Six Afghan civilians, international soldier killed

KABUL (AFP) - Six Afghan civilians and an international soldier were killed in extremist-linked unrest in Afghanistan as President Hamid Karzai called Friday for all sides to respect "Peace Day" this weekend.
Four of the civilians died when rockets fired by insurgents at a base for international troops landed in a field where women and children were working, the NATO-led military force said.
"The attack killed four, including a child," it said in a statement.
Other civilians were wounded in the attack on the base in a remote district in Paktika province on the border with Pakistan, it said without identifying the civilians.
Another Afghan civilian was killed late Thursday when NATO soldiers fired at a truck that came too close to a military convoy in the southern city of Kandahar, the alliance's International Security Assistance Force said separately.
It also announced it was investigating claims that soldiers had mistakenly killed an Afghan district governor and two of his men in the southern province of Uruzgan on Wednesday.

The Australian defence ministry said its soldiers may have been involved in the apparent incident of friendly fire.
In other violence, two policemen and a civilian were killed in a Taliban ambush in the eastern province of Khost late Thursday, provincial security authorities said.
And a soldier with the US-led coalition was killed in a bomb blast Friday, the force said, without giving the nationality of the soldier.
The coalition said separately it had killed two Taliban and arrested six in the Sarobi district near Kabul where 10 French soldiers were killed in a rebel ambush last month.
And six Taliban were killed in an Afghan operation in the central province of Ghazni, provincial spokesman Ismail Jahangir said.
The steady pace of attacks are part of an insurgency that was launched by the Taliban after their ouster from government in late 2001 and has gained strength in recent years, to the despair of Afghans whose country has been at war for 30 years.
Afghan television and news agency broadcast an appeal from Karzai for all sides in the conflict to respect the United Nations' "Peace Day" on September 21.
The president urged Afghan and international forces "not to fire a single shot unless and until attacked" and urged the Taliban to join a government reconciliation process under way.

Indian police hunt militants after Delhi gunbattle

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Armed police launched an intense manhunt across the Indian capital Saturday for two suspected Islamic militants who escaped a dramatic gunbattle in which two militants and a police officer died.
The two militants killed during Friday's shootout in a Muslim area of New Delhi included the leader of a shadowy group responsible for a series of deadly bomb attacks including ones in the city a week ago, officials said.
The hour-long gunbattle erupted around an apartment in Jamia Nagar, in the south of the capital, when police acting on a tip-off discovered a group of around five armed men holed up in a building in a maze of narrow streets.
Police Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma later died in hospital after succumbing to three gunshot wounds, police commissioner Y.S. Dadhwal said.
He said one of the dead militants was Indian Mujahideen leader "Atif alias Bashir" who was "linked with the blasts all over the country."
Over the past five months, serial bombings claimed by the Indian Mujahideen have hit the cities of Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi -- leaving at least 130 dead and many more wounded.

Dadhwal told reporters that one militant had been placed in custody after the shootout while two others managed to flee.
Scores of armed police officers on Saturday fanned out across New Delhi and adjoining cities for the two missing militants.
"It is one of the most intense manhunts we have launched in recent days and we are hopeful of a result," a senior anti-terrorism officer told AFP.
Meanwhile police and the prime minister paid tribute to the slain inspector.
"He was one of India's most-decorated police officers... It's a sad day for us," Dadhwal said of 41-year-old inspector, credited with gunning down 35 militants and arresting 80 others.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too praised Sharma.
"Sharma was an exceptionally brave officer. He had shown exceptional courage throughout his career and he was an inspiration for our security forces in his life and will continue to inspire them after this demise too," Singh said in a letter to Maya Sharma, the officer's widow.
Indian Mujahideen was blamed for a series of blasts in busy shopping areas of New Delhi last Saturday that left 22 dead and around 100 wounded.
The recent wave of nationwide attacks has forced the government to confront the emergence of an indigenous Muslim militancy.
The dramatic shoot-out in India's capital came a day after the government unveiled new security measures designed to tackle what premier Singh said were "vast gaps" in intelligence gathering on militants.
The cabinet approved proposals to hire 7,000 additional policemen in New Delhi, install surveillance cameras in busy areas and create a research wing in its intelligence agency.
Singh said India had to face up to the growing involvement of home-grown militants in attacks.
In the past, India has focused its limited counter-terrorist and intelligence resources on neighbouring Pakistan, which it accuses of orchestrating militant attacks.
Hindu-majority India has around 140 million Muslims. While tensions have always existed, India's Muslims have in the past largely resisted organised militancy.
Indian Muslim leaders, however, have complained their community was being victimised by security forces.

