Voting ends in Sri Lanka polls

People lined up in areas of Colombo half an hour before polls opened on Tuesday [AFP] Sri Lankans have voted in the country's first presidential election since the civil war with Tamil separatists in the north was ended. Polls closed at 4pm (10:30GMT) on Tuesday amid claims of voter intimidation and sporadic acts of violence following a bitter campaign. Officials results were expected on Wednesday, with both Mahinda Rajapakse, the incumbent, and Sarath Fonseka, his former army chief, saying that expected to emerge victorous. "We will have a great victory," Rajapakse told reporters after casting his ballot in his southern home constituency of Mulkirigala. "We must be ready to face the challenges of reaching new heights after this vote," the 64-year-old, who called the election only four years into his six-year term to seize on the government's victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last year, said. Vote prohibited Fonseka, however, suffered the embarrassment of not being able to vote, a problem he blamed on his name being omitted from the 2008 electoral register which was used for...... Visit : http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/2010126133311974709.html

Morales sworn-in for second term

Bolivian Indians complained of discrimination by a minority government until Morales was elected [AFP] Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, has been sworn-in for a second term, vowing to further tighten state control over South America's poorest economy and develop some of the world's largest lithium reserves. Morales, an Aymara Indian and Bolivia's first indigenous president, won a sweeping re-election victory in December due to broad support from the poor Indian majority. "Comrades, democracy has been consolidated ... the colonial state has died and the multicultural state has been born," Morales said in his inauguration speech in the capital of La Paz on Friday. After winning a majority in both houses of congress, the ruling party can now call for referendums to amend the constitution, and will control judicial appointments, which leaves other parties with little power to oppose Morales. In his inauguration speech, Morales promised to launch state-run paper, cement, dairy and drug companies and develop iron and lithium industries to help Bolivia export value-added products instead of raw materials. Call for investors Bolivia has huge deposits of lithium but does not exploit the metal. "We need a lot of money to industrialise lithium ... we're ready to negotiate [with foreign investors] to guarantee investments," Morales said. Foreign investors became wary after the president's energy industry nationalisations in 2006, which increased taxes on foreign companies. Morales said Bolivia needed "partners but not patrons." Bolivia is South America's top exporter of natural gas, but Morales has failed to attract investment to increase output and corruption has hampered efforts by the state-run energy company to develop projects to produce natural-gas derivatives. After nationalising energy, mining and telecommunication companies the Bolivian state controls 28 per cent of the economy, increased from about 8 per cent before Morales became president. The government is targeting 40 per cent state control over the economy, mainly by launching more state companies. His inauguration was attended by several South American presidents, including Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, and Rafael Correa, Ecuador's leader. Bolivian Indians make up around 60 per cent of the population and have long complained of discrimination by a mixed-raced minority that had a stronghold on politics until Morales first became president in January 2006.

Source: Agencies

Sri Lanka prepares for the polls

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Sri Lankans are preparing to go to the polls to elect a new president. They must choose between the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and the former army chief, General Sarath Fonseka.

Both men are widely viewed as hardline advocates for the island's Sinhalese ethnic majority. Both are also closely associated with last May's resounding military victory against the separatist Tamil Tigers or LTTE. However questions are being asked about the relevance of the vote for the Tamil minority.

for more : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8472254.stm

Fear over Ivory Coast ruling on Trafigura waste pay-out

The case concerns chemical waste dumped in 2006 A court in Ivory Coast has ruled that $45m (£28m) due to 30,000 alleged victims of dumped waste should be distributed by a local activist. Claimants' lawyers expressed doubts about whether the activist, Claude Gohourou, would pass on the money. One lawyer said only his firm knew the identity of the claimants, and that he was worried false lists would be made. Mr Gohourou's association said fraud was more likely if the lawyers handled the money. The case concerns 500 tonnes of chemical waste brought to Ivory Coast by multi-national oil company Trafigura and dumped around Abidjan by a local contractor in 2006. Trafigura agreed last year to pay people who said they had been made ill by the waste. The company and the claimants' lawyers agreed that a link between the dumped waste and deaths had not been proved. The money is in addition to the nearly $200m that the company paid the Ivorian government in 2007. 'Depressing' The BBC's John James in Abidjan says supporters of Mr Gohourou cheered as Friday's ruling was read out. It overturns an earlier ruling that Mr Gohourou should not distribute the payments, and claimants' lawyers said they would appeal.... for more : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8475362.stm

