISTANBUL: The jailing of hundreds of Turkish army officers including top generals accused of plotting to topple Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan underscored how far he has come in gaining control of the country’s once all-powerful military. But Erdogan, 10 years in power, must grapple with suspicions among critics and even some sympathisers that he is using this and other coup investigations to silence opposition as he sets about taming a militant secularist establishment. Far from flinching, he may seek more power in a revamped presidency. The verdict against 325 officers at the end of the 21-month trial on Friday would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when generals regularly intervened in policy-making as selfappointed guardians of Turkish secularism. Judges in the case, dubbed Sledgehammer, handed down prison sentences ranging from six to 20 years against the officers for plotting to wreck Erdogan’s rule almost 10 years ago, soon after his Islamist-rooted party swept to power with the biggest share of the vote in decades. Hilmi Ozkok, who was head of the armed forces at the time, rejected accusations the court’s decision was driven by revenge. “The ruling will serve as a deterrent and has a lesson for everyone ... in understanding how much Turkey and the rest of the world has changed,” Ozkok told Milliyet newspaper on Sunday. Turks reading such words from the mouth of the former armed forces chief will gain a measure of the scale of change since Erdogan’s AK party was first elected in 2002. The generals then made no secret of their disdain for a man who had served a brief prison sentence for relgious incitement and had backed a short-lived Islamist government they eased from power in 1997 When AK was elected for a second term in 2007 with an even larger margin of victory, an emboldened Erdogan launched a series of investigations into officers, lawyers, politicians, journalists and others that exposed several alleged conspiracies against the government. The plots consisted of plans to foment unrest and pave the way for an army takeover. Sledgehammer, a war game scenario played out at a barracks in Istanbul in March 2003, included plans to bomb historic mosques in Istanbul and trigger conflict with Greece. For many, it was all to easy to believe. Turkey’s military, NATO’s second biggest, staged three outright coups between 1960 and 1980 and pressured a fourth government, the first Islamist-led, from power in 1997. ANKARA: Turkey’s Chief of Staff Gen. Necdet Ozel, left, and his Somalian counterpart Gen. Abdikadir Sheikh Ali Dini inspect guard of honour at the Turkish army headquarters in Ankara, Turkey, yesterday. — AP Under Erdogan, a devout Muslim, curbs on religion have been relaxed. Women are allowed to more freely wear the Islamic headscarf, alcohol is heavily taxed, and students at religious high schools are able to more easily attend university. Journalists complain of pressure to write favourable stories about the government, and a number of writers are among those arrested under another plot investigation, “Ergenekon”. “This (Sledgehammer) case is an important step towards ending the army’s political role but it’s not enough to stop it completely,” said Sahin Alpay, professor of political science at Bahcesehir University and a columnist for Zaman, seen as close to the government. “Now we need a new constitution and laws that place the army under civilian supervision and reform military schools to reflect the values of a liberal democracy,” he said. A new constitution is now under consideration to replace a restrictive code Sudan, S Sudan leaders meet for deal on conflict issues ADDIS ABABA: The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan met for a second day yesterday as pressure mounts to settle long-running bitter disputes that have brought the rivals to the brink of renewed conflict. Former civil war foes President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and his Southern counterpart Salva Kiir are facing the looming threat of UN Security Council sanctions unless they reach a deal, after they missed a Saturday deadline. The protracted talks under African Union mediation began in the Ethiopian capital several months before South Sudan split in July 2011 from what was Africa’s biggest nation, following an independence vote after decades of war. The leaders met Monday for talks hosted by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in the presidential palace, alongside AU chief mediator and former South African president Thabo Mbeki. “The presidents met, now they are discussing issues,” including contested border areas and oil, said top South Sudanese official Deng Alor, as the leaders broke mid-morning for discusions with their own teams. Face-to-face meetings expected to resume later yesterday, Alor added. The pair kick-started the talks with a two-hour meeting late Sunday, following marathon efforts by rival delegations to close gaps on a raft of issues left unresolved when the South became independent last year. Little information has filtered out about progress of the meeting, but both leaders have been seen smiling and chatting in each other’s company. “There is still optimism some form of a