Govt officials set to skip Geneva UN rights meet

Nato to bid farewell to Panetta,
seeks new military chief
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta will get a fond
farewell from his Nato colleagues as the alliance
looks for a new supreme military commander.
Panetta, 74, had expected to bow out earlier but his
replacement, Chuck Hagel, has had a rough ride so
far in the US Senate which has delayed a vote on
President Barack Obama’s nominee over parts of
his otherwise distinguished record.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DAMASCUS, FEB 21
ACAR bombing near Syria's
ruling party headquarters in
Damascus killed 53 people
on Thursday, according to state
media, while mortar rounds
exploded near the army's central
command in the city.
It was the third straight day of
attacks on the center of the capital,
among the deepest and fiercest on
the heart of Bashar Assad’s seat of
power during the civil war.
The car bombing was the deadliest
attack inside Damascus in
nine months and within hours, two
other bombings and a mortar
attack on the military compound
followed.
While no one group has
claimed responsibility, the attacks
suggest that rebel fighters who
have gotten bogged down in
their attempts to storm the
capital are resorting to guerrilla
tactics to loosen Assad’s grip on
the capital.
The day’s deadliest attack
struck a main street on the edge of
central Mazraa neighbourhood,
near the headquarters of Assad’s
Baath party and the Russian
Embassy, as well as a mosque, a
hospital and a school.
TV footage of the blast site
showed firemen dousing a flaming
car with hoses and lifeless and dismembered
bodies blown into the
grass of a nearby park. The state
news service, SANA, published
photos showing a large crater in the
newsdigest
7 killed in mosque attack
GARISSA: Gunmen armed with AK-
47 rifles opened fire at a mosque in
Kenya’s east, killing seven people,
an official said on Thursday, in an
attack less than two weeks before
Kenya’s national presidential vote.
USAID chief in Mogadishu
MOGADISHU: The administrator of
the US Agency for International
Development is in Mogadishu for
talks with top Somali officials. The
visit on Thursday by Rajiv Shah
makes him the highest ranking US
administration official to visit
Mogadishu in years.
UK men guilty of bomb plot
LONDON: Three young British
Muslims were convicted on
Thursday of plotting terrorist bomb
attacks that prosecutors said were
intended to be bigger than the 2005
London transit bombings. A
London jury found Irfan Khalid,
Irfan Naseer and Ashik Ali guilty of
being central figures in the foiled
plot to explode knapsack bombs in
crowded areas. (Agencies)
middle of the rubble-strewn street
and charred cars holding blackened
bodies.
Witnesses at the scene said a
car exploded at a security checkpoint
between the Russian
Embassy and the central headquarters
of Assad’s ruling party.
“It was huge. Everything in the
shop turned upside down,” one
local resident said. He said three of
his employees were injured by flying
glass that killed a young girl
who was walking by when the blast
hit. “I pulled her inside the shop
but she was almost gone. We couldn’t
save her. She was hit in the
stomach and head,” he said, speak-
KATHMANDU, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2013 | WWW.EKANTIPUR.COM
IVF guidelines raise
age limit to 42
COUPLES struggling to have a baby should
get fertility treatment more quickly and older
women should gain access to IVF, new NHS
guidelines say. IVF should be offered after two
years of failed attempts, not the current three,
says the National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence. In 2011, nearly 14,000
women became pregnant through IVF.
Damascus car bomb kills 53 PRESS
ing on condition of anonymity for
fear of retribution for speaking with
foreign media.
Ambulances rushed to the
scene of the blast, which shattered
windows and sent up a huge cloud
of smoke visible throughout much
of the city, witnesses said.
State TV called it a “terrorist”
attack by a suicide bomber. It said
at least 53 people were killed and
more than 200 wounded.
The Britain-based activist
group the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said at least 42 people
were killed, most of them civilians.
Some members of the Syrian
security forces were also killed, it
said. There was no way to immediately
reconcile the differing death
tolls.
The bombing appeared to be
the second most deadly in the
Syrian capital since the uprising
against Assad began 23 months
ago. Fifty-five people were killed in
the first, a double suicide bombing
outside of an intelligence building
in May, 2012.
Russia’s state owned RIA
Novosti news agency quoted a
Russian Embassy official as saying
the Embassy building had been
damaged in the blast but no one
was hurt.
In a separate attack, Syrian
state TV said mortar shells exploded
near the Syrian Army General
Command in central Damascus,
causing no casualties. The station
said the building was empty
because it was under renovation.
China ex-leader ‘not cooperating’ in probe
Details of Bo’s
condition and
whereabouts
have been kept
under wraps
since his downfall
SYRIA UNREST
REUTERS
BEIJING, FEB 21
DISGRACED former senior
Chinese leader Bo Xilai is
refusing to cooperate with a
government investigation
into him and has staged
hunger strikes in protest
and at one point was
treated in hospital, sources
with knowledge of the
matter said.
