A picture released by the Peruvian News Service Andina shows the wrecked remains of a passenger bus that plunged into a 50 meters deep ravine of the Tarma River, in Tarma, some 245 northeast of Lima, early June 19, 2013, causing the death of more than 30 people. –AFP

At least 30 people died when a bus plunged off a highway into a river in central Peru, authorities said Wednesday.

“So far, I have 30 confirmed dead, but the police are continuing to search for victims,” said Rodoricao Cubas Hurtado, chief of the local highway police.

Cubas said nine people were still unaccounted for, and that the search for additional victims was focused on the vehicle, which was still submerged in the river.

The accident occurred in the town of San Ramon, in Peru’s Junin region. Officials said numerous injured passengers were taken to nearby hospitals.

The bus was carrying 52 passengers at the time of the accident, and police said they suspect that the driver may have fallen asleep behind the wheel. –AFP

A Tesla Model S is displayed on March 28, 2013 in New York City. Tesla announced a recall Wednesday for some of its Model S vehicles over possible weak welds on back seats.–AFP

Electric sports car maker Tesla announced a recall Wednesday for some of its Model S vehicles over possible weak welds on back seats.

The recall applies to versions of the four-door sedan, which costs up to $87,000, produced between May 10, 2013 and June 8, 2013.

Founder Elon Musk said on the company’s blog that the strength of the weld on a mounting bracket in a back row seat “could be weaker than intended.”

“This reduces our confidence that the left hand seat back will be properly retained in the event of a crash,” he wrote.

Musk emphasized that no customers have complained about the problem and no injuries have been reported related to it.

“However, given the paramount importance of safety, we would like to reinforce the left striker bracket on cars produced during this period.”

“This work has already been performed on cars that were in the factory, so the recall applies only to cars delivered in mid to late May and early June.”

Tesla said it will arrange to fix the problem at no cost to the owners.

Tesla shares were up 1.3 percent to $104.68 in regular trade on the Nasdaq exchange Wednesday, but fell in after-hours deals to $104.20. –AFP

HAZY SKYLINE: A woman takes photos of the hazy skyline of Singapore. — AFP photo

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s smog problem from forest fires in Indonesia worsened yesterday as air pollutant levels reached a 16-year high.

Foreign tourists and convention delegates joined Singaporeans in complaining about the smoky haze enveloping the city-state of 5.3 million inhabitants, which welcomed 14.4 million visitors in 2012.

The Pollutant Standards Index soared to 172 at 3pm (0700 GMT), well past the officially designated “unhealthy” threshold of 100, according to the National Environment Agency (NEA) website.

It was Singapore’s worst haze reading since September 1997 when the number peaked at 226.

The reading rose to 155 on Monday night, overtaking the second highest reading of 150 recorded in 2006.

Southeast Asia’s haze crisis in 1997-1998 caused widespread health problems and cost the regional economy billions of dollars as a result of business and air transport disruptions.

Zac Kot, 40, a business owner from the United States who was in Singapore for a holiday with his wife and two young girls, said they were cutting their visit short by two days.

“Has the haze affected us? Definitely. We are going to leave Singapore two days early because we are having trouble breathing,” he told AFP. “It’s from a health standpoint, really.”

Russian tourist Egor Podolsky, 23, said the haze forced his girlfriend and him to alter their travel itinerary in the city-state.

“You can see people wearing masks when walking around… It’s not good, it’s definitely not good,” he told AFP.

Surgical masks flew off drugstores’ shelves as residents and offices bought in bulk for their families and staff.

Singapore officials continued to take to social media to address Singaporeans’ rising anger over the unabating haze conditions.

Foreign minister K. Shanmugam strongly rebutted netizens’ criticism that the Singapore government was being soft on Indonesia.

“Every country is sovereign and we can’t intervene in the actions in other countries,” he said in a Facebook posting on yesterday.

“The burning is taking place in Indonesia. What do you think Singapore can do about that?” he wrote.

Shanmugam and Singapore’s environment minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Tuesday spoke with their Indonesian counterparts to emphasise “the urgency of the situation” and offer help to fight the fires in Sumatra, a government statement said. — AFP

Karim Temsamani, Google’s head of Asia Pacific, said in a speech at the Communicasia conference in Singapore, that the Internet balloons might also facilitate communication during disasters.

Google last week revealed top secret plans to launch thousands of balloons to provide Internet connections to remote parts of the world, allowing the more than four billion people with no access to get online.

Its scientists on Saturday released up to 30 helium-filled test balloons flying 20 kilometres above Christchurch in New Zealand, carrying antennae linked to ground base stations.

“What’s devastating is that only a tiny fraction of SMEs (small-medium enterprises) all across Asia are online right now,” Temsamani told the conference.

He said India, one of the region’s emerging economies, has 47 million small businesses, but only one per cent are online.

“Getting more businesses online is crucial to every single country in the region,” he said.

The experimental balloon project, called Project Loon, is one way to provide affordable Internet access to “rural, remote and under-served” regions, Temsamani said.

“For farmers in remote rural areas, this would bring market information that allows them to get better prices from merchants,” he added.

The balloons, which once in the stratosphere will be twice as high as commercial airliners and barely visible to the naked eye, will also help in disasters when communication infrastructure is down, Temsamani said.

“For places with few doctors, this could help relay drug information. In disasters, this could help coordinate supplies,” he said. — AFP

Sponsored in part by the Swiss government, the 35-metre catamaran is crowned with solar panels that retract in port but open like a bird’s wings to take best advantage of the sun’s rays when at sea.

In May 2012, the vessel became the first solar-powered vehicle to travel all the way around the globe.

It was an epic adventure that took 584 days and spanned more than 60,000 kilometres. Weighing in at 90 tonnes, it travels at an average five knots.

“Instead of being a museum somewhere in some harbour, the boat is now engaged in this second life,” said Gerard d’Aboville, the boat’s French captain, referring to the boat’s latest mission.

The ship set sail from La Ciotat in France just over two months ago. And since it has made stops including the southeastern US city of Miami on its information gathering mission on climate change and the Gulf current.

“Our main goal is to study the Gulf Stream,” he said.

“I myself live in Brittany, west of France, and we are very worried. We all know that if the Gulf Stream changes, even a little bit, our climate will deteriorate quiet a lot.”

The Gulf Stream sends a huge mass of warmer water from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic, giving Atlantic Europe a relatively temperate climate for its latitude.

I also keeps areas it crosses in the Americas, such the West Indies, from being excessively arid.

PlanetSolar will be cruising through August with stops planned in Boston, Newfoundland, Iceland and Norway. — AFP

At the end of two days of tough talks in Northern Ireland, the leaders agreed to push for a transitional government in Syria that could include members of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime who switched sides.

The Syria crisis overshadowed a deal by the world’s leading industrialised nations gathered on the picturesque banks of Lough Erne to crack down on tax evasion and share more cross-border financial information.