deal can be settled,” said a Western diplomat. Key issues include the ownership of contested regions along their frontier especially the flashpoint Abyei region-and the setting up of a demilitarised border zone after bloody clashes. The buffer zone would also potentially cut support for rebel forces in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile regions that Khartoum accuses Juba of backing. The UN set a deadline for a deal after brutal border clashes broke out in March, when Southern troops and tanks briefly wrested the valuable Heglig oil field from Khartoum’s control, and Sudan launched bombing raids in response. UN leader Ban Ki-moon has called on the leaders to tackle their remaining differences, “so that their summit concludes with a success that marks an end to the era of conflict”. For once, the mood in the long-running talks appeared largely positive, with both Khartoum and Juba apparently keen to end conflict and a stalemate over stalled oil production that is crippling both their economies. While the two leaders have met several times in recent months, delegates said there was a real sense some form of a deal was possible. A comprehensive deal-as opposed to another stepping-stone agreement-would have to include settlement on Abyei, a Lebanon-sized border area claimed by both sides and currently controlled by Ethiopian peacekeepers. But amidst the diplomatic optimism, there seemed little chance of a breakthrough to solve the growing humanitarian crises in Sudan’s civil war states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. However, it was hoped the summit would settle the details of last month’s deal to fix the oil export fees that landlocked South Sudan will pay to ship crude through Khartoum’s pipelines to the Red Sea. At independence, Juba took two-thirds of the region’s oil, but processing and export facilities remained in Sudan. In January, the South shut off oil production after accusing Sudan of stealing its oil. — AFP Serafin Castellano. “Right now our biggest enemy is the weather, a lot of wind,” he told COPE radio. Dramatic images in the Spanish media showed flames lighting up the night sky and illuminating clouds of smoke that billowed along hillsides just behind houses. Enrique Silvestre, mayor of one of the evacuated villages, Chulilla, said the situation was “very diffi- inherited from the military after a 1980 coup. Turkey may well emerge from the debate with a presidential republic and a powerful president in Erdogan. Alpay acknowledged there were questions about the case with so many defendants on trial at once, the judges’ refusal to allow in some defence evidence and the lengthy sentences. A key issue at appeal is likely to be the defence’s inability to submit legal expert testimony that computer documents submitted as evidence appeared fake. Defence lawyers said they would appeal the verdict this week to Turkey’s upper court and, if necessary, eventually apply to the European Court of Human Rights. Generals Cetin Dogan and Halil Ibrahim Firtina and retired admiral Ozden Ornek, who were considered Sledgehammer’s ringleaders were given life terms, reduced to 20 years because the coup plot had failed. Critics of the government have said the trial was a purge of the government’s opponents in the army’s ranks. “This isn’t really a legal case,” said Pinar Dogan, Cetin Dogan’s daughter and a lecturer at Harvard University. “It’s a wider operation with powerful forces behind it ... and we see those with firm secularist beliefs are the ones targeted.” She said her mother Nilgul Dogan, 60, faces three years in prison in a separate case for planting a rose bush near the courthouse to protest against the trial. Others said the case failed to go far enough. Gultan Kisanak, co-chairwoman of parliament’s pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, said the indictment did not include crimes she says were committed in a 28-year long war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has killed more than 40,000 people. “Military tutelage, a tradition of coups, contraguerrilla activities, extrajudicial killings and other dark events are all part of our recent political history,” she said. “While we need a process to confront and reconcile our past, the government instead opted to settle its own scores.” Sledgehammer is one of a series of trials that has raised questions about whether the government is using the courts to silence political opponents. Others include the “Ergenekon” case, which involves a web of alleged plots against Turkey’s government, and the “KCK” trials which accuse thousands of Kurdish journalists, academics, lawyers and others of belonging to the PKK, viewed as a terrorist group by the United States and Europe for its campaign of violence for greater autonomy in southeastern Turkey. The court ruling also has the potential to undermine morale in the military as it battles the PKK in the heaviest fighting in more than a decade and faces a growing challenge maintaining security along its southern border with war-torn Syria. A hundred or so people gathered near Taksim Square in central Istanbul to protest the verdict. “This case was an effort to silence those who defend the secular republic,” said Hanife Kopuz, 