'Bible codes' on Afghan army guns

Al Jazeera's David Chater reports on the implications of the religious gun sights US-made rifles inscribed with Bible codes are being used by US forces and Afghans to fight the Taliban. The weapons come from Trijicon, a manufacturer based in Wixom, Michigan, that supplies the US military. The company's now deceased founder, Glyn Bandon, started the practice which continues today. David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Afghan capital Kabul, said: "It is a rallying cry for the Taliban. It gives them a propaganda tool. "They've always tried to paint the US efforts in Afghanistan as a Christian campaign." 'Disturbing' General David Petraeus, the chief of the US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, called the inscriptions, which he said he only learnt about on Wednesday, "disturbing". The inscriptions do not include actual text from the Bible but refer numerically to passages "This is a serious concern to me and the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan because it indeed conveys a perception that is absolutely contrary to what we have sought to do," he said at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Thursday. A Nato spokesman in Afghanistan acknowledged that the inscriptions were inappropriate but said the guns would .... Source: Al Jazeera and agencies for more Visit : http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/20101211239216652.html

Race to help Haiti quake victims

Many Haitians are living on the streets fearing that aftershocks will destroy more buildings [AFP] Aid agencies and the US army are moving to get help to Haiti where thousands of people are feared to be trapped under rubble after an earthquake which is believed to have left tens of thousands dead. Up to 3,500 troops from the US army's 82nd Airborne Division will be sent to Haiti to help with the relief effort and to provide security in the wake of Tuesday's quake, a US army official said on Thursday. The first 100 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne were scheduled to arrive in Haiti on Thursday and would begin preparing for the arrival of other soldiers, Major Brian Fickel told Reuters. The United Nations has mobilised 37 search and rescue teams from a global network to the devastated capital Port-au-Prince. But about 40 hours after the 7.0 magnitude quake struck, only very limited help has reached those affected by the quake. Numerous bodies lay amid collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince, and the cries of people buried beneath rubble continued to ring out. Waiting for rescue Barack Obama, the US president, on Thursday announced that the US would provide an aid package to Haiti worth $100m. "To the people of Haiti, we say clearly and with conviction, you will not be foresaken, you will not be forgotten," he said. He said the US would grant "every element of our national capacity, our diplomacy, and development assistance, the power of our military and most importantly, the compassion of our country" to Haiti. Sebastian Walker, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Port-au-Prince, said that the scene in Haiti is "absolutely unimaginable". "Buildings have collapsed like pancakes, trapping people, cars ... you can see limbs sticking though the rubble. It is a horrific scene. Thousands of people are in the streets and many are carrying suitcases, looking to leave the city and go to the provinces. "We have seen more aeroplanes [carrying aid] arrive this morning. There is a stark difference from last night - there were no emergency workers during our visit from the airport to [the centre of Port-au-Prince] then. "It looks like the aid operation is kicking into action now, which is at least some cause for optimism." Send your pictures Send us your videos, pictures and comments Kathryn Bolles, an emergency help expert with Save the Children in Santo Domingo, the capital of neighbouring Dominican Republic, said that the agency was working as quickly as it could to provide help to those affected by the quake. "Currently, Save the Children is housing families in the neighbourhoods [surrounding Port-au-Prince] to prevent them from having to hike 10 miles to get up to our facility," she told Al Jazeera on Thursday. "The situation for children and families in Haiti was dire to begin with and they are still recovering from the 2008-2009 hurricane. Many hospitals, schools, churches damaged then [had] still not been repaired [by the time of the earthquake]. "Right now, the immediate need seems to be food and water. Our team is bringing pallets of water, donated food from supermarkets in the Dominican Republic and boxes of antibiotics and surgical trauma equipment." Many people were gathered in Port-au-Prince's parks, either sleeping on the ground or under makeshift tents as they waited for aid to arrive. Ansel Haerz, a journalist in Port-au-Prince, told Al Jazeera that, in the absence of international rescue workers, the people were working together to dig through the debris for survivors. "Haitians are coming together, I have seen them many times, crowded around a little spot in a building where there is a little space trying to hear if anyone is trapped beneath it and trying to get people out," he said. Cargo planes carrying emergency aid have begun to arrive at the airport in Port-au-Prince, but so far the deliveries were insufficient to sustain the population of two million. 