British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted the leaders had forged a strong agreement on Syria despite a split with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but their closing statement was short on concrete steps.

Cameron, the summit host, said Assad could not join a transitional administration after the deaths of 93,000 people and what Western nations say is the use of chemical weapons.

“As for the transition, look I think it unthinkable that President Assad can play any part in the future government of his country, he has blood on his hands, he has used chemical weapons,” he said.

The G8 communique pointedly made no reference to him however in an apparent concession to Moscow, Assad’s chief arms supplier.

The statement said only that the transitional body should be “formed by mutual consent”.

The G8 harked back to the chaos after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, saying that Syrian military and security services “must be preserved and restored” in a future set-up.

The leaders did not suggest a date for the proposed Syria peace talks, which were supposed to take place this month in Geneva to follow up on a similar meeting last year but have already been delayed.

They did however urge Syria to admit chemical weapons investigators and say they were “deeply concerned” by the threat of Islamic extremism among the rebels.

The Syria conflict has sparked fears of a new cold war with Washington saying last week that it would start arming the rebels against the Russian-backed Syrian regime.

Putin, who had an icy confrontation with US President Barack Obama on Monday, was in defiant mood after the summit, saying that Russia would not rule out new arms supplies.

“We are supplying arms to the legitimate government in accordance with legal contracts,” Putin told a news conference. — AFP

The association voted on the measure at its annual meeting in Chicago. The AMA noted that obesity rates in the United States have “doubled among adults in the last twenty years and tripled among children in a single generation” and that the World Health Organisation, the US Food and Drug Administration and Internal Revenue Service already recognise the condition as a disease.

According to “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2012,” a study released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in September last year, adult obesity rates in 2011 exceeded 30 per cent in 12 US states. The study projected that “if rates continue to increase at the current pace, adult obesity rates could exceed 60 per cent in 13 states, and all states could have rates above 44 per cent by 2030.”

Obesity is associated with a variety of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. Rising obesity is expected to increase America’s already high health care costs.

The AMA’s recommendations accompanying the vote included urging physicians and insurance companies to “recognise obesity as a complex disorder,” encouraging national efforts to educate the public “about the health risks of being overweight and obese.”

The AMA also recommended the creation “National Obesity Awareness Month” to highlight the benefits of exercise and to warn of the risks of obesity. — Reuters

First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, who has represented Pyongyang at previous international talks to get North Korea to halt its nuclear programme, was meeting Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui in Beijing.

His trip comes just days after North Korea offered talks with Washington to ease tensions that spiked earlier this year when it threatened to wage nuclear war on the United States and South Korea. The White House said any talks must involve action by Pyongyang to show it is moving towards disarmament.

North Korea was looking for holes in the international consensus that it must denuclearise by seeking dialogue with various countries, said Wang Dong, an international relations professor at Peking University in Beijing.

“If China’s stance is still firm, North Korea will understand that there are no loopholes to exploit,” Wang said.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too. I think China will make this clear to North Korea,” he said, referring to Pyongyang’s refusal to give up its nuclear weapons while at the same time trying to mend ties with key powers.

The talks are the highest-level contact between China and North Korea since US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California in early June and agreed Pyongyang had to denuclearise.

North Korea has repeatedly said it will never abandon its nuclear weapons, calling them its ‘treasured sword’, a term one of its official newspapers used again yesterday.

Late last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent another envoy to Beijing. According to a source with knowledge of that visit, Chinese officials gave the envoy a lukewarm reception while saying Beijing wanted an end to the North’s nuclear and missile tests.

Li Bin, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy in Beijing, said he did not believe North Korea was ready to discuss its nuclear programme with China.

“But now they see that China is very serious with sanctions and is very angry. My guess is that they are coming to Beijing to avoid a situation in which the relationship between the two countries gets worse,” he said.

China, the closest thing Pyongyang has to a major ally, backed the latest round of U.N. sanctions on North Korea, imposed for its Feb 12. nuclear test. Some Chinese banks have also curtailed ties to their North Korean counterparts in the wake of a crackdown by Washington on the North’s finances. — Reuters

Speaking while accepting the ink from Indian Ambassador to Cambodia Dinesk k Patnaik, NEC’s chairman Im Suosdey said the ink totally cost US$877,800, and each bottle contains 70 cc.

“The Indian government always pays close attention and support for electoral process in Cambodia,” he said, adding, “The donation shows more constant solidarity, friendship and cooperation between Cambodia and India.”

The indelible ink will be used to mark voters’ fingers and it will be unable to be washed off for seven to 15 days.

Cambodia is scheduled to hold a general election for the 123- seat parliament on July 28, he said, adding that some 9.67 million Cambodians are eligible to cast their ballots.

Eight political parties will run in the election.

Three major parties among those registered parties are the ruling Cambodian People’s Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party led by self-exiled leader Sam Rainsy, and the royalist Funcinpec Party headed by Princess Norodom Arun Rasmey, the youngest daughter of late King Father Norodom Sihanouk. — Bernama

The pair, who deny any knowledge of the alleged abuse, could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted, Police Colonel Wirachon Bunthawi told AFP from the northern city of Chiang Mai.

“The abbot is still at the temple and we’re waiting for an arrest warrant for him,” Wirachon said.

Based on the accounts of the victim and a driver, the two monks — aged 20 and 23 — are alleged to have taken the boy to see the abbot at the temple in Chiang Dao district in the Chiang Mai Province several times since February, police said.

The case comes in the wake of recent controversy in the Buddhist-dominated nation over footage posted on YouTube of three monks flying in a private jet, wearing earphones and sunglasses and travelling with a Louis Vuitton bag. — AFP

North Korea is banned from importing luxury goods under layers of UN sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests.

The NK News website said the yacht, a Princess 95MY made by British-based Princess Yachts, was possibly a recent purchase. The Washington-based website gave no evidence for when the boat was bought.

North Korea’s KCNA news agency released a photograph of Kim on May 28 that showed him walking along a dock with military officers. The starboard side of a luxury boat is visible to the right of the picture.

Will Green, sales director for Princess Yachts International, told NK News it suspected the boat was a 95MY.

“Given we launched the 95MY some years ago, many of them will have since changed hands on the private brokerage market,” said Green, adding the company was looking into the matter.

Princess Yachts is part of LVMH, the world’s top luxury group by sales.

An updated version of the 95MY, the Princess 98MY, sells for more than 8.7 million, NK News said.

It said Kim’s 10-day trip last month was his longest outside Pyongyang since taking power in late 2011, when his father Kim Jong-il died. Kim Jong-un had based himself in the eastern city of Wonsan for the trip, NK News said. — Reuters

New sanctions imposed in March in response to North Korea’s third nuclear test on Feb. 12 included tougher financial restrictions to try to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

The resolution also gave examples of luxury items North Korea could not import, such as yachts and racing cars.

Sanctions aimed at crimping the lifestyle of the elite were first imposed in 2006 but until March the resolutions had never given examples of such goods, leaving it up to individual countries to decide what constituted a luxury product.