55, clutching a cloth banner of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern Turkish republic from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. “This may be a turning point, reducing support for the government. They can’t stay in power forever but I fear what they will leave in their wake,” she said. — Reuters SUSSEX: An undated handout picture released by Sussex Police yesterday shows missing British teenager Megan Stammers. — AFP Police hunt teen who fled with teacher LONDON: British police were liaising with French colleagues yesterday in an effort to track down a missing 15-year-old girl said to have fled across the Channel with a married teacher twice her age. Megan Stammers, 15, was last seen on Friday and “is believed to be in France with Jeremy Forrest from Ringmer, East Sussex”, according to a statement from Sussex Police. Several British newspapers cited police sources as saying that Forrest, 30, was her maths teacher at Bishop Bell Church of England School in Eastbourne, southeast England. Forrest, who plays in a rock band under the stage name Jeremy Ayre and is married to a 31-year-old woman, had hinted at a “moral dilemma” in a blog four months ago. Police have appealed to him and Megan to make contact after CCTV footage showed them in a Ford Fiesta car boarding a ferry from Dover to the French port of Calais on Friday. They are thought to have remained in France.—AFP MINSK: Not a single opposition politician won a seat in Belarus’ parliament in a weekend vote that has been condemned by international observers and looks set to deepen the former Soviet nation’s diplomatic isolation. Critics also said the 74.3 percent turnout reported by the Central Elections Commission chairman yesterday was way too high and indicated widespread fraud. The main opposition parties, which were ignored by state-run media, boycotted the election to protest the detention of political prisoners and ample opportunities for election fraud. The vote filled the parliament with representatives of three parties that have backed the policy agenda of President Alexander Lukashenko. “This election was not competitive from the start,” said Matteo Mecacci, leader of the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “A free election depends on people being free to speak, organize and run for office, and we didn’t see that in this campaign.” Belarus’ parliament has long been considered a rubber-stamp body for Lukashenko’s policies. He has ruled the former Soviet nation since 1994 and Western observers have criticized all recent elections in Belarus as undemocratic. Local independent observers estimated the overall turnout as being almost 19 percent lower than the official 74.3 percent figure. “Belarus gets ever closer to the worst standards of Soviet elections,” said Valentin Stefanovich, coordinator of the Rights Activists for Free Elections group. At least 20 independent election observers were detained, according to rights activists. Political analyst Leonid Zaiko said the way the elections were held highlighted Lukashenko’s desire to prepare for another beckoning economic crisis. “He plans to control the situation with an iron fist. He has no TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 cult”. “The wind is not helping at all and the night was terrible,” the mayor told Cadena SER radio. Spain is at particularly high risk of fires this summer after suffering its driest winter in 70 years. Flames destroyed more than 184,000 hectares (454,000 acres) of land between January 1 and September 16, the largest amount in a decade, according to agriculture ministry figures. — AFP MINSK: The Head of the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission, Antonio Milososki (R) speaks, while the Head of the OSCE PA delegation, Matteo Mecacci (L), looks on during their press conference in Minsk, yesterday. Western observers slammed the weekend election in Belarus as neither competitive nor free, after results showed every seat in parliament was won by factions loyal to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. — AFP Belarus elects entirely pro-govt parliament UNITED NATIONS: Britain, France and Germany have officially called for new European Union sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, diplomats said. The foreign ministers of the three countries wrote to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton last week calling for tougher measures as the showdown with Tehran becomes more tense, a European diplomat told AFP Sunday on condition of anonymity. The EU is working on more sanctions as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seeks to counter the pressure on his country at this week’s UN General Assembly in New York. Ahmadinejad met UN leader Ban Kimoon on Sunday as the EU foreign policy chief held talks on Iran and other topics with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York. Details of the new EU measures are still being worked on but foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc will discuss the move at a meeting in Brussels on October 15. The United States and its European allies say that Iran is working toward a nuclear bomb. Iran says its research is for peaceful energy purposes. There