Pakistan does not want to be engaged in arms race: PM
APP, Karachi

Pakistan is a peace-loving country and does not want to be engaged in an arms race. Its strategic as well as conventional capabilities are focused towards legitimate defence needs and promotion of peace.This was stated by Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani while speaking as chief guest at the induction ceremony of PNS Shamsheer at the PN Dockyard here on Monday.
The vessel is a multi-mission frigate and is second of four ships to be acquired under F-22 P Frigate programme.
The Prime Minister said it was a matter of jubilation for the nation that a potent Frigate PNS Shamsheer was joining the Pakistan Navy fleet. He congratulated all those who are involved in the Frigate programme.
Gilani appreciated the focus and hard work of the Ministry of Defence Production, Pakistan Navy and Chinese partners for a successful programme which resulted in timely completion of the second ship of class.
The Prime Minister said it was another manifestation of Pakistan-China friendship which was rightly regarded as a model relationship based on mutual respect,trust and complete confidence.
He said ," we are proud of our ties with China that are time-tested and all weather relationship which is higher than mountains and deeper than oceans".
Gilani said "Our friendship and strategic partnership with China has been and will remain the cornerstone of our foreign policy." These ties, he added,were based on the principle of non-interference in each others'internal affairs and were not directed against any country.
The Prime Minister said that the long-standing defence cooperation between Pakistan and China is growing from strength to strength to the mutual benefit of both the countries.
On the occasion he also extended his profound gratitude to the government and people of China and congratulated them for reaching yet another hallmark of our friendship today with the induction of PNS Shamsheer in the fleet of Pakistan Navy.
Pakistan, he said, is located on the crossroads of major civilizations and trade routes. Its geo-strategic and geo-economic position in the present times demand enhanced efforts with regard to regional and global security.

  Frightened Afghans flee offensive in opium valley
AFP, Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan

Afghan men, women and children fearing imminent fighting between the Taliban and US troops, loaded up trucks Monday and streamed out of one of the world's main sources of heroin.
Wrapped in blankets to fend off the winter chill, families packed up goats, furniture and clothes, clogging roads with taxis, cars and tractors in a major exodus to safety, dodging roadside bombs planted to kill US and NATO troops.
"We left the area because lots of aircraft were flying over and lots of forces were moving back and forth," Shir Ali Khan told AFP after reaching Lashkar Gar, the capital of southern province Helmand, with his 25 relatives.
War and battle are nothing new to the 80,000 people from Marjah, a fertile Helmand River valley in southern Afghanistan, one of the world's main sources of heroin and for eight years a major bastion of Taliban insurgents.
What the military calls "shaping operations" have been going on for weeks. Residents have described gunbattles to a beat of planes and helicopters bringing in men and supplies ahead of what is expected to be a bloody battle. Taliban too are massing, gathering around the town and firing a constant barrage of missiles on the encamped foreign troops.
"Some people left the area six months ago, because military operations have been going on and the Taliban are so violent," said Khan, adding: "There are still lots of people left who can't leave, who have nowhere to go."
Beneath pearl-grey skies in the midst of a rainy season, men wearing turbans told reporters on the highway they feared for their safety as Afghan, NATO and US troops massed ahead of an offensive expected within days.
Nad Ali resident Abdul Rehman, just arrived in Lashkar Gah, said: "These operations are nothing new for us. There has always been military operations going on in Nad Ali, we're used to it now.
"People are bit more concerned and worried about this operation as there are more Afghan and foreign soldiers around Nad Ali than usual," he said.
Now concerns are growing for those left behind, exposed to the Taliban's reported violent control tactics and fearing bloodshed from what has been billed as the biggest offensive since the 2001 US-led invasion.
"There are Taliban in Marjah and I have not noticed any decrease in their movements to show they are deserting the place," said Rehman.
"We are worried," he added.
Marjah was planned and built partly by the US government in the 1950s as a model agricultural area irrigated by a network of canals.
Today, those canals criss-cross fields of opium poppies, which at this time of year are tall and green, not yet blooming red and not yet oozing the sap that will be processed into heroin and shipped across the world.
The region has been under direct control of the Taliban, who work in tandem with drug traffickers to force local people to grow poppies, since US Marines flushed them out of other parts of Helmand more than two years ago.
What should be the bread basket of Afghanistan is instead one of the world's richest sources of opium and heroin, earning billions of illicit dollars each year that help fund the increasingly vicious insurgency.
For 38-year-old Mohammad Basir Khan, heading to safety with his family, his biggest fear was the crude bombs that the Taliban have made a staple of their arsenal in the fight against government troops.
"We worry about lots of roadside bombs," he said.
The area is expected to be laced with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), mostly planted by roadsides and detonated by remote-control, the biggest killer of foreign troops in Afghanistan but still managing to kill more civilians.