Intel rolls out computer chip with six brains

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Intel on Monday rolled out its first chip with six brains, unveiling a "multi-core" microprocessor that boosts computing muscle while cutting back on electricity use.
The world's leading computer chip maker's new Xeon 7400 series microprocessor is tailored for businesses that want to boost server performance while conserving on space and energy.
Intel executives say the Xeon 7400 is part of an "incremental migration" toward chips with limitless numbers of "cores" that seamlessly and efficiently share demanding computer processing tasks.
Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices have two-core and four-core chips on the market.
The six-core chip delivers 50 percent more performance than its quad-core predecessor while using 10 percent less electric power, according to Intel enterprise group vice president Tom Kilroy.
Electricity and cooling expenses can account for nearly half the cost of running company computer servers.

"It isn't just performance and energy efficiency but the use models," Kilroy said of the boon promised by increasingly powerful chips. "One of the major ones is virtualization."
Multi-core chips are boons to computing trends including high-definition video viewing online; businesses offering services applications on the Internet; and single servers running many "virtual" machines.
"There is a realization that we will be able to bring things to market that weren't feasible four years ago," MySpace vice president of technical operations Richard Buckingham said while discussing the new chip's potential.
MySpace is among a growing number of Internet companies using "virtualization" to essentially multiply the usefulness of computing hardware with software that creates simulated computers complete with operating systems.
"When developers ask you for something you can pull it out of the air, literally," VeriSign engineering director John Bosco said of virtualization made possible by multi-core chips.
Multi-core chips basically allow computers to divvy up tasks to work on simultaneously instead of having a single powerful processor handle a job in a linear style from start to finish.
"It helps keep things exciting. Our development community has embraced the multi-core era," Bosco said.
Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Unisys and Fujitsu are among the computer makers building the new Xeon 7400 chips into servers designed for business networks, according to Intel.

China finds more brands of tainted baby milk: state media

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese officials have found 22 companies produced baby milk tainted with a toxic chemical, state media said Tuesday, in a dramatic escalation of a scandal that has left two infants dead.
Milk powder contaminated with a chemical used to make plastics has sickened more than 1,200 infants in a health scare that erupted last week and prompted a nationwide investigation into the extent of the problem.
The contamination was originally thought contained to the Sanlu brand, with the company apologising on Monday for the scandal.
But state-run CCTV said Tuesday night that more products have been discovered with the chemical melamine, and that all, including the powder made by Sanlu, have been pulled from shelves.
"In order to ensure the safety of the milk products, the relevant government departments have pulled them from shelves, sealed them, recalled them and destroyed them," CCTV said in its report.
The State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said tests on products from all 109 baby milk companies in China showed varying traces of melamine in 69 batches from 22 companies, Xinhua news agency said.

In an indication, meanwhile, that markets outside mainland China could be affected, a Hong Kong supermarket chain on Tuesday recalled a yogurt ice bar found to contain melamine.
The Wellcome chain said the product was the Yili Natural Choice Yogurt Ice-bar. Yili is a dairy manufacturer in China's Inner Mongolia region.
The scandal is the latest to rock China's food industry, which has been tarnished by a series of health scares over dangerous products, including those to export markets, in recent years.
China's top product-quality watchdog would dispatch inspectors to all milk-product manufacturers to contain the spreading health threat, CCTV said.
The moves were meant to "uncover the causes, pursue those responsible and severely deal with them in accordance with the law," it said.
The government has said milk collectors, who gather milk from dairy farmers, deliberately added melamine to make it appear the milk had more protein.
Sanlu, however, had blamed dairy farmers.
Police have arrested four suspects, at least two of which have admitted adding melamine to milk, according to state press, in reports that warned more sick babies were expected to be reported.
The 22 companies mentioned by CCTV included Torador Dairy Industry, a China-Australia joint venture in the northern city of Tianjian. Calls to Torador on Tuesday evening went unanswered.
They also included Guangdong Yashili Group, the report said, which exports its products to Bangladesh, Myanmar and Yemen.
However, it said tests of Yashili export products showed no melamine traces. The report made no further mention of possible contamination of exports.
Melamine, which is used for making plastics and glues, is being blamed for causing kidney stones in the affected babies, a condition normally rare in infants, but which gives rise to a range of health risks.
The two infant deaths occurred in May and July, the health ministry said.
The government has criticised Sanlu for not going public sooner once babies began to fall ill in March in northwestern Gansu province.
Tests in early August began to show melamine in Sanlu's product, but the scandal only broke in Chinese media last week.
Sanlu has fired its chairwoman and its general manager, state media said.
Four local officials, linked with agriculture and quality control, were also sacked on Tuesday, Xinhua said.
Andrew Ferrier, the head of New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, which owns 43 percent of Sanlu, said Fonterra knew of the contamination in early August and pushed for an immediate recall but that Sanlu was slowed by Chinese rules.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said her government learned of the contamination problem September 5, then "blew the whistle" three days later by informing Beijing after local Chinese officials refused to act.