'Big priorities' John Holmes, the UN humanitarian affairs chief, told Al Jazeera that the world body was doing "all that it can to respond to the emergency". in depth Video: Haiti beset by natural disasters Blog: Online calls to help Haiti Your views: Helping Haiti "One of the big priorities is getting enough doctors, medical teams and hospital staff on the ground, then food, clean water and shelter," he said, adding that the situation was "dire". He warned, however, that these emergency operations take time. "At this point in time, we cannot get teams instantly there, or as quickly as we would like, particularly in emergency situations like earthquakes where the hours count," he said. Peter Jensen, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen and leader of a Masters programme in Disaster Management, said that the scale of the quake was likely to hinder the speed of emergency relief efforts. "Haiti is a very special case because only 15 months ago the international community was there when there were big floods in Gonaives. After those floods, it was fairly obvious that Haiti needed preparation plans, which can now be brought out in the open," he told Al Jazeera on Thursday. "The problem now, however, is that the normal government structures and the local UN structures have collapsed. Then, we have some serious problems." Casualty fears Rene Preval, the Haitian president, told CNN on Wednesday he had heard that between 30,000 to 50,000 people had been killed in the quake, but did not say where the estimates came from. Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, told Al Jazeera that 100,000 people may have been killed by Tuesday's quake, while Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, compared the disaster to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people. Scenes of devastation could be seen throughout the capital Port-au-Prince [AFP] "The Indian Ocean tsunami was such a terrible tragedy and with such high loss of life. This will be a very high loss of life as well," she said. Clinton said that she was shortening her Asian tour to return to the US to help tackle the crisis. The sheer number of dead bodies was expected to pose a problem. The World Health Organisation said it had sent specialists to help clear the city of corpses, and the International Red Cross was sending a plane loaded mainly with body bags. Ambassador Joseph said that, with hospitals among the collapsed buildings in the capital, the US was sending a hospital ship set to arrive next week and two smaller vessels that were set to arrive late on Wednesday. He said that any assistance by the US military was not "to quell any rebellion" as the Haitian people "are unified and there are no reports of looting". Reports from witnesses in Port-au-Prince, however, said looters had prowled through shops before blending into crowds of refugees lugging salvaged possessions. Security fears were also heightened after the United Nations said the main prison in the capital had collapsed, allowing some inmates to escape. Several thousand Haitian police and international peacekeepers poured into the streets on Wednesday to clear debris, direct traffic and try to maintain security. Peacekeepers killed Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said on Thursday that at least 22 UN workers had been killed in the earthquake and that about 150 staff remained unaccounted for after its main building in the capital was severely damaged. The increased UN death toll was announced a day after Preval said that Hedi Annabi, the chief of the UN mission in Haiti, had been killed. Holmes said he could not confirm if Annabi was dead and said that the UN was "trying not to be distracted by our own casualties". "Our first priority is to help the Haitian people, get them out and save them while they're still alive," he said. Already one of the poorest nations in the Americas, Haiti has been hit by a series of recent disasters, including deadly hurricanes in 2008. Tuesday's quake - along with the more than 30 aftershocks measuring up to 5.9 in magnitude - was the latest tragedy to hammer the country, which has been scarred by years of unrest, crime and political tumult.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Mars' ancient lake beds spied by Nasa probe