  Australia boosts aid to Myanmar, sanctions remain
Reuters, Canberra

Australia will boost humanitarian aid to Myanmar while maintaining sanctions on the military regime, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said on Monday.
Smith said it was important to help Myanmar prepare for a time when it would have a civilian government.
The country is expected to hold its first parliamentary election in two decades sometime this year, the first step in what the ruling generals call a "road map" to democracy to end nearly 50 years of military rule.
"Burma's capacity cannot be allowed to completely atrophy to the ultimate disadvantage and cost of its people," Smith said in a statement to parliament.
He said Australia would increase its aid allocation by 40 percent to A$50 million ($43 million) a year, to help fight extreme poverty and improve child health and education in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
"The international community needs to start the rebuilding now. This is not a reward for Burma's military, but a recognition of the immense task faced by current and future generations of Burmese," he said.
Australia has banned military exports to Myanmar, and imposes travel and financial transaction sanctions against its military rulers.

  Unrest in Indian Kashmir enters 2nd week
AP, Srinagar, India

Authorities put separatist leaders under house arrest and thousands of armed troops in riot gear warned people to stay indoors in Indian Kashmir's main city Monday in an attempt to block a seventh day of violent demonstrations against Indian rule.
Widespread unrest has rocked the disputed Himalayan region for the past week, as protesters have taken to the streets in anger over the deaths of two teenage boys they say were killed by police and government forces.
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the main separatist alliance in Indian Kashmir, had called for protesters to march Monday to the local United Nations office in Srinagar, the region's main city, but it was unclear if the demonstration would go ahead.
"All our leaders have been either placed under house arrest or arrested ahead of the rally," said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a top separatist leader, in a telephone interview from his home. Police also confirmed the arrests.
The government has banned the assembly of more than four people in Srinagar in an attempt to suppress the protests.
Shops, business and government offices in the city remained closed for a seventh day and government forces erected steel barricades and laid razor wire on the roads leading to the U.N. office. The protests started after a 14-year-old boy died after he was struck in the head by a police tear gas shell as an anti-Indian protest ended last Sunday. The police officer who fired the shell was suspended and police called it "a callous and irresponsible action."
Then on Friday, witnesses said paramilitary soldiers charged at a group of people gathered on a playground and began firing as they fled, killing a 17 year old. Hemant Lohia, a top police officer, confirmed that the boy died from a bullet wound but said details about his death were still under investigation. Clashes between protesters and government forces since have injured at least 93 protesters and 33 troops in the region. Another 80 protesters have been arrested.
Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim, is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both in its entirety. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the Himalayan region, where more than a dozen rebel groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan since 1989.

  Avalanche kills 17 Indian soldiers in Kashmir
AFP, Srinagar, India

Seventeen Indian soldiers were killed Monday in an avalanche that slammed into a group of 70 combat troops at a high-altitude warfare training camp in Kashmir, the army said Monday.
Army spokesman Colonel Vineet Sood said the avalanche struck in the Khelenmarg mountains, close to the Kashmiri ski resort of Gulmarg, which has become a major draw for foreign, off-piste adventure skiers.
"We have 17 dead and 17 injured. No one is missing and rescue teams have returned to their bases," Sood told AFP.
The soldiers were from the Indian army's High Altitude Warfare School, which houses around 450 troops.
The main facility was not struck by the avalanche which swept away one of four sub-camps used for training operations.
Heavy snowfall and high winds had hampered rescue operations and made communications difficult. Gulmarg lies 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Srinagar, the Kashmiri summer capital.
First set up as a skiing school for a frontline infantry division in 1948, a year after India's independence from Britain, the high altitude school is the army's main mountain warfare training institute.