In 2009, Austrian and Italian authorities seized two luxury yachts that had been sold to North Korea. — Reuters

Thousands of people have already been evacuated after floods and landslides caused by early monsoon rains forged a path of devastation through two tourist states in the Himalayas, officials said.

“As of now we know that over 65,000 people are stranded,” Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde told reporters in New Delhi.

“We are committed to rescuing everyone now that the rains have stopped,” the minister said, adding that the army has evacuated 5,000 people cut off by the downpour.

Torrential rains at least three times as heavy as usual have hit the state of Uttarakhand, often called the “Land of the Gods,” whose Hindu shrines and temples built high in the mountains attract many pilgrims.

Houses, multi-storied buildings, cars, bridges as well as roads have been swept away or badly damaged after rivers burst their banks, forcing authorities to deploy helicopters to evacuate people and drop essential food supplies.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and president of the country’s ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, will later Wednesday fly over the disaster area to survey the extent of the damage.

“At least 110 people have died. The state government and the army are trying to rescue thousands of tourists who are stranded near the submerged valleys and Hindu shrines,” said Yashpal Arya, the disaster relief minister of Uttarakhand.

Arya said portions of a well-known Hindu temple have been washed away, leaving about 10,000 pilgrims stranded.

“The Kedarnath temple is submerged in mud and slush. We just hope that it does not collapse,” Arya told AFP.

Authorities fear the death toll could rise dramatically, with emergency workers still unable to reach villages cut off by the floods and landslides, five days after the rains hit on Saturday.

“We have been informed that several bodies are lying in the debris of damaged houses. Rescue operations will (now) pick up momentum as rains have stopped,” said local revenue official S.K. Rautela.

Some 21 bridges have collapsed in the state, blocking access to villages, said Uttarakhand chief secretary Subash Kumar.

Local officials said 40 relief camps have been set up to provide food, water and other aid to locals and tourists.

Air force helicopters from different parts of the state were taking many of those rescued to the camps, with a control centre set up in the holy town of Badrinath. — AFP

As of Tuesday, heavy rain that started on Monday had battered much of southern Xinjiang’s Aksu prefecture, including the city of Aksu and Wushi, Keping and Wensu counties, according to a statement from the prefecture’s flood control and drought relief headquarters.

The flooding triggered by the torrential rain has claimed the lives of two people and 62,392 head of livestock, the statement said.

It added that the downpours have damaged or destroyed 1,305 houses and ruined 6,667 hectares of crops or plants, resulting in direct economic losses of 200 million yuan (about US$32.4 million). — Bernama

The annual festival, scheduled to take place on Friday in Guangxi province, sees dogs packed into cages before being killed, skinned and cooked — but has met with increasing opposition from activists, highlighting China’s growing animal rights movement.

Members of the activist group the Boai Small Animal Protection Centre have been protesting in Yulin, the city which holds the festival, since early this month, calling on the local government to cancel it, group founder Du Yufeng said.

Photographs from past festivals showing dogs packed into cages and locals feasting on their meat from steaming pots have circulated on China’s popular social networking websites, leading thousands to condemn the festival as cruel.

“This year the government has said they feel under pressure from online activism… so they have a special team to monitor the festival,” Du said.

But the measures were unlikely to prevent the annual feast, she said.

“I think the team will reduce the cruelty somewhat, but mostly on the surface,” she said, adding: “We have seen animals beaten just before being cooked… the more we inspect, the more cruelty we discover.”

Government officials previously said that they could not close the festival as it was organised by locals, and not the government, Du said.

The event is reported to have started several decades ago to mark the summer solstice. It is due to attract 10,000 people according to the South China Morning Post.

Trucks arriving at the city packed with live dogs had taken measures to avoid being intercepted by activists, Du said.

“We can’t stop the trucks because they come at three or four in the morning, so we don’t know about them,” she said.

But the activists had rescued dozens of the dogs and hoped to find new homes for them, she said.

Pictures posted on the group’s account on Sina Weibo — a Chinese social networking service similar to Twitter — showed around a dozen activists on a street in Yulin holding posters showing caged dogs and calling for the festival to be cancelled. — AFP

Lawmakers unanimously approved a bill that directed Secretary of State John Kerry to use US diplomacy to push for observer status for Taiwan when the International
Civil Aviation Organisation meets in Montreal in September.

Representative Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the move would be a “significant step” to ensure that Taiwan’s airports have up-to-date technology.

“Millions of passengers flying between Taiwan and the US have been greatly disadvantaged by Taiwan’s exclusion,” said Royce, a Republican from California.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a similar bill in May. — AFP

All told, the UNCHR’s annual figures showed 1.1 million people fled across international borders in 2012, while 6.5 million were displaced within their homelands.

“This means one in each 4.1 seconds. So each time you blink, another person is forced to flee,” Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters.

“These truly are alarming numbers,” he added.

“They reflect individual suffering on a huge scale and they reflect the difficulties of the international community in preventing conflicts and promoting timely solutions for them.”

The total figure of 45.2 million included 28.8 million internally displaced people, 15.4 million border-crossing refugees, and 937,000 asylum seekers.

“War is the main reason for this very high number of refugees and people internally displaced. Fifty-five per cent of them correspond to the well-known situations of Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria,” Guterres said.

The largest number of refugees still comes from Afghanistan, a situation unchanged for 32 years.

Worldwide, one refugee in four is Afghan. Guterres highlighted the conflicts in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.

Due to the raft of crises, he said, the total number of refugees and internally displaced has risen to a level unseen since 1994, a year marked by the Rwandan genocide and bloodshed in former Yugoslavia.

Last year did see 2.1 million internally displaced people and 526,000 refugees return home, as well as the resettlement of 88,6000 in rich nations.

But fresh crises drove the global total higher.

“New refugees, new internally displaced, unfortunately represent much more than those able to find an answer to their plight,” said Guterres.

“We witness a multiplication of new conflicts, and it seems that old conflicts never die,” he said.

Guterres pointed out that the number of people who had fled the spiralling violence in Syria had soared from 650,000 at the end of 2012 to around 1.6 million now, surpassing last year’s total from all conflicts.

The UNHCR has warned that Syrian refugee numbers could hit 3.5 million by the end of this year; and there are also fears that the number currently displaced within the country, 4.25 million, will also climb.

Syrian refugees have flooded into neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, stretching those nations’ ability to cope. Guterres urged the international community to help shoulder the load, although he said UNHCR-brokered resettlement programmes for Syrians in rich countries were not yet on the cards.

With the economic crisis sharpening the asylum debate in developed nations, Guterres said it was important to keep some perspective. — AFP

More rallies were scheduled for Tuesday, a day after more than 250,000 people took to the streets of major cities in mostly peaceful rallies, although there were some clashes with police and acts of vandalism.

Protesters are furious that Brazil is spending US$15 billion to host the World Cup next year and the ongoing Confederations Cup bring together national times from around the world while, the protesters say, spending on health and education is moved to the back burner.