A channel connects two depressions in this MRO image New images of Mars suggest the Red Planet had large lakes on its surface as recently as three billion years ago. The evidence comes from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which spied a series of depressions linked by what look like drainage channels. Scientists tell the journal Geology that the features bear the hallmarks of being produced by liquid water. But they appear to have formed much later in Mars' history than many thought possible, the researchers add. The team, from Imperial and University Colleges London, studied pictures of several flat-floored depressions located above Ares Vallis, a giant gorge running some 2,000km across Mars' equator. The hollows are about 20km in diameter. Scientists had previously ascribed their formation to the slumping of the ground as ice in the soil was lost to Mars' thin atmosphere almost four billion years ago in the process of sublimation (in which the ice turns directly from a solid into a vapour). But the detail in the MRO pictures has allowed the Imperial-UCL team to trace a series of channels that connect the depressions. The group says these channels could only be formed by running water, and not by ice turning directly into gas. The scientists' ageing of the region, which on bodies like Mars is done by counting craters, suggests the features formed during the so-called Hesperian Epoch on the Red Planet. This was a time when Mars is supposed to have been too cold and its atmosphere too thin to sustain liquid water on its surface. The researchers propose instead that Mars may have experienced bouts of short-lived warming during this epoch that were caused perhaps by volcanic activity, meteorite impacts, or even shifts in the planet's orbit. This could have provided both the warmth to melt ice in the soil and the pressure needed in the atmosphere to maintain liquid water on the surface. It would be possible then for lakes to fill with meltwater and even overflow, cutting channels as the liquid ran from a higher depression to a lower one.

Strong earthquake shakes Tajikistan

At least 10,000 people have been left homeless in Tajikistan after an earthquake hit the Gorno-Badakhshansky region in the east of the country. The Emergency Situations and Civil Defence Committee said no casualties were reported after the magnitude 5.3 quake struck about 10 villages in the Pamir Mountains. Azimdzhon Shamsiddinov, the deputy head of the Vanj district, on Sunday, said: "1,050 residential buildings were destroyed in our region." He said residents had left their homes as they felt the first tremors of the quake a day earlier. Many more houses were damaged, officials said, and dozens of sheep and goats killed. Extensive damage Two schools and a clinic were also destroyed, and electricity supplies and communications were cut off by the quake. The quake came as the Central Asian nation is approaching its coldest time of the year, with temperatures going down to -20 degrees Celsius. Authorities said they were assessing damages, but their work was complicated by the location of the destroyed villages. The main road between the regional centre, the town of Vanj, and nearby villages, was blocked. Shamsiddinov said preliminary damage estimates were between $1m and $1.5m. Some residents in the Vanj district said they were afraid there could be another quake in the coming days. "We live as if we were on a volcano," Nazarbek Shodiyenov, a villager, said. "We feel constantly scared that an earthquake will strike again ... There is a feeling that the earth is constantly moving." Earthquakes are relatively frequent in Tajikistan, which is one of the poorest of the former Soviet nations.