Taliban attack kills three police in Pakistan: official

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A suicide bomber and Taliban militants attacked a security checkpost in restive northwest Pakistan late Tuesday killing three soldiers, a senior official said.
The bomber blew himself up as paramilitary soldiers approached his vehicle, before the militants attacked the checkpost in Swat valley in the North West Frontier Province, army spokesman Major Murad Khan said.
"The security forces intercepted a vehicle which was driving towards the post and the suicide bomber blew himself up in the car," Khan told AFP.
"Soon a group of militants tried to enter the post by firing on soldiers, but security forces managed to repulse their attack and three soldiers were martyred and six wounded," he said of the attack in the Tattano Bandy area.
Swat valley, a former popular tourist destination, has seen numerous clashes and bombings since radical pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah launched a violent campaign to enforce harsh Islamic Sharia law in the region last year.
The province is not far from Pakistan's rugged tribal areas on the Afghan border, where the army is battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, many of whom fled there after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Washington says Pakistan's mountainous tribal regions have become a safe haven for Islamic fighters waging an insurgency against international troops based across the border.
Tuesday's attack came as US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, arrived in Pakistan on an unannounced visit to discuss operations underway on the Afghanistan frontier with Pakistan's leaders, the Pentagon said.
The visit also comes against a backdrop of tension between the two allies. Islamabad has vowed to defend itself against violations of its air space and incursions by US forces in Afghanistan, after a series of missile strikes blamed on US-led coalition forces left 38 people dead in Pakistan.
The Pentagon on Monday denied that US-led coalition helicopters based in Afghanistan were fired on in Pakistan this week and forced to turn back.
But the increasingly frequent missile attacks, for which the United States has not claimed responsibility, are straining Pakistan's relationship with Washington, particularly because of concerns of civilian deaths.
Such deaths have stirred local anger and embarrassed the Pakistani government, already struggling to tackle the militancy that has seen 1,200 of its own people die in bombings and suicide attacks in the past year alone.
New President Asif Ali Zardari has pledged to combat the Islamic militancy.

US campaign sharpens as McCain takes poll lead

KANSAS CITY, Missouri, (AFP) - The US presidential election moved into high gear Monday as two new opinion polls showed Republican John McCain taking the lead over Democratic rival Barack Obama.
McCain, a decorated war hero who based much of his early campaign on the strength of his experience, wrestled last week for Obama's mantle of change with the help of his surprise vice presidential pick Sarah Palin.
A USA Today/Gallup survey showed McCain ahead of Obama 50 percent to 46 percent among registered voters , a turnaround from a previous poll taken by the newspaper just before last week's Republican National Convention.
That poll had McCain trailing Obama by seven percentage points.
A new Gallup daily tracking poll found McCain had moved into a 48 to 45 percent lead ahead of the November 4 election -- his best performance since May.
Experts attributed the McCain rebound to his party's convention and the surprise naming of Alaska governor Palin.