The Confederations Cup is a dry run for the World Cup. The president expressed empathy.

“These voices need to be heard,” Rousseff said in an address at the presidential palace.

“My government is listening to these voices for change.”

“My government is committed to social transformation,” she added, hailing what she called the largely peaceful nature of the protests.

In Rio, where 100,000 marched, some tried to storm the state legislative assembly, set fire to a car and ransacked shops.

Rousseff said that with the country’s rising prosperity over the past decade, new citizens have emerged “demanding more and entitled to more.” — AFP

“The year 2012 marked the first time since the surge in piracy off the coast of Somalia that the reported number of both ships and seafarers attacked in the Gulf of Guinea surpassed that of the Gulf of Aden and of the western Indian Ocean,” the report said.

Of the 206 hostages taken last year off West Africa, five were killed, the document said.

Despite the rising danger, the report stressed that the area “has not received the attention that was brought to Somalia,” where 851 sailors were attacked last year.

The Gulf of Guinea, which includes waters off Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, has emerged as a new danger-zone with pirates typically targeting fuel cargo and loading it onto other ships to sell on the lucrative black market, rather than seeking ransom to release ships, the IMB said.

“In Nigeria, money moves quite quickly, unlike in Somalia,” explained one contributor to the report document.

“In Somalia, it would take months. In Nigeria, the pirates take our (oil) cargo and the money of the (shipping) company. It would take only weeks, it is quite fast.”

A French-flagged tanker was released on Monday after it was captured four days ago in the piracy-plagued waters off West Africa. — AFP

Google, meanwhile, asked a federal surveillance court to grant it permission to release the number of national security requests and secret court orders it has received in order to be more transparent with users.

Since the disclosure of vast government surveillance programmes targeting phone logs and Internet data, Silicon Valley firms have scrambled to respond to users angered by perceived privacy violations. The government has defended the programmes as fully legal and vital to preventing terror attacks.

National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander described four thwarted plots, including a plan to bomb the New York subway he called “the first core al-Qaeda plot since 9/11, directed from Pakistan.”

Alexander, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and others defended the digital snooping, which they insisted has kept America safe since 2001, but which has come under global criticism following leaks of classified details.

“In recent years, the information gathered from these programmes provided the US government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world,” Alexander said, adding that at least 10 threats were “homeland-based.”

He told the House Intelligence Committee that most details were classified and would not be made public.

But in an effort to win political support for the spy programs, details of four incidents, including the New York Stock Exchange plot, were released.

Joyce said a tip from the NSA, which had traced international phone calls from terror suspects to Kansas City, led the FBI to get a court order to begin electronic surveillance on Khalid Ouazzani.

FBI agents then determined that Ouazzani had provided information and support for a “nascent” plot to bomb the NYSE, and arrested him and his co-conspirators.

In May 2010, Ouazzani pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda, but the FBI made no mention of a plot to bomb the stock exchange at the time.

The controversy over the spying programs erupted after rogue defense contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of them to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post earlier this month.

According to material leaked to the Guardian, the NSA acquires the call logs of Americans from phone companies and monitors digital communications with data obtained from Internet titans like Apple, Facebook and Google.

US officials insist the phone metadata includes no names or addresses, that investigators must obtain a separate order to listen in on calls, and that the Internet data searches were only carried out on foreigners residing abroad.

“If you’re looking for a needle in the haystack, you have to have the haystack first,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole testified, referring to the huge amounts of raw data, which he said were only used “sparingly.” According to Cole, the database was queried 300 times last year, and only after a secret court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act determined there was reasonable suspicion to pursue a suspect.

Critics have slammed the spying operations as government overreach, insisting the public has the right to know the scope of the programs and the role major Internet firms played in surrendering personal data to authorities. — AFP

Almost 50 years to the day since John F Kennedy declared “Ich bin ein Berliner” and 26 years since Ronald Reagan exhorted “Tear down this wall!” Obama will unveil plans for a one-third reduction in Cold War nuclear arsenals.

He will also hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he usually has respectful relations, but who is pointedly demanding details on the exact extent of US spy agency surveillance programmes.

Obama will use the speech at the Brandenburg Gate to propose cutting US and Russian strategic nuclear warheads to around 1,000 each, and also seek cuts in tactical nuclear arms stocks in Europe.

“We will seek to negotiate these reductions with Russia to continue to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” a senior US official said.

It remains unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom Obama had a frosty meeting in Northern Ireland on Monday, will agree to such substantial weapons cuts.

Russia has previously demanded changes to the US missile defence system before agreeing to return to the nuclear agenda.

The president will also commit to attending a nuclear security summit in The Hague next year, and to hosting his own version in 2016 in the last year of his presidency.

Obama inaugurated the first such summit, designed to ensure unsecured nuclear stocks do not fall into the hands of terrorists, in Washington in 2010 and went to a follow-up meeting in Seoul two years later.

His announcement on Wednesday is intended to ensure that his nuclear counterproliferation agenda remains at the center of his foreign policy legacy, following the conclusion of a Strategic Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia during his first term. — AFP

The case came to light after the woman was caught stealing a candy bar and told police she’d rather go to jail than go home because her roommates “were mean to her.”

Three of her tormentors were arrested on human trafficking charges after a lengthy investigation.

“We are yet again reminded that modern-day slavery exists all around us,” said Steven Dettelbach, US Attorney for the northern district of Ohio.

“The victims in this case endured violence, threats, sub-human living conditions and other horrific acts.” The charges come a month after three young women who had been held captive for a decade were discovered in a house in Cleveland, about 110 kilometres north of the small town where the disabled woman was allegedly enslaved.

The woman, who was not named, was made to stay with repeated threats that her daughter — who is now five or six — would be harmed or taken away from her if she didn’t do as she was told, prosecutors said.

The woman and her daughter were initially forced to sleep on a cement floor in a locked basement room that also housed a roaming iguana.

They were repeatedly beaten, threatened with the pit bulls and the snakes and watched with a baby monitor to make sure the woman wouldn’t untie her daughter’s bound hands or sneak some food or water to the girl.

On at least three occasions the woman was badly injured so that she could get prescription pain killers for her roommates: Jordie Callahan, 26 and Jessica Hunt, 31.

They also shaved her head into a mohawk and wrote “slut,” “whore” and other derogatory words on her face and chest with a permanent marker at one point, charging papers said.

The girl was often kept bound and locked in a room and wouldn’t be let out to use the bathroom until her mother was finished with housework.

The lengthy list of chores included taking care of a menagerie that included a poisonous coral snake, a ball python and a Burmese python that weighed 130 pounds.

The mother was also forced to hand over her government benefit cards and was rarely given any of the money, prosecutors said.

The roommates withheld food from their captives as another means of intimidation, giving them only canned goods or what was left over after Callahan, Hunt and Hunt’s four children finished eating.