Death toll rises in Brazil mudslide

Rescue workers have searched through heavy mud and rock for dozens of people believed missing [AFP] The death toll from a spate of flooding and mudslides in southeastern Brazil has risen to at least 60, as rescue teams continue to search for survivors. Firefighters used heavy machinery and shovels on Saturday to search for people who went missing when a massive slab of hillside collapsed after torrential rain in Rio de Janeiro state. At least 26 people died in the worst hit area on the island resort of Ilha Grande, as thick mud and rock covered an upscale resort on the island on Friday, authorities and witnesses said. "We came to celebrate the New Year and then all this sadness happened," Fernanda de Oliveira, a witness to the mudslide on Ilha Grande, told the O Globo newspaper. "We couldn't see what was happening. It was raining hard and the water was leaking into our house. "Suddenly, we saw people in the sea and we went down to rescue them." Homes crushed The mudslide also crushed three homes and a hotel on an island off the city of Angra dos Ries, burying some people in their homes on Friday. The landslides were part of a series of mudslides and flooding triggered by heavy rains across the state of Rio de Janeiro since Wednesday, leaving dozens of people missing. On Thursday, mudslides elsewhere in the state killed 19 people, mostly inhabitants of shantytowns in the greater Rio de Janeiro city area. About 80 mudslides have occurred in the region and more rain is forecast for the upcoming days, officials said. Three days of mourning have been declared locally and the city's annual celebration on January 6 has been cancelled. Officials have warned the death toll could rise.

Source: Agencies

Pakistan village mourns bomb deaths

Rescue workers searched for more bodies among the rubble from the blast [AFP] Residents of a village in northwestern Pakistan that had tried to resist the Taliban have held funerals for dozens of people killed in an apparent revenge suicide attack. Villagers in Shah Hasan Khel held funeral services from some of the at least 88 victims on Saturday, as rescuers searched through the rubble for more bodies. The attack occurred on Friday when a suicide bomber detonated about 250 kilogrammes of explosives on a crowded field in the village during a volleyball tournament. The attack on the outskirts of Lakki Marwat city was one of the deadliest in recent Pakistani history. Mohammad Ayub Khan, a district police chief, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying a three-member team had been formed to investigate the attack. Elders targeted The volleyball game had been organised by a peace committee and police said the elders, who had helped set up an anti-Taliban armed group in the area, were probably the real target. In depth Video: Pakistanis take risks for education Across Pakistan's northwest, where there is little policing, various tribes have taken security into their own hands over the past two years by setting up "lashkars", or armed groups to fend off the Taliban. Lieutenant-General Talat Masood, a retired army officer and prominent defence analyst, said the attack was most likely carried out as a revenge attack by Taliban forces. "Definitely these are militant elements from North Waziristan and Taliban who have been very angry because the military had had a successful operation in Lakki Marwat and been able to clean up the place," he told Al Jazeera. "I think they wanted to retaliate and this was a response - they had in mind those people who were supposed to be pro-government. "They had formed the lashkar to defend themselves because the army, after having cleared the area, had left it to these people to defend it." Increasing violence Lakki Marwat district lies in the North West Frontier Province, close to North and South Waziristan, a tribal region where the army has been battling the Pakistani Taliban since October. The military operation was undertaken with the backing of the US, which is eager for Pakistan to free its tribal belt of fighters that it believes are involved in attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan. Since the Pakistani army launched a ground offensive in South Waziristan in October, bombings have plagued Pakistan and killed more than 500 people. Pakistan's security situation has deteriorated over the past two and a half years and violence has killed more than 2,800 people since July 2007. In separate incidents on Friday, fighters blew up two boys' schools and a health centre in the Bajaur tribal region, officials said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Bus crash kills at least 18 in Faridpur, Bangladesh

At least 18 people have been killed in a bus crash in the Faridpur district of south-west Bangladesh, police say. Reports say the bus skidded off the road in heavy fog before hitting a tree and landing in a ditch. Local police chief Awlad Ali Fakir told the Associated Press news agency that 56 people were injured and taken to hospital, some in a serious condition. Some 4,000 people die each year in road accidents in Bangladesh, with officials blaming poor roads and bad driving. Police inspector Israfil Hawlader told the AFP news agency the driver appeared to have lost his way on the foggy highway. "The injured were rushed to local hospitals," he said. In early December, at least 20 people were killed and some 45 injured when two buses collided in Faridpur.