Almost a year after Bo’s
fall from grace under a
cloud of lurid accusations
about corruption, abuse of
power and murder, the government
has given no
definitive time frame for
Pak accuses envoy
to US of blasphemy AGENCE
REUTERS
MULTAN, FEB 21
PAKISTANI police accused the
country’s ambassador to the
United States on Thursday of
blasphemy, a crime that carries
the death penalty,
in connection with a
2010 TV talk show,
they said.
The accusation
against Ambassador
Sherry Rehman is the
latest in a string of
controversial blasphemy
cases in Pakistan, a
largely Muslim nation
whose name translates as
Land of the Pure.
According to Pakistan’s
blasphemy laws, anyone
found to have uttered words
derogatory to the Prophet
Muhammad can be put to
death. Those who are accused
are sometimes lynched
by mobs even before they
reach court.
Sherry Rehman
when he will face court, and
has not even announced
formal charges.
Bo was ousted from his
post as Communist Party
chief in the southwestern
city of Chongqing last year
following his wife’s murder
of a British businessman,
Neil Heywood.
Before that, Bo, 63, had
been widely tipped to be
promoted to the party’s elite
inner core. His downfall
came after his estranged
police chief, Wang Lijun,
fled briefly to a US consulate
last February and
accused Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai,
of poisoning Heywood.
Rehman has already faced
death threats from militants
after calling for reforms to the
country’s anti-blasphemy law,
according to court documents.
Two politicians who suggested
reforming the law were assassinated.
The case against
Rehman was brought
by businessman
Muhammad Faheem
Gill, 31, who said that
the comments
Rehman made about
the law on the
Pakistani talk show in
2010 were blasphemous.
Gill went to the
Supreme Court with his complaint
after police refused to
register it. The court ordered
police in the central Pakistani
city of Multan to investigate.
Rehman, a prominent
member of the ruling Pakistan
People’s Party, was appointed
as ambassador to the United
States in November 2011.
Gu and Wang have both
since been convicted and
jailed. No criminal charges
against Bo have been
revealed but the ruling
Communist party has
accused him in statements
carried by the official
Xinhua news agency of corruption
and of bending the
law to hush up Heywood’s
killing. Two independent
sources with ties to the family
said Bo’s trial was likely
to be delayed until after an
annual full session of parliament
and its top advisory
body in March because he
was not physically fit.
“He was on hunger
India strike
day-2 hits life
FRANCE PRESSE
NEW DELHI, FEB 21
OPERATIONS at India’s
public-sector banks and
many factories were hit for a
second straight day by a
general strike called to
protest against the government’s
pro-market reforms.
The Associated
Chambers of Commerce
and Industry estimated losses
from the two-day stoppage
at 260 billion rupees
($4.8 billion).
Eleven unions called the
walkout in protest against
the measures which they
condemned as “anti-poor”
and said were likely to cost
jobs and raise prices. While
the impact of the stoppage
was felt mainly in heavily
unionised state-run institutions,
analysts said it underscored
discontent among
workers. Leaders of two
main leftist parties said they
were boycotting the opening
session of parliament on
Thursday in solidarity with
the strikers.
strike twice and force fed,”
one source said. It was
unclear how long the
hunger strike lasted.
“He was not tortured,
but fell ill and was taken to a
hospital in Beijing for treatment,”
the source said,
declining to provide details
of Bo’s condition and
whereabouts which have
been kept under wraps
since his downfall.
The stability-obsessed
ruling party is determined
to prevent anything, including
Bo’s trial, from disrupting
the final steps of Vice
President Xi Jinping’s ascent
to becoming top leader.
Prince Philip cracks
Filipino nurse joke
THE Duke of Edinburgh told a nurse from the
Philippines that her country must be “half empty”
because so many of her compatriots have come to
the UK to work for the NHS. He made the remark
during a visit to Luton and Dunstable Hospital.
The 91-year-old royal was said to be in a “jovial”
mood and asked when the hospital would get a
helipad to save him a journey by car.
India Mars mission this year
TRUST OF INDIA
NEW DELHI, FEB 21
INDIA will launch its first
space mission to Mars this
year, President Pranab
Mukherjee said on Thursday.
“Several space missions
are planned for 2013, including
India’s first mission to
Mars and the launch of our
first navigational satellite,”
Mukherjee said in his maiden
address to the joint sitting
of Parliament at the start of
the Budget session.
The Indian Space
Research Organisation will
also put in orbit the first of its
seven satellites
of the Indian
R e g i o n a l
Navigation
Satellite System
(IRNSS). The
system is India’s
version of the
Global Positioning System.
The Mars Orbiter mission,
scheduled for launch in
October, will look for signature
of life and reasons for
loss of atmosphere on the red
planet.
Under the mission, India
will put in orbit a spacecraft
using the Polar Satellite
Launch Vehicle. The satellite
5
will undertake a 300-day
journey to Mars and is
expected to be put into the
Martian orbit in September
next year. Mukherjee said the
space programme epitomised
India’s scientific
achievements and benefits
the country in a number of
areas.
“The launch of the Polar
Satellite Launch Vehicle on
September 9, 2012 marked
our 100th space mission.
India’s first remote sensing
satellite RISAT-1, with allweather
imaging capability,
was also launched in 2012,”
he said.