She told police she would regularly have to wait until 8 pm until she was permitted to give her daughter anything to eat. — AFP

Michael Applebaum, the first English-speaking mayor of Canada’s second-largest city in more than 100 years, said he was stepping down one day after he was arrested and charged with fraud, collusion, breach of trust and corruption.

“I maintain my innocence,” Applebaum told a press conference. “I want to be clear, I have never taken a penny from anyone.”

Applebaum said he was resigning in order to focus on clearing his name.

“Being mayor of Montreal is not a task that one can do while defending themselves against accusations of this nature and I hope that you’ll understand that I’ll put my energies into my defense and into my family,” he said.

Frenzy followed his announcement as councilors jockeyed to succeed Applebaum as interim mayor until the next municipal election in November.

The city council’s executive committee is expected to make that decision within the next 30 days.

But pundits voiced amazement that anyone would want the tarnished job, given the seemingly insurmountable task of reestablishing voters’ trust in politicians in a Canadian province gripped for more than a year by scandals.

Applebaum, a former real estate agent, replaced Gerald Tremblay after he resigned in November over a scheme in which his party allegedly received kickbacks from government construction bids.

Nearby Laval’s longtime mayor also quit after he was arrested in a police sweep last month for alleged fraud and gangsterism. — AFP

The deadly rocket attack on Bagram, Afghanistan’s biggest US-led military base just north of Kabul, was a stark reminder of the potency of an Islamist insurgency that has time and again hit major targets.

Prior to the Bagram attack, US President Barack Obama had welcomed the planned talks in Qatar as an “important first step”. But he warned of a bumpy road ahead as Nato troops enter the final stage of a 12-year foreign intervention.

“Last night two big rockets were launched at Bagram (air base) which hit the target,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP by telephone.

“Four soldiers are dead and six others are wounded. The rockets caused a major fire.”

A US defence official confirmed that four Americans were killed in the attack, but provided no further details.

The Taliban broke off contact with the Americans last year and have always refused to negotiate with Kabul. On Tuesday, they unveiled an office in Qatar “to open dialogue between the Taliban and the world”.

Their statement, however, made no direct reference to peace talks.

Tuesday also saw Nato’s formal transfer of responsibility for security to the Afghan police and army. About 100,000 foreign combat troops, 68,000 of them from the US, are due to withdraw by the end of next year.

A divided insurgency is also likely to complicate talks, amid doubts as to whether the “Haqqani network” of warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former CIA asset turned al-Qaeda ally, is ready to embrace negotiation.

A Taliban spokesman in Qatar, Mohammad Sohail Shaheen, confirmed before the Bagram strike that the armed group would continue to attack US targets in Afghanistan at the same time as holding any talks.

“There is no ceasefire (with the US) now. They are attacking us and we are attacking them,” Shaheen told the al-Jazeera news channel, adding that the Taliban “simultaneously follows political and military options”.

Obama insisted the Taliban would have to renounce ties to al-Qaeda, halt violence and commit to the protection of women and minorities. He warned that US-led Nato forces remain “fully committed” to battling al-Qaeda. — AFP

After a weekend of clashes sparked by the eviction of protesters from Istanbul’s Gezi Park, the focal point of the protests, demonstrators have struggled to regroup and police have since fought only sporadic battles with smaller groups of demonstrators across the country.

Overnight, riot police in the capital Ankara briefly fired tear gas and water cannon at protesters who hurled back stones and hid behind makeshift barricades, but there were no other reports of confrontations.

In Istanbul, dozens of demonstrators switched to silent protests, standing still in quiet defiance in the main Taksim Square located next to Gezi Park.

As the protests appeared to lose their intensity, Erdogan said he had overcome the crisis, seen as the biggest challenge yet to his Islamist-rooted government’s decade-long rule. — AFP

The agreement, reached after 10 days of tense negotiations, will enable Malian troops to enter the Tuareg-held city of Kidal in the northeast to secure polls scheduled to take place on July 28.

The two sides agreed to halt hostilities and for Tuareg rebels, who took part in an uprising last year that brought the country to its knees, to be restricted to set areas. Long-term peace talks will start after the election.

Territorial Administration Minister Moussa Sinko Coulibaly signed the accord with representatives of two Tuareg movements in Ouagadougou, capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso.

Mahamadou Djeri Maiga, vice president of the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), said the accord was a chance to “turn the page of hate”.

There is longstanding distrust between the government and ethnic Tuaregs, who launched an uprising with al-Qaeda-linked militants last year. French forces intervened in January to halt an Islamist advance on the capital.

“This agreement represents a major breakthrough in exiting the crisis in Mali,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

“I call on the Malian parties, now reunited around a common project, to fully implement this agreement in the best interest of the country,” he said.

European Union policy chief Catherine Ashton said the agreement had ‘historical significance’.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon also welcomed the accord, urging both sides to begin implementing the agreement at once.

But UN envoy to Mali Bert Koenders said the deal was only “a first step”.

Talks over “technical details” on security and setting up an administration and essential services in Kidal had not started, he said. — AFP

The strong export data — up 10.1 percent over last year — comes after earlier figures showed the world’s third-largest economy grew faster than expected in the first quarter, as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration works to stoke growth with a plan dubbed “Abenomics”.

The yen’s sharp drop since late last year makes Japanese exporters more competitive overseas and inflates the value of their repatriated overseas earnings.

“It is not just the weaker yen increasing the value of exports, the amount of exports is increasing as well,” Junko Nishioka, chief economist at RBS Securities Japan, told Dow Jones Newswires.

“This shows Japanese companies are increasingly in better shape… Their profitability is also rising these days, meaning they are becoming more resilient to potential external shocks,” she added.

However Hideki Matsumura, senior economist at The Japan Research Institute, warned that returning to a trade surplus could be some way off.

“In order for us to see a surplus, we need to see a significant increase in export quantity, as well as a resurgence in overseas economies,” Matsumura said.

In April, new leadership at the Bank of Japan — handpicked by Abe — vowed to hit a two-percent inflation target within two years, jack up asset purchases including government bonds, and double the money supply.

The ambitious target, a key part of Abe’s bid to stoke the deflation-plagued economy, is aimed at reversing years of falling prices that have crimped private spending and business investment.

Last week, the BoJ said the economy was “picking up” as it held off ramping up April’s huge stimulus scheme, part of a wider plan that includes big government spending and structural reforms to the lumbering economy.

On Wednesday, finance ministry data showed that Japan’s trade deficit expanded 9.5 percent from a year earlier to 993.9 billion yen ($10.4 billion), the longest running string of monthly deficits in three decades.

But May’s deficit was smaller than expected as the market had forecast a shortfall of around 1.2 trillion yen.

Exports rose 10.1 percent to 5.76 trillion yen, growing for the third straight month on higher shipments to the United States and China.

But exports to recession-hit Europe remained weak, falling 4.9 percent.

Imports meanwhile also climbed 10.0 percent, an increase for the seventh consecutive month, as costs of fuel and other items jumped due to a weaker yen.