  Malaysia’s Anwar seeks to remove sodomy case judge
AFP, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim moved Monday to have the judge in his sodomy trial disqualified, complaining he had refused to rein in biased media coverage.
The trial, which Anwar says is a plot to end his political career, began last week with graphic testimony from 24-year-old former aide Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan who accuses Anwar of sodomising him. Defence lawyers objected Friday when Utusan Malaysia, a Malay-language daily linked to the government, ran photographs of the court's closed-door visit to the apartment where the sexual encounter allegedly took place.
Judge Mohamad Zabidin Diah refused a request to admonish the daily over the pictures, as well as an earlier headline that said "Not willing to be sodomised again," which the defence said suggested they had sex more than once.
Anwar, who was jailed on separate sodomy and corruption charges a decade ago in a case widely seen as politically motivated, said in a statement to the High Court there was a "real danger of bias" on the part of the judge.
"The local media has condemned me as they did in 1998 without (giving me a) chance to listen to my reply," the 62-year-old opposition leader told reporters. "Clearly it's a political trial."
The judge adjourned the trial until Tuesday when he will hear the application to remove him from the proceedings.
However, the defence has lost several earlier legal manoeuvres including a bid to strike out the case, and to force the prosecution to release evidence including medical reports and closed-circuit TV footage.
Anwar has said that the charges, which carry a penalty of 20 years imprisonment, are an attempt to end his political career and neutralise the threat he poses to the Barisan Nasional coalition government.

  NKorea threatens South amid push to restart talks
AP, Seoul, South Korea

North Korea warned South Korea that any attempt to bring down the communist country would draw "strong measures" from its military, a threat issued Monday even as Pyongyang embarked on a flurry of diplomacy with Seoul, Washington and Beijing.
Pyongyang is poised to mobilize troops to defend itself, including a "world-level ultramodern striking force" that has not yet been publicly revealed, North Korea's Ministry of People's Security and the Ministry of State Security said in a statement.
North Korea will take "all-out strong measures to foil the treacherous, anti-reunification and anti-peace moves of the riff-raffs to bring down the dignified socialist system ... and destabilize it," said the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The warning, stern but milder than threats made last year, was carefully timed to show tensions could flare if North Korea doesn't get what it wants from the round of diplomacy, said Jeung Young-tae, a North Korea expert at the state-run Korea Institute of National Unification in Seoul.
"They are using it as a negotiating card," he said.
The threat was issued as senior Chinese envoy Wang Jiarui met in Pyongyang with Choe Thae Bok, a high-level official in North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, amid an international push to persuade North Korea to return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks.
Footage broadcast by APTN in Pyongyang showed Wang visiting a modern new apartment and touring a fruit farm.
Wang told Choe that China, North Korea's longtime ally and benefactor, was ready to work with North Korea to boost bilateral ties, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The report did not mention the nuclear issue. The envoy was expected to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il later Monday to discuss the nuclear talks, South Korean cable network YTN said, without citing its source. Wang will likely bring Kim a letter from Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper said in a similar report.

 Iran plans major nuclear expansion over next year
Reuters, Tehran

Iran says it will start producing higher-grade nuclear fuel on Tuesday and add 10 uranium enrichment plants over the next year in a nuclear expansion sure to stoke tensions with the West.
The statement by Iran's nuclear agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday followed orders from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for work to start on producing atomic fuel for a Tehran research reactor.
The announcement raises the stakes in Iran's dispute with the West, although analysts doubt Iran has the technical ability to launch 10 new plants so soon and believe Iran is finding it harder to obtain crucial components due to U.N. sanctions.
Analysts say the move may be a negotiating tactic to prod the West into accepting Iranian terms for a nuclear fuel swap.
But it could also backfire if it only serves to make Western powers determined to push for more sanctions against Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, over its refusal to suspend enrichment.
"Iran will set up 10 uranium enrichment centres next year," Iran's Arabic-language television station al Alam quoted Salehi as saying.
The Iranian year starts on March 21. Iran mooted such a plan late last year but gave no time frame.
Ahmadinejad also said Iran remained open to a proposed nuclear fuel exchange with world powers, which they hope would minimize the risk of Iran developing atomic bombs. Iran says it wants only to generate electricity from low-level enrichment.