has been mounting speculation in recent months that Israel is planning a military strike on Iran’s bunkered nuclear facilities. The United States, Britain and France warned at the UN Security Council last week that time is running out for a negotiated solution with Iran. “It is necessary that we sharpen the sanctions,” said a second western official, confirming the request by foreign ministers William Hague of Britain, Laurent Fabius of France and Guido Westerwelle of Germany. “We think there is still time for a political solution, a diplomatic solution, time for any opposition, not on the street and certainly not in parliament,” Zaiko said. Lukashenko’s landslide win in the 2010 presidential election triggered a mass street protest against election fraud that was brutally suppressed. Some of the 700 people arrested at that protest are still in jail, including presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich. Opposition politicians have cautioned supporters to refrain from holding protest rallies this time. The opposition had hoped to use this election to build support, but 33 of 35 candidates from the United Civil Party were barred from television, while the stateowned press refused to publish their election programs. The United Civil Party and another leading opposition party, the Belarusian Popular Front, pulled their candidates off the ballot and urged voters not to show up at the polls a week before the election. The United States and the European Union have imposed economic and travel sanctions on the Belarusian government over its crackdown on opposition groups and independent news media. “The aim of giving President Lukashenko’s regime the appearance of democratic legitimacy has clearly failed,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement. “In view of the glaring irregularities in these elections, it is clearly visible for everyone what Belarus is today: the last dictatorship in the heart of Europe.” Westerwelle said Germany and its European partners would step up their efforts to push for the release of political prisoners and isolate Lukashenko and his regime. EU foreign ministers are due to hold talks in Brussels next month on political freedoms in Belarus. They are expected to consider possible revisions to sanctions against the country aimed at more specifically targeting those in the leadership deemed responsible for the political crackdown. — AP Britain, France, Germany call for new Iran sanctions and this is what we are working for. But we cannot accept nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran,” said the official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. Ashton is to chair a meeting in New York on Thursday of the six nations-the EU three, plus the United States, Russia and China-who have been seeking to negotiate a solution with Iran. The international community has pursued a dual track of pressure through sanctions while seeking to negotiate. But the US and European nations say Iran is refusing to talk. UN chief Ban “urged Iran to take the measures necessary to build international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” said a UN spokeswoman, Vannina Maestracci. Ban and Ahmadinejad also discussed the war in Syria and the protests in the Muslim world against a US-made film that mocks Islam. The showdown with Iran is one of the key topics at the UN assembly where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad, who will address world leaders on Wednesday, is probably making his last appearance at the UN assembly where he has become a controversial figure. Western nations regularly walk out of his speeches in protest at his anti-Israeli comments. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama compared Israel’s insistence on tougher approach to Iran to noise he tries to ignore, according to remarks aired Sunday. Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program that he understood and agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.—AFP
WASHINGTON: The United States on Sunday condemned a Pakistani government minister’s offer of a bounty to kill the maker of an anti-Islam film that has triggered violent protests around the Muslim world. As demonstrators held more rallies against the filmthis time in Hong Kong, Turkey, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Bangladesh-even Pakistan’s government distanced itself from the comments by its Railways Minister, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour. On Saturday, Bilour offered a $100,000 “prize” for killing the filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims”-an amateurish film made in the United States-and invited the Taleban and Al-Qaeda to take part in the “noble deed.” The State Department weighed in Sunday, with an official recalling that US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “have both said the video at the core of this is offensive, disgusting, and reprehensible. The official added: “But that is no justification for violence and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against vio- INTERNATIONAL US slams Pakistani minister’s filmmaker bounty GUWAHATI: Indian Army personnel rescue villagers at the flood-affected area in Dholla village, Tinsukia