Japan’s fuel imports have soared as most of its nuclear reactors remain off-line since the huge earthquake and tsunami in 2011 sparked the world’s worst atomic accident in a generation. –AFP

Authorities called in military helicopters to try to rescue residents and pilgrims cut off by rising rivers and landslides triggered by more than three days of rain in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, officials said.

“We are unable to confirm the number of deaths since most of the communication lines have broken down across the state,” the state minister for disaster and relief said.

“But at least 60 people are feared dead and nearly 50,000 are stranded,” Yashpal Arya told AFP.

Among those killed were four members of the same family, who died when their home was hit by a landslide as they slept, in Kasta village near the state capital of Dehradun, local officials said.

Television footage showed bridges, houses and multi-storied buildings crashing down and being washed away by the swirling waters. A swollen river is seen engulfing a giant statue of Lord Shiva in the tourist hub of Rishikesh.

Rising water levels in some towns have also swept up cars, earthmoving equipment and even a parked helicopter, as a result of the surprise rains which have lashed the state since Saturday.

Roads in many areas have been destroyed, leaving hundreds of pilgrims stranded on their way to visit shrines in remote areas. Authorities have cancelled pilgrimage trips, fearing further rains and landslides in the state, often referred to as the “Land of the Gods” because of its many Hindu temples and other sites.

Fresh rains in some districts were hampering rescue efforts, with teams from the national disaster management authority camping in the popular pilgrimage town of Haridwar awaiting air lift to the worst-affected districts, officials said.

The state government was also readying food parcels and drinking water to be dropped by helicopters to remote villages.

“The situation is very grim. The meteorological office has predicted that the rain will continue for another three days at least,” government official Amit Chandola was quoted by television stations as saying. — AFP

The leaders of the Group of Eight most industrialised nations are still working out the exact wording of the communique that they will issue at the end of the two-day summit in Northern Ireland, officials from two Western nations told AFP.

The statement is likely to focus on less contentious issues such as the need to push for a peace conference in Geneva and on humanitarian aid, one official said on condition of anonymity.

Syria was discussed for a second time yesterday during a session on counter-terrorism, following a lengthy discussion during the leaders’ dinner on Monday, another source said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron had drawn up a list of five areas that he thought there could be agreement on with Putin at the dinner.

An official said there were “very frank” discussions at the dinner, especially on the issue of chemical weapons.

The United States, Britain and France say President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have used nerve gas but the regime’s ally Russia says there is no evidence to support their claims.

However there was agreement on the need for a transitional authority that would include all communities in Syria,
which is increasingly divided along sectarian lines after more than two years of conflict.
— AFP

The Unicorn Logger, a Panama-flagged freighter, ran aground at a protected marine sanctuary off the tiny island of Sambawan on Friday, coastguard spokesman Armand Balilo said.

“The crew are detained aboard their vessel as the damage to the reef is assessed,” he told AFP.

The ship was carrying logs from Malaysia to Japan when it hit the reef, Balilo added.

A central Philippines coastguard spokesman, Ensign Jamaal Aceron, told AFP the ship will be towed for repairs to a shipyard in the central port of Cebu once the extent of the damage on the vessel is determined.

It was the latest in a series of maritime incidents at protected Philippine reefs this year.

A US Navy minesweeper ran aground at Tubbataha Reef, a World Heritage-listed marine sanctuary in the southern Philippines in January, leading to fines for reef damage and the dismantling of the ship.

A Chinese fishing vessel also ran aground at Tubbataha in April, causing even more damage. The crew were arrested and charged for damaging the reef as well as for carrying endangered mammals. — AFP

“It is necessary to avoid tightening the sanctions pressure against Tehran and start thinking about ways for a possible weakening (of sanctions) in a way that is tangible for Iran,” Lavrov said in an interview with Kuwaiti news agency KUNA

His remarks came following the victory of moderate Hassan Rowhani in Iran’s presidential election, which raised cautious hopes about a continuation of the progress seen in talks between world powers and Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan earlier this year.

“For the first time in many years, hopeful signs have appeared in this process,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov said he believed that Iran was now ready to agree to suspend efforts to enrich uranium to 20 per cent, which could prove to be a crucial moment after years of stalemate in the talks.

“This could be a breakthrough agreement and to a large extent remove the acuteness of the existing problems,” said Lavrov, saying concessions by Iran needed to be met with similar steps by world powers.

Iran has been slapped with successive rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and also unilateral measures by the United States and the European Union.

The sanctions initially only targeted the nuclear and defence industries but have now started to hurt the wider economy, causing concern among ordinary Iranians and even the leadership. — AFP

The video, which has been viewed nearly 200,000 times on YouTube, has prompted fevered debate in the Buddhist-dominated kingdom over monks’ adherence to austere principles which include living without possessions, beyond a handful of robes.

According to one of the monks, who has since been ‘reprimanded’, the jet was chartered by a devotee to fly them home to northeast Si Sa Ket from Bangkok after performing duties in November, said Nopparat Benjawattantnun, director of the National Office of Buddhism.

“His behaviour — wearing sunglasses and carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag — amounts to an ostentatious display that will provoke criticism from laymen,” Nopparat said.

Virood Chaipanna, director of Si Sa Ket’s Office of Buddhism, named the monk as Luang Pu Nenkham Chattigo, 34, from Wat Pa Khantitham.

“Yesterday I went to the temple but he was not there. They said he is in France,” Virood said.

Buddhism is Thailand’s state religion and around 95 per cent of the population is believed to follow it — the highest percentage in the world.

Figures last year from the National Office of Buddhism showed Thailand had more than 61,000 monks.

Their behaviour frequently falls under the spotlight with media reports uncovering cases of clergy taking drugs, drinking, gambling and visiting prostitutes.

“To be in the monkhood one should be isolated and content with what one has,” said Pra Khru Vinaithorn Teerawit, of the Buddhism Protection Center of Thailand, adding complaints are most commonly made against newly ordained monks.

Referring to the video, he said the public reaction should depend on whether the monks chose to travel by private jet or if it was organised by followers.

“If monks chose to travel by jet then it’s not suitable,” he said.

The video can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playeríembedded v=sANFgwoJeicask-apv/apj/dr — AFP

The owner, who kept the animals in a public housing apartment, could be jailed for two years and fined up to Sg 500,000 (US$297,000), the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said in a statement.

The 32 animals included a Sunda slow loris, a nocturnal tree-dwelling primate; a common marmoset, a small monkey with a long tail; and three ball pythons, which are popular in the pet trade because of their docile nature.

There were also three black-tailed prairie dogs, several types of tortoise, five ornate horned frogs, an iguana, a gecko and a degu, a small rodent endemic to central Chile.

“The seizure, which includes highly endangered and threatened species like the slow loris, marmoset, Indian star tortoise and ball python, is AVA’s largest inland seizure of wildlife since 2002,” the agency said in a statement.