  50 feared dead in US power plant blast
AFP, New York

A huge explosion ripped through a US power plant on Sunday being built in Connecticut amid reports up to 50 people may have died, emergency officials said, as a rescue operation swung into place.
The blast at the gas-fired plant in Middletown, home to 40,000 people on the Connecticut River, sent flames and black smoke billowing into the sky and shook houses several miles away, witnesses said.
As helicopters, ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene and a massive search and rescue operation was launched, officials were reluctant to say how many might have died, but a large number of fatalities were feared.
"The reports vary from a few, several to possibly as many as 50 dead," Brian Albert from the Middlesex hospital, which was treating several of those injured in the blast at the Kleen Enery plant, told AFP.
"They are in the process of search and rescue," Albert said, adding that the Middlesex was treating six patients and a seventh had been transferred to the nearby Hartford hospital, which confirmed it was also handling injured.
One witness told the local Hartford Courant newspaper: "There are bodies everywhere." Other witnesses suggested many victims could still lie buried in the rubble.
"There was a massive explosion, there are multiple injuries and possible fatalities," Middletown police spokesman George Yepes said.
The Hartford Courant reported that helicopters were airlifting some of the victims to nearby hospitals.

  Costa Rica elects 1st woman president in landslide
AP, San Jose, Costa Rica

Costa Ricans have elected their first woman president as the ruling party candidate won in a landslide after campaigning to continue free market policies in Central America's most stable nation.
With most of the votes from Sunday's election counted, Laura Chinchilla held a 22-point lead over her closest rival. Her 47 percent share of the vote was well beyond the 40 percent needed to avoid a run-off.
The 50-year-old protege of the current president, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias, promised to pursue the same economic policies that recently brought the country into a trade pact with the U.S. and opened commerce with China.
"Today we are making history," said Chinchilla, who will be the fifth Latin American woman to serve as president when she takes office in May. "The Costa Rican people have given me their confidence, and I will not betray it."
The closest contender, Otton Solis of the Citizens Action Party, got 25 percent of the votes. He and the other main rival, Libertarian Otto Guevara, quickly conceded defeat.
It was unclear, however, whether Chinchilla's National Liberation Party would gain a majority in congress.
Analyst Heather Berkman of the Eurasia Group said coalition building without a majority would likely delay or derail controversial fiscal reforms to shore up government finances and energy deregulation.
The third-place candidate, Guevara, congratulated Chinchilla as "our president," but he also pointed out the new political muscle of his tax-bashing Libertarian Movement Party. He won 21 percent of the vote.
Arias' economic policies helped insulate Costa Rica from the world economic crisis as he kept a high profile on the world stage as a negotiator in Honduras' political crisis after a coup deposed President Manuel Zelaya in June.

  Space shuttle blasts off on last night flight
AP, Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit Monday on what's likely the last nighttime launch for the shuttle program, hauling a new room and observation deck for the International Space Station.
The space shuttle took flight before dawn, igniting the sky with a brilliant flash seen for miles around. The weather finally cooperated: Thick, low clouds that had delayed a first launch attempt Sunday returned, but then cleared away just in time.
"Looks like the weather came together tonight," launch director Mike Leinbach told the astronauts right before liftoff. "It's time to go fly."
"We'll see you in a couple weeks," replied commander George Zamka. He repeated: "It's time to go fly."
There are just four more missions scheduled this year before the shuttles are retired.
"For the last night launch, it treated us well," Leinbach said.
Endeavour's destination - the space station, home to five men - was soaring over Romania at the time of liftoff. The shuttle is set to arrive at the station early Wednesday.
Zamka and his crew will deliver and install Tranquility, a new room that will eventually house life-support equipment, exercise machines and a toilet, as well as a seven-windowed dome. The lookout has the biggest window ever sent into space, a circle 31 inches across.
It will be the last major construction job at the space station. No more big pieces like that are left to fly.
Both the new room and dome - together exceeding $400 million - were supplied by the European Space Agency.
NASA began fueling Endeavour on Sunday night just as the Super Bowl was kicking off to the south in Miami. The shuttle crew did not watch the game - neither did the launch team - but it was beamed up to the space station in case anyone there wanted to watch it.