district, some 575 kms from Guwahati, the capital city of the northeastern state of Assam yesterday. The flood situation in Assam is grim with over 800,000 people affected in at least 15 of the 27 districts in the state, officials said Sunday. — AFP Million displaced by floods in India GUWAHATI: Floods have forced more than one million people to flee their homes in northeastern India, where authorities have called a health alert, officials said yesterday. “So far 18 of 27 districts of Assam have been hit by floods with more than one million displaced and 11 people drowned in separate incidents in the past week,” the Disaster Management agency said in a statement. Rescue officials said about 2,000 villages had been hit by overflowing waters from the rain-swollen Brahmaputra River. Himanta Biswa Sarmah, the health minister of Assam state, told AFP that a “maximum health alert” has been sounded in the devastated zone. Other officials said the affected people had been evacuated to temporary shelters on higher embankments and to schools and colleges unaffected by the second round of floods since July in Assam, which borders Bangladesh. Nearly 130 people were killed and six million displaced by the floodwaters in Assam two months ago, which came during India’s June-September monsoon. “We have dispatched doctors and paramedics to ensure that there is no outbreak of disease,” Sarmah said in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city. The Press Trust of India said almost the entire core area of 420 square kilometres (162 square miles) of Kaziranga National Park in Assam was also flooded. The wildlife park is home to the world’s single largest population of onehorned rhinos. A 2012 census in Kaziranga counted 2,290 of the rhinos, out of a global population of 3,300. The species declined to near extinction in the early 1900s and is listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Kaziranga has fought a sustained battle against rhino poachers, who kill the animals for their horns, which fetch huge prices in some Asian countries where they are deemed to be an aphrodisiac. Meanwhile, a stampede at a religious celebration killed at least nine people, eight of them women, in eastern India yesterday, a district official said. “Eight women and a man died during the stampede,” Rahul Purwa, deputy commissioner of Deoghar district, in Jharkhand state, told AFP. The victims were among thousands of Hindu devotees who had gathered to take part in celebrations to mark the anniversary of the birth of Saint Thakur Anukul Chand. The stampede broke out while hundreds of devotees were gathered in a congested hall for early morning prayers, said Purwa. “I was informed by local police officials that the incident was the result of rumours spread by some devotees. The district administration is conducting a probe,” he added. The injured were being treated in nearby hospitals. Stampedes often break out at religious events in India where policing and crowd control are often inadequate. The last major stampede was in January 2011 in the southern state of Kerala when more than 100 people died as panic spread among worshippers crossing mountainous terrain in the dark to visit a shrine. On Sunday, three people were killed and over two dozen injured in Mathura near New Delhi where a large congregation had gathered on the occasion of the Radha Ashtami festival, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. — AFP Pakistan ‘blasphemy’ girl’s case sent to juvenile court ISLAMABAD: A judge yesterday ordered police to refer the case of a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy to a juvenile court, following a medical report that said she was 14. Rimsha Masih spent three weeks on remand in an adult jail after she was arrested on August 16 for allegedly burning pages from the Quran in a case that prompted worldwide condemnation. Police on Saturday told the court the girl was not guilty and a cleric who allegedly framed her should face trial instead. “We have received the medical report which says she is aged 14. The investigation report of her case must be submitted in a juvenile court,” Judge Raja Jawad Abbas said yesterday. Rao Abdur Rahim, the lawyer for Rimsha’s neighbour Hammad Malik, who originally accused her, objected to the medical report, but Abbas told him he should apply to the juvenile court when it takes up the case. The judge later adjourned the case till October 1, summoning local imam Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti, who was arrested for allegedly adding pages from the Quran to a bag of burnt papers, to the next hearing. Rimsha, who is currently free on bail, was also asked to appear following an accusation from Rahim that she had absconded to Norway. An official medical report has classified her as “uneducated” and aged 14, but with a mental age younger than her years. Others have said she is as young as 11 and suffers from Down’s Syndrome. Rimsha and her family, who have been in fear for their lives since the blasphemy allegations, were moved to an undisclosed location after her release on bail on September 8. — AFP lence.” “Therefore we find Mr. Bilour’s announcement is inflammatory and inappropriate,” the official said in a statement. In