“A man is currently assisting AVA in the investigations.” Residents in public housing, where most Singaporeans live, are only allowed to keep approved pets such as non-endangered birds, aquarium fish and one small dog per household.

The animals, which were rescued earlier this month, are now in the care of a company running the Singapore Zoo, said the AVA, which raided the flat after a tipoff. — AFP

Singapore’s Pollutant Standards Index stood at 115 as offices opened — still above the ‘unhealthy’ threshold of 100 but down from the peak reached late Monday when the entire island was shrouded by a smoky haze.

Most commuters walked in bright sunshine yesterday without covering their faces despite the lingering smell of burnt wood in the business district.

The Ministry of Manpower has urged employers to issue protective masks to staff with heart and respiratory problems, and those working outdoors. The elderly and children have also been told to reduce strenuous outdoor activity.

The pollutant index soared to a peak of 155 late Monday, the highest since Southeast Asia’s prolonged haze crisis in 1997-1998, but eased off overnight.

On Monday, Singapore urged Indonesia to take ‘urgent measures’ to tackle its forest fires as smoke blown from Sumatra island choked the densely populated city-state as well as parts of Malaysia.

But the Indonesian forestry ministry said firefighters were already tackling the blazes and water-dropping aircraft would be deployed if local governors made a request.

A ministry official, Hadi Daryanto, also attempted to shift some of the blame onto Malaysia and Singapore, saying their palm oil companies that had invested in Indonesia were also responsible.

“The slash-and-burn technique being used is the cheapest land-clearing method and it is not only used by local farmers, but also employees of palm oil investors including Singaporean and Malaysian companies,” he said.

“We hope the governments of Malaysia and Singapore will tell their investors to adopt proper measures so we can solve this problem together.” But Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s minister for environment and water resources, kept up the pressure on Indonesia.

In remarks carried yesterday by Singapore media, he said ‘commercial interests in Indonesia have been allowed to override environmental concerns.’ He repeated an offer of help from Singapore, which has a modern military and civil defence system including firefighters. — AFP

Protesters hurling Molotov cocktails clashed with police firing tear gas and water cannons late Monday, as lawmakers approved measures paving the way for a reduction in crippling fuel subsidies in Southeast Asia’s top economy.

As police braced for hundreds to converge on parliament for a second day of protests against the expected 30 percent increase in fuel prices, ministers said the government would not back down.

“The fuel price will go up,” Finance Minister Chatib Basri insisted, saying it was just a matter of finalising the details before an announcement, which is expected in the coming days.

“The hike is very important because of global economic uncertainty,” he added, referring to a sell-off on emerging markets this month that has sent Jakarta stocks and the rupiah plummeting.

Vice President Boediono urged citizens to “stay calm” and not hoard fuel, as reports emerged that people were starting to stockpile subsidised petrol before the price rockets.

Police in West Java and Lampung provinces seized thousands of litres of fuel allegedly bought in anticipation of a price hike and detained several people, while state energy firm Pertamina said sales had increased three to four percent in recent days.

The price of fuel is expected to increase on average 33 per cent, with petrol jumping from from 4,500 rupiah (US$0.46) a litre to 6,500 rupiah, and diesel from 4,500 rupiah to 5,500.

Following a marathon parliamentary session on Monday, lawmakers agreed on a revised budget that included a package of measures to compensate the millions of poor people likely to be hit hardest.

Poor households will receive 15 a month each for the next four months to offset the impact of the fuel hike, which is expected to cause the cost of everyday goods to go up as they will be more expensive to transport.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had insisted on the measures before any fuel hike, which will come at a sensitive time as parties gear up for elections in 2014.

Eight thousand people demonstrated across Jakarta during the debate, with thousands outside the national parliament hurling Molotov cocktails, fireworks and bottles at police in riot gear, who fought back with tear gas and water cannons.

Eighty-eight protesters were detained at the Jakarta protest but police said they would be released yesterday. One protester received a minor injury, according to police.

At least 14 other people were injured in protests across the country.

Yudhoyono has been seeking to lower the huge subsidies for some time and last year came close. — AFP

Police in eastern Jiangsu province arrested Gu Yimin, an odd-job worker, on Friday on ‘suspicion of inciting subversion of state power’, marking the first time the charge has been used since President Xi Jinping took office in March.

Gu had been held in a detention centre in Changshu city in Jiangsu since early June, his wife said. The centre could not be reached for comment.

Inciting subversion is a charge that in the past was commonly levelled against critics of one-party rule.

The charge against Gu is the most significant of a series of police actions over the past three months against people who have demanded freedom of assembly.

Between late March and May, authorities detained 15 anti-corruption activists involved in demonstrations calling for government officials to publicly disclose their assets, according to Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Gu, 37, applied in late May for permission to demonstrate on June 4, the 24th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, his wife, Xu Yan, told Reuters. Chinese authorities rejected Gu’s application.

Gu had also forwarded several photographs commemorating the movement on his microblog, including one that said: “By the expiry date of 2013, remove the Chinese Communists; on June 4, the city was slaughtered”.

“He possibly wanted to restore a bit of history, to let more people know about June 4,” Xu said by telephone. “I think this charge is a little heavy. If as a mere ordinary person, he could subvert state power, then this country’s state power is too easily subverted.”

Public discussion of the crackdown is still taboo in China, where on June 3 and June 4, 1989, its leaders ordered troops to open fire on demonstrators and sent in tanks to crush a student-led campaign movement, killing hundreds.

The Communist Party has banned references to the crackdown in state media, the Internet and books, meaning most young Chinese are ignorant of the events.

State security officers told Xu that his crime was tied to “distributing photographs and writing a statement related to June 4”, she said. On yesterday, police took away the family’s router, saying they needed to investigate the crime.

Xi’s ascendancy in a once-in-a-decade generational leadership transition last November had given many Chinese hope for political reform, mainly due to his folksy style and the legacy of his father, Xi Zhongxun, a former reformist vice-premier.

But many human rights activists say they see an emerging pattern that suggests Xi is not as tolerant of dissent as some had hoped for.

“There were such hopes before Xi’s new leadership that he would be the man who would take China forward on key issues including human rights, but these recent arrests of rights activists send a worrying signal that he might not have the appetite for real change at all,” said Wang of Human Rights Watch. — Reuters

By combining gravity and topography data collected by satellites, the scientists from Curtin University in Western Australia were able to use computer modelling to at first identify two basins on the far side of the Moon. They later developed a high-resolution image to find a total of 280 ‘candidate basins’ which they suspect are craters.

“There are many more (craters) that have been mapped from optical observations or from just the shape of the topography,” researcher Will Featherstone told AFP.

“So there’s many, many craters that were already known, we’ve just been able to apply this technique to enhance the ones that aren’t so easy to see.

“What we have been able to use is the topography and the gravity together to get a stronger indication that there is something there that needs further investigation.”

Featherstone said the researchers looked at the lunar surface on both the near and far sides of the Moon, the dark side being more challenging because satellites cannot be tracked from Earth when they are on that side.