"He's in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point," political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia was quoted by USA Today as saying.
McCain and Palin vowed to use their history of fighting corruption to shake up Washington at a series of campaign stops after the Republican National Convention.
"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change," Palin told cheering crowds in Wisconsin.
"We're going to win this election and let me offer a little advance warning to the old big spending, do-nothing me-first country second Washington crowd: change is coming. Change is coming," McCain said the next day in Colorado.
Obama ridiculed McCain's promise of change and hammered the Arizona senator on the limping US economy, saying the Republican represented no change from Bush.
"John McCain, who is a good man and has a compelling biography, has embraced and adopted the George Bush economic platform," Obama said on ABC television.
The Illinois senator argued that voters would realize that the election was a choice between a new direction and discredited Republican policies.
"If they like what they've had over the last eight years, then they'll go with McCain. And if they don't like it, hopefully they'll go with me," he said.
Obama's running mate Senator Joseph Biden called McCain's commitment to change "malarkey."
"Tell me one single thing they're going to do on the economy, foreign policy, taxes, that is going to be change," Biden said on NBC.
The Democrats have had a hard time targeting Palin, who is popular among conservatives and has garnered public sympathy in the wake of the media's response to news that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant and planned to keep the baby.
Senator Hillary Clinton, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary and was incredibly popular among white women, has refused to criticize Palin even though the McCain campaign has actively targeted her disgruntled supporters.
Clinton, who has kept a low profile since she dramatically ceded to Obama at the Democratic National Convention in August, is expected to attack McCain at three events in Florida Monday.
McCain has been sharp in his criticism of Obama, warning Sunday that his rival did not have good "judgment" or a record of challenging his own party's dogma.
"He never took on his party on a single major issue, I have taken them on a lot," McCain said on CBS.
"I think I can make a strong case that whatever the issue, he doesn't have the judgment."
Neither headliners held rallies Sunday although McCain and Palin introduced themselves to voters at a Mexican restaurant in New Mexico and a barbecue joint in Missouri and Biden spoke at a Montana high school.
The Republican candidates had a rally planned in Missouri and a fundraising dinner in Obama's hometown of Chicago on Monday. Obama had two rallies planned in Michigan on Monday and another in Virginia on Tuesday. Biden was due to be in Wisconsin and Iowa on Monday.

Ike slams Cuba, Haiti death toll passes 600

HAVANA, (AFP) - Hurricane Ike raged over Cuba early Monday, pummeling the island with gale force winds and torrential rain after killing dozens in beleaguered Haiti and worsening its growing humanitarian disaster.
The second hurricane to strike in less than a week prompted more than 800,000 people to evacuate coastal areas of eastern Cuba. More than 9,000 foreign tourists were moved out of the resort of Varadero.
The hurricane made landfall at Punta Lucrecia late Sunday, the head of Cuba's meteorological service, Jose Rubiera, told state television.
Packing 120-mile (195-kilometer) per hour winds, Ike is the second powerful storm in just eight days to strike Cuba, following Hurricane Gustav.
"In all of Cuba's history, we have never had two hurricanes this close together," lamented Rubeira.
Just before dawn, the eye of storm was practically over Cabo Lucrecia on the northern coast of eastern Cuba, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) east of Camaguey and moving west, according to the US National Hurricane Center which said it was a Category Three storm on a scale going up to five.

Ike plowed across the Turks and Caicos as a powerful Category Four storm late Saturday, causing injuries and extensive damage on the British territory and tourist haven, before weakening.
The hurricane raked the Bahamas island of Great Inagua, toppling trees, blowing off roofs, causing an island-wide power failure and forcing many of its 1,000 to seek emergency refuges.
The main concern is now in Haiti , where four storms in three weeks have killed at least 600 people and left hundreds of thousands in desperate need of food, clean water and shelter.
Officials continued aid operations in the flood-stricken town of Gonaives, devastated by flooding from Tropical Storm Hanna. Another 47 people perished in the village of Cabaret, near Port-au-Prince, in flooding caused by Ike, officials said.
"Many homes were destroyed in Cabaret, and we have seen some bodies of children in the water," a journalist for UN radio who spent the night on the roof of his house told AFP.
Hundreds of bodies were found in Gonaives, a town of 350,000 in northwestern Haiti, after a five-meter (16-foot) wall of water and mud engulfed much of the town.
UN peacekeepers on Saturday evacuated several thousand residents from Gonaives, a local official said, but thousands more are still awaiting relief.
Some 650,000 Haitians have been affected by the flooding, including 300,000 children, and the task of delivering crucial aid has been complicated by dismal transport conditions, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Officials said 200,000 people were without food and clean water, many for four days.
"What has happened here is unimaginable," member of parliament Pierre-Gerome Valcine told AFP from Cabaret, 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of the capital.
Massive flooding over the past week in the poorest country in the Americas has triggered a humanitarian crisis that was worsening by the day.
Pope Benedict XVI said special prayers for the stricken country.
"I want to remember the dear population of Haiti, greatly distressed in recent days by passing hurricanes," Benedict told pilgrims on the Italian island of Sardinia.
More stormy weather hampered relief efforts Sunday. Heavy rains brought down a key bridge which severed the only viable land route to Gonaives.
The bridge gave way at the town of Mirebalais in central Haiti, forcing three trucks loaded with emergency supplies and bound for Saint-Marc, where thousands of desperate refugees from Gonaives were crowding into shelters, to turn back, according to a World Food Programme official.
Many bridges in other areas of Haiti have also collapsed, homes have been washed away and crops ravaged.
Ike was expected to eventually careen past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico and sweep toward Louisiana and the storm-battered city of New Orleans as early as Tuesday.