Pakistan, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf rejected the bounty offer. “This is not government policy. We completely dissociate (ourselves) from this,” a spokesman for the prime minister’s office told AFP. Fresh rallies were held across Pakistan Sunday to condemn the film after violent nationwide protests Friday left 21 people dead when police used tear gas and live rounds to fight back protesters. More than 50 people have died in protests and attacks around the world linked to the low-budget film, which mocks Islam and the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), since the first demonstrations on September 11. Four US officials, including the ambassador to Libya, were killed in the Libyan city of Benghazi. The publication on Wednesday of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has further stoked anger. In France, an 18-year-old man who used Facebook to KATHMANDU: Rescuers scaled down a search yesterday for two French climbers and a Canadian missing in a Nepal avalanche which killed at least nine people attempting to scale one of the world’s highest peaks. Police said they had halted a helicopter rescue mission as hopes faded for the trio, part of a group hit by a wall of snow in their tents near the peak of the 8,156-metre (26,759-foot) Manaslu in the early hours of Sunday. “We have now stopped helicopter rescue operations. Two French and a Canadian mountaineer are still missing. Sherpa guides are in the mountains searching for them,” district police chief Basanta Bahadur Kunwar told AFP. Nepal’s tourism board had earlier put the missing figure at seven, but police said four of those were among 13 already rescued on Sunday. Among those reported missing was a doctor from the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec, cardiologist Dominique Ouimet, the man’s sister said. “The tents seem to have disappeared because the avalanche came by,” Isabelle Ouimet told Radio Canada, adding that her brother was at camp three when the avalanche struck. Kunwar said five mountaineers had been airlifted from among the survivors at Manaslu base camp Sunday and were being treated in Kathmandu. “The other eight mountaineers who are at the base camp have not sustained any injuries. They have said they will either walk down or will make an attempt to reach the peak again and have told officials that they should not be rescued.” Eight of the dead have been identified, Nepal tourism board spokesman Sarad Pradhan told AFP, adding that four were French, one a Nepali mountain guide, one a Spaniard, one German and one Italian. France’s foreign ministry yesterday confirmed that four French climbers were dead and two missing after an avalanche in Nepal. “According to a preliminary toll, four French citizens are dead at this stage,” the minister in charge of French citizens abroad, Helene Conway-Mouret, said in a statement. “The search continues for two of our citizens.” The statement said three other French citizens had been taken by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu after the avalanche. Harrowing accounts of the avalanche began to emerge from survivors being treated in Kathmandu. “We were sleeping in our tent after having dinner, when all of a sudden we heard the noise of other climbers screaming. Within moments, we were hit by the avalanche,” Andreas Reiter, 26, from Germany, was quoted as telling the Himalayan <strong>Times</strong> from his hospital bed in the capital. threaten the magazine’s editors was charged Sunday with terrorism-related activity, a judicial source said. Police arrested the teenager in the southern city of Toulon on Wednesday after he was reported by a person close to him who was concerned over his radicalism. Police found several knives at his residence and said the man had threatened to go after those in charge of the weekly. Meanwhile, an influential US lawmaker cast doubt over whether there was even an anti-American protest going on when the American ambassador to Libya was killed in an attack on the consulate in Benghazi. The Obama administration initially said it believed extremists had not really planned the attack in Libya but rather had simply used a spontaneous protest over the anti-Islamic trailer as cover to mix in with the crowd and attack with weapons that included rocketpropelled grenades. The White House for the first time Thursday described the assault as a “terrorist attack” and said it could have links to Al-Qaeda. But a “I witnessed one of the team members die.” SNGM vice-president Christian Trommsdorff described the French victims as three mountain guides from the Chamonix area in the Alps and their clients, who were part of two expeditions. The avalanche happened at around 7,400 metres and carried away part of camp number three at 6,800 metres, Trommsdorff told AFP. Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world, is considered one of the most dangerous, with scores of deaths in recent years and just a few hundred successful ascents. Laxmi Dhakal, head of the home ministry’s disaster response division, confirmed the avalanche had hit camp three and said it had created “a flood of snow”. Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000 metres, including the world’s highest, Mount Everest, and attracts thousands of mountaineers every year. Most come in the spring, when Himalayan conditions are at their best, but there is also a short climbing season in late September and October after the monsoon rains end. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 Republican lawmaker cast doubt Sunday over whether the protests even happened. “I have seen no information that shows that there was a protest going on as you have seen around any other embassy at the time,” Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “The notion about the film... I think the administration was ill-advised to push down that road,” he added. Rogers said he believed it was a revenge attack timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of 9/11 but that it wasn’t clear if the militants had known Stevens was there or just got lucky. “This had to be a pre-planned event. We know it was an act of terrorism. I think the administration has come to the conclusion it’s an act of terrorism now,” he said. The State Department is under rising scrutiny about what appears to be inadequate security for Stevens and the consulate in Benghazi before the attack. — AFP Hopes fade for missing climbers Paris confirms four French dead in Nepal avalanche SYDNEY: Australian homicide detectives yesterday took over an investigation into the disappearance of a young Irish woman in Melbourne after her handbag was found in a nearby street. Jill Meagher, who works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), was last seen at about 1:30 am on Saturday when she left friends at a bar to walk the short distance home. She never made it. “We take on these cases of a suspicious nature where a person goes missing when there’s a possibility that they may have been met with foul play,” Detective Inspector John Potter said. “We don’t know that at this point and we always hope that we can find her safe and well, but at this stage she hasn’t responded to any of the media reports over the weekend, she hasn’t contacted her husband, and he’s (not) been able to contact her (on) her mobile phone.” The 29-year-old’s handbag was found yesterday morning in a lane in Brunswick, the inner-city Melbourne suburb in which she lives, about 700 metres from where she was last seen. Meagher’s husband Thomas Meagher said he tried calling his wife, who works in administration at Melbourne local radio, repeatedly from 2:00 am to 6:00 am on the morning she disappeared, and began searching the streets for her at 4:00 am. “I’m just trying to push on,” he said. “I just hope somebody saw something or she will just walk through the door.” The ABC described KATHMANDU: Unidentified Italian survivors of Sunday’s avalanche at Mount Manaslu arrive in Kathmandu, Nepal, after being flown from the mountain, yesterday. Rescue helicopters flew over the high slopes of the northern Nepal peak again yesterday to search for climbers lost in the avalanche that killed at least nine mountaineers and injured others. Many of the climbers were French, German and Italian. — AP Meagher as “a highly valued and much loved member of the local radio team”. “Our thoughts are with Jill’s family and friends during this very difficult time,” the broadcaster said in a statement. One of her ABC colleagues Tom Wright told the Herald Manaslu is nicknamed “Killer Mountain” by locals because a series of snowslides have claimed the lives of scores of mountaineers since it was first conquered in 1956. The latest deaths mean at least 62 people have died, according to an AFP tally. It saw its worst disaster when a South Korean expedition was buried by snow while attempting to climb the northeast face in 1972. The 15 dead included 10 Sherpas and the Korean expedition leader. Those who attempt the summit are experienced climbers who will tackle other Himalayan peaks as well, said Dawa Steven Sherpa, two-time summiteer of Everest from Kathmandu. “People who normally climb up Manaslu have bigger peaks in mind, or they are people who are attempting to climb all the 8,000m peaks,” he told AFP. “Very few people climb Manaslu for the sake of just climbing Manaslu.” Nepal’s worstever climbing disaster happened in 1995 when a huge avalanche struck the camp of a Japanese trekking group in the Mount Everest region, killing 42 people including 13 Japanese. — AFP Australian homicide squad leads hunt for Irish woman Sun newspaper he had offered to walk Meagher home, but she insisted on going alone. “I said, ‘can I walk you home?’, because it’s late at night, and she said: ‘No, no I live around here, I know it really well, don’t worry’,” he said. — AFP MELBOURNE: An undated handout photo received yesterday, shows Jill Meagher who works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Australian homicide detectives took over an investigation into the disappearance of a young Irish woman in Melbourne after her handbag was found in a nearby street. — AFP
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Page 35 and 36: For labor-related inquiries and com
Page 37 and 38: Review Deadmau5 doles out lackluste
Page 39 and 40: Louis CK accepts the award for outs

NEw SARS-likE viRUS EMERGES iN MidEASt - Kuwait Times

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