To get around this, the researchers used data gathered from a mission which used multiple satellites which were tracking each other as they circled the Moon.

“So whe n the satellite orbiting the Moon went behind the far side and they couldn’t be seen from Earth, they could be seen by other satellites,” he said.

Featherstone said of the 280 possible craters, the researchers had classified 66 of them as distinctly visible according to both gravity and topography.

“Scientists can, instead of looking at every square inch of the Moon looking for basins, they can target these areas,” he said.

“It just helps investigations of the Moon and the history of the Moon and the solar system,” he added. The team has also done some work on the gravity of Mars and Featherstone said other data sets were also available for Venus and other planets.

He said scientists were optimistic about further discoveries from applying their techniques to new gravity data from NASA’s GRAIL mission, which ended in late 2012 when the two satellites – named Ebb and Flow – were deliberately crashed on the Moon. — AFP

East Japan Railway (JR East) said it wanted to find a couple who would like to tie the knot aboard the usually heaving Yamanote Line, in the company of up to 120 friends and family.

“We expect applications from couples who are somewhat attached to the Yamanote line, including those who live nearby,” said JR East spokesman Yoichi Suzuki. “But they need not necessarily be rail fans.”

Guests will have exclusive use of the 11-car train, which normally carries around 1,000 tightly-packed commuters.

The train will take an hour to travel the around the 35-kilometre Yamanote line, stopping at all 29 stations but not opening its doors.

The nature of the journey will pose one possible challenge — there is no toilet aboard.

“The guests will be warned well in advance. I think this is all the same for ordinary weddings,” said Suzuki.

The event has officially been planned to mark the 50th year that Yamanote line trains have been painted yellow-green. — AFP

Researchers want to introduce a human stem cell into an animal embryo, to create a so-called ‘chimeric embryo’, which they can implant into an animal’s womb.

The hope is that this stem cell will grow into a fully-functioning human organ — a kidney or a liver, for example — as the animal matures.

This would mean when the creature is fully grown, the organ could be harvested from the animal and used for transplanting into a person in need.

“Experts will study what possibilities this kind of research will generate,” especially with regard to ethics and human dignity, a government official told AFP.

The panel of government-appointed scientists, law professors and journalists will meet later Tuesday.

Its recommendation will be sent next month to a government committee which is expected to begin drafting guidelines shaping the boundaries of Japan’s cutting-edge embryonic research.

Unlike in the United States, there is little public opposition to the research, with domestic media coverage overwhelmingly positive, reflecting relatively high levels of scientific literacy among the population at large.

Japan currently allows scientists to grow chimeric embryos for up to two weeks in test-tubes, but prohibits them from putting those embryos into an animal’s womb, the official said.

In the proposed experiment, researchers, led by Hiromitsu Nakauchi of Tokyo University, want to implant a chimeric embryo made from a fertilised pig egg and a human “induced Pluripotent Stem cell” (iPS) into a pig’s womb, he said.

Stem cells are infant cells that can develop into any part of the body.

Until the discovery of iPS cells several years ago, the only way to obtain stem cells was to harvest them from human embryos.

This is controversial because it requires the destruction of the embryo, a process to which religious conservatives, among others, object.

Pioneering work done in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University, a Nobel Laureate in medicine last year, succeeded in generating stem cells from skin tissue.

Like embryonic stem cells, iPS cells are also capable of developing into any cell in the body, but crucially their source material is readily available.

“We’ll see if the experiment goes well, but if we succeed in producing a human organ, the rest of the work toward practical use would be done within five years,” Nakauchi told AFP. — AFP

The marches, organised mostly through snowballing social media campaigns, blocked streets and halted traffic in more than a half-dozen cities, including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia, where demonstrators climbed onto the roof of Brazil’s Congress building and then stormed it.

Monday’s demonstrations were the latest in a flurry of protests in the past two weeks that have added to growing unease over Brazil’s sluggish economy, high inflation and a spurt in violent crime.

While most of the protests unfolded as a festive display of dissent, some demonstrators in Rio threw rocks at police, set fire to a parked car and vandalised the state assembly building.

Vandals also destroyed property in the southern city of Porto Alegre.

Around the country, protesters waved Brazilian flags, dancing and chanting slogans such as ‘The people have awakened’ and ‘Pardon the inconvenience, Brazil is changing.’

The epicentre of Monday’s march shifted from Sao Paulo, where some 65,000 people took to the streets late in the afternoon, to Rio. There, as protesters gathered throughout the evening, crowds ballooned to 100,000 people, local police said.

At least 20,000 more gathered in Belo Horizonte.

The demonstrations are the first time that Brazilians, since a recent decade of steady economic growth, are collectively questioning the status quo.

The protests have gathered pace as Brazil is hosting the Confederation’s Cup, a dry run for next year’s World Cup soccer championship.

The government hopes these events, along with the 2016 Summer Olympics, will showcase Brazil as an emerging power on the global stage.

Brazil also is gearing up to welcome more than 2 million visitors in July as Pope Francis makes his first foreign trip
for a gathering of Catholic youth in Rio.

Contrasting the billions in taxpayer money spent on new stadiums with the shoddy state of Brazil’s public services, protesters are using the Confederation’s Cup as a counterpoint to amplify their concerns. — Reuters

The 29-year-old former contractor for the National Security Agency dismissed allegations he was a traitor or a Chinese agent, and insisted he had exposed a dangerous US global surveillance network that threatens the privacy of millions.

US President Barack Obama’s administration has protested that the programs exposed by Snowden’s leaks were vital to protecting US citizens from terrorism, but the revelations have triggered an embarrassing global debate.

Snowden, who fled last month from his job at an NSA base in Hawaii to Hong Kong carrying with him a cache of secret documents, is unrepentant, and he vowed to expose more details about how US agents spy on private emails.

“More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming,” he said, in an online interview hosted by The Guardian newspaper, repeating his allegation that US federal agents have access to private users’ Web traffic.

The government has opened a criminal probe into Snowden’s acts and partially confirmed his allegations by defending the programs to access Internet data and phone records, saying that they have thwarted dozens of terror attacks.

The degree to which US agencies have direct access to private communications stored on servers operated by private Internet giants has proved to be one of the more controversial aspects of the revelations.

Firms like Google and Facebook say they provide information only when presented with a court order, and deny that they have effectively given the NSA “back door” access directly to their data banks.

But Snowden repeated his claim that almost any intelligence analyst with access to the NSA signals intelligence database could target almost anyone’s emails or phone metadata and that warrants are rarely audited.

“They can enter and get results for anything they want,” he said.

“Phone number, email, user ID, cell phone handset ID (IMEI) and so on. It’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy-based, not technically-based, and can change at any time,” he said.

Snowden alleged that Americans’ communications were collected and consulted on a “daily basis,” with analysts having access to all details associated with a targeted email address, such as IP addresses, raw data, content, headers and attachments.

“They excuse this as ‘incidental’ collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications,” he added. — AFP