  Egypt arrests 3 top Muslim Brotherhood leaders
AP, Cairo

The No. 2 leader of Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood and two other top figures have been arrested by police in a dawn sweep that also grabbed 10 senior members across five provinces, police and members of the group said.
Police arrested the newly elected deputy leader, Mahmoud Ezzat, and two other members of the top level Guidance Council, Essam el-Erian and Abdul-Rahman el-Bir.
The arrests are the latest move in a wide-ranging crackdown on the group ahead of parliamentary elections this year and appear designed to cripple the organization's leadership.
The group, the country's largest and best organized opposition, had just elected a new supreme guide and deputy.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the media, said they were arrested for engaging in banned political activity - a standard government charge used against the group.
The Brotherhood was banned in 1954 but is somewhat tolerated by the state. Its candidates are allowed to run for parliament as independents and in 2005 won 20 percent of the seats, making them Egypt's largest opposition bloc.
"The regime wanted to express its opinion to the new leaders by punishing them and tightening the noose on the old ones," Abdel Galil el-Sharnoubi, who runs the group's Web site, told The Associated Press.
The organization's new leader had said upon his inauguration that he would try to avoid confrontation with the government and would not respond to the periodic arrest campaigns.
"We reaffirm that the Brotherhood is not for one day an adversary to the regime," the newly elected Mohammed Badie on Jan. 16.

  China finds 170 more tons of tainted milk powder
AP, Beijing

China has found another 170 tons of tainted milk powder in an emergency crackdown that has made it increasingly clear many products discovered in the country's 2008 milk scandal were repackaged for sale instead of destroyed.
The growing number of cases in recent weeks challenges the government's earlier promise to overhaul its approach to food safety after hundreds of thousands of children in that scandal were sickened by milk products tainted with an industrial chemical. At least six children died.
Tainted milk products have recently emerged in China's largest city, Shanghai, and in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shandong, Liaoning, Guizhou, Jilin and Hebei.
China's 10-day emergency crackdown on the products is set to end Wednesday, and it was not clear whether it would be extended.
In the latest discovery, officials recalled more than 170 tons of milk powder tainted by the industrial chemical melamine and closed two dairy companies in the northern region of Ningxia, the China Daily newspaper reported Monday.
The report said officials seized 72 tons of the powder but were still looking for the rest, which had been repackaged by the Ningxia Tiantian Dairy Co. Ltd. and sold to factories in the neighboring region of Inner Mongolia and the bustling southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.
Dairy suppliers in the past have been accused of adding melamine, which is high in nitrogen, to make milk appear protein-rich in quality tests.

  Australia tightens skilled migration rules
AP, Canberra, Australia

Australia tightened its migration rules Monday in favor of English speakers and professionals, saying the country has been attracting too many hairdressers and cooks and too few doctors and engineers.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans blamed the overrepresentation of lower skilled immigrants on a system put in place by Prime Minister John Howard, whose government lost power in 2007 elections.
"Under the Howard government, we had a lot of cooks, a lot of hairdressers coming through," Evans told reporters. "We were taking hairdressers from overseas in front of doctors and nurses - it didn't make any sense."
The new rules will favor applicants who already have job offers over those who merely have qualifications or who are studying. The measures are expected to dampen enrollment in Australian colleges by foreign students hoping to settle in the country.
Numbers of foreign students enrolled in Australian colleges exploded in 2001, when the government changed migration rules to allow them to apply for permanent residency while studying. Until then, skilled workers had to apply offshore for visas to fill jobs from a list of more than 100 trades and professions that were suffering shortages in Australia.
Australia continues to have a shortage of accountants, partly because many of the 40,000 accountants who immigrated in the past five years did not have the professional or language skills to find work, Evans said.
"You've got to say if they don't have the English-language skills, don't have the trade skills and can't get a job, then really they should not be eligible for permanent residency," Evans said.
The new policy will favor applicants who score highly in an English language test. Moreover, immigrant numbers in certain jobs could be capped for the first time. The government has not identified which jobs.